Public servants celebrating the enrolment of 5 million citizens in the Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan (1959, Archives of Ontario)

Notes for talk at Public Policy Forum Dinner, April 11, 2013

I am delighted to be here with family, friends and colleagues this evening – an evening that can only be understood as a celebration of Canada’s public service. Such celebrations are pretty rare these days though the public service is an institution that deserves celebrating, and may need it now more than ever.

My hunch is that I can speak for all the former clerks here this evening that for us public service was deeply satisfying, a privilege, a source of pride, an opportunity to make a difference. Public service was more often than not fulfilling, and, believe it or not, even fun.

I wonder what proportion of public servants would say this today.

Things were much easier for us. Public service was more valued. Public servants were treated with respect. Politicians sometimes got angry at our advice but they kept asking. The media often ignored us – we liked that – but they sometimes reminded Canadians that we existed and that we mattered. When I left academics to join the federal public service, I didn’t have to explain my decision. My friends and colleagues didn’t think it was strange. They thought joining the public service was worthy, maybe important, at the very least, respectable.

Things do seem different today. The public service is no less important but it sure seems more than ever under attack and from every side. Less valued. Less trusted. More under the gun. It must be less fun.

I know I have to be careful here. I’m aware that as the distance increases from my time in public service, I become increasingly vulnerable to the seductions of nostalgia. When I was in public service nothing annoyed me more than former public servants telling us how bad things had become. How much better things were when they were in charge. Oblivious to the present, to the challenges we faced, they often urged us to find solutions in the past – a past of their own invention. The historian Charley Maier once described nostalgia as history without guilt, where we exaggerate the good and filter out the bad, history as we wish it had been. The public service doesn’t need more nostalgia.

It certainly doesn’t need more critics. Almost every day another article tells us that our public service is broken. Public service has to act more like a business, say some. Public service is trying too hard to be like a business, say others. Public service is too risk averse and must be more innovative say some. Public service makes too many mistakes say others so we need more oversight, more control, less risk.

The advice is often contradictory; the tone is increasingly derisive. In the media and popular discourse, the words “public service” have been replaced by the phrase “bloated bureaucracy”. It seems one cannot utter the word “bureaucracy” if it isn’t preceded by the word “bloated”. Public service is described increasingly as overhead, a drain on the economy rather than a competitive advantage. This derisiveness is wrong. It is dangerous for Canada. I do not intend to join that chorus.

Everyone in this room knows that the public service is vitally important. It is, we know, the police, the soldiers, the firefighters, the healthcare providers and the teachers. it is also the folk who negotiate our international deals, write and enforce our laws and regulations, help us when we are in trouble overseas, keep our food and drugs and kids’ toys safe, maintain our parks and wilderness areas, help our artists and make sure that Canadians have access to Canadian perspectives. It is the people who deliver our benefits and help those in need, and yes, collect our taxes – to the extent they can.

The public service is also a key source of policy advice, different from those who are focused on re-election or who are committed to the prevailing ideology. Public servants try at least to suspend their biases, to offer advice based on evidence and direct experience. After all they live and work in every part of Canada and the world, delivering our policies and programs. it would be strange not to want the benefits of that experience.

Simply, the public service continues to be critically important to our quality of life, to our economic performance and to our international standing. We have to stop treating this vital institution as overhead.

Let me give you an example. The Fraser Institute recently published a report suggesting that public servants were being paid more than their private sector counterparts. This report came out at the same time as the annual publication of the “sunshine list” of Ontario public servants earning more than one hundred thousand dollars. This is all well and good. Compensation must be just and fair. These are fair questions and the more transparency the better.

Just the same, the Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor, in one of his excellent blog posts, reversed the tables and published the Fraser sunshine list. McGregor reported on the considerable, though no doubt well-earned, salaries of the Fraser Institute researchers and executive, reminding us as well that taxpayers also subsidize this organization and therefore these considerable salaries. The Institute responded, appropriately, that they are competing for talent in a global market, and to get excellence they have to pay for it. No dispute there. Would that they had added a similar note in their report on public service pay. The failure even to consider what it takes to attract and retain excellence in the public service is illustrative of a larger problem: the devaluing of public service, looking only at what it costs, not what it gives.

Of course the public service, at every level, must change with changing times. All large organizations in every sector are working out how to make the transition from the old bureaucratic models, closed systems where authority came with position, and information was tightly controlled, to more open network models, where authority is earned and information shared.

The public service faces particular challenges. Today’s public issues are more complex, often with no historical precedent, and with multiple poles of conflict. And trust in government – and therefore public service – is arguably at an all time low. You cannot build a resilient, lean, open organization on a foundation of distrust. Distrust is every bit as damaging as blind deference. Distrust leads to ever more layers of costly and stifling control and to a culture of fear.

On top of tougher issues and declining trust, every public service is also dealing with endless incremental cutting – relentless, often nickel and dime cutting, with no end in sight, that feeds insecurity, makes excellence in delivery more difficult, and pushes public servants to focus internally when they need to be looking outward and to the long-term.

In short, I expect it’s a lot harder to serve these days, and a lot harder to have fun doing so.

Of course it is right and proper to ask what should be the role of government, how big should government be, and how do we get the best results at the lowest cost. Indeed there are no doubt savings to be had in transforming the public service and cutting the costly layers of control that reduce efficiency and stifle innovation.

But we should free ourselves from the mythology that government has in recent times become over-large and unaffordable. In fact the growth of public service has not been keeping pace with the growth in population. Public servants are a declining portion of the workforce and government spending is becoming a much smaller part of our economy. The cost of direct federal government spending as a percentage of GDP keeps hitting new lows, so too federal revenues. Public servants are pretty frugal. And as economists such as Hugh Mackenzie have documented, the public services we get for our taxes are one of the last great bargains.

Yes, the public service must change. Yes, it must help close the distance between government and citizen. It must be more creative. It must be more open. The public service has risen to the challenge of reinventing itself more than once in our history and, of course, will do so again. But that can happen only when we all recognize its value, only when we all stop treating it as overhead but rather as a key competitive advantage, key to our past success and key to our future. Only when we stop treating every mistake as an opportunity to berate the institution and public servants. Mistakes are inevitable especially as public service transforms itself. Accountability must not be reduced to naming and blaming. A creative organization will take reasoned risks and learn from good-faith mistakes.

We need to revalue the public service and those who work within it. Somebody has to stand up for the public service, its contribution, its importance, its value. Public servants cannot do this themselves. Even former public servants are suspect. The people in this room, however, leaders from every other sector of Canadian society, can do this. Can speak out. Can stand up for public service.

It is in all of our interests.

Thank you for this evening of celebration.

A somewhat abridged version of this post first appeared in The Toronto Star here

Governments here and elsewhere are increasingly preoccupied with cutting even as evidence piles up of its harmful consequences on people and the economy. Austerity is not even delivering the balanced budgets its advocates promise. Even the IMF is now preaching balance rather than a single-minded focus on cuts. Yet, austerity’s adherents hold fast, deny the evidence or double down. Why is that?

Of course a few at the top benefit from austerity, at least in the short term, and though few, they exert considerable influence. And some pundits are so invested in this agenda that they would have to swallow themselves to alter course. But the imperviousness to evidence is about more than that.

What makes a theory “scientific” is that it’s falsifiable – if contrary evidence is found, the theory is modified or thrown out.  But austerity fetishism is not economics; it is simply the latest expression of free market orthodoxy, and as ideology, impervious to evidence, never wrong. The belief that less government is the solution to pretty much any problem doesn’t lose a beat when the contrary evidence comes in. Just check out the responses of the free marketeers to the evidence.

First is denial. That was how our federal government reacted to the early signs of the 2008 meltdown. And now they constantly remind us how well we are doing, grabbing any glimmer of good news and ignoring the rest, comparing us to those in deepest trouble and not the few who are prospering by taking a different course. Politically this often works. None of us likes bad news and we often punish the politicians who bring it. Those who remind us of rising inequality, stagnant incomes, increased child poverty are painted as gloomy naysayers. Why, it is asked, do they hate Canada? But sooner or later the bad news is just too bad to ignore and denial no longer sells.

Here is where adherents will often double down. If austerity isn’t working, what we need is more austerity. We are never in a situation with no government or zero taxes so ‘austerians’ can always make the case that they just haven’t cut enough. That seems to be the argument within the UK Conservative Party and from Ontario Conservatives. In Canada, austerity has been implemented in slow motion, in increments, so we are ripe for this argument: our federal government denying that previous budgets were “truly” austere, is now hinting that its next budget will cut even deeper.

There are, of course, political limits to cutting. That’s playing out dramatically in the streets of Southern Europe. But here, too, the consequences of cuts are increasingly visible, first for the most vulnerable: aboriginal communities struggling to meet basic needs, higher tuitions and student debt, refugees who cannot get needed medicine, more unemployed Canadians thrown onto inadequate welfare because they cannot access insurance, migrant workers denied their meager benefits, prisoners living in intolerable and ultimately dangerous conditions. Some consequences will play out more slowly: weaker environmental regulations, cuts to education and science, neglect of crumbling infrastructure, eroding public services will all make our economy less competitive, less fair, less sustainable. The deeper the cuts, the more public services erode, the more inequality and poverty grow, the greater the risks of social disruption and the higher the political costs. Then what?

The final refuge is to argue that all the right things have been done and now it’s up to the market. These arguments are already on the business pages of our media: When the Governor of the Bank of Canada urged business to put some of the cash they were sitting on back into the economy, the austerians reacted with force. Don’t worry about “dead money”, they said. Don’t worry about the failure of the corporate sector to turn its profits – and tax cuts – into job-creating investments. Sounding eerily like old communists clinging to the notion of inevitable revolution, their argument was pure ideology – “it’s only a matter of time”, surely market forces, as the laws of economics require, will kick in, good jobs are coming. If there are inexorable laws of economics that yield jobs and growth from cuts to taxes and government, it seems somebody forgot to tell business.

So misguided ideas persist. Critics are painted as negative purveyors of doom, tax and spenders, or worse. Lets be clear, no one is arguing for imprudence or waste. Budgets should be balanced over time and debt should come down in good times. But we need to understand how we got here and we ought to stop repeating what just doesn’t work. What got us here was a combination of recession – temporarily higher spending and lost revenue – and over a decade of unaffordable tax cuts. Before the recession and the latest tax cuts, we were running surpluses. Spending obviously wasn’t the big problem and our government debt to GDP is pretty reasonable and interest rates are low. Why then the obsession with cutting? And where are the alternatives?

About 80 years ago Antonio Gramsci, an ideologue of a different stripe, wrote in his prison notebooks of moments in history when old ways of thinking are clearly not working but new ways have not yet been born. “In this interregnum”, he wrote, “a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” We are, it seems, in just such an interregnum. Austeria may be a morbid symptom, the last gasp of a failed ideology, but it also reflects the absence of a consensus around any alternative. Indeed. persistent austerity dulls the political imagination, makes any spending, any alternative to cutting, seem risky, as if cuts held no risks. It is easier to dismantle than to transform, easier to cut than to build.

Nonetheless, maybe we are seeing some of the first glimmers, for example, in President Obama’s recent State of the Union Address, where climate change and inequality played prominently, and maybe too in the U.K. where Labour’s Ed Milleband reopened the tax debate, focusing on helping the 50% hurt most by current policy. Here too some recent glimmers, though for the most part what we have been getting is different degrees of austerity.

This week the Ontario Federation of Labour is launching a grassroots consultation on an alternative Ontario budget, a People’s Budget. We have an opportunity here to help change the conversation.

Notes: Keynote talk, CCPA Post-Austerity session, Toronto, January 9, 2013

We are living in the “Age of Austerity” or at least so says David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister. He made this announcement in 2009 at the Conservative convention just before becoming prime minister. This meant, he explained, that he would have to fix the errors, the folly of previous governments. He would restore the economy by cutting spending, reducing the size of government, and shifting resources from public to private.

In 2010, the G20 met in Toronto and, apart from arresting citizens, they were also talking austerity. Canada led the charge. Fiscal consolidation we called it. Canada had become the darling of fiscal policy – the world leader in austerity. (Remember when we used to be the world leader in diversity, inclusive community, gender equality, balanced crime policy?) Increasingly our allies were asking us how to implement an austerity agenda. And certainly we had some important lessons to share given our fiscal successes in the 1990s. But what we may have forgot to tell everyone was that taxes were much higher then than they are now. Interest rates were higher too, so the costs of debt were higher, the urgency was greater, and we had more room to offset the consequences of cuts. We may have also forgot to tell everyone that the rest of the world was spending while we were contracting and because of this we were able – at least in part – to grow ourselves out of deficit.

In any case, by 2011, austerity had spread across most of Europe. Cameron, it seems, had aptly characterized the times.

By the end of 2012, however, the glow was starting to come off austerity. This was not just because of the spreading riots, disruption and violence across Europe though that’s a pretty good reason. This was not just because of job losses, soaring inequality or the devastating human consequences felt most heavily by the most vulnerable, and by women and the young – all good reasons too. No, austerity was losing its lustre primarily because it just wasn’t working. In the U.K., for example, the prime minister just extended his targets for balancing the budget because the cuts were not delivering their promise. The budget office lowered its growth projections because the costs of austerity are greater than expected. Austerity Europe was experiencing huge pain, little gain.

A recent IMF report, what I like to call the apology report, admits that the IMF had seriously underestimated the consequences of austerity on growth and now were cautioning that maybe we should all back off. (To be fair they were always cautious about austerity and its impacts.)

For a number of economists this was no surprise. Joseph Stiglitz had warned that austerity is medieval medicine, don’t do it. Paul Krugman and, here, Jim Stanford were saying that this was not the time, austerity would make things worse, possibly take us to depression.

What became increasingly clear was that austerity had never been driven by fiscal policy or economics or evidence. It was driven by ideology. Market fundamentalism. A desire to make government much smaller, eliminate or reduce, as much as politics allowed, so-called entitlements, create a “pro-business” climate of less regulation, less government, and, above all, lower taxes.

Think about the irony of this: that the huge recession-induced deficits that were largely the result of tax cuts and deregulation were now the justification to renew the commitment to that same failed ideology. Deficits were a gift – cover to do what many had wanted to do all along. Cut government down to size. Cut services. Cut. It seems that every failure of this neoconservative approach is used by its advocates to justify doing more of the same. That’s kind of nuts.

How about Canada? I left the Privy Council and Canada for a few years in 2006. At that time Canada had a $16 billion surplus. That’s a real problem for those who might share Cameron’s ideology because without big deficits it’s harder to argue for the urgency to cut programs, reduce government. Instead, the decision was made to cut taxes, for example, taking two cents out of GST. Today those two cents cost the federal government about $14 billion annually. That’s on top of continuing the corporate tax cuts the Liberals had already launched and on top of numerous “boutique tax cuts” and on top of Liberal tax cuts in 2000 that were the biggest in Canadian history.

Imagine none of that had happened. Imagine that the federal government had at least a good portion of the revenue that they gave up over the last dozen years. They would have had enough money to be far more resilient in the face of recession, to help provinces that were in trouble, to invest in science, education, in a greener, cleaner economy and to begin to transform our health and social programs so they would be there for future generations.

Instead, we’re now talking about austerity as though it’s inevitable, as though we have no choice. (When our leaders tell us that there is no alternative, it is a safe bet to assume that there is indeed an alternative and one that we would prefer were it on offer.)

When I came back to Canada just before the 2011 election it seemed as if we were all suffering the effects of austeria. Every Wednesday in Ottawa the opposition had what they called waste Wednesdays: a press conference to show how much money Conservatives were wasting. Their biggest issue? These spendthrift Conservatives. Then I watched the leadership debate. Four men (May had not been invited) were competing for who’s the biggest fiscal hawk, who’s the biggest tax cutter. Nobody wanted to be seen as a tax and spender.

Where is the discussion on alternatives? Where’s the tax conversation that we ought to be having? Our current deficit is the result of recession-related spending – now ended, I would say prematurely – and unaffordable tax cuts. But even still if you compare us to anyplace else, our fiscal situation is pretty good. This is not the 1990s. We’re not Greece.

As I said, austerity is losing its lustre. We are seeing a debate now all across Europe about whether austerity is the way to go and my view is that we are going to see taxes coming back up, including a big commitment to containing the worst of inequality. The debates are intense in Europe. Not surprising. The cuts have been deep. The suffering great. The backlash severe. And the fiscal results lousy.

In Canada, austerity has been implemented in slow motion and this incremental, barely visible austerity has been seductive. It’s harder to rally opposition. More so because very little information has been provided on the extent and implications of the cuts – it is almost impossible to develop a complete picture of where we are headed. Strategic obfuscation.

Right now, the most visible cuts are the most politically sexy or at least saleable. The targets? Public servants, teachers’ salaries, politically easy stuff that feeds off stereotypes and nurtures divisions between unionized and non-unionized, public and private.

Who else? Welfare recipients. Refugees. Migrant workers. Austerity by stealth, it seems, is making us meaner. Policy in the age of austerity becomes a highly competitive, zero-sum game. Never-ending austerity invites ever deeper divisions, resentments and jealousies.

Perhaps most disturbing about this slow motion austerity are the opportunity costs. Our focus on cutting – often nickel-and-dime cutting – takes us away from the big issues. We’re not talking about climate change. We lag when we should be a leader. We lag on green energy and we could be a leader. We lag Northern Europe – and we should be comparing ourselves to the best – on jobs, on youth employment, on equality. We’re in drift. Self-imposed austerity and a list of trade deals is not an economic plan.

What is the alternative to an austerity agenda? Of course we have to be fiscally prudent, to reduce waste, make wise choices, balance spending and revenue over time, reduce debt in good times. But as Jim Stanford has shown we are far more likely to achieve our objectives if we focus on employment and a living wage that will restore the revenue we need and reduce the demand for government help. The alternative to austerity – take back our future rather than leave it to the vagaries of the market. To make the investments now in the clean and green jobs of the future. To tackle the big challenges together – climate change, inequality and poverty, eroding democracy. To stop the erosion in our public services but rather transform them in the face of our demographic challenges and technological opportunities. The alternative to austerity – the renewal of our sense of the common good and a conversation about taxes because we only get the future we are willing to pay for.

Great change generally starts outside conventional political institutions. Idle No More, the students in Montreal, the Occupy movement, the many fighting against risky pipelines, the health care providers protesting cuts to refugee health benefits and a few rich folk calling on governments to tax us more – I believe those are part of a larger movement. The ‘enough already’ movement.

Each of these movements has its critics. Their demands are not always clear. They do seem to wax and wane. But if we see them as part of a larger discontent, a widespread hunger for something better, maybe we will understand that first and foremost they are about changing the conversation – and they are not likely going away. With all their differences they are asking some of the same questions: How did fiscal health become more important than human health? How did the health of the so-called job creators become more important than the health of the rest of us? How do we put people and the natural world that sustains all else at the centre of the agenda?

Canada would be an excellent place to do that.

Chief Theresa Spence (by Regina Southwind, Rabble, December 17)

As we enter 2013, how is Canada doing? How do we stack up against other rich countries? Emerging from the year of the 50th anniversary of medicare, the 30th anniversary of the Charter, are we making progress? Do we even have any shared notion of what progress would look like?

How we measure our success as a country matters.   It tells us a lot about what we value most.  It shapes what we ask of our politicians and how we judge the performance of our governments.  It shapes politics and policy.

Very often international comparisons of how well a country is doing rely on GDP and this has been the go-to measure in Canada as well.  GDP measures the total value of the goods and services produced by a country and is the best way to track the size and growth of the economy.  On this basis, in a world shaken by U.S. debt, European fragility and the emergence of new economic super-powers, we have been doing pretty well.

Of course GDP is important and especially to developing countries trying to lift their populations out of poverty.   But it is a lousy measure of the health and welfare of a country such as ours.  As countries get richer, growth brings diminishing returns; other things become more important.

Our focus on GDP in media and politics reflects what has been for several decades now a preoccupation with economic growth, a preoccupation that helps explain the tiresome whining of some of our opinion leaders about how badly we were lagging the US even while we were doing pretty well on other counts.  It probably also explains the equally irritating self-righteousness when we now lecture our allies on how they should manage their economies. But GDP tells us nothing about how the benefits of growth are shared or about the costs of growth to the environment, our community and even future economic prospects.  It tells us nothing about those values that sit outside the market – the quality of our political and social commons, and  our relationships to one another and to nature.

International agencies and a number of countries are developing indices that take into account equality, sustainability, democracy, and trust, as well as economic performance.  In Canada Roy Romanow has proposed just such an index, and recently David Suzuki added his voice to the campaign to think beyond GDP – promoting a measure of General National Happiness with a central place for the health of the environment which enables all else.  These are welcome initiatives because they ask us to consider what is important, what our future ought to look like.

To this work I would propose the addition of another measure, which despite its long pedigree is too easily overlooked.  Gandhi and Pope John Paul II, Aristotle and Rawls, and artists through the ages have all reminded us that the real test of any society is how we treat the weakest among us, those who have the least.  Here too, with glaring exceptions, none more shameful than our relationship with Aboriginal Peoples, we have done pretty well.  For example, we have historically been above average on measures of equality, well ahead of the U.S.  We were seen as proof that diversity and equality could coexist, that empathy and sharing could bridge differences in language, culture, lifestyle. We came to see immigration as a solution, not a problem and to be open to refugees.

Even in our relationship with Aboriginal Peoples, this government’s historic apology for some of the most grievous wrongs could have been a signal of a new, more respectful relationship (especially needed after the abandonment of the Kelowna Accord).

Churchill gave particular attention to how well a country treats its prisoners, what he described as a measure of a society’s stored-up goodwill; and here too we managed to be fairly balanced.

As for our global responsibilities, Canada led in getting rich countries to commit 0.7 per cent of GDP to aid and while we never came close to that level (others have), we did, about a decade ago, double our aid budget, with no less than half going to Africa, and took other steps that offered at least some prospect for narrowing the gap.

How do we stack up today?

On many fronts pretty well: we have much to be grateful for. But how about for those who have least?

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike has drawn attention again to the suffering of her community, part of a growing movement, Idle No More, which got its impetus from the omnibus budget that weakened environmental protections without consultation with Aboriginal communities.  The movement has spread across and beyond Canada, an expression of outrage at these decisions, at inaction on  injustice.

A few doctors and other health providers have also been leading protests against recent changes to refugee regulations, changes that mean more, including children, are subject to automatic detention and the separation of families, some may be denied essential medical help, and some will be subject to automatic deportation without appeal.  We are also increasingly relying on migrant workers who are not only paid less than domestic workers but are now denied basic benefits that they pay for through EI premiums.

As for unemployed Canadians – too many of whom are young, often indebted graduates – cuts over the last 15 years have meant fewer are eligible for EI benefits or training. Recent changes have made eligibility even more exclusive, requiring the unemployed to accept any work, even at wages of 70 per cent of the job they lost.  Access is now at an all-time low forcing many to go on welfare.  With all the growth of our economy, too many Canadians, many who do have jobs, live in poverty or are just scraping by.  We are nowhere near meeting our longstanding commitment to eliminate child poverty.

Thousands have also protested the government’s punitive crime agenda, which, while politically popular, marks a sharp departure for Canada, at a time when crime rates are going down.  The evidence is overwhelming that such tough-on-crime policies don’t work, that they make us less safe, result in prison overcrowding and inattention to rehabilitation, turn jails into “asylums” for the mentally ill, and contribute to the creation of an underclass permanently excluded from opportunity.

Internationally, apart from freezing aid, our parliament recently said no to a bill promising cheap drugs to poor countries, choosing, as Stephen Lewis put it, patents over people.  And when U.N. envoys criticize us, we are outraged, turning against the critics rather than asking how we might do better.

These changes cannot be justified on the basis of fiscal prudence.  Where there are savings, they are miniscule.  Increased incarceration and detention will create considerable costs.   While we all recognize the need for efficient administration, these changes put the burden on, thereby doubly victimizing, the weakest among us.  They reflect an indifference to those with less or, even worse, a view of people in need as shirkers and slackers.

What all this yields is a meaner Canada.   When governing is all short-term economic growth, damn the consequences, then aboriginal rights and environmental protections become inconveniences to be ignored or managed.   Refugees, the unemployed, and the poor come to be seen and treated as freeloaders, a drag on the economy, rather than fellow citizens, often victims of an increasingly mean version of capitalism.  And criminals are demonized, convenient scapegoats for our fears and discontents, the most heinous offences and frightening offenders used to blind us to the reality that those are people in our prisons, most of whose lives could be repaired.

Our leaders try to convince us that the health of the so-called job creators is more important than that of the weakest among us.  And, it seems, many of the richest and most powerful come to believe this and act on that basis, what some have called “trickle down meanness,” one of the consequences of rising inequality, particularly when growth disproportionately benefits a small group of super-rich able effectively to secede from society and its mutual obligations.  On measures of equality, we are slipping to the bottom relative to other rich countries.  We ought to measure up to the best.

An obsession with short-term growth, with money, may well blind us to the things that really matter, to the possibility that there is some common good important enough that we might modify or even sacrifice our private interests.

The debate brewing about how to measure success is not just about measurement.  It is a recognition that we need to participate in a real discussion about what we mean by the good life, the purpose of the economy,  the kind of Canada we want. It is about decency and dignity.  It is about our political and democratic institutions, the need to find much better ways to ensure that all voices, particularly those speaking for the marginalized, are heard.  This may be the only way to restore a sense of the common good and win back the many who have given up on politics, party and government.

(This article first appeared in The Toronto Star.)

Part of the answer lies in the preeminence of markets and market thinking over the last three decades.  We are not simply talking about our market economy, but more our conversion to a market society in which money can buy almost anything, we are more consumer than citizen, and inequalities and their corrosiveness grow, undermining solidarity and any sense of a common good.   With the market society comes a thinned out  “bargain basement citizenship” – Canadians expect less from their government, give less, and get less.  In this world, citizen takes a backseat to consumer/taxpayer, and democracy takes a back seat to the market. While few would be comfortable with American economist and libertarian Bryan Caplan’s statement that what we need is more market and less democracy, he captures well the bleeding of market thinking into our social and political relationships.  How did we get here?

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in what philosopher Michael Sandel calls “market triumphalism”.  The genius of market mechanisms for organizing the economy and generating prosperity held the key to the good life. The common good was no longer a matter of citizens contesting ideas or governments shaping the future; common citizenship, civic virtue, collective engagement were the old way.  The new way was to pursue our individual interests in “free and voluntary” market exchanges.

Nothing captures better the imperialism of this view than former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s pronouncement that there is no such thing as society.  Only individuals and their interests and fears are real.  To the extent that one is looking for more – meaning, purpose, solidarity – that can be found in church and the communities into which we are born and which give us structure and comfort.  Government, in this view, is part of the problem unless it restricts its role to protecting the market and, inevitably, those who benefit most from it.  Caplan worries that our woeful understanding of the laws of economics – as if there were laws – makes democracy a dangerous thing.  This is just a bolder version of the worries of market fundamentalists that when we interfere with the market we jeopardize its efficiency and thereby its capacity to deliver the good life.  Those less sanguine about markets are warned about the economic imperatives in a globalized economy which, the argument goes,  severely limit the scope for government action. Less government, less taxes, more market.  Lost is the understanding that the job of democracy is to define the good life and harness market forces to shape a better future. That this market preeminence persists even after the recent financial meltdown and current meltings is testament to its powerful hold over us.

At the same time as we have taken the common good out of politics and transfered it to the market, the growing inequality of our society makes it almost impossible to imagine ever formulating a shared sense of the good life.  The very idea of the common good becomes a stretch given the profoundly different ways in which the super rich, the poor and the majority experience life.  They breathe different air and especially as social mobility dries up they lose touch with each other.  In an increasingly privatised world, they do not meet as fellow citizens.  Their kids go to different schools.  They live increasingly in different neighbourhoods.  In Canada the last place that is meant to accommodate all of us in shared experience is our public health system – and no wonder the pressure to privatize is relentless. Money always matters but in an increasingly privatised world where everything has a price, it has never mattered more.

At the top, the extraordinary gains of a small global elite have given them an outsized capacity to shape the agenda while at the same time allowing them to secede from much of society.  They need the state far less than ever before.  And even as extreme inequality undermines equality of opportunity, the myth of meritocracy emboldens many to believe that they are entitled to all they have and that their interests are best served by keeping it. Down the economic scale, just as the very rich want to see taxes cut to hold on to what they have, so too do the majority want to withhold their money from a state they no longer trust.  Even if the financial meltdown and its aftermath have shaken confidence in the promise of markets, they have not restored confidence in governments – and why should they given lost manufacturing jobs, tainted meat, deteriorating institutions, and an inability or unwillingness to tackle the big issues.  And, in a perfect self-fulfilling prophecy, taxes are cut, the state shrinks and  becomes less trustworthy, the services it provides less relevant and increasingly shoddy, and the distrust grows and curdles into cynicism about the idea of progress.

The result: a ?marketized” politics of propaganda and pandering and an impoverished democracy that treats us as consumers and taxpayers, not citizens, and prefers to obscure the issues rather than engage us in defining the kind of society we want. Interesting that our government eliminated the direct public subsidy to parties, a subsidy that made every vote count for something,  yet another demonstration that politics is a private affair.  Increasingly those who want more, who want to take their future back, are looking outside of conventional politics for expressions of the democratic spirit: to their communities, or global causes, or to the streets.  It was striking how many of the participants in the Occupy movement and the Quebec student protests found a new solidarity in their activism.  Through action together these young people are taking a shot at rebuilding civil society and rediscovering the common good.  Perhaps it is only ever from the outside that we can hope to find the answers of what kind of country and what kind of democracy we want.

So, perhaps the answer is that many Canadians  do care about democracy but many, especially young Canadians, have given up on Canadian politics and the impoverished version of democracy on offer.  That is both understandable and dangerous. The new activism and rebuilding of an independent civil society are essential but not enough.

Student leaders from Quebec have recently launched a cross-Canada tour to promote political activism, to help Canadians learn how to build social movements that offer a richer kind of democratic experience than provided by contemporary politics, but also to explain to those who feel disenfranchised why voting and political participation still matter. They understand the dangers of leaving any government to its own devices, unconstrained by a vigilant citizenry. These young Canadians seem to be looking for a new politics tuned into the voices in the community and on the streets and one that at least begins to offer some real engagement on the issues that matter – inequality and poverty, jobs and youth unemployment, climate change and environmental degradation.  And they continue to express the hope that a renewed democracy will allow us to take back our future.  It is now up to our political leadership to take up the challenge.

A shorter version of this article was first published in the Toronto Star.

These are tough days for Canada’s parliamentary democracy.  Having endured years of steady erosion, it is now under frontal attack.  Journalists and public leaders, across the political spectrum, have begun to document the injuries. We are seeing stirrings of outrage. But this assault on our democracy could not be happening without some complicity or at least indifference on our part.  How many of us are so disenchanted with government that we no longer watch what is happening in Ottawa because we no longer care?  And, in these volatile and uncertain times, how many of us are prepared to trade off a little democracy for a little certainty or a tax cut.

These Uncertain Times

These are indeed uncertain and volatile times. The space between crises seems to be getting shorter while the world seems to be stuck, in gridlock.  Economies are slowing everywhere. Our leaders are having trouble finding almost any consensus on what ails us and what needs doing. They met in Rio+20 to achieve little more than confirmation of a lack of political will. The European economy hangs precariously, while European leaders are torn between the Austerians (largely Germany) and the Krugmanians, and our own government is unprepared to do anything beyond offering what must be irksome finger-wagging lectures.

Yes Canada has weathered these storms better than many, but this is no time for self-congratulation. Inequality here is high and rising and for the first time in living memory we worry that our kids won’t have it as good as we do.   And yet we watch our governments behave as though poverty, inequality, youth unemployment, climate change and environmental degradation are not real or are somebody else’s problem. Self-imposed austerity and a growing list of trade deals do not add up to a plan for a sustainable economy. Little wonder that many are losing faith in the ability of our political institutions to grapple with the challenges.

We are living in a state of what the late American sociologist Robert Merton called anomie, when a society’s goals and means no longer serve most people.  Our model seems to be busted. Today’s problems seem more complex, unfamiliar, and our institutions seem unable to cope.

We are past the point of tinkering.  The goals that gave us shared purpose seem now out of reach, less relevant, and we have lost or are losing trust in government as a means for collective progress.

The Rise of Junk Politics and Magical Thinking

One might think or at least hope that this state of anomie would be the opportunity to re-imagine Canada, to build a new consensus about goals and means.  But things don’t seem to be working out that way.  Instead, we see heightened polarisation, indeed multiple poles, with those who have benefitted most from the current model digging in to hold on to their privilege, and those who have benefited least, fed up, looking for something new or retreating altogether from the game.

And a game it is; just as the stakes rise higher our politics sink lower.  The toxic combination of anxiety, uncertainty and a creeping ‘declinism’ leads many to want magical solutions, simplifying paradigms, or scapegoats upon whom to vent our anger.  This is the climate of culture wars where reason can look like weakness, the long-term just too far off, and collaboration takes on its ugliest meaning.

And our politicians too often feed and feed off our fears, giving us mythical wedge issues, dividing us up into categories of heroes, victims, villains and fools, providing the scapegoats depending on our appetites.  We have watched what Benjamin Demott, the American writer, has called the rise of junk politics, with its hyper-partisanship, where everything is personal, evidence and expertise are devalued, and political cooperation is off the table. Little wonder that fewer and fewer Canadians, especially young Canadians, even bother to vote.

The Search for Leadership and the Rise of Authoritarianism

Such times have never been kind to democracy, ripe as they are for more authoritarian solutions where tough leaders take charge, get things done, and crack down on those who get in the way.  Democracy always takes a hit in rocky times.

What we mean by “democracy” evolves and has, over the past decades, deepened with each generation.   It is of course about the right to vote.  For my parents, who never missed an election, voting was the key (and how disturbed they would be at the current allegations of electoral fraud).   It is also about a system that ensures fair and representative voting and that every vote counts (something our current system of first-past-the-post cannot do).

But democracy means more than voting.  It means strong institutions to hold governments to account, constrain their power in the public interest, and protect our rights and freedoms, not least the freedom of speech and the right of association. That requires an effective parliament allowed and resourced to do its job, an independent judiciary and a free press.

It means greater transparency and accountability to ensure that citizens have the information they need to participate and to make their electoral decisions.

It means strong civil society and mediating organizations that ensure a diversity of views and balance, at least to some extent, the ability of citizens to be heard. It means making every effort to limit the extent to which money shapes politics.

But democracy is a messy business and, in the current climate, when the challenges seem intractable and we worry about decay and disaster, we are at our most vulnerable to trading it away for the false and dangerous promises of certainty, for the strong hand that is ready to take charge or for the saviour whose personal qualities promise magical, transcendent solutions.

To some extent, this may also reflect a generational divide in how we think about leadership and democracy.   For many of my generation, products of the industrial age, of hierarchy and the privileges and burdens of office, leadership is not about engagement, consultation, and cooperation, it is about strength, winning, doing what it takes to get the job done.

We see this in the occasional Tom Friedman article when he talks with some envy of the Chinese oligarchy and its ability to make big decisions fast and get things done – good things like electric cars (not to mention not so good things – and Friedman scarcely does).  Closer to home, recall the nasty attack ads on Stephane ”He’s-no-leader” Dion.  This did not refer to an ethical failing on his part or, given the “green shift”, a lack of political courage.  No, this was about good old-fashioned, who’s the boss, industrial strength leadership.  And we saw this in the campaigns against coalitions and minority governments in favour of stability and “strong” leadership.

How appealing is the promise of certainty, of someone who will bring democracy to heel or somehow transcend government, of someone who, while giving lip service to democracy, is willing to sidestep or subvert its institutions to get things done. This zombie leadership dies hard even if it is increasingly out-of-place in a networked world of savvy, connected citizens.

Authoritarian leadership can work in short bursts and in emergencies but over the long-term it will inevitably do great harm. It cuts itself off from the information and diversity of views necessary for creativity.  It cuts itself off from the people it purports to serve. It divides, inevitably creating winners and losers, insiders and scapegoats.  The poorest always pay the heaviest price.  This all breeds meanness – just look at our increasingly punitive crime policies, our approach to refugees, our willingness to cut services to the most needy. But in the end we all pay a heavy price.  We are all disempowered and alienated from the common good.  Only narrow, short-term interests are served.

This zombie leadership is running headlong into the digital age where it clearly does not belong.  But it persists because it is familiar to those who hold the power and  because it soothes our anxieties, feeds our need for magic solutions and quick fixes, and allows us to surrender responsibility for an uncertain future to someone else.

The dangers it poses to democracy are heightened in a system like ours in which majority governments face few constraints. We do not have the effective, if sometimes paralyzing, checks and balances of our neighbor to the south, so that means we are more dependent on good faith and respect for the institutions and principles of democracy. That makes our democracy more fragile, more easily injured.

A New Kind Of Leadership

Of course leadership matters.   But we need a new kind of political leadership: committed to closing the gap between citizen and government; to bridging state and an independent civil society; to bridging social, generational and ideological divides. Leadership that understands that government has a positive role to play but must be balanced by engaged and informed citizens and robust civil organizations.

We need leaders who embrace the new generation of communication tools  which make  more open government feasible.  Of course that doesn’t mean tweeting one thing and doing another. And it doesn’t mean “popularism”, going after the latest trending issues and opinions.

Leadership comes with a responsibility for modeling ethical behaviour, for appealing to the best in us, for believing in our potential, for challenging us to rise above our fears and private interests.

It means wanting to know and speak the truth but understanding the dangers of certainty and the importance of evidence, expertise, and citizen engagement.  Vision is important but vision not grounded in human experience and evidence is hallucination.

And, yes, leadership sometimes means, after having taken the pulse, doing what the majority may not have chosen, taking responsibility and accepting the accountability that comes with that – but doing so with openness and transparency, explaining what the evidence says, and with the humility to adjust or even change course as the evidence requires.

How Do We Get There?

Where will the new political leadership come from?  I suppose it will only come if more ordinary Canadians, with diverse experience outside of politics, and across all the estates, are willing to step up and demand better.  How heartening for example to see David Suzuki one of the most respected – and surely the gentlest – of our leaders put himself on the line and challenge us to stop thinking about good people and bad people, “radical” environmentalists or “greedy” capitalists,  but rather to recognize that the problem is with our model, a nasty version of capitalism that treats people and the natural world of which we are part as commodities to be exploited.  How heartening to see doctors fighting for the health of refugees and a group of lawyers ready to pay higher taxes for the common good.  And more and more voices are calling for an elevated politics and an enriched democracy.

We also need some of these people to enter the increasingly ugly political fray to change things from the inside.  We cannot leave politics entirely to professional politicians.

We have much to learn from young Canadians who bring new experiences, new tools and new ways of thinking to the table.  They seem less ready to trade democracy for a super-leader or saviour. Most are not looking for a tough boss or someone with all the answers.  They may share the general disdain for government, but for different reasons:  it is too opaque, too remote, too hard to penetrate and seemingly impossible to influence – too undemocratic.  They don’t want less democracy, they want more.

Yes, many have opted out of conventional politics, including voting, but they are also finding new ways to engage in public life, in their communities or internationally, and some have taken to the streets, standing outside all our conventional institutions and conventional wisdom to find something new.  They are the digital generation that can make those of us stuck in the industrial age so uncomfortable.  How the semi-leaderless Occupy Movement or the students in the streets of Montreal drove so many of us crazy.  Their leadership was emergent, fragile, shifting, in a word, democratic. Networks and communities replaced hierarchies.  And the generational divide is exposed.  This is not the hyper-individualism or entitlement thinking that detractors claimed.  It is about rebuilding civil society from the ground up, about a new kind of solidarity and a different kind of leadership.

Finding new ways to engage and contribute, rejecting government as parent or nanny, refusing to see the state as the answer to everything – that is all part of a better future.  But to the extent that the young ignore conventional political institutions, including voting, to the extent that they do not engage with the state and try to make it better, we risk an ever-wider gap between civil society and state and a continuing erosion of our democracy.

Holding on to stale notions of leadership is dangerous but so too is disengagement.  We risk a state that becomes more and more remote and authoritarian, less and less willing or able to pursue a better future, to constrain the powerful, to listen to or help those who need government most, to solve problems that cut across our communities and the generations.

We need Canadians across the estates and  across the generations to get indignant, to get  engaged, to enter the fray, to re-imagine Canada, and to take back our democracy,

“An Auction”. William Pyne and William Combe (1808).

Now that some time has passed since the federal budget it might be useful to step back and assess what it says about where the government is taking us. Reaction has been pretty muted. The “centrist punditry” generally see this as an incremental budget, business as usual, “balanced” and “mature”. For our Globe editorialists, for example, this was not the transformative budget the government promised and a majority government supposedly made possible. According to them, the budget was OK; it earned a passing grade but had no vision, not much transformation. Canadians, according to one poll at least, did not much like the budget but found it benign. No matter how often the government tells us it is changing the game, we seem reluctant to believe it.

To some extent the apparent indifference can be attributed to the success of the time-tested techniques of strategic leaks and hints of even more drastic measures. Apparently that trick never gets tired; we are always relieved that things are better or at least not as awful as we feared. And of course, cuts to the public service probably always play well – this is easy politics, if costly policy – and scant detail is provided on the implications of those cuts for citizens. What information we get is in dribs and drabs and so we still don’t have an overall view. And budget debate was to some extent eclipsed by serious allegations of voter suppression, electoral misconduct, and misleading Parliament and the electorate on the costs of jets.

Governments rarely move an agenda through big dramatic acts such as the Patriation of the Constitution and the creation of the Charter, or the great Free Trade debate, or the 1995 austerity budget, all dramatically visible, divisive and fiercely debated. Rather, a government’s agenda, even if it represents profound change, is more often achieved in increments, small steps which gradually reshape what we perceive as acceptable and normal. Often it is only in retrospect that we get a sense of how far we have moved, how much what is in Overton’s Window has changed, how far “the centre” has shifted. The danger, absent debate, is that we will sleepwalk into the future, that a very different Canada will have crept up on us, a Canada we would not have chosen.

Smashing the Progressive State

This budget gives pretty clear signals of a different Canada, perhaps hard to get at because it is not about building but about dismantling: not dismantling the state – witness the expanded use of the coercive criminal law power and the build up of our military and security apparatus – so much as rolling back the progressive state. Some conservative pundits have been continually disappointed in this government for its readiness to spend for its purposes or to intervene in the market when it suits. No, this is more about redefining the purpose of government and undoing, brick by brick, in the slowest of motion, but inexorably, the institutions and programs built over decades following the second world war, by governments of quite different stripes.

Some will say that the cuts in this budget are not big enough, deep enough or sufficiently targeted to justify such a conclusion. After all, the cuts in the mid-1990s were deeper and unquestionably consequential. And today’s cuts do come after a few years of sharply increased spending. But these arguments obscure the differences between now and the 19990s when there was a broad consensus that we were in a dangerous fiscal crisis, over a third of every tax dollar was going to debt servicing, and taxes were much higher. And whatever one’s views of that period of austerity, and there is much to criticize, cuts were treated as a necessary evil, witness how quickly after achieving a budget surplus that money was poured back into health transfers, science and education, child benefits, and infrastructure. And yes there were tax cuts – huge tax cuts – which reinforced the growing anti-tax, small government rhetoric, but at least they were funded by budget surpluses and not increased borrowing.

The current government inherited a double-digit surplus that created room for transforming outdated programs, considering new investments, helping struggling provinces, responding to crises, and lowering taxes. There was no spending crisis. And while we have a deficit now, it is relatively smaller than those of our colleague countries – we are certainly not Greece – and the service charges are nowhere near where they were a decade ago – this is not the 1990s. This deficit was caused by deep and unaffordable tax cuts, necessary and inevitable recession spending which is now finished, and increased spending in some areas such as the military and security apparatus, punishment of criminals, and layers of bureaucratic control.

No, this round of cuts is not the result of a fiscal crisis. It may rather be exactly what the government has told us, a milestone in transformative change. Monte Solberg, an ex-Cabinet Minister for the current government, and generally a moderate voice, gives us a glimpse of the new contract between government and citizen this budget implies:

Thursday’s federal budget was another important step in fulfilling Stephen Harper’s hidden agenda of making Canada recognizable again.

For 40 years “progressives” called the shots in Canada, and their influence affected and infected everything. They left big bruises on the economy, social policy, immigration, the armed forces, law, foreign affairs, cultural policy and, of course, the Constitution. Much of the Canada that we grew up with was indiscriminately swept away, good and bad alike.

Well, maybe not completely swept away. That old middle-class Canada could still be found hanging around Legions, hockey rinks and the kind of coffee shops where the only coffee they serve goes by the name “coffee.” But make no mistake — that Canada had been kicked to the curb and anyone who believed in it was expected to shut up and pay their ever-increasing taxes while their progressive masters turned their country inside out….

Anyway, that whole way of thinking must be smashed and Flaherty has made a start on it, but only a start. By definition, prudent governance means that cutting ineffective programs should be a yearly occurrence, not a once-in-20-year event….

In the end, paring away unnecessary positions and programs is about much more than just balancing budgets, efficiency and making accountants and economists happy.

Really, it’s about showing a little respect for those regular people who like the old Canada and just want Ottawa to live within its means, and to stay out of their face and wallet.

Solberg suggests that the cuts to spending are part of a new vision, and that the budget does indeed contain real transformative change. I agree – but these changes go to the heart of our sense of this country and need to be debated. The transformative change to Old Age Security, for example, will have an impact on the poorest and the provinces will have to pick up the pieces but it affects only the next generations of retirees and so slips by. The federal withdrawal from health care policy and the transfer of more of the responsibility and risk to the provinces could have profound implications for our public health care but the changes do not kick in for a few years. And again slip by. But the federal withdrawal here signals big change indeed. The federal government seems to be retreating to a much narrower Constitutional set of responsibilities. Gone, apparently, is the cooperative, and yes sometimes combative, federalism that built the progressive state. The process was messy, imperfect, many were left out, but the results, medicare and the social safety net, did become part of our shared citizenship. The national child benefit, employment insurance, student loans and grants, investments in university research and science, the OAS and Guaranteed Income Supplement, which along with the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans helped to almost wipe out poverty among the elderly, all these are part of this social citizenship – what each citizen could expect no matter where in Canada they lived.

As John Ibbitson wrote, though I think approvingly, this budget signals to Canadians that they should expect less from government or at least from Ottawa. The consequences of such a shift are never immediate or obvious; they are subtle and slow burning, inevitably hitting the most vulnerable first and hardest. Writing of the consequences of similar cuts in the U.S., Paul Krugman noted that when the federal government seemed incapable of responding well to Katrina, few linked that to the cuts to government operations decades before – but the link should be made. If we want to imagine the consequences of crushing the progressive state and who benefits and who does not, we might want to have a look at the twenties and thirties, a time of massive inequality and personal vulnerability which presaged the Great Depression.

Bargain Basement Citizenship and the Erosion of Civil Society

But what is clear even now is that these cuts imply a different view of our shared citizenship, of what ties us together as Canadians across language and region and community. They offer us what I have called elsewhere “bargain basement citizenship”. The new deal, the contract, seems to be that less will be asked of us – less taxes, no mandatory long census, no requirement to register firearms – and less will be provided in services and entitlements. Take, for example, the pick-and-choose approach the government has adopted in standing up for Canadian citizens abroad facing the threat of capital punishment. Part of the progressive state that Solberg wants “smashed” is the notion of shared citizenship that came with these national programs. While that state was being built, Canadians had new reason to engage in national politics and a vibrant civil society developed around this. And this strong civic society, engaged citizens and non-governmental organizations, changed and enriched our understanding of democracy, always pressing for improvements, giving voice to the powerless, and demanding collective action on new and emerging challenges. Is this too to be smashed?

I have not gone through every page of the budget or subsequent announcements to chronicle every cut to public information but even a partial list tells a story. Gone – the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. Established by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, this was the only agency devoted to engaging experts and the public on sustainability. Gone – the First Nations Statistical Council. Still relatively new, this agency recognized that aboriginal people are often underrepresented in the census and that systematic information is essential to aboriginal communities to assess needs and what is working and what is not. Gone – the National Welfare Council. For over forty years this agency produced essential information about the poor in Canada, about the working poor, and child poverty and women in poverty. It was the only federal agency of its kind and is and has been an enormously valued source of information not readily available and all too easily ignored. Long gone – the mandatory long form census, several other Statistics Canada surveys and now additional millions in cuts. The United Nations urges all developing countries to establish a national independent statistical office because we have learned how vital credible and publicly available information is to democracy. Not yet gone but under continual assault – the Parliamentary Budget Office created by this government to help Canadians, through their parliament, to hold governments to account for how they spend. Long gone – the Law Reform Commission that no doubt would have provided a trusted independent challenge to the claims behind the government’s Omnibus Crime Bill. Going – research essential to food and environmental monitoring, to First Nations and Inuit health, the CBC, and who knows what else.

It should be said that every government has been annoyed by these kinds of agencies. They produce information that allows citizens to take governments to task, to demand more or better. They help citizens to better understand their shared needs, to assess, independently of the latest government spin, what is working and what is not, to participate in solutions. They help citizens to hold their governments to account. No doubt every government has wished, at least from time to time, that one or other of these organizations would just disappear. But independent and credible sources of information, information not available anywhere else, are vital for a strong democracy and so they generally survived.

The Budget also takes aim at another essential ingredient of a strong democracy, the charitable sector. Essential to civil society are the many non-governmental organizations that give voice to people otherwise not heard, including future generations who will inherit the consequences of what we decide. These organizations, which so often challenge and criticize, are never much loved by governments. They always struggle for survival. Decades ago governments decided to stop core funding, to limit funding to the purchase of services, to make it hard for charitable organizations to engage in advocacy. But they survived, even if weaker. This budget and some of the chilling rhetoric around it takes the next step, as environmentalists are treated as a bigger problem than climate change and non-governmental organizations are warned that they better be careful about their advocacy if they want the advantages of charitable status. This and the cut to the small but effective Court Challenges Program in a previous budget rob our democracy of the dissenting voices that give it strength. Remembering this cut is yet another way to acknowledge the anniversary of the Charter and the essential role it and an independent judiciary continue to play in creating the progressive state.

If there is not much more to a country than the market, individual interests, and local communities, and the territory within which all that takes place, then citizenship and civil society lose much of their meaning. Little wonder that Margaret Thatcher proclaimed that there is no such thing as society. Little wonder that we ask so little of our citizens and provide less and less in return. But this hollowing-out of citizenship and civil society leads to an impoverished democracy in which we vote every once in a while if we so choose and otherwise retreat to our lives as consumers, producers and private citizens. This leads to something of a paradox. With the weakening of civil society, we demand less of our governments and demand that government interfere less. Instead we are on our own and we look to government to protect us and our community and our territory from terrorists and criminals. But with the hollowing-out of civil society it becomes harder to constrain government, to protect civil and human rights when government does act, and so, in the end, government becomes more powerful and less accountable.

More Democracy

So what is the alternative to the relentless decline of the progressive state? It is, at least in part, the demand for a more robust democracy, more transparency, not less, more public education and information, not misinformation and deception, more citizen engagement, not voter suppression, more diversity of views, not the chilling of dissent. It is the recognition that essential services have to be organized around the citizens they serve rather than be “marketized”, converted to commodities sold to consumers who can afford them. Above all it means a renewal of our sense of the common good and our capacity for collective management of the future rather than retreating to our private interests and fears and surrendering our future to the vagaries of the market.

In many respects, this choice – more democracy rather than more markets – is a far more demanding path. It is much easier to say “let the market do its magic” or leave things to each community than to come up with policies that help shape our future. It is a hard sell to get people to believe that we can act together to achieve something better, that government can be a positive force if it is balanced by engaged citizens and a vibrant, independent civil society.

The pessimism about our collective capacity to make things better flies in the face of how successful interventionist governments, such as in Northern Europe, have been in improving the well-being of their citizens or how successful active governments in Canada have been in sharing opportunity and improving quality of life for the many not just the few. It also ignores the growing evidence that austerity and privatization are hurting economies, allowing inequality to grow at an unprecedented rate, and giving corporations free rein.

Nonetheless, there is no “big idea” that will fix everything. We are right to be wary of grand plans. We are right to be wary of promises that come with no price tag, that pretend that we can have Swedish levels of service at American levels of taxation. And we are right to be wary of hubris. We never do know enough to act with certainty. And we are right to be wary of promises that are always looking backwards, steeped in nostalgia for what worked at another time and only worked for some. All policy is a beta version that will inevitably have to be made better and be adjusted to the times, and progress requires that we learn from our mistakes – and stop over-promising. Taking back our democracy is hard work and comes with costs.

The path of more democracy is also a harder path because it can only work if we make greater equality a national priority; democracy cannot flourish in the face of extreme inequality – and inequality is on the rise.

Perhaps this path starts from outside our formal political institutions. That is, after all, where all big change starts. The path of more democracy, greater equality, is challenging for political parties for many reasons – because there is no single perfect answer, because robust democracy makes things harder for governments, because we will inevitably have missteps and each of those will be seized upon as yet another example of wasted taxpayers dollars and misguided hope than we can make things better. At a time when we have made a fetish of efficiency, the messiness of robust democracy comes with political costs.

We are seeing the extremes of this conflict between more market and more democracy playing out with horrific consequences on the streets of Greece and to some extent throughout Europe. We are seeing this play out more or less throughout the world and closer to home in the Occupy movement. In Canada, we have it pretty good relatively speaking. We are not in crisis. That ought not to mean that we continue to drift to this impoverished view of citizenship, civil society and democracy. This budget ought to generate a bigger discussion than we are seeing. We ought not to wait for crisis to take our democracy back. Canadians deserve an alternative. The growing political polarization recent polls are picking up suggests that Canadians want clear choices and many want something new. Perhaps the increasing number of young Canadians taking power into their own hands and rebuilding civil society will renew our sense of the common good, focus us on the future, and force the kind of reinvention that we need.

Austerity, we have been told repeatedly by pundits and political leaders, is the defining issue in these uncertain times, the solution to our economic challenges.

We have been given fair warning that the next federal budget will be first about cuts – cuts to government even as we continue to cut taxes. We can expect the same from most provincial budgets.

This, we are told, is what must be done. Austerity is not simply the best way, the argument goes, but the only way, and not just for us but for our friends and allies. Canada has become the champion of austerity.

Politically, it is a pretty potent argument to make. It builds on our internationally recognized success in the 90s in balancing the budget and reducing debt (which unquestionably made us more resilient during the tough times that followed, though with equally undeniable costs to health and social programs, among other things). It draws on a powerful thread that runs through our history – one of pragmatism and frugality. It feeds off our growing disenchantment with government, but also the serious troubles we are seeing elsewhere, in Greece for example. And in this uncertain time, we are told that we have no choice. Austerity is the answer.

Opposition voices are reluctant to offer alternatives for fear of being seen as fiscally imprudent or as stuck in the past, defending “big government”.  And so, presented with no options, we come to believe that in fact there are none.

A good rule of thumb for public policy is that when we are told that there is no alternative, that usually means the opposite: that not only is there an alternative but it is probably one that we would prefer if it were offered.

We do indeed have choices – better choices. Of course we have to be prudent as we dig out of current deficits, partly a result of wise government action to mitigate the worst consequences of the global recession. But this is not the 1990s. Our situation is not dire. Canada is not Greece.

1) This is not the 90s and we are not Greece

Before the 1990s assault on the deficit, about one-third of every tax dollar was going to service the federal debt and dire warnings were circulating that Canada was at risk of hitting a debt wall and falling into 3rd world status with respect to global capital. So we cut.  But the thing is, the global economy was pretty strong and getting stronger. We were contracting; others were spending. As it turns out, economic growth – along with real sacrifice – was crucial in balancing the budget and exceeding all reduction targets. And it didn’t hurt that taxes then were higher.  So deficits turned to surpluses – more quickly than anyone expected – and those tax-fueled surpluses were quickly bringing down our debt.

Today, our level of debt is still the envy of others. But now the global economy is slowing and the future is less certain, less promising than in the 1990s; the recession lingers like a bad cold. Even here in Canada, and we have been pretty lucky, we continue to shed good jobs and, like everywhere else, our markets can expect to be battered by continued volatility. This is not the 1990s. Neither the fiscal urgency nor the economic conditions are the same.

And most important, we ought to understand how we got back into deficit and increasing debt in the first place, at least at the federal level. It was just a few years ago that we were running surpluses year after year. In the year that the current federal government took the reins, the surplus was at $16 billion. Clearly program spending was not putting us at risk. That surplus meant that we would have great resilience in the face of economic downturns – times when we inevitably spend more and lose revenue. It also meant that the federal government would be able to help the provinces, especially those hardest hit and that we would have fiscal room to manage the stresses of an aging population in a way that would be intergenerationally fair.

So what happened? Certainly part of the answer is that we are paying off the costs of stimulus spending made necessary during the recession. But that spending stopped – earlier than some would have hoped -  and so, even with moderate growth, we should be able to return to balance with a bit of prudence and without draconian measures.  If we want to.

But recession spending is not really the culprit. Our big problem is that our revenues as a percentage of GDP are far lower than they were in the 1990s, not just because of recession and slow recovery. In many respects our current and future fiscal challenges at the federal level are self-induced, the result of a succession of unaffordable tax cuts. Just think of the tens of billions annually taken out of our budgets since 2000 – and particularly more recently – in reduced income taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, and the GST, not to mention the long list of boutique tax “benefits” that amount to little more than tax cuts disproportionately benefiting those who need help least.

So our fiscal situation is not dire, at least not at the federal level.   We are still reaping the benefits from the 1990s decade of sacrifice, and the challenges we do have are largely self-inflicted.   And if we chose to get here, we can choose to get out.

2) Austerity is not fiscally prudent

Let me be clear that I share in the broad consensus that we must be fiscally prudent.   But let’s pause on what fiscal prudence really means: It means spending wisely, reducing waste, collecting sufficient taxes to pay for the public goods and services we want, and keeping debt coming down, at least during reasonably good times.

Of course there is always room to cut and we have important choices to make on our priorities.   I, for one, believe that we probably and understandably overbuilt our security apparatus after 9/11 and that in particular deserves a close look.

And make no mistake, the costly plan to build more prisons and penitentiaries – unjustified by the evidence – either increases our debt or diverts money from priority services such as health and education.

As for waste, it is probably time to look at the layers of bureaucratic control and oversight that make government less innovative and efficient – and arguably less accountable and transparent.   But as our Parliamentary Budget Officer repeatedly reminds us, the numbers here don’t add up; we will not balance the books on efficiencies and cuts to operating budgets.

Yes, government has become too central, authoritarian and remote from our everyday lives. We have a big job to do to close the gap between citizens and their governments. And there are no doubt savings to be had here.  But these are not primarily fiscal issues nor will austerity be the answer to our fiscal challenges.

Today’s austerity, however, is not primarily about fiscal prudence. If it were it wouldn’t be proceeding in tandem with large, unaffordable and unnecessary tax cuts for the most affluent among us.  These tax cuts make deeper program cuts inevitable.

The persistent emphasis on low taxes and cuts to services and public goods  looks more like ideology masquerading as fiscal common sense. In this light, austerity seems rather to be about cutting back the state and rolling out the free market agenda. Less public, more private; less collective, more individual.  It is, in other words, the fulfillment of the neoliberal counter-revolution rather than an economic plan for the future.

We know that some pretty smart economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz for two, have taken on the austerity agenda and tax-cutting neoliberal ideology that underpins it. They argue that this is in fact the time for spending, the time for investments in education and infrastructure and for putting money in the hands of those in greatest need. They argue that the consequences of premature austerity could match what we saw in the 1930s, that in any case, this strategy will not yield the growth and opportunities we need. And, they add, it is also about time to stop the tax cuts and to start increasing taxes on those who can afford it. (And in the U.S., a growing number of rich Americans are calling on their government to raise their taxes.)

Frankly we don’t have to try to weave our way through the debates among economists to be worried about the consequences of austerity. A recent report from the (not-left-leaning) IMF has surveyed the international evidence and has concluded that government spending cuts do not, at least in the short-term, create jobs and growth but do create very significant costs to society, the economy and quality of life for the majority.

3) The consequences will fall most heavily on those who can bear them least

What does the IMF report tell us? The benefits of austerity cannot be seen but its negative consequences can, and these fall most heavily on the people who can bear them least. Specifically, the authors show that austerity, especially when it cannot be offset by significant lowering of interest, brings with it increases in unemployment  – particularly enduring unemployment -  suppression of wages for the majority, and deepening income inequality.

So, as we dig out, we ought to make sure that we are not stripping away the very tools necessary to withstand future shocks and to create jobs and opportunities now and for the future.  We ought to make sure that we are not hollowing out the country, allowing the erosion of those things that give meaning to our shared citizenship and that should be a source of comparative advantage going forward. And we ought to make sure that we are not undermining our ability to invest in those things that will make us stronger and greener for the future.

Austerity will take us down the wrong track.  It is not fiscally prudent.  It is not an economic plan so much as a surrender to the market.  And its costs will be heavy for the most vulnerable certainly, but for us all. So let’s reject the politics of inevitability and look at the choices we have and what the evidence tells us about what works best for the majority, not just for the few, and for the future, not just for now.

We need to have the debate – and the starting point cannot be some assumption about the inevitability of austerity. In fact, it ought not to be about big government versus small government. It ought to be focused on what will work to enhance the quality of life for most Canadians and what will make Canada more resilient for future generations.  It ought to be a debate about what challenges, what problems, most urgently cry out for our collective attention and action.  The preoccupation with austerity should not blind us to what really matters for our collective well-being.

I, for one, would propose that inequality, not austerity, be the defining issue for us now. Income inequality is growing fast in Canada and even the traditional deniers are coming on board. The gap is simply too big, the risks too high to ignore. Indeed, extreme inequality will continue to grow in an agenda dominated by austerity and tax cuts, an agenda that reduces our capacity for mutual aid and for collective solutions to our major challenges – our low productivity, climate change and environmental deterioration, and declining political participation.

Of course we ought to be fiscally prudent and that means asking of each cut and each expenditure, including every tax cut:  will this help reduce inequality or will it make things worse?

Let’s make inequality in all of its manifestations – child poverty, the reemergence of elderly poverty, the squeeze on working Canadians and students, and the excessive incomes at the top – a national priority.

We can afford the investments. We cannot afford to ignore the threat.

C10, the omnibus crime bill, passed third reading and is now over to the Senate for what is supposed to be sober second thought.  The vote could only have been a depressing anticlimax for the many Canadians who were fighting to stop or amend this legislation.  And the implacable inevitability of its passage must surely lead many to ask, ‘why bother, what’s the point?’

This question takes on added poignancy as we read with increasing frequency articles describing the relatively unconstrained power of the current majority government to do as it pleases, impervious to opposition voices or contrary evidence.  I was watching Jamie Watt on CBC explaining that Canadians were turning the page on the crime issue (and, for that matter, Kyoto) and so, the message goes, it’s time to get over it.

Well, maybe not.  Thankfully many are not willing to “get over it”. How heartening, for example,  to hear Leadnow.ca announce that they were simply regrouping for the next stage of their campaign for better justice policy.  So, here are some reasons not to turn the page, instead to continue the fight.

1) Those who spoke to Parliamentary Committees, wrote letters and op eds, called their MPs or took to the streets have made a difference.

All the opposition parties opposed this bill, rejected the smears that they were “soft on crime”, and focused on public safety rather than easy politics.  It has not always been so. And that means that the options are finally being put before Canadians, options for a Canada that is safer, not meaner.

Premiers, whatever their views on the bill, are demanding a more respectful federalism where they – who must administer the legislation once passed – should be engaged at the outset so that they can bring their views and experience to bear.  And several are arguing that they should not have to reallocate money – say from health and education – to pay for the costs of more incarceration and more prisons.

And through the efforts of dozens of organizations, many more Canadians are now paying attention.  And that can only be a good thing.

2) The process is not over.

Whatever one’s views of the senate and its reform, that institution has often played an important role in bringing a reflective, evidence-based perspective to bear on proposed laws.  Because the members do not face reelection,  they are in a good position to avoid the worst excesses of junk politics where pandering trumps the long-term interests of Canadians.

We know that there is a remarkable consensus among the experts here in Canada and more broadly that aspects of the proposed legislation will make things worse and will certainly divert money better spent on prevention, education, rehabilitation where possible, restoration and help to victims,  and the safe reintegration of offenders into the community.

Of course, we can all do the math.  A Conservative majority in the Senate  tells us that the bill will pass, yet again, with the same anticlimax we saw earlier this week.   But the Senate does have a job to do and there is definitely work to be done.  Let’s hear the evidence, the experts, the risks, the costs.

3) This legislation is transformative as it puts punishment and prison at the centre of our criminal justice system.

This has never been the Canadian approach; our balanced justice policies have always focused on safety and justice – and the best evidence of what works.  Such a change  in direction should never happen without a vigorous debate – a good fight.

That’s all the more important because as we have seen in the U.S., this punitive approach leads to more of the same. It feeds our fears and, when we see that we are no more safe, rather than reverse course we opt for even more imprisonment, even tougher sentences.  This beast, the more you feed it the hungrier it gets.

In the U.S., state after state is trying to reverse course but that is no easy task once you have built and filled all those prisons, once you have created a permanent underclass on the one hand and gated communities on the other.  We do not want to go that way.

4) In fighting this kind of legislation we are also fighting for a different kind of politics.

Who of us isn’t  sometimes afraid, especially for our kids, often angry and horrified at some of the terrible crimes we see on the news, and moved by the suffering of victims and their families.  And we know our own frailties, that we can confuse justice and revenge, that our anger can blot out the evidence, that we sometimes lash out and act against our own best interests.

Fighting against this punitive bill is fighting against a politics that exploits our frailties  rather than appealing to what is best in us.

5) And fighting against bad policy is good for the soul.

Here is the video of a recent talk I gave on taxes as a good thing. The talk was hosted by the Literary Review and TVO and sponsored by The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.