I must say that I don't find much pleasure in digging out the corrupted behaviour of our leaders; rather, I feel hurt as I write about their failures to serve the people and their success in helping themselves and their friends. And last night's results of the election is another evidence of the state of decadence of our leadership(2) and of our division among every boundary, of geography, of language, of culture, of religion. While in the US there is the so called democratic fight between the 'machinary of law' of George Bush and the 'every vote counts' of Al Gore, we experience the ultimate expression of democracy, that is the division among people. However, we have been always of the opinion that democracy starts with the individual and the related opportunity to express ourselves publicly, and therefore, even though we are disappointed about the state of our democracy, we can still somehow express our opinions and imagine that we can still make a difference.

We must make a difference, after all we are all different ourselves, and as a consequence we have to celebrate our differences with our emotions at work, at home, in our communities. But more and more I realize how entrenched, homogeneous, colorless and backward is the mentality of our leadership.

Few days ago, Timothy Shire wrote the article "iVisit" and he showed us how new technologies are helping us to shape a new world of networking communication where we meet and see people of different countries, of different language, of different culture and of different religion(3). The common denominator of this worldwide opportunity to visit each other is our humaness(4), yet we still have leaders hailing the superiority of the machine over people and the superiority of research over the education of people. So, for instance, we have Pat Atkinson, Minister of Health, who conceptualizes health care as a machine to be fixed(5). In the past, Pat Atkinson allocated specific funds for the purpose to alleviate waiting lines for surgery, however such waiting lines have increased. Pat Atkinson is now fixing this problem by the development of a provincial waiting list database to assess how long people currently wait for care. She says "It's having the right people provide the right service at the right place at the right time." Poor Pat Atkinson, this obsolete conception of having the right people provide the right service at the right place at the right time is a reflection of her mechanistic and narrow mentality. This is the same mechanistic mentality which supported the development of the Saskatchewan Health Information Network (SHIN) and the consequential waste of dozens and dozens of millions of dollars. In fact, SHIN was supposed to provide "the right information at the right time at the right place." Today, the problem is not in providing the right information at the right time at the right place(6). Today the problem in health care is the lack of conversation among the people, the kind of clear conversations(7) where we express our humaness and share and leverage our knowledge; rather than impose our autocratic hierarchical power, impose our superior selected knowledge, and control the success of the deviant studies of our researches.

Our concentrated health researches have been an abysmal disaster(8), yet Pat Atkinson is allocating more money for research for the simple reason to keep qualified health professional in the province. She has stated "We have to have the facilities, we have to have the scientists and we have to have the researchers."

Journalists, academicians, doctors and health professionals have all spoken against the Fyke's Commission on Medicare(9), yet Pat Atkinson states that the Fyke's report will help the government to develop a common vision. Ken Fyke mailed some 400,000 questionnaires to all Saskatchewan households and he hopes to come up with a shared vision by the assemblage of the related responses. I mean, rather than spending millions of dollars for Ken Fyke's Commission, why don't we recycle Louise Simard's 'A Saskatchewan Vision for Health', after all, our former minister of health Louise Simard is the current Chief Executive Officer of the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations(10) (SAHO).

Readers, you must tell me where is any creativity, any vibrant character, any humaness, any common sense in our governments, our bureaucracies, and our businesses. We have been left alone to express our individual voices, and we will start all over again to build a new democratic beginning. Let us imagine changes, because it is with dreams that we realize ourselves.

References/endnotes

Relevant political and economics articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign

1. Prime Minister Jean Chretien: coping with his rules of ethics and his no-fault government, by Mario deSantis, November 24, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000_200/desantis270/ethics.html

2. Canada isn't ready for change, Ted Byfield, November 28, 2000, National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20001128/385789.html

3. iVisit, by Timothy Shire, November 26, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/computer_today/ivisit/ivisit.html

4. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual, by Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger, 1999 http://www.cluetrain.com

5. Money alone won't rescue health care: Atkinson, by Kim Mannix, November 27, 2000, The StarPhoenix, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

6. Knowledge Management and Virtual Organizations, by Yogesh Malhotra (Editor), April 1, 2000. An excerpt: Myth 1: Knowledge management technologies can deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. This idea applies to an outdated business model. Information systems in the old industrial model mirror the notion that businesses will change incrementally in an inherently stable market, and executives can foresee change by examining the past. The new business model of the Information Age, however, is marked by fundamental, not incremental, change. Businesses can't plan long-term; instead, they must shift to a more flexible "anticipation-of-surprise" model. Thus, it's impossible to build a system that predicts who the right person at the right time even is, let alone what constitutes the right information. http://www.brint.com/kmbook/kmvoexce.htm

7. The Simplicity Manifesto, by Bill Jensen, http://www.simplerwork.com/manifesto.htm

8. HSURC Commission: Another Study, Another Dump, by Mario deSantis, November 2, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000_200/desantis253/HSURC.html

9. Fyke's Medicare Survey and the Psychology of Influencing People, by Mario deSantis, October 27, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000_200/desantis252/fykessurvey.html

10. Louise Simard is the New CEO for SAHO, by Mario deSantis, March 14, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000/desantis138/SimardCEO-Mar14.html