On Quebec unilaterally enshrining its status as a nation in the Constitution: Jody Wilson-Raybould’s view

To be clear, this pattern of lacking leadership is not limited to Indigenous issues.  Nor is it limited to a single leader or particular political party.  In the same week Canada learned about the 215 children in Kamloops, we saw members of Parliament sit mute and accept the idea of a unilateral amendment to our Constitution rather than debate critical constitutional and legal questions about the future of our federation.  We have a crisis of leadership throughout our system, wherein political parties render their duly elected members impotent.[1]

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[1] Jody Wilson-Raybould, “Honouring the children,” The Globe and Mail (Saturday, June 5, 2021), O3

And now for something completely different: Vancouver Island's Old-Growth going & gone

 

Electoral-Reform Referendum in BC: “forced to be free”

BC Attorney General David Eby’s electoral-reform referendum tends toward a particular outcome; in other words, it is biased.

Instead of an independent Citizens’Assembly which administered the provincial referenda of 2005 and 2009, today’s referendum is under the auspices of the NDP Attorney General’s office itself.

Instead of one question, there are two, which is a way of circumventing the provincial law which declares that a majority vote is necessary to bring about particular electoral reform. Do I foresee a possible Supreme Court of Canada challenge in the future?

The first ballot question asks for a simple choice between our current of first-past-the-post system (FPTP) or “A proportional representation voting system” (PR).

The second ballot question asks to list your preferences from a selection of three PR choices – dual member proportional (DMP), mixed member proportional (MMP), and rural-urban proportional (RUP). But strangely there is no mention of FPTP.

Surely, if you voted for FPTP in the first ballot question, then you have no need to vote in the second ballot question.  But there is no category for FPTP in the second question, which suggests that electoral reform is already leading towards a predetermined outcome, so the FPTP voter is “forced to be free” as Rousseau might have it.

Instead of treating all electoral options equally and clearly, RUP, for example, suffers from particular obfuscation, because it combines two different PR systems, one of which was jettisoned by the last two referenda, making it unfair - and challenging for Joe Public to understand.

Instead of supplying the public with tried and tested PR choices for British Columbians, two such options on offer, DMP and RUP, have never before been implemented anywhere in the world.

  

The only plausible PR alternative is MMP, where the balance of proportional candidates are selected from a party “list”.  Could it be that the NDP government is actually angling for this particular outcome by means of subterfuge?

 

Surely provincial electoral reform could be brought to public consideration in a more transparent and fair manner.  What we have now is disproportionate representation by David Eby.

Kinder Morgan and the Trans Mountain Pipeline: the "bitumen battle"

History shows that British Columbia's provincial politics is dominated by ideological polarization and a tendency to extremes, with no middle ground ceded in what amounts to a zero sum game where there is a ‘winner take all’ attitude.   This was most clear in Gordon Campbell’s landslide victory in 2001 when the (neo) Liberals won all but 2 seats in the Victoria legislature, reducing the (left wing) New Democratic Party to unofficial opposition status. More recently, it took a Supreme Court of Canada decision to force Liberal Leader Christy Clark to relent in her obsessions and allow B.C. teachers a say in class size and composition, a move that took some 13 years or so to come to conclusion.

Today’s NDP, likewise, is plagued by its own drive for ideological and environmental promises of purity: no to Site C dam, yes to Site C dam; no to liquified natural gas, yes to LNG; no to tolls, maybe yes to smaller tolls. But the line across the sand over which John Horgan will not cross ‘as long as he is Premier’ is the twinning of an existing Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline, in operation since 1953 – and its possible implications for the health of the B.C. coastline should a bitumen spill occur, given an increase of one tanker a day in traffic.  Needless to say, the three Green Party members (who are propping up the razor-thin NDP minority government) are also dead set against this.

Normally minority governments can be creative ventures and a boon for democracy, which is about making compromises in a complicated world, but Premier Horgan’s posturing appears to pander to a form of environmental populism which resonates widely in a province as blessed as British Columbia.  I see no NDP effort to compromise with Andrew Wilkinson’s Liberals on the other side of the legislature regarding this issue, nor any efforts to work with their NDP cousins in Alberta under Rachel Notley, nor with the federal Liberals under Justin Trudeau.  Can they all be wrong?  Can the BC NDP be all right?  Should a so-called “constitutional crisis” tilt on a three-member Green alliance with the NDP in British Columbia?  I tend to disagree, but, maybe in another light, this opinion piece could be considered about fifty percent correct.

Why Mulcair failed

Tom Mulcair failed last night to retain leadership of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP), even though he often scared the pants off Stephen Harper in last Parliament's Question Period - and was even leading in the polls - for quite some time during the last election.  The reasons are simple: Mulcair actually imitated Harper too much, and while quite a bright man, Mulcair lacks sufficient imagination. 

Muclair imitated Harper on two significant issues: the apparent need for a balanced budget, which put him out of step with a wide swath among the NDP (allowing Trudeau to outflank him).  And he followed Harper’s coattails on the Senate:  Harper was poised to ‘starve’ the Senate and bring about so-called reform by not appointing any more Senators, even though it was his constitutional duty to do so.  When Mulcair was riding high in the polls he became obsessed with ideas of Senate reform in much the same unconstitutional manner – one that was implicitly dependant on Harper’s resolution not to appoint any more Senators (one promise that Harper did keep).  While Mulcair eyed a disingenuous frontal assault on the Constitution Trudeau showed more imagination by removing the partisanship of “Liberal” Senators already in the Upper Chamber.

This brings us to the crux of the matter: both Mulcair and Trudeau have degrees from McGill University: Mulcair has a Law Degree and Trudeau an undergraduate Arts Degree.  But Mulcair does not have an undergraduate degree from any university.  He went from a CEGEP (a two year post-secondary college system only in Quebec) to Law School, and in Mulcair’s day and age this was accepted practice for bright students.  But because he missed out on an undergraduate experience Mulcair’s education lacks breadth – and with it often comes expanded imagination.  In other words Mulcair was very able as Leader of the Opposition in responding to Harper’s specific policies (Bill C-51, and the like), but he was unable to build a successful platform of his own, one with vision. This helps explain why Mulcair’s final speech to the NDP at the end of the Convention was a clear disappointment to previously undecided voters. 

Post Mulcair, however, the NDP will remain ever divided, thrashing it out over pipelines between the “Leap Manifesto” of scion Avi Lewis and well-known author Naomi Klein (the two are married) and the Alberta NDP government under Rachel Notley.  Without Mulcair the NDP will likely flounder, and the Liberal “honeymoon” will extend itself ... as each of the two main parliamentary party competitors on the Left and on the Right are now undergoing a leadership process.

On a Canadian Conundrum - and Cannabis

If a Canadian federal election were to be held today, which party would you vote for – the Conservatives, NDP, Liberals, Greens, or Bloc Québecois? Well, if I were to vote now I would choose none of the above.  It’s a Canadian conundrum - and a real problem for discerning voters, because our federal parties keep to uncompromising and untenable platforms.

As ruled by the “Harper Government,” Canada is so undemocratic that a vote for a Conservative candidate borders on constitutional treason – just look for instance to the hack job on the CBC, which is now bereft of its editorial independence.  We live in a country that no longer has freedom of the press for our national public broadcaster.  Who in their right mind wants to vote Conservative?

Then look to the Official Opposition NDP. Stacked by soft Quebec nationalists à la Mulroney, the NDP Party under “Tom” Mulcair hopes to dismantle the Chretien government’s “Clarity Act”, now widely regarded as a success story (or the only thing federalists have going for them).  For Mulcair, the formula “50% plus 1” is enough to dismantle Canada, should a referendum on separation in Quebec actually happen.   It sounds to me that the NDP are a profoundly disloyal opposition; they very much deserve to return to third party status for this reason alone, aside from their Peter Pan dream of eliminating the Senate.

How about the Liberals under Trudeau?  Recently bolstered by caucus evictions of Senate Liberals, Trudeau wants to escape the Conservative “not a leader” caricature of his predecessors Ignatieff and Dion.  But Trudeau is still floundering on his party’s national platform to legalize marijuana.  Too bad he did not bother to check out his mother Margaret’s autobiography, Changing My Mind, before he adopted this “liberal” policy.  Margaret Trudeau suffers from bipolar disorder, and for two or three decades she was “addicted” to pot, which contributed to her chronic episodes of “extreme mania”.[1] It was only when Margaret Trudeau stopped smoking pot on her doctor’s orders that she got better and came into her own.[2]

In other words, Justin Trudeau has learned absolutely nothing from his mother’s experiences, which makes him look foolish, and now his policy on pot will contribute to any number of mental health crises among the vulnerable, once there is legal access to marijuana.  It is also well documented that marijuana use is an early trigger for the onset of schizophrenia, especially among those who are susceptible to this serious and tragic illness.[3]  Legal pot is a way of dealing with foreign drug cartels, but schizophrenics become our domestic victims, and they don’t vote.  Both the Liberals and Greens advocate the legalization of pot; that they do so is indicative of their poor grasp of mental health matters.  Pity.  Pot is also much like a Brave New World solution, where people take its equivalent, soma, in order to get a “holiday from the facts.”[4]  Moreover, the legalization of pot represents post-colonialism at its worst: instead of the disgraceful nineteenth-century Opium Wars, it is now the West which seeks further amusement and distraction, while the Chinese economic engine climbs to ascendancy.

Having eliminated the Conservatives, NDP, Liberals and Greens, there is only the hapless Bloc Québecois, which is not represented outside of Quebec.  That leaves no party to vote for, but many reasons to stand on guard against this Canadian conundrum. Allow me to suggest a remedy:  stymied potential voters should be allowed a “veto” on each and every ballot in the next federal election.[5]  

Yes, an extra entry on each ballot to say “I deny” should be considered by Elections Canada to give people of conscience a chance to express their dissent at oppressive party platforms.  It is a good to declare independence from leaders deprived of foresight, as well as hindsight.

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[1] Margaret Trudeau, Changing My Mind (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2010), p. 283.  Margaret Trudeau frequently describes herself in her memoirs as “addicted” to pot.

[2] Ibid., p. 240.

[3] For an introduction see, for example, David Suzuki’s CBC documentary “The Downside of High” on The Nature of Things.

[4] Aldous Huxley, Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited, intro by Margaret Atwood (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007), p. 224.

[5] Thanks to Wade, who probably watches too many Seinfeld episodes.

Are you on the Conservatives Enemies' list?

The other day I received an unidentified letter in the mail warning in big bold letters (exactly as written) “Are you on the Conservatives Enemies’ list?” I opened it eagerly to find that it was from the NDP telling me, among other things, of a data base operated by the Conservatives.  I was heartened to learn that I am likely not alone on that data base.  But I was also bothered by the bad grammar.  The envelope should have read: “Are you on the Conservatives’ Enemies list?”  Apparently the federal NDP, while no longer socialist, still has problems with its possessives.