Doing my part.

This comes a little late, but I feel like it’s part of “doing my part” so it will be posted anyhow.

A lot of people have posted scanned images of Stephen Harper’s letter to the former GG, Adrienne Clarkson, in 2004. This is the letter which signaled that he would be willing to work with other opposition parties, including the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois, to form an alternative government if the Liberals under Paul Martin were to be defeated in a vote of non-confidence. The betrays the Conservative Leader’s belief that when the opposition in the House (i.e. not the party who is the Loyal Opposition, but all opposing parties) constitues a majority of the seats and has approved a vote of non-confidence in the sitting government, at the very least the Loyal Opposition has a right to consultation with the Governor General so that all “options” should be considered. These “options”, of course, imply a change of government between elections, as often happens in minority parliament situations.

At any rate, the problem with posting only a scanned image of this letter is that googlebots and other search engine spiders (sorry, gillis) are prevented from reading the text in the image. The spiders (again, sorry) will only read zeroes and ones instead of the text that we can see with our eyes, which prevents the post, and effectively the Conservative Leader‘s words from being properly indexed.

So, I’m transcribing the letter, which I found in Garth Turner’s post on this issue. I don’t always agree with Turner, and I think he’s a bit of a showman, but I also think he’s a principled character and was likely a great representative to his constituents – whether his tie was blue or red.

For what it’s worth, many others have already done the same, include Maclean’s Magazine, the Libs themselves, and this other blogger.

Stephen Harper’s words, while residing in the Office of the Prime Minister, 4 Dec 2008:

And you know, let me just say this. I, you know, I have met many times with Mr. Duceppe. I have listened many times to Mr. Duceppe and his party. We have in fact responded through policy to requests that Mr. Duceppe and his party have made, but as prime minister I have never put myself in a position where I would be beholden to the Bloc Quebecois for the governing of the country. And I don’t think if everybody sits back, that any prime minister or potential prime minister in any party would want to be in that situation. I just think that it is not good for the country, I think it is very, very risky for the government in power.

Stephen Harper’s letter of 9 Sep 2004 to Adrienne Clarkson, signed with Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois and Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party:

September 9, 2004

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson,
C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D.
Governor General
Rideau Hall
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A1

Excellency,

As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister to dissolve the 38th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government’s program.

We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority.

Your attention to this matter is appreciated.

Sincerely,

Hon. Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.
Leader of the Opposition
Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada

Gilles Duceppe, M.P.
Leader of the Bloc Quebecois

Jack Layton, M.P.
Leader of the New Democratic Party

You can see for yourself how the Conservative Leader is at best skating on thin ice here. This is what rankles me the most about the entire fiasco. I don’t care what the leaders’ political stripes are nor what my political leanings are relative to them. This a matter or principles, and a matter or ethics. The Conservative Leader has consistently said one thing and then done another for well over two years now, and I’m fed up with it. I’m especially displeased how he, his party, and his caucus has repeatedly used hyperbole such as “treasonous”, “traitors” and “seditious” to describe the NDP and the Liberals, only to have to hear from the Conservative Leader’s mouth on the very day of the prorogue words to the effect of, “We’d like to work with the Opposition and are waiting for them to come to the table.” Frankly, I wouldn’t want to dine with some one who calls me a seditious bastard with the left side of his mouth and then out of his right wonders aloud why I don’t want to sup with him. And I can hardly expect any of leaders of the Opposition, be it Layton, Duceppe, Dion, or Ignatieff to want to do the same.

Stephen Harper Letter To Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, 2004

p.o.

i’m so pissed off at the state of our national affairs right now i can hardly speak.

oh wait, my representative has lost her right to speak on my behalf because the House has been SHUT DOWN. I suppose all I need to do now is find some one else who can’t speak because of this and then we’ll have a trend.

It looks like our lesson for the day (or for the fall, the winter, and likely for next spring, too) is: “Vote Conservative, or don’t vote at all.” Christ. What’s a political system without an opposition? Its a system without representation of the citizenry.

“Stand up and be counted”, my ass. If one doesn’t vote for the tories in canada, then one doesn’t count. that’s how it works around here it seems.

(in other news, all i’ve got to calm me down right now is some belle and sebastian. sorry about that, Pineapples.)

Shock and Awe No. 5

Second Battle of Ypres, 1915

Sporting Men No. 7

The Battle of Vimy Ridge, 1917

jeremy hinzman, returned

So the CBC has reported that Jeremy Hinzman is headed back to the States; the website’s “comments” feature is awash with crazies on both sides arguing nonsense like “no nation wants a deserter” or that Canada was developed on the backs of refugees so he appeals should be granted immediately. Both have their merits, but neither really dig deep into the issue.

Don’t expect me to dig deep into the issue, either. I’m just a simple guy who once met Hinzman when he was boarding with some friends here in Halifax. Hinzman is a nice enough fellow. He’s got a peaceful look in his eye that declares “polite young gentleman” to you the moment you shakes hands with him.. He was, and is, smart, articulate, and courteous. I can recall looking at him and thinking that this guy could have tea with my grandmother in the afternoon, and then shoot down my neighbour at close or long range in the evening. I was impressed, and a little disconcerted all at once. Army-types do that to me.

Anyway, the thing with the Hinzman case that gets to me is the manner in which the media, and the public, refuse to deep into the details of his story. Of course this man volunteered for an all-volunteer army. He signed up, and he was ready to do the time. The plan was to go in, do his work, and then come out ready to get a college education payed for by his service with the Forces. And if I remember correctly, he already had completed one tour before having his change of heart and asking for non-combat status. Hinzman was, and i think still is prepared to do the time in the army, if only the army would have allowed him to enter into and stay in a non-combat position.

What gets me the most though is the concept of “Volunteer” in the US Forces. The media and the public, like I said, keep going on and on about the fact that he volunteered. I don’t know if I’d call the US Forces a volunteer service though. For too many people in the rank-and-file, signing up with the forces is not so much voluntary act as it is one based on coercion, or an act taken up due to misinformation. Hinzman signed up at 18. Eighteen-year olds might have the legal authority to sign themselves over to the Forces or to vote, but I highly doubt anyone would sign their house over to their kids at 18. 18-year-olds are still incredibly immature, under-developed, and as we know with the US Forces, are all-too-often easily duped into signing up for a term or two. Recruiters chase down potential privates and corporals in the schools and at the malls, and too often people sign up thinking it’s an easy-in, easy-out way to make some cash, either to help mom and dad, or to help themselves through college. It’s not until you get to boot camp or to the desert that you realize what it means to have the shit hit the fan. And I’m sure the recruiters don’t mention things like IEDs or Stop-Loss Programmes.

Hinzman volunteered for the Forces, and deserted. But before we once more make that claim that all volunteers have signed up knowing all the benefits and disadvantages of the service, let’s think about what it means to “volunteer” for something when economic circumstances make “Option A” the only option or what it means to sign on the dotted line when the fellows holding the paperwork haven’t given you the entire document to read first.

I don’t know if Hinzman was completely duped, but I think he was misled about what the Forces could offer him, and what the Forces expected back in return. The Army doesn’t play a fair game; he found that out only a little too late. Poor dude.

City Hall, Parade Square, Halifax

The above image is scan of a photograph held by the Nova Scotia Museum; it is undated on their website.

Note the old Moir’s Chocolate plant on Argyle St to the left of City Hall, in the distance.  I once read an endearing account of downtown Halifax back when the Plant was in operation.  With only the slightest hint of nostalgia, some one noted that all of downtown smelled of chocolate on particular days of the week.  That must be better than the harbour-smell that continues to prevail on foggy mornings today.

This is a scan of a postcard that I found on a flickr website.  It seems to be a coloured reproduction of the photo.  My initial thought was to think that it is a simple tinted copy, but if you look closely you will see that some features don’t align as they should – some one has put a lot of work into “prettying up” Parade Square.  First, “Nova Scotia Museum” has been burned or erased out of the picture and replaced with “City Hall, Halifax, N.S.”.  Second, the facing of the Moir’s plant in the coloured postcard is somewhat larger than the black and white photo. Finally, the North End of Halifax as well as the harbour has been substituted for a gentle rolling hill to create perspective. The colours of the photo also seem rather “pointillist-ic”, for lack of a better term.

The flickr website dates the coloured image as “1905-1915”.   Note in both the photo and the reproduction the lack of the Soldier’s Memorial, dedicated after the First World War.

Old Maps No. 1

Map of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1894

Map of Halifax, 1894 (click to enlarge)

(Source: Archive of History Maps at UTexas; Also found on a webpage of NS miscellanea)

I particularly like this map. Note that the main street in the downtown is now listed as Barrington north of Spring Garden, but is still Campbell north of the Citadel, and Pleasant south of Spring Garden itself. Pleasant ran the course of Barrington St as we know it today, through the lands that the container terminals now sit on, and directly into Point Pleasant Park.

Dalhousie University is not marked on the map, but its streets and buildings do exists Ritchie’s Pond is still a feature, as is the old penitentiary, whose stones were later used for the facing of Saint Mary’s University’s McNally Building. Saint Mary’s Boy’s School has not yet been relocated to the south end; Robie and Inglis, for that matter do not yet intersect. In all likelihood, the Gorsebrook Golf Club was still in operation on the site.

Also note that Fort Massey United Church is still Fort Massey Presbyterian Church, and the Atlantic School of Theology is still a Presbyterian seminary.

i stole this from a hockey card

As I was channel surfing between periods or goals scored during game 7 of the Montreal-Boston playoff series on Monday I came across The Hour with your boyfriend, George Stroumboulopoulos. Amoung other things, Strombo was talking to the audience about the significance of that particular day in Canadian and in hockey history. It was April 21, the anniversary of the Leafs Stanley Cup Championship with over the Habs in 1951. There’s nothing too memorable about that particular championship (aside from the fact that it was the team’s fifth win in seven years), but there was definitely something special about the way that it was won. April Twenty-One, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty-One, you remember from your pop-music sensibilities, is that special day in Canadian hockey history when Bill Barilko of the Leafs scored a goal in overtime it undermine the Habs. Barilko would disappear that summer, and so would Maple Leaf hockey championships, until 1961, when his body was found in the bush.

Your boyfriend narrated the events to us by reciting the lyrics to The Tragically Hip’s “50 Mission Cap” to the camera. It was all very cute and endearing, not only because of the anniversary itself, but because, it being spring time, I have found myself as of late pulling out old gems from The Hip catalogue in order to commune with the sun. My pop-musical tastes generally sway toward darker, extended tracks heavy on the synth and light on the guitar. This can be explained away by my arrogance and my pretense, or by my late-teen and early-20s infatuation with ambient and downtempo beats – basically, if its got Brian Eno involved, then I’m keen on it (except for Roxy Music, of course). But when the sun starts shining, I do find myself reaching toward Summertime Festival / Arena Rock. Yay. So Strombo’s timing was incredibly… timely.. given the timing of the sun in these parts this year.

But back to Bill Barilko. I like to think that Gord Downie, in his quest to create a genuine canon of Canadian folklore (in spite of the inherent paradox involved in actively *generating* folklore) reached out to the story of Barilko and hit the mark. Barilko’s story is great for folklore not because of the hockey, not and not because of the stovepipe cup, but because he disappeared and died in a plane crash near Cochrane, Ontario, while en route to somewhere in northern Quebec on a fishing trip. Cochrane is Pretty Far North in Ontario. It’s still on Hwy 11, so its accessible and not “in the boonies”, as they say. But if you are planning on going to “the boonies”, then Cochrane is as good a place to start as any.

When I say, “the boonies”, I betray my upbringing in the comforting, and hollow confines of suburban southern ontario. I may be calling it “the boonies”, but in Downie’s world, on the Canadian Folkloric Map he was sketched out for the past twentyfive years, “the boonies” is where one locates the heart and soul of the nation. Sometimes we call it “the boonies,” but a lot of the time we call it “the north.”

Here in Nova Scotia, I notice that I don’t talk about “the north” anymore. North of me is Cape Breton, and north of that is Newfoundland. And north of Newfoundland (notwithstanding Labrador, a mainland experience of the Rock’s own particular and peculiar folklore) is the North Atlantic. “The North”, from the perspective of Southern Ontario, is where The Ends of the Earth begins. The North is not the Arctic, and its not inaccessible. And neither is it a no man’s land, because Its still part of your province. “Going Up North”, rather, is to go to the fringes of your known space, of your known lands. Going Up North is not to travel to a wasteland, or to a necessarily unknown space, but it is still to travel to a place entirely different from what you known in life thus far. In that space between there and here, that area we have declared to be ours though we do not live in it or experience it, there be monsters.

When I look at old maps of the Atlantic, maps from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I notice that “here be monsters” still can be found on the oceans. Even though the Americas had been discovered (or at least the eastern seaboard has been charted) and sailors and voyagers knew where they’re going and how to get there, that middle space between here and there was still a place to encounter the unreal, the fantastic, the wondrous or the monstrous. The Arctic and the High North (as opposed to the simple North), perhaps because it was a destination and could be marked and located on a map and therefore psychologically “controlled”, does not have monsters. There may be identifiable animals, but one will not find behemoths in the places one travels to. One find monsters only in the space one must travel through to get to where one is going.

The Arctic was still powerful and destructive, but the sublimity of its landscape created there a relationship between man and nature. We were not in control in the Arctic, but we decided to respect the Arctic for a time, so the Arctic respected us in return. Man might be subordinate to the power of nature in the Arctic, but at least man knew where the power was; with knowledge of this structure, it would only be a matter of time before these positions might reverse. Many sketch-drawings of the Sublime in nature feature the Arctic as opposed to the intermediate spaces between there are here. In spite of the power and terror of these cold, barren regions, in spite of that which makes these spaces sublime in the first place, we can moderately tame them with the stroke of a pen. No one draws the fringes and the in-between spaces, though. The fringes remain a true unknown. It is those places we instead draw and insert the fantastic, that we insert the monsters. It is in those spaces that folklore resides.

Cochrane doesn’t have the monsters I see on maps of the north Atlantic. But it is on the fringes of that unknown space that must be travelled before getting to your destination. That’s where Barilko died. Interestingly, Tom Thomson, who Downie recalls in his song “Three Pistols”, also died in these intermediate paces. Thomson disappeared in Algonquin Park while on a canoe trip of one sort or another in 1919. (I don’t know offhand is his body was ever found.) The park is a nature preserve, about a four hour drive from Toronto, or a little more than two hours from Ottawa. Algonquin isn’t nearly as isolated as Cochrane is, but it still represents the beginnings of The North to suburban Ontario. What is so interesting about Algonquin, and other large-scale parks close to urban centres in Canada, however, is that they also represent our attempts to assert sovereignty over these intermediate spaces. The Parks are named and branded and marked by various provincial and national governing bodies, lending to our maps the appearance of dominion over these lands. But what we find when we drive to them to “camp” for the night (i.e. to pretend to be able to commune with nature and the unknown) is that the park wardens and volunteers and representatives of society and the state tell us we can only hike so far and we can only go into the bush for so long before they will give up on our persons and declare us Lost. Implicit in their statements, implicit in the logos, the nature paths, the plaques, the guides and trails, is the fact that we have not tamed this intermediate space. One should stay on the trail, but one should remember that the trail is not a sanctuary from the monsters. The parks aren’t parks after all. They’re not even thrill rides. The parks are not so much santuaries from the monsters, but sanctuaries for the monsters.

Bill Barilko didn’t die on his fishing trip. Barilko died trying to get there. He died in the uncharted space between here and there. That’s why he’s great subject matter for Downie to play with. Had Barilko died on the fishing trip, his body would likely have been found quicker than it was when his plane crashed in the bush. As it stands, his body was found completely by chance, only because the unknown granted it back to us. This would not have happened, and Downie would not have a song, had Barilko got to where he was going.

I actively try not to promote the Canada=Nature trope that has lived in our culture and our psyche for so long, since Canada does not equal nature. “Canada”, rather, equals “Imagining Nature”. Canada equals Living On The Thin Line Between America and Nature. (This is a slight deviation from the Atwood School. It is slight enough for me to harp about it as if its my own yet still have to acknowledge how I’ve come to thinking about it). That’s what Downie is invoking in “50 Mission Cap”. There is hockey and hockey cards and the Leafs and the Canadiens, so it does smack of Canada like America does in a Rockwell painting. But at its heart, I think the song speaks of a non-corporate, non-commercial sense of Candianness (not “Canadiana”) in the way it flutters with the unknown spaces outside many of our doors.

Music, Winter, and Canadian culture

Enter another page of mindless data on the Interweb regarding Canadian culture (but now with embedded music at the end of the text!).

Canadians, as any Canadian will tell you, are both insecure and obsessed about the idea of a national culture or lack thereof. Answering a question such as “What does it mean to be Canadian?” will draw many different responses, from impassioned pleas for and against the concept to cynical outbursts about wasting one’s time trying to summarize an ephemeral concept. I tend to fall into line with the cynics on this subject, given the fact that “Canadians” live in a nation that is more than half of a continent in size, stretching across many different regions (be they political, linguistic, racial, economic or otherwise), but generally living within 100 km of the shared border with the United States – the dominant cultural producer in the west. (I would argue that a cultural insecurity about our proximity to the United states, as well as its cultural invasion of our nation, is an acceptable and inherent part of our shared “Canadianness” – but that’s a different subject for another time.)

The Canadian population is diffused predominantly along this ribbon from east to west, making the development and maintenance of a unique sense of “Canadianness” a bit of a pipedream. Our shared sensibilities are generally marketed to us, and are therefore weak cultural signifiers: the purchase of a Tim Horton’s double-double is not too different from a specialty drink from Starbucks; Hockey Night in Canada unites a people’s love of a game through advertisements for Ford trucks and Esso/Imperial Oil; and the CBC itself is but one of many channels of data to choose from through different media today. I have also been suspicious, if not most suspicious, of the experienced “Canadian winter” to unite a people and define its culture. Winters are indeed cold, and often full of snow, wind, and slush, but I have wondered if the three to four months of cold-climate living should not mark a nation’s self as much as the other eight to nine months of humid weather. My childhoods, for instance, were full of green Christmases, brown Januarys, and hot, hazy and humid summers. Winnipeg, meanwhile, is known as much for its cold winters as it is for awful summer black flies. The Canadian winter, full of heavy snowfalls, long nights, and toasty, warm fires is not ubiquitous, but is likely an extension of an American belief in Canada as not only the land to the north but a land that is an Arctic tundra.

Perhaps Canadian culture is marked then by the myth of winter? I will not deny that. It is completely plausible that we’ve all bought into the idea, or have at least been fooled into thinking that this is the way things are (here, too, is a subject for another day). Some recent time I have wasted on YouTube, however, has left me reconsidering the place of winter in the shared borg-like Canadian conscious. Maybe I’ve spent too much time grumbling about the lack of snow that we all long for and then complain about when the real importance of winter on the Canadian soul is its short days of filtered sun or overcast afternoons of long shadows before the even longer night falls. The winter does force Canadians to run indoors and stay there, unless they’re willing to bundle up in either wool or synthetic knits for “winter sports.” Maybe something has happened to all of us, then, by spending too much time in our parents’ rec rooms and dens, that has altered the way our synapses fire vis-à-vis other national cultures? The time spent on YouTube wondering about this was based around a flurry of Canadian music videos. Many that I watched offered long shots of grizzled Canadians in the middle of winter, bundled up against the cold, wearing touques, singing while their breath condenses in front of them. Of course, a couple music videos featuring the Canadian winter does not mean that all Canadian music videos feature the Canadian winter. But at the same time, I hardly think that there has been a cabal of record label managers, artists and musicians who have decided over the ten years ago that Canadian culture must be developed by way snow and ice and wool and faux-fur on Super-8 film. There’s something organic to this trend that shows in the way in which our musicians visually display their aural art.

Now, the evidence. Let me begin by offering to your senses Bran Van 3000‘s video for “Astounded” (2000).

This great song, on an album that didn’t get the exposure it deserves due to the folding of its label Grand Royal, offers its listeners a great sample from Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up“; it should not conjure of notions of cold winds or layered clothing. But the music video – a four-minute makeout session – encapsulates a vital part of the Canadian music and club scene – how does one dress up for the club in the middle of winter? The video conjures up the stasis of winter – piles of snow, hibernating trees, overcast skies – as a backdrop to Makeout Couple finally making it to the club. We identify with the electricity and heat of the club, as well as the couple’s great outerwear. There is a constant movement from out-of-doors to the warmth, and community, of indoors.

Broken Social Scene‘s “7/4 Shoreline” (2005) continues the dreariness of the Canadian winter. Interspersed between Leslie Feist‘s vocals are shots of the band driving down a road in the middle of winter. Scarves, touques, and coats are requisite in the car, as are the scenes of trees being passed by – trees without leaves, reaching toward a sky coloured by a palette of greys. The confinement of the car holds the scene together – the band is moving through winter, together, protected against the cold by the vehicle’s exterior, and by each other’s company. (If there is one video you should play, it is this one. Shoreline is a beautiful song.)

BSS may have taken their queue from Alanis Morissette‘s “Ironic” (1995). Say what you will about this song’s improper use of irony, and its ‘miseducation’ of an entire generation of North Americans on the term, but Morissette’s music video is required reading when it comes to “finding Canada” in pop culture. No Canadian – not even the urbanites and suburbanites – is unfamiliar with the scene of driving down a rural road in the winter, a road lined with trees and ploughed piles of snow. When you get past all the alter-Alanises singing to one another, one finds a music video where winter plays the starring role. Like BSS’s “Shoreline”, Morissette drives along a ploughed and salted road, wearing a touque and scarf, finding protection against the dreariness of the outside.

The Arcade Fire offered a more artistic notion of winter in 2005, meanwhile, with the video for “Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)”: with a frantic, animated, rendering of an urban winter scene.

The AF example does deviate from the notion of Canadian culture in music videos, I admit, but note it here nonetheless, if only to remind everyone of another song by the Band, “Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)”, which plays with snowed-in fantasies that may as well have been culled from the memories of any Canadian youth. Beginning with “And if the snow / Should Bury My Neighbourhood / . . . / I’ll dig a tunnel / From my window to yours”, “Neighbourhood #1” demands its listener to envision a world altered by the power of winter.

Following Arcade Fire in a more artistic rendition of the Canadian winter, but also completing a cycle by returning to BV3000’s scenes of Montreal, is “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by Stars (2005). Scenes of skating divide longer shots of the band members performing – singularly and individually – whilst lying down on a sheet of ice marked by an incredible crack that runs the length of the screen. Stars’ world is as frozen-over as Arcade Fire’s own Montreal is snowed-in. The band lies on the ice, nearly incapacitated; any other month and they would presumably by drowning in their sad sung words rather than living them through performance.

Of course, these few videos are not a representative sample of CanCon music videos. K-OS‘s “B-Boy Stance” (2004) (a personal favourite) and more recently, Avril Lavigne‘s “Girlfriend” (2007) both show that Canadian music videos do not demand the snow and the cold within the viewframe. Others, such the Barenaked Ladies’ cover of “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”, or even Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”, still use the climate as part of their footage. I am suggesting, ultimately, that there has been a trend in CanCon to use the winter as vital part of many Canadian music videos. I can’t say if a dichotomy exists between major labels and more “alternative” or “independent” bands (Avril Lavigne is definitely major label, and her video is different from the more indy-type bands listed above – but Kevin Brereton would likely take offense – and rightly so – to be grouped with Lavigne instead of BV3000 or Stars) – that’s a question for Strombo, Ghomeshi, or Lee to evaluate. It remains clear, however, that the cold of the winter months has been a running thread in several recent Canadian music videos, and ought to be researched further…

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You are commodified.

Casey at the Bat

Bill Casey, the 2007 Budget and the Atlantic Accord. Or maybe Bill Casey, Danny Williams and Rodney McDonald. In some circles, it may as well be Casey, Stephen Harper and McDonald, while others see it as Peter McKay, McDonald and Casey. Promises Made, Promises Kept, indeed.

When Bill Casey went to bat last week in the Canadian House of Commons and voted against his governing Conservative Party‘s budget implementation bill on second reading, he knew full well that such an action – a vote of confidence – would see him booted from caucus. He also knew, however, that the budget contained several unilateral amendments to an agreement signed between the Governments of Canada and Nova Scotia in 2005 [link to pdf of the actual document here] that would virtually eliminate any profits the province might see from future offshore oil wealth. Casey was concerned about two things – the sudden reversal of fortune for his have-not home province, and the unilateral action by the his government to tear up a signed agreement.

The brouhaha has ensued, and we’re all living in it at the moment. Casey was booted from caucus by the whip immediately after the vote; the opposition cheers him on and offers him a chair (he declines); the Government immediately smears the long-standing member as a traitor and a flip-flopper; Canadian politics heads further down the hole to complete rot.

And then the real fun began. On Saturday, June 10, 2007, the Canadian Minister of Finance wrote a letter to the Halifax Chronicle-Herald stating that side-deals of any sort (be it the 2005 agreement, the original 1985 Atlantic Accord, or the supposed negotiations going on between the Province and Ottawa for several weeks) were detrimental to the entire equalization formula and the nation’s social safety net. Premier Rodney McDonald spoke to the press on Sunday, and wrote his own letter to the editor on Monday, arguing that the Province could clearly no longer negotiate in good faith on a contract which had already been settled the previous year, and asked the remaining two Nova Scotian Conservative MPs, Gerard Keddy and Peter McKay, to vote against the budget on third reading. And finally, on Monday afternoon, The Prime Minister, having returned from the G8 Summit in Germany, finally met the cameras and responded through the press to the Premier that any such allegation of broken contracts is offensive and wrong. He concluded by daring the Premier to simply get a lawyer and see him in court.

Yes, the Prime Minister told the Premier that if he doesn’t like what he sees, then one government should simply sue the other. Promise made, Promise kept.But I digress.

Back to Casey, who went to bat for his riding, his province, and ostensibly for the remaining vestiges of decorum and principles in Canadian federal politics. One might spin that Casey’s actions created this whole mess, but it must be remembered that the Government’s budget called to unilaterally break a contract it had signed with the Province of Nova Scotia. Notwithstanding the billions of future revenues that Nova Scotia may lose (it remains to be seen if their offshore oil industry will expand, but the dollars and cents in this issue does play in Newfoundland’s court, which has been looking for a fair deal for years now), Casey’s actions highlights Prime Minister Harper’s Government’s willingness to break contracts when it sees fit. This is not the first time Prime Minister Harper has reneged on signed accords. The minority government has already pulled out of the Kyoto Agreement, which previous governments had already ratified, and have now torn up this contract, which previous governments signed. Granted, Liberal intransigence has stymied Canada’s abilities to properly work toward greenhouse gas solutions under Kyoto, but Canada’s “New Government” (which has been “new” for upwards of 18 months at the time of this printing) lost face at both the international and domestic level when its minority rump curried favour to industry and killed the agreement rather than work toward an effective solution. Likewise, the dissolution of the Atlantic Accord, an agreement which would temporarily take natural resource revenues out of the equalization formula (in a manner similar to the agreement which was signed between Ottawa and Alberta in the 20th century to give the province a chance to develop its oil industry), to curry favour to voters in seat-rich Ontario and Quebec at the expense of Atlantic Canada shows the pragmatic opportunism of the current Canadian Government. Promises made, and kept.

There was a time when new government would not reject the laws and acts developed by its political rivals in previous governments, but would work toward implementing their own platform alongside the regulations put in place. It would be impractical, and frankly ridiculous, if every new government to come to power would spend the next three years undoing the work of the previous government. Now, the Conservative Party’s numbers are tanking in the Maritimes (as expected after the Budget), but also in Quebec and are turning stale in Ontario. Prime Minister Harper’s righteous anger of governance is not helping his party in the polls – it remains to be seen if he will change course or continue to tell his MPs and Premiers to call up a good lawyer if they don’t like the way things are done anymore under “Canada’s New Government.”

Finally, check out the highly politicized 2007 Budget yourself, in .pdf (English). You may want to call up your old political science professor from university to help you cut through the bull.

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You are commodified.