There’s no question Canada is facing a grave social crisis on multiple fronts.
The homeless crisis, the housing crisis, the deadly drug poisoning crisis, and the crisis of our overburdened health care system are all real, and they share a common cause.
Forty years of neoliberalism have brought us to where we are.
Now one of the most prominent Canadian advisors to neoliberal politicians is blaming experts and academics and community advocates for the crisis and advocating a street-clearing program of Canadian cities worthy of the Chinese Communist Party.
Writing recently in The Hub – a right-wing online publication that appears to have aspirations to establish itself as a kind of thinking man’s Rebel Media – Howard Anglin cites the calamities listed above and concludes “the moral resolve of our governing class has weakened to the point that it is an open question whether they believe our civilization deserves to survive.”
Dr. Anglin, who not so long ago was Alberta premier Jason Kenney’s principal secretary and before that prime minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff, apparently longs for a firm hand to curb the disorder we can all see. (His article is entitled, in part, A Return to Order: Canada is Crumbling …)
“One thing is certain,” Dr. Anglin argues (and, actually, I agree with him on this point) “if we want renewal — economic, aesthetic, intellectual, or moral — the people who created the problem cannot be trusted with the solution.”
He is wrong, though, when he blames academics and activists – at least the academics and activists he has in mind – for the mess in which we find our cities, and increasingly our towns and rural communities as well.
He continues, with tendentious passion: “Instead of responding with outrage and action, our governing class has doubled down on their failures, insisting that the right of every Canadian to squat semi-comatose in filth is such an essential component of human dignity that we cannot question it, let alone intervene.”
He is right about this in a way, too, but the error of our ruling class is not the recognition that even the mentally ill, the addicted, the immiserated, have human rights. It was and is step-by-step entrenchment of an economic system that has created a vast gulf between the immensely wealthy and privileged and everyone else, and that is pushing an increasing portion of the majority further and further to the margins.
There is a crisis of despair out there alright, but it will not be solved by the forced drug treatment, street clearing and mass imprisonment Dr. Anglin appears to be advocating – although, to be clear, his article is long on passionately denouncing the symptoms of these crises, but vague on outlining just how his policy solutions would be implemented.
Nevertheless, Dr. Anglin’s direction is clear enough: “Some should be locked up for serious criminality; others (the majority) should be treated for their conditions for as long as that takes, and only let back into society when they no longer pose a threat to themselves or others. Some may be able to participate in community-based recovery programs when they are ready, but many others should be cared for outside the community, humanely and permanently.” (Emphasis added.)
So where? In corrective labour camps?
Funnily enough, in his colourful opening paragraphs, Dr. Anglin sailed close to identifying the true problem as he described the scene in his (and my) hometown, where “street-level squalor has spread incongruously in the shadow of gleaming new glass and steel apartment towers, which contribute in their own way to a growing feel of social division and alienation in what was, until very recently, still mostly a city of wood, stone, and brick built on a human scale.”
That is, of course, because the social division and alienation is real, and the neoliberal economic order to which Dr. Anglin has devoted much of his life not only perpetrates it, but requires it. Neoliberalism’s reverse-Robin-Hood redistribution of wealth in favour of the richest is, as they say, a feature, not a bug.
Consider the current housing crisis bedevilling all Canadian cities and creeping into its towns and rural regions.
“The prevailing philosophy of neoliberalism is culpable, more than any one policy, process or decision is for the rise of homelessness in Canada’s urban centres over recent decades,” wrote Bishop’s University sociology professor Mary Ellen Donnan almost a decade ago. “Neoliberalism not only informed the decision to eliminate Canada’s federal Affordable Housing Program, it falsely justifies the continuing neglect of the core social role of housing support and it has motivated decades of other social welfare cuts despite evident tragic consequences.”
If those tragic consequences were evident in 2014, the conclusion that neoliberalism’s chickens are coming home to roost is now undeniable.
Arguably, the Conservative government of prime minister Brian Mulroney opened Pandora’s Box when it stopped new funding under the National Housing Act and then quit supporting low-income housing. The misery and evil set loose on Canada’s cities by that policy decision is now evident on Victoria’s Pandora Avenue, and in parks and streets across this land.
“The steady destruction of social welfare began decades ago and reductions of government spending on social supports have become deeper and deeper as, guided by neoliberalism, the policy priorities were debt reduction and low tax-rates rather than human well-being,” Dr. Donnan wrote.
So, yes, strong measures are required and courageous governments are desperately needed to deliver them.
But they are not a Canadian GULAG and forced drug treatment for criminalized victims of neoliberal economics.
“Contrary to what we are told by our experts,” Dr. Anglin concluded his piece, “restoring public order is not hard; governments have the legal tools to overcome activist objections to returning order to our streets. All it would take is the one thing our governing class lacks—the will to do it.”
This is true.
But the program that we require starts with a return to fair taxation, a firm end to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population, an end to the financialization of everything including rental housing and health care, and the alienation of almost everyone to one degree or another from the necessities of a decent life.
The chances of that in a society – like Canada’s in 2023 – in which there is total elite consensus, even among the so-called parties of the Left, in the neoliberal social, economic and political order are vanishingly small.
As the American philosopher and civil rights activist Audre Lord sagely observed: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
This being so, things are likely to continue to get worse no matter whom we elect.
More people will be impoverished. Decent housing, let alone home ownership, will continue to be a fantasy for more Canadians. There will be more and cruder calls for brutal repression of the poorest and most marginalized in our society.
So, yes, we need leaders with the will to do what is really needed.
Where are they? Not in Dr. Anglin’s camp.
NOTE: I am grateful to Dr. Lily Climenhaga, PhD, for her clarifying thoughts on the causative role of neoliberalism and neocolonialism in homelessness and drug addition.
Hello DJC,
A brilliant column. There are so many causes that I could comment on. Just to mention two of them, the creation of real estate investment trusts which became possible after specific changes to the income tax legislation in 1993 has helped to fuel the unaffordability crisis in rental housing. The second was the end of the requirement for provinces to spend at least a portion of federal transfers on social programs which, I believe, was finally ended by Paul Martin when he was the minster of finance. I think that this was done at the behest of the ?IMF? which favours privitization and less social spending by governments. I believe that Paul Martin also ended the vestiges of the federal housing policy that had been adopted after the end of WW II.
Neoliberal policies is hitting the nail right on the head. It is one of the main factors as to why we have so much poverty and homelessness in Canada. It is caused by pseudo Conservatives and Reformers, who do not care one bit about the less fortunate. They take things out on any services that are in the public domain, including education, healthcare, infrastructure, and social programs, because their fiscal competency is so abysmal. In Alberta these phony Conservatives and Reformers robbed us of our oil and tax wealth, and did the most priciest shenanigans, which cost us at least $1 trillion, which was the exact opposite of what Peter Lougheed did, and this created more problems. Ralph Klein was a great example of that. Also, the way he treated homeless people, anyone on social services, or AISH, was despicable. He made a big fool of himself, when he was drunk, and threw money at the homeless. AISH recipients were ridiculed by Ralph Klein and members of his own cabinet right in front of the news cameras. He said they didn’t look to handicapped to me. In addition, AISH recipients were cheated out of their money by the Alberta PCs, to the sum of $100 million. Welfare clients had their income cut down to an unlivable amount, under Ralph Klein. Under the UCP, it hasn’t been any better. AISH recipients had their income deindexed to the rate of inflation, making it a bad cut. Also, in a very underhanded and cold hearted move, AISH clients had their payment dates changed from four banking days before the first of the next month, to the first day of the next month. It was another type of cut. Many people on AISH couldn’t pay their bills, or their rent on time, and owed major amounts of money for things, such as their power bills, because of late payment charges. To attempt to appease AISH recipients, before the last provincial election in Alberta, the UCP threw an additional $100 per month more for their income, which still isn’t enough to live off of. $1,788 is not enough to survive on, given the fact that there isn’t enough affordable housing around. Way back when, the Alberta PCs had the intention of solving homelessness in Alberta, in a mere decade. That didn’t go anywhere. The UCP’s idea was using private for profit developers to deal with the affordable housing issue in Alberta. This would only compound problems. No proper standards, and more risks. Now that we have the UCP in power again, it will only get worse.
Instead of giving an uber wealthy and retired career politician, Preston Manning, $253,000, along with a $2 million expense account, to make up some type of report on what the provincial government of Alberta did to look after the Covid-19 pandemic, that money could have been given to AISH recipients, who faced brutal and mean spirited cuts by the UCP. The UCP sure looks after their friends quite well, but in relation to the needy, they don’t care. There are alot more of those things going on with the UCP. Steve Allen comes to mind. A $290,000 payout to produce a blank and inconclusive report. In these phony Conservatives and Reformer politicians, there are supposedly Christians. They obviously missed the parts of the Bible, where it talks about helping the poor. A king was even punished by God for not doing it. Jesus also said to help the poor. These politicians have very messed up and backwards priorities.
Too right David. And Lily.
What the people pay for, they respect. And take care of.
Taxes are at an all time low. There is absolutely no evidence that this has done anyone any good, let alone conferred any benefit to society whatsoever.
Let’s leave them be for the first $100,000 of income but aim for 90% as income approaches and exceeds $1 million. Corporations are dependant on functional human societies and should be taxed maximally. Today’s corporations are free-loading off society; they need to pay their full share.
We have witnessed the largest transfer of wealth in human history in the last 3 years under the cover of a pandemic. Where did all the money go? Our country is now burdened with more debt then ever paying interest to who? Calls to address the parasites who burden us all are just met with insults or silence. I remember questioning why Notley, who claims to be progressive, would take advice from a former central banker and being met with scorn. Until you address the root cause nothing will improve, fair taxation is a surface issue used as a political tool to play on petty insecurities and envy. We know the very wealthy hide their money in foundations and other structures used to advance business goals. None of our current politicians seem to want to address the cause of societal rot just the symptoms.
Let’s not forget that the Mulroney government’s cuts to federal housing programmes were not just maintained but intensified by the Chrétien-Martin Liberal governments of 1993-2006. The Harperites kept that policy, and the 2015-to date Trudeau Government, despite its progressive rhetoric, has done exactly nothing to reinstate those programmes.
The solution to homelessness is obvious: build more housing, period. Build enough to safely house each and every person living rough on the streets or in a shelter. Once people have a roof over their heads, they will be better able — with on-site, wraparound supports — to address the challenges that led to them to being unhoused in the first place.
But another point that needs to be shouted from the rooftops is this: THERE ARE NO CONSERVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO THIS PROBLEM! Pierre Poilièvre is not the answer to homelessness, or to addictions, or to our deadly poisoned drug supply.
Canadian conservatives are proud of their intolerance and willful ignorance.
In addition to those currently living on the streets, how many more are underhoused? Families are moving in with unrelated families in order to pay the the rent, as costs rise for everything from rent and utilities to food. What happens when all of these things move out of reach? There is no longer an empty Australia waiting to receive the indigent children of the cold winters ahead who stole a loaf of bread to fill their empty stomachs. When the face of poverty and homelessness is a child and Howard Anglin’s permanent solution has run out of room, will the bar be lowered to an inhumane solution? Send them all to the coal mines on the eastern slopes of the Rockies to pay their debt to society for housing them in work camps there, living on gruel?
What everyone is witnessing is an act of slow genocide, against First Nations people, the young, the disenfranchised, the mentally ill, and the poor. Instead of the militarized and industrialized approaches of years on by, this genocide is being propagated by the starving of public infrastructure. Health care and housing are impacted, but the bigger driver of this are interests that seek to profit from catastrophe. Disaster capitalism. Corporate interests that have hordes and pillaged housing to drive homelessness by predatory pricing, in a largely unregulated market, have caused massive dislocations. From there, crime and addictions will take their toll, leading more and more to fall through the cracks and into an ever expanding mass grave. Like it or not, the NIMBY mindset has wrought this chaos and has given licence to the tribes of grifters and their endless campaign of social rape.
As for the leadership question, it cannot be answered because all the leadership has been co-opted by any one or all of so many powerful interests. The only way out is for good people to step up, but there are no more good people left.
Whenever I reread the late, great Tony Judy’s The Memory Chalet, it’s pretty hard to keep back the tears. His description of dying with ALS is truly heart wrenching but his analysis of society dying from neoliberalism (in this book, and many other books & articles) is so to the point and frankly incredibly sad.
The nibbling away at the Beveridge welfare proposals, started in the late ‘50s, accelerated with the rise to prominence of the “Chicago School”, and was crowned by the well known successes of Reagan and Thatcher. But as DJC points out, it was also the so-called Left which jumped on the low or no tax bandwagon. Hello Mr Clinton.
But how can privatization and selling off “The Commons” create a better society for all? They can’t and we all know why. A tax cut here, a roll back there lead to a broken health care system and we citizens paying to clean up dead wells.
But what to do? Wait for demographic change to affect voting patterns in Alberta? Work hard to steer the NDP to a truly progressive ethos? Or….
Darn spellchecker. It’s JUDT obviously.
This is a great column, and I would suggest reading it in tandem with Chris Hedges latest piece in the Scheer post, from July 30 https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/30/chris-hedges-the-forgotten-victims-of-americas-class-war/ (especially those of you who are fond of dunking on these people)
The one point I will add is when we are discussing neoliberalism what we are really talking about is the “Washington consensus”. There is a reason why huge parts of the globe are facing this same multi prong crisis and it’s absolutely because of the last 50 years of the Americans running roughshod over everyone else. It’s been their way or the highway for a long time now, and if you don’t like it they’ll assassinate your leaders (hell they’ll assassinate THEIR leaders) overthrow your government or cripple your economy. I mean NATO even is less a defensive organization than a tax on member states in the form of weapons contracts. While you have rightly pointed out it will take leaders with courage to get us out of this neoliberal boondoggle, there isn’t anyone on offer who would have the sauce to get us out of the Washington consensus.
With the rise of BRICS+ , the Belt and Road, the new partnership between China and Russia a new multipolar world is being formed, unfortunately its most likely we will remain attached at the hip to the great hegemonic power as it rips itself
to pieces. Fun times.
David,
I enjoyed your article. It is one I will re-read. Good job.
But I have a beef. A big beef.
Drop terms like – “neoliberalism and neocolonialism”. You lose me. I even get a bit angry. You go from an “A” in communication to a “F”. You can do better. Describe the terms. Use words. What are trying to say ? Give me, the reader, a break.
Yes, I can use, and do use a dictionary. But to put this in perspective… I stay clear of the likes of Conrad Black. Once I bought Black’s autobiography at a used book store. After a painful dozen pages, it went to the co-op book exchange.
If you don’t, I do what I so often do now a days….. I stop reading you. I don’t need the aggravation. Call me stupid ( Black would ) , or lazy ( Black would again), but I am neither. I want to read and take in what the author is saying. Its the author’s job to reach me.
At least, that is how I see it.
There is no excuse for any politically literate person not to know what neoliberalism means. We don’t usually get to pick the words ourselves that are used to identify new political and economic ideas, but neoliberalism is now the defining word for this economic philosophy that is relatively speaking, sui generis, in history. To criticize our host for using “neoliberalism” to define neoliberalism is, well, silly. As for neocolonialism, that’s a newer coinage, but it ought not to be all that difficult for you. You know, “neo,” new, and “colonialism,” colonialism, or new colonialism. That is to say, colonialism without colonial trappings to suit a new age of neoliberalism. Try to go your own way, and we’ll bomb you. There, I hope that helps.
Bravo, DC, a very insightful article. Dr Anglin appears to favour providing the police with authority to scoop mental health patients off the street. And take them where? Those favouring coercive “treatment” for drug users and the unhoused simply fail to consider the huge investment that would be required to make that a real policy option. Recently the editors of the Globe and Mail said that critics of the Alberta UCP’s proposal to introduce involuntary treatment are “ignoring the obvious”. Sorry, dear editors, you are the ones who have ignored the obvious: chronic underfunding of mental health care.
Most of those folks with mental health and drug use issues walking the streets of Edmonton are currently patients in the mental health care system. Many have been in mental health and addiction care, in hospital. They have been discharged not because they “recovered” but because there were more urgent needs for a very limited number of beds. The last general hospital built in Edmonton was the Grey Nuns, 35 years ago. In those 35 years Edmonton’s population has doubled. Like other hospitals Grey Nuns has limited psychiatric beds, some of those reserved for geriatric patients. At present it has a 10-bed unit (always full) for “special care services” including schizophrenia, psychosis and drug induced disorders.
All mental health services in the Edmonton region are grossly overstretched. In the last election the NDP committed to fund the construction of a new general hospital for south Edmonton. The UCP refused to make that commitment. You can’t treat the mentally ill with police. Are we prepared to budget the billions of dollars needed to build and staff new facilities? We better get started if we want those beds to be available in 2030.
And speaking of jails, the “new” Edmonton Remand Centre (that has capacity for about 1950 people) was completed ten years ago, and cost a reported $580 million. Does Dr Anglin want to budget another billion or so to double that capacity? That’s capital cost only and would not include salaries for hundreds of full-time correctional workers, food, cleaning and health services workers and ever-increasing maintenance and energy costs.
Conservatives don’t want to talk about those costs.
Here in BC the mini wack socred government tried forced rehab for addicts. I knew a social worker who delivered the program. She described forced treatment as a complete failure. In so far as I know any forced treatment program in any jurisdiction has been a failure.
This column is not dissimilar to Howard Anglin’s in one important respect. Both are long on rhetoric and sloganeering but short on practical solutions.
One of those practical solutions is fully funded federal/provincial rental assistance so that no low income Canadian pays more than 30% of their household income for shelter costs. Today’s years long wait lists for rent geared to income assistance by those who qualify based on their income is one of the drivers of chronic homelessness.
We could also just nationalize vacant speculative housing and real estate or aggressively tax those properties so they are rented at a rate that is actually supported by something other than casino capitalism or air BnB, a subsidy is a giveaway to the very folks that are currently holding the gun to the head of
The working class
Hi David,
If governments if the Left are only going to deliver more neoliberalism, what do you believe would help. I’m surprised you didn’t write about this in your entry above.
Would love to know your thoughts,
Tim
Well, we managed to put the kibosh on their club med plans! Why not get after ’em for being soulless vampires! I’m in! https://youtu.be/m2sHbVBuTj4?t=2
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
I agree with Anonymous, particularly the first comment.
I would like to address a couple of points that other commenters have made.
Gerrymacgp, I agree with your comments about mulroney and chretie-Martin, although I think that there was some pressure from the ?IMF? on Chretien and Martin to decrease social policies. Placing homeless people in centres with “wrap around supports”. That sounds like a great idea, at first glance, but many people don’t appreciate “wrap around supports” which are often suffocating and don’t ascribe agency to those who are, purportedly, being supported. I think that there are less intrusive ways of helping people. I agree that housing is an important part of the solution.
Simon Renouf, I agree that better mental health supports are essential. However, it is my very clear impression that courts have taken the position that people with mental health concerns do not have to accept treatment and they can, in almost all cases, simply walk out of, say, a hospital if they don’t want assistance. In my view, that is not good for people with a mental illness when that illness has a very serious negative impact on their lives. Unfortunately, many of them end up in trouble with the law and lose all freedom by being incarcerated. I think that mental health workers in hospitals, for example, should have more latitude in determining whether there is a need for secure mental health treatment. The system is, unfortunately pretty much a revolving door which does little to assist people to receive meaningful and, if necessary, long-term care. .
John kolkman, there is a place for the government in ensuring that everyone has housing. I would add that governments also need to ensure that businesses pay people adequately to be able to afford housing as well as other necessities. The very minimum that workers should receive is a living. and this amount is higher than the minimum wage. There are reputable organizations that will calculate the living wage in just about any community in Canada.
Christine:
A few points of agreement, & a few more in respectful rebuttal, if I may:
– On the IMF, it had, at the time, completely bought into the “Washington consensus”, which from where I sit, seems to boil down to “cut taxes on the wealthiest & most powerful, in the faint hope that they will deign to look beneficently on the rest of us”; I will leave to others more knowledgeable about this the question of whether it still holds to that position. Perish the thought, though, that those most able to pay for society’s collective needs — who have also been its most economically rewarded — should be expected to pay their fair & just share.
– on “wraparound supports”, I made no suggestion that those supports ought to be mandatory, simply that they must be available when & where the individual needs them. Expecting someone in crisis to have to wait six weeks for an appointment, and then travel across town to get to it, is absurd. Expecting someone living with addiction who decides they are ready to enter recovery to then wait weeks to start treatment is foolhardy. Failing to provide fully adequate & responsive income supports to people unable to engage effectively with employment due to a “hidden disability” is penny-wise & pound-foolish.
– Once upon a time, the Government of Canada, through CMHC, built housing. It stopped doing that, and Canadians began to get, in the aggregate, poorer. The Government of Canada also negotiated a “free trade” agreement with the United States, and later Mexico, and soon food banks proliferated like dandelions on my lawn. We need the federal government to once again get into the business of building housing, and we need a progressive political party to campaign on eliminating the need for food banks within their first mandate.
Thank you.
Jerry & Christine: “The Washington Consensus is a set of ten economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the ‘standard’ reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C.-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and United States Department of the Treasury. … The prescriptions encompassed free-market promoting policies such as trade liberalization, privatization and finance liberalization. They also entailed fiscal and monetary policies intended to minimize fiscal deficits and minimize inflation.” — Wikipedia.
In other words, the Washington Consensus was a set of economic prescriptions that maintained the hegemonic position of the United States (and to a lesser extent its satrapies) in the world pecking order. Countries that went along were immiserated. Countries that refused to go along were bombed. Countries that were too big or too well armed to bomb and didn’t want to go along – most notably China – figured out how to live with the Washington Consensus and prosper under it while continuing to advance their own national interests. China has now been so successful at that strategy that Washington appears to have abandoned the Washington Consensus.
DJC
DJC (and family), thank you for writing this. As a parent of university aged offspring, it is hard not to get depressed when thinking of the future that awaits them. As you highlight, while Anglin and his ilk are very adept at pointing out the problems (as is our (dis)loyal leader of the federal opposition), they are extremely short on solutions. All sides are fully aware that theses issues are complex and will not be mitigated, let alone solved, without serious commitments of time, funds, and expertise. Hence, the crises will continue to be kicked down the road, left for others to solve. Until society is forced to have an adult conversation on taxation, specifically on that of high income earners and corporations (let’s be real here, as they own all mass media, this may not happen in my lifetime), homelessness and mental health will join the other “crises” without a solution, joining health care, education, and environmental initiatives as industries that are identified as being in a constant state of crisis. Finally, lest folks think homelessness is only a “big city” problem, take a tour through Lethbridge, Red Deer, Kelowna, and other “mid sized” communities and see the tent cities that have sprung up there. Austerity and neoliberalism since the 80’s have brought us to this point, they sure ain’t the answer.
So pleased that you are raisng this issue. Back in 1999 Susan George made this speech about neoliberalsim. I peddled it for years and lost count how many times I posted in on facebook and sent links to it to politicians. https://www.tni.org/en/article/a-short-history-of-neoliberalism
“The homeless crisis, the housing crisis, the deadly drug poisoning crisis, and the crisis of our overburdened health care system are all real, and they share a common cause. Forty years of neoliberalism have brought us to where we are.”
A few casual observations . . .
. . . Quite rightly. And it is a guaranteed certainty that more of the same policies resulting in the same negative spillovers will be the future reality in accordance with Century Initiative objectives and the desires of their financier planners, because the unexamined rationale taken at face value states that, “If we stop growing we will have a smaller economy. If we stop growing, we’ll be less important in the world, as the rest of the world grows around us.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-needs-to-get-to-100-million-people-by-2100-blackrock-s-mark-wiseman-1.1337065
Even as the physics do not support unlimited growth:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-delusion-of-infinite-economic-growth/
An inference that follows from that observation would be that, notwithstanding the large numbers of enthusiastic, misguided adherents, neoliberal materialism specifically and materialism generally will prove itself to be a failure of the worst sort, even though; it is somehow believed that a stage of permanent adolescence is a desirable social/cultural nirvana.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201203/the-madness-materialism
More specifically noting that Piketty states that “Inequality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and political”, as is the moral legitimation of social exclusion/ostracism and scapegoating of the socially and economically powerless (i.e., “The scapegoat would usually be an individual of lower society such as a criminal, slave, or poor person and was referred to as the pharmakos, katharma or peripsima.”).
https://www.britannica.com/topic/scapegoat
https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/scapegoating-poor
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-bylaw-targeting-homeless-people-scapegoats-the-poor-expert-says-1.5597405
No matter though because, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose as “Being poor began to carry an intense social stigma, and increasingly, poorhouses were placed outside of public view.”
https://www.history.com/news/in-the-19th-century-the-last-place-you-wanted-to-go-was-the-poorhouse
Capitalism itself is the normalization of bondage, submission, discipline, sadomasochism, and masochism, that is the normalization of, “such practices as the use of physical restraints (economic control and the controlling of bodies in physical space), the granting and relinquishing of control, and the infliction of pain.”
Communism and technocracy as well as other forms of mercantilism besides capitalism can “normalize bondage” and the other things you list, too: these miseries are not unique to systematic capitalization and profit-taking.
Government depends on some systematization or other to realize the things it needs to defend and profit from its territory and its workers as both a domestic authority and a neighbour to other sovereignties which aren’t necessarily cooperative.
But government needn’t—and, in many opinions, shouldn’t—be wholly run by capitalist principles. No matter how market-fundamentalists harp on how government should be run like a business, it isn’t and never was, and we know that because even the most celebrant of so-called ‘capitalism’ do not themselves adhere to its classic principles —much as any government doesn’t do, either. However, capitalist ideologues decry what they call “distortions” of a presumed ‘natural-market playing-field’ in which they—and, aspirationally, only they—have an exclusive right to hypocrisy by designing and enjoying these distortions (the ones they say governments aren’t supposed to do) that benefit them most.
Neoliberal capitalism is ideally against the sovereign state because that needs government which must, no matter its political philosophy, employ a mix of systems to exists within a diverse world of foreign sovereignties. Even a slave state must spend to maintain unproductive welfare of its workers or risk rebellion, or some other kind of bankruptcy—but for today’s neoliberals, democracies are the worst, the enemy.
Classical capitalism described by Adam Smith in the 18th century made the sovereign state a given wherein, despite the “invisible hand” of the market and presumed clockwork of economic principles in some kind of fantastic stasis, was legitimately subject to interference by the Sovereign to protect against, say, dumping of foreign products, possibly to undermine a target state’s ability to defend against further depredations—which would be a classically non-capitalistic thing to do but a perfectly sovereign thing to do. Like state welfare (done by every state in some degree), state strategy also deploys systems other than capitalism—and all at once, too.
“Capitalism,” however defined, can be weaponized ideologically. It has been, as Fukuyama’s “End of History” demonstrates (he presumed the weapon of capitalism defeated the weapon of communism—and has since retracted or compromised on the original tenet—now, as the evidence against it mounts in the throes of globalizing neoliberalism—or what I call the “neo-right”).
Why does it go on when the emperors of profit plainly have no clothes in terms of governing a territory of constituted citizenry? IMHO, narratives of fantastic salvation (like Hitler’s secret weapons) are symptomatic of approaching demise (or, in some philosophies, “the rapture”), and that fantasy is the presumption that a stateless corporatocracy can be achieved. I’m willing to bet the erasure of sovereign state borders will not be achieved anytime soon—not by Adam Smith or Karl Marx, not by Friedman or Hayek. The question is how hypocritical globalist (nota bene the fine distinction from ‘globalizing’) neoliberals will get distorting the diplomatic, strategic, technologic and human systems that really underpin reality. Too much hypocrisy risks rebellion, but in a rather disorganized way like the way wildfires around the world which do not conspire anything.
Capitalism is just one system of doing things, one of many which governments use. It cannot be the basis of government, not one of many, not even of a one-world government (which, BTW, the neo-right gins as a malevolent force, even though it covets the idea for itself—so long’s it’s exclusive). Capitalism can be used beneficially by any government, but an imaginary world government would probably minimize the excesses of it in order to husband the resources it would have instead of jeopardizing those opportunities. In short, the goal of globalist neoliberals would ultimately be their undoing. In their fabulous world it doesn’t matter.
You are punching! This one’s for you. I was conflicted, but it’s a thank you. https://youtu.be/sIhRWP9L8Oc?t=1
People in Alberta had a chance to take on the right-wing program of unregulated behaviour modification under the guise of coerced “drug treatment”. Every single time it reared it’s head, the alleged progressive political opponents of the corporatists proved to be the exact opposite. Here’s a quote from the one-time head of the Provincial Liberals when confronted with irrefutable evidence of the presence of this particular contagion in the province in 2018:
“I also have several people in my immediate circle who believe their child’s life was hanging by a thread and was saved. This is not a ‘black and white’ issue.”
This is the life-saving miraculous phenomenon to which the good doctor referred:
“3 Youth Treatment Centers Linked by Abuse Accusations
MARCH 24, 1990
In addition, Newton has authorized the opening of KIDS of the Canadian West in Calgary this spring. The Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission has agreed to allocate $600,000 toward setting it up. Private donors are expected to match the government grant. More than 40 Canadian youngsters are currently under treatment at KIDS of Bergen County in Hackensack.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-03-24-mn-711-story.html
As to the Chinese propensity for social control, the CPC would have to go some to match the programs of our ideological allies and fellow vassals in Latin America, or our own trial runs during the Great Plague of recent years. Operation Condor wasn’t a 1980s box office bomb, and the Chicago Boys didn’t deliver pizza.
Hello alkyl,
To add to your comment about the Century Initiative, it is important to look at the background of those propounding this idea that we nee 100 million residents in Canada by the end of the century. that is more than double our current population of around 40 million. You can look, for example, at the connections to the consulting company Mckinsey which has obtained lucrative contracts from the Canadian government, which were something of a scandal a few months back. Many of these contracts were signed around the time that Trudeau appointed Dominic Barton, a long-time high level executive with McKinsey, as ambassador to China to try to extricate the two Michaels. Experienced civil servants were, at the time, complaining that they had been sidelined and their advice ignored when the current immigration policy was being developed by the consulting company McKinsey.
There was a huge scandal in France when it was learned that the French government under Macron had given numerous lucrative contracts to McKinsey and that McKinsey was developing policies for the French government. McKinsey had its hands in the governments of other countries as well.
Dominic Barton was married to a high level executive at Black Rock.
The personal connections between Dominic Barton and other members of
the Century Initiative to influential corporations, including Black Rock and McKinsey, and to each other are interesting.
It seems unlikely that advice to the federal and government policy based on this advice from executives, former executives and individuals otherwise related to Black Rock, Mckinsey and the like is based on the best interests of Canadian citizens. It is much more likely to be based on the best interests of these companies and individuals connected to them.
Hello alkyl,
To be specific about your comment that Mckinsey is connected to the drug crisis. I believe it was Mckinsey which helped to develop the P R campaign by Purdue Pharma to market oxycontin which is an important factor in creation of the current drug crisis. Mckinsey appears to have also done some work for the FDA in the U S. I have read that Mckinsey settled for 600 million dollars with 49 states on this issue, but I don’t know any of the details. The Canadian government is, or at least was I don’t know if they still are, taking advice from high level executives, past and/or present, of such a company? That doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do.
Thank you for both your interest and your response. I read a little bit here and there, have experienced a little bit here and there, and have a little bit of an understanding of both the readings and the experiences. Your input is valuable in reminding everyone of who the architects behind the policies are and their direct role in manipulating the public for the private monetary gain of both the architects who formulate policy and the PR manipulators.
You are, of course, referring to,
“The Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA), a project of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Johns Hopkins University, today released more than 114,000 documents related to McKinsey & Company’s work as a management consulting firm for the opioid industry. They show how McKinsey advised opioid makers Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson and Mallinckrodt to help them increase sales, despite the growing public outcry over the opioid epidemic. The documents come from the company’s files between 2004 and 2019 and are being released under the terms of the $573 million settlement that McKinsey reached with 47 states, five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia in February 2021.”
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/new-documents-show-mckinseys-role-in-opioid-epidemic
And,
“Radio Canada has published the results of its investigation into the influence of American consulting firm McKinsey on the Trudeau government. In an important piece, they explain that the extent of McKinsey’s influence has led some to suggest that the firm “may have a central role in shaping Canada’s immigration policies”. . . . “Radio Canada’s report is important for informing the general public of the lobbyist groups behind Canada’s rapid, inorganic rise in immigration.”
https://www.eurocanadians.ca/2023/01/mckinsey-the-century-initiative-and-mass-immigration
I had long since forgotten the name, Dominic Barton. The reminder is most welcome. Awareness of what is truly transpiring, how the public is being manipulated, who the manipulators are, and who benefits should be a necessary interest for every citizen.
Brilliant, DJC!
I’d comment on the disaster that is Alberta Health Care, and the appalling willingness of our society to allow people with a substance use disorder to die in our streets, but by the time I finished, you would have written three more outstanding blogs. I’ll concentrate instead on a brief history of affordable housing in Edmonton.
In 1953, during a severe affordable housing shortage, Edmonton’s city council started discussing ways to get family housing built in the city. Edmonton worked with CMHC, worked on land trades with developers, and buildings started going up a couple of years later. Locations were determined by available land. NIMBY-ism was not a factor. On January 30, 1961, on Page 3, the Edmonton Journal reported that a 216 unit block of row houses southwest of 51st Avenue and 106th Street had been approved. It would be added to similar complexes in the Wellington, Athlone, Delton, Goldbar, and Hazeldean areas. The agreement was that CMHC would put up 90% of the costs, with the developers paying 10% over 40 years. Developers were guaranteed a 5% annual return on their investments (although at the request of the developers, this was later raised to 8%). The longer mortgage was to ensure that rents would remain affordable. At the time, it was expected that no more than 23.5% of income would be required as rent for this housing. Later still, more affordable housing would be built by the city, such as in Dickensfield, and some by developers, such as Thorncliff Place / Springfield Plaza.
Once the mortgages on these properties (not the city-built ones) were paid off, thousands of properties were renovated and low-income tenants were forced to leave. Rents went up, as there was no longer a requirement for the developers to provide affordable housing. Capital Region Housing Corporation, now called Civida, owns about 4500 housing units – not nearly enough to accommodate those who need affordable housing. The wait list is from one to four years.
There have been a few supportive housing complexes built in the last while, to help people with mental health issues or a substance use disorder. All of the non-profits have spent months or years fighting an expensive battle with communities whose members say they support the developments – in someone else’s neighbourhood. Most of the money poured into housing, though, seems to go into shelters run by non-profits, and mainly in the inner city. While the shelters keep people from freezing to death in our cold winters, they do very little to provide a stepping stone to integrating into society.
“But the program that we require starts with a return to fair taxation, a firm end to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population, an end to the financialization of everything including rental housing and health care, and the alienation of almost everyone to one degree or another from the necessities of a decent life.” Exactly right, DJC.
Thank you David. It is always painful as it must be
I’m late to this party but an excellent post. Thx Dave and Lily. Not much more to be said…
A great piece that’s had me thinking for days. I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but I’ve been banging on this pot ever since the global recession of 1981 when I warned my fellow picketers that I had a bad feeling about our 18% and two-year-contract demand. Turns out it really was a turning point and we’ve had about four decades of what it turned into: the “trickledown” of neo-conservative holism and subsequent usurpation of traditional conservative parties by globalizing neoliberals who buoyed the promised sprinkling of the May Queen back into the heavenly clouds before it got even halfway to the ground where 99.9% of us live.
Tax cuts and slashed social services failed to provide trickledown. How could voters who enthusiastically elected the neo-right proponents of this rather parsimonious wealth distribution scheme fail to appreciate the contradictory math or basic human greed that ensured the exclusive beneficiaries of obscene profits relieved of tax and regulation would rather not share their good fortune?
Citizens had to be distracted from the inflationary erosion of their spending power by way of, for example, the free trade deal with the USA (eventually including Mexico in NAFTA) when the sudden rearrangement of (MST) peas under shifting shells made cheaper American manufactures seem a fair compromise for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufactory jobs in Canada (eventually even Mexico lost jobs to China’s cheap consumer goods). The post-Soviet 90s were culturally as well as economically expansive: “Greed is good,” said Hollywood movie character Gordon Gecko. But then came massive savings-and-loan failures, junk-bond scandals and bank collapses that had difficulty distracting us from the Asian Meltdown of the late 90s.
Political distraction had to be turned up a notch before voters in democracies twigged —especially the lauded middle class which, floating on debt, seemed oblivious that the water was up to their necks and their feet were barely touching bottom anymore. Alienated Gulf War vets bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in ‘95; not to be upstaged, Saudi terrorists did 9/11. One-upping the one-upping, George Bush Jr’s US military forces attacked Iraq. His successor cleaned up the massive, inherited banking collapse with tens of trillions out of Americans’ federal reserve. Then tRump. Then Covid. Then Russia invades Ukraine. There was so much going on during the last two decades of neo-right dominance I almost forgot that I’d predicted the impoverishment of our society and our environment more than 40 years ago. It’s been a real page-turner lately. Guess I just want to get to the end, find out what happens.
Is it just coincidence? Forty years? Or is it a set of remarkably coincident 40-year cycles which only seem real but are, in fact, a set of cognitive biases supported by umpteen narratives —some of them mythoi from long ago: from the Bible (40 years of Israelite wandering, Christ’s 40 days in the desert, Lent, Chuck Berry—and the neo-right arc?…)
It’s a kind of historiological pareidolia which, with so much more to work with than, say, an imagined Virgin Mary on a piece of burnt toast, seems to suggest meaningful periodicity (asking this, I checked the two-score periodicity back 17 cycles —probably deluding myself further that Portugal’s claim on the Canary Islands in 1341 resonated with the six centuries since that kingdom initiated the biggest dent on our planet earth: European marine globalization): it’s remarkable, alright, but, like divination systems—Ifa or I Ching or Tarot, for examples—it probably only serves to jiggle the mind, look at a problem a new way, and discover things that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
I always wondered why my brothers in the IWA (local 1-85) shifted from loyal NDP supporters to Reform—right about 40 years ago. I think it was a symptom of insecurity, especially after we all got a sandwich wrapped in a round map during the massive layoffs of 1981. We were relieved briefly in the 90s only to be disappointed by the recession at the end of that decade. As if not insecure enough by the halfway-point (assumed) of this 40-year arc, Carl Rove and Rush Limbaugh made sure to find a scapegoat or two after 9/11.
Nevertheless, the verdict on trickledown was becoming clear: we have been had, big time. The disappointment was only sharpened by the brief plateau enjoyed before uncomfortable awakenings. In this way, the 60s were kinda like the 2000s, the heady nod-off after the halfway climax of a narrative arc: but immortality pills began to wear off in the 70s like they did in the 2010s, everybody frantically jonesing for more more.
Unlike the early 2000s when they were on top, neo-rightists are now fighting a rear-guard action before catching too much of the blame for climate change disasters and wealth inequities in the early 2020s. Distraction ad absurdum is found, where else?— just at the critical turning point of any narrative: just before the end and, let’s not ever forget, the denouement or meaning we are left with as we close the cover or walk out of the theatre or turn off the glowing screen before a listless sleep.
Here it is: the neo-right has no other resort but demagoguery and große Lüga (Big Lie) to evade culpability. Forty years of neoliberalism has brought us to this point so the movement’s go-to is to, naturally, blame somebody else. It’s trite, so why don’t people wake up? I chill when reminded of the same type of question I asked in 1981. On the other hand I breathe a sigh of relief because, if my 40-year cat’s-paw is even halfway correct, this narrative is finally coming to an end.
Of course a good story doesn’t let it seem so predictable, even as the number of pages slims to the inevitable. Even Alberta’s UCP and tRump’s attempted revival egg me on: they are, I hope, the last convulsions of a dying arc or a cornered skunk: still dangerous but ultimately doomed by hope.
What will the world look like in 2060? Another 40 years like the last is simply unimaginable to me.