SATURDAY,OCTOBER19,2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO OPINION | O5
A
s the federal election campaign heads into its final
days, the smart money in Ottawa is already looking
ahead. Defeated heads will surely roll. Veteran Lib-
eral strategist David Herle recently argued that two
of the three main leaders would have to go. According to
Conservative operative John Capobianco, there’s also sup-
port being rounded up to replace Andrew Scheer with Peter
MacKay. Some are even asking if Alberta Premier Jason
Kenney wants to come back to Ottawa.
And the pressure on Justin Trudeau to step down as
Liberal Leader if he loses would be enormous. No losing
prime minister has stayed on as leader since Progressive
Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker lost in 1963 –
and that didn’t end well for the Chief, who was humiliated
and deposed by his former friends and allies on national
TV, when he offered himself up at the 1967 leadership con-
vention to succeed, well, himself.
Yet leaving – whether pushed or jumping – would be
shortsighted and wrong. Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Scheer and NDP
Leader Jagmeet Singh are still young politicians with much
to learn and much to give.
Although populists today make an easy living denounc-
ing professional politicians with promises to “drain the
swamp,” politics is no place for amateurs. “I am not afraid
to be called a politician,” Paul Martin Sr., Canada’s health
minister in the 1950s and foreign minister a decade later,
often declared. “Next to preaching the word of God, there is
nothing nobler than to serve one’s fellow countrymen in
government.”
With a recession looming, relations with the United
States and China badly frayed, and the country sharply di-
vided over pipelines, climate change and reconciliation
with Indigenous peoples, Canadians can hardly afford to
turn Parliament over to rookie
leaders – on either side of the
aisle.
Like children, political leaders
benefit from learning from the
occasional setback. Defeat builds
leaders. It gives them empathy
and resilience, perspective and
vision, as well as purpose and
depth.
As my spin coach likes to re-
mind us, “What doesn’t kill you,
makes you stronger.”
And Canada’s history is chock-
full of prime ministers and politi-
cal leaders whose most signifi-
cant work emerged in their sec-
ond acts, in the wake of bitter
loss.
Of the top five prime ministers
ranked by Carleton University
historians Norman Hillmer and
Stephen Azzi, only Liberal prime
minister Wilfrid Laurier, who ranked second, did not return
from defeat to form a second ministry. Laurier alone en-
joyed a steady string of unbroken electoral successes before
losing the top office to Sir Robert Borden – himself no
stranger to defeat – in 1911. Yet, even then, as opposition
leader during the First World War, Laurier’s principled and
judicious resistance to conscription both reinforced his rep-
utation as a liberal and secured his party’s solid hold on
Quebec for the next four decades. Indeed, his sunny ways
still reverberate.
The storied career of the top-ranked prime minister,
Mackenzie King, is even more encouraging. Elected Liberal
Party leader in 1919 at 45 years of age, and prime minister in
1921, King was an inexperienced leader with shallow politi-
cal roots and many debts to an aging party establishment.
Progressive in outlook, but cautious by temperament, King
muddled along for most of the decade, barely leaving his
mark.
When stock markets plunged in 1929 and the Great De-
pression ravaged the country, King and his governing Liber-
als were roundly trounced in 1930 by R.B. Bennett’s Conser-
vatives. Few would have blamed King if, at 56 years of age
and after nine years as prime minister, he had simply
packed his bags and left, happy with a legacy distinguished
mostly by its longevity.
But King stayed on as leader. Over the next few years, he
rebuilt the Liberal Party and indisputably made it his own.
Cautiously – for he was always so – he armed it with new
ideas and modern policies from a 1932 “thinkers’ confer-
ence” in Port Hope, Ont., in an effort to address the global
economic crisis.
He attracted a new generation of Liberal activists, too:
Men such as the veteran engineer C.D. Howe, and younger
reformers such as Brooke Claxton from Montreal and Paul
Martin Sr. from Windsor.
With the Liberals returning to power in October, 1935,
King was prime minister in September, 1939, when Canada
marched to war against Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
This was truly King’s moment. By now an experienced
and masterful political tactician, he skilfully kept anti-war
French Canadians and their English cousins on side through
two conscription crises and six years of war. With Howe,
soon dubbed the “minister of everything,” at his side, King
enlisted more than a million Canadian men and women in
the armed forces and transformed Canada from a rural
backwater into a modern industrialized and urbanized na-
tion.
As the war ended, King wisely backed measures to secure
the peace at home and abroad, as well as his re-election.
With Claxton, and then Martin, he set about building the
modern welfare state, introducing family allowances in 1944
and laying the foundations for universal health care and
pensions. With Louis St. Laurent, whom he recruited in
1942, and Lester Pearson, whom he promoted from the se-
nior ranks of the foreign service to cabinet in 1948, he
launched Canada into a new era of active postwar diploma-
cy.
Not a bad second act. And perhaps, if we really want the
best and the brightest leading our country, we shouldn’t be
so allergic to political defeat – and all the lessons it uniquely
offers.
Likechildren,
politicalleaders
benefitfromlearning
fromtheoccasional
setback.Defeat
buildsleaders.It
givesthemempathy
andresilience,
perspectiveand
vision,aswellas
purposeanddepth.
Asmyspincoach
likestoremindus,
‘Whatdoesn’tkill
you,makesyou
stronger.’
ThelegacyofMackenzieKingshowsushow
themoderninstincttoturfpartyleaders
afteranelectoraldefeat mightbehurtingus
GREGDONAGHY
OPINIONDirectoroftheBillGrahamCentreforContemporaryInternational
HistoryattheUniversityofToronto’sTrinityCollege
Canada’sbest
primeminister?
Hewasaloser
The decline in active school
transport, as the experts call it,
has prompted a florescence of
research correlating walking or
cycling to school with everything
from improved alertness to men-
tal health, social competence
and physical fitness. As our
grandmothers could have told
us: It’s good to start the day with
a little fresh air and exercise.
And yet, we opt to drive. Why?
A 2015 survey conducted by
the national injury-prevention
charity Parachute revealed that
parent’s prime concern with
children walking to school was
speeding cars and traffic, fol-
lowed by abduction. Addressing
these concerns by driving to
school is questionable at best. In
purely statistical terms, a child in
Canada is more than four times
more likely to die in a car colli-
sion than to be abducted by a
stranger. And in driving to
school, parents are only contrib-
uting to the congestion and real
dangers of the streets.
It’s a paradox they can live
with. “Parents frame traffic as a
problem generated by others,”
says Kate Berry, a civil engineer
and director of the Ontario Ac-
tive School Travel program.
Funded by the Ministry of Educa-
tion, with a goal “to achieve pop-
ulation-level change,” the pro-
gram represents an escalation in
the effort to combat the driving-
to-school problem. It is running
28 model projects across the
province – partnering with local
public health authorities, munic-
ipalities, school boards and po-
lice to develop strategies to turn
the driving tide.
This kind of co-ordinated ap-
proach is essential, as I learned
in a futile two-year quest to have
some kind of crosswalk or cross-
ing guard installed in front of
our local elementary school. On
his first day of junior kindergar-
ten, my four-year-old son stood
opposite his school, surveying
the mess of cars in front of it and
asked where we were “sup-
posed” to cross the street. Hav-
ing spent his learning-to-walk
years in Berlin, he was looking
for the kind of designated cross-
ing point he was used to: a stop
sign, lines on the road, any in-
dication that pedestrians were
expected.
There was none – and there
remains none. Crossing guards
being the dominion of the police
(at the time) and crosswalks be-
ing the dominion of the city, the
two bureaucracies tossed re-
sponsibility for the issue back
and forth until the school was ul-
timately demolished. In the
meantime, kids continued to
thread their way around double-
parked and three-point-turning
cars as the principal waded
through the chaos in a florescent
vest, trying to maintain order.
But while pedestrian infras-
tructure is critical, the most stub-
born obstacle to walking to
school may be the drivers them-
selves. Driving kids to school is
part of a bigger picture, in which
a generation of parents has pri-
oritized structure and supervi-
sion in their children’s lives over
freedom and independence.
We’ve persuaded ourselves – and
our children – that they’re better
off in a bubble on wheels thanfar from home, or bouncing be-
tween split parents who live out-
side the school catchment.
Parents serve as role models,
whether we like it or not. It
doesn’t make sense for our kids
to learn about the fragility of our
planet in school, and then climb
into idling SUVs to be driven to
ballet. These habits are forma-
tive. As a growing number of cli-
mate-conscious Canadians re-
consider eating beef and taking
flights, it’s worth recognizing
that, according to the federal
government’s 2017 National In-
ventory Report on greenhouse
gas sources, our preference for
SUVs and pick-up trucks has
made passenger vehicles a larger
contributor to greenhouse gas
emissions in this country than
agriculture and air travel com-
bined.
Changing behavioural norms
requires carrots and sticks. So
far, the carrots – initiatives such
as ABC (Anything But a Car)
days, where kids who walk get
stickers, or campaigns such as
International Walk to School
Month (October) – don’t seem to
be working. We need more sticks.
Ontario will see some as the
Safer School Zones Act, which
passed in 2017, starts to take ef-
fect, allowing municipalities to
install photo radar cameras in
school and community safety
zones. Toronto Mayor John Tory
hopes to have 50 up and running
by the end of the year. A month-
long pilot project conducted last
fall at eight school zones across
Toronto suggest they’ll be busy:
At half of the locations, the ma-
jority of vehicles were exceeding
the speed limit.
Schools should reconsider
programs such as Kiss and Go –
in which volunteers shuttle kids
from backseats onto school play-
grounds – that expedite the car
drop-off and make driving an
even more appealing option. In
Germany, the rise of theEltern-
taxi(parent taxi) has prompted
some schools to create a 250-
metre car-free zone around
them, impelling kids who are
driven to school to walk the last
stretch.
This fall, Toronto-based non-
profit 8 80 Cities, which advo-
cates for inclusive urban design,
is running two demonstration
projects to give communities a
sense of what is possible. In one,
planter boxes were used to
“pinch” the street in front of a
North York school, slowing traf-
fic and diverting commuters
who had been using the street as
a shortcut. In another, the street
in front of a High Park school
will be cut off to all vehicular
traffic for the drop-off and pick-
up hours, following a School
Streets model developed in Bri-
tain.
“We’re so used to things being
a certain way,” says Amanda
O’Rourke, the executive director
of 8 80 Cities. “We need to raise
expectations.”
She’s right. We need to be re-
minded of the benefits of a less
car-driven world. Getting there
will require a concerted effort on
the part of cities, schools and
parents. If we stop treating our
kids like precious backseat cargo,
we give them a chance to be ac-
tive participants in their world –
and to make that world a more
livable and lively place.risking whatever variables the
outside world might throw at
them.
The results have been stultify-
ing; children aged 5 to 17 spend a
daily average of three hours on
screens, according to Statistics
Canada, while only two out of
five get the recommended hour
of daily physical activity. They’ve
also been debilitating: A third of
the parents surveyed by Para-
chute cited their children’s lack
of “maturity” as justification for
driving them to school.
Maturity can be fostered, but
not in the back seat of a car. Last
year, Metrolinx commissioned a
series of focus groups with par-
ents in the Greater Toronto and
Hamilton areas, to get a better
fix on why they were opting to
drive their kids (junior kinder-
garten through Grade 8) to
school – often a distance of less
than 800 metres. A common
theme to emerge was the “rush
and stress” of the morning
household, as kids failed to exe-
cute their routine – described by
parents as showering, eating
breakfast, assembling lunch,
finding homework, packing
knapsacks, gaming and texting –
in time, leaving families “no
choice” but to drive.
Whose failure is this really?
It’s important to remember that
certain subsets of children litera-
lly have no choice but to be dri-
ven: children with disabilities, or
attending specialized programsISTOCKSchool:Weneedtobereminded
ofthebenefitsofalesscar-drivenworld
FROMO1Changingbehavioural
normsrequirescarrots
andsticks.Sofar,
thecarrots–initiatives
suchasABC(Anything
ButaCar)days,where
kidswhowalkget
stickers,orcampaigns
suchasInternational
WalktoSchoolMonth
(October)–don’tseem
tobeworking.Weneed
moresticks.