I wasn’t in the habit of listening to CBC, but that morning in December 2015 I had CBC radio playing in the car as I inched forward in a long line of cars waiting to cross the border. Canada’s recent election had resulted in some odd bedfellows in parliament, and the interviewer was talking with two Members of Parliament who’d found themselves in the difficult situation of sharing a desk and a microphone. Usually a desk is shared between members of the same party, but MP Niki Ashton was from the left leaning NDP party and MP Peter Van Loan was from the right leaning Conservative party, both parties in opposition to the newly elected Liberal government. It was a cute interview with the two members who’d found themselves in this unusual and possibly uncomfortable situation.
The last question, however, was revealing. I keep thinking about it. Interviewer Alan Neal asked the usual sort of soft ball question politicians are asked: “What’s the number one thing you want to do?” The responses were profoundly different. MP Niki Ashton replied “…we’re here to hold the government to account … improving the lives of Canadians …,” whereas MP Peter Van Loan said “… I will stand up for the tax payers …”
I was struck by the chasm between those mindsets
Wow! What a difference. One member saw herself as representing and working for her fellow citizens, for Canadians. The other member saw himself as the champion of tax payers. Sitting in the car, in that creeping lineup, listening to these two people, I was struck by the chasm between those mindsets.
For years I’ve struggled to understand why, how, politicians can have such different approaches to problems. But this was revealing. It showed a deep, fundamental difference in who they were working for. Whose needs they recognized.
You often hear politicians talk about their responsibility to taxpayers. I’d always heard that to mean responsibility to citizens. But they are different. Hugely different. Citizens means everyone, including all the people who don’t pay taxes, such as babies, children, old people, disabled people, and non-employed caregivers. Taxpayers, on the other hand, are a subset, defined by money.
Imagine a family, with one bread winner, a stay at home parent, and two small children. You could even add another family member who can’t work, owing to age or sickness. This family of five people has one taxpayer. Isn’t government supposed to work for all of them? Five people, three voters, one taxpayer. (The married couple might may blend two people into one effective taxpayer.) Who should government serve? Are all deserving of government attention? Or does one, the taxpayer, deserve special care?
This fundamental difference in perspective has profound consequences. A focus on taxpayers takes attention away from all the others. A democratic government should serve the people, all the people, taxpayers yes, but everyone else too.
Photo credit: Jeangagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parlement_du_Canada_-_Edifice_du_Centre_-_016.jpg