Dog’s Breakfast

Last week I did a seminar on Media Relations for the Toronto Police Service at Seneca College. The TPS has a program called Advanced Leadership Course, and the group included both senior officers and civilian employees. One of my slides cited examples of Good Communicators and included the famous JFK quote: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ It is a magnificent phrase that goes to the heart of a nation. Any nation. Which brings me to Canada after this most recent election.

Today our Parliament is a dog’s breakfast, something like Israel’s Knesset with its 18 federal parties, none of whom ever holds enough power to implement policies without sacrificing their own principles and being forced to sleep with a motley crew of strange bedfellows. You can call this political rape. Such governments are, at best, bumbling bureaucracies embedded in watered-down, decision-making. Here’s why.

When I watched the Leaders’ Debate, I kept asking myself why Gilles Duceppe was at the table. He represents a party that only runs candidates in Quebec. Thus, it is not a federal party at all, but a Quebec party. Today, with 50 MPs in the House of Commons, the Bloq once again holds the balance of power and, in the process, holds the rest of us hostage. If that’s not a dysfunctional government, I don’t know what is. If Canada was a real country – and it’s really just a collection of component parts – our constitution wouldn’t even permit a party that only runs candidates in one province and is committed to the breakup of the nation. I couldn’t imagine the U.S. allowing the Lone Star Party whose interests are confined to the state of Texas.

I also wondered why Elizabeth May was at the table in that Leaders’ Debate, and I say that with the admission of having voted for the Green Party in the last Ontario election because I thought they made the most sense. But Ms. May was representing a federal party that had never elected a single Member of Parliament, its one and only MP being a convert from the Liberals. Ms. May herself was not an elected MP either. Alas, if the Greens were at that table, why not the Abolitionist Party of Canada, the Communist Party of Canada, the Libertarian Party of Canada, or the Christian Heritage Party of Canada? At last count, we had 32 federal political parties in this country. Or maybe we could have brought back the Marihuana Party or the Rhinoceros Party. Each of them, at the time of the debate, had as many elected MPs as the Greens, which was none.

Today the Greens still have none.

And so, if we were a country that had any sense, there would have been only three people at that table – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, and NDP Leader Jack Layton. Which is how it should have been in the first place. The various choices for voters would have been more apparent, and single-issue parties wouldn’t have been there.

So, what does all this have to do with that JFK quote? ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?’ Plenty. It begs the question whether or not such words apply to Canada, and I think the answer is obvious. These words are about as far from the Canadian reality as the moon.

The single biggest problem in this country is that when we have a problem, we throw money at it, believing it’ll go away. But real life doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way in a country and it doesn’t work that way in a family. Does a good-for-nothing son-in-law stop coming to your door when all you do is give him money? Of course not.

 There is obviously a huge problem concerning our aboriginal population that can’t be addressed in this brief space. However, as far as Ottawa’s strategy is concerned and I use that word lightly, the one constant through the years has been the federal government throwing untold millions of dollars at the problem, with the result that we see today. Many aboriginals are, more or less, wards of the state.

 The issue about supporting the arts reared its head in this election campaign. While the monies directed here are not even close to what goes to the Native community, the fact remains that many people out there think they deserve federal handouts because they consider themselves to be artistes. They too have become wards of the state.

 Provincial premiers spend as much time begging for handouts from Ottawa as they do governing. Indeed, when was the last time you heard someone from the educational or healthcare sectors say: ‘Thank you very much, federal and provincial governments, but we have enough money to spend now and don’t need any more?’ While I suppose some may argue that schools and hospitals should be ‘wards of the state,’ I don’t see many signs in Ottawa or any provincial capital with a concrete plan designed to improve the health of our people or improve the academic smarts of our young.

 Indeed, with our ever-aging population, healthcare eats up so much of our provincial budgets that every province is petrified about what the future holds. What’s more, we have an immigration system that encourages people from every corner of the globe to bring over their entire family tree, whether they can make a contribution or not, and once when they’re on the payroll there is nothing to stop them from taking Junior to the local emergency ward whenever he has a fever.

 Canada is a great big gravy train.

 When I was doing that seminar on Media Relations for the Toronto Police Service, my slide screwed up the JFK quote, and I had it in reverse. ‘Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.’ Someone pointed out the mistake and I apologized. What is truly sad is that the words up on the screen represented the Canadian version.