Most people take stock of the year on New Year’s Eve. I’ve always taken stock of it at the end of August when the school year is just about to begin; a hangover, I suppose, from entering a new grade in elementary or high school or a new year of university in September. With my kids in high school and university, the school calendar still has meaning at our house — Labour Day being the real New Year’s Day.
I remember writing the August 2010 column this time last year (obviously), fresh off the plane (and a boat) from a trip to Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. But over the past year, Egypt erupted into a violent bloody revolution that killed well over 800 people and deposed Hosni Mubarak — now on trial for murder, corruption, and unpaid parking tickets. In homage to the power of modern technology that helped to bring him down, Mubarak’s plea, in Arabic, “I categorically deny all the charges,” has been turned into a cellphone ringtone.
Revolution and/or civil war have spread to Syria, Libya, and other countries in the region. Muammar Gaddafi will be ousted around the time you read this. The media always called him “Strongman Muammar Gaddafi,” as if strongman was a title. He’s not looking so strong anymore.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is facing a massive revolt and has been firing on civilians, using snipers, murderous thugs, and now gunships. As for stable and prosperous Turkey, its military leadership resigned in August, signalling they are either withdrawing from their traditional role as guardians of the secular republic or they’re planning a coup.
Even Israel has had large demonstrations.
As for Europe, when I was in Greece last year, it was in a financial depression that was so bad, the sales clerks on the Plaka were asking me how to immigrate to Canada. But this year, as the Germans have repeatedly rescued the Greek economy from a generation of profligacy and tax evasion, Greeks are rioting in the streets because apparently, they have to pay tax now and can’t retire at 55 on full pensions anymore; some even blaming the Germans for what happened in 1942.
France is in trouble because its banks are exposed to the PIIGS’s sovereign debt (PIIGS meaning Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain). The other PIIGS may default on their debt as well, particularly Italy, which can’t seem to get rid of a president who hangs around with young escort girls who call him “daddy,” and whose debt stock of 120 per cent of GDP accounts for 23 per cent of all Eurozone sovereign debt.
As for the euro itself, its days may be numbered. The Germans can’t be expected to pay for the poor spending choices of Greece, Spain, Italy, and the rest of the PIIGS forever. Despite the theatre displayed for the media about European union, at some point the Germans may simply say, “To hell with the European unity stuff . . . We’re not paying for anyone’s cushy pensions anymore.”
Moving west, London, Birmingham, and other English cities were on fire this month, with looting so rampant, the looters were trying on sneakers before they stole them to get just the right size. And poor Ireland, which used to be a Euro Tiger and went effectively broke before Greece did, is once again exporting its most valuable resource to Canada: its youth.
If you watched any American TV this summer, all you would have heard about was the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis in Congress, a contrived event, designed to embarrass President Barack Obama. Every time I hear a right-wing republican rant and rave about “taking our country back,” all I can think about is that these people just don’t like Obama because he’s black and smart.
In the Ungovernable States of America, a group of right-wing ideologues under the Tea Party banner effectively held their country (and their party) ransom in their zeal to cut Medicare and other government spending (except the military). But of course, they wouldn’t allow any tax increases to pay for American profligacy over the Bush years; even tax increases that would help pay for increased security since Sept. 11, the Afghan and Iraq wars, and the cost to bail out the financial and automotive sector in 2008 (all under George W. Bush’s watch).
To the converted, this abhorrence to tax increases is so that American millionaires and gazillionaires (who the Republicans call “job creators” now) can still create low-paying jobs . . . in Asia. But even Warren Buffett said in an editorial in The New York Times, “Raise my taxes,” admitting he only pays 17 per cent of his income in tax whereas others in his organization pay 30 per cent. It’s hard to have a lot of sympathy for low taxes paid by “job creators” like Taylor Armstrong, reality TV star of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who paid $60,000 for a birthday party for her four-year-old daughter.
The debt-ceiling debacle resulted in Standard & Poor’s downgrading the United State’s credit rating, which is interesting, because S&P somehow missed the entire subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. Funny, that.
Michele Bachmann, who is running for president of the United States, lambastes the government in speech after speech, but she and her husband applied for government grants and lobbied for bailout money for her constituency. She has said African-American families were more stable when slavery was legal, she doesn’t believe in evolution, she thinks being gay is like being a slave (and is curable!), and believes the Renaissance was a bad idea.
Even Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has now thrown his Stetson in the presidential ring, is competing with Bachmann for the ultra-religious vote, and not only pooh-poohs evolution and global warming, but has accused the Chairman of the Fed of treason for printing more money to avoid a Japanese-style bout of deflation. And he hates taxes, too.
And they want to be president? God help them, truly.
The U.S., regrettably, is in a mess and nobody really knows how it’ll all end up this time next year; the political class being to blame. It’s about to go into recession again, the stock market having plummeted in the past week. All I can think about is that Spain once had the greatest empire in the world, too. Is it time for America’s fin de siècle? I wonder these days.
Canada, it seems, is an oasis of calm in this sea of anarchy. We still have problems with poverty, especially among members of our First Nations, but the economy is reasonably strong, in comparison to that of Europe and the U.S. We have enough oil and gas to keep us in popcorn for the next 300 years, and if the Americans don’t want our oil (or play fast and loose with our lumber), we can always sell it to the Chinese. We have lots of water if the continent starts to dry up, and other generations can decide whether to keep it or sell the excess to others. The dollar is high enough that Canadian businesses have been snapping up U.S. businesses (and our banks’ trademarks now adorn some of their sports stadiums).
We appear to have our swagger back, much of it owed to Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien in the 1990s, who did what no one seems to have been able to do in the U.S.: fix their finances. Thanks are also in order for Brian Mulroney who instigated free trade and the GST. Our current prime minister, aware of the uncertainty down south, realizes we can’t rely on the U.S. and have to diversify our exports. He has been to Brazil and other countries, telling them that Canada is open for business. Canada has a political system that gives a majority government of the day the ability to do the right things for the country, even if they are politically unpopular at the time.
I’ve had a good-natured e-mail debate with Eugene Meehan of the Ottawa office of McMillian LLP, who stunned an audience of the B.C. branch of the Canadian Bar Association a couple of years ago by saying that political union with the U.S. was inevitable. It was just a matter of time, he said, referring, I think, to Scotland joining England, and the Europeans happily joining together to form the European Union.
But if you look at the U.S., I don’t think joining it is inevitable, or for that matter, desirable.
Eugene and I have talked about having a duel about the topic from time to time, either live, or in the pages of this or other legal magazines. (I’m sure duel meant “debate.” As if we were to have a real duel — I’m not sure either of us is good at swordplay; wordplay is better).
So with Europe having difficulty staying together, and the Scottish Nationalist Party planning to hold a sovereignty referendum that might lead to the separation of Scotland from the U.K., and with the current dysfunctional political system in the U.S., I think any move by Canada (or parts thereof) to join with the U.S. is like joining the Roman Empire in 366 AD or the Spanish Empire in 1800. (Mind you, if New York state wants to join us, it’s worth a discussion).
I like Americans, and there’s a large part of what America stands for that is admirable, respectable, and lovable. I like America’s “can do” attitude that leads to things like moon landings and iPods. But I don’t like right-wing propaganda that masquerades as truth, theocratic anti-intellectual/anti-science rhetoric, Fox News, rampant social and economic inequality, the idiot culture of reality TV, and of course guns, to name a few. I don’t like their political system and ability to start wars to change regimes they don’t like. And that’s what we’d get if we ever joined the U.S.: the very bad with the very good.
Being Canadian means I get to choose what I like about the U.S. and bring it home, even if I have to pay HST on it. Just like the beer commercial, I. Am. Canadian. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, even if it costs me more money.
Eugene, what do you think?
