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Leadership to Save Canada: Is Paul Martin Fit to be Prime Minister? Can He Meet the Challenge of Change?

by Howard Shaver

289 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0127; ISBN 1-4120-2299-1; US$24.50, C$27.70, EUR20.00, £14.00

Leadership to save Canada describes Canadian government leadership failure as well as the challenges Canada faces and prescribes government re-organization to achieve competent and responsive twenty-first century leadership.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

Leadership to Save Canada tells why Paul Martin is ill-equipped to become Prime Minister of Canada in light of his record as a Chrétien cabinet minister and evidence now emerging that he lacks appropriate strategic policy priorities. This book further contends that the government of Canada and its institutions, as now constituted, are increasingly dysfunctional and unable to provide the leadership we require to respond to twenty-first century change. Our government system has failed and the myopic and corrupt partisanship now practiced will diminish future Canadian quality of life. In the modern security and health-threat environment, government incompetence will be a threat to life itself.

Canada's faltering economic productivity and the lack of government focus on productivity as a strategic imperative is portrayed as being the key failure in achieving the levels of economic success required to restore our health care, education, military forces and other areas to levels of satisfactory performance. The recommendations which have been put forward by politicians and political scientists for an elected Senate and improved representativeness in the House of Commons are portrayed as changes which should have been achieved a century ago and are completely inadequate by themselves as a response to twenty first century change.

The challenge of twenty first century change is extensively described in the book. The book recommends a comprehensive program of institutional reform to change the Canadian Senate to a Senior Leadership Council. This Council will have the power to dismiss senior government officials including the Prime Minister. The Council will also be available to give mature and competent advice to all government departments and agencies, whether they be federal, provincial or municipal.

Paul Martin has embraced the need to change the way the Canadian federal government does things, but until he demonstrates an improved capability to seize and implement effective strategic priorities to get Canada producing up to its capability, his ability to achieve useful change will be very limited because of lack of resources. Under these conditions, Canada's ability to achieve reasonable objectives under Martin will be only marginally better than the completely unsatisfactory results realized under Chrétien.

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About the Author

Howard Shaver grew up in Moulinette, a small village west of Cornwall, Ontario which was subjected to ultimate change when it was flooded by the St. Lawrence Seaway. He had earlier planned an escape, attending Queen's University at Kingston for a Bachelor of Arts degree and joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in Aeronautical Engineering. He had the additional good fortune of obtaining a degree in Electrical Engineering at the United States Air Force Institute of Technology - just down the road a bit from Orville and Wilbur Wright's bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. After attaining the rank of Major in the Air Force, he joined the Federal Department of Industry from which he had a spectacular view of various Ministers, including Jean Chrétien, trying to deal with the growing demands of economic competitiveness. The great pastime in the Department of Industry was reorganization and changing names to hide the lack of grip the Ministers and their advisers had on an appropriate strategy for economic development priorities. Shaver resolved that when he retired he would try to develop some ideas about the requirements of government leadership and an appropriate government leadership and development strategy for Canada. The book Leadership to Save Canada is the result of his efforts. He is married and has three adorable grand-daughters. He is grateful for his two daughters, the grand-daughters' mothers, and his son whose contribution to the book was drawing the author's attention to his main metaphor - the sun going down on Canadian leadership and Canadian excellence.

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Excerpts

PREFACE

The title is Leadership to Save Canada. Does Canada need saving? It certainly does! After almost a quarter century of declining relative productivity and the consequential decay in our health care, education, military and other infrastructure, we need saving. We need saving by dramatically improved leadership if we are to have a basis for pride in our country and our achievements. We need saving to enable us to generate the levels of income and resources needed to benefit from and enjoy the quality of life the twenty first century will be capable of offering. We also need saving so we can regain international status and provide the resources needed to enable us to do our part in efforts to help a warring and wounded world. Progress is an illusion unless a nation builds its functional sinews by achieving competitive productivity and thereby maintaining the ability to provide its citizens with state of the art health care. A nation must also continuously pushes forward its achievements in education and skills creation as a foundation for productivity advancement. During the 90s, Canadian productivity continued to lag and Canadian governments settled for giving voters an illusory measure of tax relief at the expense of building our functional sinews.

Year after year our underachievement has continued to subtract from our world status as an achiever and contributor. The cumulative nature of our deficits in publicly supported programs is dramatically illustrated by the tattered weapons, aircraft, vehicles, buildings and clothing of our military services. This deficit has already cost Canadian lives and we can expect that government leadership failures in health care and security, as well as military, will continue to cost Canadian lives at an accelerating pace. This book attributes the failure of current Canadian government leadership to the inability of people and institutions to respond to the challenges of change. It discusses the challenges of change and proposes policies and programs that will improve Canadian response to change, thereby improving future quality of life prospects. The role of ever improving skill inventory for the working population is emphasized in the context of improved school, college and university education. The importance of life long learning is also emphasized for all productive people. It is further emphasized that our efforts and programs for life long learning are not adequate in relation to the importance of this learning for our collective and individual progress and well being.

This book emphasizes the importance of leadership with strategic talent and tells why the many proposals for reform of the Canadian Senate and House of Commons put forward to date are inadequate. It proposes a plan for a Senior Leadership Council to replace the Senate that will work effectively. It not only describes Canadian government malfunction in the context of the acceleration of change, it proposes creative twenty first century solutions. This book invites Canadians to advance their leadership, both institutions and people, into the twenty first century.

The Senior Leadership Council which will be elected, it will be non partisan and consist of well qualified senior Canadians best qualified to address the complex environment of change which Canada will face in the twenty first century. The system proposed will provide a responsible and expert level of ongoing skilled advice to working and managerial levels of all government departments and agencies, as well as replacing non performing senior government officials including the prime minister. It is ultimately up to the Canadian people to demand change from our political leaders and to decide the emphasis and orientation of change. This book strongly urges that Canadian demand leadership changes that respond to the multitude of dramatic and frequently toxic changes that are an inescapable part of the twenty first century. Unless Canadians are prepared to recognize that we have fallen short in many aspects of our collective achievement and want to do something about it, clearly nothing will get done.

I have concluded as the result of my research that the next phase of democracy should include institutional arrangements that will limit partisan manipulation of government policies and action. Another concern is that we should ensure that the processes of democracy do not obscure the objectives of democracy. The Canadian experience under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is an extreme example of partisan manipulation and the American experience under President Clinton, during his impeachment proceedings is an example of the processes of democracy obscuring the objectives of democracy. A case can be made that the very top American leaders at that time were focusing on the impeachment process while terrorists were focusing on how to attack America.

Jeffrey Simpson wrote a book describing Chrétien as a friendly dictator: one who invariably got his way in matters of how Canada would be governed. We can finally say on December 13, 2003, that one final choice usually exercised by dictators eluded Chrétien. He didn't get to choose his successor. When Paul Martin left Chrétien's cabinet it was widely rumoured that Chrétien preferred John Manley as his successor; at least it was certain, he did not want Paul Martin to succeed him. The Liberal Party denied this one choice to Chrétien and chose Paul Martin to be the new party leader which made him Prime Minister.

However, this is small comfort to Canadians who, because of Chr&eacutetien's dictatorial tendencies and severely limited vision, were robbed for ten years of skilled team leadership tuned to the growing demands of the twenty first century world. Paul Martin knows how far Canada is behind and out of tune with the world around us. That is one reason he has resolved to begin his new government with such a rush. Canadians seem to have great hopes and high expectations for his government. But, the question remains: will the change in Prime Ministers produce improved results for Canada, or merely a change in personality or style?

Paul Martin did bring forth a formidable array of talent and experience in his new cabinet sworn in on December 12, 2003; although his program has one clear Achilles heel. The money required to carry out the expanded program will be extremely limited because the recent federal budgetary surplus has been greatly diminished. It is worthwhile to study the people Paul Martin has brought into his first cabinet. These people were available to the previous leader, but their unique contributions and initiatives were rarely acknowledged by Mr. Chrétien. Where was all this suddenly recognized talent hiding when Chrétien was Prime minister? Were they all willing to submerge their talent in order to survive in the Liberal Party? Were they that much afraid of Chrétien and his thought police in the Prime Minister's Office?

The extent to which these reputedly talented people were muzzled and subjugated by Prime Minister Chrétien is a shocking indication of the limitations imposed by our system which permits excessive party discipline by party leadership so inclined. An effective defense against this hi-jacking of brain power must be built into our democratic reform. Cabinet ministers mustn't be stifled; they must be free to express their own views, and translate these views into action without undue restriction. Indeed the oath they take as Privy Councilors compels them to "declare their mind and their opinion." The proposals of this book will, when implemented, bring to bear the unfettered experience and brain power of a Senior Leadership Council, made independent by their non partisan status and their limitation to one term in office. In these circumstances the Prime Minister and his cabinet will be forced to use all their wit to formulate and manage legislation and programs for the benefit of Canada rather than for the benefit of continued electoral success for their political party.

I still do not see in Paul Martin's initial approach to governing a focus on establishing and communicating key strategic necessities. This book emphasizes the necessity of strategic focus and in the economic area, this focus must be on productivity. Although the Chrétien cabinet, including Paul Martin, paid great lip service to the importance of productivity, action on productivity was by no means effective and its priority was secondary to others. Paul Martin did not give productivity the emphasis it deserved while a Chrétien cabinet minister and since leaving the Chrétien cabinet I have not seen any indication that he has re-aligned his strategic priorities to give a major push to productivity.

A high voltage strategic push to improve productivity is an absolute necessity in order to improve Canada's competitive edge and produce the resources necessary to overcome our functional deficits in health care, education, military capability and infrastructure quality. Relative productivity decline was the causal precursor of Canada's decline in maintaining its health care, education standards, military and infrastructure. Consequently, a sound leadership based strategy for re-gaining the productivity status that Canada needs is of the utmost importance. Until Paul Martin establishes a creative way to approach productivity improvement the jury will be out on his value as a Prime Minister.

During my period of over thirty years of government service I saw successive government begin their term of office with the best intentions and then stagger into a stupor in the face of the growing complexities of the modern world. Even the respected Pierre Trudeau, with all his charisma and intelligence, was stupefied by the complexity of the economic situation Canada faced in his time as Prime Minister.

As an officer of the Department of Industry I saw the immediacy of the compete or perish dictum in industry bring forward levels of leadership in the industrial world, primarily in the United States, which produced the economic excellence that vanquished Russian Communism and won the cold war.

All the while Canadian political leadership was descending into a pit of partisan self interest and incompetence. Regional differences in Canada caused an increase in the number of political parties at the federal level from three to five. The Progressive Conservative Party committed suicide with the help of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his blip successor Prime Minister Kim Campbell, reducing itself in the 1993 general election from a majority government to a token two seats in the House of Commons. This handed dominance in the House to the Liberals who had chosen as their leader Jean Chrétien, the street fighter from Shawinigan. Jean Chrétien's conviction was that the best grip on power was an absolutely total grip on power. On the power theory he was right, on almost everything else, including the long term benefit of his government policies to Canada, he was wrong.

I believe that Canada has been betrayed over the past thirty years by a succession of inadequate governments who worshipped self interest and patronage as their guiding light. When retirement from government service freed me to explore options for improving government I resolved to try to do something to establish the fundamentals of a better government system for Canada. This book is the product of that resolve.

New ideas must be supported by organizations if they are to contribute to constructive change. I therefore obtained the letters patent for a new political party called The Advance Canada Party. This party is a shell at the moment but it may grow in strength and influence if Canadians are attracted to the ideas advanced in this book. If you feel inclined to comment on the content of the book, I would be pleased to hear from you.

The address is:

The Advance Canada Party,

P.O. Box 46052,

2339 Ogilvie Road,

Ottawa, Ontario,

Canada, K1J 9M7

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Catalogue Information

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