Nothing to see here
Monday, 8 August 2005
Mark Steyn
No one is talking about Canada,” complained Peter C. Newman at Moses Znaimer’s recent ideaCity get-together--or, if you prefer, getTogether--in Toronto.
I seem to remember getting a couple of invites to ideaCity back in the glory days of the National Post. Not really my bag. They were accompanied by big, graphically lavish infoPacks of all the buzz-worthy zeitgeist-surfers Mr. Znaimer had enticed to previous ideaCities ideasCities?--and the cumulative effect read like a list of rejected features from a dummy issue for a new Tina Brown magazine. Nothing against Moses, nor Tina, I hasten to add. But I knew Tina’s days as New York’s Queen Bee of Buzz were over when, for some do or other a year or two back, she was reduced to inviting me.
So I’m not perhaps the chap to address Peter C. Newman’s complaint. From the thinnish press coverage of this year’s ideaCity, it’s hard to gain a sense of the ideas being kicked around. Tomson Highway, who is apparently a playwright and not the service road to The Globe And Mail’s new printing plant, thought the conference should have “male strippers . . . and joints, lots of joints.” Stephanie Lafarge of the ASPCA went into some personal detail about the pleasure of breast-feeding chimpanzees, though became rather coy on the broader question of whether she was in favour of romantic liaisons between man and beast.
It’s hard to know what would be the Canadian angle on these ideas. Breastfeeding moose? Quebec male-stripper laws requiring dishabille francophones to be twice as well endowed as anglophones? I’m sure we can hold our own with any G8 nation when it comes to male strippers; indeed, we may already have a fast-track immigration program for this vital cog in the Toronto economy.
But nonetheless the fact remains that, though Peter C. Newman successfully persuaded Canada to reconstruct itself more or less in his image, no one is talking about us. And not just when it comes to the rather tired provocations of ideaCity. War, terrorism, the power of America, the rise of Islam, the decline of Europe, the decay of Russia, the emergence of China, the intractability of Africa: Jean Chrétien liked to say that “Canada is a good citizen of the world,” but we’ve never been more irrelevant to the great questions facing the world. No matter how many joints we light up at ideaCity, there’s not a joint anywhere on the planet that lights up when you mention Canada.
Indeed, our paradoxical Dominion now leads the world only in its inability to lead the world. If you look at the CIA World Factbook’s current rankings of GDP per capita, you’ll notice that most of the top ten richest countries are not actually countries--not in the sense of being sovereign states. Four are British colonies--Guernsey (Number 3), Jersey (5), the British Virgin Islands (6) and Bermuda (7)--and one more is a former British colony--Hong Kong (9). One is a small town masquerading as a nation--Luxembourg (Number 1)--and another is the second most popular answer after Monaco to the “Name A European Statelet Next To Italy” trivia question--San Marino (8).
By now you’re probably wondering where Canada comes in the rankings. Well, we’re a respectable Number 15. If you can’t be like those lucky Bermudans and still be a British colony, the next best thing is to be a former one: 11 of the 20 countries with the highest GDP per capita are present or previous holdings of Her Britannic Majesty. Indeed, if one were to exclude the small nations and colonies and look at wealth creation among large populations--over 10 million, say--four out of the top five would be British-derived: America, Canada, Australia, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The Belgians sneak in because their population is just a whisker over the cut-off--10.3 million. If one were to make the category wealth creation among nations of more than 15 million, then what’s loosely called the Anglosphere would have all four top places.
In geopolitical influence as in male stripping, size does matter. If Luxembourg has a GDP per capita of US$59,000, that’s nice for Luxembourgers, but, as there are only 400-and-something thousand of them, it doesn’t make much difference to anybody else. If America has a GDP per capita of US$40,100, it makes an enormous difference, because there’s 300 million of ’em. By any reasonable standards, Canada is a hugely prosperous nation, and it has the size to project the benefits of that prosperity around the world.
So why doesn’t it? Our NATO allies have openly berated us for being second only to Luxembourg in per capita defence spending. But the point is, even if the Grand Duchy were to spend proportionately at American levels, its military would still be tiny and irrelevant. Were Canada to do so, it would make a big impact. In 1949, Luxembourg abandoned its neutrality to become a largely honorific member of the western alliance. By contrast, we’re now a largely honorific member of the western alliance declining into de facto neutrality.
Well, okay, the whole war-mongering thing’s not our scene these days. But, in that case, what is? The elderly Irish rocker Sir Bob Geldof recently told Paul Martin to skip the G8 and stay home unless he were prepared to commit to spending 0.7 per cent of Canada’s GNP on overseas aid. This was a very finely crafted sneer, for it was Mr. Martin’s Liberal predecessor, Lester B. Pearson, whose impeccably multilateral international commission came up with the 0.7 per cent target for wealthy nations back in 1969. Canada never got up to more than 0.5 per cent, under Trudeau, and, under Chrétien (and Mr. Martin’s stewardship of the Finance Ministry), it was pared back to 0.25 per cent.
Now I don’t have a lot of use for “aid.” According to a British report, between independence in 1960 and 1999, Nigeria’s politicians looted 220-billion pounds from the nation’s treasury. The more “aid” you toss down the sinkhole, the faster they steal it. But, nonetheless, the virtue of “aid” is one of those shibboleths Trudeaupian Canada professes to believe in. So why don’t we practise it?
In fact, why don’t we practise anything we preach? As of May 2005, the top contributors to UN operations were Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal at Number 4, good grief, and they’re practically on the brink of civil war. Well, okay, we’re not in the Top 10 with all that expendable Asian manpower but c’mon, we must be in there somewhere . . . Number 20) France; 24) Ireland; 29) United Kingdom; 30) United States . . . hey, how’d those two warmongers make the Top 30 peacekeepers? Wait a minute, here we are: Canada, rocketing into the Hit Parade at 33 with a lack of bullet, right between Togo and Turkey. But, to the best of my knowledge, Togo and Benin (28) and Senegal (12) don’t regard peacekeeping as so indispensable to their self-image that they stick it on their currency and brag about it in beer commercials.
So we’re no longer a great military nation. But nor are we a great peacekeeping nation: we do less than notorious sabre-rattlers like Britain and America. Compared to the Scandinavians and the other niceniks we’re a poor aid donor, and our immobile rapid-reaction force is of no practical use in humanitarian crises. M. Chrétien’s legacy-building Africa initiative of 2002 is known only to Canadians. Everywhere else, it’s credited as Tony Blair’s Africa initiative. We have less influence internationally than we did in the 1940s--before we had a flag, an anthem, or our own citizenship. Even if the Trudeaupian vision of Canada were sufficient for a national identity, it suffers from the basic defect of being a bald-faced lie.
Let’s go back to those GDP figures: Canada’s GDP per capita is US$31,500--about three-quarters of the U.S. figure, and, if you’re a visitor from California or Connecticut, Canadians don’t appear especially wealthy. But we supposedly “choose” to pay high taxes because we’re so virtuous. So where does all the money go? Not to the military, not to UN peacekeeping, not to overseas aid. Few other western taxpayers get such a pathetic flatulent squeak of a bang for their buck. Maybe the government could set up a special program to give grants to Quebec marketing firms to investigate where the dough went. But the fact is one of the largest, wealthiest nations in the history of the world is entirely absent from the world scene. It’s not just that we punch below our weight, but that we don’t punch at all.
Far be it for me to suggest that, like Bermuda and the Caymans, we might have done better to forget the responsible-government thing and the British North America Act and live it up as the world’s largest tax haven--and, indeed, the United States’ first onshore tax haven. Many of those wealthy little territories are rather unattractive in the light of day--sunny places full of shady characters, as Somerset Maugham said of Monaco. Too many of the locals are rich, smug and self-obsessed. But, on the other hand, what are we? In our parochial narcissism, we’ve taken on the moral character of those tax havens--without the tax breaks. What a combination.
Oh, well. Maybe they can discuss it at the next ideaCity--if the male strippers fail to show.
Monday, 8 August 2005
Mark Steyn
No one is talking about Canada,” complained Peter C. Newman at Moses Znaimer’s recent ideaCity get-together--or, if you prefer, getTogether--in Toronto.
I seem to remember getting a couple of invites to ideaCity back in the glory days of the National Post. Not really my bag. They were accompanied by big, graphically lavish infoPacks of all the buzz-worthy zeitgeist-surfers Mr. Znaimer had enticed to previous ideaCities ideasCities?--and the cumulative effect read like a list of rejected features from a dummy issue for a new Tina Brown magazine. Nothing against Moses, nor Tina, I hasten to add. But I knew Tina’s days as New York’s Queen Bee of Buzz were over when, for some do or other a year or two back, she was reduced to inviting me.
So I’m not perhaps the chap to address Peter C. Newman’s complaint. From the thinnish press coverage of this year’s ideaCity, it’s hard to gain a sense of the ideas being kicked around. Tomson Highway, who is apparently a playwright and not the service road to The Globe And Mail’s new printing plant, thought the conference should have “male strippers . . . and joints, lots of joints.” Stephanie Lafarge of the ASPCA went into some personal detail about the pleasure of breast-feeding chimpanzees, though became rather coy on the broader question of whether she was in favour of romantic liaisons between man and beast.
It’s hard to know what would be the Canadian angle on these ideas. Breastfeeding moose? Quebec male-stripper laws requiring dishabille francophones to be twice as well endowed as anglophones? I’m sure we can hold our own with any G8 nation when it comes to male strippers; indeed, we may already have a fast-track immigration program for this vital cog in the Toronto economy.
But nonetheless the fact remains that, though Peter C. Newman successfully persuaded Canada to reconstruct itself more or less in his image, no one is talking about us. And not just when it comes to the rather tired provocations of ideaCity. War, terrorism, the power of America, the rise of Islam, the decline of Europe, the decay of Russia, the emergence of China, the intractability of Africa: Jean Chrétien liked to say that “Canada is a good citizen of the world,” but we’ve never been more irrelevant to the great questions facing the world. No matter how many joints we light up at ideaCity, there’s not a joint anywhere on the planet that lights up when you mention Canada.
Indeed, our paradoxical Dominion now leads the world only in its inability to lead the world. If you look at the CIA World Factbook’s current rankings of GDP per capita, you’ll notice that most of the top ten richest countries are not actually countries--not in the sense of being sovereign states. Four are British colonies--Guernsey (Number 3), Jersey (5), the British Virgin Islands (6) and Bermuda (7)--and one more is a former British colony--Hong Kong (9). One is a small town masquerading as a nation--Luxembourg (Number 1)--and another is the second most popular answer after Monaco to the “Name A European Statelet Next To Italy” trivia question--San Marino (8).
By now you’re probably wondering where Canada comes in the rankings. Well, we’re a respectable Number 15. If you can’t be like those lucky Bermudans and still be a British colony, the next best thing is to be a former one: 11 of the 20 countries with the highest GDP per capita are present or previous holdings of Her Britannic Majesty. Indeed, if one were to exclude the small nations and colonies and look at wealth creation among large populations--over 10 million, say--four out of the top five would be British-derived: America, Canada, Australia, Belgium and the United Kingdom. The Belgians sneak in because their population is just a whisker over the cut-off--10.3 million. If one were to make the category wealth creation among nations of more than 15 million, then what’s loosely called the Anglosphere would have all four top places.
In geopolitical influence as in male stripping, size does matter. If Luxembourg has a GDP per capita of US$59,000, that’s nice for Luxembourgers, but, as there are only 400-and-something thousand of them, it doesn’t make much difference to anybody else. If America has a GDP per capita of US$40,100, it makes an enormous difference, because there’s 300 million of ’em. By any reasonable standards, Canada is a hugely prosperous nation, and it has the size to project the benefits of that prosperity around the world.
So why doesn’t it? Our NATO allies have openly berated us for being second only to Luxembourg in per capita defence spending. But the point is, even if the Grand Duchy were to spend proportionately at American levels, its military would still be tiny and irrelevant. Were Canada to do so, it would make a big impact. In 1949, Luxembourg abandoned its neutrality to become a largely honorific member of the western alliance. By contrast, we’re now a largely honorific member of the western alliance declining into de facto neutrality.
Well, okay, the whole war-mongering thing’s not our scene these days. But, in that case, what is? The elderly Irish rocker Sir Bob Geldof recently told Paul Martin to skip the G8 and stay home unless he were prepared to commit to spending 0.7 per cent of Canada’s GNP on overseas aid. This was a very finely crafted sneer, for it was Mr. Martin’s Liberal predecessor, Lester B. Pearson, whose impeccably multilateral international commission came up with the 0.7 per cent target for wealthy nations back in 1969. Canada never got up to more than 0.5 per cent, under Trudeau, and, under Chrétien (and Mr. Martin’s stewardship of the Finance Ministry), it was pared back to 0.25 per cent.
Now I don’t have a lot of use for “aid.” According to a British report, between independence in 1960 and 1999, Nigeria’s politicians looted 220-billion pounds from the nation’s treasury. The more “aid” you toss down the sinkhole, the faster they steal it. But, nonetheless, the virtue of “aid” is one of those shibboleths Trudeaupian Canada professes to believe in. So why don’t we practise it?
In fact, why don’t we practise anything we preach? As of May 2005, the top contributors to UN operations were Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal at Number 4, good grief, and they’re practically on the brink of civil war. Well, okay, we’re not in the Top 10 with all that expendable Asian manpower but c’mon, we must be in there somewhere . . . Number 20) France; 24) Ireland; 29) United Kingdom; 30) United States . . . hey, how’d those two warmongers make the Top 30 peacekeepers? Wait a minute, here we are: Canada, rocketing into the Hit Parade at 33 with a lack of bullet, right between Togo and Turkey. But, to the best of my knowledge, Togo and Benin (28) and Senegal (12) don’t regard peacekeeping as so indispensable to their self-image that they stick it on their currency and brag about it in beer commercials.
So we’re no longer a great military nation. But nor are we a great peacekeeping nation: we do less than notorious sabre-rattlers like Britain and America. Compared to the Scandinavians and the other niceniks we’re a poor aid donor, and our immobile rapid-reaction force is of no practical use in humanitarian crises. M. Chrétien’s legacy-building Africa initiative of 2002 is known only to Canadians. Everywhere else, it’s credited as Tony Blair’s Africa initiative. We have less influence internationally than we did in the 1940s--before we had a flag, an anthem, or our own citizenship. Even if the Trudeaupian vision of Canada were sufficient for a national identity, it suffers from the basic defect of being a bald-faced lie.
Let’s go back to those GDP figures: Canada’s GDP per capita is US$31,500--about three-quarters of the U.S. figure, and, if you’re a visitor from California or Connecticut, Canadians don’t appear especially wealthy. But we supposedly “choose” to pay high taxes because we’re so virtuous. So where does all the money go? Not to the military, not to UN peacekeeping, not to overseas aid. Few other western taxpayers get such a pathetic flatulent squeak of a bang for their buck. Maybe the government could set up a special program to give grants to Quebec marketing firms to investigate where the dough went. But the fact is one of the largest, wealthiest nations in the history of the world is entirely absent from the world scene. It’s not just that we punch below our weight, but that we don’t punch at all.
Far be it for me to suggest that, like Bermuda and the Caymans, we might have done better to forget the responsible-government thing and the British North America Act and live it up as the world’s largest tax haven--and, indeed, the United States’ first onshore tax haven. Many of those wealthy little territories are rather unattractive in the light of day--sunny places full of shady characters, as Somerset Maugham said of Monaco. Too many of the locals are rich, smug and self-obsessed. But, on the other hand, what are we? In our parochial narcissism, we’ve taken on the moral character of those tax havens--without the tax breaks. What a combination.
Oh, well. Maybe they can discuss it at the next ideaCity--if the male strippers fail to show.