Author: Linda McQuaig

Is there a word to describe this behaviour other than insanity?

Yet this is the norm, as we continue to accept the business model that prioritizes profit maximization, even when it leads to horrendous death and destruction.

Or as British writer George Monbiot once observed: “If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you’re likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you’re likely to go to business school.”

While concern about climate change is increasing, mobilization to fight it is definitely falling short. And, ominously, as the Suncor CEO’s words suggest, the immensely powerful fossil fuel industry — the main driver of climate change — is feeling frisky and freshly self-assured.

At the height of the pandemic when oil demand fell, the power balance shifted, empowering the global public and pushing Exxon, Shell and BP to make commitments to reduce their carbon emissions and focus on transitioning to clean energy — commitments that all three oil giants have recently abandoned.

Indeed, now with oil demand recovered and rising due to the war in Ukraine, the oil giants are strutting around with new-found swagger, as captured by the New York Times headline: “Big Oil gets its Mojo back.”

The last thing we need is for Big Oil — which has spent decades actively undermining global efforts to tackle climate change — to get its Mojo back. But there it is.

Geographer Jared Diamond has documented the collapse of several past advanced civilizations — the Mayans, the Puebloans of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and the Viking settlers of Greenland — after they failed to adequately deal with severe climate shocks.

In his 2005 bestseller “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” Diamond identified three key indicators of imminent collapse, including a persistent pattern of environmental change, signs that existing modes of production were aggravating the problem and the failure of the elite to alter course to stop the destruction.

All three indicators are clearly evident today, argues U.S. international security expert Michael T. Klare, who adds that the summer of 2023 — and notably Canada’s wildfires — suggest that the process of collapse may already be underway.

Certainly, in today’s world, where the business model still dominates, our elite is not only failing to alter course, they’re actively revving up their engines and charging full steam ahead.

They’re like the whip-crazy cowboy hooting with joy as he rides a nuclear warhead in the 1964 movie classic “Dr. Strangelove,” raucously whooping it up and yelling “hee-haw” as he leads us all to oblivion.

Its judicial reforms, which prompted massive protests by Israelis last weekend, are aimed at preventing its Supreme Court from acting as a check on government actions, including actions to consolidate control over the West Bank.

Upon taking office, the new government listed its basic principles, starting with the top one: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel” — including the Palestinian-inhabited West Bank that Israel has militarily ruled over for 56 years.

He stressed that the chances of such a catastrophic mishap increase dramatically in periods of heightened tension between the nuclear superpowers, U.S.A. and Russia.

Times like now.

So the fading of nuclear fears today is a testament to the skills of Western leaders who have downplayed the imminent danger, trying to focus our attention instead on the need to defeat Russia in Ukraine and ensure Russian dictator Vladimir Putin pays a heavy price for his brutal invasion.

By keeping the focus on Putin’s horrendous war crimes, Western leaders and commentators have also distracted us from seeing how Washington’s own behaviour has increased the chances of nuclear conflict.

In a brilliant essay in Harper’s this month, U.S. foreign policy experts Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne argue that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Washington has sought to achieve nuclear dominance, replacing the Cold War nuclear balance of power. This and the expansion of the U.S.-led military alliance NATO ever closer to Russia’s borders have left Russians — not just Putin — feeling paranoid.

Or as a group of retired U.S. military officers ask in a full-page ad in the New York Times: how would Americans feel if Russian military forces were stationed throughout Canada and Mexico?

In fact, we saw how strongly America reacted when Russia put missiles in Cuba in 1962.

And, while Americans may believe those missiles were withdrawn due to John F. Kennedy’s stand-firm resolve, what really convinced the Russians to remove their missiles was Kennedy’s promise (made secretly to them and only publicly revealed decades later) that, in exchange, Washington would remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

Schwarz and Layne note that compromise worked and insist that avoiding nuclear war today may require compromise over Ukraine — such as guaranteeing Ukraine’s neutrality, similar to Austria’s neutrality during the Cold War.

Instead, Western leaders seem determined to humiliate Putin — exactly what JFK warned against when he said: “Above all … nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.”

But back to Olivia Chow, the spa and the submarine. Washington’s war planners — and their supporters, including the Canadian government — want us to focus on anything but what could happen if, say, a hyper-nervous superpower mistakenly concluded it was under attack and unleashed its nuclear arsenal, blowing up the world.

But relax. As we know, that only happens in movies. In the real world, mistakes never happen.

That threat was always grossly exaggerated. Our deficits were always manageable; there was never the slightest risk international investors would cut us off.

The notion that we can’t afford a strong public sector has always been a scam.

But it’s particularly a scam these days. The Ford government’s own numbers show a sea of surpluses — not deficits — over the next four years.

And the government’s finances are even better than it likes to admit. The province’s Fiscal Accountability Office — an independent government agency — reported last month that Ontario is on track to collect $22 billion more than it plans to spend on its public programs.

That’s $22 billion that is not being used to adequately fund our education, health care and other vital public programs that determine the quality of life for millions of Ontarians.

While the Ford government is particularly hostile to the public sector, scrimping on public programs has sadly become the norm in recent decades — to the detriment of all of us.

We’ve become increasingly numb to what we’re losing, caught up in a capitalist narrative that celebrates individuals making it on their own, rather than celebrating what we can achieve collectively.

This capitalist narrative is based on the concept of “survival of the fittest,” which was popularized by the book “The Origin of Species,” written by the great 19th century evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin.

It’s not surprising that Al Suwaidi would avoid acknowledging this. After all, he’s an aide to Sultan Al Jaber, who heads up the national oil company of the United Arab Emirates, as well as heading up the UN climate negotiations to be held there next November. The fact that the sultan is heading up both is a perfect example of the sort of communal effort on climate change that feels good, but has gotten us nowhere.

To get somewhere, we have to start centre-staging the truly immoral role played by Big Oil. Otherwise, we end up duped into believing that what holds us back is the refusal of ordinary Canadians to give up their fossil-fuel-guzzling cars.

True, some Canadians would refuse and they would be goaded on by the oil lobby and the Freedom Convoy crowd. But the majority of Canadians are sufficiently freaked out by wildfires, heat domes and flooding to be ready to transition to clean energy (especially since it wouldn’t have to impact their lifestyles that much) — if only there was some serious government leadership.

But there isn’t. Justin Trudeau, knowing the public fears climate change, fashions himself a climate warrior. But he largely succumbs to oil industry demands, revealing his warrior posture to be more fashion accessory than commitment.

It’s easy to see how this happens; Big Oil is relentless in its opposition to climate action.

A fascinating study by the corporate mapping project of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives documents that the oil industry lobbied government officials 11,452 times — with a heavy focus on lobbying senior officials responsible for climate policies — during a seven-year period spanning the governments of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

Both governments appear to have responded to this constant pressure by giving Big Oil a say in our climate policies, leaving Canada with a terrible record on reducing emissions — far worse than many comparable nations.

As climate journalist Barry Saxifrage has documented, key nations — including Germany, France, the U.K., Sweden and Norway — have significantly reduced vehicle emissions, largely by raising taxes on gas-guzzlers and cutting taxes on battery-electric vehicles.

In case you’re tempted to excuse Canada’s dismal performance because we’re economically reliant on oil, Saxifrage notes that oil is also central to Norway’s economy, yet Norway has dramatically reduced emissions. (Last year, 78 per cent of new vehicles purchased in Norway were battery-electric, compared to just 6 per cent in Canada — and 1 per cent in Alberta.)

Canadians are just as reasonable as Norwegians. If only we had a government willing to stand up to the menace of Big Oil.

The lurid revelations ignited a raging scandal, with an aroused public demanding to learn more. Since there was no way to put a lid on it, then Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Johnston to advise on the scope of the inevitable inquiry.

Johnston did do his best to put a lid on things, advising Harper that the inquiry should not be allowed to investigate the very crux of the matter: whether the payments were connected to the $1.8 billion purchase of Airbus jets by Air Canada while Mulroney was prime minister — as alleged by investigative reporter Stevie Cameron in her 1994 book “On the Take.”

Mulroney had vehemently denied the bribery allegation, and even managed to win a $2.1 million settlement from Ottawa after the RCMP investigated him — and exonerated him — in connection with the Airbus contract.

But by 2008, that exoneration was deeply in doubt due to fresh evidence that Mulroney had in fact received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash — delivered in suitcases in hotel rooms — from Karlheinz Schreiber, the arms dealer with whom he was accused of dealing on Airbus.

It sure as hell looked suspicious. And Johnston’s advice — that the inquiry steer clear of probing any connections to Airbus — was ridiculous, but helpful to Conservatives hoping to cool down the scandal. Harper later appointed Johnston governor-general.

The media is free to investigate whatever it wants and as aggressively as it wants. And I guess it’s not surprising that media outlets — owned by wealthy conservatives — are more interested in advancing scandals that negatively impact governments they don’t like.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that our major national media outlets are simply trying to sell newspapers or that they don’t have a dog in this fight.

One might conclude the Ford government is simply determined to keep nursing costs low. But that’s not really the case. Which brings us to Nurse Two.

This second nurse became so disheartened by Ford’s low pay and dismissive treatment that he quit his hospital job and now works for a private nursing agency at roughly double the pay.

Lots of other nurses have followed his path, leaving our hospitals seriously short-staffed and obliged to hire nurses from private agencies. Taking full advantage of the hospitals’ desperation, the agencies jack up the price. At crunch times, their rates go as high as $300 an hour — costing the hospital (ultimately, the government) about eight times what it pays Nurse One for the same work.

Most of this excess pay ends up in the hands of the private agencies, which, as middlemen, are scooping up tens of millions of dollars of public money.

This reckless use of public money could be avoided if the government simply paid Nurse One a reasonable wage. Ford’s refusal to do this suggests he has an agenda that has nothing to do with good governance.

Rather, he seems motivated to crush the nurses, along with all other public sector workers struggling to catch up after three years of being held to a 1 per cent wage cap. Although the cap was struck down by the courts last fall, the Ford government is appealing that decision and fighting to maintain the cap.

In addition to trouncing public sector unions, Ford appears keen to undermine public health care, thereby smoothing the way for more privatization. Certainly, he seems fixated on privatization and promoting private business interests.

He doesn’t seem to understand that, as premier, his job is to protect the public, which includes shielding our valued public programs from pillaging by private businesses, whose only concern is making a buck.

Ford and his ministers, steeped in their stag-and-doe ways, seem unaware that they are elected to be guardians of the public interest (even writing that, I realize how ridiculous it sounds, in their case).

In the legislature, Health Minister Sylvia Jones appears unable to coherently defend health care privatization, lapsing into corporate pep-talk that “Innovation is not a bad word.”

Of course, innovation isn’t bad. Indeed, it’s good. What’s bad is the way Jones and the rest of the Ford government use “innovation” as a cover for crushing workers and channelling public funds to private interests.

That’s not innovation. It’s a betrayal of their role as public guardians. And, in any reasonable political universe, that would be a scandal.

In real life, almost a million Ontarians work for minimum wages and additional millions work for not much more. They and their families won’t be able to afford to immerse themselves in Therme’s frothy thermal baths or lounge in fluffy bathrobes amid indoor palm trees.

Ironically, this may turn out to be how Doug Ford is best remembered — not as the guy who pitched beers for a buck to the tailgating gang, but the guy who created new indulgence opportunities for those who’ve probably never experienced a day job.

However, even low-income Ontarians, as taxpayers, will pay for the privilege of having the seven-storey spa on our waterfront.

That’s because the province will pay about $200 million to prepare the land and $450 million to build a five-storey underground parking garage to serve the spa (and the public space that will wrap around it almost like an after-thought).

One would have to think long and hard to come up with a more foolish way to invest in our future than to spend hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parking garage that benefits a private business and furthers our car dependence over the next nine decades, even as the climate crashes all around us.

Therme says it will build a nice, new beach for the public, and won’t charge people to use it. But, hey, we own that beach and we could fix it up really nicely ourselves, without handing over a spacious chunk of waterfront to a private developer.

We did, after all, build Trillium Park, a spectacular seven-acre park on the waterfront.

Completed in 2017, it’s the very antithesis of the mega-spa. Instead of creating a new parking lot, Trillium Park transformed an old parking lot into an imaginative green landscape full of pedestrian and bicycle paths, all for a mere $30 million — less than it will cost to build a single level of the mega-spa’s parking garage.

Both the Highway 407 and the mega-spa deals involve governments privatizing something of tremendous value — a key piece of our highway infrastructure and a stretch of our scant waterfront — for no obvious benefit and at great cost to Ontarians, and then locking in those deals for years after the demise of the governments that concocted them.

As to which deal is worse — sadly, Ontarians will have decades to figure that out.