Shawn Graham and Jean Charest announce the proposed sale of New Brunswick Power

In the past few weeks New Brunswick has been lucky enough to enjoy a break from the regularly scheduled swine flu hysteria. Thanks to Premier Shawn Graham we have been jolted from our H1N1-induced torpor. While everyone’s attention was focused on fighting over vaccines, Premier Graham and Quebec Premier Jean Charest were working out a deal that would see New Brunswick give up total control of its power assets by selling NB Power to Hydro Quebec. In spite of Premier Graham’s mantra of “self-sufficiency” for our little have-not province, he is selling out our energy future and doing it for a fraction of what the assets are actually worth. The vast majority of rate cuts will benefit only large industrial users, cutting small businesses and residential users off from the spoils, all by government design.

This is the latest in a string of disastrous (and bewildering) public policy moves by New Brunswick’s Liberal government, most of which ended in them beating a hasty retreat. What I have come to realize, though, is that every criticism I have to level at this government can be said of virtually every other government, from municipal councils all the way up to the federal big leagues. Secret deals, patronage plums, lack of consultation, infantilization of the electorate – the list goes on and on. People have probably been complaining about politicians since they first started to elect them, but you would think that in the past few hundred years something might have changed for the better. However, as long as it works well for the people who hold the power – no matter what their political stripe – the situation seems unlikely to improve.

What the Canadian electorate seems to be suffering from is a bad case of mushroom management. In business, this is a technique whereby staff are kept in the dark and covered in manure. Management fails to communicate effectively and acts without consideration for the feelings or needs of their workers, pushing an agenda that underlings do not – and sometimes are not meant to – understand. The NB Power agreement is just one recent example of this. Governments hatch secretive backroom deals and then chide people for rejecting them because they don’t understand the details. Shawn Graham has rejected his critics as emotional and uninformed. He stated that the deal will result in job creation, so anyone who is against the NB Power sale is against job creation. Not above using emotion if it furthers his own spin, Mr. Graham recently announced that his deal has the support of “welfare moms”. It is indeed curious that he considers their opinion to be more informed than that of the major bond rating agencies or the auditor general.

There are very few politicians in this country that deserve to represent my interests. This probably works well for most of them since they’re just not that into me either. One of the risks of mushroom management is that the little mushrooms are not actually totally ignorant of what is going on. They may not understand exactly what the higher-ups are up to, but they do know about the dark and the dung. The eventual result is some sort of organizational failure. An example of this failure is that Canadians are unwilling or unable to elect a majority government of any stripe – we pretty much think they’re all awful. Canadians are too polite to stage a revolt but as a result of being treated like uninformed idiots they have almost totally disengaged from the political process. People have ceased to care because they know that their opinions matter only once every four years. Because they don’t care, they don’t vote, write letters, or generally harass their politicians to do the job they were elected to do – represent us.

I have yet to encounter an inspirational Canadian politician, with the possible exception of Hazel McCallion, Mayor of Mississauga. Her dedication to her constituents (both people and businesses) is absolutely refreshing. Her enthusiasm and candor are rare beasts, it seems. The next time I go to the polls I would like to be presented with some truly honourable people who are interested in furthering my interests and not those of industry, lobby groups, rich friends, or their own fat pensions. I hope that some day we will be credited with at least a small degree of intelligence and humanity by the people who claim to want to serve us. If nothing else, I’d be happy if we could just find ourselves under a little less manure.

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Tags: canadian politicians, canadian politics, hydro quebec, new brunswick power

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Federal Government, Provincial Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.