If you were popping around here on Nexwlelexwm (Bowen Island) over the past couple of days, you might have remarked to folks that the weather seems a bit weird. We’ve had a volatile week of spring weather, with heavy rain, different kinds of winds, a front of thunderstorms and clear skies.
It is interesting to listen to people talk about the weather. The patterns are different. The air is warmer, but has a bit of a chill on the breeze. The wind is coming from different angles and the trees are moving differently. In fact southerly and westerly winds on our part of the island blow against the trees’ natural leaning direction, and yesterday on a late afternoon walk, we hear a couple fall in the forest. The thunderstorms that passed over Vancouver Island were a clue to the weirdness.
Today, in our complexity inside and out course we taught a module on pattern spotting and working with constraints. Complexity workers know that all patterns in complex situations are held by constraints. Change the constraints and the pattern changes. So weather wise, in the last couple of days we had a strange set of constraints in the upper atmosphere that resulted in a lot of convection, meaning that warm air at the surface was mixing with cold air aloft and that is what drives thunderstorms and other volatility including strange winds.
These aren’t uncommon kinds of atmospheric conditions on the coast, but they are uncommon enough that folks sense that the weather is “weird.” And its gets to the point now where I can tell you that there is a lot of convection in the atmosphere by how many people are confused by the weather pattern. Forecasting weather using a mass perception of how people make meaning of the situation is exactly how we work in complexity.
The weather is indeed strange. a few days ago I made bunch of posts on my blog “private.” I have done this once before, when people I worked with in another country were detained in part because of work we had done together. In that case the ruler of that country is a known autocrat who had survived a coup attempt and was taking it out on his enemies and anyone he thought was organizing against him.
Here in Canada we have entered into a short election campaign and although the parties have not yet released their platforms I have already decided who I am voting for, and it is a party I have never voted for in my life. This is an election between two conservative parties. One, the Conservative Party of Canada, is the legacy of the old Progressive Conservative Party which merged with the populist western-based Reform Party (and lost “progressive” from it’s name) and then lost its most lunatic fringe to the further right People’s Party of Canada. Still, they are led by the populist Pierre Poilievre who is a career political party wonk, who has made his living off of immature name calling (a la the man to the south) and slogans like “Axe the Tax” which sound good when you chant them once or twice and then they start to get boring. Plus they are just covering up terrible policy.
The other conservative party is the Liberal Party of Canada which really hasn’t changed over the past 5 decades or so. They occasionally drift to the left on social policy, and we have just come out of a period of ten years where Justin Trudeau brought a Gen X approach to social policy and swung the party left on those issues. Everyone got tired of him though and after a fall of running on fumes with a hobbled House of Commons, he stepped down at the beginning of the year and made space for a short Liberal leadership campaign. The victor was Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. He is an economist, a pension fund manager, a banker and a technocrat. His landslide leadership victory (more than 85% of the party members voted for him) instantly moved the Liberal back to their more traditional centre right position. They now have a banker in charge, with a fairly intact social conscience and a lot of experience leading government institutions and economies through rapidly changing crises. He was the BoE chair during Brexit. He knows how to play a bad hand.
One of these two men will be Prime Minister on May 1. Neither of them are true progressives; their campaigns both began with announcement of tax cuts. Carney has been prime minister for less than two weeks during which time he made a trip to Europe to shore up trading support and defence options against the unpredictable chaos coming from our south and then he came home and dropped the writ. Poilievre has continued to campaign against Justin Trudeau (who is long gone), he continues to rail against the consumer carbon tax (which Carney has effectively repealed) and he continues to promote a tax cut for the lowest tax bracket (which Carney also did, although at a lower rate and more tied to a policy decision to replace the carbon tax rebate, ANYWAY…).
Poilievre was standing 25 percentage points ahead in most polls until Carney was chosen as leader of the Liberal Party. He now sits 5 points behind Carney. The progressive conservatives who could never vote for Trudeau’s Liberals seem to have come home to the only conservative party will to occupy the centre of the political spectrum: Mark Carney’s Liberals.
So we have an election, but it is not to be one contested on progressive ideas. It will be one that will elect a party and a prime minister that can best respond to the unprecedented volatility and existential threat of this strange time. That is not the bellicose and sloganeering Conservatives. That party will be the Liberal Party of Canada. There is a lot at stake in this election and a lot of strange political weather happening now. Call it volatility in the upper atmosphere, but it is about to hail some.
I’m here in Columbus, Ohio doing my annual gig with the Physcians’ Leadership Academy. Every year I get to run a half day complexity workshop for local physicians. It’s a fun gig and gets me a chance to see friends in this region and make a stop in Toronto on the way.
Today was a weird day to cross the border though. For the past month, and especially the past weekend, the conversation that almost everybody in Canada is having is about the US tariffs that came into effect at 12:01 this morning. Blanket 25% tariffs on everything that crosses the Canada-US border. The US tariffs instantly triggered a trade war and Canada retaliated with about two thirds of a full tariff schedule which will rise to 25% retaliatory tariffs on about 1200 US products. It’s anyone’s guess whether this is a permanent state of affairs or not. The tariffs were imposed – under dubious legal authority it must be said – through a Presidential executive order which is nearly unheard of in US governance. It is usually Congress that does these things, but the President has the power to impose tariffs for national security reasons if these are the result of a declaration of a national emergency. Donald Trump made 23 pounds of fentanyl and some unknown number of migrants crossing from Canada to the US into the national emergency that has allowed him to by-pass Congress and impose tariffs, and threaten the future of our country.
So naturally in Canada, everybody has been talking about this. It is the single topic of conversation. American liquor is being romped from store shelves. “Buy Canadian” website have popped up everywhere. Premiers are talking about cutting of electricity to millions of Americans. And while we have had trade spats with the USA in the past, Trump has also signalled his intention to annex Canada, if not militarily then certainly economically. You just have to watch what he is doing to Ukraine to see what the plan is.
But the moment you cross the border, nothing. No one is talking about this. Very few people even really know about it. A few might have seen Justin Trudeau or Doug Ford on CNN today but hardly anyone has any context for what they are saying or how it might affect them.
So it’s a bit like those weather moments when it’s pouring rain on your side of the street, but your neighbours are in full sunshine, enjoying the afternoon. I don’t blame Americans for this state of affairs. Unless you follow politics closely and these kinds of things interest you, your average Ohioan is probably not giving more than a few minutes thought to this. The President is giving a State of the Union address tonight, so it’s unlikely that any of the protestations from north of the border will show up in the news cycle.
This is a feature of North American society, by the way. Americans are no more ignorant or apathetic than Canadians when it comes too politics, economics or global trade. I mean, Doug Ford got elected to a four year majority mandate in Ontario with only 19% of the electorate voting for him. There is, however, an asymmetry to this situation that leaves us booing at the US national anthem being played in our hockey and soccer arenas in response to naked threats against our sovereignty, while Americans wonder what bee got into our bonnet.
Now my friends and colleagues here know I’m Canadian, and so our conversations are sprinkled with a bit of humour and maybe some teasing back and forth, but while I love banter generally, my heart isn’t in it. The existential threat is the thing that keeps it serious. And most of my friends here are either solidly progressive or at least thoughtfully conservative and hardly anyone thinks picking a trade fight with Canada or Mexico is a good idea. Still, the words I hear most out of their mouths are “I’m so sorry.” Despite what you read on social media, most Americans are not red-hatted MAGA dupes running around yelling nonsense into the void. Life just seems to go on.
It’s just that, for us, it feels like life has changed quite profoundly. we are certainly facing a recession, we may be facing many years of recession that leaves us economically vulnerable to annexation and it’s unclear if anyone in the US or elsewhere really cares about that. I don’t know what the future holds holds for us. So we wait, because there isn’t anything else to do right now. We are in the dumbest of times and they don;t look to be getting any smarter.
If you scour the pages of LinkedIn, it won’t take long before you begin running into folks from the corporate sector who are attempting to rationalize Elon Musk‘s current approach to organizational change within the US federal government. Many of them are drawing on their experiences, or their veneration of, startup culture, and I have seen posts lately, that I’m not going to bother to link to, which talk about the principle of “move fast and break things“ being worth a shot when it comes to government. Treat it like a startup. That way you get more innovation.
It shouldn’t even require a response. But here we are.
Governments are not businesses. They don’t resemble businesses in any way. From a business perspective, the job of government is to provide a stable social substrate of policies, and predictable regulations and legislation that makes it possible for businesses to operate. On top of that government picks up the costs that businesses externalize onto society as a whole, like education and safety and health care and basic research and infrastructure.
A few blunt examples for these corporate shills.
- When companies are starting up, Society provides them with educated talent, and serviced environments in which they can establish their operations. Companies never have to pay for the investments that all of us make in an educated workforce.
- Companies largely don’t have to worry about how their employees get to work. Roads, public transportation, and a well-regulated telecommunications system provides the predictability and ease that companies require for their employees.
- When economies change or companies go bankrupt, governments are the one that care for the aftermath. Workers are paid compensation, communities who are suffering, are provided resources and local governments take on the work of creating climate for sustained economic activity.
The many functions that governments provide to communities and regions, require them to operate with a continuity of care, especially to those that are the most vulnerable and require special assistance, like children, folks who are ill or disabled, elders requiring long-term care and others. Governments take on the collective responsibilities that are beyond the scope of any of us to care for on our own, including regulating our food supply, managing, and protecting the environment, and our natural resources, ensuring that we have a stable and predictable dispute resolution systems.
It is absolutely ridiculous to me that I’ve had to repeat these points to people that should otherwise know better.
A government‘s obligations are to provide stable and predictable continuity of care to a citizens. A business’ obligations are to provide an ever-increasing return to its shareholders. In fact, many of those advocating for a startup mentality to be applied to “government efficiencies“ don’t even see the irony of the fact that a startup’s purpose is to generate nearly unlimited growth. “Move fast and break things“ is a principle used to maximize profits and expansion in the early years of a startup. And yet some folks are unironically, wanting to apply this principle to government operations, where the thing that gets broken is people and communities and where moving fast threatens the very stability upon which businesses rely. And the cost of repairing those things arenot going to be covered by shareholders.
For my whole life, and especially during the years in which I work for the public service in Canada, I have had to constantly make this argument. It is so simple to understand the differences between business and government, and yet it is those who should know better but who like to project airs of confidence and confidence who seem so willing to conflate the two. I now look upon these folks as pure charlatans.
Understand the difference. The same nonsense may be coming to Canada again too. The metaphors of managing government like a business or, God forbid, a household budget, are not only unhelpful, but they are fundamentally dangerous, and if used to guide actual policy making will result in long-term damage from which people, communities, businesses, and countries may be unable to recover.
In the past few weeks, the President of the USA has issued explicit challenges to the sovereignty of Canada, both political and economic. In response to these challenges, some of my Canadian friends who lie on the more progressive and of the political spectrum have expressed a slightly disconcerting attachment to feelings of nationalism.
I understand where they’re coming from. Over the past five days Canadians have been engaged in a nationwide conversation about what it means to be Canadian, what our country stands for, and in some cases, whether we shouldn’t just join with the United States anyway. Ironically, it’s voices on the far right, who, over the past several years, have been loudly, proclaiming that they are “defending the integrity of Canada from Justin Trudeau and the woke mob” who are now saying that perhaps we should join the United States. So for the moment, we’re going to ignore those voices in this conversation because they have nothing to offer but to sow chaos, short term, outrage, and serve the interest of those who would seek to exploit this country’s resources and markets.
Instead I think it’s important that we think about what these feelings of national defensiveness mean and how they can translate into action.
My attachment to the idea of Canada is complicated. I’m not a nationalist, but instead, I would say that I believe in the project that Indigenous nations sought to co-create when they signed the original treaties. In other words, the people whose traditional lands Canada was established upon had, in most cases, a strong curiosity and sense of what might be possible with a co-creative relationship between different peoples, who offered different gifts to one another. Despite the subsequent centuries of dishonourin the treaties from the Crown side, Canada was nevertheless founded upon a set of fundamental relationships between the Crown of England and the Indigenous nations who were recognized in 1763 as the rightful owners of these territories.
The reason for protecting Canada as a separate container of collective effort is not that we have the best public health care or proper gun laws or a well regulated banking system or a generally more progressive attachment to equality and justice. These are outcomes of the kind of things we are working on. It isn’t perfect but here in this country we are running a different experiment in living together than the US is, and I, for one, prefer it.
In its most ideal form it looks like this: Our country is a federation of two levels of government established on the basis of relationships negotiated between the Crown and First Nations governments in most places. We are a treaty country, and in places where we have not concluded treaties with First Nations, Canadian law recognizes Aboriginal title as an existing layer of jurisdiction on the land. Our governments are supported by democratic and civil institutions which , in general are set up to work for the public good.
As a treaty country, the implication I have always taken is that we have to constantly work on the relationship not only with First Nations but with each other as well. The values that we have enshrined in our Constitution are related to what’s known as Peace, Order and Good Government. Again, problematic in many ways (not the least of which is that we have discovered that it is entirely possible to build a colonial state based on these principles), but if we take these as generative principles, a Constitution that sets out the powers of the federal and provincial government focused on Peace first of all is pretty cool. Order, while seeming like the need to control things, is nevertheless a value that enshrines stability and equality and access so that what happens in the country is predictable and stable enough that people can run businesses and work together and receive services. It enshrines equality and care before the law and in our social safety net. In the early days it was often freely exchanged for Welfare, which gives you a sense of what that value could embody.
And Good Government to me means one that is free of corruption, that has integrity, that stewards the public good for the benefit of the people. As a former public servant, I always took that role very seriously. When I was out doing third part consultation on the BC Treaty Process, I was acutely aware that I was at the working coal face of democracy participation. It was my job to make spaces for voices to participate in the act of nation building and active reconciliation through treaties with First Nations who wanted to enshrine their relationship with Canada in that form. Good Governance to me meant doing that work that left good relations on the ground.
I take these values to be the aspirational directions of travel we are moving in together. We disagree about how. We violate these principles constantly. There is no easy way to do it, but if you are Canadian, you live under a Constitution that is based on these values.
I just want to say that we have done this with mixed results in Canada through our history. We have some cool things here and we have also done some truly horrible things in Canada under the laws and principles enshrined in our Constitution. But this is the project and Canada is the container that I’m interested and committed to working within.
I distrust nationalism in any guise. Even in it’s progressive forms where I can see benefits (like the way Quebec nationalism has created incredible co-operative movements, credit unions and social safety nets) there is, very close to the surface, a vein of exclusion that can press differences into otherness and foster mistrust and hate. It is easy to take what has happened over the past week and generate a pro-Canadian stance that is also anti-American and also sublimates the real challenges we need to struggle with in this country. We don’t have to do that. I am not anti-American. My American colleagues and I have common cause in the world. We don’t need to adopt any kind of nationalist rhetoric or approach to defend the best of what this Canadian project is and to keep the vultures away so we can continue the hard work of trying to fulfill the promise of this place. We need only remember what we are trying to do here, and maintain the container of shared purpose, and double down on our efforts to show what is possible.
The light is returning to the northern hemisphere and we’ve had clear skies for the last 10 days. This is a photo of the twilight with Venus seen from my house looking southwest over Apodaca Ridge. Cloud has since rolled in and a little blast of coastal winter is coming.
Republished. The post I sent out last week had broken links.
My monthly round up of interesting links. These are posted nearly daily at my Mastodon feed.
Democracy & Politics
It has been a full month of politics here in Canada and in the US that has shaken a lot of things up.
- What Could Citizens’ Assemblies Do for American Politics? | The New Yorker
Participation and democratic deliberation require time, attention, and intention. It doesn’t solve all problems, but this kind of work is essential. - Job One for 2025: Protecting Canada from US Oligarchs | The Tyee
A benchmark of the current state of US cultural and economic involvement in Canada, against which we can measure the increasingly imperialist tone of leadership in both our countries. - Danielle Smith is Undermining Canada: Former Chief Trade Negotiator | Rabble
Another piece of evidence to support my long-running contention that populists are dangerous in a crisis because they simply don’t know how to govern. - A Decent Dive into the United States’ Geopolitical Interest in Greenland and the Arctic | Channel News Asia
Trump signaling an intent to expand the US’ territory could set off a massive contest for Arctic resources. For the first time in my life, I’m worried that our neighbor to the south will actually invade this country. - Please Advise! How Dire and Disgusting Was Trump’s Day One? | The Tyee
Just bookmarking this one because it kind of captures the spirit of the day.
Climate & Environment
- We Saved the Planet Once. Can We Do It Again? | The Tyee
Charlie Angus and I are about the same age and we lived in Toronto at the same time (I remember that hot summer of 1988!). This memoir charts my own recollections too. It’s been a ride. - What Are the 2024 Salmon Returns Telling Us? | Alexandra Morton
Well, they appear to be telling us that closing salmon farms has a positive effect on returns and salmon health. Read the numbers for yourself.
Economics & Social Systems
- Milton Friedman Blaming Governments for Inflation is One of the Most Pernicious Lies of the Last Half-Century | Dougald Lamont
Lamont’s writing is new to me and absolutely compelling. A former provincial Liberal leader in Manitoba, he has a strong grasp of economics and governance. - How Communism Is Outcompeting Capitalism
It’s nice to have something to compare the grift of North Atlantic capitalism to. An article not without flaws and blind spots, but a really energetic critique.
Arts & Culture
- The Secret History of Risotto | The New Yorker
I love risotto. I love making it and eating it and learning about it, and I love a love letter written to it. - Folk Music Legend Got Short Shrift in ‘A Complete Unknown,’ But His Songs Will Live On | PennLive
A great piece that tries to rescue Pete Seeger’s legacy. Something about his portrayal in the movie didn’t sit well with me. Dylan was an artist who wrote anthems for activists. Pete was an activist who sang. Different. And we need both. - Close Reading Bad Poetry | 3 Quarks Daily
I really enjoyed this article. Learning from the worst possible outcome is a time-honored tradition.
Technology & Innovation
- I Love a Bushfix. But What’s the Future of ‘Right to Repair’?
I don’t know much about farming, so this was an interesting article that also made me realize that some of the reasons why food is expensive might have to do with farmers being bilked by their equipment manufacturers. - How to Remember Everything You Read | Justin Sung
As a person with ADHD, these kinds of videos are interesting. I’m currently actively learning two languages (Italian and jazz guitar), continuing to develop my understanding of complexity, and learning how to best teach and share it.
Indigenous Leadership & Legacy
- Bill Wilson Has Died | He was an incredible voice of leadership from the Central Coast of BC. A history maker, a guy who always spoke his mind with absolute certainty and wasn’t afraid to trigger reactions in the service of blowing a conversation about justice wide open.
- Listen to My Friend Kameron Perez-Verdia Tell the Story of His First Whale.
Books and music
Links are to publisher or artist sites where you can buy this art directly.
- The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. A beautiful novel set in 2019-2020 about a haunted book store in Minneapolis during the first year of COVID and the events following George Floyd’s murder. The book is a deep story of identity, history, language and relationship.
- The Keeper by Kelly Ervick. A graphic memoir about women’s soccer told through the eyes of a woman who comes of age in the 1980s, just as American women’s soccer bursts on to the scene.
- Benjamin Britten’s Choral Works. Nearly all of Britten’s non-carol choral music collected and performed beautifully. The choir I sing in, Carmena Bowena, is currently adding Hymn to The Virgin to our repertoire.
- Cassandra Wilson – New Moon Daughter. Her 1995 release explores multiple genres with cover songs and originals and is backed by musicians who have a wide range of fluency across multiple styles. Her voice sounds so much like Joni Mitchell’s voice from the same time. Deep and smokey and full in timbre.
- Herbie Hancock – The Piano. An album of solo piano music from 1979 recorded direct-to-disc. Showcases Hancock’s improvisational chops and his curiosity about harmony.
- Peter Hertmens Trio – Akasha. Every month I like to look for a new-to-me jazz guitarist and explore their material. This month I stumbled on the work of Belgian Peter Hertmens. Akasha is a 2018 release with organ and bass that is just a lovely collection of Hertmens’ original compositions.