Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Susan Riley highlights the fact that we'll only move past the narrow view of politics that's dominated Canada's federal scene for too long if the media is willing to play its part:

'This is going to change so many things," veteran New Democrat Libby Davies said in the aftermath of her party's breakthrough on election night. "I think it's a whole new ball game. It's going to be a whole new kind of politics."

That could be true (please let it be true), but a number of things have to change radically, starting with the way the media leap on every unscripted comment, from every politician, declare it a gaffe, then set about finding other politicians to denounce it.
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The most distressing element of the just-ended campaign was the reluctance of so many candidates (including talented newcomers such as former diplomat Chris Alexander, now a Conservative MP) to appear at all-candidates meetings, talk to the media or stray even slightly from the careful banalities of the official platform.

No wonder politics is boring to so many people. No wonder the turnout (61.4 per cent) is still distressingly low. You also wonder why accomplished individuals, such as Alexander, submit to the intellectual editing.
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To recap, what would Davies' "new kind of politics" look like? Interesting, sometimes outrageous, sometimes offensive, ideas from ordinary MPs. Opposition leaders (including Rae and the estimable Elizabeth May) focused on issues, not insults. A more relaxed prime minister. And many bright newcomers to challenge, not succumb to, the deadening cynicism of our politics.

As for a more responsible, less excitable media? OK, that will be harder.

- But the Globe and Mail offers at least one example worth following in defending the NDP's wide range of new Quebec MPs:

The election to Parliament of students and twentysomethings has been a source of bemusement for some political elites. Not all of these accidental NDP MPs expected to win. But to hold them up to ridicule, before they have exercised any of their public duties, is to be contemptuous of democracy itself.
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No one is entitled to public office, and why should students be taken any less seriously than, say, rookie MPs whose background is in farming or medicine? Voters were drawn to the NDP (particularly in Quebec), and so they elected NDP candidates, disappointing many – including “star” candidates of many partisan stripes, assured of success by the party brass, and those aspirants, old and young, who have plotted every phase of their political careers. That’s the magic of representative democracy.

Quebec’s new NDP MPs are not there just to represent the young. Yet the voices of young people should be heard. And we should heed both youth issues – the fiscal and environmental deficits they will inherit; the quality of the educational system – and the manner in which youth raise them. The most skilled among them will bring suppleness, strength and new ways of communicating to the Commons, reinvigorating a chamber that the public clearly thought could use some new energy. So rather than heaping scorn on these new MPs, let us wish them well.

- Erica Alini points out an OECD report showing that inequality has been worsening around the world, with at least one of the mooted causes figuring to be relatively easily remedied if there's the political will to do so:

(c) Across the board, governments have been withdrawing from the markets, leading to lower minimum wages compared to average wages, sinking union membership, and fewer state-owned enterprises. Though these changes raised employment levels, they also likely weakened the redistributive mechanisms that used to restrain the gap between rich and poor.

- Finally, Sheila Pratt shines a spotlight on the Alberta PCs' cone of silence. And it's not hard to find evidence of that type of refusal to listen to anybody who doesn't cheerlead for a governing party being imposed in Saskatchewan as well.