What’s It All About? asks Rex Murphy

“I don’t think any of us have a real grip in what it is all about,” says broadcaster Rex Murphy of the current federal election.
Speaking to the Aftermarket Conference for Executives, he decried the lack of vision and engagement in the federal election.
He quoted a Toronto Star article which stated that the majority response to the leaders’ debate was annoyance. “I don’t think that anywhere in the western world. that any electorate has announced that its majority feeling that the majority feeling was ‘annoyance.’
“That’s very telling. I think it is one of the crippling features of Canadian politics of the last 20 years. There was a period when we had a national election that themes emerged of some extremity, of some range, some real continuity.
“Even if you didn’t like the position that Diefenbaker took, you could not dispute that he came to talk about the whole of Canada.
“Pierre Trudeau, whether you like or dislike the person of the politics, he had one thing absolutely right. H said ‘who speaks for Canada?'”
Now the election is all about small issues of minimal interest to the public.
“In Canada the national elections are held for the convenience of the parties. They do not arise out of t need or great project; instead it is all a calculation.
“It is not linked to any intellectual framework or agenda that speaks to the county as a whole.
“This is not an election; it’s not even a good soap opera.
“This country has such unexampled potential and history. We built a culture within our own system of civility and reasonable compromise. In the meantime our politics shrinks and shrinks and shrinks.”

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