How's Canada Doing?

Back in British Columbia this weekend to find that the Canadian government is engaged in the kind of fear-mongering, swift-boating, character assassinating, or whatever adjective best describes the scurrilous mode of speech that typifies U.S. political communication nowadays.

In our mailbox, we received a one-page flyer, ‘Compliments of Stephen Harper, MP’ (as well as Prime Minister of Canada and the leader of the Conservative Party), providing us with what we jokingly might refer to as information; information that doesn't even rise to the level of truthiness. Like the U.S., Canada has experienced imported goods that are not manufactured under Canadian safety standards. Dangerous chemicals, dangerous toys, UNSAFE things. Last fall, in the ‘Throne Speech,’ the Conservatives pointed out that in the past, almost everything on a Canadian store’s shelf was made in Canada, but now, 65% of those same items are made somewhere else. Somewhere, I imagine, where manufacturers don’t have as their very top priority a concise knowledge of Canadian safety standards. That’s how global trade works, I’m afraid. Foreign manufacturers don’t necessarily have either of our safety, labor, or environmental standards. In part, that’s why they are not us; they are different, have different priorities, concerns, agendas, values, economics, problems, and laws/regulations. They are from different countries.

So, what’s a country like Canada or the U.S. to do? Well, the policy questions are doubtless complex and I am no expert on them. But one thing that a person like Steven Harper can do is send out a flyer assuring the citizens of Canada that he and his party are “protecting children from unsafe products.’ We are entitled then to return his flier, after having answered Mr. Harper’s multiple-choice question, “Who is on the right track on protecting children?’ Our choices are Mr. Harper and, respectively the leaders of the Liberal, New Democratic, and Green parties. We have no information at our finger tips in this flier about any particular legislation or any particular views that the other parties hold. We are given only Mr. Harper's assurance that the correct answer to his question is The Conservative Party. Once we choose, we mail this flier back to Mr. Harper. And exactly what is he going to do with it? I ask myself.

The implication, of course, is that those nefarious other parties (i.e., #’s 2,3, and 4) are not interested in ‘protecting children from unsafe products.’ I suppose the further implication is that they don’t even care whether children are protected from unsafe products. Perhaps they are engaged in foisting unsafe products upon the country. Perhaps the Green Party, an earnest, sincere and seriously peripheral party is about to require people to use unsafe products? I don’t think so. Well, Mr. Harper didn’t say that, so maybe he doesn’t think so either. All in all, though, my impression of this flier is that it is very low-down stuff. The kind of thing that Lee Atwater wouldn’t have done, but that Lee Atwater would have admired others doing. Lee Atwater, of course, was engaged in much more egregious stuff. This would have been small time for him.

But Lee Atwater gave us the politics we now have in the U.S. It’s sad to see Canada, whose citizens so often insist to me that Canada is very different from the U.S., going right down that U.S. road. It’s enough to give the phrase ‘political speech’ a very bad name: something like, ‘liar, liar, pants on fire…’