The Bruce Report

Only in the United States can a fundamentally boring man find himself drawn and quartered in the square of public opinion.

In Canada, we simply elect our dullards. It’s only later we discover that there’s more than we imagined lurking beneath the sweater vests and helmut hairdos.

Then again, Mitt Romney is not Stephen Harper. In fact, despite their titularly identical conservative pedigrees, pasty complexions, awkward social graces and waspish predilections, I’m reasonably sure the latter would find the former excruciatingly banal – just as most of America does.

Certainly, the political pundits, south of the border, have not been kind to the GOP hopeful for President.

“If Romney were more adept and philosophically grounded, he could make the case that he’s the guy to turn around government,” writes conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg in a recent New York Post article. “You can hear him trying, but he’s not there yet.”

Indeed, reflecting on the candidate’s recent New Hampshire win, Patrick Murray of newjerseynewsroom.com observes “6-in-10 Republican primary participants voted for someone other than Romney. And as reported on MSNBC, 55 percent of those voters said they would be dissatisfied if Romney ended up the nominee.”

And here thunders liberal firebrand Michael Kinsley in the Los Angeles Times:

“It’s obvious that Romney is just blowing smoke. The real story is clear: He wanted to achieve something important and good for the people of his state, namely universal healthcare. But now that Obamacare has become ‘liberal’ anathema in the Republican primaries – reviled even by the Heritage Foundation from whence it came – he wants to distance himself from the whole idea.”

Boring and disingenuous: Now, that’s a boxed set.

Still, what Romney lacks in personality, other Republican contenders more than compensate.

There’s serial-husband-cum-open-marriage-advocate Newt Gingrich, who trounced his rivals in last week’s South Carolina primary. He told Fox News the other day: “We’re going to serve notice on future debates that. . .the media doesn’t control free speech. The media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate.”

And there’s libertarian-leaning Ron Paul who will, if elected President, veto any unbalanced budget that crosses the oval office and still manage to eliminate

income, capital gains, and death taxes.

Both men have cleaved off various wings of support in the GOP. Yet, like Romney, neither commands a plurality of opinion on their suitability for the highest office in the land. And why would they?

Candidates merely hold up a mirror to the party they woo. And this time around, this bunch reflects the ideological multiple-personality disorder that has sundered the GOP since so-called progressives surfed into the White House nearly four years ago (which is another way of saying it is the weakest, least rounded, most mistrusted crop of Republican challengers, among conservative voters, in more than a generation).

Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, the Tea Party, climate change deniers, birthers, and other colourful, entertaining figures and movements have worked their peculiar magic on the coherence and integrity of a party that once offered a credible alternative to left-wing lunacy and mainstream Democratic pork-barreling.

Of course, what galvanizes a constituency in any election, despite the paucity of political talent on hand, is a cogent, urgent message about the economy. But the Republicans are denied even this, as more than half of American adults firmly believe that the eight-year-long administration of George W. Bush played a leading role in the financial meltdown, and subsequent recession, that continues to smart in the heartland.

Worse, indeed, for the GOP are signs that conditions are beginning to improve. The U.S. actually added 200,000 jobs in December, tweaking the unemployment rate down to 8.5 per cent – the lowest level in three years.

Still, not everyone in America is dissatisfied with Romney and the boys. At least one man quite likes their company. His name is Barack Obama.

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.

Once, it was a rare and much-coveted designation. Now, it’s a social disease that’s easier to contract than a case of Montezuma’s revenge from a greasy spoon.

Traditionally, “elite” (adjective) meant “exclusive”, that is: Suitable only for the very best, brightest, wealthiest, aristocratic, noble or accomplished among us. To be an “elite” (noun), therefore, was to be the cream of the crop – you know, a good thing. Today. . .well, not so much.

Writing in Slate a year ago, political commentator Jacob Weisberg observed the shifting definition of the word as a function of populist politics run amok. “Currently,” he wrote, “an elitist is someone who thinks the opinion of a minority should sometimes prevail over the opinion of a majority.”

What’s more, “It has the advantage of providing an escape hatch from the substance of issues by reframing them in cultural terms. Arguments for raising taxes, expanding health insurance, and fighting climate change are all met with by the rejoinder that some people should quit telling the rest of us how to live our lives.”

As Weisberg noted, the conceit is absurd, as people who deploy the word as an insult are, in most cases, similarly kissed by privilege: “In practice, conservatives are no less inclined than liberals to adopt superior stances or to tell people how to live their lives. Such hypocrisy is based on the construct of a pre-political state of nature, where we lived in abstract freedom until government arrived to limit and control us.”

Written like a true elitist, perhaps. But, then, it’s going around.

I notice, with some interest, that a few of the more popular, if still well-educated, Canadian newspaper columnists are lashing the word like whip.

In a screed provocatively entitled, “With Keystone, it’s Harvard vs. the heartland”, The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente wrote recently, “These environmentalists don’t really care about safety matters such as oil leaks or possible pollution of the aquifers. It’s the oils sands they hate – the water-gulping, forest-devastating, carbon-spewing monster that’s despoiling Mother Earth.”

In other words, they are elites. Specifically, they are “the urban elites of Toronto and Vancouver” as opposed to “the kind of people who vote for Stephen Harper.”

Who knows what the college-educated scribbler, who holds an MA from the University of Toronto, really means by this? (Paradoxically, many elites don’t actually write very well). But, it is possible to infer from her characterization a fundamental bifurcation between the swelling ranks of principled snobs and the dwindling ones of the rank and file, even as it’s not possible to merit her notion with much credibility.

The Harper government recently labeled the mass of opposition against the Keystone project as “radical environmentalists”, foreign interlopers and their domestic dupes bent on destroying industry, gross domestic product, good jobs, apple pie and dear, old mother, herself.

In fact, a large constituency who wants the pipeline stopped includes truck drivers, office workers, farmers and homemakers who live and labour along its proposed route. They’re not elites, per se. But they can read and form opinions just as well. And, apparently, they don’t want to be poisoned or otherwise inconvenienced by an industry with tens-of-billions of dollars at its disposal for development.

Indeed, compared to them, how would we describe those who run the political offices and big banks responsible for juicing the monopolistic enterprises that ply Alberta’s tar sands with private capital and tax dollars purloined from the public purse?

What would we call the geologists, engineers, accountants, management consultants, and chief executive officers who will earn more money in their lifetimes from Big Oil than will a million “radical environmentalists” in theirs from donations?

Elite: “(Occasionally spelled élite) (Latin, electus – ‘chosen’) refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence. Depending on the context, this power might be physical, spiritual, intellectual or financial.”

Yup. That sounds about right.

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 titanic struggle to rescue New Brunswick from the rubble of fiscal collapse, the casualties begin to mount. Among the first, it seems, is coherence.

Late last year, Premier David Alward chastised his political counterparts in Ottawa for unilaterally setting the funding formula for health transfers to the provinces. This, he said, was “unacceptable” in that the “proposal” materialized “with no dialogue, no consultation.”

It was, of course, the safest of all possible positions to assume, given his and his government’s once promising, now toothless, commitment to involving New Brunswickers in the mechanics of public administration.

After all, four of six principles Alward’s party espouse ceremoniously bow to the largely meaningless sentiment of inclusion, encapsulated thusly: “It should not be difficult for people to engage with their government. . .We need to do more to put people at the heart of decision-making in this province.”

Still, one wonders what brand of consultation was on display in October when Horizon Health Network – one of two such authorities in the province – declared it would cut jobs, reschedule surgeries, and reduce hours of operations at its rural centers without ever feeling impelled to engage “people” in its decision.

“Perhaps there might have been some co-operative ways that we could have worked together in making the hours work for both of us in some way,” McAdam Mayor Frank Carrol complained. “But there was no discussion.”

Regardless, Alward appeared sanguine. “We’ve challenged both health authorities to look within their budgets to see how they can find savings,” he said. “Horizon. . .has gone forward. . .and they are working through those (decisions), ultimately, with communities.”

Actually, its not. But why let a little conundrum stand in the way of public policy?

Similarly, last week, the Province announced it will no longer guarantee business loans to companies that could, at some point, fail – a strategy that makes about as much sense as denying insurance to an individual because he might, at some point, stop breathing. And yet, said Finance Minister Blaine Higgs, “We don’t want to be a bank. But if we are forced to be a bank we should act like one.”

So, then, was it acting like a bank when, on the same day, it extended a $7.5-million loan guarantee to Twin Rivers Paper Company of Edmundston, a firm that blossomed from the wreckage of Fraser Papers?

Certainly, there’s no evidence that Twin Rivers is in any danger of shuttering and throwing 400 people out of work. Indeed, said Business New Brunswick spokesman Bruce Macfarlane, “A new term loan (is) part of an overall financing package . . .for working capital purposes to hep preserve New Brunswick jobs.”

But, surely, the pertinent point is that a government that talks out of both sides of its mouth – in this case, one that embraces consultation and financial conservatism in theory, only to repudiate them in practice – is difficult to trust. Hypocrisy in a time of hunger isn’t much of a governing principle.

The question of consistency tasks elected leaders daily. The gulf between what they say they cherish and what they do is the chasm into which public sympathy plummets, and never more broadly than during periods of great trouble.

Candor, alone, can’t bridge this canyon. But, at least, it won’t erode the precipices. And, given New Brunswick’s enormous challenges – unsustainable deficits and debt, a dwindling and aging population and tax base, moribund economic growth, an underperforming tech sector, a plethora of low-paying jobs, and the escalating cost of government services – straight talk must become the lingua franca of the age.

The power of consultation to direct tough policy is, at best, limited. So, stop pretending that electors are happy partners with the elected. The latter expect (or should expect) the former to solve problems. If we don’t like the solutions, we can revisit our relationship at the ballot box. In the meantime, get on with it.

Should governments secure loans to private businesses? As no one’s crystal ball is pellucid enough to predict either solvency or bankruptcy, the answer is simply binary: yes or no. Pick one. Again, get on with it.

Let’s have some coherence before the rubble of New Brunswick’s finances claims the worst casualty of all: the truth.

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.

If, as New Brunswick Finance Minister Blaine Higgs suggests, elections are actually auctions for the affections of the electorate, bid with promises, then someone has neglected to pay the bill, which is, in a way, the besieged cabineteer’s politically unorthodox point.

“There is nothing that is more like an auction than an election,” he brazenly declared last week during a pre-budget consultation in Saint John. “What are you going to promise me? It was who was going to get there first, who could promise the most.”

Interim Liberal Leader Victor Boudreau seemed to agree, at least with the analogy. Reflecting on the result of most recent provincial election, and echoing his rival, he told the Telegraph-Journal, “Every time we promised something, they out bid us. We promised to have the catastrophic drug program in place within two years of our mandate, they said ‘it wasn’t good enough, we’ll do it in a year.’”

Now, the Grit honcho reportedly wants the Tories to come clean and concede that they had no intention of keeping their pricey promises when they made them. “If you are to be a responsible party,” he said. “you have to come up with the costing.”

Astonishingly, Higgs concurred. Sort of.

“Creating controls around elections so we don’t create this massive shopping list of any kind will help us get back in shape,” he said. “[It is] what has driven the situation we are in. . .The tremendous pressures that are put on [civil servants] through the election process. . .They are left to fill that requirement. . .We do that every election.”

There’s nothing like a little well-timed acquiescence to confuse your enemy, which may only indicate that Higgs is more chess master than auction bidder.

Whichever is the case, the pre-budget roadshow, a putative exercise in the Alward government’s already shopworn principle of consultation, is shaping up to be an unexpectedly dynamic campaign of managing expectations.

Higgs comprehends the dimension of the province’s fiscal dilemma better that any. Now, he wants the rest of us to wake up and pay attention, even if that means he’s willing to shoulder a large burden of blame, on behalf of his government, for New Brunswick’s $550-million annual deficit and $9.5-billion longterm debt.

It’s a brilliant strategy: Concede what everybody already knows about politicians as a way to defuse the opposition’s inevitable charges of breaking promises and willfully misleading the public. “Oh, right,” Higgs might rejoin. “Are you telling me you don’t also overpromise and underfund? Come on, boys, it’s in our DNA.”

But that doesn’t mean – the message might continue – we can’t be more responsible, realistic and circumspect in the future. It won’t be easy. In fact, it will be downright painful. It will take a concerted, coordinated effort by everyone of all political stripes to right the ship of state and return her to a safe harbour.

Or purple prose to more-or-less this effect.

Still, and for the moment, it’s impossible to estimate the degree of reform that will be necessary and, therefore, the likely temperature of public reaction when some version of hell breaks loose.

The Tories have promised no new taxes. Should they renege and introduce, say, a hike in the provincial portion of the HST or higher levies on alcohol and tobacco products, consumer rights advocates as diverse as the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation and the New Brunswick Anti-Poverty Association will marshall their forces in a way that will make the shale gas controversy seem, by comparison, a high-school debate.

Likewise, deep cuts in the public service or dramatic adjustments to civil pensions, bonuses and retirement pay-outs could easily provoke protracted job action at a time when the province can ill afford any further malfunctions in the variously spluttering engines of its so-called prosperity.

Ultimately, though, New Brunswick’s choices are either perishing or becoming perishingly small.

Someone has neglected to pay the bill for the promises successive governments have actually kept. We cannot assume there’s money to cover the cost of those that remain merely empty.

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.

Cataloguing all the ways governments waste tax dollars is the journalistic equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel: It’s easy and not very sporting.

Still, the compendium, “99 stupid things the government spent your money on”, published earlier this month in Macleans magazine, is an entertaining, if not especially surprising, read. (Don’t we expect the public sector to get it wrong more often than not?)

Some items are indisputably egregious: Ottawa spent a small fortune on a plot of land it could have obtained for nothing; Environment Canada paid to store office furniture it would later sell at auction and replace; the Royal Canadian mint laid down a cool $7.3 million to make pennies for 1.5 cents apiece.

Others are merely silly: A Toronto politician submitted a receipt for $300 to cover the cost of having his office “blessed by a Baptist pastor”; Alberta forked out bucks to develop a slogan its new premier summarily scrapped; and the Public Health Agency of Canada announced a $55,000-study into a cure for traveller’s diarrhea.

Yet others are only arguably wrong-headed.

What, for example, is wrong with lending a legitimate New Brunswick business (Mrs. Dunster’s Donuts of Sussex) money to help it expand its export operations? Macleans seems to think this contradicts official public policy on healthy eating, even though no such policy exists. Indeed, the prime minister might justifiably declare, the government has no business in the private pantries of the nation.

More interesting, if less amusing, than any of this, however, is what doesn’t make the list.

In an excellent column penned earlier this month, the Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson observes, “Conservative spending increased at five per cent to six per cent a year before the recession, then exploded during it and thereafter. The result was predictable: a structural deficit, an upsurge in borrowing and total government outlays higher than when the Conservatives were elected.”

One such category of outlay was the cost of advertising the government’s Economic Action Plan, which Public Works reports amounted to $54 million in 2009-2010. That was more than the entire federal ad budget in 2005-2006, which only four years later clocked in at a whopping $136 million.

To apply a Macleans standard of efficacy, the question becomes: What good did all this profligacy buy for Canadian taxpayers? Awareness? Peace of mind? A finer appreciation of irony? A heightened sense of the ridiculous?

Now, the feds are talking about cuts, of between five and 10 per cent, to government services and programs it considers only peripherally relevant to most Canadians even as it plans to spend billions on crime, defence and heritage projects for which it either cannot or will not make a cogent case.

Lawlessness is decreasing in every category of major offense almost everywhere in the country. But the Tories are determined to send more people to jail for longer just as soon as they liberate enough money from Treasury (that is, borrow enough dough from taxpayers) to build more penitentiaries. They say their share of the price tag will amount to a comparatively measly $79 million over five years. Quebec’s Minister of Public Security says, however, it expects the crime bill will cost the province more than $300 million, alone.

Meanwhile, 65 F-35 Lightening fighter jets are on order to thicken the nation’s military presence even though the U.S. Department of Defense and its oversight committees have raised serious questions about their design and engineering – a fact that did not escape the attention of Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page last year when he warned that the total cost to Canada could top $30 billion, about $9 billion more than government estimates had indicated.

And then, of course, there are the periodic displays of drum-beating sentimentality. Who cares about the bicentennial of the War of 1812? You do. Or you should, as you’re paying 30 million bucks for the commemoration.

It may not be nice, or even fair, to enumerate all the ways governments spend recklessly. But, then, they do make it so easy.

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.

The federal Grits, it seems, are getting their groove back. If by groove we mean they’re talking about “important” issues again.

Issues, like whether Kate Middleton’s grammy-in-law deserves the $1.53 each and every Canuck sends her each and every year of her imperial reign over the Great White North.

Or whether “millions of Canadians” can possibly be wrong to “regularly consume marijuana and other cannabis products.”

Or whether “a future Liberal government” can create policies and treaties “in order for Canada to regain its international standing as an intermediate power.”

Or whether “the Liberal Party of Canada” should continue with “the Liberal record of fiscal responsibility” even though six years have passed since it’s been in power.

If through these measures, and many other policy edicts, that emerged to dominate Bob Rae and company’s biennial gabfest in Ottawa this past weekend, we observe actual significance, then yes. . .I suppose we do discern a red trickle, if not actual tide, rising.

The problem is that the breakwater is painted blue, and it’s not going anywhere.

Liberals – their feet aching from years stumbling about the political wilderness without enough in their kitty to pay for new shoes – schlepped themselves to the nation’s capital to prove that “renewal” is more than just a word a psychiatrist uses before he puts the patient in a straightjacket.

More than 3,000 delegates attended to elect a new party president (Mike Crawley), reject an old faithful (Sheila Copps), and play a few jovial rounds of “If I were King of the World, Here’s What I Would Do. . .”

Topping the agenda, courtesy of the the party’s surging youth wing, was a proposal to do away with the Queen. (Not literally of course, as that would be rude).

Resolution 114 solemnly stated: “Whereas Canada is a multi-cultural nation, built by people from many diverse backgrounds and where at present co Canadian citizen can ever aspire to be head of our own country. . .be it resolved. . .to form an all-party committee to study the implementation of instituting a Canadian head of state popularly elected and sever formal ties with the British Crown.”

The “suggestion” was met with a mixture of raised eyebrows and tolerant smiles, before its was soundly defeated. Still, as one seasoned participant noted, “at least the kids are interested in politics.”

And pot.

Resolution 117 stipulated: “Whereas the failed prohibition of marijuana has exhausted countless billions of dollars spent on ineffective or incomplete enforcement and has resulted in unnecessarily dangerous and expensive congestion in our judicial system. . .be it resolved. . .that a new Liberal government will legalize marijuana and ensure the regulation and taxation of its production, distribution and use.”

There were other codicils mentioning illegal trafficking, impaired driving and drug dependency programs, but the headline grabber was calculated to appeal to the Cheeches and Chongs in the audience who apparently outnumbered the establishmentarians.

Following the proposal’s passage, Interim Leader Rae quipped, “If you want to be part of a group of free-thinking, innovative, thoughtful, pragmatic, hopeful, positive, happy people, come and join the Liberal party. . .And after the resolution on marijuana today, it’s going to be a group of even happier people in the Liberal party.”

It’s about time.

Political parties in this country have a tendency to destroy themselves with decidedly un-Canadian-like melodrama. The Mulroney Tories unravelled so quickly and  convincingly in the early 1990s, they needed Stephen Harper’s western block of reformers to stitch them back into shape.

Now that Mr. Harper enjoys a safe majority, of course, it’s unlikely anything the Liberals say or do in their national club house will resonate with most Canadians – which is why they can blather on about the evils of monarchy, the joys of weed and the importance of national prestige and fiscal responsibility.

Who’s listening? Who cares?

Perhaps it’s enough, for now, that the party of Pearson and Trudeau is getting it’s groove, if not real momentum, back.

Now, pass the dutchie from the left hand side, Your Highness.

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.

If I were in charge of the Canadian department of jingoism, I wouldn’t rattle my patriot swords over the War of 1812.

But our prime minister considers himself an expert on this conflict, now two centuries dead and buried, with the infant United States, and he asks his fellow countrymen and women – as he does on so many matters – to get with his program.

“The War of 1812 was a seminal event in the making of our great country,” his epistle on the official government website states. “On the occasion of its 200th anniversary, I invite all Canadians to share in our history and commemorate our proud and brave ancestors who fought and won against enormous odds.”

Elsewhere, in the commemorative puffery, he stipulates with grave certainty, “Canada would not exist had the American invasion of 1812-14 been successful.”

That’s a little like saying if my grandmother had a beard, she’d be my grandfather.

To declare that this nation – or any other nation – would not exist if history had been different is to utter a simple truism. In fact, as the feds get ready to spend $30 million on plaques and statues and sundry memorials, the word “unnecessary” comes to mind on more than one occasion.

The most definably Canadian aspects about this clash are the myths spun about its causes, combatants and effects – or, just about everything. As the late Pierre Berton once pointed out (in a Canadian Encyclopedia essay), “The real origins were in the conflict that raged in Europe for two decades after Napoleon Bonaparte. These wars caused Great Britain to adopt measures that greatly aggravated the United States.”

Specifically, the former slapped restrictions on the latter’s maritime trade to continental Europe and used it’s naval might to enforce them. This, coupled with rising sentiments of “manifest destiny” in some quarters of the American Congress, persuaded then-President James Madison to declare war on imperial Britain.

Canada, which was not yet “Canada” at the time, became the North American battlefield of an essentially foreign contest of will and power. Indeed, no Canadian ever took up arms to fight and, as the prime minister’s missive states, win.

In a review of American historian Donald Hickey’s book, “Don’t Give Up the Ship! The Myths of the War of 1812”, Lieutenant-Colonel Terry Loveridge, an infantry officer who teaches at the Royal Military College, offers a choice bit of wisdom about the importance of historical veracity.

“Lest Doctor Hickey’s American credentials worry the reader,” he writes, “our own Donald Graves, a ‘proud  descendant of Loyalists’, provides an important Foreword. Graves reminds us that we are approaching the bicentennial of the War and that there undoubtedly will appear entire shelves of books attempting to capitalize on the ‘most confusing and misunderstood event in the history of both Canada and the United States.‘ The implication is that many of these works will be cashing in on accepted and acceptable mythologies. For Graves, this book offers the reader a solid inoculation against the substitution of heritage for history.”

Exactly. But governments are rarely, if ever, in the business of explaining the nuances and complexities of the past. That’s why we have a department of heritage and not history. Heritage serves the cloying, sentimental purposes of politics.

“Events surrounding the 1812-15 armed conflict laid the foundation for Confederation and established the cornerstones of many of our political institutions,” claims the commemorative website in a wildly imaginative stretch.

For a sturdier connection to reality, I would suggest a  closer examination of the the rebellions of the 1830s in the Canadas, and the arrival of responsible government in Nova Scotia. And while we’re selecting bloody battles on which to hang our national identity, we might consider the astonishing achievements of this country’s ground and air forces in World War I.

In any event, I can think of a lot of good things to do with $30 million right about now. Rewriting history isn’t one of them.

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 in the frozen north have basked in the warmth of our own self-regard ever since the American industrial behemoth fell to its knees at the end of the last decade.

Our leaders have congratulated themselves, not unjustifiably, for their prudence and perspicacity, qualities that have managed to spare the country’s economy from the ravages of global recession and financial dislocation.

Our “fundamentals” have been strong, they have repeatedly insisted. Our banking system has been both supple and resilient. As a result, our unemployment rate has been more-or-less fixed to a largely manageable 7.5 per cent, while our chief economists have achieved near rock-star status among the world’s free-market geeks.

But success can also be insidious, as ruin is sometimes the only crucible in which real hope distills.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a report that’s both stunningly candid, in its assessment of that nation’s current predicament, and refreshingly sincere about solutions.

In the 160-page document entitled, “The Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States,” Commerce Department officials, in concert with the National Economic Council, all but state that America’s hegemonic dominance in the world is over. And, they concede, this decline is almost entirely self-engineered.

“The U.S. economy reigned supreme in the 20th century, becoming the largest, most productive, and most competitive in the world,” they correctly observe. “Amazing new technologies were invested and commercialized; the workforce became the most educated in the world; and incomes soared while a large middle class thrived.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to complacency: Uncle Sam got lazy.

“As the 21st century approached, however, alarms began to sound. . .Incomes stagnated and job growth slowed,” the authors write. “Other countries became better educated and our manufacturing sector lost ground to foreign competitors. Observers have expressed concern that the scientific and technological building blocks critical to our economic leadership have been eroding at a time when many other nations are actively laying strong foundations in these same areas.”

Such ruminations are neither novel nor particularly penetrating. For years, if not decades, think tanks and academic institutions have been warning about the decline of the American industrial empire. But they are exceedingly rare coming from an instrument of the U.S. government. And it’s hard to imagine the current crop of polticos in Ottawa assuming a similarly confessional tone – harder, still, to envision their response along the following lines:

“One way to approach the question of how to improve the competitiveness of the United States is to look at the past and examine the factors that helped unleash the tremendous innovative potential of the private sector,” the officials suggest. “Among these factors, three pillars have been key: Federal support for basic research, education and infrastructure.”

The corollary is, of course, that government not industry, with its short-term focus on profit and shareholder value, points the way toward economic salvation. And when you consider the umber of commercial innovations that are creatures of public investment, it’s an argument that’s hard to dismiss.

The integrated circuit, the Internet, broadband, national highway systems, air travel, rail transport – indeed, everything we now take for granted as the essential lubricants of modern, industrial progress – all began with government-supported research and development.

Try telling that to the conservative cabal that holds much of popular sentiment in both the United States and Canada in its icy grip. The enemy of prosperity, they insist, is public-sector waste. And, to extent, they are correct. But to extrapolate from this no legitimate, responsible role for government in economic expansion is simply to deny history and abandon the future.

Ottawa’s objective to cut the fat from its various departments is prudent and reasonable. To be truly effective, however, it needs to redirect its resources and bolster the real pillars of the Canadian economy: basic research, education and infrastructure, without which even the most frugal society becomes less competitive, even as it grows more complacent.

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.

The man Stephen Harper set loose last summer on a monarchy-loving crusade through Ottawa’s public spaces to hang portraits of the Queen – to no discernible purpose other than to impress her visiting grandkids – is once again functioning at his incomprehensible best.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says his freshly minted Office of Religious Freedom – promised in the Tory election platform last spring – won’t play politics among immigrants. Presumably, the good fellow can do that all by himself.

Less clear is what it will do other than add a layer of bureaucracy to a government that seriously imagines that cutting taxes and raising spending is a credible route to fiscal prudence. Not even the formidable Mr. Baird seems entirely certain about the specifics of the new enterprise, apart from the fact that it will cost taxpayers about $5 million a year, of which $500,000 are earmarked for “operations”.

In a year-end interview with Canadian Press, he intoned, “Freedom of religion is one of the first things in the Charter. It’s one of the first things in the Bill of Rights. It’s front and centre in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It’s an essential human right. I don’t see any concern about that at all.”

But, when asked again for an explanation of the new office’s workings, he spluttered, “It will be promoting religious freedom. . .persuasion, lobbying, putting light. . .promoting,” before adding, “Ours will be a made-in-Canada approach.”

As opposed to what? A made-in-Fiji approach?

Baird was on no surer footing when discussing the lamentable result of religious intolerance around the world. Referring to Egypt’s persecution of Coptic Christians, he observed, “If you’re one of the 54 Copts who was killed at this time last year, it’s pretty uncomfortable for you and your family too, whose only sin was being Coptic.”

Yes, murder can be so inconvenient.

In fact, despite the minister’s genuine, if woolly worded, concern for victims of sectarian violence, there’s no credible reason to establish a separate (and separately costed) unit inside a department that already endorses, through official ratification, the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which stipulates: “The rights enunciated in the present Covenant will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

If, however, Baird hopes to go farther than these words allow – if he intends to walk softly and carry a big scepter around the world – he is flirting with the kind of foreign policy disaster no fundamentally secular democracy can afford. After all, one man’s religious freedom is another despot’s license to imprison, torture, maim and kill.

Still, it’s more likely the minister intends to tear a page from the U.S. State Department’s play book. There, the religious freedom office purports to “monitor religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, recommend and implement policies in respective regions or countries, and develop programs to promote religious freedom.”

What’s more, its website says, “Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries; assist emerging democracies in implementing freedom of religion and conscience; assist religious and human rights NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in promoting religious freedom; and identify and denounce regimes that are severe persecutors on the basis of religious belief.”

In other words, do what Canada has always done, and to more popular and persuasive effect than the United States, in the world: Set an example made legitimate by its peaceful, orderly, tolerant and just traditions, institutions and laws.

All of which returns us to the beginning. If we already do these things, why do we need a new office to codify them?

The only man who might know the answer is Baird, himself.

It’s too bad he doesn’t seem to understand the question.

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.

To appreciate just how touchy people of every political stripe and ideological bent become when the target of their concerns is clean and accessible water, look no farther than the front page of this newspaper over the past few months.

An inter-jurisdictional spat between the City of Dieppe and the owner of a trailer park unites 500 residents, who have virtually nothing else in common, in acrimonious action to protect their rights to potable water.

Moncton City Council’s decision to slap a moratorium on fluoridation earns it plaudits from cab drivers, construction workers, bar owners, teachers and physicians (though many dentists are unimpressed impressed).

And then there’s the rolling shale gas controversy.

It doesn’t take a Maude Barlow, that ubiquitous Canadian agitator against all things corporate, to remind people of their nearest worry. But her commentary does tend to put the issue in high relief, as it did a couple of years ago when she told an international audience the following:

“The water crisis is perhaps the most urgent ecological and human threat of our time and the first – and most devastating – face of climate change. More children die each year of water-borne disease than war, HIV/AIDS and traffic accidents combined. In their recent World Water Development Report, 24 agencies of the United Nations confirmed what those of us working in the field already knew: that the global water crisis is getting worse by the day and threatening millions more people every year.

“The problem,” she continued, “is that we humans have seen the Earth and its water resources as something that exists for our benefit and economic advancement rather than as a living ecological system that needs to be safeguarded if it is to survive. We have polluted, diverted and displaced so much water from where it is needed for a healthy hydrologic cycle to function, that whole parts of the planet are drying up.

“We are just beginning to understand the devastation of this drying to the ecosystem and other species as we humans continue to rob the Earth of the water it needs for survival. The human water footprint surpasses all others and endangers life on Earth itself.”

Her conclusion: “The path to a sustainable water future is difficult but clear. First, water must be seen as a commons that belongs to the Earth and all species alike. It must be declared a public resource that belongs equally to all people, the ecosystem and the future. It must be preserved for all time and practice in law as a public trust and a human right. Clean water must be delivered as a public service, not a profitable commodity.”

In fact, the debate now raging in New Brunswick over shale gas is nothing if not about water.

A recent poll conducted by Corporate Research Associates reveals that people in this province are more or less evenly split on the subject, with 45 per cent “completely or mostly” supporting the endeavor and 45 per cent opposing. Ten per cent were noncommittal.

But when the question turned to the possible environmental implications of the hydraulic fracturing process – which employs large amounts of water, mixed with chemicals, to extract natural gas from the country rock – a revealing 83 per cent said they worried about the practice even with stiff controls in place. Indeed, 58 per cent of respondents insisted that the environment trumped commerce.

All of which strongly suggests that the provincial government’s focus, as it attempts to sell residents on the economic benefits the industry promises, should not be on establishing a framework for good corporate citizenship – a conceit no one believes will protect the water supply.

Rather, it should be on regulations that credibly back up the Alward team’s rhetoric about environmental protection. If they truly intend to install the toughest rules in North America, let’s see them do it before concerns about New Brunswick’s water becomes their political Waterloo.

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.