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Listening the radio, I heard this interview and appreciated the revisiting of colourful part of Canadian political history. Thankfully the Current on CBC radio one now fully transcribes their episodes, so I can share the highlights of the interview here.
“AMT: Remind us, what did the Liberal sponsorship scandal involve?
DANIEL LEBLANC: Well, it was kind of—officially, it was national unity program to increase the visibility of Canadian symbols, Canadian signs in Quebec. And let’s remember, this is after the 1995 referendum which was a squeaker, the “no” side won by about 50,000 votes. And Jean Chrétien, the prime minister of the day wanted to make Canada relevant to Quebecers. It was a very simple idea to put up flags and you know there was hot air balloons in the form, in the shape of maple leaf for example, and a bunch of cultural events and sporting events were sponsored by this program in exchange for putting up Canada banners at their event sites. But ultimately, it became embroiled in scandal. There was the advertising firms that were the intermediaries between the government and the events, some of them kickbacked money to the Liberal Party. There were some fraud and some of the events as well were quite close to the Liberal Party of the day. So it became known as a slush fund scandal and you know it kind of became bigger and bigger as time wore on. And you know it led ultimately to the Gomery inquiry in 2004, 2005, which created massive problems for the Liberal Party, especially in Quebec where they lost most of their seats after, during the 2004 election. So it’s kind of a scandal that was about you know more than a decade ago, but it did have a huge impact on Canadian politics of the day.
[…]
CHANTAL HÉBERT: Canadians or Quebecers, I think, would take from that sentence the word past rather than the wrestling of chains because so much happened to the Liberal Party over the post-sponsorship decade that Justin Trudeau’s party—in Quebec in particular—certainly bears little resemblance to the party that Jean Chrétien or even Paul Martin led in so many ways. You know when I think about—in hindsight, because now that all these years have gone by—the sponsorship scandal probably was over time a good thing for the Liberal Party. It forced it to renew itself at the time when it desperately needed to do so. Think of it like a brush fire, a really bad one and what grows after the fire is extinguished. That’s literally what just happened to the Liberal party in Quebec and possibly Justin Trudeau’s victory in Quebec—he did win the majority of the seats—would not have happened if the Liberal Party had just gone on and on, on the path that it was set when Jean Chrétien retired.
AMT: Well, tell me a little bit more about that, Chantal. What happened to the Liberal Party insiders in Quebec who then were caught up in this scandal? How did they—what happened after the brush fire?
CHANTAL HÉBERT: Okay. So let’s first go back to that time when Jean Chrétien leaves and Paul Martin comes. The sponsorship has not yet hit the party in the way that it will hit. And at that point, on this week before the sponsorship report from the auditor general comes out, the polls show the Liberals in Quebec at 55 per cent under Paul Martin and the Liberals have been riding very high on Quebec at the tail end of the [unintelligible] era, on the basis of Chrétien’s last decisions and particularly the decision not to sign up for the war in Iraq. But the internal workings of the party were already broken. This is a party that been ongoing a civil war between two factions: Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. And if you want to go back even further, between John Turner and Jean Chrétien as of 1984. By the time Paul Martin becomes prime minister, he sets up the Gomery commission thinking that there is distance between him and the sponsorship stuff because there is really two parties, two warring factions within the party and because it’s two main characters. Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin are from Quebec. Quebec is a battleground where people are gunning for the other faction and the sponsorship affair takes place in the middle of that and that kind of forces everybody off the ice. Within a couple of years, there is no Liberal left that is elected in ridings where the vast majority of voters are Francophones in Quebec. They are pushed back to the west end of Montreal. After the Orange wave, there is not even a seat left in the [unintelligible] region, which is a highly Federalist region. So by the time Justin Trudeau becomes leader, there is no Liberal party.”
Listen to, or read the full transcript at the link below.
Some peoples lives are worth more than others.
In the context of American society one of the deciding factors of how much your life is worth is determined by the colour of your skin. Here in Canada a similar skin tone gradient applies as being First Nations in Canada gets you the special police attention you don’t deserve. Bonus features of being in First Nations in Canada include (but are not limited to), poverty, limited access to potable water, and an hostile educational system. Make no mistake, we have much to do in Canada to address the needs of our people. We have a Canadian Highway of Tears that sullies our escutcheon and is indicative of the racism that still permeates our society.
The inherent racism present in Canada pales before the horrendous shitshow that is running south of the border. Racial divisions and discrimination represent a clear and present danger to fabric of the civil society of the United States (necessarily so). The scale of protests against the racial violence of the white establishment is increasing – fuelled by social media that circumvents mainstream media and offers a small gory window into the lives of black people who are being murdered by the security apparatus of the state.
I cannot imagine the horror of witnessing your partner being shot to death in your car, having to be polite to the individual that just inflicted moral wounds on our loved one while having your child witness the entire blood spattered episode from the backseat.
…
Violence breeds violence.
The unidirectional nature of the violence was reversed as an individual who proclaimed his hatred for white police, killed five white police officers in Dallas. The shooter was a reservist and had seen a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Lives are being lost because we have tied how much humanity you’re allotted to the colour of your skin.
Madness. It is sheer madness that we have allowed our societies to be shaped by racism and that the status quo is in fact racist. Is this series of murders in the US the tipping point? It certainly seems like people have had enough and are willing to entertain a large spectrum means to achieve their ends. It should be (like the constant stream of black people being murdered by police hasn’t been) a wake up call to the American congress and its legislative position on systemic racism and gun control. Henry Giroux paints a darker picture when he says:
“In the increasingly violent landscape of anti-politics, mediation disappears, dissent is squelched, repression operates with impunity, the ethical imagination withers, and the power of representation is on the side of spectacularized state violence. Violence both at the level of the state and in the hands of everyday citizens has become a substitute for genuine forms of agency, citizenship, and mutually informed dialogue and community interaction.”
The response of the law makers will tell the tale though, because the disconnect between public opinion and public representatives is being brought into stark relief. Congress has been mostly bought and paid for – but they have to at least look like they are serving the needs of the public on occasion, will the murder of five police officers stir the sycophants into action? I really don’t know, because getting reelected seems to override important qualities of being a decent human being. Qualities like empathy, compassion, and morality seem strangely missing when it comes to societal issues that threaten idea of moving toward a just society.
The cynical side of me contemplates this question: Would the US have gun control if members of Congress were similarly subjected to the murder/assassination program the rest of America is being subject to?
In the business lexicon I think polite somehow equals naive or stupid. Neil Macdonald examines some of the hi-jinks our corporate leadership in Canada feels it can get away with.
“A letter arrived last week from TD Bank. “In order to continue to meet your banking needs …” it began.
Try to guess what came next. Hint: I’m a customer at a Canadian bank.
Sure enough, “We sometimes need to adjust our pricing.”
Unsurprisingly, the prices being adjusted were not being adjusted downward.
As of March, the bank’s “non-TD ATM fee” is being raised 33 per cent.
Fees for cancelling an Interac e-transfer and for holding a post-dated cheque at a branch are going from free to $5. And the fee for transferring a tax-free savings account to another bank is going from free to $75.
These are huge increases, far in excess of growth or individual spending power.
Now, it’s important to understand TD’s position. The bank’s profits were $8.02 billion last year, up only slightly from $7.88 billion the year before.”
Our banks do this sorta shit all the time. Hmm..bottom line looking a bit thin? Let’s put the screw to our customers, they’ll smile and say ‘thank-you’.
“It’s worth noting, though, that in the U.S., where TD is now a serious player, with more branches than in Canada, the bank plans to impose no fee increases on customers come March.
“Totally different environment,” a TD spokeswoman told me.
Translation: There’s a lot more competition there, and if TD tried charging the sorts of fees it imposes on the bank’s supine Canadian flock, some other U.S. bank would be in there siphoning off business before you could say “special offer.”
Up here in Canada, TD’s letter advises customers that if they don’t want to accept the fee hikes, they are free to close their accounts, “without cost or penalty.”
Generous, that.”
It is really as simple as that? Because we in Canada don’t allow the wild west capitalism that typifies our good neighbours to the south we have to accept the fact that the fox is in charge of the henhouse?
“It’s all part of being Canadian. The equation is simple: Canadian consumers and workers are protected from certain free-market excesses, but that coddled security comes with a price: oligopolies, in which a few firms dominate, and all the behaviour that flows from that.”
If this is the price we have to pay to be able to weather the financial shit-storms that brew in the US, I might be able to accept that – but I think that the cost benefit analysis is still up for debate.
“If you want a really depressing bit of Canadian reading, go look at the Canadian Competition Bureau’s policy on “price maintenance,” something most of us know as “price-fixing.”
Certain companies, especially in the luxury trade, try to see to it that their products never go on sale. Rolex is one. Canada Goose, the world-famous Canadian parka-maker, is another.
This offends capitalism: in a free market, one of the few responsibilities of government is to monitor and punish efforts to deaden competition”
Looking at you telecoms :/
“In fact, “price maintenance behaviour” was a criminal act in Canada, until Stephen Harper’s Conservatives changed the law in 2009 (though some forms of price-fixing still remain a crime).
The new law reduced price maintenance to a non-criminal offence, and even at that, it now has to be proven that “price maintenance conduct has had, is having or is likely to have an adverse effect on competition in a market.”
In other words, the government has to prove that price fixing results in fixed prices.”
Another gifted poison pill from our beloved former conservative government. It is shit like this that ruins their airs toward being business friendly and being friends of the market and all of the other hooey they exude from their weaselly mouths. They lay down on market policy that hugely distorts the market – and in the end makes Canadians pay more – and then have the audacity to make ‘sad face’ and shrug their shoulders laying the blame on the ‘free market’. Conservative economic policy is made of pure unadulterated rannygazoo from top to bottom.
“After trying to make sense of the gibberish on its website, I asked the Competition Bureau how many times it’s gone after companies for what it calls price maintenance since it issued its new “enforcement guidelines” in 2014.
The answer: None. Zero.
“Nevertheless,” said a spokeswoman in an email, Canadians should rest assured the bureau remains vigilant: “The Competition Bureau will not hesitate to take appropriate action where it believes price maintenance has occurred.”
Okay. Good to know.”
*sigh* – WTG Competition Bureau. :/
20110505 – Evi, Alberta, Canada – Crews work to clean up at Rainbow Pipeline’s oil spill, the worst Alberta oil spill in 35 years, dumping 28, 000 barrels of oil into a wetland area at Evi, Alberta which is near Little Buffalo, Alberta, Canada.
Progress in the laying of plans for Canada’s build-your-own-envirnomental-disaster have hit a snag. The people’s land that we want to endanger are saying no way, and no how. Pretty rude considering that one of our more outspoken Premier’s comments ,“Let those Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.” Oh Ralph, how we miss those straight talkn’, shoot from hip’in, shod in political clown shoes days of yesteryear (not at all actually).
Now, it seems, Alberta may need the dreaded Easters help in order to get our tar-sands products to market. Strangely enough, they seem to be not acquiescing to our requests. The Mayor of Montreal responds:
“Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announced the city’s official opposition to proposed Energy East pipeline project Thursday, saying the potential risks outweigh its possible economic benefits to communities including his. Coderre was joined by mayors from neighbouring cities including Laval and Longueuil that make up the Montreal Metropolitan Community.
“We are against it because it still represents significant environmental threats and too few economic benefits for greater Montreal,” said Coderre on behalf of the MMC.”
I imagine it would have been easier to make a case for the pipeline if much of Eastern Canada had not been forced to look elsewhere in the market for oil, because apparently the Dreaded National Energy Program (western Canada selling oil to Eastern Canada for a fair price) was to risky a venture for the Western Canadian oil capitalists. Fast forward to the present and now we in the west are wondering why these bastards are not helping us out.
This state of affairs does not sit will for the political representative of the business sector in the Alberta Legislature. Cue the stolid Brian Jean to microphone:
“In a statement, Brian Jean, leader of Alberta’s Wildrose Party, called Coderre’s position “disgraceful.”
“While Mr. Coderre dumps a billion litres of raw sewage directly into his waterways and benefits from billions in equalization payments, his opposition to the Energy East pipeline is nothing short of hypocritical,” Jean said.
Jean claimed the project would entail economic benefits of $9.2 billion for Quebec, citing numbers provided by TransCanada.”
Well, your claim is only made much more substantial by using the figures provided by the oil company. We shan’t tarry to long with sources though, because this was just the opening salvo in the great West VS East energy pipeline showdown.
Coderre replies:
“”First of all, you have to allow me a moment to laugh at a guy like Brian Jean, when he says he relies on science. These are probably the same people who think the Flintstones is a documentary. But that’s another story.”
Ouch. But our intrepid Wild Rose Leader fires back..
“I had an opportunity to serve with Mr. Coderre in federal politics for many years, and I’m used to watching him float up and down the gutter,” said Jean, who was a Conservative MP for a decade before entering provincial politics in Alberta.”
Oh Brian, politics is hard and nasty eh? We’ll finish with Mr.Coderre:
“The community of metropolitan Montreal isn’t nothing,” he said. “It’s four million residents, it’s 82 municipalities, it’s 50 per cent of the gross domestic product, population and jobs of Quebec.
“We have committees of engineers, so we are working with credible data. We realized that when you build it, you can say it will bring this or that, and it will create so many jobs. But the economic reality is that it’s only 33 jobs and at most $2 million per year of municipal revenue.”
Two million is far cry from 9.2 billion dollars. I’m sure the real number lies *somewhere* between those two extremes, but that isn’t the point. It is Mr.Coderre that we are trying to win over to our side, and calling him a gutter inhabitant is not going to get the pipeline built. This kind of grandstanding might win you the populist vote from rural Alberta (hurrah for the Sticks!), but it doesn’t play very well on the national stage.
On the upside, Brain Jean and band of merry corporatists are doing a lovely PR job, making the Energy East pipeline much less likely to happen. Perhaps the Suzuki Foundation will give them an award or something.
I’m consistently amazed by the audacity of organized religion and the amount of steamy-ripe-bullshit that it forces down our society’s throat. The fetid promotion and glorification of ignorance coupled with the consistent denial of science and fact is a burgeoning cataclysm for the human race. Organized stupidity, if left unchecked, will be the end of us.
There are bright spots though, in Canada organized religion is hollowing out as people move away from being scared of lights and ancient shadows (worshipping capitalism instead – woo-haa…). Baby steps and what not. Our progress though seems fruitless though as we live in the shadow of the towering mass of religious stupid that is the United States. In the US it seems as if the powers of fear and magic are still on the rise despite the fact that the rest of the world is gradually becoming more rational and more secular.
That is worrisome to say the least, as our blessed bible believers have access to enough nuclear weaponry to sterilize the earth several times over. Earth wiping out capacity isn’t something you give to people who believe in ghosts, magic, and assorted Ooga-Booga. It is unsettling to watch what is going down the GOP side of the run up to the presidential elections. There is no ‘safe’ candidate in this field of republicans, as all are afflicted, to one degree or another, with the virus of organized religious belief. Further comment on the republicans and their suicidal commitment to unreality is the topic of another post because the amount of stupid involved with their political strategy would break my blog if discussed all at once. Perhaps a more simple start to the religious problems in the US is answer?
I’m thinking that a good start in the US would be to remove the tax-exempt status of the Churches. If this info-graphic is even half true, it would be a step in the right direction for the people of the US.
I might (well not really) become a believer if the various testaments to human gullibility decided to dismantle their superstructure and actually help the poor.
The developing story about alleged Quebec police misconduct keeps getting more interesting. Neil Macdonald wrote an amazing analysis of the situation over at CBC News. There is some great analysis going into the history of SQ (Sûreté du Quebec police union) and how they consider themselves above the law but I think the closing statement is probably the best closing statement in any article I’ve ever read:
But ask yourself this: If I, a charter member of the privileged white males society, find them frightening, imagine what must go through the head of an intoxicated young aboriginal woman on a cold night, alone in a squad car?
Wow. I highly suggest reading the article in full. It will be well worth your time.
To speak to the title of my post though I wanted to address the fact that police officers were taking our aboriginal brothers and sisters for a car ride and dropping them off miles outside of town. For those of you that think this is a new or unusual practice, don’t. It has happened before. And outside of Quebec. As some of you may remember the Saskatoon Freezing Deaths. This was where the Saskatoon police force would take natives out on “starlight tours”, which would mean to drive them miles outside of the city and drop them off. In the dead of winter. We know this was happening as early 1976 because an officer was punished for this and we know it was happening as late as 2000. Is it still happening there?
I remember the reporting at the time of the story and found it troubling but I thought this must be an isolated incident, just this one police for that was doing this. To find that the SQ is doing the same is exceptionally dismaying. If the SQ is doing this, then how many other police forces are doing this as well? That the SQ *allegedly* are adding rape into the situation by demanding sexual favours for a ride back into town saddens me.
As the Intransigent One stated, these things don’t happen in a vacuum. I think this story has revealed the need for not just a federal investigation into the developing Quebec story, nor just the Highway of Tears, nor just the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, but on the conduct of all police forces in relations to our indigenous people. That there are three major issues happening at the same time, all in different parts of the country demonstrates the need for this. We need to get a handle on this issue. I mean, if Neil Macdonald can feel frightened by one of our police forces, imagine how it is for someone not in the privileged class. It’s no wonder why there are such trust issues between our aboriginal people and the rest of us.
Canadians finally have decided that being in the vanguard of international Neo-liberal community isn’t so shit hot after all. The whole free markety/trickle-downy charade was looking dilapidated and tired; the fear-stick had been applied to the public, with such magnitude and frequency, that suddenly Conservative ideology seemed retrograde even quaint. How engaging are the grand policy strategies of “GWB-lite” after ten years of living the Conservative dream?
We should give the Harper government full marks for stretching those ideological skid-marks of neo-liberal ideology out as far as (they) he did. The hard sell on Neo-liberalism had to go, and off it went, with Canadians giving the Liberal party of Canada a firm mandate and majority to… well… not be the Conservatives.
This is what worries me the most. Like the two business class parties in the US, the federal PC’s and Liberals in Canada both offer oligarchy approved governance styles. The main difference is that the Liberals like to use lube while buggering the public trust, while the Conservatives use a handful of sand. Our social system was savaged by the Liberal government of the 90’s under false pretenses – this same government also approved NAFTA – the free investors agreement – that has been savaging our domestic economy since its inception. Is being sold down the river wistfully by a hand-wringing government ‘forced to make the tough decisions’ any different than one that outfits the public with lead boots and kick off the docks?
Comparing the election wins of Obama and Trudeau reveals similarities that, for progressive voters, ought to inspire some trepidation. Hope and Change may inspire the imagination, but implementing actual societal change is *hard* and given the political realities of the situation. I really want to believe Justin Trudeau when he says, “the old Canada we knew and loved, is back”.
When he gets us out of the Trans Pacific Partnership – the latest free investor agreement and curb stomp to the domestic economy – I might start to believe him.
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