Parcel of Rogues

Ross Dobson

The book's title, Parcel of Rogues, comes from a poem by Robbie Burns, “A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation'', scathing those who sold out Scotland to union with England. The Scots have been trying to get back “home rule'' ever since. We could learn from that. I think it's time to start signing up membership on a Canadian “Home Rule'' movement. It's gone just about as far. I also think we`ve got less than two years before that becomes an equally-feckless fringe-group notion. Maude Barlow never suggests that Canada may have had its final federal election. But, after reading her stunning critique, analysis and indictment of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, I could be persuaded that we have. Before Brian Mulroney and his rogues will ever put his status to the decision of an electorate who has read this book, he will run for cover to the USA and take us with him.

Maude Barlow convinces me that WE Canada and Canadians have been placed totally at risk by this “parcel of rogues'': not just our forests, water, energy (both hydro and petrochemical) the foundation of our economy, but our food production as well, not just our social network, our cultural identity and our political capacity to govern what we do the foundation of our separate identity, but our politics and government as well.

If only the Conservatives would understand that a country is not a corporation, government is not management, self-actualization is not competition, and the marketplace cannot encompass, or serve, the whole of existence.

“A Parcel of Rogues” has to become the source book for a new political alignment in this country. Our present politicians and parties who either conspired or ignored our way into this are either part of the conspiracy or totally fossilized. Maude Barlow for Prime Minister!

Excerpted from Ross Dobson's book review of Maude Barlowe's "Parcel of Rogues How Free Trade is Failing Canada," as published in City Magazine, Winter/Spring/91 p. 39

(CX5068)

 

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