Rod McQueen's Blog, page 38

The road not taken

Of all the overindulged groups in all the world, Ontario teachers must surely be the most mollycoddled. First, there was the news that expenses for negotiators were paid for by the other side; now their bloated pensions are being buttressed by full credit for time off during an illegal strike. And what to say about the Ontario government toll-gating political contributions from the teachers? Taxpayer money is being recycled like it was rotten food meant for the green bin.

Teachers hardly even do their jobs anymore. They refuse to reply to emails from principals received after 3:15 p.m. They don’t even respond to parents looking to talk about a child’s progress or lack thereof. Report cards are fewer and far between. Graduates enter university without basic life skills; many have never even made a single presentation to class in all their student years.

There was a time when I wanted to be a teacher. I don’t know which would have been worse: trying to maintain the attention of a classroom of unruly, texting students or the ignominy of being part of such a greedy group. Teachers might have our money but they no longer command our respect.

 

Housebound

To get some understanding of just how high house prices have risen in Toronto, I cite my grandparents’ place in Etobicoke. My grandfather died in 1961, my grandmother in 1966. Their three-bedroom bungalow with a self-contained basement apartment sold in 1967 for about $25,000. Today, the same house, with no additions, would come on the market for $1 million and might even attract multiple bids. What else has risen forty-fold in the intervening almost 50 years? Nothing I can think of.

Certainly not incomes. When I graduated from university in 1967, my starting annual salary was $6,000. Humanities grads now get around $55,000. If the ratio were the same as in 1967, my grandparents’ house should cost $220,000 today. A case of beer was $5, now it’s $40, up eight times. Not even heavily taxed cigarettes, then about 50-cents a pack, now $10, up by a factor of twenty, can match house prices for sky rocketry.

I was recently doing some unrelated research and learned that the average mortgage in the mid-1960s was $33,000 and the average family income was about half that for a two-to-one ratio. Today, the average Canadian family is carrying mortgage debt of $190,000 and the average household income is around $65,000, a worse-off three-to-one ratio in the intervening years.

Low mortgage rates pushed up prices recently, to be sure, but there were many years in the last 50 when rates were high and prices still soared. The real question is this: how does anyone afford a first house these days? Even a dump of a place in Toronto costs $600,000. Still, there are many people buying those dumps for teardowns where construction costs can add another $600,000 to $1 million. In the ongoing debate about income inequality, housing trumps them all.

Canadian idle

How would the Canadian election have turned out if the terrorist attacks in Paris had happened before the vote? My dentist put that question to me today when, fortunately, he had so many implements in my mouth that speech was impossible. I say “fortunately” because I could not have mustered a response even if my mouth was available. By the time his work was done, my lips were frozen and the moment had passed.

I’ve been wrestling with the question ever since. Watching the televised clip of Justin Trudeau at the G20 summit in Turkey was like looking at a man who’d been gobsmacked. As he reiterated his pledge to bring home Canada’s CF-18s Trudeau seemed somehow smaller than when last I saw him. His speech was hesitant, his composure deflated. Imagine how he must have felt in the midst of the other world leaders. Not just the new boy, but the naive boy, the only one pulling out when the rest were pulling together in common cause.

Was Trudeau right to say that was my pledge, that’s what people voted for? Or should he have followed another pronouncement of John Maynard Keynes, the economist who urged the kind of deficit financing Trudeau embraced to gain his victory? After all, in addition to that famous economic theory, Keynes also said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

In this case, Trudeau was damned either way. He could not so quickly dump a promise even if keeping it was grievously wrong. When his father, Pierre, defeated Joe Clark and won back the office he’d lost only nine months earlier, he went on stage to the applause of the Chateau Laurier crowd and said with a smile, “Well, welcome to the 1980s.”

Well, welcome to the real world. The honeymoon is over after less than a month of sunny days.

 

 

The going down of the sun

Today’s Remembrance Day services in Ottawa offered a number of new sights. There was a new prime minister and his wife who wore a hat straight out of Downton Abbey, a new Sikh minister of defence who served in Afghanistan and a new minister of veterans affairs in a wheelchair. But it wasn’t the new I sought. It was the War Memorial itself, the silver cross mother, the twenty-one gun salute, the children’s choir and the aged faces of veterans.

I never lost a loved one in any war. Oh, I had an uncle and and an aunt who served and came safely home. And as a boy growing up in Guelph there was a neighbourhood couple who used to tell me about their only child, Kenneth Macalister, a member of the Special Operations Executive. He parachuted into France, was captured, and died in Buchenwald, hung on a meat hook. Of course, Colonel John McCrae, author of In Flanders Fields, was born in Guelph. So I have connections, but not enough to cry about. Yet every year I always cry when I watch the televised proceedings.

I cry at the sound of The Last Post. I cry at the Piper’s Lament. I cry because so many thousands died for their country. Once a year we are all transported to a sacred place of memories we never had by people we never knew who did impossible tasks we cannot fully comprehend. My tears are not enough but they are all I have.

The Bible tells us, “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.” Maybe tomorrow.

 

Her only bad habit was us

A few of us were standing around the bar at the National Press Club in Ottawa on a Friday night in late 1975. Some couples were dancing in the next room. Mostly it was just the usual bar scene, boozing and boasting. Until Margaret Trudeau swept in with a certain devil-may-care attitude and a security detail officer a few steps behind.

Such a drop-in was unheard of. A few MPs might come for lunch, a lobbyist or two might mingle, but not the prime minister’s wife. Margaret had recently been in the news so maybe she thought she should come hang out with some hacks. She was just back from a trip to Cuba and Venezuela with Pierre where she’d entertained guests of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez at a formal dinner with a little “song of love” she’d written herself. Canadian officials were chagrined at her behaviour.

A small knot of barflys gathered around Margaret while Trudeau’s press officer, Ian Macdonald, who happened to be present, phoned the boss in a panic. Pierre was across the street in the West Block attending an event, so was able to arrive in less than ten minutes. As he stood beside Margaret, she threw a quarter onto the bar and said, “Get this man a soda. I guess I can afford that.” Peter Meerburg, of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, was on the phone at the other end of the bar dictating a story about the scene to his night desk.

Pierre spoke quietly to Margaret and took her onto the dance floor where they had more words. There must have been some agreement struck because Pierre soon departed and a few minutes later so did Margaret, lighting up a joint as the elevator door closed while her security officer pretended to look elsewhere. There was much gossiping and tongue-clucking in the days that followed.

We now know that Margaret was unhappy in her marriage, suffering from a bipolar malady, and taking various drugs that drove her to do outrageous things. In the years since, she has dealt with her demons, found peace and is now helping others handle their own mental issues.

And so it was wonderful to see her as a full participant at the swearing-in of her son, Justin. Margaret, a wife of and a mother to a prime minister, has come full circle. Along the way she has gained many admirers and the rest of us have learned a little humility.

Jaywalker

Baseball season is over. The Blue Jays pushed the World Series winners to six games in the American League finals, one game better than the Mets fared against the Royals. Jose Bautista showed the world that Toronto has style with his bat flip. Josh Donaldson won the Hank Aaron award and is in line for the Most Valuable Player award. We should be celebrating a successful season, the best in 22 years.

But we’re not. We’re mired in a he said-he said-he said controversy about the unhappy departure of general manager Alex Anthopoulos, the man who made this year happen. He said he turned down a new contract because he didn’t feel he was going to have the right fit with incoming president Mark Shapiro. Shapiro claims he did everything but shine Anthopoulos’s shoes to get him to stay.

Third man into the debate was young Edward Rogers, third generation scion of the ownership family. In an unusual interview with Sportsnet, owned by Rogers, Edward went through chapter-and-verse of what he claimed they did to convince Anthopoulos to stay. Now, I don’t know Edward, I’ve never clapped eyes on him, but no one talks as lyrically as he did in that interview. Here it is in all its splendour. Was there a ghostwriter involved?

Just when we thought baseball mattered again, the suits arrived and the party’s over. Fans of the late, lamented and losing Brooklyn Dodgers used to hold out hope by saying, “Wait ’til next year.” By the sounds of things, I don’t think we can say even that.

 

 

Field of dreamers

The election night resignation by press release of Stephen Harper was cheesy. He offered no thank you, no list of accomplishments, no closure for supporters. It did, however, trigger a leadership race. Comebacks are always possible. The Progressive Conservative Party won only two seats in 1993, changed its name, and was returned to power a decade later. The Liberals, written off in 2011 by no less an observer than the indefatigable Peter C. Newman, rose from the dead: 34 seats to 184 in only four years.

So here’s my list of Conservative leadership candidates:

From Atlantic Canada, only Peter Mackay is likely to run, mostly because he has nothing better to do. Bernard Valcourt is too old at 63 and just lost his seat, hardly a winning combination. Former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord never was and never will be ready for prime time. From Quebec, neither Pierre Poilievre nor Maxime Bernier has much profile outside their home province.

From Ontario, Tony Clement has too few friends in the party to cause a groundswell. Doug Ford’s proclamation a few weeks back that he would consider running if Harper lost was almost enough to make me vote for Harper just so the job did not become vacant. Almost.

Among female contenders Rona Ambrose, Lisa Raitt and Kellie Leitch, the latter is the most likely. She is the most ambitious politician I have ever seen, male or female. Such neediness won’t serve her well.

In the west are found the top two names: Brad Wall and Jason Kenney. Wall is premier of Saskatchewan which pretty much puts him out of the running. Name the last premier to lead a national party and win an election. Finally, the man most likely to succeed, Jason Kenney. He certainly has the political operatives and was helpful electing Patrick Brown PC leader in Ontario. I once attended a dinner and happened to sit at a table of eight that included Kenney. I can’t recall a single redeeming feature of the man. If the Conservatives elect Kenney, it will be like Harper Redux, a closed party with narrow appeal, votes against the current, doomed to run second again.

Coyne toss

The longer-than-usual election campaign has been tough on the media. First the Globe and Mail endorsed the Conservative Party but not its leader, saying Stephen Harper should step down. The response to this risible position was both swift and satirical. “Hell but not Satan,” said one tweet. “Hilary’s pantsuit but not Hilary,” said another. “Duran, but not Duran,” went a third.

Equally grabbing, but a different form of foolishness, came today when Andrew Coyne resigned as editor of editorials and comment at the National Post. Seems he didn’t like the edict from the owners that the paper would be supporting Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party. Coyne will stay on as a columnist. He made the announcement in a series of fifteen tweets over a two-minute period this morning. I guess that’s what passes for the equivalent these days of Charles Dickens publishing a chapter a week of Bleak House.

Everyone from Elizabeth May to Miss December rushed to congratulate him for the principled decision that he, as Coyne put it himself, “didn’t want to be seen endorsing or voting for” the Conservatives. All that was fine and upstanding but then he went on to announce that he would be voting for the NDP candidate in his riding.

Do principles just apply to him? What about readers of his column and viewers of his pronouncements on CBC’s turgid At Issue panel? Don’t we deserve at least the patina of objectivity? Sure, one assumes great analysts like Coyne actually vote, but we shouldn’t know who for. As we watch him grandstand tonight as part of the CBC election coverage we’ll know who he voted for and be able to gauge all his comments through that lens. If principles apply equally to all, the CBC should tell him not to come peddling his profundities any more. A tweet to that effect will suffice.

Barbarians within

Far be it from me to rain on the Blue Jays parade, but I’m about to. No one was more happy than I with last night’s come-from-behind win. It had to be the wildest game of all time. There have been other spectacular victories recently that also rank with the ages. And I speak as a fan who froze his butt off at Exhibition Stadium in the early years.

For all this time I’ve been part of one group or another that share a pair of season’s tickets so I go to the ball park for maybe a dozen games every year. Beginning in August, with the run-up to the league lead, there’s been a change. It started first on Friday nights when the regular game followed the gathering outside that featured a band and drinking, not necessarily in that order. As the crowds grew and the sellouts became regular, the whole tone of the Rogers Centre altered, and not for the better.

Many of the newcomers can only be described as “stupid fans.” They weren’t there to watch baseball so much as they were there to party and drink. Oh, they cheered and they waved the giveaway towels but it wasn’t as if they appreciated the finer points of the game. Beer seemed to be more promoted than before. If you wanted to buy beer, a vendor came down the aisle every few minutes. If you wanted popcorn, you’d wait, and you’d wait.

The result of beer served by firehose has been overly zealous and drunk patrons. I know people who’ve had tickets for years who stayed away because the revelry got out of hand. Last night’s “stupid fans” were not only an embarrassment as they threw beer cans and trash onto the field, they represented an endangerment. Some of the missiles didn’t make it all the way, they fell on other patrons. Don’t these people understand that the baseball diamond is hallowed ground, not to be sullied by such detritus?

Of course they don’t. They’re just along for the ride. They rest of us have to put up with them. Winning doesn’t offer the same joyful lift when you’re in bad company.

Day of decision

I’ve been wavering about Justin Trudeau for prime minister. When I first heard him speak in March 2013, I was a fan and said so in a blog post. (Justin Time.) He was articulate, well-informed and worked the room well. When I next heard him in May 2015, his speech was lacking in passion and his performance was poor. I was less impressed and said that, too. (Flatlining on Front Street.)

During the election campaign, his presentation has improved and his economic policies seem appropriate. The Nanos poll has the Liberals in the lead by six points while Ekos says the Conservatives are ahead by more than two points so the outcome is still anybody’s guess.

But opposition parties rarely win on their own steam, governments get thrown out, that’s usually how regime change happens. And I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the Conservatives deserve to be thrown out. Never mind Mike Duffy, a weak Conservative cabinet, a poor record on climate change or a bombing policy in Syria with which I disagree. Those are all relevant, but what pushed me over the edge was the niqab .

The Conservatives want Muslim women to have their faces uncovered during citizenship ceremonies, to my mind an unnecessary slight because their identity is verified privately before they take the oath. Stephen Harper is also threatening to enact a law that would mean such religious garments could not be worn by members of the civil service. All this despite the fact that the courts have twice ruled his approach is not appropriate.

This divisive fear-mongering is not my Canada. I don’t want political staff in the prime minister’s office overseeing who is and who is not allowed into this country. Or what they can wear once they’re here. No one was expecting my father when he showed up in 1910 on a ship at Quebec City as a three-year-old with his family. Nor did anyone legislate against the kilts worn by his Scottish ancestors – the soldiers known as the “Ladies from Hell.” On any given subway ride I can see African tribal dress, Sikh turbans, Rasta hats and dreadlocks, tattoos galore, and all that’s just fine with me.

When the Quebec Assembly earlier this year began debating a law against specific religious garb, the first federal leader to speak out against such legislated intolerance was Justin Trudeau. For that reason alone, I’m voting Liberal on October 19.