WHY ELIMINATING THE SHELTER BELT PROGRAM IS BAD ECONOMICS

In its April 2012, budget, Harper announced a $250 million cut to Agriculture, which quickly filtered down to the rural constituencies that, for the most part, voted for Harper. The town of Indian Head woke up to find that the Prairie Shelterbelt Program, operating since 1901, was eliminated. This cut was made without any rural consultation, similar to the cutting of the Canadian Wheat Board, also done without any consultation or the farmer vote required by existing legislation.

The elimination of the shelterbelt program directly affects the income of 80 families, but thousands more will be affected across the prairies. According to the government’s own figures, in spring 2011 the shelterbelt program shipped nearly 3 million seedlings to 7,500 rural people to create an additional 1,200 km of field shelterbelts, 2,218 km of yard and 134 km of riparian shelterbelts. The 28 different deciduous and coniferous species went to 37 distribution points in Saskatchewan, 40 in Manitoba, 67 in Alberta and 2 in BC. These will protect nearly 16,000 hectares of fields, over 200 hectares of wildlife areas and nearly 700 farm yards.

This is in just one year of operation. Since its founding over a century ago the program has had an enormous impact on rural life, land conservation and biodiversity on the prairies. Since 1901 it has shipped over 600 million seedlings to nearly 700,000 persons. I am one of them. Our family planted caragana shelterbelts around a field we were taking out of chemical farming. The hardy shelterbelt now holds snow, reduces wind erosion and provides bird habitat in our field overlooking the Qu’Appelle Valley.

PUBLIC MEETING

On May 16, 2012 several hundred people crowded into Indian Head’s Memorial Hall for an information session on the cuts. No one from the Harper government turned up to explain their actions. Agriculture Minister Ritz sent his regrets without explanation. MP Andrew Scheer sent his Assistant, Joan Baylis, to read a short letter saying he couldn’t attend because Parliament was in session.

This was a lame excuse; other MP’s regularly return to their ridings when parliament is sitting to discuss government decisions which have major ramifications for the area they represent. The elimination of the shelterbelt program has severe implications for people in the riding that Scheer represents, and also for the Prairie Provinces in general. In his short message Scheer simply said he’d “stay active on this file” as if that would excuse him from not showing up at this important public meeting.

Rather than sending Minister Ritz or MP Scheer the Harper government sent bureaucrats.  Mr. Jamshed Merchant, ADM for Agriculture and Agri-Food and Mr. Henry de Gooijer, Manager of the Agro-forestry Development Centre, spoke briefly and then took prepared questions from a small panel.  This included Scott Wright, Director, Agriculture’s Applied Technology Division; Bruce Neill, retired Centre Manager and Lorne Sccott, Reeve for RM 156.

I listened closely to their justifications and, put frankly, they went in circles, continually contradicting themselves. The ADM talked of how Harper was “transforming the way we do business”, was “reducing the footprint” of government, and was initiating “new priorities”. He made no specific mention of the shelterbelt program; it was all bureaucratic lingo. While admitting the program had helped pioneers and tackled soil erosion in the dirty thirties, Mr. Merchant claimed “the time is right for the federal government to step out” of the program.

Canadians should be able to expect public servants to deal more objectively with such decisions and to avoid the babble that is often used when politicians feel the heat. But the ADM didn’t even refer to the government’s own facts, available as you came into the meeting, about the continuing demand for the program. These facts contradicted most of what he said. If the shelterbelt program has met its objectives then why, in 2011, did the front-desk answer 5,400 inquiries and mail out 12,000 brochures?

There was no response when past Manager Bruce Neill noted the massive carbon sequestering resulting from the program. The government’s own figures suggest that by 2061, the 2011 seedlings alone will have sequestered 1.06 mega-tonnes of C02; that’s a lot of carbon. Nor was there any acknowledgement of the economic contribution that shelterbelts make. According to the government figures, the crop benefits for the 1,200 km from the 2011 seedlings is estimated at $1.9 million and the value placed on the conservation of topsoil over the next 30 years is $14.2 million.

ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

We must put agriculture in its real, natural context and honestly cost the positive contributions that ecological preservation makes to food production. Water and soil conservation and biodiversity have real, measureable benefits for farmers. Just how do you justify cutting a $2.2 million program when the environmentally-induced benefits from just one year are eight times greater?

If anything, the shelterbelt program has growing value in the face of the challenges of climate change and the importance that bio-mass can play in sequestering carbon and producing renewable energy. But, fixated on oil exports, Harper can’t see the forest for the trees. Nor are his political underlings going to learn anything by boycotting public meetings such as the recent one at Indian Head.

This decision doesn’t just reflect bad economics; it reflects Harper’s ideological objective of removing government from vital public services. De-regulation and privatization go hand in hand with Harper. The preference of the Harper government is for a private for-profit firm to take over the shelterbelt program, gaining public assets at bargain-basement prices. If no viable business plan is forthcoming then the program will go. That Harper is only allowing a 5 month horizon for an alternative plan shows the low priority and lack of foresight given to this decision.

Those at the Indian Head program were never given the option of cost-cutting to help reduce the federal deficit. And there were other practical alternatives. Harper didn’t touch the $1.4 billion a year subsidy going to the oil and gas industry. Just a 10% cut in this, to match the 10% cuts demanded from departments, would have provided $140 million to enable Harper to preserve unquestionably beneficial programs such as this one. But Harper does not like facts and doesn’t listen to scientists. He’s now also announced eliminating Canada’s Experimental Lakes Area, one of the most important fresh water research locations in the world.

PRESERVING DEMOCRACY

While Harper tries to justify every cut as being necessary to reduce the deficit, this is a smokescreen for his agenda. The public would have had a lot to say about this at the Indian Head meeting, but, for some unexplained reason, the organizers wouldn’t take any questions or comments from the floor. Regardless of the highly controlled format the public’s sentiments were forthcoming. There was loud applause three times: first, when local Reeve Lorne Scott laid out the economic and environmental benefits of the program and asked the ADM just how much was really going to be saved; second, when the retired Centre manager, Bruce Neill, asked why the Centre wasn’t given any option to contribute to cost-cutting; and third, when Lorne Scott asked why Minister Ritz and MP Andrew Scheer weren’t present to explain themselves.

If future meetings are publicized as “public”, the public must be free to participate. We can’t allow the contempt for parliamentary democracy being shown by Harper to filter down to erode grass-roots democracy. Canadians at large need to defend their right to fully participate in the political process and to hold politicians to account when they make such ill-conceived, ideologically-motivated decisions. Otherwise, Harper cuts doubly: he cuts valued programs and he cuts public criticism in one fell swoop. We can’t allow this to happen.

RE-ASKING THE BIG “THEOLOGICAL” QUESTIONS ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY

Our sustainability depends on our developing knowledge of the natural world we inhabit and the deepening of our self-knowledge as a species. Humans have been asking probing questions about such matters for a long time. Big questions, such as: What’s out there? How did we get here? What’s this place made of? And what makes us human?

Our answers always have a cultural overlay. When we look back at older worldviews we sometimes can see the oversights that we don’t recognize in the viewpoints of our own times. The most nonsensical view today is that economic growth which destroys habitats and biodiversity can go on in perpetuity.

FROM SOUL TO MIND

The astronomically-curious Egyptians thought we had a heart-based connection to a universal cosmic spirit. While they knew our brain mattered in controlling our bodies, it was removed before mummification because it wasn’t considered crucial to the everlasting “soul”.  Middle Eastern monotheism, including Christianity, was influenced by this tradition.

After the darker times of the Middle Ages and the coming of the Renaissance we started to see the human world more in terms of individuals with desires. During tumultuous revolutionary times the philosopher Descartes began to distrust our senses as a reliable path to understanding. He concluded that doubt implies a doubter which led to his famous “I think therefore I am”.  Was it our ability to reason that made us human and empowered us to answer the Big Questions about the universe?

We investigated our bodies with more rigor. Willis and others explored the structure and function of our brains in shaping memory and human intellect. It was starting to look like we were getting close to explaining our unique makeup. Our highly developed cerebral cortex was surely the anatomical foundation of “reason” and of “mind”. But empires and early forms of globalization somehow went hand-in-hand with the growing faith in reason. Technological reason became ever-more linked to domination, the colonization of indigenous peoples and of the natural world itself.

REASON DETHRONED

Then Marx’s “mind” came on the scene, arguing that empires and economies were not naturally or divinely-ordained but controlled by historically-created classes and emerging systems of production. This certainly stirred things up. Then Darwin’s “mind” entered the fray. His lesser-known interest in animal emotions accelerated the dethroning of humans from our biological pedestal.  We had gone from seeing ourselves in the stars, to becoming fixated with our capacity “to reason”, to facing up to the historical systems that led to “the exploitation of man by man”, to finally starting to recognize our kinship with the animal world.

Then, after witnessing clinical studies of hysteria, Freud began to change our view of mind. Descartes’ confidence in human reason was proving one-sided; unconscious emotions could transform our physical and psychological being. We were peeking into the world we now call “post-traumatic stress”. We were perplexing even more about “What makes us human?” Then, to confuse us even more, along came Einstein’s “mind” and we started down the path of deconstructing material reality, which now leaves us with a lot more space than matter and an ubiquitous dark energy. Just when we were beginning to think we knew about the universe we faced the question “what’s this place made of?” all over again.

RETURN OF CONNECTION

The invention of the camera by Cajal, and advances in transportation and communications, gave us a refreshing perspective on the Big Questions. We soon discovered that the human brain has billions of neurons and vast potential for forming networks. It was only a matter of time before we would better understand the neuro-plasticity of our brain. Computing machines were created, initially to accelerate the decoding of enemy messages during WW II. It was only a matter of time until the spread of desk-top computers, mobile electronics and social networking. From a different angle than the Egyptians, we were getting back to a focus on connectedness. We became more interested in making the most of being here, than in “How did we get here?”

Environmental degradation and the ecology movement reinforced the shift to place and inter-connectedness. We had gone “full circle”; coming from a heart-based connection with the stars, to the shaky mind of reason, to discovering the all-powerful role of systems and conditioned emotions in shaping ideologies, to seeing our massive potential for connecting. Our ideas, our images and even our relations to each other, could now grow in scale to include all of humanity. We were thrown into a human fusion and much confusion was to come as parochial worldviews began to implode.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Psychologists like Skinner and Pavlov helped us to ask how much of our behavior was shaped by environmental conditioning. Was our self-identity really guided by a rational self-interest? Was this just another historical delusion? Were we perhaps quite vulnerable to being socially-engineered? This view clashed with the idea of a “free individual” that had carried so much weight from the French to the American Revolution. Meanwhile, expanding systems of control, including totalitarian and corporatist ones, continued to show that humans were very susceptible to reward and punishment. All authoritarian governments, including the Harper government, use control tactics that appeal to this base nature.

Some of us are recoiling from the globalization of scientific and spiritual ideas and trying to make our customary views into a fundamentalist worldview. This is happening in many places around the world. It won’t work for we are all being thrown back to asking the Big Questions. Perhaps asking rather than answering questions is “what makes us human”.

A MISSING QUESTION

We now know our brains are capable of creating convincing models of reality. We know that these come from early conditioning, connecting neural-hormonal pathways that are as much emotional as cognitive. Descartes’ mind-body dualism is now dead, except perhaps in propaganda, advertising and celebrity- popular culture. We know that these models underlie strongly held perceptions that we stubbornly uphold even when they are illusory. (Goggle the Ames-Trapezoid Room.) When these interior models are taken to be external reality they can fuel adamancy and destructive human actions. The supremacist Norwegian who mercilessly killed so many youth because he believed they were pawns in the Muslim takeover of Europe shows this all too well.

Our perceptions and our identities are constructed by idiosyncratic inner processes that couldn’t develop without conditioning from the outside. Societal-organized harm easily gets linked to our not-so-private fantasy-dream world.  So now, if we wish to become a sustainable species, we must also ask the additional question: “What’s in here?” And we need to answer this in such a way that we no longer separate ourselves or assume we know as an observer. We need to fully recognize that we co-habit this place with many other persons and a diversity of creatures.

I am indebted to Nigel Walk’s BBC documentary The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion: Who Are We? (Episode 6), for inspiring this piece.  Look it up on the internet.

CAN A MULCAIR-LED NDP MOBILIZE MAJORITY REALIGNMENT?

Thomas Mulcair is the NDP’s seventh leader since its 1961 founding. He will build upon the huge void left by the death of Jack Layton. Mulcair led from the start and continued to lead as the other six candidates dropped off. He won 57% on the final ballot against Layton’s past national campaign director, Brian Topp.

I followed the leadership race as a sympathetic non-member. I was intensely involved in CCF-NDP politics in my youth and, being Saskatchewan born-and-raised, had the chance to see NDP governance up close. I was already becoming concerned about the gap between progressive rhetoric and actual governance when I attended the NDP founding convention 50 years ago. Though I took one run at parliament in a 1964 Saskatoon by-election, I steadily moved towards non-partisan community-based activism.

HISTORICAL LESSONS

But with Harper so quickly taking Canada backwards I knew this leadership race mattered greatly. Was the NDP ready to do politics in a new way to inspire a reengagement of the public, especially youth, in working for a more equal and sustainable Canada? Was Mulcair going to see the forest for the trees?

The leadership race was presented as a clash between “staying the social democratic course” and “reaching out to a broader base”. This is a silly dualism, as the history of NDP electoral gains shows. It was in the wake of intense grass-roots activism that the CCF came close to federal power and won in Saskatchewan in the 1940s. It was in the 1980s that Ed Broadbent, an original signator to the Waffle’s nationalist manifesto, led the NDP to the top of the public opinion polls and had the most NDP MPs ever elected. It was Jack Layton, a sympathizer to the progressive New Politics Initiative (NPI) in the early 2000’s, who became the Leader of the Opposition.

There doesn’t need to be a clash between wisely understood principles and good governance if we are clear and strategic about achieving our objectives, which will be required to replace Harper.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

This was the first time the NDP selected its leader using one-member-one-vote. (Past delegated conventions that gave unions disproportionate power, were more prone to brokerage politics which often served the not-so-progressive social democrats.) The increase to 130,000 members was encouraging, but that only half voted was not. Glitches in the on-line voting system stretched the 4-ballots to over 12 hours.

On the first ballot Mulcair was front runner with 30%, lower than many expected. Topp, touted as the “social democratic candidate”, followed 9% behind. The big surprise was B.C.’s Nathan Cullen’s third-place finish with 16%. The race was quickly down to four. Manitoba’s multi-talented Niki Ashton got the lowest vote and was dropped off. Martin Singh withdrew and endorsed Mulcair. Paul Dewar, who many thought would do better, voluntarily withdrew without endorsing anyone.

Speculation began about the final ballot being between Mulcair and Topp. Pundits conjectured that this reflected a deep party “split” between traditional social democrats and more liberal New Democrats wanting to reach out. Some union leaders encouraged 4th-place Peggy Nash to immediately drop out and endorse Topp. With the preferential voting system locking in 55,000 of the 65,000 votes, there was little room for maneuvering.

Some scenarios were ruled out by the second ballot. Mulcair made the most gains, moving to 38%. Topp notably gained the least but stayed in second place with 25%. Cullen didn’t make the breakthrough to “come up the middle”, but was still ahead of Nash, getting 20%. Nash dropped off without endorsing Topp, which surprised some. The crucial question going into the 3rd ballot was whether enough of Nash’s 10,000 votes would shift to Topp to bring him within striking distance. Or, would there be pressure on Cullen to endorse Mulcair to start reunifying the party.

Topp could only win with a scenario of unlikely “ifs”. Some speculated whether Cullen could replace Topp in second place, creating new opportunities for progressive party unity. But the die was cast.

On the third ballot Mulcair led with 44% and while Topp clearly gained the most votes from Nash he was only at 32%. Cullen came last, was dropped, and also refused to endorse anyone. Much of Cullen’s B.C. labour-environmental support would likely go to Topp, but would it be enough?  Perhaps realizing what was coming Cullen said he didn’t want to play “backroom politics” and respected one-member-one-vote.

Going into the last ballot, Mulcair was positioned to become Leader of the Opposition. And he did! He ended with 57%, but if you do the math you find most (58%) of Cullen’s supporters went to Topp. The vote distribution hardly fits with the pundit’s notion of a party deeply divided between traditionalists and expansionists.

POLITICS OF REALIGNMENT

Will the NDP now be able to help build a majority realignment to replace Harper? Clearly Mulcair is more of a traditional “politico” and he may try to “go it alone”, without co-operating with the Liberals and Greens. This might bode well for Harper’s attackers, who will try to make Mulcair and not Canada’s future into the issue. But Cullen winning 25% support suggests that positive reaching out and strategic cooperation are intertwined. A recent poll even shows winning support for joint NDP-Liberal candidates, though it’s lower among NDP supporters. Cullen was also the most “Green” candidate, which bodes well for realignment embracing ecological sustainability as the foundation for democracy and justice.

But the vision of realignment remained obscure, though Ashton’s youthful “new politics” was a start. So a renewed progressive vision remains a work in progress. But it became clear that creating majority realignment is not about a left-right split in the NDP. Those wanting to stay the course with Topp clearly don’t have a monopoly on progressive alliance-building. Cullen’s campaign may help show the way.

Past leader Ed Broadbent’s interventions in support of Topp, as the only one carrying the social democratic banner, misread what is actually happening with the democratization and greening of the NDP, post-Jack Layton. It’s probably no accident that both Premiers Romano and Calvert endorsed Topp. The historic crisis facing Canada under Harper’s rule, however, can’t be resolved by staying the course; certainly not along the lines of the longest-governing, Saskatchewan NDP.

GREENING THE NDP

The NDP has been slow to “green”. This in part results from social democratic ideology seeing social justice as simply redistributing the fruits of capitalist industrialization. There are serious matters of value and policy to resolve here if Canada is to become governed by a progressive majority. One example: though the federal NDP membership overwhelmingly supports phasing-out nuclear power, it was an NDP government using social democratic justifications like public ownership of resources that propelled Saskatchewan to be the largest uranium-exporting region on the planet. This was rationalized as “jobs and growth at any cost” much as Harper rationalizes the Northern Gateway pipeline. Another example: while NDP leadership candidates all attacked Harper’s science-denying on climate change, the highest per capita greenhouse gases in all Canada are in Saskatchewan where NDP governments for decades oversaw the crown expansion of coal plants and export of nuclear fuel.

NDP self-righteousness can itself be deceptive.  And, yes, of course we can and should still take pride for being the founding province for Medicare. But that happened almost 50 years ago just after the NDP was formed. There remains much to sort out inside and outside the NDP if Mulcair’s victory is to be a step along the road to a majority-voting realignment.

Part IV, WE STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE

In Part 3, I explored the corporate agenda that drives Harper’s politics. In the last of the series, I discuss what we can do to get the federal government back in the hands of the Canadian majority.

Harper is taking Canada towards more centralized, authoritarian government. He is using his majority to advance legislation which will result in widespread social injustices and a shift of more power to the corporate sector. With opposition votes divided, he is positioned to take Canada further in this reactionary direction after 2015. Those who care about Canada and our citizens must now co-operate to create an alternative future.

Harper’s politics are devious, although demonizing him won’t help; he’s exploiting a situation that’s been in the making for decades. We will have to rely on Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to help limit Harper’s arbitrary rule, but it was Trudeau himself who started centralizing power in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Harper has built on this to create his “government within government”. It was Mulroney who made the big shift towards economism, where the corporate marketplace trumped everything; this has been a precursor to Harper’s desired corporate state.

However, Harper changed the “game”. His Ministers’ justification of any action because the party “got a mandate in the last election” ignores the fact that less than 3 out of 10 eligible voters supported Harper. Obsessed with power, he cares little for the implications of his devious methods and policies for Canadian unity down the road. When he pleads “smear campaign” over charges of vote suppression during the 2011 election, remember that the Harper Conservatives have already been convicted of electoral fraud from the election that first brought them to power.

THE NEW VISION

Harper accumulated votes by driving wedges between Canadians. The Reform Party used the bilingual wedge between French and English and then the energy wedge between West and East to build its base. Harper then compounded tensions between town and country over gun control and now wants to accentuate tensions between provinces over Medicare and between generations over old-age security to try to hold onto power. His wedge politics sow disunity. This can be a successful short-term tactic, but it can’t build bridges of understanding and compassion across groups and regions. The answer is not more of the same; attack ads from more parties will drive even more people from the voting booths. Such polarization and de-politicization will give advantage to Harper.

The challenge is to build a new basis of unity among Canadians with a vision that resonates across the majority. To do this the Liberals will have to update their heritage of human rights to defend the freedoms that Harper is undercutting. The New Democrats will have to update their progressive heritage to advance the social justice that Harper is undermining.  And the Greens will have to find more successful ways of moving ecological sustainability to the centre of Canadian political culture.

OVERCOMING TURF

Harper exploits political “turf wars”, but he didn’t cause them. Both Liberals and New Democrats embraced some of the myths of neo-liberalism and globalization. The Liberals couldn’t have picked a more vulnerable leader than Ignatieff for Harper to target with attack ads; Ignatieff was a political outsider and an elitist. Former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow advanced many of the ideas of Tony Blair’s New Labour, abandoning the values of redistribution for neo-liberal economic growth. Predictably we got more inequality and more environmental toxins.

The climate crisis gains momentum as Harper fiddles with how to defend the fossil-fuel economy. This mounting crisis is already bringing the movements for democracy, justice and sustainability into better alignment. The renewed political vision has to challenge Harper’s simplistic view of capitalist economic growth “at all costs” because perpetual growth is untenable. The market must be put back into the larger context of society and society must be placed in the context of natural systems. There is a spiritual dimension to this shift in paradigm. Participatory democracy has to be strengthened, not undermined, as Harper is doing, to help bring the required changes.

BOTTOM UP

Parties habitually stand in the way. The timing of its cumbersome leadership race led the NDP to “drop the ball” with its vital new role as Official Opposition. As the Liberals came up in the polls there was a return, among some, to the mentality that they were entitled to govern. Putting all their eggs in one basket, electing their leader Elizabeth May, the Greens lost some hard-won traction with the public.

All three parties could contribute to a Harper re-election in 2015. Political realignment to end vote splitting is going to be required and leaving this to “strategic voting” is not an option. Co-operation between the opposition parties must be strengthened if Harper is to be soundly defeated at the polls. It may be no accident that the favoured new leader of the Liberals, Bob Rae, was once in the NDP and that the apparent front-runner for NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, was once in the Liberals. But can they see the forest for the trees?

B.C. NDP leadership candidate, Nathan Cullen, has called for party co-operation. He has sometimes been attacked as disloyal by party stalwarts, but his message continues to resonate. Prior to the March 24th leadership vote he has had the largest number of contributors and has been running just behind Mulcair and Brian Topp in total fund raising.

Cullen is proposing holding run-offs among parties to select the candidate to challenge sitting Conservative MP’s.  Another suggestion is working for an electoral alliance in the seats where the vote has split three-ways and where Conservatives were elected by a small margin. We have to be aware that Harper’s handlers will likely want to launch attacks on this, much as they attacked “the Coalition”. Fear and deflection are Harper’s preferred ways.

ONE APPROACH

What about the views of the skeptics of co-operation? Electoral reform is ultimately needed but is not going to happen before 2015. Criticisms that party co-operation would have prevented the breakthrough of the NDP are not relevant, now that Harper has his majority rule. Further, if opposition parties are willing to consider co-operating after the next election, why wouldn’t we be proactive and more effective and do this before the vote?

There will be no short-cut to the “majority” taking back the Canadian government. But what if the grass-roots took charge? What if opposition parties, where Conservative MP’s got fewer votes than the combined vote of the other three, voted to hold a joint nominating convention? All members of all co-operating parties would be eligible to vote, and members of all co-operating parties would be eligible to run; all co-operating parties would agree to support the candidate that won. Each party could have a member on the campaign committee to help bring the basis of unity rather than disunity into better focus.

Think of it: the proponents of democracy, justice and sustainability in a common campaign. Creative development could percolate out into the communities and up the three political parties. I have already witnessed a similar process in non-partisan community forums defending the farmer-elected Canadian Wheat Board. Held in “Harper country”, where no NDP MP’s were elected, these prairie forums will raise more money than any federal NDP leadership candidate raised across all of Canada. This illustrates the potential of the grass-roots democracy-in-action required for voter realignment.

Would party leaders dare overrule such a bottom-up approach? Would Harper be able to attack ordinary Canadians standing up for their country? We’ll see, but the conversation must begin! Sensitive and skilled brokers from all political traditions must now step up to the plate. Harper is a wake-up call to Canadians.

The full four-part series is available at: rtownonline.ca, or www.crowsnestecology.wordpress.com

PART III, WE STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE

In Part 2 of this series, I showed how Harper’s health, social and legal policies will result in widespread injustices for Canadians. In Part 3, I explore the corporate agenda that drives Harper’s politics.

Harper will use his majority government to shift even more power to the corporate sector of the economy. For him the role of government is primarily to serve corporate interests; society serves the market rather than the reverse. With such a one-sided view it is little wonder that Harper has so little respect for democratic practices or policies which advance social justice.

STIMULUS PACKAGE

The 2008 recession forced Harper to appear to abandon his simplistic “free market” ideology. However, he still designed his stimulus package in a pro-corporate way. Unlike other industrial countries he refused to use government intervention to help make the conversion to green energy to address the climate crisis. The tar-sands and the nuclear industry were big benefactors. Though Harper continued cutting funds to social programs like childcare, he broke his promise to cancel billions in tax breaks for oil companies making record profits.

His Economic Action Plan favoured the well-off, not those most in need; while over 300,000 Canadians lost jobs during the recession, the wealth of Canada’s 100 richest people grew to an average net worth of $1.7 billion. Most organizations surveyed said Harper’s stimulus plan had a neutral or negative effect; even the right-wing Fraser Institute was critical. The $16 billion surplus he inherited from the Liberals quickly turned into a $56 billion deficit which Harper will reduce on the backs of ordinary Canadians.

While pursuing his corporate agenda Harper has steadfastly blurred the lines between the “Government of Canada” and his increasingly centralized control, using a cadre of 87 unelected staffers in the PMO’s Office. Harper’s Action Plan ads were even designed to appear to be from the Conservative Party and the Canadian taxpayer continues to foot the bill for Harper’s self-promotion. In 2011 public servants confirmed that Harper had sent a directive for the “Government of Canada” to be renamed “The Harper Government”.

CORPORATE DE-REGULATION

As head of the National Citizens Coalition (NCC) Harper advocated bank de-regulation along the lines taken by Republicans in the U.S. Thankfully he didn’t have a chance to do this for we would have suffered much more from the 2008 recession. But Harper’s rigid ideological commitment to de-regulation continues. While still a minority government he had already weakened regulations on pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables; new regulations coming from Agriculture Minister Ritz allowed food corporations to do their own labeling and safety inspections.

Tampering with food safety is a dangerous game. The listeriosis outbreak in August 2008, which the Sept. 16, 2008 Canadian Medical Journal linked to Harper’s deregulation of food safety, killed 17 Canadians. The contamination came from Maple Leaf Foods, one of the early companies to adopt the new regulations, which only required testing finished products once monthly.

Leaking Harper’s plans cost a Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) biologist his job. Legislation to protect whistleblowers would protect our health, yet Harper continues “muzzling” government scientists. Astonishingly, Minister Ritz commented that the real “whistleblower was the gentleman who turned in” the CFIA biologist. Ideology has replaced evidence in Harper’s anti-science approach to governing. In 2009 he cut scientific research funds by $138 million; in 2012 he pulled the plug on a world-renowned Arctic research station that monitors atmospheric changes.

GUTTING WHEAT BOARD

Minister Ritz brought in Harper’s first majority government legislation, Bill C-18, to kill the farmer-elected Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). Though a Federal Court found that this legislation breached the rule of law, and a majority of Western farmers have voted in support of the CWB, Harper carries on concentrating power with the large grain companies. He uses empty rhetoric about farmer’s “marketing freedom”, but it will be agribusiness that gets the “freedom” to control the market. Though the huge potash corporations have their own “single-desk”, Canpotex, the CWB’s single desk is taken from family farmers, who must make an “individual choice” about where to market. The so-called “open market” will reduce the role of producer organizations and of the Canadian Grain Commission, which has given farmers some assurance of third-party quality control. Individual farmers will also be more vulnerable to the railways and could become pitted against each other in the “rush to the bottom”. Canada’s largest grain handler, Viterra, may soon be sold to a U.S. firm like Cargill or ADM.

Harper is also re-regulating in the interests of energy corporations. His Minister Oliver has attacked the right of Canadians to participate in environmental reviews of tar-sand pipelines; he consistently says that environmental reviews will be cut back. His double speak: “We respect the integrity of the regulatory process but we do need to get these projects approved.” Harper clearly wants to gut the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) and replace it with designated one-stop review bodies that are closely tied to industry.

“JOBS AND GROWTH”

Harper obscures his commitment to corporate “growth and profits” with his mantra of “jobs and growth”. This appeal to working people and small businesses is an attempt to distract attention from his political agenda. Such “economism” goes back to the Mulroney era with its rhetoric about work, family and nation, but Harper has taken this to new lengths. The claim that the benefits of corporate-driven growth “trickle down” to the general population does not hold up to serious scrutiny; it accentuates  inequality. In spite of the billions in wealth taken out of Saskatchewan by the uranium industry, the north remains the second poorest region in all Canada. Harper’s Alberta-style vision for Canada as an “energy superpower” will continue to distort the overall Canadian economy, creating divisions between Western provinces that export non-renewable resources and the rest. His highly contentious corporate agenda will put Canadian unity at further risk.

We already know what Harper’s policies do to “jobs and growth”. After receiving government subsidies and making $4.7 billion, an 80% increase in profits over 2010, Caterpillar had the audacity to demand a 50% decrease in wages from workers at its London plant. When workers refused the company shut down its plant leading to the loss of 450 jobs.

Exporting bitumen from Alberta to China will lead to a loss of home-grown, value-added jobs. Harper’s new immigration policy ignores the reunification of families and the human rights of refugees while privileging the labour force needs of corporations. Rather than respecting the collective bargaining process Harper consistently forces workers back to work. While Harper’s Minister Raitt recently stopped job action at Air Canada, CBC’s business co-host Kevin O’Leary went on a rant calling for the abolition of the unions and the firing of all employees. Those favouring Harper’s vision of an undemocratic corporate state are becoming more strident about their desire to trample on the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

NOT SUSTAINABILITY

Economic growth based on the sell-out of agriculture and non-renewable resources is not the path to a sustainable society. Harper’s backward-looking “vision” can be traced to the neo-liberal economics of the 1970s which ruthlessly embraced globalization as the means to expand the markets and profits of western multi-national corporations.  People throughout the world have learned the hard way that unfettered “free trade” is not “fair trade”; that privatization of public services is a disaster for the common good, and that corporate de-regulation threatens public and environmental health.

This is another wakeup call for Canadians.

Next time I’ll discuss what can be done to get the Canadian government back in the hands of the Canadian majority.

PART II – WE STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE

In the last piece, Part 1 of this series, I documented Harper’s contempt for parliamentary democracy, his manipulation of elections, his undercutting of freedom of information and disregard for international law, and his predilection towards political surveillance. In a nutshell it seems his government holds little or no allegiance to our democratic practices. In Part 2 I look at the injustices that will result from the policy changes that Harper is pushing through with his authoritarian rule.

DISMANTLING MEDICARE

While heading the National Citizens Coalition (NCC) and before leading the Alliance Party, Harper appealed to the alienation of Western Canadians from the federal government. But the policies he affirmed made a mockery out of our citizenship and in retrospect his use of the phrase “Citizen’s Coalition” seems slightly Orwellian. The NCC opposed Medicare, which is embraced by a vast majority of Canadian citizens as basic to our national identity. While acting as the NCC head Harper called for the scrapping of the Canada Health Act, which was created to ensure equity in health services for all citizens across Canada.

Harper has consistently called for the provincialization of healthcare. Soon after his majority government in 2012 and without consultation or meeting with the provinces, he announced a federal funding formula based solely on per-capita grants. This formula totally ignores different needs across the country, especially in the provinces with the higher percentages of seniors who require more health care. It pits the provinces that would benefit, such as Alberta with its younger workforce, against those provinces who would not, driving yet another wedge into Canada. This is intended as a first step towards balkanizing healthcare, empowering and forcing provinces to build-up their private-for-profit delivery system.

ATTACKING PENSIONS

Before he was PM, Harper attacked the Canadian Pension Plan or CPP which has worked very well for Canadians. Rather than build upon the strengths of the CPP, in 2011 he introduced the Pooled Registered Pension Plan (PRPP) which would be run by banks, mutual funds and the insurance industry. His recent attack on the Old Age Security (OAS) for being financially unsustainable is also strictly ideological. Independent researchers have concluded that the projected increase in expenditures from 2.3 to 3.1 percent of GDP is financially sustainable, and among the lowest cost in all industrial nations.

Harper is playing on an undercurrent of resentment for the Baby Boomers coming from younger, less wealthy generations, whom he is claiming to protect with cuts to public pensions. With no interest in evidence-based policy, he ignores how many people presently depend on public pensions: eleven million workers lack workplace pensions, only one-third have enough savings to use their full RRSPs, and most telling, almost 90% of RRSP’s investments come from the top 10% income group.

If anything, upcoming generations who are increasingly part of what is called the “precariat” will have even less access to work-place pensions and less ability to save privately. The way to protect them when they become seniors is clearly to protect and expand our public pension plan.

Harper’s policy objective, however, is to move pensions from the public to the private saving sphere, to the advantage of financial corporations and to the detriment of the quality of life of retiring Canadians.  With his publicly-funded pension of over $200,000 annually Harper won’t personally need the $6,000 per year from the OAS. Nor will he be among the sparse 6% of seniors who earn enough ($69,000) to get OAS benefits clawed back. However, the public pension plan, including the Guaranteed Income Supplement or GIS, remains critical to the wellbeing of the majority of Canadians; it provides up to 75% of the retirement income of low-income seniors, including women who have worked in the home without incomes.

UNDERMINING PARTICIPATION

Harper cleverly masked his hostility towards the rights and freedoms of Canadians by using populist language from the very beginning of his political career. All the Reform Party talk of transparency and accountability now looks rather trite in view of Harper’s steady moves towards more authoritarian rule.

Rights and freedoms are not abstract, they must be guaranteed; for example, there must be policies that affirm equal access to information and to legal and political processes for citizens to fully participate in society. There remains a huge inequity between male and female participation in decision-making within Canadian society, yet, while still a minority government, Harper abolished most Status of Women offices across Canada. He eliminated funding for the National Association of Women and the Law and for the Court Challenges Program, which further weakened the ability of vulnerable Canadians to participate more equally in Canadian society.  He eliminated the budget of the Law Commission of Canada which advised Parliament on law reform and gave life to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

LAW AND DISORDER

While Harper tries to dismantle public health, pension and participation programs that provide some semblance of social justice he shifts massive taxpayer-resources towards social-political control. Billions have been committed to build mega-prisons in a time of a falling crime rate. He continues to centralize political power by legislating mandatory sentences that will further drive up taxpayer costs. His government continues to misinform Parliament about the real costs of his mega-prison plan. By 2015 he will likely have doubled the annual spending on prisons, adding $5 billion a year for the taxpayers to pay.

Harper came to power in great part by driving a huge wedge between the amorphous population he stereotypes as “criminal” and the rest of us. Yet it could be members of any of our extended families that could end up in Harper’s expanded prison system. While planning to incarcerate more Canadians, he has cut rehabilitation programs throughout the corrections system, ensuring that hardening and not the healing of Canadians will result from imprisonment. Meanwhile his government and party continue to show disrespect for the rule of law, or the rules by which elections and parliamentary democracy operate. The double standard grows each day.

RETRIBUTION NOT JUSTICE

The overall pattern is most revealing. Just after first being elected in 2006 he rescinded the Kelowna Accord which was the first comprehensive agreement to improve the quality of health and education among First Nations. Health, education and housing, and not more prisons, should be a policy priority for Canada if we want prevent more crises such as occurred at Attawapiskat. Then in 2007 his government cut over a billion from the national childcare program, in spite of all the research showing that attention to quality of life in early childhood pays “dividends” throughout the life cycle.  In 2010 Harper showed his “policy priorities” by spending as much as he previously cut from national childcare on policing the G20 meeting in Toronto, funding the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

Social justice is about finding a fairer way to distribute benefits and burdens across groups in society. The Harper government is steadily shifting resources from advancing social justice, which we know enhances the health of the community, to retributive programs, which we know can perpetuate social and political disintegration. There seems to be little or no awareness in his circles about the positive role of restorative justice in consolidating social solidarity. His mean-spirited punitive approach to the role of government is a throw-back to pre-democratic times.

This is another wake up call for Canadians.

Next time I’ll discuss how the corporate economy shapes Harper’s political agenda.

WE STAND ON GUARD FOR THEE – PART I

This is the first in a Series of four articles looking at how the Harper government is undermining democracy, justice and sustainability and what Canadians can do to prevent his political agenda from balkanizing Canada.

We need to protect the political freedoms we have in order to make Canada a more equal and sustainable society. Without robust political freedoms the Harper government will continue to drive wedges between us for the benefit of a few, without regard for what climate change will do to our children.

We see historical examples of elected regimes centralizing power and aggressively attacking their opponents to gain dictatorial-like powers. Our soldiers fought against fascist regimes to prevent this. Canada is not immune to this threat. Our democracy is presently being challenged perhaps more than at any other time. Reductions in voter turn-out and widespread cynicism about crass power plays and the lack of authenticity in politics have already weakened our democracy. There are growing signs that the present federal government intends to use its power to weaken democracy further.

1. CONTEMPT FOR PARLIAMENT

Let’s look at the Harper record so far. While still a minority, Harper led the first Commonwealth government to ever be found in contempt of Parliament. Those cynical about politics may not consider this anything special, but it is. The withholding of information, or misinforming Parliament, fundamentally undermines its ability to keep government transparent and accountable to the people. It is the first big step away from democracy.

Harper’s Ministers appeal to the “supremacy of parliament” as though having a majority of seats justifies dominating Parliament. This ploy was used when Harper dismantled the farmer-elected Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) without following the rule of law. But the supremacy of Parliament does not mean that majority governments can do an end-run on Parliament or existing legislation.  A government that acts like a one-party state is not working within the framework of parliamentary democracy.

For Harper it’s all about centralizing control. He has broken his promise to democratize the Senate by appointing a rash of Conservative cronies and defeated candidates to rubber-stamp his legislation. There will be no sober second thoughts in a Harper-dominated Senate. He’s even appointed an unelected person to his Cabinet. Contempt for our democracy was shown with Harper twice shutting down (proroguing of) Parliament to side-step democratic accountability.

2. MANIPULATING ELECTIONS

Elections enable the voice of the people, popular sovereignty, to be expressed. Some politicians see elections as simply a means to obtain power, a means to manipulate voter behavior to squeeze out enough first-past-the-post votes to become government. Harper cleverly uses wedge issues to divide Canadians. His propaganda attack ads on opposition leaders not only manipulate half or non-truths, but his excessive spending in the 2006 campaign contravened the Elections Act. Using the “end justifies the means” mentality, the Conservatives concocted an “in and out” funding scheme that violated spending limits. Laws were broken by senior Conservative officials including partisan-appointed Senators. In accepting a plea bargain whereby the Conservative Party pleaded guilty and individual charges were dropped, the judge said that the breaches were “significant to the democratic process.”

The Harper government first came to power through electoral fraud, then used the inner control of state resources to work towards majority government. Now we find that during the 2011 election last May, which had Harper squeezing out a majority with less than 3 out of 10 eligible voters, more electoral violations occurred. Misinformation about changes in the location of polling stations was systematically sent to thousands of Liberal supporters in 37 constituencies, many with tight races. These “robocalls” have been traced to an Edmonton firm, Racknine, linked directly to the Harper Conservatives. This scam directly benefitted the Conservatives and we will have to wait and see if Elections Canada finds a smoking gun. A rash of by-elections may be on the way.

3. CURTAILING FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

To allow informed consent among voters, a democracy requires the free-flow of reliable information. Harper is fundamentally undermining this process.  He rigidly controls contact between his Minister’s and the media and scripts the political lines used for public consumption. When the head of the regulatory body, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), called for a shut-down of the Chalk River nuclear reactor due to inadequate safety back-up, she was fired. When the Chief Statistician went head-to-head with the government over the need to maintain the long-form census to provide quality information for better needs assessment of Canadians, he was squeezed out. The Canadian Association of Science Journalists is now raising the alarm that government-employed scientists, paid from taxpayer’s funds, are being “muzzled” by Harper.  Harper has even abolished an Access to Information data base (CAIRS). His plan to abolish the per-vote subsidy for political parties would leave him and his powerful corporate funders even more able to monopolize political discourse with expensive attack-ad propaganda.

4. BREACHING INTERNATIONAL LAW

Harper’s contempt for the domestic rule of law is also shown internationally. He has systematically undermined international attempts to negotiate a treaty to avert atmospheric temperatures rising to an irreversible level. He turned his back on Canada’s commitments under the Kyoto Accord, which Parliament endorsed. In total disregard for the ruling of the Supreme Court, Harper is the only government which did not repatriate its citizens from the U.S.’s Guantanamo base. His government was among a handful that opposed the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which affirms the “duty to consult” prior to any resource extraction or toxic dumping on indigenous land. Harper refused to sign the UN Declaration designating safe water as a human right and refused funding for First Nations communities facing a desperate lack of safe water. His government has just been singled out for condemnation by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Harper is starting to give Canada a reputation as a “rogue state”.

5. POLITICAL SURVEILLANCE

His government is prepared to be even more draconian. Harper tried and failed several to pass legislation allowing his government to monitor internet activities. Now with a majority, his Minister Toews has introduced Bill C-30 compelling internet providers to give police new surveillance powers without requiring a warrant. This act was brought forward with the deceptive moralistic title – the “Protecting Children from Internet Predator’s Act”, yet it would enable a massive internet sweep of political opponents. The attempt to send a chill among Canadians, with Toews claiming “either stand with us or the child pornographers”, has somewhat backfired; even some libertarian Conservatives have rallied for privacy protections and free speech on the internet.

This legislation needs to be placed aside Harper’s new counter-terrorist strategy which speaks of “violence by domestic issue-based groups…revolving around the promotion of various causes”. It then groups together dangerous neo-fascist white supremacy groups with “animal rights, environmental and anti-capitalist groups”.

Legitimate reform and opposition organizations are already coming under attack. Look at Harper’s Minister Oliver’s preemptive attack on Aboriginal and environmental groups opposing the Northern Gateway Pipeline, calling them “anti-Canadian radicals”; or the detention of 1,100 protesters at the G20 meeting in Toronto in 2010 without cause or arrest.

Harper seems intent on criminalizing those who are standing up for democracy, justice and sustainability. His attempt to militarize Canadian culture is a most cynical ploy. We celebrate our military for fighting against fascism in order to protect the very rights and freedoms that Harper so disregards. His law and order agenda to build-up police powers and prisons and to have government-prescribed sentences, further reduces the separation of power that is fundamental to a democracy.

This should all be a wake-up call for Canadians.

Next week I’ll look at the injustices that will result from Harper’s changes to social policy.