HABITUAL POLITICAL SELF-CENSORSHIP
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2) BACKGROUND ON THE CCPA AND THE FRASER INSTITUTE

The CCPA is Canada's largest 'progressive' (political left) think tank with five offices in Canada (Ottawa, BC, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Manitoba). According to information on their website (Jan. 08) they have 24 staff and over 80 research associates.

The CCPA is a federally registered charity, and like all registered charities, their financial information is available from Revenue Canada's website. From the year 2000 to 2006 the CCPA's total revenue was $20 million, starting with $2 million in 2000 and growing to $3.8 million in 2006 (for an average of 3.3 million per year).

What is the CCPA's mission? According to their website they are "an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice" and "one of Canada's leading progressive voices in public policy debates" to " ensure Canadians know there are workable solutions to the issues we face."

According to their own description then, the CCPA evidently exists to solve poverty in Canada.

$20 million over 6 years appears to be a large budget, and of course it is when compared to the almost total lack of resources available for grassroots anti-poverty organizations. (Which is why there are almost none in Canada other than the Fredericton Anti-Poverty Organization, OCAP, and a very few others including LIFE which operates on a voluntary basis with almost no funding.)

However, the Fraser Institute, another registered charity but a political right 'free market' think tank, has over double the revenue of the CCPA. For the same time period between 2000 and 2006, the Fraser Institute reported $47 million in total revenue starting with $4.7 million in 2000 and growing to $10.9 million in 2006 (for an average of $7.8 million per year).

(Note: This total does not include the "Fraser Institute Foundation" which lists $6.6 million in revenue for 2006, but has no revenue listed for the years 2003-5.)

The Fraser Institute, with their mission to create a "A free and prosperous world through choice, markets and responsibility" is one of some 500 free market think tanks in the world.

And this is too many even according to some free marketers think tank supporters (Mark Skousen).

These 'free market' registered charity think tanks have one thing in common: they are not starting and running free market businesses, but instead survive by begging for charity donations, while simultaneously denouncing 'dependency' and 'handouts' for everyone else. They even brag of being "independent" of government yet can only issue tax-deductible charity receipts to their donors because they are a government approved and registered charity.

This giant sticky bubble of hypocrisy begging to be popped has not been targeted by the CCPA or other progressive think tanks, who supposedly are virulently opposed to groups like the Fraser Institute.

On the other hand, the Fraser Institute and other free market think tanks, show no such generosity. They vigorously engage in constant ideological attacks on poor people, public services, and organized labour with the goal of getting laws and regulations changed in favour of private business and against all things 'public.'

This failure of 'progressives' to issue even the meekest rebuke of this hypocritical 'free market' travesty, can only be due to the fear that if the Fraser Institute loses their charity status, that 'progressive' think tanks may also lose theirs. Both would have to close their doors and their former employees would be at the corner with signs: "will think for food" (to change one of the jokes of Canadian humourist Will Ferguson who memorably wrote in his satirical novel "Happiness," how in a world with happy, secure people, fashion models would be out of work and their signs would read: "will pout for food").

3) HOW THE POLITICAL LEFT & RIGHT SHARE PREMISE OF MONEY AND PRODUCTION

Both the CCPA and the Fraser Institute were quoted and critiqued in LIFE's article on Money and Productivity to show how both left and right have the same economic premise: that money comes from production.

This orthodox definition of production has devastated women and the environment, something writers such as Marilyn Waring, Maria Mies, Vandana Shiva, David Korten, and others have pointed out.

Challenging fatally flawed economic beliefs is crucial to the movement for a guaranteed livable income and, as such, it is crucial to fully discuss definitions of money and productivity. If this does not happen, humanity will never "Make Poverty History" as so many people and groups have declared is their goal.

4) WHY NOT ENCOURAGE DIALOGUE?

Instead of NAPO attempting to stifle economic discussion regarding guaranteed income, they instead could have encouraged a full discussion on the economic issues, from the grassroots to the academic treetops, in order to "make poverty history."

NAPO has had 35 years in which to develop effective arguments to promote guaranteed income. Had they done so, NAPO would have had no reason to fear 'bad' arguments from groups like LIFE, since poverty would have been eliminated.

Similarly, there are hundreds of social justice professors and professionals in Canada who also over the last 35 years could have created effective arguments and strategies to gain wide public support for a guaranteed income to end the scourge of poverty. They too, have not done this, even though they have had access to resources to do so. In fact, while offering no solutions to poverty, some 'social justice' professors actually use time and resources to squash the idea of guaranteed income.

Something is deeply wrong.

Resources ostensibly devoted to ending poverty, are used instead to stifle debate on the topic of guaranteed income - undoubtedly the most censored economic topic.

Yet a full and open discussion about money, productivity and economics is essential to the topic of ending poverty.

6) CHARTER OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS

Attempting to silence this discussion also affronts the principle of constitutionally guaranteed free speech. According to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

" 2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

Specifically, if we are to see a world with economic and social justice, free expression is a crucial democratic principle:

"There are three key values fostered by freedom of expression that the Supreme Court of Canada has recognized: democracy, the search for truth, and individual autonomy.[xiii]:" ...

"The free flow of ideas allows people to make informed decisions on issues of political importance.[xiv] It is also important that the ruling majority not be able to silence dissent or repress minority views.[xv] Freedom of expression allows people to vote after being informed by open debate and exploring competing political opinions.[xvi] (Centre for Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta

It is one thing to attempt to limit free expression (especially of economic ideas), it is quite another if people quietly acquiesce. The first is bad enough, but the second is suicidal.

Tacit consent, is when people's silence is taken to mean agreement. If people give tacit consent to being censored, then they are tacitly agreeing that freedom of expression is a bad idea, and that they do not need, or want, freedom of expression.

A December 2007 article called "Consentership, far more pernicious than dictatorship" by Ben Tanosborn has been blazing through the blogosphere. He writes: "That citizens consent to relinquish rights and freedoms... has made it starkly clear that even if we claim to live under democratic rule of law,   our [US] republic operates under a much different rule: the rule of consentership. We, the citizenry, are simply the consenters!"

Another interesting source that provokes a reflection of free speech, or lack thereof, is in the 1970's British TV series Upstairs Downstairs. One of the primary concerns of both the downstairs servants, and the upstairs aristocrats, is that people must know their place.

Head butler Mr. Hudson, the devoted upholder of social conventions, vigorously scolds his fellow servants should they even slightly veer from their "proper" place and demands they remember their duty to obediently serve their upstairs masters.  

Today there are many Mr. Hudson's alive and well and spreading their message to shut-up, know your place, and leave the economics to the experts, since, as we call all see, things are going so splendidly in the world.

6) EXAMINING ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS

A "Mr. Hudson" approach to organizing for a guaranteed income will never work. Poverty cannot be solved until we fully and openly examine all economic assumptions, but especially definitions of production and money.

For example: Does money actually come from production? Are all activities defined as economically 'productive' good for people and the planet? Or are many of the 'productive' economic activities actually "illth," as John Ruskin called it?   Do measures like the GDP actually encourage practices that are harmful to the environment? Do these measurements financially punish those engaged in unpaid care work-- even though this work first makes life, then makes life livable?

These are foundational questions that must be discussed to end poverty, to end economic incentives to war, to end economic attacks against unpaid care workers (mostly women), and to end economically driven harm to nature and other living things.

Attempting to discuss economics as a science without critiquing everyone's positions and assertions--regardless of whether they are politically left, right, or centre--is profoundly unscientific and only defends the status quo.

Currently, the economic status quo means needless suffering, ill health and death due to economic premises that no one wants to examine: how we define money and productive.

Yet if we do not examine foundations of how money and production are defined, how can we argue for a guaranteed income, since after all, a guaranteed income is about money.

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See also: Why quote