Posts Tagged ‘Canada’

Call it the Credit Crunch, Depression 2.0, or whatever. The fact is, due to a set of cascading financial circumstances, businesses all over the world are now dealing with the problem of no money. It’s not that labour and capital are too expensive, there is just no money to pay for it all. Since I belong to a relatively high turn-over industry, I’ve been watching out for the stimulus packages that are being passed to get the world’s industries humming again.

The Canadian government’s plans did not produce much in the way of debate. The Liberals and Conservatives simply agreed to disagree and Jack Layton was left alone with a torch and pitchfork in his hands and a stunned expression on his face. Granted, with the regulatory environment our banks have, there seems to be much less at stake in Canada. In America, the numbers are bigger, the stakes are higher, and the tempers shorter.

I understand the debate as the gross generalization that I am about do describe. We have one side in favor of the stimulus package. They want the 800 billion to go into projects that will pay workers who will in turn spend that money again in the general economy. This way of thinking subscribes to the Keynesian school of economics. The other side is against government spending of any kind, and states that such a package will bankrupt the country and they’ll all be cleaning trillion dollar bills out of the gutter by the year’s end. The people saying this proudly say they hail from the Austrian school of economics.

I find the Austrian Solution for the problem very interesting because it seems to consist of the following:

Stage 1: Let Companies Fail.

Stage 2: ???

Stage 3: Profit.

Of course, that’s not the whole plan, but out on the internet I heard a lot about of the doom-saying about runaway inflation and not much in the way of an alternative plan. It turns out that many followers of the Austrian School of economics are supporters of Republican Congressman Ron Paul, who has come up with what I suppose is the vision for their philosophy. This includes abolishing of many government institutions, including the Federal Reserve. Military bases would be closed all over the world, and the US would pull out of the UN and NATO. Drug regulation would be turned over to the states, who could legalize and criminalize as they pleased.

While that leaves out the interesting question of the power vacuum that would be left behind if the US Military were to take its ball and go home, I can see this strategy’s appeal. It certainly is different, and it challenges many assumptions of value in the US structure of power. However, it completely enshrines the idea that government never does anything right, spends taxpayer’s money on hookers and blow, and kicks puppies for good measure. As a product of a government-run medical system, I have a problem reconciling that with the successes of government institutions around the world. It would be destruction for its own sake if the stimulus packages aren’t passed and unemployment is just allowed to increase. Furthermore, these packages include projects like roads and bridges that the market depends on, but can’t reasonably benefit from in the short run. Radical ideas are attractive because they encourage debate and lead up to things that are truly creative. However, we have to be aware that we sometimes cling to these ideas simply because they allow us to believe that we are right and everyone else is wrong.

It wasn’t the only bastion of intolerance in the city, but it was a good place to draw the line. Everywhere else in BC, Social Justice 12 was just another elective class for high school seniors. Students would learn how to analyze issues of intolerance in their world, as well as some strategies to combat that intolerance. The Abbotsford school board, however, voted to postpone the course and censor certain sections that dealt with homosexual rights. The irony was not lost on the 96 students who had already signed up for the course.

Over 300 people gathered in the rain at the University of the Fraser Valley last Saturday in response to the School Board’s decision. Some were indeed homosexuals, some of them were families, some of them were fellow students, and others were just tired of seeing this kind of thing happen in their town. Religion is kind of a big deal in Abbotsford. There’s practically a church on every corner, and the local editorial page usually has a letter every week advertising the book of Leviticus. There are people with the same approach to faith who make no qualms about injecting themselves into the local political process, hoping to turn this town into an idyllic version of something it was when there were 75,000 less people and it didn’t take up 5 highway exits. Intelligent people see something like this and they get scared. Nothing can wash away scruples like the belief that God is on your side, never mind that the same God has been known to have it out for those who practice religion without scruples, and never mind that the United Church flew a banner at the rally saying “We are all God’s Children”. Indeed, the people who supported the school board’s decision would see a rally like this as a form of persecution, further evidence they need to keep “people like that” out of the public sphere. That’s okay. This rally wasn’t for them, anyway. It’s for those who value tolerance and freedom of speech, yet are afraid to speak out themselves. It’s for the thousands who make their home in this town, yet feel shut out by the rhetoric they hear. This rally stands to prove that it’s not religious fervor that drives this town, it’s passion for our beliefs. Anywhere else in Canada, having passion is only a human right. Around here, it’s your duty as a citizen.

So after realizing that 143 seats does not a mandate make, Stephen Harper has convinced the Governor General to prorogue, or suspend parliament until early January. Personally, I wanted the coalition to oust the Prime Minister. Not because I think they’ll make a better government, but because I wanted someone to pay for the state of Canadian politics.

Dion was well on his way to being that person. The Liberal party lost all of those seats because they could not shake their image of an Ontario-centric Canada. They didn’t even seem to realize that they were talking down to the voters. They should have addressed that and made visible efforts to change.
With a new party leader, the Liberals could perhaps rethink their approach to governing and ultimately come up with a better party.

However, when Harper introduced the economic update, he made it clear that he should be the one to suffer. To cut his opponents’ election funding from the budget and to punish their voters (i.e. public workers) by taking away their right to strike means that Harper isn’t in Ottawa to make the country better, he’s just waging a personal war for seats in the House of Commons. He can yell all he likes about “what Canadians want”, but to pull a stunt like this after an election means that he has no idea what Canadians want. We want a minority conservative government. The reason Canadian politics has been so “boring” is that we as a people have no desire to go on these grand political adventures from the left or the right. A government where no party has a clear mandate has no power to carry out any kind of agenda, and that suits us just fine.

In case you didn’t know it was the 21st century, America has just elected Barack Obama, the first African-American President. Personally, I think this turn of events benefits everyone, even Non-Americans like me. It isn’t going to matter exactly what kind of President he is, the fact that Obama got elected the way he did is enough to rewrite the playbook on political campaigns. A vivid and compelling vision of your city, province or country is a requirement for any run for office. Now that we have the internet, that vision can be as vivid and compelling as you want. You can have as much information out there as you want, and the candidate with the most information wins. This increases voter confidence and energizes your core base. Early statistics place US voter turnout at 70-80 percent. Forget that there is a black US president, that number is an even greater achievement!

However, since Canada’s relationship with the US still resembles that of a humpback whale and a cluster of barnacles, a change in regime should always be a concern. The US Ambassador warned the Fraser institute that Canada will miss Bush if Obama wins the election. I’m sure we will miss Bush just as much as that lovely 30% duty he decided to put on our softwood lumber exports.

Obama’s site says that he will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to change NAFTA in such a way that benefits America’s workers. The campaign promise is vague in a way that’s unsettling. Is he appealing to his democrat base, or is this a vision of things to come? Of course, there are also elements within Canada that believe we got the raw deal on NAFTA. Perhaps if all parties meet on the basis of a shared distrust of the agreement, some common ground can be found and a better NAFTA will result.

No matter what Obama’s actions as president we’ll be, it’s a sure bet that he will think of his own people first. We should ask nothing less of our own parliament. However, we should take solace in the fact that he got to where he is right now by listening to the people around him, rather than just hiding behind his talking points. Where his opponents demanded obedience, he demanded inventiveness and passion. If he invites Canada to join in his plans for the future, he will do it by trying to inspire that same inventiveness and passion. Even if he turns out to be an adversary to Canada’s interests, the only way we’ll do right by Canada is if we respond with a strong vision of Canada and our place in the world. Either way, we come out with the Canada we wish for.

Image provided by http://www.mackaycartoons.net/

After a month of salacious tv ads, accusations from all sides, and 300 million dollars we have achieved…absolutely nothing! Actually I think everyone got what they wanted in this election. The Conservatives have more seats, but still a minority which is what most of Canada wants anyway. I don’t think the Conservatives have themselves to congratulate for their 19 new seats. The Liberal party’s media presence, at least in the west, was next to nothing. I think many people voted for their Conservative MP candidate just so Harper would get out of that goofy sweater vest and stop attempting to smile. However, it’s more likely that the Liberals have done nothing to shake the image that they only care about Ontario and Quebec. Not only that, if you have a place like BC with bad memories of a provincial NDP government, we are left with no centrist alternative to vote for.

Now, I’m not saying that Canada is going through a new phase of Reaganomics, Thatcherism, or any other variation “Big government=Bad, No taxes=Good” philosophy. It’s just nice to know that we can pay for the kind of services we expect from the government without burdening future generations. We love the idea that we can get our medicine, military and employment insurance without running a deficit. The Conservatives bring this ideal to the table, but it doesn’t cover other issues that Canadians are concerned about, like the environment or poverty. The other parties were very passionate about these issues, but offered little information as to how their strategies would work without bankrupting the country.

The Liberals “Green Shift” plan that cost them so much seats could have been a blessing if they had simply published some data on how it would work. It could have created jobs and spurred innovation in many industry sectors, but we wouldn’t have known that because the other parties had control of the plan’s image. The average commercial webserver can send out the equivalent of the library of congress in a matter of hours. It shouldn’t be a stretch publish white papers, datasets, or bill drafts of any kind.. The Liberals chose to respond by repeating themselves rather than provide more detail, like they were guarding the plans for the atom bomb. The rumour mills provided by the NDP and Conservatives were able to build on that uncertainty until both parties had gained seats in the election.

I want to point out a recent article in the Boston Globe about the nature of rumours. Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology studied over 280 internet discussion groups to find out how rumours were born, spread, and killed. They found that rumours are based on a genuine attempt to find the truth. If you want to fight a rumour, first you cannot deny it if it’s true, and if it’s not true, make sure the truth is more vivid than the lie. The Democrats in the US are unwittingly putting these conclusions to the test in the forthcoming presidential election. Some Republican supporters have literally accused Barack Obama of being the Anti-christ. The website fightthesmears.com, along with the shear volume of information being published about the Democratic candidate are strategies dedicated to producing that more vivid truth. Forget the man’s stance on international trade. If he wins in two weeks, this will be a new chapter on how to use media to in politics. The internet has shrunk the costs of communication by exponential factors. No one will be interested in a repeated lie when the truth can be repeated just as easily. Candidates no longer be able to win elections based on hearsay and conjecture, but by communicating the most comprehensive vision of prosperity for all of their voters.

While the American public gets ready to head to the polls this November, the Conservative Government of Canada, not to be outdone by their neighbors to the south will follow suit in October. The election hasn’t even been called yet, and the Conservative party has already jumped the gun in creating these ads championing their glorious leader, Stephen Harper.

The ad is almost as cynical as it is stupid. You can’t even vote for Stephen Harper unless you live in his riding! It’s insulting to voters because it preys upon our supposed civic ignorance. The “testimonials” couldn’t have looked more staged if they all had Jar-Jar Binks pole-dancing in the background. To top it all off, Stephen Harper has a smile that curdles milk and gives nightmares to small children.

To add insult to injury, when this election goes forward this October, I will have to make a decision. It will either be the Liberals who won’t even look at you if you live outside of central Canada, the NDP and the Greens who have never formed a federal government, and the pack of losers responsible for that ad. For once I just want to see a campaign ad that talks about promises and plans for the future. As I said before, the governing parties of Canada seem to want nothing more than a majority in the house, and all designs for the country run secondary. I rather enjoyed having a minority government because no one party’s agenda could really get passed in the House of Commons. If either the Conservatives or the Liberals get a majority this time around, I have no idea what they have planned. I for one, am planning to vote this fall. I think it’s cowardly when people deign to complain about the government yet make no effort to do anything about it. Now if any potential politician wants to know what he or she can do to attract my vote, answer me this: What’s my country going to look like in 5 years?

During our Trip in Nelson I got a chance to see the Nikkei Memorial Internment Center in New Denver. Sara and I went there with her friend Wendy Tagami, whose parents had met near there during the war. Over 22,000 Japanese-Canadians were interned at New Denver. Wendy told us that many of the small houses on the outskirts of town were converted from the cabins that they had to live in. The center consisted of several of the wartime cabins surrounded by a wood fence and a Japanese-style stone garden.

The garden was so beautiful you could almost forget the circumstances by which people came here. At the time, Japan had already taken over Hong Kong and bombed Pearl Harbor. The government felt it couldn’t afford to offer Japan any other gains, so it went so far as to round up its own citizens with any racial connection with that country. Many of the Japanese-Canadians, in the very spirit of “stiff upper lip” calmly signed over all their possessions and reported to Hastings Park in Vancouver, where the PNE is now. From there they were sent off to the BC interior, far from any critical civil or military infrastructure.

Many of the first nights were spent in cast-off army tents. Soon, small cabins the size of most modern kitchens were built with walls so thin that the winter ice served as the only form of insulation. The internees did everything they could to keep life going on as normal as possible. At the memorial center you can see the photos of the dances, the baseball games and the Buddhist church that still stands today. When the war was over, the internees found that most of their possessions had been sold to pay for their internment. There would be no redress until 1988.

It’s easy to deride the decisions of the government at the time as racist and opportunistic. By our standards, they most certainly were. The repatriation and redress of the Japanese-Canadians was just and lawful. However, the policy of current governments apologizing for the mistakes of past governments unnerves me. It is a great way to garner cheap political capital without having to address the mistakes we have made recently and are still making now. We in the present love to inform the past, but how often does the past inform the present?

Have we truly done away with the mindset that caused us to unlawfully sell off millions of dollars of personal property to balance a budget?

Do we still favor solutions that are more convenient than effective?

Instead of trying to distance ourselves from history, we should be trying to find similarities with it. If you think about it, all people in history are just like us. They have a lot of bad past decisions weighing them down, ideals that are impractical, and an uncertain future that’s hurtling at them at the speed of time. At so many points in history you will see people who’ve learned from the mistakes of the past, lived up to the ideals and accepted a future that will outlive them. It shouldn’t be hard for us to be like those people. They often have a lot books written about them.

So the other day Sara and I were watching the encore presentation Olympic Opening ceremonies. As for the ceremonies themselves, they were fantastic. With over 15,000 performers, complex lighting effects and wire-fu to put the best action movies to shame, I doubt any country is going to top this kind of spectacle for long, long time.

The encore presentation on the CBC happened at about 3:00pm, but we were intrigued to find out how NBC handled their coverage. Rumor had it that ratings in the States depended on the victory of their athletes, and events that Americans did poorly in were simply ignored. We wondered how this way of thinking would carry over the coverage of the opening ceremonies and the parade of nations.

At first things were pretty similar to the Canadian coverage, although there was more explanation of the performance in the commentary. It took away some of the fun of interpreting the meaning of the performances, but it was interesting to hear some of the facts about what went into creating them. For example, the ceremonies involved creating images the coordinated movement of thousands of the performers. Amazingly, no markers were used to keep them in place as they created the fantastic designs on the stadium floor. However, as the parade of nations started, things started to get a little weird.

On the CBC, as the parade of nations went by, we heard the stories of the flag bearers, the athletes and how they got to be where they are. Stories such as how one of Japan’s equestrian athletes had been competing since the 1960s, or how the US flagbearer was a refugee from the Sudan.

Later on NBC, the first thing they mentioned about Canada was how we liked to pay people to compete for us and how we never won a medal during the Montreal or Calgary Olympics. Sara and I looked at each other and said: “Did Canada just get dissed?”

It turns out we weren’t alone in being talked about this way. For every nation that came around the track it was how many medals this country won, or how much they didn’t win, or how they’ve yet to win a medal. It wasn’t really offensive I guess, but it really shows off the priorities of the American coverage.

If the Olympics are a grand international society party, I guess the television coverage of these shows would be the impolite whispers spoken in hushed tones around the punch bowl. If only we could translate and consolidate all of the myriad interpretations of this event. We’d get some serious gossip and if we’re lucky spark a diplomatic incident.

On a related note, I hope Tokyo gets the bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. Just think of the events that can be inspired by Japanese game shows. Who would take the gold in an Olympic level competition of “Squishy-Squishy”?