Elder Advice

Thinking Inside the Box - 157

Could be worse. Not sure how, but it could be.”— Eeyore

Honestly. I started more than a half dozen Elder Advices since the last one was posted. And scrapped each one as the increasingly bizarre events of the past five weeks overtook them.

“Please be patient with me – I am from the 1900s”. Elder Advice was being sarcastic when he made that request to an overeager 20-something at the door trying to court his vote in Canada’s upcoming federal election. The young man seemed unwilling to accept that I had already got to the point, and was waiting impatiently for him to arrive.

The point is there only a single issue in this election: What is Canada to do with the new reality that the United States is now an unpredictable and unreliable presence in the world? The answer to that question is not informed by anything Trump says. That Trump is a profoundly ignorant and incoherent bad faith actor is incontestable and on full display in his public statements, every day. He is, at bottom, a useful idiot for those who actually implement policy. The real question for Canadians is whether those people are collectively intent on abandoning the essential features of decades of co-operative bilateral arrangements, including the treaties governing use of the Great Lakes, continental military cooperation, and even the 1846 Treaty of Oregon which established the 49th parallel as the Canada/US border. And whether they are actually serious about pursuing an economic war. All for the sinister purpose of ultimately absorbing this country.

Elder Advice is beginning to think America was a good idea that has now got entirely out of hand.

Memes are delightful but no substitute for action by serious grown-ups. The one above, while far more amusing, is not much different from the profoundly juvenile government of Canada ad now making the media rounds, which mindlessly exhorts us to “Choose Canada”. Presumably by “buying maple leafs” and continuing to be our “local adventure-loving”selves, which is how the ad incoherently describes Canadians and what we apparently spend our time doing. Which is also confusing to Elder Advice because he understood, from this same government, that we are irredeemably racist, genocidal, colonial settlers in a post-national state, with no core identity. Anyway, it now appears from the polls that the majority of Canadian voters have found the government responsible for this pathetic call to armchairs is deserving of another term in office.

As one of my favourite clients, a former executive at Enron, Bre-X and Theranos mused this week -”You people are going to keep these guys in business? Really?”

Elder Advice frankly despairs.

The potential re-election of the dead-tired, scandal-ridden, economically-illiterate, principle-free, performative-preferring Liberal government, complete with exactly the same collection of Justin-appointed ministerial lemons, has even Gilly bristling. Or perhaps it was my neighbour’s comment that the country is “going to the dogs” - when it is increasingly clear that would be an improvement.

The thought of another 4 years of bungling by this same unserious gang, with their proven track record of offering no solutions to the real problems, is more than dispiriting. Affordability of housing and food, national security, economic diversification and productivity, availability of health care, unjustifiable wealth disparity. Those are the real problems that require attention, thought and hard work to resolve and would have been the priorities of any government animated by the desire to serve the public as opposed to personal or partisan interests. And they will not be solved by the people who, until January, did not even think of addressing the unconstitutional barriers that have, for decades, strangled interprovincial trade. To the point where toilet seats are subject to individual provincial regulations. Really.

That said, at this critical moment, the only feasible alternative is a party apparently intent on fighting some other election. The failure of Conservatives to recognize there is now only one issue in this debacle is inexcusable. And for Poilievre, his ongoing failure to focus on meeting even the low bar of demonstrating that he will be no less competent than Carney in responding to the new America, given the limited options available to us, is unforgivable. And has reduced Elder Advice to a level of despondency he has not known since Justin was elected.

So, instead of the adult conversation Canadians need and deserve as to how the political class proposes to enable the critical economic pivot needed to reduce US control of our economy and what trade-offs the federal government will have to make to do it; instead of looking us in the collective eye and honestly disclosing what sacrifices Canadians will all need to make in the face of existential risk; instead of committing to an environment of governance which is no longer deferential to process and dedicated to infinite listening but rather to timely decision-making and action, Canadians have been offered the depressing spectacle of both Liberals and Conservatives trotting out the usual election pablum, including tax breaks.

Elder Advice? I am on record in the last election, saying: “By all means tell me the alternative would be no better: just don’t try to persuade me it would be any worse. Elder Advice acknowledges the Liberals and Conservatives are, at bottom, two cheeks of the same ass. But, in this election, it is time to throw these bums out.”¹ And that same advice probably applies now. But, to be perfectly candid - as Elder Advice invariably is - Canadians who are contacted by pollsters and candidates this time around should at least insist they record your current voting preference as: “None of the above”. Perhaps an early message of widespread public fury will galvanize those pandering for votes into some useful action.

Soon after Confederation in 1867, the New York Times had this to say: "When the experiment of the "Dominion'“ shall have failed, as fail it must, a process of peaceful absorption will give Canada her proper place in the Great American Republic”.

We have shown them wrong for 158 years. But if we expect to make it to 161 we need real leadership and better governance than what is now on offer.

1. Elder Advice 74