rabble.ca Canadian federal election blog

Harper’s economics, at home and abroad

by rabble staff

On the eve of the election, Nikolas Barry-Shaw has an excellent piece on Znet summing up the convergence of economic and foreign policy issues in this campaign. First, he summarizes the bi-partisan (Liberal/Conservative) implementation of neo-liberalism:

While those fortunate enough to own stock in the banks and the oil companies have certainly enjoyed the fruits of “solid” economic fundamentals, ordinary Canadians have most certainly not, according to a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.  It wasn’t always so. “Between the Second World War and 1980, the economic pie was growing at all points in the distribution, even if income shares in Canada didn’t change much” observes Lars Osberg, author of “A Quarter Century of Economic Inequality in Canada: 1981-2006”.

With the exhaustion of the post-war boom, however, class warfare was reborn under the moniker of neoliberalism.  Employers’ hardened stance and an open assault on trade union freedoms - pursued by Tory and Liberal governments alike - would usher in a “new norm” of lowered expectations and “stagnant or declining real wages, despite unprecedented improvements in education and skills,” for Canadian workers. The “fear of falling” for workers was also enhanced, with the poor facing “a much nastier reality now than twenty years ago, since cuts to social assistance have substantially increased the poverty gap - even in Canada’s richest provinces.”

(Stephane Dion’s claim to represent both social justice and the economic legacy of the Chretien/Martin years is unproblematic only to those with a serious case of historical amnesia.  It was precisely the deep cuts to social spending made by the Liberals during those years - after beating the Tories in 1993 on the promise of “Jobs, jobs, jobs” - that helped established this “new norm”.)

Then, the connection is made to foreign policy, mentioning a country that - despite suffering from a devastating food crisis while under Canadian supported UN occupation - has been totally off the election discussion radar:

it was Canada, in concert with the U.S. and France, who put Haitians in such a hopeless situation.  Canada helped plan and execute the overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s democratically-elected reformist government, in whom Haiti’s poor had invested so much hope.  After the coup d’État, Naomi Klein writes, there was “a wave of Falluja-like collective punishment inflicted on neighborhoods known for supporting Aristide,” unleashed by the Canada-backed interim government and the UN “peacekeeping” mission.

The repression imposed a “peace of the graveyards” on these restive neighborhoods, so that Harper and other foreign dignitaries could visit like conquering heroes.  During his July 20, 2007, visit to Cité Soleil, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods of Haiti’s capital, Harper stated that Canada’s presence in Haiti was “giving [Haitians] some hope and some opportunity,” and that “Canadians should be very proud that they are offering to help, that our help is making a difference in terms in safety of people’s lives.”  The sullen looks on the faces of the mothers present for Harper’s awkward photo-op, however, told another story.

The savage violence of the occupation was necessary to impose a tremedously unpopular neoliberal economic plan on Haiti.  The opposition was so great that Haitians began referring to IMF and World Bank strictures as the “plan lanmo”, literally “the death plan”.

It should go without saying that like the Kandahar mission, the 2004 coup in Haiti was initiated by the Liberals and then supported by the Conservatives.