Polarization destroying Canadian consensus

Harper is making Brian Mulroney look like a beacon of progressive thought.

by Ish Theilheimer

When Canadians become nostalgic for the good old days of Brian Mulroney, you know something is seriously wrong.

Mulroney won two successive majority governments in the 1980 before being hounded from office in the '90s, having acquired the popular moniker "Lyin' Brian." He was pompous, full of himself, scheming and capable of downright nastiness. He peppered his speech with gutter-level expressions like "There's no whore like an old whore," and "You gotta dance with the one what brung you."

Mulroney led Canada into corporate trade deals that ravaged hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and provincial economies. He introduced the widely-hated Goods and Services Tax. When he stepped down, news media called him "the most detested Prime Minister in history" and Kim Campbell led his party to an almost total rout — only two Conservative candidates won seats in the House.

Ish waxes nostalgic for Progressive Conservatives and Canadian consensus.

But by comparison with today's Conservatives, Brian Mulroney looks like a beacon of progressive thought and action. He made inspired appointments, such as making Stephen Lewis ambassador to the UN. Among his special assistants, he hired Elizabeth May, as part of a process leading to the establishment of environmental assessment — which the Harper Conservatives are leaving in tatters.

Mulroney's government took a strong stand against the US intervention in Nicaragua under Reagan, and accepted refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and other countries with regimes supported directly by the Reagan administration.

Mulroney also was recognized for promoting the election of more women to all levels of government in Canada. He named 11 women to his Cabinet, including to non-traditional portfolios such as National Defence, Energy, Foreign Affairs and Justice. He appointed record numbers of women to the courts, as ambassadors and onto government commissions and boards.

And Mulroney and arch-rival Joe Clark, his foreign affairs minister, set up Rights and Democracy (the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development) as a non-partisan organization at arm's length from government. They gave it a mandate to help promote developing democracies and human rights around the world and appointed Ed Broadbent, who had recently retired as NDP leader, as its first president. Rights and Democracy (R&D) did leading-edge work around the world, frequently taking positions opposed by governments of the day, and it earned tremendous prestige for Canada as a voice of fairness and justice.

All that changed with the installation of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. One of his earliest acts was to make Canada one of four countries that opposed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which Rights & Democracy helped develop.

Another of his earliest acts was to make political hacks with little international experience directors on the organization's board. As directors, they hounded R&D's president Remy Beuregard viciously and mercilessly, culminating in an incendiary late-night Board meeting from which Beauregard went home and had a fatal heart attack in 2010. In 2011, the Harper government announced R&D would be closed.

Last week, SG News attended a farewell reception for the organization, at which Joe Clark and former Liberal Cabinet minister and R&D president Warren Allmand spoke. They spoke with real pain about how much Canada has changed from 25 years ago, when, although Canadians disagreed plenty, they also found broad areas of consensus on things like human rights, the status of women and environmental protection.

By coincidence, on the same evening, SG News also attended the launch of Warrior Nation, a new book by Ian McKay and Jamie Swift. The authors spoke of concerted efforts on the part of Harper, his government, and right-wing academics like Jack Granatstien, to rewrite the nation's history.

Right-wingers, they explained, hate the celebration of peace-keeping as a Canadian achievement. They would rather see Canada as a guts-and-glory kind of place where soldiering takes precedence over the work of scientists, teachers, farmers, carpenters, doctors, writers, nurses, artists and other civilians. So they are literally re-writing history.

One example of this trend: the government is spending 28 million dollars promoting the memory of the muddled and unnecessary War of 1812 — while cutting the same amount from Libraries and Archives Canada. The right-wingers are telling their own story of Canada and destroying the people's ability to learn the truth.

This revision is not being done in a casual or accidental way. The new history is being rewritten and published with a take-no-prisoners, scorched-earth approach and is being crammed down Canadians' throats at every turn. The proposed purchase of colossally expensive flying Edsels — the F35 fighter jet — is a good example.

There are better jets. There are jets built in Canada. There are cheaper jets that might not force the government to cut pensions and health care if they were purchased instead. But the F35s fit with Harper's vision of the Canada, the Warrior Nation, so they are, it appears, what Canadians will have to shell out more than one thousand dollars per capita to buy.

You know things are getting desperate when people like me think people like Brian Muloney is starting to look good. But a lot of Canadians are like me. We believe there is a Canadian consensus in support of human rights, women's rights, environmental protection, and public services.

We hope that consensus continues. At least until Stephen Harper and his wrecking crew destroy it.

 

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca