How to rebuild the citizens’ moral fibre and trust!

Written by Bernard Brault on 10/11/2011

Warning: This text may contain some facts considered harmful to the sensitive persons

It took 30 months for the Quebec Government to implement an inquiry commission in the construction industry. It takes real leadership qualities to handle the unprecedented media pressure and the raging opposition parties! We have to protect our society of law and allow the police investigations to do their job. Or, do we want criminals to be granted immunity?

In spite of everything, the deathblow will come from the inside. Il will be delivered in September, when the courageous director of the Unité ancollusion, Jacques Duchesneau, will make public his report. As a reminder, he was thanked a few weeks ago. The national interest has its reasons, which are unknown to the moral fibre.

We all need therapy!

What we all need in Québec is individual and mass therapy. We lost trust in our leaders and administrators and the acts of chronic embezzlement, collusion, and corruption seem to have almost widespread for us to become aware. The profiteer, the king of dodgy dealings, and the artist of glaucous transactions have succeeded in undermining the middle-class citizen, who, in his turn, is trying to become a thief. Stealing from the thieves is not that bad. Why shouldn’t I be the one who accepts the brown envelope?

Think about it. Let’s say you held a brown envelope in your hands. It’s only a few millimetres thick. You can feel the notes soft, yet strong, and you can guess, according to its thickness, 30 or 40 notes, or even more…let’s say 50 green, red, or brown notes. How much? $ 5,000 or maybe $ 10,000. You’re cold and hot at the same time, you’re trembling, and in just a few seconds you’re dreaming of all the things you could do with it. After all, all you have to do is to give up being so zealous. Not to mention all these business and political bastards walling in your taxes…

I can hear you already, you, noble administrators and members of some noted boards of directors, saying you won’t touch an envelope full of $ 5,000 worth of notes. Of course you won’t; that’s your one-day fee. Should they offer you more to interest you? Once you are faced with a conflict of interest that could make you lose your own pension fund of a few millions, would you implement some measures in your disadvantage?

We all have in common a feeling characterized by a mixture of survival, indifference, and shame. We all need to justify ourselves for fear of suffering from burn-out. Everybody does it, why shouldn’t we do it, too? The exaggerated individualism, the reality TV of a day-to-day life without tomorrow, the media exposure of some lawless and faithless financiers, who keep on gambling our retirement funds, all this could wear out the good spirits of the president of the optimists’ club. Yours, too, maybe?

This is what we’ll bequeath to our children: A faithless, lawless, respectless, not to mention, self-absorbed world, very well served by a technology that could replace the real world by a virtual one.

First, we need to regain our self-esteem…

There is no pride in stealing your neighbour, no pride in accepting to give up your freedom for a few dollars in an envelope; at the most, it appeases your hunger of buying stuff, while leaving a bitter and disgusting taste. It even gets harder facing yourself in the mirror. There is no pride in becoming a society full of pirates and robbers. Stealing from the Government means stealing from yourself and from your neighbour. It may not be an ethical question, but sinking into the abyss, such asGreeceandItaly, could be a reality in the near future.

Should we rebuild from scratch?

It’s no point in getting indignant. Each of us has to make proof of integrity, honesty, acknowledgement of our own errors, humility, and especially respect of our consciousness.

The Sound Management is a governance value, but also an implementation method, and if needed, a control method. It will take at least 30 months for the Government to admit, if ever, the obligation to implement a Sound Management concept and a Sound Governance with its values and some efficient and tangible tools within the governmental system. We should take action and keep our hopes up!