COVID-19 will be part of all of our biographies.
Ray Pennings
Executive Vice President

This quick-read newsletter curates resources of value regarding faith and public life targeted towards business and community leaders.

HERE'S MY TAKE
 

May 1, 2021

COVID-19 will be part of all of our biographies. We’ve been asked to do things we never imagined doing and challenged by questions we had hardly contemplated. We are all “so done with it” (writing as I am in Ontario where the lockdown rules are stricter today than at any time in the past 13 months) while the malaise that the New York Times rightly labelled “languishing” seems widespread.

In the fog of our collective languish, many no longer muster the energy to do the hard work of understanding the complexity of COVID or think innovatively. Debate has been reduced to tweeting bumper-sticker slogans; the social solidarity of “we’re in this together” has given way to good guy/bad-guy narratives.  

In this context, the temptation to lionize or demonize almost everyone around us blurs our judgment. We are upset with the political decisions made and point out their ineffectiveness. A change of course just proves that the leader was originally wrong. A tearful apology is a sign of weakness and incompetence. A pastor told me he was feeling guilty because some of his colleagues were facing legal troubles for leading worship services but he wasn’t yet. Did that mean he was being less faithful for the gospel? The youngest person who dies from COVID; the oldest person who gets vaccinated; the overwhelmed doctors and nurses in ICU wards doing the double-shifts and breaking down on camera – the coverage is mostly emotion and dramatic image.

I don’t mean to minimize any of the depth of pain or the reality of the challenges that any of these images represents. I only mean to point out that in this languish stage, the public processing of our present circumstance has shifted from the cognitive to the emotive. Our evaluation of the situation has less place for nuance and the players are categorized as heroes or villains, martyrs or victims.

My own reading this week included some reflections on a sermon by St. Augustine, preached in the year 397. Martyrdom was very real in the living memory of the early church and Augustine was asked to preach at a “festival of the martyrs.” However, Augustine goes out of his way to avoid heroizing the martyrs, contrary to most who celebrated them as “muscular athletes” or “triumphant stars of the faith.” Instead, Augustine deliberately aimed to make the celebration “less dramatic, so as to stress the daily drama of God’s workings in the heart of the average Christian.”

“God has his martyrs in secret,” Augustine told his audience. “Sometimes you shiver with fever; you are fighting. You are in bed: it is you who are the athlete.”

When media coverage seems little more than a “Festival of the COVID-Fight,” it is useful to be reminded of the learning and growth that can take place in the ordinary. In languishing times, we don’t need martyrs. We need friendships. We need to remember history and learn from those who have walked troubled roads before us. We need to seek and give forgiveness, and let neither the emotion of the news coverage nor the pique of the moment rupture our everyday relationships. Give thanks for the gifts of the moment and plan for the future, recognizing these plans may have to be held lightly.

Another week. A continued need for ordinary grace in languishing times.​​​

WHAT I'M READING

Inflation Tiff

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem told a Parliamentary Committee this week that although the 2 percent inflation target remains in place, we ought not to be surprised (as if anyone who has recently bought lumber or hardware supplies might be!) if inflation numbers rise in the short-term. The usual way to combat inflation is to raise interest rates, except that Canada, along with all western governments, is handing out record amounts of borrowed money, justifying it as affordable on the premise that interest rates will remain reliably stable. Last week, I observed that the federal budget assurance that a rising GDP would overcome all debt problems wasn’t as foolproof as the government would have us believe. This week, the governor of the Bank of Canada is pointing out that there might be leakiness in our economic boat. 

Money Doesn’t Always Win

For 48 hours last week, a new Super League exclusively for the 12 richest European football (soccer) clubs existed. It was hard to deny the thinly-disguised greed on the part of these clubs who, with the new league, would keep much more revenue for themselves, compared to the current arrangements, where on-field performance during the season determines who gets the preferred opponents and schedules. The announcement was met by street protests, threats, and accusations by those excluded. Its backers abandoned the project within two days of its launch. While only the naïve would celebrate this as a victory for the purity of competitiveness and sport over the dollar (since it had more to do with a wider sense of greed to allow more people to share in the billions of dollars that European football generates) the idealist within me appreciated an organic groundswell of resistance to oligarchic greed and the desire to preserve opportunities for the “little towns” to compete for the highest titles in the sport.

Counting Spouses

The Canadian Polyamory Association believes that up to 20 percent of Canadians are in “some sort of polyamorous situation,” further claiming that “people will use different names when referring to themselves. They will use ‘ethical non-monogamy,’ ‘consensual non-monogamy,’ ‘radical relationship,’ ‘relationship anarchy’ when they describe what they practice. But for the census, they should all use the word polyamorous, so that the statistics pick up on it and the category carries more weight.” The Association urges Canadians to declare their polyamory in the upcoming census, hoping this will put pressure on government to consider more than traditional monogamous relationships for tax and other benefits. Consumers of a broad range of media will also note regular coverage of polyamory designed to normalize and legitimize what we used to call promiscuity.

Reimagining Education

Cardus Senior Fellow Deani Van Pelt noted in The Hub this week that the impacts of COVID on education were every bit as far-reaching as the more frequently discussed COVID impacts on work. In addition to the evidence of increased numbers moving from government to independent schools, Van Pelt hopefully points to person-centered (distinct from child-indulgent) and place-based education as a new frontier that could lead to new opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Muddy Federalism

In December’s “10 Things I’ll be Watching in 2021,” I noted that the arrangements between governments in Canada are blurring and in conflict. This week, a Federal Court of Appeal ruled that Alberta has the right to control where it ships its oil and can shut off the tap as it threatened in 2018 to British Columbia, even if its motive is political as it was at that time. Like last month’s Supreme Court of Canada’s carbon tax decision, which allowed the federal government to dabble in what was thought to be provincial jurisdiction, these split court decisions are also divided on reasons (even among the majorities) which suggests that rather than resolving and adding clarity, they are only foreshadowing future detours on the road to inter-governmental jurisdictional clarity.

MEANINGFUL METRICS

Keep the Apron, Cut the Strings

A number of policy organizations, headed by the Canada West Foundation, collaborate on an annual survey relating to governance in Canada. This year’s survey examined whether a year of COVID focus had changed the expectations that Canadians had of their governments. While there is a bit of nuance to the answer that policy nerds might pay attention to, the basic answer is “no.” For the most part, attitudes remain unchanged from previous surveys. ​​​I did find the question of provincial “opting out” of federal programs with compensation to be of interest.​​

As has been the case for the past few decades, Canadians as a whole are almost equally divided on the question, although Quebec which once was a total outlier is being joined by Alberta and Saskatchewan in championing provincial rights. Interestingly, in the rest of Canada this is a question that divides across ideological lines. In Quebec, however, the numbers hold constant right across the political spectrum. Bottom line? Most Canadians still want the money transferred – just not with strings attached.

Canada West Foundation 2021​​

TAKE IT TO-GO
       

Last Card

UNO what? After more than a year of signing off this weekly newsletter with a lighter wordplay touch, I need to ‘fess up. This last paragraph has become a bit of a game between certain colleagues and me. When distributing the deck, they think pun cards should be discarded as jokers. They keep raising the stakes but I remain all in. The sign-up page for this newsletter (which they control) insists that this paragraph is the reason Insights continues to be a free newsletter. Well, I am going to raise them one. If anyone is on the side of the readers, it is I in wanting to let you cash in your Saturday morning chips without a surcharge. My colleagues can skip their turn if they want to but I am not playing any Change Direction cards. The newsletter remains free – pass it along to your friends to join our Saturday morning Insights team. Last card. I’m out.

Photo by Karla Hernández via Unsplash.com

Our mailing address is:

Cardus
185 Young St
Hamilton, ON L8N1V9