SteynOnline

This column from Canada's National Post is a reminder of just how long the collectivist left has been pushing punitive liberalism in the cause of "the environment". The predictions re entitlements down south and further general Canadianization seem pertinent, too:

On Wednesday night, slumped in front of The National, I watched the CBC explain why the increase in gas prices was good news. "OPEC isn't the only one supporting today's sky-high fuel prices," said Peter Mansbridge. "Many Canadians are also behind the big price change."

Really? Why, yes. Kelly Crowe explained that these legions of Canadians were in favour of higher gas prices "to force people to switch from big cars to smaller cars or to get out of their cars altogether" - and on to public transit. At this point, in the great tradition of CBC literalism, a Toronto bus was shown driving past. Of the "many Canadians" inclined to this view, The National produced two (if one discounts Kelly and Peter): a fellow from the Sierra Club and another from the Canadian Environmental Association. By contrast, the few Canadians opposed to this line must truly be small in number, for, despite the CBC's renowned commitment to "balance," Kelly's report failed to uncover a single dissenting voice.

Wracked by guilt, I tossed and turned all night like Jacques Villeneuve taking the hairpin bends on the Grande Corniche. The lyrical scene of those happy TTC commuters haunted my dreams. By the morning, I was resolved: Like Rosa Parks, I was demanding my right to take a seat on the front of the bus. Alas, I don't live in Toronto. And, when I hit the street in Montreal, there was no public transit in sight, only thousands of commuters who'd been spending 90 minutes jamming the sidewalks on a balmy February morning wondering where all the buses had gone.

Well, some 400 of them had simply been abandoned by their drivers the night before, left in various locations far from the depot with their electric doors open and their lights running. Of those that were taken back to the garage, many had been rendered unusable, with their windshield wipers covered in grease and seats soaked. At least one was set alight. And, lest there were a few still operational, some 15 false alarms were called into firefighters, plus a bomb scare.

If you or I made bogus calls to 911, we might get in trouble for wasting valuable police and fire department time. And, in Quebec, that time's even more valuable than elsewhere. The firefighters have their own ongoing work stoppage and naturally resent it when the small number of hours they're prepared to put in doing their jobs are wasted on hoax calls. The Sureté du Québec, meanwhile, were mostly occupied last week with their labour dispute: During the morning rush hour, SQ cruisers rode three abreast across the auto routes at 50 km per hour, causing massive tailbacks but, more importantly, doing their bit to aid the Mansbridge-Crowe campaign to reduce gas consumption. Indeed, the bus lane was the only one they weren’t blocking. Work stoppages by cops, firemen, bus drivers: a typical week in Quebec. After Thursday, all I can say to those "many Canadians" of the Mansbridge­-Crowe bent is, if you want to take my new Jeep Cherokee Libido with its remarkable 120 metres per litre consumption rate, you’ll have to drag my bullet­riddled body from the automatically reclining seat and prise my cold dead fingers from whichever one of the 72 cup holders I'm clinging to.

You can't beat a bus - well, actually, a rusting Honda Civic with a split transmission can beat a bus, but I'm speaking figuratively - anyway, you can't beat a bus as a symbol of the universal good: "Bus" is an abbreviation of "omnibus," meaning "for all." For all: There are some things better managed by paying the government to do them "for all" than by letting Joe Schmoe do them for himself as a free-born citizen. It's the defining tradeoff of democratic society, and its rituals will be played out again today as Paul Martin presents what we misleadingly call his "budget." At this stage, I'd wager that very few of us, pace Kelly Crowe and her chums, are willing to give the government effective control over our freedom to travel. In fact, it's hard to name a single business Canadians would now willingly see nationalized. Take the most hated institution you can think of. Banks? If the feds ran them as "the people's bank" (as some on the left pine for), do you really believe the "administrative costs" would be lower and the opening hours longer? Do you think they'd have bothered inventing a bank card you could use at an ATM in Florida? Or, more likely, would it take two weeks for a cheque to clear? Nationalized banks, by the way, are not strictly the province of the wackier banana republics. Consider how Banker magazine opened its report on the last French presidential contest: "Exactly what the recent election of Jacques Chirac as president means for the banks is unclear. He could presumably change the heads of two of the major bank groups, Credit Lyonnais and CIC, to put one of his buddies in place. The last time he had the opportunity, when he became prime minister in 1986, he dumped most of the bank presidents."

Mr. Martin will not be nationalizing anything this afternoon: Those days are gone. But nor will he demonstrate any serious interest in reducing the amount of the citizenry's income that he confiscates for the greater good - "for all." The battered Canadian omnibus has no desire to join the Reagan-Thatcher SUVs or even the Clinto-Blairite mid-range sedans in the passing lane. According to one estimate last week, in another decade the average Canadian's "standard of living" will be down to 50% of the average American's - which would seem to be at odds with our annual UN award as the best country to live in. Yet, despite the best efforts of my pals on these pages, there remains no sustained clamour for change from the average Canadian - or, as they say in Britain, "the man on the Clapham omnibus." My fellow right-wing bastards take the optimistic view that, eventually, the yawning gulf between us and the great Republic to the south will crack the system apart. But I doubt it. The greater likelihood is that, if the Liberals can ride out the next few years, much of the civilized world will come closer to our own demented Dominion. The European Union is essentially being built on a Canadian model, albeit even nuttier. On the Continent, supposed conservatives such as M. Chirac regard free-market capitalism as an unhealthy Anglo-American fetish.

from The National Post, February 28th 2000