GOLDSTEIN: Freeland questions whether 'capitalist democracy' still ...
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Published Aug 19, 2023 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 3 minute read
In a commencement address to graduating students at Boston’s Northwestern University in May, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the fundamental question of our time is: “Does capitalist democracy still work?”
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That, of course, raises the question of what she thinks should replace it, if she wonders if it’s still working, since dictatorships — see the collapse of the former Soviet Union — don’t exactly have a great record on capitalism or democracy.
And what does it mean in the context of a Liberal government headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who, when asked in 2013, when he was Liberal leader, what country he most admired aside from Canada, answered:
“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime and say, ‘We need to go green, we want to start investing in solar’.”
On that front, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will soon be off to China, ostensibly to make the world’s largest emitter of industrial greenhouse gases, the country that burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, an ally in the fight against climate change.
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Meanwhile, Trudeau continues to rag the puck on calling a public inquiry into foreign interference by China into our democracy, including but not limited to the last two federal elections, despite the fact all the opposition parties, the House of Commons and, according to the polls, most Canadians, want one.
Then again, the Trudeau government has always had a soft spot for China, especially on the issue of climate change, back to when then environment minister Catherine McKenna was being quoted approvingly in Chinese state media for her praise of China while visiting Beijing.
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For example, in 2018 when she said, as quoted in china.org.cn, the state-run web portal of the People’s Republic of China:
“China has been and continues to be an essential partner in the fight against climate change as a large emitter and producer, but also with its commitment to reduce emissions and its ability to scale like no other country. It is essential that we engage with China, and China is committed to climate action.”
The reality, as Chinese President Xi Jinping recently made clear, is that while his nation will pursue its climate goals “unswervingly,” as he described it, it will tolerate no foreign interference on what those goals are or how or when they will be achieved.
Which is ironic, given China’s interference in our democracy.
EDITORIAL: Here’s a better game plan — don’t meddle in foreign votes LILLEY: China looks to greenwash image using Canada and GuilbeaultOn Freeland’s questioning of whether capitalist democracy still works, she told the graduating class of Northwestern University at Fenway Park:
“That is the question being posed around kitchen tables, in my country and this one, as parents wonder if our children can count on capitalist democracy’s essential promise of a future more prosperous than our present.”
In fact, Freeland made her views about what she thinks doesn’t work in capitalist democracies in her 2014 book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, where the title alone suggests who she thinks are truly at fault for today’s failures of both capitalism and democracy.
She does make a valid point that much of what is called capitalism is in fact crony capitalism, defined by the Oxford Languages Dictionary as, “an economic system characterized by close, mutually advantageous relationships between business leaders and government officials.”
Something which many Canadians accuse the Trudeau government of today.
