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Canada must now grab the Olympic spirit

Canadians find themselves in a happy place today. The Winter Olympics in Vancouver have been a smash success, with Canada carrying off the honour of having scored more gold medals than any other country before in the history of the winter games. The Games have seen their share of heartache, what with the deaths of a luger and the mother of a Canadian athlete, but they will be remembered as not only a great global party, but also as the birth of a “new Canada”.

Canadian and international commentators alike have concluded that the recent events in Vancouver have showcased a new kind of Canadian, one who enjoys celebrating his or her patriotism in an exuberant and boisterous way. It has been noted, for example, that Canadians have shed their excessive focus on political correctness. I’d say that Canadians have finally discovered their “inner American”.

One should be careful with predictions, however. It could be that Canadians are simply caught up in the moment, and by next week, we could be our old sullen selves again, who don’t mind being told by government what to do. But maybe there is hope this time around. Just maybe Canadians, having tasted blood, will finally start demanding red meat when it comes to their personal and civic freedoms.

While staging the Olympic Games was a national effort, with Canadians from all over this vast country contributing to the event’s success, one aspect does stand out that could explain the very unique nature of people’s reactions: the Games happened in Western Canada. Perhaps it was the Western mentality, which is much more prone to unleashing that inner American, that emerged on the Olympic sites in Western Canada and then spread across country, infecting even the usually morose folks of Toronto.

How much of that Western-style celebration of patriotism and pride, with the accompanying disposal of political correctness, will stick to easterners remains to be seen. It would do them a world of good if they hung on to it, as it would benefit them politically, economically, socially and personally.

Politicians, a reviled profession

Several studies have found, confirmed and re-confirmed that Canadian parents would rather see their children become lawyers or journalists than politicians, showing all three of these professions to be among the most reviled in the country. What they all have in common is the perception that they make a living from lying and generally being despicable individuals. Unfortunately, the vast majority of members in each of these professions have done more than their share to solidify this view.

When it comes to politicians, people look for honesty, integrity and leadership. It is understood that politicians are always faced with difficult decisions and that they don’t always make the right choices. But making mistakes is human, and as much as people may be angry about a flawed policy or law, they also, reluctantly, acknowledge that they themselves might have made the same mistake if they had been in the prime minister’s shoes.

Another consensus has it that no one, at least in Canada, chooses politics as his or her career with a premeditated plan to cause hardship or to destroy the country – well, except perhaps for Pierre Trudeau. What is good for the country and what it isn’t, is a matter of personal, and ideological, preferences. But regardless of the individual’s views, left or right, he or she thinks that his or her policies will benefit the country. In other words, as maligned as our politicians are, none of them has any evil designs or deliberately sets out to inflict harm.

Sticks and stones ...

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. At least, that’s according to this old saw. A German phrase defines names as being nothing more than “noise and smoke”. Words, names, labels – we’ve had this discussion before, many times in fact. In politics, especially in Canada, labels don’t mean much anymore.

In Ottawa, we have a party in power that calls itself “Conservative”, yet it has failed to do most of the “conservative” things people had expected of it, such as eliminating Big Government, reducing (income) taxes, prudent spending and so on. The “conservative” government in Alberta is even less “conservative”, spending like “liberals” and conducting its affairs in a very secretive and authoritarian  -- not to mention “Government-knows-best” – manner.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Party of Canada is more like the “liberals” Americans despise, and worlds removed from what “classical liberalism” used to represent. As if all that weren’t confusing enough already, with “right”, “left”, “conservative” and “liberal” labels being flung around wildly, there is also that ominous word “progressive”.

If you listen to a TV pundit like Glenn Beck in the US, progressives are the worst kind of left-wingers. Beck distinguishes very carefully between the left, i.e., the Democratic Party, or at least what it used to be, and the “progressives” – to him, and those like him, simply another word for “socialists” or “communists”.

Feeling embarrassed

Turn to any news channel or open any newspaper, and one topic you’ll likely find discussed just about everywhere in Canada right now is the perceived slight of the French language at the Olympic Games in Vancouver. At the same time, letters pages in (Albertan and Western Canadian) newspapers are filling up with irate comments about how the “French should go home and shut up”.

I first became aware that there was an issue on the night of the opening ceremony, when my Twitter page started being inundated with angry comments about the use, not lack, of the French language. I decided then not to reply to or comment on any of them, because, frankly, they made me feel embarrassed and ashamed. Albertans tend to have a bad reputation in the rest of the country, and the last thing we need is to be known as French bashers (particularly in a province where, like in the rest of the country, the rate of functional illiteracy – in just one language! – now borders on fifty per cent).

Those who criticized the use of French at the Olympics proved only one thing: that they’re utterly uneducated and uninformed about what goes on in the world. The Olympics organization is an international organization, and its first and primary official language is French. Naturally, any official Olympics business is conducted in French first, and English second. So, when, for example, Canada’s Governor-General Michaëlle Jean spoke in French first and then switched to English, she merely adhered to the practices of the international organization. Now, though, many Canadians (in the West) appear to be calling for her head to roll over this “affront”.

Canadians elect leaders, not parties

A lot of people will relate to this scenario. Trying so hard to impress a “person of interest” (the “cool girl” in your class) or a person of authority (a teacher or boss), people tend to get themselves into weird situations and end up looking foolish – right in front of the very person they’ve tried so hard to bedazzle.

This is what Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff must feel like. The person of interest is not some “babe” he has a crush on, but the Canadian electorate. Seeing how he spent most of his adult life away from Canada, it’s almost impossible to believe he could ever have any “romantic” feelings for Canadians. A fatal attraction, in fact, is more like it.

Since returning to Canada a few years ago, Ignatieff has done everything in his power to curry favour with Canadians. He had been lured back to Canada after decades of being away by a cabal of Liberals, who thought that he could be the next Trudeau and give the Liberal Party a much-needed booster shot.

That he was beaten to the leadership on his first attempt by an inept and bungling academic should have told him there and then that it simply wasn’t meant to be. Not everyone can be a commercial airline pilot, nor can everyone develop a Pavarotti-like voice and perform in the great opera houses around the world. To the chagrin of Ignatieff, it’s also true that not everyone, even the reddest of Liberals, can, or should, become leader of the Liberal Party.

Budget: Alberta Tories lack common sense

Alberta, Canada’s richest province, has had a hard time recently. Assailed by a global recession, with its concomitant drop in oil and gas prices, as well as by its own premier, Ed Stelmach, who felt he had nothing better to do than “reform” the oil royalties scheme, thus causing worse damage to the province than former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program, Alberta now finds itself in a position of having to dig itself out from under a pall of gloom. Preparing a budget with a deficit that looms large no matter what government does is no easy task. Yet, even in such difficult times, there is a right way, and a wrong one, to go about it. Sadly, the Tories have chosen the latter.

If an election were held today, the fledgling Wildrose Alliance would win a majority. The Wildrose’s claim to fame is that it is a party of genuine fiscal conservatism, whereas the Tories have become worse than socialists by some accounts. In an attempt to fend off the attack from the right, Mr. Stelmach recently shuffled his cabinet and awarded the finance portfolio to Ted Morton, whom most in Canada would consider an “extreme right-winger”. In fact, Mr. Morton admitted that the Wildrose Alliance could easily be his political home, as he agreed with about 80 percent of its platform. Albertans, therefore, had been hoping that, as finance minister, Mr. Morton would restore fiscal prudence in a government that had long since lost its way and indulged in massive overspending (including substantial pay raises for government members).

Disappointment ran appropriately high this week, after the government had tabled its budget. Any sign, even the slightest one, that Mr. Morton is the fiscal hawk he has always been made out to be is invisible to the naked eye. In all fairness, though, the budget had been drafted before his appointment. His job merely ended up being a recital of what his boss and his team had already written down.

Reboot, or the boot, for Stelmach?

 For the Alberta Tories, and Albertans, this is the moment of truth, the end game. The next twelve to 24 months will decide the fate of the Tories, who have been in power since 1971. Since December 2006, when Ed Stelmach took the reins of the Tory party and became premier of Alberta, the party has been in a steady decline. Nothing the premier has ever touched has turned out as planned, and Albertans, not surprisingly, have soured on Stelmach and the party they have held dear for close to forty years.

Stelmach’s biggest sin has been his “reform” of the royalties scheme for oil and gas companies, the very lifeblood of the province. His call on companies to part with more of their profits for the privilege of drilling in Alberta, all in the name of giving Albertans their “fair share”, has been a source of major discontent, resulting in many companies suspending production or moving to greener pastures, including the Middle East, where, as some oil executives said, there was less economic uncertainty than in Stelmach’s Alberta.

Stung by the emergence of the small-c conservative Wildrose Alliance as a viable opponent, the Tories now understand that they have to start living up to their “conservative” label again if they do not want to lose the next provincial election, which will take place by 2012. The Wildrose Alliance has already won a by-election in a Tory Calgary riding and welcomed two floor-crossing Tory MLAs over to their corner in the Legislative Assembly. Every poll taken since last fall has ranked the Wildrose Alliance as Albertans’ top choice if an election were held now; in Calgary and Edmonton, the Tories have actually fallen behind both the Wildrose Alliance and the Alberta Liberals and now find themselves in third place. Soon, according to the scuttlebutt in political circles, Guy Boutilier, a Tory MLA booted from the government caucus and now sitting as an independent, could join the Wildrose Alliance in a matter of days.

The 'State-of-Failure Address'

Over a year ago, Barack Obama inspired not only Americans, but also people around the world, with his “Yes, we can” chant. As it turns out, a chant is all it ever was, devoid of any substance. The lofty promises of “post-partisanship” and “reaching out across the aisle” have been empty ones at best, or bald-faced lies at worst.

It’s not all Obama’s fault; while he does and must shoulder most of the blame, the main forces behind his government’s shift to the radical and extreme left have been such Communist-Democrats (or “progressives”, as Glenn Beck calls them) as Nancy Pelosi. Not surprisingly, there has been praise for former Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung from within the Democratic party, while the “czars” appointed by Obama really do live up to the Russian origin of the word.

After Scott Brown’s overwhelming victory over Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, Obama and the Democrats have been scrambling to put a happy face on the first major slap in the face for this leftward administration. The president’s State of the Union Address was supposed to undo some of the damage and give his government a new sense of direction so as to avoid a bloodbath in the midterm elections in November of this year.

It’s safe to say that the condescending, manipulative and arrogant tone of the speech has not averted that threat. In fact, a complete slaughter of the Democrats this November is now almost assured.

Where is that brave, new world?

Apple boss Steve Jobs presented, with much fanfare, the arrival of his company’s latest product: the iPad, essentially a bigger version of the iPhone or iPod Touch. The latest toy can be had for US$499, but that price can quickly double if you wish to have WiFi and 3G capabilities as well as larger memory. As the iPhone before it, the iPad, too, will be linked to AT&T to provide the necessary wireless connection to the Internet.

In Canada, so this pundit’s prediction goes, the iPad will not be a major success. Actually, it could be a colossal failure here. First of all, its price will definitely be higher, and the data plans available through Apple’s Canadian 3G partner, Rogers, will be much, much costlier – and, no doubt, unlike the AT&T plan in the US, the Rogers plan will most likely be contingent on a contract.

Is this the brave, new world of wireless and mobile technology that everyone keeps telling us about? The ease of accessing content and information wherever you are, as they show us in TV shows and movies? When Canadians hear “mobile”, they instinctively think of the usual cellphone providers that act as the gatekeepers to the “mobile Internet”. Since there has been hardly any competition in the wireless market in Canada, data-transfer rates are steep, and users can often find themselves with an additional $80, $100 or more on their cellphone bill just for surfing the Internet or sending e-mails via their smartphones.

Reform tax system and let Canadians prosper

After stimulus spending and corporate bailouts for companies that will eventually disappear anyway, Canada is now saddled with a considerable deficit and must start looking at ways of reducing, containing or, hopefully, eliminating it, while continuing to grow its economy and create jobs. This is not an easy task, as it will require substantial cuts to government spending and a major overhaul of the tax system.

Spending cuts will put the government of Stephen Harper in a predicament. Canada’s government programs are mostly geared to special interests that, even though they constitute a minority only, can make a lot of noise and cost the Conservatives dearly at the polls. But any anticipated screaming of such groups notwithstanding, cuts will have to be made, including to the tax dollars that go to political parties, preferably by scaling back the entire increase in government outlays that has built up since Mr. Harper took office in early 2006 – the biggest increase in modern history, even exceeding by far the mostly abysmal track record of previous Liberal governments.

But there is a lot more at stake than bringing the deficit under control. This should also be the time to help Canadians become productive and successful, and nothing would accomplish that goal more efficiently than a large-scale tax reform. The middle class in Canada has effectively been wiped out, with the average Canadian family spending more on taxes than the basic necessities of life, such as food, clothing and shelter. The average middle-class family, or what used to be the middle class, now loses at least 45 per cent of its annual household income to the taxman, making taxes households’ number-one spending item.

What follows is a list of recommendations on how to improve the lives and prospects of average Canadians.