Woe, woe, Ontario
Monday, 30 May 2005
Mark Steyn
What do the Liberals have to do to lose? The rule that there’s no such thing as bad publicity is supposed to apply to soap actresses and rock stars, but look at the polls: Grits 32.5 per cent, Tories 30.5 per cent. And, even when you find a national poll showing a Conservative lead, break it down regionally: Liberals 38 per cent, Tories 34 per cent. That’s Ontario, which is the critical battleground, as we psephologists say. “Yours to Discover,” as the licence plates say. And what one mainly discovers after the most cursory of glances is that Paul Martin could be captured on DVD giving a Quebec advertising agency $20 million to supply him with coke and rent-boys and there would be a political earthquake in Ontario resulting in the shock poll result: Liberals 37.5 per cent, Conservatives 34.5 per cent.
As I wrote in the very first issue of the Western Standard, the Grits must occasionally wonder: where did we go right? And, while I’m reprising haunting refrains, as I wrote in our last issue: “The minute an election’s declared, the CBC and the Toronto Star will come on side and we’ll stop getting features on Adscam and start getting in-depth investigations on Tory plans to bring back back-street abortions and mandatory readings of Leviticus in gay bath-houses. And then some of those wobbly Liberal voters will wander home, in Ontario’s riding-rich 905-belt, in Quebec’s West Island, in the Maritimes . . .”
Woe, woe and thrice woe. As it turns out, they didn’t even wait for the writ to drop. CTV and The Globe And Mail commissioned a poll showing that 63 per cent of Canadians do not believe Paul Martin is telling the truth when he denies any involvement in Adscam. Let’s be clear on that: they’re not saying just that they don’t believe his initial position--that he didn’t even know about any of this stuff; they’re saying they think he was actively involved in it. When polls showed that 58 per cent of Britons thought their prime minister was a liar, Fleet Street produced stories with headlines like “The Big Lie” and “The King of Duplicity” and “Blair in Thick of New Battle on Iraq ‘Lies.’” All for a mere 58 per cent? Sixty-three per cent of us think our prime minister’s a liar, which may be a G7 record, and a strong Commonwealth second-place finish after Robert Mugabe. And how does CTV headline its story on this stunning poll finding? “Cdns. Suspicious of a Tory Hidden Agenda: Poll.”
Given the thin gruel of their non-hidden agenda, one can only hope the Tories have some sinister for-your-eyes-only master plan written in invisible ink and secreted in the leather thong Joe Clark will be wearing for his tolerant, inclusive appearance in this year’s Calgary Gay Pride parade. But, whether or not they do, CTV’s headline gives a pretty good idea of how the campaign will go: the Liberal agenda is staring at us in plain sight, but the proverbial hidden agenda of the Conservatives is still the real issue. The Tories may have top-secret plans to cut public spending: dozens of Quebec advertising agencies may be forced to look for work in what passes for the province’s private sector and the monthly staff outings to Liberal fundraisers paid for by taxpayers may be cut back to once or twice a year. And from there it’s a mere hop and a skip to cutting back on late-term abortion which means that many high-flying female Quebec marketing consultants will have to take time off for maternity leave instead of taking time off because they pulled a muscle waddling out of the restaurant with $150,000 in small bills stuffed in their pantyhose. The Tories are a threat to “da Canadian values”--and, in the sense that da Canadian values are those of the G7’s first Third World kleptocracy, one hopes they’re right.
To modify Lord Acton, power corrupts and Liberal power corrupts very liberally. What’s happened in Canada is that the ruling party has engaged in wholesale elimination of the line between its own interests and the nation’s. Under the West- minster system, where the prime minister has inherited the vast powers of patronage that once accrued to the sovereign, there’s always a danger of that, and that danger increases when you have an entrenched ruling party and a weak opposition. As long as they’re simply stuffing the courts and the boards of regulatory bodies and Crown corporations with party hacks, you can tell yourself, well, it’s pure coincidence. But even that limp fig leaf is no longer sustainable once they advance from handing out chairmanships and judicial robes to handing out suitcases of cash.
What’s at issue in Canada is not the corruption of this or that itsy-bitsy government program, but the corruption of the entire political culture, up to and including large segments of the electorate. Two and a half years ago, Professor Michael Bliss wrote that if they wanted to see any change in the way Canada was governed Ontario voters were going to have to steel themselves and vote for what was then the Alliance. A gazillion revelations and a laughably inept prime minister later, and Mr. and Mrs. Central Canada still aren’t prepared to suck it up and vote Tory. It’s not possible for any sentient being not to be aware of the level of corruption revealed by Adscam. Yet, when Paul Martin says, “Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?”, throughout 905-land they nod and say, “Oh, you, of course, Paul.” Parts of the Canadian electorate seem to have developed a severe case of battered-wife syndrome.
Look, we don’t need to demand unreasonable levels of integrity. How about if we just compare Gomery with the oil-for-food scandal? Maurice Strong, the former Power Corp. strongman who’s been the below-the-radar muscle at the UN for the last decade or so, has stepped down from his role as “adviser” to the secretary general. His stepdaughter Kristina Mayo, whom he put on the UN payroll in violation of the organization’s rules, has resigned. Is it too much to ask that Canada rise to the debauched ethical standards of the United Nations? Does a Liberal establishment grandee have to get a job at Turtle Bay to be called to account?
It’s never healthy to take refuge in the Brechtian jest that we need to elect a new people. Nevertheless, as a general rule, the people get the government they deserve. After last year’s election, David Warren wrote a column attributing Paul Martin’s survival to the sweeping demographic and, indeed, psychological changes that had occurred in Ontario’s golden horseshoe over the last three decades. I think I would put it in broader terms. Just as Somalia demonstrated that UN peacekeeping was more corrupting to our military culture than old-fashioned warmongering, so “da Canadian values” are also intrinsically harmful, by definition. Big government weakens the citizen’s sense of self-reliance, of which, in healthy societies, a refusal to tolerate a corrupt ruling elite is taken for granted. It ought to be possible and it’s surely necessary to push the Liberal vote down to its core. C’mon, Ontario, land of my birth. What does it take to get to Liberals 36.5 per cent Conservatives 35.5 per cent?
From the Western Standard
Monday, 30 May 2005
Mark Steyn
What do the Liberals have to do to lose? The rule that there’s no such thing as bad publicity is supposed to apply to soap actresses and rock stars, but look at the polls: Grits 32.5 per cent, Tories 30.5 per cent. And, even when you find a national poll showing a Conservative lead, break it down regionally: Liberals 38 per cent, Tories 34 per cent. That’s Ontario, which is the critical battleground, as we psephologists say. “Yours to Discover,” as the licence plates say. And what one mainly discovers after the most cursory of glances is that Paul Martin could be captured on DVD giving a Quebec advertising agency $20 million to supply him with coke and rent-boys and there would be a political earthquake in Ontario resulting in the shock poll result: Liberals 37.5 per cent, Conservatives 34.5 per cent.
As I wrote in the very first issue of the Western Standard, the Grits must occasionally wonder: where did we go right? And, while I’m reprising haunting refrains, as I wrote in our last issue: “The minute an election’s declared, the CBC and the Toronto Star will come on side and we’ll stop getting features on Adscam and start getting in-depth investigations on Tory plans to bring back back-street abortions and mandatory readings of Leviticus in gay bath-houses. And then some of those wobbly Liberal voters will wander home, in Ontario’s riding-rich 905-belt, in Quebec’s West Island, in the Maritimes . . .”
Woe, woe and thrice woe. As it turns out, they didn’t even wait for the writ to drop. CTV and The Globe And Mail commissioned a poll showing that 63 per cent of Canadians do not believe Paul Martin is telling the truth when he denies any involvement in Adscam. Let’s be clear on that: they’re not saying just that they don’t believe his initial position--that he didn’t even know about any of this stuff; they’re saying they think he was actively involved in it. When polls showed that 58 per cent of Britons thought their prime minister was a liar, Fleet Street produced stories with headlines like “The Big Lie” and “The King of Duplicity” and “Blair in Thick of New Battle on Iraq ‘Lies.’” All for a mere 58 per cent? Sixty-three per cent of us think our prime minister’s a liar, which may be a G7 record, and a strong Commonwealth second-place finish after Robert Mugabe. And how does CTV headline its story on this stunning poll finding? “Cdns. Suspicious of a Tory Hidden Agenda: Poll.”
Given the thin gruel of their non-hidden agenda, one can only hope the Tories have some sinister for-your-eyes-only master plan written in invisible ink and secreted in the leather thong Joe Clark will be wearing for his tolerant, inclusive appearance in this year’s Calgary Gay Pride parade. But, whether or not they do, CTV’s headline gives a pretty good idea of how the campaign will go: the Liberal agenda is staring at us in plain sight, but the proverbial hidden agenda of the Conservatives is still the real issue. The Tories may have top-secret plans to cut public spending: dozens of Quebec advertising agencies may be forced to look for work in what passes for the province’s private sector and the monthly staff outings to Liberal fundraisers paid for by taxpayers may be cut back to once or twice a year. And from there it’s a mere hop and a skip to cutting back on late-term abortion which means that many high-flying female Quebec marketing consultants will have to take time off for maternity leave instead of taking time off because they pulled a muscle waddling out of the restaurant with $150,000 in small bills stuffed in their pantyhose. The Tories are a threat to “da Canadian values”--and, in the sense that da Canadian values are those of the G7’s first Third World kleptocracy, one hopes they’re right.
To modify Lord Acton, power corrupts and Liberal power corrupts very liberally. What’s happened in Canada is that the ruling party has engaged in wholesale elimination of the line between its own interests and the nation’s. Under the West- minster system, where the prime minister has inherited the vast powers of patronage that once accrued to the sovereign, there’s always a danger of that, and that danger increases when you have an entrenched ruling party and a weak opposition. As long as they’re simply stuffing the courts and the boards of regulatory bodies and Crown corporations with party hacks, you can tell yourself, well, it’s pure coincidence. But even that limp fig leaf is no longer sustainable once they advance from handing out chairmanships and judicial robes to handing out suitcases of cash.
What’s at issue in Canada is not the corruption of this or that itsy-bitsy government program, but the corruption of the entire political culture, up to and including large segments of the electorate. Two and a half years ago, Professor Michael Bliss wrote that if they wanted to see any change in the way Canada was governed Ontario voters were going to have to steel themselves and vote for what was then the Alliance. A gazillion revelations and a laughably inept prime minister later, and Mr. and Mrs. Central Canada still aren’t prepared to suck it up and vote Tory. It’s not possible for any sentient being not to be aware of the level of corruption revealed by Adscam. Yet, when Paul Martin says, “Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?”, throughout 905-land they nod and say, “Oh, you, of course, Paul.” Parts of the Canadian electorate seem to have developed a severe case of battered-wife syndrome.
Look, we don’t need to demand unreasonable levels of integrity. How about if we just compare Gomery with the oil-for-food scandal? Maurice Strong, the former Power Corp. strongman who’s been the below-the-radar muscle at the UN for the last decade or so, has stepped down from his role as “adviser” to the secretary general. His stepdaughter Kristina Mayo, whom he put on the UN payroll in violation of the organization’s rules, has resigned. Is it too much to ask that Canada rise to the debauched ethical standards of the United Nations? Does a Liberal establishment grandee have to get a job at Turtle Bay to be called to account?
It’s never healthy to take refuge in the Brechtian jest that we need to elect a new people. Nevertheless, as a general rule, the people get the government they deserve. After last year’s election, David Warren wrote a column attributing Paul Martin’s survival to the sweeping demographic and, indeed, psychological changes that had occurred in Ontario’s golden horseshoe over the last three decades. I think I would put it in broader terms. Just as Somalia demonstrated that UN peacekeeping was more corrupting to our military culture than old-fashioned warmongering, so “da Canadian values” are also intrinsically harmful, by definition. Big government weakens the citizen’s sense of self-reliance, of which, in healthy societies, a refusal to tolerate a corrupt ruling elite is taken for granted. It ought to be possible and it’s surely necessary to push the Liberal vote down to its core. C’mon, Ontario, land of my birth. What does it take to get to Liberals 36.5 per cent Conservatives 35.5 per cent?
From the Western Standard
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