Elections are important. At least you would think that would be the case in a liberal democracy like Canada.
But for most of the twentieth century, they simply weren’t. Oh sure elections were called. There were even these things called campaigns. Some people would even get excited and jump up and down. But, for the most part, Canadian elections in the 20th century were pretty much pro forma affairs. Everyone knew that elections were a nuisance and held only to affirm the dominance of the Natural Government Party and its policies. There was never any serious prospect of change.
Usually, the only ballot question was just how big the Liberal majority was going to be.
But in 2006, an election did matter. A new party was elected. The shock of that event was bad enough on election night but it was only when the Tories were actually sworn in that the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the chattering classes really got going.
Two memes – double standards and litmus tests – emerged as talking points almost immediately and have continued ever since.
The double standard meme got an immediate workout with David Emerson (remember him?) crossing the floor from the Liberals to the Tories. In the Liberal view, events like that went against the natural order of the universe. Only Tories were allowed to cross the floor to the Liberals. The fact that MPs and their provincial confrères cross the floor all the time was conveniently forgotten. as was the fact that even Winston Churchill, the greatest Briton of the 20th century, crossed the floor not once but twice!
An event that would have been a one day wonder under a Liberal government but went on ad nauseum under the Tories.
The most recent example of the double standard in action was the sound and fury signifying nothing over the Tories’ decision to prorogue Parliament. The fact that prorogation had been used as a tactic to avoid unpleasantness as recently as Jean Chretien in 2003(when he prorogued Parliament to avoid receiving the Auditor General’s report into the sponsorgate scandal) was conveniently ignored.
So again, what is okay for Liberals to do automatically somehow becomes illegitimate when Tories do it.
The second meme to appear was use of litmus tests against Tory appointees. The usual screech heard is that so and so is against gay marriage. The shock, the horror! Implicit in this argument is the idea that Tory appointees are somehow congenitally too stupid, too reactionary, and/or too unprofessional to serve Queen and country. What an astonishing ad hominem attack on those seeking pubic service.
Lately this litmus has taken a distinctly unsavoury direction. For example, in the ongoing contre temps over the revolting civil servants at Rights and Democracy, some bloggers and pundits have pointed out that one of the Tory appointees is – wait for it – a CHRISTIAN(queue appropriate weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth). Apparently Michael van Pelt is president of the ‘fundamentalist’ think tank CARDUS.
Apparently for some in the punditocracy and for Liberal intelligentsia actual belief – rather than a pro forma nod to the peons now and again – has become an absolute bar to public service. Tommy Douglas must be spinning in his grave right about now.
Now, I’ve actually had a good look at the CARDUS website
{CARDUS is) a new name for a growing organization! The Cardus was an ancient north-south road that connected the people of Roman cities to their major public spaces. Our wide-angle periodicals, policies and punditry come together for a renewed vision of public life, up and down the Cardus—the Main Street.
In the 2009 edition of their magazine, Policy in Public, their feature article went like this:
In our main feature, Cardus Senior Fellow and former newspaper executive Peter Menzies outlines how alternative media forms are as transforming to our public discourse as was the invention of the printing press only centuries ago. To Menzies, this rings some alarm bells: the erosion of journalism standards is lessening public trust, and encouraging an emergent form of tribalism in which individuals consume only media forms that reinforce narrow identities—all of which lessen the caliber of our public conversation.
Now my antennae twitch at the faintest taint of fundamentalism and all I say about CARDUS is that if this qualifies as fundamentalism then we need a lot more of it in our public discourse.
In any case, to my mind this sort of attack – raising a person’s private life in order to attack their public service – breaks one of the major unwritten rules of the Canadian norm. A politician’s private life is just that, private.
I mean we’ve had some real oddities in public service in this country. Liberal Mackenzie King, a talking to his dead dog takes the cake but he is Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister. Tory Richard Hatfield, the late Premier of New Brunswick, was rumoured to have a taste for chicken. That didn’t stop him from being elected Premier time and again. A few reporters tried to make hay on the back of Vic Toews divorce but those stories were quickly spiked and the topic was not raised again.
Essentially with the application of these kinds of litmus tests, to serve the public in any sort of official capacity, a person must accept the Canadian ‘consensus’ or the Canadian ‘way of doing things’ This is know as Liberal Party policy. If you dare to have a different viewpoint and still have the gall to put yourself forward, you are cast into the outer darkness as an ideologue, a misogynist, or, worse, a supporter of Israel.
Needless to say the application of these two memes delegitmizes and demonizes Tories and their appointees, cheapens public service and discourse and results in a poisonous brew indeed.
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