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.
totally agree! Canceling my subscription too.
Dear Holger,
Thank you for capturing so thoughtfully and eloquently the view of so many Canadians. My summation yesterday that the Globe editorial board has its head so far up its ass it thinks that the sun rises in the west seems rather crude now but no less accurate.
Sincerely,
Ingrid
Excellent essay which expresses exactly how I feel about the Globe and Mail. The editorial ranks right up there with countless Harperian pronouncements over the years for duplicity veiled (and I use that word intentionally) in incompetence.
When I first heard that the Globe had endorsed the Conservatives on the basis that Harper should leave immediately if reelected, I thought it was a joke, as in, somebody made it up. But no! As Holger Syme points out, how utterly divorced from reality can the Globe be? Even worse, how divorced from reality does the Globe think it can seduce its readers into becoming?
To scratch the surface of the absurdity of what the Globe is proposing consider for a moment, just how exactly, pray tell, does one call upon Harper to resign just after he has won re-election? What despot with a renewal on his despotism, would ever give that up? That is as likely a scenario as the Globe’s owners, the reclusive billionaire Thomson family, ever endorsing a political party other than the CONs, As proof, just look at the mental gyrations and gymnastics, the serfs working at the Globe have to go through to satisfy their Lords, the almighty Thomsons, with this bizarre editorial stance of theirs.
Sure thing Globe and Mail, Harper would certainly step aside for the good of the party and the good of the country, after being re-elected a 4th time. What delusional nonsense!
With or without Harper pleased to see the Conservative Party joining the Ford clowns.
I highly recommend “Losing Confidence” Elizabeth May’s scathing indictment of the decline of Canadian democracy, in which she outlines how corrupted and corporate controlled our media has become. No wonder they wouldn’t let her into their all-boys debate
I suggest everyone not only cancel their subscriptions, but stop reading Glib & Male online, avoid patronizing their advertizers, and perhaps the 99% can put this paper out of business. Along with the National Post.
True colours are revealed. Thank you for exposing this betrayal. Outrageous endorsement after months of seemingly insightful coverage. They had me fooled. I am cancelling tomorrow. Hello Toronto Star
The Globe has always been a lapdog for the top 1% of the top 1%. How can one tell? Almost next to nothing, near zero content regarding Canada’s major environmental issues.
The crazy thing is that I joined the Reform Party in Burnaby some 20 years ago cause I wanted Pot legalized. I am a Conervative now or was until they took an anti pot approach to that topic
I stopped buying papers 10 years ago once I realized the 1% were directing the information…..overall, our current Canadian news and information system unfortunately has been bought over….pablume
Read rabble.ca, a real discussion of news.
I didn’t see the Globe editorial but for the past week I have had the National Post delivered free of charge along side my Toronto Star. After reading it for a week I phoned to have them stop delivering it. All it did was make me furious reading the Conservative right winged views day after day. I am so glad that at least we have one newspaper that isn’t completely controlled by the Conservatives. The Star isn’t perfect and I know it leans Liberal, though it does present other vews too. If the Harper government gets back in, we’ll also lose the CBC which is the only radio/TV that presents interviews, book reviews, ideas programs and other intellectually stimulating programs.
I really hope that we can regain some media independence in the future.
Dianne Field
Globe and Immoral Mail: You are as immoral as Harper
Real, oral and honest news from non-corporate funded and non-political party funded: http://www.nationalobserver.com
Perfect….you are all free to subscribe to a paper that only publishes or endorses your ideologies…..it’s short of a book burning but keep at it….
What a specious suggestion. This blog, and most of the comments, are directed at the false, illogical and incoherent narrative of the endorsement, and not its ideological bent. Of course, it happens that many of the commentators will be happy to see the Conservatives gone after Monday, but (as usual) you have presented the Conservative supporter stereotype: refusing to engage with the facts, limiting yourself to either straw men or ad hominem attacks. It’s one of the reasons that I will be glad to see a change.
Great response to a crazy endorsement. Although the saving grace was Jeffrey Simpson’s column facing which clearly pointed out that the “Conservative” party IS the Harper party…
It appears everything else can be argued, but the one indisputable fact no one can run from is the Conservative Party IS Stephen Harper.
Cannot believe your logic in that how can support of Conservstve Party would mean automatic support of Harper .With this logic please tell me millions of like should not CANCEl subscribing to your paper.
I am cancelling my subscription to the Vancouver Sun which is also part of Postmedia, and also endorsed Harper. Clearly pretty much all of our mainstream papers are now controlled from above and told what to say. When 70% of Canadians say time for change it is ridiculous for our papers to suggest Harper is the best for us.
Thank you for writing this. I was in the process of composing my own letter but you have saved me the trouble, leaving me with the only remaining response required – canceling our subscription.
Crude perhaps, but … G&M fucked up, showed their true colors, and is paying for it. Good
The Globe refuses to let us know who sits on their editorial board. David Walmsley told me that in June 2014.
For too long the Globe has been trading on its former reputation of being a principled defender of key national interests. Its convoluted endorsement of Harperism is a wake up call. It is time not only to cancel subscriptions but also to hold advertisers accountable. Gordon
Excellent article. Well-done and well-said. You captured the views of many Canadians. Thank you
Vote for a party that doesn’t require you to hold your nose. Vote Green, and save the Mop and Pail for putting your kitchen scraps in.
After some reflection, I just sent the following post to David Walmsley: Having spent a couple of days being outraged by your support for the Conservatives – and ultimately, Harper and his backers – it has recently occurred to me that your editorial, poorly crafted in all of its ambiguities and nonsensical arguments, may have in fact been a very intentional display of the your feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place (in response to the pressure from the Globe’s owners and their cohorts). I can think of no other reason for your sudden incapacity to present a smart argument, no matter who you were endorsing. Not everyone has the guts to say no when pressured to do something they don’t believe in.
Subscription cancelled…..very confusing turn of events that can only be interpreted as a last ditch effort to sway votes. Very poor journalism -not accurate, not credible and very opinionated.
Congratulations over your superb slamming of the endorsement ‘s dastardly deed. Praise to all those opting out altogether. Trying to hold my nose. MALCOLM HANSON
If professionals told the types of lies that the politicians do during election time and while in office it would be considered malpractice and their licenses would be revoked by their respective regulatory bodies. It behooves me that the politicians and those they keep in their pockets can lie and distort truth during election campaigns; that they don’t have to be accountable to society -it’s atrocious. As for comments in the Globe and Mail and discussions there in; it’s obvious that they don’t understand or choose to convey the global picture of the platform of a political party. If one looked closer at the liberal platform they would see that they are promoting economic growth that has a spin off through the economy which offsets (historically the lowest possible borrowing costs )to create such infrastructure. It makes sense. Why wouldn’t One borrow at the most affordable time to do so to build much did it infrastructure of the country requires. I like any platform of any party that looks to help many different groups of people’s from students to seniors to businesses.
I too cancelled my G & M subscription. Just can’t take that kind of editorial nonsense. Thank you for your excellent article Holger Syme!
Thank you for this. This needs to go national as a rebuttal to that awful endorsement in the Globe yesterday. They have spent months criticizing Harper and now this. I don’t get it. Harper is the Conservative party. You vote in the Cons, you get Harper (and maybe the Ford brothers too!) I too am so disappointed in the Globe and my long time subscription might have to go as well.
A poorly spelled and difficult to follow article by a respondent ‘professing’ University tenure (?) does not a sound refutation make.
It perhaps also misses a possibility that the said Editor writes so poor a piece deliberately to provoke this reaction : to insidiously and so, cleverly promote the destruction of ‘Harperism’ when he has been forced by a corrupt Proprietorship to position the G&M alongside its sister publications at the back of Mr. Harper.
That very same thought had crossed my mind also. Application of Occam’s Razor would suggest otherwise; the alternative is to credit Mr. Walmsley with a subversive insouciance of which I am deeply skeptical.
Thank you for this well-reasoned and well-written piece. I, too, am appalled by this editorial and shocked that the G&M should have published it. I shall not now subscribe to the Globe.
For those of you would like to read insightful commentary about the destruction of democracy in Canada under Harper, the Guardian has some excellent articles. These pieces are well written, well researched and balanced. It’s a shame that this editorial can’t seem to provide even one of these attributes of responsible journalism
Another good reason to shun “Canada’s national newspaper”! Disgusting! Thanks for writing this.
Thanks for the excellent rebuttal to an appalling article. I have had my doubts about the Glob and flail latley. This terminates my relationship with their news stream. Good bye harper and the globe.
I wonder if your assumption that the decision was made by the Editor is valid. The Postmedia papers (which, includes the National Post, the Sun chain and several other major metropolitan dailies) were all directed by corporate HQ to back the Conservatives. Perhaps this was a similar circumstance–directions from HQ mixed with an ambivalent editorial board created this muddled mess.
Thanks for this devastating critique of the Globe endorsement of the Harper government. It is an appalling piece of journalism, accepting holus-bolus the Tory narrative that there is a lot to risk and much to fear if either the Liberals or NDP replace the Harper because Harper and company have been excellent economic managers.
What a load of bunk. In this new world economy where demand is weak and commodity prices have collapsed, the free ride that Canada has enjoyed for more than a decade is over, and the Tory formula of tax cuts and zero deficits is a bankrupt combination that will over time result in a much poorer, more unequal Canadian society. This is no vision for our future.
I am just as upset with the Maclean’s magazine endorsement of the Harperman government. No matter what happens in the federal election, these examples of intellectually weak and dishonest journalism by the leading publications in English Canada have exposed serious rot in the public discourse. I think this could well lead to a widespread radicalization of the middle-class, as exemplified by your wonderful blog post.
Hi Andrew 🙂 It was a good post tho’ after I reflected on the insulted tone often seen in anti-H sentiment. It’s not personal with H or with the “mop and pail,” just the business of business, just what they do. And the G&M has always done that haven’t they, supported extractavist big biz? On my better days anyway, I’m not going to feel betrayed or affronted. Let’s get even!
Hope to see you one of these days, Andrew 🙂
An eloquent expose of the flawed logic in the Globe and Mail’s endorsement. To your commentary I would add that to focus on (however narrow and fallacious) economic arguments in this election is to draw attention away from the calculated dismantling of our democratic traditions by the Harperites within what used to be the Conservative party. This remaking of Canada in his image in an act that all Candians should be horrified of. It was undertaken by a man who did not seek, has not earned and should not be afforded any such mandate.
Amen.
There’s just one question left unanswered… (or quite possibly unasked) … who paid this author to write this; because no moral human being would stoop this low. There HAD to be some incentive to write this promotional piece and since money is mentioned I shall assume money is the reason. Such a shame that people have to stoop this low to get votes for a man who so many dispize. If Harper had done ANY THINK for Canada He’d be able to brag about it, NOT tell us again what changes he plans on making.
We like to think our media is all about reporting the news in an objective and intellectually honest way but the fact is they are all corporations and in the end it’s all about their corporate interest. In the 2011 election 31 of 32 newspapers endorsed Harper while over 60% of the population voted against him. Cancel your subscription.
Thanks for taking the time to clarify the real issues and provide a thorough critique of the corruption at the core of our once respectable national newspaper.
Thank you for this insightful and well written critique of the Globe and Mail’s bizarre endorsement of the Conservatives but not Harper. I would cancel my subscription, too, but there have been thoughtful editorials (even on this election) and some wonderful columnists providing balanced and well-written analyses of a wide range of issues and topics. And, unfortunately, the Globe&Mail is the only paper in Canada of any quality coverage of national news. I have to say I was not surprised by the endorsement of the Conservatives, despite the otherwise more balanced coverage of election. Like the Conservative “base”, nothing Harper and the Conservatives have done over these past, long nine years would change the paper’s editorial endorsement. Nothing.
I didn’t have a subscription to cancel, but I am committed to writing to the biggest Globe and Mail advertisers to tell them that I shall never buy their products, if I ever see them advertise in the Globe and Mail again. Everybody can do their part.
You don’t subscribe so you’ll get on the case of their advertisers. You are what’s wrong with this country. Why do you feel like you have the right to stick your nose in to others business?
If you don’t read the paper how will you ever catch them advertising?
I too have parted ways with Globe and Mail. Unconscionable. A clear, concise assessment and rebuttal, Mr. Syme. Thank you.
Keith Wilson, you pull words from my mouth. Mr. Syme, you possess the required precision for actual clarity. You not only inform, but are compellingly truthful in a most desperate, unhanding, and ultra obvious way. My haphazard consumption of mainstream media repulses me. This sickening game is nearly over, please Lord. Our land must re-jig our electoral system, so that humanoids may effect the change mandated by their sentient convictions, and preserve the evolution of truth. I am so thankful to read others’ luminary commentary, especially having once feared a national abdication of good sense and intellectual thought.
Well said. Best I’ve read in a long time. The Globe and Mail is dead to me.
This is an excellent article.
Dear Holger Syme,
This is a superbly written and supremely well thought out piece. You have exposed every inanity … no, I exaggerate, there actually are a few further preposterous notions in the Globe and Mail’s editorial which you don’t touch on … almost every inanity in this completely idiotic Globe and Mail “endorsement.” There is such a complete lack of intellectual, moral, and political, and even logical coherence in this piece that it makes one suspect that lightning struck the author before bringing pen to paper, rendering them a gibbering idiot.
No country deserves, as this editorial advises, to continue being a tortured guinea pig in some Machiavellian experiment by the Conservatives seeking to exorcize their own contradictions. Any honest consideration would conclude that Conservatives deserve to be cast into the political wilderness where, if they so desire, they can continue to torture themselves with their addled chicanery, and not the balance of the country.
In any event, I congratulate you for so artfully exposing the inner contradictions of this example of editorial sophistry, as cringe-worthy a piece of writing as has ever crossed my desk.
Well done!
Thanks!
Thank you! Thank you! A very, very satisfying response to such an appalling G&M piece!
I cancelled my subscription yesterday for the same reasons. I appreciate your well thought out response. I’m still sputtering with rage that G&M would attempt to lead voters to think a Conservative win might result in Harper resigning. Unlikely and shameful posturing for the sake of a headline and sound bite.
I had been faithful to the GM… but I cannot ignore their irresponsibility any longer. My trust and faith are broken! Goodbye GM!
I cancelled my subscription today too and was offered a 50% discount for the next six months if I stayed, “to see if I would be happier with the paper after the election.” How ironic. Same logic as the editorial – stick with us, we’ll change a thing or two, maybe, and then you’ll like us. Sorry, that’s not how it works. I’ll come back to you Globe if you fire the editorial board and apologize for your amateur editorial and response to the outrage. Until then, you’re not the only game in town and I’ll get my news elsewhere.