Worth the Fee to Read It

Yesterday the Federal Liberals were all over their latest attempt to smear a little mud on the Government with the Cadman affair. I’m not going to weigh in on whether this is an attempt to rub two Liberal Leadership candidates together and get a little smoke going, or whether there is a burning fire here waiting to erupt from underground and consume the Harper benches. I don’t think that’s the point.

The point that is waiting out in the wings is this: to the extent that most Canadians spend any time thinking about Federal politics, they expect this sort of slime attack to be taking place. The net effect, if I am right about this, is that aside from a first week blip in the inevitable polls everything will settle right back down to the stalemate we’ve been living with in voting intentions since prior to election night 2006. In other words, a lot of sound and fury, agitated electrons galore carrying radio and television coverage, and another chunk of boreal forest consumed spewing out newsprint, and all for nothing.

The Liberals Need Dirt to Stick to the Conservatives: Auberge Grand-Mère, the APEC Conference, HRDC, $2,000,000,000 for an incomplete gun registry, and then the Sponsorship programme (just to name a few) have collectively established that the Liberal Party is filled with people who treat the state and the assets of the Canadian people as something akin to their personal and party property. We came, under the Chrétien years, to understand that the trough was filled, they were at it, and we could all just get stuffed. Upon taking office, Prime Minister Martin acted against expectations by calling the Gomery inquiry, hoping to stuff the tarnish onto his predecessor and leave his own hands clean, but, as we saw, the tarnish was on the lot of them, whether involved directly or not. There is an old saying — the fish rots from the head — and the Canadian people smelled the stink right down to the tail.

But Canadians didn’t expect anything better from the Conservatives. The tarnish now applies not just to the Liberals, but to all members of all parties. It is politics that is tarnished. Moreover, the tarnish is reinforced and reapplied daily: a steady diet of strong statements, refusals to engage in answering questions, never-ending election fever, electioneering and games of “chicken”, coupled with the school-yard antics of Question Period, have soured Canadians on their political system. This, I think, explains the refusal of young Canadians to actually use their franchise (my own daughter announced last night, when I mentioned she’d be able to vote after her birthday this year, that she has no intention of ever going to a polling place and [in her words] encouraging the idiots), the sheer lack of interest in recent elections, the stifled yawns at yet another threat of an election federally, and the loss of expectation that anything will be done or improve. We are as a citizenry fundamentally disengaged from the hypocrisy and ranting that is politics today.

Now there are those for whom the great game is exactly that: a game, where pieces are moved, feints unleashed, forces mobilised, manoeuvres undertaken and advances hopefully won. But this is trench warfare as in World War I, not an opportunity to Blitzkreig as in World War II. No one is thought to be worth a risk, no one is expected to do better, so the outcome remains a stalemate. So, I predict, it will be “post-Cadman”.

(Interesting to note that even the ground troops for the parties seem disengaged: I live in one of the four ridings holding a by-election on March 17, a mere fortnight and a bit away. Not a single piece of literature has as yet been dropped; the doorbell hasn’t rung once. Considering that all the parties would be able to draw upon their resources in the riding associations across the region and concentrate them on this one battle I find it amazing that, two months after the first signs popped up on lawns in the riding, no one has as yet paid a call. That suggests to me that getting ground support is an issue in its own right.)

Responsible government — Canada’s invention to make Crown-in-Parliament responsive to the citizenry as opposed to élites making accommodations amongst themselves — has been dead for at least two full generations; its last tattered remnants were swept contemptuously aside with the arrival of Pierre “MPs are nobodies off the Hill” Trudeau in 1968. Since then party machines, executives and the like have ruled, in our name and against our interests. The governments have become steadily more executive in nature, so that by the early 2000s one could safely have said “Ministers are nobodies off the Hill”. But even a good, competent and ethical Prime Minister can’t control everything, or keep everyone in line. Unethical behaviour will be found easily. Slime has its sources in just this — this, and when one man is all that matters, toppling him is akin to promoting regicide.

But it’s all noise, as Canadians have concluded. A sad day for Canadian self-government, when we’ve given up. But that’s where we are.

I had a call yesterday asking me if I’d come and present a paper to honour my thesis supervisor’s life work in September (this event will be held at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto on Saturday, September 27, 2008, if you’ve an interest). The amazing thing about this (to me, at any rate) is that I am not actively academic, don’t regularly publish philosophical papers, and so on. I have accepted — Thomas Langan’s work deserves celebration, in my view — and will spend much of the next few months worrying away at a style of writing and presentation I haven’t made a part of my life for fifteen years.

But the request does raise the question “what does a business advisor with a strong technology background have to say about philosophy?”. This is not as strange as it might appear, although I have certainly met more than one philosophy professor in my time who has pooh-poohed the very idea that anyone who dresses in a suit and tie and goes to work in offices with others of that ilk would have anything much to contribute to the issues of that discipline. With that, I fundamentally disagree as much as I did when I was doing my B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. pre-thesis work in and around holding down a full-time office job, managing people and projects and generally burning the candle at both ends.

If philosophic positions hold water, they have applicability in the lives of so-called ordinary people doing ordinary, everyday things. Indeed, I think this is one of the acid tests one has to apply: what happens if you take this idea out into the world? Does it make sense to people without the specialised training in academic philosophy, who are unfamiliar with the technocratic lingo of the schools? Can they tie it to things they know and do, recognise it in situations they encounter, even “put it to work” in their own lives? If they can, then there’s something there worth working on further; if it lands with a resounding thud of disinterest and disuse, perhaps it is hair-splitting and distinction-making to no purpose.

One of the concepts Thomas Langan has put forward for the last quarter century (perhaps longer, but I know for certain he was teaching to it in 1983 as I was in the classroom) is the notion that there is an overlaid social structure on the societies, nations, cultures and civilisations of the world which he labelled the HTX (the “high-tech I don’t know what to call it”). It is not a culture in its own right, but rather poaches from some of the world’s cultures, and is best visualised as a nodal network of connections between people and locations. HTXians have little affinity for place, community or neighbourhood; their loyalties are to others who share their symbolic-analytic interests.

Tom always noted that I was one of these people, at home in and a part of the HTX (indeed, his book on the HTX, Surviving the Age of Virtual Reality was dedicated to me as an exemplar of someone living the experience directly) but also with one foot still in community. Perhaps that foot has atrophied somewhat in the eight years since Surviving was published; that will be one point of reflection to consider while thinking about my remarks for September’s conference. What’s more interesting is that the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management has created an institute dedicated to the exploration of the very “spikiness” of the world that the HTX tried to describe, headed by Richard Florida, author of a number of books on the “Creative Class” and their clustering style.

Another idea, from Thomas Langan’s Tradition and Authenticity in the Search for Ecumenic Wisdom, that resonates with business leaders, Little League baseball coaches, Executive Directors of not-for-profits, and Deans of Medical Education (to pick but four) is the notion of the hypocrisy that infests institutions as they diverge from the principles of their founding tradition. Institutions thus are always in need of reform, even as one holds onto the tradition (indeed, the reform is to preserve the tradition). One need think only of politics in Canada, the deformation of Parliament, the focus on leaders at the expense of MPs, the parties’ faux democratic methods in candidate selection, etc. to see how the institutions have radically diverged to work almost antithetically to our tradition of responsible government, Crown-in-Parliament. Again, a possible point of departure for a reflection on the nature of our society, and its prospects, a topic that was and is near and dear to Thomas Langan’s heart.

But the final point of take-off may come from his master work, Being and Truth. I had the pleasure, two years ago (and will do this again in May and June this year) of leading a philosophers’ café composed of 9-12 year olds. The core chapter, “Kinds of Objects, Kinds of Truth”, was not made into a reading, but rather several of the examples (Langan’s approach is resolutely phenomenological: first go to the things themselves and see what they reveal) were talked about. The children involved were able to reason out what the things were “saying” without prompting, and come to moments of enlightenment for themselves that parallel the arguments Langan makes. Einstein is reputed to have once said that if he couldn’t explain his theory of relativity to a six year old, he didn’t really understand it himself. Seeing these children grasp the different between an object and what it symbolises, or the built-up construct we call “a nature”, or even the inter-relationship between different kinds of truths (not just a world with shades of grey, but indeed, a world with colour) shows how essential these arguments were, and how well linked together to build up a world-view, yet graspable by anyone without scholastic training. An “Einstein test” moment, indeed, and perhaps also a worthy starting point.

In any event, I have found myself today turning these over again and again in my mind, and although I have no intention to return to the campus for a fourth time to teach, or even to complete my abandoned doctoral programme, I am “on fire” with the thought of this event and this speech/paper.

Every so often, you are presented with a gift. When your next gift is presented to you, will you see it? Will you accept it (and the responsibilities it will entail)? Or will you let it go, and then wonder why life is passing you by?

Another Federal Budget has been brought down, and I must confess the whole thing was boring in the extreme. We might, of course, have had at least a frisson of excitement as to whether the Opposition would manage to combine forces and precipitate an election, but as we know Stéphane Dion, Follower of the Official Opposition, signalled his latest backing down from the electoral abyss even before the Finance Minister rose in the House. So we are left with a limp rag of a budget and a limp rag of an Opposition: hardly inspiring, although it does leave Opening Day free and clear on the horizon to enjoy another year of baseball.

I’m not about to whinge about the Liberals. They are as entitled as anyone to make fools of themselves in public, and I must say that I think, along with Jeff Jadras of A BCer in TO and many other Liberal bloggers, that this is one opportunity missed too many. How, really, can anyone take any bluff or bluster out of the mouths of the chicken pen seriously after this? Why, indeed, even listen to it, other than habit? Steve V of Far and Wide this morning asks the key question, which is that if this was about simple lack of readiness to compete then why not just admit it and head onward to mid-October 2009, when the fixed election date comes up, and no more snorting and pawing the ground only to tuck tails between legs one more time. When even the columnists of the Liberal Party’s House Organ, the Toronto Star, start questioning why we should care, as reported in Blogging a Dead Horse, I think the answer is clear: we shouldn’t.

Yet there were reasons for disappointment with this budget, and they’re not the ones laid out by Garth Turner. From the point of view of the twenty-first century, as opposed to the twentieth, not dumping money on dying industrial models is a good thing. Yes, in Ontario times are tough. All the money that’s been sloshed at the extended automobile industry over decades, however, hasn’t protected that economy, those jobs or the affected families. The industry - as with any industry - is prepared to take any hand-out on offer, and then do exactly what it was going to anyway. Border constraints imposed by the US Department of Homeland Security make just in time inventory processes that cross the border inefficient and unpredictable. We will end up with other marques prospering that source parts not made in Canada from outside North America, and American marques dying unless there are exceptional reasons to deal with that border. Slopping money is simply filling up the pig-trough and not solving the real problem - which is essentially beyond a Canadian solution in any case.

It’s what isn’t being done by what is ostensibly a Conservative government that bothers me, as I suspect it bothers Aaron Wudrick of the Wudrick Blog when he comments on just how “Liberal” our Conservative Government is. Oh, well, as Joanne of Blue Like You points out, there are political implications, and perhaps we should be satisfied with the opportunity for yet more self-immolation on the Red(-faced) Team’s side of the aisle. But I am not.

There is so much slop in the system already - programmes for every two-bit cause known to mankind and every supplicant under the sun, delivered through Industry Canada, the regional economic expansion arms (ACOA, WD and the rest of the handout brigade), dribbles from Heritage, pork pie from HRSDC, a bit of IRAP money from the NRC here and some CANARIE droppings there (I defy you to find the year or two you’ll need to sort through the many layers of “beg and receive” set up over the years by previous governments) - and really, after two years in office, there is little excuse for this continuing. Then, too, the whinge from the more hawk-like Liberals is that “we left you guys a whopping surplus and you’ve handed it out all over the map, so now you get to flirt with the danger of not breaking even”. True enough, but the problem isn’t with the GST reductions, the income tax changes, the new tax saving account, or the child care money. The problem is with all the other new programme spending on top of all the existing programmes, most of which have carried on blindly and blithely spreading their steaming droppings onto the Canadian economy, distorting it. Why, indeed, would anyone in VC land actually think about the size of investment needed to make the company they’re interested in successful when they know there are all those programmes out there to pick up their slack? Why would managers care to invest in their own business’s future out of earnings, or worry about whether their products have a viable market, when there’s all that money slopping around to go prop things up, or build a new product that can attract the cash but has no proven market applicability?

All this largesse, in other words, has created a Canadian entrepreneurship good at complaining, good at buck-passing, and good at form-filling and report writing, but not one that cares to get down and do the hard work of scratching out a living the old fashioned way: earning it.

A Conservative government ought to be expected to, at the very least, challenge the 400,000+ civil serpents who are busy running this national slush account in its many forms. If they wanted to keep certain types of programme - perhaps they, too, have some sort of Chrétienite “Innovation Agenda” - then at least they could clean them up, rationalise them, sweep away the programmes hanging on for the last 1% of the job they originally were specified to carry out that will never finish, and the like. But no: we just add to the pile, and the Canadian taxpayer and productive business person groans under the load.

After all, if Conservatives won’t bring fiscal order to government, who will? The “never met a handout for Québec I didn’t like” Bloc? The “there’s airtime and the pretense of relevance in asking for money” New Democrats? The “none of you are doing enough” Greens? Or the “hey, you’re being Liberal enough for us” Liberals? Don’t make me laugh.

But we’re stuck, aren’t we? It’s much more fun to hand it out than to clean it up, and it always will be. The notion that taxes are an impost (and hence an imposition) on taxpayers is long dead: the question is now put as “how much will taxpayers be left with” as opposed to “how little should we take”. The notion that programmes should have a defined end-point and then be shut down is long gone in favour of perfection, “finishing the job” (which is never done, and always expanding). We as a nation will be sucked dry - although what’s been done to this point is precisely why Ontario is dying, Québec and the Atlantic provinces died and the West - the country’s last bastion of productivity and growth - is at risk.

It’s the being stuck that made Flaherty’s budget yesterday a yawner, not the items in it.

One of my blogging confrères & favourite authors, Raphael Alexander, started spreading around a meme where he would tag other bloggers, requesting they post six unimportant things about themselves.

One of his recipients of this geas was another favourite author of mine, Patrick Ross, who has, in turn, sent me on the quest. So, here we go: 

I have moved progressively “leftward”, which is why I am so conservative: Left and right are meaningless. The most natural linkage in our politics is blue (Tory) and green (Green). This, of course, sends everyone in fits of ragelaughter, but it’s the sort of paradox I thrive on. Besides, Liberals are anything but liberal: they believe whole-heartedly in group privileges.

I’ll read anything: Not only have I purchased almost 100,000 books in my lifetime, I have been known to pick up newspapers anywhere in the world I am and try to puzzle out the stories. But the real proof of the pudding comes online, where I have to check into Twitter every 30 minutes or so to keep up with all the tweets, have over 250 blogs in my RSS reader, and a long bookmark list of websites that are subscription-based or otherwise don’t just provide a feed.

I am a very lazy person, which is why I work hard: I do work hard, running my own company and all, but actually most weeks if I put in 20-25 hours I’ve got everything done. That’s because I try to work smart. That email inbox is kept empty (helps make the new ones stick out), and I write everything mentally meaning it just needs transcription. (Hey, if it worked for Mozart it might work for me, too.) My failing is that anytime there’s a tax form lying around I put it off, something to do with not wanting to be in the government paperwork or tax collection business.

I love campuses but would not much like being on one: I’ve been an adjunct professor (at the graduate level) three times now, in three different faculties and at two different universities, and frankly I’m just not interested in putting up with campus life, although I loved going to class, and still like being around a university.

The one sport I’d have season tickets for isn’t prominent where I live: I used to share season’s tickets at the SkyDome with a (now deceased) friend of mine but, of course, Vancouver only has a Single A club. Quite watchable, but not the same thing as MLB. Fortunately a Little League game is equally entertaining. As for the rest of the sports available, none of them awaken me from my dogmatic slumber.

I am very easy-going; I have an opinion for every occasion: Clients tell me that I make outrageous claims, but they take them semi-seriously and get the underlying point. Yet there are few places where, if someone wants to disagree, I’m going to go to the mat for a point. I take great pride in watching the world work out the way I think it will. Oddly enough, I’m a better pessimist, so the last year has been “my kind of time”.

I just don’t know yet who to tag with this, so I’ll post what I’ve got and think about it some more. Every decision has its time.

Why, indeed, blog? How much more writing can one Internet take?

The short answer, at least in my book, is that free speech is becoming more perilous. More groups want to ban any comment that offends their sensibilities. Since we went down the road of recognising groups, we’ve created a situation where men and women are mostly afraid to speak out in public.

We are entitled to speak our minds. We need but a press to publish with. A blog does that very nicely.

Whether my opinions are of any interest to anyone remains to be seen. But they are of interest to me. Couldn’t that serve as reason enough to make them public?

I don’t pretend to be some sort of faux-reporter. Expect what you read here to be items about which I have become passionate, if only for a while. Think of this as an editorial with a mandate to write about anything today that might provoke a response, and we’ll get along just fine.

My commitment to you: I shall endeavour to be accurate within the limits of my knowledge, I shall try not to give unnecessary offence (while being sure to give necessary offence as needed), and I shall do my best to be critical of the situation more than of the person, unless the person is the situation in need of a good airing.

But I also warn that fairness does not require me to write in a wishy-washy fashion, playing the “on the one hand, and on the other hand” game. To not take a position is to really let myself down.

I do hope you find this entertaining, thought-provoking and perhaps even something that occasionally alters the trajectory of your life.

I look forward to our conversations.