Oh, here's a sexy story. A cabinet minister was caught privately calling a difficult problem "sexy" and an opportunity for career advancement. We journalists would never do that.

Get caught, I mean. We certainly have blunt private conversations about our colleagues' failings and the way certain tragic events make for great copy. And we could not do our work at all if every editorial discussion made it into print.

People in public life are equally unable to function without space for frank private conversation. Especially about the things they must be most smoothly hypocritical about in public.

Would it not be terrifying if politicians' private talk presented the same appalling mix of fake outrage and smothering vacuity as their public utterances?

Defending embattled Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt in question period, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said "This minister has been working around the clock to make sure we get a greater supply of isotopes. That's what this minister is doing, that's what this government is doing, not playing cheap politics." But we do not think members of cabinet work around the clock and never sleep, nor do we want them to. Surely the PM doesn't either.

Even if politicians often are as vacant as their more polished utterances suggest, it is no excuse for the rest of us to turn into bellowing buffoons just because a politician has been detected smelling opportunity in a crisis. There are far worse ways to advance a public career than solving problems; watch question period and you'll see what I mean.

It took a ridiculous comedy of errors for Ms. Raitt's infamous remarks to become public.

But honestly, if she does solve the medical isotope crisis, wouldn't you be willing to promote her even if you knew that's why she'd done it?

Just as you'd pay a mechanic to fix your car even if you knew he'd done it for the money.

In perhaps his most famous passage, Adam Smith said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."

And the same is true of politicians, if we are smart.

Some people honestly think politics is less grubby than private enterprise. Stephen Leacock satirized one utopian socialist for depicting office-holders as "sagacious and paternal ... free from the interest of self and the play of the baser passions" who "work ... as work the angels". But, Leacock snapped, "let me ask in the name of sanity where are such officials to be found?"

Not, clearly, in our Parliament.

In a classic piece of standardized outrage over the Raitt affair, Michael Ignatieff snarled, "The cheapest politics here is to call a crisis a career opportunity." As if he did not treat every Conservative misdeed, real or imagined, as both a massive crisis and a stepping stone toward 24 Sussex. I certainly hope he and his inner circle are aware of what they are doing, and honest about it in private. Cluelessness is not a desirable quality in a politician. Or in a citizen.

In the name of sanity, then, let us take James Madison's advice, in Federalist #51, that to secure liberty and check the appetite of the authorities for power, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

Ambition is part of human nature, especially among those drawn to public life. As Madison also said, "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

Politicians might have us believe they are so exceptionally public-spirited and virtuous that we may dispense with checks and balances in our political arrangements. But to borrow another phrase from Adam Smith, those who make such claims are by no means such fools as those who believe them.

It is the beginning of wisdom in public affairs to reward politicians who solve problems and punish those who do not. That way we harness their mighty ambition to our well-being, instead of prompting it to work for our undoing.

In this case, I grant, Ms. Raitt's instinct for advancement seems to have come unhitched from any functioning instinct for self-preservation. But that's just one more thing I hope, and trust, her colleagues are discussing privately in salty language.

Politicians alert to career opportunities!

Partisans exploit crises!

Ministers backbite!

It's as sexy as rutabaga. So stop the presses .... and don't start them again until we get a grip on human nature, political ambition and the fundamentals of political economy.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

What, I ask myself, would Matthew Arnold say about contemporary politics and public debate? And a silly answer I get back, because I now pile shallowness on pomposity by admitting all I’ve read by him is “Dover Beach.” But somehow I seem to have absorbed more than I deserved of his ideas and you should too.

To cement my status as a Philistine I’m going to quote famous Western author Louis L’Amour: “Someone has said that culture is what remains with you after you have forgotten all that you have read…” In this case culture is what remains after you never read it. But I bring it up because it’s amazing how much remained.

For instance, in teaching university courses I assign book reviews, which my students hate. I suggest various technical aspects of reviewing books, but always to help them make an overall appraisal. And now I discover that Matthew Arnold, who really invented the profession of “critic” in the mid-nineteenth century, said “Literary criticism’s most important function is to try books as to the influence which they are calculated to have upon the general culture of single nations or of the world at large.” Which is exactly what I wanted my students to be doing. I just didn’t phrase it that clearly… until now.

Comedian Bob Newhart joked that “You don’t actually have to be intelligent if you can just create the perception. This can usually be accomplished by a reference to Kafka. Even if you never read any of his – or her – works.” On that basis I’m going to praise Arnold after reading not his works but the Oxford Past Masters profile of him by Stefan Collini.

If citing Arnold makes me sound snobby it is far from obvious that he would object, since he described criticism as “the disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.” But even if it is pompous, there are worse tasks one could set oneself. And that word “disinterested” is extremely important in this context. For there’s another major theme in Arnold’s writing that I had somehow absorbed: his warning about the distorting effect on our intellectual decency of putting cause ahead of cultivation.

When he spoke of being “disinterested” Arnold did not mean we should not reach firm conclusions or defend them vigorously. He himself did both, though to be honest I don’t share a lot of his beliefs. But here’s what I do share. According to Collini, partly through long, tedious contact with English Dissenters in his day job as school inspector, Arnold realized “that those whose fundamental identity was given to them by their status as members of a sect could not help but respond to all ideas and values, and judge all issues, from the constraining vantage point of the person with a grievance.”

The sentiment may not seem remarkable today, with political correctness all around us. But I spend much of my time watching politics as a journalist and commentator. And I found this passage electric because it now applies not only to the genuinely marginalized or self-marginalized but to our mainstream parties and to people in power as well. Partly through the process of sharpening their polemical weapons by taking on the tone of the legitimately aggrieved, and partly due to a general coarsening of intellectual and cultural life, they have succumbed to this peril in their rhetoric and their thinking.

Party men and women nowadays do not evaluate an issue or an event from a broad perspective, considering its place in the long history of human thought and action and its probable impact on the general culture before fitting it into their partisan concerns. Instead, they instantly weigh its usefulness or danger to their entrenched positions, and base all their thinking about it on that narrow, crumbly foundation.

As for political activists and politicians as individuals, do they not remind you of Arnold’s question about what “the everyday, middle-class Philistine... finds so attractive in Dissent? Is it not, as to discipline, that his self-importance is fomented by the fuss, bustle and partisanship of a private sect, instead of being lost in the greatness of a public body? As to worship, is it not that his taste is pleased by usages and words that come down to him, instead of drawing him up to them; by services which reflect, instead of the culture of great men and religious genius, the crude culture of himself and his fellows? And as to doctrine, is it not that his mind is pleased at hearing no opinion but its own, by having all disputed points taken for granted in its own favour by being urged to no return upon itself, no development?” Now attend a party convention… and weep.

Through your tears, recall Arnold’s belief that the “best spiritual work” was “to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing”. Now admit it: The parties you like exhibit this deplorable quality every bit as much as those you do not. Don’t they? (And while you’re at it, watch out for this problem in the blogosphere as well.)

I do not presume to appropriate Arnold for my own narrow causes. Rather, I hope I can claim to be affiliated, however imperfectly and without having noticed it, with his program. Can we not still aspire to think broadly before acting narrowly? When we contemplate the opinions and programs of those we despise, can we not try to hold fast to one more Arnoldian sentiment for a troubled age: “One gains nothing on the darkness by being... as incoherent as the darkness itself.”

So there you are. I’m going to read some Arnold… as soon as I’m done with Kafka’s plays… or essays… or whatever she wrote.

[First published on MercatorNet]

This just in: marriage is better than family breakup. No, really. A new study from the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada demonstrates the cost to governments of "non-traditional families." But it's no chilly venture into bean-counting or mean-spirited exercise in moralizing. It's about the kids.

Let me declare right away that my wife helped edit this report and I have done work for the IMFC in the past. I even spoke at their opening and predicted a bright future for them in a Citizen column on Feb. 24, 2006. So I'm now praising a friend, not announcing a discovery.

The report, Private Choices, Public Costs, available at www.imfcanada.org, has three cardinal virtues. First, authors Rebecca Walberg and Andrea Mrozek say something important about an important topic. Second, they use statistics without worshipping them. Third, they make policy recommendations without putting excessive faith in political action.

It might be controversial today to say marriage is important. But this April a major study found that nine in 10 Canadian teens expect to marry, for life, and have children. So we need to tell them how and why intact marriages matter to their future kids.

Bluntly, children from other kinds of homes are more likely to flunk out of school, go to jail, get hooked on alcohol or drugs and have other things go wrong with their lives. Including, the key statistical fact behind this report's analytic work, that single parenthood roughly doubles the chance of living in poverty.

The authors logically conclude that cutting family breakup in half would keep half of the affected families off public assistance and thus reduce the cost of federal and provincial anti-poverty programs for single-parent families by a quarter. Which cost, they estimate roughly, is now nearly $7 billion a year.

True, if we saved Canadian governments $1.7 billion a year they'd probably do something stupid with the money like buy a car company. But we can't fixate on politicians' ability to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear or we'd never get anywhere on any issue. Besides, this cynical retort risks obscuring the authors' most important methodological insight: Family breakdown isn't bad because it hurts public finances; it hurts public finances because it's bad.

These authors use public dollar costs the way doctors use thermometers: they treat the fever as a rough measure of how ill someone is, but do not mistake the temperature for the illness. They note frankly various limits to their methodology.

For starters, children from single-parent homes are disproportionately involved in crime. So a large part of the cost of policing, courts and jails should be included in a global figure of the cost to government of family breakdown, but it's not in their study.

More profoundly, a large share of the material and psychological losses suffered by victims of crime would have to be included in a measure of the true social cost of failed marriages. And the blighted lives of those who drift into crime because of a troubled upbringing would have to be counted in the true personal cost. Likewise the pain of drug abuse, promiscuity, and the misery of family disintegration.

Of course, these things are hard or impossible to quantify. But the authors avoid the trap of thinking that what cannot be precisely measured does not matter much.

They also avoid the temptation to say that since family breakdown is bad for society and public finances, governments should aggressively try to promote traditional marriage. True, they recommend changing the tax code to let married couples file jointly, and getting schools to teach young people that marriage is hard work worth doing. But they do not equate government action with social action.

They merely note that where the state is doing things wrong, like penalizing marriage on tax day, it should stop. And since it has taken control of education, whatever needs to be done by schools must, primarily, be done by state schools.

It would be difficult to read this report and accuse the authors of lacking compassion. Some people may still try ...

if they read it at all. The rest of us should keep our focus on this key passage: "The point of debate should not be whether a lack of two married parents matters for children but rather what to do with the reality that it does."

It leaves a lot to discuss, from program design to tax fairness to private versus state action to celebrating those who succeed in single-parent settings without deceiving ourselves, and the next generation, about how much harder this "lifestyle choice" usually makes things for children.

It's a conversation well worth having. Think anyone in Ottawa will want to?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

You can't believe a word they say. We face a horrendous truth deficit.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty just said the federal government deficit will be $50 billion this year. And it might. But the fact that he said it makes it less rather than more believable.

Permit me to review the facts, a term here meaning "the long sequence of non-facts that issued forth from the mouths of senior federal politicians."

First, during the campaign the PM promised us no deficits.

Second, two days after the election the PM told us he wouldn't rule out deficits in 2009-10 but there wouldn't be one in the current fiscal year (2008-09).

Third, 10 days after that, the finance minister told us he couldn't rule out a deficit in 2008-09.

Fourth, in his Nov. 27, 2008 update he predicted a small surplus for 2008-09 and 2009-10.

Fifth, in December, Flaherty said there would be a deficit in 2009-10 but not 2008-09.

Sixth, a few days before the January budget, in what the Citizen called "an unprecedented move to soften the blow of next week's federal budget" a "senior official with the Prime Minister's Office, who declined to speak on the record" told journalists the deficit would be $34 billion in 2009-10 and $30 billion the year after that.

Seventh, in the January budget the government said there would be a deficit of $1.1 billion in 2008-09, $33.7 billion in 2009-10 and a cumulative $50.1 billion in the next three years.

Eighth, on May 25 they told us the figure for 2009-10 would be more than $33.7 but they wouldn't say how much until June.

Ninth, on May 26 they told us the 2009-10 deficit would be $50 billion and claimed they were telling us to avoid "inaccurate" speculation that might confuse markets. A bit rich given their own record of ... what exactly?

Are these lies? Perhaps. But at this point I am not willing to give them that much credit. Remember: A man who lies knows what the truth is and deliberately fails to convey it accurately or completely. He does not merely "say the thing that is not," he knows it is not.

And it is not now possible to state with any degree of conviction that the people just cited knew whether their remarks were accurate when they made them. Or even to maintain plausibly that they cared.

From a purely practical point of view it is hard to quarrel with the government's behaviour or to express surprise at it psychologically. It is manifestly clear that they can say whatever sounds good, then change their story months, weeks or even a single day later without political consequences. And psychologically, once you discover that you can utter self-serving fibs and pay no price the temptation becomes enormous. It is so much easier and more fun to assume an air of solemn responsibility and make oracular declarations as a Very Important Person dealing with Very Important Matters in a Very Important Way than to admit that you have no idea what's going on. And why not, if there's no price to pay?

Actually, there is a large social price to pay when you foster cynicism on this scale. It's just that, as with the financial cost of deficits, political leaders don't pay it, we do.

If I may quote my own Jan. 30 Citizen column: "Now it's obvious what the pre-budget leaks were about. They were softening us up, so when we saw the actual $84.9 billion five-year deficit figures we'd go, oh well, that's only $20 billion more than the $64 billion over two years they already said, and what's $20 billion to government?"

Does not this cynical passage seem that much more plausible now that we've been through a further series of apparent softening-up steps, including moving from a $34 to $50 billion deficit for next year in two slices of only, say, $8 billion each? But I confess to growing doubts about its accuracy.

Such an analysis makes the politicians sound devious and sinister. But when these guys talk, there may well be no deceit, no depth, no hidden pool of knowledge and cunning. What you see is what you get. Their conceit and fatuity make them say whatever sounds good, and believe it as soon as they hear their own voice saying it.

They couldn't tell us the truth if they wanted because they don't know what it is. I don't mean they don't know the specific truth about the deficit, though they don't. I mean they don't know what "truth" is. When Flaherty said Monday that he wouldn't reveal the true deficit figure until June, do you think he had a firm intention to reveal it Tuesday? Or a firm intention not to? If so, you misunderstand his mental landscape. It doesn't contain such items.

You can't believe a word they say. Not one word.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

When the Tories attacked Michael Ignatieff for having spent time abroad, he could have retorted that it's no point of pride that you're a parochial ignoramus. Instead he pretended to be one, saying that to know how much the world loves Canada you sometimes need to see it "from afar."

Which is a pity, given the things he might have learned about political scandal if he hadn't spent the whole time gazing adoringly into our navels.

Ignatieff lived for years in the U.S., where they caught Nixon and impeached Clinton, and where Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was found out, kicked out and signed up for reality TV faster than you can say Business Development Bank.

And Ignatieff spent years in the UK, where the Speaker of the House of Commons is the latest, but by no means the last, victim of a juicy political expense-padding scandal. Whereas here Brian Mulroney can hide cash income for years, pay tax on only half of it, then oleaginously declaim, "I have never in my life knowingly done anything wrong."

Do not try this at the CRA, folks. For that matter do not try it in the confessional, either. Nominally, at least, Mulroney is a Roman Catholic, yet if his words are to be taken at face value he believes Original Sin only happens to other people. Like tax bills, receipts and full disclosure, I suppose. But I digress.

Over in the UK, MPs are in scalding hot water over a House of Commons housing allowance scheme as lax as it was generous. It helped them rent or buy second homes in London to conduct parliamentary business even if they lived nearby or, in the case of some Sinn Fein MPs, did not take their seats. And it subsidized not just politicians' mortgages but their big-screen TVs, tennis courts, an ice cube tray, a hot tub and even the clearing of a moat.

But when the Daily Telegraph got hold of the story, a most remarkable thing happened. Three, actually.

First, highly-placed politicians including the Minister of Justice and now the Speaker lost their fancy jobs and maybe their seats.

Second, scores of MPs are now either caught in the slimelight and paying back their subsidies with a sad display of false contrition or trembling at the prospect that they will be next, or face criminal prosecution.

Third, and to me most remarkable, is the rapid emergence of a crushing consensus that even if MPs were technically following the rules, their conduct was wrong and must be punished.

Contrast that with Mulroney's sanctimonious explanation that he didn't answer questions about his hidden income in 1996 because nobody asked because it was hidden so he's totally innocent and angelic. Or Jean Chrétien's weird dealings over the Auberge Grand-Mère. Or Gordon Campbell's drunk driving. Or any number of other Canadian cases where the Bart Simpson rule "I didn't do it nobody saw me do it you can't prove a thing" is good enough even if they did and we can.

Mind you, these British MPs got in trouble by committing the cardinal political sin of being both arrogant and petty.

Let Stephen Harper or Dalton McGuinty promise no new deficits, then write bad cheques for tens of billions on posterity's account, and the public mind just boggles. We know they lied, played us for rubes and took our cash, but the sums are so huge we can't cope. Eighty-four billion might as well be a googleplex. Whereas in Britain they helped themselves to fancy items we understand and might want. Um, except the moat, which presents its own PR challenges because castles just scream aristocratic luxury. As with the Reform Party getting pretty good traction in the early 1990s over subsidized meals and haircuts for MPs, it's generally the small stuff that raises the biggest stinks.

Still, you have to love it.

I take particular delight in seeing a Speaker once praised for trashing traditions like wearing a wig and breeches now being ousted for trashing traditions like respect for public money in public office.

But I think we can all enjoy British politicians being caught cutting themselves a big fat slice of pie because "I'm worth it" (when in fact the public thinks they're skunks) and actually paying the price.

In Canada, however, politicians don't have to be above suspicion, just above conviction. And as usual, it's our fault. Our political culture is to blame, and we're it.

Still, I wonder. During his years abroad did Michael Ignatieff learn anything he'd like to share about how the Americans and the British root out wrongdoing by politicians so vigorously?

Or is he a parochial ignoramus who spent his whole time thinking everyone admired Canada for letting them get away with it?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

The Mulroney and Dhalla inquiries are media magic, at once lurid and relevant. But between the accusations, self-pity and sobs I occasionally wonder if there isn't a bit more to public policy.

I'm not saying these inquiries aren't important. If an MP has abused his or her position it is a fundamental breach of the spirit, and the letter, of self-government. But so are unfounded accusations against an MP. Our right to be represented in government depends on the ability of our representatives to carry out their duties without harassment. We cannot have Charles I bursting into Parliament, sword in hand, in pursuit of five MPs who deny his divine right to rule. Nor can we have MPs subject to frivolous proceedings to keep them from their work.

We must suspend judgment until we know the facts. But we must know them, even though this issue is a media nightmare for everyone.

The Liberals cannot afford to appear to be pounding on immigrant nannies, whose PR advantages range from race and gender on the left to hard-working aspirations for a better life on the right. Nor can the other parties afford to appear to be pounding on Ruby Dhalla for precisely the same mix of reasons. One can only hope MPs all realize they are parliamentarians first and partisans second, and bring the appropriate discernment and determination to the task of punishing wrongdoing by colleagues while shielding them from frivolous proceedings.

As for publicity, this case is one where justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. As opposed to the Mulroney inquiry, which brings to mind British humorist J.B. Morton's quip that "Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be believed."

It may be the crushing, final proof of Canada's blandness that a former prime minister could take envelopes of cash secretly from shady characters, not tell the tax man for years, and there's actually nothing going on. It is certainly a troubling reflection on the dry rot in our public life that, despite a high-profile inquiry so distasteful Wednesday's Globe and Mail editorial cartoon had it on TV in hell, we still don't know what went on and probably never will. Unresolved questions and failed scrutiny undermine faith in our governing institutions far more than any other outcome possibly could.

So I want both matters settled in public, despite the unavoidable hint of soap opera. But it bothers me that they are all over the front pages, editorial pages and cartoons, while a different hearing I attended back on April 2 was so poorly attended by the press that if a pin had dropped there, the noise would still be echoing in the empty chamber. I refer to the joint committee on the Library of Parliament listening to members of the Association of Former Parliamentarians express concern that Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is exceeding his mandate, usurping the role of Parliament and zzzzzzz.

Sorry. Are you bored? Bored with the way Parliament spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year with barely a second glance? Including tens of billions it doesn't even have, sticking our children and grandchildren with huge unpaid bills? Well, in dull days of yore when people had nothing more interesting to do than watch MPs flee kings with drawn swords, they cared whether those we sent to Parliament could hold the executive to account for how it spent money.

I went into that April hearing sympathetic to the budget officer and came out very worried about him. Patrick Boyer, one of the ex-MPs and my colleague in Breakout Educational Network, repeatedly said Page was in contempt of Parliament and surely such a claim deserves serious attention. But I'd settle for frivolous attention if the alternative is none at all.

I realize that, in the vernacular sense, contempt of Parliament is as Canadian as maple syrup. But Boyer's objection was specific, technical and convincing: that the Parliamentary Budget Officer draws on the authority of Parliament in participating directly in public debate, yet trades on weariness with politicians in presenting himself as an independent voice. Instead of strengthening MPs' voice, the argument goes, he usurps it.

And if you wonder how Parliament has any prestige to appropriate the answer comes back, convincingly, that MPs are the procedural repositories of our right to govern ourselves. However badly they do the job, and however badly we choose them, there is no alternative, so that's our voice being appropriated and we should pay attention.

It's certainly important to find out if parliamentarians are doing their jobs wrong. But we also want to make sure they're able to do them right. Even if no one looks glamorous, bursts into tears or pockets a thick wad of unmarked bills.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Is there truly no limit to the wilful obtuseness of politicians? The short answer is, none that is tolerable.

The latest fiscally alarming affront to common sense is Ontario Economic Development Minister Michael Bryant saying "The state has got to be strategic ... we need to act as an entrepreneur and invest directly in businesses."

When someone tells you they are being philosophical about things you need to ask which philosophy. So when a politician says he is being strategic you must ask what his strategy actually is. And what Mr. Bryant told the Canadian Club of Toronto on Monday is: "This is government choosing winners and losers. This is supposed to be the thing that governments weren't supposed to do. But this is the business that we are in."

Aaaaaaaargh!

There's a reason governments aren't supposed to do that. It never works. When government starts picking winners and losers it winds up with a big pile of the latter, which quickly comes to include taxpayers. What makes Mr. Bryant think his government is so special or that the laws of economics have changed?

I want to be fair here. In this recession governments have discarded a number of supposedly solid lessons of the recent past with unseemly haste and ill-concealed enthusiasm. But on a few things they've also had good excuses, if not good reasons. We thought, for instance, that we had learned to avoid deficits. But a lot of people never entirely conceded that deficits don't stimulate the economy. They just accepted that it was so hard to stop running them when prosperity returned that on balance they did more harm than good.

I don't agree.

But I admit these people were not throwing all the lessons of the past out the window when they claimed things were so bad we should try a stiff belt of stimulus now and worry about putting the cork back later. (Even so, I wish the politicians weren't smirking so much while doing it.)

As for buying shares in, say, Chrysler, I think it would be a silly thing to do even if it didn't set a dangerous precedent. But if someone says look, it's a one-off, it's a major company, a big employer, a big purchaser, a mainstay of our economy, it's a position that, though wrong, deserves an answer.

The state plunging into the investment business as a general practice is a totally different matter. There's just no coherent argument for it that merits a detailed response. Indeed, when confronted with his minister's blithering, Premier Dalton McGuinty offered not logic backed by evidence but one of his trademark pieces of mendacious vacuity.

"Free markets are alive and well," McGuinty said, "It's just that they have a new partner." As if free markets were single things like fish markets that could have "partners," rather than enormously complex rule-based processes involving millions of participants. And as if government, already the rule-maker and referee, could also become a player without cheating all the others in the short run and getting itself in trouble over time.

McGuinty further drivelled that: "I think what Mr. Bryant was trying to say is that the days of governments kind of quietly presiding over the gradual evolution of the economy are behind us. If you take a look around the world, the strongest economies have governments playing an active role ... I think the smart way is to find where are your sectoral opportunities and find ways to nurture growth in those strong sectors."

It is misleading to say governments used to preside over the evolution of economies. It is false to claim that the strongest economies have historically had governments playing an active role. And it is idiotic to refer, as a documented phenomenon, to governments showing aptitude at detecting sectoral opportunities, let alone nurturing growth in them. His remarks are as arrogant as they are ignorant.

Based on their past performance, would you entrust the Ontario cabinet with your retirement funds if they opened an investment firm or, as Bryant seemed to suggest at one point, a bank? I'm not even certain, if they had been obliged during the 2003 election to put out a prospectus subject to the same rules about honesty and full disclosure that confront corporations, whether they would now be in office, or in jail.

Luckily, the decision whether to let them make investments for you is not in your hands. People like McGuinty and Bryant are not stupid. They are clever, and good at politics. But they are wilfully obtuse when it comes to historical lessons about the actual capacity of the great and good to bestow benefits on the unwashed.

So they're going into business with our money, without warning or permission, and won't stop until it is gone. Which I grant is a limit of sorts. But not one we're going to like.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Scared about swine flu yet? If not, we have more headlines. Like "Government not ready."

Oh sorry, did you miss that one? Too busy looking at that fetching statue of a Mexican lass wearing a mask ... and nothing else. Not sure how that got in the paper. But amid the "we're all gonna die" coverage there is one good reason to think we're all gonna die. Two, actually. But neither is really about swine flu.

As Ottawa doctor and commentator Barry Dworkin observed, to me and his radio audience, coverage of this disease is out of all proportion to its impact. How many new cases of colon cancer were diagnosed last week, he asked me, and how much press did they get? As for Third World havoc, what about malaria or trichinosis? They just don't get much ink because Hollywood celebrities and western journalists tend not to get them.

I don't want to spoil all the fun here. I sympathize with the impulse to panic. Killer epidemics are among my favourite fears, and I realize everyone's ready for a reprise of the dreaded Spanish flu of 1918.

Well, when I say "ready" I mean "not ready." So if you really want to panic I highly recommend a savoury blend of two stories from the front page of Tuesday's Citizen. The lead story had a splendidly terrifying photo of a Mexican in cowl and mask looking uncannily like the man on horse number one. But the text assured us that "Ottawa chief medical officer of health, Dr. Isra Levy, said Monday that the city -- indeed, the country -- is as ready as it could be to face a pandemic. He said 50 million doses of antiviral drugs had been stockpiled, more than enough for every Canadian. The drugs are the first line of defence. Ottawa, he said, would be well protected."

Ordinarily I would have filed this under the Mandy Rice-Davies rule, named for the woman who dismissed an official's denial during Britain's Profumo scandal with the immortal "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

It is a regrettable feature of modern spin control that when public figures say precisely what you expect them to, regardless of the facts, their words tell you nothing. But look across the page.

Lurking there was a story that "As area hospitals respond to the heightened alert over swine flu, emergency planners are grappling with whether they will have enough nurses and doctors to treat a sudden surge in patients if the deadly outbreak in Mexico triggers a pandemic here. 'It's the million-dollar question because hospitals are at the edge in terms of their capacity already,' said Thomas Hayes, who chairs a committee of emergency planners from area hospitals, nursing homes and other health-care providers."

That bit about hospitals at the edge of their capacity is not what they would say regardless, and tells you everything you really need to know. Our health-care system, in good times, with infectious diseases under control, a healthy, relatively young population and a long period of prosperity, has been brought to its knees by central planning.

No amount of Mandy Rice-Davies style declarations of allegiance to socialized medicine until the last drop of someone else's blood can change this fact.

Nor can a bunch of sanctimonious rhetoric about collective rights from Michael Ignatieff's latest tome change the reality that in health care, as in life generally, it is impossible to know exactly what is going to happen next so you must try to be ready for the unexpected.

Individuals should exercise, eat right and drink plenty of water to give their bodies a fighting chance if they do get sick. And medical systems need to be flexible, responsive, decentralized and operating well below capacity so they can absorb the ferocious blows of a real epidemic without collapsing.

Now look in the mirror. Do you take good care of yourself? You don't have to tell the rest of us but you know the answer.

Now look in the paper. Have politicians taken good care of our health-care system, or only said what you know they would say anyway to protect the well-being of their political careers? Once again you know the answer.

I said at the outset there are two good reasons for thinking we're all gonna die. One is everybody dies, and the goal of keeping fit, ducking when you hear loud noises and seeking appropriate medical care is simply to postpone the event as long as is reasonably possible. The other is that our health-care system is stretched to the breaking point without anything major having gone wrong.

The swine flu is unlikely to be that thing though you never do know. Sooner or later something really bad will happen, and smooth official assurances that everything is under control will be the predictable, useless accompaniment to man-made catastrophe.

There. Now you can panic.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]