Statues Of Limitations

There's been a proposal for Victoria Park, near where I live. The idea is to build statues of each of the Prime Ministers of Canada.

There are plenty of reasons not to like the idea. For one thing, it's going to be expensive, at about $2 million (though most of it through grants from higher levels of government.) Also, I'm not sure statutes are the right thing for a park that is blessed with more wildlife than your average groomed and neutered city park. And of course, there's been a recent drawn-out debate over replacing the park washrooms, which has many locals sick of discussing the park. 

And of course, it commits us to continually pay for new statues as new PM's come along.  In our system, where a John Turner or Kim Campbell can pop in and out of office in a few months, that could get pricey.  They could perhaps have a rule that you have to be in office for a couple of years before you get a statue.  Or better still, the size of the statue is proportional to how long the Prime Minister was in office.

But what gets me is the number of people whose criticism just comes down to:
The Prime Ministers are politicians, and politicians are the worst kind of scum.


I again say that we have to get over our dichotomy of politicians as entirely evil, and the rest of us are their innocent victims. I'm used to seeing the voters' persecution complex in the Letters to the Editor, but I still find it kind of shocking that our loathing of politicians goes back to people who have been dead for a century.

The Americans don't seem to have this problem; they hate politicians more than anyone, but I don't see any of them complaining about Mount Rushmore. But then the Americans mostly focus their hatred on the other party's politicians. Canadian society is not as divided, but incidents like this make me think there is just as much unfocused anger in it.

So I propose a statue of the hard-done-by taxpayer.  Say, a statue of an anguished person turning their pockets inside-out.  Perhaps a fat politician behind him, chomping a cigar, and stealing the taxpayer's wallet.