Canada at G 8

In the century since, Canada gradually adopted another posture: honest broker between the old rulers and ruled, known today as the developed and developing nations. This rested on a sense that Canada could identify with both sides, because it had been a colony, too. Stephen Harper shows no such sensibility. He's the Gunga Din of post-9/11, carrying water (and oil) to his masters, along with the white man's burden. How so?

He overidentified with the big guys there, like a yelpy pup among Great Danes. He took it on himself to explain that the G8 excluded nations such as India and China since its job is "to bring together the major countries, advanced countries of shared values." It's insulting, grandiose, delusional and ignores all the similarities "we" share with "them." Does he even know that Canada was once a colony?

He joined in piling onto Zimbabwe ("We've added the G8's powerful voice") for its "fraudulent election" and "illegitimacy." He showed no sense of perspective: that the U.S. held a fraudulent election in 2000, or illegitimately tortures in Guantanamo, and that his own government continues to permit the Americans to practise on Canadian Omar Khadr.

He was at his most smug and patronizing as he lectured those "less developed" than us about climate change — a term he and others have managed to substitute for global warming. "The developing world is up against some simple mathematics, and we've simply got to make that point to them," he said. Did he want to add, as he likes to, that he's an economist and knows about this tricky stuff? "I could show you the graphs," he told the press. Did he expect the developing countries to squeal, Oh look, he has graphs. Do show us your graphs. And "this is not a philosophical position. This is a mathematical certainty." It's way more glorious than philosophy, folks; this is math! Bow down before it.

The plan they were supposed to gratefully accept wasn't even a plan. It's a wish stated in wishful terms of vision or goal. It has no start line for reductions, which could be measured from 1990, or any other year. It has no interim targets and exerts no pressure. It aims only to avoid "the most serious consequences of climate change" — omitting to say which effects are less serious. And even this non-plan won't happen unless they sign on first, and admit by the Harper logic that they have no choice.

The over-obvious irony is that China and India are developed. They've built postmodern, industrial, innovative economies. Their big flaws are social and moral, not economic. Canada, meanwhile, is deindustrializing, with full acquiescence by the Harper government, and declining into reliance on raw materials. We're back to hewers and carriers. It's rapid underdevelopment. Those nations must snicker faster than they can bristle as they watch our PM strut among the G8 as he condescends to them. He's George Bush's poodle now that Tony Blair's moved on, and there's nothing to be gained by it.

Maybe it's Canada's role, or that of today's white dominions, to be more imperial than the Empire long after the Empire has relinquished its crasser forms and learned a few lessons. I mean, who still celebrates Victoria's birthday? Trust me, it's not the Brits.

[This article was originally published in The Globe and Mail.]

[Rick Salutin returned home to Canada, following ten years of university study in the United States, in October, 1970. He has been a writer ever since. His many plays include 1837, on the movement for independence from the British Empire; and Les Canadiens, about the famed hockey team and its relation to the spirit of Quebec nationalism, which received the Chalmers award for best Canadian play in 1977. His TV work includes Maria, about union organizing in the textile industry. He has written biography and history, as well as three novels, one of which, A Man of Little Faith, won the Books in Canada best first novel prize. He received the Toronto Arts Award in writing and publishing in 1991 and the National Newspaper Award for best columnist, for his Globe and Mail column on media, in 1993. He held the Maclean Hunter chair in ethics in communication at Ryerson University from 1993 to 1995 and has taught in the Canadian Studies program of University College, the University of Toronto, since 1978 . He has written columns for Canadian Business, Toronto Life, TV Times, the Globe and Mail Broadcast Week and This Magazine, of which he is a founding editor. He was Globe and Mail media columnist from 1991 to 1999 and is now an op-ed columnist.. His most recent book is The Womanizer, a novel.]