I've recently been doing something that I had hoped I might never do: start reading a lot about politics. I've also been reading quite a bit about history (though I don't think I ever had an aversion to that), specifically Canadian history. In today's post, I want to talk a little bit about some parallels between what I've been reading about Canada's path through the Great Depression and the politics that we're seeing now. Is this alarmist? Probably so in other hands, but I don't mean it that way. What I mean to do is just like at the political climate of the Depression in Canada and pick out a couple of features that we should watch for, signs of trouble. I also think that we can easily recognize those signs in our present situation. However, where I wish to break off from the more alarmist line is to say that these signs are probably present in varying degrees in all societies, and that it's not their presence that we need to keep our eyes on, but rather their intensity. So, on with the task.
According my appalling interpretation of history, there were two watchwords that defined the response by the Canadian government to the Depression: order, and balanced budget. These two were prized above everything. When municipalities across this country begged the federal government for relief money, the feds simply responded that there wasn't money for that sort of thing, that the budget couldn't withstand borrowing substantial sums of money (which is of course exactly what they did in 1939, and I can't imagine the national economy was in better shape after 10 years of depression than it was after five, say); lastly, they said that aid to the citizenry was a municipal matter anyway and so the feds refused to take any responsibility for it. One particularly telling tale is that of a group of unemployed Vancouver men who occupied a post office in the city in protest. They were perfectly peaceful and actually allowed people to go about their business, but refused to leave. (The society embraced these men, by the way, sending them food, baked goods and coffee to keep their spirits up throughout the occupation. The common man certainly felt this action was warranted.) Eventually, the mayor of Vancouver decided that he'd had enough and sent the police to break up the occupation. The leader of the occupiers spoke with the head policeman on the scene, and agreed that the occupiers would leave peaceably if they were to be arrested and charged. However, the police were given specific orders not to arrest them, as to put them in jail and feed them would cost money. Rather, the occupiers were simply to be turned out. This was unacceptable to the occupiers, and when they were told that the government had heard their message loud and clear, and that they should go home, to which the occupiers respond that if they had homes to go back to, they wouldn't be there.
The point that I wish to draw here is that the government simply refused any responsibility for and refused to do anything about the social problems in its country. As long as the people were kept in line, often by violence, and even more often by laws that muzzled rational discourse and backed up by the threat of violence, then all was well. The Padlock Law in Quebec was just such a law: it allowed the police to padlock the home or business of anyone found to be in possession of or distributing communist material, or furthering communist ideas. The law of course also applied to anyone found to be aiding anyone in such pursuits. It wasn't applied very often: it didn't need to be, as the threat of its application was sufficient. The definition of communism in the law, you ask? None given, as "any definition would prevent application of the law." (Those are the words of Maurice Duplessis, by the way.) Similarly unjust laws were passed in Alberta, where Aberhardt tried to annex the banks into the provincial government. However, that legislation was handily struck down, and one may venture the suggestion that perhaps a rich banker has more sway in society than does a "communist," though that term was applied broadly to say the least.
So, that's just a little taste of what the Great Depression held in store for Canadians. Let's look at the contemporary Canadian landscape a wee bit. Fortunately, the Canadian government hasn't made it very difficult for us to find parallels, and they even come nicely identified with numbers: C-10 and C-38. C-10 is the omnibus crime bill, which would make our criminal laws much harsher in this country. Many have condemned C-10 as approaching the model of American criminal law, when even the Americans have been saying lately that the plan didn't work out as they'd hoped. C-38 is the looming bit of "budget" legislation. I use scare quotes when referring to it as a budget because the only thread that ties the whole 420-page bill together is that each of its issues in some way addresses Canada's deficit situation. I think that these two bills correspond to the two Depression watchwords: C-10 shows the emphasis on maintaining order in society, despite the costs that such a criminal policy has been shown to have in the United States (but after all, who was going to fill all of our brand new prisons without C-10?); C-38 shows the use of economic matters to avoid facing up to important issues, such as the state of our democracy. The opposition parties submitted over 1 000 amendments to the bill, of which over 800 were accepted for voting by the speaker, who organized them into over 150 separate votes in Parliament. Not one was accepted by the majority Conservative government. Not a bloody one. They also wouldn't go along with the suggestion that this bill was too disparate, and should be broken up into chunks for separate debate.
The Depression-era Canadian government was fascist. It was a police state that used the budget to justify anything and everything, and used unjust laws and police violence to suppress any dissension. With C-10 and C-38 at the federal level, with Bill 78 and the police brutality we've seen come out of Quebec, it seems like we should be keeping a sharp eye on this situation. It's getting pretty bad up here.
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