By Shane Jolley, Guest Columnist
“Those who belong to a certain order of society – people who make big decisions that affect all of us – don’t seem to have much sense of their own fallibility. Being unacquainted with failure, the kind that can’t be interpreted away, may have something to do with the lack of caution that business and political leaders often display in the actions they undertake on behalf of other people.” – Matthew B. Crawford in Shopclass as Soulcraft
The kind of failure referred to above, is the concrete measurable kind, like when the electrical is repaired but the lights don’t work, the crop is planted but fails to grow, or your bike is fixed but fails to shift gears. It’s failure that carries direct consequences, not the subjective failure of the bureaucratic world where one can usually spread the blame around or duck it completely.
Direct responsibility for one’s work is a quick cure for sloppiness. Which begs the question, how many of our current federal electoral candidates have ever picked up a wrench?
If you believe Stephen Harper’s attack ads, Michael Ignatieff has never tied his shoes let alone renovated his kitchen, but maybe this isn’t really a problem. After all, don’t we want our leaders to be paying attention to the really big issues that face us? Like the consequences of $107/barrel oil, perhaps? But, of course, the party leaders can’t talk about that, because there’s no upside… at least from a federal perspective.
The fact that Harper and Flaherty were able to duck the blame for not being upfront about the 2008 recession is an example of decision making that carries consequences for everyone but themselves. How could Finance Minister Jim Flaherty not have known, when, as Rick Mercer pointed out, “he could have asked my mother?” I think he did know, and he lied. Too many of our current politicians will you what you want to hear to maintain power. There is little else left in our federal system.
Stephen Harper’s PR machine has gone to great lengths to generate an image of him as the great defender of the rural “working-class man”, the one who understands the “little guy”, which is itself an insulting reference to hard working people. And it’s hardly a fitting description of a guy who was born in Toronto and whose father was an accountant at Imperial Oil. He attended High school at Richview Collegiate Institute where teaching in the trades was conspicuously absent, and his early work experience included working in the Imperial Oil mail room, and working as an intern for the federal PC party. According to the conservative website, Conservapedia, “…he eventually grew frustrated and disillusioned with the party, which he saw as overly pragmatic…”
Really? Overly pragmatic? Sounds like something we could use more of. Pragmatism, cooperation, a measure of compromise for common good. Not from Mr. Harper, a man whose background reveals him as an ideologue with barely a scrap of real-world experience.
What is at the root of this public relations nonsense? Simply put, it’s political partisanship, the reality that candidates serve a party before their constituents. These days I’m finding it increasingly difficult to find any positive aspect to the party system that rules our Canadian parliaments. Parties were originally formed to give candidates and voters a common set of values or ideas to rally around, but today the party system has degenerated into a structure to maintain a power base for no other reason than power itself.
I have lost all patience for people who say “I’m Conservative”, or “I’m Liberal”, or “I’m Green”. Does that mean that if the party runs a fence-post, it will get your vote? And that’s not a hypothetical question, there have been plenty of fence-posts on the ballot.
Maybe people quietly support partisanship because it’s an excuse to not have to think, or dialogue on any constructive level about the issues. Political partisanship offers a barrier through which one can avoid having to see things from someone else’s position, and it’s ultimately destructive to all. As with Mr. Harper, idealism trumps pragmatism.
So here’s my advice.
Don’t vote for Stephen Harper, or Michael Ignatieff, or Elizabeth May. Vote for the local candidate who you can really trust to represent you in parliament. One who has demonstrated an understanding of what failure means, and the consequences it will have on you as your representative. One who pays attention to more of what’s going on in the world around them than their party’s polling numbers. One who has proven trustworthy in following through on what they say. One who puts you ahead of their party colours.
This will require some thought. It will require paying attention to what the candidates have to say. And it will require making a much tougher decision than merely voting by habit.
If the federal parliament is filled with conscientious, honest, principled representatives, then it won’t much matter what colour rules the house. There will be disagreements as usual, but there will also be respect, and constructive progress on the really important issues that confront Canadians.
Then maybe we won’t need parties at all.
Shane Jolley is the coordinator of the LocalMotive Project in Grey-Bruce
