Category Archives: Canada

“A second-rate socialist country”

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Rick Salutin in his column yesterday recalls that Stephen Harper as Leader of the Opposition called Canada a “second-rate socialist country.”

Canada isn’t second-rate or socialist. The comment only reveals how second-rate are Harper’s own political reflexes and how ignorant he is of Canadian political history. It also tellingly betrays his rolling-boil resentment of everything east of his imagination’s westerly orientation: when he says “second-rate,” or “socialist,” or “country” for that matter, he is obviously not thinking of Calgary or Fort McMurray.

It’s hard to believe that Harper has anything valuable to teach us about what it means to be Canadian. His government has more citations for contempt of parliament than any previous government in the last one hundred and forty-four years. This is not sitting well with older voters who have a respect for this country’s institutions that he does not share.

Frye, on the other hand, is in a position to teach Harper about conservatism and what it means in the Canadian tradition. In the Preface to The Bush Garden, for example, he observes that our “national emphasis is a conservative one, in the lower-case sense of preserving the continuity of political existence.” In this sense, Harper is not really a conservative in any meaningful way: like the Republicans, whose political operatives he hires and consults, he is a radical partisan who wishes to break our longstanding social contract of mutual support and replace it with commercial values. And, like the Republicans and others who pass themselves off as conservatives, Harper behaves as though the already advantaged can never have enough, while everybody else already has too much.  Too much, that is, of what only a genuinely conservative commitment to citizenship can provide, such as education and health care, as well as institutions intended to operate independently of a hostile political environment, such as the CRTC and the CBC — and, of course, parliament itself. When Harper attempts to rebrand the Canadian government as the “Harper government,” he exposes who he is and what he wants. He shows little desire to preserve “the continuity of political existence” beyond personal political ambitions that always display a strangely aggressive contempt for any opposition. He appears not to understand that the permanent institution of Canadian government isn’t the same thing as the temporary presence of a “Harper government,” or that they should never be confused. That — more than Michael Ignatieff’s twenty-year-old-taken-out-of-context-private-citizen’s-opinion on the design of the Canadian flag — may be the measure of whether or not he ought to be prime minister.

W.O. Mitchell

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUn57cq7Lms

Donald Sutherland reads an excerpt from Who Has Seen the Wind?, which nicely illustrates Frye’s observation below

Today is W.O. Mitchell‘s birthday (1914-1998).

From the “Conclusion to the First Edition of Literary History of Canada“:

The sense of probing into the distance, of fixing the eyes on the skyline, is something that Canadian sensibility has inherited from the voyageurs. It comes into Canadian painting a good deal, in Thomson whose focus is often furthest back in the picture, where a river or a gorge in the hills twists elusively out of sight, in Emily Carr whose vision is always, in the title of a compatriot’s book of poems, “deeper into the forest.”  Even in the Maritimes, where the feeling of linear distance is less urgent, Roberts complements the Tantramar marshes in the same way, the refrain of “miles and miles” having clearly some incantatory power for him.  It would be interesting to know how many Canadian novels associate nobility of character with a faraway look, or base their perorations on a long-range perspective.  This might only be a cliche, except that it is often found in sharply observed and distinctively written books.  Here, as a random example, is the last sentence of W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind: “The wind turns in silent frenzy upon itself, whirling into a smoking funnel, breathing up top soil and tumbleweed skeletons to carry them on its spinning way over the prairie, out and out to the far line of the sky.” (CW 12, 348)

Getting It Right

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I want to thank again well-wishers as I continue to recover from surgery. I’ve tried to maintain the daily presence of the blog during the past week because we have a readership that seems to engage it every day.

Yesterday, however, I posted a piece that, when I read it back later, betrayed my true state: lingering discomfort exacerbated by the judgment-impairing presence of analgesics. The result was a post so badly written that it is a humbling reminder that a sincere commitment to a topic is never enough.

I’ve gone back and, I hope, made it worthy of your time, but without any expectation that anyone would want to take it on again. However, I did so on the principle that it is necessary to get it right when introducing a new discussion thread, in this instance addressing the current political situation in Canada from a Frygian perspective.

The “Harper government,” as it styles itself, has ambitions that are not consistent with our long tradition of the pursuit of good government. According to the old British North America Act, good government, along with peace and order, is not just desirable, it is a matter of constitutional concern. Frye regularly observed that we have a genius for political compromise that is unique to us.  It seems to be foreign, for example, to an American political process that regards government with a suspicion that occasionally devolves into gun-toting hostility. For Canadians, government has never been something that gets in the way of national purpose, it is an instrument of it.

The importation of “American style politics” by the Harperites is therefore not just a nose-tweaking provocation of our Red Tory sensibilities, it is an affront to our deeply ingrained sense of civility that has made us the world’s laughing stock as a pleasant enough but boring people. In other words, it undermines the best we have to offer. It’s hard to argue that Frye would have regarded it as anything but a quality worth preserving.

Yesterday the Speaker of the House found the Harper government in contempt of parliament. That’s a welcome development but not much of a surprise at this point. Harper’s contempt for everything in the Canadian political tradition that does not deliver him to power has been apparent for a long time. What Frye has to say about the national character which shapes that tradition will increasingly become the focus of our attention here as the country moves toward an election.

Frye on Canada’s “separation of the head of state from the head of government” [Reposted]

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

Further to our earlier posts (here and here) about Stephen Harper rebranding the government of Canada as the “Harper government.”

Above is Stephen Harper addressing an invited audience of people he’d likely acknowledge as “real Canadians.” Note that his first declared priority is to win a majority government. Our parliamentary system functions by way of the confidence of the House of Commons, maintained by the majority of House members. Harper makes it clear that he wants a majority government not because he’d be representing the majority of Canadians (he wouldn’t even come close), but because the majority of Canadians represented by four opposition parties would be legislatively neutralized. Like George Bush, Harper behaves as though one vote more than he needs is all that is required to push through an agenda that is not representative of the will of the people.  Like Bush too, that agenda accommodates corporate interests which always have his full attention.

It’s no surprise that Harper’s version of Canada has no reference to Frye’s, which is unfortunate because Frye was an avid student of Canadian culture, history and politics in a way Harper obviously is not. In fact, whatever Harper seems to do or say turns out to be, by Frye’s standards, the opposite of what we as a nation have accomplished, as well as what we demonstrably aspire to be.

From “Canadian Culture Today”:

It has always seemed to me that that this very relaxed absorption of minorities, where there is no concerted effort at a “melting pot,” has something to do with what the Queen symbolizes, the separation of the head of state from the head of government. Because Canada was founded by two peoples, nobody could ever know what a hundred per cent Canadian was, and hence the decentralizing rhythm that is so essential to culture had room to expand.  (CW 12, 528)

Harper, on the other hand, knows with a hundred percent certainty what a “real Canadian” is and believes in, and says as much. A fully unleashed Harper majority government might therefore require not-so-real Canadians to conform to standards that aren’t a good fit for them and have no reason to be. The kind of conservative who wants government out of the way of business often tends to be the kind of conservative who also wants government intruding upon people’s private lives; government not fit to regulate commerce still ought to be free to legislate the morality of those who deviate from some lugubriously maintained norm. Harper appears to fit that mould. His outlook, in any case, is inconsistent with “the decentralizing rhythm” that Frye says is “essential” to our distinctive culture.

We don’t have to look far for evidence of this. Harper is the man who spent almost a billion dollars on security at the G20 summit in Toronto last summer. That security failed pretty spectacularly, but it nevertheless succeeded in executing the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, the vast majority of those detained being peaceful demonstrators. The amount Harper spent on failed security exceeded the combined costs of the two previous G20 summits in Pittsburgh and London by, again, almost a billion dollars. The security for those earlier summits cost only a few million each. So where did Harper’s billion dollars go? Who received payment and for what services? Why aren’t those who abused the constitutional rights of the people they improperly detained answerable for their actions? We still don’t really know and no answers seem forthcoming any time soon.

Consider how much health care, education and other benefits those billion wasted dollars might have provided, and at a time when we are relentlessly assured we cannot afford them at current rates. In order to make such an assertion a self-fulfilling prophecy, Harper intends to decrease corporate taxes funding government programs to 12%, down from 20% in 2000. The strategy on the right everywhere these days seems to be some form of this corporate tax runaround, in which corporations get a never-ending string of tax concessions, resulting in a “revenue shortfall” which leads to cuts in social spending “we can no longer afford.” All of this happens, of course, as the already very rich get considerably richer.

It is therefore also worth recalling that Harper used his office to promote a Fox-style news channel that was intended to have mandated carriage by cable service providers across the country, bringing it into the homes of millions of Canadians whether they wanted it or not. And he did so after meeting with Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch of Fox News. Or, more accurately, he did so after secretly meeting with Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch of Fox News. Harper is allowed to be a narrow ideologue if that’s what he wants to be. But as our prime minister, all of his transactions as a public servant must be transparent. Secret meetings with people like Ailes and Murdoch are not acceptable.

Given that Harper thinks of government as his to rebrand rather than as an inalienable instrument of the people, he may not even be able to conceive of his role as one of “service.” He can therefore try to rebrand the government of Canada all he likes. But it nevertheless remains our government, whatever else he calls it. As our servant, he serves only at our pleasure, and we of course are always free to dismiss him. Thanks to the kind of behavior he has displayed over the last four years, we may be doing that sooner than he expects.

Quote of the Day: “Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom”

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrNl6-j9x5w

What we don’t get here and why

“In looking at two countries as closely related as Canada and the United States, no difference is unique or exclusive: we can point to nothing in Canada that does not have a counterpart, or many counterparts south of its border.  What is different is a matter of emphasis and of degree.” Frye in “Canadian Culture Today,” (CW 12, 510)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gives Canada props for preventing Fox-style “news” from developing here because we regulate the deliberate dissemination of lies.  He points out, however, that we must be particularly vigilant with Stephen Harper on the scene.

Money quote:

Canada’s Radio Act requires that “a licenser may not broadcast….any false or misleading news.” The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper’s proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, “Sun TV News” which Canadians call “Fox News North.”

Harper, often referred to as “George W. Bush’s Mini Me,” is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.

Full story here.

Here We Go

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aiGNvhgv9s

This burnished old chestnut from a couple of years ago is back on the airwaves — because irresponsible badmouthing never needs much revision

The election hasn’t even been called yet — and may in fact be months away — but the Conservatives are already running attack ads against Michael Ignatieff: not anything related to what he says or believes or advocates, of course, just the fact that he exists and has a life and a career.  For Harperites, that’s enough to make him an enemy of the people.  And the attacks come, predictably enough, on the heels of a multi-multi-million dollar ad campaign promoting the government of Canada: your tax dollars spent to convince you that Conservatives are just cuddly centrists who probably really do love the CBC and universal health care — although evidently not as much as the sight of our armed forces kicking the ass of evil doers all around the world.  The Americans have only just rid themselves of Bush.  And here’s Harper apparently resolved to Rovify this country with resentment and what used to be called the politics of personal destruction but is now just called politics.  In the words of Rush Limbaugh: “I hope he fails.”

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCOQxVz6neQ

“The Great Canadian Flag Debate”  (From the CBC archives but not posted by the CBC, and so viewable by non-Canadians.)

Years ago The New Republic initiated a “most boring headline” competition inspired by a column with the title, “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.”  It’s still funny, except when it’s not, like when the issue is sound banking regulation and the delivery of high quality universal health care.  See, for example, Fareed Zakaria’s article in Newsweek two years ago, “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,” where he really means it.

On this date in 1965, after long and often rancorous debate, Parliament approved the design for what is now the Canadian flag.  As often happens here, we were united in our divisions and eventually came through with a unanimous choice, but only by way of fiercely partisan in-committee flanking maneuvers.  In other words, we tricked ourselves into it.  For spite.  This is what Frye otherwise calls our genius for compromise.

From “National Consciousness in Canadian Culture”:

And today, when not only Quebec but Western and Eastern Canada have strong separatist sentiments, separatism is neutralized by a feeling, affecting separatists and federalists alike, that the issue is not really important enough to go beyond the stage of symbolism.  Even symbolism has had a curiously muted life in Canada.  Older cultural nationalists, for example, warned us against the dangers of “flag-waving,” disregarding the fact that Canada at the time had no flag to wave.  (CW 12, 499)

Thomas Chandler Haliburton

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Today is Thomas C. Haliburton‘s birthday (1796-1865).

Frye in “Haliburton: Mask and Ego”:

Haliburton would never have called himself a Canadian.  He was a Nova Scotian, a Bluenose, and died two years before Confederation.  He was born and brought up in Windsor, and represented Annapolis in the legislature.  There he did good work in fighting the Family Compact, and became the friend of an every more brilliant man than himself, Joseph Howe.  It was in Howe’s paper that he began the series of sketches later know as The Clockmaker: the sayings and doings of Sam Slick of Slickville, Onion County, Connecticut.  The Sam Slick books extend from 1835 to 1860, there are eight of them, and they take in nearly everything Haliburton wrote that we still read, except for some sketches of Nova Scotia called The Old Judge.

After his first skirmishes as a Liberal, Haliburton became a judge, a judge like the one in Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches, who says he has no politics because he’s on the bench, but — and then we get a belligerent Tory speech.  To call Haliburton a Tory would be an understatement.  He fought responsible government; he fought the Durham Report, and until toward the end of his life he fought Confederation.  He didn’t want Great Britain either to give Nova Scotia self-government or run it from London; but to appoint Nova Scotians to the government.  In other words, he wanted patronage on a grand scale.  As for the kind of person who should be appointed — well, there are several hints, sometimes not very subtle hints, about one in particular who has deserved well of his country. (CW 12, 316-17)

Emily Carr

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“Haida Totems”

Today is Emily Carr‘s birthday (1871-1945).

Frye was deeply interested in painting, and as a young reviewer seemed to have little patience for sniffy art criticism.  See, for example, his 1939 Canadian Forum review, “Canadian Art in London,” which begins with an observation so dry that any hint of condescension would be immediately desiccated: “The Canadian Exhibition at the Tate Gallery was opened by a somewhat puzzled Duke of Kent, who said, according to the Times, that Canadian painting was very interesting, and that the really interesting thing about this exhibition was that it gave the English a chance to see this painting” (CW 12, 7).

Frye clearly enjoyed reviewing Canadian artists — not necessarily because he had any sort of patriotic bias, but because (knowing that all of the arts have deep roots in their native environment) he shared with them a Canadian experience that allowed him to see past the imperial prejudices of self-congratulatory more advanced tastes.

Here he is in the Christmas 1948 issue of Canadian Art, “The Pursuit of Form”:

Most painters choose a certain genre of painting, which in Canada is generally landscape, and commit themselves to the genius of that genre.  Their growth as painters is thus a growth in sensitive receptivity.  In comparing early and late work of a typical landscape painter, such as Arthur Lismer, once can see a steady increase in the power of articulating what he sees.  The early work generalizes colour and abstract form; the late work brings out every possible detail of colour contrast and formal relationship with an almost primitive intensity.  Emily Carr seems to go in the opposite direction, from the conventional to the conventionalized, from faithful detail to an equally intense abstraction.  Yet there too the same growth in receptivity has taken place, the same power to express all the pictorial reality that she sees.  (CW 12, 85)

Sir Wilfrid Laurier

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Today is the birthday of Canada’s seventh prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1841-1919).

Frye in “National Consciousness in Canadian Culture”:

The Canadian sense of the future tends to be apocalyptic: Laurier’s dictum that the twentieth century would belong to Canada was even then implying a most improbable and discontinuous future.  The past in Canada, on the other hand, is, like the past of a psychiatric patient, something of a problem to be resolved: it is rather like what the past would be in the United States if it had started with the Civil War instead of the Revolutionary War.  (CW 12, 500)

(Note that there is a brief bit of film footage of Laurier giving a speech on the campaign trail in 1911, the first moving image ever taken of a Canadian prime minister.  However, I’ve been unable to find it.  If anyone knows of a source, please let me know where it is and I’ll post it.)