Disclaimer: I am very jetlagged. Please be patient with me.
Canadians, and more specifically the Canadian media have been perpetuating a myth about our electoral system for a while now and it's gotta stop. Newspapers and radio shows are guilty of it, as are party leaders of most stripes: they're treating our electoral process as if we live in the United States.
Here's how it is: We elect parliaments in Canada, not presidents. We elect representatives who sit in the House of Commons who then collectively determine who should speak for Canada: the Prime minister, the first among equals.
Most of us can't vote for Harper, Layton, Ignatieff, or May, but not a day goes by on this campaign that I don't hear some pundit talking about how Ignatieff will do X or Harper will do Y. Both Harper and Layton have been noted for talking like they will personally do something if elected, and though I haven't heard Ignatieff do the same, I wouldn't be surprised.
The fact that in practise, our political system does work as though we elect short-term tyrants doesn't negate the fact that that's not how this system is supposed to work. In fact, I would argue that since we cover campaigns as though it were some sort of horse race between presidential candidates leads not only to an excuse, but an expectation of tyranny once that leader ends up in the Prime Minister's role.
The second myth is that parliamentary elections can be "won" somehow. Jack Layton or Stephen Harper cannot "win" this election as the absurdity of that statement is twofold:(1) as we've already established, any one candidate can only win his or her riding, and (b) winning a minority of seats (or even a majority) does not mean that the remaining parties are somehow not part of our governing process. The House is the authority, not the governing party, and certainly not the Prime Minister.
Ignoring these two truths about our system of government leads to the devaluation of the role of our elected MPs and to support for arguments like Harper's opposition to a coalition. We should either take advantage of our parliamentary system, or simply drop it in favour of (in my opinion) less democratic presidential role. There's really no point on keeping up the premise of parliamentary democracy if people are going to continue to believe that the Prime Minister runs Canada.
The biggest problem we Greens have in Canada is perception. People don't know who we are, or what we stand for. We tend to operate in a media vacuum, in an absence of media coverage from mainstream sources... which is a shame because the Greens have some really interesting things to say. There are still people in this country who think that we're a "one issue party", or that we're "Conservatives with a green bent". These are caricatures, fashioned by those who don't want us taken seriously, and sadly, they're usually all the public hears.
In 2008, the public had the opportunity to see who we are and what we can do when our leader, Elizabeth May was in the debates -- an opportunity denied to Canadians this time around by an unelected consortium with no responsibility to the public trust. In response, the Greens have seen a surge in support from the general public, former prime ministers, and independent media, and it's that last one that I thought I'd share with you today.
Below is the result of an "open debate" invitation from Channel Zero, an independent media group, who decided that if the media consortium wouldn't invite all of the major parties, and wouldn't even reveal the requirements for inclusion, then someone else would have to pick up the slack. All parties were invited, only the Greens have shown up (so far).
I really encourage you to watch the video below. If for no other reason than to be sure that you've seen all the sides in this upcoming election. You might also want to cut her some slack on account of her voice being rather beaten up over the past few days. She normally sounds much less raspy :-)
I got some heat from a few people today for what I said on Twitter and Facebook so I thought that I should clarify my position on it a bit. You see, I have a Big Problem with so much effort and rhetoric being poured into getting people to vote.
Now let me be clear: If you know what's going on, if you know what your options are, and you know what you think about what your candidates stand for, then by all means, I want you to vote... even if it's not for the party I'd prefer. My preference is for this country to be ruled by the collected will of the enlightened majority, and while democracy may be flawed, it's the best tool we've got for that.
But let me be clear again: If you do not know what's going on, what your options are, or who those people are who want your vote, I want you to figure that part out before you even think about voting.
Paul Martin was right when he said that there was a democratic deficit in this country, but I think it's time that we stop expecting these problems to be fixed from the top down and start looking in the mirror. Democracy is dependent on three things:
Free and fair elections
A free press
An informed electorate (dependent on a free press)
Now in Canada, we're pretty lucky to have some semblance of the first two. Complain all you want about our antiquated first-past-the-post system, as someone who's volunteered to work in a polling station, I can tell you that Elections Canada runs a clean ship. As for the press, well it has a lot of problems with consolidation, and this recent fiasco with a private consortium denying the Green voice in the debate should give anyone pause, but lets be honest, it could be worse.
But the informed electorate is where we need serious work, and it's from here that our governments derive this feeling that they can get away with anything... because they can. I have met transgendered people living on welfare in social housing who vote Conservative. I've heard about people who vote based on party colours, and there isn't an election that goes by that I'm not subjected to some idiot spouting something completely false to justify their vote for a party that works against her best interests. How many Canadians will vote in May not knowing (or caring) that our Prime Minister was found in contempt of parliament? How many will know why? Hockey games get more attention in Canada than the politics of running Canada does.
There's a democratic deficit in this country alright, but the low-hanging fruit here is in the electorate, not the government. Too many people don't want to talk about, read about, or even think about politics in Canada, and that's where we need to start: at the level of engagement, not at the end of the process.
These massive campaigns to "Rock the Vote" or some such nonsense work so hard to appear non-partisan and drive home only one message: that voting is cool, important, or even a responsibility... and it's all of those things, but only if that vote represents an informed citizen's opinion on how her country should function. They skip all that boring stuff because these campaigns are under the false impression that checking a box is the goal, and that democracy is simply the byproduct.
So yes, I know it's harder to sell, but can we please stop with this "get out and vote" business and instead try for something a little more thorough like: "it's your government, maybe you'd like to find out what's going on and take part?" I'll leave that to the marketing folk to figure out.
Has anyone else got the feeling that world governments haven't learnt the right lesson from the latest series of cables released by Wikileaks?
Here's a newsflash guys, the key isn't to be sorry that you got caught, it's to be sorry that you committed the acts for which you (should be) ashamed in the first place.
Wikileaks should be commended for their dedication to promoting openness in our relations with our neighbours, rather than vilified for distributing to the truth to the world.
It's an ugly phrase. Often overused and misunderstood, it's important to know that despite what you may have heard, Canada is not such a place. It is however equally important to accept that we are closer to it now than we have ever been, and each day I read more and more about us losing the Canada we want for ourselves. Whether we believe it or not, we're closer to a police state than most of us want to admit.
To those of you who would still defend these people, I say that these acts are indefencible. In the G20 case, the SIU has found that no one may be charged because no one can be identified. The appropriate response to this then is to argue that any officer refusing to identify themselves is in fact a criminal -- at best, a thuggish terrorist at worst. Is it safe then to assume that self-defence can be invoked when assaulting an unidentified officer committing acts of brutatlity? And what, if anything will become of the officers higher up in the chain of command after this incident? Who gave the orders to arrest non-violent protesters, and who allowed the city to burn while our freedoms were crushed beneath combat boots and riot shields?
There is anger brewing in this country... at least, I hope there is.
For my part, I honestly don't know what to do. I feel like I'm abandonning my country when it needs me, that I could do something to fight this if I stayed. But I don't know what that something is. To those reading this, I ask you: what, outside of violent revolution can we do? How do you fight thugs and Fingermen without resorting to bloodshed?
I will post details about this year's Hallowe'en stuff soon, but I wanted to share this for now. Below is a video clip from 1978 of Tommy Douglas addressing the House of Commons. There's two things that I'd like to point out to you before you watch it:
This is a man talking about energy independence in 1978.
Note the remarkable lack of noise and heckling in the room. Thirty years has changed much.
I remember the day I heard that Rob Ford would be running for Mayor in Toronto. I figured this to be great news. Ford, a blustering idiot councillor from the suburbs needed a good smack down, and there was no way that a racist bigot like him could ever win in a city as beautifully diverse as Toronto. He would be ejected from politics, outed for who he was, an ignorant blowhard who couldn't possibly hope to represnet the most multicultural city in Canada.
Oh how it hurts to be so wrong.
Not only did Rob Ford win, he won with 47% of the vote. That means that 47% of Torontonians either voted for a bigot or didn't bother to do the research themselves to find out that that they were going to vote for a bigot. On top of that, 50% didn't even show up to vote at all. We're past a question of "who stole votes from whom" here, this is problem is systemic.
Dave Meslin had part of it right when he talked about Toronto's invisible primaries, an ugly byproduct of our antiquated first-past-the-post voting system is that we exclude voices from the debate because they aren't loud enough to win. Remember that 50% that didn't even show up to vote? Well knowing that your vote actually counts for something is a great way to energise interest in politics.
But there's a second element that we don't hear discussed enough and that's interest by virtue of time and energy. Ford won because he ran a great campaign. It painted him as a straight-talking, no-nonsense guy who's going to "clean up City Hall" while somehow obscuring the fact that he himself was a millionaire, bent on destroying everything most Torontonians hold in high regard. All anyone had to do was Google his name to find out who he really was, but too few people did -- 380,201 people actually, and now we have four years to find out just how much this man can do, both to the city itself, and to its reputation on the world stage.
For political devotees like myself, it's easy to dismiss 47% of the voting public as either ignorant or crazy, but it's just not true. I honestly believe that people want to understand the politics of their city, province and country, but they simply don't have time. For those of us for whom politics is a hobby or interest, it's hard to accept that someone wouldn't want to burn a few hours a day reading up on local events, or watching a news show, but for most of us, a few hours is all we have, and many of us would rather spend that time on something that makes us happy, whether that be painting, reading, hockey, or just socialising. Democracy is work for many of us, and it's a commitment that some of us can't make without sacrificing our sanity.
Now I'm not excusing political apathy, far from it. For the next four years, every one of the 380,201 people who voted for Ford and the million or so who didn't vote should be reminded that the state of things is in fact their fault. No, I'm trying to point out that any society that doesn't allow for enough time to both do what we personally need for our sanity as well as take part in our own governance isn't really a Democracy. In a real Democracy, a blustering fool like Ford couldn't hope to succeed because the public would actually know what kind of person he is. His comments about cyclists being at fault when they're hit by trucks and his tirades in council would be lunch counter conversation in every home in a real Democracy, his archaic views on homosexuality, a joke told over dinner.
We need to slow down, decompress and work less, engage more... with each other and with our community. Activist groups are great, but they're not much good if they only include people between the ages of 18 and 28, or those over 65. Too many people are just too busy paying rent and feeding their kids to worry about more than the 30second spot they saw on TV and that is the real problem here.
I've attached some Youtube videos to this post along the side to give you a taste for what kind of man is sitting in the Big Chair now. Know that Toronto is not unique in this, in fact I'd argue that such misfortune is just as likely to happen anywhere where the public is sufficiently overburdened and disenfranchised. I can only hope that he angers enough people in these next four years that it inspires others to re-engage with their Democracy.
I'd like you to take 30seconds to watch something for me:
Violence has its place, and that place is when words are no longer enough. Anyone paying attention to what's going on in the world can tell you that the gap between the rich and the poor is dangerously wide and that the priorities of the rich minority are not in the best interests of the poor majority. Ecological disasters like the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico and the recent world-wide economic collapse are symptoms of a greater problem, one the "civil" protesters are campaigning for... if only someone were listening.
But no one is listening... at least no one with any measurable power. Instead, our leaders erect fences and spend billions dollars on making sure that the voices of the people aren't heard at these events. They take our money and construct elaborate indoor lakes to placate the media, while they conduct the business of governance behind closed doors. This is not democracy, and people insisting that standing in a street and waving a sign is the best response to such injustice just don't get it: we should be angry! Those are our streets, our spaces, and our leaders, talking about issues that relate directly to our lives and they shut us out with wire fences, concrete walls, and thousands of violent police? Where's the rage?
Martin Luther King had it right when he said that "a riot is the language of the unheard". The overwhelming majority of Canadians want action on things like the environment, peace, the economy, and poverty, but rather than moving on these issues, our leaders consistently work against our interests. Chants and sign-waving clearly aren't getting it done, and so a few among us have started smashing things. It's not intelligent, it's not tactical, it doesn't even have to make sense. It's rage, and it's not only justified in such a situation, but called for.
That video clip is about oppression:
Convince the majority that opposition isn't worthwhile.
Beat the remainder into submission.
Simultaneously encourage and incite violence from the reactionary minority, so that the press sides against them. This returns us to #1.
I'll be the first to concede that violence is not the answer here, but the time for chanting and sign-waving is through. I don't want to hear any more of this "if the violent people would just stop, then maybe they'd listen" business because sadly, that's just not true. Something has got to be done, or soon it might not just be a Starbucks and a few police cars that get smashed.
I had a rather enlightening conversation with an Old Friend over lunch yesterday. John, a former co-worker at Work [at] Play and I meet for lunch every few months, mostly to catch up on each other's lives and talk about how things are going at my present employer. He's since moved on to be the COO at VirtualDoubloon but we got along so well, that I figured the friendship was worth the maintenance.
This time around, we didn't talk about my current employer so much as how my life was moving in general. I was on the verge of my 31st birthday and coming out of both a romantic relationship and a (thankfully unrelated) business co-founding partnership and "what's next" was the primary topic of discussion.
He asked about my political career, specifically whether I'd run in the next election, and I explained that I'd love to if the riding association in North Vancouver-Seymour is unable to find a candidate, but outside of that, every topic we hit on didn't produce any enthusiasm from me. The truth is, I haven't been motivated by much since I moved here. I've been unable to get excited about the activist scene, and frankly my job stopped being interesting over a year ago.
This line of thinking gets worse when I consider that about six months ago I was in the very same position I am now. I was re-evaluating my whole reasoning for being in Vancouver and was so desperate for something to hold me here that I jumped at the chance to start a company with a stranger -- which for the record is not a good idea :-)
Since our conversation though, I've come to realise that too many of my decisions in this life so far have been ones governed by how those actions might affect others. This isn't to say that I've been a terribly selfless person, rather that I've let my own happiness be hindered by whether or not decision x was a Right decision, or whether it would make people I love unhappy.
I'm not going to do that anymore.
This can mean a variety of things. I might take dance classes, or join a choir, or even take this job. I might move to Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, or Seoul too... I'm not sure yet. I'm just done with letting my happiness be governed by externalities.
31years in... I guess it's better late than never.
Big news on the other side of the world lately. Israeli troops attacked a ship full of activists in international waters carrying humanitarian aid, killing at least 9 people and injuring anywhere between 30 and 60 more. The "dangerous cargo" they were keeping from Palestinians in the Gaza strip was not weapons, but food and medical supplies.
It's time that we all wake up and accept that Israel's actions are those of a terrorist state. No other nation in the world is afforded the kind of support the West gives them, especially in light of the crimes committed by their government.
The Gaza blockade is now in its fourth year. The people in that region are being denied everything from food to musical instruments, and now Israel has attacked ships flying flags of NATO and EU countries in international waters. Whether or not you can accept that opposition to Israel is not the same as antisemetism is no longer the issue. Israel is using Western support in the form of military and financial aid to do evil.
Note however that I am not making the case for the Palestinians here. Frankly, I don't think that Hamas is any better than the Israeli government. No, this is just a plea that we take a moment to understand the situation for what it is and act accordingly.
Our politicians, and even our media are terribly afraid of being branded antisemetic and so the cheerleading for Israel continues. Seeing the situation for what it is: two terrorist governments duking it out with millions of civilians in-between, has to start with us.
Your action-list:
Accept the above
Contact your MP and help them understand that you and many others have accepted this and that it's about time that they started representing you and call for sanctions.
