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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
June 27, 2004
Good enough?
On the eve of an election that will at least superficially change the complexion of Canadian political life no matter what the result I won't bother repeating how I think you should vote: it will be obvious to anyone who has been reading me. American election campaigns are far too long (a necessary evil of fixed election cycles); our Canadian ones have become much too short. For whether or not we enjoy the spectacle (and I unashamedly enjoy watching politicians squirm) it is in our interests to make the course gruelling. Politicians should be put to the test and judged through many ups and downs. They should never be allowed to sprint quickly past us. A "snap election" is invariably called to give the incumbent an unfair advantage; to leave the "undecideds" with too little time to review the alternatives and indeed to discourage them from voting at all. When the election is called for the least convenient time of the year when people's minds are fixed on vacations this manipulation is compounded. On the other hand a government grown arrogant and too comfortable will sometimes receive a nasty surprise. It is part of the thrill of our first-past-the-post parliamentary system that we do have the power to "throw the bums out". We should enjoy it while it is still with us for I fear sooner or later we will land ourselves with some system of proportional representation in which no matter how we vote we will get approximately the same coalition of self-serving fat-cats back in power. The greatest weakness of the system we've inherited is the way it concentrates power in the single person of the Prime Minister with his whip hand over cabinet and caucus and ability to make all major appointments. It was designed for a small and nimble state with intensely competitive two-party races and a trigger-happy electorate. It was intensely adversarial as were our courts as was our economy: for competition got us the best results and we were adult and manly enough to handle it. Instead today that Prime Minister rules over a vast welfare state with a taxing power grown by accretion until almost half our wealth is taken out of our hands to be reprocessed through stupendous bureaucracies. The state the law the economy meld together through the mutual accommodation of huge vested interests. And if a party is allowed to stay in power too long it becomes practically indistinguishable from the bureaucracy. The truth is citizenship began shrinking to a SIN number a long time ago. Anyone who has been audited by the tax bureaucracy -- as I have continuously over the last three years -- will appreciate how small a thing the human being has become in comparison to "the process". The "oversight of Parliament" has become likewise a joke -- for grand questions of public policy are determined by the Prime Minister or the courts limiting Parliament to the theatrical discussion of the odd passing scandal. The bureaucracy has evolved into a "sacred trust" and the only public questions that get discussed are about how many billions should be poured into which of the machine's capacious orifices. All the more reason to wake up and vote. Not that one's citizenship reduces to this either. Gargantuan as it may be a government alone does not decide what we are. Every Canadian company selling goods in the market enhances or detracts from our national reputation; every book or song leaves a taste in the mind; every Canadian traveller makes an impression of his country in the native or foreign soil he treads. No government can finally determine whether the words "Made in Canada" will suggest something reliable or something tawdry. We too often expect a government to do things we could more easily do ourselves and this begins with setting examples of probity and decency; of courage and industry; of generosity and humility of spirit; -- of the public virtues. Still in democracy every country gets the government it deserves . And when we wake to the apprehension that our government is corrupt cynical and venal vast and unaccountable that its gestures are empty and its ideas perverse that it makes a hash of everything it touches and lowers the moral tone of our society we must finally look within. We the citizens allowed this to happen. We were the ones who failed to turn them out: who solemnly decided they were "good enough for us". David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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