Reflections on October 2014

Photo by: Katja

The Prime Minister's speech: NB

In Stephen Harper’s speech to Parliament today about the “... increasing places where the planet is descending into savagery” our Prime Minister is again tipping his hat to the Conservatives’ favourite work of political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) and the concept of the “war of all against all” which had its origins in the English Civil War.

Canada's Parliament attacked today

Three leading motives usually incite men to fight, -- the patriotic love of liberty, the enthusiasm of glory, and religious fanaticism.[1]

-         ` Madame de Staël, Germany, 1810

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[1]   Madame de Staël, Germany, tr. Orlando Williams Right, vol. I (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1871 [British Library Historical Print Edition]), p. 39.  De l'Allemagne was first published in French in 1810.

Closed-door FIPA: some more thoughts

Let’s consider an important question about the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) between Canada and China. Why was there debate after signing - and ratification – not before?

Prime Minister Harper signed the deal in Russia on 9 September 2012. It appears that the arrangement was made with an authoritarian country in another authoritarian country by an authoritarian Prime Minister.

The deal sat in limbo for two years until it was recently ratified on 12 September by Cabinet, not by Parliament, despite the fact that it is a 31 year contract – with no chance for abrogation until the 15^th year.  Clearly the Chinese government views things long term – in the light of (multiple) “Five Year Plans”. Canada’s Free Trade agreement with the United States (NAFTA), negotiated under the Mulroney government, was a national election issue and requires only six months’ notice for Canada to exit the agreement.

Here we see the difference between dealing with the authoritarian planning of an emerging superpower in Beijing and how two asymmetrical and elected democracies came to terms under a negotiated NAFTA.  So it appears that Harper folded before Chinese government interests. No debate in Canada means no chance of loss of face for China.  And in the interest of the apparent ascendancy of a binding economic treaty (autonomous from Canadian democracy now liable to be sued) Harper sacrificed Parliament (this time there was no need to prorogue) again absolving it of its primary function to parler (talk).  (By the way, the Speaker of the House of Commons should be made aware of this latter point).

In defence of themselves, and the Canadian public, the Hupacaseth First Nation in B.C. challenged FIPA by means of federal court action, demonstrating that our legal system is the true conservative force in the nation.  That action was still unresolved when FIPA was ratified, another boot to the rule of law by Harper (following Hobbes who wrote against Sir Edward Coke, admirer of the Magna Carta and legal mind behind the Petition of Right of 1628).

Notice also the timing of the ratification. It came on a no news Friday afternoon just days after Harper joyously announced the discovery of one of the Franklin ships.  Harper leveraged his “national sovereignty” capital from the Franklin discovery and applied it to the widely-disdained, secretive FIPA.  Besides, Canada’s warlord had been outwitted by ancient Chinese warlords, and Harper needed to shore up a strained relationship, certainly in order to travel to China this November, for the planned meeting with APEC leaders.

Parliament’s non-debate on a 31-year-agreement is an ominous sign, worse than Harper’s multiple omnibus bills. Consider the French liberal thinker (and traveller) Alexis de Tocqueville who warned of the likes of our authoritarian Prime Minister in his Democracy in America (1835): “I foresee that if we fail to establish among us the peaceful authority of the majority in time, sooner or later we shall arrive at the boundless power of one man.”[1]

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[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, tr. Gerald E. Bevan, intro. by Isaac Kramnick (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), pp. 369,370.

On China, the Confucius Institute, and Coquitlam School District politics

As Chinese authorities continue to expel more and more missionaries – and repress the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong – School District 43 continues to recruit more students from China, who prefer the Coquitlam area because of the School District’s dubious partnership with the Confucius Institute, which receives its mandate from authoritarian Beijing.[1]

 

Given chronic underfunding in the B.C. public school system, our school districts have come to depend on these overseas students, which means that SD43 is becoming financially addicted to its affiliation with the Confucius Institute – and its role in the English-Mandarin bilingual classes.

It is a partnership with no foreseeable end.  But is it also problematic for a few School Board Trustees?

The Tri-City News reported in December of last year: “During 2012/’13, the Chinese government paid for the SD43 board chair Melissa Hyndes and trustees Holly Butterfield (Anmore/Belcarra) and Keith Watkins (Port Moody) to visit the country as part of the district’s international education outreach. The trip cost about $9000 [each] but no provincial funds were spent on travel expenses.”

Our school trustees are supposed to be Canadian public officials.  Yet three of them were given “all-expense paid” trips to China courtesy of its government, all while SD43 holds a partnership with the Confucius Institute which also contributes to the cost of Mandarin instruction at the Walton elementary school in Coquitlam.

 

Can the China trips be perceived as a form of conflict of interest?  Certainly it is a problem of “accepting extra benefits”.  In the B.C. Legislature “A member must not accept a fee, gift or personal benefit” so why should public School Trustees be the exception?  And how much do trips to China shape SD43’s relationship with the Confucius Institute?  Or affect Mandarin instruction in our public schools?

And what about funding priorities and the truly massive budget cuts? Do the trips not look excessive in light of every Middle School student in SD43 now forced to go the year without a cafeteria?

Furthermore, children in the Mandarin classes are being taught by hand-picked teachers from China who probably do not know about human rights, or Tiananmen Square (erased from public memory), and who do not know the democratic free vote, assuming they appreciate the concept.

So it appears the Canadian state, assisted by a few public school trustees at SD43, is contributing to the moral disarmament of our society as China becomes a single-party superpower.

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[1] An abbreviated form of this letter was published by the Tri-City News on Friday October 3, 2014. The Tri-City News serves Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore and Belcarra –  British Columbia.