Export, Eh?

In January the Canadian Trade Minister, Art Eggleton, came down with competitive advantage flu and mused that the state should not support or protect Canadian culture, but instead "free" it for export and, one assumes, to flourish accordingly. He was speaking generally about the increasing presence of U.S. media in Canada, but seemed unencumbered by any sense of absurdity in attempting to establish that Canadians have a comparative advantage in cultural production and must therefore export our culture to the United States. These musings spurned a number of hastily convened meetings in Ottawa to discuss the erosion of Canadian cultural institutions, meetings convened by the Trade Minister’s counterpart, the Trade Minister of Heritage Sheila Copps. Their government has presided over deep cuts to public broadcasters and support for cultural industries, so with great fanfare exactly nothing happened. This kind of political contortion provides an opportunity to pause and take stock of the recent history of the neoliberal agenda in Canada.

Like the United States and England, Canada was governed by two consecutive terms of conservative governments during the middle and late 1980s. These governments, under Brian Mulroney, implemented a rollback of the state, the goal of which was (and is) to erode and dismantle as much of the Canadian mixed economy as possible, enter free-trade agreements, and reform or eliminate social policies at odds with the first two objectives. Nineteen ninety-three saw the election of the Liberal Party on a platform of creating employment and abrogating NAFTA. What the government delivered, however, is even stricter economic and social policy conservatism, largely at the hands of the Finance Minister, Paul Martin, Jr. In addition, two neoconservative provincial governments in Alberta and Ontario lead to the regional implementation of the neoliberal agenda, an agenda that has been adopted in different degrees by almost all ten provincial governments.

The period from 1945 to 1974 is now seen as the "golden age" of the social security state in Canada. In the context of post-war activism, strong economic growth, and the women’s, peace, environmental, and civil rights movements, universal social programs began their period of fullest expression. Nineteen ninety-six saw the introduction of two important programs, Medicare (universal medical insurance) and the Canada Assistance Plan (universal "living wages"), among other reforms toward creating equality, inclusiveness, and redistribution of wealth and opportunity.

Early neoliberal advocates and researchers in Canada were organizations like the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI), a group of the largest 160 corporations, and right-wing think tanks like the CD Howe and Fraser Institutes. They generated economic and social policy analysis reminiscent of the Chicago School of Economics. Additionally, "citizen’s coalitions" formed around issues from tax relief to direct democracy. Such coalitions often have either funding or staffing relationships with neoconservative foundations, institutions, or leaders and gate-keepers. In contrast to the previous decade, 1975 to 1985 was a decade of cuts by the state as a spender and an employer. There were greater corporate tax expenditures and a reduction of transfers for program spending. Other measures were introduced, including an increase in contracting out, privatization, and promotion of private sector insurance, such as Registered Retirement Savings Plans. Much of this program was justified as "targeting the needy," the well-worn euphemism for obfuscating cuts.

The 1980s were characterized by further reductions in government expenditures, two free trade agreements and "social policy by stealth"—that is, the dismantling of relatively popular programs through technical amendments in the budget process, such as de-indexing transfer payments, clawing back old age security, cutting payments to other governments who share the costs of programs (like welfare), and changes in qualifications for wage support and other programs. Immigration policy was refocused on wealthy applicants and away from humanitarian or family reunification applicants. This didn’t all happen without protest. Some struggles emerged for social programs, like the fight against de-indexing pensions in the late 1980s, which the government was forced to abandon after popular outcry. The BCNI, generally supportive of the Mulroney government, supported the pensioners on this issue—it later turned out that it didn’t want an entire program of rollback threatened by the conservative government’s obsession with any one issue. The "free trade election" in 1988 marked perhaps the most obvious alignment of corporate interests against large coalitions of other groups, a struggle which is remembered by activists as one of the best and most cohesive campaigns in recent history. Unfortunately, it lost.

In the fall of 1994, there was an unprecedented, and since then unmatched, bout of deficit hysteria in Canada. Suddenly, it seemed, the sky was falling and with it credit ratings in New York brokerage houses and Canada’s status as a developed country, etc. Shortly thereafter, in the spring of 1995, Paul Martin’s back-to-the-future budget took Canada in the Minister’s words, "back to spending levels of 1951" (7:1 cuts to spending ratio). Equally importantly, the guiding principles of social programs in Canada were effectively dismantled by the introduction of the Canadian Health and Social Transfer (CHST)—a block fund allocated to education, health, and wage support programs together. Without control over the funding formula, Ottawa had effectively given up their main tool for implementing and upholding national standards of social programs. These standards vary for each program, but include things like universal access, minimum levels of support and criteria for the provision of services. Although we are still in the process, the CHST foreshadows the end of universalism, the guiding principle of the state programs. The funny thing about the 1995 budget was that it was from a government elected two years earlier on a platform of anti-conservatism (Brian Mulroney having achieved the honor of being the most unpopular prime minister in the history of polling), and job creation. The landslide victory for the Liberal party translated into an intensification of the neoliberal agenda.

@HEAD 1 = Other Contortions of Late Neoliberalism

@PAR AFTERJ<@191>UB = The aforementioned episode between the trade minister and the heritage minister typifies the ever-emerging conflicts between the neoliberal agenda and its steady erosion of programs of economic and social justice that have been (so far) important to Canadians. To a certain extent, these programs have been part of a national identity that is characterized by a reliance and trust in interventionist government in social and economic spheres. Here, the health care system is often contrasted with that in the United States, not just as an example of state intervention, but as an expression of identity, an identity somewhat less concerned with an individual’s right not to have universal health insurance. But this connection is not to be taken too far—at its fullest expression, the state left much to be desired, and did not include all equitably in its redistribution of opportunity and benefits. We have opportunities to witness these ever-present divisions as groups are pitted against each other during the gradual dissolution of the safety net. In this particular case, those in state-supported or otherwise protected cultural industries are getting a taste of what people of color, low-income, and other marginal populations have been living with for the past 20 years, and more.

The much discussed "death of the middle class" has evolved into divisions along class lines, perhaps the most stark expression of which was found in an extensive polling project conducted by EKOS Research Associates in 1994 on behalf of the federal government. Of those polled, over three-in-four believe that politicians and business leaders "seem to have taken care of themselves and friends while average Canadians have suffered badly." When asked to rank priorities for the government, the sample as a whole cited freedom, clean environment, healthy population, integrity, and individual rights as the first four priorities, and competitiveness and minimal government 20 and 22 (out of 22) respectively. The survey also polled the attitudes of "elite decision-makers" who numbered 19 percent of the sample. This group ranked as the first four priorities of government: competitiveness, integrity, minimal government, and thriftiness. Health ranked ninth. As the EKOS Associates write, "the diminished strength of Canadians’ generosity and compassion is most evident among the more comfortable social class," and the "preeminence of economic interests over values reflects a growing class fissure, which increasingly defines the foundation for political economic disputes in Canada." Regional divisions have also been exacerbated through the dissolution of national. There has been a traditional tension in Canada between "have" and "have not" provinces, who have shared revenues through national programs. It became a practice in Alberta not long ago to take people cut off welfare and bus them to British Columbia, where a left-wing provincial government had yet to cut welfare rates. The EKOS study also indicated significantly less tolerance for both immigration policies and equity programs—that is, programs that are associated with people of color.

Although neoliberal policies have been the mainstay of public policy for about 20 years, the cause and effect of public sentiment and official policy are, as usual, difficult to establish clearly through polls. The government released the EKOS polls, one assumes, to establish that it was responding to public opinion in restricting immigration and cutting the deficit (although that didn’t stop it from ignoring the mandate they were elected on). But the EKOS study is an example of the intensified arsenal of tactics governments and large institutions have been using to implement policies generally at odds with the majority of public opinion. It might also be noted that polling occurs almost exclusively in English and French, effectively ignoring significant segments of the Canadian population, who, surprise surprise, tend to be from ethnoracial groups. In the words of John Wright, vice president of Angus Reid, one of Canada’s largest polling firms, "Communities vote in blocks and sometimes they do ... but the key is, do they participate? If they don’t vote, I don’t care about their views."

To gain and retain power, the governments implementing these neoliberal changes have also turned to some race-traditional and duplicitous methods of control: outright lying and crisis management (the current government promised to eliminate a regressive consumer tax, the GST, and abrogate NAFTA), targeting disempowered groups as causing declining standards of living (largely immigrants and social assistance recipients), blaming employment equity for unemployment, and creating a false sense of crisis or inefficiency in government programs. The Minister of Education in Ontario briefed his staff in September 1995, to "create a crisis" in education funding so he might more easily introduce privatization. The national health care system is currently in the same position as funds are withdrawn and hospitals close, although we might reliably guess that people have not suddenly become healthier. Alternately, a sense of false consciousness is also being encouraged. The above-mentioned Heritage Minister has created a $20 million flag-waving campaign (literally, to give people flags to wave). It is apparently intended to foster a sense of unity and belonging, perhaps in response to the separatist movement in Quebec gaining momentum—as real benefits to confederation in Canada are withdrawn. This particular campaign betrays either deep racism about the current devolution of government, or more likely, a lack of insight into the history of Canadian identity and culture, which is often characterized by an ambivalence to overt nationalist sentiments, and certainly to ministry-sponsored flag waving. Polling and presentation is, of course, one of the lessons Canadian neoliberals learned from experience around the world. The story is sadly familiar by now—a government recently elected on a platform mixing an odd assortment of pro-jobs, pro-health care, deficit cutting, tax-cutting, anti-immigrant promises proudly declares that it won’t wait, won’t stop, and won’t blink as it systematically guts itself and a good number of productive members of society along the way. When Conrad Black goes out of his way to applaud a government, as he did recently the Ontario government, you know you are in deep shit.

The neoliberal culture of government has created an interesting confusion among the members of various right-wing factions. Big-government conservatives (as often reflected in their columnists) are regularly appalled by the prescriptions of their younger neoconservative colleagues seeking to carve a piece of history for themselves. This has lead in part to the Reform Party, a new national "populist" and deficit-fighting party rose to prominence in the last federal election largely capitalizing on the misery of the previous progressive conservative legacy, and blaming the state of the nation on everyone from same-sex couples to immigrants to welfare mothers. But with the governing Liberal Party now predicting the end of deficits in Canada, speculation on soon-to-be revealed election platforms displays a paucity of policy options, summarized by a sort of macho whose-tax-cut-is-bigger. The Reform Party is without an economic platform of blame, and has announced a fresh start including tax cuts, more cuts to programs, and some promises about health and education. How these three appear to be irreconcilable is not explored. Aside from promising to cut things even faster, the Reform Party has resorted, a la Dole, to the moral high ground which, as the left has found, can also be moral quicksand. Meanwhile, a reinvigorated Progressive Conservative Party is rolling out its new platform: a bigger tax cut, and some reinvestment in health care and education. Deja vu. The New Democratic Party has made the most consistent statements toward reinstating social programs but receives little mainstream coverage, and the official opposition, the Bloc Quebecois, has just elected a new leader whose direction is as yet unclear.

If Sartre worried about the banality of evil, neoliberal post-deficit platforms are presenting us with the evil of banality. The mess neoliberalism has left the country in casts a shadow over the latest state-of-the-nation analyses. Three recent books have been published about the neoliberal legacy (though not explicitly phrased that way) and the current state of Canadian peoples and preferences—in the pollster’s style. Sex in the Snow: Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium by Michael Adams and Shakedown by the aforementioned Angus Reid are the two most recent summaries of the mood of the people. The tip-off about these two books is that they are written by pollsters who have made a good living under the past three governments. They more or less trot out a clustered history of the opinions of Canadians as the state withered and the middle class collapsed into bizarrely termed groups like "disengaged Darwinists," "New Aquarians," and of course "Anxious Communitarians." Their tone approaches lament for the days of the middle class, especially when they come up against the divisions discussed above. The third book, Boom Bust and Echo, is written by economist-demographer David Foot and anti-immigrant, anti-refugee columnist Daniel Stoffman. It is a weightier treatment of larger demographic trends in roughly the same method, with perhaps more Malthusian overtones: What shall we do with the large aging population seeking status but facing fewer jobs and opportunities? The popular press has also been asking for more in the way of vision from Ottawa. The right-of-center Globe and Mail ran several articles in January on "Ottawa’s Missing Mind," and the generally liberal Toronto Star makes reasoned editorial requests for some sort of promise on employment every week or two.

Pollsters attempt to construct narratives about public opinion not just to explore symptoms, but to estimate trends. The emergence of these books (and related ones by the likes of Jeremy Rifkin and Nuala Beck), seem to be asking with some sincerity, What do we do next about this state of things? In a sense, the challenges that federal governments have set for themselves are more reduced in scope than ever before: federalism has been severely eroded and is now limited to enforcement of a justice system and promotion of "competitiveness" by leading trade junkets around the world once a year. The prime minister has responded by peppering his speeches with the word "vision" and references to the year "2001," but no substantial trends have emerged for the direction of post-deficit politics. A cynical observer might surmise that that is because he wants things to stay the way they are. Jean Charest, the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, is emphasizing his youth in relation to the other candidates. As far as I can tell this has absolutely no policy value at all.

With each wave of privatization, the persistence of relatively high unemployment and record levels of bankruptcies, and the promised land ever in the distance, the question, What is government for? is getting raised in a most public way, as perhaps it hasn’t in Canada in several decades. This is arguably a good thing, and I hear the same questions from U.S.-based writers and media as well. The unfortunate part is the rather limited scope of the answers that get floated. Canadian-style neoliberalism is ensuring its survival by forcing the majority of citizens to define their interests as narrowly as possible, and fostering a false sense of what is and isn’t desirable

 

Simon Archer is a Toronto-based writer and activist. He has worked in communications for the New Democratic Party and several community-based services.