What's more important? Good governance or looking good? The Globe and Mail reports on the Dauphin's latest brainstorm:
The Liberals are promising there would be the same number of female and male ministers in a Trudeau cabinet, and that all new Supreme Court judges would be bilingual under their government.
This runs into the small problem of the electorate. If those foolish beings known as Canadian voters insist on electing more men than women, a prospective PM Justin will need to dip into a shallower talent pool of women to find his cabinet. Given the challenge of finding even moderately competent people to run for high office, the Liberal leader has now the added problem of finding competent people with the correct genitalia. This doesn't even get into patronizing notion that women need help in climbing the greasy pole. But the silliness doesn't stop there:
The proposals are part of a new package of reforms announced on Tuesday to offer a “fair and open government” to Canadians. The Liberals insist this is an issue that will speak to Canadians after nine years of Conservative government, which they argue was authoritarian, secretive and disrespectful of taxpayers.
How exactly the Tories are more disrespectful of taxpayers than the Liberals or the NDP is not explained. It's tossed out there like a schoolyard taunt. The not thinking things through approach continues with this gob smacker:
“We will also adopt a federal government-wide open and merit-based appointments process, which will ensure gender parity and that more Indigenous Peoples and minority groups are reflected in positions of leadership,” the Liberal proposal states.
So the Liberal Party is promising to be both all wet and all dry simultaneously. If a system is "merit-based" then the gender or race of the applicants is irrelevant. If a system is based on gender or race then merit is either irrelevant or of secondary importance. So which is it Justin? Are you hiring people because they know what they're doing or because they look a certain way?
For the most part Canadian institutions haven't been quite as obsessed with racial and gender quota hiring as their American counterparts. This is partly because our racial history is less fraught, and partly because most minority groups integrate well into the Canadian mainstream. So Justin is fighting a problem that doesn't really exist, or apologizing for something that was remedied decades ago.
The Son and Heir then goes onto promise, apparently channelling the British his father so loath, setting up a Prime Minister's Question Period. That's a bit different from the Canadian Question Period which is a juvenile free for all that sees party leaders toss questions off to Parliamentary Secretaries and other warm bodies in waiting. In the Mother of Parliaments the PM gets asked the questions and the PM responds. It requires a real skill to handle the back and forth. Here's Mrs Thatcher's last PMQ. If Justin ever does get to live in 24 Sussex again he'll rue the day he made that promise.
Trudeau the Younger is promising real change but delivering cosmetics. The who is far less important than the what. From the Clerk of the Privy Council on down to the customer service rep at the passport office, the race or gender of the federal employee matters not on whit. Why should it? If racism is a bad thing when practiced against ethno-cultural minorities, why is it a good thing when practiced against a presumed majority?
I doubt the Dauphin has thought through any of this very carefully. But it sounds good, doesn't it? If you glance through these proposals they give the impressions of being nice and accountable. Why not help out disadvantaged minorities? Why not have the Prime Minister of the day field questions from the opposition benches?
But facts, as an old American once observed, are stubborn things. Many of Canada's minorities perform far better in school and in the workforce than the traditional British Protestant population. Don't believe me? Walk into a top Canadian university and count the number of south and east Asians. Very few, I can attest from personal experience, got into those classrooms because of quotas or preferences. They earned their way in. This is what makes Justin's proposals so absurd.
Women currently earn more university degrees than men. In practical subjects such as science and commerce the classes are dominated by Asians. Yet both groups would be given a leg up in Justin's quest to right the wrongs of yester year. If WASPish males continue to hold senior positions that might have more to do with generational inertia than imbedded racism. Canada was literally a white man's country until the 1970s. It should hardly be surprising that it takes a generation or two for immigrants and their children to begin working their way into the top ranks of government.
More than anger these proposals make me afraid. I fear that we are heading down the road the Americans have well trodden these last fifty years. That in setting up a system of racial and gender quotas we will do little to help those groups who are relatively new to Canada. Instead such a system will breed resentment and doubt among the wider population. Resentment at places begin handed out by racial lottery rather than merit, doubt about the success of any member of a minority group as being truly deserving.
The Canadian way works very well Justin. Thank you very much. We don't need failed American ideas to spoil our way of life.
When your political philosophy consists of buying votes, canned green narratives and governmental solutions to government-caused problems, why not a quota system as trained seals, parrots, or monkeys can likely fit the bill. Why not one of each?
Posted by: John Chittick | Saturday, June 20, 2015 at 12:13 PM