Immersion and Miss Marple

I have been on my "immersion" therapy for my transition to Canada for a couple of weeks now.  I read the news every day on CBC's website, I also catch the odd article or editorial from other newspapers online when they catch my eye on the news stream on our website's Home page or Social Lounge page.

The sheer size of the country guarantees something is going on somewhere, so it's impossible to keep track of all that is happening.  I find myself sticking with news from around Ontario, and trying to get a hang of the various levels of government and how they interact and function.  I have a ways to go, getting to actually having the hang of that, I think.

One thing that is at least looking familiar, though.  Some weeks ago my eye caught on an article reporting on meetings of the Public Accounts Committee.  Since what I do now has direct relation to that, I read the article, and since then have become hooked on following this story.  I have come to an inescapable conclusion now, since following these articles, that there is at least one thing I will have no trouble recognising: government operations!

Yup, doesn't matter where you are in the world, there is nothing like an Auditor General's report for embarrassing non-compliant government ministers and their ministries, and no excuses so lame as the ones propounded for these failures, and no employees so apologetic as the low-level staffers about to be thrown under the bus for carrying out the orders of higher-ups.  I could have been reading a report from the PAC here in Jamaica, all I had to do was substitute names.

I read a lot of Dame Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries, and one of the constants of Miss Marple is her firm conviction that people are the same no matter where you are.  She believed that experience in one place can hold you steady somewhere else, as long as you let yourself see the patterns in human behaviour.  The names will change, but the actions and reactions are the same.  I am seeing how right she is, and now I feel one step closer to confidence and a step further away from worry that I will not acquit myself well in EL.  People really are the same, no matter where you meet them.