Anti-democracy is all of a sudden in style. Ain’t it grand?
All around, far and near, we are witnessing the rise of Triple-A governments: Autocratic, Authoritarian, Absolutist.
Wondering about notions of public consultation, proper process, debate, governing on what you campaigned and were elected on? Hey, who needs that when it is so simple, so expeditious, so without any serious friction for the time being, to do what tickles the fancy?
Political opposition is withered and weakened, the call for change is in the air, the media are on their heels, and the conditions are primed for opportunist exploitation to produce a democratic backslide.
Sure, more than anyone, we know we’re talking about the guy at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. He’s autographing executive orders as if he were Jerry in that Seinfeld episode signing the clutch of 12-cent royalty cheques from Japan; repetitive strain injury can’t be long in arriving.
And not to make light of this. Jobs are being lost, important grants are being rescinded, live-saving aid is being stifled, history is being erased, and laws and the courts themselves are being flouted. Just because he says so and no one, not even the more level-headed among those close to him, is stopping it.
But it would be wrong to only cite the most powerful person as the only person who wants the most power. Look closer to home to an example hiding in plain sight.
Much is being written frantically this week about Bill 7, the benignly named Economic Stabilization (Tariff Response) Act introduced by B.C. Premier David Eby on the day before a two-week break, following a short stint after a nine-month break.
Bill 7 is hardly anyone’s lucky number. It pretty well does away with democracy for the next couple of years in the province. It invests in the government profound powers that the parliamentary system never anticipated: the right to override any of our laws and to thwart the challenges to them, and the regulations that steer those laws into our lives and are the presumptive conditions under which we are kept safe from their abuse. All of it arises not as a response to what we can measurably answer but as a ham-fisted preemptive strike, rather as if we mandated social restrictions before we knew of COVID – and that’s one of the weaker ways to put it.
Criminologists will say that a drug dealer and a vice squad cop are two sides of the same coin, that they live in the same mindset of strategic enforcement to maintain control; now, it seems, a former civil libertarian lawyer who became premier can be said to be the same. For Eby has strayed so far from his roots, gone so far to the other side, that if he doesn’t walk back his bill when the legislature resumes next week, it will be a tell-tale sign he has lost the plot. (He could be stopped if every non-NDP MLA bands together, so we will see, particularly if the Green MLAs so quickly abandon their pact with the government.)
The bad vibe is all over the place. As our federal election campaign launches, we see a snippiness with the new prime minister about talking about his wealth and what it amounted to as he abided the rules in placing it in a blind trust. We also see that his prime challenger, no fan of nearly all experienced reporters, won’t cart the paying Ottawa-based journalists – the best-informed, as I can vouch from experience – on his campaign plane, as countless leaders have over the decades. What is it that makes my leaders act so arrogantly about the public right to know?
I can see some of the same threads on a different scale in local politics, too. My local mayor in West Vancouver just announced the purchase of a building on the outskirts of the district to house an art gallery: not a site anyone would see as ideal due to location, no viable business plan to pay for it, no consultation with community arts groups until after the fact – when they were required to sign non-disclosure agreements so they could not discuss the matter publicly, for heaven’s sake.
It makes me feel like I’m living in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Someone told me the other day that the American courts are trying valiantly but fruitlessly to hold back the tide like King Canute. I had to ruin the image and say that the legendary medieval story is often misunderstood. Canute didn’t hold back the tide; he had his throne brought to the shore to show his followers that the tide would still lap upon his feet, and that only God could stem the waves and control the elements.
Then again, perhaps that’s what my friend meant without realizing it – that, in the absence of common sense breaking out, only an act of God stops this.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism. He is the vice-president in the office of the chairman at Fulmer and Company.
