Back in January, when the Harper Tories eked out their election squeaker, Canadian foreign policy wasn’t even on the radar screen, despite valiant efforts by the anti-war movement to challenge Canada’s role in the occupations of Haiti and Afghanistan. Things will be different next time. As Canadian troops die in sizeable numbers for the first time since the Korean War, foreign policy could become a key factor in blocking a Harper majority.

It’s true that the military brass, key business organizations like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the political right are pulling out all the stops, and this may have some impact. The “red rallies” to “support our troops” are a well-orchestrated campaign to whip up patriotic fervour, and every time a bomb kills civilians in Kabul, the corporate media sings the “save the Afghan civilians” tune.

The vast majority of water and wastewater systems in Canada are owned, operated and maintained within the public sector. Essential to our public health system, municipal water systems were one of the first major services to be publicly delivered in Canada. The reason why water infrastructure is overwhelmingly public is because the private sector could not be relied upon to deliver a quality service at a price that all residents could afford. It’s therefore ironic that water corporations from rich countries like our own are now trying to persuade developing countries not to develop water resources publicly but to experiment with the private sector instead. What’s more, the belief that the private sector can manage our public water resources is now gaining ground in Canadian government and policy circles.

Contrary to widespread popular mythology, “Ballistic Missile Defense” is alive and well in Canada. In fact, for many years Canada’s contribution to BMD has greatly surpassed efforts by other nations that have, at least, been honest enough to admit their participation.

So, although Canada has not joined the “Coalition of the Willing to Admit Involvement in BMD,” it has long been complicit in creating, designing, researching, developing, testing, maintaining and operating numerous crucial BMD systems. Billions of tax dollars have been spent aiding and abetting domestic war industries, government scientists and military personnel, all deeply embedded in U.S.-, NORAD- and NATO-led BMD efforts.

Faced with the undeniable reality of “Hubbard’s Peak” in global conventional oil supplies, the world’s largest multinational energy corporations are now hell-bent on squeezing oil out of tar in northern Alberta, like junkies desperately conniving for one last giant fix in a futile attempt to quench America’s insatiable “addiction to oil” (described so eloquently by President George Bush II). Along the Athabasca River near Fort McMurray, a sub-arctic town almost 1,000 kilometres north of the U.S. border, tar literally seeps out of the riverbanks where Aboriginal peoples once used it to patch their birch-bark canoes. But most of the tar sands lie hidden below northern Alberta’s boreal forest, in an area larger than the state of Florida.

In this country today a battle is being waged over Canada’s role in the world. On the one side is a powerful alliance between those who want Canadians to give up their sovereignty and integrate with the United States and those who reject a role as a peace-broker and embrace the Bush doctrine of military and economic totalitarianism. On the other side are the majority of Canadians, who steadfastly refuse to give up the idea that Canada should be an independent force for good in an increasingly unipolar and violent world.

It hardly needs saying, but it should be acknowledged in any case: The coming period is not going to be an easy one for the Left in Canada. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been settling into Ottawa for the long haul. Harper has been exercising power calculatingly, confidently, ruthlessly. The spring budget was revealing. Cheered on by business associations and the mainstream media for its sober fiscal stance, it was critiqued by hard-right neoliberals for alleged fiscal prolificacy, even as it cut over twenty taxes and continued to bring down program spending in relation to a growing economy. An image of moderation was presented, even as neoliberalism was deepened. Addressing an alleged fiscal imbalance sometime in the future was enough to gain the support of an increasingly opportunist Bloc Québocois and to get the budget through the minority Parliament.

Harold Innis died in 1952, more than a half century ago. He was never a man of the Left; in the 1930s he labeled the CCFers “hot gospellers.” Do we really have anything to learn from him now?

In the early 1980s, the auto majors reversed four decades of steady growth in wages by successfully forcing concessions out of the once-powerful United Auto Workers. That working-class defeat had not only continental, but global, ramifications. So, when Delphi, the largest parts manufacturer in North America, declared a little over two decades later (2004) that it would reduce workers’ wages by over 60 per cent, it seemed that another, even more dramatic round of concessions was about to begin. But this time a remarkable resistance emerged from below to defeat the auto majors and their strategy. This unexpected victory, combined with worker skepticism of union-negotiated concessions at GM and Ford (with Daimler-Chrysler workers expected to be even more critical), raised instead a new possibility. Could we be on the verge of a revival of the American labour movement?

Council of Canadians Chair Maude Barlow has described Stephen Harper as “the staunchest right-wing ideologue ever to occupy the Office of Prime Minister.” Not surprisingly, Harper’s dark-blue Tory cabinet looks rather like George W. Bush’s Canadian dream team, with its stamp of social conservatism and punitive predilections, as well as its enthusiasm for deep integration with the U.S., for plumping the military and for all the mantras of neoliberal policy: free trade, privatization, castrating the public sector. Here’s an unrepentantly selective profile of several key players.

From Harris to Harper

The January federal election results unexpectedly yielded a minority Conservative government. The Great Moving-To-The-Right Show is having yet another run. In Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada now has the most ideologically committed neoliberal in power since Margaret Thatcher. The five priorities Harper has announced – an accountability package, a cut in the GST, a market-based childcare system, a law-and-order agenda centred on sentencing and a reduction in health-care wait times through increased delivery flexibility – all reflect these commitments. These proposals are embedded in the overall strategic priority of aligning Canada even more tightly with the U.S. through increased overseas military commitments and further economic integration. Canada’s takeover of the NATO command in Afghanistan and increased troop deployment is already sketching in the new terrain. It could hardly be more pressing for the Left to take stock of what the Harper government is and might become.