| The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, April 04, 2008, By Dan Gardner. ©The Ottawa Citizen. |
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Canada: stagnation wrapped in delusion. They say Stéphane Dion's leadership is in doubt. They say Stephen Harper is a control freak. They say the NDP hopes to embarrass the Liberals. They say there may be an election, or then again, maybe not. I say, I don't care. This column may come across as slightly unpatriotic, and my colleagues may consider it professional sedition. So let me state for the record that I love my job and my country. Journalism is swell. So is Canada. I mean it. But really, there are times when I can't bear the sight of either of them. As the reader may have guessed, this is one of those times. Canada has huge advantages. Endless land, massive resources, next-door access to the world's richest market, and a predominant language that happens to be the lingua franca of international business. We have the ninth largest gross domestic product in the OECD. We have the second-highest percentage of young people with a post-secondary education. We are a G8 nation. The economy has rolled smoothly from one good year to another for so long we've forgotten what hard times are like and government finances are, as they used to say in the Royal Navy, shipshape and Bristol fashion. We are not a small, frigid country at the periphery of civilization. We are not Iceland with trees. So what has this rich, smart, strong country done with the good fortune of recent years? To use another British phrase: bugger all. Spinning federal deficits into surpluses was a major accomplishment a decade ago, but that was followed -- under the stewardship of Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, and Stephen Harper alike -- by a steady rise in spending on pork, trivia and bloat. With the economy solid, the budget remains shipshape. But what happens when a storm blows in from the south? The thick surplus that might have buffered the country is gone and a recession will force Canadians to choose between a return to deficits, higher taxes, or pitching programs over the side. When we look back to these fat and happy days, we may well think we would have been better off if the governor general had taken the cash to Vegas and let it ride. Yes, that's a touch hyperbolic. A portion of the surpluses of the last decade was used to pay down debt, after all, and that's a very good thing. But remember that debt repayment was largely accomplished by subterfuge: governments low-balled forecasts, pretended to be surprised when things turned out rosier than predicted, then socked the money away before anyone noticed.
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What does it say about the state of Canadian democracy that politicians felt they had to routinely lie in order to do what was clearly in the public interest? What does it say that the biggest change in social policy of the last decade -- gay marriage -- came from the courts? What does it say that marijuana decriminalization -- a trivial policy adopted by a dozen American states 30 years ago -- was considered too radical for a "liberal" government? What are we to make of that fact that B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell's carbon tax -- old hat in Europe and too tiny to do what needs to be done -- is the most exciting policy innovation of the last decade? The future always holds nasty surprises but many of the challenges we will face are predictable. The productivity gap is growing. Population aging is intensifying. Climate change has begun. Rolling in cash, what have Canadian politicians done about any of this over the last decade? There were plenty of pious pronouncements, naturally, as this is one function of government which Canadians have indisputably mastered. But substance? Action? What did they actually do? The answer to that question is best captured by that delightful British phrase I introduced earlier: bugger all. "We will set the standard by which other nations judge themselves," Paul Martin belched during his mercifully brief tenure as prime minister. "No other state, with the exception of the Vatican, is so acutely aware of its reputation for morality and modesty," a columnist in the Times of London observed. Stagnation wrapped in delusion. That's Canadian public life. A recent poll asked Canadians to name this country's greatest modern achievement in foreign affairs. Top spot went to the decision not to join in the invasion of Iraq, followed by spearheading the landmines treaty, and the signing of the Kyoto Accord. Notice that the first consisted of not doing something while the third involved promising to do something and then not doing it. How it makes the heart swell. Another poll found most Canadians think we have more influence in the world than 20 years ago and our primary contributions lie in peacekeeping and foreign aid. To believe this, one must smoke some of that marijuana we did not decriminalize. Canada has been reducing its contributions to peacekeeping for 20 years and is now a minor source of blue helmets. As for foreign aid, it was Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson who set the target -- 0.7 per cent of GDP -- which rich countries committed to meet long ago. The northern European countries have met or exceeded it. And Canada? We've never come close. But still, Canadians are proud as a beaver with a new stick.
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Yes, I'm going to wag the northern Europeans at you. I know people find that annoying. We were raised on images of a trim 60-year-old Swede wrestling a sorry hoser into submission and so it can be tiresome to be reminded, as Andrew Cohen did in these pages recently, that little countries like Finland do far more than Canada with much less. But facts are stubborn things and the fact is northern Europe consistently does better than Canada on a host of measures. One key reason is policy innovation. They choose their niche -- Finnish telecom, Swedish environmental policy, Danish alternative energy -- and they make it happen. As I said earlier, we are not Iceland with trees. Iceland has excellent governance and clever policies. We have trees. The contrast between Norway and Alberta is almost unbearable. Both were poor, cold and rural until oil came along. Both are booming today. But Norway has a plan for the future -- all but four per cent of its oil revenues are put in a fund and invested internationally. After just 17 years, the 4.6 million people of Norway have socked away $370 billion. And the 3.5 million people of Alberta? They're living for today, baby! Low taxes! Cheap gas! Good times! After 31 years, the province's Heritage Fund holds a measly $16 billion. I know where I want to be when the oil runs out. Alberta is a particularly egregious example but the same qualities can be seen across the country. In recent years, Canada's governance has been irresponsible, unimaginative and myopic as Mr. Magoo. But the media don't have time to delve into that. They're too busy rattling on about Stéphane Dion's image problems or Stephen Harper's political genius or some other twaddle that sensible people don't give a damn about. "Far from making it easier to cope with public challenges," wrote the American journalist James Fallows, "the media often make it harder. By choosing to present public life as a contest among scheming political leaders, all of whom the public should view with suspicion, the news media help bring about that very result." Cynicism seeps in. People tune out. Democratic life is weakened and the quality of governance and policy making declines accordingly. Real journalism is easy to define, Fallows argued. It is "the search for information of use to the public." A valuable yardstick. And one that rules out almost everything "they say." You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen. |
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Copyright © 2005 Dan Gardner |