Canada’s cranky old-men syndrome

Quebec’s giddy new separatist leader describes Canada as an “imaginary” country, and Michael Den Tandt, one of the country’s best abstract thinkers, goes ballistic—it exists legally, he writes and, besides, it’s more popular than Pierre Karl Péladeau’s ethnic nationalist alternative. Den Tandt’s response is as familiar and as chronically seductive as spring tulips in Ottawa.

Clearly, Canada and the way things are done in Canada are hardly imaginary. Indeed, the awesome inertia of bearable second-best, not logic, is the status quo’s best friend.

Other amateurs as well as PKP raise their hands and say the damnedest things. Unify the tiny, near-insolvent Maritime provinces? Impossible. Abolish or create a full house of elected Senators? Impossible. Create a currency union with the US? Inconceivable. Give up our national border and let Quebec have one? Nonsense. A continental carbon tax? Road tolls in Toronto? I should live so long.

The classical liberal response to PKP’s primitive nationalism is: Yes, Canada was imagined. The union was assembled and sustained as an idea by persuasive men and women, not God or blood. And, so, it can be played with, altered and replaced through peaceful debate and democratic decision-making.

That was the promise Quebec heard Pierre Trudeau make in the first referendum debate. Wouldn’t it be lovely that if in two years we aren’t just picnicking and boasting about being around for 150 years but are actually engaged in at least one glorious argument over the way we organize ourselves?

Let’s try to act generous and young again.

Canada’s survival: what’s love got to do with it?

Activists who had an especially good time in the '60s often complain that young people now don’t have the passion that they had in the good old days, that with their smaller dreams big Canada will eventually disappear. The human heart and the lifespan of the Canadian federation has become a peculiar obsession of defeated Liberals, especially Michael Ignatieff.

While his suggestion to the BBC (Click on: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17819102) that Canada will eventually fall apart out of “mutual indifference” has been scorned, his concern that that the old passion necessary to keep us united may be missing is taken seriously. In short, Ignatieff survives again as a thinker.   

John Ivison writes in the National Post, “Ignatieff tells it like it is on Quebec.”

“Love, we are told, is a mix of intimacy, passion and commitment. It seems to me there is no great love for Canada in Quebec - and, judging by the rising demands for autonomy in Alberta, the thrill has gone for many in the West.”

Click on: www.nationalpost.com/Ignatieff+tells+like+Quebec/6520273/story.html

Margaret Wente writes in the Globe and Mail, “Michael Ignatieff was right about Quebec.”

“He’s right. Our generation embraced the French fact with passion. It was what distinguished Canada from the rest of the world. The existence of Quebec – the language! the culture! – made us feel cosmopolitan and sexy.”

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/michael-ignatieff-was-right-about-quebec/article2414217/is

On a quiet day, there is no denying that Canadians feel great pride, mutual benefit, collective security—but there's little love from shore to shore. Without feeling sexy extra-territorially, are Canada’s provinces, in Ignatieff’s words, merely parked as “way stations” on a road that leads to independence?

History and, surely, Ignatieff's liberal faith argue otherwise.

Free peoples are not destined to play national politics in units exclusively bound by love.

Otherwise, the lose federations of North America would have never matured in the first place—or survived the religious, language, and economic strains of the 19th and 20th centuries. (Both united federations have just spent ten years fighting an unpopular war in the Middle East, after a century of world wars at others' behest.) Also, Europeans would be electing national fascist governments again, if mutual self-interest and civility weren’t uppermost in people’s thinking.

Actually, Canada and the US are relatively easy to govern when their regions are rather indifferent toward each other. “Mutual indifference” has been successfully addressed by forceful leadership, compelling external challenges, and mutual self-interest.

While federations don’t impress romantics, they’re good at addressing great opportunities and challenges that loving little nations must leave to others.

Fighting over an “ordinary” brand for Canada’s left

It’s too much to ask for the drama of a heresy trial or the Republican primaries. The Canadian left is too old and too conservative for any of that. Nevertheless, the New Democratic Party’s leadership race is finally starting to generate news and a little feeling.

Last Sunday, in Winnipeg, we’re told, the gloves came off.

Click on:  http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndp-leadership-candidates-take-off-the-gloves/article2350862/?service=mobile

The “wedge” issue was created by front-runner Thomas Mulcair, who suggested that the NDP must refresh its slogans and renew its appeal if it is to win power—they might even, gasp, drop expressions of loyalty to “ordinary Canadians” every time they open their mouths in public.

Stunningly, he declined to withdraw these remarks. Several of his opponents not only committed themselves to stick with the “ordinary” but saw great benefit in plodding along according to the way they do things now.

Peggy Nash, who whispers the word “inspire” in every second sentence and hopes to be everyone’s second ballot choice, insists that the Party has already nicely renewed itself under the infallible leadership of the recently deceased Jack Layton.

Jack Layton occupies the same position of authority in the NDP that Ronald Reagan has among Republicans. While never winning a national election, his name permits most New Democrat politicians to stop thinking.

Unfortunately, for Peggy Nash and the other leadership candidates favoring continuity, Jack’s campaign rhetoric is pretty lame without Jack’s famous cane.

Mulcair deserves careful attention. He actually wants to win the next election against Stephen Harper. He knows that to do that he must keep his 59 seats in Quebec. To do that, he knows he must show Quebecers that he’s on fire in English-speaking Canada. He can’t catch fire in English-speaking Canada without being more interesting than Bob Rae, who’ll likely be a 67-year-old leader of the Liberal Party.

That means dropping stale, deflating slogans like “ordinary Canadians.”

Demagogues: What Quebec and Texas suffer in common

Christopher Hitchens is gone, leaving a mountain of unfinished work behind. Now, we’ll all have to laugh at his enemies a little harder and better contend with our own.

Quebec leader of the Parti Quebecois Pauline Marois and Texas Governor Rick Perry pretend to live in different worlds. Neither one is naturally funny. Yet, both are ridiculous bullies.

Marois organized news in Montreal last Friday to exclaim:

"What will remain of us as a nation if we let the French language decline without reacting, if we let our values be trampled upon?" she asked. She urged Quebecers "to affirm loud and clear our shared values, our identity. There is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of what we are."

"It's at the point where the niqab, the kirpan and all the religious signs are permitted everywhere by Canadian multiculturalism, but Christmas is not allowed," Ms. Marois said. "Absurdity has its limits."

Click on: www.nationalpost.com/preys+rising+cultural+insecurity/5868925/story.html

Wearing a fetching fall jacket that you could wear comfortably while walking dogs in Central Park or seal-hunting off Newfoundland, Perry whispered to Republican voters the following commercial message:

“I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.
As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.”
Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.
I'm Rick Perry and I approve this message.”

Click on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAJNntoRgA

Of course, neither politician is ashamed; both are shameless. They stroke the vanities of gigantic majorities and insult tiny minorities living quietly in their midst.

In Quebec, French is the mother tongue of over 80% of the population, is the official and working language of the province, and has grown steadily for over four hundred years. Over 83% of Quebecers identify themselves as Roman Catholics. Now, what about the Muslims with their vicious jackboots and masks? They enjoy absolutely no special favors and count for only 1.5% of Quebec’s population.

80% of Texans call themselves Christians. In the state of Iowa, where Perry is running his desperate commercials, approximately 90% of the people also say they are Christians. No one knows, or likely cares, how many gays will show up in the Iowa caucuses to befriend or oppose Rick Perry.

What’s most worrying about both these brutes, however, is that they are proud professional politicians. They’re not lose-lipped amateurs. They say what they say in order to get majorities to like them. Rick Perry has been running successfully for elective office, almost non-stop, for 26 years. Pauline Marois has been working for elected politicians and running for political office in Quebec since the 1970s.

It’s too easy to say that the two of them are merely preying on “rising cultural insecurity.” Christians in Texas and Francophones in Quebec aren’t really afraid of the small religious minorities in their communities. However, majorities don’t need to be afraid to be intolerant.

The more they keep electing bullies the more we must wonder—out loud—whether they are bullies as well.

New Democrats are soft on democracy too?

It’s official. It was first volunteered by their leader Jack Layton to the editorial board of The Globe and Mail just before the election and repeated last week by his Justice critic Joe Comartin: the social democrats in Canada’s national Parliament now believe that Quebec’s share of seats in Canada’s only elected legislative assembly must stay the same despite the fact Quebec’s actual share of Canada’s voting age population has gone down significantly.

Joe Comartin was as vehement as he was inventive “. . . any redistribution must ensure that Quebec receives a minimum 25% of the seats in that House, “its traditional share.” Conversely, Ontario, Alberta and BC shares shouldn’t go up even though their populations have grown by millions.

Click on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/quebec-denounces-western-premiers-praise-plan-to-enlarge-house-of-commons/article2045487/

The Harper government is expected to bring in legislation (for the third time) to catch up with the last national census. To honor even roughly the primary driver of the electoral map—allocating seats according to where people live to ensure each vote is roughly of equal weight—Harper will ask Parliament to allocate some thirty more seats to Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. The NDP opposition, apparently, will ask him to be “flexible.”

Asking a so-called ideologue to be flexible is shrewd but, but on this issue, deceitful.

The New Democrats are not asking that Harper provide safeguards for smaller provinces and minority language, culture and religious rights—they’re already enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.

Quebec is protected as well as respected in the Constitution; it enjoys a minimum of 65 House of Commons seats and the same representation as Ontario in the appointed Senate. In addition, the choice and design of a federal structure of government for Canada was largely driven to protect Quebec’s interests from any future intolerant Canada-wide majority.

The allocation of seats in the House of Commons is guided by the decennial census and can be adjusted slightly within each province to respect practical geographic differences. However, the House of Commons membership historically has been driven by one fundamental principle: each vote should be of equal worth; consequently, the allocation of seats must be regularly adjusted to reflect where people actually live.

There would not have been a liberal union of southern and northern American states or a Canadian union of Tories, Grits, Quebec nationalists and, later, socialists and social-democrat offsprings without agreement on one powerful legislative assembly that would represent all the people, as equals.  That is the rationale, the business, and the constitutional obligation of the House of Commons.

Indeed, to persist much longer in denying the dramatic relative growth of the populations of Ontario and Western Canada is to invite legal redress before the Supreme Court.

Yes, yes, Jack Layton is in a tricky spot; his new political base in Quebec won’t benefit directly by giving faster growing regions more seats. However, Official Opposition leaders, by definition, have many people to please and disappoint. He’s putting himself in a tough spot for an unworthy impulse; some decisions can’t be finessed and are best survived by standing for a principle—in this case, one embedded in the DNA of the left. In this political community, citizens—new and old—are equal.

Secular tots and social harmony in Quebec

“It may be that this policy will not prevent “any nascent religious fanaticism among the very young.” But it will (not) enhance and perpetuate a “them and us” culture that is not conducive to a harmonious society. There is no denying that many religious teachings, from holy texts created in times when fighting for a god against the infidel was a way of life, may not be such a good thing. . .We could surely work on ways to do without this. The Quebec daycare policy is a step in the right direction.

Robert Harrison, Burlington, Ont.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/letters-to-the-editor/dec-23-letters-to-the-editor/article1847646/print/

The government of Quebec, with the help of 58 daycare inspectors, is determined that its (universal) daycare subsidies do not support teaching religion to three year olds. Click on: http://www.cjc.ca/2010/12/22/quebec-curbs-religion-in-daycare/

How will these inspectors distinguish between religion, tradition and custom? Quebec’s Family Minister Yolande James announced that Christmas trees can stay put but role-playing and songs used for religious teaching are banned. As Lysiane Gagnon speculated, “the memorah is okay but it would be forbidden to tell the children why one candle should be lit every day.” Representatives of Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Greek Orthodox faiths fear that in order to avoid offending the inspectors all hint of religion will have to be muted.

Was the policy launched only to protect the purity of the majority’s tax dollars or also to advance the conviction that secular toddlers are most likely grow up to be temperate mainstream citizens? Either way, there is something disproportionate about this initiative. Its aggressiveness feels like an act of faith.

The tiny fraction of Quebec’s thousands of subsidized daycare facilities that pass on rituals and, yes, some of the rudimentary magic of their parent’s religion, surely, doesn’t constitute a serious or deliberate challenge to the social order of Quebec. Furthermore, a universal childcare industry that accommodates rather than shuns stories and activities that help bind individual families together is clearly in the best interests of creating a healthy new generation of Quebeckers.

The state’s school system, the weight of the majority culture and the long demonstrated appeal of Quebec’s secular values to new generations suggests that remedial pre-school interventions to restrain the appeal of religious zealotry is hardly necessary.

Of course, some strong families do aggravate the tendency of some teenagers to become political and religious fanatics. And the state should be—and is—well equipped to protect society from the illegal acts of extremists. Conversely, however, the state isn’t as successful in dealing with high school drop-out and delinquency rates that are aggravated by weak families—families that can’t talk amongst themselves or appreciate their parent’s roots or values.

Is secularism, in Quebec’s case, acting like a new state religion? Certainly, this campaign to clean religion out daycare centers reveals a rather free-wheeling impulse to smooth out differences that should give us pause. One of the principle glories of the secular state is the vitality of pluralism. If the state insists that its beneficence must only be available to deserving secular agencies it undermines that pluralist society.

The state and its awesome fiscal and regulatory power must be careful about putting any virtue above all others. Measures “conducive to a harmonious society” are not automatically steps in the right direction. Indeed, the rule of law, entrenched charters of rights and peaceful elections should give us comfort that we needn’t strive for some dreamy “harmonious society” in order to be safe, prosper and express ourselves.

Quebec’s left wing and the survival of hyperbole in Canada

Last month, the geeks of Quebec’s conservative remnant met in public in a suburban hotel—and talked about changing Quebec.

 The next week, Quebec’s left mobilized: a new Social Alliance was formed to stop the neo-cons from spreading crazy ideas about lower taxes and privatization.

At stake, allegedly, are the principles of solidarity and sharing. The Alliance spokesman, Michel Arsenault, president of the Quebec Federation of Labour, found words to dramatize the situation:

The issue: “It’s the difference between being human beings and animals….With animals, when one of them gets old, they let it die, they eat it. We want to take care of our people, our youths, our students our elderly.”

The alternative: “We are the most egalitarian society in North America and we want to keep it that way. Our social services cost $7-billion a year. When you compare with Ontario, it is costing Ontarians, through the private sector, $17.5-billion for the same services. We are getting more for our money with the public sector than Ontarians are getting with the private sector.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec/quebec-labour-student-groups-unite-to-fight-the-right/article1788183/

You start to worry that Canada’s political discourse is killing our sense of humour, and Quebec comes to the rescue.

Imagine Ontario as a case study of right-wing, heartless incompetence.

Even assuming that Ontario’s larger population (13 million Ontarians compared nearly 8 million Quebecers) has the same percentage of families and individuals that need social services to avoid living like animals, is it possible that the Ontario government has to spend approximately fifty percent more per capita on social services than the Government of Quebec?

Is Quebec egalitarian? Spectacularly efficient or outrageously cheap?

Modern Quebec and the Jews

On Monday, the National Post ran a story entitled, “Poll finds French-English gap towards Jews.” A poll commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies found, “only 34% of French-speaking Canadians felt Jews shared their values versus 73% of English-speaking Canadians.”

Click on: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Poll+Finds+Frenchenglish+Toward+Jews/3793036/story.html

Canadian novelist, Mordecai Richler probably would have had something sharp and smart to say, but he’s dead. So, a bothersome story in the mainstream press passed without note. Still, this is a striking assertion.

The poll was released exclusively to Postmedia and doesn’t provide any technical background: for instance, the exact wording of the question and whether there was any meaningful difference in the percent of English-Speaking and French-Speaking Canadians who simply declined to answer or said they were undecided. Nevertheless, taken as reported, the survey suggests that when Canadians think about those who share their values, French-Speaking Canadians are half as likely to include Jews.

For two generations, Quebec has portrayed itself to us and to itself as a liberal, secular, humanist society. For French-speaking Canadians to see the Jew—the most stubborn liberal in our midst—in different terms doesn’t make sense. Rather than their values, is it possible that the Jew’s commitment to Quebec as a French-speaking society is still in doubt?  Any nation with a strong sense of solidarity often displays a dark side towards the “other.”

The Association of Canadian Studies has succeeded in getting our attention. They should consider telling us more, if they wish to help us better understand what French-Speaking and English-Speaking Canadians think.

Michael Fortier’s calendar for big decisions

Michael Fortier, an unlucky former Minister of Trade and former Conservative Senator from Quebec, suggested in a letter to La Presse last month that it might improve the political climate in Quebec if a referendum on the constitutional status of Quebec was conducted only once every fifteen years.  Immediately, Stephen Harper’s communication/crisis management team ridiculed the idea. Fortier will survive the scolding.

Of course, political elites in Quebec will not easily turn their pet issue over to a calendar. However, Fortier was at least trying to find a way out of Quebec’s growing malady: constant attention to the big picture and neglect and retrenchment on the management problems of collective daily life.

Whatever the fate of Fortier’s idea in Quebec, the idea of making up our minds on one big thing at least every fifteen years would be an awesome leap forward for the rest of Canada.

Since the close defeat of the Charletown Accord in the national referendum in 1992—eighteen years ago—a grey old man’s mantra has settled over our national affairs. It asserts that the distinguishing economic, social, and political characteristics of Canada are settled and needn’t be disturbed. Of course, a handful of utterly central questions for a self respecting democracy (for instance, the authority of the Crown and Govenor General, the status of the Senate, the appointment of judges to our Supreme court, whether we can be closer or should further away from the United States) are up in the air, in seminars and in pending files. Isn’t that the safest place to keep them?

The problem of making a career out of avoiding big challenges is that skilful small thinking gets too big a head. Leaders and schemers start believing that incrementalism and procrastination are always enough, the responsible course.  In the spirit of Michael Fortier, this blog is dedicated to the notion that those who care about politics should exercise their appetites for change, and their skills in persuading others to make a real difference.

National Post Article: http://Click here