TAKEN BY STORM

Last week, Old Man Winter took one last mighty snowy hack at us in Ottawa. That’s weather for you. Then the city put a big icy pile of it right across my driveway. That’s government for you.

Oh come off it, you may say. That always happens. Stop whining. It’s just part of winter in Canada. Get a grip … and a shovel. But here’s the thing. It’s one more way we get so used to government that we assume something annoying “always happens” and forget to be outraged except when we look right at it.

Seriously. First thing on a weekday morning a whole lot of people are scrambling to get the kids to school, or daycare, before rushing off to the jobs they both have to do to pay for the second car, the daycare and all the other things associated with having two jobs in order to afford them. (That’s modernity for you.) And then this already well-nigh unmanageable schedule is thrown into a cocked hat because the state takes some snow that is its problem, because it’s on public streets, and makes it your problem. Or you’re elderly or handicapped or pregnant or injured and have trouble moving half a ton of wet sticky snow compacted by government machinery before being inflicted on you. Tough snowballs, apparently.

I don’t see it that way. When I look right at it I frequently reflect, with expletives deleted, that it is not a service for which people would pay money. If the people driving the snowplows worked for you would they do it?

There’s no need for idle or abstract speculation here. Lots of my neighbours, and probably yours, do pay private companies to come along with trucks with plows to deal with snow

And those guys deliberately and carefully remove the snow from the ends of their driveways. The exact opposite of what the city does with a sneer.

Here various hands may go up noting that highways and other thoroughfares are and must be a public responsibility. True. But it doesn’t mean they have to be operated in a centralized, monopolistic, unaccountable way. Almost nobody thinks the government should own paving companies just because it performers, neighbourhood associations would find someone happy to clear the streets without blocking the driveways? Perhaps by first plowing in the current obnoxious manner, then having those little guys who boot maniacally down the sidewalk (currently giving no indication that they will stop if you don’t leap out of their path) take time at each driveway to clear the ice wall out and down in the direction of the plowing.

If they didn’t, you’d start a company that would, right? Opportunity would knock and somebody would answer.

It’s amazing how often proposals like this get derailed by a general sense that government is more efficient and compassionate than the private sector. You’d think we’d be out of patience with the former by now. And when’s the last time a private company routinely blocked your driveway or did anything remotely comparable?

In fact if they did you could sue them, or call the government to make them stop. When it’s the government, you can’t even get them to admit it’s a bad thing. Some days I feel lucky they don’t insist I thank them for helping me start my day with a brisk workout.

I said above that it wasn’t a service for which people would pay money. But of course we do. We pay the city for it, in property taxes that are already one of the biggest items in the family budget and keep going up despite all the talk of frugality (and the city sets the rates but the province does the assessments so nobody’s accountable, what a coincidence). So we pay a monopolist far more concerned with keeping its employees happy than its “customers.”

If we had choice, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, we would not face this problem, let alone face it with weary resignation punctuated with curse words.