The Sixth Estate

After the election, I speculated that the Harper regime would introduce either no Senate elections or rigged Senate elections. I’m sad to say I was right, and that it appears it will be the latter: the provinces will be allowed to hold elections as they please, and the Prime Minister will then have the option — not the obligation — to appoint people who win the provincial elections.

Unfortunately, this pathetic attempt to sidestep necessary Constitutional reform is going to simply move us one more step along what the late Jim Travers called our road toward an Arctic banana republic. I realize Constitutional reform is difficult to the point of impossible — the usual explanation for why it’s impossible. But the idea that we can move ahead with these elections anyways is fundamentally wrongheaded and will turn our democracy into a joke. Here are four questions that have to be answered before Senate reform should be allowed to proceed. The Harper regime has failed to provide an answer to even one of these questions.

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First of all, if you’re not aware of the current WikiLeaks revelations about Alberta’s electricity schemes, you can catch up by reading blogger David Climenhaga and alternative media The Tyee. I won’t go back over old ground, except to summarize: the Albertan government offered to build massive infrastructure to transfer excess electricity from the tarsands south to America on the cheap, to bypass the usual public consultations process so that the people would not realize they were being ripped off, and have the new lines run by a subsidiary of SNC Lavalin, Mohamed Gadhafi’s prison-building friends in Montreal.

Now, Climenhaga and The Tyee have already hit on the main theme of a government yet again irresponsibly betraying the democratic public interest for the benefit of their rich corporate friends, but there’s an angle here they’re missing. I’ve been thinking about writing on this for a while, as a warning, and unfortunately it seems that my assessment has been — as folks in the intelligence industry say — “OBE”: Overtaken by Events. Here’s the real lesson, just in case we hadn’t already learned it: there is no such thing as an energy superpower. You’ve probably heard this term before; it’s a major centrepiece of Canadian international and environmental policy these days. Forget it, folks. It doesn’t exist. Because here’s the thing:

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As you’ve no doubt read by now, the Harper regime has now fallen one short of Brian Mulroney in the race for the largest Cabinet ever. This has created the predictable wave of complaints about out-of-control Parliamentary patronage. Slipping by unnoticed was the continuing decline in Harper’s commitment to a promise he made back in 2006: that there would only be ministers with genuine departments, not trivial “ministers of state” and such, because everyone in Cabinet deserved to be equal. Everyone  from left to right seems disappointed by the bloated size of the Cabinet in Harper’s new government.

However, I’d like to go in a slightly different direction by asking a couple of deeper questions that the media is either unable or unwilling to. First, what is a proper Cabinet size for Canada? Second, what exactly do we want from Cabinet ministers, anyways? Our system works on the fiction that a couple of dozen people can run the country, and that one person alone (the Prime Minister) can make an informed decision on every important issue. This is obviously senseless. Back in 1997, Stephen Harper wrote an important essay saying that prime ministers should share power and that it was “anachronistic” to run a government like “a military regiment under a single commander with almost total power.” Now that he has total power himself, apparently he feels differently.

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I’ve been thinking lately about the Fermi Paradox: the observation that if the conditions which gave rise to life on Earth are not unique (and there is no reason to suppose they are), then the galaxy should be rife with intelligent species, to the point that we probably ought to have seen evidence of one or more of them already. And that, as we have not done so, there must be some filter which limits the number of intelligent species. I suspect we are coming to an understanding of what that is. Given a probable prediction of a dismal future, we have two choices: accept that the science is probably true, and undertake reforms which may hurt in the short term but are completely reversible in the long term; or hope that the science is definitely wrong, enjoy our comforts in the short term, and take the risk that the consequences are completely irreversible in the long term. And we’re choosing Option B. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, one wonders whether intelligent life exists anywhere.

What marks us apart from all the vague analogies, like Easter Island, is that for the first time in human history our knowledge of the natural world has progressed to the point that we actually know more or less what our fate will be. Contrary to popular imagination, indigenous environmental knowledge, while tremendously sophisticated, has never possessed that level of rational systemic understanding. Ironically, understanding how to prevent one’s fate and having the means to do so apparently is not sufficient grounds for survival. So much for the Fermi Paradox.

Here in Canada, I would happily concede any other policy front if the Harper Government™ indicated it intended to take the responsible course on climate change. I would happily trade away Canadian sovereignty, or universal healthcare, the rule of law, freedom of the press, and the supremacy of Parliament. All of those things can be reconstructed. It would be a hard choice, and unfortunately it is not one I will have to make. But as a first step, Harper could replace the current odious environment minister, Peter Kent, who I have been told regards juvenile idiot Ezra Levant’s screed Ethical Oil as a serious work of environmental scholarship.

There were a considerable number of people in the progressive blogs, people I respect like Dammit Janet, who counselled strategic voting over the past month. I did not. Many of them are understandably upset at the results. Many of them are blaming people like me, who said to go ahead and vote your conscience and damn the consequences. And I’m going to defend my choice here, but my main focus is on how to move ahead. Move ahead together, I mean. We need each other now more than ever.

But the main thing is to figure out where to go from here.

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Quick: If the Harper Government™ loses this election, what will it be remembered for? I don’t mean this in a partisan way. Here’s another question: what is the singular most important achievement that we remember the Chretien government for? Any answers?

The current election isn’t the first time in Canadian politics that we have been mostly bereft of big ideas, where not just the daily grind of Parliament Hill but the collective sum of Canadian political culture seems preoccupied with minor and uninteresting questions like tweaks to corporate tax rates and the propriety of inter-party Parliamentary cooperation. But we are in a period where our nation is simultaneously far wealthier, more resourceful, and therefore more capable of reaching forward than ever before, yet is stunningly bereft of any vision of where we might reach to. For the moment, I like to think of some of the more important areas where vision is sadly lacking as the missing planks of the election campaign.

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