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Canadian ‘Totalitarianism’? Hope Can Win, Says Author Thomas King
Canadian ‘Totalitarianism’? Hope Can Win, Says Author Thomas King
Governor General award winner talks election politics and the power of words
Cherished author and former New Democrat candidate Thomas King insists he’ll stay out of politics this pivotal election season.
But on the heels of his Governor General award-winning novelThe Back of the Turtle — set in a coastal B.C. village devastated by a toxic spill — neither is the 72-year-old Order of Canada recipient shying away from controversy.
He’s incensed by the sweep of Conservative legislation under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in particular last month’s wide-reaching anti-terrorism bill, and earlier the slashing of waterway and environmental protections, muzzling of scientists on climate change, and gutting of Canada’s research libraries.
“The pieces of legislation they brought in, to my way of thinking, have been very close to a kind of totalitarianism,” he told The Tyee in a phone interview from his home in Peterborough, Ontario. “That doesn’t make me feel good, and I don’t think it’s very — if I dare say it — Canadian, particularly.”
Last year, The Back of the Turtle secured him the Governor General’s top literary prize. The book follows Dr. Gabriel Quinn, an aboriginal scientist who works for a multinational company whose chemical spill has decimated a small coastal B.C. town. The protagonist disappears and resurfaces in his fictitious hometown, Smoke River Indian Reserve, where he confronts his complicity in the cataclysm.
Despite energy companies’ safety assurances, it’s a feared outcome increasingly familiar across the country as a raft of bitumen and gas pipeline proposals advance.
For King, who is of mixed Cherokee, German and Greek descent, the novel’s clash of worldviews reflects many of the ethical tensions with which many Canadians grapple. But in that clash, he believes, also lies the potential for changing citizens’ hearts and minds.
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Two Startling Victories for Global Sanity in One Week
Two Startling Victories for Global Sanity in One Week
Austerity doesn’t work. Dutch judge: Citizens are right, slash carbon emissions.
Two remarkable developments in the past week that could have a significant impact in many countries are worth a lot more attention in Canada and the United States.
First, a major research document published by five top economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) admitted that the strong pro-capitalist policies at the centre of its activities in developing countries for the past 30 years do not work.
One of the IMF’s main roles in recent years has been to bail out countries during financial crises. In return for loans, some 60 mostly poor countries have been forced to follow strict rules, such as privatizing government resources, deregulating controls to open markets to foreign investment, and restricting what they can spend in areas such as education and health care.
Now the paper, Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective, says there needs to be a shift and that greater income equality in both developing and developed countries should become a priority.
Dutch told to act on emissions
The other significant — but unrelated development — which received scant attention, concerns a ground-breaking decision by a judge in the Netherlands. He ordered the Netherlands government to slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least a remarkable 25 per cent by 2020.
The ruling came after almost 900 Dutch citizens, headed by the group Urgenda, took their government to court in April in a class action lawsuit to force a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to tackle climate change. Netherlands has been lagging behind other European countries in tackling climate change.
Significantly, the challenge was based, not on environmental law, but on human rights principles. Urgenda asked the courts to “declare that global warming of more than two degrees Celsius will lead to a violation of human rights worldwide.
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Seven Things You Need to Know About Inequality
Seven Things You Need to Know About Inequality
The gap between rich and poor is growing, but there are solutions, says The Tyee’s author of ‘A Better Place on Earth.
In recent weeks I’ve had the chance to talk at launches in Victoria and Vancouver about economic inequality and my bestselling book A Better Place on Earth: The Search for Fairness in Super Unequal British Columbia.
There’s been attention from Global News, the Vancouver Sun, CBC radio, CKNW and other media outlets. B.C. Booklook said I should be gagged for spreading “malicious truths.”
Following are seven key facts I think you should know about the growing gap between rich and poor in B.C. and elsewhere:
1. Inequality has been rising for three decades: Anyone in a city in British Columbia is well aware that while some people have wealth counted in the billions of dollars, others sleep in doorways and eat from food banks. What we know from experience is borne out by statistics, which show that inequality has grown in Canada, like in much of the economically developed world, since the 1980s. In B.C. the gap has grown even faster, with inequality spiking from below the Canadian average to well above it in the early 2000s. The top 10 per cent now hold 56.2 per cent of the wealth in the province, the biggest share anywhere in Canada.
2. High inequality has many consequences: Research from around the world shows that greater inequality is associated with all kinds of negatives, including worse health outcomes, poorer education, more teen pregnancy, greater substance abuse, higher rates of mental illness and higher levels of incarceration. It is also linked to reduced opportunity, where children are likely to be stuck in the same income bracket as their parents. Inequality makes economies weaker, since many people in the bottom and middle tiers lack buying power. It is frequently cited by economists as a key reason why the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis has been so lacklustre. We’re all affected.
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