NDP or Bloc?Quebec Left Debates Election Tactics

By Richard Fidler

An interesting debate over federal election tactics has developed among socialists in Québec solidaire (QS), the new left pro-sovereignty party that confines its activity to contesting Quebec, but not federal, elections. For the first time since the 1980s, the federal NDP is being considered as a valid electoral option by some, while others advocate voting for the Bloc Québécois as the best means of forestalling the re-election of the Harper government. The debate also reflects an interest among some supporters of Quebec independence in the possibility of forging new ties with progressive-minded people in English Canada.

When the October 14 election was called, QS leaders Françoise David and Amir Khadir held a news conference in which they said the challenge was to defeat the Harper government – its re-election would be a “disaster,” David said – but without indicating how opposition to Conservatives should be expressed in the election. The QS leaders focused their criticism of the Tory government on its cuts to spending on cultural activities and its moves to restrict women's right to abortion. There was no mention of Canada's war on Afghanistan, the environment or the threat to working people from the U.S. financial meltdown.

This position apparently did not sit well with many QS members. In a subsequent article, published in a number of newspapers, Khadir and David fleshed out their position, comparing Harper with George Bush, and citing among other things his opposition to Kyoto, his refusal to endorse the UN statement on aboriginal rights, and his “dragging Canadians into an interminable war in Afghanistan.” They urged progressive Quebecers to vote “for an ecologist Quebec, a Quebec of justice and equality, a Quebec in which the arts flourish and a Quebec that is open to difference.” Again, however, they did not indicate what form such a vote should take. The article did not mention the NDP.

Québec solidaire does not publish a newspaper, its website is confined to official statements, and there is no viable internal discussion bulletin either in print or on line. However, much of the subsequent debate has been published in the on-line journal Presse-toi-à-gauche (PTàG), which generally reflects views within Québec solidaire.

A “strategic vote”?

In its September 16 edition, Caroline Béliveau, in an article headlined “Vote against or vote for?” wrote: “It is strange that Québec solidaire advocates such an approach, as it simply contributes to slowing down the rise of emerging and progressive parties like the NDP and QS.” The strategy of voting against, she said, amounts to “shooting ourselves in the foot. This is what has led the Bloc to parliament, and has now led us into an impasse.” She said she would be voting for the NDP candidate in her riding.

In the same issue, Bernard Rioux, a leader of Gauche socialiste, one of the recognized “collectives” or organized tendencies in QS, argued that voting for the Bloc could result in the election of the Liberals, like the Tories a party of Big Business. Liberal governments, he said, had been the first to turn to neoliberal attacks on the welfare state, had imposed the Clarity Bill in violation of Quebec's right to national self-determination, had plunged Canada into the “criminal adventure” of the war in Afghanistan and initiated the massive increases in military spending. Furthermore, even holding the Tories to minority government status would be no victory. Liberals and Tories have voted together in Parliament on all important issues.

To vote for the Bloc, said Rioux, was to vote “for a nationalist and neoliberal alliance (PQ-Bloc) that has dominated the sovereigntist movement and led it into a complete dead end.” A vote for the NDP, he said, would “underscore the need for unity of the social movements in opposition to conservative policies.... The NDP's discourse in this election is a sustained support for social mobilization against the policies identified with the Harper regime expressed in the call for withdrawal of the troops from Afghanistan, the denunciation of fiscal injustice, the desire to advance a policy of full employment, etc. The NDP defines itself as an ally of the movements on all these questions. That is why it must be supported.”

However, this support could not be unconditional, Rioux explained. The NDP's “timid asymmetrical federalism, limited to a case by case policy, its lack of understanding of the aspirations expressed in the independentist struggle, demonstrate that the political left will have to replace this party on the federal scene in Quebec if a real political alliance against the federal state is to become possible.”

Also in that issue of PTàG, Pascale Rioux-Oliver attacked the QS leaders' support of “strategic voting.” It presents the Bloc and the Liberals as “defenders of the people, as the only serious alternative for persons on the left who seek... greater social justice,” she wrote. “This habit of voting to block the most right-wing party benefits only the ever-lasting official opposition parties which, once they find themselves in power, govern the country with the same neoliberal policies.”

The Bloc and the Liberals, in the last Parliament, had never combined, as they could have, to counter the Harper government's destructive policies, she noted. Where was this “opposition” when more and more soldiers were sent to Afghanistan; when military spending was multiplied; when the Tories blocked the anti-scab law, opened the way to further oil sands development, defied the Kyoto protocol on climate change?

A system of proportional representation – a long-standing campaign demand of Québec solidaire – would add “a little democracy” to our society, said Rioux-Oliver. “But perhaps it is time to look a little further than the end of our nose and to begin to think about the repercussions the succession of all these 'strategic votes' will have over several years.” What is needed, she said, is a party that reflects our convictions. That is “our best bet.”

The case for the Bloc

In the following edition of PTàG, dated September 23, François Cyr made the case for voting for the Bloc, “the party that in most of the 75 [Quebec] ridings, is best placed to do useful work.” Cyr is the former chair of the Union des forces progressistes, one of Québec solidaire's founding components. His argument followed on an earlier contribution he had co-authored with Pierre Beaudet of Alternatives, a federal-government funded NGO, that also defended the Bloc Québécois. Cyr wrote:

“I cannot vote for the NDP, even if the correctness of its position on the
withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan stands in courageous contrast
with the Bloc's procrastination on the issue. While its trade-union roots wither
and it stands squarely in the centre of the left, the NDP appears as the most
nationalist of the Canadian parties, as testified by the fact that its leader
was unable, despite his promises, to block the support by his parliamentary wing
to the Clarity Bill.”

Moreover, the Quebec spokesman for the NDP, Thomas Mulcair (the party's only MP from Quebec) had quite recently served in the Quebec Liberal government, after a career as a lawyer where he had helped fight Law 101, Quebec's popular language legislation, on behalf of the Anglophone lobby Alliance Quebec. “Some of our political friends, independentists in fact, will vote NDP forgetting that in its essence Canadian nationalism, the party's ideological substratum, has been forged in part in opposition to Quebec's historic demands.”

Cyr drew attention to the divisions of party allegiances within Quebec's social movements, comparing unfavourably some of the NDP's candidates – such as Mulcair and former Liberal MP Françoise Boivin, “the NDP's new rising star, recently converted to Canadian social liberalism” – with some Bloc candidates “from the social movements,” such as Luc Desnoyers of the Canadian Auto Workers or Viviane Barbeau of the Federation of Quebec Women. While some “exceptional” NDP candidates were worthy of support (“where the Bloc has no chance”), “Mr. Mulcair's team clearly controls this campaign.”

While Cyr predicated his support of the Bloc primarily on its support of Quebec sovereignty, he also saw merit in some other aspects of its program. “The Bloc, over the years has departed from its partly conservative roots, those of Lucien Bouchard, and taken fairly progressive positions, except on the intervention in Afghanistan.” The Bloc's positions on such issues as employment insurance, anti-scab legislation, French-language rights of federal employees, etc. showed that the Bloc, a coalition party, was “now strongly influenced by its progressive wing.” And it was the “only force capable of slowing down this rise of the right, both neoliberal and neoconservative.”

Is Quebec sovereignty the only difference?

In an article also published in the September 23 edition of PTàG, André Parizeau of the Parti communiste du Québec expressed much the same position as Cyr. The pro-sovereignty PCQ, which parted company with the Communist Party of Canada two years ago, is also a recognized collective in Québec solidaire. Parizeau expressed the unanimous position taken by its central committee, also published in PTàG: vote for the Bloc except in a few ridings such as Mulcair's Outremont, where the NDP could be supported.

Both the Bloc and the NDP are social-democratic, Parizeau wrote. “The only real difference of importance lies in the fact that there is one (the NDP) that consistently says it is against Quebec independence, while the other says it is for, although it tends to tail behind the PQ (which is another problem). When all is said and done, I fail to see how sovereigntists could continue to claim that the NDP would be somewhat better.” And the Bloc has more support within the unions and “popular groups” than the NDP, he added.

In fact, the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ) leadership has come out squarely behind the Bloc Québécois, while the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) urges an anti-Tory “strategic vote” for the Bloc, the NDP... or the Liberal candidate, whichever is best positioned to beat the Conservatives. The other major union federation, the CSQ, has not expressed a position on the federal election.

In a remarkable article also published in the September 23 PTàG, André Frappier put the fight against the political right in a broader context than other contributors to the debate. Frappier, a leader of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in Montréal and a prominent member of Québec solidaire, was an NDP candidate in the 2004 federal election.

Frappier urged his readers to join in building an anti-Harper demonstration being organized for October 5 in Montréal by a broad coalition of unions and women's and other grassroots organizations. “This gathering should become a high point in the election campaign, to advance our demands and publicly proclaim our rejection of conservatism and neoliberalism. The political battle must also be conducted in the streets.” He continued:

“But in the longer run we cannot disparage the need for a progressive political
alternative at the pan-Canadian level. Otherwise, we are condemned to leave the
political horizon either to the Conservatives or to the Liberals, we are
condemned in each election to fight the party in power without having any real
perspectives. This is a luxury we can no longer afford, particularly in the
context of globalization and the predominance if not interference, both
political and military, of the American government.”

Can the Quebec left reach others through the NDP?

We have built Québec solidaire, he noted, despite the ever-present pressure of the strategic vote. The anti-worker record of the PQ governments showed us how urgent it was to build a left-wing political alternative. However, he conceded, the special problem on the federal level is that the national question is also posed.

The Bloc's response to this question is the opposite of what it should be. “Instead of weaving links with progressives in English Canada, the Bloc... adopts positions much more closely aligned with U.S. policy.” The Bloc claims to defend Quebec values. “Is sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan part of those values?” He quoted the Bloc's program: “Canada will always have a role to play both in Afghanistan and within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) [NATO's Afghan command] to which it belongs. It must be available to accept another, less offensive, type of mission.” Furthermore, the Bloc supports NAFTA, Frappier noted.

The NDP, on the other hand, had some good positions on social and economic as well as international questions. It was the only party to oppose the Security and Prosperity Partnership; it had opposed NAFTA and the war in Afghanistan.

What about the NDP's position on the Quebec national question, then? Frappier drew attention to an article by English-Canadian feminist and socialist Judy Rebick after the previous federal election, when she wrote:

“In my view the election was a disaster for progressive ideas and movements in
Canada. While the Conservatives are carefully constructing a majority for the
next time, the left is deeply divided and demobilized....
“When Jack Layton announced out of the blue at the beginning of the campaign that he actually supported the Clarity Act, any chance of unity with the left in Quebec flew out the window....
“The pressure of electoral politics in the age of neoliberalism and a relentlessly right-wing media is enormous. It is difficult for a social democratic or even a socialist party to stand up to these pressures. The only way that can happen is for social movements to pressure the party from the other side.”

Frappier said he had run for the NDP in 2004 under the influence of NDP leader Jack Layton's professed readiness to oppose the Clarity Act, and that with party approval he had identified openly as a sovereigntist. Today, under electoralist pressure, the pendulum had swung the other way.

“However, the NDP currently represents the only vehicle on which we can push in order to indicate to progressives in English Canada the importance of recognition of Quebec's self-determination. That choice will be made in Quebec and we will not accept interference from Ottawa. But it will be important, when the time comes, to have supporters who will fight for respect of our position. It is a shocking idea, even for many progressives in English Canada, but it is also a shocking idea in Quebec to undertake the construction of a federal part.

“But this dynamic, allied with mobilization in the streets, can alone enable us to go further, to weave a political solidarity between trade unionists, women's groups, and community groups in English Canada and Quebec, in order to emerge from this impasse".

An important debate

This is an important debate among progressive pro-sovereignty Québécois. None of the participants questions participating in the federal election; no one calls for abstention, as most sovereigntists did until two decades ago. All are looking for a political alternative to neoliberalism and capitalism, although they differ on whether or how that alternative can be expressed at this time. They see the importance of waging the fight against the federal regime on federal terrain.

The NDP is increasingly a factor in the debate, although even those tempted to vote for it are highly critical of its positions on the Quebec issue. (They also tend to exaggerate the progressiveness of some key NDP positions.) The labour movement, as always in recent decades, is divided on electoral tactics as on political strategy in general.

This debate among Québec solidaire members and supporters is much needed. After a promising beginning, as a fusion of various political and social forces on the broad left, the party has stalled, in part because its sole focus on Quebec electoral politics has contributed to a certain parochialism and electoralism that inhibits its ability to develop a coherent program on international and class questions and a mass-action strategy to implement it.

The crisis of perspectives of the sovereignty movement, and the threat to Quebec working people from the neoliberal offensive orchestrated by the federal government, are encouraging some rethinking among Quebec socialists on the question of alliances between the left in Quebec and the Rest of Canada (ROC).

Socialists in the ROC need to take note, and respond positively to this opening. If nothing else, the NDP's inability to develop as a credible contender for federal office – in large part because of its historic opposition to Quebec's self-determination – is striking proof that the left in both nations suffers greatly from their lack of mutual solidarity and a common, coordinated political strategy by which to express it. •

Richard Fidler is a member of the Socialist Project in Ottawa.

Harper's Bunker:The State, Neoliberalism and the Election

By Bryan Evans and Greg Albo

The manner of governing of Stephen Harper's Conservative government might be characterized as a paradox with a purpose. A sharp centralization of authority over decision-making and political management in the executive branches of the state – particularly to augment policing, warmaking and market-enhancing administrative capacities – is accompanied by an equally focused policy agenda that seeks to hollow out the redistributive role of the Canadian federal state. This simultaneous centralization and decentralization is a key feature of the process of state restructuring under neoliberalism.

It is not a matter of bypassing or weakening the state in favour of markets in general, but a change in the form of the state: the executive of the state is strengthened relative to parliaments and participative bodies; state economic apparatuses facilitating the internationalization of capital and market processes to bolster capital accumulation are given policy precedence over redistributional and regulatory departments of the state; decentralization is pursued as an administrative and constitutional agenda to weaken further redistributional and regulatory policies while centralized policies for the protection of free trade, commerce and private property are adopted; and the internal processes of all levels of the state are increasingly commercialized, privatized, insulated from democratic accountability and subordinated to capitalist imperatives and agencies.

The phenomenon of 'centralized decentralization' was first observed with respect to the British experience with Thatcherism. It was observed that the power of the state was in fact becoming increasingly concentrated – 'free market, strong state for these iron times' – in particular state apparatuses closely controlled by the executive branch. This centralization of power was necessary, politically speaking, as a means to drive through an agenda to restructure the economy, defeat the trade unions, erode the welfare state and strengthen control and political usage of the coercive apparatuses of the state. The Thatcher-era Conservatives understood that state power was a necessary element to restructure the state and economy alike, as well as its relations with different aspects of civil society.

The parallel process in Canada had its origins with Brian Mulroney's Conservative government of the 1980s (although the Liberal governments of Pierre Trudeau first brought neoliberalism to Canada, and he began administrative restructuring in the last years of his regime). It gained a great deal of momentum under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, and the massive restructuring budgets of Paul Martin of the mid-1990s.

What Canadians have witnessed in the two odd years of the Harper regime in Ottawa is a variation on these themes. There is a further centralizing of power at the centre of state, and in key state economic apparatuses, as neoliberalism 'hardens' in response to the current economic crisis and the military impasse of the wars in the Middle East. As well, a new agenda for decentralization of social and redistributional policies of the federal government appears to be forming. It is in this light that some of the recent developments of the Conservative minority government need to be read as they prepared themselves for the fall federal election of October 14, and their hoped for subsequent agenda in a new Parliament.

Centralizing Power at the Summit of the Canadian State

Even by the standards of other liberal democracies, the Canadian state, burdened by the vestiges of British colonialism, is among the least democratic. The immense powers previously held by the colonial-era Governor-Generals have, over time, been transferred to the Prime Minister Office (PMO). This includes the power over appointments to the cabinet and to important non-elected positions within the state apparatus, most important through the extension of administrative and political controls over the Privy Council Office (PCO – the overseer of the bureaucracy). The result is that the prime minister and those individuals who inhabit the PMO wield immense power – Canada's elected dictatorship – over the workings of the Canadian state.

This political-institutional legacy substantially enables the centralization of power within the Harper government, as it did for prior Mulroney and Chrétien regimes. This process has had several dimensions including the building up of separate administrative and policy capacities, the formation of a few key (and most often secretive) operational committees, placement of key political personnel in the PMO and PCO, and a narrowing of persons and institutions which can influence policy direction.

In terms of the elected and appointed officials constituting the executive offices of the Canadian state in the current regime, what is most evident is the number of former 'Common Sense Revolutionaries', from the hyper-neoliberal Ontario Government of Mike Harris of the 1990s, now at the centre of the Harper government.

Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty served in prominent positions in both the Harris and the successor Ernie Eves' governments, including as minister of labour, corrections, attorney general, finance, and deputy premier. He was clearly identified with the hard right within the Common Sense Revolution and aggressively attacked Eves in the leadership battle to succeed Harris as party leader and premier as too moderate.

John Baird, the current Minister of Environment, was the social services and energy minister through the Common Sense Revolution years. There he took a hard line on young offenders and took every opportunity to boast that the rapidly dropping number of social assistance recipients was evidence of the success of the Harris government's social and economic policy. When asked where these tens of thousands of former welfare recipients were ending up he admitted not having a clue.

Tony Clement, who is responsible for the health portfolio, is another Common Sense Revolution veteran who at various times held the transportation, environment, housing, and health portfolios. Peter Van Loan, the Conservative House leader, was president of the Ontario Conservative party under Harris.

And, behind the scenes, Harper recently appointed as his chief of staff in the Prime Minister's Office, Mike Harris's former chief policy advisor and also chief of staff, Guy Giorno. This is in addition to a bevy of lesser known young Common Sense Revolutionaries who found their way into the Harper government as policy and communications specialists in various minister's offices.
Taken together, these individual conservative partisans and several of their former colleagues were all central players in Ontario's Common Sense Revolution. They left Ontario a stunningly different place than when they entered government in massively restructuring government and bolstering corporate power. A similar project is under construction in Ottawa to pursue more radical neoliberal policies, slowed mainly by the realities of minority government. Still, the Harper government is two and one-half years old and there are clear signs which look eerily like Ontario in the 1990s. And like Harris in Ontario, the Harper agenda is to embed neoliberalism and social conservatism as the fused governing philosophy in Canada whatever party is in power (something that the Harris project was quite successful in Ontario, including having it embedded in Toronto municipal government although nominally run by a social democratic Council block).

There are, of course, 'insiders' of note who have no link to Ontario's Common Sense Revolution, such as Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson and Defence Minister Peter Mackay. By virtue of their current portfolios they are responsible for policy fields of considerable importance to the Harper government as it aligns Canada to an unprecedented extent to the ambitions of American imperialism. Emerson in particular is interesting in terms of his background as Deputy Minister of Finance in the British Columbia government of Bill Vander Zalm but also as a director, prior to election to Parliament in 2003, of Macdonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA). MDA specializes in data and information processing as well as various satellite technologies which have applications to missile and other weapons systems. Moreover, MDA's American parent company, Orbital Sciences, is a major missile defence contractor.

As Industry Minister in the Liberal Paul Martin government (Emerson crossed the floor to join the Conservatives shortly after the Conservative win in 2006), Emerson lobbied for a Canadian aerospace industry strategy where he openly recognized the “potential industrial cooperation opportunities for Canada associated with Ballistic Missile Defence” (The Hill Times, November 22-28, 2004). Fast-forward to the Conservative Budget of 2008 and a line of continuity is apparent. A 'Canada First Defence Strategy' was proposed entailing a $12 billion increase in defence spending over the next 20 years and using public money to forge a “new relationship with industry,” as the budget speech referred to it.

Neoliberals and the Personnel of the Federal State

The changing nature of the Canadian state cannot be ignored in all of this. The long-standing doctrine in public administration that the state is neutral serves to mask a rather different reality. Forty years ago British political scientist, Ralph Miliband, launched a debate regarding the nature of the state wherein he argued the state is an instrument of the ruling classes. That is to say, the liberal democratic state is a capitalist state in that it is dominated by the ruling classes via the elites who control the state, and the way that departments of government are subordinated to business interests. The relations between the state and corporate interests, however, do not always take the same institutional and political forms. Today, the state and its institutions are taking new organizational and corporate forms that are organically linked to the neoliberal project. This can also be seen in the circulation of state elites under Harper.

A case in point is what is happening to the very uppermost echelons of the federal state elite. In March 2006, exactly one month after being sworn in as Prime Minister, Harper appointed Kevin Lynch to the top position in the Canadian public service. An economist by education, he had a long career in the ministries of finance and industry as well as the Bank of Canada. Within six months Lynch had removed a number of senior bureaucrats. It is purely speculative to attribute motive to the removals and ensuing promotions but alignment with the agenda of the government is always at least a part of such moves.

Lynch's predecessor as head of the public service, Alex Himelfarb, while no leftist, was a traditional public servant who saw the role of senior public servants as one of offering policy advice, even unwelcome policy advice, to the cabinet and prime minister. Himelfarb's background as a former professor of sociology and then as a public servant associated with social policy initiatives, was probably simply not a good fit in assisting the Harper government pursue its neoliberal economic agenda. Moreover, a pluralist approach to policy advice was not welcome in the Harper state.

As with the Common Sense Revolution in Ontario, the latitude for policy development narrowed substantially. The role of the broad public service – apart from the core at the executive summits in the economic or security apparatuses – has been recast as one of simply implementing the priorities of the government without regard to alternatives or warnings respecting potential downsides. It is this type of neoliberal bureaucratic restructuring that partly accounts for, on the one hand, the scandal of the meat inspection processes in Canada as it moved toward industry self-regulation, and, on the other, the autonomy and the lack of democratic accountability of any of the measures of the Bank of Canada, under the leadership of Governor Mark Carney (with his work lineages to Goldman Sachs and its derivatives trading arm), during the current global credit meltdown.

According to a well-placed Ottawa consultant, the centralization of the policy-making function in the PMO has led to the loss of several senior policy managers, especially at the assistant and deputy minister level. With less interesting and more distasteful work to do – such as the massive gutting of funding of cultural programmes in the quiet of August, many public officials, at both senior and intermediate levels, have departed. This is a crucial way that neoliberalism has consolidated across the senior levels of the Canadian state. Neoliberals have consistently been moved into key bureaucratic posts, in a sense forming themselves as 'organic intellectuals' of the neoliberalization of the state. The Harper government is continuing this process in a more thorough-going reorganization of state personnel.

Centralization of Power for Decentralization of Social and Economic Security

It is important to see the recruitment of the many political and administrative leaders of the Common Sense Revolution, and the extensive dismissal, circulation and conscription of new state personnel, to the Canadian state with a sharpening of neoliberalism in Canada. This is a strengthening the central executive and organs of the Canadian state. They are putting in place the political and administrative capacities to pursue a further fundamental decentralization of the redistributional capacities of the state. This is consistent with neoliberalism, the legacy of the Reform and Alliance Parties that Harper has sustained, the Conservative strategy for gaining political space in Québec and the agenda the Harrisites have brought to Ottawa.

The fundamental premise of the postwar 'social contract' in Canada, as elsewhere among the northern capitalist states, was establishing some minimal floor of social and economic security. The period of post-war and depression reconstruction was best captured by the 1943 Report on Social Security which would inform the next 30 years of largely federally-driven welfare state building in Canada. This redistributional bargain was built into the institutions of federalism in Canada, particularly through federal transfers but also by Federal government administrative and policy oversight.

Today, in contrast, the Harper government is proposing to build on the defunding and deconstruction which took place under the Mulroney and Chrétien governments. Together these governments brought Canadians a deepening insecurity through the effective constitutionalization of free trade and an unprecedented retreat of the federal state from the funding of social programs. Recent suggestions that the provinces may be provided more economic autonomy is a program to further constrain what is left of the Canadian social security state. As it is the social program fabric of Canada, given that the provinces are responsible for program delivery, is increasingly a hodge-podge of unequal access, quality and coverage. Greater decentralization without fiscal capacity, that is the ability to fund programs, will assuredly translate into greater inequality. No doubt, as has been the case elsewhere, devolution to subnational levels of government, whether local or provincial, sets the stage for a race to the bottom as these jurisdictions compete with each other to win investment and curry favour with capital by cutting taxes and rolling back social security.

The centralizing agenda of Harper's Conservative government, particularly as it relates to political and state personnel, has its counterpart in this decentralizing agenda with respect to social and redistributional policies. It is one of the key areas that Canadian neoliberals are keen to act further upon. This is framed in terms of the Conservative's 'strict constitutionalism' in assessing the federal division of powers in Canada: the federal government should not be involved in policy areas, such as health, education, welfare, culture, that are allocated as provincial powers in the Canadian constitution. This is the neoliberal competition state further displacing the welfare state. It is also Harper's vision for Canada, and forms the basis for the Conservative election platform.

The 2008 Federal Election

While neoliberalism in Canada, as throughout the world, is increasingly discredited, and has less and less popular appeal, it continues on inside state institutions and power structures. Economic crises and military debacles have not yet broken it. The opposition parties all reject, to varying degrees, some of the worst aspects of the Conservative government. On this basis alone, it will be worthwhile campaigning to defeat the Conservative as one of the most egregious governments Canada has had in 80 years in terms of domestic policy, and the most supine ever in having Canada fulfill its role as faithful ally of American imperialism. Yet, it cannot be ignored that the political scene in Canada is all but absent of political alternatives to neoliberalism: all of the parties have accepted the 'new realities' of Ottawa, and none is attempting to build an anti-neoliberal politics.

It is pure fantasy to suggest, as many have been doing, that a Liberal-NDP alliance (with the Greens possibly thrown into the mix) and tactical voting would serve as a means to 'reclaim' Canada against the 'neoconservatives' of Harper. The Liberals implemented the main features of neoliberalism in Canada. And social democracy around the world has accommodated neoliberalism, as has the NDP everywhere it has held power in Canada since the 1990s. Indeed, social democracy has realigned itself in terms of its organizational basis, its policies and the political alliances it forms. As a political instrument, social democratic parties such as the NDP play as much a role in disorganizing the working class as they once did in organizing it (in Canada on the basis of a quite particular and paternalistic labourist ideology).

This is a feature of the broad collapse of the Left since 1989. In Canada, it has led to political dissent taking a variety of forms: political apathy, minoritarian radical campaigns, social coalitions, efforts to forge electoral pacts, and starry-eyed efforts at reforming the NDP. This has meant that elections have come to focus – as with the current election – on the merits of voting for the NDP as the best alternative in existing circumstances. This has held the majority opinion as the NDP remains, if ever more loosely, the only 'labour' party in North America and it remains the closest of all the parties to a variety of community struggles and progressive opinion on the issues of the day. These contentions still have merit.

A smaller number have been few calling for a wider electoral front to defeat the hard right of the Harper coalition, through strategic voting where the Liberal candidate has had the best chance to defeat the Conservative. This position has proven difficult to pursue in practice given non-cooperation from the parties and being simply a call for particular voting through the media (where a wider campaign is going on to simply have the NDP and the Liberals merge, given the view that the NDP's policy stance is largely one of degree and not of kind from the Liberal Party).

The strategy, moreover, has left the wider electorate (particularly ordinary workers) more confused when the same general policies continue on with the Liberals in power. The leading organization campaigning for this strategy has been the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), and it has, no doubt, contributing to the current strategic disorientation of the CAW on both collective bargaining and political issues as its elected leadership cosied up to the Liberal Party.

The contention that the Left should take on the responsibility for the formation an electoral pact between the Liberals and the NDP, rather than campaigning for the issues and campaigns it believes in, has proven electorally fruitless and political debilitating in the past. There is no plausible reason to expect any different outcome in this election.

The features of neoliberalism that now structure the Canadian state (and that Harper's electoral agenda seeks to deepen) do not lend themselves to easy reversal through elections or through these political forms. Discussion about electoral strategy in the context of existing political forces becomes ever more formalistic. This limiting of democratic politics, and the political disorganization of working class and social movements, have been central objectives of neoliberals. That is a crucial and most painful lesson of the last two decades.

Social transformation in the 21 century is not going to occur through a singular political rupture, or a set of reforms built into an electoral alliance, or a series of spontaneous scattered revolts. This is also the case for breaking the grip of neoliberalism as a set of socio-political relations and state structures (and not just as a set of policy ideas or an ideologically extremist defence of the market). To form an alternative to neoliberalism and the form of state it has constructed, the formation of a new social bloc, campaigning for a systemic anti-neoliberal alternative and able to contest – not even necessarily conquer – political power, is required.

The Left in Canada has been much slower than elsewhere to come to terms with this new political reality. In both more radical small political currents, key unions and social movements, there are just calls for more of the same, only better or more determined than the past. This is intellectual nonsense and increasingly politically debilitating. The current federal election provides an opportunity to defeat Harper. It also allows the Left to campaign on a series of key political demands – such as getting out of Afghanistan, a public infrastructure programme to reverse carbon emissions, settlements with First Nations, rebuilding public healthcare and education, constraints over financial capital – that can also be a foundation for its own rebuilding and re-emergence as a social force. •

Bryan Evans teaches public administration at Ryerson University, Toronto.

Greg Albo teaches political economy at York University, Toronto.

Canada's Election and the Climate Crisis: Five Parties, No Solutions

By Ian Angus

For the environment, there's good news and bad news in Canada's current federal election campaign. Good news: for the first time ever, climate change is a central issue in the political debates. Bad news: despite much sound and fury, none of the major political parties is proposing effective measures for dealing with the climate change crisis. The differences between them amount to “Don't do anything” versus “Don't do much.”

When Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party took office in January 2006, they promptly cancelled existing environmental programs and planned to ignore the environment from then on. Only a massive public opinion shift led them to awkwardly don green garb in 2007 and announce a new “Turning the Corner Plan” on greenhouse gases.

There wasn't much to the plan – a detailed review by the respected Tyndall Institute concluded that greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade would be the same, and might be lower, if the Conservative plan didn't exist at all. The Tories' close alliance with the Bush administration and its drive to block any international agreement on emissions targets shows just how misleading their green rhetoric was.

Now, with a recession looming, the Conservatives are fighting this election as the “party of free enterprise, free markets and free trade” – which means returning to their previous anti-environmental positions. Harper demagogically promises to defend economic growth, while charging that the Liberals “jeopardize our economic growth with new taxes and threaten to impose new trade barriers in their Green Shift Plan.”

Harper signalled his new direction most clearly by promising a 50% reduction in federal taxes on diesel and aviation fuel. That's a $600 million fossil fuel subsidy to industries that generate 10% of Canada's greenhouse gases. If the Conservatives are re-elected, no one should be surprised if they use “economic growth” to justify backtracking even on the feeble environmental measures they introduced in the past 18 months.

The opposition

Polls show that the environment and climate change still rank very high as voter concerns, so the Tory policy shift offers an opportunity for the opposition parties to mobilize that concern in support of a strong pro-environment program. Unfortunately, none of them proposes effective measures for dealing with the crisis. The “solutions” they offer amount to little more than crossing their fingers and hoping that the problem will go away.

All four mainstream opposition parties – Liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Québécois and Greens – have embraced the currently trendy economic theory that the way to fight global warming is to “put a price on carbon.” Corporations and consumers emit greenhouse gases, the theory says, because doing so doesn't cost them anything. If government imposes a cost, companies and individuals will seek alternatives – they will try to reduce or eliminate their emissions in order to reduce their costs.

The Liberal Party is the prime defender of this approach. The cornerstone of its election program is the “Green Shift Plan,” which they say will “shift Canada's tax system away from income and towards pollution.” They promise to phase in a $40 per tonne tax on greenhouse gas emissions over four years, and to reduce corporate and personal income taxes by an equivalent amount. As a result, businesses will be “encouraged to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere,” while consumers will be motivated to insulate their homes and find other ways to make less use of fossil fuels.

The Liberals say they will begin the tax shift immediately. They also promise an emissions trading scheme for corporations, including caps on emissions – but say it “will take several years to build.”

The New Democratic Party argues, correctly, that the main effect of the Liberal tax plan will be higher prices for working people. Instead, the NDP wants to launch a cap-and-trade program quickly. They have provided few details about their program, but they have made positive statements about the Western Climate Initiative, under which several provinces and U.S. states propose to regulate emissions while allowing corporations to continue polluting by purchasing emissions credits from the government, other corporations or Third World countries.

The NDP website says its plan is “in line with” a similar scheme implemented in Europe. It is silent on the fact that the European system has produced windfall profits for energy companies while having no effect at all on emissions.

The Green Party and Bloc Québécois propose variants on the two main themes. The Greens want a cap-and-trade program for large corporations, combined with a shift from income taxes to carbon taxes for consumers. The Bloc favours cap-and-trade, organized on a province-by-province basis.

Will market solutions work?

There is much more than this to each party's program, and each party promises a different set of reforms and subsidies. But underneath those variations in style and detail, the opposition parties are united in seeking to use capitalist methods to solve a problem that is inherent in capitalism. “Putting a price on carbon” – directly through taxes or indirectly through a cap-and-trade scheme – means depending on the magic of the market to reduce emissions.

At best, that's wishful thinking.

Consumers can only make significant emissions cuts if affordable low-emission alternatives are actually available, which they are not. In practice, the main effect of pricing carbon (directly through a tax or indirectly through emissions trading and regulations) will be to increase the prices of essential products for which there are no alternatives – especially food, transportation and housing. Workers and farmers, already hit by declining real incomes, will have to tighten their belts until those magical new products arrive, if they ever do.

As for corporate polluters, it's hard to believe that anyone who follows the business news can still claim that markets and “price signals” are an efficient way to get good results. Yet such claims are still made: Hot Air, a recent book co-written by two leading Canadian economists who favour putting a price on carbon, offers a typical justification:

“Using market-based policies is the best way of accomplishing this objective, because taxes and emissions trading schemes send the same financial signals to all firms and individuals, encouraging them to seek the lowest-cost actions that lead in turn to lower overall costs for society.”

Two points need to be stressed.

First, to these economists, “lower overall costs for society” doesn't mean fewer droughts, floods and giant storms, less damage to crops, or fewer climate refugees and climate-related catastrophes. It only means lower spending by capitalists. For them, the cheapest solution is the “most efficient,” even if it increases human misery.

Second, and more important, the economists' unstated assumption is that the “lowest-cost actions” will reduce emissions. But real-world experience shows that long before they change their business methods, corporations will opt for a very different set of “lowest-cost actions,” including:

• Lobbying and economic blackmail. Whoever wins the election will be subject to intense pressure from the major emitters, demanding special treatment, arguing for delays and exemptions, and threatening layoffs and shutdowns if their interests aren't given priority. Past experience says they'll succeed in watering down legislation, if they don't block it completely.
  
  
• Cheating and lying. A recent study found that the methods used by Canadian and U.S. oil refineries to calculate greenhouse gas emissions dramatically understate what's really happening. Actual measurement at an Alberta refinery found that it released 19 times more benzene, 15 times more hydrocarbons, and nine times more methane, than it reported to Environment Canada. The oil industry's response? Rather than changing its emissions measurement procedures, it demanded that the government suppress the tables showing the dramatic difference between reported and actual emissions.
  
  The plans proposed by Canadian political parties all rely on self-reporting by the polluters, for whom lying is often the lowest-cost option. Even if they are caught, investigations, trials and appeals can win them years of delays.
  
  
• Cutting wages. The tried and tested corporate method of dealing with higher costs is to shift the burden onto workers, directly through pay cuts and longer hours, or indirectly by outsourcing work to countries where wages are lower.
  
  
• Gaming the system. Every corporation employs teams of lawyers and accountants to figure out how to get around regulations and avoid paying taxes. These scam artists are undoubtedly already working on legal ways to minimize the impact of any emissions policy – without actually reducing emissions, of course.
  
  
• Passing the costs on to consumers. If the increased costs imposed by carbon taxes or trading can't be evaded, corporations will increase prices. The only barrier to such increases is competition, and the biggest polluters have very few competitors.
  
  
• Shifting investments elsewhere. Capitalists don't just need profits – they need a rate of profit that matches or exceeds the rate they can make elsewhere. If the carbon rules cut into their profits, they will move their money elsewhere, to other industries or other countries. If that happens, just watch how fast the politicians back down!
  
  

In short, big industry will do everything in its power to block or minimize any restrictions on business-as-usual – and they will do their utmost to avoid or delay complying with laws that do get passed. Pro-capitalist economic models never take those factors into account.

But that isn't the biggest problem with the programs of the opposition parties.

Even if their programs are implemented exactly as proposed, and even if there is 100% compliance, and even if the regulations and “price signals” produce the promised results, emissions will not come down fast enough to head off dangerous climate changes.

The most aggressive “put a price on carbon” plan proposed in the influential book Hot Air will, the authors say, reduce emissions to 50% below the 2010 level, by 2050. That's far less than what's needed – but none of these programs is nearly that aggressive.

Declare a climate emergency!

The starting point for any serious effort to combat climate change must be recognition that this is an emergency. The world's leading climate scientist, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute, says that unless decisive action is taken quickly, “it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control.”

A growing number of climate scientists believe that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already passed the safe level. Modest targets such as reducing emissions to 25%-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 are not just inadequate – they are, Hansen says, “a recipe for global disaster.”

A government that really wanted to deal with climate change would declare a Climate Emergency. It would learn from the experience of World War II, when Ottawa forced through a radical transformation of the entire economy in a few months, with no lost jobs or pay cuts.

Internationally, it would campaign for a tough global climate treaty with teeth, focusing on cutting rich industrial nations' emissions and transferring clean technology to the Global South.

Regardless of what happens in international negotiations, Canada must unilaterally adopt a goal of a 60% overall emissions reduction by 2020, and a 90% reduction by 2030. Those reductions can be achieved through government measures such as these:

• Set hard, rapidly declining ceilings on emissions produced by the largest companies. Expropriate any company that doesn't comply.
• Put all power industries under public ownership and democratic control. Begin phasing out coal-fired plants immediately and stop building new ones. Invest heavily in non-fossil fuel sources such as solar, wind, tidal and geothermal.
• Stop all new development in the Tar Sands and rapidly phase out existing operations, including restoring of the land as closely as possible to its previous condition.
• Redirect all military spending and the federal budget surplus into public energy-saving projects such as expanding mass transit and retrofitting homes and office buildings. Former tar sands workers and redeployed soldiers can play key roles in this effort.
• Retool auto plants to focus on building mass transit, wind turbines and other green technologies.
• Expand and upgrade transit systems so that all urban residents can use them easily. Make all public transit free.

The climate crisis will not respond to modest goals and incremental tinkering – what's needed are emergency measures to drive current greenhouse gas emissions towards zero as rapidly as possible. Unfortunately, in this election, modest goals and incremental tinkering are the best that Canadian politicians are offering. There is no sign that any party recognizes how serious the problem actually is, let alone that emergency action is needed. •

Ian Angus is Editor of Climate and Capitalism and an Associate Editor of Socialist Voice.

The Secret Cost of the War

The Secret Cost of the War
by Blair Redlin

The so far secret total cost of the Afghan war has the potential to become a major mid-campaign issue.

After some stalling, Stephen Harper agreed last week to the release of a report on the complete monetary cost of the Afghanistan war for Canada by Parliament Budget Officer Kevin Page. The report includes an estimate of future financial costs and, according to media interviews with Page, comes to a figure that far exceeds the $8 billion the Conservatives have floated.

The report was requested by NDP M.P. Paul Dewar. Once the election was called, Page said he needed all party consent before he would agree to release the report during the campaign. All Opposition Leaders quickly wrote him to give their OK. Harper only agreed once his reluctance started to generate headlines.

Meanwhile, news broke Thursday of a huge $22 billion estimate in an imminent report by Dalhousie University security analyst David Perry. Perry’s report includes both actual costs so far and an estimate of future costs for everything from the replacement of destroyed military equipment to long term care costs for the projected 41,000 Canadian veterans of the Afghan war. Perry’s estimate does not include costs for aid. It will be published in International Journal.

The financial cost of the Afghan mess promises to increase already high levels of opposition to the war amongst Canadians. Getting Harper to come clean on a real estimate of costs should be a focus of the televised leader’s debates. NDP Leader Jack Layton can now push on the cost issue and add it to the many other reasons the Afghan mission is a mistake.

The financial cost issue may even help shift some seat results, particularly in Quebec.

The Israel you don't hear about

Dow Marmur's article quotes Amir Gissin, Israel's consul in Toronto, who this month officially launched a $1-million 'rebranding' campaign called 'Brand Israel.' Marmur's article repeats the themes of this campaign, which seeks to shift focus away from the discriminatory policies of the Israeli state (which some, including Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu and former US President Jimmy Carter have likened to apartheid) and focus instead on 'the positives'.

For those who can remember the 1980s, many will find similarities in the attempts by the South African apartheid state to portray its racist settler regime as a 'marvel' of industry, science, technology, culture, the arts and more broadly 'civilization' in Africa. Such racist messaging is now being reproduced by the Israeli foreign ministry, trying to tout similar'miracles' - implicitly sending the message that Africans in the 1980s orArabs in the early 21st century are incapable of such contributions.

Israel is increasingly criticized not because of its existence as a "Jewish state" but because of the legislated discrimination it practices against the non-Jewish indigenous Palestinian population in order to maintain such an ethnocratic state. This means refusing to recognize the basic rights of at least 5-million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, denying Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip the fundamental right to self-determination (free from military occupation) and refusing to grant Palestinian citizens of Israel equal rights in the realms of property ownership, marriage rights and citizenship law. No amount of Israeli 'spin' or 'rebranding' can detract the world's attention away from such egregious violations of fundamental Palestinian human rights.

Kole Kilibarda

PhD student, York University

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/columnists/303215

A Case Study in Canadian Hypocrisy - Canada Congo Olympics

By Yves Engler

The mainstream media’s hypocrisy during the Olympics would have been funny if it weren’t so ignorance-producing.

So many words written or spoken about human rights violations, lip-synching, suppression of Tibet, taped fireworks, Communist dictatorship, evil Chinese nationalism and yet what about context? Or what about how Canada might seem to them?

Has any media discussed Canada’s decades-long support of British imperialism in China? Opium War anyone? Dividing the country up among European powers?

How about Canadian business, missionary and diplomatic support for Japan’s brutal invasion of China in the 1930s? What about the weapons and $60 million Ottawa sent to aid Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang fighting Mao’s forces after World War II? Certainly one of the outraged Canadian columnists could have found room to mention Ottawa’s refusal to recognize the Chinese Communist government for 21 years?

For many years this refusal to recognize the new government was justified by citing Chinese “aggression” in the Korean War that left four million dead. During that war Canada sent 27,000 troops halfway across the world, partly in response to China’s revolution the previous year. China, on the other hand, only intervened after 500,000 hostile troops approached its border with northern Korea.

From historical amnesia concerning Canada-China relations through Tibet and Sudan the media’s double standard is glaring.

Does anyone believe that prior to Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics we will see a media barrage about the British Columbia land stolen from First Nations? Interviews on all the TV networks with spiritual leaders of the Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh? Does it take a graduate degree in history to see the parallels between the actions of the Chinese government in Tibet and the European settlement of Canada?

Or, how about comparing Canada’s role in the Congo to China’s role in Sudan?

A few days ago Liberal MP Irwin Cotler complained to the Montr? Gazette: “China is Sudan’s largest trading partner. It buys Sudanese oil, Sudan uses the revenue to buy Chinese arms, and the arms are then used to kill Darfuris … this complicity risks turning the Beijing Olympics in to the ‘Genocide Olympics.’”

By UN estimates, there have been 300,000 killed in Darfur since 2003, while in the Congo The International Rescue Committee estimates there have been 5.4 million killed since 1998. In the latter conflict Canadian mining companies, diplomacy and military all played a role.

Yet in what mainstream media did you see the following reported?

With the end of the Cold War and weakening of Russian influence, Washington decided it would no longer allow the French to dominate large parts of Africa. Rwanda was viewed as an important staging ground for control over central Africa’s big prize: the Congo’s mineral resources.

Ottawa, with many French-speaking individuals at its disposal, played its part in bringing the formerly Francophone-dominated Rwanda into the U.S. orbit. The Canadian government helped Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) take power in 1994 after they invaded Rwanda from neighbouring Uganda in 1990 (Kagame, who was head of intelligence for the Ugandan ruling party, was trained by the U.S. military at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas).

Taking direction from Washington, Canadian General [now Senator] Romeo Dallaire commanded the UN military force for Rwanda. According to numerous accounts, including his civilian commander on the UN mission, Jacques-Roger Boohbooh, Dallaire aided the RPF. In his book, Le Patron de Dallaire Parle, Boohbooh claims that Dallaire probably provided the RPF with military intelligence and turned a blind eye to their weapons coming in from Uganda.

Dallaire, Boohbooh concludes, “abandoned his role as head of the military to play a political role: he violated the neutrality principle of MINUAR [UN mission to Rwanda] by becoming an objective ally of one of the parties in the conflict.”

In his own book, Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire writes, “It had been amazing to see Kagame with his guard down for a couple of hours, to glimpse the passion that drove this extraordinary man.” This was published six years after Kagame unleashed a horror in the Congo.

Dallaire was not supporting the RPF on some personal whim. During the worst of the Rwandan conflict, Canadian military aircraft continued to fly into Rwanda from neighboring Uganda, the country that sponsored the RPF. Were they bringing weapons?

The book Tested Mettle notes: “A sizable contingent of JTF II [Canadian special forces] had been deployed into Africa. To provide additional ’security’ for the UN mission in Rwanda, MacLean and his team had set up an ‘advanced operational base’ in Uganda. From there they would launch long-range, covert intelligence patrols deep into Rwandan territory.”

After the Canadian-backed RPF took power they helped launch a rebel attack led by Joseph Kabila into Zaire, now the Congo. In early 1997, a few months after launching his invasion from neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda, “Kabila sent a representative to Toronto to speak to mining companies about ‘investment opportunities.’ According to Dale Grant, editor of “Defence Policy Review,” this trip “may have raised as much as $50 million to support Kabila’s march on the capital of Kinshasa.”

A number of Canadian companies signed deals with Kabila before he took power. First Quantum Minerals, with former Prime Minister Joe Clark as its Special Advisor on Africa Affairs, signed three contracts worth nearly $1 billion. With Brian Mulroney and George Bush on its board, Barrick signed a gold concession in northeast Congo with Kabila’s forces. Heritage Oil also made an agreement with Kabila over a concession in the east of the country that Kabila’s army didn’t yet control.

The Canadian military gave substantial support to Kabila’s incursion into the Congo. Ottawa organized a short-lived UN force into eastern Zaire that was opposed by that country and welcomed by Uganda, Rwanda and Kabila’s rebels. Much to the dismay of the government of Zaire, General Maurice Baril, the Canadian multinational force commander, met Laurent Desire Kabila in eastern Zaire during the guerrilla war.

The book Nous ?ons invincibles provides a harrowing account of a JTF II operation to bring Baril to meet Kabila. Their convoy came under attack and was only bailed out when U.S. Apache and Blackhawk helicopters attacked the Congolese. Some thirty Congolese were killed by a combination of helicopter and JTF2 fire.

After successfully taking control of the Congo in mid-1997 Kabila demanded his Rwandese allies leave the country. This prompted a full-scale invasion by Rwanda, which unleashed an eight-nation war. To this day, Canada provides assistance and diplomatic support to the RPF despite the millions killed in the Congo and a terrible domestic human rights record. RPF proxies continue to fight in the Congo.

Canadian companies also continue to feed the fighting, largely based upon securing the Congo’s immense natural resources. There are more than a dozen Canadian mining companies active in the Congo today. In 2004 Anvil Mining was accused of providing logistics to troops that massacred between 70 and 100.

Ten Canadian companies were implicated in a UN report titled “Report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the Congo,” published in 2002. Ottawa responded to the report by defending the Canadian companies cited for complicity in Congolese human rights violations.

Let’s hold Canada to the same standards that we set for China.

—-

Yves Engler is currently finishing a book on Canadian foreign policy tentatively titled Uncle Sam’s nephew: tales of Canadian imperialism. He is the author of two books: Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority (with Anthony Fenton) and Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical.

Crumbling Bloc?

By Peter Graefe

Watching the Bloc Quebecois over the past decade is a little like watching
a bullfight. You know that the bull is going to die, but not on what
particular charge. And, as with a bullfight, I do not relish applauding the
result. A rapid overview of the Bloc's formation and achievements provides
some context for assessing its current predicament, and the effects of its
potentially imminent demise.

The Bloc was formed at the death of the Meech Lake Accord constitutional
amendment in June 1990 by former Conservative and Liberal MPs. For these
MPs, the failure of the Meech Lake Accord signalled that Quebec's vision of
what Canada is, namely a partnership of peoples where each guards a
significant degree of decision-making autonomy, could not find space in
Canada's constitutional order. It therefore started as a loose assemblage
of centre-right nationalist politicians who were at least nominally
federalist. It was the disappointment over the closure of Canada's
constitution to Quebec nationalism that led to the strategic decision that
Quebec sovereignty was now the only way to escape the constitutional
blockage. With the former Conservative cabinet minister Lucien Bouchard as
leader, who Quebec public sector workers might also remember for his role
in the confrontations over the vicious 1982 public sector wage cuts, the
Bloc initially appeared to represent a more nationalist version of the old
Creditistes.

The class character of the Bloc nevertheless changed with the election of
Gilles Duceppe in a 1990 by-election, with a substantial influx of social
democratic MPs in the 1993 federal election, and with the clear support on
the ground by the labour movement and the broader left. In tandem with the
Parti Quebecois' strategy of building an inclusive nationalist coalition in
the run-up to the 1994 provincial election (and subsequent 1995
referendum), the Bloc defined itself as a progressive alternative to the
neoliberalism of the Chretien Liberal government. It also came to have a
much more resolutely sovereignist cast: it was no longer simply the party
of federalist nationalists dismayed with the failure of Meech, but also the
party of separatist nationalists who never harboured any illusions about
(or much interest in) a Canadian project.

In a period where the NDP had lost official party status, the Bloc became
the voice of (semi-)social democracy. The question of nationalism meant it
did not always play that role effectively, as it did not maintain a rich
dialogue with the left in the rest of the country, nor did its ideas get
much play in the English press. But it did provide a door into
Parliamentary committees for labour and social movement representatives, as
well as an organized counter-program emphasizing trade union rights and a
positive role for public services. Its main blind spot was the relationship
with the United States, where the strategy of getting closer to the States
as a means of facilitating a break with Canada led to unfortunate embrace
and celebration of the current trade agreements, as well as an ongoing
flirtation with monetary union. As an opposition party, the Bloc never had
to reconcile how its social democracy and its critique of Canadian foreign
policy fit with its embrace of the American Empire, but there were clearly
tensions in that juggling act. And given the recent record of social
democracy, it is not hard to guess how those tensions would be resolved.

With the failure of the 1995 referendum on sovereignty, the Bloc lost its
original purpose, which was to protect Quebec's interests in Ottawa leading
up to the referendum. It nevertheless successfully contested the subsequent
elections -- and while signs of its loss of appeal to voters continued to
manifest, the ability of the federal government to disappoint Quebecers,
such as through the sponsorship scandal, regularly bailed the Bloc out.
Indeed, even if this election proves largely disastrous for the Bloc, all
it might take is a scandal for it to at least partially bounce back. Yet
across this period, the Bloc changed to become more programmatically social
democratic and to emphasize the inclusionary nature of the Quebec
sovereignty project. From election to election, its more conservative and
less urban MPs slowly made their way out of the picture. But as they left,
the Bloc seemed unaware that its ideas were not resonating outside
Montreal, and were unable to come up with social democratic strategies
adapted to the unique challenges (demographic decline, deindustrialization,
job shedding) of Quebec-outside-of-Montreal.

But if the formation of the Bloc involved grafting a mass base of social
democrats and separatists onto a Parliamentary party of disappointed
federalists of the centre-right, its decomposition followed the reverse
order. A key moment here was the shift on the right outside of Quebec. As
long as the Reform party and Alliance vilified Quebec nationalism and
punished parties (like the Progressive Conservatives or the NDP) who
attempted to reach out to federalist nationalists, the electorate remained
polarized between the BQ's sovereignty and the Liberals' status quo
federalism. But once the united Conservatives decided to court Quebec
nationalists, without fear of another party playing up a reactionary
Canadian nationalism in the rest of the country, the Bloc could no longer
play on that polarization. And it was ultimately its founding core of
centre-right federalist nationalist voters who were at play. As Meech Lake
and Charlottetown receded into memory, this group was willing to once again
engage with a Canadian project, at least as long as sovereignty was not on
the immediate agenda.

In this task, the Conservatives benefited from the growing
Montreal/rest-of-Quebec cultural divide. Right-wing talk-radio hosts could
position the conservatives as more attuned with the concerns of people
compared to a Montreal cultural and political elite which could only look
at the rest of the province in condescension, when it looked at it at all.
To the Bloc's credit, it has ignored calls to pander to right-wing populism
to reclaim this electorate. To its great discredit, it has been unable to
articulate an alternative vision of regional development and cultural
representation that might break the lock of conservative political appeals.

What is left of the Bloc is a mass base of separatists, who are by and
large social democratic in orientation. It is not difficult for the largest
union central, the FTQ, to endorse the Bloc despite some notable slips such
as opposing a $10/hour minimum wage for federal employees or supporting the
softwood lumber deal. And barring a disaster, the Bloc will elect a strong
but somewhat smaller parliamentary contingent, concentrated in but not
limited to the eastern part of the Island of Montreal and surrounding
francophone suburbs. The big question for the social democratic left at
that point is what action to take to prevent the further shrinkage of the
electoral successes made under the Bloc banner.

** Perspectives **

Let there be no misunderstanding: Quebec nationalism is not disappearing.
If I liken the Bloc to the bull at the bullfight, it is because the Bloc is
the bearer of the nationalism formed in the crucible of the 1990-1995
nationalist upsurge -- a social democratic nationalism aiming at an
inclusive definition of the Quebec nation. After the loss of the
referendum, it continued to bear this project, but the base beneath it was
frittering away. As the Parti Quebecois government adapted to the ambient
neoliberalism and developed its own form of competitive austerity (the
vaunted "Quebec model"), and was then relegated to third party status by
the right-wing Liberal and Action Democratique parties, there was not much
space left for this kind of social democracy. Obliged to follow the PQ, and
with no hope of holding power to implement its program, the BQ's social
democracy became a thin symbol of Quebec's uniqueness ("a more
compassionate society than Canada") rather than an anvil for shaping an
alternative project for the Quebec nation. And as the next referendum faded
into an ever farther future, the balance of power within the Quebec
nationalist movement shifted towards more conservative expressions that
defined the nation in more exclusive terms, which contracts rather than
expands the BQ's electoral base.

We seem to be at another moment in time where the right-wing is far more
successful than those on the left in working across the national divide.
While the Conservatives re-unite the Mulroney coalition of "francophones
and francophobes", social democrats in Quebec and the rest of the country
are unable to get it together to make the most of the historically
unparalleled level of social democratic (or at least semi-social
democratic) success in federal elections in Quebec. Pierre Beaudet, writing
on the rabble.ca election blog, easily recites the historical litany of how
the left outside of Quebec has consistently chosen Canadian nationalism
over solidarity with the Quebec left. Meanwhile, the Quebec right joins
arms with Stephen Harper, whose Reform party just a decade ago ran ads
about there being too many Quebec Prime Ministers, and whose Canadian
Alliance was entirely gung-ho on the Clarity Act. The point here is not to
contest Beaudet's largely accurate claim, but instead to suggest that the
prioritization of nation over class solidarity is strategically
debilitating on both sides of the national divide.

One encouraging aspect of Harper's courting of Quebec conservative
nationalists, beyond the obvious benefit of having some limited
conversation and compromise after more than a decade of Chretien's
hard-line, is that there are no federal leaders left to play the Canadian
nationalist card to punish politicians who work with nationalists. In this
atmosphere, there is some hope that after the electoral dust settles, the
left in Quebec and in the rest of the country can take some bold and
imaginative steps in developing ways to work together. The Bloc seems
destined to waste away. The next nationalist upsurge is hard to predict. It
would be healthy for all concerned that the Bloc's contribution to
preserving and strengthening a social democratic presence in Parliament,
not be lost in the interim.

For a socialist left which aims higher than the permanently lowered
expectations of contemporary social democracy, the challenge is similar.
Slogans about Quebec's right to self-determination have been a handy way of
being friendly while continuing to do politics on separate tracks of
resolving national differences rhetorically but not at a level of trust and
comradeship that would enable joint action. As the Canadian project seems
likely to tick along for a few years yet, the socialist left needs to more
effectively work together to do effective politics within that framework.
One place to start would be to make self-determination more than a slogan
and more than something applying only to Quebecers: part of the common
struggle under capitalism is to develop people's democratic capacities to
plan and organize and decide on the future of their communities. Might
self-determination provide a framework for working together to challenge
how capitalism blunts those capacities without losing sight of the national
question?

Peter Graefe teaches political science at McMaster University.

26 Years since the Sabra and Shatila Massacres

From Palestine House:

"26 years after Sabra and Shatila, massacres, the Massacres against our people are continuing in different shapes and means.

The struggle of our people shall continue until we achieve our national goals and until the last Palestinian refugee returns to his/her home in historic Palestine. Then and only then we might forgive, but we shall never forget.

26 years ago, on September 16, 1982 the Lebanese Forces working under the command of the butcher, Ariel Sharon entered Sabra and Shatila Camps in Beirut and killed hundreds of unarmed Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

Sabra and Shatila massacre was not the first or the last massacre against the Palestinian people. It was one of a series of massacres committed by the Zionist forces.

Deir Yasin, Kofor Kasem, Qibya, Tantoura, Jenin , Hebron…….."

Hey why not?

She Ain’t No Union Maid

By Ron Jacobs

The recent selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee has revived the media’s interest in what they love to call the white working class in the United States. Her husband, write commentators across the spectrum, is a union member. He is what we like to think of when we talk about the US working class. Well, besides the fact that Mr. Palin is one-quarter Yu’pik, his union membership is another aspect of his person that makes him a non-typical member of the US working class. In fact, not only is union membership at historical lows in the US, a good number of the workers joining unions these days are not white. Neither are they in jobs that pay well like those in the Alaskan energy industry (according to his tax records Todd Palin earned close to 93,000 in 2007 from his energy industry job and other earnings as a salmon fisherman.)

Back in the 1970s, the US Left was much stronger than it is today. This was true not only in the nation’s schools, but also in its workforce. Part of the reason for this was the intentional strategy of many Left formations to seek work in the labor force and organize among the workers. Several of my friends began working in factories making everything from bricks in Maryland to auto parts in Michigan. Others took jobs as bus drivers or laborers building Washington DC’s subway system. Some became pressmen and some went into the fields to work picking fruit and vegetables. A couple even ended up in West Virginia’s coal mines. It was the efforts of these individuals and their cadres that helped foment the upsurge in militant labor activity across the US in the early to mid-1970s. Wildcats in the mines and auto plants. Militancy among the pressmen during newspaper strikes in DC and elsewhere. Communists elected to union positions on the floor and in district offices.

Behind this leftist surge into the workforce were some very intense debates regarding the nature of the US working class. There were those groups that still considered this class to be composed of white males. Subsidiary to this perception was the unspoken assumption that these men, while understanding the issues of labor, were essentially reactionary when it came to issues of race, gender and culture. The ultimate media representation of this stereotype was the US television character Archie Bunker on the popular TV show All In the Family. It’s not that this perception came out of nowhere, as unions had historically excluded blacks and others from the construction and other trades. Perhaps foremost among leftist groups that perceived the US working class in this way were the Revolutionary Unions. These affiliated regional organizations eventually whittled away dissenters and coalesced under one Revolutionary Union that evenually became the Revolutionary Communist Party (which was a different creature than the current RCP). Their perception of the working class as reactionary and culturally conservative led them to imitate what was in actuality the most reactionary part of the US working class. The wrongness of their analysis became apparent to many in the RU and elsewhere on the Left when the RU found themselves aligned with some of the most reactionary and racist elements of the movement against school busing in Boston.

Meanwhile, others on the Left saw a different trend in the US working class and focused their attention on that trend. Put simply, these leftists recognized that the US working class was changing from the enclave of white men to a workplace where people came from all parts of US society: blacks, immigrants, women and the young. Seeing this demographic change and realizing that it was probably a trend that would continue, many of these groups organized among the new workers. This naturally led to workplace divisions, but it also gave a new life to workplace organizing. Indeed, one could reasonably argue that the existence of certain unions owe their continued existence to the realization by the US Left of the 1970s that this new element of the US working class would not only respond to union organizing efforts, but would also eventually become the majority demographic in certain sectors of the labor force.

Which brings us back to the selection of Sarah Palin as the 2008 GOP VP nominee. The selection was quite obviously made with two elements of US society in mind—the socially conservative Christian fundamentalists that serve as the GOP’s voting base and the US working class. It is my contention that the latter element is a misnomer. It is not the US working class that the GOP is chasing with Palin’s nomination. It is the reactionary element of the white part of that working class. The pretense by the GOP, the media and others in US society that this element of the working class is “the working class” is not only incorrect, it is (at the least) unconsciously nativist, if not outright racist. After all, the working class is composed of a very large percentage of women, blacks, Latinos and others with non-US national origins. Many, if not most, of this part of the working class do not share Sarah Palin’s (and the Christian conservative base she represents) apparent views on the war in Iraq, women’s rights, race, and even the ultimate goodness of the US capitalist system. Instead of reminding US voters that Palin is nothing more than a right wing Republican that believes that the Iraq war is a mission from God, which is exactly what George Bush is, the media present her to the US public as a real representative of the working class. The Democrats seem to share that view. Yet, if they listened to their rank and file, the Democratic leadership would know better. Instead, they share with the media the essentially elitist view that the working class is mostly white and mostly reactionary. Consequently, they look for ways to pander to this element of the US voting public while ignoring the rest of us who work for somebody else to make a living, are not reactionary, and want nothing to do with Sarah Palin and her sidekicks John McCain and the US right wing.

Reproduced from ZNet

Israeli army open fire of Gazan fishermen and international activists

On the 1st September 2008, the first day of Ramadan, several volunteers with the Free Gaza Movement and the International Solidarity Movement accompanied a small fleet of seven fishing vessels from Gaza City port.

The fishermen exercised their right to fish in Gazan territorial waters, providing them with a livelihood and providing food for the besieged people of Gaza. The fishing fleet reached approximately nine miles offshore and began trawling along the Gazan coast, well within international limits. Usually the Israeli Navy prevents Gazan fishing vessels from accessing beyond six miles and in many cases only three miles, by attacking the boats, sometimes lethally, or by arresting the fishermen. However, this day’s fishing resulted in a highly successful catch due to the ability to access richer fishing grounds further offshore.

Two Israeli Naval gunboats approached the fleet soon after leaving port and began firing “warning shots” shortly afterwards. They were aware that internationals were on some of the boats. The Israeli Navy continued shooting multiple times at the fishing vessels, one of which was fired upon at least seven times. They also deployed explosive charges in the water and attempted to de-stabilise some of the boats by creating a strong wake. Communication was established with the Israeli Navy via VHF radio, informing them that everyone onboard were unarmed civilians and requesting that the Israeli Navy stop shooting.

The volunteers will continue to join Gazan fishing expeditions on a regular basis and will monitor Israeli aggressions towards the fishermen. Video and written documentation will be posted publicly and made available to journalists. The Israeli Navy will not be informed as to when the volunteers will join the fishermen, nor the ports they will sail from, since this is not within their jurisdiction. Also no indication will be made as to which vessels have internationals onboard.

Sky News: Israel denies excessive force in rubber bullet killings