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)

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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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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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)

I’ve been impressed with the social movement that swept Obama to the presidency and spilled into Canada to send the federal NDP to a place where they raised more money from more people than the Liberal party.

Now with renewed talk of crashing the arrogant Harper government, Layton has a chance to become prime minister. Here’s how.

Election Financing as the Trigger

Harper is on record as wanting to destroy the Liberal party, not just defeat them. So one of the first things he does in this new parliament, while not seriously addressing meaningful interventions on behalf of working Canadians in this economic meltdown, is to remove the per-vote funding for political parties. His is well funded, the Liberals are always 8 minutes from bankruptcy and the NDP and Bloc are populist parties with solid and growing funding machinery.

So changing the financing rules to push the Liberals into financial purgatory seemed like a solid Harper bully move. The Liberals have been a party of corporate entitlement, so they do not have a populist funding regime. Maybe now after a few failed elections in this decade they will seriously work on building one.

Harper incorrectly stated today in the House foyer, typically without taking questions, that Dion [or anyone] cannot become prime minister without electoral support. Nice campaign rhetoric, but really, no one was elected to a majority so anyone who can come up with 155 votes has a legal shot at governing.

Coalition Dynamics

Judy Rebick wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago on a 3 party coalition that can orbit a few key policy similarities and box out Harper. Canadians for a Progressive Coalition are working well coordinating the advocacy for an anti-Harper, progressive alternative and email campaigns to all opposition MPs from people all across the country, which returned a few emails from Liberal lackeys condemning the move as bad policy. Typical Liberal birthright arrogance about not wanting to share.

So today we learned that Ed Broadbent and Jean Chretien have been trying to broker a coalition with Bloc voting support to keep Harper from ramping up his attacks on all things not radically right wing.

Prime Minister Layton

So who gets to be prime minister in a limited coalition? Dion is a lame duck as he announced he’s stepping down at a convention. Some kind of new leader for the Liberals established over the next few days is unlikely and potentially illegitimate to party members or caucus.

The Bloc can quite easily stay out of a formal coalition with just a pledge to support votes. So Duceppe will not be prime minister. But there is something else to the Bloc. Plenty of people who are not separatists have been voting Bloc for some time now. Why? Because the Bloc gets things done for the province and the party’s social and economic policies are on the whole enviable, especially to progressives. And people vote Bloc to keep majority governments from the Conservatives or the Liberals because they are bad for Quebec since a majority federal government shifts the power too centrally and blocks provinces’ relative power.

So that leaves Prime Minister Layton, and not because his campaign rhetoric was that he wanted Harper’s job. With the lame duck Dion or fresh new Liberal leader being questionable prime ministers, and Duceppe being a separatist, the only compromise that isn’t a deal breaker could be Layton.

Proportional Representation

My agenda all decade has been to advocate for the end to majority governments in Canada and our 19th century electoral system which best serves a two party system, which Canada is far from today. Each minority government that gets elected puts a larger spotlight on the elephant in the room: that the electorate is too split or regionalized for simply two national motherhood parties. This means majority governments will become mathematically unlikely.

So if the opposition can crash Harper’s bully government, we will have a system more like proportional representation than first-past-the-post, but with the Conservatives on the outs. This event can be a springboard to electoral reform.

Changing to a PR system will ensure entrenched Quebec advocacy for the Bloc without need for referendum threats. It will mean millions more votes for the NDP as so many won’t need to vote strategically anymore. It will also mean the Green Party getting dozens of seats to support a green agenda, except to the extent that their platform isn’t progressive enough to address the hyper-consumerism that is aggravating the climate crisis.

And the Liberal party, though they will bleed votes to the NDP, Greens and Bloc, will have a chance to survive. And the Conservatives? Who cares. Let their solid base do its work and elect the dozens of MPs that reflect their crazy right wing ideals.

So at least the three non-Conservative parties may leap towards PR to improve their future access to parliament, and the Conservatives may have to join in just to keep from being wildly marginalized forever because they too are no longer a national party that can get things done.

And this all bodes well for the BC election on May 12, 2009 when we will try again to pass a PR referendum that would have passed last time if the 57% didn’t fall short of the suddenly new 60% threshold for referenda.

So the goal isn’t so much to get Layton in as PM, but to stop Harper from continuing his socially conservative and economically neoliberal, anti-social agenda. And out of it we may end up getting a far more fair electoral system.

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Contact Stephen Elliott-Buckley at Vista at dgiVista.org.

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This doesn’t really prove that the NPA is dead. Corporate donations will keep the NPA or some future clone alive forever, regardless of the fact that the 4 NPAs elected will likely never cast a meaningful vote in the next 3 years. This is good because I’m quite tired of Ken Denike. But that’s another story. Ask me over a beer at the Public Lounge some time. Even if Kennedy Stewart were right and they were totally wiped off all councils, they’d still be back, strong as ever with their corporate cash.

Here are some of the stories that made for today’s COPE/Vision/Green win, in their order of significance:

Populism!

North American politics are populist right now. Obama, the rise in the federal NDP, the federal Liberals’ inability to raise more funds from more people than the federal NDP, and the mobilization of people rejecting apathy to join Vision Vancouver–all these show that citizens matter. The NPA is like the federal Conservatives and Liberals: complacent, corporate-friendly parties that have never felt the need to <irony>pander</irony> to human beings for money and volunteer support, while relying on corporate cash to use the media to encourage enough voters to drink their Kool-aid.

The progressive win in Vancouver is a testament to grassroots mobilization. And as much as the Republicans demeaned Obama as being a community organizer, that’s exactly what got him ahead of Hillary Clinton and into the White House, and what got the NPA machine out of Vancouver city hall.

This is also why the BC Liberals’ recent Whistler convention was demonizing the NDP all day, all the time: they’re afraid of being tied in the polls, they’re fiscal neoliberal Milton Friedman worshippers during the biggest global economic crisis in capitalism in a century, they watched Obama get elected and Harper not win a majority [despite calling the election for before the US election, knowing he'll never get a majority after Obama wins], and they know that even with the soft fascist censorship of Bill 42, they are screwed because they are as unable to mobilize human beings to vote them into a third term in May as the NPA was in recent weeks. [Exhale. Sorry for the long sentence!]

The right always loses to mobilized progressives who get out the vote by shedding the apathy we’re lured into by the cynical right wing. And the provincial NDP just successfully ran its third dress rehearsal for the May 2009 election [working on the federal election, the 2 Vancouver by-elections and the munis]. Obama has a database of 3 million contributors. He will not be throwing that away now that he’s elected. He’ll mobilize it. The NPA and the BC and federal Liberals and Conservatives will never have that. But progressives do.

Red States, Blue States

The map of mayoral votes: can you say red states, blue states?

OK, even with no guarantee of data quality and with some oversimplifications, if you know anything about the rich and poor in Vancouver, this map makes perfect sense. Where do the rich and/or conservative live? Yaletown, Point Grey, south of 16th and west of Main, the bedroom community/pseudo-suburb of southeast Vancouver. No surprise, all red for the NPA. Coal Harbour would go NPA if it weren’t largely filled with empty condos owned by thousands foreigners needing a Vancouver home.

Where do the not so rich or conservative, and/or working class and/or immigrants who didn’t buy their citizenship and/or young and/or single live? Everywhere else, where people outnumber the NPA voters and voted Gregor green.

The $100 Million Olympic Village Elephant

Peter Ladner and so many others commenting on the $100 million problem with loaning the Olympic Village development with our cash still don’t get it. It’s not about how certain things happen in-camera. It’s not about whether councilors were fully informed before voting. It’s not about the privacy of businesses. “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Here’s how. Stephen Harper’s sweater vest didn’t save him from demonstrating how out of touch he is with most Canadians when he said the global economic meltdown is a good time to invest in some bargains in the stock market. Heck, even the CanWest toxic waste machine is laying off 560 workers in part because of the global meltdown and their share price dropping 90% this year. They’re sure a bargain, but the better bargain will be in watching them implode so that we can dilute the corporate concentration of media in Vancouver and Canada with more competition and less autocratic control of news…and, frankly, better jobs for the journalists forced to work for the Aspers.

But the $100 million problem is about how the International Olympic Committee and VANOC are not transparent organizations. They are secret, above democracy, and the IOC is even above countries. They’re designed to be unaccountable to us even though they are spending billions of dollars of our tax money while people die in the streets and on surgery waiting lists. Shameful.

Ladner is so out of touch: “It’s completely irresponsible and ridiculous to think that we could do all this in public and still protect the taxpayer….Why would the Olympics be different? The scope is bigger but the framework of the deal is the same. The city does this stuff all the time — it has done this for years.” But when you mix this repulsion with the secrecy of the Olympics oligarchy, you get one pissed off electorate. Whoops.

And he doesn’t even get the irony about how little the taxpayer is being protected in any of this Olympics deal anyway. The solution would have been to explain how in-camera works, then come out and say that when it’s out of in-camera, they’ll explain to people all the details. No, wait. They can’t do that because of all the Olympics secrecy. That’s the bigger whoops. Like it or not, the city is symbiotically embroiled in the grand, global secrecy regime of the Olympics. Watch your wallets, folks.

Plumping

Ellen Woodsworth was elected in a very small part from plumping. Plumping works. Some COPE supporters who were frustrated by the nature of the deal with Vision and Green–and others–voted for only COPE members and not for others on the slate from Vision. Ellen Woodsworth got elected to the last city council spot by 1023 votes over Kashmir Dhaliwal [the only Vision candidate for any council to not get elected] as of 10:24pm Saturday night. I doubt all those votes were from people voting for her and avoiding voting for Vision candidates to keep one or more of them from getting more votes than her. But with not too different arithmetic, the plumpers would have made the difference.

Privatized Police

Korina Houghton didn’t get elected to city council for the NPA even though she had a full-page ad in 24hrs on Friday. Part of her plan was to “combat crime through continued support of the ambassador program” meaning the Downtown Ambassadors, the partially city-funded, private pretend cops designed to criminalize the <irony>unsightly</irony> people from business areas. If 11,300 more voters actually wanted a private police force created by business owners and not transparently accountable to the public despite their public funding, she would have beaten Ellen Woodsworth for the 10th spot on council. Thankfully those 11,300 people don’t exist. And while we’re at it, let’s de-fang the Ambassadors and get them back to helping tourists get from the art gallery back to the cruise ship terminal. And I’ll leave out all that business about Kanman Wong’s campaign literature saying one thing in Chinese and another in English. He’s had his political career maimed enough already…remember David Emerson?

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A vote for the Liberals and Wendy Yuan is a vote for the federal Liberal party “brand”, elitist and pro-corporate policies and the Paul Martin-David Emerson gang.

Worst of all, NOT voting is a vote for Wendy Yuan. Here’s why:

As far as I can tell, Wendy Yuan seems like a nice person: earnest, believing in the importance of a prosperous future for Canada [she owns a small business so you do the math] and somewhat down to earth.

But in the context of who we want representing us in parliament, she’s an empty vessel and fully uninspiring on the issues.

Don Davies has actually lived and volunteered in the riding for years, works for human rights and social and economic justice, and is interested in his fellow citizens in the riding and our concerns as opposed to pro-corporate issues or concerns of people who own big homes in Richmond like Wendy Yuan.

And without going into Wendy Yuan’s foibles which you can read about elsewhere:

• the tragic optics of the apartment she rented last fall in Collingwood to go along with her house in Richmond
• her probably good work with SUCCESS, the Richmond Economic Advisory Committee and SFU in Surrey [as opposed to any real work in Vancouver-Kingsway]
• whether she was involved in nomination meeting voter shenanigans, racially-divisive advertising, or supporting or failing to oppose China’s practice of murdering Falong Gong members for lucrative organs,

on what she actually brings to the table, she is a disastrous pick for MP.

You can review it for yourselves in a few places. Her YouTube site has a few vignettes of true policy emptiness that reflect her party’s abject refusal to address issues of real people. Its three features are so free of issues that we hear our anthem, see some pictures of her showing up at public events and trust-based service pledges. Empty otherwise.

She also seemed quite useless at the all-candidates meeting on October 7, 2008. While these videos may have neglected her best moments, what we do see is cringe-inducing.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• She lacks irony as she proudly claims to being the first democratically elected candidate, presumably in this round of elections, while for 2004 she stepped aside to help her colleague Paul Martin parachute the toxic David Emerson into this riding as the Liberal candidate. Whoops. But then we don’t really expect business people to demonstrate much facility with political, moral or social philosophy…and I should know, having been a business major when I first went to university.
• She totally dodged, but not even as “deftly” as Sarah Palin [whoops], a question on the SPP, claiming that among his criticisms, Don Davies’ facts may be wrong and that she would have to research them, so she wouldn’t comment on them. One of the facts was that Paul Martin was one of the original 3 Amigos who signed the deal: hard for her not to be aware of earlier this decade as she was “appointed as Leader’s Representative to the Liberal Party of Canada (BC) by then Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004.”
• She continually talks about how she understands the issues of constituents, but living in Richmond, that is hard to believe, and given an opportunity to explain what the constituents care about, she shows little knowledge of anything beyond what immigrants and small business owners want [she is both]…oh yes, that and a desire to serve. But the problem is that she evidently wants to serve her party [remember the David Emerson connection] more than the largely poor and working class community of a riding she doesn’t live in.

In short, she is a master of cliche and substance-free “apparent” responses and comments in the all-candidates meeting and her own video vignettes. And she is quite a poor public speaker, with real difficulty framing ideas of any real substance beyond cliches and empty platitudes.

So how will this riding go tomorrow?

Reform/Conservative candidate [in name only] Salomon Rayek will not win. He didn’t even bother to show up at the all-candidates meeting. This was smart and the best option compared to actually being there and suffering the focus of how much everyone hates David Emerson. Showing up would actually end up costing the party votes and tax funding. And judging from the emptiness that Wendy Yuan showed in actual content breadth at the meeting, she should have thought about skipping the meeting too.

Rayek also will not win because his job is just to get out the Reform/Conservative vote. His flyer in the mail the other day also highlights his commitment to his party–instead of our constituents–and its boogeyman crime and punishment initiatives and tax cuts, he’s a blood donor[!], his children once attended schools in the riding and the best part: he’s the “president of a local Electoral District Association for the Conservative Party” which happens to be Delta-Richmond East. So he actually may live as far away from our riding as Wendy Yuan.

Since the Reform/Conservative party will not win Vancouver-Kingsway strategic voting to keep Harper out is irrelevant. A vote for Don Davies does just as much to reduce the Reform/Conservative representation as a vote for the policy-vacant Wendy Yuan.

Green party Doug Warkentin also won’t win. He’s a late entry candidate who admitted to not fully knowing his party’s platform at the all-candidates meeting and showed a distinct lack of breadth of knowledge of federal issues, but he sure sounded like an earnest, caring man. Just like Wendy Yuan. So she earned no more support than he did based on her performance.

No one from the small parties will get much of a vote either.

So that leaves NDP candidate Don Davies as the candidate that should win. During the all-candidates meeting he showed a fantastic breadth of knowledge of issues, with far more policy knowledge than Wendy Yuan. He was articulate, thoughtful and spoke of real people’s concerns, fears and hopes.

But winning means getting the vote out. Democracy in Canada is largely sub-contracted. People haven’t typically been directly engaged or even committed as members of parties. They vote sporadically and let professional political parties, lobbyists and activists do their business, however corrupt and deceitful it can be at times. This is why Wendy Yuan’s little YouTube ads don’t really say anything of substance. It’s all about the party brand, not about mobilized human beings.

And the Liberal Party is no more populist than it was with the sponsorship scandal kneecapped them.

So when we look for how the Obama bump affects Canada we see that individual voter disenchantment with big party politics that has become a social movement after initially crystalizing around Obama in the USA, has moved into Canada raising bazillions of dollars for the NDP, increasing their poll standing and reflecting the reality that the NDP has been the official opposition for two and a half years while over 40 times the federal Liberals abstained on votes in the last parliament, giving the Harper Reform/Conservatives a de facto majority. Why did they abstain? They weren’t confident of being able to win at least a minority government if they opposed the government on a confidence motion.

And why are we voting tomorrow? Because Harper himself crashed his own parliament since the Liberals wouldn’t. If I were Wendy Yuan, I’d be afraid of that too.

And while Harper called this election for many reasons, two of them underscore why Don Davies should win tomorrow:

1. Harper, being a US-Republican American Idol, cannot be re-elected to anything if Obama wins the presidential election. A shift to the populist “left” in the USA will remove his cover of having a more radical soft fascist in the White House. Even though the Democrats are Republicans-Lite, an Obama election is a rejection of the fear-mongering conservatism that has ruled North America this decade. Bad for Wendy Yuan is that Paul Martin’s co-creation of the SPP and the North American Union puts that stink on her, and would have even if she weren’t close to him personally. So Harper has shot for re-election before the US election and the Liberals are no more ready to govern than they have been for the last 30 months.
2. The global economic meltdown hurts everyone with conservative fiscal policies. Even the director of the anti-human International Monetary Fund has characterized this “event” as dire. So who pays for this? Harper’s Reform/Conservative party and the Liberals, whose fiscal platform is so identical to the Harper gang that after David Emerson crossed the floor he justified himself grandly by telling the truth that the parties were essentially the same to him. And Paul Martin spent years making Canada the envy of the world [as Wendy Yuan was eager to keep repeating at the all-candidates meeting] because of the balanced budgets and surpluses created by gutting Canada’s social programs. So Saloman Rayek was wise to skip the all-candidates meeting, but Wendy Yuan didn’t figure that out: the Liberals’ de-regulated fiscal free trade policies are just as much responsible for the economic disaster we’re in now as the Harper government.

So it’s time to vote tomorrow and it’s time to tell everyone you know in Vancouver-Kingsway to get out and vote for Don Davies, unless they are committed to solid, corporate-friendly, 20th century politics that ignores real people and real issues. And if that’s the case, they’re part of the problem.

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Regarding “Liberals have a worthy leader in Stéphane Dion” by Fiona Hughes in the October 1, 2008 Courier newspaper:

I appreciate Ms. Hughes’ fine exploration of the toxicity of Stephen Harper as prime minister of a minority government and how awful it would be for the rapidly privatizing Canadian culture if he were to become the leader of a majority government.

The reality, thankfully, is that centre and right-wing Canadians are almost evenly split between the Liberals and Reform/Conservatives and the polling numbers have barely budged since the 2006 election. The USA is similar with a near even split between red and blue state voters.

Because of this voter split and since the Bloc is doing so well in Quebec, we have little chance of seeing a majority government again in the near future, or ever. This is good, since majority governments are inherently tyrannical.

But what Ms. Hughes fails to point out is that Dion’s Liberals lacked integrity and provided Harper a de facto majority government every time they abstained on a vote, allowing the toxic Harper to behave like a slightly moderated autocrat.

And since the Liberal caucus has their knives out for Dion once he doesn’t deliver a Liberal majority, the party’s cohesion has been eroding since the election was called. So a vote for the Liberals is a vote for a fractured party with a conflicted sense of self-identity on the verge of yet another leadership race.

It is no coincidence that the NDP has been rising steadily in the polls and has behaved as the de facto official opposition in the last parliament. When it comes to a party that speaks for Canadians, the NDP has stood up to the Reform/Conservative Party and the Liberals, who have been afraid to crash Harper’s parliament because they were never ready to have an election. They still aren’t, which is why Harper had to crash his own parliament.

And the Liberals still don’t deserve our votes. As much as the Democrats in the USA are Republicans-lite, so too are the Liberals: slightly more socially progressive yet just as fiscally hyper-conservative as the Reform/Conservative party.

And as for voting for Wendy Yuan in Vancouver-Kingsway, there is no hope that the Reform/Conservative Party’s attempt at a candidate will win the riding. He is the president of Reform/Conservative’s Delta-Richmond East constituency, and like Ms. Yuan, doesn’t live in Vancouver-Kingsway, but owns a home in Richmond (though last fall Mrs. Yuan rented an apartment in Collingwood). David Emerson also didn’t live in the riding.

So strategic voting in Vancouver-Kingsway is unnecessary. Vote for the principled NDP and let the Liberal Party continue its implosion because they will not be a cohesive force in the next parliament any more than they were in the last one.

Stephen Elliott-Buckley
Vancouver

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The Vancouver NPA, multi-generational vanguard of pretend non-partisanship has finished nominating its candidates.

One significant note here: Kanman Wong is the final NPA council candidate. Remember Kanman? He ran a modestly respectable campaign for the January 2006 federal election as the Conservative party candidate for Vancouver-Kingsway. He got a famous 18% of the vote while David Emerson won the riding and within hours of his victory was fielding calls from John Reynolds to cross the floor to Harper’s side.

So here’s Kanman again, working up the public service thing. And strangely Wendy Yuan, who was displaced from her candidacy in Vancouver-Kingsway when Prime Minister Paul Martin parachuted in his star candidate in 2004–one David Emerson–is now again running as the federal Liberal candidate in Kingsway, though she still owns her house in Richmond while renting a place in Collingwood.

It’s quite surreal. It’s almost as if the David Emerson Experience [with apologies to Jimi Hendrix] has hit an unfathomable pause button on the lives of two would-be politicians, who are now free again to pursue office after their trip to the electoral Twilight Zone.

So back to civic politics again, the Green/Vision/COPE coalition is in shape with COPE’s solid endorsement of its deal with Vision. The campaign will be odd, with common themes, yet distinct wedging for competition among the endorsed candidates. But it will also mean cut-throat jockeying for getting those coveted rationed candidacy positions.

And once the election ends with the hated, anti-social NPA unlikely to have any majority on the councils or boards, the coalition will have to live its three years through its own growing pains, like Blade Runner replicants trying to build up a lifetime of emotional experiences in but a few years. Depending on the flavour of which Vision candidates get nominated, and then elected, we will see Vision function in office as a centre-left bloc or a centre/centre-right bloc of opportunism over intent. Time will tell. And if it drifts rightward, expect a fair amount of defections back COPEward over the next 3 years.

But back on the federal side of the things, Layton being ahead of Dion in the leadership preference polls has serious traction. The NDP have been the de facto opposition for 2.5 years especially as Dion’s gang has abstained their way to greener electoral pastures that never emerged. In fact about a year ago, federal parties were polling almost identically to their results in the federal election 18 months earlier. It’s no different last month.

So now the Conservatives have announced that they’re campaigning against the NDP and the Greens. This means they will preemptively concede a majority by not trying to defeat the Bloc in Quebec, as if the Reform Party [ok, called the Conservatives now] can actually get Quebecers to vote for them without moving to the oil patch first. It also means that by announcing they aren’t competing against the Liberals, that the barely cohesive Liberals should become wary of 1992 when the Progressive Conservatives [remember that party that existed before the Reform Party took over?] were decimated to 2 seats.

But it’s all game theory. Whatever the Conservatives say is designed to cause ripples that they can then surf.

But wait, there’s more. In trying to figure out who is even running for David Emerson’s “Conservative” seat, I’ve finally discovered that it is Solomon Rayek, or Salomon Rayek, depending on who you check with. The Conservative Party website lists the candidate as Solomon, whereas the fellow at SalomonRayek.ca spells his name with an “a.”

Maybe it’s a typo, maybe it’s an irrelevancy. Whatever the case, you’d think they’d try to keep their story straight. And even though they may address this inconsistency some time soon, I wonder how it will be spelled on the ballot. In the end, it presents the feel of this being a throw-away riding, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why the Conservatives would think they have no chance of keeping this riding. Oh ya, David Emerson.

And that brings me back to Kanman Wong…right, he’s running municipally.

But as much as Wendy Yuan is more at home in Richmond, Salomon Rayek is reported as president of the Conservative Party’s Delta-Richmond East constituency association, a position he is still holding according to their website, he is the president of Jewish Advocacy for the Conservative Party, he has also sought the party’s nomination in Burnaby-Douglas, it seems for this election as well. So it appears that he is a candidate in name only in Vancouver-Kingsway as he doesn’t seem to stuck on location. I wonder if he’ll rent an apartment in the same Collingwood building as Wendy Yuan. He owns a home in Capistrano townhouses in Richmond. That would be awkward elevator conversations.

So it seems that we have the Liberals running someone from Richmond who rented an apartment in the riding, against someone for the Conservatives deeply involved in a Richmond riding as well, but who calls Kingsway his home, perhaps only because his youngest son was “born and raised” there. I wonder how much the Vancouver-Kingsway voters will feel like theirs is a proxy riding for a Richmond turf war.

Oh, and some of Salomon Rayek’s published letters to various newspaper editors are here.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the Georgia Strait reports that Ryan Windsor is running for the Green Party though its website says this today of Vancouver Kingsway. Maybe they actually have a candidate but wish to keep it a secret:

Vancouver Kingsway

Nominated Candidate – Candidat(e) nominé(e)

If you would like to be a candidate or volunteer for this riding, please contact the Electoral District Association listed below. If there is no Electoral District Association in your riding contact your Provincial Organizer, Rob Hines, Office: 604-689-9200, Cell: 778-689-6666, rob.hines@greenparty.ca

There are many ways to contact us, from e-mail and snail mail to simply walking into our office at Get Connected

And in case you care about recent history, I received this email below as part of a mass mailout on July 9, 2008, showing that the Greens were at least looking to begin setting up an electoral presence in the riding then. And as of today, the website says there are still about a dozen BC ridings without Green Party candidates, including a bunch without constituency associations yet. Unless of course their website is hiding them too. But in the end, they’ll run a candidate even without a constituency association…wild!

The Green Party of Canada is currently seeking to engage individuals in your riding. We support local grassroots democracy and there is no better way to become involved than at a local level. We’re trying to start a local association of the Green Party of Canada in Vancouver Kingsway! The local association, called an EDA (Electoral District Association) has the power to raise funds, issue tax receipts, hold events, elect officers, nominate candidates, and so much more. In fact, the Green Party of Canada is the only national political party that allows EDA’s to have fundraising capabilities.

The local association is the vehicle through which party members organize. The GPC office in Vancouver provides assistance to EDA’s to help organize them. Contact us for any questions regarding what to do next.Once an EDA is registered the GPC automatically starts sharing funds. It is an excellent way to start saving and investing for the next election. Setting up an EDA is easy!

We’re also looking for a candidate to step forward in the riding. The Green Party has run a full slate of candidates in the last two federal elections and intends to do the same for the next election. Even if there is no local association we will have a candidate running.

For more information on how you can get involved today call the BC Organizer, Rob Hines at 778 689 6666 or by email at bc@greenparty.ca. I’ll help you navigate through the process of establishing an EDA, attend your inaugural meeting, and provide ongoing support and training.

–
Rob Hines
Organizer BC & North
Green Party of Canada

bc@greenparty.ca
F 604 689 9200
T 778 689 6666

301-207 W Hastings St
Vancouver BC V6B 1H7

So in the end, The Greens’ website reports no candidate, the Conservatives and Liberals are running folks from Richmond and the NDP have Don Davies. Whew, representation lives!

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Totally Unacceptable Response from Liberals on Cadscam

Comments inserted inside the Liberal email:

The Cadman Affair

Dear Liberal Friend,

Over the last week we have witnessed Canadians’ already fragile trust in the Harper Government dissolve as allegations of the Conservatives’ 2005 attempt to acquire the vote of former MP Chuck Cadman come to light.

If anything, the Conservatives’ knee-jerk reaction has been consistent over the years: when in trouble, intimidate, bristle and threaten litigation.

If the allegations prove correct, this attempted transaction is an affront to the democratic process and possibly a contravention of the law.

What the heck does that mean? If the “allegations prove correct” it’s not “possibly a contravention of the law”. It IS a bribe and HAS to be an affront to the democratic process of the country, if a criminal investigation leads to a conviction in the affair also known as Cadscam.

We Liberals will keep asking for the truth on the Chuck Cadman affair, both inside and outside of the House of Commons.

If your last paragraph is any indication, those questions aren’t nearly tough enough.

Stephen Harper has acknowledged that it is his voice caught on tape admitting there were discussions regarding “financial considerations” between Conservative party officials and Mr. Cadman. Now, Mr. Harper must explain – without any of the ambiguity we have witnessed all week — what the nature of those discussions was.

We need your help to keep the Conservatives’ feet to the fire on this disturbing issue. Canadians deserve the truth, and with your financial support, Liberals like Stéphane Dion, Michael Ignatieff, Ken Dryden, Marlene Jennings and Ralph Goodale will get to the bottom of this.

No way. Did the Liberal President just ask people to pay the party if we want them to continue to get to the bottom of this? What happens if we don’t pay up? Will they stop asking questions in the House? Maybe they’ll avoid more votes? It sounds like they are asking for bribes to do their job! Asking questions in and out of the House of Commons is FREE.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

The Honourable Marie-P. (Charette) Poulin, Senator
President

PS. Visit www.liberal.ca to learn more about the facts concerning this very important issue.

Any why isn’t there an RCMP investigation into Cadscam yet? Did I miss the announcement of one starting? There’s an audio tape confirming the Prime Minister knew that party officials were offering Cadman replacements for “financial considerations”. That’s a BRIBE. You can’t offer a Member of Parliament financial incentives for their vote, it’s against the law. I’m completely ashamed of our country that we can let an entire week go by without formally investigating alleged criminal activity from the most powerful Canadian, caught on tape.

Maybe the new Liberal forum needs to be plagued with people asking the Liberals why they felt a donation request was a good idea in an email talking about politicians using bribery. They are turning a career ending move by Harper, into an “ethics probe”. As if Canadians could give a fig about the ethical status of politicians, it’s rarely been a reason to vote them out before. The Conservatives preach all about criminals serving the time if someone does the crime; Live by the sword, die by it!

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Artificial confidence motions around the crime bill and Afghanistan mission extension couched Parliament Hill today. Yet in keeping with Steve’s reluctance to permit the media any real access to him, the PMO or cabinet, his communications staff sent an email [below] giving all media in the country 17 minutes to get to the Commons foyer for a Steve statement. Hurry! Hurry hard!

I can count on two hands the number of times Prime Minister Steve has stooped to speak to the media in 2 years. The last time Steve did this was in October. Then he gave 67 minutes notice. Perhaps now he has effectively trained the media so they only need 17 minutes lead time.

——– Original Message ——–

Subject:	Notice
Date:	Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:43:03 -0500
From:	PMO
To:	ALLNEWS_E@LSERV.PMO-CPM.GC.CA

From the Prime Minister’s Web Site (http://www.pm.gc.ca/)

February 12, 2008
Ottawa, Ontario

Public event for Prime Minister Stephen Harper for today, Tuesday February 12th is:

12:00 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will make a brief statement.

Foyer
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON

*Open to media*

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Perhaps it was an error by anonymous correspondent on her campaign team to email me [above] with confirmation that she lives in the riding. Or maybe she’s just another inauthentic constituency “representative.”

NDP candidate Don Davies reported yesterday that she lives in Richmond and has not denied his repeated claims that she does not live in the riding:

Davies said that although Wendy Yuan, a long-time resident of Richmond, last year claimed that it’s not important for an MP to live in the riding, the Yuan campaign office now says she is a resident of Vancouver Kingsway.

According to land title records as of February 1, 2008, Ms Yuan and her husband are the registered owners of a home in Richmond. Documents further show that Ms Yuan re-mortgaged this property in April, 2007. As of February 6, 2008, there is no record that they own a home in Vancouver.

“We also searched on-line telephone and address directories. We can find no record of any residence attributed to Ms Yuan in the riding,” said Davies.

“I think Ms Yuan has some explaining to do: where does she live? Does she live in Vancouver Kingsway or not? If so, why has she kept her residence in Richmond?” Davies asked.

“Before [the last election], Ms Yuan stepped aside so Paul Martin could appoint Mr. Emerson as the candidate. Her personal reward was an appointment by the former prime minister as a representative on trade issues in Asia,” said Davies.

“[She and Emerson] both came out ahead personally, while voters who cast – or wanted to cast – their ballots in good faith were betrayed.

“Now, we see Ms Yuan trying to fool the voters into thinking she lives in Vancouver Kingsway – which is either directly untrue, or without telling them she retains her main residence in Richmond.

Meanwhile on Wendy Yuan’s website we read all sorts of feel-good statements about representative democracy.

As a Chinese Canadian woman and as an immigrant who came to Canada twenty-three years ago, I feel that Canada has given me so much and it’s high time for me to give something back to this great country of ours by serving the people and making a difference. And a great way to do this of course is to work with all of you and the residents of Vancouver Kingsway so that together we can build a more just, a more prosperous and a greener Canada.

“All of you and the residents of Vancouver Kingsway,” not all of “us.”

Yes, I am relatively new to politics, but I am ready to bring a fresh approach to the residents of Vancouver Kingsway.

Again, no mention of belonging to the community, just a group of people she will service. And it’s not that fresh approach if her style of honesty and full disclosure is similar to Emerson’s–that’s just cynical.

I am ready to listen to you and deal with the real issues and I want to prove to you that we as Liberals are here for the long haul. I believe that the Liberal Party’s principles, its core values and its vision are the means to build a stronger community in Vancouver Kingsway and indeed, a stronger Canada.

It’s too bad that the Liberals define long haul by sending in a candidate from another city. Are there no quality Liberal candidates who actually live in our riding?

My first responsibility will be to represent you and all the residents in this constituency. I will keep my promises to you and I will hold myself accountable if given the honour to work for the people of Vancouver Kingsway. As we get ready for the next election I will continue to knock on doors, engage with people, and learn more about how we can work together to address our concerns and aspirations.

Again, “this” constituency, not “our.” “Our” concerns and aspirations? Would those be the concerns of Richmond residents?

I will use my skills in international business to contribute to Canada’s success in the Pacific Rim and my experience as a working parent, an immigrant and a woman to address the issues and challenges that we face in our riding.

Well, now it’s “our” riding. Unless she can demonstrates that she lives in our riding, this is an unacceptable word.

Before I ask you for your support and for your vote, I say let me earn it first. I invite you to engage with me in our democratic process, to participate in discussions and concrete actions that will help turn a new page in Vancouver Kingsway’s diverse and growing neighbourhoods and communities.

Well, I engaged with her by asking if she lives in the riding. She says she does, but the evidence contradicts that.

When her campaign office calls me back to explain their email to me from December and try to prove to me that she lives in the riding, I’ll update this post.

And here’s the update. An email came in with an attached pdf of her Hydro bill. Her personal information was blacked out at the source. I purpled out her account number and meter number, which are none of anyone’s business anyway:

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