The Globe and Mail - 22.02.2020

(Elle) #1

O2| OPINION OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020


and present – or, worse, whole-
sale alienation of the minority
from the majority.
That is what is at risk in the cur-
rent situation, should the de-
mands for police or even military
intervention be heeded: not just
violence, as at Oka or Ipperwash,
or the near-instantaneous re-
placement of one barricade with
another, but the lasting estrange-
ment of Indigenous and non-In-
digenous Canadians.
The rule of law, in short, cannot
be divorced from its political-cul-
tural underpinnings. The ways in
which the legal and political
spheres inform each other are of-
ten overlooked. At the time of the
secession reference, for example,
a great many voices, inside Que-
bec and out, denounced any at-
tempt to bring the secession de-
bate (until then dominated by ai-
ry separatist claims of a right to
secede unilaterally) within the
rule of law as futile or even dan-
gerous. Secession, they insisted,
cannot be considered as a legal
question; it is entirely political.
And then the clincher: What are
you going to do, send in the army?
To which the answer was: Who
needs an army? What encouraged
the people of Quebec to accept
the Supreme Court’s ruling, and
its later codification in the Clarity
Act, was not the threat of force,
but the desire of most Quebeck-
ers to live within a law-based
state.
Whatever the pretenses of its
nationalists, Quebec is in most
respects a modern North Ameri-
can society, much like any other:
bourgeois, mortgage-holding
and above all law-abiding. Divid-
ed as they may be on the ques-
tion of independence, the vast
majority of Quebeckers are sim-
ply not interested in revolution-

If you want the law’s protection,
you also have to accept the law’s
authority.
But fuzziness on the rule of law
would appear to be even more
prevalent among its self-styled
defenders on the right. I don’t just
mean their tendency to prefer
that it be selectively applied, de-
pending on whether they sympa-
thize with the aims of those defy-
ing it, a trait they share with their
left-wing counterparts. I mean al-
so their cramped understanding
of the rule of law’s foundations, as
seen in the widespread demands
for immediate police action to
dismantle the barricades – as if
the rule of law depended on no
more than rules and law.
For as much as those desiring
the law’s protection must accept
its authority, so those who insist
on the law’s enforcement must
accept its limits. The rule of law
does not consist only in legal texts
or the courts and police that ap-
ply it. It is as much made up of the
willingness of members of the
public to abide by it.
It cannot simply be enforced
upon an unwilling population,
and especially not upon a section
of the population that feels itself
set apart from the main, notably
by race or ethnicity, where the is-
sue can quickly spread beyond
the merits of any particular law to
the authority of those who draft-
ed it.
For a law to have any meaning-
ful chance of enforcement, it
must enjoy the support or at least
acquiescence of a substantial ma-
jority, whether of the population
or sub-population. Without such
consensus, all that will be
achieved is to breed disrespect for
the law – see: prohibition, past


ary adventures.
The same cannot be said with
certainty of many First Nations.
The conditions of life on too
many reserves are so deplorable,
the rate of improvement so slow,
as to leave an important section
of their people open to persua-
sion that they have nothing to
lose – that their interests are not
necessarily best safeguarded
within the law but may require
defying it, or indeed that Cana-
dian law does not apply to them.
For now, that section is probably a
small minority; the minority
within that minority willing to
use violence, smaller still. But
that could change. And a confron-
tation with the police – not only
at one point on the tracks, but at
multiple points, across the coun-
try – would be the surest way to
change it.
It is human nature, under
stress, to choose sides: an “at-
tack,” as it might be perceived, on
some members of a community
can all too easily come to be seen
as an attack on all. The differences
that might once have divided the
community are set aside in the
presence of an external “threat,”
the moderates closing ranks with
the radicals.
By contrast, patience on the
part of the authorities – not capit-
ulation, but patience, goodwill
and, where possible, negotiation


  • is likely to maintain the support
    of the larger section of Indige-
    nous opinion. This places a simi-
    lar constraint on their antag-
    onists on the barricades: In the
    battle for the middle ground,
    whichever side appears the most
    reasonable has the best chance of
    winning.
    That estimation can evolve
    with time and circumstances. As
    the consequences of the block-


ades become more evident, as
much for Indigenous Canadians
as for others, the pressure on the
protesters to compromise will in-
crease. At the same time, the case
for intervention, should it come
to that, will become more persua-
sive – especially from a govern-
ment that has established its bo-
na fides as a good-faith negotiat-
ing partner, unwilling to use force
except in extremis.
I understand the fear that fail-
ing to intervene will invite further
recourse to the blockade and oth-
er extralegal tactics by opponents
of resource extraction, notably
with regard to the Trans Moun-
tain pipeline and Frontier oil
sands mine project. But the risk to
the rule of law from a reckless or
premature use of force, and the
setback to relations with Indige-
nous communities that this
would entail, is in my view even
greater.
The vulnerability of Canadian
infrastructure to activist hijack-
ing may be annoying, and it may
be frustrating, but it is a reality.
The tendency of so many conser-
vatives to wish away what is un-
pleasant to behold, indulging in-
stead in wild fantasies of what is
possible by enforcement – the
border-crosser issue is another
example – is one of many pathol-
ogies currently afflicting the
movement. So is a taste for in-
flammatory rhetoric and need-
less, almost reflexive polarization


  • always dangerous, but positive-
    ly toxic when issues of race are en-
    gaged.
    The Liberal government may
    be fairly criticized for helping to
    create the current situation, or for
    being slow to resolve it. But it is at
    least not acting in such a way as to
    make it vastly worse. Can Conser-
    vatives claim the same?


Protests:Theruleoflawcan’tbeseparatedfrom


itspolitical-culturalunderpinnings


FROMO1

Thevulnerabilityof
Canadianinfrastructure
toactivisthijacking
maybeannoying,and
itmaybefrustrating,
butitisareality.
Thetendencyofso
manyconservatives
towishawaywhatis
unpleasanttobehold,
indulginginsteadinwild
fantasiesofwhatis
possiblebyenforcement
–theborder-crosser
issueisanother
example–isone
ofmanypathologies
currentlyafflicting
themovement.

H


ow odd that as we hurtle
toward the future we seem
to be tumbling into a near-
ly medieval past, a world divided
between the divinely privileged
and those who are, shall we say,
not. Is it true that Mark Zucker-
berg (net worth: approximately
US$70-billion) requires one of
his employees to blow-dry the
anxiety sweat from his armpits,
as a new book alleges? A king
might have a groom of the stool;
Mark has a peon of the pits.
Speaking of toilettes, there’s
an odd thread that unites other
billionaire-saviours. Jeff Bezos
(net worth: US$130-billion) and
Michael Bloomberg (net worth:
US$62-billion) both enjoy accru-
ing capital and naming things af-
ter themselves, but they share
another trait, which is the belief
that bathroom breaks are
the enemy of capitalism.
“Don’t ever take a lunch
break or go to the bath-
room,” Mr. Bloomberg said
in 2013, summing up his reci-
pe for success. Amazon, the
empire over which Mr. Bezos
presides, allegedly prioritiz-
es customers’ calls over na-
ture’s, and limits the
amount of time employees
can spend in the bathroom
according to warehouse
workers (one former em-
ployee is suing over this
practice).
I never imagined we’d be
living in a world where plu-
tocrat’s pit-dryer and cross-
legged factory serf were via-
ble career paths, but here we
are. At the same time, these
three men are presenting
themselves as saviours of a
world they have each, in
their own way, helped to
break. Mr. Zuckerberg wants
to be the saviour of truth;
Mr. Bezos of the environ-
ment; Mr. Bloomberg of the
republic. Because they are
billionaires, they’re not pro-
posing to do it through col-
lective action or challenging
structural injustices. They
want to muscle in, aim some
money at the problem and
heroically effect change in
ways that will salve their
own egos – while maintain-
ing their own lucrative inter-
ests, and the system that al-
lows them to flourish.
Mr. Bezos just pledged


US$10-billion over an unspeci-
fied period of time to combat cli-
mate change through the We’re
All in This Together Fund (who
am I kidding, it’s actually called
The Bezos Earth Fund.) Various
climate scientists applauded this
generous infusion of cash, espe-
cially coming from a man whose
company, in its first environmen-
tal audit, was shown to pollute at
roughly the same level as a small
country.
Others were more critical of
Mr. Bezos’s gesture, pointing out
that if he wanted to make the
world a better place, he could
start with Amazon itself, which
has a troubling safety record in
its factories, consistently works
against the unionization of its
work force and pays a shockingly
low – and yet somehow still legal


  • amount of tax. A group called
    Amazon Employees for Climate
    Justice points out that the com-
    pany provides support to the fos-
    sil fuel industry through its cloud
    computing service, and says that


Amazon has threatened to fire
workers who speak out against
its climate policies. “We applaud
Jeff Bezos’ philanthropy,” the
group writes, “but one hand can-
not give what the other is taking
away.”
This “philanthrocapitalism” is
exactly what U.S. journalist
Anand Giridharadas warned
about in his book,Winners Take
All: The Elite Charade of Changing
the World. In his view, wealthy do-
nors are attempting to control
the levers of social change with-
out actually changing society – or
threatening their monopolistic
positions. They run high-altitude
elite gatherings, they seed foun-
dations that bear their names
and above all they look for mar-
ket-based solutions that tinker
with the edges of the problem
while maintaining the status
quo. In so doing, they subvert the
will of the collective by suggesti-
ng that government is broken
and only the wisdom of individu-
al billionaires can solve intracta-

ble problems.
“What is at stake,” he writes,
“is whether the reform of our
common life isled bygovern-
ments elected by and account-
able to the people, or rather by
wealthy elites claiming to know
our best interests.” He adds,
“Much of what appears to be re-
form in our time is in fact the de-
fence of stasis.”
Since I’m not a billionaire, I
can only assume that standing
on such vast stacks of money
goes right to the head. Maybe
there is an undiagnosed condi-
tion called Superhero Syndrome.
How else to explain Mr. Bloom-
berg’s candidacy in the U.S. Dem-
ocratic nomination race? Here’s a
man whose political past as may-
or of New York is littered with
stupid, damaging policies, from
targeting African-Americans and
Latinos with stop-and-frisk poli-
cies to secretly spying on Muslim
communities. His company has
been accused by numerous
women of sex-based harassment
and discrimination, and he
has joked – as Senator Eliza-
beth Warren magnificently
reminded voters during this
week’s Democratic debate –
about “fat broads and horse-
faced lesbians.”
Somehow, Mr. Bloomberg
vaulted into the middle of
the Democratic pack, poll-
ing well enough to earn a
space on that debate stage.
He’s got this far thanks to
US$400-million he’s spent
on ads and social media and
not on the strength of his
convenient Damascene con-
version to enemy of Wall
Street. Perhaps Americans
have been nurtured so long
on the idea of wealth equall-
ing competence that they
can only imagine a blow-
hard billionaire being top-
pled by one who blows even
harder. Thankfully, that idea
was neatly pierced by Sen-
ator Amy Klobuchar, who is
so far from a billionaire that
she once had to eat a salad
with a comb: “I don’t think
you look at Donald Trump
and say, ‘We need someone
richer in the White House.’ ”
Perhaps we’ve been ruin-
ed by superhero movies. All
those stories of billionaires
such as Bruce Wayne and To-
ny Stark swooping down
from their steel-accented
lairs to knock bad guys’
heads together and save the
day. Life is much messier,
though, and requires real he-
roes – not paper ones.

Wealthwon’tsavetheU.S.–letalonetheworld


ELIZABETH
RENZETTI


OPINION

ILLUSTRATIONBYHANNABARCZYK

PerhapsAmericanshave
beennurturedsolong
ontheideaofwealth
equallingcompetence
thattheycanonly
imagineablowhard
billionairebeingtoppled
byonewhoblowseven
harder.
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