August 2002
by Barry Stagg
The behaviour of Martin, criss-crossing the country on the summer barbecue-convention circuits is indicative of a smug certainty held by that Liberal and many others of his ilk. Management of Canada's governance and its public funds is taken for granted with the concomitant belief that a little ersatz noblesse oblige mixed with wads of tax dollars will bring around any balky members of the state establishment.
Since government is 100% management with shareholders/voters meeting every 4-5 years or so, it is no surprise that what we call fraudulent accounting by the Enrons and Worldcoms is standard 'honesty' for government. Mark Steyn points this out in a recent column and it is self-evident from the Chretien songbook featuring 'Money for nothing and get your campaign workers for free'. Paul Martin is no Martin Luther as far as reform of that style of Liberal governance.
The Nomenklatura comparison is irresistible. Liberals have governed on the public CEO program since MacKenzie King slithered through the Second World War without confronting Quebecers over the widespread refusal to serve the Allied war effort against the Nazis. That bit of political cowardice set the stage for the demanding tactics of Quebec's separatists.
Since the King era, Canada has been governed by Liberals or Tories defaulting to the Liberal agenda. Martin proposes to continue the game, once his hostile takeover of the Liberal boardroom is complete. Martin's shtick is that of the wealthy, avuncular corporate boss: Seasoned, competent and totally connected to all the right business circuits. His practice is a mixture of presumption and arrogance, not unlike that of his most smug supporters: the management classes of southern Ontario, grown fat on state regulated and protected commerce in banking, insurance and media, mixed and merged with the conventional public service.
The pitch to the aboriginal establishment is more of the same statist gruel that feeds the troughers down south. A little nod and a smiling wink to the Constitution and it is full speed toward entrenching a wasteful system of federal surrogate spending through the ridiculously titled 'First Nations' that amount to nothing more than fiscal dependencies which, when stripped of feelgood rhetoric and illusory native menace, are Canadian Bantustans engrossed in the act of self-creation.
There is little that is unique about Martin's tactics. It is the same sort of conspiratorial appeasement that profited the Liberals and the professional separatists of Quebec for the past 40 years. Now the professionals locked in the dance of mutual profit and perpetuation are the Briefcase Indians instead of the increasingly passe Quebec nationalists. From King through to Pearson ,Trudeau and Chretien, Liberals pick their mascots, champion them and feed them with federal tax dollars. Martin is the would-be successor to all this, a statist churner with the same sense of CEO dedication to Canadian taxpayers that Nortel shareholders got from their man, John Roth.