The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Wednesday Night - Fred Astaire

Go West Young Immigrant

Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba bound:

Only a decade ago, Ontario took in the lion's share of Canada's immigrants, with half going to Toronto and 60 per cent to Ontario as a whole. Last year, only 42 per cent of all immigrants went to Ontario, statistics show.

At the same time, immigration to Western Canada has surged, especially in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Scenes From the Imperial Capital

St George Street

Lies and Simple Truths

The truth will set them free:

Allan Gregg wants politicians to stop lying.

To bolster his thesis, the veteran pollster and strategists asserts that Stephen Harper is less identifiable to Canadians than Snooki, the over-tanned Jersey girl, because he is less authentic and interesting than she is.

Mr. Gregg’s warning to leaders is smarten up and start telling the truth. Canadians aren’t buying the political-speak any more; they want honest and truthful politicians.

Mr Gregg is the original über pollster. He helped to mastermind the election victories of Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney. There was also a brief stint where he worked for Kim Campbell, though in fairness there was nothing that was going to save that train-wreck. That Canada has a free trade deal with the United States is in no small part thanks to Allan Gregg's sweet whisperings into Brian Mulroney's ear.

This history means we should accord him a respectful hearing. Much has he seen and known of cities, of men and manners, climates, councils and governments. Still, he is out to lunch. Not in the sense that he is talking rot, just missing the point. Ordinary Canadians do find Snooki more genuine than Stephen Harper. But what we seek from Snooki is not what we seek from Stephen. 

In his speech Mr Gregg noted:

“Our faith in our political leaders continued to decline,” he said. “Most often short of outright lies, our elected leaders seem to have become congenitally unable to speak the unvarnished truth – and everyone knows it.”

While in theory the electorate may want truthful politicians, in practice they despise them. Modern Canada has an abundance of truths people have no interest in hearing. Human beings prefer sweet delusion to hard and unpleasant facts. Politicians are creatures of the ballot box. If voters, those few of us who still bother showing up on election day, have no interest in hearing "unvarnished truths" then the politicians will have no inclination to utter such truths.

To borrow from J.B. Say, or more accurately from Keynes' borrowing from Say, a law of political discourse can be advanced: The supply of B.S. creates its own demand. The lies of our political masters breed complacency among the electorate, which in turn stimulates demand for more lies. Even if outright deception is not employed, a certain shrewd omission is common place in political rhetoric.

The most glaring example of this is in health care. This country's lengthy waiting lists for treatment is almost universally blamed on a lack of funding. Here are selections from the OECD health care report for 2011:

Waiting times to receive care were highest in Canada, in an 11-country survey. In 2010, 59% of respondents reported waiting 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, and 25% for 4 months or more for elective surgery.

As for spending, the report continues:

Canada spent 11.4% of GDP on health in 2009, more than the OECD average of 9.6%. Spending per person is also higher than the OECD average.

Yet most OECD countries have a greater role for private financing and delivery than we do. Simply tweaking the current Canadian health care system, with small co-payments and allowing private competition, would likely improve wait times, as they have in Britain and continental Europe. In the Netherlands health care insurance is run by private for-profit companies, with government subsidies to compensate insurers for higher risk clients. The Dutch spend slightly more than Canada on their system, yet their health care outcomes are comparable or superior.

There is nothing magically "better" about the Canadian health care system. All developed nations, except the United States, have some type of government supported universal health care system. Most of those nations deliver higher or comparable quality at equal or lesser cost than Canada. This is the "unvarnished truth." We are not that different from other rich countries, where we are different we are not necessarily better. 

There is, of course, not a sitting Canadian politician who would say such things within earshot of a microphone. Instead we hear: "Canada has the greatest health system in the world. All that's needed is some administrative reforms and more money. We are better than the Americans." Repeat for nearly fifty years, after which opposition is now confined to a handful of conservative and libertarian think tanks and media outlets.

No politician will utter such statements, nor will such statements be tolerated as part of the back and forth of public discourse. Witness the "hidden agenda" tag that was placed on Stephen Harper for some vague musing back in the 1990s on Medicare reform.  Discussions of health care reform tolerate very little truth, instead they largely feature the ruthless enforcement of dogma by party whips and the MSM. For two generations the political class has repeated the same lies and half-truths about Medicare. Today few Canadians want to hear anything else. We just can't handle the truth.

 

Tuesday Night - Delta Force

With Conservatives Like These...

...we might just go broke:

Federal spending jumped 22 per cent in the first five years the Harper Conservatives were in power, says a government of Canada performance report released Thursday.

A good chunk of the increase was due to tens of billions of dollars in stimulus spending across the country during the economic downturn, but mounting healthcare costs also contributed to the spike.

Scenes From the Imperial Capital

St George Street, Knox College

The European Industrial Guilt Complex

Move over white liberal guilt. 

Do you remember that Harry Enfield character, Jürgen the German – the young tourist who went around apologising for his country, and shouting abuse at anyone who demurred? I'm afraid I've met a couple of German MEPs like that – aggressive in their internationalism, bellicose in their pacifism.

Is there a German word for moderation? For seventy years they were the world's greatest fighters. For the next seventy years they led the world in self-abnegation. In whatever she does, Deutschland über alles. Half way measures are for the weak...and the insufficiently neurotic.

In creating their half-baked version of a federal state most of Europe's leaders had two objectives: control Germany and provide a counter-weight to the Americans and the Soviets. For the Germans the creation of first the EEC and then the EU was a collective form of atonement for the sins of their fathers.

The Soviets are kaput. Obama led America seems intent on going the same way. European debt levels may bring down the world's economy. So what is the point of the EU today? United or no, the pincer movements of an unsustainable welfare state and the continents nihilistic demographics will wreck the place within a generation or two. Merkel, Sarkzo and the EU's stodge in Athens are simply re-arranging the deck chairs.

Why keep going? The most powerful force in politics is inertia. Millions of Europeans obtain their daily bread from the beneficence of Brussels. Some are bureaucrats, others are subsidized farmers and still more businesses whose meagre profits hinge on navigating the regulatory labyrinth of the superstate. It works well for the many people who will riot to protect their unearned privileges. The victims, as with most rent seeking activities, are many and scattered. The unemployed young Spaniard or struggling small French entrepreneur are certainly Brussels victims, though they rarely understand themselves as such.

This is why the Eurocrats are fighting to save the quixotic Euro. You cannot separate fiscal and monetary policy. The father of the Euro, the Canadian born economist Robert Mundell, pointed this out half a century ago. He is now arguing for greater "fiscal harmonisation and authority." Which is also the goal of the continent's political leadership.The Euro will make or break a federalized Europe.

Economics was never the the point of the EU, it was only the means. Since the time of Aristide Briand the goal has been to create a United States of Europe. The free trade area, the single currency and the Schengen Area were steps along the way. By entangling the economies of Europe it would make political union far more likely, if not inevitable.

This is the ass-backward way of creating a country. The traditional manner, favoured by chaps like George Washington and John A Macdonald, was to create the country first and then figure out how to set up a national economy. This would require, however, at least a rough political consensus in that direction. The people of Europe don't want a federal Europe. They certainly want to trade and travel freely, so long as they are protected from the downsides of those activities, but they are still attached to their nationalities.

The recent debt crisis has only highlighted the vast differences in Europe's cultures. For all the talk of a new European, it is the old Greece and the old Germany that we have seen these last three years. Whatever the post-nationalist pretensions of the Bruges-Brussels elite, the tabloid and populace of the continent still view the world much as their ancestors did, through the prism of nationalism and history. It has been some decades since the media was filled with so many veiled, and not so veiled, references to the Second World War. 

They've certainly put away the guns. Not that Europe's parade ground armies are much of a threat to each other, or indeed anyone else. One of the reasons the EU trembles before Vladimir Putin, a tin-pot dictator in all but name. The enfeebled and decadent Europe of today whiles away the epoch trading bailouts and historical grievances. This is the way world ends, not with a bang but with some tired old ethnic jokes.

The Euro will be saved because it must be saved, otherwise the European projects ends. The Eurocrats are not letting this very good crisis go to waste. The choice being given in the media is between yet another bailout or a default. There is a third option and that is the one we are now seeing implemented: colonization.

Greece is becoming a protectorate of Brussels. It now finds itself much in the same position Newfoundland did during the Great Depression, broke and with no hope of recovery. So the self-governing Dominion of Newfoundland voted itself back into colonial status, with London picking up the tab. 

Greece is the new Newfoundland. That may save Greece for the moment, and the Euro for the moment after that, it will do little to save Europe in the long-run. London couldn't pick up the tab even if it wanted to.

 

Monday Night - Robin and the 7 Hoods

Good Try

So the courts have ruled:

A federal judge has ruled that a member of the Church of the Universe, which believes cannabis is the "tree of life," has failed to show that his marijuana consumption "has any nexus with religion."

Christopher Bennett, who claimed that he should be allowed to smoke up to seven grams of marijuana - about 35 joints - every day for religious purposes, argued that Canada's drug laws infringed upon his religious rights.

Scenes From the Imperial Capital

Manitoba Drive, CNE Grounds

Talking About Nothing

Never in the field of human government has so little been said by so many to so few:

The Hill Times went through the government electronic directory service to get a rough idea of how many communications staffers—people paid to help craft and disseminate any given government message—currently work in the public service, ministerial offices, the PMO and the PCO. In all, there are currently around 1,500 communications staffers working in government offices and departments across Canada, including 87 in the PMO and PCO.

The less you have to say, the more people you need to say it. Once upon a time, as the article suggests, communications work in government consisted of a few former reporters acting as press agents. As government has expanded in scope and scale over the last half century, so have its messengers. Most of these staffers spend their days preparing press releases, which are quickly scanned by legions of journalists and bloggers and then deleted. 

You might think these press releases constitute important information, essential to the operations of a national government. You would be wrong. The flood of press releases mostly consists of funding announcements. More money being shovelled to some particular group which the relevant minister, or one of his staffers, thought would be useful in helping to swing a riding in the next election. The really important nonsense is typically delivered by a minister at a press conference, though many of these are now just funding announcements with more media coverage.

Government has always been involved in pork and patronage. These, however, were sideline activities until about thirty years ago. Hum-drum things like defending the Dominion and maintaining public order were the main focus of the state. In the years after 1945 government expanded its remit to removing the risks of ordinary life: free health care, subsidized post-secondary education, generous welfare, unemployment insurance and pension programs. 

By about 1980 Canada was broke. No one really mentioned it at the time. The Brian made some vague references to it during the 1984 campaign. People like getting free stuff, even if much of the free stuff is being paid using their own tax dollars. The votes follow the money, so the money kept flowing. The brighter among our political and bureaucratic masters, however, began to understand that government was too big. 

With government spending approaching 50% of GDP it was becoming a drag on economic growth. The good times would have to be rolled back. This was not an ideological stand, it was a pragmatic one. Either balance the budget or the whole welfare state would collapse. Once the fiscal crisis of the mid-1990s passed the government did not immediately begin to splurge again. That only happened when Stephen Harper entered 24 Sussex. 

Before Trudeau took his walk in the snow, government certainly grew quickly but it grew in a certain direction. More money was being spent on new social programs and infrastructure projects. The growth of government under Stephen Harper has not been dedicated toward any grand new social programs, the suggestion of which is an anathema to good Tories across the land. Government now grows by inertia.

Departments expand through the usual process of empire building. Agencies of the state are ever eager to find new remits, there always being some new dragon to slay, even if that dragon is trans-fats or tobacco. Then there are the various pork projects committed to under the guise of "economic development." Where once government expanded with visions of utopia, now it expands through routine and lack of foresight. We now have small minded big government.

Back in 1980 the National Energy Program was launched in a series of speeches by  Marc Lalonde, Allan MacEachen and Pierre Trudeau. That was big government at its biggest. But how many spin doctors are required to say you're kneecapping the Canadian oil industry? Big minded big government doesn't need much messaging, it speaks for itself. A government that strives to be all things to all people must have several different messages and, therefore, many messengers.

 

Sunday - Thatcher 1983

Quebecgeld

Lord Black:

The price Quebec has paid for this nirvana is a constitutional Faustian bargain: It has lost all ability to frighten Canada or assert more than its natural minority influence on the federal state. Prior to this year's federal election, Canada had rarely had a majority government that was not significantly dependent on Quebec MPs. Fifty years ago, Quebec had 85% of the federal MPs of Ontario and 185% of the MPs of Alberta and British Columbia combined; the corresponding percentages will now be 64% and 100%, respectively.

Canada, a nation saved through bribery.

 

Saturday - Roger Scruton on Prague