I'm not joking, there was a coup d'etat in Canada this week - you know, that big, sparsely populated country to our north. For the first time in history, a Prime Minister convinced (or coerced) the Governor General - the unelected representative of the British monarch - to suspend Parliament in order to prevent a no-confidence vote in the Conservatives' minority government and the formation of a tripartite coalition government including the Liberals, the New Democrats (NDP), and the Quebec Nationalist Bloc Quebecois (BQ) party. This is absolutely unprecedented and absolutely unacceptable; the fact that this was allowed to happen is yet another disgrace of the Bush administration.
The crisis was sparked by the Conservatives' refusal to include a forestry and auto industry bailout in a recent economic package, a plan to end federal subsidies for political parties (a necessary law to ensure a viable democracy under the parliamentary system), and an attempt to remove the right to strike for federal employees. As PM Stephen Harper's Conservatives had clearly lost the confidence of Parliament, the parties announced their proposed coalition, completely in keeping with the law and the Constitution. Yet Harper openly defied the spirit of the law - technically, though not previously in practice, the Governor General has the final say on constitutional matters - and in so doing, taking a bludgeon to Canadian Democracy. Let me once again be perfectly clear:
Harper suspended the democratically-elected Parliament to avoid losing power. This is very serious.
The Canadian right and their American allies say that this is simply a power grab by the left; the Conservatives were re-elected just a few months ago. The latter part of that is true, but only because the center to left segment of the electorate is divided between the NDP and the Liberals, while the left-center leaning supporters of the BQ are voting for Quebecois independence. Here are the results of the October 2008 election:
Party | Leader | Popular Vote | Percentage | Seats Won |
|
Conservative | Stephen Harper | 5,208,796 | 37.65% | 143 |
Liberal | Stéphane Dion | 3,633,185 | 26.26% | 77 |
NDP | Jack Layton | 2,515,561 | 18.18% | 37 |
Bloc Québécois | Gilles Duceppe | 1,379,991 | 9.98% | 49 |
Green Party | Elizabeth May | 937,613 | 6.78% | 0 |
So the truth is that the Conservatives won just over a third of the vote. It's Harper and the Tories that are making the power grab:
Party | Popular Vote | Percentage | Seats Won |
|
Liberal | 3,633,185 | 26.26% | 77 |
NDP | 2,515,561 | 18.18% | 37 |
Bloc Québécois | 1,379,991 | 9.98% | 49 |
|
Opposition Total | 7,528,737 | 54.42% | 163 |
Opposition Total (Incl. Greens) | 8,466,350 | 61.20% | 163 |
The tripartite coalition, had it been a single ticket, would have won a landslide victory over the Tories. It's fair to assume that virtual every Green Party supporter would supported the left-center bloc had they been included in the coalition as well (though since they didn't win a single seat they're not a part).
Harper and his lackeys completely ignore this reality; one minister even had the audacity to say that it was the coalition - the coalition who represents an overwhelming majority of Canadian voters - who were the ones staging a coup d'etat. Wow, that's some serious doublethink. This willingness to lie blatantly, repeatedly, obviously and in direct contradiction to irrefutable fact, should give pause to Canadians, Americans and all citizens of the world. Harper's government is practicing the well-known "Big Lie" technique popularized by the Nazis and practiced by autocrats the world over; it's a technique that basically says that the power-crazed politician should tell lies so colossal that few would believe that anyone could have the impudence to distort the truth to such a great degree.
Likewise, the Big Lie provokes the thought process in lazy, apathetic, poorly informed citizens akin to: "well, they're both saying the other is staging a coup, so the truth is probably somewhere in between." The obvious problem with this "golden mean" mentality is that the truth may not lie somewhere in between two extreme positions; it may well be that one is accurate and the other is a complete falsehood. Accusing one's opponents of your own misconduct in a society in which there is a pseudo-objective, "50-50," politically-correct press, is probably the most effective public relations tool ever employed - albeit one that should cause great alarm.
At any rate, given their rhetoric, relentless lies, unquenchable thirst for power and willingness to contrive an alternate reality, it seems to me obvious that the Harper government has adopted as its governing principle an even more extreme version of Straussian neoconservatism than that practiced by the current American administration. In short, they believe that the Tories comprise an elite destined to act as the vanguard of the nation against some nebulous, ill-defined threat. Hell, they've basically said as much:
"It used to be in Canadian politics that you had to win an election in order to become the prime minister of this country," Heritage Minister James Moore said on Tuesday.
"Now they're entering into an agreement, giving the balance of power to Quebec separatists and Canadians are rightly outraged by this ... it's not what Canadians voted for." Source
Also notice in this statement the implication that the views and desires of the Bloc Québécois and their supporters - who, according to Harper himself, comprise a "distinct nation" within Canada in the same way that Canadian aboriginal societies are referred to as "first nations" - are somehow counterfeit because they seek greater autonomy for Quebec. Sound familiar? Yet at the same time, Quebec and its people must be forced to remain within Canada, even though they obviously aren't real Canadians, for if they were, a coalition with the BQ would be no problem. It's as if Harper views Quebec as a territorial possession of an empire, not as one province within a nation.
But that aside, let's go through the famous 14 points of fascism and see if there are any other reasons why we should be worried about what's going on in the friendly land to the north:
- Powerful and continuing nationalism: This is subtle, but Harper invokes nationalism and the nation far more frequently than any of his predecessors in recent memory.
- Disdain for the recognition of human rights: Big time. The current government has also been complicit in helping the American administration violate human rights.
- Identification of enemies, threats, and scapegoats as a unifying cause and as justification for autocratic actions: It seems Quebec nationalists have joined the ranks of terrorists in Canada now, because the BQ actually having a voice in the political process is obviously unacceptable to the point that it warrants the suspension of democracy. Oh yeah, and the Tories are obsessed with terrorism.
- Supremacy of the military: Harper is bulking up the Ministry of Defence at a faster rate than any time since WWII. See the "Canada First Defense Strategy."
- Rampant Sexism and/or Male-Dominant Leadership: This one isn't as applicable as it once was; however, vast majority of cabinet posts are held by men.
- Direct or indirect control of mass media: For the Canadian Tories and their masters, the American right, this usually takes the form of the relentless demonization of critical journalists and media outlets. Like the GOP, Harper & Co. frequently accuse the Canadian press of "liberal" or "left-wing" bias whenever anything that reflects poorly on them is disseminated to the public - regardless of its veracity.
- Obsession with national security: This goes along with supremacy of the military; Harper is also a stalwart supporter of the NATO occupation of Afghanistan.
- Use of religious and/or cultural identity to manipulate public opinion: This one is happening in a very big way with government spending to reshape Canadian culture into something more to the Tories' liking.
- State protection of corporate power: Well, 3 years after winning office, Harper still hasn't passed a climate change bill, despite that all the parties supposedly agree on the need for it. See also "rampant cronyism" below.
- Suppression of organized labor: Fascist and proto-fascist leaders hate labor unions, because the organizing and mobilizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government once democratic institutions have been sufficiently eroded. As I mentioned before, one of the precipitating factors of the constitutional crisis was the Harper government's attempts to stifle the power of labor.
- Open disdain for intellectuals, academia, science and the arts: Authoritarians find it necessary to create an elaborate infrastructure of massive lies and perverse social mores in order to maintain popular support. Intellectuals are capable of seeing through this, and are generally much more willing to question existing social structures; thus, autocrats always harass and ridicule (or worse) intellectuals, academics, scientists, and artists to discredit them and dissuade the public from questioning the state. Needless to say, Harper and the Tories are doing this as well.
- Obsession with crime and punishment: Despite Canada's extremely low crime rate, Harper has taken a much more draconian line on crime than any other PM that I'm aware of.
- Rampant cronyism: Unchecked power always leads to corruption. As regards the Tory government - that's a big 10-4.
- Disregard for the rule of law, public opinion, and democracy: Does suspending Parliament to maintain a minority government in office count?
Excepting perhaps the sexism part, Harper's government has been undertaking all of these, many very aggressively. Now with his suspension of Parliament, there can be no doubt about who this man is and what his intentions are - and they don't include Peace, Order, and Good Government. OK, maybe the order bit - he and other fascists are big on order - but definitely not the other two.
The outlook for Canada and Canadian democracy is grim, and it isn't helped by the proposed coalition's spineless, ineffectual leadership (Stephan Dion - AKA the French-Canadian John Kerry). Unfortunately, the opposition has seemingly fallen into the same trap the US Democratic party found itself after 9/11 - they appeased the political aggressors which, rather than fostering national unity, only serves to make them appear weak at precisely the time the public demands strong leadership. And predictably, appeasement has only made the aggressor more aggressive.
Some coalition members even seem to have bought the Tory spin that a majority of MPs expressing their lack of confidence in a government which only earned 38% of the vote is somehow "undemocratic." This sort of reasoning is a crime against logic, but hearing it from a Liberal MP adds insult to injury. Rather than backing down when Governor General Jean granted the suspension request, they should have stood up strongly.
They should have gone to Parliament Hill and announced, in no uncertain terms, that Canada is a democracy, that the coalition represents the votes of the vast majority of the public, and that they will not stand by while an unelected figurehead suspends Parliament and the rule of law simply to maintain a minority government in power. At that point, if Harper still didn't agree to step down, they should have reconvened Parliament anyways, passed the no-confidence motion in defiance of the suspension order, and subsequently announced plans to unveil a new constitution which strips the unelected figurehead representative of a foreign monarch of any real power at all. It is disgraceful and pathetic that the coalition acceded their power - nay, the people's power - to Harper based on the dictates of a figurehead, whose position is nothing more than an arcane relic of a bygone era.
I don't know what's going to happen now, but I don't have much faith in the leadership of any of the parties. Likely the best case scenario now is that the Harper government will remain until January, at which time there will be an election in which the Liberals win a majority and Canada can have a functional government once again. However, many things must go right for the liberals to make this possible. The worst case scenario is that some crisis - genuine or, more likely, staged - unfolds, which Harper then uses as justification to seek further autocratic powers. Only time will tell how this will all play out, but the current state of the world and the global economy gives little reason for optimism.
I hope I'm wrong about where this is headed, but this whole debacle bears a lot of resemblance to the infamous Reichstag Fire. Either way, when we're talking about the totalitarian inclinations of political leaders, the one thing history shows us is that it's always best to err on the side of paranoia.
Cross-posted at my new blog, The Daily Elitist.