So, Who Should it Be: Trudeau or Scheer?

My last two blogs considered Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer in light of the question “which one should be elected Prime Minister in the October federal election?”. I limited my consideration to them because they are the only ones with any realistic chance of forming a government, whether majority or minority.

So here is my answer:

Justin Trudeau has shortcomings. Some of style; and some of substance, or the lack thereof; and some resulting from the actions of his government. In some areas, one is the consequence of the other.

I am most critical in three: his handling of the SNC/Lavalin affair; the bungled visits to China and India; and continuing spending deficits.

As I’ve said before, my criticism of the SNC/Lavalin affair results from how ineptly it was handled, causing needless damage to the government. I attribute this to lack of experience but also to arrogance that, it seems, blinded the Prime Minister and his advisors to significant political realities, as well as the intelligence and sophistication of Canadians. And now they’re paying the price. Whats more, I don’t know if they’ve learned any lessons from this.

The trip to India and China was bad enough as a national embarrassment, but it also damaged relations with those two significant countries, although I don’t know by how much. In fact, as I’ve said previously, the immediate impact on Canada/China relations may be fortuitous because, while the current difficulties with China are probably exacerbated by the ill will resulting from the trip, it also short-circuited a rush to negotiations on a free trade agreement, if not an extradition treaty and, in light of China’s behaviour these days, that’s a good thing.  In fact, my biggest concern over the government’s handling of the China file is that, once the Huaweii dispute is resolved, it will rush back in and try to return the relationship to “normal” without hitting the pause button to inventory our lessons from this episode and make the necessary changes going forward.  That would be a big mistake and a missed opportunity but, given the financial stakes for Canadian businesses with significant lobbying power, I’m less than optimistic the government will do what needs to be done.

On the issue of the Huaweii dispute, I don’t have enough information to assess how effectively it’s being managed, although I do feel some increase in pressure on China might be useful but, of course, it also might backfire. My hunch is it’s being handled about as well as it can be given the weak hand Canada has been dealt and, regardless who forms the government in Ottawa, it’s just going to take time to play out.

As for India, well, as I watch the rise of Hindu nationalism with its increasingly chauvinistic treatment of non Hindus, I wonder how closely we want to align with it too.

No question, it’s a nasty and difficult world out there.

I’m critical of the government for its continuing use of deficit spending without a plan to achieve balance or, if there is one, not sharing it with Canadians. As the talk of a recession grows, this becomes more urgent.

Against these criticisms, I give the government good marks (in some cases better than good) for its handling of the Nafta file; its effort to balance the economic needs of the country while pursuing credible initiatives to support the environment; joining the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership; concluding the free trade agreement with the EU; its immigration policy; legalizing physician assisted dying; as well as significantly reducing poverty and providing good overall stewardship to the economy.

Not a bad list of achievements at all.

When I balance the negatives against the positives and consider the government’s stated future policy directions, as well as hoping four years in office has taught them a few lessons, I do believe Prime Minister Trudeau and his government deserve to be re-elected for another four years…

…unless there is someone better.

And that brings me to Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives.

First, a few general comments on the Conservative Party. In 2015 it was defeated after ten years in government. Many Canadians had tired of its virulent partisanship and, particularly in the last year or two, its narrow minded nastiness. Some of its members were defeated. Others chose not to run. But a significant number continued and are now on the opposition benches. By and large, it’s the same party that governed for ten years with little to suggest it has spent much time considering why it was defeated or where it should go in future. And that’s a problem. In our system of government, we send parties to the penalty box (to use a particularly Canadian metaphor) when they get tired or overwheening or corrupt or just plain arrogant. And we expect them to use that time-out to renew. Typically that lasts a couple of terms. The Conservatives don’t seem to have used their time-out well.

On specific policy questions, the Conservatives advocate for changes that would take Canada back to their time in government, particularly on climate change. They dishonestly attack the carbon tax as a “tax grab” without acknowedging that the revenues from the tax will be returned to taxpayers, either directly or through other provincial government programs. They would repeal it and replace it with measures that, to most experts on the issue of mankind’s impact on climate change, are woefully inadequate.

They shout their support for pipelines from Alberta to both coasts while attacking the current government for its failure to make more progress on getting pipelines built. This, despite that in ten years of government, they failed to get even one kilometer of pipeline built. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that their unqualified support for the oil industry and its wish to build additional pipelines, without acknowledging the significant environmental implications and opposition, not to mention the views of native Canadians, doesn’t work. Remember, we live in a country of laws. This is an example of a failure to engage in introspection and chart a new course away from the policies that failed them when they were government.

They attack the government’s handling of the current conflict with China publicly and repeatedly, demanding that it be tougher. Aside from my view that is unhelpful to Canada, and verging on disloyalty during an international crisis, it’s not at all clear what they would do differently. It’s simply an attempt to score political points at cost to Canada’s national interest and the welfare of some of its citizens, something that should be condemned.

They say we need to re-think our relationship with China, something I wholeheartedly agree with. As I indicated previously, I trust them more on this issue than the Liberals although I am mindful they too are beholden to powerful business interests that will seek to “normalize” the relationship as soon as the Huawei dispute is settled.

The Conservatives are committed to scrapping changes the Liberal government adopted to how appointments are made to the Upper House (the Senate). I think that would be a step backward as we try to give Canada more effective governance. Like many Canadians, I support abolishing the Senate but I’m also realistic enough to know that isn’t going to happen given the extraordinary difficulty of amending the Canadian Constitution. So, we are stuck with an unelected Upper House, and for many, that’s undemocratic, although it was clearly the intention of the Fathers of Confederation.

Historically, a Senate appointment has been a sinacure given as reward for party loyalty or financial support. Senators overwhelmingly were members of either the Liberal or Conservative parliamentary caucus. That changed with the new system of appointments and a majority of Senators are now “independents”, appointed through a less partisan process than previously. These new Senators are showing their independence by amending and delaying legislation, attracting criticism that the process is undemocratic. Well, undemocratic or not, it’s the process we’ve got and I would prefer that the “house of sober second thought” really did provide sober second thought, with the caveat that, ultimately, the Commons will always prevail, which it will.

Normally, as a fiscal conservative, I would find myself in agreement with the Conservatives on the issue of budget management and would expect them to commit to achieving a balanced budget. But that seems to have disappeared as they go into the election. At this point I don’t trust them any more than the Liberals to rein in government spending and end deficits.

Although they’ve criticized the government for its immigration policy, I have no real understanding of what the Conservatives would do differently. It’s likely they would restrict somewhat the current policy, although by how much and where is unclear. On balance, I suspect there would be little change, including for undocumented immigrants coming across our southern border, despite their angry rhetoric today. As I’ve said before, that problem results from the attitude towards immigrants by the current American administration and it will continue as long as that administration is in office.

In a move that screams of political opportunism, the Conservatives say they support re-opening the Constitution with a view to amending it so Quebec will finally sign it. What? Or, maybe more appropriately: “What the f…k?”. Of course it would be good if Quebec signed the Constitution but, really, at what cost? Re-opening it will result in an avalanche of competing demands from all across Canada (is that Alberta calling?…oh, you want to discuss equalization payments you say…fine, no problem…and on and on and on.) . This is crazy talk. I suppose there are younger Canadians who don’t remember the never ending constitutional haggling and paralysis, but I’m not one of them.

Aside from the Conservative’s policy positions, there is still the question: would Andrew Scheer make a better Prime Minister than Justin Trudeau. In my last blog I detailed some issues and beliefs that might provide an answer.

There has been renewed discussion lately of the fact Andrew Scheer spoke and voted against the legalization of same sex marriage in Canada, this in response to the Liberals releasing a video of a younger Andrew Scheer speaking against same sex marriage in the House of Commons. In response, Mr. Scheer and the Conservative Party have reiterated their long standing position that the matter is settled and will not be re-opened. And I believe them, although not for the reasons they’re giving. I believe them because it would be politically unpopular and costly to re-open the issue, but also, and more significantly, because changing the law is virtually impossible because of the ruling of The Supreme Court of Canada that led to the legislation in the first place. Remember, the law was not changed because of the particularly progressive nature of the Paul Martin government. It was changed because the courts gave the government no choice. And that hasn’t changed.

John Ibbitson at the Globe and Mail wrote a column arguing that gays and lesbians shouldn’t not vote for the Conservatives because of the issue of same sex marriage because of their commitment to leave it unchanged, but that’s only right up to a point. If, like many public figures, the party and Andrew Scheer had “evolved” on the issue (to quote former U.S. President, Barrack Obama), that would be one thing, but if they still believe same sex marriage is wrong that suggests they don’t accept the fundamental equality of gays and lesbians, perhaps viewing us, in the words of the Catholic Church, as “intrinsically disordered”, perhaps worthy of sympathy, but not respect as fully formed human beings and equals. And, thus far, Andrew Scheer has resolutely refused to say whether his views have changed which could be a political calculation but, I suspect, tells us they have not.

So, on a practical level, is this important? Yes it is. None of us has any idea what new challenges are going to face Canada and its leaders during the life of the next government. All we can say with certainty is that there will be new challenges, some of which might seriously affect gays and/or lesbians uniquely (think of the sudden appearance of Aids) and, when that happens, I would like to know I have a government that respects the rights and equality of all Canadians and that responds appropriately, regardless of their sexual orientation, race, colour, religion…you name it. And, with the lingering bitter taste of the same sex marriage debate, not to mention the memory of the appalling indifference or hostility of most politicians when Aids first appeared, I don’t have that confidence in Andrew Scheer or his party.

In some respects, the same can be said on the issue of womens access to abortions in Canada. Andrew Scheer is a strong opponent of abortion but has said the issue will not be re-opened under a government led by him. But he has been less unequivocal on whether Conservative back benchers could raise the issue. Also, he has made promises to anti abortion groups that conflict with the commitment to not revisit access to abortions. However, even if the issue does manage to come back to the Commons, history suggests the government will not be able to impose much in the way of restricting access. Canada is where it is on the issue of abortion because of repeated decisions by Canadian courts striking down earlier attempts to regulate abortion. But, while the likelihood of change is slim, unlike with the issue of same sex marriage, it is not virtually non existent.

Andrew Scheer and most of the Conservative caucus voted against the legislation that legalized physician assisted dying in Canada. This is an issue the Conservatives may revisit. I know advocates for physician assisted dying are critical of the current law because of its limitations, but I am certain that none of those limitations will be loosened, and may well be expanded, under a Conservative government.

So, do I think Andew Scheer will be a better Prime Minister than Justin Trudeau? No I do not. And, more importantly, I believe his philosophical and religious beliefs conflict with what I think are core Canadian values of equality, tolerance and inclusion. It doesn’t surprise me that he cites Senator Ted Cruz, who amongst other negative things, is virulently anti-gay, as a role model, or that he’s had past affiliations with “The Rebel”. It’s all of a piece.

I’m not saying he’s a bad person, just that he holds beliefs that I think are wrong and hurtful to many Canadians.

Then there’s the influence of provincial premiers to consider. So far, I’ve seen little from Andrew Scheer suggesting he would be a strong, dynamic leader, one capable of pushing the federal position against regional opposition. That concerns me because at least two of the current Conservative Premiers would have outsized influence over any Andrew Scheer government: Doug Ford and Jason Kenny, both of whom hold social and political views wildly at odds with my own. Bluntly put, I don’t want either of them steering the federal ship and I think that would likely happen with Andrew Scheer as Prime Minister.

Finally, like many Canadians I’ve watched in dismay as the world order that has benefited us all has come under attack in the past four years. Brexit; the authoritarian turn of governments in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy, amongst others; the rise of right wing populist parties in Germany, France, Scandinavia and the Lowlands; the election of Donald Trump with his constant trashing of the western alliances and working to weaken the liberal democratic order while kowtowing to tyrants; indeed, the seeming retreat of liberal democracy across the globe.

Except, that is, in Canada.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt such pride in my country as I have in the past few years as it consistently and unwaveringly reiterated its commitment to democracy, western liberal democratic values and multilateralism.

And I don’t want that, or the world’s perception of it, to change.

I’m not saying Andrew Scheer is a Donald Trump wannabe, or even a pale reflection of Viktor Orban in Hungary but, unfortunately for him, if he wins, that is what much of the world will see. The headlines will be something like: “Canada Lurches to the Right” or “Canada Follows Trump” or, well, I’ll leave that to your imaginations. I know it’s not fair but it is what it is and, for the rest of the world, one of the last consistently strong defenders of real democracy and the established international order will be gone, adding to the momentum towards chaos out there.

We cannot let that happen.

just sayin

g

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Should Andrew Scheer be Elected Prime Minister?

Last week I wrote a blog titled “Does Justin Trudeau Deserve a Second Term?”. It was my first blog on the pending federal election and I promised to provide a follow-up blog on Andrew Scheer next. Neither provides a look at the election as a whole, just an assessment of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

And so to the question: should Andrew Scheer be elected Prime Minister?

Writing about Andrew Scheer is more difficult than writing about Justin Trudeau for the simple reason we know so much less about him. Even on policy positions, there is precious little that is detailed enough to allow for much of a critique. That will change as the election campaign rolls out but, in the meantime, we are stuck with very limited information.

Andrew Scheer was born in Ottawa in 1979 (god I feel old) where he was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic family (his father was a Deacon in the church). After graduating with a history degree from the University of Ottawa he moved to Regina where he ran for the Conservative Party in the 2004 federal election and defeated Lorne Nystrom in the riding of Regina-Qu’Appelle. At twenty five, he was the youngest MP ever elected from Saskatchewan. In 2011 he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, making him the youngest Speaker in Canadian history.

Following the defeat of the Harper Conservative government in 2015, he ran to succeed Stephen Harper as Leader and narrowly defeated Maxime Bernier to win the position. Judging from the voting over twelve ballots, it seems he was everyones’ second choice. Given Bernier’s subsequent break with the Conservatives and his founding of the Peoples’ Party of Canada, which is aggressively courting voters on the right of the conservative spectrum with policies that offend the sensibilities of many Canadians, Conservatives probably dodged a bullet when they chose Scheer over Bernier. With his victory, Andrew Scheer became the Leader of the Official Opposition.

Determining what Andew Scheer believes is harder than describing the bare bones of his political biography, so I’ve made assumptions based on only a few positions and policies, some of his comments, and his religious and social background, an approach, I concede, fraught with the possibility for error.

This much we know:  he was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic family and he continues to hold views consistent with that religion. He describes himself as a “blue Tory”, presumably in contrast to “red Tories”, a nearly extinct species since the Reform Party took over the Progressive Conservative Party to create today’s Conservative Party. Actually, I believe today’s Conservative Party is made up overwhelmingly of blue Tories, but of varying shades. Although I’ve never heard it articulated clearly, my own take is that a blue Tory is someone who adheres to traditional conservative views on the role of government in society (i.e. to minimize it), including fiscal probity; believes in the paramountcy of individual liberty, sometimes at cost to the collective; supports and strengthens traditional international alliances, mostly with western democracies; and adheres strongly to the Canadian motto: “Peace, order and good government”, which isn’t so different from traditional conservative parties in Canada.  Where it gets more complicated is when  the populist influence, that with the takeover of the Conservative Party by the Reform Party, significantly infuses Conservative Party thinking and positions, is merged with the more traditional conservatism. And that’s where “social conservatism” comes in. To many it seems social conservatives, in their zeal to change society on social issues like abortion and the rights of sexual minorities, want governments to act in ways contrary to the notion of “limited government” or individual liberty.  But that is a subject for a future blog.

I don’t know where Andrew Scheer exactly fits on the spectrum of social conservatism, although I believe he is a social conservative and he sits closer to the right end of the spectrum than the left. In fact, I think he describes himself that way. I came to this conclusion based on his past and current positions as they relate to a number of issues, a few of which seem particularly pertinent:

Early in his career as an MP he voted, and spoke against, expanding the definition of marriage to include same sex couples.

He has consistently supported imposing limits on womens’ access to abortions.

More recently, he voted against the legislation allowing physician assisted dying.

He voted against the legalization of marijuana.

He supports Brexit.

He has criticized steps by public institutions to limit the teaching of creationism.

He supports moving the Canadian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

He has generally opposed measures to strengthen gun control in Canada.

All these positions are consistent with mainstream social conservatism or orthodox Catholicism, or both. I should note, he calls himself a feminist by which I take him to mean he wants his three daughters to have the same opportunities as his sons, whether educational or professional.

He has also indicated that one of his political “heroes” (for lack of a better word) is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

Although he has severed the connection, he and his staff had past associations with “The Rebel” which has been described as Canada’s version of Breitbart News and is generally considered part of the alt right movement, including its role spreading Islamophobia and other racist and extreme conservative views.

Aside from issues that fit into the “social conservative” box, he and his party are admantly opposed to the carbon tax and are committed to repealing it.

He voted against Canada accepting the Paris climate accords.

Mr. Scheer and the Conservatives are also committed to reversing the moves the Liberal government has made on senate reform, returning it to a fully partisan chamber with appointees chosen by the government of the day with a view to strengthening its hold on the government and/or rewarding party supporters.

The Conservatives are also in favour of joining with Quebec in reopening the constitution with the goal of getting Quebec to sign it. Amongst other things, this would require explicitly granting Quebec a veto over certain types of changes in future.

Andrew Scheer has said Canada should take a tougher line with China, both in the current dispute and in the relationship going forward.

As I noted in my last blog, although when he was running for leader he committed to reaching a balanced federal budget in the first two years of any government led by him, that seems to have disappeared from the radar.

Andrew Scheer seems to be a decent person, someone who would be a good neighbour. To some extent, for most Canadians, he’s a cypher on whom they can project whatever they want. His engaging smile helps and, if nothing else, he comes across as completely non threatening.  Thus far, I have seen little from him that demonstrates an ability to provide strong and decisive leadership.

So, back to the question: should Andrew Scheer be elected Prime Minister. As with the first blog, I’m reserving on that for my next, and probably final, election blog in a week or so. This much I will say now though, there is no doubt Andrew Scheer is a conservative in most ways that term is used, including on social issues. A majority government led by him will realign Canadian social and international policy in significant ways, tilting it to the right. To assume otherwise is to ignore the clear evidence before us.

just sayin

G

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Does Justin Trudeau Deserve a Second Term?

I’m going to be out of the country for most of the upcoming Canadian federal election (although back in time to vote) so thought I would write a couple of blogs on election related issues over the next couple of weeks.

Rather than looking at the big picture, including the many factors that influence our votes, I want to focus first on Prime Minister Trudeau and then on Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer. Once I’ve done that I may offer a broader view of the election.

To begin with, I am not a committed supporter of any of the three major national political parties. At one time or another, I have voted for each of them. I recognize the Greens are gaining some traction, but for now my views are restricted to the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP. As I believe only the Liberals or the Conservatives have any chance of forming a government, I will not be saying much about the NDP or its leader, Jagmeet Singh either. I understand NDP and Green supporters hope that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives win a majority, resulting in an increase in their influence, a result I don’t think would be in Canada’s best interest in the world we are living in.

So, let me begin with the question: does Justin Trudeau deserve a second term?.

I have never been much of a fan of Justin Trudeau. Yes, I was aware of his birth on Christmas Day 1971 to then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his wife Margaret. But those who say we have followed his every move subsequently, don’t speak for me. In fact, but for odd snippets over the years, I didn’t really take much notice until he delivered the eulogy at his father’s funeral in 2000. And, dare I say, my response was less than enthusiastic. I know it’s bad form to criticize people in mourning and their role in the rituals around death, so I held my peace but, after all these years, I can say my impression of that young man was not good. The speech had all the markings of a high school theatre presentation which, considering his occupation at the time, wasn’t all that surprising I guess. The strained references to Shakespeare were particularly galling and the overall impression for me was that the performance was about him and not his father.

Fast forward a few years and he’s running for Parliament in Montreal. He wins and, because of his lineage, gets more attention than most freshmen MP’s but, again, his performance always strikes me as just that: a performance that may be broad, even dramatic, but feels shallow.

Fast forward again, and he’s elected leader of the Liberal Party in the wake of its shellacking in the 2011 federal election. Suddenly all the hopes and prayers of “progressive” Canadians are resting on the shoulders of this tall young man from Montreal. There are whispered questions in some circles about his intellectual heft, with the unkind suggestion he takes after his mother and not his father who, by that time, had achieved a kind of mythic stature as a Canadian statesman, albeit not in all parts of the country. Even people like me who did not succumb to Trudeaumania in the 1960’s and 70’s (in fact, I actively campaigned against Trudea senior in all his elections), came to recognize his contribution to the constitutional fabric of Canada, as well as his standing up to Quebec separatists, his introducing and promoting the very Canadian take on multiculturalism, and his expanding civil liberties for Canadians. For many baby boomers, his years now have a kind of romance inextricably linked to their own youth that is rapidly becoming a distant memory. His failures as Prime Minister were forgotten as he joined the pantheon of the Canadian immortals, but so it always is with “great” political leaders.

And then Justin Trudeau won the election, ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper. Many I suspect, myself included, voted for him because his was the only party that had any real chance of ridding us of what by then was a tired and rather nasty Conservative government.

Hopes were high for the new government, indeed they were on steroids as a result of the international media fawning over the newly minted Prime Minister, at least partly in response to the elections elsewhere of leaders who were an assault on Darwin’s theory of evolution. Just when mankind, particularly the western democracies, seemed hellbent on striding back to the dark ages, along comes quiet little Canada with its determined assertion that it was moving forward. Heady stuff indeed. And Justin Trudeau played the role perfectly. He was good looking; had an attractive wife and three cute kids. He mouthed all the right things about feminism; immigration; native reconciliation; the rule of international law; multilateralism; the environment; human rights…you name it, all the boxes were checked with a flourescent pen. And we liked it. Indeed, a very un-Canadian smugness sprung up amongst us, particularly when we were communicating with our poor American cousins as they suffered the daily assaults on their sensibilities by the destroyer in chief they had somehow managed to elect.

Any misgivings about the intellectual depth of our new Prime Minister were smothered by the international accolades. Canada had arrived. Or had it?

The thing about governing is its hard work and it can get messy. So how successfully has Prime Minister Trudeau and his government governed Canada over these past four years?

I’m going to begin with issues and events where their performance has been less than stellar, and where better to begin than the SNC/Lavalin affair. I say “affair” because I remain unpersuaded this is much of a “scandal”, at least as that term has been used historically or, for that matter, is used in other countries, but that doesn’t save the government from criticism for its handling of it, although not on the scale of the increasingly hysterical demands by the Conservative Partyj for never ending inquiries and criminal investigations.

My principal criticism of the government on this file comes from its inept handling of it, with the resulting damage to the body politic. From the beginning, when the Prime Minister tried to play word games, parsing legalisms and thinking that would satisfy Canadians, it was appallingly amateurish. Not only was it shockingly inadequate, its condescension was insulting. There was a myth that Prime Minister Trudeau had surrounded himself with political savants as evidenced by his election win, but the government’s response to the SNC/Lavalin affair puts an end to that. What we witnessed in the subsequent weeks and months was a government that consistently misread the Canadian public, not to mention the Cabinet Member who was at the centre of the controversy. And the result is a much weakened government and the responsibility for that lies squarely at the Prime Minister’s feet (Gerald Butts resignation notwithstanding).

Canada’s relations with China and India is the second area where I have criticism of the government’s performance.

Justin Trudeau came into office proclaiming “sunny ways” as the new mantra of government, a slogan I find cloying and vaguely reminiscent of syrupy seventies sitcoms, and he and his government seem to have believed their sunny view could be projected (or, perhaps, imposed) on the rest of the world. How naive of them. I still wince at the debacle that was Justin Trudeau’s joint visits to India and China. Clearly on the India trip someone was at fault for its planning and execution, not to mention the details such as inviting a convicted terrorist to a reception with the Prime Minister. That the government of India holds some negative views of Canada because it believes we harbour Sikh terrorists should have surprised no one with even a passing understanding of foreign affairs. But somehow that was overlooked or glossed over, drowned in the certainty of our virtue and Boy Scout image. As a result, we suffered a significant setback in relations with India.

And then there was the Trudeau Family Costume Party. The recent book by Gerald Butts throws the Prime Minister’s wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, under the bus on this one, blaming her for the decisions around how they would dress but, even if the idea did come from her, the buck stopped somewhere else, whether with the advisors around the PM or the Prime Minister himself, and they let it pass. The cringeworthy result was a diorama of the Trudeau family vacation, posing with childish excitement, in pictures that, at best, were condescending to their hosts and, at worst, acutely embarrassing for Canadians. I suspect I wasn’t alone in wanting to deny any Canadian affiliation when travelling abroad subsequently.

Prime Minister Trudeau’s next stop was China where, we were told, he was going to announce the beginning of negotiations on a free trade agreement. The government, with breathtaking arrogance, seemed to feel that little Canada could dictate the terms of that agreement on issues like human rights, workers’ rights, womens’ rights, the rule of law…you name it. The feel good mantra was that future free trade agreements with Canada would be a civilizing force on a backward and barbaric world. This to a country that is at least five thousand years old and with a population at least thirty times larger than Canada’s. And guess what? It didn’t work. The Chinese, never particularly subtle in their international moves, were angry and frustrated and made no secret in showing it as the talks ended before they had even begun.

Subsequent developments with the Peoples Republic of China make me grateful that the free trade talks never got off the ground, but the ham fisted way they were handled by Canada’s government was an embarrassment and probably contributed to the unmitigated hostility we feel from China today.

Which brings me to the present conflict with China, this one resulting from Canada’s arrest of a Huawei executive on an extradition warrant from the United States. Like most Canadians, I feel anger and frustration at the Peoples’ Republic of China for their behaviour on this issue. Their expectation that Canada can just ignore its international treaty obligations and its own laws and simply bend to the will of a rising superpower is offensive and naive. And I feel frustration at what seems like a lack of progress in efforts by the government to resolve the crisis. But, and this is a big “but”, after nearly half a century negotiating countless agreements, many out of the public view for sound strategic and policy reasons, I’m loathe to be too hard on Canada’s government on this. That said, even with my very limited information on what, if anything, is happening on the file, I do feel that Canada needs to do more than resist the pressure if an acceptable resolution is to be found. This is a profoundly asymetric negotiation with China holding most of the cards, but sometimes in these circumstances, it’s necessary for the smaller party to take a dramatic and aggressive step that, at a minimum, raises the cost to its counterpart of not finding a settlement. Thus far, its rogue behaviour has cost China nothing. It may be helpful for Canada to take a calibrated, carefully thought out, step to push back, perhaps something like expelling those Chinese students on Student Visas who are family members of leading Chinese political and/or business figures. So, for me at least, the jury is out on the government’s handling of the current dispute with China.

A word about deficit spending. I hear so many people today proclaiming that deficits don’t matter if other, underlying economic factors, are positive and yet I remain unconvinced. Most of us are old enough to remember when Canada was a near economic basket case because of, amongst other things, smothering deficits. We escaped from that with the brutally hard measures the then Finance Minister, Paul Martin, took and, for a time at least, we seemed to have learned our lesson. One of the reasons Canada was relatively unscathed by the 2008 super-recession was the strong financial position of the government at the time. So, I would like it if the current government would give us some assurance that deficits are going to be eliminated in a predictable timeline although, given their promises on this issue in the last election, I would take it with a very large grain of salt.

Finally, on the negative side of the ledger, electoral reform. In the last election Justin Trudeau proclaimed it would be the last election using the “first past the post” form of voting. I didn’t think that was a good idea then and I still don’t, so I don’t know whether it’s a negative or a positive that they have abandoned the promise. On the one hand they made a promise they didn’t deliver on but, on the other, not delivering on it is, in my view, very much in Canada’s interest. Had they never intended to proceed with it I would mark it negatively, but I don’t think that was the case. So, for me at least, a draw on this one.

Now I’m going to identify those areas where I think Prime Minister Trudeau and his government have been successful.

First amongst these is the renegotiation of NAFTA and, trust me, this is a very big deal. Although there are naysayers complaining the agreement is not as good as its predecessor, on balance, it is a good deal for Canada, including some gains resulting from the U.S. demands on Mexico. More importantly, it is so much better than virtually all the available alternatives at the beginning of the negotiations. Navigating through these negotiations with an egotistical, thin skinned man child ultimately on the other side, and emerging mostly unscathed is a tremendous achievement. Prime Minister Trudeau, with the assistance of his excellent Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, deserve full marks on this file.

Similar credit goes to the government for completing the work begun by the Stephen Harper government on the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union. In a world of increasingly large and assertive powers, a middle sized country like Canada needs economic, diplomatic and military partners. These agreements offer real possibilities on all those fronts.

Although it remains controversial and a work in progress, I believe the government’s approach to climate change strikes the right balance if we are to make any real national progress on this issue. The rigid and competing demands of environmentalists and the energy sector and its allies require compromise, even if it has to be forced. That is the government’s strategy and, while the final outcome is uncertain, it’s the only realistic way forward. There’s a political cost to this approach but the government appears willing to pay it which, contrary to some of its other stands, shows admirable spine.

The government has stumbled somewhat on immigration but, on the whole, deserves credit for acknowledging Canada’s obligation to welcome newcomers even as much of the rest of the world slams its doors on them. I have heard complaints that Prime Minister Trudeau’s welcoming statements caused the rush of illegal immigrants across the still largely unguarded border with the United States. While they may have exacerbated that problem, they were not the cause of it. The cause is the incredibly xenophobic and racist behaviour of the current U.S. administration, making the United States anything but the welcoming beacon engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Also, the government is taking steps to address the flow of illegal immigrants and I still have confidence in its management of this file.

Perhaps not as sexy, but for many, more important, have been the government’s efforts to reduce poverty in Canada. Due at least partly to federal government programs, the rate of poverty in Canada has fallen dramatically in the past four years. This is particularly true for child poverty and poverty amongst seniors. There is still much to do but the government is taking us in the right direction.

Many argue economic performance happens regardless of governments and, to some extent, I agree with them, although it is clearly possible for governments to damage economic performance through poor policies and laws. The Canadian economy has performed well under the Liberals and it continues to do so. To what extent this reflects back on their policies I really don’t know but, in as much as were the economy performing poorly, they would be blamed, fair is fair and they deserve credit on this.

So, back to the question: does Justin Trudeau deserve a second term? I’m witholding my view on that until after I’ve written about the only real alternative: Andrew Scheer. I began this piece by detailing my concerns about Prime Minister Trudeau’s intellectual heft and his political maturity. When I look at the areas where I think the government has served Canada poorly, I’m reminded of that because, in most, if not all, those cases, the failures seem traceable to that personal weakness and to inexperience. One of the questions Canadians will need to answer is: do they think he has learned and developed from those experiences? I think there are some signs he has but, on the other hand, his continued reliance on young and relatively inexperienced advisors concerns me.

just sayin

G

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If Not Now, When? Hong Kong on the Brink

The world watches with fatalistic silence as demonstrators in Hong Kong fight to maintain the tenuous threads of democracy that still bind their city. Media outlets report the Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese military police are massing on the border as more and more ominous warnings come from Beijing. It is entirely possible we are about to see Tiananmen Square Two, exactly thirty years after the first massacre.

Although most commentators seem to think the consequences of military intervention by the PRC will be much greater than was the case with Tiananmen Square, if we learned anything from the earlier massacre it is that China will go to any lengths, indeed pay any price, to maintain stability in its territories which now include Hong Kong. So, don’t be surprised if Beijing is prepared to be labelled a pariah; or to lose Hong Kong as its gateway to the capitalist west; or to murder its people to ensure the stability of the PRC and, most of all, the communist party that animates it.

As we in Canada have witnessed spectacularly, China does not play by the rules when they can’t be shaped to its own selfish agenda. And it won’t in Hong Kong either, betting that its economic and military power will allow it to escape relatively scott free. And it might be right given the disarray of the democratic west these days. Certainly, there will be no leadership from The White House, America having taken what we can only hope is only a sabatical from leading the free world although, if Donald Trump sees some way to utilize it in his trade war with China, expect him to, but only so long as it meets his trade needs and then, under the bus for the Hong Kong martyrs.

Which brings me to Canada. I’m not delusional enough to think Canada can rally the world against China but I do think it should be raising its voice warning against bloodshed by the PLA or Chinese police. And it should be working with its allies to do the same thing, making it clear that the destruction of the democratic rights of Hong Kongs’citizens will result in a complete re-examination of relations with the PRC, including the One China policy (that should get their attention). We, in Canada, should be doing this already in light of China’s hostage taking and attempted trade blackmail in response to the arrest of the Huawei executive.

I have stated in earlier blogs my belief that the PRC poses an existential threat to liberal western democracies, indeed to all democracies including, obviously, Taiwan. Others have stated similar views and, in the heat of the Huawei dispute, our political leaders have inched, sometimes imperceptably, towards those views. But there’s another undercurrent; one that desparately wants things to return to “normal” where Canadians can continue to benefit from cheap Chinese products and Canadian business people can participate in the financial bonanza that China may offer. I fear, once the Huawei matter is resolved, that undercurrent will quickly dominate the conversation and the clear warning signs we have seen over these past few months, will be conveniently forgotten at our considerable peril.

That must not happen and if there was ever a time to “walk the walk” on China, it is now. If the PRC occupies Hong Kong and destroys the vestiges of democracy that remain there, then the democratic world must react as forcefully as it did when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956; or when it invaded Chechoslovakia in 1968. Nothing can be the same in relations with China afterwards. It will have demonstrated unequivocally that it is a rogue nation committed to dominating the world and is willing to use whatever force, connivance or brutality it needs to accomplish its ends.

We may not be able to rally the world against China, but we can sure as hell raise our voices consistent with those of our ancestors in this country. Yes, there will be a price. There always is. But Canada did not become the modern, prosperous and democratic nation it is today by kowtowing to tyranny.

Just sayin

G

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Whose Pride is it Anyway?

This week marks the beginning of Pride celebrations in Vancouver. Those of you who have been hearing about Pride celebrations all month may be wondering how that can be? Well, Vancouver is a few weeks behind the rest of the world when it comes to Pride for a very simple reason. When the first Pride parades were held in Vancouver the organizers didn’t want to miss out on the much bigger and more exciting Pride celebrations in San Francisco, so they scheduled Vancouver’s parade at the beginning of August, instead of the beginning of July, and so it has stayed. From a weather perspective it’s probably a good result, the weather in Vancouver in early August being generally more parade friendly than late June/July.

As a seventy year old gay man I have a pretty good perspective on the growth of Pride in Vancouver and, particularly in recent years, considerable criticism of some of the actions of those now charged with managing and running the Pride celebrations here. I get that the gay community has expanded and diversified since I was young and it was just beginning. I used to know what the various letters stood for. “LGB” was easy. “Q” was added for “queer”, a term gay men of my generation find profoundly offensive by the way. And now, well, I don’t know. We have “T” for “trans” and several numbers and other words and letters. It kind of begs the question: what exactly do we all have in common? From my perspective at least, not a lot. I certainly don’t identify with transexuals or two spirited (not even entirely clear what that means) or all the other sub groups and I wish they’d stop speaking on my behalf.

Which brings me to the Pride Parade and the people who now organize it and speak for it. Our goals as young gay men and lesbians were pretty simple: we wanted to stop being hassled, and discriminated against, and bashed, and murdered, and put in prison for simply being who we were. We understood that to do that we had to come out of the proverbial closet and a parade seemed a good place to start. The early versions of the parade were more exciting for the behaviour of some of the hostile spectators than for the actual participants but, in time, it grew to be the enormous positive event it is today.

Somewhere back there though, other groups decided they wanted in and, generally, we welcomed them, not realizing their agendas might differ significantly from ours and, indeed, might undermine ours.

And that is what’s happened.

Perhaps the first really noticeable example involved the group “Black Lives Matter”. It began in the the States in response to repeated examples of police brutality towards black people there. And then it appeared up here where people, who apparently had little else to do, proclaimed themselves their spokespeople. And we invited them to join our party, although I have no idea why given, as far as I know, they are not predominantly made up of any of the exhausting alpha-numeric mumbo jumbo that is now used to identify the Pride community. The next thing we know, they are blocking the parade in Toronto and demanding that uniformed police be banned. And from that annoying little spark, Pride societies across the country fell into line, including Vancouver Pride, which promptly banned the VPD from the parade. For those of us of a certain age this was a particularly galling action given the enormous amount of work we had invested as far back as the early seventies to cultivate a positve and mutually respectful relationship with the VPD. But apparently our objections meant nothing, although in an especially irritating and condescending message, the Vancouver Pride Society said they appreciated the views of “the elders” but were responding to fears of younger people.

Predictably, that was only the beginning. This year the Vancouver Pride Society has banned UBC (full disclosure here: one of my alma maters) from participating because they had allowed a speaker, who some trans people find offensive, to use one of their facilities. And just when it seemed it couldn’t get any worse, they went further and announced another ban; this one of The Vancouver Public Library (THE FRIGGING VPL FOR GOD’S SAKE!) because it seems it too, has offended the deities of transdom by allowing some other speaker to use one of its rooms. Freedom of speech? Not so much apparently.

Watching the local news these days, I cannot help but wonder why the Trans community is wasting its energy blocking free speech among the gay community and not exerting some leadership over the issues its members are bringing forward. I’m referring to the current dispute where a pre-operative trans man is pursuing a human rights complaint because he was refused a bikini wax. As if that was an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money and the judicial and policing system! All it does is bring discredit to the community and lessens the likelihood of making real progress on the significant issues facing trans people. But I digress.

And just in case their strategy to cause me and my kith to have an aneurysm wasn’t working, a Pride spokesperson tells the newspapers that the Pride Parade was started by trans women of colour and, therefore their views should somehow be paramount. This, by the way, follows earlier claims that the Stonewall riots were led by trans people (it is to weep).

What the f..k?

Aside from being gratuitously wrong (I’ll assume for a second that they’re ill informed and not just outright lying), that claim’s an insult to the gay men and lesbians who worked so hard and so long to create and build the Pride celebrations in this city.

Most of my generation of gay men was wiped out in the Aids epidemic, but there are still a few of us left to bear witness and, on behalf of all of us, I simply ask the leaders of Vancouver Pride today: where do you get off appropriating our history, our story, our struggle, and…our parade?

Happy Pride.

just sayin

g

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American Carnage

Having just spent a week travelling up and down the west coast of America I have a few thoughts on the state of the union down there.  As a Canadian with strong American family and friendship ties I have always felt affection for America, albeit sometimes tinged with ambivalence.  Its “can do” attitude; its freedom; its abundance, its public commitments to liberty and human rights, its belief in unbridled individualism and, increasingly in it’s major cities, its openness and tolerance.  But something has changed for the worse and I’m not sure it’s reversible.

America has always been a country of extremes where violence was interwoven with all the national myths.  It was born of a civil war that, amongst other things, resulted in the founding of much of English Canada by its refugees.  Less than seventy years later it embarked on another civil war, this one more brutal and bloody than was imaginable at the time.   That war was partly over whether America should be a nation of slave holders or freemen, itself a reminder of the hideous violence of the slaveholding history of America from it’s beginning as a group of colonies through its founding.  Although the union won and slavery was abolished, the scars of that conflict continue to afflict the country one hundred and fifty years later.  Interwoven through all these conflicts was the systematic destruction of native peoples and their cultures, as well as the violent expropriation of nearly half of Mexico’s landmass.

And now America seems to be rushing hellbent towards another cataclysmic confrontation.  Watching it is like seeing a train wreck in slow motion where you dread the outcome but, certainly as a Canadian, are helpless to prevent it.

In some respects, America has always been a nation at war with itself.  On the one hand, there are the inspiring words of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights that echo the best liberal sentiments of the Enlightenment, as well as the words of Emma Lazarus at the base of the Statue of Liberty, welcoming the downtrodden of the world. And on the other, the xenophobia that has arisen in response to each new wave of immigrants, whether directed at Catholics, the Irish, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Asians and, most recently, all people of colour.  There have always been large numbers of Americans who didn’t buy the actual meaning of the noble words written by their founders and yet who, somehow, managed to adopt them as their own, even as there behaviours and actions conflicted with them.  But time and again America has managed to rise above the nasty nationalism, white supremacism, anti-semitism, intolerance towards racial or sexual minorities, and emerge on the right side of history.  I think it was Winston Churchill, or maybe Abba Eben, who said “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possbilities”.  This time I’m not so sure.

So, what is it about America that brings these two incompatible human drives into such sharp and regular conflict?  It seems likely to me that the very seminal impulses that drive America forward also contain the seeds of its destruction.  In other words, the notion of unbridled freedom, unquenchable material progress and gain, and a complete focus on the individual all animate the joyous energy that is America but, ultimately, also nurture the very negative human qualities that undo civilizations.  Without limits, those impulses inevitably lead to conflict and to the breakdown of collaboration and social order.  There are so many examples of this in American society today it is difficult to chose one as an illustration, but gun control is as good as any.  What society can ultimately tolerate a heavily armed citizenry in a state of constant conflict with itself and survive?  And yet that is what we have in America today.

On January 20, 2017 Donald Trump was anaugurated as the forty-fifth President of the United States.  In his inaugeration speech he announced that the era of “American carnage” was over, as if the previous seventy years of educational, scientific and medical advancement; military dominance; breathtaking technological breakthroughs; and prosperity unmatched in the history of mankind was somehow a great and terrible failure inflicted on America by an ungrateful and duplicitous world. His administration then set out to undo much that had made America admirable and successful.  The result is an American carnage of an almost unprecedented degree.

America today is on a cusp and it’s not clear which way it will fall.  That shouldn’t concern just Americans.  It should  deeply trouble all citizens of the democratic world, if not of the world itself.  What was once unthinkable is now within the realm of possibility:  America may fail.  How, I don’t know, but it may fail in ways that are catastrophic for it and the rest of the world.  History tells us that all great nations and empires ultimately fail.  You don’t have to read Tacitus or Gibbons to know that, but that the failure should be the result of an internal poison present from inception and successfully held at bay for over two hundred and fifty years, makes the idea of failure much more painful but, perhaps, also avoidable.

At this moment we know there are tens of millions of Americans who agree with the racist, corrupt, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic views of Donald Trump and his administration. It is no longer possible to hide from that reality; to somehow avoid it by wishing it were not so, by, despite all evidence to the contrary, believing that it’s only a very small number of Americans who so vehemently disagree with their own nation’s founding principles.  I suppose that’s one good thing about Donald Trump:  he’s not subtle; he gives voice to the deepest, darkest impulses of his nation.  He has kicked over the rocks the “deplorables” hid under and given them permission to articulate their views in chilling clarity, views, that if triumpant, will render America just another failed experiment, a victim of the toxin lurking in its soul from the very beginning.

There is already a civil war in America.  It just hasn’t turned really violent…yet.  But how long before mobs are in the streets, attacking those they see as “others”?  Okay, it has already happened in Charlottesville but, mercifully for now at least, that is the exception. But for how long?  How long before the majority of Americans feel so hopeless in the system that is forcing them in directions they detest that they take action outside that system?  Or, if the democratic will of the majority is finally expressed through the system, how will the rabid minority react?  The terrible truth is the social contract all societies need to hold together and to function peacefully is being torn terribly by the actions of Donald Trump, his administration and his followers and, once torn, can it ever be whole again?  I don’t know.

The next sixteen months mean everything.  If Donald Trump wins re-election all bets are off.  For Americans who believe the current trajectory of their country is not only wrong, but catastrophically wrong, there can  be only one objective:  to win the 2020 election which means, amongst other things, choosing the Democratic candidate who is best able to defeat Donald Trump.  It also means that some other needs should be postponed if they conflict with that electoral objective.  That is why AOC and the rest of the “squad” are risking all by allowing themselves to become the centre of attention.  The most likely path to Donald Trump’s re-election runs through a campaign that stigmatizes the Democrats as radical, or socialist, or way outside the mainstream of America, and led by left-wing people of colour.  I do understand the youthful zeal that drives the squad. There was a time when I was that age too and I was very active in Canadian politics, armed with the certainty of my beliefs and oblivious to the cautions of elders.  In that  direction lies grief.

As a non American, I watch in frustration as the country so many of us looked up to debases itself and I wish there was something I could do to help it right the ship.  But, truth is, there is very little a non American can do.  However, there is one thing that, while not a game changer in the States, is worthwhile for Canadians and that is to protect and strengthen the national character of Canada as tolerant, inclusive, democratic and welcoming.  It may have a limited impact on Americans, but at least Canada can remain an example of what modern democracies can and should be.

 

just sayin

G

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It’s Official. I’m Old

At 7:05 this morning I crossed that invisible but awful line. I turned seventy. And I don’t like it. It was at 7:05 a.m. on July 20th 1949 that I made my first appearance on this stage. My mother used to tease me that I’d kept her up the entire night before I was born. I suppose I did.

Seventy can’t be explained away as we seem to have managed with earlier decades. You know: “early”, “middle” and “late” middle age. Seventy is old. There’s no getting around it. It’s not separable into those categories we have so cleverly used to disguise the simple fact we’re aging, because there’s really no sugar coating that reality now.

Seventy has always meant “old” for me. My first memorable encounter with it was when my grandmother turned seventy. We were on a Cunard liner in the middle of the Atlantic, heading to Europe, and grandma turned seventy. It was a big deal. She qualified for something called “the old age pension” that, at four, I didn’t fully understand but I did know it was a good thing involving someone giving her money every month. And she was really, really old. As it happened, she lived another twenty years which, in those days, was quite an achievement. But still… And sixty-six years on, here I am, except that the socialists in Ottawa keep clawing back my OAP, or whatever it’s now called, which is kind of annoying after fifty years of paying taxes in Canada. It’s as if they want to punish me for having provided for myself. But I digress.

And please, don’t anyone, particularly anyone younger than me, tell me that “seventy is the new fifty”, just like “sixty was the new forty”. SPOILER ALERT: they’re not! Oh, we may look younger than our parents’ and grandparents’ generations at this stage of their lives (although not when it comes to comparisons with my mom) but, even so, the body has all sorts of subtle, and not so subtle, ways of signalling that this mortal vessel has left it’s “best before date” long behind. Some of you will understand this. Stiff legs after sitting; knee problems; hip problems; back problems; arthritis; shortness of breath after a brisk walk; acid reflux; failing eyesight; difficulty hearing; the expanding gut and, perhaps worst of all, the brain not working quite as fast as it used to. Deny all you want, but there is a lot more sand at the bottom of that hourglass than at the top.

In my case, the feeling of advancing mortality is probably more acute because I turn seventy in a year when the last two members of the “greatest generation” in my family passed away: my mom and my cousin Shirley (99 and 96 respectively). I seem to have lost my immortality pass.

So, if it wasn’t clear already: I HATE BEING OLD. I really do.

But, just so you don’t all go out and slash your wrists, I’m going to finish by telling you of a gift someone gave me about ten years ago. Some of you will remember Murray Kliman, or Doctor Kliman. Murray began his practice in a small town in southern Saskatchewan where his wife was his nurse. At some point they relocated to the Lower Mainland where Murray ran a family practice and became active in the BCMA which is how I met him. Murray was perhaps twenty or twenty five years older than me. As time passed, he aged and became less involved in the medical association. His wife pre-deceased him and, eventually, Murray ended up in a wheelchair, living in a seniors’ residence. One day I was heading out to lunch and had just left the elevator in the lobby of the BCMA building when I noticed Murray being rolled through the entrance by his son Jack. I went over to see him and crouched down so we were at eye level. Although confined to a wheelchair, Murray still had his impish grin and his eyes twinkled through the thick glasses he always wore. I put my hand on his arm and asked “How are you doing Murray?”. His smile broadened and he replied “Well Geoff, every day’s a bonus, every day’s a bonus.”.

That was Murray’s gift to me and I intend to make it my mantra for however many bonus days I have left. Given the longevity of my mother and father, there may be a few.

just sayin

G

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SanFrancisco

I decided to take a drive south and now find myself in San Francisco. On the first night I stopped in Ashland in southern Oregon where I stayed at The Ashland Springs Hotel for the second time. It is about one hundred years old and, when it was built, was the tallest building between San Francisco and Seattle. It’s nine stories and has been beautifully restored. It also has a good restaurant and bar. If you’re in the neighbourhood, I recommend you give it a try. Mind you, like most of Ashland, the guests tend to be on the older side. Given I’m about to turn 70, I fit right in. I’ve attached a picture of the lobby from the mezzanine restaurant where tea is served every afternoon.

Heading south towards San Francisco, I drove through the areas devastated by wildfires last summer, fires that torched at least one entire community. The grass was beginning to come back but the burned trees stood as a stark reminder of the tragedy. This, while a tropical storm, soon to be a hurricane, is approaching New Orleans, threatening unprecedented flooding although it is hard to imagine that after Katrina. As if to provide an ironic note to all of this, the Trump administration continues on its headlong drive to reverse all of the global warming measures implemented by the Obama administration. Cities are flooding, tornadoes are showing up with increasing ferocity and wildfires are devastating large swaths of America, and yet this administration refuses to acknowledge the role mankind has played in fomenting these disasters.

And lest we Canadians start feeling smug I am reminded of the picture of the five Conservative Premiers flipping pancakes at the Calgary Stampede last week whose sole organizing principle seems to be repealing the carbon tax and to hell with Canada’s Paris Climate Accord commitments. This, only a week after Andrew Scheer announced the Conservative “climate plan” that is being universally derided as worthless.

Scheer wasn’t at the Stampede although he would have fit right in. And while I’m on this topic, I couldn’t help but wonder at these five middle aged white guys in white Stetsons and white shirts, all but one of them with a stomach overhanging his stampede buckle, and flipping pancakes. They don’t look at all like the Canada I know today. They did look like the Canada I grew up in in southern Alberta in the fifties, but not at all like the multi ethnic people I think of as Canadians now. And what happened to all the women? I was tempted to tweet their picture and ask: “are you sure these are the guys you want running the country?”. But the fifth dwarf was missing so I didn’t.

It is to despair. Humanity is sleepwalking to an incalculable disaster, one that may indeed be existential, and we continue to have “leaders” who refuse to acknowledge the threat, let alone do anything meaningful about it. And people ask why I drink martinis.

And then on to San Francisco where I am staying at the Parker Guest House on Church Street. Another beautiful restoration, this one to two old San Francisco Victorians. Again, I highly recommend it. I’ve attached a picture of the garden.

I used to visit San Francisco with great regularity. Now, not so much. In some ways it is much the same. In others, it has changed profoundly. What struck me most forcefully about downtown (around Union Square) is that the Tenderloin seems to have expanded. In this apex city of tech billionaires, I would have expected the opposite. But, yesterday when I visited the area, I found blocks that previously were nice shopping streets now populated by people with various afflictions and surrounded by the smell of urine and empty storefronts. For those of you who know San Francisco, I am speaking specifically of Sutter Street just west of Powell, an area where I used to stay on my visits in the seventies.

And I did see the slightly sinister “Facebook buses” picking up and dropping off the young techies, causing them to disappear into the inner sanctum of clouded glass and, one presumes, power sources.

But all is not lost, Twin Peaks bar still sits at the top of The Castro; still serving copious amounts of Irish coffee to “boys”, some of whom appear not to have moved since the mid seventies. They also still serve the smallest martini in the world (well, at least in my world). I have often said Twin Peaks is like the Tower of London where it is said that when the ravens depart, the British monarchy will fall. In my version, when Twin Peaks departs, the queens will fall (okay, bad joke but I kind of like it, particularly the politically incorrect part).

I start heading north again on Sunday but not before helping two of my oldest friends celebrate their 55th anniversary.

just sayin

G

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Tainted Meat

And so, we round back to China.

Last week China imposed a total ban on the import of Canadian meat and meat products. Hardest hit were pork producers but also, to a lesser extent, beef producers. The ban was imposed because Chinese inspectors found residue of a substance that is banned in China, ractopamine. I don’t know anything about the science, but ractopamine is fed to swine in the later stages of their development to keep them slimmer but is banned in China as not being safe for human consumption. The European Union and several other countries also ban the use of ractopamine in products intended for human consumption. However, neither Canada nor the United States have such a ban.

Canada is not the first nation to have its pork banned in China because of the presence of ractopamine in the meat. As early as 2007, U.S. pork was banned for the same reason.

The dominant Canadian reaction to this ban is that it is part of the relentless campaign by Beijing to force Canada to release the Huawei excutive being held in Vancouver in response to a U.S. extradition warrant. There’s probably some truth to that, at least to the extent the ban reaches beyond pork to all meat products and is not focussed on a single meat producer. It would be naive to think China would not take advantage of these circumstances to further its other campaigns.

That said however, Canada is not the Boy Scout on this one. It seems there are at least 188 counterfeit veterinary certificates involved with these tainted shipments. That matter has been turned over to the RCMP but, as best as we can tell, is focussed on one or more meat packing plants in Quebec. Think about that.

In the not so distant past, Canadians have been rightly outraged when products from China were found to contain substances banned in Canada and/or deemed harmful to consumers. In fact, some of us have gone so far as to actively avoid consuming products originating in China, perhaps playing into the narrative that the Chinese are corrupt, totally focussed on profits or, at best, hopelessly primitive in their inspection and control activities.

But now the shoe is on the other foot and it’s not comfortable. Some one, or more likely, some people or corporation, has deliberately set out to circumvent the Chinese ban and, most likely, broke the law doing so. In the process, they have created enormous economic uncertainty for tens of thousands of Canadian farmers and workers in the meat producing industries. This is on them, not China, and I look forward to learning who they are.

Of course, they’ve also given China a gift in its ongoing conflict with Canada, one that will be used to undermine the “good guy” image we hold so dear. It will most likely prolong the current dispute. Well done.

While I’m on the subject of the dispute with China, I want to offer a few comments on the conduct of the Official Opposition, the Conservative Party, throughout this whole sorry mess. There was a time, not so long ago, when internal partisan politics stopped at the border or the waters edge. That belief was demonstrated by the entirely creditable efforts of people like Rhona Ambrose (former interim Conservative Leader) and Brian Mulroney (former Conservative Prime Minister) assisting with the conclusion of the re-negotiated NAFTA. But not anymore apparently. Day after day, the Conservative Foreign Affairs Critic, Erin O’toole, and the Conservative Leader, Andrew Scheer, issue blistering comments criticizing the Liberal government for somehow not solving the the crisis, as if it simply required some simple but always undefined action. Of course, they never say what they would do if they were the government, but that’s not surprising given that they would almost certainly do little, if anything, different. Their public haranguing of the government on this is music to Beijing’s ears and can only prolong the dispute and the suffering of the Canadian hostages. What this does is remind me of some of the vicious partisans that were part of the Harper government and now populate the Conservative caucus.

By the way, the same can be said for the gratuitous intervention and comments of former Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, who should know better.

In days past, this might have been said to be “giving comfort and support to the enemy”. Maybe it’s time to bring back that phrase.

just sayin

G

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Canada. A Nation of Losers?

Well, the rapture over the Raptors that seemed to consume some Canadians is subsiding.  The memories of what, apparently for some, was the most important experience of their lives, are fading.  Even the shock that bland old Canada could have its own victory party shootings is wearing off.  The national media have mercifully consigned most Raptors coverage back to where it belongs on the Sports pages and, even there, the prospects of the NHL entry level player draft is elbowing it out.

If we ever needed a lesson in how Toronto centric the so-called national media in Canada is, we got it in spades through these past three weeks.  Of course, the one I blame most is the CBC, not because it was necessarily the most blatant, although it may have been, but because it at least pretends to speak for the whole country.  This time it wasn’t speaking for the whole country so much as speaking at it, demanding we all be caught up in the frenzy sweeping Toronto as their team advanced through the NBA finals.

After the Raptors won, one particularly irritating theme popped up in all the media: Canada, formerly a country of losers, was now a winner.  Okay, so I’ve only lived in Canada for seventy years and may have missed a few things, but this really is news to me; the part about Canada being a country of losers that is.

That I was born in the 1940’s and my parents and other relatives did their part in defeating the Nazis/fascists and making the world safe for liberal democracy, may have blinded me to the fact I was in a country of losers (for those of you who have forgotten or, more likely, never knew, 1.1 million Canadians served in the military in World War Two, 42,000 of them were killed.  This, in a country of 10 million people at the time.  Think about it!);

Since then, I’ve watched my country go from victory to victory, or so I thought.  I suspect I’m dealing with very different views of “winning” here; one, that requires there be a loser and one, that sees everyone winning.  The first, like war, plays itself out as sports spectacles fueled by testoterone.  The second is rather more complicated.  But consider these events, all of which have happened in my lifetime:

In 1956 Canada welcomed over 100,000 Hungarian refugees fleeing the Soviet Union’s crackdown on their country (yes, I remember that);

In 1957 future Canadian Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the Suez crisis and setting the stage for Canada to send it’s soldiers as peacekeepers all over the world;

In 1957 the Canadian Parliament passed the first legislation that led to the establishment of comprehensive and universal medicare in Canada, a program that, despite its flaws, continues to provide high quality care to all Canadians regardless of their income most of the  time;

A few years later Canada began welcoming tens of thousands of American “draft dodgers” who didn’t want to fight in the immoral and illegal Vietnam war, (which, despite massive pressure from Washington, Canada refused to join);

After that war ended, Canada welcomed thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian “boat people” as refugees, despite not having been a party to the war;

In 1967 Pierre Trudeau (for younger viewers of this blog, he was the current Prime Minister’s father), then acting as Justice Minister, introduced amendments to the Criminal Code that decriminalized consenting sexual activity between adults, effectively throwing out laws against sexual activity between gay people.  He famously declared:

“There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.  What is done in private between two adults does not concern the Criminal Code”

This change was not the result of pressure from the courts, it was made by a popular government.  A year later, when Trudeau Sr. became Prime Minister, he won one of the largest majorities in Canadian parliamentary history.  It took decades before our cousins to the south took similar action and then it was done by the courts.

In 1979 Canadian diplomats rescued Americans after the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran (mind you, if you’re relatively young, you may not know this if you relied upon Ben Affleck’s film of the event which, not surprisingly I’m sorry to say, portrayed the CIA as the heroes and the Canadians as, at best, hapless patsies);

Canada began, and continues, to welcome countless immigrants from all over the world and, in the process, has built the most successful multi-racial/multi-cultural country in the world; ever;

On September 11, 2001 Canada welcomed thousands of stranded Americans and cared for them until it was safe for them to return to the States;

In 2003 Canada resisted enormous pressure from Washington to be part of the invasion of Iraq that resulted in the continuing meltdown of the entire middle east and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives;

In 2005 Canada made same sex marriage legal, only the third country in the world to do so at the time;

Most recently, Canada has successfully resisted the tide of populism/nativism sweeping so much of the west and continues to refuse to cave to the forces of bigotry, isolationism and plain old racism, while continuing to fight for multilateralism and an international order governed by law and agreed-upon rules, even when its staunchest traditional allies seem to be backing away from that vision;

Canada has built, and continues to build, a prosperous, stable, democratic and civil country where people, regardless of their ethnic background; their religious beliefs; their sexual orientation, can live in peace and harmony.  (I’m a Canadian so I’m required at this point to acknowledge that we’re not perfect; mistakes have been made and there is still much to do.  BUT, we continue to work on that every hour of every day, year after year.  How many other countries can say that?).

These are all achievements of historic significance; achievements seldom reached by other nations. So, imagine my surprise, when the media outlets tell me Canada was a country of losers, only now liberated from that pitiful state by the majestic efforts of a Toronto basketball team composed mostly of young Americans.  How could I have been so blind?

All joking aside, anyone who feels Canada was a nation of losers and, only now because of a basketball game, can hold it’s head high as a winner, should give their head a shake. At best, I pity you.  At worst, well I’m not sure I can find the words.

I am a proud Canadian.  I don’t have to shout about it to the world.  I don’t have to measure it by some sporting event.  I don’t need to mimic our American neighbours and demand everyone else agree with me about my country.  I simply don’t, because I know.

Canada Day is coming up shortly.  Pause, and be grateful for what we have.

just sayin

G

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