August 7, 2005
Politically incorrect
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Have you ever noticed how we are blessed in Canada with politicians who never make mistakes?
That no matter how rotten things get, it's never the fault of the people we put in charge to deal with the issue in the first place?
Take health care. Have you ever heard a major national or provincial politician admit that he or she personally screwed up on health care?
I've heard politicians and governments blame doctors for being too greedy and hidebound when it comes to change. I've heard the medical profession and universities blamed for graduating too many doctors (before governments cut medical school enrolments and thus helped to create the current doctor shortage).
And I've heard patients blamed for clogging up emergency rooms (many because they can't find a family doctor -- see government-created doctor shortage above).
But I've never heard Prime Minister Paul Martin say, for example: "You know, when I slashed transfer payments to the provinces in the early 1990s in order to balance the federal budget more quickly, I didn't fully consider the impact it would have on health care and that was clearly my mistake."
How about the shortage of hydro-electricity in Ontario?
The people who get blamed for that are, once again, us. After all, we greedily consume too much power, say our politicians.
But have you ever heard Premier Dalton McGuinty --or, for that matter, past premiers like Ernie Eves, Mike Harris, Bob Rae or David Peterson --admit that they are personally responsible for the energy shortage because it was their job to plan ahead and/or not to make ridiculous promises they couldn't keep?
What about gridlock in Toronto? Know who's most at fault there, according to Mayor David Miller and current and past city councils? You and me again, because we love our cars too much.
But we never hear any of these politicians say something like: "You know, when it comes to planning for the future, given that for the past 50 years or so we've been promoting economic growth in Toronto, we clearly made a huge mistake in not building enough roads." (When have you ever heard our federal or provincial governments admit the same thing, since they're also to blame?)
What about Toronto's garbage disposal crisis and the fact that, having rejected every other possibility, including modern incineration, Toronto is now in the absurd position of trucking its garbage to Michigan, which soon may not want it? Again, we all know who's to blame for that, according to our politicians.
Yep. You and me again, because we are all wasteful consumers.
Indeed, you can take almost any issue that governments are responsible for in the sense of setting public policy and it's always the same thing.
Our absurdly lax criminal justice system? Notice how, according to our federal Liberal masters, it's not their problem? It's ours for being too Neanderthal in our views about crime and punishment?
Our disaster-prone immigration and refugee system? Again, not the fault of government, but of Canadians for being too intolerant, racist, etc.
Rampant gun crime in Toronto? According to our political leaders, it's not their fault for giving us a lax criminal justice system and being ambivalent, at best, about giving police the tools they need to combat urban street crime. Rather, it's those damn Americans and their lax gun laws. Or it's us -- again -- for worrying about gun crime at all, when federal government statistics clearly show that the crime rate is going down.
Indeed, according to our political masters, from Ottawa to Queen's Park to City Hall, the simplest way of curing all of our ills would obviously be to get rid of everyone who isn't a politician, since clearly, they're not the problem. We are.
The Sun
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