The sponsorship scandal’s the past; let’s move on
Globe and Mail
By William Thorsell
Lust for outrage fuels Canada’s long-known sponsorship scandal, a pent-up desire to vent against the system, at Jean Chrétien, at Quebec. The tone of the thing, from the grassroots up to the Prime Minister himself, reeks of generalized frustration funnelled into a vessel much too small to contain the bile. The bile overfloweth in an almost masochistic orgy of recriminations. Auditors-General from coast to coast feel the animal spirits and prepare to bring more damning tablets down from the mount as evidence of their bona fides. O Canada, we stand in fury for thee!
This is the same Canada whose collective behaviour suggests that we are the lagging country cousins of our neighbours in the U.S., at least by measures documented last month by Ontario’s Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. If class is defined by respect for the future, Canadians are clearly lower-class than Americans, though most Canadians feel quite the opposite in their smugness. Americans look farther ahead than we do in assessing their economic interests, and make smarter investments with the future in mind. Let us count the ways.
Dean Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto documents a series of behaviours that put us in a relatively poor light. Americans put a higher value on university degrees. We have a lower participation rate in our universities, and spend only 63 per cent as much for each student as Americans do on higher education. In sum, we don’t think as much ahead.
Research by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation indicates the problem in Canada is not tuition fees, which are generally lower here.
Writes Dr. Martin: “The study uncovered that it was students’ attitudes, and not financial barriers, that dissuaded them from attending higher levels of education.” Those attitudes are short-term.
We spend half as much per capita on universities as the Americans, and care less about it. Now there’s a country cousin who deserves to earn $10,000 less for each household (after tax) than Americans do every year.
What we do earn, we spend with similar insouciance toward the future. Largely due to our monopoly-pay medicare monster, Canadian governments spend relatively more on current consumption. Our future-oriented investments in education, infrastructure, research and cities lag those in the U.S., even though Americans as a whole spend a great deal more on health care than we do by allowing private monies to flow into the system.
Oh, and the cities! Dr. Martin says the biggest disparity between Canadian and U.S. incomes results from their higher levels of urbanization, which contributes to productivity through critical mass, networking and open-minded attitudes. A clear correlation exists between urbanization and productivity. “Low urbanization [is] the largest negative contributor to Canada’s productivity gap” with the United States, says Dr. Martin. The Canadian country cousin literally lives in the country, sometimes subsidized to do so, and those Canadians who inhabit our cities are denied the fiscal and political levers to take proper care of them.
Oh, but let’s not be distracted from the sponsorship scandal, which thrills us so darkly. Paul Martin has the best attitude to cities that we have seen in 30 years, the deepest understanding of education’s value, and the most sophisticated approach to economic growth. He is no way responsible for the misappropriation of funds in Quebec, and has had only three months in office under his own name. The world is changing at tectonic depths, and we need every ounce of experienced leadership we can muster to advance our national interests.
We are enjoying a binge of venom against the marginal past, distracted from preparing for the important future. Let’s move on.William Thorsell is director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum.
