Continuing Canadian Context

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.