Before you get all excited about this budget, the next election or some other kick of the political mule, let me remind you that we all know politics is sordid. We must know it. Why else would politicians from William Henry Harrison to Jimmy Carter to Belinda Stronach keep campaigning as outsiders? In January, complaining about Ms. Stronach's refrain of "I am not a professional politician," my colleague Susan Riley said "Imagine someone boasting 'I am not a professional pipe-fitter.' Wouldn't the response be, then find me one, quick?" And in the March 22 Maclean's, Paul Wells noted that Ms. Stronach "has the outsider cachet that inexplicably draws supporters to the candidate who knows least about politics. When my pipes burst during the last cold snap of winter, I didn't say to myself: 'Here's the proof that traditional plumbing has failed ... It's time to bring in a non-plumber who can do plumbing differently.' No, I called a pro. I'll never understand why people think politics requires less expertise."

Maybe they don't. Maybe there's a more convoluted explanation for our chronic enthusiasm for drawing people into politics who have no experience and thus presumably no understanding of it. It certainly requires explanation. Plumbers may attract apprentices who don't know the trade, but then they train them to do it the old-fashioned way. Your grandfather joined pipes so they didn't leak; your father joined pipes so they didn't leak; you will join pipes so they don't leak. No one talks about reinventing plumbing. Yet even people who've been in politics for years suddenly tell us that as soon as it's totally different it will be great.

As The Globe and Mail's Murray Campbell wrote on Tuesday, "One of Dalton McGuinty's ambitions is to 'reinvent government.'" One of them? If a guy set out to reinvent science you'd probably say "Good luck mate" but if he pulled it off you'd say "Great, take a break" not "To infinity and beyond, and make it snappy." But in politics, total change is just the start. In November, Paul Martin, after 10 years in government, said "our governments and our leaders must change the way they conduct themselves." In December he promised "fundamental changes ... to the way we are governed." And in February he promised, "If I can't change the political process, I'll get out."

Huh? Didn't that process produce socialized medicine when his father was in cabinet? If your dad built you the greatest hot tub in the world would you pledge to bathe in a horse trough? Surely if Mr. Martin has to promise to make government into something totally different or it will stink, he's admitting that it has stunk for the past decade and that he knows we know it. Naturally he concedes that it stank for the decade before that when those awful Tories were in power let alone during the Dark Ages when taxes were low, morals were high and nits like Francis Bacon went around babbling: "It is good also not to try experiments in states."

Based on his actions, it is clear that Mr. Martin values expertise in politics; he just completed a highly professional, ruthless takeover of the Liberal party. As for Belinda Stronach, she relied on cagey, even cynical political operators to run her campaign. But as politicians, presumably they say what they think we will like. The real question is why we like it, even though we find Yes Minister funny. Or why one Paul Wells, in the Jan. 26 Maclean's, praised the B.C. government's assembly of 160 citizens drawn at random to find ways to reform government as "a stirring rebuttal to the cynicism that infests so much of Canadian politics and journalism"? If an airline were to adopt a similar process, would we call it a stirring rebuttal to cynicism in engineering and rush to buy a ticket on the maiden flight?

I say the reason we won't accept the argument that experience works here too is not that we don't understand what's wrong with politics. It's that we do. Deep down we know politics is about government and government is about force. If we dwell on that ugly truth for any length of time it will dawn on us that any proposal to do things by government is a proposal to do them by force and that, therefore, anything that can't be done by force can't be done by government and anything that can't be done efficiently or kindly by force can't be done efficiently or kindly by government. Which is fine if you accept a limited role for government and extensive social obligations for ourselves as private citizens. Instead, having demanded that government make us healthy, wealthy and wise, we wait breathlessly for it to become completely different so it can.

If you don't agree, tell me why government "charity" costs so much and achieves so little. Better yet, tell me how long you'd stay in the chair if the guy in the white coat pried your jaws open, fired up the drill then declared that he was going to reinvent dentistry right now or else quit the profession.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Say, what ever happened to Fabius Maximus? I don't mean is he on your couch drinking beer. I mean why don't we tell ourselves instructive stories about famous people any more. Some folks might think I'm a snob for reading Plutarch's Lives, which describes and compares the lives of noble Greeks and Romans in search of examples to imitate or avoid. Others might think I'm a boor for doing so on the recommendation of the great western writer Louis L'Amour, whose battered heroes surprisingly often read Plutarch while recuperating. I haven't been riddled with lead and no buzzards are in sight, but I do not hesitate to recommend both. L'Amour, like Plutarch, tells a ripping good tale accompanied by memorable turns of phrase like the villain who "acts like he was raised on sour milk." And both offer valuable moral lessons.

For instance, Fabius Maximus was the Roman general who used patience to defeat the great Cartheginian general Hannibal. He shadowed the invader through Italy, harassed his communications and supply lines, but refused to be drawn into a possibly catastrophic decisive battle. Every now and then the Roman people got impatient, gave command to some hot-blooded demagogue who confronted Hannibal and promptly got crushed, then came back to Fabius and said, "Um, if we scrape together another army would you go try that delaying stuff again?" He did, in the end triumphing totally and earning the nickname "Cunctator" or "the delayer." Gee, maybe we should try patience in warfare. But wait. There's more.

Years later, Plutarch tells us, Maximus's son held the high office of consul, and his father "either by reason of age and infirmity, or perhaps out of design to try his son, came up to him on horseback." But the son sent a messenger to "command his father to alight, and tell him if he had any business with the consul, he should come on foot. The standers-by seemed offended" but Fabius leapt from his horse, hurried to embrace his son, and said: "Yes, my son, you do well, and understand well what authority you have received, and over whom you are to use it. This was the way by which we and our forefathers advanced the dignity of Rome, preferring ever her honour and service to our own fathers and children."

It is easy to ridicule such tales, let alone Plutarch's fables about obviously legendary figures like Romulus or Theseus. I even find Parson Weems's invented tale of George Washington and the cherry tree a bit silly. I mean, the kid was busted, right? He wouldn't have got very far quibbling about the meaning of the word "chop." But I wonder if we'd be better placed to cope with the ad sponsorship scandal if we still discussed how children taught to take honesty seriously can later be trusted with political power. Or if people in government could say to one another "you understand well what authority you have received" and not laugh. Instead we don't seem to tell ourselves any stories at all.

Pierre Trudeau admitted in his memoirs that after larking around the Quebec countryside in a German uniform frightening people, he realized around 1944 that he'd sort of missed the significance of the Second World War. Do we tell our children this story as a warning that a young person indifferent to Naziism would become an adult indifferent to Communism? Do we praise his post-modern ironic detachment from moral seriousness? Or do we just ignore the very possibility that history offers examples to avoid or imitate, and instead sit on our maximus flipping channels?

Not everyone in Plutarch is admirable, of course. He offers many examples to avoid, not imitate, including great men with tragic flaws. We are not always obliged either to believe his stories or accept his interpretations, which lean towards the austere, Spartan side. But argument depends on analogy, and he offers lots of useful ones. We could be arguing whether someone is another Themistocles (the brilliant Athenian leader too fond of money), or whether Themistocles was as bad as people say. Unless the only Homer we know is Bart Simpson's dad.

Even Louis L'Amour offers examples, like a villain who at age 40 "blamed the world for the success that had never come to him, failing to understand that the fault was his own. He was one of those who had always wanted to start at the top, and the idea of consistent effort to get there had seemed futile to him." Of course, 50 years ago a pulp western writer could call a villain's face "long and saturnine" and readers would understand.

See, Saturn was this Roman god, and ...

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

It is small consolation that they haven't forgotten me. I returned from vacation and was instantly plunged into gloom by 435 e-mail messages, most implying that I was depraved, stupid or both. Outside the window I saw Liberal election signs that somehow conveyed a not entirely dissimilar message. So I had managed to get away from it all but it didn't get better in my absence. At the risk of seeming positively Clarksonian, I confess that I have been in the tropics, chugging around in a little rented houseboat and snorkeling with the fishes. To my mind our finny friends are doing better than the politicians. I didn't wear shoes, get e-mail or receive a phone call for an entire week and didn't miss any of them. Then I got back to grey skies, foul-mouthed pop stars and unbridled, if inept, political ambition. I wasn't glad.

It's so peaceful drifting lazily over the seabed, occasionally fighting to keep from being swept onto sharp rocks, fire coral or possibly a scorpionfish by pounding waves, then finding you can't get back through the little gap out through which you glided with ease because Mr. Tide is much stronger than he seemed. True, life and limb may be in peril but it's all so straightforward and under your own control. Only you and your brother-in-law can run the boat onto a sandbank, mistake north for east-south-west or fall overboard trying to snare the mooring buoy.

The dazzling underwater world takes your mind right off current events. Tropical fish come in amazing varieties: hog, clown, and many shapes, sizes and colours of parrot, to say nothing of the guide book's "oddly shaped bottom dwellers;" what is there here to remind you of politics? Other, I mean, than rumours of a deep hole with sharks lurking in it?

We investigated another deep hole through which, an overly excited acquaintance had claimed, snorklers could be sucked to their death and eventually disgorged, barely recognizable, into the Atlantic. But at least it wasn't sucking in tax dollars and disgorging them, barely recognizable, into Quebec. Besides, I would have had to commit an act of personal stupidity to be converted into ocean nutrients. Cushion star fish, however numerous, cannot elect Liberals to take my tax dollars.

The ocean is honest, too. The "donkey dung" sea cucumber turns out not to be nearly as uncommon as one guidebook claimed. But the name is no mystery once you've (ugh) seen it. And when they call it "fire coral" I do not wonder if it's a holiday camp. Whereas when they call it Human Resources Development Canada I wonder what human resource they even think they have developed.

Some alert readers may be tempted to observe that I actually write a great deal about politics. I do so for the same reason that while I might show fellow snorklers a cute porcupinefish if convenient, I should take some considerable trouble to advise them if I had spotted a tiger shark.

Government is big, hungry and ever-present. So we must pay attention to it. But I confess to some feeling of bemusement at the number of commentators who seem to think that Paul Martin becoming prime minister, or even Tony Clement haplessly seeking to become leader of an opposition party, will flood their life with colour, zest and meaning. I would rather be writing about things like tropical fish, which are more fun, more interesting and in many ways more important. Politics is simply more pressing.

On my last swim I spotted a juvenile hogfish head-down on a fan of coral. Go on. I defy you. Go sit in the House of Commons visitors' gallery and tell me what you saw that was half as interesting.

At first when you go swimming you look at all the fish and go "Ooooh, look at all the fish." Later you develop more discerning taste and go "Ooooh, look at all the colourful fish." Then you get back to the boat and argue whether it was green with yellow stripes, orange with a blue stripe or mottled. The guide books help ensure an interesting vacation by showing you an infinite variety of fish that don't faintly resemble the ones you think you saw or, better yet, various fish each of which has 14 different colour schemes and a note saying these can vary.

Eventually you learn to pay attention to such things as shape of tail fin, eye colour, number of stripes. And you feel real satisfaction when you instinctively recognize a yellow snapper. You don't find those in Parliament. Uh, wait a minute...

Anyway, I'm back now, my shoes full of sponsorship spam, contemplating the inability of Ottawa City Council to cut back on mulch and its belief that shifting property taxes from the homes people live in to the firms where they work is the best thing since manna from heaven, and like Scrooge I'm about ready to retire to Bedlam. I have one question first, though.

Do they have a salt-water fish tank?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Two years ago historian Jack Granatstein produced the sort of book that should cap a scholarly career. Canada's Army was a stunning overview of its subject, comprehensive without being dense. Exactly what you'd want from an engaged scholar. His new Who Killed the Canadian Military? is the identical opposite: a stunning monograph, short without being sketchy. Exactly what you'd want from a scholar who's engaged. Including the cover, a recruiting poster pointing directly at the reader. The book elegantly starts nearly every chapter with "Who killed the Canadian military?" And the answer comes back relentlessly: "Lester B. Pearson - inadvertently ..." "John Diefenbaker ..." "Paul Hellyer ..." "Pierre Trudeau ..." "Brian Mulroney ..." And then "Who finished off the Canadian Forces? Jean Chrétien did." But don't think you're off the hook.

The book is full of blunt truths on subjects from UN incompetence to quotas to the enduring differences of opinion between francophones and anglophones on defence. But its bluntest is: "the real killers of the Canadian Forces were you and I, the Canadian people. The military scarcely interested us ... We assumed that we were safe, our territory inviolable, and we believed ultimately that the Americans would protect us. So you and I elected our politicians, and we told them ... we wanted health care, culture, better pensions, and a thousand other programs ... These are all good things ... But Canada is a rich country, and we could have had both a strong military and the social services we want." There is no escape. "Who killed the Canadian military? We all did."

To help combat this indifference, let me digress to note that George Blackburn recently contacted me about his campaign to get people to put his superb Second World War memoirs into the hands of the nearest interested teenager. George has had a few health scares lately, and he's not as young as he was 64 years ago when he was among the first Canadians sent to defend Britain against Hitler's then-probable invasion. But he need not worry that the voices of veterans will lapse into silence, provided those of us who care take the trouble to read and share his books. For anyone not already familiar with those dark days I'd say start, as his publisher did, with volume II, The Guns of Normandy. Please.

Now back to Jack Granatstein and blunt truths. For the lack of interest in our military is not an isolated piece of forgetfulness. At one time concern about our military, past and present, was uncontroversial. Nowadays there is widespread hostility on the left to the very concept that military force has any utility. And it creates hostility to remembering the good it did at Vimy Ridge, in the battle of the Atlantic and in Normandy.

It need not be. When I spoke with Jack Granatstein yesterday he called himself "centre-left" on social issues; he wants abortion legal and the minimum wage raised. Yet his new book takes a Wilsonian position on NATO's "totally justifiable and necessary 'humanitarian war'" in the former Yugoslavia "to stop a genocide in the making." Regarding Iraq in 2003 he says, "Sufficient cause for action, in my view, was that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, a monster who had attacked Iran and Kuwait and oppressed his own people."

More generally, he says with characteristic directness, "In the cut-throat realm of international relations, power still comes primarily from the barrel of a gun, not from the ranks of social workers that Canadians believe they send abroad ... Does this weakness serve Canada's national interest? Do we even know what these interests are?" As he agreed, it would be inadvisable to say such things to a Liberal convention these days, never mind to the NDP.

Prof. Granatstein's desire that Canada play a role for good in the world is hardly controversial even on the right (though some of us grumps contain our enthusiasm). But his grasp of the connection between military power and international influence is by now not so much controversial as taboo on the left. When a recent report warned that Canada will soon find itself with no armed forces at all, most commentators didn't bother to respond. Such indifference contains a big streak of peculiar partisan hostility. Regardless, fixing the problem starts, as usual, with understanding how we got to where we are.

So read Jack Granatstein's new book. It will leave most of you in no doubt that over the last 40 years Canada's handling of national security has been shameful. But be warned.

On the question of responsibility for the problem and for the solution, it is one book you should judge by its cover.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

What ever happened to soft power? Its advocates seem to be flourishing professionally. But what have they to say about the affairs of the day, such as nuclear proliferation or Haiti? On nuclear proliferation, we all know now that the Americans, and almost everyone else, badly overestimated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But we also know now they badly underestimated the international trade in nuclear materials to rogue states (and most Western governments still would if the American invasion of Iraq had not frightened Libya's Col. Gadhafi). You can't just chant "BUSH LIED!" History, as is its wont, has moved on. What shall we do?

We need better intelligence or, if we decide that's not really possible, some plan for dealing with inherently inadequate intelligence. Yet Canada basically doesn't do foreign intelligence. We also need some sort of firm plan for dealing with nuclear proliferation. Even in Europe, the realization that biting America's ankles doesn't qualify is painfully sinking in and policy is changing.

In a story I don't recall seeing in Maclean's, in late January Germany's foreign minister told Britain's Daily Telegraph that of course there were no plans for a European superstate. Two days later, "senior German officials" told the Telegraph the quarrel with the U.S. over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Germany and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had become "a prisoner" of French President Jacques Chirac's anti-war campaign. (Also, the implosion of its fledgling democracy makes Russia an increasingly unsuitable third partner in this supposedly enlightened alternative to America's yee-haw foreign policy.)

Moreover, while many Canadians seem to regard the American concern with militant Islamism as redneck xenophobia, in France they've voted to ban headscarves in schools while the ultra-liberal Netherlands is trying to expel thousands of illegal immigrants and Denmark is undertaking immigration reforms openly aimed at radical imams. Such policies put those governments at risk from terrorism that won't be diminished by insulting George Bush especially since, unlike Canadians, they don't secretly know the U.S. must defend them no matter what.

The New York Times, not exactly pro-Bush, recently noted that despite "headlines around the world about how American credibility has been reduced to tatters," its allies are now seeking to work more closely with the U.S. to keep WMDs out of the hands of rogue states. Even Hans Blix now says "We Europeans cannot simply resist forceful action by the United States and leave it at that. We have to take positive action also. We have to push the United States to use international organizations to face threats to our common security."

Right. We must face the threats not deny them. And only the U.S. has the hard power to do so. Yet Canada's government dithers on whether to make a typical "all aid short of help" offer on missile defence involving neither money nor sites, while our foreign minister pushes hard for a treaty to ban weapons in space. The high-tech U.S. military relies on satellite communications, which it must protect from bad guys who laugh at treaties. We're trying to make sure it can't. And we will fail. So far soft power looks like weakness.

What about Haiti? It should be the ideal spot for a kinder, gentler Canadian intervention. First, it's in serious need not of a clean military operation to oust the villains but of some of the sensitive nation-building liberals tend to favour. Second, such an intervention would have the quality appealing to liberals of having almost no relevance to our national interest, unless you believe (a) all failed states are breeding grounds for terror and (b) we as well as the Americans are threatened if terror comes to North America. Third, Haiti is a French-speaking nation, and we have francophone regiments (OK, we're down to one francophone regular force regiment). But we can't do it.

We haven't got the ships or the planes, and the Van Doos, as horribly overextended as everyone else in our military, just left for Afghanistan. On the TV news Monday night, the prime minister said we were monitoring the situation in Haiti closely and were concerned. In other words, we're impotent and frustrated. I'm not sure they give Nobel Peace Prizes for that.

There was a time when leftists were prone to expansive, even daffy visions of remaking the world. But they knew, as only a few like historian Jack Granatstein now seem to, that such plans require even more robust military capabilities than realpolitik is likely to. In his excellent new book Who Killed the Canadian Military? Mr. Granatstein says that because "soft power" meant military neglect, "Canada has ceased to matter internationally." Ooops.

Lloyd Axworthy promised us a world transformed, not ignored. Well? What can "soft power" do on nuclear proliferation, or even Haiti? Guys?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

In ancient Japan they had a highly ritualized form of theatre called Noh, in which actors in masks enacted standard story lines using stylized dialogue. In the first act an aspiring politician would come on stage in a smiley mask and promise to balance the budget, a chorus of voters would shout "Hooray" in unison, and then ... Hey, wait a minute. This isn't a textbook on ancient Japan. This is the daily newspaper. See here, in the second act the politician appears in a mask whose mouth gapes in amazement and horror, and intones "The situation is far worse than we thought." The chorus of voters goes "Oh goodness me, we had no idea." There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then they hug and the stage goes dark. The format is not totally rigid. While it is habitual for the politician to blame his budget woes on his dishonest incompetent predecessors, propriety permits a preposterous variation, known as "Ottawa City Council," in which the horrible situation is revealed to be the work of the very same politicians now shocked to discover it. But such opportunities for artistic licence are few.

When the lights come up on act three the politician inevitably returns in a mask expressing grim determination and a new robe whose sleeves are rolled up, pushing a wheelbarrow containing an immense report. "Good heavens, people," he recites. "We have consulted the experts and they say we can keep our pledge to you to balance the budget, which we made with no idea at all that it might be hard, but regrettably we will have to close all the facilities that make our community kind and vibrant, let rubbish accumulate without end on our pathways, cease to ship useless plastics to foreign lands, and quite possibly sever both your legs just above the knee."

At this point another chorus of activists in bright costumes leaps on stage and shrieks "Better that you drop a big bomb on our beloved city than do those terrible things of which you speak." Then a wise advisor comes forward to say "O politicians, O people, heed me. For a small sacrifice, no more than two cups of your favourite stimulative beverage per week, our centres of learning and compassion can be saved and the crisis averted forever." "Hooray" shouts the chorus of voters. The whole thing is staged again the next day, or even in another theatre on the same day, and the audience never seems to get tired of it.

Now I know people find repetitive ritual performances soothing. But I've been examining the fundamental tenets of modern art and it seems that shocking the bourgeoisie is the shortcut to money and fame. I'm not suggesting you could get away with, say, pickling a shark. But within reason, I gather, upsetting convention is the standard path to success. So here goes.

First, wouldn't it be weird to stop having the entire populace speak with one voice? Theatre-goers find it comfortingly familiar when a character in the disappointing role known as "the McGuinty" says things like "What I hear from Ontarians is that they are not overly concerned about how long it takes us to balance the budget." But at the risk of cluttering up the stage, maybe we could have more than one kind of Ontarian up there. And when the politician wheels out the barrow full of recommendations from the experts we could get really wacky by having one, in a jester's costume, ask why he didn't consult the experts before making the promise.

We could even shatter the standard format entirely, à la Rites of Spring, and have the jester deliver a soliloquy on the question of why it is that, as society becomes fabulously more wealthy, it should become harder rather than easier for governments with ballooning tax bases to meet what ought to be the shrinking rather than growing needs of the populace. The jester could quote a mysterious figure known as "Citizen Arts Editor Peter Simpson" that the locals already deliver some 20,000 cups per year of their preferred stimulative beverage to various politicians, and say it might explain why the latter find it hard to concentrate on line items in the budget.

To be safe, the jester could conclude his soliloquy by suggesting that social problems expand to meet the number of subsidies and social workers available. Having everyone enjoy a hearty laugh at the concept of handouts creating dependence would relieve the tension. Then we could go back to good old act one, where the aspiring politician promises to balance the budget. And the audience could join the chorus in shouting "Hooray."

Except me. I'd be at the back, shouting out the name of that old Japanese type of theatre. "Noooooh."

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

If it's business as usual with the ad sponsorship scandal, it won't be business as usual. It will be very bad news. For all of us. A news story in yesterday's Citizen said the fate of Paul Martin's government "hinges on one simple question: Will voters believe the prime minister when he says he knew nothing of the Quebec sponsorship scandal?" But it doesn't. Plausible deniability tinged with righteous indignation will just add fuel to the fire.

What's inflaming sentiments isn't the specifics of the scandal, it's the feeling that we're being played for suckers. So traditional, clever Liberal damage-control techniques will be a bigger disaster if they work than if they fail. To call a snap election and cobble together a slender majority would inject a dangerous dose of bitterness into our politics.

The Liberals will be tempted because it looks doable; the Globe and Mail's Christie Blatchford just wrote, "For all the outrage ... now, my hunch is that it will not last, and that once again, I will get the government that many of you deserve." And persons eligible for circumpolar junkets with the Governor General will be inclined to think their task is, as usual, to calm a temporarily unruly mob. Liberals and Red Tories mostly believe alienating Quebec nationalists is far more dangerous to the country than a few financial irregularities and that all decent people not currently hyperventilating know it. And as historian Michael Bliss noted, there is a class element to this crisis.

On Gerry Cammy's Sunday call-in show on CFRA, where my wife was a panelist along with Liberal Whip Mauril Bélanger, some callers were sufficiently agitated as to have some trouble expressing themselves. People who do not chatter for a living can be confounded with bromides about integrity, a dash of bafflegab about procedure and wounded innocence if directly attacked. But it's the wrong plan here.

One caller said she was living on a pension of $1,000 a month. So $100 million would suffice to double her pension for 8,300 years. But how much is it to Jane Stewart, who oversaw the HRDC billion-dollar shmozzle then landed a comfy job in Geneva with the International Labour Organization, which most regular folks have never heard of though it has heard of them? Or pollster Allan Gregg, who worried in Friday's Globe and Mail that "the audit process was running amok, and that Ms. Fraser was behaving more like the leader of the Official Opposition than the accountant she is." He reminded us hicks that $100 million over four years, to a government spending $180 billion a year, is like losing $15 out of $100,000. He called on the auditor general "to give an accurate, and not hysterical, picture" of "routine problems that will plague any organization that employs a quarter of a million people, and handles a fifth of a trillion dollars in taxpayers' money" and said "our government works very well." Not reassuring to people upset that government works very well for those in or near it.

Mr. Martin and his advisers may think their problem is the obvious one that if he knew about the scandal he's guilty and if he didn't he's clueless. But any attempt to finesse this dilemma will be too slick by half because what really bothers a lot of us is a third possibility: that Mr. Martin was a sufficiently savvy insider to operate on what some trades call a "need-not-to-know" basis. Since it was evident that penetrating questions about the sponsorship program would yield answers he could neither act on nor ignore, he was smart enough not to ask them. (Technically there's a fourth possibility: nothing bad happened. But I don't believe it and neither do you.) An endless inquiry and an impenetrable report months after an election would be more of this strategy. And so it would reinforce rather than dispel the public perception that politics is indeed "some kind of a game played by an elite few."

The Liberals may be tempted to think the old soft shoe will get them off the hook, and perhaps their rainmakers tell them they can win a majority based on Quebec, urban Ontario and the Maritimes. Having Jean Chrétien return and toss off cynical wisecracks like "I don't think anymore" is not a good sign. Even worse, a close confidant of Mr. Chrétien just told the press, "The primary concern now is that this has got to stop. We have to work for the unity of the party and prepare for the next election."

The danger here is not that such a strategy will fail but that it will succeed, and convince vast numbers of hard-working regular folks, especially west of Ontario and north of Toronto, that they are governed by scoffing elitists who regard millions of tax dollars as amusing playthings. Stolen, squandered, misplaced, what does it matter?

I doubt the Liberals can win a snap election. But I also fear it, because if they do, it will do lasting harm to the tone of Canadian politics. We can all lose.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

On mornings like this you wake up and say thank goodness government is on the job. Here in Canada it's a positive pleasure to pay, on average, just 47 per cent of our income in taxes to be protected from the shoddy products, hypocrisy and greed of capitalists. Hey, wait a minute. What's this Gagliano doing in my breakfast cereal? Not delivering municipal services, that's for sure. Nor, apparently, is the City of Ottawa, which is going to freeze taxes that will nevertheless rise on a mere 80 per cent of households so it can slash services. Oh boy. You don't get that from those rotten private companies. Nor will you, thanks to the ever-vigilant state.

For instance, I'm delighted to learn that the minister of Health wrote to her Quebec counterpart last summer asking what the heck the deal was with letting people pay money to private firms in fees to get treatment when they're supposed to pay money to government in taxes not to get treatment. Everybody knows that. Including the health authorities in Britain, who have been scandalized to learn that the National Health Service was paying more to private hospitals to treat medical problems than it was paying to public hospitals not to treat the very same problems. Well, there won't be any more of that sort of thing.

If there is, what could be more pleasant and refreshing than going to the complaints department of your government? Oh, it hasn't got one. Why would it? On the Public Works Quebec sponsorship scandal that the auditor general confessed was hard to distinguish from "packing a suitcase full of $100 bills," yesterday's Citizen reports that "Revenue Minister Stan Keyes said he thinks voters won't punish the Liberals. He predicted Canadians will make the distinction that the transgressions of the past ... were made by people in the Chrétien government who set out to break the rules."

Yeah. It's like when you go into a store to complain that the lawnmower they sold you won't mow and they say well the previous owners were a bit like that. So you say can I have my money back and they say no and you say will you replace it and they say no. Strange that I can't remember the last time a company told me such a thing.

Nor are private firms given to the lovely habit of snatching a guarantee back and rewriting it. But there's Senator Jim Munson, promoted to our august chamber of sober second thought for 16 months' service as J. Chrétien's communications director, assuring us the previous owner was entirely innocent as well. "He wanted answers. The former prime minister has always said that if anybody has done anything wrong then they should be punished." Hey. Didn't this piece of paper use to say that when asked about sponsorship program abuses in 2002 Mr. Chrétien questioned why the press would quibble that "a few million dollars ... might have been stolen" in the course of buying Quebecers' allegiance. Oooh, punish me again.

Isn't it nice to know that private firms can't change their story so dramatically because the state, assured of its superior morality, stands guard against private dishonesty? For the same reason it is not recommended that private-sector accountants shrug off the possibility of a few million dollars having been stolen should agents of the state raise the issue. Or that they bypass the rules to purchase luxury transportation for the boss.

It is also not recommended that if shareholders or customers start complaining about a massive scandal, everyone should start running in circles pointing fingers at one another saying it wasn't me they did it I know they did though I don't know anything about it I'm completely in the dark I just work here I don't know anything I never did know anything so obviously you should let me run everything and trust me completely.

Sure. I'm game. When did they ever go back on their word? Um, except here where way back on Feb. 2 the speech from the throne said "the government of Canada is unalterably committed to fiscal prudence, as evidenced by annual balanced budgets ..." but on Feb. 11 the Finance minister told us "My fear ... is that if this economy turns south that the government will then take action to protect its balanced budget, which I think is inappropriate." But don't worry. He says it won't happen soon. Phew. Mind you, nine days is a long time in politics. And if it does happen, there's no complaints department. And no, you can't get your money back.

Weird, my cereal's starting to taste rather peculiar. Oh, no wonder. It came from one of those private corporations. If only government made it ...

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]