Has a certain Opposition party been caught trying to infiltrate a certain leadership campaign?

Stay tuned.

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…as here, is like comparing the Beatles to Milli Vanilli.  Like comparing Kobe beef to ground chuck.  Like comparing Stephen Hawking to Johnny English.  Like comparing a Harley to a Moped.  Like comparing Olympic wrestling to pro wrestling.  Like comparing a Ferrari to a Ford.

You get the point.

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…so says The Hill Times. Thanks, Hill Times!

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As they grimly devote themselves to the task of reviewing 2012 — filled, as it was, with declining poll numbers, widespread public disinterest and no achievements whatsoever — Canada’s members of Parliament are today filled with undisguised envy for one figure.

One who will be long remembered by history. One who is recognized from coast to coast to coast. We speak, naturally, of Ikea Monkey.

Canada loves Ikea Monkey. Members of Parliament? Not so much.

Ikea Monkey became Canada’s best-loved, er, Ikea Monkey over the weekend.

As chronicled in a Pulitzer-winning report by Sun Media on Sunday , Maryam Shah wrote how the monkey in question — a rhesus macaque, youngish, somewhat stressed — had decided to explore a North York Ikea store on a Sunday afternoon. It was in its owner’s car, and it somehow got out.

“It’s a smart monkey,” a Toronto police spokesman said, and he would know.

Normally, voluntarily going to any Ikea location on a Sunday just before Christmas is a clear indication of mental illness.

But Ikea Monkey was driven to the Toronto-area store, one assumes, and left to its own devices.

Being “a smart monkey,” it got out of the car it was in, and likely went in search of “banan,” which is Swedish for “banana.”

(Other helpful Swedish banana-related phrases: “Och som stoppade en bil med banan?” and “Bananskalle, jag satsar åt dig,” which mean, respectively: “Who disabled an unmarked unit with a banana?” and “Listen, you stupid banana head.”)

Anyway. The Ikea Monkey delighted Ikea shoppers, who snapped photos that were immediately uploaded to the Internet. Some of the best Twitter tweets about Ikea Monkey: “BREAKING: #IkeaMonkey named Raptors starter. Can’t do any worse than humans.” And: “Peter Gabriel’s latest: “Shop the IkeaMonkey.” And: “It’s a lot of laughs until you recall Planet of the Apes started like this.”

Actually, those were all my tweets. I thought they were pretty funny, if I do say so myself.

But the point — and there is a point to this Swedish simian exegesis — is this: Ikea Monkey, in his little tailor-made shearling coat, and his thoughtful custom diapers, became more famous than any Canadian politician you can name.

Faster than you can say Instagram, the image of Ikea Monkey — natty, cute, and understandably bewildered by Ikea-issue Allen wrenches — went all around the planet.

Nearly 3,000 news stories. Tons of social media updates. Untold numbers of fake Twitter accounts.

(Personal favourite: #IkeaMonkey4TOMayor. He can’t do any worse than the incumbent.)

In the years to come, as social historians debate the enduring significance of Ikea Monkey, one thing will emerge as an empirical fact: In just a few brief moments, Ikea Monkey became the best-known Canadian of 2012. The whole world knows about Ikea Monkey, now.

For Stephen Harper and his government — who never seem to do much of anything, parliamentary majority notwithstanding — Ikea Monkey provides a cautionary tale.

To wit: When a rhesus monkey becomes better known, and better admired, than you (and in record time, too) it is perhaps time for a change in approach.

My advice? Dress the Conservative caucus up in little shearling coats and diapers, and make them visit shopping centres on weekends.

They’ll do a hell of a lot less damage to the country.

And, who knows?

Maybe they’ll get better known, too!

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…the most experienced support, too.

Both count.

Ms. Pupatello stands head and shoulders above the rest. She has the support of 17 caucus members, including Finance Minister Dwight Duncan and other cabinet ministers such as Bob Chiarelli, Brad Duguid, Mike Colle, and Michael Gravelle. Ms. Pupatello also has the support of three former MPPs. The regional distribution of her support is impressive: seven of her caucus supporters hail from ridings in and around Toronto, three from Ottawa, three from Northern Ontario, three from Southwestern Ontario, and one from Eastern Ontario.

Her supporters also have more total experience than her rivals. Including former MPPs, Ms. Pupatello has a combined 180 years of experience in the Ontario legislature in her camp and 60 election wins.

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Harinder sounded charming, Sousa sounded smart, Hoskins sounded comfortable.

Pupatello sounded like a Premier.

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A failure.

It isn’t something that anyone – particularly political partisans – ever like to admit to.

But that’s what the gun registry was, ultimately: a failure. And I say that as a Liberal, and a Liberal who owns firearms, too.

Justin Trudeau, who unnerves Harper Conservatives and Mulcair New Democrats in equal measure, said this week that the registry – however well-intentioned – was a failure. He said it with no enthusiasm, but he said it nonetheless.

The Cons and the Dippers quickly professed to be pleased by Trudeau’s change of opinion. But they shouldn’t be.

During a campaign-style stop in Hawkesbury, Ont., Trudeau said: “The long-gun registry, as it was, was a failure and I am not going to resuscitate that. But we will continue to look at ways of keeping our cities safe and making sure that we do address the concerns around domestic violence across the country in rural as well as urban areas.”

NDP principal secretary Karl Belanger and Conservative Senator Doug Finley made a big fuss about what Trudeau said, bleating and tweeting about Trudeau’s past voting record on the issue. But the government and the Official Opposition are fighting the last war.

Because the registry, as Trudeau said, is indeed dead. The Conservatives terminated the program earlier this year, and then made a big show out of erasing the many years of collected data (Quebec, however, is holding onto the information in the hopes of creating a registry of its own).

I’ve owned guns for a long time. So do members of my family. We didn’t think it was a big deal to register our guns. On one of the occasions I did so, it took less time that it took to register my bike. (I timed it.)

But that was then, this is now.

As with the NEP and a carbon tax, the Conservative Party is fond of droning on and on about assorted outrages, real or perceived. Politically, some work, and some do not. (Suggesting that opponents of an Internet surveillance bill were on the side of “the child pornographers” was one such canard that blew up in their faces.)

The gun registry, however, worked. As a political issue, it defeated more than a few Liberals, and elected untold numbers of Tory backbench trained seals. That’s why Harper and his party talked about for such a long time, without ever actually doing anything about it: it won them votes.

No longer. The registry has been relegated to the history books, and Trudeau – wisely, shrewdly – is serving notice that a Liberal government will be in no rush to bring it back.

Trudeau has also said he doesn’t regret voting to preserve the registry. That, too, isn’t really controversial. He’s simply saying it was part of the Liberal policy past – but it won’t be part of a Liberal policy future.

Like every successful aspiring Prime Minister, Trudeau knows that urban Canada alone can’t deliver a Parliamentary majority. He needs rural support, too. (A lesson Ontario Liberals will learn, the hard way, if they select a leader from downtown Toronto.)

Before the advent of the registry, Jean Chretien held all but one of Ontario’s seats, and he secured MPs in every province and region, urban and rural. When Justice Minister Allan Rock started marketing the registry, Liberals started losing seats.

Justin Trudeau is once again doing what he said he was going to do: borrowing policies from the Right, borrowing from the Left. The Clinton guys had a fancy name for it – triangulation – but its meaning is simple: doing what it takes, without being blinded by ideology.

That strategy, by the way, isn’t usually a failure.

It’s a winner.

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Still miss him.

Breslin’s column, the unforgettable one, here.

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Hmmm.

Given how completely wrong the Globe was on Pupatello’s liquor sales statement – ie., they claimed the exact opposite of what she said, in both headline and story, and have yet to publish a correction, despite having been sent a full transcript – I am actually feeling a bit sympathetic towards The World’s Worst Mayor™. Hard to believe, but true.

But that doesn’t stop the rest of us from speculating recklessly about what the top secret blockbuster story is about, does it? Speculate away, Team wk.com!

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