The Bruce Report

For Christmas, I bought myself a camera: a Nikon D-5000 to be precise. It set me back about eight bills, but it was worth it. Now I shoot pictures like a real photographer: snowscapes, sunsets, people walking their dogs, even a few politicians.

            I don’t have one of Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, however. This doesn’t bother me much because, as sophisticated as my camera is, I suspect it can’t compare to the one he purchased for $2,150, before he expensed the sum to the hard-working men and women of his province last year.

            After all, nothing beats owning a sharp piece of technology, especially one that’s both superfluous to the duties of office and bought and paid for by taxpayers, at least a few of whom did not vote for the alleged New Democrat in the last election.

            On the other hand, the premier did stick to his fiscal-prudence knitting when he also expensed the province $5,501 for two laptops. Apparently, the first was so efficient he figured a second would make him even more productive.

            Such are some of the revelations contained in a report, released Wednesday by Nova Scotia Auditor-General Jacques Lapointe, on the public spending habits of certain MLAs in that province. Among others were: $8,000 for a generator installed at a legislative member’s home; $1,260 for sand from a company owned by another member’s brother; $13,445 for custom-made office furniture; $738 for a coffee maker (to be fair, it is an espresso machine); and $790 for a model boat.

            About this last, House Speaker Charlie Parker explained he only bought the replica of the ship Hector for his constituency office in Pictou because of its “historical significance” to his community. He had nothing to say about the current significance of his role as Chair of the very legislative committee responsible for gatekeeping members’ expense accounts.

            What is it about political office that turns men’s minds to mashed potatoes? Did any of these jokers really think they could hide their petty larcenies forever? Other people go to jail. Just ask a few Newfoundland and Labrador MLAs who recently served time for making false and fraudulent claims for reimbursement.

            That’s not likely to happen in this situation. Having been caught out, all transgressors now vow to make full financial restitution. As if this is the point.

            Lapointe says the real problem is the absence of clear rules stipulating what is and what is not a legitimate expenditure (over to you Charlie “boatman” Parker). “They [the rules] are so ambiguous and so poor and they are applied so badly that it gets to the point where it’s hard to say a lot about any of these things, even though it seems perhaps obvious to us that this just wrong.”

            Oh, that’s just exquisite! Where once we were expected to hold our elected representatives to a higher standard of behaviour, now we are told to assume a lower standard because, for reasons we can only imagine, they don’t know the difference between right and wrong without a playbook.

            Okay, permit me to provide some elucidation for all our feckless, ethically challenged MLAs and MPs, wherever they may roost in this great country of ours.

Get a clue, boys and girls. If you don’t need a Samuel Heath Curzon extending shaving mirror (because you’re a woman) to conduct affairs of state, don’t make me pay for it. If you install lime oak toilet seats in your guest bathroom, don’t then tell me the cost of accommodating your sensitive butt is a deductible expense. And if you want to buy garlic peelers, retaining walls, water features for the back garden, or a musical mobile for little Jimmy’s play pen, be my guest. But not, I repeat, not literally.

            Are we all on the same page now?

            No? Darrell Dexter is vacationing just now?

            I wonder how Nova Scotia’s twenty-one-hundred-dollar, state-of-the-art camera is working out for him. Hmmmmm!

Threatening to deprive a man of his livelihood because he exploits his employees, steals from his shareholders or pollutes his community is fair, ethical play in a society that cherishes the value of each of its members.

            But confectioner David Ganong is guilty of none of these crimes. He treats his employees well. He embraces good, corporate governance. He is one of New Brunswick’s “greenest” entrepreneurs.

            Unfortunately, he is also the former chairman of an advisory panel on the NB Power/Hydro-Quebec tentative accord, which concluded the other day with this rather banal statement: “[We] have reached unanimous agreement that if the proposal is implemented, it would be good for New Brunswick.”

            Lamentably, this was enough for many people in the province to call for a boycott of Ganong’s candy and chocolates, as the company’s Facebook Fan Page flooded with angry rebukes and the kind of invective normally slung against fraudsters.

            “Ganong products will never again be bought by anyone in this family,” fumed one critic. “Consider yourself boycotted,” thundered another. “Starting today, whatever candy comes to this house will be branded other than Ganong,” bullied a third.

            And there were many more just like these and oftentimes worse: hysterical, outraged, wounded, snarling, braying screeds that, in some jurisdictions, might qualify as slanderous speech.

            Frankly, I get this kind of stuff all the time. It’s an occupational hazard. Besides, at least one of my professional responsibilities is to inspire strong feelings and provoke debate in these and the pages of other publications. Having executed my job, I’m not required to respond.

            Ganong, however, doesn’t enjoy this particular luxury. He makes sweets for a living, and customer relations are crucial to his progress. And so we witness his careful rejoinder in last Wednesday’s Saint John Telegraph-Journal: “After putting both my reputation and my time and effort into this on a volunteer basis. . .because my opinion is different than what somebody else’s may be, informed or uninformed, it is disappointing that they would try punish my company and my employees.”

            Indeed it is, and the ironies in the circumstance are almost too numerous to catalogue. From the beginning of the NB Power saga, opponents of the deal have complained about the lack of transparency and consultation undertaken by the province. But when someone who is asked for their opinion reaches an unpopular conclusion, he or she is immediately and fiercely castigated.

            It’s now frustratingly evident (if it wasn’t before) that some ardent critics in this province are less interested in hearing a fellow citizen’s divergent views than they are in hearing their own parroted, over and over again, by like-minded constituents. Heaven forbid they might learn something.

            But what’s especially chilling about this sort of overreaction is the pall it casts over the principle of democratic participation. If I thought, even for a second, that something I honestly believed could be used to curtail my economic opportunities, or those of my family, friends and employees, how willing do you think I’d be to sit on any public panel for any reason?

            How willing do you think I’d be to declare, as Ganong did about the NB Power agreement, “The proposed deal would contribute real and positive value to New Brunswick over the business-as-usual scenario”?

            It is entirely possible, of course, that he’s wrong. Maybe he and his colleagues should have consulted more people who were disinclined to endorse the deal, as Opposition Leader David Alward asserts.

            Is this sufficient reason to threaten Ganong’s livelihood?

Those who adopt such extreme measures to force compliance with their version of reality fail to realize that they undermine the conventions which provide them with their own liberty to express themselves.

The issue is not whether Ganong’s business will survive the torrent (it will). The issue is whether we, in an uncivil society, will survive the effects of our own intemperance.

Three economists went hunting, and came across a large deer. The first economist fired but missed, by a meter to the left. The second economist fired but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third economist didn’t fire but shouted in triumph, “We got it!”

            That one always cracks them up in the dank warrens of Statistics Canada, where hollow-eyed numbers-crunchers try not to take themselves too seriously. But any good joke also bears an element of truth.

           Last week, according to a Report on Business story, the country’s “leading private economists” exhorted Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to keep the fiscal taps open. The nation, they argued, is only crawling towards a convincing recovery. Now is not the time to shut off the spigot.

“The dominant theme here is that unlike recoveries from previous recessions, this one’s going to be fairly slow and drawn out,” said Craig Alexander, deputy chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank. “I don’t think the government should be tightening fiscal policy before the recovery has gained traction.”

Not so fast, blurted the Fraser Institute’s Niels Veldhuis and Charles Lammam in an article for Business in Vancouver two weeks ago. “An economic recovery is occurring despite the fact that most of the stimulus spending has yet to be implemented,” they wrote. “In fact, the risk to a continued economic recovery in 2010 lies in governments continuing to push forward with their stimulus spending plans [as they] will compete with the private sector for scarce resources.”

Well, now, it’s good to clear that up. But whether your aim trends towards the right or left of whichever target is in your sightline, can we still agree that the underlying issue is the economic efficacy of government spending regardless of the circumstances?

Let’s not forget that the past two years has upended the norms. Today, legions of formerly right-wing, market-loving economists embrace Ottawa’s $60-billion Economic Action Plan (and its U.S. counterpart, the $800-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program) like socialists at an industrial planning seminar. Conversely, many others tremble at the prospect of prolonged, systemic public deficits.

The reason has nothing to do with global shifts in economic theory, and everything to do with forced government pragmatism in a crisis. A paramedic doesn’t ask a bleeding man whether he had a good breakfast; and finance ministers don’t bother with such arcane notions as productivity improvement when millions of jobs circle the drain.

Ironically, though, emergency stimulus funding may be the least effective way for governments to spark economic growth. According to the Institute of Public Affairs, a U.S.-based think tank, “Every economist who has won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in macroeconomics after 1981 has either dismissed or deeply questioned the crude prescription of fiscal expansion to sustain or increase economic activity and employment. In contrast, they have argued that fiscal policy is either useless or weak because forces are set in motion that counteract any direct stimulatory effect.”

Indeed, in his latest quarterly report to Congress, special inspector general Neil Barofsky said that the Troubled Asset Relief Program has failed to boost bank lending as well as halt the spread of foreclosures. “Whether these goals can effectively be met through existing TARP programs is very much an open question at this time,” he wrote.

Stimulus spending is, at best, a short-term fix. How governments can play a far more productive role in the economy – and thereby ameliorate the more catastrophic effects of cyclical recessions – is by cutting personal and corporate income taxes, raising consumption taxes on certain items, and making strategic, targeted investments that help the private sector obtain capital for investment in training, exporting and research and development.

Of course, if you talk to three economists, each will give you a different opinion. But, then, when was the last time any of them proved he could shoot straight? 

I have no personal beef with the Globe and Mail’s daily pre-Olympic coverage. If it wants to make a complete imbecile of its corporate self, who am I to stand in its fawning, self-important way?

            But a page three feature on torch relay snowsuits? Come on. Was that really necessary? So thinks Amy Verner, the fashion reporter who scribbled this gem in the February 1st edition: “More than 130 recycled pop bottles went into making each uniform”. And this: “Because the uniform is unisex, many girls cut the standard round-neck t-shirt collars to make them more flattering.” And this: “The yellow patches are problematic when it comes to dirt.”

            You don’t say? Or, more accurately, I wish you wouldn’t. Anymore.

            The otherwise venerable newspaper, which employs some of the sharpest journalists in the country, raised more than a few eyebrows last year when it assigned its editor-in-chief John Stackhouse and three columnists, Gary Mason, Roy MacGregor and Stephen Brunt, to carry the Olympic torch and then record their thoughts for posterity.

            Here’s some of what Mason wrote in his ode: “The torch lit an Olympic spark in me. As I started running, it felt, well, strangely wonderful. Around me were Canadians of every description: babies in strollers, teenagers in early Halloween garb, seniors draped in flags. Their cheers were deafening.”

            Were they, Gary? Were they really. . .you know, deafening?

            But the more interesting question was why these guys were pimping themselves out to the games’ organizers and sponsors to spread the canned messages of patriotism, duty and camaraderie.

Brunt told critics to take a pill, pointing out that this was all “part of the machinery of the Olympic Games. . .I hate to break people’s hearts and tell them there’s no Santa Claus.”

            Yeah, and we know it doesn’t snow in Vancouver, either, and those ski moguls are actually made of straw. But does that mean we must be constantly reminded that money, not athletics, makes these games go round?

Canadians are not naïve. Still, most do expect a certain dispassionate impartiality from journalists (even commentators). Otherwise, how can they trust what they’re reading is factual or honest?

What if, for example, Gary Mason felt differently than he apparently did about his torch run? What if all the babbling babes and teary grandmothers left him cold? What if he had, instead, recorded his thoughts this way: “The torch sparked a royal pain in my derriere. As I started hobbling, my sciatica began acting up, and I wanted to scream at all those fools blocking the road to get the hell out of my way before I shove. . .”

Well, you get the sentiment. But do you think you’d ever get to read it?

As William Houston, himself a former Globe columnist before drinking the early-retirement Koolaid recently, aptly observes on his blog, “The relay is, after all, an IOC marketing initiative. And the Globe [staffers] will be in Vancouver covering the Games. Just how independent will they be after joining the IOC promotional machine? Journalists are supposed to keep their distance, to be separate from the issues and events they cover, but the torch relay isn’t in any way separate from the Games. It’s part of the Olympic package.”

So, it seems, is Canada’s national newspaper which, in addition to its breathless feature on snowsuits yesterday, published an eight-page section (not “special report” or “advertising supplement”) entirely devoted to “Vancouver 2010”.

Perhaps it’s too much to expect the old separation of journalistic church from corporate state anymore. Maybe we’ve travelled too far down the road of multi-media mergers and acquisitions and Web 2.0 synergies to ever go back. I don’t know. Can Amy Verner’ headline writer shed some light on the matter?

“So far, all eyes in the relay have been on the torchbearer’s uniform. But behind the scenes, the 200 members of the VANOC, RBC and Coca-Cola torch relay teams sport their own official garb.”

You don’t say?

The defining features of Premier Shawn Graham’s first term have not been the little successes sprinkled lightly over his policy agenda, but the astonishingly big appetites for change his government members have displayed.

            Every rookie legislator promises, at one time or another, to transform the world – or, at least, his corner of it – to benefit the electorate. He pulls out the usual suspects (health care, higher education, social services, economic development), vowing to whip them into shape for the greater good of existing and unborn generations.

            Few ever really deliver if only because they’re constrained by the attitudes of their constituents and the duration of their mandates. What sets Graham and his cabinet apart is that setbacks don’t seem to bother them much. The fiercer the public opposition to their grand schemes, the more determined they are to be understood, if not admired.

            That’s not to say they often manage to swing this minor miracle. The Liberals are still stinging from their early experiments with higher education, French language education, and health care. And Graham may have reached his Waterloo with the agreement to sell much of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec.

            Still, you tend to believe him when he declares that obtaining a second mandate, months from now, is less important to him than maintaining a principled, if sometimes flawed, policy of “self-sufficiency” improvements today.

            That, at least, was the underlying message in his State of the Province address two weeks ago, when he said, “The risk for anyone who seeks to change things for the better is that sometimes in pursuit of a better way of doing things, you’ll move ahead too fast or too far or both. There’s no shame in that.”

            No, there isn’t. But what’s peculiar, even ironic, about the address is the evidence it presents of small, positive changes – not big, spectacular advances – in New Brunswick since the Grits assumed office almost four years ago.

            In 2006, the province’s population was shrinking, nine consecutive quarters of population decline had led to 4,300 fewer New Brunswickers. According to Statistics Canada, the province added nearly 1,000 people in the third quarter of 2009, bringing the total increase since Graham’s election to 5,300.

            Four years ago, children in the province lagged their peers, elsewhere in the country, in educational attainment; grade schoolers here, for example, ranked ninth in reading, nationally. Today, according to the address, the situation is improving: “We invested more than $34 million to help kids with special needs, introduce new trades courses in our schools. And we brought back art, music and physical education. Has it made a difference? Last year, alone, we saw a seven-point gain in literacy at the Grade Two level. [That’s] the biggest jump in literacy since testing began.”

            And despite New Brunswick’s reputation as one of Canada’s least economically robust jurisdictions, the province has actually overtaken the national average in job creation and full-time employments.

            Slowly, steadily and convincingly, New Brunswick has become a better place to work, live and raise a family. Incomes are higher. Professional opportunities are greater. The cities are thriving. And a comprehensive, funded plan for northern economic development is in place.

            None of these developments reflect industrial planning on a massive scale, or centralized efforts to terra-form the economic landscape. None have relied on anything more impressive than daily attention to detail and prudent, targeted spending on specific priorities.

            “Ladies and gentlemen,” Graham’s address closed. “in the end it’s about believing in and building on the potential of every single New Brunswickers; the potential of our families and children, our businesses, our workers. Quite simply, it’s about making New Brunswick better.”

            Actually, the soaring rhetoric aside, it’s about keeping New Brunswick from foundering on the shoals of political hyperbole – which, despite itself, the Graham government has managed quite nicely over the past four years.

            Self-sufficiency, after all, is in the details.

The chance of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, say some British scientists, is getting better thanks to recent advances in optical imaging technology. That’s nice, isn’t it?

            Now, if we could, with the same assurance, predict the existence of sentient beings right here, on good old planet Earth, we’d be all set. But given the week that was, I must confess to a certain scepticism.

            Witness the drubbing the U.S. Democratic Party took in a Massachusetts election held to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s empty senate seat. It would have been a walk for the dems, but for the high-jinks of their contender Martha Coakely, who refused to shake hands with supporters outside Fenway Park and, on one occasion, failed to help an onlooker to his feet after he was inadvertently knocked to the ground by one of her campaign staffers.

            As a result, the future of health care reform, climate change policy and long-term economic development rests with Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown, who once posed semi-nude for Cosmopolitan and who, during the campaign, couldn’t resist showing people his truck to prove just how regular a fellow he is.

Why does he hold the keys to the castle? For reasons that astound, in the American system of government a simple majority is not enough to prevent legislation-killing filibustering. That means one man or woman can, theoretically, hold a nation of 330 million hostage to whim or malice or garden-variety politicking.

Turning north, we observed federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea delivering a speech in Burlington, Ontario, just before getting gob-smacked with a cream pie in protest over Canada’s refusal to ban the seal hunt. “Shame on you Gail Shea,” the activist screamed before the cops restrained her.

To her credit, the minister handled herself with admirable forbearance, considering the pie was made with tofu. Others immediately wondered whether the assault could be considered an act of terrorism as any offense that’s designed to send the message, “See how easy that was; I can get to you at any time” comes close to the technical definition of the word.

In other news, New Brunswick Liberal MLA T.J. Burke earned international attention for his rendition of “Pants on the Ground”, a song made famous not long ago by Atlanta resident Larry Platt during an audition for American Idol. Burke was responding to opposition questions about the NB Power/Hyrdo-Quebec deal when he accused Conservative Leader David Alward of having his “pants down”. He then began rapping “Pants on the Ground. . .Pants on the Ground.” The performance went viral on YouTube and other social media sites, prompting an American Idol producer to ask Burke if he could run the clip on an upcoming segment.

Though the video provoked roars of laughter almost everywhere, some die-hard Liberal haters noted how Burke’s hip-hop break-down proved, without doubt, the Graham government’s utter lack of leadership – a sentiment that prompted others to wonder whether right-wing punditry and a sense of humour are mutually exclusive quantities; oxymorons with the emphasis on the word’s root, if you will.

Finally, according to the Canadian Press, “The RCMP and federal officials weren’t saying much Wednesday about the reported sighting earlier this week of mysterious missile-like objects in the sky off southern Newfoundland. Darlene Stewart of Harbour Mille told CBC News she was outside taking pictures of the sunset Monday when she saw something fly overhead. Her picture shows a blurry image of what appears to be a missile-shaped object trailing flames or smoke.”

The incident sparked the predictable flurry of speculation about extraterrestrial visitors, which, if recent news from the front lines of science is credible, may be entirely possible. On the other hand, if these space-farers are intelligent, another question arises.

How would we, of all people, recognize them?

Few high offices in this province are as grindingly tough, as fraught with fear and loathing, as that of president of the late, lamented NB Power.

            So none should begrudge David Hay’s decision to throw in the towel just as the utility he has ably led over the past five years prepares for its reincarnation as a vassal of Hydro-Quebec. Still, the manner of his departure, announced yesterday, poses more questions than answers.

            Why, for example, does the provincial government insist on terming this a “retirement”, when the circumstances more aptly suggest a “resignation”?

            After all, Hay – who is nowhere near putting-out-to-pasture – hitched-up for a new, three-year term only last March. At the time, he appeared boundlessly energetic, ready to do battle with the forces fate unleashes on power companies struggling to make a buck in the unpredictable world of fossil fuel. Now, says his terse statement, “is the right time to move on.”

            And that’s the other thing. It is customary for those in the public eye who choose to truncate their careers to provide the appropriate dog and pony show for the clamorous media. One expects a scrum at which carefully crafted messages are scattered like confetti – something along the lines of, “After careful consideration and consultation with my family, I am moving on to pursue other interests to be revealed at a later date.”

            But, at this writing, Hay has remained scrupulously tight-lipped, refusing interviews, preferring to let his political masters do the talking.

            “David Hay retires having turned around the utility and made it a great place to work,” Energy Minister Jack Keir said dutifully yesterday. “His counsel leading up to the period of transition has been invaluable, and I thank him for his services to New Brunswickers. . .This is David Hay’s decision. He saw that NB Power is headed in a new direction and he saw this as an opportune time to pass the torch.”

            Uh-huh. Should we read between the lines and properly wonder? Was Hay forced out? Or did he quit in protest over the deal with Hydro-Quebec?

            All of which sheds a light, albeit a dim one, into the one corner of this story that has successfully resisted media scrutiny over the past few months. We know how most New Brusnwickers feel. We know what Opposition Leader David Alward thinks. We know what the business community says. But what do we know about NB Power’s own employees? Where do they stand, behind closed doors, on the subject of sale?

            It’s not idle curiosity or rank speculation that motivates such musings. Inarguably, those who work for the utility are among the most qualified in the province to judge the efficacy of the tentative agreement with Quebec. And when the company’s most senior executive packs up and hits the bricks so abruptly, we are left to ask ourselves: Does he know something the rest of us don’t?

            Certainly, the optics for the provincial government are lousy. Whenever a controversy as volcanic as the NB Power saga erupts, common sense (and public relations) dictates that everyone on the mountain runs in the same direction. If Hay did choose, of his own volition, to leave at this worst possible time for the government, did anyone in cabinet try to change his mind? Or did Keir recognize that such negotiations would be futile – so strong were the CEO’s objections?

            We’ll likely never know the whole truth. Confidentiality contracts typically accompany severance packages in circumstances like this. Still, if Hay can’t talk, the provincial government has some obligation – if only to itself – to provide a fuller rendering of the reasons for this development.

            The fragile accommodation Premier Shawn Graham recently reached with Quebec – to sell generation assets, but retain the transmission system – has not persuaded many hardcore opponents. And Hay’s departure will only provide more justification for trembling over a deal that has already generated more than enough fear and loathing.

If you want to stay thin, as the old joke goes, nothing beats a strip of duct tape applied against the old pie hole.

            Still, a new national report by the Heart and Stroke Foundation is no laughing matter. Canadians are getting fatter, more sedentary and, consequently, sicker. Incidents of heart disease are up, especially among younger people as chronic obesity in pre-adolescents becomes more common. And, perhaps worse, the nation’s health care system is ill-equipped to ameliorate the problem.

            According to an article in this paper yesterday, “national prevalence of high blood pressure between 1994 and 2005 increased by 127 per cent in the 35 to 49 age bracket. Diagnoses of diabetes increased by 64 per cent and obesity levels rose by 20 per cent within the same time period and demographic.”

            The story in New Brunswick is especially bleak. Here, we hold the dubious distinction of scoring tenth (out of 13 provinces and territories) in overall wellness based on certain metrics, such as: weight, physical activity, and diet.

            Seventy-seven per cent of New Brunswickers don’t smoke (that’s the good news), compared with 78 per cent in Canada as a whole. Forty-three per cent claim to be physically active, compared with 49 per cent nationally. Thirty-seven per cent are maintaining a healthy weight; the Canadian average is 44 per cent. Finally, the percentage of people eating an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables is only 39 per cent, compared with 44 per cent across the country.

            It’s also clear (though not from this study) that a growing number of physicians in Canada are getting fed up with their patients. Some reports last year suggested that a handful of family practitioners in Ontario actually refused to provide non-emergency medical care to people who routinely failed to follow their doctors’ advice.

            All of this is not merely inconvenient or troubling; it’s downright catastrophic to the already underfunded and overtaxed national health system. As Thomas Axworthy of Queens University pointed out, rather pithily, not long ago, “Ten million baby boomers are now between 40 and 60.

“Described as a basketball that moves along the python of life, boomers have overwhelmed every set of institutions that mark their passage: first the diaper industry, then schooling, then musical tastes, next housing, and then the job market have all had to cope with a huge scale-up in a short time period. We are now on the cusp of health care in general, and long-term care and palliative care in particular are coming under the same type of pressure.”

Clearly, laziness and imbalanced diets are sources of our current woes. But something more insidious is also at work: Much of what we eat isn’t really food at all. They are what American journalist-activist Michael Pollan dubs “edible food-like substances.” Laced with sugar, salt, and chemical preservatives to “improve” taste and extend shelf-lives, they are ticking bombs in our guts. “Many of them come in packages with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy,” Pollan once said. “In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients and common sense by confusion. The paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we become.”

It’s an argument made in conspiracy-theory heaven. The packaged-food industry is deliberately poisoning us to provide a ready marketplace of sick consumers for its buddies in the pharmaceutical industry who, in turn, generate new food additives to keep the cycle productively engaged.

But Pollan is right. In a world where billions go hungry every day, we in the fat West have forgotten how to prepare a healthy meal, sit down at the supper table, eat modest portions, and repeat the practice day after day.

We’d better rediscover our secret chefs, and soon.

There’s not enough duct tape on the planet to solve this ballooning problem.

There have been times (though, not many) when Stephen Harper’s strategic calculations have been unequal to his ambition. Given the growing fury among the electorate over his decision to suspend Parliament until March, this is one of those times.

            When the pathologically unflappable prime minister casually placed a call to Governor-General Michaelle Jean last month to ask for prorogation (and she, just as casually, consented), he underestimated the degree of public rancour he would inspire.

            So, in fact, did many of us who moil for meaning in the pages of daily newspapers, television broadcasts, and Internet forums. After all, he got away with it a year ago with no discernibly ill effect on his political fortunes. What’s different now?

            Call it the “once bitten, twice shy” syndrome, or the tendency of people to revolt whenever something to which they believe they are entitled – even if it, like a sitting legislature, is not something on which they often ponder – vanishes. But Canadians are riled up and, unfortunately for Harper, just in time for the Olympics.

            Not long ago, this autocrat in democratic sweaters enjoyed a 15-point lead in the polls over his closest rival, the estimable Michael Ignatieff.

The latter made all the rookie mistakes: Talking down to people; smirking in public scrums; assuming voters felt essentially the same way as he did about the course of the nation; believing his own ridiculous press points as the second coming of Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

            Meanwhile, Harper made all the right moves: Eviscerating the Liberal leader as a “Harvard elite”, a “Michael-come-lately”, a “fair-weather” Canuck more interested in the future of his political career (after having spent 35 years out of the country) than in the future of Canada, and a pasty-faced goofball convinced of his telegenic superiority.

            But, oh, how the political temper changes.

            Witness now a prime minister on the run from hundreds-of-thousands of Internet-savvy Canadians determined to vent their spleens and take back a government they were, only mere months ago, content to leave in the hands of a man they reckoned wasn’t the best this country ever produced, but who, under different circumstances, could have been  worse. As one protester at a Montreal rally declared the other day: “He [Harper] is just not a fan of the checks and balances we have in this country.”

            More precisely, the prime minister is not a fan of Parliament, which he views as annoying and obstructionist. He would much rather take his agenda – social, economic, political – to the great, if largely imaginary, unwashed majority. The problem is that most Canadians remain underwhelmed by Harper’s pugilistic brand of populism if only because they’re uncertain where it leads.

            Indeed, can a parliamentary democracy exist without its sitting members? And for all the faults in Canada’s version, how can it conduct the nation’s business in the absence of its various congresses – Commons and Senate committees, among others?

Philosophy professor Daniel Weinstock asks these and other questions in a trenchant analysis, published by both La Presse and the Ottawa Citizen last week.

“The Prime Minister is not only making cavalier use of the discretionary powers entrusted to him in our Parliamentary system, but in so doing he is undermining our system of democratic government,” he writes. “Our parliamentary and constitutional institutions are grounded not just in explicit rules but also in the spirit of those rules.

“Think of the idea of a ‘loyal opposition’ so central to our practice of responsible government. The role of the opposition parties is to hold the government to a high standard of justification. The opposition parties can neglect their responsibilities by being servile and pliant. They can also misuse their powers for narrowly partisan purposes.

We expect them to avoid both these pitfalls.

“What is true of opposition parties is true in spades of the office of the Prime Minister, given the very great powers that are concentrated there in our system of responsible government. We expect that the Prime Minister will do his part to ensure that this system works.”

In other words, in our form of government, executive self-control is just as important as legislative reform. To believe otherwise is Harper’s flaw, and his strategic miscalculation.

So here I am, a public offender, sitting at my kitchen table, slurping a double cappuccino, reading the morning paper, when suddenly I come across a story that confirms the federal government’s intention to introduce mandatory minimum sentences.

            Well, now, that makes me think twice about my chosen profession, doesn’t it? I guess I’ll cancel next week’s home invasion. And I won’t even think about that bank heist next month. Does anyone know a good career counsellor?

            The Harper government would have us believe that most violent criminals are a calculating, coolly rational bunch sensibly persuaded by legal edict to change their ways as one might change one’s socks. Curiously, a growing number of Canadians concur.

            According to a new Angus Reid public opinion survey, the Globe and Mail reports, “65 per cent of respondents had a moderate or strong feeling that mandatory minimum sentences send a tough message to criminals. . .62 per cent favour capital punishment for murderers, while 31 per cent believe that rapists should be put to death. The figure is a significant boost from the last survey, in 2004, when 48 per cent favoured capital punishment.”

            If these results are accurate, then perception once again triumphs over reality in this formerly tolerant, reasonable nation.

Here’s what Statistics Canada says on the subject of violent crime: “The rate has gone down slightly in recent years from a peak in the early 1990s.  For instance, in the year 2004, [it] fell two per cent, making it ten per cent lower than a decade earlier.”

            And here’s how the Canadian Council on Social Development interprets its own data: “The overall crime rate in Canada rose steadily from 1960 to 1990. It peaked in 1991, then started dropping throughout the 1990s. These fluctuations are attributed in part to the ‘baby-boom’ and ‘baby-boom echo’, where the proportion of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 25 was very high for many years before it dropped sharply in 1991.”

            But let’s say they’re wrong. Do stiffer sentences provide a disincentive to commit crime, or do they reinforce a perpetrator’s determination to avoid capture? Can criminal behaviour be analyzed as a set of reducible properties common to every human being, or is it rather a product of unique circumstances?

            These are enormously complex questions, but most serious studies conclude that lawlessness is a function of many factors: genetic make-up, age, gender, geography, and socio-economic conditions. And of these, the last exerts the most persistent influence on an individual’s comportment.

            In the United States, violent crime rates among poor, young, black men are anywhere from 30 to 50 per cent higher than among their more affluent white counterparts. African-American males are also ten times as likely to find themselves incarcerated at some point in their lives.

            In Canada, lack of educational and economic opportunities has been consistently linked to crime, particularly in the inner cities and in impoverished rural areas. Again, the bottom line in this country is that increases in income inequality raise crime rates. Naturally, then, the policy approach should be clear: Fighting poverty is the best way to fight crime, mandatory sentences notwithstanding.

            Of course, none of this satisfies our bloodlust, our thirst for vengeance.

            “Our brains are primed to freak out faster than to deliberate,” Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, observed in the Globe article. “There is a kind of elevated, metaphysical anxiety that is disconnected to specific events or persons. We are swept up in a miasma of underwear bombers, 9/11 and earthquakes in Haiti – with all of this thrown together in a kind of disarticulated confusion.”

            If this is truly how we feel, the least we could do is own up to our collective panic disorder. Retribution is not rehabilitation. And punishment is not equivalent to prevention.