On The Importance Of Political Renewal

I'd like to share with you a comment made on a previous post dealing with the self-delusion the Conservative Party seems to be engaged in as they lurch toward 'renewal.'

AniO wrote:

The rehabilitation of the Conservative party is vital to our future, however. Sooner or hopefully later, the current government will become old, tired, arrogant and corrupt - the inevitable ravages of power, it would seem. At that point it is vital that we have an ethical and solid alternative to vote for. After the hostile takeover of the PCs, we didn't have and look what happened. How do we get them to thoroughly clean house and reform (pun intended) themselves, and return to their roots of a once-ethical, credible political party with the interests of Canada and Canadians at heart. Our longer-term future may depend on it.

Here was my response:

You make an excellent point here, AniO. A healthy democracy demands a healthy and functional opposition, a party to hold the government to account and serve as a government-in-waiting. Here in Ontario, for example, the Liberal government has been in power for far too long, and has become what you describe: arrogant and old. The most obvious sign of this is the fact that it is selling off 60% of Hydro, which means that they are surrendering 60% of an annual $750 billion in profits, all for a few billion dollars.

When I voted for them in the last provincial election, I knew it was time that they spent some time on the bench, but unfortunately, the PCP under Hudak was never a consideration by virtue of his manifest incompetence, and I could not support the NDP's Andrea Horwath because she triggered an unnecessary election in her venal quest for power.

Renewal is something that must come from within, something that follows a careful and motivated soul-searching, the capacity for which I believe the Conservatives currently lack. While they are no doubt paying close attention to the many notes of grace coming from the new Trudeau government, to emulate the style without the substance will merely continue the blind path the party has been on for so long.

They will have to do much better than that to once again be considered a government-in-waiting.

Some Surprising Findings

Whether it is due to what has been called The Francis Effect or the increasingly severe weather that so many parts of the world are experiencing, a recent study finds that more and more Americans are beginning to appreciate the threat posed by climate change. Additionally and rather surprisingly, even those who are disengaged from the issue or completely skeptical support the development of alternative, clean technologies:




Meanwhile, here at home, a majority of Canadians

favour imposing new taxes on fossil fuels such as gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas to reduce greenhouse gases and overwhelmingly endorse the growth of the renewable energy sector in Canada(93%), according to a new poll.

The support for a tax is strongest in BC (62%), females (60%) and young Canadians in the 18-29 age group(68%), and weakest among Ontarians(53%) and the 30 to 39 age group, the Nanos Research poll commissioned by University of Ottawa Positive Energy found.

It is long past due that we make a real commitment to mitigate the worst effects of climate change before it is too late for all of us.

A Sordid Story

While it is yet too early to tell how the new Trudeau government will handle the environmental and climate change file, early indications are promising. Minster Catherine McKenna has said that with regard to future pipeline proposals,

assessments will be “based on science” and ensure Canadians can participate in the hearings. During the campaign, the Liberals slammed the review procedures – put in place during Conservative rule – as inadequate and pledged that pipeline assessments would include upstream impacts of crude extraction.

Lord knows that the oil interests cannot be trusted to police themselves, as the sad and corrupt tale of Nigeria, Shell Oil, and the late Ken Saro-Wiwa amply demonstrate.

Saro-Wiwa, a passionate Nigerian environmental and human-rights activist, has been dead for 20 years, executed on trumped-up charges, the apparent victim of collusion between a corrupt military and Big Oil.

It was Shell that Mr. Saro-Wiwa was campaigning relentlessly against in 1995 when Nigeria’s military government arrested him. And it is Shell that continues to operate about 50 oil fields and 5,000 kilometres of pipelines in the Niger Delta today.

Although he died for his cause, that cause is yet unfulfilled:

The lands of his Ogoni people, in southeastern Nigeria, continue to be contaminated by oil, and thousands of people are still reported to be exposed to the pollution, despite repeated promises of a cleanup.

A report released this month by Amnesty International concludes that the giant oil multinational Shell has failed to clean up the pollution from its southern Nigerian pipelines and wells. Shell is the biggest international oil producer in the Niger Delta, which is the biggest oil-producing region in Africa – and one of the most polluted places on the planet.

And while Shell Oil has made its mea culpa over what transpired in the land of the Ogoni, the fact is it has done little to reverse the harm and environmental despoliation it has caused:

[A] 38-page Amnesty International report says it is Shell itself that is breaking its promises in the region. Amnesty’s researchers visited four oil-spill sites that Shell said it had cleaned up years ago. They found soil and water still blackened and contaminated by oil, even though people were living and farming nearby. “Anyone who visits these spill sites can see and smell for themselves how the pollution has spread across the land,” said a statement by Mark Dummett, an Amnesty business and human rights researcher.

One contractor, hired by Shell to help clean up a spill site, told Amnesty: “This is just a cover-up. If you just dig down a few metres, you find oil.”

It is an egregious corporate failure that has not gone unnoticed by Amnesty International:

“It is heartbreakingly tragic to see how 20 years after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa … we see very little has changed: the oil spills have not stopped, and Shell still has not cleaned up this huge environmental degradation,” said a statement by M.K. Ibrahim, the Amnesty director in Nigeria.

“In the 20 years since Saro-Wiwa was executed, thousands of villagers in the Niger Delta have still not been able to drink clean water, nor farm on their land, nor fish in their waters,” he said. “This oil pollution is wrecking lives.”

And government corruption, it would seem, continues, as reflected in the customs seizure of this:



The above, called the "battle bus," is a

full-sized steel bus, created by British-Nigerian artist Sokari Douglas Camp in 2006, [which] carries oil barrels on its roof and is emblazoned with one of Saro-Wiwa’s most stark and enduring phrases: “I accuse the oil companies of practising genocide against the Ogoni.”

Intended to inspire Nigerian youth to be vigilant and hold the government and oil companies to their promises of environmental remediation, the sculpture has instead

become a symbol of the ongoing censorship of communities in Nigeria and it has also made explicit the links between the violence and corruption and the influence the oil companies . . . have in the region.”

Back here in Canada our new government, unlike the old with its virtual blank-cheque mentality for all things resource-related, will indeed do well to keep in mind the true nature of the oil multinationals and legislate and regulate them accordingly.

Conservative Self-Delusion

These days I find I have little desire to think, let alone write, about the Harper regime. Despite the fact that we lived so long under its oppressive and toxic shadow, I prefer these days to think about future possibilities. However, the current 'introspection' the defeated party is undergoing merits some attention; it is a process that seems doomed to failure as revisionism about its sordid and dark record is rampant. Stoutly declaring that they got the 'big things' right, Conservative stalwarts seem doomed to a fruitless rebirth that will, at best, be cosmetic, at least until they are willing to confront some unpleasant truths, something I frankly doubt they are capable of.

In today's Star, Carol Gore offers them a framework for renewal that I doubt their hubris will allow them to entertain.

Since the Conservative were ousted on Oct. 19, former cabinet minister Jason Kenney has told anyone who will listen: “We got the big things right. We got the tone wrong.”

But the 47-year-old leadership aspirant is deluding himself if he thinks his party’s problems are only skin deep. The reason the Conservatives lost power is that Canadians no longer wanted a government obsessed with security, fiscal austerity and big oil. Harper’s relentless negativity only reinforced that.

Their 'sins were many; here are but a few of them:

Their Fiscal Record:

They spent the $13.8-billion surplus they inherited within two years, leaving Ottawa with no economic cushion when the 2008 recession hit.

On their watch, the national debt grew by $176.4 billion. Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of Canada’s accumulated debt was amassed since 2008.

Their Job-Creation Record:

Year after year, they brought down budgets that promised to increase employment and prosperity. When they took power in 2006, the unemployment rate stood at 6.4 per cent. When they lost power, it was 7 per cent.

Add to that the fact that many of the jobs are precarious and part-time, forcing more people into poverty.

Their Record On Political Accountability:

They shut off access to government documents, silenced public officials, denigrated or drove out parliamentary watchdogs, rolled dozens of legislative changes into book-length omnibus bills and refused to let opposition MPs examine their expenditures.

Their Record ON Advancing Canadian Values On The World Stage:

Jason Kenney was front and centre on many of these issues. He was the minister who banned niqabs at citizenship ceremonies; who opened the floodgates to a massive influx of foreign temporary workers; who insisted Canada had a great “skills gap” (based on a misreading of Kijiji’s jobs vacancy data); who boasted about defunding charities that criticized Israel; and who blasted a United Nations official for revealing that nearly 900,000 Canadians used food banks every month.

Carol Goar lists additional examples of how the Conservatives squandered their power during their reign, but I think you get the picture. It is one, I suspect, that will be forever beyond the grasp of a party that seems to prefer sweet lies to bitter truths, thereby likely dooming them to wander the political wilderness well into the future.

Catherine McKenna In Paris

The international community is “really excited” to see Canada back at the table for climate change talks in Paris, Canada’s new environment and climate change minister said Tuesday.



May concrete and substantial action follow.

Redefining Government

Those of us who followed closely the dark years of the Harper regime are well-aware of its ethos: government is an impediment and an intrusive force, foisting itself upon people who would be far better off left alone. The tax-cut policies of the regime, along with the creation of TFSAs, the underfunding of programs, the gutting of environmental regulation and oversight, etc. were all ample testaments to that philosophy.

The thick carapace of my cynicism led me to fear that far too many of my fellow citizens had accepted the message of the primacy of the individual over the collective. While a humbling experience, I am so glad that I was so wrong, a fact amply attested to by the results of our recent election.

Hope and goodness are alive and well.

In a recent column, Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank makes some very interesting observations about what led Justin Trudeau's Liberals to such a definitive victory, and the word 'good' figures prominently in his assessment. He observes that the word was used during the campaign by both Harper and Mulcair as being synonymous with 'skilled', as in 'good leadership.' Trudeau, however, used it differently:

...when he used “good” as in “good government,” Trudeau often wasn’t speaking merely of skilfulness or efficiency.

He meant morally good. Virtuous. Right.

It was a little shocking to hear. It echoed the language of an earlier generation before the relentless Conservative assault on the size, scope and nature of democratic government impoverished our speech and slackened our hopes.

The kind of fatalism implicit in the Harper message, that we are controlled by global forces and markets that compel us to be either lean and mean or 'die', was challenged by Trudeau:

Trudeau called out both this fatalism and the pessimism about voters that underlay the Conservatives’ personal attacks and their scaremongering against new Canadians.

His promise to run a modest budget deficit for three years to restore public works and put more Canadians to work was above all a pledge to think differently and more confidently. Challenging current ideology, he said we could alter our circumstances.

Second, he insisted that inequality of wealth and opportunity was a moral problem as well as a technical one. The promise to raise taxes on the rich and reduce those on the middle class gave testament to his seriousness.

Raising taxes and running deficits have been considered political third rails. Despite the risks, Trudeau grabbed on hard.

Canadians responded by strongly endorsing a philosophy that says government can once more be a force for good, a notion constantly challenged and undermined by the neoliberal agenda:

And it was this enthusiasm for “good government” that decided the election.

It was a vote for a return of moral passion and a sense of purpose when we address our economy, our environment, the newcomers to our nation and our Aboriginal Peoples.

This kind of political talk was once much more common in Canada. Perhaps it will again be possible after this very broad and deep victory to engage Canadians in pursuing what another Liberal prime minister called the Just Society.

The message to all Canadians is that they are not alone in their struggles, surely one that can bring some solace to many. Let us now hope that message will find full expression in policies implemented with vigour and deep conviction.

The Joy And Pride Continue

Although there will undoubtedly be some serious disappointments in the months and years ahead, the joy and the pride that Canadians feel over the election of the Trudeau government is very strong indeed. Treat yourself on this fine Sunday morning by checking out the full array of letters from Star writers as they share their hopes for the future. Following are but three of them.

Canada reborn! My heart swells with joy and pride as Canada demonstrates democracy in action and Prime Minister Trudeau and his ministers are sworn in before the public openly and on national television. Is there another nation in the world where citizens have voted freely and elected such superbly qualified men and women who are immediately shown to all the citizens?

We are so blessed with freedom and the opportunity to have a Prime Minister who recognizes true Canadian values and will restore our status at the United Nations and throughout the world.

After the years, terrifying to me, of the Harper regime diminishing openness, eliminating discussion in Parliament, imposing cruel laws in areas of justice, immigration and engaging in undeclared war, the sun is streaming in and we are returning to the Canada that I have loved for more than 80 years.

As one born in Canada, I am thrilled to see the bright future for my wonderful country.

Shirley Bush, Toronto

For the Prime Minister-designate of our great nation to be ushered into the swearing-in ceremony, borne aloft on the haunting timbre of Cree tradition, and for him to emerge as our new Prime Minister, is a potent acknowledgement of the myriad peoples who made, and continue to advance, our nation.

Mr. Trudeau represents a rebirth of ideals, renewal of Canada as inspiration for the rest of the world. Through this territory, global citizens can, indeed, envision a hoped-for country, in which disparate peoples and diverse views can be incorporated into nationhood.

Through Canadian influence, the international community can aspire to parity, can pursue equity, can insist on right. Canada has always been this nation. May we never forget this moment, never abandon this movement, always seek the better angels of our nature.

Caril Phang, Toronto

The swearing in of the new government was a celebration of great joy and pointed symbolism that heralded a new era of inclusivity and civility in Canada. How fitting that – flanked by cabinet ministers proudly wearing Liberal red – our new Prime Minister chose to wear a tie coloured Conservative blue.

What a thoughtful way to demonstrate his belief that he was elected to serve all Canadians, not just those who chose to support him at the ballot box. His “sunny ways” are such a profound and welcome relief – we are so ready for them.

Gillian Bartlett, Toronto