Politics, Re-Spun

Premier Campbell is Simply Afraid

“Question period is about to get underway. And guess who isn’t in the legislature? Why that would be Premier Gordon Campbell for the fourth time in a row.”

via Public Eye Online – Three strikes you’re out?.

And since the premier is scared to continue with the legislative calendar for the rest of the week before the start of the election campaign, it’s hard to conclude anything other than he is dreadfully afraid of accountability.

His party is in enormous trouble.

WE WON!!! Democracy 1, Gordon Campbell 0

Gag law ruled unconstitutional

March 27, 2009

The B.C. Liberal government’s controversial election “gag” law has been ruled unconstitutional by the B.C. Supreme Court.

Justice Frank Cole found that Bill 42’s restriction on third-party election advertising before the official 28-day election period is unconstitutional. He’s expected to issue written reasons for his judgement early next week.

via Hospital Employees’ Union – Home.

Gordon Campbell, the Anti-Populist: Soon Out of a Job

“Amongst people ‘absolutely certain to vote’, the governing party is only two points ahead of the NDP (41% to 39%).”

“The BC election may well be determined by the turnout levels of supporters for each party.”

via BC Liberals Lead, Voter Turnout Will Decide the BC Election | Angus Reid Strategies. Read the whole piece; it’s fascinating.

Gordon Campbell prides himself on not pandering to the rabble that makes up the poorest 95% of the 4m+ British Columbians.

The NDP has grown solidly in the last few years in its ability to relate to this poorest 95%. The Obama bump didn’t hurt either. With the neoLiberals’ lead within the margin of error of decided voters, we’re starting in a tie with the winner determined by which party can convince people that voting matters. Luckily we also have an electoral reform referendum to get out and vote for again this time, so I don’t need to give you a hint which side that favours.

And with the welcome rise of the BC Conservatives [who have some sound criticisms of the neoLiberal party's carnage] as a viable alternative to the neoLiberals, Campbell is going to be cruising the privatized liquor stores on May 13th looking for empty boxes to move his stuff back over to the opposition leader’s office.

Then with a winning electoral reform referendum we will be looking for some seriously enhanced representation in the ledge: the Conservatives peeling non-neoliberals from the neoLiberal party, the Greens getting electoral representation with members from across the spectrum, maybe members of the soft right-wing of the NDP joining a new centre-right Liberal party. Could this be the end of polarized BC politics?

More from Angus: “Overall, 51 per cent of respondents across the province say it is ‘time for a change of government in British Columbia’ while only 34 per cent feel that the current government should be returned to office. When Gordon Campbell’s name was added to the question, only 30 per cent of respondents thought ‘Gordon Campbell should be re-elected’ while a majority (54%) said it was time for a different premier.”

Clearly, Campbell has made the right choice to avoid all unnecessary public appearances since his arrest in Maui, but even that tactic just isn’t good enough anymore.

And while the NDP needs to define itself more and do better convincing the population how it will manage the transition from an economy that serves global corporate profit to one that serves actual human beings, there is plenty of time, especially since they haven’t even released their platform yet. Wait until next week to see the plan.

So to be this close to the government that has swelled its public service communication ranks to 250 as it spends our tax dollars telling us how awesome they are while under the Bill 42 gag law–all this, before the NDP platform is even out, I’m very confident!

Now it’s time to organize the 50/50 pool on which out-of-touch, condescending cabinet ministers will lose their seat as Campbell loses government. Whoever guesses the closest mix wins half the pot. The other half will go to any of hundreds of human-advocacy organizations the neoLiberal carnage has affected.

BC Cabinet Minister Effectively Endorses NDP Candidate, Kathy Corrigan

BC’s neoLiberal Solicitor-General John van Dongen “admits the protests of Burnaby’s mayor and his wife, who is running as a New Democratic Party candidate in the upcoming provincial election, were partly behind the government’s decision to seek a new jail site.”

This is pretty much the closest thing to an endorsement from a sitting BC neoLiberal cabinet minister of an NDP candidate that I could imagine. Like Dan Jarvis’ lame protests over BC Ferries building ships in Germany instead of his North Vancouver ship-building riding, nice guy John Nuraney, Burnaby-Deer Lake MLA, seemed incapable of stopping his government from plunking a remand centre into a Burnaby neighbourhood with no community consultation.

Crediting someone who isn’t even an MLA yet with being able to side-track condenscending, unresponsive government policy over the government’s own sitting MLA in the riding may be the highest praise an NDP candidate could hope for. Thanks for that John! I wonder if he’s looking for an honourary NDP membership. I’d sure give him one.

And judging from Pat Tracy of the Burnaby Now, agreement with the NDP’s arguments that the neoLiberals are arrogant and out of touch is widespread: “The problem with this whole issue is that it just seems unfathomable that van Dongen and Nuraney were caught so flat-footed on this. Didn’t they realize back in August that this would be a hot potato? Apparently not. And, apparently, based on our interviews with them prior to the anti-prison campaign gaining steam, they thought that they could pacify the community’s fears with facts. Wrong again.”

So in attempting to defuse a wedge issue by bending on the remand centre’s location, van Dongen has essentially given Kathy Corrigan her first victory as an MLA. Now all we need to do is get her elected on May 12th. Maybe the solicitor general will do some door knocking too.

Destroying the CBC: Another Step Today

I’ve already written about the slow destruction of the CBC. And I’m at it again today.

The short list of what I wrote before:

• constrain funding to lose Hockey Night in Canada
• lose the rights to the HNIC theme song
• kill the CBC orchestra

And now: “the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. plans to cut up to 800 jobs as part of its strategy to make up for a $171 million shortfall in 2009-10.”

Defunding through manufactured crises is a core element of the neoliberal toolkit. Today’s 800 layoffs are not the first assault–it’s been going on for years under Conservative and Liberal governments. Corporate media and Canada’s neoliberal parties are cozy. A state-run media portal is unfair competition in a “free” market. It has to go, but quietly.

So the weak, unbelievable argument from Igg holds little credibility: “Even the private broadcasters understand the importance of a public broadcaster, so the question is what is the government prepared to do now to ensure that this national institution survives this recession?” Clearly, nothing. The recession is another bludgeoning tool for socialized media.

Another great neoliberal toolkit is selling assets to rent back, thereby providing an eternal revenue stream for anyone wealthy enough to buy a government asset…a revenue stream funded by tax dollars in a pretty straightforward corporate welfare scheme: “The public broadcaster will consider selling and leasing back some of its real estate assets to raise extra cash.”

If the government really believed this was a good idea, they’d be advising all Canadians to sell their homes and rent them back for a quick influx of cash and the privilege of renting for the rest of our lives.

So what to do?

In a world where megacorporations are floundering, they are even more desperate for public broadcasters to get out of the way and slide their assets over to the private sector.

It’s basically theft.

Taxes are how we buy things together. Our ancestors paid for the CBC. In a nation of concentrated corporate ownership of private media, public broadcasting offers some of the last best examples of a vibrant free press keeping leaders accountable in a democracy. It’s no wonder our right wing governments are dismantling it.

Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are interested in keeping it. A coalition government with the NDP in significant power or a better representative government mix in a new electoral system is pretty much a minimum for saving the last pounds of flesh from being scraped from MotherCorp’s tortured body.

Leaving the knife-wielders in power leads to the obvious conclusion.

via CBC to cut up to 800 jobs, sell assets.

Gullible Gord: A Compendium of Campbell’s Fear and Desperation

“Incompetence is combined with thoughtlessness, arrogance and hubris — a fatal mix.”

via Spare Us from Gullible Gord :: Views :: thetyee.ca.

Rarely is there an article that so succinctly lists evidence of Campbell’s extraordinary dislocation from reality, worship of neoliberalism and disregard for citizens and communities. Rape and pillage for the lowest financial return is bad policy. These people have to go!

Read this piece and forward it widely! With the Bil 42 gag law, it is viral distribution of the destructiveness of BC’s neoLiberals that will bring them down.

“Lord Stern on global warming: It’s even worse than I thought”

“Sea levels are likely to rise twice as fast as predicted in the last UN climate change report in 2007.”

via Lord Stern on global warming: It’s even worse than I thought – Climate Change, Environment – The Independent.

As governments continue to craft optics-friendly greenwashing plans while ramping up highways construction, etc., I keep reading reports that estimates from as little as 2-3 years ago were too conservative as new data shows accelerating climate change effects.

Nero fiddled and we’re worried about how to afford a new car during this economic crash!

Stupid.

Remembering Fondly the Professionalism of Teachers

Every once in a while I lament how drastically the public education system degraded over my 11 year high school teaching career. The system in the early 1990s was a dream compared to how it ended for me 4 years ago, with Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark and the gang robbing me of what I expected to be a lifelong career.

So when I read this piece today about the activities at the BCTF AGM, I just started nodding. I used to enjoy attending AGMs over spring break to discuss the state of the profession and ways of improving the public education system. It’s nice to see that is still happening.

I remember distinctly the last few semesters I taught. With changes in evaluation [I won't even go into how much I hate the FSAs and other standardized tests], we ended up in a no-win situation.

School districts had to meet arbitrary, “objective” accountability contracts for improvement. This led to students being discouraged from taking skill-appropriate courses, struggling students encouraged to not take provincial final exams to keep the scores up, that sort of thing.

We were suddenly not allowed to give zeros for incomplete assignments or deduct late marks. This idea I actually agreed with. The process meant that students had a chance to complete assignments sincerely with integrity. That was the idea. The problem was how to help students know the importance of time management and meeting deadlines. But those were non-content skills that should not be reflected in the evaluation of students’ work.

So many schools used the GSN system for evaluating work habits: good, satisfactory and needs improvement. I embraced no late marks, but I let my students know that good work habits meant actually handing in all but maybe 1 or 2 assignments. Missing more assignments than that was satisfactory and after missing a significant number of assignments, they’d get an N. This made great sense because poor time management and deadline meeting skills were work habits issues, after all.

I’d send home assignment reports to parents indicating missing assignments with a reasonable, extended period [with a deadline] to hand in outstanding work. After setting such a deadline, I was entitled to not accept outstanding assignments. Only then would the assignment get a zero.

The blowback came from several fronts. GSN evaluations had real consequences. Often athletes wouldn’t be allowed to play with Ns. Honour roll rules required no Ns; this also had implications for post-secondary admissions and scholarships. Parents would complain that their students were missing extra-curricular opportunities. Coaches complained that key players were benched. Administrators were complaint departments putting out blowback fires and began to hassle teachers who followed the new grading regime and used work habits marks as intended.

So we had a new grading system, but the institution did not display the integrity to follow it through by supporting its own work habits evaluation system.

Enter the standardized testing [non-] solution for a problem manufactured to halt the flow of an education system.

This kind of professional hypocrisy was one of the things that I didn’t miss when I finally resigned.

Since I left teaching, my profession has championed profound social and political causes: draconian labour relations from the government, to confronting “that’s so gay” hate rhetoric.

Every March when I read about the BCTF AGM, I nod, thinking of how proud I am to have been a teacher, a member of a profession with such integrity in the face of assaults from a neoLiberal government and misanthropes pretending to be educational leaders.

Principals ‘dumbing down’ B.C. schools, teachers say

Complain they’ve been ordered to allow rewrites, never give zeros, accept late work

By Janet Steffenhagen, Canwest News Service March 15, 2009

VANCOUVER — B.C. teachers complained Sunday that school principals are ordering them to never give zeros when marking class assignments, to accept late work and to allow students to rewrite tests as many times as it takes for them to get good marks.

Such orders are being delivered in many schools around the province by principals who have embraced a program called Assessment for Learning, and it’s undermining teachers’ professional autonomy in the classroom, delegates said at the annual meeting of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation in Vancouver.

“When principals say you have to retest over and over and over again, that is a violation of professional autonomy,” Burnaby teacher James Sanyshin told the three-day meeting.

It’s as though B.C. principals recently attended a “can’t-give-a-kid-a-zero conference,” another delegate added.

Some warned the imposition of top-down assessment practices is “dumbing down” public education and will ultimately result in more families turning to private schools.

Burnaby delegates were particularly incensed, saying teachers are in the best position to evaluate student performance and they should decide what assessment tools they will use. The BCTF says principals are using Assessment for Learning to boost student performance and graduation rates in their schools.

It’s being presented as a cure-all and a best practice, Burnaby teacher Frank Bonvino said, adding: “It’s good that these new theories are being discussed … but it’s got to be up to the individual teacher to decide how or if or when they’re going to implement these things in their classroom.

“Sometimes when I hear administrators talk about best practices, I think … that’s just a buzzword they use for ‘teachers’ autonomy is going to get screwed,’ ” he said. “At the end of the day, you have to have control and you have to be comfortable with what you’re going to teach in the classroom.”

Union vice-president Susan Lambert said student assessment has become a political issue in schools because of standardized tests and a requirement for schools to show continual improvement in student achievement. “There’s huge pressure on [principals],” she said. “You set a goal for your school and if you don’t meet that goal, you’re seen as a failing principal.”

Delegates also approved plans for an aggressive, year-round media campaign to promote public education over private education and to increase pressure for more public-school funding.

But creative action must be the priority leading up to the May 12 provincial election if teachers hope to make education a vote-determining issue, union president Irene Lanzinger told delegates. That’s because the government’s so-called “gag law” restricts advertising by the BCTF and all other third parties.

“We need to make news, use new technologies and engage our members like never before,” said Lanzinger, who is unopposed in her bid for a third one-year term as president. “We all need to make sure the public and our members know how important this election is.”

Delegates plan to protest today in downtown Vancouver.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

via Principals ‘dumbing down’ B.C. schools, teachers say.

Crown Corporations: Start Exercising Your Ownership!

BC has had crown corporations for such a long time that people have forgotten that we all actually own them. People who don’t resent taxes sometimes describe them as “how we buy things together.” Crown corporations are how we get things done together.

Gordon Campbell’s neoLiberal party and a host of other right wing, free market worshiping, hyper-individualistic, privatization fiends are carving up, selling off and giving away our crowns because they hate that all of us own and do things together. They don’t play well with others.

If we don’t quickly figure out that we own our crowns, we’ll lose them all. And if you want to keep owning them, you need to vote out Gordon Campbell on May 12th.

Crowns exist in part because of the idea of natural monopolies, something economists speak of when they talk about an industry or sector where the costs of getting into the business are prohibitively high, so really only one organization should be the sector. Large scale infrastructure elements fit that description: hydro-electric dams, electricity transmission, highways, ferries, bridges, tunnels, water, sewage, car insurance, education, healthcare, telephone, cable TV. The public fronts massive cash, then takes the profit from the crowns, or intentionally subsidizes losses for a greater social good.

So let’s examine some of the public crowns that have been intentionally impaired after years of BC’s neoLiberal rampage to the point that they are becoming like regulated private utilities.

Before he got elected in 2001, Gordon Campbell promised to not sell BC Hydro. He also promised not to rip up public sector labour contracts. Whoops. So he split up BC Hydro: electricity, transmission and administration [which he sends  off to Accenture], then he arbitrarily forbids BC Hydro from generating any new power so that the equivalent of electricity used car salesmen can destroy our rivers for electrical price gouging. This is a perfect tactic to allow circumstances he created to destroy BC Hydro’s ability to exist, without having to actually kill it himself.

He promised to not sell BC Rail, so he leased it for the obscene 999 years to CN for $1 billion, the process of which is now the subject of a massive, delayed court case which if it is ever completed could crash Campbell’s government.

Along with electricity and rail, the neoLiberals have assaulted BC Ferries. It was created generations ago to ensure the public was in control of our water highways. As a crown corporation it was owned by the government–us. Gordon Campbell changed it into a private corporation, whose sole share is owned by the BC Ferry Authority. The provincial government still owns $75 million in BC Ferries’ assets, but the Ferry Authority has voting authority over BC Ferries.

That sounds like splitting hairs, but it surely is not. Even though the BC Ferry Authority has a board appointed by the government, this new arm’s length private corporation keeps its financial books to itself and is not subject to freedom of information requests.

BC Ferries then tried to sell off its routes to investors and built gas guzzling ferries in Germany after precluding BC firms from bidding on the contracts for the new ferries. Neither of these actions are in the best interests of British Columbians doing things together through a crown corporation. The new private corporation model serves these goals well.

So when BC Ferries pays for ads at GM Place that say–sit down for this one–”BC Ferries” on the boards of Canucks games and on the big, fluffy dome under the hanging scoreboard, I wonder why they feel the need to advertise. I suppose it is because people who can afford to sit in seats that allow them to see the underside of the scoreboard can afford to fly to and from Vancouver Island by helicopter or plane, so reminding them of the ferry is good marketing. That’s the best spin I can see with that when in the big picture, advertising the ferries is like advertising which highway to drive to Whistler.

And since BC Ferries is a private corporation, I cannot send in a freedom of information request for their insane marketing plan. And when I phoned to ask about it, Mark Stefanson, BC Ferries’ Vice-President of Public Affairs did not phone back to explain the big fluffy BC Ferries ad under the GM Place scoreboard.

And while not technically a crown corporation any more, we [through the government] still own its assets and appoint its directors. And as long as we continue to forget that despite splitting hairs, we still own BC Ferries, they’ll continue to operate in some corporate interest that is not the same as the interests of those who own its assets and indirectly appoint its directors.

Switching out of public crown corporation abuse to publicly regulated private utilities, we have Telus. Formerly BC Tel, it has existed for over a century providing human-centered communication services for much of that time.

More recently, Telus realized it was actually a for-profit corporation competing on a global playing field with the biggest, craftiest telecom firms in the world. So it began acting like that by expanding into providing various other organizational services, like contracting the payroll services for the Calgary Board of Education and Health Region and mangling them to hair-pulling dimensions.

And now in a fit of irony-free silliness, Telus has outsourced its own customer service phone calls. Yes, the phone company has hired another company to have its employees phone Telus customers to see if they are happy with Telus. Every time I’ve been called by “Telus” for a customer service check in recent months, the person calling says they are calling from “‘insert random company’ on behalf of Telus.” And some of the callers are very tired of hearing people complain that the phone company has outsourced its own customer service.

And now that Shaw Cable is moving into the telephone business, they are calling people to see if they’d like to switch from Telus. One of Shaw’s arguments is that they hire Canadians for customer service calls. Telus International operates North American call centre support in the Philippines and soon, India.

So when I phoned Shawn Hall in Telus’ media relations to ask why the phone company is outsourcing customer services calls, he said he’d have someone in the know call me back with an explanation. Like BC Ferries, that didn’t happen, even though Shawn Hall has stooped to spin-doctoring Telus’ bad reputation in IT employee gripe forums.

And while I wouldn’t expect a private utility to actually put its customers first like a crown corporation should, it is evident that the corporate model that Telus embodies has been creeping dangerously into BC’s public crown corporations as Gordon Campbell marketizes and privatizes them.

On May 12 when we vote for a new government in BC, we simply need to decide if we want to pay taxes to buy things together and use crown corporations to do things together. If you do, vote for the NDP. If you want monolithic, unresponsive, Enron-style global corporations managing our natural monopolies, vote in Gordon Campbell’s neoLiberal government for a third time.

Because, honestly, the ego that Gordon Campbell swims in is such that given a third mandate, he’ll rule far more like a monarch than we have ever seen to this point. And you can kiss goodbye public ownership of anything.

The Unanticipated Pricetag of Being an Olympic Corporate Sponsor

The Canadian Press: Threats against Olympic sponsors worry security officials.

They should be worried! I don’t know if they need to be $1b worried, but if you do the math, there is earned concern:

((The Olympics corporate welfare program) + (obscene reductions in government spending for human beings) + (radical and radicalized groups who object to the billions wasted on this spectacle, and what in our culture it has steamrollered) + (sponsors and government groups that flaunt their glee in the faces of those suffering) + (an opportunity to capture attention on a global scale)) x (an unpredictable economic depression [ooops, Great Recession]) = a perfect storm of wariness.

And while the CBC recently reported that the carnage that has become the lower mainland in the last 2 months is likely the playing out of choked distribution points in the Mexican drug war, the climate of fatal violence in and around Vancouver increases the likelihood of radicalized responses to the Olympics.

And if Gordon Campbell gets re-elected [by the way...did you know that Gordon Campbell hates you?] then we should all expect things to ramp up considerably once he implements his crowning agenda buoyed by being elected a third time!

— —

No One Is Illegal – Ignite resistance ~ Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!

No One Is Illegal – Vancouver » Blog Archive » Ignite resistance ~ Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!.

In a world where the deregulated global market capitalist regime is imploding, there is wide open space to re-frame the local, national and global economy in a socially and economically just way.

An off-shoot of this progressive agenda is the celebration of authentic community where people/consumers/citizens can get out of their cocooned homes and participate in the cultures of community.

What better way to do it than in this event?

Details:

SATURDAY MARCH 21. rhizome cafe, 317 e. broadway

* 6:30 – 7:30 pm: artists of colour showcase. please bring $ and support their creations! (tshirts, crafts, prints, posters, art and more) Free food served during artists showcase (on us and Rhizome)
* WITH: Louis Cruz, Tania Willard, Afuwa Granger, Riadh Hashim, Angela Sterritt, Gord Hill, Kat Norris, People’s History of Kanada posters, Café Ramona and products made by Zapatista Mayan women, and more.

* 7:30 – 9:30 pm: wicked performances and inspiring words includes spoken word, storytelling, children’s songs, hip hop, comedy, musical performances, and talks! Enjoy dinner and drinks from Rhizome’s delicious menu
* WITH: George Ciccariello-Maher from OAKLAND!, Kat Norris, Aysha and Sahara, Carnegie Community Action Project Choir, Hari Alluri, Reem Alnuweiri, Ros Salvador, Sinag Bayan Filipino Cultural Collective, Priscillia Mays, Gupreet Kambo, Alaaeldin Abdalla, and Lindsay Bomberry.

MLA Dan Jarvis: Time to Lose Your Job

North Vancouver-Seymour neoLiberal MLA Dan Jarvis is about due to lose an election.

While elected consistently since 1991 even before Gordon Campbell neoliberalized the centrist, mildly progressive party, his political record has been quite lacklustre. A chronic backbencher, he spent most of his productive time as a deputy critic of minor issues, never rising to any prominence despite being in the ledge for 18 years.

We clearly have a placeholder here, a seatwarmer to occupy a riding for a neoliberal party that is not terribly interested in social and economic justice for the vast majority of British Columbians.

So when it comes to serving the province as a provincial politician, he has clearly underperformed.

What does appear to be the case, though is the role he fills as false maverick in the party. Here’s how:

- he opposes his own government sending ferry contracts to Germany instead of building them on the north shore.

- he votes against his own government’s Tsawwassen treaty

While this can explain why he never made it too close to cabinet or a higher profile critic position, his space to oppose the government allows him to pander to contrary views, particularly ones with local interest like shipbuilding, to help ensure his seat for the party.

So what does that give to a community? Cynicism. The government will let a critic spout off to keep the constituents thinking government is listening, then the government can go ahead with whatever decision they want, like building gas-guzzling ferries in Germany not with our own shipbuilding industry.

And while the neoLiberals consider NV-S a safe seat, do residents really deserve this kind of dismissiveness?

But then again, if they’re blind neoliberals, they’d vote for Jarvis even if he were dead, which Jarvis himself joked about regarding the possibility of not coming out of his heart surgery last month.

And speaking of heart surgery, why would voters want to re-elect a man over 70 who had heart surgery just months before the election? That is taking to an insane degree the notion of voting for the party over the candidate.

But something of a concern about Jarvis and his electoral organization is his re-filed financial statements after the 2005 election. He initially submitted documentation of just one corporate donation of $3,000 from Canada Online Healthlink Inc., which operates CanDrugstore.com, an online pharmacy that dispenses drugs to Americans.

Months later, his campaign filed an amended financial statement with these additional corporate donations made just days before the election:

• Pacific Rim Consultants Ltd: $500
• Electric Power Equipment Ltd.: $600
• Surespan Construction Ltd.: $500
• Fiberco Ltd.: $2,000

My first question is what kind of organization were they running in the 2005 campaign to neglect reporting all but one corporate donation?

Less than $1,000 of the $8,000 his campaign raised came from actual people. While this is normal for the corporate-run neoLiberal party, it makes me wonder why they can’t even get half of their funding accounted for properly. After all, it’s not like they had hundreds of human donors requiring immense paperwork to keep track of.

So to summarize, we have a 20-year underperforming MLA in what the neoLiberals consider to be a safe seat. He just had major heart surgery a few weeks ago. He speaks out and votes against his party, which gives him standing in the community, but without being able to influence the party’s decisions. And his campaign finance record keeping includes people who can’t read column headings on Elections BC forms.

If that doesn’t just scream electoral dismissiveness, then I’m not sure what would.

And while I’m sure he is a pleasant enough fellow, as a politician neoLiberal MLA Dan Jarvis has been useless to citizens of North Vancouver-Seymour.

It’s time for him to lose his job. So any voter who wants to be more than a blind neoLiberal follower willing to excuse everything Dan Jarvis is not doing for the riding, should look at what the NDP’s Mo Norton is offering.

Willfull ignorance is really inexcusable, especially when Dan Jarvis has accomplished so little in 18 long years as a politician.

Keep Reading Your Community Newspapers, Or Else

Despite the sexiness of the internet, print is not dead. If you are not spending more time reading your community newspaper, you are on the wrong road, for yourself and for the health of our society.

Granted, decades ago television supplanted newspapers as the dominant source of news and information for the majority of North Americans. And now the internet has passed newspapers.

The Pew Research Center in the United States is one of the most respected research organizations because of the balance of their approach to tracking political, social, economic and cultural trends and patterns.

Late in 2008 they reported that 40% of Americans get their news mostly from the internet, up from 24% just 2.5 years ago. Newspapers have slipped to 35%. Canadian trends usually follow the Americans.

There are many reasons for this shift, largely obvious, but they don’t reflect the whole story.

Certainly internet media sites have improved their capacity to deliver information with far more appeal and better organizational tools for users. The Air America radio network, Alternet.org, Rabble.ca, BC’s TheTyee.ca and other progressive online media have been well served by new technologies like podcasting and people’s need to look outside corporate media to find critical information and analysis on this decade’s radically right wing governments in BC, Canada and the United States.

At the same time, increasingly concentrated corporate media ownership, with increasing ownership by foreign corporations, has led to cost cutting through centralizing reporting and firing breathing journalists. Corporate media often prefers to often just be the de facto communications department of right wing governments by reporting as “news” often verbatim press releases.

This has led to the dilution of meaningful content in newspapers, declining paid subscriptions, and full-page ads on the front page of newspapers. People notice the decline. Even daily newspapers have been dumping papers for free in public spaces to be able to claim their circulation is high despite decreasing subscriptions and actual paying consumers. Declining circulation leads to declining ad revenue: a debilitating revenue feedback loop. Large North American cities are losing their status as two-newspaper towns as large dailies close.

But the other side of the story is about the necessity of a free press in a healthy, functioning democratic society: an increasing rarity with such corporate concentration of ownership.

While the internet has risen in prominence, television is responding with enhancing relevance. On the progressive side, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have drawn more viewers. Even CNN’s reporters have become more critical than soon after 9/11. Farid Zacharia would never have been able to get a show on CNN 6 years ago.

Sadly, the same kind of improvement in critical capacity has not emerged in Canadian television. CBC TV’s high profile pundit panel consists of centre, centre-right and right wing commentators, with no progressive voices.

But community papers are a vibrant resistance front against ignorance, apathy and right wing governments preferring to elude the spotlight.

During our global economic crisis and increasing oil prices, globalization of goods and services will decline. People will be buying local more, supporting bioregional agriculture and production.

In a world of global corporate media ownership, people still long for news, commentary and analysis that affects them and not just some nebulous World Economic Forum policy from Davos, Switzerland.

Indeed, in the global economic, environmental and energy crises we are entering, it is the community itself that will be the our way out. People of all political stripes on the prairies, and where Gordon Campbell cynically calls BC’s heartlands, have known this for generations.

Community papers have breathing journalists who see what happens on their streets, in their closing mills and in spin-off sectors throughout their regions. They see how people live and breathe and how suffering shows up. There is far less centralization and homogeneity of reporting.

And as long as community papers are financially viable it is their publishers’ and editors’ duty to enhance their content since global corporate media owners and the internet’s capacity to inform people about life outside their communities provide just one scope of information.

Community papers do recognize the role they play in reflecting and influencing the fabric of local society. They have to make sure what they publish is worthy of reading.

Similarly, people need to realize they have a part to play in ensuring a free press can exist. They can do this by reading their local papers, demanding quality analysis, engaging in community discussion about issues in the paper and supporting local advertisers.

There are a handful of community papers in the province that excel in quality journalism and commentary. There are many more that sometimes rise to a significant level, but there are many more that are not reaching that standard. This needs to change.

It is the public’s job to demand more from their local media. The public must complain about press releases from city hall or the health authority showing up as news without analysis and contextualization. We must be vigilant in writing letters to editors. We must contact journalists and editors directly to tell them when what they publish is good, and when and how it can be better.

The effectiveness of a free press in a democratic society is eroding, and that is not accidental. But it doesn’t have to decline. And while it is very hard to force the CRTC to break up concentrated corporate media ownership across the country, it is far easier to walk into the office of your local paper with some Timbits for the staff and your opinions about your community, what is working and what needs improvement.

Directors of right wing think tanks can always get meetings with the editorial boards of large corporate media. But on a community level, the leaders of community groups, activists, all citizens need to realize that they deserve to have the ears of their local media.

After all, community media is about us, the community. And the more we insist that it reflects our lives, the more robust our media will be.

And if we let our community newspapers become Pablum or die, that will be our fault. Our society deserves a freer, more vibrant press. We need to do our part in ensuring that.

BC Liberals’ Homelessness Non-Solution

The neoLiberals are such anti-social, free marketeer, social darwinists that when polling shows people are very concerned about homelessness and poverty in BC, they come out with a thoroughly, cynically empty plan full of insubstantial optics that is insulting to people in need and those who advocate for them.

How do we know this? Beyond the empty rhetoric and Rich Coleman’s desire to be the saviour/czar of the homeless [after being the aggravator of those eager for affordable housing], we turn to BC’s auditor general. Whew!

When the neoLiberals first got elected they did two things to signal that they were not as interested in transparent, open government as their rhetoric indicated. They de-funded the auditor general’s office and Elections BC. But in a nice twist of irony, it is the auditor general who came out with some objective truth: the emperor has no clothes because the homelessness plan has no “clear goals and objectives,” “accountability for results is missing,” and they government has “not identified success.”

This is no surprise. I’ve written about the useless Rich Coleman periodically while the government has sworn off recognizing the need to count the homeless in BC to figure out the extent and breadth of the problem. This is especially embarrassing as NDP MLA David Chudnovsky toured the province as housing critic to do just that. Whoops, Minister Coleman, do your job, hey?

In his report, the auditor general’s comes up with one of the best arguments around, if it weren’t for the neoLiberals’ actively ignorant and blind social darwinist ideology keeping them from buying it: “The cost of public services to a homeless person is significantly higher than to that same person being provided with appropriate housing and support services.”

So the neoLiberals are willing to waste taxpayer money–normally repulsive to them–because they can’t bring themselves to admit that the free market forces people to the streets. This is why “pathetic” fits so well.

And it’s also why Rich Coleman won’t be able to rub two sticks together to solve anything before the election. It’s all optics designed to appeal to that element of their base that are actually repulsed by the party’s disdain for the poor or bothered by the presence of such poverty in the streets. Now that they hear the neoLiberals are serious about solving homelessness, that’s good enough. They can show up to vote and believe they aren’t voting for poor-bashers.

It’s just too bad that they’re wrong.

Mr. Harper’s Gift of Democracy

The Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, is not a fan of democracy, transparency or accountability.

His hallmark moment upon sliding into the office was to eviscerate responsible government by forcing cabinet ministers to get approval from the prime minister’s office before speaking, answering questions, sampling the decadent cheese plate in the parliamentary dining room, that kind of thing.

He also passively declared war on the media by setting new standards of unavailability. Taking cues from his American Idol, George W. Bush, the Conservative Party’s Harper generally refused to talk to the media at all. When he did decide to hold a press conference he gave little notice. By little I mean once in February 2008 when he sent an email notification to the press corps 17 minutes before his press conference was planned to start. That is just insulting.

But this past fall during what was incorrectly called Canada’s constitutional crisis, Harper inadvertently gave Canadians an early Christmas present: more functional democracy combined with an example of how he is afraid of it.

Here’s a quick background on the “crisis.” Canada’s parliamentary system has traditionally been run by majority governments, where one party wins more than 50% of the currently 308 seats in the House of Commons. That party’s leader becomes prime minister, appoints a cabinet from other members of parliament and forms an executive branch from members of the legislature, the opposite of the distinct membership of the executive and legislative branches in the United States.

Minority governments occur when no party wins 50% of the seats. In this case the tradition is for the party with the most seats to form a government, but for bills to pass, they would need votes from some or all of members from one or more other parties.

Canada’s October 2008 election resulted in the third straight minority government in four years. Harper won, but in the midst of the economic collapse released economic plans that refused to acknowledge the reality of the global crisis in deregulated, neoliberal, free market capitalism, and that attacked the successful public funding model for political parties and the rights of public sector workers to pursue pay equity justice. Note that I don’t call it an economic crisis, as this is a crisis of how free market capitalism manages the economy.

The parliamentary system is typically deemed robust because of its capacity for creative forms of governing, one of which is coalitions. So when Harper presented his useless and offensive economic posture as 2008 was winding down, the Liberal and New Democratic Parties formed a coalition with voting support from the progressive and separatist Bloc Quebecois and prepared to vote no confidence in the government, then ask the usually titular governor-general for the right to form government.

Instead Harper asked her to prorogue, or suspend, parliament until late January 2009 to avoid losing his job. In January he released a more realistic budget with attempts, albeit conservative and cynical, to address the crisis in capitalism. The Liberal party decided to support the budget until it has the funding and public opinion to crash the parliament when they have a chance of winning a minority government themselves.

Majority governments are now unlikely in Canada as the Bloc Quebecois dominates federal politics in Quebec, blocking national parties from the dozens of Quebec seats required for a majority government.

So, the Liberals are supporting Harper’s Conservative government in a de facto coalition.

And here we sit just weeks after the federal Liberals put a dog collar around Harper’s neck by voting for his budget, but the previous two months were a grand flowering of democratic capacity in the often sleepy politics of Canada, with nation-wide rallies to support the “progressive coalition,” despite the participation of the Liberal Party.

While media was reporting a majority of Canadians fearing for the existence of our country when Harper asked permission to prorogue parliament, what we all learned if we were paying attention is that most Canadians do not understand the difference between government and our elected members of parliament (MPs).

While governments form when a crowd of 155 MPs can vote together on key issues, we elect our MPs directly. If the governor-general refused Harper permission to hit the pause button on parliament to save his job and a Liberal-New Democrat coalition began governing, there would be no coup as Harper was implying, but rather the proper functioning of a parliamentary system.

More than proper, though, we saw a more responsive operation of a political system a few months ago. Majority governments in parliamentary systems are inherently tyrannical as the government wins all key votes and can largely ignore citizens between elections. Non-majority governments are tenuous and need to serve at the pleasure of the people.

So when Harper released his deluded economic messages in November, disconnected as they were from the reality of citizens’ experiences and worries, parliament worked beautifully. Opposition parties that outnumber Harper’s party and reflect 62% of the popular vote, threatened to end his attempt at governing.

Through Harper’s inability to understand or care about Canadians and their priorities, he set in motion a far more legitimate mechanism of parliamentary democracy.

In the mid-1960s, a similar minority parliamentary situation erupted new ideas like the national pension plan and the government funded, yet patient-driven healthcare system. The 1980s and 1990s, in contrast, were a time of neoliberal majority governments. At the end of 1989, parliament unanimously pledged to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. What happened? Child poverty worsened by 400,000 over the 11 years. More recently the last Liberal majority government never got around to implementing its celebrated national child care program before they lost government. Oh well.

This turns on its head the notion that majority governments get more done because they’re more stable. In truth, they are usually complacent.

So for 2009 as we wait for the Liberals to decide when they’re sufficiently out of debt and ahead of Harper in the polls, we watch our often arrogant politicians plunged into a forced compromise.

It smells like democracy to me. And with the success of the Bloc Quebecois preventing majority governments, we may be able to smell the flowering of minority parliament democracy for years, that is until we can finally get some electoral reform that will euthanize the 19th century first-past-the-post electoral system, where the candidate with more votes than any of the others gets elected. It is a good system for two party countries like Canada in the 19th century, but in most of Canada today we have four national parties fielding candidates eroding the legitimacy of anyone not elected with a massive and unlikely 50% of the vote in their constituency.

Until then, Canadians need to stop and smell the roses. And we must send emails to members of parliament in all parties demanding they act on what we want because they are more responsive to each of us now than ever before in the last two generations.

The other day on Parliament Hill, I met a New Democrat member of parliament, Peter Stoffer from Nova Scotia, who personally telephones anyone who contacts him. This is virtually unheard of from federal Canadian politicians. But it better become the model for anyone who wants to get re-elected to the next minority parliament in Canada. Because we will not see a return to the arrogance of majority governments for quite some time, if at all.