ANDREW MILLS wrote in the Globe and Mail
> Last Saturday, I took a seat on one of the four Canadian Auto Workers'
> subsidized buses full of communists and churchgoers, Luddites and lesbians
> bound for Washington to join the protests.
- snip -
> It was rare to find a protester who could directly connect the workings of
> the World Bank and IMF to the issues raised by the global justice movement.
> Their knowledge of the World Bank and IMF seemed vague and superficial.
> They'd been told that these bureaucracies caused global problems, and they
> accepted it: Okay, let's go protest.
The rarity of finding an articulate protester could easily be an artifact
of the insincerity of the search. Mr. Mills could have gotten an answer
from Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank, but that
wouldn't have fit in Mills' derisive agenda.
I too have had a recent experience of difficulty finding clear answers. In
my case the respondents have been Canadian government officials, who seem
to operate in a culture of insincerity -- give an answer that evades the
question and begs the issue but qualifies as a sufficient reply. My
respondent from the Ministry of Human Resources Development presenting me
with a three page letter containing facts that I don't dispute and
omitting references to context that dwarfs those facts. My respondent from
Canada Customs and Revenue lied. When I replied seeking further
information about the "facts" he presented me with, I received a
"clarification" from another official in the ministry that in effect
admitted the first response was baseless.
I won't go into the specifics of the case mentioned above because it is a
situation familiar to anyone who has to deal with government and is not
crowned with an aura of patronage. It is also familiar to anyone who
watches the squirming, weaseling and spinning of govt. spokespeople
dealing with exposed scandals such as the HRDC audit revealed.
Joseph Stiglitz tells us that the IMF officials play by the same rule of
say what you can get away with.
Tom Walker
