Governing by Cronyism Right Hook JJ McCullough, OP Columnist There has been much guffawing of late over the allegedly rampant cronyism in the Bush White House. First came the jokes over the now-notoriously incompe- tent Michael Brown, the former head of the Arabian Horseracing Association, who was reborn as the Bush- appointed chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Brown’s laughably slim resume quickly made him into somewhat of a tragic farce in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, during which it became obvious that the FEMA head should have stuck to tending his ponies. If the “Brownie” episode was not bad enough, the President is now facing even more flack over his appointment of White House Consul Harriet Miers to the US Supreme Court. In her former life, Miers was the head of the Texas Lotto commission during George W. Bush’s reign as governor. Among her chief accom- plishments was her groundbreaking work ensuring that Texas scratch-n-win bingo cards would “look and feel and smell like the game of bingo.” Truly a woman of passion-just not the sort of passion one might expect from a justice of the high court. Canadians may be tempted to poke ribs and snicker over these latest American scandals, but it’s worth not- ing that similar events occur in Canada on a much more frequent basis. Part of the reason why Miers and Brown are so controversial is precisely because they represent a clear and odious departure from the system of appointment America has traditionally prided itself on. The United States system of government, with it’s clear division of powers, was intended by the Founders to be a meritoc- racy, that is to say a system in which the most qualified individuals gain the offices best suited to their talents. The US constitution gives the American President free reign to appoint independent men and women from any professional background to his cabinet, be they politi- cians, businessmen, soldiers, activists, intellectuals, bureaucrats, or academics. The end result is that the President’s nominees for Secretary of Energy, Education, or Transportation will be expected to pos- sess career backgrounds from which they can bring to government actual knowledge in the fields of, you guessed it, energy, education, or transportation. In Canada, by contrast, we still operate under the belief that to run an executive department of govern- ment, the only qualification you need is a seat in the parliament. Education, experience, knowledge, and even interest in the ministry in question are all minor con- cerns to a Prime Minister making his cabinet. Appointing ministers has become an act of sheer polliti- cal patronage, much like everything else the Prime Minister does. Even now in the Martin Administration, the core group of Chretien-era decision-makers has stayed the same; they simply rotate titles to create the illusion of diversity. Bill Graham, the former foreign minister, is now the defense minister. John McCallum, the former defense minister is in turn now the new rev- enue minister. Ex-Justice minister Anne McLellan is today the deputy Prime Minister, and so on. To make matters worse, often the ministers don’t even know what job they’re getting until the night before. The “late night phone call” from the PM has become something of a legend among ruling party MPs. Of course, they’re probably all too busy waiting by their telephones to realize that we take the same approach to choosing a cabinet as most teenage boys take to picking a prom date. You don’t have to take my word for it. A quick look at the biographies of some of Martin’s cabinet ministers highlights more than a few men and women who’d probably have a hard time getting a job in their new field had they been anything other than an MP in Canada’s ruling Party. Our new Veteran’s Affairs Minister, for example, is not a veteran, nor has she ever served in the military. Her main experience was being Sheila Copps’ secretary. Defense Minister Graham has similarly never served in the military, yet is now in charge of maintaining our troops. Dosanjh, a career lawyer, is not a doctor, has never worked for a hospital a day in his life, and never even held a junior portfolio in the BC health ministry. Yet he’s now in charge of the entire country’s healthcare system. And then of course we have our new minister of Social Development, Ken Dryden, a man who the government’s website proudly proclaims as “one of the best goalies ever to play hockey.” Because, you know, catching rubber pucks and national childcare reform have so much in common. Canada is essentially governed by a whole parade of Michael Browns and Harriet Miers. Almost every execu- tive branch of our federal (and provincial) government is headed by men and woman who owe their jobs solely to being a member of the right party and having a cozy relationship with the PM. That this practice constitutes the accepted norm, and not the exception, is what makes our system much worse than the United States. Aid For People: Left Overs lain Reeve, OP Columnist Several months ago, following the Tsunami in South- East Asia, I wrote an article in which I attempted to show the link between the level of charitable donations to worthy causes and the media attention they garner. I found it somewhat elementary at the time to point out that the more coverage an event got, the more money got sent to help it’s relief. It has nothing to do with severity or the number of dead, dying, or sick; it is all Stop letting the media tell me where to put our $$$ about pure media coverage. And while issues such as poverty, hunger, and pan- demics such as AIDS certainly do get their fair share of media coverage, the coverage lacks the intensity of nat- ural disasters. Media is much quicker to give a sense of urgency and awareness to a situation where tens or hun- dreds of thousands die in a day, than to one where mil- lions die over several years. The more disturbing trend, however, that is current- ly arising is that the effects seem to illicit a lesser and lesser response every time. In a year plagued by a shocking number of natural disasters, we can see the response growing less and less urgent with every occur- rence. Not until there was mass public outrage with their mediocre reaction to last week’s earthquake in Pakistan did the federal government agree to match the donations of citizens as they had done with the tsunami months before. But can we honestly expect anything less? News media, for all its wonderful advantages as a medium of global communication, is vulnerable to the same faults as other sources of media. If we see a shocking commercial too many times it stops affecting us. If we see the same type of humour used over and over in a sitcom we get bored. If Columbo always solves the case, we stop being surprised when he nails one more. Thus, it follows that the response of govern- ments who are merely reacting to media coverage would get lesser every time, especially when they are in such quick succession. It’s easy to see, through this lens, why we should, perhaps, think about disasters in a more human way. If we start to determine the amount of money we should donate to a cause based on the actual need—as opposed to some phantom calculation of media atten- tion, public will, and GDP increase the country may experience—our governments would be more able to hold their heads up. Canada should aim to be a leader in relieving world problems. Well-thought-out policy is the answer, not knee-jerk reactions to media and public protest.