Frances Russell writes perceptively today about the Cons push to avoid a real inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, and about why Canadian public opinion matters little, unless it happens to correspond to the views of the neocon elite.
As the author of Canada's neo-conservative revolution, however, Mulroney remains the darling of Canada's "elite insiders," a term coined by Frank Graves, president of Ottawa's Ekos Research and author of the multi-year study of Canadian society called Rethinking Government.
Graves says Canada is a class society, split into five tiers. At the top sit the elite insiders, the well-paid, well-connected professionals who command the heights of the nation's corporations, think tanks, bureaucracies, media and universities.
Although they represent just 19 per cent of the population, they have set Canada's agenda since the Trudeau era ended in 1984. They wanted free trade, free markets, integration with the U.S., small government, decentralism, ongoing tax cuts and a strong military. And they got them.
Meanwhile, virtually every poll conducted over the last two decades finds average Canadians opposed to most, if not all, these initiatives.Worth reading the whole piece at
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/columnists/f_russell/story/4101283p-4699505c.html- B