James Travers. Rest In Peace. If You Can.

James Travers.  Rest In Peace.  If You Can. 

Mourning for the Toronto Star national affairs reporter James Travers is widespread and real. But is it deserved? A journalists’ journalist, he evoked admiration for his wit, his acerbic mind, his concern for Canadian democracy. In the House of Commons in early March a few minutes were taken to mark his unfortunate passing. He died, young – at 62 – on March 3, 2011, and on March 5 one of his columns was reprinted.

It was a column from 2009.  It is called “Canada, we have a problem”. It won a National Newspaper Award. (Remember that fact.  It’s important.)

The column shines.  It traces the satisfaction Canadians felt for decades – looking out at the often precarious and despotically ruled world – and then at their own real democracy possessing strong democratic institutions and only minor instances of corruption. A condition, James Travers records, that has passed.

In short, he reports, Canadians are letting their democracy slip from their hands. He lists as victims and causes of the erasure of democracy the RCMP, Parliament (now a “largely ceremonial body”), an odiously politicized senior bureaucracy, and a Governor Generalship, in fact, decapitated.  (Remember his list.  It’s important.)

Expediency, writes Travers, has replaced “precedents, procedures, and even laws”.  He calls on constitutional expert Donald Savoie, writing that ‘prime ministers now operate in the omnipotent manner of kings”, “every link” in the chains connecting the people to their legislators “stressed, fractured, or broken”.

Till that point, Travers aims at the target and hits the bulls eye.  Then … and  then something goes wrong.  He discusses the unfrocking of Guiliano Zaccardelli – once RCMP Commissioner “for conflicting testimony in the Maher Arar affair”, and reports him now “ in France, safe and quiet in an Interpol sinecure.”  Travers is correct.  That fact is scandalous.  How many people know where Zaccardelli landed? (Remember the question.  It’s important.)

Travers uses David Emerson’s victory as a Liberal in Vancouver/Kingsway (2006), and his crossing the House to sit as a Conservative cabinet minister as an example of the new stresses in the system.  Travers – in a way – defends Emerson’s move. “Emerson”, he wrote, “ is an honest man and his motives genuine.” 

Travers wrote that.

A man who showed contempt for the voters of the constituency who put him into Parliament, who double-crossed them, and who joined the governing party he had excoriated in order to gain a cabinet post “is an honest man and his motives genuine”.  Something has gone wrong – and not only with our democracy.  Something has gone wrong with our “trusted eyes and ears” covering national affairs.

Many would say the double-cross engaged in by David Emerson was not strange – but characteristic.  That may be arguable. Close associate of BC premier Gordon Campbell - as CEO of Canfor Mr. Emerson happened to be in that position to profit from the Gordon Campbell government’s erasure of many of British Columbia’s safety regulations. In the year when forestry deaths rose from about 16 or 17 the previous year to something in the 40s, Canfor made a record profit. David Emerson was CEO. He did not – in any record I saw – express dismay at the destruction of safety regulations … and of lives.

Unmasking as he goes, James Travers reports the 200-page manual Stephen Harper issued to Conservatives on how to defeat democracy in Parliamentary Committees, the lengths Harper has travelled to hide public information, the gagging of MPs, the gagging – too – of cabinet ministers, the appointed “apparatchiks” with more power than elected MPs, and even the leaks Harper’s ‘hirelings’ engaged in to assist the political campaign of Republicans for office in the U.S.A.

Summing up, James Travers writes: ”Extreme is now ho-hum in a country where the prime minister can override his own law to force an election, where accountability is little more than a campaign bumper sticker, where the police play politics and where there is no connection between scandal and punishment for those in privileged positions.”

True … and high sounding.  Then he tells us who can fix the evils – “mad-as-hell voters” can fix them.  And he ends writing: “If war is too serious to leave to generals, then surely democracy is too important to delegate to politicians.”

The statement is rubbish, for we do delegate to politicians, our elected MPs and MLAs, out of necessity, major (though not all) activity of our democracy.  Travers’ statement is rubbish, and it would be sentimental to pretend otherwise. But James Travers has to end the column in sentimentality, to supply a sugar-coated finish, because he hasn’t told the truth throughout.

Think of the parts above that I suggested readers remember.  (1) The column won a National Newspaper Award. (2) The institutions he listed that are victims of the destruction of democracy are the RCMP, the senior bureaucracy, Parliament, and the Governor Generalship. (3) Guiliano Zaccardelli, disgraced Commissioner of the RCMP, “is in France, safe and quiet in an Interpol sinecure”.

It is with that last little piece of information that he tells all.  The column won a National Newspaper Award because it failed to list one of the most corrupt institutions in our decaying democracy: Canada’s Mainstream Press and Media. If James Travers had told the truth about his own institution, he’d have won no Award. Those who remember know the Mainstream Press and Media didn’t follow Guiliano Zaccardelli to France, didn’t ask how – disgraced – he could win a top job, didn’t insist on knowing how his replacement was chosen … and why.  It never pursued the alleged reforms taking place in the RCMP. The Mainstream Press and Media failed in their fundamental task … failed calamitously.

They have, in fact, never pursued the alleged questionable and improper actions of the former top man in one of Canada’s most important institutions: the RCMP.

That is just the tip of the iceberg.

Remembering the shameful prorogation of Parliament that Stephen Harper wrung from a wholly inadequate Governor General Michaelle Jean, Canadians may also remember the Mainstream Press and Media came as close to supporting Harper’s assault on democracy as they could.  And then they let that massive betrayal drop, as if of no importance.

I could go on … and on.  But almost every user of the internet has to know that the Mainstream Press and Media are being more and more and more attacked and exposed for lies, failures to report, cover-ups, manufactured stories … all over the Western world.  And the Mainstream Press and Media are striking back – with lies, failures to report, cover-ups, and manufactured stories.

A real battle is in progress. The open fight for greater democratic reality in the governments of the world is being matched by the huge fight-back of the criminal corporate/government alliance intending to and narrowing democratic freedoms wherever possible in the world.  In B.C. and in federal Canada governments are in the hands of private corporations.  And to maintain that condition the Mainstream Press and Media (a part of the ‘private corporations’) are lashing out with lies, failures to report, cover-ups, and manufactured stories.

The biggest, recent one in B.C. (a manufactured story if ever there was one) – is still echoing in the heads of British Columbians.  It’s the white-washing of the corrupt B.C. Liberal Party just before its leadership race ended.  The Mainstream Press and Media failed to tell British Columbians that the BC Rail Scandal RCMP documents released as a basis for the white-wash [to a select few the Court decided were “the public”] were dubious to say the least.  The documents were untested as to their truth. The RCMP is alleged to have been (at best) inadequate in its investigations.  A huge body of other documents was withheld even from the small select group.  And if the BC Rail Scandal contains criminal action on the part of cabinet members (which it very well may), ALL the members who were running for office (who were former cabinet members) are inextricably tainted with the crimes.

Instead the Mainstream Press and Media trumpetted “disinformation”, to give the impression that the released RCMP documents cleared all the Liberals in cabinet at the time of the BC Rail Scandal, that the documents revealed only a tiny, ugly little threesome who were the whole story of the BC Rail Scandal. 

That’s British Columbia.

Let’s glance at Bev Oda, Minister of International Co-operation, whose actions the Speaker of the House of Commons has just judged worthy of consideration as being in contempt of Parliament. Sitting like a robot while John Baird and Stephen Harper controlled the disinformation about her, she was clearly not in control of her Department.  She is alleged to have lied to Parliament; Baird and Harper are alleged to have compounded her ugly situation.

What does the Globe and Mail headline its big story (Feb, 19 11)? “Bev Oda: A solid minister, a muddled political message”.  The ‘story’ is I believe – intended to cover up and whitewash. “A solid minister…?”

Let’s glance at the “in and out” scandal in which the Harper Conservatives have been convicted of actively and deliberately violating Election Financing Rules in 2006 (an appeal will be heard).  One of the major actors in the seamy scandal is Harper senator Doug Finley, manager of the Harper 2006 and 2008 elections.  Clearly an important person whose role has to reflect on the deliberateness of the allegations of intended violation, he is treated by the ‘big story’ in the Globe and Mail as a colourful fellow, an amusing chap.  The headline above the story is “Retreat of the tweeting Senator”.  The story that follows is as stupid.

The reporters are happy to frame Doug Finley’s view of parliamentary honour and propriety. Finley: “Politics is an adversarial business.  Kellogg’s doesn’t make money by telling everybody General Foods are a great product.” 

The Globe and Mail - I think readers may judge - is campaigning, now, hard, for a Stephen Harper election victory whenever an election comes, and without regard for Harper’s ruination of Canadian democracy, perhaps in support of it.

Which leads to a consideration of what I call the CBC Radio “Carol Op factor”.  Listening quite regularly to “As It Happens” evenings, I have become more and more sensitive to what I think may be Carol Op’s support of the Stephen Harper government.  Listen yourselves. Carefully. What do you think?

On Wednesday, March 9, Carol Op interviewed a Liberal MP concerned with Bev Oda, the “in and out” scandal, the failure of cabinet to reveal spending costs to Parliament, the Speaker’s ruling, the seriousness of contempt of Parliament. 

Ms. Op went for the Liberal MP as if he had done something wrong!  Was the Liberal Party going to use the materials to call for a vote of non-confidence?  The MP was gentle, was reasonable, was informative.  The Speaker had made it clear – the MP reported – that he wanted the matter to go to a committee to be considered and ruled on before action was taken.

A perfectly reasonable response, but it didn’t satisfy Ms. Op.  She didn’t ask what was the gravity of the possible findings of contempt of Parliament. She didn’t ask what would happen to Parliament if cabinet refused to report its spending to the people – one of the primary reasons Parliament exists. She didn’t ask if someone could slip accidentally into contempt of Parliament.  She didn’t ask if the incidents could lead Canadians to believe Stephen Harper is really trying to destroy Parliament. She didn’t ask for any information Canadians might have wanted.

She merely kept putting the question almost exactly as I imagine Stephen Harper himself would put it – with equal irrationality – if he were doing the asking. Were the Liberals going to move non-confidence?

Is Carol Op another James Travers, really wanting to say truth but so entangled in the mesh of Mainstream Press and Media fundamental dishonesty that she is incapable of doing so?  I can imagine her telling her audience that in double-crossing his electors, and in selling out in order to become a cabinet minister, David Emerson was “an honest man and his motives genuine” (as long as he was crossing the House to become a Stephen Harper loyalist).

The anger in the population over the dishonesty of the Mainstream Press and Media has to grow.  It is growing. The real battle to win back democratic reality in Canada has to become sharper – and people like Carol Op have to be pulled from their comfortable sinecures if listeners decide they are campaigners for the destroyers of democracy in Canada. 

Readers and admirers of people like James Travers have to be able to look at apparently excellent articles to see the truth being covered over, the facts carefully withheld, the falsehoods conveyed …  the loyalty to fascism buried in the rhetoric of a love for democratic freedoms.