You have the best arts coverage of all our Canadian newspapers. You have some excellent reporters. During this election campaign, you published a number of serious, well-considered, forcefully argued editorials. I don’t know why you feel the need to give Margaret Wente a platform, but I can overlook that. Often, I feel like you are the only Canadian paper that aspires to some sort of intellectual seriousness. The Toronto Star tends to break more stories than you do, but I prefer your vibe. I’m stuffy that way. I don’t know why anyone would read the National Post, except, occasionally, for its long(ish)-form theatre reviews.
And today, you left me without a Canadian paper to read. I’m cancelling my subscription.
It’s one thing for a newspaper’s editor-in-chief to take a political stance one disagrees with. That happens. It’s certainly happened with you, over and over again. But in the past, I put those moments in the Wente box: dismaying, sure. Disappointing. Incomprehensible even. But not so totally and indisputably corrupt as to taint the entire enterprise. Not this year.
Your endorsement of a counterfactual Conservative party without Stephen Harper is the most ludicrous piece of editorial journalism I have read in a very long time. Its argumentation makes no sense. It is appallingly written (allow me to don my English professor hat and ask: how exactly does one “knit” economic and fiscal stewardship? Is a knitted steward floppy, or does one need to insert a steel rod to give it [him? her?] a spine of some sort? Can one wear it in the summer, too, or is it only for colder months?). It endorses a vision of government that relegates absolutely everything to the question of economic management — as if our federal politicians had no role to play in the life of the nation and its citizens other than to tax businesses and private individuals. I’ll come back to that. But worst, your endorsement is shockingly mendacious. Its claims fly in the face of the facts as reported in your very own pages.
The central assertion in your editorial is this: the Conservatives’ economic record is so strong that in an election (rightfully) focused on the economy, they “might have won, and would have deserved to.” So strong are they in this regard, in fact, that “the two other major parties have so much respect for the Conservatives’ record on economic, fiscal and tax policy that they propose to change almost none of it.”
Essentially, you suggest, all three major parties are running on the same economic platform. Apparently you think this is a sound argument for voting Conservative, despite holding a very low opinion of almost everything else the party has done under Harper’s leadership. It obviously is no such thing. If you were right, it would be an extremely strong argument for voting against the Conservatives: everything they’ve done in areas other than the economy stinks; the other two parties only resemble the Tories in their economic policies; ergo, vote for one of the other two, and you’ll get to keep those (supposedly excellent) policies while getting rid of all the foul, distracting nonsense. You could have made that fairly bizarre case from the premiss with which you started. But no.
If your argument is internally inconsistent, it’s also completely divorced from reality. Of course, your entire endorsement is an exercise in counterfactual dreamweaving: our system, as you well know, does not allow voters to elect a Prime Minister; and we have no more influence than you over whether a party leader resigns or stays in office. Your recommendation to vote Conservative and hope for Harper’s resignation is cute but pointless. It also seems to presuppose that the “the Conservative Party” has little in common with its leader, and has been forced onto the path it has been pursuing with increasing relentlessness almost against its own will. Freed from the Harperite shackles, it will return to the “big tent party” it used to be — under, what, Jason Kenney’s leadership? Doug Ford’s? Exactly where are the Conservative voices that have been silent for so long, and will finally speak out to reinvent their party once Harper is gone? Who do you have in mind? Chris Alexander? Michelle Rempel? Rex Murphy?
But, sorry — I got distracted by the fancy footwork of your concluding paragraph. Back to your endorsement’s more fundamental counterfactual: that the other two major parties have drunk deep of the Tory Kool-Aid on the economy.
Perhaps I’m missing an obvious joke. I don’t suppose a writer who drops phrases such as “leaving aside a few billion dollars’ worth of extra borrowing” really expects to be taken seriously in his judgment of a government’s fiscal record that rests entirely on one year of budgetary surplus, and a surplus of less than “a few billion dollars.” You even admit that fiscal responsibility has been Harper’s “brand,” not his actual “record.” I guess it is consistent with your love of free markets to believe that someone’s brand is more important than someone’s record. But let me proceed as if you meant to be taken at your word.
The NDP, you say, basically has the same economic plans as the Tories. You say this, I assume, because Tom Mulcair has not proposed the renationalizing of the oil industry, and has not publicly contemplated common ownership of the means of production. A disappointment for me as much as for you, to be sure. The odd thing, though, is that your own summary of the parties’ platforms paints a totally different picture. Here, have a look. It really doesn’t matter how feasible any of these policies and plans are — that’s not what the question is. (If it were, you’d have to ask the same thing of the Tories’ rather unsustainably ambitious goals.) Pretty much the only thing the NDP and the Conservatives have in common is their commitment to balanced budgets. Is the minimum wage not an economic issue? Pipelines have nothing to do with the economy? A 2% corporate tax rate increase is negligible? (But a 4% increase in taxes on individuals, as planned by the Liberals, will lead to a “brain drain”?) Billions of additional dollars in new infrastructure spending — not worth mentioning? Significant incentives for manufacturers — identical to the Conservatives policies, or not worth considering? Ending interest on student loans: not an economic issue? Seriously? Do you understand what an economy is?
The Liberals, you say, are also great admirers of Harper’s economic policies. Except as soon as you actually started writing about their plans, you must have realized that you couldn’t even begin to sustain that particular counterfactual, so you decided to switch tack, and take a page from your endorsee’s playbook: instead of lying about the Liberals’ platform, you chose to make stuff up about what they would actually do in government (a question you don’t think worth discussing with regard to the Tories). In that fantasy future, the “spectre of waste and debt rears its ugly head.” Rather intriguingly, a Liberal minority would raise that spectre with the help of the Tory-policy-loving NDP. You call this “a recipe for frailty” — though why, one can’t be sure. Because minority governments are inherently frail? Because the NDP’s Harper-like policies will clash with the Liberals’? Because the NDP will reveal its true deep red colours and drag young, inexperienced, selfie-loving smiler Trudeau down into their den of economic recklessness?
In your understanding of tax policy, the very idea of progressive taxation becomes a Conservative model: if the Liberals propose to cut middle-income taxes, they’re simply “one-upping” the Tories; if they propose to increase benefits for families with children, same thing — never mind that those benefits are targeted in one case, and universal in the other. It’s only when taxation becomes too dangerously progressive that this oneupmanship threatens to destroy Canada: when the rich suddenly end up paying the kinds of taxes they pay in left-wing hellholes like, say, the US.
So, in sum, you’re trying to have it many different ways: on the one hand, NDP and Liberals basically propose to continue Tory policies. Except, on the other hand, they’re also dangerously different. And taxation can destroy a country. But government spending has no effect on the economy, and can be neglected in discussions of policy. And a few billion in borrowing are negligible, unless they can be called a “spectre,” in which case we need to run from them in terror.
You wanted an election “about jobs, taxes and the economy,” but even in your own endorsement, you’re incapable of discussing those three simple topics with any kind of seriousness. In that sense, you are a pretty perfect reflection of your endorsee. Where you differ from the Conservative party, and where your vision of government is even more distressing than theirs, though, is in your belief that politics should only be about money.
That’s the part of your argument that galls me the most. The Tories may have many positions on social policy that I find reprehensible, but at least they have positions. Even Stephen Harper doesn’t seem to think that all he should concern himself with is “jobs, taxes and the economy.” You, on the other hand, seem to think everything else is just a sideshow.
Sure, you talk about big tents and gesture vaguely towards “socially progressive” values. But you wouldn’t make that sort of stuff the basis for an endorsement — right? Health care? Pension plans? Students? The environment? Education? The arts? Foreign policy? Immigration? Apparently, as far as you’re concerned, all of those are distractions, issues that merely “pus[h] up the number of Canadians upset … for reasons having nothing to do with their pocketbooks.” Because that is what voters should vote with, it seems: not their brains, not their hearts, but their pocketbooks. And that, ultimately, is the vision of government that motivates your endorsement, as incoherent as it is in its conclusions: governments are institutions that affect their citizens’ pocketbooks, and the best government is the one that leaves those pocketbooks as unencumbered as possible. You deplore the “American-style culture war” the Harperites have unleashed during the election campaign. Yet your own argument is about as “Amercian-style” as any I can imagine. At its cold heart, it’s pure libertarianism.
There is a simpler way of saying this. What your editorial really proposes is this: the government should play as minimal a role as possible. People should vote with nothing in mind but money. The Conservatives come closest to this ideal, which is why they must win again. Harper has slipped off message, and has made politics about things other than money. He has therefore become an embarrassing distraction that might get people thinking that governments can do things other than leave citizens alone. This must not continue. Otherwise, who knows what might happen. The spectre of a “bigger government footprint” is looming.
That’s a terrible view of what a government is and does. It has nothing to do with the Canada I live in or the history of what Canada has been in our lifetimes. But given that this is the vision that informs every vaguely substantive argument you offer, I’d have preferred it if you had been more honest in endorsing it. Glimpsing that narrow, inhumane vision dimly through the tangle of non-sequiturs and distortions in your editorial? That’s more than I can take. So, goodbye, Globe and Mail. I shall miss parts of you. I shall not miss your intellectual corruption.
128 Responses to Dear Globe and Mail,
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Holger Syme's work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.Images may be reused as long as their source is properly attributed in accordance with the Creative Commons License detailed above. Many of the photos here were taken at the Folger Shakespeare Library; please consult their policy on digital images as well.
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you nailed it ! I’m done with the Globe for sure
THANK YOU! Strangest editorial I’ve ever read. Vote Conservatives cause Harper will be gone?!!! He has them encrusted in his tight Reform Party fist!! Bizarre!
Une critique et une réponse très constructive à cette aberration publiés par le “Globe and Mail”. Bravo M. Syme, J’espère qu’après les élections vous allez pouvoir remplacer cet éditorialiste indigeste, sans doute bien payé par ce qui reste du Parti Conservateur du Canada,
Fantastic analysis. And I am pleased to see how many people have already read ti.
Bang on!
What a wonderful letter. Thank-you for putting on paper what I could not. Now to find a paper to replace my Globe,
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
Fucking brilliant. It’s such a relief to have someone enunciate exactly why I was so offended by that editorial.
Excellent dissection of a twisted, repellent encyclical by an out of touch oligarchy.
What an excellent critique!
Bang On! Exactly what I, and sooooo many of my friends couldn’t figure out either! I know of 5 friends who have now cancelled their Globe and Mail subscription!
I switchf to The Star two years ago after 35 years of subscribing to the Globe. I could no longer stomach their editorial stance. The only thing I miss is the cryptic crossword!
Cancelling my subscription as well. Thank you for nailing it.
Bravo!
If I were to have aspired to have written a lengthy response to this infamous editorial, I would have tried to say it exactly as you have. Great stuff!
Excellent – I cancelled my subscription 4 years ago after a similar g&m fence-sitting piece on Harper
Excellent article! I too will be cancelling my subscription.
beautiful piece of writing. thank you.
what dope have the Globe’s editors been taking. I am a regular and mostly admiring reader of the Globe, but this editorial is idiotiic
Michael Mackenzie
Excellent. Well put. I too am cancelling my subscription. But I did so after the arrogant and obviously biased David Walmsley “moderated” the Globe and Mail leadership debate.
The following link is what should/would have been published as the G&M Editorial, if William Thorsellwas still running the ship.
https://medium.com/@InklessPW/throwout-by-william-thorsell-986c7546f921?source=tw-lo_76ef6986c375-1445051931749
We do not need newspapers to tell us how to vote a day or two prior to elections. If there was an argument for editorial endorsements in the 19th century and earlier, news is not hard to get or evaluate in our electronic age today. What we do need is good investigative journalism, and a diversity of columnists’ views from senior journalists. We can rely on democracy to do the rest. … as juries are quite capable of making sound decisions after listening to both sides and a judge’s impartial clarification of the law. Newspaper editors, like the rest of us, get just one vote.
Thank you so much for this. You have expressed my feelings and the feelings of so many other Canadians so well; I have shared this letter on Facebook, as have others.
Very good.
A masterful creation in word to prove that truth is possible to communicate in writing if there is an agenda in fact, reason and moral logic. Deep appreciation for you gifts.
I keenly await the inevitable tsunami of leaks from inside the Globe on how this shitshow went down.
thank you. i cancelled today. i will miss the paper but they have crossed a line. their customer relations person told me on the phone that they are getting many angry calls today. good. they’ll have to win back me and others who’ve fled. let them try.
Thank you, Mr. Syme.
Great letter! I canceled my Globe subscription for simile reasons: http://theteteatete.org/2015/10/17/why-i-canceled-my-globe-and-mail-subscription/
Absolutely ridiculous. How can we take the Globe and Mail seriously now? Great letter. Thank you.
Brilliant!!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU – THANK YOU.
Bye Bye G&M…
Is it possible that maybe Mr Walmsley has actually outwitted the Globe owners. As was made obvious through his attempt at supporting the Ontario Liberals, that is no allowed at the Globe. So what if he endorses them but makes his argument for doing so clearly flawed? Might he be hoping that everyone sees this and in doing so rejects the endorsement?
What an excellent piece of analysis! If only we had journalist in this country capable of such rigour.
I am grateful to you for putting into words — so well– what I found so reprehensible about the Globe’s editorial. I can’t wait to read what you have to say on the rumoured disagreement between the National Post and Andrew Coyne over their editorial policy and CPC endorsement. Thank you.
Well, bravo for this effort. It needs to be edited down to, say…two volumes of an encyclopedia, but still…
Thank you for your excellant letter, the Vancouver Sun had a similar editorial, was planning to cancel my subscription until I read Pete McMartin’s column today
If you believe anything in this letter I am surprised that you would subscribe to any of Sun Media’s papers. I don’t love the Star but all I ever see in any of the Sun papers is outrage or spectacle….and a ridiculous amount of advertising.
The Vancouver Sun is not part of Sun Media, but Post Media.
Sun and Post merged earlier this year, so same people calling the shots.
I agree Marg. and I think many more people read McMartin’s column than that cringingly sycophantic Sun editorial. Walmsley, of the Globe claims that his bosses did not direct his editorial, but these editors know what is required of them.
Thank you for a thoughtful & timely piece. Why–in 2015– would anyone subscribe to a newspaper with corrupt values? While i don’t love all their writers, I subscribe to the Star in gratitude for their activism & politics. If not for their legwork Rob or Doug Ford would be mayor of Toronto.
I am so relieved to find such a cogent response to the G&M’s ridiculous endorsement.Thank you!
An excellent piece. If the Globe and Mail hired YOU, I might resubscribe.
Ditto.
I found the endorsement shocking, but the worst part was Walmsley’s attempt to cover it up the same day. In his Facebook “chat with readers”, he wrote this about the Globe endorsement process: “Of course if there is a serious disagreement, the publisher is my boss. That has never happened to my knowledge when it comes to endorsements.”
Yet it was just a year ago, in June, 2014, when the Globe editorial board endorsed Kathleen Wynne. Very quickly Globe owners the Thomsons called Globe publisher Philip Crawley who called Walmsley to change the endorsement to be for Tim Hudak. The endorsement was retracted and an infuriated editorial board was forced to write an endorsement for Hudak. Disgruntled Globe staff then leaked all the details of the sad affair to Canadaland and other news outlets.
In that crisis, when Walmsley was asked about the Globe’s process for writing an endorsement, Walmsley also apparently lied, saying, “It’s a significant process that’s quite sophisticated and it goes on really from before election begins, there’s a discussion among the board…we see the platforms, we study them, we convene a series of meetings…we keep an open mind throughout the process…we had meetings with each of the leaders, and out of that we came to a conclusion and decided that Tim Hudak was the person to endorse in this occasion, the Conservatives.”
I don’t think it’s enough to quit our subscriptions. I think we should make formal complaints about Walmsley and this affair to the Ontario Press Council: http://ontpress.com/file-a-complaint/
Brilliant article! The most intelligent and perceptive piece of ‘calling bull shit’ I have ever read. Bravo Mr Syme.
Thank you!
Thanks for putting this to (virtual) paper. I wholeheartedly agree with it all, particularly the way in which you deconstruct the Globe’s intellectual corruption. What I find most shocking is not the sentiment, nor the so-called “arguments” they make (can anything entirely lacking in supporting evidence or cogency be considered an “argument”?), but that they seem willing to destroy the last vestiges of credibility they have in order to advance (in theory) the interests of a purely hypothetical libertarian party.
What we need is a journalistic enterprise with more contributors like yourself, and fewer Wentes et al. Bravo.
Like with many publications, editor-in-chief’s opinion usually doesn’t reflect that is his/hers staff. There were certainly plenty opinion pieces written in favour of other parties.
And, why hold a grudge against the entire paper? Certainly Arts, Travel and Style sections have nothing to do with this. They work hard delivering the best coverage in the country. Why punish them?
I think Mr. Smye was quite careful to specify that he appreciates many aspects of the Globe’s work. The problem is that in supporting the Arts, Travel and other writers, one is–ipso facto–also supporting the views of the editors. Your complaint, therefore, should probably be directed at those editors–why hold the entire paper up to ridicule with such an editorial endorsement, thereby throwing the entire enterprise into question?
The reason for “holding a grudge” (although “exercising critical and ethical discrimination” would have been more accurate phrasing) against the entire paper is that an editorial like this is so muddy in its argumentative maunderings, so meagre in its conceptual reach, so cringing in its deference to the will of the newspaper owners (the only thing other than an inconceivable level of authorial stupidity that could account for it) as to have thrown away on the whole paper’s behalf any claim it has to intellectual or social integrity. Why would one want to support in any way a publication capable of disseminating as serious editorial comment such a shamefully risible exercise in special pleading?
Exactly.
So, Sad journo, are you saying that you endorse the Globe and Mail but the editors have to go?
Niilo: perfect.
Literally, The Globe is good for lighting fires with… Every section in the Globe is shockingly tasteless when compared to worldly newspapers like Financial Times. Their “Style Advisor” is best suited for the blind or penniless. In short, The Globe tries way too hard to be other newspapers (I think it has copied The Guardian in its approach), and the newspaper fails to be creative and demand readership. If The Globe did a much better job, I would read it, but, it seem incapable of producing a truly national newspaper that is worldly, or, something others around the world would actually wish to read.
Except it’s not even very good for lighting fires. Their “new” glossy multi coloured paper doesn’t burn very well. OK, it’s not very “new”, but I live in the hinterlands and it’s hard to even get a paper copy of the Globe and Mail. Sometimes I miss that. Less and less now.
This a stellar piece of deconstruction! Bravo , Mr. Syme!
A brilliant opinion piece. Bravo.
absolutely awesome!!
Too long…. I share the writer’s frustration. Not a globe reader, cancelled my subscription last year after 5*yrs planning to renew in December but no more