Murray Dobbin's Blog

The NDP’s stunning loss in B.C. is being deconstructed, dissected, analyzed and mourned over not only here but across the country. Every pundit and political junkie, including me, thought the NDP would win, even after their lead suddenly dropped. But unfortunately, most of the analysis won’t be very helpful for those individuals and organizations hoping and fighting for a better country.

Just as we are trapped in an arcane excuse for democracy (it was never meant to be democratic, it is designed to manage capitalism), we are also trapped in the same paradigm when it comes to figuring out why elections are won or lost. We sit down, list off a half dozen reasons, we agree and disagree, refine the answers and gradually move on to some other disconnected political element of the universe.

It’s not that the reasons aren’t important. So long as politics is done this way the players (98 per cent of citizens are just observers) have to learn how they screwed up the game. For those not already immersed in the tortuous autopsy of the NDP loss here are a few factors.

Vote split. In B.C., if the left vote is split at all, the NDP loses. This time around the Greens were competing vigorously (it is B.C. after all) with the NDP in many progressive ridings and in 13 seats the combined Green and NDP votes would have defeated the Liberal candidate. (The final tally: Libs 50, NDP 33, Greens 1.) But it’s never that simple — not all Green voters have the NDP as their second choice and some wouldn’t vote at all if there was no Green candidate.

Reversal on pipeline process. Another issue related to the Green/NDP contest was possibly the single most damaging to the party. In the final two weeks of the campaign Dix reversed himself on the Kinder Morgan pipeline which would bring more tar sands goop to the port of Vancouver. He came out against it after saying he would wait for a review to be completed. It was meant to take the wind out of the sails of the Greens but instead it put wind in the Liberals’. It played perfectly into Clark’s singular focus: the economy and who would manage it best. It seemed to confirm that Dix (the notorious memo back-dater) could not be trusted and wasn’t concerned about the economy.

Outcampaigned. But in general, the NDP just ran a lack-lustre campaign with no real vision — just a shopping list of things they would do (some of them very good). “Change for the better” was a deliberately cautious slogan but seemed designed for insomniacs. In this case the whole was less than the sum of its parts.

The Liberals, despite being saddled with an unpopular premier, ran a brilliant campaign — if winning at any cost was the name of the game, which it is. Relentlessly negative messaging and fear mongering ground people down — those who didn’t buy into the fear were equally likely to be disgusted with the process and simply tune out and stay away from the polls. Turnout was a record low. Dix, who I think would have made an excellent premier, was vulnerable on the trust and character issue for the memo back-dating and failure to pay a Skytrain fare. Small stuff in the larger scheme of things, but turned into defining charcteristics by tens of thousands of repetitions on radio and TV.

Combining the trust issue with the decades old right-wing attack on the NDP’s economic “credibility” was enough to make some people doubt that change would be for the better after all. The economy is always the NDP’s Achilles heel. The party tends to stay away from the broad issue out of fear the media will eviscerate it. But ignoring the economy just makes the Liberal attacks a self-fulfilling prophecy: it takes the NDP out of the game and makes people wonder why they don’t talk about it. The facts, of course, suggest the Liberals were criminally irresponsible on the economy — from the BC Rail scandal to the obscene giveaway of hydro resources, to the gutting of government revenue with tax cuts to their friends.

Positively ill-advised. But the NDP barely mentioned those facts and chose instead to turn the other cheek — and become a punching bag for Liberal assaults. The party decided to run a positive campaign and this is really the lesson of the election loss. A friend wrote to me saying running a positive campaign is like “bringing flowers to a gun fight.”

Don’t get me wrong. You can design a campaign that projects a positive vision of the future but two things about the NDP’s approach doomed it failure. First, you can’t run a positive campaign in a month. It takes time to engage people in a vision of the future, even one they agree with. Secondly, the NDP tied one hand behind its back by failing to hold the Liberals to account for the horrible, destructive policies they implemented over twelve long years.

Presumably, the election brain trust, led by Brian Topp the quintessential back-room boy, (now teamed up in a consulting firm with Ken Boessenkool, a former Harper confidante) decided that this would be “negative.” Nonsense. It was in fact grossly irresponsible not to put the Liberal record front and centre. If you want to contrast yourself with your opponent how do you do that without talking about what their record is? The Liberals’ vicious attacks on Dix cannot be likened to exposing the Liberals for what they actually did to the province. People have notoriously short memories — and the Liberals rode them to victory.

Party system. Perhaps the real dilemma facing the left is the nature of party politics itself. A tiny percentage of people belong to the NDP and Green parties and even within these parties there is little in the way of continuous engagement, political education, and social activity that is so critical to building community. This is where the failure of the month long, list-of-promises, positive campaign is rooted.

In Saskatchewan where I come from, Tommy Douglas and the CCF (the precursor of the NDP) won power in 1944 in a province totally dominated by a Liberal, pro-business party machine for decades. It won a landslide victory in a media atmosphere of absolute hysteria (headline: CCF will seize farms), fear-mongering and blatant lies. The CCF held power for 20 uninterrupted years. How? It started out as a movement and retained that character for many years afterward. It was deeply rooted in community. People felt ownership of it and its policies and out of that came government programs that met the expressed needs of the people. And that, in turn, brought enormous trust in government.

People’s distrust of government now runs so deep that it will take years of trust-building to regain some democratic equilibrium. That means a totally different kind of politics and a totally different kind of political party. Progressive parties run by brain trusts, engaging in politics as a game, will ultimately lose. For them progressive policies are simply pieces on a chess board, not part of a larger vision. And the longer this style of politics goes on, the more institutionalized and inward looking such parties, including the NDP, become.

When Preston Manning founded the Reform Party in 1989 he said that if it hadn’t achieved power in 20 years he would dissolve it and make room for something else. It actually happened sooner than that, of course. Manning wasn’t married to any political party, even his own. He was committed to changing the world.

Just a thought.

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There is no accounting for political judgment when it gets caught up in irrational euphoria. The overwhelming victory of Justin Trudeau in the Liberal Party’s leadership race demonstrates just how impoverished the state of our political culture has become. Did the polls — almost completely meaningless at this stage of the political process — so addle people’s discernment that they could not see what was in front of them? In a stunning failure of imagination 80 per cent of those casting ballots effectively declared: We think a pretty face and a famous name is all we need to win and more importantly, all the country needs to lead it.

Justin Trudeau is allegedly 40 years-old, but his persona is one of a perpetual adolescent who can’t be taken seriously, because he doesn’t take the world seriously. He’s spent his life avoiding anything truly challenging and seems addicted to having a good time — to the exclusion of disciplined political work. His intellectual capacity, whatever it was, is now so atrophied that it seems clear he rarely engages on his own in serious analysis or thoughtful consideration of important political and philosophical questions.

Trudeau’s interview with Peter Mansbridge — one of the few situations where his advisors weren’t holding his hand and telling him what to say — should terrify all those who voted for him. In one (250 word) answer, to a question on the Boston terror bombing, Trudeau repeated the teenagers’ favourite phrase “you know” eight times and “I mean” four times. This level of political immaturity and inarticulateness is normally expected of people who devote virtually no time to thinking about politics. Here’s an excerpt — Trudeau’s answer to the question what would Trudeau do if he were prime minister. Read it and weep.

“First thing, you offer support and sympathy and condolences and, you know, can we send down, you know, EMTs or, I mean, as we contributed after 9-11? I mean, is there any material immediate support we have we can offer? And then at the same time, you know, over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes. Now we don’t know now whether it was, you know, terrorism or a single crazy or, you know, a domestic issue or a foreign issue, I mean, all of those questions. But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. I mean, yes, we need to make sure that we’re promoting security and we’re, you know, keeping our borders safe and, you know, monitoring the kinds of, you know, violent subgroups that happen around.”

“Violent subgroups that happen around”? Who talks like this? It is hard to imagine that Justin’s father ever talked like this — even at age five. This is a man revealed as one who may well be incapable of mature political behaviour let alone good political judgment. Harper smacked him around like a cat playing with a mouse before tiring of the game and finishing it off.

It’s not just the content of the response, which is bad enough, but the inability to express coherent thoughts. Trudeau seemed to be mistaking a ruthless mass murderer for a violent kid who grew up in a bad home. His response is so far removed from what the vast majority of people feel about the issue that you have to wonder what, exactly, informs his opinions. The most rudimentary political instincts should have kicked in even if his advisors failed him.

And this wasn’t a momentary scrum with a few reporters. This was an interview with Peter Mansbridge — the most valuable showcase any Canadian political leader can be provided. Liberals know that Stephen Harper will spend millions, if he has to, to define who Trudeau is before Trudeau can. This was Trudeau’s big opportunity to define himself as a man of substance, with a vision, and someone who could represent Canada on the world stage.

Apparently we need to go elsewhere for Trudeau’s substance and it seems he wants us to accept the theme from his leadership campaign and post-victory musings: that he is dedicated to Canada’s middle class. More than half of Canadians identify themselves as belonging to the middle class, and there is no doubt that the middle class has suffered, “hollowed out” since the 1980s. In 1972, 56 per cent of all income went to the middle 60 per cent of Canadian families; in 2006 it was just 53 per cent. In the 1970s, 30 per cent of middle class families needed two incomes to maintain that status. Today that figure is 70 per cent. Since the early 1980s the middle class has gained virtually nothing from economic growth.

What accounts for this dramatic decline in the class of people who used to define the nation? In a word, globalization, and the public policies which stem from it and helped create it. Amongst those policies are free trade; lowered labour standards; passive acceptance of de-industrialization; the weakening of labour vis-à-vis capital through cuts to EI and welfare; the virtual abandonment of industrial policies to promote high paying jobs; the use of “temporary” foreign workers; cuts to the “social wage” which includes post-secondary education; and the transfer of wealth to the uber-rich from the middle class.

All of these policies have been eagerly embraced by the Liberal Party ever since Jean Chretien reneged on his 1993 election promise to revisit NAFTA. Paul Martin’s singular economic policy was trade; he deliberately maintained high unemployment through most of the 1990s to “discipline labour” (including the middle class), cut government revenue by $100 billion over five years, gutted the UI program and abandoned the federal role in the provision of social welfare and effectively put an end to universality as a principle for post-secondary education and any new social programs.

In an article in the Globe and Mail, Trudeau does manage to identify some of these trials of the middle class: “While the economy has more than doubled in size in the past 30 years, middle-class incomes have gone up just 13 per cent.” But nowhere does he criticize his Liberal predecessors’ policies which created this situation. He commits to a new “national focus” on education, yet not funding for it. But it was Paul Martin’s unprecedented spending cuts which precipitated the huge increases in tuition fees and massive student debt.

What Trudeau seems unwilling to admit is that the slow demise of the middle class is the result of corporate globalization and to revive middle class fortunes means a direct challenge of all of globalization’s elements. Will he reverse any of these classic Liberal policies and if so which ones? Will he oppose any further trade deals? Will he try to re-industrialize through a massive renewable energy strategy? Will he revive the federal government’s previous role in funding universities? Will he reverse the gutting of EI? Will he tax wealth?

Don’t hold your breath. The real Trudeau is the empty vessel interviewed by Peter Mansbridge, and that means the party is in the hands of the same hypocritical apparatchiks who wrote — and then casually betrayed — the rosy promises in Jean Chretien’s 1993 Red Book. Welcome back to the future.

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One of the many things that Hugo Chavez, the charismatic and revolutionary president of Venezuela contributed to the world was his demonstration for people everywhere the difference between democracy and liberal democracy. Chavez’s hyperbolic style, his tweaking the tail of the Imperial tiger and his willingness to be just as ruthless as his US-backed opponents, gave Western leaders and journalists lots of ammunition to demonize him.

But what really made them all crazy was precisely the fact that he took liberal democracy – the term applied to a political system designed to manage capitalism in the interests of the wealthy and corporations – and turned it into genuine democracy. It highlighted for those struggling for social justice that liberal democracy is an oxymoron – liberalism being the principle that capitalism (inequality) rules and democracy being its opposite: equality. As witnessed by the outrageous levels of inequality now characterizing Canada, you can have one or the other but not both.

Nothing threatens leaders of the Western powers – especially the US – like good examples of real democracy and they will do anything to destroy them, demonize them or threaten any other country that dares think about emulating them. No example is too small to destroy as was witnessed by the 1983 US invasion of Grenada (population 110,000). The strategy was called “destroy the dream” – which explains, perhaps, why US troops totally destroyed a rural, all-women jam-making co-operative. In the 1980s it was Nicaragua. There they forced the Sandinista government to change its system of electoral democracy from a constituent assembly (made up of elected representatives from all sectors of society) to a multi-party system that the elites could control. The result: the Sandinistas lost.

The US and its imperial junior partners like Canada have always had some excuse, however transparent, to crush good examples in the past. But Chavez shamed them at their own game, winning more democratic elections than any Western leader in the past century: Since coming to power in 1999, he won 15 of 16 elections defeating his opponents by a margin of 10-20 percentage points, landslides by our own standards. And he did it through elections that were determined by Western observer groups to be perhaps the most fair on the planet. Former US President Jimmy Carter, representing one of the most respected observer groups, claimed that Venezuela’s electoral system was “the best in the world.”

None of this matters to politicians dedicated to global corporate dominance. Henry Kissinger’s infamous justification of US support of the fascist coup in Chile was brutal and unapologetic: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.” It is only the most chilling expression of capitalist elite’s contempt for any democracy that takes equality seriously.

Stephen Harper has the identical mentality. As a result of Chavez’s death, said Harper, “… I hope the people of Venezuela can now build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.” This would be laughable if weren’t sinister. Harper no doubt knows all about the incredible social progress achieved under Chavez’s government. But for Harper democracy is clearly not about the substance of what it delivers. When he talks about freedom it is freedom of the wealthy to do as they please; and the rule of law means the laws that protect corporate privileges. As for democracy it is risible that Harper has the gall to even utter the word given his record.

Just what did Chavez accomplish in his fourteen years in power? There are far too many examples to list here but according to Latin American researcher and journalist Salim Lamrani in “50 Truths about Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution” here are some of the more notable:

“* In December 2005, UNESCO said that Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy.
* The number of children attending school increased from 6 million in 1998 to 13 million in 2011 and the enrollment rate is now 93.2%.
* The rate of secondary school enrollment rose from 53.6% in 2000 to 73.3% in 2011; the number of tertiary students increased from 895,000 in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2011, assisted by the creation of new universities.
* Between 2005 and 2012, 7873 new medical centers were created in Venezuela. The number of doctors increased from 20 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 80 per 100,000 in 2010.
* Infant mortality rate fell from 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand in 2012, a reduction of 49%.
* From 1999 to 2011, the poverty rate decreased from 42.8% to 26.5% and the rate of extreme poverty fell from 16.6% in 1999 to 7% in 2011.
* In the rankings of the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP), Venezuela jumped from 83 in 2000 to 73 in 2011, and entered into the category of Nations with ‘High HDI’.
* Since 1999, 700,000 homes have been built in Venezuela.
* Since 1999, the government provided / returned more than one million hectares of land to Aboriginal people. Land reform enabled tens of thousands of farmers to own their land. In total, Venezuela distributed more than 3 million hectares.
* Five million children now receive free meals through the School Feeding Programme. The figure was 250,000 in 1999. The malnutrition rate fell from 21% in 1998 to less than 3% in 2012.”
* The unemployment rate fell from 15.2% in 1998 to 6.4% in 2012, with the creation of more than 4 million jobs.

As for that core meaning of democracy – equality – acccording to the UNDP “… Venezuela is the country in the region with the least inequality.” Equality apparently matters as, according to the 2012 World Happiness Report put out by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Venezuela is the second happiest country in Latin America, after Costa Rica, and the nineteenth in the world beating out Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Spain.

Harper and other Western leaders’ reaction to Chavez and his legacy is an important revelation regarding their visceral hostility to using state power in the interests of the poor. They cannot hide their contempt and their media cheerleaders go along with them – with the term “dictator” and “strongman” still being used routinely to describe Chavez (while no such term was ever used to describe George Bush who took power illegally).

But if they simply ignore the stunning social progress made under Chavez it is his other accomplishments that have them worried. Chavez’s foreign policy has severely weakened the grip that the US and institutions like the IMF and World Bank had on the region. This legacy goes well beyond Venezuela’s borders and threatens the centuries-long domination of giant corporations and finance capital.

In 2011 Chavez was instrumental in creating of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) which brings together the 33 nations of the region making the Organization of American States, the decades-old tool of US political domination, almost irrelevant. On the trade front, in 2004 Chavez created the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) with Cuba establishing the basis for an alliance (now with eight members) based on cooperation and reciprocity. Its explicit aim is “combating poverty and social exclusion” and again challenges the historic domination of the region by the US.

The question remains what effect Chavez’s death will have both on the future of Venezuela and the region. Now that the US has extricated itself from two Middle East wars it will turn its attention once again to its “back yard.” The empire will strike back. But the “good examples” (and there are many in Latin America including Bolivia and Ecuador) are robust and inspiring. Short of a return to concerted covert action or military intervention the Latin American spring seems secure. Viva Chavez!

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The whole issue of the housing bubble, its extent and whether there will be a soft landing as predicted by many wishful thinkers has resulted in many interesting headlines in recent weeks – including some high on the delusional scale. One suggested that house prices are a mere 20% overvalued (if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you). Another that Marc Carney, having solved the housing bubble issue, was now moving on to an allegedly different issue: economic growth. Into this mix rode the cowboy of the big Canadian banks, the Bank of Montreal (BMO), with a replay of its irresponsible low interest rate of 2.99% for a five year mortgage. The last time it did this, for a couple of months in early 2012, it scooped $7 billion in mortgage business.

BMO’s reckless move was preceded last January with its self-serving report prepared by free market diva Shelley Cooper suggesting that “…alarms about Canada’s housing market by international observers, from the International Monetary Fund to The Economist magazine, are exaggerated or simplistic.” Referring to Canada’s housing as “somewhat pricey” the gamblers at BMO felt no compunction last week in risking another mortgage war. Did I say gambling? Well, yes, gambling – with taxpayers’ dollars and the future of the Canadian economy. Virtually every housing loan is insured by you and me with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation sitting on $600 billion of loans it has guaranteed.

The story suggesting house prices were overvalue by just 20% was based on a report from Fitch ratings – a company which rates mortgage backed securities. A less sanguine and more objective estimate of the overvaluation comes from a report by The Economist – which says the figure is 78% as against rents (the highest in the OECD) and 34% (second only to France) as against income. The US is undervalued by 7% and 20% respectively – which gives you an idea of how bad things can get when a bubble bursts, or even if a balloon deflates – the favourite analogy of the wishful thinkers.

That 78% over-evaluation means that every new loan the banks make – and the deliberately seductive 2.99% rate – go to people who are going to be saddled with houses that on average are overvalued by 78%. BMO is like a pusher offering cheap drugs to people who apparently can’t resist. The rate offer comes at a time when there seemed to be a smidgeon of rationality creeping into the market. Not if the banks can help it. They know the real story on over-valuation as does the Bank of Canada and Finance Minister Flaherty. That’s why Flaherty chastised BMO for its new low rate. The reckless loan practices of the banks have given Canada the distinction of having the fastest growth of home-ownership of any OECD country – tracking the over-valuation notch for notch.

But the big banks in Canada listen to no one, not even governments which are pathologically pro-free market and who have bailed all of them out with billions in taxpayers’ dollars (more on that in a moment). They almost always get their way (amalgamation being the only important exception) and have no intention of sacrificing excess profits just because it threatens tens of thousands of home owners and the Canadian economy.

Could interest rates increase by 1.5 percentage points five years from now? Who knows? But if they did 17% of Canadian households would be facing unaffordable mortgage rates, according to estimates of the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals. Those defaults represent a big chunk of the $600 billion Canadians are on the hook for through CMHC.

Why would the banks listen to any word of caution when the CMHC guarantees virtually every mortgage they sell and eliminates the risk that most people imagine lenders assume? The collective profits of the big banks just hit a record in the first quarter: $7.33-billion, 11% more than the same period last year, and driven largely by the mortgage bingeing of Canadian consumers.

Another recent headline suggests none of this is worth worrying about. The Globe and Mail told us: “Carney shifts from housing bubble to sluggish growth.” The story reflects on Mark Carney’s claim that he has the mortgage bubble under control and he can now turn to economic growth. But just how Carney, limited to using the crude tool of interest rates, is going to do that is unclear.

And the problem is that housing is still the only source of real growth in the economy. While most people would assume, from all the talk about the stupendous wealth of the tar sands, that we are a “resource driven” economy, the truth is that resources pale in comparison to housing and related financial services. According to the Conference Board of Canada, the resource sector (energy, forestry, mining, agriculture) accounted for a mere 7% of GDP in 2012 while housing (finance, real estate, construction) accounted for 27%. If the housing market goes south, just what sector does Mr Carney think is going to replace it as a growth driver? He has now given “certainty” that rates won’t rise til late 2014 – something that is supposed to spur business investment.

But the additional certainty was minuscule and will not have the desired effect. No one expected Carney to touch the rate and even with a 1% interest rate the economy grew by a pathetic annualized rate of .6% in the third quarter and .5 % in the last quarter of 2012. Over two thirds of the economy is domestic and Canadians are amongst the most indebted people in the world (personal debt is at 160% of annual income compared to the US at 110%) – maxed out on credit and borrowing like mad on their slowly devaluing houses (home equity loans total $206 billion, equal to 12% of Canadian GDP. In the US the figure is 4%). Exports are down and staying there so just why would business (which is already sitting some $600 billion in cash) go to the banks to borrow when there is no prospect for new demand?

The fact is, neither Flaherty nor Carney have a clue what to do about the housing market or sluggish economic growth. Flaherty’s dilemma is that he dare not deal any more decisively with the mortgage madness for fear of driving the economy into recession. Housing sales are already down across the country due to his credit tightening but building continues at a rapid pace in places like Toronto (with some 50,000 units in the pipe). So just as re-sales slow, tens of thousands of new units will come on the market in 2013 creating a new glut and pushing prices further down. Is a recession by the fall on the way?

No one can fix this. Carney will leave the mess to someone else in July. Flaherty fundamentally believes that the government shouldn’t do anything to create growth except cut taxes so there will be no industrial policy option on the table where real investment in new stuff (like renewable energy) could be promoted. There will be virtually no new public investment with the possible exception of infrastructure. And the banks will continue their rogue and reckless behaviour because they can. They will not give up the goose that continues to lay golden eggs.

Talk about ungrateful. Have the banks forgotten that it was taxpayers’ money that saved their bacon in the great recession (the great bail-out is still unknown to most Canadians)? According to conventional wisdom, carefully crafted by the Harper government and rubber-stamped by the media, “our” banks did a great job of dealing with the economic crash and we didn’t have to put up a cent to help them. The implication is that they deserve to be left alone to make obscene profits.

But as David MacDonald, chief economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported last year, the big banks actually got billions of dollars in backing from the government – $114 billion (7% of our GDP) at its peak in March 2009. According to MacDonald: “At some point during the crisis, three of Canada’s banks—CIBC, BMO, and Scotiabank—were completely under water, with government support exceeding the market value of the company. Without government supports to fall back on, Canadian banks would have been in serious trouble.” They were receiving support through financial programs of the Bank of Canada, the US Federal Reserve and, of course, CMHC. The latter provided cash by buying up $50 billion in the banks’ mortgage-backed securities over just a four month period starting in October, 2008. Over the next twenty-one months while receiving financial backing, the big five made $27 billion in profits.

Responsibility for the intractable mortgage dilemma can be laid decisively at the feet of Mr Flaherty and his own recklessness back in 2007. That’s when he opened up the CMHC’s mortgage business to US competition. We soon had the same lunacy here as they did south of the border: no down payment, 40 year, sub-prime loans. That year and a half experiment (Flaherty finally got scared smart and started to rein it in) is what spurred the irrational drive by so any Canadians to own a home. That rash action haunts Flaherty today and will ultimately ruin his legacy. It could even lose the Conservatives the next election.

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The West’s hypocrisy and oil-greed are coming home to roost with a vengeance in Libya as the Arab spring in that country turns into a nightmarish winter characterized by armed gangs, economic collapse, a decline in services by an incompetent government and increasing political domination by radical Islamists.

Whether or not the Libyan people think this is better than living under the autocratic and bizarre Muammar Gaddafi is obviously for them to decide. But the notion that getting rid of Gaddafi was somehow going to bring liberal democracy to this oil-rich country was never believed by the Western powers, including Canada, who brought about his downfall. We will never know if a civil war in that country without the West’s intervention on one side would have seen Gaddafi ousted. It seems unlikely. Gaddafi would also still be alive without US intelligence provided to the rebels on his attempted escape.

But Western powers knew the risk they were taking and took it anyway. They are no doubt busy doing their own calculations – a cost benefit analysis of regime change and its grotesque blowback. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Ghahafi’s brutal, summary execution: “We came, we saw, he died.” Then she laughed. It was a repulsive performance (perhaps she was trying to outdo another Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright who when asked if half a million dead children was too high a price for sanctions on Iraq replied “We think the price was worth it.”)

The US is not so sanguine now about the results of their spurious ‘no fly zone’ war on the Libyan regime. And talk about bad Karma. Clinton’s not laughing now as her political career has been severely damaged by the subsequent murder of the US ambassador by her cherished freedom fighters. She was responsible for the level of security at the US embassy and she will wear that responsibility for the rest of her career – including her run for the democratic nomination.

It’s hard to know if the arrogance of the West is rooted in willful ignorance or hubris but the governments involved in regime change, including our own, should have known the inevitable outcome of their actions. The poison pill of regimes like Gaddafi’s and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is that the disappearance of a dictator leaves an enormous power vacuum that gets filled quickly. Democracy – and all the things that underpin it like tolerance, human rights, civil liberties, the rule of law, and pluralism – doesn’t suddenly appear just because you hold elections – even “fair” ones. It grows out of decades of robust civil society organizations through which virtually all citizens, to varying degrees, absorb the values and attitudes critical to a functioning democracy.

None of the Arab Spring nations exhibited diverse, strong civil society groups before their rebellions because such organizations were a threat to the regimes and thus ruthlessly suppressed. The result in Egypt was that secular forces – responsible for Mubarak’s overthrow – were unable agree on a single candidate to defeat the Islamists and their religious agenda.

If Egypt’s spring is a huge disappointment, Libya’s is a catastrophe. According to Geoffrey York of the Globe and mail Ansar al-Sharia (allegedly tied to Al Qaeda), the Islamist militia widely accused of being responsible for the murderous assault on the US embassy “…has now taken control of the key western entrance to Libya’s second city [Benghazi] – including the highway to the capital, Tripoli.” Ansar al-Sharia along with three other militias have divided up Benghazi. The new government is so inept and has so little moral authority that it is said to be actually signing “co-operation” agreements with Ansar al-Sharia to receive detainees arrested at its checkpoints. The collapse of the former regime’s police and military means the central government is increasingly dependent on the militias for security. Ansar al-Sharia is also taking advantage of the collapse of central government services by setting up its own humanitarian services.

Throughout the country both militias and armed criminal gangs operate with impunity and kidnappings, killings, armed robberies and the destruction of Sufi shrines and Christian graves go completely unpunished. Rigid enforcement of religious rules have many people terrified. According to one example from York, two young businessmen have been forced to sleep in their business establishment for fear it will be trashed. “Islamists have denounced the businessmen as ‘infidels’ because their company’s name, Odysseia, is a reference to Greek mythology.”

The combination of government incompetence, the politics of revenge and the Islamist suspicion of any kind of secular governance means that the economy is in a downward spiral as well. Gaddafi’s huge infrastructure projects – including the largest irrigation project on the planet – have virtually all ground to a halt. There is nothing on the horizon to suggest they will be restarted soon. Many of the workers who were key to their completion have fled the country out of fear of the militias. Obsessed with religion and purifying Libyan society the last thing on the Islamists minds is a functioning economy.

So, if Western governments knew that the “revolution” would result in chaos and another Islamist state what could possibly make such a result worthwhile? Was it just oil? The West already had access to Libya’s oil but the proceeds went to Libya. What few people in Western countries realize is that it was Gaddafi’s African nationalism that really had them worried. Gaddafi – the so-called lunatic – was seriously messing with capitalism’s international institutions and threatening the US dollar as the global currency.

That threat was serious enough that even his major compromises with the West – ending support for terrorism, dropping his pursuit of nuclear technology, working with the US military and intelligence services – were not enough to protect him. One of the few African nations with independent wealth, Gaddafi had plans to make the continent independent of Western institutions like the IMF, and World Bank.

Gaddafi was the force behind the creation of the African Investment Bank, and in 2011 of the African Monetary Fund to be based in Yaounde, Libya with a US$42 billion capital fund and the African Central Bank based in Abuja, in Nigeria. The IMF, whose economic blackmail has resulted in social devastation throughout the developing world, was headed for irrelevance. The same countries the bombed Libya tried for years to undermine these efforts but failed. Faced with the severe damage caused to the global financial system by the 2008 meltdown, getting rid of Gaddafi was even more important. Gaddafi’s longer term plans for a single African currency backed by gold – and no longer accepting US dollars in payment for oil – was an even greater threat as it would have weakened an already weaken US dollar.

It seems virtually certain that Gaddafi’s projects aimed at freeing Africa from the ravages of Western banks will not be completed. They relied for their fruition on the billions Gaddafi had earmarked for them. The radical Islamists who will ultimately control Libya’s government have no interest in assisting any part of Africa that is not Islamist. African nations will now slip back under the pernicious influence of the IMF and the World Bank knowing that if they dare get out of line NATO may find a ‘no fly zone’ excuse to bring them back.

But almost no one in Canada knows any of this because the mainstream media and all the political parties in the House of Commons (except the Greens) are complicit in not wanting us to know. Our collective ignorance means Libya is now effectively off the radar of the Canadian media (York’s reports excepted). The dominant image of Canada’s shameful involvement (cost: $100 million) is thus likely to be Stephen Harper’s boasting about Canada “punching above its weight” as if the trashing of international law and brutal regime change in the interests of international banks was a sporting event.

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The Brazeau affair — sad, repugnant and bizarre all at the same time — shines a light on two aspects of Canadian politics that desperately need some exposure.

One is what it reveals about the state of “official” aboriginal politics and its relationship to the Canadian state.

The other, the almost exclusive focus of the media, is the grotesque hypocrisy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper regarding the Senate. The question most asked in post-Brazeau flame-out is how was it possible that Harper, the strategic genius and control freak (with a $10-million staff at his command), could have chosen this guy as a senator?

Did he set out to humiliate aboriginal people by picking one of the worst possible candidates from amongst their spokespeople?

Maybe Brazeau was actually the best loyal Conservative aboriginal person Harper and his war room could find. You do have to wonder what kind of aboriginal leader would be loyal to a man and government so utterly contemptuous of First Nations people and their rights.

Or was it just simple racism — setting lower standards for aboriginal representatives than for others?

After all, two other appointees seem just as sleazy as Brazeau in their unseemly greed regarding questionable expense claims. For the nouveau-elite pair, Pam Wallin and Mike Duffy, $130,000 a year for sycophantic support for Harper just wasn’t enough. And what does it say about journalism that these two former media titans have such casual disregard for the public good? That it never occurred to two former journalists that they might get caught is also bizarre. But I digress.

It is just not possible that Harper didn’t know of all the skeletons in Brazeau’s closet. Even though Harper says he doesn’t read Canadian newspapers, his loyal soldiers do, and there was a lot to read. Here’s what Harper knew when he appointed Brazeau:

The Porsche-driving former model was behind in his child support payments (even while making a six-figure salary with the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples [CAP]).

He was facing a charge of sexual harassment.

His organization was being investigated by Health Canada for financial irregularities tied to Brazeau’s three-year tenure as CAP’s executive director.

And he was a political pariah amongst other aboriginal groups who complained bitterly to the government about CAP’s (budget: $5 million), legitimacy and membership. Brazeau helpfully reinforced that criticism later by describing his former organization as a “mickey-mouse club.”

His behaviour since being appointed suggests that the one thing a politician needs more than anything else is completely missing from Senator Brazeau: good judgment. But whether we look at the before or the after of his appointment, one thing seems clear — Harper’s alleged commitment to Senate reform remains illusory. After years of attacking the institution as a haven for cronies, he has turned his distaste for cronyism into a principle of governance (not unlike his commitment to rid Ottawa of its opaqueness).

Harper could have made better choices for senators, but he couldn’t help himself. So great is his contempt for democratic governance that he felt obliged to fill the senate with the ethically challenged and other losers. While others are decrying the descent into bathos, the Senate farce could be seen as just another arrow in Harper’s voter-suppression quiver. The more public disdain for government, in Harper’s calculations, the better.

The other revelation we can extract from this gong show is what it reveals of the relationship between aboriginal groups and the government. Brazeau is just the worst example in recent memory of the abuse of the privileges available to those running formal aboriginal organizations. One of the reasons that other groups complained loudly about Brazeau’s CAP is that the continued legitimacy and funding of these national (and provincial) groups depends on their good behaviour. Brazeau’s group (and his defamation lawsuit against them) threatens the delicate status quo.

The financial privileges and social status these organizations confer on their directors means they will fiercely defend their official status. Once they receive that status it is almost never rescinded. The groups long ago became institutionalized and bureaucratic but so long as they exist it is very difficult for other more democratic and grassroots groups to get established. This is one of the barriers the Idle No More movement faces: these groups guard their formal status carefully and are not amused by anything that challenges their legitimacy. But that, of course, is just what INM does. If these organizations (including most band councils) were doing their job, there would have been no national outpouring of First Nations anger.

That is one of the things that the movement will have to come to terms with early on. What will be its relationship with these compromised organizations? So far it seems there is no effort to engage these groups — and that is a good thing. They have been around for over 40 years and will not — indeed cannot — accommodate the kinds of demands INM makes nor can they become the organizations that reflect those demands. They have been defined by their financial relationships with the state and they are now more service organizations than political bodies capable of mobilizing their members for social justice.

But that doesn’t mean that INM can’t establish itself as an organized movement. Its legitimacy will come from its genuine connection with aboriginal communities and its growing political capacity to demand that governments listen. Before the advent of government funding aboriginal organizations had real power — indeed that is why governments funded them in the first place. The lesson of 40 years of aboriginal politics is stark: you can take government funding but you have to hand over your power to get it.

The first Metis organization of the twentieth century, L’Association des Metis d’Alberta, (founded in 1932) fought for over 10 years for a land base — and succeeded. This was despite the fact that its membership was made up of some of the most destitute people in the country. There was no funding except from the pockets of the leadership. Its vice-president, Malcolm Norris, once pawned his watch to buy gas for a trip to a meeting in a remote community. And there you have the polar opposites of aboriginal leadership — unless you can imagine Patrick Brazeau pawning his Porsche.

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When historians write the chapter on the current period of social democracy in Canada they might well conclude that the worst thing that happened to it was the 2011 election when the NDP got 103 seats it hadn’t really earned. It was such an unexpected event that the NDP could not cope with it. You could see it in the euphoria of election night – the same night that the dismantling of the country (whose best government features the party could take much credit for) would begin in earnest with a Harper majority.

The delusion set in that night and it continues to today. While the party always talked as if it would become government it was always an article of faith – not reason. The election put that article of faith on steroids and the reward for the faithful was to be allowed to believe even more strongly. That blind faith will destroy social democracy in Canada and hand Stephen Harper the additional four years he needs to dismantle the country. After transforming the country in the post-war years into a modest social democracy without ever coming to power, the NDP’s false dream of actually coming to power threatens to wipe out its legacy. If that isn’t irony I don’t know what would qualify.

The only hope of delivering a fatal blow to the Harper Conservatives is a one-time agreement between the opposition parties focused on a single policy agreement: a coalition to defeat Harper in the House and establish proportional representation. Neither the Liberals nor the NDP seem at this point to be the least bit interested. The Liberals suffer from their own delusions: returning to their ‘natural governing party’ status of the past.

But those who vote for the NDP have always assumed that this was a party that actually put the country’s interests ahead of its own. Regrettably, everything we have seen from the party under its last two leaders belies this assumption. It was Jack Layton’s NDP whose preoccupation with political advantage handed power to Harper in the first place and facilitated his majority.

Three factors make it a virtual certainty that the NDP cannot win a majority or indeed anything close to it. First, the Harper Conservatives will out-spend the opposition by nearly two to one and much of that will be attack ads demonizing the opposition leaders long before the election is even close. Second, the thirty new House of Commons seats are almost all in suburban Canada (mostly Alberta and Ontario) where the Cons do extremely well – and the NDP doesn’t. Third, the Liberals will eat into NDP support no matter who they choose as leader. This is especially true as the NDP moves further and further to the centre – legitimizing the Liberals’ policies. And as the NDP moves right more of its traditional supporters will stay home – as tens of thousands already do.

It is clear from the polls that continued efforts to demonize Harper are not going to bear much fruit. The fact is that the media – which was so easy on Preston Manning and on Harper in his early days – has actually been pretty good at exposing the outrages of the Harper government. It has almost no impact on his ability to hold on to his core support. His long list of violations of the letter and spirit of democracy, his attacks on science, his grotesque foreign policy, his attacks on unions – all of it simply reinforces the anger of the 60% who have opposed him all along.

A recent Nanos survey revealed why Harper keeps his poll numbers high and the Liberals and NDP don’t. The poll shows that it is all about capturing a high percentage of those who would at least consider voting for you: “…45 per cent of Canadians would consider voting for the Conservative Party, compared to 49 per cent who said they would consider voting Liberal and 51 per cent who might cast their ballot for the New Democrats.” If translated into actual support any of the three parties could win a majority.

But it is Harper who is way out in front on this score, capturing (at 35% support) 78% of potential supporters (he got 90% in the election). The NDP manages just 57% (60% in the election) and the Liberals less than half. As long as these numbers hold, Harper will still be prime minister after the next election.

Another poll, by Ipsos Reid, will confound those who see Harper, his policies and politics as a threat to the country. On a whole range of questions, Harper gets 40% or more approval, enough to maintain his numbers despite all the bad press he has received – and despite the conviction of his detractors that he is the spawn of Satan. Forty-four per cent of Canadians think Harper’s majority government is “working well,” 45 per cent like the way Harper is “handling his job as prime minister,” 44 per cent share Harper’s “values” on where Canada should be headed, 48 per cent think Harper’s “approach to politics” has been good for Canada, and 44 per cent think Harper’s approach to politics has been good for Parliament.

Go figure. Or rather, the NDP and Liberals should go figure.

The Nanos poll suggests that the Conservatives have almost no room for growth except in Quebec – where they are actually losing support, not gaining it. In contrast the Liberals and the NDP have plenty of room for growth in virtually all parts of the country with over 50% east of Manitoba saying they would consider voting for either party.

Who will fare better at capturing their potential supporters? The NDP’s strategy does not seem to be focused on this goal. Its recent flip-flop on corporate rights agreements (so-called free trade), its refusal to address the issue of tax cuts and the $50 billion hole in annual revenue, its fear of challenging Harper on law-and-order issues all suggest they are trying to replace the Liberals. Instead of trusting its own supporters and potential supporters by providing a vision of the country that other polling suggests a majority support, the party seems engaged in micro-managing its policies and messages. If Tom Mulcair thinks this is the way to capture a greater percentage of those who would consider voting NDP he is in for a rude awakening.

The Liberals and the NDP don’t have to grow their support much to deny Harper a majority but neither of the parties will be strong enough to grab minority status for themselves. It is a truly sickening prospect to imagine, once again, these two self-interested parties allowing a Harper minority to continue its destruction of the country because they haven’t got the integrity or the guts to put the country first.

But as it stands today that seems, incredibly, to be where we are headed. Mulcair’s recent edict that only he will talk about potential co-operation has been seen as just another way of saying it’s dead. It calls for concerted action for the rest of this year to do everything possible to convince these parties to join with the Greens to save democracy and the country. A friend recently suggested that what is needed is a Voters’ Union to press for co-operation. It’s a great idea.

The only Liberal leadership candidate who has openly campaigned on co-operation with the other opposition parties is Joyce Murray. Like others, including Fair Vote Canada and other civil society groups – and even right-wing political pundit Andrew Coyne – Murray calls for uniting progressive voters behind a single candidate in enough ridings to ensure the Conservatives’ defeat.

The Liberal leadership contest allows for non-members of the party to vote through the creation of a “supporter” category: anyone willing “to affirm support for Liberal principles.” If thousands of Canadians signed up as supporters of Murray (she is also to the left of virtually all the other candidates who fall over themselves being pro-business) she could actually win.

As for the NDP, every progressive in Canada should be collaring their NDP friends (and emailing MPs) and giving them a wake-up call: ask them if they care more about their precious party than they do about their country. If their answer is unclear tell them the party will not get another cent from you until they get on side with a co-operation strategy. The next fundraising letter you get should remain unopened until this happens. This is the year to do it. By December we need to know that the Conservatives will be headed for the dust bin in 2015.

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