Meat Slices and The Canadian Way

I spend a lot of time here sarcastically yapping about the "Canadian Way" of doing things. One of the big Canadian stereotypes is that we're awfully polite and apologize quite frequently.

Well, when it comes to Canadian politicians, as I've said before, they apologize alright but it's half-assed, scripted and completely insincere. So imagine my surprise at the latest developments in the Maple Leaf Foods recall.

The whole thing is a complete disaster, with over a dozen people sick and many who have died. Class action lawsuits are in the works and everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else.

Except for Michael McCain. Who is Michael McCain?

He's the president of Maple Leaf Foods. So, in following the Canadian way, he's the last person you'd see sincerely apologizing but he is. On Wednesday, he held a press conference where he took full responsibility for the outbreak and went beyond that to say that it was nobody else's fault but his own. That people are upset and they should be, because well.. they fucked up.

Not only is this an incredible example of accountability at its best, but it's also an incredible smart business practice. Maple Leaf is losing millions of dollars over this outbreak but something tells me that they will recover because he probably restored a lot of faith in the mind of Canadians by being outright about the whole thing.

You know, researchers and politicians have spent a lot of money and resources into finding out why few Canadians vote. And I bet you if what McCain did was the norm and not the exception, then people might have better faith in their leaders.

But something tells me we're not going to see Harper making a press conference of:

"War in Afghanistan? Cuts to Status of Women? Reopening the abortion debate? Keeping homophobes and misogynists on the payroll? Cutting arts funding? Yeah.. my bad."

Something tells me that's not happening anytime soon...