How do we work to get democracy back?
Democracy has always been a question of trend, of direction, and of movement; not of absolutes or a still picture.
Democracy has always been a question of trend, of direction, and of movement; not of absolutes or a still picture.
The federal government ratified last week the controversial Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA).
It gives multinational corporations from China the right and power to legislate in Canada by overruling Canadian federal, First Nations’ and territorial laws right down to municipal bylaws.
It happens not nominally but effectively through a NAFTA-like secret arbitration panel process, that is outside of Canadian law, by binding and preventing it.
Attention! Different to legitimate legal processes – these panel decisions cannot be appealed.
Opposition parties, except for the Liberals, had tried to stop FIPA in 2013.
It is wrong to assume that dictatorships typically first reach for power with violence when they actually start by passing crime-enabling laws and regulations that attack constitutional rights.
Why would it be different for Canada’s version of an emerging “totalitarian democracy” (the late Gore Vidal)?
There are good reasons why the Yukon and Nunavut Regulatory Improvement Act, Bill S-6, has been tabled to the unelected Senate but not to Parliament.
The harsh reality is that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Bill S-6 amendment of the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act (YESAA) and the Nunavut Waters Act and Nunavut Surface Rights Tribunal Act rolls back Yukon’s constitutional self-government rights granted under the Devolution Transfer Agreement.
It does that by giving the prime minister and his cabinet rights they did not have, to interfere in the Yukon on behalf of speculators and corporations.
In a throw-back to the 1800s, First Nations are singled out by not living up to contracts with them. Even judges chosen by Stephen Harper have expressed that in a long string of decisions.
Bill S-6 continues with the colonizer stance also by weakening the Umbrella Final Agreement which originated closely interwoven with YESAA.
The Yukon government provides anti-democratic assistance to their masters in Ottawa also by injecting questionable expertise into gas fracking consultations, suggesting a predetermined outcome.
This offers a handy platform to Ottawa to pursue political goals of a postmodern aristocracy hidden behind false economic claims.
In ways different to the First Nations, municipalities also have a venerable grassroots democratic tradition of their own.
The 1998 Yukon Municipal Act had answered to longstanding demands by Yukoners as well as their town and city councils for democratic participation.
When Whitehorse residents used their rights and petitioned city council to hold several referenda, the city turned against them.
In the case of the union-busting Walmart, the petition was a handful of signatures short. At the time, mayor Kathy Watson pushed through a narrow 4-3 vote at city council for the Argus development (Walmart).
In the case of Marianne Darragh’s successful 2008 McLean Lake petition, in an era when city council was very much dominated by the city's managers, the city went to court to escape its duty to hold a referendum.
Perhaps in conventional perception, environmental concerns, before they grew much broader in the face of a climate survival problem, were surrounded by white middle class privilege that did not suffer a serious rights deficiency.
Now, much is to be learned from women’s equality, slavery abolition, aboriginal rights and labour rights struggles.
The finding was that regulating supposedly acceptable degrees of violence and harm against people re-enforces the problem.
Goodwill, information, and general sympathy campaigns were not enough to heal the pestilence of oppression.
It took the claiming, occupying and legislating of rights to make democracy work.
First Nations taught us that rights of the Earth as community rights are not idealism but a practicality proven in a thousand generations.
Should citizens bow to a litigious city hall or corporations in their pursuit or endorsement of fracking-based LNG infrastructure?
Where can citizens go after they have been fed a drumbeat of phoney consultations to the point they want to throw up, being lied to and being denied rightful participation?
When do regulations help the community, and when do they hurt by cajoling people into forgetting to say no to danger and harm?
How do law-making and organizing strategies interact?
What can we learn from other places and fights?
Come to Global Frackdown 2014 and meet the community rights attorneys Mari Margil and Thomas Linzey for a presentation and conversation, 7-9 p.m. Sept. 26 at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre, who will be here on invitation of the Frackfree Yukon Alliance.
Robin Gilson
Peter Becker
Whitehorse
Peter Becker
Whitehorse
