Category Archives: Canada

Post Coming…

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…On Harperworld, a glimpse into what Stephen Harper has in mind for Canada as “an energy superpower,” as he has characterized it. The plan includes Canada moving up the scale of carbon dioxide producers; we’re currently at number 7, which is especially high considering our population makes up only .5% of the world’s population. Per capita, we are the worst of the worst. (France, which has about twice our population, doesn’t even make the top 10.)

For those who aren’t clear on this, in 2002 Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which the Harper government has simply walked away from (clearly to Alberta’s advantage, which is what all of this is really about). Our commitment under Kyoto was a modest reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. It’s not just that we aren’t even close, it’s that the Harper government’s contempt for our international treaty obligations has put us an astounding 24% above 1990 levels, and rising.

Harper’s also planning some sabre-rattling in the Arctic over gas and oil reserves. We have no reason to be showing our war face because there is already a long standing international panel negotiating the sovereign claims of a number of arctic countries, including of course the U.S., Canada, Norway and Russia. Norway and Russia, in fact, have already negotiated a settlement on disputed claims without a single shot fired in anger. But Harper wants to mix it up with troop deployments and, eventually, those shiny new jets, so that’s what we’re going to do. It’s the Russians specifically we will be baring our teeth to. So that should go well. This is completely contrary to Canada’s long history of superior diplomacy in such matters. We are not war makers. We are peace keepers. But not in Harperworld.

Finally, the only reason there is any negotiation necessary among the nations involved in these claims disputes is that global warming is reducing the Arctic’s seasonal ice, making those resources more accessible. That’s the same global warming the oil companies invest tens of millions of dollars every year to deny is even occurring. It’s a death spiral of cognitive dissonance: global warming is not occurring, but its occurrence makes available fossil fuel reserves that will in turn exacerbate global warming — which is not occurring.

Canada, by way of the Harper government, is apparently going to be a charter member of this suicide pact. And it’s doing so with the support of just 39% of the voting population, something the remaining 61% ought to keep in mind.

We will, of course, also have lots of Frye to provide perspective on our wretched history of exploiting and despoiling our wilderness whose ecosystem we hold in trust.

Canada Day

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Frye on Canadian culture and identity in relation to Great Britain and the U.S. in the “Conclusion to the First Edition of Literary History of Canada“:

The simultaneous influence of two larger nations speaking the same language has been practically beneficial to English Canada, but theoretically confusing. It is often suggested that Canada’s identity is to be found in some via media, or via mediocris, between the other two. This has the disadvantage that the British and American cultures have to be defined as extremes. Haliburton seems to have believed that the ideal for Nova Scotia would be a combination of American energy and British social structure, but such a chimera, or synthetic monster, is hard to achieve in practice. It is simpler merely to notice the alternating current in the Canadian mind, as reflected in its writing, between two moods, one romantic, traditional, and idealistic, the other shrewd, observant, and humorous. Canada in its attitude to Britain tends to be more royalist than the Queen, in the sense that it is more attracted to it as a symbol of tradition than as a fellow nation. The Canadian attitude to the United States is typically that of a smaller country to a much bigger neighbour, sharing in its material civilization but anxious to keep clear of the huge mass movements that drive a great imperial power. The United States, being founded on a revolution and a written constitution, has introduced a deductive or a priori pattern into its cultural life that tends to define an American way of life and mark it off from anti-American heresies. Canada, having a seat on the sidelines of the American Revolution, adheres more to the inductive and expedient. The Canadian genius for compromise is reflected in the existence of Canada itself. (CW 12, 344-5)

Video of the Day/Quote of the Day: “Disastrous for this country and my generation”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFOys8Fqgno

Brigette DePape interviewed by Evan Solomon, who does not question DePape so much as interrupt her to lecture her

“Harper’s agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation. We have to stop him from wasting billions on fighter jets, military bases, and corporate tax cuts while cutting social programs and destroying the climate. Most people in this country know what we need are green jobs, better medicare, and a healthy environment for future generations.” — Brigette DePape in her press release yesterday

WWJD: What Would Jesus Defund?

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Further to our previous post: It is difficult even to imagine that the Prince of Peace, who exalted the least among us, would defund any of the organizations below. The Conservatives, on the other hand — led by a man who is a declared Christian and has said that there is room for religion in Canadian politics — defunded all of them. (List compiled by rabble.ca)

Despite our budgetary woes, however, we can still afford jets, jails and corporate tax cuts. Just like the Sermon on the Mount teaches us.

Unofficial tentative list of organizations whose funding has been cut or ended by the Harper government, including government agencies that supported civil society groups.

Community organizations, NGOs and research bodies reported to have been cut or defunded[1]

  • Action travail des femmes
  • Afghan Association of Ontario, Canada Toronto
  • Alberta Network of Immigrant Women
  • Alternatives (Quebec)
  • Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale (AFEAS)
  • Bloor Information and Life Skills Centre[2]
  • Brampton Neighbourhood Services (Ontario) [3]
  • Canadian Arab Federation
  • Canadian Child Care Federation
  • Canadian Council for International Cooperation
  • Canadian Council on Learning
  • Canadian Council on Social Development
  • Canadian Heritage Centre for Research and Information on Canada
  • Canadian International Development Agency, Office of Democratic Governance[4]
  • Canadian Labour Business Centre
  • Canada Policy Research Networks
  • Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
  • Canada School of Public Service
  • Canadian Teachers’ Federation International porgram
  • Canadian Volunteerism Initiative
  • Centre de documentation sur l’éducation des adultes et la condition feminine
  • Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA.)
  • Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples (Toronto
  • Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada
  • Childcare Resource and Research Unit, Specialink
  • Climate Action Network
  • Community Access Program, internet access for communities at libraries, post offices, community centers
  • Community Action Resource Centre (CARC)
  • Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail (CIAFT)
  • Court Challenges Program (except language rights cases and legacy cases)
  • Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre Toronto: (Funding cut by CIC in December 2010).
  • Democracy Council[5]
  • Department of Foreign Affairs, Democracy Unit[6]
  • Elspeth Heyworth Centre for Women Toronto: (Funding cut by CIC in December 2010).
  • Environment: Youth International Internship Program
  • Eritrean Canadian Community Centre of Metropolitan Toronto (Funding cut by CIC in December 2010)
  • Feminists for Just and Equitable Public Policy (FemJEPP) in Nova Scotia
  • First Nations Child and Family Caring Society
  • First Nations and Inuit Tobacco Control Program
  • Forum of Federations
  • Global Environmental Monitoring System
  • HRD Adult Learning and Literacy programs
  • HRD Youth Employment Programs
  • Hamilton’s Settlement and Integration Services Organization (Ontario) [7]
  • Immigrant settlement programs
  • Inter-Cultural Neighbourhood Social Services (Peel)[8]
  • International Planned Parenthood Federation
  • Kairos[9]
  • Law Reform Commission of Canada
  • Mada Al-Carmel Arab Centre
  • Marie Stopes International, a maternal health agency – has received only a promise of “conditional funding IF it avoids any & all connection with abortion.
  • MATCH International
  • National association of Women and the Law (NAWL)
  • Native Women’s Association of Canada
  • New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity
  • Northwood Neighbourhood Services (Toronto: (Funding cut by CIC in December 2010).
  • Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH)
  • Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Housing (OAITH)
  • Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care
  • Pride Toronto
  • Réseau des Tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec
  • Riverdale Women’s Centre in Toronto
  • Sierra Club of BC
  • Sisters in Spirit
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • South Asian Women’s Centre[10]
  • Status of Women (mandate also changed to exclude “gender equality and political justice” and to ban all advocacy, policy research and lobbying
  • Tropicana Community Services
  • Womanspace Resource Centre (Lethbridge, Alberta)
  • Women’s Innovative Justice Initiative – Nova Scotia
  • Workplace Equity/Employment Equity Program
  • York-Weston Community Services Centre Toronto

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Frye on Democracy and Religion: “An open mythology has no canon”

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Continuing with Frye on religion and democracy, here he is in The Modern Century:

[D]emocracy can hardly function with a closed myth, and books of the type I have mentioned as contributions to our mythology, however illuminating and helpful, cannot, in a free society, be given any authority beyond what they earn by their own merits. That is, an open mythology has no canon. Similarly, there can be no general elite in a democratic society: in a democracy everybody belongs to some kind of elite, which derives from the social function a particular knowledge or skill that no other group has.

The earlier closed mythology of the Western world was a religion, and the emergence of an open mythology has brought about a cultural crisis which is at bottom a religious crisis. Traditionally, there are two elements in religion, considered as such apart from a definite faith. One is the primitive element of religio, the collection of duties, rituals, and observances which are binding on all members of a community. In this sense Marxism and the American way of life are religions. The other is the sense of a transcendence of the ordinary categories of human experience, a transcendence normally expressed by the words “infinite” and “eternal.” As a structure of belief, religion is generally weakened; it has no secular power to back it up, and its mandates affect far fewer people, and those far less completely, than a century ago. What is significant is not so much the losing of faith as the losing of guilt feelings about losing it. Religion tends increasingly to make its primary impact, not as a system of taught and learned belief, but as an imaginary structure which, whether “true” or not, has imaginative consistency and imaginative informing power. In other words, it makes its essential appeal as myth or possible truth, and whatever belief it attracts follows from that. (CW 11, 67)

This is not what we’re seeing from the highly politicized religious right: it tends to be aggressive and exclusionary, and the agenda seems largely driven by intolerance of secular values as well as resentment of the freedoms they promiscuously provide irrespective of belief, gender or sexual preference. Issues relating to these areas, at any rate, always seem to be top-of-the-list targets. Want to make a religious conservative group resolutely committed to political action? Just raise the issue of gay marriage or the rights of women over their own bodies. It never misses.

I will be posting a list of agencies and organizations that have already been defunded by the Conservatives. Those no longer worthy of government assistance unmistakably have the “wrong” set of priorities: women’s organizations, agencies offering various kinds of assistance to the poor, including immigrants and children, and organizations promoting gay rights, among a number of others with a recognizable progressive mandate. It is a persistent pattern of behavior.

“The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada”

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Marci McDonald has started a blog based upon the book she published last year, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, which is in turn based upon her earlier article in The Walrus, “Stephen Harper and the Theo-Cons.” The article is a concise review of the American-inspired and Alberta-based republican nationalism that most Canadians do not seem to know anything about. It will no doubt surprise many how deeply embedded this movement is in the Conservative party, and that it seems to be achieving increased access to the institutions of government. It has, at the very least, ready access to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Religion is of course a private matter. But when it begins to impinge upon the public sphere, particularly in government, then it must be scrutinized and made accountable.

Over the next little while we’ll be rolling out a number of passages from Frye in which he discusses the necessary subordination of religion to secular interests in a democracy.

A thorough-going review of McDonald’s book here.

An interview with McDonald on TVO’s The Agenda here.

Rupture (Reposted)

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqgmoLpzw4E

Bill Maher’s Armageddon weather forecast

It’s 6.30 and we’re still here. But then so probably is our pro-family values (i.e. anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion), pro-corporate and anti-NGO evangelical prime minister. But as long as we are all here and in it together, we should pay close attention to any overlap between public policy and the fundamentalist religious beliefs of Stephen Harper and those who advise him.

For example, the proposed “Office of Religious Freedom” doesn’t sound like it’s about “freedom” at all, but about imposing particular religious values upon our foreign affairs and commitments, where they have no place. Harper and his supporters in the evangelical community can believe to whatever degree they wish that Armageddon is coming and that Canada has a specific role to play. That’s their business. But they can’t make it a problem for the vast majority of Canadians who do not share it.

Update: Article 11 of the “Statement of Faith” of the Christian and Missionary Alliance based in Colorodo reads:

The second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is imminent(32) and will be personal, visible, and premillennial.(33) This is the believer’s blessed hope and is a vital truth which is an incentive to holy living and faithful service.(34)

Articles 10 and 11 of “The Statement of Faith” of the Canadian CMA, of which Harper is a member, read:

10. There shall be a bodily resurrection of the just and of the unjust; for the former, a resurrection unto life;22 for the latter, a resurrection unto judgment.23

11. The second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is imminent and will be personal and visible.24 As the believer’s blessed hope, this vital truth is an incentive for holy living and sacrificial service toward the completion of Christ’s commission.25″

There appears to be a deep-seated premillennarian disposition in CMA theology which is not explicitly present in the Canadian branch of the church, but the shared theological base seems otherwise consistent. particularly with regard to the resurrection to “life” of the “just” and a resurrection to “judgment” of the “unjust.”

Furthermore, Marci McDonald’s reporting suggests that there are elements of a growing premillennarian faction in Canada, apparently encouraged by increasing American influence and the use by the PMO of American religious advisers. In any event, the shared doctrine that the second coming is “imminent, personal and visible” seems to indicate an exclusionary fundamentalism. That in turn appears to be consistent with openly proclaimed intolerance for secularly evolved priorities defined by generations of popular will and expressed by many decades of government initiatives and legislation. The hostility to women’s rights, gay rights, and rights in general has to be coming from somewhere, and its sources do not seem to be just a difference of political opinion.

We’ll be returning to the efforts pursued so far by the Conservatives to turn back these secular advances, as well as their continued efforts to do so on other fronts: such as the law and order bill promised within the next 100 days that will reportedly compel Internet Service Providers to provide the police with increased power to conduct internet surveillance of citizens without warrants.

Group of Seven

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Fred Varley, “Stormy Weather, Georgian Bay”

The Art Gallery of Ontario opened its first exhibition featuring the Group of Seven on this date in 1920.

From “Canadian Scene: Explorers and Observers”:

[T]he primary rhythm of Canadian painting has been a forward-thrusting rhythm, a drive which has its origin in Europe, and is therefore conservative and romantic in feeling, strongly attached to the British connection but “federal” in its attitude to Canada, much possessed by the vision of the national motto, a mari usque ad mare. It starts with the documentary painters who, like Paul Kane, have provided such lively and varied glimpses of so many vanished aspects of the country, especially of Indian life. A second wave began with Tom Thomson, continued through the Group of Seven, and has a British Columbia counterpart in Emily Carr. (The romantic side of the movement is reflected in the name “Group of Seven” itself: there were never really more than six, in fact there were effectively only five, but seven is a sacred number, and the group had a strong theosophical bent.) One notices in these paintings how the perspective is so frequently a twisting and scanning perspective, a canoeman’s eye peering around the corner to see what comes next. Thomson in particular uses the conventions of art nouveau to throw up in front of the canvas a fringe of foreground which is rather blurred, because the eye is meant to look past it. It is a perspective that reminds us how much Canada developed as a passage or gateway to somewhere else, being merely an obstruction in itself. Further, a new world is being discovered. There is an immense difference in feeling between north and south Canada, but as north Canada is practically uninhabited, it exists in Canadian painting only through southern eyes. In those eyes it is a “solemn land” as frightening and fantastic as the moon. (CW 12, 423)

Quote of the Day 2

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Further to Bob’s earlier Frye quote, here’s Rick Salutin in today’s Toronto Star:

We now live in a permanent state you could call the tyranny of the minority. You could also call it the tragedy of the majority. We’ll have had 10 years of a government desired by 40 per cent of the voters, while 60 per cent, who largely agree on what they’d like, will get zero representation. Everyone played by the rules of the game, but it’s a stretch to call that game democracy.