Sheila Copps, Worth Fighting For, Toronto,M&S, 2004 - A Book Review

Some will turn away because she's a Liberal to the core -- blindly so, they will say, blindly . But -- just maybe -- they should all read Worth Fighting For. Copps is a literate soul who writes clean English and doesn't varnish or spin-doctor her material. She has, moreover, a story to tell that people should know about. Finally, what she says about the "Martin team" and its heartless, sleazy, bulldozing to power has, maybe, already been said by Murray Dobbin, John Gray, Hugh Winsor, Lawrence Martin, and others. But she's a lifetime Party Liberal who takes off the gloves to warn Canadians about the Martin slick, dishonest, bare-faced suppression of democratic processes. She wants us to know the threat Paul Martin poses to democracy in Canada as well as to "the middle way" of caring and consensus building in our traditions. Let's -- first off -- deal with what might be called flaws in the book. The major one is, incidentally, a major virtue. It's "Sheila's story" seen from Sheila's point of view. The photos that decorate the ends suggest she's a little too pleased, perhaps, with her own image (but that's common with many public people). In concentrating upon her own view of Canada, of Liberalism, and the world, she presents a coherent base for judging many historical events and ideological battles in which she participated. She suggests Jean Chretien was always a smarter politician than he is given credit for. But -- bringing him in -- she completely avoids dirty activities in which he was involved: the secret military raid on Native people at Gustafsen Lake in B.C.; the repugnant kow-towing to U.S. government, involving RCMP violence at the famous APEC meetings in Vancouver; the needless violence against innocent Canadians at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City; and what we seem to be learning of inexplicable gagging of investigation and charges against wrong-doing connected to embassies in China. And the sponsorship scandal. And more. But my observations are from a reviewer seeing what is not in the book. Copps can't be declared guilty of not writing about those things because they simply aren't the subject of the book. The book is about Copps in politics. Her story tells us sad things about (a) the position of women, still, (b) about the power of corporations to "govern government" in Canada and to impede good things Canadians have democratically expressed they wish for themselves and the world, and (c) about the empty, stupid, reactionary press and media we have in Canada. Let me give one example. Since I have worked for the cultural independence of Canada for a long time, and became familiar with the terms of the struggle, I watched her closely in the Heritage Ministry. She was determined to outsmart the U.S. which was trying to shove all of "culture" into Free Trade and other treaties, allowing the U.S. to erase other peoples' cultures and ram " coca-colonization" down their throats. Copps did a brilliant end-run on them. The U.S. refuses to recognize culture as a government portfolio. For the U.S. (to put the matter bluntly) all culture is "entertainment" and all entertainment is a capitalist, profit-making activity involved with conveying "commodities" at a price. As a commodity, entertainment has no nationality, no relation to identity, no special place, and should be traded like flour or band-aids. (That is U.S. political argument to overwhelm others, not a fundamental U.S. belief.) And so if the U.S. has more power to make films, magazines, pop songs, and books, say, than any other country, then (according to the U.S.) all their "entertainment" commodities should be able to move without any impediment everywhere in the world. That should be the case even if doing so destroys film-making, magazine production, song writing, and book publishing in other countries. One of the glaring ironies of that political position is presented by film in Canada. For more than 50 years U.S. interests have had a stranglehold on Canadian film theatres and film distribution in Canada. They have used that stranglehold to destroy major Canadian film production and to keep Canadian (often brilliant) film-making a welfare, cottage industry, unable to compete against the U.S. monopoly. Canadian politicians -- for more than 50 years -- have submitted to holding a subservient position, placing brilliant Canadian film talent in shackles on behalf of U.S. profit-making and cultural imperialism. In the middle 1980s, Flora McDonald, then Heritage Minister, prepared herself well to break the U.S. stranglehold on the Canadian film industry. Just as she was about to introduce legislation, the chief film agent for U.S. film-makers, Jack Vallente , contacted U.S. president Ronald Reagan who contacted Brian Mulroney who forced Flora McDonald to let Jack Vallente castrate Canadian film legislation, re-write it, and continue giving all power to U.S. interests. Sheila Copps didn't get caught in that trap. Studiously, carefully, she set about (as one of her headings has it) "building a global alliance". She began by organizing (with Lloyd Axworthy and Diane Marleau) a meeting in 1998 of 22 countries from around the world to address, in fact, U.S. cultural imperialism. Out of their discussions came the International Network on Cultural Policy. France was getting upset about U.S. incursions, as were many, many other countries. And so the INCP grew. The U.S. tried to kill it, and failed. And when Unesco wrote a document declaring the legitimacy and the need for instruments to assure international cultural diversity at the behest of the participating nations, the U.S. fought it, and lost. The wonderful ploy the INCP used was to refuse membership to any country that did not have a national culture minister or equivalent -- and, of course, the U.S. does not have one. It had to sit as an invited "Observer" at meetings. At the second annual meeting, in 1999, the U.S. "Observer" tried to introduce a destructive resolution, and he was slapped down as out-of-order by the South African culture minister. Isolated, almost alone, the U.S. finally voted in favour of the Unesco initiative. Copps was significantly instrumental in organizing international forces and terms to help prevent the U.S. from using its front organization, the World Trade Organization, to take over the non-U.S. cultures of the planet. Why don't Canadians know about that and other very important work Copps has done? As she reports, Quebec media followed the story. "The English media, on the other hand, ignored the whole issue. The only time there was ever any interest was when they were commenting on my travel bills." (p. 165) The English (or anglophone) media didn't ignore "the whole issue". They knew all about it, were offended a Canadian would try to rein in U.S. cultural expansion, and so did what they could to kill knowledge of the work Copps was doing. Most anglophones don't know what Copps did because most of the anglophone press and media is devoted to Continentalism and has done everything it can to ignore, belittle, or insult her good work. The anglophone media has succeeded. That's why -- as I say at the opening of this review -- many people won't read Worth Fighting For, even though they have a nagging feeling Sheila Copps should be paid attention to. It's called Media Brainwash. I saw it working when Copps was fighting against Continentalists in Ottawa to get the International Network of Cultural Policy up and running. At that time I was invited by the Chair of Canadian Studies at Carleton University to give an address. The Chair was held by a woman. Many women were studying in the School of Canadian Studies, and there was a growing emphasis on Women's Studies. I detected, however, a note of worrying complacency and self-satisfaction among students and faculty. The subject of feminism came up. I brought up the work Sheila Copps was doing and the resistance to it. I asked the women present to consider: Sheila Copps is a woman, a new mother (and, at that time, I believe a single mother). She is, I said, doing heroic work for Canada. You should not only support her (which they weren't doing), but you should show your support by organizing a support demonstration on Parliament Hill. Women supporting the good work of a woman, for Canada and the world. The people present looked at me as if I had two heads. "Support Sheila Copps?" was written all over them. They were totally taken in. Thinking themselves feminists, thinking themselves ardent critics of repressive politics, studying in the senior Canadian Studies centre in North America, they were being told by sell-out males dominating anglophone Canadian press and media to think of Sheila Copps as a dumb, scatter-brained, embarrassing female. And nearly all those women in Canadian Studies accepted precisely what those mostly stupid, mostly white, mostly reactionary, mostly Continentalist men told them to think. (Ah! Liberation!) By the same token, when the Sheila Copps report about Paul Martin's ugly repression of democratic process and his willingness to destroy major institutions like Medicare and the CBC was published, man after man after man connected to Martin denied everything, and the anglophone press and media helped them put Copps into an unfavourable light. My experience on the democratic matter has been the same. The Martineers were alleged, in very convincing reports, to be practicing Party Membership fraud in B.C. with the help of the rancid Gordon Campbell B.C. Liberal machine. Twenty of us wrote to the Chief Electoral Officer (before whom Copps has serious complaints). We asked for investigation of electoral fraud and wrong-doing in B.C. which was being discussed openly in the press. The Chief Electoral Officer tried everything he could to avoid even acknowledging our letter of complaint. Forced to do so by repeated messages, he made me re-present to a colleague in the same building!! We were then informed that if WE could produce evidence of fraud, the Chief Electoral officer and Elections Canada might do something. As far as we could see, the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada fled from our complaint and burrowed underneath the piles of rotten and decayed material that surround Paul Martin's throne. Maybe a lot of people should read Worth Fighting For, Sheila Copps' book. And maybe they should write to the Chief Electoral Officer demanding her complaints be fully and fairly investigated. We may be sure the mostly stupid, mostly white, mostly reactionary, mostly Continentalist men of the anglophone press and media certainly won't take a role in making sure her complaints are fully investigated and reported upon.