Xenophobia? Or...?

Xenophobia? Or...?

I have been noticing over the past few years how (apparently) xenophobic and ethnocentric our government's relationships have become. There have been several notable examples of Canadian citizens who have been, more or less, abandoned by the Harper government when in a dire situation in another country. Maher Arar (actually turned over to torture in Syria by our own police), several women trapped in abusive relationships in the Middle East, Omar Khadr, and a guy who took refuge in a Canadian embassy and lived there for a long time, two boys sentenced to death for their roles in a school-yard tussle...

Why does our government not extend itself to assist its citizens? Is it a general laziness or callousness? Does attempting to assist these individuals not offer enough political rewards? Or the corollary, has public indignation not been loud enough to push them to move? Do they not care about others, or is it specific kinds of others they do not care about?

The new immigration rules which put the final decisions on potential immigrants squarely on the desk of the Minister of Immigration (currently Jason Kenny) are reminiscent of the movie, “_______” which saw Eddie Albert in the role of the CEO of an electric company, making Dis-Con-nect! proclamations as each delinquent customer case was brought before him. So now, do immigrants have to be attractive to Jason Kenny before they can be approved? What criteria is to be used? There is now a list of “countries approved of by / friendly to the government” from which refugee claims will be most suspect. Some of these are countries where, despite having a “democratic” system, certain groups such as homosexuals and the Romany, are persecuted.

In recent news, conditions on First Nations reserves have been highlighted. They are, in many cases, deplorable. The UN has taken an interest, as has Amnesty International. Canada! Canada is being investigated for human rights abuses. Hello? How could things have been allowed to be so bad? I would think, in a country like Canada, if the political will was present, situations like this would be corrected in short order.

Furthermore, First Nations have spoken out against the building of the Northern Gateway Pipeline which, they say, will destroy important ecological areas and endanger wildlife species. For this, they have been labelled as dangerous radicals by the government.

New legislation will see foreign workers entitled to 15% less pay than Canadian workers in the same jobs, and will limit immigration to those with skills and/or money that will enhance Canada's economy. Refugee claimants can obtain admission on the whim of the Minister, and are not entitled to the same level of health care as Canadians. These changes, combined with the recent anti-labour actions (back-to-work legislation), disenfranchisement of the poorest seniors (OAS changes), changes to EI that will force people to take jobs below their skill level, and attempts to whittle away at human rights legislation and the charter itself, make me wonder where Harper is taking us.

It might appear, looking objectively, that Harper is setting up a society divided on racial and economic lines. Come with me on a journey to one possible iteration of the place Harper plans for Canada to become...

At the top are white, male, protestants – the captains of industry. This elite group controls the vast majority of wealth and resources. Their policies are guided by personal gain and the perpetuation of the system.

At the bottom are people of colour, the handicapped, the elderly, the under-educated, the young. They are the labourers who do the real work. The scientists, artists, academics, and various intelligentsia and alternative thinkers have been encouraged to shut up. Or leave. Or they have been incarcerated, either as lunatics or traitors. “Deviations”, such as homosexuality, feminism, imagination, creativity and so on, are strongly discouraged.

The military is a major employer, as are makers of armaments. Various wars are fought on foreign soil to gain territory, resources, or points in the international machismo scale. Agriculture is dominated by big multi-national corporations, many of which are closely linked with Monsanto.

Environmental protection is all but non-existent. Refineries, oil wells, pipelines, mines and various sorts of power plants have sprung up, unchecked, across the country. There are no incentives to explore green technologies, only incentives to harvest the country's oil, natural gas, water, lumber and minerals as quickly as possible and transport them to a resource-hungry world.

Extinction of species has become normal. The protection of endangered species was abandoned as not cost-effective.

Fisheries have all been taken over by corporations with factory ships. Fisherman not hired on by these corporations or the resource sector are now flipping burgers for minimum wage.

Services have been withdrawn from unprofitable communities, those without oil or natural gas or trees or valuable rocks to harvest. They have become towns of old people, the young all lured away by jobs elsewhere.

Health care was privatized when the government cut back and then eliminated transfer payments to the provinces. Education became stratified at the same time. Affluent communities can still afford to pay qualified teachers and outfit classrooms with the best technologies, less affluent areas take what they can get.

Social programs have decreased in some areas and disappeared in others. Soup kitchens, run by charitable organizations like churches, have flourished. You can get a hot meal if you sit through the sermon.

Literacy rates have dropped across the country. Unemployment rates have risen as jobs have either moved overseas or lower paid foreign workers have been shipped in. Crime rates have risen as a combination of need and idleness and lack of direction or hope draw more people, especially the young, into gangs and illegal activities.

Of course, this rise in crime works well into the plan. Private prison corporations turn a tidy profit from the labour of inmates who are afforded the barest necessities of life, and so contribute little to the overhead costs of the operation. Mandatory minimum sentences and an ever-increasing list of things that are illegal, coupled with the depressed economic and educational condition of the populace, ensure a workforce in the prisons that is both plentiful and present for the long term. The abandonment of any pretence of rehabilitation, training or counselling guarantees many repeat offenders.

Immigration, apart from those with money, connections, and desirable skills, has all but ceased. Canada is known as a country hostile to refugees.

Years of propaganda (coupled with the suppression of dissenting voices) have encouraged citizens to embrace an ideology of cold intolerance and of profit before all. Patriotic messages, adorned with the doughy face of The Leader, are everywhere.

Social media, and the internet in general, is tightly monitored. Malfeasants are sought out and prosecuted. A wide range of comments and searches have become suspect, if not downright illegal.

The national broadcaster has been dismantled and several of its most outspoken advocates jailed. Political journalism has become the publication of carefully crafted releases from the PMO.

With the eradication of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the RCMP, CSIS and local police services have been granted much broadened powers of search, seizure, surveillance and arrest. The law, in all things, is essentially at the whim of cabinet ministers or, more specifically, the PMO. Shortly following the defunding of the Human Rights Commission, Canada withdrew from the United Nations.

Little is known of how government operates, or what new policies may be in the works. The defunding of the Freedom of Information infrastructure, the auditor general's office, and various watchdog agencies, along with the disintegration of the opposition parties, has effectively dropped the veil on public policy decision making.

Unions and any form of organized labour have been outlawed. Job actions, including strikes, are also illegal. Under the auspices of creating jobs and lowering unemployment, minimum wages and labour standards have been reduced across the country.

Poverty, chronic untreated illness, and low literacy are prevalent. Many university departments, with the exception of engineering, business, law, certain sciences, medicine, nursing, agriculture and education, have been closed. Few faculties of arts remain, and almost no faculties of fine arts or music. Funding decisions cite a lack of economic benefit to these areas of study.

Many theatre, dance, music and arts organizations have ceased to exist. With the shift of focus of the Canada Council for the Arts from arts funding to promoting cultural events like the Calgary Stampede to the world as tourist attractions, available monies for anything vaguely alternative or controversial decreased substantially.

Certain areas of the national parks have been preserved from clear-cutting and strip mining as tourist attractions. These areas can be accessed as part of privately-operated tours.

The deregulation of firearm purchase and ownership, and the ensuing explosion in gun ownership, has made the population wary. The number of children shot in their own homes has risen to close to U.S. levels.

Of course, these changes did not come all at once. They came through a series of lengthy and complex omnibus bills which gradually eroded the power of oversight bodies, dismantled various institutions, altered long-held policies, and reframed the national conversation.

These bills also included incremental changes to the Elections Act which ultimately made it impossible for opposition parties to fund campaigns, and which made the next election to be set at the pleasure of the government. It has not pleased the government to call an election for many years.

You may see this scenario as paranoid, extreme, dystopian. And it may be. But look carefully. Many of these changes have, subtly, begun to come to pass. There are real-life examples of all these circumstances to be found in our world. Some are fairly close to home.

Voters are lured by crumbs, like tax credits on kids' sports or bumper sticker slogans, to vote for parties without seeing the whole programme. Incremental change is insidious. And now they have a “strong, stable majority” even if far fewer than 50% of eligible voters voted for them. And that, apparently, has given them a “strong mandate” to do whatever they please, even if it was not on their election platform. How many seniors do you think would have voted Conservative if they knew of the changes to the OAS program before the election?

Be alert. Educate yourself. Talk to others. Take a stand on what's important to you before it's too late.

Anyway, that is my view from out here in the woods.