{"article":{"id":6205,"heading":"excellent article in toronto globe and mail","author":"Michael Valpy","created":"2001-04-25 19:07:35","modified":"2005-08-15 00:32:41","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:32:41","article":"

POSTED AT 12:05 PM EDT Tuesday, April 24

Democracy demolished

By MICHAEL VALPY

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Portrait of two citizens at Quebec: Somewhere today outside the old walled city, the cradle of Canada, Lori-Ann

Campbell, 22, and her boyfriend, David Martino, 24, are keeping a date with the unfolding destiny of their country's

democracy.

Two specks, two bit players, taking part in an event of such dramatic media and political dimensions that it has washed

beyond the grasp of Canadians' easy comprehension. Six thousand police. Thousands of journalists. Perhaps tens of

thousands of marchers, protesters and demonstrators, with Campbell and Martino among them.

For the past few weeks, the two have explored with me their reasons for wanting to be in Quebec City for the Summit

of the Americas — the gathering of 34 presidents and prime ministers from the Western Hemisphere, primarily to

advance a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

We have met at Toronto's York University, where Campbell is working toward a master's degree in political science. We

have met for Sunday brunch in a coffee shop in Toronto's Little Italy, talked at a downtown academic bookstore.

Martino, a master's student at University of Western Ontario's Centre for Theory and Criticism, has sent me long e-mail

messages late at night.

They have wrestled with their ideas of their country, their views of themselves as citizens, their feelings about what may

transpire this weekend on Quebec City's streets, about protest, civil disobedience, violence, the confrontation between

police and political dissent.

Martino writes poetry in his leisure time. Campbell sings opera, plays piano and oboe, is a York University don,

belonged to the Young Progressive Conservatives in her home province of Newfoundland, has done volunteer work in

a women's shelter and a child-care centre in Toronto's troubled Jane-Finch neighbourhood. The two go to church

together when they meet on weekends.

What has emerged from our conversations is two young people's deep unease and skepticism about the state of

Canadian democracy. They are not out on the margin of Canadian thought. I have had the same conversations with

judges, lawyers, doctors, farmers, politicians, priests, business people, my own children, public servants, the elderly

parents of my friends and, of course, many students.

A dictionary says democracy is a word derived from the Greek demos (people) and krateein (to rule) and defines it, in

part, as \"a form of government in which political power resides in all the people . . . with each citizen sharing equally in

political privilege and duty.\"

The unease and skepticism spring from the growing fear that, in an increasingly \"global\" world, Canada's political

institutions may no longer be effective.

They arise from concern about who really exercises power: Unbridled executive governments in federal and provincial

capitals? Unelected international trade tribunals that function in secret? Corporate executives? International trade

bureaucrats?

And they arise from a concern about the ethics and accountability of those who exercise power.

Last year, the authoritative Institute for Research on Public Policy conducted an in-depth study of Canadians' views of

their democracy.

Most people still seemed content, the institute reported, but they put more faith in unelected interest groups — known,

bafflingly, as civil society — than in elected politicians to bring about political change, believed overwhelmingly that

people and organizations with money have more influence on government than those without, have significantly lost

confidence in political parties to shape public policy, increasingly see Parliament and provincial legislatures as empty shells

for executive decision-making and overwhelmingly support the power of the courts to strike down legislation deemed

unconstitutional.

Side by side with the findings of ground-breaking research by University of Toronto political scientist Neil Nevitte —

that Canadians today, young Canadians especially, are more likely than Americans or Western Europeans to engage in

protests, demonstrations and boycotts — the IRPP study offers a more substantial context to what is taking place this

weekend in Quebec City and generally across the country than does Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's recent assessment:

\"Blah-blah-blah.\"

\"Why go to Quebec?\" Campbell asked one afternoon. \"Because it is impossible for one individual to grasp what is

happening. Because being in a collective space — with the police, the people who live there, the NGOs, seeing who's

inside the security wall and who's outside — I do believe it creates discourse. For young people, discourse is so

important to the formative character.\"

The issue at Quebec City today is democracy. Yesterday's issue, the dead issue, is the debate over free trade versus no

free trade.

Agreements like the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) are considered the hallmarks of global

governance, a force that is: without political accountability, beyond democratic reach, captive to transnational corporate

power, unconcerned with North-South economic disparity, human-rights issues and national and international labour

and environmental standards.

Ottawa lawyer Steven Shrybman, a litigation specialist in international agreements, calls the World Trade Organization,

created in 1995, the globe's most important international covenant.

Toronto lawyer Michelle Swenarchuk, counsel and director of international programs for the Canadian Environmental

Law Association, is a world-recognized authority on environmental law and trade agreements. She has advised the

Canadian government on several international conventions. Her description of the WTO is more blunt: she calls it a coup

d'état against national sovereignty.

Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, said her 100,000-member organization will pursue its criticism

of international trade agreements as an extraparliamentary opposition rather than enter into parliamentary politics.

\"We won't get the politics we want until we build the space. Until we challenge the corporate juggernaut, there's no

room to work. You have to create the political space [outside parliaments] for participatory democracy to work on a

global scale.\"

Marc Lortie, Chrétien's personal representative at the Quebec summit, has had the unenviable job of explaining the

government's FTAA agenda to the public.

He acknowledges what he calls the \"huge cynicism.\" He acknowledges that the government — a big free-trade

cheerleader — is not doing a good job of explaining to people on the street that it is committed to coupling trade with

democracy, social justice and environmental protection.

Lortie's problem, among other things, is that the public has not seen any wording of an FTAA democracy clause.

His problem is that no hemispheric government is really a strong advocate of environmental standards being included in

the FTAA, and few are strong advocates of social justice protections.

In an e-mail a few days ago, David Martino commented on the news that the Canadian government has enabled private

corporations to buy \"encounters\" with national delegations at the summit.

\"It seems as though the implications of this are accepted, generally, as natural within the proceedings of business and

politics. Where do responsibility and ethics fit? On the other hand, people acting in opposition cannot agree as to

whether being a 'balancing' part of the meetings is to be co-opted.\"

Lori-Ann Campbell told the story of attending last year's general assembly of the Organization of American States

(OAS) in Windsor, Ont. As she and Martino walked around the concrete and steel security fence surrounding the

delegates' meeting place, they came upon a cluster of police.

\"How long are you guys planning on being here?\" she asked.

\"As long as the enemy is here,\" an officer responded.

Said Campbell: \"Wow. This is unbelievable. I am the enemy.\" Edmonton physician Carolyn Steinberg is not in Quebec

City today.

But when her daughter, Anna, 21, a University of Alberta political science student, announced that she would be going,

Dr. Steinberg and several other parents got together and tried to understand what was motivating their offspring.

They attended a workshop on free-trade issues. They were impressed by their children's knowledge and found that

they shared their dislike of the secrecy of the FTAA negotiations and concerns about social justice and environmental

issues. They were proud of their children's engagement. \"We want them to grow up in a country they can be proud of,\"

Dr. Steinberg said.

Then the parents read about the 6,000 police officers to be at the summit, about plastic bullets and pepper spray, and

they became concerned for their children's safety. They circulated a petition to other parents, calling on the government

not to let people be harassed by security forces.

Dr. Steinberg took her concerns to her MP, Justice Minister Anne McLellan, and was told, she said, that the protesters

have had enough say. \"I wonder,\" she concluded, \"if the government has lost touch with the public.\"

In February, one of several meetings convened by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to brief

civil-society organizations on plans for the summit was held in the cafeteria of the department's Ottawa headquarters,

the Pearson Building. Lortie was chairman. Peter Boehm, Canada's ambassador to the OAS, and Claude Carrière,

Canada's chief negotiator on the FTAA, were present. The room was crowded.

The civil society representatives soon started telling Lortie that the information being given them by DFAIT officials was

thin, very thin — about making public the draft FTAA text, about the democracy clause, about protection of indigenous

people, protection of national culture, education and other social programs from transnational corporate intrusion, about

equality of women.

Eventually, Diana Bronson of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, an organization concerned with social justice issues in the

Americas, lamented that the people more and more excluded from the summit and from anything to do with FTAA

negotiations were the elected parliamentarians from the countries involved.

CELA's Michelle Swenarchuk said parliamentarians everywhere feel marginalized, blocked from influencing their

governments on international agreements.

She said her experience with Canadian cabinet ministers is that they themselves don't understand the agreements. \"The

only minister I ever dealt with who knew the details of a trade agreement was [former prime minister] John Turner. It's

the experts who negotiate these things, with no consultation with elected officials or line ministries.\"

She said the 1999 WTO negotiations in Seattle failed, not because of massive street protests, but because European

environment ministers vetoed their own negotiators on subjecting genetically modified foods to the organization's trade

rules. \"That was instructive. The European ministers were able to intervene.

\"With NAFTA, we now have a high degree of economic integration without political engagement . . . with commissions

[such as the one on environmental protection] structured to neutralize opposition from environmental groups. With the

FTAA, I don't see an overall political route. This is fundamentally about American power, like taking on the British in the

19th century.\"

Maria Minna, minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency, insisted in an interview that

Canada is indeed setting the agenda for the FTAA. \"The hemisphere has the widest disparity economically between rich

and poor of any region in the world,\" she said. \"This is why [our] emphasis has been on equitability. You can't have

trade without [improving] social structure. It would only create further distortions.\"

She said the Canadian government has financed civil-society meetings all over the Americas, financed projects to

strengthen democracy such as creating ombudsmen, improving electoral laws and judicial proceedings, worked on

giving civil-society organizations greater access to international negotiations. But \"my experience,\" Swenarchuk says, \"has

been that we're seen as a nuisance, as a political problem. There's no change to any of Canada's positions. They're not

there to listen. There's no real engagement.\"

One oft-cited example of ignored advice is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. After months of work with the

House of Commons environment committee in the late 1990s, a coalition of environmental agencies known as the Toxic

Group won support from the committee — a majority of whose members were Liberals — for amendments that would

have strengthened the legislation significantly.

At which point the Friday Group, a business lobby on the environment, reportedly made its views known to members

of the cabinet and the amendments were rejected. The Toxic Group asked for the same opportunity and was turned

down. The bill was pushed through Parliament.

The growth of civil-society organization has been enormous. And governments such as Canada's are taking them more

seriously in the wake of the 1996 failure of the controversial Multilateral Agreement on Investment negotiations —

torpedoed by Canadian and other civil-society groups who obtained a leaked copy of the text — and the 1999 WTO

meeting in Seattle debacle.

\"In that sense, there's no more indulgence and condescension,\" she says. \"The MAI defeat made a huge impression on

them. We beat the Canadian government.

Once we get our hands on the material, we can create political problems for them.\"

The Treasury Board recently prepared detailed guidelines (not yet made public) on how the government is to consult

citizens groups on major policy initiatives. It is not, however, an initiative that has been universally applauded.

Environmental and other activist groups point out that many significant regulations — which account for about half of all

federal legislation — are seen in advance by finance and trade bureaucrats to ensure that they comply with Canada's

commitments to NAFTA and the WTO.

\"There is no public consultation on regulatory instruments,\" said a senior analyst with one group. \"We don't know

what's not seeing the light of day.\"

In addition, the Treasury Board guidelines have run into opposition from MPs such as Winnipeg-South Liberal Reg

Alcock, who argues vehemently that elected politicians, not government public servants, should have the mandate to

consult the public on the government's intentions.

\"The priests are the executive and the bureaucracy,\" he says. \"The less we hold politicians accountable for what is done,

the more irrelevant they become.\"

Alcock operates what probably is a unique machinery on Parliament Hill for consulting his constituents, a network of

3,000 people in his riding to whom he circulates the briefing notes given him on government initiatives and invites their

feedback, which he then circulates in a constituency newsletter.

\"You can't have democracy without transparency. I get 300 to 400 letters a week. I read the equivalent of War and

Peace every month. I tell people I'm going to vote with the government, and they accept that, but I've had screaming

matches [with other MPs and ministers] in caucus.\"

But what if more and more decisions important to Canadians are being made by international tribunals, according to

international rules beyond reach of elected parliamentarians' oversight? Made by influential and powerful corporations

seen to have the ear of government?

Conservative Senator Lowell Murray, who co-chaired a 1999 Senate committee on social cohesion in Canada, said that

when democracy is perceived as becoming privatized, people don't vote — a testament perhaps both to the sliding voter

turnout in federal elections over the past decade and to the number of people marching in Quebec City.

He said political parties have become useless in terms of public policy development, that they no longer play a role in

shaping policy or integrating the values of Canadians, a prime reason why the Commons has become an empty shell for

executive government.

Although not every parliamentarian agrees.

John Godfrey, the Liberal MP for Toronto's Don Valley West, played a major role in raising the profile of

early-childhood development within the Liberal Party and government, both as co-chairman of the party's caucus

committee on the issue and as a conduit between the government and non-governmental organizations doing

social-policy research.

\"I have no sense of powerlessness when I work on these things. By knowing what I want and seizing the instruments

available, I can be purposeful.\"

Still, there are a lot of people marching in Quebec City.

Geneva Guerin is one of them, tired and sick with the flu.

Athletic — she is an outstanding soccer player — normally bursting with energy, the 23-year-old student-council

member at Montreal's Concordia University has been worn down by the past few weeks of organizing and fundraising

to send 88 busloads — that is 4,224 students — to the summit.

I had dinner one night in a tiny Old Montreal vegetarian restaurant with Guerin and fellow members of Concordia's

summit transportation committee — Sabine Friesinger, 23, who is on the student-council executive; Jason Fitzgerald, 27, a

graduate engineer, and a third young woman who asked not to be identified.

Guerin talked about being petrified of being arrested at today's demonstration. Over chickpea, bean and leafy salads,

they all spoke of how they saw democracy being stolen from them by corporate-driven trade agreements beyond their

reach as citizens, agreements unacceptably at odds with their concerns for the environment and sustainable

development, for issues of Third World social justice.

They were well informed, articulate, thoughtful and angry at their government, angry at the imbalance of power they

see in the world they are inheriting, and angry at what they see as the thrall of governments to corporate influence.

This was what was taking them to Quebec.

It is interesting how little factually is known in Canada about just how much corporations influence government and

how the influence is exercised.

No one, for example, has written a biography of Thomas D'Aquino, the urbane, sophisticated chief executive officer of

the Business Council on National Issues, the voice of Canada's 150 largest corporations. He has been readily demonized

by left-leaning journalists and just as readily celebrated in the business world. But what about how he thinks? How he

and his organization work?

A former senior federal civil servant described receiving an invitation a few years ago for \"Saturday drinks\" at

D'Aquino's Ottawa house. The former civil servant did not go.

The following week, his minister had a quiet word with him, suggesting that he should attend the next time an invitation

was issued.

Is it all done this way, over drinks, over dinner? A sharing of interests and information, a meeting of minds? Paid

corporate encounters with Summit of the Americas delegates somewhere this weekend behind Quebec City's old walls?

Maude Barlow described how she once met Latin American trade negotiators at an international gathering — and

found they all were sons of their country's economic elites. It's the sort of description that can lead to paranoia. And

demonstrations.

The MAI negotiations and Seattle changed many things, altered the narrative.

At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, leaders of transnational corporations spoke of corporate

responsibility and addressing global inequality and environmental issues.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has created a minister for corporate social responsibility and a bureaucracy to examine

\"social inclusiveness.\" Canadian cabinet ministers have held private \"dinners\" for key civil society activists.

Finance Minister Paul Martin invited leading activists — such as Barlow and writer Naomi Klein — inside the Quebec

City security fence. They said no.

And the response of business? The Atkinson Foundation-funded Commission on Corporate Accountability and

Democracy — currently holding hearings across the country — sent out a thousand invitations to business leaders

asking them to make submissions. There was not one response.

It is a world of breakneck change, of rethinking how democracy will be exercised and how people will live together.

David Martino is in Quebec, looking for a definition of citizenship for himself in this world. He grew up in a Toronto

immigrant community, was disturbed by stories from his parents of how they were treated when they first arrived in

Canada, worked with disabled children and adults in a community centre after school, met North African refugees on a

scholarship to Italy, became angry by what he saw as structural social inequality \"with an always distant 'cause' that was

never referred back to the system that perpetuated it.\"

From the e-mail he sent just before he left for Quebec:

\"I am only a single person in the world. But I believe that we, as peoples who live with this Earth, have a responsibility

to it and each other. We have lost sight of any sense of justice, of responsibility and ethics. We have lost faith that

people together present another form of power, one that can effect and influence change. I find it more and more

necessary to act in the world . . . We all need to educate ourselves, beyond the pretensions of 'being informed;' we need

to be moved back into life.\"

Some blah-blah-blah.



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