John Robson: On Power Outages and Politicians’ Complacent Mindset That Nothing Serious Can Go Wrong

A utility worker documents the damage along the roadway after a major storm took down poles and power lines, on Merivale Road in Ottawa, on May 21, 2022. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

Commentary

Decades ago, I backpacked to exotic places where things were very different. For instance the electricity might work intermittently, and accountability not at all. But now that globalization has created a far more homogeneous world, culturally and technologically, um, they don’t work here either.