A Second Look at the Recent Canadian Election.

 

Trans Mountain Pipeline Protest

Five parties won seats in the election. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives were able to get a majority of the seats. Many people attributed this to strategic voting.  But a second look reveals the deeper issue. The  five parties who won seats share of similar view on the overall nature of  the Canadian political economy.

First none of the  five parties see anything wrong with the fact that the general direction of the Canadian economy is determined by large corporations and their financial associates. None of the five parties  find anything wrong with the free-trade agreements even though they have virtually destroyed the automobile industry in Canada. The free-trade agreements all see Canada naturally as a primary producing and exporting country and our  fate is to import manufactured goods.

From time to time one of the parties will note that the inequality of wealth and income in Canada is getting more and more skewed.  But none of them are willing to propose that we go back to the progressive income tax, wealth taxes  and corporate taxes that we used to have during the period of the Keynesian  political economy. None of them are even willing to propose that we shut down the off shore tax havens used by wealthy individuals and corporations to avoid paying taxes in Canada. Yet a recent poll done for the Toronto Star found that 94% of Canadians want these practices made illegal in Canada.

Most of the parties see the housing crisis as the inability of young people to buy a house without major financial support from their parents. Yet everywhere you look there are people sleeping in the rough and communities across Canada are having a hard time dealing with the impromptu tent cities that are popping up everywhere. The fact of the matter is that probably the bottom one third of Canadians by income can not find appropriate housing. The only way for the government to solve this problem  ls to build significant amounts of new rental housing for the poor and those with low income. That means going back to the basic democratic ideal that housing is a basic human right.

Then there is the fact that none of the parties would stand up in opposition to anything that the US government says we should do.  Whenever Washington calls on us to bomb somebody we always say yes..Not even the Green party will say no.

Is there a climate crisis The young woman from Sweden says to read the science . But it seems in Canada our political leaders do not believe the science. Canada is number one in per capita greenhouse gas emissions but the small carbon tax being implemented now by Canadian governments is a sick joke. I would have thought that Canadians cared more for their children and grandchildren than they show. None of the political parties are willing to endorse the Green new deal for Canada not even the Green party .

The  original New Deal in the United  States ended the  depression and created hundreds of thousands of very good jobs. Similar programs now around green energy and conservation might even allow the indigenous population of Canada to break away from its historic position of marginalization and poverty. 

There is much talk of reconciliation in Canada. But this has to start with Canada and our political parties recognizing the United Nations declaration on indigenous rights and that begins with the right sovereignty over traditional lands which were occupied by the indigenous populations for thousands of years before European settlers arrived . But none of the parties  are willing to do that.  This would give indigenous peoples and nations the right to determine their own economic development.

Canada’s five parties have basically agreed with the neoliberal revolution that began with the election of Margaret Thatcher’s government in Britain in 1979 and then Ronald Reagan’s government in the United States in 1980.   In Canada Brian Mulroney’s government was elected in 1984. 

The new political economy was not limited to formally right-wing parties. It was not long before it spread to the social democratic parties as well, beginning with Sweden in 1982, Australia in 1983, and New Zealand in 1984. The new policies included major cuts to all  progressive taxes, cuts to social programs, deregulation, and privatization of state owned assets. This came with a broad attack on organized labour. The push for “free trade”  was to come a little later.  

There was no political party in the recent Canadian election to oppose this broad agenda.

No Is Not Enough

Naomi Klein’s new book, No Is Not Enough is on the best sellers lists. I had read and admired her two previous books: The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything. As she points out, this is a very different book. It is a popular tract on how we need to work together to oppose and replace Donald Trump as the President of the United States. The answer is not found in one-day marches on single issues but in bringing people together in an organized way to build an alternative movement.




If you regularly read the paper, follow the news on television or go online you will be familiar with the Trump phenomenon. In Canada it has been reported that most people now watch CNN and not the CBC or CTV. 

    It is only when you get to th last 40 pages of the book that Canada enters the picture: a look at the formation of the Leap Manifesto as one example of an effort to bring people together in a new progressive political formation. But there is no real examination of the experience of the Leap Manifesto. For example, none of the four candidates for the leadership of the New Democratic Party, a very moderate social democratic party, were willing to back the Manifesto. There is no evidence that any serious organization is being done around the manifesto.

Naomi Klein has deep ties to the USA. While born in Montreal, her parents are both American and she has dual citizenship. She writes for many publications but is a Contributing Editor to The Nation magazine. In the 2016 US presidential campaign both The Nation and Klein supported the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.    

The financial crisis of 2009 and the Centre-Left    

Where is the analysis of the Democrat Party? Even before entering the White House, Barrack Obama revealed his true colours. He took time off from the presidential campaign in October to go to Washington to pressure Democrats in Congress to support President Bush’s TARP program for bailing out the banks. Without majority support in Congress from the Democrats TARP would not have passed . The majority of the Republicans voted to let the market do its job, destroy the weak banks and let the strong ones survive. “Creative destruction” as Schumpeter called it.

Klein comments “What if the Democrats had used the leverage they had in 2009 and 2010 to make serious, substantive restructuring demands of the banks and the auto giants in exchange for continuing to bail them out.” Why would the Democrats do that? They are known as “the party of Wall Street” for good reason.

This is one of the frustrations with this book. We all saw on TV the massive support that came to Bernie Sanders during his left wing presidential campaign. When it became clear that the establishment of the Democratic Party was not going to let him get the nomination, Jill Stein offered to step down and let Sanders take her role as the presidential candidate of the Green Party. This would permit his “political revolution” to continue and confront the “Duopoly” of the American political-economic Establishment. Instead, Sanders declined the offer and  told his supporters to join the Democratic Party and to support Hillary Clinton. Klein avoids any comment on this crucial political shift. The radical democratic movement behind Sanders vanished.

What about American militarism?

There is another key issue which the progressive democratic left must confront: the militarism and imperialism of the Anglo-American alliance. Bernie Sanders was rightly criticized for almost completely ignoring this in his campaign. Some will remember that in his presidential campaign Trump argued that NATO was obsolete and should be shut down and that if he were elected President he would put an end to the politics of regime change. He would “drain the swamp” in Washington.

Public opinion polls in the USA showed that the majority of Americans were opposed to more wars. President Obama had bombed seven Muslim countries. Klein has dodged this key issue. In contrast, Martin Luther King insisted that racism and poverty in the USA were tied to militarism and imperialism and the US had to end the war in Vietnam. Soon after he was assassinated. 

Social Democracy and the rise of right wing nationalism
In the fall of this year there were two important elections in Europe. In September 2017 there was a national election in Germany. Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats lost 65 seats in the legislature and saw their popular vote total fell by 8. Percentage points. The Social Democrats (SPD) lost 40 seats and saw their share of the vote fall to 20%, the lowest total since the end of WWII. The new right wing Alternative for Germany (AFD) won 94 seats and 12.6% of the vote.

In the general election in Austria in October the Social Democrats (SPO) won 27% of the vote and 52 seats in the legislature. But the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), a right wing nationalist party, won  26% of the votes and 51 seats in the legislature. In both these countries the social democratic parties had supported a neoliberal austerity program that had a dramatic negative impact on their trade union partners. To what extent is the rise of the new nationalist right wing parties due to the very significant move to the right by the social democratic parties? Klein does not get in to this, perhaps because the book is directed to a US audience.

Canada’s example of building a political alliance

There is one recent example of working together to build a new political alliance. In the late 1980s in both Canada and the USA popular organizations, led by the trade union movements, were formed –  broad political alliances to oppose the free trade agreements. In Canada there also was the formation of provincial Coalitions for Social Justice. Many popular groups joined in these alliances. Members of these groups individually chose to focus their political work in these coalitions. A similar organization was formed in Mexico in the 1990s.

One problem with these coalitions was that they were formed to try to defeat a precise political agenda put forth by big business. There was no attempt to formulate a positive alternative vision. Many saw the  coalitions as an arm of the social democratic parties. The Sanders movement demonstrated that this is now possible. But it would not work in the Democratic Party or in a Tony Blair-Bill Clinton neoliberal formation called The New Democrats. Unfortunately Klein chose not to assess this example.

No Is Not Enough: Resisting the New Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. By Naomi Klein. Toronto: Knopf Canada , 2017












                                

Origins of the Free Trade Agreements

The Trudeau government is currently re-negotiating NAFTA with the governments of the USA and Mexico. The results we are told will be Win!  Win! Win!

How can Canada lose? The standard line from big business, the mass media and mainstream academics is that everyone benefits from free trade.  Consumers profit from lower prices for all goods and services. So while we wait to see how the proposed new NAFTA negotiations will go,  it might useful to remember the major political battle that transpired as the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) and NAFTA were created. Who pushed for these agreements? What was the opposition in all three countries?

The Push from the United States 

                                                                          

Free Trade Is For Capital Not Labour

At the beginning, a free trade agreement between the United States and Canada was proposed by Ronald Reagan in his 1980 Presidential campaign. In 1983 Paul Robinson, the U..S. ambassador to Canada, began talks with Sam Hughes, President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The US insisted that the official request for negotiations had to come from Canada in order to try to contain nationalist political opposition.

The US administration had goals: the elimination of the Foreign Investment Review Agency,  the National Energy Program and the Canada-US Auto Pact.  They wanted the agreement to include services, agriculture and culture. All federal and provincial government subsidies should be eliminated and “national treatment” guaranteed for American investments. Municipal and provincial governments were not to give preference to local, Canadian companies. The big surprise was that the final draft of CUSFTA also included a continental energy agreement that gave US investors a preferred status and guaranteed access.

The US government initiative had strong support among the American corporate sector. In 1987 over 400 large corporations created the American Coalition for Trade Expansion with Canada. They spent heavily on advertisements and began a major lobbying campaign in Washington.

Canadian Business Support for the Agreement

In Canada the Chamber of Commerce led the campaign. They were joined by the powerful Business Council on National Issues, the Canadian Manufacturers Association, the Canadian Bankers Association, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and many other business organizations. They achieved support from the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects, headed by Donald Macdonald. After Brian Mulroney and the Conservatives were elected in 1984, the Canadian government pushed hard for a bilateral free trade agreement.

Strong Opposition in Canada                                                                               

 
There was strong opposition to the agreement in Canada. It was led by the Action Canada Network, anchored by the Canadian Labour Congress and the Quebec trade union federations. The coalition included teachers organizations, most farm organizations, the major women’s organizations, the Assembly of First Nations, the Canadian Environmental Network, and the Canadian Conference of the Arts. Public opinion polls revealed majority opposition to any agreement.

The Canadian business alliance played a key propaganda role in the federal election in the fall of 1988, known as the “free trade election” because of the strong opposition taken by John Turner, the leader of the Liberal Party. The New Democratic Party also opposed the agreement, but its leader, Ed Broadbent, played down the issue in his campaign.

The Conservatives won a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. But the Liberals and the NDP together took 56 percent of the popular vote. This explains why big business in Canada has been so committed to keeping the British first-past-the-post electoral system. Ronald Reagan declared CUSFTA “the new economic constitution for North America.”

Negotiating NAFTA                                                                                           

Historically, Mexican business organizations had not opposed the Keynsian “populist” agenda. They had clearly benefited from one policy in particular: when a foreign-owned corporation sought permission to build a plant in Mexico, they were required by law to find a Mexican partner and give them 51% of the voting stock. This had resulted in strong business organizations. As they said in Mexico, “300 businessmen run the country.”

This was quite a contrast to Canada which put up tariffs under the National Policy to try to force American corporations to manufacture in Canada. The result was the “miniature replica” problem: high foreign ownership, very inefficient Canadian branch plants, and a relatively weak capitalist class.

This changed in Mexico with a new political leadership that had largely been trained at elite American universities. They absorbed the neoliberal agenda advanced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan: free trade, the free market, government deregulation, the privatization of profitable state-owned enterprises, including public utilities, and a broad attack on labour unions and the welfare state.

While the media emphasized the benefits to consumers of the removal of tariffs, in general they were already below the 10% level. Big business, sitting on excess capital, wanted the right to invest anywhere, sell their products and services anywhere, and repatriate their profits without government interference. Corporate taxes would be reduced and tax havens expanded.

The Alternative Agenda

When negotiations for NAFTA began, the Canadian and American anti-free trade coalitions were still in place. In Mexico, a similar coalition was formed, the Mexican Network on Free Trade (RMALC). Their goal, supported by their American and Canadian counterparts, was to raise Mexican wages and standards of work up to the highest levels in the northern states. This included human rights protections as found in the European Union, rules of the International Labour Organization on labour rights, and health and safety rules. The coalitions also argued that corporations should not be permitted to move to Mexico to avoid environmental regulations.
Of course, when the final draft of NAFTA was released none of these objectives were included. Corporations were moving to Mexico to maximized profits by specifically taking advantage of much lower wages, lower taxes and weaker regulations.

For many years public opinion polls in Mexico have shown majority opposition to NAFTA. Economic growth and job creation was much higher during the `populist” period, before the new shift to the politics of neoliberalism and structural adjustment.Today that opposition has been enhanced by the politics of Donald Trump. This is reflected in the rise of support for Manuel Lopez Obrador in recent public opinion polls. 

                                                             
John W. Warnock is retired from teaching political economy and sociology at the University of Regina. He is author of Free Trade and the New Right Agenda (1988) and The Other Mexico: The North American Alliance Completed (1995).               

On Re-negotiating NAFTA

Most people who are following the Trump phenomenon know that big business is worried that the new Republican President will carry through on his pledges to pull the USA out of the various “free trade” agreements and put forth alternatives which will “bring the good jobs back to America.” The Globe and Mail reflects this concern through its editorials and its stable of men committed to the neoliberal program, enhanced in recent years by opinion pieces contributed by propagandists from the many right wing “Think Tanks” based at Canada’s universities.

A recent piece by Ian McGugan is typical. “...trade is a mutual exchange in which countries buy from one another and invest in one another...this back-and-forth usually works to both parties’ benefit because it allows each country to specialize in what it does most profitably.” Oh?

Who does the trading and why.

Historically, trade began as a democratic process in horticultural societies. People came together to exchange their surplus goods for goods that were in short supply. I was fortunate to observe one of these markets in rural Chiapas one day while travelling in Mexico. Once a week there was a community market where individuals (usually women) came, spread a blanket on the ground and laid out their agricultural products and crafts. They bargained with buyers on a price, usually based on labour time. The products had a use value for buyers.

I also saw this in a public market in San Cristobal which I visited with local friends. On several tables a woman from an indigenous community had stacked the clothes that she had created. The needlework was amazing. Her daughter, around 10 years old, was explaining how a price was set for the various items. It was based on the labour time needed by her mother to create the individual item. The labour theory of value.

The mercantile system.

This democratic trade was replaced in Europe during the feudal era by professional merchants who had a different value system: maximizing profit by buying cheap and selling dear. Slowly this form of trade came to challenge the feudal system.

Merchant trade was radically changed by the creation of the territorial states with absolute monarchs and a class system founded on a landed aristocracy. Trade was controlled by the ruling classes and state-created monopoly corporations like the Hudson Bay Company. State military power became an important factor in this new system of trade. Historians hold that the mercantile system lasted from around 1500 to 1750.

A key factor was the development of European imperialism and colonialism. “Trade” under this structure was more like military pillage. Slavery was introduced on a large scale. Europeans began moving to areas of the world where the indigenous peoples had been forcibly removed from their land and resources.

The new liberal political economy. 

A new class with wealth was developing under mercantilism, a capitalist class which demanded the end to the old order and the freedom to invest and trade anywhere in the world. John Locke is often cited as the founder of liberalism. But what he did was put together a unified political position based on demands by the new capitalist class.

Locke was primarily concerned with justifying the seizure of land and resources from indigenous communities. He supported slavery, was a partner in the New Royal African Company, which was engaged in the slave trade, and invested in sugar plantations in Barbados, which depended on slavery for productive labour.

The early liberals like Locke argued that the only reason for government to exist was to defend private property rights. Citizenship and any role in parliament should be limited to men who owned private productive property. 

When the new ruling class of capitalists took power, they fiercely supported colonialism and imperialism through the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Trade under such a system could not be anything but unequal.

The orthodox view of trade today continues to follow the model set forth by David Ricardo in his Principles of Political Economy (1817). Free trade benefits all. Every country has a relative comparative advantage. Great Britain should emphasize manufacturing. Portugal should give up on manufacturing and concentrate on making wine. How did that turn out? 

Karl Marx once asked: Cuba today is a sugar plantation. When did the Cubans decide that this was their international comparative advantage? In fact, the Cuban indigenous populations were all killed or fled to other areas around the Caribbean. They were replaced by Spanish immigrants and African slaves.

The real world of trade is quite different from that described in the current economics text books.  Governments establish policies to try to regulate trade. But it is the large corporations and the major financial interests who direct the policies and who do the trade in goods, services and control the capital flows. Different social and economic classes have different political views on trade and trade policy. This all became very evident in the debate surrounding the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

John W. Warnock is retired from teaching political economy and sociology at the University of Regina. He is author of Free Trade and the New Right Agenda (1988) and The Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed (1995).

Keynes is Back!

On Monday I tuned in to the CBC to listen to the first public speech by Bill Morneau, the new Minister of Finance in Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. The speech was given to the Toronto Region Board of Trade for the benefit of the Bay Street crowd. I have to admit, that I was favourably impressed.

Bill Morneau and Justin Trudeau

Morneau is a very successful Toronto businessman with a very good academic background in economics. Of all Trudeau’s cabinet appointments, this was the one which concerned me the most. Morneau had also been chairman of the C. D. Howe Institute, a right wing pro-business “think tank” that is firmly committed to the agenda of free trade and the free market economy.

Morneau remarked that at his first meeting with a group of government economists he sat alone across a long table facing a dozen of them. When he stated that the new Liberal government would not put a high priority on balancing the budget, he reported that smiles broke out among those across the table. They knew full well that the Canadian economy is going through a very rough period, and with the collapse of the markets for oil and minerals, the immediate future was not all that great. As a result, the weakened economy was providing all governments with less revenues.

The Bay Street crowd heard Morneau report that there will be a string of budget deficits, and they were starting with a $3 billion deficit left by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. But the goals of the new government started with restoring economic growth. The Liberals would proceed with their promise of major government spending on infrastructure, a pledge of $125 billion over a decade. The tax cut for the middle class would also boost spending and help create jobs.

Despite their campaign promise, an annual federal government deficit could possibly exceed $10 billion. The plan was to revive the economy so that the debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio would be reduced. The hope was to be able to balance the federal government’s budget by 2019, the year of the next election.

There would be no structural adjustment policies. Instead, the economic policies identified with John Maynard Keynes would drive the agenda. The Liberals could see the complete failure of the alternative, the structural adjustment programs pursued by European governments.

To top it off, Morneau’s presentation was outstanding. He was very clear in both English and French. He gave a well organized speech without consulting notes or reading a text. He looked straight at the audience and spoke with conviction.

What happened to the New Democrats?

Thomas Mulcair and the NDP

In contrast, there is the disaster of Thomas Mulcair and the New Democratic Party. What happened? At the beginning of the 2015 election campaign, the polls showed support for the NDP was slightly ahead of the other two parties. An NDP-led government seemed possible.

In his first speech to the Bay Street crowd, given at the Economic Club of Canada on June 16, 2015, Mulcair made it very clear that his social democratic party stands strongly for balanced budgets. This was the tradition of NDP provincial governments in Canada, he argued. Special praise was given to the Saskatchewan NDP  government of Roy Romanow, who came to office in 1991, balanced the budget and paid down the provincial debt. No mention was made of the fact that this was done by slashing health and social programs and raising consumption taxes which fell heaviest on those with low incomes.

Mulcair noted that there was one exception to this tradition: the Ontario NDP government headed by Bob Rae, who, he noted, had turned out to be a Liberal. Bob Rae’s NDP government confronted an economic recession in 1990-1 by cutting taxes on low income earners, raising taxes on those with higher incomes, and expanding a range of social programs designed to assist the weaker members of society. His government and its policies were praised by a long list of Keynesian economists.

Then came the shock from Quebec. In June 2015, in the middle of the election campaign, journalists in Quebec posted a video clip from the Quebec legislature, a speech Thomas Mulcair made in 2001, when he was a member of the provincial Liberal government. Mulcair praised the free market policies of Margaret Thatcher, criticized the Labour governments in Great Britain for “putting their nose in everything” while declaring that “government interventionism is a failure.” He declared: “let the free market thrive and get off the backs of businessmen and women.”  He was also very critical of the trade union federations in Quebec for their politics of the left, backing the Parti Quebecois. Mulcair brushed this off. He refused to say he had been wrong. 

Looking to the Saskatchewan NDP
Mulcair’s NDP was determined on this issue. In August 2015 he chose Andrew Thomson, former NDP finance minister in Saskatchewan, to be a star candidate in the Ontario riding of Eglington-Lawrence. Thomson had been elected to the Saskatchewan legislature in 1995 while Roy Romanow was premier. When Lorne Calvert became NDP premier Thomson joined the cabinet, serving as finance minister in 2006 and 2007.

Thomson is best known for his determination to reduce the province’s royalties on the oil and gas industry. He also cut corporate taxes and corporate capital gains. He took substantial amounts from the Financial Stabilization Fund – a pool of revenues held in the bank by the government, termed “a rainy day fund” – in order to balance the provincial budget. Thomson was used by Mulcair to stress the NDP’s commitment to their primary election promise, to run four straight balanced budgets. They would do what Stephen Harper’s government could not.

Recent public opinion polls show that Canadian support for the Trudeau Liberals stands at 52%. Support for the NDP stands at just 14%. It appears that Mulcair is in full control of the party, as he has announced that he expects to lead the NDP in the next federal election. So far there is no indication that there is any opposition to Mulcair within the federal NDP caucus or party.

It seems to me that the Canadian electorate made the right choice in the recent federal election. The Harper gang is gone, and the large majority of Canadians are happy with that. But it also appears that they made the right decision when they shifted their support from Thomas Mulcair to Justin Trudeau. With the world experiencing economic stagnation, Keynes is the correct road to take, not structural adjustment.

I Am Not Dead Yet

Our farm at Bulyea.

What happened? I have not posted on my blog since last June. That would seem to suggest that I am no longer around. But I am still here. However, I have been negligent in letting my readers know what is happening. I do have some excuses, but they may seem a bit lame.

The Farm
At the farm this summer, I once again had to face the problem of flooding and my inability to win the war with the beavers. We would take the major dam down, and they would just build it up overnight. There were too many beavers around, and the eradication process was unsuccessful. We made some tries.

The beavers have built a huge lodge in the lake which has formed in our back yard. Beaver experts (trappers) who have seen it say it is the largest they have ever seen. You cannot use dynamite any more since the events of September 2001. Then there once was the old tried and true farmer explosives made from ammonia nitrate and diesel fuel. Again, it is not a good idea to use this method for it will likely bring down the forces of law and order on your head.

So we went to the local gun shop and bought the latest explosives for destroying beaver dams and lodges. It is a chemical mix which comes in a relatively small plastic jar. The ingredients are carefully mixed simply by rotating the jar which is then placed on the dam or lodge. At a distance of more than 100 yards you shoot the jar with a 22 rifle. I checked it out on the Internet, and videos show that it is supposed to work. The experts do get impressive results.

Not having a good 22 rifle, I asked a farmer I know who does a lot of hunting to help me out. He obliged. We launched his fishing boat in our back yard and paddled out to the beaver lodge. The new lake at this point is about six feet deep. We set the plastic jar with the explosives, paddled back to shore, and my friend got out his 22 rifle with long rifle shells and a scope. A few shots that he took hit the jar, it jumped up, but did not explode.

So we went back in the boat to see what happened. One shell went right through the jar and out the back, but no explosion. We agreed that it probably did not go off because there was not enough force behind the shell. My friend went home and got his deer rifle and we tried that with a new jar of supposedly explosive materials. However, his scope was off and at that distance he failed to hit the jar after about 10 rounds. So we put off further action until next spring.

In addition
In any case, day to day coping with the flooding, and work finishing off the bathroom in the renovated residence,  took a great deal of my time over the summer and fall. I have also been doing research on my new project, the impact of climate change on agriculture and food. I have done quite a lot research and written drafts, but to date I have not published any of it.

I returned at the end of October to Peterborough, Ontario where I will be spending the winter; I will return to Saskatchewan and the farm in early April 2016. Right now I am reconstructing my web page, and the new program I am using is much more complicated that the one I originally used, and it is taking me a lot longer to learn how to do the work. But I will be done soon, and in early January I will once again be posting on my blog. If you are on Facebook, you will see that I am still commenting on the world of war and political economy.

The big change                                                                                             

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool No. 1, Bulyea

Stephen Harper and his gang of mean spirited conservatives are gone. He told an American right wing group one time that “you will not recognize Canada when I am finished.”  He tried his best to move Canada into the right wing conservative camp. But Canadians are basically middle of the road liberals who are not really interested in making the rich richer and getting tough with the poor. While the large majority of Canadians come from a Christian background, most want to have a generally secular society. The mainstream is not interested in fundamentalist religions and their politics. It seems to me that the majority of Canadians are satisfied to just follow along with the Americans as long as the Democrats are in office.

I am one of the solid majority of Canadians who are quite happy that Stephen Harper and his gang are gone and has been replaced with a modern liberal. Right now I am enjoying the Justin Trudeau honeymoon. I am actually quite pleased with the people he has put in the cabinet, especially the women. They are such a contrast and improvement over what we just experienced. .It is going to be a pleasant Christmas this year. The new Trudeau seems to be ready to lead and has indicated that his government is going to do what it pledged in the election campaign. His government will find the money to provide adequate support for the 25,000 political refugees from Syria. As he has said, “Canada is back!”

This is all bad news for the New Democratic Party which is stuck with Thomas Mulcair as leader. He is too much of a neoliberal. They are now down to 14% in the polls. The only way they are going to recover is to get rid of Mulcair and move back to being a traditional democratic socialist party. It wouldn’t hurt if they shifted to being an anti-war party.

In Saskatchewan there will be a provincial election in April 2016. The NDP has a very weak,  neoliberal leader, who follows the precedent set by Roy Romanow, Lorne Calvert and Dwaine Lingenfelter. All across the advanced capitalist world, electors are turning against the social democrats for moving to the right to embrace the neoliberal agenda, including structural adjustment policies. Until the Saskatchewan NDP faces up to this reality, they will be a weak opposition. They are down to 30% in the polls and are currently looking at another major defeat in April.   

What is Really Going on in Ukraine?

On June 10, 2015 the Pew Research Center, based in Washington, D.C., released the results of a major public opinion poll it had undertaken on the conflict between the US/NATO west and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. The poll results, ignored by the mass media in the NATO countries, presents a picture that is quite different from that of our mass media and our political leaders.

Ukraine right demonstrates

Canadians might not be surprised to learn that public support by Russians for President Vladimir Putin has soared to 88% and the view of Russians toward NATO and the west has plummeted. Support for Putin’s policies towards Ukraine stands at 83%.

In contrast, support for the US/NATO policy on Ukraine has been falling among the general public in the six European NATO countries surveyed. The strongest opposition to the US/NATO policy is in Germany. For example, in the NATO countries surveyed only 41% supported sending military aid to Ukraine, with only 19% support in Germany.

Even more surprising, only in Canada and the USA did a majority of those surveyed support sending military forces to defend a NATO member if engaged in a military conflict with Russia. The lowest support for such action was in Germany at 38%.

The survey taken in Ukraine excluded Crimea, now once again a part of Russia, as well as the Eastern Oblasts of Luhans’k amd Donets’k, the centre of military conflict. Overall, the survey revealed increased hostility to Russia and a greater belief that the future of Ukraine is with the European Union and NATO.

However, the survey revealed growing majority opposition to the government in Kiev, which has had strong support from the governments of the United States, Canada and NATO. The economy is in collapse. Only 3% of those surveyed said the economy was “good” while 66% said that it was “very bad.” Over the past year support for the NATO-backed government has declined substantially. The Pew poll found support for the Kiev regime at only 32% with 59% having a negative opinion.

Only 33% of those surveyed approved of the performance of President Petro Poroshenko while 43% disapproved. The poll found that 60% disapproved of the performance of the Prime Minister, Arseney Yatsenyuk. 

On  President Poroshenko’s major government policies

* 57% disapproved of the military conflict in the east,
* 57% disapproved of the policies towards Russia,
* 61% disapproved of the policies towards corruption in government, and
* 62% disapproved of the general economic policies.

For Canadians the most important question was how to solve the situation with the rebels in the Eastern Oblasts. The Petroshenko government has refused to negotiate with the rebel governments. They have insisted on a military solution. NATO claims that it supports the Minsk agreement for a negotiated solution, but member states are beefing up military support to the Kiev regime. Both the President and the Prime Minister have made very disparaging comments about the people living in the Eastern oblasts who speak Russian as their everyday language. At the same time,  Putin has made it very clear that Russia will not allow the Kiev regime to crush the rebels, and this position has very strong popular support among the Russian public. If the Kiev regime were able to more successfully pursue the civil war, Russian military intervention would be expected.

It is here that the Canadian government and the opposition political parties are out of step with public opinion in Ukraine. The Pew poll found that 47% in Ukraine support a negotiated settlement and only 23% support the Kiev government’s military solution. A much better policy would be for the Canadian government to support a negotiated solution to the conflict and the proposals by the Eastern rebel governments for modifications in the existing Ukraine constitution.

NOTE: This first appeared as a guest comment in the Leader Post.

Free Trade Benefits Canada, eh?

General Motors in Oshawa

Every time I pass through Oshawa, Ontario I think of the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the USA. Oshawa is the home of General Motors of Canada, the largest producer of motor vehicles in Canada. Not that long ago Canada was the fourth largest producer of cars and trucks in the world.

During the government of John Diefenbaker, the Canada-US Auto Pact was signed. For every car that the US Big Three sold in Canada, they had to build one car here. That agreement preserved the manufacturing industry in Canada. It was replaced by the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement of 1988. Canadians, we were told, should have the option of buying any car wherever it is built, without any government interference.  With the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, Mexico was added. The Big Three began shifting production south to take advantage of Mexico’s low wage economy.

The goal of the “free trade” agreements was never to free trade. Trade was already free for most products with only a few having low tariffs. Quotas were virtually unknown. As the organizations of big business all stressed, what they really wanted was freedom for capital. Freedom of business organizations to invest in any country without government interference and the freedom to repatriate their profits as they so wished.  

The auto industry today
Michael, a friend of Susan’s, has worked on the assembly line at GM in Oshawa for 25 years. Working conditions have steadily gotten worse. Now they have two 10 minute breaks per shift and only 20 minutes off for lunch. New workers start at $20 per hour, a reduction from previous contracts. Pension contributions from the company have been cut. Now it is nearly impossible for a new worker to buy a house; down the road they may be able to save enough for a down payment on a one-bedroom condo for $350 grand in one of the new 50 storey high buildings.

GM will not say what its plans are. The production of its Camaro automobile is presently being shifted to Lansing, Michigan which will result in the loss of around 1,000 jobs. It is also rumoured that GM plans to shut down its CAMI assembly plant located at Ingersol, Ontario. Within the industry, it is widely believed that GM plans to shut down the Oshawa operations in 2019. Michael says the workers in Oshawa are expecting this.

All the automobile companies now demand  handouts from federal, provincial, state and local governments before opening new plants. They get additional government grants and loans by threatening to close existing operations. We know that only too well in Canada.  Between 2010 and 2013 automobile corporations have invested $29 billion in the USA, $20 billion in Mexico, and only $2 billion in Canada. We are, as one editor of Maclean’s Magazine once pointed out, “Puerto Rico North.”

Free trade and the NDP
I lived in the Toronto area in 1971. Oshawa was a thriving city. The auto workers’ union was strong. Wages and benefits were very good. The city was represented in Parliament by Ed Broadbent, MP for the New Democratic Party.  In 1988 he was leader of the New Democratic Party. In the famous “Free Trade Election” that year Broadbent and the NDP were virtually silent on the proposed FTA. The opposition to the agreement was led by John Turner, leader of the Liberal Party.

I remember well that election. The trade unions linked to the NDP set up an election headquarters where the unions called their members, urging them to support the NDP. They reported that their members overwhelmingly stated that the proposed Canada-US free trade agreement was the number one issue, and that they were opposed to it. But Broadbent and the leadership of the NDP ignored this issue and instead stressed environmental issues.

The NDP has never opposed free trade agreements. At best, like Thomas Mulcair, they ask for some modifications. But free trade agreements are bad news for working people, and they know it.

These days we take the Go Train to Toronto. A Go Train bus (a city bus no less) takes us from Peterborough to Oshawa, where we switch to the commuter train that goes to Toronto. We travel from Oshawa (150,000) through Whitby (130,000) and Ajax (110,000). When I lived here before they were independent cities. They are now suburbs of Toronto, part of the six million people crammed into this area of southern Ontario. Endless massive high rise condos. Nothing that could be described as a community. Bedrooms for Toronto workers. This alienating mess, tied together by the 12-lane 401 highway, travelled by over 500,000 vehicles every day, is the result of capitalist planning. It is hard to believe that we live in one of the largest countries in the world with endless open space.

Capitalism and Climate Change

On Sunday I entered Beit Zatoun community centre on Markham Street in Toronto to sit in on a discussion of Naomi Klein’s new book:  This Changes Everything; Capitalism vs. the Climate. Around 300 people were stuffed into this nice older building, mostly long time left wing political activists.

A three-person panel kicked off the meeting. Umair Muhnammad argued that this was an important book, for Naomi Klein, now an internationally known journalist, had legitimized the role of socialists in this debate on the disaster of global warming and climate change. Klein had made it clear to a wider audience that capitalism must have constant growth and the production of profit to survive. At present, those dominating the system were deeply committed to the continuation of the fossil fuel economy. Climate change could not be brought under control without confronting capitalism.

Beit Zatoun Toronto

Building alliances for change
Ellie Perkins stressed that a popular movement for serious change had to be tied to all the broad issues concerning social justice. She pointed to the leadership provided by the Aboriginal and women’s movements. There had to be a clear link with the anti-war movement. Broad based alliances were necessary.

Many of the criticisms I had when reading Klein’s book were emphasized by Sam Gindin. Klein’s book had left out the reality of the enormous power of the political state, which was closely aligned to the capitalist class. There was no discussion of the modern version of capitalist imperialism, the U.S. government leading NATO’s world wide crusade in opposition to all popular efforts for change.

Gindin stressed that Klein’s book had opened the door for us. It was time to boldly put forth the egalitarian and democratic alternative to capitalism in all our discussions. Capitalism has not served the interests of the people we represent. He noted, as one example, that under the free trade agreements the number of employees at General Motors had declined from 800,000 to 100,000.

Much of the discussion from the audience focused on how to try to build coalitions. I recognized a number of people in the crowd from the days of the Coalitions for Social Justice and the national coalition formed to oppose the free trade agreements. We had some successes back then. Central to that effort was the trade union movement, which had the resources, the organizations and the base to give the coalitions. Could this be revived?

Gindin was refreshingly frank on the issue of organizing for change. We have to recognize that since the onslaught of neoliberalism beginning around 1980 we have faced a long period of steady defeats. At the federal and provincial level the welfare state is being whittled away. The free trade agenda had resulted in the loss of a great many manufacturing jobs. Real incomes have declined for most workers. Income and wealth inequality was steadily rising.  People were discouraged, with a growing percentage not even wanting to vote. As Gindin argued, “it is as if we are having to start all over from the beginning.”

No one mentioned the fact that the political parties that we used to support, and who brought us the welfare state after World War II, now fully embraced the broad neoliberal agenda and U.S - led imperialism.



Can capitalism save the planet?
One member of the audience rose to put forth an alternative view. He declared that the science is clear on global warming, and there are many studies showing what has to be done and how to do it. We do not have to have a socialist alternative: the capitalists can make the changes. After all, we all know that capitalists can make major adjustments, as they did to deal with the Great Depression. Leo Panitch agreed that it was possible for capital to make the necessary changes, but it would just lead to other contradictions. He cited one example: Germany is praised for bringing in a green program for producing electricity, but no one mentions that they have expanded their export of coal.

I didn't agree. It might be possible for the capitalists in the G-7 countries to accept a plan to shift to Green Capitalism. But would it be possible to get the rest of the world’s capitalists to take a similar stance? Gindin asked: "What would happen if the North agreed to shift wealth to the South? The mass of people in the South want the consumer lifestyle that they see in the North. In addition, most of the governments of the states in the South seem to be worse than ours. Would they agree?"

One problem I had with Klein’s book is that the alternative strategy she promotes is the model we associate with the Occupy movement. But these spontaneous actions all seem to fade away rather quickly as they have no structure. Capital yielded on trade unionism and the Keynesian welfare state after World War II because they were confronted with the mobilized power of the popular classes through their organizations and political parties



Will Greece show us the way?
Naomi Klein wrote this book over the past five years during which a mass struggle was going on in Greece. Yet there is no mention of this in her book. But that is exactly where we need to look to see what strategies work. The mass struggle in Greece, characterized by a great many general strikes, served to educate and politicize the general population. It has resulted in the rapid rise in support for Syriza, the Left Green opposition party, which now has a chance of winning the general election on January 25.

On the bus trip down to Toronto, my colleague, Susan Ferren, who went with me to the meeting, remarked at the major change that had occurred in the Greater Toronto Area since she had lived here in her youth. From Oshawa through to Toronto there is now one great alienating example of market-designed suburban sprawl, the home to six million people, many forced to live in sky high condos. The 401 highway is twelve lanes wide with seemingly millions of vehicles going back and forth, 24 hours a day. She asked: “How could this be sustainable?”

As we walked down Bloor St. West to go to the meeting, we saw where the capitalist class does its shopping. She reminded me that “consumerism is the ideological essence of personal capitalism, and it is deeply entrenched in our culture.”

Before we headed back to Peterborough we went to the cinema to see Selma. Don’t miss it. I remember this struggle well. We have won battles in the past. It is possible to mobilize people. Organization is essential. Martin Luther King knew how to do this.  As Sam Gindin pointed out at the meeting, it is through local struggles on important issues that people come to understand how the system works. Not through reading books.