“You wouldn’t let your grandparents choose who you date,” says the advertisement, “Then why let them choose your government?” And yet, just weeks away from a fourth federal election in seven years, voter apathy is as likely to determine the outcome of the next Canadian election as anything the underwhelming leadership of the three main national parties will say during the rest of the campaign. Notwithstanding ingenious provocations from the elections council (who devised the ad), young voters’ habitual disengagement will almost certainly leave future policy on global warming, immigration, healthcare, education, Afghanistan – and a host of other urgent issues – firmly in the hands of the older generation. Despite a rash of high-profile political scandals – the no-confidence motion against the Harper government for “contempt of Parliament” was unprecedented in Commonwealth governance – by and large the electorate seems fatigued rather than angry.
Anyone accustomed to the dread of elections in the Caribbean (racial tension, threats of violence, mindlessly provocative rhetoric) or the overlong, increasingly unpleasant confrontations of US presidential campaigns can only marvel at the mildness of Canadian politics. There are striking differences of tone; a mischievous Conservative ad describing Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff (who spent many years abroad as a top-flight academic) as “just visiting” Canada is what passes for an “attack ad.” There is also an unshakable reluctance to go for the jugular (Willie Horton ads, the 3 am phone calls, “death panels”). Following the no-confidence vote, in circumstances that would probably have had Tea Partiers burning effigies of President Obama outside the White House, Ignatieff could manage only this modest semblance of outrage: “There are only two alternatives here: more of this disrespect for democracy, more of this contempt for the Canadian people, or a compassionate, responsible Liberal government.” The spirit of the Marquess of Queensberry, rather than Clausewitz or Machiavelli, presides over these elections.
But behind the public’s exhaustion with minority governments, lavish budgets for G20 summits (and other mundane political scandals) there are deep concerns about Canada’s political future, especially its lack of leadership on the world stage despite considerable economic power. Few people have spoken to the lack of vision better than Gen Romeo Dallaire, former commander of the UN peacekeeping troops in Rwanda in 1994. Following the “failure of humanity” – the bureaucratic fumbling which reduced the UN peacekeeping troops to the role of helpless spectator while the interahamwe militias set about the genocide in 1994 – Gen Dallaire became a tragic figure in the eyes of the world. But after deep introspection (and a nervous breakdown) he summoned the will to re-enter public life. He is now a Senator in the Canadian parliament and a passionate advocate for aid to the developing world. Among the many good causes he has worked for since his retirement from the military, none has engaged him more fully than the plight of Africa’s child soldiers. He leads a charity to raise awareness of their suffering and has written a book (They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children) to help spur the international community into action.
Speaking to schoolchildren, teachers and parents in a garrison town north of Toronto, Gen Dallaire recently offered a forceful critique of the challenges ahead. Eschewing the apologetics that might be expected from a man with such a harrowing past, he asked his audience the following question: Are all humans human? If so, how could the UN abandon Rwanda but intervene, at great cost, in the former Yugoslavia. Why this discrepancy, he asked, if our common humanity is as well established as we like to believe? Why is so much time and energy spent on relief efforts for the 2005 tsunami while the conflict in Darfur (a man-made catastrophe which claimed more lives) was all but forgotten? Why do countries that ought to provide leadership in conflict prevention and the alleviation of poverty shirk their duties? Why are international responses to Africa’s crises so ad hoc, so short-term, and so inconsistent?
Dallaire urged his audience to imagine a Canada in which every high school student had a pair of dirty boots under their bed. Dirty with the soil of a developing country they had recently visited as NGO volunteers and worked to make a difference. Thus engaged with the wider world, Canada could not ignore the impoverished four-fifths of humanity, nor comfort itself with the platitudes that have shored up the developed world’s longstanding indifference towards poorer, less democratic societies. In half an hour the general made a better case for the political re-imagining of his nation than any of the three main parties. More aware than most of the hard facts in the world’s disaster areas, he nevertheless spoke with an inspired optimism that none of the current party leaders could hope to match.
Such are the paradoxes of democracy. Those who live in countries with quiet elections, rarely understand the power of their vote. Sated with freedoms that are the envy of less fortunate nations, they surrender their political imagination to quibblers who endlessly debate the present muddle instead of offering a strategic vision of the future. Consequently, one of the grand ironies of our age is that while a sea change in Middle East politics is being driven by young people, mature democracies like Canada’s often remain captive to the political will, and outlook, of an older generation.
