Will Cape Breton produce the next political surprise?
In an era wrought with unexpected election results, local voters should be inspired to look for new solutions
Monday’s sweeping victory of the Coalition Avenir Quebec (C.A.Q.) in Quebec’s provincial election is the latest example of citizen discontent with the political system. This voter angst with the status-quo has reached many quarters, most notably in the United States with the election of the once implausible candidate Donald Trump to the presidency and in Great Britain where the establishment was set on its heels in the Brexit referendum.
Even in neighbouring New Brunswick, the once-comfortable resting place for only the Liberal and Conservative parties, voter disenchantment with the standard way of doing things has reared its head. People, in significant numbers, have said that the once-accepted ways of doing things no longer answer their concerns and meet their needs.
What might we expect here in Cape Breton?
For a people who look to politics almost daily as a source of salvation for our problems, we seem paradoxically predisposed to simply go with the flow, never questioning the manner or approach to how we govern ourselves. It is as if we think there is no other way than the way things are and we just stumble along accepting what we are told and lacking the courage or energy even to say, “hey, is this the only way to do things?”
Maybe we are content with our status-quo? Maybe there is no desire for change, no thought even to how it might improve our community.
Perhaps our political culture sees politics as only a play thing, a source for discussion but never real substantive debate and, with it, reform. Perhaps we seek to be only irresponsible spectators, leaving things to grey figures from distant capitals and their local agents? In our case it is the much discussed ‘ they.”
“They,” presumably those people in Halifax or Ottawa, should do something, we tell one another. The doing something usually comes down to shipping dollars here, whatever may be the purpose, just so long as an announcement is made and we can feel content for another day. Then we pat one another on the back and pretend that this time things will be different.
Our politicians adore this method of doing things. It makes life easy and predictable for them. Take our two federal Members of Parliament for example (one is tempted to say, as the line goes, “take them please”). For the past 21 years each has made a series of media accompanied announcements. Yes, the fabled “announcement” has become a central feature of our politics. There is the smiling M.P. holding the cheque in hand for one or another publicly-funded agency. In the photo, the usual faces always present, is the implied message of success and assurances that these much sought-after dollars will make a real difference. Yet, after these acts of deliverance, we never seem to be told what was achieved, other than, of course, support for the recipient agency’s search for permanent bureaucratic entrenchment.
For these MPs, there’s a back-bench world of going along to get along, knowing that the least said means the soonest re-elected. Yet, we keep electing them. So, who ultimately is to blame, if not ourselves?
Let us not be naïve. Much of politics has always about gamesmanship. In any effort by a politician to stay out in front of the mob, he must seek to appease its lusts and cries. She or he must appear to be doing something to maintain apparent relevance and a sense of importance. But here that tactic has become an operating strategy. It is not a mere means to an end; rather, it is the end.
Take, for example, CBRM Councillor Kendra Coombs’s recent remarks concerning health care, at a recent council meeting. She repeatedly quoted Premier Stephen McNeil’s description of local expression of opposition to his government’s recent announcements on the issue as “noise.”
She was correct in what the Premier said, her position being, quite properly, that genuinely formulated opposition is not mere noise.
Yet, do we not rejoice in what he termed “noise.” It is the reality of our politics and level of public discourse. ‘Noise” is what gets attention. It matters not what one does but only what he might appear to be doing. Be loud, be heard and make it seem you are doing something. Issue a snappy oneliner and go home, content that you are doing your job. This type nonsensical noise works because we let it work.
Sometimes along the way, however, electorates wake up, expressing what they want done and demanding of politicians that they work to achieve it or face the consequences. Quebec is the latest example. In Cape Breton, maybe, it is time for us to wake up and pick up the pitch forks they used in their march.