(Part three of a series)
Stephen Harper may have won the election, but a strong NDP opposition raises the possibility that a broader audience of Canadians will be exposed to truly progressive ideas for the first time in a generation.
That, in itself, holds change-making potential.
But how do progressives help sow the seeds for a return to the days when Canada's federal government actually initiates new, internationally respected public services and policies that meet the needs of this and the next generation? Services and policies that address long-neglected issues in Canada: worsening income inequality and sustained poverty, environmental neglect and abuse, and the end of the promise that each new generation will have a better life than the last.
First, we have to help change the conversation from 'who is best able to manage the economy' to 'what kind of Canada will the next generation inherit?'
To do this, progressives need to connect with the emotions that are out there: the worry, stemming from insecurity, and the aspirational nature of Canadians. And they have to do it in a pragmatic, fully costed way or risk ceding that ground to the right.
It helps to confidently root the progressive frame in the Canadian story, which, in many respects has been a history of mutual struggle and support (though in no way complete -- especially considering our treatment of First Nations and immigrant workers).
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Our challenge, and it should be a pride-making challenge, is to tap into Canadian (mostly progressive) values. Which values? And how to tell this story?
Everything I learned about Canadian values, I learned growing up in frequently drought-stricken rural Saskatchewan. This was a place where pragmatism had to coincide with dreaming: because you couldn't start a farmstead without having a dream of taming Mother Nature, and you had to learn how to be very pragmatic about achieving that dream.
This was a place where individual responsibility -- the weight you carried on your shoulders, working the fields and trying to keep your kids clothed and fed -- balanced nicely with a deep sense of community, of social responsibility, of interconnectedness -- because everyone knew you couldn't do it alone.
We needed each other to survive. And because we needed each other, it meant we had to be caring, sharing, empathetic, and giving.
When tragedy struck a family, everyone offered whatever support they could: food, visits, taking over the chores on the ranch. And if you were the recipient of this goodwill, you didn't view it as charity, you knew it was the give-and-take of living together, in community. It was part of living for the common good.
That's the Canada I know and love -- those values remain embedded in the Canadian psyche, prairie hound or not.
When we think about how to sell our ideas, it starts with asking ourselves, what is the infrastructure behind those ideas. What are our values? What are the stories that inform them? Once we do that, we're better positioned to connect with each other, to touch people with our ideas, to lead the way into the future.
The right has known this is how to mobilize for years. It's our turn. If we fail to take up this challenge, progressives will find themselves stuck in a conversation someone else set for them -- Conservatives. To stay in the Conservative frame is to remain in reactionary mode, which is to remain in retreat.
Some pundits would read this as a call to 'unite the left'. Here's why it's not: Efforts to unite the left will undoubtedly lead to a suppression of progressive values in the cold hard grab for power. They also contain a whiff of short-term tactical desperation. No, this is not a 'unite the left' rally cry; this is a call for progressives of all political stripes to awaken to new modes of connecting with Canadians because that's the only way to create a lasting and meaningful alternative to the politics of fear.
As it stands, the election of a Harper majority represents the sad end of a chapter in Canadian history: the slow fadeout of the post-war consensus that gave us public health care, public pensions, employment insurance, access to university -- the types of public policies that transformed Canada into an internationally respected nation. We were peacekeepers, we were caretakers, and we were a great country in which to live.
We can still be that, and more. But getting there requires a long-term strategic shift, to help Canadians emerge from the heavy cloak of the politics of fear and awaken to our greater potential.
Tomorrow's blog post wraps up this series with a suggested way forward for progressives.
There's so much wrong with this, it's hard to know where to begin. So I will make these points at random:
• It's not a call, we are told, to "unite the left" but a call for progressives to champion progressive values.... Hennessy and I have one thing in common: neither of us knows what she means by "the left" and "progressive". Are progressives part of the left or vice versa?
• There is no such thing as "Canadian values". If there was, we wouldn't have the political polarization we have today. "Canadian values" is a cheap rhetorical device used to beg the question - either you agree with me or you're not a true Canadian. The right does this all the time.
• Asking "what kind of Canada will the next generation inherit" implicitly postpones the agenda for a generation. "What kind of Canada do we need today" is the real question we need to ask.
• Social change isn't going to come from votes in Parliament, and it isn't going to come from appeals to "values". There are powerful forces arrayed against social change - forces that have a strong material interest in the staus quo. They are not going to be persuaded to relent by rhetoric, or by appeals to conscience and "Canadian values". They will permit the kind of social change we desperately need only when we are able to threaten their security and their privileges and their wealth, just as they have been doing to us since this country began.
• Hennessy warns "progressives" against staying "stuck in a conversation someone else set for them -- Conservatives. To stay in the Conservative frame is to remain in reactionary mode, which is to remain in retreat." And yet she is careful to admonish these progressives that their demands must be "pragmatic" and "fully costed". So who is it that's stuck in the Conservative frame?
To M. Spector:
On your last point, why would you say that being pragmatic and costing out a program is "[being] stuck in the Conservative frame"? The very folks we'd like to serve have at least a moral right to know what the likely costs could be for any program, progressive or not. Some of our beneficiaries are taxpayers whose money would be at stake, and the rightists have traditionally pointed to what they have thought is the Left's tendency to ignore costs at any cost. Then we're accused by the right, quite historically, as being that "tax and spend through the roof", "irresponsible" socialist (Oh horrors!!) bunch, the "Looney Left", as the Brits have said, those "crackpot twenty-somethings who haven't experienced the reality of hard work put forth by decent conservative folks who are contributing to our country's economy by the sweat of their brow". And pragmatism is simply doing what we quite logically and rationally can do, the things most important to the majority of Canadians coming first: probably health care. There'd only be a finite amount of funds, my friend, even if we tax the rich (however that's defined) an appropriate rate, and get rid of tax havens. In addition to vetting costs, and seeing how much we can pay out, we must ensure on implementation, that there'd be no waste in the process, no having it easy at the taxpayers' expense by over-manning (another British conservative term), and therefore that every Dollar spent goes to useful product for the people, and is accounted for. Following pragmatism and cost-accounting, we can take real progressive action on the things we think most Canadians find most important, including improved health care, affordable and even scholarshipped post-secondary education, and public transport. Amen.
Because it's always the Conservative talking points that claim they are more pragmatic and better financial mangers than the left. "Pragmatism" is always inscribed on the banner of the "progressive" opportunists and capitulators who prefer to compromise and sell out the left. It's code for "forget about principled politics; let's just make deals and be happy with the crumbs we are thrown".
In fact, your comments are a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about.
We have to set our sights much, much higher than "improved health care" and "public transport". We are facing huge crises of climate change; peak oil; ocean, water, and soil depletion; rising food prices and famine; catastrophic loss of biodiversity; a permanent state of warfare; and austerity programs for the toilers of the world in order to protect the superprofits of the rich. Solving these problems is going to require a complete restructuring of society and the economy; it's not something that it is possible or even necessary to "cost out". There is in fact no alternative; the cost of not solving these crises is unacceptably high.
The revolution will not be budgeted.