Canada’s third world nations

Remember when Katrina hit, and the underbelly of American neglect was exposed to the world? The fact that millions of people in the richest, most prosperous country in the world were living in squalor was the subject of much consternation and concerned tongue-clucking. The fact that the vast majority of people affected (and subsequently neglected) by the disaster were from a racial group that has historically been abused and continues to be patronized or ignored by the powers that be also didn’t escape notice. We here in Canada were comfortable, perched atop our high horse, thanking the heavens above that we were simply better than that:

Conditions in one Haida Gwaii hospital are so bad that chemotherapy drugs are mixed in an outdoor wooden shed and the morgue is housed in a temporary trailer. Not only that, but the regional hospital district says water needs to cleared from the main building’s roof by hand and physiotherapy sessions need to be conducted in an old greenhouse.

The problems at the 61-year-old Queen Charlotte General Hospital and Health Centre were detailed to the NDP in a letter from the North West Regional Hospital District, sent in mid May. On Tuesday, the NDP raised the issue in the legislature, pressing the government on why it has let the facility deteriorate to such a low level.

I am not a popular entertainer, and I don’t have an internationally-televised live broadcast to exploit. All I have is this humble blog and my microcelebrity (I got Pharyngulated yesterday! Sniny!) to make this statement: Christy Clark doesn’t care about Native people. Neither does Gordon Campbell, under whose watch all of this happened, but he’s gone. For those readers outside of British Columbia, I should probably explain. Christy Clark is the current premier (akin to a governor in the United States, or a First Minister in many other parliamentary democracies) of British Columbia, having recently been elected after the resignation of the disgraced Gordon Campbell.

Health care is administrated by the provinces, meaning that the premier is responsible for ensuring the funding and oversight of health care facilities meets a provincial standard. It is up to her (or him) to ensure that resources are properly allocated, which means that the extremely sub-standard conditions of the Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlote Islands) are her responsibility.

If this were an isolated incident in which political powers neglect First Nations communities, then I might be content to shrug it off. Shit happens, and sometimes things get missed. But for some reason (more on my suspicions on what that reason is later) it is always Native communities getting a shipment of body bags instead of health supplies; it’s always Native people being the subject of NIMBY protest, and because they receive taxpayer support, everyone with an internet connection thinks that they’re qualified to offer an opinion on the issue, which usually contains at least one racial slur (prefaced by “I’m not racist, but…”) and an admonishment to “get off their asses”.

I’ve spoken before about the need for effective political opposition, and this is exactly what I was talking about. Instead of running around trying to score cheap political points and play games with the debt ceiling, the provincial NDP has found an area where the government is slacking, and has brought it to the forefront. My cap is tipped to them, at least on this issue (although I am no fan of the provincial NDP generally). However, this issue is not simply relegated to the provinces:

Announcing the release of the joint work plan, INAC Minister John Duncan noted that “Canada and First Nations have an enduring historic relationship based on mutual respect, friendship and support.” However, the 2011 June Status Report of the Auditor General of Canada (AG Report) tells a different story. Chapter 4 of the report highlights the ongoing appalling conditions on First Nation reserves, the stark contrast between conditions of First Nation reserves and other communities and the federal government’s repeated failures to address adequately the deplorable conditions on First Nation reserves.

The report itself is pretty chilling, detailing the several ways in which the federal government has failed to take meaningful action on issues of basic necessities to First Nations communities across the country. Their approach is disorganized, slipshod, and shows a complete lack of commitment to actually ameliorating the problems faced by First Nations people. And therein lies the problem: it is convenient and easy to blame Native people for their lack of success, but when the support they receive from the federal government is so woefully inadequate (compared, say, to the amount that municipalities receive), one cannot simply chalk these problems up to being lazy. We’re talking about thousands of people who don’t have clean drinking water. This isn’t asking for “a handout” or special favours – this is ensuring that our citizens have what we would describe as the bare necessities to live.

So, if bringing the conditions of Haida Gwaii to provincial attention represents a successful official opposition, then the complete lack of progress and the widening disparity between Native Canadians and everyone else represents an appalling dereliction of duty on the part of the Liberal Party of Canada (with whom I am aligned) and the New Democrats. Government has a duty to look after the interests of its people, and the opposition has the responsibility to take the government to task when it fails in that duty. This failure is just as appalling as what happened in New Orleans – more so, because it’s happened over the stretch of several years.

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, describes the problem in much the same words I would use:

This isn’t about assigning blame or pointing fingers – it’s about accepting responsibility and saying “my brothers and sisters need my help.” And while Mr. Atleo wasn’t at liberty to say it, I will put into words the general feeling I got from his discussion: First Nations people are treated like the ‘niggers’ of Canada, and we have work to do if we care enough to change that.

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Democracy – still happening

It’s easy to lose sight of what’s happening in the world, especially when new stories are flooding the news outlets (OMG did you hear that SCHWARZENEGGER had a secret KID? And apparently John Edwards is still relevant?). Something important is still happening, and it’s spreading to places that one might not suspect:

For a man who has lost three disputed presidential elections to his archrival, Kizza Besigye is enjoying the kind of political resurrection that can only happen by accident. The leader of the Forum for Democratic Change has become the face of an unprecedented uprising in Uganda. It began with a “Walk to Work” demonstration in mid-April, a small, unassuming protest against soaring food and fuel costs. Had Besigye and his small group been allowed their demonstration, it probably would have passed without much fuss or attention. But instead they were met with riot police with billy clubs, tear gas and rubber bullets. It was the kind of security force overkill that sends a clear message: The government of President Yoweri Museveni is terrified of dissent and is willing to quash it by whatever means necessary.

I’ve never been in a position of political power, so I can only extrapolate from what I know of history, what I’ve seen in the news and in various fiction and non-fictional media. There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to dissent that happens in the mind of a dictator, whereby whenever someone speaks up against you the immediate reaction is to try and prevent that person from speaking. This seems to be particularly likely when the dictator is surrounded by a group of sycophants.

What’s happening in Uganda, aside from the criminalization of gay people, is that the political infrastructure is starting to crumble under President-For-Life Museveni. Because of his paranoia and sense of slipping control, he has completely overreacted to a small, non-violent protest and in doing so, has elevated his chief political rival.

This overreaction likely owes a debt to a number of factors:

  • The massive uprisings happening across north Africa and the Arab peninsula were triggered, initially, by high food prices and cost-of-living increases under a tyrannical government;
  •  The recent return of Besigye to Uganda after an extended period of exile means that Museveni has a powerful rival now within his own borders, albeit under house arrest;
  • The high level of scrutiny that Uganda has “enjoyed” recently due to its rampantly anti-gay legislation has brought extremely unwelcome attention to a country that, before then, hadn’t really been famous since Idi Amin was in power;
  • The ordinary types of despotic paranoia I mentioned earlier in this post.

So here’s an important lesson for those of you hoping to use this blog as a sort of Machiavellian how-to guide to be a successful political ruler: avoid overreacting. If your political rivals are gaining popularity, figure out what is fueling that rise and then find a way to circumvent it (preferably by fixing the problem your rivals are promising to solve). And, whatever you do, don’t piss off the foreign media:

At the same time, the police were stopping the media from getting in to see Besigye. The roads were blocked with spiked belts. When we tried a back route, our unassuming SUV was first followed then stopped by police. Last week, Uganda’s minister of information called the international media “enemies of the state.” Journalists have been detained, their equipment seized and a few local reporters have been beaten by police as they tried to cover the demonstrations.

There’s no quicker way to raise the “tyrant” flag than to crack down on free speech rights. If you want your rule to extend indefinitely, be open, be honest, and be transparent (or at least appear so). Respect human rights, respect private business (but regulate it when necessary), treat your political opponents respectfully, and if you have to silence dissent, do it swiftly and away from the eyes of the cameras.

Hmm… maybe I shouldn’t have said that last part.

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Health care ‘rationing’: Canada vs. the USA

Once again, and I hope you will forgive the digression, I’d like to talk a bit about something that has absolutely nothing at all to do with the usual topics of this blog. This topic is one that is more in line with my professional interests rather than my personal ones (if those two can be really thought of as distinct – I chose this career for a reason). As I may have intimated previously, I am a passionate believer in public provision of health care services.

While private-sector advocates often point to the increased competition and innovation possible in a for-profit delivery model, they neglect two important factors in their argument. First, health care is consumed almost entirely at a point of crisis. People walking into a hospital are not really in a position to “shop around” – they have an acute need and are therefore far less capable of making a dispassionate consumer choice. Second, the only way a for-profit health care delivery system could work is if it is either stringently regulated (a position that is wildly unpopular) or if we just stopped caring if sick people get gouged by unscrupulous corporate interests. Private delivery has the interest of maximizing profit, and while increasing efficiency is one avenue of doing that, companies have figured out that extra billing and price fixing are much more lucrative ways of turning a profit.

The debate over health care reform in the United States has introduced a new word into the public lexicon: rationing. Basically, rationing refers to the belief that under a publicly-administrated health care system, only a certain level of care would be available, and if you want more than that, it’s tough shit. It is from this idea (and an intentional misrepresentation of ‘end-of-life counselling’) that the now-infamous “death panels” became a talking point. People became outraged at the idea that the government would step in and say “grandma can’t have that hip replacement, because it’s too expensive”.

First, here’s what’s true about that argument: a publicly-provided health care system will introduce rationing. There will be medications, technologies and procedures that people will not have access to because of lines drawn by government about what is acceptable care and what is excessive.

However, there is already rationing in the American system, and it happens all the time. Any health care system will require rationing – the demand for health care services will always exceed the amount of available resources. Our concepts of disease and health are plastic, and shift as new innovations are made and the understanding of the human body increases. In order to understand health care we must first understand that there is no method of delivery that is free of material constraints – the question then becomes “how can we provide the greatest level of health care with what we’ve got?”

Canada’s approach, and indeed that approach of most industrialized nations that have publicly-funded health care delivery, has been twofold. First, a list of services is drawn up. The Canada Health Act allows for all “medically necessary” services – a definition that is intentionally vague. This imprecise wording means that the number of services that are provided can expand and contract based on need and resource availability. If you have a specific medical need that is not listed – for example, you have a rare disease or want a type of drug that is not covered – then you will have to pay out-of-pocket for it. Obviously, this is non-ideal, but by delineating it this way and drawing up the list in such a way that covers the majority of health care needs, the Canadian system can provide some form of care to everyone, even if it is not the absolute best.

Second, the Canadian system rations in terms of accessibility – the notorious waiting lists. Given a finite level of capital resources (and I am putting human resources on this list as well), demand may fluctuate in such a way as to exceed the availability of the system to deliver services immediately to all people. For example – if you have the ability to do 10 bone scans a day and 11 people walk in the door, 1 person is going to have to wait until tomorrow (when, hopefully, only 9 people will come in). These waiting lists can be managed with varying levels of efficacy, and we’ve gained some ground in recent years. The fact remains, however, that people cannot necessarily get immediate care for all health conditions (although acute and emergency needs are always prioritized and get attention reasonably fast).

Rationing in the United States is far less publicized, and far more dangerous. Given the same situation (finite resources, high demand), the USA’s system handles rationing by artificially reducing demand by curtailing access. Whereas there may be the same proportion of people requiring care, the United States simply does not provide care to certain people. By knocking people off the rolls (prohibitively high cost of insurance, de-insuring people for a variety of reasons, making coverage contingent on employment), the system ensures that everyone who can get care gets it quickly and to the extent they want/can pay for.

The reason why I call this type of non-explicit rationing more dangerous than the Canadian solution is because the consequences are far more dire for individuals and the economy. For individuals, because losing health coverage (or never having it in the first place) means that people are unable to get care for anything but emergency conditions. For the economy, because those emergency conditions are far more expensive to treat than they are to prevent, and because medical bankruptcy has a ripple effect through the economy at large. This is to say nothing of the reality that public provision is far cheaper than for-profit schemes (despite what free-market advocates would have us believe).

Conclusion

While “rationing” sounds like a scary word, people need to realize it is the inevitable result of a level of demand that is always greater than available supply. Rationing is no more rare in a for-profit system than it is in a publicly-funded one; the only difference is the method of rationing we choose to use. The Canadian solution is to provide services up to a certain level with some barriers to access (waiting times). The American solution is to curtail the number of people who are able to access any level of care. These solutions have different effects, and for reasons of both utilitarian ethics and personal/economic outcomes, the Canadian approach is superior.

Tyranny: American style

Emergency powers are a funny thing. Granting extraordinary leeway to a governmental authority is crucial when lines of communication have the potential to get crossed, and swift action is needed to address an urgent situation. However, the tricky part comes when it’s time for that governmental authority to give up those emergency powers. When the ’emergency’ is vaguely defined, it becomes easy to justify extending the powers indefinitely. The ability to violate those pesky civil liberties becomes far too tempting, especially if there’s no organized opposition to point out how egregious your abuse of the law is.

Guess who’s finding this out?

US President Barack Obama has signed a four-year extension of the Patriot Act from Paris, extending post-September 11 powers allowing the government to secretly search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of alleged terrorists or their supporters. Hours after the US Senate and House of Representatives passed the law, through votes taken in rapid succession, and just minutes before the law was to expire at midnight in Washington DC, Obama sent in a digital signature, finalising the renewal on Thursday. During congressional debates, legislators rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties would not be abused [emphasis mine].

At the risk of sounding like a member of the tin foil hat brigade, people need to realize that without an effective opposition, the government is not working for your best interests. This is simply the nature of all government; once it begins considering itself the embodiment of the state – rather than the legislative interests of the people of the state – it will become self-serving at the expense of the rights of its citizens. Despite all the hopes pinned on this supposedly liberal president, he has shown – with one stroke of the autopen – to be no less autocratic than his predecessor.

I have supported Barack Obama from the beginning of his first campaign to the office of POTUSA. He spoke a language I agreed with – people becoming more involved with their government and increasing transparency. However, like all leaders, once he gained office he had to begin making compromises. I stuck through him with his ludicrous mishandling of the health care debate and various budgetary fights (his insistence of pretending that Republicans are reasonable people with principled objections rather than seeing them for the howling mob of reactionary plutocrats they are irked me to no end). I cheered when he overturned the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulations, and commiserated when he had to sign the renewal of the Bush tax cuts.

However, by signing the Patriot Act back into law rather than simply letting it expire, and by increasing America’s military presence abroad, he has shown himself to be just as unprincipled and prone to corruption as his opening act.

Most chilling about this story?

Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul, who saw the act’s terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government’s ability to monitor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23.

Any story where Rand Paul is the good guy is one that makes my head spin. The same Rand Paul that thinks that businesses should have the right to discriminate against people based on sex, gender, race… basically whatever they don’t like. This is the guy I have to cheer for standing up for his principles. It’s a sad day.

This is what happens when you don’t have a serious opposition – corruption takes root unabated. The Republicans are too busy trying to torpedo the entire United States economy, by demanding ridiculous service cuts by holding a metaphorical gun to the head of the country’s credit rating, to organize a legitimate force that can criticize acutal government overreach. Although, considering how they explode government interference (while all the while trumpeting for “small government”) when they have power, maybe it’s no surprise that they support unchecked wire taps and surveillance of people who are suspected of crimes in the absence of real evidence.

The lunatics are running the asylum, and the people who were hired as orderlies are too busy trying to steal meds from the supply closet to bother trying to restore order.

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Today’s word boner…

Is brought to you by guitar legend Carlos Santana:

“This law is not correct. It’s a cruel law, actually, This is about fear. Stop shucking and jiving. People are afraid we’re going to steal your job. No we aren’t. You’re not going to change sheets and clean toilets. I would invite all Latin people to do nothing for about two weeks so you can see who really, really is running the economy. Who cleans the sheets? Who cleans the toilets? Who babysits? I am here to give voice to the invisible.”

It’s not so much what he said, it’s more where he said it – at an Atlanta Braves baseball game commemorating the civil rights movement. In front of a crowd of thousands, Mr. Santana had the courage and poise to call out not only Major League Baseball, but the fans sitting in the bleachers, for turning a blind eye toward racism happening right now and choosing instead to pat themselves on the back for how tolerant they’ve been.

He had more:

“Most people at this point they are either afraid to really say what needs to be said, this is the United States the land of the free. If people want the immigration law to keep passing in every state then everybody should get out and just leave the American Indians here. This is about Civil Rights.”

He then proceeded to shred the guitar so hard that all the women in the audience became pregnant [citation needed].

While I don’t usually care about the political positions of celebrities, I am impressed with what it takes to stand up in front of thousands of people and point out their complicit hypocrisy. It helps that he’s right, too.

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Tough on crime

One does not have to plumb the depths of political rhetoric very far to expose the unbelievable hypocrisy and outright falsehood lying just beneath the varnished surface of its truisms. The right to publicly-administered health care is not slavery. Republicans are not better on the economy. The Harper Government™ is not tough on crime:

The Supreme Court of the Canada will hear arguments this week that will likely determine the future of Vancouver’s supervised injection site, known as Insite. The court will have to decide whether Insite is a health-care facility under the jurisdiction of the B.C. government, and whether closing it violates the rights of impoverished drug addicts.

Supporters, including the province, say a body of peer-reviewed studies has proven Insite prevents overdose deaths, reduces the spread of HIV and hepatitis, and curbs crime and open drug use. But the federal government rejects that evidence, arguing the facility fosters addiction and runs counter to its tough-on-crime agenda.

Those of you not familiar with Vancouver’s safe injection site should read Ethan Clow’s excellent analysis of the issue. I will do my best to summarize. As we learned from the United States in the 1920s (and from our own failed national experiment), prohibition is a really stupid way of trying to stop people from doing something. There are generally two ways of preventing an unwanted behaviour – enforcement and outreach. Prohibition puts the emphasis firmly into the first camp by creating stiff penalties for engaging in the unwanted behaviour. With respect to drugs, this means punishing those that use and sell drugs.

One of the biggest looming issues facing Canadians with the Republican North majority is the introduction of the omnibus crime bill. Basically, this bill calls for money to be funneled into the prison system, including the construction of new incarceration facilities. Of course, this comes at a time when crime rates are in fact dropping, but the RNP has a solution for that too – make more things crimes! Mandatory minimum sentencing is one tool in the arsenal of a prohibitive government – take legal leeway out of the hands of judges and force standard jail terms regardless of the severity of the crime.

The problem, as anyone with even the slightest insight into human behaviour and psychology will be able to tell you, is that people are generally going to do whatever they want if they don’t think they’ll get caught. When it comes to drugs (especially drugs like marijuana with negligible personal risk due to use), people will always want to get high, and unless you have cops on every street corner and outside every window, people will find a way to do just that. While drug use may be a bad thing (I think the issue is more nuanced than that, but let’s just grant the assertion for a moment), if your goal is to reduce drug use, your policies should be targeted at doing just that.

If you don’t think that drug use per se is bad, but rather the consequences of drug use (addiction, self-harm, overdose, loss of control) are bad, then you would likely favour an approach known as “harm reduction”. Basically, the idea is to find a way to allow people to do what they want but to minimize the negative repercussions. For example, alcohol is regulated in such a way as to minimize the damage – only licensed facilities may dispense it and staff must be trained to recognize intoxication; only people of a certain age may purchase it; purity of ingredients is inspected by the government – people still drink, but in a way that is much safer than it used to be before those regulations were in place.

In the case of Insite, the negative health consequences of intravenous drug use are mitigated by providing clean needles (that are not infected with HIV) and a safe place to get high. Needles are disposed of safely (rather than in the streets, where any number of things can and do happen to them), and overdoses are managed by professionals. It is certainly not ideal – ideal would be to have zero drug users – but it does save lives, reduce infection rates, and actually saves the city a lot of money. It is the kind of local control for a local problem that small-government conservatives and libertarians should applaud.

Not so the Republicans though. They claim to be “tough on crime”, but what they actually are is litigious on crime. They endorse laws that expand the role of the federal government to interfere in municipal matters and take discretion out of the hands of judges and place it in the (completely incapable) hands of elected officials. This is the kind of behaviour, of course, that Conservatives (note the capitalization) constantly accuse Liberals of; however, it’s only wrong when it’s something Conservatives don’t like. When it’s for their own cause, there is always some bullshit rationalization.

I have a friend who is a prison guard (actually I have a few, but I am talking about this one in particular) who was overjoyed over the RPN majority election. His rationale was that there would finally be attention paid to the state of the prison system, and no more coddling of criminals. Far be it from me to question his expertise in terms of what the inside of a prison looks like – he’s in one every day and I haven’t even visited. However, I think his assessment is short-sighted. The omnibus crime bill creates more criminals, it does not reduce crime. If anything, it statistically increases crime (convenient, when you have all these new prisons to fill) by creating new criminals. It does not reduce the harms caused by criminal behaviour, nor does it do anything to reduce the true underlying causes of criminal behaviour (income disparity, lack of opportunity/education, living conditions).

Both the political left and right undoubtedly want to reduce the incidence of crime. It is in nobody’s best interest for there to be more crime. However, one side of the political debate has chosen a method that is proven not to work, and does so in the name of being “tough on crime”. Nothing could be further from the truth, and we are all about to learn this first-hand.

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Tidying up a landfill

Imagine for a moment that your house is built on a garbage dump. Your home constantly reeks of not only the discarded foodstuffs and general refuse of our disposable society, but of the general human neglect that accompanies those places we prefer not to think about. All around you is the funk of abandonment, to the point that it permeates your pores.

In other words, you stink.

Now, imagine someone from outside your home notices your living conditions and clucks disapprovingly. You are not invited to social engagements, and are generally ostracized from polite company. Everywhere you go people turn up their noses and avoid you. Noticing this, you say “I know what the problem is! This garbage dump I live in is untidy!” So you pile all of the rotting compost into an organized heap, rake the dirty diapers into a mound, and arrange the biohazardous waste in an aesthetically-pleasing way that really showcases your savvy as a decorator and landscaper. “There,” you say “that should take care of the problem!”

National Front of France bans skinheads

The new leader of France’s National Front, Marine Le Pen, has barred skinheads from the far right’s annual May Day march in Paris. She confirmed for French radio she was banning “trouble-makers” from the first march to be held since she took over from her father Jean-Marie in January. “They draw cameras like flies and naturally we would protect ourselves from such provocations,” she said.

Marine Le Pen has decided that the real problem with her ultra-right wing racial supremacist party is that there’s just too many skinheads around! They’re making all of the bigots in suits look bad! The depressing part of this story is, of course, that her plan appears to be working. As though people don’t really mind racism so much as they don’t like being associated with the ugly parts of it. Your heart almost goes out to those poor bastards – too racist for the ultra right-wing of the political spectrum, and now too ugly to even be seen.

But then I remember that given the chance they’d kick my teeth in and leave me on the side of the road for dead, so my sympathy doesn’t really extend that far.

Orange Country Republicans censures member

A California Republican group censured one of its own Thursday, saying her words and actions since sending an e-mail last month depicting President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee have been potentially offensive, damaging and insincere. Capping a meeting Thursday, the Orange County Republican Party’s executive committee voted 12-2 Thursday to issue an ethics censure against Marilyn Davenport.

Do you want to know how you can tell that you’ve gone way over the line? Like, not just said something questionable or that could be potentially misconstrued, but have left tact and appropriateness deep in the distant past as you bravely rocket forward strapped to a jetpack fueled by pure racism? When you get disowned by The Republican Party for being too racist. That’s like having Mel Gibson take you aside and warn you that you might have a bit of a drinking problem. It’s like Glenn Beck calling you a conspiracy theorist. It’s like Michael Vick leaving you a note of concern about the way you treat your pets.

The Republican party is not necessarily racist, and I think I’ve pointed out this distinction before. There’s nothing egregious in the Republican platform that says “black people are inferior”, but their constant harping on “personal responsibility” as the primary explanatory factor for differences between the haves and the have-nots certainly dovetails nicely with racism. It’s not an accident that every time someone in the news says something ridiculously racist, it’s always a Republican. Republican political philosophy isn’t overtly racist, but it does ‘provide aid and comfort’ to racists. Conservatives hate hearing this – nobody likes being called racist. Most conservatives wouldn’t consider themselves to be racist, and under particular definitions of the concept they aren’t. However, there seems to be a great reluctance among conservatives to try and parse out why the racists always seem to come from their camp, and so much more rarely from ours.

It is a rhetorically unfortunate fact that both of the people mentioned in this post are female, because the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig” takes on a sexist connotation. My intent is merely to point out that no matter how much you try and ‘beautify’ something, it is still as fundamentally ugly as it was before you started (although I don’t personally find pigs that ugly). Trying to gloss over – I intentionally avoid the word ‘whitewash’ – the problem by tidying up the landfill that is your political position isn’t going to fix the underlying issues. If you think racism is a problem, if you think that your spotlight is too often taken up having to apologize for and distance yourself from those who are your allies but who say bigoted things, then you have to really look hard at why they feel at home in your house.

People aren’t shunning you because your dump is unkempt; it’s because you stink.

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Mining a silver lining

First off, I want to apologize for shirking my duties this past week. I squandered my weekend, when I should have been writing the posts for last week, doing other stuff. When Monday came around, I had decided to write a post-mortem on the election after the results were in. However, by the time I got home from working at the polls I was so tired and disgusted with the outcome that I couldn’t really marshal my thoughts enough to write anything that I could feel good about. This is the reason why I usually set up a buffer of posts, so as to avoid this exact type of thing.

Secondly, I find it troubling that the week that I decide not to post, my hit count explodes 😛

Finally, this post is going to be a sort of amalgamation of some thoughts that have been kicking around my head for the past week since the election. I’ve titled this post ‘mining a silver lining’, because while it pretty much goes without saying that I am disappointed and fearful about what it means that the Republican North party has a legislative fiat (both in the Parliament and ostensibly in the Senate), I think there are some real good news stories to come out of the election. The political content of the archives of this blog should be sufficient to explain why a Republican North majority is a bad thing for Canada; I will instead focus on some good news speculation.

ALL THE PROGNOSTICATION MEANS ABSOLUTELY DICK

There will be a lot of political commentators (myself among them) who will make predictions about what will or won’t happen under a Republican North majority. The sheer variety of opinions and predictions ensures, mathematically, that most of them will be wrong. Political decisions are influenced by ideology and promises, but occur on a day-to-day basis and are affected by human events. Nobody can predict exactly what human beings will do, as this world is a chaotic place. Nobody would have expected U.S. foreign policy to make a dramatic series of shifts based on events in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Fewer still would have predicted that Japan’s economy would take a tumble after an earthquake and resultant nuclear accident.

My point here is that no matter who makes the predictions, policy will adapt to the the immediate circumstances around it. Changes in technology, in climate, in foreign politics, in any number of things will have a strong influence on how Stephen Harper’s policy decisions will be made. Trying to predict specific actions over a four-year period is a complete waste of time, and can be enjoyed only as an intellectual masturbatory exercise.

Now I will commence to fapping.

STEPHEN HARPER IS THE LEADER OF A DIVIDED PARTY

The Republic North party is made up of two core constituencies: social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. The perhaps unspoken (or certainly under-spoken) reality that accompanies such a grouping is that while they may claim to be related ideologies, the two are in fact orthogonal. There is nothing in the doctrine of social conservatism that lends itself to fiscal conservatism – in fact the two are often at cross purposes. Libertarians and Classical Liberals believe that the government has no business whatsoever legislating either social issues or economic issues – only in safeguarding individual liberties. The reason the Republican North party was able to pick up so much support is because they catered to the economic centre/right, which is also a part of the Liberal party’s core constituency.

The only way (as far as I can see) that the RNP was able to stitch these two groups together was to simultaneously forge a false equivalence between these two perpendicular political perspectives, and to publicly proclaim disinterest in social policy while quietly whispering assurances to their social base that those issues would come to the fore once a majority was achieved. Now that this is a political reality, Prime Minister Harper will have to ‘pay the piper’, so to speak, by advocating positions that are wildly unpopular among the Canadian majority. If he fails to do this, social conservatives who have long felt ignored by the federal government will abandon the RPN and revive the Reform party. Should he capitulate to their whims, he will alienate the Libertarian/Classical Liberal wing of his party.

This must be a deft balancing act that will take an extraordinary statesman and leader to accomplish. Stephen Harper is neither of these.

JACK LAYTON MAY EXERCISE A GREAT DEAL OF CONTROL

Part of the success of the RPN during their successive minority governments was Stephen Harper’s ability to keep the reins of his party tightly held. Information did occasionally leak, but for the most part the government spoke from one perspective only. Considering the number of wingnuts in the party, keeping that communication clamped down was an extraordinary achievement that served the party’s interests well. Jack Layton may be able to exercise the same kind of party discipline, albeit in a dramatically different way.

Nobody really predicted that the NDP would make the strides they did in this past election (owing largely to Quebec, but also partially due to the implosion of the Liberal party). Jack Layton now finds himself the leader of a party with 102 seats, many held by rookie politicians. The NDP brand has been, since the early 2000s, consistently centred on Jack Layton himself, rather than a particular policy position. The rookie MPs will be looking to Mr. Layton for guidance and instruction, more so than would a team of seasoned veterans. While Jack will have to pull in some of his own wingnuts and handle more than the ordinary number of blunders born of inexperience, he will also have a party that gets virtually all of its cues from him. In this way, the NDP can appear more organized and credible than they legitimately are. This means that progressive decisions and policies can be articulated without seeming like they’re coming from the hippie fringe.

ELIZABETH MAY WAS ELECTED

I am not a Green voter. I did vote Green in 2006, because my riding was a safe bet and I supported electoral reform. I think the Green party can articulate a non-corporate perspective that is sorely and noticeably absent from the other three major parties. Elizabeth May is a gifted speaker and is able to articulate environmental policy issues well. She’s also shown herself to be indomitable and highly resistant to intimidation in the face of overwhelming opposition. While I don’t necessarily agree with her party’s platform on many issues (medicine and health care being chief among those), I am glad to see a more pluralistic Parliament.

Her election also serves the purpose of giving the Green party legitimate political status. Voting Green is now a legitimate alternative, and while the party is still in its infancy in terms of credibility, having elected an MP (over a RPN cabinet minister, no less) certainly vaults it into the standings. After all, they only have 3 fewer seats than the Bloc, who used to be the official opposition 😛

POLARIZATION IS BAD, BUT NOT ALL BAD

One doesn’t have to look much further than the United States (a name that is becoming progressively more ironic) to see how dangerous political polarization can be. Polarization forces people to make choices to support positions they don’t agree with in the name of party affiliation. Having a plurality of perspectives means that government will be more stable, rather than erratically jerking back and forth from right to left. Canada has elected a far-right government with a far-left opposition (although I don’t think either of those descriptions are really fair in the general scheme of things), meaning that for the first time in a long time we see a stark separation between the usually moderate people of this country.

However, there is one upside to polarization that has to do with a necessary consequence of good government. When the government is largely running things behind the scenes and caters to the will of the majority, people become complacent. Why bother getting up in arms about a government whose actions are largely invisible and that I agree with for the most part? Having the debate happen more to the extremes, with policies to match, means that government activity will become increasingly salient to the average Canadian. People will see that their actions (or inactions, as the case may be) can allow dangerous legislation that is contrary to their personal interests to be passed largely without comment. Perhaps having a RPN majority government is what Canada needs as a kick in the pants to spur increased political involvement by its populace.

SUMMARIZING THOUGHTS

As I’ve made clear, I’m not happy about this election. My best-case scenario would have seen a diminishing Harper minority with a strong NDP opposition – allowing the further fragmentation of the right and bringing progressive issues to the fore. What I got instead was a bizarro world in which a 2% increase in political support for the RPN means 30 more seats and the Bloc has all but evaporated. It is an interesting time for Canadian politics, and while there will undoubtedly be some serious damage done in the interim (I’m thinking specifically of crime, climate change and the strength/direction of the Canada Health Act), there may yet be some positive stories to come out of this.

I am back to my regular self, and am recommitting myself to articulating my position. I promise – no more weeks of rage (well… hopefully).

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Stephen Harper has a magic wall of protection

I’ve written one of my patented, irreverent and (hopefully) funny posts over at Canadian Atheist. Here’s a little taste:

I wasn’t going to say anything, but I had a surefire way to lock up the election and prevent Stephen Harper from securing a majority government. It was, admittedly, a risky gambit, and somewhat… unorthodox. But it has a proven track record of efficacy going back hundreds of years, requires only a minimum of effort, and is nearly foolproof.

Of course, as you’ve probably guessed, I am talking about voodoo…

If you want to read the rest of it, just click on over to the site and check it out. I promise not to disappoint.

We no longer have the Conservative Party of Canada

Once upon a time, Canada had two major political parties – Liberal and Conservative. In the mid-20th century the Conservative party re-branded itself as the Progressive Conservative Party. With its economic stance set somewhat toward the right and its social stance being somewhere in the middle of the road, it catered well to those Canadians who identified as ‘centrists’, and tended its garden on the political right fairly well. However, as the NDP rose to federal prominence, the Liberal party was forced to make a rightward drift. Enjoying national popularity and avoiding divisive issues, the federal Liberal party was able to lay claim to the political center.

Facing obsolescence, the Progressive Conservative dropped the “progressive” label and united with the newly-formed Reform party – a party catering exclusively to those in the right wing – forming the Conservative Party of Canada. Because the far right had been all but ignored by the major political parties, the CPC was able to capitalize on a stumble from the Liberals and form government. Their popular appeal rested firmly on walking a tightrope between “Progressive Conservatives” – those with a conservative economic viewpoint but a centrist social viewpoint, and “Reform Conservatives” – what would be called ‘values voters’ in the United States (as though liberals don’t have values).

The problem with the Conservative party is that their base is fractionated – those who are turned off by hardcore social policy, and those that are growing increasingly tired of being slept on while they try and impose hardcore social policy. Until now, the CPC maintained their solidarity by publicly claiming to be socially centrist, whilst simultaneously whispering promises to the more extreme fringes of their base. Now, it appears that this facade is slipping:

Saskatchewan Conservative candidate says the federal government has decided to cut funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, a decision he says was influenced by anti-abortion supporters. The decision on whether to fund the organization has not yet been announced. But Brad Trost, the incumbent candidate for Saskatoon-Humboldt, told the Saskatchewan ProLife Association’s annual convention last Saturday that anti-abortion supporters who signed petitions played a big role. In a recording of his speech, obtained by CBC News, Trost can be heard thanking those who had signed the petitions, saying his office was involved in spearheading the petition campaign along with other members of Parliament.

This is not an economic policy. Cutting funding to an international agency is a tiny drop in a much larger bucket. Canada’s foreign aid spending represents about 0.33% of GDP – falling far short of its pledge of 0.7%. Removing funding for one agency does not meaningfully reduce Canada’s budgetary deficit or national debt. Given the involvement of the anti-abortion lobby in this particular move, there is no conclusion one can reach other than the fact that this is an ideological move against abortion rather than anything that could be called economically conservative.

I won’t bother re-hashing all the arguments against defunding Planned Parenthood, except to say that the only thing this move accomplishes is to make it more difficult for people, particularly women, to get much-needed health care services. Abortions do not decrease when they are made illegal, and Planned Parenthood does not exclusively provide abortions – those kinds of services represent a tiny portion of a wide variety of health care procedures. But of course we are dealing with Conservatives here – facts and reality represent a similarly tiny portion of what informs their policy.

I’m not necessarily opposed to conservativism, although I do think it is a short-sighted and ultimately simplistic world view. Overdone conservatism, like overdone liberalism, can be incredibly destructive. However, a well-struck balance between the two opposite ideologies can move society forward in a sustainable and equitable manner. It is, therefore, with no small measure of sadness, that I am forced to announce the death of the Conservative Party of Canada. While Conservative in name, this party has revealed itself to be nothing other than the northern branch of the Republican Party of the United States.

The ugliest, most small-minded and hateful aspects of humanity are on full and proud display in the Republican party, and the Republican Party North (formerly the CPC) is pinning its future on the idea that Canadians are as stupid and short-sighted as our southern neighbours. Given that the CPC is polling around 40% (which, in Canada’s political system, is a majority – it’s because of the metric system), it appears to be a safe bet.

So if you’re Canadian and you’re not planning on voting in the upcoming election, or if you’re planning on voting Conservative in the upcoming election, please don’t tell me. With things like this happening in my country, I’m not sure I can maintain my trademark personal evaluation from ideological. If you’re so lazy that you can’t be bothered to stand up against the forces of stupid long enough to write an ‘X’ on a piece of paper, or so blinded by sound bytes and easy answers that you think that the Conservatives have anything resembling policies that will have a positive effect on the lives of Canadians, then I’m not sure I can know that about you without taking it personally.

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