All posts tagged John A. Macdonald

About Stephen Harper’s ambassadorial timeshare: maybe he missed the lesson on the Statute of Westminster!

by David Climenhaga on September 25, 2012 in Canadian Politics with 7 Comments

Canadian and British Joint-Embassy diplomats work out their timeshare arrangements. Below: The young Stephen Harper on the day he missed his history lecture after lingering too long over Atlas Shrugged; Perfesser Dave feeds lines to Opposition leader Tom Mulcair last weekend; Mr. Harper at the NCC.

Like Sir John A. Macdonald, a British subject I was born and now, apparently, a British subject I may die. What’s with that?

Or did I fail to get it right yesterday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his gang of so-called Conservatives have decided to give up he trappings of independent nationhood and, just as the Scots are about to head out for the Highlands, go in with the British on a joint-venture diplomatic service?

This has got to be the weirdest story of the long, weird Harper government. Who thought we’d ever see the leaders of a sovereign nation state, even this one, so glibly toss aside the trappings of sovereignty and nation statehood?

What’s next, a cheerful bon voyage et bon chance to Quebec? (Scary answer: Don’t bet against it.)

What gives with these guys, anyway? Sovereign countries run by sensible politicians don’t just volunteer to stop being countries, even a piece at a time – not, leastways, until after a sustained bombing campaign by the U.S. Air Force and the other occupants of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Preferred Customer Lounge, formerly known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But Mr. Harper and his minister of foreign affairs, John Baird, have glibly done no less – all the while assuring us it’s just a cost-saving measure, doesn’t mean a thing, it’s simply a way to save Canada’s hard-working taxpayers a modest sum of free-floating Northern Credonias, or whatever the British-Icelandic-Canadian currency is called nowadays, by going back in with our previous colonial masters on their nice ambassadorial digs in Burkina Faso and what have you.

This prompted NDP Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair to sound like he was channeling Perfesser Dave and riff that there’s plenty more the Harperites could do next. “Why stop at the embassies,” he wondered. “They could merge our armed forces. No wonder they’re so nostalgic for the war of 1812! Why not merge the Senate with the House of Lords? It’s the same difference. …” (It is true, Mr. Mulcair and the Perfesser chatted over the weekend at the Alberta NDP convention, but I can assure you they didn’t talk about diplomacy.)

Seriously, speaking of the War of 1812, was the young Stephen Harper so excited about that conflict that he missed the lesson on the Statute of Westminster?

The Statute of Westminster, for those of you who voted for Mr. Harper’s Conservative Party and may like him have missed that class, has nothing to do with the port up the Fraser River from the offices of the market-fundy “institute” of the same name. Rather, it was a law passed in the British House of Commons in 1931 that essentially established Canada and the other dominions of the British Empire as independent countries.

Among other things, the Statute of Westminster meant that never no more would our Canadian interests abroad have to be represented by the British Legation, even before prime minister Pierre Trudeau got us our own Constitution with an amending formula and everything. At least, that is, until Messrs. Harper and Baird came along.

So, seriously, people … are they nuts? The answer, I think, is probably yes. Let me explain.

Canadians and the citizens of other Western democracies that have been pushed relentlessly to the right for the past 30 or so years still count on their most right-wing politicians to entertain a certain amount of sensible hypocrisy when spouting their foolish bromides.

They can’t actually believe that nonsense, we tell ourselves after a night like the one in May 2011 on which Mr. Harper and his party finally got their coveted majority government, so they’ll probably run the place in a pretty sensible fashion.

It’s like in George Orwell’s 1984, the Party – and especially the Inner Party – isn’t supposed to consume the same tripe they spout over the Prolefeed. It’s supposed to understand the true Party agenda and vision (a boot stomping on a human face forever).

Now, in deference to my one-time supervisor at the Globe and Mail, Peggy Wente, I have to confess that I didn’t actually write the previous line myself, but pretty much stole it outright from a blog post economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times, just throwing in an extra word here and there to confuse the no-longer-so-anonymous blogger at Media Culpa. I just forgot to put quotation marks around it because I’m tired and have to get up in less than six hours and drive to Red Deer, and because, anyway, I don’t really care that I’m falling short of the Globe’s journalistic standards in terms of reasonable credit for the work of others because … oh, wait. I just provided reasonable credit!

Whatever… Don’t expect Ms. Wente to be punished very severely for her transgressions. She knows where most of the bodies are buried at the Globe, including who authorized the payments to Conrad Black for that column his driver used to bring her in his limo. (Really!)

Anyway, it’s kind of scary when you start unearthing bits of evidence that Mr. Harper might actually believe what he said back when he was the Top Dawg at the National Citizens Coalition (which, readers are reminded, isn’t national, doesn’t represent citizens and isn’t a coalition).

It’s sort of like finding out that Ronald Reagan was relying on a tarot card reader for advice and may have really believed it when he whispered into the microphone, “I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Alert readers will recall Mr. Harper’s actual words to the NCC’s Colin Brown Memorial Dinner in 1994: “Whether Canada ends up as one national government, or two national governments or several national governments is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion. … And whether Canada ends up with one national government or two governments or 10 governments, the Canadian people will require less government no matter what the constitutional status or arrangement of any future country may be.”

In other words, yesterday’s embassy timeshare announcement suggests that Mr. Harper actually believes the kind of nutty tripe he spouts! He may sincerely be the pure, globalized market fundamentalist fruitcake that the more excitable residents of the tinfoil-hat-wearing corners of the blogosphere keep saying he is!

And if that’s the case, he really may not give a hang who represents us abroad, who owns all our bitumen or anything else – be it the British, the Chinese, the Americans, KPMG or Coca-Cola – as long as they share his market-fundamentalist convictions.

And if that’s really the case, we Canadians might just be advised to skid his loony government as quickly as possible while we still have a country!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

As goes California, so goes the nation!

by David Climenhaga on July 25, 2012 in Canadian Politics, U.S. politics with 9 Comments

The Beach Boys, now, and, below, then. Below them, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, then and now. As goes California, so goes Canada?

As goes California, so goes the nation – the nation in the normal scheme of things being what the world knows as the Good Ole U.S.A.

For many practical reasons that all of us instinctively understand up here north of the 49th Parallel, and even in those parts of Canada south of the 49th, as goes California, so goes Canada too.

I refer, of course, to the steep downward spiral in which the Republican Party finds itself in that large and populous West Coast state – a place big enough to be a leading nation all on its own and home, arguably to the American image, if not the American soul.

In the Republicans’ troubles in California, it is said here, we see a reflection of the coming decline of Canada’s Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Since the days when we started reading about Philip Marlowe, the chivalrous shamus, patrolling the mean streets of the City of Angels for 35 dollars a day and expenses, we’ve understood that social trends good and evil often originate on the West Coast of the United States. From there, they make their way insidiously and frequently invidiously throughout the world.

The worst trends and the best are likely to stop off here in Canada – we are close, after all – well before they show up in the souk in Marrakech or even the Ginza in Tokyo.

And so it was soon after Ronald R. Reagan, former B movie actor and California governor with a shaky grip on reality, became president of the United States that the Republicanization of everything Canadian seemingly began. This unfortunate trend led in time to the reverse takeover by the Reform Party of the old Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, which traced its roots all the way back to our first prime minister, the great patriot John A. Macdonald.

The Reform Party, which should have been called the American Party of Canada, was then led by the Chief Americanizer himself, the scratchy voiced Preston Manning. Its adherents loved everything American except America’s good ideas. If Sir John could see what’s become of his patriotic old party since the Invasion of the Party Snatchers in 2003, he’d be spinning in his grave so rapidly he’d be throwing up wisps of unholy smoke!

But in the seeds of the Republican Party’s great success, the self-interested enthusiasms of its ideological elite and its willingness to adopt any tactic, no matter how unethical, to win, were also the beginnings of its current troubles.

That is, it had the natural inclination of all ideological political parties toward seeking perfection and the resulting tendency to put quasi-theological notions ahead of ideas that actually work.

Even now we see these same diminishing ideological returns at work in the Post-Reform-Party Canadian Conservatives under Mr. Harper – a party now based more than loosely on the American Republican model.

With this in mind, understanding where California’s Republicans are now headed is useful to plotting the near-future trajectory of our own Conservatives – and where the California Repugs are going is straight south, metaphorically speaking, not to Mexico.

In an interesting feature last Sunday, the New York Times chronicled the startling decline of the Golden State’s Republicans, and delves into the causes of it.

The Times quotes U.S. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the No. 3 Republican in the lower house of the U.S. Congress, who says of his state’s party: “We are at a lower point than we’ve ever been.” This notwithstanding the fact the state is in deep economic trouble (in part because California is only one Greece-like state in the American currency union) and Democrats are in power, and hence in a position to take the blame.

How low is that? “It’s no longer a statewide party,” says a veteran Republican consultant. “They are down to 30 percent, which makes it impossible to win a statewide election. You just can’t get enough crossover voters.” (Remember, this is a “two-party system,” so 30 per cent is not the magic number it can be in Canada with multiple parties.)

“They have alienated large swaths of voters,” he said. “They have become too doctrinaire on the social issues. It’s become a cult.”

If this doesn’t sound familiar to Canadians, it should. Because this is exactly the path to ideological reductio ad absurdum the Harper Conservatives and their provincial branches like Alberta’s Wildrose Party are heading down. Witness the recent attacks on Conservative moderates by party extremists over federal dollars being spent on a tourist trap for Chinese visitors honoring a Communist surgeon.

“The institution of the California Republican Party, I would argue, has effectively collapsed,” says another Republican consultant quoted by the Times. “The Republican Party in the state institutionally has become a small ideological club that is basically in the business of hunting out heretics. When you look at the population growth, the actual party is shrinking. It’s becoming more white. It’s becoming older.”

Hunting out heretics? Well, Canadian Conservatives are still good at collecting money from corporate donors – something that according to the Times’s sources, the California Republicans are getting worse at. But give them time…

The California conservatives, the Times’s sources say, are identified with the wrong side of a series of issues that put them well outside the evolving American mainstream – immigration, the environment, abortion and gay rights – not to mention the wrong side of the continent’s demographic trends.

Add to that list a sane level of gun control, and you have a portrait of the Harper Conservatives – back up microscopically in one recent poll, but still describing a long downward trajectory.

If democracy continues to function in Canada – and with Stephen Harper at the helm, that premise cannot be taken as assumed – the Conservative movement will continue to be left behind by Canadians, just as Californians are leaving the Republican Party in their wake.

The Beach Boys are back together. Jerry Brown is Governor again. And Stephen Harper is finished – just you watch!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Yes Minister MacKay! Perfesser Dave explains the French role in the War of 1812

by David Climenhaga on July 18, 2012 in Canadian History, Canadian Politics with 2 Comments

One of our heroic French allies, armed with a bassoon, holds off a Russian soldier near Niagara on the Lake some time during the War of 1812 with the Russians and the Taliban. Below: Perfesser Dave; Defence Minister and amateur historian Peter MacKay. Was he overtired? Elmer MacKay, at right, with Karlheinz Schreiber. (Not exactly as illustrated, and not mentioned in the story, but so what? It’s my blog! I can do what I want!)

Some stories happened just too long ago for ordinary bloggers to explain. That’s when we turn to the expert knowledge of the historical record offered by academics like Perfesser Dave, the Canadian History Guy. Perfesser Dave knows practically everything there is to know about our country’s history. And when he doesn’t know something, he knows which cabinet minister to call for the answer! So if you have history questions, don’t just ask some blogger! Ask Perfesser Dave!

Perfesser Dave: Yeah? Who’s talking?

Questioner: Perfesser Dave?

Perfesser Dave: What? I thought I told you I was on vacation…

Questioner: I know, Perfesser. You did. I’m really sorry, but something’s come up. Something that’s just totally confusing. So I had to call. You are the Answer Guy, after all, and I’m just so confused. I really need your help. Can you illuminate my fuzzification?

Perfesser Dave: Sorry, Questioner, I’m not the Answer Guy any more.

Questioner: What? Since when?

Perfesser Dave: Since I got the history research grant from Parks Canada. They had to let a couple of park wardens go to pay for it, so you’ve got to know they were serious! So now I’m the Canadian History Guy ™. So, what’s your question, Questioner? This is sort of a busman’s holiday. I’m doing research, as a matter of fact. So … you were asking?

Questioner: That’s lucky, Perfesser Dave, because I’ve got a history question.

Perfesser Dave: Mmmmmm-hmmmm…?

Questioner: You know Peter MacKay, right? The defence minister?

Perfesser Dave: Yeah. Elmer’s boy.

Questioner: What? You say something about Elmer Fudd?

Perfesser Dave: Never mind. It’s just noisy in here. Yeah. I know him. Fine man. … a fine man….

Questioner: Well, he gave this speech on Bastille Day, at the French Embassy, and he said the French fought alongside the British in the War of 1812!

Perfesser Dave: OK? So what confuses you about that?

Questioner: But Perfesser Dave! The French fought on the side of the Americans! How could they have fought with us?

Perfesser Dave: You’re right. And Minister MacKay is right. The French fought on the side of the Americans. The French fought on the same side as us. What’s the problem with that?

Questioner: But Perfesser, we were fighting with the Americans!

Perfesser Dave: Yeah? I can barely hear you. Of course we were fighting with the Americans. We’ve always fought with the Americans. We’ve fought on the same side as the Americans ever since John A. Macdonald got back from the Civil War, you know, when he marched through Georgia with General Sherman…

Questioner: What!!!!??? John A, Macdonald didn’t fight in the Civil War! Did you hear me right?

Perfesser Dave: I can barely hear you. Germany was playing Italy on TV and everyone’s cheering because Germany just won…

Questioner: Germany didn’t win! But never mind that. I meant we were fighting against the Americans in the War of 1812.

Perfesser Dave: No we weren’t. We were all on the same side. America, Canada, France. Just like always.

Questioner: That’s ridiculous. And you call yourself the Canadian History Guy?

Perfesser Dave: No, Parks Canada calls me the Canadian History Guy…

Questioner: What, I can barely hear you. What did you say?

Perfesser Dave: I’m whispering, Questioner. You can’t be too careful these days. I said we were all on the same side in the War of 1812. The USA, Canada and France. Just like always.

Questioner: Oh, right! And I’m paying Telus long-distance minutes for this! So who were we fighting with, the Taliban?

Perfesser Dave: In 1812? As a matter of fact, I think it was the Taliban! Or maybe the Confederates. No, for sure it was the Taliban.

Questioner: No it wasn’t! I read Pierre Berton’s book on the War of 1812 when I was at J-School. It was good too. And we were fighting against the Americans. And the French were fighting with the Americans. And we burned down the White Hou…

Perfesser Dave: No you didn’t! That book’s been removed from the Carleton library. By Preston Manning… Wait! I mean that book was never there. Preston just took the Stats Canada reports and the old census forms. And we were all on the same side. Fighting the Taliban. And the Russians. Who were working with the Taliban. Just like always. Got that? Just work with me on this, Questioner…

Questioner: Are you OK, Perfesser? Are you in the bar? Have you been drinking again?

Perfesser Dave: Yes I am in the bar. I’m on vacation, for heaven’s sake. Like I said, sort of a working vacation. Like Bastille Day at the French Embassy, only with beer instead of wine, and American friends instead of French friends. I’m just saying though, we Canadians have a deep and abiding relationship with the French because we fought side by side in so many wars. If we hadn’t been allies in the War of 1812, we might be sharing this continent in a new light … a Soviet-Taliban light!

Questioner: You have been drinking!

Perfesser Dave: Only a little … there’s a deep and unique bond that exists between Canada and France based on shared culture, values, history, and defence …

Questioner: Awwwww! Perfesser Dave! That’s so lame!

Perfesser Dave: Look, Questioner, I see somebody I need to talk to…

Questioner: Where are you, anyway?

Perfesser Dave: Nice little resort. Up here on B.C.’s and California’s shared border. We can see the Russian bombers landing over at their base in Russia from here. Which is why we need to buy those F-35s! Hey! Sarah! How are ya? Is Condi gonna run for VP? Tell ’er Peter says hi!

Questioner: Why are you yelling? What’s going on Perfesser Dave?

Perfesser Dave: Sorry, Questioner. It’s way above your pay grade! In the morning we’re going to hike up Mount Baekdu to where Stephen Harper was born. By Crater Lake. If I told you any more, I’d have to shoot you. Yuk-yuk.

Questioner: Perfesser Dave! That’s not funny!

Perfesser Dave: Oh, quit being such a priss! Next thing you’ll be complaining to the government censors! … Questioner? You still there? Hello? Hello? … Students nowadays… Can’t take a joke! Hey bartender, pass me another Full Sail India Pale!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Preston Manning is no saint, as secretive Carleton University scheme illustrates

by David Climenhaga on July 17, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Canadian Politics with 9 Comments

Preston Manning and his then-protégé Stephen Harper back in the day. Below: Mr. Manning as he now appears (United Church Observer photo): Alberta premier E.C. Manning, Preston Manning’s father; Mr. Harper as a Reform Party candidate.

Nowadays, folks think of Preston Manning as a benign force in Canadian politics – possibly because of his scratchy voice and grandfatherly demeanour, and partly because on a personal level he is most certainly an honourable person.

This is a dangerous misunderstanding.

It’s worth remembering that while the former Reform Party of Canada leader may not be a sinner, he is certainly no saint, as the media echo chamber here in Alberta would like to lead us to believe.

Mr. Manning is an unflinching market ideologue as dedicated as his sometime protégé Stephen Harper to destroying the Canada we have built together over the past 150 years and remaking it in the brutalist image of Tea Party USA. He is an effective and sometimes sneaky opponent of the great public services like our universal health care system that it has been our particular Canadian genius to build up over generations.

Notwithstanding his grandfatherly image, Mr. Manning has been prepared to play politics in the corners with his elbows up over his long political career, which has always been about pushing Canada as far to the right as possible as quickly as possible.

In this, of course, Mr. Manning learned at the feet of a master – his father, Alberta premier Ernest C. Manning, who took the Social Credit movement of William Aberhart in one generation from an almost revolutionary uprising and turned it into one of the most regressive and reactionary political parties in Canadian history.

Moreover, despite his undoubted personal rectitude and well-known Evangelical Christian convictions, Mr. Manning and his neoconservative followers, many of whom were and are concentrated within the so-called “Calgary School” at the University of Calgary, have been quite willing to use subterfuge and trickery to achieve their political aims.

So, for example, the reverse takeover of the loyal old Progressive Conservative Party of Canada – which traced its antecedents all the way back to John Alexander Macdonald, visionary patriot, Father of Confederation and first prime minister – was steeped in artifice and manipulation. That National Defence Minister Peter MacKay, the last leader of the PCs without whom this takeover could not have happened, can walk in public with his head held upright shows more brass than most of us could muster in such circumstances!

It is also said here that with the benefit of 20-20 historical hindsight, we can see the same tendencies at work in Mr. Manning’s effective campaign to derail Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney’s effort to make Quebeckers feel at home in Canada through the far-sighted mechanism of the Charlottetown Accord.

Thus it is fair to say that Sun News Network bloviator Ezra Levant is quite right when he describes Mr. Manning as “the Godfather … of conservative successes all across the country today.”

So we should not be surprised by the key role the Godfather played in the secretive attempt to engineer what amounted to a reverse takeover of parts of Carleton University’s political and economic studies programs that has recently been exposed by the Canadian Press.

According to a CP report last week, Mr. Manning himself and his so-called Manning Centre for Building Democracy – which really ought to be called the Manning Centre for Making Neo-Conservatism Palatable to Inattentive Voters – were up to their necks in the scheme to create a supposedly non-partisan “showcase school of political management” at Carleton.

There is absolutely nothing non-partisan, of course, about the Manning Centre – which boasts openly its goal is “building Canada’s conservative movement” and sends handpicked students from its summer program to work at such right-wing Astroturf organizations and think tanks as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada and Fraser-Institute-spinoffs like the Frontier Centre in Winnipeg, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax and the Montreal Economic Institute.

The Carleton plan, we can now see, was never just to pour a $15-million donation from Calgary businessman Clayton Riddell into a legitimate academic program. Rather, it called for the Clayton H. Riddell School of Political Management’s contributors to enjoy what the Canadian Association of University Teachers has condemned as an “unprecedented and unacceptable” level of control over who the school’s teachers would be, what they would teach and how.

Like the U of C’s “Calgary School” from which it no doubt drew inspiration – which is nothing more than a Fraser Institute-style neoconservative indoctrination centre paid for with taxpayers’ dollars – the Riddell School was clearly meant to continue the process of turning Canada’s public university social science programs into hothouses of far-right ideology and creating an elite corps of neo-Con cadres to serve Canada’s New Establishment under Prime Minister Harper and his successors.

The danger that unbiased empirical research would go on at this supposedly “cross-partisan” institute under Carleton’s roof is extremely slight, to say the least, as would be the chances of students who wanted to pursue it. This is true notwithstanding the presence of a token New Democrat among the organizers.

The plan in which Mr. Manning played such a pivotal role has now come a cropper – or at least suffered a serious setback – thanks to the efforts of the CAUT and CP.

Leastways, embarrassed by the public and institutional pressure they applied, Carleton seems to have backed away from the worst of its plans for the moment and insists that it used proper procedures to hire staff at the school, which has been in operation for one academic year.

“Carleton quietly released the donor agreement on the Friday afternoon before Canada Day after stonewalling The Canadian Press for almost a year to keep it under wraps,” CP reported last week. “The contract reveals the Riddell Foundation effectively appointed three of five people on a steering committee. That committee was given sweeping power over the graduate program’s budget, academic hiring, executive director and curriculum.”

The chairperson of the steering committee, naturally, was Mr. Manning himself.

So, for the moment it seems, Carleton will run the Riddell School along more traditional lines, although it is likely that its funders have been offered private assurances by the university nothing really will change.

What will not change will be such attempts to take over public institutions by stealth and lead our country down the garden path to the right by groups that draw their inspiration from Mr. Manning’s views and career.

Preston Manning remains an influential and key ideologue on the Canadian far right. He is more than just another jolly Calgary grandfather.

For this reason and as his recent involvement in the effort to establish an ideological base camp in Ottawa with the Riddell School both illustrate, Canadians would be wise to view Mr. Manning’s activities and enthusiasms with skepticism as unlikely to benefit our country.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Happy Alberta Day, Canada! Get used to it!

by David Climenhaga on July 1, 2011 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments
Labour relations in Alberta, circa 1999: The authorities, in this case the Calgary Police Service, openly intervene in a labour dispute on the side of the employer. Your blogger, in white socks (!), is at bottom left. Below: John A. Macdonald, not yet spinning like a top; the Canadian flag (may not be exactly as illustrated).


Happy Alberta Day!

Whoops, I meant Canada Day. Sorry.

Same difference, though. As any astute observer can see clearly, the Albertanization of Canada continues apace under the heavy hand of transplanted Ontarian Stephen Harper’s Revised and Reactive Reform Party of Canada, or whatever their focus groups have them calling themselves this year.

It’s the Conservative Party of Canada at the moment, I think, a moniker that must have that great Canadian patriot John A. Macdonald, founder of a party with a somewhat similar name, spinning in his grave fast enough to send up puffs of smoke.

The latest example of the Albertanization process is the Harper government’s autocratic, punitive and most likely unconstitutional approach to ending the labour dispute at Canada Post, and its successful application of the threat to do the same thing at Air Canada.

While there is plenty of outrage at this legislation, what is not yet widely understood in the rest of Canada is the extent to which the Conservative braintrust of neo-Cons, batty (publicly paid) right-wing academics, corporate “think tankers” and their ilk have been influenced by the petroleum-driven political culture of this province. This is a place with a monochromatic mainstream media, worshipful attitude toward American-style ideological extremism and reflexive anti-labour attitudes and practices that have been reflected literally for generations in Alberta’s legislation.

So, for example, it has been illegal in Alberta for decades for essentially any publicly employed government or health care worker to strike, with the alternative of an often-employer-biased arbitration process to legally resolve disputes. In health care, a number of mechanisms also allow employers to get the strike ban temporarily or permanently extended to many workers in the private and not-for-profit sectors.

The system works as well as it does, in my personal view, more through the good will and common sense of a number of employer representatives, including many senior employees of the Alberta Public Service Commission, than through the decency or democratic instincts of a majority of so-called conservative politicians at the provincial level.

This situation is taken to almost laughable lengths in Alberta. Here, for example, workers in franchise sandwich shops that happen to be located on the premises of health care facilities may not be allowed legally to strike, the risible theory apparently being that patients literally couldn’t survive without sub sauce on their cold-cut classic cheese and baloney sandwiches. Talk about your essential health-care service!

Regardless of whether this Alberta approach to labour law has been particularly effective at preventing illegal strikes – and my observation would be that it has not – it is the ham-handed and dictatorial “new normal” that the Conservative braintrust behind Prime Minister Harper now seems to want to put in place in the rest of Canada.

So when on June 26 the Conservative majority bulled through the legislation forcing members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers not only to return to work but to accept a deal designed on the face of it to reinforce the employer’s bargaining goal, they were only imposing the old Alberta normal on the rest of Canada.

Ditto when they succeeded in bullying Air Canada baggage handlers represented by the Canadian Auto Workers into accepting a concessionary deal while making same fatuous claim they were protecting the economy.

Count on it, however, within days this government will again be proclaiming the economy as “robust,” thanks to their wise stewardship. But then, doublethink is also an essential component of Alberta’s political culture.

This is why, for example, odious Conservative attack advertisements making up facts about various Liberal leaders cause not a ripple of reaction here, but a mildly critical ad suggesting a Conservative premier might not have had a plan is the subject of bitter commentary and unconstitutional legislation years after its final appearance. This is true even though the fact the premier in question did not have a plan is now manifestly apparent to everyone in the province.

Speaking of unconstitutional legislation, the constitutionality of the Canada Post back-to-work law will be tested in the courts by CUPW. However, it is reasonable to predict that the Albertanized Harper government will try hard to delay the process as long as it can while it works to weaken that union, another venerable Alberta labour relations tactic.

If it succeeds at that, even if its law is eventually overturned by the courts as seems probable, it is unlikely that the government will need to make use of the constitutional escape hatch provided by the Charter’s “Notwithstanding Clause” since then the damage will have already been done.

The Harper government’s knee-jerk responses to the labour disputes at Air Canada and Canada Post are just further evidence of the ongoing Albertanization of the rest of this country.

So, Happy Alberta Day, Canada. Get used to it! You’ll be seeing a lot more like it now that Mr. Harper has his majority!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Whatever happens tomorrow, the NDP surge is a sign of hope for Canada

by David Climenhaga on May 1, 2011 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments
Jack Layton surrounded by supporters in Edmonton last Wednesday. A closer view, below.


This column appeared in Friday’s edition of the Saint City News.

It’s too late for televised accusations of “blind ambition” to stop the momentum of the New Democratic Party.

It’s too late for plaintive calls to cost out NDP proposals, which Canadians pretty obviously like, to have much effect.

Jack Layton and the New Democratic Party may be on the cusp of a historic breakthrough in tomorrow’s federal election, or they may face a bitter disappointment like that experienced by former NDP leader Ed Broadbent in 1988.

Whatever happens, the decision will be made one by one by Canadians in the privacy of a polling booth. Habits, instincts, intuition, loyalties, distrust of traditional right-wing parties and desire for change will all play a role.

But it’s too late for sinister Conservative attack ads, which take time to penetrate public consciousness, or grave warnings in Liberal political speeches, which are made only to the party faithful, to have much impact.

Whatever happens on election day, who would have thought when this federal election was called that the most dramatic story of the campaign would be the surge — or perhaps the rising tide — of Jack Layton’s NDP?

If anything, in the opening hours of the campaign, the prevailing media story line about the NDP was whether or not it could hold the seats it has. The campaign was painted as a two-horse race between the mighty Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the not-so-mighty Liberals under Michael Ignatieff.

Somewhere along the way, though, Mr. Layton caught fire and his party began to follow him up in public esteem. Principally, it was Mr. Layton’s performance in the two televised national leaders’ debates — one in French and one in English — that really started the ball rolling. That said, from the get-go Mr. Layton had a lot of respect, both as an effective Parliamentarian and a politician of goodwill.

The fact the Conservatives didn’t consider Mr. Layton or the NDP threats until too late also helped. For months, they directed their unsavoury attack advertisements at Mr. Ignatieff, succeeding in their effort to lower the Liberal leader in the eyes of the public, but sullying the PM a little in the process too.

But it is said here that the biggest reason for Mr. Layton’s remarkable success so far is a combination of his upbeat, positive and patriotic personality with policies that truly reflect the vision of a majority of ordinary Canadians for their country.

That said, notwithstanding Mr. Layton’s inspiring performance, the NDP still faces a tough, uphill grind even to increase its Commons seats by a small number, let alone the significant jump the party’s popular support demands.

Our first-past-the-post Parliamentary system is biased in favour of the most powerful national party, which is the Conservatives despite Canadians’ ambivalence about their negativity, fear-mongering, hostility to Quebec and diversity, and the unavoidable suspicion they will implement a destructive hard-right agenda if given a majority.

Our electoral system also favours strong regional parties such as the Bloc Quebecois. This explains the rise of the Reform Party, which later engineered a reverse takeover of the Conservative Party of John A. Macdonald and John Diefenbaker in the political sequel to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Moreover, our country’s one-dimensional, corporate media campaigned openly against the NDP as it became apparent the party could have a real impact on Monday.

So it is still possible that even if NDP support is strong on election day we could see a Conservative majority or a Liberal resurgence. It is true also that polls are funny things, and voters may yet retreat to old habits or be paralyzed by apathy.

Still, the unexpected surge of the NDP in the spring of 2011 is a sign of hope. It indicates the true aspirations of Canadians are more inclusive and generous than our prime minister’s dour and forbidding vision.

One thing is certain: Monday will be the most important day of Jack Layton’s political career, and perhaps of Canada’s history in this new century as well.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Election tealeaves: What’s up when Canada’s Old New Government morphs into ‘the Harper Government’?

by David Climenhaga on January 5, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
John Diefenbaker: He actually has very little to do with this story, but what a great picture! Below: See the morph … sometime in mid-November.

Do you remember “Canada’s New Government”?

For a time there the phrase Canada’s New Government was practically trademarked by the minority government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper after it squeaked into power in January 2006.

Nowadays, of course, Canada’s New Government is getting a little long in the tooth for that moniker. Indeed, it’s better known as Canada’s longest sitting minority government, having managed to get re-elected in October 2008 while nevertheless remaining in a minority position. So, after about 20 months, CNG went the way of all political sloganeering that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Whether you love ’em or hate ’em, you’ve got to know that sooner or later, likely at a moment that offers them the maximum political advantage, Mr. Harper’s Conservatives are going to call an election (or get the Opposition to call it for them) in the hope that three times is the charm and they can finally get the majority they crave.

From Mr. Harper’s personal perspective, of course, this is very important. If he fails a third time to win a majority, that old Conservative tendency to turn on their own leaders with fangs bared is certain to reassert itself faster than you can say “John Diefenbaker.”

In the mean time – as long as an election is not to the Conservatives’ advantage – it’s reasonable to expect the government to do what it can to keep the combined Opposition parties in Parliament from toppling it. So, one week there’s talk of an alliance with the Liberals, another a détente with the New Democrats, another (quelle horreur!) some kind of a discreet deal with the Bloc Quebecois.

We outsiders, who are never consulted about these things until the moment of greatest advantage for the sitting government (and never mind that this sitting government was all for U.S. style fixed election dates until, well, it wasn’t), are left to read the tealeaves for hints of when the next election might be in the wind.

So here, thanks to an alert reader, is a single solitary tea leaf for your consideration.

In time, Canada’s New Government became the good old-fashioned Government of Canada. I guess someone in the Conservative High Command realized that Canada’s New Government didn’t exactly ring the right bell for a crowd that was cutting deals right and left to hang on to power until the moment the dice rolled their way.

Or maybe – after a historically long period of minority rule – they just decided it sounded more dignified to be associated with the solid old Dominion Government of John A. Macdonald, Jean Chrétien and sundry other prime ministers.

Have no doubt such things are tested and re-tested before scads of focus groups before any such change is made.

Now, suddenly, even before spring is in the air, there seems to have been a change in the government’s nomenclature for itself. At Health Canada, at least, the Government of Canada appears to be no more, having been supplanted in mid-November by the … wait for it … “Harper Government.”

Now, this is interesting and – to my mind, which is always safely protected by a tinfoil hat – mildly sinister.

To the people I hang around with, after all, the phrase “Harper Government” isn’t exactly a compliment. Indeed, to some it may be an outright term of opprobrium! But if we just stop drinking our own social democratic bathwater for a moment, the sudden use for this phrase by the Harper Government suggests to me that their pollsters are telling them it’s resonating positively with voters.

I don’t think I have to tell you all what that means. A hint of an election?

On the other hand, maybe this was just some bright spark of a Health Canada PR man’s idea of a way to mix things up for spring?

Whatever. Seeing as, for the moment anyway, all the other federal departments seem to be sticking with the stodgy old GoC.

Who knows? With the Harper crowd’s reputation for tight control of everything, I’d bet on this being the first wave of a general trend.

Another cuppa, anyone?

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Looking ahead, Alberta Conservative-Wildrose Alliance merger seems inevitable

by David Climenhaga on December 12, 2010 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Not-so-strange bedfellows: Remember the Conservative Reform Alliance Party merger? Below: John A. Macdonald, Ted Mordon, Vitor Marciano.


This column appeared in Friday’s edition of the Saint City News.

Here’s a small wager: Within a decade, probably much less, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Alliance will be one party.

What that party will be called, and who will lead it, depends a bit on the outcome of the next provincial general election. But let’s make a side bet that this new political entity will be called the Conservative Party of Alberta.

If this sounds familiar to you, it should. After all, there’s a well-thumbed playbook for the takeover of moderate centre-right parties, those “big tents” like the Alberta Progressive Conservatives that broker the interests of a wide range of supporters, by more radical parties dedicated to moving policy far to the right.

This strategy has been successfully applied to both the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the Republican Party in the United States, neither of which much resemble their predecessors in anything but name. Canadian Conservatives were pushed toward their current position by the neo-conservative Reform Party, later known as the Canadian Alliance.

Not so long ago, remember, the great Conservative Party founded by Sir John A. Macdonald, renamed the Progressive Conservatives in 1942, was the sort of party that could stand four-square for the protection of Canadian industry from foreign corporate predators, or even create the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

But that was before the split in the party’s support engineered by the Reform Party, and the corporate-backed effort to “unite the right” that followed, resulting in what was in business terms a reverse-takeover by neo-conservative Reformers in December 2003.

Now the days of a progressive national Conservative party are gone forever, and gone with them is the “progressive” in the party’s name.

Today we are seeing the application of the same strategy to the Alberta Progressive Conservatives through the well-funded challenge presented by the Wildrose Alliance. If the Alliance cannot exploit Premier Ed Stelmach’s inept leadership sufficiently to form a government, their next goal will be to split the conservative vote enough to justify a call to “unite the right” in Alberta.

In this they are aided by the powerful market-fundamentalist “fifth column” within the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, led by politicians like Finance Minister Ted Morton who favour the same policies as the Wildrose Alliance. It should come as no surprise that this effort is also backed by federal Conservatives and run by political operatives like Vitor Marciano who honed their skills in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s service.

Sadly, they are also helped by the splintered efforts of Alberta’s traditional opposition parties, which cannot seem to devise ways to exploit what is sure to be a temporary split on the right.

One goal of the Wildrose strategy is to move the entire political debate as far as possible toward the right – making market-driven mechanisms for addressing society’s problems the only ideas that get serious consideration. Another is to deny conservative voters a centrist alternative, in the hopes they will stick with the names and symbols they are comfortable with, even if those things have come to mean something quite different.

The effect – as we see clearly in the current debate over the future of health care – is to push the range of policies contemplated much farther toward privatization than most Albertans are comfortable with.

Opinion polling shows a substantial majority of Albertans want health care that is both publicly funded and publicly delivered. Yet thanks to the Wildrose challenge, public debate now centres on how much privatization we must accept!

In the next Alberta general election, we seem certain to see the ironic spectacle of the Progressive Conservatives, led by people who want to privatize health care, portraying themselves as the defenders of public health insurance against a party with identical policy goals.

In the slightly longer term, however, these two streams of Alberta conservatism are bound to be pushed by their financial backers to become one again.

When they do, all vestiges of the Conservatives’ traditional progressivism will disappear.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

The old man. The old flag. The old policy. The same old…

by David Climenhaga on September 28, 2010 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
The old man with the old flag advocating the old policy. Below: the Old Man, still young, Harrison at Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Rory. Vote for Rory or he’ll bite your ass!

Edmonton mayoral candidate Daryl Bonar has signs that say “FIGHT BACK!” I suppose that locates him somewhere in the political spectrum, but I hope readers will forgive me if I say that this particular candidate’s slogan really ought to be “STANDING UP FOR EDMONTON!”

Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel, who is going to knock out Mr. Bonar and all the other would-be fighters in the opening round of the Oct. 18 Alberta-wide municipal election, has one of the better political slogans: “Open. Decisive. Fair.” The fair part is in a cool ecological green. This is an unusual slogan, as political slogans go nowadays, in that it actually says something … even if it’s not entirely true.

The mayor of the town I live in has a slogan that says “Our City – Our Future.” My wife says this should read “My Vision – Your Taxes,” but personally I think this is unfair. However, the mayor will likely only be getting one vote from our household.

Out on my lawn there’s a sign for a city council candidate who takes the minimalist approach. It just says “Wes Brodhead. Councillor.” So is he an incumbent, or what? (He’s not.)

Wes may be taking a chance, because a professional political operative of my acquaintance (NDP) once told me you have to have a slogan if you want to get elected. So I did as he said and had one when I ran for city council back in 2007. I didn’t get elected anyway, so maybe my political advisor was full of hooey, or maybe my slogan wasn’t up to snuff.

Actually, my slogan was so insipid I can’t even remember what it was. “Yes we can!” Nope, that wasn’t it. Anyway, whatever it was, as it turned out we couldn’t.

The thing is, political slogans that actually tell the truth are generally frowned upon in the post-modern era. The theory is that Albertans (and presumably other Canadians too) like straight talkers who say what they mean. This, of course, is complete baloney, because if you said what you meant, nobody would vote for you.

“Vote for Dave: I’m only in it for the money!”

“Vote for Rob: I’m a big fat right-wing slug who wants to wreck your city!” (Shut up! I’m allowed. I lived six year’s in Rob’s town. Anyway, thanks to Duffer Harris, the suburbs get to wreck your city now and there’s nothing you can do about it!)

“Vote for Rory*: I’m a retired pain-in-the-ass and I have time on my hands.” (*Resemblance to actual politicians is purely coincidental. If you’re a politician running for city council and you name is Rory, I’m sorry that I missed it. I really, really didn’t mean you. Rory is my dog’s name. Really.)

Seriously, do you think Alberta voters would reward straight shooters who had slogans like that with their votes? Fat chance! No, voters expect you to lie to them, and if you don’t and they catch on, they’ll punish you on voting day. That’s why there are so many utterly boring generic slogans, like mine, which I still can’t remember.

Here’s one from a would-be councillor who’s really hard to find on the Internet because he shares a name with a semi-famous movie star. “Let’s focus on the future. Together.” (No, whaddya say you just go on by yourself. I’ll catch up later….)

Here are some more actual political slogans from the generic school of political sloganeering (names of candidates, who are all running right now, are not included to protect the guilty), with explanatory commentary provided by your blogger:

“Work with [FIRST NAME OF CANDIDATE HERE] to build the future.” (I’d really rather not, thanks very much.)

“The BEST choice for city council!” (Good one!)

“A positive voice committed to improving our community.” (Does he really mean this?)

“A voice of reason.” (Oh dear…)

“Refresh. Refocus. Renew.” (Really? How about … Reassess!)

“Together, we can make things happen.” (Not tonight, dear. I have a headache.)

“A smart direction with fresh ideas.” (The same old Tory bean counting.)

“Make your vote count.” (Oh, I will … but not for you!)

“Serious about choices and voices.” (Obviously not the front-runner.)

OK. Enough of that. For my money, political slogans just aren’t as good as they used to be.

Consider John A. Macdonald’s: “The old man. The old flag. The old policy,” plus sundry variations thereof. Who wouldn’t vote for the guy? In my opinion, things started going downhill in this country, slogan-wise, with “Let Laurier finish his work.” Please! It’s enough to make you want to vote for Robert Borden!

The United States offers a richer vein of political sloganeering. President James K. Polk, for example, was in 1844 one of the last who actually said what he meant: “54.40 or Fight!” (Not good news for you, Canada!)

William McKinley in 1900: “A Full Dinner Pail!”

Warren G. Harding, 1920: “Cox and Cocktails.” (It’s not as bad as it sounds folks. Whereas, “Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa, Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha,” is, although it didn’t work.)

Personally, my favourite political slogan of all time is William Henry Harrison’s “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” which apparently meant something to American voters at the time. “Hasta la victoria siempre,” of course, must be counted a close second.

Political leaders of an earlier generation, sadly for us who live in their future, got by without slogans. What would have been Genghis Khan’s if he had had to run for office? Or Emperor Nero’s, had he faced the same challenge? Catherine the Great’s?

And then there’s George Armstrong Custer, who lived in the Slogan Era, but never had the opportunity to follow through with his ambition to run for president of the United States?

Readers are encouraged to offer their suggestions to fill these important blanks in history.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.