Justin Trudeau wants to project a young, fresh face, representing all the good things that Canadians want – a man who would do politics differently.  But the gap between reality and fairytale is extraordinary.

If one looks at what he has said to date, one finds a man with tired old ideas;  a limited understanding of, and sensitivity for, many major issues; and a puppet serving Bay Street, Big Oil and other powerful interests. The same powerful interests served by the Harper administration.

A middle class fairy tale

Most telling is Trudeau’s supposed concern for the middle class.  Though 80% of Canadians have seen their revenues decline or stagnate over the last 3 decades – income inequalities are at an all time extreme – Trudeau, like Stephen Harper, has concluded that low corporate taxes are the way to go for maintaining what they perceive to be a prosperous and rich Canada.

But Trudeau goes one step further to the right than Harper.  He has repeatedly expressed the view that now is not the time to lower the corporate tax rate, implying that, at a later time, a lower corporate tax rate could be an option.

To put all this in context,  the lowering of corporate tax began with the Liberals and was accelerated by the Conservatives.  The result is that: 1) At 15%, Canada has the lowest corporate tax rate in the G8; and 2) approximately $575B lies dormant in corporate liquidity.

Together, these factors imply that having the lowest corporate tax offers very few competitive advantages and that a better distribution of the wealth could be achieved with higher corporate taxes and fewer fiscal escape clauses/deductions.  The additional accrued revenues could be invested in economic development and regional diversification; youth employment; health; innovation for the jobs of tomorrow; public transportation and other urban infrastructure; day care –  to name just a few examples.

Further on this theme, Kevin Page, the former Parliamentary Budget Officer, concluded that a low corporate tax rate limits government manoeuvrability to that of austerity budgets.

In his own clumsy fashion, Trudeau has confirmed Kevin Page’s analysis in that he recognizes that the Liberal Party of Canada’s (LPC’s) own Harper-like policies on wealth distribution would produce Harper-like results. To be more specific, to prepare Canadians for such an eventuality, or the “necessity” of this Bay Street accommodation, Trudeau has indicated that the post election LPC budget could  very well be an austerity budget.

In other words, there is a disconnect between Trudeau’s supposed concern about the middle class and reality. In the absence of any serious attempt at redistribution of the wealth – something in which Trudeau appears not to believe in – he can only offer a middle class fairy tale.  This is a backdrop for many Trudeau’s positions on other issues.

No wonder Justin has described income splitting as “a decent idea”, even though 85% of Canadians would receive no benefit, while the majority of the top 1% of income earners would get $6500 and up.  So much for his preoccupation with the middle class.

Appeasing Big Oil, denying science

Turning to the environment, once again Trudeau has much more in common with Harper than most think, particularly when it comes to the denial of scientific evidence. It’s high time to debunk the myths about Trudeau’s “concerns” in this domain.

Trudeau’s position on Keystone XL is case in point.  According to Justin, the opposition to Keystone XL to transport tar sands bitumen to the US Golf coast is not based on scientific evidence.  Yet life-cycle emissions related to tar sands – from the extraction stage to the refining and production of major quantities of the by-product pet coke for use as a cheap, dirty fuel; and to the final consumption as fuels – place tar sands-derived substances in the range of 20% to 25% more emissions than those associated with conventional petroleum.

As if this extreme denial is not enough to put Trudeau in the same Big Oil camp as Harper, Trudeau has also complimented Premier Redford for promoting Keystone XL with references to Canada’s good environmental record!  Trudeau has been critical of Harper for not doing the same – despite Harper’s disastrous environmental legacy.

This is absolutely astounding!  After Harper’s dismantling of environmental protection legislation, weakening of the environmental impact analysis process, muzzling scientists, decimation of Canada’s environmental research capabilities especially as it relates to the impacts of climate change and the monitoring of Canada’s emissions, pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol,  and much much more, Trudeau, like Harper, perceives the environment as a PR challenge rather than a Mother Earth/humanity state of health challenge.

But the denial doesn’t stop there.  Trudeau bases part of his support for Keystone XL, as is the case with Stephen Harper, on the recent US Dept of State report which suggests that the environmental impacts pertaining to the approval of Keystone XL will be minimal.

Never mind that this report was written by authors close to the petroleum industry who concluded that if the US cannot import unrefined tar sands derivatives, the US would get it’s petroleum from elsewhere.

Never mind that a rejection of Keystone  XL would be a US and global game-changer, sending a clear signal to the globe that the US is serious about reducing its dependency on fossil fuels and will be looking to clean tech to address tomorrow’s energy needs.

Indeed, under these circumstances, it should come as no surprise that Trudeau did not distant himself from Jean Chrétien’s January 2014 remarks to the effect that it makes no sense to restrict tar sands development because we are going to need petroleum for a long time to come.

Falling behind Europe on emissions reduction, green economy

And the denial goes a notch higher when it comes to Trudeau’s views on national solutions to address climate change.  In keeping with the Liberals’ conciliatory legacy with Big Oil, this time, in reference to cap and trade, he claims that this environmental concept doesn’t have scientific merit. (Cap and trade is a model which penalizes companies that exceed their emissions limits and rewards companies that reduce emissions below their targets by being able to sell their credits to firms in the proceeding category.)

Never mind that Europe has had an Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) since 2005 and that the ETS has proven to be a potent compliment to other environmental policies. The results are such that at least 25 EU nations have been identified as likely to meet or beat the EU target 20% reduction of emissions by 2020, relative to 1990 levels.

Never mind that Germany has exceeded it’s Kyoto Protocol goal of a 21% reduction in emissions by 2012 with an achievement of a 25% reduction, all while having one the world’s strongest economies and a clean tech sector that has become bigger than the German auto sector.

Never mind that China has become the world’s largest investor in clean tech – with $67.7B and $61.3B invested in renewables in 2012 and 2013, respectively – and is now planning to introduce the first of seven pilot cap and trade schemes in Shenzhen.

As a former Government of Canada employee who worked in the field of sustainable development, it comes as no surprise that Trudeau’s “thinking” on Big Oil is both conciliatory and wishy-washy.  Emissions spiked up during the previous Liberal reign – as has been the case with the Conservatives at the helm.

The Liberals’ oil-friendly legacy

This LPC legacy was so because of, among other things: 1) the absence of effective legislative and fiscal measures; 2) the party’s continuation of generous subsidies for the fossil fuel sectors; and 3) a fossil fuel-friendly mindset as reflected in the Stéphane Dion proposal, prior to the Liberals’ defeat, to invest billions of government funds in the fossil fuel industry to help that “impoverished” sector reduce its emissions.

It is becoming increasingly evident that Trudeau is vague as to his environmental plans because of his alignment with Big Oil, a longstanding Liberal tradition.

By contrast, Thomas Mulcair advocates a transfer of subsidies from the fossil fuel sectors to the clean tech.

Poor judgement, top-down leadership and Harper similarities

Further on the denial of science,  but in a different context, is the matter of the unusually long time – over a year – that it is taking for Health Canada to approve for use in Canada the drug  Mifepristone (a.k.a. RU-486), the abortion drug.  This, despite the fact that the drug has been in use around the world since 1988, when it was first approved in France.

Given the views on abortion of the minister in question, Rona Ambrose, the delays are suspect. But all Justin Trudeau could say on the exceptional delays is that he is not a medical expert.  Imagine the implications of him being in power with his weak judgement, when this is combined with his not wanting to upset Big Pharma and right wing groups.

Equally telling on Trudeau’s poor judgement and flippancy, was his “performance” on the Radio-Canada TV show Tout-le-monde-en-parle, on Feb 23, 2014.  The Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada, Vadym Prystaiko, quite aptly called for Trudeau to apologize for his “joke” on the show to the effect that Vladimir Putin would not be in a good mood to discuss the Ukrainian turn of events  because of the defeat of the Russian men’s hockey team in Sochi.  As the Ambassador said, 82 deaths in the clashes between security forces and the demonstrators is no laughing matter.

Trudeau’s lightweight Senate proposal

As for the Senate, I have saved this for near the end because I think we should go beyond the scandals of the moment, to the stuff that has implications for all Canadians. Let’s get real. The case has yet to be made as to why a different Senate, made up of unelected officials and appointed by another group of unelected officials, would improve Canadian democracy.  More important, with Senate retirements not mandatory until age 75, it means it would take at least two decades before this so-called different Senate would take shape.

Add to the Trudeau Senate cocktail the way in which he went about springing the news on “Independent” former Liberal Senators. Here one discovers Harper-style, top-down leadership, with no consultations outside a small inner circle. Due to the absence of internal consultation, Trudeau not only surprised Liberal Senators, but his entire caucus!  Or is this another case of poor and gratuitous judgement?

Justin opposes divisive politics – except when it suits him

While Justin Trudeau presents himself as a uniter, not a divider like Harper and Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, delegates at the Feb 2014 national convention in Montreal expressed the view that a Marois majority would help the party gain votes in BC and Ontario. In other words, the LPC hopes for a PQ majority in order to falsely represent the LPC in English Canada as the saviour of national unity. This is wedge politics that places party interests above national interests in order to target specific regional voters. This is the kind of traditional LPC trick that turns off Québécois.

No wonder only 10% of the LPC delegates at their convention in Montreal, Quebec were from Quebec.

During the orange wave in Quebec, the NDP gains were in part the result of former Bloc voters shifting over to the federalist NDP.  This is the way to unite Canadians, by presenting a progressive alternative for all parts of Canada – with the same themes/messages in every region of the country.

Trudeau and Harper: Other similarities

Finally, there are a host of other matters where we find Trudeau and Harper very much on the same page – such as Trudeau’s views that: 1) the sale of Nexen would pave the way for free trade with China and a more prosperous middle class; 2) health is primarily a management issue, rather than a financial challenge; and 3) guns are an integral part of Canadian culture.

Summing up the LPC policy positions to-date, it is clear is that Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau are on the same Bay Street/Wall Street, Big Oil team.

Why would we expect anything different from Justin in 2015?

Canada is blessed with some of the last vestiges of pristine nature on Earth – unbroken forests, coastlines and prairies, thousands of rivers, streams and lakes, open skies, abundant fresh air. Many of us live in urban areas, but our spectacular landscapes are embedded in our history and culture. They define and shape us as people.

We are also defined by our Constitution, which is far more than a set of legal prescriptions. It embodies our highest aspirations and values. As our nation’s top law, one would expect it to reflect our connection to the land, air, water and wildlife that keep us alive and healthy. Our Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives us freedom of expression, equal protection from discrimination and the right to life, liberty and security of the person. But it doesn’t mention the environment. How can we fully enjoy our freedoms without the right to live in a healthy environment?

Some provinces taking the lead

Some Canadians are further ahead than others. Quebec’s Environmental Quality Act and Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms both include environmental rights. Other provinces and territories – including Ontario, the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut – provide limited environmental rights. Worldwide, 110 countries enjoy constitutional rights to a healthy environment, and 181 of 193 UN member countries support recognition of such a right. Canada and the U.S. are among the exceptions.

Canada dead last in environmental protection

The sad truth is that Canada fares poorly among wealthy nations on environmental performance. A recent ranking by the Washington-based Center for Global Development puts Canada last of 27 industrialized nations. The Conference Board of Canada rated our country 15th out of 17 industrialized nations for standards on air pollution, climate change, water and other environmental factors. And the World Health Organization reports that 36,800 premature deaths a year and 13 per cent of illnesses and injuries in Canada are related to exposure to environmental hazards – costing us tens of billions a year in health-care expenses and lost productivity.

The benefits of constitutional protection of the environment are many and the drawbacks few. In places with such a right, people have legal avenues to protect them from activities that pollute the environment and put human health at risk.

Argentina’s constitution saves river, people

For example, Argentina’s constitutional environmental-rights protection was used in a case where industrial pollution was seriously affecting the health of people along the Matanza-Riachuelo River. After residents sued the national, provincial and municipal governments and 44 corporations, Argentina’s government established clean-up, restoration and regional environmental health plans. It has increased the number of environmental inspectors in the region from three to 250, and created 139 water, air and soil quality monitoring points. There’s still much to be done, but three new water-treatment plants and 11 new sewage-treatment plants mean millions of people now have access to clean water and sanitation. Many garbage dumps and polluting industries were shut down. And the local economy benefited.

France has environmental charter too

A legal right to a healthy environment is not about hamstringing corporations; it’s about ensuring they’re run responsibly and that people’s health and well-being come first. It’s also about ensuring laws are enforced and penalties imposed when they’re violated. The total amount of fines imposed under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act from 1988 through 2010 (about $2.4 million) amounted to less than what the Toronto Public Library collected in overdue-book fines in one year, 2009 (about $2.7 million)! And it’s not a right-versus-left political issue. Jacques Chirac, France’s conservative president from 1995 to 2007, made constitutional recognition of the right to a healthy environment one of his priorities. More than 70,000 French citizens attended public hearings on the issue and France’s Charter for the Environment was later enacted with broad support from all political parties.

Environmental protections can strengthen economy

Evidence suggests that stronger environmental regulation spurs innovation and competitiveness, so the right to a healthy environment can benefit the economy. In the aftermath of the Walkerton disaster, Ontario strengthened its drinking-water legislation, which stimulated development and growth of the water-treatment technology sector. Countries with constitutional environmental protection, such as Norway, often enjoy high economic and environmental standards.

It won’t be easy to get the right to a healthy environment enshrined in Canada’s Constitution. But with public support and small steps along the way – such as encouraging legal protection from municipal, regional and provincial governments – we can make it happen.

With contributions from from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

On November 7, the Parti Québécois government at long last introduced a Bill on the La Charte des valeurs (Charter of values) to the National Assembly, but under a new, very long name: La Charte affirmant les valeurs de laïcité et de neutralité religieuse de l’État ainsi que d’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes et encadrant les demandes d’accommodements (The Charter affirming laic values,the neutrality of the state as well as equality between men and women and a framework for requests for accommodation).  For the purpose of simplicity, from here on the Bill will be referred to as La Charte.

The purpose of this article is to provide background information or the context for La Charte. Most of the information contained in this article is common knowledge for francophone Québec but rarely available in English and, as such, virtually unknown to English Canada.  This leads to many misunderstandings, often referred to as the two solitudes.

La Charte des valeurs appeals to variety of very different groups

Contrary to what many in English Canada may think, the debate in Québec about La Charte represents a cocktail of factors.

One of the main components of the cocktail has to do with the Québec dark years known as “la grande noirceur” –  the years during which the Québec francophone community lived under draconian Catholic Church rule, when music and films were censored, women who had sexual relations prior marriage were sent into the streets, and abducted children born outside marriage were put in Church orphanages.

One might say that these dark years are now looked upon by the majority of Québécois as being as reprehensible as residential schools are for members of Canada’s First Nations.

Accordingly, the sentiment to separate religion from the state is several notches stronger in Québec than in the rest of Canada.

Add to this cocktail the fact that, for women, these dark years included women being labelled as inferior in a male-controlled world.  Consequently, many in the feminist movement want to make sure that religious symbols of inferiorization, worn on one’s body or otherwise, are banned from the public sector.

Yet another component of the cocktail is the 1936-1039 and 1944-1959 reign of  Premier Maurice Duplessis, who had a pact with the Catholic Church to control the people.  Under the pact, the Church would run the Catholic schools, the hospitals and civil society in general, as long as it kept the people docile under the Duplessis economic development formula, entailing cheap labour and union/communist-busting features.  In honour of this pact, in 1936 Premier Duplessis had a crucifix placed over the Speaker’s chair in the National Assembly.

Pauline Marois follows Harper model of targeting markets

Pauline Marois, like Stephen Harper, wants to be in full control and consequently detests being stuck in a minority government position.  But because her first year in power has been one of a seemingly endless series of incoherent improvisations, she has lost control of public opinion. In that sense, her government is not all that different than the Charest Liberal government that preceded the PQ.

While she had promised she would eliminate the health tax during her election campaign, her first budget included a health tax of $200 for those earning $42,000 to $100,000.  Another election promise entailed addressing the absurdly low royalties and taxes paid by Quebec’s mining industry, but once in power, she backed down to the industry lobby.

She had promised to migrate Quebec to a green economy, but, so far, she seems okay with the two pipeline proposals to transport tar sands oil into – and crossing through – Quebec, and is not ruling out exploiting potential local oil reserves.

All this has added up to widespread dissatisfaction with the Marois government and poor prospects for pursuing a majority government.  This is where La Charte comes in.

Marois’ game plan

In early Fall 2013, Pauline Marois introduced the Charte, figuring it could position the PQ for a majority government by creating a perceived crisis among Québécois to the effect that Québec had an epidemic of new religious immigrants who were imposing their values on the majority population.

The game plan entailed calling an election for December 2013, while La Charte was a hot topic, and cutting into the homogenous outlying regions’ right wing nationalist vote – designed to foster a migration of the Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec (CAQ) vote over to the PQ.  That made “political sense” in that CAQ support is declining.

The plan also counted on the feminist movement.  Accordingly, as did Harper when he placed “correct thinking” people on the Board of Rights and Democracy, Marois appointed four new “correct thinking” members to the Conseil du statut de la femme (Council on the Status of Women).  But it backfired when the president of the Conseil, Julie Miville-Dechêne, publicly denounced this political interference.  The reality is that the woman’s movement in Québec is divided on the issue.

November’s Montreal municipal elections

During this same period, all four of the main candidates for Mayor of Montreal for the November 3, 2013 elections came out against the Charte.

On election day, Denis Coderre, former federal Liberal Cabinet minister – the very in-the-box, unimaginative candidate for mayor with a sparse and vague platform (he actually thinks more parking spaces downtown is a solution to Montreal’s infamous congestion problems) – became the city’s new mayor with 32% of the vote.  On La Charte, Coderre had said in one of the election debates that he would contest it in the courts if it included the ban on religious symbols in the public sector.

For common Sense Canadian readers in BC, it may be also interesting to note that innovative, visionary candidate for mayor, Richard Bergeron of Projet Montréal, often referred to Vancouver as a model for urban densification and a green city.  He came in second with 25.6%.

New voices against La Charte

Concurrent with the municipal election campaigning, others condemning the Charte elements pertaining to the wearing of religious symbols were Quebec’s hospitals’ association, universities, a teachers’ union, a private daycare centres’ association and many more.

Adding his voice to this opposition, the president of La Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse  (human rights and youth rights commission), Jacques Frémont, went public to say La Charte would not pass the test of either the Quebec Charter of Rights or the Canadian Charter of Rights in the event of a legal challenge. Either the PQ would have to modify the proposed Charte or revert to the “Notwithstanding clause.”

In effect, it has become very clear that it would be impossible to apply La Charte in the Montreal Statistics Canada census area, which attracts 87% of Québec immigrants and which represents over 45% of the population of Québec.

But all these obstacles did not deter the PQ.

Rather, the factor that changed Pauline Marois’ mind about going into a December 2013 election with the highly emotional Charte as a wedge issue, was the polls, which did not reflect the support she hoped for. As a result, as of October 27, the December 2013 election hype has been called off.

Swinging Further to the Right

Cultivating the right nationalist vote for La Charte is not, unfortunately, an isolated incident.

Shortly after coming into power, the Marois government appointed Pierre Karl Péladeau – controlling shareholder of Quebecor and Sun Media, well-known for his support of right wing causes – to sit on the Board of Hydro-Québec.  Péladeau has since attended at least two Marois Cabinet meetings.

His spouse, Julie Snyder, host of the popular Star Académie (Québec equivalent to American Idol), is one of the members of the Janette movement, a women’s movement in support of La Charte.  Julie Snyder is also involved in the development of a television production presenting a favourable portrait of  Marois, to be aired on TVA, a TV network owned by Péladeau’s media empire.

Which brings us back to what Pauline Marois said when she became the leader of the PQ.  At the time, she said she would modernize social democracy.  She never explained what she meant, but after a year in power, it is becoming clearer as to what she had in mind – going after the right wing nationalist vote to put sovereignty over the top.  Fortunately for Canada, the game plan is not working.  But absolutely nothing can deter Pauline Marois. On November 7, she introduced La Charte to the Quebec National Assembly.

La Charte goes to the National Assembly

Pauline Marois knows that her Bill on La Charte will not get passed as proposed under the minority government at the National Assembly. But like Harper with his obsessions, Marois continues to insist that her Charte will unite Québécois, once again hoping that – eventually, that is – by the time the minority government is dissolved, she will be able to count on gaining new support among the right wing nationalists in Quebec’s outlying regions.

One might conclude that Pauline Marois is engaged in what Einstein referred to as insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”