The Dominoes of Democracy - Part 2

What is one of the chief effects of the Harper regime's preference for an ideologically-based policy model over one premised on logic, facts and empirical evidence, as explored in my earlier post? The decline, perhaps even the demise, of a healthy democracy in which citizens are engaged and informed participants, thereby allowing an ideologically-driven government to pursue its agenda largely unimpeded.

In today's Toronto Star, columnist Bob Hepburn writes about the state of our democracy and the growing gap between Parliament and Canadians. An interview with David Herle, former Paul Martin campaign strategist and principal partner at The Gandalf Group, a Toronto-based research and consulting company, yields a portrait of a population deeply disaffected with politics in general and Parliament in particular.

And there are ample studies and surveys to back up that portrait:

For example, a poll last fall suggested barely 27 per cent of Canadians believe Ottawa is dealing with issues we really care about.

Most people are worried about daily issues, such as their children’s education, looking after aging parents and getting decent health care. But other than writing cheques to the provinces, Ottawa has opted out of health care, education, transportation and other issues that affect our normal lives.

Instead, there is a narrow set of issues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pursuing and for the most part the opposition parties are adhering to them. Because voters have stopped looking to Parliament for help, Ottawa has stopped responding to their needs, Herle believes.

“People are no longer putting demands on government (bold type mine) and aren’t flocking to politicians who claim they can help them,” he says. “They’ve simply given up on Ottawa altogether.”

Although I am not a person given to conspiracy theories, I have written extensively on this blog about both democracy and democratic participation, and long ago concluded that one of the secondary goals of the Harper regime is the discouragement of an engaged electorate, thereby making it easier to push through an agenda in which the role of government in people's live is minimized, one of the chief beliefs of the reactionary right. What better way to pursue that goal than to convey to people, via policy pursued through the very narrow prism of ideology and rabid partisanship, that their voices mean nothing and their engagement in the democratic process is both unnecessary and unwelcome?

Conservative MP Michael Chong, the only former member of Harper's cabinet who has ever displayed real integrity, puts it this way:...if voters have given up on Parliament, it means they have lost faith in politicians to look after their interests.

Part one of this post dealt with causes, and I would argue that Chong's observation is precisely the effect that the Harper regime so avidly desires.

The Dominoes of Democracy

Cause and effect. Sometimes the relationship is obvious, as in, for example, a cigarette left smoldering on a couch and the subsequent conflagration that destroys a house. Other times, to see the relationship requires some digging, some thinking, some connecting of the dots. To its shame the Harper regime, as retrograde and benighted as it is, has proven quite adept at obscuring such relationships. Thanks to this Machiavellian bent, we are all the poorer.

In a recent address to the Alberta Federation of Labour, one that, curiously, was not reported in the mainstream Alberta media, former Tory pollster and strategist Allan Gregg gave another version of his Assault on Reason speech he gave at the opening of Carleton University’s new School of Public Affairs.

Gregg made the following unassailable assertion to the group:

..."effective solutions can only be generated when they correspond with accurate understanding of they problems they are designed to solve. Evidence, facts and reason, therefore, form the sine qua non not just of good public policy, but of good value."

He went on to lament the steady decline of these criteria under the Harper government that began with the elimination of the long-form census, followed by

the destruction of the national long-gun registry, despite the pleas of virtually every police chief in Canada that it be saved. After that, under cover of an austerity budget, there were massive cuts to Statistics Canada, Library and Archives Canada, science and social science activities at Parks Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office, the CBC, the Roundtable on the Environment, the Experimental Lakes Area, the Canadian Foundation for Climate Science and so on.

Gregg notes that these assaults on evidence-based decisions were followed by a multi-billion-dollar penitentiary-building spending spree which flew directly in the face of a mountain of evidence that suggested that crime, far from being on the rise, was on the decline.

Gregg draws the following conclusions:

"This was no random act of downsizing, but a deliberate attempt to obliterate certain activities that were previously viewed as a legitimate part of government decision making," Gregg stated. "Namely, using research, science and evidence as the basis to make public policy decisions.

"It also amounted to an attempt to eliminate anyone who would use science, facts and evidence to challenge government policies," he added.

So, beyond the obvious consequences of flawed government policy that is based on ideology instead of empiricism, what is the effect of all of this?

To be continued later today...

Unions After Bill C-377

In my favorite Shakespearian play, Hamlet, there is a scene wherein his erstwhile friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, explain that an acting company that used to enjoy great popularity has fallen on hard times. Thanks to a new craze in which troupes of child actors have become the rage, and "are most tyrannically clapped for", adults have had to go on the road to earn a living. Hamlet wonders about the child actors' futures, because their current success means they are in fact "exclaim[ing] against their own succession", since they will be out of work once they grow up.

I can't help but think about human nature's shortsightedness when I read those lines. We pursue things that aren't good for us, while we denigrate that which, in the long term, is of benefit. Take, for example, the public's attitude toward unions. More days than nought, there are columns and letters published condemning unions and their well-paid members, envy and resentment seeping through the pages, seemingly in a senseless quest to bring people down to the lowest pay and working conditions possible.

It is, of course, this irrational impulse to which Bill C-377, the thinly-disguised union-busting legislation passed on Wednesday evening by the Harper government, plays. Clothed in the rhetoric typical of a workers' rights-hating regime, the law will require labour organizations to provide extensive details, such as the salaries of top union leaders, to the Canada Revenue Agency, which will publish the information on its website.

All designed, of course, to stoke even more public contempt for those enjoying better working conditions and pay than those in non-union environments.

And yet, as observed by Thomas Walkom and David Climenhaga, unions themselves must bear some of the responsibility for this current sorry state.

Writes Walkom:

What’s really killing unions is not the political right. It is that, for too many workers, organized labour is no longer relevant.

In 2011, federal figures show, 31 per cent of Canadian workers overall were unionized. Of these, the vast majority are middle-aged or older. For younger workers between the ages of 15 and 24, the rate of unionization is just under 16 per cent.

Compounding the problem, says Walkom, is the fact that union membership is concentrated in the public sector, with only 16 per cent of private sector workers belonging to unions, largely due to the collapse of manufacturing jobs and the proliferation of part-time and contract work in North America.

He adds,

Unions — which understandably pay attention first and foremost to their own members — haven’t lobbied hard enough to tighten up the employment standards legislation that allows these low-wage practices.

Nor have most unions figured out a way to deal with a new kind of workplace, where people no longer labour in large factories and where strikes can be circumvented by technology.

Echoing this idea, in The Rabble David Climenhaga writes:

Ironically, while most unions don't do enough to represent working people beyond their own membership, what little they do to fight for the powerless in society is why authoritarian neoconservatives like Harper have such a hate on for labour and other groups that speak out for traditional Canadian values.

So one worthwhile response to the effort by the Conservatives to smother unions in red tape is to fight harder for real progressive causes, not to mention never again signing a lousy two-tier contract that leaves young workers with the short end of the stick to preserve the past victories of older workers. No, an injury to one remains an injury to all, people!

Perhaps the final consideration should be given to those who "most tyrannically clap[...]' for the kind of repressive legislative agenda epitomized by Bill C-377. In a jurisdiction near you, you can probably look forward to more of this.