Posts

The pipeline prime minister

At the Paris Climate Change Conference in 2015, Canada’s newly elected Liberal government was roundly applauded for helping propel an ambitious new “aspirational” target of limiting the global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

This goal is based on the scientific evidence that suggests any more will trigger dangerous “tipping points” and condemn the world’s most vulnerable populations to widespread misery: a new norm characterized by extreme weather phenomena, food shortages, draughts, ecosystem collapse, flooding, mass extinctions, and the violent conflicts that such events inevitably entail.

And there is hope. A new analysis published in the journal GeoScience found that the 1.5 degree goal is more achievable than initially thought, but only if much stronger reduction targets are achieved for 2030 than those currently proposed. If we don’t step up our efforts drastically, however, a leaked draft of the next IPCC report suggests that the 1.5 degree mark may be hit in only twenty years, with a 3 to 4 degree increase by the end of the century.

Humanity is losing the battle against climate change, and Canada’s hypocrisy and incoherence places our country front and centre in the collective failure.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were elected on a promise of heeding the science. Yet in the two years since returning from Paris, they have adopted Stephen Harper’s weak reduction target of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, released a climate plan that by the government’s own estimates fails to achieve even those targets, and then undermined their efforts by launching full throttle into massive expansion of the oil and gas sector, Canada’s single largest emitter.

Far from ratcheting up their ambitions as the science demands, the Liberals have since weakened their commitments, delaying crucial measures to cut methane emissions until at least 2023 — a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Humanity is losing the battle against climate change, and Canada’s hypocrisy and incoherence places our country front and centre in the collective failure.

Canada, the carbon champion

At 722 megatonnes, Canada’s current emissions are almost 20% higher than they were in 1990 and virtually unchanged from 2005. Why? Because as our emissions from electricity generation and heavy industry have gone down since 1990, two runaway trends have been pushing us stronger in the opposite direction: the growth in the number of cars on the roads, and the unchecked expansion of oil and gas extraction, whose emissions have soared by 76%. The bulk of our emissions today thus come from the oil and gas and transportation sectors, which respectively account for 26% and 24 % of our total.

The result is that we are now the second most carbon and energy-intensive economy in the industrialized world. The latest report card issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in December found that Canada uses 62% more energy and produces 44% more emissions for every $1,000 of GDP than the OECD average, far more even than other resource-based economies.

Justin Trudeau, the pipeline prime minister

In words, the Liberals acknowledge the scale of the challenge, and are indeed moving ahead with welcome investments in public transit and green infrastructure that should have begun decades ago.

The problem is that, in typical Liberal fashion, the government’s right hand is hard at work nullifying the efforts of the left – so that when the measure is made between words and acts, a chasm invariably opens in between.

The Liberals’ signature climate policy is a carbon tax that, at its peak of $50 per tonne in 2022, will still be far below the level experts say is needed to have a significant impact on emissions, at least not without a suite of robust measures designed to reinforce the economy-wide transition away from fossil fuels.

Yet far from reinforcing, the Liberals are engaged in a spirited push in the opposite direction.

As the Liberals’ left hand slaps a carbon tax on emissions, the right hand continues to funnel billions of dollars a year in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, with still no plan in sight to phase them out as promised.

Not even Stephen Harper’s Conservatives approved so many major oil and gas projects in their ten-year reign. And the Trudeau Liberals have only just entered their third year.

As the left hand, in the form of Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, rallies an anti-coal coalition at the United Nations – an easy PR win for Canada, which derives only 11% of its energy from coal – the right hand is engaged in a pipeline-pushing frenzy, championing no fewer than three new oil sands pipelines or expansions carrying one of the highest-emitting sources of fuel on the planet.

Among these are the Keystone XL pipeline now revived by Donald Trump after President Obama blocked it, and all are in addition to the Pacific NorthWest liquefied natural gas project the Liberals approved early in their mandate.

Not even Stephen Harper’s Conservatives approved so many major oil and gas projects in their ten-year reign. And the Trudeau Liberals have only just entered their third year.

PR over the planet

The Liberals insist that we can simultaneously increase oil and gas production while reaching our emissions goals, which is akin to believing you can row feverishly away from your destination and trust the efforts of your rowing companions to get you there. The least that can be said of such a stance is that it is dangerously irresponsible and wildly underestimates the steepness of the climb Canada faces in its emissions battle.

The OECD’s December report lays bare the evidence: the expansion of Canada’s oil sector, projected to grow by 50% between now and 2040, “seriously risks the achievement” of our targets under the Paris Agreement.

Canada’s oil sector, and the oil sands more especially, are more than just an elephant in the room. They are a stake through the heart of Canada’s climate efforts

A new analysis published in Policy Options goes much further. Using projections furnished by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), the governmental department responsible for tracking our greenhouse gas emissions, the authors calculated that “only with a complete phase-out of oil production from the oil sands, elimination of coal for electricity generation, significant replacement of natural-gas-fuelled electricity generation with electricity from carbon-free sources, and stringent efficiency measures in all other sectors of the economy could Canada plausibly meet its 30 percent target.”

Eyes on Canada

Canada’s oil sector, and the oil sands more especially, are more than just an elephant in the room. They are a stake through the heart of Canada’s climate efforts – and why an increasingly vocal roster of international leaders, from the OECD to France’s Emmanuel Macron, are abandoning the usual diplomatic bromides to urge “courage” from Ottawa in matching its actions to the scale of the crisis at hand.

The world welcomed the Liberal government’s good intentions on the climate front. They may now be coming to see, much as Canadians are, that it’s not heart the Trudeau Liberals lack. It’s spine.

Unfortunately for the climate, the consequences may be all but the same.

/by

Valérie Plante’s broken promise hands a victory to cynicism

Among these we find a much-needed $28 million boost to public transit (a 5 per cent jump) and measures to improve pedestrian safety, as well as nearly $20 million for diverse housing initiatives and multi-million-dollar increases to the budgets for arts and culture, snow removal, and the frontline services provided by the boroughs.

The renewed investments will come with a price. Residents will see their taxes increased by an average of 3.3 per cent, which represents an additional $118 a year for an average homeowner in Montreal and far less for the majority of Montrealers who rent.

Fixing the pipes

The hike is due chiefly to the increase in the water tax, which has been frozen since 2013 despite massive investments in the city’s aging water infrastructure that will have ballooned from $93 million in 2014 to $500 million in 2018.

A campaign platform is a party’s contract with citizens, a solemn set of commitments and values on which a government’s performance can be measured and held to account.

Plante has argued that the increase to the water tax is necessary and that the investments are the responsible thing to do given the catastrophic state of our water infrastructure. It is estimated that Montreal loses a third of its drinking water every year due to leaky pipes, and it costs ten times more to repair the 850 water mains that rupture each year than to plan the works in advance.

The decisions made are thus highly justifiable. If the story of the Plante budget stopped here, Montrealers might have woken up on Thursday to an entirely different narrative plastered across the headlines.

Legitimate criticism

Instead, the budget has been met with unanimous denunciations of her “broken promise” — and understandably so. Plante’s tax increase violated the express commitment made in Projet Montréal’s campaign platform to “fulfill its program without increasing taxes beyond inflation,” then pegged at 2.1 per cent for 2018.

This is no minor thing. A campaign platform is a party’s contract with citizens, a solemn set of commitments and values on which a government’s performance can be measured and held to account.

It has been doubly disappointing, therefore, to see the mayor trying to rewrite her platform post-election by insisting that her pledge referred only to the 1.9 per cent increase to the property tax. In repeatedly denying the evident truth of a broken promise, Valérie Plante guaranteed that the tax increase would overshadow the rest of the budget.

Plante’s inability to level with voters sabotaged any hopes that they would let this reversal pass

It can be argued that the corner the Plante administration found themselves in was not entirely of their own making. Projet Montréal claims to have been left a surprise $358 million budgetary shortfall by the preceding administration, which is possible only because opposition parties in Montreal lack access to the books that would allow them to make fully informed decisions regarding their platforms. Plante, to her credit, has agreed to put an end to this situation by tasking the city’s auditor general with publishing the state of the city’s finances prior to each election.

It can become necessary and even responsible at times for politicians to go back on a commitment if new information or circumstances come to light. Citizens are mature enough to accept this when it’s justified. But the condition is that their leaders are transparent and upfront with them, and that they respect citizens’ intelligence and democratic rights enough to acknowledge the broken promise, explain fully, and gain their support.

Plante’s inability to level with voters sabotaged any hopes that they would let this reversal pass, and comes as a particularly bitter pill to swallow for Montrealers who expected more from this mayor.

Missing the point

Some Plante supporters have cried foul over the media’s obsessive focus on the tax increase, and have tried to argue the many merits of the budget as a whole.

But this is to miss the point of the present uproar. Politicians’ actions, whether we support them or not, are built on the foundation of trust between citizens and representatives. The edifice of representative democracy crumbles if politicians are allowed to make easy promises to win votes, jettison them when the going gets rough, and then claim that a broken promise is not a broken promise — and it is precisely the media’s role to push back hard against those who attempt to do just that.

Valerie Plante’s failure to own up to a broken promise has fuelled the ambient cynicism that is eating away at these democratic foundations.

Today, every voice that says “Nothing ever changes” and “They’re all the same” is emboldened. And it just got a little harder to argue that they’re wrong.

/by

Denis Coderre, last century’s man

Denis Coderre moves with a heavy gait these days. His brow furrowed, his eyes sunken, it seems like the life has fled from the mayor’s tired frame.

This campaign was supposed to be his cakewalk to re-election, and instead it feels as though he’s sleepwalked into a street fight and has yet to fully wake up. It’s not without a faint echo of Stephen Harper in his final campaign: Coderre wears the sagging expression of an old general left behind in battle, emitting the lonely aura of a man out of phase, and trudging against time.

Echoes of a bygone era

Denis Coderre has a frequent one-liner when asked about mayoral challenger Valérie Plante’s proposed Pink metro line between Montréal-Nord and Lachine. The mayor, himself from Montréal-Nord, trains his guns derisively on Plante’s lack of ties to the establishment parties in Ottawa and Quebec City — who will you speak to to get it built, the mayor quips, your friends in Québec solidaire and the NDP?

It’s a telling line of attack, from a man who can barely remember a time when his life and fortunes weren’t intimately entwined with those of Canada’s “natural governing party.” You need look no further for a glimpse inside the political mind of Denis Coderre: Votez du bon bord,Denis warns, choose a Liberal if you want a seat at the table.

In Coderre’s old-school, old-boy idea of politics, authority and influence don’t come from below — from the mandate afforded by voters, or the mayor’s capacity to rally Montrealers to his or her side — but from backroom deals and back scratching among tightknit political cliques. In Coderre’s world, democracy is an insiders’ game, and you need to know which doors to knock on if you want to play.

Swimming against the current

There is something vaguely discomforting about the sight of our mayor so artlessly mocking his adversary’s outsider status, and swimming so clumsily, so obliviously, against the zeitgeist of the times. The attack is emblematic of a wider pattern.

At a time when voters are demanding more and more transparency from their governments, Montreal’s mayor still refuses to make even his daily agenda public. Since 2014, security guards at City Hall have been under orders to no longer register the comings and goings of visitors to his office. And in an age where the real “smart” cities around the world are placing their faith in the free flow of information, the flow of information out of the mayor’s office has all but dried up.

Civil servants have been silenced, the mayor’s own councillors on the executive committee are barred from speaking freely to the press, and journalists — 30 at last count, from 13 different publications — are battling obstruction, intimidation, outright threats, and in the case of La Presse’s Patrick Lagacé, police surveillance in the course of their important work to keep the public informed of the administration’s actions.

When strongmen reigned

In the era of smartphones, social media and urban tech, forward-looking cities around the world are opening up once-opaque administrations, and trusting in the collective intelligence of communities to find innovative solutions to the problems they live daily.

Yet in Montreal, we have a mayor whose brute authoritarianism harkens back to the strongman era of the 1960s and 70s, when Jean Drapeau reigned imperial over his urban kingdom. It seems so long ago that Coderre the candidate vowed to empower city councillors by putting an end to party discipline. Instead, Mayor Coderre has ruled his caucus with an iron fist, forbidding any divergence of views, wielding posts — and the salaries that come with them — as payment for loyalty, and reducing city councillors to the role of potted plants.

Even behind closed doors, the members of Coderre’s executive committee who dare voice a dissenting opinion are browbeaten into silence by the mayor.

And citizens who voice their opposition at council meetings simply have their mic cut.

The disconnect

Denis Coderre is far from the first politician to have an immoderate affection for power. What’s most bewildering about the mayor’s hamfisted methods is not so much his crude attempts at control, but his peculiar apparent belief that, in 2017, Montrealers wouldn’t mind.

It’s this historical incongruence that I find the most fitting theme to define Coderre’s reign. In the wake of Radio-Canada’s explosive investigation into the mayor’s strongarm tactics, we saw an incredulous Patrice Roy of the Téléjournal practically pleading with the mayor to understand what all the commotion was about. Visibly, it was to little avail. Coderre pointed the finger back at journalists and answered that, while he may have “stepped on people’s toes,” it was important in order to get things done.

It was the quaintly authoritarian response of an old-school political boss. And it was only the latest in a salvo of tone-deaf defences by Coderre that shone a floodlight on exactly what voters are finding increasingly hard to swallow about the man.

Time and again, when the anachronism of Coderre’s imperious manners is questioned, the mayor trivializes his comportment — a personal phone call to the police chief about one journalist here, a not-so-veiled threat to another there — as part of the “normal” rough-and-tumble of politics.

As if to say that his critics are all just thin-skinned sissies who can’t take the heat of the sport.

It’s almost like he doesn’t know that the rest of us stopped playing a long time ago.

___

This article was originally published on Ricochet.

/by

Projet Montréal leadership race shows why city politics matter

There’s an unfortunate irony with city politics. It’s the level of government that is closest to us, and where our councillors are only a Facebook message or borough council meeting away. It’s at the local level where common values are most cohesive, experiments in participatory democracy are most practicable, and the impact of decisions on our physical environments are most tangible and immediate. Yet it is also the level of politics that excites people the least, with abysmally low voter turnout rates that barely manage to scrape past a feeble 40 per cent.

I’ve thought a lot about the reasons for this, and it seems there’s enough blame to go around. There are the politicians who speak of city government in dry managerial language as an “administration,” and whose ambition is limited to building a “ville intelligente,” propelled by the wide-eyed dream of an efficient snow plow operation. There are the opportunists who pretend local politics exist in a values-free vacuum, where notions of left and right — shorthands for philosophical divergences between collectivism and individualism, equality and elitism — have magically ceased to apply.

As if sound management and du “gros bon sens” could replace the need for vibrant debates over the principles on which our city should be built.

And there is the local media, who often fail to discuss city politics at all, or serve as a megaphone for “taxpayer” anger over corruption, potholes, and orange cones. Because if the municipal machine is nothing more than a dispenser of services, then citizens are merely the ATMs.

Corruption matters, and so does efficient management. But to hear the way we talk about cities, you would never know that they are on the front lines of combatting climate change, integrating immigrants, reducing inequalities, or developing new forms of democratic decision-making. You would never know that they are home to over half the world’s population, or that they produce around 75 per cent of the world’s GDP and greenhouse gas emissions. And you would never get the slightest hint that while our 19th-century nation-states remain bogged down by divisions and dated structures, globalized cities are increasingly networking amongst themselves to devise innovative solutions to this century’s most pressing problems.

For a glimpse at the revolutionary potential of urban policies, you’d have to look elsewhere. In Barcelona, the city’s left-wing government is pursuing a bold new strategy to reclaim 60 per cent of its streets currently used by cars to serve as “citizen spaces,” green neighbourhoods where “expression and participation, culture and knowledge,” and “the right to leisure” will slowly replace the roars of car horns and engines. Cities from Madrid to Oslo have announced similar plans to pedestrianize their city centres within five years. And Copenhagen, which has become the world’s cycling mecca after decades of avant-gardist policies, has pledged to go completely carbon neutral by 2025.

Building a modern movement for Montreal

Meanwhile in Montreal, our mayor is waging a war on pit bulls.

Fortunately, we have an opposition party that dreams a little bigger.

For twelve years, Projet Montréal has stoked the local imagination with grandiose visions of what a human-scaled city of the 21st century can be. Under party founder and former leader Richard Bergeron, the party did much to popularize new urban thinking in Montreal, persistently raising the bar by proposing audacious transit and urban planning projects inspired by cities around the world. Where it did less well, however, was in connecting with Montrealers’ daily concerns, broadening its base beyond the environmentalist left, and rallying Montreal’s progressive social, political and economic forces under its banner. Few Montrealers came to associate Bergeron’s Projet Montréal with causes of social justice or participatory democracy, despite the party’s founding principles that placed these on an equal footing with sustainable development.

The party’s current leadership race is an opportunity to change that, and to help build a new urban movement in Montreal that can propel the next generation of leaders into power in 2017. This is the first leadership race of any political party in over 20 years in Montreal, and it is most likely the only chance Montrealers will get to have their say in who will go up against Mayor Denis Coderre in next year’s election.

The choice of mayoral candidate will have a major impact, both on the direction of the party and on its capacity to unite the opposition forces and topple Coderre.

There is Valérie Plante, a downtown city councillor with a long history of community involvement, who has placed the need to combat social inequalities at the heart of her campaign. A member of the Broadbent Institute’s board of directors, Plante has vowed to push for a $15 per hour minimum wage, to expand social and affordable housing, to appoint a gender-equal executive committee, and to combat systemic discrimination against women and racialized minorities. She has called for Montreal to become more proactive in opposing the Energy East pipeline and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. And she has made citizen engagement a central part of her appeal, promising to usher in a new culture of collaboration at City Hall as Montreal’s first woman mayor.

There is Guillaume Lavoie, the party’s finance critic and an international expert in public policy, who has made the “collaborative and sharing economy” the central focus of his campaign. Promising to expand car-sharing and to “regulate so as to better permit” services like Uber and Airbnb, Lavoie views these platforms as the pillars of a new economic model that carries the potential to reduce waste, expand access, and boost productivity by utilizing dormant resources and promoting a “nation of micro-entrepreneurs.”. Considered by many to be the most centrist candidate of the three, Lavoie has vowed to broaden the party’s appeal by reaching out to those who have remained outside Projet Montréal’s traditional base of support.

And there is François Limoges (right), a city councillor from Rosemont, whose signature proposal of a “10/45” plan would ensure that all Montrealers can access public transit within a 10-minute walk from their house and arrive at their destination within 45 minutes. Limoges also wants to expand the network of ruelles vertes into a massive grid that would span the entire city and become an emblem of Montreal, and he’s promised to create three to five new public markets in underserved areas of the island that would rival Jean Talon and Atwater.

There are many areas of course where the candidates are in wild agreement. But beneath the surface, there are also significant divergences, both in philosophy and style, and in particular between the two presumed frontrunners, Valérie Plante and Guillaume Lavoie. That, after all, is what leadership races are for.

Yet whichever candidate one prefers, it is hard to deny that there is an abundance of substance between them, and that there are three visions that all see further than our current mayor’s fixation with pit bulls and potholes.

__

This article was originally published on Ricochet.

/0 Comments/by

Rays of hope as the Trudeau era begins

“Sunny ways” are infectious, it seems. On Wednesday, the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau was sworn in, unleashing the rush of a collective catharsis as the weight of a traumatic decade lifted like a sombre fog.

I confess. I was among the first to mock Trudeau’s campy invocation on election night, and I have long been an ardent critic of the Liberal leader. He may yet prove my initial instincts right. But as the newly minted cabinet ministers paraded eagerly before the media, it was hard not to feel even the most tenuous and superfluous utterances of ideals from their mouths — a “most vulnerable among us” here, an “extreme poverty in the world” there — ring out as echoes of a once-familiar country we nearly let slip away.

There will be no shortage of opportunities over the next four years to criticize this government, and we will surely have many opportunities to be disappointed, perhaps soon. But for the moment, we can allow ourselves to be deeply moved by these moments, as if they were the voice of a long-buried Canada emerging from its winter slumber.

The new face of Canada

For the first time in Canadian history, Justin Trudeau’s cabinet is gender-balanced. Its young members are the most diverse in our history too, including two Indigenous Canadians, five other visible minorities, a quadraplegic, and a visually impaired former paralympian. And that is to say nothing of the equally promising diversity of experiences and skills, with nearly half our cabinet new to politics entirely and a great number possessing backgrounds in civil society and community activism.

This isn’t simply a symbolic coup in checking off the boxes of communities needing representation. Much to Trudeau’s credit — and my own delighted surprise — beneath the mosaic surface, there’s substance and talent in spades. And in the crucial domains of climate change, Indigenous reconciliation, and social justice, in particular, there is hope, at least today, for a new beginning.

Of the many inspired choices in this team, the most transformative are without a doubt those affecting Indigenous Canadians. In a bold and potentially epochal move that is eliciting the elation of aboriginal communities, Judy Wilson-Raybould, a former Regional Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), former B.C. Treaty Commissioner, and former Crown prosecutor, is the new Minister of Justice, inheriting one of the most powerful positions in the government. One could hardly think of an appointment with a greater potential for rebuilding the shattered relationship with Canada’s first peoples.

But that is only part of the story. Former Nunavut cabinet minister Hunter Tootoo, an Inuit man, will take over the Ministry of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard (an area crucial to Indigenous communities), while Carolyn Bennett, a medical doctor with a strong record of engagement with Indigenous communities, will head up the newly renamed Ministry of Indigenous and Northern Affairs – a nod, believes AFN Chief Perry Bellegarde, to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

For a party that flightily promised to implement all 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report immediately upon its release, this is a promising start to backing up their pious intentions with the devotion and gravitas that is so urgently required.

A climate change government

On climate change too, we find cause for an unexpected gush of optimism. Catherine McKenna, an impressive young lawyer with an international background in human rights and development, is the newly renamed Minister of the Environment and Climate change. Environmentalists quickly lauded the move for bringing a much-needed social justice perspective to the issue of climate change, whose most cataclysmic impacts will be (and already are being) felt by the world’s most vulnerable populations.

The new focus seems confirmed by the appointment of former Environment Minister and Liberal leader Stéphane Dion to Foreign Affairs, in a clear signal that climate change will be a cornerstone of Canada’s foreign policy. Dion was of course the Liberal leader who risked it all (and lost) on a platform geared towards “shifting” to a green economy.

Importantly, there will also now be a Minister of Science in the form of Kirsty Duncan, a climatologist and former member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Amarjeet Sohi, a former city councillor and strong advocate of public transit with a history of social activism, becomes Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, lending a timely green tinge to that ministry as well. And perhaps the most crucial and convincing decision of all was to also place Dion in charge of a new cabinet committee on the environment, climate change, and energy, which will be tasked with ensuring much-needed coherence across eight key ministries, including those mentioned above.

For a party whose weak campaign promises suggested an incomplete grasp of climate change, the remarkable robustness of understanding reflected in this cabinet comes as yet another heartening surprise.

An international perspective

There are enlightened choices in other ministries as well. Sikh-Canadian Harjit Sajjan, a former military and intelligence officer with a stunning record of accomplishments in Afghanistan, is the new Minister of National Defence. Jane Philpott, a medical doctor with a social justice bent, international development background, and a decade of work experience in Africa, is the new Minister of Health (and shockingly, Canada’s first MD named to the post).

Other appointments are promising, though not without a hint of qualification. Maryam Monsef, a 30 year-old Afghan refugee, is the new Minister of Democratic Institutions (inexplicably renamed from Democratic Reform). Intelligent and articulate, Monsef also comes with a dramatic backstory, but the political neophyte will be charged with the complex and crucial task of shepherding in the promised abolition of our first-past-the-post voting system, which will be a major test of the Liberals’ commitment to true democratic reform.

Vigilance: the suits still controls the purse

Yet it’s not all rainbows and unicorns in Canada the morning after a new Liberal government is sworn in. Despite the promising signs in a wide array of areas, the Liberal cabinet also reaffirms the party’s basic fabric as being inextricably entwined with Canada’s corporate establishment.

Vigilance is called for across the board of course, but nowhere more so than in the key economic portfolios, most especially with the new Minister of Finance. The government’s second-in-command, Bill Morneau, is a multi-millionaire former Bay Street executive and former head of the right-leaning C.D. Howe Institute. He’ll be joined by Treasury Board President Scott Brison, a former Progressive Conservative and former investment banker. Other economic portfolios went to so-called “blue Liberals” as well, notably International Trade (Chrystia Freeland), Economic Development (Navdeep Bains), Transportation (Marc Garneau), and Natural Resources (Jim Carr). Liberals will be Liberals, after all.

But there will be plenty of time for holding feet to the fire. This week belongs to Justin Trudeau and his new government, who may already be credited with restoring hope to a tired country that was in dire need of believing in itself again.

Congratulations, Mr. Prime Minister. We’ll be watching.
__

This article was originally published on Ricochet.

/0 Comments/by

Justin Trudeau and the politics of image

We live in a media age where images increasingly pass for reality, where the gloss of marketing manipulation is so thick as to mask entirely what lies beneath. When the standards that reign in the pharmacy aisle are allowed to infiltrate our democratic decision-making, we embrace a dramatic decline in our level of scrutiny that endangers us all.

All parties employ specialists in the art of image-making, and all engage in the politics of spectacle to differing degrees. But in this campaign, it is without a doubt the Liberals who have been the most hyper-savvy — and most cynical — in exploiting many voters’ lack of discernment between a made-for-TV campaign and the lack of substance it can hide.

Behind the sugary facade

In the media echo chamber, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s most substantive claim to the mantle of “change” in this election is his rejection of the balanced budget orthodoxy that has been used by neoliberal politicians as the premise for slashing social programs. It’s a shrewd target for Liberal strategists.

Dig deeper, however, and we find it has been the victory of austerity politicians to successfully confuse the two: the real source of austerity policies is less the smokescreen of balanced budgets than the emptying of the public purse by decades of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The corporate media have, of course, been complicit in this confusion. Now, all too happy to confirm their own facile assumptions about “spendthrift” being a synonym for “left,” they have grabbed hold of the Liberals’ highly symbolic gambit to suggest that the red team has stolen the NDP’s thunder.

The problem with this shallow narrative, as well as Trudeau’s absurd attack line about the NDP adopting “Harper’s budget” by promising to balance the books, is that it focuses only on the bottom line — and media headline — while ignoring the actual programs and policies that compose the government agenda.

A truly progressive program is one that aims for the reduction of social and economic inequalities in society and the strengthening of solidarity. In this election, that mantle goes indisputably to the NDP, who are alone in proposing the first major expansion of Canada’s social safety net in decades.

True to the traditions of social democracy, the NDP’s signature proposals for new universal child care and pharmacare systems are transformative social policies that would help those at the bottom of the economic ladder the most, as would their massive reinvestments in health care, which earned the party first place in the electoral report card issued by the College of Family Physicians of Canada. They would pay for these investments through a range of measures targeting those at the top, including a two-point increase to the tax rate on large corporations and the closing of tax loopholes used by CEOs.

Taken together, these policies would amount to the most significant push in a generation to rebuild the tattered public domain. They would signal the end of the austerity era in Canada, and a modest first step in reversing the tide of corporate power and privilege that is undermining our democracy.

Next to these robust efforts to reduce the inequalities that soared under the Liberals’ watch in the 1990s, Trudeau’s vow to tax “the 1%” is akin to striking a coup in the bumper sticker wars: the measure is laudable, but the Liberal plan will do precious little with the acquired funds aside from shifting it slightly down the ladder towards the upper middle class.

Trudeau’s primary claim to challenging inequalities is thus a mirage, with the greatest tax cuts under his plan going to those earning incomes between $89,401 and $200,000, and the more than two-thirds of Canadians who earn under $50,000 a year receiving little to no help at all. The Liberals have given up on creating the social programs that act as the primary equalizers of opportunity, preferring instead Harper’s method of bribing those who vote the most with cheques in the mail.

The same pattern emerges when we compare the two parties’ climate change plans. Both Trudeau and Mulcair have made climate change central to their discourses, yet a deeper look reveals a serious lack of substance lurking behind the Liberals’ sugary facade.

While the NDP’s ambitious emissions reduction targets have been lauded byEnvironmental Defence, Équiterre, and Pembina as credible and science-based, Trudeau has dismissed emissions targets as unnecessary “political numbers.” The Liberals have refused to provide any national targets or carbon pricing standards at all, despite the fact the next government will be called upon to arrive at the Paris climate summit in less than two months’ time to present Canada’s commitments to the world.

Appearance vs. reality

This deep chasm between appearances and reality, style and substance, runs through the entire Liberal campaign. Upon the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report in June, Trudeau demanded the immediate implementation of all of the report’s 94 recommendations. The Assembly of First Nations, however, finds the Liberal commitments far inferior to the NDP’s and points to a $500-million gap in their fiscal plan.

The Liberals, despite loudly claiming to be a party defending civil liberties and Charter rights, voted for and will maintain most of Harper’s draconian C-51. Trudeau has also breezily dismissed Harper’s sale of $15 billion in cannon-equipped armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia by making the ludicrously false claim, “They’re not arms, they’re Jeeps.”

Despite all of the noble principles to which the Liberals pay lip service, Trudeau has hidden behind excuses to avoid taking a stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, of which enough is already known to have drawn the opposition of both front-runners to the U.S. Democratic Party presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as well as countless civil society organizations and top-flight economists ranging from Jeffrey Sachs to Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

Stiglitz and others warn that the sweeping and secretive pact is more about boosting corporate privilege than free trade, and yet Trudeau has invoked airy platitudes about being “pro-trade” to avoid expressing any concerns over the TPP’s vast provisions, which will further empower corporations at the direct expense of democracy, human rights, freedom of expression, Internet freedom, and action to combat climate change and protect the environment.

When the wind blows….

And what of the massive program of new infrastructure and social spending at the core of the Liberal platform?

Admittedly, their platform includes a vast array of often welcome and necessary investments in crucial areas such public transit, the CBC, affordable housing, and clean energy. The problem is less with the party’s spending priorities — most of which mimic the longstanding priorities and current pledges of the New Democrats — and more to do with their dubious sincerity, given the inconsistent records of both the party and its leader. As late as July, for example, the Liberal leader was even vowing to balance the budget, despite now making not balancing the budget his primary claim to the mantle of change.

The jack-in-the-box nature of the Liberal platform, with its sudden conversions and laundry list of promises sprung at the drop of the election writ, only adds to the narrative that emerges from the glaring gap between the party’s actions and words. Taken together, it’s enough to make the whole exercise smack of cynical electoral opportunism, lacking any foundation of genuine conviction.

This is nothing the Liberals have not accustomed us to in the past, of course, though it certainly does not bode well for the honouring of their commitments in the future. And so it’s little surprise that despite throwing money in all directions, the Liberal platform somehow avoids ever arriving at a coherent vision of social progress.

Party of change, party of power

In this election, both the New Democrats and Liberals have leaders who were selected with the express aim of putting a new face onto longstanding organizations with deeply rooted political cultures, hundreds of candidates and MPs, and tens of thousands of members. Yet in both cases, the election masks shouldn’t distract us from the underlying characters and compositions of the parties that have evolved over long histories.

Despite the boyish charm and buoyant energy of their new leader, the Liberals are still the party of the establishment and corporate elite, which they will surely take no time reminding us of the moment they return to power.

Likewise, if Tom Mulcair fails to exude the same youthful dynamism or sunny optimism as Trudeau, behind the leader the NDP’s slate of candidates is by far the youngest, and counts the most women (43 per cent) and most Indigenous candidates (6.5 per cent) of any major federal party — ever.

In sum, the NDP is still the party of transformative change, with a robustly social democratic agenda geared towards reducing inequalities, combatting climate change, initiating a new era in our relationship with First Nations, reforming our democracy through proportional representation, and reorienting Canada’s foreign policy towards peacekeeping, aid, and development.

So come Oct. 19, let’s not be made fools of by falling prey to the manipulations of the image-makers. No party can reinvent itself during an election campaign — even if it’s the longest in our history.

__

This article was orignally published on Ricochet.

/0 Comments/by

Unveiling the Bloc’s fake feminism

Two. That is the number of women who have tried to take the Canadian citizenship oath since 2011 without removing their niqabs, after having already unveiled themselves to confirm their identities. Yet here we are, weeks after the issue erupted, still allowing it to hijack one of the highest stakes election campaigns in decades. Why?

Gilles Duceppe would have us believe that it is about uncompromisable principles, specifically Quebec’s values concerning gender equality. His moral authority on the matter is admittedly stronger than Stephen Harper’s, but is this what the issue is really about?

No one engaged in this debate is “pro-niqab,” though many, like Ricochet’s Toula Drimonis, are pro-choice for Muslim women. Yet while the debate over the niqab divides feminists, from the perspective of women’s rights the whole question is ultimately a distraction from the broader picture.

Indeed, anyone with any sense of reality and reason must recognize that major threats to gender equality in Canada persist and have grown considerably under the Conservatives — and that they largely emanate from homegrown Canadian society, not from immigrants.

Real threats to women’s rights

If Duceppe would like to talk about women’s rights, then all the better— but let’s start at the top, beginning with the gravest threats to women’s rights, shall we?

Let’s talk about the 1,200 murdered and missing Aboriginal women, whose cases continue to inspire but a regal shrug from Harper’s Conservatives and have been largely and shamefully absent from this campaign. Let’s talk about how the wage gap in Canada is among the worst in the developed world and twice the global average, or about how the Harper government gutted pay equity laws and the Court Challenges Program that helped women fight for their rights.

Let’s talk about sexual harassment, which as we’ve recently been reminded, goes on every day in workplaces and public places across the country, even at the highest echelons, and yet is routinely met with silence, shrugs, rationalizations, and victim-shaming. Let’s talk about the closure of 12 of 16 Status of Women regional offices by the Conservatives, the abolition of funding for women’s groups and programs, the continued lack of affordable childcare, or the government’s ideological refusal to fund internationally engaged humanitarian organizations who help women gain access to abortions, even in cases of rape.

So by all means, let’s discuss women’s rights, and let’s discuss them fully and honestly, with our focus guided by the gravity of the threats and number of women affected, rather than by the women’s faith or cultures of origin. But is that we’re doing, and if not, why not?

Duceppe’s dangerous game

It serves neither Harper nor Duceppe to launch a wider debate about the real threats to women’s rights in this country. It simply wouldn’t move enough votes, because of the Conservatives’ record and the Bloc’s convergence with other parties, notably the NDP, on these issues.

So to find their wedge, they instead point the self-righteous finger at “those” veiled foreigners who come to our egalitarian shores and pollute our Western values with their “barbaric cultural practices,” in the Conservatives’ eloquent phrase. The debate has sparked an irrational existential fear within a wide swath of the Quebec electorate, which is the only thing that can explain the force and speed with which the issue has moved so many votes during this crucial election campaign, as suggested by polls.

Behind the Bloc’s veil of false feminism, we find that this is not a debate about our values of gender equality at all. The keyword here is “our” — this is about us versus them, and little else. It is a knee-jerk defensive reaction from insecure ethnic nationalists, exploding with fabricated fears that a centuries-old culture and identity is under threat from invasive foreign elements. It is the barely healed wounds from Hérouxville and the Charter of Values debate, torn frivolously open yet again for crass political gain.

To the deep dismay of many, Gilles Duceppe, so often a man of progressive principles, has now wrapped himself in the same xenophobic flag as Harper, and with the identical aim of prying loose votes on the backs of Québec’s minorities. It is to his profound disgrace, for which he should be made to pay the same price as Pauline Marois by following his friend into political retirement.

The government we want

To paraphrase Stephen Harper, let me be clear. I am not suggesting that the majority of Quebecers, who seem to agree with Duceppe and Harper in public opinion polling, are a xenophobic mob.

It is one thing to tell a pollster that you believe a woman should show her face to take a citizenship oath, which while purely symbolic and constitutionally dubious, is nonetheless an argument that resonates. But it is quite another to allow an issue affecting but a half-handful of women to eclipse all reason and perspective in a historic election campaign.

Policies around climate change, economic inequalities, the cultural genocide and murder of Aboriginal people, the health of our democracy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, war and peace, the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War — and yes, women’s rights — are among the many that will be drastically impacted by the outcome.

We can now stop rubbing our eyes at the fact that we’re even still talking about the niqab in the current campaign. It’s not funny anymore. This political manipulation is vile, it is dangerous, and it must be vehemently condemned, with those politicians responsible for fanning the flames held accountable at the ballot box. Issues of severe consequence face voters, and they demand our full and reasoned consideration.

With the second-largest number of seats in the country, Quebecers have the power to decide whether our next government will be led by Conservatives, New Democrats, or Liberals. But with that power comes great responsibility, and with two weeks to go, we’re failing. Badly.

__

This article was originally published on Ricochet. 

/0 Comments/by
© Copyright 2018 - Shawn Katz