The Bruce Report

Alas, my predictions this time last year for 2011 did not pan out, but for one: Prime Minister Stephen Harper did thank his loyal New Brunswick supporters by gutting health transfers, though he deferred a decision to build an extensive monorail from Edmundston to Sackville.

What’s a prophet to do? Owing to cheap, assembly-line Chinese manufacturing, crystal balls are notoriously unreliable these days,. This should not, however, prevent us from gazing long and hard into the foggy firmament for clues of things to come in 2012.

Barring the sudden and untimely end of the world, as promised by the Mayan long count calendar, which runs down just in time for Santa Claus, we can be reasonably certain of the following developments:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will finally say what everyone knows has been on his mind since he waltzed into Ottawa some seven years ago: Democracy is overrated. The House of Commons can’t be trusted. The Senate is irrelevant. The supreme court is disloyal. Parliamentary watchdogs (especially the Auditor-General) are despicable. And the mainstream media are traitors.

With the virtually unchecked power his majority confers, he will introduce sweeping reforms to the administration of politics and governance in Canada, beginning with a change in his official designation, from “Prime Minister” to “Lord High Executioner of the Sovereign Republic of Canuckistan”.

He will then offer the British Royal Family dibs on forming a permanent ruling class. When its members decline, he will claim that their disinterest stems from the fact that Canuckistanians are not sufficiently anglophilic to earn such an honour. To remedy this, he will instruct government House Leader John Baird to introduce legislation that will require all citizens, regardless of their national or ethnic origins, to eat crumpets for breakfast, take afternoon tea and speak with a central London accent.

In 2012, the size of the federal public service will be slashed to a shadow of its former self, but not before it balloons thanks to the presence of hundreds of new contractors hired to slash the federal public service to a shadow of its former self.

The year will also bring new challenges to the East Coast.

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter will levy a new “stupidity tax” on the Halifax Regional Municipality. Applicable to any public officials and private individuals who insist that a structurally imbalanced budget is a small price to pay for pet projects and unlimited entitlements (re: sight-lines of George’s Island from Spring Garden Road), it will eradicate the province’s annual deficit within six months.

Prince Edward Island will cease to qualify as a province after historians uncover new evidence that it never did.

And the $48-billion worth of major capital projects in Newfoundland and Labrador will grind to a halt after a province-wide call for skilled labour produces only three applications from some guy named Buddy.

But the biggest changes in the Atlantic provinces appear to be in store for New Brunswick, which will finally abandon all pretense of one day developing a clean, renewable energy sector.

After months of meeting with residents about the future of the nascent shale gas industry, Premier David Alward will throw his hands into the air and declare, “This business of consultation totally sucks!”

By spring, the Tory government will have consigned most private land, outside urban centres, to mineral and natural gas exploration and extraction companies under existing laws of eminent domain. It will then pen deals that guarantee hundreds-of-millions of dollars a year in resource royalties and other fees.

By year end, having chewed up, bulldozed and otherwise exposed countless hectares of farms, woodlots and forests, the shale gas industry will announce that there’s not enough of the stuff to justify full-scale production operations.

They will engineer a coordinated pull-out from the province, prompting the opposition MLAs to suggest a new slogan for New Brunswick:

“Flee. . .from this place.”

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

News of a certain defence minister’s recent $2,904 two-night stay at a swank German hotel – coming so soon after the imbroglio over his Canadian military-enabled helicopter ride high above an exclusive fishing hole in the back woods of Newfoundland – has rocked the reform-minded Harper government.

Now, an unimpeachable Ottawa source, who identifies himself only as “Whistlethroat”, confirms that the feds are introducing new regulations, clarifying what officers of the Crown can claim as legitimate expenses while on “official business”.

Your humble scribbling servant, having obtained a copy of this missive, is pleased to present these stipulations herewith for the continuing edification of a concerned citizenry.

Number one: The use of government aircraft and ground vehicles for the purpose of travelling to international conferences shall be limited unless said conferences advance Canada’s security and technology interests abroad. To this end, meetings justifying unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded modes of transportation include: The Las Vegas Star Trek Tricorder and Phaser Convention, the Melbourne Wizards and Orcs Role-Playing Festival, and the Marvel Comics Superhero and Arch-villain Symposium in Cleveland, Ohio.

Number two: The per diem cost of accommodations in foreign hotels shall not exceed the price of comparable accommodations in domestic establishments except where the latter do not provide standard in-room goods and services. Such goods and services may include: Three-dozen appetizers of polar bear garnished with scorpion claws, 50 liters of Mongolian champagne stored in a gold-lined bathtub, and 75 dancing girls wearing ostrich stoles and diamond-encrusted chaps. In the absence of said goods and services, ministers may expense the Government of Canada for inconvenience.

Number three: Charges related to consultations with foreign dignitaries shall be reimbursed when, and only when, they conform to one or more of the following guidelines: Private functions must not require more than five state rooms, three Mariachi bands and six open bars; strategy sessions must not require more than two fishing lodges, three tubs of beluga caviar and one hind portion of Alberta buffalo; and multilateral policy talks must not require more than 17 pay-per-view sporting events, 300 downloads of the most recent “Angry Birds” application and 500 premium text messages on the weather in Durban, South Africa.

Number four: The use of government speech writers while on official business shall be proscribed, except when circumstances require said use. These circumstances may include: The officer of the Crown’s inability owing to scheduling conflicts with tourist guides, personal trainers and food tasters; the officer of the Crown’s incapacity owing to naval gazing, mirror gazing or, less commonly, soul searching; and the officer of the Crown’s unsuitability owing to the fact that he or she doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.

Number five: Upon their return to Canada, those engaged in official business must submit detailed expense accounts. Costs charged to the public account will be considered legitimate if they do not include one or more of the following descriptors: Bar fight, horse-drawn carriage, lederhosen, massage, audition, stomach pump, and komodo dragon (see government regulations regarding exotic pets).

Number six: Copies of all expense accounts will be posted to an as-yet undetermined government website for the information of Canadian citizens. Such information will be made freely available to the general public between the hours of 2:00 am and 2:10 am on Sundays, during Hockey Night in Canada, and on Christmas morning. Upon receiving an access to information request, properly notarized by a priest, the Government of Canada will issue a strongly encrypted password to any citizen who requests entry to the site.

Said passwords will be issued two hours before the end of business, yesterday.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

“One of Quebec’s biggest cities is rolling out the welcome mat to immigrants with a 16-point guide to local values, which include refraining from bribing officials, killing people for family honour, or cooking smelly foods. The city of Gatineau says its newly released  ‘statement of values’ is aimed at helping newcomers integrate. But critics say it. . .treats (them) ‘like they came out of a cave.’” – The Globe and Mail, Dec. 5, 2011

Hear yea, hear yea.

Let it be known that on this day, December 8, in the year of our Lord, 2011, the City of Moncton – also referred to as “The Hub City”, “The Little City That Could”, and “The City That Time Forgot” – adopted a formal, 16-point set of rules to help guide and govern the behaviour and comportment of immigrants who may not be familiar with local ways and habits.

Be advised that for each infraction of the new regulations (barring stated exceptions), violators will be force-fed a bowl of “restaurant-style” poutine.

Article 1: The use of snowblowers in the removal of said snow is restricted to 24 hours per day, seven days a week, nine months a year.

Article 2: Snowblowers must not be “donated” to otherwise friendly neighbours, until such time as the benefactor has successfully completed a 30-day psychiatric evaluation.

Article 3: Fraternizing with public officials is proscribed, except when said fraternization may result in the booking of 1970s and 80s-era supergroups at the Magnetic Hill concert site. (Such acts may include, in no particular order, Fleetwood Mac, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Bad Company, and the surviving members of The Bay City Rollers).

Article 4: Motorists are permitted only limited access to city streets, except during periods of heavy road construction, pot-hole season, and winter nor’easters when they are permitted unfettered access to city streets.

Article 5: The integrity of bike lanes is strictly enforced: They may be used only by registered owners and riders of Harley-Davidison Sportsters, Honda Phantoms and Kawasaki Ninjas.

Article 6: Killing people for family honour is absolutely prohibited. Killing people for any other reason is, likewise, frowned upon.

Article 7: All food consumed in public spaces must be free of detectable odor. It must also be free of detectable flavor and nutritional value.

Article 8: Ridiculing the head pond above the Petitcodiac River as “a manmade splash-pad”, “a riviera for hip-waders” or “a poor excuse for a puddle”, is a stringent requirement of residency.

Article 9: All conversations in public spaces must cover the following topics in the following order: The weather, the Moncton Ti-Cats, the weather, the “new Sobeys”, the weather, and the weather. (The inexplicable rash of sex toy thefts in Kent County is an acceptable substitute for one of the aforementioned subjects, but only if the purpose is to explore the recreational proclivities of said Kent County matrons).

Article 10: Any reference to the Greater Moncton Sewerage Commission as “party central” is strictly forbidden.

Article 11: Any reference to Moncton City Council as “chez George” is strictly forbidden.

Article 12: Lawnmowing before noon on Sundays is prohibited, as it tends to disturb the 14 people who regularly attend church on Wednesdays.

Article 13: Excessive use of the downtown area is proscribed, as it promotes the myth that the city actually has a downtown area.

Article 14: As children are our most precious commodities, parents must comply with standing orders to send them to schools with sufficient levels and quantities of mold, plaster dust and corroded plumbing as to ensure their desirability as robust and contributing members of the community.

Article 15: Public displays of affection are restricted to three weeks in February, when the temperature drops slightly below the freezing point of liquid nitrogen.

Article 16: Offensive and/or insulting language is forbidden, except in circumstances outlined under the aforementioned Article 1. . .Re: snowblowers

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

We must not vilify Defense Minister Peter MacKay for hitching a ride, at taxpayers’ expense, on a Canadian military helicopter whilst vacationing in Newfoundland and Labrador last summer.

Nay, we should praise the brave and noble political warrior for risking life and limb to demonstrate that not all of our aging whirlybirds drop from the sky like luggage in a samsonite commercial.

Who among us would wish to be tethered to a line suspended above the earth before being hoisted aboard a CH-149 Cormorant? Not the NDP’s Nicole Turmel, I’d warrant. Not Bob Rae, whose only recent act of selfless heroism was agreeing to become the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

This must be what Prime Minister Stephen Harper means, when he says (as he did last week in the House of Commons), “The minister was called back. . .and used government aircraft only for government business, and that is appropriate.”

It is, indeed, appropriate for the elected official responsible for the nation’s fighting men and women to confirm the air worthiness of a contraption that developed cracks in its tail section mere months after alighting on these shores in the early part of the previous decade.

And shame on Colonel Bruce Ploughman, director of Canada Combined Aerospace Operations Centre at 1 Canadian Air Division, for suggesting otherwise in a recently uncovered email:

“So, when the guy who’s fishing at the fishing hole next to the minister sees the big yellow helicopter arrive and decides to use his cell phone to video the minister getting on board and post it on YouTube, who will be answering the mail (then). . . Given the potential for negative press. . .I would likely recommend against it, especially in view of the fact that the Air Force receives. . .regular (access to information requests) specifically targeting travel on (military) aircraft by ministers.”

Clearly, this man has not gotten with the Harperization program.

But others still may, if they are willing to learn from MacKay’s fine example.

Imagine, for example, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Keith Ashfield strapped to the deck of a trawler in the middle of a November gale off the Avalon Peninsula, there to measure the effectiveness of search operations once his government follows through on its plan to shutter a rescue sub-centre in St. John’s. Such first-hand intelligence to inform public policy “going forward” would be invaluable.

Or perhaps Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel might spend some quality time traversing Montreal’s honeycomb of aging bridges, overpasses and tunnels to personally ascertain the number of vehicles required to dislodge a 15-ton block of concrete from its mooring. His resulting report would lend new urgency to the Economic Action Plan’s “shovel-ready” mantra about stimulus dollars.

And what about the famous Alberta tar sands which, it is said, are polluting soil, air and waterways with high levels of mercury, lead and 11 other toxins in Aboriginal communities up and down the Athabasca River. According to a report last year in The Globe and Mail, “University of Alberta biologist David Schindler criticized the province and industry for an ‘absurd’ system that obfuscates or fails to discover essential data about the river.”

Well, then, let’s discover.

Environment Minister Peter Kent hasn’t been up to much, lately – not since his government’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. Why not ask him to rusticate along a western riverbank or two, eat a few fish, drink some local water, and, you know, see how feels after a month or three? I’m sure he’d be delighted to comply, because if there’s one thing a minister of the Crown hates more than controversy, it’s being upstaged by his fellow cabinet inmates.

Of course, Peter MacKay might yet upstage himself.

Rumour has it that the good fellow plans to prosecute another war, only this time he’ll insert himself directly into front-line action. Apparently, his purpose is to test the quality of government services provided to returning veterans, among the ranks of which he will count himself.

Now, that’s really going the extra mile.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Weh-Ming and I (left) discussing the lighter points of heavy equipment

A few winters ago, in a fit of Christmas cheer, I offended the gods of common sense by giving away a practically new, all-metal-construction snowblower.

Had I lived in Fort Lauderdale, my soft-hearted gesture might have seemed merely unnecessary. But I didn’t live in Fort Lauderdale. I lived in Moncton. I still do, and over the years of record-breaking accumulations, I have come to believe that the decision I made then actually betrays congenital mushiness in the organ located somewhere north of my big mouth.

Until last Sunday.

That’s when I met a man by the name of Weh-Ming Cho, who lives with his wife  in a nicely appointed bungalow in one of the Hub City’s prettier neighbourhoods. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

About a week ago, after the season’s first, real blast of winter, he posted a squib on the online classified advertising site Kijiji, seeking offers for his snowblower. But it wasn’t just any squib. It was a comedic rant worthy of the late George Carlin writing at his raucously best. It read, in part: “This isn’t some entry level snow blower that is just gonna move the snow two feet away.”

This is an 11 HP Briggs and Stratton machine of snow doom that will cut a 29-inch path of pure ecstasy. And it’s only four years old. I dare you to find a harder working four-year-old. My niece is five and she gets tired and cranky after just a few minutes of shoveling. This guy just goes and goes and goes.”

You know what else? I greased it every year to help keep the water off it and the body in as good a shape as possible. It’s greasier than me when I was 13, and that’s saying something. You know how many speeds it has? Six forward and two reverse. It goes from leisurely slow up to light speed. Seriously, I’ve never gone further than five because it terrifies me.”

Weh-Ming, who now prefers to hire others to move his snow around, explains he was just having some fun. But within hours, something that could only make sense in this Internet-addicted, glued-to-the-blinking-screen age of ours happened. Weh-Ming and his haughty Briggs were getting famous. Everywhere.

Views of the ad jumped from 100 to 1,000, then to 10,000, 50,000, 100,000. By Sunday night, the counter at the bottom of the screed registered more than 300,000 hits. Emails poured in from Europe, New Zealand, the United States. Facebook was on fire. The twitterverse was. . .well, all atwitter, and the mainstream media were muscling for interviews. Who was this guy, and how did he get so funny?

Weh-Ming, who is actually an office worker in real life, graciously complied, chortling merrily for CBC hosts on the regional and national networks. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post gave the ad two thumbs up for hilarity.

I came late to the party, catching wind of the fine fellow’s adventures only after hearing him talk in a radio item late last week. But after checking out his prose online, I recognized a man who had clearly missed his calling. And I began to cogitate.

All my recent efforts to secure a snow-removal contract had come to nothing and I was not looking forward to another winter of sinew-stretching shoveling. My only question was: Why was he selling? He had an answer for that, too.

“I’ll tell you why,” his ad obliged. “Because I heard it was time for you to man up and harness some mighty teeth and claws and chew your way to freedom.”

That was good enough for me, so I sent him an email: “I will buy your snowblower for the listed price, plus the cost of having it shipped over to our place in Moncton. As a professional writer, I think we writer guys ought to stick together on matters of snow jobs!”

He agreed, and the deal was done.

Do I need a snowblower? Yes.

Do I have anywhere to stow it? No.

But when it comes to supporting great scribbling, I believe in putting my money where my big mouth is.

UPDATE: Kudos to Junk-Away Moncton for dropping their cargo, speed-washing their ride and getting their asses in gear just in time to be CTV-filmed taking the fame monster to her new home on the other side of town.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Every so often, my generally stern and sober-minded wife can be a truly wicked wag. Upon hearing the news, this week, that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the “Butcher of Chechyna”, had won an international peace prize, she quipped with perfect sardonic timing, “Moammar Gadhafi must be rolling in his grave.”

In fact, the dispossessed dictator, now dead, didn’t even make the shortlist because while the bright lights behind China’s Confucius Awards may dispense their accolades indiscriminately, they don’t do it posthumously.

But if they did, one imagines a raft of candidates plucked from history’s bloody pages worthy of the selection committee’s sage consideration.

There’s Ghengis Khan, whom scholars attest once remarked, “The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.”

There’s Atilla the Hun, who conquered half the known world in the final days of the Roman empire, killing tens of thousands in the name of “unification”, before succumbing, himself, to deeds both dark and dastardly.

There’s Peter the Great, who ruled Europe’s frozen north with an iron fist before lamenting, near the end of his life, “I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself.”

And who can forget Vlad the Impaler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, Osama bin Laden and Mao Tse-Tung, himself?

Ah, yes, they don’t make peace activists like that anymore.

As it is, the so-called “Confucians” had to settle, this year, for a vastly less accomplished humanitarian, though they made the best of a bad lot by celebrating Putin’s “iron hand and toughness revealed” in the Chechnyan war of 1999 that, not incidentally, “impressed Russians a lot.”

Added the official communique: “He was regarded to be capable of brining safety and stability to Russia. He became the antiterrorist No. 1 and the national hero.”

The committee also praised him for “acting as the propagandist of current political events. . .which made true his teenage dream of joining the K.B.G.”

Noting that the Russian strong man opposed NATO’s air strikes against Libya, Qiao Damo, the co-founder and chairman of the Confucian cabal of state-sponsored apologists, explained: “Those wars (in Chechnya) were righteous wars. Mr. Putin fought for the unification of his country.”

Those “wars” were certainly righteously barbaric, as combatants on both sides of the conflict committed unspeakable atrocities against their fellow men and women. But, hey, you can’t make peace without breaking a few eggs – or skulls, as the case may be,

Still, Putin’s newfound status as the Mother Theresa of the Caucuses does seem a little incongruous given the company he trounced to win the nod. Also in the running were Microsoft founder Bill Gates, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, South African President Jacob Zuma, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, and Taiwanese politician Soon Chu-yu.

Conspicuous by their absence from the honour roll were 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and 2009 runner-up to U.S. President Barack Obama, Hu Jia – Chinese pro-democracy advocates currently spending quality time in one of The Middle Kingdom’s finer penal institutions.

The Confucius Peace Prize – now in only its second year – is, of course, an international joke, though a bad and unintended one. The 2010 winner was a Taiwanese factotum who declared he’d never heard of the competition or of his triumph until a journalist contacted him for a quote. Reports The New York Times: “He did not show up at the ceremony, even though the prize came with the equivalent of $15,000 in cash. Instead, a young girl with no relation to (him) accepted a statuette and a bundle of bills.”

Heaven only knows how Mr. Putin intends to celebrate his victory this year. Perhaps, my beloved suggests with a studiously straight face, he should invade Afghanistan.

Then again, I remind her, they don’t give out awards for repeating yourself.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

In the exacting language of financial reporting, the mental disease industry is worth a gagillion dollars worldwide. I don’t know how many zeros are in a gagillion, but that’s only because I suffer from a neurological disorder that prevents me from caring about neurological disorders.

Fortunately, Big Pharma can help me with this, as it manufactures a powdered concoction that’s guaranteed to render me passionately concerned about my obvious deficits and equally committed to its annual profits. The drug’s clinical name is “Sickuare”, but it’s more commonly known on the street at “Get With the Program”.

Now, when I say I don’t care about all neurological disorders, that’s not strictly accurate. I am keenly aware of the personal, social and economic ravages caused by genuine illnesses, such as schizophrenia, depression, alcoholism, narcotic dependency, and a veritable cornucopia of wayward mood conditions.

But, I draw the line at what Allison Ford, a staff writer and beauty editor at Divine Caroline, pithily observes is society’s fondness for labels of the psychological kind. “These days, people love characterizing everything as an addiction, from the frivolous to the frightening,” she writes. “In pop culture parlance, you can be a rage-aholic, a shop-aholic, and a choc-aholic.”

Even love, itself, has come under serious scrutiny. One J.D. Murrah, opinionating on Hubpages.com, concludes, “Although it sounds extreme to some segments of the population, there is a phenomena known as ‘love addiction’. Those afflicted with it are often seeking the strong blast of feel-good brain chemicals associated with falling in love rather than the long-term commitment. They are chasing the ‘high’ that goes with love rather than love itself.”

Which just goes to show that some joneses can be both good and bad for you. “Exercise addiction is probably the most contradictory of all the addictions,” writes Elizabeth Hartney, a PhD in psychology, on About.com. “As well as being a widely promoted health behavior, important for the prevention and treatment for a range of ailments, it is an effective part of treatment for other mental health problems.”

On the other hand, she reports, “There are several similarities between exercise addiction and drug addiction, including effects on mood, tolerance and withdrawal. Neurotransmitters and the brain’s reward system have been implicated in exercise and other addictions. For example, dopamine has been found to play an important role in overall reward systems, and regular, excessive exercise has been shown to influence parts of the brain involving dopamine.”

It follows, then, that anything that pleasures your brainpan too efficiently also imperils your mental health. That goes for bird-watching, gardening, singing, dancing eating, sleeping and breathing. And if these are clear and present dangers to your sanguinity, there must be a talk show you can watch, a self-help book you can scour, a course of therapy you can take, or a pill you can pop.

The infantilization of daily life is well-nigh total. We no longer talk about the choices people make, but the compulsions (which can be managed, don’t you know) that make them behave badly. We no longer hold children accountable for their actions; we dose them with expensive chemicals until the little blighters are too stuporous to cause anyone (except, of course, themselves) much harm. We no longer speak in the now dreadful absolutes of good and evil; we check our diets to see if we’re eating too much wheat, not enough gluten and just the right amount of probiotics.

We are addicted to the idea of our afflictions, and the world’s legal drug lords wouldn’t have it any other way. Imagine what would happen to their obscenely portly bottom lines if their goodies actually worked. Pretty soon, we wouldn’t need them or their wares. Then where would they be?

Personally, I’m addicted to practically everything, which merely makes me high on life. I say, “practically” because the two things for which I’ve never developed a slavish devotion is corporate balderdash and timid groupthink.

I count myself lucky, for there’s no profit to be made from a pill that gets those particular monkeys off anyone’s back.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

It will pain many Canadians to admit, but Senator Nicole C. Eaton’s characterization of the beaver as a symbol that’s wholly unrepresentative of this nation’s evolving position in the world is both brave and correct.

Indeed, when she says, “Many accuse the dentally defective rat. . .the toothy tyrant. . .of being a nuisance that wreaks havoc on farmlands, roads, lakes, streams, and tree plantations” and should, therefore, “step aside as a Canadian emblem,” she is merely demonstrating those qualities of reflection and sober second thought we expect from members of our Upper Chamber.

Regrettably, however, her nomination of the polar bear as an appropriate replacement displays far less discernment and only reminds us that Senate reform cannot arrive a moment too soon.

As Ms. Eaton – who graduated “in production” from Montreal’s National Theatre School before becoming a “field producer” for CFTO television in Toronto – should know, Ursus maritimus is a fussy, preening, devious beast with a voracious appetite for (gasp!) baby seals.

According to polarbearsinternational.org, the creatures locate their prey’s breathing holes through the Arctic ice and then “lie in wait” before snatching and devouring them whole. As if this behavior were not despicable enough, they also stalk the poor, little fuzz-balls that bask on the ice by “taking advantage of sleep-wake rhythms. The bear crawls slowly forward and freezes in place when the animal raises its head. At about 20 feet from the seal, the bear pounces, killing it before it can escape back into the sea.”

Now, I ask you: Does this seem fair? Is this the Canadian thing to do?

The brutes also plunder belugas, narwhals and birds of every variety, which only confirms they are gluttonous to boot. Still, it is their bathing and cleaning habits that are especially at odds with Canuck values. After chowing down on some defenseless “Bambi”, they spend upwards of 30 minutes preparing for their photo shoots with camera-hauling eco-tourists and marine biologists who note, with trepidation, that these vicious carnivores are actually endangered.

Vain and threatened is hardly an image this country should want to embrace as it prepares to save the world’s financial system from the predations of the greedy, the incompetent and self-absorbed.

But if not the polar bear, then what Canadian icon would serve as a more relevant and resonant alternative to the beaver in the 21st Century?

I’ve always been partial to the caribou. It’s vegetarian, docile and inclined toward herd mentality – not unlike many members of the House of Commons.

There’s the crow, which is tricky, annoying and ubiquitous – just like Bay Street bankers and those house-hunting realtors on The Learning Channel.

There’s also the squirrel (that hoarding chatterbox), the groundhog (that risk-averse troglodyte), the raccoon (that unwelcome house guest), the coyote (that understudy to the American timber wolf), the moose (that notorious highway obstacle),  and the common house cat (that fair-weather friend).

And yet, if we’re serious about our archetype during this period in history, we should select an emblem that accurately reflects the full measure of our salient qualities.

As Lester B. Pearson once said, “Our national condition is still flexible enough that we can make almost anything we wish of our nation. No other country is in a better position than Canada to go ahead with the evolution of a national purpose devoted to all that is good and noble and excellent in the human spirit.”

Of course, that was before Marshall McLuhan opined, “Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.”

And so, while we are hopeful, generous and inquisitive, we are also complacent, entitled and privileged. While we are sturdy, stolid and inventive, we are also distracted, dissolute and lazy. Though we are noble, high-minded and serious, we are also spoiled, coarse and, every so often, patently ridiculous.

Which creature best represents this country today? What is our better beaver?

Members of the Canadian Senate, get ready for your close-ups.

One of the foundational concepts of western philosophy is the cartesian proposition, in latin, “Cogito ergo sum”, which, when loosely translated into english, means, “I think, therefore I am.” It follows, then, that if I cease to think, I also cease to exist.

But is it possible that excessive thinking can actually hasten my demise? I thought too much, therefore I am not? (The paradox, of course, is that if I’m dead, I shouldn’t be able to formulate the question in the first place, which throws the definition of reality, itself, into the metaphysical meat-grinder. But, I digress).

If thinking may not be sufficient proof of existing, a growing number of academics and commentators are making playful hay with the notion that cogitation ain’t what it’s cracked up to be and that the traditional routes to critical analysis – notably, a higher education – may not be as useful or even beneficial as were once. . .well, thought.

Writing in the Globe and Mail recently, columnist Neil Reynolds suggests, intriguingly, “The U.S. does confirm the thesis that education is not necessarily a measure of intelligence or job performance. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a daily electronic newspaper for academicians, California has the best-educated state legislators in the United States – and one of the worst economies. The state’s official unemployment rate (12 per cent) is the highest in the country.”

He has a point. Consider the number of Harvard and Stanford-educated post-docs who brain-waved the world into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Their expansive frontal lobes kept them sequestered in rooms, where they ran algorithms on the performance of non-existent securities without care for the broader consequences of their actions for the society they repudiated.

Consider, also, some of the truly bone-headed musings issued, in recent years, by some of the planet’s smartest people.

Former first lady and current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the release of sensitive documents when her husband was in office: “I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the President.”

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky: “I did not have sex with that woman.”

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the progress of the war in Iraq: “I believe what I said yesterday. I don’t know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it’s what I said.”

Naturally, the alternative – trusting the affairs of state and economy to a gaggle of knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing flat-earthers – is no solution. But the point is we shouldn’t have to if we elect or appoint leaders who do not fall prey to the arrogance of their own knowledge.

Perhaps the real problem is not “thinking”, per se, but the type and duration of mental exercise deployed in given situations. Not long ago, a University of Chicago study found that people who sweat needlessly about their decisions invariably make more mistakes than those who go with their guts. “Whether evaluating abstract objects or actual consumer items, people who deliberated their preferences were less consistent than those who made non-deliberative judgments,” the authors concluded.

Another project, undertaken by the University College London, suggested that some people simply think too much about everything, making them prone to memory loss, depression and, by extension, suicide.

Somewhere, in the minds of men and women, there is a happy medium, where self-awareness is less cartesian than socratic, along the lines of, “I don’t really know anything, but I intend to find out.”

Refreshingly, this appears to be the intellectual territory New Brunswick Finance Minister Blaine Higgs appears to occupy as he struggles to find out what’s going on with  the province’s departmental budgets. “I’m not getting a monthly update on a financial basis,” he told reporters the other day. “I haven’t said I’m giving up on it. I don’t intend to give up on any of this.”

That’s comforting, lest thinking about the wrong things hastens our economic extinction.

“The federal government wants to update its brand image for the modern social-media world, keeping symbols like the ‘Canada’ wordmark but competing better in a more crowded market of images and ideas.” – From a Postmedia News report carried by the Montreal Gazette on August 25, 2011.

It’s brilliant, bloody brilliant, growls the raven-haired Ima Ripoff, Creative Director of LMAO Strategic Communications, as she squirms in her seat, downing shots of bourbon, in the lobby bar of Toronto’s Transcontinental Hotel.

“Finally, somebody in Ottawa is showing a little gumption, a little moxie,” says the advertising doyen of barely perceptible gender. “I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on this country’s brand image, shake things up, kick some butt. . .Waiter, get me another and make it a double. . .Now’s my chance. I tell you what boychick. We are gonna have us some fun.”

I’ve known Ripoff for years. A Madison Avenue refugee by way of New York’s Lower East Side, she’s not the perishing type. You might remember her spectacularly controversial tourism campaign for Prince Edward Island a few years back, in which she transformed the iconic Anne of Green Gables with the provocative tagline, “Lusty redhead open for business.” Or her repositioning of Newfoundland and Labrador for target audiences as “Not just for alcoholics, anymore.”

In the end, she lost both campaigns to what she dismisses as “office politics”. But  not before she picked up four “Spinnies”, the Academy Awards of the marketing world. Still, as she likes to say, that was then, this is now, and now is “hot, happening and hip” thanks to the federal government’s determination to spend a (typically) undisclosed sum  to spruce itself up for the younger, web-savvy set.

Gamboling down Bloor Street, sucking back Marlboros and Jim Beam, Ripoff commences to spit ball: “How wedded do you think those PCO characters are to their own ideas? I mean what we should really do, if you ask me, is blow the whole freaking thing wide open. You know?”

Not really.
“Well think about it mouse turd. Branding isn’t about pretty pictures. It’s about connecting with the consumer. Don’t you think the consumer would connect better with Canada if it had a better song? I mean, what’s this ‘Home and native son’ garbage?”

You mean “Home and native land”, don’t you?

“Whatever. . .My point is we could license the rights to Tom Cochrane’s ‘Life is a highway’ or, even better, Carole Pope’s ‘High school confidential’. Imagine how that would go over before every hockey game? Oh. . .oh. . .wait a sec, I’ve just had another brainstorm. What if we hired Randy Bachman to play ‘Takin’ care of business’ during every economic summit? Awesome, right?”

Ripoff’s on a roll now.

“How do you feel about the flag, anyway? Personally, it leaves me colder than a witch’s armpit in Nanoveet.”

I think you you mean Nunavut.

“Whatever. . .I’m picturing some big-time radical chic. Imagine a lumberjack wearing only work boots and Calvin Klein underwear. On his chest is tattooed the words, ‘Canada, eh!’ Or, maybe that doesn’t speak to the youth market well enough. . .Okay, I’ve got it: A kid hunched over his smart phone. Below the image is the tagline: ‘Hoodie nation never sleeps, yo!’”

Ripoff stops and fires up another smoke.

“Something still bugs me though. Can-a-da doesn’t really do much for me. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t roll off the tongue. I mean ‘United States’ is pretty boring, but at least you get the idea. The brand message is implicit. But what’s ‘Canada’? It sounds like somebody just found a energy drink container and doesn’t know what to do with it. You know. . .‘Can? Ah,duh?’ We need the nation’s name to be both clear and positively evocative.”

What about, I suggest mischievously, “Cando”. One might incorporate such a moniker into a variety of traditional and online marketing campaigns. For example, we could be “Cando country”, or “The great Cando north”, or “Experience Cando”, or “Can’t do? Not in Cando”.

Ripoff’s red-rimmed eyes are shining now.

“Brilliant, bloody brilliant. Mind if I rip that off from you?”

Be my guest.

“Gotta tweet Ottawa right away.”

And so, naturally, begins the start of a beautiful relationship.