RE: Desperately Seeking Ideas

Dear Sir/Madame:

I don’t know if Allan Gregg was trying to dance around the real problem in Canadian politics, or was just leaving out the juicy bits because of ignorance. His, the media’s or politicians’ take your pick.

The fact is that we are now at a period in Canadian history where the dumbing down of our media, polling gurus, and politicians has converged into a black hole, where the Canadian voter is not. It is also the same black hole that has sucked the pride of Canada, and any sort of creative problem solving that might have been seen in Ottawa in years past.

Our media in Ottawa, who report on the politics and political game have reduced their efforts to the scrum, all chasing the same story, all chasing the theatrics of people who act like kindergarten children at the best of times. Reporting what the most recent poll is showing is also part of the dumbing down process, not only is the data bad, so are the assumptions made from it.

On the other hand it is cheap journalism for the ‘cut and paste,’ trend in our media reporters.

There is no background information researched and given, to the Canadian people so they can think, discuss, debate and arrive at an informed opinion on any new ideas, policies, and dreams that might be put forth.

Can you imagine a Prime Minister standing up in the House of Commons, let alone the Leader of her Majesty's loyal opposition, and telling the country that he will build a railway across the country, find a cure to cancer in the next decade, bring an end to the endless slaughtering of innocent people in Africa, or clean up our dying oceans?

The polling companies have been looked upon as gurus of the future and thoughts of Canadians, when all they do report back to their clients is the opinion of randomly selected Canadians, who are lucky enough to be at home, with no caller ID on their telephones. The polling companies pay their caller-interviewers by the call completed, so the only real criteria used to qualify the person who answers is the fact they speak English, are home, and have a heart beat. The entire younger generation that relies on cell phones, internet, wireless or text messaging are missed. As are those working shift work.

There is no attempt to collect the evolution of any of the thinking, ideas, or opinions since there is no attempt to call the same people back to see if their thoughts, ideas, or opinions have been changed for the good or bad, after having watched, listened to, or read the dumbed down reporting. How can you ask 1,500 randomly selected people across Canada a question about something that is important and cannot be explained in eight seconds, and expect to extrapolate that slice of opinion across a country with 30,000,000 plus people, from every corner of the world, speaking every language of the world?

Who might or might not come from a country where speaking your mind gets you shot. Dead.

Remember, the mass media we have now reporting the political games being played out by the kindergarten being convened in the House of Commons, is not read by, listened to, or viewed by a majority of Canadians.

This is also a media that is shrinking its presence around the world, thus the view of the world from a Canadian perspective, and thus limiting Canadians ability to look at the world’s issues from a uniquely Canadian point of view.

In fact the numbers of people in Canada watching, reading, or viewing the media reflects very closely the numbers of people not showing up to vote.

That means Canadians under 35 don’t show up to vote, 8 times out of 10, and their brethren over 35, show up only 50% of the time to vote.

Our politicians are dumbed down to the point where they watch their popularity in the polls rise or fall much like Snow White asked her mirror to tell her was the fairest of them all.

When a Prime Minister will sell his soul to stay in power, and a leader of the Opposition will only whine to the Canadian people about what he does not like about the Liberals, but not tell us what he would do different, we are truly at the lowest ebb.

Mind you when only 50% of us show up to vote, do we get the government we want or need?