CKNW Editorial
for May 1, 2001

I may surprise you a bit this morning – I have a lot of time for the people, mostly but not exclusively young, who demonstrated in Quebec City recently. It goes without saying that I exclude the violent from this approval.

The benefits of globalization are many and I have, over the past couple of years, spoken of many of them. It is also true to say that globalization and freer trade are inevitable.

But I am, at least in part, a disciple of Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader when it comes to large corporations. This does not mean that my lip curls at the very mention of General Motors or Microsoft but just that I do not for a moment believe that many, if any, multi national corporations will ever act adverse to their own interests except under compulsion either real or threatened. This does not make them bad in themselves nor does it make them run by evil men – though some corporations and their bosses are evil I’m sure. What it means is that corporations, like most groups and perhaps the vast majority of individuals, act in what they perceive to be their own best interests. This is as true of General Motors as it is of a labour union … it is as true of Microsoft as it is of a hockey player selling his talent … its as true of a mining company poisoning the waters of a third world country as it is of a city council looking for the cheapest way to dump its garbage.

One of the most obvious – and most often denied – truths of globalization is that governments are losing more and more control over transnational corporations and the transfer of money. The computer has made it all but impossible to prevent money – huge gobs of it – from whizzing away instantly. This has, amongst other things, meant that the money market has not only become more international but instantly so. We saw, back in 1993, an individual, George Soros take on the British Treasury in a fight for the pound and win. This is pretty scary. We may all decry the bureaucratic red tape of governments but at least they are, in theory, us.

It has also meant that those who need the money enough to sacrifice their environment and indeed freedom – freedom being, as the man says, nothing left to lose – will make the best pact with the devil they can.

Transnational Corporations have enormous political power not just by buying elections – whether they really do that or not is debatable – but by lobbying. The cynic has the Golden Rule saying he who has the gold, rules and there is too much truth in that for peace of mind.

The problem with the protesters in Seattle, Washington and lately, Quebec City is that they have no leadership with a plan. They have some leadership – usually tired old socialists who are still mentally at least humming old war songs out of the Welsh mine pits or young idealists who are, as young idealists have always been, keen, energetic but a little short of practical answers to the problems they protest. But they have no leadership with any concrete answers.

Maude Barlow, Mel Hurtig and Rachel Klein are excellent at pointing out the evils of international capitalism gone mad but damned poor at coming up with solutions.

But they cannot, for all that, be blamed for the problem. Nor can we deny them the right to expect some leadership from their governments of which there has been none. Nor have I got any answers for them although they might start by going back to Thomas Friedman’s book, now considerably updated, called the Lexus and the Olive Tree. There are things governments can and must do and Canada should be taking a lead role in Nafta.

There must be an international set of rules for an international playing field and while the MAI was wrong, and rightly beaten back, there must be some sort of MAI where all governments exercise basic rules. These must not only be rules which protect Canadian companies trading, say in the United States and vice versa but what they must contribute in terms of both economic and social values wherever they do business. We cannot, for example, stop a company moving to where there is slave labour or child labour and manufacturing its goods there but we can forbid the importation and sale of their goods. It takes us all to do that. That is but one example. We can refuse entry of goods that are produced at the expense of another’s environment which is, after all, the environment of all of us. Indeed we must do these things.

But it takes political will and that takes public will. How much of any of this did you hear Mr Chretien or Mr Day speak about in anything other than pat pablum during the last election, or since? You may have heard Alexa McDonough but she has no grasp of the issues and leads a spent political force.

And this is the great tragedy. The leading voices for making globalization subject to the will of the people comes from the usual leaders of the usual rent-a-crowd. We see their faces and hear their voices and say to ourselves, my God! not them again! Don’t they ever shut up?

The problem is that they are half right – half right in that they perceive the dangers of allowing the world’s capitalists run things as they please. They are only half right for two reasons – they cannot and will not see the enormous benefits that can accrue to the world’s population if globalization is brought under control by the world’s people through their governments and they offer nothing by way of solutions. But for all that, these are the only voices that are speaking and they are, or represent the voices of our young, our future. Rather than dismiss them out of hand we must not only listen but join the fight … but with positive solutions.

If we don’t … if we simply reject the message because we don’t much care for the messengers we will permit our futures to be governed by political lightweights like Jean Chretien and George Bush whose elections depend upon those who in turn depend upon them to do nothing.

Freedom is a very fragile thing as history teaches us. We have already, over the past few decades, lost democracy in this country and only have a tolerated freedom to vote every four years for our master. As freedom can be lost by citizens, so it can be by countries. Our country, as a country, has not got its act together on the questions raised by globalization and it hasn’t got much time left to do so. Sadly, given its leadership, we can’t expect much more from our government except ongoing provocations to provide reasons for those who care to protest.

Don’t look at the fences or the pepper spray – look at the huge power vacuum into which the hitherto ungovernable pool of capital is moving without much, if any, government constraint.