The view from Nova Scotia: sorry, Pierre

HALIFAX – In Ottawa, the political centre of all things, Chris d’Entremont is a super big deal.

In Nova Scotia, the province from which d’Entremont hails? Not so much, bud.

On a recent trip to Nova Scotia, precisely nobody had anything to say to this writer when they were asked about Chris d’Entremont. When prodded for something, anything, they just shrugged.

Pierre Trudeau used to say, uncharitably but not inaccurately, that most Members of Parliament are nobodies when removed from Parliament Hill. In the case of Chris d’Entremont, that status seems to extend all the way to his home province. Out here, they’d much rather talk about the Blue Jays. Or the weather.

The profound disinterest in d’Entremont’s much-analyzed decision to slink across the Commons floor from the Tories to the Grits may be a Nova Scotia thing. In this province, rapid partisan flip-flops aren’t front-page news. Snowplow jobs, advertising gigs, paving contracts: they go back and forth between the two main parties like the flicking of a light switch.

Departed Atlantic Canada Tory guru Dalton Camp, who not infrequently benefitted from such partisan political assignments, had the best line about how Nova Scotians regard all this partisan chicanery: “Politics is largely made up of irrelevancies.”

So why is Chris d’Entremont, who is mostly irrelevant, being treated as relevant by every pundit in the punditocracy?

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