Seven Oaks Magazine.

As the most insipid, American-style gimmick in the CBC’s hallowed history winds to a close – and the leader of the country from which we set out to distinguish ourselves (by dint of our host of sundry greatnesses) comes to pay a visit to our diminished capital – there is still the faint murmur of grumblings relating to the dearth of women on the list of Greatest Canadians. When a prick, whose boss is a Dick, visits town to speak with the cocksure prime minister, the absence of feminine sanity is at its most egregious. My own theory is that the omission of Canada’s female half from the celebration was rooted in a miscommunication early into the show’s production process – a naïve, idealistic CBC development grunt, inspired to tell the stories of Louis Riel and the Patriot rebels of 1837, proposed doing a show about “Canadian heroes who were hung.”

Despite the contest’s shortcomings, the populist courage and conviction of the socialist leader Tommy Douglas were given high marks and high profile betwixt the elitist Bonapartism of Trudeau and the grunting, Neanderthal xenophobia of Don Cherry. In a week where so many were so transfixed upon and inspired by Douglas’s rabble-rousing, progressive populism – a political strand thankfully not confined to our own country, and picked up most clearly in the likes of Venezuela’s presidente, Hugo Chavez – we also have, on hand, the shell of the North American Left that long ago abandoned the righteous anger of the disenfranchised as well as the insidious personification of the chest-thumping Right that snatched it up: Jack Layton and George W. Bush, respectively. While Canadians honoured one great man who had fused popular and religious indignation with a radical political agenda, a born-again, Evangelical war criminal -- who, in a form, has done the same – has come into our country to shake blood-stained hands with his Haiti-adventure sidekick, our prime minister, and all that Jack Layton’s NDP could offer in response was a milquetoast, diplomat’s letter, highlighting not so much the NDP’s opposition to Bush’s illegal war-making, but rather Jack Layton’s desire to sit down with the Halliburton Kid and prove himself to be a statesman. The smiling, moustachioed mug imploring Canadian’s to vote for Tommy as their Greatest demonstrated none of the angry spirit of his nominee in his supplicant letter to King George.

“Dear President Bush,” Layton’s letter begins, “Official visits can provide opportunities for greater understanding of common concerns and diversity of thought. It is these exchanges that make such visits potentially beneficial and productive, particularly if elected representatives and citizens hear each other's point of view.” Layton goes on to lament that “Sadly, my requests to meet with you were denied,” bemoaning the fact that, unlike during the state visit made by Mexico’s Vicente Fox, there would be no chance this time for “civilized, respectful dialogue.”

As outlined by columnist Heather Mallick, Bush has turned down Paul Martin’s humiliating promise of a supple parliament, refusing to address the House of Commons even after an all-party pledge of no booing, no heckling – indicating that, having not only abandoned Douglas’s fiery sermonizing, the NDP has also forsaken the conviction shown by a young Svend Robinson, when the latter heckled a bewildered, senile President Reagan in Ottawa.

Bush’s presence should serve as a gross, frightening reminder of a lesson somehow not driven home by the meteoric rise, just a scant few years ago in this country, of Stockwell Day – that in the angry vacuum left by progressives no longer willing to acknowledge the frustration, resentment and confusion felt by many in as harsh a world as this, retrograde demagogues hiding silver spoon agendas behind veils of fist-pounding, pulpit-shaking millennial moralizing are free to make enormous political hay. Layton’s memo to his fellow statesman contains none of the indignation or rage seizing people worldwide as they face the violence, poverty, joblessness and environmental devastation wrought globally by Bush et al.’s nihilistic pursuit of ever-greater fortunes. If anything, the plutocratic rightists who have implemented the programs in which these angers are rooted have had greater success in tapping in to the politics of discontent.

So in the wake of the vindication of Tommy Douglas’s progressive populism, Jack Layton and the NDP have nothing but a tepid letter and no-heckling promises for the man who ostensibly won the last American election by tapping into the moral outrage and common frustrations of “the People.”