4 - Sunday, March 13, 1988 - North Shore News ACTUALLY, THE idea of a premier not being around all the time makes a lot of sense. There is something positively McLuhanesque, to saying nothing of Toffleresque about it. There's The Zap, zipping about the world, connected to his office in Victoria by a Fax machine. He has taken a fair amount of fragging for this. And the editorials have all been wrathful, verging on regicidal. How dare he not stay in the cuckoo’s nest? Much as I hate to go against the grain, it seems to me, for once, The Zap is doing it right. Futurist Alvin Toffler’s whole point was that in the Post-In- dustrial Age we would all be able to fan out into the forests and live in self-contained electronic cot-. tages, inputting and outputting all the data our little hearts desired. And if we had a government ex- pense account, as well, to cover travel costs, fan-tastic! If I was the premier, I know I'd get all the heavy-duty communications tech- nology together I could — and split for Hawaii. Run the province from.a cottagé on the beach. That way, you wouldn't get so strung out. Two points here: ., First, it is not just that the me- dium is the message any longer, the medium has become theen- vironment itself. That is, we live in the media now, ali of us. At a certain level, it doesn't ” , ; matter whether Zap i is visiting Vic- toria or the Vatican, it’s all just a pit stop. The truth is, he can be in- terviewed, photographed, videotaped; telexed, telegrammtied, Faxxed, couriered, telephoned or ‘ beepered at virtually any moment, He doesn’t have to answer, but he can be reached — which of... course is the same case when he is at the legislative building. He can _ always —— and oft ten does — close - the door,. . As. long as he is within rang? of: the global communications grid, he is still ‘‘here,’’ in the sense that you read about him in the papers or see him on TV. In fact, ‘how often does the premier of the province physically appear and talk to you? zero times, 1 bet. Once? Twice in your life? Mainly he is a media impression. And as long as he swims in the media soup — that is, stays in front of the cameras arté mikes and keeps babbling — he will re- main a part of our lives, much more so, probably, than the guy two doors down the block. A t a certain level, it doesn’t matter whether Zap is visiting Victoria or the Vatican, it’s all just a pit stop. The truth ts, he can be interviewed, photo, ographed, videotaped, telexe telegrammed, Faxxed couriered, telephoned or | ' . beepered at virtually any” moment.”” Second point: You'll notice that, somehow, the province of British Columbia keeps trundling along. Cabinet mectings, obviously, have become far more interesting with the - premier being represented by pro- xy. That way, other cabinet ministers get to pop up and talk as though they really had brains of their own. [ was almost impressed. It has always struck me as peculiar and strange that at the very apex of the democratic system, you should have totalitari- anism. f refer to the ultra-secretive cabinet system itself. _ Of course, as any executive anywhere will tell you, sooner or later you've got to have a door that locks shut. But the irony! The voters freely elect their representatives. The representatives enter the House of Commons or a provincial legislature to speak for the pcople, and what happens? For the most part, they might as well be camped outside in the hallway with the reporters, peeking through the keyhole into the room where the cabinet meets in the hope of figuring out what might be going on. The only people who know how a given province or the country itself is being run are the members of the various cabinets and a handful of top bureaucrats, and they are sworn to secrecy! When you think about it, that’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Apart from the fact — a signifi- cant one, I quickly admit — that the members of any cabinet in Canada must sooner or later face the electorate, there is little struc- tural difference between them and a politburo. — In both cases, at the top, it is government behind closed doors, in secrecy, with orders-in-council or directives issuing forth, even as tablets come down from the. mountain. Under the cabinet system, the premier or prime minister has far too much power. He is net just a de facto tyrant, he can be an actual tyrant — which of course is what so many people arc realizing about The Zap. It’s The System, just as I always suspected. 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