Students on the right side of history
Watching the drama unfold over the protests of Quebec students against higher tuition fees, I’ve come to the conclusion they’re wrong on only one count: they should be demanding not just a freeze on fees. They should be demanding the abolition of university tuition entirely, On top of that, students should get paid to go to university. The benefits to society of an educated populace are so great that the cost of educating our young people is insignificant in comparison.
Before you conclude that I’ve gone over the top, consider these facts:
Excluding the random acts of violence that have occurred (never acceptable in a law-abiding society), Quebec students have been resolute and proper in their resistance to their government’s intention to raise tuition. Their opposition is based, in part, on a historic decision made by the Jean Lesage government during the 1960s Quiet Revolution. Quebec had just come off a repressive, church-ridden regime where barely half the population had achieved even Grade 6. To advance beyond third world status, Quebec realized it had to rear a generation of educated, competent, and productive young people able to compete in every aspect of business, science, and the arts.
While Quebec’s decision to hike tuition fees by $254 a year over seven years seems reasonable — especially when compared to the higher fees of other provinces — such a decision represents a backward step.
The argument against the students is that they must give up their “entitlement” to low-cost post-secondary education. I would argue that rather than young people having an entitlement to an affordable education, they actually bear an obligation to educate themselves for tomorrow’s increasingly technical and complex world. Doesn’t every politician praise the benefits of education, putting an “educated work force” among the top priorities of Canada or any other country? And if that’s so, isn’t it to society’s advantage to see that every individual is educated to the extent of their capabilities?
Quebec has funded its modest — up to now — university tuition fees with a tax structure that is the heaviest in Canada. People have been paying for the benefits they’ve enjoyed. That’s the way it should be.
While doing research for my forthcoming book on Joey Smallwood, the first premier of Newfoundland and Canada’s last “Father of Confederation,” (Joey Smallwood, Schemer and Dreamer) I found out more about how he had not only abolished tuition in the 1960s, but for a time actually paid students to go to university. Both schemes had to be abandoned in the face of financial pressures Newfoundland faced as a “have-not” province. But ever since, Newfoundland has managed to keep its tuition fees the second-lowest in the country, next to Quebec.
Only North America and Australia force their young people to pay a king’s ransom for an education. It puts them in debt for at least the first ten years of their working life. Today, these debt-burdened students begin their work careers facing uncertain job prospects, sky-high housing costs, and devastating government cutbacks in social benefits. They’ll have to work longer to retire on less. What a horrible legacy we’re handing them, all for the sake of a conservative economic agenda calculated to benefit the rich with tax reductions and reward corporations (owned mostly by higher income Canadians) with larger subsidies and lower taxes.
Most European countries charge only modest enrollment fees for university registration: 165 euros in France ($214); 500 euros ($650) in Belgium, 1,000 euros ($1300) in Germany, about the same in Holland and Italy. Britain maxes out tuition at 3,145 pounds ($5032). EU countries must limit their deficits to 3 per cent of GDP — the failure of Greece to do so is what’s behind the current euro crisis. It will be overcome, but that’s another story.
While Canadians bemoan the advantages Quebec students enjoy, they should look to their own provincial governments and ask why they haven’t done better in facing up to the task of preparing the country for the future. Today, the booming resource revenues of the West primarily involve the transfer of public wealth to private hands as a result of absurdly low exploration fees and royalties. The proceeds of these non-renewable resources should be directed more to the public good and less to private gain. Why did the last but one Conservative premier of Alberta have to back off from his efforts to charge higher royalties to the oil industry, an attempt that played a big part in Ed Stelmach’s having to resign as Premier?
Equally damning is the counter-productive tactic adopted by the Charest government to try to quiet the student protest. Opening the way to cost-cutting in universities by having students share in budget decisions means only one thing: that money will be pried out of essential budgets like research to fund tuition costs. This approach ducks the really important issue — that of adequate funding for all university operations.
Ontario is equally culpable for having forced universities to raise tuition, followed in turn by reductions in provincial support. In my days as a trustee of a Toronto School Board, I learned that the prospect of being able to go to university is one of the strongest motivations for students to stay in school.
Canada has the capability to maintain one of the world’s best educational systems. It is one that should be open to all who can meet a demanding standard of academic quality. Abolishing tuition and paying students to educate themselves may seem like a utopian fantasy, but the countries that pursue this goal are the ones that will lead the world tomorrow.
J.S. Woodsworth, “the conscience of parliament”
It was shocking — but not surprising — to see Prime Minister Harper indulge in such a malicious distortion of history with his attack on the wartime leader of the CCF party, James Shaver Woodsworth.
Harper, followed by Foreign Affairs minister John Baird, used Woodsworth’s reluctance to enter World War II as an excuse to avoid answering the NDP on whether Canada may stay in Afghanistan after our scheduled 2014 departure date.
“Unlike the NDP, we are not going to ideologically have a position regardless of circumstances,” Harper told the Commons. ” The leader of the NDP, in 1939, did not even want to support war against Hitler.”
Of course, Woodsworth wasn’t the leader of the NDP. It didn’t even come into existence until 1962, as opposition MPs loudly reminded the Prime Minister across the floor of the Commons. “Okay, it was the CCF, same difference,” he replied. “Parties do change their names from time to time.”
I don’t recall any single comment by Mr. Harper ever setting off such a flurry of condemnation. NDP MPs, to their credit, reacted shrewdly. They suggested it would be fair game to raise Reform party policies. I’d go back further. What about the time Conservative leader John Diefenbaker voted against Canada’s adoption of the Maple Leaf flag?
Perhaps Mr. Harper would benefit from a history lesson.J.S. Woodsworth is universally recognized as one of the great figures of Canadian public life, a man revered for his commitment to improving the lives of Canadians during the difficult 1920s and 1930, when social welfare measures such as employment insurance and pensions were virtually non existent. Mr. Harper would be well advised to read Kenneth McNaught’s biography of Mr. Woodsworth, A Prophet in Politics (University of Toronto Press).
Mr. Woodsworth was a Methodist minister, a Christian pacificist, whose moral code prevented him from supporting armed conflict. He told the CCF National Council that he could not support going to war, and offered to resign. His offer was refused, but every CCF MP but he voted to accept the government’s Throne Speech, an act tantamount to agreeing to going to war. Woodsworth’s successor, M. J. Coldwell, made it clear that the anti-war stance had been a personal view of Mr. Woodsworth, and did not reflect the position of the party. (There was no actual vote on a declaration of war.) The CCF pushed for all-out prosecution of the war effort, and supported conscription.
In his speech on the war, Mr. Woodsworth made clear his respect for democratic rights.
“I rejoice that it is possible to say these things in a Canadian parliament under British institutions. It would not be possible in Germany.”
At the time, Mr. Woodsworth was seriously ill. He had suffered a stroke and his wife had to write out his remarks for him on cards, which he could barely read. He managed to hold his seat in the 1940 election, but died in 1942.
Here is what Prime Minister Mackenzie King said of Mr. Woodsworth, when some Liberal MPs heckled the CCF leader during his speech opposing Canada’s entry into the war:
There are few men in this Parliament for whom I have greater respect than the leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. I admire him in my heart, because time and again he has had the courage to say what lays on his conscience, regardless of what the world might think of him. A man of that calibre is an ornament to Parliament.
This week’s Tory attacks set off a uproar on the web. The Globe and Mail’s story drew some 4,000 comments — the vast majority highly critical of Mr. Harper. I can’t recall a single case of so much public outrage. A Twitter site, #Harperhistory, quickly sprang to life.
Is it these kinds of unprincipled attacks that are at the root of Mr. Harper’s decline in the polls? Or are they a reaction to his evident loss of public support? (Latest polls show his trustworthiness rating down from 32 to 20 per cent, and put the Tories and the NDP in a statistical tie in voter support, both in the 32-34 per cent range.)
Mr. Harper’s cheap attempt to manipulate history as a means of avoiding a straight-up answer to a matter of current public concern, is yet another example of the kind of extremist politics that has no place in a respectful democratic dialogue. It is to be hoped Canadian voters will someday send him that message.
Feeling good about Alberta
As difficult as it is to find things in politics to feel good about, this week’s election in Alberta is something to cheer up anyone who’s despaired of the apparent rightward direction of Canadian politics in the past few years.
In Alison Redford, the bright, forty-something human rights lawyer who grappled first with retrogressives in her own Progressive Conservative party, and then went on to defeat the Tea Party-ish Wildrose Alliance, dramatically confounding the pollsters, Canadians may have found a model of statesmanship for the next decade of the 21st century.
Ms. Redford, most will remember, won the leadership of her party and became premier of Alberta last October, in a voting marathon that put her on top despite having the support of only one fellow MLA, little or no name recognition outside her hometown Calgary, and being a first-term MLA.
She promptly set to work to recreate the dynastic right of centre PCs (in power since 1971) and brought in a budget that included, among other dramatic steps, a multi-billion dollar fund to improve R&D (and reduce environmental damage) in the oil sands industry.
Her policies flew head on against the Wildrose Alliance, representing the most right-wing elements of the PC party. They’d broken away, just as the die-hard free enterprise, hang ‘em high, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage zealots of Brian Mulroney’s federal Conservatives had done twenty-five years ago, when they split to form the Reform party. That led to ten years of one-party Liberal rule before both sides were brought back together by the skilful management of Stephen Harper, aided and abetted by then PC leader Peter McKay.
Until a week before the Alberta election, it seemed as if the province was in for a Wildrose government. The polls predicted a majority for a party led by the attractive, articulate Danielle Smith, who was cleverly cashing in on voter animosity toward the too-long in power PCs.
A funny thing happened on the way to the polling booth.
Alberta discovered its place in Canada, and in the 21st century. Whether it was due to the “bozo” comments of a couple of Wildrosers which were never repudiated by Ms. Smith, or to the fact that Alberta’s economic surge has brought several hundred thousand new voters in the past decade, the old image of a redneck, Eastern-hating province no longer rang true.
The result: a massive shift in voter sentiment in the weekend before the vote. Albertans were not about to accept an unproven party that harbored religious fanatics and racists, and was prepared to face off against the rest of Canada on the environment, fiscal policy, and “conscience” issues (code language for socially regressive views on abortion and gay marriage).
My first newspaper job was in Alberta, and I can tell you it was one of the most conservative places in Canada. But my sharpest memory is of the optimism of Albertans for the future. I remember meeting a construction worker who told me: “With all the oil and other resources we’ve got, Alberta is going to be the richest province in the world.”
The new PC majority, 61 seats to 17 for Wildrose (5 Liberals and 4 New Democrats) gives Alison Redford firm control of a province that she describes as wanting a government that is “socially progressive and fiscally conservative.”
Her description aptly fits the definition of a Red Tory, a species Stephen Harper has spent the past ten years doing his best to kill off. Few Canadians will quarrel with a party dedicated to socially progressive and fiscally conservative policies. Even Tommy Douglas, the revered founder of the NDP, would have to agree. He told the cabinet of his first government in Saskatchewan that he didn’t intend to run deficits – he had no desire to “pay interest to the bankers.”
Ms. Smith, to her credit, accepted her party’s defeat stoically. She concedes Wildrose will have to re-think its policies, especially on the toxic issues of “conscience’ and climate change that contributed to its defeat. One can expect Wildrose to become a more disciplined, more focused party once its members get to the Legislature. It will have the chance to do what all good opposition parties do: hold the government to account. And thereby perhaps become the government itself some day.
Ironically, just as Canadians were absorbing the Alberta results, there came evidence from Ottawa that not everyone in the federal Conservative party has learned the lesson of Wildrose. Stephen Woodworth, a Conservative MP from Ontario, introduced a private member’s bill to set up a committee to study when life begins in the womb. The objective, obviously, is to make abortion illegal. The Prime Minister says the cabinet will be “whipped” to vote against the bill, but backbench Tory members will be allowed to vote as they wish.
Alison Redford won’t be worrying about her backbenchers coming up with measures like this. She is dedicated to working with Ottawa and the other provinces on ways to make oil sands development environmentally more acceptable, and to strengthen the economic union that is Canada. Look for her to be the Newsmaker of 2012.
How Trudeau and the Charter made today’s Canada
The thirtieth anniversary of the enactment of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms — ‘les trente glorieuses” as the French would put it — offers an opportune moment to recall how the concept for this nation-changing statute first developed in the mind of Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
The process is explored in the second volume of the three-part biography of Trudeau, Trudeau Transformed, by Max and Monique Nemni. This volume builds on the revealing details of their first book, in which Trudeau is shown as the willing prisoner of an orthodox Catholic upbringing, reared in a society dominated by the most reactionary elements of his church. The result is a cloistered personality nourished by fascist-like sensibilities, grounded in a survivalist philosophy that saw Quebec as the only “pure” society in North America, in need of constant defense from Protestant godlessness.
That Pierre Trudeau broke free of this stultifying environment is well-known. He left his comfortable upper class home in Montreal to study law at Harvard, went on to take political science and law in Paris, and worshiped at the feet of Harold Laski, the Jewish Marxist who influenced a generation of future leaders by his teachings at the London School of Economics.
After London, Trudeau traipsed around the world — to Israel, India, China, Cuba et al — traveling not in the first class comfort he could well afford, but with a rucksack and just enough cash to get him from point to point. In writing of this period of his life, the Nemnis point to it as experiences as evidence of a desire to absorb lessons from cultures other than his own. He was not an idle dilletente, they argue, but a dedicated student of the politics and economics of the lands through which he journeyed.
In 1950, Trudeau found himself back in Montreal with the firmly fixed idea that he would become a “statesman” who would liberate his people from the subjugation he now realized they had suffered under reactionary leadership. It was not a matter of his abandoning Catholicism; he no intention of doing so and never did leave the church. He remained so faithful, in fact, that while working in Ottawa, now a man past his thirtieth birthday, he applied to Church authorities for permission to read certain social and political works from the Church’s index of forbidden books.
Trudeau was surely transformed by his education and world travel. He chose to take a job with the Privy Council (the secretariat to the Cabinet) in Ottawa because he wanted practical experience in the working of Canadian federalism. He had by now rejected narrow nationalism as the preferred route for Quebec and saw in federalism the opportunity for his people to grow to heights beyond what might be achieved in their home province.
Trudeau’s first public appearance in support of the idea of a charter of individual rights came on May 8, 1951, when he went before Prime Minister St. Laurent and other government leaders as secretary of a committee urging such a measure. Their effort was in support of a Senate recommendation that Canada adopt a declaration of human rights modeled on the declaration recently proclaimed by the United Nations. That didn’t happen, because no one at that point had figured out how to get agreement of both the federal government and the provinces to make a change to Canada’s constitution, then embedded in the British North America Act. As the Nemnis write:
Nine years later, on August 10, 1960, the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker adopted a bill of rights. But this was only a federal law, which could easily be amended. It was not until thirty-one years later, in Ottawa on April 17, 1982, that a beaming Pierre Trudeau looked on as Queen Elizabeth ratified the repatriated Constitution, enshrining the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As he dutifully took the minutes at the meeting in 1951, could Trudeau have imagined that the Charter would one day be his most important contribution to Canadian history?
The thirty years of the Charter have seen a historic shift in the weight of individual rights vs government mandates. Innumerable cases have been argued before the courts on Charter issues, and repressive laws have been struck down or modified as a result. The Charter has far from unanimous support; there are those who see it as an invitation to social anarchy, benefiting only those who would abuse convention to pursue reckless behaviour. Hardly convincing arguments.
The Charter was not, of course, the only act of statesmanship of Pierre Trudeau’s career. He brought in the Official Languages Act, worked for a Just Society, promoted multiculturalism as a foundation stone of modern Canada, and in repatriating the Constitution made Canada a fully independent nation.
As Max and Monique Nemni conclude, “Whether we revere him or revile him, the fact remains that today’s Canada is the Canada of Pierre Elliot Trudeau.”
A different kind of NDP
Unendingly boring and endlessly fascinating. It beats me how a political convention can be both these things at once, but the NDP Leadership convention, as broadcast on CBC yesterday, managed to leave me with both these impressions.
Through it all, the mantle of leadership moved relentlessly toward Thomas Malcolm, ending in his fourth ballot victory with 57.2 per cent of the vote, against long-time party organizer Brian Topp.
Peter Mansbridge et al did their best to maintain an aura of suspense throughout the 12 hours of broadcasting. All were loathe to concede that the outcome was actually predestined, at least insofar as over 90 per cent of the votes were concerned. Those were the advance ballots cast by 55,000 members before the convention ‘s opening. It was the second choices of those who had voted for candidates who fell off the ballot or withdrew — five of the seven — that cinched the outcome.
Out of it, a different kind of NDP has emerged. Members rejected the advice of the party establishment to stick with the social democratic principles that had been bedrock in the NDP. They preferred to flirt with the ideas of relative newcomers like Mulcair and Nathan Cullen who preached, each in different ways, of the need for the NDP to broaden its appeal and opt for a more centrist vision if it hopes to turn its new-found status as Official Opposition into a launching pad for power at the next election.
Only Cullen went so far as to advocate outright cooperation in selecting joint candidates with the Liberals in ridings held by Conservatives. His surprising third place finish is a tribute both to his own effectiveness on the platform, and the willingness of many Dippers to give serious thought to finding ways of uniting the “progressive vote.”
The fact Mulcair, in his first interview as NDP leader, rejected the possibility of cooperation with the Liberals and Greens does not mean some type of alliance cannot eventually emerge.
Mulcair had to play the party unity tune, and he did so by pledging ever-lasting loyalty to core NDP principles. Instead of moving to the centre, he wants to bring the centre to the NDP. His position is categorical, he said, that there will be no merger with the Liberals. “We tried that, and they turned up their noses,” he said. Yet the pressure to win (something new in NDP circles) will become powerfully compelling as time goes on.
Bob Rae, for his part, seemed a little disappointed with Mulcair’s stance in an interview he gave Sunday morning. Rae noted that Canada is into a four or five party system, suggesting that the making of alliances will become a necessity if the Conservatives are to be dislodged.
The TV coverage of this convention, tedious as it was, had one interesting new feature. Twitter messages crawled across the screen, spontaneous comments from people expressing their 140-character views of the world. A refreshing innovation, and another example of how social media are changing our conventional view of the world.
A closing note: The convention produced a second surprise, after Nathan Cullen’s remarkable performance: Martin Singh, the immensely personable sixth-place finisher. Asked how he felt about his quite respectable showing, he cracked, “I didn’t die but I went to heaven.” Surely the best turn of phrase of the convention.
Flutterings and flops at the NDP convention
The fight for the leadership of Canada’s New Democratic Party is in its final 24 hours, but there are signs aplenty of flutterings and flops among the seven candidates still in the race.
Bran Topp, the backroom fixer who was the first out of the gate in the race to replace Jack Layton, must have embarrassed his establishment supporters (Shirley Douglas, daughter of the sainted Tommy Douglas put his name in nomination) with the dullest performance in an afternoon of candidate speeches. Having no experience as an MP, he was unable to connect emotionally with the convention. Topp made a great mistake by not running in the recent Toronto-Danforth by-election to name a replacement to Layton. Topp would have won, and he would have come into the convention with the momentum of that victory.
(Disclosure: I joined the NDP a few months ago out of exhaustion with the failures of the Liberal party, and a conviction that Thomas Mulcair offers the best hope of a progressive alternative to the ruling Conservatives of Stephen Harper.)
But my man disappointed me with his platform performance. He came on stage after a long and elaborate build-up that began with a musical entourage and included a video that was so badly produced and over-exposed that it was painful to watch. Topping it off, he raced through his speech, reading it with eyes downcast on the text, his time having evaporated with clunky and clumsy introductions.
Pat Martin, the Winnipeg NDP MP, summed it up succinctly: “Tom Mulcair is a great orator and that wasn’t great oratory.”
The third of the front-runners, Peggy Nash, had her own problems. She had far too many people take up precious time with boring nomination speeches. She ran out of time, too, although to give her credit, her apparently extemporaneous speech (is there such a thing at leadership conventions?) was delivered smoothly and effectively.
Mulcair and Nash both reminded me of the Stephane Dion fiasco at the Liberal convention in 2006 when Dion allowed the cheers of his supporters to steal valuable speaking time. He got cut off in mid-sentence when his time was up.
The most refreshing speech of the afternoon came from the candidate who is bound to be the first knocked off the ballot, Nova Scotia pharmacist Martin Singh. His animated video about his personal life and his political convictions was a delight to watch. His 10-year-old son rendered a great fiddle performance and Martin spoke earnestly and knowingly of the issues. He was especially appealing when he spoke of his experiences in his father’s pharmacy that led him to advocate a national pharmacare program. It would be the final plank in the national healthcare program launched in the 1960s by Tommy Douglas.
My hunch is that none of this will greatly affect the way delegates are voting. The majority are already decided on who they’ll support, and the convention is designed to give each candidate the opportunity to lure over those already leaning to their side. Mulcair came on stage with the aura of a winner, and it’ll probably carry him through in the end.
The real test will come in Parliament, and across the country in the three years and a bit remaining before the next election. Thomas Mulcair’s ranking as the senior NDP member in Quebec, and a former provincial Liberal, might be what is needed to bring together the progressive majority in this country behind a single party.
Voting started at 5 p.m. Friday, with the results of the 55,000 advance votes scheduled to be announced at 10 a.m., (ET) on Saturday.The partying hits high gear Saturday night.
Hope amid horror in the Shafia trial
The verdict, when it came on a quiet Sunday afternoon, was not unexpected; Guilty of first degree murder. Mohammad Shafia, his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their son, Hamed Shafia, guilty on all four counts in the deaths of the three Shafia girls and Mohammad’s first wife of a polygamous marriage, Rona Amir Mohammad.
I had passed by the Frontenac County Court house in Kingston, Ontario, many times during the trial. Tempted as I was to observe part of the trial, I did not. The thought of seeing the accused in their glass enclosed dock, and hearing the evidence of the horrific killing of the four victims, left me chilled. I had no professional need to observe their demeanor or to hear the evidence first-hand.
The verdict brings to a close a tragic and troubling three-month trial that has no precedent in Canadian judicial history. That a mother, father and a brother, in Canada by virtue of this country’s open acceptance of people from around the world, would act on cultural/religious concepts that are reprehensible to Canadians, is a betrayal of the very principles under which they were allowed to come among us.
The concept of “honour killing” to avenge the immodest or unchaste behavior of female family members — and thereby clear the “honour” of the male heads of the family — is an entrenched fact among certain Muslim societies. That the Shafia family came from Afghanistan (via Australia and Dubai) is especially ironic when set against the sacrifice of Canadian and other Western soldiers in support of equality and human rights in their home country.
Mr. Justice Maranger, in imposing the mandatory sentence of 25 years without eligibility for parole, commented powerfully on their acts:
“It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime…the apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honour … that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”
There is every indication that the vast majority of Muslims in Canada would support the verdict. Yet there remains a refusal, among certain Canadian elements as well as some strands of the Muslim community, to accept the unique nature of the acts that led to the deaths of four innocent females.
Their reasoning goes something like this; The crimes, while appalling, are really no different from any other acts of violence against women. “Don’t call them honour killings,” goes this refrain.
The words of Mohammad Shafia put the lie to this specious reasoning.
“They betrayed us immensely,” the police tapes of a conversation between Shafia and his wife show him saying. “They violated us immensely. There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this. They betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed everything. They brought about their rightful deaths.”
Shafia must have been thinking of Verse 4-34 of the Koran:
“Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more strength than the other, and because they support them from their means … As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next) refuse to share their beds (and last) beat them (lightly.)”
Knowing how the Christian Bible can be interpreted in so may different and often conflicting ways, it is not surprising that these words would be taken by some to justify murderous acts against female family members.
Yet there is hope in this horror.
Once again, we see evidence of the powerful effect of freedom on people brought from oppressive societies. Zainab, who was 19, Sahar at 17, and especially the rebellious Geeti, just 13, had all been exposed to Western values, and all had eagerly embraced the universal desire for freedom and self-expression. Even “sad, doomed, betrayed Rona,” at 52, sought the protection of Western values.
The hope is that the yearning for freedom among girls and women all over the world will someday put an end to the evil distortions of culture and tradition that bring about such crimes as honour killings. We hope the deaths of Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona, have not been entirely in vain.
