OTTAWA—As the crow flies — or in this instance a government jet backed up by a string of chauffeur-driven vehicles — it is doable to travel from Parliament Hill to the town of Stouffville, northeast of Toronto, in about 90 minutes.A person using more conventional means of transportation on the other hand would take at least double that time. In either case, the travel there and back will use up most of a normal day’s work.If that sounds like a long way for the prime minister and a gaggle of ministers to travel as they did on Monday — and with Parliament sitting — just to use the backdrop of a family-run restaurant to announce a reduction in the small business tax rate, it’s because it is.A charitable explanation would be that it may have been hard, in the midst of the small-business backlash that has attended Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s plans to change some of the rules that govern private corporations to find a friendly venue for the announcement.A less charitable take would be that Stouffville has the not insignificant advantage — given the pummelling the finance minister had endured at the hands of the Conservative opposition in the House — to be so located as to make it logistically difficult to be back on time for question period.Be that as it may, it is to Stouffville that Trudeau, Morneau, small business minister Bardish Chagger, who happens to double up as the government house leader, and her indigenous services colleague Jane Philpot, who happens to be the MP for the area, repaired on Monday to eat some pasta and then some crow.For were it not for the headwind that the government has faced over its fiscal reform, chances are Canada’s small business would not have received an unexpected mid-mandate gift from the federal government.Notwithstanding some breathtakingly brazen prime ministerial talking points, Monday’s announcement was first and foremost testimony to the force of tha ...
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