Constitution? We Don't Need No Constitution!

In John Huston's 1948 study of the dark side of human nature, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a group of bandits claim to be federal police officers. Humphrey Bogart and his fellow prospectors ask to see their badges. In a line that has gone down in movie history, the leader of the bandits replies, "Badges? We don't need no badges!" In a Hobbesian world, intimidation and brute force equal legitimacy.

The president and the vice president of the United States live in a Hobbesian world. The forget, however, that the men who founded their nation -- men they say they revere -- were products of the Enlightenment. The American Constitution was a firm and direct rebuke of everything Hobbes stood for.

It is interesting that one of the main sources of opposition to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney comes from former aides to Ronald Reagan, whose mantle Bush and Cheney have claimed. Last week, in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, P.X. Kelley (a former commandant of the Marine Corps) and Robert F. Turner (who served as one of Reagan's lawyers) condemned the president's recent executive order, which "interprets" Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

They wrote, "we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that well may promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come." Mr. Bush's order displays a long established pattern of rewriting or simply ignoring laws or treaties he finds inconvenient.

In a recent article in Slate, Bruce Fein -- who also worked for Reagan -- called for the impeachment of Dick Cheney. "In grasping and exercising presidential powers" Fein argued, "Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed George III." Fein then went on to list a number of, what he considered, were impeachable offenses.

Most disturbing of all is Bush's attempt to thwart congressional oversight, which the authors of the Constitution took as axiomatic in any democracy. Alberto Gonzoles continues to serve as Attorney General, despite what Congress sees as his clear incompetence and less than honest stewardship at the Department of Justice. But, in a stunning claim of executive privilege, Bush has forbidden employees and former employees of his administration to testify before the justice committees of both houses; and he has gone so far as to insist that, since U.S. attorneys serve at his pleasure, he will order any government attorney to refuse to expedite any claim of contempt of congress. Finally, Mr. Bush has proclaimed that politicians have no expertise when it comes to running a war. He vows that no decisions will be made about the war in Iraq until David Petraeus reports to Congress in September -- refusing to acknowledge the fact that politicians originally authorized his disastrous invasion of Iraq and -- under the Constitution -- they have the responsibility to declare when the war is over.

As Frank Rich made clear in the New York Times on Sunday, everyone knows what Petraeus will report in September. He has already hinted at what he will say. Patraeus told the Times of London last month that September "is a deadline for a report, not a deadline for a change in policy." Remarkably, a significant number of legislators have given up waiting for Godot, but not for Petraeus. Lindsay Graham has perhaps given the most succinct summary of their position. Speaking on Meet the Press three weeks ago, Graham proclaimed that he would "not vote for anything" unless "General Petraeus passes on it."

In other words, the policy which has been applied disastrously for over four years will not change. Perhaps because Bush and Cheney worked so hard to stay out of Vietnam, they are determined to display their courage now; and they define courage as staying the course. Mr. Bush knows there will not be any change in policy because a majority in the senate is 60, not 51; and, even if that threshold were reached, it would take 67 votes to overturn his veto. So the dance continues. So far, only four Republicans have -- when push came to shove -- voted against Mr. Bush's conduct of the war.

So the burden now falls on those senators -- the old lions of the Republican Party, like Senator Warner and Senator Lugar -- who say they harbour grave doubts about the course this administration has followed. There will not be a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. Logistically, it will take a lot of time. But, until the withdrawal begins, the bodies will pile up; and the members of the president's party will have as much blood on their hands as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. Together they will have to answer the question which John Kerry asked thirty-five years ago -- long before he became a senator, and long before the Swift Boat Veterans impugned his patriotism -- "What do you tell the last man to die for a mistake?"

Lessons from Niagara

My wife, our youngest son and I spent last Friday at Niagara Falls. Our son's science course this year focused on the environment. One of the phenomena he studied was erosion by wind, water and ice. There is no better example of water erosion than Niagara. But having never seen the Falls, our son needed to experience them. So we decided to rectify that oversight.

I have seen the Falls several times -- but always from above or from the caves underneath. However, this was the first time any of us had stood on the deck of one of the several Maids of the Mist. Without a doubt, the Falls are most impressive from below. The sheer amount of water, the roar it creates and the mist and spray which rise in the air, like the steam from some gigantic boiling cauldron, inspire both fear and reverence.

But more than that, when one stops to consider that water from four of the Great Lakes tumbles over the gorge into Lake Ontario and then down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic -- where it joins the ocean currents constantly circulating in a system which gives us rain in the summer, snow in the winter and life forever in renewal -- one can only pause in admiration.

Niagara is a natural monument to our interconnectedness. It reminds us that, in an age of muscular individualism -- which operates on the principle that Individual Choice is the prime directive -- all of our choices have consequences -- not just for us as individuals, but for all of humanity and for the planet we like to think we own.

One cannot walk the streets of Niagara Falls, Ontario without encountering the planet in miniature. After our ride on The Maid, my wife and son let me park myself on a tree-shaded bench, because my arthritic knees cannot now take the punishment which I once dealt them. While my wife and son went in search of souvenirs, I sat and looked ahead to the American Falls. I found myself at a small convention for Those Whose Knees Are Not What They Once Were. A woman from Colorado sat down beside me. Her family, too, was in search of trophies to take home to Denver. We were joined by a retired cardiologist from Toronto, who trained in Montreal, moved to Houston, but moved back to Ontario to retire. When his family came by and picked him up, a family originally from central China, then Los Angeles and Vancouver, sat down on the bench. This was their first trip to the Falls. Throughout their travels, they said, they had not encountered anything like them.

And there is nothing like them. The world beats a path to Niagara; and Niagara serves to show us the path to wisdom. It reminds us that we are all in this together; and the solutions to whatever problems we face now require international cooperation. We are not alone.

The Legacy of Life

Today, my neighbours at BlogCatalog and I are attempting to do a little consciousness raising. Our subject is organ donation. It is something of which we are all aware; however, we really don't give it much thought -- unless it becomes an issue in our immediate family. But it is one of those phenomena where demand far outstrips supply.

In Australia, over 1700 patients are awaiting organ transplants. In Latin America, more than 50,000 patients are waiting; in Europe and the United States the number is 95,000. And in China, more than 2 million Chinese need organ transplants. The demand is so great that in South Asian countries, such as Pakistan and India, perfectly healthy people are willing to sell an organ -- like a kidney -- in the daily battle to survive.

Perhaps we don't give the idea of donating our organs much thought because what precedes it is too uncomfortable to contemplate. However, most of us prepare wills in preparation for that day. As part of that process, we should also consider what donating our usable organs can mean to those who face premature deaths.

We can give the gift of life to those who still have so much to give to life. And there is no greater gift than the gift a of stranger who gives -- not in the expectation of receiving something in return -- but because the need is great.

It is a gift that will be remembered with each new sunrise.

Lord Black and Captain Ahab

Canadians have never felt much sympathy for Conrad Black. Perhaps that's because he never displayed much sympathy for them. Black's disdain for what he viewed as the Canadian inferiority complex -- which he felt made Canada an economic backwater and a land of limited opportunities -- was well known to his countrymen.

But, as the Lord of Crossharbour found himself a convicted felon last week, it is safe to say that Canadians were not above feeling a sense of catharsis. For, like a Greek or Shakespearean tragic hero, Black's tragic flaw was hubris. The problem was that he clearly was no Oedipus or Othello -- because, in the end, Sophocles' and Shakespeare's creations were self critical enough to at least acknowledge their flaws. Lord Black appears to be much more akin to the classic American tragic hero Captain Ahab, in Melville's Moby Dick. And perhaps that is fitting, given the fact that Black frequently extolled the virtues of Canada's southern neighbour, going so far as to write admiring biographies of two of its presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon.

Like Ahab, Black felt that he was the constant target of lesser creatures who insulted his intelligence. And, like Ahab, he exhibited a heightened sense of injury. When Ahab was told by Starbuck, his first mate, that it was "blasphemy" to hunt an elemental -- a force of nature -- Ahab responded, "Speak not to me of blasphemy, man. I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." And, like Ahab, Black appears to feel no sense of remorse. Ensnared in a tangle of legal harpoons -- some of which he threw himself -- his raised middle finger is a gesture of defiance. He will go to the bottom, refusing to acknowledge that there are some fates which should not be tempted.

For, unlike Black, most Canadians live in the shadow of fate -- or of a natural environment which can seal one's fate. This is a land where prairie farmers have been known to tie ropes from the back doors of their houses to their barns -- as life lines to prevent their getting lost in a blizzard. Perhaps, because Mr. Black grew up a child of privilege, he knows little of the life of a prairie farmer and the elementals which are the axioms of his existence. Canadians tend to side with Starbuck. They know that one does not do battle with white whales or the Great White North. Admittedly, such an attitude is not very heroic -- to my knowledge the only legacy Starbuck has left behind is the bequest of his name to a chain of coffee shops. But at least one survives -- and saves one's soul.

None of us is qualified to analyze the state of Lord Black's soul. But, for many Canadians, when Black renounced his Canadian citizenship he was, in effect, cutting the rope from the back door to the barn. And they watched, knowing instinctively that Black was going to be caught -- snowblind -- in the storm.

This is not to say that Canadians would not allow Lord Black to return to Canada -- although his conviction makes his application for citizenship somewhat problematic. However, Canada has a long tradition of accepting refugees. They would insist, though, that he serve his sentence in a Canadian jail -- unless that sentence were overturned on appeal. We may not be a very heroic people (in the sense that we do not go in search of monsters to slay) but we are a tolerant people. In the end, I suspect that Canadians would be willing to give the Lord of Crossharbour a second chance. But they would insist that he acknowledge he made a mistake when he cut that life line.

The Difference Between a Battle and a War

We can learn something from the British response to the recent terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow. British authorities have relied on very good police work and very effective international cooperation. The same strategy paid considerable dividends when suicide bombers hit the London transportation system two years ago.

That insight is critical as Americans begin to call for a change of strategy in Iraq. Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld insisted that what was needed to combat terrorism was a war. And they brought all the technological resources at their disposal to effect "regime change" in Afghanistan and Iraq. But both countries have a history; and history suggests that in both countries a massive military response was -- and is -- counterproductive. The Russians tried that strategy in Afghanistan in the 1970's; and the British tried the same strategy in Iraq in the 1920's. Both Russia and Britain, despite their huge investment in weapons and human lives, failed to change the fundamental character of the region. Instead, they created what the United States has created in Iraq today -- insurgencies.

Why? Because, despite their sheer brute force, Russia, Britain and the United States -- in the tortured language of George W. Bush -- "misunderestimated" their enemy. The British have some experience with this problem. Perhaps that accounts for the way they are dealing with the attacks in London and Glasgow. But in 1776, they lost the thirteen original colonies because, as the historian Barbara Tuchman pointed out in The March of Folly, they failed to see that, essentially, the American Revolution was an insurgency and that their opponents were not ignorant and unwashed country bumpkins.

It is more than a little ironic that the present American administration is so ignorant of its country's history. It is even more ironic that thirty-five years ago the United States faced an insurgency in Vietnam which no amount of carpet bombing could bring to its knees. History -- whether ancient or modern -- has no bearing on their thinking.

The British encountered the same problem in India. When Mahatma Gandhi told the British that they would one day "walk out of India," Winston Churchill declared that he placed no store in the ridiculous assertions of a "naked savage." But Adolph Hitler misread the same Churchill and his countrymen in 1940, when his air assault on Britain produced the exact opposite of what he so confidently predicted. As a strategy, "shock and awe" is counterproductive against a population prepared to wait out the invaders.

In defending their homeland, the British have abandoned shock and awe for intelligence and leg work. Their chief weapon has been information; and they have relied on an international network of police forces and intelligence agencies to generate that information. Information has led them to abandon some of their previous assumptions -- like the enemy are all foreign infiltrators and they are all ignorant barbarians. The medical profession is the last place that any of us would begin to search for terrorists.

It is information, not ideology, which drives their strategy. The tragedy of the last six years is that the Bush administration has got so much backward. Intelligence comes before strategy; tolerance comes before democracy; battles are on going; but wars are -- or at least should be -- rare. And preemptive war is doomed to failure.

What we have needed from the beginning is a battle against Al Qaeda. All out war simply saps resources; and, as the First World War proved, it can obliterate an entire generation. The war we have waged -- including the war Canadians are fighting in Afghanistan -- is fought against an enemy who has better knowledge of the terrain and which is -- in the words of one military analyst -- willing to trade space for time. When things get tough, insurgents simply leave one area and pop up in another. What we have needed all along is a strong homeland defense, which emphasizes good police work, not a crusade to bring democracy to "savages."

Mr. Bush is not the first to misunderstand the world in which he lives and the battles which need to be fought. More importantly, he ignored advice that could have put him in a much different place. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- who knows something of war in general and of war in Iraq in particular -- has recently revealed that he spent two and a half hours with Mr. Bush, trying to convince him that his decision to invade Iraq was folly. "I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers," Powell told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Powell has some knowledge of the limits of military power. Of the civil war the American invasion of Iraq has spawned, Powell says, "It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States." Unfortunately, says Powell, "It is not going to be pretty to watch, but I don't know any way to avoid it."

The way to avoid it was to do what Mr. Bush was loathe to do -- which was to avoid grandiose dreams and the rhetoric which accompanies them. If Mr. Bush had committed himself and his country to an admittedly long battle with Al Qaeda, which required stellar police work as opposed to smart weapons, he would not face the general revolt he now confronts. Having led his countrymen into a quagmire, they do not trust him to lead them out. Even his once most fervent supporters understand the fundamental miscalculation he made.

He could have won a battle against Al Qaeda. But he has lost the War on Terror.

Tricky Dicky Two

Richard Nixon once famously offered the opinion that "when the president does it, it's not illegal." After reading a series of articles in last week's Washington Post, one could be forgiven for thinking that the ghost of Nixon still stalks the halls of the White House -- or at least for concluding that his ghost has found a home and a kindred spirit in the office of the vice president.

Nixon forgot that the oath he took was not to "preserve, protect and defend" the United States. It was to "preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States." Mr. Cheney has consistently shown contempt for that document.

Two months after the September 11th attacks, Cheney brought a four page document to Bush which had been "written in strict secrecy by [David Addington] his lawyer." The Post reports that, "In less than an hour the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review." Then Mr. Bush signed the document. When Secretary of State Colin Powell heard about this new executive order on the evening news, his reaction was, "What the hell just happened?" Condolezza Rice was reportedly "incensed." Nevertheless, the order stood. Thus, write Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, "foreign suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges, and would be tried, if at all, in closed 'military commissions.'"

Having got Mr. Bush to agree to a policy which placed detainees in a legal limbo, Cheney next moved on to the question of how they should be interrogated while in custody. The problem was that the Geneva Conventions got in the way of what Cheney called "robust interrogations." So once again, Addington set to work redefining the term "torture," which the Geneva Conventions strictly outlawed.

Addington produced a document (with which the Justice Department concurred) which "prohibit[ed] only the worst forms of cruel and inhuman treatment" but which permitted many other forms of interrogation based on the newly minted concept of torture, which Addington defined as, "equivalent in intensity to the pain of organ failure . . . or even death." A subsequent memo, produced on the same day, outlined a list of approved interrogation techniques -- including waterboarding -- which the United States had prosecuted as a war crime since 1901. Addington's memo was dated August 1, 2002. It only became public knowledge on June 8, 2004. Just as Mr. Cheney had kept the detainee memo close to his vest, he likewise kept the administration policy on interrogation techniques carefully under wraps.

Besides the influence he wielded in the development of policies on detainee confinement and interrogation, it has recently come to light that Mr. Cheney for the last four years has been quietly ignoring his obligation under law to pass on documents on intelligence to the National Security Archive. His rationale for doing so is that he is not a member of the executive branch of the government -- an argument which Mr. Addington has advanced on his behalf.

Finally, just as Americans were preparing to celebrate Independence Day, Mr. Bush commuted the two a a half year prison sentence of Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. "Scooter" Libby. Given his past involvement, it is hard to believe that Mr. Cheney did not have some input into Mr. Bush's decision.

Clearly, the vice president believes that he should obey laws only when it is convenient to do so. When it becomes inconvenient, he believes he has the right, by virtue of his office, to ignore them or rewrite them without congressional approval -- which is precisely what Richard Nixon maintained.

The whole Watergate saga was about who won that argument. Obviously, Mr. Cheney learned nothing from Watergate. What is even more disturbing is the thought that perhaps he believes Nixon was right.

There are those who bemoan the fact that the Democrats lack the votes to force a change of policy on Mr. Cheney and the man who has such confidence in his advice, the President of the United States. What they forget is that Nixon resigned only when a bipartisan group of senators -- led by Barry Goldwater, the godfather of modern neoconservatism -- went to the White House to tell Nixon that the jig was up and it was time to go.

To date, Republican congressmen have -- for the most part -- remained loyal to the administration. A few, like Senator Hegal of Nebraska, Senator Smith of Oregon and, most recently, Senator Lugar of Indiana have broken with the two men at the top. But, until a critical mass of Republican lawmakers have the valor to tell Bush and Cheney that the jig is up, democracy in the United States is in deep, deep trouble. The question is, how many Republicans have the courage of their convictions?

After 140 Years

Jacques Cartier was not impressed when he sailed down the St. Lawrence in 1534. "The land God gave to Cain" he concluded as he looked at the landscape. John A. MacDonald also acknowledged the difficulties inherent in the place he called home. But, after cobbling together the British North America Act with the other founding fathers, he turned to Isaiah for inspiration: "The wolf and the lamb will graze together and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock . . . . They will do no evil or harm in all My holy mountain."

One hundred and forty years has not changed the physical geography of the place. Anyone who has stood on the open prairie and watched a winter blizzard blow in, or who has tried to navigate the Bay of Fundy when the fog is a blanket thrown over the bow of the vessel, knows the feeling of insignificance -- and terror -- Nature can unleash on this, North America's attic. And the lion and the lamb have never coexisted as idyllically as MacDonald hoped they would. Just ask David Suzuki, who spent part of his youth in an internment camp during World War II. Or ask native Canadians to retell the sad history of life on a reserve or in a residential school.

And yet -- and yet -- as we celebrate Canada's birth for the one hundredth and fortieth time, there is much to be proud of -- in the usual unobtrusive Canadian way. Many claim that Canada should have disintegrated decades ago -- and, during what is almost a century and a half, it frequently appeared to be ready to do so. Yet the country has weathered the First World War, The Depression, World War II and two referendums whose purpose was to determine whether or not the citizens wished to tear the house down. From its three founding races -- British, French and Native -- it has evolved into a mosaic of races and cultures which bear little resemblance to the country's original inhabitants.

And what is most remarkable is that in a world which has been torn asunder by ethnic rivalries -- from Rwanda, to Bosnia to Iraq -- Canadians, despite their occasional lapses into ethnic insanity, have continued to strive for for that vision of tolerance which MacDonald found in Isaiah. As John Ibbitson writes in his book, The Polite Revolution, "We are a nation of strangers, bringing in more strangers by the hundreds of thousands each year, from every region of the globe, who then learn to live together as friends."

There is always something a little messy about this mix. To those who have not taken the time to understand how the country works, it appears to leave us without a clear sense of identity or history, where region counts more than country and where urban neighbourhoods function, at times, like city states. But it is that autonomy to act as free agents, while agreeing that somethings -- like the longest railway in the world, Medicare, the CBC, public higher education and the Canada (or Quebec) Pension Plan -- are national institutions and the product of the national will which make the country unique.

And make no mistake: Canada is unique. If its environment can make one feel insignificant, that same environment -- in different circumstances -- can soothe the soul. The same prairie landscape looks different under a summer sky, stretching out to infinity. And the Fundy mudflats are a source of wonder when the tides roll in on a clear day. Then there are Niagara, the Rockies, Payto Lake and the Fraser Canyon. There are no other places like them on earth.

But, most of all, it is the dream of the peaceable kingdom which drives the vision of Canada as a nation. The American humorist, Josh Billings, said: "There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together but I'm still betting on the lion." For the last one hundred and forty years Canadians have placed bets on both beasts, convinced that they will be able to work something out. They haven't always succeeded -- at least immediately. But Canada was never a done deal. Canadians know that each generation has to renegotiate the bargain. It is that commitment to renegotiate the terms of nationhood that we celebrate this Sunday. We are all the better for it.

On an entirely different subject, I want to thank Ron Hart for his advice. His comment on last week's post is actually attached to my post of June 5th. I have followed his recommendation. I recommend that readers of this blog visit his website at www.safewatergroup.org.

The Shop Up the Road

I ended last week singing The Call Centre Blues. After downloading a number of updates from Microsoft, my security system informed me that its "parameters were incorrect." I called up the help desk of my internet service provider -- a company in which we own a small number of shares. After doing what the person on the other end of the line suggested, I rebooted my computer (we only have dial-up service here) and I got the same message -- the parameters were still incorrect.

I called a second time, talked to a new person and -- after doing what I was told -- discovered that I could not surf the web. I called a third time, reached yet a third advisor, and I was told I should remove Explorer 7. "But," I said, "I have no other browser. "

"That's all right," I was told, "an earlier version is underneath it." After removing Explorer 7, I discovered that there was no earlier version on my hard drive.

My service provider has recently moved its support services to India. In theory I have no objection to that decision; and in truth, while I had to ask a couple of times to have the instructions repeated, I did not mind the Indian dialect. What bothered me was that my help was coming from half a world away. These folks were -- at least to begin with -- reading from a script. More importantly, they had no real hands-on knowledge of my computer.

I am aware that, in his book The World is Flat, Tom Friedman maintains that, because of startling telecommunications wizardry, service can be delivered from anywhere on the planet. However, my gut tells me that service is best performed by those closest to the problem or the client -- sort of a truncated version of Peter Drucker's management theory.

I probably screwed up my computer through my own ham handed ignorance. But to fix it, I took it to a little shop about half an hour up the road, in the small metropolis which breathes economic life into this rural community.

I talked to a person, not a disembodied voice. He brought me into the shop and showed me what he was doing. He checked the system out with me before I brought it home. And, the next morning, when I received a message which proclaimed that my modem had gone missing, I brought the computer back. He opened the machine up and showed me how the modem was slightly out of its slot -- and didn't charge me a cent for the quick fix.

When I bought the machine three years ago, I purposely went to a shop which was owned by someone I knew and trusted. His business has since been bought by the people who got my computer up and running this week. But they have continued to deal with people as they did -- and do -- deal with me.

The shares of my internet service provider are doing well these days. They provide a good income -- which is why, I suppose, several suitors want to harvest a controlling interest in the company. We hope that those shares and the income they produce will help us send our third and last son to university.

But as a client of the company, as opposed to a shareholder, I feel less well served. We have worshipped at the altar of efficiency for far too long. In the end, what makes a company great is quality -- not efficiency. And while it is undeniable that companies which do not make a profit disappear, it is equally true that companies which fail to provide quality service likewise disappear.

The folks who run Livewire Networks in Belleville, Ontario know that. In an era when big boxes and transnationals obliterate the competition, small quality operations deserve our support for one reason: they are good at what they do.

The Rising Revolt

Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald is in Ottawa today trying to shore up support for Nova Scotia in its battle with the Harper government over his province's claim to off shore oil and gas resources. Thus, he joins Newfoundland premier Danny Williams in calling Harper a promise breaker. It is worth remembering that, some years ago, Harper expressed contempt for Atlantic Canadians and their "culture of dependency." Now that they have the opportunity to join Alberta in petro-prosperity, Harper says he wants a piece of the action. And his response to Messers. MacDonald and Williams has been, "So, sue me."

This is a strange response from the nation's politician-in-chief. But then it is not unusual, either. When Conservative MP Bill Casey complained about the Harper government's treatment of his province, he was drummed out of the caucus. The same thing happened to MP Garth Turner when he complained about the first Clean Air Act. Turner, after sitting awhile as an independent, joined the Liberals. Harper has a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish. Unfortunately, he lacks the people skills to do it. And that apparently does not concern him. In fact, Harper displays what the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald called "a vast carelessness" in his dealings with people.

He appears to care even less for the will of the people. A case in point is his recent support for George W. Bush's proposed missile shield in Eastern Europe. As Linda McQuaig points out in the Toronto Star, Harper "promised in the last federal election campaign that he wouldn't reverse Canada's opposition to [the proposed missile defense system] without a vote in the House of Commons, which he knows he could not win." Harper has "in effect [done] an end run around Parliament and the Canadian public, and helped advance a position that is at odds with Canada's own official policy."

On domestic policy Harper and his brethren cancelled the Kelowna Accord when they came to office. They say that they will introduce legislation which will expedite native land claims; but, as the recent federal budget makes clear, they have abandoned the promises made in that agreement. The rising tide of native frustration appears to be the last thing on Harper's agenda. And his refusal to heed premier Dalton McGunity's request for a ban on handguns continues to alienate Canada's urban dwellers, who only have representation because Harper co-opted Liberal MP David Emerson and appointed Montrealer Michael Fortier to his cabinet.

So, however Mr. Harper may deny it, he has earned his reputation as a promise breaker. He appears to believe that whatever policy promises the Liberals made were hogwash. The fact that they were Liberal policies, by definition, gives him the right to nullify them. What is interesting is the public revolt against his actions. One would expect an outcry from the Liberals. But, more significantly, he has managed to alienate two of the country's last three Conservative premiers. The other premiers are all from rival parties. And his support for Jean Charest in that province's recent election proved far from helpful. It takes a special talent to create this kind of mess.

How does one account for such an outcome? As a technocrat, Harper appears to suffer from a genetic weakness. It is the belief that he knows better than anyone else because, when push comes to shove, he really is the smartest guy in the room. He is not the only leader, public or private, who suffers from the affliction. The movers and shakers at Enron caught the virus. Paul Wolfowitz, another carrier, has been cashiered from his job at the World Bank. And Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are in the last stages of what has become -- for them -- a terminal disease.

The most recent polls indicate that Canadians are not impressed with any of their elected leaders. But, as the tide of opposition grows, I suspect that they are particularly happy that they didn't hand Mr. Harper the keys to the car in the last election. Recent history has proven that the smartest guys in the room can be remarkably stupid.

Syntax or Substance?

As the Conservatives roll out their latest attack ads against Stephane Dion, the nation's media are beginning to shine a spotlight on the Leader of the Opposition. Linda Diebel, of The Toronto Star, has just published Against the Current, the first full length study of Mr. Dion in English. And, last week, Lawrence Martin devoted a column to Dion in The Globe and Mail. Mr. Martin clearly admires Mr. Dion's integrity; but he laments Dion's fractured fluency in English. However, as those of us who grew up as Quebec Anglophones can attest, getting your tongue around any word which is more than two syllables in the other language takes some practice. Martin concludes, somewhat sadly, that "Mr. Dion is a gentleman and a scholar. In politics, that combination, as honourable as it is, has rarely been a winning one."

Susan Riley, of The Ottawa Citizen, has a much more upbeat assessment of Dion. While admitting that Dion appears to have a somewhat shrill superiority complex -- she quotes a Quebec satirist who claims that Dion has the "indignant air of a granny who's found a dirty hair in her tisane" -- he also has the courage to speak truth to power: He "has fearlessly marched into battle against Quebec's sovereigntist elite, stood up to an intimidating Prime Minister Jean Chretien ('This is not a time for joking,' he once famously admonished his boss, before startled cabinet colleagues) and has never hesitated to challenge illogical arguments or historic distortions."

That is why the latest ads smack of ignorance and arrogance. They hearken back to ads which the Conservative Party ran five elections ago -- the ones with the unflattering picture of Jean Chretien's lopsided mouth -- which were withdrawn within three days (after Chretien quipped that, of course, he only spoke out of one side of his mouth, unlike the Conservatives who spoke out of both sides of theirs.) Canada's "new" government seems to be stuck with some pretty old and ineffective communication strategies.

Perhaps that explains why the Conservatives, after riding a wave with their new budget, have seen their numbers sink back into the thirty percent range. The Liberals are also stuck in the same neighbourhood. And Mr. Dion is not without critics in his own party. Sometime ago, Raymond Heard -- a former news director at CanWest Global and now a Liberal Party operative -- bitterly criticized Dion for his election compact with Elizabeth May (the leader of the Green Party) claiming with Andrew Coyne, of The National Post, that Dion has moved the party too far to the left.

And Mr. Martin's concern about Mr. Dion's flawed English certainly has something to do with the general anxiety that Dion won't be able to sell his vision in places like Saskatoon. On top of that, Mr.Dion -- by his own admission -- is not a natural politician. Readers of this blog will remember that I did not foresee Mr. Dion' s victory at the Liberal leadership convention (see my post for October 4, 2006).

I too was worried about Mr. Dion's ability to communicate with English Canada. But I should have remembered that, when Jean Chretien arrived in Ottawa back in 1963, he didn't speak a word of English. Some would say that he never did quite get the hang of the language. But, despite his tortured syntax (which, by the way, was as tortured in French as it was in English) Canadians instinctively felt that Chretien, like him or not, only spoke out of one side of his mouth. They eventually came to see what Mitchell Sharp, that wise old man of the Liberal Party, saw in the young Chretien when Sharp took him under his wing. And, with time, Chretien developed into a very effective leader.

The question is, how much time has Mr. Dion got? For the moment, any election plans are on hold. I suspect that time will work in Mr. Dion's favour.

The Henry Ford Argument

Henry Ford's name will forever be linked with the Model T. It will also be linked with a much more controversial proposition, namely the belief that -- as Ford himself said -- "history is bunk." Ford's proclamation is particularly ironic in view of the fact that, as he aged, Ford seemed to be increasingly stuck in the past. By the time Tex Avery convinced Ford's grandson to hire a team of "whiz kids" from the Harvard Business School, Ford had driven his company into the ground. Avery brought Robert McNamara into the company; and together they turned things around. Unfortunately, McNamara would eventually become the architect of the Vietnam War -- but that's another story for another post.

Despite the obvious absurdity of Ford's proposition, his argument is alive and well. It raised its head again last week when Christopher Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to The New York Times, "called for the committee to stop rehashing past controversies and to 'focus on the myriad threats we face today.'"

The immediate cause for Bond's admonition was the release of two pre-war intelligence reports on post-war Iraq. The reports predicted that after Saddam Hussein fell, "Iraq would be unlikely to split apart, but a post Saddam authority would face a deeply divided society with a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict," characterized by "score settling" and "heightened competition for power among the different groups." The analysts also predicted that, "rogue ex-regime elements could forge an alliance with existing terrorist organizations or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare against the new government or coalition forces."

The popular argument is that because pre-war intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was wrong, no one should have believed these predictions. However, what is conveniently swept under the rug is the information which was coming from Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors, who were on the ground in Iraq before the invasion. They kept sending back reports that there were no WMD to be found. Besides Blix, Scott Ritter, a former Marine and UN weapons inspector, kept insisting that Saddam's nuclear capacity had been destroyed by 1998 and could not have been reconstituted by 2001. He also said that 90% to 95% of Saddam's chenical and biological capacity had been destroyed and that Saddam did not constitute the threat he was declared to be. However, Blix and Ritter were dismissed as dupes. Those in power knew better and they therefore deserved the public's trust.

And what should we do with this intelligence now? Well, say Mr. Bond and the president's supporters, it is obviously irrelevant, because that was then and this is now. But it is instructive to dip a little farther back into "then."

Jules Witcover, also writing in The Times, refers to James Mann's book, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. Witcover reminds his readers that in the waning days of the first Bush administration, Paul Wolfowitz -- who was then Deputy Secretary of Defence to Dick Cheney -- directed his assistant I. Scooter Libby (do these names sound familiar for other reasons?) to prepare a draft which "set forth a new vision for a world dominated by a lone American superpower actively working to assure that no rival or group of rivals would ever emerge." Libby, for his part, passed the assignment to Zalmay Khalilzad -- another familiar name. Khalilzad produced a document which "envisioned a world in which American military power alone could rival or replace the collective security that had marked U.S. containment policy during the Cold War."

Remember, this was 1992. There is no evidence that George W. Bush had anything to do with these deliberations. At the time, he had not entered politics and he was happily attending to business as a part owner of the Texas Rangers. But the plan was not thrown together hastily after September 11, 2001. It was the kind of plan whose sweep and -- some would say -- beauty appealed to Wolfowitz, the mathematician. It inspired a kind of shock and awe.


Convinced of its brilliance, why should the plan's authors have paid any attention to the intelligence at hand? Their only problem was selling the idea to their boss. The rest, as they say, is history. And -- as Mr. Ford said -- history is bunk.

The Triumph of Convenience

In his award winning book, The Ingenuity Gap, Thomas Homer Dixon illustrates how the catastrophic failure of modern systems -- like the electricity grid which left millions of North Americans without power five years ago -- can be caused by several smaller but cascading failures. Like it our not, we live in an interconnected world; and a failure in any of the many links which tie us together can bring the house down.

What is true of technical systems is increasingly true of social systems. A striking example of this phenomenon is contained in an essay in the Armed Forces Journal of April 27th. Its author, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, criticizes the current senior officer corps at the Pentagon, claiming they lack moral courage. The "tendency of the executive branch," he writes is "to seek out mild mannered team players to serve as senior generals." And the senior generals perpetuate that leadership template. What we are left with is a system where "senior officers select for promotion those like themselves." What this means in practice is that career advancement lies in saluting and marching uphill, rather than questioning the wisdom of one's superiors.

This is not a new phenomenon. It happened during the Vietnam War and it happened in Renaissance England. In Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, Thomas Cromwell -- the real villain of the piece -- lectures Thomas More on his failure as an administrator. More not only serves at the king's convenience, Cromwell says. He serves to expedite whatever the king deems convenient -- meaning that when he assumes public office the good administrator checks his conscience at the door.

More's reply has rung down the decades, ever since the play debuted almost fifty years ago: "I believe when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties . . . they lead their country by a short route to chaos." Thus, the debacle in Iraq comes down to, as Yingling amply illustrates, a team of weak leaders, acquiescing in one bad decision after another. Or, as Homer Dixon would put it, each bad decision in the public sphere forms a link in a chain, which eventually contributes to catastrophic public failure.

Whether it be at the Pentagon or at Enron, or -- closer to home -- in the self-dealing of the sponsorship scandal, we have seen the triumph of convenience over conscience. The path to success is not to speak truth the power, but to enable it. Those who do so are rewarded. Someone like More, who has the courage to disagree and offer reasoned arguments to whomever is the king, will lose his or her head -- or, as was the case with General Shinseki, his career.

We live in a time of wars and proxy wars, ecological degradation and extreme economic injustice. If we are to arrive at solutions to these problems, our public servants must hold to the courage of their convictions. Perhaps that explains why I feel so uncomfortable every time I see Stephen Harper making another public policy announcement. I watch as the minister or ministers who will manage the policy stand behind him, nodding silently -- like religious fundamentalists at a camp meeting, punctuating the preacher's sermon with silent "amens." I suspect that Mr. Harper does not seek out dissenters; and, despite the first part of that old saying, it seems to me that -- more often than not -- fools never differ.

In the absence of dissent at the highest levels of government, we, mere citizens, must have the courage to disagree. The disaster in Iraq or the Holocaust in Germany could only happen because thousands of Adolph Eichmanns sought career advancement, despite the demands of justice, in service of the king.

When Edward R. Murrow took on Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, he ended his broadcast with an allusion to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cassius was right: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.'" McCarthy died an alcoholic mess -- a fitting end for a man who thrived on fear and character assassination. His demise was the product of a kind of courage which -- at present -- is in short supply. Without such courage we will bring the house down.

Paying Attention to the Facts on the Ground

Richard Gwyn begins his column in The Toronto Star this week by proclaiming that "Canada has done something remarkable -- it has figured out how to contain within it another country." Gwyn's observation has, at least in part, been triggered by the obvious disarray in the ranks of the Parti Quebecois, perhaps best illustrated by Gilles Duceppe's decision to run for the leadership of the party -- a decision which he reversed some twenty nine hours latter. Gwyn warns his readers that separatism is not dead: "The new creed in Quebec politics will be 'autonomy,' or making the province as separate as possible within Canada."

And it is that trend which worries The National Post's Andrew Coyne. Heading his latest column "scenes from a dying country," Coyne observes that Premier Danny Williams is sounding a lot like Jean Lesage these days, insisting that when it comes to the province's resources, Newfoundlanders should be "masters in their own house." Add to that the present Quebec premier's insistence that Quebec be considered a nation within Canada and be given a seat at UNESCO and the future begins to look darker. Alberta, too, "cannot decide whether it is or is not in favour of the concept of a single national securities regulator."

Could these men be talking about the same country? The answer is yes -- and it has always been thus. The fact that it has always been this way is no reason to be sanguine about the future. However, it is instructive to consider how we got from there to here.

Fundamentally, Canada is a country of ideas; but, for most of its history, it has rejected ideology. The country entered upon the world stage just as the free trade movement of the nineteenth century was at its apex. Yet John A. MacDonald immediately established the National Policy as a way to set Canadian manufacturers on their feet. By 1935, William Paley had developed a template for broadcasting in North America, which held that broadcasters were private entities who paid their bills through advertising. But the CBC was established as a public corporation. In 1956, after two world wars had confirmed the conventional wisdom that nation states projected their power by the use of military force, Lester Pearson insisted that Canadian forces would be used for peacekeeping, not self defense or military conquest.

In fact, throughout its history, Canada -- like its native son, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith -- has had a great distrust of what Galbraith called "the conventional wisdom." Instead, public policy decisions have had more to do with the facts on the ground than with any theory of the way things should be.

During all this time the country struggled with its identity, weathered the Conscription Crisis of World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, and the October Crisis of 1970. We relied on the tools at hand; and, if those tools proved inadequate, we -- after careful reflection -- changed them. Like the first Prime Minister, whose nickname was "Old Tomorrow," we tried not to make decisions impulsively.

Why this walk down memory lane? Well, it seems to me that the present government, for all its political calculation, does not think things through. When Gilles Duceppe threatened a motion to recognize Quebec's de facto sovereignty, Mr. Harper -- within a week -- came up with his "nation within a nation" resolution, something which is already coming back to haunt him. Just as rashly, he decided to extend Canada's mission to Afghanistan until 2009, not giving much thought to whether or not we possessed the resources or the expertise to meet the longer term commitment -- as the scandal over the treatment of Afghan prisoners illustrates. And then there was Harper's reversal on income trusts -- a fundamentally wise decision -- but a reversal of a promise made in an election campaign. Framing his decision in the ideology of a party which holds that taxes are a scourge, Harper committed himself to a bad idea. When a government ignores the way things are, as opposed to the way it thinks they should be, it generates alot of bad ideas.

As Gwyn points out, Canada has thus far arrived at a different place than Montenegro, Kosovo, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Perhaps Scottish voters will consider Canada before they seek a "velvet divorce." As millions of unhappy couples will testify, there is no such thing. The challenge is to remain committed to the union, by considering the partners' needs, aspirations and dreams. All of these things are manifested in what exists here and now, in what we have learned in the past -- and, most importantly, in not acting impulsively or in the heat of anger.

Gilles Duceppe concluded this week that seeking the leadership of the Parti Quebecois was a bad idea -- a decision bolstered by the fact that only two members of the party's caucus were prepared to support him. It would have been wiser to have taken note of that fact before he stepped in front of a microphone.

The Wolfowitz Principle

Almost forty years ago, Dr. Lawrence J. Peter enunciated the principle which bears his surname. Peter believed that "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." There were, said Peter, many reasons for this. But the prime reason was that the set of skills which led to an employee's success at one level of the organization were not the skills required at a higher level. And, never having developed the required skills to succeed at a higher level, the employee -- and the organization he or she worked for -- failed at the task at hand.

Paul Wolfowitz is a stunning example of the Peter Principle. A mathematician by training, he is universally acknowledged as a very bright man. But, like another technocrat before him -- Robert McNamara -- he has been a remarkable failure at the American Department of Defence. And, also like McNamara, the man he worked for sent him off to the Presidency of the World Bank. The jury is out on Mr. McNamara's time at the bank. But it is becoming increasingly clear that Wolfowitz's tenure there, like his tenure at the Defence Department, has been a train wreck.

Both McNamara and Wolfowitz made their reputations as gurus of statistical analysis -- techniques which are widely thought to accurately predict the results of human endeavour. But, as McNamara now readily admits, those techniques are only valid if one thoroughly understands the terrain -- geographical, cultural, historical and political -- over which one travels. During McNamara's time at Defence, the numbers -- particularly the body counts -- were always on his side. But he, and the government for which he worked, did not understand Vietnam at all. By 1967 he wasn't sleeping at night, his wife had an ulcer and he knew that -- despite the numbers -- the war he had crafted was not winnable. Lyndon Johnson thought McNamara was melting down and replaced him with Clark Clifford, who understood that McNamara had stumbled upon the truth.

It would appear that Wolfowitz and his president have had no such epiphany. Even though his predictions that the war in Iraq would be easily concluded and paid for by Iraqi oil money have proved to be so much smoke, Wolfowitz went off to the bank convinced, as ever, that history would vindicate him.

And, if Wolfowitz did not understand Iraq, he understood the World Bank even less. That is not to say that, in some ways, Wolfowitz was not a good fit for the job. He, like several of his predecessors, believed that the way to improve the lot of the world's poor was to practice what John Ralston Saul has called "crucifixion economics," a set of economic principles perhaps best illustrated by the bank's requirements before it loaned money to Russia in the early nineties. Essentially, all the major assets of the state were privatized at fire sale prices and found their way into the hands of a few wealthy Russians, thereafter referred to as "the oligarchs." Then state services were drastically curtailed. The result was unemployment, loss of pensions and a crisis in Russian health care. Wealth was shifted up into the hands of a few, not down to the masses.

Naomi Klein, in a recent column in The Nation, provides a laundry list of similar demands which had to be met by other poor countries before the bank would lend them money. " . . . it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; it demanded that Tanzania privatize its water system; it made telecom privatization a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; it demanded labor "flexibility" in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post invasion Iraq." And if -- as in Russia -- things got worse rather than better, what was Wolfowitz's solution? Eliminate corruption and crony capitalism in the offending countries -- as if the bank's own demands had not encouraged, indeed, demanded such corruption.

And then came the case of Shaha Riza, Wolfowitz's companion. She had worked for the bank before Wolfowitz's arrival. And, sensing a potential conflict of interest, Wolfowitz took steps to -- at least temporarily -- remove her from the organization. To that end he worked out a deal whereby she would remain a bank employee, but she would be seconded to the U.S. State Department. However, the storm broke when reporters -- like David Corn, also of The Nation -- discovered that Riza's transfer included a 36% pay hike (from $132,000 a year to $180,000 and guaranteed annual raises of 8%). Nice work, if you can get it. Or, more precisely, nice work if you know someone who can get it for you. The salary increase will also effect Riza's pension. Under the new regime, she can expect an annual pension of $110,000 a year. Had she not been offered the promotion, her annual pension would be $56,000 a year.

All of this makes it hard for the bank to rail against crony capitalism. Mr. Wolfowitz does not owe his rise to competence. Instead, in the idiom of the day, he knows how to network. He has demonstrated his incompetence at not just one but two of the world's most powerful institutions. That kind of incompetence is greater than even Dr. Peter recognized. It needs a new name. Call it the Wolfowitz Principle.

The Myth of Inevitability

Thirty years ago I sat in a Canadian history class at the University of Manitoba. The class was taught by Gordon Rothney, one of the finest scholars and teachers I have known. He and I shared a place in common. He was born in, and I taught high school in, the same little town in the Eastern Townships. During the course of the year we, of course, discussed Quebec's place and future in Confederation. Rothney had no sympathy for the nationalism espoused by Rene Levesque; but he understood where it came from. And, more importantly, he was of the opinion that the nationalists would eventually win the day -- not because they had justice on their side, but because of what, he felt, were the inexorable tides of history.

He believed that the history of the twentieth century was the story of how power was being consolidated into geographic blocks. That consolidation began with economic pacts, like NAFTA and the European Economic Community. Eventually it would erode international borders and national sovereignty would be a thing of the past. He was quite confident that the growing influence of the United States would eventually hold sway over North America, and that the flow of power from North to South would, in the end, dissolve the historical east-west bonds which held Canada together. I remember arguing that, despite what Tolstoy said, history was not about unstoppable movements of people and resources. It was about wisdom -- or the lack of it -- as expressed in the choices which people made throughout time.

I must admit that, over the past thirty years -- particularly during the last Quebec referendum in 1995 -- I have sometimes thought that he was right. But, as of today, Canada has not disintegrated. Some -- myself included -- would argue that the present government's take on the federation makes that dissolution easier. But, for the present, it looks like we will hold the family together.

I thought of Rothney this week as I read John Ralston Saul's excellent book, The Collapse of Globalism. Saul claims that in the thirty years since I sat in Rothney's history class, the so called best and brightest among us have been in the thrall of an ideology of economic determinism. The result, in the 1980's and 90's, was public policies which were presented to us "with the force of declared inevitability." But, says Saul, there is nothing inevitable about our situation. Instead of being trapped by the tides of history, we are in an "interregnum," an era characterized by "a vacuum of economic thought, which adds an element of even greater uncertainty, because economics is a romantic tempestuous business, rather theatrical, often dependent on the willing suspension of disbelief by the rest of us." And, ironically, in the midst of this vacuum, we have come to see all of existence through an economic prism.

Having willingly suspended our disbelief, we have forgotten that we have choices, that "we have the power to choose in the hope of altering society for the greater good. . . The conviction that citizens have such power lies at the heart of the idea of civilization as a shared project." For, Saul writes, "To believe in the reality of choice is one of the most basic characteristics of leadership. Curiously enough, many individuals who think of themselves as leaders find this reality very difficult. They believe that their job is to understand power and management and perhaps make minor corrections to what they accept to be the torque of events."

We have substituted management for leadership. It is worth remembering that the current President of the United States holds an MBA from Harvard; and the current Prime Minister of Canada holds a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Calgary. One should not be surprised that they espouse what is, for the moment, the conventional wisdom. Thus, this week Mr. Bush vetoed a bill which would begin the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, arguing that such a bill would inevitably lead to chaos in the entire Middle East; and the Harper government claimed this week that its Green Plan was modest because anything more demanding would inevitably do untold damage to the Canadian economy.

What is so appealing about inevitability is that it relieves us of moral responsibility. We believe in financial accounting; but we work hard to sidestep any accounting for the long term consequences of our actions. Asked this week if, knowing that the intelligence his organization had on Saddam Hussein's nuclear capability was -- at best -- unreliable, he had argued against President Bush's decision to go to war, George Tenet answered that it had become clear to him that the decision was inevitable. To this assertion, former CIA analyst Michael Scheurer, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, wrote that Tenet faced a choice -- to go along or to resign: ". . . Tenet's resignation would have destroyed the neocons' Iraq house of cards by discrediting the only glue holding it together: the intelligence that proved Saddam Hussein was guilty of pursuing nuclear weapons and working with Al Queda."

When you have a mortgage and a family, it's never easy to make that kind of decision. But as Tenet's decision illustrates, the consequences can be disastrous. The potential to avoid disaster, despite what I learned in Gordon Rothney's history class, still resides in our power to choose.

The Fire Next Time

Last week's blockade of CN's and VIA's main line by the Bay of Quinte Mohawks was a taste of things to come. When the Harper government tore up the Kelowna Accord soon after coming to office, native leaders warned that we would face a warm and uncomfortable summer. John Ibbitson, of the Globe and Mail, warned in March that "Reasonable, thoughtful observers with no axes to grind or drums to beat worry that aboriginal crime and aboriginal violence are about to escalate; that this silent long suffering underclass will implode under the pressures of poverty and substance abuse, and then explode in anger." This from a columnist who generally supports Harper government initiatives.

Then, in its recent budget, the government provided by-the-bootstraps money to solve native problems. It offered money to encourage native home ownership -- even though native homes are considered community assets; and it also offered money for job training. But, despite the flood of money to lots of other causes, there was no money to improve the deplorable conditions on native reserves.

After Finance Minister Jim Flaherty trumpeted his government's generosity, Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine -- fighting back tears -- declared, "I don't know how long we're expected to wait, but I don't think that this country can afford to see such poverty in such an incredibly wealthy country." Last week's actions along the shores of the Bay of Quinte are a signal that Canada's natives intend to wait no longer.

And, despite Mr. Flaherty's claims that his government's financial management of the country represents a "new approach," there is something well worn and utterly depressing about his rhetoric and his policies. As an article in this week's Globe makes clear, the federal government has been in the habit of ignoring its native peoples for over a century. In 1907, the Department of Indian Affairs sent its chief medical officer, Dr. Peter Bryce, on a tour of residential schools. What he discovered was an alarming incidence of tuberculosis among native students -- and a death rate of 24% over a fourteen year period. In some schools, the death rate was as high as 69%.

Bryce pleaded with the bureaucrats in Ottawa to quarantine sick children and to not allow them into residential schools when they were obvious carriers of the disease. The churches, which controlled the schools, refused to follow his recommendations. In order to protect the health of the schools' residents, Byrce recommended that Ottawa take control of the schools. It took over sixty years before Ottawa followed his advice.

Why? According to Dr. John Milloy, of Trent University, the government had set up residential schools on a "contracting out" basis. The deaths from tuberculosis, he says, were caused by "the policy of paying the churches on a per capita basis to run the schools. Numerous letters indicate that because of the funding policy, churches would admit sick children and refuse to send ailing ones home. Pleas to the department for more funding fell on deaf ears." To date, the Harper government has followed a similar policy. Rather than assume its constitutional responsibility for conditions on native reserves, it has left that file (like so many others) to the provinces -- a new form of contracting out. Having tried this failed policy in the past, we are now told it is part of the new conservative "ethic of individual responsibility."

But as Bill Bradley, in a recent essay in Time makes clear, neither the conservative ethic of individual responsibility nor the traditionally liberal "ethic of caring" make the solutions to the problems we face achievable. What we need, he says, is something which connects both the concepts of responsibility and caring -- what he calls the "ethic of connectedness." What we need is the recognition that we will only begin to solve problems when we realize that all of us have a stake in those solutions. We all want the same things, Bradley says -- good homes, good families, good jobs, good health care and good pensions. These objectives cannot be solely market driven. The require a shared sense of responsibility.

In a lecture at the University of Toronto last fall, philosopher Charles Taylor suggested that the only way out of the violence and nihilism of the so called War on Terror and the Clash of Civilizations is to start from Dostoevsky' s insight that "we are all responsible." Only when we recognize our collective responsibility for the predicament we are in -- our "connectedness" -- can we hope to find the the solutions which the planet and humanity so desperately need. The rail blockade at Deseronto last week was a plea for connectedness. If we choose to ignore that plea, then we will reap the harvest of our own neglect. We will all face the fire next time.

To Tell the Truth

The recent agreement between Liberal leader Stephane Dion and Green Party leader Elizabeth May has generated alot of comment, much of it negative. Calling the agreement a "misguided gift to the Greens," The Toronto Star editorialized that, of the two leaders, May was the real winner. Worse, the paper maintained, there was "no compelling rationale" for the agreement. Jack Layton called the agreement "backroom wheeling and dealing;" and Chantal Hebert, also writing in the Star, claimed that the deal was a strategic mistake. She claimed that May has no chance of defeating Peter MacKay in Central Nova, a riding which he and his father have held for almost forty years. Moreover, she wrote, "the 10,000 voters who supported the Liberals in the 2006 election have been turned into political orphans."

On the surface, the disenfranchisement argument appears to hold water. But that argument cuts both ways. If 10,000 Liberals have been denied a potential voice in Parliament, there were 660,000 Green Party voters who were also denied a voice in the last election. And, in the absence of some kind of system of proportional representation, the Green Party -- unless May wins a seat -- will remain voiceless for some time.

Andrew Coyne, in The National Post, writes that "the real target of the operation is not Mr. Mackay. It's the NDP." He suggests that what Dion is doing is trying to unite the political left, so that it will not succumb to the weakness that dogged the political right during the Chretien era.

So there are alot of theories to choose from, all with an appropriate soupcon of cynicism. But there is another explanation; and, in advancing it, I may be looking at the world through rose coloured glasses.

All of these theories start from the same assumption. In the past, any Canadian Party has had to move to the political centre to win a Parliamentary majority. The Liberals have been particularly adept at this. In the '50's and '60's, when the NDP was on the rise, the Liberals advocated programs which began as NDP policies. Thus, we got the Canada Pension Plan and Medicare. With the rise of the Reform Party in the 1980's, the Liberals advocated balanced budgets and decentralization of the federal government.

Now, say the pundits, the Conservatives have borrowed the Liberals playbook. If the Liberals under Dion are tilting in favour of the environment, they will, too. And, if the Liberals (in pursuit of a majority) spread money around lavishly, then the Conservatives will, too. The Conservatives, they say, have stopped acting like the purists they have -- with the exception of Brian Mulroney -- always been. And the Liberals -- acting like the purists they have never been -- are marginalizing themselves, choosing not the political centre, but the left wing fringe.

All of that holds -- until the political centre undergoes a radical shift. That happened in 1966 when the Liberals, under Lester Pearson, introduced Medicare. Even though he led a minority government, Pearson realized that -- despite opposition from John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives -- medicare was an idea whose time had come.

Rather than playing politics as usual, Dion may be betting that environmentalism's time has come. If one examines the platform which won him the party leadership, one would have to conclude that he believes this to be so. And, given the Conservatives abandonment of their Clean Air Act and former environment minister Rona Ambrose, in favour of recycled Liberal policies and the combative John Baird, it is not too much of a stretch to conclude that the Conservatives are moving in the same direction. Couple that with the fact that the NDP has espoused green policies for longer than either the Liberals or the Conservatives, and it may be that Dion is right.

If Dion's political antenna have led him to the right spot, then the next election may be the Canadian equivalent of that old game show, To Tell the Truth. For those not old enough to remember, the show consisted of a panel of three guests and a panel of four celebrities. The guests all claimed to be the same person, someone who was notable for a particular accomplishment or personality trait. The task of the celebrity panel was to determine which person was the real thing and which two guests were impostors.

In the next election, I suspect that Mr. Harper, Mr. Dion and Mr. Layton will all claim the environmentalist's mantle. Mr. Duceppe, given the recent Quebec election results, will be working very hard to keep his party's raison d'etre viable. He may even be contemplating a move to Quebec to succeed Mr. Boisclair as the leader of the Parti Quebecois.

In such circumstances, the central question of the next election would be, "Will the true environmentalist please stand up?" Given Mr. Harper's recent conversion to environmentalism, his support for Quebec's status as "a nation within a nation" and his recruitment to the cabinet of David Emerson, it would not be surprising if Canadian voters did not buy what he was selling. And, despite the NDP's support for green initiatives, the Party has never garnered enough support to control the national agenda -- even in its halcyon days under Ed Broadbent. They simply lack the support to give their policies legs.

That would leave Mr. Dion, whose recent suggestion in the Star that we set absolute targets for greenhouse emissions and that we achieve those targets by instituting a carbon tax, would be a clear policy departure from both ineffective Liberal policies of the past, as well as the fuzzy policies of Mr. Baird and Mr. Harper. Support from Green Party advocates could give him political capital to put green policies in place.

Despite opposition, Pierre Trudeau made official bilingualism a part of the Canadian fabric and he repatriated the Constitution. Dion, like Trudeau before him, could put in place policies which, until his arrival, were unthinkable. He could begin the task of turning Canada green. The first steps in that direction might be taken if Canadian voters put together a coalition of Liberal, NDP and Green Party Members of Parliament. It would be their way of giving the policies a test drive.

A wide eyed delusion? Maybe. It certainly would be a departure from politics as usual. In the end it is, perhaps, too much to hope for. But there have been moments in history -- admittedly rare and far between -- when politics as usual has been abandoned for a new order. As Tennyson wrote,"'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."

Man of the People?

Watching George W. Bush since November's election, I am reminded of an old movie. In 1957, director Elia Kazan, writer Budd Schulberg and actor Andy Griffith collaborated on the film, A Face in the Crowd. It is the story of an Arkansas good old boy who sings a pretty good song and whose "aw shucks" persona pave his way to television stardom. It is a role which Griffith has perfected over the years. But in this film, Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes is a kind of Darth Vader from Mayberry.

On television he comes across as a man of the people, a common man of uncommon wisdom. Unfortunately, as his star rises, so does his ego. At the end of the film he is full of contempt for his viewers, feeling he can say anything he wishes; but he saves his most caustic comments for the end of his show, when the credits role and the sound has been muted. Beaming at his audience, he looks at the camera and tells them that they are fools. He can manipulate them in any way he chooses.

Of course, one of the many people he has betrayed slips into the control room and turns up the sound. The public sees behind the persona and abandons him because, in the end, they are not the fools he takes them for.

These days Mr. Bush seems alot like the defrocked Lonesome Rhodes. His theme is consistent: he continues to proclaim that he is "the decider." But one gets the sense that the public has changed the channel. Bush's contempt for the rules against domestic spying, his inability to mount an effective cleanup of New Orleans, the swamp at his Justice Department and -- above all -- the continuing disaster in Iraq, have torn the mask away from the good old boy.

In the last chapter of her book, The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman followed the quagmire of Vietnam from the end of the Roosevelt administration to the end of the Nixon administration. Calling the chapter "America Betrays Herself in Vietnam," she detailed how successive presidents fell victim to a kind of "self hypnosis," convincing themselves that unless the United States defeated the Communists in Vietnam, they would conquer all of Asia, eventually landing on the shores of San Francisco.

It is a history of paranoia and hubris, which no amount of evidence to the contrary -- of which there was plenty -- could alter. Certain that they were men of moral courage, five presidents (Democrats and Republicans) identified Vietnam -- which Lyndon Johnson referred to as a "raggedy-ass fourth rate country"-- as a clear and present danger. The last two presidents tried to bomb the place into oblivion, never understanding that each increasing show of force merely strengthened the resolve of the North Vietnamese, who were prepared to wait the Americans out.

There was an enemy, of course. But it was in Moscow, not Hanoi. And eventually the enemy did itself in, the consequence of the regime's own incompetence. Unfortunately, those who pulled the levers of power in Washington never understood this and they refused to change course.

But, despite Washington's ill conceived notion of courage, Tuchman did not disparage the real thing. In fact, she wrote, "Aware of the controlling power of ambition, corruption and emotion, it may be that in the search for wiser government we should look for the test of character first. And the test should be moral courage." However, she wrote, " there is always freedom of choice to change or desist from a counter productive course, if the policy maker has the moral courage to exercise it."

Thus, the true test of moral courage was the courage -- in the face of a failed policy -- to change course. With so much invested in Vietnam, several presidents refused to cut their losses and chart a new direction -- until the people, through their elected representatives, forced that change. Such, it appears, will be the fate of George W. Bush. There is an enemy out there. But it was never in Iraq. Having reached the pinnacle of success, Mr. Bush is becoming just a face in the crowd.

The Best Leaders Money Can Buy

This past Monday, statistics on how much the major American presidential candidates have raised in the first three months of the year were released to the public. It was not surprising that Hilary Clinton led the pack. What was surprising was how much money she had raised -- some $26 million. Mitt Romney led Republican candidates with almost $23 million; Rudy Giuliani has $15 million in the bank; and John Edwards, another Democrat, has raised some $14 million.

It is quite a stretch to claim that that kind of money is given out of a sense of civic responsibility. It is true that the internet has opened up campaign charity to people with twenty or thirty spare dollars in their pockets. But that kind of money doesn't come from the common folk. These days they are too busy just trying to pay their bills. Moreover, that kind of money doesn't buy a night in the Lincoln bedroom. It buys policy.

And, lest Canadians think that we are somehow free of such electoral corruption, it is worth remembering that Howard Dean was invited to last year's Liberal convention in Montreal to offer advice to the party faithful on how to win the next election. And earlier last year, the Liberals' provincial cousins invited James Carville to their annual retreat to show them how to navigate the road to victory in the election which we will face shortly in Ontario.

And it is not just the Liberals who have sought the advice of American political consultants. Carville's influence is being felt in both of Canada's major parties. Coincidentally on Monday, The Globe and Mail and Canadian Press ran stories about the new War Room -- a Carville innovation -- which the Tories have set up in suburban Ottawa. The new facility, which has been leased until January 2008, consists of 17,000 square feet. It includes a television studio to produce political propaganda; and it contains 100 new desks with new computers atop each one. After the facilities tour, staged for members of the national media, Environment Minister John Baird and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier ran the latest attack ad against Stephane Dion, which airs this week in Quebec.

Keep in mind that no election has been called. In fact, Baird says that he "sincerely" hopes that there will be no election for awhile. But, he says, that decision is in Mr. Dion's hands. Of course, given last week's vote on the budget, Baird's statement is patently false. That decision rests in Mr. Duceppe's hands.

What the Tory war room and attack ads confirm is that the "perpetual campaign" has finally come to Canada. We have reached the point where our politicians care more about running for office than they do about governing. And what this week's figures from south of the border confirm is that the perpetual campaign is very expensive.

Which begs the question, what if those funds -- and all that energy -- were directed toward policy rather than politics?

Politics is about means. Policy is about ends. Clearly, someone has confused means and ends. There used to be an axiom about the moral quagmire to which such confusion leads. One suspects that the people behind the war room operate on the assumption that the public is stupid. If they are correct, we are in deep trouble. However, as the last federal election -- the one which gave the Tories a minority government -- proved, the Canadian public generally knows exactly what it is doing. It's the party in power which cannot --or will not --draw the distinction between means and ends.

Three Men on a Horse

The results of this week's election in Quebec leave the residents of that province -- and, indeed, the whole country -- in an intriguing connundrum: What happens when three men are riding the same horse and one man wants to turn right, another wants to turn left and the third -- presumably -- wants to go straight ahead? The theory of minority government says that all three will have to meet, compromise and find a way forward. However, because Quebec has not had a minority government in over a hundred and twenty-five years, putting the theory into practice -- something which is always hard to do -- may be particularly difficult.

There are those who rejoice in the rise of Mario Dumont and the Action democratique party. And it is finally encouraging to see that the official debate is no longer between two mutually exclusive alternatives -- federalism and separatism, or as the Parti Quebecois would prefer, sovereignty. However, the political landscape defies such simplistic analysis. After all, M. Dumont says that he is in favour of an "autonomous" Quebec; and nobody, including M. Dumont, seems to be quite sure what that means. A more realistic assessment of Monday's election results is that Quebecers looked at at the Parti Liberal and the Parti Quebecois and said, "a pox on both your houses." And, because they had a third alternative, they decided to park their votes with M. Dumont -- for now.

All political choices are "for now." But it is worth remembering that axiom, particularly when dealing with la belle province. One should not, for instance, come to the conclusion that separatism is dead. It may lie dormant; but it never dies. Sovereignty can be revived from anywhere on the political continuum. Rene Leveque espoused it after spending many years on the political left. Lucien Bouchard came at sovereignty from the political right. What is required to ignite the fires of sovereignty is not a liberal or a conservative bias. What fans its flames is a heightened sense of injury, articulated by a man or woman of common origins, who can remind French speaking Quebecers (we sometimes forget that there has always been a significant minority of English speaking Quebecers) of many wrong headed decisions, from the hanging of Louis Riel, through the Conscription Crisis of World War I, to the economic divide which resulted in the Two Solitudes.

And, while such common folk can rise to positions of influence among Quebec's elite, someone who has been born into that elite cannot hope to argue successfully for separatism. Jacques Pariseau was a committed separatist. But he always looked and sounded -- even in French -- like a British banker, bemoaning his lost privilege. Quebecers looked at Rene Leveque and saw the kid who fought with les anglais in the streets of small town Gaspe; and when they heard Lucien Bouchard, they heard the outsider from the Saguenay.

Even more importantly, separatism needs a perceived slight to nous autres to gather steam. After all, for Quebecers, it was the bigoted English who hanged Riel; it was the English Imperialists who forced young Quebecers into a war which they did not think of as their own; and it was the rich English captains of industry who kept French Canadians working in the factories of St. Henri or on the farms of les habitants.

And that brings us to the three billion dollars which Stephen Harper pitched into the Quebec stable to feed the horse which now has three jockeys. Harper bet on M. Charest to win; but he wound up with no real winner -- just two places and one show. Because the ADQ articulates essentially conservative -- with a small c -- policies, and because M. Charest is a committed federalist, there are some who claim that Mr. Harper is sitting in the cat bird seat and should call an election.

However, Mr. Harper's transparent support of M. Charest (who immediately promised Quebecers that he would use a significant proportion of that money -- $700 million -- for tax breaks) may, indeed, cause a backlash in English Canada. Couple that with Mr. Harper's support for the idea that "Quebec is a nation within Canada" and his determination to shrink the influence of the federal government, yielding more control to the provinces, and you have the makings of a potential crisis.

Pierre Trudeau, who came from the same background as Jacques Pariseau, knew that it was a mistake for the Prime Minister to serve as "headwaiter to the provinces." And, even though he could be guilty of the same Olympian hauteur as Pariseau, he knew how to adopt the patois of the common man, in both French and English. Clearly, Harper lacks Trudeau's vision and his ability to talk to a wide spectrum of Canadians.

We can all hope that there is no October Crisis in our future and that the three men on the horse arrive at some accommodation with each other. For through it all -- the death of Riel, the Conscription Crisis and the October Crisis -- we have, so far, found a path to the future and, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "the better angels of our nature." The next few years will require that, when we make political decisions, we insist that our leaders -- and we -- consult our better angels.