It was nice to see both U.S. President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper take shots at China’s record on human rights just days before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing. “America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists,” said Bush. Harper played it even safer, letting his actions do his talking for him. Instead of joining his co-heads of governments for the opening ceremonies, he sent Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson in his place, as if this were a trade mission or diplomatic obligation.
Nice, because far too much has been said and written about the power of the Olympics to promote democratic ideals and transform tyrannical regimes such as China’s. Awarding Nazi Germany the games in 1936 did not, after all, deter Hitler from precipitating global warfare just three years later. Nor did giving them to Moscow in 1980 bring an end to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan or hasten a conclusion to the Cold War.
Indeed, hoping the Olympics might act as a carrot to bring about regime change has never worked. If it had, then presumably runners and jumpers, not soldiers and pilots, would have been dispatched to Iraq in 2003 to engineer the downfall of Saddam Hussein, with a lot less bloodshed (and a lot more medals).
Nice, too, because, of course, both Bush and Harper know a thing or two about exercising anti-democratic regimes firsthand. Bush came to power on the back of a fraudulent election that — twinned with his response to the terrorist attacks less than a year later — helped redirect the trajectory of human history in the early 21st century.
Harper never quite managed to repeat Bush’s act of larceny, instead settling for a mere 36 per cent of the 65 per cent of Canadians who actually voted in January 2006, giving him an effective mandate of less than 24 per cent. Still, for the past two-and-a-half years, Harper has acted as if he had been awarded clear majority backing, never so obviously as when he recently taunted Liberal leader Stéphane Dion to either “fish or cut bait” — that is, either force a federal election by bringing down the Conservative minority government or else let it rule unopposed. “Canadians deserve to have a Parliament that works,” Harper said. “They want the government to keep governing, to address the issues that matter to them, to keep the country moving forward.”
By any measure, this is a curious conception of how a modern liberal democracy is supposed to work. It rests on three basic faulty — if not false — assumptions. First, Harper seems to regard democracy as something that mysteriously “happens” only at the moment of an election itself, with voters not only indicating their preference but also endorsing in full the winning party’s platform. In the case of any party scoring a clear and substantial majority, perhaps this might be the case. However, in the present instance, a clear majority of Canadians have not endorsed Harper’s program in any shape or manner. As such, it is not only right but essential that the official opposition force the minority government to explain and justify every single piece of legislation that it brings to the House. By insisting that the Liberals shut up, Harper undermines the very process from which he claims his authority.
Second, if Harper is right in his claim that the Liberals have prevented him from governing for the past 36 months, this throws into question whether we actually need a government. After all, the country has not fallen apart in the interim, despite the presence of many contentious issues. And with the primary role of government being to enact new legislation, it might also be asked if there are really more laws that urgently need to be added to the already bloated law books.
And even if the answer is yes, a third assumption is that Parliament is the best or most efficient body to undertake this task. It’s only a matter of history and convention, surely, that allows a bunch of diverse and dubiously informed individuals to determine matters of national interest in this fashion. Could not a group of non-elected, suitably informed experts within the civil service draft and sanction any new legislation that’s necessary, without all the grandstanding and chest thumping of House of Commons votes?
With his centralization of power within the Prime Minister’s Office and curtailment of parliamentary debate, Harper has already gone some way towards acting on this third assumption. He could, if so inclined, claim good precedent for doing so. In the aftermath of the Second World War, various writers in western democracies either advocated a management style of political rule (e.g. James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution) or else argued that traditional political differences had ceased to be meaningful (e.g. Daniel Bell in The End of Ideology). Instead, nations such as Canada were entering a new era of post-partisan politics, in which such institutions as Parliament would have only limited influence.
The dangers inherent in any such attempt to neuter Parliamentary debate, to elevate bureaucrats over elected politicians, or to gag official opposition parties have, of course, been all too obvious in recent history. Such moves, successfully executed, were at the heart of the rise of fascist and communist regimes in the 1920s and 1930s.
These restrictions on true democratic expression are also all too evident in contemporary post-communist China. Beneath the Nuremberg-like spectacle of the opening celebrations in Beijing lies a persistent and unrepentant denial of even the most basic democratic freedoms.
So it was nice of Harper not to attend the Olympic ceremonies. It would be even nicer if he applied the same awareness to his own undemocratic government in Canada.
David Bright has published widely on Canadian social, labour and criminal justice history. He teaches history and politics at Niagara College, Ontario.
