Category: New

The Harper Conservative government has to go. Now. The divisiveness, the bitterness, the confrontations and the sleaze of today’s Ottawa are an embarrassment for all Canadians. Nobody deserves this type of government. It is time to do something.

Michael Ignatieff, pay heed. You cannot allow the Harper Conservatives to continue to reign. They are dragging you down to their level. They are dividing your party. They are belittling you and the rest of the House of Commons. They are harming Canada’s reputation among civilized nations. They are hurting women and minorities in Canada and around the world. They will do anything; lie, cheat and steal to stay in power. Their agenda is of power not people. Their tactics are division not inclusion.

Michael, please do your part. Get out in front and lead. We will do our part in the ridings, getting rid of as many of Mr. Harper’s more disgusting supporters as we can.

And you can tell this country that we are getting out of Dodge and Kandahar just as fast as we can get planes there to pick up our troops. If one more Canadian life is wasted in that God-forsaken, opium-farming country, do not let it be your damn fault.

Get us into an election and you can talk to Canadians about jobs. Not retail jobs. Not jobs for kids to nuke hamburgers. Talk about real jobs. That is what is needed and that is what our government has to encourage and nurture.

You can do more about the environment than any air-head who thinks that is the only issue. That smirking Harper thinks he is above talking about the environment but you have to stop him and his friends from fouling our air and our water and our farmland and our food. Our environment is not here for individual profit. It belongs to all of us and to future generations. This country is too precious to rape for coal for the Chinese and oil for the Americans. Either harvest resources with respect for our land, for our seas and for our air or do not take them at all.

Harper and his minions are going to tell Canadians that they have solved the economic crisis but the indicators are that the financial world is still much too fragile. You have to tell the world that Harper’s laissez-faire economics do not work. There have to be rules. There have to be controls. We have to have people who can enforce the rules. No matter where people locate their money, they have to pay their share of taxes. They have to obey the rules.

It’s time to move to the left Michael. Business no longer calls the shots. We have to welcome the NDP into a Liberal Party that works for people. We have to believe in national daycare. We have to be in front of a guaranteed income for Canadians. And dental care and a health plan that includes the prescription drugs people need. There is a special club in the Liberal Party, Michael. Its founding members included people such as the late Pierre Trudeau. We called it the Get Off Your Ass club. You can join.

– 30 –

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

How do you choose a future for your country? We have certainly seen enough examples of how not to change the country. They range from revolution to political edicts. Last time we had a revolution, we hung a few rebels (1837 and 1885). Political edicts really do not work for fundamental changes because the next politician in line can un-edict them. A politician such as Lester Pearson can give us Medicare but subsequent politicians can pervert the intent. It is when a change is agreed to by the voters that politicians are more cautious about changing it back.

The last major attempt at change was the Charlottetown Accord that Canadian voters rejected more because it was a solution presented by politicians rather than a properly debated and understood change. In Ontario and British Columbia there were attempts at changing how people vote—moving from first-past-the-post to a form of proportional representation. They failed because the people pushing the proposals were less democratic in being chosen than their proposed changes.

In Ontario, the government actually held a form of lottery to pick one participant in each electoral district. These lottery winners were then given presentations by academics on various options. The outcome was obvious: they were given these choices, so they picked one. The entire project was a fiasco and Ontario voters turned thumbs down on the recommendation of the lottery winners. The results were similar in British Columbia where the government gave the voters two opportunities to change the voting system—with the same negative result both times.

The obvious answer is to use democratic methods to choose the people making the recommendation. If the people are chosen democratically, then the voters can take ownership of their deliberations. They have to have their discussions and debates in open forums. They have to be available to take input from the people who selected them. They have to be people who can function within a political environment.

That was what Ontario’s lottery winners lacked. With not being chosen democratically, they had no concept of how people would react to what they recommended. It would color citizens’ perceptions of the results if one political party dominated the proceedings and the results would have a more balanced reception with a reasonably balance of political philosophies among the participants.

Whether we called it a constitutional assembly or a Friday night fish fry, it would still need to attract the participation of people interested in how the country works and with ideas about how we can make it better. Some political science professors would be attracted but these people tend to be long on theory and short on practical knowledge and might have a difficult time getting elected to the assembly.

This is what is called a KISS solution. It means keep it simple stupid. And that is also one of the important keys to making it work. Confuse the voters and they will withdraw their support. As long as the average person can easily follow the process, understand the necessary discussions and dialogues and appreciate the conclusions, we could have a winning formula to Canada’s future. All we have to do is build some support.

– 30 –

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

What is Canada? Is it its provinces? Is it its peoples? Is it just an idea? That is as fundamental as it gets. The Fathers of Confederation were a small population of English-speaking and French-speaking British subjects trying to pull a nation together to compete with and contain the emerging nation to the south of our borders. They created a country with the second largest land mass in the world that had no way of protecting itself and no clear idea of its future.

We are certainly less grandiose than our American neighbours to the south. We lack the braggadocio and pretentions. The United States is a country based on ideals that seem to hang around just off-stage. It is a country of vaudeville and Washington, Disney World and Guantanamo Bay, Las Vegas and Los Alamos, that enjoys the warmth of the art of Norman Rockwell and the chill of the sins of Al Capone, that takes town hall politics to the world stage, and while a country reluctant to go to war, it then does not know when to come home.

When John Porter published The Vertical Mosaic, his report on Canada’s sociological development, in 1965, he explained that it was the safety valve of the United States that drew away the more radical elements of our society. He believed that this kept Canada from having to deal with home grown trouble makers. He was just a few years ahead of us becoming more aware of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) and the eventual murder of Labour Minister Pierre Laporte.

English-speaking Canadians still look with jaundiced eye on the Péquistes of la Belle Province who cheerfully screw les anglais by demanding pacifying transfers of federal monies and responsibilities to Quebec. Les notables (Quebec’s bilingual and wealthy elites) who perpetuate this foolishness are actually repressing their own people with it and doing little harm to Canada’s increasingly more powerful English-speaking majority.

This self-defeating tribalism in Quebec has also contributed to the shifting the power centre of Canada from Montreal to Toronto and to points west. Instead of speaking out on behalf of the French-speaking Canadians in other provinces, the Quebec Péquistes reject them and further narrow their field.

The drain to the safety valve of the United States that Porter indicated turned out to be on the right wing of the political spectrum throughout the rest of the 20^th Century. While the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney was supposed to have heralded the growing strength of the right in the 1980s, it was actually the merging of the Western Reform and the Conservative Party that brought in a truly right-wing government. Porter’s safety valve had become redundant.

Canadian voters are obviously reluctant and concerned about the agenda of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government but there has been little to spark their enthusiasm to the left.

It is from this cauldron of concern from which a new consensus needs to emerge. We will write more about it.

– 30 –

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]