The compelling case for a strong coalition government in Canada
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggested in a column this week that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden should pick a bipartisan cabinet before the election campaign. A “national unity cabinet” — unity of purpose based upon shared values — was necessary because problems today “if handled on a partisan basis will rip America apart.” Friedman’s examples of potential cabinet choices were from all sides of the Democratic party and included Republicans like Mitt Romney and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio.
The Green party had the best single climate policy option in the recent election: a wartime-style climate coalition cabinet. Climate change is an emergency requiring strong government leadership and in our system this must mean coalition government, all hands on deck. In parliament recently Elizabeth May praised the new feeling of co-operation between all of the parties.
There has been encouraging bipartisan co-operation in most country’s handling of the COVID-19 emergency (with some glaring exceptions). But conventional politics simmer on the back burner. The U.K.’s Guardian published two opinion pieces pointing out that past British governments have been forced into coalition governments in emergency situations and that Boris Johnson will probably have to include all parties if COVID and the economic recovery afterward prove difficult — and Johnson has a fresh mandate with a large majority.
The COVID crisis has governments dusting off a wide range of emergency acts that could help resupply medical staff, enforce quarantine, deploy the military or call up reserves, etc. Emergencies require governmental actions that are unjustifiable in regular times. The use of such measures normally require bipartisan approval.
The unprecedented emergency action necessitated by the COVID pandemic has forced government out of it’s limited role in the neo-liberal organized governance that predated the pandemic. We live in a time of many silver linings. Crises are an opportunity for change; innovation is everywhere and creative destruction is already shaping our future. The blinders are off and there are many more possible futures: the possibility of alternative governance and economies, the promise of a new unifying politics.
But the building climate dangers make COVID look like a day off work with a cold. And we have wasted three decades of precious time to prepare and treat effectively what has now become a possibly fatal catastrophe. COVID treatment has ripped gaping holes in our socio-economy — climate change promises civilization collapse. And we haven’t begun effective climate treatment yet.
The exit from the dance phase of COVID recovery will require an effective vaccine which is at least a year, maybe more, away. The economic recovery promises to take years. To stand any chance of staying below a 2 C rise in global temperature — which is deep into dangerous climate change territory — requires that we reduce emissions in Canada (which is all we can do for the moment) at a rate of 5 per cent plus per year starting today, in 2020. Presently in Canada we are in a climate mitigation plan to fail with a hoped for (but not certain) emission reduction of only around 5 per cent to 7 per cent per decade.
(What if we knew that our federal COVID plan was a plan to fail? What if we all knew that measures now being taken were clearly, obvious to everyone, grossly insufficient? )
Given the COVID pandemic, and the expected difficult economic recovery, and the urgent need for effective climate mitigation — Canada needs a strong, bipartisan, unifying coalition government.