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P3: The Swindle of Public Subsidies of Private Property: A Review of Nanaimo Between Past and Future: Critical Perspectives on Growth, Planning and the New Nanaimo Centre by Eric W. Ricker & Frances Christopherson, eds. (Nanaimo: Friends of Plan Nanaimo Society, 2005)

Reviewed by Michael Barnholden

The Rain 5:1 (Summer 2007): 8


You can’t fight city hall, they say, but this fine collection of essays on the urban economic development of Nanaimo, the mid-sized Vancouver Island Community, argues differently. You can fight city hall, it suggests, you just can’t win. Particularly when city hall has big business and senior levels of government on their side pulling their own dirty tricks. If the history here were not so sad, it would be funny. Fortunately, the battle Nanaimo’s citizens are waging is far from over and this book is a broadside, a shot across the bow of BC-style neoliberalism in the war for human rights and democracy. This war is being waged against corporatists—elected and otherwise—who are screwing everyone else, including small business.
   Many will remember Gordon Campbell’s generalissimo, self described pit-bull Gary Farrell Collins, saying that, when the (neo) Liberals took office, they were going to preside over the greatest transfer of wealth from the public sector to private hands? Well, the story behind the New Nanaimo Centre (outlined in part two) demonstrates both the BC Liberal’s neo-liberal strategies and tactics, and neither is pretty, especially if you believe in things like democracy and rule of law. If you thought the Hell’s Angels were Nanaimo’s top thugs, this collection of essays gives us page after page of already-existing neo-liberalism. Nanaimo Between Past and Future is both a sign of the times and it portends the future if people don’t fight back.
   Liberals, not the Liberal Party of BC but small “l” liberals, are people who believe that capitalism can be reformed (hopefully for the good of all or at least most)—as opposed to radicals who believe that capitalism must be overturned (revolution for the good of all). This book is full of liberals, some of whom used to be members of the Liberal Party of BC. There are no radicals in this book.
   On the other side there are neo-liberals, who count the late Augusto Pinochet, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Brian Mulroney and locally Gordon Campbell as charter members. Neoliberals believe that capitalism should be completely unfettered and talk a lot about globalism and free markets, when what they really mean is rampant global capitalism. The economic initiatives of neo-liberalism have already proven to be massive failures elsewhere (even on neo-liberal terms) but, as this collection shows, none of these failures seem to prevent them from trying to enact what is essentially class warfare wherever and whenever they can.
   Indeed the recent development of Nanaimo’s urban core is a classic example of neo liberal class warfare. When a neo liberal public-private partnership for a waterfront convention centre in downtown Nanaimo is hatched in some corporate boardroom somewhere else, the games begin. As the essays in this book suggest, these guys—and it is mostly guys—play for keeps. They don’t just want the land and buildings: they want the right to the earth below, the air above, the sea in front, and the view from behind. In other words they want all Nanaimo has to offer, and they want the local taxpayer to pay for it. They ignore the community plan and its zoning laws. They ignore provincial election laws and change the rules to suit their agenda. They will slander their opponents, manipulate the press, lie to their constituents and expect everybody to line up behind their slim majority of elected officials. Reading this book makes you want to have a second look at David Icke and his theory about shape-shifting lizards: here they are, in technicolour.
   Thanks to Eric W. Ricker and his cohort, Nanaimo Between Past and Future is a handbook for people who want to organize effective opposition to creeping corporatism. The essays collected here describe how concerned citizens (is there another kind?) have organized an opposition to the neo-liberal agenda of the Liberal Party of BC and their henchmen and hangers-on, and fought them tooth and nail using every tool in the citizen handbag. In an informative chapter on the history of ice rinks in Nanaimo by Lawrence Rieper we see concerned citizens marshalling history. In other chapters we see them calling in experts who debunk the notion of convention centres as an economic engine, especially post-9/11, when international travel becomes officially restricted and self-restricted. There is a trenchant dissection of gentrification in a chapter titled “Politics of Exclusion: Social Impacts of the New Nanaimo Centre” by Gordon Fuller. Another chapter by Naava Smolash surveys press coverage of the referendum on the Centre. Given the relevance of this history, even the indexes are of general interest. I am thinking particularly of Lawrence Rieper’s listing of buildings by type and the dates of opening and closing with name changes, as he tracks the movement of business from the downtown core.
   The Friends of Plan Nanaimo Society has undertaken a multi-pronged strategy to battle the neoliberal agenda, which is often characterized as “moving forward”. The publication of Nanaimo Between Past and Future is but one tactic in what promises to be a long running series of battles and skirmishes. The first and perhaps most practical purpose of this book as outlined by Ricker is as an informative and critical perspective on what was at that time the most prominent issue in the fall 2005 municipal election. Unfortunately the referendum was lost, but the battle is far from over. There are and will be in the future many battles of this kind to be fought both in Nanaimo and in other towns and cities across the country and around the world. This book has as a secondary purpose the establishment of an historical and contemporary context for “revitalization and development”. The politics around these issues will, I believe, become more and more polarized as governments move closer to the Corporatist ideal of the state being a marriage between the power of the state and corporations. These pending mergers can sideline and disenfranchise citizens in the blink of an eye. In their very worst incarnations actual freedoms will be sacrificed to formal freedoms and the question will come down to who will live and who will die. A quick look at Susan George’s paper “A Short History of Neo-Liberalism: Twenty Years of Elite Economics and Emerging Opportunities for Structural Change” will make the connections clear. We are in trouble but the neo-liberal regimes are far from invulnerable. A book like this is the invaluable public record of both the struggle and the tactics and strategy faced by groups of people opposed to neo-liberal hegemony. The key documents and records presented here are the record of such a battle and as such can serve as a blueprint for future organizing. It will not be necessary to reinvent the organizational wheel each and every time a community needs to defend its integrity.
   This is not about resisting any and all change, nor is it so-called nimbyism, but rather a well-told tale of the basic issue of what kind of community we want to live in. It is in this context that we need books like this. If we let the neo-liberal agenda unfold we will get the kinds of communities they think we deserve. It will be us and them. There will be winners and losers. I have deliberately used military terms to drive home the point that neoliberalism is in fact a war, a class war, thinly disguised as economic development.


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