A Political Patent?

Ideas are the ammunition of politics. Sure it takes a savvy spin doctor and a shameless media shark to make them fashionable, marketable and appealing, but ultimately the crux of any policy, and thus any party, is the idea.

In almost all other industries ideas are closely guarded secrets that emerge only after they have secured a patent, surrounded by a copyright and heralded by a team of lawyers waiting to pounce. Inventions, screenplays, novels, marketing strategies – all are tightly guarded property. Avril Lavigne is learning this lesson the hard way.

But what about politics? This is the industry in which ideas almost constantly have an impact on our daily lives – yet there is no patent for political ideas. The Nova Scotia NDP have been derided in public by their liberal and Tory counterparts, yet in private these parties are secretly leafing through the NDP platform for succulent drops of policy creativity. You can almost hear them in their caucus offices, sitting below posters of Jack Layton comically compared to Marx and Lenin, meanwhile carefully deconstructing NDP policy points for ways to rejig and re-release in proudly packaged red or blue jackets.

“Buy local!” says Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald. What a novel idea! What page of the New Democrat platform was that on? “Cut the home heating tax!” you hear them say, another zinger from the Tories! It takes a great deal of creative skill of course to copy/paste properly!

I cannot harp on the Tories as if this is a prerogative unique to them. There is no secret that some of the great cornerstones of our country were those policies “liberally” adopted over the decades from the New Democrats. From Healthcare to affordable Housing, and even the Bill of Rights, the NDP have always traded the prospect of power for the basic implementation of their policies. But the party “of the Charter” would never courteously give kudos to the “Socialist Hoards”.

The reality is, ideas in politics are always up for grabs as soon as they fly off the shelf. Is this a bad thing? Probably not. While the newest tracks and the latest Harry Potter book will be soundly secured by copyright legislation, the creative contributions of Canada’s political parties will be torn apart and reinvented time and again by those tired policy-makers in Canada’s Big Parties. And from my perspective, Canada is all the better for it. Canadian Social Democrats are proud of the contributions we have made to the fabric of the nation, not a roster of Prime Ministers. Besides, wasn’t it a Canadian who invented the light bulb, not Edison? But doesn’t it work just the same?