Governor General: Nice Man, Wrong Time

The new Governor General of Canada is a very nice man as witnessed at his investiture on Friday, Oct. 1, 2010.

His Excellency David Johnston comes to the office with a civic spirited family of four daughters and a supportive and independent spouse.

David Johnston has spent a goodly portion of his life in academe as either a professor and later administration. He is a constitutional expert. He has left good will wherever he has worked.

Mr. Johnston, a university president has also been appointed to several commissions and informal investigations. The latest was for Prime Minister Harper setting the parameter’s for the Ostrey commission into former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s dealing with the Karl Heinz-Shrieber Affair. Undoubtedly at the Prime Minister’s wink, the parameter’s of the inquiry were limited to the three hundred thousand dollar undocumented payout to Mulroney but not the what for, meaning the Air Canada/Air Bus quid pro quo.

I don’t wish to imply that Mr. Johnston did anything untoward. Mr. Johnston travels in the circles where these kind of situations are understood. Mr. Johnston is held in high regard not only for his good character but also Mr. Johnston knows what a nod and a wink is in the establishment.

The above event set off an alarm bell when I heard the announcement last month.

What would Mr. Johnston bring to the Governor General’s office?
The first thing that came to mind was that if Our Great Leader ever wanted to Pro Rogue Parliament again, he wouldn’t get much fight out of Mr. Johnston. Although versed in the constitution, I would make a large wager that deference to the Prime Minister would be the over riding principle irrespective of the Governor General’s obligation to the Queen to protect the integrity of the democratic process.
As my nephew said, just another connected old white man from the fifties. Harsh but valid ?

What did Mr. Johnston say in his speech to the people of Canada?
His three pillars were; family, education and philanthropy/volunteerism. Sounds like Grande Mere and Tortierre. But let’s examine the pillars for meaning in 2010 Canada.

Family: Code for the right and anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion minority religious right or just old fashioned communal sensibility. We all want the family, the basic social unit, to love and thrive. You have to ask the question? Which families? No mention of how families struggle to survive in an inequitable economic climate that leaves a quarter of the ‘families’ in this country in poverty. Not to mention the disgrace that our native population lives in.

We owe a great deal to our families and they should be honoured. But, come on….

Education: honouring teachers is a worthy and an about time pillar. Teachers are thought of as elitist and have to much time off. Hogwash! In the public elementary and high school systems it is a profession that needs all the help it can get. With the pace of change and the problems of the young to integrate and understand, learn how to learn, a great teacher is a life long asset to have had. I thank mine. J.J. Casey, Tom Peacocke, Jim De Felice, Bernard Hopkins to name a few.

For the last two decades higher education has been turned into a utilitarian processing school for the needs of the unspoken truth of our age, finishing schools for the corporate agenda. What are business schools doing in Universities. University professors become pimps for the justification of ideologies. Particularly economics departments, which is called the dismal science for a reason.

People go to university to meet the expectations of the corporate job search like we used to in the sixties take trades in high school to feed the industrial machine. We go to university, not to learn how to learn and think, but to be smart (self interested) and utilitarian.

Mr. Johnston has spent his life in this environment, becoming the bright light of one of these institutions while raising tuition’s exorbitantly and redefining the purpose of a university.

Which brings us to the third pillar, philanthropy/volunteerism. I have no doubt the good intentions of Mr. Johnston. As funding for universities has declined to levels that leave Canada at the bottom of the OECD, through no fault of Mr. Johnston, he had to find funding somewhere. The great American Universities have endowments and of course whatever happens in America can only be good for us as well.

In the age of in-equality, excess and greed, the wealthy are wealthier than at any time in history. The Schulick this, the Munk that. What happened to naming buildings after inventors and humanitarians like Fredrick Banting. As our universities have become more exclusive, the rich have moved in for posterity (philanthropy) to create ideological centres of ‘excellence’. Toronto has a new Opera home (which is good) but has not had a new medium size theatre in fourty years. And the ones that do exist are falling apart. Elites recover a great deal of their philanthropy through tax breaks. So who is really paying for these Munk Centres for International Studies? Donate 19 million, get a tax break for 12 million and have the governments chip in 66 million for the operating funds. We do. So Philanthropy is a sometimes good but double edged sword.

Canadians, per capita, are one of the most volunteering societies in the world. But as a substitute for the strengthening of society while corporation’s and the wealthy absolve themselves from contributing to the tax base is no solution.

His Excellency Mr. Johnston from all appearances is a smart and caring man which is his slogan for the country: smart and caring. But the boys down on bay street are smart. And when they go home to their families I am sure they are caring. But do they have vision and creativity. Two words I don’t think I heard from Mr. Johnston. I heard no mention of the creative arts. Only the cliches to the cultural communities and to that sacred word, innovation.

I wish Mr. Johnston and his family the best. But as inspiration and vision, Mr. Johnston is just another member of the establishment being used by this Prime Minister, cleverly, to fall in in line with the paternalistic fifties regressive agenda in The Age of Inequality.

Dwight mcFee

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