The media of today are simply slews of tabloids, scuttling and scrambling to find what interests the public and what is most embarrassing is what they think of the populace: as pedestrian gossip girls. A simple-minded and shallow evaluation reveals that perhaps the populace desires bliss in ignorance, preferring to ignore problems and willing them away rather than dealing with them and proceeding with societal progression and rather fearfully clinging onto stagnant, festering regression.

To say the least, the “honourable” Minister of the Environment: Peter Kent, is a square peg placed atop the triangular symbol of the Canadian Environment. A former member of the MEDIA, most likely doling tabloid articles promoting corporate bigotry, I do not see where his appointment to the position of Environment Minister does anybody justice.

It’s funny because the Conservatives support neo-liberal (LEFT politics) policies which give corporations of the private sector more power: how is that democratic? Did the people vote for those companies? No.

But Harper even had the gall to announce intentions of legalising corporate funding of election campaigns: something so obviously stacked in his favour.

Allowing corporations more power does not make government more efficient at all; it makes the government weaker than they already are, vulnerable to corporate walk-out threats that is a powerful card to play when the jobs of many Canadians are on the line. A card where the company does not take responsibility for but spotlights the government for “forcing their hand” by humbly and simply requiring stricter emissions/waste regulations or even paying reparations for damages to people affected by those companies polluting.

More power to these corporations, acting upon the greed of CEOs and investors take no heed or account for what their hefty bonuses they allocate to themselves will do to those working. Recent strikes by various unions and the workers they represent in Occupy Movements sweeping across the globe are indicative of what a corporate dominated world (especially by transnational corporations and organisations that represent them (EXAMPLE: the International Monetary Fund is practically a legal LOAN SHARK)) is doing.

Capitalism is currently the dominant system in the present world we live in. The weird thing is the intensity of commodification, of even labour! Capitalism depends on consumerism, hence the presence of manufactured obsolescence and holidays centered on buying.

The most ironic thing is that there is a 1%. It is observed that 1% of the world’s human population holds the most wealth; that leaves the other 99% pretty much impoverished and without money to consume leaving the capitalist economy to go stale. As we see now: no one is investing because their money all fed into the rich, no one is buying because they have been bled out of their money. The rich cannot possibly shop enough for the rest of the human population and thus, we are at our current impasse. What has happened to the valiant virtues of Robin Hood? (In today’s society, he would’ve already been detained, stigmatised by the media, and assassinated (akin to being bound, gagged, and executed)).

I’ve digressed. Peter Kent, a former member of the pedestrian tabloids (for all intensive terms— piranhas trained by the conservatives), was appointed by Harper to seat as the Minister of the Environment. It’d be more ironic if he was an accountant from oil-rich Alberta, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Constantly, Kent avoids questions aimed towards his grasp of the environmental processes (some corporate-sympathisers say it is the job of his advisors to be knowledgeable) by deploying tactics deemed rhetorical fallacies such as personal attacks (ad hominem) rather than addressing the topic at hand. They appeal to the false needs of the Canadian populace to form a bandwagon of American consumerism. When Peter Kent’s literacy on the environment was called into question (multiple times), he responded by begging the question in a ploy to will it away (ineffectively, might I add; simply presenting the image of a political buffoon).

The Tories often employ red-herrings, fallacies which mislead and change topics. Many of these fallacies are exemplified by the Conservatives and friends of Harper, such as the obesely imprudent and insulting flabberings of Rob Ford, Toronto’s most embarrassing and rude Mayor (blatant disregard for public safety while he drove while on his cell phone, advocacy of immigrant restrictions, and his many budget cuts to public services—not to mention his brother’s flaunting of illiteracy) since Mel Lastman and his joke about the homeless (where the social welfares of Metro Toronto cleaned the streets of his North Toronto— the next day, a homeless woman died). Toronto is becoming an increasingly expensive place to live, probably to deter prospective immigrants and those below the poverty line, destroying their ability to remain. It’s a subtle yet glaring subversion and is highly concerning: is racism returning? Referring to the ban of shark fin soup, I am wholly supportive of the ban BUT the sudden unleashing of racist sentiments against the Chinese community is concerning. The ban is already set on a date, why would someone, under the false guise of an environmental organisation (in which I scoff at), issue such a genocidal threat to poison Chinatown (conversely: factory farms, puppy mills, zoos, marine theme parks, slaughterhouses, and race tracks aren’t targets of such intense hatred for treating animals as mechanical parts, torturing them physically and mentally)? Are all these perhaps proliferated by commodity capitalism’s exploitation of the general populace? A divide and conquer tactic?

It is evident that they use scare tactics to gain public support even though the Harper government wants to repeal gun regulations even with bullet holes still lodged in the walls of Canadian schools (metaphorically speaking, St Pius X High School in Ottawa and L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal—a scene of misogynous massacre of many women by a deranged individual who happened to obtain lethal firearms).

The Harper Conservatives also frequently deploy methods of grandstanding and party-whipped commotion to drown out and turn the arguments of the opposition to collapsible straw— tactics often used by vicious reporters and morally deficient lawyers. The walking, talking placards of corporate blue also dredge up past party mistakes and turn those into gross generalisations of the parties now, obviously implying that Canada is rife with stale, stagnant beliefs. They should instead turn that arrow upon themselves, and their supporters who desperately cling to the rancid feet of corporate indentured politics. Canada should not be ruled by past legacies of discrimination and exploitation of classes and races.

Even now, with the Attawapiskat crisis shedding light on the shady informal dealings between the government and an assigned third-party management, it is clear that the Harper Conservatives seek to maintain the legacy of John A. MacDonald’s residential schools and assimilation (destruction of culture and traditions of living; essentially genocide— literal at one point when the British Army destroyed villages and even gifted blankets laced with smallpox). It is said that Conservatives enjoy slow change and reform but from what I and many other people are seeing today is a regression to barbaric times. Even in Nunavut, a pseudo-Israel for the Inuit peoples, wields no powers in their sovereignty and are only given mere consultation sessions on what a company or the government is going to do to their territory and is basically just a notification of, “Hey, I’m going to just let large radioactive waste transports pass through your backyard. Just so know. –insert picture of misleading smiling child here-”

There terrible thing is, the government’s active negligence and precipitation of the detrimental conditions of the First Nation’s communities (especially the Reserves) is having vast negative effects which are deteriorating and dismantling their once structured society. After much uprooting and indignant settlements of outrageous proportions (some contracts not respected at all, which is legal since they are legally binding), mental, physical, and physiological stressed have taken their toll on First Nation’s communities, marginalised by mainstream Canada. The government’s continued negligence (from by-standing while discrimination escalates) of the situation proliferates rates of suicides, alcohol and drug abuse, and violence (a glaring problem the government wishes to watch unfold— a war attrition; waiting to see how long their way of life can last). Canada: A “multicultural” country which relegates the variant cultures of indigenous and immigrant to mere segregated themed cuisines and décor— avenues of consumption and exploitation; the label of ‘multicultural’ is used as a façade to bolster Canada’s international acclaim to values only entwined in a mask (where are programs of equalisation between women and men, “majority” and minority? If the government of Canada is a representational democracy, where are the indigenous and the various “multicultural” representatives?).

I find it ironic in a capitalist society which boasts “private property” and the legal rights— they seem to only guard the interests of wealthy corporations, even going so far as to allow them to pollute neighbourhoods they set their operations up in. What’s worse is that they somehow win in these legal battles and cost our governments millions of dollars and even resulting in regulations being loosened to the detriment of the populace and entire communities.

In closing, Peter Kent is a miserable excuse for an Environment Minister if he agrees with the policies of Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty (since Harper came into power, the budget for Environment Canada has dropped significantly). For him to have the gall to employ dirty politics and taunt the ire and rage of the other parties is tantamount to the trivial and idiotic politics of school yard infantile disputes. To go so far as to call into question NDP environment critic, Leslie’s concern for the environment—full knowing that HE was the one who assisted in barring opposition party participation in the Canadian delegation to Durban, Africa, for Kyoto Protocol renewal (only Elisabeth May of the Green Party sponsored herself and with accreditation by a non-governmental organisation) — is an abhorring display of power abuse. The political consequences of Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto agreements to reduce emissions is absolutely damning: many nations will feel that the U.S. and Canada are seeking to abstain so as to promote their economies (in sought-after international hegemony and glory) and so will follow, all knowing the damages climate change will wreak. This is the intense indignation felt by the opposition parties, leading the suave French musketeer, Justin Trudeau, to utter an explosive expletive in great frustration with the pompous baiting and boasting of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Government of Canada.

Officially, Harper’s Conservative Government has turned Canada into a world-renowned failure upon the international scene. For the Environment Minister, Peter Kent to even utter that the Kyoto Protocol was an “impediment” to ameliorating and mitigating the process of climate change is absolutely unacceptable. Especially when he provides no alternate solution, signalling the obvious: he is a simple puppet—an arm of the Finance Minister even— of Harper’s Conservative corporate-loving government. One which puts the pockets of wealthy CEOs over that of the withering 99%— a withering outmatched by that of the quickly declining health of the environment and all who inhabit it (humans included, all classes and cultures). When Japan, China, and France all declare that Conservative Canada’s secession from the Kyoto Protocol agreements is a horrendous display, Canada becomes the international communities’ public enemy number one.

Why? Because this single action declares that Canada does not care about the flooding in South America, the droughts and subsequent famine in Africa, or that many regions along the equator will become uninhabitable. It shows that Canadians put their trust and support in a government that is selfish and backwards; becoming a generalisation that a majority of Canadians are greedy and self-absorbed. Those who do not or cannot vote are not being represented in Canada and therefore it skews the appearance of support in election data. The West preaches democracy as if it were a divine god-sent, but there is so much room for corruption if reforms are not made to stop it. As a Canadian and Torontonian, I am embarrassed to be represented by Rob Ford and Harper: two individuals who support ignorance (for those who cannot pay), racial segregation, corporate dominance over welfare and unions (basically the 99%), and inequality (with predominance of self over others: meaning corporate money over climate stability for all).