pointed to this article tonight: Millions mismanaged in Laval metro project: auditor general. And in a few weeks, people will be wondering why voter turnout rates are so low. Well, this is why. In Canada, in 2004 (and for years this has been true, but it’s getting worse, not better), all levels of politics and the senior bureaucracy, in all departments, are completely and utterly compromised by incompetence. The current administration in the mayor’s office of Montreal is clearly incompetent, changing with the wind, shedding members along the way. Both this and the previous provincial governments are rotten through with disinterested politicians who don’t even know the beginning elements of what “governing” entails. As far as I can tell the entire bureaucracy in Quebec is made up of patronage-hired, public-service-union-coddled people who aren’t adequately trained to do their jobs, but anyhow aren’t particularly interested in doing them. Even worse are the “arms-length” crown corporations, or whatever they call them provincially. And we all know how corrupt the ruling Liberal party is on the federal scene. Does anyone believe for a second that the Conservatives or even the NDP would be any better?

did a survey of the accessibility of Canadian political websites related to the ongoing election here and released their findings a few days ago: Canadian election Web sites flunk standards test. Note (as readers here will likely know already) that it is Joe Clark the accessibility expert and gadfly, not Joe Clark the former Prime Minister, who did this work, as they humourously note several times.

As always, it’s tempting to give them a pass on this, but it’s well past time that we cease to do so. It’s 2004 and the use of the web for political and basic informational needs is hardly new – it is incumbent on people who are trying to communicate to give some thought to the quality of their work. A politician would never release a TV ad that was full of video artifacts or anything – they demand a basic level of quality from the craftspeople who produce such material. Likewise, the state of the art in Canadian politics should be a great deal better than it is right now.