Posted
21th August 2001
World's Apart by Gordon Barthos
Toronto
Star (Photo shows Pierre Pettigrew)
APierre Pettigrew can muster a kind word even for his harshest
critics. Most of the anti-globalization activists who created
such a ruckus at the recent Group of Eight summit in Genoa "have
valid points," Canada's international trade minister told the
Couchiching Institute's summer think-tank this past week. "They
have legitimate concerns and pertinent questions" about the
cost/benefits of globalization, the ever-freer and speedier
exchange of ideas, information, skilled workers, capital, goods
and services that defines our era.
Pettigrew respects political activists who can make themselves
heard across the anarchists' chants, the police barricades and
the tear gas. But the global skeptics are on the wrong side
of history, he believes. They oppose a process that has boosted
Canada's growth and prosperity. And he doesn't shrink from saying
so. Most activists seek in vain to "turn back the clock," Pettigrew
told the seminar. Indeed, many seem perversely driven by nostalgia
for "the epic class struggles of the past, the welfare state
of the 1970s ... in a sense, for an idealized world that never
existed." They lack coherence, and practicality, he suggested.
By forcing politicians like Jean Chr*tien to defensively scale
down summits and hold them in remote places, they hinder the
very people who are trying to tame globalization's wilder side.
Certainly, that's the politicians' mantra, neatly expressed.
But the politicians are rattled by this fast-growing challenge,
and their reaction shows it. Tempered though Pettigrew's remarks
were, they did a disservice to many if not most of the 100,000
hardy souls who descended on Genoa last month. Most wanted to
get some publicity for progressive, alternative agendas, not
to physically disrupt the meeting. Nor can they be written off
as Luddites, or hopeless dreamers. Prominent Canadian activists,
for example, want Ottawa to think twice before surrendering
yet more political sovereignty to corporate interests, for marginally
faster growth. Can that be construed as seeking to turn back
the clock?
Is
it retrograde to demand that Ottawa preserve some capacity to
craft labour, social and environmental policies that reflect
Canadian values and needs? Does globalization mean we must consign
3 million Canadians to live in fear of hunger, as yesterday's
Star reported? To accept Ontario's new "voluntary" 60-hour workweek?
Ever smoggier air? Is it "class struggle" to maintain that policy-makers
could do more to ease child poverty or the corrosive rich/poor
gap? Is it misplaced nostalgia for some idealized "welfare state"
to favour investing in publicly funded income programs, social
housing, universal medicare and education in preference to tax
breaks? Is it intellectually incoherent to demand more effective
measures against planetary warming, air and water pollution
and unsafe foods? Is it impractical to dismantle barriers to
developing countries' exports? To boost aid? To write off debt?
These
are not the wacko demands of a lunatic fringe. Millions of Canadian
churchgoers, social activists, trade unionists, environmentalists,
community workers and others endorse them. They may be idealistic.
They unquestionably are costly. Some conflict with others. But
they are front and centre on the public agenda today, in part
because protests beginning in Seattle in 1999 have put them
there. Indeed, Pettigrew rightly pointed out that Ottawa is
starting to act on some of these fronts.
If
the activists continue to press their case at the summits, it
is because they want to keep up the pressure. This may be inconvenient,
even tiresome, for complacent politicians' including some of
Chretien's Liberals and most of Mike Harris' Tories' who are
more eager to trim taxes and shrink government in the name of
globalization, to shed troublesome files and to download responsibilities,
than they are to shoulder new challenges. But as Pettigrew noted
at Couchiching, no debate should be off-limits. "In this globalizing
world we must have confidence, we must be flexible, inquisitive
and open to new ideas, no matter where they come from or who
suggests them," he said.
So
let's hear no more about young Canadian activists being lost
in woolly pipe dreams for a welfare state that never existed.
They are talking about their hopes and fears for tomorrow. This
country hands out awards from time to time. The Order of Canada
is one. Its motto: Desiderantes meliorem patriam, from the old
Latin Bible. It can be translated They seek a better country.
That's what the big noise is all about. People seeking a better
country, and world. We'll hear more of those "valid points"
that Pettigrew talked about when we host the G-8 summit in Kananaskis,
Alberta, next year. Let's hope our easily rattled politicians
are listening. * Gordon Barthos writes The Star's editorials
on foreign affairs..
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