The ‘good son’ rides again

To me, the most maddening footage running through the early episodes of Ken Burn’s Vietnam series is the story of the patriotic teenager Denton Winslow “Moogy” Crocker. With his parent’s reluctant consent, he made it to the fight, and the day after his 19^th birthday was killed on a hillside, years before his draft-call, and well before his well-spoken mother and her leaders voiced their qualms about the war.

Thank goodness faith in western institutions today is not so terribly influential as it was after America settled two world wars. Yet, amongst us still are waves of good sons and daughters ready to take on causes their parents take seriously around those dangerous family dining-room tables.

In Canada, it’s much harder to get in trouble for being loyal. Still, the spirit of family solidarity in our politics ought to get more attention. Certainly, its force belies any tingle of nervousness excitement about this so-called transformative era and is bigger than stale speculation about whether any politician these days really believes in the formal religious teaching they adopted as children.

An exceptional public figure can survive the bitterness of switching parties and, today, seeming indifference to the Crown and God is ignored. However, can you think of a surviving politician who was found out to be a bad son?

Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwai, Andrew James Scheer, and Justin Pierre James Trudeau have more common as sons than are divided by either ideology or religion. Indeed, as sons go, they’re each at least as reliable as their predecessors.  Each displays gravitas not so much as thinkers or partisans, but as sons who can be trusted.

Justin Trudeau is pretty laissez faire about his policies and styles of dress. And, he’s especially loquacious about his entire life--what he learned from his father about honor, and needless to say, how patient he was with his mother. He may be the family’s peacock, but isn’t a Trump-north narcissist.

The most exciting thing about Andrew Scheer may be the ‘fire wall’ between his religious beliefs and his politics, both inherited from his parents. The smoldering question is whether he’s allowed himself enough space to grow into anything more than the eager teenage son of a Catholic Deacon in Ottawa.

Putative New Democrat leader, Jagmeet Singh is the most spectacular straight of them all.

GQ magazine may have made his exotic religious garb camp and harmless. Nevertheless, his multi-colored collection of turbans, his Kirpan, and metal bracelet--and simply surviving as a faithful Sikh in a high school in working-class Windsor, Ontario--all together display not religious fervor, but foremost the universal qualities of a loyal son.

He might not re-win Quebec or have the tactical genius to broaden the NDP vote against a left-wing Liberal Prime Minister. Certainly, no New Democrat leader has yet. However, the fear that a social democrat may have an alien Sikh-inspired hidden agenda is implausible.

If you’re one of those Canadian who vote according to what you believe will most appeal to elites in other countries, you’ll stick with Justin Trudeau. However, if you’re bored with pastel slogans like ‘diversity is our strength’ and want to show off 2017 Canadian values, Jagmeet Singh is the real thing.   

Strict atheists and radical secularists may regret that he hasn’t given up his religion, even quietly, like a typical Anglican. At the same time, however, they would have to admire that he stuck with those who brought him to this place.

Despite their family trees and long left resumes, the others can’t match him when it comes to honoring those core values that are the deal-breakers in the land of the good son.

Can Canada change--on purpose?

The 7th Republican President elected since a Democrat President dropped two atomic bombs on Japan has not yet blown up our civilization--nor as a petulant half-measure asked Congress to annex Canada the one country no American pundit dislikes or worries about.

Yes, the world is in trouble and yes; we are all over the map about how to fix it. Having merely survived six months without Barack Obama we might stop being so pleased with ourselves; and our leaders endless dithering over whether to be more influential on this measly continent or concentrate on impressing other civilizations making history.  

For starters, we ought to be more negative about our choices. What Leonard Cohen said about poetry, is equally true about public policy: it’s not our supply of sentiments; it’s the limits that are imposed on us that force us to be creative.

And as a Canadian/California poet who crossed our borders figuratively and literally his entire career, he likely wouldn’t have objected to applying his way working to Canada, as a trading economy. Commerce made his first home Montreal a beautiful, pre-eminent power, not its natural endowments. And as soon as Canada was free to make its own decisions, Canadians have been arguing about trade policy. It’s our turn. Let’s get on with it.

                                   

Part 1: Opioids past their due-date

This essay may seem rather mean at first. It ends up, however, on a positive note: suggesting that eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers within the giant regional economies of the world could be today’s most productive task for free traders and moderate nationalists.

However, before dusting off a vision that’s presently in the attic, let’s look again at four familiar tactical notions.

1. Whether the current President of the United States is an unpredictable philistine is beside the point.

His tweets won’t change anything tangible, let alone Canada’s troubled relationship with the United States. The US is too old an economy and too litigious a democracy for that.

Putting America’s interests first is what all American Presidents are elected to do, and they are free to advance with Canada, amiably or arbitrarily, pretty well whatever that means in Washington.

Furthermore, the closer the embattled President and Congress get to next year’s mid-term elections the more US trade negotiators will be pressed to demonstrate concretely, together, that they are putting America First, crudely if necessary. ‘Going around’ the White House buttonholing better listeners in Washington becomes a fool’s errand.

2. The chemistry (mutually insincere) between our PM and the President has little to do with business confidence and the investment climate (inferior) in Canada. 

Getting the photographic and rhetorical distance right may help re-elect Justin Trudeau. However, that won’t change the fact that Canadian provinces are relatively less safe places to invest in than, say, Ohio or California or even Utah, because provinces have relatively less power to assert and protect themselves in Washington, the one capital with the power to disruptive export and domestic industries in both countries.

The additional risks are high for the new capital intensive, high-skill industries that we hope will diversify our economy. They do not have significant cross-border supply chains like the auto assemblers, with entrenched union and corporate lobbies and Congressional representatives to protect them.

At considerable expense to us, Canadian governments mitigate somewhat their lack of continental power with corporate welfare. Nevertheless, subsidies and diplomacy together can’t erase today’s border taxes: a buyer’s-market dollar, without a big government big enough to bluff the biggest government on earth.

3. Integrated continental business interests far better protect us from protectionists in the US than threats of a ‘trade war’ or Ottawa talking points that ‘stand up’ to the craziness in Washington. That business integration, however, also puts paid to ideas that Canada has viable strategic alternatives to the US economy or credible freedom to bite back.

Ever since Canada won the right from Great Britain to write its own foreign policy, its Canada-First PM’s have resolved to make Canada freer by ‘diversifying’ its export markets. Nevertheless, generation after generation, approximately 75% of our export sector jobs and our country’s business cycle still revolve around the prosperity and continued openness of the United States. (Germany and China also have impressive neighbors with dreams just like the ones we have in Ottawa.)

The Canadian Embassy in Washington is distributing a humble little pamphlet that shows Americans how much the iconic American hamburger presently includes ingredients from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, as well as from California and Arizona. This pamphlet should also be sneaked into Canada-China conferences, where the password ‘strategic’ now has the punch of a wicked three-martini, expense account lunch.

4. ‘Trade interdependence’ isn’t the same as peace through mutual deterrence: Canadian government retaliatory measures can bother US big business, while US protectionism can throw tens of thousands of Canadians out of high-value jobs.

Like the Paris Accord on Climate Change, the NAFTA was tricky and time-consuming to conclude but can only be dissed by the US. The Trudeau government graciously agreed to “modernize” a relatively young trade treaty, mostly because it had no choice.

Brian Mulroney may exhort that Canada is big enough and popular enough to play a leadership role in worldwide alliances--and, if pressed, say “no” to extremely unpopular American presidents. Really? California and France are as cocky and as anti-Trump as we are. Yet, they aren’t dreaming about shopping around for a new best friend and securing enough customers on enough continents to be free those over-ripe, fly-over American shoppers.

Part 2: Liberalizing world’s great regions, including ours

We can admit to ourselves that we are too integrated to bluff our giant neighbor. Can we consider aloud that considerably more integration would make us safer?

Little changes to NAFTA won’t make Canada secure commercially, nor will resource sales to China. Alternatively, protectionism would severely divide the country and as surely, reduce the pace of Canadian private-sector innovation.

However, there’s another strategic option: outflank 19^th century nationalists and 20^th century globalizers by getting on with what the FTA didn’t create--not merely less taxes on trade with the US, but a full-fledged Canada-US common market.

Such an agreement could make sense to Canadian and American workers who enjoy little power in the global economy, but who’ve collaborated and competed beneficially across the border for generations. Overwhelmingly, those workers and businesses know when trade is ‘fair’ as well as ‘free’. Re-constructing the common market that was taking shape before 1776 would provide a mighty platform for enforceable, rule-based, free trade expansion.

While the status quo burns the midnight oil tweaking NAFTA, I’d nominate for negotiation a European Union-style union: including the free movement of workers and goods and services, external trade relations, the dollar, and a common security parameter. We could then enjoy free travel across the 49^th parallel and equivalent treatment for Canadian and American workers, students, visitors, and investors. Canadians would be on the same team in confronting unfair trade practices, upholding today’s GATT rules and, for instance, in designing effective measures to discipline GHG polluters who trade within and with our new common market.

 Looking out over a new century, it wouldn’t be a bad start--certainly better than the opening decades of the last--to let the continents of the globe digests the gale of change we unleashed globally after the last world war.

The latest global alternative for Canada: a free trade deal with China, a super-power without an independent labour movement or workers’ party, would mostly translate into greater power for that state’s business allies. Money doesn’t lead necessarily to power-sharing. ‘Inclusive economics’ take hold in inclusive democracies, not the other way around.

Like the Spaniards and the Dutch in a European Union dominated by a democratic Germany, Canadians have qualified their sovereignty in North America before. However, they’re hardly likely to agree to do so with the new China or, indeed, with the same old Russia or even the UN of today.

Of course, few complex social arrangements are permanent and how one changes is largely unpredictable. An economic union with the US, however, needn’t lead to Fortress America, a greater federation, or fragmentation.  Future generations strengthen existing arrangements or, in disrepair, eventually decide to do something dramatically different.

Such an economic union would be imperfect. It would soon lead to calls to alter the NAFTA with Mexico and wouldn’t quell debate about global trade relations, over-heated and rusty sub-regional economies, and how the spoils of economic growth should be shared. Nevertheless, it would have a sophisticated domestic market large enough to keep driving innovation, and it would be sufficiently transparent to adapt with the consent of the people.

I liked the idea of re-uniting our nascent pre-revolutionary federation, without the Crown and slaves. You thought otherwise, even when Barack Obama was President. Fine. But, please don’t look at a common market as a slippery slope; a trap that would soon extinguishment Canada’s identity and emerging reputation as the nicest place on earth. The dots often don’t connect: the Charter of Rights without Quebec’s signature hasn’t lead to Quebec’s separation or a Canadian republic, and NAFTA hasn’t diminished the capacity of the federal government to represent us and ‘nation-build’.

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Is thinking regionally a retreat? Would Canada be choosing to be less influential? Would Canada be inviting the United States to stop being a champion of ‘globalization’?

Adam Smith and David Ricardo theorized about an entire world economy much smaller than either Western Europe or the United States, today. Furthermore, the dimensions of the market they imagined allowed for the possibility of democratic politics--for liberals, social democrats, conservatives and reactionaries to fight it out in free elections, for control of effective parliaments.

In this century, we don’t think of free trade merely between the Christian monarchies of Europe and their 18^th century colonies. The question for our time is at what pace must ‘globalization’ proceed? And how many participants does our ‘free market’ have to include to be dynamic and still, collectively, responsible for our material destiny?

Western mixed economies can’t place the economic drivers and the body politic too far apart, certainly not in different bowls, especially now, when all the players have the vote.

Having a few public levers as far from our sprawling private economy as Washington and Ottawa has been far enough away to build extraordinarily prosperous, relatively open communities for some 360 million people--literally, a beacon for innovators and an affront to a less free world, whether we’d like to hide or not.

However, in the name of ‘globalization’, moving any of the federal, democratically accountable levers (say: currency, tariff, corporate taxes, immigration, and homeland security policies) literally off-shore wouldn’t be the same as letting a few that are already shared substantively with Washington leave Ottawa formally in a new Canada-US arrangement.

Sesquicentennial Canada has the competence and liberal temperament to negotiate with a successful neighbor that also has never been anything other than a democracy the common market and currency union that a dozen prickly western European powers have in place--and are willing to risk significant political capital to preserve.

Probably, today’s EU grew too big too fast, including holus-bolus east European countries in far different social and economic circumstances than its founding western European members. Bearing that in mind, this proposal doesn’t propose building on NAFTA to create at the same time a full-fledge economic union with Mexico.

Nevertheless, the EU today--the world’s largest economy--was only possible because some half a dozen western European democracies of wildly uneven political clout were willing to breakdown barriers they once thought were essential in protecting their individual national identities. And, throughout the union’s history they have preferred to have Germany inside, rather than outside their common market.

Of course, of course, such an arrangement would leave federal negotiators and the capital’s monetary and macro-economists with that much less to do; leaving Ottawa less beguiling as a mecca for idealistic young Canadians looking for traditional federal government ways to express their Canadian identity.

The post-adolescent mission of making Ottawa stronger because it was weaker than London and now is weaker than Washington has enriched Ottawa conversation and dignified its endlessly trendy intrusions into the affairs of Canada’s strong, creative local governments--and has left Canada’s consumers and economic actors poorer in return.

Mulroney’s free trade agreement didn’t and never could have taken future trade disputes and bilateral trade policy out of the reach of national legislatures and opportunistic politicians. The FTA, however, eliminated tariffs on over 90% of the goods that flow between our two countries. And, for over 25 years, interfering lobbies have left the lion’s share of its multi-billion dollar daily trade flows alone. The more we trade, the more value traders secure in each other’s markets, the safer we’ll be from demagogues that pop up in both our democracies.   

The best trade negotiators look forward keenly to the day the negotiation is over, when the actual market takes over. They don’t confuse careerist dithering with actual decisions.

A “modernized” FTA will not make Canada the equal of its super-power neighbor and what I’m suggesting won’t either. Indeed, a manageable common market should give the United States as well as Canadians, a more credible voice in the world. It would be a union of political un-equals to create a common market--a place where hard-pressed consumers and talented Canadian workers needn’t be unequal.

Trumpism and the burden of being called a ‘conservative’

When I was a kid, I started writing letters to Progressive Conservatives packed with “strategic advice” about not losing elections to Liberals. Habits that stir you are hard to break. And now, despite a career of neutral service to three governing parties in Ontario, the itch is back—and I’m free to scratch it. I love competitive politics and believe that fearing close elections is good for every government. That usually requires Conservatives not being branded as weird aliens.

(New Democrats eventually got past the problem when their “democratic socialist” leaders became “social democrats.”)

Today, the Conservative Party of Canada is singularly exposed. So here goes.

Less than halfway to the next election, the party’s membership faces unsure electoral opportunities and two dangerous questions. Will there be a leadership candidate on the ballot in May who can define themselves and then beat Justin Trudeau without being competent in French and, united, how do they cope with Donald Trump’s toxic presidency next door?

Assuming currently reported confidence that Canada is on “the right track” falters, and an appetite for change returns, is it plausible to explain new ideas and promise to heal divisions almost entirely in English? Can a Conservative leader go on the attack relying on simultaneous translation? In this age of personality politics, will Quebecers stop judging the whole man or woman and settle for memorized platitudes?

But let’s move on from a known known.  

In designing an aggressive Conservative alternative for the next election, let’s look at six ways of not being branded Trumpets. As befits the subject, most are downers, with one promising gamble at the end.

1. Denying Trump’s shadow is useless.

The new President is like a stray puppy, unpredictable, unattractive and irresistible. He’ll be on the Conservative leader’s porch first thing the next morning. And even if he or she doesn’t feed him, Liberals will be over before sunrise to keep him frisky.

Insist that Trump is not really a conservative—that he’s an “independent,” a “populist,” a “fraud,” whatever. According to the meme of the moment, the very day the new leader complains about Ottawa and its insatiable elites, he or she will be called out for playing to a “Trump-lite” base.

2. As important as being new, avoid being a Canadian “Republican.”

In Canada, fear of populist US Republicans generates more votes than fear of immigrants, foreign investors, global epidemics, and family dynasties. Loathing the right half of America is polite shorthand for: Americans are sick and we’re not.

Sure, opposition leaders can, and I would argue, should be able to promote ideas a slim majority of Canadians might not yet like. But they can’t lean against a long-held distaste for xenophobic US right-wingers that 80% of adult Canadians enjoy and nourish.

3. Being louder patriots won’t impress.

Canada’s nationalism is Liberal now. Weird historically, but done. Standing up for “Canadian values” is Justin Trudeau’s franchise.

America’s “I’m mad as hell” Presidency will grow hoarse and all those angry T-shirts will fade before Canada’s next election. However, it is extremely unlikely Canadian voters will look for or find reasons to stop disliking Donald Trump, his angry supporters, or his chauvinist style.

Our politics and the Charter tolerate cynical imitation. There is, however, a well-earned pride amongst old Tory partisans for preferring to lose honorably. Losing as populist counterfeits to Justin Trudeau would be ugly. People would laugh. Eye contact would be difficult, and without eye contact, amassing $millions more than the competition won’t take a political campaign anywhere.

4. Telling Liberals to be aggressive trade negotiators is lame.

Don’t be too cocky with those statistics about our “balanced” trade relationship or try alarming individual US legislators, unions, and businesses with musings about a “trade war.” While Canada is the biggest customer for 35 US states, our economy is more than twice as reliant on the export of goods and services than is the US (31.5% of GDP compared to only 12.6%, in 2015). And for our biggest region, swing-vote Ontario, that reliance is approaching 50%, overwhelming with its southern neighbor.

The high-tariff diplomacy of John A. Macdonald and Robert Borden isn’t available to us. It’s a dangerously credible threat by Trump’s America, but would be a clownishly obvious bluff for trade-reliant regional economies like ours. The answer to a superpower bully isn’t tough talk.

5. Sorry, Trudeau’s sunny diplomacy isn’t naïve or lazy.  

A majority of Canadians and their trusted advisor The New York Times are enthralled by Joe Biden’s instruction that Canada, with Trudeau, must carry civilization’s torch through this dark night. Trudeau’s wink-wink southward asides repeat endlessly: “I share the nausea, but must carry on quietly, for the sake of our workers and their precious children.”

We have the most sociable Prime Minister in Canadian history, with a Cabinet that devours briefing books and advice from Canada’s most glamorous white-collar business: understanding and lobbying important Americans.

If commercial relations really do get scary, Canadians will rally behind their constructive Liberal government, the namesake of the party that has not “sold out” to Washington or harmed continental interests on Bay Street either.

In any case, no matter how adaptable their tweeters, Conservative leaders can’t compete against Liberals or New Democrats with 19th-century Tory insults about vulgar US politics. If only because their voting base is still genuinely positive about America and its future.

6. Outflank Trumpism and Trudeau with better ideas.

We know Trump’s big-government nationalism won’t work here, and when economic nationalism doesn’t work, it wastes resources and turns nasty. Also, Trump’s agenda in Washington may be neutered by a blood bath in the White House. Nevertheless, his election last November was evidence of trouble in his country and, likely, in ours. He has torn the fabric of our shared post–Cold War order.

Simply doubling down on trade diversification, multilateralism, and our unreformed Westminster democracy would be an all-Canadian reply to Trump all right, but not to the times. The Conservative Party would remain the status quo’s spare party, with an anti-liberal name.

Conservatives are as qualified as Liberals to see the times are changing. However, before being taken seriously as innovators, they should acknowledge how experience and changes in Canada have changed them as well.  For conservatives, “new” doesn’t go without saying.

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For openers and as a thought experiment—why not do something about that word “conservative”? At it’s best, it’s a noble, dull word, whether puffed up with hyphens or not. It’s like a sad Victorian poem one reads, after others act.

Rebranding is both a painful and profitable industry. While all organizations fear symbolic change as much as the real stuff, they often profit handsomely when they do. And, anyway, Conservatives are the least qualified in Canada to get huffy about nomenclature.

At the time of Confederation, the word “Conservative” was sprung on Canadians as only the second half of the “Liberal-Conservative Party.” And over half a dozen times since then, it has been kept on and taken off the party’s name.    

Conservative virtues, of course, grace politics across the spectrum; otherwise, we would have destroyed our civilization long ago. Yet, despite how beautifully the conservative temperament is dressed up in Masterpiece dramas, today, “conservative” as a political label has been appropriated by sheltered and wealthy US right-wingers and unlovable organizations that are excited by leaps of faith and the least-democratic clauses in their county’s liberal constitution.

Furthermore, the all-powerful creative industries that educated and entertain Generation X and millennial voters has remorselessly linked the word “conservative” with hot buttons, such as: cold, intolerant, old-stock, complacent, sexist, unfeeling, and antiscience—useful when stuck in a snow bank, but boring.  

The postcolonial British Tory themes of deference toward state power—including a “sober” unelected Senate and numerous unelected public agencies, as well as economic and cultural protectionism, European networking and fear of US-inspired populism—are now nestled in Ottawa at the heart of the Liberal Party of Canada.

As that shift consolidated after Pierre Trudeau’s return to power in 1980, the traditional, grassroots small-l liberal constituencies of small businesses, family farms, new Canadians, and populist democrats shifted in sufficient numbers to secure Stephen Harper’s three-term, “neo-liberal” prime ministership. 

Ideologically, I’d guess that a majority of Conservative activists, especially in the growth centers west of the city of Kingston to the Pacific Ocean, are already Canadian-style libertarians.

These activists are community-minded and cooperative, not the supposed rugged individualists who, after intense parenting, survive outdoors in southern California. They’re convinced, however, that our personal and economic freedoms are under greater threat than central government and artificial borders, that planners are taken too seriously and markets unwisely less so.

They champion public measures to expand workplace training and reduce changing employment barriers, believing that open economies must remain open to benefit all individuals and working families. They see greater leisure time as an economic dividend, not as a euphemism for giving up and parking people who are not earning a living wage.

Presumably, they’ve come to see that public “entitlements” (legislatively defined transfers, including universal health and unemployment insurance in every province and tax credits and equalization payments) provide more reliable social support than charities and photogenic guilt-trips. And, as important, they appreciate that “entitlements” leave people comparatively free, while leaving bureaucracies profoundly less free to treat people arbitrarily or bribe and bully businesses, civil society, and other elected levels of government.

While it’s safe to say they’re not out to create that mythic Anglo-sphere alliance, they do believe that genuine democracies around the world rely on the United States' commitment and strength. And they can actually name aloud ones, like Israel, Taiwan, along with Japan and South Korea.

Feeling comfortable using the words “libertarian” or “classical liberal,” for that matter, is more important than rushing to formally change the name of the Conservative Party.

“Canadian” and “democratic” are attractive adjectives. However, they should think twice before bothering to go back to qualifying the word “conservative”—a noun opinion-makers and educators more powerful than the Canadian Conservative Party have either appropriated or debased.

With luck, however, once they resolve to free themselves of that noun “conservative,” they’ll be able to more firmly embrace and promote the truly expansive possibilities of more stable economic and social relations between our two liberal democracies and their common global interests, whatever the fate of the Trump presidency.