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Since the Tommy Douglas/ Pierre Trudeau era, Canada's unique form of partly socialized capitalism has been the envy of the world. The looming figures of Douglas and Trudeau embody the unique alchemy that has made Canada such a beacon of progress.
On the one hand, we have Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian Medicare, "the greatest Canadian," who represents for so many the compassionate mandate to provide a social safety net for all Canadians. On the other hand, there's Pierre Trudeau, whose Charter of Rights embodies the view that a democratic society must permit (and even facilitate) its citizens' wildly different projects, so long as none of these individual projects robs anyone else of their basic rights and freedoms.
There is no absolute science to managing the swirling pandemonium of interests bumping up against each other in a modern democracy. But for some time, the efficiency of the Canadian system has been at the top of the international pack.
Here in Vancouver, at the edge of the political universe, it's easy to be oblivious to the sea changes that have recently transpired in the belly of the Canadian political beast. For the first time, Quebec and Ontario no longer run the show. Now Calgary is Canada's spiritual and political centre of gravity. This unlikely shift, which was engendered by the newfangled Tories' ability to capitalize on Liberal opportunism and nepotism, has all kinds of devastating repercussions for the Canada that we know and love. In the chillingly oracular words of former Tory PM Joe Clark, "People are so enraged at the Liberal government, they're giving Stephen Harper and his government a bye. They should take a look at what he proposes."
By now, most of us have heard about Harper's vicious disparagement of Canada as a "Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term." Thoughtful Canadians must be asking themselves what "welfare state" policies Harper wishes to overturn. One need go no further than the National Citizens Coalition.
Harper was president of this secretive organization from 1998-2002 and resigned only to seek the leadership of the Canadian Alliance. The National Citizens Coalition was formed in 1967 by Colin Brown, an Ontario insurance tycoon, to combat "big government" evils such as medicare,
the Canada Pension Plan, and welfare, as well as other right-wing bugbears such as unionization, campaign finance reform, and Vietnamese immigration. In short, the Coalition's agenda is to promote corporate welfare and pull the safety net from beneath our feet.
As the NCC's former president, there can be no question as to Harper's hostility towards the disadvantaged. In a 1997 speech, Harper (then vice-president of the NCC) told the Council for National Policy, a far-right-wing think tank, "In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance."
This organization has grown savvier over the years and now hides its insidious agenda behind a thin patina of populist rhetoric. Harper wishes to create in Canada a powerful bulwark for American Republican values, which in the 1997 speech Harper referred to as "a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world." Once the Calgary agenda is established, provinces like BC (whose crony premier is a de facto Harper Tory), will begin to fall like dominoes. And the Canadian social safety net-our actual true light and inspiration to the world-will be torn to shreds before our incredulous eyes.
The other dimension of the Harper social agenda involves the collapse of the division between church and state. In this, Harper is taking his lead from the Bush Administration and all of the manifold ways in which it has facilitated the (sometimes covert) insertion of backwoods evangelical values into the legislative agenda. Like his American counterpart, Harper opposes gay marriage and seeks to have a free vote in the House to reverse legalization. On the issue of abortion, Harper, who has spoken out openly against the procedure, said with a wink and a nudge that he'd be open to a private member's bill and free vote on the issue. Given what's happening to women's reproductive rights just over the border, alarm bells should be going off in the heads of all progressives.
Finally, and most insidiously, Harper has publicly applauded federal financing of "faith-based charities." In an essay for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, Harper wrote, "A Conservative government would recognize the vital work done by religious institutions and ensure that religious charities are eligible to participate in government programs on the same basis as other charities and non-governmental organizations."
These sentiments should send a shudder down the spines of those who've witnessed the cynical fashion in which the Bush administration has funneled tax dollars into "faith-based charities," most of which are thinly veiled schemes to market a narrow evangelical worldview at home and abroad. This is, in fact, the explicit mandate of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, of which our new PM is a proud member.
On the issue of Kyoto and the environment, Harper is a pure expression of the Calgary view-as expressed on a regular basis by popular Calgary-based and Rush Limbaugh-wanna-be Dave Rutherford-that the planet is nothing but our treasure trove and toilet and, in our worship of the almighty dollar, the first and only priority is to channel our "natural resources" to the States and China as quickly as possible. From this cowtown way of seeing things, environmental externalities don't merit a
second thought.
Unfortunately, Alberta's uncontrolled tar sands project accounts for an ever-increasing proportion of Canada's carbon dioxide, benzene, and toluene emissions. Of course, it would be possible to offset the problem by forcing petroleum companies to reduce their gasoline's sulphur content. But don't mention that in Alberta, where "Greenpeace" and "David Suzuki" (two of BC's and Canada's greatest contributions to world progress) are dirty words.
Finally, and most ominously, Harper is a huge cheerleader for American military aggression. Had he been PM in 2003, Canada would be fighting right alongside Uncle Sam in Iraq today, about which Harper said, "We support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win." This is troubling, given America's increasingly confrontational rhetoric towards Iran. The PM recently said the West should be concerned about Iran acquiring the bomb because of "the kind of values it stands for, the kind of human rights abuses we've seen there . . . and many of the other problems in that regime, [including the] holocaust denial and some of the bellicose language.''
The problem is that Harper's speech, which might as well have been written by David Frum, neglects to mention that American tin-pot dictator implants and Israel's carte blanche on the bomb and human rights are at the heart of the problem. His kind of deliberate oversimplification and obfuscation of the issue only heightens the Muslim world's frustration and exacerbates their ever-escalating animosity. The shame is that Canada once excelled at being the world's most respected diplomat. Now, while we're distracted into aiding and abetting Uncle Sam's doomed mission to spread free markets and bullets through the Middle East, the disgusting genocide in Darfur and Chad goes on unnoticed.
Scary indeed, be afraid, be very afraid.
