| Subject: Re: Moors comments on candidates... |
Author:
Mike Redmond
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Date Posted: 13:41:20 04/16/03 Wed
Author Host/IP: NoHost/209.17.158.14
In reply to:
Greg Moors
's message, "Re: Moors comments on candidates..." on 16:37:21 04/15/03 Tue
Greg,
There has always been something charmingly old-fashioned about the policies espoused by Mr Orchard and his supporters, and your call for more hewers of wood and drawers of water, rather than university educated knowledge workers is but the latest example.
I am all for tradition, and in some ways Mr Orchard's nationalism does strike a chord with all of us who grew up loving and respecting our country for the role it played in the world. Where he loses most of us, of course, is when he veers off into anti-American ranting that leads him to appear to support Milosovic over his own country and Saddam over the west. I am sure he doesn't intend to go that far, but he does veer perilously close on occasion to the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" adage, with the United States playing the role of villain.
We have always had our differences with the Americans, of course, even after they got over their early propensity to invade us. But Mr Orchard's rhetoric is reminiscent of that type of adolescent nationalism that many of us idulged in during the sixties and seventies. Most of us matured, and realized that a positive Canadian nationalism does not require an anti-American phobic aspect (disguised most often these days as "anti-globalization"). Mr Orchard and his supporters have not, seemingly, grown past that stage.
Hence, it would seem, the nationalist prescriptions for a "national car" (shades of the Bricklin), or a Canadian shipping fleet (fast ferries anyone?) or a Canadian tractor (just because Massey Ferguson couldn't do it at a profit doesn't mean the government shouldn't throw money at it?). None of these are necessarily foolish by themselves, although one has to wonder whether anyone, including Mr Orchard, has ever tried to put together a business plan of any of them. But their biggest problem is that they are not really policies at all. They are simply slogans without detail or substance trotted out to prove the nationalist credentials of those who want to wrap themselves in the flag of self-righteousness (maple leaf covered of course).
Other candidates have proposed, with varying degrees of detail, realistic policies that a government could actually implement, such as Mr Prentice's proposals to assist post-secondary education. If we hope to form a government we must offer a platform and a team that actually addresses real problems, and offers a realistic prospect of providing sound management along with leadership. That will take more than an obsession about Chapter 11 of NAFTA and slogans that sounded new when Pierre Trudeau was doing backflips off diving boards but which haven't changed since then. It will take sensible proposals along the lines proposed by Jim Prentice and some of the other candidates to move the Canadian economy into the information age.
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