Canada and Other Matters of Opinion (33 page)

James, you see, has picked up the old story. There’s this tomb, see. Cue Angelina Jolie. And having watched enough
CSI
to bring himself up to speed, Mr. Cameron has gone all David Caruso on the bones, done the DNA research and, hey, presto, the central faith of the Western world, two thousand years of belief and scholarship beyond even the reach of Céline Dion, has, may I say it, hit an iceberg.

The world is wrong. Hollywood producer, archaeologist, Academy Award winner, self-appointed king of the world James Cameron has unlocked the greatest mystery in the history of the world. Better than Geraldo Rivera at Al Capone’s vault. I expect the Vatican to apologize and close its doors within a week. Haul down Notre Dame, board up Westminster, give over all the cathedrals and churches to Starbucks. It was all a scam.

If what Jim has on film is true—and he’s a formidable ecclesiologist—Christianity is for dupes. I have a minor question: Do you think we’ll see any documentaries of like attempt and equal impertinence from James Cameron on Mohammed or Islam?

To ask the question is to answer it. Hollywood is only daring with Christianity. Why does Hollywood, which worships only money and itself, feel so blithely free to mock,
degrade, toy with and abuse the sacred story of billions of people and offer the gospels no more respect than they would the script for
Showgirls?
Probably the answer to that question is that the minds that produced
Showgirls
are so radically vulgar they are incapable of realizing any distinction between the two.

That frame of mind will prostitute anything—the life of Christ, other people’s religion—for a stale press conference and a fresh buck. It’s that simple. It also explains Al Gore’s Oscar. Having toppled one messiah, Hollywood wanted a shallow facsimile in the wings.

It is an ancient and sage observation that politics is mean and harsh. Consider the cruel and enlightening example of Stéphane Dion.

Hold the grief counsellors, cue the vultures. The body is not yet cold—good grief, it hasn’t even hit the floor—before the dissection begins and the post-mortems offer up their verdicts.

In Mr. Dion’s case, the anonymous voices of the backroom, the “high-placed insiders” of the Liberal Party, hymned an instant chorus of his failings, an instant call for his ouster. And not to avoid what cannot be denied, we in the press are equally eager to spur and participate in the instant demolition. Personality always trumps politics—the human drama of a leader undone is worth a thousand panels on Afghanistan.

The latest word is he’ll announce his resignation on Monday.

Dion wears his party’s loss. After all, he would have been showered with hosannas had he won. At the leadership level, politics is an all-or-nothing game. Leaders have been bathed in praises to make a pharaoh blush for presiding over electoral victories for which they, the leaders, had as little to do as the fall of a leaf.

They were just there when it happened, when the public turned like an angry beast on the party that was in, and would have elected a party with a sick and ugly dog for a leader to send a measure of their disgust. Be the leader in one of those moments, and prepare to be extolled as a genius, a Napoleon of the ballot box. The sycophants and camp followers will crowd the throne room and every tongue will chirp his greatness.

Mr. Dion is on the underside of this phenomenon. It was the centrepiece of his platform—the Green Shift—that, more than any other item, obstructed the Liberal Party’s performance. His personality, likewise, was a poor match for uncertain and anxious times. And he was the least able communicator of the very team he headed. Yet, for all that, there is still something unseemly, bordering on cruel, about the speed with which he is being marked as rubbish and consigned to the bin.

He failed. Bury him quickly. Disregard or ignore the sensibility of the individual caught in a moment of awful transition.

A decent interval to let him gather himself might have been a signal that politics has a heart, that party politics can
permit a moment of composure to one of its leading figures and thereby indicate the game isn’t always everything. In other words, that it could, however briefly, allow some respect for a particular human being and his human circumstance.

That is, of course, a hope far too large for politics as we have come to know it, and I fear being regarded as hopelessly sentimental—or, what’s worse, antiquated—for merely introducing the thought.

The other personality at play is Stephen Harper’s. He won—not the majority he hoped for, but still, he won. He remains prime minister—that is the crucial, the essential, consideration. Those disappointed that some of his performance was less than it should have been, that he misjudged the issues in Quebec, that he offered “stock tips” during a time of plant closings and financial anxiety, will muffle their criticisms. The well-oiled knees of those hoping for favour will genuflect at the rumour of his presence.

Which is too bad—for him. Mr. Harper needs to listen to those who would judge him coldly. Not the “Harper is Bush” mob, who think a slogan is a thought. But those who are willing to hazard a frown from their master in the cause of delivering some delayed truths to his attention. Among those truths, perhaps the most startling one is that he needs some of the very qualities of the man his party mocked and brought down. An occasional gust of charm, for starters. He needn’t make it a habit. A more frequent willingness to speak without a prompt sheet from the polls. To speak in the voice of who he really is. To give some glimpse of his real
feeling—outside those dreadful TV ads—about the arts, how he sees the country, what he thinks of the times we’re in.

There’s a hard truth in the consideration that many Canadians don’t trust Mr. Harper, and I think it’s because they see
he
doesn’t trust
them
. His guard is always up. The brain locks in gear before the mouth stirs.

That’s where, surprisingly, he could learn from Mr. Dion. He should note that, though Mr. Dion lost the election, there is still so wide a feeling at some level of Canadian appraisal that it was too bad he did. He was not the leader Canadians wanted, but his openness and “exposure” implied a trust, a faith in the people whose support he sought. Loss notwithstanding, that was admirable.

Stéphane Dion, for the most part, let Canadians see him. Stephen Harper should study that example.

Just twelve days ago, on Monday of the past week, there stumbled into life what all of us now remember as the coalition.

Three men—two leaders of national parties, one leader of a Quebec separatist party—held an official “signing ceremony.” The coalition was all ready to become the government. Stéphane Dion would be its prime minister; Jack Layton’s NDP would have six of its cabinet ministers; the
Bloc was guaranteed something called a “formal consulting mechanism” during the promised eighteen months of the agreement. Only the delay of an imminent confidence vote, and the subsequent prorogation of Parliament, stayed the coalition’s swift and lofty ascent to power.

I’m summarizing what everyone already knows, because in the hectic, stormy politics of the last two weeks, events of twelve whole days ago feel like something you might catch only on the History Channel. It really does seem like years have passed since those two or three days when Mr. Dion really looked like he was going to become prime minister after all. But it was only just last week. As T.S. Eliot once sagely observed, “History has many cunning corridors,” and as if by way of illustration of this maxim, last week’s PM-to-be is this week’s backbencher. The governor general had barely finished sipping tea with an imploring Stephen Harper before the Liberals jettisoned Mr. Dion and placed Michael Ignatieff in his job.

Where are we now? Last week, the coalition had everyone in the country mesmerized. There was talk of nothing else. Open-line shows, comments on web pages, editorials—there was a wave of popular and media response of a volume unseen since the wrangles of Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord.

And where is this coalition now? What is it? Does it even still exist? Mr. Ignatieff hems and haws about “a coalition if necessary, but not necessarily a coalition,” which is what a really fancy mind comes up with when it wants
to say yes and no to the same question. Equivocation in a tuxedo, but pure equivocation nonetheless.

One would think the brand new leader of the Liberals could give a direct answer on something as plain as whether his party still has an agreement with the NDP and the Bloc; that all three are, like the fabled musketeers, all for one and one for all. That, as per the agreement between them and the signing ceremony that announced it, come January 27, when Parliament returns, it’s out with the Harper imperium. But on the few occasions that Mr. Ignatieff has been pushed to clarify the most central question in all of Canadian politics—Is the agreement to bring down Stephen Harper still in force?—the most erudite washing machine in Canadian politics goes into full spin cycle.

And out tumbles yes, no and maybe as if they were synonyms.

Even the NDP, which I think has the first claim to pride of authorship in this matter of a coalition, seems more than a little hazy on its current status. Its most dulcet-toned deputy leader, Thomas Mulcair, reminds Mr. Ignatieff that he was “one of 161 MPs who signed a letter to the Governor General asking to form an alternative government with the NDP.”

But when pressed on the matter of whether his party and the Liberals are still in concert, still determined to do what that coalition was set up to do—form that alternative government—out comes the tepid “I have every reason to believe in his sincerity and in the sincerity of his Liberal colleagues.”

Let’s try that again: “I have every reason to believe in his sincerity and in the sincerity of his Liberal colleagues.”
There’s
a trumpet blast. More “let’s do lunch” than “give me liberty or give me death.”

Are the Bloc still in this thing? No idea. Do they still have that wonder, detailed in the signing ceremony, of a “formal consultation mechanism?” Is Michael consulting with them? Is Jack mechanizing? Haven’t heard.

This is all very strange. Just twelve days ago, we had the boldest, most dramatic parliamentary manoeuvre in a generation, a formal alliance between three opposition parties, a signing ceremony of their leaders giving birth to a new entity and an “alternative government.” This week, the once-explosive notion of a coalition is a shimmer in some phantom zone of yesterday’s politics. No one who had anything to do with it wants to admit it’s dead. They want it to fade away all on its own. If it weren’t for that signing ceremony and the wonderfully retentive powers of videotape, I’d almost bet some of its backers would deny it ever existed.

There won’t be any more rallies for the coalition. It was the fevered product of a moment’s opportunism, a political house of cards. Five years from now, it’ll be a good question for Trivial Pursuit.

Michael Ignatieff is good news for the Liberal Party.

It was good news when they
didn’t
pick him at the leadership convention two years ago. He was then too fresh to the party and too fresh to Canada. He needed some time to wash the scent of the Harvard common room off himself. Needed time to establish some bona fides with the country he hadn’t lived in for most of his adult life. Needed time for that big brain of his to wrap itself around the issues and rhythms, both subtle and complex, of Canadian politics.

Well, wrap itself it has, and the odour of Harvard has been duly subdued by the more manly fragrances of Question Period and the Liberal caucus room.

He stayed on after that first loss. That, of course, was critical. He stayed on and played the good soldier during the torments of Stéphane Dion’s (let us be Christmas kind) uneven stay as Opposition leader. Two years ago, he was a resumé. Today, he’s a politician, almost “one of the boys.”

And here he is, leader of the Liberals. Precisely how he managed this during the political convulsions of the past few weeks is almost mystically perplexing. If Mr. Dion had been in focus on the night of December 3 (I’m referring here to the infamous late video), Mr. Ignatieff might not be leader today. Let’s just say that chance and tumult co-operated.