The Citizen, 2004-06-03, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2004. PAGE 5.
Other Views
Bureaucrats speak only in parts
The only thing that saves us from the
bureaucracy is inefficiency.
An ef ficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat
to liberty.
— Senator Eugene McCarthy
Senator McCarthy was, of course talking
about American bureaucracy. Canadians
can sleep soundly knowing that there is
no way in hell our bureaucracy will ever
occupy any sentence in the company of the
word 'efficient'.
As I speak, the so-called 'Air India' trial is
crawling forward, millimetre by tortured
millimetre, in a Vancouver courtroom. It's a
trial that has been going on for....gee; can it
really be only ONE YEAR?
One year. a platoon of two dozen mega-
bazillion-dollar-billing lawyers, a potential list
of 1,000 (yes, 1,000) witnesses and no end in
sight.
That's obscene enough. What makes the
situation truly vomit-inducing is that this is a
trial for a cowardly mass-murder that occurred
in 1985. That's almost 20 years ago.
Infant children of victims who died when Air
India Flight 182 exploded off the coast of
Ireland in 1985 are fully-grown adults with
their own infants today.
We all know that the wheels of justice grind
exceedingly slowly....but 20 years to resolve a
public crime where the perpetrators are already
identified and apprehended?
Not the fault of bureaucrats — the fault of
lawyers, you say? A semantic quibble. What is
a lawyer but a bureaucrat who drives a more
expensive car?
Henry Kissinger, a man who came to
government bureaucracy relatively late in his
The federal Liberals are complaining
their Ontario party is not showing them
much brotherly love in an election, but
they should not expect to be treated as part of
one big, happy family. -
The Liberals in Ottawa are upset because
Premier Dalton McGuinty in his first budget
introduced premiums to pay for health care,
breaking a promise to avoid new taxes and
angering many in the province.
This will make it more difficult for Liberal
Prime Minister Paul Martin to win votes in
Ontario, which is essential if he is to hold onto
government.
Liberal candidates have found some voters
hostile because of the premiums and Martin
first excused McGuinty as having little choice,
because the preceeding Progressive
Conservative government cut taxes drastically
and left him needing to restore services.
Martin has since raised a note of criticism,
saying McGuinty dealt with the issue in' his
way, but "my way would be different."
But the federal Liberals have a long history
of looking after only their own interests when
in government, which has been most of the
time, and not caring how much this hurt their
less successful Ontario party in elections.
When McGuinty was gearing up for an
election last year, as a minor example, the
federal Liberals got embroiled in such
bitternesS and backstabbing in changing
leaders he had to ask them to turn it down to
avoid deterring his Liberals from working
together and harming his chances.
In the 1999 election that McGuinty lost to
Tory premier Mike Harris, several federal
Liberal backbenchers praised Harris for his tax
cuts and one even asked, "why should I help
McGuinty?"
The federal Liberal government also
career, nevertheless recognized the nature of
the beast rather succinctly.
"Bureaucrats speak only in parts" he said.
"It's as if you decide Picasso is good at legs, so
you ask him to paint the legs. You have
Gauguin do the torso, Renoir the hands, and
since Matisse draws lovely heads, you get him
to do the head. Then, when it's finished, you're
astounded that you've produced a mess!"
The people in charge of the drug abuse and
prevention program in the state of New
Hampshire know what Kissinger was talking
about. Just last month, they lost a $17 million
federal grant from the U.S. Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration.
Reason? Their grant application arrived at
the federal offices typed on pages with smaller
margins than officially permitted. It didn't
matter that the grant application was actually
written by the drug-addicted patients affected,
it was still rejected by the authorities.
Reminds me of the story of the Great Cross-
Border-Drug-Scare of the late 1960s. This was
a good four decades before the post 9-11 cross-
border paranoia we're familiar with today, but
I remember it well. Formerly benign and
easy-going border crossings between Canada
and the U.S. unaccountably turned hostile and
constipated overnight. Cars and trucks were
increased transfer payments to provinces and it
would not have been proper to delay the
announcement to help its Ontario party. Yet its
minister in charge of the treasury board could
have avoided saying this was "a coup for
Harris."
In the 1995 Ontario election, when the
federal Liberals cut transfer payments, Ontario
Liberal leader Lyn McLeod was persuaded to
praise them as fair and able to make tough
decisions. This was held against her
throughout a campaign that Harris won.
Before this, the federal Liberals had a rare
layoff from government and their Ontario
counterparts got into office for five years. It is
no coincidence they did it while there was no
Liberal government in Ottawa to let them
down.
Before the 1985 election, the federal
Liberals lured four of the Ontario party's most
promising MPPs, including Sheila Copps. to
run for them, leaving it without a sitting
woman or Francophone and looking
unrepresentative, and prompting it to complain
the federal party was raiding it.
In 1981 Liberal prime minister Pierre
Trudeau was unable to restrain his praise for
Tory premier William Davis for his efforts to
secure a new Constitution and helped Davis
win.
The Ontario Liberals seemed to have a real
mysteriously lined up for miles in both
directions. Ordinary cross-border shoppers
were suddenly subjected to unusually rigorous
inspections.
And it wasn't just the Canada-U.S. border.
Word had it that people travelling from the
U.S. into Mexico and vice versa were facing
the same hostile reception. U.S. Federal
agents, armed to the teeth and grim as death,
were checking everybody going in either
direction.
Reason? No one would say for sure, but the
rumour was the orders came from 'higher up'.
Indeed they did. All the way from the office
of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI.
Hoover was an iron-fisted, no-nonsense
disciplinarian —actually he was as batty as a
brain-damaged cockatoo (the man liked to
dress up in black lace bras and fishnet
stockings, but believed Martin Luther King
was a card-carrying communist).
No matter. Nutbar or not, Hoover ran a tight
ship. He insisted that all FBI agents be white-
skinned, short-haired, male-gendered and
perpetually clad in Brooks Brother's suit and
tie. (Yeah, really hard to pick them out in a
sailors' bar.)
He also kept his staff on a short leash. He
would pore over every memo issued by head
office before it went public. writing caustic
and cautionary revisions in his trademark
green ink. Once, when an otherwise
unremarkable memo went out concerning FBI
procedure. Hoover took exception to the fact
that the text of the memo was typed almost to
the edges of the page. .
He took out his fountain pen and printed:
WATCH THE BORDERS! J.E.H.
chance in 1975 until federal finance minister
John Turner resigned only eight 'clays before
the vote saying he had policy differences with
Trudeau.
This enabled Davis to win by claiming the
federal Liberals were confused on how to
improve the economy and strong leadership
was crucial in Ontario and many wondered
why Turner could not wait.
The federal Liberals were so dominating and
said so much on Ontario issues that Davis won
four elections and in each was helped by
suggesting if the Liberals won, the province
would become a branch plant run by the prime
minister's office and that the powerful federal
Liberal organizer Keith Davey was "in this
with both feet."
A federal Liberal minister of health and
welfare. Judy LaMarsh, used an Ontario
election campaign in 1963 as a platform to
accuse Tory premier John Robarts of hindering
her setting up a national pension plan, but she
was so strident it backfired.
Federal Liberals have hurt their Ontario
party so often in elections it has become as
routine as dropping the writ. So the federal
Liberals are merely getting a taste of their own
medicine.
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Visiting an old friend /
/
t was a ritual that began when I was a little
girl. Each Friday night, my mom and I
would climb the long path of steps and
enter a place that held more wonder and magic
for me than Disney World ever could.
I was a normal kid. I played ball and got into
mischief. I had plenty of energy and curiousity.
But for many years, even after I was too old to
be accompanied by my mother, nothing could
alter this weekly routine.
The glorious Carnegie Library in my old
hometown was a mainstay in my life for many
years. The rich, warm wood. handcrafted
shelves containing hundreds of books had an
effect on me that went well beyond my love of
reading. The librarian, of course, knew me by
name and would suggest titles I might enjoy. I
could spend forever wandering these aisles of
literature, selecting stories to suit my mood.
There was a time in my mid-teens, of course,
when my trips became more furtive, even
irregular. It just wasn't cool to be going to the
library. As a young mother, however, I soon
found myself yearning once again for the calm,
soothing environs of wood and words.
When I moved to Brussels, one of the first
trips I made was to the Carnegie Library there,
I felt at home, comforted by the familiar, and
left that day with a library card.
As time went on, however, my personal
library grew. Recognizing the solace I find in
books, it made sense that I incorporate them
into my home. The introduction of a new hand-
crafted bookcase has helped to replicate the
comfort of the Iibrarj'.
Typically though, for everything gained,
something is lost and my burgeoning personal
collection ultimately put an end to my long-
time ritual. It was interesting therefore, when
called upon to sit and chat with our local
librarian for the purposes bf a news story
recently, that I discovered the same old feelings
stirred, The urge to wander among the sturdy
wooden bookcases, to sit and be lost for just a
little time at least, was strong. I could see the
little girl I was, sitting at one of the wooden
desks while waiting for her mother, legs
swinging, voraciously reading the book she
meant to take home.
Interesting too was when conversation
turned to the issue of decreasing usage in our
library and the reasons. Keeping in mind my
love for the atmosphere of the old libraries I
joked that perhaps people don't like the
utilitarian bookshelves which have replaced
the gorgeous handcrafted ones in some
portions of the building.
While it may hurt the aesthetic appeal for
this individual it's unlikely, however, it would
keep away anyone who wanted to be there,
Rather, the problem is at once more simple and
more complex. Everyone not taking books out
of the library is doing so for individual reasons,
and they are as diverse as the residents residing
in the municipality that houses the library.
It saddens me somewhat to know that my
reasons have contributed to the problem.
All of that said, however, between business
and pleasure, the librarian and I had a lengthy
chat that day. And it's interesting to note that
for the time I was there, a steady flow of people
came into the library. Only a handful took out
books, but it is clear that the computers are a
valuable resource to the community. Should
the library ever close it would be felt by many
who perhaps never read a book.
Got me thinking, too, how much I've taken
the library for granted and how sad I'd feel to
lose it. Perhaps it's time to renew an old
acquaintanceship.
McGuinty government hurts fells