Canadian Women's Soccer and the Politics of Commitment

The Canadian women's national soccer team made an early exit from the World Cup. That's a drag because they are a good team that went into the tournament with heightened expectations. Another reason this is a drag is the gender politics that have followed this team for a good long time. There is simply no reason that the women's team should be funded at a rate so shockingly different from the men's team and Canada Soccer should be completely embarrassed that it could not even conclude a temporary, interim deal with the team until the World Cup was underway.  One can only speculate on how this level of uncertainty has affected the team. This is not an issue of motivation but, as the team made clear in its press release related to the funding agreement (you can find that here), related to directly to training. To be compensated equally with the men's team, the women's team will have to allow Canada Soccer to transfer resources from training. In other words, Canada Soccer has said "we will pay you the same but not resource you the same. You'll get the same money but not the same support." It is horrible, as the PR notes, that the women's team was forced to make this choice and, if you are a soccer fan, it raises deep and fundamental questions about Canada Soccer's commitment to winning.  What is even worse ... its a short term deal that seems to expire at the end of the year. Canada Soccer's commitment to gender equality (even such as it is), in other words, is temporary and then defaults back to its pay women less stance. For its part, Canada Soccer does not even mention the deal on its website (or, did not when I checked).

None of this is as it needs to be. While I am shocked by the blatant character of Canada Soccer's gender discrimination, I am not surprised by it. In fact, I'd be surprised if the opposite had happened, if Canada Soccer had pro-actively (without being urged to and without the women's team needing to go public) took it upon itself to create the conditions for equality in a substantive way. Imagine the different headlines that we could have been reading: Canada Soccer realizing commitment to gender equality: women and men now compensated and resourced the same. I get that that sounds pie in the sky but why should it? Why is Canada Soccer, in 2023, trying to get away with inequality? 

For its part Canada Soccer seems to be in something of a financial mess. Earlier this July, it found itself backtracking on agreements with the national teams because, it said, the deal had been worked out without the approval of its Board of CFO (you can find that story here). But, that's not an excuse. All that had to happen was that the Board and CFO approve the deal. The exact financial machinations are difficult to track down but Canada Soccer is funded through a different body: Canada Soccer Business. Its website bills it as follows: "Canadian Soccer Business (CSB) is an independent commercial agency that offers a suite of representation services, delivering corporate partnerships, sponsorships and media rights for entities that make up the backbone of soccer in the country" (citation: here). Its web site has the standard feel good stories on it, but it seems that what has happened is this: Canada has outsourced funding for its national soccer teams to a private agency that withholds a portion of the revenue it receives (say, prize money from the World Cup) in order to fund both its own operations and the Canadian Premier League (see here for information), which -- according to its website -- seems to be its main client. This is potentially lucrative as CSB also retains media rights to the national teams. If you want to find out more about the CPL by clicking on the line on CSB's web page, you'll be directed to another web page v-- or, at least I was -- asking you to donate (in a cycling banner at the top of the page). The nature of the deal Canada Soccer has with CSB seems to be pushing Canada Soccer to bankruptcy and has -- according to the men's team -- delayed its payments from the men's World Cup. Canada Soccer, it seems, has attempted to balance its books through the time tested method of paying women less. 

One of the things I find particularly offensive about this is the way in which Canada Soccer tried to assure us that it is committed to the national team. Being committed to something, one should note, involves something more than stating a commitment. Canada Soccer has said it is committed to getting a fair and equal deal for the women's team but the last agreement expired in 2021. Not only is that a long time but the path to a fair and equal deal is easily available to them. It involves ... well ... resourcing and compensating the women's team equally.  Another example, from its web site, is Canada Soccer's vision, the first part reads "Leading Canada to victory [...]." If we were to ask the national teams about that commitment, what do you think they would say? How do you "lead" a team to victory when you make the players fight for equality. I think a team that's been without an agreement for two years and was forced to choose between compensation and training, might have something to say about the how real that commitment feels to them.  The point is simply this: it is easy to say one is committed to something but we should not mistake that for an actual commitment. 

The same type of commitment was evident politically from the new federal Minister of Sport and Physical Activity, Carla Qualtrough. Now, I am going to state clearly that I don't think being Minister of Sport in Canada is an easy job. The embedded and systemic inequalities and abuse that have come to light over the last several years are serious and require serious efforts. You can find some information here. On the other hand, at least part of the problem seems to be systemic and when we have people in powerful positions, one might expect something more than a statement of a reiterated commitment, as we received from Qualtrough. Their statement was reported on CBC as follows: "My background is as a human rights lawyer, so you're never going to hear me say anything but pay equity, equal pay for work of equal value. Our women deserve equal opportunities as our men and we're going to make sure they have it." To me, this amounts to little more than virtue signalling. As a minister, one should not simply say they support equality. I'll be honest: I would have thought that was a precondition of the job. Instead, what we have is a person who is uniquely placed to use the authority of the state to accomplish this ... say to help develop a new funding mechanism and to cut out the private business intermediary that seems to be draining money away form the national teams. And, yet, the best we can get out of them is the Coles Notes version of their CV and a commitment to promote the very equality that their government has so far ignored. 

I don't think this will bode well. 

Revisiting Saudi Arabia or What Price Your Ethics?

This is not an "I told you so" post, but it is an issue that I think needs to be periodically revisited because its implications are important. You might recall that a number of months ago -- last August -- the government of Saudi Arabia took offence to what were, in fact, fairly standard comments made, late on a Friday, by the Canadian state in defence of human rights in that country. In response, the government of Saudi Arabia did a bunch of things (suspending visas, stopping shipment of good through Canadian ports, recalling Saudi students, etc.). If you need a refresher, this CTV story provides it.

There were people -- including friends of mine -- who thought Canada has misstepped. I will confess I did not.  In retrospect, the government of Saudi Arabia's actions were completely out of character for normal diplomatic relations. It was a deep and serious over-reaction and no one should lose site of that matter. Governments make such statements all the time. The government of the US, for instance, routinely criticizes the governments of Canada and Mexico for its policies. People find this annoying and upsetting but we recognize that this is part of a domestic political strategy and serves domestic political interests in the US. Those criticisms (including some pointed personal criticism of Chrystia Freeland) actually changed nothing. They did not speed up the negotiating process of the new trade deal (which now seems to be on a rocky road for other reasons) or succeed in gaining concessions from Canada. One government says X or Y and and another government says Y or X. It is the character and nature of politics.

What happened with Saudi Arabia, we can now see, was something else and I do, actually, hope those Canadians who lined up against Canada by suggesting that Freeland or the government should not have embarrassed the government of Saudi Arabia are now a bit embarrassed themselves. For whatever reason, the government of Saudi Arabia has decided to double down a series of pretty bad foreign policy measures. Its war in Yeman is little short of a disaster; its intervention in Syria has failed; it has assassinated a dissident in one of its own foreign embassies, and the gulf coast alliance with which it works is springing leaks (its plan to isolate Qatar is going nowhere in the UAE started supporting its own side in Yeman).  Why criticize Canada? What was there to gain?

I think someone in the Saudi government spent too much time reading about hard power policies and their effectiveness at some western university because SA is a walking example of how badly hard power has failed and they have tried to use the hardest power. Does the government think it can win concessions from Canada. Hardly and if one pauses for a second to think about it, the oddness of this strategy (at least with regard to Canada) comes clearly into view. Saudi Arabia is just not an important part of Canadian foreign policy or international trade. While there were some minor inconveniences, most Canadians have not even noticed a diplomatic conflict. Did you? Were there any real world implications to the actions taken by the Saudi government for Canada?  If Saudi Arabia was trying to control the response of the Canadian government by "punishing" (as the news story says) the country, well, that punishment amounted to ... well ... nothing because our limited interchange means it can amount to nothing. Not only, in other words, did the government of Saudi Arabia over-react, it over-reacted without effect. Rather than being somehow embarrassing for Canada, what the Saudi government did was to illustrate its own powerlessness, at least with regard to Canada, and that is precisely thing a believer in hard power seeks to avoid. Said differently, their strategy has highlighted the limited value of their strategy. 

Thus, one of the upshots of this conflict is not to say "see, Canada was right," but to say "see, be careful when you double down on a hard power strategy." The fact that you tried to remobilize a strategy (hard power) that failed in Yeman, failed in Syria, and was failing with some of your traditional allies, should have highlighted the limits of that policy; not its potential usefulness is another situation.

For Canadians, we should not walk away and think either: (a) we need to be quiet when confronted by a potentially hostile other country or (b) we were right, yay!  Instead, those who were quickly willing to criticize the government for its (admittedly meaningless) defence of human rights should ask themselves: am I on the right side? Before asserting that the Government of Canada has done anything wrong in issuing a statement about human rights, one might ask, who might I be implicitly defending if I reject the Canadian position? What human rights violations might I be suggesting we ignore?  To what governments might I be suggesting we give a free pass? What price, in other words, am I putting on my ethics?

This is not an idle or academic question. If one says "the government should sit quietly by so we don't lose visas or shipping fees or student places," one is putting a price on one's ethics and, in the case of SA, one would have been selling them at a bargain basement price because the actual cost -- the "punishment" -- that SA could inflict on Canada was so low. You might want to sell your ethics. You might believe that it is OK to do so. But, surely, even if this were the case, you would want to set a higher price for them. Instead, those who criticized Freeland and the Canadian government basically said "my ethics are sold at Value Village." And, this says something interesting, the implications of which might not have been well considered. If your ethics can be sold so cheaply ... why would I want to buy them? If you are willing, in other words, and to use a different metaphor, to cut and run at the first sign that there might, possibly, on the outside chance, be something that bad  that could, maybe, happen in a very small way ... well ... why would I (or, anyone else) pay any attention to you in the first place.

To say this in blunt terms: if Canada backed down before every well-to-do non-democracy looking to defend its scratch ... why would anyone (Canadians included) take Canada seriously with regard to anything?

Saudi Foreign Policy and Canada

It is easy to speculate about others actions when you don't know much about a country. This is the Canadian dilemma with regard to Saudi Arabia. While I suspect most Canadians could find the country on a map and are aware that it is a major oil producer with a state religion ... that is likely about it. For one reason or another, Saudi Arabia has made Canada the brunt of its vindictive and it is pulling out all the stops ... or, at least all the stops it can. It is sending the Canadian ambassador home, selling off Canadian state investment it owns (and perhaps private investments as well), stopping flights back and forth to Canada, and recalling a whole bunch of its students (perhaps up to 16 000) studying at Canadian universities.

By Canadian standards this is big stuff. Canadian knowledge of foreign policy often begins and ends with whatever has been on the news of late and the United States. And, these are often the same thing. Canadians are aware of things going on in other parts of the world, to be sure, and they often have deep -- and conflicting -- views on those subjects (say, Israel and Palestine, nuclear disarmament and North Korea, Russian intervention in other parts of the world, etc.) But ... Saudi Arabia ... in a spat with Canada and ... over a tweet .... seriously ... a tweet ...  that was, well, more or less the mildest form of criticism that the Canadian government could possibly have offered. You can find an assessment here.

What is going on -- that is, what should we learn from this -- and what should Canada do about it? This is a two part question, but a potentially important one for the development of Canadian foreign policy. So far, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has stuck to its guns but what is also clear is that this government does not know a great deal about foreign policy and is having a very difficult time navigating international waters. In large measure, I want to argue, this is because the world is different and IR theories that developed and were designed for past times -- even the recent past -- won't work. Canada needs, in other words, a foreign policy -- even a foreign policy of criticism -- that is conscious of its historical moment. So far, at least from what I can tell, neither the current government nor its critics have really demonstrated that. Instead, they are recycling the debates of the Harper era and that will not get Canada where it wants to go.

What is going on is several things. First, there are things specific to Saudi Arabia. It has established a particularly aggressive foreign policy of late: supporting rebels in Syria, attempting to internationally isolate Qatar, and conducting a destructive civil war in Yemen. It is embroiled in a three way fight for influence in its region of the world (with Iran and Turkey) and beyond. At home, it has cracked down on peaceful dissent, which includes (among others) women's rights activists. What are the wider implications of this?

Several inter-related factors are important to consider: the world of the Middle East, in which Saudi Arabia was a repressive but internationally peaceful and predictable client state of the US has now passed. Saudi Arabia will not step on US toes, because of US power, but otherwise it will follow what it perceives to be in its own interests and it will use hard power mechanisms to accomplish its aims. This has occurred, again, for a couple of reasons:

(A) Saudi Arabia lacks soft power options. It shouldn't. Its oil-based bankroll should allow it to develop a fuller range of foreign policy options, including effective diplomacy. For whatever reason, the Saudi government has chosen not to take that course but to instead focus on hard power options. Or, in the case of Canada, as hard a power as they can muster. The neglect of soft power foreign policy options, in other words, has left Saudi Arabia with few alternatives to a bellicose -- and potentially irrational --  foreign policy that seems intended to force other states into its line.

Canada is a good example. While the Canadian government would likely continue mild criticism of Saudi Arabia (as it does with a range of other states), that criticism is meaningless and, in the case of the current government, more or less intended for domestic consumption. In other words, these kind of tweets appeal to soft-centre-left Canadians who support human rights, were horrified by their almost complete irrelevance to the Harper government, and want to see their government saying the "right things." In point of fact, this is the kind of international human rights engagement against which supporters of human rights in Canada have been quick to argue. Talk that really does little.

And, make no bones about it, Canada was not actually going to do anything serious about the Saudi human rights record. It didn't want to because the current government does not really know what it is is doing on the world stage and the Conservative opposition is more interested in potential military sales than anything else.

What this means, of course, is that the Saudi effort to create a one-state embargo of Canada was meaningless. In fact, I'd guess that a lot more Canadians are aware of Saudi Arabia's human rights record today than they were a week ago. I'd guess a lot more people are scratching their head about the Saudi government and wondering about the political rationality of its policies now than a week ago. Not only has Saudi Arabia drawn more international attention to its own bad record, but it can't cause Canada to back down.

Why? Because whether we like it or not, the discourse of human rights is a selling issue with Liberals and long has been. Trudeau's father was, of course, a huge supporter of rights (think Charter) but so are people like Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland and so are the people who vote Liberal or whom the Liberals want to vote Liberal. The Liberals have no monopoly on human rights, of, but the issue seems to resonate with significant sections of the Canadian population and those are the sections where the Liberals are looking for votes. Put in different terms, if Canada misjudged Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia has misjudged Canada.

In terms of realpolitik, Saudi Arabia is playing a losing game here too and this is a key point. Saudi economic interchange with Canada is simply not great enough to have any effect. Imagine, for instance, that the highest estimate of Saudi students in Canada is true and 16 000 university students disappear. This is a tiny number. According to Universities Canada there are 1.7 million students in Canadian universities. The CBC this morning made much of the 700 or 800 Saudi medical students in Canada, but ... are we  to believe that there are no students, say in Canada, who might like those spots in medical school?  Sending an ambassador home is a big diplomatic move (that is why most countries never do it) but it is largely meaningless in terms of policy. Cancelling flights inconveniences people who fly but it does not stop transit between Canada and Saudi Arabia. It just inconveniences ordinary people looking to make the flight, perhaps university students who now have to look for a new school that will accept their credits less than a month before school starts (less than a few weeks before the US fall semester begins).

(B) This is not, however, just an instance of Saudi Arabia looking to exert its authority on the world stage. It illustrates a transition in world power away from the US/USSR binary of the Cold War era or the single super-power of the post-Cold War age and toward a more multi-centered international power system in which different countries compete internationally with each other and with "the west" for international influence and authority. In this regard, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran, among others, are all engaged in the same international politics. The issue, in other words, is only Canada a little bit. It is really about other things and this is what the current Canadian government might have misjudged.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think Canada should be silent in the face of international human rights abuses and I don't think that Canadians should back down in front of aggressive hard power politics ... when they are in the right. I'll get to this in my next post.

What we are seeing, however, is what a multi-polar world looks like. The increased US evacuation of international politics under Trump is facilitating this development. While the previous US government, for instance, would almost certainly have "sided with Canada" (at least in terms of public statements), the current one has not and likely will not. Their approach is this: "this is none of our business and we wish both sides well. We hope they solve their problems." Likewise the EU -- preoccupied with its own issues -- took basically the same stance.

What does this mean? Well, it means that Canadians should not look to the US or the EU for support for our actions on the international stage. I watched CBC this AM and there was mild surprise that others -- our traditional allies -- have not sided up with us. But, the fact that our media at least were looking for this illustrates how much they have misjudged the world.

Not only is easy and ready support for an "international consensus" on human rights at hand, but it is not clear that there is an international consensus on human rights.

Again, don't get me wrong. I think the ordinary person -- the ordinary Canadian, American, Briton, German, South African, etc. -- is completely in favour of human rights. But, exactly how much political capital their governments are prepared to spend on it is not clear. We know from polling in the US that there is a decline in empathy, particularly among Republican supporters. Put in other words, things that we all could have previously assumed ... might not be easy to assume.  The new right in Europe, for instance, seems simply to not care about the lives of refugees. And, we have all see the problems with child-parent reunification in the US. Lots of people care, to be sure, and show that care every day. But, lots of others ... don't and this is giving, I think, their governments pause.

The influence of the decline of empathy on domestic politics, then, has the interesting and important effect of emboldening human-rights violating regimes. They were violating human rights before, that is clear, but they did so in different ways. Now, criticism of the violation of human rights is construed as "meddling" in another state's internal affairs. And, the declining international power of the US and indifference of European states facilitates that process.

For Canada, this means -- and Canadians should note this -- there is cavalry riding the rescue.  Canada needs to be deliberate in its actions and secure in its ability to stand on its own feet. (Again, more on this in the next post.)

The wider picture is this: this is what the post-New World Order -- the post-global age --  looks like.  It is not necessarily pretty. Rather than regionalized economic power blocks figuring out how to collaborate with each other under the umbrella of the WTO, what we have is militarized quests of influence based in little else than hard power. It is not pretty at all. But, perhaps even because of this, now is the time to rethink Canadian foreign policy. We should not abandon a commitment to human rights but we need to figure out exactly how to meet that aim in changing circumstances.

Freedom of Religion, Sexism, Reproductive Rights

A key issue for some evangelical Christians is attestation. What is that? It is a new policy whereby organizations that receive federal summer employment grants -- these are to hire students over the summer -- must agree to that they support the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Here is the precise wording:

"CSJ applicants will be required to attest that both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression."

You can find the larger description here. Some of my friends who are evangelicals are reading this as a direct attack on their views and on freedom of religion. In New Brunswick, this issue has popped up in the past -- on the provincial level -- with regard to state funding of post-secondary education and, in particular, the fact that students attending Crandall University do not qualify because it is a private school that maintains a faith-statement commitment.

The problem -- for at least the people that I have seen comment on this -- is that some evangelical Christian organizations believe they cannot attest to this statement because of their religious believes but rely on job grants to run, in part at least, their summer programs. I don't believe my church applies for federal grants (I'd need to check that one out) but they do apply for provincial grants and hire high school/college kids to run summer camps and the like. Are they right? Is this attestation requirements a threat to freedom of religion?

I will confess that I am not sure. I don't think it is, but I'd also like to argue that there is some room for discussion and that there should be.  The issue, in other words, for all concerned might be more complex than we allow. They issues are "reproductive rights" and "sexual orientation or gender identity or expression." Some evangelical Christians see themselves as ardently anti-choice and opposed to anything but hetero normative and patriarchal gender and marriage relations. Others -- a larger group, in my opinion -- would not make an unqualified statement on either of these points, but argue that individuals retain the right to hold views regarding reproductive rights and gender identity and *not* suffer discrimination for these beliefs. All, they would argue, should enjoy equal *benefit* of the law.

I want to come back to this point -- equal *benefit* of the law -- because it is an important standard that is often neglected in consideration of equality issues. I should begin by saying, however, that I find it very difficult to speak about reproductive rights, as a man and this is the key point that I want to make today. My general view is that this is an issue in which there is an unequal burden, as it were, and that unequal burden creates a necessarily unequal authority to speak on the subject. I want to be clear: I am *not* saying that men should not speak on this issue but that the weight of authority must necessarily rest with women. A man cannot, quite simply, claim an equal right to a woman's body.

This is a point that I don't think enough evangelical Christians have considered because they have gotten so used to debating the merits of abortion and choice. I do think that the issue of children affords evangelical Christians many opportunities to be constructively involved in the world. I am not certain that forcing often young, poor, marginalized women to bear the burden of someone else's ethics is, however, one of those constructive ways. There are children to adopt, poor families in need of assistance, food banks that will nearly run out of food sometime shortly after Christmas, school supplies to be bought, access to minor sports and music programs to be provided, and a range of other things. There is tutoring and mentoring and driving (which often takes two people owing -- rightly -- to new regulations about ensuring that no one adult has supervisory control of children who are not there own). I recognize that many churches are involved in these things right now. Mine is. But, my point is this: there is no shortage of ways to be active in the world in support of children and families. There is poverty and need and  loneliness that can and should be addressed right now, as I write and as you read this. But, whether or not this extends to control of another person's body is not at all clear to me.

Let me unpack that sentence a bit more. Childbirth and child raising are difficult, time-consuming tasks that challenge who we are as people.  Men do not have to experience pregnancy and childbirth and will never experience these things first hand. Hence, to say that a man -- any man -- should have an equal voice in reproduction is theoretically interesting but in practice *must* confront a stark reality. I am a man. The price of my having a say on this issue, or even a determining voice, is born by someone else. I will not have to be pregnant. I will not have to give birth. I recognize that there is an unequal burden to child care, as well, on a macro scale but let us leave that off because there are a lot of exceptions.  The issue that we have to address is whether I get a vote on what someone else will do with their body? If we were talking about two men and one man controlling what another did with their body for, say, nine months ...  would we even be having this discussion? I deeply and fundamentally doubt it.

This is what I mean by someone else bearing the burden of my ethics. For me to say "see I have done the right thing," I, as a man, never have to address the implications of me feeling that I have done the right thing, if I so choose. Other people do, and they will not get that choice; often people I will never meet, never know their story, never understand their circumstances, never share their aspirations or cry with them for the things that have gone wrong in their lives. In other words, I not only claim control over their bodies, but over the bodies of women I have never met, will never meet, and will not ever try to understand what is going on in their lives. I will make up my mind on the basis of what I think is right and without any regard for them, their circumstances, the child for which they will care, the choices they will have to make, the heartache and pain I can bring to them.

And ... make no mistake about it: this will not *only* be one person controlling another's body. It will be control exercised through the state. What those who oppose choice seek to do is make it illegal for women to have abortions. This means that the police, the courts, even the medical profession will be used as instruments to control the choices women can make with their bodies. This is not an abstract, Philosophy 101, debating club type of discussion. This is a discussion with real implications: women being arrested and forced against their wills to have children. I really wish I were exaggerating but before anyone accuse me of doing so, let me ask you a few questions: what do you think will happen if abortion becomes illegal? What do you think the word "illegal" means? Who do you think enforces the law?

I will need to come back to this issue -- and it might not be a bad thing because I've blogged way too much on freedom of speech so perhaps I should address another issue -- but the first problem that evangelicals need to address is not their supposed right to their religious beliefs. And, this is the key point I want to make. I think this issue is miscast as a freedom of religion issue. I support freedom of religion. Indeed, I think spirituality is just way too important to allow anything but individual freedom.

But, I am less than certain that my freedom of religion is the same as to my ability to control someone else's body. Is this actually what those who argue for freedom of religion mean? Is this their definition of freedom of religion: the right to use the state to control other people's bodies? Thus, rather than asserting a right and demanding equal treatment on its basis (which might be fine; we will come to that in the future), I'd argue that evangelical Christians should, as it were, "go back to the drawing board." Pause in their certainty that they know what is right and that they are acting according to the will of God, consider their options, and think about the implications of the rights they are asserting. Phrased in the way I just phrased it, you can see the gender bias inherent in the assertion of this supposed freedom of religion. Evangelicals -- including myself -- need to ask: is this really what we want to do? Legitimize men's control over women's bodies? We've had that in the past and there is far too much of that in the present. It has not worked well and that is why the advocates of equality want to get rid of it. Is this really what we mean by freedom of religion: the right to have men force women to have children against their will?

I'd argue, no.

Education ... What's it good for ...?

In my last post, I tried to argue that education was a good thing. Indeed, it is almost silly that I have to make that argument. It would have seemed bizarre to previous generations of Canadians who went to remarkable length to increase the level of formal education in our society. Previous generations of Canadians made it illegal to *not* education children. They introduced minimum working ages to ensure that kids were in school, they built a massive public educational system and then equally massive postsecondary university and college systems. They subsidized tuition through tax dollars, developed life-long education models, introduced senior colleges, promoted training programs at work, organized correspondence courses and now online courses and frontier colleges and after school homework programs. They expanded the range of subjects taught in schools; introduced immersion, and a host of other things. Those taking their stand against increased access to postsecondary education are, then, taking their stand against the weight of tradition and force of Canadian history. And, this is something we all, I suspect, know. As I said, have you ever seen a parent who has said "Yes, keep my son or daughter uneducated?" Was this, in fact, not one of the arguments against the Taliban ... their refusal to allow education to girls?

There is another argument that we can make in favour of increased access to postsecondary education as well: it is democratic and helps promote equality. Let me lay out the basis of this argument.

Canada is a liberal-democratic society. This doesn't mean liberal as in the Liberal party but liberal in terms of its commitment to individualism. Like many things over the course of Canadian history, that commitment to individualism has been honoured in the breach and we should not ignore that. We should not pretend that Canada was (or, is) a better country than it was (or, is). Individualism, historically, excluded all kinds of people on the basis of skin colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, social class. But, what we could say is that this is a goal and this is a standard against which we evaluate ourselves. For instance, we become upset with sexism -- say, someone who decides they won't hire women for a job -- because it violates our sense of individualism. We think that the best person should be hired for the job and that gender is -- most of the time -- irrelevant to qualifications. Individualism, in this way, serves as a marker against which we can assess decisions.

The Canadian belief in (or, ideal of) individuals is not, however, naive and its not revolutionary. Its not naive in the sense that most people recognize that we live in a society of manifest and real inequality. We live in a society where there are, for instance, significant distinctions in wealth, material  circumstances, access to leisure pursuits, etc. Some children grow up on Cote de neiges; some grow up on impoverished northern reserves; some in the south end of Halifax.

What does this have to do with education? Liberal Canadians (again, small-l) looked on education as the great -- and non-revolutionary tool -- to address social problems. Education, said differently, is the great leveller. It is what allows for equality of the opportunity.  I won't say I necessarily subscribe to all of this way of looking at things but let me lay this argument out for you.  Its runs like this: if individualism means anything in Canada it does not mean what former Prime Minister Trudeau called equality of circumstances. Liberal Canadians accepted economic, social, political, etc., inequalities because, so this theory runs, they are based on natural differences between people. Those differences might in desire (one's wish to do something); they might be in ability (one's ability to do something better than someone else). And, on this level of natural differences, liberals do not believe that there should be much state interference. Again, as Pierre Trudeau among others have said, it is not the state's business to tell people what choices to make with their lives.

This is, however, different from allowing unequal competition based on things other than ability, desire or hard work. If one child, for example, had an advantage over another for reasons other than abilities, etc., that is not, Trudeau and others have argued, true individualism. The wealth of parents is one of those things that can (and, I'd likely argue does) provide an unequal and unfair advantage to some versus others. To continue this example: if one child -- by virtue of his parents wealth -- gets a manifestly better education than another child, then we don't really have individualism because this allows the wealthy child to occupy a more competitive position in the job market. When this happens we have a replication of social class, rather than a competition of individuals where the best qualified person gets the job.

In the Canadian liberal mindset, then, inequality is acceptable when based on certain things (desire, work, etc.) but not when it is based on others (replication of wealth). Why? Because the wealthy child who benefits from their parents wealth has actually done nothing to earn that privileged position themselves. They have obtain an advantage in the labour market, not by dint of their hard work, skill, intelligence, determination, etc., that is: something based on their character, but simply by virtue of the fact that their parents had money.  If this were the case, a liberal might say, we don't actually know whether that rich kid was actually the best candidate for the job. And, if we start hiring people who are not the best for the job then companies and society suffer as well. We know only that he or she benefitted from their parents abilities, skills, etc.; and not whether they have those skills, abilities, etc., themselves. What we know is that that rich child won the genetic lottery and that is all. It is ethical -- is it fair -- that the child should benefit because they happened to get lucky and -- through no fault or action of their own -- were born into a rich family? Should we hire people on this basis? Is that good for employers? Is it good for society?

Increasing access to higher education (again, done as best as we can on the basis of choice, without telling someone what to do) is the way inequalities of condition (the genetic lottery) can be addressed to without levelling society. Instead of lowering everyone to the same social condition, Canadian liberals let equality go but try to raise each cohort of children to roughly the same competitive level through education. It is not 100% equal. Children born in wealthy families still have advantages others cannot afford (private lessons, tutors, trips, and the like) but as long as the same basic level of education is accessible, then, we can have about as good an equality of opportunity as is possible without crossing that line and starting to tell people what to do with their or their children's lives.

Education is, thus, an essential tool through which Canada has tried to realize individualism. All the caveats apply: it does not work perfectly. It  does not create perfect equality. It is focused on individualism rather than equality, etc., and all those are true. The issue, however, with regard to  free tuition, as I said before, is not its perfection. It is whether or not it advances certain objectives.

What all this is designed to say, then, is that there is an ethics to "free tuition." "Free tuition" might be about helping people. It might be about being nice to poorer Canadians. It might be about challenging the dynamics of social class. Or, it might be about a dozen other things. But, at its heart it is about a Canadian conception of individualism organized around the idea of equality of opportunity (which is not equality of condition or perfect equality). In addition to the social benefits that accrue to a better educated society that I mentioned in my previous blog, access to post-secondary education is about a society that is committed to individualism putting their money where their mouth is.

Because, after all, if one claims to believe in individualism and equality of opportunity but does nothing to create an individualistic society in which there is equality of opportunity, then, well ... one does not really believe in those things, does one?

Anger and Public Life: Or, Attack Ads as Cultural Artifact

I recently tried to argue that one thing that had changed in the recent Canadian federal election was the tone of public discourse. The Conservatives who -- for right or wrong -- had mastered Bush II era negative advertising techniques in Canada took a hit by not recognizing that times had changed. Even before the election had officially been called, the CPC rolled out their usual panoply of negativity -- which had been used to effect in previous elections -- but ... nothing happened. The Tories could not gain any traction and, for one reason or another, voters shifted over the Liberals -- whose leader was under near continual Conservative attack.

There could be a number of reasons why negative attack adverts did not work this time. It could be that people simply did not believe them because they held a different view of Trudeau. It could be that a significant chunk of voters were simply so interested in getting rid of Harper that they were willing to vote for whomever, regardless of public discourse, under a "lesser evil"-type of approach to public life. It could be that the adverts backfired and actually drew attention to the Liberals and their leaders. All of  these things likely played some role in the process of Conservative defeat, but in a previous blog I argued that Canadians were moving beyond negative advertising and hence, the adverts missed their market.  Should I re-think my assessment? Have I spoken too quickly? I tried to argue that Canadians moving beyond negative advertising was a "good news story" that gave us -- along with some other things -- more reasons for optimism in Canadian public life than we have had in some time. But, am I right or ... might not such an assertion require more explanation?

One thing to look at might be the character of public discourse.  "Back in the day" -- that is, when I was an undergrad, one of my profs introduced the concept of the "spirit of the age" (zeitgeist) and argued that it just was. One could recognize that culture had shifted (one way or the other) but it was impossible to explain. One could just detail that it happened but historians -- he was a history prof -- should remain silent on cause because they would not be able to find it.

Even then I did not like that explanation, the way we might say it now is like this: Canadians in the recent past responded to negative advertising because they were angry. They didn't, in 2015, because the "sunny ways" promised by the Liberals captured a more optimistic, upbeat Canada. In other words, the spirit of the age had changed and the Liberals benefit from it, in the same way that the Tories had previously benefitted from people's anger. One might not agree with this type of explanation but we have all heard explanations like this. For instance, after 9/11 "people were scared." Or, "people don't like change." Or, "people think it is time for a change." Etc.

There is, of course, a serious problem with this way of thinking, likely more than one but let's focus on one right now. There is no "spirit of the age," as it were, because culture is not a seamless whole. Instead, it is a fractured, fragmented, self-contradictory, and contested. We have, for instance, lived through a time  of remarkable technological achievement but that achievement has spawned both advocates and opponents.  In the past, the Industrial Revolution spawned Romanticism and, in Canada, the Group of Seven and back-to-the-land movements.  Equality between different ethnic groups in the US has spawned both amazing developments in mass media, athletics, the arts, etc., but also indignant disregard of Black lives. In Canada, today, respect for Original Peoples sits side-by-side with indifferent to MMIW; respect for the environment (something some might see as built into Canadian culture) is an odd bedfellow with the Tar Sands.

Thus, there is no singular spirit of the age. Canadians have not passed through an "angry age" to "sunny ways." Instead, some Canadians have been angry (and, some political figures played to this anger and perhaps inflamed it); while other Canadians are more optimistic or believe that optimism is warranted with the right approach to public life: negotiation, common cause, mutual support can replaced confrontation and antagonism if we ditch the needless confrontation and antagonism (this is, after all, 2015!).

The question, then, is -- or, was --  not an angry culture but who is angry and why? Or, to draw this back to my theme:  to whom did attack adverts appeal and why? Why did they stop appealing or to whom did they stop appealing and why?

I suspect that the number of people to whom attack adverts appealed is actually pretty low. I think those people are there, but I think their numbers were made to seem artificially inflated by the odd electoral circumstances in which Canada found itself in the federal elections of 2006, 2008 and 2011, where a significant number of middle-class suburbanites -- people who had spent most of their lives voting Liberal (or, occasionally, NDP, or very occasionally PC with an emphasis on the P) -- voted CPC. Said differently, they were disaffected Liberals who could not vote Liberal (for whatever reason) but had not dramatically shifted away from their personal or class views.  Negative advertising may have cemented their support in those elections for the Tories but it did not cement their attachment to the party or to conservatism, as an ideology.  They were swayed by negative advertising but their views had not been changed.

I also suspect that there were others, however, for whom negative advertising -- or the negative adverts that they saw -- were something other (and, more) than a political strategy.  I suspect that the views they articulated really represented deep-seated views and it is to these people, I think, that we need to turn our attention if we want to understand the negative anger of that time because these people really were, it seems to me, angry and negatively so. Who were these people? There seems to have been several distinct groups:

1. Alienated westerners: supporters of the old Social Credit, some former PCs, Reformers and member of the Canadian Alliance (or, perhaps, if we were to back far enough we might find routes in the Western Canada Concept). Western alienation is still discussed in the news  but its changed and the news, in fact, has a very poor handle on it. The  character and nature of the anger, the sense of being pillaged by the "rest of Canada," the sense of being disrespected and being outsiders in their own home, as it were, was a very real feeling that we cannot just chock up to some sort of zeitgeist. It had real roots and real causes.

2. Oddly ... self-identifying evangelical Christians. Not all, but there were an oddly large number (of a much smaller group in Canada than in the US) who were angry. The character and nature of this anger, I suspect, has little to do with Christianity. But, there are Christians who clearly have felt outside the loop, a sense that the world is not unfolding the way they think it should, and that if not their position than that of their religion is in trouble. They are angry at women's rights, equality for gays and lesbians, Sunday shopping, increased respect for non-Christian religions combined with decreased respect for Christianity, and any number of other things.

3. Professional anger mongers. These are far more common in the US, where there is -- apparently -- a lot of money to be made by being angry. The Fox-News continually angry talk-show hosts cum semi-sort-of-journalist crew ... does not really exist in Canada. In fact, those right wing Canadians who want to be this kind of person might be better off heading south of the border after the failure of Sun TV, or whatever it was called, last year (I think). Professional anger mongers sell a product: righteous indignation. They also sell a political messages: moderates, liberals, leftists ... heck, anyone but conservatives, are rotten hypocrites who irrationally hate the nation. Said differently, this is anger directed to political purpose. It is designed to discredit particular political perspectives and serves to reinforce that discrediting by increasing the level of emotion. I'm not certain if professional anger mongers are really angry or they are putting on an act. I suspect, its 50/50; some are and some are not. The key, however, is that these are people who are already angry. Anger is their "go to" position.

4. But ... this is a small group. To whom are they speaking? And, this is where I start to run into trouble because, it turns out, that group number 3 does have a bit an audience and that audience are also people who seem to be ready to be angry. What are they angry at? Well, all matter of things. If western alienation could be mobilized against Stefan Dion's carbon tax; anger at Muslims -- and, particularly women who wear Niqabs -- is another question. This is anger that is not regionalized. Indeed, this is one of the things that we might note as a "take away" from the last election, the "Harper Government's" war on those who oppose the Tar Sands failed. It might have, ultimately, secured a few votes in AB and SK, but even here the CPC fortress was shaking. The message -- mobilize anger against premiers who oppose Keystone -- fell flat except with those who were already pre-disposed to it. There were no new votes to be won here.

Likewise, I don't think the Tories scooped up any new votes with their attacks on Muslim women. It possible it got them a few extra votes here and there but the polls don't suggest that because most people who were pre-disposed to this message were already voting Tory. Same too with the anti-terrorism thing.

This does not, of course, answer the question. But, it helps a bit. The anger that the Tories mobilized seemed to be hit its mark (even though that mark was far more limited than they thought) when they went after visible signs of diversity. My guess is that this anger was primarily working class, overwhelmingly white, and largely -- but not exclusively -- male. When I did have the opportunity to talk to some of these people, I asked them directly "why are you angry?" Their answers were pretty consistent: person X (Muslim woman) is trying to get something for nothing, disrespecting "our" traditions, illustrating that they are not "loyal" to Canada, etc. In other words, their anger was animated by a sense that the world they knew was being undone and that someone else -- someone who they identified as an outsider -- was getting preferential treatment.

Now, I hasten to add that I am not agreeing with any of this. There is clearly much more than an implicit racism in these contentions. They lack historical perspective, claim the right to define the nation, are empirically problematic, fail to reflect on white privilege, among other things.

I will also confess that I still find this anger -- this vindictive -- odd. It can be so harsh, so powerful, so immune to reason that it becomes the antithesis of reason and discussion. It is about reinforcing views that were already held; not defending or explaining those views.  It struck me in talking to people who held these views that their minds were made up. They did not want to discuss. If I disagreed with them -- if I said a good word about Niqab or spoke of women's right to determine their own dress -- I was almost instantly subjected to the same anger. How could I say such things ... ? Didn't I know that ... ?   I must be a ... (liberal was the usual word that was used here)! It struck me in these not-conversations that these people -- at least the ones to whom I spoke -- had been angry for some time. They were rehearsing statements they had made many times, heard others make, and that had received support from their friends and family.  Anger -- at least at diversity -- had become a "go to" position for them that was unquestioned.

There is more to this, but I'll leave off this discussion now because it is already too long. I might return to it because there are unaddressed issues but I still maintain my optimism. Yes, there is a lot of anger "out there" but ... it did not rule the day and, right now at least, likely cannot. Some of that anger in the past reflected real processes -- regional marginalization -- and should be treated seriously. Others, well ... they represent the odd conjuncture of political opportunism, the consumerism of anger (its transformation into a commodity), and race-based class politics.

Remembering Parizeau: Marking Time and Politics

Jacques Parizeau's death marks an era of history. I never met the man and, to be honest, have what must be the exact opposite vision of Canada. I am not writing an obituary, or a commemoration; nor do I want to transform his death into a moment of national self-reflection. I feel for his family: they have lost someone they love and we should respect that. Parizeau's death means, as well, a great deal to those with whom he made common cause or who supported the idea of Quebec independence. What I have to say about Parizeau is not an insult. Instead, what I want to suggest is that Parizeau's own dynamics, his own ideas, and his own contradictions marked out an era in time and a debate, and one side of that debate. Parizeau, in other words, is being honoured for many things. Perhaps rightly so. What I want to address is what he and his era and politics represented.  It is, I want to suggest, the very contradictory tendencies that Parizeau represented that encapsulate an era.

First, Parizeau is being honoured by everyone as a builder of modern Quebec.  Here, Parizeau is honoured as a person who helped create the fiscal and policy infrastructure of the Quebec that has allowed the provincial state to act, effectively in many instances, in that province. Good, but why honour Parizeau in this way and would he be happy with this acknowledgement?  Honouring Parizeau as an architect of the state de-politicizes his message and, frankly, his politics. It is an odd form of honouring because it places Parizeau in a company he might not otherwise want to keep. Modern Quebec was built by a great many people. It is not simply attached to the independence project. Indeed, the same claim can be made about many federalist leaders. What this type of honouring does is actually to strip Parizeau of his controversy and his goal. It makes for a safe form of remembering, one that avoids the political conflicts he was so intimately attached to in his life and that, as a cabinet minister and Premier, he helped to create. I don't want to be too hard on people making these types of statements about Parizeau. I get it. We should reflect on the best of a person after they pass. I actually don't disagree with that. But, there is something inaccurate about trying to remember Parizeau without separatism. It is, as if, the goal and objectives for which he fought were edited from history by the very people honouring him.

Second, there is another issue that I feel quite bad raising that relates to politics but it won't be the last time I wonder such things as I put this blog together. English-language media and public figures have a particularly difficult time figuring out how to address Parizeau. This is different from René Lévesque, with whom English-language media had a love/hate relationship that turned mainly to love after his death. I recall someone even talking about Lévesque as a "great Canadian." Parizeau presents a different challenge because he was not well liked. There was no love to go with the hate. This is complicated for federalists (perhaps English-language federalists like myself) because Parizeau failed at his key goal. Canada exists today, and we have this conundrum of memory today, because Parizeau did not succeed. If he had, I would not be writing this blog. This raises questions about how we commemorate failure?

Parizeau, importantly, had his own answer. He argued two things. First, failure occurred because of "money and the ethnic vote." I listened, sadly, to Gilles Duceppe trying to apologize for this comment on the news the other night. I wish he hadn't because, well, the minute we start apologizing for prejudice ... that is the minute we are starting to have serious problems. I won't get into the substance of what Duceppe had to say, but it amounted to arguing that there was in fact an "ethnic vote" that was consciously put together to oppose separatism and that the ethnic vote leaders now admit this. In Canada we are all well aware of voting patterns. We study these all the time. We have them with regard to language, gender, class, ethnicity, region, etc. But, Duceppe was not making this point. He was coming very close to "blaming the victims." He did not use precisely these words but he came very close to arguing that Parizeau was right. The ethnic vote is to blame and the ethnic vote is something a bit different -- even if in an unspecified way -- from a Quebecer vote. How should we commemorate this way of thinking? Indeed, even to raise the question, as I have done, introduces a host of problems and uneasy feelings. Someone could accuse me of trying to make my own political hay. If that is you ... well ... sorry. I'm trying to focus on the analytic issue. How can we, should we, do we, remember things about people and politics of the past (even the recent past) that we don't really want to? They are part of history, part of the record, part of a person ... do we send them out? Do we recall them even when they seem to point to a disturbing and marginalizing cultural trends?

Parizeau's other answer was that the supporters of independence needed to ask a straight question. On this point, I have a world of respect for his philosophy because politically, a straight question was a non-starter. When asked clearly and directly "do you want to separate from Canada" Quebecers said "no" in overwhelming numbers.  The fact that Parizeau continually argued that independence forces should ask a straight question shows his commitment to transparency and democracy  ....

except ...   he didn't actually do that when he was in power. And, here is another odd contradictory characteristic. When he was out of power, Parizeau was a man of his principles. When he was in power, he wasn't. I listened to a CBC discussion the other night about how Parizeau was a man who did not accept "Plan B" (I can blog on what this actually means in another entry because "Plan B nationalism" actually has a specific meaning.)  Lévesque or Bouchard may have opted for some version of sovereignty-association, but not Parizeau, so this story went, he embraced outright independence. A line from the story went something like "for Parizeau, there was no Plan B."

But, there was ... and in both referenda. Parizeau was one of the leading cabinet ministers in the historic first PQ administration. He was a member of the cabinet that made up the first referendum question that asked Quebecers not about independence but about whether or not the government had a mandate to negotiate sovereignty-association, with any results put before the electorate in a subsequent referendum.  The 1995 question was as follows:

Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?

I don't mean to belabour the point, but neither of these propositions asks a direct question. In 1995, you have, in fact, to know something about other legislation that was passed by the National Assembly. The question is also, if I might offer my own views, not a little disingenuous.  I listed to a PQ supporter years ago, during the referendum, say "everyone knows what this means." This is not an exact quote. My memory is not that good but the substance of the discussion that ensued was as follows. The journalist (an Anglo) said "so it is a referendum on independence." The supporter said "no. It is about this question." "So," the journalist said, "you are not asking Quebecers for independence?" "Of course we are," was the response. "We are Pequistes." The question, in other words, seemed broad enough and had enough wiggle room that it could masquerade as more than one thing. It could be interpreted both as support for independence at the same time that it could be interpreted as a mandate to renew the relationship between Quebec and Canada within some form of federalism.

My point is both these specific questions and Parizeau's supposed refusal of Plan B. He refused it only when he was out of office. In office, and in practice, he embraced it. Even if he did not like it, his Quebec was a Quebec that never asked Quebecers directly if they wanted to be independent.

This is an interesting characteristic that permeates an era in Quebec political history and that is, ultimately, what I think it is important about it. This was an era in Quebec and in Canada, that talked continuously about independence. But, shied away from asking the question directly. Strong talk, strong words, were evident on all sides; but direct talk to the electorate ... when it really, really counted, for one reason or another at that point leaders shied away; even the most committed Plan A advocates (and, we can take Parizeau to be one) backed down and instead asked about Plan B. In effect, they soft sold their own goals.

Finally, we should note that there is much more that could be said but I want to return to the "money and the ethnic vote" comment. I don't want to belabour this comment; I really do not. Everyones says dumb things now and then and I am sure that Mr. Parizeau, if he could have had those words back, would not have said them. What is important here is not to tar Mr. Parizeau with a racist brush. I never knew the man but let us grant him honesty and integrity. My comment is cultural. The PQ was never able to succeed where other nationalisms have failed. All nationalisms, in one way or another, ultimately end up playing with fire because they are about divisions in society. No matter how much we spin it, ethnically-based nationalism divides the world up in ethnic and/or linguistic groups; it divides the world up into "us" (members of the nation) and "them" (others). The nation, in other words, cannot embrace everyone; otherwise, there would be no cause for separatism.

Quebec nationalists -- because of their history, because of their beliefs, because of their politics, because they were smart people -- tried as hard as anyone, I suspect, has ever tried to build a progressive and encompassing nationalism. And, they may have succeeded to a much greater extent than any other nationalism. But, failures mixed with their successes and this is what the "ethnic vote" comment signifies. It does not signify anything inherently evil lurking in Parizeau's character. It signifies, however, how difficult it is create distance between nationalism and prejudice.

This difficulty is complicated on the economic front by a transition that Parizeau was also part of: the transition in the independence movement from social democratic (words Lévesque liked) to neo-liberal. Parizeau supported the independence of  Quebec but one always had the suspicion that his Quebec was not a Scandinavian-type social democracy but a more-or-less capitalist country: Quebec, Inc. In some ways, that transition is now fully complete. The PQ is bleeding votes on its left to Quebec Solidaire and its key voting base seems increasingly rural. There may be many socialists and social democrats left in the PQ, but they do not rule the roost in a party that has turned increasingly to the right.

Parizeau's death is a moment of memory and sadness for his family. I hope they can celebrate his life and his love of them. Parizeau's death did not cause the end of an ear but, I suspect, it symbolizes one. The transitions through which Quebec and Canada have moved over the last generation and of which Parizeau were multiple, contradiction, and tension filled. That, it seems to me, is not Parizeau's legacy but the themes his history marks out.

Saying Dumb Things about Original Peoples

A Winnipeg teacher named Brad Badiuk has said some stupid things on Facebook and been suspended (or, placed on leave) as a result. This might be a good place to talk about Badiuk’s right to free speech -- whether or not he should be placed on leave for saying stupid things in a public forum -- but instead there is a more pressing issue.  That is: what he actually said and what is wrong with it. Without wanting to attribute any particular intelligence to Badiuk’s comments (or the punctuation errors -- something I found disturbing for a person who is supposed to be a teacher -- that they contained), I actually think his comments deserve to be discussed. Let me be clear up front: what he said was ignorant (in a literal sense of the term), silly, bigoted and showed not a shred of research into the issue he was addressing: Canadian/Aboriginal relations. Still, this can be an “educational moment” because the concerns this particular individual raised are concerns I’ve heard others raise. For those us who support better relations between Original Peoples and Canada, there is a bit of an obligation to address Badiuk’s point and show him and others why they are misguided. That is what I seek to do in this post.

Badiuk’s points were posted on social media; they were not a refined argument. I won’t use his language and so something might get lost in translation but briefly, he makes several points regarding Original Peoples:

• Original Peoples use past injustices as a “crutch” to try to get things from Canadian society

• They are a “conquered” people

• They get more benefits than white Canadians

• Treaties should be torn up and people move on

• The answer to Aboriginal Peoples is for them to work hard

• Why should he, as a contemporary Canadian, pay for the injustices done by others in the past and to which neither he nor his family has any connection

Obviously, it would take forever to address each of these points and a blog might not be the place to try reader’s patience by writing page after page. Let me, therefore, try to address the key points that need to be addressed in order to suggest a better and more profitable way of looking at this subject.

First, most Original Peoples are not conquered peoples. In fact, I cannot -- of the top of my head -- think of a single conquered nation in Canada. Instead, relationships between Native and settlers were defined by treaties that provided for land surrender (or, not, as the case may be), commercial exchange, further settlement, etc. The first point we might want to make, then, is that Badiuk does not know his history. He hinges part of his argument on an event -- conquest -- that did not take place. Hinging an argument on something that did not occur weakens your argument, or at least that is what I tell my students.

But, what is more important here is that Badiuk *thinks* that there was a conquest and my bet is that a whole bunch of other non-Native Canadians do too. The problem here is not just misunderstanding history -- being incorrect -- the problem is ethics. In effect, what the proponents of conquest are saying is that “might makes right.” In the past, Original Peoples were conquered ergo, their rights in the present are limited. Imagine that we accept this ethics, what then? Well, if might make right then that is a rationale for Original Peoples to use violent protest to accomplish their objectives, is it not? If violence subjugation is a legitimate ground to extinguish rights, then surely, to be consistent, we must say that violent protest is a legitimate approach to establishing rights, no? The argument about conquest, then, carries with it an irony of legitimizing behaviour that I doubt Badiuk wants to legitimize -- the politics of violence -- and, in fact, places him in a position where -- to be consistent -- he has to support Original Peoples; not oppose them.

But, it gets even more confusing and ironic than this. Badiuk’s other points refer to history as well: his family immigrated after 1900 and so he is not responsible for what happened before that. In other words, history does not apply to him. OK, perhaps, but did he not just use an historical argument -- conquest -- to cast aspersions on Original Peoples. What we have here, then, is the situational use of history. History applies to some people (Original Peoples) but not others (him). Even leaving aside the faculty matters, this is an odd argument indeed because it is riven with inconsistencies.

Second, Badiuk does not seem to understand what a treaty is. The idea that one party can just tear up a treaty -- and I’ve mad this point in this blog before -- is just not true. I like treaties. I think they are a much preferable way to establish relationships between peoples than violence. They do not always work; they are ignored frequently by the Canadian government. But, of all the ways to regulate interaction between people, treaties are better than alternatives. But, Badiuk has not just missed this point. He’s missed the point that a treat is an agreement between two peoples.  The Original Peoples who signed onto the treaties back in the day clearly intended them to last for a very long time. They often contain language like “as long as the sun shines” or some other metaphor. Did the British imperial government or the Canadian government believe that these treaties would last forever. I don’t know but I suspect not. I suspect that they believed Original Peoples would disappear into the mists of time. But, they did sign the treaties. And, the treaties are legally enforceable. That is Canadian law and to disregard it is, in fact, to state that one feels Canadian law should not apply to them.

Let’s leave aside the question of legitimate ways of contesting the law for another time (because their are legitimate ways to do so, but simply stating that “it should not apply to me” and then disregarding it is not one of them). Instead, let’s focus on two things: (1) in defending treaties Original Peoples are not, in fact, doing anything that is wrong. They are obeying the law and making use of the legal mechanisms that Canada has established to adjudicate disputes between parties. It is what we are all supposed to do. Hence, to fault them for it (for defending treaties and taking their case to court) is to suggest that Original Peoples are doing something wrong by insisting that Canada obey laws it has made (or, into which it has voluntarily entered as part of a treaty) and then using the courts to adjudicate disputes on legal matters. This is an odd argument, is it not? (2) Treaties are between two parties. One party cannot unilaterally break a treaty. Let me use an example that I have used before. Imagine a slightly different situation: I contract someone to mow my lawn each week and agree to pay them $1000 for the summer to do so. They dutifully mow my lawn. Can I now refuse to pay them because I don’t want to? Of course not. That would be breach of contract and we all know that. I cannot unilaterally change the terms of a contract after I have gotten what I want out of it. A treaty works the same way. Canada got what it wanted (or, before that the Empire and colonies) from the treaties. Can they now say “gee, we find this agreement inconvenient and so we’re going to tear it up?” If this logic were applied to any other case, the answer would be so clear, no one would debate it.

Finally, there is the “why should I pay” question. Let me ask this question a different way: Badiuk is a teacher. Why should I pay his salary? There are many reasons why we pay into the public purse. We can’t go through all them here because this blog is already getting too long but we can note that paying taxes is part of one’s obligations as a citizen. We usually like those taxes from which we seem to derive an immediate benefit and dislike those, the benefits of which are not clear. I would argue that good societies solve their problems -- or, at least try. We pay taxes to maintain a military (I pay them whether or not I am a pacifist) because we need a military; I pay taxes that pave roads whether or not I owen a car; my tax dollars help to fund repairs to the minor ballpark, whether or not I pay. There are benefits to paying taxes and, by and large, Canadians actually don’t have very many concerns with taxes. I’d argue that addressing the problems of marginalization and unresolved conflicts between Canadians are good uses of tax dollars because they help citizens and help build a good society. In other words, we should pay because those tax dollars help out the society and we are committed to making Canada a better place.

Let me go just a bit further: Badiuk has every right as a citizen to object to taxes and to vote for candidates that want to lower taxes. I think he is ethically wrong to say pick an already marginalized group and inaccurate, ethically troubling things about them and conclude that they are the reason for his taxes being what they are. It is scapegoating and does nothing to advance a serious discussion of tax rates if that is what we are interested in.

I’ll conclude on this note. I am sure Badiuk’s comments hurt a lot of people. They were silly, build on an inaccurate perception of the past, and involved a shaky logic in which there was a situational deployment of history (applies to some people but not others). This is something that I’d like people to learn about the anti-Original Peoples arguments that we hear. The problem with the argument Badiuk put forward is not that he commented on public policy. That is his right as a citizen and he should. The problem is that he treated that right in a cavalier way. He did not bother to do his homework and so her paraded inaccuracies as truth; he did not think through the logic of his ethics or the situational way in which he argued from history, he ignored the fact that his scapegoating did nothing to advance public debate about an important issue: tax rates. I don’t want to generalize too broadly because that itself is logically shaky, but I trust you see the point. Many of the argument we hear in opposition to Original Peoples just don’t hold up. The result is that we have a debate that we do not need to have that gets us nowhere. I hope this blog -- for those who read it -- helps get that discussion back on the right track.

Negotiating With Terrorists

Negotiating with Terrorists

There should be a serious discussion of the lessons Canada has learnt from its involvement in Afghanistan. So far, in public discourse at least, this does not seem to be the case. Indeed, a great deal of the commentary has been rather self-congratulatory: Canada went and did a tough job, did it well, earned the respect of our allies, and built up international good will. Sure, we may have technically left before the job was done but our military is to be congratulated and per capita, our contribution was significant. 

This is clearly one way to look at Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. As public discourse it is a discourse that, I suspect, comes readily to a lot of Canadians mouths. After all ... who wants to say anything bad about: (a) our own country, (b) soldiers who died, or (c) soldiers who risked their lives. Lurking beneath this discourse, in my view, is a more troubled perspective. Canadians, do not seem to be 100% convinced by the discourse and have questions about the merits of what actually went on. Is Afghanistan notably more secure today then before the Canadian mission? One thing I would like to do is ask some of these tougher questions because, it seems to me, that we need to ask these types of tough questions if we are to learn anything from recent history. Asking tough questions is, of course, not simply democratic (democracies in which the government view is too easily accepted become what Taylor called “soft tyrannies”) but what I do in my job. Asking tough questions, ideally, is a way of getting people to think about how decisions are made, their results, and how they might be improved in the future. It is, IOW, the basis not just of university level education but of engaged and active citizenship. 

Let’s start with a tough question up front, a really tough one: what have we learnt about negotiating with terrorists? I will confess that I don’t have an easy answer to this question because I am not certain I have heard anyone in government discuss it other than to reiterate conventional. This is actually a tough question to even ask because it is amenable to all matter of definitional confusion: what exactly is a “terrorist”? I’m not a “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” type of person. I think terrorists know who they are. But, I do recognize that the definition is politically changed. The Russians refer to Chechen attacks on civilians as acts of terror and they did indeed seem to me to be, but the Apartheid regime in South Africa call the ANC terrorists. The Syrian government calls the Free Syrian Army terrorists. I can’t sort all this out in one short blog, but we can acknowledge that there is a political dynamic to definitions of terrorist. 

This issue is further complicated by the use of the term “insurgent.” In Afghanistan, insurgents were the “bad guys”: terrorists and those who opposed NATO “stabilization” through force of arms or attacks on civilian, military, and paramilitary targets. (I put “stabilization” in quotation marks because I think the aim of the NATO force was not just stabilization but to ensure a favourable pro-western government, which is something other than simply stabilization. A stable, anti-western government is not what either the US or Canada wants.) Should Canada -- or, more importantly since it is not at all clear Canada could or would have acted alone -- negotiated with the insurgents? 

In addition to the definitional problems associated with words like “terrorist” and “insurgent,” there are other problems with this question. The first is that there is, rightly in my view, a general revulsion to negotiating with those who use terrorist tactics. On an official level, the argument is that negotiating with terrorists is a no-win situation. It simply encourages terrorists by making them think that their tactics are successful. This problem becomes even more grave if the goal of the terrorists/insurgents is to get you out of their country. Hence, negotiating with them might involve abandoning the objectives that brought, say, Canada to Afghanistan in the first place. On a political level, this type of negotiating would be a death sentence for a sitting government because if one accepted the goal of the terrorists (forcing Canadian forces out of the country), then the government would have to concede: (a) that is lost or (b) that its involvement in Afghanistan was misplaced to begin with, or (c) both. Such a political stand would, I think, cost a sitting government power. In the case of the Conservative party, it would rattle its popular base. 

On a popular level, negotiating with terrorists seems just wrong. It seems like rewarding people for using indiscriminate force. We don’t do that with our neighbours. If my neighbour, say, beat up my son to get me to move the property line in her favour ... I would not do it. I would not “cave in” to such blatant aggression and what is a “might makes right” attitude. Doing so on an international level calls up the same thoughts. Most people, then, think that negotiating with terrorists is ethically wrong because it sends the wrong message. It rewards people who have a callous attitude toward life. Because of this, most people feel that the violence of terrorists must be met with force. 

The final problem with this question is that even when we ask it, we have no easy straight forward answer. History does not prove that one approach -- military versus negotiated political settlement -- is preferable to the other in attaining goals. This problem is magnified by what strikes me as a legitimate counter-factual argument. “OK,” someone might say (say, the government of Israel), “we did not negotiate and we did use force and it did not work. Terror attacks on Israelis continued. But, it would have been a heck of a lot worse if we had negotiated or if we had not used force. While we did not succeed in bringing peace to Israel, we did prevent the loss of life.” This is a counter-factual argument to be sure but it is an argument that governments need to ask because it involves the exploration of policy options. We all do this all the time on a minor level (“if I spend my tax return on X, would it be better then spending it on Y”). It is a way of clarifying thoughts. The problem in this case is that it admits no easy answer.  There is no way of knowing that one way would have been better then the other. 

History is equally mixed up but, and this is the key point I want to make, history does not show that the “never negotiate” approach is inherently better then seeking a political solution. It does not demonstrate, for instance, that a military (force) response to terrorism is inherently better then the negotiate approach in terms of efficacy. The type of argument that I am putting forward involves truly horrible considerations because it allows no safe ethical space on which to stand. For example, if the goal of anti-terrorism policies (including the use of military force) is to save lives, then we are saying that our goal is to save lives. If we can save more lives via political negotiated settlement then we can via a military option, should we take that option even if it is ethically problematic? Anyone who tells you that there is an easy answer to this is lying. Even if we don’t engage in useless and rampant speculation (“sure, you might save lives now but what if you encourage other terrorists?”) we are left calculating lesser evils. We will never find ourselves on the side of angels. 

Historical examples do demonstrate that military options don’t have a significant success ratio and, when they do work, there are likely specific reasons as to why they do. The problem is that those specific reasons can’t be easily replicated because they involve the context of that situation. For instance, the government of Sri Lanka crushed the Tamil Tigers but it was able to do this because the Tamil Tigers approximated a regular military force operating out of a defined geographic locale. In this situation, a more effective military could invade and capture the Tiger’s geographic base and capture their leaders along the way because this fight became something more like a standard war. 

This same approach failed miserably when Israel tried it in Lebanon because the context was different. The military force needed to occupy a foreign country while needing to secure other borders (something Sri Lanka did not have to do and so could devote its military to one objective) and deal with a more traditionally defined terrorist cells operating in Europe and in the occupied territories made it impossible for Israel to secure its popular through military force. The cost, use of manpower, and loss of life were, in the long run, prohibitive. It is also possible, as the NATO force has found in Afghanistan, that the geography of the country can work against you. The Afghan Taliban insurgents are not on the level of the Tamil Tigers in terms of getting close to a regular military force but they are something much more then a motley band of bandits wandering the countryside. They can use the geography to their advantage and slip away, moving to safe havens or other countries, out of reach of NATO forces. Moreover, Afghanistan is not Sri Lanka. NATO is an occupying force; not a force fighting in its own country. 

What this means is that a military solution is far more difficult in Afghanistan or in Israel then it was in Sri Lanka and even in Sri Lanka, the military solution took a very, very long time. The government of Columbia (a pretty darned problematic government to be sure) has spent a generation hunting communist insurgents through its countryside without long-run success (despite victories) and it, theoretically at least, is fighting on its home turf. 

There are also examples where political negotiated settlement worked. It worked in Ireland. The British government spent a generation trying to implement a military solution and made little appreciable headway (despite some fairly draconian measures). The solution that brought peace to Ireland was a negotiated settlement; not a military solution. The apartheid regime in South Africa ultimately conceded that it could not defeat the ANC through military means and that the best solution for the future security of the RSA was a negotiated settlement. As with Ireland, they were right. 

There are other examples that show different approaches. Italy and Germany used policing against Red Brigade terrorists in the 1970s to effect; Canada deployed a combination of negotiation and force to stamp out the FLQ. Neither groups had significant popular support and that made it easier to address them, but you see the point: different solutions can work in different contexts. 

The question is: what is the context of Afghanistan? Is it possible to negotiate with the Taliban? What are the ethics of doing so? What are the ethics of not doing so if one knows for as close to absolute certain as one can get that a failure to negotiate will mean deaths?

One of the great advantages of a blog is that one does not have to have answers. I don’t. But, it seems to me that as we think about the lessons of Afghanistan, these are questions that need to be asked. If we don’t ... we won’t learn anything from the experience.