April 20, 2006

The federal Liberals should choose Ignatieff as leader.

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The race for the leadership of the federal Liberal Party has begun in earnest. And there are some strong and highly intelligent candidates already in the field or contemplating a run for the job, especially former Ontario premier Bob Rae and former federal environment minister Stéphane Dion.

But it is Michael Ignatieff, who, though elected to Parliament from a Toronto riding only last January, would make the most formidable Liberal Party leader.

There are those who think it is the height of chutzpah for Ignatieff to think he can return to Canada after three decades outside the country and become its prime minister. I disagree.

That Ignatieff has lived abroad and taught at universities such as Cambridge, Harvard and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales is, in my opinion, a plus, rather than a minus.

He comes from the cosmopolitan world of arts, education, and culture, and his world-view is far less parochial than many of his small-minded “Canadian nationalist” political opponents, who after years in the political trenches are unable to think “outside the box.”

And of course he is not tainted by the corruption that was endemic in the Chrètien and Martin years.

Ignatieff would be the Liberal most able to defeat the Harper Conservatives in a federal election. Why? Because this distinguished author and professor is the very thing most Canadians think they don’t like: a “neo-con.”

The word “neo-con” has become a term of abuse, almost an insult, in Canada, in particular among Liberals and New Democrats, thanks to the antipathy that has been generated to it in this country by the Bush administration.

Yet most Canadians have no idea of neo-conservatism’s historical roots. It originated within the Democratic Party in the United States during the Cold War 1970s, in opposition to both the “loony left,” who were prepared to appease the Soviets and co-exist with Communism following the Vietnam defeat, and the isolationist and reactionary Republican right, nowadays referred to as “paleo-cons,” as in paleolithic or ancient.

Most neo-conservative thinkers were former liberals and leftists, even socialists, people like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Senator Henry Jackson, Jean Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Norman Podhoretz.

Canada’s more liberal political culture and lower international profile has made neo-conservatism a less significant factor in our political life and this is why so many of us confuse it with other political doctrines.

The founders of the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance were mainly social conservatives and evangelical Christians — often called theological conservatives or “theo-cons” — rather than neo-conservatives. As for the old Progressive Conservatives, many were simply ideological liberals.

In order to avoid being “tainted” by the term “neo-con,” at least in this country, Ignatieff prefers to define himself as being on the “centre-left” of the political spectrum, and a proponent of “liberal internationalism.”

But, perhaps because he has lived outside Canada for so many years, he fits the neo-conservative profile almost to a T.

Basically, neo-conservatives can be defined as follows:

They are fiscal conservatives, and oppose big government, but allow a role for the state in mitigating those extremes of poverty and wealth inevitable in a free market economy. They do not advocate a laissez-faire "free-for-all" economic system nor are they social Darwinists.

They are social liberals, but without going to the extremes found among some of the politically correct. They tend to be “a-religious”and secular and are agnostic about, or even supportive of, abortion and same-sex marriage. More pragmatic in matters of morality than are social conservatives, they are far less likely to be swayed by religious arguments.

In international affairs, they believe Canada has a national interest and should be prepared to back it up.

They champion a robust, fairly pro-American policy, and are not afraid to assert that sometimes armed force is needed to extend democracy and defeat the enemies of freedom around the world.

So they look askance at the naivete of those who place their faith in “soft power” and who would have our foreign agenda be dictated by the do-gooders at the United Nations or among various “civil society” non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

“I believe in a progressive and compassionate approach to social policy; a moderate, creative and responsible approach to economic policy in order to fuel the growth required to enhance social justice; and a confident and realistic foreign policy that focuses on making a real and positive difference in our troubled world,” Ignatieff recently stated in the Globe and Mail.

This is neo-conservatism in a nutshell — and a far cry from the image painted by those who choose to slander it.

A true “public intellectual,” and fluently bilingual, Ignatieff arguably would be the most articulate and knowledgeable Liberal leader since Confederation (and yes, that includes Pierre Trudeau). He would attract voters from both the left and right.

Conservatives and New Democrats should pray to the political gods that the party chooses someone else.

April 2006

UPEI Faculty Opposes Gag Laws

Henry Srebrnik, Newsletter of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS)

The threat of censorship lately has hung over the campus of the University of Prince Edward Island. Last month, the president of the school, Wade MacLauchlan, had the February 8 issue of The Cadre, the student newspaper, confiscated after it published the notorious Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

MacLauchlan stated that he ordered the papers removed from "the property" to prevent "the possibility of a reckless invitation to public disorder and humiliation." He cited the deaths that had already occurred elsewhere in the world – though PEI is one of the most peaceful corners of the globe.

MacLauchlan met with the president of the Student Union four times in the days that followed, and the Student Union finally agreed to destroy the offending issue of the paper, although at first they had rejected the idea. MacLauchlan afterwards praised the Student Union for its wisdom in seizing and destroying the papers, insisting this had been their decision, not his.

"I was especially proud of the leadership shown by the Student Union in addressing a situation that was obviously not of its choosing," he remarked.

A few days after the controversy began, MacLauchlan staged a meeting with a Muslim woman on PEI, someone entirely unconnected with the university, who had written a letter congratulating him. He had the local paper, the Charlottetown Guardian, cover their conversation. She appeared in a photo with him, reading her letter as he looked on benignly.

"It was very honourable on your part to stand up to do what is right," she wrote. "Your action has set a great example of integrity, courage, justice, and wisdom, as befits a strong chief administrator of an educational institution." MacLauchlan then posted her lengthy letter on the official university website for a week.

An "open letter" from SAFS published in the National Post on February 16 criticized his action, and his behaviour also met with negative comments locally. But he continues to justify his actions.

"Is UPEI a more positive, dynamic and animated learning environment today than we would be if the cartoons had been left in circulation for the intervening three weeks, and their publication defended by the University as free speech?" asked MacLauchlan in a letter to faculty on February 28. Of course! "I am absolutely convinced that our learning environment is better for having limited the publication of the caricatures."

Things looked like they might get worse. The university administration is currently in negotiations with the Faculty Association over a new collective agreement. They were particularly insistent that the new contract include a "Code of Conduct" which would obligate the faculty to be respectful, punctual and reliable – do some professors arrive hours late to class? – and to "act in a manner that will contribute positively to the overall vision, mission, and reputation" of UPEI.

But who, pray tell, would determine whether the "reputation" of UPEI has been harmed? Note that the administration was not proposing that they also be bound by this code, though one could argue that the president has done more damage to UPEI than anyone on faculty or staff. Yet it would be the professors who would be, to say the least, discouraged from criticizing university policies.

One doesn't need a PhD in political science to be troubled by such developments. This was an obvious attempt to infringe on the basic right of freedom of speech, something every Canadian should hold dear. No other faculty collective agreement in Canada contains such language.

The president of the Faculty Association, Wayne Peters, told the membership that this clause alone was sufficient reason to go on strike – after all, if it were now in effect, I presume even a tenured full professor like myself would be liable to dismissal for writing this very article.

Due to the publicity generated by those opposing this code, which included letters of support from, among others, the Harry Crowe Foundation, the ad-ministration dropped its demand for the code. It was clear the faculty would never accept such a draconian clause.

A university is the very last place where one should try to stifle debate with gag laws. Where there is no check on power, those in control can act in arbitrary and
capricious ways. This is an old tale.

I've been teaching a course on African politics at UPEI this semester, and we've been dealing with the many sad stories of the so-called "big men" who ruled their countries in totally arbitrary and capricious ways, and brought them to the brink of ruin. I guess that's why all this sounds so drearily familiar.

March 23, 2006

Nationalism persists as a mobilizing force; ethnic and religious conflict remains the primary cause of war in the world.

Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary] Fast Forward Weekly

These days, few people would deny the impact of religion in world politics. Yet this is something that many academics would have been reluctant to acknowledge a few decades ago.

Most 20th century social scientists embraced secularism, believing religion to be a diminishing force, something that, in the words of Philip Costopoulos, co-editor of the anthology World Religions and Democracy, "belongs to the childhood of the human race."

Today, he notes, scholars are forced to grapple with the issues raised by the challenges to democracy posed by various religious traditions.

Journalist Robert Fulford has admitted that he was one of many who failed to anticipate this development: "Of all the smug and foolish delusions that were part of conventional wisdom when I was young in the middle of the 20th century, two stand out in memory. One was the idea that nationalism was a 19th century concept, on its last legs. The other was that religion, as a force in worldly affairs, was slowly but inevitably fading away. At times I was stupid enough to believe both of these preposterous fallacies; but then, so was nearly everyone else."

A succession of analysts, Karl Marx and Max Weber among them, also postulated that ethnicity would dissipate, and ethnic and nationalist conflicts diminish, through the process of modernization.

But contrary to their predictions, the integration of ethnic populations into larger state structures and economic systems has not, in most instances, resulted in a decline in ethnic allegiance. There seems to be little correspondence between modernization and levels of ethnic group cohesion.

Instead, the role of ethnicity as a mobilizing force appears to be escalating, and the worldwide development of a sense of ethnic, national and religious consciousness constitutes one of the major political and social trends of this new century.

The persistence of such ethnic separatism in today’s world has also long confounded social scientists. For most thinkers of the modern era, ethnic nationalism is an "infuriatingly persistent anomaly," remarked Robert H. Wiebe in his book Who We Are: A History of Popular Nationalism.

"Nothing so thoroughly affronted the universalist values that the champions of human rights and of law and order alike used to measure the health of the world," he wrote. "It accumulated modifiers: atavistic, fanatic, xenophobic, blind, bloody."

But many scholars now recognize that the development of global markets, the disintegration of empires and the weakening of state structures do not necessarily lead to a lessening of concern with issues of national identity and territory.

On the contrary, they stimulate new demands for national recognition and new ethnopolitical conflicts arising from separatist movements within existing states, transnational ethnic linkages and, in some cases, forced migration, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

There are as many as 3,500 groups of people around the world who describe themselves in ethnic or national terms, so most of the world’s sovereign states are multinational patchwork units of different – often hostile – ethnic communities. On the other hand, there are some 77 multi-state national groups – ethnic peoples who live in more than one state. All this is a recipe for trouble.

"Myths justifying ethnic hostility, fear of ethnic extinction and the opportunity to mobilize around these themes," observes political scientist Stuart Kaufman in his book Modern Hatreds, will produce "a politics of extreme nationalist symbolism" that leads to ethnic warfare.

Since the Second World War, more people have been killed in ethnic and religious conflicts within states than have been killed in wars between states. Today, with ideologically based superpower rivalry a thing of the past, nationalist and religiously rooted doctrines are in the ascendancy, often bringing in their wake intolerance of minorities, hatred of neighbours and impatience with established frontiers.

The past two decades, especially, have seen the intensification of ethnic strife, especially in multinational states prone to such antagonisms. Indeed, friction between rival nationalities is the basis of most of today’s violence and has contributed significantly to global instability.

Of 30 major armed conflicts that are either still going on or have recently ended, 10 or 11 can be regarded as being between religious civilizations, and 14 are essentially ethnic conflicts, according to Harvard University history professor Niall Ferguson.

Since ethnic conflict remains our most intractable political problem, policies and techniques that promote ethnic accommodation ought to be of prime concern to political elites in multinational states. Yet even those political leaders who would rather place stress on economic or other issues have frequently found it easier to mobilize people along ethnic rather than class lines. This has all too often resulted in polarized and fractured societies with little overarching national loyalty.

Attempts made to ameliorate ethnic and religious discord within states through power-sharing and other forms of political accommodation have met with only mixed success. The role of international organizations such as the UN in trying to resolve such conflicts has also proved ineffective in all too many cases.

The seemingly immutable differences between communities has frustrated many. In his 1995 book, Black Sea, British author Neal Ascherson observed that this maritime crossroads between Europe, the Middle East and central Asia has always been a place where civilizations overlapped and diverse peoples intermingled.

Yet, though many groups have lived side by side on its shores, "the symbiosis has often been more apparent than real," he concluded. "My sense of Black Sea life, a sad one, is that latent distrust between different cultures is immortal." Necessity may bind such communities, but they remained "a bundle of disparate groups – not a helpful model for the multi-ethnic society of our hopes and dreams."

As Turkish political scientist Umut Ozkirimli contends in his study of Theories of Nationalism, humanity continues to be "torn apart by nationalist conflicts, cruel acts of ethnic cleansing and all kinds of fundamentalisms." Unfortunately, animosity between ethnic and religious groups remains the primary cause of armed conflict in the world.

March 22, 2006

The U.S. is on the verge of losing the war in Iraq

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The United States toppled Saddam Hussein in a short and decisive campaign three years ago, yet is on the verge of losing the war in Iraq to a faceless insurgency three years later. What went wrong?

“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” may apply to people but not to wars. The impending American withdrawal from Iraq is, in Samuel Huntingtonian terms, a civilizational disaster, far worse than the U.S. defeat in Vietnam three decades ago.

Vietnam was a war that should never have been fought. The Vietnamese Communists proved to be no danger to the U.S. and were content, after 1975, to govern their own state, albeit, of course, in a non-democratic fashion. But at least they turned out not to be an international threat.

Iraq is different. The defeat there will leave the country in the hands of religious fanatics and terrorists who will be emboldened to launch further attacks on American allies in the region – and, eventually, on the U.S. itself.

The Iraq war has also demonstrated a major weakness in the ability of a western state to win a war against those who completely disregard the value of life – their own and those of fellow citizens as well as those of the opponent. The rules of war are to them totally irrelevant.

The only way to defeat such people is through massive terror of one’s own, which of course the U.S. and its allies will not (despite accusations to the contrary from left-wing radicals) engage in.

The Americans lost a war in Vietnam they could have won, but at a tremendous political and moral cost. But at least the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, though fighting as guerrillas, were still an identifiable military force, and did engage in regular battles against American and South Vietnamese forces

In Iraq, though, it seems that all it has taken to make the U.S. go home is simple terrorism – suicide bombers in cars, roadside bombs, improvised explosive devices lobbed at military units, and so forth.

The terrorists and fanatics are not even organized in guerrilla formations. And yet they have managed to defeat the mightiest power on earth, a country that accounts for almost half of all military spending in the world – the U.S. allocates more money for its armed forces than the next 17 states combined.

This does not bode well for the future of the Middle East, nor for the rest of the world as well.

March 11, 2006

Examining our role in Afghanistan: Should we be there?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The 2,200 Canadian troops stationed in Afghanistan find themselves under increased fire, now that we have taken command of the NATO troops in the southern region of the country. Canadian casualties mount around the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

This is causing increasing unease back home. A recent Ipsos Reid poll found that only 52 per cent of Canadians believe our combat mission in Afghanistan is vital to our national interest, while 48 per cent feel the troops should come home as soon as possible.

The latter figure is down from 66 per cent four years ago, when we first deployed the military there.

The new Conservative government has rejected calls from people such as NDP leader Jack Layton for a full debate on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, with Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay saying the mission isn't up for discussion.

How seriously should we take those who criticize our involvement in Afghanistan? Have not many of them done a complete about-turn in the past few years?

In 2003, the main argument made by Canadian opponents of the American invasion of Iraq was that it was `different' from the war in Afghanistan. They pointed to the fact that Saddam Hussein hadn't been involved with al-Qaida or the Taliban, that the invasion hadn't been authorized by the UN or NATO, that it wasn't a war of necessity, and so on.

They later felt vindicated by the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had been discovered in Iraq. Fine.

Now they want out of Afghanistan as well, though back in 2003, they had seemed to imply that the Afghanistan mission, unlike the Iraq war, was a defensive and justifiable one.

Doesn't this demonstrate retroactively, so to speak, that their opposition to the Iraq conflict wasn't based on their rejection of the American rationale for toppling the Saddam regime, but simply left-wing pacifism? And that they now oppose the operation in Afghanistan - which, remember, was "ground zero" for Osama bin Laden before 2001 - for the same reasons?

If they really feel that we should not try to defeat, or at least neutralize, those who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks, they should state that clearly.

Of course, their job has been made easier by the reluctance, especially by the former Liberal government, to provide a degree of justification for the mission. Jean Chretien and Paul Martin acted almost as though they were ashamed of it, and made it a `stealth' operation. It was never debated in Parliament.

This reluctance to display Canada's colours in Afghanistan is not just metaphorical, but literal.

Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, the Canadian commander of the multinational brigade in Kandahar, has had all Canadian flags and insignia (and those of other NATO countries) removed from bases and vehicles. The reason? `Cultural sensitivity'.
The only flag to be flown is that of Afghanistan.

How absurd is that? We are in the country at the request of its own government and our soldiers are dying on its behalf. Surely we should be allowed to make our presence evident.

Imagine watching film footage of Canadians landing on the shores of Normandy on D-Day, or fighting in the Korean war, without them being allowed to `show the flag'. Back then, we weren't ashamed to let our enemies know we were there to liberate those they had oppressed.

February 22, 2006

Different reasons why some approved, others condemned the Danish cartoons.

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

We’re all now very familiar with the notorious Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, following the uproar over their publication by the Cadre, the student newspaper at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Two other Canadian publications, both in Calgary, followed suit.

UPEI president Wade MacLauchlan condemned the Cadre’s decision to print them and the entire issue of the paper was subsequently confiscated by the Student Union.

The reaction elsewhere around the world has been nothing short of amazing. Marches, demonstrations and riots ensued, embassies and legations were burned, and at least 50 people have been killed.

The furor still shows little sign of abating.

In trying to understand the motives of those who have supported or opposed the publication of these cartoons we must realize that there are at least two sets of players on either side of the issue.

Some of those who approved of the circulation of the cartoons are secularists, atheists or opponents of all religion. They uphold the right of free speech, including what we might call blasphemy, as an absolute principle in a modern society.

Others, though, might be devout followers of other faiths, who simply consider Islam to be a false religion and thus view Muhammad in a negative light.

On the other side, there are those who believe these cartoons are an unnecessary provocation and see their dissemination as an affront to Islam. These people are liberal multiculturalists, and they would feel just as strongly were any other faith to be denigrated or ridiculed.

But others who have taken offense might be observant Muslims who are upset because Islam, which they regard as the only true faith, has been mocked, but who might themselves have no compunction in belittling or denying the claims of other religions.

We have to keep all these different motives in mind as we watch this story continue to unfold around the world.

How amazing this cartoon controversy would seem to the 1960s student radicals. Not just because they, unlike today’s students, would probably have been on the side of “transgression,” or because Islam was a subject not even remotely on the radar back then. They would wonder why so few of today’s academics--many themselves “tenured radicals”--seem to be speaking out on this issue.

February 10, 2006

Conservatives should remove opposition to same-sex marriage from their agenda.

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian


Stephen Harper has become the prime minister of Canada. The election of his minority Conservative government has been a first step in reshaping the political landscape of Canada.

Harper has promised to re-open the issue of same-sex marriage and allow a free vote in parliament on rescinding the legislation that legalized it. But in order for the Conservative movement in this country to expand its reach and bring about much-needed reform, it must prevent its social agenda from being driven by those who want, for various ideological or religious reasons, to restore the traditional definition of marriage as one between a man and a woman.

Conservatives should reject the sterile and non-logical arguments against same-sex marriage and unequivocally affirm that gay and lesbian Canadians are full and equal citizens of this country.

The debate about abortion is of a different order entirely, as it revolves around such issues as when human life begins and the status of a fetus. Two individuals marrying, on the other hand, pose no threat to anyone or anything.

The Conservative Party needs to move beyond its fixation on the definition of marriage and welcome the gay community--which, by the way, is above the Canadian average in terms of education, occupational status, and wealth--to participate in its work.

Many fiscal conservatives, interested primarily in lower taxes and smaller government, and proponents of a robust defence and foreign policy, both natural constituencies for the Conservatives, will otherwise consider Harper a captive of certain religious forces and be reluctant to support him.

Those who do not subscribe to the theological arguments for opposing such single-sex unions, and secular libertarians who resist in general the intrusion of religiously-based morality in government, will shun the party as well.

All this will keep Conservatives from achieving electoral success in our major urban areas and prevent the party from ever achieving a working majority.

Perhaps government should get out of the marriage business altogether, and leave the public validation of two people committing themselves to each other to other institutions in society. But as long as the state remains involved, it must treat all people with equal respect.

A democracy must maintain what American political scientist Alfred Stepan calls the “twin tolerations”: allowing freedom of religion within civil society but also making certain that no particular religious group be allowed to authoritatively mandate public policy to a democratically elected government.

Endorsing same-sex marriage not only makes political sense, but is also the principled position to take.

January 25, 2006

An analysis of why the Liberals lost.

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Why did Paul Martin’s Liberals lose the election? There are so many reasons. As the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have said, “let me count the ways...”

From Liberal strategist Scott Reid’s dismissal of the Conservative child care plan as “beer and popcorn money,” to pro-Martin labour leader Buzz Hargrove’s bizarre description of Stephen Harper as a “separatist” while at the same time encouraging Quebecers to vote for the Bloc Québécois rather than the Tories, it was just one misstep after another.

It shows the bedrock strength of our “natural governing party” that, even after running such a lacklustre campaign, they still won over 100 seats and have held Stephen Harper’s Conservatives to a fairly slim minority government.

The Bloc also lost seats and must rethink its strategy in Quebec, now that it faces a significant federalist alternative in the Conservatives.

In relative terms, Jack Layton’s New Democrats probably have the most to cheer about, having gained seats in both Ontario and British Columbia.

Here were two of the most serious Liberals gaffes:

Martin dropped a bombshell in one of the leaders debates, announcing that if he won re-election, he would eliminate the federal government’s power to use the “notwithstanding” clause in the Charter of Rights.

While most of the subsequent debate around this issue centered on whether this was in fact a good idea, and whether Martin could in fact unilaterally amend the constitution without the consent of the provinces, what initially went unnoticed, until Jack Layton mentioned it, was Martin’s unstated premise that no federal government should ever want to override a Charter ruling by the Supreme Court--because the justices would always be chosen by Liberal governments.

Yet, as Layton pointed out, what if some future court rulings resulted in reducing rights to, say, public health care, abortion or same-sex marriage? The Liberals had clearly never considered the possibility that the “scary” Stephen Harper might win an election and then have the power to select judges who would implement his “hidden agenda.”

When this prospect became more likely, Martin declared that Harper would “stack” the Supreme Court with conservative judges. Apparently, the current members of the Court, all but one appointed by the Liberals, did not, in his view, hold any political opinions. To voters, this was yet another sign of Liberal arrogance.

The prime minister also blundered in his use of the “America card.” His shrill and gratuitous denunciation of the Bush administration for not ratifying the Kyoto Accord, made at an international conference on climate change held in Montreal in December, was particularly silly, given that Canada’s environmental record is worse than that of the U.S. Canadian greenhouse gas emissions have risen about 24 per cent since 1990, as compared to 13 per cent south of the border.

Then, as the campaign entered its final phase, the Liberals unleashed a barrage of attack ads against the Conservatives.

The ads, in which Stephen Harper was all but accused of being an American agent “very popular with right-wingers in the U.S.,” and speaking to “a secret, ultra right-wing American think tank,” implied that those intending to vote Conservative were, at the very least, dupes, and at worst, little more than pro-American fifth columnists seeking to destroy Canada.

The producers of the Liberal attack ads made a big mistake: they referred to Stephen Harper consorting with his “American pals” and “American friends.” Note: not “Republicans,” nor even “right-wing Americans,” but simply “Americans.”

In other words, the ads mocked the U.S. itself, the country on which we to a large extent depend for our very defence and economic livelihood.

This did not go unnoticed south of the border: Both the New York Times and Washington Post, the two most influential American newspapers, ran stories about the anti-American ads, as did the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times and USA Today. PEI’s favourite journalistic son, Mike Duffy, was interviewed on CNN about the ads.

Paul Martin now had the ear of the American administration, all right, but not in ways that would do Canada much good.

I think even those Canadians not enamoured of George W. Bush, or of the United States in general, were ashamed of these “over the top” attacks.

Harper will not have an easy time of it: He has no natural allies in the next parliament and probably the best thing going for him right now is the political exhaustion of all Canadians. No one wants yet another election in the near future. But he will be given little quarter by the other parties. None of them will demonstrate a particularly generous attitude towards the Conservatives.

Still, here are five reasons why, even if you disapproved of the Conservative Party’s program, its narrow victory on Jan. 23 might not be a bad thing for Canada:

It would bode ill for democracy if a party that had been in power for as long as the ruling Liberals had been, could not be defeated in an election, especially following the sponsorship scandal and other revelations--because the other major party was deemed too “scary.”

Nor would we have a healthy political system if voters believed that only the two left-centre political parties, the Liberals and New Democrats, were legitimate, and agreed to assign to the Conservatives the same status of “nation wreckers”as they did to the Bloc Québécois.

And in Quebec, a Liberal victory would have been manna from heaven for the separatists, and would provide the ammunition for them to maintain that anglophone Canadians cared little about the way they had been treated, and that federalism was a force for corruption.

Had the Liberals won, the country would have been run out of three “city-states,” since the vast majority of Liberal seats are in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Finally, our country would not remain united in the long run if the citizens of its richest province, Alberta, and its most dynamic city, Calgary, were forever kept away from the levers of power.

So, even for those Canadians who support the Liberals and New Democrats, things are not as dire as they seem for the country!

January 17, 2006

When did ‘Canadian Values’ become such an issue?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

A lot of things have changed in the world of Canadian politics since I was a university student four decades ago.

Back then, for instance, our professors told us that our British-derived Westminster form of “responsible government” was superior to the American separation of powers model, with its rigid divisions between executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Our system, in which Parliament was supreme, was more flexible and adaptable. We did not have a constitution “cast in stone.” And we did not have to worry about unelected judges with lifetime tenure having the final say on how we would be governed, by exercising the awesome power of judicial review through reference to that constitution.

Today, of course, we have become worshipers of the Charter of Rights and are saddled with a constitution that is virtually impossible to amend.

Another example of Canada’s more enlightened political culture, we were taught, was our tolerance for ideological diversity.

Canada had no foundational myth nor was it formed around some great political vision. While the American idealists who had fought for independence and founded the United States were larger-than-life heroes, bold political theorists, revolutionaries with transcendental goals, Canada’s “Fathers of Confederation” were neither great thinkers nor orators, but simply colonial politicians.

The 1867 British North America Act united four British colonies into a Dominion of Canada. It was a compact of provinces and/or “founding nations,” not a new American-style social contract inspired by, in the words of the United States Constitution, “we, the people.”

The U.S. developed what Abraham Lincoln called a “political religion.” The various written documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, among others--are still revered, and serve as a canon of political literature.

Indeed, the followers of political scientist Leo Strauss at times sound as though the U.S. Constitution is, if not actually a revelation from God, then at least semi-sacred and divinely inspired.

The historian Richard Hofstadter once said of his country that “it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.” And “Americanism” has indeed at times been moralistic, rigid and doctrinaire.

But since Canada was formed by a union, at the time, of British and French colonial subjects, with their differences of language and religion, it was more comfortable with ideological diversity and could deal with it in a more rational manner. There was no overarching definition of what it meant to be a “Canadian.”

No one had a monopoly on the “spirit” of the nation. Television ads for soap and cars did not wave Canadian flags in viewers’ faces. There was no “Canadian way of life.” Nationality was related to community, not ideological commitment.

The U.S. House of Representatives actually included the notorious “Committee on Un-American Activities” (HUAC), to investigate “subversive activities.” It was a vehicle for unscrupulous politicians to impugn the patriotism and smear the reputations of those whom they deemed ideologically suspect. It was finally abolished in 1975.

But a “House Un-Canadian Activities Committee” would have been an oxymoron. So we could argue that the U.S. was a more politically intolerant nation that repressed minority opinion with recurring waves of McCarthyist demagoguery and witch-hunting, whereas a non-populist, non-ideological society like ours allowed more freedom because there was less need to enforce ideological conformity.

As the philosopher George Grant wrote in his 1965 Lament for a Nation, “To be a Canadian was to build a more ordered and stable society than the liberal experiment in the United States.”

Yet today, as the fractures between east and west, anglophone and francophone, multicultural big city and “old stock” rural region, continue to widen, our most prominent political leaders, Liberals in particular, prattle on endlessly about so-called “Canadian values,” which mostly boil down to feel-good platitudes.

They wrap themselves in the Maple Leaf while delivering speeches full of empty bombast and self-congratulatory rhetoric, boasting about what wonderful patriots they are.

When did we become just a second-rate version of America?

January 5, 2006

Who is responsible for Canada’s slide towards national disintegration?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The election campaign has now passed the half-way mark. Following the Christmas-New Year’s time out, the politicians are again bombarding us with their messages in advance of the second round of leaders’ debates.

Along with child care, gun violence, insider trading on the stock market, and relations with the United States, the very future of the country has emerged as an election issue.

As we paused for the holidays, the Bloc Québécois had an astounding lead of 60% to 20% over the Liberals in Quebec, according to a poll conducted between Dec. 17 and 19 by the Strategic Counsel. The Conservatives and New Democrats were nowhere, at 8% each, in the province.

Even in Montreal, the poll found the Bloc was almost twice as popular as the Liberals. Such are the continuing fruits of the sponsorship scandal.

Yet Paul Martin has continued to attack the Conservatives as being less able, or even willing, than the Liberals to preserve Canada as a united country. Indeed, a few weeks ago the prime minister accused Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe, “if they get enough seats,” of “working together to dismantle this country that all of us are so proud of.”

This is all a bit odd, coming from a man who seemed unhappy with the Clarity Act and who appointed a founder of the Bloc, Jean Lapierre, who has called the act “useless,” as his Quebec lieutenant when Martin took over the party.

Steven MacKinnon, the national director of the Liberal Party, also spoke of a “Conservative-Bloc partnership,” while Liberal strategist John Duffy wrote about Harper’s “record of parliamentary co-operation with the Bloc.”

It goes without saying that Mr. Harper is no friend of Quebec’s sovereigntists. But there is no doubt that, should the Conservatives form a minority government (which I think they will), the Bloc Québécois will want to keep Stephen Harper in power for as long as possible. Why?

The House of Commons after Jan. 23 will likely have more than 60 “Quebec” MPs, as the Bloquistes like to think of themselves, while the remaining House members, be they Liberals, Tories or New Democrats, will all be from “Canada” (including the handful of Liberals elected in anglophone and allophone ridings of Quebec).

As the Conservatives will probably not win a single seat in Quebec, the Bloc will able to portray Mr. Harper as an “English Canadian” prime minister and the Conservatives as a party “foreign” to Quebecers. That will help the Bloc carry the message to people in that province that a Yes vote on separation in a future provincial referendum will be the only way to safeguard their interests as a people.

Indeed, the composition of the next parliament will make many Québécois feel as though the province has already, in all but name, split off from the rest of the country.

But don’t blame Stephen Harper or even Gilles Duceppe for this state of affairs. Just remember that those great defenders of Canada, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, have been in power these past 12 years.

December 27, 2005

Let's try changing our political architecture: Why not create a bicameral Parliament for PEI?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The plebiscite on electoral reform held across the province this past November saw the proposal for a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system decisively defeated by Islanders.

Proponents of the MMP model had argued for “topping up” the 17 single-member constituency winners to the legislative assembly with a further 10 MLAs elected from party lists, so that the percentage of seats gained by a party would more or less equal its share of the popular vote.

No votes would be “wasted” on parties with little chance of winning a seat through the current “first past the post” (FPTP) system, since every vote would count towards electing an MLA. Voters would not be forced to vote “strategically,” by casting their ballot not for the party they sincerely wished would win but rather for the one that had the best chance of beating the party they least wanted to win.

The greater equivalence between votes and seats would prevent lopsided majority governments with little opposition, and would also allow minor parties, which almost never win directly-elected seats, some say in policy formulation and decision-making.

Supports of electoral reform also maintained that if this resulted in coalition governments, it might force parties to cooperate with each other, leading to more responsive and harmonious forms of governance.

Detractors of MMP claimed that it would create two classes of legislators, with the 10 list members not accountable to individual voters and perhaps chosen by “backroom” political bosses.

MMP also would make it difficult for any party to win a majority of seats, thus creating either minority governments or lengthy post-election negotiations producing unstable coalitions and perhaps political gridlock..

Small parties might have to be courted as coalition partners and emerge as “king-makers,” with influence disproportionate to their actual numbers. All this would prevent strong and decisive leadership by any one party.

FPTP is simple and produces winners and losers, while MMP is concerned with balance and fairness in representation. To use the analogy of a hockey game, with FPTP, whether one team beats another 9-0 or 5-4, it wins, the other loses. MMP, on the other hand, in effect allows every goal to count: The losers in a 5-4 game, according to this perspective, should be awarded some points and not go home empty-handed, as might those who were shut out 9-0.

Might there be a way to cut the Gordian knot and satisfy the critics in both camps? I would suggest changing the very political “architecture” of our legislative branch by creating a bicameral provincial parliament. After all, in the 19th century PEI did have an upper chamber, the Legislative Council.

The composition of the lower chamber, the legislative assembly, would remain as it is at present: 27 members directly elected from districts across the island, the winner in each riding being the candidate “first past the post” with a majority or sometimes, in a multi-party race, a simple plurality.

The upper house of, say, 21 members, which we could call a senate, would be elected through straight proportional representation (PR), with all its members chosen “at large” from the lists drawn up by the parties running for office. A threshold clause of five percent of the overall vote would be included, to prevent the election of cranks and extremists: No party receiving less than that would be allowed representation in the senate.

Since electors would mark two ballots, one for the candidates running in their particular riding in the lower house, and the second for the all-island party lists contesting the upper chamber, they could also vote a “split ticket,” choosing the candidate of one of the large parties for the legislative seat (to ensure strong majority government), while selecting the list of a smaller third of fourth party in the senatorial election, either because that party more truly represented their own ideological preference, or simply to ensure that the senate provide a proper “watchdog” role over the governing party in the lower house.

In some future election, we might see the election to the legislature, using the first-past-the-post system, of 20 Liberals, six Conservatives, and one New Democrat,. The island-wide popular vote for the parties on the second ballot, however, might result in 44 percent of the electorate choosing the Liberal list, 39 percent the Conservative one, 12 percent that of the New Democrats, and five percent the Green one. This would see nine Liberals, eight Tories, three New Democrats, and one Green Party member going to the senate.

Our hypothetical bicameral parliament would now consist of 29 Liberals, 14 Conservatives, four New Democrats and one Green. Still not truly proportional, as in a pure PR list system, but not nearly as lopsided as the current “winner take all”method of electing legislators.

And it would provide other benefits as well. In terms of division of powers, the lower house would remain pre-eminent. The premier and cabinet would, as now, be responsible only to the lower house, and could only be removed via a vote of non-confidence or the defeat of a government-sponsored bill in the legislature.

So we would still have a strong majority government because, given the nature of island politics, with its strong two-party system of Liberals and Conservatives, the outcome in the legislative assembly would (as in my example) invariably result in one of the two major parties winning more than half the 27 seats.

The composition of the upper chamber, however, with its members elected in proportion to the votes cast for each party, would doubtless include smaller groups such as the Greens and New Democrats, allowing their voices to be heard as well.

The senate would therefore be able to more adequately represent those people and interests, be they class, ethnicity, gender, occupation, or otherwise, whose points of view might otherwise be ignored or overlooked in the “winner take all” direct election of the members of the lower house.

Not beholden to voters in specific constituencies, as is the case with MLAs, the senators could afford to take a broader view of the issues of the day without worrying that it might cost them their seats. The upper house could function as a “chamber of sober second thought” (as our federal senate was originally meant to do) and perhaps, when it debated legislation that had first been introduced in the lower house, serve as a check on hasty, ill-informed or unreasonable proposals.

While it would not be able to veto laws passed by the government in the legislature, the senate could, through committee work, public hearings, and other means, propose amendments or modifications which might, in its view, improve the proposed legislation. It would also have the power, by a two-thirds vote, to request that the legislature re-introduce such bills, though it could not force the lower house to make modifications should that body refuse to do so.

Still, the cabinet would be wise to take the senate’s suggestions into account before the final passage of a bill into law in the lower house, as it would not need to fear that this might result in the fall of the government, as would be the case if the ruling party’s legislation were defeated in the assembly itself.

True, this model, with a total of 48 lawmakers, would cost taxpayers more, but is it not worth the price? Such a system might alleviate the concerns of those who fear that PR brings in its wake weak government, while addressing the frustrations of those who feel that their votes for smaller parties “don’t count” with FPTP.

And it might even, as a bonus, produce a less adversarial relationship between government and opposition.

October 18, 2005

Defying Laws of Politics When it Comes to Quebec and Alberta

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Our politics seem to defy many of the observations that apply elsewhere in the world. In Canada, you actually can have your cake and eat it too, if you're Quebec, or you may end up having neither, if you're Alberta.

Quebec acquires more and more of the trappings of sovereignty through an asymmetrical federalism that allows it "distinct" status within the country, and its citizens keep electing Bloc Québécois MPs to the House of Commons.

Yet the province also continues, thanks mostly to the Liberal Party, to have a disproportionate say in governing Canada as a whole.

Many of Canada's top offices, from those of the prime minister and the governor-general on down, are held by Québécois. Quebec's 7.56 million people make up about 24% of Canada's population but they are statistically over-represented in the federal bureaucracy and in many other institutions. And since 1968, every Canadian prime minister who has lasted more than a year has been from Quebec.

A decade ago, when it seemed the Yes side would win the Quebec referendum on sovereignty, a group of anglo Canadian Liberal cabinet ministers openly contemplated removing Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, a Québécois, from office, according to Breaking Point: Canada's Referendum, a CBC documentary televised this past September.

"If there would have been talks to negotiate the separation of Quebec, the Canadian population would have never accepted that on one side you would have representatives from the province of Quebec and on the other side a Quebecker as the representative of Canada," stated John Manley, a former member of Chrétien's government, who was interviewed for the program.

But things have now returned to "normal," it seems. Prime Minister Paul Martin has assured Quebec premier Jean Charest that he is open to the idea of broadening Quebec's role on the international stage.

The Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine, named after a Quebec minister in the 1960s who asserted that Ottawa did not have exclusive constitutional power over foreign affairs, has long guided Quebec's strategy.

Unlike other provinces, Quebec has a ministry dedicated to international relations, with a $100 million budget and a staff of 400. It has asked for its own seat at international summits and membership in multilateral agencies and UN-affiliated bodies such as the International Labour Organization and World Health Organization. Quebec already has its own seat at meetings of La Francophonie, the international club of countries with French culture.

The Quebec National Assembly a few years ago voted itself the authority to debate treaties and accords signed by Canada, if they concern an area of provincial jurisdiction. Quebec's "right to give its consent before Canada signs" any such treaty or agreement "must be recognized," recently declared Quebec's International Affairs Minister, Monique Gagnon-Tremblay.

The federal Foreign Affairs Minister, Pierre Pettigrew, agrees: He told the House of Commons that Quebec deserves a say in international forums discussing health, culture and education..

Pettigrew and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Lucienne Robillard, both francophone Quebecers, met on Oct. 7 with Gagnon-Tremblay and with Quebec's Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Benoît Pelletier, also of course francophone Québécois, regarding Quebec's demands.

Both sides called the meeting "cordial" and "positive," even though nothing concrete was finalized and more discussions will be scheduled. "I didn't feel intransigence, I felt an openness," Pelletier later remarked. All this, while the rest of Canada stands idly by.

On the other hand, wealthy Alberta has almost no say in how the country is governed at the federal level. No Albertan has served as prime minister since Joe Clark was in office for nine months in 1979-1980. (The only other PM from there was R.B. Bennett, who served between 1930 and 1935.)

Thanks to sky-rocketing oil prices, Alberta has been running huge surpluses. But this is creating "Alberta envy" elsewhere. A poll conducted in mid-September by the Strategic Counsel found that 61 per cent of Canadians outside Alberta believe that the province's oil windfall should be shared to help those harmed by rising energy costs.

So will Albertans soon have neither their cake nor eat it? Not surprisingly, only 26 per cent of Albertans felt the same way, and Premier Ralph Klein insisted "it's not in the cards."

No wonder Albertans increasingly question their role, mostly financial, in sustaining a federation which allows them little input in decision-making, and even demonizes them as having values out of step with other Canadians, while coveting their cash.

Can anyone imagine a comparable situation in any other country as diverse as ours? Certainly Americans would find this bizarre. No state has a hammerlock on the presidency, nor are any completely marginalized and cut out of governance at the national level.

But then, in the United States, the individual states don't fight with each other as though they were little countries, as is the case in Canada.

September 24, 2005
No matter what, Canadians think Liberal rule is just fine

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The Liberal government approaches the fall session of parliament, which reconvenes on Sept. 26, in good spirits.

Prime Minister Paul Martin has reiterated his promise to call a federal election within 30 days of the final report by Justice John Gomery into the sponsorship scandal, due next February. Martin's chief strategist and pollster, David Herle, in August assured Liberal MPs they can win a majority government by adding seats in the West and Ontario, with or without gains in Quebec.

And why not? Despite an endless series of scandals, and the evidence of corruption at the highest levels of government uncovered by the Gomery Commission, polls show that the opposition parties seem to be making little headway against the Liberals, who have now won four elections in a row since 1993.

Perhaps it is due to the fact that the federal Liberal Party, that most wonderful of political machines, has cleverly managed to remain the "default mode" of Canadian politics.

Other parties, such as the Bloc Québécois, the Conservatives, and the New Democrats, are "niche" parties that appeal to a narrow class, ethnic, geographic or ideological base. But the Liberals are the ultimate "big tent" party. Though there have always been internal differences and individual rivalries within it, the pragmatic desire by Liberals to win and retain power has always ensured a tendency towards the political centre--after all, that's where the votes are.

In most other places, if you try to be all things to all people, you end up pleasing nobody. (Marxist used to call this "exposing the contradictions.") But in Canada the Liberal Party is at one and the same time able to accommodate anti-American leftists and pacifists who periodically condemn the United States and its policies, sometimes in very uncomplimentary terms, while at the same time doing all in its power to keep the Americans sweet by cooperating with Washington on issues of trade, defence, and counter-terrorism.

So, while rejecting American requests to participate in continental missile defence or the war in Iraq, the Liberal government still manages to sustain a fairly decent level of military collaboration with the U.S. armed forces, both in North America and abroad, especially in Afghanistan.

The Liberals seem able to articulate and aggregate the views and interests of both workers and businesspeople, men and women, immigrants and the native born. They even manage to appeal to English Canadian nationalists while also retaining the allegiance of many "soft" Québécois nationalists.

When Canadians demand more spending on social programs, the Liberals borrow ideas--liberally!-- from the NDP. When it becomes necessary to battle deficits, they steer to the right and govern like Conservatives. Their flexibility is legendary.

Indeed, as the "fulcrum" party along the political spectrum, they attract high-profile people from both their left and right. Two of Martin's cabinet members, Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh and Human Resources Minister Belinda Stronach, were previously members of the NDP and Conservative Party, respectively.

The party also renews itself every few decades by selecting as its leader a prominent public intellectual rather than a professional politician. In 1968, it chose Montreal law professor Pierre Trudeau to succeed Lester Pearson, and Paul Martin may, according to some, be followed by the internationally-renowned academic Michael Ignatieff, who has taught at Harvard.

And the electorate, perhaps appreciative of this wonderful sleight of hand, rewards the Liberals by ensconcing them as our permanent governing party. The opposition parties, green with envy, remain relegated to the sidelines, their status reduced to being either critics (the Bloc and Tories) or accomplices (NDP) of the government. Such is political life in Canada today.

September 7, 2005

Is it fair to criticize the new occupants of Rideau Hall?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Ever since questions began to arise regarding governor-general designate Michaëlle Jean's commitment to a united Canada, her support among Canadians has dropped precipitously. Paul Martin's choice of this Haitian-born Québécois broadcaster to be the Queen's representative unleashed a flood of complaints.

A Decima Research poll conducted in mid-August found that those who were unsure about her appointment climbed to 39 per cent from 25 per cent, while those who were decidedly unfavourable went to 22 per cent from 16 per cent. To already alienated western Canadians, in particular, she feels-ironically--like a colonial governor imposed on them by far-off Ottawa.

Her defenders have accused those who questioned her previous political connections to Québec separatists of "McCarthyism." The prime minister's own spin doctors called it a "smear campaign."

Apparently it is simply not the polite thing to do to wonder about her past--though I think these same people would be the first to protest if it turned out that an appointee to the highest post in the land had once been involved in, say, far-right or pro-fascist politics.

Such people might recall that a Québec lieutenant-governor, Jean-Louis Roux, was forced to resign his office in 1996 when it was discovered that as a youth during World War II he had worn a swastika and had taken part in an anti-Jewish and anti-war demonstration whose stated purpose was to wreck the offices of the Montreal Gazette, which strongly supported Canada's war effort.

In her statement of August 17 Jean denied that she and her spouse Jean-Daniel Lafond had supported the Québec independence cause. "Let me be clear: we have never belonged to a political party or the separatist movement." But is this not a matter of parsing words? Many people throughout history have supported and worked for a cause without being "card-carrying members" of a specific party or organization.

After all, in the film La Manière Nègre, a 1991 documentary produced by Mr. Lafond which examined independence struggles in Québec and Caribbean entities such as Martinique and Haiti, she is shown apparently toasting the prospect of Québec independence.

But the issue here is not simply whether Ms. Jean was in the past sympathetic to the idea of a sovereign Québec. Many Québécois have been and continue to be. I consider this to be a legitimate political option. The citizens of that province may indeed someday, in a peaceful and democratic referendum, choose to leave the Canadian federation.

However, in the film Ms. Jean is sitting with, among others, Pierre Vallières, a founding member of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ). This group of ultra-left terrorists created havoc in Québec for years and in October 1970 murdered a Québec cabinet minister. Surely Pierre Trudeau, who sent the Canadian army into the province to stop further FLQ activity, must be rolling over in his grave! Indeed, the founder of the Parti Québécois, René Lévesque, himself refused to share a platform with former FLQ members.

Mr. Lafond is himself a trendy French intellectual, a political child of the 1968 student uprising in Paris and a devotee of the radical French philosopher Michel Foucault. He fits in perfectly with the café society of the Quartier Latin in Montreal.

In his films and writings, he has denounced the shortcomings of Western society, and in his discourse has made use of all the politically correct left-wing clichés about colonialism, American imperialism, and so on. In 1994, regarding Québec, he was quoted in L'Humanité, the newspaper founded by the French Communist Party, as stating that "the situation in this country is more and more intolerable and, while no one today uses the violent means of the FLQ, we need to find the ways to overcome this."

Yet he is now about to become the "vice-regal consort" of the governor-general, a British colonial vestige of an office if ever there was one! Isn't our political system wonderful? It can absorb, neutralize and co-opt any "critical opposition."

Perhaps Ms. Jean and Mr. Lafond now regret having moved in circles that included former "theorists of liberation" such as Mr. Vallières. All of us, I am sure, once knew people we would no longer befriend. And it's clear most Canadians just want this whole controversy to go away, the sooner the better.

August 19, 2005

Canada and Hans Island: Is it worth fighting for?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

For the past several months, a dispute between Canada and Denmark over Hans Island, a tiny 1.3 square kilometre scrap of barren rock in the Arctic situated between Greenland, a Danish possession, and Ellesmere Island, now part of Nunavut, has been heating up.

Canadian claims are based on the discovery of Hans Island and the rest of the Arctic Archipelago by British explorers between the 16th and 19th centuries and their subsequent status as part of British North America. In 1880 the British government transferred its claim to the Arctic Archipelago to Canada.

In addition, Canada claims the water between the Arctic Islands as internal waters, a claim that is not recognized by the United States, and which has caused some conflict with respect to the enforcement of environmental laws. Should oil and gas be discovered beneath the waters, this could become even more significant.

So the quarrel over Hans Island may be part of a larger issue: who really owns the vast areas of land and water in the North American Arctic? It may turn into a test case on sovereignty claims along the Northwest Passage.

The current wrangle over Hans Island itself started in 1973 when Denmark and Canada drew a border down the Nares Strait, between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, but left the island’s status undecided.

Denmark claims that geological evidence points to Hans Island being an extension of Greenland, and therefore belongs to Denmark. The island is closer to Greenland than to Ellesmere.

Last month, in order to confirm Canadian sovereignty over the island, Bill Graham, our defence minister, paid a visit to Hans Island. “My act of going there was totally consistent with the fact that Canada has always regarded this island as a part of Canada,” he told the press. “I was just visiting Hans Island the way I visited other facilities of Canada’s.”

In turn, the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moeller, reiterated his country’s claim. He declared that standing firm was “crucial to being an independent state.” Denmark had already sent its own navy ships to the island in 2002 and 2003 and hoisted a Danish flag.

The ongoing fight brings to mind another story with a Danish connection. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act IV, Scene iv), Hamlet is puzzled to hear that the Norwegian prince Fortinbras has asked for permission to march across Denmark. He asks a soldier for the reason and receives this reply:

Hamlet: Good sir, whose powers are these?

Captain: They are of Norway, sir.

Hamlet: How purpos’d, sir, I pray you?

Captain: Against some part of Poland.

Hamlet: Who commands them, sir?

Captain: The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.

Hamlet: Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?

Captain: Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

Hamlet: Why, then the Polack [sic] never will defend it.

Captain: Yes, it is already garrison’d.

Shakespeare is clearly making the point that countries will often instigate conflicts for no apparent gain other than national prestige and honour.

It seems that Canada and Denmark will heed the advice of the Bard. Moeller announced that he and Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew intend to discuss Hans Island next month during a foreign ministers gathering at the United Nations.

It’s true that the larger question of sovereignty in the Arctic is no laughing matter. But this particular squabble, with its opera bouffe quality, needs to be resolved.

Jerusalem and the three Abrahamic faiths

Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary] Jewish Free Press

Jerusalem is probably the most famous city on the planet, a place vibrantly imagined even by people who have never been there. It is the spiritual and religious heritage to one half of humanity and has also been central to the experience and “sacred geography” of Christians and Muslims.

All three faiths have claimed the city as their own over the centuries. This has made it one of the most explosive and emotional issues in the world.

The story of Jerusalem is history in a grand manner—an absorbing saga of prophets, priests, and pilgrims, of kings and conquerors, a city besieged, defended, conquered, damaged or destroyed, and rebuilt, some 40 times in 30 centuries—always in the name of God.

All the dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are condensed and symbolized in Jerusalem—and in particular in its walled Old City of 220 acres and thirty-five thousand Jewish, Christian, and Muslim dwellers, divided into the Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim quarters, where, in the words of Thomas Stransky, a Catholic priest in Jerusalem, “too much history crowds claustrophobic space.”

He might agree with the tenth-century Arab geographer Muqaddasi, who wrote that the city was “a golden basin filled with scorpions.” In today’s Jerusalem, too, piety easily becomes political, and politics transforms into piety.

The tremendous devotion felt by religious Jews to Jerusalem is demonstrated by the more than 600 citations to it in the Bible. The Temple Mount in the Old City is arguably the world’s most desired piece of religious real estate.

It is where King David erected an altar, and where Solomon and Herod built their temples. The Western Wall of the second temple is the holiest site in Judaism.

For Muslims, Jerusalem is known as Al Quds, (the Holy) and is the third holiest site in Islam, following Mecca and Medina. The Temple Mount is known as the Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), where Mohammed began his famous Night Journey to heaven. Ever since Caliph Abd al-Malik dedicated the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque at the end of the seventh century, it has been, except in the Crusader period, under the control of the Muslims.

Almost all of the sacred shrines and sanctuaries connected with the life and death of Jesus are found here. Among its many splendid Christian sites are the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Via Dolorosa, and the Garden of Gethsamane.
Contemporary Jerusalem is doubly divided. As well as being a holy site for Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the city contains secular Israelis and Palestinians who also, we should not forget, ground their respective national identities within its borders.

The modern Jerusalem today includes not just the Old City but also East Jerusalem, formerly held by Jordan and annexed by Israel in 1967, as well as West Jerusalem and the 1994 western expansion of the municipal borders. The city limits now encircle ninety-four square miles and more than 650,000 inhabitants. About 62 percent are Jewish, 38 percent non-Jewish, most of them Muslim Arabs.

When the UN General Assembly in 1947 voted for the partition of Palestine, Jerusalem was to be part neither of the Jewish State, nor of the Arab State. It was to be an international city, a corpus separatum.

But the UN was never able to establish international control of the city. Instead, it was partitioned in bitter fighting in 1948 and 1949, between Israel and Jordan.

The idea of internationalisation was primarily an idea promoted by the Christian powers, particularly by the Vatican, and those Catholic states that were operating under the influence of the Vatican, who had much more influence in those days than now.

And indeed the Christian presence, at least in terms of population, has declined dramatically in the course of the past century. In 1900 there were more Christians in Jerusalem than Muslims. In the Jerusalem of 1948 the 32,000 thousand Christians made up approximately 19 percent of the population; today, at 12,000, they are less than 2 percent. (There are some 230,000 Muslims in the city.)

Now historically, Christians judged that the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 and the final expulsion of the Jews in 135 was divine punishment. Today things are very different. While there are remnants of this classical anti-Judaism among Jerusalem’s Christians, it is very minor, and becomes even more so now when they are in eclipse. The change in Christian attitudes is best symbolized by the visit to Jerusalem in 2000 by Pope John Paul II.

He prayed at the Western Wall to ask for forgiveness for centuries of anti-Semitism, an image, writes Stephen Crittenden, that may be the most enduring of his entire pontificate.

And what of Islam, and in particular Palestinian Arab Muslims? For those who belong to Hamas, God has given the entire Middle East, which includes the intrusive “Zionist entity,” as an Islamic trust (waqf) for all generations until the day of judgment. "Jerusalem should be forever united solely under Palestinian (read: Islamic) sovereignty,” reads its covenant. “The liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be.”

The extremists would not support the Palestinian Authority’s less radical desire for sovereignty over East Jerusalem, including the Old City. Hamas preaches and engages in violence and terror in order to destroy the state of Israel and replace it with an Islamic state.

Indeed, some Muslims, and even some secular Arab nationalists in Palestine, have been denying that the Temple Mount is in fact the site of the ancient Jewish Temple, by any historical or archaeological reckoning an absurd position.

What of the Jewish position on Jerusalem? After June 1967 Israel controlled all of Jerusalem for the first time in about 1900 years, a watershed moment for Jews in Israel and around the world. They were overcome by the euphoria of a victory that was stunning, unexpected, and seemingly complete.

It should thus come as no surprise that almost all Orthodox Jews now support the political slogan, “Jerusalem should and will remain the unified and eternal capital of the State of Israel, under the absolute sovereignty of Israel alone.” The steady exodus of so many not-too-religious Jews from the city in favor of Tel Aviv, and the immigration of so many Israeli and diaspora Orthodox Jews to the city, has had the effect of radicalizing its politics.

So what will be the future of the earthly Jerusalem? Israel has tried very hard since 1967 to imprint its presence on the whole of the city.

But Jerusalem remains deeply divided, a city of two thoroughly antagonistic and mutually hostile communities who hardly set foot in each other’s areas, who hardly communicate with each other, and who live very separate lives, mentally and culturally divided. Since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, this chasm has widened.

Demographic facts also favour the Palestinians. With the Arab minority currently increasing at an annual rate of 3 percent, twice the rate of the Jewish majority, Arabs are likely to form the majority of voters in Israel’s capital within thirty years. And that is one of the things that is impelling many Israelis to think that the Arab populated parts of Jerusalem should become part of the Palestinian state, rather than remaining part of Israel.

But no repartition of Jerusalem that would involve a return to the 1967 armistice lines would be acceptable to Israel, as it would necessitate the eviction of 200,000-plus Jewish residents of East Jerusalem from their homes. A settlement will probably have to be based on existing population patterns.

An alternative to a territorial partition might be an open city based on existing population patterns, so that the existing Arab populated parts of the city would be part of Palestine, and the existing Jewish populated parts of the city would be under Israeli sovereignty.

This is one version of the “condominium” solution—a form of joint sovereignty, perhaps only over the Old City, if not all of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is an essential component of any settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is not primarily a security issue, but rather a symbolic issue. It was at the Clinton-Barak-Arafat negotiating summit at Camp David in 2000 that President Bill Clinton discovered to his surprise that the main unresolvable issue was the ownership of this small piece of real estate.

The Jewish and Muslim holy sites are conjoined, nor can they be surgically separated. In any case, as the Israeli writer Avishai Margalit has asked, how does one divide a symbol?

It is of course easy, and perhaps even rational, to be a pessimist. Yet, as the historian Martin Gilbert has remarked, while “The twentieth century has often been a bloody one for Jerusalem, it has also been a century of creativity and satisfaction, exuberant life, determination, civic achievement, and perpetual hope.” Despite all the odds, we must all, in the words of the Psalmist, “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

Is stronger Canada Chretien’s legacy?

Henry Srebrnik, The Calgary Herald

It's been more than a year since Jean Chretien retired from politics. His old friends and political allies are looking about to cement into place his political legacy.

One of his top former political advisers, Warren Kinsella, recently stated that Chretien's greatest policy achievements were in the field of national unity.

Kinsella called the Clarity Act, passed in June 2000, a "political masterstroke" and noted that when Chretien left office last December, the federal Liberals led in the polls in Quebec.

But the Clarity Act, which sets out a clear legal mechanism for the secession of a province, was really the brainchild of the old Reform party.

Following the October 1995 Quebec referendum, almost won by the sovereignists, Reform released Twenty Realities of Secession, a working document which laid down terms for bargaining with Quebec in the event of that province's departure.

It was written by Stephen Harper, today the leader of the Conservative Party, and then a Reform MP. It was published, along with 20 Proposals for a New Confederation, in January 1996, in a pamphlet entitled 20/20: A Vision for the Future of Canada.

The Liberals throughout the referendum campaign had attacked Reform, accusing the party of obstructionism and, by breaking solidarity within the federalist camp, of undermining the campaign against Quebec separatism.

But unlike the Liberals, who had refused to discuss such issues, Reform faced the tough questions head on. Harper pressed the government for its response to Reform's Twenty Realities, but, he complained, received no satisfactory answers.

Yet most of what appeared in Twenty Realities was later incorporated into the Liberal party's own Clarity Act. It was political scientist Stephane Dion, who in January 1996 had become the federal minister of intergovernmental affairs, who picked up the Reform ball and ran with it.

On Sept. 30, 1996, the federal government referred the matter of Quebec secession to the Supreme Court of Canada. It asked whether the National Assembly, legislature, or government of Quebec could effect the secession of Quebec from Canada unilaterally.

On Aug. 20, 1998, the Supreme Court concluded that Quebec does not have, either under Canadian law or international law, the right to leave Canada unilaterally.

However, the court also emphasized that the rest of Canada would have a political obligation to negotiate Quebec's separation if a clear majority of that province's population voted, in a clear question put before them in a referendum, in favour of it.

Following the court's ruling, the Chretien government on Dec. 13, 1999, tabled the Clarity Bill in the House of Commons. It became law on June 29, 2000.

The act set out the principles and procedures that would guide the House of Commons in the event of an attempt by a separatist government to leave confederation.

If, after a referendum on a clear question, the government of Quebec sought negotiations on secession, the House of Commons would need to determine if there had been a clear majority with a clear will to secede. There would be no negotiations without such clarity.

This was indeed what Harper had been asking for a few years earlier. But needless to say, he got no credit for it. Our natural governing party is very adept at plagiarizing the programs of other parties when it suits them. Just ask any member of the NDP as well.

As for Chretien increasing Liberal support in Quebec, after Adscam hit the fan shortly after Paul Martin became prime minister, the Bloc Quebecois won 54 of the province's 75 seats in the federal election last June. It still remains the dominant party in Quebec. And Martin has been far more accommodating to Quebec nationalists than his predecessor was.

History will no doubt demonstrate that whatever Chretien's achievements were, strengthening national unity was not among them.

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What Does the Bush Victory Mean for Israel and the Mideast?

Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary] Jewish Free Press

Let's get right down to it: When Israelis heard that George W. Bush was re-elected president of the United States, there was dancing in the streets.

On the other hand, there were plenty of long faces in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, where public opinion overwhelmingly lined up behind John Kerry. I suspect not too many people were smiling in Damascus, Ramallah or Tehran, either.

From Prime Minister Ariel Sharon down to the person on the Egged bus, American foreign policy, especially as it will impact the Middle East, was naturally first and foremost on their minds.

Whether it be the continuing chaos and savagery in Iraq, the nuclear ambitions of a very threatening Iran, the support given to terrorist groups like Hezbollah by Syria, or the situation of the Palestinians in a post-Yasser Arafat world, the attitude of the American administration will be paramount.

Washington has in recent months directed a series of warnings toward Syria, which is facing the prospect of U.S. trade sanctions, and to Iran, which has been heavily criticized for pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Bush will certainly pay less attention than Kerry would have to European criticism of Israel and will also increase the pressure on Arab states to rein in Islamist terrorists.

Obviously, most Europeans are in no mood to help the U.S. effort in Iraq. But would France and Germany (not to mention Canada) have really been all that willing to heed Kerry's plea to commit forces to that war? It's unlikely, to say the least!

While the leaders in most Arab capitals looked at another four years of Republican rule with resignation, at best, interim Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi, not surprisingly, had a different take, praising Bush, again, for liberating his country from Saddam Hussein's grip.

But he is being a bit too polite. If Iraq is indeed to be set on the road to democracy, or even stability, in advance of that country's scheduled elections in January, the U.S. must set its mind to forcefully crush the terrorists and Ba'athists who control so much of the Sunni heartland. Otherwise the war will indeed have been in vain. And once that's done, it should hand power over to an Iraqi government, and leave quickly, lest that new regime loses legitimacy.

The Palestinians too were less than pleased with Bush's victory. "We hope there will be a change in the policy which gave support for Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and refused cooperation with President Arafat," remarked the Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath.

The PLO head had been treated as a serious partner for peace by Bill Clinton, rather than as the corrupt impediment to progress he has shown himself to be. But unlike his predecessor, Bush did not meet with the late Palestinian leader even once during his first term.

Bush also opposes a Palestinian "right of return" to areas they fled in 1948, which would effectively mean the end of Israel, nor has he criticized the building of the security fence. But he did reiterate, following his re-election, that he will "continue to work for a free Palestinian state," as part of the "road map" to peace first unveiled in 2003.

With Arafat's departure, the Palestinian leadership will now be preoccupied with an inevitable power struggle, which might even descend into armed conflict, to replace him. In Gaza, especially, the extremists in Hamas might attempt to take power.

Arafat's place has been taken by the current and former prime ministers of the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qureia and Mahmoud Abbas, who have divided Arafat's responsibilities between them. The Bush administration regards both as suitable partners in any peace talks. Abbas supports a two-state solution and signed the Oslo Accords on behalf of the PLO in 1993.

Obviously, these remain perilous times for Israel. The day following Bush's victory in the U.S., Sharon also faced an important vote, this one in the Israeli Knesset. With the backing of opposition parties, he won a 64 to 44 vote to fund the evacuation, resettlement and redeployment of Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from Gaza and parts of the West Bank beginning next summer, as part of his unilateral disengagement plan unveiled last February.

Sharon told Israelis that "painful compromises" were required. He said that he feared for the demographic future of Israel if millions of Arabs remained under its rule. But the Gaza settlers feel betrayed by their former champion.

Sharon's own Likud Party remains deeply divided on the withdrawal, and 17 of its 40 members cast their votes against the funding bill. Nationalist and religious parties, usually allied with the prime minister, also refused to support it. Since June, he has led a wobbly minority government which could fall at any time. So he definitely needs Washington's support.

But what else is new? "The sentiment against Israel is powerful throughout the Arab world and on that score the United States is always dragged in as a champion of Israel." So noted a New York Times editorial--of September 3, 1951!

But it was a sad commentary on the American Jewish community's diminished sense of solidarity that while Israelis were hoping that Bush would be re-elected, most American Jews voted against him.

Preliminary data indicates that Bush achieved roughly a five point increase over the 19 per cent he won in 2000 but Republicans had hoped for bigger gains. So three quarters of American Jewish voters supported Senator Kerry.

Whatever one may think of the current war in Iraq, it should be recalled that Kerry in 1991 voted against liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's occupying armies. Did American Jews not remember that Saddam lobbed 41 missiles at Israel during that conflict?

How has it come to this? Have we once again entered a period in North America where most Jews are, despite their "official" line that "we are one" with Israel, really "non-Zionists?" After all, only since World War II and the terrible lessons of the Holocaust did Jews unite completely behind the Jewish state. Sometimes I wonder whether this is still the case.

Lament from the Ivory Tower

Henry Srebrnik, The Calgary Herald

It's egg-on-face time. The week before the U.S.presidential election, I predicted on the Herald's editorial page that John Kerry would make George W. Bush a one-term president. Indeed, I thought Kerry would win quite handily.

I was of course very wrong. So why did I misread it so badly?

I guess I've been living in an academic bubble for so long that its very atmosphere has, as it were, seeped into my thinking. Even though I considered George Bush worthy of a second term, I nonetheless fell victim to the ideological "hegemony" of the liberal intelligentsia, who by and large control the major American newspapers and universities, and, in that sense, frame the very political debate.

Like them, I came up with all the reasons that made it seem that Kerry would (or in their case, should) win in 2004. Since the ability to articulate and explain policies and analyze data and facts is our stock in trade, I was particularly impressed by Kerry's clear superiority in the presidential debates.

It's clear I overestimated the Democratic tilt among newly registered voters, who either split more evenly between Bush and Kerry or in many cases didn't bother to vote, while underestimating the Christian evangelical vote for Bush. That last, for someone like myself, who does recognize the power of religious values, was unpardonable.

The economy was clearly less of an issue than I thought it would be. People do not always vote their pocketbooks. I've been saying that to Marxists and socialists for decades--but I forgot to take my own advice.

Finally, the American people is more steadfast in supporting the war on terrorism and the ongoing battle in Iraq than I gave them credit for.

Well, I did get one thing right: Ralph Nader was not a factor this time around.

There is indeed, as Richard Nixon famously remarked, a "silent majority" that doesn't care about Michael Moore's propaganda movies, Robert Redford's threat to leave the U.S. if Bush won, or Bruce Springsteen's political advice.

Why John Kerry will win the American Presidency

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

With just one day to go before election day in the United States, most polls show President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry running neck and neck, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College totals.

The Electoral College works this way: each of the 50 states is allocated a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. senators--they all have two-- plus the number of members in its congressional delegation in the House of Representatives, which varies by population.

So California, the largest state, has 55 electoral votes, while small ones like Alaska and Wyoming have only three. As well, the District of Columbia, the federal capital of Washington, gets three electoral votes.

In 48 of the states, whoever wins the popular vote gets all of the electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska both use an alternative method. These states divide themselves into a number of districts, and the winner of each district is awarded that district's electoral vote. (Maine has four electoral votes, Nebraska five.)

So the election really consists of 51 separate contests. As there are 538 electoral college votes, whoever wins 270 or more becomes president.

I have been following the contest state by state, and I predict a Kerry victory. In fact, I am surprised at how big the electoral college margin for Kerry looks to be, if the states all go the way I think they will.

The popular vote, nationwide, will be as follows: John Kerry 52.5%; George Bush 47%; Ralph Nader, 0.5%. This will translate into more or less the following electoral college numbers: John Kerry 317; George Bush 221.

Why will Kerry win so handily?

The major elite disseminators of public opinion--the university professoriat and important newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post-- all in the main support Kerry. The perception of Bush as an intellectual lightweight by these groups was reinforced during the three presidential debates, in which Bush was clearly no match for the more articulate Massachusetts senator.

On the level of popular culture, Hollywood personalities, film makers and rock stars are doing their utmost to sway people on his behalf. They will influence many wavering or undecided voters. Michael Moore alone has been worth thousands of votes.

Voter registration is way up in many states, and most of these new voters, in particular African-Americans and Hispanics, will favor Kerry.

The Kerry campaign's ads, in particular those produced by so-called "527" independent advocacy groups, have been much more effective than those put out by pro-Republican groups.

The Democrats are still fired up over having had the 2000 election "stolen" (in their eyes) from them in Florida. The Supreme Court intervened and stopped the recount thus giving the election to Bush. Al Gore, remember, won the overall popular vote that year. There is for many Democrats an almost visceral hatred of Bush.

Both the Iraq war and the domestic economy also work against Bush. Unemployment and job losses due to outsourcing are a major factor in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, and a declining stock market has reflected this despondency. The ballooning deficit, due to massive military spending and tax cuts, and record-breaking oil and gas prices, have also been sources of concern.

More than 1,100 Americans have been killed in Iraq, in a war that shows no signs of ending. Kerry, like Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 during the Korean War, and Richard Nixon in 1968, when Vietnam was the major issue, claims he will somehow get America out of this quagmire. Bush, on the other hand, appears adrift.

And the Democrats are also responsible for spreading a "whispering campaign" about the possible re-institution of the draft. This scares middle class voters, who don't want their kids blown up or beheaded in Iraq.

Bush's pro-life stance and opposition to gay marriage and stem cell research will indeed win him votes among his evangelical Christian base, but may cost him more among moderately liberal Republicans.

And when things aren't going well, the incumbent gets blamed even for matters beyond his control, such as the shortage of flu vaccine in the U.S. this fall.

Finally, left-wing candidate Ralph Nader, who captured almost 3% of the popular vote in 2000 and cost Gore some states, including Florida, will not be a spoiler in this polarized election climate. Almost all of his supporters will move into the Kerry column.

In 2000, Bush won 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266. But in 2004, Bush is facing a "perfect storm" and it is hard to see him surviving it. The political stars are aligned against him.