rabble.ca Canadian federal election blog

French Debate: Stephen Harper does the Rope-a-Dope

By James Laxer

            Stephen Harper played defence for two hours during last night’s French language debate.  Appearing tranquillized himself, he tried to lull viewers into a zen state in which they would not think that cuts to the arts, locking up 14 year olds for long sentences, and dismantling gun control were all that bad. 

            Gilles Duceppe got off the best lines of the encounter when he charged that under Harper there would be more guns in circulation and more fourteen year olds behind bars in prisons he called universities for crime.  Stephane Dion was likable and confident easily exceeding the low expectations that had been set for him.  Held back by her relatively poor French, Elizabeth May did manage some effective shots at Harper.  Expect more from her tonight in English.

            Jack Layton spoke well, but his constant references to the day when he will be prime minister were a little cringe provoking.  On the war, he was clear—-the NDP is the only party, he said, that favours withdrawing Canadian troops from Afghanistan now.  On petroleum, he was vague and disappointing.  A viewer from Caraquet, New Brunswick asked whether the time had come to nationalize the petroleum industry.  Layton said no, the NDP does not wish to nationalize the industry.  Rather, he said, the party wanted action.  Pushed from the left in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the NDP favoured the creation of a publicly owned petroleum company.  The party took credit for the establishment of Petro-Canada by the Trudeau government.  Now the NDP doesn’t give the idea of public ownership in the petroleum sector a glance.  It’s a sign of how far the party has moved away from the left.  (In case anyone retorts that public ownership is out of favour these days, let me point out that the proportion of global petroleum held by state owned companies is on the rise and now exceeds eighty per cent.)

            I expect Harper’s handlers to take him off valium and put him on caffeine for tonight’s encounter.

[This is likely my last post on the campaign.  I’m leaving for England first thing tomorrow on a trip planned long before Harper pulled the plug.  Thanks to rabble.ca for inviting me to participate on this site.  I’ve learned a great deal from my fellow bloggers.  It’s good to know that there are a lot of us on the progressive side in these turbulent times.]

Self Immolation is Not Limited to American Right-Wingers

            By James Laxer

            One Republican Congressman who voted against the Bush administration’s bailout package yesterday said it was a choice between freedom and material comfort.  He chose freedom.  Others warned that what had been averted when the plan failed in the House of Representatives was no less than the onset of socialism.  Lou Dobbs, who hosts a show on CNN that is largely devoted to bashing Mexican immigrants, hailed the defeat of the plan as though the date of the rejection of the bailout will be celebrated as a second Fourth of July.

            Today’s Republican Party is inhabited by people who genuinely believe that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a traitor, not only to his class, but to the American way of life.  In truth, FDR was the saviour of American capitalism.  Liberals and social democrats have often been called upon to save capitalism from its excesses, to mop up the mess made by the wild-eyed lunatics.  Increasingly Barack Obama is settling into the role of a second FDR, reassuring Americans about their jobs and their savings.  We have nothing to fear but the crazies themselves, I can hear him saying at his inauguration on January 20, 2009.

            Since he took over the Conservative ship, Stephen Harper has been well aware that if the beliefs of the Canadian right, including his own beliefs, were actually presented to Canadians, his party wouldn’t stand a chance.  Harper’s ideology is remarkably similar to that of the House Republicans who voted No yesterday.  That is eminently clear when we peruse his career in the Reform Party and as the head of the National Citizens Coalition.  

            Every now and then, the craziness slips out of the mouths of even Harper’s most trusted lieutenants as when finance minister Jim Flaherty said: “If you’re going to make a new business investment in Canada, and you’re concerned about taxes, the last place you will go is the province of Ontario.

            The Conservatives are trying to make it to October 14 without anyone calling them on the wackiness of their ideas.  Don’t let them.

The Godfather of the Conservative Party of Canada (part 2)

by James Laxer

            Here was the truth about the world as William Aberhart learned it from social credit founder Major Douglas:  In the modern age, technology has created the potential for an era of prosperity for all.  What prevents this from happening are the operations of banks and other financial institutions which continually take money out of the system.  This denies to the people the purchasing power they need to purchase the goods they produce.  To eradicate this problem, the solution is “social credit”, the provision by the government of monthly dividends to be paid to each “bona fide” citizen (Aberhart’s term) so that the people can make up the shortfall in purchasing power.

            Aberhart took these insights back to Calgary and began inserting them into his Back to the Bible broadcasts.  In the midst of the privation of the depression, Albertans learned about social credit as nothing less than revealed religious truth.  From town to town across the province, Aberhart took his message, illustrating the validity of social credit on the blackboard where he displayed the A + B Theorem (write me and I’ll explain this theorem which all economists from Marxists to Monetarists agree is bogus.)

            The preacher created a political movement (he wouldn’t call it a party), garbed in the style of western populism.  It sounded very democratic, except that Aberhart reserved the right to dismiss any candidate for office he didn’t like.

            In 1935, Social Credit swept to power in Alberta, and while Aberhart experimented with a few social credit measures, he ruled according to the maxims of orthodox economics.  After Aberhart’s death during the Second World War, Ernest Manning, the boy from the bible class, took the reigns as premier and held the office longer than any other leader.

            His son Preston, not so enamored with A + B, but imbued with the idea that Canada needed a right wing makeover, thought long and hard about the politics of a new beginning for the country that would be rooted in the market system, the limited state, individualism, evangelicalism, pro-Americanism, and the rejection of multiculturalism.

            From his fertile brain and the thought of those who followed came the Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party of Canada with its odd political culture, combining populism and authoritarianism.

            If Harper wins a majority, forget about Sir John A., but keep William Aberhart in the back of your mind.

The Godfather of the Conservative Party of Canada (Part 1)

by James Laxer

            Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada is a hybrid of two parties, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party.  The two merged, or more realistically, the Canadian Alliance acquired the PCs in December 1993. 

            In its traditions, the Conservative Party does not trace its origins back to the Liberal-Conservative Party (known as the Conservative Party at the time) of John A. Macdonald.

            The roots of Harper’s party are in Calgary, where the Conservative leader has his own seat.

            It all began in the early 1920s, when an evangelical Christian by the name of William Aberhart left his native Ontario for Calgary.  There he became a high school principal, but unable to find a church that suited him, he founded the Prophetic Bible Institute on 8^th Avenue in downtown Calgary.  He set up a course of study whose target audience was serious young Christians.  The first person to sign up for Aberhart’s most rigorous course was a farm boy from Saskatchewan who was still in his teens.  His name was Ernest Manning and he would be heard from again. 

            A few years after the Institute was established a local radio station asked Aberhart if he would like to broadcast his sermons.  Aberhart took up the challenge and soon developed a mass audience for his religious message across southern Alberta and northern Montana. 

            In 1929 and in the early 1930s, the Great Depression struck the prairies harder than any other Canadian region.  Businesses went broke.  Farmers couldn’t sell their wheat and faced foreclosure and the loss of their land.  In the summer of 1932 when Aberhart was in Edmonton grading senior matriculation exams, someone shoved a pamphlet under his door.  He read it through the night and when the sun rose he had been converted to social credit, the brainchild of a Scottish engineer by the name of Major Douglas.

            (Tune in tomorrow for the stunning conclusion of The Godfather.)         

To the Liars go the Spoils

By James Laxer

            On both sides of the border, the political right is telling bald-faced lies to obliterate their opponents. 

            Despite Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that he would cut taxes for 97 per cent of income earners and would raises taxes only for the top 3 per cent, John McCain and Sarah Palin reiterate the charge that the Democrat plans to increase the taxes of average Americans. 

            On right-wing talk radio, broadcasters continue to tell millions of people that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and this is now believed to be true by about a quarter of the U.S. population.  These are same people who recycled the falsehood, believed by 50 per cent of Americans, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11 attacks.

            In Canada, the whale of a lie of the campaign is that the Liberal carbon tax would raise the taxes paid by ordinary Canadians.  No matter how many times Stephane Dion explains that his plan is revenue neutral, that he would lower income taxes by the amount he would additionally tax industries that pollute, the Conservatives repeat the lie.  A large proportion of the population has been convinced by ads that repeat the falsehood and by the repetition of the lie on the hustings that a Dion government would raise their taxes.

            One reason the repeated lies work is that the mainstream media are not prepared to call the perpetrators on their behaviour in a serious way.  Oh, there’s the occasional slap on the wrist, delivered by political “analysts” who regard lying as just another tactic.  And there’s the mainstream media tendency to reduce the whole thing to a difference of opinion between the two sides.  In this approach, the Conservative lie about Dion’s platform is as valid as a truthful statement about what’s in the platform. 

            When John McCain appeared on The View, he was effectively called on his lies by Joy Behar.

            Don’t expect our gatekeepers, Peter Mansbridge, the At Issue Panel, Rex Murphy and Don Newman, to do much outing of the liars. 

            It’ll take the concerted anger of a politically literate public to counter the liars and the lies they tell.

The Pseudo Conservative Party

By James Laxer

            Stephen Harper’s party is grotesquely mislabeled.  If conservatism connotes a desire to conserve then his is no conservative party.

            Rather it is a party whose mantra is romantic individualism.  The party is fuelled by a gas bag of cranky resentfulness against the complex character of the contemporary world. These “conservatives” are not at home in multi-racial, multi-cultural settings. They resent political literacy, are suspicious of culture and can’t stand the thought of state support for the romantic comedy “Young People Fucking.” They are unmanned by women who want to remake the world so that their needs and aspirations are legitimated. 

            These conservatives long for a simpler past that never was, a society in which individuals relate to each other in ways no one ever did. 

            The Conservatives, of course, can depend on business and the rich to support them for reasons of pure self interest. But we fail to understand this party if we think in material terms only. This is a party for the rich that is led by the cranky. 

            The odd feature of the denizens of the resentful right is that although their policies are fine-tuned to suit the wealthy and the powerful, they imagine themselves to be on the outside, bravely struggling against long established elites, perhaps the CBC or the Barenaked Ladies.

            Big business has an interest in keeping these conservatives on a leash to prevent them from harming the return on investment. But business greed and neo-con stupidity have combined south of the border to imperil the system itself.  That’s why last week the grown ups had to call in George W. Bush to explain the facts of life to him.

            It’s the same here.  Cranky conservatives can do a great deal of damage especially during a time of difficult economic transition.  And it would be foolish for us to count on wise elders to come to the rescue. The better option is to keep the pseudo-Conservatives out of office.

Black Monday

By James Laxer

Irrational exuberance and the terrible hangover.  Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch both bit the dust yesterday, the worst day for the U.S. financial sector since the Great Depression.  In the wake of Washington’s takeover of Freddie and Fannie and the collapse of Bear Stearns, the towers of finance capital are more than a little shaky.

Black Monday showed, for those who needed the lesson, that the kind of people Stephen Harper thinks are so good at running the world are not only greedy, they’re world class incompetents.

Harper and his pals, south and north of the border, believe in the wondrous power of de-regulated capitalism to make the economy soar by getting stale, old government out of the way.  That is, of course, until the new financial instruments they invent, designed to turn billions of sow’s ears into silk purses, land them in big trouble.  Then they scurry to government, quaking with fear, begging for the handouts their friends in office are only too happy to provide. Harper will use the financial crisis to reward his corporate friends and punish the rest of us.

We saw some cracks in the structures of capitalism yesterday.  The shafts of daylight that came through teach people that there’s nothing wondrous or all-powerful about the system.  Now’s the time to get out radical ideas about how to restructure our economy in the interests of wage and salary earners and how to take control of our petroleum industry out of the hands of  Big Oil.

That needs to be the subject until election day.

Who’s Going to Challenge Harper on the War?

 By James Laxer

            Yesterday morning, over breakfast with the members of the media who are traveling with his campaign, Stephen Harper announced that the Canadian military mission in Kandahar would end in 2011. 

That’s the date the Conservatives and the Liberals agreed on in the parliamentary resolution both parties supported in the House in March.  Now Harper’s using that pullout date as his way of responding to the rejection of this mission by the Canadian people.  He’s making it sound as though he’s sensitive to public opinion and will be pulling Canadian troops out.

The journalists were so charmed at actually breaking bread with the great man that they reported the story at face value.  A pullout of troops three years from now?  Canadians want the troops out now.  Not in three years, after dozens, perhaps hundreds, more Canadian soldiers have died.   

Stephane Dion isn’t going to say anything about this.  He made his deal with the devil (that’s an expression, not to be interpreted literally) in March.

Where are the other leaders on this?  Jack, Gilles, Elizabeth, somebody….speak up. 

On a day, when we will hear many genuine expressions of sorrow about the tragic events of September 11, 2001 along with the words of those who use that day as a pedestal to preach war, let’s spare a thought for those who will die in this dirty conflict over the next three years.

Only 32 days left to debate the war until Canadians vote.

Beyond the Puffin Poop: What is the Harper Agenda?

By James Laxer

            On Sunday, Stephen Harper described the Conservative Party of Canada as “centrist.”  For a man who ran the National Citizens Coalition, and energized the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, this is a curious label to pin on the party he now leads.  Harper has devoted his entire political life to the honing of a disciplined political instrument that will drive Canada to the hard right.  Unlike George W. Bush, who is a frat boy, Stephen Harper is a true ideologue.  His goal, which extends far beyond holding office for its own sake, is to transform Canada from a country he can’t stand to a lean satrap of America.   He won’t be ready to hang up his skates until the word “Canada” has acquired a muscular meaning around the world.  He won’t be content until this country’s tolerant, fuzzy, secular humanism has been expunged.

            This is not a hidden agenda.  But in the mainstream media, it’s regarded as bad form to talk about anything Harper said, did, or wrote before he took up residence at 24 Sussex Drive.

            Harper’s waiting for a majority he would use to:

·        Negotiate a much closer economic, national security and military union with the United States.

·        Decimate the Canadian social state, with medicare shredded by the emergence of a patchwork system that varies from province to province with a growing role everywhere for the private sector.

·        Cut taxes for the rich.

·        Open the doors to a much larger role for “faith based” initiatives and the assault on secular values.

·        Push ahead with oil sands development, condemning Canada to the role of the first world’s greatest per capita polluter.

·        Privatize the CBC.

·        Complete the militarization of Canada.

Under a Harper majority, the role of the opposition would be worth about as much as a warm pitcher of spit. 

And they’re off

by James Laxer

As recession closes in on the country, Stephen Harper is sprinting for a majority. By next spring, most Canadians who live outside the oil kingdom that is the Harper heartland will have had enough of an economic strategy that favours Big Oil and lets the manufacturing sector and the sectors that rely on it crumble.

Speaking outside Rideau Hall, Stephen Harper shrugged off the idea that he was running to win a majority. But the Big Bad Wolf about to swallow Little Red Riding Hood kept flashing into view despite all his best efforts. Harper’s strategy: go for a majority while never claiming that’s what he’s doing. His tactic: let the other four leaders tangle each other up so that with about 37 per cent of the vote, he can squeak to the narrowest of majorities.

Stephane Dion, surpassing low expectations, seemed serene if a little diffident and unapproachable. How he will play in Quebec where few people like him and in the rest of the country where few people know him remains to be seen. As is customary for a Liberal leader Dion made his appeal to progressives. His pitch throughout will be to try to pull social democrats and greens to his banner.

Gilles Duceppe opened strongly. This guy, who is usually ignored in English Canada, is one of the country’s most seasoned politicians. He warned Quebeckers that the Bloc is the only party that can stop the Conservatives from winning a majority across Canada. Good ploy.

Jack Layton spoke forcefully on behalf of those (the majority) who are being left behind. It’s smart for him to portray himself as running for the job of prime minister, and smarter for him to ignore the Liberals. Why didn’t he call for the troops to be brought home from Afghanistan?

Elizabeth May had passion and was the most human of the leaders. Her warning that people need to regain control of their politics will resonate, especially with the young.

Final note: is the CBC going to go with right of centre analysts from now to election day?