Canadian Colonialism Now (Part Two). The Political World

Colonial Canada Now (Part Two).  The Political World

To be effective, colonialism must exist at the core – in the political world and among those who create and pay for the politicians. “We all create and pay for the politicians”, you may say. But there are key powers and forces who serve interests that are not the interests of “we all”.  They use media, the education system, political indoctrination, and other forms of persuasion to create the terms upon which “we all” accept and pay for the politicians, “their” politicians.

We all more or less acknowledge that in lands we think of as “satellite” countries, “dependencies”, and “colonies” the politician class is laid on (elected or not) and serves the dominant power. At the same time we’re asked to say by rote: “that doesn’t happen here”. Are we right?

A few hundred years ago a colony was a place which was seized –because of its wealth or its strategic position on trade routes – by a “world power”.  Often “colonists” were shipped there to begin resident communities.

Hawaii, for instance, is still a strategic point on the way to Asia, and so in the middle of the nineteenth century, the U.S. faked a rebellion there, took it over, and began the process of making Hawaii a U.S. State.  Holding it as a semi-independent colony would be too dangerous for its future; it might decide it wanted self-rule.  And so against U.S. policy not to hold far-off land as part of the country, that far-off island group was made a constitutional part of the U.S.A.

In the weird, present process going on among contenders for world dominance called “globalization”, Afghanistan may be a kind of modern Hawaii.  The “peace” wanted for it may well be ‘peace as a willing and cooperating satellite of the U.S.A.’
Haiti is another strategic location which – in recent years – France, Canada, and the U.S.A. have hi-jacked, actually kidnapping the legitimate, democratic leader and flying him to Africa.  Then they  shuffled all the political and military cards to put in place leadership that follows (in the main) imperial orders.  When parts of the population rise in destitute, foreign-corporation-bled Haiti, U.N. troops put down “insurrection”(!) The Globe and Mail’s Report On Business (Friday, May 30 08) has a ten-page special on Haiti which calls Aristide’s kidnap a situation in which he “flees under the direction of U.S. marines” and ROB neglects to report that Canadian troops guarded the airport for a smooth kidnap.

In Africa from the sixteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth a chief object of wealth was a black human body.  And so the European and U.S. Slave Trade powers put in place the famous “nigger kings” to round up and corral fellow black Africans to ship out as slaves.  Because the “nigger kings” actually sold the bodies of their own people, they became a symbol for colonial sellout.

Whatever the wealth sought from a colony, or whatever strategic global location it has, one condition is always required of a colony – continuity of political agreement to serve the dominating power.
That is why, to the chagrin of ‘progressive’, ‘democratic’ U.S. people – the U.S. (and other ‘imperialist’ powers) almost always back repressive despotisms more often than freely operating, democratic populations seeking self-rule.  But despotisms are risky, dangerous, and explosive.  And so “willing” colonies are better.

By backing despotisms, the U.S. assures continuity of policy: military alliance with the U.S., trade and industrial policies favourable to the U.S. (the so-called “open” economies), and the unimpeded flow of U.S. propaganda: news, entertainment, books, “culture”, especially “popular culture”.  That last conditions the population to want U.S. life and commodities.

Nonetheless, a “democratic” colony, employing a sophisticated electoral system is preferable to a despotism for the reasons already stated.  Such a country looks as if it is “equal”, is choosing its policies to serve the imperial power.  How is Canada’s colonial position evident? Partly it is underscored by the “freezing” of the political class in Canada.  Three things are increasingly evident.  First, political “leaders” answer more and more to private corporate forces.  (For instance, Stephen Harper’s “equals” in his cabinet take direct orders from Harper, ‘the prime minister’s office’, about what they may say and who they may communicate with.  Ordinary MPs are completely gagged.  So much for democratic representation.  Harper works out policy with private corporate ‘North American’ power, apparently, and his “equals” in the cabinet are given their orders.)

That explanation is not my own.  It is not a “view” of this columnist only.  Read Lawrence Martin, “Info control spinning out of control”  (Globe and Mail May 5 08), for instance.  There Martin reports that the Harper control freaks were about to take control of everything the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, wished to release to the public, and were stopped just in time.  As well, Martin lists a frightening number on the Harper “enemies” list (who cease, in fact, to exist as Canadians, for the Harperites).  More of that farther on….

Nor is Martin alone.  Donald Savoie. specialist on the Canadian constitution and its functioning in the real world of Canadian parliamentary democracy, believes we are in “crisis”.  He addresses the crisis in his book, “Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom”.
His essay (Globe and Mail May 17 08 A19) is a must read on the issue.  It states, put very briefly, that the Harper “government” has become an inner circle, (connected outward to corporate power, I conclude), unelected for the most part, and silencing almost all elected, democratic representatives in parliament.  They [MPs], he insists, must form the force that breaks what I call “the new fascism”.

One example of the gagged “equals” in the cabinet can be found in
the Kelly Marie Richard, Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench case (at first, a dental malpractice case).  It has escalated scandalously, producing allegations of misconduct among RCMP officers, the judiciary, professional associations, lawyers, large insurers and now MPs, MLAs, and cabinet ministers who refuse to acknowledge the issue exists.  The matter has grown to a size that places it within the competence of Stockwell Day, minister of public safety, and Rob Nicholson, minister of justice.  Neither man will address the question.  Neither man will even acknowledge communications about it.  It seems impossible to believe that they have been given orders to ignore their trust positions and their duties to the Canadian public and to serve the interests of a huge tangle of, finally, private corporate forces contributing to “corporate North American power”.  But all the indications point that way.  They refuse all contact on the Kelly Marie Richard scandal.  They give every indication that all members of the Committee for the Defence of Kelly Marie Richard are on the “PM’s enemies list” and are treated as non-existent.

In the lives of ‘white men’ that is something of a new (and necessary) twist. It has to happen if democracy is to be destroyed in the country and bare-faced, colonial brute-law put in place.  Ironic, then, that Christie Blatchford, columnist for the Globe and Mail (May 29 08 A1 A6), should suggest that a “national day of insurrection” (to replace the present ‘national day of action’) by Canada’s native people may be in order because of the treatment they receive.  Native claims, she says, “go unheard.  Their letters to everyone from premiers to department heads and provincial coroners go unanswered”.  That’s policy, many of us know, and is now being turned on people who espy in the Kelly Marie Richard case what they believe is the same kind of lawless, co-operative, manipulated violations on behalf of private corporate interests to which Native Peoples are regularly treated. 

Secondly, U.S. presence and power is so great in Canada that almost no really credible differences exist between the three major federal parties.  The Liberals, for instance, caved in and backed  U.S. policy put forth by the Harperites on Afghanistan.  The NDP voted, commendably, against the extension of Canadian presence in Afghanistan.  But it, too, is hobbled by an inner circle that mostly reduces policy, policy making, and public response to corporate-acceptable levels. 

Instead of exciting public interest with dramatically strong, independent policies on the reconstruction of the RCMP, national control of Canadian energy resources, a major new environmental policy, a full-scale national policy on water and on Canadian-generated technological initiative, and a foreign policy clearly independent of the U.S.A., for instance, the NDP spends too much of its time and energy heckling the Opposition Liberals.

My own NDP MP recently refused to write a letter to the RCMP Commissioner and to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP to ask about the status of the Kelly Marie Richard case.  My MP argued that the RCMP and CPC never answer letters containing such questions!  Pardon?

In B.C. the reactionary government of Gordon Campbell has been involved in such sell-out of B.C. wealth – swimming in allegations of corruption – that the B.C. NDP should be the obvious, impatient, government in waiting.  Refusing to become militant, refusing to take on the sell-out major press head-on, refusing to lay out a wholly B.C. ownership policy of B.C. wealth, the NDP (so far) runs alongside the Gordon Campbell forces nipping  - often unproductively – at their heels.  Its most recent concentration on the BC Rail Scandal and apparent improper actions in the premier’s office provide a soft, fresh wind blowing through B.C. NDP inactivity.

A third indication of growing colonialization of political forces in Canada is becoming evident.  The “political population” – meaning many civil servants, MLAs, MPs, and unelected party officials and operatives – have become a continuous single class, pitted together, often, against voters and forces in the society working for policy changes that challenge U.S. dominance of Canadian wealth, thought, and the economy.

That apparently complex situation is not really complex at all.  The definition of a modern U.S. colony is one in which (regardless of party or government) there is an assured and continuous policy of military alliance with the U.S., trade and industrial policies favourable to the U.S., and on the unimpeded flow of U.S. propaganda: news, entertainment, books, and culture, especially popular culture.  Just imagine a political party appearing that campaigns to change that basis to one oriented to the long term, independent economic, environmental, cultural, and social good of the resident population. An avalanche would fall upon that political party. Politicians, press, media, cultural advocates, etc. etc. would shriek about narrow nationalism, racism, selfishness, and countless other negatives pointing to an allegation that anyone who resists Canada’s colonial inferiority is mad, cruel, and inhuman. But Canadians – under such a debate – would begin to wake up to their real situation.

Canada’s political parties and leaders have been indoctrinated to blind themselves to the huge potential of a Canada in which Canadians own, operate, develop, and refine the raw material wealth of the country, and lead scientific initiatives as well as map  out trade and exchange with the rest of the world.  Our leaders and parties have been indoctrinated to believe that Canadians (among the best educated people in the world) just couldn’t do those things.  “Bring in the yanks, please.  We are too stupid to own and run Canada.”

Colonial Canada Now has no better symbols of its condition than our politicians of all parties. They are so basically, consistently given to Canada’s colonial position that we tend to think they are normal, and we think their way is the only way…until we look a little more closely.