He Is Either Supremely Arrogant Or Extremely Delusional

"He" would be the outgoing but hardly lamented Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Alexander, who allowed his transfixation with power to corrupt and ruin him. The damage may indeed be permanent.

As you will see in the following video report, his inability to purge himself of the Conservative Kool-Aid means he accepts no responsibility for the party's recent fall from power but blames everything on outside perfidious forces such as the Liberals debasing and poisoning the campaign culture and liberal media distorting the truth. This is hardly an encouraging augury of his potential for rehabilitation:

Potential And Reality

I remember when I first started teaching, everything seemed so clear, so obvious: students, for example, were no longer writing very well because they weren't taught grammar; a rigourous and systematic approach would fix that. I soon learned, however, that such a prescription was unspeakably naive. Like everything else, it did not exist in a vacuum, but rather was tied to so many other factors over which I had little or no control, such as family environment, motivation to read voluminously, etc., etc.

In some ways, and I really hope I am wrong, I wonder if Justin Trudeau's winning approach to electoral victory may partly mirror the naiveté I had so many years ago. After years of exposure to Stephen Harper's toxicity, expectations are very high among Canadians for a new political culture, and Trudeau's potential to disappoint is great. If he succeeds, his impact on the health of our democracy could be quite substantial.

Lawrence Martin writes that there is much to change:

If Canadians thought the operation run by Stephen Harper was ugly before, look at what we’re hearing now. Not from Mr. Harper’s opponents, but Conservatives themselves.

“They had almost a Stalinistic way of looking at things,” Philippe Gervais, a former Tory campaign co-director, told iPolitics . “You were either on-side, or you were dead.”

Here’s Geoff Norquay, the long-time Harper defender on TV panels. In the next edition of Policy magazine, he writes what the political operation was really like under Harper favourite Jenni Byrne: “They ran a closed circle, they humiliated staff, they berated candidates, they pushed every reasonable argument far beyond its logical limit, they shut out others with a different view.”

One of Trudeau's strongest suits is his style:

Style doesn’t make the man, but as Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy illustrated, it can change the morale, bring a new spirit to a country. Mr. Trudeau is no Reagan and he is no Kennedy but he has some of their charismatic attributes. If he doesn’t settle for half-measures, he could bring a new spirit.

That infusion of our waning spirits was clearly evident in the increasingly large crowds Trudeau attracted as the campaign wore on, and in the enthusiasm with which many greeted his majority government.

In more substantive matters, a test for the incoming prime minister will be how he handles dissent:

The wise leader doesn’t demand agreement from everyone in his party. If the news media gets all excited about an MP going offside on some issue, he should take it in stride, as in, “So what? That’s what a democracy is all about. The freedom to speak your mind.”

Lawrence Martin has several suggestions for Trudeau as his time in office draws near, but I'll end with one that I think all of us would agree upon:

To restore civility to our politics, Mr. Trudeau should ban personal attack ads. To restore sanity to Question Period, the Speaker needs to be empowered so that questions are answered.

Now wouldn't that be something to truly behold?

It Seems All The Rats Haven't Deserted The Ship

I was catching up on my reading today, enjoying a brief break from blogging, when I came upon this; it seemed too good not to share:


H/t Globe and Mail

The Virtues Of Civility

Probably one of the most obviously distressing aspects of the last ten years has been the precipitous drop in political civility, earmarked by fractious and factious exchanges in the House of Commons. No longer a chamber for informed debate, under the Harper reign it became a vehicle by which the government denigrated all opponents and thumbed its nose at the concept of transparency and accountability, thereby alienating the general population and discouraging people from any form of participation in the democratic process.

We live now with high hopes that will all change.

There is an encouraging story told by Susan Delacourt suggesting that our hopes have a chance of being realized:

I asked Trudeau: what was the big difference in his two lives on the Hill — as the son of a prime minister in the 1970s and 1980s and as a backbench MP in 2010?

Trudeau said he had two answers to that question: one he was accustomed to answering publicly, one he kept to himself.

First, the oft-repeated answer: he was surprised to realize how much he liked constituency work, helping people in his Montreal riding of Papineau. He had never seen that aspect of MPs’ work through his father, who had staff to handle issues in the riding.

As for the other answer, Trudeau looked around to see who might overhear him. Careful to keep his voice down, he said he was stunned to see how some MPs treated their staff, and the air of entitlement around them. He was truly surprised to learn that many staffers had to endure temper tantrums from their bosses. “Who do they think they are?” he said, glancing in the direction of an MP or two dining nearby.

Apparently, Justin learned a valuable lesson from his father when he was a child:

Trudeau then told me about how when he and his brothers were young, the only times they got in serious trouble with Pierre was when they showed disrespect to their RCMP protection officers. Overhearing the boys call one of the officers “Baldy,” Trudeau gathered them together and furiously scolded them, telling them that these men had families and lives they were putting on the line to watch over them.

This is not a prime minister who is going to rule with fear, it seems.

Basic decency and empathy are qualities I think most of us try to practise in our daily lives. To see them applied in the public arena would, without question, mark a radical and highly desirable shift in our political culture.

Meanwhile, Beyond Our Borders

The world of U.S. politics is proving to be consistent in its insanity. Watch the following video in which Republican hopeful Ben Carson says, at about the 3:20 mark, what he would use the Department of Education for:



Can a holographic resurrection of Joseph McCarthy be far behind?

On The Post-Election Employment Prospects Of The Harper Fallen

In Power Play's Don Martin's considered opinion, they are decidedly dim:

On The Restoration Of Canada's Soul And Other Matters

There is a series of excellent letters in today's Star that I hope you will take time to read. I am reproducing the first two dealing with what the ejection of Harper means for Canada; the third, about the long-form census, is followed by a link to an As It Happens interview with Munir Sheik, the former chief statistician for Statistics Canada who quit over a matter of integrity and principle. Sheik talks about why a return to the mandatory long-form census is crucial if we are to have data that can be relied upon.

The dismissal of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government provides welcome and palpable relief for those Canadians they tried to browbeat, bully and frighten into submission. This election, more than any other in the past 40 years was about soul of our nation. Canadians came down squarely on the side of decency, fairness and inclusivity as the moral foundations of political leadership.

Mr. Harper now understands that federal democratic governments are not in power to abuse it. They are not there to frighten, intimidate and shut up our nation’s researchers and scientists; they are not there to value the lives of first nation women less than others; nor to marginalize and badmouth all refugees while ostracizing the physicians, nurses and others who care for them.

They are there to govern with respect and inclusion for all in this country. Bullying those Canadians whose opinions differ from theirs became the nasty, bulldozing hallmark of the Conservatives under the stamp of Harper. Thankfully, it is now this belligerence and oppositional defiant government behaviour that Canadians rejected.

I suspect the same feeling of release and relief is being felt by many across Canada today. Mr. Trudeau was bang on in his post election conversation with Canadians. Sunnier days!

Dr. Paul Caulford, Toronto

It’s not a new Canada as the Star’s Tuesday headline suggests. It’s still the same old Canada: relatively progressive and open-minded. But back to the future? Not quite.

Almost a decade of Harper’s rule failed to destroy this nation. His attempts to turn us into a country of fear, hate and discrimination didn’t work, as Monday’s results demonstrated. Despite its imperfections, the first-past-the-post system served us well.

And yet again the NDP’s move to the right cost them dearly and, as happened here in Ontario last year, they paid the price. When Canadians want change they vote for it, as they did last spring in Alberta and nationally on Monday.

Although I don’t expect a full-fledged just society to emerge under Trudeau the Younger, he does have a golden opportunity to restore Canada’s tattered reputation on the global stage, while jump-starting our economy through a welcome dose of Keynesian stimulus spending.

Where Canada goes now is up to the Liberals. They can start by following through on the promises that won them the election.

Andrew van Velzen, Toronto

On the same day as Prime Minister Trudeau is sworn in, he should instruct StatsCan to restore the mandatory long-form census, if possible in time for the 2016 census. This simple action would be widely popular, would help the economy, and won’t need legislation.

No single action taken by the Canadian government led by Mr. Harper has been so thoroughly discredited and condemned as making the long-form census voluntary. Manufacturers and marketers, property developers and professors, cities and school boards have repeatedly pointed to the serious economic and social damage caused by not having this data available. If Mr. Trudeau wants to signal that he is serious about creating real change, perhaps the best way to start is by making it clear that this parliament will use data, and not ideology, to make decisions, policies, and laws.

Howard Goodman, Toronto

Click here for Munir Sheik's thought on the census.