![James Laxer](http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/thumbnail/category_pictures/picture-62_0.jpg "James Laxer is regularly asked to comment on current national and global issues by the Canadian media and frequently writes columns in major newspapers and periodicals.
In 1969, he was one of the founders of the Waffle Group, Canada’s largest New Left political movement. In 1971, at the age of 29, he ran second for the national leadership of the New Democratic Party. In the mid 1970s, James Laxer was a leading crusader against the power of multi national petroleum companies. His books, speeches and television appearances helped lead to the creation of a nationally owned oil company, Petro Canada, established to counter the power of companies like Exxon in Canada.
In 1981, Laxer was appointed research director of the federal New Democratic Party. At the end of his two year term, he wrote a controversial, book length critique of the party’s economic policies, charging that they were seriously dated. The report was front page news in Canada and was debated for months in the national media.
In 1984, the National Film Board of Canada hired Laxer to be host narrator, for a series of documentaries on the changing global economy and Canada’s place in it. In preparing the series, Laxer travelled extensively in Japan, Europe and the United States. The series, entitled Reckoning, was denied broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation because it was seen as too controversial.
Instead it was broadcast by a hook up of all the English language educational networks in the country. The series was also broadcast in the United States, as well, by a large number of PBS stations. The Reckoning series has won awards in both the United States and Canada. One of its films won the blue ribbon, first prize, at the prestigious American Film and Video Festival, for best political documentary. The same film won the Atlantic
Film Festival and national Gemini Awards in Canada for best writing in an information series, awards which went to Laxer and the film’s director as co-authors.
In 1986-87, Laxer spent a year in Europe writing Decline of the Superpowers. From 1978 to 1981, he hosted a public affairs television program on TV Ontario. He regularly went to Europe to conduct interviews with leading European political and intellectual figures. In 1993 his book False God: How the Globalization Myth Has Impoverished Canada, was published by Lester Publishing. In Search of a New Left: Canadian Politics
After the Neo-Conservative Assault was published by Viking in 1996. The Undeclared War: Class Conflict in the Age of Cyber Capitalism, was published by Viking in 1998, and by Penguin Canada in 1999, in a paperback edition. Dalton Camp wrote that the Undeclared War "is an informed and cogent book on the great and growing dilemma of our time: how to preserve a free society in the face of increasing disparity and the creation of a new class society---‘a dominant class and a dominated class.’ This is stuff we need to know." Laxer’s book, Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America was on national best seller lists for seven weeks in the autumn of 2000. In his review of the book for the Globe and Mail, David Shribman, Pulitzer prize winning columnist for the Boston Globe, commented: "This is a book by a Canadian that can change the United States." Stalking the Elephant is to be published by The New Press in New York in September 2001. In 2003, his book, The Border: Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the 49th Parallel, was published by Doubleday Canada. In 2004, Douglas and McIntyre published his book Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism. This memoir of James Laxer’s childhood was the winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for best biography/memoir in 2005.
James Laxer is a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto")
Anyone who has regard for the Canadian political tradition or the great things we have done together in the past as a nation should avert his or her glance today as the NDP and the Bloc vote to keep the Harper government in office on a confidence motion.
There is no glory on this day for anyone. All four parties in the House gain and lose from what is happening in Ottawa.
The Harper government gets to stay in office, having thrown a few crumbs on the table to win the support of the NDP and the Bloc. The Conservatives who relish their take-no-prisoners approach to governing are tall in the saddle. What they have lost is the ability to frighten Canadians with the terrors of last autumn's failed attempt to create a Liberal-NDP coalition government with the backing of the Bloc. Now it is Stephen Harper who is being kept in office by the socialists and the separatists, the very political forces he earlier portrayed as unfit to have a say in governing the country.
Michael Ignatieff is a winner because his bluff paid off. The Liberals are now free to vote against the government on every confidence motion. They have succeeded in shifting the burden of determining the fate of the government to the two other opposition parties. While the Liberals may be the major victors in this week's brawl, that doesn't reverse the remarkable shrinkage Ignatieff's stature has undergone over the past year. Once thought of as a sparkling intellectual, a second Pierre Trudeau, the Liberal leader bumbled his way into and out of the coalition, gave his support to the Harper government in return for a few report cards, and spent the summer who knows where.
Jack Layton delayed another trip to the polls, which may have been his short-term aim. He has lost his position as the stalwart opponent of a deeply reactionary government. Principle gave way to expediency. Chiding the Liberals for their previous votes of confidence in Stephen Harper doesn't amount to much if the NDP backs the government when it really counts.
For the Bloc Quebecois to vote confidence in a government that excoriated their movement and party as having no right to a role in running the country shouts the message that all Gilles Duceppe and his MPs care about is saving their seats. Quebecois who were furious about Harper's demagogic campaign to de-legitimize their members of parliament can only shake their heads in disgust.
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Gilles came tumbling after.
Canadians grow cynical as they watch. Last year, a smaller proportion of Canadians than Americans voted in their countries' respective elections, and that was unprecedented. At a time when Canadians need political leadership to cope with a broken economic system, they get this.
Links:
[1] http://rabble.ca/taxonomy/term/309
[2] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/jack-and-gilles-went-hill#comment-1062599
[3] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/jack-and-gilles-went-hill#comment-1062622
[4] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/jack-and-gilles-went-hill#comment-1062625
[5] http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/09/jack-and-gilles-went-hill#comment-1062750
[6] http://rabble.ca/user
[7] http://rabble.ca/user/register
Everything you say is more or less true Jim, but its all largely a function of the system that we have. If you are a player in this game, you have to play your hand as best as you can. Right now everyone is probably doing what makes the most sense from where they sit and if Jim Laxer were leading the NDP right now, i wonder if he would do things any differently right at this moment.
The biggest danger is if the Liberals overplay their hand and end up with an election that they really aren't prepared for.
Jim Laxer has proven himself to be a Liberal party supporter for quite a few years now. He thinks that the Iggy, torturing loving, Iraq suporting Liberals are Canada's saviour.
His quote of "Jack and Gilles" comes straight from Ignatieff. It's been decades since Laxer has done any real work for progressives in Canada. At this point he a firm member of the red team.
Honestly, can we not do any better than to parrot Michael Ignatieff's "Jack and Gilles" talking point verbatim?
Jack Layton and the NDP are doing what successful social democratic parties have been doing the world over, as well as here at home: turning principles into pragamatic policies that help people.
Laxer disagrees with this approach. We get that. He thinks the NDP should perpetually be Robin to the Liberal Party's Batman. Newsflash: The Liberals are not the centre-left party of Warren Almand and Paul Martin Sr. they were in the 1960s and 1970s.
Laxer's holyer-than-thou routine against the New Democrats is now 40 years past it's best before date. Get a new idea or get out of the way for people who have them.
Quit bashing James Laxer, he makes some good points.
Regardless of the merits of the NDP's political strategy, this decision to back the Harper government is bound to breed cynicism, specially considering Jack Layton's overheated rhetoric in the past when the Liberals propped up the Conservatives.
So surprise, surprise, Layton and Duceppe are run-of-the-mill politicians just trying to outfox their opponents, making deals one day, spewing propaganda the next.
Wake me up when it's time to go to the polls...