A6

BY BILL CLARKE

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It's been going on for a long time: when people want something done and don't now exactly how to do it, they call in an expert.

People have been trying to explain experts for quite a while. Some say that an expert is someone who comes from at least 100 miles away; others place the limit at 1,000. There are those who believe that it has to do with population: an expert comes from a place that's at least five times the size of the place where he's going to exercise his expertise.

From all of this, it's easy to figure out that those who are in very large cities have a more limited away of places in which to seek experts. This is, of course, unless they are in places like Washington or New York. The inhabitants of these places won't admit that anyone anywhere is smarter than their local folks unless that person happens to be a hermit living in some wilderness. Such hermits, of course, are simply local geniuses (genii?) who have abandoned their native cities in order to deprive the world of their wisdom.

The origin of the term is in doubt. There are those who insist that it comes from "X", the unknown quantity, and "spurt, " a little squirt." So, when they see an unimpressive person they don't know wandering around their workplace, they assume he's an expert brought in to change things. When things start to go wrong, they know who to blame.

Although it can't be proven, it seems that in some businesses and any number of government departments, experts are constantly employed to wander around and do nothing. In this way, those in charge are exempt from censure when things don't go well. They simply and very publicly fire the present set of experts and import new ones. This causes no loss of employment as the available experts simply rotate through the system.

It parallels the practice of eliminating civil servant positions so those who were on the staff can become consultants and provide the same services without being on the payroll. If they're senior civil servants, they can have both a pension and their consulting fees. In fact, if they were very senior, then the whole thing was probably their idea in the first place.

Politicians are much enamoured of experts. They use them to run election campaigns and such things. If I'm not mistaken, Joe Clark used them in his run against Trudeau. Trudeau didn't need them since he considered himself an expert in just about everything.

Governments also bring in experts for a variety of purposes. Current examples are the studies on forest management and forest product investment. The people involved must be experts because nobody I've asked can quite figure out what they're talking about.

The education system is much beset by experts. Their job is to redesign the curricula so that (a) parents won't know what's gong on at school, (b) students will be adequately confused so they won't cause trouble and (c) teachers will have to be retrained at great expense to the public purse and great financial gain to the experts who happen to be the only ones who understand the new process.

The quality of an expert can be judged by looking at that person's business card. The more letters after the name, the more expertise he (or she or whatever) possesses. It doesn't matter that nobody knows what some of those letters mean. It's also good to find one whose name is completely unpronounceable.

Remember Yaako Poyry?