Harper and His Crew Strike Again

There is an interesting article in today’s Globe and Mail by Simon Houpt which, in my view, exemplifies the repressive nature of the Canadian Federal Government, led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. A very secretive administration that came to office promising greater accountability and access to information, the Harperites have done everything in their power to ‘control the message,’ tending to ridicule and punish those that don’t share its ideological bent.

Houpt’s article, which I am reproducing below, looks at two recent cuts in arts funding in that context:

New York Diary: Whither Brand Canada?
Without the arts, our image grows dim abroad
SIMON HOUPT
From Monday's Globe and Mail
August 11, 2008 at 2:16 AM EDT

Last month, for the first time in almost a decade, Central Park was eerily quiet on Canada Day.

Every year since 1999, the federal government has sponsored a New York City satellite of its July 1 party on Parliament Hill, importing a handful of Canadian bands as part of the park's free SummerStage concert series. There have been delicate tribute shows to Joni Mitchell, fuse-blowing rock from the Tragically Hip, a resplendent Rufus Wainwright, rain-soaked sets from the Cowboy Junkies and Natalie MacMaster, and musicians making in-jokes about hockey and the CBC that the expats in the audience would then politely explain to the locals.

And at the end of every show, the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan would suddenly blossom with thousands of tiny Canadian flags worn in the hair or thrust into the back pockets or temporarily tattooed onto the sun-kissed arms of concertgoers, most of whom were merely honorary Canucks for a day.

No more. This year the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) killed the concerts. When I asked a spokesperson in Ottawa last month for an explanation, she refused to comment. Last Friday, it all became depressingly clear when DFAIT announced it was cutting all ties to culture by axing its PromArt program, a $4.7-million annual fund that sent artists into the world to speak for Canada.

The program's death notice was revealed in exquisitely cynical fashion. On Thursday, a government official leaked the story to a reporter by explaining the program had funded mainly political radicals and others it deemed naughty: the former CBC pundit and current Al-Jazeera contributor Avi Lewis, the journalist Gwynne Dyer, and a Toronto rock band known as Holy Fuck. Talk radio and conservative bloggers lapped up the talking points like so much cream, outraged that millions of dollars of tax money had been used to support speech with which they disagreed.

Did they care that they'd been spun? In fact, the vast majority of the funds sent abroad artists and companies that Stephen Harper would enjoy with his wife and kids: $8,000 to send Newfoundland's Duo Concertante dance company to China; $30,000 for the acclaimed experimental circus troupe Les 7 doigts de la main to give 42 performances in Mexico and Germany; $15,000 to The Nickle Arts Museum of Alberta to present an exhibition for six months in Poland.

There are the dozens of $500, $750 and $1,000 grants that paid the airfare for award-winning authors to go forth as independent representatives of Canada. Last year, more than 300 grants were awarded.

The program was not, as its critics are barking, a wasteful socialist/Liberal boondoggle. Its greatest champion was in fact Joe Clark, who as the secretary of state for External Affairs (now DFAIT) from 1984-91 oversaw a major expansion in the cultural diplomacy budget because he recognized the importance of increasing Canada's presence abroad as the country embraced free trade with the U.S. and made its way in a globalized world.

And killing PromArt was never really about silencing radicals; that was just a red herring that paid political dividends. Late on Friday, while attention was focused on the DFAIT cut, the government quietly said it was also ending Trade Routes, a $9-million program run by Heritage Canada to help artists take their work abroad.
It's hard to overstate how low a profile Canada has abroad. If that's the way the government wants it, that's their decision. But if we want our voice to have influence in the rest of the world, to be the moral beacon we believe it is, that requires marketing Brand Canada. Sending artists and writers abroad is an integral part of that marketing that happens to be extremely cost-effective.

A little while ago Pamela Wallin told me that when she served within DFAIT as the consul-general of New York, culture was an indispensable tool to create a broader understanding of Canada within the United States. “It's all about presence; it's all about being top of mind. The more stages we continue to take ourselves off of, the more difficult the overall mission becomes,” she said.

“In order to be more than the Great White North, or more than just a trading partner like others, I think we have to show how interwoven the connections are, and how broad that cultural mix really is.”

She noted that the consulate also often used Canadian artists visiting New York to soften potential trading partners.

“It's an entrée point, it's a way to deal with people other than at the office, nine-to-five, about economic matters.”

That's why it was smart foreign policy to have Feist headline the Canada Day show in Central Park back in 2006, shortly before she became the iPod girl and a four-time Grammy nominee.

Even the United States, which invented the globalized free market in culture, has a long tradition of spending government money on so-called cultural diplomacy. During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department sent jazz musicians Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and others to the Middle East, Asia and Europe to spread American values. The U.S. is spending more than half a billion dollars a year on TV and radio broadcasts that bring American music, comedy, and drama to the Arab world and other territories.

This is lost on DFAIT, where PromArt and its antecedent programs were never really understood. One long-time bureaucrat in the department told me recently: “Anyone caught doing culture, it was a career killer.”

DFAIT, being stocked with diplomats used to reading scripts written at head office, was always uncomfortable with the voices of artists who weren't direct government employees.

This might, in fact, be the core reason the feds have just cut a small but effective program that didn't really mean much to the overall budget. Since taking office, Stephen Harper has tightened communications coming out of Ottawa, putting choke collars on his cabinet ministers and spokespeople. He wants to be the only one who speaks for Canada abroad, too. From the government's perspective, artists especially are suspect: they don't tend to stay on message; sometimes, they even voice independent thoughts. Worst of all, they're more interesting to listen to than a droning politician. Maybe Harper is jealous.

I'm only half kidding.

80% of Canada's Population and Climate Change

There is an interesting article from today's Globe and Mail, which I am reproducing below, discussing how a coalition of four Canadian provinces has joined with seven American states to form the Western Climate Initiative, set up to establish a cap and trade system to reduce carbon emissions. I find it quite telling that the four provinces (Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia) representing about 80% of the Canadian population, find it necessary to use their powers to circumvent the Harper Government - a clear indictment, their rosy rhetoric notwithstanding, of the lack of action on the part of Canada's Conservative Government, which plans to force reductions in emissions, not next year, not next decade, but in another 42 years, by 2050!

Bilateral coalition unveils cap-and-trade proposal
JOSH WINGROVE
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
July 24, 2008 at 4:05 AM EDT

A coalition of four provinces and seven states revealed a framework yesterday for a broad cap-and-trade program to reduce polluting greenhouse-gas emissions, the first such program in North America.

The Western Climate Initiative draft design proposes setting a hard cap on industrial emissions, providing cash incentives for companies to reduce their pollution levels. Following a European cap-and-trade model - by which greener companies can sell their pollution "credits" to the highest bidder - it would be the first such carbon system on the continent.

"This rewards efficiency," said Nicholas Heap, a climate-change analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation. "The people that are using less fuel and emitting less greenhouse gases are going to have lower costs."

The program would grant each participating province (British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec) an allocated and declining cap for each year from 2012 to 2020, set in advance. Those caps have not yet been set, but would be based on population, electricity consumption and production, and economic activity - not on current efficiency, the WCI report says. As such, the most efficient provinces in 2012 could sooner sell credits to other regions, creating a revenue stream.

The overall WCI emissions cap - the sum of each province and state's cap - "will be set at the best estimate of expected actual emissions," the WCI report said.

It is not yet clear how each province would enforce the caps, with the draft design allowing flexibility for each jurisdiction. One carrot on the enforcement stick is set, however: Any company that did not have sufficient credits to cover its emissions would pay a threefold credit penalty the next year.

The plan is still open for review, and is the culmination of several policy briefs released earlier. It will be reviewed publicly and finalized in September.
The effect of the cap would be for polluting companies to pay for the emissions they created. They would be free to pass those costs on to consumers.

"They'll be paying a price for putting carbon in the atmosphere; that is the idea," said B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner, whose province was the first to join the WCI. "We believe there are economic and environmental opportunities that can come from a cap-and-trade system."

Emissions caused by the production of transportation fuels, such as gasoline, are included in the draft design. Others include electric generation, general combustion, industrial process emission sources and transportation fuel combustion. The gases considered as emissions are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride.

The cap would apply to all companies emitting more than 25,000 tonnes of those gases, measured as "carbon dioxide equivalents" per year.

"We recognize we're in a carbon-constrained world," said Jock Finlayson, chief economist at the B.C. Business Council, adding that it remains to be seen how the WCI proposal would fit in with the federal government's plan to reduce emissions.

"The devil will all be in those regulatory details. There's a great bit more to come."

The emissions would be regulated at the point of entry into the member province or state. For instance, emissions created by transportation fuel would likely be measured at a distributor - not car by car - but may vary from province to province. Companies would be required to begin monitoring emissions in 2010, and begin reporting them in 2011.
Emissions from the production of biofuel would not be included.

The WCI plan includes the option for provinces or states to maintain "comparable fiscal measures" for putting a price on emissions. B.C. is the only province with such a system, after introducing a carbon tax this month.

The four provinces, which joined the initiative voluntarily, make up nearly 80 per cent of Canada's population, and account for 49 per cent of its greenhouse-gas emissions. Ontario joined most recently, just last week. The participating states are Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The eleven jurisdictions have a total population of more than 80 million people, creating a broad trading market for polluters.

The United States has a similar cap-and-trade program to reduce acid rain.

The WCI draft design will be discussed by stakeholders in San Diego on July 29. The WCI plan is open for public comments until mid-August.

View the full report or make comments at http://www.WesternClimateInitiative.org.