SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
stephen harper
Let's Not Be Duped Again By Deficit Hawks Peddling Austerity
We could actually be on our way to a very different and promising future. But, count on it, the deficit hawks will soon be circling menacingly overhead, hell-bent on preventing any diversion from the austerity they’ve confined us to for decades.
May 20, 2020
Slowly, cautiously, the deficit hawks are daring to come out of the shadows.
These are the well-heeled folks, from conservative think-tanks and political circles, who for decades have successfully pushed governments to impose austerity and social spending cuts on the rest of us, in the name of keeping government deficits small.
With the country reeling from the devastating economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus, these usually cocky deficit hawks haven't yet mustered the nerve to come out fully against what is proving to be immensely popular with the public--a dramatic ramping up of Ottawa's spending to shield Canadians from financial despair.
Led by former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the deficit-slaying crowd is starting to re-emerge, determined that the pandemic doesn't become the transformative event that could spell the end of the deeply unequal, corporate-dominated economic world they've diligently constructed in recent decades.
But, led by former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the deficit-slaying crowd is starting to re-emerge, determined that the pandemic doesn't become the transformative event that could spell the end of the deeply unequal, corporate-dominated economic world they've diligently constructed in recent decades.
After five years of near-silence following his 2015 electoral defeat, Harper took to the Wall Street Journal to proclaim the increased spending "economically ruinous" and to warn that if governments "fail to practice mild austerity proactively, a brutal kind will be thrust upon them."
This is the same language deficit hawks used in the 1990s to frighten Canadians into believing that, unless we drastically cut government spending, we'd hit the "debt wall" -- the perilous point where international investors would no longer lend us money.
Harper insisted in his op-ed that Canada "came close" to defaulting on its debt -- hitting the debt wall -- in the '90s.
It's a scary tale, but not even remotely true.
In fact, even as the carefully stoked deficit hysteria reached a fever-pitch in the mid-'90s, Canada retained the very top credit rating -- Triple A (Aaa)-- indicating that the prestigious Wall Street ratings agencies ranked it one of the safest places in the world to invest.
Below were many countries with credit ratings stretching down to Baa3, and then below them, countries ranked "high-risk." Lower still were dozens of African nations that didn't even get a credit rating; international markets had cut them off long ago.
Now that's the debt wall, but Canada has never been anywhere near it.
The deficit hawks knew this. Yet they still railed against Canada's debt, generating sufficient fear that Canadians accepted the brutal round of social spending cuts delivered by Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin in 1995.
Since then, the doctrine of small government has prevailed, virtually unchallenged in public debate. Until now.
The deficit hawks are hoping to revive the hysteria they created in the '90s.
But let's not be duped again. This time, let's pay attention to a true debt story--the story of how we ran up a gigantic debt fighting the Second World War and we weren't intimidated by it after the war.
While our debt today is about 35 per cent of GDP, by the end of the Second World War it reached a massive 130 per cent of GDP. "But no one cared!," notes economist Jim Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work.
We didn't even pay down that debt! On the contrary, we racked up lots more debt in the early postwar decades, as Ottawa invested heavily in infrastructure and expanded the size and scope of government.
The debt kept growing, but the economy grew faster, making the debt burden relatively lighter. By the mid-'70s, our debt amounted to only about 20 per cent of GDP. We never actually paid it off; we just effectively outgrew it, says Stanford.
Those years are sometimes called "the golden age of capitalism" as the economy prospered and a strong middle class emerged.
The deficit hawks can't deny these facts, but they suggest this wouldn't work today.
In fact, with today's record-low borrowing costs--with interest rates effectively close to zero--we're well positioned to run up a huge debt at virtually no cost, allowing us to put Canadians back to work and begin building the infrastructure needed to transition to clean energy.
We could actually be on our way to a very different and promising future. But, count on it, the deficit hawks will soon be circling menacingly overhead, hell-bent on preventing any diversion from the austerity they've confined us to for decades.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Jason Kenney Treated with Kid-Gloves, Indigenous Protestors with Assault Rifles
The hardball tactics are alarming
Feb 15, 2020
I want to start by turning myself into Jason Kenney's investigators.
I admit to being against further oilsands development, making me a person of interest to the sleuths in Kenney's $30-million "war-room" who are tasked with vilifying oilsands critics. Of course, they're really hoping to unmask "foreign-funded special interests," and I don't have a single dollar of foreign backing. Still, I do what I can!
The war room is just one of the Alberta premier's bullying tactics, along with threatening Western separation, as he tries to intimidate critics and pressure the Trudeau government into approving the proposed Teck mine, a vast 293-square-kilometer open-pit mine, which would be the biggest tarsands mine yet.
Given that such an approval would hopelessly compromise any Canadian effort to battle climate change -- which, let's not forget, threatens the world including us here in Canada -- the answer must clearly be no. In the election last fall, two-thirds of the country voted for parties that advocated strong action on climate change.
The fact that this is seen as a difficult decision reveals the Trudeau government's keenness to be accommodating when dealing with opposition, which is coming from the right and backed by powerful business interests.
Meanwhile, there's a willingness to play hardball when opposition is coming from Indigenous people and powerful business interests are against them.
These hardball tactics have been on display in northwestern B.C. in recent weeks as Wet'suwet'en Indigenous protestors, trying to block a pipeline from crossing their land, have been confronted with highly militarized RCMP officers dressed in combat fatigues, bearing assault rifles and police dogs.
Chainsawing through a gate marked "Reconciliation," the RCMP have forcibly removed the occupiers -- that is, people occupying their own land -- amid prayers for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, sparking nationwide protests. Most of the media attention has focused on how disruptive the protests have been to southern train travel.
But the hardball tactics are alarming. The RCMP were prepared to shoot the Indigenous protestors, according to a report last December in the U.K. Guardian. Documents cited in the article show that RCMP commanders argued that "lethal overwatch is req'd" -- a term for deploying an officer able to use lethal force.
What makes the strong-armed clampdown so outrageous is that the natural gas pipeline, approved by the B.C. government and enforced by a court injunction, is to be built across land that has never been ceded. A 1997 Supreme Court of Canada decision ruled the title was held by the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs.
Indigenous people have long been on the receiving end of strong-arm police tactics ordered by Canada's federal and provincial governments, particularly when they stood in the way of colonial settlement or resource extraction. From the late 1800s, Indigenous people were forcibly relocated to reserves, with their children sent to now-notorious residential schools.
In recent years, Canada has extended the national security apparatus to prevent protestors -- often Indigenous people protecting their lands -- from interfering with oil and gas developments.
Casting such protestors as terrorists, Stephen Harper's government -- with qualified support from Justin Trudeau's Liberals -- passed the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Act, which authorized police surveillance and arrest powers against those interfering with "critical infrastructure."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Good Riddance': Canada's Stephen Harper Bids Adieu to Politics, Hello to Consulting
Former prime minister made resignation announcement Friday
Aug 26, 2016
As expected, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced his resignation from Parliament, saying that he's now gearing up for "for the next chapter of my life."
That chapter, as the Toronto Star reports, includes "launching a global consulting business."
Harper posted the news Friday on his social media accounts, saying, "I leave elected office proud of what our team accomplished together."
For the 57-year-old, the resignation marks the end of "nearly two often-tumultuous decades in public office," Mississauga Newsreports.
Harper lost power in October in a "devastating election defeat" when his Conservative Party lost to the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party.
Since then, the Star adds, he "has only appeared in the Commons for votes since he lost power last fall, and has never spoken in debate as the MP for Calgary Heritage."
The country "shifted to the center-right under Harper," the Associated Press writes, and, as Common Dreams has reported,
During his tenure as Prime Minister, which spanned from 2006-2015, Harper was known internationally for pushing through an aggressive conservative agenda which included: wholesale investment in fossil fuels, including Canadian tar sands; blocking international efforts to combat climate change; dismantling civil liberties through mass surveillance; unflinching support of Israel and attempts to outlaw pro-Palestinian boycott movements; supporting numerous wars overseas; and willfully ignoring the treaty rights of Canadian First Nations, among many other things.
As for his new career, the National Post reports that he "has already lined up an impressive and potentially lucrative post-politics career that includes a new consulting business with international clients, board directorships and joining a speakers' bureau."
Following the election in October, Andrew Mitrovica wrote at Ricochet:
Like millions of Canadians, I'm glad he's gone and taken his tawdry ideas--if you can even call them that--about who Canadians are and what Canada stands for with him into political oblivion. I'm not going to waste a nanosecond pondering his ignominious "place" in this nation's history, his toxic "legacy" or what he's going to do next. Justin Trudeau is like a nicely wrapped confection.
Look, he'll be just fine. Chances are Harper's going to do what other ex-prime ministers have done when voters tell them emphatically to get lost... he will cash in big time. I suspect the make-believe economist will quickly join a high-powered law firm somewhere in Canada or maybe the United States and turn into a make-believe lawyer. He'll also accept lots of invitations to sit on lots of corporate boards that will pay him lots of money to act as a glorified lobbyist.
Like Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien before him, he'll happily trade in the "noble calling of public service" to become a highly paid gun-for-hire in a pinstriped suit doing lucrative mega business deals with influential politicians and CEOs he befriended along the way. Some elder statesman.
Good riddance, Harper. Don't let the closet doors hit you on the way out of the PMO.
On Twitter, writer and Ricochet founding editor Derrick O'Keefe similarly summed up many progressives' response to the new development:
\u201cGood riddance, Stephen Harper.\u201d— Derrick O\u2019Keefe (@Derrick O\u2019Keefe) 1472222780
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular