My old cat died last week. He was nearly 18 years old and is the last in a long line of cats going back nearly fifty years. First there was Mouse. Then Mimi and Trouble. And finally, Tad and Scudder. Scudder outlived his brother by five years. I miss him. Of course I do. But, thinking about him also makes me think about the relationship between human beings and pets.

First, let me get a bit of tired thinking out of the way, you know the thinking that puts people into either a “cat” or “dog” category. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I like dogs as much as I like cats. The difference is I would never keep a dog in an apartment which is where I live. And I had a wonderful dog growing up. He was an Irish Setter and his name was “Rusty”. I was five when he joined our family, and seventeen when he died. That was the first great loss of my life.

People like to debate which is better: a cat or a dog? But when we look at what each brings to the relationship with humans today I’m not sure there is that much of a difference. I understand that dogs have been domesticated much longer than cats, dogs likely first joining humans when we were still in our hunter gatherer stage, and cats later when we had settled down into farming. Both brought useful skills to people at the time. Dogs helping with hunting and gathering. Cats preying on vermin and birds that threatened agricultural crops. So that may account for the earliest connections but does little to explain the vestigial connections that thrive all over the world. Of course farmers still have dogs and cats to help with farming although as I recall from my childhood there is usually a distinction between a “house” cat and a “barn” cat, the latter presumably having to work harder for its board.

The debate over comparisons between cats and dogs usually involves an assertion that one is more intelligent than the other. I really don’t know what that means. It seems obvious that dogs have larger brains but, on the other hand, cats have brains perfectly evolved to meet their particular circumstances. Of course the measure of intelligence may get mixed up with how each interacts with humans, with dogs seemingly more affectionate and attentive. But that is hardly a measure of intelligence. In fact, it might be the opposite. People who have little experience with cats assume they are not very friendly. And they are wrong. Cats, as long as you understand they are cats and not tiny humans, can be very affectionate although it’s not as unconditional as that from a dog. To add to this, dogs have eyes that are seemingly more expressive, often coupled with a muscle wrinkle between them that causes humans to project all sorts of sympathetic interpretations. Cats, with the exception of opening and closing, express very little direct meaning from their eyes causing the uninitiated to think them cold and inscrutable when, in fact, they are not necessarily either.

The comparisons aside, I’m still puzzled by the relationship between them and humans now the most obvious utilitarian reasons for it have disappeared. What is it about a cat or a dog that humans find so attractive?

Some might argue these pets are surrogates for children but that only goes so far as “family” pets are shared with all members of a family.

And now I’m going to talk about what I know best: cats. There’s considerable truth to the idea that while a cat may be someone’s pet, that person is also the cat’s human. Especially if you raise a cat from kitten-hood, the bond is deep and strong. You delight in the cat’s playing and purring and it delights in your providing food, shelter and affection. And the affection is very important. Whats more, it’s reciprocated. Scudder would often nip me. Well, not actually a nip. He would just nuzzle into my arm and bring his teeth together. Some might say all he was doing was looking after himself, asking for affection for himself, but that would do him injustice. It was his way of saying he really really liked me, at least as far as a cat could formulate that thought. And after all, how different is that from the affection we receive from another animal or, for that matter, another human being? They say they really really like you and you reciprocate. So, I guess in a way, it’s all transactional. But it’s more than that. There is a bond of affection between the two. Oh, don’t expect a cat to express the complex emotions of a human but, in its way, it feels something warm and generous. When Mouse was an adult I saw him looking off in the distance and asked my partner: “What do you think’s going on in his head” to which he replied: “very little”. Undoubtedly true by human standards but, in the world of cats, the thoughts are as complex and sufficient as they need to be.

I actually hold the view that, for many of us, our lives are not complete without that kind of interaction with another living thing. Although I phrase it that way, I’m generally of the view that mammals are the best match with cats and dogs at the head of the line.

Or maybe philosophizing about the relationship between cats and humans is just too precious. Maybe what we feel for cats is as simple as the joy and laughter they give us, you know, play. Perhaps they remind us of ourselves a long time ago when the world still held mysteries, shocks and surprises. I have so many funny, joyous memories with my cats, although some did not seem particularly funny at the time. Sitting in front of my fireplace reading when a large and old Pre-Columbian sculpture came crashing and smashing to the ground and looking up to the ledge high above the fireplace to see Mimi’s bright blue eyes looking down at me in wonder, perhaps unsure what all the commotion was about. Or maybe she was just feigning innocence. Or during the dinner party I hosted for the Millenium when Trouble was sitting on the rather capacious stomach of one of my guests and, as I popped the cork on the champagne at midnight, launched himself in response across the room, leaving my guest bloodied and howling as the launch pad. Or the time I heard Tad wailing from the dining room only to find him impaled on the antlers of a bronze deer sculpture, he having tried to emulate his little brother whose nickname was Nadia Comaneci because of his agility jumping, climbing, scaling anywhere. Although it wasn’t so funny when little brother, Scudder, decided he would go for a walk outside the railing on my twenty ninth story patio only to slip, fall to the ground and survive. Although I should just note he never, ever went near the edge of any patio again. And then there’s all the other less memorable but equally joyful times when one of them would suddenly react as if some monster was chasing him and run frantically all over the house. Not to mention chasing tails or, my favourite, using the hallway outside my bedroom door to emulate a 737 on takeoff, usually at two or three in the morning.

So, as I said earlier, Scudder is the last in a long line and, yes, that does mean there won’t be another. At my age the prospect of leaving a cat behind seems wrong. But I will cherish all their memories for the rest of my life.

*with apologies to James Kirkwood

Just sayin

G

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On May 22 the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation revealed they had located the likely remains of 215 children from the nearby Kamloops Indian Residential School in an unmarked grave adjacent to the school. They used ground penetrating radar to make the find and further confirmation is proceeding. It is expected many more such grave sites will be found across Canada in the days and months ahead. The news washed over Canada like a Tsunami with politicians and other leaders expressing shock and outrage. First Nations people were neither shocked nor surprised.

European settlers in Canada and the missionaries who accompanied them viewed the native population as inferior and needing assimilation into European Christian values and behaviour. The first Indian Residential School, as they were titled, was built before Confederation in 1831, but it wasn’t until after the formal creation of Canada in 1867 and “The Indian Act”of 1876 was passed that the system really took hold. At their peak, there were over one hundred and thirty such schools in every part of Canada. Canada’s first and founding Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, was instrumental in their creation. The schools were funded by the Government of Canada and were mostly administered by Christian churches. Their stated goal was to ensure native children received an education that would prepare them to participate in Canadian society. Their actual goal was more sinister. It was the eradication of First Nations’ cultures and identities in a Canada dominated by European settlers or, in the words of historian, James S. Milloy, “to kill the Indian in the child”. This was done by forcibly removing the children from their families, culture and language and instilling shame about their Indian background. Schools were often built far from the families to ensure there was no contact with their children. In 1894 the Indian Act was amended to make attendance at Indian Residential Schools mandatory, resulting in the forced removal of children from their families until well into the twentieth century.

In the one hundred plus years of the Indian Residential School system more than 150,000 children were held in them. At one point over one third of native children in Canada were housed in a Residential School. The Kamloops Indian Residential School closed in 1978 and the last Indian Residential School closed in 1996. This isn’t ancient history. It occurred during the lifetimes of most of us.

Children at the schools were often abused physically, sexually and emotionally. They were denied the love and support of their parents and families as they encountered this bewildering world of nuns and priests and rules and regulations that made no sense to them. Imagine if you can what it would have been like to be such a child in such a place. My mother was raised without the love and support of either a mother or a father and, although she was supported by a loving grandmother and aunts, she never fully recovered from that loss of parental support. And think about the parents and families. Think how you would have felt if your children were seized and taken far away, with no communication and no understanding when, if ever, they would be returned.

Much of Canadian history is a reaction to our southern neighbour, the United States. Growing up we were taught that, unlike the Americans, Canadians didn’t slaughter the native populations as they expropriated and occupied their lands. We were taught they were treated reasonably, even humanely, under the circumstances. We were taught that although our approach was more civilized, even generous, it had often failed, but that really wasn’t our fault. And all the while we were kidnapping their children and doing everything we could to extirpate their cultures, identities and self worth.

I was born in the late 1940’s and raised in Alberta, mostly in small towns. There were Indian Reservations near those towns but very little contact between them and the European inhabitants of the towns and surrounding farms. At most, native men might be hired to help in the harvest. Although I don’t remember anything specific, there was a general view the natives were lazy, backward, unreliable, prone to alcoholism and generally untrustworthy.

In early 1990 I visited Germany for the first time. The Berlin wall was torn down a few months previous. As someone born just after the Second World War to parents who had participated in it I was surprised at how normal, friendly and welcoming the Germans were in light of the country’s Nazi past. I remember talking to a young man and asking how he felt about the atrocities committed by the Nazi’s. He pointed out he wasn’t born during that period and his mother was just a child but he did say he asked his grandmother about the horrors committed by the Nazis and she responded that she and most other Germans didn’t know what was going on. I found that unbelievable.

I don’t remember any discussion of Indian Residential Schools as I was growing up. I certainly wasn’t aware of them and, as best I can determine, neither my parents nor my grandparents had much, if any, knowledge of them. And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder “how is that possible?”. And although I understand the minefield of drawing comparisons between Nazi atrocities in Europe and other genocidal events, I now feel the same incredulity I felt all those years ago when I was told ordinary Germans didn’t know what was going on. It might be more accurate to say they didn’t want to know and now in Canada it’s an inescapable fact that many, many Canadians did know and either supported it or didn’t care. Federal politicians over a century; provincial and local politicians over that same period; and bureaucrats, thousands of bureaucrats kept busy implementing the objectives of their political overlords; they, at least, all knew and surely it couldn’t have been confined just to them. Sound familiar?

I first became aware of Indian Residential Schools sometime in the past twenty years, perhaps even the past ten. I didn’t pay them much attention and assumed their role was at worst misguided, believing they were a well meaning effort to give native children a leg up, an opportunity to become full and participating members of Canadian (European) society. When stories emerged of abuse at the schools I, like most I suspect, assumed they were exceptions, exceptions where the perpetrators should be punished, but exceptions none the less. I didn’t bother to inquire further about the schools and assumed they were creations of the nineteenth century that had disappeared long before I was born. And when representatives of First Nations people complained about the Residential Schools I mostly tuned out, drifting into the old narrative about native people and generally assuming they simply didn’t know what was in their best interests. All around me in Vancouver, which became my home sixty years ago, I could find examples of the Indian stereotype that was subliminally instilled in me growing up: lazy, unemployed, unkempt and drunk or drugged, not someone who could be redeemed or, for that matter, was worth redeeming.

Canada has cultivated an image of itself as open, liberal, progressive, generous, and as free from racism as any large multi cultural country on earth, perhaps ever.

And then the 215 bodies were found.

Suddenly I’m confronting a terrible truth about my country. Suddenly I’m identifying with the children and their parents as the state separates them. I feel as if I’ve been walking on these children’s bones my entire life.

The purpose of Indian Residential Schools was to eliminate the “Indian” presence in Canada. And to some extent, it succeeded. Multiple generations of survivors of residential schools have battled with the demons created by their treatment as children, often lapsing into addictions and many other anti social behaviours. Canadian prisons are full of them. And that’s on us because, regardless of what we and our ancestors knew or did not know, this was done in our name and we own it.

But despite the best efforts of successive Canadian governments going back over a century, native cultures and societies persist even if profoundly damaged, disfigured and weakened. And it is our sacred duty to help them lift themselves up and to heal. I will leave it to others to determine how we do that but I know it starts by acknowledging the facts and the guilt. That is the first step to ensuring nothing like this ever happens again in Canada.

just sayin

G

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As Hamas rockets rain down upon Israel and Israeli bombers and artillery respond by bombing Gaza we are reminded of the intractable conflict that is the middle east and, particularly, the role of Israel in that conflict. I’m watching and listening as commentators pontificate and take sides; speculate on the motives of the principal players and wring their hands at the fate of the Palestinian people. So, it is with some trepidation that I wade in, but here goes.

First, a little bit of history. Modern Israel is the manifestation of the hopes and beliefs of the Jewish people, and its capital is Jerusalem. That belief traces back through pre-history to the story of the Exodus from Egypt and the founding of Jerusalem by King David. In 132 AD Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and Israel by the Romans under the Emperor Hadrian who then wished to expunge any memory of Judea or ancient Israel. He renamed the land Syria Palaestina. For nearly two thousand years the Jewish diaspora longed for a return to Israel. The non Jewish inhabitants who remained on the land are the Palestinians.

The land that is now Israel was included in a British Mandate following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World war. As that mandate was coming to an end the United Nations divided the territory between a new Jewish state, a state for the Palestinians and territory that would remain under international control. In the six months leading up to the end of the mandate Jewish and Palestinian guerrilla armies waged a low level civil war.

The drive to establish a Jewish state in the land of ancient Israel was greatly strengthened by the treatment of Jews in Europe during the Second World War. Tens of thousands of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust eventually found their way to the territory and became a core building block of Israel’s population.

On May 14, 1948 Israel declared its independence effective with the termination of the British Mandate at midnight on that same day. Almost immediately the combined Arab armies of Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Iraq and Syria invaded the nascent state starting the first Arab-Israeli war that continued until July 24, 1949. The armistice that ended it left Israel with a much greater land mass than had been allocated to it in the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan. And so began over seventy years of conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours aligned with the Palestinians.

As well as several Palestinian insurgencies, Israel has been involved in three more wars with its Arab neighbours: the Suez Crisis in 1956 where the combined forces of Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt with the intention of occupying the Sinai Peninsula and taking control of the Suez Canal; the Six-Day War in June of 1967 when Israel fought the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria; and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur seeking to regain territory lost to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Except for the Suez Crisis, these wars ended with the defeat of the Arab armies and with Israel gaining and holding more of the disputed land.

There have been several internationally mediated attempts to achieve a lasting peace but they have all failed at least partly because of the failure of the Palestinian leadership to stand up to its more militant rivals. That was certainly the case when, in 1993, Yasser Arafat failed to follow through with the initial commitments in the Oslo Accords. With the benefit of hindsight, that was probably the best deal the Palestinians were ever going to get but it was allowed to slip away.

The Palestinians are led by two organizations, The Palestinian Authority that predominates in Palestinian settlements in the West Bank and Hamas that controls the Palestinian enclave on the Gaza Strip. Hamas is the more militant of the two and is designated a terrorist organization by many western countries including the United States, the U.K. and Canada. It is dedicated to the complete overthrow of Israel and the expulsion of its Jewish citizens, and creating a Sunni theocratic state. Presumably acting on the ancient view that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, Hamas receives considerable support and backing from theocratic Shia Iran.

As the peace processes have faltered Israel has built Jewish settlements on large parts of the land it occupied in the Six Day war making it difficult, if not impossible, to ever create a contiguous Palestinian state.

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip after the Six Day War and voluntarily withdrew from it in 2005. Hamas then ousted the Palestinian Authority and took over Gaza by force, and has used it ever since as a base to attack Israel, leading to Israeli retaliation which is what is happening today. This also fundamentally undermined Israeli confidence that any Palestinian state can be created that will co-exist with Israel.

Even this briefest of brief “Coles Notes”barely scratches the surface of the complexities surrounding these events, including foreign interventions, bad behaviour by all sides and, perhaps most important, the claim to right of place by each of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The current dispute began with Israeli settlers attempting to evict Palestinians from their homes in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood. The matter was before the Israeli Supreme Court and, with its ruling imminent, groups of right wing Israeli settlers marched towards the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. They were diverted by police but, in anticipation of their arrival, Palestinians assembled at the mosque. When the police tried to disperse them they were met with resistance including stone throwing. The police may have overreacted and entered the mosque, eventually clearing it of the demonstrators. Watching from Gaza, Hamas launched missiles at Israeli population centres, including Jerusalem. Israel retaliated with bombs and artillery. Civilians on both sides were killed but mostly Palestinians in Gaza. As the missile attacks and bombing have continued, large sections of Gaza City now lie in ruins and fatalities climb giving Hamas a propoganda victory. This, even though the Israeli Defence Forces are notifying civilians in targeted buildings and areas of imminent bombing so they have time to move from harms way. No notice is being given by Hamas as it continues to launch hundreds of missiles at civilian targets in Israel.

Predictably, as Palestinian casualties have risen so have the voices across the world calling for Israel to halt its shelling and bombing. This, of course, is exactly what Hammas wants and is an integral part of its strategy of undermining Israel in world opinion. Anticipating this, Hamas deliberately placed its armaments, headquarters and launching pads amongst the civilians of Gaza. In other words, it is using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

What is particularly offensive in the world outcry is the use of terms like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” to describe the Israeli actions. The same is rarely if ever said of the Hamas offensive. Some are now trying to argue Israel is committing war crimes by its defensive actions. The term “war crimes” entered the lexicon after the Second World War in response to the monstrous crimes committed by Nazi Germany and its allies, particularly against the Jewish inhabitants of Europe. It is a term that, over time, has attained some precision and it does not include the actions of a state trying to defend its citizens while doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties on the other side. It does include deliberatly targeting civilians and using civilians as human shields, both of which Hamas is doing. In other words, yes there are war crimes being committed but they are being committed by Hamas, not Israel.

I have many criticisms of Israel when it comes to its treatment of the Palestinians, particularly its continuing support for the annexation of West Bank land for Jewish settlements. That process may already have proceeded beyond the point where a “two state” solution is viable but, without that, what are the alternatives: a Jewish state with a permanent majority underclass of Palestinians? an Israel that is no longer majority Jewish? the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel and the West Bank? None of these are possible and all guarantee continuing bitter conflict for generations to come. But those criticisms don’t obscure the facts in the present case that Israel was attacked by Hamas and is defending its citizens, or that Hamas bears much responsibility for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza both because it initiated the current conflict and it is using them as human shields.

People much better informed than I have tried to solve the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And they have all failed. And so we are left with a low level war that occasionally flares and gains world attention and then subsides. That’s what is happening now and it will end when the Israelis have degraded Hamas’s offensive capability sufficiently and/or world opinion has reached a point that the United States can no longer sit on the sidelines.

Just sayin

G

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On January 20, 2021 Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, ending four years of chaos and retreat for America under former President Trump. The transition from one administration to the next was one of the rockiest in the history of the United States, punctuated by an armed assault on the Capital that attempted to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. The democratic world watched in horror as the events leading up to the inauguration unfolded. But finally on January 20 it was over and democrats the world over breathed a sigh of relief.

True to form, former President Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat and subsequently encouraged his followers to buy into the lie of election fraud, causing millions of Americans to doubt the legitimacy of President Joe Biden. And anyone who hoped that feeling would slowly dissipate has been disappointed. The lie was, and coninues to be, propagated by elected Republicans at all levels of government and that leaves America in a very perilous state.

Although not without precedent in America, it is still astonishing to watch men and women who certainly ought to know their message is a lie, continuing to propagate it without any regard for the long term effect on their country. It couldn’t be clearer, if there was ever any doubt, for them, the sole purpose of participating in public life is winning and holding power at whatever cost. This is the ultimate expression of rot in a democracy and it is very hard to root out.

Approximately seventy five million Americans voted for Donald Trump. This, despite the many scandals, the stinking corruption that seeped into every aspect of public life in the U.S. during his administration, his flirtation with, and obeisance to, foreign enemies of the United States, and his pursuit of personal aggrandizement no matter the cost to the Republic. The fig leaf of “not knowing” how he would behave as President that some embarrassingly clung to to justify their first vote for him, was ripped away and he was exposed in all his venal and corrupt incompetence. And yet seventy five million Americans still voted for him, more than for any other Presidential candidate, except Joe Biden, in American history.

Seventy five million Americans said they wanted Donald Trump and his administration to continue and nothing since the election, including the armed assault on the Capital, has shaken their fealty to him. And that probably means we are just between periods in the fight for the soul of America.

Watching from Canada I am astonished at the naked abasement of most Republican politicians as they scramble to ensure they are on the same side as Donald Trump. That the Republican Party would boo Senator Mitt Romney and remove Representative Liz Cheney from House Leadership tells us all we need to know about today’s Republicans. I couldn’t be more opposed to most of Representative Cheney’s and Senator Romney’s policy positions, but to realize they are being rejected by the vast majority of their own party for simply truth telling is appalling and deeply troubling.

A long time ago the Republican Party adopted the so called “southern strategy” that allowed it to gain a chokehold over the southern states. There were always elements of racism behind it, but they were generally hidden and only communicated by “dog whistles”, allowing the “respectable Republicans” to continue pretending they were just mainstream politicians. What we have seen with the ascension of Donald Trump and his particularly perverse form of populism is that base turning and devouring its creators. What a mess.

President Biden seems to believe that adopting populist economic policies that, overwhelmingly, will benefit Donald Trump’s blue collar voters will move them away from the the more vile expressions of Trumpism and at least begin reintegrating them into mainstream America. I’m not so sure that is going to work. Aside from the considerable legislative hurdles to overcome to get the key elements of these programs passed, there is little evidence to date the target audience has either the capacity or willingness to embrace new ideas and to abandon their deeply held prejudices.

Perhaps one of the most astonishing examples of this concerns COVID 19 vaccinations. Pollsters tell us that forty percent of Republican men say they will not get vaccinated and we are now seeing that effect as American efforts to achieve “herd immunity” through mass vaccination slow to a trickle with many informed observers now feeling herd immunity is not achievable. And why do these people refuse the vaccines? It’s complicated but it has something to do with the “know nothing” nature of their movement (I say “movement” because “party” is now wholly inadequate). The suspician of so called elites, whether scientific, medical, entertainment, political or business, runs deep and causes great distrust of any recommendations coming from any of those sectors. That Donald Trump and his wife were secretly vaccinated before they left the White House doesn’t seem to have seeped into the consiousness of these people. Of course it would be helpful if he urged his supporters to get vaccinated, but I don’t know why anyone is surprised that he hasn’t done that. If there is one thing we learned about Donald Trump during his Presidency it is that his needs, and particularly his ego, supersede any other consideration even when it means his own supporters will get sick and die.

The great challenge facing America today is that nearly half of its people don’t really speak the same language as the other half. Trump supporters views, beliefs, whatever you call them, simply defy rational argument. It is as if some kind of mass psychosis has turned them into angry, self centred children and there is no easy solution to end that.

Given American history, it is quite likely the Democrats will lose control of both the House and the Senate in the 2022 midterms, at which point the Biden Presidency will be enfeebled for its remaining two years. And then in 2024 there will be a replay of the bitter fight of the 2020 election with its outcome uncertain. And once again, the very survival of American democracy will be at issue.

Of course I hope I’m wrong and the Democratic Party rallies to coalesce a mighty coalition that will turn back these forces of chaos and darkness. But my great worry now is that those who worked so hard to defeat Trump in 2020 are relaxing in the belief the crisis has passed. It hasn’t, and it will take an enormous effort to repell it once again.

Just sayin

G

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I received my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine a couple of weeks ago. Based on conversations with friends who went before me I expected exhilaration, a feeling the end was in sight. But no, the next day dawned about the same as the previous several hundred and I continued about my life as socially distanced as before which, I am told, is the right thing to do. I do expect we will vaccinate our way out of the pandemic and that may happen in the next several months but, in the meantime, the same stifling monotony continues to bear down on us all.

Looking back on the pandemic so far there are a few noteworthy things for me. First, why is it that right wing, populist leaders provide the worst possible leadership during this crisis? Setting aside the particularly egregious example of Donald Trump (I’m trying very hard not to write about him, to read anything about him or to even think about him), in Canada we have two examples at the provincial level: Jason Kenney in Alberta and Doug Ford in Ontario (I agree Quebec should probably be added to this list but, as usual, Quebec is so distinct as to require another category entirely). But why is it that Doug Ford and Jason Kenney have so spectacularly and repeatedly failed to provide effective leadership in their provinces? Admittedly, in the early days of the pandemic I was impressed with Doug Ford’s “awh shucks” approach, as well as his willingness to call out COVID scofflaws, but much has changed since then, particularly as the Tsunami of COVID cases swamp Ontario in the third wave. And I can’t even put it down to the nature of the Ontario electorate that, by any measure, is as typically Canadian as any. That’s not the case with Alberta, or so its leaders remind us constantly, and where the “live free or die” mantra seems to have found a home in Canada.

So what is it about these two populist leaders that causes them to be so spectacularly unsuccessful leading their provinces through the pandemic? I don’t really know although I suspect it has something to do with an innate distrust of expertise and authority; a deliberately cultivated sense of being put down or looked down upon by urban, educated elites or, in the case of Alberta, eastern elites; and the sense government is never really the solution to big problems. But if the pandemic has taught us anything it’s that we desperately need good and competent government to handle these really big challenges. That, by the way, and despite Alberta’s current dissent, has always been part of the Canadian consensus. How could it not be as settlers worked to establish a successful country in the enormous and often hostile territory that is now Canada?

In my view the most successful political leadership during the Pandemic has come from the Atlantic Premiers and the Premier of my own province, British Columbia. In both cases the political leadership has deferred to the medical experts and scientists and has allowed them to be the face of the government response. When I consider how the government is doing on this file in B.C. I think of Dr. Bonnie Henry, not Premier Horgan. From the coverage I’ve seen of the Atlantic responses that seems to the case there too. On the other hand, Doug Ford placed himself front and centre as the public face of the response in Ontario as has, although not to the same extent, Jason Kenney in Alberta which brings me back to the topic I try to avoid: Donald Trump. During the early months of the pandemic Donald Trump inserted himself into the the national COVID briefings in the U.S., frequently contradicting or belittling the medical experts. It was only when his particular brand of buffoonery began to reflect badly in the polls that he distanced himself, but the damage was already done; damage numbered in the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died. And not to be forgotten, there still is Jair Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil, who continues to wreck havoc on his country’s response to the virus.

I’m not a psychologist but it strikes me there is a basic insecurity in leaders who insist that they, and they alone, be the face of their government’s response. And when things are going well they seem to be rewarded politically. But, when, as in a crisis as unpredictable as a pandemic, things sour, they wear the blame. I suspect both Doug Ford and Jason Kenney have suffered severe political damage from their roles and may pay the price for it when their provinces next go to the polls. I also think Prime Minister Trudeau is guilty of the same behaviour although, thus far at least, the damage to him is more limited.

Aside from the behaviour of political leaders, I find it interesting to watch how people generally are behaving. Of course the anti maskers and anti vacc’sers head the list on this group although in Canada, mercifully, we have been the spared the worst expressions of that behaviour. I can’t help but feel these people aren’t very intelligent and allow themselves to be led in directions that by most measures are self destructive. They shout slogans and convey messages that are simply untrue, and their firey commitment to their cause blinds them to any other perspective. We see this often enough in the best of times but what is remarkable is how it accelerates as the stakes become much higher. A recent poll showed that 40 plus percent of Republican men in the United States do not plan to get vaccinated. Aside from the threat that poses to everyone else, it also illustrates a juvenile connection to facts and evidence with conceivably disastrous results for the individuals themselves, let alone their loved ones. Fortunately, right now we seem to have the opposite problem in Canada with people overwhelmingly wanting access to scarce vaccine supplies.

And speaking of vaccines, I find the federal government’s critics on how and when vaccines are available in Canada annoying as they seem to assume the rest of us are working in an information vacum. At best, the federal government gets a middling grade for its role fighting the pandemic, particularly when it comes to messaging and slowness to take stronger measures when they were obviously necessary. But on the vaccine front they get a “pass”. It’s not clear how any other federal government could have improved on the current performance. Reasonably informed Canadians understand that Canada has no domestic vaccine manufacturing industry that could create COVID 19 vaccines. And that is the result of decisions made by previous federal governments, both Conservative and Liberal, that allowed the domestic industry to be bought, and subsequently dismantled, by foreign companies. Given that, the federal government has had to play the cards it was dealt and I think they’ve done so quite well. I’ve seen the claims that Canada ranks way down the list of countries when it comes to acquiring and getting vaccines into people’s arms, but when I look carefully at it I note the vast majority of countries ahead of us are tiny and/or isolated. The only major G7 countries ahead of Canada are the U.K. and the United States, both of which have domestic manufacturing capacity and both of which have had much worse pandemics than has Canada.

I’m also interested in the “expertise” so many are now claiming on epidemics and, more recently, vaccines. This is particularly so when the “peanut gallery” issues furious demands on social media that governments pursue actions responding to the pandemic. I don’t exclude myself from this group entirely although I have tried to hoe to the “trust the government and medical authorities” line. The one area I would like the government to act on, even if it turns out to be an overreaction, is closing Canadian airports to flights from countries with high caseloads of COVID 19. If we have learned anything on this front it is that it is better to go faster and harder than not. Sitting in British Columbia where the major seeds of the pandemic came from our neighbours to the south in Washington State, I remember the many early calls to shut that border that were largely ignored by Ottawa until COVID 19 was well established in B.C.

There will be autopsies when this is over, autopsies that will note the successes and the failures and that can map a future where Canada is better prepared to meet the next biological onslaught. In the meantime, we are getting there, although the “third wave” is hitting with a ferocity we had hoped to avoid, but in a few weeks the vaccinations should begin to affect the rates of infection and we’ll all be able to breathe a partial sigh of relief. Trust me. I’m an “expert”.

Just sayin

G.

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Two days ago Cong Peiuwu, China’s ambassador to Canada, published an op-ed in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s oldest national newspaper, in which he accused Canadian politicians of blatantly interfering in China’s internal affairs and poisoning the relationship between Canada and the People’s Republic of China. The next day Michael Spavor was put on trial for espionage in the Chinese city of Dandong. Michael Spavor is one of the “two Michaels” who have been held in Chinese prisons for over eight hundred days as hostages in retaliation for the arrest in Vancouver of Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, on an extradition warrant from the United States .

The trial was closed and even representatives of the Canadian embassy in China were refused access on the spurious grounds it dealt with Chinese national security which, by the way, violates the treaty signed by China that gives consular rights precedence over any internal Chinese rules. Neither Michael Spavor nor his legal counsel were permitted to see the evidence against him. The trial lasted less than two hours and a verdict will be issued in the future.

On the following Monday Michael Kovrig, the second of “the two Michaels”, was put on trial in Beijing, also on charges of espionage and also in a closed proceeding that Canadian consular officials were barred from. And, as with last week’s trial, no verdict was given. There is virtually no doubt the courts will find both Michaels guilty of the charges which carry sentences of up to life imprisonment.

Cong Peiuwu made no mention of the two Michaels in his opinion piece, complaining instead about Canada considering granting accelerated access for refugees from Hong Kong, as well as Canada’s criticism of China’s genocide against its Uyghur population, Canada blocking the purchase of Canadian companies by Chinese state controlled companies, and national security concerns raised in Canada by its purchase of Chinese equipment for border security.

Most of the opinion piece trumpeted the growth in Canada/China trade and offered the possibility of significant economic gains IF Canada plays by Chinese rules. I suppose this could be seen as an iron fist in a velvet glove so let’s take a look at the iron fist. For most of the past forty years we in the west have laboured under the illusion that as China became more prosperous, as more of its citizens moved into the middle class, and as it became more integrated into global trading systems and political institutions, it would liberalize and move from a communist autocracy to something more in keeping with western views of democracy. In fact, we took comfort from the transition towards democracy of other countries in the region, specifically Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia. And all the while we repeated the mantra that, given its history, China would never harbour territorial ambitions beyond its borders.

And we were wrong.

It has taken years and countless examples of rogue behaviour by China for us to finally confront the reality of a soon to be global super power that wants to impose its values, its system and its interests upon everyone else. In China’s view, the accepted norms of international behaviour don’t apply to it except when they benefit China. In fact, given its recent behaviour, I would question the value of any treaty commitments made by China. Of late the Chinese have been explicit that the prevailing international norms reflect a western and particularly American view of the world that is not shared by it nor, in its view, much of the rest of humanity.

There’s no point lamenting this change or blaming ourselves for our misplaced beliefs and trust. It is what it is and now we must decide where we, as western nations, will fit in this new world order.

The contest between tyranny and democracy is as old as mankind and, in the western world, can be traced all the way back to classical Greece where tyrants battled democrats and where the seminal ideas of western democracy sprung to life rooted in the central position of the individual. And, despite their well documented failings, these ideas benefited mankind enormously, particularly in the fields of science and medicine. There is no better testament to that than the near miraculous development of effective vaccines against COVID 19 less than a year after the deadly virus first appeared.

And it’s not just in the material world that the western idea has flourished. In a democracy we all have opinions that can be expressed freely and we are able to choose our own governments and systems of governance as the vigorous debate of the agora animates our lives and provides a continuous petri dish for innovation. These too are part of the gift of the west as, by the way, is capitalism.

China seems to believe it can pick and choose amongst the western ideas, that it can transform capitalism into a kind of state capitalism and build a middle class without the worrisome challenges of dissent and free debate. Its paramount objectives are stability and a monopoly on power by a single political party, all enforced by a system of surveillance and control that not even George Orwell could have imagined. And that might be okay for people who are rooted in a very different tradition than our own, but it is certainly not okay for the inheritors of the western idea.

In his opinion piece, Cong Peiuwu offers Canada a choice. Although he doesn’t state it in quite these terms, it is a choice between being subservient to an anti democratic statist society and enjoying great economic benefits as a result, and refusing that subservience with the attendant economic losses. Ultimately he is asking us to be someone we are not and never will be so no matter how much we equivocate, there is really no choice at all.

Canada has a well deserved reputation for muddling through; for trying to please everyone; for straddling the fence even after everyone else has chosen a side. And so we are again. The federal Liberal government’s approach to China not only lacks clarity, it has been manifestly unsuccessful when it comes to issues like freeing the two Michaels or responding to China’s continuing disregard for the norms of international behaviour. I suspect this is partly because of the deeply embedded conflicts of interest of many of the government’s supporters when it comes to China, with them hoping when the two Michaels affair is over we can just return to the status quo. But that isn’t an option. We all know the old saying: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” And Canada is way past that fool me twice moment.

The next few decades are going to see a bifurcated world with the non democratic countries clustered around China. The democracies will, at least initially, form around the United States and there will be fierce competition between the two, competition that might, but needn’t, lead to armed conflict.

Whether we like it or not, Canada has to decide which side it is on in this new world order. That shouldn’t be a hard choice given our history and geography and yet the federal government continues to twist itself into contortions to somehow have it both ways.

Siding firmly with the democracies doesn’t mean Canada should lead the charge against China whenever and however. But it does begin with a clear understanding of what we are dealing with, including knowing China will upend international conventions, norms and institutions if they don’t advance its own goals. In other words, the rules based order Canada has prospered under will be in flux for some time and when it finally settles may not serve our interests as well as its predecessor.

Canada will continue to have economic engagement with China but, going forward, must ensure that doesn’t turn into dependency as has occurred in the past. In other words, future decisions on economic development should never be dependent upon China acting in accordance with its agreements.

Canada must also rediscover its voice when it comes to calling out behaviour by China that, with any other country, would have led to instant condemnation. And, no matter how ludicrous its statements, we should get used to being lectured by China in response.

It’s going to be a brave new world out there and Canada will have to play its cards carefully but always consistent with its core beliefs in democracy, human rights and a rules based international order.

Just sayin

G

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Full disclosure first. I didn’t watch Oprah’s interview with Meghan and Harry, not even a bit of it. But I have been following the fallout and have seen a few clips from it on newscasts.

Well, according to the headlines, an earth shattering event occurred when the Queen of America sat down with the fallen Duke and Duchess. There it is in bold print: “Palace in Crisis”, “Worst Royal Crisis in 85 Years”, “Just the Four of Us Now”, “What Have They Done?”, “Duchess has shown courage, says Biden” and on and on. Admittedly, most are from the British press but even here in staid old Canada our papers managed to get quite excited.

Perhaps it’s because we’re a bit stir crazy after a year of pandemic restrictions or maybe we’re just a bit stir crazy, but the reactions from around the world are worthy of a good Monty Python skit (are you listening John Cheese), except everyone is taking it so remarkably seriously which, I suspect, reflects an underlying pathology in our world.

Oprah Winfry is first and foremost an actor. Yes, she began in journalism, moved on to talk TV and then went on to build an impressive empire. I have nothing against her but I do wonder sometimes at the deference given her, particularly in America. She’s become a kind of delphic figure, her words and actions weighed, considered and always respected. I remember when Donald Trump first appeared, there was talk of Oprah running for President as if that would be the necessary antidote to the Anti Christ who had taken over the Republican Party. Mercifully, it passed and adult minds took over the conversation.

And if you want to see classic acting just watch Oprah’s face when Meghan dropped the “bombshell” about a senior Royal raising the issue of the soon to be born Archie’s skin colour. Shock and disbelief, as if it couldn’t possibly have happened in the world we live in. Her eyes widened, she breathed deeply and looked stunned before proceeding very slowly to explore the answer. And she wasn’t alone as all her accolytes in TV land genuflected. Oh for heaven’s sake! No one, least of all Oprah, absolutely no one who is reasonably informed about the world we live in felt the slightest genuine surprise or shock. And that presumes by the way that the comment was indeed racist as opposed to an entirely neutral question about an obvious fact. I know all sorts of people who mused on the potential colour of Archie’s skin, including me. I thought it delightful that someone in the direct line of succession to the throne might be “a person of colour”.

As an aside, this reminds me of an anecdote involving my late mother who was an English war bride. Very late in her life she learned from me that one of her English nephews had married a black woman and they were expecting a child. After pausing for a moment or two to reflect, she said: “Well, I suppose if it’s alright with the Royal Family it should be fine with us.” And so it was.

Of course there is racism in our world and England is no exception. In fact, given its history and class structure, I think it likely there is more racism in England than in many other parts of the world. Equally though, it isn’t hiding under every rock, every comment, every unstated thought. It is possible to discuss issues of race and not be a racist.

As for Harry and Meghan, well the Royal Family does get itself in a pickle every generation or two by having “commoners” join it. Americans seem to be the most problematic (I’m talking about you Wallace Simpson), although, Diana, as aristocratic an “English Rose” as you could find, also inflicted mighty damage on the House of Windsor. And now, thanks to Diana, we have Meghan.

The tale that Meghan and Harry are telling isn’t new and the examples they cite to bolster their case don’t survive very well under close scrutiny (not giving Archie a title and withdrawing protection from them when they withdrew from Royal duties), but there’s no doubt Meghan was the subject of racist comments in the United Kingdom and elsewhere and clearly she was very unhappy in her role as a senior Royal. And so they left. And so they should have. And we should all wish them the best in their new lives in California.

As for the rest of us, aside from the distraction from the really big issues of the day, we need to get our lives back. Unless I missed it, there is still a pandemic raging out there; the military junta in Myanmar is still shooting protestors in the streets; the People’s Republic of China is still destroying the few remaining vestiges of democracy in Hong Kong; the people of Yemen are still starving; and there are still people everywhere behaving badly.

Those of you who have been following my blogs know that, when it comes to Canada, I am a committed republican and would welcome Canada shedding the monarchy as its head of state. So, in most respects, I really don’t care whether or not the monarchy is damaged by this latest “scandal” any more than I care about what the Kardashians are doing.

As I said earlier, I wish the young couple well. I’m sure they will have a comfortable and privileged life no matter what course they follow.

Just sayin

G

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On December 1, 2018 Canadian authorities arrested Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, at the Vancouver International Airport after she arrived on a flight from China. The arrest was in response to an extradition request from the United States that alleged Ms Wanzhou had participated in a conspiracy to commit fraud in order to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran. She has also been indicted in the U.S. on charges relating to the theft of trade secrets. After her initial appearance in a Canadian court, Meng Wanzhou has been free on bail subject to wearing a monitor and having a twenty four hour security team with her. She recently lost a bid to have the terms of her bail reduced. She is residing in one of two mansions she owns in Vancouver and is free to travel around Vancouver; shop; dine out; have parties in restaurants; and be visited by her husband and mother. She is represented by a team of top tier Canadian lawyers in her fight against extradition.

Meng Wanzhou is not just any senior Chinese executive. She is the daughter of the founder of Huawei, China’s pre-eminent technology company. Huawei’s expansion into the West is the subject of concern amongst western nations over the possibility it might be used as a Trojan Horse for countries competing with China, whether economically or otherwise.

Canada’s current extradition treaty with the U.S. came into force in 1976 but it was preceded by other extradition treaties over the previous one hundred and fifty years. In other words, Canada has had extradition treaties with the United States for over two hundred years and they have been a mainstay of the close and complex relationship between the two neighbouring countries. It requires each country to treat an extradition request from the other in accordance with its terms.

Not surprisingly, Meng Whanzou’s detention caused outrage in Beijing and it launched a campaign to force Canada to release her. Shortly after her arrest two Canadians in China, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, were arrested. Michael Spavor is a Canadian diplomat on leave of absence to work for an international think tank and Michael Kovrig is a businessman in the tourism industry. They have been held ever since in separate Chinese jails where they are subjected to daily interrogations, sleep deprivation caused by their cells being lit twenty four hours a day and very limited access to Canadian consular support.

The Canadian government has responded to the pressure from China by stating Canada is a country of laws that honours its treaty obligations, while deploring the behaviour of China. The process contemplated by the treaty is being followed, as is the separation of Canadian courts from political interference. Whether Beijing understands this and simply ignores it or whether it genuinely believes Canadian political leaders can direct the courts in their decisions remains unclear.

The pushback from Beijing isn’t restricted to the imprisonment of the two Michaels although that is its most visible element. An equally egregious action concerns the COVID 19 pandemic, made more so by China’s role in its origin and initial spread. In the early days of the pandemic Canada entered into a partnership with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control to develop a vaccine for COVID 19, a partnership that would build upon scientific and technological work by Canadian scientists developing the first Ebola vaccine. Canadian facilities provided the Chinese CDC with complementary cell culture media and technological support that would ultimately lead to the Chinese COVID 19 vaccine. In May, 2020, Canada green lit clinical trials of the vaccine in Canada. Although China never announced it was not going to provide vaccine candidate seeds for the Canadian trials, they never arrived which is one reason why Canada does not have a made in Canada COVID 19 vaccine and is having to scramble to acquire vaccines made in other countries. China has never linked its ending cooperation with the detention of Meng Wanzhou but it’s now clear that is the case.

Also, China suddenly “discovered” that shipments of Canola from Canada were infected with bugs or weeds that don’t even exist where the Canola is grown in Canada and, as a result, blocked shipments from two of Canada’s largest suppliers of Canola. One of these is Richardson International with roots in Manitoba and it just so happens Canada’s then Foreign Affairs Minister and now Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, highlighted her personal connection with Manitoba canola farmers by bringing a bottle of canola seeds from her father’s Manitoba farm to her first meeting with Chinese leaders two years ago. Coincidence? I doubt it.

There are other actions by China, some small, some larger, all designed to force Canada to break its extradition treaty with the U.S. and bow to the will of China. But the most obvious is the continuing detention of the two Michaels.

In response to this hostage diplomacy the Canadian government says it is doing everything possible to achieve their freedom. I had to deal with many armchair quarterbacks in my career negotiating agreements over the years so I’ve been reluctant to call the government out on this, hoping there were indeed actions underway that would see the two Michaels returned to Canada. But after more than two years with no evident progress I think it time for Canada and Canadians to up the ante.

On February 4, 2022 the Winter Olympics will open in Beijing. The opening ceremonies will undoubtedly showcase China as a modern, successful and powerful country. Billions will be watching from around the world. And the idea that Canadian athletes would march into that spectacle under the Canadian flag while two of their innocent countrymen are rotting in a Chinese prison appalls me.

I understand the controvery around Olympic boycotts and concluded years ago that if we demand perfection in the host country, at least perfection as measured by the western democracies, there will be precious few countries where an Olympics can be held even though China is certainly engaged in activities that should invite censure, particularly its crushing of democracy in Hong Kong, its continuing threat to the survival of a democratic Taiwan and the treatment of its Uyghur population, large numbers of whom are now held in concentration camps.

And I do understand the unfair toll a boycott would exact on our athletes who have trained and dreamed of Olympic competition all their lives. But there has to be a line somewhere and if the aribtrary arrest and confinement of innocent Canadians by China isn’t it, I don’t know what would be.

Compared to China Canada is a very small country and so has limited leverage to affect Chinese behaviour. But Canada isn’t a small country at all when it comes to the Winter Olympics. In fact, Canada is a super power and if it clearly announced it would not participate in the Chinese Winter Olympics so long as its citizens were being held hostage by China it would be noticed. What’s more, if some of our allies like the United States or Germany or the Nordic nations joined us in support the message would be deafening.

I’m under no illusion that a threatened boycott would instantly cause China to act differently but I do believe a strong show of support for a boycott from Canadians will help Ottawa grow a spine on this issue and take a much more assertive approach to China, one that isn’t hobbled by the myriad conflicts of interest that exist on Canada’s China policy between many high profile Canadians and the long term interests of Canada.

I have started an online petition calling for Canada to boycott the Chinese Winter Olympics if the Canadian hostages are not freed. You can access it at: http://chng,it/2hd9jjJqjp or simply go to “Change.Org” and ask for Geoff Holter’s petition on the two Michaels.

Just sayin

G

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On January 20, shortly after his inauguration as President of the United States, Joe Biden signed an Executive Order cancelling the federal permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. This was not even remotely surprising given his role in the Obama administration that had refused to grant the permit in the first place, and his very clear promises during the Presidential election. Yet, within minutes, there were cries of outrage from Canada’s oilpatch and particularly Alberta whose furious little Premier went apoplectic. It was as if this was an ambush; as if a trusted friend had stabbed us in the back even though any moderately informed Canadian knew it was going to happen. In fact, we even knew when and how it was going to happen as that was communicated to us days before the inauguration.

And yet.

Premier Kenney, red in the face, went on national television descrying the action, attacking Ottawa for failing to more aggressively defend Alberta’s interests and demanding Canada immediately implement tariffs against American exports to Canada. In other words, Canada should start a trade war with the Biden administration on day one of its term. Huh?

His anger was undoubtedly stoked by the incredibly foolish decision he made a year earlier when, absent private sector investors willing to invest in the project, he decided the Alberta government would directly invest one billion taxpayer dollars and provide a further six billion dollars in loan guarantees to the pipeline. In other words, due to this extraordinarily bad decision the taxpayers of Alberta may be on the hook for seven billion dollars while the pipeline is effectively dead. Why, with an historically unpopular President in the White House and Democrats generally opposed to the pipeline, he thought this a wise course is beyond me; and why when the private sector was unwilling to make the investment this didn’t at least cause pause, beggars understanding.

But we didn’t hear anything about that in his reaction as he tried to focus the blame on Ottawa although it is manifestly clear the blame lies squarely with Edmonton. At one press conference Premier Kenney practically shouted that “if this hurt Bombardier in Quebec, or the auto sector in Ontario, or the shipbuilding industry in the Maritimes, Ottawa would immediately retaliate” which is, of course, nonsense. But it’s nonsense that plays to his conservative Alberta base, a significant proportion of whom, I suspect, would have preferred Donald Trump being re-elected and not just because of the pipeline but because his “populist” world view aligns nicely with their own.

And just in case there was any danger this dispute might be contained within Canada’s borders, Premier Kenney climbed onto Fox News to attack the Biden administration, something I’m sure appealed to Fox viewers and was noted by the new administration.

My question through all this has been: “what’s Plan B”?. As many of you know, I would have preferred the Keystone XL pipeline be completed, just as I support the twinning of the Trans Canada pipeline but, as I said earlier, it should have been blindingly clear to any reasonably informed person there was a considerable chance it would not be. The Keystone XL pipeline is mostly on American soil and, frankly, it is up to Americans to decide what they want on that soil. We may disagree. We may mount arguments that the decision isn’t wise for any number of reasons but, in the end, it is not our decision. So, what was/is Plan B? Unfortunately with Alberta, I suspect there is no Plan B; no alternative to get its oil to refineries; no real plan to transition away from its reliance on the extraction of fossil fuels; no plan to gain some kind of offset if the expected cancellation took place. It was their way or nothing. That said, it appears that once the twinning of the Trans Mountain Pipeline is completed, there will be ample pipeline to transport Alberta’s oil although that fact hasn’t gotten in the way of a tantrum. And, lest we forget, the twinning of the Trans Mountain Pipeline is only happening because Ottawa bought it with billions of Canadians’ taxpayer dollars.

I spent the better part of half a century negotiating contracts in Canada, many of them with governments, and there are a few lessons from that experience that could be usefully applied in Alberta. Especially in the public sector, when you are negotiating with a government or politician who has made a clear political commitment as a centrepiece of his/her campaign, there is no point in demanding he/she renig on it. It doesn’t matter how unreasonable you think it is; how many attractive alternatives you offer in its place; what kind of political pressure you try to exert. The world of politics has its own rules and expecting a politician to ignore them because you want him/her to is a fool’s game. President Biden made it clear from the beginning of his campaign for the White House that, if elected, he would cancel the pipeline. That may have been little more than a sop to the environmentalists on his left but that doesn’t matter. He committed to it and that is what he was going to do. And, of course, he did it right away. That a veteran politician like Premier Kenney would expect anything else raises real questions about his competence.

When it became clear Joe Biden was going to win the election the Alberta government should have pivoted to a Plan B if one had existed. It would have outlined alternatives that might be extracted from the U.S. or Ottawa in lieu of the pipeline. And it should have been developed with an eye to meeting the political needs of the leaders of Canada and the U.S.

But no, Alberta once again played the “victim” card and set about trying to damage Canada’s relations with the new administration in Washington. This really shouldn’t have surprised us because, if we’ve learned anything about Alberta in the past, it’s that it really isn’t interested in anything other than getting exactly its way and complaining bitterly when it does not.

Another example of this is its response to the roll-out of the COVID 19 vaccines in Canada (although I note Premier Ford in Ontario does a pretty good Jason Kenney imitation on this too). After blundering from one failed response to the pandemic to another, and then watching as Alberta predictably outpaced the rest of the country in infections, Premier Kenney now uses every opportunity to shift the blame to Ottawa by constantly announcing “Alberta is about to run out of vaccines”. No, Alberta is not running out of vaccines any more than British Columbia or Nova Scotia are running out of vaccines. The federal government tells the provincial governments when, and how many, vaccines they will receive, expecting they will then tailor their vaccination programs to align with that information. To say that “Alberta is going to run out of vaccines shortly” skates over the predictable organization and plan for the vaccine rollout. Yes, the interruption in the supply of the Pfizer vaccines because they are retooling their factory has delayed some of the expected deliveries, but that is hardly the fault of the federal government. And most Canadians know that including, I hope, most Albertans. What is really going on here is Premier Kenney attempting to deflect blame for his disastrous mismanagement of the pandemic in Alberta regardless how that might damage the fabric of Confederation.

And then there is Equalization, the program that distributes federal money to some of the provinces to ensure that all Canadians, irrespective of where they live, receive roughly the same level of public services. If you listened to Premier Kenney you would likely believe that once a week or so several large armoured trucks pull up to the Treasury Branch in Edmonton and load sacks of cash that are then trucked to Ottawa and then given, mostly, to Quebec. While there’s no doubt the Equalization system could use some change to better reflect the actual fiscal realities of the provinces, the belief that Alberta is being bled white by it is simply wrong and extremely mischievous. It should also be pointed out that the Conservatives were in power for eleven years that ended only a few years ago and Premier Kenney was a senior member of that government. But in all those years they didn’t fundamentally change Equalization. They did make some changes to it and surely if the unfairness Premier Kenney claims now existed then, that would have been a good time to address it. But they didn’t and he didn’t. And now we have him using the myth of Equalization to gin up his base regardless of the cost to Canada. Sounds like something that happened south of the border not so long ago.

As some of you know, I am a native born and raised Albertan. I moved to the West Coast in my teens but I still feel considerable affection for that province. Starting in the late nineteenth century, both my grandparents and then my parents worked hard to help build Alberta. Many of my ancestors are buried there. So it gives me no pleasure to call Alberta out. But call it out I must.

Alberta had the good fortune to be located atop Canada’s largest deposits of oil, not just the oilsands which, by the way, as a boy in Alberta we did call the “tar sands”, but also vast conventional supplies of oil first discovered in Leduc in the early part of the twentieth century. And it used the wealth from that oil to build a low tax and high service economy and government. It did not set aside reserves for the day the oil would stop flowing. Yet even today, as we in the rest of Canada hear the angry cries of Alberta and its claims to be impoverished, it still has the lowest provincial tax regime in Canada, including its vaunted lack of a sales tax. So don’t be surprised when there is less than complete sympathy when Alberta complains about its fiscal woes. Many of the tools to fix them are within its control.

And then there’s the tone. With the exception of the previous one term NDP government in Edmonton, most Alberta governments have made hay by attacking Ottawa and fostering the sense of victimhood amongst its citizens. Currently, we have a Premier who has taken this tactic to a whole new level, his response to almost any controversial issue entirely predictable and less and less effective in the rest of Canada. During one of his tantrums a year ago I asked that someone give him his teddy bear and take him to his room so the adults could have a conversation. And nothing has changed since then as he has increasingly turned Alberta into the spoiled child of Confederation.

just sayin

G

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At twelve noon today Joe Biden was inaugerated as the 46th President of the United States, ending four years of chaos, corruption and an assault on representative democracy by Donald Trump. Much of the world breathed a collective sigh of relief at that moment as the possibility of resetting global relations so the democracies can speak with a strong collective voice once again came into view. The challenges facing President Biden may well be greater than any facing an incoming President in the nearly two hundred and fifty years since the Republic was founded. I worry that his seventy eight year old shoulders may not be able to bear up under the pressure but anyone who cares about democracy in the world should wish him the best as he tackles these herculean tasks.

Aside from confronting the worst public health crisis in a century with a pandemic killing approximately four thousand Americans a day, he must deal with the economic fallout of that pandemic as America, like most of the developed world, endures a deep recession. That in itself would be more than enough to challenge the most capable leader but it is only the first of the challenges.

As the world witnessed during the summer of unrest following the killing of George Floyd, as well as the assault on the American Capital by a mob of protesters determined to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power, he must also confront the deep and seemingly intractable divisions cutting across all sections of the American population, whether racial, economic, social or geographic.

Perhaps most urgently, he must tackle the very real threat of domestic terrorism so vividly on display at the Capital on January 6th and at the Michigan state capital in Lansing last fall. This is made immeasurably more difficult by the utterly classless behaviour of the defeated Donald Trump as he fuels the fire of mistrust in all American insitutions. Polling showing a majority of Republicans still believing the election was “stolen” and not recognizing the Biden Presidency as legitimate confirm the worst fears of people who care about the survival of the American Republic.

And while all this is going on in America, the world has not stopped turning and will now confront President Biden with international challenges every bit as daunting as those that faced his predecessors in the darkest days of the Cold War. Enabled by the ineptitude of the Donald Trump’s foreign policies, North Korea continues to assemble its arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems capable of threatening not only its immediate neighbours but also North America itself. Iran, freed of the constraints of the Iran Nuclear Agreement, moves inexorably towards a point where it will be able to create nuclear weapons capable of attacking its middle eastern neighbours including Israel. Russia continues to use all the Machiavellian tools of statecraft in the twenty first century to undermine democracy at home and abroad. A resurgent China, with its authoritarian creed and fearful use of technology to control its vast population, moves seemingly inexorably towards displacing America as the predominant world power while, at the same time, using its newfound wealth and military might to bully smaller countries while eschewing the norms of international behaviour. Populist dictators or wannabe dictators crop up around the globe, in some places supplanting democratic regimes, this a direct legacy of Donald Trump’s preference for autocracy over liberal democracies.

Then there’s climate change that threatens the very survival of the human race and that has already resulted in catastrophic events around the world, no more so than in America where out of control wildfires now regularly plague the western coastal states; where hurricanes of unprecedented intensity, frequency and duration now assault the American east coast from Texas to Maine; where massive flooding and droughts plague America’s breadbasket; and where rising sea levels threaten to inundate all or part of some of its most iconic cities. All this made incalculably worse by the ignorance or criminal disregard for science by the Trump administration, setting America and the world back in its efforts to confront this existential threat.

President Biden and his administration will need all the luck, good will and support possible to navigate through this maelstrom of crises.

Far and away the majority of Canadians celebrate the end of the Trump Presidency, one unlike any other we have had to deal with in our over two hundred year relationship. We welcome the return to “normalcy”, to behaviours neighbours, friends and relatives expect of each other and to the opportunity to move forward together. However, we Canadians shouldn’t let our relief at the arrival of the new administration blind us to the fact that the relationship always has had irritants and disagreements and they will not go away. The first example of this appears to be the Keystone XL pipeline and President Biden’s intention to cancel it. Of course that will anger Canadians in the oil patch and we are already hearing demands from Alberta that Ottawa do something, it seems anything, to stop the inevitable. The question I have is “why is anyone surprised?”. President Biden was part of the administration that originally cancelled it and has been clear from the beginning of his campaign for the Presidency that he will cancel it again. My question to those expressing outrage at this news now is what have you been doing in the meantime? What is Plan B?

And you can bet there will be disputes over softwood lumber in the next four years, disputes that we in Canada will consider an affront and entirely without merit. Also, with Senator Chuck Schumer now the Senate Majority Leader, expect new complaints and actions about supply management in Canada’s dairy industry. There will also be battles over “buy America” policies and how they may or may not offend NAFTA or whatever we are calling that treaty now. And many, many more. But the difference this time is we will be dealing with an administration that believes in laws and agreements and that follows accepted norms of international behaviour while also being respectful of other country’s needs. And that is cause for enormous relief.

Canada has had a relatively easy time in the world over the past 150 years. First of all we were part of the British Empire, protected and cossetted by Britain’s military and economic might. And then we rested comfortably next to the world’s sole remaining super power during Pax Americana. For good or bad, the Trump administration has changed that. Like many of our European and Asian allies, we will never quite forget the shock of seeing America turn as it did. And that may be a good thing. Hopefully, we will now take a more self reliant role in the world, including our commitments to defence and strengthening our ties with other democratic nations.

But this does not mean we should turn our back on America. Anything but. America, though flawed and wounded, remains the best possible hope for the triumph of democracy in the world or, at worst, its survival. It is in Canada’s interest to support and help America in any way it can as it grapples with the seemingly overwhelming challenges facing it. We should welcome the opportunity to join a democratic alliance assembled at the call of America to define and chart a place in the world, one that will, amongst other things, clarify and coordinate our response to a resurgent and authoritarian China. We should coordinate our policies and plans to combat climate change. We should enhance our defence capabilities, not just as an ally of America but as an independent first world country in the twenty first century. And where we can we should provide a model of democratic governance and civic responsibility to our friends, family and neighbours to the south.

But first, let’s all just exhale.

just sayin

G

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