Locally & globally, democracy must dust itself off, try again
Astonishing as it is, it's one thing for an egomaniacal would-be dictator to be trashing democracy in the United States; or for China, after dabbling with more openness, to be proclaiming communist dictatorship as the proper model for the world; or for a rash of countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe and elsewhere to be in the grip of democracy-busting dictators under the long cloak of manipulated elections ...
Quite another, and especially startling, for democratic norms to be eroding in as quiet a place as Nova Scotia, the cradle of democracy in British North America no less, especially under the baton of a premier who, in the main, comes on as a publicly spirited nice guy.
It's not just about Stephen Mcneil, in other words, but what's disappointing is that a Nova Scotia premier would slide along with it so easily. How else to read the shutting down of legislative committees and the legislature itself and a general tendency toward a one-man show with shameless strong-arm tactics in many aspects of government?
In passing, let us note that when the coronavirus epidemic started last winter, the heavy thinkers fretted over whether the authoritarian measures needed for lockdowns would be giving some politicians a taste for more.
This has happened big time among autocratic regimes, with Hungary's bully boy prime minister, Victor Orban, going whole hog and using COVID-19 to give himself indefinite rule-by-decree powers.
So what's Stephen Mcneil's main reason for having the only legislature in Canada to fail to convene since the pandemic began — with a one-day session due for Dec. 18 just to shut it down again?
One guess.
The downer here is that this soft despotism is the easy route, much easier than dealing with hard questions and the rough and tumble of democratic life.
For one thing, the Opposition and the usual gang of us in these pages and a bit beyond complain, but the public in general, where the democratic decline finds its root, shrugs, and so it's something the government can get away with.
The public assumption, alas not entirely wrong, is that government, along with many other of our public institutions, are increasingly losing authority in the global order where reality, personal and governmental, is increasingly defined by huge multinational corporations: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Walmart, Mcdonald's, etc. — and large pools of faceless money.
With the provincial government, it's worse, and especially destructive to public confidence in the democratic process, in the cases where its policies are rankly controlled by large outside forces.
The forestry sector is a case in point. There are new protests underway — demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns — this time against massive clearcuts in the supposed-to-be-protected buffer zone next to the Tobeatic sanctuary in Digby County.
A friend, who complains of beating on this subject to no avail for some 40 years like many of us — through endless reports, hearings, government policies, public protests and whatnot promising better forest management — says “I will send some letters, but they will fall on deaf ears, as it is all about money in this province. Government is corrupt.”
And that's pretty well the state of confidence in democratic process in these parts.
And even where the government does have direct control, Mcneil showed his colours in the creation of a Kremlin-like bureaucracy to centralize health care that drove doctors away and turned rural Nova Scotia into ground zero for bad health care in Canada, until the whole thing collapsed a year ago.
The candidates in the running to replace Mcneil need to be pinned to the wall and made to answer on this. (If they're not, that in itself tells a sad tale.) The opposition parties as well, which are either incapable of crystallizing the issue — any issue, for that matter. Or perhaps it's a case of the public and media not taking them seriously. (Either way, it's another side of our misfiring democratic machinery.)
On the bigger scale, however, Nova Scotia is, like never before, part of the world. The tone of the world's struggle for and against democracy will have a backwash here. The democracies are beginning to push back against China's despotic arrogance, while the world's dictators grumble and shudder as their pin-up boy, Donald Trump, gets defeated, although barely.
The way forward will be treacherous, but there's hope for a revival, here as elsewhere.