Leadership

Our neighbour Michael has a variety of things in his yard – old equipment, lumber, derelict vehicles and a great many apple trees.  He told us to help ourselves to any of the apples that we could use so a few nights ago Marilyn picked way too many.  I had previously picked enough green cooking apples for a couple of pies but the ones she picked resemble a Macintosh – some up the the size of a store bought Mac but mostly about halfway between that and a large crabapple. 

Since we’re going to be braving the perils of US Homeland Insecurity this weekend I needed to get the remaining apples cooked.  Which is why I was standing over the sink this afternoon listening to CBC while I cut up apples.  And it just happened that today was the day that Prime Minister David Cameron spoke to a joint session of parliament. 

Cameron and Harper inherited vastly different political legacies but appear to be moving forward in lockstep and they are clearly setting out a path forward for the G20.  Time will tell whether some other notable world leaders have the insight and balls to follow their lead but we should all hope they do. 

Cameron came to power with a deficit that in percentage terms was worse than the one that presently is sinking Greece.  Harper inherited the wisdom of Paul Martin.  Both leaders are firmly committed to driving down sovereign debt and to that end they have engineered a joint letter with several other G20 members setting out their recommendations for a path forward for G20 members. 

Notably absent from the list of signatories to that letter are the president of the US and the German chancellor.  It may just have been my cynicism but I thought I detected a couple of missiles fired toward Washington in Cameron’s address to parliament.  Clearly he believes that the path forward for government is to reduce debt – we can’t spend our way out of this crisis.  In the subsequent press conference Cameron wasn’t shy about stating that the EU – Germany & France in other words - needs to step up and deal with their debt crisis that is threatening the world economy.

We can only hope other world “leaders” are listening.