CKNW Editorial
for March 3, 2000

We've spoken about this before but it's a topic all Canadians should think about and worry about. We simply do not, as a people, get our dander up. We are submissive and always polite ... we put up with enormous crap from those in authority and wonder, always with decorum of course, why we are so badly governed.

We have free speech but it's the sort of free speech inherited from Britain where in the 1940s the Lord Chamberlain was still censoring the West End Theater and where books are still banned if they might unduly offend ... Britain was the country where the papers in 1937 wouldn't print the new that the King was having an affair with a twice divorced American and where Winston Churchill was kept off the BBC because he was embarrassing the

government with his warnings about Hitler. Free speech ... but not quite.

We don't throw people in jail for saying unkind things about the government - we just always, when push comes to shove, take the government's side. We have an establishment in Canada - in this Peter C Newman is quite right - and it includes the left and the right as long as it's the traditional left and right. This establishment permits dissent but only within carefully circumscribed rules. Never was this better exemplified than in October 1992 when the entire establishment, left, right, center, the artsy fartsy crowd

and the media lined up behind Brian Mulroney. Maclean-Hunter even officially joined the Yes Committee - it's breathtaking when you think of it ... one of the largest media outlets in Canada officially joins one side of the biggest dispute in Canada since Confederation.

It has interesting manifestations as Gordon Gibson and I spoke of the other day ... we have always felt that Mel Smith, in fact, far more than recent recipients including Mulroney ought to have an Order of Canada and an Order of BC ... I remarked that anyone who was so opposed to the establishment as Mel did, wouldn’t have a chance .... If you dissent within the limits like Jeffrey Simpson or Don Newman you got an Order of Canada but if you are beyond the pale, no chance. Gordon mentioned with which I heartily agree if a journalist gets an Order of Canada that's proof positive that he's not doing his job properly.

Our reluctance to really kick up our heels gets the job done for the

government. All they have to do is mumble a few appropriate phrases and we are prepared to forgive them for directing the RCMP to make Suharto's life comfortable and blame it all on ear-ringed hippies. The issue so clearly is one of democratic principles ... the right to dissent and the absolute requirement that the police be free from government interference ... but we are distracted by our inherent willingness, when all's said and done, to obey our masters.

I've said all this this morning for a purpose.. We are a country that's adrift. We're adrift because we permit our political masters to do as they please. Let's think about this for a moment ... some years ago, late on a Friday when everyone had left for the weekend, the federal government set up Nunuvit as what can only be called a quasi-province. Even though new provinces can't be set up without permission of the provinces it was all but done. The cost in money is horrendous but the greater cost is to our freedom

to debate. Take the war in Kosovo - Parliament wasn't consulted until after the troops had gone. Take Jean Chretien's parliamentary Constitutional veto resolution of 1995 set up not only without a by-your-leave from the people but directly in the face of many Canadians and provinces.

We have a system of government that simply does not work. It's totally unsuitable to a huge nation with a sparse, spread out population. 50%+1 of the House of Commons has 100% of the power which is all devolved to the Prime Minister's office. A bare majority of the seats in Quebec and/or Ontario guarantee a party the right to do as it pleases as long as it doesn’t offend that power base. Yet dissent, even by the Reform Party, is muted.

And the Reform Party is my final example. Listeners will know that the illiberality of the Reform Party has caused me a lot of heartburn over the years. But they are the only party prepared to address the structural problems of our system of governance and by doing so head off an inevitable split. But they are pilloried by not only the establishment parties and the establishment itself - but by the establishment media as well.

What this country needs is a bloody good Boston Tea Party. We cannot, through inherited lethargy, simply allow those bastards that have, since the Family Compact, run the country to suit themselves, continue to do so.

Will we have to totter and stagger to the brink of self destruction before we do anything?

Judging by what we've put up with and continue to put up with I suppose the answer is yes.