A citizen's advocacy group has recently called Sophie Grégoire Trudeau out for accepting gifts and loans of clothing from Canadian fashion labels, deeming her "for sale" for daring to wear support for our country's industry on her sleeve. I can see how gifts and loans can make for some bad optics, even if the role of prime minister's wife has little real political oomph behind it. However, in a world where few powerful individuals direct their influence toward social good like Grégoire Trudeau does, Democracy Watch's threadbare argument seems to be more about populist-pleasing celebrity shaming than hypothetical conflicts of interests.

Duff Conacher says that government rules, as they are worded now, “can be abused with no real consequences.”

The Green Party receives a C-, the best grade of bad overall grades in Report Card on British Columbia Parties' Democratic Good Government Platforms -- Conservatives receive a D-, NDP a D-, and Liberals an F. A Dishonesty Downgrade of one full grade is also shown in the Report Card results -- usually only half of all promises are kept because of the lack of an honesty-in-politics law which is needed to effectively penalize promise-breakers and those who deliberately mislead.