Child victim of the war in Iraq. Photo from Newcastle-Emlyn anti-war site.
Canadians,
for the most part, love peace and nature, and we are progressive in our
thinking. Unfortunately, we are also complacent, naive, and poorly
informed. This has allowed a small but determined conservative minority
to steal the vast majority of our country's resources and sell them,
cheap and raw, to foreign corporations who often use them to
manufacture goods they then sell back to us at a huge markup.
It
has also allowed warmongers with a right-wing ideological agenda to
commit our defence forces to a partisan role in the Middle East, not
the peacekeeping role we were duped into believing we were committing
to.
In the last few days, two important events have set the
stage for a war of wills between a passive progressive majority and an
aggressive conservative minority:
- Imperial Oil (ExxonMobil
Canada) announced that the cost of the Mackenzie Valley natural gas
pipeline, planned to run from the fragile arctic permafrost and caribou
grounds to provide cheap energy to the rapacious Alberta Tar Sands, is
$9B (120%) over budget, and threatened to walk away from the project unless the federal government funds the shortfall.
- Three
more Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan (bringing the death toll to
60). They were killed while traveling in an open vehicle in a
supposedly secure area by what a military spokesman termed "a
determined enemy". The incident followed hard on the heels of yet
another bombing error by the foreign occupying armies, which killed
seven children.
Alberta Tar Sands sludge mining, in what used to be pristine boreal forest. Photo: Melina Mara, Washington Post
Classical neocon tactics are being used to spin both events:
- Brinkmanship
is being used to force the federal government to write a blank cheque
for the pipeline, and indemnify Exxon against ecological disasters and
further cost increases. If they don't, native communities that have
invested in infrastructure to prepare for the construction influx left
in the lurch, and the entire massively expensive, ill-conceived (it
currently consumes 0.7 gallons of energy to produce every gallon of
energy produced) and ecologically devastating Alberta Tar Sands project
will be threatened.
- Absolutism
(Bush-style "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists"
framing) is being used to bully Canada into committing to keep our
troops in the midst of the anarchy and civil war in Afghanistan. The PR
from the military is increasingly using the term 'enemy' to describe
anyone in Afghanistan who opposes the continued presence of foreign
troops in their country. The ideologically rabid Harper Conservative
minority government routinely uses the "if you don't support our war,
you don't support our troops" line to disparage anti-war groups. And
today a military spokesman lambasted the Canadian media for daring to
publicize opinion polls showing Canadians' strong opposition to the
war, saying it was "demoralizing our troops".
George Lakoff
and others have explained to Americans how these devious and
manipulative 'end justifies the means' tactics work, and how to fight
back against them, but for Canadians, used to gentler, fairer debate,
this is new territory, and progressives and moderate Canadians have
fallen for the neocon rhetoric, or at least been cowed into silence.
The conservatives' vile US-style 'attack ads' personally ridiculing
Liberal leader Stéphane Dion have been blanketing the airwaves, a
warning to those who would dare challenge the neocon program.
Someone needs to stand up to these dangerous people; they do not speak for the majority of Canadians, even though the majority of Canadians are now too confused or too frightened to speak up.
Those
who remember the last (Mulroney) Conservative government's use of
brinkmanship will recall how close we came to having our country broken
apart by it -- anglophone and francophone Canadians were pitted against
each other and told that unless they both agreed with the Mulroney
constitutional plan (to cripple the federal government and transfer
most power to the provincial governments), each 'side' would reject the
other permanently. Instead, Canadians of both languages united and
rejected the Mulroney government, which fell to obscurity and was taken
over by Harper's right-wing Reform party.
The only response to
brinkmanship is to push back, to refuse to choose between the
artificial alternatives presented. We must reject, once and for all,
environmentally ruinous and financially unsupportable 'development'
projects. The fact that the pipeline is economically non-viable,
despite soaring energy costs, is not because of approval delays, but
because it is simply too risky, too extravagant, and too inadequate
(the amount of natural gas available just doesn't justify the
expenditure, at any price). Like drilling in the Alaskan ANWR, and the
colossally expensive and ecologically ruinous Tar Sands, this is just a
dumb idea, which is why the government is being asked to subsidize it
and indemnify the corporations involved against the massive risks it
poses. We must kill these moronic resource megaprojects once and for all.
There are many 'renewable' uses for this land, like ecotourism, that
provide a much more compelling, low-risk, sustainable 'return' on
investment.
The only response to absolutism is to reframe the
debate in terms that reflect the real complexity of the situation.
Afghanistan and Iraq are countries that have been economically
destroyed by despots and occupying armies. Decades-long wars will not
'rebuild' them, and our presence merely sets us up as a convenient
military and rhetorical target for the combatants. These countries need
to solve their own political problems, and what we should be doing is
providing economic and social assistance to them, but only when it is
safe to do so and when we can be assured the assistance will not be
diverted to corrupt regimes and warlords. This is an immensely
difficult task, but it is not solved by our wading in and taking sides
and fighting their wars for them. We must withdraw our military forces and cease military activities in the Middle East immediately.
Yes, this will probably result in a greater power vacuum that will
intensify the civil war, but that war is inevitable and we are just
delaying its full onset with our presence. We should try to help in
humanitarian and infrastructure (economic, educational and social
rebuilding) ways, but until order re-emerges from the current anarchy
we may be helpless to push this process. And yes, this further
jeopardizes our energy security. That's our problem, not theirs, and we
should refocus our efforts on addressing it, through tax shifting,
investments in renewable energy and large scale conservation programs.
Not by waging futile wars of occupation.
It's time, not just in Canada but throughout the affluent nations, to stand up to conservative bullying and say enough.
How many times must we make the same mistakes before we learn the
lessons of history and find better ways to deal with the intractable
problems of our time?
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
