The neatest thing about being a conservative is that I learn new things about myself all the time. Viz.: turns out I support military brutality. Who knew!
Prof. Huish makes two interesting points; I’ll respond here (and, hopefully, at The Mark) next week.
My Honduras post has been republished at The Mark.
If the Canadian and other world governments had been as thoughtful in approaching the situation in Honduras as they have been hasty in casting judgment upon it, we wouldn’t be in the midst of a terrible foreign-policy blunder. But here we are. How did we get here?
The events leading up to the present crisis are largely undisputed. Manuel Zelaya became president in 2006, elected to a single four-year term ending in January 2010. The Honduran Constitution barred Zelaya from running for re-election, and as his term neared an end he sought to overcome the constitutional bar by amending the Constitution. But the Constitution prohibits amendment of the presidential term limit; so Zelaya sought to organize a constitutional convention that would re-write the rules. But the Constitution also prevented the president from calling such a convention, giving that power to the Congress. And the Congress said no.
Undeterred, Zelaya announced that he would go ahead with a referendum on the question of the term limit, and ordered ballots from Venezuela. The matter proceeded to the Supreme Court, which declared the referendum illegal. Zelaya demanded that the army assist him in administering the referendum (as they would, apparently, in the normal course of things); the army’s commanding officer refused, citing the Supreme Court’s decision; and Zelaya promptly fired him. When the Supreme Court ordered his reinstatement, Zelaya either refused or immediately fired him again.
The army, having refused to administer the referendum, seized the ballots that had been delivered from Venezuela. Zelaya then organized a mob and broke into the military installation where the ballots were held, seized them, and began to distribute them.
This is where things get a bit hazy. The army arrested Zelaya at his home. It is unclear whether they acted at the express order of Congress or the Supreme Court; what is clear, however, is that they acted with the approval of both. It is also unclear whether Zelaya chose to leave the country rather than face justice in Honduras. In any case, as soon as he was deposed, the Congress initiated proceedings, under the Constitution, to ensure the succession of power. An interim president was chosen to preside until the regularly scheduled elections choose a new leader this fall. Zelaya’s ouster has popular support, including the support of Zelaya’s own party in Congress. And at no time has the Honduran military attempted to seize any political power.
Yet almost immediately upon Zelaya’s removal, world governments — including the Canadian and American governments — leapt to Zelaya’s defense, condemning his removal as a “coup” and warning against the intervention of the Honduran military in domestic political affairs.
This is a mistake. The confrontation between the three branches of the Honduran Republic is a Honduran constitutional crisis, and it is up to Honduras to settle the matter. And that is what they have done. There is no question, and it cannot reasonably be doubted, that Zelaya broke the law – not only in pursuing his referendum in the face of the Supreme Court’s decision, but in refusing to reinstall the army commander and in seizing the referendum ballots from the military. The other branches were entirely within their rights – their rights under the Honduran constitution, and their inalienable rights as adjudged by a candid world – to order Zelaya’s arrest.
Now it may be, as some have suggested, that the precise mechanism by which Zelaya was arrested and removed from office was extra-constitutional. I’d have thought that the Supreme Court of Honduras would be the arbiter of that; or that at the least the people of Honduras, not the presidents of Venezuela, Cuba, and the United States, should be the ones to decide. But if the removal was extra-constitutional, Zelaya’s restoration is not the remedy. Indeed, having so clearly broken the law, Zelaya — if he is dissatisfied with exile — should face prosecution in Honduras.
Instead, world governments have refused to recognize the duly constituted government of Honduras and have demanded Zelaya’s restoration. Why?
I’ve heard various explanations, none of them compelling. It has been suggested — and I’m given to understand that this is the prevailing attitude at PMO and DFAIT — that Zelaya is the democratically elected president, and that he should remain in that position until a new president is elected in the fall. And it has been suggested that approval of the ouster would encourage a return to the military coups that were common in Central and South America in the twentieth century.
These explanations suffer a common fault: they are based on superficial assumptions about the state of democracy in Honduras, and in Latin America more generally. The explanations are related: we ought to support the democratically elected president as against the military, the thinking goes, because the president is a tribune of the people while the army is a reactionary force that would subvert democracy.
But in fact the exact opposite is true: there is absolutely no sign, hint, or indication that the Honduran military seeks political power, while Zelaya has openly sought to expand his political power beyond the bounds of the constitution in defiance of the laws of the land and the dictates of the political and judicial branches. Nor does the point hold more broadly: while military coups posed a great threat to Latin American democracy in the middle years of the twentieth century, the greater threat in the past two decades has come from elected presidents — elected presidents who use quasi-constitutional mechanisms like “non-binding plebiscites” to accrete power from the other branches, gradually eroding constitutional checks and balances to the point that once-functioning democracies like Venezuela have become the fiefdoms of megalomaniac despots like the “democratically elected” Hugo Chavez. The knee-jerk preference for a democratically elected president over the military may be laudable in the abstract but it is faulty in practice.
And that’s the great risk of our meddling — for meddling is what it is, and make no mistake. The risk — aside from our betrayal of the Honduran people in the moment of their triumph — is that Zelaya, once returned, will succeed in subverting the constitution and installing himself as president for another term. Backed by the threat of a Venezuelan invasion, and with the tacit approval of the United States and the United Nations, he certainly would be a fool not to try. And then what?
Zelaya says he has no intention of serving another term as president. The proof will be in the pudding. By rights he should be in prison. Thanks to the hasty and ill-advised meddling of the Canadian, American, and other world governments, he may return to office until year’s end. In January he will either stay or go. If he goes, then his temporary ouster will at least have put a stop to his illegal schemes.
If he stays, then we will have been complicit in the installation of a despot.
… but in the admitted hope of blowing your mind:
Justice Thomas, in particular, remained willing to front new theories on critical questions, often writing only for himself, as in NAMUDNO. No other member of the Court is so independent in his thinking. The irony of course is that there remains a public perception, rooted in ignorance, that he is the handmaiden of other conservative Justices, particularly Justice Scalia. I disagree profoundly with Justice Thomas’s views on many questions, but if you believe that Supreme Court decisionmaking should be a contest of ideas rather than power, so that the measure of a Justice’s greatness is his contribution of new and thoughtful perspectives that enlarge the debate, then Justice Thomas is now our greatest Justice.
THE CANADIAN PRESS – RANKIN INLET, Nunavut — Governor General Michaëlle Jean, on the first day of her trip to the Arctic, gutted a freshly slaughtered seal, pulled out its raw heart — and ate it.
And yes, there’s a picture.
President Obama and former Vice President Cheney both gave speeches today on the same topic: America’s response to terrorism. The two speeches—whose back-to-back timing was apparently coincidental—constitute a rare and important thing: a thoughtful, lengthy, and well-articulated statement of two contrasting policy approaches to one of the major issues of our time. Others have focused on the political aspect; I think it’s much more productive to read the speeches with an eye not towards the political party the speaker represents but towards the assumptions and ideas—political, philosophical, practical, and moral—that underlie each approach.
Here are President Obama’s remarks, delivered at the National Archives.
Here are Vice President Cheney’s remarks, delivered at the American Enterprise Institute.
Both speeches are long, but I think both are more than worth the time to read and digest. I think the two speeches illustrate an important, perhaps a fundamental philosophical difference between the current administration and its predecessor. I can’t say much more than that right now, but I’ll revisit the issue in due time.
BONUS: If you’re not speeched-out, I also heartily recommend President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame University. The President’s words about the presumption of good faith may sound familiar to longtime readers. His words about doubt should sound familiar to fans of John Milton.
[Note: This article first appeared at The Mark, Canada's daily online forum for news and opinion.]
The big news in the expatriate community is a recent change to the Citizenship Act under which children born to Canadians abroad are only entitled to citizenship if at least one of the parents was born inside Canada. In other words, Canadian citizenship now only passes for one generation outside the country.
The change has its merits and demerits; I’ve explored some of them on my blog. But whatever the merits of the amendment, you can’t change the definition of Canadian citizenship without changing what it means to be Canadian. Or can you?
I’m a Canadian citizen, though I currently live in the United States. But because I was born overseas, any kids I have during my stay in the States won’t be Canadian citizens. Having kids right now is a purely speculative notion (to my mother’s chagrin), but the idea that my hypothetical kids wouldn’t be Canadian has got me thinking about what being Canadian means.
Living in the United States, I think about being Canadian a lot. Maybe it’s just me; maybe it’s an expatriate thing. Either way, living here has undoubtedly increased my sense of Canadian identity. Part of it is linguistic. (I once had to spell out the word “produce” before a midwestern friend could understand what I wanted at the grocery store.) Part is cultural: for all our self-congratulation, Canada is remarkably racially homogenous (at 86% white) compared to the United States (75%). Part is geographic: we complain about the frost in October, but I tell you in all honesty that I miss it. (Not too much.)
Most of all, Canada is where I come from. It’s part of me in a thousand different ways, some obvious, some not, but all contributing to who I am. I want to pass that on. I want to say to my children: your ancestors lived on the land from time immemorial; your ancestors crossed the seas; your ancestors fought one another, and then made their peace; your ancestors confronted a land that cannot be tamed, and learned to live with it (and off it); your ancestors went to war, time and again, to fight for freedom and justice, not always without honest reservation; your ancestors persecuted one another, felt shame, begged forgiveness, and forgave; your ancestors stood tall, lived honest lives, held out a helping hand, said please and thank you. I want to say to my children: you have the spirit of the north inside of you. I want to say to them: you are Canadian.
Can I say that, if my children aren’t citizens? If they never vote, or expect to vote, or pay tax? If they pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America? Can my kids be Canadian, even if they aren’t Canadian citizens?
Why not? Tying Canadian identity to Canadian citizenship reduces Canada to a mere political entity, to a government. But it’s more than that; it’s a nation, with a national history, a national culture, national past-times, national quirks, national shames and national triumphs. Surely there’s more to being Canadian than having a passport. Surely being Canadian is being a product of all of the experiences of all of the Canadians who have come before.
The recent change to the Citizenship Act seems to have been drafted on the assumption that, for many Canadians living abroad, identity and citizenship are the same. That’s probably true: those who don’t identify as Canadian won’t bemoan the loss of citizenship; those who do will take the steps necessary to pass citizenship along. But I suspect there’s a third group: those who want to pass along Canadian identity without passing along citizenship. If I’m right, tightening the citizenship rules might result, somewhat paradoxically, in the growth of a new sort of Canadian diaspora, connected culturally and emotionally to the motherland even while connected politically and socially to countries around the world.
That’s what I’ve been telling myself, anyway: I’m not Canadian because I’m a citizen, I’m just Canadian, and it follows that my kids don’t have to be citizens to be Canadian as well.
But, for all that, I’d still rather they were.
I’m swamped with work at the moment and haven’t had a chance to do any real (non-work) writing, but yesterday’s BC election–and particularly the rejectiond of a single-transferable vote system of quasi-proportional representation–has me thinking. I must confess to not having followed the BC (or earlier BC and Ontario) PR debates closely with respect to the particular systems proposed. But insofar as Paul Wells is right that one major obstacle to reform was the complicated nature of the proposed system, I have a proposal for an incremental reform that (I believe) satisfies the major concern of the pro-PR crowd while maintaining the most visible element of the status-quo.
The proposal is simply to adopt a single transferable ballot within each riding. Representatives (whether MPs or MPPs or what have you) will still be apportioned according to population within contiguous geographic bounds–i.e. ridings–but each voter within that riding will be able to indicate a second and even third ‘choice’ on their ballot. If no candidate receives a majority of votes within the riding based on first preferences, candidates receiving votes below a certain threshold will be disqualified and ‘their’ ballots recast according to those voters’ second preference. If there is still no majority winner, the process repeats until there is.
Having a single transferable vote system within ridings would–unless my math is wrong–eliminate the main objection to the First Past the Post System, namely its propensity in multi-party democracies to grant majority power to a party winning only a plurality of votes. If a government is formed by the party winning a majority of seats, and if each seat is held by a candidate who has ultimately received a majority of votes (whether first-preference or first-through-third preference), then a majority government will enjoy the electoral support of a majority of voters (assuming ridings are equal or roughly equal in population–and I’d be all for ensuring that this is, and continues to be, the case).
It’s not PR, by any means; but I happen to be one of the neanderthals who things that in a broad and diverse nation, expressions of geographic interest play an important role. In any case, it strikes me as being an incremental improvement that gets us closer to a truly proportional system of representation without scrapping the existing system entirely.
Thoughts?
Mr. Galloway received a preliminary notice of determination by the Canadian Border Services Agency that he might be inadmissible to Canada, I gather based in large part on his public admission that he provided funds to Hamas, a banned illegal terrorist organization, which would seem–on the face of it–to constitute grounds for inadmissibility under Section 34(1)f of the Immigration Refugee Protection Act.
Okay. Here’s my question: what is a preliminary notice of determination by the Canadian Border Security Agency? The Canada Immigration and Refugee Protection Act doesn’t mention preliminary notices. Neither do the regulations promulgated under the act. In fact the phrase “preliminary notice of determination” doesn’t appear on the Immigration Canada website.
So when Minister Kenney says, matter-of-factly, that Galloway “received a preliminary notice of determination by the Canadian Border Services Agency that he might be inadmissible to Canada,” I have to ask: what the heck is that? Neither the statutes nor the regulations provide for a pre-application determination of admissibility. Does the ministry regularly evaluate potential applicants? If so, under what circumstances? Terry Glavin has suggested that Galloway’s parliamentary staff contacted the Canadian High Commission regarding his speaking tour, and that the “preliminary notice” was written in response. That may be so; but is there any other documented instance of a potential applicant receiving a “preliminary notice of determination” in response to such an inquiry?
I should mention again that I don’t think Kenney did anything wrong here; indeed, I think that’s true even if the “preliminary notice” was sent on his instruction. But if that turns out to have been the case, it raises interesting and important questions about a minister’s ability to keep aliens out of Canada. As I argued last month, use of the “preliminary notice” effectively forecloses judicial review of that interesting and important question. In light of the judiciary’s over-reaching in other areas, I can understand why that may be politically desirable. But at the very least it’s worth noting.
Finally, notwithstanding my curiosity, at the end of the day I agree with Kenney on the fundamental point: Galloway was never refused entry to Canada, because he never sought it. Had he sought it, he could have pursued an appeal in the courts. I think the Federal Court erred in allowing his preliminary injunction suit to proceed; but the fact that Galloway didn’t actually seek entry demonstrates, to me, that for Galloway the goal was never access. It was publicity.
[Note: I have to tread lightly here, so forgive me if this is a little opaque.]
The Federal Court issued an opinion today ordering the Canadian government to request Omar Khadr’s repatriation from Guantanamo Bay. Two thoughts:
First, the opinion’s logic strikes me as flawed. The fundamental holding is that Khadr’s Section 7 Charter rights have been violated because (a) he has been detained at Guantanamo Bay as a ‘child’ and (b) while at Guantanamo Bay he has been subjected to sleep deprivation prior to interrogation. These alleged acts violate Khadr’s Canadian constitutional rights, notwithstanding the fact that they occurred outside of Canada and at the hands of non-Canadians, because Canadian government officials were complicit by virtue of their interrogation of Khadr in these circumstances. The court concludes that the only plausible remedy is an order compelling the government to exercise its heretofore-prerogative power to request Khadr’s return.
I don’t think the court’s logic follows. Khadr’s claim (as I read it) is not that the government must request his repatriation because his Section 7 rights have been violated; his claim is that the government’s failure to request his repatriation itself violates his Section 7 rights. The court blurs the distinction, but it’s an important one. If the rights identified by the court—detention while a child and sleep-deprivation—were violated, they were violated some time in the past. Khadr is no longer a child, and the allegations regarding sleep-deprivation relate to events occurring between 2002 and 2004. Given that these violations occurred in the past, how does repatriation now—when the violations are not alleged to continue—remedy the wrong? That doesn’t mean there should be no remedy at all; if the Canadian government was complicit in the violation of these rights, it seems to me the appropriate remedy is an action for money damages against the Canadian government. But I don’t think it follows that because Khadr’s rights were violated in the past, but are not being violated now, the Constitution requires the Canadian government to demand his return as a means of remedying the past wrong.
The second thought is a more general one. The court explicitly acknowledges that it is infringing on what is traditionally a prerogative power of the executive branch. Indeed, it can cite to no other case—anywhere in the world—that has infringed on this power in this way. The result is to mandate the appropriate exercise of this consular power; that is, the court’s decision erases any discretion the government has traditionally had, and declares that only one possible choice among the universe of policy choices in this circumstance is constitutional.
We seem to be seeing a lot of that these days—attempts to mandate a particular policy choice by determining that alternative policy choices are unconstitutional. But by mandating a particular policy choice, the deciding court places that choice outside the realm of politics, thereby foreclosing debate and discussion. That’s bad for democracy. There are good, honest arguments on both sides of the repatriation debate. Both sides should have the opportunity, and ability, to affect government policy. And if government policy ultimately strays from popular opinion on a particular choice, the people have an opportunity to alter that policy—at the ballot.
There is a great temptation, always, to declare an opposing policy alternative to be so wrong, so immoral, so contrary to received notions of good government, that it cannot be tolerated by law. But when we succumb to that temptation, we constrict the realm of politics, restrict our collective ability to make policy choices, and reduce the involvement of the electorate in the process of governance. That’s not my idea of democracy.
