Archive for the The Chairman’s Corner Category

I was lucky enough to be among the 50,000 faithful at the Rogers Centre who witnessed Wednesday’s ALDS final game between the Rangers and the Blue Jays, a game that has already been unanimously dubbed “an instant classic”.  As dramatic and improbable as Wednesday’s game was, it is really just the apex of an epic season that can only be punctuated but not negated by the outcome of the ALCS and/or the World Series.

The sense of a looming epic was apparent from the outset of the season (after all, spring training saw the return to Canada of prodigal son Russell Martin, and the season was only three weeks old when we witnessed the destruction of Pompey).  From there, it was three months of scuffling before the youthful Alex Anthopoulos, a lad in distress if I ever saw one, rubbed the magic lamp and used his three wishes to conjure Ben Revere, Troy Tulowitzki and David Price to lead (dare I say it) an epic second half to the season to return the Jays to the playoffs for the first time in 22 years.

A similarly dramatic script was a foregone conclusion for the playoff run, but not before a couple of subplots worthy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were added to this Shakespearean (there it is again) epic.  In the last game of the regular season, the team put at risk a shot at the overall best record in the American League (and home field advantage in the ALCS) by nobly but perhaps unwisely offering their Lion in Winter, Mark Buehrle, the opportunity to start that game on short rest in order to reach the 200 inning mark for the 15^th time in what is almost certainly his final season.  For once, someone had forgotten to distribute the scripts, because two first inning infield errors led to six unearned runs and a first inning exit for Buerhle.

Undeterred by this failed attempt at orchestrated milestones, the Jays were back at it in Game 4 of the ALDS.  With starter R. A Dickey cruising with two outs in the fifth inning with a 7-1 lead, out came Manager John Gibbons and in came ace David Price.  With Dickey leaving before the end of five innings, Price needed only to hold on to the lead and pitch three innings to end his undistinguished 0-6 post season streak.  Set up so adroitly (and apparently there is no truth to the rumour that the Jays had also asked that the Ranger agree to blindfold their batters), Price did manage to get that monkey off his back, albeit with a mediocre performance that saw him give up three earned runs in his three innings of work.

So back to the epic march.  Game 5 saw the return to the mound of Marcus Stroman in the fifth start since his Lazarus-like return from what was called and should have been season ending knee surgery in the spring, sporting a Sideshow Bob haircut for those whose recognition of epic foreboding require a more contemporary reference.

And then came the “epic” seventh inning.  A 53 minute extravaganza that featured an unheard of sequence of events that culminated in the Rangers committing three consecutive infield errors under the influence of atomized alcohol from an earlier shower of flying beer cans and a three run, two out home run and bat flip by Jose Bautista that has been memorialized and universally decried on YouTube (apparently even ISIS has dismissed the bat flip as “unnecessarily provocative and unsportsmanlike”).

Epic.

September 2015 has provided a particularly intense reminder to many Torontonians of the power of images.  We had only begun to confront the collective call to action that resounded from the heartbreaking photo of Alan Kurdi’s body face down on a Turkish beach when our downtown core was turned over to the 40^th Annual Toronto International Film Festival.  Though admittedly not as compelling as that already iconic still photo, the fare on offer from the skilled filmmakers presenting at TIFF provide their own array of clarion calls.  Having only partaken of a small subset of the films on offer, my own compassion has been forever activated on issues as far flung as the emotional journey that must be confronted by transgendered children and adults and their families, the harrowing circumstances of child soldiers in Africa and the technical and personal challenges of rescuing our brave explorers on Mars (who knew?).

It is undeniable: the right image, at the right time, with wide distribution, can truly galvanize global opinion and become a catalyst for action.  That is why we are inundated with such images, each one competing to be THE policy focus.  For anyone that tries to be truly aware, it is relentless, and exhausting.  Roused from the necessarily narrower focus of our day-to-day lives too often and too jarringly, we instinctively begin to respond to the initial shock by pounding the snooze button.  We cannot engage with any one issue, the next is coming too fast on the heels of the last.  When we focus even briefly to comprehend the complexity that defies simple solutions to urgent problems, our hearts quickly jerk our heads out of that important but taxing exercise to address the crisis revealed by the next compelling image.

The migrant crisis is a clear example of this challenge.  The solution is not simple.  The photo of Alan Kurdi has jolted Western nations into a consensus that we are obliged to act to address the Middle Eastern migrant crisis.  However, many are realizing that the response cannot be limited to the relocation of those now so desperately seeking refuge.  The enormous number of refugees willing to risk the perils of an unaided migration and the uncertainties of ultimate settlement will multiply exponentially with the appropriate and necessary creation of compassionate, streamlined and more certain relocation programs.  Sadly, it is not possible to relocate the entirety of the at-risk populations of the failed states of the Middle East (Libya, Iraq and Syria) to Western nations.  The appropriate global response must therefore also include diplomatic and, if necessary, military measures to restore stability and order in the region, which will likely require a regime change in at least Syria, …but wasn’t regime change in Iraq and Libya what got this all started in the first place…?

Hey, is that Omar Khadr on the TV, looking for some relief from his bail conditions?  We have got to do something about Canada’s hypocrisy in its treatment of Canadian-born child soldiers.

If the polls are to be believed, there is one certainty about the outcome of the upcoming Canadian federal election that is critical to the health of the body politic: all three of the large national parties will enjoy a healthy backing of the electorate in terms of both popular vote and elected seats. Canada’s periodically tenuous three party system will not only survive, but be demonstrably stable.

Why is this so important? Because it maintains the viability of the political centre, from which effective public policy can not only emerge but also find broad acceptance among Canadians. That is not to say that there is no important role for those voices on the vanguard of the right and left of the political spectrum. The emergence of public healthcare in Canada is the most transformative example of the value to the political marketplace of a progressive party that runs ahead of the status quo. One could equally argue that the presence of reasonable Canadian federal debt levels notwithstanding our generous public healthcare programs demonstrates the benefit of a viable conservative perspective that acts as a brake upon the inclination of progressive sentiment to outrun society’s willingness and ability to pay.

It is the functionality of this dynamic of the Canadian political landscape that is both comically and tragically absent in the U.S. The current popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the early stages of the Republican and Democratic Presidential nomination race are emblematic of this shortcoming. While neither is likely to ultimately be their respective party’s nominee, the explicit (Trump) and implicit risk of a third party candidacy that could decide the election by splitting either the left or right vote means that the nominees on both sides must lean further from the political centre to hold their respective vote. The casualty will be the quality of both political discourse and, sadly, effective public policy.

Canada has inched closer to the creation of the sort of two party split that plagues the U.S. (and, to a lesser extent, the U.K.) on several occasions, including most recently in the 1993 federal election in which Audrey McLaughlin’s NDP was reduced to only nine seats and Kim Campbell’s PCs to only two. That election was further notable in that the PC collapse showed the danger of the party of the right drifting too far to the centre, as its annihilation was the product of the rise of Preston Manning’s socially conservative Reform Party.

The 2011 election saw a near-death experience for Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals as “Canada’s Natural Governing Party” was reduced to 34 seats. Some commentators and biographers of Stephen Harper have suggested that his driving political ambition is to complete that bifurcation of the Canadian political landscape. History suggests that would be both an impossible and undesirable result. Let’s hope that whatever the outcome on October 19^th, we are left with a three party system that can effect the integration of the laudable but contrary impulses of policy innovation and prudent incrementalism and sustain the halting but inexorable progressive arc of Canadian public policy.