When Marx prophesized the withering away of the state, I doubt he could have imagined the vacuum would be filled by the private sector. Yet as governments have recoiled from their traditional activist role, the private sector has assumed ever more responsibility, not only for economic prosperity but also for “the social good.” McDonald’s is now one of the world’s main providers of playground space. Coca-Cola has emerged among the largest benefactors of scholarships for Hispanics in the U.S. Business figures like Anita Roddick have taken on iconic status as a model of modern-day virtue, by merging the interests of her Body Shop chain with the welfare of Indians in the Amazon rain forest.

In fact, over the past two decades, we have witnessed the systematic blurring of the traditional roles of the public and private sectors. Today, governments are primarily consumed with facilitating initiatives needed to spawn more private-sector productivity, competitiveness and expansion. In the process, the public becomes convinced of government’s irrelevance as it seems to be little more than the handmaiden of business.
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Any poll I might care to conduct would find that Canadians, virtually to a person, say they want homelessness eradicated, theenvironment protected and disparities between the richest and poorest reduced. How then do we explain the continued presence of the homeless in our midst? Or the systematic degradation of our environment and scarce resources? The stunning accumulation of individual wealth in the face of Third World poverty? Even more curiously, if this is the kind of society the public truly wants, why is there no hue and cry over the persistence and deepening of these problems?

The answer, it appears, lies in a disconnect that has developed between those things we value and the world we are prepared to tolerate. While huge majorities may give these call-for-action responses in polls, they rarely raise these sentiments in public debate or translate them into direct demands for action. Rather, what we find is a public that has come to accept that the homeless are just “there,” that the deterioration of the environment is part of the normal course of events, and the the wealth gap is just, well, something that exists.
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For many who knew Dalton Camp only in passing, he was something of an enigma. As the slayer of “the Old Man”, John Diefenback, he was a backroom boy, who developed a public profile in the 1960s that was more defined that most of the politicians he worked for. He was a columnists and commentator for three decades whose byline was invariably accompanied by his past affiliation with the Progressive Conservatives, yet he railed against the interests of Corporate Canada, greed and injustice with an uncompromising passion and consistency that created “secret fans” out of the likes of Jean Chretien and former NDP Leader, Stephen Lewis.

His personal personae was every bit as confounding.

Based on my own first encounter of him, he struck me as a bitter, negative, self-possessed man who had been trapped in time. The next time I saw him he was speaking at a private dinner celebrating his 60th Birthday. There, I experienced what to this day was, for me, the most erudite, well-reasoned and inspirational exhibition of public intellectualism I had ever witnessed. His command of language, cadence and pacing and boldness of thought, literally took my breath away.

Bewildered, and in need of some reconciliation between the myth and the man I had just met, I sought the counsel of a much more seasoned and Camp-familiar colleague. He explained my conundrum with (what at the time were), two incomprehensible words …”maiestas desidero”. He went on to point out that while Dalton was a true giant of considerable accomplishment and talent, he was also extremely bitter and harboured deep personal resentments over his failures, the most lasting of which was never becoming Prime Minister of Canada. I learned afterwards that his description of Camp (loosely translated) was “greatness missed”.
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In the three months plus since the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, much has been written about how the events of Sept. 11 forever altered us and the world we live in. There is no question the terrorist attacks traumatized Canadians. They brought us closer to our families; made us recognize that Canada cannot shirk its military responsibilities; forced us to look beyond the comforts of our borders; and drove home the fact that the world is, and for some time will continue to be, a dangerous place.

For some, this trauma also has lent new importance to religious beliefs. Others are questioning the wisdom of pursuing the holy grail of more material possessions. Cynical for decades about government’s ability to forge a common good, we now fully support Canadian and U.S. initiatives in the war on terrorism and, while we worry that the hostilities could escalate, we’re prepared to back a long military effort and, if necessary, see it expand into other regions of the globe.
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If politicians are sometimes slow to learn from their mistakes, they almost always learn from their successes. Nowhere has this been more true than in the case of Jean Chretien. The Prime Minister assumed the highest office in the land in 1993, fully formed and developed as a politician. In his 32 years in office, he has assimilated a deep understanding of the inner workings of government and a keen sense of Canada and Canadians. This tutelage has taught him that the electorate he serves eschews extremism and instead values order, calm and stability. Over the years, he has adjusted his style and approach to government accordingly.

In a period of growing cynicism about politicians and diminishing expectations of the ability of government to solve problems, he has chosen incrementalism over vision. He does not anticipate problems; he nibbles away at their edges, as they arise. He may rattle his sabre at his enemies in public, but then will bend over backwards to find consensus behind closed doors. His ministers and caucus, who owe their position and victories to him, have marched in time with his slow, tempered drumming and adopted this style as their own. Three successive electoral wins have reinforced the wisdom of his approach.
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Few who have observed Mike Harris would describe him as inspirational, charismatic or visionary. The Ontario premier, who announced last week that he will step down as soon as his Progressive Conservative party chooses a successor, is a common, straightforward man of solid middle-class stock who takes pride in a no-nonsense, practical approach to problems. Yet, over a six-year tenure, he changed Canada’s most unchangeable province in a way it hadn’t experienced in five decades.

When Harris assumed office in 1995, his government inherited a $10-billion deficit and an electorate who believed their affairs had been badly mismanaged by Liberals and New Democrats for eight years. While voters were looking for little more than stability and good government, Harris had campaigned on a right-of-centre platform that included a pledge to keep every promise he made. In stark contrast to others who have made similar promises, he did precisely that.
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While the details of my activities on Sept. 11 may have differed from those of other Canadians, I doubt my emotions did. Disbelief turned to despair, fear for loved ones and finally a morbid desire to know more — to make sense of a senseless act. The natural response to uncertainty is a desire for closure. Our first-blush instinct of disorientation turned to a hard, cold demand for finality, for retribution; if those who had committed this crime were punished — better yet, annihilated — then the source of our disquiet would be removed and we could return to our previous, blessed lives.

Over the past few weeks, we devoured any morsel of information we could lay our hands on, in the process learning more about the world around us than ever before. And, as we waited for war, we discovered that there was not going to be any quick and easy solution to our unease.
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