And why do I say Transport Minister #4 - becuse regardless of who wins or not, the current guy already said he is not running for office again - so there goes our continuity - or an attempt at it.
Do the math – this is the 4th Federal Election for Canada in 7 years! Each election costs the taxpayers $300,000,000.00. So that will make it $1.2 billion totally wasted on self-serving party interests – not the real interests of Canadians. At a time when the country is trying to pay down the deficit created by the same self-serving elected officials, would it not make more sense to work together and use the money to pay down part of that deficit – or maybe help create jobs for those who still need it?
Looking at this from the aviation side I will say it again - the 4th Minister of Transport in just over two and half years! No wonder nothing really moves forward at Transport Canada (TC)! How can it when the head at the top of chain changes so often. We all barely get to know the name of the minister and then they move on.
The real leadership falls to the faceless bureaucrats employed to keep the ministry going. We know very little of them and rarely get to even put a name or face to most. And they change with frequency as well.
So the way I see it – and please enlighten me if I am wrong – an elected official comes to office, acts on some election promises, party created mandates or the points put forward by the ministry bureaucracy – and then that same bureaucracy implements things from there. The problem here is that those of us who actually work in the business get little to any input other than through the local or regional reps for the TC system. And they are not always in the loop either as we all know. Every region of the TC Kingdom has its own flavour and working manner. And in many cases one region or fiefdom seldom mirrors any of the others nor necessarily is up to date with what the king has decreed from Ottawa.
Case in point – I had a call the other day from some folks panicked into thinking the needed a Private Operator Certificate (POC) to operate their vintage jet aircraft under CAR 604. So said their regional TC office. The question was could we create the POC SMS materials required. The answer to that was yes but on investigation we found that the type of aircraft involved was no longer part of the CAR 604 POC requirement and governance (that was according to Ottawa National TC offices). As to where they do belong – nobody can quite say yet. We could not get an answer where the many and varied aircraft that have been removed from CAR 604 should be. So how can these folks legally fly? Good question it seems. And it was frustrating not to have an answer for them.
Like I said earlier – nothing is getting done – at least in a continuous or follow-through manner. And while we hear that TC is being pushed to increase air safety (side note - aircraft are not exactly falling from the sky daily – so where is the panic?) – it is hard to see how they are managing this. Am I wrong?
One of the biggest issues we have in Canada is voter apathy. It comes from too many elections. And the average voter seems unable or disinterested in figuring out what election is for what level of government. We had a municipal election in the fall. Now a federal one seems inevitable in the spring, followed by a provincial one in the fall. To the average voter in the average Canadian city it comes down to “What again? Didn’t we just do this?” That is why we only get 25 – 30% voter turnout – and in the case of the federal scene – repeated minority governments that achieve very little if anything.
Why? Because party politics/outlook and keeping office gets in the way of governing.
It used to be said that a minority government was a good thing – because the parties had to compromise and come up with plans and legislation they all agreed to. That has not been the case I feel in recent years. They have become entangled in self-serving issues alone, tricks to gain power they were not elected to, and actions that bring into question ethics and honesty. It then falls to the large and massive bureaucracy machine to run the country. And the problem there is layers upon layers of government that supports itself more than the average individual. In fact a recent report suggested that Canada has more civil servants per citizen than even the US. And that is scary!
Time was politicians were someone who was part of the community they represented. They were known to their constituents and usually had a role in the community beyond that of local politician. They earned their right to go Ottawa and represent the needs of their community. That has changed. A large number of today’s elected officials are career politicians. They trained for it, live it, breath it and by and large are very disconnected from the people they are supposed to represent. In increasingly frequency they are not even from the community they represent now. “Parachute” candidates picked by the party and not the local riding are quite common. And that just adds to point I make about professional politicians.
It’s all out of focus! We need to stand up and vote – which might result in a majority government that can have a reasonable mandate to move forward and get something started and done. We should perhaps look to the US system to see if we cannot borrow from them. Term limits are one thought. Elected senate is another. And never do you see a minority government falling there. The US structure does not allow it. I am just saying – it could be worth looking at. It’s clear our system is not working.
As for this election – you can look forward to seeing a “None of the Above” sign on our lawn. I think there is some validity to this as a campaign. It represents all of us who want to vote but cannot support any of the options we are presented. And I suspect that there are lot of us!
RS
