Where’s the Leadership in Canadian Politics?

Most Canadians have a strange relationship with their politicians, one that is characterized by indifference and a feeling of contempt that rages in degree from mild to severe. Our politicians are a small, detached and clueless clique who constantly struggle for superiority amongst themselves, all the while missing the increasingly obvious cues from a frustrated populace who just want to see some vision and leadership.

Informed by intellectual elites, acting on the results of polls, and communicating via spin doctor, our politicians fiddle while Canada slowly smolders. How has such a vibrant country managed to produce such a mediocre lot of selfish, squabbling children? Is Canada so unimportant to our best and brightest that public service does not beckon them?

Let me make a couple of assumptions: first, that it is possible for an individual to have a vision for the country that appeals to most Canadians, and second, that these individuals do exist and are seeking to hold public office.

These are optimistic assumptions but I think I can defend them. If the first assumption isn’t true, then this country is in deep trouble. Our two main parties have increasingly (and dangerously, for Canadian unity) become representatives of their home bases – the Liberals draw on support from Ontario and (formerly, after the Gomery inquiry) Quebec and the Conservatives draw on their support in the West. But there are common threads that link all Canadians, and I refuse to believe there is no one out there who does not have a vision woven out of all (or most) of these threads.

My second assumption, that individuals with this vision do exist and are seeking public office, I base simply on my own passionate political beliefs and those of others. Each day I read or listen to what Canadians have to say, and it’s clear to me that there is no shortage of passionately articulated and thought-out beliefs about our country. So there must be those who have formulated these beliefs into a broad and consistent vision in our political parties.

If these two assumptions are true, then I’m led to only one conclusion, which is that those individuals in our political parties who have the vision for this country and the leadership qualities Canadians need are not being promoted to positions of prominence in our political parties.

That all of our “leaders” seem to be white men between middle-aged and elderly bears out this conclusion.

Instead of seeking and promoting to leadership positions those who are best for Canada, our parties run on the grease of influence, favours, and backroom deals. Witness the long conspiring of Paul Martin to the throne, the power brokering to merge the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties, the unseemly bagging of Belinda and her instant promotion to cabinet.

How many Canadian leaders and visionaries who are so badly needed in service to their country are passed over each time this happens? How many times does this need to happen to someone before they get frustrated and enter private life instead?

Until we see democratic reform in our political parties, we’re not going to see political reform in our democracy.