There are lessons for Canada's elites in the U.S. election

[Oscar]

There are lessons for Canada's elites in the U.S. election

[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/11/the ... s-election ]

By Murray Dobbin | November 11, 2016

Hubris: extreme pride, especially pride and ambition so great that they offend the gods and lead to one's downfall.

In the aftermath of the stunning results of the U.S. election, the mix of emotions and hard-nosed analysis spans the spectrum from feeling sorry for the irrational and politically illiterate American voter to visceral fear about the consequences of their electing a thuggish buffoon as president. But common to all reactions, I suspect, is a smugness rooted in our sense of superiority -- as if our elites are somehow more attentive to the public interest and the lives of ordinary Canadians.

Well, yes and no. Hubris doesn't appear full-blown -- it's a process. It's not as advanced in Canada but it is alive and well in Ottawa, provincial capitals and on Bay Street. But more on that in a moment.

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In the meantime, Canadians have little to be smug about. It took liberal and progressive voters 10 years to rid the country of Stephen Harper who was openly contemptuous of all democratic institutions and of the values of two-thirds of the citizens he governed. Justin Trudeau is gradually showing his true colours as was inevitable for the leader of a Bay Street party. Will he and his coterie of clever advisers look to the south and learn any lessons?

We can hope -- but if that is all we do, we will see the same conditions we face now get worse. While clearly not as grim as the U.S., features in Canadian politics and society mimic those that led to the election result in the U.S.: the largest income gap between rich and poor since the late 1920s; incomes that have been stagnant since the early 1980s; the second-highest proportion of low-wage jobs in the OECD (after the U.S.); the highest personal debt-to-income ratio in Canadian history; work-life balance statistics that demonstrate most workers effectively "have no family life"; the rewarding of unbridled corporate greed with tax rates that make us look like a banana republic; the eager handing over to corporations the power, through "trade" deals, to neutralize our ability to govern ourselves democratically; the continued loss of tens of thousands of the best industrial jobs; welfare rates that deliberately punish the poor; the cynical continuation of absolutely unconscionable conditions for hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people from coast to coast.

Canada is not the U.S. and, fortunately for our arrogant elites, we are less likely to rise up in populist anger and shake the system to its core. That's a pity because like their American counterparts, they demonstrate "pride and ambition so great that they offend the gods." But unless Canadians are equally offended and motivated to act, there will be no downfall.

Murray Dobbin has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for 40 years. He writes rabble's State of the Nation column.