The Slide From Wonderment to Bereavement

I spoke to a highly respected Canadian on the weekend who had told me six months earlier that he was strongly considering running federally in the next election. Then things changed. “When I told others I was considering running, I was immediately put in a box. Prior to that no one questioned my commitment to the country and to sustainable corporatism; now I’m already being hammered by supporters of the other parties. I talked to my wife and we both felt that if that’s what modern politics is like, we wanted no part of it.”A sense of sadness came over me. Our country just lost another highly capable talent in the political spectrum. What are we doing? The refusal of good people to run for politics is now gaining traction in numerous media stories and in each the current state of political agitation and partisanship was the culprit.I tried to remind my friend that it actually wasn’t average Canadians that behaved this way but those responsible for party fortunes. He acknowledged it immediately, stating that in his home region of British Columbia he had received nothing but high respect from fellow citizens in coffee shops and various venues. But then he asked the deadly question: “Glen, you’ve been there. Can you assure me that the next Parliament will put aside this kind of tribalism and get on with the business of governing the country? Can you?” I had to say that I couldn’t offer any guarantees, but that my experience had taught me that only a renewed sense of citizenship could keep politicians behaving productively and respectively. We both had to acknowledge that Canadians just aren’t at the point where they are ready to use their clout to reform the parliaments and city councils of Canada.How have we come to the point where a minority of hyper-partisans, comfortable with using overtly negative means to label people even before they run for office, usurp our historical place as citizens to encourage those we respect to run for office? We can’t choose good people if they aren’t in the contest.There are few people left in this country who won’t acknowledge the sorry state our politics has gotten itself into. One well-know journalist recently chronicled her own misgivings by calling it her “35-year year voyage from wonderment to bereavement.” Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert has been covering federal politics long enough to have seen it all. She recalls the terrific national debates during the Mulroney era, where, “what was on the mind of the House of Commons was also on the mind of the country.” Those days are now gone.One of the highlights Hebert recalls was hearing sovereignty leader Lucien Bouchard deliver, “the most passionate defence of Canada’s peace-keeping role that I would have occasion to hear.” Compare that with the eerie reception received by Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird at the United Nation’s vote on the statehood of Palestine. You can see the troubling reception by watching the brief highlights here. The last place Canadians would ever anticipate their country receiving such a stony reception would be at the General Assembly of the United Nations. Canada’s stolid support for Israel is the choice of this government, but to have built its position on the ashes of what was once this country’s certified international peaceful reputation is deeply saddening for anyone who has understood our past. Politics has clearly become a divisive force in Canada and through our presence in international venues.Canadians have collectively drawn a clear distinction between partisan personalities and those of the more principled variety. The title of a recent Andrew Coyne column tells the tale: In Canada, Credibility Trumps Power. And It Isn’t Even Close.  He highlights the clear respect citizens have for Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, former Auditor General Sheila Fraser and even her lesser-known successor, Michael Ferguson.  As Coyne cogently puts it:

[Politicians] have institutional power. They do not have the broader power that comes with credibility, of being able to shape events not directly, but indirectly, through the expectations and actions of the public. The governor can assume the public’s trust, and plans policy accordingly. A prime minister, having squandered the public’s trust, cannot.”

It’s not just the lost trust that matters; it is the means by which it was lost that really counts. As Coyne concludes: “Politics is about packs; the more ruthless, more disciplined, more pack-like of the parties mauls the others into submission … And so each learns to scrape and smear, to manipulate and deceive.”Which brings us back to my friend on the west coast.  Is it any wonder that this respectable person would opt to sit the next one out? He understands perfectly well Chantal Hebert’s closing words: “I have spaced my visits to the Commons; there is only so much corrosive rhetoric one can be exposed to before one’s soul becomes corroded.” In this case, discretion does become the better part of valour. The only problem is that, once again, we have lost another highly qualified person to run for public office.How long this goes on is up to us as citizens. We can stop rewarding the muggers with mandates and provide opportunities to those who refuse to play that game. Again and again the choice always comes back to us. That’s democracy in its essence.