In the thug state Stephen Harper is busily constructing, Young has become Stephane Dion with a guitar, or Michael Ignatieff with a tambourine – just another opponent of the prime minister to be torn down. In Harper’s one-opinion world, to engage is to destroy, never to discuss.
Young’s offence was to express his opinion and to make a donation. In normal democracies, that would be no big deal. You might agree with the rock-star, you might not. Ninety-nine percent of the time, most wouldn’t even notice.
But Canada is no longer a normal democracy.
Governments in normal democracies don’t introduce legislation seeking the right to ask about your political beliefs when applying for a job;
Governments in normal democracies don’t put through 40 per cent of the legislative output of parliament in one bill that effectively prevents scrutiny of its contents;
Governments in normal democracies don’t produce endless commercials about themselves paid for by the public they are trying to indoctrinate rather than inform;
Governments in normal democracies don’t use the full weight of official wrath against individual citizens who speak out against their policies.
The reason all that hot pitch came down on Neil Young, some of it directly from the PMO, is that the opinion he expressed was about the Alberta tar sands, and the donation he made was to a First Nations Band to help them fight for their rights in court.
In other words, Young doubly offended Canada’s petro-potentate currently resident at 24 Sussex Drive. He criticized the prime minister’s only real passion, the oil patch, and offered assistance to the one group standing in the way of its unfettered expansion – First Nations.
The name of Young’s concert tour, Honour the Treaties, cannot have sat well with the prime minister either. Harper has played the role of Indian Agent from another century in his dealings with First Nations. On a range of issues from treaty rights to conditions on reserves, this PM still carries on the paternalistic approach that the Kelowna Accord aimed to end — an agreement that Harper promised to follow in principle, but has utterly abandoned.
The PM promised to hit the re-set button in the Ottawa/First Nations relationship after his much-ballyhooed public apology to Canada’s Aboriginals for their treatment at residential schools. Then he refused to provide documents to the very Truth and Reconciliation Commission he himself had set up to get to the bottom of it. He went on to slash native funding, ignore the Idle No More leaders, and set the Mounties on native protestors trying to wake up the nation to their plight.
The PM’s idea of consulting with First Nations over resource development was to palm it off on corporate executives and pretend that his constitutional obligation was discharged.
In a report handed to the PM last July, one of the chiefs told Stephen Harper that Enbridge, the company behind Northern Gateway, was one of the most deceitful organizations that he had ever dealt with since industry entered their territories.
When many industry players lost the trust of First Nations over their failure to negotiate impact-benefit agreements in good faith, Harper finally turned to members of his government to sell the project. But an eleventh-hour charm offensive by a bunch of ministers utterly without charm is not consulting, it is tokenism. No heart of gold here.
In that same report to the PM, a chief declared that colonization was still alive and well in Canada. He noted that the repeal of bills C-38 and C-45 was one of the main demands during the 2013 Crown-First Nations meeting between the Chiefs and the Prime Minister. The old form of colonization was to isolate natives on reserves and exploit their resources. The chief said that the new form was to change laws without consulting natives to legalize extracting native resources.
It has not been missed by First Nations leaders that the National Energy Board is now looking after at-risk fish species. Seriously.
Nor is it coincidental that the Athabaska Chipewyan First Nation announced it was pulling out of the Joint Oil Sands Monitoring program last week. It follows the Fort McKay First Nation, which walked away last year.
They left because the program is mere window-dressing. As Canada recently reported to the United Nations, emissions at the tar sands are expected to soar over the next 30 years. That puts the government’s public relations baloney about “responsible resource development” in perspective. It is a marketing pitch to make a sale, not reality.
Make no mistake, all of this is an extension of unfinished business from last year’s Crown – First Nations meeting, matters left hanging that could explode on the Canadian political scene this year, pending Harper’s decision on Northern Gateway. The attack on Neil Young serves notice that the Harper government has no intention of changing its ways and will brook no opposition.
In that context, trashing the musician as a rich, ex-pat rockstar with a diesel-guzzling tour bus and a hypocrisy problem bigger than Al Gore’s makes perfect sense. Young even rated a website brought to you by the usual suspects with the diplomatic name “Neil Young Lies”
A lot of people seem to think the prime minister does too. An Abacus poll revealed that 68 per cent of respondents think Stephen Harper is neither honest nor accountable.
That’s partially because his record as PM qualifies him as Oil Executive of the Decade and little more.
Harper has divvied up over $400 million of taxpayers’ money amongst profitable oil industry players like Shell Canada, Enbridge and Suncor. This, the government claims, will boost green energy. Critics say it just gives the companies environmental cover and free money – an odd practice for a political party that came to power promising to end government subsidies to big business.
The Harper government brought in the omnibus legislation that removed impediments to untrammelled resource development. To this prime minister, environmental protection is only an ad campaign.
For seven years, Harper has been promising to enact regulations for the energy sector that would limit emissions. For seven years, he has failed to keep his word.
The oil patch doesn’t want regulations and Harper has obliged. Remember, this was the guy whose idea of adolescent rebellion was to go work for the oil company that employed his father.
There is a final footnote to the attacks on Neil Young. Harper is trying to make swift-boating anyone who opposes his government the new normal. Any national debate is now a knife fight. Judging from former prime minister Jean Chretien’s foolish remarks, he might be succeeding.
Chretien opined that Neil Young should stick to music and leave the tar sands to the experts. And who would that be Jean, Big Government and their confreres in the oil patch? If so, there is this problem. You might be right about oil, but what if Neil Young is right about the environment? Oil all gone, and with it the boreal forest and the Athabaska River.
The NDP will no doubt be watching to see if Chretien’s remarks are disavowed by Justin Trudeau. If they’re not, Thomas Mulcair and Elizabeth May could be the only leaders left defending everybody’s right to stand up and make a little noise – even if we don’t run a government or an oil company.
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