Tuesday digest

- The main reason I could never be a supporter of the party of Trudeaupia is because they pull stunts like this on a regular basis as part of their electoral strategy. It amounts to dividing the country based on our differences and basically appealing to racial loyalties. It's the same game the tribalist Bloc Quebecois plays except it comes wrapped in the Canadian flag rather than the fleur-de-lis.

An excerpt from the above-linked Globe and Mail story discussing Toronto MP Jim Karygiannis' efforts to recruit members on behalf of leadership candidate Joe Volpe:

At a Tim Hortons in south Ottawa, he plays guess-the-nationality as a man walks through the parking lot. He shouts a greeting in Tamil, and discovers the man is from Guyana.

Mr. Karygiannis tells him that he visited Guyana after floods there last year, when Canada provided aid, and the man, who identified himself only as Mr. Ali, starts to chat.

"Let me ask you something. Do you think it's time that Canada had an ethnic prime minister?" Mr. Karygiannis asks. Joe Volpe is ethnic, somebody who immigrated to Canada just like us, he tells him. He asks if Mr. Ali wants to join the Liberal Party, and Mr. Ali gives him a telephone number so that an organizer can call. "And I have a lot of family," Mr. Ali says.

Later, Mr. Karygiannis remarks on his "killer closing line" -- "Is Canada ready for an ethnic prime minister?" -- and explains how it's done. "It takes 30 seconds to zero in on an individual and figure out if you can sign them up, if you've got something in common with them."

For him, it's where people come from.

An MP since 1988, Mr. Karygiannis has assiduously courted ethnic communities, and has visited dozens of countries such as Somalia and Sri Lanka, often after natural disasters -- so often that his critics call him an international ambulance chaser.

On that note, here's an article from Saturday's National Post titled "Ideas to Improve the Nation". It's worth considering how many of these worthy ideas, especially those related to multiculturalism policy, have been sacrificed at the altar of political expediency by the likes of Trudeaupians like Joe Volpe and Jim Karyigiannis.

1. One thing? Try this: Think of Canada as a nation -- not a "superstructure" or a "community of communities" or a statist cargo cult; not two nations or ten or 600, but one nation, with a history and a future and a collective purpose. Much breath has been wasted debating whether Quebecers are a nation. The more important question is whether Canadians are. At present the answer would be: uncertain. This lack of a shared understanding of why we are living here together undermines everything we do. It paralyzes decision-making, poisons debate. We tolerate the most absurdly dysfunctional arrangements for no good reason but that we have not hitherto summoned the collective will to face down the provincial and regional interests who prey upon our divisions. Let's start. - Andrew Coyne

2. End government's fetish with race, colour and gender equity outcomes. Instead concentrate on improving equality of opportunity for Canadians as individuals. Physical security, a good education and assurance of equality under the law are due every citizen. Certain vulnerable groups -- children, the disabled, the truly needy -- deserve extraordinary protections, but funding identity groups incubates a grievance culture. Start with the universities, the cradle of our governing and ideological elites, where equity (zero sum) practices celebrate tokenism at the expense of merit, undermine professional standards and institutional credibility, sow inter-collegial animosity, chill the free exchange of ideas and encourage ideological radicalism. - Barbara Kay

3. As everyone knows, our politics -- at all levels -- have been battered by a myriad of ethical scandals. The result: declining voter rates, and rising rates of cynicism and anger. The solution does not lie with attacking politicians, and yet more public inquiries and ethical codes. Listening to anyone talk about the importance of ethics is not going to improve anyone's behaviour. That is like reading about sports, and believing it will turn you into a better athlete. Political ethics are not taught; they are caught. We need to create an ethical political culture that begins in the heart, and not on the page. Meaning, don't talk about ethics. Do ethics. - Warren Kinsella

4. Canada's fertility rate -- about 1.5 children per woman -- is ominously low. America's rate is 2.0. Replacement is 2.1. How to persuade Canadian couples to have more children? Canada long ago means-tested the old family allowance out of existence. It may be time to restore it in a new form. Here's a suggestion, with a nod to writer Phillip Longman: Reduce a worker's Canada Pension Plan contribution by 25% for each child after the first. So, in a two-income, two-child family, each worker would get a 25% break; in a two-income three-child family, each worker would get 50%, etc. The remissions would end when the child turned 18. But the policy would send a message: Having a child is a contribution to the future. - David Frum

5. Multiculturalism works great when backgrounds and traditions supplement Canadian identity. It's not so hot when there's no Canadian identity to supplement. Whether you believe we're fostering radicalism in segregated communities, or just that talented immigrants deserve better than living in poor neighbourhoods and driving cabs, there should be a common consensus: We need to do a better job of integrating new arrivals. No, not assimilate. Integrate. A national initiative to accelerate training and certification for foreign-trained professionals. To set up community programs that mix kids from different ethnic backgrounds. To teach civics in the classrooms. To forge ties between established Canadian families and those that have just arrived, to help them get acclimatized -- a different kind of family sponsorship. Enough talk about multiculturalism's alleged failings. Let's make it work. - Adam Radwanski

6. What Canada needs is radical tax cuts. It is unfashionable to acknowledge that reduction of tax increases government revenue, but, up to a point, it is true. The Eisenhower-Nixon tax-cut of 1955 increased federal government revenues. So did the even greater Kennedy-Johnson tax-cut of ten years later, and the massive Reagan tax-cuts of 1981 and 1986. High Canadian taxes are the principal cause of the Brain Drain that has driven hundreds of thousands of Canada's ablest professionals to the United States, and a fiscally responsible tax reduction would close this national wound, and encourage the flow of prosperous immigration. So wealthy a country can do its tax-payers at every level, and itself, an easy and instant favour, and it should. - Conrad Black

7. We need a campaign, run by the education ministries of the 10 provinces, to reawaken our lifeless high schools. Coast to coast, lackadaisical high schools turn out students who have trouble earning a living, studying in universities or understanding Canadian issues. The provinces should create a co-operative permanent staff to work on curriculum reform aimed at higher national standards. Improved high schools will require proficiency in both languages (a former demand now widely abandoned), teach techniques of study and work, and above all resume the teaching of Canadian history, without which we cannot hope to have a successful future. - Robert Fulford

8. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms should be amended to extend its guarantees to property. Currently it doesn't entrench property rights, for the very reason the founders of the U.S. Constitution insisted that theirs should: Entrenched Property rights limit the powers of the state. For Thomas Jefferson this was a good thing. For Pierre Elliott Trudeau it wasn't. In 1816 Jefferson defined "the first principle of association" as "the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." James Madison agreed. "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort," he wrote. America's constitution evolved during the bright dawn of classical liberalism. Ours was negotiated in the murk of a quasi-Marxist twilight. It shows. - George Jonas

9. During the last election, the Conservatives promised $2-billion for a deep water port for Iqaluit and the purchase of three naval icebreakers. Were the government to follow through on this commitment, it would substantially strengthen Canada's Arctic sovereignty, a claim that will be increasingly challenged with the expected opening of a navigable trading route through the Northwest Passage. But a large port has the promise also to transform Nunavut by drastically reducing the cost of living, and contributing substantially to the economic development of the Eastern Arctic. Iqaluit would become Canada's answer to Ushuaia, Argentina's gateway to Antarctica -- a port of call for cruise ships, thereby seizing for Canada the major benefits of the looming explosion in Arctic tourism. It is written: The true North, strong and free. - John Geiger

10. Canada needs more religious liberty. Not the purely legal guarantee in the Charter of Rights, but practical, on-the-ground religious liberty. That would mean human rights tribunals throwing out theological disagreements masquerading as human rights violations. It would mean that religiously-based arguments were addressed, rather than ruled out-of-bounds in public policy debate. And it would mean that the vast machinery of the Canadian state would not insist that religion retreat wherever government advanced in health care, education and social services. Religious Canadians are not a threat to the public order, but a powerful contributor to the common good. That contribution should be welcomed, not feared. It's good public policy. And it's their right. - Father Raymond J. de Souza

- What's this?

- Finally, remember that when you hear handwringing CBC types talking about the "cycle of violence" in the Middle East over the next few days as Israel defends itself, the way to end this little problem is simple: Hamas just has to hand over the kidnapped soldier.