Monday January 27, 1997

Monday January 27, 1997 – By Graeme MacKay

Team Canada versus the Rest of the World

Canadians have once again witnessed the passing of another “Team Canada” Asian trade mission.  It’s an event that was initiated a couple of years ago by Prime Minister Jean Chretien in an effort to get out of the dismal city of Ottawa and appear as though some sort of concerted effort was being made to drum up business for Canada.  It was also an obvious attempt by Chretien to draw attention to other parts of the world rather than relying solely on the benefits of a young and wide reaching trade agreement with a friendly and rather powerful neighbour to our south.  While the intentions are good in these non-NAFTA nations, the amusement in the whole event is knowing that the delegation of provincial premiers and Jean Chretien is officially called “Team Canada.”  This has to be one of the most divided periods of federal-provincial relations.  The idea of Canadian politicians getting together like a united hockey team is a joke.  Having Premiers from three different political persuasions is difficult, but not unusual, however having a committed separatist premier accompanying the delegation is nothing short of bizarre, (but indeed, uniquely Canadian.)

This recent trade mission included stops to South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand.  Lucien Bouchard surprisingly accepted the invitation to join the other provincial premiers and we all waited for the Quebec Separatist leader to blurt something out that would piss everyone off except for a collection of Canada-bashers in a much anticipated republic of Quebec.  But, after two weeks of hanging around a bunch of notorious guys like Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, and Brian Tobin, nothing rude was uttered, no feet were stepped on, in fact, the whole lot of these politicians looked like they were having a great time together, and even Lucien Bouchard was cracking smiles.

If any feet were stepped on it was brought about by Chretien, who, while in Manila waded into a constitutional debate concerning the length of time a Philippine President is allowed to keep.  Chretien, a veteran career politician himself for some 30 odd years, questioned the injustice that Fidel Ramos can only serve 2 terms.  By now our PM should well understand that it is not a good idea to mess with any country’s constitutional affairs, judging by his own sloppiness in past dealings with our own.

Frank McKenna, the long serving Premier of New Brunswick stepped on toes by pawning off provincially produced peanut butter.  He was being anything but a team player when tried to compete against other provinces to get contracts of course this isn’t the first time McKenna has treated other provinces like business foes.  His excuses for his actions resemble closely with those of a particular fictional character out of Sherwood Forest.

These trade missions are great for photo opportunities as well.  We’ve seen the leaders walking along the Great Wall of China, stand and gawk in front of the Taj Mahal, and mill about stern faced soldiers carrying machine guns in Korean no mans land.  Jean Chretien wobbles along on a bicycle in Beijing, and goofs around with the architect of the Tiannamen Square massacre following a treaty signing.  We’ve all become used to these sort of things, and in all honesty, it allows us news buffs to escape the regular on-goings in the legislatures, and committee rooms where these people usually hang out.  Maybe Mr. Chretien is on to something when it comes to national unity…because here in Canada, Canadians are its biggest critics.  When we step outside and see just how messed up other countries are we tend to pay a little more respect for our own land.  I’m sure the premiers get this sense.

As for Craig Keilburger, the 13 year old child rights activist who goes on about child labour injustices in these trade nations, someone ought to put him over their knee for good hard spanking. (Posted to thinkfastech.com)

Asia Pacific Trade Mission. Graphite rendering by Graeme MacKay (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). Illustrated in 1997. 

 

Wednesday February 28, 1996 

Pen & Ink caricature by Graeme MacKay – The Toronto Star, Wednesday February 28, 1996 

Toronto Day of Action

(Story: Union and Harris repeat mistakes of the past, published: The Toronto Star, February 28, 1996) Can you believe or trust union leaders who have called a strike to save their members’ jobs right after having helped defeat a New Democrat premier who had tried to protect their members’ jobs by “Rae Days” that kept them all working by taking back a bit of their salaries?But can you either believe or trust a Premier who is making exactly the same blunder that his predecessor did when new in office?

Toronto Star – Feb 28, 1996

For about the first half of his term, Bob Rae governed almost entirely on behalf of those who had put him there, organized labor and the various special interest groups. Later, Rae changed radically, although far too late to save him politically. His “Rae Days” were part of an attempt to deal with a budget deficit for which all Ontarians were – and still are – paying a ruinous price.

What Rae once did, Mike Harris is now doing.

Any yielding to union demands would be “appeasement, ” says Harris. Triumphantly, almost boastfully, Harris has declared that the strike – more exactly, its eventual, inevitable, defeat – will send out a signal to potential investors that Ontario now offers “a better business climate.”

Beyond question, the condition of the province’s business climate matters a great deal. So equally, though, does the state of social cohesion among all its citizens. By ignoring this factor, by trying to depict public servants as enemies of Ontario’s collective interests, Harris is fracturing the province exactly as Rae did initially.

It’s neither here nor that Harris is repeating Rae’s original miscalculation from a different social-economic perspective – the neo-conservative one that whatever may be good for corporations has to be good for everyone.

Although he’s not much given to reading, you’d have though that by now Harris would have taken note of the speeches of Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan – his economic ones, not his cultural ones – and have wondered why Buchanan should be soaring in the primaries at the same time as he himself is tumbling in the polls.

Pen & Ink caricature by Graeme MacKay (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). Illustrated in February 1996.

As for the union leaders, their calling of a strike on the basis of a modest 66 per cent vote and without having shown their members the government’s counter-offer to their own call for $1.5 billion in new payouts, confirms that they have learned nothing about contemporary reality.

That reality, for public workers as well as for all workers, is harsh and disagreeable. But it’s an unavoidable one, for at least the foreseeable future. All kinds of labels have been stuck on it, from Alvin Toffler’s “third wave” to “global post-capitalism.”

Perhaps the best comment about our present economic condition, most particularly so in the context of a strike by public workers to protect jobs that hundreds of thousands of others would dearly love to have, no matter with or without job security, is contained in American economic commentator Robert Samuelson’s recently published book, The Good Life And Its Discontents.

Samuelson’s theme is that we have entered the age of “the end of entitlements.”

It’s an excruciatingly painful change of life. Vast numbers of workers have had to accept downsizing and restructuring as the new norm. For many of the young, the new norm is unemployment (close to one in five), and after that an endless cycle of part-time jobs, short-term jobs, self-employment. For all, the new norm is shrinking social programs, longer queues for medical treatment, shrunken pensions.

Hamilton Spectator – Feb. 2, 1996

We are all angry and stressed out by these different forms of a loss of entitlements, that is of the abrupt loss of all that we all once took for granted.

Among all workers, only the publicly paid ones still are behaving as if the past was the present. The past, that is, not just of tenure but of barricaded tenure. To lay off Ontario Hydro employees required severance settlements averaging $100,000 – the highest in Canadian industrial history. To lay off all but the most junior of provincial civil servant takes, typically, two years.

Ontarians simply can no longer afford these kinds of entitlements by the few. As Management Board Chair Dave Johnson has observed, “The deficit does not go on strike. The debt does not go on strike.”

One half of the way this strike will unfold thus will be determined by how and when union leaders at last learn to cope with reality.

The other half will be determined by how, and when, Harris learns from Rae that to govern is to govern for all.

At a guess, it’s going to take each side a long time to learn what their job is.

Richard Gwyn’s column normally appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. (Source: Toronto Star)