#voteoct19

[greencoastbc]

THE CLOSING OF THE CANADIAN MIND (repost)

What is Canada? What was Canada? What is at stake when we vote on October 19th? Writer Stephen Marche's article has gotten a lot of attention since it was published on August 14 in the New York Times. If you haven't read it, here it is.

By STEPHEN MARCHE

THE prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has called an election for Oct. 19, but he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it.

He has chosen not to participate in the traditional series of debates on national television, confronting his opponents in quieter, less public venues, like the scholarly Munk Debates and CPAC, Canada’s equivalent of CSPAN. His own campaign events were subject to gag orders until a public outcry forced him to rescind the forced silence of his supporters.

Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.

Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.

But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.

His relationship to the press is one of outright hostility. At his notoriously brief news conferences, his handlers vet every journalist, picking and choosing who can ask questions. In the usual give-and-take between press and politicians, the hurly-burly of any healthy democracy, he has simply removed the give.

Mr. Harper’s war against science has been even more damaging to the capacity of Canadians to know what their government is doing. The prime minister’s base of support is Alberta, a western province financially dependent on the oil industry, and he has been dedicated to protecting petrochemical companies from having their feelings hurt by any inconvenient research.

In 2012, he tried to defund government research centers [sic] in the High Arctic, and placed Canadian environmental scientists under gag orders. That year, National Research Council members were barred from discussing their work on snowfall with the media. Scientists for the governmental agency Environment Canada, under threat of losing their jobs, have been banned from discussing their research without political approval. Mentions of federal climate change research in the Canadian press have dropped 80 percent. The union that represents federal scientists and other professionals has, for the first time in its history, abandoned neutrality to campaign against Mr. Harper.

His active promotion of ignorance extends into the functions of government itself. Most shockingly, he ended the mandatory long-form census, a decision protested by nearly 500 organizations in Canada, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops. In the age of information, he has stripped Canada of its capacity to gather information about itself. The Harper years have seen a subtle darkening of Canadian life.

The darkness has resulted, organically, in one of the most scandal-plagued administrations in Canadian history. Mr. Harper’s tenure coincided with the scandal of Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto who admitted to smoking crack while in office and whose secret life came to light only when Gawker, an American website, broke the story. In a famous video at a Ford family barbecue, Mr. Harper praised the Fords as a “Conservative political dynasty.”

Mr. Harper’s appointments to the Senate — which in Canada is a mercifully impotent body employed strictly for political payoffs — have proved greedier than the norm. Mr. Harper’s chief of staff was forced out for paying off a senator who fudged his expenses. The Mounties have pressed criminal charges.

After the 2011 election, a Conservative staffer, Michael Sona, was convicted of using robocalls to send voters to the wrong polling places in Guelph, Ontario. In the words of the judge, he was guilty of “callous and blatant disregard for the right of people to vote.” In advance of this election, instead of such petty ploys, the Canadian Conservatives have passed the Fair Elections Act, a law with a classically Orwellian title, which not only needlessly tightens the requirements for voting but also has restricted the chief executive of Elections Canada from promoting the act of voting. Mr. Harper seems to think that his job is to prevent democracy.

But the worst of the Harper years is that all this secrecy and informational control have been at the service of no larger vision for the country. The policies that he has undertaken have been negligible — more irritating distractions than substantial changes. He is “tough on crime,” and so he has built more prisons at great expense at the exact moment when even American conservatives have realized that over-incarceration causes more problems than it solves. Then there is a new law that allows the government to revoke citizenship for dual citizens convicted of terrorism or high treason — effectively creating levels of Canadianness and problems where none existed.

For a man who insists on such intense control, the prime minister has not managed to control much that matters. The argument for all this secrecy was a technocratic impulse — he imagined Canada as a kind of Singapore, only more polite and rule abiding.

The major foreign policy goal of his tenure was the Keystone Pipeline, which Mr. Harper ultimately failed to deliver. The Canadian dollar has returned to the low levels that once earned it the title of the northern peso. Despite being left in a luxurious position of strength after the global recession, he coasted on what he knew: oil. In the run-up to the election, the Bank of Canada has announced that Canada just had two straight quarters of contraction — the technical definition of a recession. He has been a poor manager by any metric.

The early polls show Mr. Harper trailing, but he’s beaten bad polls before. He has been prime minister for nearly a decade for a reason: He promised a steady and quiet life, undisturbed by painful facts. The Harper years have not been terrible; they’ve just been bland and purposeless. Mr. Harper represents the politics of willful ignorance. It has its attractions.

Whether or not he loses, he will leave Canada more ignorant than he found it. The real question for the coming election is a simple but grand one: Do Canadians like their country like that?

The original is published at: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html

Follow Stephen Marche on Twitter at https://twitter.com/StephenMarche

Who’s standing up for Canadian values on Vancouver Island? 

Who are the Vancouver Island #greencoastBC alternatives to the Conservatives? Let’s start from the north of the Island, and work our way south.

Brenda Sayers is the candidate for North Island—Powell River. You’ll find out more about Brenda here:

http://greensofnorthisland-powellriver.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/NIPRGreens

https://twitter.com/niprgreens

Glenn Sollitt is the candidate for Courtenay-Alberni. Find our more about Glenn here:

http://www.glennsollittgpc.ca

https://www.facebook.com/GlennSollitt

http://www.twitter.com/glennsollitt

Paul Manly is the candidate for Nanaimo-Ladysmith. Find our more about Paul here:

http://paulmanly.greenparty.ca

https://www.facebook.com/VoteforPaulManly

http://www.twitter.com/PaulManly

Fran Hunt-Jinnouchi is the candidate for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Find out more about Fran here:

http://www.franhuntjinnouchi.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/FranHuntJinnouchi

http://www.twitter.com/FHJinnouchi

Frances Litman is the candidate for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. Find out more about Frances here:

http://franceslitman.ca

https://www.facebook.com/franceslitmangreenparty

https://twitter.com/franceslitman

Jo-Ann Roberts is the candidate for Victoria. Find out more about Jo-Ann here:

http://joannroberts.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ

https://twitter.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ

https://instagram.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ/

Elizabeth May is the candidate for Saanich-Gulf Islands. Find out more about Elizabeth here:

http://www.elizabethmaymp.ca

https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethMayGreenLeader

https://twitter.com/elizabethmay

https://instagram.com/_elizabeth.may/

https://www.youtube.com/user/canadiangreenparty

[greencoastbc]

Judy Wilson is concerned about Canadian politics. Here's what she said about hearing Elizabeth May speak. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc

[greencoastbc]

Clive Gammon is a Glenn Sollitt supporter in the Courtenay-Alberni. Here he is showing off his political colours at the Comox Valley Green Party of Canada launch event .. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc (at Glenn Sollitt Comox Valley HQ)

[greencoastbc]

Glenn Sollitt listening to Courtenay-Alberni voters at today's Green Party of Canada launch in the Comox Valley .. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc (at Glenn Sollitt Comox Valley HQ)

[greencoastbc]

Greg Sabo used to be a Liberal supporter. He's now voting for Green Party of Canada candidate Glenn Sollitt in the Courtenay-Alberni riding .. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc

[greencoastbc]

Michelle and Andrea - solid Sollitt supporters /p>

Michelle Borden and Andrea Lang at the Glenn Sollitt Comox Valley launch event. Andrea has known Glenn for years, and was voting Green long before him. Michelle, however, was always a Conservative Party supporter. She voted Conservative for decades because of their fiscal policies, and because she believes they stood for "Canadian values." In this election she's voting for Glenn Sollitt and the Green Party of Canada because she likes their policies better, and because she likes Glenn's values. He's a business man who's committed to defending BC's coast, and the families that rely on a healthy coastal environment for their economic well-being. Do you know other conservative voters who are looking for an alternative? Citizens who want to be proud of this country again? Tell them about Michelle. She's one of thousands of Vancouver Island conservatives for whom voting Green is making a lot of sense.

[greencoastbc]

Michelle Borden is a long-time Conservative voter who has decided to vote Green in 2015. She's now a solid Glenn Sollitt supporter in the Courtenay-Alberni. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greenpartycanada (at Glenn Sollitt HQ in the Comox Valley)

[greencoastbc]

What about the economy? 

Canadian Business magazine says Elizabeth May "showed another way forward." And that includes putting people to work on things that need doing if we're going to be serious about facing the issues, it means investing in our communities. 

Here’s the full story, from Canadian Business Magazine:

Why Mulcair and Trudeau fought on Harper’s terms—and lost

There is nothing more refreshing in politics than a leader who has nothing to lose.

A victory for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May in the October election would be any opportunity to hold caucus meetings around something bigger than a coffee table. The low threshold for success means she is free to play offense—as she did Thursday in the Maclean’s leaders debate. Unencumbered by expectations, May was the most comfortable of the four performers. Most of the intelligent things that were said about the economy came out of her mouth.

To his credit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper did well, given he was the target of nearly every attack. Harper is an ideologically arrogant leader entirely convinced of his right to foist his worldview on the country, even though 60% of voters in the last election cast ballots for someone other than a Conservative. But arrogance was an advantage in Thursday night’s setting. Harper was rarely flustered. He effectively shrugged off the Bank of Canada’s prediction that gross domestic product contracted in the first half of the year. Growth will be positive on the year, he said. Message: stick with me and everything will be fine.

The opposition leaders were good at pointing out that Harper has been rather poor macro-economic forecaster. His vision of Canada as an energy “superpower” wrongly assumed oil prices had shifted forever higher. And when the foundations of the global economy were trembling ahead of the financial crisis, Harper denied that a recession was coming. In fact, in the autumn of 2008, when the rest of the world was scrambling to deal with the fallout of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Harper made a priority of curbing public funding for political parties. The move triggered a political crisis that wasted weeks of precious time. The prime minister eventually presented a credible economic stimulus plan, but only after experiencing a near-death experience in Parliament.

Harper is vulnerable on the economy, which is why his campaign also is emphasizing “public safety” as another reason to give the Conservatives another mandate. Yet the two main opposition leaders did a poor job of exploiting it. New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair cleverly noted that Harper’s legacy as economic manager could include two recessions. Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, pointed out that his predecessors bequeathed Harper big budget surpluses that he turned into deficits.

Why the federal government shouldn’t balance the budget Yet neither Mulcair or Trudeau really hurt Harper on the economy. That’s because they chose to debate the prime minister on his terms. Harper wants the debate about economic policy to revolve around balanced budgets. He says anyone who votes for a New Democratic or Liberal candidate is asking for Greek-style debt crisis. The charge is absurd, but no more so than the repeated attempts by Mulcair and Trudeau to smear Harper for running “eight-consecutive deficits.”

Any responsible leader would have run shortfalls in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Harper’s failure is his refusal to plan for a ninth or even a tenth deficit. Business investment is weak. Exports are struggling. Households are too indebted to carry on spending in their post-crisis pace. If there ever is a time for a more active role for government in the economy, this is it. The federal government easily could do more because its debt is low and borrowing costs may never be lower. But Harper won’t because he is ideologically fused to balanced budgets. The Conservatives want to equate fiscal probity with superb economic management. By trying to embarrass Harper for running deficits, Mulcair and Trudeau are playing into the prime minister’s hands. They elevate the importance of balanced budgets by trying so hard to convince voters that they too would run tight fiscal policy. The New Democratic Party and the Liberals, therefore, would do no better at boosting economic growth than the Conservative Party is right now. So why change prime ministers?

And now back to Elizabeth May. She was the only leader who recognized that if the objective is to stimulate growth in the near term, then Ottawa has to change the way it frames economic policy. When asked to rate how important it was to run a balanced budget, May said: “In the scheme of things, not very.” It was a recognition that fear of even a small deficit limits ambition. May said she would unleash an “army of carpenters” to retrofit buildings that leak warm air in the winter, and require occupants to blast their air conditioners in the summer.

This is the kind of creative thinking that Ottawa has lacked for years when it comes to economic policy. May could finance her army cheaply with record-low interest rates and promise—in legislation, if need be—to pay it back as soon as the economy was once again growing at potential. The Greens’ prospects are slim. But on Thursday night, the party’s leader was alone in showing that there was another way forward.

by Kevin Carmichael Aug 7, 2015 Originally published here.