Canada's Biggest Crisis is a Crisis in Leadership

The real systemic problem in our country is that our leaders have abdicated their authority to fringe ideas and mob rule.

“Cowards rule the world these days.”

So said John Dutton, the formidable rancher and landowner from the TV series Yellowstone.

If you're familiar with the series, you'll know John Dutton is not a guy you want to be on the other side of a disagreement with. He's got a connection with his history and he knows what he wants for his future. He's passionate and capable, and even if you don't agree with his methods, it's obvious he's an outstanding leader.

But, do cowards really rule the world today?

Well, the cowards seemingly run the media that turned most of the country against the Freedom Convoy. They run the school boards and the universities too. And the sports teams. These cowards are the ones in authority, but they're not real leaders.

Shonna Waters at betterup.com defines a leader as someone who:

1. Inspires passion and motivation in his/her followers.

2. Has a vision and the path to realizing it.

3. Ensures their team has support and the tools to achieve their goals.

She goes on to say that a leader may be any of those things, but a good leader is all three. A guy like John Dutton definitely has all three of these going for him.

Of course, having John Dutton as, say, our Prime Minister would likely be problematic in several ways, not least among them the fact that he's not above sending those who cross him to “the Train Station”, from which they never return.

So, there's that.

Anyway, let's take a look at what a bad leader looks like. In researching this, I discovered that there are way more traits for bad leaders than there are for good ones, but there were several that kept coming up.

Poor leaders are:

1. Poor communicators,

2. Often oblivious to their weaknesses,

3. Refuse to take responsibility for their mistakes and instead blame others,

4. Lack integrity,

5. Often know-it-alls,

6. Usually incompetent, and

7. Care more about people's opinions than they do about doing what's right and good.

I'm sure there are many more, but this already paints a pretty good portrait.

Dictionary.com describes a coward as:

a person who lacks courage in facing danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.; a timid or easily intimidated person.

When I compare Canada's current leadership to these two lists, it's pretty clear what kind of a leader we've got. If it were just the Prime Minister, we could probably limp along until the next election, but sadly it's way more systemic than that. Yes, I just used the word “systemic” and trust me, it makes a lot more sense in this context than how it's generally used these days.

It must be convenient (for someone) to have so many scandals in government that the latest one keeps eclipsing the previous ones. It makes it very difficult to keep track. Is this number 27 or is it still just the first one…? I really have no idea.

The thing is, most of what's going on in Canada's government is related primarily to Justin Trudeau's narcissistic tendencies, coupled with unrealistic idealism and just plain incompetence. Those three traits on their own encompass the majority of that previous list.

It's one thing to be incompetent, but when you're an incompetent narcissist, your whole raison d'etre is to blame others for all your mistakes, and in Justin Trudeau's case, that pretty much amounts to a full time job. No wonder he's so bad at the job we hired him for.

But never mind the world, the more pertinent question for Canadians is this:

Are cowards ruling our country?

When people say Canada is broken, what they're really saying is that the leadership is broken. Almost everything that's not working in this country right now is directly attributable to poor leadership.

Stephen King said, “A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.” We're seeing the results of cowardly leadership playing out before our eyes in real time in this country.

When you see a mob of university students chasing out an invited guest speaker in Calgary because they don't like the topic, or a BC teacher being fired for repeating historical facts, or the continuing saga of men competing as women in professional sports, and the never-ending stream of apologies demanded (and capitulated to) for comments that wouldn't even be noticed apart from those shrill social media voices - these things are a failure of leadership. Full stop. All of these things are allowed to happen solely because leaders have abdicated their positions of leadership. Those that are supposed to lead, are instead being led by the mob. These leaders are cowards and they easily tick most of the seven boxes above, if not all of them. If there were some real leaders with even regular sized balls, the cowards underneath them would get with the program pretty quick, and the ones constantly calling for heads on a platter would begin to grow up just as quick.

Lately I've been noticing an increasing number of cracks appearing in the surface of this “woke agenda” (sorry, not sure what else to call it), and a tiny bit of light starting to seep through. It really seems like more and more people are starting to get sick of it. All of a sudden these ball-less cowardly leaders are going to notice that there are more people who are sick of their bullshit than there are whiners trying to control them and they'll also run. At least I'm hoping that's how it'll play out.

By the way, leaders don't necessarily need to be in a place of authority to be leaders.

More stories are coming out all the time of how toxic these “leaders” have become. The more these stories come out, the more stories are going to continue to come out. This may end up being some kind of bloody revolution, but if so, it'll be well worth it.

The current crop of authority figures we have in big business, media, academia, and certain areas of government are more worried about offending small, vocal minorities than they are about actually helping people, building their business, or even doing their job. They're really only concerned with their image, which is precisely why they're so easily controlled.

I call this FOMID - the Fear Of Making Important Decisions. This is the hallmark of our current leaders. Admittedly, some of these people have good reason to be afraid. In many cases, their jobs are literally on the line. This is all the more the reason we need leaders who are more concerned with doing what they've been tasked to do, and doing it with integrity, than they are about offending people.

Imagine what would happen if enough people just stood up and said NO. I'll bet these guys would fold pretty quick. It would be helpful if these people were peers, in the case of universities, professionals, and sports leagues. In the case of schools, parents will do just fine, and in the case of politicians, these people need to be us.

Regardless of the sphere, it's the public who will turn the tide.

It's already started to happen. After Boob-gate premiered at Ontario’s Oakville Trafalgar High School, parents took to the streets and demanded change. They had no intention of allowing a man to teach their children while wearing prosthetic breasts the size of basketballs and fake nipples the size of teacups - regardless of what the school administration had to say about it. At first, the school wouldn't bend, but eventually they had no choice. That guy doesn't work there anymore, although the school still stopped short of admitting that anyone did anything wrong.

Kayla Lemieux, ex-shop teacher maintains that these are real.

Another refreshing instance happened at the end of February when Publisher Penguin Random House announced that it will publish "classic, unexpurgated” (uncensored) versions of Roald Dahl's children's novels after receiving severe backlash for cuts and rewrites that were intended to make the books suitable for modern readers.

Once again, it was the public outcry that made them back down.

The Toronto District School Board always seems to be in the news for this sort of thing and just last week, amid accusations of racism (which involved allegedly locking a child in a small room), they put a grade 1 teacher, the principal, and the vice principal all on time-out. According to the TDSB, this is not disciplinary, but simply so they can conduct their investigation, which “may take a while”. It seems like this is really just a regular day in Toronto.

This time there was a bit of a twist, however. This time a group of parents got a petition together to advocate for these three staff members.

Not only the parents, but the Ontario Principals’ Council (OPC) also issued a statement saying:

we are confident that once this incident is thoroughly investigated, the evidence will show that the student in question was never placed in the room depicted in the media reports, let alone with a closed or locked door…

The educators involved in this case are not allowed to comment publicly while the matter is being investigated, making the one-sided media coverage especially difficult and distressing to the professionals involved.

They also urged the board to return the administrators back to the school at the “earliest opportunity.”

So, these are bright spots indeed. As I said, the more these stories come out, the more stories will continue to come out. Along with that, the more we hear about parents standing up for their rights and the rights of their kids, the less afraid other parents will be to do the same. Eventually, I believe those in authority will have no choice but to give way to real leaders who will do what we hired them to do, and who will cater to the best interests of their companies, their students, their athletes, and whomever else they are mandated to serve, instead of fringe ideas and screaming mobs.