When hanging out with my Grandpa this summer, I was watching the CTV coverage of Canada’s latest unfulfilled threat of election drama. The debate was on the Conservatives’ (ruling party) non-release of the actual numbers upon which they were communicating very suspect ‘Oh, don’t worry, the deficit will be eliminated two years.’ The exchange went something like this:
Conservative spokesman for the Minister of Finance; “The deficit issue will be resolved. We have a plan that’s based on extensive analysis showing that, without any further tax increases, we’ll eliminate the deficit within the next two years.”
Liberal Finance Critic; “Then why won’t you show us the numbers? How are we to believe your projections if we can’t even see the numbers?”
Conservative; “We will do so when we are required to, at the next budget session.”
Liberal; “But if you have the numbers, why not show them now?”
Reporter; “He has a point sir, if you have the numbers, what is the problem with just disclosing the projections?
Conservative; “I bet that if the Liberals were in office, they wouldn’t show us their numbers until they absolutely had to.”
With a slightly ‘Ah, busted’ look on the Liberal Finance Critic’s face, and an assenting ‘Oh, fair enough’ nod by the reporter, the discussion was over.
Meanwhile, on my couch in small town Ontario I felt like yelling ‘Hello! Over here! Remember us - the citizenry? The people who you are purportedly serving?’
So much of that exchange disgusted me I don’t know where to start. The obvious manipulations of the Conservatives we have come to know and expect. But the fact that political gaming has become a valid justification for such lack of transparency is disgusting. Have we so given up on a healthy public debate about substantive issues that it’s not even considered that people from the general public might also want to see the numbers? Are we seen as so stupid and apathetic that the actual state of our economy, or the actual plans for Afghanistan, or the actual solutions to environmental collapse are irrelevant in contrast with our perceptions of the skill of the leaders’ posturing on such issues? Our political discourse has become reality TV, where we respect those who game most cunningly.
Part of the problem is structural. We have a situation in which the centrist parties in Canada only rarely represent serious policy or philosophical differences, and instead get elected based on a collection of demographics that draws mostly from historical, not contemporarily salient ideological divides. The Liberals still try and eat away as much of the Left from the NDP, while agreeing with the Conservatives on most issues of free trade, and maintaining their base with urban Central Canadian voters and immigrant groups. The Conservatives get the socially conservative vote - while doing little more than throwing meaningless bones to those who are anti-abortion, or anti-same-sex-marriage – and maintain their base in the oil-rich West and rural Canada. Meanwhile, those of us who are fiscally conservative, socially progressive, pro free-trade, internationally minded, and wanting to solve the environmental challenges but in a free market way are stuck without a home. And so the parties have no real incentive to highlight their policy differences, because it isn’t a policy debate.
Aside from the structural issues, there is also the failure of the political class. The devolution of the discourse into the scandal of the month is partly the failure of the media, which usually only shows highlights from the infantile ‘Question Period’ in the House of Commons instead of the substantive debates that fill most of the schedule. Also, of the politicians, who far too often are made up of the Machiavellian (Harper), the good-hearted and intelligent but lacking in charisma (Dion), the towering intellects who succumb to the pressure to stoop to ‘our level’ and play the game (Ignatieff), and the plain old… ummm… how to say this… Sarah Palin equivalents (Stockwell Day).
But finally, and most importantly it is our failure. It’s a failure of the citizen to call Bullshit, to count ourselves out of the Survivor-esque and instead challenge leaders to come up with policy proposals that would advance the common good. It’s our failure for not standing up and saying ‘We don’t give a damn if you don’t want to show the Liberals the numbers – we want to see them.’
