Mike Lofgren, for 28 years a legislative assistant and staffer in the US House of Representatives, published The Deep State in 2016. The details of his argument, which is focussed on the US, differ from the details of Canadian politics, but there are sufficient general similarities that it can provide an interesting perspective on our present discontents with the Government of Canada..Lofgren argued in addition to the visible government clustered around the Mall in DC, there's a less easily defined network that operates on its own, no matter who is elected. Likewise, the Canadian government is not confined to the Parliamentary precinct in Ottawa..The Americans encountered partisan gridlock before, just as Canadians have encountered corruption and scandal. Lofgren argued the past decade or so in the US was similar to the rancorous years prior to the Civil War. Several Canadian journalists have, in one way or another, indicated the current government is the worst in our history..The militarization of law enforcement in the US, along with what we now call the “weaponization” of the US Department of Justice, are matched in Canada by executive over-reach undertaken by the Liberals and sustained by the NDP along with, as we have recently witnessed, the subordination of the rather important matter of elections to the interests of a foreign and antagonistic state, the Peoples’ Republic of China..The American deep state is centred on military and security organizations, now expanded to include the wizards of Silicon Valley. President Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address contained an early formulation of the issue. He warned of the malign consequences of creating “a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions” that he summarized as a “military-industrial complex.” He was concerned about regime change such that the US could become something other than a democratic republic..Canada has no military-industrial complex to speak of. We scarcely have an armed force at all. Instead, our existential focus has been on Quebec and the Laurentian obsession with “national unity,” otherwise known as appeasing la belle province and protecting the hegemony of the Liberal Party of Canada..For both Eisenhower and Lofgren, both of whom were Republicans, the deep state and the military-industrial complex was in no sense a secret cabal that needed to be exposed. The hybrid entity of public and private organizations existed in plain sight and mostly acted in the light of day. It's not so much a sinister operation as an entrenched and not particularly competent one. Indeed, its failures have become sufficiently routine that only the carapace of protectiveness towards its leadership has enabled the leaders of the deep state in both countries to escape responsibility for their habitual ineptitude..That said, the term “deep state” is seldom applied to Canadian political events. So far as I know, there is only the eccentric 2017 book of Kevin Taft, once the leader of the Alberta Liberal Party, called Oil’s Deep State. As late as March 2020, CBC's Bruce Livesay endorsed Taft’s opinions, that the petroleum industry constituted Canada’s deep state. That appraisal came over three yeas after Justin Trudeau said it was necessary to shut down the oil sands. Unlike the real Canadian deep state, the oil business is not particularly powerful..Most of the recent deep state symbolism has been popularized by Donald Trump, Breitbart and their supporters. This usage bears little resemblance to Lofgren’s account. For Trump and his allies, the deep state means chiefly executive branch officials and intelligence and security officials opposed to Trump’s efforts to give a new direction to the US government..Most of the discussion of Trump’s deep state debunked his usage and ignored the arguments and the evidence he introduced. Critics were chiefly concerned with dismissing Trump’s “conspiracy theories.” And yet, no one denies the importance of the administrative apparatus either in the US or in Canada. That’s where regulations are formulated and enforced; that’s where programs from social welfare to military defence are implemented. The administrative state is the natural home for “experts,” as Canadians were reminded daily during the COVID-19 event..Nevertheless, the attitude of agenda-setting Canadian journalists towards Donald Trump and all his works has made any use of the term into prima facie evidence of being a conspiracy theorist..Andrew Coyne, writing in the Globe and Mail in 2022, for example, explained it was entirely democratic for elected representatives not to try to run things. Using a somewhat archaic metaphor, he said governments steer, not row. The rowers in government — the auditor general say, or the privacy commissioner — operate outside the direct control of elected officials. That’s why day-to-day government operations are so hard to follow and so typically opaque, “especially of the public.”.This is the deep state in operation, and it’s entirely OK Coyne assured us. It is a “basic principle of democratic governance” central to which is “an executive that is accountable and rules-based.”.What happens when the government is not accountable and breaks the rules? Coyne doesn't say..A year earlier the Toronto Star praised the deep state in Washington for keeping Trump “in check.” Chief among the members of the “permanent establishment” was James Comey, FBI director later fired by Trump and author of the bogus and discredited Russia-collusion hoax. In Canada, the Star explained, we celebrate our “valued” non-partisan civil service “whose mission is to serve whichever government is in office.” In short, Canadians have “long prized what some deride as the ‘deep state.’” Canadians should prize it still!.All this discussion about the deep state is preliminary to noting last week two of its most trusted members put in a rare public appearance..The first was Vincent Rigby, Justin’s national security advisor from January 2020 to September 2021. He told MPs on June 8 that whoever leaked evidence about Chinese interference in the election was not a “hero.” Why not? Because “if you start having public servants releasing — illegally —highly, highly classified intelligence, you are trending in the direction of chaos.” He did not explain what is to be done when the government persistently, consistently and suspiciously ignored evidence of Chinese spying and subversion. Rigby is now a senior advisor at the other CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington..The second, of course, was David Johnston. The question has been raised many times both by his supporters and his detractors: why, oh why, did he ever accept Justin’s invitation to become a “special rapporteur?”.The answer can be found in the first sentence of his letter of resignation: “my objective was to help build trust in our democratic institutions.” That is, he had no sense that such “trust” was entirely misplaced — despite having written a book on the subject. Anyone who reads Johnston’s report with care cannot avoid noticing the author’s endless obfuscations. As Trump might have said, this is “sad.”.It may be nothing new for states and governments that have unlimited pretensions to power to react by claiming that nothing is wrong and that anyone who wants to change things has “unacceptable views,” as Justin said of the truckers. Lofgren called this the Hapsburg strategy. It works for a while but does not end well..An alternative is to try to reform a fossilized political culture by debunking myths no one believes anyhow. Perhaps a beginning was made in Alberta with the election of Danielle Smith..Does anyone in the country think similar change is possible in Ottawa?
