Insanity is electing the same type of people over and over and expecting them to be competent.
paraphrased from a quote by Albert Einstein
In support of recall legislation.
How successful would a company be if it elected a new CEO every couple of years based on their popularity with employees? That company would be out of business in a year or two. We expect companies to appoint CEOs that know the business and can make it more successful moving into the future.
Yet, when the future of our country is at stake, we elect people based on our interest in their parties policies and promises, or their last name, or the fact they have nice hair. We then allow them to play with billions of our hard earned dollars.
And we have been conditioned to do this since elementary school…voting for the kid for student council that promises free pop and candy at every desk, knowing full well that they can’t fulfill those promises. We vote for the popular kid regardless of his/her ability to be a good leader.
Except in the case of student council we don’t actually give them any power. We don’t let them run the school, we let professionals with credentials and experience do that.
We invest our retirement funds in companies and expect them to be run well and to create new products and revenue. Yet we turn around and allow people with no appropriate experience, sometimes with no experience at anything other than being politicians, run important sections of our government. A government that controls vastly more money than even the largest corporations.
I will admit that some people have appropriate credentials and experience and, if allowed to head up the correct portfolios, could provide a decent service to the Canadian people. But those appointments are at the whim of the PM, who is usually always more interested in scoring political points and virtual signalling than putting people into the correct positions.
We allow this same PM, with his background as a drama teacher, ski instructor and camp councillor, run a $350B yearly budget and set policy for a country of 35M people (all with the backing of only 35% of the voting population of Canada)
While some elected officials have excellent qualifications they are rarely placed in an position where they can exercise their knowledge (Jane Phillpot is a doctor but was placed into Treasury Board). And sometime they get it right (Jodie Wilson-Raybould is a lawyer and was placed into Justice) but then they change things up as soon as it scores political points.
For the most part, politicians are more interested in implementing their favourite policies than doing what is right for the country. Why are we surprised when they end up making a mess or disrupting the workings of the public service?
Something needs to change, we vote for a group of people because they spin an appealing message during the election, but then, regardless of their competence, we are stuck with them for 4 or 5 years until we can vote again.
Canada needs to implement recall legislation that allows the voters to remove an MP that is obviously incapable of doing their job.
danlargo.com 