Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

Locate me
FR

politics

by

Before transitioning to the financial sector, Wayne Armitstead spent 20 years as a teacher and administrator in Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon and Australia. His 30-year financial career as broker andfinancial advisor began in Edmonton, Alberta then moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where he specialized in portfolio management for wealthy clients.

Wayne shut down his business in 2010 due to the unpredictability of markets resulting from various government interventions taken to re-stabilize the system following the 2008 financial collapse. After observing at close hand the evolution of the financial system for many years, Armitstead wrote Capitalism Perverted: Exposing the Sources of Income Inequality. He was gracious enough to sit down and answer a few questions for us:

Atlantic Books Today:

You spent 10 years as a stockbroker and 20 years as a portfolio counselor. What inspired to take such a deep dive into income inequality?

Wayne Armitstead:

Actually, it wasn’t a deep dive at all. When the governments did nothing to the banks and others who had created the financial crisis in 2008-09, I knew that the financial system was broken. I called my clients and told them I could no longer look after their investments because I had no idea what governments were likely to do.

I started to research how we got into the mess and discovered a book by Jesus Huerta de Soto who confirmed my suspicions that credit was out of control. I didn’t intend to write a book until I came across Hyman Minsky’s book Stabilizing an Unstable Economy. He confirmed my belief that the credit system needed help and when I found that he had actually predicted The Crash of 2008-09 in that book that was written in 1986, I knew he was right. It was just a matter of time to fill in the blanks with the information I had already researched and I was ready to write. The income inequality that showed up was a consequence of excess credit and then authorities giving free rein to corporations to continue the excesses.

ABT:

You spend considerable time in the book on the rather fascinating history of banking crises, going back to Amsterdam in 1763. In brief, what do these crises tell us about our system today?

WA:

Excess credit is responsible for every financial crisis. They were the first financial crises and run on banks. It was my way of emphasizing the importance of excess credit to financial blowoffs because it has existed for centuries.

ABT:

Can you briefly explain the link between excess credit, which you say links most banking crises, and the increasing disparity in wealth and income since the mid-twentieth century?

WA:

Two main points: In 1946 America had sufficient gold to buy back every federal government bond outstanding which they pledged to do. By 1971 they had borrowed so much money from the rest of the world that they reneged on that promise. That was the end of the gold standard and from that point forward all currencies were fIat, meaning there was nothing supporting them. Not only were Americans spending excessively but so was every other (almost) country.

Second point. Since America was still the most important country they showed leadership (in both directions). In 1980 Ronald Reagan became president and reduced taxes hugely. So now America was spending too much and receiving much less revenue. BIG DEFICITS. Compare Eisenhower, with 24 tax brackets and [a] 90 percent personal tax rate at the highest bracket, to Reagan with four or five tax brackets and [a] 30 percent [tax] rate at the highest bracket. The high income earners were able to acquire wealth because of lower taxes.

In later years, this expanded because corporations used electoral campaign laws to lobby Congress to favour capital over labour. In the last few financial crises (for example the Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, the dot.com crisis in 2000 and the housing crisis in 2008) corporations were bailed out with increasing debt on federal balance sheets.

ABT:

You advocate a larger influence for government on the economy, which would be a reversal of recent trends. How would you explain that to a dedicated small-government advocate?

WA:

I would advocate that because Hyman Minsky advocated it. Housing, health, education and food are out of reach for many citizens. Minsky advocated that governments provide guaranteed employment (not a guaranteed income, which is different). A small-government advocate would say that everyone should be responsible and should look after himself. That is just not possible. I [would] ask, is he happy with beggars and tent cities?

Corporations have too much power. They need regulation. That should be the lesson learned in 1929, 2000 and 2008.

ABT:

I think you completed the book just before the pandemic hit us. Any lessons in your work for a post-COVID world?

WA:

Absolutely! Implement Minsky’s solutions. Raise taxes on high income earners. Cooperate with the rest of international partners to close tax havens and repatriate domestic citizens’ financial assets. This would have a tremendously positive effect on criminal activity.

ABT:

You note that “the rebellion against climate change expressed by 15–25-year-olds on several continents” is a source of hope. Are you optimistic that humanity will get its priorities straight and figure out a financial system that better sustains society and the planet?

WA:

I am hopeful. We have too many people on this planet creating too much waste and using too many resources. We have too much debt and we care too little about other people. We have too much military equipment and fight too many wars.

We will either reverse all of those liabilities or the Earth will do it for us.

Young people are the only hope. Unfortunately there is too much ignorance to expect those in charge to make the right decisions.

by

Michael de Adder is currently reaching millions with his timely, astute, and now viral observations of a political climate unlike anything experienced in recent times.

At Atlantic Books Today, we think that’s a good thing.

de Adder has been drawing the world’s foibles and woes in succinct, hit-the-mark cartoons for decades. To date, he’s collected his cartoons in six books, with a seventh set to hit the shelves fall of this year.

Here’s a retro peek at de Adder’s books…

deBook (2008)

 

 

 

 

 

 

dePictions (2013)
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Might Be From Nova Scotia. If… (2013)
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


You Might Be From New Brunswick If… (2014)
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 


You Might Be From Newfoundland and Labrador If… (2014)
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 


You Might Be From Canada If… (2017)
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And… coming in September, 2019
You Might Still Be From Nova Scotia If…
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

Photo by Chris Benjamin

The Age of Increasing Inequality
Lars Osberg
Lorimer

Organizing the 1%
William Carroll and JP Sapinski
Fernwood Publishing

My organization produces an annual Nova Scotia child and family poverty report card to help communities identify the changes that will improve the lives of our most vulnerable members. But, when communities ask what they can do to address poverty, my message is that in order to reduce poverty, indeed eliminate it, we need to address its root causes, including income inequality. 

I love finding a new way to explain something, to reframe a problem, and especially being able to point to more evidence-based solutions to propose. Thanks to Lars Osberg’s The Age of Increasing Inequality: The astonishing rise of Canada’s 1%, and to William Carroll and JP Sapinski’s Organizing the 1%: how corporate power works, I can now enhance my presentation on why communities should care about income inequality and what we can do about it.

Dr. Lars Osberg, who is an economics professor at Dalhousie University, shows that “The elimination of poverty is quite within the realm of fiscally feasible policies” by doing the math: it would cost the top 90 percent $378 per year to lift as many as 5.2 million Canadians just above the poverty line.

Osberg has been studying this subject for decades, since long before it was a hot topic. He points out that in the postwar period, the top’s share was 10 times that of the bottom 20 percent, but there was not significant growth at the top and researchers were not as interested in the issue. In contrast, since the 1980s top incomes have been growing exponentially faster than those in the middle or the bottom, with no end in sight. Had somebody been listening to Osberg then, we might not be where we are today, at a tipping point certainly, particularly when considering the impact this growth is having on the state of our ecological systems.

If you are not currently concerned about income inequality, these books are a wake-up call. As Osberg shows, income inequality matters for so many reasons: because of the poverty of the disadvantaged, because of the gap between the incomes of those in poverty and the middle class, because of the growing gap between the elite and the ‘ordinary’ citizen–sometimes expressed as the 1% versus the 99%–and because of the hollowing out of the middle.

While these things all have different implications, requiring different policy solutions, we should be especially concerned about how the increasing concentration of income and wealth affects our democracy and our access to political power.

What kind of society do you want to live in, Osberg asks. As a result of the growing gap, the society we live in is one where, with escalating consumption norms, status purchases are marketed to everyone, creating envy and discontent. The social resentment, coupled with economic insecurity, means some are pining for the good old days and looking for scapegoats—including “immigrants whose cultures are somehow threatening”—which fans the flames of class conflict and racism.

While intergenerational mobility is a marker of equality of opportunity, as Osberg points out, when you are at the top the only movement for your kids is down. It therefore becomes ever more important for the kids of the rich to have a built-in and ongoing advantage to protect their status; thus, paying their fair share for an adequately funded public education is a threat to that advantage. When public education, which has always been the great equalizer, is underfunded, inequality of opportunity becomes another cost of income inequality for the 99%.

Wealth inequality is even worse than income inequality. Wealth inequality is likely underestimated, with the top 20 percent having a net worth of billions, while the bottom 20 percent averages a net worth of negative $1,000—that would be debt.  

But to really understand economic power, you need to go beyond what the wealthy own, to what they control via their social status and political influence. Corporate power is so pervasive we may be unaware of its presence, or the extent of it.

Carroll and Sapinski mapped networks of individuals, corporations and key organizations to underscore and expose their influence. Included are many of SNC-Lavalin’s 312 direct and indirect subsidiaries, which are blamed for poor working conditions, while the parent company can claim it did not know. As the authors show, layers of management mediate the CEO’s control, sometimes in different countries, while workers report to supervisors who often do not know who the owners are. The production-consumption chain makes it nearly impossible for consumers to make ethical purchases. 

The concentration of corporate capital has closely followed the concentration of income with an elite few. (This concentration of wealth and power has even had an impact on price-fixing; the recent bread-pricing scandal is the starkest example.)

Carroll and Sapinski map networks of elites to show just how strong the interdependence is between industry and high finance, bank loans, shareholders and governance boards. Osberg does this at the individual level, highlighting who benefits and who does not.

In order for the affluent to acquire more financial assets, somebody else has to acquire liabilities. The flip side of the overspending by the debtor (households and governments) is underspending by the creditor (corporations and the very wealthy).

One of the critical points made by Carroll and Sapinski is that labour power is not an object: workers are people. Their very existence depends on a social relationship marked by class, gender and racial inequalities.

Carroll and Sapinski trace the current economic system historically, highlighting how it is based on making someone else pay for so-called externalities (like pollution), including through colonization, the slave trade and other forms of exploitation of humans and nature. The negative impacts of this kind of corporate power are social (poverty, homelessness, food insecurity) and ecological. Minimum wage, public pensions and public healthcare are important concessions, but ultimately corporate power and state power need each other. Even our education system has adapted to the needs of capital—best seen via the corporatization of our universities, from the board of governors and the buildings they meet in to corporate funding of research. 

Redistributive measures (higher wages, higher taxes on the rich, full employment), as Osberg outlines in this final chapter, would undoubtedly help constrain income and wealth concentration. However, Carroll and Sapinski argue that our solutions must enable collective strength that displaces the “antidemocratic logic that empowers and rewards those who own and control capital.” They propose that we need a fundamental restructuring of the economy, one that allows workers to have more control over their labour. They put forward co-operatives as an alternative to corporations, because they allow for democratic ownership and control by workers collaborating to meet human needs rather than simply amassing profit. 

Carroll and Sapinski also point to the need for more public ownership, including of banks, which must operate differently. They propose that our governments centre participatory budgeting and economic planning. They favour initiatives such as divestment, securities tax, increasing the role of unions, moving to codetermination of boards (half workers and half investors) like in Germany and the reinvention of jobs to balance creative control and collaboration. In order to build an energy democracy, we need to shift to renewables and increase public democratic control of economic decisions.

Osberg, Carroll and Sapinski all point to honouring fundamental human rights. The latter authors recommend seeking collaborative consent by First Nations, respecting their collectivist ways and deep ties to the land. Solidarity among and between counter-movements including feminism, environmentalism and Indigenous and labour movements is important.

Do corporate owners have something to contribute to our democracy? Absolutely, say these authors, but no more so than anybody else. Protecting, indeed strengthening our democracy, requires us to restrain the influence of the corporate elite. Simple measures include banning corporate electoral donations and restricting individual electoral donations to $100.

We need to crack down on corporate lobbying, with greater transparency regarding indirect ways corporate elites lobby, such as through pro-business think tanks. Regulatory and public bodies should have very limited corporate presence, balanced out by citizens and community leaders who put the public interest first.

It is also essential to build the capacity of non-profits and community-based alternatives—like my organization—to support the democratization of civil society, including the policy planning process.

How have we gotten here? Carroll and Sapinski make clear the elite have been able to mute the contradictions and construct myths to cover the gap between what we aspire to in our democracies and the way inequality undermines those aspirations.

It is time to turn off the mute button.

by

The first comedy or satire I wrote was for The Muse, the student newspaper of Memorial University of Newfoundland. In the fall of 1980 The Muse was part of a largely unorganized student crusade to do something about The Parkway, a four-lane highway that, owing to a kind of haphazard urban planning endemic to St. John’s, bisected the campus. Crossing the road was perilous and the student body wanted a remedy.

The Muse didn’t want to let the issue die so running a story about it as often as possible was a priority. But there was only so much one could say; the road was in the wrong place and presented a real danger to students; a safe crossing needed to be provided and soon. That was it.

I took the baton for the week of the October 17th edition, reporting on an imagined “Parkway Safari” motorsport event wherein drivers tore around campus trying to strike and kill students with their cars, scoring points as they did so. I enlisted a couple of pals to pose as victims for grisly photos of the contest. The piece did what I still suppose good satire does, issue a warning about where a stupid behaviour will land us if we don’t smarten up.

The paper was distributed throughout the campus in the morning. That afternoon a Memorial University student, a young woman full of promise, Judy Lynn Ford, was struck and killed by a car on The Parkway. I thought that horror rather proved the point of my piece. Not so most people on campus who read it after the tragedy. Many were unaware that it was written and printed before the accident and judged it, I can’t say unfairly if they believed it was in response, in horrendously bad taste.

Bad taste sometimes lends satire vitality. As it can be a knife or skewer satire can also be a blunt instrument. It can be a cudgel, a hammer. We say in Newfoundland “Foolish as a bag of hammers” to mean something or someone ridiculous. In other places there is “ugly as a bag of hammers” to mean that which is lumpen, misshapen, unwieldy. All that can be said of comic and satiric prose.

The outrage over the Parkway piece didn’t much bother me; my heart was colder then.

Energies soon found focus in a spontaneous act of civil disobedience, students marching across a crosswalk on The Parkway in an uninterrupted, endlessly looping line so as to permanently arrest the flow of traffic. The cops arrived and handled things poorly, the protest escalated to the point where the police considered it best to beat a retreat. Barricades were erected and the students occupied the highway for a glorious weekend, until commitments were given to build an elevated pedway over the road.

In the years since, I’ve written four novels and a couple of feature-film screenplays, notably the adaptation of my comic novel Rare Birds. I wrote a bunch of episodes of the television industry satire Made In Canada. I’ve kept up writing for print media and have written for the stage. I spent the most creatively rewarding five years of my life writing for the CBC Radio show The Great Eastern, a program I have no hesitation declaring among the very best examples of scripted radio in the history of that medium. (Why the show isn’t podcast by the CBC is an unfathomable mystery.) The Great Eastern was a more sophisticated comedy than the CBC brass was comfortable with in a show coming out of Newfoundland. A CBC Vice President cautioned us, “No more jokes about French philosophers.” We paid him no heed and CBC canned us one season before the project was completed.

Photos by Joel Upshall courtesy of The Overcast

How have things changed since I started out almost forty years ago? In four decades what is funny and how comedy works hasn’t changed much. The audience has; it’s grown timid. The pieties of Political Correctness have scared people off that which is transgressional. People are afraid to laugh lest it be heard as laughter “at” something.

So it was that two people, on separate occasions, told me they put down my novel Today I Learned It Was You because they were “afraid of where it was going.” At the centre of that novel is a report that a one-time thespian sleeping rough in a public park in St. John’s is “transitioning” from man to deer. Spoiler alert: he isn’t doing any such thing. The ridiculous proposition that he is, a bit of dark mischief by another character in the novel, is embraced by a gullible public to such a degree that confessing the deed becomes unthinkable. Those readers “afraid of where it was going” never read far enough to grasp that the central joke was their very fear. That’s where we are.

Satire is a distant early-warning system. Without it the most unlikely and absurd consequences befall those who haven’t imagined the world at its most preposterous.

The speech police, these days as likely to come from the smouldering ruins of the political left or the Academy as from the Church or the Mosque or the Presidential Palace, are making it more difficult and more dangerous to sound the alarm. If there was ever a time to reach into the bag for a hammer it’s now.

by

The Boat Harbour Effluent Treatment Facility photographed by journalist Miles Howe for the Halifax Media Co-op

Reading Joan Baxter’s The Mill: Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest, the story of the infamous Abercrombie pulp mill in Pictou County, is shocking and upsetting. I can’t say what hits hardest. Perhaps it’s the desperate giveaway of Nova Scotia’s forests to foreign corporations with decades-long leases at bargain bin prices. Or it could be the obviously high-risk, careless decision to pump a healthy tidal estuary full of millions of litres of chemical effluent in hopes that nature would somehow clean it up. Or maybe it’s the deception and strong arming involved in getting the Pictou Landing First Nation to allow just that to happen in their own backyard, almost instantly decimating the waters its residents relied on for food and recreation.

Nova Scotia’s long-standing relationship with pulp and paper companies has resulted in clear cuts such as this one, photographed by author Jamie Simpson.

Any one of those aspects of this story is jaw dropping and agonizing to read about, but the straw that breaks the camel’s back is simply this: It’s been going on for over 50 years and it’s still going on today.

There’s little in Baxter’s friendly, highly readable account of the Pictou County pulp mill that is not still happening today, be it short-sighted forest management, lack of mill oversight, pricey government payouts to corporations or broken promises to clean up and restore Boat Harbour, the Pictou Landing First Nation’s beleaguered tidal estuary.

Through Baxter we hear from Pictou Landing Elders and activists and a multi-generational group of other Pictou community residents and activists. Many acknowledge that the mill has brought badly needed jobs to Pictou. But most question the price that was paid for those jobs.

The Mill is a valuable document of Nova Scotia history that connects directly to our present day. As I read it, I couldn’t help thinking that it should make its way into high school curricula. As Elizabeth May writes in her foreword:

“More people need to understand the political deals that brought this mill into being and protect it still. Can nothing change the political culture of Nova Scotia to protect its citizens?”

Of course the political culture of investment in and under-regulation of resource-extractive industries is not Nova Scotia’s exclusive domain. It’s a pan-Canadian political culture, one that in Alberta has seen public institutions penetrated by the oil industry to such an extent that they have formed what Kevin Taft describes as a “deep state.”

As a former Liberal MLA from Alberta, Taft has an insider perspective on the workings of political culture, which gives the stories in Oil’s Deep State: How the petroleum industry undermines democracy and stops action on global warming–in Alberta, and in Ottawa a sort of fly-on-the-wall quality. In Taft’s experience as a politician he’s been privy to conversations that might raise the hair on the back of your neck. (One particular threat from a “senior energy industry official” in 2007 stands out. Taft recalls being told, “We can do things you’ll never know. You won’t even know what hit you.”)

In Oil’s Deep State, Taft tells the story of the Alberta government’s journey from hard bargainers walking away from negotiations with Syncrude in 1973 over the first oil sands project (and later signing a deal with a 50 percent royalty on net profits and a 5 percent stake in the project) to the 1990s regime, which enacted policies written by oil-industry groups, offering open season on the oil sands and allowing firms to repay all their capital investments before paying just 25 percent in royalties. It’s a stunning turnaround of political philosophy and it all happened inside the same party, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

What accounts for such a dramatic reversal is the basis of Taft’s deep-state theory. He describes how corporations like Suncor, Imperial Oil and Enbridge threw money into political campaigns and created well-funded pro-industry groups like the Energy Policy Institute of Canada and the Canada School of Energy and Environment (housed within the University of Alberta), through which they were able to dominate the discussion around how to manage Alberta’s oil sands, and the province’s role in contributing to climate change.

Oil’s Deep State and The Mill tell similar stories–the hobbling of our democratic institutions by corporations whose profit margins are directly linked to their ability to control our natural resources. They are cautionary tales of what happens when the fox ends up running the henhouse.

Read ‘em and weep.

by

Newfoundland writer Bill Rowe is back again like a modern-day Solomon with more political tales to tell. Those accustomed to his brutal frankness in evaluating premiers Joey Smallwood, Frank Moores and Danny Williams have been clamouring for him to dish on the full cast of characters animating that province’s unique political culture.

With ten popular books under his belt, the recovering politician returns with a highly personal, “no punches pulled” report card on the Rock’s strange collection of political leaders since 1949 ranging from the heavyweights to the lesser lights.

His latest, The Worst and Best of the Premiers and Some We Never Had, provides another feast for political junkies. Some forty-two political leaders are essentially roasted in a highly uneven set of short vignettes concluding with the author’s rather idiosyncratic and dubious percentage grades.

Bill Rowe’s earlier books on Joey Smallwood and Danny Williams were insightful and brutally honest portraits of earth-shaking, messianic political overlords. His current offering falls far short of those standards and tastes, for the most part, like an assorted collection of leftovers.

Seven of the province’s best known and memorable premiers, Joey Smallwood, Frank Moores, Brian Peckford, Clyde Wells, Brian Tobin and Danny Williams, reappear in distilled individual portraits. Of the recognized provincial titans, only Joey, Danny and Clyde are covered in any comprehensive fashion.

Premier Smallwood is growing on Rowe. After savaging him in The Premiers Joey and Frank, he confesses that critics called him “nuts” for ranking Moores ahead of Smallwood. “Dragging Newfoundland kicking and screaming into Confederation” is recognized as his crowning achievement. Setting aside his personal dislike of Joey (“the prick”), he raises his standing to 85 percent and downgrades Moores to 75 percent. Moores’ sleazy and scandal-ridden politics needed to be weighed against his success in ending Smallwood’s 23-year stranglehold on power.

The best part of Rowe’s book is his more detailed and nuanced portrayals of the Crosbies, father Chesley A (Ches) Crosbie and son John Crosbie. As a leading St. John’s businessman and political kingmaker, Ches campaigned in the 1948 referendum for Economic Union with the United States and, according to Rowe, “built better than he knew.”

Son John fell short in his quest to become premier, but Rowe recognizes his accomplishments as “number two man” in St. John’s and a formidable cabinet minister in Ottawa. Bringing home the bacon also earns John a mark of 85 percent, equaled only by his political nemesis, Joey Smallwood.

Rowe is definitely old school when it comes to awarding grades. Sixteen of the forty-two politicians assessed are awarded failing marks, confirming their status as hapless and forgettable politicians. In one rather sad case, former Progressive Conservative leader Ed Byrne, who paved the way for Williams’ 2003 accession to power, is awarded a 25 percent grade for being convicted of fraud for grossly inflating his expense claims.

Rowe claims that his report card tends to judge the province’s third-party leaders differently. That may be so, but it is still heavily skewed toward electoral success, favouring those in the dominant Liberal and PC parties. One notable exception, Lorraine Michael, NDP leader from 2006 to 2016, earns praise and a 65 percent rating for winning a coveted seat and holding government to account while battling breast cancer.

Surveying this rather irregular and ragged collection of vignettes, it becomes clear that this is not vintage Bill Rowe. Constrained by the laundry-list format, he gives a few notables like Frank Moores and Brian Peckford short shrift in his attempt to get everyone in.

Merely cataloguing the political leaders comes at a cost, especially when it comes to drawing linkages and making connections across time. The Crosbies of St. John’s, elder and younger, consume many pages and would be better in a section of their own. The same can be said of the St. Andrew’s College boys, John Crosbie, Ed Roberts and Frank Moores, all of whom spent their formative years in that exclusive Ontario boarding school.

Rowe’s own personal biases colour his judgement, especially when assessing political rivals during his time in the House and in cabinet. He is particularly hard on his one-time cabinet colleague, Ed Roberts, an impressive Liberal politician who served as opposition leader from 1972 to 1977 and was foiled in his 1975 bid to become premier when Smallwood backed Liberal Reformers to divide the vote.

Rowe successfully challenged Roberts for the Liberal Leadership in 1977 in what the author describes as “a vicious process” with, it is clear, wounds that have yet to heal. His bitter rival–a Newfoundland public figure respected for his intelligence and erudition, elected in his home riding through thick and thin and serving as a legislator for 25 years–deserved better.

Grading contemporary politicians can be risky because their legacies only become clear in the fullness of time. As the afterglow of his colourful and activist PC regime fades, Rowe has downgraded Danny Williams in the light of the collapse of oil revenues and the incredible cost-overruns incurred with Muskrat Falls. He’s surprisingly soft on Williams’ successor, Kathy Dunderdale, and simply rolls the dice in venturing an assessment of current premier, Dwight Ball. That grade of 50 percent for Ball looks like a conditional pass at best.

Then again, attempting to rank political leaders anywhere may well be a mug’s game.

The Worst and Best of the Premiers and Some We Never Had: A Political Report Card
Bill Rowe
Flanker Press

by

About halfway through The Effective Citizen, Graham Steele casually mentions that in some ways, politics is a lot like the mafia. If so, Steele is like the mafia capo turned police informant; he’s spilling the dirt on his former career to help you beat the politicians at their own game.

Steele delves into the psychology that drives politicians—what motivates them, what bugs them and why the system transforms good people into political hacks. Armed with experience from a 15-year political career—first as a staffer, then an opposition New Democrat MLA and ultimately as Nova Scotia Finance Minister for a three-year stint, Steele should know what he’s talking about.

The Effective Citizen begins with a short parable about the executive director of a small Nova Scotia non-profit trying to get help from the government. After months of runaround and upbeat platitudes from the local MLA, Steele’s imaginary executive director gets nowhere.

“You thought you did everything right, but nothing changed. What went wrong?” Steele writes. “You were a victim of political bullshit. I wrote this book so you might better understand how to recognize political bullshit, and what to do about it.”

The rest of The Effective Citizen is split up into two halves: first, a frank examination of the way politics actually works and second, a user’s guide for how to navigate the system and make government work for you. It’s a quick, engaging read, and the writing is approachable.

The first half, especially, is fascinating and relevant for just about anybody who’s interested in politics—even if you’re not an executive director of a small Nova Scotia nonprofit.

“Why is self-awareness so rare among politicians?” Steele asks, as he examines the theatre, the empty, partisan jockeying and bad-faith strategy that drives so much in politics. “It’s psychological self-defence. It would mean spouting bullshit while being fully self-aware that you are spouting bullshit, and being okay with that. Most people can’t do that.

“But what politicians are doing is forever weaving and re-weaving a story about themselves. It’s a story about what they’re accomplishing and why. To be an effective citizen, you need to understand the politician’s story, and then figure out how to knit yourself within it.”

(In an early footnote, Steele offers a solid academic defence of the word “bullshit” and then uses the word liberally throughout.)

At times, the examination of political psychology is almost sympathetic to the politicians; in other moments, it’s utterly devastating, peppered with anecdotes from Steele’s own political career. In its best bits, the book is a refreshingly clear-eyed, unsentimental examination of the worst aspects of political thinking, from somebody who really knows what he’s talking about.

If there’s one way The Effective Citizen falls short, it’s Steele’s own self-awareness. After a while, the political anecdotes start to feel too self-serving. There’s no mea culpa, no moment where Steele describes how he became the monster that he’s describing in so many other politicians. And in fact, there are a few times where the author specifically makes a point of saying that he always eschewed the ugliest tricks of the trade.

The second half of the book is more narrowly useful to that hypothetical small non-profit executive director. The vast majority of citizens will never have to use the kinds of tactics that Steele describes, because most people don’t devote their time to changing legislation or securing government funding for their projects. Steele’s guidance might make it easier but, as he repeatedly emphasizes, there are no secret tricks, no shortcuts to navigating the political world and no guarantees that you’ll be successful.

The Effective Citizen is a worthwhile read for anybody who cares about politics and wants to understand how it really works. As Steele explains, the political playing field is tilted heavily in favour of the politicians. All too often when they win you lose. Steele uses his experience to help shift the balance a little bit back in favour of the citizens and calls on the reader to demand more from their governments.

“Don’t give your politicians a free pass,” he says. “Their desire to please shouldn’t clash with your desire to get things done. Results count. Words are cheap and are the building blocks of political bullshit.”

The Effective Citizen
Graham Steele
Nimbus Publishing

by

Photo by Jon Sturge, courtesy of Rick Mercer Report

 

Sometimes preparation pays off in serendipitous ways. When Angela Mombourquette interviewed for an editorial position at Nimbus Publishing last December, the Halifax-based writer, journalist (and former editor of this magazine) decided she would be wise to bring in a few book ideas. Some quick sleuthing revealed that no one had written in depth about the CBC news comedy show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which was quickly approaching a quarter-century on air.

Spoiler alert: Mombourquette didn’t get the job, but she did land a book deal with Nimbus. Six months later, she turned in a first draft of 25 years of 22 Minutes: An Unofficial Oral History of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which is set for release in mid-November.

The book includes unvarnished accounts of cast rivalries, off-air pranks, fast food with prime ministers and satirical moments that influenced the real Canadian news cycle. “I was kind of surprised by how candid some of the people were when they spoke to me,” says Mombourquette. “They didn’t get into the real dirt, but they were surprisingly honest.”

DHX Media––the production company that owns 22 Minutes––ultimately declined to participate in the project, but Mombourquette secured interviews with 27 cast members, guests and staff, including Rick Mercer, Gavin Crawford, Peter Mansbridge, Colin Mochrie and Geri Hall.

Earlier in her career, Mombourquette had worked in TV production at CBC Halifax, with a stint as floor director and script assistant on 22 Minutes. Former producer Gerald Lunz remembered her and his agreeing to an interview opened an all-important door to Mercer (who is his production and life partner).

One standout omission, however, is Mary Walsh, whose red-suited, Harper-kissing Marg Delahunty Warrior Princess arguably provided some of the show’s most memorable moments from 1992-2004. After months of scheduling and negotiations, Walsh declined just before the first interview. “That was a bit heartbreaking,” says Mombourquette.

During an interview with Atlantic Books Today for her new novel, Walsh describes 22 Minutes as a family. “I miss the people a lot,” says Walsh. “They were and are a great group. I was lucky to be a part of it.” She confirms that Mombourquette approached her for an interview, but “Salter Street or DHX Media didn’t want to go forward with it,” she says, “so then, I thought, ‘I don’t, either… I’m going to stay over here with my gang.’”

As an award-winning columnist, writer, editor and producer, Mombourquette is no stranger to the rigours of building a narrative, but transforming individual interviews into a book-length “conversation” required serious organization. “I loved it,” she says, laughing. “I have to say. I’m a Virgo.”

After each interview, Mombourquette pulled themes and quotes that she could read to the next participant––eventually creating a sense that the entire cast is gathered around a table. When the story began to flow, “sometimes I was so tickled,” she says. “I was literally jumping up and down in my seat––and that’s not something writers get to do very often.”

The 25-year milestone was a natural hook, but Mombourquette says she wrote the book to give readers an inside look at the people, characters and moments they’ve come to know intimately through their screens. “I think the show is loved by Canadians,” she says, “and I think everyone enjoys a chance to get behind the scenes and find out what was really going on.”

The series also holds a special place in the hearts of Atlantic viewers, says Mombourquette, because the entire original cast and several current members hail from Newfoundland. More importantly, filming in Halifax created a sense of regional ownership. The idea of moving production to Toronto was sometimes floated, she says, but “the producers, I think, felt that it would lose its edge if it was trying to critique the centres of power from the centre of power.”

by

Former cabinet minister Tom McMillan laments a fallen political party

Canadian political memoirs rarely pack much of a punch and all too many are essentially the final act of self-aggrandizement in a politician’s career. The odd political autobiography – like Erik Neilsen’s The House is not a home (1989) and Brian Mulroney’s Memoirs (2007) – tries to settle old scores. Rarely do such projects produce calls for the resurrection of a dead or dying political tradition.

Former Mulroney Cabinet Minister Tom McMillan, hailing from Charlottetown, PEI, attempts to do just that in his rambling personal memoir, Not My Party: The Rise and Fall of Canadian Tories, from Robert Stanfield to Stephen Harper, which is bound to disrupt the relative peace now prevailing in today’s Conservative Party of Canada. It’s likely to not only re-open old political wounds, but to incite a renewed struggle to restore the heart and soul of Progressive Conservatism.

After retiring from partisan party politics in the late 1990s, McMillan resurfaces with a stinging indictment of Stephen Harper for “destroying” the progressive side of Canadian Toryism in his 2003 quest to merge the Canadian Alliance/Reform movement with the traditional Progressive Conservative party. He holds Harper personally responsible for the abandonment of the Progressive (or Red) Tory tradition, the imposition of highly partisan “cult of personality” politics and the debasing of an “enlightened national party institution” bequeathed by our founding Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald some 150 years ago.

Tom McMillan is, in many ways, an unlikely party rebel. Born into a dyed-in-the-wool Prince Edward Island Conservative family, he’s the twin brother of a consummate insider, Charley McMillan, Mulroney’s trusted political advisor. After winning election as a Charlottetown MP and becoming a federal Cabinet Minister, McMillan later served as consul general in Boston and then was twice defeated in the 1990s as a federal PC candidate in Charlottetown and Peterborough, Ontario.

McMillan is so steeped in party politics that his whole life story is interwoven with what he terms “the rise and fall of Canadian Tories” from the defeat of Liberal Louis St. Laurent in 1957 to the present. After “Uncle Louis” passed from the scene, Tom never waivered in his partisanship, seeing the world as divided almost naturally into “white sheep” (Tories/Conservatives) and “black sheep” (Grits/Liberals).

When Tory Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s regime began to crumble from “termites” in 1965, McMillan fell under the potent political influence of two quintessential “Progressive Conservatives,” Robert Stanfield of Nova Scotia and his chief advisor and confidant, Dr. Thomas H.B. Symons, the founding President of Trent University.

Young Tom McMillan was absolutely captivated by Dr. Symons, the gentlemanly, thoughtful, pipe-smoking intellectual who personified, in his mind, the core values of Progressive Conservatism: civility, individual rights and social justice. While working for Symons on a pioneering Canadian Studies project, he fell under his spell and, like many others, counted upon him for sage advice at critical points in his life and career.

McMillan’s reconstruction of Robert Stanfield’s tenure as Progressive Conservative Opposition Leader from 1967 to 1976 will only enhance the Nova Scotian’s public image as “the best Prime Minister Canada never had.” Unlike many of his contemporaries, young Tom was apparently immune to the magnetic appeal of Trudeaumania and Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s progressive vision of a “Just Society.”

McMillan was totally immersed in the PC party’s policy renewal process, guided by Dr. Symons, and became thoroughly “Symonized” as a true believer in building a “progressive, reformist and modern” Conservative party in tune with the late 20th century.

The McMillan boys, Tom and Charley, both played an instrumental role in reviving Tory political fortunes in PEI and earning themselves a seat at the table. After winning election in 1979, Tom held the Charlottetown seat for the Tories, served in opposition from 1980 to 1984, and then in cabinet as the federal Minister of Environment.

Reading this memoir is a virtual feast for political junkies and particularly for those of a Tory stripe. His political masters from Robert Stanfield to Joe Clark to Brian Mulroney are all treated favourably as respected, if misunderstood, spear carriers in the Canadian Tory pantheon. Short-lived PC leader Peter MacKay of Central Nova is barely mentioned, even though he signed a May 2003 deal with Saskatchewan farmer David Orchard to defend the “Progressive” faction, and then delivered the PC’s into the arms of Harper’s rebranded Conservative Party. Reducing MacKay’s critical role in the demise of the PC tradition to little more than a few sentences in a 600-page book stands out as a glaring and peculiar omission.

For a recovering politician preaching civility and magnanimity in politics, McMillan sure dishes in considerable detail on the cast of characters who inhabited the party from 1967 until his final campaign in 1997. Few will be surprised by his unflattering portrayal of the ebullient, autocratic Yukon Cabinet Minister Erik Neilsen, but his sharply critical depictions of his former environmental advisor Elizabeth May, and Halifax Cabinet colleague the late Stewart McInnes, will raise eyebrows and temperatures in some quarters.

McMillan’s memoir appears at a critical juncture for the Conservative Party of Canada and its provincial cousins. With Stephen Harper’s influence on the wane, this well-timed book may well find a ready audience among “progressives” who fled the Conservative party during the Harper years. Many Progressive Conservatives harbour the view that the CPC is not their party anymore, including former PC leader Joe Clark and Ontario Tory stalwart Justice Roy McMurtry. Where Nova Scotia’s Peter MacKay fits into the evolving narrative is left unclear in this weighty opus.

by

An ad from Noah Richler’s NDP campaign

Author and former NDP candidate Noah Richler tells Atlantic Books Today that due to the branding of parties, leaders and candidates, our electoral system is becoming Americanized

Noah Richler is an award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster. His book, This Is My Country, What’s Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada, won the British Columbia’s National  Award for Canadian Non-fiction in 2007, and appeared on many year-end “best-of” lists. In 2015 he ran for parliament as the New Democratic Party candidate in Toronto-St. Paul’s.

His most recent book, The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, examines his foray into federal politics. Born in Montreal, he splits his time between homes in Toronto and Digby Neck, Nova Scotia.

Atlantic Books Today: You mention in the book that when you first decided to run for office you wanted to do so in Nova Scotia. What’s your connection with Nova Scotia?

Noah Richler: My wife and I have been going out to Nova Scotia for 15 years or so. She used to go out as a child. We have often visited a village called Sandy Cove and became very attached to the community in this working fishing village on the St. Mary’s Bay. I go out there and I like to think that I do my best writing out there. We are so committed to it, in fact, that we have bought an old abandoned inn that we would like to turn into what the Californians call a “creativity lab” and we have been inviting writers out there for some time. The whole premise of the Hillcot Centre is basically that if arts and culture and a sense of the past don’t matter in an economically challenged area, do they matter at all? So we’re basically testing ideas we’ve been abiding by our whole lives.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Nova Scotia over the years and the previous MP there, Greg Kerr, was completely absent as a figure, and I did think for a time, probably because of my love of the area, that it would be interesting to walk the tuning-fork shaped riding up the Digby Neck and down the French Shore and try and get elected that way.

But that wasn’t appealing to the party. They wanted me to run in Toronto where they felt most of the news and issues were going to be put forward and they were right about that. It’s not a Toronto-centric comment to understand that as the biggest, most important city in Canada a lot of the battles would be fought here. I didn’t mind that in the end because I think we all need what you might think of as a “safe place” and I have relationships in Nova Scotia that I decided I didn’t need to alter by putting myself forward as so evidently partisan. One day I will write about Nova Scotia and I didn’t want it sort-of tainted by having to plug a party position.

ABT: A point that comes up repeatedly in your book is that today’s politics is largely about brand. Does this come at the expense of individual creativity and initiative among candidates?

Richler: You’re right. Anybody that watches TV or goes to the movies sees countless stories about the individual entering politics and making a difference. Typically the individual is up against some party brass. The terrible thing about that is it’s true. [laughs] So I went in imagining that conversations at the door would be about Canada and about gleaning views and sharing views and having healthy debates. Of course it’s not about that. It’s about gathering data about who is most likely to vote for you.

I first heard that expression, “The Brand,” from Chrystia Freeland, now our Minister of Trade, and that was not interesting to me. I can still remember the sensation in the pit of my stomach. I remember thinking, “That’s not a reason to enter the fray.” One of the gifts of running for the NDP is it’s much more a collection of people, it’s much more of a grassroots party. It’s much more of a variety at the base than the other two principal parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. It’s also less organized.

The irony, of course, is that I was putting forward a brand, calling myself “The Candidate” in my social media campaign videos that I put out and trying to be identified by some kind of shorthand. I know [that] in a more vigilant party, a more controlling party, I probably wouldn’t have been at liberty to do that. We would have had one of Gerald Butts’ minions calling, saying “You can’t do this, you’re running for the Liberals, you run on Liberal red,” and so on.

A number of the revelations [about politics] were ones that shouldn’t have been revelations at all, they were kind of banal in nature. One of them was realizing what a mannequin in the window you are at these rallies that are orchestrated for television.

At first I was hustled along to a room where part of me thought it might be for a chat with [Tom] Mulcair or the people next to him. Instead, you and the twenty candidates that show up are pushed into the background behind Mulcair to stand and look obedient as the press cameras record his answers to journalists. The press conference happens and you’re standing there. All parties demand that.

It actually infers one of the great paradoxes of Canadian politics, which is that we have a parliamentary democracy, which suggests that candidates are elected by constituents in individual ridings, advocating those ridings’ interests. But, and this was particularly evident in the end, as voters we are behaving more and more like our neighbours to the South, with their presidential system, and we vote for one leader or the other.

ABT: The book ends with you being recognized by a student at the Hart House gym as her former NDP candidate. She asks you whether you’re going to run again, and you leave the question unanswered. Is this a matter of you not being sure of your response, or was this a literary device?

Richler: It was a good way to end [the book] but it also made me smile because I’m sure that’s the question most every candidate faces.

I thought “no” for a long time and I wouldn’t do so without the support of my family. I also wouldn’t do so if I didn’t think I was bringing something particular to the table. Next time around I’d have to have a sense of what I was contributing and in truth I feel I’m a 56-year-old white guy and there are plenty of those in Ottawa already. I kind of hope it’s somebody else’s turn. I’d really like to see the NDP be the first [federal] party to have a leader who is not white.

by

Turmoil As UsualPolitics on “The Rock” is not only an island blood sport but also tends to be turbulent and unpredictable. Political culture has been dominated by larger-than-life premiers with plenty of bombast, most notably Joey Smallwood, Brian Peckford, Clyde Wells and Danny Williams. That’s why Turmoil, As Usual, a phrase plucked from Newfoundlander John Crosbie, is such an apt title for James McLeod’s first book on the stranger-than-fiction 2013 to 2015 period in Newfoundland/Labrador politics.

Freed from the daily grind of producing factual news reports, Telegram political reporter McLeod lifts the veil and, in places, cuts loose with scalpel-like precision. Stirred by attending his first NL political convention, in September 2013, he makes good on his promise to tell “all the stuff nobody ever hears about.”

McLeod has filled this book with fascinating little vignettes sure to titillate political junkies and entertain readers, from rebuffing Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s vigorous efforts to get him on the dance floor, to witnessing the NDP tribal warfare that claimed Lorraine Michael to trying to make sense of short-term Premier Frank Coleman’s incoherent mumblings.

Premier Williams cast a bigger shadow than McLeod’s insider account seems to recognize. After the departure of Williams, his successor Dunderdale was unable to hold the fort and no one was able to fill the political void.

Current Liberal Premier, Dwight Ball, “a bland guy with a big chin,” may have finally toppled Paul Davis and the PCs but he does not escape unscathed. Observing him up close, McLeod is underwhelmed by the slow-moving, impeccably dressed Deer Lake pharmacist who now holds power, and hints that the turmoil may not be over.

Turmoil, As Usual: Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador and The Road to the 2015 Election
by James McLeod
$19.95, paperback, 247 pp.
Creative Publishing, January 2016

by

What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise –and Collapse– of Nova Scotia’s NDP GovernmentFormer Nova Scotia Finance Minister Graham Steele is among the nominees for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. His book, What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise—and Collapse—of Nova Scotia’s NDP Government (Nimbus Publishing) has been a top seller since its release last September.

The prize, which is named for another former politician, Windsor, Ont. MP Shaughnessy Cohen, awards $25,000 to the winner and $2,500 to the finalist. The winner and finalist will be announced on March 11 at Politics and the Pen in Ottawa. The finalists were selected by a jury comprising author Denise Chong, author and Ottawa Citizen columnist Terry Glavin, and The Globe and Mail Atlantic bureau chief Jane Taber.

The annual prize is awarded for a literary non-fiction book that “captures a political subject of relevance to Canadian readers and has the potential to shape or influence thinking on Canadian political life. The winning work combines compelling new insights with depth of research and is of significant literary merit. The prize particularly values books which provide the general reader with an informed, unique perspective on the practice of Canadian politics, its players, or its principles,” says the Writers’ Trust on it’s website.

The other finalists include Joseph Heath, Chantal Hebert, Naomi Klein and John Ralston Saul.

Check back on March 11 for an update to this story.