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election 2015
Campaigners Bid Harper Adieu While Vowing to Hold Liberals Accountable
But though Trudeau's sweeping win was, as he declared in his victory speech, a repudiation of "negative, divisive politics" in favor of "a positive vision that brings Canadians together," the new prime minister and his majority government still have much to prove.
"While we welcome Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau's election night speech that focused on hope, inclusion and the end of the politics of division and fear evident under the Harper government, we are deeply concerned by his party's support for 'free trade' agreements like the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)," wrote Brent Patterson of the Council of Canadians on Tuesday.
"And with about 40 days until the critical United Nations COP 21 climate talks begin in Paris," he added, "the Liberals have only pledged 'real climate change solutions' rather than more concretely an end to export pipelines and no new approvals for the tar sands."
Joanna Kerr, executive director of Greenpeace Canada, urged (pdf) the Liberal government to seize the "unprecedented opportunity to reject boom and bust polluting industries by stopping tar sands expansion and making Canada a leader in renewable energies."
"It's now time to say yes to a brighter future and farewell to politics of fear and environmental degradation," Kerr added.
To that end, climate justice activists from across the country are planning an action for November 5-8, during which they will welcome the incoming prime minister to his new residence in Ottawa by presenting gifts that "tell a story of people power growing and demanding real climate action and a new, clean energy economy in Canada."
The call-to-action, supported by 350.org, explains further:
On the first day, we'll deliver the evidence that confirms we must keep tar sands under the ground. On this day, we'll present a basket of broken treaties -- with documentation of the hundreds of violations of Indigenous rights that have taken place in the tar sands. We'll also supply the Prime Minister with scientific journal papers that confirm the majority of tar sands must stay in the ground in order to prevent climate catastrophe, along with reports which confirm that reliance on fossil fuels will have devastating impacts on our economy.
The second, third, and fourth days of the nonviolent direct action will see the delivery of thousands of signatures from people who oppose tar sands and pipelines; water samples from the rivers, lakes, and coastlines that tar sands pipelines would--and have already--put at risk; and a "surprise gift" meant to show the new prime minster "that we have the technological solutions, we just need the right policies to begin the transition to a clean energy economy."
Trudeau made "many, many promises during this campaign," journalist Karl Nerenberg wrote on Tuesday. For example, Nerenberg said, the prime minister-elect vowed "[t]o make a major investment in on-reserve First Nations education, without imposing Harper's humiliating and draconian conditions on First Nations communities, all in the context of a renewed nation-to-nation relationship with Canada's First Nations, Inuit and Metis people."
In fact, a series of tweets from former Rabble editor Derrick O'Keefe on Monday night on that exact topic illustrated how Trudeau's victory is simultaneously eliciting hope and skepticism.
As the Council of Canadians' Patterson wrote on Tuesday: "We should rightly celebrate the defeat of Stephen Harper, a significantly increased voter turnout, and an election apparently relatively free of the voter suppression evident in the last federal election, but we will have to campaign even harder now to ensure that the 70 per cent of Canadians who said 'it was the time for change' in Ottawa this election, get the change they deserve."
Dirty Campaigning: Harper's Racist Wedge Politics the Oldest Trick in the Book
Both women's looks were nothing more than decisions taken on how to present themselves in public, based on personal beliefs and preferences, religious or otherwise. As far as images go, full-sleeve tattoos, blue hair, and stretched earlobes are more eye-catching than a beige-coloured hijab coupled with a shirt and yoga pants. The former image, however, doesn't elicit the same level of pearl clutching and angst.
As unattractive as it may seem to some Canadians, coloured hair and tattoos are seen as personal decisions, while the niqab and hijab have been twisted by the Harper government and reduced to regressive symbols of women's unequal treatment and harbingers of all we don't understand and ultimately fear.
Judging by the outrage and the proud groups of misguided potato-sack-wearing "patriots" who showed up at advance polls, you'd think Ishaq tried to circumvent the law and defiantly thumbed her nose at us, when in reality all she did was follow the letter of the law. A Federal Court ruling and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms say so.
In 2012 I watched in utter shame as the Quebec Charter of Values was touted by the Parti Quebecois as some sort of solution to the religious accommodation and secularism debate. They tried to sell Quebecers on a plan that targeted vulnerable minorities and their beliefs, while making convenient allowances for what constituted Quebec's own majority Christian "cultural heritage."
And the rest of Canada pointed fingers at Quebec's xenophobic tendencies, while ignoring the national surveys indicating the rest of the country was ripe to be just as easily manipulated.
The PQ gambled with anachronistic notions of the values that constitute Quebec, and it backfired spectacularly. With just a few days left in the longest and probably dirtiest federal electoral campaign this country has seen, I remain optimistic that Canadians will also see through the manipulation and demagoguery.
Political distractions like the niqab work because they are simple and tangible. Manipulating a majority into demonizing a minority is the oldest trick in the book of wedge politics. Later, we look back and wonder how so many were played, and yet we never learn. We sink to the lower rungs of dirty politics and then complain about the stink.
As we head to the polls, the Conservatives have introduced the McCarthy-esque "barbaric cultural practices" snitch line and unleashed a wave of xenophobia and racism across the country. Noam Chomsky's warning rings true for Canada: "As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome."
I can only hope that the majority of Canadians see through Harper's dirty and destructive politics and vote accordingly.
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