If you’re wondering who Lord Moran is, his real name is John Wilson and he was Britain’s ambassador to Canada from 1981 to 1984 (Trudeau / Turner / Mulroney).

When he left, he wrote a final valedictory letter to the Foreign Office that’s now getting some attention because it’s just been released (under Freedom of Information) to the BBC, who’ve reprinted a passage as a demonstration of the kind of candidness that diplomats used to be able to do, before the present Labour government started snapping at its diplomats to make it look better.

Anyway, the quote is as follows:

One does not encounter here the ferocious competition of talent that takes place in the United Kingdom. Canadians still seek wider opportunities elsewhere. Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do – in literature, the theatre, skiing or whatever – tends to become a national figure, and anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once.

Well . . . yes, I suppose, in spite of people like Conrad Black, Celine Dion (shudder), Michael Buble, James Cameron, and so on, I’ll allow that we probably still have a long way to go before we finally rid ourselves of this reputation for mediocrity. (You only have to look at Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff — especially Ignatieff and the people in the Liberal Party who work directly for him — to understand why that mediocrity rap still hangs on.

But you know what? I’m betting we can find more stuff to make Liberals feel bad here. You see, the full text of Lord Moran’s letter is available here, at BBC’s Radio 4 format, in PDF format. Here’s what he says about Trudeau:

Many of my colleagues here admire him. I cannot say I do. He is an odd fish and his own worst enemy, and on the whole I think his influence on Canada in the past sixteen years has been detrimental.

Mr. Trudeau has maintained that only by an increase in Ottawa’s powers could Canada develop as a strong state. He treated provincial premiers with contempt and provincial governments as if they were town councils. But I think few Canadians share his extreme centralising stance.

And if you think life in the House of Commons today is reminiscent of a rowdy kindergarten class, here’s what Lord Moran observed 25 years ago:

The level of debate in the House of Commons is correspondingly low; the majority of Canadians ministers are unimpressive and a few we have found frankly bizarre. [I wonder whom he means by that? -- ed.]

I strongly urge people to download and read this letter — and remember that this is the vague pathway that the Waffle’s been hinting at, a return to the Trudeau era. Seeing how international people really viewed us should be quite an eye-opener for people longing for a return of PET.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 12:22 and is filed under Iggy Bops, International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.