BT Calgary Blogs

Canadian taxpayers were taught an important political lesson this past week, but it’s laden with irony because the instructor, the professor if you will, was those taxpayers themselves.

When an opinion poll reveals that 80 percent of the populace suspects or in fact believes  members of parliament and by extension senators, too, are guilty of claiming expenses which violate the rules, it’s no surprise that politicians would react very quickly.  Not to put too blunt a point on it, but the Decima poll, to summarize it another way, discovered that four of five Canadians figure their elected and appointed representatives may be petty thieves or crooks, or actually are.  To say the poll results attracted the undivided attention of MPs and senators would be understatement of the first order.

This all has to do, as you’re doubtless aware, with the insistence by parliamentarians, aided and abetted by Prime Minister Harper, Liberal leader Michael (Iffy) Ignatieff, and the unctuous Jack Layton of the NDP, that personal expenses are their business and auditor general Sheila Fraser need not worry herself about taking a look at the books.  All is well, they said:  we’re upstanding and worthy politicians, they said:  the Board of Internal Economy (BOIE) takes care of such matters, they said:  Ms. Fraser cannot be serious about delving into our trivial little spending habits, they said.

(It’s always been thus.  Back in the 1980s the Commons Sergeant at Arms, a fellow named Gus Cloutier, quietly set about establishing an exclusive restaurant on Parliament Hill with the tacit knowledge and consent of the BOIE but without leave from the house finance committee or for that matter anybody else in authority.   It was only when the speaker of the day, Jeanne Sauve, intervened that Cloutier’s culinary hideaway was exposed, and then shut down).

In any case, let it be noted that in the current controversy, the glee club of self-righteous protest and pleadings of honesty was in full voice on parliament hill……before the Decima poll results were released.  But now?  Well, my oh my:  how the tide has turned because we have a full-blown political Dunkerque underway in Ottawa, with our previously haughty politicians in stampeding retreat from their original positions of defense and denial.

But they’re reversing course not because of sudden pangs of conscience, or because of a belated comprehension that expense money is in fact taxpayer money.  They’re in precipitous abjuration because the Canadian public has delivered, by vast majority, a resounding vote of no confidence in their alleged spending habits.  We’ve said we don’t trust you lot, and we want answers provided not by your little BOIE, but by independent analysis from an independent examiner.

Clearly that manner of external financial review is not what we get from the BOIE, which is chaired by the house of commons speaker and which is populated entirely  —  you guessed it  —  by members of parliament and senators.  The foxes preside over the financial affairs of the parliamentary chicken coop.

The expense account imbroglio detonated a couple of weeks ago when Ms. Fraser suggested the operational costs of our two parliamentary institutions  —  commons and senate  —  should perhaps be subject to scrutiny.  After all, she said, the total bill is $533 million dollars a year (half a billion in short phrasing) and surely the politicians would have no quarrel with perusal of who’s been spending how much on what.

But Fraser’s subsequent and formal request that the ledgers be opened to audit was abruptly turned aside by the BOIE, which claimed it makes absolutely certain, pretty much guarantees actually, that personal MP expenses are placed under microscopic review with every nickel and dime accounted for, nothing amiss, no larking around with claims, you can bet your life on that.  And then there was the observation from the commons benches that there can’t possibly be financial  impropriety in a $4 cup of coffee here and there.  MPs do have to provide “refreshments” from time to time for visiting constituents and guests, you see.

(By way of context, members of parliament earn $157,731,00 annually.  Committee chairs, and there are a good many of them, are given a supplementary allowance which takes their yearly pay to $168,896.00, while cabinet ministers also earn an extra reward which delivers an annual salary of $233,247.00).

There aren’t all that many Canadians earning almost $158K a year, never mind $233K, and  it’s a sure bet the great majority of them, whatever the salary, buy their own coffee.  Perhaps with that in mind, Ms. Fraser’s rejoinder to the java reference was immediate and caustic.  “I’ve got better things to do than look for $4 cups of coffee.”  And furthermore, she said MPs and senators should not be afraid to have their expenses audited if it’s true the BOIE rules and regulations are as effective as everybody on the hill says they are.

In the two weeks since Ms. Fraser broached the notion of an audit, the issue has gained very firm traction, which of course is why our elected and appointed representatives are now running at flank speed for cover.  There’s little if any doubt an audit will proceed, and it’ll go well beyond morning lattes.  Tellingly, we’ve reached that point because of one single factor:  the Decmia poll, which clearly advised MPs and senators we don’t accept their cooing assurances about how the clandestine Board of Internal Economy has everything well in hand.

Here’s the broader instruction arising. Canadian citizens, Canadian taxpayers, have a great deal of political power   —  if they choose to exercise it and in the Decima poll, that’s precisely what they did.  For the first time in years hostile voter opinion has forced the sad sacks occupying commons and senate seats to completely and utterly reverse a previous position.

The lessons, two of them, are clear.  First, we have before us a significant victory for democratic process in Canada because the audit controversy has proven beyond question that when the electorate pipes up in protest, en masse, politicians actually do pay heed.  And second, the people of this country have now fashioned a template by which they might in future effect genuine change in Canadian politics with not a whole lot of effort.  In this case, all they had to do was answer the phone and tell a Decima researcher exactly what they think.  In the wider expanse, they need only take themselves into the voting booths the next time around, sharpen the pencils, and then in a manner of speaking stick them into the hides of incumbent politicians who would dare claim our money is well and usefully spent on coffee.

We can only hope, and while it may spring eternal I’m afraid in my case it’s faint.  Voter participation in the last federal election was at an historical nadir:  only 42 percent of Canadians bothered to turn out, and over the years one of the principal reasons cited for increasing electoral inattentiveness has been well, my one vote won’t make any difference, so what’s the use?

I’ve always thought it a feeble argument, a weak defense for abandonment of  democratic responsibility.   But the audit controversy has done one thing, if no other:  it has caused Canadian citizens to rebel against the arrogant hive who thought they’d get away with lurking in secrecy behind the financial self-appraisal of the BOIE.  I say again:  in so doing we taught ourselves a valuable lesson, but it’ll take permanent root only if we decide to go to class full time.

As for the $4 cup of coffee, perhaps we should wonder about how many all told?   Ten or 12, 10 or 12 thousand, 100 or 120 thousand?  Ms. Fraser, even if uninterested in a single mug, may be inclined in summation to tote up the aggregate.  Then we might really get mad as hell and not take it any more and teach a second, more permanent lesson to the parliament hill latte lifters.

I’ve received an agreeable and rewarding number of emails, comments, and phone calls over the past several weeks inquiring about the absence of material in this space.  I have no wish to whicker and drone about a work schedule here which changed to some degree  –  although it did.  And I’ll not dwell on a couple of other issues which in combination caused abandonment of the weekly blog  –  although they did.

None of that.  I shall instead merely proclaim…..I’m back.

Brian Mason describes himself as an eternal optimist.  If he weren’t, he says, he would long since have walked away from  his job as leader of the Alberta NDP Party,  and found something else to do.

But he soldiers on, one of two NDP members of the provincial legislature, one of a succession of leaders whose collective accomplishment over the years has been to maintain the virtual anonymity of the party in a province which has always voted toward the right or centre right of the political spectrum.  In all probability it’ll do so again as the Wildrose Alliance rapidly emerges from fringe to genuine contender against the floundering troupe posing as a government under Premier Ed Stelmach.

Mason and his lone colleague in the legislature, Rachel Notley, both hold ridings in Edmonton which is where the NDP has occasionally journeyed to actual election victory.  But as party leader, Mason is obliged every now and again to venture forth into territory which historically has shown no interest at all in the New Democrats, and so it was that he surfaced in Calgary the other day to deliver the word.

He attracted a couple of dozen or so ferociously loyal and dedicated seniors who listened attentively as the weary theorems of NDP paradise echoed around the room.  Put the blocks to big oil and make sure all of us Albertans  –  as true owners of  natural resources  –  get our fair share (whatever that is) of energy revenues.  Do not under any circumstances permit the slightest move toward private health care because that would inevitably lead to Americanization of medical services and we all know what that would mean.  (No matter that for at least ten years, the Alberta government and the feds, too, have strenuously insisted the American brand of health care isn’t the preferred model, and would therefore not be the consequence of modest private delivery.  Alberta and Canada would instead adopt the best practices of several European nations, primarily Austria, France, and Sweden to develop a system that would work, be affordable and above all provide immediate access, or very close to it, to both general and specialized care.  Wildrose leader Danielle Smith, in particular, is an advocate of the European experience and has compiled a good deal of research on it).

But Mason insists, as he always has, on raising the phantasma of thousands, if not millions of Canadians without health care insurance, ensnared in a system catering exclusively to the wealthy and utterly disinterested in the poor.  Oh dread and dire:  that’s a pathway we must not follow:  public health now, public health forever:  and  together with all  the other party slogans and verses, Mason offers up the left wing psalm extolling the joys of eternal peace, prosperity, and good socialist government for all.

That said, there are a couple of things about Brian Mason which suggest he might surprise a few people when the next election is called  –  presumably in 2012.  NDP poll numbers are improving slightly, although one might argue twice nothing is still nothing, but there has been a discernable upward trend.  (I hasten to add the polls don’t forecast the remotest prospect of a  party breakthrough in Alberta, let alone outright victory.  Not in this province).

But Mason, whom I encounter rarely because he’s mostly in Edmonton and I’m down here in Calgary, demonstrates a not inconsiderable knack for on-the-spot, at-the-podium communication which cannot hurt when he gets into the electoral ruck and run against Stelmach, Liberal leader David Swann, and even Smith.  For openers, he uses a wireless microphone with which he strolls behind and to each side of the dais.  He’s comfortable and imparts an aura of confidence, even warmth, and when speaking to his sturdy elders the other day referred to no prepared speech, no notes, no talking points.  He was conversational and informal, seemed to be off the cuff, and for Mason that could well be an asset when locked in election combat versus Stelmach and Swann, both leaden and uninspiring performers on the stump.

More significantly, maybe, is evidence I’ve not heretofore seen that Mason has a fairly sharp sense of humour.  Somebody in the audience, lamenting what he described as the persistent lack of  coverage by the mainstream media  (we were in the back of the hall and apparently had gone unseen by the questioner) asked why the NDP and its leader aren’t embracing social media.

That, replied Mason, isn’t so:  he’s on Facebook, the party has a website, a number of provincial constituency offices have websites, they’re right into social media although……well, he’s not on Twitter, doesn’t tweet, doesn’t like little meaningless 140-character squirts signifying nothing and so twitter and tweet he does not.  But on the other hand maybe he should although then again he finds Twitter sort of disconcerting so maybe not.

So after the meeting I asked him:  “Why don’t you like Twitter?”

(Pause).  “Why don’t I like Twitter?  (Pause).  I don’t know.  It just….it’s just….it just doesn’t turn my crank.  (Pause).  Y’know, I like Facebook, I really do.  My staff is pushing me to get on Twitter but….ah….I’m just not comfortable with it.  But we’ll see.  We’ll see.  I’m gonna keep practicing.”

I put it to Mason that he was admitting to being a bit of a neanderthal with respect to social media.

“I know.  I know I am, but……oh well.”

The foregoing doesn’t read on paper or on a blog for that matter nearly as well as it sounded and looked on television delivery, because Mason had an amused glint in his eye and quite clearly enjoyed portraying himself as not quite out of the cave, just yet, in terms of social media.  He was self-deprecating and charming during his confession of electronic wariness and for my money his responses were ideally suited to questions which had been framed with the precise intention of revealing a flair for humour   –  not that I expected to discover one.

By comparison, I suspect Ed Stelmach would have said he prefers the old two piece phone (the box on the wall and the cradle ear piece that looks like an inverted candlestick) at the Lamont general store.  And I suspect David Swann would have embarked on a thesis about the performance evaluation matrix of various social media devices, relative to the ambient light available at any given time to the user.  But Mason caught the drift right off the bat, on a question he doubtless did not expect, and thereby revealed himself to be a man of appreciable wit and media agility.  Conventional media, that is.

Allow me to be clear, as in crystal.  God forbid that Mason and his tiny band of followers ever expand to the point of assuming governance in Alberta, or that they even reach legislature strength in numbers which would give them the balance of power.  But I will say this:  if politics in this province needs one thing, it needs some real people.  Brian Mason, I would suggest,  is one of them and it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more around.

Just so long as not too many are romping about the province waving NDP banners.  If that were the case, then I guess I’d have to ask Mason why he’s so blinkered and hidebound about the energy industry which after all is the principal economic driver of the province.  Mason often sounds a lot like a union leader in the desolate slag heaps of Wales oh, about 80 years ago, and you have to ponder sometimes whether he’s figured out what century it is.   He’s a throwback to other days and times, and in fact the  combined NDP headquarters and meeting hall in Calgary is adorned with portraits of Tommy Douglas and David Lewis and Frank Underhill and all the great warriors of a half century and more ago.  But it seems to me if those men are Brian Mason’s role models, he could do a lot worse  —  so even as he pursues  political dreams which are largely irrelevant in modern society, my sense of  Mason is that he’s nonetheless a pretty genuine and decent fellow.    

In the meantime, I expect to see him Twittering, and fairly soon, too.

The parallels between two governments, that of Alberta premier Ed Stelmach today and of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker almost a half century ago, differ by circumstance and dimension, and are accordingly inexact, but they’re intriguing nonetheless and worth brief examination.

By February of 1963, Diefenbaker   –  who just five years earlier had led the Progressive Conservative Party to the most triumphal parliamentary majority in Canadian history  –  was conning the rapidly sinking wreckage of a government riven by cabinet revolt and backbench disarray.

With the approach of February 2010, Ed Stelmach  –  who slightly less than two years ago led the Conservative party to its most triumphal majority, bar two others, in Alberta history  –  is conning the rapidly sinking wreckage of a government riven by disintegrating public favour, with resultant evidence of backbench restlessness and a palpable degree of uneasiness among party executives and backroom plotters.

Because of ferocious loyalty to Diefenbaker from rural Ontario, in part, but primarily from western Canada Diefenbaker held onto his leadership  –  but not his Prime Ministerial chair  –  for another four years before he was finally forced out.

Conventional wisdom has it that ferocious loyalty to the Tory brand (although perhaps not in the same measure to Stelmach himself) will assure his relatively easy survival as Alberta premier, and Conservative party leader.

It appears conventional wisdom is now disappearing out the door.   Stelmach’s popularity and more ominously that of his government is steadily ebbing not only in Calgary and southern Alberta, but also in Edmonton where opposition forces have historically had little more than a toehold, and in every rural sector of the province.  Stelmach’s own approval rating is the lowest of all Canadian premiers and territorial leaders and with that the internal revolt has now begun.

If it’s true that past lessons unlearned will cause history to repeat itself, then the Diefenbaker precedent (and that of Ralph Klein) is beginning to fill Stelmach’s rear view mirror.  That said, only a fool would claim the defections of two Conservative MLAs to the rapidly germinating Wildrose Alliance party are in themselves definitive evidence of insurrection in full flight, but wise observers would suggest the breach in the dike is now wholly exposed.  The question then is whether Stelmach, the Alberta version of Hans Brinker, has enough fingers to stem the flow.

Based on the lurching gait of his leadership thus far, I would think probably not.  It’s all very well for Stelmach to lay blame for his plight at the feet of a global recession which he could not have foreseen and over which his government had no control.  But the smooth suits in Calgary oil and gas towers aren’t buying that for a moment.  They’re still infuriated by the premier’s revised, ill-considered, and frequently amended royalty framework for oil and natural gas  –  and Tory bagmen wishing to ensure the party counting house remains full of cash are evidently finding a lot of energy executives unwilling to ante up.

It’s also incomprehensible to thinking people in Alberta that deficit financing, after a decade of surpluses totalling more than $40 billion dollars would now be the financial order of the day, and more than likely for the next three years.  But it is, partly because the government, without blinking an eye, overturned legislation which prohibited deficit financing as a matter of law.  The Stelmachians said they had no choice:  the planetary recession, you see, and so we’ll have to go into the red by the billions.

In the broad scan of politics  energy patch ire and deficit financing, taken together, should at worst be a troublesome burr under Stelmach’s saddle  –  if there were visible signs of competence in other areas such as health care reform and education, and if Stelmach could articulate them with reasonable coherence.    Trouble is there aren’t and he can’t, so serious danger now brews in front of the Premier because the people who really count  –  Alberta voters  –  appear in larger and larger numbers to be losing confidence in him.  What’s happening brings to mind the ditty about how “if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it is a duck.”  In Stelmach’s case if he “walks like a stumbler and talks like a stumbler, then he is a stumbler.”

Even at that, though, a record of  trudging from one unpolished speech to another, and thence from one hamfisted policy (no more free soap, toiletries, or snacks for mentally ill patients) to another ($11 million dollars carved from funding for people with developmental disabilities) would heretofore have probably had no impact because the traditional Alberta opposition parties are altogether inconsequential.  The province has been a one-party playpen for the Tories for years, but that dynamic is now altering quickly and radically with the emergence of an opposition party which isn’t really a party yet, has no record of electoral success save a single MLA, is led by a woman with no political experience  –  and yet is taking Ed Stelmach to the opinion poll cleaners.

This would of course be the Wildrose Alliance and its leader, Danielle Smith.  She’s the beneficiary of those two Conservative defectors, Rob Anderson and former cabinet minister Heather Forsyth.  Their signatures on Alliance membership cards mean the party has gone from one seat in the legislature to three, which is one more than the NDP and only six fewer than the Liberals.  And it’s all  happened in slightly less than three months.

I’ve had the occasional chat about all this with Tory backroom types in Calgary, one of whom was publicly defiant about Stelmach just before the premier’s mandatory leadership review last November.   These chaps are undoubtedly out of favour with the Stelmachians and in fact are regarded as party pariahs, but their political dials are still finely turned to Tory frequencies.  Their view is unanimous:  Smith, notwithstanding her inexperience, is off to an impressive start and absolutely must be taken seriously because people are becoming convinced she’s everything Stelmach is not.  Such thinking may not be entirely accurate and it may not be fair, but it does generate that vital commodity known as momentum.  Smith has it,  Stelmach doesn’t, and every political novice in the country knows if a leader loses it, getting it back is next to impossible.

(In the long and agonizing fall of John Diefenbaker, he had without question lost momentum by 1963, but there was no one around to gather it up.  Lester Pearson, the Liberal leader of the day, had very little going for him except a reputation for astute diplomacy.  A politician he was not:  he was an insipid speaker with no ability to engage and hold an audience:  his television appearances, back in those single-channel days, had viewers turning off their sets from one end of the country to the other.   In every respect, Danielle Smith  –  so far at any rate  –  has been the exact opposite).

But for the moment, at least, Stelmach seems to be unaware of the gathering storm on his horizon, because his observations about Smith, the Alliance, and the two erstwhile Tories who now sit in opposition to their former colleagues have revealed no sense of urgency, no hint of foreboding.  Albertans must work together, he says, and the Tory party must work together too, with determination and unity.  And oh, by the way, the cabinet shuffle which was supposed to be the first block of the rebuilding has been put off for a while because of travel plans.

The premier nuzzles his soother and urges us to do the same.  The government is close to finishing its “competitiveness review,” which will set things right in the oil patch and the forthcoming budget, he says, will demonstrate to one and all that Stelmach and his cabinet have things all figured out and the province will pretty soon be strong and rich and equipped once again with the Alberta Advantage.

That would suggest a Premier somnolent in the land of Nod, because when the money stopped coming in and when the Tory establishment decided that John Diefenbaker  –  notwithstanding his undiminished communication skills  –  had to go, he went.

In Alberta, the money flow slackens, the party structure weakens, and Ed Stelmach  –  unlike the old Chief  –  cannot relate to the public.  Faced with perhaps the most serious challenge to his governance so far, and to nearly four decades of Tory supremacy in Alberta, the Premier issued a written statement by way of his office subalterns.  A note from his vacation hideaway.  It was from that we learned how everybody has to work together, how the Tories need to unite  –  while Smith and the Wildrose Alliance were in every newspaper headline and on every radio/television newscast in the province, non-stop.

(By the way, Stelmach got 77.4 percent of delegate support at that leadership review two months ago, which at the time appeared to be a reasonably solid endorsement.  Now, it looks as if it was actually another crack in the Hans Brinker dike, but there’s not much evidence yet that the premier has figured out he needs to get more than one finger into it, in a hurry).

It’s not too late, but nearly so, I think.  I’m mindful of political scientists, a good many of them actually, who say Stelmach does in fact have time on his side, and moreover he has the machinery of government at his beck and call to clear away the difficulties confronting his government’s reputation, and then get the message out that he’s done so.  But it may just be that very government machinery itself is under public suspicion, and if that’s the case, the Premier’s comeback will not leave the starting blocks.

Ed Stelmach, meet the ghost of John Diefenbaker.

“In politics nothing is contemptible.”

Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1874-1880)

  At the risk of declaring the obvious, one thing is for sure:  Disraeli wasn’t living in contemporary Ottawa.  But if he were, it’s likely he would alter his view because Canadian politics has in fact descended to the contemptible. 

  How else can one explain the appearance earlier this week of what was described as a cartoon challenge on the Liberal Party of Canada website?  Humourists near and far, neophyte and professional, were invited to submit amusing photo interpretations of Prime Minister Harper busily ignoring the dreary Copenhagen global warming summit, otherwise known as the global gong show.  (More ominously, the Copenhagen rhetoric has of late become a conniving con game, formulated by developing nations  in order to extract vast sums of money  –  reparations, the lesser nations now call them  —  from the wealthier countries, Canada among them).   

  Setting aside for the moment the bothersome little sidebar  –  for the Grits   –  that Harper is actually attending the Danish sham, and further that the Prime Minister is acutely aware this carnival has devolved into incessant bickering about how the third world ransom note should be composed, the mere facts of the Liberal presentation were (are) in themselves a denial of Disraeli’s assertion. 

  The cartoon chucklefest attracted a whole raft of submissions, all of which were reviewed by Grit deep thinkers bunkered in Ottawa, and some of which  –  the best of the best, we were advised   –  were then posted on the party website, with assurances a winner would in due course be declared.  In all, there were 75 finalists.

  One of them was based on a photograph taken in November, 1963, by Robert H. Jackson of the Dallas Times-Herald.   Jackson pressed his shutter at the precise moment a sallow Dallas club owner named Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald:  the picture caught Oswald’s face contorted in pain, as the bullet ripped into his abdomen and inflicted a mortal wound.   

  Oswald, of course, was about to be formally charged with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which if anything darkens the enclosure in which the Liberal party of Canada now cavorts.  The Grits found it amusing, apparently, that one of the cartoon entrants had superimposed Stephen Harper’s head over that of Lee Harvey Oswald.  I take it the effect of this was to produce gales of laughter among the Liberals serving as cartoon editors and gatekeepers, because against the background of a murdered United States president, and his alleged assassin subsequently shot and killed for all the world to see, the Grits went right ahead and published the doctored photograph on the party webpage.  

  Funny stuff, what?  Stephen Harper taking a slug to the gut.  For sure this one has to be in the running for best cartoon of all.  (Never mind a second image, also posted on the Liberal web page,  in which Harper was shown in what might best be described as an intimate moment with a dairy cow).   

  With apologies to Disraeli, these two cartoons taken together (but especially the Oswald effort on its own) precisely define the word “contemptible.”  And they further strengthen my view that the Liberal Party of Canada is spectacularly unqualified to govern this country, with this cartoon challenge as prima facie evidence.   Actually, there’s more to it than just this pair of grotesque parodies and I’ll get to that a bit further on in this essay. 

  To continue:  belatedly, the Liberals removed the two “cartoons” after being overrun with protest from the blogosphere, from the mainstream media, from the public, and by his studied silence, from Stephen Harper, too:  he would not, his spokesman said, dignify such rubbish with a comment. 

  But in the internet age, to remove images from an owned and operated website is to not remove them at all.  That’s another element of modern society the Liberals don’t seem to grasp:  that the web world is in many respects an anomaly of the old academia axiom that to survive in ivied halls you must “publish or perish.”    The Grits don’t seem to have figured out that if you publish stupid or distasteful or offensive or gross material on the internet these days you damn well will perish because there’s no going back, no retrieval, and the twitching corpse of Liberal public relations strategy in Ottawa is the latest evidence.   It’s incomprehensible that party factotums would in the first instance approve such ghastly samples of so-called humour, and would in the second post them  –  but they did, after no doubt vetting the material with quill pens scratching away by the glow of a guttering candle.  One suspects their communications stupor was hastened by several flagons of mead.   

  But even though the Oswald cartoon, which if nothing else was a clear incitement to violence against the Prime Minister of Canada, and the cow have been excised, the stench of  Liberal “humour” lingers on.  That’s because of the remaining final submissions still decorating the Liberal Party website, three of them  –  on the pretext of slagging Harper  –  are in fact denigrating Alberta and all of us who live here.  The images paint us as thick witted yokels and rubes, hillbillies, fat and happy in a bleak wasteland fouled by oilsands pollution, complacent and uncaring about the fetid mess we’re visiting upon the rest of the country, and therefore not especially good citizens of the greater and pristine Canada. 

  For my money, this anti-Alberta lampooning, vicious and with no basis in fact, is the real toxicity, the real bacteria of the Liberal web page.  For me, the Grits bring on political acid reflux, because while they endorse demeaning insults against Alberta, they also claim to  represent the entire nation, and presume in due course to once again become its government. 

  God spare us the thought, never mind the possibility, because in reality this is a party of slender and reckless thinking, uninterested in national unity except as it pertains to Quebec, and content to let wannabe cartoonists malign a major province which just so happens to be among the dominant propellants of the entire Canadian economy. 

  All of this is proof positive, in my estimation, that the Liberal Party of Canada is now populated by elitist parvenus wholly capable of behaviour which cannot, even by the most generous of interpretations, be described as anything but disgusting.

  With that in mind, I’m further drawn to the sagacity of Benjamin Disraeli, who while he may not have foreseen the dreadful wash of sewage we call democratic politics in present day Canada, was nonetheless right on the mark with another of his observations 135 or so years ago. 

“The hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity.”

  They way I look at it, that’s a phrase which as far as it goes neatly sums up this entire cartoon caper.  But it doesn’t go quite far enough, which takes us back to that other entry  from the Disraeli political logbook. 

   Contemptible. 

  Once upon a very long time ago the editor of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, a man named Eric Knowles, saw fit to hire a young and untried kid as a general reporter, and instructed the city editor to assign a string of minor local stories about a road getting paved here, a few trees added to a park there, and so forth.  For those and other tales, the kid was paid $32 dollars a week, which at the time was the minimum wage in Saskatchewan.

  After a couple of months or so, the city editor declared he’d observed some modest signs of progress, so the kid would henceforth be placed on the police beat.  And furthemore, the city editor suggested if there were continued evidence of emerging ability, then better things might well be in store:  city hall for example, or perhaps even an opportunity to cover the provincial legislature in Regina.  Expense account, hotel, exotic indeed. 

  But the police beat lasted a long time because the kid went for it like bees to the pollen, and forgot all about city halls and legislatures.  He learned to like and respect cops, learned to appreciate the sometimes difficult choices they had to make even in a smallish city of 50,000 or thereabouts, learned there was a seamy underbelly in Saskatoon which was largely unknown to the general public because as the founder of the Metropolitan London Police, Sir Robert Peel, once said “the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”  The kid learned the cops were dealing with it, all right, every day and night. 

  I’ve never forgotten those times and never lost my appreciation for police officers, but I have to admit it’s under severe strain these days because what seems to have happened to the RCMP. 

  There was a time when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was considered one of the finest law enforcement agencies in the world.  Its recruitment and training standards were of the highest order, its public image was without stain or tarnish and its commanding officers were wholly removed from the distasteful realities of politics, and political expediency. 

  In recent years, though, the force leadership has deteriorated, in my view, to an artful and often conspiratorial cabal, with its primary motivation to no longer serve and protect, but seemingly to simply protect itself:  cover its tracks and butt.   

  For instance, the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport in October, 2007.  He was a man who had wanted to settle in Canada because, I’m thinking, of an assumption that among other things the federal police force here would be far removed from the sometimes ominous menace of the policja in Poland.  Mr. Dziekanski didn’t live long enough to find out if this was true, though, because after he’d spent ten hours sweating and confused in an airport holding room, he was tasered to death by four RCMP officers who made no effort, none at all, to speak to or reason with him, or to discover precisely what was going on. 

  They shot him less than 30 seconds after arriving in the holding room, with a weapon which had been conclusively shown in past episodes to be occasionally lethal.  But they just shot him and then got their heads together to tidy up and mesh the strands of testimony which they were to present to a subsequent inquiry. 

  The results of that inquiry by the RCMP Commissioner of Public Complaints, Paul Kennedy, are now before us and they should be of concern to us all.  Essentially, Kennedy says evidence from the four cops was simply not credible, particuarly when compared with bystander video which clearly showed they just walked in and opened up with the tasers.  Five times they shot Dziekanski, even as he writhed in agony on the floor and even as he began to go into the cardiac arrest which killed him. 

  Kennedy says the RCMP response to his findings will be a “defining moment” for the force, and in my opinion he’s correct because this was by no means an isolated case.  But so far, the RCMP has retreated to the bunkers, refused comment, said it would be inappropriate to speak about Dziekanski’s death before another inquiry has published its conclusions and recommendations.  That won’t happen until next year, which would suggest the RCMP hopes this forthcoming analysis will be less critical than Kennedy’s, and further that maybe the current public discomfort about Dziekanski will have abated. 

  Now if this had been a single case of RCMP wrongdoing or ineptitude, or even one of a sparse few, then the last thing you’d see would be a critical commentary in this space.  But consider the following, all within the last 15 years. 

• a federal police force unable to foresee or detect a Greenpeace invasion of Parliament Hill, or to then offer an explanation of how it happened: 
• cops unable to spot an intruder on the lawn and then right inside the hallways of 24 Sussex Drive, which just happens to be the residence of the Prime Minister of Canada.  The PM at the time, Jean Chretien, and his wife were inside and asleep when all this was going on. 
•   an RCMP commissioner forced to resign because of inaccurate testimony to a House of Commons committee.  That same commissioner, Guiliano Zaccardelli, had earlier been found responsible for a “fundamental breach of trust” in connection with misuse of RCMP pension funds. 

  On training and standards: 

• four comparatively inexperienced officers, one with barely a month in uniform, shot and killed by a mentally unbalanced farmer near Mayerthorpe, Alberta: 
• two young constables killed while on duty, isolated and alone with no backup in the far north: 
• two more killed by a shooter in Saskatchewan: 
• a 22-year-old prisoner in custody at the Houston, B.C. detachment office, shot in the back of the head during what was described as a struggle with a cop: 
• another man shot to death while in the holding cells in Pincher Creek, Alberta. 

  None of these events is reassuring and none of them point to a police service which decides on lethal force only as a last resort.  And certainly, not much in the recent history of the RCMP speaks to the slightest command concern about ensuring to the highest degree possible the safety of its officers, either by training them for situations such as Mayerthorpe or by redesigning policy for cops on remote postings where help is a very long way away. 

  I’ve known a lot of police officers in my time, I’ve hung out with them and had more than the occasional beer with them, and I can tell you this:  the RCMP veterans, the old pros now retired and watching their beloved force descend into politcal spin, obfuscation, coverup, denial, and above all what the complaints commissioner described as a “massively inert” bureaucracy, are in utter despair. 

  But they won’t say anything in public, or at least very few of them will, because they’ll tell you it’d be pointless and would cause the current leadership to say well, they’re just old geezers and they don’t understand what policing is all about nowadays, and they’re just aging old timers with nothing better to do than grouse and complain  about how they’d sure have done things better,  and besides you have to understand that police work has changed. 

  I’m not arguing with that and the veterans don’t argue with it either.  Theyre just saying, and I’m saying it hasn’t changed for the better. 

  I haven’t the slighest doubt that were he alive today, Robert Dziekanski would concur.  Unless of course he’d gone back to Poland, where perhaps  law enforcement isn’t so bad, after all.

  It was back around midsummer when Ed Stelmach squelched all the chatter among his cabinet ministers about the possibility, if not probability of tax increases to counter the worsening Alberta deficit.  Among the cabinet types who’d openly mused that raising taxes would indeed be a point of discussion, if only in a very preliminary manner, were finance minister Iris Evans and treasury board president Lloyd Snelgrove. 

  The premier strode into the government media room in Calgary, accompanied by his two errant ministers, and proceeded to deliver a monologue which put both of them in their place. 

  “There will be no new taxes, period,” quoth Stelmach, “so don’t talk about it.”  The ministerial duo, one on either side of the premier, stood mute and chastened and since that day have said not a word about taxes.  It was an abrupt and forceful and highly public dressing down by Stelmach, not only of Evans and Snelgrove, but anyone else in the Conservative cabinet and caucus who might dare to henceforth mutter about raising taxes. 

  And when fast Eddie had concluded his remarks, he walked purposefully from the room, with Evans and Snelgrove trailing along like waterbugs in his wake.  One suspects they were committing to memory the mantra of George Bush # 1:  “Read my lips:  no new taxes.”

  As it happens, George Bush #1 hastily abandoned his promise when conditions in the American economy were clearly spelled out for him, but here in Alberta Snelgrove and Evans, along with the entire Stelmach crew, have apparently absorbed the message from the boss and now spend their days devoting themselves to reduced spending. 

  So let us deliver credit where credit is due, even if a good many critics still contend the Stelmachians are too late to the table of restraint, and laying too little upon it.  Perhaps so, but Snelgrove and Evans recently appeared once again in the Calgary media hall, Evans to present the third quarter fiscal update for the current year, and Snelgrove to offer fresh evidence the government is responding to the unremitting gloom of its numbers. 

  Cue the confession.  “We were at the all-you-can-eat buffet for ten years,” said Snelgrove, “and Albertans were lined up with us.”  In other words, the government was pigging out on spending, urged on by cities and towns large and small whose governing officials wanted in on the feast.  “I don’t think,” continued Snelgrove, “the government did anything more than what Albertans were looking for.  When you were out on the election campaign, no one said ‘please leave my town out for a new school or road widening, or a new hospital’”

  And then Snelgrove admitted the government, confronted by those incessant demands to spend like sailors numbed by grog  ”could have been a bit more prudent.”  And he even agreed that Stelmach’s ministers, and before them the Ralph Klein ministers, had pretty much lost control of financial oversight to the bureaucrats. 

  But Snelgrove proclaimed those days are over.  The Stelmachians, under orders from the Premier himself, have already pared about $430 million dollars from spending by tidying up bits and pieces of administrative overlap, and they’re promising another $2 billion dollar spending reduction in the budget for next year. 

  That’s a fair whack of money, except when compared with deficit projections which still exceed $4 billion.  But they’re whittling and assure us they’re about to lop  –  which would suggest the buffet table has been pretty much cleared away and the menu is now prix fixe instead of a la carte.  Snelgrove and his colleagues have audibly exhaled, and relieved themselves, it seems, of their financial indigestion. 

  But here’s the thing.  Snelgrove insists, and there’s no reason to disbelieve him, that Ed Stelmach issued stern orders during his very first cabinet meeting, in December 2006, that his ministers were to get a grip on government finances.  Above all, they were to rid Alberta of the wild fiscal pendulum which would swing on the one hand toward prodigious spending during the good times, and axe-swinging cuts during the bad.

  I have several observations about all of this.  To begin with, I understand the politics of government spending, especially when every municipal reeve and small town mayor in Alberta (and the big city leaders, too) demands a share of  resource boom boodle.  I understand too how the bureaucracy can get control of government money, especially if cabinet ministers are distracted by leadership conventions, and elections, and other such sideshows.  

  But I also understand that competent, assured governance (Margaret Thatcher in the early years springs to mind) demands in turn that premiers and cabinet ministers must be resolutely disciplined.  They have to learn how to say “no,” to constituent pleadings for money, especially in boom or buffet times when their view of the future tends to compress to the electoral exigencies of the present.  Spread the cash around, buy re-election, and forget about the bust which will assuredly come.  And of course, come it has, and so we’ll now see if austerity is to be a question of government expediency dictated by the moment   —  or long term policy arising from hard lessons learned.

  The critical chapter in the tale, however, is this:  Ed Stelmach has said repeatedly he thinks his financial policies are sound, his prescription for economic restoration correct, but everything’s been fouled up because the government hasn’t been able to communicate effectively.  And furthermore, accurate communication isn’t easy, no sir not easy at all, “with the type of media we have here.”

  Dammit.  Just when I acknowledge there’s been one step forward, it appears I’m mistaken and there are two back.  It’s all our fault.  The Wildrose Alliance and Danielle Smith are mere figments of media imagination:  the polls are a dreadful case of manipulation by radio, TV, and newspapers:  the Calgary-Glenmore byelection disaster would have actually been triumph were it not for the wretched fourth estate. 

  I need to be clear.  The media is not without issues, it’s not pristine, and most of its population is ill-acquainted with politics and economics.  But it doesn’t cook the message, and that’s something Stelmach has to figure out, while at the same time schooling himself to become far more relaxed and confident in dealing with us.  

  In that context, permit me to pose the following question to Mr. Stelmach.  If, as your loyal and sturdy treasury board president says, you delivered instructions at your first cabinet meeting to get a handle on government finances, why has it taken almost three years for your administration let the public know about that order,  in plain language? 

  Seems to me there’s a communications issue, all right, but I promise you it doesn’t reside with the media.  On the contrary, the premier should examine his own shop, because that’’s where he’ll find the problem.

  It was late August when I noticed one of the major big box stores in town had started to get the Christmas stuff out.  Repeat after me:  late August. 

  A day or two later a news item appeared about the gift wrap and ribbons and toys, books, games, doodads, gadgets now filling the shelves, and of course artificial trees, lots of them, right up there in plain view, towering above the display area where everybody could see them, which would of course draw shoppers right to those shelves with all the Christmas inducements loaded on and in.   

  Whereupon the chant from the business community started right up.  There’s a recession on, y’know, and sales haven’t been all that good and Christmas, y’know, is our biggest time of the year and so we’re just tryin’ to get ahead of lost ground here, and besides we haven’t got our store Santa sitting in his little North Pole-Elf-Reindeer kingdom just yet so we’re not really overdoin’ this bit, no sir. 

  Now it’s November and Santas by the dozen have most assuredly appeared, perched on their chairs, all dressed up with pillows tucked in their tummies and beards that look like untilled cotton fields.  Lineups of little kids with lists in hand, getting set to go begging for lots of boodle under the tree, which of course mum and dad will buy from that big display up there atop the shelves. 

  I say they are  overdoing it, have been for decades, and it gets worse very year.  I find the whole miserable, grasping commercial rack-up-the-credit card don’t let ’em walk without buying scene disheartening and annoying, especially since I have a story about how my Santa Claus really and truly did come to our house one Christmas Eve a very long time ago.   

  I was just a little gaffer, four years old probably, or maybe five, which would take us back to the first year or two following the Second World War.  My father was on the faculty at the University of Saskatchewan and while he provided well for us, you have to remember that 60 odd years ago salaries at Universities and at most other places for that matter weren’t so hot.  In fact, there was still rationing of some products and merchandising was basically confined to goods needed, not wanted.  So my parents budgeted carefully every month, but they were especially cautious in December because they would be buying small gifts for one another, and perhaps a few friends, and for little Mike one good present, one only, from Santa Claus. 

  Now keep in mind this would be the guy coming down the chimney, and I knew it because that’s how they told it in “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”   That marvellous classic by Clement Clarke Moore was the core of my Christmas fantasy, and back then nothing got in the way of it.  There was hardly any advertising, and there was no television, period, to deliver a subconscious imprint that maybe Santa lived in a cash register, and so I should lobby for lots and lots of presents instead of just one.  

  Nor was Santa a retail mannequin, with a travel schedule which allowed him to come down from the North Pole for most of November and December and sit around in a whole bunch of department stores on the same day at the same time, instead of making that one toy I knew would be mine.   

  It was the magic, the breathless excitement of a fantasy world that did it for me, and I believed so hard.  But one day when I was out cavorting around in the snow an older neighbourhood kid named Bobby Fisher upped and told me there was no Santa Claus, and I shouldn’t be so dumb as to fall for that silly old poem about “T’was the night,” and get over it. 

  I advised my parents of this news, and inquired if it might be true.  They said no it would not be true and Santa Claus would for sure arrive at the very moment I fell asleep on Christmas Eve, but not a second before so I mustn’t try to stay awake.   And he would be pleased, they said, to find the cookies and milk which I would provide. 

  But I brooded.  Bobby Fisher was a really big kid, probably seven or eight years old, and could it be he might just know something, might be right about how there’s no Santa Claus?  So I went back to my parents, and with the desperation borne of a four or five-year-old’s longing that Santa remain real and alive and about to come to see me, reasoned with them.  If, I said, Santa and his reindeer land on the roof of our house, the sleigh will leave tracks in the snow up there, and the hooves little holes, won’t they?  Yes, my parents agreed, they will. 

  My mother told me the story years later.  About 2:00 AM, after several notches of rye, my father got his coat and boots and gloves on and went out into perishing cold (mother remembered it was around 30 below), pulled the ladder out of the shed, propped it up against the eaves, then got a broom and wobbled up the rungs and stroked a couple of sleigh tracks right into the snow on the roof.  For good measure he sort of troweled out a few holes for the hooves, and then clambered down and more than likely had another dram of rye to warm up. 

  I don’t remember the one present, but I do remember this: I waited quite a while before venturing outside much later on Christmas morning, because I couldn’t help being hesitant and uncertain about whether the proof of Santa’s existence really would be there.  And I remember looking up,  and then bounding through the snow back to the house because anybody could see, even stupid old Bobby Fisher could see exactly where Santa had come with the sleigh and reindeer, right there on the roof.    

  My father had made sure the enchantment would endure, just for another year or two, because now I knew for certain my single present had indeed come from that wonderful he-only-comes-but-once- a- year-man who quick as a flash flew down the chimney.  It said so right on the little card:  “To Michael, from Santa.”  The glass of milk, by the way, was empty, and just a few crumbs lay scattered on the cookie plate.

  As my parents saw it, a little boy should not under any circumstances be denied the excitement and trembling anticipation of knowing, with utter certainty and conviction, that “St. Nicholas soon would be there,” and so I was left with the unrestrained joy of a Child’s Christmas in Saskatoon for just a little while longer.   

  As I mentioned, I’ve frequently told this story of how a father, in a powerful affirmation of love for a son,  restored a little boy’s faith in magic and perhaps a little bit of sorcery  After all these years that Christmas is indelible in my memory. 

  For small children these days, I’m pretty certain the retailers and the advertisers, starting in August, have removed all the mystery, the freedom of a child’s imagination, the spell, the pure unadulerated joy of Christmas.  I’ll bet you this:  I’ll bet any small boy or girl who’s seen one department store Santa after another after another and then another doesn’t remember a single one of them. 

  I remember my Santa, as if he came to our house just yesterday.

  Douglas Corrigan, born in Galveston, Texas in 1907, was determined by his late teens to become a pilot.  He did, and then spent a good part of the 1920s barnstorming around America with his own small aircraft, offering rides at $2.50 a flight for folks at county and state fairs. 

  Corrigan was also qualified as an aircraft mechanic, and manged to pick up a fair amount of work with various start-up carriers, principally in California. 

  But as the story goes, Corrigan always had a hankering to embark on a solo flight across the Atlantic, and was doubly inspired when Charles Lindberg accomplished that very exploit –  remarkable for the era   –  in 1927.  But for one reason or another, frequently bearing upon the refusal of aviation regulators at the time to grant Corrigan permission for a trans-Atlantic effort, he didn’t get a chance to emulate Lindberg.   

  That all changed on July 17th, 1938, though, when Corrigan took off from  New York on a properly sanctioned flight to Los Angeles  –  and ended up 28 hours and 13 minutes later in Ireland.  He explained to incredulous aviation authorities that his compass had gone wonky and had instructed him he was flying west to LA, when in fact his little craft was droning steadily east, across the Atlantic.   

  But why, asked the regulatory mavens, had he not occasionally glanced at the ground?  That would surely have alerted him at once to the fact he actually wasn’t over terra firma, i.e. the United States, but instead over water, i.e. the ocean.  

  A most reasonable question, said Corrigan, which can be put to rest by describing to you the impenetrable fog which enveloped my entire flight, thus denying to me even a brief glimpse of ground, or water, or anything else.  Only the errant compass was in view.   “And that,” said Douglas Corrigan then, and forever after until his death in 1995, “is my story.”

  It was a story wholeheartedly embraced by an America starving for humor, longing for respite from the debilitating grasp of the Great Depression.  Nobody really believed the tale, but they certainly had great fun with it.  After Corrigan returned to the United States on August 4th  –  by steamship, incidentally  –  he was given a ticker tape parade through Manhattan with a million people happily looking on, and the next day the New York Post fashioned a blaring headline which read “NAGIRROC YAW GNORW OT LIAH.”  If that line looks all backwards, it is, but put it in front of a mirror and you’ll see it reads “HAIL TO WRONG WAY CORRIGAN.”

  If  Corrigan was sticking to his story, the nickname stuck too, and Wrong Way Corrigan is now firmly enshrined as the architect of one of the marvellous sagas of early aviation.  

  With that, let me introduce a fresh pair of Wrong Ways named Timothy Cheney and Richard Cole.  The difference between them and Corrigan is that their bizarre airborne episode is anything but amusing, and in fact raises a good many questions about pilot fatigue, mainly, but also cockpit distractions, inattentiveness, carelessness and when all is said and done, loss of aircraft control. 

  Cheney and Cole are (were) the Northwest Airlines pilots who took off in an A320 Airbus from San Diego last week, bound for Minneapolis-St. Paul, and then proceeded to overfly MSP by roughly an hour and 150 miles. 

  I assume, without fear of contradiction, that everyone who settles into a commercial airliner these days does so with the unwavering conviction that if nothing else, the two or perhaps three pilots up in the front end will be alert, aware, concentrating, conscious, and above all monitoring the flight, even if modern jets essentially fly themselves. 

  Cheney and Cole have abruptly brought that assumption to ground, so to speak, because for whatever reason they managed to not be alert, aware, concentrating, and conscious, and so flew right over the bright lights of Minneapolis-St. Paul and then continued east, half way across Wisconsin. 

  To repeat:  the jet flew on for an unscheduled hour, or slightly less, and 150 miles while air traffic control and Northwest Airlines dispatch frantically attempted to establish radio contact.  No response,  nothing, which quickly led to a nagging worry on the ground that the flight had been hijacked. 

  With that possibility in mind, the United States Air Force was placed on alert for a potential interception:  an advisory was sent to the White House:  and all the while a $50 million dollar jet, with 144 passengers and five crew members on board, flew over and past MSP in utter silence.

  Eventually, Cheney and Cole reacted to the incessant radio traffic from below, turned the jet around, and in due course landed.  As soon as the doors opened, MSP airport police and officials from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were all over the plane, and Cheney and Cole, with one pressing question:  what the hell happened?

  Ah, yes said Cheney and Cole;  what happened?  Well you see it was this way, and on they went to fashion a yarn about how they’d been discussing Northwest Airlines corporate policy, had their personal laptops out to examine certain details of said policy so they could then debate them in greater depth, and so they guessed they’d probably just “lost situational awareness” for a while up there, because their conversation was pretty intense, even heated at times, and y’know, well, I guess we just kind of didn’t pay quite enough attention for a bit.

  Apart from “lost situational awareness” as a euphemism for either losing or abandoning control of a jet, there’s not an aviation expert or commercial pilot on earth who for one second buys Cheney and Cole’s line of malarkey.  Their unanimous opinion, based on the evidence, is that both these characters nodded off on the flight deck, were soon sleeping like babies at 37,000 feet and 550 miles an hour and were so dead to the world  they heard nothing from the sophisticated array of communications equipment found on any current jetliner.     

  For what it’s worth, the FAA has revoked the pilot’s licences of both Cheney and Cole.  So presuming the experts are correct, and these two were indeed slumbering, here’s the issue:  this wasn’t the first time.  There’ve been several examples, among them a jet flying to Hilo International in Hawaii a year and a half ago.  The aircraft remained straight and level at 21,000 feet, overshot the airport, and continued on out over the Pacific Ocean with no contact from the flight crew.  They eventually came to, reversed course and landed, but the subsequent investigation verified the two pilots had been comfortably dozing. 

  Generally speaking, there are around 3,000 commerical planes in the air over North America during peak flight hours.  That’s 6,000 pilots and first officers, and likely several hundred more because a good many older generation jets have three-person crews.  Given those numbers, airlines now have some work to do to persuade me, and I suspect a whole lot of other people, that pilot napping isn’t a significant safety issue. 

  The industry response, I’m guessing, would be that sleeping in the cockpit occurs so infrequently that it’s really of no consequence, and at any rate no cause for excessive worry because after all, these new generation aircraft are just about as fail-safe as they can be. 

  Sorry, but that’s not good enough.  Airline crews have to be as fail-safe as they can be, too   –  which in my view would mean they need as an essential ingredient of flight duty to be awake all the time.  My concern is how many cases of pilot napping have there been that we don’t know about?  And worse, how many the airlines themselves don’t know about, because crews kept quiet, didn’t tell? 

  Just asking.  I wouldn’t be, though, were it not for Tim Cheney and Richard Cole, late of Northwest Airlines.  And as a final point, back to Wrong Way Corrigan.  His trans-Atlantic flight was a stunt:  he knew exactly where he was going,  but In the context of commercial aviation in 2009, I haven’t the slightest doubt Wrong Way would find nothing Right about this, at all.

  It just so happens, for reasons neither here nor there, that I was driving toward Calgary from back around the Saskatchewan border last week when the satellite radio news channels started getting all tied up in knots about a wayward balloon somewhere over Colorado.  It wasn’t long before word issued that a six-year-old boy might be on board, whereupon the story assumed dimensions which redefined the word disproportionate. 

  The news organizations started calling anyone they could think of:  the sheriff’s department in Fort Collins, Colorado, the national guard, search and rescue, state troopers, state police, aviation experts.  (How high might a balloon go, what would the atmosphere up there be like, could a six-year-old survive, do you think the balloon might run out of air/helium/hydrogen and crash?) 

  Then they got to talking with little kids who are schoolmates or neighbours of the little kid who was presumably flying around, frightened and uncomprehending, and probably hanging on for dear life.  (Do you think he’s safe, is he a good kid, what kind of kid is he, does he like sports, does he know how to fly?)

  Even on the face of it  –  a story with looming potential tragedy   –  it was pointless inanity, but as is so often the case these days the piece ended up as yet another example of the U.S. media getting suckered.  Richard Heene, publicity hound extraordinarie, and self-promoter who describes himself as a research scientist and inventor, but has only a Grade 12 education, was pulling a stunt in order to get himself onto a reality TV show. 

  The details of Heene’s caper are by now well enough known.  He was fooling around with the balloon, which by the way was held together with snippets of binder twine and duct tape,  in the back yard of his Fort Collins home.  But it was either improperly tethered, or not tethered at all, and  took off with his son, the six-year-old, apparently on board.  Heene and his wife were all over 911, our kid is trapped in a balloon, and by the time the thing landed two hours and 80 kilometers later, a half dozen Colorado police agencies, the national guard, fire departments from hither and yon, and search-rescue units were desperately trying to save the little gaffer who was said to be along for the ride   —  except he wasn’t, and never had been. 

  Heene nearly got away with it, though, because first off all those police and fire departments bought his explanation that it was just a misunderstanding.  He thought the boy, named Falcon, had been in the gondola when the balloon got loose, but actually he’d squirreled himself away in the attic, and wouldn’t come out because for some reason he was afraid he might get heck from dad, or mom, or both.  So Falcon stayed hidden while half the police and rescue personnel in Colorado were haring around trying to retrieve the binder twine-duct tape contraption, and the boy at the same time. 

  But Heene had his story and stuck with it:  he assumed Falcon was aboard, didn’t know he wasn’t, and furthermore, how could he possibly have been aware  the kid would stash himself in the attic and not respond to frantic calling of his name? 

  There was a television show once upon a long time ago which ironically, was for its time a kind of reality program.  Not the crude stuff of today, but real nonetheless.  It was called “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”   They still do sometimes, and Falcon Heene did, and the consequence was his dad got hoisted on his own petard of media grubbing and craving for publicity. 

  One of the networks, later in the day, was interviewing the entire Heene family, all lined up just like so for the group shot, and someone asked Falcon why he’d stayed hidden in the attic.  Why didn’t you come out when you heard dad and mom calling your name?

  It seemed  the boy didn’t quite hear, or get the question and he asked his dad to repeat.  Dad did that, at which point this little six-year-old boy said right into the camera, even though he was in fact responding to his father, “because you said we were doing it for the show.”

   Hard landing.  TKO,  because the interviewer followed up:  what did Falcon mean by “doing it for the show”?  A good deal of hemming and hawing ensued from dad about how well, he must have been talking about all the media thronging about on the lawn and at the doorway, yes, that must have been what he was talking about, for sure.  The problem was the Fort Collins sheriff’’s department  –  the lead agency in all this falderal   –  was suddenly not buying the old man’s tale of woe, and would therefore be re-interviewing dad and the family tout la quick. 

  Richard Heene now faces charges of conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a child, and making false reports to authorities.  Colorado Family Services is in on it, too, and there’s a possibility Falcon and his siblings may be removed from Dad’s loving care. 

  Exploitative care is more like it, for which Heene the elder, if found guilty, could end up doing six years in the joint.  He should get no less because the real victim in this case is a little six-year-old boy who tried his very best to do as he was told so he wouldn’t get “heck.”  

  It can be argued, I suppose, that Falcon ought not to have his father taken away from him, but the evidence suggests the poor little guy doesn’t have a worthwhile dad  now.  He instead has a hopeless excuse for one 

  And what, you may ask, was the balloon thing all about in the first place?  Well, aside from the reality TV show pitch, Heene the so-called research scientist and inventor evidently had in mind that his flying machine could be marketed as a commuter vehicle.  People could waft down to their offices and back about 50 feet above ground, so he posited, and if there were no television shows in his future, there would surely be vast riches arising from his Heeneible, as in dirigible. 

  It’s a sad story on two counts.  First, a little lad forced to be a stunt prop by his useless moron of a father, and second, the U.S. media swarming like locusts after nothing.  If they’d paid no attention to this miserable fabrication, then by definition neither would we. 

  I know I’ve been on this U.S media theme before, and I also know you might as well try to raise the Titanic as change the journalistic mindset down there.  Even so, I do have one hope:  I hope Falcon Heene gets an opportunity for a better life, because he hasn’t had much of one so far.

  The title of this piece isn’t meant to convey the impression I’ll somehow connect David Letterman to Canadian politics to professional athletes, although come to think of it Letterman has admitted to a mode of athleticism involving a good deal of, um, nocturnal exercise.

  No, I have in mind instead a three-part offering which will first discuss the Late Night host’s apparent testosterone propulsion, and then turn to a couple of previous essays which in the one case proved my crystal ball is reasonably clear, and in the second entirely fogged. 

1.  Letterman:  Heh, heh, heh. 

  He got going a week ago on his CBS show with a question to the audience:  “Do you feel like a story?”  Excited rumblings of applause and laughter; yes indeed, a story would be very good.

  And so with sly and crafty wordsmithing David Letterman owned up to romping about in bed with women to whom he wasn’t married.  They were, however, his employees at CBS.   But it wasn’t as if Letterman had been suddenly afflicted with pangs of conscience.  Not at all.  It was a threat of blackmail, $2 million dollars worth, which forced him to go public on his very own show and confess to what he described as “creepy” behaviour. 

  The demand for money was placed in the back seat of Letterman’s car early one morning, and was presumably accompanied by photographs or videos, or both, of him thrashing around with his female employees.  The material was allegedly compiled by a CBS producer with whom one of Letterman’s sexual partners had had a prior relationship. 

  The artful humour, the amusing phrases continued.  Letterman explained how after examining the package-in-the-back-seat-of-the-car, he concluded “what this is, is a guy is going to write a screenplay about me.  And you know, that’s good news for anybody, isn’t it really?”

  More giggling and applause from the studio audience.  Oh yes, a screenplay.  No question.  No question at all that this would be good news for anybody.  And on it went:  in fact, Letterman was rewarded with sniggering and clapping no fewer than 28 times during his mea culpa, because what he did was neatly disguise an admission of infidelity in the language and innuendo of his craft:  standup, or in this case, sitdown comedy.   Funny guy, this Letterman.

  I wasn’t born yesterday and I’ve never been on a turnip truck so can’t be accused of falling off one, but I don’t find anything in the least funny about this because for one thing, David Letterman has had great sport, for years, slagging errant politicians who’ve done half gainers into sheets other than their own.  At one point, he actually posed the rhetorical question that if he were doing the same thing, “can you imagine how fast they (CBS) would have my ass out of here?” 

  Well, he was doing the same thing, but his ass remains firmly planted in the Late Night chair because his deft comedy routine/confession drove the ratings out of sight.  And that’s what it’s all about, is it not?

  No.  It’s about two other issues.  One, Letterman is the boss, in effect owns the broadcast, and is therefore in a position of immense power and influence.  Even if the sex was consensual, and evidently in one of the trysts eager, it was also  –  by definition  –  an exercise of that power and influence.  So far as we know, the women in question did not go to bed with the key grip or the lighting guy. 

  And second?  Laugh all you want, but then consider a woman named Regina Lasko.  She’s been Letterman’s companion for 23 years, she’s been his wife since March of this year, and she’s the mother of their five-year-old son, Harry. 

  Model/actress Rachel Hunter once said “having been on the receiving end of infidelity, I know how much it hurts.”  Now Regina Lasko knows, too. 

  “Do you feel like a story?”  Truth to tell, not much, because this one was written by a comedian who in recent days hasn’t been so much funny as devious  –  notwithstanding the appearance of heartfelt remorse.  (Letterman did, a day or two after his initial confession, apologize to his wife, but that was the sole display of genuine regret.  Otherwise, it was all heh, heh, heh). 

  At 62 years old, David Letterman is still unaware of the truism that if you screw around, you’re going to get caught.  Sooner or later.  Usually sooner. 

2.  Canadian Politics

  The brightest politician in Canada right now, although not holding elected office, is Laureen Harper, wife of the Prime Minister.  She was the inspiration behind the PM’s musical foray a few days ago onto the National Arts Centre stage in Ottawa.  Unannounced, Stephen Harper strode out to a grand piano, sat down, cleared his throat, and with the full NAC orchestra listening in, played and sang the Beatle classic “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

  A year ago, it seemed Harper needed all the help he could get from his friends, but the NAC musical interlude revealed he actually does have a bit of a personality.  There was some risk of bombing, to be sure, but the PM pulled it off, with the internationally acclaimed cellist Yo Yo Ma abandoning the bow and delightedly joining in, pizzicato.    

  And speaking of friends, a pair of recent polls suggest the Prime Minister may now have more than he thought.  Both surveys give the Conservatives 40 percent approval, give or take a point, and the Liberals  –under leader Michael Ignatieff  –  less than 30 percent.  That’s approaching the nearly universal disapproval bestowed upon the doleful and forgotten Stephane Dion, who just a year ago led the Grits to their worst electoral result, ever. 

  Can you say free fall?  With piano roll Harper seemingly impervious to threat these days, a lot of Liberals are saying exactly that, and their angst is lessened not one whit by a party leader who looks more and more as if he’s been freshly cast, crated, and shipped to Ottawa direct from Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London.    

  I’ve said before, and say again:  Michael Ignatieff is going nowhere except down, at flank speed.   And now Laureen Harper, by prodding her husband to lighten up and sing us a song, has contributed mightily to the precipitous Iggy decline and fall.   

3.  Jocks

  I’ve decided I have to smarten up, and stop pretending to be a sports columnist.  A while back I forecast that Arland Bruce the Third, sulking and pouting around because the brain trust with the Toronto Argonauts had decided he was no longer on the first string, would never grow up.  I further predicted his attitude and arrogance wouldn’t change after his shipment, via trade, to the Hamilton Tiger Cats. 

  ERROR.  Bruce has rapidly returned to dominance as a CFL wide receiver, causes no trouble except for opposing teams, plays like a man possessed, has criticized no coach or teammate, and behaves as an adult.  Good for him, not so good for McCourt the sports expert.

  I was halfway right about Dany Heatley, the disaffected bellyacher whose $7.5 million dollar annual salary with the Ottawa Senators wasn’t enough to keep him from whining and complaining and demanding a trade.  I figured no team on the NHL earth would have this dork, so he’d be forced to remain with the Senators, and would thereafter lollygag and idle his way right out of the league.

  ERROR.  The Senators, according to everything one reads and hears, still regard Heatly as a royal pain in the neck, which is the part of the Heatley bio making me half right.  But it doesn’t matter now, because he was traded to the San Jose Sharks just before training camps opened, and on the evidence of the first three or four games, has returned to playing very, very good hockey without word one of complaint.  Half wrong. 

  So no more sports.  Except now I see Kerry Joseph, the Argonaut quarterback, has opened up about how the team has no consistency, it’s all dysfunctional, a mess.  By implication, the Joseph finger points at head coach Bart Andrus. 

  So on reflection, maybe I’ll do a piece about Andrus. 

  I can hear you out there now.  “For God’s sake, don’t.”:  Okay.  I won’t.