I Promised Myself I Wasn't Going to Write About Lobster.

And yet, here we are. Because sometimes extremely-online discourse says something about broader issues that we should be paying attention to.

I’m not a communications professional, but I would probably have advised agriculture minister and PEI member of Parliament Lawrence MacAulay not to post a photo of himself in Malaysia eating one of the largest lobsters known to man or god. From a strictly utilitarian and professionally conservative perspective, the sort I often adopt despite myself, I would have wanted to avoid the ensuing controversy, which was as inevitable as it is regrettable. But I resent myself for that risk-aversion in this case, just as I find the reaction to the photo to have been, in many cases, cynical and thoughtless.

The institutions, technologies, and communities that shape us, particularly online, simply insist by default that each and every reading of each and every action is undertaken, at best, without grace or reflection. Bad faith seems to be the only faith we have left. It’s a trap: the speed of exchange, the algorithm which courts controversy, the need for in-group approval, the clout-chasing, the partisan double-standards. Once we’re in the trap, it seems impossible to get out.

Honestly, why aren’t we talking more about the size of that lobster? Photo: Lawrence MacAulay’s Twitter feed.

The best critique of the photo is that it comes off as, let’s say, tonally off the mark. For many, that’s true. That’s a factual statement. People are starving, food bank use is up, food insecurity has surged. We continue to face an affordability crisis that has hit working class people hard and the vulnerable among them ever harder. The combination of lobster and an ‘exotic’ foreign locale are coded as extravagant — which, for many, they absolutely are, though not perhaps for many locals on the East coast who have readier access to lobster, if not to Southeast Asia.

Taking the tonal critique into consideration, it’s fair to ask whether the post was sensitive to the moment. For many who were offended in good faith, it obviously wasn’t. That’s a fair point. But there’s more to it.

The deeper issue here isn’t why a minister ate lobster while on a trade trip dedicated to advocating for the consumption — and export — of a staple from his home region. We could be discussing the climate implications of trade. Or whether these trade missions are worth the money. We could dive into thee deeper issues: why food bank use is up, why food security has surged, and why we continue to face an affordability crisis. Anger at the photo is a stand-in for the anger, frustration, and sense of abandonment which many people feel. Those feelings are real and they are legitimate. But I’m willing to bet you a burger and fries from Five Guys, which seem to cost as much as a lobster dinner these days, that for every one person genuinely concerned about struggling workers and the vulnerable, ten were doing the partisan dance for its own sake.

In 2021, Canadian exports of seafood were just shy of $9 billion dollars, which represents a double-digit rise over the previous two years. The fishing industry that year made up 1.4 percent of Atlantic Canada’s economic output, which was slightly down, a drop brought about by the pandemic. The fishing industry accounts for 24,000 regional jobs in Atlantic Canada, of which 3,300 come from PEI, whose population is about 175,000. Fisheries jobs are critical to the region, a top employer, particularly in rural areas.

Presumably workers in Atlantic Canada are pleased that the minister is off doing what he’s meant to do as a minister in this government, promoting trade and exports that are critical to an essential regional industry. Perhaps they weren’t online en masse to defend MacAulay because, one imagines, they’re on the water and in factories doing the work that gets lost in ephemeral online discussions about this or that or god knows what.

Conservatives were quick to jump on the MacAulay photo. You can find their posts on social media if you’re so inclined. The gist of the complaint was ‘Oh, there go the high-flyin’ and falutin’ Liberals again, crushing $60 lobsters while everyone else starves’. I do not take their criticism as a good faith effort to stand up for the poor and hungry any more than I doubt the Liberals would be doing their own share of dunking if it was a Conservative government minister posting such ‘fancy’ meal photos from abroad. I know this because ten years ago the Conservatives did the same thing as MacAulay, though, as far as I know, then-minister Gerry Ritz didn’t commit the cardinal sin of posting about it. Inconsistency abounds.

As plenty of people pointed out, if the minister had been eating Alberta beef, how many Western Canadian Conservatives would be so outraged? And what of the $1700-a-plate fundraisers their leader, Pierre Poilievre held a year ago or the more modestly priced $600 affair coming up?

The Conservatives raised $35 million in 2023, which is money that no doubt would have fed a lot of people! If that point sounds absurd, that’s because it is. The money donated (that is, spent), Conservatives will tell you, is an investment — which is precisely what Liberals will say of MacAulay’s trade trip. That the latter is tax money and the former is private money is beside the point given that each is premised on the idea that the money in each instance is meant to yield a return on its investment. As I’m constantly reminded by capitalists and Don Draper, that’s what the money is for.

Presumably under a Conservative government there would still be trade missions. Presumably ministers on those missions would still eat. They may not be so inclined to post their meals, of course. At least not in the early years of their government. But you can bet that one minister or another will eventually defend the very behaviour they criticize today, just as their partisans will come to their defense when they do.

It’s easy to trade dunks on the internet obsession of the day. Participating in the pile-on encourages in-group solidarity and the dopamine hits and growing follower counts that come with it. I fall for it, too. Sometimes your fingers move faster than you brain. Sometimes you go with the flow. Often, on reflection, you realize you were uncharitable or wrong or both or worse. The subsequent corrections or walk-backs do not equal the volume of initial posts. They never do.

The discussions we ought to be focused on should be dialed into issues of affordability, worker power, poverty, and trade. We ought to discuss the structures and policies that make people upset over a photo of a politician abroad eating a dish from back home that’s important to his riding, his region, and to the country. But that’s much harder to do. It requires a good faith effort to listen and exchange perspectives and reasons instead of defaulting to scolding, double-standard dunks, and knee-jerk reactions. And that’s not for us. We prefer to keep swimming into the lobster trap.