Reboot
Now that the shenanigans of the House have taken a welcome backseat to the more serious matter of rescuing the economy, perhaps we can get back to some reflections on the viability of non-partisanship as a political option, keeping in mind that our key premise is that the search for common ground is a non-partisan strategy. This has been missing for some time in Ottawa and was greatly exacerbated in the last federal election.
Viewing the battle from the inside was something of a sordid affair, as political campaigns usually are, but there was something different about this one, a strange occurrence that left everyone sullied and aware that somehow those of us in the political class had failed to protect the historic sense of decency that often characterized Canadian elections. Somehow we intuited we had all manipulated our way in a corner of our own making. Meant to give citizens clear choices, we had nevertheless poisoned the system and observed as fewer Canadians had exercised their franchise than any other time in the nation’s history. We were somehow at fault and we knew it. A collective guilt was palpable – a “pox” on all our houses had finally come home to roost.
The one party that had manipulated the country into such a seedy exercise naturally enough benefitted from it. Yet many Conservative members of parliament I have befriended also sensed something had shifted. To get the few seats extra that they eventually attained, they had violated their own law, cut a decent man to shreds, spent millions of negative advertising dollars that could have been put to more productive use and, in the end, faced a Canadian people that now thought less of politics and politicians than ever before – quite a trade-off.
And what could one say of the media? In having the good fortune of knowing and working with numerous journalists – local and national – I was interested to note that they, too - reluctantly so -sensed they must share a portion of the blame. The language of politics had been debased by the most outrageous and outspoken partisans because the media are more prone to give them attention – and they did, significantly so in that election.
Finally, sadly, we have come to an historic low point in public discourse and political life. Some say it has been this bad before, but not in anyone’s memory that I have spoken with. They have been politicians, journalists, former speakers of the House of Commons, people of statesmanship and diplomats. Their condemnation has been universal, though they tend to conclude their comments hoping for a better day.
It is exactly for that “better day” that these pages have been written. Good people, public servants and respected members of the fifth estate, have collectively lost their way and look back with nostalgia on a federal politics that at least carried an essence of respect and decency. It will take these very same people to re-engage, to save us from ourselves, and remind us that, while change is inevitably, the characteristics of mutual respect carry an abiding sense of nobility that has formed much of the Canadian political story for over a century.
Consensus building, or non-partisanship have now become the radical position - on the outside looking in. We look back to a day when individual parliamentarians gathered from across Canada to find and work toward consensus towards some of the great problems of their respective time periods. There’s nothing “common” in that House today. It has become the nesting ground for a hyper-partisanship that seeks to divide a nation for the sake of keeping power. The problem is that citizens themselves are walking away and see that once good House as a place of discord, bitterness and, worst of all, useless endeavors. The following pages are an indictment of that outlook, a treatise on how we could change it, and, finally, a testament to the good men and women in both the media and politics who still retain the belief that mutual respect and the common good remain the key traits of any government that is indeed competent and effective.