Watching Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla and former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney answer questions on camera — about nanny abuse and envelopes of cash from affable Germans in hotel rooms, respectively — makes me think of an old parents' gag: "The 'p' is silent, as in 'bath.'"

Grilling these two is like a liberal parent talking to a three-year-old. "Tell the truth, Adam Jr., did you just pee in the bath? It's not nice to lie to Mommy. Mommy won't be angry. She just wants to hear the truth and she'll run a fresh bath, all lovely and fun. Freezies for snacktime! Mommy is losing her tiny mind here. Pee bad! Bathy nice! Tell Mommy and we can talk about your reasoning, sweetheart."

But Adam, Ruby and Brian are such steadfast little chaps. Ruby Dhalla wouldn't even concede that the house where the "caregivers" rubbed her mother's feet was her house, it was just a place she "visited." Then she realized this was a non-starter and she agreed that she did indeed live in her house. In other words, she had peed in the bath, sort of, but not very much, and actually her brother did it maybe because she's a girl and girls are dainty.

Mulroney took another tack. "Show me the pee," he basically said, in that stentorian yet unconvincing tone he used in days of yore when he was berating the opposition about appointing their pool man to the Senate.

Oh, I'll give ya something to cry about, Brian.

A strange truth

I find a poignance in the testimony of Dhalla and Mulroney, who seem to be telling their own weird truth. This is why they alternate between bridling and sentimentality about family.

Born in relative poverty, they both suffer from affluenza, as do many of us. They are strivers yearning for a status they believe is bestowed by a "Dr." honorific, or a Westmount mansion, or displaying legal tender like garden mulch, and they are deeply insecure. Their tender sense of dollar humiliation is the source of their grief.

When Mulroney was asked why he hadn't declared his wads of cash on his tax return, he said he didn't consider them part of what he called his "revenue stream."

When money isn't in my revenue stream, I put it in what I call my "savings account." Or I pay for repairs to my summer home (where I also spend my winters, if I can put it in aspirant Mulroney terms). I pay tax on interest but that's not just because my country expects no less, but because I am a hopeless liar.

When I lie, my face turns red and I stammer. Seven minutes later, I confess. I would make a lousy Madoff, a pathetic adulterer. When I was a kid, I remember a friend offering me candy after dinner.

"No thank you, I've already brushed my teeth," I said.

I have spent my adult life trying to make up for all those uneaten Smarties, but my heart's not in it. The child is mother to the woman: I'd confess to peeing in the bath if I hadn't even had a bath. The phenomenon of people confessing to murders they didn't commit? I get that.

So of course I have been at sea this week. How uncomfortable to be soaking in a tub with more pee than water. So many public figures are lying. We're swimming in lies.

Guy Lafleur, a man I love, has been convicted of lying in court. But he had a reason to lie, a son who appears to have been a giant pain all his life. Lafleur loves his bad son even more than he loves himself.

Only in Britain, you say

But from that sublime reason to lie, we head for the stinking ridiculous, which is the ongoing scandal engulfing Britain that should topple the government any day now.

Thanks to the brave Telegraph newspaper, British taxpayers now know that the House of Commons expense scheme was a private casino with the customer favoured to win. MPs of every party evaded taxes, they flipped houses (they were as icily clueless about where they actually lived as were Dhalla and Republican Senator John McCain) and they expensed for non-existent mortgages.

And Brits bought their MPs some weird stuff: Wisteria-trimming, dog food, bathrobes, horse manure, mole removal (the insectivore, not the spot), prams, toilet seats and tin openers, for starters. One MP finally admitted that he'd had his moat cleaned at public expense. How does one even clean a moat? With plankton and a rigged-up Atlantic Bee Mop?

It was the Week of Lies. And what a richness, what a foaming stewpot of lies! The Augean stable of fibs and frauds, the fakeries, the falsehoods and fictions and other words starting with f! The hot hysteria and tears enveloping Westminster as MPs confess.

In Britain, they tested the bathwater and it's full of pee. In Canada, we haven't perfected the lab work yet.

But we shouldn't have to. Just tell Mommy what you did. She won't be mad. She just needs to know.