Mel Watkins

Mel Watkins is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Political Science, University of Toronto. He is Editor Emeritus of This Magazine and a frequent contributor to Peace magazine. He is a memer of Pugwash Canada and former President of Science for Peace. Website: http://www.progressive-economics.ca/author/mel-watkins/.

Canada’s responsible for our own bad habits

Mar 162013

Features

As Obama decides on Keystone, Canada forced to review our history of resource exploitation.

by Mel Watkins

A New York Times editorial on March 10 said “No to the Keystone pipeline.” Opponents of the pipeline, like myself, feel good. We can at least hope that the editorial has increased the odds that Obama will also say no — but whether the odds change enough to matter is impossible to say.

Problem is, feeling good or better is not good enough. There's something wrong with this story. It's as if the decision about the pipeline is no longer our decision. If Obama says no, that's the end. If he says yes, that's the end too. Isn't the definition of shirking responsibility that you have given away the power to make a decision on something that really matters to you?

Heading off the bitumen cliff

Feb 252013

Features

Staples trap: Canada's economic dependence on dirty oil threatens global environment.

by Mel Watkins

Canada is headed for a bitumen cliff and it risks taking the rest of the world along. That's the chilling forecast from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Polaris Institute — who also offered options to avert disaster — in the most comprehensive discussion to date on the "Dutch disease".

Drones and collateral damage

Feb 112013

Features

Children could, and should, be off limits.

by Mel Watkins

Some of us are old enough to remember how, during the protests in the 1960s against the Vietnam War, in the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, we would shout: "LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

We turned a tragedy into a taunt but it had the merit of being the kind of truth that doesn't otherwise get widely acknowledged.

Cuban Missile Crisis, 50 years later

Oct 152012

Features

The war that wasn't, was a game that never should have been played.

by Mel Watkins

Pick your war and the Harper government will celebrate it. Their attitude is, "Sure it was bloody, but war’s war, and we’re the better for it."

But might it not make more sense to celebrate the wars and the killing that didn’t happen? And the peace, the absence of war, that did? Memory matters, truly matters, if we are ever to learn and stay alive in the era of weapons of mass destruction. What we remember and how we remember it is far too important to be left to those who worship warriors and count the dead as part of the celebration.

Harper’s economic remedy has poor track record

Oct 022012

Features

Austerity programs cause suffering in Europe, as cashless-consumers stop spending.

by Mel Watkins

Stephen Harper tells us that the “new norm” is that the world economy is in trouble and things look bad. Big chunks of Europe are in recession. America is flat, constipated. China’s slowing.

Now you might imagine that Harper, who is rarely so candid, would use the occasion to outline a serious plan for limiting the damage to the Canadian economy, to try to maintain, even raise, its rate of growth and its level of employment.

So here’s what he actually said: Cut government spending. Gut environmental protection. Sign more free trade agreements. Increase foreign ownership in telecommunications.

Harper and Baird lurch into Iran-Israel imbroglio

Sep 182012

Features

Israel's nuclear shrug has spread around our world.

by Mel Watkins

Does Iran have the Bomb? No.

We can be as certain of that as of anything in the crazed, secret, over-spun world that encompasses all matters bearing on nuclear weapons.

Does Israel have the Bomb? Yes. Everyone knows that. Except that, if you ask the government of Israel directly, it will refuse to give a straight answer. Sort of a version of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Resources (“staples”) trap is Canadian Disease

Jun 202012

Features

Cure is to tax bitumen and fund a dividend to every Canadian.

by Mel Watkins

Everybody's using the term "Dutch Disease." Actually, we should be calling it the "Canadian disease."

Glorifying the War of 1812

Jan 032012

Features

PM has an agenda behind proposed celebration.

by Mel Watkins

The War of 1812 was the least of wars. That great popular historian, the late Pierre Berton, described it as "foolish and unnecessary." After the war, the border was the same as it had been at the beginning.