Why Is Harper So Fervent About Free Trade?

Much has been written about the Harper government's obsession with concluding a variety of trade deals; probably one of the most worrisome in terms of its implications for Canadian sovereignty, jobs, environmental protection and culture is the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that Canada is pursuing with the European Union, about which I have written previously.

As reported in the news today, Harper has just addressed both British Houses of Parliament advocating for it:

“It remains our hope that we will soon achieve a comprehensive economic and trade agreement with the European Union, Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the United States,” Harper said.

“For Canada, and for Great Britain as a member of the EU, this will be a historic step — a monumental one, in fact: A joint Canada-EU study has shown that a commercial agreement of this type would increase two-way trade by twenty per cent.

But like so much else about the cabal that currently rules us, I believe there is an underlying truth about Harper's fervour that his rhetoric seeks to obscure. The fact is that such deals, while they will open up new markets for business and thus help to fatten corporate coffers, will also make it easier for those very same corporations to continue to ignore their responsibility to create good-paying jobs in Canada.

Consider an obvious truth. In the old days, there was an understanding, a 'social contract' if you will, that good profits and good jobs went hand-in-hand. Pay your workers a good wage and they will buy your products. That premise, many would argue, has steadily eroded with freer trade, with job losses outpacing job creation, and a growing gap in inequality within Canada.

It is no secret that the middle class is dwindling, the same middle class that used to buy the bulk of goods and services produced domestically. Now, however, with outsourcing and the steady erosion of domestic manufacturing, that domestic market has shrunk. But it doesn't have to be that way.

In today's Star, Jonathan Power has a piece about the rapid growth of prosperity in the developing world. One of the most important observations he makes is the following:

The most important engine of growth of the developing South is their own domestic markets. The middle class is growing at a pace like never before. Within a dozen years the South will account for three-fifths of the 1 billion households earning more than $20,000 a year. Between 1990 and today, the South’s share of the world’s middle-class population expanded from 28 per cent to 58 per cent. Even in the poorer parts of India or Africa, mobile phones, motorbikes and contraceptives are fairly common. Phone sales are up to a cumulative 600 million in Africa — and climbing fast.

So, of course, these emerging markets are much coveted by the corporate agenda, further relieving them of their former 'burden' of job creation in order to expand their profits. And while the corporate press will continue to promote the propaganda of freer trade prosperity, we would all be wise to bear in mind that the prosperity it talks about is not to be found domestically, as they would have us believe, but rather, offshore.

A Suggestion For Kellie Leitch - UPDATE

She may be a lost cause, but I have a suggestion for Harper enthusiast/Simcoe Grey Conservative M.P. Kellie Leitch, about whom I have written previously on this blog. The former medical doctor turned defender of the indefensible, who is one of a series of rotating trained seals spokespeople for her dear leader, would be well-advised to read this letter about speaking truth to power from Lee Gold of Toronto:


Re: MP Brent Rathgeber leaves Conservative fold over lack of accountability, June 7

I thought we would never see the day when a member of the so-called Conservative party spoke truth to power. Finally, someone within Harper's own party could no longer stand the status quo.

Finally, someone within this big, diverse country objected to the dictatorship of the man at the top. A prime minister's job is to represent Canadians, all of them, and not just himself and narrow business interests.

To do that you have to listen and let people speak. But Stephen Harper does not. Diverse voices are not heard even within his own caucus. The only voices he hears are holdovers from the ruinous Mike Harris years in Ontario. Everyone else is silenced.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Brent Rathgeber for finally naming what the rest of us have seen so clearly. But, of course, it gets coverage and has more credibility when it comes from within.

Let's hope the other “trained seals” step out of their comfort zones, stick up for their country and desert the current dictatorship.



UPDATE: I see Ms. Leitch continued to show her party fealty today, as she 'addressed' concerns levelled by Mark Eyking, the Liberal MP for Sydney-Victoria, that the federal government is denying the E.I. appeals of fishermen in Bay St. Lawrence, Nova Scotia.

Why Mandela Is So Important

Although I have only made reference to him three other times in this blog, Nelson Mandela is a person who I revere like no other. And of course, I am hardly alone in that sentiment, attested to by the fact that millions of people, not only in South Africa but around the world, are in a state of anxiety over his latest hospitalization.

But in frail health at the age of 94, hospitalized yet again with a stubborn lung affection many attribute to his 27 years of incarceration, most of it on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, where he contracted tuberculosis, it is unlikely that Mandela will be with us much longer.

Why is the world so reluctant to let him go? I can think of no other world figure who will be as mourned upon death as Mandela will be, and for some fairly obvious but crucially important reasons:

He is, without question, a man of outstanding character and deep morality. Not only did he show the courage of his convictions against apartheid by remaining in prison for 27 years (he could have been freed much earlier had he renounced the African National Congress), but upon release, when ordinary people would have been consumed by bitterness over that suffering and the lost years, he went on to become the President of South Africa and led the way to reconciliation with, not revenge against those who had treated him and his fellow blacks so abominably over the decades.

In doing so, Mandela held up a mirror to all of us, showing the potential that resides deep within and discoverable if we are willing to do the work that that entails. He taught us, political and corporate culture notwithstanding, that we are much more than mere fodder for that thing called the economy, that we have an innate dignity and a worth current propaganda would gladly deny.

Mandela showed us that we do not have to defined and circumscribed by our circumstances, that transcendence is possible.

I suspect that current rulers, both domestic and international, would like us to ignore those glimpses of our better angels that Mandela's life has afforded us. Those glimpses might lead to other things, like an expectation that those we elect put the people and their dignity before the exultation of corporate forces. They might demand that government not move in lockstep with those forces who see, not human dignity but only human fodder, mere fungible commodities to feed the machine in its quest for never-ending growth.

People might also begin to expect character from those they elect, not the subterfuge, not the opacity, not the arrant greed which have been mainstays of so many so-called democracies, not the least of all our own in Canada. They might demand real integrity, not a manufactured image, to define those who ask for our trust. They might demand real accountability.

I suspect our rulers would like us to ignore the lessons in life and humanity that Mandela's example has given us. Better for them if we continue upon our frightened and frequently insensate path, either disciplined by the ever-present fear of job loss or anodized by the latest in reality programming that invites us to mock our fellow human beings, the latest fashions, the latest technological marvels.

We are, of course, free as in the many opportunities that life presents to either ponder and learn from or ignore the truths that the long existence of Nelson Mandela has provided us with.


I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Nelson Mandela

John Spong Talks About Religion

I have been doing a great deal of reading about religion over the past few years, and although I rarely allude to it in my blog, I have a deep conviction that our existence here is but a small part of a much greater reality. Writers like John Spong, Marcus Borg, and Harvey Cox have helped me to grow out of what I consider the childish and superstitious notions of religion that the professional atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens) find so easy to mock and dismiss into a more nuanced appreciation of what we call God.

Here is a brief clip of John Spong articulating some of that perspective:

And In Case You think Canada's Fingers Are Clean...

Last evening I wrote a brief post about Edward Snowden, the brave young man who has made public the fact of extensive domestic surveillance in the United States that all its citizens should be concerned about, yes, even those whose reflexive response to such outrages is, "If you've got nothing to hide, why be concerned?"

This morning comes news that our Indefensible Defence Minister, Peter MacKay, approved a secret electronic eavesdropping program that scours global telephone records and Internet data trails – including those of Canadians – for patterns of suspicious activity.

As reported in The Globe and Mail, the program, which originated in secret under the Paul Martin Liberals in 2005, was reinstituted in November of 2011 following a lengthy hiatus after a federal watchdog agency raised concerns that it could lead to warrantless surveillance of Canadians.

I am sure that, just as Barack Obama is defending the American violations of basic civil liberties as necessary to fight terror, our government, should it rouse itself to address the issue here, will offer similar meaningless reassurances. And if that doesn't quell the voices of dissent which I hope loudly arise, it can always resort to the things it does best: vilification, denigration and calumny heaped upon those who dare think for themselves.

Perhaps, as the Sixth Estate suggested in a post last week, people don't care anymore about privacy loss. But maybe, just maybe, enough will see the implications of such widespread spying for what it is: a wholly unjustifiable and massive abuse of our essential rights as citizens.

Another Portrait In Integrity

While Edward Snoden will undoubtedly be portrayed in the days and weeks to come as a traitor to his country, his courageous revelation of the domestic spying that the NSA is engaged in earns my admiration. Not only has he demonstrated his personal courage and convictions by his willingness to be publicly named, he has also shown for those who have any lingering doubts that, despite his high-flown rhetoric, U.S. President Barack Obama is a complete fraud in portraying himself as a moderating agent of change:



Says Snowden:

"I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

For Your Sunday Reading Pleasure ...

Whether or not you live in Ontario, you may find Martin Regg Cohn's column of some interest in illustrating the fractured and uneven relationship that Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has with the provinces. Writing in the voice of Ontario residents responding to Flaherty's finger-wagging over the MetroLinx proposal to raise the HST one point to help meet the GTHA's transit needs, he observes,

Your latest letter takes federal-provincial pugilism to a new level of aggression — lecturing and hectoring [Ont. Finance Minister] Sousa by telling him what he already knows: That he cannot create a regional GTA sales tax, a tax he has neither imposed nor proposed.

He goes on to point out Flaherty's hypocisy as well as his intransigence in meeting with his provincial counterpart to discuss federal involvement in addressing transit funding, once more underscoring the rather limited 'skill-set' (divide and conquer seems to be their default position) the Conservative Party of Canada brings to the table in federal-provincial relations.

All in all, a rather good piece of writing to enjoy on a Sunday morning.