The Pulpit Column

“When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.”

--Cree prophecy

We’ve all seen the ads on television. A man telling us how we should all burn bio-fuels and referring to Prime Minister Harper’s “promise”. The message is that burning ethanol and diesel made from plants is good for the environment. Those ads are paid for by the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, a non-profit organization that exists to promote bio-fuels. It’s membership includes such environmentally unfriendly companies as Archer Daniels Midland, Sunoco, Monsanto and Shell. The kind of agricultural and energy practices these interests are promoting are anything but green.

Stephen Harper went to address the UN on climate change with one thing in mind. He went to further the neo-conservative agenda to keep dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Harper, an opponent of Kyoto and, until recently, a global warming denier, has become the point man for George Bush and John Howard to dismantle the Kyoto process. That process is something that the Harper government claimed to support, even as they were cutting funding to programs to reduce global warming and refusing hard targets in favour of intensity-based targets. Hard targets are what Kyoto is really based on, so when Stephen Harper or John Baird claims to support the Kyoto process while insisting on intensity-based targets, they are being less than honest. Intensity-based targets are dishonest in themselves. While claiming to reduce emissions, they really allow for emissions to increase as long as there’s a profit to be made. The earth’s climate systems are not, of course, interested to Mr. Harper’s credo of greed over common sense or his contradictory claims about the Kyoto process.

“You hand in your ticket

And you go watch the geek

Who immediately walks up to you

When he hears you speak

And says, "How does it feel

To be such a freak?"

And you say, "Impossible"

As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here

But you don't know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?”

– Bob Dylan Ballad of a Thin Man

Prime Minister Harper, or Steve, as he's known in Newfoundland and Crawford, Texas, tawdled off to Europe this week.

Before he left he made it clear, in rhetoric that sounds like it was written and conceived in the Bush White House, that he wasn't going to go along with Germany's plan to begin dealing more effectively with global warming. The goals are too ambitious for Canada, at least according to Steve.

There are many ways to describe Environment Minister John Baird. Some say he's a bull in a china shop. Others call him a blowhard. Baird's April 26 announcement of the Harper government's latest attempts to evade reality leaves little doubt though. John Baird is a coward, a shirker, and a prevaricator. All of his bluster and his crooked smile cannot hide his many shortcomings. John Baird is not fit to sell used cars. Not only is he not good enough to buy a used car from, he should be rushed to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia as soon as possible. They can do tests to find out what is wrong with Mr. Baird there and keep him isolated so that his malady doesn't spread. Oh, we could isolate him in the Canadian facility in Winnipeg, but Baird, like so many in the Harper government, will be much happier in the USA. We don't know what, exactly, causes Mr. Baird to act the way he does. My personal guess is that he was exposed to some sort of brain fluke that has eaten whatever parts of his brain control good sense, honesty, the willingness to work and bravery. Whether it's a brain fluke or some other illness though, we should not judge Mr. Baird too harshly. There is little doubt that the man is seriously ill and needs treatment.

“I’ve been hearin’ stories, fact the word's all over town,

I’ve had my share of worries ever since you’ve been around,

So come over here and listen, I don’t want you to be missin’ what I say,

And I ain’t gonna waste my time sayin’ it all again.”

--Nazareth

Sir Nicholas Stern, a British economist that Britain’s Blair government tasked with determining the economic costs of global warming, released his report on October 30. The news isn’t good. If we do nothing, the course apparently preferred by the Bush government in the US and the Harper government here in Canada, the world economy will be taking a $7 trillion dollar hit.

Stephen Harper, in a move so cynically political that it would make even Jean Chretien’s head spin, recently agreed to keep Vancouver’s Insite safe injection clinic open until December 2007. Mr. Harper cited the need for more study for the shortened extension of Insite’s exemption from Canadian law. That claim is highly suspect, since several peer reviewed studies have shown the benefits to both addicts and the greater community that the site provides.

If the Harper government was truly interested in what such studies say, they’d be begging for more clinics to be opened in Canada’s major cities. A call for further study is just a delaying tactic, an attempt to get an uncomfortable political situation out of the news until the Conservatives can gain a majority government. Insite is a popular program in Vancouver and has support in other urban centres where Harper desperately needs to gain seats, but it is not popular among Harper’s mostly rural core constituency.

No doubt the time between Harper’s call for more study and the time that the short extension he offered ends will be full of calls to close the Insite clinic. These calls will be based on little more than conjecture and misinformation, and will likely bear an uncanny resemblance to the articles still being put forth by global warming deniers and creationists. They will be persistent, published in an uncritical press, and given the same weight as scientific, peer reviewed studies.

Harper’s willingness to put political concerns before both science and the good of the community is nothing new. Politicians have been doing it since politicians were invented, and the Liberals that preceded Harper were so expert at it that few even noticed the extent of their political manoeuvrings. Mr. Harper is certainly no stranger to basing his position, or changing it, according to the polls either. The change in his public stance on health care is an example of that, as are the focus groups he’s been running to develop an environmental plan.

Does Canada have an independent foreign policy? We used to, back when we were recognised as more than a satellite state of the United States. Our involvement in peacekeeping, trade with countries the US does not approve of, and efforts to remain an honest broker who does not take sides are well documented.

That independence, and our good reputation, began to slip with the institution of the original Free Trade Agreement under Brian Mulroney. By the time the Liberals took control, Canada was well on its way to being irrelevant on the international stage. Our shrinking military and lack of participation in peacekeeping missions were no doubt a contributing factor, but the root cause was a political reluctance to anger our trade partner to the south. It was not, as Stephen Harper, the neo-conservative Calgary School, and the various right-wing think tanks insist, simply due to the under-funding of our military. That under-funding was made possible by a lack of foreign policy, not the other way around.

We exhibited at least some independence under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, although that may well have been driven more by domestic political expediency than any wish to act as a truly sovereign state or have influence on world events. Our stature as a country that could be called on when needed was slowly eroded. More and more the reason given for our non-participation on the world stage was trade with the US.

Is Canada participating in the torture and abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan? Yes. Hopefully not directly, but unfortunately we are indirectly involved in exactly that, and have been since we arrived there.

When Canada first sent troops to Afghanistan, we handed over captured enemy combatants to the United States. Those combatants were sent to Guantanamo Bay under the invented, and illegal, designation of "illegal combatant" or passed on to countries that we know routinely commit torture. There were some well-documented cases of US soldiers beating detainees, sometimes to death, in Afghanistan. Those prisoners who reached Guantanamo Bay were, and still are, mistreated as a matter of course.

We continued handing prisoners over to the United States for years under the Chretien and Martin governments, even though we knew the US was breaking international law. In December 2005 we reached an agreement with the Afghan government. It isn’t much of a deal, really. We have no oversight, the Afghan military can pass the prisoners on to which ever country they want, even if that country is committing torture. We also know that prisoners are regularly beaten and tortured in Afghan jails.

Knowing those things and still passing prisoners on is a breech of Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture. The convention states very clearly, “1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

"There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearance; he somehow seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an actor, and clad in immaculate linen."– H.L. Mencken

Prime Minister Harper is playing cheap, partisan political games with the mission in Afghanistan.

After having to be cajoled and dragged into a take note debate with no vote a few short weeks ago, Harper suddenly felt the need for an abbreviated debate followed by a rush vote on May 17. It was so urgent that he could only give the other parties 36 hours notice and could offer no details to aid them in preparing for the debate. They had to push to have the debate extended from three hours to six. The only notable events that occurred between April’s take note debate and Wednesday’s partisan power-play were some polls that showed Harper’s numbers climbing.

Harper won the vote by 149 to 145. A slim margin no doubt dictated by the political concerns of the Liberal Party who would very much like to maintain control over the timing of the next election. That result seemed to anger Harper. He stood petulantly on the stairs and complained to reporters that he didn’t get full support from the Liberals and Bloc. He was lucky to get as much support as he did.

In the House of Commons, Harper announced that his motion for a vote on a two year extension of the Afghanistan mission was a farce. He said that, should he lose the vote, he would extend the mission by one year, then call a general election to seek a mandate to extend the mission by another year. It was nothing less than the most blatant use of the Canadian military for purely political reasons in memory.

On April 5, 2006, CBC’s the National ran a segment on cuts to funding for programs designed to help Canada meet its Kyoto commitments. While the political spin from the Conservative Party had been that the One Tonne Challenge had been cut, the CBC story pointed out that the cuts were much deeper and far-reaching. Several scientific research projects and 40 information offices were on the chopping block.

Later news reports confirmed that the Conservatives had cut 15 environmental programs and was reviewing everything else. According to these reports, Environment Canada could lose as much as 80% of its climate change funding and there are further reports that all climate change spending will be cut by 40%.

The Conservatives’ justification for the cuts? According to Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, “If it's not in the taxpayers' interest to fund programs that are not effective, then we are not going to.” Lunn did not explain what he meant by “taxpayers' interest” or elaborate on how it would be decided what that interest was.

Do the Conservatives plan to replace any of this funding? That’s not clear, but seems unlikely given that they’ve only said that they’ll come up with their own plan at some unspecified point in the future. Kyoto and other environmental programs are not really on the radar of the Harper government except as something to cut. The environment is not part of Stephen Harper’s much ballyhooed but completely inadequate five-point plan.

Mr. Harper went to Cancun to meet with Mr. Bush and Mr. Fox last week. It was billed as another Three Amigos summit, but was more like The Three Stooges. Bush and Fox are lame ducks and Harper has such a slim minority that every time he claims to have a mandate, the opposition parties break into open laughter.

The agenda was written in the back rooms of multi-national corporations. The progress that will be made in creating “Fortress America” to keep the bad people out and the money rolling into corporate coffers will be decided by men who never stand for election. It is business as usual, without even a sideways glance to the needs of the countries involved or the people who live in those countries.

Bush, Harper and Fox were in Cancun to appear to be doing something, not to actually accomplish anything. The interesting thing was what Vicente Fox was trying to appear to be doing. Following his dream of solving Mexico’s poverty problem by encouraging the country’s poor people to move north, Fox pushed Harper to accept more Mexican workers into Canada. Harper was noncommital, promising to have somebody look at the issue.

Do Canadians want our country to be nothing more than a satellite of the United States? We were well on our way to that uncomfortable reality under the ill-considered policies of Paul Martin, and all the signs point to the situation worsening under the Harper government. In the debate about Afghanistan, that is the sub-text that must be considered. Harper, who was so embarrassed by our decision not to partake in the invasion of Iraq that he published an open letter of apology to the United States, is fully backing our new role in Afghanistan. The Conservative response to a recent poll that indicated most Canadian do not agree with our present role in Afghanistan tells a story of the arrogance of the Conservative Party and the undue influence of war hawks on our government. Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor responded to the poll by saying “I guess what this poll tells me is I've got a lot of work to do. I've got to start explaining to Canadians why we're in Afghanistan and the good work we're doing.” If Canadians do not agree with the actions of our government, our government thinks it is because we are misinformed and must be corrected like errant children.

Stephen Harper has a drug problem. Like so many who share the monkey on his back, he likely doesn’t realise that it’s a problem yet, and would be unlikely to admit it if he did. Those closest to him either share the problem or keep silent about it, acting as enablers. Those slightly more removed recognise the problem, but do not speak out either because they fear repercussions or because they hope to benefit if Harper’s drug problem leads to his destruction. They do not care about those that will be harmed as Harper’s problem spirals out of control.

Like so many before him, Stephen developed his problem by poor choices made early in life. His role models, people like Ronald Reagan, had drug problems of their own. His peers, people like George Bush, have also followed that path.

I don’t mean, of course, that Stephen Harper is running around Ottawa snorting cocaine off the bodies of exotic dancers, shooting heroin in the Peace Tower, or cooking up a batch of methamphetamine every time he returns to Calgary. I have no idea if he does those things, nor am I terribly interested in his hobbies. I feel I should make that clear because Mr. Harper does have a reputation for being both humourless and litigious.

"Your country [the USA], and particularly your conservative movement, is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world."

- Conservative leader Stephen Harper, then vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in a June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing American think tank.

Would Stephen Harper turn Canada into smaller version of the United States? The Bush administration certainly hopes so. An oft-quoted article by Partrick Basham in the Washington Times praised Harper as, "Mr. Bush's new best friend internationally and the poster boy for his ideal foreign leader."

“Beware! the floor is slick and greasy And dangerous… Get down on all fours to proceed.” --Hunter S. Thompson

As the UN Summit on Climate Change in Montreal was winding down, Paul Martin took a shot at George Bush and the United States for their record on the Kyoto Agreement and their apparent reluctance to partake in any future agreements. "To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say this: There is such a thing as a global conscience," Martin said.

That got the attention of the Bush White House. They said they’d be watching our elections and there had better not be any more anti-Americanism. Another vague threat from the Bush administration. They hauled our ambassador in for an official dressing down. David Wilkens, the US ambassador to Canada, has been complaining that Martin’s rhetoric is damaging relations between the US and Canada.

Nobody in the US press likes to mention that relations between the US and Canada were fine before George Bush came to power. They shy away from noting that Martin has a point about the US position on global warming.