The Manley Commission

The work of the Manley Commission has received generally good reviews -- largely because Manley and his fellow commissioners have refused to carry anyone's water. Tom Axworthy, one of Pierre Trudeau's principal advisers, wrote in The Toronto Star that their report "will make uncomfortable reading for everyone in Ottawa." Axworthy continued: "Perhaps the most depressing of Manley's findings is that the 'government from the start of Canada's Afghan involvement, has failed to communicate with Canadians, with balance and candor about the reasons for Canada's involvement or about the risks.' There can be no more serious indictment of a country's political system than going to war without telling the citizens why, or the severity of the risks involved."

It is that essential failure which undercuts Manley's recommendation that Canada remain in Afghanistan past February 2009, the scheduled date for the withdrawal of Canadian troops. Manley recommends extending the mission, providing that two caveats are met: that NATO deploy another 1,000 troops to the Kandahar region of the country; and that Canadian soldiers be provided with new and better equipment. NATO pledged today that it would find the troops. We shall see what comes to pass.

Manley has concluded, along with James Travers -- also writing in the Star -- that to withdraw from Afghanistan "might wreck NATO as well as Canada's reputation." One should not forget, however, that it was Donald Rumsfeld, with his distinction between "old and new Europe," who started to dismantle the alliance. The silliness about "freedom" -- as opposed to" french" -- fries didn't help.

And those developments point to the elephant in the room. What lies at the heart of NATO's reluctance to commit itself to Afghanistan is George W. Bush's decision to remove strategic assets from that country in order to invade Iraq. The Second Bush administration, in NATO's view, switched focus from the business at hand to what Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld saw as unfinished business, left over from the administration of Bush's father . NATO was left high and dry; and Osama Ben Laden was left to roam the mountainous no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And now NATO is awaiting the results of the American election. The alliance will make no significant decisions until it knows who will succeed Bush the Younger. Until the members of the alliance know that the next president makes better decisions than The Decider, there will be no real movement on Afghanistan.

That is a insight which apparently has eluded Stephen Harper, whose foreign policy continues to echo that of the Bush administration. His current claim that his government does not make changes in policy regarding Afghan prisoners -- the military does -- sounds remarkably like Bush's assertion that politicians shouldn't decide what happens to the nation's troops, the generals should. George W. Bush is a tragic example of The Peter Principle played out on the world stage. It may not be long until Canadians conclude that Mr. Harper, like Mr. Bush, was not the right man not to lead his country.

An End to Magical Thinking

The last two weeks on global stock markets have been a roller coaster ride with which no theme park could compete. And, while many people saw it coming, what is most remarkable is that the so called best and brightest didn't. The question is why?

In the last thirty years of his life, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith saw the Keynesian consensus, which he had helped build, crumble. A new generation of economists, in an attempt to transform economics into a natural science, tried to build a set of mathematical models which could predict the future. It was, in fact, Milton Friedman -- Galbraith's academic antagonist -- who claimed that any theory should be judged, not on its realism, but on its predictive capacity.

The problem was that, at the heart of the new economic models, lay the bedrock assumption that human beings are rational creatures who make rational decisions. If one buys that assumption, mathematical economic models work. Galbraith contended that economics existed as part of a matrix which included politics and history, both of which offered a plethora of evidence that human beings often make irrational decisions. He claimed that any attempt to turn economics into a rational, self regulating system was, in effect, to believe in magic.

What the current gyrations on the world's financial markets proves is that Galbraith was right and Friedman was wrong. And, if there is any lesson to be taken from recent and future financial turbulence, it is that -- as Richard Gywn wrote this week in The Toronto Star -- we need to relearn that "when governments leave the marketplace to itself, as has been the prevailing ideology for the past couple of decades, the result is both an outburst of entrepreneurial energy and creativity but also a thundering great smashup."

The markets have taken some hope from the coordinated cutting of interest rates by central banks and from the American Congress's promise to cobble together a stimulus package. But, as Robert Reich wrote this week in his blog, "As a practical matter our only real hope for avoiding a deep recession or worse depends on loans and investments from abroad -- some major U.S. financial firms have already gotten key cash infusions from foreign governments buying stakes in them -- combined with export earnings as the dollar continues to weaken." Reich concluded that, "We're going to need the rest of the world to bail us out." We have been reminded again that, whether the subject is global finance or global warming, we are all in this together.

And we have been reminded that, whether the movers and shakers sat in the executive offices of Enron, or the White House, or City Bank, the story ended the same way. The new technocrats know a lot about statistical analysis. It's a shame they know so little about Sophocles, Aeschylus or Euripides. The Greeks could have told them that this was going to happen. Their predictions were based on a thorough knowledge of human nature -- not magic.

Radioactive

In defending his government's decision to sack Linda Keen, the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Stephen Harper cast himself and his confreres as guardians of the public trust. "We had to intervene to stop a course of action from the president of the nuclear commission which would have needlessly jeopardized the health care system and the lives of Canadians and people around the world," he told reporters in Prince Albert this week.

Former Conservative (now Liberal) MP Garth Turner saw a pattern. "Stephen Harper dumped me," he wrote in his blog this week, "for being an MP who tried to speak for principle first and party second. Bill Casey was fired as an MP for speaking for his constituents first, and being a follower second. Michael Chong was outed for putting the concept of Canada ahead of vote pandering to Quebec. Now Stephen Harper has done it again, firing Linda Keen for doing her appointed job of making sure nuclear reactors are safe."

"The pattern is unmistakable," Turner wrote. "It reminds me of a famous Humphrey Bogart movie, 'The Caine Mutiny,' in which an insane naval commander abused his power after seeing imaginary threats all around him." Some might see Turner's take on things as nothing more than sour grapes. But the communitariate has been uniformly critical of Harper. In The Globe and Mail, Lawrence Martin wrote, "Since taking power two years ago this month, this type of behaviour has been a hall mark of this government. It confuses class with crass." Martin did not side automatically with the opposition parties, who "typically took their case way overboard, comparing the Keen affair to Communist witch hunts in the U.S. following the Second World War." And, Martin pointed out, the opposition parties voted for a bill to overule Keen and restart the Chalk River reactor-- which she had ordered shut down because Atomic Energy Canada had not installed required safety upgrades -- even though various medical experts did not see the shutdown as life threatening. There is more than enough blame to go around. But the blame should not rest on Keen's shoulders.

Harper is no Joe McCarthy. But his paranoia is reminiscent of Richard Nixon, whose penchant for vengeance was personal -- he had his staff draw up a list of "enemies" -- and whose establishment of a "plumbers" operation in the basement of the White House led to his downfall.

Writing in The Toronto Star, Chantal Hebert focused on Harper's paranoia. "Two years [after Harper's election] is seems that Canada has traded a government with a short attention span for one whose policy focus is so narrow that it often borders on fixation. The latter goes hand in hand with an unprecedented degree of micro-management from the top, an obsessive preoccupation with iron clad control over even the most fact based communications." The result, wrote Hebert, is that, "according to government insiders, that combination is well in the process of rendering parts of the federal policy apparatus inoperative."

As Nixon's paranoia became full blown, his government ceased to function. No one is suggesting that Harper has reached the point where, like Nixon, he is strolling down the corridors of 24 Sussex Drive having drunken conversations with the portraits of his predecessors. But his two year tenure has given Canadians enough time to take the measure of the man. And, before long, he will be seeking a majority government. Clearly, the principle of caveat emptor applies. A secure Harper administration would expose Canadian democracy to a lot of unhealthy fallout.

This is a government which has been conceived in one man's image. And, therefore, it should remain a minority institution -- until such time as Canadians choose a man in their own image.

The Falconer Report

Last week, Toronto human rights lawyer Julian Falconer released a report which was the product of an investigation ordered by the Toronto District School Board. Mr. Falconer headed a panel which looked into conditions in Toronto's public schools, after fifteen year old Jordan Manners was shot to death inside C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute. The report has caused waves throughout the system. Mr. Falconer and his colleagues found that "a culture of violence" exists in some public schools; and, in a press conference, he expressed the opinion that Jordan Manners died of " flat neglect, pure neglect."

Moreover, Falconer laid the blame for the present situation squarely at the feet of former premier Mike Harris and the policies he and his minions instituted in the last half of the last decade. "The Tory government of the late 1990's," Falconer wrote,"embarked on a deliberate course designed to net out 'equity' from the equation."

What that meant is practice was that the province assumed all funding for public education. School boards had no control over their source of funds, and no flexibility to meet individual needs. Each school board was funded by a formula which linked the number of students in a system to the amount of money the system received. Communities, which for years had looked enviously at the rich tax base Toronto's business and manufacturing communities provided the city's schools, felt that a blow had been struck for fairness.

But, for the board which served the province's largest immigrant community, the reality was that the support systems for new immigrants and economically disadvantaged students were gutted, because the money to support those systems disappeared. The Harris government decreed that guidance counsellors, social workers and after school programs were non-essential services.

On top of its new financial constraints, the board found that it had to apply a new Ministry of Education initiative called The Safe Schools Act . Falconer found that the consequences of this piece of legislation were particularly tragic: "The impact it had on youth" he wrote, "particularly African Canadian youth, is a stark example of the fallout of this government policy." In the name of "safe schools," students were expelled in "droves." The Safe Schools Act was implemented by Harris' first minister of education, John Snoblen -- himself a high school drop out -- who honed his administrative skills at the waste management company he inherited from his father. Unfortunately, for most of the students who were expelled from the system, the career opportunities which awaited Mr. Snoblen did not exist.

Mr. Snoblen was famously videotaped by one of the functionaries at the Ministry of Education, telling his employees that sometimes you had to "create a crisis" to initiate reform in a system. Snoblen's strategy should not have been surprising, because the Harris program came right out of the play book authored by the bright lights at the University of Chicago's Economics Department. (See my post for November 3, 2007)

The Chicago School's program has been applied in many places throughout the world -- and the results have been universally disastrous. In Toronto, writes The Toronto Star's Jim Coyle, "with the attack on social services, the dearth of child care and after school care, in those most critical hours for the young and restless, with the closing of community centres, the most vulnerable have been left to sink or swim in the wildest of seas."

Within the system itself a new spirit of competition -- for students and resources -- was set in motion. This fostered an ethic of self promotion: schools developed their own websites trumpeting their accomplishments; and staff who sought promotions did the same. In such an atmosphere, it made no sense to have a public discussion of a school's shortcomings. And, thus, the Falconer commission discovered that seven months before Jordan Manners was shot to death, according to The Globe and Mail's Christie Blatchford, "several Jeffreys students approached a female teacher to tell her that they believed a young Muslim girl had been sexually assaulted by a group of male students in the second floor boys bathroom." The teacher reported the incident to the school's administrators; but "for eight months, until Mr. Falconer and his investigators discovered what allegedly had occurred in June last year, nothing happened." The principal and two vice principals have since been charged with failing to report the incident, as they are required to do under Ontario's Child and Family Services Act.

They may well have to pay the price for their "pure neglect." But the responsibility for what has happened in Toronto's schools goes much higher. Mr. Harris retired from government and handed over the reins to his finance minister, Ernie Eves. Mr. Snoblen abandoned his seat before the next election and headed for his ranch in Oklahoma to herd cattle. Like the Buchanans in Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, "they retreated into . . . their vast carelessness and let other people clean up the mess they had made." That job has fallen to Mr. Falconer and the members of his commission. They -- and the Toronto District School Board -- have a huge task ahead of them.

Primary Concerns

In 1814, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "An enlightened people and an energetic public opinion . . . will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government." His opinion is worth remembering in a time which tends to echo the contempt in which H.L. Mencken held the American electorate, whom he referred to as "the booboisie."

But what happened last week in Iowa may be a signal that the common man has, in George W. Bush's phrase, been "misunderestimated." For, the caucus victories of both Barak Obama, on the Democratic side, and Mike Huckabee, on the Republican side, were striking rebukes to the elites in both parties.

There was a time when party bosses gathered in smoke filled rooms to choose their parties' presidential candidates. But, when president Theodore Roosevelt and governors like Wisconsin's Robert LaFollete ushered in the Progressive Era, the presidential primary became the vehicle by which an enlightened public wrestled control of the political process from entrenched interests.

Over the years, with the help of political consultants and the codified techniques of mass communication, the party elites have learned how to control the primary process. However, in the last eight years -- according to conservative commentator David Brooks in The New York Times -- there has been a catastrophic failure of what Brooks calls, "the leadership class." That class includes more than just politicians. It includes the Brahmans of the Fourth Estate and the uniformed military at the Pentagon. The consequence of that failure has been what Brooks has called "two earthquakes."

"This is a huge moment," Brooks wrote last week. "It's one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance." From the other side of the political spectrum, Brooks' friend, E.J. Dionne, wrote in The Washington Post that, "Iowa voters in both parties staged a rebellion against the status quo and against the past."

Of course, it will take more than the selection of two insurgent candidates to cure America's political ills. The common man and woman have learned a lot in the last seven years about Congressional math. They have learned you can win the popular vote and lose the election. They have learned that it takes 60 votes, not 51, to pass legislation in the Senate. The have learned that, if you believe in divided government, it's better to have one house of Congress at odds with the other house, than to have one house divided against itself. And they have learned that, even if both houses manage to pass a piece of legislation, the president -- through the use of "signing statements"-- can virtually ignore any clause, or, indeed, most of any bill that comes to his desk. During the second Bush administration, "the aristocratic spirit of government" has been given free reign.

We will have to wait to see if this rebellion has legs. The cynics claim that Huckabee will not do nearly as well in New Hampshire as he did in Iowa. But they speculate that John McCain, who used to be an insurgent in another political life, may -- with Obama -- walk away with a victory. However, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, the choices of their parties' elites, are taking off their gloves.

More importantly, the primaries which follow Iowa and New Hampshire have been -- up to this point -- the places where the traditional tools of mass communication have been employed by the powers that be to slap down political upstarts. It is worth remembering that, in 2000, the Bush organization put an end to McCain's presidential quest be starting a whisper campaign in South Carolina, to the effect that McCain was the father of an illegitimate black child. Such are the joys of politics as usual.

My money's on Obama. But I would be quite happy to see him run against Huckabee. That contest would have been ordained by the people. It remains to be seen if the people are willing to tolerate politics as usual. If they rejected the usual hokum this time around, Mr. Jefferson would be pleased.

Tribalism Run Amok

The assassination last week of Benazir Bhutto is a reminder that, as much as many of us would prefer democracy to any other kind of rule, there are certain prerequisites on which any democratic state must be founded. In many parts of the world, those prerequisites do not exist; or they are actively being undermined. And the first -- and most important -- prerequisite is the rule of law. All democracies are governments of laws, not men.

Whatever her faults, Bhutto was a democrat. David Ignatius, writing this past Friday in The Washington Post, remembered encountering her when they were both undergraduates at Harvard: "We had no idea she was Pakistani political royalty. She was too busy jumping into her future to make a show of her past." He recalled crossing her path a few years later at Oxford, where she was president of the Oxford Union debating society: "She was wearing a Rolling Stones T-Shirt, the one with the sassy tongue sticking out, and I recall thinking that Pakistani politics would never be the same once she returned home." On that score, Ignatius was right. Elected to -- and deposed from -- the Prime Ministership of her country twice, her life and times were tumultuous.

The tumult continues; and it is impossible to predict how the saga will play out. Haroon Siddiqui has written in The Toronto Star that "the crisis has two faces -- one as seen by most Pakistanis and the other as seen by the United States and, by extension the rest of the West, including Canada. Most Pakistanis view the U.S.-Pakistan relationship as an unholy alliance, with [Pervez ] Musharraff doing America's bidding, which is partly why he is unpopular. And Pakistan's democrats deeply resent Washington's choice of a military man as its instrument."

In North America, says Siddiqui, "Bhutto was portrayed as 'Pakistan's last great hope' in the headline of one magazine. But most Pakistanis did not share that perception." Her party is a family business -- her son has been appointed her successor -- and, as Ignatius admits, " the corruption charges that enveloped her second term as prime minister were all too real."

Still, whatever her failings, she stood for the rule of law -- which meant that, ultimately, she agreed to play by the rules. No democracy can exist unless its citizens abide by that agreement. It is only that agreement which keeps the tribes from each other's throats. In the name of safety, several governments -- including our own -- have sought to overlook or short circuit the rules. No one can predict what will come next in Pakistan. But unless and until the rule of law can be re-established, the safety of every Pakistani is at stake. That is a lesson which also applies to those of us who are thousands of miles away in North America.

A New Year's Reflection (2008)

During the middle two weeks of December, I attended three funerals. The first was for my wife's cousin, who died much too early. He was 30. The last funeral was for a former officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was 89. Clearly, death has respect neither for youth nor age. That fact might cause one to reflect on the unfairness of things.

But what struck me at all three funerals was how one life touches so many other lives -- and, often, that one life reaches across barriers of age, gender, language, culture, race and ability. This was particularly true in the case of Simon Lortie, my wife's cousin. Simon was perfectly able bodied until the age of 19 when, swimming in the Atlantic -- not far from Boston -- he dove into a wave and broke his neck. The accident left him a quadriplegic.

He returned with his family to Montreal, where he underwent months of rehab and he began looking at the world from the perspective of a wheelchair. But the accident did not turn Simon into a narcissist. Self pity was not in his vocabulary. With a partner he started his own business. He had always loved music and the nightlife of Montreal; and he continued to make the rounds of the clubs and to enjoy the various musicians who, with other artists, give Montreal its unique elan. With help from a visiting attendant, he lived in his own apartment. Perhaps most importantly, he joined the Association des paraplegiques du Quebec (The Quebec Paraplegic Association) where he counselled others who found themselves in circumstances similar to his. And he became a community activist, lobbying for wheelchair access to public buildings and public transportation.

Simon's name became a watchword -- particularly in Montreal's French language press -- but he was thoroughly at home in both French and English. He even spoke a little Italian, his grandparents' native tongue. From his parents he learned tolerance for the many cultures and languages which gathered with human faces around the family table.

The church was packed -- there was standing room only. There were many people in wheelchairs, some on crutches -- white faces, black faces -- and personal recollections in two languages. The service was a reminder, for those of us who grew up in what used to be called Quebec's Two Solitudes, that so much of what separates us is mere claptrap; and, if we can take the time to build walls, we can also take the time to tear them down.

In the last two decades the tribes have been resurgent. Much time and blood have been been spent in ethnic cleansing. Simon's short life was a rebuke to the lie that there is salvation in the tribe. And, as the new year begins, his life reminds us all that the length of time we have is unimportant. It's what we do with the time we have that makes all the difference.

Bali: Success or Failure?

Much has been written over the last week about the UN Climate Congress, which went into overtime last week in Indonesia. The inability of 192 nations to agree to hard targets for greenhouse gas reductions has caused some commentators to despair. And one could, understandably, read the outcome as collective denial.

Certainly, the Harper government, for all its happy talk about its good intentions, continues to ape the position of the Bush Administration because, I suspect, the Prime Minister -- trained in Friedmanesque economics -- believes that any measures which apply brakes to an unfettered economy are clear and present dangers.

Most Canadian commentators found Environment Minister John Baird's performance at the conference embarrassing. And, given Canada's past environmental commitments -- which admittedly were not kept -- the Harperites refusal to accept hard targets for greenhouse gas reductions left several foreign observers flummoxed. Writing in the Toronto Star, Chantal Hebert referred to Mr. Baird's appearance as a Bali Flop: "For all intents and purposes, the Bali meeting was a multi- day communications disaster for the Harper regime. It set back a year of conservative efforts to re-brand the party on climate change and confirmed the issue as the government's Achilles heal."

But for Canadian commentators whose perspective was broader than Canada's role at the conference, there were signs of hope. Also writing in The Star, Richard Gwyn focused on the last minute concession by the United States to join the discussion -- after George W. Bush has gone back to Texas: "Almost any U.S. President, let alone Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, is bound to be more open and conciliatory," wrote Gwyn. More importantly, "at Bali, China and India hid behind the U.S. While it was being bashed, they could remain silent. The late U.S. concession, though, put the spotlight on these 'late polluters' and other comparable if smaller ones such as Indonesia and Brazil."

What or who was responsible for the change in American direction? Clearly, for the first time, the Bush administration faced a full court press from the international community. From the mighty to the humble, the message was the same. As a delegate from Papua, New Guinea told the American delegation: "If you're not willing to lead, please get out of the way." But, according to Gwynne Dyer, it was Al Gore who prevented the conference from running aground. Gore told the conference: "Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now. . . there will be a new (presidential) inauguration in the United States." So the conference removed the call for hard emissions targets and bought Gore's argument that there was hope -- if nations kept talking and reached an agreement by 2009.

"So don't believe the cynics," wrote Dyer,"who say that public opinion does not matter. A large majority of Americans are far ahead of their government in their desire to see effective action on climate change, and the Bush Administration is fighting a delaying action." One wonders if the Harper government has got the message. Bali ended with an agreement to keep talking -- and the knowledge that the biggest polluters are now inside the tent. No one ever claimed that it was going to be easy to get 192 nations to agree to save the planet. But an agreement is within our grasp.

Mr. Gore's Speech

Scholars who focus on American Literature, when they set the boundaries of the American literary canon, always save space for speeches -- usually delivered at critical moments in the nation's history. There is, of course, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, delivered in August of 1963, not long before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And William Faulkner's speech, delivered in Oslo as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, is a favourite of those of us who made a living teaching the language and its literature.

My guess is that, likewise, the speech Al Gore delivered in Oslo last week -- in a decade or two -- will find its place in the literary canon. Employing wit, passion and a sense of history, it was a call to action. And, while it lacked the rhetorical flourish of Winston Churchill (who Gore cited) its simple but powerful rhetoric stands as a beacon in the swill of modern Orwellian spin.

Gore began with a reference to Alfred Nobel who, like Gore, got the chance to read his own political obituary, "a judgment, which seemed to me harsh and mistaken -- if not premature." But like Nobel, Gore said, "that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose."

It is, indeed, one of the ironies of history that Gore, the wordsmith and teacher, has been far more effective outside government than he ever was within. When it came to warning of the danger we face, Gore -- like Churchill -- did not mince words: "We the human species are confronting a planetary emergency -- a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here." Every day, Gore said, we dump "another 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet." And, every day, scientists tell us that "something basic is wrong." Pulling no punches, Gore declared, "We are what is wrong and we must make it right."

But, as dark as the skies and the future might look, he was no pessimist. His parents' generation met the same life or death challenge in World War II. And, Gore believes, this generation has the power to rise to the occasion. Reminding his audience that Mahatma Gandhi "awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called 'Satyagraha -- or 'truth force'"-- Gore proclaimed that, "in every land, the truth -- once known -- has the power to set us free;" and the truth is that we need "a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide. And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution."

Gore ended his speech with a call for both China and "my own country . . . to make the boldest moves or stand accountable before history for their failure to act. We have everything we need to get started," Gore said," save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. . . . So let us renew it, and say together,'We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise and we will act.'"

Those simple declarative sentences have stark beauty and power -- the same beauty and power of The Gettysburg Address. One day they will take their place in the canon beside Lincoln's address. My hope is that, just as Lincoln reminded us that we need to be guided by "our better angels," Gore's words will do the same.

Greasing the Political Wheels

There is little to recommend Karlheinz Schreiber. It is not difficult to understand why, when John Crosbie and Peter Lougheed were asked to meet with him, they turned down the invitation. Self promotion is nothing new; but Mr. Schreiber appears to have been on the make for a long time -- and he is unapologetic about it. Moreover, the only truly credible piece of information he has offered the House Ethics Committee is his own assertion that he "was born ugly, not stupid."

Still, before we send him back to Germany -- where the mess he is in seems, ironically, as putrid as the mess he finds himself in here -- we should hear his tale, as convoluted and as incredible as it may be. And, as the House Committee and the public inquiry heed Mark Felt's advice to "follow the money," Canadians need to ask themselves if, indeed, they have been stupid.

Lawrence Martin, in The Globe and Mail, points out that the real "outrage" in the midst of all the noise surrounding Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney, is how Schrieber and his associates helped engineer the campaign to dump Conservative Party leader Joe Clark -- which paved the way for Mr. Mulroney's ascension to power. "Back in 1983," Martin writes, "when backers of Brian Mulroney were leading a campaign to unseat Joe Clark as party leader, Tory strategist Dalton Camp noted how something strange and alarming was going on." Camp claimed that "'foreign money' was fueling the anti-Clark drive. It was a grave allegation -- foreign interests hijacking the Canadian political process. But he offered no proof."

Mr. Schreiber does not inspire confidence. But, if he is credible on this point, we now have the proof. According to Martin, "Walter Wolf, an Austrian, and Mr. Schreiber, a German, secretly funded the dump Clark campaign to the tune of estimates that run to the hundreds of thousands. Then Bavarian premier Franz Joseph Strauss was orchestrating the drive, and also may have helped bankroll it. Mr. Wolf and Mr. Strauss detested Mr. Clark's moderate brand of conservatism. They wanted him out, and with their plotting, they succeeded. Few words in protest were heard then -- or since."

No one should be shocked to discover that money greases the wheels of politics. Sir Hugh Allan donated large sums to John A. Macdonald's Conservatives, hoping that he could buy a controlling interest in the new Pacific Railway. And, as the Gomery Commission discovered, Jean Chretien's Liberals rewarded Quebec advertising agencies with large contracts, on the understanding that a significant portion of that money would find its way back to party coffers. Mr. Mulroney stands in a long line of Canadian Prime Ministers who have known how to use money to accomplish their political goals. If Schreiber's claims -- and what Martin reports -- are true, Mr. Mulroney's sound and fury about John Turner agreeing to the appointments PierreTrudeau made before he left office qualify as comic relief.

Some will say that all of this is simply more of the same. But, in the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, there are differences. Those differences are the source and the amount of the money. It is not news that politicians can be bought and sold. But who is doing the buying and selling has always been important. Mr. Schreiber seems to offer Canadians a take on one of their Prime Ministers which -- like several others -- is far from flattering. However, it is not enough to take comfort from the fact that the people eventually sent him and his party -- at least temporarily -- into oblivion. The question is, were they had? And, if so, how do they ensure that it will not happen again?

Echoes of Isaiah

We are just about three weeks away from Christmas. As a child, I was taught that Advent was the Season of Expectations. For a kid who was focused on what would find its way under the tree, it was easy to relate to the Season of Expectations -- as crass as mine most assuredly were.

But as we began Advent this week, I found it hard to imagine any truly realistic expectations. The world, as Wordsworth wrote, is "too much with us." From Karlheinz Schreiber putting on a peekaboo performance in front of the House of Commons Ethics Committee, to the announcement that the United States has signed an agreement with the Maliki government to establish permanent military bases in Iraq, to the report which declared that Toronto is the poverty capital of Canada -- and that the number of poor children in this country is 20% higher than it was in 1989 -- there was more cause for disappointment than there was for expectation last week.

But I was taken aback yesterday when I came across a passage from Isaiah -- which everyone has heard; but the source of which few, I would guess, know. Like most of my generation, my acquaintance with the Book of Isaiah comes from secondary sources. My introduction to Isaiah came from attention to the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr. He returned to Isaiah again and again: "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." That was Isaiah. He could be the bearer of bad news; but he was also the prophet of possibility. And then there was his faith that natural enemies could build a peaceable kingdom -- the lines behind John A. MacDonald's vision of Canada: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. . ."

It was Isaiah who made me think of King and MacDonald yesterday, when I came across the lines, "they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

One could argue that we have always been a long way from the future Isaiah imagined. But it was he who inspired King and MacDonald. And it was that inspiration which led both men -- living a hundred years apart -- to accomplish what many thought was impossible. Such is the power of expectations. Down through the centuries, like Isaiah, Christmas has raised our expectations. What matters, in the end, is what we do with those expectations.

And Life Goes On

In the November 14th edition of The New York Times, Kurt Campbell -- a former official in Bill Clinton's Pentagon -- asked the question, "What has become of the Iraqictects?" Campbell pointed out that, unlike the last generation of war planners -- whose saga the late David Halberstam chronicled in his book, The Best and the Brightest -- the advisers who planned the War in Iraq seem not to have experienced any adverse consequences.

Campbell, an alumnus of Harvard, recalled seeing, "the lonely ghostlike figure of Robert MacNamara, striding around Cambridge making presentations to a new generation of would-be strategists about how to learn from his mistakes of the past." MacNamara and his brethren had to "endure booing on college campuses, shunning from old friends and colleagues, brutal treatment from the communitariat at the time, and the kind of bitter despair that generally accompanies a thorough going battlefield defeat." Unlike the Kennedy generation of cold warriors, this group of hawks have simply left government to pursue "challenging new directions in the private sector." In fact, concluded Campbell, what is truly puzzling is how "normal" all this seems to be.

What has changed? Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, recounts the assault on western democracies since the end of the Vietnam War. She contends that governments, from Chile to Argentina to Russia to Washington -- where the trend began -- have been, in her phrase, "hollowed out" by the evolving military industrial complex. Klein labels the next generation of this corporatist marriage the "disaster capitalism complex."

Taking a cue from Ronald Reagan, who declared that, "government isn't part of the problem, it is the problem," modern neo-conservatism has sought to dismantle government by contracting out to the private sector most of its functions. As a result, many former civil servants have left government service to found their own companies, which in turn have been awarded contracts to do what government used to do. Hence, Joe Allbaugh, the former director of FEMA founded New Bridge Strategies, whose mission is "to be the 'bridge' between business and the lucrative world of government contracts and investment opportunities in Iraq." His replacement at FEMA, the hapless Michael D. Brown -- after he was fired from that job -- set up his own company "specializing in disaster preparedness." And, of course, Erik Prince -- the CEO of Blackwater, a private mercenary army -- has been in the news a lot of late. In fact, there are more private contractors fighting the war in Iraq than there are American soldiers.

By privatizing the war, the Bush administration has dampened public criticism. Most citizens -- unless they have a family member in the armed services -- have no direct stake in what happens in Iraq. And, while the private contractors do have a direct stake, most contracts have been awarded on a no bid, cost plus basis. If they are lucky enough to have cultivated the right people, they have a guaranteed money making operation -- and there is lots of money to be made, despite all kinds of evidence that what they have been paid for has not been done.

This phenomenon is particularly striking in the case of Mr. Rumsfeld, who has recently "returned to the private sector." When he entered government, he was supposed to place his holdings in a blind trust. And certain investments, like his shares in Lockheed and Boeing, were placed in that kind of vehicle. But Rumsfeld refused to divest himself of his shares in Gilead Sciences, the company which he used to chair (the company which holds the patent on Tamiflu, the vaccine which the American government has chosen to stockpile in case of a flu epidemic.) When discussions were held about purchasing a vaccine, we are told that Rumsfeld left the room. But, even in his absence, things turned out swimmingly for Gilead. According to Klein, "In July 2005 the Pentagon purchased $58 million worth of Tamiflu, and the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would order up to $1 billion worth of the drug a few months later." If Rumsfeld had sold his shares in Gilead in January, 2001, when he entered office, he would have received $7.45 for each share. By refusing to sell those shares "through all the avian flu scares, all the bio terror hysteria and through his own administration's decisions to invest heavily in the company [writes Klein] Rumsfeld ended up with stocks worth $67.60 each when he left office."

The Vice Preisdent's fortunes have followed a similar path. While Mr. Cheney did sell some of his Haliburton shares when he entered office -- netting a profit of some $18.5 million -- Klein reports that he didn't cash out entirely. "According to The Wall Street Journal, Cheney hung onto 189,000 Haliburton shares and 500,000 unvested options even as he entered the vice presidency." Haliburton, as one of the chief beneficiaries of the new no bid cost plus contracting process, has done remarkably well during the war. Klein notes that, "the company's stock price rose from $10 before the war in Iraq to $41 three years later -- a 300 per cent jump -- thanks to a combination of soaring energy prices and Iraq contracts both of which flow directly from Cheney's steering the country into war with Iraq."

Through it all, these gentlemen have operated on the principle that self interest is in the public interest. In fact, what they have done is merge the private and public spheres, while reaping huge profits along the way. George Bush likes to compare the reconstruction of Iraq to the Marshall Plan. In fact, written into the Marshall Plan was a specific prohibition against American contractors participating in the rebuilding of Europe. The American government bankrolled the reconstruction; but Europeans actually did the work. The history of reconstruction in Iraq has been a history of American contractors reaping profits, even when work, in the vast number of cases, wasn't done. The Iraqis have simply stood by as spectators. And for the architects of the war, the profits have continued to roll in -- just as they did before this generation of The Best and the Brightest entered office. Life has gone on with astonishing normality. And they tell us that this is a war without end.

Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Harper

The Canadian chattering class was abuzz last week after Prime Minister Harper appointed David Johnston, the president of the University of Waterloo, to determine the parameters of a public inquiry into what is being labelled the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair. We have been here before. When the Liberal government, which succeeded Mulroney, charged that Mulroney had received cash for steering Air Canada's purchase of new jets to Europe's Airbus Industries, Mulroney launched a lawsuit, claiming that the government had besmirched his good name. The government eventually settled with Mulroney out of court for $2.1 million.

But, in the last four years, certain facts have come to light. First, Mulroney did receive $300,000 from Karlheinz Schreiber -- in cash, in three installments, in envelopes, in hotel rooms. Second, Mulroney was delinquent in paying taxes on that income, something he has since rectified. And, third, as the CBC program The Fifth Estate has verified, that money was Airbus money, which had been deposited in a Swiss account in Schreiber's name. Whether Mulroney knew about the source of the money is not known.

After initially stonewalling opposition calls for an inquiry, Harper decided to reverse himself -- after Mulroney called for an inquiry, and after Schreiber claimed that he had sent a letter to Harper's office, charging that he and Mulroney had discussed the payments two days before Mulroney left office -- a letter which Harper says he never saw.

Mr. Schreiber is quite a piece of work. An acknowledged arms dealer as well as passenger plane salesman, he has had ties to other politicians, most notably Marc Lalonde, Pierre Trudeau's political lieutenant. He would appear to have a talent for ingratiating himself with the powers that be -- whatever their political stripe. He has been ordered to return to Germany, where he faces charges of fraud and tax evasion. It is in his self interest -- something he has promoted quite successfully -- to drag Mulroney into the mess in which he now finds himself.

The problem is that Mulroney, who claimed in his libel suit that "he had never had any dealings" with Schreiber, clearly misrepresented the situation -- which reminds Canadians that, before he left office, they regularly referred to Mr. Mulroney as "Lyin' Brian." More than that, the whole affair puts Mr. Harper in an awkward position. In his Reform Party days, he referred to Mr. Mulroney as the enemy. But since being elected prime minister, Harper has arranged a rapprochement with Mulroney and his supporters in the party. Some observers see Mulroney's influence in the appointment of Michel Fortier to Harper's cabinet. The fact is, as Andrew Coyne observed in Macleans last week, " . . . Harper is tied to Mulroney, as Mulroney is tied to Schreiber, not by any opposition insinuations or press vendettas, but by their own appalling lapses of judgment."

An inquiry may find that Mr. Mulroney did nothing illegal. He is, first and foremost, a very smart lawyer; and one assumes that he would do nothing to put himself in legal jeopardy. However, with the mounting evidence of income inequality in this country, one can understand why Canadians might be more than miffed to discover that another one of their leaders was particularly adept at feathering his nest. At the very least, the inquiry should follow the money -- as difficult, and as embarrassing as that might be.

Another Remembrance Day

Yesterday was Remembrance Day. And in every city, town and hamlet across this land, Canadians gathered at their local cenotaphs to remember those men and women who are buried in Europe or at home -- and to pay homage to those soldiers, sailors and airmen who are still with us.

Those who are still with us are dwindling. The number of former soldiers who walk down the Main Streets of Canada each November 11th grows fewer and feebler with each passing year. But we still feel compelled to drop what we are doing at eleven o'clock, and think about the young men and women who will never grow old.

And what do we, the living, owe them? I wish I could say that we owe them the gift of universal peace. The two Great Wars of the last century were supposed to be the Wars to end all Wars. If only. But the years which followed each of those conflicts should have taught us that such noble aspirations are short lived.

So, where does that leave us? For awhile Canadians found military purpose in peacekeeping. But, in fulfilling our NATO commitment, we have discovered that we no longer perform that role. If Afghanistan teaches us anything, it is that it is much easier to get into a war than it is to get out. Therefore, when our leaders beat the drum, telling us that it is our duty to defend our country, they should always be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Those who give the orders rarely lead from the front. And the young almost always bear the burden of the battle.

It has been a long while since we fought the good fight. But, every Remembrance Day, we recall that there was once such a fight; and we recall that we enjoy the blessings of this country because those who joined the Canadian armed forces did what was necessary. In the end, the best way to honour the dead is to distinguish between the necessary and the nihilistic. Those whose names are on headstones in Europe and the war monuments across Canada know that difference.

Friedman's Faustian Bargain

It has been almost a year since Milton Friedman's death. At the time, memorialists everywhere sang his praises. The New York Times called him "one of the 20th century's leading economic scholars;" and not one of the obituary writers failed to mention his firm conviction that human freedom and free markets were inextricably linked. He was not always so feted. The first thirty-five years of his career were spent in the wilderness -- although life in the economics department at the University of Chicago was far from shabby.

But the Keynesian Revolution had marginalized a man who felt that his country had gone off track with the New Deal. He steadfastly clung to his belief that classical economics was the equivalent of Keats' Grecian Urn, where both truth and beauty coexisted.

Then came the Cold War; and Latin American politics took a distinctly leftward turn. John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State; and he vowed to stamp out the heresy of Communism with the same zeal with which his own parents had set off for China to convert the locals to Christianity. With support from the State Department, the University of Chicago established the Center for Latin American Economic Studies; and, under the leadership of Friedman and Arnold Harberger, it took up the task of placing its economics graduates in positions of influence throughout South America.

The problem was, however, that -- as Naomi Klein tells the story in her book, The Shock Doctrine -- all attempts to implement Chicago's take on economics met with defeat at the ballot box. The reason was not hard to understand. South America had a vibrant union movement; and it had its own economic advisers -- who understood that one of the essential outcomes of Friedman's free markets was concentration of wealth at the top of society. Why should the masses vote themselves into poverty?

So Friedman advised his charges that crisis meant opportunity. When their societies were in crisis, what was required (wrote Friedman) was "shock treatment" -- an economic version of what the American military has called "Shock and Awe." The first such opportunity came when the Chilean army -- with the help of the C.I.A. -- overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvadore Allende. Before the revolt, a group of Chicago graduates had drawn up a program for a new economic order to be established after the coup.

The plotters knew, however, that there would be stiff resistance. As Orlando Letalier -- a member of Allende's inner circle -- wrote in The Nation in 1976, "The economic plan has had to be enforced, and in the Chilean context that could be done only by the killing of thousands, the establishment of concentration camps all over the country, the jailing of more than 100,000 persons in three years . . . . Regression for the majorities and 'economic freedom' for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin." Needless to say, Letalier's opinions were not popular with the new Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet; and, a month after his critique of the new order appeared, Letalier was murdered in Washington, where a bomb tore apart the car he was in.

Despite the repression which accompanied the new order, Friedman flew to Santiago to act as a "technical adviser" to Pinochet. When asked about his work with Pinochet, Friedman claimed that his role was that of a physician giving "technical medical advice to the Chilean Government to help end a medical plague -- the plague of inflation." And, for awhile, the cure worked. In fact, it inspired similar coups throughout the Southern Cone of South America -- in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. But eventually, after all of these countries had instituted the three pronged program which Friedman recommended -- privatization of state owned enterprises, government deregulation and slashing of social spending -- all four countries collapsed under mountains of debt. The same thing happened when Friedman's formula was applied in Mexico, Russia and China. In each case, what saved the economies of all these countries was coordinated international government intervention -- something Friedman claimed was unadulterated heresy.

The story keeps repeating itself. In North America, as recent statistics have indicated (see my post for October 22nd) we are reading from the same textbook. Augusto Pinochet died -- a little less than a month after Friedman's death -- just as he was going to be tried for crimes he had committed while in power. Friedman received the Nobel Prize in 1976, just as successive coups were ensuring that hundreds of thousands of people disappeared or were forced to lie down on bed springs attached to car batteries. Another form of shock treatment was being administered during South America's long, dark night.

In Christopher Marlowe's play, Dr. Faustus, a scholar achieves fame and gains the respect of his colleagues. But he does so at the cost of his soul. Somewhere, Milton -- like the rest of us -- must be asking for mercy.

Is Iran Next?

In the October 8th edition of The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reported that Pentagon planners had, for sometime, been developing plans to attack Iran. "This summer," wrote Hersh, "the White House, pushed by the office of vice president Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran." The original plans called for a "broad bombing attack." But the redrawn plans would emphasize "'surgical' strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere."

Shortly after Hersh's article appeared, Mr. Bush -- at a press conference -- declared, "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." One should note that the information necessary for constructing a nuclear weapon is all over the Internet. If possessing knowledge is the threshold for an attack, the entire world is a target.

Defenders of the president claim that Bush, whose command of the English language is worse than embarrassing, was merely displaying more of his shattered syntax. But, in an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies on October 22nd, Vice President Cheney warned, "The Iranian regime needs to know that, if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences."

Even Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has joined the chorus. He has vowed that, should Iran develop a nuclear weapon while he is president, he will attack Iraq's neighbour. That, he says, is "a promise."

It is interesting that all three of these men have never served in combat. And, therefore, none of them have any familiarity with the unintended consequences which accompany the use of military force -- what former Secretary of State Colin Powell has called the Pottery Barn Rule -- "you break it, you own it." It was President Kennedy's familiarity with that rule which led him to build a naval quarantine around Cuba, rather than invade that island.

As a glaring example of the Pottery Barn Rule, Iraq is Exhibit A. Yet both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney refuse to recognize it. It could be that they are simply dense; or perhaps, convinced of their own righteousness, they are incapable of admitting a mistake. Whatever the reason, both men appear to be drawn more to the power of myth than to the power of facts. And, when it comes to myths, there are chiefly two which, apparently, appeal to both men. The first is The Myth of the American West, where it is easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys -- and where the administration of justice rests on the principle that the guys in the white hats are quicker on the draw than the guys in the black hats. The other myth is the Myth of American Invincibility. In this myth, the American military -- like Washington's army at Valley Forge -- endures unspeakable hardships; but, in the end, it triumphs. That myth died in the jungles of Vietnam thirty-five years ago. But it was resurrected by the Neo Cons when the Cold War ended; and it was promoted by a generation of boosters who spent the Vietnam years far away from those jungles. In the last four years, the Myth of American Invincibility has died another death in the sands of Mesopotamia.

It is this mythological perspective which appears to have led the president and vice president to conclude that the U.S. can ride out the consequences of a "surgical" strike on Iraq. Having destabilized Iraq and empowered Iran, they now propose to take those intransigent mullahs to the woodshed. But, as a former senior intelligence official told Hersh, "Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, "'Uncle Sam is here! We'd better stand down?' The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer."

It would have done a world of good if the education of Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney -- and Mr. Giuliani -- had included stints in the jungles and rice fields of Southeast Asia.

The House Never Loses

Last week, Hugh MacKenzie -- an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives -- wrote an editorial which relied heavily on recently released data from Statistics Canada. The data underscored what an earlier study (see my post for March 7th) confirmed. The last fifteen years have seen a growing gulf between the richest 5% of Canadians and everybody else. All of this has happened as leaders of all political stripes have sung in chorus that tax cuts create a tide which, in turn, raises all boats.

"It turns out," wrote Mackenzie, "that the share of income among the richest of Canadians is actually concentrated right at the top -- among Canada's richest. Between 1992 and 2004 [the richest 5% of the population carved out] 25.3% of the economic pie." But "more than 90% of the gain in income share among the richest 5% went to the richest 1% of Canadians. And, remarkably, 20% of the gain went to the richest of the rich, the millionaires sitting in the top 0.01% of Canada's income scale."

Writing in The Toronto Star, David Olive put those statistics in context. "Statistics Canada reports that 2.8 million families, or one in five, live below the low income cut off, or LICO, the new politically correct term for poverty line. The gap between rich and poor has reached a three decade high, a prosperity gap usually associated with underdeveloped nations." Referring to Mackenzie's work, Olive pointed out that "a stunning 80% of families have seen their earnings and after tax income stagnate or decline, after inflation, over the past generation."

Such is the hypocrisy of economic and social conservatism. The family values folks have had a disastrous effect on the people they say they revere. Tax cuts led to a decline in social investment, on the theory that the poor, with money in their pockets, would look after themselves. But those tax cuts came in the form of tax credits. And tax credits only apply to those who have incomes. And those with larger incomes receive larger tax breaks.

It has been the same story south of the border, where all of this economic flim-flam began, thanks to Milton Friedman and his colleagues in the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. In his blog last week, Robert Reich -- the former Secretary of Labour and now a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley -- wrote that, according to data supplied by the IRS, "the wealthiest 1% of Americans are earning 21% of all income. . . The bottom 50% of all Americans, when all their incomes are combined together, is earning just 12.8% of the nation's income."

At the same time, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised more tax cuts. And President Bush vetoed a bill which would expand health coverage for uninsured children because it would "encourage socialized medicine." As E.J. Dionne pointed out in The Washington Post, by the same logic we should not encourage public education. Today's conventional wisdom is that social investment is socialism. Franklin Roosevelt faced the same criticism. His record speaks for itself.

In the mid 1970's, in the wake of his Nobel Prize, Friedman and his wife wrote a book titled Free to Choose, which PBS turned into a popular series of programs. But, as the last twenty-five years have shown, what Friedman called "freedom," actually meant "privilege." In the name of freedom, economic policy makers have rigged the game. That little white ball keeps coming up on the same few numbers. And it keeps coming up on them again and again.

(Once Again) In Praise of Speedskating

Last March, I wrote a short piece in which I unabashedly sang the praises of speedskating. Having just returned from the first meet of the new season, I wish to reiterate what I wrote then. Speedskating truly symbolizes what is best about Canada. It encourages excellence; it seeks to make a place for everyone; and it is based on the simple proposition that doing something well can be fun.

As I also wrote at the time, my wife and I find ourselves in rinks across this province at ungodly hours; and we drive considerable distances for that privilege. But, after all, going anywhere in this country usually involves travelling a considerable distance.

This weekend's competition occurred two weeks after Marion Jones returned her Olympic medals to the International Olympic Committee. It struck me, as I watched the competition, that perhaps speedskating is so enjoyable because its devotees are passionate amateurs. They all have day jobs, because no speedskater can make a lucrative living doing what he or she loves to do. There are no astronomical salaries, and no agents who are laughing all the way to the bank. And, so far, the fame speedskaters have achieved has been relatively modest. Perhaps that explains why, to the best of my knowledge, BALCO has not peddled its products to Olympic speedskaters.

My wife, who had broken an arm a few weeks before I wrote the March post, has healed nicely. She did not participate this weekend. She wisely decided that she was not ready for a two day meet; and, while she has been back on her skates since the beginning of September, she will begin competing at a smaller, shorter event later this fall. And she has decided that there are some exercises which she will not attempt. Speedskating is fun; but nursing a broken arm isn't.

I wrote last March that, if a visitor to Canada wanted to know what this country was like, I would take him or her to a speedkating competition. I still stand by that statement. Speedskaters live in a community which represents what is best about the Great White North. Despite the hype, Canada is much more than just Hockey Country.

Staying the Course

That phrase does not carry positive connotations these days. Given what has happened in Iraq over the last four years, it has come to stand for, at best, inertia -- at worst, folly. But that phrase best describes the results of the Ontario election. The number of members who were elected by each party stayed about the same. There was not much discussion of pressing issues, which everyone knows are coming down the pipe. And the answer to the question, "Do you want to change the way we elect our representatives?" was a resounding "No!" This province's voters were not feeling particularly enthusiastic about their politicians. But they weren't prepared to send them packing, either.

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals won 71 seats, or 66% of the legislature with 42% of the vote -- which proponents of proportional representation will maintain is exactly the problem that needs to be fixed. However, the proposal to move to proportional representation was soundly defeated, 63% to 37%

John Tory, who began the race as a clear favourite for premier, self destructed during the campaign; and, in the words of one wag, he created a wedge issue -- public funding for all faith based schools -- which he promptly used against himself.

Only the New Democratic Party's Howard Hampton increased his share of the popular vote -- his party harvested 19% of Ontarians ballots -- but his share of seats remained the same.

As we awoke this morning, not much had changed. But we are all aware that change is coming. One of every seven jobs in Ontario is related to the auto industry. And, as our neighbours in Michigan are well aware, that engine of economic growth is in trouble. The forest industry in Northern Ontario is also mired in an economic swamp. Pulp and paper is not the ticket to prosperity which it once was. And, while $80 a barrel oil has done wonders for Alberta's economy, Ontario buys the black stuff; it doesn't produce it.

Cynics may claim that Ontarians were playing the role of Sergeant Schultz, the dull witted soldier on Hogan's Heroes. Perhaps they "see nothing -- nothing at all." But it's probably more accurate to conclude that they simply chose the devil they knew -- because, although the Liberals do not inspire fervid devotion, they are -- generally speaking -- competent.

And Mr. McGuinty's victory was historic. It's been seventy years since the Liberal Party of Ontario won back to back elections under Premier Mitchell Hepburn. If John Kenneth Galbraith were alive, he would remind McGuinty that Hepburn's tenure was, in Galbraith's opinion, "one of the most corrupt in Canadian history." This, from a life long Liberal -- both north and south of the border.

We await the future. And we hope that -- as far as the Liberals are concerned -- history does not repeat itself.

What Kind of Jobs?

In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called an election, the purpose of which was straightforward. He was seeking a mandate from Canadians to do something which they had consistently and steadfastly refused to do for one hundred and twenty years: enter into a free trade agreement with the United States. One of the chief benefits of the agreement, he said, was that Canadians would be deluged with "jobs, jobs, jobs." Mulroney won the election; and, six years later, the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) morphed into NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) between Canada, the United States and Mexico.

From the perspective of twenty years ago, it would appear that Mulroney was, indeed, a prophet. According to a report in The Globe and Mail last week, the employment picture in Canada is the best it has been in thirty-three years: "Canada's jobless rate surprisingly fell to a thirty-three year low of 5.9% last month after employers added 51,000 jobs. Wages are rising at the fastest pace in a decade and labour shortages -- not tightening credit conditions -- are what's most worrying executives."

In the same week, a report written by Armine Yalnizyan for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, reached the following conclusion: "a surging economy has coincided with a process of redistributing incomes from the less affluent to the richest." After analysing data from Statistics Canada, Yalnizyan claimed that, "only the richest 5% enjoy the spoils of economic progress . . . and this is in the best economic times." Canadians have known good economic times before. But this time, said Yalnizyan, things are different: "Something significant is shifting in Canada. A generation ago, the gains from economic growth were more widespread, and the taxes generated by that era of prosperity financed investments across the country, in every neighbourhood, that enhanced the quality of life for all citizens."

My generation benefited directly from those investments. Governments built public schools, universities, roads, hospitals and community recreation facilities. And, when we followed the conventional wisdom and graduated from institutions of higher learning, lo and behold, there were jobs waiting for us. Moreover -- it now seems particularly quaint -- we only needed one of those jobs to pay the bills.

Our children face a much different world. In a column in Friday's New York Times, Bob Herbert cites a study which was released last spring. The study showed that "men who are now in their thirties earn less than their fathers' generation did at the same age. The median income for men in their thirties in 1974, in today's inflation adjusted dollars, was $40,210. According to the study, which used Census figures from 2004, those annual earnings have dropped to $35,010."

There are those who claim that this phenomenon is the inevitable consequence of free trade -- more jobs at lower salaries. Herbert claims that it is the consequence of a failure of imagination. "In the first two or three decades after World War II," he writes, "men and women of talent and vision gave us The Marshall Plan, the G.I. Bill, the interstate highway program, the Peace Corps, the space program, the civil rights movement and much more."

Our son recently returned home after having received an Honours B.A. and teaching for a year in South Korea. He then headed for Toronto, seeking a career. What he found was lots of jobs for $8 - $10 an hour --not enough to pay the bills. He is home now, where rent and food are free and he is working two jobs, hoping to eventually go to graduate school, where he can acquire marketable skills. And he is thinking of returning to Asia -- because, when he posted his resume on a website for teachers of English as a second language, within one night he got six inquiries from China and, within two days, three job offers from South Korea.

Well, some will say, his degree has opened doors for him. True. My wife and I have always encouraged our children to see the world. As someone who can earn a good living teaching in Asia or Europe or South America, he thinks of himself as a citizen of the world. And yet . . . there is something wrong with this picture. When Mike Harris slashed nursing jobs as part of the "Common Sense Revolution," he told those recently unemployed professionals, "Just as Hula Hoops went out and those workers would have to have a factory and a company that would manufacture something else that's in, it's the same in government, and you know, governments have put off these decisions for so many years, that restructuring sometimes is painful." Given the fact that, with an aging population the need for nurses surged, Mr. Harris was -- to put it charitably -- myopic.

We have lived for a generation with myopic leaders. Our son will make his way in the world. But there are so many more who have not had his advantages -- or who have not had the advantages we baby boomers have had. The late John Kenneth Galbraith loved to tell the story of how his father -- a small town Ontario teacher, farmer and politician -- during a local election, mounted a pile of manure and apologized to his audience for standing on his opponent's platform. If those good people had no trouble recognizing horse manure, neither should we.