Archive for November, 2008

I have a problem with “no problem.” The ubiquitous phrase has insinuated itself into dealings with store clerks, office assistants, even professional occasions. Say “thank you” for some service rendered and the likely response is “no problem.” I detest the words; they smack of smart aleck and smarminess all in one.

Other cultures have similar expressions but they somehow seem worthy. When we lived in Washington, D.C., the equivalent was “uh-huh,” always spoken in a languid manner. I vividly remember the day I held a door for a stranger, she said “thank you,” and I automatically said “uh-huh.” I was pleased to have finally learned the local lingo.

So, too, when we lived in Florence. Initially, my Italian vocabulary was limited to twenty words and six of them were “prego.” The most common use occurs when a person says grazie, thank you, and you say prego, for “you’re welcome” or “not at all.” If you open a door and indicate to a woman she should precede you, you say prego. When you enter a restaurant, a waiter may say prego, as in “come in” or “at your service,” or he’ll say prego when he delivers dinner, as in “there you go.” In a store, if there are several people waiting, the clerk will say prego for “who’s next?”

In Washington, “uh-huh” brands you as belonging. In Italy, you can’t get by without prego. In Toronto, “no problem” needs to be replaced by something more pleasant. I just happen to have a happy candidate. It’s “you’re welcome.”

It’s hard to imagine a more lamebrained idea than the one that has just been launched at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. So-called facilitators have been appointed whose job it is to monitor conversations on campus for racist or homophobic content. If such felonious phrases are overheard, the facilitator is supposed to step into the circle of perpetrators and lecture all concerned about the impropriety of such statements.

What’s next? The Bad Breath Brigade? A swat team to wake up students asleep in class?

This at a university that’s just cancelled Homecoming celebrations because almost 200 were arrested in a melee involving throngs of drunken students and rabblerousers. This at an institution struggling to find a new principal at a time when twenty such openings exist across Canada.

This is political correctness taken to ludicrous extremes.

I predict the speech police will last until the first one gets punched in the proboscis.

Our good friend Betsy from Washington, D.C. has just headed home after a two-day visit. We met Betsy, a southern belle, while we lived in Georgetown in the early 1990s and have maintained the friendship ever since. Her visit was a reminder how enjoyable Washington is and how unplugged you can become from events.

On election night, she told us, houses across the city emptied as people headed for Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, where they sang “Hey, hey, bye, bye” in full-throated joy to the current occupant, George W. Bush.

With the election of Barack Obama, race relations in the city that’s two-thirds African-American have improved 100 per cent. Everybody’s talking to one another other and feeling good about their political future. Together.

As for the economy, the latest trend in Georgetown is for people to run up their credit cards with no intention of ever paying off the charges. It’s as if they expect a government bailout or, if that’s not forthcoming, they’ll declare personal bankruptcy. Either way, everything is free.

Still, reality has sunk in with some people. Betsy spotted a neighbor, who had just renovated, swinging a pick ax to clean up some cement in front of his house. When she asked what he was doing, he said he didn’t want to call his architect about the repairs. Anything the architect arranged would be far too expensive.

Robert (Bongo Bob) Thomson, sometime leader of the Social Credit Party and a florid speaker who favoured malapropisms, used to say, “If so-and-so were alive today, he’d be rolling in his grave.” Well, if John Robarts were alive today, the former Prime Minister of Ontario would be spinning at high speed at the thought of his province receiving equalization payments.

Back in the salad days of his government in the 1960s, Robarts was happy to participate in the program, but he also warned that it couldn’t go on forever. Complaints from the have-not promises, he said, might one day “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Most of the focus on the $347 million in equalization payments that Ontario will receive has been along the lines of?’how the mighty have fallen.’ I have a different view. I think we should send the money back. Clearly, equalization has seen the end of its useful life now that former have-not provinces are haves, and haves are have nots.

Wastage offers another reason to end the system. By the time Ottawa recorded the taxes it collected, chased down fraud, thought about what to do with the funds, and paid some bureaucrats and consultants to massage the results, what had probably been $400 million shrank to $347 million.

By the time Ontario records what it gets, sends people to Ottawa complaining that the amount wasn’t enough, assigns civil servants to ponder how to spend the money and then distributes the funds through a variety of programs, further leakage will likely reduce that amount to something like $300 million.

Why not just leave the original $400 million in the hands of the taxpayers who earned it, lost it, and are now about get three-quarters of their money back again? And what about the $8.4 billion that will go to Quebec next year? How much of whatever that amount started out as will be frittered away on the way through? Snuffing out the National Portrait Gallery offers paltry savings by comparison. The goose is well past her best-before date.

The American election today provides a useful reminder about the merits of the two-party system. For the last five decades, we’ve had far too many elections that produced minority governments because there are too many choices. The Alliance-Reform-Progressive Conservative liaison got rid of a few startups. We need more such consolidation.

Here’s my prescription:

1. As long as the Green Party popular vote remains in single digits, and the party has no seats, their leader cannot participate in televised debates during the election.

2. Unless the Bloc Quebecois decides to run candidates outside Quebec, BQ candidates can no longer run federally. Seventeen years is long enough to be a regional party. The Creditistes, under Real Caouette, were in Parliament for eighteen years, became a joke, and finally petered out. The Bloc needs to be drummed out.

3. New Democratic Party seat totals have fluctuated between 13 and 37 over the last five elections. Time to fold the tent that was never very big anyway. If Bob Rae can become a Liberal, so can the rest of that merry band.

After allowing 10 per cent of the popular vote for fringe candidates, that would leave a Conservative Party and a Liberal Democratic party (for lack of a better name) fighting for 90 per cent. By playing in such a ball park, some team is sure to win a majority, thereby bringing stability to the land.

Without some such action, we’ll become like Italy with its more than sixty governments since the Second World War. Italy without the sunshine and stylish good times.