Reciprocal Politics

Haiti, and the global response to the disaster there, is one of the better examples of what happens when we rise above self-interest and act out of compassion.

That compassion always gets a hard second look after any disaster, as the first blush of the need to simply “do something” begins to give way to the realization of the enormity of what needs to be done.

That’s okay. Every time we act as one, no matter how imperfectly, we learn something. We’re just a little bit better able to cooperate, a little more efficient in our repsonse; our governments a little less wary of each other, and our politicians a little less partisan.

I’ve added a new poll – do you think the governments of the world, in responding to the Haitian catastrophe, will learn anything about the value of cooperation?

Let me know what you think.

There’s a new poll here at Reciprocal Politics and I hope you’ll take a moment to express your opinion.

When it comes to deciding how to vote, whose position should a politician put first?

• The Party they belong to?
• The constituents who elected him or her?
• Their conscience?

Friends, I have a confession to make.

In a moment of weakness early this year, I joined the Liberal Party of Canada. In my defense, I was going through a health crisis at the time, on medication, and not at all sure I’d be around to see the summer, let alone Christmas.

Still, I shouldn’t have done it. Politics is politics and commentary is commentary, and, in my opinion, nare the twain should meet.

At the time, (again, thinking I might not be around) I felt the urge to do something, anything to support an open and egalitarian Canada. It was the heady days just after the coalition.  By the way, I do not agree with those who raked that idea over the coals. I mean, it was doomed, but not because there was anything wrong with the reasoning. It was a perfectly appropriate avenue. Had it been done properly. It wasn’t. But I digress. 

Michael Ignatieff had just taken the reins and in my addled state I had visions of Chretien, Trudeau, and Pearson dancing in my head. Alas and alack, such has not been the way things have played out.

Such a shame.

My politics have always been “left-leaning”, whatever that might mean in practical terms. For the most part, I confess that it’s meant that I’ve leaned towards supporting the Liberal Party in Canada. Then again, I’ve also, when our issues lined up, supported the Conservative Party. At least, the Conservative Party of people like John Diefenbaker (in spirit anyway, I’m not that old) and Brian Mulroney. This current party of the school yard sandbox kickers has little in common with them that I can find. I can even get behind some of the things that Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe and Elizabeth May bring to the table.

With a broad spectrum of people pointing out that Ignatieff had considerable global credentials, was practiced in considering sweeping concepts, and had a team of seasoned players like Bob Rae and Dominic LeBlanc, among others, to back him up, it seemed as though this might be the time to plant my flag; or lawn sign as the case may be.

I shoulda known better. (How much more Canadian can you get?)

With things going from great to worse, Mr. Ignatieff has called in some of the old guard; the heavyweights from past glories, to pull the ship off the rocks. Not a bad idea in its way. But when I heard the old, tired “We have to find a wedge issue” wafting on the wind, I realized it was time to get out the smelling salts (for myself, not the Liberals). A coupla good snorts and my head was clear. They’re tying the tug on the wrong side of the shoal.

 The Canadian Prime Ministers who left their stamp on this country, from Sir John A. Macdonald to Jean Chretien, were able to do one thing better than their opponents – communicate the uniqueness of Canada to Canadians in a way that spoke to them in their time and place.

The world has changed.

The world tends to do that.

The leader, of whatever party, who can once again communicate what makes this country unique, in a way that fits a globally-connected, totally wired world, will be the leader who joins the ranks of a diverse, yet unified, elite.

Canada, when we strip away all the rhetoric and window dressing, is, above anything else, a country of win-win. We’re not always successful at it, but it’s what we strive for, and its what we expect of our leadership.

For the majority of Canadians, the current state of affairs is not “the will of the people”. It’s just the lesser of two evils.

I’m truly sorry Michael. My membership will lapse on New Year’s Day.

I’m not sure if it was more amusing or sad to see all the recent hoopla about “climategate”, the “amazing” revelation that climate scientists are human beings who have biases, agendas, and suffer from as much pique as the rest of us.

The question around Copenhagen is not whether or not climate change is real. Ask a polar bear, whose habitat is dissolving around him. Ask anyone who lives where there used to be snow two foot deep by now and instead there’s none. Ask anyone who lives where there used to regular rainfall, green grass, and crops enough to feed their families, and instead there is only dust.

Climate change is real. However …

Even if we shut down every single carbon contributing activity on the planet at noon Thursday (feel free to pick your own hypothetical date), would it change anything? Would it keep the Arctic frozen? Rebuild the Antarctic ice cap? Calm the storms? Bring the rains in time for next year’s crops?

Probably not.

Whether or not the catalyst for a warming earth was human activity or some natural process, the reality is that it is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. Your children and mine, our grandchildren and theirs, are going to inherit a warmer planet than we were born into.

It’s way too late to be asking “how do we stop it”? That’s like Thelma and Louise looking for the brakes after the car went over the cliff.

No, the real question is “How do we deal with the consequences?”

How do we address the fact that hundreds of thousands of people will need to be relocated from inundated lands over the next few decades? How do we negotiate land claims for places like the Northwest Passage that until now, were pretty much “passages” in name only? Are we prepared for the increasing spread of disease fueled by warm, moist environments that offer fertile ground for viruses and bacteria?

I do laud the efforts of the twenty thousand attendees whose carbon footprint is trashing Denmark this week. There is much talk of global consensus, of collaboration, of reciprocity. Indeed what else, after all, is cap-and-trade, once stripped of its trappings?

However, I cannot help but wonder – where will the reciprocity be when patterns of rainfall turn the breadbaskets of the world into empty cupboards? When medical supplies are unable to staunch the march of pandemic?

Shifting to “sustainable” economies and ”greening” our lifestyles are admirable goals. It’s kind of like agreeing with Mom and Dad that, for our next party, we’re not going to pour Jello in the pool or destroy the roof shingles by carting the bands instruments up there so we can hear them better.

But right now, the roof is leaking and the pool water is kinda thick.

What are we going to do about that?

US President Obama now owns a war. It’s in a place called Afghanistan.

He didn’t really have a choice about accepting delivery of this rather overripe and kinda tattered package. I’m no president, but if I were in his shoes, I think my first inclination would have been to mark it “Return to Sender” and to ship it back to a particular somebody in Texas.

Since that wasn’t an option, I doubt that President Obama could have accepted the mess much more graciously than he did in the speech he gave last night. His consistency in using terms of mutual respect and his refusal to demonize either Islam or indeed any group in the blanket way that the “right”, no matter what country it’s in, loves to do, is commendable. He changed, or at least created the opportunity to change, the tone, the characterization, of the conflict.

But will that tone carry downstream? That is up to the people who believe that armed conflict is about more than pummeling the other guy until he cries uncle. And then kicking him in the head for good measure. It is up to the people who believe that, justified or not, now that the US and the rest of NATO is there, it needs to find a way to plant seeds, not just destroy worlds.

There are millions of people like that in the US. They need to make themselves heard. They need to take the CNNs and Fox News’ and right wing sabre rattlers to task. They need to support their troops in a way that makes it clear that they are fully behind the struggle and sacrifice of their sons and daughters and husbands and wives and neighbours; and that their support is not contingent on how many notches someone has on a belt buckle.

The people of America sent a powerful message to the world when they sent Barack Obama to the White House. Those same people need to keep sending that message to those who, both inside and outside their great nation, aren’t sure they really meant it.

President Obama has given them an opportunity.

I hope they’ll take it.

US President Obama’s speech tonight will outline the reasoning for sending more troops to Afaghanistan. I look forward to hearing it. The rhetoric around the number, 30,000 pluse whatever other NATO countries will add to the pot, is already building.

Too many. Too few.

It does not, I would suggest, matter. It’s not the number of troops sent – it’s the purpose they’re sent for.

If the purpose is to “spread democracy”, let’s save the lives of a whole lot of young men and women and just stay home.
If the purpose is to destroy the Taliban, perhaps a history lesson from the days of the Soviets would be in order.

Not just the US, but NATO as a whole, is stuck with a mess of another’s making. But that’s not really the problem. The problem is that we keep doing the same thing the messmaker did, and expect a different result – the textbook definition of insanity.

So why not try something else? If standing toe to toe and slugging at one another until somebody falls down isn’t working, perhaps it’s time to change the game.

This may be President Obama’s one and only opportunity to change the face of the Afghan war. After tonight it is his war.

I look forward, none too optimistically, to see what he does with it.

The World Summit on Food Security begins today, November 16, 2009.

A) As noted in an Associated Press article, UN food summit to back new strategy against hunger - AP, November 12, 2009, and on the FAO’s website, more than a billion people on the planet are undernourished.

B) In an article in Canada’s Maclean magazine from the same week, What a waste - Macleans, Nov. 16, 2009, Nancy MacDonald states “The agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices, creating an abundance of food, and profits.”

I’m sensing a gap in … sense here.

Perhaps we could fill that gap with the wisdom of another article in the same Macleans issue, Do you mind if we pick your pears? a volunteer project in B.C. gets fruit that would have rotted to people who need it - Macleans, Nov. 16, 2009. In the closing quote, Dianne MacLean, the woman who initiated the project now known as the LUSH Valley Food Action Society, says “This is how easy it is. Anybody can do it. You can do it without money and without an organization. It’s important for people to know that.”

I wonder if Macleans would offer to distribute copies of the article to summit delegates?

I don’t suggest that feeding the world’s hungry is as simple as pulling up to a grocery store or a food distribution center, filling up a big truck with stuff that won’t sell, and shipping it to where people aren’t quite so picky. Not quite. Nor am I ignorant of the delicate realities and sensibilities that must, for the sake of human dignity, be taken into account.

I reject, however, the amazingly blind concept that “food security” is a matter of more money and then again more money. The FAO estimates that 44 billion dollars will be needed in yearly agricultural aid. Per What a waste, The UK alone wastes 16 billion yearly in discarded food - more than one third of the FAO’s figure.

If those are accurate numbers, we do not need to produce more food. We do not have a food “shortage.” We have, instead, a distribution problem, one that people like Dianne MacLean, on a small scale, have already solved.

That the distribution problem is exacerbated by the conflicting interests of groups large and small is a given. That all of those groups are, in the end, under the control of individuals who can choose to exercise, or not, choices of conscience as well as commerce, is also true.

It is not easy for politicians and bureaucrats to set aside their individual agendas. It is not easy for business to reconsider its understanding of what constitutes profit and how to make it. It is not easy for consumers to re-examine the aesthetics that motivate us in food choices.

None of that is easy.

But it is essential.

No Canadian election this summer.  No real surprise there.  All of the parties played their parts to perfection, gave us something to talk about for a few days, and we can now all go off about our vacation plans – assuming you have a job to have a vacation from – without the nagging concern that you should maybe possibly consider where you’d be at the end of July and whether or not you should think about maybe possibly voting.

Actually, I’m not as cynical about this as I sound – I’m one of the people that actually think Canada’s multi-party system has distinct advantages to the American two-party version, and that we’ve just seen the second example of why that’s so (the other recent example being the “coalition crisis”, but I’ll leave the why of that for another day).

The NDP and the Bloc set the stage – had they not come out solidly against the Friday vote, the Ignatieff Liberals would not have had the leverage they needed to force the Conservatives to the table, and the Conservatives wouldn’t have been able to save face by “saving” the public from the nasty Opposition.

We, the public also played our role to perfection. We clearly did not want an election. But we clearly are also tired of the Conservative bully and personal attack model of operation. Its just not the “Canadian way” – something the Conservatives seem to have a perennial blind spot to. Which is unfathomable to me, but there it is.

Regardless, there was a distinct possibility that, should we be riled by being annoyed throughout the first month of summer by having to mow around election ads, we would very likely switch to a minority government of a different stripe. That was something that Harper and Ignatieff could both agree that they didn’t want. Score one for common ground.

From there, the rest was a walk in the park I’m sure.

In a two-party system this would not have been nearly so clear cut. Note that in the US, success or failure in Congress and Senate are often a matter of convincing just a few “rogue” congressman or senators to vote against their party. Which gives, in my opinion, individuals way too much power in the governance of an entire country.

Sometimes, more (parties) really is better.

Or, as Edmund Burke wrote – All that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Burke lived between 1729 and 1794, proving once again that old adage “the more things change the more they stay the same.”

We don’t have to look too far to see what happens when we’re apathetic about who leads our nations. Writing in North America, I’m looking specifically at Canada and the US. Apathy means that the majority stays home at election time, and the minority gets to decide who sits in the big chairs.

True, there are times when it may seem like there are no clear choices, a situation more likely to happen in Canada’s multi-party setup than in the American two-party system. But even then, the more people who vote, the more likely it is that at least some of the people elected will reflect the views of the majority, and, since a minority government is the probable result, the more likely it is that the parties will be forced to cooperate in order to accomplish anything.

Fortunately, both countries seem to be emerging from their respective periods of apathy. How long it lasts is the new question.

The recent election in the US is an example of what happens when a shrewd politician gets his finger on the pulse of this feeling of  “needing to do something.” Much can be accomplished in relatively short periods of time.

And the current situation in Canada is an example of what happens when a leader can’t seem to realize that the people have stopped being complacent. There is much ado across the country as to whether Canadians would accept a summer election. But the real question is whether the alternative is palatable any longer?

We’ve had plenty of time to witness the politics of division. And we’ve seen a once formidable Prime Minister be reduced to making threats and statements that it’s hard to imagine even he still believes. If that’s the case, the dysfunction that has to follow in Parliament would be, if nothing else, embarrassing to all Canadians on the world stage.

Maybe this column should have been titled “the lesser of two evils.” – a summer election, or months more of the same old same old.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another. – Winston Churchill

I doubt that Churchill is remembered by many as an economist. Or for that matter as a man of “peace.” But he was known as a man of resolve, and as a shrewd judge of character. You don’t lead a country out of war by being irresolute or easily fooled.

So I can’t help but wonder how he would view the right wing parties in Canada and the US. The Americans have already dispensed with their confrontation-minded leadership and opted for a more “helpful” approach. Canada, generally the more socially progressive of the two is lagging a bit behind this round. Primarily because of our somewhat different government structure, the timing of our changing of the guard is a little bit vague.

But it will come. The recent “attack ads” launched by the Conservatives is a pretty clear indication that any rhetoric on their part about working together is hollow. What I find incredible, and a bit unnerving, truth be told, is that they don’t seem to understand the effects these things have on the majority of Canadians. Craig Oliver of CTV News hit the nail on the head when he said that Canadians, like Americans, are very receptive to a leader who has some global experience.

Far from detracting from Liberal leader Michael Ignatiieff’s stature as a leader, all that they’re accomplishing is to make Ignatieff look both more capable and more mature than their own man.

Churchill was, of course, simply paraphrasing the age-old Golden Rule. I’m sure if it’s surprising or reassuring that a man so inextricably linked to global war was also a proponent of the only global ethic that can move us beyond territorialism and brinkmanship.

Let’s hope the lesson isn’t lost on our leaders.