Parliament Hill is viewed through the front gates in Ottawa on May 25, 2010.Sean Kilpatrick
Making virtues out of necessities is the true talent of the adept political mind or put more baldly, per Rahm Emanuel, never let a good crisis go to waste. Last week Nick Clegg, the most visibly talented politician this side of Barack Obama, put his cards on the table when, in a speech laying out in broad strokes Britain's coalition agenda, he called for a "power revolution. A fundamental resettlement of the relationship between state and citizen that puts you in charge." Clegg went on to list the three steps that would achieve this:
"One: we will repeal all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit your freedom.
Two: we will reform our politics so it is open, transparent, decent.
Three: we will radically redistribute power away from the centre, into your communities, your homes, your hands."
All of which sounds as though this was a positive purposeful agenda for change (translation: virtue). Contrast that with The Guardian's Polly Toynbee summing up today's Speech from the Throne: "cuts, cuts, cuts…in the days of penury" (translation: necessity).
A similar dynamic is taking shape in Ottawa, one that sees our political elites both two steps ahead and two steps behind. We're two steps ahead in that the fiscal essentials are likely less poor than the Brits but two steps behind in that Parliament has yet to take its lumps from the public in a somewhat down-market replay of the British expenses scandal. Either way there's a reckoning coming and as the plain spoken Tom Flanagan stated this morning:
"... reality is about to take over in our new era of soaring deficits. Some may see it as bad news that there won't be any federal money for regional festivals or grandiose foreign-aid initiatives or uneconomic green projects. But the good news is that there will be fewer contrived issues to fight over."