Season 3: Episode 2- A Battalion of Sorrows

The world has endured a miserable year of Trump. Canada has a new Prime Minister, and a new budget.  Canadians need Mr. Carney to succeed. He is our war leader.  But a number of obstacles are likely to screw up his plans.  

Transcript

2  A Battalion of Sorrows

I’m Patrick Esmonde-White. Welcome to Canada Re-imagined, season three. After the Cataclysm.

Since my last podcast season, we have endured a miserable year of Trump, we have a new Prime Minister, and we have a new budget.  Canadians need Mr. Carney to succeed. He is our war leader.  But a number of obstacles are likely to screw up his plans.  

I’ll explain in Episode 2: A Battalion of Sorrows

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Shakespeare, in Hamlet, wrote that “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”

A battalion of sorrows is now visited upon us. Young Canadians, in particular, have reason to fear what lies ahead: fire, flood, wind, drought, famine and pandemic. The global economy is in a tailspin. The hounds of war have been unleashed. The senility of Donald Trump is terrifying.

All this was largely foreseen when, a year ago, voters elected Mark Carney as the “anti-Trump” Prime Minister: honest, calm, competent. It did not matter that, like me, he may be out of touch with younger generations.  That is not what Canada needed… yet.

Carney’s greatest stroke of fortune was that he ran against Pierre Poilievre, a career politician without the charisma of a mortician. He was lucky.

Mr. Carney’s plan is to run a good, honest government, and to stimulate growth. To that end, last fall he delivered a banker’s budget, a return to basic Keynesian economics. It was fiscally conservative, unimaginative, and definitely better than Trumpish alternative.  

The specific events of the past year could not be predicted, but the overall picture is totally as expected.  Global events have spiraled out of control.  Authoritarians thrive in Russia, Iran, Israel, and other countries. Trump is ruling with gangster-fascist efficiency. 

All this cannot last. You reap what you sow. Plant the seeds of war, greed and hatred, and that is what will grow. Fascism is growing, but so will the resistance. 

From my perspective as a journalist in Washington during the 1980’s, the seeds of American fascism were planted long ago. America has a long history of plantation owners, robber barons, the Ku Klux Klan, McCarthyism. Ronald Reagan and his supporters were their heirs. His tax policies encouraged greed. His defense policy accelerated the arms race. His social policies entrenched racism. 

Trump’s gangster-fascism is the fruit of the same tree.  His MAGA faithful were useful idiots, totally disposable. Now come the jackboots of ICE, the new Gestapo. 

But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The silent majorities are waking up. Thomas Jefferson said that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. We are now entering the new American civil war. It will be fought with ballots, bullets, law suits, and mass disobedience. 

Democracy may will win, though it is not certain. But the damage to America will take decades to heal. 

All this has a huge impact on Canada: best friend, and closest neighbour.

The task ahead for Mr. Carney is to weather the Trump cataclysm, avoiding a military incursion, and limiting the economic damage. He appears to be the leader Canada needs.

But after the cataclysm, a different task emerges. Even before Trump, voters in many democracies, including Canada, wanted change. The status quo was not working. A new vision of democracy, the economy, and of the future was needed.

Our modern society is complex. It relies on institutions that we take for granted. We assume that food is safe, airplanes fly, tax collectors are honest, national parks will open, schools and hospitals will function, the military can protect us … the list is endless. That is captured in the phrase “good government”. Mostly, Canada has this. In some critical areas, we do not.

Recognizing Trump for what he is, Mr. Carney laid out the Liberal plan in a budget. That budget was a throwback to the 20th century. The dilemma is that we are now in a new millennium. This is what may undermine Mr. Carney’s success.

Three issues in particular are unsettling. 

First, the public service. It is a mess. For years, internal surveys have shown that the public service culture is ailing, imagination is lacking, and risk aversion is the rule. But if the public service is flawed, it is also absolutely essential.  It needs to be fixed, not flogged. 

Many listeners think they don’t get a bang for a buck from government. They are not wrong. But the blame may be misplaced. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Carney did not set out to fix things. Instead, he imitated Elon Musk, and slashed brutally.

Decades ago, Canada arguably had the best public service in the world. Then, it was led by people who had lived through the great depression and two world wars. They saw public service was an honourable calling. They knew that capitalism needed rules, and that the rich must pay their fair share of taxes. They worked to earn the trust of the taxpayer. It mostly succeeded.

Then, Ronald Reagan gave the epitaph to post-war economic consensus when declared that “government is not the solution to problems, it is the problem”. Brian Mulrony sang from the same songbook. Reagan cut taxes on the wealthy by two thirds, and the American national debt tripled.  Canada followed suit. 

Public service was scorned. Government unions were reviled as the enemy. Politicians of every stripe cut budgets, but demanded more.  Departments were unable to modernise.  Dysfunction spread.

The problem for Mr. Carney is that good government requires a good bureaucracy. If he is to succeed, he needs government to function efficiently. He had one chance to achieve this, and he passed on it.

Go back five years. For the public service, COVID was an experiment with positive results. It led to innovation over the future of office work, of urban planning, and how technology could increase productivity. It showed new ways to deliver better and cheaper services, while also improving the quality of life. 

Then, with no plan, no logic, no vision of reform, government workers were sent back to the cubicles. The Prime Minister ordered the flogging to continue until morale improves. 

The point is, Canada needs good government: efficient, effective, transparent, and honest. Most public servants truly want to deliver this. Many have good suggestions on how to make happen. 

Nation-building could have included the public service.  The fact that it did not will cost Mr. Carney dearly.

A second huge disappointment involves national security. As discussed in earlier Canada Re-Imaginedpodcasts, Canada is in a unique and strange situation. 

Canada is under threat, but not because Russia and China are about to invade. The only country that threatens us is the United States. Venezuela was first. Greenland may be next. Canada will follow unless the clock runs out. 

Canada’s logical step is to disengage from the Americans.  Canada must prepare to combat an armed American incursion. This must be done carefully, and in secrecy. 

Let us give Mr. Carney the benefit of the doubt. It would be malpractice if this is not happening, but in a manner that does not ruffle the eagle’s feathers. 

We certainly need defense. Canada faces cyber-attacks. Our social media and communications systems are dominated by tech-oligarchs. Our ocean borders need to be guarded, our fisheries protected, and sea lanes in the Arctic need to be controlled. This requires a made in Canada, made for Canada, defense plan.

A modern defense strategy must also recognize the threats. Climate should be understood as critical security issue. The Liberals proposed a youth climate corps. Unfortunately, climate events are far too dangerous for student jobs. A full-time Climate Corps is long overdue.  

International assistance is also a defense issue. 

When poor countries build democracy, they become allies. If they are mired in poverty, this spawns desperation, terrorism, and refugees. Aid can help poor nations fight poverty, climate change, and infectious diseases. It enhances Canada’s “soft power”.

Foreign aid is humane, compassionate, and lifesaving. It works. Stories to the contrary are fake news. Aid sometimes even pays for itself.  Saskatchewan makes billions of dollars from potash sales to China. This was all initiated by a CIDA employee named Wally Redekop. 

There was a reason why Lester Pearson proposed that rich countries spend 0.7% of their GDP on aid. The UN agreed, and many countries meet that goal. The Americans were always total cheap skates, even before Trump ended the entire aid program. Canada, for years, fell short by two thirds.  Mr. Carney has now cut the aid budget to the bone. It is embarrassing.

The point is, if Canada spent billions on international assistance, the world would be far better off.  It would be a long term investment in global security.

A third major Liberal disappointment to me concerns the environmental impact of nation-building projects, and the lack of real action elsewhere in the budget on climate change. 

The Prime Minister hopes big nation-building projects will bear economic fruit.  There is an aphorism, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”  The Gods are chuckling.  The plan seems flawed.

First, the Prime Minister consulted the provinces, and quickly passed “fast-track” legislation.  He vaguely promised to respect the First Nations, and to protect the environment. Then he surrendered to big oil and to Alberta.  All these promises cannot be kept. The gods are likely laughing.

Some projects may indeed flourish. Others will run into financial and constitutional roadblocks. Most will likely fail the ecological sniff test.  When they do so, the Indigenous guardians of the land will object. They will fight back.

All this is important to the success of the Prime Minister because ultimately, for future generations, climate crisis is the legacy that lingers.

These three issues… the need for public service reform, a new defense and aid strategy, and climate action… are urgent. They cannot by punted down the road.  As the cataclysm to our south descends into terror and chaos, all three will impact Canada’s ability to bring hope to younger generations.  

Good government from Mark Carney may let Canada survive the storm. He is proving to be superb at avoiding conflict, and minimising the damage. Canada will then, after the cataclysm, still have to deal with health care, Indigenous restitution, poverty, and a host of other issues now pushed to the back burner.

If this return to the issues of the past is where we end up, it will not work. This is why the time to re-imagine a different future is now, so we are ready. 

All of this begs the question: what could Canada do differently to thrive in the future? 

Here’s one possibility. After the Trump cataclysm, assuming democracy survives, Canada will have a period of a few years in which to act. The global scene will be fluid, chaotic. The United States will be in crisis, rebuilding for years. Canada, and other democratic nations, will be searching for a new vision, global strategy for the 21st century. That will include a new national dream for Canada as a global leader.

This is the opportunity for Canada to unite around a vision of what peace, order and good government should look like in a time of climate chaos, artificial super-intelligence, and simmering hatred.  Perhaps Mr. Carney can lead this moment. 

However, his strength appears to be competence and integrity, not vision and creativity. That is when the flaws in the current budget, and in the constitution, may come back to haunt the Liberals.  

It will be a time of change, rife with opportunity.  Voters want change for a reason. Conservatives will propose we return to the way things were. The problem is, conservative policies harken back to an earlier, Reagan-inspired era. That world is gone.  The NDP are still struggling to find their footing. It suggests a vacuum in vision, and nature abhors a vacuum. 

My preferred approach to filling this vacuum is to start back at the British North America Act of 1867. It defined solid Canadian values.  “Peace, order and good government” was embedded in the Act. It was an excellent guide to what we aspired. 

The division of responsibilities between Ottawa and the provinces gave structure to a political system that was intended to deliver order and good government. While Canada is one of the finest countries on earth, far too many problems never get fixed.  They demand good government. On that score, Reagan and Mulroney were wrong.

But if the ideals of the Act were admirable, what if the division of responsibilities in constitution has become the problem?  What if that political structure no longer works in a modern world?

The world in 1867 was, after all, very different. Every part of our economy, our science, and our culture, has radically changed.  In their wildest dreams, the Fathers of Confederation could never have anticipated nuclear science, artificial intelligence, modern medicine, or a host of other advances, good and bad, that we take for granted.  

The constitution they crafted was practical. The provincial allocation of health, education, infrastructure, and other responsibilities was designed for remote colonies in the 19th century. To them, nation-building meant a railway from coast to coast.  

Today, the federal government has the main sources of revenue: personal and corporate income tax. The provinces retained many of the big ticket expenses, like health and education.  

Constitutional renovation might allow common sense changes that permit Canada to deliver better results for taxpayers.  This issue is not on the platform of any political party in Canada. Provinces would jealously protect their authorities. Yet, the need for change is common sense.

In upcoming podcasts, I will look at areas where the provinces have responsibility, and simply cannot deliver results for Canadians. 

To summarize, the situation confronting Mark Carney mirrors that which confronted Sir John A. Macdonald a century and a half ago. The United States, with a massive army, was threatening. The colonies needed to survive. They made compromises, built a confederation, and embarked on nation-building.  

Constitutional change today would be very difficult, and it should be. But difficult is not the same as impossible. Renovation of the constitution would require leaders who believe that by doing this we can re-build Canada to withstand a battalion of sorrows in a dangerous world. 

A crisis is, of course, already upon us. We already face a battalion of sorrows. It is already a moment of peril. But when the cataclysm ends, and the re-building begins, the opportunity will be here re-imagine the national dream, and to re-invent democracy.  If we can grasp the opportunity, and the future belongs to Canada.

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You have been listening to Canada Re-imagined, season three: After the Cataclysm.

I’m Patrick Esmonde-White, totally responsible for this podcast. My theme music is by Tom Plant. My thanks to the Harbinger Media Network for their support. If you enjoyed this, please spread the word. Tune in again.