Rex Murphy’s got something on his mind

One of the nation's leading commentators speaks on Canadian politics, global warming, the implications of oil, and the future of Newfoundland

By Kenny Sharpe

“You asked the man one question and he went on for nine minutes”, said Rex Murphy, recalling an interview he conducted in the early ’90s with a fisherman from L’Anse aux Meadows, not long after this province saw the collapse of its fisheries.

It was with the help of this retrospectively suited alter ego that Rex Murphy was, in some way, referencing his own question-answering abilities, akin to those of the outport skipper.

With fluidity, substance, and passion, Rex Murphy of all people could give you the answer to any question.

His culturally native sereneness, in tune with his Memorial-by-way-of-Oxford, Rhodes Scholar education, provides the basis for his weekly column in The Globe and Mail. In addition he is a national radio host and television regular for the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

Rex Murphy is a poet, a linguist, a true ambassador of the English language. Above all, he is a Newfoundlander.

With the release of his most recent unedited proof titled Canada and Other Matters of Opinion, Rex Murphy took the time to sit down with The Muse for a rare and rapid interview to talk about Canada and other matters of opinion.

The Muse: In your most recent publication, Canada and Other Matters of Opinion, you urge politicians in Canada to turn south at example Obama. You suggest that politicians at home throw away their conventional political warfare and simply speak their minds. What would a Canadian population like to hear from their political leaders?

Rex Murphy: Well before they would listen to anything they are going to have to get certain cues. As you probably know, because you’ve scanned the book, I have certain progressive estimations of Obama that are shifting over time…[B]ut one gift that he had, that we don’t have to discuss because it has already been manifested is the gift of convention. [Obama] had the ability to give cues and that’s the preliminary before you can get to the main message. Our politicians, without being sarcastic, probably since the summertime of Trudeau, have more or less been fairly conventional, and I’m talking at the national level.

And, as from Trudeau through to the early nineties and into now, the partisan rules have become more and more part of the total umbrella of Canadian politics.

Politics in Canada is so small. (In a political speaker’s voice) ‘If I do this in the House of Commons, will this hurt Ignatief?’, and (in that same voice) ‘If I play the piano at the National Art Center, will that wash away the last time I said something nasty in Quebec?’ It is so tactically focused.

How is someone in Sudbury, Ontario, or somebody in Hatchet Cove, Newfoundland supposed to take that and relate it to something in his or her own life? Are they expanding the horizon of human possibility for the entire nation?

There is no reference to the public whatsoever.

[The politicians] have to shut off the idea where they think that the game is only for them. They have to open themselves up to things that are proportionate to the country that they are seeking to lead. I also want to throw in something about our provincial premiers. With the exception of Danny [Williams], name another premier that stands out not only as a voice for their own province, which I know is a standard obligation. When is the premier of BC saying something that really means something to the people in Newfoundland?

They say they are players of a national dynamic, but they don’t rise to those roles. Again, I’m not nostalgic. Our politicians are mediocre and, in many cases, are so individualistically driven that they have no capacity whatsoever to inspire.

TM: In your uncorrected proof you call global warming ‘neither truth nor science’. For the up and coming generation, what exactly is it, then?

RM: Well I know this, and you should know this if you have any education at all beyond high school. You should be able go recognize the characteristics of a campaign, as opposed to disposition, or as opposed to a truly neutral or disinterested presentation of a thesis.

Since this thing began, Gore’s ludicrous film, it is a Hollywood production by a failed politician.

All I am saying to you is, I am not saying go pro or con, just recognize something that is not in the terrain of neutral analysis. Recognize propaganda campaigns when they are staring you in the face.

Now you can have a propaganda campaign for a good and a true cause. That is a separate thing. But recognize that we really are being pounded, and that all of these weights of persuasion, such as the mass media are complicit.

I don’t know if there is such thing as an environmental reporter exists. The environmental reporters that we see in Europe and North America, have always, and will always be advocates. We would not allow a business reporter to be on side, but it seems that in this kind of soft terrain of the generality of ‘let's save the planet’, you are able to be a missionary at the same time as you are being a scrutineer or an analyst.

That’s context. I am really surprised at the young people who are temperamentally inclined to resist and seem so eager to take what is propaganda.

That is the big preface.

On the theory of global warming there are many, despite what you have been bludgeoned to accept, many reputable speakers. I note, by the way that anyone who resists global warming is thought to be a merchant for Exxon Mobile, which is pure garbage. Gore is getting a hell of a lot more money than Ian Flemmer of Australia, and if you haven’t read that, you should.

The idea that science is contingent on consensus is ludicrous on the face. It could be only one person, for example, who has the strongest idea. I don’t think Einstein came out of a committee and when Galileo was here, the committee was on the other side of the room.

And the idea that the most ardent advocates are suggesting that if people contest the idea of global warming, maybe even a little bit, that we should hold tribunals. So you know, that’s the inquisition, except it’s in the twenty first century and on the right corner.

Don’t lose your independence of mind; check the damn thing out. The final thing is this. If you like the finesse of what we will call the science of global warming, then you also have to accept power prescriptions of how it will stop. Those are economic, political, and the social pressures, and they are always up for debate.

TM: How oil-free is the future and does this sort of future exist?

RM: I don’t think it is feasible at all in the immediate term, which I would define as thirty or forty years. We have, even in Newfoundland, even with the devastation of the fishery…one of the greatest standards of living in the entire world. I think we like it. There are competing economies, and I’m not talking about ours. We have India, China, South America, which are really speeding up.

There has to be a general political decision of the whole population. They are not digging in the oil sands because they like digging in murky earth. They are digging in the oil sands because there are boats in St. John’s harbor, there are big factories in Ontario, and there are people who want jobs.

We are not going to cut off oil in twenty or thirty years, despite all of the statements that we are hearing. And if we do, every government in the Western world would be tossed out. Secondly, if the Western world wants to, that’s the really big question; if it wants to surrender its economic primacy, if it wants to, go right ahead.

TM: In your book, you talk about a ‘Last Chance Syndrome’, referring to Newfoundland and Labrador and its future with the oil industry. Care to elaborate?

RM: I think that the oil industry is almost like Providence. I have thought about it a little bit. The biggest social and economical hit that we ever had, and psychologically it was massive, was the suspension of the defining activity of the place since it began. That is, closing the fishery.

And I know that in the early days it was really tenuous, but we still think of four hundred, five hundred years ago. So Newfoundland came to be because of the things in the water and our guys, over time, got really good at getting those things. It affected our language, built the social culture, built the songs and the entertainment. It gave us a cast of mind.

For your reference, 30,000 Newfoundlanders losing their jobs in one day would be the equivalent to picking up the Globe and Mail and suddenly there were 600,000 Canadians out of work. That is proportionate. And you can imagine this would stagger the nation.

More or less the oil industry kicked in gear in this province at almost that moment when the fishery collapsed. I know a lot of guys who sold their houses for airplane tickets. But they got out and they got jobs and they weren’t on welfare. That was all very good. So oil has played a really, really important part, and I’m trying to stress that. It really is significant, consequential. I see it as really, the-stop-that-wildest thing going here.

The great perimeter coastline of Newfoundland is becoming something of either a shelter for people in their old age. Or a museum. Or the spot that a son or daughter visits at Christmas

And the thing that infused Newfoundland culture for 450 years is just folding away. You should acknowledge what is going on and maybe, if we have some structured belief in Newfoundland and Newfoundland character...maybe we should be, really, really, really, worried that the prosperity that is contracted with oil is not the whole story.

And I would fault the provincial government here. I would fault Danny Williams as to why this particular of it is so massive, this particular discussion. I don’t know if there is a remedy. But that discussion is not on the highest part of the public agenda.

This is a great wrench in the social fabric and historical continuity of Newfoundland. I think it is the biggest question of our time.

TM: Will Danny Williams be successful in positioning this province to lead the country and the continent?

I don’t know. I really don’t know. I know that he is dedicated. I give him a lot of credit by the way. He is not a man who needs the position. Everybody knows that.

This is a hard place to run. We are a concerned bunch by the way. (Rex laughs). It is not easy and I wouldn’t wish it on him. But I look the size of these problems and the depth of them. I also think that the scale of the shock that we received by the closure of the fishery. I don’t know if that was so large that we’ve even absorbed it ourselves.

[Danny Williams] has learned the lessons of the Smallwood years and some others: how we slopped industries away and gave Doyle half of North America and all this stuff. He learned those extremely well. And it is that record that he is chief in responding to and that makes him so aggressive in any negotiation.

But I wonder that if outside of that zone, over the longer term, and I am thinking backwards, not forwards, that the relationship with how we came to be, what is happening to the emptying of the out ports, the evacuation.

But they’ve married, they have houses, they are there. They come home now as a tourist comes. So how many now have gone to Manitoba or Saskatchewan, I could give you the names of a cousin there, a brother here.

You go out to places like Twillingate—I was out there a few summers ago—and it’s really beautiful, but it is static. Are we just becoming a kind of rough version of Disney World, where people come in and they enjoy the two days of sunshine and then off they go again? That is the big problem.

I wouldn’t put it all on poor Williams’ plate because I think that it is part communal. But the leader always has the chore of the challenge of articulating what is the central challenge.

Share