The bigger picture

I certainly don't disagree with the criticism of the Star's attack on Jack Layton and Olivia Chow as a "hatchet job". And indeed it's worth noting that the decision to focus on Layton and Chow looks to be designed to invent a story where none exists: with average expenses in the range of $469,000 per MP, the choice to point to the lone married couple in the House of Commons in order to be able to talk about a "million-dollar" total looks to be entirely unjustifiable except as either a cheap headline or a pretense to attack the NDP.

But I'll also point out that such a story should also make for an opportunity to point out the broader picture of expenses not just for other leaders, but for parties as a whole. And that's where I'd hope we'll see a stronger response from Layton and Chow in the future: it isn't just an issue of pointing to the same type of expenses for other parties, but particularly the massive pools of government money used for the Cons' purposes that should be the real target of public outrage.