Not just an economic crisis – it’s very much a political one too
By Peter Ewart
Thursday, January 15, 2009 03:52 AM
By Peter Ewart
These days in the U.S., Canada, and other countries, it often gets presented that the main thing we are facing is a severe economic crisis. What often gets put in the shadow is that we are also confronted with a profound crisis in our political system, one that very easily could wobble into uncharted waters.
To put it in a phrase – our democratic system is in deep trouble. And we have seen many signs over the last period of time.
At the end of this last year in the U.S., we were treated to the spectacle of the George W. Bush Republican government, in league with the Democratic Party leadership of Congress pushing through a deeply unpopular $750 billion bailout for the Wall Street bankers who had played a big role in precipitating the sub-prime mortgage mess.
It is estimated that as many as 90% of the American people were vehemently opposed to this bailout of the Wall Street moneybags, yet both houses of Congress eventually passed the bill authorizing it. Now that the banks have their hands on these funds, they are arrogantly refusing to tell the American people what they are doing with the money. Thus, perhaps the greatest robbery of the public treasury in the history of the U.S. has taken place with the full support of the majority of the elected representatives of Congress, including the newly elected U.S. president, Barack Obama.
There are numerous examples of anti-democratic and anti-popular decisions being made by political parties in power in Canada and British Columbia, ones that have serious economic repercussions for the people of the country. Particularly infuriating was the sale of BC Rail in 2003 despite Premier Gordon Campbell’s promise not to sell the publicly-owned railway.
More immediate, take the decision to hold the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver / Whistler. This was initiated by the Glen Clark NDP government back in the 1990s and fully supported by the Liberal government that followed. But just how democratic was the process? It is well known that many of the several million people who live in the rural areas of the province did not support paying for these Olympics, not the least of which reason was the potential of accumulating massive debt. But they never got the opportunity to vote in a referendum on this issue. Only those people actually living in Vancouver did, and even then, a substantial minority of those were in opposition.
Now we are approaching the time when the bills must be paid, and they are substantial. Counting up the cost of the Olympic and Olympic-related projects, such as the Sea-to-Sky Highway improvements, the Vancouver Convention Centre (already $500 billion over budget), the Canada Line, and so on, Vaughan Palmer, columnist for the Vancouver Sun, estimates that the final tab could be approaching $7 billion (there, of course, should be substantial returns, but many believe there will be a substantial shortfall). This is at a time when we are clearly entering a severe recession, the forest industry is in the tank, and mining and other industries are plummeting.
We are headed for a real mess, but what grates the most is that the majority of British Columbians were not in favour of the Olympic extravaganza in the first place. Yet, it is we who must now foot the bill.
Is it any wonder why almost 58% of the people voted in the last election to throw out the existing electoral system and bring in the BC-STV system? Whatever one’s view on the benefits or shortcomings of BC-STV – one thing is clear. That vote was a reflection of the profound mistrust that British Columbians have with the current political process, which is dominated by political parties that act like cartels and which serve tiny, but powerful elites whose interests are often diametrically opposed to the vast majority of people.
Will simply switching political “horses,” i.e., electing another political party, change the increasingly anti-democratic nature of the political decisions being made? Such is the view being put forward by some about the election of Barack Obama in the U.S. However, we should not hold our breath in anticipation.
The political problems we are facing are systemic and have to be approached with systemic solutions that empower the people and ensure that their will is expressed in the political decisions that are made. Indeed, without a greater congruence between the will of the people and the electoral and legislative structures that are supposed to represent them, and without people having more control over these structures, the entire political process could well become unstable as the economic crisis deepens.
Peter Ewart is a writer, college instructor and community activist who is based in Prince George, BC. He can be reached at peter.ewart@shaw.ca
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Posted by: Sonja on January 15 2009 7:33 AM
Vote for BC-STV on May 12.
No doubt he is respectfully allowing you to make up your own mind.
For more info: www.stv.ca