Part I

The fractious trajectory of the healthcare agreement in the U.S. should encourage Canadians to reflect on the crisis of national governance in both Canada and the United States.  It is unhelpful and hollow to simply breathe a sigh of relief that we had the foresight to implement universal Medicare 40 years ago.

The widespread public contempt for the political class, together with the virulent opposition of the Tea Party, produced a toxic blend that almost crushed even the extraordinarily powerful personal leadership of Barack Obama.  The excesses that produced the recession reviled the public, as the extent of the betrayal and abuse by those in positions of power and trust was exposed.

The life savings, employment, and overall quality of life of millions of ordinary Americans have in many cases been irrevocably undermined.  As public debt reaches astronomical proportions and as many of those responsible for the financial collapse are back in play as if nothing happened, distrust about public action is intense and corrosive.  Disengaged citizens retire to their information cocoons and listen only to commentators who reflect their fury, while the insidious demagoguery of a Glen Beck or Russ Limbaugh is given undeserved legitimacy by CNN and FOX News.

Canada faces a similar crisis of national governance.  Ottawa is just as dysfunctional and paralyzed as Washington, though lacking the inspiring leadership of a Barack Obama and the vocal vitriol of the Tea Party, which in Canada occupies the fringes of our governing party.

Canadians are equally disillusioned and as cynical as Americans about those in positions of power.  Although we are emerging from the recession in a better financial position than the United States, thanks to fewer and better-capitalized banks, demand for our natural resources and a petro-dollar, too many of us are unemployed and underemployed.  And we are under no illusion that the $54 billion deficit that our national government racked up in under a year created anything of enduring value or was money well spent.

We failed to respond to the worst economic crisis in decades within a fair and equitable framework and with a clear commitment to pull out of the crisis with a greener, more sustainable economy.  Our national government conveyed no sense of public purpose or narrative other than obtaining a submissive majority in Parliament. By focusing primarily on expanding opportunities for superficial consumption rather than expanding opportunities for meaningful employment, the government failed to invest in innovative industries using advanced technology, in pioneering scientific research, and in our educational infrastructure at every level.  Nothing has been done to repair the great inequities emerging across the country in our social safety net from pensions to employment insurance to healthcare.  And we are nowhere on developing credible national strategies to address climate change and clean energy.

But, regrettably, Canadians have lacked compelling national leadership for a long time.  The absence of a strong voice in Ottawa challenging us to think big and implement a coherent nation-building agenda means that an entire generation of young people, whether born in Canada or moving here with their families, has grown up in a directionless, uninspiring vacuum.

Why?  Over the last quarter century, as national governments increasingly focused on balancing budgets, one of the fundamental principles of good governance – fiscal responsibility – became the overriding end in itself.  Political platforms became excruciatingly boring cost accounting exercises, the national civil service relegated to mere accountants, while vital government business was outsourced to overpaid consultants driven by personal profit, not public service.   Voter engagement declined precipitously.  And while we did succeed brilliantly in achieving the goal of deficit reduction in the 1990s, we then failed to make use of our fiscal strength to pursue coherent, long-term national initiatives and public investments from early childhood care and education to climate change.

Now, recent successive minority governments have squandered with impunity our fiscal strength on a hodge-podge of partisan initiatives from micro tax credits for transit passes, to ill-considered reductions in the GST, to more jails to quiet the Tea Party fringe.  And on almost every issue – the environment, clean energy, Afghanistan, gun control, isotopes, food safety, reforms of EI, pensions, health care – the government has behaved dictatorially, disrespectful of Parliament and by extension the people of Canada, stifling intelligent open debate, attacking and intimidating those with whom it disagrees, and in some cases resorting to deliberate undermining of the rule of law.

When Parliament was abruptly prorogued for a second time, Canadians surprised even themselves with a burst of public outrage.   But that now has faded away.  Our national government once again believes that as long as the traditional metrics of economic strength improve, Canadians will passively settle for minimal national government – government that stands for nothing in particular and that avoids conflict by shrinking itself, shifting both moral and material responsibilities to provinces and municipalities.

So as the national government goes missing in action, financially stressed provinces begin to raise their sales taxes to collect the national revenue foregone with the GST reduction.  Provinces are forced to turn to other provinces instead of Ottawa to address serious national energy security challenges.  The growing patchwork of provincial policies and initiatives in areas of national concern is leading to greater inequities and uneven opportunities across the country.  A steady weakening of social solidarity and our common citizenship is further exacerbated by Ottawa’s silence in important debates over fundamental national values essential to building our diverse yet inclusive society.

Meanwhile our national government hopes Canadians can be distracted from the long-term damage to national governance through photo-ops, and a dreary work plan too often filled with disconnected initiatives with completion dates beyond the next election. The official spin-doctors are regularly tasked with dispensing the deceptively comforting advice that the extraordinary level of citizen apathy and cynicism is actually just a sign of a significant shift to so-called conservative values and support for smaller government.

A vicious circle is setting in: those who govern demand too little of us, and we in turn expect too little of them.

If we start to believe that we are not stronger when we act together to advance fairness, justice and equality in Canadian society in a meaningful way, then we lose all sense of joint responsibility, shared sacrifice and national purpose.  Social bonds will crumble, and generational bonds will attenuate.

If we start to believe that people’s behaviour is only shaped by whether we stand to gain or lose, that human progress is only measured by material things, then moral indifference triumphs over the fundamental principle that protecting the dignity of our neighbour protects the dignity of us all.

As we contemplate yet another national election, our greatest deficit is not financial or monetary: it is a deficit of good governance and good citizenship.

Part II

Good national governance is all about confident national leadership that allays our fear of rapid change, and calls on our mutual obligations as Canadian citizens to take responsibility for our world and the world of our children and grandchildren.  Good governance means national leadership with the capacity to understand and respond to unexpected events; national leadership with the agility to seize the sometimes fleeting opportunities to think ahead, and forge a common purpose among people who have never shared anything before.

Above all, good governance means national leadership with the credibility to remind us that, despite our extraordinary freedom to choose to identify with different religious, political, linguistic and cultural communities, at all times we are individuals – men and women, young and old – building an inclusive society where achievement is measured by our commitment and responsibility to our fellow citizens.

Good citizenship is then the counterpart to good governance.  Good citizenship requires us to rediscover our sense of moral indignation and denounce both mediocre leadership and citizen apathy, and demand public action.  Good citizenship is telling our leaders that we are prepared to ask as much of ourselves as we do of our governments, as long as our leaders act clearly in the national interest with transparency and accountability.

To seriously address the deficit of good governance and good citizenship, we need a new ethic of politics – unflinching honesty, straight-talk, transparency and accountability – in which the dedication of our elected representatives to public service and the national interest is beyond question, and civil moral discourse is restored, indeed encouraged.

We are neither as difficult a country to govern, nor as complicated a people, as our politicians would have us believe.  Despite thirteen provinces and territories, six time zones, three oceans; despite our many languages, religions, ethnic and national origins, we have much in common.  We are Canadians without borders – citizens from everywhere with links to many countries and global networks that are enormously valuable economically, socially and politically – contributing to a vibrant and youthful diversity that will sustain us for generations to come.  The world is still a collage – plural, fragmented, a random collection of cultures, origins, perspectives.  Canada is where the collage becomes a coherent dynamic whole with a collective commitment to the best of universal values:  equality, justice, the rule of law, fundamental rights and freedoms, non-discrimination.

We are building a unique multi-ethnic liberal democracy that can be an inspiration to a world troubled by religious and sectarian friction. Time and time again, Canadians defy geography and demography and pull together for what is right – to recognize the sacrifices of our fellow citizens, to promote greater humanity and human dignity, to celebrate what we share – from yet another tragic death in Afghanistan, to the devastating earthquake in Haiti, to the Olympics.

But we will fail to realize our potential to be a great nation if our national leaders continue to cast national politics as a boring out-dated struggle between supporters of smaller government and less spending versus bigger government and more spending; supporters of private sector initiative versus public initiative; supporters of “conservative values” versus liberal or socialist values. This is seriously out-of-sync with the rhythm of our times. Good national government in the 21^st century is much less about sterile debates over the size of government and levels of expenditure, and much more about providing ethical leadership, both nationally and internationally, and establishing national priorities and national standards.

The vast majority of Canadians simply want good honest government, of whatever size is justifiable and appropriate, that provides bold national leadership across the full spectrum of issues that demand national attention.

Most Canadians are neither very rich nor very poor and work at jobs of average status – the self-employed, retail, lower and middle-end service sector workers, skilled manual workers, unionized and non-unionized, part-time and full-time.   These are the critical swing voters who will determine the outcome of the next federal election.  Their economic interests and diverse backgrounds do not predispose them to either small or big government, private or public sector, conservative or liberal values.  Yet they are much more vulnerable to hardship and insecurity than ever before.

Political choice for these Canadians is not about accounting and expenditures, but rather the larger public purposes and moral imperatives that will unite Canadians.  We are ready, willing and able to discharge the responsibilities that go along with the rights of citizenship, to do our part to build a dynamic inclusive society.  We recognize that reducing the widening income gap between the very rich and the very poor and helping the most vulnerable in society is unquestionably the mark of a great nation.

But none of this will be possible if our national leadership fails to nurture a vibrant middle class to which most aspire, as well as the extraordinary competitive advantage of our diverse globally-connected population.  We must recognize that Canada can be one of the great nations of the 21^st century.  The time is long overdue for the sustained encouragement of bold and imaginative leadership and governance to restore our collective ability to manage change and to advance our ideals of a fair, compassionate and innovative country, and greater peace and humanity around the world.

Part III

An agenda for change:

1.   Public support for at least two years of community college beyond high school, now essential for most 21^st century jobs.

2.   Early childhood care and education, including help to all provinces to provide full-day school-based options from the age of three.

3.   A national energy framework that includes a national carbon price and ensures equitable access to clean energy across the country.

4.   A National Health Council with a mandate to ensure a comparable range and quality of health care services across the country and to explore all financing options.

5.   An arms-length Criminal Justice Council to recommend all Criminal Code amendments to avoid ill-informed partisan policies.

6.   An arms-length Commission to advise the national government on all federal contributions to provinces, including equalization, to bring coherence, consistence and accountability to the current incomprehensible and divisive jumble of payments.

7.   Compulsory voting with a voting age of 16.

8.   A Canadian head of state that reflects our 21^st century collective identity.

9.   Senate reform, shaped by citizen participation and ratified in a national referendum, that will enable Parliament to function effectively as a legitimate accountable forum for developing national standards and initiatives.

10.  A real economic union so that people, goods, services and investment do not face provincial obstacles.

11.  National action to ensure all Canadians, whether urban or rural, have comparable access to affordable broadband service.

12.  Public investment in our physical infrastructure – public transportation, sewers, water filtration, parks, recreation, social housing  – and a Bank for Infrastructure Development that determines the value of each infrastructure project, its environmental impact, and streamlines the process of reviewing and signing off on major projects.

13.  Coherent and equitable national immigration policies that encourage both highly-skilled workers as well as the less-educated immigrants who, as in the past, will build Canada through their determination to discover and define their own opportunities as citizens.

14.  Real equity for aboriginal Canadians and the elimination of disgraceful third-world conditions to provide aboriginal Canadians with the same quality of life and opportunities that we like to think we offer all Canadians.

15.  A national initiative to require all Boards of Directors to consist of at least 40% women within 5 years, similar to the successful Norwegian program implemented in 2003-2008.

16.  Rigorous national standards and regulation of toxic chemicals in the environment –  the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat.

17.  A serious national cyber security strategy.

18.  Finally, national leadership that refuses to pander to prejudice and parochialism and vigorously defends the fundamental values of equality of men and women, and non-discrimination, that underpin our inclusive society.