Volume XIV, Number 1, January 1996
The Western Separatist
Papers are published monthly by W.S.P. Ltd.
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The problems with the educational system in Canada and the United States have been well documented in books such as Andrew Nikiforuk's "School's Out — The Catastrophe in Public Education and What We Can Do About It," (MacFarlane Walter & Ross, Toronto, 1993) and "If Learning is so Natural, Why am I going to School?" (Penguin Books, 1994) Nikiforuk used to be the education writer for the Globe and Mail newspaper. In his books, he argues that "our schools have become a costly, bureaucratically dominated daycare system producing kids who can't add, write, or think." His books are guides for parents, to help them do something about this situation. He maintains that more than ever, parents need to take an active role in finding and safeguarding a good education for their children.
It is trite to say that children are the future, and how well they are prepared to take over the future makes a big difference to the quality of it.
John Taylor Gatto is an American educator who taught for 25 years in the New York school system and on the eve of winning the "Teacher of the Year" award, quit the system, providing in his award acceptance speech, an extraordinary critique of schooling by the public school system. With the publication of his book "Dumbing us Down" he has become guru to the home-schooling movement in North America, travelling and speaking throughout the continent. He recently spoke at the University of Victoria.
His speech provided a lot of hope for our future, while shaking up many premises about the way things have operated in that past.
School, as it has been known to us in those rosy delusions of "the best years of one's life" is actually a big business that is currently failing, and its breakdown holds much promise for change.
Gatto spoke of the advent of the public school system and how it was created specifically to ensure an easily manipulated populace, a willing bureaucracy, an acquiescent labour force, and malliable consumers. This occurs because whereas education must necessarily be an individual thing, the school system of needs must force its subjects to conform, simply because it's dealing with such a large number. It must treat them as if they were plastic or empty in order to cram them through the system and out the other end. The trouble is that the product that is coming out the other end is less productive and useful to the real growth of culture, the economy and other facets of our lives. At the root of this is that the system cannot serve two masters, both the interests of the individual child and the state.
Gatto hit right at the ennui and violence-producing aimlessness endemic in today's youth with the statement that "they're starved for a reason to get up in the morning." The school system ensures that there is no reason to children's lives by isolating them from what is meaningful in life, from all the generations but their peers, taking them away from community-based learning that was once so effective, by creating the mentality that learning is by permission of their teachers, dependent upon an authority outside their own beings, and alienates them from themselves.
As he put it, "People who wait for the teacher to tell them what to do, end up doing what the teacher teachers them to do." For "teacher" substitute "government" or "media" or any other "authority." This ends up being "dumbness"....and who finds this widespread dumbness useful? Governments do, so that they can predict and control the citizenry; special interest groups do, so they can predict and manipulate their constituencies of support; big business does because it can predict the choices of its consumers.
It's all very convenient, but it doesn't add up to strong, creative, productive individuals, alive with the possibility of new ideas, and the vision of each being a complete human being. There are signs here and there that we are desperately trying to hold onto the concept of being truly human, yet it eludes us.
There has been a massive failure of the synthetic institutions created to replace the family, which was in a large part destroyed by compulsory public schooling. Children have been cut away from the natural sources of their strength, only to founder upon the failure of its replacement.
The education system is in terrible trouble in Canada; why is this a positive thing? B.C. Minister of Education Art Charbonneau brought Gatto's appearance in B.C. onto the pages of the newspapers by referring to Gatto's criticism of the government's decision to consolidate school districts as "drivel". Gatto was pointing out that whenever the government has made ushc decisions, it has only taken the power over and responsibility for education even further away from the people in the system, and saving money might happen, but only at the expense of education. He cited historical examples for this statement.
Everywhere the education business is almost bankrupt, yet the alternatives are alive and growing in power daily as the established system loses its stranglehold on the individual. This alternatives are schools closely tied to the parents and the home, either such things as Charter schools, or community schools, or the real unseen tide in the movement to find real education, home schools. This movement is bringing learning back to the control of the individual child.
Statistics to support the effectiveness of home learning are often suppressed, because they are so embarrassing to the government's system. But even more dangerous to the government's position, to the state's precarious status quo, is the fact that home education is producing a group of people who can think for themselves and take responsibility for their own minds and actions. They aren't likely to be satisfied with the thought control and choice control that has been the norm for their parents generation. These are the leaders of tomorrow and they are being educated outside the system.
They have access to educational resources unheard-of in any previous generation, for example the Internet. More importantly, they value education for its necessity to their lives, not just because they have been corralled, powerless, into a system that then takes over for their own will. What more positive thing can there be? These people will not just accept the rote catechism foisted upon them by the state, that what has existed should exist, that premises cannot be questioned, that authority must be necessarily superior and always automatically obeyed. Change will be possible for this generation.
Yet another Canadian institution is poised on the brink of collapse, an institution that has been the bulwark of creating a willing, apathetic populace. It's another sign that Canada is nearing its demise, and new possibilities could emerge.
In an interesting aside to the speech, Gatto remarked that he had sent the Quebec separatists $50 to help their campaign but should have sent them $100! It was obvious that shook up a few more premises in the audience.
"Teach freedom" is not likely a motto found in any public school in Western Canada. With home learning and other alternatives, it has a chance.
Keltie Zubko
To the Editor:
During the debate leading up to the Quebec referendum and based on some comments in parliament by Preston Manning, Trevor Lautens of the Vancouver Sun exulted that the West is "in". This declaration refers to the original Reform platform whereby a Triple E Senate and referendum, initiative and recall would see the West demand its way "in" to Canada. Reform has since surrendered every one of those "demands."
We are now told that Quebec is to be awarded distinct society status and given a constitutional veto. Ontario is to be given a constitutional veto as well. As regions — not provinces — the Maritimes and the West are awarded veto power.
In short, the rep-by-pop supremacy of Central Canada is to continue undisturbed. As western patriot Doug Christie has always pointed out, if rep-by-pop is good enough for them, it is good enough for us too. The West will either continue to surrender or it will separate.
No, Trevor, the West is not now "in"; it never was "in" and it never will be "in". For our region, independence is necessary. Free the West.
Mike Walsh
Vancouver, B.C.
To the Editor:
I was just thinking about Canada and what is likely to happen in the next few years. First, Quebec is as good as gone; it has gone too far to turn around, I think. That means only the English-speaking provinces left in Canada.
Now here's the game plan: We need B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Yukon and N.W.T. as a Western Canadian republic.
Do you realize how wealthy the Western Canadian republic would be?
We've got the best timber in the world, the oil sands and natural gas, West coast fishing, the best farming in the world, potash from Saskatchewan, the port of Churchill in Manitoba, the west coast ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, mines and minerals galore in B.C. and N.W.T.
Just think how fast we could crawl out of debt and run our own show!
We would scare the hell out of Ont. Bay Street boys, which would be good riddance. Let Ontario and the Atlantic provinces form another republic or join the states if they want. I think we should look after No. 1, which happens to be us. It's time for a shake-up.
Ted Krause
Edmonton, Alberta
To the Editor:
I am very concerned about the Chretien government. He is certainly showing his true colors and like the rest of the Quebecers, he is more loyal to France than he is to Canada. I think he should be asked to resign.
Once again, Quebec gets everything and B.C. and some other provinces, nothing. This "distinct society" for Quebec has my blood just boiling. Could we not start a movement for B.C. to separate. I feel sure we could survive on our own. I am fed up with multiculturalism also.
Mary Heard
White Rock, B.C.
The Western Separatist Papers welcomes your letters to the editor. They should pertain to Western Canadian issues, and be short, due to our space limitations. Please send them to the Editor, WSP, P.O. Box 40153, Victoria, B.C. V8W 3N3, or by e-mail to wcc@ftcnet.com .
by Bill Stavdal
This article appeared in the Victoria Times-Colonist of January 3, 1996. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.)
A letter writer proposes a special tax to save the CBC (TC Dec. 23). I have news for him. All of us have been paying a CBC levy for years, in the form of its billion-dollar annual subsidy. We should be asking not "How much more?", but "Why?"
The CBC was created in 1936 with a mandate to foster national unity. It was a time when Johnny Canuck was deemed to be in short pants, needing guidance and protection to help him grow up. Thus the National Film Board (1939), the Canada Council (1957), Telefilm Canada (1967), and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (1968, but originating much earlier).
These are but a few of the national training wheels strapped on for us. Since then we have shed Trains Canada Airlines/Air Canada and survived. The CNR and Petro-Canada are being sold off without national crisis.
The nature of the CBC makes it a special case. Because it is largely freed from market forces it has become the natural home of those who favor government intervention (translation: throw money at any problem, whether actual or perceived).
I would argue that some hallmarks of CBC public affairs coverage are preoccupation with affairs in Ontario and Quebec, support for government social programs, an amazing concern over AIDS, sympathy for native Indian insurrections, suspicion of big business, and above all, anti-Americanism — a poor substitute for national pride.
When you dial the CBC it's like going to McDonald's: you know how it's going to taste before you reach.
But the point here is not CBC content. I would cheerfully say that some is excellent. The real issue, I suggest, is why Canada needs a CBC at all. This is where the debate should begin.
If we ever required a national glue, this one has not been very sticky. The CBC has had 60 years to build national unity, yet look at us now. Nearly one third of Canadians think the country will not exist in its present form by the year 2000.
We should inquire how the United States gets along without a CBC equivalent, yet united and vastly more patriotic than we. Public broadcasting thrives in the U.S., chiefly by meriting individual and corporate donations. CBC-FM delivers a fine array of classical music; so does KING-FM out of Seattle, along with commercials, at no cost to the taxpayer.
A second main question: by what rights does government sequester our money to inform and amuse us? As an adult I can inform and amuse myself, thanks very much.
Is Canadian culture so moribund that it requires a CBC? If it does, we might as well turn off the life support system. A culture lives or dies on its own merits.
When you stand back and filter the debate an implicit condescension emanates from those who favor government intervention in cultural affairs. Why do Canadians need such guidance? Usually they cite the cultural strength of our American neighbor. What the culture industry tries to avoid conceding is that, given fee choice, people will read, view and listen to what interests them, not what some authority thinks is best for them.
Canada's culture commissars hate and fear Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the marketplace which empowers the individual.
Much more could be devoted to exploring the CBC's bedmates: the NFB, proud producer of Forbidden Love: Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives, available at your neighborhood video shop. Or to the CRTC, which not only decides a good deal of what we view and hear via private broadcasters, but incidentally siphons off a share of our TV cable fees to Telefilm Canada for movies of approved themes.
Fortunately (from this viewpoint) the whole thing is breaking down under the onslaught of satellite technology and the Internet. People who have the means and the know-how are simply going around the system. That's what's really behind the panic in the east.
If I'm ever given a choice between government and the private sector as my source of information, I'll take the latter. They don't claim to know what's best for me; they guess at what I'll pay for and take their chances.
(Bill Stavdal is a Victoria resident and former Daily Colonist reporter who retains a lively interest in public affairs.)
by John Schmidt
Being the head of a multinational company like $12.4 billion Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) of Decatur, Ill., can be as exacting as being head of the average Third World country. Both are fighting malnutrition which robs the people of their productivity. In this quest each of them is beset by monstrous difficulties.
In July, ADM chairman Dwayne Andreas was in such unusual difficulties he was forced to call in former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Montreal to co-chair a nine-member trouble-shooting committee to get him out of a jackpot in which he found himself. (Another member of the panel was Glen Webb, chairman of Growmark Inc., which has Canadian connections. Growmark is a farm co-op which recently took over bankrupt United Co-ops of Ontario.)
A bit of background on ADM, of which Mulroney is a director. It is one of the world's largest grain merchants with 300 grain elevators to deal in corn, wheat, soybeans, cottonseed, canola, rice, barley and sugar cane. Proclaiming itself "supermarket to the world", it owns or leases 200 plants to process corn, soybeans and other commodities. Included are the canola crusher at Lloydminster, formerly owned by United Grain Growers, another in Windsor, Ont., and one in Watson, Sask.
It runs its own transportation system with 2,000 barges and 10,000 hopper cars. It employs 16,000.
Its processed output is chiefly lysine which is used in hog and poultry feed to enhance protein utilization to make them grow faster. It claims half the world lysine market; Canada is a big customer.
It also supplied citric acid to the food and beverage companies.
Andrea's company scored a major political coup in 1994 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was prodded by President Bill Clinton to require that a tenth of all gasoline sold in the U.S. by next year contain ethanol from corn. Since ADM produces 60% of U.S. ethanol, it will be entitled to receive $300 million in tax credits and exemptions from excise taxes.
The company is near the top in the contribution list to the Democratic and the Republican parties.
The corporate calamity which sent Mulroney hot-footing it to Decatur was the revelation that Mark Whitacre, 38, a highly placed executive, had become an informant for the FBI which was trying to nail ADM with price-fixing on lysine and lay anti-trust charges against it. The fact he was president of ADM's fast growing worldwide bioproducts division rated this as one of the most bizarre intrigue dramas — corporate or governmental — of all time.
For three years he carried a FBI briefcase fitted with a hidden microphone to spy on the executive suite.
Blowing the whistle on Whitacre was John M. Dowd of the Washington law firm of Akin Gump. (no relation to Forrest Gump.)
Dowd had represented ADM in another federal anti-trust case involving alleged price collusion with other companies on high-fructose corn sweetener. After 10 years of hearings the charges were dismissed.
Having nicely recovered from this episode, the company spent most of the summer of 1993 fighting floods whose damage would have sunk most companies. At one point two-thirds of its barges were tied up and it was forced to charter special trains to move processed product out of flooded areas.
None of these episodes had prepared it for dealing with a mole in the executive suite. When the suave Mulroney arrived, he had to devise a political strategy of coping with 34,000 perturbed shareholders and damage control by coordinating ADM's response to U.S. government probers.
His high-profile committee quickly spread word that Whitacre had made off with $2.5 million. But Whitacre claimed ADM had allowed him to pick up extra money; indeed, had taught him how. Then he tried to commit suicide. When he recovered the press was told "he didn't steal $2.5 million, he stole $9 million."
It was announced Oct. 10 the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission was investigating ADM for allegedly making payments to company officials that were not disclosed to shareholders. The same day Whitacre became CEO with a new company, Future Health Technologies Co. of Chicago. At this writing, no charges have been laid against ADM.
What of Mulroney? Readers may recall an interesting coincidence. When he was prime minister, his Bureau of Competition Policy blocked a merger between two flour mills. Then it allowed the sale of one to a foreign buyer — guess who? — why Archer Daniels Midland.
(This article appeared in the Whig-Standard, of recent, but unknown date, and highlights the arguments for the newly-sprung popularity of the western separatist option.)
by Barbara Yaffe
Frank Sterle has an idea he'd like to share with the rest of us. Over to you, Frank.
"We British Columbians should follow the current path of Quebec. After all, what do we B.Cers really have to lose by breaking away from Confederation?
"Sure, I guess it's kind of nice being a part of Canada and all. However, when considering the pros and cons of B.C. belonging to Canada, I see many more negatives than positives."
Sterle put these thoughts down on paper and sent them to me the other week. He's 27, an aspiring writer living in White Rock, an oceanside suburb near Vancouver. It's about as far away as you can get from Quebec, without actually leaving Canada. Sterle's words reflect a view that bubbles up in British Columbians occasionally, when they're feeling grumpy.
The far-flung province on the western fringe quite legitimately feels neglected and unappreciated within Confederation. It watches wistfully as Quebecers and Ontarians run the show in Ottawa. No B.C.-born person has ever been elected prime minister. (John Turner went to University of B.C.; Kim Campbell never actually got elected.)
B.C. tolerates a costly federal bilingualism policy that has little relevance for its multicultural, mulilingual populace. B.C. seethes silently as potloads of cash are shipped east so that jobless fishers can remain idle but cosy in their isolated outports. Indeed, as a have province, B.C. understands, far too well, the joys of forever giving far more than it receives.
While it may be crass to draw up actual balance sheets on what each province gives and gets out of Canada, the Vancouver-based Fraser Insittute has done so, and the results might just as well be shared.
In 1990, British Columbians, per capita, received $355 more in benefits than they paid in total taxes to the federal government. However, if the feds weren't engaging in deficit spending and we were paying sufficient taxes to enable Ottawa to achieve a balanced budget, B.C.ers would have been in a net loss position — minus $828 per capita.
Quebec's fiscal position within Canada is far rosier, per capita. Quebecers received $1,571 more in benefits than they paid in federal taxes. Even in the theoretical balanced budget scenario, Quebecers would have still come out ahead — receiving $696 per person more in benefits than they'd pay in taxes.
Clearly, it would appear that Quebec derives more fiscal comfort from Confederation than B.C. More cultural comfort too.
Quebec has total control over its immigration policy while B.C. does not. And Canada has given Quebec guarantees that its language and culture will be protected. Special funding for French-language training is available coast to coast. There is no similar official support for Chinese-language training which is more relevant for Vancouver-area people.
So why aren't there more Frank Sterles out there? Why does Quebec talk so often of shredding the Maple Leaf while B.C. stands ever ready to salute it?
University of B.C. political scientist Phil Resnick acknowledges "there is a logic behind a B.C. separatist movement," even though a serious effort has never emerged.
"There's the idea of Cascadia, but the northwest states show no sign of detaching themselves from the U.S." And on its own, B.C. has just 3.5 million people at the edge of a continent, so it's hard to conjure up a national image. "The Quebecois have much more a sense of being a nation, either in Canada or outside."
Also, in Greater Vancouver, half the population comes from somewhere else, notes Resnick. The community is not culturally cohesive and so, "the deeper sense of identity is with Canada."
Resnick says it's always difficult for members of a majority group like English-speaking British Columbians to understand the mentality of a minority group. As a result, there isn't much sympathy for Quebec's sovereignty push. West Coast people tend to view it as "baffling, perplexing, aggravating."
True enough.
The lonely separatist from White Rock asserts: "I personally would vote for a B.C. separatist party. Perhaps then Ottawa would start seriously thinking about how much more B.C. gives to the federation than the federation gives to B.C."
A minority perspective, but one that speaks loudly and clearly of the frustrations many British Columbians feel during this interminable referendum season.
Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives, at once, grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.
Joseph Addison, The Spectator, Nov. 6, 1711
It is reported of the Persians, by an ancient writer, that the sum of their education consisted in teaching youth to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak truth.
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, Feb. 15, 1751
Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.
Edward Gibbon: Memoirs, 1795
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
Herman Melville: Moby Dick, 1851
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
Nietzsche: Haman All-too-Human, 1878
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-room, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
R.W. Emerson, The New England Reformers, 1844
Quotes sent by our readers:
None of us is free until everyone is free.
Rabbi Paul Sidlofsky
Faith climbs the highest mountains, and bridges the widest streams; Faith leads us to life eternal, culmination of all our dreams."
Unknown (sent by a reader, with the words: "This is my prayer for all Western Separatists.)
by Douglas Christie
In a recent column written by Bill Stavdal (reprinted above), the very significant question was asked, why should we fund the CBC. This billion dollar per year retirement home for the leftist elite is not giving us anything which the Americans don't get from the private sector for free. But it struck me while reading Mr. Stavdal's lucid and convincing reasoning that he could perhaps go further: The CBC <W0>is Canada. Just as the purpose of laws in a corrupt state is to create criminals so that the people can be terrorized, the purpose in Canada is to create debt with unnecessary spending so the people can be demoralized and enslaved.
Canada, a country 4,000 miles (how many kilometers I don't know) long, and 300 miles wide, was a corrupt institution from the beginning. John A. Macdonald, its founder, was caught taking bribes for the construction of the railway which he had advocated, and yet he was later returned to office.
This country that prides itself on its racial and religious tolerance is also one now setting up special tribal homelands for people based on the colour of their skin and the bloodlines of their ancestors, which will be constitutionally-perpetrated indefinitely into the future. This is called, "Our Native Policy". At the same time, in Canada, persons lose their jobs by order of the Human Rights Commissions for the unpardonable sin of expressing their Christian beliefs on their own time.
Politically, things are even more absurd. After all the billions in equalization payments to Quebec, after having a Quebec prime minister ever since 1968 to 1995 (that is 27 years, with the exception of Joe Clark's 6 months, and Kim Campbell's few), after giving Quebec bilingualism from sea to sea and special job promotions for Quebecois in all levels of governments, after all that they vote for a party who says they want independence and we make them the official opposition. The prime minister (Chretien) from Quebec says we will give you more (on behalf of me and very other non-Quebecer) and Mr. Bouchard says now that is not enough and wants independence.
The docile, stupid sheep in the rest of Canada don't become perturbed when a Quebecker represents both sides of the debate and they are the prize. This is not ridiculous enough: when Quebec holds a referendum, it votes 49.6% for a final offer of more from Canada or else independence will be demanded once again. All this, and the only Western Canadian leader Preston Manning's strongest response is to demand a renewed and decentralized federalism!
One has to ask when will the West wake up? Here we are with 52% of Canada's productive capacity in fishery, forestry, mining, agriculture, 90% of the country's petroleum production, vast quantities of fresh water, and beautiful. land, and we have not got the confidence to say good-bye to the graft-ridden sick politics of Central Canada.
Are we seriously going to keep paying its outrageous taxes as it sinks further in debt, and burden our future generations with the cost of their Pearson Airports and largess to Quebec and Ontario? This seems to me beyond belief, and yet I have been ridiculed for years as a believer in Western Canadian separation as the only solution.
The waste in the CBC, monumental as it is, is one-fortieth of the annual increase in the debt of Ottawa, and that does not count the off-loaded debt upon the provinces which is now being thrown overboard by Mr. Martin as he realizes the Canadian ship is going down.
The level of stupidity of the average Westerner must be viewed with amazement as one compares what we could be on our own with what we are now in Canada.
We could have a Triple E Senate in Western Canada to share power for all in the parliament of our own making in one language. But this can never happen in Canada. We could control and limit immigration to levels which reflect our cultural as well as our economic needs. But this will never happen in the debt-ridden nation of Canada, desperate for new huddled masses yearning to be free — free to work for less, pay more taxes, and have less freedom than we have had in the past.
We could enjoy a level of prosperity based on our resource wealth unknown in our history without subsidizing the inefficient and wasteful government in Ottawa, Quebec, and the Maritimes. But we never will as long as Ottawa has the power to tax our resources and buy votes with money spent in Quebec and the Maritimes. We are a docile group of fools if we cannot see this by now, but so far we have been just that.
Ottawa, with more MPs from Quebec alone than all of Western Canada has become a hotbed of patronage and graft. The Central Canadian media, led by the CBC, tells us not to worry, be happy, pay our taxes, and let the good times roll. The debt soars. The population of alien cultures proliferates. Our future lapses in the hands of politicians whose goal is personal wealth and power. We feel frustrated, but hesitate to strike the blow that will cut the Gordean Knot and set us free.
The simple stand for independence taken by each of us is all it takes to vote for someone in every election who dares to take that stand. everything else is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Let Preston Manning be captain if he wants, but be sure that Independence is a real option before the ship goes down.
The First Intellectual Prize Fight
Victoria, B.C. will be the site of the first intellectual prize fight over the question of whether Western separatism is a viable option for Western Canada.
The date is Friday, January 26th, and the place is the Coast Harbour Hotel on Kingston St., James Bay, Victoria, at 7:00 p.m. An admission of $10 will be charged, to help offset costs and to encourage further debates.
For the positive, western separatist side, Doug Christie will argue; the spokesperson for the negative, federalist side is yet to be announced.
Other Meetings
Western Canada as an Independent Nation — What are the Benefits?
Doug Christie will speak on this topic in Nelson on January 24th at 7:00 p.m. at the Heritage Hotel, in the Hume Room.
Everyone is welcome to attend, including dedicated federalists, to join in debate.