The amazing life and musings of Duncan Cameron

Conversing with Duncan is always a wonderful, insightful experience that ends far too soon. Read some of Duncan's many accomplishments and his thoughts about Canadian politics past and present.

Duncan Cameron Credit: Facebook

I recently sat down over zoom with my friend, Duncan Cameron.

Duncan joined the Department of Finance in 1966 after graduating from the University of Alberta. He worked in various roles including  as financial advisor to the Canadian Delegation at the United Nations General Assembly, until his departure in 1969.

He went on to earn his PhD from Sorbonne Universite, returning to Canada in 1975 to teach at the University of Ottawa where he was a member of the political science department until 2004.

For 11 years, Duncan was editor of the left leaning political, cultural and literary magazine, Canadian Forum that was active from 1920 to 2000.

He was president of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) from1987 until1999 and when Judy Rebick founded rabble.ca in 2001, Duncan became a founder and urged the CCPA to sponsor it.

Duncan continues contributing to rabble.ca and is president emeritus.

He authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited 11 books including Ethics and Economics (with Gregory Baum), The Other Macdonald Report (with Daniel Drache), The Free Trade Papers, The Free Trade Deal, Canada Under Free Trade (with Mel Watkins) and Constitutional Politics (with Miriam Smith).

Duncan is an adjunct professor of political science at Simon Fraser University (SFU), a director of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at Concordia University in Montreal, and a research fellow of the Centre for Global Political Economy at SFU.

Duncan can also be heard on Radio-Canada, the French branch of the CBC, where he has a regular spot on Phare-Quest.  

Recently, Duncan introduced me to the Polanyi Institute in Montreal, Quebec. Karl Polanyi was an economist journalist. His approach was based on empirical research and history.

As a graduate student in France, a friend gave Duncan a copy of Silent Surrender (1970) documenting the growth of American ownership of Canadian industry. Written by Kari Polanyi Levitt – Polanyi’s daughter who began her career in economics teaching at McGill University – the book argued that economics cannot be separated from politics – something we take for granted today.

“When I began teaching, I was introduced to her. I remember meeting her at an event after a conference in Gatineau,” Duncan shared.

“And, somebody said, how was your trip to Haiti? And, we then had, I would say, a 10 to 15-minute monologue on her trip. Everybody was just listening to her. It was incredible. She's one of the most articulate, intelligent voices I'd ever heard in my life. And, so we became friends,” he added.

Eventually, Kari told Duncan that she had her father’s archives and wanted to establish an institute where folks could consult his work. Key to establishing the institute was that Kari had found a graduate student, Margie Mendell, to translate Polanyi’s work from Hungarian to English.

Originally from Budapest, Hungary, Polanyi also wrote in German having worked in Austria where Kari was born before moving to England during World War II.

“He was editor of a magazine similar to The Economist. And his book, The Great Transformation, is the best history you'll ever read of the 20th century. It was written the year I was born, 1944,” Duncan said.

“He was a tremendous visionary and has all kinds of ideas that I've used for years in my teaching. I used to do a whole session on Polanyi versus Hayek,” he explained.

Friedrich Hayek was part of the Austrian School of Economics that believed free-market capitalism would ensure the necessary creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship needed to help societies and citizens prosper.

Hayek is the founder of neoliberalism while Polanyi is the socialist thinker who goes beyond Keynesian economics and doesn't have the kind of negative association we get with academic neo-Marxism.

Together Kari and Mendell set up the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at Concordia University, Montreal, and things took off from there.

They started organizing conferences and people came from all over the world. Now conferences alternate between Montreal and host countries including Hungary, Italy, Austria, France, Mexico, Turkey, Argentina, and Korea.

When Kari celebrated her 100^th birthday this year, Duncan made the opening presentation at the Polanyi conference in her honour. He also wrote a wonderful piece about Kari’s life and work for rabble.ca.

Duncan maintains, “It's an important thread in my sort of whole existence, the Polanyi Institute. Along with the Parkland Institute in Edmonton, the CCPA in Ottawa, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Regina and Halifax.”

Duncan points out that the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta (U of A) was established as a result of a study that looked at privatizing liquor stores in Alberta. Hmmmm. Privatization of liquor stores, now that sounds familiar.

It seems political economist, Gord Laxer – brother of York University political scientist and founding member of the Waffle party, Jim Laxer – wanted the CCPA to do that study. So, Gord phoned Duncan and the study was done.

Then, Gord suggested there should be a CCPA in Edmonton. Instead, Gord managed to get funding from the dean of arts at U of A to start an independent think tank and became the founding director and former head of Parkland Institute (1996 - 2011). Duncan was also a founder.

The economic and social research institute had its first publication reviewed in the weekly British magazine, The Economist.

“They had a lot of impact in Alberta. I think without them, you'd never have had Rachel Notley,” Duncan mused.

Duncan reminds me that recently Albertans celebrated their province without actually mentioning that September 1, 1905 is the date Alberta became a province by joining Confederation.

The actual holiday fell on Monday, September 2, 2024 and Daniel Smith took the opportunity to hold a press conference to declare that despite Ottawa’s efforts, Alberta was doing really well because exports of petroleum had never been higher.

“Well, of course, the reason was that Ottawa, because of Rachel Notley, built a pipeline to Tidewater at a cost of $30 billion. And, Trudeau never talks about it because it's destroyed his reputation amongst environmentalists. They ( the federal Liberals) did it for Alberta. He gets no credit for it at all,” Duncan observed.

Duncan went on to add, “Smith’s basking in the benefits of this. The federal government will also get $3 billion a year in revenue from this. So, in 10 years it'll be paid off and of course they're under pressure to sell it if you can believe it. They should never ever sell it because it’s the only way that Canada will be able to control the export of tar sands and therefore the development of the tar sands. It's a very important public policy instrument. They had to sign over 600 community benefit agreements with local Indigenous peoples along the way. No private company would ever have taken the risk to do all that.”

Duncan is hoping Naheed Nenshi becomes Alberta’s next premier – although he fears the rural areas are going to be tough to win.  

“What most people don't remember, is that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) started in Calgary. The first meeting was in 1932. People remember Regina because of the Regina Manifesto a year later,” Duncan shared.

That first meeting in Calgary was a mixture of agricultural activists, small groups of urban trade unionists and large numbers of social gospel folks. Eventually, the CCF evolved into the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Duncan believes the NDP have lost touch with their rural roots right across Canada.

“Tommy Douglas would never have been elected premier in 1944, or lasted until the 1960s, if it hadn't been for the support in the rural areas. They have none now. They just don't seem to have any sense of the importance of rural Canada,” Duncan lamented.

Duncan and I moved on to discuss the current federal government’s unpopularity. Duncan puts it down to Doug Ford, Scott Moe, Daniel Smith and the other conservative premiers.

“So, the conservative premiers have got this game going where they get together and they blame Ottawa for health care funding. In the meantime, they're not spending the money on health care,” says Duncan.

“Daniel Smith's on the radio and she says, we're spending money on health care and it's public money and we're spending it. And, that's all that matters. Of course, it's going to for profit stuff,” he adds.

Then, Duncan reminded me that the principle of the Canada Health Act included portability – that one Canadian citizen can get health service in any province. It also included that health care had to be publicly administered. So, by privatizing health care and its administration, Smith, Ford and other conservative premiers have negated this policy.

Yet, Trudeau has not withdrawn money from either Alberta or Ontario.

“For every dollar they (the premiers) put into private, they (the federal government) should withdraw a dollar. It's that simple,” Duncan stated.

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