By Dennis Gruending

Broadcaster Steve Paikan will moderate an English language election debate among the leaders of Canada’s five political parties on Thursday, October 2. He says that networks in the debate consortium settled on 10 questions to be asked. I have questions to pose about the election and I am sure that you do too. Please consider posting yours below in the Comments section found as you scroll down on this page. In that way, we can share notes and information to help us question candidates in community meetings or at the door. My first question to each of the five leaders is this: What value or principle do you hold most dear and tell us how it will help Canadians?

Question 2: Canada has been criticized by the United Nations for enduring levels of poverty among aboriginal people. Political and aboriginal leaders negotiated the Kelowna Accord in 2005 to invest approximately $5 billion into schools, housing and clean water in aboriginal communities. The Conservative government refused to honour that agreement. What will each of you do to restore that $5 billion investment in aboriginal people and their communities?

Question 3: At least 19 Canadians have now died from listeriosis after eating tainted meat products. This tragedy occurred after the government cut back on food inspections and turned much of its responsibility over to industry to police itself. One of a government’s basic responsibilities is to keep its citizens safe from harm, and that includes protecting us against being poisoned by the food that we eat. What will you do to restore the federal government’s role in keeping the food supply safe for Canadians?

Question 4: The Conservative government has chosen to provide $100 a month to parents with young children rather than proceeding with a childcare plan negotiated by the previous federal government, the provinces and territories. Parents and people who work in early childhood education say that the government’s modest tax breaks have failed and that there is an urgent need for more childcare spaces. What will you do to ensure that children can receive childcare while their parents go to work?

Question 5: Development of the tar sands has been proceeding at breakneck speed. These mega projects will create open pit mines in an area of northern Alberta equal to twice the size of New Brunswick. The projects are already polluting the river and lake systems and experts say that if they go ahead Canada cannot hope to meet even its modest commitments to reduce our levels of greenhouse gases. Peter Lougheed, the former premier of Alberta, has publicly criticized the rapid pace of development. How is it possible, if indeed it is possible, to develop the tar sands in a way that allows Canada to meet its Kyoto treaty commitments and to protect the land, air and water in Alberta?

Question 6: American economist William Nordhaus says that any politician who will not support placing a price on carbon is “not really serious and does not recognize the central message about how to slow climate change.” The Liberals and the Green Party want to introduce a carbon tax and use the money collected to reduce income and other taxes. The Conservatives oppose a carbon tax and say they will introduce intensity-based pollution targets for industry. That might slow the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions but will still allow them to rise for many years to come. The NDP says it would tax big polluters while leaving individuals alone, and that it would use the money collected from corporations to invest in green programs and technology. The question to the Conservative and NDP leaders is this: How do you respond to the charge that by refusing to put a price on carbon consumed by everyone you are not serious about preventing climate change?

Question 7: The war in Afghanistan has now taken 100 Canadian lives with many more Afghan civilians being killed and maimed. A Liberal government sent our troops to that country and a Conservative-led government voted to keep them there. The prime minister now says our troops will come home in the year 2011 no matter what happens. The question to the prime minister is this: You used to tell Canadians that the Taliban were a direct threat to our security but now you appear to be saying that is not the case. Have 100 Canadians die for nothing?

The question to the NDP, Green and Bloc Quebecois leaders is this: You have called for the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops. How do you respond to the fear that to withdraw immediately would lead to chaos and civil war in Afghanistan?

Question 8: A growing number of Canadians are weary of violence and war and are seeking ways to create a sustainable peace. They are lobbying the Canadian government to create a Department of Peace. The minister in charge would be responsible for creating and supporting activities that promote a culture of peace and non-violence in Canada and the world. The question to all leaders: We already have a Department of National Defence. What will you do to promote a Department of Peace?

This, obviously, is but a short list of questions that could be asked of our political leaders. Please use the Comments section below to share a question or questions that you would like to see asked of candidates during the remainder of the campaign.

By Dennis Gruending

Policy wonks may think that elections are about issues but linguist and political commentator George Lakoff says they’re all about cultural metaphors and stereotypes. The Republicans are proven masters at shifting focus away from issues and toward potent metaphors framed in a conservative way and with “family values” at their centre. In Canada, Stephen Harper’s steely resolve turns dreamy when he dons a sweater vest and muses to the camera about how great it is to be a dad.

Lakoff, an American, says that the incumbent Republicans would have much to lose by focussing on issues – a sinking economy, a mortgage crisis, rising energy prices, a record and staggering government deficit, and a war in Iraq. Stephen Harper has an unpopular war of his own to defend, not to mention a hollowing out of Canada’s manufacturing sector and his lack of action on global warming.

The Republicans know that Ronald Reagan and George W Bush won by running on values, authenticity, trust and identity rather than on issues. Lakoff says that Republicans specialize in placing their family values into an authoritarian frame, then applying it via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Enter Sarah Palin, John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate who burst onto the Republican stage as a gun-loving religious fundamentalist and mother of five, a self-styled hockey mom and a “pit bull with lipstick.” Her job was to personify what Lakoff calls “the mother in a strict father family, upholding conservative values.”

Lakoff warns that those who criticize or belittle Palin for her extremism or her lack of national experience are missing the point. While the criticisms may be true, Lakoff says, they are largely irrelevant to this campaign. “Conservative theorists win [people] over in two ways: Inventing and promulgating the idea of a ‘liberal elite’ and focussing campaigns on social and family issues.” Palin has been recruited for both roles. In her acceptance speech, she heaped scorn on Obama as an elitist liberal intellectual, even though he arose from modest circumstances while McCain is a millionaire who can’t remember how many houses and condominiums he owns. Palin’s pit bull attacks on Obama leave McCain free to take the high road as warrior and strict father figure of the family and nation.

The Conservatives are attempting something similar in Canada, although the strict father role doesn’t rest as comfortably on apple-cheeked Stephen Harper as it does on the older and craggy McCain. Conservative ads and campaign events portray Harper as a decisive and firm leader, a tax cutter – and an ardent family man. Tellingly, he was unenthused when a reporter asked him if Stéphane Dion isn’t just as much of a family man. Harper has no corner on that market — Jack Layton, Elizabeth May and Gilles Duceppe also have credentials as good family people.

On the pit bull side, the Conservatives ran advertisements all summer attacking Dion as a pin-headed intellectual and bookish ditherer. Then, two days into the campaign came the puffin flying over Dion and pooping on his shoulder. Dion, by the way, is shown in that ad standing in front of a blackboard containing the words: “Hello class, my name is Professor Dion.” This denigration of teacher and intellectual contains parallels to Palin’s putdown of Obama for being a community organizer – as though being a community worker or teacher is not a real or useful job.

In fact, Harper is as much a policy wonk as is Dion, although the latter has the more impressive academic credentials. Dion has spent much of his life teaching at a university while Harper, other than a stint leading the right wing National Citizens Coalition, spent most of his time in the backrooms of the Reform Party or in the House of Commons. As for the manly man, Harper may have shed his paunch but on a cross-country ski trail Dion would likely win the race.

There are important issues at play in both the Canadian and American elections. It does matter who wins and who governs. Dion, Layton, and May each has national policy prescriptions to offer but they, especially Dion, cannot afford to ignore the political marketing of the Conservatives. They will have to blend reality with symbols, running on character and values, authenticity and trust as well as on the issues.

Note: George Lakoff will be the resource person for a seminar called Persuading to Win to be held near Toronto on Nov.
14-15, 2008.

By Dennis Gruending

A war of words has erupted around Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s appointment to the Order of Canada on July 1st. Some have hailed him as a hero to women while others brand him as a murderer for his role in developing freestanding abortion clinics. The Prime Minister has taken the unprecedented step of criticizing an Order of Canada appointment. “My preference, to be frank, would be to see the Order of Canada be something that really unifies, that brings Canadians together,” he told the media on July 2nd. Canada’s Roman Catholic bishops made much the same point in their statement saying the award creates “controversy and division”. The bishops are calling for the award to be rescinded and they level a harsh criticism of Morgentaler as someone who has “encouraged the development of a culture of death.” A Vancouver area priest who received the award in the 1980s says that he will return his medal.

Morgentaler was among those who lobbied for a change in Canada’s abortion law but he can hardly be credited, or blamed for, the liberalization that occurred in 1969. It was his establishing standalone clinics that saw him arrested and imprisoned. In 1988, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the new law was contrary to Section 7 of the Charter of rights and Freedoms which guarantees (for women in this case) the right to life, liberty and security. The Mulroney government then introduced new legislation that would have criminalized later term abortions. The legislation passed in the House of Commons in 1991 but failed to win approval in the Senate.

Words in the abortion debate are often brandished like weapons and there appears to be little place for common language or accommodation. Those who believe that a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy describe their position as being pro-choice. They describe those who disagree with them as being anti-choice. Those who believe that a woman should have no such right describe themselves as pro-life and their opponents as pro-abortion or worse. The language wars do not end there.

Author and linguist George Lakoff says in his book Moral Politics that the words embryo and fetus are medical terms. An embryo is the product of conception, more than just a cluster of cells but not yet recognizable as a member of the species. A fetus is a further stage of development but there is no precise and specified moment at which a cluster of cells becomes an embryo and the embryo a fetus. Lakoff says that the choice of these words “call up a medical context in which the issues are medical issues.” Opponents of abortion use the word baby or unborn child. The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF), for example, criticized the Morgentaler appointment in a July 2 news release. COLF said, “It is neither heroic nor admirable to cause the death of unborn children, the most vulnerable of all Canadians.” COLF is a joint project of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization. Lakoff writes, “The very choice of the word baby imposes the idea of an independently existing human being.”

The Catholic hierarchy confers personhood upon the earliest stages of the embryo that results from the fertilization of sperm and egg, and the bishops extend this position even farther to say that it is sinful to use any “artificial” form of birth control to prevent that fertilization from occurring. The hierarchy also believes that the practice of birth control leads to the slippery slope of what the bishops call an abortion mentality. This is not the place to debate the hierarchy’s position on birth control other than to say that few people in our society, including Catholics, take it seriously.

In Vancouver, Father Lucien Larre says that he’ll return his Order of Canada medal rather than be associated with Morgentaler. Father Larre is no stranger to controversy and division himself. He once lived in Saskatchewan where he founded Bosco Homes for treating emotionally disturbed and addicted adolescents. In 1992, some years after he was awarded the Order of Canada, a Saskatchewan jury convicted him on two counts of physically abusing children in his care and acquitted him on nine other charges. He was sentenced to one day in jail and paid a $2,500 fine for one charge of common assault. The National Parole Board of Canada pardoned him five years later and erased the charges.

Henry Morgentaler is 85 years old and is apparently in poor health but he remains a galvanizing symbol. Some groups and MPs have also used his appointment to criticize Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who acts as head of the Order of Canada advisory council. Alberta Conservative MP Ken Epp was quoted in the Toronto Star as saying, “Is she now totally out of impartiality because of the fact she has weighed into this?” Criticism of judges was common in the old Reform party and lives on among Conservatives. Since Canada enacted the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the 1980s, some of the highest profile cases have involved women, sexual minorities and aboriginal people. The political and religious right is antagonistic toward the charter and suspicious about what it considers to be liberal-activist judges.

Mr. Harper’s comments regarding the Morgentaler appointment can be seen as political. He had earlier promised that his government would not attempt new legislation regarding abortion, although there are three Private Members Bills at various stages that do deal with aspects of it. Harper’s position will have disappointed many in his political universe but by questioning the Morgentaler award he sends a sympathetic signal to social conservatives without having to do anything about it. They may well demand more of him.

By Dennis Gruending

Hundreds of people participated in the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa on May 15th. Last year, the featured speaker Serge LeClerc described his personal journey from the depths of despair to personal salvation. He said that he was born to a teenaged single-parent, aboriginal mother, drifted into years of drugs, crime and incarceration, then had a religious conversion in prison that led to a career as a motivational speaker and the director of a teen addiction program in Saskatchewan.

It was a moving story but also one that fits a template that focuses on individual fall and redemption. As we filed out of the room following the speech one MP said to me quietly, “I’m waiting for the day when our speaker is a corporate polluter who stands up and repents for his sin.” The breakfast’s message in recent years has tended to fit within a religious tradition that focuses upon an individualistic view of faith. The event has done less to reflect the more communal thrust that has that has been central to both the social gospel and social Catholicism, to name just two Christian movements.

The invited speaker at this year’s breakfast, however, may represent that more communal dimension. Judy Graves has worked with the poor and the homeless in downtown Vancouver since 1974.

David Anderson, chair for the 2008 breakfast, is a Conservative MP from Saskatchewan. In a newspaper interview he described the breakfast as “non-partisan”, “non-political”, and “Christ-centred.” Let’s consider those in order. Just a few months after Serge LeClerc was the featured speaker in 2007, he was nominated as a candidate (and later elected) for the Saskatchewan Party, a provincial cousin of the federal Conservatives. The optical frame here approaches partisanship.

The breakfast in 2007 also featured a closing prayer from Lt. General Walt Natynczyk of the Canadian armed forces. He invoked God’s care for the troops in Afghanistan, who he said were “protecting Canada.” Praying for the safety of Canadian troops is fine but to say that the troops in Afghanistan are protecting Canada is a contested comment in the debate surrounding the Afghan mission, and one with which many Canadians and MPs would disagree. The Lt. General’s words go beyond a frame that is non-political at a time when the Afghan debate was very much alive in Canada.

MP Anderson says the breakfast is a “Christ-centred event” and it is. There were no individuals at the podium from any other of the world’s religions to offer commentary, prayers or readings from their holy books at either the 2006 or 2007 breakfasts. This is an odd omission when a number of MPs and Senators are drawn from those religions and serve in a country that is increasingly diverse. This frame can’t help but convey an exclusionary message. This is the more puzzling since smaller multi-faith prayer meetings do occur among parliamentarians throughout the year. Why, then, are individuals of other faiths not represented at the podium at the annual gala?

The prayer breakfast literature makes no comment on gender but appearances are difficult to ignore. Of the 24 individuals who came to the podium in 2006 and 2007 only two were female. MP Karen Redman offered a prayer in each of those years and in 2007 Melanie Hart sang a gospel song. It should not be difficult to include female parliamentarians more prominently in the event since there are 96 of them serving in the House of Commons and the Senate. The choice of this year’s speaker offered a welcome antidote to the paucity of women at the podium.

There are other outstanding Canadians associated with religion who would be excellent choices to speak or offer prayers at the breakfast in future years. Here is my short list: The Most Reverend Dr. Lois Wilson, who served as the moderator of the United Church of Canada, and was also an independent member of the Senate. Dr. Tyseer Aboulnasr is a former dean of engineering at the University of Ottawa, and a respected Canadian commentator on Islam. Mary Jo Leddy is a former a former Catholic sister and the founder of Romero House in Toronto, which became a home and a haven for refugees. Ernie Regehr, who was a founder of the inter-church peace group Project Ploughshares and continues to serve the organization as a senior advisor. Former MP Douglas Roche was Canada’s ambassador for disarmament to the United Nations. James Loney served on the front lines with the Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq, where he was kidnapped and held for months prior to his release.

Members of Parliament, including Bill Blaikie, Karen Redman and others have lamented that for many people the very word religion conjures the image of social and moral conservatism. That is only one side of the religious frame and in future the National Prayer Breakfast could play an important role in balancing the picture.