Setting the Standard

"We will set the standard by which other nations judge themselves."
  -- Paul Martin, May 19, 2005 Ottawa, Ontario

That scraping noise you hear is the sound of nations shuffling their collective feet over the bar we've set for them, particularly when it comes to governmental ethics. Ottawa has sunk far below the mere level of corruption, beneath the quagmire of outright farce and public school recess displays of childishness, and into the turbid depths of ineptitude and complete stupidity that would make the lowly cuttlefish seem a witty, insightful alternative to our governing leaders.

And MP Carolyn Parrish thinks American's are idiots?

Once reasonably respected, if generally ignored as a congenial member of the global family that had good table manners and was always ready to pass the peas, we are now becoming known more for our embarrassing displays of prepubescent behaviour and general duplicitous smugness, with federal MPs acting like a pack of puppies on their first day at obedience school.

Though already distressingly apparent locally just last year, when our supposedly stupid, uncivilized neighbours to the south were engaging in presidential debates as polite as an afternoon at Sunday school, while we were witness to a shouting match and debating free-for-all full of repetitious drivel with nary a question answered, the world is starting to take notice. In the midst of one of the worst corruption scandals in recent memory, many, from scribes at the New York Times to our own US ambassador, are left shaking their heads over our gleefully ignorant but increasingly hypocritical behavior, and wondering why anyone would "want more Canada."

But putting the Gomery inquiry aside for a moment as it lurches from one embarrassing account to another, exposing the effects of having spent the vast majority of the last century in power on the moral fibre of a political party, everyone short of the parliamentary groundskeepers have been jumping on the "I'm with stupid" bandwagon, turning Parliament Hill into the most watched situation comedy this country has ever produced.

The latest plot line follows none other than Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal and his cloak and dagger approach to politics, perhaps the result of his mistaking that double agent decoder ring he found in his cereal box for a divine directive to make like James Bond and run freelance sting operations on government officials.

Not that he didn't get a hit recording out of it, catching chief of staff Tim Murphy and Ujjal Dosanjh engaging in a round of "guess what I'm not saying to you," with enough verbiage and innuendo to make any legal professor proud. Of course, Grewal also fancies himself a bit of a hip hop artist, cutting and splicing his recorded way into an RCMP investigation and another interview from federal ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro, who already has a file on Grewal that may expand to fill his entire office before this is done.

And that's to say nothing of Grewal's run-in with Air Canada security, the final straw that in any other country would spell the end of a political career, but given how staunchly his boss is standing behind him, will probably result in a promotion, and possibly still a cabinet position from the Liberals if he can ever learn to leave his tape recorder turned off.

If it isn't MPs crossing the floor, quitting their party, throwing temper tantrums in caucus, kicking chairs and shoving reporters like an agitated Russell Crowe (as Stephen Harper is apparently prone to do), name calling and personal attacks both in the house and in public, or public musings about "Japs" being "bastards" as Conservative MP Steven Fletcher felt the perplexing need to do, then it's the stunning revelation that the Senate is a violent free-for-all of wannabe boxers and thugs who like to hit each other and swat wayward children, at least according to Senator Anne Cools. And while it's hard to envision a gang of cobweb-incrusted senators with oxygen tanks and walkers wheezing their way through three rounds of pugilistic debate, it's one more sad tale in the never-ending soap opera that is Ottawa.

So, is this the sort of standard Paul Martin had in mind? Back room deals, dirty politics, childish behaviour, and the sort of wit normally found in a kindergarten class? And when Stephen Harper famously retorted that "Corruption is not a Canadian value," did he have in the back of his mind that covert surveillance, possible entrapment, public expressions of bigotry, and general incompetence is?

A fine standard indeed, folks...keep up the good work.