Chilling report outlines attacks on democracy
A re you still with me, readers? My usual goal, as a friendly columnist, is to cheer and entertain you. After all, Peterborough brims with goodnews stories. But this election season, only once every four years, it seems important to comment on the “Dismantling Democracy” report from a coalition of concerned Canadians called “Voices-Voix.”
It lists major offenses against democracy which have been committed in Canada in the last 10 years.
It’s not even about policy, it’s about process: the diminishing avenues for us to participate, and if we do criticize, to get ready for a hit. Not the historic Canadian way. Sixty-five percent of us are perceiving the direction and are uneasy. Did you see the Toronto artist and writer team who recently created a cotton bag emblazoned “My Prime Minister Embarrasses Me” in French and English? Sold out in a day.
David Letterman-style, the dismal list might run:
Number 4: Practise contempt for Parliament by proroguing or cancelling it four times since 2006. The first to was to prevent a non-confidence vote from taking place; the second to prevent the House receiving a report on abuse of Afghan prisoners by the Canadian military; the third to prevent a report on misuse of public money by senators.
We in Peterborough have suffered through almost a year of no representation at all in Ottawa. A neighbouring politician with a thin understanding of representative democracy, said, “What’s wrong? You can still get passports”.
Number 3: Work from the premise that there is no such thing as society, just individuals striving to make their own way. That’s a discredited Margaret Thatcher notion. And it flies in the face of our communitarian spirit. But if you hold it, of what use then is the long-form census to tell us about ourselves as a group?
Number 2: Use a national tragedy to justify ramping up surveillance (Bill C 51) and curtail civil liberties without adequate oversight of the agencies who will collect data and watch us. The United Nations itself is concerned about C 51 and our liberties. Pulitzer prizewinning author Chris Hedges, a respected American journalist says, shocked, “We have nothing like it even in the States”. Number 1: For you to name. May I add a few Ganley “Bonus Offences”?
Ghastly, self-serving appointments:
Recently the appointment of Steven Kelly, who is a Kinder Morgan oil executive, to the very panel which regulates the oil industry, the National Energy Board. Then, the appointment of Russell Brown of Alberta to the Supreme Court. Brown, as a sitting justice, kept a public blog, in which he slagged Justin Trudeau and even Chief Justice Beverly McLaghlin. A judge. A public blog.
These appointments take place with no review, no vetting. You wonder why these men aren’t embarrassed by their conflict of interest so blatant.
Never mind the Senate appointments: Brazeau, Duffy and Wallin, or the naming of the unqualified Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court. Never mind the reduction of funds to the National Library, or to the office which responds to Freedom of Information requests. Look at the board of the CBC, nine members, not one broadcaster and not one educator. Is this our general dumbing-down?
VOICES-VOIX goes further and connects the dots: it sees creeping authoritarianism, as we slumber on.
In the most terrifying comment, the report quotes U of Ottawa professor of constitutional law, Dr Errol Mendes saying of these interferences with democratic institutions, oversight agencies and the public service: “This abuse of executive power is tilting towards totalitarian government, and away from the foundations of democracy and the rule of law, on which his country was founded.”
This is the dreaded “T” word. Such a tilt we must recognize and stop.