@ - Sunday, October 11, 1992 - North Shore News

Big does no

IN A ne doubt futile attempt to pump a little intellectual
content into the flag-waving debate, let me refer to a small
book by Jane Jacobs, an author of formidable intelligence,

‘ who is best known for her brilliant analysis of contem-
porary urban reality, called The Death and Life of Great
American Cities, published some 20 years ago.

Her smaller book, published a
decade later, was, in many a
thoughtful opinion, equally as
impressive as her famous master-
piece. °

But it attracted relatively little
attention, possibly because its ma-
terial, alchough presented with
originality, insight and clarity of
mind, was so disturbing to so
many people, particularly in jit-
tery, insecure modern Canada,
that reviewers and readers alike
flinched away.

The title says it ali: The Ques-
tion of Separatism, Quebec and
the Struggle Over Sovereignty.

Perhaps because she is an
American academic who moved to
Canada later in life, she brings an
objectivity to the ‘‘constitutional
debate”’ that few, if any, Cana-
dian (or French-Canadian) schol-
ars have mustered.

For one thing, she makes clear,
it’s not a debate over a constitut-
ion, except on the surface.

It’s a debate over power.

The thrust of her argument is
that the particular question of
Quebec and its relation to Canada
has to be seen in the context of
the larger issue of sovereignty and
autonomy in general.

She makes the case that our
contemporary notion of the im-
perial nation only arose during the
past century and a half.

She shows how Norway, in the
fast century, gradually but per-
sistently severed its ties to Sweden,
imposed as a result of a lost battle
long before, and became a sepa-
rate nation.

Not only did Norway and
Sweden succeed in establishing a
model for peaceful separation,
they managed to recombine their
respective energies as autonomous
states to the long-term economic
and social berefit of both.

For most Canadians, the power
struggle with Quebec isn’t about
language or transfer payments or
even jobs in the federal civil ser-
vice, it’s about bigness.

Ms. Jacobs writes: ‘*Bigness

, eee

STRICTLY PERSONAL

means power, but only so long as
the bigness is combined with
vitality — no longer. Power is the
attribute of bigness that makes
bigness attractive to people.

**Admiration of bigness because
of its power tends to make us
overlook its inherent weakness:
practicality is not the long suit of
bigness.

“For one thing, big organiza-
tions, whether nations or enter-
prises, can make mistakes, just as
small ones can, and when they do,
the mistakes will be big ones, with
big consequences.”’

She reminds us that big animals
are not big because they are com-
plicated; rather, they have to be
complicated because they are big.

“This principle, it seems to me,
also applies to institutions, gov-
eraments, companies, organiza-
tions of all sorts.

‘They are big because they
produce a huge output of tele-
phones, say, or have a tot of
welfare clients, or govern a big
population.

“Whatever the reason for ex-
pansion, the large size creates
complications. Big organizations
need coordinators, liaison people,
prescribed channels of com-
munications, administrators,

's pleased to Gnnounce an exhidiiion of:

ELEMENTARY ENRICHMENT MONOPRINTS
and ~
WORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTIO

the publication and sale of two outstanding new prints
GATHIE FALK

“North Shore Roses”

ALAN WOOD

“Beach Watkk*
other prints available for sale from the “Artists for Kicis" Trust include:

BILL REID
GORDON

ROBERT BATEMAN
JOE FAFARD

“Ha!
SMITH

ida Grizzly Bear’
‘Sea Edge after Goya"

"Great Blue Heron’

"Barb"

Thursday October 15,1992
7:30 - 9:30 pm.

North Vancouver Ci

Hall Gallery

143 West 14th Street
the exhibition continues through November 18.1992

%.

For more information about the “Aritts for Kids* Trust contact its Director,
8 MacDonald, c/o the North Vancouver School District, 810 West 2ist

Street, Norih Vancouver, B.C. V7P 2C?

Phone: 987-6667

44.A small organization can get by without
a bureaucracy. A big one cannot. 9?

supervisors of supervisors, whole
extra departments devoted to serv-
ing the organization itself.

“*A small organization can get
by without a bureaucracy. A big
one cannot.””

Ms. Jacobs disagrees with the
proposition that making bigger
units out of smaller units
automatically saves money or that
consolidation guarantees
economies of scale. Rather, costs
of added complications exact a
price.

“One of the most exasperating
and destructive costs of bigness is
that sometimes the complications
become so excessive that they are
stifling: they interfere with the
very purpose an organization was
intended to serve. ... Red tape is
the way we commonly describe
complications of size that have
become stifling."’

One of her passing asides rings
a gong, almost more so than her
main arguments themselves.

“One of the things I look for-

The "Name friends 7
recommend to friends

CRAIG SLAY
Call 926-6869

~ Author Jane Jacobs

ward to if Quebec ever does sepa-
rate,’’ she writes, ‘‘is two smaller
postal systems instead of what we
now have.

**.,. When the Canadian postal
system was smalier, had less mail
to handle, it delivered the mail
more swiftly and reliably.’”

Centralization of national gov-
ernments has been gathering force
during most of this century, and
has been intensifying swiftly in re-
cent times, she states.

“‘When centralization is com-
bined with increased respon-
sibilities taken on by government,
as has also been happening, the
result is very big government.’’

Not all governmerits have em-
braced this combination, she
notes. Switzerland and Japan are

t necessarily mean better

outstanding exceptions.

Both have relatively few na-
tional programs.

** Almost everywhere in the
world, bureaucratic complications
have now become so intractable as
to defy either solution or under-
standing.

‘“‘Many intelligent, industrious
and well-intentioned people in
government are spending their
lives creating messes, futilities and
waste because they cannot avoid
doing it.

“The complications are laby-
rinthine. The red tape is stifling.
The vast, unwieldy organizational
bulks are inflexible, impossible to
put on the right track when they
have nosed onto the wrong. ...

**Big things turning into smaller
things,’’ Ms. Jacobs writes, “has
two different and opposite mean-
ings. One implies decay and
disintegration, the other implies
birth and renewal of vigor.’’

To be continued, if I don’t
swing, like I say, from the yard -
arm first.

Baha’u Ilah

(1817 - 1892)

“The fundamental purpose
animating the Faith of God
and His religion is to
safeguard the interests and
promote the unity of the

human race.”

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