Following Poilievre’s logic, if the root cause of terrorism is terrorists, then the root cause of aboriginal crime must be aboriginal criminals. So if the jails are full of aboriginal people, it’s because so many of them commit crimes.
If you’re not squirming yet, you should be. It is a very short step to the conclusion that aboriginal people are disposed to crime — presumably because of some racial or cultural ‘difference’.
The only way out of this moral swamp is to commit sociology and look for the causes of crime beyond the individuals who commit them — in society, or the tainted justice system around them. In short, to fix things, first we must find the root causes.
I was therefore dismayed to read Rex Murphy’s column in the Post last week, which eulogized (there is no other word for it) Poilievre’s stunted logic: “Root cause arguments,” writes Murphy, “are often mere political cover to shift focus from a murderous event … an effort to diffuse responsibility, attenuate the guilt of perpetrators and drown the event in ever expanding circles of ‘context.’”
Okay, so now I have a question for Murphy: The suicide rate among youth in Nunavut is 12 times the national average. Where does Murphy think the cause lies?
His advice is that we should “insist on keeping attention on the immediate event and its actors.” In other words, to find answers to our questions, we need to look no further than the young people who, tragically, took their own lives — or possibly to their parents.
I confess I was left wondering if Murphy even understands what root causes are. After all, the search for them is a reaction to exactly the kind of policy-making he proposes — that is, to the failure to look beyond the “immediate events and actors.” In the case of aboriginal peoples, this kind of myopic thinking has led to the social and cultural disintegration of their communities.
So the rejection of root causes is not just an assault on policy-makers who coddle terrorists (as if anyone does). Poilievre and Murphy are attacking a whole approach to policy-making, one that treats issues and their causes as diverse, complex and often surprising in their origins.
What’s the alternative? Simply put, the alternative to complexity is … simplicity. Instead of searching for root causes, we argue over simple solutions. What are ‘simple solutions’? One-line answers to hard questions.
Here are some Conservative examples: You can stop crime by cracking down on criminals. The way to peace in the Middle East is to say that Israel is right and Arabs are wrong. A carbon tax is a job-killer.
To be fair, Conservatives are hardly the only party to use simple solutions, but they’re certainly way ahead of the others at playing this game. And it has worked well for them. But the chickens may be coming home to roost.
In the age of global interconnectedness, Canadians are getting wise to the claim that big issues have simple solutions. They now know, for example, that the economy and the environment are interconnected in all kinds of complex and surprising ways — and that this, in turn, means that economic development must also be sustainable.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning has been talking about this for years, as has Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has made it a central plank in his party’s emerging platform. Now Alberta Premier Alison Redford is arguing the case, as are a growing number of big companies in the energy sector.
Unless all these people are wrong, it’s pretty clear which way history is going. Far from being an occult religion, the search for root causes — treating issues as complex and interconnected — has gone mainstream. It is “thought-leaders” like Murphy and Poilievre who are off-side.
So what is the lesson for the Conservative Party? They’re going through a rough patch. Their poll numbers have slumped and, as Chantal Hébert wrote last week, people are getting anxious and angry about the bullying and the secrecy. Something out there seems to be shifting.
Of course, Conservative strategists will reply that it’s two years until the next election — a lifetime in politics — and that management of the economy remains the government’s strong suit … except that by then credibility on complexity, interdependence and root causes may be exactly what the public expects from a good manager.
As with the environment and healthcare, more and more Canadians view the economy as a complex system. They don’t know how it works or what exactly will create jobs and prosperity, but they are increasingly wary of anyone who claims to have a bottle full of solutions for our economic woes.
Indeed, this is precisely why the idea of government as a competent manager matters to them. Managers are people who understand complex systems and can make them work. Canadians want to believe that the person with his hands on the controls has the sophistication and the skills to do the job — which seems to be why they liked Mark Carney.
Where does this leave Stephen Harper? While someone obviously thought it was clever to have him ridicule Justin Trudeau with the quip on “committing sociology”, no one seems to have realized that by doing so they were also casting the Conservatives as the party of simple solutions.
Think about that for a minute. Is this really where Canadians are likely to go to find a competent manager? If I were Stephen Harper, I’d be having a serious talk with my comms people.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Don Lenihan
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