Go ahead and ask them now, some weeks later, what the political landscape of Canada is. It features nothing the Group of Seven might have done except for the map with its abstract political colours. Harper is blue, Ignatieff is red, Layton is orange and May is green. Let's ponder these colours. Green is the colour of life, Orange is the colour of Hollander royalty, red is the colour of life (but also Soviets and the dying Maple Leaf). Blue is the colour of disenchantment, also of life, and thirdly of lack of options.
Since the election has been announced there has been a deafening silence about the government deficit and the global depression (or recession if you're an optimist, or end of capitalism if you're an alarmist) and everyone opened volleys of 'family politics' and other types of sensationalism. In this country you do not play politics on weighty issues. Let me explain: families, in Canada, are doing well. Most families are in the easy-to-control low-to-mid middle class, relatively wealthy, perhaps overspending on credit, but doing well and employed, with an exception rate of less than 10%. This comes out to maybe 15,000 out-of-work families facing destitution or hard times, probably half that and maybe even less than that. There is no particular zone of concentration as in the '90s. The east coast probably can be weighted a little.
What makes this weak politics is that this group of people is easy to hoodwink. They think their fair taxes are monolithic tithes to the state. All an aspiring prime minister has to do is promise that these taxes will be reinvested into the middle class family background that pays the majority of them. It goes without saying that the poverty line does not discriminate between families and individuals, but families are more important. Help them, and help yourself to a political majority. This is all theory, but the parties have acted on it as if it were a rule.
So each of the big three politicians started election season by flogging family politics. Some friends of mine distilled it thusly: Conservatives meant a straight family with not even a gay child, while the Liberals and NDP would help any family. Never mind the family unit is the sort of ancient structure that is known to be able to survive all kinds of nonsense. Maybe in the 'post-industrial' era families are endangered or suddenly overwhelmed by the corporate world structure. Anyways, because in most countries all people come from families, they are the safest bet for politics, and that is why for weeks there were shameless attempts by each party to win this faction over.
This is how majority politics works. I have no idea how these aspiring governments are planning to fund their extravagant family subsidies, but it will probably include wasteful consulting, forms in triplicate, and a communications blackout. Nearsightedness is a curse on the populace, but a blessing to the politicians.
As for the recent G20 implications about Tony Clement: I cannot believe that people care so much. We already knew the G20 thing in Toronto was a fantastic boondoggle which implicated all of Canada to be a hybrid anarcho-fascist state filled with people filled with self-righteousness. And damn the tax-payer! Shameful scenes like those should never be repeated, and lets leave the considerations of responsibility and blame until the election has happened. We already know it was a fumble the rest of the world hardly took notice of.
Can we move on? Can we attempt to stop bleeding money? Can we move beyond niche politics and onto larger issues? Canada, we cannot keep on with the flogging of dead horses. We cannot think of ourselves at the foremost of each and every issue. We cannot substitute our future for our present, but of course that's a lesson we'll learn in five years, give or take. We cannot fix our ignorant and apathetic public and we cannot solve the problem that exists when only families and the aging segment of the population are seen as important, and only for political reasons (so, Grandma, don't listen to those whippersnappers who see you as a vote not a person - and don't be surprised when the brightest of your kids leave for the States).
Canada, and every country even remotely like it, exist in the political stone-age where cause-celebre politics poison everything and a coherent discourse is impossible. Most of the time people are bashing Harper. A minority Conservative government is not the end of the world, but I still think we should hand Jack Layton a minority and see what he does with it. And the establishment should stop dumping on Elizabeth May and the Greens. They've had a hard enough time coming up with a coherent platform, and may have it assembled the day before another Conservative minority is voted into power.
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