23 February 1999
Lies, lies and more lies. That's my sentiment toward the latest round of praise for the Liberal government, for Jean Chretien and his pals. Teflon coated Canadian equivalents to Bill Clinton and the UK's Tony Blair - smiling white men in suits, defenders of capital's interests. At least Pierre Elliot Trudeau had the "honesty" to give us a shrug when caught in his own web.In this last week, Liberal Finance Minister, Paul Martin Jr. has been grabbing headlines as the new wonderboy of Canadian capitalism. The man promises us a bright future.
He has been hero-ized as the man to bring his "common sense" business experience to bear upon the problems of the Canadian economy. Who better than a self-made millionaire?
Self-made? Well, let's just say he had a head start. He began his career (and I stress "began") at the very heart the Canadian corporate structure - the Power Corporation. He was handed control of the Canadian Steamship Lines (a Power Corp. subsidiary) where he "earned" his millions. One of the practices was to put Canadian steamships under the flag of a foreign state in order to avoid paying Canadian taxes. New vessels were built in foreign shipyards.
Now, say what you want about Karl Marx, but he got a few things right. One of them is that the government, the state, is the administrative representative of the interests of the dominant class. And that holds true for Canada. Look at the names on the roll of those who filled the benches of every Prime Minister's close circle of associates and it reads like a list of board members of Power Corp., of stockowners, wealthy new-made bureaucrats.
These are the people who promised to eliminate unemployment. But unemployment levels haven't changed. What has changed is the frantic attempts at statistical manipulation to eliminate the numbers of unemployed people off the list to make things look better.
They were going to make an impact on homelessness, yet the homeless situation has been raised to crisis levels. The frustration was seen at the latest near riot of homeless people at Parliament Hill.
They were going to reduce poverty, but the numbers of people living in poverty has increased.
They said they would never implement NAFTA, but they did. And they tried to implement MAI.
They were not going to make drastic cuts in social spending, but anyone who has worked in the public sector, or who relies on those social programs, has seen essential services cut.
They said they supported democracy across the world, but cozied up to dictators around the world such as China's in order to "sell" Canadian business. The RCMP (with probable backing of the PM's office) pepper-sprayed students demonstrating against Indonesia's dictator, Suharto.
They criticized Tory cuts to CBC, said they would maintain the integrity of public broadcasting and would undo what the Tories had done. Once they were re-elected the cuts to CBC were maintained, people lost jobs and the Corporation has never been the same since. Ask any one of the CBC workers now out on strike.
Their defence has always been that we did not listen closely enough to what they were "really" saying. That times just changed. That there was "no alternative". This is condescension on a national scale.
The Liberal Party has nothing to do with liberalism. That philosophical umbilical cord was severed generations ago. The Liberals now lie just as Turner lied, as Trudeau lied, as . . . well, you get the picture.
I am not trying to demonize the Liberals. I fault them for being political hucksters, for taking credit when capitalism booms and saying its not their fault when it busts.
The fault of Canada's economic woes is something they really have little control over - neither do Reform, the NDP, the Conservatives. And each is ever ready to lay blame upon the others or at the door of uncontrollable market forces of global capitalism. None of them has the wherewithal to acknowledge that economic crisis, of boom followed by bust, is the natural condition of the capitalist system itself. Capitalism is inherently crisis-ridden.
There really is an alternative to it - Socialism. A majority that makes a
conscious decision to implement socialism will never be fooled by false promises.