When I was in high school, and for reasons that I am not exactly sure of now, we used to make fun of the term expert.
For example, "an expert is someone who knows an awful lot about nothing at all" or "a spurt is a little spray of water; an expert used to be one."
I suppose we did this because we were rebellious teenagers who thought that we knew everything. We were going to change the world.
Then I grew up and became an expert. Now I am not as flippant about what people know. Indeed, there are many times every day that I go to other people for advice because of their expertise. No one can know everything and sometimes the best way to find what you need is to ask someone else with expertise.
In pursuing a doctorate and becoming a professor, one tends to gain a great deal of expertise in a narrow field. I was once the world's leading expert on palladium (III) compounds, because I was the only person in the world making them.
Since receiving my Ph.D. and throughout much of my adult life, I have gained a measure of expertise in all aspects of chemistry and to some extent, expertise in science as a whole. Still, there are things that I don't know so I go to experts.
The same can be said for Ph.D.'s in other disciplines. One of the hallmarks of an advanced education is realizing that there is so much that you don't know. There is even more that you can learn by talking to others about their own disciplines.
When I need to know something about, say, economics, I talk it over with an economics professor. If they don't know the answer to my question, they can invariably point me in the direction of someone who does.
More to the point, even if my query is not directly in their area of expertise, they can provide a much better answer than someone who has not been studying economics for most of their adult life. This is one of the roles that academia plays in society. We can provide expert advice when it is needed.
This is true in all aspects of life and not just academics. I would trust the expertise of an auto mechanic about a problem with my Corolla over my own knowledge, even if they didn't work for Toyota. Their expertise far exceeds mine.
Indeed, much of our economy is predicated on the exchange of expertise, be it chemistry professors, economists or auto mechanics.
Expertise is to be valued. Or, at least, one would think that it should be but that doesn't appear to be the case for the Harper Government.
The latest battle is over the Fair Election Act. Canada's Chief Electoral Officer Mark Mayrand, the Commissioner of Canada Elections Yves Cote, the former Auditor-General Sheila Fraser, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, every provincial Chief Electoral Officer, and more than 150 Canadian professors including many Chairs of Political Science programs all think that the act is flawed.
What is the government's response?
Treasury Board president Tony Clements summed it up: "Well, we don't always have to listen to the self-proclaimed experts. Sometimes they don't have the same opinions as the majority of Canadians."
None of the people in that list is a self-proclaimed expert. These are people that have devoted their working lives to bettering democracy. It takes a lot of hubris to describe a professor with a Ph.D. in political science as a self-proclaimed expert, let alone Canada's Chief Electoral Officer.
Further, when did the opinion of the majority of Canadians become a guiding mandate for this government? If only that was true!
It would mean no more Northern Gateway pipeline. We would be acting on climate change. We would be legalizing marijuana. If majority opinion mattered, there are a great many things that this government would need to do.
In any case, this government's dislike and disrespect for experts goes well beyond the Fair Election Act. Shutting down federal research libraries, muzzling federal scientists, cutting funding for the experimental lakes area, limiting the Census - all of these are an attack on abstract and factual knowledge.
Instead, the government seems to be saying that they are going govern on the basis of what they feel the majority wants. After all, all those years studying the subject at hand just leads to a bunch of self-proclaimed experts.
To paraphrase something that we all heard as kids, it comes down to Mr. Harper and his government saying "If you can't something that I want you to say, then don't say anything at all."
On the subject of muzzling public debate and believing that everyone should think just like them, I am sure that the Conservatives are experts.
