Now we find out that–SHOCK–the Conservative MP up in the Peace is not running for re-election again [see below].

How much would you be willing to bet against:

1. Blair Lekstrom knowing weeks ago that Jay Hill was not going to run again,
2. Blair Lekstrom will seek the federal Conservative nomination in that riding,
3. Jay Hill waited this long after Lekstrom’s resignation to keep it from looking as painfully obvious as this.

After 22 years in federal politics, The Honourable Jay Hill, Member of Parliament for Prince George-Peace River, British Columbia, and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, announced today that he will not seek re-election

via HillWatch (Jay, that is): Government House Leader “will not seek re-election” – Inside Politics.

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I can understand the reluctance to change the name of something like that park. The unscientific, but still relevant, Globe and Mail poll has people rejecting the idea 6 to 1.

Vancouver, Washington is thinking of changing its name to Fort Vancouver to re-assert its own identity. That kind of branding exercise is difficult and highly controversial.

But when it comes to other re-branding in our region, it hasn’t been so controversial. Eradicating “Queen Charlotte Islands” for Haida Gwaii and changing the names of the water around here to Salish Sea are less controversial because of relatively less impact of those name changes compared to Stanley Park.

But we also saw a sad and not so ironic example on Canada Day of a sickly outpouring of racism, bigotry and stereotypes during the Stanley Park name change debate. I wasn’t surprised, but I was disgusted.

So the article below suggests some politicians favour going with an informal name change, and I tend to agree.

In the 1980s, I recall people starting to talk about Haida Gwaii and being corrected, but then defending their use of the term with a description of some significant, but generally disregarded BC history. Ultimately, we got some good education and debate about an important issue. Now we happen to have a political name change as well.

Lately, I’ve been corrected by some as I’ve been refusing to acknowledge Myanmar as the new name for Burma because I don’t recognize the junta that changed its name. I was told at various times that I am in no position to confer that status. Nonsense. I am a citizen of the world. I don’t have to be a nation to make that judgement, nor does anyone else.

So as I watched a quarter century of “Haida Gwaii” usage lead to political change, I would like to see some similar political consciousness-raising around the nature of Lord Stanley’s park, and along the way, we can separate the emotional relationships we have with Stanley Cup from the debate.

So I’m going with Xwayxway, pronounced “kwhy-kway” to see if a quarter century from now the kind of Canada Day bigotry we heard last week can evaporate and we can all understand a little bit more about how 96% of BC exists as unceded First Nations land.

At the opening of an aboriginal-themed village site in Stanley Park last month, a native elder suggested renaming the park Xwayxway – pronounced kwhy-kway – which was the name of a native village at the current site of Lumberman’s Arch in the northeastern part of the park.

The concept garnered some support, with some politicians suggesting the park could be known by both names. Ian Campbell, a hereditary chief and councillor with the Squamish First Nation, said he would pursue a formal proposal. And tourism groups said it would be possible to build marketing plans around the new name.

The idea also gained support as a way of acknowledging aboriginal culture and history. In B.C., residents could look to the example of Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. And the Salish Sea is now used as a name of waters also known as the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound and the Juan de Fuca Strait.

via No name change for Stanley Park: Stockwell Day – The Globe and Mail.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau once remarked that “the English people believe itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.” The same can be said of the modern Canadian populace except that even when we are “in-between” governments we are still largely a people living in self-deception. Something has been rotting in the State of Canada for a long, long time.

Toronto Burning?

The events in Toronto over the past weekend have illustrated a number of startling facts. To begin with, the Toronto Police arrested over 900 people. The vast majority of those have been and will be let go, without any charges. It has already become clear that what the Police were doing is “fishing.” They rounded up hundreds of innocent people in an effort to find possibly a handful of guilty individuals. This is a clear violation of rights, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has already suggested that court challenges will be imminent.

Remember that controversial “five meter rule,” passed in secret in the Ontario Legislature, that allowed Police to search anyone within a five meter radius of the G20 security fence, ask for identification, and arrest anyone who resisted? Well, funny story…no such rule existed. The Police lied. As of this writing, they have just admitted that they lied. But it’s okay; they lied to protect us. Without a shred of exaggeration this is the argument that just about every military junta and dictatorship in history has made when “momentarily suspending democracy.” We are suspending your rights to protect you. Protect you from the insidious dangerous “other.”

In Toronto the “other” was the notorious Black Bloc. The Chief of Police, Bill Blair, has said of the Black Bloc that “they came to destroy our city.” You will notice that in much of the media the argument has been advanced that the Black Bloc are foreigners of some sort or another. Either they are Europeans, professional terrorists or worse still…Quebecois (who were specifically targeted by the Police). No God-fearing, lawful, English-speaking Canadian could possibly engage in the sort of actions we saw in Toronto. We represent God and Country, Law and Order, the Crown and Parliament. They represent chaos, “anarchy” and violence.

Ironically enough, the entire idea behind Black Bloc is not exclusion but inclusion. The masks are worn to say, “we are you.” You need only don the black to join a mass that will protect you, will free you, will fight for you and all of us. Nobody complains about the heavily armed, masked Police. A body that in two days has committed far, far more crimes and more egregious crimes than the humble Black Bloc could ever hope to. Remember friends, when the people resist and put their lives and bodies on the line like they did in Toronto they have no mechanism to rely on other than themselves, their friends, their families, and the bonds of solidarity that exist between these groups. When people go into the streets like they did in Toronto, to confront a cabal of men and women who are actively destroying the lives of billions of people around the world, including our own—we do so with love. Love for our sisters and brothers in Toronto as much as in Mali and Nigeria and Thailand and Burma and Columbia and Argentina.

But Jasmin, you say, this one incident. One, unfortunate, weekend where things got out hand for everyone. No, it is not one weekend; it is a pattern of behaviour.

During the Olympics, the same massive security apparatus that was deployed in Toronto was used in Vancouver. Hundreds of cameras, miles and miles of fencing and a billion dollars worth of Police, military and private security guarding a two-week party for the rich and super-rich. The same violations, the same instances of police brutality were reported once again. Much as they were in Vancouver in 1997 at APAC Summit and in 2001 at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Again and again and again the Police and state, protecting the forces of capital, act with impunity, with violence, brutalizing ordinary citizens, outraged at the fate of their democracies.

Days before the G20, CSIS came out and without any sort of evidence whatsoever (that they were able to produce, at least) accused potentially thousands of ordinary citizens of being spies for foreign governments. When the expected storm of controversy erupted over this claim, CSIS furiously attempted backtrack on this claim. So, to what end would they do this? As in Toronto, as in Vancouver, as in Quebec it is to rule by fear, to rule by decree.

Our Local Lords

In BC an incredibly unpopular tax is being advanced despite the protests of the vast majority of British Columbians. The fact that we, as ordinary people, oppose the HST is irrelevant. Who supports it? The governing BC Liberals, the right-wing Fraser Institute and the corporate establishment they both serve. They rule through decree and the brute force of legislative power. The recall campaign that has been launched against members of this government, while popular amongst ordinary people, will have a difficult time toppling any actual MLAs. The rules for launching a successful recall campaign are so steep as to be functionally impossible. As unpopular as the Liberals have become, our system is as such that they are likely to remain in office until 2013, at least.

And if they do, the odds of them losing an actual election are just as shaky a prospect. Because, we must recall, Canada is one of only a handful of “democracies” in the world which continues to use a First-Past-the-Post (FPP) electoral system, instead of some variation of Proportional Representation (PR). Thus, as it happens regularly in this Province in particular, we allow parties to win perhaps 50% of the popular vote and then translate this into 98% of the actual seats in the Legislature and Parliament. And even when an opposition party wins more than 2% of the seats, like the current incarnation of the NDP, they exercise exactly 0% of the actual power in Victoria.

It doesn’t help that when we had a referendum to attempt to change this atrocious system, the party that had historically made electoral reform part of its platform suddenly said nothing. In fact, in practice, they opposed electoral reform. Why? Because the NDP would rather be the perpetual opposition than allow for challenger to emerge on its Left that might actually force this party to stand on principle and ideology rather than an oft quoted rumour that they are not, in fact, the BC Liberals. They have become party to this same system, merely a Janus face of it.

At least in Ottawa there a multiple parties, you say. Often times, agreements are struck between the parties and this represents a consensus of the governed, yes? To answer this we should merely recall the most common refrain that was heard in the media and amongst many citizens when the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals attempted to form a coalition government. It was unconstitutional and illegal, they told us. We do not even understand our own system of government. We do not understand just how warped our “democracy” has become. We see little danger in a government repeatedly suspending parliament when they are in danger of losing power. Perhaps, understandably given our history, we see this merely as the latest in a long series of authoritarian practices which have sullied our “democratic” record.

A History of Violence

Say what you will about our imperialist cousins to the South but at least they had the “common sense” to revolt against the monarchy. Canada began as little more than a corporate holding of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the personal domain of the British crown. Little has changed in nearly a 150 years of history. We are now the personal holding of a number of transnational corporations and Parliament still governs, essentially, by decree. We have symbolic votes every few years and in the meantime we sit with our collective thumbs up our collective anal sphincters.

Yet we somehow have this popular conception of Canada as a benevolent, utopian, northern wonderland. This is a country steeped in blood and violence, against both its own citizens and the peoples of far flung nations.

To begin with, there is the obvious extermination and ongoing persecution of the Native Peoples of “Canada.” Many, quite literally, live in Third World conditions on reserves where there is little or no running water, electricity or most any other basic amenities. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie Canadian establishment is busily attempting to turn their ancestral lands into Golf Courses. And where extermination and exploitation have failed, cooption has been the watchword. Hence, the token Native “themes” during the Olympics, “power-sharing” agreements with certain Nations and the “marketization” of traditional cultures. The veneer of culture is preserved in the form of totem poles and postcards, while every significant feature of their culture is eradicated or banned.

It is no accident of history that the Canadian state attempted to ban the traditional potlatch, in part, because this bizarre habit of sharing things was a clear affront to the capitalist market system which was tightening its grip on the land. Nor is it an accident that the last Residential Schools, an experiment in cultural genocide, remained opened until the late 1980s.

While the Americans openly waged war and genocide against their Native Peoples, Canada did so only marginally more covertly. The effects were largely the same, however.  A similar fate awaited both Chinese and Indo-Canadians, who had been brought over in the thousands to work on the railroads as slave-like labour. The Canadian government actively recruited these people for exploitation and in turn targeted them for discrimination with all manner of racist legislation and policing.

After 9/11 there was a great deal of controversy surrounding Canada’s new anti-terrorism legislation. The controversy was misguided as critics seemed to be under the impression that these impositions on our civil liberties were somehow new. Even a cursory glance at the Canadian approach to civil liberties will demonstrate a history of violations.

The Boer War is generally regarded as Canada’s first “foreign war.” It is also, however, regarded as the first time that an entire nation of peoples, the Boers in this case, had been targeted for internment (i.e. placement in concentration camps). The British Army set up an extensive network of concentration camps, originally “refugee camps,” which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Boer civilians. Predominantly Anglo Canadian soldiers actively participated in these pogroms.

During both World War I and II, the Canadian government set up dozens of internment camps on Canadian soil. Thousands of Austro-Hungarian, German and later Japanese Canadians were interred in these camps, their rights denied, their property confiscated. After the war(s), they were released into a hostile climate, destitute and violated. Apologies and restitutions would not be forthcoming for decades and many are still waiting.

In October of 1970, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to tackle the so-called “October Crisis” in response to the kidnapping of a British trade minister and Quebec cabinet minister by a Quebec sovereignist group calling themselves the “Front de libération du Québec” (FLQ).  During the period in which the Act was invoked, Justice Minister John Turner claimed that 497 people had been arrested, 435 of whom had been released by February of  1971 with no charges, 62 were charged, and 32 had been charged with offenses of a more serious nature. With tanks in the streets of Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec, the Canadian state once again went fishing. Hundreds arrested, thousands harassed to capture a handful of suspected terrorists.

Since then, the modern Canadian approach to anti-terrorism has been marked by the outsourcing of torture, the illegal deportation of citizens to foreign prisons and a generally racist and two-tiered approach Canadian citizenship. Gods help you if you are a Canadian of colour stranded abroad. In the meantime, Canada has actively participated in the toppling of democratic regimes (Haiti) and in numerous imperial occupations (primarily Afghanistan, “merely” a supporting role in Iraq).

Canadian Democracy?

This has been a lengthy piece. Much has been skimmed over, still other topics ignored all together. All of this, however, is to make one very simple point: we do not actually live in a functioning, democratic state. We live in an oligarchic state which engages in a ritualized, symbolic process of electioneering once every few years, giving its citizens the illusions of democratic norms and actual citizen power. In practice, as the current government has shown, we have a very tenuous grip on anything remotely “democratic” in this country.

There is little to be said, I believe, for Canadian democracy. When speaking of Canadian politics it is more proper to speak of a Canadian regime, one that has for over a hundred years been involved in a war against its own citizens, and the citizens of foreign nations, often as a hand-maiden to still more powerful empires.

Events like the ones which took place in Toronto over the past weekend are a far more accurate representation of what people power looks like: necessarily in conflict with the state in capital. We are free only when we oppose, confront and eradicate these institutions and systems. The state and capitalism do not represent us, they do no protect us: they enslave us. And the institution of slavery, as French activist and author Yves Fremion has written, is perhaps unique in history in that it seemingly exists for no other reason than to be abolished.

• July 1, 2010 -- A Better World is Needed: The oh-so ‘Canadian’ style of dissent (8)
• June 26, 2010 -- Protecting the people elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who want them to do their work (3)

So now the task is to pick out a list of ideological contenders for the BC Conservative Party. Their policies are here including their tax policy, elevated in stature during these exciting anti-HST days.

We all know right wing people. We all know Liberal supporters who have to hold their noses when they learn of the latest anti-human, anti-social slash combined with a tax cut to rich people or corporations, all the while selling out provincial economic interests in exchange for global neoliberal races to the bottom. They really need an opportunity to see if the BC Conservatives actually would offer a choice that would keep them from vomiting.

So think of all the current BC Liberal MLAs, the former MLAs, the candidates who lost, those not afraid to share their ideologies, those who aren’t afraid to mention their federal party affiliation, those NDP members/MLAs/candidates who aren’t really all that left wing at all when it comes down to the issues.

When you do that, you may end up with a dozen or more without much effort, likely including the 7 or so at the top of the hit list of the recall campaigners who will be making solid use of the anti-HST petitions to force some by-elections and destroy this provincial government.

And in an era when majority governments have lost much/most of their legitimacy, the provincial 2013 election will not be so easy, especially with voter apathy rising as voter turnout dipped below 50% in 2009.

So when you land on some contenders, send them to the Conservatives in email or Twitter or even Facebook if you haven’t quit yet. I’m sure they’d love to hear you’re thinking of them!

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Now we have polling to show that once Canadians start thinking outside the box of majority government crutches, we can start imagining what preferable leadership could look like in Canada.

The poll also asked Canadians how they would vote if the Liberals and NDP went to the polls offering Canadians a coalition government, and here things get interesting.

…

If the coalition were to propose Jack Layton as prime minister, according to the Reid poll, it could defeat the Conservatives by 43-37 per cent.

via Prime Minister Layton? – The Globe and Mail.

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Imtiaz Popat on “The Rational” and I, talking about the HST, the Vancouver Parks Board’s dance with class war and gentrification, and federal coalitions in the UK and Canada!

The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista Video.

You can watch it in Miro, the best new open source multimedia viewing software: http://www.miroguide.com/feeds/8832

or…

You can watch it in iTunes: itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml

or…

The podcast file is at http://dgivista.org/pod/COOP.Radio.5.31.10.mov

Enjoy!

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Canada and the U.S. will set common standards for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty vehicles, Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced today.

via Prentice: Canada, US will align regulations on truck emissions :: The Hook.

Some time ago Canada embraced worse pesticide standards so we could harmonize with our fellow deregulation addicts in the USA.

Neoliberals love to seek level playing fields, which usually means stripping away anything that fetters profit maximization. Environmental standards are pesky. They come from society enacting its will through government to limit the damage that profit-mad corporations can heap upon our world.

So when right wing governments get into power, they try to align their regulations with key trading partners, but not to enhance regulation by matching better standards, but by eroding the higher standards so we can remove barriers to competition with others.

This is a race. A race to the bottom.

So with these new truck emissions standards to come in, my default assumption is that they will dilute more effective standards. I’ll be looking for more expert analysis of this announcement.

My other concern is the principle that I don’t want my country aligning its policies with those of other countries, even if we trade so heavily with the USA, which may not be the wisest thing to do in the near future, but that’s another story.

Policy independence matters.

But a larger concern is the nonsense climate breakdown policy we have that this change pursues: “Reducing emissions in this sector will help us achieve our 2020 target of a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels.”

That’s just a crappy target. Forget about 1991 emissions levels, forget Kyoto, forget what kind of drastic reduction in GHGs we need to pursue as the industrialized world. This is a pathetic target designed by Alberta tar sands interests, climate change deniers and neoliberal Christian Armageddonists.

In the end, whenever your read about policy harmonization, you should immediately watch how we’re all going to get screwed.

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While I’m no staunch defender of the arrogance and politically idiotic behaviour of a former junior federal cabinet minister, calling her a dog is just sexist and despicable, especially for an actual newspaper, and I use that term lightly.

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1.20.01, eight months before 9/11 helped destroy rational linearity in politics.

Java will save us. Not the bean, not [much] the computer thing, nor the shark, chicken or Russian cigarette, but the awesome instrumental song that appears on Hugo Winterhalter‘s The Best of ’64 lounge album, though it wasn’t a “lounge” album then.

In a fit of political cynicism, I hooked up my record player and went immediately to find my Winterhalter collection to accompany the neighbourhood’s invasion of cherry and apple blossoms driving an early spring.

Java will save us because I have such fond memories as a child of this tune. I don’t recall any of the context other than the fact that I have loved it for decades. The linear rational actor in my mind would be frustrated by not remembering, but the systems theorist in my mind revels in the mere presence of an element of meaning.

It is the collection of small things in life that pull us through doldrums. This week the House of Commons slimly passed a motion further delegitimizing selfish prorogation. Also, there are 3 motions in the Speaker’s office pursuing the government on contempt of parliament for not turning over to parliament documents describing how our government participated in torture in Afghanistan.

This is why I like minority parliaments.

But when I think about the paradigm shift in mindsets that is occurring around us while we’re distracted by the political cynicism, we need to look to Canadians Rallying to Unseat Stephen Harper [CRUSH] and Canadians Advocating Political Participation [which came from the massively successful anti-prorogation Facebook group].

These two groups are examples of how linear, modernist thinking–particularly in political parties–is so 20th century. The world is evolving quickly. Evolutions in technology and communication like the interwebs are changing how we exist in society and the nature of relationships we exist in.

Political parties are sooooo far behind, they basically just sent some politicians to CAPP rallies on January 23rd to put in face-time, but they are not on the cusp of the organizing wave.

And this brings me back to Java. Listen to the 2:20 of bliss here.

Stop what you’re doing and do a little jig.

Then if you want to know what is killing linearity of thought and politics and social organization, read about systems theory. My friend asked me for a primer on it last night. I referred him to Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics and his Center for Ecoliteracy.

If you dream of social, economic, political or any kind of change, you likely are looking to be a paradigm mechanic: twisting screws, rebuilding the carburetors of our world. You also likely are dabbling in some manifestation of systems theory. If so, read this great review of its paradigm below to see how much you can already check off as your m.o. and then see what other elements of the paradigm can augment your stance today into tomorrow.

Then listen to some more Java, then think about whether the software platform incarnation of Java adds as much to this idea as the mood of the 2:20 in the tune, because it might.

And revel in being a paradigm mechanic, because if not for us, we’re stuck in a 20th century model that seems to long to morph back to the good old days of the 19th century!

From A Systems Perspective | Center for Ecoliteracy.

Systems thinking presents a different lens through which to understand the complexity of the world.

Thinking systemically entails a number of shifts in perception, which lead to different ways to teach, and to different ways to organize institutions and society. These shifts offer opportunities for teachers to present material in more holistic ways, in context rather than as isolated facts, consistent with the way students encounter the natural and social worlds in their own experience.

Systems thinking is one of the consequences of our guiding principle, “Nature Is Our Teacher,” discussed in the Explore section of the website. We note there that a systems approach helps young people understand the complexity of the world around them and encourages them to think in terms of relationships, connectedness, and context. We also highlight the shifts in perception that accompany systems thinking, and discuss their implications for educators.

These shifts are not either/or alternatives, but rather movements along a continuum:

From parts to the whole
With any system, the whole is different from the sum of the individual parts. By shifting focus from the parts to the whole, we can better grasp the connections between the different elements. Instead of asking students to copy pictures of the parts of a honeybee, an art teacher takes her class to the school garden. There they draw bees within the context of their natural setting.

Similarly, the nature and quality of what students learn is strongly affected by the culture of the whole school, not just the individual classroom. This shift can also mean moving from single-subject curricula to integrated curricula.

From objects to relationships
In systems, the relationships between individual parts may be more important than the parts. An ecosystem is not just a collection of species, but includes living things interacting with each other and their nonliving environment.

In the systems view, the “objects” of study are networks of relationships. In the school or classroom, this perspective emphasizes relationship-based processes such as cooperation and consensus.

From objective knowledge to contextual knowledge
Shifting focus from the parts to the whole implies shifting from analytical thinking to contextual thinking. This shift may result in schools focusing on project-based learning instead of prescriptive curricula. It also encourages teachers to be facilitators and fellow learners alongside students, rather than experts dispensing knowledge.

From quantity to quality
Western science has often focused on things that can be measure and quantified. It has sometimes been implied that phenomena that can be measured and quantified are more important—and perhaps even that what cannot be measured and quantified doesn’t exist at all.

Some aspects of systems, however, like the relationships in a food web, cannot be measured. Rather, they must be mapped. In the classroom, this shift can lead to more comprehensive forms of assessment than standardized tests.

From structure to process
Living systems develop and evolve. Understanding these systems requires a shift in focus from structure to processes such as evolution, renewal, and change.

In the classroom, this shift can mean that how students solve a problem is more important than getting the right answer. It may mean that the ways decisions are made is as important as the decisions.

From contents to patterns
Within systems, certain configurations of relationship appear again and again in patterns such as cycles and feedback loops. Understanding how a pattern works in one natural or social system helps us to understand other systems that manifest the same pattern.

For instance, understanding how flows of energy affect a natural ecosystem may illuminate how flows of information affect a social system.

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The public is apparently very eager for excuses to forgive corporations and conservative governments. Does this eagerness extend to groups not so favourably supported by the corporate press?

I think a core element in the public’s smooth road to appeasement is a combination of political and socio-economic burdens, and apathy. Who has the time and energy to care about the consequences of actions like prorogation or massive design flaws in cars? Those consequences reflect systemic regulatory weaknesses that need to be addressed.

The public seems to want a quick fix and if someone nods in our direction, we forgive and all too easily forget.

That’s why I’m happy that the anti-prorogation group in Facebook is reframing itself as a pro-participation NGO to combat apathy. Apathy is a core ghoul that has a negative feedback loop with cynicism and encourages miscreants to enter politics. CanadaParticipates.ca will help pull democracy out of the tar pit.

It’s just very tiring.

And we need all the energy we have to get over the Olympic hangover exacerbated by the budgets today in BC and in Ottawa on Thursday.

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The audio is weak in places, but the discussion is strong!

The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista Video.

You can watch it in Miro, the best new open source multimedia viewing software: http://www.miroguide.com/feeds/8832

or…

You can watch it in iTunes: itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml

or…

The podcast file is at http://dgivista.org/pod/COOP.Radio.3.1.10.mov

Enjoy!

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OK, maybe it was partly arrogance that led him to phone it in, but in early December 2008 when he did it before, he ended up announcing the suspension of the legislature by standing outside Rideau Hall being sleeted upon by the weather gods, who were clearly politicizing his actions. Who wants to do that again.

The state of democracy in Canada is in a shambles. The last provincial election in BC in May 2009 saw voter turnout drop below 50%. Oh well.

Voter turnout almost dipped below 40% for the first time in Alberta’s provincial election in 2008.

Last year there were rallies across the country opposing the impending prorogation. This year, Harper waited until the seriously sleepy time between Christmas and new years: pretty crafty. Even Hill-addicted journalists were tweeting from warm climates about the prorogation.

You can read all about the reasons why he pulled this move again all over the place. The Reform/Conservative Party has its reasons about consulting with businesses about the economy and such. There are Afghan torture scandals to avoid, Senate stacking to further, the Olympics alternate universe to embrace, and various other benefits and comparisons to pre-1982 traditions about the ending of legislative sessions.

No matter.

What is clear is that responsible government is no longer a given. Technically, elections legitimize governing bodies to do whatever within their power as they govern. Harper is doing nothing “wrong”. Nor is his apparitional coalition partner, Michael Ignatieff.

The flagrant disregard for public accountability, combined with the public’s inability to demonstrate any serious concern for political integrity means that there needs to be forces that can mobilize people to care about it all.

Those rallies last year were an encouraging sign, but until there is a vehicle to truly convey public will or outrage and to educate people about the dismissiveness of prorogation, we will continue to see politicians demean us–their employers–and justify our cynicism of their integrity.

It’s a vicious circle that leaves them continuing to feel confident that they can get away with whatever they want and our voter turnout will continue to drop.

And while the overt fascism in V For Vendetta is not present in Canada today, the soft fascism of diluted democracy is becoming the norm. It’s no wonder young [and older] people today are avoiding political parties and embracing other political mobilization avenues.

2010 has barely begun. The tragedy of the Olympics and its social, political and economic aftermath has yet to be fully visited upon us. We have a glaring absence of hopeful, inspiring, motivating political leadership in most of the country. We have but a few years to turn 180 degrees to avert climate breakdown and our political systems have never been so impotent in the face of such challenges.

On new year’s day yesterday, some stranger asked me if I thought 2010 would be a good year. I said that if we don’t start off being optimistic, we have no chance at all.

Stephen Harper’s new year’s resolution of avoiding accountability is a rough start. But I begin the year optimistically that we will emerge in 362 days in a better place.

If not, the first year of this pivotal decade will put us even further back from where we need to be.

I can’t stomach that. Can you?

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The breadth of clarity he brings to issues is quite refreshing. He has finally given in to pressure, thankfully, to start taking shots at our wonderful, glorious, selfless, polite and all-around loving country.

Canada is a climate criminal. Stephen Harper and the Conservative-Liberal coalition government are the don and mob standing guard for the tar sands, not thee, or thee, or thee, or anyone else who has to live on the planet.

It’s not brain surgery. We have all this dirty oil that takes insane amounts of energy to extract and process. It is environmentally devastating and requires oil to sell beyond a reasonably high price to justify the billions of dollars of investment to get at it. And peak oil’s supply crunch should provide that high oil price.

That sure sounds like the better mousetrap!

Except that we’re trying to get off oil as it is. And here sits Canada, poised to become an even greater pariah state than any of the OPEC nations or Axis of Evil members because we want to further aggravate climate breakdown by processing more oil so we can get rich. Screw everyone else, the ice caps, ice shelves, glaciers, sea level residents, the poor, etc.

We can finally be a world power, but not in a good way.

Bad Canada. Bad.

Almost a century and a half of reasonable progressiveness that makes us all think that on the whole, Canada is a swell chum. But when we look at how easy it is to suck all that gunk out of the prairies, embrace the cash and screw everyone else, maybe it’s time we started to think of our nation not so much as good, with some bad times [residential schools, cultural genocide, internment camps, disenfranchisement, supporting foreign evil-doers], but on the whole bad, with aberrations of niceness [peacekeeping, apologizing too much, Anne Murray].

So let’s make the bad man stop.

Stephen Harper’s email address is HarpeS@parl.gc.ca

His phone number in Ottawa is 1.613.992.4211 and at his constituency office, you can call him at 1.403.253.7990.

His Conservative-Liberal coalition co-leader is Michael Ignatieff, whose email address is IgnatM@parl.gc.ca

His phone number in Ottawa is 1.613.995.9364 and at his constituency office, you can call him at 1.416.251.5510.

You need to contact these criminals this week because the Copenhagen climate summit starts on the weekend and we can’t be the deal breaker. None of us could live with ourselves if we let it happen.

I suggest you email them both with explicit instructions to agree to the highest level of cooperation possible, not the minimum, and that we have to resist tar sands free lunch and leave it in the ground because there’s a catch: everyone pays, and we don’t want to be the ones delivering the bill.

And when you call their office, be nice to their staff because they are having to field the calls of thousands of angry Canadians.

Exercise your democracy and free speech, because everyone else’s hope for a better life for themselves and their descendants is depending on us not to ruin Copenhagen.

Then, on 12.12.09 find or start a vigil and gather to encourage world leaders to not destroy our descendants’ quality of life through greed, selfishness, fear or inaction. Time is running out.

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Here’s what they found [see below for some of the ambiguous juicy quotes]:

1. a large minority think Igg would do a better job of running the country
2. a slim majority think parliament isn’t working
3. a slim majority think Harper is doing a good job of managing the issues

The conclusion from Ipsos? Most support Harper and are wary of Igg, so they don’t want an election.

That’s the best they could hobble together from the ambiguous data available.

Here’s the real answer that also supports the inconclusive data: Canadians don’t understand the relevance of the following–majority governments, minority governments, what parliament is supposed to do, what de facto coalitions do, what real coalitions could do, why majority governments are tyrannical, and how “issues that are most important to Canadians” have anything to do with the operation of government…especially minority governments.

The two parties that have governed Canada, with the polling firms and corporate media are incapable and uninterested in properly informing Canadians about the parliamentary system and all the other features of how politics actually occurs in Canada.

Why? They have a vested interested in manipulating perception for electoral purposes.

Democracy, informed civic participation and intelligent planning for the short and long term future are not the object of the Liberal Party, the ReformConservative Party, the polling firms and the corporate media.

When people start to learn about why we are being so poorly represented by the governing establishment, we have an actual hope of making democracy work while we watch the perfect storm of peak oil, climate breakdown and the implosion of neoliberal capitalism and globalization.

Education is the key.

Without it, we are at the mercy of people continuing to jerk us around.

The polling Ipsos paradox:

While many (53%) Canadians ‘agree’ (21% strongly/32% somewhat) that ‘our parliament isn’t working’, a new Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of Canwest News Service and Global Television reveals that a majority (53%) ‘agrees’ (20% strongly/34% somewhat) that ‘Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are doing a good job of managing the issues that are most important to Canadians and should continue to govern’.

via Majority (53%) Say Harper Conservatives Doing ‘Good Job’ and Should Continue Governing as Only 39% Believe Ignatieff Liberals Would Do ‘Better Job’.

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In 2009, Michael Ignatieff could only manage a “blue ribbon panel” on Employment Insurance with limited scope that won’t report until September.

via What can you get to prop up a government? | NDP.

And since Paul Martin was the deadbeat prime minister who bailed on the Liberals’ agreement with the NDP causing the election in 2004, I can’t blame Igg personally for showing that the federal Liberals aren’t in it for suffering and needy Canadians.

But this arrangement satisfies a number of Liberal priorities:

1. demonstrating that Igg has the semblance of a problem-solver
2. promoting the appearance that the Liberals care about working people after a decade of neoliberal cuts to human supports
3. making their base feel like their leadership has a heart
4. delaying pulling the plug on parliament until after the summer when no one wants an election

So just as the Liberals ignored their promise to the NDP leading to the 2004 election, the Liberals can now come out after the summer to claim that Harper isn’t worthy of staying prime minister because either the working group isn’t working or whatever other recession-based argument he wants to make.

In the end, he is simply biding his time, enduring the personal attack ads from the ReformConservatives, allowing Harper to continue to not solve problems and waiting for the right time in the fall to crash parliament.

Once he gets his own minority government, we’ll see a continuation of the neoliberal anti-worker plan that began in 1995 and that the Canadian bankers and CCCE will insist upon since they kept the Liberals from entering into a coalition with the NDP.

And if the Bloc continues its hold on Quebec we’ll have no majority government. And if Igg earns a minority, he’ll either have the ReformConservatives or the NDP as supporters.

Igg is touting the merits of cooperation since he’s made parliament work. But when he’s a minority prime minister, expect his parliamentary supporter to get as much uncooperative behaviour as Martin offered 5 years ago.

Let’s just make sure that the NDP gets enough seats to qualify as partner so we can be the ones to try to force Igg to behave like an actual minority government prime minister.

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It’s one thing for Ignatieff to sit quietly, saying nothing, waiting for the economy to implode Harper’s government, but for Harper to show that he still thinks the Bush Doctrine rules the world means his crash will be profound when the federal Liberals pull the plug on this version of their coalition with the Conservatives.

These tidy morsels from this great CP piece below are precious:

• “Harper took an alternate tack at the summit, waving the banner of free trade as often as possible.” Forget about how neoliberal free trade is largely responsible for our current crisis in capitalism.
• Harper’s goals: to “maximize the benefits of increased trade and investment”
• Harper’s new bff, the president of the Dominican Republic: ”Of course, with the financial and economic global crisis, that’s the…main problem, the main concern, but this doesn’t mean that free trade for some countries is not in their best interest.” Yes, black is black and white is white, but that doesn’t mean that black can’t also be white. 
• “Harper spoke of ‘antagonists,’ ‘cold war socialism’ and ‘rogue nations when referring to countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, declaring himself an ‘anti-Communist conservative’ in an interview with right-wing American TV channel Fox News at the summit.” Charming how Harper’s vision of Canada is filtered through Fox News.

Leaders declare Americas summit a success thanks to Obama

Published Sunday April 19th, 2009

Jennifer Ditchburn, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Still, they reached a consensus on adopting a shorter final statement, and more importantly nobody left slamming the door as happened at the last summit in 2005.

There were no confrontations between the Americans and some of their rivals. Instead, there were handshakes and Obama’s photo-friendly smile. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez said he’d like to send an ambassador back to Washington.

The chemistry was key, as host Prime Minister Patrick Manning noted.

“We all came here I think believing that we would have quite a battle among the radically different perspectives that exist on certain subjects…that did not materialize, in fact we saw the opposite,” Harper said a closing news conference. “We saw the replacement of confrontation by dialogue, a very good dialogue.”

Harper joined several others in saluting Obama for his landmark speech Friday evening, in which he brought a message of partnership with the hemisphere based on mutual respect and dignity. Obama also acknowledged certain failures in American foreign policy, including its enforcement based drug policy.

Obama repeated his call for a new American policy in the hemisphere at a news conference Sunday. He noted how many countries are supportive of Cuba precisely because of its humanitarian efforts – it sends thousands of doctors to developing countries.

“That’s why it’s so important that in our interactions, not just here in the hemisphere but around the world, that we recognize that our military power is just one arm of our power, and we have to use our diplomatic and development aid in more intelligent ways so people can see more concrete improvements in the lives of their peoples as a consequence of U.S. foreign policy,” Obama told reporters.

He said there had been promising signs in relations between his country and Cuba and Venezuela, but that the real test would come from the actions that followed after the summit.

The issue of Cuba’s inclusion in the inter-American family and future summits was pushed off to the general assembly later this spring of the Organization of American States (OAS). The prime minister did not comment on how Canada would vote at the meeting.

Harper took an alternate tack at the summit, waving the banner of free trade as often as possible.

One of his final acts of the summit was to sweeten the pot for countries Canada is negotiating with, earmarking an extra $18 million in aid over five years to help them “maximize the benefits of increased trade and investment.”

His call for open markets found some allies.

The president of Dominican Republic said he was keen to advance negotiations with Canada for a free trade deal.

“We see trade as part of development, it’s not just trade per se – it’s trade related to development,” Leonel Fernandez told a group of Canadian reporters.

“Of course, with the financial and economic global crisis, that’s the…main problem, the main concern, but this doesn’t mean that free trade for some countries is not in their best interest.”

Harper also adopted strikingly different language than Obama.

Where Obama urged countries in his stirring speech Friday against focusing on ideological labels such as capitalist or socialist, Harper spoke of “antagonists,” “cold war socialism” and “rogue nations” when referring to countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, declaring himself an “anti-Communist conservative” in an interview with right-wing American TV channel Fox News at the summit.

His spokesman continually referred to Latin America as Canada’s “backyard” in a briefing to kick off the meeting.

Some Canadian observers said Harper seemed to misread the tone of the summit, where many countries – and not just the “rogue nations” such as Venezuela and Bolivia – have been feeling a strong domestic backlash against trade liberalization.

Opposition to a Free Trade Area of the Americas was the principal reason the last summit fell apart.

Carlo Dade, executive director of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, gave Harper points for announcing a $4 billion financial guarantee for the Inter-American Bank (IDB), a move that he said took leadership in the hemisphere.

The financial crisis was by far the main preoccupation of countries represented at the summit.

But Dade said focusing on trade was an ill-advised strategy at a moment when many are resentful of trade – part of the reason figures such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales have emerged.

“There’s a lot of blame going on for the financial crisis on trade liberalization,” said Dade, who has been attending summit-related events. “Some countries have suffered in trade agreements with the United States and the European Union. They’re not like Canadian agreements…but (the government) hasn’t done the work to differentiate Canada from this.”

The damage that organized drug crime has inflicted on the region would have been a good topic to raise, Dade added.

Canada is seeing this reticence clearly in its dealings with Caribbean leaders. The 15 members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have been dragging their heels on a free-trade deal with Canada because they would like the deal to include funding that would adjust for any economic losses to their people as a consequence of a pact – this despite the fact Canada is the largest donor to the Caribbean region.

Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, said he and other rights organizations were disappointed that Harper did not couple his rhetoric on trade with a vision for social justice and better protection for human rights.

“It certainly does seem that’s he’s been a bit of a solitary voice around this vision of free trade being the answer to all of the woes in the Americas,” Neve said.

“It seems pretty clear that a lot of the other leaders have either moved on from there, or while still interested feel there are other more pressing priorities that really need attention here.”

Harper arrived in Jamaica Sunday evening for an official visit, where he is expected to address a joint session of Parliament.

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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.

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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.

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In a fit of transparent and predictable governing, which turned out to be only a veneer, the government committed to fixed election dates, throne speeches and budgets. Circumstances, however, can really cramp such a plan.

Campbell is just like Harper. The federal Conservatives couldn’t even abide by their own October 2009 fixed election date legislation, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the growing likelihood of an Obama presidential victory in the United States and the reality that Harper wouldn’t even have been able to hold onto a minority government with such a left-ward swing there.

Squishy rationales have forced the same event in BC with the delayed throne speech, which is supposed to establish the tone and priorities for the legislative session.

Past throne speeches and budgets in BC have focussed on improving the state of children or the environment with little or nothing positive in those areas: more veneer and PR.

Last Tuesday’s throne speech, if it were honest, would have had to talk about the lack of a solid excuse to cut short the spring legislative session since a regular length would have presented far too many question periods before the May election, for Campbell to be have to avoid.

His virtually non-existent public profile is still a result of his drunk driving episode in Maui 6 years ago.

An honest throne speech would have had to explain the necessity that on Friday the 13th, the election gag law came into effect, stifling the free political speech of hundreds of groups critical of the government [and maybe 6 groups who support them] all to prevent truth-based ads showing how much Campbell’s mean-spirited, market-worshiping cuts and policies have hurt vulnerable British Columbians.

And if you do some calendar arithmetic, you’ll see that reading a throne speech 3 days before the gag law comes in means 3 days of the worst press and multi-million dollar advertising spending imaginable.

Another reason to delay the throne speech is merely to cut down on the amount time the media can focus on it until the next big event, the budget tomorrow.

But the biggest reason to delay the throne speech is because it will have to introduce a package of economic policies that will make the neoLiberal MLAs vomit in their sugar-coated breakfast cereal on Wednesday morning: a deficit budget.

Like the Harperites, The neoLiberals are so ideologically opposed to deficits, effective social spending, communitarian economic policies or an economy that exists for citizens instead of for pimping workers for global corporate hyper-profit, that they’ve spent weeks now pre-emptively providing excuses for why they will have to go into deficit to mitigate the effects of the global economic meltdown on BC.

But none of this dream throne speech will come forth today. Instead it will be a superficial ramble full of platitudes about strong leadership in an economic crisis, looking out for the economically vulnerable and why the NDP will make you lose your job if they get elected.

The sad truth, though, is that in the government’s attempts to justify breaking its own balanced budget legislation, a few weeks ago the finance minister released a sexy slide show tracking how bad the economy has been in the last 6 months.

But in their zeal to show how awesome their surplus budgets have been recently, they produced a graph that showed the last 2 NDP surplus budgets before they lost government.

This will hurt them in the end because Campbell spent his entire first term in office whining about how they inherited an NDP deficit when we know that massive neoLiberal tax cuts for the rich created the funding crisis that made a mess of BC’s social fabric.

No throne speech today will help them when facts like these are swimming around. They’ll need heaps of luck to keep government on May 12th.

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I hope so much to be wrong, but the budget wasn’t as heinous as I expected it to be. While it did little of substance to make a real difference for the most vulnerable Canadians or women or first nations or working parents or or or or…you get the message, it had enough tidbits to make the Liberals look like whiners if they crash the government and form the coalition, since an election would cause massive political vomit from across the land.

Here are a few issues:

1. The Liberals, as Conservative-Lite, could easily have come up with many of the stimulus package elements that Flaherty spewed out. After all, don’t forget that the Liberals brought us the MacDonald Commission which led to free trade with the USA, NAFTA, the GST, Paul Martin’s anti-social budgets, the Kandahar escapade and a host of other annoyances.
2. Ignatieff didn’t enter politics in Canada to become a prime minister of a coalition government. His ego is all about the Liberal ruling birthright. He will get far more political capital for the bankrupt and desperate party he leads by slamming Harper as opposition leader than by suffering as a coalition prime minister. Harper’s budget wasn’t sufficiently anti-human for him to reject it and lead a coalition [which he would have to do since rejecting the budget and the coalition and causing an election would be blamed on him].
3. Jim Flaherty demonstrated today that Conservative cluelessness will continue unabated: open season on how out of touch they are. During the last election campaign, Harper described the beginnings of the global economic crash as a good time to buy stocks: truly heartless and obvlivious to the reality of millions of Canadians’ fears. Today Flaherty put on his grinning smirk in announcing the tax credit for home renovations: “The home renovation tax credit is available for renovations to the house or the cottage, for everything from a new furnace to energy efficient windows to a new deck.” And his compatriots were grinning and giggling along with Flaherty’s nod to elites that love/control them so much. Hands up all Canadians who don’t have a cottage!

It all adds up to the Liberals biding their time, unless I’m wrong and we get a coalition government. So here’s hoping that I’m wrong!

• June 29, 2010 -- Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably (0)
• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)