"Quiet Crisis"

The maddening distraction begins again, as Parliament resumes today.  You’ll hear about jet fighters, the gun registry, the long-form census, and other issues 24/7.  There will be virtually nothing about the increasing gap between rich and poor, the down-on-their-luck Nortel pensioners, the lack of climate change action, no plans for the looming health crisis, the increasing costs of higher education, or how our staggering deficit will be paid off.What this session of Parliament should be all about is the open struggle between public and private life.  Famed American author, Thomas Friedman, has described our current condition: “We have this tendency to extol consumption over hard work, investment and long-term thinking.”  Friedman goes on to elaborate on how our concentration on ourselves as opposed to our country has led to the privatization of citizens.The framework for this, what Friedman calls, “quiet crisis,” is the modern penchant for freedom – not from armed oppression but from government itself.  Whether it’s the gun registry, taxes, or the freedom to harm the environment without consequences, we have been duped into believing that government sticks its nose into what should be our exclusive domain as private citizens.The Conservatives come to Ottawa this week with the full belief that less government, reduced taxes, and fewer laws is the golden path to Canada’s future.  The collateral damage that results from this outlook – environmental degradation, embedded poverty, the loss of international prestige, to name a few – are mere distractions.  This kind of ideology takes aim squarely at our public life and those democratic philosophies that made this country great in the first place.  It was the philosophy of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and George W. Bush.In fact, there is no need to take the common good into account because only individualism prevails.  When Thatcher shockingly declared, “There is no such thing as society,” she could just as easily have been describing the current government’s outlook on Canada.  And the way they’ll live it out will be a relentless attack on government itself as the only way to true prosperity and freedom to live as we wish.Except it doesn’t work that way.  It’s a kind of libertarianism that leads to the empowerment of the few over the many: the very condition that the lovers of freedom fought against two centuries ago in both Europe and North America.  It’s the kind of ideology that imprisons us as citizens.  Author Alan Wolfe describes it perfectly when he states: “Libertarianism is a political philosophy for Peter Pans, an outlook on the world premised on never growing up.”  Well, this session of Parliament will be about whether Canadians decide it’s time to mature, or remain adolescent.In an earlier age, it was believed that authoritarianism and kings were the enemy of liberty and personal choice.  But through democratic reform over decades, we made government work for the majority of us.  It limited certain freedoms so that all could benefit from citizen life.  Most conclude that we are the more remarkable country for it.We are now reversing that progress, and in the place of government is the free market.  We know, and have experienced, what happens when one or the other of these becomes too powerful, and Canada has excelled only when we struck the proper balance between them.  This is a time when we are seriously out of kilter.  The present drive of the Conservative government to privatize and permit unfettered freedom for modern market forces is creating the kind of public damage that is destined to undermine our collective prosperity in the future.  We’ll consider more on this subject in the coming weeks.So, while you’re hearing all the hoopla that political parties and the media fixate on over the weeks ahead, try to consider the “quiet crisis” that is really at play in today’s Ottawa.  It’s about your way of life and whether it becomes more private and self-centered, or whether it applies itself to the serious public problems that threaten the collective health of this country, and the planet, at present.  Either way, it’s decision time.