A familiar face on Canada’s political scene is calling for a new approach to politics in this country.
Former deputy prime minister John Manley says the country needs to reverse the current poisonous trend and create a more positive dynamic within the political life of the country. He’s calling on all involved, including political parties, public servants and the media, to make that happen.
“Political parties play an important role in our democracies by providing voters with choice, but partisanship that cannot compromise, that demonizes adversaries and that relies on vicious ad hominem attacks degrades our democracy,” Manley said Thursday night during an address at the University of Prince Edward Island.
“Increasingly, smart, sensible people who should be thinking of fulfilling a public role, either elected or non-elected, choose not to subject themselves to the poisonous atmosphere of public life, partisan self-righteousness and ‘gotcha’ journalism.”
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A very good speech, as usual, by Manley. Observations that Manley probably knows but is too much of a gentleman to candidly broach, yet here lies causes of the rot in Ottawa:
- When he talks about people not wanting to take risk to enter public life he needs to expand that. Too many people want politicians and government to remove risk from their lives. Some even think the changing climate can be controlled by politicians like Dion. Therefore if we want to fix democracy we need to understand how we got to the point where risk is so badly understood by the general population. Or more specifically, how risk became abused by the progressives.
- Capitalism works best when there is lots of healthy competition. That’s because through trial and error, bad ideas get killed rapidly and good ideas float to the top and get copied rapidly. The same process works in politics. But in a 2 party system ( the Dippers and Bloc are radical fringe parities) unless the Liberals can come up with an approach to politics, other than trying to find their Messiah to lead them out of the wilderness, Conservatives will suffer from the lack of competition of good ideas floating to the top.
- The Silly Service has become a cesspool of nepotism based on the need for bilingualism but the country is not bilingual and never will be. Therefore sourcing has become aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces… all from the only bilingual corridor in Canada …Ottawa/Montreal. To see the insanity it causes, look no further than the long form/short form debacle. Most countries have ditched the census (the UK is about to) and in a digital age they use other methods for census data collection. Yet the Neanderthals in Ottawa’s bureaucracy can’t even handle a tiny change. Therefore what we have is a Valarie Plame syndrome of desk jockeys sabotaging the elected government.
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Manley is one of the few Liberals with any credibility. I believe he is actually directing his comments to the Liberals and NDP. There a few politicians who make them all look bad like: Fry, Mcguinty, Easter, McCallum, Holland, Layton, May Etc. These and others will say (and some will also do) anything to gain power.
Of course our biased press loves them as contoversy machines and is complicit in giving them a bully pulpit. The press refuses to even question these freaks in order to out them as the nutbars that they are.
Agreed, Rick. Their day will come.