Pickleball. Wildly popular, Elder Advice understands, except among those living close to the courts on which it is played. A Chilliwack, British Columbia, couple were reportedly so fed up with the noise from the pickleball courts next to their house, and the resulting damage to their hearing, that they went on a hunger strike in an effort to force the city to shut the courts down. While most sports carry a risk of injury which heightens their attraction to players, only this one seems to limit the risk to non-participants.
Elder Advice, as you would expect, has a solution. A modest modification to the name of the sport and to the ball with which it is played. Using the “Pickelhaube”, shown below, instead of the traditional plastic multi-holed pickleball, solves both problems. The sport remains essentially the same except for the level of apprehension when you are on the receiving end of a serve. As for that Chilliwack couple and those like them, Elder Advice predicts that, over time, use of the Pickelhaube will moot their issue by drastically reducing the number of players.
The Pickelhaube has been around since the mid-19th century. While even Bismarck acknowledged its value as military equipment was entirely ornamental, Elder Advice believes its functionality in the civil realm is virtually endless. Primarily as a suppository for the deserving. The central question in each case being: how violently should it be inserted?
This week alone Elder Advice identified a number of candidates.
Everyone at Public Services and Procurement Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and Canada Border Services Agency - those institutions responsible for the federal government's gross mismanagement and contracting practices related to the ArriveCan app. Which the new Auditor-General described as: “ … probably the first example that I've seen such a glaring disregard for some of the most basic and fundamental policies and rules."
GC Strategies Inc., you may recall, is the tiny company that the federal government has awarded 140 contracts worth a total of $258 million since the Liberals took power in 2015. These are the people responsible for delivery of the ArriveCan app in 2020. An app intended to track health and contact information for people entering Canada during the pandemic and to digitize customs and immigration declarations, the cost of ArriveCan ballooned from $80,000 to an estimated $60,000,000 amid allegations of widespread incompetence, fraud, bribery and corruption. An app that wrongly obliged thousands of Canadians to quarantine unnecessarily. An app for which the name “ArriveCan’t” would be more apt.
PHAC is the same public institution whose disclosure in a 1000+-page financial report in 2023 identified $150 million of public money lost and unrecoverable “due to an offence, illegal act or accident”, specifically, an “unfulfilled contract by a vendor”. A public institution which has since refused to provide either further information about the issue, or an explanation as to why it will not. And the same public institution responsible for credentialing two Chinese scientists employed by the People’s Liberation Army to enter Canada’s previously most secure Level 4 infectious disease facility - the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. Then revoking their security clearances in 2019. Then invoking national security concerns in refusing to provide further information or explanation. The herculean struggle to avoid releasing relevant documents included the Liberals taking the Speaker to Court, the Liberal government being found in contempt of Parliament and, eventually, a special committee of MPs and three retired judges being tasked to examine the documents and advise whether any should be redacted or kept entirely from the prying public eye. It turns out, virtually none. What the government insisted were national security concerns, the committee found are, in fact, merely concerns about institutional embarrassment for PHAC.
Elder Advice has long been concerned about the decline in the public’s trust in expertise, its faith in governmental institutions and the increasing reluctance to hold anyone accountable for failure. The last thing we need are further illustrations as to why that decline may be justified. A 2023 Privy Council Office poll, only released in January 2024 through an Access to Information Act request, depressingly demonstrated that 60 to 70 per cent of Canadians no longer believe the country’s public institutions - local, provincial, national and financial - are capable of making decisions that benefit the public. The normalization of dysfunction cannot be acceptable. Neither can the refusal to impose individual responsibility for avoidable failure. The public has quite enough to manage already, given the erosion of the power of conversation and compromise, the fracturing of society by misinformation and the increasing inability to identify sources of reliable knowledge.
Elder Advice shared his thoughts this week with one of his favourite clients. You will remember him from a past posting. He is partially sighted - the victim of a tragic childhood accident involving a pop-up book about giraffes. But we see eye to eye on this issue.
His very different choice for the painful Pickelhaube prescription was Tucker Carlson: the very definition of “a useful idiot”. If I have to watch that video clip of him extolling the virtues of Russian shopping carts one more time, even the gratifying visual of a “Pickelhaubing” will not be enough. Is it just Elder Advice or does everyone know enough about human anatomy to appreciate that the useless bit of flesh on the end of Tucker Carlson’s penis is Tucker Carlson? Elder Advice is just asking questions.
Anyway, no doubt each of you has your own nomination. And we could all use the entertainment in these increasingly uncertain times. So send Elder Advice a Comment letting him know who and why.
I’ll sharpen the Pickelhaube while I’m waiting.
I nominate Justin Trudeau whose government is directly responsible for the ArriveScsm fiasco and so many others. Indeed, he should be acclaimed.