Time to say goodbye

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

The turning leaves tell us about change; the need for it and the importance of making change at the right time. 

Autumn leaves turn colour then drop to make room for a new generation that will continue the work of the trees they serve. They’ve done their best and accept that their work will be carried on by new growth.

Political leaders need to accept the same reasoning. They don’t and very few resign when they should. 

They don’t for a variety of reasons, fearing loss of power, loss of money, and loss of relevance. Also, they don’t resign when they should because they fear their leaving will be seen as an admission of having done wrong, or at least not doing everything they had promised to do.

Two that should resign now are Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario premier Doug Ford. 

Trudeau has had his time - eight years leading the federal government – and a majority of Canadians no longer want him around. A poll by Nano Research shows that only 20 per cent of respondents believe he should lead his governing Liberal party into the next general election.

Another poll reports that just 27 per cent of Canadians think the country is headed in the right direction. 

Trudeau became prime minister as a celebrity candidate and probably the least qualified person in the country’s history to take on the role. He no doubt did the things he thought best, making some good decisions and some bad for the country and its citizens.

He now has family problems that need his attention more than the country does. An easy and honourable way out is to step up to a microphone and say supporting family is more important than politics.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s approval rating has seen its largest dip since he took office five years ago. He currently ranks last in popularity among Canadian premiers. Recent polling shows his approval rating at 28 per cent, a drastic drop from 69 per cent in March 2020.

He now finds himself mired in a scandal that refuses to go away. His government’s decision to remove 7,400 acres from the environmentally-protected Greenbelt zone surrounding the Greater Toronto area has resulted in heavy criticism. It forced the resignation of his housing minister who Ontario’s ethics commission said broke ethics  rules.

Ford has sloughed off criticism saying the land is needed for affordable housing. However, he has said repeatedly in the past that his government would not develop the protected lands.

There are alternatives to building housing on farmland, which the 2021 Census on Agriculture suggests Ontario is losing at a rate of 319 acres a day. It is difficult understand what Ford hopes to achieve by breaking his word on such a sensitive topic.

All this follows criticism of Ontario’s handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, health care in general, care of seniors and reducing funds for education.

Trudeau and Ford need to be replaced by new types of leaders. Leaders who are committed to something bigger than themselves and gaining votes for their political parties.

Our political party system has become one of opposition instead of co-operation. We need new leaders who are less beholding to their parties and more tuned into the voices of the people and their needs.

The world is changing dramatically and facing the difficult issues of climate change, pandemics, growing authoritarianism and inequality. Today’s leaders must have new approaches to the rapidly changing world and the ability to inspire diverse groups of people to work with them.

The world in which Trudeau and Ford were elected five to eight years ago now is a different place. There is a trend toward weakening democracies and access to information that have left general populations with less say.

There is no shame in stepping aside now and being replaced by people with new approaches and new visions. Leaders who seek solutions by listening to the common people who are the ones most affected by the changes we see now, and more change that is likely in the future.

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 There are times when we must risk the consequences and tell a friend that he or she is doing wrong. Canada has reached one of those times.

It’s time for Justin Trudeau, the prime minister who falls in love with every microphone and camera he meets, to tell U.S. President Joe Biden to get aggressive and take real action to end his country’s gun insanity.

Mind your own business, Biden and other Americans likely will say.

Unfortunately, it has become our business. The U.S. gun obsession is pouring hundreds of illegal guns into our country where they are being used in crimes. Crimes in which Canadians are dying.

Ontario police data shows that 73 per cent of guns used in Ontario crimes come from the United States. 

Toronto, which had more than 300 shootings last year, is a major destination for guns smuggled from the U.S. 

“Our problem in Toronto [is] handguns from the United States,” Toronto Police Service Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw told Canadian parliamentarians during hearings on gun violence in February 2022. Eighty-six per cent of crime handguns that were able to be sourced were from the United States, he said.

Just a week or so ago police busted a gun smuggling ring and seized 173 firearms, many of them handguns. Most were being smuggled from the United States.

Three of the firearms possessed by the man who shot and killed 22 Nova Scotians in 2020 were smuggled from Maine in the back of his pickup truck.

Guns from the U.S. often are smuggled by trucks or boats, but innovative ways of transport also are being used. Last year police in southern Ontario recovered from a tree a drone carrying 11 smuggled handguns.  

Statista Research reports that in 2021 the U.S. gun industry manufactured 13.8 million new firearms. Some were sold to other countries, some were smuggled into countries like Canada and the rest stayed in the U.S. where roughly 40,000 people a year are killed with guns.

Already this year, which is not yet four months old, there have been 13,000 gun deaths in the U.S., almost 10,000 injuries and 162 mass shootings. Those are not up-to-date figures because people are shot and wounded or killed almost every hour in the U.S.

American politicians have been unwilling or unable to legislate strict controls on firearms, including semi-automatic assault style rifles that shoot bullets capable of piercing body armour. They won’t act because too many of them fear losing their seats, although a majority of Americans say they favour stricter gun controls.

Fear is what drives America’s obsession with guns. They feared “Indian attacks” during the almost 400 years it took to colonize a continent owned and occupied by Indigenous peoples. They feared uprisings and attacks between opposing forces during and after the 1860s civil war.

Today Americans fear being victims of street violence, so they arm themselves with more guns. Almost one-half of Americans own at least one firearm, and not because they enjoy hunting or target shooting.

Many Americans own and carry a handgun because they feel they need to protect themselves against fellow Americans. 

Many do not have enough firearms knowledge and training to handle anything more than a cap gun. Several hundred a year accidentally shoot themselves. 

Take the reported case of the Georgia guy who shot himself in the leg while holstering his pistol as he dressed for an outing. The outing? He was going for an hour or two of relaxation at his favourite cigar lounge. 

Why anyone would need a SIG Sauer P320 pistol on his belt to go to a cigar lounge is beyond comprehension.

Suggesting Trudeau complain to Biden about lack of action on American gun insanity is probably not a great idea. Even if followed it would not achieve much.Some Americans are suggesting that one way to get action is to boycott school attendance. Stop sending kids to school until lawmakers pass effective gun control laws.

Boycotts? Now there’s an idea. Maybe boycotting American products, visits and other contact is something for Canadians to consider as a way of protesting how U.S. gun production is killing Canadians.

 Dusk is falling over the federal election campaign. Soon it will be dark, the campaigning over, and an election result presumably known Monday night. 

But after listening to all the promises, all the hyperbole and examination of the issues, I’m still wondering why one of the real issues troubling Canada has not been whispered.

That issue starts with ’se’ and ends with ’ism’.

If you are thinking separatism, you are wrong. Talk of Quebec separation has been around since the beginning and will be with us long into the future.

I’m thinking sectionalism, in which groups of us huddle tightly into our own sections, thinking less and understanding less, about the lives our fellow Canadians huddled in their own sections.

Canada is one of the world’s most sectionalized nations. Look around. There’s Atlantic Canada, Central Canada, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North. All sectionalized by geology or language, culture or climate.

Atlantic Canada is off on its own, separated from Ontario and the West by Quebec with its French language and culture. The Prairie provinces are sectionalized by the vast wilderness of Northwestern Ontario and the Rocky Mountains which leave B.C. perched alone on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Above all this is the barely populated North, separated mainly by geology and climate.

None of this is new. Canada always has been like this. 

However, it seems that the different sections, or regions, of our country are losing touch with each other. We don’t know each other as well as we used to and each section has been going its own way with less thought about the concerns, problems and dreams of the others.

This certainly has affected our politics. Our federal politics are controlled by one section – Central Canada. Sure, we elect MPs from all parts of Canada, but the power and decisions really lie with people from Central Canada, which is southern Ontario and Quebec.

For instance, the three politicians with any chance of becoming prime minister next week – Justin Trudeau, Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh - all are products of the Central Canadian core: Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.

In the last 100 years, 11 of 14 prime ministers have been from Central Canada. Richard Bennett was from New Brunswick (1930-1935), Alberta’s Joe Clark served less than a year in 1979-80 and Kim Campbell of B.C. did less than six months in 1993.

What our country needs is more ideas and more leadership from all sections of the country. We also need to know more about each other, and understand each other, so it becomes easier for us to work together.

Despite the marvels of modern communication technology, Canadians know less about each other than in the past.

Two years ago, Historica Canada, an organization dedicated to enhancing awareness of the country's history and citizenship, conducted a survey that shows just how little we know about ourselves and our history.

Sixty-seven per cent of those who completed the survey got a failing grade. 

Scores were particularly poor for questions about Canadian science and innovation. Most test takers did not know that the world’s first Internet archive and the Jolly Jumper baby exercise swing were Canadian inventions.

I suppose it is not critical that we all know that, or that most Historica survey takers did not know that the first recorded instance of Hallowe’en costume dressing in North America was documented in Vancouver in 1898. But knowing more about other regions and their people, even if it is just trivia, helps us to understand each other.

Complicating Canada’s sectionalism problem is the fact that most of the sections hug the American border. A majority of Canadians live within 160 kilometres of the U.S. border and have a huge amount of their facts, opinions, and ideas influenced by American culture.

We need to work at ensuring a unified Canadian identity and increasing sectionalism will not help us to do that. Allowing sectionalism to grow will make Canada a series of islands that do what they think best for themselves instead of the overall country.

Sectionalism is not the biggest issue we have considering what we’ve been going through with Covid and climate change. It is, however, something worth thinking about.

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Time to fix the RCMP

The prime minister was right on cue. Out in front of the microphone and cameras, promising more gun control in the wake of the Nova Scotia massacres.

He said the government had been on the verge of banning assault-style weapons but was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

It was interesting that he appeared to link the Nova Scotia killings and assault weapons. The RCMP had not said what type of weapon was used in the murderous rampage. In fact, it hadn’t said much at all about the most horrific Canadian mass murder in modern times.

It took the force’s senior management almost a week to give the public any details of the massacres, including a vague reference to the killer having a pistol and long guns.

The RCMP’s failure to properly inform the public throughout this incident is indicative of the dysfunction within the federal police force.

That dysfunction has been obvious for years, yet the force’s senior management and their federal government political bosses have failed to take action or even acknowledge it.

The Nova Scotia mass killings, which included the shooting of RCMP constable Heidi Stevenson, a 48-year-old mother of two, once again reflect the problems within the RCMP and the consequences on its members and the public.

Three years ago, the force was found guilty of failing to provide its officers with proper use-of-force equipment and training. That labour code charge was laid after five officers were gunned down by a madman in Moncton, N.B. in June 2014. Three of the officers died.

That tragedy followed the shooting deaths of four RCMP officers by another madman in Mayerthorpe, Alberta in 2005. There were calls for a judicial inquiry to find answers to safety questions raised by that incident, but they were ignored.

For years now the RCMP has been accused by its own members of bullying, sexual harassment, failure to provide proper training and equipment and of incompetence in the senior ranks. RCMP leadership and governing politicians have said either not much is wrong, or that they are studying the situation.

Urgent action is needed before more officers are driven half-crazy by harassment, or forced to quit because of bullying, or are shot because their bosses are either uncaring or too incompetent to protect them properly.

One ray of hope for change is the Federal Court of Canada certification earlier this year of a $1.1-billion class action lawsuit against the RCMP, alleging harassment and bullying.

The class action was filed by current and former members of the force. The Federal Court’s certification means that the lawsuit can proceed.

That lawsuit should throw considerable light on the turmoil within the RCMP and the reasons for it. Many officers and former officers blame the force’s leadership, which is hidebound to decades-old traditions and practices.

Canadians should not have to wait for a costly class action lawsuit to see some action in fixing the long-standing problems within the RCMP. Global News earlier this year estimated that various lawsuits, human rights complaints and other inquiries into RCMP problems have already cost taxpayers $220 million over the past two decades.

These complaints have been well documented and reported in the media over many years. They are not just whining from malcontents. They are real problems destroying morale and respect and confidence in the police force.

The real shame is that the people hurt most by the force’s dysfunction are the people who are not causing it – the frontline officers who diligently do their risky work as commanded by bosses following leadership patterns totally unsuitable for a modern police force.

The front-line officers are the ones who sometimes can’t do their jobs properly, or quit because they can’t take the toxic working atmosphere or even commit suicide because they have become so depressed.

If I were Justin Trudeau, I would call the entire RCMP leadership into a meeting and ask them to explain why they should not all be fired. I would also refocus my mind to understand that more gun control is a far lesser issue than the dysfunction consuming the RCMP.

The RCMP dysfunction has been evident to both Liberal and Conservative governments. It must be ended to restore Canadians’ pride in what once was a national treasure.

Mindless Bickering Returns

The politicians are back on Parliament Hill apparently having learned little from October’s general election.

It seems to me that we voters told them clearly that we want an end to mindless partisan bickering. Stop saying and doing things designed only to get more votes. Stop the unintelligent cheap shots. Seek compromise and work constructively on behalf of the people. 

It was too much to hope for, judging by some of the news generated by the return of Parliament. Take for example the mindless criticism of the new prime minister over the fact that taxpayers are paying for two nannies to help with his three young children.

That began when the CBC reported that the Trudeaus have two nannies paid between $15 and $20 an hour for day work, and $11 to $13 an hour for night work. The report criticized Trudeau for this because he had said during the election campaign that wealthy families like his should not receive government handouts to help raise their kids. He said he and wife Sophie would donate their federal Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) to charity.

It seemed odd that the report came from the CBC, which had worked so vigorously to defeat Stephen Harper and elect Trudeau. At any rate, other media and opposition politicians jumped in.

Some media labelled the so-called scandal Nannygate (will we ever stop tagging anything even slightly controversial as something ‘gate’). Some opposition politicians called the prime minister a hypocrite for saying the wealthy should not receive  the UCCB, then have taxpayers pay for his two nannies.

Let’s all take a deep breath and give our heads a shake. Being prime minister is a job, an incredibly busy job. The job comes with a salary and benefit package that includes staff such as drivers, housekeepers and other assistants, including nannies. All recent prime ministers with young children have had nannies as part of their salary and benefit package.

The child care benefit is not part of a salary package. It is for all Canadians who qualify. That’s why it is called the Universal Child Care Benefit. Lumping it in with a job benefit is disingenuous. 

Criticizing the prime minister for it is unwarranted and silly. It is the type of political manipulation that we told the politicians we want them to stop.
There will be many reasons and opportunities to criticize the new prime minister and his government as time goes on. We could start with the fact that Canada sent 383 people to the Paris summit on climate change, all expenses paid by the taxpayer. The U.S. sent 148, the UK 96 and Australia 46. 

Canada is back all right, but hopefully not back to bigger spending, bigger deficits and bigger tax increases.

Taxpayers voted for change, not only in government but in the attitudes of the politicians. They want a progressive opposition that holds the government accountable, and one that works constructively to create better programs and services for the people.

Mindless criticisms about nannies are misguided and not a hopeful sign for constructive change. Neither was the start of the throne speech debate in Parliament Monday.

Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose initially took a constructive approach to the debate. She promised that the opposition would be the taxpayers’ watchdog, and praised Trudeau for revising his overzealous plan to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by Dec. 31.

However, she slipped back into old-style cheap shot political rhetoric, saying that while world leaders were ramping up their efforts to defeat ISIS, Trudeau was posing for selfies at international conferences.

Treasury Board President Scott Brison returned the insult by saying that the defeated Conservative government was one of the biggest, most wasteful governments in Canadian history. Whether that is true, or false, or somewhere in between is hardly relevant now. 

To which Ambrose shot back: "It's been 25 minutes and the sunny ways are over." That was a reference to Trudeau’s Oct. 19 election victory speech in which he said sunny ways - positive politics – achieve good things.

So much for real change in political behaviour.


Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y 

Canada's Unworthy Leadership

The early days of this marathon federal election campaign confirm a sad fact: none of the party leaders is worthy of leading Canadians.

Not one has displayed the courage needed to shake the addiction of serving their political parties and their self interests, instead of the people. None has had the grit to reject toxic politics and personal attacks as tactics for getting elected.

Their policy thoughts are based on information drawn from their most trusted sources: the pollsters, spin doctors, lobbyists and media manipulators.

Canada, like the United States, has lost over the last few decades the concept of servant leadership. At one time political service was an honour and a duty. Thomas Jefferson, author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, envisioned a government of citizen farmers serving fellow citizens for four years, then returning to their farms.

Now political service is a career, a job that provides good salary, plenty of perks and prestige and excellent pension. All three federal main party leaders – Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau – are career politicians. Their skills are political skills directed at gaining and retaining power for their parties.

The problem of having career politicians should be obvious. Because they have no other career (and future retirement income) to fall back on, they must devote more effort and energy to getting re-elected. That means less effort and energy to devote to serving the people.

Servant leadership means putting all others above yourself. It means understanding the interests and needs of your followers and listening actively to what they have to say. It grows from the kind of humility demonstrated by Mahatma Ghandi, who walked among his people in homespun clothes. And from  Pope Francis washing the feet of convicted criminals.

It is not that the country lacks leadership. Much good leadership is found outside political arenas. Leaders in industry and business know that cynicism, incivility and belittling their competitors do not grow their enterprises. They understand that gathering diverse views, pursuing change unrestricted by party tenets, and accepting compromise are building blocks for success.

Many of those leaders want no personal involvement in politics that have become too partisan to achieve much of anything.

Howard Schultz, self-made billionaire and Starbucks chairman, gave us some insights into this problem recently when he wrote a piece for New York Times in which he said he would not enter the U.S. presidential election fray.

“Our nation has been profoundly damaged by a lack of civility and courage in Washington, where leaders of both parties have abdicated their responsibility to forge reasonable compromises . . . .”

The times in which we live demand strong leaders which we don’t have and are unlikely to have soon. Unfortunately it will take a dire crisis for the best leadership to step forward. It has happened before: The Second World War produced Britain’s Winston Churchill. The Depression years brought forward C. D. Howe in Canada.

We need people like these to pull us all together. We need leaders who will spend all their energy working together and building consensus.

We have three mainstream parties in Canada capable of forming a federal government.  But ours is becoming a one-party system in which the winner forms a government with the principal goal of getting re-elected and the losers spend their time undercutting it.

We need a return to a democracy where there are no winners and no losers. Just elected citizens working on behalf of all Canadians.

That’s a pipe dream right now. The October federal election will produce much of the same old, same old. It might be in a different form, with perhaps a minority New Democrat government held up by the Liberals.

And then all the barking will begin anew as each party tries to knock the other out of the way and gain sole ownership of the government.

It probably doesn’t matter who wins and who loses. The bureaucrats (remember when they were called public servants) will keep the country running.  Hey, look at Italy, or better still Greece, the cradle of our democracy.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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