A tarnished image.(DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT--TRUST)(distrust of politicians)

Publication: Canada and the World Backgrounder

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Canada & the World

Surveys show that politicians have now displaced used car salespeople as the most distrusted members of our society. The people we send to the nation's capital to run the affairs of the country are less trusted than the guy on the corner lot who will look you in the eye and tell you the clunker he's selling has been owned all its life by a little old lady who only drove it once a week to church

Politicians took last place for trustworthiness among 22 professionals in a 2006 poll taken by Leger Marketing of Montreal. Only 14 percent of those surveyed said they trusted politicians, five percent below the figure for car salespeople. (Firefighters were at the top with 96 percent, followed by nurses at 95 percent, farmers at 92 percent, teachers at 88 percent, police officers at 81 percent, judges at 78 percent, bankers at 72 percent, and church representatives at 64 percent.)

An Environics poll done for the CBC in May 2005 also found that Canadians have a low opinion of their politicians. According to the survey, nearly two-thirds of Canadians had little or no confidence in their political leaders. While the NDP was considered the most trustworthy party by 23 percent of those polled, followed by the Conservatives (22 percent) and Liberals (17 percent), nearly a quarter of respondents didn't think any of the parties could run a government with honesty and integrity.

Politicians have sunk to this level to a large extent because of their own antics:

* Countless election promises are made only to be broken after the vote;

* NIPs can be encouraged to cross the floor and join the party they opposed with the reward of a cabinet position;

* The few who turn out to be common criminals taint the reputations of all;

* The behaviour in the House of Commons is worse than anything that would be tolerated in the unruliest classroom. As a recent Globe and Mail editorial described it, the non-answers to questions in Question Period "are drowned out by applause or catcalls, and the Speaker has the thankless job of kindergarten monitor."

Can we imagine bank presidents calling each other jerks, jackasses, or scumbags? Then there were the Liberal Party ads in the last election that grossly distorted some quotes of Conservative Stephen Harper and added the tag line "We're not making this up."

While some of...

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