A Vision for the Country from David Peterson
July 1, 2006 · By kaqchikel
I tuned into TVO for a moment the night before last. There was a panel of prominent politicians, among whom were Preston Manning, Hugh Segal, David Peterson and Allan Blakeney.
It was an interesting discussion for a moment. It focused on leadership and vision for Canada. One comment stood out and is worth recording here, for no national commentator is bound to pick up on it. It came from former Ontario premier, David Peterson, most recently notable for engineering Belinda Stronach’s crossing to the sinking Liberals.
On the topic of vision, Peterson said that “the articulation of a vision (in Canada) cannot be left to the mob.” Ordinary Canadians cannot be trusted, in other words, to know what kind of country they want. The contemptuos Liberal comment means that without the enlightened to tell them what they want, Canadians would simply claim more money, you know, for beer and pop corn.
When Peterson speaks of a useless mob whose lives need to be ran by others, he likely assumes that all Canadians are like Ontarians, for one. The subtext also is, of course, that only the Libranos can articulate a vision for the country.
That’s likely to mean a diminishing role for the country in the world stage, an anaemic military, a decaying medicare, a neglect of families over the predilection of new rights-seeking groups, a shackled bureacracy and politicians doling cash to their friends out of paper bags.
Mr. Peterson’s Liberal vision of Canada is worth pondering on Dominion Day, if only to reject it.
Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca
More interesting was the fact that a paper published by Manning and Harris was deemed scandalous for merely suggesting that the federal government live according to Canada’s basic law; the Constitution of 1982 and the BNA Act upon which it’s based both state that health, education and welfare are in provincial, not federal, jurisdiction. It’s fascinating that the suggestion that the feds get out of health care and return it to the provinces who should be allowed to raised their own taxes to pay for it should be met with such horror. Live according to the law?
The continuous invasion of the feds into areas of provincial jurisdiction (now child care, next a “national nutrition strategy”) is a series of scams willingly undertaked by provincial and federal politicians to claim credit for successes and point fingers when the programmes fail. With no one taking responsibility, the stage is set for the least efficiently run and effective programmes we can doom to mediocrity.
I also loved the way Allan Blakeney fondly recalled Expo 86, the flag debate etc. as some kind of solid vision of Canada when they were no more than matters of Canada’s image. What substantive. achievement can we point to from such vanities as those, Mr. Trudeau’s rose, his pose, his adolescent twirling behind the Queen? Mr. Blakeney seemed unaware of the fact that no one under the age of 50 would even know what “vision” he was talking about!
I should be fair and say that Pierre Trudeau’s martial law order-in-council in October 1970, his sending tanks into the streets of Montreal, his suspension of Habeas Corpus: arresting scores of people and holding them without trial, was arguably successful policy even if it was brutal. After all, there has not been a single political kidnapping or murder in Canada since, and that’s 37 years ago.