Leader-Star News Service February 1996 Archive

If there was going to be an independent review of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it would have been nice if the people doing the review were at least seen as independent.

Instead, the fix was in from the start. Did anyone really expect a challenging and critical look at the CBC from this three-member mandate review committee? How could you, when it was chaired by former CBC president Pierre Juneau and included Peter Herrndorf, head of government-funded public broadcaster TVOntario and a former CBC executive, and communications professor Catherine Murray from Simon Fraser University?

It's a bit like getting the Mother Superior to judge the virtues of the nuns in her convent.

So, rather than a mandate review of Canadian broadcasting and film, what we got was a reaffirmation of the CBC's historical role within the cultural policy of the nation.

Not surprisingly, the committee concluded that the CBC's place in our lives is more crucial than ever. In a fragmented, multichannel universe, with Canada itself deeply divided along regional and linguistic lines, the committee said the CBC's mandate must be strengthened.

"We need Canadian programs and films to enable our citizens to understand one another, to develop a national and community consciousness, to help us shape our own solutions to social and political problems, and to inspire the imagination of our children and express their hopes," the report states.

Who could possibly argue with that? Obviously, any nation needs to see itself, its values and its traditions reflected in its media institutions. But instead of starting from that premise and seeing how, or if, the CBC serves those aims, the mandate review committee took it one step further. The committee members began with the assumption that a national broadcaster, in the traditional form of the current CBC, was essential to achieving the cultural goals we seek.

If this were 1932, that would be true. American radio broadcasting was flooding into Canada, which led to the creation of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission.

The same argument could have been made 20 years ago about TV. The cultural power and influence of the American giant to the south required a national broadcaster that was mandated to pursue specific national and cultural goals.

But clinging to the old model of a single national broadcaster in the 500-channel universe makes little sense. The argument that we need a state-controlled, mass-market broadcaster like the CBC as an outlet for Canadian art and culture has become anachronistic.

In recent years, we've seen what amounts to the democratization of television. Technology has revolutionized the medium and we have gone from old-style broadcasting to the world of narrowcasting.

There now are channels that appeal to the particular interests of specific audiences. There are sports channels, a channel for women, channels dedicated to the arts, weather channels, all-news networks, even a shopping channel. As technology evolves, the menu is going to keep expanding and TV programming will become more and more specialized.

This is a broadcasting world that was not imagined 20 years ago, never mind back in the 1930s when the CBC was created by government as an institution to protect, foster and develop the elusive Canadian identity.

As such, the mandate committee has produced a vision of the CBC that is firmly stuck in a media environment of the past. The days when the CBC was the only outlet for Canadian programming, good or bad, are gone. With it should go the idea of the CBC as a national network that dedicates itself to programming in Canadian arts, culture, drama, news and current affairs. In a world of specialty channels, it is impossible to justify the monstrosity of a $1.3 billion network to provide services others can, and already do, offer.

The strength of, and ultimately the justification for, the CBC in a multi-channel world is its news and current-affairs programming. Unlike Canadian drama and other cultural programs that have access to specialty channels, there is no alternative for the news dimension of CBC. In fact, CBC has recognized this by creating Newsworld, its own 24-hour news and public affairs channel.

What should happen is that CBC's broadcasting role be reduced to that of Newsworld. It would become purely a news and Canadian public-affairs network, leaving the cultural programming to the growing array of specialty broadcasters dedicated to audiences with those tastes.

If the government wants to promote cultural programming, it can offer grants and incentives for productions by artistic groups carried by channels dedicated to that type of programming.

The idea that we need a costly, bureaucratic and wasteful CBC to deliver us our culture is no longer valid.

If you're wondering why the NDP government is treading so lightly in its plans to restructure the Crowns, it has to do with what it learned six years ago -- an episode that included Louise Simard's one and only foray into journalism.

It was in May, 1990 when the "privately run" Institute for Saskatchewan Enterprise was holding its champagne summit on privatization -- one they claimed would command worldwide attention and would be the crowning glory to former premier Grant Devine's privatization agenda.

But by May 1990, the privatization issue Devine claimed would be the "NDP's Alamo" had already turned into his own personal Alamo. The NDP had forced him to abandon his plans to sell SaskEnergy a year earlier.

Still, the PCs were determined to make this special conference a success.

The NDP was just as determined to see it fail.

Outside the Saskatoon conference centre NDP MLA Dwain Lingenfelter threatened his party would make the 1989 debate "look like a Sunday school picnic" if there was any more privatization.

Meanwhile, Simard was busy attempting to infiltrate the conference.

She registered as a reporter for The Commonwealth -- the monthly guide to proper New Democratic thought.

Perhaps suspicious of an ink-stained scribe who could afford a 7,000-square-foot mansion in Condie, the convention organizers told Simard to either fork over the $1,150 regular delegate's fee or hit the road. Simard hit the road.

With or without the NDP's opposition, however, the opulent conference was widely perceived as a failure -- nothing more than a shameless promotion of the PC agenda.

It was typical of the problem that plagued Devine's entire privatization plans.

"The way he (Devine) did it, he provoked the natural historical tendencies and forced us to oppose," said Opposition Leader Roy Romanow back then.

"If he had been more conciliatory and statesmanlike, he might have had more success," he said.

Evidently, Romanow seems determined not to make the same mistakes.

Six years later, problems in the Crown sector are arguably greater than ever.

Competition has become a reality, restructuring and downsizing are needed to handle internal debt and rate regulation is a constant headache.

This becomes the basis for the NDP government's review of the Crowns where, senior government sources say, everything -- including privatization -- will be on the table.

But don't bet, however, Romanow will allow his government to blunder into another political debate like Devine did.

While the NDP's great debate on the Crowns will also culminate with a great conference this June, any similarities stop here.

The NDP wants its Crown review conference conducted by the non-partisan universities instead of vested ideological interests. It will come only after a series of provincewide town hall meetings and government officials say it will be a fraction (around $25,000) of the cost of the 1990 privatization conference.

Of course, any NDP involvement in a conference supportive of privatization would be seen by many as the death knell of the credibility of the party that drew its line in the sand at SaskEnergy privatization. Bet this is where we will most likely see Romanow putting lessons from the past to best use.

By keeping "all options on the table," it will be easy for Romanow to go with the prevailing political wind.

Should polls and the town hall meetings show support for privatization, the NDP could "reluctantly" follow the public will.

But should public opinion suggest differently, we are as likely to see Romanow using this conference and debate to oppose privatization. After all, this is a government that loves to set up strawmen just to knock them down. Remember the debate over health user fees in the 1993 budget?

Most likely, what will emerge is a typical Romanow compromise: limited privatization and the selling of shares in Cameco, but no sell off of basic utility Crowns like SaskTel and SaskPower.

For the NDP's conference, bet all doors will be open.

Remember Francis Fukuyama? He's the American social scientist and author who created a huge stir almost six years ago when he wrote an article entitled The End of History.

His argument was that the demise of communism, as a reality in the former Soviet Union and as an ideology in the world, was more than just a passing phase in world history. It was the end of modern history as we know it.

The death of communism meant that capitalism had triumphed. Gone was the dialectical conflict between the two great ideologies that philosophers such as Hegel maintained (and Fukuyama agreed) was the engine that drove history. So, without the clash of ideas at the centre of the world's political and economic debate, history itself would cease.

Of course, Fukuyama was speaking figuratively, not literally. Events would continue to unfold and history would go on. His point was that it would be a different kind of history, one where a consensus around liberal ideology would guide the course of human affairs. Political conflict would be framed by other forces, such as nationalism, religion and race.

Many on the left denounced and ridiculed Fukuyama's thesis. They could not accept the finality at the core of his argument, which was that the great political debate of left and right, communism (or socialism) versus liberalism, was over. The western ideal of democratic liberalism had finally won the day.

But, by now, there can be no arguing Fukuyama's point. The convergence of ideologies has transformed politics into a debate about specifics and tactics, rather than ideas. There no longer is any real political argument about the supremacy of market forces in what has become an integrated global economy. Those on the left, who retain their belief in the role of the state to shape economics, might not like what's happened, but they have no answers on how the economic world can be changed.

The evidence that proves Fukuyama's position is now everywhere. We're surrounded by it. All you have to do is look at the political debate happening in Canada, whether it's at the federal or provincial level.

In Ottawa, the Chretien government is no different from national governments the world over. It subscribes to the notion of debt reduction, greater market economics through trade liberalization and less government, and increasing individual responsibility. Government is seen as a tool for economic progress only in so far as it facilitates growth in the private-sector economy.

What we've seen is the political debate take the shape that Fukuyama predicted. Instead of it being waged on a left-right ideological basis, politics in Canada is now driven by the nationalism of Quebec, regional grievances and the struggle for power between federal and provincial governments.

But forget Ottawa. Take at look at what has happened in Saskatchewan to appreciate how Fukuyama's End of History argument fits the new political paradigm in this province.

For decades, Saskatchewan was the crucible of the ideological debate within Canadian politics. It was here in the 1930s that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was formed, embracing the Regina Manifesto that called for the eradication of capitalism.

The CCF and, for years after, its successor, the New Democratic Party, supplied the political debate with the ideological conflict that kept politics a dynamic and evolving process. There were sharp differences between parties over both the role of government in the economy and the nature of the economy itself.

But those days are all but gone. Over the last decade, and more particularly since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there has been a transformation of the political debate around the world.

Saskatchewan has not been immune from these forces and our politics vividly reflects that change.

There is virtually nothing substantive that differentiates the Romanow NDP government from the positions of either the Liberals or Tories. The political debate now has been reduced to the fringes, where the combatants argue over the process rather than the goal, the implementation instead of the outcome.

There is now consensus on what politics has traditionally been all about, namely the role of government in the province's economy and society. The question now is not what we do, but how fast we do it and what are the specific policy tools we use to get there.

So we're left with an NDP government that reflects a political consensus where the clash of ideas has vanished. Politics in Saskatchewan, like everywhere else, has become a kind of empty, sterile exercise where ideas no longer matter. Ask yourself when the last real conflict of vision occurred between competing political parties in this province, or in Canada.

Maybe history has gone on, but, as Fukuyama predicted, it is no longer fuelled by the ideological clash of left and right.

Much to the amazement of those of us who monitor the workings of government on a daily basis, sometimes it does actually work.

Thursday's handling of the Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) rate changes is a case in point and much of the credit goes to Labor Minister Doug Anguish.

As problems in government go, we likely did not need to spend $50,000 to Toronto-based actuarial consultant Bruce Neville to discover there was a serious problem with the WCB's rate structure.

Common sense told us that.

When a bookstore owner is suddenly faced with a 50-per-cent increase in his 1996 rates or when a small town newspaper that doesn't even own its own printing press finds out its workplace has magically become 185-per-cent more dangerous, there is a breakdown in the system.

In fact, 27,489 of the province's 35,192 business covered by WCB were facing increases roughly totalling $20 million -- an average 13.9-per-cent increase.

Given that the WCB did not have an unfunded liability, many businesses -- not surprisingly -- viewed the rate hikes as nothing short of gouging.

These external problems were not the only ones.

The unions -- who have been calling for the head of WCB chairman Stan Cameron for years now -- spoke of internal problems at the WCB including its decision to lay off rehabilitation workers and spend hundred of thousands of dollars on outside consultants.

Though for perhaps different reasons, labor and business were united in the view there were big problems at the WCB.

Of course, identifying a problem in government is not exactly a unique skill.

Governments tend to be no less complicated than a space shuttle and perhaps every bit as inclined not to get off the ground or -- heaven forbid -- blow up.

When something goes wrong, it's something we can all see.

The skill in government is finding the solutions to those inevitable problems and finding a politically acceptable method of implementing them.

In hiring Neville at the hefty $50,000 price tag, Anguish did just that.

The Neville report quickly determined that the methods for determining rates were 20 years out of date and not based on accepted principles of insurance.

What kept them from spinning out of control before was the manual adjustment of rates known as the "prudence principle" -- a rule the WCB applied to rate increases limiting them to no more than 50 per cent. (It was the abandonment of the prudence principle for 1996 that caused the enormous jump in rates.)

But Neville's report recognized: "Clearly, it is inappropriate to subject any industry to this volatility in assessment rates."

He recommended business only pay $7 million -- not $20 million -- in additional assessments in 1996. It works out to an average 4.8-per-cent increase with no more than a 10.5-per-cent increase for any industry.

And while the Neville recommendations will mean WCB revenues will fall $10 million this year to $144 million, the changes even drew praise from labor because they didn't let companies with high injury or fatality rates off the hook or reduce benefits to injured workers.

Of course, there are some of you who might argue nothing worked here: That the changes only came because of the howls of protest from business. That the NDP government could have avoided paying a consultant $50,000 if it had just ensured its politically-appointed board was doing its job properly in the first place.

Keeping with the space shuttle analogy: Perhaps problems should be fixed before launch?

They may be right. To say government works does not necessarily imply it works perfectly.

But Anguish could also have as easily taken the SaskPower approach where the public's concern over unfair rate increases was completely ignored even with a so-called public review process.

Any time government stops, listens to the people, identifies a problem with policy and corrects that policy at the risk of publicly admitting it had been wrong in the first place, it's done something right.

Believe it or not, government worked Thursday.

The only people who call for a ban on public opinion polls are politicians near the end of election campaigns they are about to lose.

But given today's increasing use of polls by political parties as either propaganda tools or replacements for informed debate, they may have a point.

At the very least, such polls that are little more than another shoddy, deliberate attempt to mislead -- like the one our tax dollars allowed the PC caucus to get away with this week -- should be exposed for what they are.

Unveiling his $8,000 survey by CanWest Opinion, PC leader Bill Boyd said the poll will be just one tool his caucus will use this session.

Perhaps better quality tools are in order.

A sample size of 505 people -- no doubt, an attempt to cut costs by limiting the number of telephone calls -- gave this poll a plus-or-minus-4.5-per-cent margin of error. That's twice as inaccurate as normal, leaving the findings of many questions in doubt.

For example, results of a question asking if people supported or opposed having taxpayer-funded abortions de-insured under the Canada Health Act showed a somewhat surprising 42.2 per cent in support and 47.3 per cent opposed (with 10.5 per cent having no opinion).

But with a 4.5-per-cent margin of error, that "opposition" to de-insure abortions could be as high as 52.5 per cent or as low as 42.8 per cent. Conversely, support to end taxpayer-funded abortions might be anywhere from 38.7 to 46.7 per cent. In other words, it tells us virtually nothing.

Boyd blew the accuracy issue off by saying this poll was more about a feel for public opinion than an accurate reflection. Poll-lite, so to speak.

More accurately, the poll seemed designed to reflect Tory opinion of public opinion.

Much of its methodology seemed to involve punctuating key questions with phrases like "to encourage new job creation" to achieve an affirmative result coinciding with the Tories' agenda.

Should the government reduce the amount of regulation of business in Saskatchewan to encourage new job creation? Should the government reduce the various fees charged to Saskatchewan businesses to encourage job creation? Should the government lower taxes to encourage businesses to create more new jobs?

Boyd acknowledged some questions were "a little bit leading" (misleading?), but insisted the real beauty of the poll was it asked questions government polling doesn't ask.

That's somewhat true.

Unfortunately, we likely didn't need to take a poll to determine 86 per cent of us think utility rates wouldn't be as high if Crown corporations did a better job of controlling their own costs.

Come to think of it, a poll rattling off 60 such questions on as many different topics doesn't really add much to public debate on any issue. (Should we privatize Crown corporations? Depends. Which ones?) Unfortunately, political parties understand the public has come to believe pollsters -- any pollster, regardless of track record, survey size or methodology -- as infallible clairvoyants.

And, sadly, we journalists who've tended to view almost any poll as front-page, top-of-newscast material have contributed to this malaise. Claire Hoy -- who in his 1989 book Margin of Error tore a mile-wide strip off the entire Canadian polling industry -- summed it up best:

"In almost any other area, journalists tend to be skeptical practitioners of the classic I'm-from-Missouri-show-me attitude," Hoy wrote. "But polls are routinely regurgitated as fact, taken at face value, with journalists showing little interest and even less knowledge, in exposing the shortcomings of the survey technique.

"To a large extent, polls, rather than complementing experience and personal judgment, have replaced them in journalists, just as they have in politicians."

When we aren't vigilant, politicians tend to try and get away with whatever they can.

There has long been a simplistic dimension to the argument that much of the solution to Canada's economic and fiscal ills rests with lower interest rates.

The root of the problem, we're told, is that "real" interest rates, the gap between the Bank of Canada rate and the rate of inflation, is too large. If interest rates were at, or near, the rate of inflation, good things would start to happen. Companies would borrow money to expand, consumers would use credit to buy, overall demand in the economy would increase, jobs would be created.

From this would flow the fiscal spinoffs for deficit-ridden governments we all seek. People who now are a drain on the public purse, because they collect unemployment insurance or welfare, would start paying taxes instead. Revenues to government would increase, deficits would disappear and we would have the money we need to pay for social programs. In short, it would be the 1970s all over again.

This is the scenario that is essentially at the heart of the alternative federal budget released this week by the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. As one of the last holdouts of Keynesianism in Canada, the CCPA calls for a loosening of monetary policy coupled with an increase in spending by government. If that happened, the economy would be stimulated and Canada would grow itself out of its problems of unemployment and debt.

The alternative budget maintains its approach would meet or exceed Finance Minister Paul Martin's own three-per-cent-of-GDP deficit target by next year and produce a balanced budget within four years.

However, this is exactly the opposite of the fiscal strategy Martin has followed for two years, and is certain to continue following in his March budget. The alternative budget admits as much, predicting $5 billion in spending cuts in Martin's coming budget. "The twin objectives of the Liberal government's economic policy are to curb inflation and eradicate the deficit. The goal of employment creation has been sacrificed to these fiscal priorities," the CCPA budget states.

The fight against inflation has been the focus of Martin's monetary and fiscal policy. He says the best way to get interest rates down and keep them low is by "getting the fundamentals right''. That means keeping inflation low and reducing the deficit. Do that and you will force down interest rates and economic growth will naturally follow. The fastest way to raise interest rates, Martin will tell you, is to monetize the debt, as suggested by the alternative budget. Increased spending and having the Bank of Canada inflate the money supply will inevitably lead to inflation and higher interest rates, which no one wants.

But it seems to me that the emphasis on interest rates misses the point of what is wrong with the economy. Canada does not have a problem of high interest rates. Currently, the prime lending rate in Canada is seven per cent, far below the U.S. level of 8.25 per cent. The prime rate in Britain is 7.25 per cent, it is seven per cent in France and 11.5 per cent in Italy. The only countries in the G7 with lower prime rates than Canada are Germany and Japan.

So the argument that Canada suffers from high interest rates does not measure up. Given the amount of Canadian debt held by foreign lenders, it's not realistic to expect that, in an integrated global money market, Canada would be able to finance its debt with lower rates.

If the central problem of the Canadian economy is not high interest rates, then what is it? Surely something is wrong when we limp along with a totally unacceptable rate of 10.5-per-cent unemployment while corporate profits are at record levels.

The core of the economic dilemma in Canada is psychological. Individually, we have little faith in the economy or our own economic security, which has created a crisis of confidence. Interest rates could be two per cent and people would still not spend because they receive nothing but negative messages, particularly from government.

It's at this level that the CCPA ideas have some merit. University of Manitoba economist John Loxley, who helped prepare the alternative budget, argues that government needs to address the "tremendous insecurity" people feel. "Interest rate reduction alone is not going to do it. Unless you have a job and a sense that the government is going to maintain the social safety net, people's attitudes are not going to change," Loxley says.

His argument is that inflationary pressures from the alternative budget would be mild at best, perhaps totalling one per cent. Given the excess capacity in the economy reflected by double-digit unemployment, there is reason to believe the economy could tolerate a small and temporary inflationary blip.

With 1.5 million Canadians looking for work, a government-inspired attitude adjustment sounds like good advice.

It was something you might expect from a tinpot dictator. But the prime minister of Canada?

The images of Jean Chretien grabbing a protester by the neck, putting his hand over the man's mouth and then pushing him aside, to be wrestled to the ground by police security, should alarm us all.And not because the incident amounted to a worrisome breakdown in protection for the prime minister. What is troubling was how Chretien reacted, how he handled the situation, how he treated the demonstrator and what it says about the prime minister himself.

Amazingly, the initial reaction to the incident in Hull has focused on the security issue. Coming only a few months after a late-night intruder made his way into Chretien's home, the talk has been how this was another serious breach of security. Confronted face-to-face with an angry demonstrator, Chretien had to literally take matters into his own hands.

But did he? The people in charge of security believe not. They say there was no problem, never any threat to the PM's personal safety. Remember, this was Canada's Flag Day and the crowd was made up largely of school children.

The demonstrators are said to have numbered only about 12 and were hardly menacing. They merely chanted their slogans against Chretien and his government. Nothing very threatening about that. If anything, there would be more cause for concern if these sort of demonstrators were not allowed to congregate and express themselves to the prime minister. The fact they are there, and allowed to be there, is partly what makes something like a Flag Day relevant. We have a country that values, protects and encourages free speech.

One official from the RCMP security service that protects the prime minister dismissed any suggestion that Chretien was in danger, or that his security had lapsed.

"Our analysis shows that the prime minister was adequately protected at all times," said Sergeant Andre Guertin, who described the incident as a "minor altercation". Guertin says the RCMP did not see the man as any kind of threat to Chretien.

So, if the prime minister was in no danger and security had not failed, an obvious question is raised. What was Chretien doing? Why did he act like he was some kind of crude head of an authoritarian state that does not tolerate dissent? He even looked the part in sunglasses, tilted upward as if in military style.

Can you imagine the outrage, the public condemnation, if Brian Mulroney had acted this way. How about Lucien Bouchard grabbing a federalist demonstrator?

The point is, what Chretien did was wholly unacceptable. We have not only a right, but a duty, to expect more out of our political leaders than for them to behave in a way you would expect from a professional wrestler. Is this how Chretien believes you deal with dissent in a democratic society? Rough them up and shut them up?

There will be those who will say this is a gross overreaction to a minor incident. Perhaps the prime minister acted improperly and momentarily lost his cool, but so what? That's where it ends. We all make mistakes and, given the recent break-in at 24 Sussex, Chretien perhaps has a reason to be on edge about his safety.

But to do that also ignores the fact we demand more from our political leaders. Besides, if anyone should be able to deal with a few demonstrators, it is Chretien. He has been in politics for 30 years and has always talked about how his experience is a great asset because he realizes it is important not to overreact in politics. Why then, did he?

If anything, what this country needs right now is the kind of political leadership that engenders respect from virtually everyone. We need not all support Chretien in a partisan sense, but we need to have reason to at least respect the person and the position of prime minister. We might not all agree on his government's policies, but we must be able to recognize our values as a national community -- things like tolerance, civility, freedom of speech -- reflected in the position of prime minister.

It's at that level where Chretien's actions are the most disturbing. Perhaps it was a momentary lapse in judgment under the stress of a confrontation, but that doesn't make it any less troubling. The whole point is what this brief incident says about Chretien. He seemed completely rattled and, according to some reports, even disoriented for a time before and after the incident.

Like it or not, this incident tells us a great deal about the prime minister and his ability to cope with personally difficult situations. The last person in Canada who should act the way Chretien did is the prime minister.

In a country filled with growing stress and tension, what does that tell us?

The idea of reforming government is as old as government itself. It's probably safe to assume there hasn't been a government that, at one point or another, didn't pledge to remake itself so that it would be more effective in doing what the public wants.

In some ways, the talk of government renewal is probably a healthy democratic sign. It demonstrates that those in power are responsive to public opinion and seek to change government so that it better reflects the changing needs of society. Who can argue with that?

No doubt, this is the signal Premier Roy Romanow wanted to send in a provincewide television address Sunday night. After what he called "the most extensive" public consultations in Saskatchewan's history, Romanow outlined how his government would respond to what the public said it wanted.

He promised that government would become smaller, more efficient and better focused. It would take the public's advice and make sure that it continued to provide important social services, while supporting economic development through market expansion.

But if people feel skeptical about the promise of government reform, there is good reason for it. They've heard this many times before. It's deja-vu all over again.

The language of government reform never changes. The promise is always to eliminate duplication and overlap, reduce administrative costs, cut red tape, make programs and initiatives more responsive. The goal of government reform and reorganization is always to make government better.

But, inevitably, the results never meet the expectations created by what sound like good intentions. Just as one government follows another, one government reform is followed by another, then another. Yet nothing much ever changes. Departments might merge, or disappear completely, but others emerge only to become the objective of yet another round of government reformation later.

This raises the question of whether government is capable of reinventing itself. There is good reason to believe that significant reform of government by government is impossible. As an idea, it's a non-starter. You might tinker around the edges, but any substantive, structural reform won't happen. There is simply too much power vested in the bureaucracy for any major changes to occur.

As a result, anything that alters the power relationship in government is almost certainly doomed. Talking about government reform might sound good, but the chances of anything significant coming from it are remote.

The reason is simple. Political power in government is concentrated in the hands of cabinet. The power of cabinet comes from only one source -- its control over the bureaucracy.

If cabinet's authority is rooted in its ability to use the power of the government bureaucracy, does anyone really believe cabinet will diminish its bureaucratic influence by devolving power from government? The fact is political power comes from only one source: government.

So the inevitable result of government reform and restructuring is merely a shuffling of chairs. As Allan Blakeney once noted when the Grant Devine government announced a major "restructuring" and "streamlining" of the bureaucracy, these plans are always presented as revolutionary, but nothing much really ever changes.

That is not to say efforts at reforming government are not well intentioned. Politicians always believe they can make changes for the better and while there might be incremental improvements, progress is always exceedingly slow and politically painful.

In Romanow's case, the idea of government reform probably carries more weight now than it might have in the past. The fiscal pressures of government and the psychological factor of a new century looming on the horizon give the notion of government reform some political impetus.

Moreover, there is clearly public support for change in government. As Romanow noted in his speech, 73 per cent of people who took part in the government's public consultation process believe "the roles and structures of government should be reviewed".

But that kind of public attitude favoring reform of government seldom varies. Ask people at any time if they think government needs to reform itself, become more efficient, effective and responsive, and a significant majority will agree. The notion of government reform is a constant theme within public opinion.

It's for that reason politicians in one government after another inevitably talk about and implement reform as a way to address public opinion. But as experience has shown, nothing ever really happens.

What matters is that, for a time, people think things are changing.

When it hit the bookstores more than a year ago, reaction in this country to the book "Break-Up: The Coming End of Canada and the Stakes for America" ranged anywhere from scorn to disbelief.

The thesis presented by author Lansing Lamont that Canada and Quebec were headed towards a bloody civil war was largely dismissed as the preposterous musing of an ill-informed American.

The former Time magazine journalist and head of Canadian affairs for the Americas Society in New York created a futuristic glimpse of violent ethnic conflict in the streets of Montreal. As a kind of hybrid that blended historical fact with speculation of what lies ahead for Canada, the book seemed to be taken more seriously by Americans than ourselves.

For example, noted American academic Seymour Martin Lipset, who has spent much of his career studying Canada, suggests the book was a wake-up call for those who do not see the dangerous currents running through Canada's national unity debate.

"The book warns those who think this can happen easily of the possibility of a rude surprise comparable to events in the former Soviet Union," Lipset says.

But suddenly, and disturbingly for many, the notion of the Quebec issue leading to civil conflict doesn't seem quite so outrageous. Certainly the temperature of the debate was elevated last week when Prime Minister Jean Chretien embraced the notion that an independent Quebec could itself be divided.

When the prime minister said "if Canada is divisible, Quebec is divisible," he echoed the position taken publicly by his new Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion.

In an instant, Chretien validated the growing hard-line attitude against the separatists, both inside Quebec and throughout the rest of Canada. With a sense that Quebec separation is inevitable after last October's narrow referendum result, the political agenda clearly reflects that fatalistic attitude.

The focus has increasingly turned to the terms of secession. But many dread both the direction and tone the national unity debate has taken. All of a sudden, Lamont's scenario of civil unrest in Quebec has entered the realm of mainstream political discourse.

Premier Roy Romanow is among those who has lamented Chretien's comments. He argues the talk of partitioning an independent Quebec, to accommodate specific communities that want to remain part Canada, is the wrong focus for the debate.

The speculation about partition, Romanow fears, will become a "self-fulfilling prophecy" because it acknowledges the eventuality of an independent Quebec and what shape it might take.

Moreover, Romanow suggests Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard will use the talk of Quebec's borders as a starting point in the discussion of Quebec's secession.

But others see the talk as more menacing than merely counter-productive. Historian Desmond Morton of McGill University doesn't mince his words. He calls it the biggest "bone-headed move" of many made by the Chretien government in its handling of Quebec.

"It all depends what your purpose is," Morton says. "If you're preparing to split up the country and have a civil war, then this is a pretty good way to do it."

While he doesn't deny the issue of Quebec's borders is a legitimate question to raise, Morton says it creates a "blind rage" among francophone Quebecers and does nothing to advance the cause of keeping Canada intact. He asks for Saskatchewan people to remember how they felt back in the days of the battles with Ottawa over control of natural resources.

"You felt pushed around by an alien government in Ottawa. Well, Quebecers aren't any different from other Canadians.

The majority want to be a part of Canada. But if it's on the basis of being kicked around and frightened into it they won't want to very much, or not for very long, or under any circumstances, if they can get out if it."

A similar view is shared by Queen's University professor John Whyte, regarded as one of Canada's foremost constitutional experts.

Whyte says he is concerned about the debate over Quebec's borders because he believes it merely advances the cause of the separatists. Experience has shown in the past that such bravado has worked against the cause of national unity.

By threatening Quebecers, Whyte says the argument for independence is strengthened in Quebec because the majority in the rest of Canada will be seen as a belligerent force that wants to punish Quebecers.

But underlying that is a much more dangerous fact. "What's happening is we're tapping into a sentiment of territorial conflict and when you bring territorial conflict into a nationalist movement,it often turns out to be pretty bloody," Whyte says.

"All the evidence is that this sort of talk merely steels the resolve of those who see themselves as a distinct nation with the need for autonomy to protect themselves from a threatening outside force."

Others, however, argue there is nothing particularly frightening about the challenges to a separate Quebec's territorial integrity.

University of Saskatchewan constitutional lawyer Howard McConnell says when countries dissolve, borders almost always are redrawn.

"It's not an incendiary idea to assert that if the broader nation-state is divisible, Quebec is also divisible. There's a logical symmetry to it," McConnell says.

He also notes that polls show a majority of Quebecers acknowledge that Indians should have the right to autonomy in their traditional lands of northern Quebec.

For that matter, McConnell says that not changing Quebecs borders would probably be just as explosive as attempting to redraw them. Minority communities in Quebec, whether anglophone, allophone or aboriginal, will demand their own right to self-determination.

As such, he thinks a revision of borders should Quebec separate is inevitable.

If that's the case, the question becomes who decides what the borders will be and how is it achieved? The answer where that leads is something many would rather not contemplate.

When Morton thinks of the civil strife suggested in Lamont's book, he says that in his "more optimistic moments" he used to think it would never happen. Last week, he and many others began having doubts.

Contrary to what Premier Roy Romanow said last week, he knows full well how important "small costs" are.

Especially when it comes to persuading the people to swallow the bigger costs that actually do affect them.

Romanow made the comment last week when asked if it was fair that taxpayers were shelling out $30,000 for his half-hour televised address Sunday night. "I really say we've got to get off this business of concentrating on small costs," Romanow said.

"Thirty thousand dollars is a lot of money perhaps to you, and it certainly is to me, but when you're looking at a $5.1-billion budget and you're looking, above all, at the nature to reconstruct Saskatchewan?."

Close your eyes and you'd think it was Grant Devine talking. (Stop it, Roy, you're scaring us.)

Justifying taxpayer-paid-for propaganda because it only costs three cents per Saskatchewan resident is complete hogwash.

Extending that argument, Sunday night's address could have been most efficiently distributed through a one-page news release at a single penny per photocopy. (Not factoring in the salaries of the umpteen hacks and advisers needed to prepare such propaganda.)

We already knew about government plans to cut red tape for business and review the Crown corporations and we've certainly heard, ad nauseam that Saskatchewan's problems can be blamed on federal transfer payment cuts.

No way would the NDP have ever let Grant Devine get away with what amounted to a free-time political advertisement.

In fact, they didn't.

"If any network gives any politician free air time without it being an emergency and without it being publicly stated why it is an emergency, then I think there is a problem," said Ed Tchorzewski in March 1990, referring to a similar thinly-veiled partisan address from Devine.

"It seems to me the premier is looking for a free ride in order to shore up his political image."

That this NDP government can use as many tax dollars as it needs to swill out propaganda dressed up as "results from our public consultation" is a travesty.

The party should get the bill for Sunday night, as they have for Romanow's past televised addresses. Failing that, the bill should go to some limited, semi-political account already in government like the NDP caucus allowance.

But if you're still unconvinced this was a political exercise, consider the one tiny news nugget that did emerge Sunday night.

It, too, is a "small cost."

Once past the fed-bashing and the charade of reporting results from his poorly-attended public consultations, we learned Romanow is "looking at" reducing the size of cabinet and will cut the number of ministerial assistants (MAs) and freeze their wages. It was a near-meaningless gesture for a couple of reasons.

Given that Romanow just added a net four more $90,000-a-year cabinet ministers last November, there will be no real savings here. (Arguably, we'll still be behind.)

Similarly, the annual 4.3-per-cent salary increase MAs automatically receive only amounts to about $200,000 each year (presuming they don't wind up with pay hikes through "reclassifications.")

And even after subtracting 10 or so political jobs (again, assuming these people are really laid off and not just hidden in the departments or the Crowns), real savings likely won't add up to much more than $600,000. (More likely, Romanow's real "savings" will barely exceed the $30,000 cost of the broadcast.)

By Romanow's own argument, some $600,000 in savings would be a "small cost" in a $5.1-billion budget.

But it's one small cost that's vital to Romanow.

Axing 214 jobs from crop insurance the very next day -- and with more job losses and cuts to come in the March budget -- it was crucial for Romanow to make it appear as if his cabinet is suffering too.

An uncensored and politically unopposed TV address was the best way to make that point.

Don't be fooled. Such small costs are important to the Romanow government.

Unfortunately, they're important for the wrong reasons.

There is a perverse irony to this latest twist in Saskatchewan politics, in which the Romanow government has taken to lecturing municipal governments about efficiency and cost effectiveness.

We saw it a few weeks ago at the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) convention, when the usual phalanx of provincial cabinet ministers put in an appearance to rub shoulders with the municipal politicians. One of the rituals of Saskatchewan politics is the cabinet "bear-pit" session at the SUMA convention each January, when local politicians have a chance to confront their provincial masters.

In a speech to the convention, Romanow talked about the urgent need for local government to become more efficient. He explained how Saskatchewan people were overburdened by 847 urban and rural municipal governments and called on SUMA to find ways for municipal governments to merge, or at least work more closely together.

The same message was delivered to a provincial television audience by the premier last Sunday night. Using charts and assorted other props, Romanow showed how Saskatchewan has more municipal governments than any other province. For example, Ontario has almost 10 times Saskatchewan's population, but 16 fewer municipal governments. Alberta, with two-and-a-half times our population, has 370 rural and urban governments.

If a person didn't know better, you would think local politicians should be taking advice from their learned provincial counterparts. Certainly, that's what the premier would like us to believe.

But don't be seduced by the Romanow government's holier-than-thou attitude when it talks about the excesses of municipal government. The fact is, local politicians have little to learn from provincial government.

One of the best, and most objective, ways to compare the relative merits of provincial versus municipal government is in fiscal terms. While the provincial government brought the province to the brink of financial default, local governments were busy balancing their books.

By law, municipal governments are not allowed to run deficits to pay for operating expenses. They must live within their means. In other words, local politicians face the kind of financial discipline that provincial politicians often talk virtuously about, but seldom actually experience.

As you might expect, many municipal politicians are coming to a slow boil over the Romanow government's attempt to paint local government as some kind of huge, wasteful, expensive monstrosity of bureaucracy. They don't appreciate being depicted as a primary example of how government needs to be reduced and made more efficient.

You can hardly blame them.

It is not as if local government hasn't recognized the need for greater co-operation between municipalities as a way to reduce costs. Indeed, four years ago, SUMA launched its own task force on urban government renewal, but was never able to get the Romanow government's attention. All of a sudden, provincial politicians have seen the light and only now are catching up to what local politicians have been grappling with for years.

The problem many in SUMA have with Romamow's talk of municipal amalgamation is that the idea is presented in such a simplistic manner. It is based entirely on the number of municipal governments, which is given as a prima facie case that restructuring and reform is necessary. What is missing is talk about the roles and responsibilities restructured municipal government faces now and in the future.

But what provokes municipal politicians even more is that they're being cast as villains, when it fact they have carried much of the burden in the Romanow government's deficit fight.

Since the NDP took power, revenue-sharing grants from the province to urban municipalities have fallen by 30 per cent. Local government has been forced to swallow the cuts imposed by the province and maintain balanced budgets.

Talk to local politicians and they have trouble containing their disdain as they watch the slanging match unfold between the province and Ottawa over cuts in federal transfer payments to Saskatchewan.

Both Romanow and Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon criticize the federal government for cutting transfer payments to the provinces by 25 per cent, while overall federal spending is going down by only nine per cent. Municipal politicians have trouble feeling sorry for the Romanow government when it served up 30-per-cent cuts to municipalities to balance its own budget.

As one SUMA official notes, "It's something that irks our people. That type of hypocrisy is not lost on our members."

But what makes it all the more aggravating is having provincial government politicians tell people in municipal government to get their act together.

It should be the other way around.

The first time Ron Osika arrived in Regina, he stepped off the train at the station that is now a casino and telephoned his parents to inform them of the momentous decision he had just made.

It was 1957 and the square-jawed 18-year-old was about to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A call to the folks back in North Battleford would be the best way to break the good news, Osika thought. Unfortunately, his Polish-born parents neither read nor wrote English and sometimes had trouble with verbal translations.

"Ronnie? The police have got you?" his worried mother asked.

Not quite, ma.

He telephoned a sister and had her explain . . .

Almost 40 years later, a series of unexpected twists and turns have brought Osika back to Regina to lead the Official Opposition against some of the most seasoned front benchers in Canadian provincial politics. It's not something Osika imagined 40 years ago, 15 years ago, three years ago or even six months ago, for that matter.

But he's hoping his lifetime of dealing with the unexpected has somewhat prepared him for the role.

Osika's first posting was in Virden, Man. "I had a big gun and I came out swinging to fight crime and/or evil," Osika laughs.

After a couple of somewhat unpleasant encounters with large individuals whose opinion of the law differed from that of the young constable, Osika quickly learned discussion and reason were often less painful than coming out swinging.

He was also exposed to social problems he had never seen before. In the late 1950s, Indians were not allowed in Manitoba beer parlors.

"I learned that my job was not only to go out and get the bad guys, but to look after people that were in trouble," Osika said. "That's part of Liberalism."

Osika spent from 1972 to 1981 as a field trainer for graduating RCMP officers, helped train Canada's very first native constables and is credited by RCMP historian D. Bruce Seally as "the man who started cross-cultural training for the RCMP."

After 25 years, Staff-Sgt. Osika left the force in 1981 expecting to continue in his career of training young police officers at some place like the Saskatchewan Police College. Training field managers for Saskatchewan Crop Insurance wasn't in the plans. Although he knew little about agriculture, Osika became a candidate for a job with the crown corporation. The government was more interested in his experience training adults, and was confident he'd learn the rest.

In two years, Osika became Crop Insurance's manager of field operations and put his police background to use by instituting an audit system for claims to crack down on fraud.

Given that he had never been politically active and was hired under an NDP administration, the last thing Osika expected was to be fired when the NDP took power in 1991.

In February 1992, he found out differently. To this day can only speculate why.

"My name appeared on a lot of letters folks (in difficulty with crop insurance) didn't like," he said.

"I felt if I could ever get into a position to do away with this sort of thing . . ."

Politics was something he never considered, but when executives from the Yorkton-Meville Reform Party Association came looking for candidates shortly after, Osika found out he was more interested than he ever thought he'd be.

"I was all fired up that something was not right," he said.

Osika finished second in the April 1992 Reform nomination to now MP Garry Breitkreuz. His interest in politics and the Reformers in particular -- "a little bit too extreme," he says -- quickly waned.

But while working as an ad salesman for the Fort Qu'Appelle Times, Osika was encouraged by former leader Lynda Haverstock to seek the provincial Liberal nomination for Melville in 1994.

"What's transpired since kind of boggles the mind," he said of Haverstock's resignation last November.

What the Liberals have gone through is not unlike a divorce, and Osika admits the job he has been given is as unexpected as it is intimidating.

There again, it won't be the first time Osika has dealt with the unexpected.

He's sort of made a career of it.

SAN FRANCISCO -- It is a remarkable sight watching the political establishment in this country quake with fear as Pat Buchanan's quest for the Republican presidential nomination gains momentum. Understand, none of this was supposed to happen.

Originally, Buchanan was dismissed as little more than a fringe candidate. His was the voice of the disenchanted right, far removed from the mainstream of Republican, let alone American, politics.

The theory was that Buchanan's appeal would be limited to a fairly narrow spectrum of people motivated by single issues. Buchanan would be the candidate of the religious right, the anti-abortionists and the more strident anti-government zealots. But his would be a limited political universe, one based on a narrow moralism that failed to reflect the range of traditional, more moderate conservative values at the core of the Republican party.

But an even more important reason why Buchanan's candidacy was doomed to fail was because he didn't have the support of the party establishment. He did not travel in the right circles, was too brash, his ideas too extreme, his positions too inflexible. The Republican presidential nomination race was about power and, thus, about selecting someone who could defeat Bill Clinton. You could forget a radical like Buchanan. He could not possibly appeal to the coalition of voters it would take to win the presidency and, therefore, he could not be taken seriously.

This remained the conventional wisdom even after Buchanan won straw votes in Alaska and Louisiana. The real first test was the Iowa caucuses, where front-runner Bob Dole was well-known and respected. Then would come the New Hampshire primary, where history says winners become presidential nominees.

When Buchanan came a close second to Dole in Iowa, the worry began to set in. When he won New Hampshire, the Republican establishment was in stunned disbelief. When Buchanan placed a strong second in the Arizona primary this week to Steve Forbes, and Dole had fallen to third, conventional wisdom was in full retreat.

Now that Buchanan is being taken seriously by the party establishment and the media in the U.S., attention has turned to why this is happening. Buchanan's message of America-first trade protectionism, anti-immigration, anti-big business, anti-abortion and pro-gun politics has a wide swath of appeal. He is fashioning a populist movement built on a rejection of the very political and corporate establishment that had been rejecting Buchanan and his message.

In an attempt to explain this phenomenon, one comparison being made is with the message of Roman Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin. Back in the depths of the Great Depression, Coughlin was known as the "radio priest", whose message was heard by millions who tuned into his regular broadcasts. Coughlin spoke directly to the victims of the Depression who bore the brunt of the economic collapse. It was the system of high finance and corporate greed that Father Coughlin said had ruined the lives of ordinary people.

As a devout Roman Catholic himself, Buchanan is tapping into that same middle- and lower-class anger in 1996. While we are not experiencing the economic fallout of the 1930s, there is a brooding sense of economic insecurity. People who haven't lost their jobs fear they will.

Samuel Freedman, writing in The New York Times, sees Buchanan as a modern-day version of Coughlin. Buchanan appeals to people because he speaks for the common man. He promises to erase the insecurity by turning the clock back to the days when America was able to protect itself from hostile outside economic forces.

"Not only does Mr. Buchanan embody the Roman Catholicism and America First credo of Father Coughlin, he also, most importantly, has built his 'conservatism with a heart' around 'Rerum Novarum', the same (papal) encyclical at the core of Father Coughlin's advocacy of workers rights," writes Freedman.

"The document, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, argued that workers, as people of God, had a moral right to a living wage and to a voice in the workplace. One could hear the echoes of 'Rerum Novarum' in 1919, when America's Catholic bishops endorsed unemployment insurance, a minimum wage and labor laws protecting children."

People will no doubt notice the inconsistencies in Buchanan's message. He says that he speaks for the average working person, yet he opposes a minimum wage. He opposes free trade because of American jobs being lost to low-wage countries like Mexico, yet he does not object when factories relocate to right-to-work states to save on labor costs.

But such contradictions seem not to matter. What counts is Buchanan's message and what he represents. He voices the concerns of ordinary people and reflects their fears.

In politics, that is a powerful combination.

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