Canada’s constitution was founded on the primacy of law & order. The federal government was imbued with sweeping powers to ensure the “peace, order and good governance” of the newly formed confederation.
The belief was then, as it is now for the most part, that stability and security were paramount for the survival of the realm.
In the world of cheap distributed communications tools – every person a potential pamphleteer, advocate, activist, this fixation on static, staid and stable institutions is both decrepit and dangerous. The many-to-many discourse enabled by contemporary communications technology afford government, local and federal, opportunities for interaction undreamt of by the Prime Ministers of yore.
Richard Bedford Bennet, almost as famous for his voluminous correspondance with far-flung Canadians as for his bungling, heavy-handed treatment of Canada and Communists during the Depression, would I’m sure have given his right arm for this kind of Web 2.0 interaction. Diefenbaker, a self-styled man-of-the-people would undoubtedly be wired-in to the blogosphere, pecking away at his Blackberry sending excoriating polemics to his constituents.
What would Mackenzie-King do with the Internet? He certainly wouldn’t trust it – but he’d scrupulously exploit it. He would definitely not otrich-out and ignore it as much as possible, only lashing out at it with bizarre, ill-conceived legislation that curtails the liberty of Canadians which is what our current government is doing. C.D. Howe would embrace the entrepreneurial opportunities provided by the web with a vengeance, I’m sure .
It is, in many ways, unfair to compare Stephen Harper to these intimidating, accomplished individuals of savvy, intellect and integrity. Harper is no Mackenzie-King, Diefenbaker or St. Laurent, he’s not even really a Clark or Campbell. He is neither cagey nor imaginative. He is, like Tupper or Meighn, humble, reasonably principled and, aside from his day-job, unremarkable. His feat, it is obvious, is finding a way to wrangle the ungainly political-perspective-from-nowhere into a viable political engine.
This need not be so. If someone, anyone, in Ottawa is paying attention to the writing on the wall they would know this:
The future is chaos. Friction wins. And Good Governance requires both.
The political discourse is going to get messier. Anyone who looks deeply into the ways people discuss politics knows it’s already messy. Like turning over a rock on a stoney British Columbia beach to discover the tidal pool teeming with life, the variety of voices and degree of interaction amongst these elements is obvious – it seems the only organizations to not comprehend this are the political parties and the government they operate. Gone are the days, if there ever were any, of demagogical monopoly. Nobody can lay claim to an ideological program that has consensus across the country – it just doesn’t fit.
As a consequence, the political parties bike-shed all political discourse. They focus on parochial non-issues like debit card fees, a few million dollars in misspent public funds (as if patronage was a novel abhorrance of Chretien – our country is BUILT on patronage) or whether or not a candidate has verifiable Canadian bona fides. Personality politics, and the demagogery it engenders should simultaneously enrage and terrify the electorate – that is the path to Kings and Emperors. To get Jeffersonian on y’all, we are a nation of LAWS not people – debate the laws, not the people (we need to make this easier, a topic for another post).
Friction is where innovation happens – when ideas are mingled, mixed, bashed together, synthesized and otherwise energized. The more this happens and in the more places the greater the probability of the best idea being discovered. This will only happen if citizens are given the tools and incentives to make it happen. The push need not be big, the machine needed is simple, but the inclined plane must be oriented the right way – good ideas should roll down hill.
The investment required is minimal – one can only guess at the motivations behind why it hasn’t been made, most hypothesies one can dream up serve only to fuel the endemic and virulent cynicism amongst Canadians.
The United States government, arguably an institution with pathologies outstripping even the most sweat-inducing nightmares of a Canadian progressive, has released data.gov, Statistics Canada can’t be bothered to publish their website in current mark-up.
Citizens need to realize the value of enagement and demand it aggressively, unapologetically and unceasingly. Baby-boomers need to recognize how and why things got so messed-up. Some might say I’m tarring to many progressive people – however these are a fraction of a minority of the largest demographic group in the country, it is fair to assess this generation (perhaps no other) as a cohesive group. (cf. Born at the Right Time).
Clarity is key. Too many groups have perplexing, convoluted messages. They are steeped in political-correctness and inclusiveness that serves only to muddy the waters. There is a big difference between the insultingly pat, sound-bite messaging of the Carville/Rove -ouvre (cf. “Our Brand is Crisis”) and succinct, intelligble explanations and arguments (cf. anything by Lawrence Lessig).
How can existing organizations fix themselves? How can we catch-up to last decade? Then this one? Then the next one? What can each of us do now, right now, to push this a little further in the right direction?