Alex Himelfarb: Am I optimistic and, if so, how is that even possible? (Part 1 of 3)

Part 1 – Turning Points: Big change that never comes

Turning point in the forest. Image courtesy of Cody Moore on Unsplash.

Today’s newsletter is an essay for Pledge supporters by Alex Himelfarb. Alex is a member of the Launch Committee of the Pledge for Canada and an ongoing co-coordinator of Pledge efforts. Alex was a professor of sociology before entering Canada’s civil service, where he capped his career by serving as the Clerk of the Privy Council (Canada’s top civil servant) under three Prime Ministers – Chrétien, Martin and Harper – before becoming Canada’s Ambassador to Italy. He is the recent author of Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge (Lorimer, 2024).

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I just had a piece (“Canada at a Crossroads: Finding Optimism in a Neoliberal Age”) published by Alberta Views here. As happens with magazine pieces, much changed between writing and publication: the frightening speed at which US democracy is being dismantled; the new divide in America between appeasers and resisters; the constantly shifting trade wars; the elusiveness of peace or even ceasefires to stop the horrors of war.

Here in Canada, we just came through a momentous and unusual federal election.

So, I have revised and updated the piece and, in some cases, changed my mind, following John Maynard Keynes’ wise counsel that that’s what we ought to do when the facts change and when we learn something new from others.

Because I have made the piece even longer, I offer it in three parts: the first (today’s essay here on the Pledge for Canada’s publication) about all the turning points that have come and gone without our ever turning, on the verge of big change that never came; the second (this Wednesday) about why we seem to be stuck; and the third (this Friday) about where to look if one is looking for hope.

Part 1. Turning Points: Big change that never comes

At the end of a recent interview on my book, Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge, I was asked how it was possible that I still claim to be optimistic about Canada’s future. Good question. The book does tell a pretty bleak story of a world upside down, unmoored, a story of how the neoliberal counterrevolution of the 1980s, when governments started focusing single-mindedly on economic growth and business-friendly policies, made us more vulnerable in an increasingly turbulent world. And that dismal tale was written before the Trump regime launched its assault on Canada and other traditional allies. I expect many Canadians are looking for any reason to be optimistic. It’s hard to know which of our multiple crises to focus on from day to day. We are, it seems, in one of those in-between times of disruption and tough choices.

We have just come through a momentous federal election reshaped by Trump’s politics of extortion. Mark Carney’s Liberals won a strong minority – a victory inconceivable just months ago. I hesitate to draw firm political or sociological conclusions from the results of this highly unusual election, that, for example, this was a vindication of “centrism” or signals the death of the left or of the populist right – any and all of which one can find in the surfeit of pundit postmortems. In our first-past-the-post electoral system many are often voting not so much for those who best reflect their values as against the leader or party they most fear or makes them angriest. What we can, I believe, take from this election is that Trump lost, Canada is otherwise deeply divided, and all parties would benefit from a period of introspection. Now the newly elected Liberal minority must figure out not only how to approach the Trump trade war amidst our multiple crises – climate change, nature loss, economic insecurity, inequality -- and set a course for building a more resilient, less dependent Canada but also how to address the deep social, regional, generational divisions that roil underneath the patriotism and undermine the solidarity necessary for bold collective action.

The Age of Crisis

Probably every generation thinks that they’re at some crucial crossroads where the decisions they make or fail to make will reshape the future. In fact, it feels like we have been living through a succession of such turning points, always on the verge of big change but somehow never making the turn.

After the 2008 global financial meltdown and the recession that followed, the worst since the great depression, pundits declared that we had got it all wrong, that the status quo could not hold. The financial chaos, which began in the US but quickly spread globally, had revealed how costly had been the deregulation of the financial sector and how fragile is an economy built on massive mortgage-fueled household debt. That many banking executives who had contributed to the crisis got huge bonuses while others were losing their jobs, their homes, or just hanging on, made clear that there was something profoundly wrong with how we had organized ourselves. Canadian banks didn’t fare nearly as badly but they too got government help in the form of many billions in liquidity support and Canadian executives too got handsome bonuses even if not quite as hefty as their counterparts in the US where all this started.

Political leaders across the west talked about the need for a new morality, that we were seeing the dark side of globalization and capitalism, that we could no longer tolerate corporate giants too big to fail. And yet within no time we were back to business as usual – austerity in the name of “fiscal consolidation,” the most vulnerable asked to pay the price for the meltdown and bailouts.

Or take climate change. A few years after the financial meltdown, Naomi Klein wrote her powerful This Changes Everything about how the climate crisis will force the world to rethink, well, everything. It seemed no longer possible to ignore or pretend away the already evident consequences of climate change and the risks it posed to civilization. Extreme weather events – wildfires, floods and mudslides, fiercer and wetter hurricanes but also droughts and water stress – were the most telling sign that our antagonistic relationship with nature could not continue. In Canada, pundits declared climate change an existential threat and wrote that no political party could hope to win an election without an ambitious and credible climate action plan. For a while we were making progress, albeit very modest given the climate crisis. Yet now it seems we are ready to backstep. Not only can political parties run without a climate plan, they can even promise to undo the limited progress we have made.

And then came the pandemic. COVID-19 exposed how woefully unprepared we were, how stretched we had allowed our health and social services to become, and the often fatal costs of privatizing long-term care. It made glaring the consequences of inequality and weak labour protections as the poor, the marginalized, Indigenous communities, people of colour, the aged, and frontline service workers and caregivers were hardest hit.

But the pandemic also showed us that better was possible. Governments of all stripes stepped up to protect our health and keep people and firms afloat, rolling out with unaccustomed speed billion-dollar programs that, for a time, even reduced poverty and inequality. Firms raised the wages of frontline workers who put themselves at risk so we could stay safe. We experienced the kind of solidarity that often comes with crisis, finding ways of helping each other and celebrating healthcare workers and others in the front lines.

In the midst of the pandemic, governments here and just about everywhere were talking about huge public investments “to build back better.” Change was in the air. And then – inflation hit, the result primarily of inflated fossil fuel prices, fragile global supply chains, war and greed. The fiscal hawks who had been uncharacteristically silent began to squawk,

The pandemic programs were rolled back as were the frontline workers’ pay raises. Talk of building back better evaporated. Even the COVID solidarity proved fragile, momentary, the now infamous “Freedom Convoy” revealing how angry many had become at government and how raw our differences. Social media, our major source of human connection through the lockdown, fueled our outrage and magnified our divisions. Yet again the opportunity for change passed, the optimism and solidarity with it.

And now we face a new existential threat: President Trump’s assault on Canada. The on-again-off-again, mostly on-again, tariffs, the ever-changing complaints and demands, and the insulting, infuriating and unrelenting talk of annexation led then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to declare what would have been unthinkable just months ago, that the Trump regime is trying to destroy our economy, to subjugate our country. Trump recently and provocatively said that it was “highly unlikely” that the US would resort to military force.

But Trump, it seems, underestimated Canadians. Rather than cower, our leaders have, thus far and for the most part, shown a willingness to fight back. Prime Minister Mark Carney has declared the relationship with the US we have long taken for granted is forever changed. The Canadian response to the threats, the extortion, has been widespread anger and even more widespread and uncharacteristic patriotism across our many divides. Gordie Howe’s “elbows up” became a rallying cry. Canadians are buying Canadian, boycotting American, changing travel plans, and rallying to push their governments to stand up for Canada and protect those affected by US economic aggression. We have been forced to confront the high costs of our over-dependence on the US. And we have front row seats to the extraordinary unravelling of American democracy, a vivid lesson on how fragile democracy is, how dangerous to take it for granted, and how cruel the alternatives can be.

Will this finally be the turning or yet another wasted crisis?

(The essay continues this coming Wednesday here on the Pledge.)