Something Missing: Third Man Out…

I didn’t watch last night’s Munk Debate on the Economy. It’s not that I’m not concerned about the state of the economy, it’s just that the framework is all wrong, that a major player was missing, and that I was pretty sure that I would learn little of value or that any of the three debaters would actually add anything to the discourse leading up to our October 19 vote. Mr. Harper wants to limit the discussion to the economy, though he’s unlikely to admit that his much-touted success lies solely in his having managed to sell off or give away the last vestiges of Canadian economic sovereignty, what little is left following the predations of the Mulroney-Campbell-Chtétien-Martin administrations. In (mostly) completely gutting the access that Canadians have to the wealth generated in this country, Mr. Harper has also managed to accelerate the sack of the environment and the wasting of the social foundations of the country. Mr. Mulcair has, thus far, no blood on his hands, but the signs are that there is little gumption on the part of his party for redress of the most fundamental notions the wrongs committed by his Liberal and Conservative predecessors, and Mr. Trudeau, by slavishly following the Con lead on privacy and trade issues, indicates plainly that he isn’t likely to heal the damage wrought by his colleagues across the floor, especially given the propensity of Liberal governments to campaign from the left and then govern from the right (think of Chrétien’s Red Book, full of hope, all of it devoid of substance).

This is precisely why last night’s “debate” is such a travesty: the underpinnings of our current government are based on chimeric and untruthful notions of life in Canada, as well as in the wider world. The meanness and sleaze of this crew, especially as embodied in its leader and reflected in cabinet, senate, party operatives, donors and backbench wingnuttery needs to be front and centre in any discussion of who might best govern the country. By limiting the debate to the economy, the whole exercise became a useless wordfest of business platitudes and hackneyed notions of social structure. Sad that more people aren’t reading, digesting and operating on the material that Harris et al have put at our disposal.

(the last paragraph is lifted verbatim from a comment that I left at Owen Gray’s Northern Reflections)