Matt Gurney: I hereby propose the Ice Bucket Challenge for National Survival

I need a premier to unilaterally harmonize some regulations and then publicly dare another premier to match that move ... and then pass it on.

By: Matt Gurney

Canada's premiers went to Washington, D.C. this week, to meet with ... whomever would agree to see them, it turned out. The Team Canada delegation ended up scoring a meeting with James Blair, deputy White House chief of staff. That ain't nothing. But it's also a signal of where the White House rates Canada in terms of urgency. Our call is important to them, but we're going to be on hold listening to the canned music for a bit, seems to be about the size of it.

And in terms of what was accomplished. Well. We'll let Mr. Blair speak for himself.

I don't want to rush to any conclusions before all the facts are in, but I'm going to venture that our problems have not been solved by the jaunt down to D.C.

And that's okay! I'm not one of those Canadians who sees treason in every entreaty. Trying to drum up support and get heard in D.C. (and Mar-a-Lago) is obviously going to be part of what we have to do going forward. It would appear, however, that we're going to need to do more. The federal government is currently largely idled and out of action while the Liberals attempt to get their own house in order and the Conservatives begin rolling out a new roadmap to the next election. So there won't be much help coming from Ottawa, at least for a few more weeks (and probably much longer). So it's going to be up to the premiers.

And in the spirit of being cooperative and helpful, I'm going to offer them a suggestion on how they can get going. I'm calling it the Ice Bucket Challenge for National Survival. And our premiers can get it started today.

Do you remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? It was a social media fad about a decade ago. There'd been variations of it for much longer, but in the summer of 2014, it really exploded online. The concept was simple: a person would film themselves dumping a bucket of ice water over their heads, and would then dare someone else to do the same. And if they refused, they were on the hook for a donation to a charity combating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. (Ideally, of course, you'd make a donation even if you dumped the bucket on yourself.) It worked! Hundreds of millions rolled in to charities raising awareness of and supporting research toward a cure for ALS.

I'm not asking politicians to dump buckets of ice water on their head — though I suspect it would do some of them some good. No, the point here isn't the bucket-o’-ice-water part, it's the naming-and-shaming part. Because I have a pretty worrying hunch that despite all the talk of Team Canada and visits to D.C., our premiers aren't doing much to get this country battle ready. Too many of them, after a career in Canadian politics, are probably too stuck in their ways of "the announcement is the plan." Others are probably just too intellectually and emotionally stunned by what's coming out of D.C. to really know what to do.

And that's also okay. Because the rest of us have already figured it out for them. It's time to make this country stronger by bringing down internal trade barriers. These are mostly regulatory. Some of them exist because special interests have defended them, but I bet a lot exist because they haven't really been worth the effort of getting rid of, even though everyone — literally everyone with an informed opinion on this — agrees that they are bad and an economic drag on the country.

So let's just start wiping them out. Not by convening another goddamn task force. We don't need to drag Martha Hall Findlay or some other long-suffering soul into it. Frankly, we don't have the time for that, anyway. We need to get moving on this now. So let's resurrect the Ice Bucket Challenge, but this time, the disease we're trying to cure is Canadian complacency.

Complacency and groupthink are rampant across the Canadian political class, alas. I get that. So my proposal is to start small. Very small. I want one premier — and I think it should be Danielle Smith, for reasons I'll get into in a moment — to announce that Alberta is unilaterally harmonizing five or 10 regulations (or so, the exact number doesn't matter) with another province or territory. I don't care which one. That doesn't matter, either. What matters is that it not be a proposal, but an action. It has to be a thing that one province just does, and then announces.

And then I want that premier to then publicly dare, via a video released on all major social media platforms, the premier of the province or territory whose rules they adopted to reciprocate by harmonizing five or 10 of their regulations with Alberta, also unilaterally.

And then, here's the fun part — that second premier then nominates the premier of another province or territory. And unilaterally adopts five or ten of their regulations. And then dares Smith and the premier of that third province to match the moves ... and then pick the next province.

And so on and so on and so on.

I don't care what regulations are chosen. I don't. Because it isn't really the point. I know full well that the premiers will all pick the easy ones, the low-hanging fruit. And obviously, none of this is going to do much of anything to help us at the federal level.

But there isn’t anything we can do on that front yet, so, whatever. The premiers can and must break the stifling complacency that is such a hallmark of modern Canadian politics and use the power of social media, and simple shame, to get the ball rolling. To do something. And then do another thing, and another thing, and another thing.

Smith should get the ball rolling because she's taken so much flak — unfairly, I think — for her visits to the U.S. This is a chance for her to (and I'm saying this as politely as I can) tell the other premiers to shove that nonsense up their bottoms and start doing something beyond joint statements. Smith should also take the lead because I think she'll grasp the point of what I'm suggesting here, and precisely because of the flak she’s taken, she would be particularly well placed to demand the next premier down the line do something. After weeks of criticism, there is the added appeal that she’d automatically become the captain of Team Canada if she does this first.

So yes. Save us, Danielle Smith. Alberta can lead here — probably better than any other province could … Quebec being an interesting possible exception. I also suspect my Albertan friends would be able to bring themselves to the task of harmonizing regulations with a zeal and focus that might be missing from some of the other premiers.

But in the end, I don't really care who does it first. I think it makes sense for Smith for Smith to go first, but if she won't, any of them will do. Start small, but start. Do something. Do it immediately. Do it in public. And then use the power of your public profiles to get the next guy to do something. Make doing nothing but the same-old messaging and study groups the politically riskier option.

Because, the thing is, friends, I've taken enough trips around the sun to know how Canadian politicians respond to any threat. That normally means a political threat — the threat of the media reporting on a scandal, or losing a key riding, or taking a beating in the polls. They respond by mouthing off and maybe announcing a task force or a study or even dragooning a retired supreme court justice into writing up a big report. But in the end, they don't actually do much. Things don't change. No one loses a job or an entitlement. No special interests are alarmed and no one, anywhere, is particularly discomfited.

That's going to be our default response to this, because we've conditioned the politicians — we, the voters, have, by tolerating this for so long — to a point that I am not confident that the politicians know what else to do. They know there is a problem. They know they need to do something. But they, and all the people that work for them in political roles, and all the people in their vast public-service bureaucracies, approach things the same way.

Message it. Work up a comms plan. Have a meeting. Hammer out a joint statement. Put together a task force. Get something symbolic out for today’s news cycle so that no one thinks you’re useless and adrift, and then figure out the action tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes, so we get another news cycle’s worth of nothing. And another and another.

The hell with that. We don't have time. We need to break the habit of choosing process over action. And the Ice Bucket Challenge is a ready made model.

Cut some regulations. Just a few, and small ones. Whatever. And then dare someone else to do a few more. And a few more. And a few more. Keep it going. We've built these awful social media sites and the politicians can't resist them. Let's put them to good use.

It feels a little silly proposing this. I am aware that it might seem like I’m making light of a very serious situation. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I take this situation very seriously. I think we’re in real danger. If I felt like anyone in a position of leadership was up to the task of really leading, I’d never dare suggest we use the power of Twitter and Instagram to shame our politicians into action. There would be no point. But I don’t feel that way. At all. This is basically the last idea I’ve got left because we’ve been under direct threat here for weeks or months and nothing has happened. We very clearly don’t know what to do and maybe don’t even know that the usual spin and statements won’t cut it.

The White House, sadly, knows what it’s doing. And they are doing it while our leaders wage a daily race for the toughest-sounding talking point. We need to do better. Now. Time is not on our side. It’s not enough for the U.S. pressure to reawaken our patriotism. It must also smash our complacency and our notions of business-as-usual. We need to show, even if only ourselves, that we are capable of responding productively and quickly when under threat. And if we aren’t, well, we should find that out, too. While there might still be time to negotiate decent terms for our surrender.

I hope it doesn’t come to that. Please, premiers. One of you. Any of you. Do something. Only you can. This sucks. I know it’s not the job you asked for and never one you’d imagined yourself ever having. But look around. Unless you see an adult in the room, I have bad news.

It’s you. You’re the adult. And we’re all counting on you. Don’t let us down.

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