Helena Guergis, the former tory, former cabinet minister and soon former Member of Parliament, broke the cardinal rule of Canadian politics: Thou shalt not get caught. That might sound a bit arcane but it appears to be the only rule that matters in a parliament without principles.
It was about 45 years ago that the ink-stained fingers of Toronto Star cartoonist Duncan Macpherson produced the classic cartoon comment on political skulduggery: it was a charming rendition of then Prime Minister Mike Pearson playing the piano in a saloon while a keystone-cops gaggle of mounties raided the place. The caption was something about Mr. Pearson just being the piano player and not knowing what was going on upstairs. The cartoon was stimulated by a German immigrant who might or might not have been bedding certain cabinet members and quasi diplomats. It led to Canadian political parties choosing piano players as leaders ever since.
The poorest piano player was the Liberal’s Paul Martin. How he let himself get tarred by the fallout from Jean Chrétien’s sponsorship scandal never did make sense. Maybe he realized that he would be in worse trouble if he dumped on his predecessor. The one thing you do not do in today’s politics is try to stay above the mud-slinging and let the problem fester.
Mind you, it is not clear yet whether Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff can even play the piano. You could never sell tickets to a classical piano recital by Conservative Stephen Harper but he does do a reasonable honky-tonk. You expect that the Bloc’s Gilles Duceppe can fake it at the keyboard, like he does everything else. The NDP’s Jack Layton would demur as his Toronto Musician’s union card has probably lapsed.
Obviously the parties should have a requirement of a certain level of skill with the piano. If it can be a standard requirement for kindergarten teachers, why not make it a requirement for political leaders. Mind you, on that basis, Mitchell Sharp would have defeated Pierre Trudeau for the leadership of the Liberals in 1968. Sharp was by far the better piano player.
But, we digress. We were talking about the lack of principles in Canadian politics. After an impassioned speech to a group of political people the other evening about this lack of principles, I realized that if I was going to put my money were my mouth is about this issue, I am going to have to be more political and build my case. If you are going to build a case for reform, you also have to have a constituency. That also needs to be built. Which means: I need to make nice with people.
First of all I need to make nice with more citizens of Babel. That means simply: stop making fun of Babel. That is doable, with the proviso that I can still make fun of the mayor. After all, he is really funny.
It means I have to become a joiner. The rule is, you can never change things from outside. That means I need to join the Ontario Liberal Party and stop dissing Dalton McGinty. What I can do is pretend that old friends such as Gerry Phillips and Jimmy Bradley, who are still in the Ontario cabinet, are really running the Ontario government and I can support them because they are capable politicians with a deep respect for Ontario voters.
The new me and Sancho can then gird for battle with the windmills and windbags of politics to reform the degrading system of elitist governance we have been enduring in Canada since Confederation.
More to come in The Democracy Papers: Part II.
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