Right Politics And The Decay Of Canada Part Three (3 Of 4)

It is almost certainly true of the Paul Martin "team" accumulation of sympathetic candidates for the forthcoming federal election by means of alleged fraudulent and criminal Liberal Party membership stacking. A formal Complaint to the Chief Electoral Officer has been lodged requesting full investigation of the B.C. end of the situation. So far (a month having passed), the Complaint has not even been acknowledged by the Chief Electoral Officer or anyone in Elections Canada.

As the people who signed that Complaint await a reply, Ujjal Dosanjh, former NDP attorney general and premier (after Glen Clark) becomes a hand-picked Martin Liberal candidate. Dosanjh is famous for (a) waiting six months or so after hearing of the police investigation into actions of Glen Clark to make the matter public (b) of, allegedly, stacking NDP memberships during that time to assure his own succession to the premier?s position (c) of allegedly using Liberals to swell his membership support (d) of acting in such strange fashion in the election against Gordon Campbell that street talk was that he "threw" the election and (e) of doing something probably unprecedented in Canadian political history to make that claim credible: conceding defeat in the election a week before voting day!

Ujjal Dosanjh, incidentally, was a major participant in the uninvestigated RCMP/Canadian Army attack upon Native people at Gustafsen Lake where some 70,000 rounds of ammunition were fired, land mines were planted, and misinformation about the incident was purposefully communicated by the RCMP through at least one major media contact.

In all the cases referred to the call for investigation is based upon strong conviction that criminal acts (simply defined) were engaged in by people engaged in Right Politics. In all cases the alleged crimes are being supported by government inaction.

The second way in which Right Politics are criminal politics is as easy to understand as the first way. Laws are written down that are often deeply immoral but become accepted as "normal". The German State under Adolf Hitler devised intricate laws about race in order, systematically, to violate and destroy innocent people. South Africa spent long decades under national Apartheid laws which provided for the dehumanization and violation of the majority of the population. Canadians know those things.

They often don?t recognize that the laws governing Native peoples here were originated at a time when Euro-Canadians - in a majority - believed Native people were inferior by definition. Canadians fail to see that the huge, expensive legal structure built around the Native people to this day helps foreign and Canadian corporations steal from the Native people and keep them in bondage.

As I write, the B.C. and federal governments (both refusing to settle land claims) are arguing in the Supreme Court of Canada that Native peoples claiming lands do not have to be consulted about the disposition of those lands until the claims are settled.

That kind of double-think is a characteristic of Right Politics. If you are able, follow this chain of double-think: I wrote to the B.C. Attorney General's office (in charge of access to information) and asked a number of questions about the insane mortgaging and magical financing behind the removal from ownership by the B.C. people of the B.C. Ferry Corporation (its almost incomprehensible privatization). The Attorney General's office wrote me and told me the now-named B.C. Ferry Services is no longer covered by the access to information laws since it is no longer under government control (which is probably not true). I was given the address of a highly placed B.C. Ferries Services officer. I wrote her. She did not reply. I wrote to her again, to premier Gordon Campbell, and to the Minster of Transportation saying that my questions were ones any British Columbian might fairly ask and I wanted them answered. The B.C. Ferries officer wrote to me that she had forwarded my letter to Communications and someone there would answer the questions. They haven?t.

My star reply (so far), however, is from Gordon Campbell himself (March 31, 2004). (A) He writes of the B.C. Ferry Corporation (which apparently no longer exists but is now B.C. Ferry Services!). (B) He speaks of that entity as one among some "public bodies" (it was melted down a year ago by legislation to end it as a public body), and (C) he urges me to write to the Privacy Commissioner under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act to complain, though he apparently knows very well that B.C. Ferries is no longer subject to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, no longer being a public body.

The question any normal reader might ask is whether I am insane or whether Gordon Campbell is. The humour in the situation, however, is gallows humour. Some years ago, under the Socred government of Bill Bennett, I had a similar kind of bureaucratic experience. Finally, I wrote directly to him and explained. By return mail Bennett wrote to say he had forwarded my letter to the person in charge, whom he named, and told me if I didn't have immediate satisfaction to write back. The matter was cleared up in days. The Socred governments were eccentricly conservative. The Gordon Campbell government should not be confused with them. It is a Bush-Republican, neo-liberal government intending the destruction of the social order as we know it. That is why Campbell asks me to put my hip-waders back on and wade into his swamp of thickening concrete.

The criminal nature of Right Politics extends through the whole "Western" world. Perfectly "legal" are the World bank, the International Monetary Fund, The World Trade Organization, the core European Union administration, the O.E.C.D. (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and the two Western hemisphere Free Trade structures. Each one, however, has been constructed by a combination of interests seeking to funnel wealth from the land and the people to a small fraction of "owners" -- without any regard for the damage done to the society at large or to individual people.

Canada is a part of that movement. The portion of the Canadian population living at or below the poverty line has increased dramatically in the past fifteen years. The upper ten percent of Canadian earners has increased its wealth equally dramatically. Profits of major corporations are obscene. Nevertheless, Canadians are told daily (by Right media, research institutes, and politicians) that "in order to compete" Canadian wage earners are going to have to take a further slash in standard of living. The inter-connectedness of those facts is hard for Canadians to see because the media in the Western world are owned by the obscenely wealthy people whose intention is to strip the general population of all independence, security, well-being, and participation in the development of the country's wealth. Let me give a single Canadian example.

In the early 1970s Canada's oil and gas industry was almost wholly U.S. owned. Chief expert advisers to the federal government on the future of supplies came from the (U.S. owned) industry. Critics discovered the U.S. "experts" were rigging the information to further the U.S. goal of profit-making from Canadian fossil fuels. Canadian press and media never remind Canadians of that fact.

In 1975 Petrocan (a wholly Canadian owned corporation) was created by the Trudeau government, and in 1980 the National Energy Program was created. Peterocan has been a successful company, hated by the U.S. oil men and shredded by successive federal governments pursuing Right Politics. In March, 2004, Paul Martin announced his government would sell the remaining 18.7 percent of Petrocan still owned by the Canadian people.

The financial press reports the final sale will be a huge success for brokerage companies and for privatization advocates. None of the media has said the sale will be any kind of success for Canadians. The Globe and Mail headline, moreover, continues a media falsehood: "Petrocan fed flames of Western discontent". (March 24 B6) The truth is that the Energy Program (overall) instituted by the Canadian government had 80% support in polls taken -- even in Alberta. "Western discontent" was the discontent of those controlling Right Politics. If the only people in Canada who matter are the obscenely wealthy, U.S. corporations, and members of the press and media -- then the Globe and Mail headline is correct. Those three forces were discontented and have succeeded in destroying Petrocan as an enterprise owned by and for the Canadian people.

The profits from Petrocan, the capital it owns, the knowledge it has of the Canadian fossil fuel situation will now be totally directed to the benefit of a small number of wealthy owners. Canadians at large will have no part.

The Paul Martin government moves quickly and quietly into full-blown Right Politics. To begin, the claim of criminal activity in the Martin Liberal Party membership gathering -- and voting -- cannot be brushed aside. Such activity reveals a willingness to undermine the fundamental bases of democratic process. One of the fundamental goals of Right Politics is to undermine democratic process.

Secondly, Martin is moving towards collaboration in the so-called U.S. missile shield -- a program reviled on ethical, moral, environmental, and political grounds. A majority of Canadians dislike the program.

Thirdly, Martin followed his Washington master in refusing to condemn the Israeli murder of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin (and many others) on March 22. Legal experts agree the murder was a crime in international law.

Finally, the coup in Haiti by which the U.S. overthrew democratically elected Jean Bertrand Aristide was illegitimate, as was his kidnap by U.S. agents. Paul Martin has sent Canadian troops to support the U.S. overthrow of a democratic government in Haiti. Military forces in Haiti come from the U.S.(which wants a repressive regime), from Chile (which since the rise to power of Pinochet -- and after -- has been a U.S. puppet state), from France (which has financial interests in Haiti), and from Canada, which has every moral reason to stay out of Haiti.

In all four of those matters, the Martin "team" and government are flaunting support for criminal behaviour or are actively participating in it. That is a dangerous game, and it can only lead to several kinds of disaster.

(Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Four, will say where the money comes from that is funneled into the pockets of the obscenely rich and how it is kept from the people of Canada by fully considered government policy.)

Other articles in this series:
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part One
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Two
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Four
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Robin Mathews publishes on culture, politics, the arts, and Canadian Intellectual history. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, a potter. His column appears regularly on Vive le Canada.

Comments: rmathews@sfu.ca

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