Altered States

We shook hands in the elevator at West Block, wishing each other a good summer. Exiting, the more senior MP noted that things in the House of Commons had clearly changed. “I think life was easier for our predecessors,” he opined. “Oh, I know some things have improved, but it seems like the public no longer holds us in high regard anymore, and that’s too bad because we’re all working hard.” He waved and was off.Riding up to the fourth floor, I got to thinking about his reflections.  Somehow, he had performed that rather remarkable rhetorical feat of acknowledging that the country had changed but that MPs were the roughly the same as before. It’s a view collectively held by most members of parliament and I’ve struggled over the last couple of years with how we in the House sometimes miss those truths about ourselves that might very well assist us in winning back the respect of some in the country if we would but learn the lessons.But it’s not just MPs or citizens.  It’s a broad net of decline and has captured numerous journalists, bureaucrats and even observers from other countries.  In a pessimistic stage regarding political service, there has been an almost benign acceptance of the negative traits in politics that have entrapped and weakened us all.  Living in a fishbowl for any politician is at times unfair and maddening and has resulted in the collective turning inward of public life.  Journalists have also pulled out of the public sphere to a large degree, opting to take on the role of disenchanted prosecutor instead of the more traditional searchers of truth in both its good and bad forms.Bureaucrats abound in Ottawa and federal jurisdictions across the country and they are the efficient managers of the delivery of government services. But it’s hard to find a civil servant these days who doesn’t feel “under the gun,” usurped by overbearing political masters and hindered from providing the effective and efficient supervisory role in Canadian public life.  I know, I've talked to many of them and they all feel the same.  And so they retreat.As I have discovered all too well in recent months, international observers, blessed with the gift of distance and objectivity, have taken repeated note of our decline. Ironically, they have developed a similar practice as the rest of us – pulling away from Canada in international venues in everything from the environment to foreign aid.And so in a nation once noted both internationally and within the country itself as a remarkably efficient and fair land, with a highly competent public service, we have retreated into a place we don’t really recognize.  Worse yet, we don’t really recognize ourselves, and that is troubling. Apathy has a price and we are now paying it.  But we’ve been doing it on the installment plan, bit by bit every year and through successive governments.  We live in a world of altered states, but the key characteristic that defines us now is skepticism, and in a country as vast and diverse as Canada the results of this latent negativism can be costly.And so, over the summer, we’ll be considering this collective political retreat a couple of times each week in this blog.  I have spent so much time in discussion with others on this matter in the past two years that a picture is beginning to emerge and it is of Canada on the decline.  Many will disagree, and those who are only interested in newsy political details will move on from this blog to other fields. But these subjects are so important to our national condition that they must be discussed, even by junior Members of Parliament.  It’s time we did some reflection and there’s no better time for introspection than the summer.