All posts in Canadian Economy

Advice for Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau: Hammer Stephen Harper on the economy

by David Climenhaga on April 15, 2013 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Justin Trudeau, Oil Politics, Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair with 3 Comments

The neoliberal Harper economy at work: a Toronto street scene, last week. Below: Thomas Mulcair, Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper and Margaret Thatcher.

Here’s some free advice for a couple of would-be Canadian prime ministers who are both in the news these days, the NDP’s Tom Mulcair and the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau: Hammer Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the economy.

Both of them were with their party faithful yesterday – Mr. Mulcair at the final day of the NDP’s policy convention in Montreal and Mr. Trudeau at his coronation as Liberal leader in the evening in Ottawa. Either of them, it is said here, has the potential to form the next government of Canada if the planets line up the right way.

But that means, to succeed, something is going to have to go wrong for Mr. Harper – because, as we pretty well all know, more often than not opposition parties don’t win elections so much as governments lose them.

And the strongest card in Mr. Harper’s hand right now is the economy – crazy as it may seem to readers of this blog, public opinion polling consistently shows voters trust him on it, and they don’t necessarily trust either opposition party as much on economic matters. Moreover, until recently the economy has been ticking along smoothly enough for government work.

As a result, though, the economy is also Mr. Harper’s greatest weakness.

The Big Three issues that matter to Canadians on just about every pollster’s radar screen nowadays are the economy, health care and the environment.

Combined with our sourpuss prime minister’s unappealing personality, they have the potential to add up to the Four Horsemen of the Tory Apocalypse – but it’s the economy that rides the pale horse!

These issues don’t always come up in the same order from poll to poll, but the economy will tend to bob to the top of the worry list whenever the real economy doesn’t seem to be doing as well as it ought. So it should concern the Mr. Harper’s so-called Conservative Party of Canada that so many Canadian public opinion surveys show concern about the economy trending upward as the economy itself softens.

As for hea

lth care and the environment, Canadians don’t trust the Harper Conservatives on either file – and with good reason, as their agenda on both is well known. Those agendas, it can be said with confidence, are to destroy public health care and ignore the environment, especially where either issue gets in the way of encouraging the pursuit of private profit.

Still, they’ll try – if only half-heartedly – to do better in those areas. Look for more fluff in the months ahead about “Green Conservatism” and more pledges not to mess with health care … at least until the next ginned-up economic crisis.

If the Harper Conservatives’ stewardship of the economy is not particularly sound in reality, they’re stuck with their approach because they view the funds it can raise as essential to their long-term effort to implement the other key planks in their plan for the political and economic deconstruction of Canada.

With only a few words changed, Tariq Ali’s brilliantly pithy assessment of Margaret Thatcher’s program in Britain could as easily be used to describe Mr. Harper’s plans for Canada today: “On the economy the Thatcherite model (astonishingly, still being praised by blind politicians in denial) was effectively the deindustrialization of the country, the purchase of working-class votes by squandering the monies that accrued from North Sea oil and laying the foundations for a financialized economic model that exploded with the Wall Street crash of 2008.”

Replace the worlds “North Sea oil” with “Alberta Oil Sands” and you’ve pretty much got the Harper scheme in a nutshell. No need to drop the term Thatcherite.

That’s why they’re in such a lather to complete those pipelines so quickly.

But as long as the economy is perceived to be burbling along as well as can be expected, the Harper Conservatives can likely cobble together enough votes between their die-hard market-fundamentalist and social conservative s

upporters and wet Tory voters fearful of upsetting the economic applecart.

Voters for whom either the environment or health care is the top-of-mind issue are much more likely to have figured out where the Harper Government really wants to go in these areas and hence are much less likely to vote for Conservatives.

Then there’s the matter of the PM’s personal popularity. As pollster Frank Graves put it in iPolitics Friday, Mr. Harper’s personal approval numbers are not particularly auspicious lately.

“…But he has shown considerable resilience in the face of such challenges in the past,” observed Mr. Graves, who is the founder and president of EKOS Research Associates Inc. “The more important threat to Mr. Harper is the state of public outlook on the economy – and its impact on how confident Canadians are that the country and the government are moving in the right direction. This is the challenge which – unaddressed – is most likely to be fatal to Mr. Harper’s future prospects.” (Italics added by me.)

“Numerous indicators show that concerns about the economy are the dominant concerns of Canadians and that long-term anxieties about our economic future are mounting,” Mr. Graves noted elsewhere in the piece. “The notion that we were the stalwart economic performer in the G8 has been displaced as our growth and growth forecasts have cooled substantially. There is a broad sense that the middle class (Mr. Harper’s prime political constituency) is in deep trouble. While they may be comforted by the thought that at least we aren’t Greece or Spain, the long grind of growing fears of economic stagnation – or worse, erosion – weigh heavily on an incumbent after a certain amount of time.”

I hope Mr. Graves will forgive me for quoting him at such length, but this is a key point. It’s not just that the economy is Mr. Harper’s greatest strength. It is his only strength.

This is why the Harperites “came out swinging” at Mr. Trudeau within moments of his victory last night – they have been swinging at Mr. Mulcair for some time, of course – mocking his famous name and claiming he lacks experience.

Well, good luck to them on that. Unlike Mr. Trudeau, who has been a teacher, their own leader is a political and Astroturf hack who has never held a “real job” in his life.

But both the Liberals and the New Democrats will do better not to rise to that bait but to attack Mr. Harper on the economic front instead.

Indeed, for the reasons noted above, it is axiomatic that his opponents attack him now, strongly, consistently and continually, on his current economic performance and its future economic potential.

Every doubt that can be raised about the ability of the Harper fundamentalists to manage the economy needs to be raised now – especially while the economy is clearly foundering – because the perception Tories are competent economic managers is the foundation that underlies Mr. Harper’s only chance of continued success.

The evidence is in: the Thatcherite market fundamentalism that Mr. Harper espouses is a cruel fraud. It has proved to be a catastrophe wherever it has been implemented. Even as we ponder this, it is hollowing out the economy of Central Canada and leaving future generations of Western Canadians with the bill for the environmental cost of financing his scheme.

Mr. Mulcair, Mr. Trudeau: Hammer him on the economy!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Scoop: How the Fraserites slip their propaganda reaction-free into the media

by David Climenhaga on April 9, 2013 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Fraser Institute, Neoconservatism, Propaganda with 11 Comments

Is she embargoed or isn’t she? Fraser the Magician, at right, pulls a Fraser Factoid from a chest of charitable donations, assisted by federal Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, in uniform cap at left. Like the political figures and full-time lobbyists above, Fraser Institute research may not be exactly as illustrated … ever!

TORONTO

Have you wondered how the master manipulators at the Fraser Institute, those tireless missionaries of the market fundamentalist religion, always manage to get their stories into the media without any reaction from the vast number of critics of their shoddy, biased and ideologically motivated work?

One would think, after all, that journalists at Canada’s few remaining serious news organizations at least would want to phone up the most obvious opponents of the Vancouver-based lobby group’s questionable conclusions on any given topic and ask them what they think of them.

A check on their methodology from an acknowledged expert in the field might also be appropriate, from a journalistic point of view.

Cub reporters are usually taught in their first Journalism 100 class to do this sort of thing as a matter of routine. And yet, the Fraser Institute’s reports almost invariably appear without even a hint of the most basic reaction.

A typical example of this phenomenon was found in Thursday’s slipshod “study” by the Vancouver-based corporate boiler room, wherein the Fraser Institute’s crack research team made the dubious claim Canada’s public employees are “paid 12 per cent more than their private-sector counterparts,” and, what’s more, need to be brought quickly into line with the harsh discipline of the private sector.

Now, there was nothing at all new in this particular press release, which mirrored several others the Fraser Institute has produced over the past few months on individual provinces’ public sectors. Each one masqueraded as a legitimate piece of research. In other words, every time it was the same pig, with a slightly different shade of lipstick.

Like all the others, this latest version uses the same flawed methodology, failing even to take into account the occupations supposedly being compared. The true spread, it’s said by better researchers than me, is not 12 per cent but less than 1 per cent.

Using labour force data from just one month (April 2011), this particular example of Fraser Fakery came up with the 12-per-cent claim in effect by comparing Registered Nurses or government meteorologists with minimum-wage store clerks to gin up numbers that fit the Fraser paymasters’ ideological preconceptions.

Just the same, you’ve got to hand it to them. Whenever this happens, those of us who think the Fraserites are nothing more than full-time propagandists and unregistered lobbyists, paid to produce misleading and dishonest press releases done up as “analysis” and pass them off as legitimate, peer-reviewed research, are left to sputter and protest. Often, we will be advised by the reporters we call with our complaints to write a letter to the editor.

Alas, once the initial news hit has come and gone, the impression has been implanted in the minds of the public, no matter how meretricious the “research,” that the Fraser Institute is not only a legitimate research group but that its destructive policy prescriptions ought to be followed for the good of the nation.

Well, here’s the scoop. Here’s how they do it. And I must say, their scheme is devilishly – even admirably – simple.

The Fraser Institute simply sends out its press release with a note slapped on the top that says it’s embargoed until the next morning.

Now, embargoed, in the argot of the newsroom, means a news release or some other document has been given to the media in advance of the release date on the first page. In return, the media are asked not to reveal the contents to anyone until the publication time.

Just to be clear, we’re not talking about something like a budget lockup here, in which a journalist or news organization agrees not to release information until a certain time in return for an advance peek at the data.

Rather, it’s just a note placed arbitrarily atop a news release by a PR person – which is really all that the “researchers” at the Fraser Institute are – with zero moral or legal meaning. At best, it’s a request.

But apparently the naïve decision-makers in Canada’s “serious” media have concluded in their wisdom that this means they can’t call anyone for reaction until the information in the release has been published the next morning lest they give the scoop away. Perhaps, of course, that conclusion simply suits their ideological agenda.

Regardless, by then the damage has been done, the falsehood has been implanted in the public’s imagination and letters to the editor and follow-up stories are just so much “he-said-she-said.”

It’s said here that it’s time for us in what’s left of the Canadian reality-based community to demand an end to this shady and discreditable practice – if not by the Fraser Institute, which is incorrigible, at least by the journalists who play along. After all, they have to know it’s been designed to deceive.

If you’re a journalist and you think, “We can’t do that,” our text today comes from the Gospel according to E.C. Phelan, author of the 1981 edition of the Globe and Mail Style Book, which resides to this day in an honoured place on my bookshelf.

“For several years we have refused to honour release dates on material (mostly handouts) delivered to us and other media outlets in advance,” wrote Mr. Phelan, who no doubt would not have approved of the spelling of the word “honour” in the passage above.

I do not know if the staff of the Globe still lives by Mr. Phelan’s commands. If they don’t, they should. The soundness of his advice on this topic is obvious when we see how an organization like the Fraser Institute uses arbitrary embargoes to exploit the honourable instincts of some journalists as part of its ongoing campaign of deception.

In future, when journalists who want to do their jobs properly receive “embargoed” material from the Fraser Institute or the other organizations like it that have sprung up like mushrooms across Canada, they will be doing the right thing journalistically and morally if they nevertheless seek immediate comment from the people whose oxen the Fraserites are plotting to gore.

And what, pray, would the downside be? Do you seriously think the Fraser Institute would stop sending out its news releases to any mainstream media operation that ignored its fatuous embargoes?

Please! Press clippings are its fundamental reason for existence.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Never mind the details: Fraser Institute’s a leader in press release production

by David Climenhaga on April 8, 2013 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Fraser Institute, Neoconservatism with 10 Comments

Workers in the Fraser Institute’s Department of Press Release Production. Notice the large wads of U.S. cash with which they are presumably being pad. Actual Fraser Institute press release printers may not appear exactly as illustrated.

TORONTO

According to a press release issued last week by the Fraser Institute, which is one of Canada’s leading producers of press releases, government employees earn more on average than equivalent private sector workers.

One is tempted to respond by shouting, “It’s the market, Stupid!”

After all, when you’re comparing qualified professionals doing important public service work to unskilled workers in the retail sector, as the Fraser institute seems to be doing in this slapdash and amateurish “study,” one would expect the market to set higher rates of pay for the workers with skills and necessary qualifications.

What’s more, one would also expect the Fraser Institute’s extremely well-compensated “researchers” to understand the concept of the market above all things – since it’s the alleged superiority to market solutions for everything, the facts notwithstanding, that is quite literally their raison d’etre.

Indeed, the market was exactly what they pleaded in their own defence when they were exposed on the day of their latest press release as highly paid hypocrites by an Ottawa Citizen blogger, who noticed in a U.S. tax return that a dozen Fraser Institute staff members are compensated in the comfortable six figures for their tireless market proselytizing, and that their founder and “senior fellow” is paid more than the Prime Minister of Canada!

But never mind that blind alley, because in fact the Fraser Institute’s “analysis” in this “study” and all the others exactly like it – as has typically been the case with output of this organization over the past 38 years of its existence – is full of apples-to-oranges comparisons, deceptive omissions and intentional ignorance designed to achieve the propaganda goals of its corporate paymasters.

So while it might be accurate to say public employees have a marginal edge in earnings over their private-sector counterparts in most provinces, the Fraser Institute’s claim that public employees in Canada are paid on average 12 per cent more is almost certainly bogus.

The conclusion is based on labour force data for a single month (April 2011) and appears not to have taken occupation into account at all – PhD statisticians make more than 7-Eleven clerks, quelle surprise! The study doesn’t account for the level of government that employs the workers. It provides no figures on what the actual wages the group’s researchers are looking at are – just its magic “12% Delusion.” I could go on, but why bother?

When a Canadian Union of Public Employees researcher did a better study using census data in 2011 – I know, I know, CUPE’s a public sector union and has a dog in the fight – he found the difference between Canadian public and private sector workers in 2011 to be less than 1 per cent.

CUPE used census data and looked at 500 different detailed occupations to find, first, that there isn’t much of a difference between public and private sector pay when the same jobs are compared honestly, and, second, that what difference exists is explained by the fact there’s a much smaller wage gap for women in the public service than the private sector.

Indeed, back home in Alberta, when the Fraser Institute trotted out the same analysis of Alberta public employees’ pay and claimed Alberta public employees earn 10 per cent more than their private sector counterparts, a more detailed analysis using the data form the long-form census showed Alberta public employees earn an average 2 per cent less than their private-sector counterparts doing the same or similar work.

I guess that’s why the Fraser Institute’s friends in the federal government were so anxious to get rid of that long-form census!

What’s actually shocking about the Fraser Institute’s latest claims is, given the difference in the marketability of the skills needed by a public sector shrunken to its bare essentials and those wanted by the de-skilled private sector, that the pay gap is so small.

But then, the Fraser Institute’s job isn’t really to provide honest comparisons. As has been said in this space before, its “researchers” are nothing more than full-time propagandists and unregistered lobbyists, paid to produce this nonsense and pass it off as legitimate, peer-reviewed research. Thanks again to their friends in the federal government, they are bankrolled by all of us through the organization’s charitable status while its many technically prohibited political activities are winked at by the thoroughly politicized Canada Revenue Agency.

The Fraser Institute purports to be a “think tank” – or, as it risibly puts it on its website, “Canada’s leading public policy think tank.”

In fact, as noted above, about the only category in which it can honestly claim to be a Canadian leader is in the production of press releases.

So far in the first 98 days of 2013, the Fraser Institute has issued 21 news releases. That’s one roughly every four and a half days for those of you without a calculator.

In 2012, the Vancouver-based organization published 54 releases, better than one every week.

Astonishingly, virtually all of them touted research that found “market solutions” always work better than public services. The few that didn’t announced appointments and awards designed to give the “institute” its faux academic image, or that the University of Pennsylvania has ranked it the “top think tank in Canada.”

Please! If this is top work, you really have to wonder about either the mushrooms they put in the omelets they serve in University of Pennsylvania’s cafeteria! Either that or the sophomoric efforts of all those other think tanks.

The Fraser Institute achieves this volume of press release production in part by recycling the same shoddy research over and over again into new press releases.

So the same meretricious research on which last Thursday’s dubious claim that Canadian public sector workers enjoy a 12-per-cent premium over workers in the private sector, for example, was trotted out at least three times before – for Alberta on Jan. 22, British Columbia on Jan. 24 and Ontario on Feb. 20.

In each case, the media picked up the story with naïve credulity and ran it without a word of reaction or criticism by experts in the field or opponents of the Fraser Institute’s views.

Next: How the Fraser Institute always manages to get it news releases to run in the media without opposing comments. This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Dutch Disease plus unbalanced equalization: a shot across Alberta’s oily bow

by David Climenhaga on April 2, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Dutch Disease with 4 Comments

The site of a former automobile assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont. Well, you can’t blame this particular patch of weeds on the Dutch Disease, but you get the idea. Below: Economists Jim Stanford and Noah Zon.

Let’s call it Dutch Disease Redux with complications of Confederation.

Since Alberta’s petroleum economy has almost unquestionably hurt Ontario’s manufacturing base, it is axiomatic that Ontarians will soon demand a revised deal from Confederation.

This is a reality Albertans need to think about. Some may scoff and mutter that Central Canada deserves whatever it gets – “Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark,” and all that. But the electoral reality is that Ontario probably has the votes to make a good start on fixing this problem if voters there start to perceive it has gotten out of hand.

Alberta’s crybaby notion of Confederation in the era of Stephen Harper’s prime ministership is that we pay for everything through equalization payments with our vast oil wealth, and the federation is then run to our disadvantage – even though the people doing the running are dominated by a claque of far-right Alberta politicians.

The problem with this perception is twofold:

  • First, the damage being done to the Central Canadian manufacturing economy by Canada’s petroleum-enhanced Loonie, in other words, the so-called “Dutch Disease”
  • Second, Canada’s equalization formula does not tell the whole story of whom is contributing what to Confederation

Now, Alberta politicians from all three branches of the Wildrose Party (federal government, Alberta government and Alberta Opposition) can accuse politicians who speak the obvious truth of treason if they like, but this doesn’t alter the unassailable facts about Canada’s economic predicament, and those facts are going to winkle through to Central Canadian voters.

This is not to say Mr. Harper’s federal Conservative Party can’t win back their hearts by 2015, but they won’t necessarily do so by advocating and adopting the polices that Alberta politicians say must be followed – such as, for example, us dictating social policies to them.

As economist Jim Stanford wrote early last month, our current conservative political leaders in Edmonton and Ottawa, aided and abetted by the semi-official Sun News Network and market-fundamentalist think tanks, have worked hard to portray the idea Dutch Disease might afflict Canada as dangerous, foolish and virtually treasonous.

The trouble with this McCarthyist strategy, he notes, is that “it relies on vilifying and marginalizing opposition, rather than debating facts and arguments.”

And the facts to be debated point strongly by to a case of Dutch Disease being experienced by Central Canada that is more severe than that experienced by the Dutch. The decline of Canadian manufacturing, writes Mr. Stanford, “is mostly a problem of consumers (both at home and abroad) not wishing to buy Canadian-made manufactures, and in that context the issue of the Loonie’s decade-long appreciation (beginning in 2002) is clearly relevant.”

He concludes: “Far from being ‘discredited’ by empirical research, the resource-driven deindustrialization hypothesis is almost universally supported by it.”

As for the outflow of money from Ontario, consider the new study by economist Noah Zon of the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto, which concluded “there is roughly an $11-billion structural gap between what Ontarians pay to the federal government and what they receive back from the federal government.”

“One might assume that, given Ontario’s below average fiscal capacity, it would now be a net recipient of redistribution in the federation, but that turns out not to be the case,” the report explains. “Canada’s fiscal arrangements have not evolved to reflect changing circumstances.

“As a result, Ontarians continue to see their federal taxes redistributed away from Ontario on a net basis at a time when the province can ill afford it, at a rate estimated at approximately $11 billion in the 2009-10 fiscal year, the most recent year for which numbers are published.

“The gap is almost entirely a result of federal spending and program decisions that leave Ontarians receiving less than their per capita share of spending and transfers, rather than regional inequities in revenue collection,” the report says.

In its conclusion, the report notes: “Federal spending decisions are significantly skewed against the people of Ontario. The good news is that this is fixable. The federal government can, and should, reform those programs that discriminate against Ontario and Ontarians.”

The obvious conclusion from Ontario’s perspective: If currency distortions fuelled by Alberta’s oil industry continue to disrupt Central Canada’s economic wellbeing, more equalization not less is going to be required from Alberta.

It may not be obvious to our Alberta politicians, who are mostly occupied shouting down their opposition and branding it as treason, but the release of the Mowat Centre’s report is more than just a way to fill a few column inches in the Toronto Star.

Whether we like it or not, combined with the fact the Dutch Disease narrative is not just going to go away because we want it to, it’s a shot across Alberta’s oily bow.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Apocalypse Soon: Preston Manning, Ron Paul and the Angry God of the Market

by David Climenhaga on March 17, 2013 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Manning Centre, Preston Manning with 4 Comments

Tea Partier Ron Paul surrounded by flags, if not quite wrapped in them. Below: Preston Manning, Canadian pontifex maximus of the cult of market fundamentalism; his father, millennial dispensationalist Ernest C. Manning.

Last weekend, the priests and priestesses of the Canadian branch of the international market fundamentalist religion gathered in Ottawa and called, as they always do, for more human sacrifice.

I speak, of course, of the annual networking conference of the inaptly labelled Manning Centre for Building Democracy, named for Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party that now governs in Ottawa and Canadian pontifex maximus of the cult of market fundamentalism.

“Conservatives” at the Manning conference – who virtually to a man and woman are not conservative at all, but adherents of an extreme and radical ideology that borders on theology – didn’t need to elect a pope. They already have one, in the body of former Texas Congressman Ron Paul. So they invited Dr. Paul (he’s a physician by profession) to be their keynote speaker.

Hearing Dr. Paul droning on about the coming fiscal apocalypse if the world does not adopt his nutty ideas – the gold standard, no central bank, no income tax, pure market ascendancy and all the rest – plus similar things from many other speakers, one was struck by how the modern North American conservative movement is not really very far removed from the Christian millennial dispensationalism of Mr. Manning’s father, Alberta premier and radio evangelist Ernest Manning.

Apocalyptic imagery runs through Canadian conservative discourse nowadays, as conservatism is infected with the Tea Party virus that is destroying the Republican Party in the United States. Like the Prophet Jeremiah, participants in the Manning conference warned us repeatedly that if we do not immediately adopt the sackcloth and ashes of austerity, their angry market god will rain destruction down upon our heads.

Indeed, like Dr. Paul – “It’s coming to an End! This debt is unsustainable!” – they seem to relish the idea of destruction, especially when it’s us, the deserving unbelievers, who are the ones about to be destroyed.

“I believe we’re in a period of transition from a system of economics and politics that’s ending,” Dr. Paul rambled, comparing the coming destruction of insufficiently market fundamentalist North America to the end of the Soviet Union, to the cheers, whistles and stomps of his enthusiastic Canadian acolytes.

What Dr. Paul called “government planning, welfareism, inflationism, central banking, deficits” will be the death of us, he warned. But worry not! Something new is coming!

“In almost every country in the West … debt is the big problem because it was taught for many, many years, the Keynesian theory of economics, that deficits don’t matter, that if you come up short, you know, you keep taxin’ the people to the point where they can’t be taxed any more, then you keep borrowing till you can’t borrow any more, then they think, ‘Well, it’s magic!’ All you have to do is print the money and it’s going to work out,’ and you can do that for a while. …

“My approach to all this is that’s all completely wrong,” Dr. Paul proclaimed, “and it’s coming to an end, there is a replacement, and it can be found in the Cause of Liberty…” (Cheers.)

OK. Enough of this pish-posh. If you’ve got a stern constitution, you can watch the rest for yourself courtesy of the Sun News Network. Suffice it to say that Dr. Paul’s thumbnail assessment of the Keynesian school of economics is neither strictly fair nor accurate – but, hell, it grabbed his audience’s attention.

Never mind that the even the most modest predictions of doom by this crowd never seem to come true – as pointed out recently by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, from whom I have gratefully borrowed the metaphor of the right’s demand for more human sacrifice to appease an angry market god.

Never mind that the prescriptions of neoconservative capitalism do not work, have never worked, and have spread destruction and woe throughout our planet. “The neoliberal hypothesis has been disproved spectacularly,” wrote George Monbiot in a wise essay last summer. “Far from regulating themselves, untrammelled markets were saved from collapse only by government intervention and massive injections of public money. Far from delivering universal prosperity, government cuts have pushed us further into crisis.

“The quest for year zero market purity was dangerous enough in theory,” Mr. Monbiot concluded. “Distorted by the grubby realities of life on earth it is devastating to the welfare of both people and planet.”

Indeed, market fundamentalism as advocated at the Manning Centre and practiced by the politicians the group is allied with is the perfect scam: the more its features are adopted, the worse things get; the worse things get, the more the adherents of market fundamentalism blame the vestiges of common sense – be they environmental controls, consumer protections or fair taxation!

This happens, as Mr. Monbiot pointed out, because it suits the economic elite. “Thirty years of neoliberalism have allowed the super-rich to detach themselves from the lives of others to such an extent that economic crises scarcely touch them.”

So, of course, while the theme of theological and esoteric market fundamentalism prevailed at the Manning Centre conference, as exemplified by Dr. Paul’s interminable sermon, not every individual at the event was a starry-eyed market fetishist.

Many of the Conservative Party’s leading political strategists were there as well, and so, through the blather, we could begin to see emerging the outlines of the right’s strategies for the next election and the continued marketization of Canada.

Having had the unexpected opportunity to attend the conference and listen to many of its sessions, over the next couple of days I hope to bring progressive readers a summary of some of the major themes that mainstream media were content to leave behind the closed doors of the Ottawa Conference Centre.

Next on this theme, though not necessarily the next post on Alberta Diary: “Green Conservatism” and marketing energy exports to Canadians.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Is the right-wing Manning Centre plotting ‘Manchurian Municipal Candidates’?

by David Climenhaga on March 12, 2013 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Municipal Politics, Preston Manning, Public Policy with 8 Comments

Former Texas Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, the crazy uncle of American politics, with some of his young acolytes at this weekend’s Manning Centre “Big Ideas” conference. Below: anti-medicare crusader Dr. Brian Day, a sign directing conferees to advice on how to sell their kidneys, and Mr. Manning himself.

OTTAWA

You can’t take an organization too seriously that hires Ron Paul to deliver the keynote address at its annual Big Conservative Ideas blowout, features speeches on “U.K. independence” and presenters who compare medicare to barbed wire and machine guns, and has breakout rooms where they’ll teach you how to sell a kidney.

All these things and more happened at the Manning Centre for (sic) Building Democracy conference last weekend in the nation’s capital.

Still, it doesn’t pay just to ignore what went on there either – although the really interesting stuff, it goes without saying, doesn’t happen in sessions just anyone with a convention name tag and an unsigned copy of Atlas Shrugged can wander into.

In fairness to Preston Manning, spiritual leader of the Canadian right and nominal leader of the Manning Centre, I don’t think the kidney-sale seminar was an official event. Even if it was, I’m sure they wouldn’t encourage you to sell more than one, even in a perfect free market.

As for Dr. Brian Day, whom we are reminded daily was president of the Canadian Medical Association in 2007 and 2008, barking about how Canada’s public health insurance “is like a Berlin Wall enslaving Canadians,” well, a certain amount of hyperbole ought to be expected when market fundamentalists get together.

Even Dr. Paul, the crazy uncle of American politics, makes sense now and then, as when he suggests it might be a good idea for America to stop invading foreign countries and throwing people in jail for smoking pot. (No wonder Prime Minister Stephen Harper, our canny PM, failed to show up at the Manning shindig!)

But then the former Congressman from Texas and three-time presidential candidate drifts off into a long discourse about how the “Austrian economists” can explain everything, we’re all doomed if we don’t back the currency with gold, and we need to shut down the Bank of Canada right this minute. That’s when you realize he’s not just a crank, but one that’s gone right over the top.

Oh, he’s consistent alright, which seems to be Dr. Paul’s principal claim to fame. What’s the answer to the problem of big government? “More liberty.” What do you need if the toilet won’t flush? More liberty? Unfortunately no, the answer to that one is a plumber.

But the Manning conference attendees seemed to get a charge out of Dr. Paul’s perorations – whistling and stomping whenever he paused for breath in his lengthy explanation of why financial apocalypse is nigh. This suggests the typical participant in this event may not have been quite as influential as the mainstream media suggested, or at least quite as in tune with what the Harper government will likely do to try to stay elected.

Regardless, if an observer were willing to read between the lines, there were still things to be learned from the conference.

Take the Manning Centre’s previously publicized plans to elect more conservatives to Calgary City Hall in particular and municipal halls across Canada in general.

On the surface, the Manning Centre is merely offering a political dating service to match up would-be conservative candidates with people who have money to donate or political skills to impart.

Perhaps, like me, you wondered why they’d bother, seeing as most city councillors outside two or three major cities are pretty well all small-c conservatives anyway.

The answer, found between the lines in an official session called “Conservatives and the City,” is that Mr. Manning and his fellow fundamentalist marketeers plan to give them something more to do when they get there than just pass tougher cat bylaws and force senior citizens to shovel their walks.

Panelists David Seymour, the Manning Centre’s “Senior Fellow, Municipal Governance,” and Ray Pennings, yet another Senior Fellow at yet another right-wing think tank you’ve never heard of, dropped a few hints about the need “to reduce the scope of political decision making” and privatize municipal planning.

So the question for the Manningites isn’t whether or not there should be municipal planning, but whether it ought to be done by public employees or private contractors.

Privatization of planning, it is said here, is an idea that will seem insane to most voters. This may explain its absence as an issue the right talks much about in public, outside events like last weekend’s conference. But, pretty obviously, it’s on more than the back burner for the Canadian right.

From these tantalizing hints, we can guess the outlines of the program for the Manning Centre’s civic candidates, once they’re elected:

  • Hand civic functions to private contractors, from whom they cannot be taken back
  • Privatize municipal planning to put decisions about the future of our communities in the hands of the corporate sector
  • Cut off funds to community groups that do not support the Manning Centre’s market fundamentalist agenda
  • Limit the powers of civic politicians to make meaningful decisions that do not tilt the field in favour of corporations
  • Reduce the overall scope of local democracy

So wait for it! A Manning Centre Manchurian Municipal Candidate is coming to a local election near you! He or she should also be able to advise you on how to sell your kidney.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

What’s with Laureen Harper’s stock portfolio selloff? Fiscal Götterdämmerung? Or what?

by David Climenhaga on January 14, 2013 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics with 7 Comments

Laureen Harper tuning up her pipes for the fiscal Götterdämmerung? Canadian political spouses may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Mrs. Harper; the unreal Mr. Harper, long rumoured to be in the doghouse.

Terribly rude of me to ask, I know. Positively un-Canadian! But what’s with Laureen Harper’s stock portfolio selloff?

The Ottawa Citizen reported in a remarkably uninformative story last week that what it termed a disclosure of assets and liabilities filed with the federal Ethics Commissioner by Mrs. Harper and her husband, who happens to be the Conservative prime minister of Canada, showed Mrs. Harper had “liquidated her entire portfolio of stock market investments late last year.”

The disclosure entry used to be there in the PM’s periodical ethics reports, explained the Citizen, but when the latest version of the submission to Commissioner Mary Dawson showed up last month, it was gonzo.

The Citizen story found on line didn’t say how much the portfolio was worth, whether or not their reporter knew, and if not why not. Maybe they just didn’t figure that was appropriate data for members of us in the Hoi Polloi. Maybe they’re just sloppy reporters. Who knows? They didn’t provide us with dates for the earlier reports either.

Regardless, I don’t know about you, but as a person fast approaching retirement age, relying on the shaky track record of the so-called wealth management industry for a happy twilight, this kind of thing makes me seriously nervous.

Are the Harpers privy to insider information? You bet they are!

So does this mean the proverbial balloon’s about to go up, that the fiscal Götterdämmerung is almost upon us? I’m serious, people! Did they take the cash and buy gold and trail bikes suitable for roaring out of town when the roads are packed with refugees’ cars?

Then there have been all those rumours floating around for years now – never confirmed, rarely denied – that all is not well domestically speaking at Chez Harper 24 Sussex. Is the PM sleeping on the downstairs couch, watching the shadow cast by the Eskimo sculpture that was used by a previous occupant to subdue a burglar back in the day when the Mounties were less vigilant than they presumably are now? It’s a thought.

So is this a sign of marital discord? A coming division of marital assets?

Or could either of these things presage a planned departure from office by His Nibs? (Oh happy day! … Alas, too much to hope for, it’s said here.) Still, we can always pray to the monetary gods that the Harpers have decided to cash in the family stocks to invest in a nice little retirement pied a terre on the Amalfi Coast or something.

Or was there something so embarrassing in there that they decided they’d better sell it off fast before some wise guy filed an FOI request or received a plain brown paper envelope?

Maybe they’ve just decided to be squeaky clean while the unremitting Harper regnum drags tediously on, seeing as a reporter had already timorously asked about Mrs. Harper’s investments.

Like I said, who knows?

By the sound of it, the Citizen’s not-so-very-intrepid reporter was told to bug off by the Prime Minister’s Office.

As the Citizen scribe’s account put it: “‘Mrs. Harper’s updated disclosure reflects the fact this account was liquidated,’ explained Andrew MacDougall, Harper’s director of communications.” Now screw off, Mr. MacDougall didn’t add, although you can be reasonably certain he was thinking it because he didn’t say anything else either, not bothering to respond to the Citizen’s subsequent entreaties.

As an aside, a wise old reporter once told me when I was a cub never to reveal to readers when someone you’re interviewing thinks you’re an idiot. This is a sound rule that pays dividends in dignity. Apparently they don’t teach it any more in J-School, though.

Well, there you have it. Something’s up, and we don’t know what it is. It may or may not affect our lives. Nothing new about that with the way the Harper Government does business, of course.

But, if I may be so bold, it is relevant to the way the country is run, which is why they were asked to file the disclosure in the first place. The Harpers have a duty to inform us, whether or not that duty is enshrined in law.

If they won’t, the media, which still has a few resources, has an obligation to get to work on finding out what the hell is really going on.

If they won’t, at the very least they ought not to expect us to take them seriously when they come around, po’ boy caps in hand, asking us to contribute to their rickety paywalls.

So what’s the deal?

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Nexen deal: ‘Friends with benefits’ may not be nearly as good as it sounds!

by David Climenhaga on December 9, 2012 in Alberta Economy, Canadian Economy, CNOOC, FIPPA, Nexen Inc. with 4 Comments

Thanks to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada’s oilpatch will soon take a Great Leap Forward. Below: CNOOC’s logo.

“When we say that Canada is open for business, we do not mean that Canada is for sale to foreign governments,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper intoned at a news conference in Ottawa Friday – except, he didn’t add, those parts of Canada our government’s rich pals feel like selling off.

So, once again, Dec. 7 gets to be a date that will live in infamy, in this case the soon-to-be infamous sale of Calgary-based Nexen Inc. for a tidy $15 billion to the government of a Communist dictatorship – or whatever it is you call a Crown corporation run by the government of a Communist dictatorship, which by definition one would think is an uncrowned sort of place.

And here we thought government ownership was supposed to be a bad thing to “Objectivists” like Mr. Harper. Only if it’s our government, I guess. I’m sure I heard somewhere that Mr. Harper promised people would benefit – but he must’ve actually said People’s Republic.

Whatever. Mr. Harper told us that thanks to the sale of Nexen to the China National Offshore Oil Corp., which was undoubtedly so desired by his cronies in the Calgary oilpatch it would have been hard to expect him to do anything but go along with the deal with a smile on his face, the Chinese government is now going to be Canada’s friend with benefits, or, in this case, “tangible benefits.”

I hope you know, people, what that phrase generally means … It means, just in case you missed that part of your pop-cultural education, that we Canadians can soon expect to be on the receiving end of more than little CNOOCkie.

One aspect of that CNOOCkie, one supposes, will be the enactment any minute now of the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with China that Mr. Harper personally signed back in September – assuming, that is, that it hasn’t already been enacted and the government and media just haven’t bothered to tell us about it.

That one will surrender a larger hunk of our national sovereignty than the mere sale of a $15-billion Canadian oilpatch company to a foreign regime. However, like the Nexen sale, the FIPPA is desired by the rich oilpatch folks who get to pocket a goodly share of the proceeds even though it’s sensibly not wanted by ordinary Canadians, so it’s not hard to see which way Mr. Harper’s so-called Conservative government is going blow on that one.

I don’t know why Mr. Harper hesitating to put the stamp of approval on the FIPPA, quite frankly, because afterward he can use the same old dodge he’s using for giving the nod to the Nexen deal – don’t worry, I’ll never do it again.

And speaking of friends-with-benefits-type situations, where, I ask you, have we heard that one before?

Our national sovereignty, of course, like Nexen, will be gone – and not just for the three decades the FIPPA is supposed to last, because in 30 years what’s left of Canada will be told how we have to sign on for another 60 or risk being shut out of the global market.

By the way, if you want to know why it’s in Canadians’ interests to sign deals like this with the Communist Chinese, look no further than the same people who were palpitating with horror back in July because a Conservative politician stood up when a scratchy gramophone played, wait for it, the Communist Chinese anthem!

I speak, of course, of the reliable friends of the government at Edmonton’s Ethical Oil-drop-org – who are one and the same, and I do mean pretty much one, with Sun News Network bloviator Ezra Levant, the fellow whose knickers were all in a knot back in July about Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s stand-up taste in music.

But by early September, Mr. Levant’s Ethical Oil thingy solemnly informed us that in the event of the takeover of a big chunk of our oilpatch by a Communist dictatorship, the same one he’d been in a froth about a couple of months before, all would nevertheless be well because our oil would still be ethical.

This would presumably be the case because we Canadians are ethical people, no matter what we do with our oil.

So rest easy, people!

Meanwhile, I am sure readers will be relieved to know that after weeks of disturbing silence, Ethical Oil seems to have resurfaced on the very day Prime Minister Harper rubber-stamped the Nexen deal.

It’s true. Just yesterday, Ethical Oil’s pseudanonymous Twitter account holder subscribed by my Twitter feed. So I think it’s safe to say we can stand by for the definitive explanation any moment now of why selling off Nexen was a Good Thing for Canada after all.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta NDP’s Brian Mason lays claim to Tory Peter Lougheed’s legacy

by David Climenhaga on September 23, 2012 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics, Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, New Democratic Party with 2 Comments

Free of his moustache, Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason addresses his party’s 50th annual convention in Edmonton yesterday. Below: Federal NDP Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair, who also spoke yesterday; former Alberta Conservative Premier Peter Lougheed.

Freshly shorn of his trademark moustache, Alberta New Democratic Party Leader Brian Mason made the implicit explicit yesterday at the party’s 50th annual convention in Edmonton.

To wit: he stated outright what a lot of us have been thinking, that the policies advocated by today’s Alberta New Democrats have more in common with the managerial legacy of Peter Lougheed, who died in Calgary on Thursday at 84, than do those of the Progressive Conservative Party whose ruling dynasty Mr. Lougheed founded more than 41 years ago.

Conservatives, naturally, will scoff at this suggestion and accuse Mr. Mason of being the leader of a minor party trying to crash the former premier’s funeral cortege. Well, a minor opposition party the NDP still is, but, really, on the record, the logic of the rest of his case is pretty hard to assail.

Mr. Lougheed was a manager who raised petroleum royalties in Alberta to 40 per cent from the pathetic 17 per cent charged under the Social Credit government of Premier Ernest Manning. Today, after the succession of PC mismanagers that followed Mr. Lougheed into the premier’s office, Alberta royalties have been ratcheted down to 15 per cent, Mr. Mason said.

Citing the points Mr. Lougheed prescribed for sound management of the province’s rich natural resources, Mr. Mason concluded that “it is the NDP that is carrying on Peter Lougheed’s legacy and not the Progressive Conservatives in this province.”

Take Mr. Lougheed’s oft-made pronouncement Alberta’s government should “act like an owner” to manage the province’s resources. The numbers, he said, illustrate how premiers Don Getty, Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford have shortchanged future generations of Albertans. “That is billions of dollars that are being stolen from future generations in this province by a government that is in the pockets of foreign oil corporations.”

Of Mr. Lougheed’s call for Alberta’s resources to be developed with care and planning, Mr. Mason said: “The principles of planning have been abandoned by his party.” Of his call to add value here in Alberta: The PCs “are letting the oil industry write its own ticket and those jobs are going down the pipeline just as surely as the unprocessed bitumen.”

Mr. Mason didn’t mention the Wildrose Party – understandably enough, given the nature of the occasion – but it’s worth mentioning here that the province’s largest Opposition party would likely take corporate taxes and resource royalties even lower, exacerbating the artificial deficit crisis already created by the PCs.

There was far more tax fairness in Mr. Lougheed’s day, Mr. Mason observed, before business taxes were slashed, royalties rolled back and a flat-tax implemented that gave bit tax breaks to the wealthy and left the rest of us holding the bag.

Mr. Mason reminded his listeners that “when you attack teachers, you attack kids; when you attack nurses, you attack patients; when you attack long-term care, you attack seniors. We can’t permit deficits created by tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations to be paid for by the middle classes.”

Mr. Mason told his (obviously sympathetic) listeners of the great pride he felt at his role in defeating premier Klein’s “Third Way” health care policy, which, he asserted, was nothing more than an effort to bring in private health care by stealth. This is a plan, he warned, that despite new rhetoric is not much changed under the Redford Government.

“Alison will show her true colours before too long,” he predicted. “She may try to embrace the Lougheed legacy and lay claim to it, but in actual fact she is very different and shows no inclination to go back to that progressive vision. That leaves it up to the New Democrats.”

OK, this stuff is all well and good, but even with the opportunity to ride the Orange Wave generated by the federal NDP, Alberta New Democrats are still members of a boutique party in a province where the main opposition is even farther to the right than the government and the progressive vote is split at least between the NDP and the Alberta Liberals, and last time was shared with the Alberta Party to boot.

Mr. Mason’s prescription for changing the party from a phone booth to a big tent – in other words, reaching out other progressive voters who may have concluded that is where the future lies – is obviously needed.

Accordingly, earlier yesterday, convention delegates voted to give each party member a vote in future leadership contests, abandoning the old system of having elected convention delegates (who tend to be party insiders) choose the leader.

But if the Alberta NDP is going to succeed at broadening its base, it’s going to have to prove they can run a party meeting with more precision than a church supper – and get, for example, the evening’s main speaker to the podium in time to make the evening TV news.

Last night the time crunch left federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair scrambling with that deadline no doubt in mind to make similar points to Mr. Mason’s, packaged for a national audience.

Mr. Mulcair wondered why the Conservative governments of Alison Redford and Prime Minister Stephen Harper are so determined to ship Alberta bitumen as fast as possible to the Texas Gulf and Communist China, where they’ll likely further depress the price Alberta’s resources can fetch, instead of adding value and creating jobs here in Canada.

“Your premier has said we need a national conversation about our natural resources. And you know what? I agree with her.” But instead, the Redford and Harper Conservatives seem determined to sell Canadian bitumen to a Chinese company that is nothing but an arm of the Chinese government “without even having a national debate. We’re calling for a national debate.”

As for Mr. Harper’s unrelenting attacks on environmental regulation and sustainable development – leaving the costs of his recklessness to the future – not to mention his tactic of just making stuff up to attack the opposition, Mr. Mulcair responded, “we’re in favour of a more prosperous Canada, but a Canada that’s more prosperous for everyone.”

He asked: “How is it that the Conservatives, who tend to talk that game, are living off the credit card of a future generation?”

In other words, he agreed with Mr. Mason, it’s time for Albertans and Canadians to do what Mr. Lougheed advised, and act like the owners of their resources.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Harper’s wish for war with Iran: an ill Tory wind that blows no good for Canada

by David Climenhaga on September 10, 2012 in Canadian Economy, Canadian Politics, Diplomacy, Middle East with 24 Comments

Unlike Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Doge of the Most Serene Republic of Venice was prepared to receive the ambassadors of Persia. Below: Igor Gouzenko, Dr. Samuel Johnson and Winston Churchill.

When Igor Gouzenko came in from the cold 67 years ago last Wednesday, Canada had an extremely serious and completely legitimate complaint against the Soviet Union.

From 1939 until 1945, when the Soviet Union was our ally in the long war against Nazi Germany and its actual Axis of evil, it turned out the Soviets were carrying on as if we Canadians were their enemies too!

Whether by accident or design, when the little cipher clerk from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa defected to Canada with his wife and infant child, bringing with him evidence of the extensive Soviet spying efforts against our country, Mr. Gouzenko effectively tripped the alarm that started the Cold War between the Soviet Bloc and the West.

But despite Canada’s entirely legitimate complaints with the Soviet Union, what our government didn’t do about it was shut down the Soviet Embassy. Indeed, for 46 years and many profound differences, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, that embassy remained open as a patch of Soviet territory on Canadian soil, just as it was on Sept. 5, 1945.

The reason for this is pretty elementary and obvious to anyone with the common sense of a gnat: As Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill famously put it, “to jawr-jawr is always better than to war-war!” (Readers must forgive my phonetic spelling.)

Or, to put that another way, it was obviously in the interests of Canadians for us to keep talking with the Soviet Union, no matter how much we disagreed with its foreign policy or its treatment of its own citizens.

The alternatives to talking really were unthinkable, it is true, which tends to concentrate the mind, as Dr. Samuel Johnson observed in a somewhat similar context. (“Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully!”) Just the same, this is one of the fundamental principles that underlie the whole idea of diplomacy: talk is better than war, and war cannot be prevented without talk.

So what can we conclude about the seemingly impetuous decision last week by the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to break off diplomatic relations with the unsavoury Iranian regime and order its diplomats out of Canada? (Our embassy staff in Tehran was apparently all packed and ready to go, which suggests that this action wasn’t in fact all that impetuous.)

It’s certainly very hard to make a case, for the patently obvious reasons set out above, that this action is in the interests of the people of Canada, because the interests of the people of Canada are plainly not served by any war in the Persian Gulf, no matter how limited.

If Iran is attacked, for whatever reason and by whatever party, with or without Canada’s support, the probability is very high that, at least for a time, the Strait of Hormuz, the bottleneck of the Gulf, will be closed to tanker traffic. Even if the navies of the west, with their quaint faith in their own technology, manage to keep the Strait open to oil tankers, the insurance rates alone on commercial shipping will cause oil prices to soar to a level that will deeply wound the West’s economies, including ours.

And if the Iranians manage to sink a tanker – or, God forbid, an American aircraft carrier, say, with one little supersonic Moskit missile – well, the implications are incalculable. This is why, in case you wondered, the U.S. Armed Forces and State Department have been so unenthusiastic about the prospect of doing the tango with Iran in the Gulf.

Given that, even though we are probably relatively safe behind our Atlantic and Pacific Maginot Lines, it is very clearly in Canada’s interests to do what it can prevent a war in the region. So why is Mr. Harper acting like he wants one, and the sooner the better?

Could Mr. Harper’s government merely be trying to protect embassy staff in Tehran or to stop nefarious Iranian activities in Ottawa, as Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird suggested on CBC radio Saturday morning?

Well, there are real concerns, given recent history, but they do not add up to reasonable case for completely shuttering two embassies. Like soldiers, diplomats are paid to take risks for their countries because it’s in their countries’ national interest that they do so. Typically, indeed, they’re paid quite a bit better than soldiers for their troubles. And if we can’t keep an eye on the small number of Iranian diplomats in Canada, one wonders what we are paying the Canadian Security Intelligence Service half a billion dollars a year to do?

Certainly, this is not the way governments, including ours, have tended to behave throughout the history of diplomacy. So it is said here it is fair to conclude that – about this part of the government’s story at least – Mr. Baird is simply lying.

Are they concerned about the Iranian nuclear program, if indeed its objective is to build an atomic bomb – a tale told in some diplomatic quarters that nevertheless has many detractors and is based on questionable evidence?

Well, perhaps they are, but this is a compelling reason to keep the embassy open, not to close it. In 1945, when Mr. Gouzenko came knocking, the Soviets didn’t have The Bomb yet either – they wouldn’t explode their first atomic weapon until Aug. 29, 1949. We knew they were working on one.

Is the Harper Government marching in lockstep with Washington, as Mr. Harper has stated we ought to have done when George W. Bush targeted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass distraction a decade ago?

Well, not if we are to believe the Americans, who say they want nothing more than to open a direct dialogue with the people of Iran, if not their current leaders. “We know the Iranian people remain hungry for information about the United States – information about travel to the U.S., educational opportunities, and our policies towards Iran and the rest of the world,” says the website that is the U.S. “Virtual Embassy” to Iran.

In the absence of normal diplomatic relations, says the U.S. State Department, “we have created Virtual Embassy Tehran to offer you another perspective and another source of information, so you can make up your own minds about the U.S., our concerns about the Iranian government’s activities at home and abroad, and our serious efforts to achieve a resolution to those concerns. … This place is for you.” (The site can be viewed in Farsi and English.)

So where does this leave us? Why would a government we have elected to run our country do such a thing?

Let’s leave speculation about that to others. But we have a duty to ask ourselves, cui bono? Who benefits? Because it sure as hell won’t be Canada or Canadians!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

← Older Entries