The Canadian Wheat Board has placed a full page ad in newspapers across the country, condemning the Harper government for dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board.
He first took up this campaign when he was with the National Citizens Coalition, on behalf of Karlheinz Schreiber who was hoping to start a pasta factory in the West. Since then, the attack on the CWB has been on behalf of multinational corporations.
In the ad, the CWB remind us that 62% of wheat farmers want the board kept intact, since its disappearance will mean that small wheat farmers will have to negotiate directly with giant American food conglomerates, and how easy will that be? We know that only corporate farms have the resources to effectively handle that.
By ramming this legislation through Parliament without any debate, Harper hopes he can make the final decision to shift the profits and control of wheat farming from Canadian farmers to multinational corporations from the U.S.
This government has no problem exploiting farmers to fulfill the NRA's agenda, but refuses to stand with farmers when they need assistance.
He claims that the Canadian people gave him a mandate to get rid of things like that, but I don't remember seeing any of this on the ballot.
I had an opportunity to work with the local farming community during the Save the Prison Farms campaign, and was so impressed with the lengths they went to, to help the prison community, who learned so much about life by tending to farm animals, growing their own food, and running the daily operations of a farm.
Now that group is taking what they've learned about political activism and applying it to other injustices. What remarkable people.
I attended the Rally for Democracy yesterday in Kingston, and one of the organizers was Dianne Dowling, the driving force behind the Save the Prison Farms campaign. She mentioned a quote that she uses often when discussing Canada's eroding democracy. Paraphrased it speaks to a nation being pacified with "bread and circuses". Keep us fed and entertained and we will allow you to get away with anything.
Dowling was surprised to learn that the concept came from ancient Rome, and contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire.
This is also known as "escapism and distraction", social tools used "to keep the underprivileged poor people quiet". (1) In modern times, these tools can also be "employed by a governing body to hide inadequacies or divert attention from themes that can cause malcontent among the populace." 2)
This description fits us the best, because our nation is not being properly fed. But we are being entertained and Circus Maximus-ed into a stupor.
In October of 2009, Colin Horgan wrote a piece for the UK Guardian: Canada's frozen political waste. In it he discusses the unusual phenomenon that had taken hold in Canada, where "down is the new up". (3)
At a time when the Conservatives were playing fast and loose with our tax dollars for self-promotion, pork-barrelling, handing out big cardboard cheques, and pounding away at our democracy, the big news was that Stephen Harper had played piano at the National Arts Centre.
We were entertained and his poll numbers spiked. In Roman terms we were Circus Maximus-ed in the gluteus maximus.
Emperors expressed the wish that the "potentially unruly and dangerous city population" be "amused", also adding the idea that this would keep them "quiet". (2)
And when Harper should have been speaking at the UN, he was sipping coffee at Tim Hortons, and we smiled. He was one of us, or at least had successfully personified himself as one of us. Horgan concludes: "Harper's popularity might be on the rise, but it's not because of his piano playing or aw-shucks coffee shop patriotism. It's because he allows us to be apathetic. And the less we care, the better he'll look."
Renowned Canadian artist Mendelson Joe agrees: “I don’t blame Stephen Harper,” he says. “I loathe what he stands for – his only ambition is to rule – but I don’t blame him. I blame the people of Canada.” (4)
He spoke those words before the G-20 in Toronto, urging Canadians to protest against the Harper regime. We did and look where it got us. The message was clear. I will entertain you, but cross me and you're going down.
We would rather be entertained.
This is why he's gambling on the $100 million re-enactment of the War of 1812, keeping us amused with gladiators, in all their splendour. And if our veterans and seniors continue to suffer, our working poor struggle, and our children go to bed hungry, that's OK. The colourful uniforms and shining clash of rifles and bayonets will make it all go away.
The comradery of sitting amongst their peers, the historical stories that some of the spectacles told, and the opportunity to wrap oneself up in the glory of Rome, provided the ideal escape from issues of war, disease, political unrest that may have otherwise had a more detrimental affect on the psychology of the population. (2)
Rome fell in part because "the Empire became a dictatorship and the people were less involved in government."
Canadians couldn't be less involved in government as they are today; the apathy fuelled by the neoconservative goal of making Parliament so toxic, we tune out.
In one of the latest taxpayer funded self-promotion TV ads, Stephen Harper claims that Canada is walking tall, clearly a distraction. The fact is that Canada's reputation has tanked under this regime. We went from first to eighth place as the best country to live. From seventh to 25th in gender equality. From near the top to sixtieth place in peacekeeping. And even more alarming, from sixth to 24th place in infant mortality, out of 26 nations (5).
In a country with our wealth, our infants are dying at a faster rate than many poorer nations. We should be ashamed. And yet somehow we're not. We're being kept entertained.
The new border security perimeter and EU trade deals, if allowed to proceed, will mean that Canadians no longer own any of their country. Our water, healthcare and public services, will all be controlled by multi-national corporations. So why aren't we angry? Because we're being kept entertained.
I'm reminded of the Merovingian Dynasty, the once powerful rulers of the Frankish Empire. Toward the end, all decisions were made by others, but once a year, the long-haired king would be paraded before the people, and they rejoiced, unaware of the fact that the man had no power.
And once the Mayors of the Palace with the help of the Church gained complete control, the "long-haired" ruler had his head shaved and was locked away in a monastery.
I see Canadians rejoicing every July 1, singing 'O Canada' and waving our flags, unaware that the entire celebration is meaningless. A re-enactment of a bygone time. An amusement.
Because at the end of the day it won't matter whether we are now 'Harper'. There will be nothing left to fight for. Our country will no longer be ours. We are just that shaven head locked away in a monastery.
But now and then we'll be entertained.
1. The Hidden History Of The Roman Empire, Discovery
2. Escapism & Distraction As a Social Control During the Roman Empire, By Peter Benjamin Bisset, Ezine
3. Canada's frozen political waste: With Barack Obama, anything seems like it might be possible. With Canada's Stephen Harper, barely anything does, By Colin Horgan, UK Guardian, October 24, 2009
From 1948's Universal Declaration of Human Rights onward, the history of the past half-century has been the struggle of colonial peoples for their freedom, the struggle of minorities of colour and women for full civil rights, and the struggle of aboriginal peoples to achieve self-government. Some of these struggles are etched in my memory.
I remember the television pictures of that small crowd of protesters who crossed Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on their way to Montgomery to demand the right of black people to vote in the American South.
I remember the men of Attica prison, in upstate New York, who staged an uprising to protest their living conditions. The state police and national guard took the prison by force and forty-three prisoners died. Before the final assault, one of the prisoners said: "We have resolved, after long and bitter experience, that if we cannot live like men, then we are prepared to die like men."' From these examples, I learned that human beings value some things more than their own survival, and that rights are the language in which they commonly express the values they are willing to die for. (1)
Those words were written by Michael Ignatieff and included in his 2000 Massey Lectures and resulting book, The Rights Revolution. I bring them up, not with the intent of electioneering, but to contrast what is happening in Canada today.
If Ignatieff dared to suggest that he was inspired by prisoners fighting for their right to be deemed human beings, there would be no end to it. The Conservatives would waste time in the House, standing up one at a time, heckling and chanting "soft on crime", and the media would lap it up like the obedient lap dogs that many have become.
And yet the Attica prison riots and the prison riots that took place in Canada in the 1970's, should be something that we are discussing now. The Conservative government seems determined to replicate the days, when horrendous prison conditions ignited those riots.
And yet one of their talking points, used to justify the enormous expansion of prisons, is to keep us safe. The firm they have hired to design the new Super Prison in Kingston, is creating a facility in which inmates will be "controlled" every waking minute.
Animals kept in pens would eventually turn on their masters if they were treated that way.
Government spending on programs to help re-integrate inmates back into society once they've served their sentences is not keeping pace with spending to build more jail cells, CBC News has learned. According to a CBC News analysis of data from Correctional Services of Canada (CSC), the government is increasing spending on capital items such as new prison cells at double the rate of spending on programs designed to curb violent and deviant behaviour that landed people in prison in the first place.
But as you see from Harper MP Peter Goldring (in his PR flyer paid for by the Canadian taxpayer), this government believes that society owes nothing to convicted criminals. Rehabilitation programs, like the enormously successful Prison Farm program, would be considered "perks".
They are creating unsafe conditions, not only to the staff at the prisons, but to the communities where the prisons are located.
Another talking point is "job creation" but that's nonsense. Read Justin Piche's blog, and he'll tell you what this is really about. Profit! Conservative friendly companies cashing in "on the misery of others".
They are creating 634 new beds in prison, while hospital beds are closing. Our crime rate is the lowest in our history while seniors are at their highest, and they're adding prison beds, at an enormous cost. We are facing a record deficit and debt, and this is how they choose to spend OUR money?
The Conservatives announced $150-million in new spending for prison beds Monday which will allow 634 new spots at jails in Quebec, the Prairies and Ontario. Although the Conservative “tough on crime” agenda has been popular with many voters, the additional $601-million in funding announced for new beds has the opposition fighting back. “The big change was when we started to see what the costs were,” Mark Holland, Liberal public safety critic, said yesterday. The total number of new beds planned for current prisons is 2,552 and The Correctional Service of Canada is working on plans for new penitentiaries. More beds are needed to house criminals who may not have received jail time before new mandatory-sentence laws.
And none of this is going to benefit Canadian society, only shore up the neocon base and provide profits for those who don't need more money. Especially when it's more of OUR money, with nothing in exchange except a nightmare.
Canada’s $10 billion campaign to put more people in prison for longer periods of time will not make this country safer and may backfire by creating a larger criminal underclass, corrections critics warn. “I don’t think they’re looking at the evidence,” Anthony Doob, a leading Canadian criminologist, told the Star.
Despite historically low crime rates, Canada is expected to spend $9.5 billion to build new prisons and retrofit old ones — a figure that has Conservative politicians scrambling to justify the cost. Last week, Treasury Board Minister Stockwell Day suggested Canada needs more prisons because of an “increase in the amount of unreported crime.” The federal government later cited a six-year-old Statistics Canada survey it said supported his comments.
“The real problem is crime policy is usually reduced to a slogan,” Doob said. “You’re simply increasing the cost to Canadians with no benefit. In the long run, you’re ending up with other kinds of secondary costs. These people are going to get out of prison, they’re going to be less likely to find jobs and they’re going to be burdens on society in a variety of ways, including crime.”
Mad yet?
Sources:
1. The Rights Revolution: CBC Massey Lectures, By Michael Ignatieff, Anansi Books, 2000, ISBN: 978-0-88784-762-2, Pg. 3
The Whig Standard ran a great editorial last week on our local Conservative candidate, Brian Abrams, who has been missing in action over the Prison Farm issue.
Because this was not simply about this important issue, but the Conservative Party in general, who keep their MPs silenced, while they themselves keep far too many secrets.
How does this cut Brian Abrams' credibility out from under him? Because the issue has long grown beyond the merit of prison farms. Even people who couldn't have cared less about convict farmers six months ago are wondering why the Tories remain so secretive. With each episode, the Tories' arrogance is magnified in a riding where the Conservative candidate has been strangely silent through the most important federal political debate locally in years.
As lawyer for the Kingston Police and an ex-RCMP, I suppose Abrams stayed in hiding so as not to have to weigh in on the police brutality at the Prison Farm protests, which included the rough handling of an 88-year-old woman.
And since party policy is "law and order", he would not be allowed to have an opinion contrary to the American style incarceration planned by Stephen Harper.
But Brian Abrams is not the only Kingston Conservative missing in action. We have a senator, though not many are aware of it. A Conservative senator appointed by Liberal PM Paul Martin, because he tried to be fair. Big mistake.
Now when I say that Kingston has a senator, that should mean something, but it doesn't. I've never seen the man. He ran Abram's campaign last election, so his name was in the paper, but aside from that he's pretty much a "no-show".
Kingston also had a Nortel Plant and recently Segal was part of the neocon controlled senate who dashed the hopes of disabled ex-employees, who will now lose all benefits as of January 1.
These workers deserved better from Nortel’s discredited management, which botched their disability plan. But also they deserved better from the new Tory Senators who owe their jobs to Stephen Harper, and will get their own gold-plated pensions and full disability coverage courtesy of the Prime Minister’s munificence.
These Senators rejected a proposal by Senator Art Eggleton to grant the 400 disabled ex-Nortel employees preferred status over other creditors when the telecommunications conglomerate is finally wound up under court supervision. Many of them are sick and unemployable, and say they will have to go on welfare. Eggleton notes that dozens of other countries have stronger protections for long-term disability.
This story is heart wrenching.
Here's Segal's contact information. This happened in his back yard and he did NOTHING. Let him know how you feel. In fact drop a bit of Christmas cheer on any or all Conservative senators, whose only function is now to simply do what the big guy tells them to do.
"I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another." Ellen Goodman
There are so many important issues facing us today, that at times it all seems so overwhelming. How can we possibly fix everything? Climate change, poverty, homelessness, intolerance, war .... where do we start?
Fortunately, we have many Canadian heroes who don't focus on the enormity of the tasks ahead, but on some small measure where they can exact change.
But the difference that they are making could very well be the most important issue of all. Our right to protest. Because when we allow ourselves to be silenced, we have no hope of changing anything.
But apparently brutality was not enough for our government. They wanted to make sure that none of their decisions would ever be questioned again, so they presented a 'diversion arrangement', whereby 'offenders' could exchange community service for a record.
This might sound like a fair exchange, except that part of that condition meant they had to admit that what they did was wrong. How can it be wrong to protest a decision that was completely unfair and made without debate?
I certainly don't fault those who agreed to this deal, because having a criminal record can follow you throughout your life, but several people refused, including Jeff Peters and Andrew McCann.
They are taking a stand, because this is no longer just about the prison farms, but our basic civil rights, that are being threatened.
“When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.” Stephen Harper, Canadian Press, April 18, 2005
Lofty words from a man who now goes to enormous lengths to cancel any kind of dissent in this country.
Which brings us to Alex Hundert, one of many protesters at the G-20, who risked his own freedom to guarantee ours. You can read his story here.
Hundert was placed under a gag order that FORBID him from taking part in public political discussions. After appearing on a university panel he was rearrested. In Canada.
While Canada has some of the best police officers in the world, we are still troubled with this blatant oppression by the authorities and bail conditions imposed. We totally agree with Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young’s comment of “astonishing” — and may we add “appalling.” This is not the Canada we grew up in. We are losing civil freedoms in a democratic country. These recent totalitarian actions are something we thought only happened in Eastern bloc countries.
There is little doubt that Canada’s image has been eroded by incidents such as this. The recent rejection of Canada by the UN Security Council is a telling tale of just where we stand in the eyes of the world. It is time to stand up and defend the principles of fairness and justice of which Canada had long represented.
This is not the Canada I grew up in either.
We are increasingly becoming an Eastern Bloc country where witch hunts are the norm and peaceful protesters arrested at gunpoint.
We can stay silent and allow this government to continue it's human rights abuses, or we can stand up to this by demanding answers.
Like where is the proof that the prison farms are too expensive?
Why were the police at the G-20 told to leave vandals alone and instead abuse those protesting this government's inaction on important social problems?
And why so many police in the first place?
A hero doesn't have to try to change the whole world, but if we have enough people willing to speak out and stand up for something they believe in, who knows? We just might.
A young offender appeared in a Kingston courtroom on Monday to answer to charges of public mischief. Unfazed by the entire process, she showed no remorse. While waiting to appear she sat on the floor and sketched, then brazenly stood in line for legal aid. An all too common story of an underage criminal, taking comfort in the fact that they would be given a "slap on the wrist" and not have to pay for their actions. In fact throughout her incarceration, she sang. The nerve.
And as her story was told in our local paper, they were not allowed to publish her name because of her age, so referred to her simply as "Jane Doe". I don't like that name because it is more often used to describe an unidentified female corpse. I'm going to call her, "our young heroine".
Because her crime of public mischief was standing against the injustice of the prison farm closures. "I love nature and shutting down the prison farms is bad for the community," the 14 year old said. "It's bad for the planet." She said she knew she risked arrest when she decided to join the blockade.
She was the youngest person among 24 people hauled away by police because they blocked a road into Frontenac Institution on Aug. 8 and 9, in a failed bid to stop cattle trucks from removing the prison farm's dairy herd from the property. "I thought we were just sitting on prison property ... " (1)
As she was entering the courtroom, she was presented with a gift, sent from a woman who knows a lot about advocacy and civil disobedience, Margaret Atwood. It was a signed copy of her critically acclaimed book The Handmaid's Tale: "Dear unknown arrested girl, congratulations on your courage. It could have been worse, read on" in reference to the oppressive society imagined in her book, in which women are subjugated and controlled.
Margaret Atwood had passed the torch that our young heroine had already picked up.
Another Torch Bearer
Olga Hudson was born in Manitoba. As a young girl she often marched in protest with her mother. Marched against unfair labour practices, and the abuse of veterans. And marched for women's rights. In fact Manitoba was the first province in Canada to grant women the right to vote.
Olga's mother had passed the torch of social conscience onto her daughter, and as a result she said that she has always been active in social causes. But in early August of this year she was arrested for the first time. Olga is 87 years old.
She wasn't frightened at the blockade, though police treated her roughly. She was hauled to a paddy wagon, shackled at the legs and handcuffed with plastic zip-tie style restraints. "They hurt because they were narrow strips of plastic," she said. She was put into a paddy wagon and into a steel compartment. "Every time they turned a corner, I was terrified I would knock myself out on the metal," she said.
At the police station, she said a senior officer was clearly upset with officers who felt it was necessary to shackle her. She spent more than four hours alone in a holding cell before she was released. (2)
But she had followed news reports about the save-the-prison-farms movement and knew that this was where she needed to be. Her family must be so proud, as she is passing the torch of justice on to them.
And Still More Torch Bearers
Nik Gravonic had worked as a federal parole officer for almost thirty years, and had seen firsthand the value of the prison farm program. So he joined the protests that aimed to prevent the removal of the farm animals.
Nik Gravonic said he passed out during the paddy wagon ride to the police station from fumes that entered his compartment. "I was getting the fumes from the motor," said Gravonic, 63, ... He was taken to the hospital and then was returned to the police holding cells.
Gravonic said it was an unsettling experience to be arrested. "Probably the most eerie sensation I've had in my life was when the officer put the handcuffs on me because he was in control and I wasn't in control anymore," he said. Gravonic said he was treated harshly. "(The officer) said if I didn't keep my mouth shut, I would be charged with resisting arrest and I would also be charged with assault," he recalled. "So (he asked) did I want three charges or one charge, so I kept my mouth shut." (2)
Don Misener is a retired United Church minister, who had served as a prison chaplain for 16 years. He too saw the value of the prison farms: "They're incredibly important in terms of helping inmates decompress from years of incarceration and develop the kind of compassion and self-discipline that's crucial for their being able to function effectively in society."
Misener had never been arrested before. "I just can't conscience just seeing it wiped away," he said. "I think it's time to stand up and do what we can for the sake of our society and our grandchildren." (2)
These two men have passed a torch of compassion and insight.
The Prison Farm Closures are a Human Rights Issue
Philosopher Richard McKay Rorty once said that human progress was "an increase in our ability to see more and more differences among people as morally irrelevant." That notion is fundamental when speaking of human rights. Because human rights have little to do with being politically correct and everything to do with treating humans as humans.
In If This Is a Man, Primo Levi describes being interviewed by Dr. Pannwitz, chief of the chemical department at Auschwitz.' Securing a place in the department was a matter of life or death: if Levi could convince Pannwitz that he was a competent chemist, he might be spared the gas chamber. As Levi stood on one side of the doctor's desk, in his concentration camp uniform, Dr. Pannwitz stared up at him.
Levi later remembered: "That look was not one between two men; and if I had known how completely to explain the nature of that look, which came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds, I would also have explained the essence of the great insanity of the third German [reich]."
Here was a scientist, trained in the traditions of European rational inquiry, turning a meeting between two human beings into an encounter between different species. (3)
I'm not trying to compare the prison farm closings to the Holocaust, but am only drawing a parallel to one human being looking at another human being as from a different "species". This thought process allowed slave owners to look on their human holdings as property, not men, women and children. And in many ways a penal system allows the same distinctions.
I read a comment the other day, and I wish I could find the source again. But it was from someone who I believe had worked as a guard at the Frontenac Institute. He spoke of the relationship between the "staff" and the "inmates" and how it had been broken down.
The guards did not wear uniforms and had the same dirt under their fingernails as their charges. They worked as equals getting an important job done. And as the inmates toiled daily alongside guards, they found common ground and their differences became "morally irrelevant".
The Harper government has stated that these inmates don't learn marketable skills. What can be more marketable or beneficial than that? Tasks can be taught, but what the prison farms gave them, can only be learned through dealing on a day to day basis, with people who pass on their values.
Ottawa has refused to release any reports or documents to substantiate the claim [that they are losing 4 million dollars annually]. Correctional Service Canada refused to release any documents in response to an Access to Information request filed last year by the Whig-Standard seeking the latest internal audits of the prison farms. (2)
Ghandi said that "civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies..." All the people I mentioned above understood that. And they were not alone. A great many people stood in protest against this tyrannical decision.
People from all walks of life: farmers, teachers, ministers, nuns, lawyers, mothers, fathers, grandparents and children. Singers, authors, professors, you name it, they were there. And two people who led the charge, Dianne Dowling and Jeff Peters, are true heroes and true humanitarians. They are also both farmers, who took time out of their busy schedules to fight for Justice, and they have passed the torch of determination.
Stephen Harper often speaks of "ordinary people". "Ordinary people don't like the arts". "Ordinary people want more prisons" ....
But he would never understand the people involved in this movement, because they are not "ordinary".
