![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")
This week on BNN, Stephen Harper said that financial markets don't like the "kind of instability" that goes with confidence votes on such matters as the Speech from the Throne and the budget that could bring down his minority government.
The prime minister's decision to prorogue parliament actually created the necessity for a Speech from the Throne when the House returns. That's what automatically follows a period of prorogation. His very action is setting up the kind of confidence vote that he said creates instability.
But that is not what is most important about what Stephen Harper said. In his brief remarks, he showed that he believes that the normal operations of our parliamentary democracy promote financial instability. Sessions of parliament always involve votes of confidence. That is true whether there is a majority or a minority government in office. Canadians chose to elect a minority government. In doing so, they were instructing the parties in the House to work with one another to govern the country. They were saying that they did not have confidence in any single political party to govern on its own.
To serve as prime minister a political leader must respect and defend our system of government. He or she must begin from the premise that to remain in office a government must enjoy the confidence of the majority of the members of the House of Commons. That is the essence of our system.
Stephen Harper was not directly elected by Canadians to serve as prime minister. He is not our president. He and the members of his government are in office solely when they enjoy the confidence of the House.
This is not an academic point. It goes to the very heart of our democracy. It was what Canadians fought for, and some died for, in the 19th century. Before that, the struggle to make parliament supreme went on for centuries in Britain.
Stephen Harper poses a threat to our democracy. If he understands it, he doesn't respect it.
He would be much more dangerous as the leader of a majority government.
The classic justification for undemocratic rule has always been that it promotes stability. Autocrats have always complained that democracy is messy and unpredictable. Markets can suffer when votes of confidence are held -- THAT'S WHAT THE MAN SAID.
Harper's got to go. The members of the opposition parties should see to that at the first opportunity.
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