The 1998 Kerr-Saltsman Lectures in Canadian Studies

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March 24, 1998

Stephen Lewis
Deputy Executive Director,
UNICEF, New York

 

Program

Master of Ceremonies

W. Robert Needham
Director, Canadian Studies Program

Welcome

James Downey
President, University of Waterloo

&

Helga Mills
Principal, St. Paul’s United College

Introduction of Speaker

John Wilson
Professor, Political Science, University of Waterloo

The Stanley Knowles Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies

Stephen Lewis
Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF, New York

Lecture: The Rise and Fall of Social Justice

Questions and Comments

Closing Remarks

Lois Wilson
Board Chair, The International Centre for Human Rights and

Democratic Development (ICHRDD)

Footnotes to Program

Program

W. Robert Needham, Director, Canadian Studies Program

I think we should start. My name is Bob Needham and I am Director of the Canadian Studies Program. It’s my very great pleasure to welcome you to this inaugural lecture, of the Kerr-Saltsman Lecture Series. The lecture this evening is being given, as you know, by Mr. Stephen Lewis, as our first Stanley Knowles Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies.

Our intention is to move rather briskly through the preliminaries to the lecture. To keep the flow across the stage to a minimum, each person who is listed on your program will call on the next in order and immediately thereafter make his or her own way into the audience. I've asked each of the preliminary speakers to keep their remarks to about two minutes. There will be a period for questions and answers at the end of the lecture. During the question and answer period I'll try to keep questions queued in order. The question period will be followed by words of thanks from Lois Wilson.

Following the formal part of the evening there will be an informal reception and that will be held in the foyer of this building. Those who have found seats in the Arts Lecture Building are asked to come back here and greet Stephen and meet old friends.

Now, before starting, I want to say on behalf of the Canadian Studies Program Board -- which has been working on this project, as a dream, since 1991-92 -- I want to say a word of appreciation to all of the many contributors to the Stanley Knowles Endowment Fund. The list of donors seems to grow regularly, daily almost. It includes labour unions, individual union members, pensioners, corporations and parliamentarians, and many others.

Ronald Lang, our Honourary Chair, has not found it possible to be here tonight, but he does deserve a special word of thanks. Ron, as many of you may know is a graduate of our Department of Political Science. And he is a former Director of Research and Legislation at the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa.

I want to particularly thank Mr. Robert Kerr for making it possible to turn dreams into reality. I also want to thank Bob Kerr for bringing the name of his good friend Max Saltsman into the title of the Kerr-Saltsman Lecture Series in Canadian Studies. I'd like to just pause for a minute and ask Bob and Margaret Kerr to stand and be recognized, if they would. And he's probably reluctant. At any rate, Bob and Margaret are in the audience.

And I would also like you to recognize Dorothy Saltsman and her two sons, Joel and David, who are sitting directly behind Bob Kerr.

I would like to say that Max, like Bob Kerr, was a good friend of the University of Waterloo and of very many of the people who are here tonight. Max had a very keen intellect. He was also a sitting Member of Parliament for Waterloo for a number of years. He contributed to any number of class seminars in the Faculty of Arts. And that is where many of us first got to know him and his intellect. Max also contributed to a course in the Faculty of Engineering, which you may not know about. He contributed to a course that was given by Don Clough. Max would come down from Ottawa every week, or every other week. His task was to present an outline of a social-political issue that he was grappling with, while Don Clough would attempt to do the modelling of the particular social problem being examined. I think that class was very successful.

Lastly, I want to express a very sincere word of appreciation for the organizational work that was accomplished by the staff at St. Paul's College, and to those many people in the support units at the University of Waterloo. Without their assistance this event, I think, could not have happened.

I would now like to call on the President of the University of Waterloo, Dr. James Downey. Jim.

James Downey, President, University of Waterloo

Colleagues and ladies and gentlemen. The linking in this way of the University of Waterloo with Stanley Knowles, and, by spiritual extension, with Max Saltsman and Bob Kerr, may not be as improbable as it first appears. Whatever our reputation as a centre for the study and creative application of technology -- which, by the way, we proudly accept -- we see ourselves somewhat more broadly as a non-conformist institution built to bridge the traditional divide between the academy and the world of work. The load-bearing span in that bridge was co-operative education, which drew upon the principles of the British working class model of sandwich education.

Sometimes called "lunch bucket U" in the early days, Waterloo persisted in its non-conformity, adding one of the nation’s largest distance education programs in order to reach men and women scattered across Canada who had no other access to a university education and its enabling credentials. Across this Waterloo bridge have passed thousands of working class people, earning and learning their way to university degrees and productive careers.

By its very non-conformity as a university, Waterloo is actually a good place for the study of Canadian values and visions. Canadian Studies is not just about our literature, our history, our politics and our economics; it's also about our science, our technology, our architecture, our environment, the health of our people, the ways we communicate with each other, and the ways we plan our towns and cities. In all of which areas Waterloo has earned prominence among Canadian universities. We've also demonstrated interest in the way our aboriginal peoples contribute and connect to our nation’s narrative. This too is an important part of what we understand by Canadian Studies.

In Stanley Knowles’ last extended parliamentary speech on the 9th of July 1981, he said:

I do not need tributes or that sort of thing. The thrill of being here and winning some of these accomplishments, the feeling that people out there are a little better off in some respects, or that they are glad they have someone who is a friend in court for them, makes the experience, the thirty-five years I have been here, such a delight that I hope I can do it again. 1

As for doing it again, as long as Canada has people like Bob Kerr and Max Saltsman and Stephen Lewis, who cherish the ideals of the social democratic tradition, Stanley Knowles will never stop causing those things to happen for which we honour him here.

Like Stanley Knowles, Waterloo from the beginning made room in its life for faith. Four church related colleges provide opportunity for connecting academic study with religious practice. One of these, St. Paul's United, drawing on the strong social action and non-conformist traditions of the United Church, seemed to all of us the most appropriate home for the Stanley Knowles Professorship in Canadian Studies. And now it's my pleasure to invite Dr. Helga Mills, Principal of St. Paul's United College, who has worked so hard and so effectively to establish this Visiting Professorship and the Kerr-Saltsman Lecture Series, to extend to you her welcome.

Helga Mills, Principal, St. Paul’s United College

In my travels throughout life and around the world, I have always found it a bonus to be a Canadian. Watching the University of Waterloo's Canadian Studies Program grow at St. Paul's College has, consequently, been a source of great satisfaction for me. The widespread public response to the Stanley Knowles Visiting Professorship and tonight's lecture, demonstrates once again that Canadians are ever willing to seek new opportunities to understand the dynamics of this great nation and to build an even better future together. I would like to welcome all of you and those who were not able to find a seat here and are listening to us and watching us on the big screen in the Arts Lecture Hall. All of you are welcome to come and attend the reception in the foyer here following the lecture.

During the course of the past few weeks we received some interesting letters from people who would have liked to be here but could not. Several regrets came from Senators, reflecting ruefully that recent attention focused on their non-attendance at Senate left them no choice but to remain in Ottawa this evening. None the less they pass on their good wishes to Mr. Lewis and to us all here. Tonight signals the beginning of a bright new venture for Canadian Studies. Countless hours of staff and volunteer time have kept it moving ahead. Further information on the Stanley Knowles Professorship and a flyer naming the other 1998 Visiting Professors and the dates of their public lectures will be available at a table at the back of the foyer during the reception.

I anticipate a stimulating evening. Thank you all for being here. And now I would like to call on Professor John Wilson to introduce Mr. Lewis.

John Wilson, Professor, Department of Political Science

I am tremendously delighted to be able to welcome Stephen Lewis to Waterloo once again. Since he was last here he has had a long and illustrious career in the service, first, of the people of Ontario – he came within an ace of becoming Premier in 1975 – then since that time of the people of all of Canada as our ambassador to the United Nations – and now, we may say, of the whole world, with the important work he has been doing as Deputy Director of UNICEF in New York.

But we all cherish special memories – special memories of special occasions – and the one that I remember most of all, in over forty years of watching and listening to this extraordinary man, was a day in the fall of 1964 when my late friend Max Saltsman was first elected to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Waterloo South.

Stephen had come to Galt towards the end of the campaign to take over its management, to make sure that no stone would be left unturned, and that all would go well. And as we approached the end of the campaign, some of us in our youthful enthusiasm began to use a number of election practices which I think nowadays would be regarded as peculiar, if not in fact illegal. And the other side was not very pleased about this. But I will never forget that moment on the afternoon of election day itself, when a number of us were in the committee room waiting for the end of the day to come and attending to some details, and suddenly out of a temporary silence the telephone rang. And we all jumped.

It was the Conservative candidate, whose father's death had caused the by-election, and who therefore believed he was entitled to win the seat. After all, South Waterloo was the safest Conservative seat in all of Canada and for that reason too it should be his. And he was very angry. He demanded to speak to Max. But almost before Max could answer Jim Chaplin began bellowing at him – in a voice you could hear all over the room – complaining about the trickery that had been going on, about all these terrible things that shouldn't be allowed to happen. He was appalled. He would have the election controverted. Max would go to jail.

And then, not able to scare Max, he cut him off quickly and demanded to speak to his campaign manager. Stephen came on the line, and Jim Chaplin bellowed again. "What in God's name do you people think you're doing over there?" And Stephen said, very gently – "winning" – and hung up the telephone.

It was a great moment – in a number of very great moments that Stephen has given us over the years. And so I repeat that I am delighted to be able to welcome him back to Waterloo, and I know we are all looking forward with great anticipation to what he has to say tonight.

The Rise and Fall of Social Justice

by

Stephen Lewis

Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF, New York

I can't tell you how tickled I am to be here this evening. I must say I had a delicious reverberation of nostalgia when John Wilson told that story which, frankly, I do not remember. So it may be one of those magnificent hyperbolic concoctions. Or it is conceivable that it is michievously true. But it rang in my mind the most exquisite moment that I had during that memorable campaign in Waterloo South in 1964, teaching me a truth about the eccentricity of door-to-door canvassing that has never been subsequently equalled. In order to get a feel for the campaign, one day near the end, we all in the New Democratic Party pretended that by knocking on doors we could intuit the pulse of the electorate and their natural intentions and proclivities. So, trusting no one, I went out on the streets of Galt myself and knocked on a number of doors. And I remember one particularly auspicious house. With one wondrous moment I knocked on the door urgently. A very pleasant woman came to open it, she looked at me guardedly. I said "I'm from Saltsman." She said "Oh, just a moment," and she ran down the hall and returned with the laundry. Some of you may not know of Max's dry cleaning establishments at that time. But it did mark for me a day that lives forever.

I want to thank John for so lucid and engaging and mercifully brief an introduction.

I venture to this platform with some trepidation. I don't like these bright lights and dark platforms that are elevated. The last time I was on such a stage was a number of years ago at the Palais du Congrès in Montreal, in 1990, and at the end of my remarks they turned off the light and I walked vigorously off the platform and into space. That did not surprise many of my friends who felt that I'd been walking into space most of my adult life. However, it was a rather lengthy drop to the ground. The ground was cement. I broke my hip. And I have ever since approached these environs, as it were, with caution. But I have made it here now and I am well and truly ensconced on the remarks I wish to make.

I have a cavalcade, a cascade of memories. It's tremendous to have the honour of the Stanley Knowles Visiting Lectureship, in the name of Robert Kerr and Max Saltsman. I knew Stanley, of course, for a lifetime. I met Bob in 1964. We were friends. We weren't intimates. I was filled with appreciation and admiration for what he did then and what he did politically thereafter. I met and gained a great regard for Max at that time, a regard and friendship that lasted many years, because Max brought to the New Democratic Party Caucus in the House of Commons a dimension of knowledge and experience which was largely unique in the annals of the Democratic Left. It's quite an honour, therefore, to be able to be associated with these names and to be part of the legacy of Democratic Socialism.

A lot of our Democratic Socialists latterly have departed. Many of them are still vibrantly active. All of them in a swath of honour in this recent period. I noticed with some sadness when I got home in the last couple of days that Ted Jolliffe2 had died. A magnificent early leader of the CCF in the Province of Ontario, my father's law partner for many years, and a man with whom I did a number of labour arbitrations, whose mind and intellectual capacity was not only awesome but thoroughly intimidating. I noticed that one of Stanley's closest intimate friends, who represented Winnipeg North over the years as Stanley represented Winnipeg North Centre, David Orlikow 3, died not very long ago. Another magnificent exponent of Democratic Socialism.

I thought to myself in the process of the honorifics that many of you will not know that this Thursday night in Winnipeg, Ed Schreyer 4, former Premier of Manitoba, Member of Parliament in Ottawa, lively Governor General, lively Ambassador to Australia and the nether hinterland for Canada, that Ed is being honoured at a great banquet in his honour, where he will undoubtedly speak emotively about the years gone by. And on April first next, Donald MacDonald 5, my predecesor here in the Province of Ontario, in the litany of NDP leaders an astonishing man in the way he built the foundations of this movement, is to be honoured. It is a contagion of socialist celebrations. All of these people, plus Max, and Bob and David Lewis 6 and Tommy Douglas 7 and so many others, are the underpinnings, if I may say, of everything that is best about the historical legacy of political behaviour in this country. And I'm proud, I'm very proud to be associated with them.

Stanley of course was special. 8 Stanley was a magnificent and kind human being who made a huge contribution to social progress and to political civility unparalleled in the annals of this country. He had an extraordinary grasp of parliamentary principles and practice and peccadillos. God, Stanley loved Parliament! I was on the phone extension in the family home when Stanley called on that memorable night in 1958 when the CCF suffered the angst of the Diefenbaker sweep. And I remember vividly Stanley's words to my father on that occasion. "David, what do I do now? I have only one thing in life. It's the House of Commons. What do I do now?" And after a little sojourning, you may recall, with the Canadian Labour Congress, Stanley made a triumphant return thence to complete his 35 years of magnificent parliamentary service. And I wanted to encapsule Stanley for you briefly tonight. So I looked back to my Dad's [David Lewis] own autobiography -- I hope you don't think this is sublimely self-indulgent -- and I thought I would read to you what David said about Stanley because it encapsules it quite exquisitely.

Stanley, you'll recall, was brought into the mainstream of the Democratic Left when he stood in the by-election in Winnipeg North Centre in 1942 to succeed J.S. Woodsworth. 9

David writes:

Knowles was born in Los Angeles, of Canadian parents with roots in Nova Scotia. He came to Canada in 1924, at age sixteen, and was educated at Brandon College, United College and the University of Manitoba. Partly owing to natural tendency to be abstemious in food and sparing in physical comforts generally, and partly owing to reasons of health, Knowles has always been thin, not to say scrawny, and aged beyond his years. While other people were growing visibly older, Knowles was merely catching up with his appearance. [Really quite a lovely line. I didn’t know my father had such a felicitous pen.] But his appearance was misleading. From the start of our work together in the late thirties I realized that he had a fine sense of humour (marred only by a love for the low art of punning), a skilled lawyer’s capacity for organizing facts and arguments and above all a warm empathy with human suffering and a respect for human dignity.

Knowles never made enemies or even provoked antagonism. If he disagreed with the views of a colleague, he seldom criticized them; he simply stated his own opinions in well-ordered sequence. I envied the peace which this gave him, but I did not admire the trait, even though that did not diminish my great affection for him. I don’t believe that collective problems can be met intellectually or practically unless differences of opinion are confronted in a forthright exchange of views. … [Which merely means I may say as an aside, so that David could eviscerate an opponent.] … This may produce unpleasantness but it reduces, or should reduce ambiguity, the main ingredient of political obfuscation. Perhaps both approaches are necessary. One without the other would produce either permanent confusion or permanent confrontation.

At all events, Knowles won friends wherever he went. As a candidate he was a campaign manager's dream. He worked constantly from six in the morning at plant gates until midnight, shaking hands after a meeting or coffee party. He never tired; indeed, his appearance camouflaged great inner energy, which seemed to be recharged whenever there was a job to be done. His orderliness was maddening; he knew exactly where every piece of paper was to be found and what was on it. I doubt whether I could ordinarily live with such disciplined tidiness, but in an election campaign it was a godsend.10

I may say that those of us who knew Stanley in Ottawa, knew that he kept every scrap of paper that related to any constituency item in a fashion which was positively supernatural. And when you wanted to extract, from Stanley's files, something that related to June the 3rd, 1944 and you asked him for it on September 7th, 1972, he would say "Just a moment," walk into his office, and 30 seconds later emerge with absolutely every incidental piece of memorabilia relating to the incident at hand that you could possibly imagine. Stanley was extraordinary.

It's also nice to be speaking today because it's election day in Nova Scotia. Another memorable victory for the hordes on the Democratic Left. I don't know the results yet. But I am entirely confident that the extraordinary changes which have transfixed the Maritimes over the last couple of years, particularly since Alexa's [Alexa McDonough, Federal Leader, New Democratic Party of Canada11] ascendance in the New Democratic Party, will undoubtedly be felt tonight even if for some perverse reason we do not emerge as the government. But even if we don't win, it is a perfect example because of the significant increase in the number of seats which we will experience and the possibility of the official opposition if not the government. All of it is due to the historical legacy. Nothing in political life works in compartments. There is an organic continuum. And the way in which the principles and the issues are laid by the Stanley Knowleses of the past makes it possible for the contemporary efflorescence to occur. God, you can't imagine how exciting it will be when I'm listening to the radio on the way back to Toronto and they count the seats. You don't understand! You're here in Ontario, in the privileged heartland of capitalism. Where only from time to time in the intersticies of the corridors of power does Democratic Socialism poke its nose through. Out there in the Maritimes over the years it was such a wasteland. It was beyond description.

Lois, you're going to have to forgive me but I want to tell you people a story so that you can sense what was then and what is now. When I was a young punk organizing for the CCF just in advance of the New Democratic Party -- or maybe it was immediately, yes, it was just in advance of the New Democratic Party -- I was sent by the CCF to Nova Scotia to participate in a provincial election campaign, which was being held, if memory serves me, in the very very early 60's, 1960 or 61. And I knocked on the doors and met a scurilous contempt everywhere I went, and the only sojourn in comfort I thought I could possibly win for the election was at least to participate on election day in one of the polling booths. So I fashioned for myself a scrutineer's credential and I went in to what was then Halifax Centre, just to watch the count. And I say, not irreverently but filled with affection, that as I walked into the room I saw that it was a gathering of amiable octogenarians: the ancient but vigorous Deputy Returning Officer, and equally ancient but somewhat surly Polling Clerk, and the representatives who were scrutineers for the Liberal and Conservative Parties.

And you know what happens. The polls close. They take the ballot box. They turn it upside down and this exquisite, aesthetic mound of ballots emerges in a slightly ramshackle fashion on the table. And then this aged but vigourous Deputy Returning Officer pulled himself to his full height and began to count the ballots. Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Liberal, Liberal, Tory, Tory, Liberal, Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Liberal, Liberal, Tory, Liberal. And he stopped! And he looked at the ballot, and he passed it, trembling, to the polling clerk. And she took it and, with an ill concealed contempt, showed it to the Liberal scrutineer, who palpably grimaced and passed it over to the Tory scrutineer, who responded in similarly visceral fashion. They didn't bother to show it to me. But it was clearly and identifiably marked for the CCF. And he pushed it into the nether reaches of the table. Then, gathering his wits, his psyche, his emotional stability about him, he began to count again. Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, Tory, Tory, Tory, Tory, Liberal, Tory, Liberal, Tory, Tory, Tory, Liberal. He came to the penultimate ballot and he stopped! And he looked at the ballot before him -- I kid you not -- in a fashion that verged on a kind of homicidal instinct. And he passed it, spittals of foam at the corner of his mouth, to the polling clerk. And tears appeared in her eyes. And she took it haltingly over to the Liberal scrutineer, who swept her hand in simple dismissiveness and walked across the room and gave it to the Tory scrutineer, and then she passed it by me and I looked at it and it was again clearly, identifiably marked for the CCF. And the Deputy Returning Officer picked it up. He looked me in the eye and he said "Some son-of-a-bitch voted twice." Times, they are a-changing. Now we have a lot of sons-of-bitches voting for us.

I want to begin the more, the central portion of my remarks, with some disclaimers. First, I want to say to you that I would like in the minds of everyone to be distinctly dissociated from UNICEF, the organization and agency for which I work and which I love unbounded. I want to be dissociated because some of the things I say may seem vaguely extreme, faintly ideological, and I would not wish the reputation of so splendid a multilateral agency to be sullied by my personal abberations since I am speaking in a personal capacity. It's much easier than it usually is before this audience. Normally I have to reassure an audience and tell them not to get worried that I'll engage in maniacal spasms of the left. After all I worked for four years for the Tories. So I’m not only cleansed, I'm positively neutered. And it is, it is quite wonderful to know that I can, therefore, in front of this audience, engage in a kind of prolonged, psychopathic, ideological convulsion and no one will mind whatsoever.

Number two. More important -- and this worries me a little, in fact it worries me a lot -- is that I am very much out of my depth. I'm not really that much involved in Canada any more. I love this country. I'm a Canadian citizen. I worked most of my adult life here. But the work internationally tends to keep me out of Canada much of the time. Indeed, I live in New York, commute back and forth from Toronto. Or, more accurately, Michele [Landsberg] commutes to New York, a city which she loves unwarrantedly. And I travel a great deal for UNICEF, so I don't want to pretend that I have a grip on those pieces of continuity between past and present in Canada, which would illumine those who participate in Canadian Studies, a section of scholarship for which I have enormous respect. But I couldn't even remember the name of the leader of the Reform Party, [Preston Manning] when pressed recently. Although I admit that may have been selective. And I didn't know about Jean Charest's [then Federal Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada] likely, in fact inevitable, shift from the Tories to Liberals. Although that isn't a particular surprise for those of us who have known both those species over the course of the year. In fact, for Jean Charest, this is not a metamorphosis. It's a lateral transfer.

Number Three. I'm therefore going to engage, if you will permit me, in some inchoate musings on the rise and fall of social justice, linking it wherever possible and to some specific extent to the Canadian context, within some international analogies, so that I can draw on some of the aspects that I know best.

First, Stanley Knowles' memorable battles around pensions and the pension fight 12 is a good starting point. Those were halcyon days for social justice in Canada. Largely charged and driven by the Democratic Left, the fashioning of hospital and medical insurance, hospital and health insurance in Saskatchewan in the 1940's and thereafter and the tremendous struggle to put in place an infrastructure of social security was what gave to this country in the 40's and 50's and 60's and 70's broaching tenderly on the 80's -- largely for four decades -- a sense of the primacy of the human condition: the need within Canada to create a social infrastructure which was humane, imaginative, progressive, comprehensive, conclusive. It wasn't perfect but it was a model for ever greater extension of progressive increments to the social welfare apparatus. Now, since the decade of the 1980's, much of that apparatus is in the process of falling apart. It doesn't really matter which political party is in power in Ottawa. The fact of the matter is that medicare has, in significant measure, been shredded. And the entire social welfare apparatus, federal and provincial, has also been rendered eviscerate by the depredations of political idealogues of the right. Medicare, in a way, to me as a Canadian, is the most startling change of all. Because if you will recall all of the surveys which accompanied the numbers of constitutional debates which this country has had ad nauseam over the last many years, when asked for defining characteristics of Canadians, Canadians themselves answered "Medicare." For Canada, health insurance, and the fabric of what we so painfully and determinately built, is clearly and directly under challenge from private corporate entrepreneurs and insensitive and indifferent governments.

Second, that impulse is an impulse which is ugly, mean spirited, and wrong. The shredding of the health apparatus and the putting at risk of the entire social welfare infrastructure has, of course, been caused by the deficit mania over the last number of years in Canada and the cut-back frenzy which it engendered. And all of that was ugly, mean spirited and wrong. Profoundly wrong. How bitter -- forgive me because I want to speak my heart tonight at this audience -- how bitter are the ironies! I've recently been told of the orgy of triumphalism which attached to the recent political gathering of the federal governing party when Mr. Martin and Prime Minister Chrétien spoke so glowingly of their balanced budget. But I want to utter, what is, I suppose, the ultimate heresy: the balanced budget was not achieved by a frenzy of cost-cutting; the balanced budget was achieved by the growth, the economic growth, in certain sectors of the Canadian economy. And I want to put to you a proposition, which at this moment in time is positively subversive, but I want to put it anyway. That it was entirely possible -- as many of our social commentators of the progressive left said over the years -- it was entirely possible that we could have achieved this revered balanced budget status one or two years later. Let us say by the year 2000, instead of by the year 1998.13 Without virtually any of the pain and anguish which the social sectors of Canadian society have suffered and which tremendous numbers of vulnerable people have experienced in the process.

From my point of view, the entire economic analysis was wrong. We were stampeded by ideological impulses. The taking to task of the social sectors will take a generation to repair. And one must truly ask whether or not it was worth it. Many people were saying in the late 1980's and in the early 1990's -- but they were voices that were masked and that were not heard -- that you do not deal with a serious fiscal deficit by simply assaulting your social infrastructure and the apparatus which gives to a society its ultimate strength in human terms. You grit your teeth. You plan your economy as best you can. You engage in sober fiscal analysis. You cope with the deficit for a period of time. And you know in the scheme of things, (because nothing is permanent in the course of nations; all these things are cyclical) if one has the appropriate economic interventions, you know that over the course of time you will generate a reasonable degree of growth in the economy that will ultimately treat your deficit. You make a choice. The choice wasn't made. Because everybody was stampeded. Even alas, some of us in the Social Democratic mainstream. But when you're stampeded social justice gets run over.

It's ironic in a way when I think about it and examine it, because I understand, I think, what has happened better now with some exposure on the international scene than I understood it when I tried to understand it here. And that brings me to the third point I want to make.

In most of the developing world -- and these were policies which Canada supported -- the 1980's was called the lost decade. And it was called the lost decade because most of the developing countries, certainly in sub-Saharan Africa, in much of Latin America, in many parts of South and South-East Asia, all of these developing countries were subject to what were called Structural Adjustment Programs. They were exercises in unrepentant, savage, fiscal monetarism. They were driven by a Reaganesque, Thatcherite view of society. They were focused on exchange rates. They were focused on the sale of public enterprises and parastatels, as they were called. They were focused on dramatic reductions in the public sector. And they were focused on exports as the entree to economic stability. And they failed. They failed lamentably. Because the focus on the fiscal and monetarist priorities resulted in a complete neglect of the human priorities. Now, they were driven by the international financial institutions affectionately known as the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But they were driven complicit with the G7, of which Canada is a part, and by most of the industrial world. And they took a terrible toll on the vulnerable sectors in the developing world. And one learns a lesson about the nature of the economic apparatus in the process. Because, the truth is, that every time a society, Canadian or Botswanian, is forced, or by choice decides to put a greater emphasis on fiscal and monetarist imperatives, then, inevitably the emphasis on human development and the human imperative is rendered nondescript. Tossed into the waste basket of the economic system. And it doesn't matter whether it's happening in a developing country or whether it's happening in Canada. And that magnificent social infrastructure, which was built with such fevered energy in the 50's and 60's and 70's by the Democratic Left in large measure, has been painfully shredded in the last ten to twenty years. Certainly, five to fifteen years. And it was ever thus, even in other societies, not nearly engaged in similar well being.

Let me tell you what happened in those other developing countries. In those developing countries there developed something called Structural Adjustment with a Human Face, as the governments recoiled from what was being imposed upon them. And there was a widespread recognition that suddenly emerged, that unless you protect your social sectors in the process of implementing fiscal change, you're going to inherit the whirlwind. And throughout many of these countries, therefore, there has developed a reasonably sophisticated economic analysis which says that if you don't put your money into health and nutrition and education and water and sanitation and all of the protection areas ranging from child labour, on one hand, to violence against women on the other, then you're not going to have a society worth inheriting if you simply build up your economic muscle. We have not learned that lesson.

I am reminded, and I remind you, of the moment in time, late 1980's, when Ed Broadbent 14, then leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, rose with a resolution in the House of Commons calling for an end to child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. It's 1998. The percentage of child poverty has never been higher in the history of the country. Apart from the United States and the United Kingdom, we have a level of child poverty higher than any other country in the OECD conglomerate. And given that Tony Blair is now focusing on child poverty in the United Kingdom, it's likely that our situation will be second only to that of the United States of America. And we do not have the kind of racial divide that exists in the United States of America, by which the levels of child poverty can at least be explained, if never defended. What is it about a country, so profoundly well off as this one, that in the process of achieving what it calls a kind of fiscal balance sheet sobriety, it sacrifices child poverty to the extent that over a million children in Canada lie below the poverty line in wrenching and desperate circumstances? There's something profoundly wrong here. There is a moral ethic missing. Am I some kind of old fashioned idealogue? No. Because the lack of balance does great damage to a country.

It leads me to the fourth point I want to make, between the rise of social justice, which was so characteristic in the battles fought in the generation of Stanley, and the battles that are being fought today. The consequences of this kind of poverty show the skewed priorities. In this country now, today, in 1998, there has never been a greater gap between the top salary and income earner and the 60% at the bottom. In fact, if you read economists like Jim Laxer 15, if you read magnificent writers like Linda McQuaig 16, you will see that over the last twenty years there has been relatively little improvement in income earnings, for salary and regular wage earners in the bottom 60% relative to the cost of the society as a whole. Whereas there has been a tremendous increase in purchasing power and wealth in the highest proportion, in the richest proportion of Canadian society. Does that make sense, having gone through the pain everyone has suffered with the cutbacks and layoffs and the senseless emasculation of so much of the social fabric?

Does that make sense in a country like this, in the 1990s, to have the kind of unemployment we have when, in truth, in the early days, when social justice was felt to be a cause formidable, it was looked upon, this level of unemployment, with tremendous jaundice? What have we done in this country? For what? To have a wounded country? To have such disparities between wealth and power, on one hand, and poverty and ignominy, on the other? And again it is in its own way a kind of mirror of the patterns which have continued internationally. There are 1.3 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day. There are another 2 billion people who live on less than $750.00 a year. That's practically half the population of the planet. Where is the balance again of the moral and ethical imperative? At a time when, God knows, there is the knowledge and the capacity, we live with these extraordinary and quite frightening disparities even in industrial countries; disparities in the developing world. I'm not hypothecizing or prophesizing some kind of an apocalyptic outcome. I'm simply saying that when social justice was on the rise in Canada, the human dimension was at the heart of political debate. And when social justice is on the decline in Canada, the fiscal dimension is at the heart of political debate. And that's as true a core of a Canadian Studies program as anyone might wish to divine.

Number Five. Where did it all go wrong? Where did the bridge come between the social justice imperative that we all knew in the past and the reality that we see today? I don't think there's much doubt that it came in the Reagan years, where you had the beginning of this mindless reverence for globalization and privatization and the market place, the triumph of multinational and transnational corporations, the like of which we've never seen before. And whether it was NAFTA, or the World Trade Organization, or the multinational investment activities, which have been under debate and under negotiation in Geneva over the last number of years, Canada has been swept up in this process of Reaganism from the 1980's into the 1990's and it has distorted our economy. And it has made us all less trustful of the way in which we can organize and plan our society. We've surrendered more and more to a kind of "corporate masters of the universe" view of the world. That's a phrase which is used by Susan George 17, a quite wonderful left wing British economist, who has analyzed "masters of the universe" in a number of books, and without raising any conspiratorial dimensions, demonstrates, time and time again, how the pattern of globalization in the 1990's has meant the emergence of transnational corporations with more power and more influence and more reach than any of us in our worst socialist scenarios could have divined. I don't live my days and nights in a contagion of, you know, the class struggle. But I do understand that this is really altering the nature of Canadian society and altering the nature of international society.

I was much struck by the space given in the Toronto Daily Star, recently to Linda McQuaig's new book entitled The Cult of Impotence. Because what Linda McQuaig argues -- and it's really quite fascinating -- what Linda McQuaig argues is that, in a sense, we have reached the point where we feel that governments can no longer influence public policy the way they used to be able to influence public policy. That somehow governments cannot control corporations. Governments will not regulate corporations. Governments will only deal in areas where they are largely irrelevant, and people don't have the same confidence in their government because government is constantly jettisoning its obligations and priorities. Again, there is some very real truth to that. As a matter of fact I was particularly interested in seeing Linda McQuaig say it and write it because I feel it palpably as I move around, particularly in industrial countries. In Canada, in the wonderful near euphoric days, when social justice was on everyone's tongue, we knew that the intervention of government from time to time was a profoundly reasonable thing to do. A perfectly reasonable thing to do. But that's what governments do. They protect the citizenry. They shore up the social structures. They create an infrastructure and a fabric which sustains people through life. That's what governments do. They create jobs. They have a buoyant economy. They keep health care in place. Shelters are given priority. Education is given priority. Pensions are given priority. Unemployment insurance is given priority. You have a social welfare system which says that human development is what development is all about. And if one wants to have a vibrant economy, let's have it, but not at the expense of the human condition. But it's not the same today. Today the inclination to defend the human worth is hardly recognizable. It doesn't animate the political process any longer. We discuss the arcane counter points of constitutional debate. And we lavish on deficits and balanced budgets. And we hear almost nary a word about the human dimension. That's a profound change from the social justice which we once had, to the social justice that now seems so elusive.

Number Six. But it's more than that. It has poisoned our political discourse. May I speak very honestly about this? The Reagan years again, were the turning point between the way in which politics played a civilized, mature, thoughtful, moderating role in the exchange that took place ideologically between different opinions and among different opinions in Houses of Parliament and the situation that emerged over the last ten or fifteen years in the Canadian House of Commons, in various provincial legislatures, and God knows on display every day in the Congress of the United States of America. Where suddenly politics became so personal, so venomous, so intrusive, so vituperative, filled with animus, verging on hatred. It is so odd that this change has taken place and it nullifies and suffocates really useful debate. Look, I was in the Ontario Legislature for over fifteen years from 1963 to 1978. And almost always when I was there, there was a Tory horde of massive proportions, on the other side of the House. You've never seen so many pre-paleolithic, antideluvians in one place, at one time. It was like a Neanderthal's convention. And there were so many of them they sometimes slopped over onto our side of the House. The operative verb being "slop." And we had debates which were contentious. John Wilson, God knows, can tell you because he chronicled the period. He spoke about the period. He discussed it with his classes. Any first rate political scientist or historian who looked at Canada in that period knew that there were intense, sometimes frenetic exchanges. But we had respect for each other. It wasn't abusive. It wasn't personal. I actually liked Bill Davis [then Premier of the Province of Ontario]. My caucus resented it deeply. But I liked Bill Davis. I liked many of the Tories on the other side of the House because even though I disagreed with them profoundly I understood that they had an ideological analysis which was entirely principled by their own lights. And they felt the same for us. It was never the case that we would engage in the kind of intemperate schenanigans which one read about every day in the papers from 1984 through 1988, when the Mulroney years and the Reagan years coincided and poisoned the politics of Canada for many, many years thereafter. It denigrates and lacerates in equal measure. Poor old Edmund Burke probably turns over in his grave. That is a big difference between the sense of justice that once existed and the sense of justice that now exists. So the welfare state ground down. And the economy has become distorted. And the political debate is acrimonious and corrosive. And on top of that, the cultural and ethical fabric of the country is fraying somewhat.

Leads me to my seventh point. Don't panic. I'm venturing ineluctably, if slowly to the end of my remarks.

I remember returning from the United Nations at the end of the 1980's and travelling across Canada, sometimes speaking in university gatherings like this, occasionally to a convocation of students which was attached to the receipt of an honourary degree. I say that not because I particularly value honourary degrees, but because I remember affectionately that there was a fellow named Jean Chrétien who had just written a book and was also travelling across Canada receiving honourary degrees. So he would do the morning convocation and I would do the afternoon convocation. And we developed quite a little pattern. If either of us had lost our future careers we could have done a soft-shoe routine.

I crossed the country in 1988, 1989, 1990 and I remember the sense of sadness and disbelief I felt at a number of observable themes, tones, characteristics of Canadian society, which I had not seen before. The feelings against Quebec were, frankly, maniacal, irrational. Sometimes, in questions I received, damned near psychotic. Very, very intense. Awfully disruptive, to a decent country. There was more racism than I had ever remembered. There was more sexism than I had ever encountered. Affirmative action. Gender equity. The great struggles for social justice, which had characterized the 60's, 70's in these fields; you were now struggling merely to maintain what you had already achieved. The views of refugees were positively hostile. This wasn't the country I knew in the 1970's. This was a country which had changed and was changing profoundly. I learned it myself in 1992 when Bob Rae [then Premier of the Province of Ontario] asked me to do a little study on racism in Ontario after the riots on Yonge Street, subsequent to the riots in Los Angeles. And I remember when I was writing my report, having spent sixty intense days of listening to various delegations of people of colour throughout Ontario, and people in minority positions, and people who felt vulnerable, listening to it time after time again, thinking to myself: my God there has been a transformation which is insidious and largely malevolent.

And I wrote the report and said so. But that too was a change. I think again, because the priorities have been so distorted. Because the fiscal mania has been so obsessive. Because the human dimension has been so inconsequential. My tolerant country, slapped and abused by Reaganite branch plantism, had become intolerant and exclusive. And that brings me to my eighth point, because that's not all.

And here I just want to put it to you as directly as I can to try to make the thesis whole. We have been failing internationally, I would wish to say, as much as we have been failing nationally. There was a time when Canada stood at the top of the international ladder. My God there was nothing better than being a Canadian when you travelled internationally. For one thing, being a Canadian meant that you weren't an American and that was almost enough on its own. But on top of that, you were a member of the Commonwealth, a member of the Francophonie, a member of the G7. There wasn't another single country on the face of the earth which was a member of all three international clubs. Not one. Not to this day. No other. We were a middle power. We were a relatively humble power. We had a terrific peace-keeping tradition. They loved us at the United Nations and in multilateralism. Lester Pearson was a name to conjure with. Canada's economic aid and assistance, official development assistance, was used in ways which were appreciated in most of the developing world. It doesn't mean that bits and pieces of that aren't true today, but it does mean that it's necessary to say that the decline in official development assistance in foreign aid generally around the world is catastrophic and unconscionable.

It was back in 1969, in a committee chaired by Lester Pearson in the United Nations, that all of the nations of the world, of the industrial world, agreed that 7/10's of 1% of gross national product was what a country should provide for development assistance, 0.7%. There have only been four or five countries who ever, ever surpassed it. The Nordics, of course. God, the Nordics are lovely countries. If you ever get itchy, go off to Scandinavia -- Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Holland. They're the only countries now that are ahead of the 0.7%. Everybody else is dropping calamitously year after year. The average of all of the industrial countries is now 0.25%. It has never been this low in all of the years of documented official development assistance.

And what does official development assistance money go for? It's really fascinating, the parallelism, as one watches the argument. What does it go for? It goes for the social sectors. You see, you can't get private direct investment to build your health systems and your nutritional networks, and your primary basic education, and your water, and your sanitation throughout a country -- those basic human priorities, which give a country a chance of dignity, self worth, and then economic advance -- you don't get that from private direct investment. You don't get it from trade. You don't get it from debt relief. You don't get it from commodity prices. You get it from official development assistance. You get it from the willingness of certain industrial countries to collaborate with the investments in the social sectors from the World Bank. And you build your infrastructure that way. And when you shred your official development assistance, you deal a mortal blow to the least developed countries of the world, many of whom are right on the brink of breaking through if only they weren't abandoned and betrayed. And I'm not talking about the countries that are engaged in civil conflict. There are fifty countries in sub-Saharan Africa -- there may be six or eight of them that are in real trouble -- but all the rest have the capacity to fashion a decent economic infrastructure if they're given half a chance. And all around them the industrial countries are drawing back. And it's even more disconcerting -- maybe it speaks to the reason I chose this theme -- that the old development activists, those people who were in the fray -- those people who fought the good fight, those people who cared about these issues, they're beginning to retreat. They're kind of overwhelmed. They see around them the emergence of the transnational corporations with far more influence than some governments ever had. They see around them the absolute obsession with trade. They see the trade-offs between trade and human rights. They feel defeated. They feel lost. And there's no bridge between the decline in official development assistance on the one hand and all the other ingredients which would have to be summoned economically to shore up some of those countries on the other. So we're in a very difficult position. It's particularly bad that Canada is complicit in this. Our foreign aid has dropped disastrously. Most people who work for CIDA would say that. Readily. Willingly. Honestly.

For an organization like UNICEF, Canada has been a godsend. We are tremendous supporters of UNICEF around microniutrients, dealing with landmines, dealing with girls' education, dealing with gender. We're very fortunate we've maintained this particular rapport with the government of Canada. But all of the money is gradually eroding, and I say to you that the social justice which characterized our foreign policy, in days gone by, is fraying at the edges. And it is not restored miraculously by magnificent work in the field of landmines. I wouldn't take that away from Lloyd Axworthy for a moment. But there's a lot more to Canada's foreign policy activity than one intrusive act of honour, as great as that act of honour is. It leads me to the ninth point I want to make.

This grinding down of international behaviour, in many areas, has other and more grotesque manifestations. I've been obsessed with Rwanda. I can't get it out of my mind. I can't understand how it is possible, in the mid-1990's, with all of the capacity around the world, that we allowed, knowingly and willfully, between half a million and a million people to be killed, while the world watched. I thought the testimony of Roméo Dallaire was really quite something recently. When he admitted that if he had had five thousand more troops in Kigali in those fateful weeks of April 1994, that he probably could have prevented the half million deaths. I was fascinated when there emerged, a couple of weeks ago, from the Carnegie Foundation, a remarkable report called Preventing Deadly Conflict 18, in which they had taken the Roméo Dallaire thesis -- this remarkable assemblage of eminent persons who were put together by the Carnegie Foundation -- they took the Dallaire thesis and they subjected it to scrutiny by a panel of international military experts who came to the conclusion that Roméo Dallaire was exactly right. That if he'd had five thousand troops -- which all kinds of African countries were offering at the time but they couldn't get the logistical support to transport them there -- if he'd had those five thousand troops, a half million people would be alive today. I was totally taken aback when I picked up an article in Liberatione, the French newspaper, literally one week ago, where the present Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan 19, at the time the Under Secretary-General for Peace-Keeping, apologised for the inability of the world to find those five thousand troops when needed. You have a Canadian peace-keeper on the ground asking for them. You have the world filled with knowledge of what it would have meant. And everybody stood by and watched the slaughter of half a million people. Now it is true, that from the Holocoaust of '33 to '45 to the genocide of Rwanda there is kind of a unrelieved line which runs through Cambodia and Ethiopia and Bosnia and Afghanistan and Mozambique and Angola. But there was something about Rwanda which was a descent into depravity the like of which we have not latterly approximated.

Let me tell you what it does. I remember, not very long ago, being in the trauma centre in Kigali, where UNICEF supports the work of a wonderful little Italian NGO, which does counselling, psychosocial counselling, with adolescent kids. And their particular counselling technique at this time was to have the kids engage in art therapy. And to draw, as best they could, the memories and recollections they had. Every single one of these kids had killed, or witnessed killings. And I took out the art book. And I leafed through the pages. And page after page had exactly the same image. An adult man or woman with a machete in his or her head. And blood dripping down the page. A lot of blood. Page after page after page. And I stood there. And I thought to myself: How in God's name does this society continue? How do you deal with these kids who are so emotionally traumatized? How does Rwanda make it over the next number of years? And it was so utterly unnecessary. Now, maybe it was one of those grotesque abberations to which the world is given from time to time in a fashion which pushes one as close to the edge of hopelessness as you can come. But I don't think so. We knew too much. We could have stepped in easily. The arms merchants were supplying the weaponry, but it wasn't sophisticated weaponry. And it could have been stopped. And that says something about the ebb and flow of international social justice. Then and now.

In 1993 we had the great international conference on human rights in Vienna. In 1998 it’s the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.20 The Rwandan genocide is sandwiched in between. God, it's crazy. The state of social justice, national and international, can be said to be dreadful. But I want to take a complete u-turn in what I have said thus far (although perhaps I have overdone it or overstated it; I feel it that way myself; therefore you must feel it) and say to you that this phenomenon that I've tried to describe -- that one had a pattern in Canada of social justice rooted in the human condition for many years, and abandoned it gradually over the latter decade or two; and that this was paralleled in equivalent movements internationally; and that it was a shift from the human to the fiscal -- that despite the fact that it drives all of us nuts that these patterns are there, there is no room for losing hope. Because what's the point? Governments can intervene. Things can change. So, crazily enough, I am filled with anticipatory exhilaration. It's partly because from the nadir there's only one way to go. And that's up towards the celestial climbs. It's partly because these things are cyclical. And in the great historical pageant we will come back to sanity over the next number of years if we work at it. It’s partly because, there is a moving blip in favour of the Democratic Left. Really interesting. A strong presence in Scandinavia. The emergence of Tony Blair and the British Labour Party. The victories in the French municipal elections of a couple of weeks ago by the French socialist party. The likelihood that President Kohl of Germany is finally going to lose and that the victors are going to be Social Democrats. You're going to have Germany, France, the United Kingdom and much of Scandinavia suddenly experiencing a revival of Democratic Socialism. We will have a core of tiny appendices to build on the monolith of Nova Scotia. And when we tie them together, it will be damned near irresistible.

It's partly because I believe that Democratic Socialism is still a relevant ethical framework within which to etch social and economic policy. We won't always be right. We won't always be profound. We won't always be searching. But there are antecedents in Canada on which we can draw and we have presentable logic on our case. It's partly because governments are not impotent. And I have faith in democratic change. But without being soppy, maudlin, or self-indulgent, it's mostly because every generation throws up its unlikely quotients of Bob Kerrs and Max Saltsmans and Stanley Knowleses. Principled, uncompromising, indefatigable. We don't have to be intimidated by the course ahead. We are perfectly capable of changing Canada and humankind for the better. It has happened before. By God, it will happen again.

Thank you for having me.

I'll take some questions if you like.

BOB NEEDHAM

Stephen has said he'll take time for questions. So … who is first? Yes.

FLOOR

Do you see a breakdown in respect in society in general represented by what is happening in the House of Commons?

Stephen LEWIS

Actually I think that the parliamentary … [repeat the question please] … The question was do I see a breakdown in respect in society in general, given the breakdown in the House of Commons?

This may be an odd thing to say, but actually I think that the breakdown in parliamentary behaviour is somewhat worse than in society as a whole. Somewhat worse not because it's more extreme, but because of parliamentarians we have legitimate expectations. Of normal, decent human beings, we have reasonable expectations, but we don't put them on a pedestal. We put our parliamentary representatives on a pedestal. We vote for them. We vote for their policies. We vote for their conduct. We vote for their positions. Sure, it's good fun when the Principal of the College can make the crack about the Senate which she made and the Senators who are cringing in the precincts of the Senate tonight lest they lose a day’s pay. But it ain't funny when all is said and done, because the pattern of behaviour of Andrew Thompson, with whom I sat in the Provincial Legislature, the pattern of behaviour of Andrew Thompson -- about which you'll notice, his colleagues were not very vocal for a large number of years -- is the kind of pattern that induces cynicism in Canadian public life. And when that pattern is reinforced by behaviour towards each other, which is simply rude and inappropriate, then it feels out of control. Society as a whole acts inappropriately from time to time. It happens in schools. It happens in universities. It happens on the streets. It happens in families. But we don't expect it to happen so obviously and so ungraciously from our elected representatives.

FLOOR

Stephen, congratulations on your speech. I used to campaign for Robert. Tell me, you travel a great deal and I've been reading about Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium and Holland and the unemployment rate is very low. They don't have soup kitchens. …… Health care and pensions are a great criteria over there. Yet some of the people I met, that came from Denmark recently on a visit, they said they couldn't understand Canada, and all the natural resources they [Canadians] have, that they have soup kitchens. They don't have them there. Could you tell why those countries are … they're Christian … they're, whatever they are, their background … but they do things so well and care for people. ……?

Stephen LEWIS

Well, I don't … You know there is a danger, and God knows I'm more susceptible to it than most, to romanticizing those countries. I think what has been true of the Nordic countries is that from the very early days they made a decision to put money into the social sectors because they understood the social sectors are the underpinnings of economic growth. And when times were bad they didn't withdraw their money from the social sectors. You know you can still divert funds into the social sectors when the economic indicators are in decline. If you look at Sri Lanka. If you look at the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. If you look at Botswana. If you look at Malaysia, prior to the recent difficulties, although even there Malaysia is doing better, let us say, than Indonesia, Thailand and Korea. If you look at some of these countries you will see that even when the economy was under seige, the government was still focusing on the social sectors, and the indicators in human terms were much higher than the surrounding countries in the region, even though the surrounding countries had a much higher per capita income. So, Sri Lanka has always had better indices in infant mortality, longevity, literacy, maternal mortality, than many countries of the region with higher per capita incomes, because it has understood that if you invest in the health system you'll be better off in the future. And what the Nordic countries did -- and as I say, I don't want to romanticize them; they have flaws as well [though] I don't think they have quite so many; they have a slightly different inheritance -- but they have always felt that you should not sacrifice the human factor for the fiscal factor. And that, I think, is what has happened to us in Canada over the last few years. Maybe the pendulum will swing back. I believe it will. But there's been a lot of hurt. A lot of pain. Unnecessary, in the process.

FLOOR

Sir, you spoke about the number of children living in poverty and today I heard on the news that money will not be allocated to the International Monetary Fund. It has to be tied to family planning. In other words, family planning has to be abolished, and in that scenario there is no way one can have social justice in the developing countries.

Stephen LEWIS

I think, if I understand you, this gentleman was saying that today he heard that money from the International Monetary Fund would not be forthcoming unless it were tied to a policy of abolishing family planning. I think what you're probably talking about is the debate in the US Congress where they have attached a rider to the bill disposing an amount of money for the International Monetary Fund -- eighteen billion dollars is the amount they are talking about -- they have attached a rider which says that no country which performs abortions can be a recipient of the money. No country which has family planning activities over a particular time can be a recipient of the funds. This is a particular peccadillo. I don't know how to describe it … It's a particular piece of ugly political behaviour which is imposed and I don't know what any of the rest of us can do about it. In this case they have made it impossible to pay their dues to the International Monetary Fund. But by attaching the same rider to legislation they have made it impossible to pay their dues to the United Nations. The United States Congress would have paid the 1.3 billion dollars it owes the United Nations except that the legislation was stopped by virtue of an amendment which said that unless you outlaw abortion you can't have your money. Well, I mean the United Nations is an assemblage of states. It's not for the United Nations to dictate the domestic policy of sovereign countries. But that didn't bother people in the American Congress. You know this is a very, …United States is an odd and difficult … I mean it's such an interesting country in so many ways, and it's such a difficult country in so many ways.

Here's a little fact which people in this audience probably won't know and I hope some of you appreciatively gasp, so that my taking the time to tell it to you will prove worthwhile. The Convention on the Rights of the Child 21 is the most universally ratified convention on the face of the earth. It's absolutely extraordinary. 191 out of 193 countries have ratified. There is no other international convention on civil and political rights, economic, cultural, social rights, on the rights of women, on the elimination of racial discrimination, against torture, against genocide -- no other covenant has ever had that kind of ratification internationally. And who are the two delinquents? Somalia, which you will agree, doesn't have a government to ratify, and the United States of America. [gasp] Thank you. And therefore I simply make the point that it's sometimes hard to get the United States on board because they have different ways of looking at the world. And yet they are the single most important country on the face of the earth. We have to work with them.

FLOOR

In the gods up here.

Stephen LEWIS

In the gods. Yes, you really are in the gods.

FLOOR

I am no less inspired as I listen to you tonight than when I've listened to you before now. But I would like you to reflect on

Stephen LEWIS

Is that Lorne?

FLOOR

Yes.

Stephen LEWIS

I can't believe it. I haven't seen you in twenty-five years. And you still haven't trimmed your beard.

FLOOR

We have a collective tendency to slide into the slough of despond in Ontario under the onslaught of the fascists at Queen’s Park. I would like ……

Stephen LEWIS

Nor have you changed.

FLOOR

.… but what I would like to hear you reflect on … how it is that you stir the hope in your neighbour … back home, when we go home, that will enable us collectively to do whatever it is they're doing in Nova Scotia?

Stephen LEWIS

Yes, whatever they're doing is probably better than what we did last time in Ontario. At least relatively. I don't know, Lorne. I really don't know the answer to that question. I think I don't know enough about Ontario now. I'm not going to be silly. I read the columns of Michele Landsberg. I read them with religious fidelity. This is quite unusual but there's not one I've disagreed with. And I read a tremendous pain on the part of a columnist and a tremendous anger at what has happened to her Ontario and her sense of Ontario. I would have thought that in the circumstances, and I think the polls bear this out, there is the potential for a very, very strong counter-attack on the part of those in Ontario who would wish a different kind of politics. And I sense that that is coming. Or at least one senses that that is coming. Where it will rally round is less clear. I think it is probably, I say this sadly, it is probably more likely to rally around the official opposition than it is to rally around the third party. But a rally is required regardless. Because what is happening in the Province of Ontario cannot possibly be sustained. It is too hurtful to the province as a whole. I therefore hope, when the provincial election comes around, that people will pick and choose very carefully and give the Democratic Left an appropriate chance. But people are in the mood to take a second look, and that's the time when one makes the arguments as strongly as they can be made. But it's a tough uphill slog. It's a very tough uphill slog. John Wilson was extremely generous and kind tonight when he said that we were within a whisker of forming a government in 1975. We really weren't. We were … we were within sight of forming a government. And it happened. It just took fifteen years. But where we are now it will be a tough slog. I don't envy my colleagues although I know it. I mean I've been there. Donald MacDonald was there. It is possible to move the party ahead. And it is possible … You know, what is so wonderful about -- excuse me for this moment in indulgence -- and I know there are Tories and Liberals in the audience, and I love you with the same intensity I love my socialist colleagues, albeit with less respect. But I simply want to say that this is a great time to be alive if you're on the Democratic Left. That there are so many things that need social change. There are so many targets to shoot at. There are so many opportunities to make the argument. One is almost overwhelmed by the possibilities that exist. And I just imagine … I assume that everyone with even a twitch of interest in progressive social change is probably having sleepless nights. Simply of excitement at the prospect. I remember sitting in the legislature with a psychiatrist in the NDP caucus, a fellow named Jan Duksta. And Jan Duksta used to sweat, visibly, with exhilaration, as he looked at the therapeutic possibilities around him. And it's that kind of potential which I would think all of you would warm to.

FLOOR

Very good speech Mr. Lewis. My question concerns biometric identification … various governments in North America wish to identify the public by scanning the palm or the finger of the individual and assigning a number based on that scan. What, from your experience, is your opinion on that matter?

Stephen LEWIS

Well, I certainly don't have any experience of scanning. I don't like those intrusions as a kind of basic principle. But those intrusions are moving in on us on every single front. The technology is overwhelming. One never knows whether one can resist those kinds of things. It certainly doesn't sound very palatable or desirable. There comes a point, I think, where the civil liberties of individual human beings are transgressed upon pretty strongly. And therefore I would urge a lot of caution. But I am amazed, I am amazed at the kind of capacities we have now. You know there is the … there is now satellite photographic capacity where American satellites, God knows how many thousands of miles in the sky, can peer down and identify individual figures on the ground. In refugee camps. Along the Pakistan border. Or in movements across the lower Saharan Desert. It just sort of takes your breath away that there is no privacy anywhere. And I therefore am always apprehensive. I didn't even know the term biometric. I thought you were going to ask me about kilometres and I got worried. But I'm glad you introduced it and my instinctive response is I don't like it. And I won't give them my finger if they ask.

FLOOR

Yes. I want to ask a question about the increasing impotence of governments that you refer to and the rising power of the multinationals. Lately we have gotten very concerned about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. I was wondering if you could comment on that problem which seems to be coming. And if you could give us some insight as to what might be done to protect the kind of [values] you were talking about this evening.

Stephen LEWIS

The Multilateral Agreement on Investment was an agreement under negotiation, primarily in Geneva, from which the world was largely excluded, as you know. Anyone who asked the question would know. Indeed it really wouldn’t have come to light were it not for the internet until February of last year. And a number of governments had secretly been negotiating it for some time. In fact I'm not naive about these political things, and certainly not naive about international matters, but I was quite taken aback at the degree of secrecy and collusion with some of the transnationals in the process of fashioning an agreement which would be so beneficial to one corporate sector, and so potentially prejudicial to society as a whole. And certainly interestingly enough, to domestic business, as a whole. So the Multilateral Agreement on Investment has caused a lot of concern. Although the irony is that it may not proceed because some corporations wanted even more than they're getting. And some governments wanted the corporations to have even more than they've asked for. And it is possible that that agreement will not see the light of day precisely because some demands are so extravagant they can't be endured.

On the other hand, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, in a way, fits in with patterns of globalization: privatization, free market economy ideology, World Trade Organization, NAFTA, all of the bodies we are creating which give to transnationals tremendous access and protection with very little responsibility at all. Now, what do you do about it? It's really interesting you should ask. Let me be personal for a moment, or at least institutional for a moment. In UNICEF we brought together a group of our colleagues to look at the consequences of globalization on children. Just as we looked at the consequences of structural adjustment on children, just as we looked at the consequences of child labour and a low income economy on children, we are deciding that we'd better start taking a hard look at the impact of globalization. And that will tie in the World Trade Organization and the multilateral investment process as well. We want to do it because we have a particular advantage. We're very, very strong on the ground. We have a considerable operational capacity within developing countries, and so we can extract from those countries the kind of evidence and documentation where you can make a very good case. And we don't want to publish something without making a very good case. So, to the extent that one of the UN agencies can be a participant in this debate, I think we'll try to chronicle the impact of these trends, these formidable trends, on children, women and vulnerable groups. But what we really need, of course, is the kind of activism which existed at the time of NAFTA and continues to exist. And the kind of leadership which Maude Barlow 22 [National Chairperson, Council of Canadians] and many others have given over the years. We can't give up on this. This requires the churches, and the trade unions, and the social activist groups, and everyone who cares about the future of Canada, to make sure that we don't end up just cavalierly handing power of decision making to transnational corporations, with very little capacity for government to resist. It is absolutely phenomenal how we are complicit in this process. As though it were of no consequence. And you see it is of no consequence. It's of no consequence to those who are in power, and those who have corporate power. It is only of consequence to the common herd.

And when you don't care about human priorities, only fiscal priorities and corporate profits, then it's no longer a consequence. I was … if you want to see a very, very brief but interesting little analysis read Tom Walkom's column 23 on page 2 of the Toronto Star today … It's … I think it was today … No, it might have been on the weekend, but it might be today … I was really quite impressed by the way he had encapsuled this simple argument. You know what it is, when I think about it? It's an extension of David Lewis' corporate welfare bums 24 campaign of 1972. Yes, 1972. Because what David argued at the time was that government was giving handouts to corporations, in a way which exceeded even the social security benefits for people at large. And corporations were having a field day on everything from deferred taxes to capital gains. Well what's happening now is that corporations are being given investment entitlements, profit protection, labour and environmental exemptions, and a broad based exemption from government stewardship the like of which we never dreamed about in 1972. But just as Rachael Carson 25 in the 1960's understood the environmental depredations that were thirty years down the road, so should we, in the early 1970's, when we cared about social justice, understand the potential absence of social justice, twenty-five years thereafter. And that's what we're feeling now. And that's why I say, my God you would have a field day to go after those people. I positively salivate at the, at the … I don't want to return to political life. I love what I'm doing. But I have to tell you it's positively incendiary. It makes the whole metabolic system churn. My molecular structure is convulsing. I think I should bring this to an end. Thank you.

Bob Needham

I would now like to call on Lois Wilson for closing remarks.

Lois Wilson, Board Chair, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development 26

There will be true equality when you don't need a box [to stand on].

Stephen shared with me earlier in the evening that he doesn't accept this kind of invitation too often. But when he saw the combined names Kerr, Saltsman and Knowles he couldn't resist. The cascade of memories overcame him. We're glad that they did overcome you, Stephen, and that you came.

The most memorable thing for me tonight, I think, is his emphasis on the primacy of the human condition and the necessity of the moral ethic in forming political policy; the respect for human dignity and for human suffering. And that came through in what you said Stephen. You've done something, I think, which is very hard to do. And that is to recall to us who we were as Canadians and who we can be again. It's very hard for us to struggle with that in a wounded country and a wounded province. And it's hard to hope. You carried that over in your comments about the manifestations internationally. I'm aware that the Structural Adjustment Program, for example in Africa, is called Suffering African People, and in Latin America Sophisticated Arrangements for Poverty. So they're well aware of what's happening.

And you mentioned the descent into depravity of Rwanda, which still goes on. At the same time that Princess Di was killed I was in a seminar at the International Centre for Human Rights that was listening to how Rwandan women had been raped and marched naked through the streets over the years. Yet there was no public mourning for them. Partly because we didn't know about it, and where's Rwanda anyway? That whole kind of insular attitude is abounding.

So tonight you've addressed us on those issues with your usual wit, with your incisive insights, with your outrageous language and your forthright ideas. And you have lifted our spirits and exercised our minds. One of the best things is you've made us roar. I think laughter is always very close to hope. Among other things, what you've done tonight is to give us hope -- in a world, in a country, in a province, in a place where it's very easy not to hope. So thank you for that. When you did that u-turn you gave us some hope. And that I say, is not at all bad for a neutered male.

End Of Program

This lecture was deliveredby Mr. Lewis without a prepared text. It was transcribed by Darlene Radicioni and edited by W. Robert Needham, Director, Canadian Studies Program, University of Waterloo, with the editorial assistance of Linda Warley of the Department of English.

List of Footnotes to Program

  1. Harrop, Gerry Advocate of Compassion: Stanley Knowles in the Political Process. (Hantsport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press, 1984), 147.
  2.  

  3. Edward Bigelow Jolliffe. Mr. Jolliffe died at the age of 89 at Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Alan Blakeny a former Federal NDP President and Saskatchewan Premier, said that as the Ontario Provincial Leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation from 1942 until his retirement in 1953, Ted Jolliffe "…made social democracy a national rather than a regional occurrence." See: Obituary/ Edward Bigelow Jolliffe. The Globe and Mail, (Saturday, May 23, 1998), A5.
  4.  

  5. David Orlikow, 1918-January 1998. First elected to the Manitoba Legislature as MLA for St. John’s in 1958. First elected to the House of Commons in 1962 and re-elected in 1963, 1965, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1979, 1980 and 1984. He was defeated in the 1988 federal election with a record of over 40 years of public service.
  6.  

  7. Schreyer, Edward. Ed Schreyer, A Social Democrat in Power: Selected Speeches and Interviews. (Winnipeg: Queenston House Pub., 1977).
  8.  

  9. MacDonald, Donald C. Government and Politics of Ontario. 3rd ed. (Scarborough, Ont: Nelson Canada, 1985). MacDonald, Donald C. The Happy Warrior: Political Memoirs. (Markham, Ont: Fitzhenry &Whiteside, 1988).
  10.  

  11. Lewis, David. The Good Fight: Political Memoirs 1909-1958. (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1981).
  12.  

  13. Whelan, Ed and Pemrose Whelan, Touched by Tommy. (Regina: Whelan Publications, 1990). McLeod, Thomas H. and Ian McLeod, Tommy Douglas: The Road to Jerusalem. (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1987). Thomas Clement, The Making Of A Socialist: The Recollections Of T.C. Douglas. (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1981). Lovick, L.D., ed., till power is brought to pooling: Tommy Douglas Speaks. (Lantzville, British Columbia: Oolichan Books, 1979). Shackleton, Doris French. Tommy Douglas. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975). Essays on the Left: Essays in Honour of T.C. Douglas. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971). Tyre, Robert, Douglas In Saskatchewan: The Story Of A Socialist Experiment. (Vancouver: Mitchell, 1962).
  14.  

  15. Harrop, Gerry Advocate of Compassion: Stanley Knowles in the Political Process. (Hantsport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press, 1984), 147. Trofimenkoff, S.M. Stanley Knowles: The Man from Winnipeg North Centre, (Saskatoon: Saskatchewan: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1982). Knowles, Stanley. The New Party, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1961). Also published as The noveau parti, (Montreal: Editions du Jour, 1961).
  16.  

  17. McNaught, Kenneth William Kirkpatrick, A Prophet in Politics: A Biography of J.S. Woodsworth. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960, 1959).
  18.  

  19. Lewis, David. The Good Fight: Political Memoirs 1909-1958. (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1981), 200-201.
  20.  

  21.   http://www.ndp.ca/ including access to a brief CCF/NDP history including a bibliography:   http://www.ndp.ca/aenglish/hiseng.html
  22.  

  23. See: Harrop, Gerry Advocate of Compassion: Stanley Knowles in the Political Process. (Hantsport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press, 1984). Trofimenkoff, S.M. Stanley Knowles: The Man from Winnipeg North Centre, (Saskatoon: Saskatchewan: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1982).
  24.  

  25. Levitt, Joseph. Fighting Back for Jobs and Justice: Ed Broadbent in Parliament. (Ottawa: LLA Publishing, 1996).
  26.  

  27. It can be noted that in the context of the argument the year 2000 for budget balance seems conservatively drawn. Other commentators on the progressive left argue if cuts to social programs had not been made that aggregate demand would have been maintained at higher levels with the effect that the budget deficit would have been eliminated before 1998.
  28.  

  29. Laxer, James. In Search of a New Left: Canadian Politics After the Neoconservative Assault. (Toronto: Viking/Penguin, 1996). Laxer, James. False God: How the Globalization Myth has Impoverished Canada, (Toronto: Lester, 1993); Laxer James. Inventing Europe: The Rise of a New World Power. (Toronto: Lester Publishing Limited, 1991). Laxer, James The Decline of the Superpowers: Winners and Losers in Today’s Global Economy. (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, Ltd., 1989).
  30.  

  31. McQuaig, Linda. The Cult of Impotence: Selling the Myth of Powerlessness in the Global Economy. (Toronto: Viking, 1998); McQuaig, Linda. Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths. (Toronto: Viking, 1995); McQuaig, Linda. The Quick and the Dead: Brian Mulroney, Big Business and the Seduction of Canada. (Toronto: Penguin, Viking, 1991); McQuaig, Linda. Behind Closed Doors: How the Rich Won Control of Canada’s Tax System …and Ended up Richer. (Markham: Penguin Books, 1988); McQuaig, L. Corporate Power Becoming More Concentrated, Study Finds." The Globe and Mail, (January 14, 1988), A4.
  32.  

  33. George, Susan. Faith And Credit: The World Bank's Secular Empire. 1st ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994). George, Susan. A Fate Worse Than Debt. 1st Grove Weidenfeld Evergreen ed. (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990). George, Susan. Feeding the Few: Corporate Control of Food. (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981, 1979). George, Susan. Food for Beginners. (London, England: Writers and Readers Pub. Cooperative Society, 1982). George, Susan. Food Strategies for Tomorrow. (San Francisco, CA: Hunger Project, 1987). George, Susan. How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger. Reprinted with rev. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977). George, Susan. Ill Fares the Land: Essays on Food, Hunger, and Power. 1st ed. (Washington, D.C: Institute for Policy Studies, 1984).
  34.  

  35. Scott R. Freil, Preventing Genocide: How the Early Use of Force Might have Succeeded in Rwanda. A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, April 1998). Douglas E. Lute, Improving National Capacity to Respond to Complex Emergencies: The U.S. Experience. A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, April 1998). Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. Preventing Deadly Conflict. Final Report with Executive Summary. (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York. December 1997).
  36.  

  37. A Ghanaian, Mr. Annan is the first United Nations Secretary-General from sub-Saharan Africa.
  38.  

  39. Asbeck, Frederik Mari, baron van, The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights And Its Predecessors (1679-1948). (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1949). United Nations Association in Canada. Universal Declaration Of Human Rights; adopted on Dec. 10, 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly. (Ottawa [n.d.]. Williams, Paul. ed., The International Bill of Human Rights. (Glen Ellen, California: Entwhistle Books, 1981).
  40.  

  41. Adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20, 1989, The Convention on the Rights of the Child was opened for signature on January 26, 1990, with sixty-one countries signing the first day. See: The Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Powerful Tool for the Future.
  42. http://www.unicefusa.org/issues98/mar98/convention.html.

  43. See, for example: M. Barlow, "The Sale of Canada Act," Canadian Forum, 49:795(Dec. 1990), 19-21; M. Barlow, Parcel of Rogues: How free Trade is Failing Canada, (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1990); M. Barlow and B. Campbell, Straight Through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Just Society, (Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 1995); M. Barlow and B. Campbell, Take Back the Nation, (Toronto: Key Porter Books Limited, 1991).
  44.  

  45. Walkom, Thomas. Government Activism still alive and kicking," The Toronto Star. (Tuesday, March 24, 1998), 2. http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED19980324/news/980324NEW02a_NA-WALKOM24.html
  46.  

  47. Lewis, David. Louder Voices: The Corporate Welfare Bums. (Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, Publishers, 1972).
  48.  

  49. Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin; Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1962). Silent Spring Revisited. (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1987).
  50.  

  51. The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, ICHRDD, was established by an Act of Parliament of Canada in 1988 as an independent and non-partisan organization which initiates, encourages and supports the promotion, development and strengthening of democratic and human rights, institutions, and programs as defined in the International Bill of Human Rights. The mandate of ICHRDD covers civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, as defined by the Universal Declaration and its two companion covenants. See: http://www.ichrdd.ca/

 

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