Immigration advocates give thumbs down to new biometrics rules for migrants

13 Apr

[This post, part of an assignment I recently completed with friend and UBC School of Journalism colleague Irina Sedunova, also appears at the web site we created as part of the project, Migrant's Identity.]

Over the past 50 years, Canada has garnered an international reputation as an open, welcoming nation. But thus far in the 21st century, a decided shift toward rigidity and closure has characterized the country’s immigration policy.

Much like its neighbour to the south, Canada was profoundly shaken by the attacks of September 11, 2001, in which 26 of its citizens perished. In response to those tragic events, the Liberal government of Jean Chretien passed new legislation designed to bolster security and reassure the nation’s citizenry: among others, the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act; the 2001 Smart Border Declaration – intended to enhance security and information sharing between U.S. and Canadian officials; and the 2002 establishment of a nationwide database of airline passengers. The consequence of these new measures was a tightening of Canada’s immigration system and fortification of barriers to entry, to which the current Conservative administration has added yet more bulwarks.

Canada is a constituent nation of the Group of Five, or for intelligence purposes, the Five Eyes. Along with its counterparts – Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. and U.K. – the northern nation is expected to share security information, and bring itself in line with group protocol. Thus, when the Harper government announced last year that biometric screening and data collection would soon be required of refugee applicants, and later as part of visa and temporary residence applications for nationals of 29 countries and the Palestinian Authority, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney invoked solidarity with the Five Eyes as a key justification for the changes.

“Implementing biometrics will bring Canada in line with the growing list of countries that already use similar technologies, such as the U.K., Australia, the United States and other European countries,” announced the minister in February 2012, after a protracted rant on the cost to Canadian taxpayers of “bogus” refugee claimants. The underlying assumption is that this biometric groupthink is a move Canada would be wise to follow, in the name of enhanced border security and savings to the federal treasury.

But many immigrants, civil libertarians and immigrant rights advocates are concerned about the implications of the new requirements for foreigners wishing to seek asylum or long-term residency in Canada.

Harsha Walia, a Vancouver activist and founder of pro-immigration organization No One Is Illegal, finds the new measures discriminatory and invasive. Not only will nationals of certain countries be subject to heightened suspicion for no other reason than their nationality, she points out; their personal information will also be accessible to law enforcement, various government officials and private, profit-driven security firms for an indefinite period of time. In Walia’s view, this represents both a breach of immigrants’ right to privacy, and a de facto abrogation of the presumption of innocence.

Colombian national Rafael Puyana, currently completing a master’s degree at Emily Carr University and living in Vancouver on a student visa, will soon be subject to the new regulations. Puyana says once he is obliged, beginning in September, to provide his thumbprint and photo identification to immigration officials in order to remain in this country, he will feel like a perpetual suspect.

“Canada is a country that, at least from what I’ve seen, seems to treat everyone as equal,” says Puyana, who notes that the country’s longstanding embrace of refugee claimants and immigrants has instilled a favourable impression in his mind. “It’s weird that now [the Canadian government is] going to make these distinctions…[We] are gonna be labeled as something that other immigrants are not.”

“You can live with it, forget about it, but at the end [of the day], you are being labeled. There’s a circle around you, that has a tag, and it says ‘This is a Colombian. This is his name. This is what he does.’ And that’s scary.”

Citing concerns over his privacy, and the ease with which authorities could extract further information about him through the internet and social media, Puyana is justifiably nervous about what his future in Canada will bring.

While there is no single criterion that qualifies a country for inclusion on the dubious list, there are a few commonalities. Many of the nations – like Haiti, South Sudan, Eritrea and Bangladesh – are part of the developing world, the Global South, or, as in the case of Somalia, riven with poverty and lawlessness, and lacking the means for economic development. Nationals of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and others, meanwhile, have attracted heightened suspicion in the wake of 9/11. But worrisomely, several countries have also made the list by virtue of high visa rejection rates under Canada’s current immigration rules, or a history of inadequate or improper documentation for refugee claimants.

Changes to Canada's immigration system will likely make access to Canada's asylum and visa systems more difficult. In this photo, food is delivered to a refugee camp in Pakistan's Swat Valley. Image: Al Jazeera English

Changes to Canada’s immigration system will likely make access to Canada’s asylum and visa systems more difficult. In this photo, food is delivered to a refugee camp in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Image: Al Jazeera English

At first glance, it’s easy to attribute visa rejection or improper documentation to carelessness on the part of the applicant. But as immigration lawyer Lesley Stalker explains, this conclusion ignores a number of crucial factors.

“[The government has selected countries] where there’s been a high refusal rate of Temporary Residence visas in the past. And which are the countries that tend to have a high rate of refusal for TRPs? They’re countries where people are unlikely to return…In other words, these are countries that are war-torn, or have a very poor record of human rights abuses,” says Stalker.

“So, [the government] doesn’t say, right off the bat, ‘We don’t want people coming here to make refugee claims.’ But you don’t have to scratch very deeply to figure that out.”

As for nationals arriving without proper documentation, Stalker identifies another noteworthy tendency.

“Who arrives without proper documentation? It’s people who aren’t going to get visas to get [to Canada], but who need to get here to claim asylum,” she notes. “If you’re from the U.S., you don’t need to arrive with false papers; you get a passport from your country, you present yourself at the border, and you’re waved through. Same if you’re from Germany, or Italy, or Japan.”

Conversely, Stalker says, “If you’re from Afghanistan, or Pakistan, and you apply for a visa to come to Canada…you’re not likely to get that permit. And so the only way to get here, if you want to make a refugee claim, is to purchase false papers.”

Stalker believes Canada’s government is altering the country’s immigration policy in order to enhance its own economic station. This means the door is open to immigrants who bring advanced skills, knowledge, or pecuniary assets, and to temporary foreign workers who will fill seasonal labour needs and then return home once their services are no longer required. But at the same time, the federal administration is deliberately reducing options for refugee and visa applicants from specific countries, most of which face extraordinary barriers to entry already.

In addition to these problems, Stalker, like Puyana, says she is uncomfortable with the collection and storage of personal data the new immigration protocol will entail. Beginning this year, Visa Application Centres (VACs), operated jointly by the Canadian government and private security firms, will commence operations in the listed states. Applicants for visas and visa renewals will need to appear at the centres, where each individual will be obliged to pay an $85 processing fee, and provide fingerprints and photo identification, both of which will be accessible to law enforcement and intelligence officials throughout the Five Eyes.

“When I look at information from [Citizenship and Immigration Canada], the announcements on the web site, and the announcements by the minister, they always emphasize that the information of Canadian citizens or permanent residents will not be collected. So they realize that people are quite spooked by this, and they’re reassuring ‘Oh no, we would never dream of collecting your data; it’s only the data of those other, “unreliable” people that we’re going to collect.”

For his part, Minister Kenney has emphasized in speeches, announcements and media interviews that the changes to immigration protocol are to prevent foreign nationals from abusing Canada’s immigration system by filing invalid refugee claims, and remaining in the country after obtaining illegitimate visas. He also hopes the reforms will enable the government to remove alleged scofflaws from the country faster, reducing the number of appeals available to them, and saving Canadian taxpayers money.

“These new measures will further accelerate the processing of refugee claims for nationals from designated countries that generally do not produce refugees,” Kenney proclaimed last February.
“They will also reduce the options available to bogus claimants to delay their removal from Canada, which sometimes takes years and years. In fact, it takes at least 4.5 years on average for bogus refugee claimants to have run the course in all of the various appeals that they have. And then it takes us quite a lot longer to actually remove them from Canada, which is virtually an encouragement for people who want to come and abuse our generosity.”

Kenney has also emphasized what he sees as a need for Canadian immigration officials to access biometric identification information in order to verify the identity of visa and refugee applicants, and distinguish bona fide travellers and visitors from illegitimate abusers of the system.

However, as Stalker mentions, this will present a significant, and perhaps insurmountable, hurdle for vulnerable asylum seekers who have no alternative but to falsify documents in order to reach our shores.

“I think, [Kenney] has the view that ‘good’ people don’t take initiative, and find their way out of a refugee camp or out of a dangerous situation to make their way to Canada and have their claim assessed…[rather], they will wait for 10, 15 or 20 years in a refugee camp, and hope that they are one of the very few who are identified by UNHCR as needing resettlement.”

Reforms to the Canadian immigration system in 2010, despite being unfavourable to many active asylum seekers, did enable the resettlement in Canada of thousands more selected from refugee camps. Beginning this year, our country plans to offer resettlement to more than 14,000 asylum seekers annually, which would effectively double the roughly 7,000 government-sponsored refugees resettled in years prior. However, relative to the global need, this figure is a mere drop in the bucket; in 2012, the UNHCR estimated the number of refugees approved for resettlement worldwide at over 172,000. And this, in turn, is a fraction of the global total of refugees, now in the tens of millions.

Immigration law scholar and UBC professor Catherine Dauvergne, a proponent of greater liberalization of the Canadian immigration system, believes migration is already a divisive topic in Canada, but that the government currently in power is also working hard to shift public opinion in a direction of greater stringency.

“I think Canadian public opinion on immigration is quite divided, and I think what we’re seeing, maybe, in the 21st century, is more division than we have seen in the past over immigration to Canada, and public attitudes towards it.”

Further, Dauvergne adds that foreigners in general, and particularly those ascribed a status of heightened suspicion or illegitimacy, are “easy targets” for politicians looking to tighten border security or demonize perceived outsiders; they can’t vote, and frequently aren’t entitled to the rights that citizens and “legal” permanent residents enjoy.

“It’s always very easy [for journalists, advocates and/or activists] to generate a public interest story that’s sympathetic to an individual person without citizenship, or even without migration status. But it’s hard to generate sympathy for statistics.”

And in the case of Canada’s biometric identification protocols, the difficulty of eliciting sympathy for statistics is precisely the challenge critics will face, in their efforts to call public attention to the disconcerting new reality.

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The soft fascism of the Keystone XL

22 Mar

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” Noam Chomsky

Is the Canadian government engaged in a tactic of soft fascism over the Keystone XL project? I believe it is. Read on to find out why.

Defining fascism

The ideology of fascism first arose in 1920s Italy, under the infamous dictator-to-be, Benito Mussolini. In its earliest incarnation, fascism was envisioned as a sort of divine compromise: a racist, xenophobic, hypernationalistic perversion of the classical liberal notion of national equality, combined with Marxist, socialistic, and capitalistic elements. Rather than advocating the elimination of class as Marxists do, however, fascists imagined the state as a pillar, pure in composition, devoid of weak links, imperfections, outliers or conflict. Following this line of reasoning, one may easily understand how deliberate demonization of perceived outsiders, book-burning, eugenics, and genocide would later be justified, even ascribed virtue, within fascist regimes.

Mussolini’s vision prized harmony and national unity above all other virtues; for this reason, he sought to subdivide fascist Italy into “corporations” – constituent parts wherein labourers, capitalists and political leaders would be represented. Through such a method, Mussolini believed, the history of class strife that had characterized human history – to paraphrase Marx and Engels – would be forever pacified.

As Italy moulded itself according to the dictates of its charismatic strongman, and the economy enjoyed substantial inflows of new capital from government projects, development and foreign investment, large, capitalistic firms, businesses and merchants often flourished. But under Mussolini’s fascism, the state reigned supreme and in firm control. Any private company, politician, or even civilian espied to be acting or speaking against the national interest was quickly and systematically discredited, put out of business, subjected to torture and various other forms of physical harm, or worse. Any threat to national unity needed to be immediately squelched, in order for fascist harmony to endure. No chinks in the mighty pillar were permissible.

A typical nationalistic propaganda poster in Mussolini's Italy, urging citizens to purchase products manufactured domestically to bolster the economy. Image source: fascismoeliberta.info

A typical nationalistic propaganda poster in Mussolini’s Italy, urging citizens to purchase products manufactured domestically to bolster the economy. Image source: fascismoeliberta.info

Historical revisionists will claim that the conclusion of World War II marked the fall of fascism, once the Axis Powers were defeated. This is little more than a saccharine fantasy.

In Spain, the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco persisted until 1975; the right-wing military autarky of Antonio Salazar in Portugal, until 1974. Post-war Italy featured a political party – the Italian Social Movement – that subscribed to the ethos of Mussolini. In Latin America, several military regimes bore significant fascist elements until as recently as the 1980s and 1990s, among them Galtieri’s Argentina, Pinochet’s Chile, and Fujimori’s Peru.

Like communism, fascism continues in the so-called Western capitalist democracies to this day, although its once formidable apparatus of power has been eroded, as a consequence of many decades of revolution, war, and of valiant demonstrators taking to the streets to demand their rights. But there is a worrisome shift underway in our society; an insidious force has infiltrated our governments on the wings of neoliberal capitalism, aiming to undermine our freedoms, silence or discredit dissenting voices, and dismantle all barriers to the transnational flow of capital. I call this force soft fascism: dovelike in comparison to the genocidal, totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Mussolini, but ominous and inimical with genuine democracy nonetheless. In Canada, soft fascism has crept in the door, bludgeoning us not (primarily) with physical violence and intimidation, but rather, with a steady stream of propagandistic messaging aimed at engineering consensus, at framing the terms of our public discourse in a rigid cadre.

The corporation, then and now

Under Mussolini, the corporation was a vital component of national unity. Big business was subservient to government in Mussolini’s day, and he was determined to ensure that private enterprise would reflect the national interest (as enumerated by the diminutive despot himself, of course). Comparing the Italian fascist corporation with the private multinational of the present day, we can discern a few parallels – among others things, both resemble miniature dicatorships in their affinity for hierarchy, internal unity and control; both have been known to employ various methods – peaceful and otherwise – to quash dissent, whether internal or external.

But there are also key differences. While Mussolini’s fascist corporation was consciously shaped to reflect his notion of the Italian national interest, the modern profit-seeking multinational owes allegiance to no country. And with the leverage created through so-called free trade agreements the corporations themselves have a hand in designing, the superfirm moves capital and resources across borders at will, often in a matter of seconds. As such, today’s corporation has become akin to a hostage-taker, dangling the carrots of jobs and prosperity before us, exerting downward pressure on our wages, mesmerizing our political leaders with empty promises and implicit threats. Under Mussolini, the corporation operated in the putative national interest, and propaganda was designed to keep its constituents in line. Under a regime of soft fascism, the state operates in the corporation’s interests, and the role of propaganda is to persuade citizens that these align with the national interest.

This mode of persuasion is especially crucial when they do not.

The Keystone XL propaganda machine

The recent trip to Washington of federal New Democratic Party and Official Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair ignited a volcano of melodramatic outrage from Alison Redford and Brad Wall, premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan, respectively. Both leaders, along with Canada’s chameleonic Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, admonished Mulcair loudly and purposively in advance of his departure, deftly surfing the wave of the Canadian news cycle to lure eyes and ears. Their message was unambiguous: If Mr. Mulcair has nothing nice to say to the Americans about TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone XL pipeline project, or the Athabasca Oil Sands in general, then he’d best not say anything at all.

Redford and Wall assumed an even more militant stance after Mulcair’s trip, portraying the Leader of the Opposition as a traitor, his questioning of Oil Sands development and the Keystone XL’s merits while in Washington, ridiculous and anti-Canadian.

But even more telling was the position of Oliver, who penned this op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail, imploring Mulcair (or rather, the newspaper’s readership) to appreciate the benefits that would accrue to the U.S. thanks to the Keystone project – namely, jobs and “energy security.”

It was Oliver, after all, who in an open letter published in Jan. 2012, disparaged opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway as “foreign-[read: U.S.] funded radicals” interested neither in protecting the environment nor combatting climate change, but rather in redirecting Canadian bitumen south, to serve the energy security interests of the United States.

Evidently the minister is more than willing to stomach his own doublespeak to advance the interests of private corporations Enbridge, TransCanada, and of the Koch Brothers, whose refineries anxiously await the cash cow of cheap Canadian bitumen – which naturally leads one to wonder, who is funding Oliver?

The fact that neither Redford, nor Wall, nor Oliver has the authority to instruct Mulcair on what he should or shouldn’t say, under any circumstances, is irrelevant. The purpose of their posturing is to lay out a case for the Keystone pipeline, discredit one of its most prominent critics at every turn, and frame the public discourse in a manner that suits them.

But what’s in it for the premiers? you might ask. The answer is simple: both Saskatchewan and Alberta are experiencing economic booms due to oil and gas exploitation, and their governments’ fiscal health is intertwined with commodity sales. Further, both currently face substantial public budget deficits, exacerbated in part by disappointing natural gas revenues – the so-called “gas glut” having debased the fuel’s market price. Like all politicians in democratic societies, they prefer to avoid unpopular decisions whenever possible; low taxes, fiscal probity and sound public services all make for happy constituents. But seldom in political leadership does the opportunity arise to have one’s cake and eat it too. TransCanada – which contributes significant tax and royalty revenues to both provinces’ coffers and employs thousands of locals – has proffered just such an opening, at no pecuniary expense to the respective provincial administrations, and at no political cost to the politicians at the helm.

And why the rush to build the Keystone pipeline now, with Oil Sands bitumen selling so low, and with Canada’s own energy security needs unsatisfied? Another important question, the answer to which is likewise beguilingly simple. According to a 2012 report released by the International Energy Agency, the United States is well on its way to achieving energy security without Canada’s help. In fact, the IEA asserts, the U.S. is on pace to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil by 2050, thanks in part to the advent of horizontal drilling, expansion of fracking operations in the Marcellus Shale and elsewhere, and even oil sands extraction schemes in Utah.

TransCanada’s executives are acutely aware that the window of opportunity to line their pockets may be closing, and their extensive lobbying efforts on Capital Hill would appear to be paying dividends for them.

The shibboleth that the Keystone XL is in the interest of the U.S. rests on an inaccurate assumption: that the U.S. cannot, and will never, satisfy its own energy needs. But this is just one among many bunk arguments advanced by the pipeline pundits.

Illogic rules the day

It’s imperative that we move our bitumen to market immediately, bellow Keystone’s proponents, while brandishing a highly dubious report attributed to the U.S. State Department which suggests precisely the opposite: that development (and consumption) of Oil Sands bitumen will continue apace irrespective of Keystone.

This is about as rational as rushing to douse one’s lawn during a rainstorm.

Keystone is our best shot at long-term prosperity, the pipeliners bark, wilfully omitting the grave threat climate change poses to our current and future well-being, and the fact that the bulk of the expected lucre from this bargain-basement firesale will accrue to TransCanada executives. The royalties and tax revenues will be in the tens of billions over the course of Keystone’s operational lifetime – but that’s hardly sufficient to guarantee long-term prosperity in a country of 32 million, with a steadily growing and aging population, particularly as wages continue to stagnate across our economy. And the purported windfall will also set us far back, if Canada hopes to pay anything more than lip service to the global fight against climate change, before sea level rise becomes a genuine (and exorbitantly expensive) threat to our coastal communities and assets.

To elaborate, experts project that dike upgrades in Greater Vancouver alone would cost $9.5 billion by the year 2100 if the current pace of sea level rise continues unabated. Although the pipeline will create thousands of jobs in both countries (albeit mostly in the short term, during the pipeline’s construction), it will also further contribute to the strengthening of Canada’s dollar against America’s currency, undermine our country’s export competitiveness, and potentially precipitate the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Canada’s economy is export-dependent, and a further shift from manufacturing to oil and gas development will only exacerbate our already unhealthy addiction to unsustainable, carbon-intensive resources – not a prescription for developing the sort of advanced, 21st-century economy we will need to combat climate change and remain viable in the long term.

Comparison of Athabasca Oil Sands' GHG intensity, relative to crude oils sourced from Venezuela and the North Sea. Source: Jacobs (2012) Source: Jacobs (2012), http://www.energy.alberta.ca/Oil/pdfs/OSPathwayStudyEUjacobsRept2012.pdf via Andrew Leach

Comparison of average Athabasca Oil Sands’ well-to-wheels GHG emissions, relative to crude oils sourced from Venezuela and the North Sea. Source: Jacobs (2012), http://www.energy.alberta.ca/Oil/pdfs/OSPathwayStudyEUjacobsRept2012.pdf via Andrew Leach

What’s more, we haven’t even begun to mention the significant probability of a major spill, possibly reminiscent of the catastrophe that struck the Kalamazoo River in 2010.

For their part, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his supporting cast have adopted the false choice as their go-to logical fallacy.

Remember Vic Toews’s cynical assertion that all those who opposed his 2012 internet snooping bill were allied with child pornographers? The public frame constructed around the Keystone XL is steeped in the same tactic: the pipeline must be built, or we won’t have any money to pay for social programs like healthcare, argue Redford, Harper et al. Either you support this project, or you’re an enemy of Canadian jobs, prosperity, civil society, puppies, and kittens. The Pipeline is in the National Interest of Canada, and thou shalt not speak ill thereof lest thou carry the mantle of Traitor. And so on.

As irrational as the false choice is, its power in influencing public opinion is undeniable; throughout the mainstream media landscape of this country, journalists seem to have latched onto the nonsense with abiding zeal. Either you support the Pipeline, or you oppose Canada’s National Interest, shriek the headlines. Seldom are the real options and challenges we face presented, let alone evaluated. And key among those genuine challenges is the predicament of Fort Chipewyan, on the shores of Lake Athabasca – and downstream from one of the most polluting, destructive industrial projects in human history.

A sacrifice we’re willing to make

First established in the 18th century as a fur trade post of the North West Company, Fort Chipewyan sits in an idyllic setting, overlooking Lake Athabasca, and adjacent to Wood Buffalo National Park. In the summer months, Fort Chip (as it is affectionately known) relies on tourism as a key revenue source; visitors come to enjoy the scenery, explore the region’s history, or venture into the wilderness. Today, the majority of the hamlet’s roughly 1000 permanent residents are of either Dene, Cree, or Metis ethnicity; the community is closely knit, the atmosphere, predominantly peaceful.

An aerial view of Fort Chipewyan in Northern Alberta, with Lake Athabasca in the foreground, and the serpentine Athabasca River twisting its way through the horizon. Image c/o mark(s)elliott/Flickr

An aerial view of Fort Chipewyan in Northern Alberta, with Lake Athabasca in the foreground, and the serpentine Athabasca River twisting its way through the horizon. Image c/o mark(s)elliott/Flickr

But sadly, all is not well in Fort Chip.

The water line of Lake Athabasca that fronts the townsite is in slow, steady recession, like a tide that ebbs but never flows. The fish that populate the river suffer an uncommonly high incidence of unusual diseases – boils, cancers, mutations – that have rendered unviable what had been one of Fort Chip’s primary food staples. To make matters worse, local caribou and even berries are contaminated with elevated levels of arsenic, a carcinogenic toxin emanating from the nearby megaproject. The toxification of the local sustenance that has nourished Indigenous residents of the region for centuries has forced the community to shift its consumption patterns; rather than depending on a traditional diet, Fort Chip is now obliged to import the majority of its foodstuffs from the south, to be sold at its solitary grocery store. As in so many Northern communities, the cost of daily necessities is prohibitive, especially for a populace accumstomed to a life of modest means. Nevermind the untold – and increasing – consumption of fossil fuels required to supply Fort Chip with these bare essentials.

Such are the externalities that go uncounted even in the most exhaustive reckonings of the carbon intensity of Oil Sands bitumen – which varies depending on the location of the mine, but is consistently and considerably higher than that of conventional crude. Other factors seldom, if ever, considered: the consequences of displacing a vast carbon sink and natural water purifier in the form of boreal forest and wetland removed for bitumen mining; the long-term impact of Oil Sands-related toxicity on local terrestrial and aquatic food chains – and by extension, ecosystems; the psychic impact on local communities, like Fort Chip, of the dramatic changes that are reshaping their present and future, without their informed consent and in contravention of Treaty 8; the increased problems that will arise as the scale of the operation grows.

But perhaps most worrisomely of all, no reliable data exist on the quality or quantity of toxins emanating from the Oil Sands’ infamous tailings ponds, all of which lie behind permeable levees of sand, and all of which are leaking. In fact, many Oil Sands extraction firms are unaware of the toxins present in the ponds themselves, let alone the nature of the pollutants that may be leaching therefrom into the groundwater, or the Athabasca River itself.

Rare cancers

Despite precautions the locals have been urged to take, like eschewing berries harvested from the surrounding area and caribou meat, and restricting their consumption of fish to one meal per week, Fort Chipewyan experiences an incidence of cancer above the Canadian norm. According to a 2009 study commissioned by the province, 51 cancers were identified in 47 individuals – 12 more than would be expected for a population that size. But even more alarming than the number of cancers detected, is the type: cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer of the bile duct, typically afflicts one in every 100,000 people among the general population. In Fort Chip, population 1000, three cases have been confirmed via biopsy since 1995.

As with any investigation of cancer, however, attributing causation is virtually impossible. For example, a circumspect scientist probably would not assert that cigarettes cause lung cancer; they are merely a risk factor for lung cancer which may contribute to its development. This ambiguity facilitates the task of obfuscation for those with an interest in maintaining the status quo; continuing with the analogy, tobacco companies managed to shirk Surgeon General’s Warnings and repel lawsuits for years by simply muddying the waters. Any number of lifestyle factors could lead to lung cancer, they bloviated. Tie goes to the oligarch.

And considering the anti-Native racism that runs rampant in this country, imagine the venom the largely Indigenous residents of Fort Chip would encounter, if they attempted to conclusively link one of Canada’s economic lynchpins to elevated cancer rates in their community.

Fort Chip’s problems fall under the category of collateral damage, at best. This is Canada’s National Interest we’re talking about!

Destination unknown

For all the havoc it’s caused already, from widespread seizure of property through the Eminent Domain provision of the U.S. constitution, to destruction of forest and natural habitat, to violent confrontations between police and blockaders, the ultimate fate of the Keystone XL remains uncertain. However, at this point, it appears likely that U.S. President Obama will green-light the project, seduced by the barrage of nonsense that the U.S. State Department, without the faintest hint of irony or shame, deigns to call an “Environmental Impact Statement.” (As it turns out, not only did the State Department outsource that report to contractors with extensive ties to Big Oil [TransCanada included]; it also attempted to conceal this blatant faux pas – immoral, but not unreasonable given the scale of the fiasco and importance of the decision.)

But the fate of Keystone is not the only perplexing question which remains to be answered.

Conflict of interest, anyone?

The rules surrounding conflict of interest in Canadian federal politics are fairly transparent. Last year, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty breached those rules, according to Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson, by writing a letter to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on behalf of a constituent, whose radio station was seeking the coveted 88.1 radio frequency in metro Toronto. After first insisting (naturally) that he had done nothing wrong, Flaherty eventually expressed regret over the incident and took responsibility.

Similarly, former Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan recently resigned his position, ostensibly over a letter he improperly wrote on behalf of a constituent. (Although there are reasons to suspect other factors may have influenced his decision.)

The point is, Canadian elected officials are not supposed to shill for the private business and personal interests of constituents in their capacity and profile as elected officials. Such would be a violation of ethics, an abuse of their power, profile and visibility in Canadian public life.

To write a letter on behalf of a constituent in one’s role as a cabinet member, premier, legislator, senator, Supreme Court judge or prime minister is verboten. However, it seems, representing the interests of a large, private company through an aggressive advertising and propaganda campaign on both sides of the border (all financed by the public purse, by the way) poses no ethical problem whatsoever.

If Ethics Commissioner Dawson could explain the reason for this apparent inconsistency, the implications of which are titanic in scale, I’d be delighted to hear her justification.

Until then, I’ll have to assume Dawson, like so many other Canadians, is not nearly as disturbed by soft fascism as she ought to be.

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Bill C-54 and the definition of insanity

17 Feb

The definition of insanity, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, is attempting the same action over and over again, and expecting a different result.

Throughout human history, the criminalization of mental illness has assumed various forms: burnings at the stake, executions, lobotomies, overcrowded prisons, hellacious conditions in insane asylums. A common thread to all of these examples is a lack of understanding around psychic disorders and treatment options. The result, invariably, has been ineffective, inhumane policies that have instilled a profound social contempt for the mentally ill – as evidenced by words like “lunatic,” “insane,” “wretched,” “demented,” “idiot,” and “maniac,” all of which have been used at various historical junctures to describe individuals with psychoses and other psychic ailments.

History and scientific inquiry should have taught us by now that the criminalization of mental illness is unhelpful at best. Yet here we go again.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s Bill C-54, the “Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act”, is the latest brainchild of the federal Tories ostensibly designed to keep us “safer.” Here are some reasons why this legislation is deeply problematic, and will almost certainly fail:

1) It at best misinterprets, but more likely demonstrates our federal government’s ignorance of the legal term “not criminally responsible” (NCR).

2) It ascribes guilt, and foists a retributive, fallacious interpretation of “justice” on individuals who have been legally absolved of criminal wrongdoing. (For your reference, Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Justice Minister, this is what “not criminally responsible” means.)

3) The bill does nothing to PREVENT future tragedies – like the 2008 beheading of Tim Maclean aboard a Greyhound bus, or the horiffic demise of the children of Guy Turcotte and Allan Schoenborn. (And there is substantial evidence that the Schoenborn killings, among others, were indeed preventable.) Instead, it merely delays the re-integration of NCR perpetrators whom courts deem “high-risk” back into society, with no commensurate improvement in the quality of treatment they receive. Meanwhile, the Harper administration is taking no action to improve access to and quality of mental health treatment among the general population, and more worrisomely, continues to neglect a dangerous spike in the proportion of inmates in Canadian prisons who suffer mental disorders, and who are NOT receiving the care that’s necessary both for their rehabilitation, and for the safety of Canadians.

It seems to me the most rational approach to reducing future violence by sufferers of mental illness (a rarity to begin with), is the improvement of our mental health services. Irrespective of our political leanings, can we not all agree that we’d be wiser to pursue a policy of prevention, rather than retribution?

4) This legislation reinforces stigma, a fear on the part of those with mental health issues, that they will experience shame, ostracization within the community, or even a deterioration of career prospects, as a consequence of asking for help. One might reasonably argue that stigma is the single greatest obstacle to timely and effective treatment of mental health issues, and that the elimination of stigma needs to be the foremost priority of a prudent mental health strategy in this country. Unfortunately, Bill C-54 will only exacerbate the problem.

By presenting Bill C-54 under the umbrella of “Tough On Crime,” this government is further criminalizing mental illness, reinforcing the associated negative stigma. In this sense, the new legislation is not only ineffective, but counter-productive. Rather than making Canadians safer, this bill will likely endanger more of us unnecessarily. 

5) Finally, and in keeping with Harper et al.’s apparent disdain for evidence-based decision making, Bill C-54 is a response not to systemic issues, trends, or substantive data, but to a few gruesome headline-grabbing incidents. And, with all due respect to the victims and their loved ones, a few sensational events, taken out of context, will almost never lay the groundwork for sound policy. Good legislation focuses on the rule and pays less heed to the exception, not vice-versa.

Some thoughts on Vincent Li, and Tim’s Law

I can scarcely imagine the anguish that the family of Tim Maclean must have experienced upon learning of his death. Likewise, I can appreciate the victims’ longing for personal accountability, and their feelings of rage, bitterness, and disgust with the verdict of “not criminally responsible” applied to Vincent Li. It’s easy to see why, in the minds of Tim Mclean’s parents, Vincent Li remains a dangerous, volatile offender, a barbarian who ought to remain locked away for the rest of his  life. After all, life is precisely the irreplaceable asset of which Li deprived their beloved son, on that fateful night in 2008.

The sentiment behind “Tim’s Law” – which would see mentally ill killers institutionalized for the rest of their lives – is abundantly clear to me, once I walk a mile in the shoes of the grieving Maclean family. But unfortunately, at the foundation of Tim’s Law lie a pair of common but mistaken assumptions: first, that people suffering with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses – including Li – are incapable of recovery; and second, that Li is “nuts” and will represent a perpetual danger to society once released. On the contrary, full recovery from schizophrenia is possible, Li has thus far responded well to treatment and medication, and mental health professionals have determined he is very unlikely to re-offend.

Considering the above information, let’s assess this picture from another crucial viewpoint.

Vincent Li is a mentally ill patient, and every day, he is forced to reconcile with the gruesome attack he committed, the knowledge that he extinguished the life of an innocent young man and inflicted irreparable harm on the man’s family, and the memory of the traumatic incident itself. Imagine that you murdered someone while sleepwalking, recalled the event upon waking, and were forced to live with the enormity of your own actions for the rest of your life, and you may begin to comprehend Vincent Li’s state of mind. How would you feel? Could you sleep at night? Could you even begin to carry on living? How would you react if Vincent Li were a close friend of yours, or a member of your family?

In a May 2012 interview with Chris Summerville, president of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, Li expressed remorse for his actions, and a desire to one day seek forgiveness from Maclean’s loved ones. (Imagine being in THAT position, by the way.) Tim Maclean was a victim of Vincent Li’s mental illness. And Li suffers from a disease, one he did not choose, but one he is working diligently to overcome. The application of stiffer penalties to NCR individuals wrongly inculpates them, reinforces stigma by criminalizing mental illness, and will do virtually nothing to mitigate crime or violence in our society.

Atrocities by mentally ill Canadians are extraordinarily rare, and we possess the technical knowledge as a society to prevent many of the infrequent acts of violence that are attributable to mental illness. But we need to start by demanding more of our elected leaders, not our overburdened correctional facitlities.

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One correction & one clarification related to Jan. 2 post, “Colonialism, the Mayan prophecy, and why #IdleNoMore is such a huge deal”

11 Jan

Just wanted to advise my readers of a correction to my Jan. 2 post “Colonialism, the Mayan prophecy, and why #IdleNoMore is such a huge deal.”

Bill C-45 Indian Act changes

It was my understanding at the time that I composed the original post, that the changes to the Indian Act within Bill C-45 applied to the absolute surrender of reserve lands along with their “designation,” which typically amounts to a lease or conditional surrender. I was mistaken. The relevant sections of the Indian Act – 37, 39 and 40 – have been amended to facilitate designation, but not absolute surrender. The rules governing absolute surrender have not been substantially changed under this particular piece of legislation.

Clarification on Bill S-8: Safe Drinking Water for First Nations

Originally I wrote that this bill, first tabled by the Senate last year, would cause the federal government to cut off its funding for water infrastructure on First Nations reserves. What I meant was, the federal government would impose requirements for infrastructural upgrades on First Nations reserves, but would not provide sufficient funding to assist First Nations councils and governments to meet those requirements. An amended version of this bill will likely emerge soon, perhaps in the spring of 2013; whether it will include additional funding for infrastructural upgrades remains to be seen.

The original blog post has been updated with alterations to the points mentioned above.

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First Nations sovereignty, Canada’s tax dollars, and the misinformatitis epidemic

11 Jan
The iconic totems of Stanley Park, near what was formerly the Sḵwxwú7mesh village of X̱wáýx̱way, are among the monuments created by the Indigenous people of the land I'm fortunate to call home - a city we now call Vancouver. Image c/o *Robin*/flickr

The iconic totems of Stanley Park, near the site of the Sḵwxwú7mesh village of X̱wáýx̱way, are among the majestic works of art fashioned by the First Peoples of the land I’m fortunate to call home – present-day Vancouver. Image c/o *Robin*/flickr

A reasonable outside observer not conversant with the politics and society of Canada, might have expected tensions over the #IdleNoMore movement to unfold along ethnic lines: Indigenous vs. non-Indigenous. And while the movement has undoubtedly stirred much anti-Native resentment to the surface in the public discourse of this country, arguably an even more appreciable rift has opened between the two traditional wings of the political spectrum: progressive and conservative. While part of this owes to circumstance – the Conservative party happens to control our federal government at the moment, and its allies have rushed to defend the antidemocratic, unilateral changes to the Indian Act embedded in omnibus budget bill C-45 – the crux of the dispute, for fiscal conservatives in particular, hinges on whether “our tax dollars” are perceived to have been spent wisely, or recklessly.

But what if the whole basis for our way of thinking is skewed? What if our priorities are backwards? What if we have everything we need to rebuild the nation-to-nation relationship first enumerated in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and all we lack is the political will?

In this post, I plan to challenge the way many of us currently approach the issue of First Nations’ funding, sovereignty, and relationship to Canada.

“Balancing the budget”

Let’s get something straight from the outset: I seriously doubt we’d even be having the conversation around Chief Spence’s allocation of capital within her tiny reserve in present-day northern Ontario, if our federal government had not (ostensibly) made the elimination of the deficit its primary goal. And the Harper Conservatives are deadset on achieving that aim in exactly the manner one would expect from fiscal conservatives: by “tightening the belt,” “staying the course,” “trimming the fat,” “restructuring/re-evaluating outlays,” or, as we used to say before the invention of Orwellian Newspeak, imposing austerity.

Indeed, since capturing a so-called majority in last year’s federal election, Harper and friends have slashed spending in a number of areas – with emphasis on the sciences, the regulatory sector, and the public broadcaster. Few departments have been spared cutbacks here and there. And importantly, programs and services for Aboriginals, including healthcare, have once again taken it on the chin.

Nevermind the fact that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s deficit reduction projections have thus far failed to materialize, and that he has yet to reveal the basis upon which he plans to balance Canada’s budget by 2015 (although I’d be willing to hazard a guess that more austerity is in the pipeline – no pun intended). What we need to consider is whether balancing the budget is a worthwhile undertaking at all, or, as I suspect, just a facade behind which our government is effectuating a neoliberal (pro-corporate, low-regulation) transformation of our country’s economy, and the gradual “unlocking” (read: usurpation) of what remains of First Nations territory.

Austerity: frugality or insanity?

Conventional wisdom dictates that, as an individual, when you’re overburdened with debt, or you’re spending more than you’re earning, there are three options available to you: 1) earn more money, 2) spend less, or 3) declare bankruptcy. However, the macroeconomic equivalent of option 1) – increase tax receipts by growing the economy – is much easier said than done, and option 3) is often not politically feasible. So when countries are in financial trouble, they wind up choosing option 2) much more often than not. And as we’re seeing in Spain, Greece and Italy right now, the consequences can be nothing short of catastrophic: double-digit unemployment, a wicked spiral of poverty, desperation and social upheaval, and worst of all from the macroeconomist’s perspective, economic contraction that never seems to subside.

In Greece, Spain and elsewhere, clashes between police and protesters over austerity cuts have led to violence. In this image, protesters fight back against a riot squad with petrol bombs. Image c/o PIAZZA del POPOLO/flickr

In Greece, Spain and elsewhere, clashes between police and protesters over austerity cuts have led to violence. In this image, protesters in Athens fight back against a riot squad with petrol bombs. Image c/o PIAZZA del POPOLO/flickr

The examples of Europe, Canada and the United States seem to reveal a rough correlation: the more draconian a country’s austerity measures, the more agonizing the consequences for its citizens, and the fiercer and more robust the public reaction. In Canada, we’ve thus far been spared the sort of violence that has racked the streets and plazas of European capitals like Madrid and Athens since the global financial crisis sent the debt-inflated world economy into a tailspin. But there’s no guarantee, particularly as Flaherty continues his regime of blood-letting, that the citizens and First Nations of the land over which his Conservative government presides, will remain as serene and amicable as the Occupy and #IdleNoMore movements have thus far been.

With this is mind, it’s worth asking ourselves: is there an alternative to austerity, contrary to the familiar TINA dictates of Britain’s implacable former prime minister Margaret Thatcher? Well, if the precepts of Modern Monetary Theory are accurate, then not only do we have an alternative to austerity, we have an economic, social and moral obligation to exercise it.

Modern Monetary Theory in a nutshell:

Since the global financial system unshackled itself from the last vestiges of the gold standard in 1971, and adopted the U.S. dollar as its reserve currency, we have been operating with what’s called a fiat currency – or one which has no inherent value beyond that assigned to it by a national government, and in relation to other currencies (i.e. a $20 bill isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, until the central bank says otherwise). In Canada, we have a national bank with the authority to create money, simply by typing numbers into a machine, and then disbursing the money it creates (in most cases, electronically). The implication of this is that central banks that control their own currency are able to create an unlimited supply of money at their discretion, and are confined in this regard only by inflation (caused by an expansion of the money supply which outpaces the economy’s productive capacity), and the willingness to create more currency.

And while the concept I’ve articulated above applies to monetary policy, it carries further implications for fiscal policy as well – namely, that as long as a government’s debts are denominated in its own sovereign currency, that country will never be limited in its ability to repay them. When Canadian government bonds mature (fall due), all our central bank need do is type numbers into a computer, and then transfer the funds to the creditor’s bank account. As long as a country like Canada is able to do this, according to MMT, there will be a) no possibility of a default on its debt obligations, b) no real hazard associated with debts denominated in Canadian dollars, and c) no pressing need to balance our federal budget. In fact, MMT suggests that attempts to do so are counterproductive.

Furthermore, MMT stipulates that until an economy’s productive capacity is fulfilled – that is, until it reaches full employment and its resources are depleted – the creation of money by a central bank to pay down debts will not lead to inflation – again, provided these debts are denominated in the country’s sovereign currency.

This presentation (on the U.S. Fiscal Cliff), by Dr. Stephanie Kelton at the University of Missouri Kansas City Department of Economics, offers more explanation. Dr. Michael Hudson, a research scholar of economics at the same university, has also written in-depth on the problems inherent in neoliberalism and austerity which MMT can help to rectify. I’ll explain how this is relevant to Canada’s relationship with First Nations in a moment.

First Nations are conversant with racism and injustice. Canada has made sure of that.

We already know the implications of austerity on the First Nations of this land, including the erosion of critical infrastructure (like water and sewage systems), cutbacks to healthcare funding, and the AANDC funding cap of two per cent a year imposed by Jean Chretien’s Liberal government in 1996 – which, with alarming lack of prescience, was designed to compensate for the average annual rate of inflation (hence the two per cent), but fails to consider population growth. In case you were wondering, the First Nations population has increased at a rate faster than that of any other ethnic group in the country since then – close to 2.5 per cent a year – which causes the funding shortfall to compound by that amount annually. In other words, the first year of the funding cap, the shortfall would have been 2.5 per cent, the following year, five per cent, in 1999, 7.5 per cent, and so on to 2012, in which residents of Attawapiskat First Nation, for example, received less than half the total government funding that residents of Toronto received. This type of policy has consequences, and as we’ve witnessed, of the approximately 600 First Nations communities in Canada, AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo estimates that 100 or more face crises similar in scale and severity to the housing shortage in Attawapiskat.

Canada’s economy is based on commodities – lumber in British Columbia, diamonds in the Northwest Territories and Canadian Shield, diluted bitumen in Alberta and Saskatchewan, liquified natural gas, precious metals, wheat, soy and canola grown upon the fertile soils of the Great Plains – extracted primarily from territory of which First Nations are still legal proprietors. Therefore, the gross injustice of the inequality between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples should be obvious to anyone with a clear understanding of history, treaties, and the laws that underpin Canada’s very legitimacy as a sovereign state. Not only has Canada failed to share the wealth of the land, a condition upon which the treaties were signed, we have consistently disregarded First Nations sovereignty and rights to self-determination and respect, as outlined in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Over the course of history and continuing to the present day, we have neglected many of their land claims and divested them of their assets, blinded as so many of our forebears were – and too many of us still are – by the fog of greed.

And as if to add insult to injury, we non-Indigenous Canadians have treated First Nations like second-class citizens or even sub-humans since the time of first contact. We’ve spent incalculable quantities of both time and money to denigrate our First Peoples, rob them, assimilate them, and even to annihliate them. But after all the agony and despair that Canada’s colonial system has inflicted on Indigenous peoples throughout history, after continuing that legacy through an infantilizing, humiliating Indian Act relationship from which South Africa drew the inspiration for Apartheid, and after deliberately underfunding First Nations programs and infrastructure for years, we still have the temerity to blame Aboriginal leaders – like Chief Theresa Spence – for inflicting poverty on their own people.

Talk about limitless, unrepentant chutzpah. We, friends, have mastered it.

Let’s stop blaming and start talking about solutions

This is the part of the blog post in which I “tie my shoelaces,” as I like to say – or, in plain English, make clear what my conclusions are, and how the disparate aspects of my argument fit together.

First of all, we already have the means to help substantially improve the lives of First Nations in every respect, right in front of us. All we seem to lack is the will. We can’t reverse history, we can’t feasibly go back; I could go live in Europe if I wanted to, but I doubt I’d feel much more at home on the streets of Edinburgh, or Paris, or Madrid, than a person of First Nations heritage would. I live on unceded Coast Salish territory in what is now the city of Vancouver. But this land is home for me, the only home I’ve ever known. And if I plan to stay here, I believe it’s my responsibility to acknowledge history, and my role therein. It’s also my responsibility to consider ways of moving the relationship between First Nations, and “settlers” like myself, in a direction of mutual respect, shared prosperity, and justice – because the status quo is not acceptable.

Although I’m no expert on Indigenous governance – and I prefer to leave the task of pondering the many associated issues to people like Taiaiake Alfred, Russell Diabo, Pamela Palmater and others much more qualified than myself – I know that we already have a decent (if imperfect) framework from which to move toward a system of Indigenous sovereignty: The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Among the commission’s recommendations are the establishment of a sufficient land and resource base to provide First Nations the opportunity to build a self-sustaining economy, and the creation of a First Nations parliament. (Incidentally, this is not unprecedented; Norway established a parliament for the Sami people in 1989, and I see nothing that would preclude Canada from doing the same on behalf of First Nations.)

To pretend that we lack the financial means to help First Nations achieve prosperity, self-determination, self-governance and economic independence is both a myth and an egregious abdication of our moral and legal duty as Canadians. We have an abundance of funds; in fact, we have a central bank that can simply create money out of thin air to repay its dollar-denominated debts, so it’s beyond time to recognize the arguments that involve some variation of “lazy, incompetent Natives wasting OUR tax dollars” for what they really are – as much racist, ahistorical, amoral claptrap. Like a disease, this epidemic of nonsense – or as I like to call it, misinformatitis - continues to spread like wildfire through a Canadian mainstream media apparatus that’s unsympathetic to First Nations issues, and lacks Aboriginal representation in its newsrooms. And like a vampire that’s immortal until one impales its heart with a stake, the plague of misinformatitis will only spread and fester until we cure it with logic.

What we need right now is neither a policy of avoiding inflation (which is well below target) or balancing the budget (which is unnecessary). Rather, we need a concerted effort to assist First Nations to achieve sovereignty, prosperity, improved health and education outcomes, and the means by which to build sustainable, independent economies. Why? Because treaties obligate us to do so, because First Nations have been subsidizing the rest of us for more than two centuries, and because I, for one, refuse to remain complicit in my country’s veiled campaign of cultural genocide.

And by the way, if you’re so worried about the misspending of “taxpayer dollars,” why not set your sights on the nearly $60 million Canada spent on the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, published in 1996, the recommendations of which our current government apparently has no desire to fulfill? Why not probe into the AANDC’s sloppy accounting practices, or the $4.5 billion that pay for the bureaucratic overhead, salaries, pensions and paid vacations of its 5000 mandarins in the nation’s capital? Why not inquire into how former Treasury Board (yes, Treasury Board)  President Tony Clement managed to shovel a $50 million infrastructure slush fund for his home riding into a pair of gazebos, leaving no paper trail? (And yeah, he’s still around.) If you’re really interested in cracking down on financial laxity, shouldn’t your first target be a government that’s imposed needless, dangerous austerity measures on Canadians and First Nations, whilst comically stumbling over its own finances over and over again?

Or would you still like to moan about how Chief Spence has been slicing a shrinking pie that was too small to begin with?

Might there be some financial mismanagement in Attawapiskat and other communities? Of course, just as there might be (and is) financial mismanagement in the non-Aboriginal municipal, provincial and federal governments. But Chief Spence is not to blame for the legacy of colonialism, the continuation of the Indian Act, and the consistent underfunding of her community, any more than you and I are responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. It’s a question of priorities, and sadly, we have a federal administration which has prioritized balancing the budget and advancing its neoliberal agenda over the recognition of Aboriginal rights, the preservation of Canada’s natural environment and national sovereignty, and the long-term well-being of the people who inhabit this land.

This is why First Nations people, and the Canadians who support them, must be #IdleNoMore.

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Colonialism, the Mayan prophecy, and why #IdleNoMore is such a huge deal

2 Jan

In 2013, an unprecedented opportunity awaits us. The only question is, will we have the wisdom to capitalize on it?

With the #IdleNoMore movement burgeoning, and a New Year upon us, there is no time like the present to consider how Canadians and the Aboriginal people of Turtle Island can move forward peacefully, amicably, constructively, and together. But first, we need to dispense with the frustratingly persistent colonial mindset that continues to mar our progress.

IMPORTANT: Those of us who trace our heritage to Europe in particular, need to assume personal responsibility for our misconceptions, and work to rectify them. Decolonization starts with you and me.

And only now do you see the people. You were blind to their presence because their reality is different from yours. The people around you occupy space the way you occupy time. Their existence approaches transparency…These people do not dwell on the land the way you are accustomed to. There are many of them, they have been here in their millions over thousands of years. When the Great Sphinx of Egypt crawled out of the sands by the Nile, and Stonehenge was rising in ominous rings from the Salisbury Plains, these people were here. Their genius, to leave no monuments; their genius to envision the circle of creation as complete.

-John Moss, from ”The Opposite of Prayer: An Introduction to Tomson Highway.”

The new year having dawned, I find myself reflecting on 2012,  particularly on the hype that surrounded December 21, date of the so-called Mayan apocalypse. Indeed, the mass media had been circulating the fantasy for years, in typical sensational style. Hollywood even produced a ludicrous action blockbuster, starring John Cusack, in anticipation of Armageddon.

However, to the surprise of few rational human beings, the sun indeed rose on December 22nd. There was no catastrophe, no mass failure of technology as predicted in advance of Y2K. Storms, floods and volcanoes didn’t simultaneously tear our world to shreds, an asteroid didn’t plunge mercilessly into the planet’s crust, precipitating an interminable ice age. Once again, we can only resign ourselves to a familiar, if uncomfortable, reality – that the single greatest threat to humankind is we ourselves.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Maya are not an ancient, extinct people, comparable to the Sumerians or Egyptian pharaohs; they live on, inhabiting Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and wide swaths of jungle in Central America. Many of them continue to speak the languages and maintain the customs and traditions of their forebears. And incidentally, Mayan elders recognized the 2012 “Armageddon” hype for what it was – an outlandish misrepresentation of their calendar, buoyed senselessly by a Western media establishment perpetually hungry for eyeballs.

Rather than the end of time, insist Mayan elders, their prophesies foretold that December of 2012 would mark the beginning of a transition, a change in consciousness, a re-awakening.

I can’t help but wonder if we’re witnessing it right now.

The hunger strike that set the wheels of Idle No More in motion

On December 10, Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat First Nation announced that she would begin a hunger strike to persuade Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper (thus far unsuccessfully) to meet with her, to discuss the perennial squalour and disrepair endured by her people, on the remote Cree reserve. Little did she realize the response – both positive and negative – her act of defiance would elicit.

Some, like a few of the vulturine hacks at the National Post, doubled down on a bevy of supercilious tropes, maligning Chief Spence’s handling of federal funds for the northern community’s hardships – despite apparently possessing no concrete evidence upon which to draw that conclusion, despite the mountains of paperwork filed annually by Attawapiskat and many other First Nation communities across the country, and inspected regularly by the discerning eye of Canada’s Auditor General, and despite the fact the town had been mired in housing and infrastructural crises for decades. Evidently, for journalists seduced by the colonial mindframe, the knee-jerk temptation to incriminate Aboriginal leaders – whilst exculpating a spectacularly opaque and fiscally ham-handed federal government, mind you – is much too alluring to resist.

Perhaps the most egregious diatribes came from self-proclaimed conservative contrarian J.J. McCullough – who defamed peaceful Idle No More protesters as “marauding, riotous hordes” – reviving the spectre of odious Aboriginal caricatures that dominated Canada’s newspapers more than a century ago. Not to be outdone was the National Post‘s Christie Blatchford, whose affinity for horse manure, as Harsha Walia reveals, is superceded only by her penchant for logical fallacies.

By the way, it’s tempting to view Blatchford’s anti-Native hogwash as a form of intimidation, if not terrorism. But not really. I just felt like drawing an asinine moral equivalency. (In case you have any lingering doubts, let me be clear that the old adage about imitation and flattery does not apply in this instance.)

Anyway, enough about the manure meted out by maleficent mainstream minions. The hope, optimism and pride Idle No More has inspired, far outweigh its unwarranted portrayals. This movement is so much more than your parents’ Native protest. It’s an emblem of positive change. Aboriginal peoples in Canada, throughout the Americas and overseas, so long assailed by the manifold evils of colonialism, are rising like a phoenix from the fire, filled with determination to make things better, not only for themselves, but for all of us. Some revolutions are waged with guns, mortars and artillery, devastating communities and costing millions of lives. This revolution is being conducted with banners, drums, gatherings, traditional songs, round dances and hunger strikes, bringing hope to communities ravaged by despair. The possibility of a new beginning beckons, tantalizingly close, bright and lucid like the Northern Lights.

Protesters of all ages have joined in the peaceful #IdleNoMore movement, displaying their solidarity with Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Spence. Image c/o Caelie_Frampton/flickr

Protesters of all ages have joined in the peaceful #IdleNoMore movement, displaying their solidarity with Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence. Image c/o Caelie_Frampton/flickr

But make no mistake; First Nations – and Canadians – are facing the fight of a lifetime.

Breaking down the wall of denial

In the late 1980s, legendary blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan penned “Wall of Denial,” a song about that figurative barrier that separates each one of us from truth and enlightenment, the dismantling of which is a monumental psychic and emotional challenge. Though his lyrics pertained to a wholly different scenario, the premise is universally applicable – and apt for the Canadian context. Our wall of denial is high, it’s thick, and it’s reinforced with ample layers of ignorance and misapprehension. And the only way to bring it down is by working together.

To be sure, the issues inherent in the Canada-First Nations relationship are complex, but in the year 2013, I feel it can essentially be reduced to one overriding truth: Too many Canadians think we know what we’re talking about, but really have no clue.

Here are some of the notions that non-Aboriginal Canadians need to understand before we can meaningfully advance our discourse around Idle No More:

  • Assimilation is NOT the answer.

The notion that Aboriginals will be better off if they just integrate into the Canadian mainstream has assumed many forms over the years, from Trudeau’s 1969 White Paper, to the genocidal Residential Schools, to bans on Indigenous art, ceremonies and potlaches, the ’60s Scoop, and the systematic eradication of languages and forms of knowledge vital to our First Peoples. Even the Indian Act itself, which infantilizes Aboriginals as “wards of the state,” is a document originally tendered with the nefarious object of assimilation in mind. Indeed, a campaign of cultural genocide has been the policy of our government throughout its existence, not to mention the various efforts at physical and biological genocide that preceded Confederation.

Although several overt policies of assimilation have been abandoned over the years, such as the Potlach Ban and the Residential Schools, references to assimilation still pervade our public discourse and the legislation our governments construct. Simply stated, since assuming control of the federal administration, Harper’s Conservatives have revealed, in hints and actions of varying subtlety, their intention to legislate First Nations cultures out of existence, one little amendment at a time. And they’re invoking the ghost of Milton Friedman as their PR rep, pushing a neoliberal, hypercapitalistic agenda, and speaking in coded language. When the Conservatives say they want to help Aboriginal people achieve economic success, it likely means they want to acquire traditional and/or Treaty lands for economic development purposes, and assimilate the inhabitants. Likewise, when columnists like the National Post’s John Ivison opine that First Nations communities like Attawapiskat have “no economic reason to exist,” this implies that the inhabitants of that community should just abandon their traditional territory and move elsewhere, to a place where money can be made, for the benefit of the Canadian taxpayer (in other words, assimilate). And don’t even get me started on Margaret Wente!

  • Canada is a multiracial country, but there is a dominant, mainstream culture to which immigrant communities gradually adapt. And Aboriginals are not immigrants.

One critique I’ve heard fairly often in right-wing circles, is that Indigenous people ought to be regarded as no different from immigrants. Okay then. How many fourth-generation Polish, Russian, Italian, Indian immigrants do you know, who are fluent in the language of their ancestors? I’m guessing not very many. I’m a second-generation Canadian of largely Scottish descent, but I speak no Gaelic, I almost never wear a kilt or carry a sgian-dubh (dagger). I have never played the bagpipes, taken part in Highland Games, or shorn a sheep as my ancestors did. Most of the cultural traditions of my progenitors are lost on me.

Now, imagine you belong to a culture that’s been subject to various campaigns of systematic eradication over the past several centuries, that laws have forbade you to learn your language, wear your traditional clothes or partake of ancient ceremonies. Indigenous people have been persecuted for centuries by settlers intent on destroying their way of life. And many of them are doing their damnedest to revive what colonialism has striven for so long to obliterate.

If we accept that assimilation is not an option for Aboriginal people, and considering the fact that languages and cultural norms tend to fade rapidly with the passage of generations in a country dominated by secular, acculturated anglophones, let’s abandon this inane suggestion, shall we?

  • The Indian Act changes in Bill C-45 amount to an underhanded land-grab, implemented with insufficient, if any, consultation with First Nations.

The modifications to the Indian Act inherent in the omnibus bill are small, but deeply significant, in that they reduce the threshold by which Treaty First Nations may lease or “designate” (conditionally surrender) their lands. Instead of a requiring a majority of title holders, or a referendum of the First Nation’s members, leases to resource extraction companies (let’s be honest; in most cases, they’d be the most likely bidders), or conditional surrender of the Indigenous lands, can now be approved based on a simple majority at a meeting of just a handful of Band members, and then rubber-stamped by the Aboriginal Affairs Minister. Combine this with deliberate, draconian program and infrastructure funding cuts by the federal government, and many Indigenous communities will be forced to carry debt, with their lands serving as collateral (in fact, in British Columbia, First Nations were saddled with more that $400 million in debt as of April 2012, accrued through the treaty negotiation process alone). To escape debt, according to the neoliberal mantra to which our government is committed, the best option is privatization and individual ownership. I can’t emphasize enough the threat this poses to First Nations territory and Treaty lands.

  • And it gets worse – C-45′s unilateral Indian Act alterations are the tip of the iceberg
  • The Harper government has amended the Navigable Waters Act, downloading this responsibility to the provinces and providing them with greater powers of appropriation over waters in First Nations jurisdiction. Structures (like bridges for pipelines transporting diluted bitumen) can also now be constructed with no environmental review.
  • Evidently channelling Orwell’s 1984, though sadly not in jest, Harper and friends have also introduced a pair of bills whose consequences will be the opposite of their stated purpose.
  • The first of these is Bill S-212: First Nations Self-Government Recognition Bill

This legislation, as the Vancouver Observer‘s Jenny Uechi reports, is a Canadian version of the American bill that led to the sell-off of 90 million acres of American Indian land – roughly 65 per cent of the total. The purpose of the Dawes Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1887, was to advance a “divide and conquer” strategy for the acquisition of Aboriginal territory – and from a capitalistic, colonial perspective, it was an overwhelming success.

The following are the six objectives outlined in the Dawes Act:

1) Break up the tribe as a social unit

2) Encourage individual initiative

3) Further the progress of Indian farmers

4) Reduce the cost of Indian administration

5) Secure at least part of the reservation as Indian land

6) Open unused lands to white settlers

I’m guessing that, if you’re reasonably informed about Aboriginal land issues, more than a few of these goals will sound familiar to you. Bill S-212 is a national disgrace waiting to happen, and it must be stopped.

  •  Bill S-8: (Un)Safe Drinking Water for First Nations

The Orwellian tenor of this bill would be laughable if it weren’t so detestably unjust and cruel. Bill S-8, rather than assuring safe drinking water for First Nations, would likely achieve exactly the opposite effect! This legislation would download the responsibility for providing potable drinking water on the reserve to cash-strapped First Nations governments, without providing additional funding for the infrastructural upgrades required. The federal government would also indemnify itself in the event of an outbreak of water-borne illness. The consequences of this bill, combined with amendments to the Indian Act allowing for industrial development of reserve land, and changes to the Navigable Waters Act precluding the need for environmental assessments, will likely entail the further endangerment of the health, welfare, and lives of Aboriginals on reserve, unless the federal government commits to providing funds to upgrade the dilapidated water infrastructure in many First Nations communities.

Then again, considering the closure of the Kitsilano Coast Guard station last summer, cuts to Aboriginal healthcare and to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in advance of the 2012 tainted beef recall, our government is apparently not averse to endangering the health of its citizens in order to advance its neoliberal agenda of deficit-cutting (which, incidentally, doesn’t seem to be going all that well. Funny how austerity never works).

    • Contrary to what at least one so-called “journalist” has asserted, Aboriginal people aren’t “whining about a whole lotta nothin’.” On the contrary, they are fighting for respect, for their pride, for their culture, for their Treaty and human rights, and for their very lives.
  • The very least we can do, as beneficiaries of a colonial mass appropriation of land and resources that has made Canada one of the most prosperous countries in the world, is support their right to protest, and demand that our Prime Minister meet with Chief Spence.

Ok, that’s about all I can handle for now. My next post will illustrate that balancing the federal budget is a fool’s errand, and discuss three reasons why the squabbles over tax money “subsidizing” First Nations are a collective load of, um, horse manure.

For now, I’ll leave you with this: a cogent piece in the Globe and Mail that explains why audits of First Nations like Attawapiskat will do little, if anything, to resolve the crises afflicting those communities. We need to take a different approach, starting immediately. And it needs to begin with respect.

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Totalitarianism: too close for comfort?

13 Dec

Note to readers: This post may alarm you, disturb you, surprise you, frighten you. You may scoff, incredulous to its implications and conclusions. But be that as it may, I hope my words will also cause you to think, about democracy, about liberty, about what it would take to compel you to rise up and take action.

This post is deliberately provocative, for a time and place wherein it appears nothing short of deliberate provocation will suffice. Because power seldom – if ever – grants rights and freedoms to a citizenry that is unwilling to demand them.

“I am not a dictator; I have only simplified democracy.” Adolf Hitler, 1936.

Last week, I had the distinct pleasure of reading Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. For those of you unfamiliar with Wolf’s work, she is a writer and journalist who has committed her career to a variety of causes, among them pro-democracy activism, feminism and civil rights. Penned in the latter years of the George W. Bush administration, The End of America issues a stern warning for citizens of that country who have been lulled into complacency by their country’s longstanding democratic heritage, and the mantra of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ to which every American is (ostensibly) entitled. As Wolf points out, the presidency of Bush the Younger marked a transition within America’s body politic away from freedom and toward tyranny: the Bush administration initiated the War on Terror, and a pair of questionable foreign military invasions that have produced little beyond death, destruction and misery; a move to increasingly draconian and intrusive (though not necessarily more effective) airport security, through the establishment of the Transportation Safety Administration; the inauguration of the Guantanamo military detention facility and ‘black site’ prisons around the world; warrantless wiretapping; and suspension of the writ of habeas corpus under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 with little, if any, justification.

Even more importantly, Wolf’s opus assails the illusory notion of what she calls the ‘pendulum’ of democracy: that through the orderly, conventional electoral process, unsavoury governments and leadership styles will invariably be supplanted with the marking of an ‘X’ on a ballot. On the contrary, Wolf presciently warns that freedom and democracy don’t simply fall into one’s lap; rather, they are institutions built through centuries of struggle, the maintenance of which requires unflagging vigilance on the part of the citizenry. And we need look no further than America’s current president, who has continued and even exacerbated many of the illiberal policies of his predecessor, for proof positive of the pendulum’s failure to rectify abuses of power on its own. But Barack Obama’s egregious assault on civil liberties is a topic for another blog entry.

What we can (and must) learn from Wolf’s lengthy missive, and from the present situation in the United States, is that totalitarian regimes, including fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, seldom materialize in an instant. Rather, they tend to evolve incrementally, one step at a time. All the while, the course of day to day life for most people is unaffected by the increasing authoritarianism of government – and this seeming uneventfulness tends to lull citizens into a complacent insouciance until it’s too late to reclaim what’s been lost. It’s this complacency we must resist, first and foremost, in order to uphold the liberty and democracy we venerate. And we need to start resisting immediately. As in, right now.

Clear and present danger

Right under our noses, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is dismantling environmental protections, regulations and government-funded science initiatives. He’s continued the demolition of the Canadian welfare state initiated by his Liberal predecessors, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, axing, among other programs, a federal healthcare service for refugees. He’s muzzled scientists, withdrawn Canada from Kyoto, and undermined the effectiveness of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. All of these actions are well documented and of significant concern, as is the convoluted saga of the F-35 fighter jets and their absurdly ballooning price tags. But hidden beneath the surface is a fundamental change to Canada’s democratic DNA which Harper is striving to effect. The endgame in brief: less talk, less freedom, and more autocracy, with a view to putting Canada on the fast track to neoliberal paradise.

Stephen Harper's aim is to radically transform Canada along neoliberal lines, an endeavour inimical with democracy. Image c/o tiganatoo/Flickr

Stephen Harper’s aim is to radically transform Canada along neoliberal lines, an endeavour inimical with democracy. Image c/o tiganatoo/Flickr

What’s at stake

For success and longevity, few democracies on Earth rival our own. We’re blessed with one of the freest, most open societies in human history. But as I’ve noted above, liberty can be a dangerous chimera to those who take it for granted. And under the present regime, too many of us have been seduced by the siren song of a freedom we presume will endure for all eternity, so perpetual is it in our minds. But as many of us look on with apathetic eyes, the insuperable freedom we believe ourselves to possess is disintegrating, like a cliff buffetted by the crashing surf of despotism.

By now, every one of us is aware of the much-publicized ‘omnibus bills’: The Safe Streets and Communities Act C-10, and the so-called budget bills C-38 and C-45 (which are not so much financial plans as wholesale manifestations of a neoliberal agenda, which Harper et al. seem intent on ramming through with as little democratic accountability as possible). The ‘Prime Minister knows best’ theme pervades our federal government’s policy decisions, from dismantling various social programs and human rights initiatives, to slashing program funding, to incremental cessions of Canada’s legal and environmental sovereignty to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI agents are now taking ‘baby steps’ toward being permitted to enter Canada and arrest Canadian citizens) and the Environmental Protection Agency (whose agents Harper has suggested would competently serve in lieu of laid-off Canadian environmental scientists, formerly tasked with monitoring pollutants from our industrial smokestacks). Far-reaching budget cuts have also pinched, among other portfolios, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and forced the closure of the Canadian Coast Guard base at Kitsilano. Conservatives maintain the duties of the defunct base will be absorbed by the already overburdened volunteers of the North Shore Search and Rescue department – a delusion, but nonetheless one which B.C.’s Tory MPs won’t dare contradict.

For a man trained in economics, Harper seems alarmingly oblivious to the concept of opportunity cost, doesn’t he? But I digress.

Undeterred by the resistance they encountered over C-38, Harper and friends introduced a second omnibus ‘budget’ this fall – bill C-45 – which promises an additional array of antidemocratic propositions, including changes to the Indian Act, ostensibly streamlining the process by which reserve lands may be leased by Band councils for development purposes. First Nations maintain that these proposed changes have been subject to no consultation and inadequate respect for treaty rights; thus, thousands of Aboriginals and sympathizers have voiced their frustrations in recent ‘Idle No More’ protests across the country.

Indigenous people are not alone in perceiving a lack of consultation and accountability from a Harper government that’s foisting drastic policy changes on them. Many Canadians have reason to sense that the land they call home is being hijacked by an authoritarian politburo.

Why has Harper taken this approach to leadership? There are many possibilities, from each of which a kernel of truth may be extracted: his personal affinity for control; the desire to capitalize on a rare majority mandate by ramming as much of his agenda through the pipeline in as little time as possible; a contempt for his political opponents, in particular New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair, with whom Harper shares a relationship far less collegial than the one he enjoyed with the late Jack Layton; or even personal misconceptions about the nature of Canada’s parliamentary democracy, in which the Prime Minister is traditionally considered the First Among Equals, rather than the Supreme Leader.

But there’s one other reason, perhaps even more important than those I mentioned above: democracy is simply inimical with Harper’s economic agenda. Too many valuable government programs (like the long-form census, healthcare and other crucial public services for Aboriginal Canadians) and research endeavours (among them the Experimental Lakes, Nunavut’s PEARL and science project funding) are at stake, for informed constituents to remain quiet on such deep budget cuts, and the corresponding neoliberal philosophy of a reduced role of the state in the economy. Open the floor to debate, open the omnibus budget bills to genuine scrutiny (rather than paying lip service to parliamentary procedure), and Harper knows he’ll be placing his vision in jeopardy: hence the need to assume dictatorial control whenever possible. In this sense, there is at least one historical precedent of which we’d be wise to take note.

Chile: neoliberalism’s sacrificial lamb

In a narrative tragically common to Latin American nations, Chile was transformed from a democracy into a dictatorship in September of 1973, when a CIA-backed military junta, under the command of General Augusto Pinochet, seized control of the government. Pinochet would rule the country as dictator until 1990 – all the while vanquishing legion critics and political opponents with indefinite detentions and clandestine acts of genocide, in the context of one of history’s most repressive police states.

The despotic regime of Augusto Pinochet is noted for its extreme repressiveness, and as the prime testing ground for Milton Friedman's neoliberal initiatives. Image c/o -Vik-/Flickr

The despotic regime of Augusto Pinochet is noted for its extreme repressiveness, and as the prime testing ground for Milton Friedman’s neoliberal initiatives. Image c/o -Vik-/Flickr

The reason this lamentable period in Chilean history is instructive for us, is because of a sea change in economic theory to which it corresponded. The decade of the 1970s included a number of significant developments, but the two I’ll focus on here are the oil scare – which saw the cost of petroleum skyrocket, leading many countries to implement highway speed limits and develop alternative energy sources – and the hyperinflation that numerous industrialized countries (including the United States) experienced, in part because their economies were dependent on petroleum for the transport of products and services. It didn’t take long for policymakers to conclude that such a protracted period of hyperinflation was undesirable; too much money was chasing too few goods, and something needed to be done to restore the stability of currency. This sentiment brought the economic theory of monetarism – espoused by Milton Friedman and other Chicago economists – to the forefront. Monetarism emphasized the notion that inflation was linked to the amount of money a country’s central bank chose to print; by simply printing less money (or purchasing fewer bonds), the central bank would automatically rein in inflation.

Closely linked to monetarism was another set of values Friedman endorsed: that unfettered capitalism, privatization and the ‘invisible hand’ of individual responsibility, were the surest pathways to prosperity, efficient distribution of resources, and personal motivation to succeed; in other words, Friedman was an intellectual architect of the neoliberal ideal. His philosophy undeniably contains some truth – in general, human nature dictates that we tend to prize more highly our own possessions than those we share with an amorphous ‘public’, and we tend to work longer hours when we know we’ve got no choice. But there are also several important shortcomings of this approach. To simplify: the profit motive in isolation doesn’t always lead to desirable social outcomes; market fluctuations can cause severe insecurity for those who depend on private companies to fulfil basic needs; the wealth generated by neoliberalism has delivered unprecedented prosperity to a privileged few while exacerbating social and economic inequality; and much of the ecosystem upon which we depend has been ravaged by the mantra of deregulation – not to mention the grave danger to our livelihood posed by climate change.

Before the rise of hard-line neoliberals Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s, Chile became a testing ground for the hypothesis that would unseat Keynesianism as global economic orthodoxy. Pinochet’s regime abolished collective bargaining, vitiating Chile’s formerly influential labour movement, and eventually leading to the demise of unions. Social Security was privatized, government programs slashed or eliminated, the minimum wage abolished, and the majority of public assets and portfolios sold to the highest bidder – leaving thousands of workers and dispossessed individuals to fend for themselves. Taxes on wealth and corporate profits were abolished. The currency was artificially devalued. And as in the rhetoric of Thatcher/Reagan, the concept of collectivism in all its forms – ‘society’, ‘the common good’, ‘community’, ‘public’ – was actively suppressed from the public discourse, in favour of total individualism. Large corporations and foreign investors had Pinochet’s ear, and received priority status in the ersatz economy: a modern manifestation of Italian fascism. Under suchlike conditions, where the will of the majority invariably conflicts with the goals of the regime, true democracy cannot exist. That’s why it didn’t exist under Pinochet. That’s why it doesn’t exist in the alternately command economic-neoliberal People’s Republic of China. And that’s why it doesn’t genuinely exist in Harper’s Canada.

The growth figures Chile produced under Pinochet’s reign earned this period the moniker ‘the Chilean miracle’. (Interestingly, Canadian Conservatives, like former cabinet minister Stockwell Day, have hailed Canada’s relatively successful escape from the 2008 global financial crisis as ‘an economic miracle’.) However, the title is an Orwellian misnomer – throughout the 1970s, the country did indeed enjoy periods of spectacular GDP growth, but these were interspersed with cataclysmic recessions. The newly-privatized banks, which had become vehicles for credit bubbles and Ponzi schemes (much like the present-day JPMorgan Chases and Goldman Sachs of the world) became insolvent within a decade, leading to the loss of millions of Chileans’ life savings. In desperation, and with riots erupting in the streets, Pinochet took steps to reverse many of the neoliberal measures he had implemented, reintroducing collective bargaining and the minimum wage, hiring back thousands of government workers, and nationalizing private industries at will.

Chile remains a prime exhibit of neoliberalism’s failings: dramatic boom-bust cycles and systemic instability, the decline of worker rights and wages over time, the erosion (or absence) of democracy and civil liberties, the disappearance of the middle class, and the tendency of large, unaccountable foreign corporations to assert authority against the will of the people, harvesting a country’s resources and cheap labour before moving on. (For more information on the Chilean experience of neoliberalism under Pinochet, I highly recommend Scott Bidstrup’s “Free Market Fundamentalism: Friedman, Pinochet and the ‘Chilean Miracle‘”. I credit Bidstrup’s essay for greatly enhancing my understanding of this topic.)

What it all means for us

I can sum up the core message of this blog entry in one word: resist. Push back against Harper and his neoliberal agenda. Oppose his efforts to undermine democracy and accountability.  Write letters. Write blog posts. Share information. Take to the streets. Let your prime minister and his cabinet ministers know, hard-core neoliberalism and the avoidance of debate, compromise and accountability are incongruent with your vision of Canada. Make it crystal clear to him, that this country is a parliamentary democracy, not an electoral democracy. Keep the Twitter hashtag #IdleNoMore alive, but more importantly, commit to remaining idle no more for Canada’s Aboriginal people, for your friends, for your family, and for yourself. Let’s heed Naomi Wolf’s warning and nip authoritarianism in the bud, before it mutates into totalitarianism.

Civil disobedience, peaceful protest and dissent are not misbehaviour; they’re enshrined in our country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If Canadians can camp out overnight with our American counterparts for the latest iPhone or for the start of Black Friday, we have more than enough stamina and determination to demand a better future from our elected leaders, just as Quebec’s students did last year in vociferously opposing the Charest government’s tuition hikes.

Proponents of neoliberalism prize the individual over the collective, in part because divided, we are weak. But together, we can move mountains.

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