![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")
The populist fig leaves worn by Stephen Harper and his ministers -- you can order facsimiles online -- to hide the truth that this government has only one priority -- low taxes for the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else -- were torn asunder by two events on the eve of the resumption of parliament this week.
Last Thursday, Transport Minister John Baird stood behind a blue sign that read "Protecting Canadians" to announce new fees to be charged to all air travelers to fund additional security measures at the country's airports. The user-fee that the minister denied was a tax will raise $1.5 billion in new money over the next five years.
While in opposition, Conservatives called fees charged at airports an "air tax", but now the T word has been expunged from their vocabulary. Baird wore his innocent face while making the announcement. This is in contrast to his snarly face, the one he wears while answering questions in the House of Commons.
In Charlottetown meanwhile, Harper cabinet minister Helena Guergis showed up at the airport fifteen minutes before the scheduled departure of her Air Canada Jazz flight to Montreal.
The minister, accompanied by oversize bags she wanted to carry on to the plane yelled at the Jazz agent to hurry up because he was wasting her time. When asked to remove her boots, after running through the security check setting off the bells, she threw the footwear at a security official. She yelled at another employee: "I'm going to be stuck in this shithole because of you."
Then Guergis and her aide lunged at the security barrier and began kicking and banging on the glass.
The plane's departure was held up and the minister was allowed on board.
Fascinating juxtaposition: one Conservative minister announcing an increased airport fee in the name of security, and baldly denying it is a tax, while another minister of the crown spews contempt for the airport workers who are the country's first-line of security at airports.
Anyone who was not a member of Harper's little elite would have been arrested and cooled off in a cell for behaving the Guergis did. AndI thought this government was tough on crime.
Harper and his ministers like to portray themselves as good old Tim Hortons Canadians who are not to be confused with the pointy-heads in the opposition parties.
The fig leaves have fallen. The Conservatives don't have to wait now for the nude machines to be installed at airports to be exposed for what they are.
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