John Stall

I had the great pleasure of attending the annual “ Canadian Entrepreneur-of-the-year awards” at the Convention Centre last week as the guest of one of the nominees. The event is staged each year by Ernst and Young. I use the word “pleasure” because its hard to come away from an event like this without being inspired by the stories of those who are being celebrated by their nomination as the “best” in their categories.

Clearly, entrepreneurship is not for all of us. Most of us prefer either by choice or by circumstances to play it safe,  to get a job or aspire to a profession, and then stay the course and adjust our economic lives to the limits of  our income. Not so with the entrepreneur! They are the cowboys and women of the wild economic west. They are free spirits with guts, confidence, energy and a neverending stream of ideas. They don’t put limits on themselves or listen to the nay-sayers. They don’t associate with people who say “no,”  “can’t” or “won’t.”

They just go out there and do it! They get beaten up, they get hurt for awhile, they put in many sleepless nights, they sweat a lot at the beginning but they never give up on themselves. The result for those who can stomach the ride and eventually achieve their goals, is to attain personal economic freedom while making a distinct contribution to the marketplace.

Although I was inspired by the evening that celebrated some 20 or so entrepreneurs, I’m not a big fan of “award ceremonies,” simply because it leaves those who don’t win, feel (for a few minutes) like they lost. But when flying in the rarefied air of entrepreneurship at the highest altitude of Canadian business, Their are no “losers,” just winners.

I’m told the mood was anxious and a bit tense at the Liberal caucus meeting that followed the throne speech until (as I learned shortly after 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning) that Stephane Dion indicated he had heard their concerns about triggering an election by opposing the Throne speech. They were concerned for three good reasons:

1) The Liberals are in disarray and are not convinced that Dion is the leader who can lead them back to power.

2) They knew the party responsible for triggering the election would be blamed by Canadians who don’t want one.

3) There wasn’t a ballot question contained in the Throne speech over which an election would be fought.

All of the other parties, however, seem anxious for an election, they just don’t want to be tagged as the irresponsible ones who triggered it. So what we got this week was a dramatic game of political chicken that if nothing else was fun to watch and to talk about.

My sense is the short-term winner might well be Dion because he chose to listen to his caucus. He listened, rather than hold to a conviction that many thought would be to fight an election on the environment, by bringing the government down for indicating it wouldn’t be able to meet Kyoto commitments and for wanting to keep the date of withdrawal from Afghanistan open for discussion.

Listening to your caucus can be a good thing and can save a lot of grief. Just ask John Tory.

It seems to me that the Conservative party of Ontario has a double dilemma to deal with in the wake of the election results when it comes to whether or not John Tory should stay or go. The questions being asked by the party executive, rank and file and by fundraisers of the P.C Ontario fund are:

Can a leader who demonstrated such bad judgment by insisting on a policy that was clearly an election killer and by choosing to run (and lose) in a risky riding, regain and sustain the genuine respect that got him there in the first place? Because in business, (as Tory made his mantra) those who don’t show results or bad judgment should be replaced.

The dilemma for the party decision makers and fundraisers is that if it concludes the guy who can’t deliver the goods should go, with whom do they replace him? Who is the alternative candidate who can strike the balance between the extreme wing of the party and the centre (as Tory could)?

The knee-jerk reactors of the party may be the first to want Tory out, but I suspect the big thinkers will conclude that in the absence of an alternative at this point, John Tory is probably still their best hope against a likely new liberal leader in the next election. It may take a “mea culpa” promise from Tory to bury the school funding issue forever, in addition to a strong commitment from him to include more people from all ranks of the party when it comes to setting policy – assuming he still wants the prize of Premier enough to endure the next four years of humble pie in opposition…stay tuned!

A reader wondered a few days ago why I had not been blogging about the referendum question and what I thought about electoral reform.

In answer to his querie, I’ve only just started blogging so my first couple were dedicated to the mainstream campaign.

As for electoral reform, I’m not among those who think it is necessary or essential. I don’t have a particular problem with the current system of “first past the post.” I have never found myself in the position of wanting to vote for a candidate but not the party or vice versa.

We are having the referendum question included in this election because the current Liberal government decided through legislation that electoral reform should be offered. The legislation then handed it off to a citizens’ coalition to suggest an alternative that became the “mixed member proportional.”

Although the system could be intellectually argued to be more representational than the current system, in practice, I think it could lead to cycle of minority governments who are prevented from acting or forced to act in ways by smaller party’s who would be able to appoint sitting MPs through the list system.

The idea that all parties could appoint people who are not elected and therefore cannot be unelected by the electorate is not something I am comfortable with. In my view, all MPs who take a salary, benefits and pensions from the public purse should be accountable to the people of the province on election day - not  to the party brass who put them them on a list to serve if the party wins a regional lottery of public support.

So, now we have some of the juice that I was musing last week has been absent from the provincial election campaign and it’s arrived in the form of John Tory’s apparent desperate decision to salvage what he can. This decision has him accepting that a large majority (up to 70 per cent) of the province want no part of his faith-based school funding plan so he’ll put it to a free vote if elected.

In my view, the political “juice” is not the issue of faith-based funding itself, the “juice” is in the weight of Tory’s decision to jettison his original rigidity despite early indications and strategic advice that it was not a popular policy.

Tory’s climbdown has set a flurry of dynamics and questions into motion for the remainder of the campaign that include: