he most basic contract of governance in a democracy goes something like this. The people who vote do so with the understanding that no matter what party they vote for among those wishing to govern, the voters do so as part of bargain. The trade is that if we elect you, pay your salary, and pay for the means to govern, you in turn will represent our interests, protect our rights under the law, protect our health where possible and keep us safe from those who would poison our food, our water, abuse our children or invade our homes and communities.
Unless you promised us otherwise during an election campaign, we can assume that your government will do these basic duties. That is the Democratic deal.
It follows that if after we elect you, you decide to hand over to the food industry the regulation and health standards required for our food supply safety then you must have committed a very serious breach of trust with the electorate. To start with you have created a horrendous conflict of interest, in which the food processing corporation, who never claimed their main goal was philanthropy, is forced to find a balance between profit making and the cost of food safety. We pay taxes and we already agreed to pay for the protection of our food supply. We did not ask nor expect this safety obligation to be put into the hands of the supplier. Nor did we hear any public debate on the virtue of such a decision. Nor did we vote in a referendum that would alter this tradition of government protection of the food supply.
During the election this Canadian government did not warn us that it wanted to win power to govern by means of the ballot box only in order to gradually eliminate government itself. This Conservative government must have secretly intended to use its power to make government disappear, to abdicate from Federal oversight and responsibility. It did not announce that if once elected it was determined to serve the interests of an oil Cartel, or a Food giant corporation, or the biggest Pharmacorps in the world. They did not tell voters that they intended to break and destroy the sacred contract between Democratic voters and Democratic governments.
It is not clear to me how the Minister of Agriculture can justify closing down XL MEATS when he has told the voters of this country that there is no problem. He has said that he is eating meat without concern. He has said that the consumer must be held responsible for poisoning himself. If food is burnt enough or boiled enough or radiated enough people will not get sick from it. It must surely be the same for water. Put enough chlorine in it and drink it “safely”, or avoid swimming at public beaches anywhere, or cut down all the trees and avoid power outages, or don’t drive and so avoid accidents or auto recalls.
This government is determined to get out of the way of business and is committed to helping large corporations do whatever they want to do in pursuit of profit, with a massive and reckless lunatic disregard for any other interests on this planet. This seems horribly clear to me in everything this government does, but to change this crisis we are in as a democracy the electorate will need to realize the scale of the betrayal and deception implicit in how this government thinks and operates.
