The senior deputy  minister in the BC government has left the job after four years in the position.  This in itself is neither remarkable nor significant.  Having myself served in this position to two BC Premiers in the 1990’s, I can attest to the unrelenting demands of the job.  It is not a position that one can expect to serve for a long period of time without serious therapy.  On the other hand it is one of the most challenging, interesting jobs that one could ever have.  As Cabinet Secretary, chief policy advisor to the Premier and Cabinet and head of the public service, it provides one with a great opportunity to wrestle with the important issues of our time and to make a difference.

Jessica MacDonald, the one who is now leaving, deserves credit for some important accomplishments.  She is clearly committed to a greening of policy, and until the recent almost complete retreat by the government, deserves a lot of credit for moving this agenda in the face of a lot of internal opposition.  She also took the lead in moving the Campbell government into the 21st century on aboriginal rights and reconciliation after a hostile start on the part of Campbell.  These are to her credit.

On the other side of the ledger the so-called Reconciliation Act was badly designed and handled by her, and she has to accept responsibility for its failure.  Further, the deceit and fudge on the province’s finances through the winter, spring and summer should never have been allowed to happen, given that it could be predicted starting last November.  The fact that so many organizations and groups were misled into thinking that their budgets were secure until early September, long after their plans for the year were set and commitments made, and then cut without notice, was an unconscionable act and  she should never have let it happen.

It is curious  that she chose to send a letter of explanation to her fellow deputy ministers with wording that raises more questions than it answers  and with the almost certain knowledge that it would be publicly released.

To me, having 30 years of experience deciphering the code of government and political communications, this  communication to deputy ministers raises all kinds of questions about why she left.    Is it true that she left of her own accord, or was there more to it as a result of internal issues and problems?  Is the letter just another attempt at spin by a government that has trouble telling us what really happened?   Her attempt to suggest it was natural, planned and for her own reasons leaves one wondering more than it convinces.

The media has been amazingly gullible on this.  Columnists have accepted and amplified her letter as if it were all true and completely transparent.  Not one that I have seen has asked why such a letter was needed and what really went on with her leaving.  Not that it matters that much, but that much gullibility by the media  makes you wonder about its judgment on all of the other information the government feeds it.  Might this be part of the explanation of why this government is able to get away with so little media scrutiny?

If you follow the political columnists, you would be excused for thinking that Canada is tiring of our electoral system failing to generate a majority in Parliament.  There is widespread agreement among them that the House of Commons is dysfunctional, that the nation’s business is not getting done, and that politics has become a perpetual election campaign.  Many favour the Liberals decision to vote against the government in confidence votes, apparently hoping that an election will yield a majority.  These are almost the same columnists who viscerally trashed the idea of a coalition government at the end of 2008.

I want to thank Neil McArthur, a professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba, for bringing to my attention polls in the United Kingdom which suggest that the next election there may fail to produce a majority. Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are all splitting voter intentions.  While it has been commonly assumed that the Conservatives will manage a majority when voters go to the polls next spring, pundits are now revising that prediction somewhat.  Voters are showing less then total enthusiasm for either the Conservatives or Labour, and the Social Democrats are as a result making some gains at the expense of each.

Except for a brief period of Labour Government in 1974 after the Conservatives tried unsuccessfully to form a coalition with the Liberals, the  United Kingdom has not seen minority election results since the 1920’s.  That was the period when Labour was displacing the Liberals on the left as the alternative to the Conservatives.  The trend was to Labour, but it was still a third party for most of the 1920’s.  The result was successive coalition governments.  By the early 1930’s the Liberals had been reduced to permanent third party status, and minority results disappeared as the system reverted to two party domination.

Thus during the period of three party competition, the response of the parties was stable government through coalitions.  Labour Leader Ramsay MacDonald was twice Prime Minister as leader of coalition governments.  Following this tradition, should the result in the next election be a three or four party split, two of the UK parties will almost certainly combine to form a coalition government.  The tradition there is to seek stable government and functional parliaments through coalitions when no party has a majority.  And it would almost be unthinkable in the UK to try to go through a major crisis such as an economic recession with a minority government.

Contrast that with Canada.  Coalition governments constituted from minority parties are unthinkable to opinion leaders.  Undereducated and uninformed, they know litttle of Westminster government.  Last November when a coalition government was proposed by the Liberals and the NDP, the major political columnists unthinkingly attacked the whole idea with ridicule.   Wells, Coyne, Simpson – the whole lot went into a frenzy as they failed to  get their closed and unimaginative minds around what is considered normal and expected in the Westminster parliamentary system.  They blanketed the media with ridicule of the idea that the Canadian parliament might actually work the way parliaments are designed to work, and successfully  discredited any possibility of a coalition government.  Of course the real problem was their inability to overcome their biases against the so-called socialists and separatists participating in government.  Not for them the idea that a large number of voters actually support the ideas and policy of those parties, and therefore the parties have a legitimate claim to play a role when conditions provide for it.

So Canada is not to be permitted coalitions of the kind that are natural and expected in the Westminster system.  Our ever watchful columnists, incestuously writing in their papers and  holding forth on TV panels, virgorously break the back of any coalition ideas before they are ever tested.

But that is not the way it has to be.  If the election comes out as the polls suggest in the UK, it will be a different story there.  It is our  misfortune that while the home of  Westminster government has the maturity to let parliament work as it was intended, we do not.  Perhaps we need another few generations of experience to let prominent journalists learn how the system works.  Or fewer reactionary and uninformed journalists dooming us to never ending unimaginative provincialism.

The unbearable lightness of being Jeffrey Simpson is clearly not easy.  Poor Jeffrey is torn between two powerful attractions – self absorption in his perfect, reasonable mind and loyalty to his tribe, the elite and privileged of Canada.

Such is the problem that Simpson faces in dealing with Michael Ignatieff.  But it is not as hard as it might seem.  Ignatieff and Simpson share most fundamental beliefs and assumptions.  Both see power as the natural property of superior thinkers and actors who constitute a natural elite.  Both look down on those who do not qualify for membership in the elite.  And both know they belong on the basis of superior merit.

If asked neither would acknowledge this or let themselves think about it very much.  As public intellectuals they feel comfortable in their assumed natural superiority.  But both see fundamental questioning of basic liberal values as unfathomable.

The source of these attitudes has something to do with an assumption about privilege.     Some people are special, and that is just the way it is.  Anyone who does not belong to this group or have the qualities to be part of it but who aspire to power or status in society is essentially a poseur and illegitimate.  So comfortable are Ignatieff and Simpson in their assumptions about belonging to the elite that they do not have to actually set out standards and criteria for belonging.  They know those who fail to meet the standards when they see them.

Everything that either says or writes must be interpreted in this light.   Neither can fathom populist grass roots politicians on the right or left.  Those who identify with the beliefs of ordinary folks that challenge the beliefs of the elite are inherently suspect.  For all the talk of living in a postmodern world, they are unwavering modernists, believing in realism, progress and improvement on the basis of enlightened principles, objective knowledge, objectivity and liberal values.  Good government policy flows from these ways of seeing the world and will be reliably pursued so long as power is preserved and nurtured by the elite and any difference resolved through elite accommodation.

As much as Simpson is supposed to be and sees himself as the objective journalist par excellence, he is essentially joined at the hip with Ignatieff in pursuit of a common project.  They may disagree on particulars at times but that is all quite acceptable so long as it is left for the elites to resolve.  In other words, leave our public problems to them and those who have what it takes to be part of the natural elite.

They share views about the real problems in Canada and who is responsible for them.  Included on the list are westerners who believe there is a unique and legitimate western perspective.  And separatists and Quebec nationalists who see separatism as a legitimate option.  And right wing conservatives who won’t accept the liberal consensus and left wing radicals who insist that class and privilege are both a reality and a problem.  Include deficit spenders on the list.  And those who fail to understand the national – which is most often the Ontario – view on the hard issues.  And those who seek a coalition (unless it be a “natural’ one made up of right thinking Liberals and Conservatives – a dream team to the elites of Canada and – something Simpson has actually suggested).  And leaders like Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton.  Especially leaders like them.  Neither can fathom or tolerate such people and what they say and believe.

Ignatieff has no doubts about his superior claim to govern.  He and a select few in the Liberal Party are the only legitimate claimants to power and responsibility.  Simpson smugly occupies his assumed position of national sage and keeper of the truth under the protective wing of the only legitimate national voice – the Globe and Mail.  Together the Liberal Party and the Globe and Mail, national guardians of elite values and ideas, watch over us and protect us from popular excess and populist mayhem.

Given his almost unbearable belief in his own reasonableness, one might think that Simpson and the Globe would oppose the holding of an unnecessary election, that they would support parliament working as it is supposed to do including forming coalitions, and that they would be contemptuous of self seeking politicians disregarding the clear wishes of the democratic majority.   But Simpson has no problem taking the other view, since none of these correspond with how the elite see things.  None of these advance the interests of Ignatieff, the golden hope for the restoration of the natural elite to power.

Anomalies in the natural order of things are barely bearable and thus must be vigorously opposed.  And this means that ultimately the natural governing party must be restored to power.

Foregoing an unnecessary election in an effort to make Parliament work runs counter to the interests of the admirable Ignatieff and the natural governing party.  It is also a view embraced by the untrustworthy Duceppe and the suspect Jack Layton.  Layton is a favorite whipping boy of Simpson’s.  NDP positions, coming as they do from outside the natural elite, are all suspect.  So in his column on Tuesday  Simpson comes down hard on Layton, who is the only leader listening to the people and struggling to make Parliament work.  Unfortunately Layton and the NDP just don’t belong.  They are unacceptable in a coalition and their actions are repugnant even if they manage to avoid an unnecessary and pointless election.  The elites know.  Contradict them at your peril.

Or perhaps, even better, recognize Simpson’s writings for what they are.  He too has an agenda.  In truth, his agenda is just that of another special interest, representing the hopes of a frustrated and disempowered liberal anglo elite desperate for the restoration.  And who fear it mght be slipping away.