Business School Deans: We're not all cut-throat!

Listening, on NPR's On Point to three or four deans of U.S. Business Schools speak about their schools' attempts to pry the U.S. economy out of the depths of another recession was like listening to the designers of the Titanic as it went down in the icy-cold North Atlantic. We built the best, most unsinkable ship in history...was the cry at that time. Today the refrain is, "We are not all about cut-throat competition and profit."
And yet caller after caller, graduates themselves of business schools, protested the precise opposite. "I learned that profit mattered most, until I took a course in ethical leadership in another school and found "my people" and "my thinking," was the way one caller put it.
Over 45% of the graduates of U.S. business schools last year went into the financial services sector, while a mere 5% decided to try their own businesses. And yet, these deans insisted that the host, Tom Ashbrook, would be surprised and pleased with the kind of social conscience among the current crop of students attending these schools. There are, they claimed, students who want to start not-for-profits, and co-ops, even in these schools.
And yet, as Ashbrook encouraged them, "Get on with it, we need it today!" we all knew that this was another of the mirages that infect all corporate spokespersons. One of the deans spoke eloquently about the two sides of the business school enterprise: Marketing and Organizational Development, and acknowledged that the schools themselves, "may have veered too far in the direction of marketing in the past," and need to right the ship by focussing more on the development of organizations.
And yet, when business schools concentrate their faculty and their students on the issues of running profit-seeking, or more accurately, profit-driven as the sole reason for their existence, organizations, how can the "human side of the enterprise" as an old theorist, MacGregor, put it so many years ago, have any oxygen?
And it is the human side of the enterprise that has been sacrificed on the altar of profit!
And that is both obvious and tragic.
And there are so few voices trying to bring the ship back into balance...
Even the current initiatives around social enterprise, and business on a not-for-profit basis, as advocated by the Nobel Prize winner, Mohammed Yunus, for his work in establishing micro-credit banks in Bangladesh and in some 70 countries around the world, are still on the fringe of conventional thinking about the place of profit in the economy.
Why, for example, is there no Grameen Bank in Canada? Certainly the major banking institutions in this country are not interested in the proposition that human beings deserve a "first money" chance to make money in their own venture.As Yunus put it in his interview with Evan Solomon on CBC's Power and Politics, we need money to make money, and everyone deserves that first money to get started. Incidentally, for the sceptics, well over 97% of the loans that the Grameen Bank makes are paid in full, a much higher average than main street banks can boast.
Now that Yunus has established his banks in the U.S., there is a possibility that those business school deans will invite him and his colleagues to speak to their students, and the process of money finding real people with real imagination and real commitment to bring their vision to life, might find legs, and become a sustainable platform in the American "survival of the fittest" jungle.
And then the business schools can start to learn from the Grameen Banks that capitalism has more than a monolithic model, as currently advocated by those business school deans.
For more on Grameen Banks go to:
www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content...

Don't blame Ignatieff...U.N. Security Council Seat lost

So Canada had to withdraw from the voting after receiving a mere 70 votes, on the second ballot, after receiving 114 on the first ballot, in a bid for a seat on the Security Council at the United Nations.
And also, Canada has been forced to withdraw from a military base, strategically important according to the defense minister, in the United Arab Emirites, because Air Canada is blocking their airline from flights in and out of Canada...
And then, like a petulant child, the spokeperson for the Prime Minister is on CBC's Power and Politics, arguing that Michael Ignatieff is partly responsible for the negative reception to Canada's bid for that Security Council seat....
Shortly thereafter, former U.N. representatives, along with Ed Broadbent, all demonstrate some of the reasons for the failure to secure that seat:

• the Harper government's lack of action on global warming and climate change, a stance that makes "island states" nervous given their potential demise with rising ocean levels;
• Canada's withdrawal of funds from some African states in favour of Latin and Central American states;
• the general move away from progressive positions and attitudes that has characterized the stance of the Canadian government when bidding for a Security Council seat (votes Canada has secured in the past) 
• an unbalanced position with respect to Israel and the Middle East which some see as "unfair."

And the Canadian government has been advised by the man who actually sat in the Security Council, on Canada's behalf, to speak to all the members of the U. N. and listen to their reasons for voting as they did this time. "And listen to their reasons"....
Wining and dining, and smoozing on Canada's behalf, is no substitute for policy that is respected by the world community.
The P.M.'s surrogate mouthed platitudes like "principled policy" based on "Canadian values," "policies that we would not compromise" as the defence of the government's posture...and ordinary observers are prompted to wonder, out loud, if principle has not trumped enlightenment and engagement and statesmanship in this case.
Yesterday was not a good day for the government of Stephen Harper. Perhaps a few more days like that one, and we will be into an election and their future can be archived into the history books.

Wanted: Political Will, Collaboration, Co-operation and Courage

By Michael Kinsey, The Atlantic, October, 2010
Numbers are numbing, and I’m trying to avoid them. But pick a document at random from the pile. Here’s one: the latest annual “Long-Term Budget Outlook” of the Congressional Budget Office, published in June. The future is especially hard to predict at this moment, because current law includes several things that are unlikely to happen, such as the expiration of the George W. Bush tax cuts, and major unspecified cuts in defense and other spending programs. But making reasonable assumptions about these matters, the CBO projects that the national debt—nearly 62 percent of GDP—will rise to 87 percent of GDP by 2020 (a decade away), 109 percent (its previous peak, during World War II) by 2025, and 185 percent by 2035. “After that, the growing imbalance between revenues and noninterest spending, combined with spiraling interest payments, would swiftly push debt to unsustainable levels.”
The CBO says that these estimates “understate the severity of the long-term budget problem because they do not incorporate the significant negative effects that accumulating substantial amounts of additional federal debt would have on the economy.” To wit: higher interest rates, more borrowing from abroad, less domestic investment, lower incomes, and an increasing chance of a true crisis if markets lose faith in the U.S. government’s ability to pay off its obligations.
There are a dozen ways to look at the national debt and the annual government deficit, and they all lead to varying degrees of panic. What’s especially scary about our fiscal situation is that everybody knows the facts and concedes the implication, but nobody is doing anything about it (except for grinding out books and reports and long articles in magazines like The Atlantic, complaining that everybody knows about it but nobody is doing anything about it).
And the national debt is just a fraction of the problem. State and local governments, unlike the national government in Washington, cannot print money, and many states have constitutions that forbid them to run a deficit. Nevertheless, they will be losing, together, about $140 billion this year. They’ll make up the money by “disinvesting”: firing teachers, putting off maintenance on public buildings, shutting libraries. We’ve been delaying maintenance on our public infrastructure of highways and schools and, yes, airports since at least the 1980s, and the shabbiness is really starting to show. Delaying maintenance is like borrowing against the future. Debt is everywhere you look. Here’s a short inside piece in The New York Times Magazine about state and local unfunded pension obligations for retired employees. They add up to between $1 trillion and $3 trillion. Until that article, I had given no thought whatsoever to shortfalls in state employee pension funds.
The dimensions of this problem, although numerically stated by Kinsey, are nearly incomprehensible.
And the fact that no political initiative seems to be able to mount a credible and sustainable energy, crossing party and ideological divides, to address it appalls us all.
The White House says it is very conscious of the situation, and seeks to change the direction of the curve. The Democrats, however, in both houses of Congress, seem unable to attract a single Republican to the cause, especially since the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has bowed out of proferring ideas and co-operation in order to provide statemanship and leadership on this burden for the foreseeable future.
And the burden is not restricted to the generations of Americans coming over the next half century. It also applies to Canadian generations.
Our two countries are so inter-dependent in trade, in geopolitical issues, in cultural images and in comparisons, as Canada seeks to carve out some identity different from our neighbours, like Health Care and "peace-keeping" and "honest broker" and "battle of the blades" and "hockey" and we hope, schools and hospitals that still work.
Fiscal responsibility does not have either a Democrat or a Republican pedigree. Fiscal responsibility is an issue through which all other issues have to be seen. Fiscal responsibility seems to have been thrown out the window after 9-11, because "the world is going to here from us" after this, as Dubya put it standing on the rubble at ground zero.
Complications for debt and deficit continue with the Afghan "surge" in spite of the draw-down date of July 2011. Also, this, like the economic collapse of 2008, is not an issue that can be fixed in a nanosecond, in the manner to which Americans have become accustomed, or they lose interest. It will take long-term planning, and long-term discipline, and long-term co-operation, and long-term vision and these are traits the U.S. seems more able to deliver to other countries than at home.
The power of pop culture, of a Tea Party filled with people whose lives, for the most part, have not been dedicated to long-term goals and solutions, but rather to daily issues like jobs, and domestic responsibilities, a media addicted to simple identifiable conflicts of personalities from a dual perspective (hero or goat), outside pressures like trying to bring peace to the middle East, and keeping the North Korean regime off balance, and preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and the occasional preventable health scare, because regulations and the regulators to enforce them were cut from the budget....and the mix plays havoc with the most sane of minds and characters.
While the possibilities for change have so many windows of opportunity (given the huge number of critically ill issues), and that makes for epic efforts on the part of a few (like Obama), the majority of legislators and ordinary people are, naturally overwhelmed, and burying heads in proverbial sand seems like a sane approach.
I worked for an chief executive once who would often comment, "Many problems, if left to their own development curve, will eventually resolve themselves, without exceptional intervention."
Two first nations people, talking will usually take a common perspective on the horizon without making direct eye contact, keeping in mind their short existence, in the long reach of eternity.
We can only hope that both the executive and the first nations' perspective will be useful in the long-term struggles with our need for military solutions, for instant answers, for our refusal to join national causes, for our internal divisions (like St. Paul: The things I would not do, I do, and the things I would do, I do not do.)
and the appalling cancer that now infects so many countries, including the U.S., in terms of fiscal stability, will be resolved by a combination of new approaches at home and new concensus among nations.
Maybe, just maybe, war will finally become "too costly" as it has always been, and we will be forced to accept that reality. And maybe child deaths through preventable disease and lack of water and adequate nutrition will no longer be tolerable to our eyes. And maybe, our empty bank accounts will force us into the kind of collaboration that can only be built on top of universal scarcity, rather than the imbalance of plenty for some and nothing for many.
And maybe, just maybe, we will finally see every human being as worthy of a decent, honourable and productive existence, and remove our worship of the rich and the mighty. And maybe we will finally hear Pogo who reminded us, "We have met the enemy and he is us!"

Update: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "I am an atheist" (From her book, Nomad)

From Allen Gregg in Conversation, TVO, October 9, 2010
AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has lived under threat of death for years. Born in Somalia, the former Dutch member of parliament was forced into hiding after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, with whom she had made a film denouncing the treatment of women in Islam. She wrote about it in her bestselling memoir, Infidel. Now she's come out with a follow-up. It's called Nomad.
This young woman is saying some very complex and important things about her experiences as a daughter of Islam who has left her family faith and now seeks to enlighten especially Muslim women by speaking to them about christianity. While she agrees that all people are created equal, she holds that not all cultures and religions are equal. In the fear of Mohammed, and the fear of the hereafter, the most important aspect of Islam, and in the treatment of women, according to Ms Ali, she finds the Islamic faith seriously wanting.
In addressing the significant feminists of North America, like Germaine Greer, she believes they have "provincialized" feminism, and focused their attention on the evils of white males, exclusively, ignoring the evils of males of black or brown or yellow cultures, because those men do what they do because of their culture.
As I understand her, she seems to want to enter the 'marketplace of ideas' with those of the liberal democracies competing equally for the hearts and minds of the billions of Muslims of various cultures around the world. As a spokesperson to Islam, having grown up in that religion and culture, she knows firsthand of the young men who are standing on the streets of cities around the world, including Somalia, vulnerable and receptive to the seduction of those recruiting for jihad, with the promise of an idyllic afterlife if they will enlist, receive minimal training and become a successful suicide bomber.
She has even separated herself from her mother's fear of her spending her afterlife 'burning in hell' because she has disobeyed Mohammed.
On the subject of the veil for women, she indicates that for Muslim women not to wear the veil is to suggest in their culture that such women are whores, and available.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's own life is in danger constantly; consequently, she moves about with a bodyguard, and has appeared on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour, in a townhall meeting, by videotape, only to be attacked by the wife of the imam who is leading the initiative to build the Islamic centre near ground zero, as being the woman with a bodyguard, while the imam's wife proudly asserts that, although her life is in danger, she does not have a bodyguard.
As Ali states, there is a political side to Islam, (she might also be aware of a similar 'arm' of christianity) to which she is especially opposed. It is the battle of the political arms of faith that we may be watching as fundamentalists, both Islamic and Christian seem to be feeding each other and the war of conquest of the hearts and minds of individual recruits.
Interestingly,not engaged in active recruitment, the Jewish faith and culture are, it would appear, enemies of Islam and friends of Christians and to some extent, the war can be measured by the attempts to smear the Jews or protect those same Jews.
This war, while it will not bring about co-operation between and among fatihs, has certainly brought out how people feel about and fear the unknown, and the newest 'player' in the scene is the jihadist which Ali confirms is an intimate ingredient to the faith and practice of Islam around the world.
If this is truly a war of civilizations, as Ali contends with others, then the West will certainly have to take a different approach from the military one that has embroiled the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan for a full decade. We cannot continue to pour borrowed billions into winning the hearts and minds of the Taliban, in the hope of eradicating Islamic jihad. Perhaps we need more Ayaan Hirsi Ali's from all sides, to take the battle to the classrooms, to the bars, the pubs, the restaurants and the community centres.
However, in order to accomplish that, people like Ali will have to feel free enough to shed their bodyguard, to avoid their inevitable death. We can only hope that she does not have to live the rest of her live underground, appearing through television screens, webscreens books and radio, in order to stay safe.

Dr. Ted Hsu, "game-changer" for Kingston Liberals

Ted Hsu, uncommonly respectful, dedicated and globally insightful!

(Endorsing a political candidate is never done lightly, irreverently, or without risk. Nevertheless, we all face considerable risk, in how our country deals with both the economy and the environment. We at the acorncentreblog.com happily take the risk attendant to endorsing a candidate whose future will be bright, hopeful and full of accomplishments of his own on our behalf.)

Engaging, energetic, charismatic, intellectually accomplished and seasoned in business….Who in the riding of Kingston and the Islands would not be proud to have Dr. Ted Hsu as the Liberal Member of Parliament in the next government?
Ted Hsu is a graduate physicist, with a doctorate from Princeton, whose academic work applied a mathematical model to the interactions of electrons in high temperature super conductors. What did he learn, as a result of his study? “Primarily, that electrons, although they interact with the nucleus and among themselves, nevertheless, they behave like non-interacting electrons in normal metals, but not in these superconductors.” On a more “layman” level, he also learned that as a scientist, he could study something for a few months only to realize that “I could be wrong” and I have to back off that particular approach. “I think this is a positive that I bring to parliament and government; politicians often stay too long with an approach that isn’t working because to acknowledge it isn’t working might cause them to lose face.”
Dr. Hsu is very concerned about the legacy we are leaving our children and grandchildren, especially with respect to the size of our carbon footprint. In Kingston, for example, as Executive Director of S.W.I.T.C.H., a non-profit dedicated to the goal of authentic sustainability for the city, he would like to see the city achieve a 10% reduction in our carbon footprint within 5-10 years, a modest goal that looks much easier than it actually is to accomplish. One of the reasons for the difficulty, according to Dr. Hsu is that the prices are all wrong. There is no incentive for consumers to move dramatically and swiftly in the direction of sustainability. Upon completing a study of the data in Kingston from 2000 -2006, he discovered that there was very little, if any, impact of conservation use and that most variance could be explained by weather and normal consumption peaks and valleys.
As a long-term thinker, who has studied science, and worked in the financial services sector, Dr. Hsu believes that political parties need large numbers of members to explain prospective policy to the public, because people will listen to those they already know and trust. He also believes that honest accounting is essential in order to bring about fair pricing of various energy sources, so that subsidies and hidden environmental costs are included in the cost of production, and then renewable energy sources will be able to compete on a level playing field.
He favours energy generated by nuclear power, once again, provided it is on a fully costed basis; similarly, he advocates the continued use of coal, on a fully costed basis, and those costs would include the cost to the environment of the carbon that is emitted. Having worked on the Stephane Dion leadership campaign, Dr. Hsu has watched the debates over the green energy plans put forward by the former leader, and when asked about how he would proceed, if given the file, either in caucus or in government, he pauses to reflect and then begins, with an ever-present slight smile of detached enjoyment, as he responds:
“First, I like a balance between old and new so that they are integrated; an example of this kind of thinking can be seen at the Louvre, in Paris, an old building, where the renovations included a glass pyramid. Similarly, in the Art Gallery of Ontario, the new addition brought in new architecture in cedar, without in any way detracting from the original.”
“Second, I would proceed cautiously, with modest goals, and full respect for the needs of the people to understand each step of the change process. Explanation, explanation, explanation….to colleagues, to constituents, to the general public. I am a detail-oriented guy whose experience in both science and in financial management retains the macro picture while attending to the finest details. The mission of S.W.I.T.C.H. for example is the “vitality of the community as a whole” and that mission guides us in our daily tasks in serving our members to help them find opportunities and new partners and to avoid dangers in their projects.”
Recognizing the political realities both in the country and for the Liberal Party, Dr. Hsu understands the need to recover the respect of the electorate for the process. If he were successful in securing the nomination, and in achieving victory in the election, neither of which he takes for granted, he brings a modesty, “as a rookie” to the process, a commitment to be as honest as possible and a healthy skepticism to the process of leadership and governing.
With respect to the role of the Member of Parliament, in relationship to the bureaucracy, Dr. Hsu believes that he has a distinct advantage over others because of his background, enabling the civil servants to move quickly through the background briefings, especially in scientific matters and in financial management issues, to the core issues, without having to spend additional time needed to orient a less experienced audience. Once again, he concentrates on “respect” for the members of the civil service, “who know more than I do and who can and often are very helpful when they know you are prepared and have respect for their expertise.”
With respect to Canada’s future in nuclear reactors, Dr. Hsu advocates the building of a new research reactor, as different from a nuclear power reactor, and points to the Chalk River reactor to which scholars, scientists, and industrial researchers came from around the world to learn from and work with Canadians. He would like to see that kind of global initiative in this field for Canada in the future.
As an “uncommon” candidate, with an intense and sustainable interest in and management skills for the future of both our economy and our environment, both common shared issues, Dr. Hsu offers a file of successful academic achievements, a social conscience that drives his daily work in the city on behalf of future generations, experience in the necessary honest accounting to bring to the public’s attention all the hidden factors behind “hidden derivatives” on the books of A.I.G. and also behind the actual costs of various forms of energy, without government subsidy, for consideration as a nominee by members of the Liberal Association for Kingston and the Islands.
Could he provide continuity with the level of performance and legacy of his most recent predecessors, Peter Milliken, Edgar Benson and Flora McDonald? The scribe's answer is an unqualified, “yes, both more and different!”
This man is a “game changer” in the current vernacular, and whether or not he wins this nomination, he will be leading this community, and/or any community fortunate to have him as a member, forward in insight, in confidence and in authentic sustainability for his grandchildren and for ours. This, for him, is not a fight for personal political power; it is a long and sustainable struggle for the health of the individual and for the planet.
It has been an honour and a privilege to meet with and to get to know Dr.Ted Hsu.

"Left" under fire 20 years ago...still today

By Gerald Caplan, Globe and Mail, October 8, 2010
(Mr. Caplan is writing about the history of the Bob Rae government in Ontario, in the 1990's.)
Reflecting this reality, within months Mr. Rae's government faced an unrelenting, brutal four-year onslaught that was unprecedented in Canadian history.

The attacks came from all sides. It is no exaggeration to say hysterical fear-mongering and sabotage was the order of the day. Launched within the very first year of the new government, the attackers included every manner of business big and small, both Canadian and American-owned, almost all private media, the police (especially in Toronto), landlords and lobbying/government relations firms. Their goal was clear, and they had the money and power to achieve it.
They were determined to undermine the government every step of the way, to frustrate the implementation of its plans and to assure its ultimate defeat. In all three goals they were successful. The considerable achievements of the government – often forgotten or dismissed –were wrought in the face of a deep recession and ferocious obstruction.
The tactics were not necessarily subtle. Though the Soviet Union was ignominiously imploding, right-wing columnists such as Diane Francis and Barbara Amiel actually resorted to old-fashioned red baiting, smearing the government as “red” or “communist.” And after the new finance minister's very first meeting with the banking community , a bank vice-president told him, in the presence of an aide: “Nice speech, Mr. Minister, but we're going to kill you.” And they did.
Conrad Black was a leading executioner. Lord Black swore loudly that on principle he'd never invest in Ontario under an NDP government. Other corporate interests threatened a virtual strike of capital unless the government relented on its intentions to introduce higher business taxes and to strengthen union rights, environmental regulations and equity programs.
Here is a sample of the flavour of the debate in the U.S. today, over the election in November. Anything smacking of "public interest" is considered anathema to the "right" and they will stop at nothing to undermine, discredit, in fact demonize and destroy anything, even remotely resembling "government interference."
Short-term subsidies for giant auto-makers, for example, even though the money has been paid back with interest, are high on the "hit list" of targets to be exploded repeatedly as evidence of the "un-American" quality of the president and his party.
In Tennessee, recently, the story goes that a house was on fire; the fire department was called; they came and they sat in their truck(s) watching the fire burn the house down, because the owner had not paid the $75 fee required of residents to acquire fire protection. Only when the fire started to threaten the property adjacent did they emerge from their vehicle and put it out. If you want to see a country, at one level, imploding on its own petard, this is it.
There are words that comes from the study of religion that might be useful here. One is sacralizing (making sacred) and the other is satanizing (making evil). In the U.S. case, the "right" considers Obama and his fight to restore the middle class "satanic" in the extreme, because all of their rich and rigid supporters want an economic playing field that leaves them free to plunder, without government interference. These same people sacralize freedom, hate-mongering, personal assasination attacks, and a tax code that is grossly tilted in favour of the top 3% of the income scale.
Of course, the media likes the world divided in this manichean way. They don't have to either think or research where people stand, on a continuum, right or left. And the war ensues.
However, lost in such a picture is nuance, subtlety, sensitivity, and any attempt to bridge the chasm betwen right and left, something Obama has persistently attempted, to the chagrin of his "left wing."
As the anonymous banker commented to Messrs. Rae and Laughren, "We're going to kill you!" the same kind of attitude can be found on the right in the U.S. today, backed by billions unleashed by the Supreme Court, and in Canada in Harperland, (in honour of Lawrence Martin's latest book), focussed on the Liberals.
As my father used to say, in his understated way, when he was most distressed by the way a dynamic was developing, "This is no way to run a railroad!" Surely we are entitled to more respect, and more honesty and more intellectual rigour and far less melodrama, in the pursuit of public policy goals. Or have we descended to the swamp where the "war" mentality is all we have left.

Canada: bumblebee nation?

By Richard Gwyn Columnist, Toronto Star, October 8, 2010
 Recently, after taking part in a literary festival, I asked an organizer how to fill in the expense claim. She answered: “Our mileage rate is 50 cents a kilometre.”
Only if she had said “kilometrage rate” would I, or any Canadian, have had any difficult understanding what she meant. To us, it’s perfectly natural to mix and muddle two quite different systems of measurement.
This is my entry point into a theory about Canadian identity I’ve been developing and make public here in the hope it will earn me a Canada Council grant.
This is that Canada can only be understood as a bumblebee nation.
Bumblebees, so it’s said, cannot fly. Their wings are too short and stubby. Yet they in fact buzz about entirely efficiently, even can hover motionless while sucking out pollen. The reason is that bees don’t know that they cannot fly.
We, too, ought not to be able to fly. But we do, and on the whole not at all badly.
This is not the Canada Council responding; yet if it were, the grant would be approved.
Gwyn looks at this paradox of a nation with eyes steeped in the vagaries of time spent wandering and wondering about how "things work" historically, politically, culturally and even, it seems biologically.
So much of our research today, and for the recent past , is based on the biology that we are unpacking. Neuroscience studies of the differences between the male and female brains often grab more headlines than the cultural differences of our behaviour, attitudes, beliefs and perceptions.
Move over, beaver; bumblebee enter stage right!
Buzzing without wings and accessing the pollen necessary for cross-pollination, cross fertilization, and new life. Facilitating new plants, while coping effectively with gravity, turbulence, and interlopers.
Based, however, as Gwyn claims, on a document and a cultural mix that are not supposed to work for the simple reason that they are not like any other.
Is Gwyn wisely pointing to the notion that planning can and often does lead to precisely the opposite of what we envisioned by those planning? Is he attempting to "send-up" those ancestors who took themselves and their documents extremely seriously, literally and studiously, based on what they knew then.
Would we write a different document? Would we be happy pretending the U.S. Securities and Exchange is a surrogate for Canada? Would that be a step down a slippery slope into merging with the elephant on the south side of the North American "bed?" Bumblebees are very efficient at collecting their pollen, but I think they would make lousy travellers to Mexico for the winter. I would prefer the Canada goose, even though our southern neighbours curse the droppings.
Appearing to be a culturally diverse, welcoming, tolerant and open society, Canada likes to headline figures that support such an image, without actually doing the hard work of making those adjectives authentic. Internal tensions that just won't dissipate may be providing the energy for that buzzing that we like to do around those flowers that seem so succulent. New cultures and perspectives may be the fuel stoking the heart of the little buzzers. And, if so, will we be pollinating new plants for use in new ways to provide new energies for new ventures, including clean air, water and access to both for all?
If Gwyn is even close to being right, then we certainly do not need those 65 F-35 Fighter Jets...we already have sufficient "wings" to fly wherever there is pollen and we would only contemplate war with anyone at our own peril.
Arthur Lower would be happy with Gwyn's testimony about mixing and muddling. Some of us might prefer a more "canary-like" image, signalling the disappearance of oxygen in the coal mine.