"You People"

I don't know quite what to say about the actions of Helena Guergis and the poor treatment she gave airport employees in PEI a few days ago. It's understandable she would have been impatient on her birthday at the Charlottetown airport and that she was trying to get home to see her husband. Ministers' lives are an endless round of activity, and all of us have felt frustrations at airports at one time or another.It's not necessary for me to offer an opinion on whether or not she should resign; that will be played out at another level. Yet there was one thing she uttered that has troubled me since I first heard of the incident. To refer to the area she was in as a "hellhole" was unfortunate enough, but when she castigated airport employees by claiming she had been "working my ass off for you people," she perhaps revealed more than she intended.It's often unfair in political life when citizens think their MPs or Senators do nothing; that is something categorically untrue, but it's there and it must be endured. Yet what the junior minister said revealed the flip-side of that reality. It gets back to what we were considering in an earlier posting about "mutual contempt." It is a sure reality that a Canadian politician is a public servant and not a reigning monarch, even if in government. We forget this at our peril. It's not as though we weren't aware we would be under-appreciated when we ran for office. Nevertheless, serving Canadian citizens is an honour, regardless of the response. For some, however, possessing an important position, even if just for a time, can lead to a subtle sense of entitlement that lays below the surface but can erupt in moments of anger or turbulence. Did Ms. Guregis really mean what she claimed, or was it a gut reaction unlinked to anything substantial? We'll never know, but the point is it shouldn't have occurred in the first place.The Founding Fathers of the American state scored a verbal winner when they introduced their most famous composition with, "We The People." These were aristocrats. Used to holding prestigious positions, they nevertheless lowered their own importance to put themselves on the same moral level as the citizens they served and fought for. In contrast to that enlightened prose, the "you people" that was uttered in the airport placed an artificial separation and distance between politician and citizen - a no-no in any modern democracy.To be honest, I have never witnessed such an incident while in politics, including in Parliament itself. But what took place in PEI a few days ago must serve as a prescient reminder than an arrogance that places citizens below their willful servants can only ruin the public space. Helena Guergis apologized a few days later, as was fitting, and I take it at face value. But the very fact it occurred at all serves as a bad indicator for every public official as Parliament resumes. We must be on our guard, not so that we don't get caught, but that we don't get arrogant - a difficult challenge with what lies ahead in Ottawa in the coming months.