Demonstrators from PowerShift BC gather in Victoria. | Photo courtesy of PowerShift Canada

It would be easy to succumb to cynicism these days in British Columbia. Christy Clark’s election, after a campaign that was equal parts deceitful and simplistic, would seem to confirm that we are living in post-political times. Marketing has overcome rational public policy debate. Consumerism and self-interest have overcome citizenship and the common good.

Clark and the B.C. Liberals’ laser-like focus on ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ – even if, as in the case of her much touted LNG boom, the real economic prospects are doubtful at best – is part of a major trend in electoral politics that targets the perceived self-absorbed voter with great specificity.

Jeffrey Simpson, writing in the Globe and Mail about a new book by political reporter Susan Delacourt, sums up the conventional wisdom.

“Canadian politics has moved into an era when voters no longer think much of themselves as citizens, with duties and obligations and longer-term perspectives, but as taxpayers in a consumer society who shop among politicians for those who will give them the most at the lowest cost,” he writes.

Delacourt’s book is entitled Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them. Democracy has been reduced to just another exercise in direct marketing. Simpson concedes that this is a depressing statement about our times.

Fortunately, Simpson and Delacourt’s analysis is missing a crucial part of the story. Just because modern electoral politics has sunk to new lows of calculated manipulation, doesn’t mean that the public is universally and forever in thrall to politicians. Harper’s Conservatives are the masters of this deception, but their poll numbers are stuck at 32 per cent these days, and their hold on power looks tenuous.

More importantly, politics remains alive and well – it’s just taking on new forms. And there is little evidence that our species has devolved irreversibly to a more selfish state of existence. The foundations of the welfare state – a key part of the material basis for social solidarity – may have crumbled or been eroded by successive governments, but I don’t believe neoliberalism has yet been able to completely erase collective and unselfish impulses.

For an example, let’s take a look at what took place in Victoria last weekend. While the B.C. Legislature sat empty – again – hundreds of youth gathered for PowerShift BC, a long weekend of strategizing and organizing to create a movement that will shift our province and society off of our fossil fuel addiction. The overarching concern behind PowerShift – which began in the United States and has also held annual conferences in Ottawa – is the looming threat of global climate change.

Youth are stepping up to educate their peers, petition elected officials to take action, and put themselves on the line with direct actions and civil disobedience aimed at stopping destructive new fossil fuel exports in their tracks. This is hardly the behaviour of young people in thrall to consumerism and motivated only by narrow self-interest. For most people in a country like Canada, the devastation of climate change remains an abstraction, a future prospect. The reality is that it is primarily the poor and destitute in the Global South who are being hit hardest by climate change.

PowerShift BC is just the latest manifestation of the emerging movements fighting for climate justice and Indigenous rights and sovereignty in Canada. The success of these two movements is inextricably linked. It was fitting that PowerShift BC concluded on October 7, the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation which recognized Indigenous sovereignty and title. The date was marked by an international day of action, initiated by Idle No More, in more than 60 cities. The Harper government, in contrast, pretty much ignored the date.

Idle No More and PowerShift give us reason to hope, and we urgently need real politics of solidarity like this to find some expression in the electoral sphere. After all, to really make the shift we need, power must be taken out of the hands of the puppets of corporate power. Until then, it’ll continue to be a dismal shopping experience at the ballot box.