Why poke the N.B. bear?
Times & Transcript (Moncton)
Tue Jun 23 2009
Page: D6
Section: Opinion
Byline: Alec Bruce In Focus
In our rich system of democratic privilege, a politician’s easiest task is raising expectations. His hardest is managing them.
Consider the condition of Shawn Graham’s Liberal government as it limps into the tender embrace of another New Brunswick summer. Not long ago, the Grits rode into office — having trounced Bernard Lord’s feckless Tories in a majority win — spouting inspirational clichés about transformational change and self-sufficiency.
Now, according to at least one recent survey, it trails the Conservative opposition in public approval by as much as eight points. Just as stunningly, the premier’s personal likability quotient has plummeted from more than 70 per cent a year ago to less than 45 per cent at the beginning of this month.
Paradoxically, none of this accompanies a groundswell of support for Tory vision or leadership. Leader David Alward remains for many New Brusnwickers something of a cipher, if a well-intentioned one. A mere 33 per cent of people polled thinks he’s doing a good job, while a sizeable fraction doesn’t know enough about the man to render an opinion.
So, is the inescapable conclusion that in the space of three years Graham’s red brigade of revolutionaries has managed to screw up the best and biggest political free lunch in more than a quarter century (which is horrifying if you are a card-carrying Liberal)? Or has something more nuanced and complicated transpired behind the curtain at Freddy Beach lo’ these many months?
Certainly, the mistakes have been numerous and often egregious. I will never understand, for example, what possessed Health Minister Mike Murphy to bulldoze a tentative agreement with 75 per cent of the province’s physicians, threaten them with a wage freeze, and then bolster his belligerence with legislation and “Royal Assent” which amounts to nothing if not a coercive fiat, an outright abuse of trust.
Similarly, Education Minister Kelly Lamrock’s knuckle-headed decision to eliminate positions for teachers, librarians, and counsellors — only months after introducing sweeping, controversial changes to English Second Language programs, and executing a retreat from post-secondary education reform — seems to be the self-immolating action of a man who has grown weary of the burdens of public office.
But since these manoeuvres will not restore funds sufficient to cover the costs of operating two health authorities and a baker’s dozen of district school boards — and will only serve to distance this government from the people who elected it — the question remains: Why execute them?
Why tug at the frayed ends of New Brunswick’s social fabric, where average men and women struggle against the tide of economic collapse to pay their rents and mortgages, put food on their tables, and educate their children? Why poke the bear?
The “hard times” argument doesn’t convince, especially as Graham and his ministers have committed tens of millions of dollars to the rescue of failed, or failing, big businesses, such as Fraser and Atcon.
The “prudent spending” argument doesn’t persuade, especially as this government has raised its capital budget to match federal infrastructure money designated for pools, recreation centres, secondary roads, and tourist traps.
The only answer is that New Brunswick’s Grit machine remains loyally wedded to its original purpose of raising expectations without providing a scintilla of evidence that it can manage them, now or in the future.
What is “self-sufficiency,” after all? A slogan deployed to produce a Pavlovian response among we poor dogs of the East Coast economic wars? Who can be self-sufficient under regimes which consistently, perennially fail to understand that the source of all wealth is a healthy, sustainable private sector — a private sector that’s devoid of public bailouts, but is also properly regulated to mitigate the financial catastrophes generated by greed and malfeasance? What is Business New Brunswick for, if not this — this and the constant, hard-scrabble work of attracting and retaining sustainable, innovative job-generators to our rural and urban regions?
When Graham’s cavaliers assumed office in May 2006, they promised the world. They vowed to produce everything a small province of a small country could possibly want: fairness, justice, equality under the law, robust economic development. And many of us believed them.
But, in the end, their promises were too big, their appetites too large, and their assumptions too grand.
Let they, over the long, hot summer finally find their focus. Let they finally begin to manage our expectations with pragmatism. Let they no longer raise our expectations with empty rhetoric, lest we dash theirs a year from now at the ballot box.
n Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based journalist. His column appears in this space every Tuesday and Thursday. He can be reached via www.thebrucereport.com
© 2009 Times & Transcript (Moncton)
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