CAPP, Tea Parties and Things That Go Bump in the Night

There is still a lot of speculation as to whether our new protest movement, that started out as anger over Harper's latest abuse of power, will continue or fizzle and die, once Parliament resumes.

Kady O'Malley gave us a very good critique on her blog yesterday, as she discusses a column by John Ibbitson. I usually can't read his stuff without wanting to poke my eyes out, but he tries, poor man; and every now and then he gets it right. Not this time though.

Over at the Globe and Mail's Ottawa Notebook, bureau chief John Ibbitson is musing about this weekend's Tea Party convention in Tennessee, and the American penchant for insta-populism: revolt first, ask questions later. What, he wonders -- or, at least, his headline writer does -- would it take for Canadians to charge the political barricades in similar (or at least per capita comparable) numbers? (Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question.)

Clearly Ibbitson missed, or simply dismissed the protest rallies on January 23. If he had scanned the crowds and listened to the speakers at the podium, he would have witnessed the charging of political barricades, metaphorically speaking.

And I'm not referring to the politicians who recited their prepared speeches, but to the citizens. People from all ages and stations revealing that this was not a revolt engineered by the opposition, but rather, for lack of a better word, an 'uprising' of ordinary Canadians fed up with the antics on the Hill.

Ibbitson proclaims:

Canada and the United States are remarkably similar countries — so similar, that no one else on earth can tell the two of us apart, unless this Austrian or that Sri Lankan has an ear so well attuned to English that she can distinguish Newfoundland from Missouri accents.

Yet politically, we are solitudes. Americans are perpetually in full-throated reaction to the status quo ... Now it would seem that an equally large, though very different, assembly of Americans is rallying in reaction to Mr. Obama’s statist interventions in the economy, his hopes to reform health care, his government’s projected deficits ... This is no confection whipped up by Fox News. Massachusetts elected a Republican senator last month in reaction to the excesses of Obamanation. Yet here at home, all is quiet.

He then goes on to suggest that protesters should meet Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams at the airport and let him have it because he decided to have heart surgery in the U.S.

I find that notion absolutely absurd, and Ibbitson's entire article proves that he really doesn't understand Canadians at all.

First off, someone electing to have medical procedures done out of the country is not on our radar. We just want our public health care protected at home. So if the Conservatives, in particular NCC's Stephen Harper, believe that they can muster support for private health care by using Williams as the poster boy, they are sadly mistaken.

Another thing Ibbitson may not understand about Canadians, is that we are 'nice'. We would not attack a man who has just had heart surgery for heavens sake.

But Ibbitson's suggestion that Canadians don't protest, makes me think that this man needs to get out more. Canadians protest all the time. The media just doesn't cover it in the same way that Fox News turns it into a week long event.

And we don't protest nonsense. That's not who we are. Those teabaggers and their guru Glenn Beck, are insane. I mentioned yesterday about the Frank Luntz memo that revealed how he uses doublespeak to stir up the masses.

Watch the video connected with this story. They have no idea what they're even protesting. It's all talking points and hyperbole. Just don't ask them to spell 'hyperbole' ... or 'talking' .. or 'points'.

But if Ibbitson did leave his office once in awhile, or even peruse YouTube, he'd see Canadian protest in action. The difference is that our protests are substantive. We don't sweat the small stuff.

For instance he would see Canadian protests:

- To protect our sovereignty

- To protect consumer products from a new risk management scheme designed to replace government inspectors.

- He would see police intimidation at those protests that was not covered by the media.

- And more intimidation

- And protest over the SPP, inked by Paul Martin and put on steroids by Stephen Harper

- Protesting over pepper spray being used on protesters, in an event again not getting much media attention. Mel Hurtig stated that he gave the media leaked documents on Harper's meetings with George Bush and the Mexican president, and they said there was no story there. No story? Our PM was selling us out and there was no story?

- And how about the use of police provocateurs to justify brutally breaking up a peaceful protest?

We also protest inaction on climate change, visits by war criminal George Bush, health care, the war, the Olympics, and pensions. Our First Nations protest the theft of their land and are joined by others ashamed of the way they are treated.

Maybe the real story here, is why the media is so ignorant about the protestations of the Canadian people?

As they downplay the significance of this latest prorogation, waiting for the hubbub to die down so they can once again worry about the important things, like what the MPs are wearing or who gives the best cheap shot, our country is in trouble.

So what does this mean for the future of CAPP:

Following the resounding success of the nation-wide rallies held January 23rd, CAPP organizers have begun planning the future of the movement. Hoping to maintain the momentum achieved by those demonstrations, organizers have begun initiating plans in support of a greater long-term strategy. The strategy involves educating the public about democracy and their rights as citizens through the creation and administration of an independent database of information ....

So the media can pretend not to notice the swelling of the ground from grassroots protest in action, but to borrow from Pierre Trudeau: JUST WATCH US!!!

Another Important Organization Falls Victim to Right-Wing Ideology

When we learned before Christmas that Harper and his Reformers had cut funding to KAIROS, it was upsetting but not surprising. Now that Charles McVety seems to running our country's finance department, there has been a lot of speculation over who would be his next target. Who else doesn't his Religious Right like?

Well we just found out. The Canadian Council on Learning.

Diane Finley's handler, Ryan Sparrow; is suggesting that it's a refocus (recalibration ... refried beans?) But anyone paying attention knows what this is really about. Public education for a start.

The Reformers have always hated public education and resent giving a dime to any schools that are not private and have the nerve to teach ... are you ready? SCIENCE! Egads the horror!

".. The Reformers gathered in Saskatoon saved perhaps the loudest cheers, whistles, and applause for [William] Gairdner's last shot: 'And my favourite proposal, by the way, is returning choice to education by privatizing every school in the country'!" (Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 166)

When Stockwell Day was running the Bentley Christian Schools in Alberta, he came under fire for the curriculum, which did not meet provincial standards. He made headlines for defending fundamentalist school curricula that a government commission later found to hold "a degree of insensitivity towards blacks, Jews and natives." The ACE material that Day defended included a reading lesson which asked junior high students: "The Jewish leaders were children of their father, the devil - true or false?" "God's law is clear," said an angry Day to the Alberta Report in 1984. "Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school."

Private schools base their teachings on the Bible and can't let anything like the facts get in the way of what's laid out in ancient scripts. No wonder so many people are turning away from religion.

The Canadian Council on Learning, not only promoted public education, but also improving education for aboriginals and adult literacy. When John Baird was with the Ontario government, heading up Community and Social Services, he tried to cut anyone off welfare who couldn't read or write. (Senators who can't read or write are OK though) And remember one of his first acts when heading up the treasury board in 2006, was to cut the funding for adult literacy. It's this whole social Darwinism nonsense.

But Dr. Paul Cappon, the CEO of the Canadian Learning Coucil, may have hit McVety's radar before, because of something else the Reformers hate ... sex education.

“Students are not getting enough sex education,” says Dr. Paul Cappon, executive director of the Council of Education Ministers of Canada, the body that administered the surveys for Health Canada (Sokoloff, 2003, p. A10). Schools devote less time to AIDS and STD awareness than they did in the late 1980s. It is hard not to see this as fallout from the ideological right turn that has emphasized rigorous curriculum and relentless testing at the expense of subject areas like music, art, gym and sexuality education which are necessarily less quantifiable than subjects like English and Math.

Charles McVety's Canada Family Action Coalition has fought against both sex education and early learning, something else that Dr. Cappon advocates for, and said of a national child care plan; The Liberals bent on getting children into daycare and then indoctrinating them with liberal ideology is a scary thought. But it could be real if they spend billions on a program that citizens have not asked for. And yet they have asked for it many times.

I think we are going to see a lot more of these progressive organizations see their budgets removed to feed into Harper's extreme right-wing agenda. McVety is probably giggling now, pouring over lists and squealing with delight.

But who will be next?