G20 protesters: Boxed in

On Sunday morning, strolling past Toronto Police Headquarters (two minutes away from where I live), I struck up a conversation with a police constable.  Why, I asked him, did the police not protect property during the G20 disturbances of the previous day?  He replied, quite reasonably, that the police did not want to risk bodily harm to protect windows.  They would have intervened if people had been at risk.  Nobody was harmed, he pointed out, nor was anybody placed under that threat.

That sounded right.  But it was an odd echo of something a rioter from the notorious "Black Block" told the Globe and Mail: "We're not violent," he said, "all we damaged was property -- not a single person was hurt."  (That might sound a tad disingenuous: what would have happened if police had tried to arrest one of the rioters while he was smashing a window with a hammer? -- But let's not chase the thought down that hole.)  Ironically, the scary rioter was making the same distinction as my charming constable acquaintance.  Hurting property is different from hurting people.  Morally different.

Here is another head-scratcher from that Sunday.  A lot of people, including some suspected of carrying dangerous weapons, were milling around in the vicinity of Queen and Spadina.  (See below.)  Police suspected some of these people of carrying nasty items, such as Molotov cocktails.  So they told everybody they had to go, unless detained.  The crowd didn't disperse.  So the police boxed the crowd in -- presumably, they wanted to hold the malfeasant types in until they were ready to be inspected without resisting.  Problem is they held the whole crowd there for several hours in the pouring rain, until they could be inspected, and then detained or released.  Many of the people in the box were peaceful and legitimate protesters; one was a freelancer working for the Guardian newspaper in London. (I really do not want to say that the Guardian's coverage of the Vancouver Olympics makes it ok to punch their journalists in the stomach -- but I confess the thought did cross my mind.)  

Now, here's the question.  Were those who were not charged illegally detained? Were their civil rights violated?

 

I don't know anything about the law.  But here's what puzzles me.  The police claim that the crowd was ordered to disperse.  Suppose this is true.  Then, supposing that the order was delivered audibly, clearly, and repeatedly, not dispersing puts you in risk of some coercive action.  So on this scenario, some of the people in the box knowingly disobeyed an order given by peace officers.  They could not find their way out of a place that they had been told to vacate.  Look: if you wander into a place where there is a clearly posted Keep Out sign, you can't really complain.  Maybe the person who put the sign there had no right to -- but surely the police do have a right to ask citizens not to interfere with their actions.  (Hell, they do that every time I venture out onto an expressway in Toronto.  There's always some "investigation" that lasts for hours and backs the Gardiner up forever.)

Let's stick with the scenario for a moment.  Some of those people in the box claim that they didn't hear the order.  They may not have heard it -- that it was given audibly doesn't imply that everybody heard it.  Some may have been distracted; some may have been talking to their friends; some may have had other things on their minds.  But this doesn't put them in the clear, legally speaking, as far as I know.  If the order is properly given, not having heard it is not an excuse for disobeying.  Nor does it cut the mustard to say, as some did say, that they were waiting for a bus.  Once riot police tell you to clear out, the transit option disappears.  Better to think of walking, or taking a taxi, or hiking up to Dundas to see if transit is running better up there.  Inconvenient . . . but what else are you going to do?

Still sticking with the warning-was-given scenario, the best sense I can make of the just-hanging-around scenario is that, given the situation and its political implications, some people wanted to disobey the police.  That's civil disobedience.  I admire civil disobedience -- it's a much more lofty option than insisting that you have to catch the street car.  Hey, I was brought up in India, and Gandhi is my hero.  You are not going to catch me saying that peaceful civil disobedience is morally less-than-heroic.

But: and this was Gandhi's point -- watch the Ben Kingsley/Leslie Howard scene if you don't believe me -- that civil disobedience comes with the duty to suffer the duly administered legal penalty.  If you break the law for a noble political end, then assuming you want to change the state not destroy it, you accept the penalty.  What's this about civil rights being violated?  You don't have a civil right to hang out at the corner of Queen and Spadina when a peace officer has told you to move on.  Assuming, of course, that he has a right to do so.  (If you think he doesn't have that right, then why not say so -- rather than all this "I didn't hear him" nonsense?)

OK, let's come off the scenario now.  It hasn't yet been established that the police did clearly, loudly, and repeatedly enough make it clear that people had to disperse.  I would think, though, that this is easily established.  There must be film, right?  The guy/gal who took the photo above probably could tell you, if s/he was contacted and asked nicely.  If they just boxed people in without giving them a chance to leave, and kept them there for hours in the pouring rain, and didn't give them anything to eat or a private place to relieve themselves -- well, that is a crime.  How would you like to be treated that way? 

Research Funding Worries in Canada

On Tuesday, January 27th, the Harper government brought down its long-awaited budget. The Liberals indicated their support, so the coalition is dead and the Harper government alive.

One of the most worrying features of this government has been its antipathy to intellectuals and artists. As for the latter, Harper traduced artists in the last election campaign as citified types who go to a lot of cocktail parties -- and lost a lot of seats in arts-loving Quebec as a result. As far as this is concerned, the Government may have learned its lesson: 160 million is in the works for big arts festivals (and the attendant cocktail parties in big cities, one imagines). Well, good -- but it's a pity that struggling avant-garde artists won't benefit from this.

With respect to universities, the Harper record hasn't been bad. At least up until now. Paul Martin, the former Prime Minister, was a staunch believer in universities (though not necessarily a supporter of pure research in humanities) and under him, the three federal research granting councils had strong budget increases, peaking (under Harper) at around 2 billion dollars per year. This, together with such programs as the Canada Research Chairs and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, has brought considerable excitement to Canadian universities in recent years. There's a palpable feeling of things happening.

In this week's budget, however, the news for research was quite bad. Today (January 29, 2009) the Globe and Mail reported on its front page that Genome Canada's funding from the feds had dropped to zero. This is a high-profile and high-prestige agency, and is very visible in cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, which have large medical research establishments. In the 2008 budget, Genome Canada received an increase of 140 million. Today, it's gone from the budget altogether. This seems bizarre. A 100% cut! (UPDATE: Colin Farrely points out that this story is based on a misinterpretation of how the Government funds Genome Canada. It does so by means of one-time grants, not by on-going base funding. In the last two years, Genome Canada got grants of $100m and 140m. These grants can be drawn on any time over the subsequent four years, and are still current. However, no new money came in this year. So things are not as bad as the Globe story suggested, but still quite a bit worse than last year, since GC can't make new commitments.)

At the same time, the budgets of the three granting councils drops by 87 million -- or about 3%. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's budget is cut by 14 million (also in the 3% range). Compounded by a stupid recent emphasis on directed research at SSHRC, and a consequent internal reallocation of funds away from independent research, this could be a very bad development for humanists. (Again, this is a reversal. Last year, the government proposed an 80 million increase in each of two years.)

The news was not all bad though. This is a stimulus budget, and public works are the theme. As part of that theme, colleges and universities are to receive about 2 billion dollars for infrastructure renewal, which must be matched by the provinces. Many Canadian universities suffer (as do universities everywhere) from deferred spending on maintenance, and this should help. There are also some increases to the Canada Graduate Scholarship funds and Canada Foundation for Innovation (which is a source of research infrastructure funding, mainly for scientists).

What's the trend? I don't know, but there is cause for worry. Especially for humanists.

UPDATE: Further evidence now emerges of an anti-intellectual approach to "training". Lisa Shapiro kindly referred me to the Canadian Association of University Teachers analysis of the budget. There it is pointed out that some money has been redirected from granting council base budgets to the Canada Graduate Scholarship program. However, the new money that goes to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for these scholarships will be restricted to students in business related programs!

Another, more positive note: The Government will contribute $50 million to the Institute of Quantum Computing in Waterloo, presumably matching the contribution of Jim Balsillie of Blackberry fame.

What Michaelle Knew

In my post on Parliamentary Democracy below, I argued that the post of Prime Minister is not well defined in Westminster style democracies. (For example, neither the Constitution of India nor the Canada Act define the office.) There is no clear rule about the length of a Prime Minister's term, or about the conditions under which s/he may hold office. It is also not clear what powers attach to this office. In constitutional fiction, s/he is the first minister of the Queen or the Head of State; by convention, the Queen or Head of State acts on the advice of the Prime Minister. When can the Queen or her viceroy dismiss a Prime Minister? This is far from clear, and constitutional epistemology plays a role.

If the PM enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons, then the Governor-General must do his or her bidding. On Thursday December 4th, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked the GG to prorogue Parliament so that he would not have to face the House on a vote of confidence. Should she have acceded to his request? If he had the confidence of the House, she was obliged to do so. If he did not, she was obliged not to do so.

Here's a problem in what I call constitutional epistemology. Does the GG know that Harper did not have the confidence of the House? Well, in the ordinary sense, yes. Nobody could doubt that a majority of members of the House had no confidence in him. They said so. They signed pieces of paper to that effect.

Nevertheless, they had voted to receive the Speech from the Throne. So when the Commons had voted last in a confidence measure, they demonstrated confidence in Harper's government. Thus, the GG does not know, in a constitutional sense, that he does not have the confidence of the House.

Tortured reasoning? Perhaps, and I'll return to that in a moment. Think of the reasoning that some citizens express on the airwaves and the internet. We know that the electorate rejected Stephane Dion, they say. How can the GG call on him to form a government? This reasoning is irrelevant in two ways. The first and most direct reason for irrelevance is this: as pointed out by many learned people (and by myself in my post on Parliamentary Democracy), we don't get to vote for the Executive. But secondly, just think of constitutional epistemology. If the GG does not know that Stephen Harper has lost the confidence of the House, she surely does not know that the electorate does not want Stephane Dion as PM. We all know it, if we know anything at all. But she does not. Not constitutionally.

OK. On this thread of reasoning, Michaelle Jean was right to prorogue Parliament on the advice of her first minister. Parliament is to open once again on January 26th. On this day, Jean will deliver a speech from the throne. The next day, the Government will present a budget. If the opposition coalition holds, the Government will be defeated on one or both. It will then demonstrably have lost the confidence of the House.

Harper will then advise the GG to dissolve the House and call a fresh election. But as somebody who has lost the confidence of the House, he will not have the right to expect that she will take his advice. He will argue that he has the confidence of the people. But by constitutional epistemology, she will not know this. Perhaps some Canadians will think they know this, and who am I to say they are wrong. The problem is that what they know, or don't know, is irrelevant. The GG cannot know such things.

So here's what I think Michaelle Jean must have said last Thursday: Mr Harper, I will take your advice and prorogue Parliament. But if you lose a confidence vote in the House early next year, don't expect me to dissolve the House. You can't have an election until it is clear that a Government cannot be formed.

If she said all of that, she has my respect. If she only said the first thing, she does not.

Parliamentary Democracy

Those of us who grew up in the British Commonwealth learned about parliamentary democracy in high school. We are used to the idea that we elect a House of Commons, and that the Government -- the Executive -- is responsible to the Commons. We tend to fall into a certain line of thinking about the nature of voting in this country, and in other former British colonies. When people say: I voted for Stephen Harper, or I didn't vote for Stephane Dion, meaning that they voted Conservative, or didn't vote Liberal, we tend to think that they are just confusing our system with the US system. Here we vote for an MP, right? Unless you live in Calgary Southwest, you couldn't vote for Harper.

Right. But let's ponder for a moment the nature and history of the executive branch of our Government. The Commons itself originally had, in England, no function other than to authorize taxation. An important function, no doubt, but not an executive function. Moreover, ministers didn't sit in the Commons; they were appointed by the sovereign, and held office at the pleasure of the sovereign. In the constitutional fiction under which we live, this is still so.

Some people think that the Commons got its present powers after the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688. And its legislative powers were certainly enhanced then: for all laws had to go through the Commons. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister (who was not even called that) did not answer to the Commons until much later. Wikipedia correctly says: "throughout the 18th century parliamentarians and legal scholars continued to deny that any such position was known to the Constitution. The title was first referred to on Government documents during the administration of Benjamin Disraeli but did not appear in the formal British Order of Precedence until 1905. George II and George III made strenuous efforts to reclaim the personal power of the Monarch, but the increasing complexity and expense of government meant that a minister who could command the loyalty of the Commons was increasingly necessary."

This means that though there is a substantial body of precedents that define the office of Prime Minister, no law defines the office. Every new decision makes that law. In this country, substantial centralization of powers occurred under recent Prime Ministers. It may well be that in India or Australia, there are subtle differences about how much authority a Prime Minister can claim. And these differences would trace not to legislation, but simply to what former Prime Ministers have done or have been allowed to do.

Moreover, it means that though the electorate votes for Parliament, and thus indirectly for the Government, they still vote under a system according to which Parliament was not the home of Government. In the British system, the Executive is separate from the Legislature -- and that's the assumption that defines voting in Westminster style democracies. We don't really vote for the Executive. In theory, the Prime Minister is still an officer appointed by the Crown, though now more than ever s/he must command the loyalty of the Commons, who votes up the money by which the Crown governs.

Contrast this with France or the United States. There, the electorate votes for both the Executive and the Legislature. We vote for those who authorize or reject legislation, but we do not vote for those who propose and execute legislation. Some think of this as "our system" -- different but just as good.

Last week's events have shown us in Canada that however good our system might be, it is less democratic.

Why I am not Voting Conservative Again

When the Conservative Party won a minority government in 2006, I was glad because that non-performing ass, Paul Martin, had lost office, but also unworried because I didn't think that the old Reform social agenda would ever come into law. As explained in a recent post, I thought that Harper would keep his promise about bringing gay marriage to a free vote in the Commons, that it would be reaffirmed there, and that the issue would then die away. This has come to pass, I think -- though God knows how many people are huddling in dark corners in Red Deer muttering about the evils of gay marriage, and plotting to bring capital punishment back.

But at the time, I did worry about anti-intellectualist tendencies in the Conservative government-to-be, and Harper's alarming lack of belief in the ideal of Canada. I'll return in a moment to that lack of belief. But first, a couple of other things.

Two years later, I want to acknowledge that the Government has done some good things. It corrected Chretien's dangerous neglect of the military. It courageously eliminated income trusts -- this tax dodge, though quite beneficial for individuals, had not only resulted in alarming corporate tax avoidance, but also in the smothering of global ambition in many large and successful Canadian companies, who were offered an incentive to de-globalize. The government has also played the Quebec question quite adroitly, though Quebecers have since wized up that if they don't keep sovereignty on the simmer, they will lose bargaining power in Ottawa.

OK. But there are also some disgraceful things. First, Harper cancelled the Kelowna accord -- the all province plus Federal government agreement that was Paul Martin's one substantial achievement as Prime Minister. Kelowna would have seriously addressed the native question that so blights and disfigures the Canadian nation today. Harper did apologize to the natives in the Commons for the abuses they have suffered over the years -- and that was remarkable. But he has not done anything to replace Kelowna. Sooner or later, Canada will suffer for not righting this historic and momentous wrong. We are rightly proud of Canadian social justice -- but we tolerate something not far short of apartheid within the state. Kelowna would have been a step toward dismantling the current system. Harper cancelled it. He simply reneged. He went back on a promise given not by the Liberal Party, but by the Government of Canada with the agreement of the provinces. (He did the same with Kyoto.)

Secondly, Harper has promised to treat fourteen year old criminals as adults in the criminal justice system. This is the most barbaric proposal I have encountered in my thirty plus years as a Canadian. Can you imagine bringing children to adult court? But this isn't all. To add insult to injury, the proposal is only for Canada outside Quebec. In Quebec, the age will be sixteen! Right, let's leave it there . . . I don't think I need to say more.

But what I find most disspiriting about this government is its utter rejection of any Canadian ideal. Judging from the constant loud denials in public media, we all know that Canada has a bit of an identity deficit. But contrary to what Canadians tend to believe, we are not alone in this. The Dutch, the Danes, the Belgians -- quick, what's their identity? Do you think that say Malaya has a national identity?

Now, I tend to think that the identity deficit is a bad thing. The Americans and Brits and even the poor besieged French and Germans have an inbuilt cultural crutch to rely on in moments of reduced cultural genius. Even in periods when the best of British literature is a bit enervated, as it is today, they still have their great literary past, and a confidence that someday the spark will return -- ditto German science and French style. (So: yes, there will be good British novels again, even if Ian McWho?en is as good as it gets today.) But we and the aforementioned northern Europeans are only as good as our performance on the day. When our geniuses die or become senile, our whole culture is diminished.

There is a way to build up our identity. It is to stand for something. Back in the sixties and seventies, when we and the rest of the Commonwealth were pulling ourselves out of the swamp of postcolonial insecurity, Canada did stand for something. The Canadian welfare state was built then, and is today much celebrated -- as was Canadian multiculturalism, Canadian foreign policy (think of opposition to apartheid by the Conservative Prime Ministers Diefenbaker and Mulroney; think of Canada in Suez and in the UN), and (yikes!) even Canadian architecture and design. This is the Scandinavian way too, and it is so even today: if you don't have an identity, at least have some values. Then you can wear your maple leaf with pride -- as Canadian hippies did in the seventies.

Harper is viscerally against this whole line of thinking. He hates state-sponsored values (even when they are not state-manufactured). He's even against state-identified values. He is all for strengthening the military (and so am I), but he is not for strengthening External Affairs and Canadian diplomats. He doesn't like state-funded culture, and he doesn't think that anybody else did -- except for the people who directly benefit from Canada Council grants. He was probably taken by surprise when his arts-funding cuts lost him significant popularity in Quebec. (Interestingly, this might deny him his majority. Just imagine: cut grants to effete opera-huggers, and you lose a government. There's Canadian identity for you: just when you discount it, it jumps up and bites your leg.) Economically, he is generally in favour of individuals doing better -- but he does not like the idea that Canadian collective entities should be strong global entities, whether they be corporations, or cultural organizations, or NGOs.

We have all been diminished by this neglect of the collectivity. I cannot support the person who is responsible. C'mon Harper: let's have a little 'country first'.

How I Voted in 2006

In January 2006, I voted for the Conservative Party. I did so in Vancouver East, one of the most reliable NDP ridings in the country. In Jeff Wall's celebrated photos, some of it looks like this, which may explain why:




For the very first time in six elections, I failed to vote for the winning candidate and the winning party.

Why did I vote that way?

First, I was disgusted with the Liberals. They had threatened national unity by their dirty tricks in Quebec.

By contrast, the Conservative Party had made genuinely innovative proposals vis-a-vis Quebec, which still serve them well in that province.

Third, I was horrified by Paul Martin's vindictive treatment of old Chretien supporters, for instance pushing the old warhorse Sheila Copps out of her Hamilton riding, and Stephane Dion out of cabinet.

Fourth, I didn't think that the social yahoo-ism of some Conservatives would do any harm. Harper had promised a free vote on gay marriage, just as Brian Mulroney had promised a free vote on capital punishment in 1984. (For my friends in countries that don't have a Westminster style parliamentary democracy, a free vote is one where members of parliament are freed from party discipline, and are free to vote their own conscience. Since the Government has no stake in the issue, neither result counts as its losing the confidence of the House.) Capital punishment lost in 1984, and it went out of Canadian discourse. I was convinced that gay marriage would go the same way (and it has).

In a word, I was truly tired of the Liberals, and quite ready to see a grumpy old duffer, Paul Martin, leave.

Day Five and still no improvement

Stephen Harper said yesterday that the Liberal Green Shift plan would be catastrophic, not only for the economy, but for national unity. He said that Government economic modelling has shown that meeting Kyoto commitments would cause a recession equivalent to that of the 80s.

That modelling had nothing to do with the Green Shift, which cuts income taxes and levies a carbon tax. It was about emission controls in isolation.

Of course, the Liberals have done nothing so far to explain their position. In the Green Shift brochure, a clear explanation is offered: "We will cut taxes on those things we all want more of such as income, investment and innovation. And we will shift those taxes to what we all want less of: pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and waste." Yet, Dion continues to respond to Conservative attacks with a message of sacrifice: Mr Harper "does not have faith in Canadians' ability to meet great challenges."

This morning's Globe summarizes the Liberal Plan, but fails to note that it includes personal as well as business income tax cuts. Yet, the cuts are clearly stated: "We will cut the lowest income tax rate to 13.5 per cent from 15 per cent, a 10 per cent reduction. And we will cut the middle class tax rates to 21 per cent from 22 per cent and to 25 per cent from 26 per cent."

Why doesn't Dion introduce some clarity into this debate?

In an interview yesterday, Harper said that only popular arts programmes should be publicly funded. I guess Feist can expect a grant from the Canada Council some time soon.


More than half of the arts funding story in the Globe and Mail is devoted to how well Harper plays the piano. Not clear why this is relevant (except perhaps to soothe the feelings of arts-supporters in this country).

Still No Green Shift . . .

The campaign remains idea-free. Harper has promised to leave Afghanistan by 2011. That's simply reacting -- he doesn't say why Canada's right decision to support NATO in Afghanistan will become wrong in 2011.

Meanwhile, the Liberals refuse to present the Green Shift in simple terms. The simplest way to put it is this: We're going to cut income tax. And we are going to tax carbon. We're going to take less money from your pay-cheque. If you choose to spend your money on gas, that's your business.

This simple message should be very attractive to city dwellers in particular. Granted, in Canada, they get less than one vote per person -- and so its good politics to ignore them. But remember that Harper opposed the Green Shift even in Richmond BC, a suburban riding where upwardly mobile voters hate taxes, and where carbon obscures the citizens' view of the mountains (for which they pay a lot in terms of property values).

Instead of this, Dion tells a New Brunswick crowd that "transforming to more fuel-efficient practices must start now to ensure economic viability in the future." This is almost like telling them that they have to make a sacrifice for the future. Not a sexy message, is it? (And it's all in polysyllabic words.) What's he thinking?

As for news today: Elizabeth May of the Green Party will join the debate (Good! -- now get Duceppe out of it); the NDP advances in British Columbia.

Paradox on the Campaign Trail

Bored? Don't be. Stephen Harper is playing with our minds:


"The biggest single problem we have is it's a chicken and egg problem -- it's that we are not here," he said, peering through a giant tea-cup in Toronto.

He was talking about dim Conservative prospects in Toronto -- "Once we start electing some people, it will be easier to elect some more." But what's the chicken and egg problem -- "Which came first electing more or electing some?" That doesn't sound like a problem exactly. Hmm . . . And "We are not here" -- don't you have to be?

The Green Shift

Another day of vapidity. The Conservatives posted an ad on their website, which showed a puffin (behind Dion's ear above) shitting on him -- Really! -- as it flew by. Harper has apologized. Good, I guess.

In the meanwhile, Dion has a new website, which pushes him as a nice guy ("not rich"), and the papers speculate that his "music of English" statement (see Revelations post below) was sympathetic. (Sure it's sympathetic. Hell, it's almost pandering: when did you last hear a francophone talking about the music of "the beautiful language" --- English???)

The Liberals announced today that they will reinstate the Court Challenges programme, which (before the Tories eliminated it) used to fund constitutional challenges brought by private citizens against the government. A very worthy idea. (Even Sarah Palin could get behind that, right -- private citizens suing the Government at Government expense? Don't tell her that's how we got gay marriage though.) I hope it is followed by promises of reinstating the cultural programmes recently cut by the Tories. But look: this is not really a nation-sized story. How many people are going to be swayed by the Court Challenges programme, which they have likely never heard about?

I don't get why the Liberals are not campaigning on their Green Shift programme. Yesterday, Harper told the Huangs that it is a revenue grab. (See the Harper in BC post below.) This is nonsense: the promise is to legislate revenue neutrality. For each dollar gained from the carbon tax, the proposed legislation will say one must be cut somewhere else. The Shift cuts personal income tax and taxes carbon emissions instead -- at $40 per tonne, I think. Well: isn't that a good idea? Why are the Grits acting embarrassed about it?

Harper in British Columbia

Today, Stephen Harper travelled to British Columbia to lecture the Huangs. (Those are their friends in the foreground.) I don't know whether they would have liked to say a word or two to the Great Communicator -- but it doesn't look as if they are going to get a chance.


He slammed Gordon Campbell's carbon tax at the Huang residence. He didn't say much about the environment, or what the carbon tax would do for it, or indeed anything about the effects of the tax -- on the economy, or human values, or anything else.

He said: "Every politician in history who wants to impose a new tax claims that it's either revenue neutral or it's temporary. It's not true.” Later in the day, he said: “The reason politicians impose a new tax is they need revenue.” Thereby, he slandered one of Canada's few competent politicians, one who brought BC from Canada's worst governed to best, one who has rescued the provincial budget, and one who had always been at pains to work with Harper.

Revelations in the Canadian Election

Today is the first real day of the Canadian election, and already a lot of excitement -- of a sort. Stephen Harper tells us that he enjoys playing cards with his kids. Stephane Dion reveals that a hearing deficit keeps him from hearing "the music of English". (Actually, he has been taking speech coaching, and hearing him on the radio this morning made me wonder how he has managed to acquire a Swedish accent .)



Jack Layton should really catch up. Is there nothing he wants to tell us?

Elizabeth May of the Green Party says we should stop watching CNN and get involved in our own election. Well we would if somebody would give us something of substance to chew on -- sorry guys, the music of English doesn't count, nor does pinochle, or whatever it is that Harper plays with his kids.

Election called

Today's the 7th of September, and a federal election has been called in Canada. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, claims that Parliament has been unproductive -- though his party has a document on how to obstruct Parliament. (Don Martin of CanWest reported in May.) And that is what they have been doing.

The press has been agog with the news that the Liberals have leased a Boeing 737-200 from Air Inuit, which consumes more fuel than the Conservatives' Airbus 319 -- as if the Liberals had hired this plane because it was deemed more luxurious or prestigious, like a Hummer. Not a word about issues so far. Perhaps this is what will pass for an issue.

(UPDATE: Liberals will pay carbon offsets.)

On the first day of the campaign, Mr. Harper seemed to take a card from Sarah Palin's hand:

"Mr. Dion, I understand, is a father as well. I don't know Stephane Dion all that well but I presume that he's been married a long time, has children. I presume he's a family man also.

Being a family man ... a father of school age children is a big part of my life," Mr. Harper told reporters. People say it must be tough to balance your family life with being prime minister. In fact if I didn't have this family life I don't think I could stay balanced as prime minister."

This from a man who, on his first day as Prime Minister, walked his little son to primary school in front of cameras, and took his farewell by shaking the little one's hand.

The quote is from the Globe and Mail. Mr Harper really should really try to learn the difference between 'presume' and 'assume'. Already, he does far too much of the former.

Nothing about field-dressing a moose: I "presume" this is Laureen's job.



As of today, the pundits deem a Conservative win inevitable. And the polls indeed look that way -- they show the Blues at 39%. Let's see.

Should Canada Try to Be a Country?

After thirty years of immigration and multiculturalism, Canada is not the country it was. The question: is it a country at all?

It is an excellent place to be a citizen. People whose families immigrated here a generation or two ago have had the advantage of an excellent educational system and a prosperous, tolerant society. When they work abroad, they benefit from their exposure to a wide range of cultures thanks to Canada’s cosmopolitanism. When they work at home, they are able to take advantage of their inside knowledge of their parents’ culture. Second and third generation Canadians are at home here – and with their easy mobility, they are Canada’s eyes and ears abroad. Canada is a brilliant base for a glittering international career – ask Adrienne Clarkson or Irshad Manji. And make no mistake: these Canadians are deeply attached to Canada and its values. (It seems superfluous to say this about a former Governor-General – one of the best we have ever had.) Since they embody the best of Canadian values it would make very little sense if they did not.

Let it be clear then that I have no sympathy with rants about how foreigners are diluting our values. Tom Kent, a former principal secretary to Lester Pearson, issued just such a rant recently in the Globe and Mail. I thought it came very ill from an expatriate Brit, who came here in the days where a moderately good job in Blighty gave you immediate entree to the very top jobs in Canada. And the right to expatiate publicly on how the miserable brown and yellow people who followed you have no real attachment to the country, and are only diluting homegrown culture.

My question has nothing to do with “foreign” values, or foreign ways, and whether they have a place in Canada. It has to do rather with the cumulativity of cultural discourse. In a country, people talk to each other. They build on each other. In Canada, people seem to engage only in global conversations. These conversations leave no residue here: as brilliant as many Canadians are, and as much as they have contributed to English-speaking civilization, nobody here picks up their work and makes out of it a national discourse. This is perhaps why the most brilliant Canadians – Glenn Gould, Robertson Davies, Mavis Gallant – leave nothing behind.

David Armstrong tells a compelling tale about Australian philosophy in his wonderful little piece “Black Swans”. He starts by recounting precisely the same kind of sneer about Australia that all the colonies have had to cope with – including the India of my youth. In 1958, one L. Sturch wrote in an Oxford magazine:

It is a mistake to think that the name "Australia" has the same logical grammar as "France", "Switzerland", "Siberia", "Rutlandshire", or "North Dakota". It is no more like such names than "Utopia", "Erewhon", or "Ruritania" are. . . "Australia" is not a real place; . . . the word "Australia" is not a name. (There is a certain heaviness to this: could Sturch have been a satirizing Australian, I wonder.)

Armstrong counters with a great story: how John Anderson in Sydney, George Paul in Melbourne, Jack Smart, Ullin Place, and Charlie Martin in Adelaide – all foreigners – began a tradition so robust that there is now such a thing as “Australian philosophy”. Philosophy – or at least philosophy in the tradition that comes to us from Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein – is as international a discipline as physics. Germans and Croats argue with Hungarians and Canadians, about the same questions, using the same dialectical tools. Yet, there is in this discipline an Australian style -- virtually no other country can say that. Armstrong himself is one of the great proponents. And today you see something recognizably Australian in the topic-wise extremely diverse writings of Frank Jackson, Kim Sterelny, Michael Smith, and David Chalmers (as well as immigrants such as Philip Pettit and Graham Priest). If you read Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia, you’ll find evidence of the same sort of thing in other intellectual fields. (I venture to say that much the same is true of Australian wine-making -- happily, there is some evidence of an emerging Canadian culture in this field, at least in British Columbia.)

What about Canada? In philosophy, it has had the same opportunities. Some pretty good philosophers have grown up here. Bas van Fraassen, David Gauthier, Ian Hacking, Charles Taylor, and Patty and Paul Churchland are among the most influential philosophers alive today – and Gerry Cohen, David Braybrooke, Barry Stroud, Tom Hurka, Ted Honderich, and Brad Inwood are not far behind. We have had our share of inspirational foreigners: including Jonathan Bennett, Mario Bunge, Terry Penelhum, Kai Nielson, (the same) Charlie Martin, Michael Ruse, and Ronnie DeSousa. Yet there is no such thing as Canadian philosophy. Why not? Partly because there is in Canada no particular ferment around these figures – all of whom are challenging, controversial, and deserving of discussion. Canadians just don’t think it’s cool to get excited about local intellectual controversies: they would rather participate in discussions without boundaries. The figures I have mentioned are just as much discussed outside Canada as they are here: when they leave the scene, they, like Gould, Davies, and Gallant, will vanish without leaving a mark on Canadian discourse.

Countries that have a culture pull up their citizens. A talented philosopher in Australia benefits by participating in the philosophical culture of that country – you do not have to agree with somebody to be excited by their ideas. David Armstrong in Australia did not agree with John Anderson or George Paul, and Kim Sterelny in turn does not have much time for how Armstrong did philosophy. Yet, one thinks of these people as belonging to a powerful and coherent tradition, and deriving some of their influence by so belonging.

Canada is not on a path to developing the same kinds of incubators. I would even question whether there is such a thing as Canadian literature -- there are great Canadian writers, but after Robertson Davies and Alice Munro, they haven't much written about Canada. Australia progressed from colony to country; Canada has chosen the more modern vision of a state that is not a country. Doubtless, that has virtues too.

Is there any harm in starting a little country within our global community? Maybe I could (should?) make a modest start by writing a combative book about Ian Hacking.