John Stall

I don’t know about you, but I am not yet enjoying this first snow fall of the season. It came to soon and too fast.

I am trying very hard to remember some good advice passed on to me many years ago by Canadian gold medalist Nancy Green about getting through a Canadian winter. ”Embrace it,” she said, “don’t reject” it. Nancy of course loves winter more than any other season. She and her husband now operate a ski resort complex called Sun Valley in British Columbia.

Nancy’s idea of embracing winter is to dress warm in bright colorful clothes, to decorate the outside of the house with lots of colourful lights, to play in the snow, skiing, or walking or snowshoeing or tobogganing or snowmobiling or ice fishing. To always curl up in front of a fireplace if you can, to huddle in kitchens preparing soups and chili, to bake break and drink wine. 

It’s a great outlook and we do live the life she promotes, but I wasn’t going to be ready to embrace it for another few weeks or at least until the leaves got raked and the lawnmower put away!

I watch and listened carefully and with a great deal of interest to how defense minister Peter Mackay looked and what he had to say after a rocket-propelled grenade whistled over his head and exploded near the Kandahar base he was visiting.

To me, he looked a little pale and quite shook up as he praised the reaction of those in charge who got him out of harms way very quickly describing their action as cool and professional.  I could write and talk about this for hours and hours (and I have along the way with those who have the patience to listen) because I know what it feels like to come under attack in a war zone. I won’t go on forever but want to make a few points in this blog just because I can.

War is hell! But only those who have been there “get it” — to the rest it’s just a phrase. Peter Mackay now “gets it” and so do I.

I went to Saudi Arabia to cover the first Gulf War in 1991. As a 40-year-old reporter/show host, I knew nothing about war other than what I’d heard or read from other who had lived through one. I had a couple of days training before departure at CFB Borden. My decision to go was a business decision and so was Peter Mackay’s. At the time, I was hosting a top-rated radio interview show on CFRB and  for several years had pursued the pattern of actually going to the hot spots of the world. Saudi Arabia was very hot indeed - and loud! Almost every day for almost a month.

Within hours of the first coalition strike on Sudam Hussein’s army who had invaded Kuwait, the incoming Iraqi scud missiles began exploding around our base in Saudi. We never actually knew if the explosions we heard and felt in our chest were the result of the missiles hitting the ground or colliding with American patriot missiles taking them out over head before they hit.  I can assure you though, the sound is terrifying and stays with me today. I can only describe it as ten times as loud as the loudest crack of thunder you have ever heard letting loose directly over your house, and you feel the concussion from the inside out. The difference between Mackay’s experience and mine is that I didn’t have any Canadian military whisking me out - although the Mulroney Government did make a deal with the Bush administration after about three weeks to get the area evacuated of me and several hundred other Canadians, leaving on American cargo planes.

Mackay’s experience may not make a difference to Canada’s role or future commitment in Afghanistan,  but I think it’s useful to the decision-making process to have a defense minister at the cabinet table in Ottawa who has had to dive under the table in the field and who has had to (whether he likes it or not ) stop his heart from entering his throat as a missile or grenade whistles over his head while the men and women in Canadian uniform keep cool and professional.

I’ve surprised myself with this little blurb because I don’t like to talk or think too much about the month I spent in a war zone with anyone other than the nucleus of family and small circle of friends who will listen. It wells up in me only when something triggers it
– like Mackay’s close call, or when a journalist is killed, or when I meet up with a soldier returning from Afghanistan or at this week of the year … at the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month.

Another week and another confidence vote in the House of Commons. This time on the Finance Minister’s economic statement/mini budget. It might not become a weekly occurrence but it’s shaping up to be the way the Harper government plans to operate more often than not.

The federal Tories seem content to govern as though they have a majority perhaps sensing the only consequence is the chance to form one – if and when the Liberals have had enough of staying out of the house when it come time to vote against something that would bring the government down.

Stephane Dion said again this week that he will bring the government down one of these days but not this week.  He won’t say which week or over which issue. 

I appeared as a panelist on Anne Rhomer’s CityTV open line show the day after the economic statement and heard at least one caller conclude that Canadians don’t want an election and that he and others are not being fooled by the tactics being used in Ottawa, leaving the impression that both Liberals and Conservatives would face a day of reckoning, but I’m not clear what he meant . Does he mean that Canadians will eventually punish one side or the other at an election or both?

Who do you think would be punished more at the polls?  The party who provoked an election? Or the party who pulled the trigger?

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: 

Hi there, and welcome to my new blog - let’s call it “Stall’s world” just for fun.

This is where I am happy to begin sharing some of my thoughts and insights into the news, trends and events that shape not only our lives of today but because I have been in and around the news and public affairs business for a very long time (some 30 years), I like to whenever it is useful, interpret and compare current developments with and through the prism of history that gave rise to them.

For example, of all the provincial elections that I have covered over the years (back to the mid-70s) few if any, have been less contentious than this one. 

There is no overriding issue to be decided (although funding of religious schools and promise breaking are talk points). There is no “let’s get rid of the Harris regime, because they have concluded the revolutionary agenda” or cut too many services. There is no “Let’s get rid of the Bob Rae government because they put the province into debt.” There is no “Let’s get rid of that David Peterson - just to teach him a lesson about not taking anything for granted by calling an election way before one was scheduled or necessary - but just because he was way out front in year three of his mandate.”

In this election, there is no real palpable public anger, no real scandal, no real sense that anything is at stake - there is no “juice.”