Lessons from Tony Blair

That all-important swing voter

I’m not a big fan of using extended quotes in columns. For one thing, it seems somehow like cheating off another boy’s exam paper; for another, it’s boring to type out someone else’s words. All that said, I’ve been reading Tony Blair’s autobiography A Journey: My Political Life and I was struck by the following passage concerning the 1997 election that swept Blair to power in the UK:

I believed the current prime minister John Major was much better than others thought. He had real appeal as a person. Fortunately, his party had gone off the rails, to a heavy, hard-right position, and over the seemingly interminable time I had spent as Leader of the Opposition - almost three years - I had learned how to play him and his party off against each other...
(The Tories’) hope was that we would trip up, I would suddenly lose my head, by some trick of fate or fortune the mood of the public would switch. It was never really going to happen.
Instead, and rather more predictably, the Tories fell apart. Every time Major tried to get them on the front foot, someone in his ranks resigned, said something stupid, got caught in a scandal and frequently all three at once and occasionally the same person...Amazing how a political party can go like that, though it is possible to tempt them into it if their opponents are smart enough; and by occupying the centre ground, make them foolishly go off to the side.

There are enough similarities between Britain 1997 and Canada 2010 to make for a comparative study. Equally, the differences between the two years and countries illustrate What Must Be Done by either the Canadian Tories or Liberals must do between now and election day to secure victory in insecure times.

Stephen Harper’s Tories have clearly gone the hard-right route. It actually amazes me that Harper is burning personal time and power in attempting to win a vote that now appears doomed - the long gun registry. The PM showed up in Thunder Bay this past Thursday, just coincidentally a few days before the registry vote; and just coincidentally the home base of two NDP members starting to waver away from voting with the Conservatives. He has been making red meat speeches and red meat answers to questions about the registry. And for what purpose?

This is not a vote-winning issue, but the government is being so bull-headed about it that clearly they must believe it is. Please don’t express any poppycock about opposition to the long gun registry being a matter of honour! ethics! cost savings! Rubbish. It’s about appealing to the Canadian version of Floyd R Turbo, the simple-minded hunter played by the late Johnny Carson. But isn’t that social subset already voting Tory? Granted the base must be served now and then, but a glance south of the border shows us a series of Republican Presidents starting with Ronald Reagan who campaigned against abortion with the fervour of a Catholic bishop, then shut the hell up about it once inaugurated. Harper is trading cities for sticks. Not a good deal.

There are more signs of the hard tack to starboard, seeking a favourable wind that may not be there. Building big new prisons is a classic hard right issue. So is sneering against ‘Toronto elites’ as Conservative House Leader John Baird did recently. Indeed, the sense that Baird is the only Tory allowed to speak without having every verb, noun, um, eh or burp vetted by the PMO also shows the rightward shift.

I’m not sure where the long form census debate fits into the left-right spectrum. The handling of it by the government has been atrocious. One is left thinking that not only does this government not seem to like people very much, it doesn’t even want to know them. Although it must be observed that along among the world’s peoples only Canadians would rise in protest at being denied the opportunity to do more paperwork.

So that parallel fits. I’m not so sure that Harper, like Major, runs ahead of his party in public favourability. Not that it really matters. The Orwellian PMO has ensured that no Cabinet Minister stands a chance of being seen as a viable successor to Harper. You could argue for Jim Flaherty I suppose. You could, but I won’t.

And those that are in Cabinet still manage to implode in public. Just for s***s and giggles I Googled ‘Canadian Tories saying stupid things.’ I found 312,000 results. There may be some duplication within that number. One has to wonder aloud about the seeming chauvinism of throwing Helena Guergis out of caucus and under a bus for allegations which were proven untrue, whereas Stockwell Day gets to flat out lie about crime statistics while announcing those new prisons - and he gets a free pass.

The long and the short of it is that there is a sufficient and growing weakness in the government that creates a golden opportunity for the Opposition Liberals. But is Michael Ignatieff a Tony Blair, and can the Liberals become New Liberals as Labour in the UK became New Labour?

Ironically, the counter-argument that there is no need for the Liberals to become “new” anything merely underlines the Grit problem. Labour had to transition into New Labour because there were a series of socialist positions that Labour had campaigned on over the years (severely high upper end tax rates and de-denuclearizing the armed forces being two examples) which had proven unpopular. Therefore, when Blair’s predecessor John Smith died, and Blair and Gordon Brown made their historic deal where Blair would be the leader for ten years, it was a necessity to change Labour into something more palatable, popular and electable.

The Canadian Liberals do not have that particular problem. Now, the arched eyebrow set would say that the Liberals do not have principles that require changing because the Liberals do not have principles. And yes, there is something to that jab. When the Liberal Party has had a visionary for a leader - Laurier, Trudeau - it is a visionary party that can cascade to massive victories. When it has a likable, yet non-visionary leader like Jean Chretien, it is just a cruel winning machine.

Chretien had no vision - we as a nation were not all going to shrink in size and move to Shawinigan - but he did have shrewd sense of history and knew how to sell the Liberal Party successes. He targeted the most unpopular Tory positions - the GST - and swore he would eliminate them - he didn’t.

So what is Michael Ignatieff, who like Blair became leader as a result of an entente with a rival, in Iggy’s case that being an entente imposed on Bob Rae? Is he a visionary? Is he a non-visionary? Has he staked out the middle as Blair did?

I’m willing to bet that you the reader had to think for a while before answering the previous paragraph’s questions. Ignatieff admitted this week in a televised interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC TV that he had more work to do in order to reach the Canadian public.

Well, Iggy is rather wrong on that score. He has reached the Canadian people. He has high awareness, his every word on the issues of the day are sought out, he speaks well, he flips a mean burger. He is visible, but his words ... well, it’s rather like someone reading a comic book where all the speech and thought balloons have been erased with white out.

The Tories are doing everything they can to make the upcoming campaign season a tight race by consistently opening up then blowing leads in the public opinion polls. But can the Liberals take advantage? That’s the end of it I’m not so sure about. When I’m playing poker I never go all-in on a 50/50 hand. The Liberals seemingly are willing to play those cards. Good luck with that.

Hubert O’Hearn
for Lake Superior News

1967 Revisited

Come to think of it, Mister Peabody does resemble Paul Martin Sr.

Inside Television 519
Publication Date: 9-17-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn


I was reminded of something by a Facebook posting just a few minutes ago. It was time to write this column and I thought I’d just check the social networks to see what was new before going to the newswires to check the television networks. There was a link to a YouTube post of Bobby Gimby and the chorus singing Ca-Na-Da, the anthem of the 1967 Centennial. The comment was made on both Facebook and YouTube that this should be our national anthem.

Therefore Sherman, let’s you and I go with Mr. Peabody into the Wayback Machine and look at the past with a point to be made about the present.

That song was absolutely omnipresent that year, as was Centennial fever. Every community with half an idea did a Centennial public works project. In the city of Fort William, it was the Conservatory behind Chapples park. In Port Arthur it was - I guess you can guess - Centennial Park complete with the best toboggan run in the Lakehead (sic).

I remember that toboggan run well. I was nine, my grandfather took me to Centennial Park on a 1967 winter’s Sunday and we ran into people he knew. They had kids and a toboggan. I became a guest passenger on the voyage ... until the toboggan hit a lump and ascended into the air. Showing the agility of a Romanian Gymnast and the common sense of an anvil, I removed myself from the toboggan while in mid-flight only to find myself beneath said now descending object with an otherwise full load of screaming children. Who landed on my face. Whump. Therefore, my grandfather was left with the task of mopping up a bloody face - mine - and driving several laps around the cities while waiting for the child - still me - to stop screaming bloody murder before being returned to my mother.

So not all memories of that Centennial Year are positive ones. Although any event in life that doesn’t kill you or someone else and leaves you with a good story to tell is worth living. The point of all this is that as exhilarating and beautifully patriotic as the Vancouver Olympics proved to be, the giddy intoxication still runs second to the Centennial. The Centennial ran all year obviously, Expo 67 ran all spring through fall in Montreal, we were 100 years old, had a population of 20 million as the song reminded us, we were all grown up and for the first time felt kind of - cool.

Yes, it might have been Canada’s best year. We had a flag (okay, it was a compromise design that thrilled no one but, ehhhh, you get used to it), an anthem (which edged out The Maple Leaf Forever because of the latter’s reference to ‘Wolfe the dauntless hero’ which really didn’t play well in Quebec), and this Pierre Trudeau guy who had the swagger and style of a Kennedy but was very definitely a homegrown product.

We were building stuff: schools, infrastructures, industries. We stayed out of Vietnam and welcomed the draft dodgers. Our Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, had a deserved Nobel Peace Prize. The Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, while Prime Minister had passed an excellent Bill of Rights the equal of Trudeau’s later Charter of Rights although only binding on the Federal government. And Diefenbaker was a Tory. Can you imagine Stephen Harper doing that? me neither.

Even on television, every time you turned on the set you hit a classic. Chez Helene and The Friendly Giant for the kids, This Hour Has Seven Days for the intelligent, Tommy Hunter and Don Messer’s Jubilee for your toe-tapping family fun. And do not forget Wayne and Shuster. Never forget Wayne and Shuster.

But now? It’s not so much that no program, politician or presentation has truly captured the public imagination, it’s more that we seem to have lost an imagination to capture. We certainly had the fervour at the Winter Olympics but the follow-through seems as lost as a New Year’s Resolution.

It may well be that we’re just happy to be alive and somewhat thriving in the face of economic calamity all around us. But even the Great Depression left a legacy of the CBC, Air Canada and the origins of the modern social welfare state. We, well we play our cards very conservatively. In  television, is there a single Canadian show produced today that you can say with a straight face will have a 50 year shelf life? With CBC being slowly asphyxiated by financial strangling, and CTV with Global combining to form America Lite, it is not likely that there will be such a show in the near future.

Perhaps that is the lesson to take from 1967. It really was ground up, community first, all those projects and events and songs. Ottawa supplied chunky cheques, no doubt about it, but money really doesn’t create happiness. People create happiness within themselves and share it with others.

And yes, i think every hockey game, movie and school day ought to start with Ca-Na-Da. At least all beginnings would begin with smiles. Be seeing you.

Sharks, Stephen Harper and John Turner

Friday, September 10 - 2010
   What do a Shark, Stephen Harper and John Turner have in common?

Its never a good thing watching someone lose their touch in public. One moment, or many moments, you’re Big Johnny Swagger  able to make victory appear with a point of your finger; the next, you’re Brian Mulroney. Or Tiger Woods for that matter. This isn’t just a political thing.

I used to like using the ‘jump the shark’ phrase until everybody and their Aunt Mabel started using it and it became like 57 year old white guys with beer guts saying ‘word.’ But jump the shark was a good one while it lasted and deserves a one-time revival.

I am seriously starting to wonder if Stephen Harper has jumped the shark. Granted, I would be delighted if that proved in the affirmative. Equally though, there are all the signs of a politician who has been locked in the bubble too long and has lost his mojo, his karma, his ability to bend minds in order to obey his commands. Or in Tiger Woods’ case, reading eight foot putts. It’s the same thing. Doubt - doubt starts to enter the mind - and doubt is the dark child of fear and the loss of instinct.

It can come early or late in the career. Sometimes it may not even be your fault. Take John Turner for example. He was the Toronto Maple Leafs to Pierre Trudeau’s Montreal Canadiens when they both popped up in Lester Pearson’s last Cabinet. Trudeau’s star burnt brighter, quicker; yet Turner made a good run of it at the 1968 Liberal Convention that elected Trudeau. Surely, it was felt, his time would come.

It did. In 1984. Turner’s time had come but his era had passed. If Turner had been the road company version of a show called Kennedy, re-worked to fit a Canadian audience, the last Kennedy had run for the Presidency four years before and lost.

Mulroney, who trounced Turner in the greatest landslide in Canadian electoral history, was the perfect man for the mid-1980s. He smacked of New Money and the years dominated by Reagan and Thatcher was full of it. Dallas and Dynasty - let’s make it rich baby. then of course it came time to pay the bills for all this nonsense and in came Jean Chretien with Paul Martin to tight the economic ship in an election that reduced a majority Progressive Conservative government tio two seats. As you look back on it, that truly was stunning. The Tories were not only neither loved nor admired - their MPs weren’t even liked. There was not even a, ‘They’re a bunch of bastards but Charlie’s OK.’ Utter destruction.

I am starting to think that Harper’s era is passing and that the Prime Minister knows it. There are the signs of failing government that have existed since the dawn of the 20th century and the mass media era. Tightening of government secrecy. Control concentrated in the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office), a sudden push for a policy issue that is a pleasing and surprising sidebar that surely will change the public’s view.

Regarding the last, I’m reminded of things like Bush the Younger’s staunch and well-funded stance on AIDS in Africa, Trudeau travelling the world pressing for nuclear disarmament, or Paul Martin with economic development for native youth. Harper has taken a strong public stance on Northern sovereignty. It is admirable. But I think it may also be the signing of the will, a last attempt at leaving an honourable legacy.

The time of Harper - the time of Harper has been an accidental time to begin with. Paul Martin may have lacked focus, but there was no good economic or foreign policy reason to remove him - save for one’s opinion of the Afghanistan War and Canada’s involvement in it. The Sponsorship Scandal, as sleazy as it definitely was, was pretty clearly an outcome of Team Chretien, and not Team Martin. People were tired of it all, so it was time to send the Liberals to their corner for a timeout.

In that corner, however, the Liberals found the cabinet where Daddy keeps his liquor and in a fit of drunken madness elected Stephane Dion as their leader. That too only occurred because Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae fought like two old cheerleaders at a sorority reunion and neither could bear the other to be elected Alumni Prom Queen. And I do apologize for the overt sexism on the preceding metaphor, but I like the image so I’m keeping it.

So it’s not as though the public have ever truly been all googoo over Harper to begin with. He was there, he was plausible, he’ll do. Do you actually know anyone - seriously anyone - who walks around saying Harper is the greatest Prime Minister, like, ever dude? (And yes, I’m using the middle-aged white guy version of urban youth speak to make sure that absolutely no one has ever said precisely that.)  

But if there was a time of Harper, what was it and why do  I insist on putting it in the past tense? I believe it was the end of a longer era - that of the 1990s and solid economic health that had its mirror cracked from side to side by 9-11, crazed banking and financial crisis. Outside of crisis, this is where things would have logically sat, with a solid and stolid caretaker government. A St. Laurent ers redux. We wanted management over imagination.

I suspect that Canadians are aware that Things Are Not Right. One thing about a nation that has a keen sense of the weather and how it can quickly change is that I do believe that Canadians are running ahead of Ottawa in terms of a willingness to accept whatever it takes to hold the line on climate change (we can’t fix it - subject for a future column - but we can’t fix it). Similarly, I also believe that Canadians are ahead of Ottawa in sensing that the Western economic structure might crater any given Wednesday and there does not seem to be a level of activity or focus within the government that indicates there is crisis planning going on.

We’re scared about the future. We’d like to think our politicians were too.

And scared is all right. Politicians all too often go for the ‘calming voice’. Let’s sing together: Ohmmmmmmm. Frankly, if my elected representative admits that he’s scared into staining his St. Laurent, at least I know he’s going to be working mightily on the problem.

Tightened security and secrecy equally plays against public faith in a time of fear. The problem of any secret from Degrassi High up to the PMO is that people always think the secret is hotter/juicier/scarier than the reality really is. So not knowing the truth makes the public believe that the story which is withheld is even more horrifying than our worst fears. Not a real good recipe for trust.

But - will anyone capitalize? Can Harper re-shape a government in the nine months or so before the next Federal election? How’s this heavy re-work of Iggy into small-town Chretien (but with degrees!) going to play long-term? Who is going to see the growing new wave of public desire and going surfing like the Beach Boys? Stay tuned and ... be seeing you.

Hubert O’Hearn
For Lake Superior News   1

Why the Ads are Better than the Shows

Inside Television 518
Publication Date: 09-10-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn

One of the great advantages of book reviewing and developing good relationships with publishers is that I’m able to feed interests the newest and best-presented information. therefore, when i saw that Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant were releasing a book version of their brilliant CBC Radio program The Age of Persuasion, I immediately requested a copy.

Well worth it. For those who have not followed the series - I would always stumble across it, listening to CBC on random afternoons - what O’Reilly, as the narrative voice, does is go behind some of the great achievements or massive failures in advertising. he explains their logic, means of execution and results, and does so in a clear and entertaining manner. As well he should - both O’Reilly and Tennant are real-life MadMen when away from the radio studio.

Besides being an awful lot of fun to read, The Age of Persuasion also stimulates thought, sometimes simultaneously. For instance, a radio station came to O’Reilly asking for help in marketing itself. It was felt by advertisers that radio didn’t work any more. That’s not particularly good for the business model. So what O’Reilly came up with was a series of fake radio ads, or rather, real ads for non-existent stores and services. The eventual flood of consumer complaints was saved and used as evidence that not only did people notice radio ads, they were concentrated enough to be persuaded to seek out the business. Now that is brilliance.

The most intriguing notion presented, particularly as one digs into it, is that all advertising is in fact a sales contract between the company and the consumer. In exchange for interrupting the activity you want to be doing, the ad will inform or entertain you for your benefit. The television commercial is the obvious example. You want to be watching Jon Stewart do his baleful stare at Camera Three, but instead a man comes on to tell you how white your shirts can be. (And yes, I now have satisfaction stuck in my head.) At that moment, you had better care deeply about white shirts and how to make them whiter and/or have the message delivered by an extremely witty walking and talking toadstool or something, or else the contract is broken.

Annoyance is not allowed in the contract. And the contract extends beyond the obvious model. Consider television news as an example. Do you actually care about every story delivered on a newscast, 24 hour or evening format? Not likely, and you’re definitely not being entertained by stories of atrocity in Somalia. I believe this is why there no homely newscasters any more. The packaging must be attractive.

Similar too is the contract between a newspaper and its audience. May God bless the homes and all who cross their threshold of anyone who puts on a church tea in a village. I congratulate you and admire your skill with sandwiches. But said tea is not highly ranked on my list of eternal questions. And until the hallucinations begin, there is no Sandra Bullock-type standing out from the page and reading the stories. Therefore, the ads have to literally sell that page. The relationship between advertising and news in all of radio, TV and print can work brilliantly when symbiotic, disastrously when confrontational.

The final thought I’d like to share, is that I have wondered why it is that we look at objects as necessities when they didn’t exist ten years ago. I’ve had two conversations with people who are ripping their hair out because they can’t find - anywhere! - an iPhone 4 for under $1200, or a roughly 100% mark-up over an already dubious price. Well, wait two months and I’ll get you two for $500. We know this, but we keep on lustfully buying. We truly are spending ourselves into madness.

Why? Well, it’s an old saw that the ads are more entertaining than the programs, hah hah, but let’s look at the outcome of that. I do believe it by the way. I’m much more likely to look up from reading or writing to look at the TV when a certain ad come son than while the program I’m supposedly watching is on. Therefore, does the dull setting not make the gem shine even brighter? It is an interesting thought, I hope. Perhaps this is why the brilliant programming these days is more likely to be produced by commercial-less HBO and Showtime, because the traditional broadcasters have to dull down the product in order to make the ads look good.

You’ll enjoy The Age of Persuasion if you enjoy thinking about these kinds of media topics. Be seeing you.

How to Save the Long Form Census*

*(and make Stephen Harper Look Silly)

A responsible citizen completes his personal information

Is this a political 'dirty trick'? A prank? A thumbing of the nose at authority? A deliberate attempt at embarrassing the Prime Minister?

Well yes. Now that we have the motive out of the way, onwards.

Assumptive that you agree that the collection of reliable and complete data is necessary for government and private priorities and planning, here is something you can do.

First, go to this web page. Download and print your own copy of the 2006 Canadian census. Make photocopies and give them to friends. Take a big red marker and cross out 2006 and write in 2011. Fill in as much of the rest as you wish. Then tuck it in an envelope and mail it to your favourite Federal politician. I would suggest Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton or Gilles Duceppe. They'll like you a lot for doing it.

Mail, by the way, sent to Federal MPs is franked: no postage required. Here is the address:


Mr. John Smith (or whomever)
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6


It is then suggested that the leaders present the collected census forms en masse by dropping the bags into the  well of the House of Commons as a petition. Yes, just like Miracle on 34th Street.

Show that you care. And if you care, then share: Facebook, Twitter, email. If in one month we can get 20,000 forms sent in, I believe we'll have proven our point.

Strike a blow for freedom!

- H

Politics for Joe: Five Platform Planks You'll Never See

Five Platform Planks You’ll Never See

So the question of the week Joe, is have you ever considered just why it is we have these large territorial or national governments in the first place? There are two equal answers, although the emphasis and debate usually falls on the first. That one, is governments exist in order to do the things private interests can’t do profitably (install sewer systems or subsidize your kid’s education) or you really, really don’t want private interests to do (one wouldn’t sleep terribly well knowing protection was being provided by a Haliburton-owned mercenary army).

Very generally speaking, elections are fought, won and lost on these questions of emphasis and expenditure. Ottawa has a given number of powers and responsibilities: which are going to be pushed and altered; which are taking a back seat for the next four years; how much money will be spent on it or cut from it? There’s 90% of what the Federal parties, Provincial parties and I suspect down to the level of ward alderman are all about. How much on whom to do what?

What gets totally missed however is that second rationale for government’s exist. We don’t like to talk about it much because it’s big and scary, while placing the role of government as stern and protective parent. Government exists in order to lead (or push) private interests into doing things they would not necessarily do on their own. And, government is also of a size and strength to be able to confront enemies head-on.

An example? I can give you two very good ones. The passage of the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts in the United States in 1964-65 come to mind. Were it not for his obsession with getting the “coonskin on my wall” that was Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson would be revered today for getting equal rights for Negros (sic) through a Congress that contained many a Strom Thurmond-esque Dixiecrat. This was something that private interests, state governments and the courts in achingly slow progress had not solved in the hundred years since the end of the Civil War. It also directly confronted the gigantic enemy within that to this day haunts American life: racism.

Second - and many readers will not like this example - is Pierre Trudeau’s Official Languages Act of 1969. Had private interests, provincial governments or the courts made French and English equal and equally portable within Canada? No. And Quebec - whether the government of the day was or is PQ or Liberal - would go on to shamefully attack that principle of equality in a scornful triumph of the majority. The irony has always struck me that should Quebec ever secede, everyone involved in any form of cross-border economic or public service activity would instantly have to learn English and to a much higher level of fluency than say an Anglo-Canadian’s high school French. But, despite that future attack, the Official Languages Act was leading Canada kicking and screaming in parts to this day into breaking the Two Solitudes. Despite whatever feelings one might have about corn flakes boxes, one must admit that we are a better and more unified country in the forty turbulent years since 1969, than the growing separatist urge of the previous forty.

One could throw in Voting Rights for Women as well, where the beneficiaries had de facto no political power, yet managed to achieve just that.  Or the New Deal, which yanked America forward, saved capitalism, and created the American version of the modern social welfare state. But all of the above, and there are more, were gigantic shifts in social or economic movement.

We certainly are at an historic point that requires such a giant push by the Canadian government parent. The environment demands it, as does the increasing complexity of the war against terrorism that we have dragged ourselves into. The economy is fair enough, but our conveniently located greatest trading partner (the U.S. if it isn’t obvious) is going heavily into the tank. I concur with Paul Krugman’s piece in the New York Times on September 3, that America requires another, bigger, focused stimulus push but there’s not a snowball’s chance that will pass a tea party terrified Congress.

Which of course is the problem itself. We are at a low water mark in the political courage rankings. How hard a question is it to keep a long-gun registry that is already in place. Yes yes, more people are killed by cars, but we have to licence them too. Yes yes, it’s expensive but name something that isn’t in its start-up and fine-tuning phases? How precisely is it doing harm?

So, although each of the following are policies that I’d like to think we know in our hearts should be done, but lack the political push to get done. The Greens might have some ogf this in their platform, but the Greens require two absolutely gaffe-free, chiming bell perfect election cycles before they’ll even supplant or combine with the NDP. Anyway, a list of five:

1) Shut Down the Tar Sands - I always figure if you’re going to piss people off, do it right away. Alberta will damn your party for two generations and dear little old ladies who over-subscribed their RIFFs in Canadian Growth Commodity Mutual Funds will hate you and there is no doubt that this is going to be an economic hit that will take five years to recover from. However, in this case the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the few. Ocean levels may well rise three feet in the next five years. I invite you or any friend who is near a sea coast to go to the beach with your collapsible umbrella. Place it in the sand, stand behind it and sight back at the land from the umbrella’s tip. Look how far you can see before the land breaks that plane. The Tar Sands are a massive environmental blood clot in the lung and must be removed. No one will do it.

2) Driving Limits - Equally, since becoming a public transit user, I have looked back at my driving years with many a blush. So many unnecessary trips. So much wasted energy. But leave us face it, we enjoy our comfort. I suggest then that licence bureaus start taking the annual odometer readings seriously. Urban drivers will be limited to 20,000 kilometres a year. If it’s good enough for the car lease, it’s good enough for you. That’s tidy up a lot of downtown Toronto traffic in one hell of a hurry. Will anyone do it? Oh heck no. For one thing, it would require Federal-Provincial agreement, requiring double the number of courageous parties. Second, public sentiment is much like an old, old cartoon I remember in the  Ntaional Lampoon. A rustic holding a rifle said to a campaigning politician, “Do whatever you want, but keep yer hands off the Chevy.”

3) The Last Spike: The Next Generation -  A quick look at a road map of Canada shows in interesting thing. Our major cities tend to line up in a rough row from coast to coast, with a dip through the Golden Horseshoe; and Calgary and Edmonton as opposed in geography as they are in hockey and football. Point is, this country is absolutely made for high speed rail and we haven’t even really taken a serious look at it. At least not to the level of there being available accurate costing. Still, it would be more environmentally friendly than flying or driving, is safer, and is less land wasteful than ever-growing airports. Plus all those people laid off from the Tar Sands will need to be put back to work.

4) Ban Smoking -  Can we just get this done already? It really is about the lost tax revenue isn’t it? $4 billion to Federal and Provincial governments (source: smoke-free.ca) is a lot to replace. That does ignore the lowered health costs and the growingly accepted Grand Guignol of shunting smokers to the back of the health treatment line. (“Yes Smithers, we’ll just kill them off ... slowly.”) Everybody will have a really rough two weeks, smugglers will prosper, and please make the judicial penalties hefty fines rather than prison time. In the future, our children will look back and shake their heads as to why we thought making people stand and shiver outside of bars was attacking the problem.

5) The Third Option of Education as Foreign Policy -  I’ve already written about this, so I’ll be brief. Fold up our international military operations. Harper is right that we need to enhance out Northern presence. Take the savings into bringing in refugee students from the world’s broken places. This diaspora will be able to create change from within in Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, and some day Afghanistan.

Be seeing you.

(Be sure and visit the host for these columns: Lake Superior News - H)

99 Luftballons

Politics for Joe 2
99 Luftballons
August 25, 2010

I thought of the title for this one as I was preparing to write about the dubious practice of the trial balloon. Those who have fond memories of the pastel T-shirt with unstructured jacket era surely remember 99 Luftballons, the anthemic German-English pop song heartily sung by Nena walking through a war zone. The controversy at the time was that Nena had armpit hair. That was the 1980s. Ronald Raegan was simple-minded and so was the decade.

In some ways eras in North America are defined by the glowing aura of whomever is in the White House. The more complex the mind of the President, the more complex the era. Franklin Roosevelt is I truly do believe the one true genius ever elected as the President or Prime Minister of a major nation. Were FDR and Pierre Trudeau both at the same cocktail party, the conversation would gravitate towards the American. Plus FDR was noted as the inventor, shaker and pourer of cocktails that could bring an entire newsroom of reporters to their knees. And the problems he faced as President had an heavier mix than his planter’s punch: Depression, Fascism, Civil Rights, World War Two, a brawny and expansive Soviet Union, and the invention of the modern welfare state. He would never had found time for golf, even if he could have played.

Eisenhower however had time for golf. The old general loved simple and straight lines of attack and he had the perfect time for that strategy. Granted, developing and holding a de facto empire is not a simple thing, but America was so pre-dominant economically and militarily that it actually could hold together political and economic hegemony at that time. They are only just now realizing that time has passed.

But, to run through some of the rest quickly: Kennedy - complex (Civil Rights, Vietnam, Soviet Union, Berlin Wall, Cuba); Reagan - simple (what problems? Have a party and leave the bill for that strange little vice-president you never really liked); Obama - complex (space will not allow the listing).

Getting back to 99 Luftballons, I hadn’t realized how perfectly the lyrics fit until for curiousity’s sake I looked them up. Here, see a few lines for yourself:

99 Decision Street.

99 ministers meet.

To worry, worry, super-scurry.

Call the troops out in a hurry.

This is what we've waited for.

This is it boys, this is war.

The president is on the line

As 99 red balloons go by.

Now, Ontario is not about to go to war with anyone, but I’m noticing a disturbing trend in terms of sending out trial balloons like so many World War One zeppelins out over the cities and towns of this province and equally scaring the bejeezus out of everyone.

There has always been something about Dalton McGuinty I haven’t liked, but I’ve only been able to put my finger on it lately. I know that it stemmed from the time of the run-up to the 2003 provincial election when the then-Leader of the Opposition Liberals gave perhaps the shiftiest, dodgiest, most weaselly political interview I have seen to this day with Paula Todd, then of TVOntario’s late and sadly missed Studio 2. After it was over I emailed Paula and said, I think, ‘Well you certainly gave it your best show.’ She in turn wondered if the viewers had caught the slipperiness of the thin-lipped McGuinty. Seven years of his Premiership later, I guess not.

My first personal encounter with what I’ll call the Chicken Little style of government was through my association with TVO as a member, later vice-president of their Regional Advisory Council for Northwestern Ontario. It was in the lead-up to Greg Sorbara’s first budget as Minister of Finance. Town halls were scheduled across the province for the purpose of discussing a number of possible options, including selling TVO, selling the provincial liquor outlets, and raising fees on i.e. campsites.

If there is one thing that can get the educated portion of Ontario all in a tizzy, it is threatening TVO. At the time in 2003, TVO had over 600 members in Thunder Bay alone. That may not sound huge, but any marketer will tell you that a 0.5% return on a passive campaign is pretty good. Think about it. TVO really only does consumer marketing through its own in-house media: website and television. as obnoxious as pledge weeks can be, they certainly beat high rep commercials across other networks with Steve Paikin playing Old Spice Guy.

Now there’s a foreboding image.

I had a word with the Minister of Natural Resources, David Ramsay. It was his ill fate to be the Cabinet representative at this particular grumpy Town hall. The Cabinet must have drawn straws to see who would attend these affairs. The losers won, getting the spine-stiffening task of playing St. Sebastian in a sharp blue suit. The Thunder Bay event was well-attended - some 40 breakout tables of 9: 1 facilitator to every 8 agitators. I cornered Ramsay at the side of the stage just after the first wave of crowd was arriving.

I knew Ramsay slightly from the days when I worked at Queen’s Park, so I played the part of the cool, ‘Hey, I’m on your side babe’ Liberal. “So what the hell’s up with TVO?,” I asked in a conspiratorial whisper, complete with sideways shifting eyes. He seemed relieved that he hadn’t been attacked. “Let me put it to you this way,” he said, “There are some sacred cows in this province and TVO is one of them.” Granted, i was relieved. Granted, I’ve never really worried about a TVO sale ever since. Granted, I still don’t like how the network’s public affairs unit has been shrunk to the size of Steve Paikin’s chin.

More to the point, it told me that this entire consultative exercise was a sham. If there was no chance in hell that the Province was going to sell TVO to a Bronfman, Miss Piggy or David Radler why was that option even being discussed? I can’t even think of any rock-ribbed Tories who have seriously pushed for a TVO sale, and you’d be drummed out of the NDP caucus for even joking about it. Therefore, this was an idea generated by the government itself.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! And Chicken Little releases a pretty red helium balloon with DOOM! written on it in bright white letters. And oh look dear, isn’t that a World War One zeppelin on the horizon.

We entered the era of the trial balloon. They’d been done before McGuinty certainly. Arguably, this notion of putting out a policy option as a leak and seeing which way the wind of public opinion blows the balloon; it has been around since at least the beginning of private polling.

But McGuinty takes the thing to a whole new level which I why I find it morally corrupt, or at the very least sneaky and cynical. The story ends up with Chicken Little revealed as the hero. When everybody shrieks at the balloon, Chicken Little steps up and says, ‘Never never shall I sell TVO. Never never shall you miss a show.’ Then everybody dances and they start serving cheesecake. Why? Their government and Premier Dalton Little listens! Hoorah.

I saw that recently the spectre of TVO and the Liquor Control Board being privatized was brought up again, by the portly current Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan. I don’t believe it for a second. We’ve discussed TVO to death already, and the LCBO is a cash cow. Did nobody ever watch an episode of The Sopranos? Who on Earth is insane enough to dump a monopoly on liquor in a province whose northern half is feeling increasingly desperate?

No, it’s yet another trail balloon. And they’ve done it before in non-financial portfolios, as with the proposed education reforms last year that would have taught little Joey, age 10, how to fellate a banana. (I know there are international readers of my work who have just looked at the previous sentence and said to themselves, “Nawwww.” Oh it’s true. It’s damn true.) The Premier got to put on his Super Chicken cape and squawk that he will save us all by shooting down this heinous attack on moral values.

By the way, the announcement that Ontario will now sanction Mixed Martial Arts cards may yet prove to be a trial balloon ready for shooting down, but I rather doubt it. There will be money to be made and the Toronto and Ottawa media are mewing like happy kittens at having another event to cover, another special advertising section to sell.

The puzzlement is that it such an unnecessary, cynical habit, to rankly upset and then soothe the electorate. It seems to me abusive husbands use much the same psychological tactics to cower their spouses. And I do wonder sometimes what a good and honest public servant like Mike Gravelle thinks about all this, deep down inside. I’ll let you know if I find out.

So. I had tried to think of a new tag line for Politics for Joe, but the more I tried the more I realized that the one I’ve been using for years will do just fine. From Patrick McGoohan’s legendary series, because we’re all just living in The Village, we quote The Prisoner ... Be seeing you.

For more great reading, be sure and visit the source of this column: Lake Superior News.