Democracy Under Fire

Oxymoron - Open Government

2012-01-29T08:27:00.000-05:00

Apparently there hasbeen an “Open Government Consultation” conducted byTreasury Board over the last couple of weeks. Whilst I am not up onsuch 'consultations' David Eaves is very much so, I will then hand itover to him in these extractsfrom a recent post at Eaves.ca. He tells usthat you can explore on theTreasury Board website and also that TraceyLauriault has tracked some of the submissions onher website.

“As part of the Open GovernmentPartnership commitments it would be great for the government tocommit to guarantee that every request for information made of itwould include a digital version of the document that can be searched.

Second, the government should commit that everydocument it publishes be available online. For example, I remember in2009 being told that if I wanted a copy of the Health Canada report"Human Health in a Changing Climate:A Canadian Assessment ofVulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity" I had to request of CD,which was then mailed to me which had a PDF copy of the report on it.Why was the report not simply available for download? Because theMinister had ordered it not to appear on the website. Instead, I as ataxpayer and to see more of my tax dollars wasted for someone toreceive my mail, process it, then mail me a custom printed cd.Enabling ministers to create barriers to access governmentinformation, simply because they do not like the contents, is anaffront to the use of tax payer dollars and our right to accessinformation.

Finally, Allow Government Scientists to speakdirectly to the media about their research.

It has become a reoccurring embarrassment.Scientists who work for Canada publish an internationally recognizedground break paper that provides some insight about the environmentor geography of Canada and journalists must talk to governmentscientists from other countries in order to get the details. Why?Because the Canadian government blocks access. Canadians have a rightto hear the perspectives of scientists their tax dollars paid for –and enjoy the opportunity to get as well informed as the governmenton these issues.

Thus, lift the ban that blocks governmentscientists from speaking with the media.”

I think by now we all realize that its not just aparticular minister who blocks access to unfavorable reports but thatthis practice is in fact now the standard practice for the currentRegime. Whilst I suspect that this 'consultation', as with so manyother initiatives from the Harper Regime is nothing more than smokeand mirrors to keep folks happy whilst they goabout doing exactly as they intended in thefirst place, David has submitted a number of suggestions and whilst Iurge you to read his entire post here are a few of them which indeedmake a lot of sense.

Redefine Public as Digital: Pass an OnlineInformation Act

a) Any document it produces should be availabledigitally, in a machine readable format. The sham that the governmentcan produce 3000-10,000 printed pages about Afghan detainees or theF-35 and claim it is publicly disclosing information must end.

b) Any data collected for legislative reasonsmust be made available - in machine readable formats - via agovernment open data portal.

c) Any information that is ATIPable must bemade available in a digital format. And that any excess costs ofgenerating that information can be born by the requester, up until acertain date (say 2015) at which point the excess costs will be bornby the ministry responsible. There is no reason why, in a digitalworld, there should be any cost to extracting information - indeed, Ifear a world where the government can't cheaply locate and copy itsown information for an ATIP request as it would suggest it can't getthat information for its own operations.

Use Open Data to drive efficiency in GovernmentServices: Require the provinces to share health data –particularly hospital performance - as part of its next fundingagreement within the Canada Health Act.

Finally before we leaveDave and examine the other side of the coin he points out how farbehind Canada is in providing open data to its citizens.

Open Budget and Actual Spending Data

For almost a year the UK government haspublished all spending data, month by month, for each governmentministry (down to the £500 in some, £25,000 in others).More over, as an increasing number of local governments are requiredto share their spending data it has lead to savings, as governmentbegin to learn what other ministries and governments are paying forsimilar services.

It is interesting tosee that even as they take submissions about improving access to datathey are actively doing exactly the opposite. TheSixth Estate points out:-

“......it’sincreasingly difficult to find any Royal Commission reports onlineanymore, thanks to the government’s inexplicable practice oftaking down their websites and hiding backup copies on a NationalArchives server which blocks Google from indexing its contents.

Presently, theHarper regime’s Minister of Graft, the Dishon. Tony Clement, isbusy looking for symbolic measures to promote the idea that Canadahas “open government.” Restoring full, indexed, andeasily accessible Commission reports would be a good first steptowards that goal.”

To cap it all off andto reinforce that the Harperites have no intention of letting theircitizens know what is going on Poggigives us this little snippet of information:-

“The House of Commons gets back to worknext week and that means that parliamentary committees resume aswell. In fact the Standing Committee on Health will meet tomorrowafternoon.

Kady O'Malley, as @kady on Twitter, was kindenough to link to thispage which provides the schedule ofupcoming meetings. O'Malley also took note of the number of padlocksassociated with the entries which indicates that a meeting will beheld in camera — closed to the public.

Of the ten meetings currently listed, eight ofthem will be held in camera. Admittedly thisisn't something I've kept track of but that seems high. It's worthnoting that aside from preventing the press and public from viewingthe proceedings, taking the meeting behind closed doors automaticallybinds the participants — including opposition MPs — tosecrecy.

Eight out of ten would certainly suggest one oftwo things: either something is in the works that a lot of us won'tlike or keeping the public in the dark about what goes on incommittees has become the default position of this government. Eitherway, democracy loses.”

So not only can we orthe media not examine the workings of these committees but ourelected representatives are not allowed to speak of such 'debates' with their constituents or the media.

This should not come asa surprise to anyone following the steady reduction of anything otherthan “approved” spin from this regime and the everincreasing suppression of any reports or views that do not closelyfollow their ideological agenda. So whilst I thank David and all theothers who have submitted ideas and comments to this 'consultation' Ido hope that none of them are expecting a positive outcome from it.

Seems that the publicis doomed to be just like Schults from Hogans Heros by the time thenext election comes around “Isee NOTHING! I know NOTHING!” and haveblind faith in Herr Harper.

Change on the way for BC?

2012-01-27T15:01:00.000-05:00

This was in my in-box today, from Fair Voting BC. I am encouraged by news of so many groups that have spawned (to use a word from my sons' gaming world) into existence for the sole purpose of re-claiming a democratic society. If change can happen in BC, I believe it can happen across the entire country, but as with all things demanding political will, we have to help make it happen.

January 26, 2012

Networks and Partnerships for Democratic Reform

Dear Democratic Reform Supporters:

As both the western and Chinese New Years get underway, our news is mainly about networking and partnerships. Fair Voting BC is pleased to announce the following:

Vancouver City Council To Renew Request for Power to Choose Best Voting System for City: Fair Voting BC has had numerous discussions with Vancouver city councillors over the years about addressing some of the problems with the city’s democratic processes. We were therefore very pleased that Councillor Andrea Reimer has introduced a motion calling on the province to change the charter to allow the city freedom to choose its own voting system and to make detailed ballot data publicly available (our request! See last month's newsletter). While council generally appears to be favourable, the minister responsible, Ida Chong, stated that she’ll only implement the requests if the Local Government Elections Task Force and the Union of BC Municipalities agrees, so there’s still a lot of work to be done yet before we win our democratic rights. Fair Voting BC will be speaking in favour of this motion when council hears speakers (likely next Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning). It would be great to have FVBC supporters join us and speak in favour of the motion yourselves - there's strength (and fun) in numbers! Check out the meeting agenda and, if you can come, please send a note to Jim DeLaHunt (jdlh@jdlh.com) to get put on the speaker's list.

Fair Voting BC Partners With Party X on Democratic Dialogue Series: Party X is a Vancouver-based non-profit community of tech innovators and social entrepreneurs who are developed new web-based tools for building public consensus. Fair Voting BC is delighted to partner with Party X to offer a dialogue series later this spring on issues of democracy, technology and collective decision-making. Our first organizing meeting will take place downtown at 6pm on Feb 1 (next Wed) and we invite anyone who’s interested to join us. Please click here to register (no charge).

Integrity BC Invites FVBC Supporters to Sign Petition Banning Union and Corporate Donations: Integrity BC is a relatively new non-partisan organization championing accountability and integrity in BC politics and we are pleased that two of Fair Voting BC’s founding directors sit on their board: Nick Loenen (former Socred MLA) and David Marley (former assistant to the BC Attorney General). Integrity BC is currently running a campaign called “Who Really Runs BC?” which calls for a ban on corporate and union funding of political parties, a cap on personal donations and a Citizen's Assembly to study and make binding recommendations on a host of other reforms, including banning contributions from outside B.C. They invite you to visit their website for more information on this issue, to sign a petition and to volunteer to help collect signatures.

Liberal Convention Supports Alternative Vote: At the Liberal Convention last week, the party adopted a motion that recognizes the failings of Single Member Plurality voting and endorsing the Alternative Vote (AV). AV is much like our Single Member Plurality system, but it substitutes a preferential ballot for the current ‘Mark an X’ ballot. With a preferential ballot, you rank the candidates (1, 2, 3, etc). If no candidate wins 50% on the first vote, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the ballots supporting them transferred to those voters’ second choice. This repeats until someone has 50% support. While there are some (arguably small) benefits of using AV, it is by no means a form of proportional representation (despite some confusion in news reports). Fair Vote Canada regards AV as a non-reform, and Fair Voting BC calls on the Liberal Party to initiate a combined multipartisan and public deliberative dialogue to build consensus on voting reforms that can be broadly supported.

Visit our Website

fairvotingbc.com

Enemy of the people of Canada.

2012-01-25T08:26:00.001-05:00

Who is the enemy, you decide!
In a sworn affidavit released Tuesday to TheCanadian Press, Andrew Frank says he was told by his supervisorat ForestEthics that a PMO official had referred to theirorganization as an "enemy of the state." The affidavitdescribes how staff were told their jobs were at risk after theofficial told Tides Canada, which supports the work of ForestEthics,that the government would "take down" all of the agency'sprojects unless it cut ForestEthics loose.
Frank says he was fired from his job as communications adviser atForestEthics on Monday over his plans to go public. His affidavitdetails a series of conversations allegedly held in early Januarybetween ForestEthics and Tides staff.
Mr Frank's open letter follows-

A Whistleblower’s OpenLetter to the Citizens of Canada

My name is Andrew Frank. Igrew up in a small town in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia.My granddad taught me how to fish. My father was a well‐respectedlawyer known for his unwavering integrity, and my mother was afavourite kindergarten teacher. Both have always impressed upon methe importance of telling the truth. Today, I am taking theextraordinary step of risking my career, my reputation and mypersonal friendships, to act as a whistleblower and expose theundemocratic and potentially illegal pressure the Harper governmenthas apparently applied to silence critics of the Enbridge NorthernGateway oil tanker/pipeline plan.

As I have detailed in asworn affidavit, no less than three senior managers with Tides Canadaand ForestEthics (a charitable project of Tides Canada), haveinformed me, as the Senior Communications Manager for ForestEthics,that Tides Canada CEO, Ross McMillan,was informed by the PrimeMinister’s Office, that ForestEthics is considered an “Enemyof the Government of Canada,” and an “Enemy of thepeople of Canada.”This language was apparently part of a threatby the Prime Minister’s Office to challenge the charitablestatus of Tides Canada if it did not agree to stop fundingForestEthics,specifically its work opposing oil sands expansion andconstruction of oils and tanker/pipeline routes in Canada. This isespecially concerning because ForestEthics is a legally registeredintervenor in the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panelprocess, currently examining the Enbridge oil tanker/pipelineproposal. By attempting to silence a registered participant in thereview, I fear the Harper government may have permanently damaged theintegrity of this process.

After waiting more thantwo weeks for Tides Canada to go public with this story, it hasbecome clear to me that the organization is too afraid of reprisalsfrom the government to act. Tides is responsible for the employmentof hundreds of Canadians and dozens of crucial environmentalprojects like the Great Bear Rainforest, and has been understandablyparalyzed in challenging the Prime Minister’s Office on thismatter. I on the other hand, am speaking out as a private citizenbecause I feel that the rights and civil liberties of my fellowCanadian citizens, including freedom of expression and freedom ofspeech, are at risk. There was a look of fear and disbelief on myfellow staff members’ faces the day they were told our owngovernment had labelled them enemies of the state. Our administrationcoordinator had tears in her eyes. In the days that followed, ouremployees couldn’t sleep well. They lost their appetites, andthey began to fear for their own personal safety and civil liberties,and those of their families and loved ones. They began looking overtheir shoulder, out of fear and paranoia, because their owngovernment might be watching them.

The language ofanti‐terrorism, when applied to Canadian citizens wholegitimately question the wisdom of an unsustainable oiltanker/pipeline plan, is an affront to the rights of all Canadians.It is the language of bullying. It is language that is violent andabove the law, and harkens to previous examples of RCMP surveillanceof Canadians for political rather than legal purposes, includingTommy Douglas. The casual use of such loaded language at the top ofour government is immoral, unethical and probably illegal. A stronglyopposed oil tanker/pipeline plan is now the least of thisgovernment’s worries. In its heavy‐handed attempt tooverride public opposition, the government has breached the public’strust. I now invite Canadians, including the media and members of theHouse of Commons, to challenge the unacceptable behaviour describedin this letter and sworn in my affidavit.

Approximately three weeksfrom now, Mr. Harper will visit China on an official state visit. InChina, Amnesty International asserts that a half‐million“enemies of the government” are held in prisons withoutcharge. If the argument in favour of the Enbridge pipeline is thatCanada stands to make billions selling oil to an oppressive Chinesegovernment, then my answer is “no thank you.” That’snot “ethical oil,” especially when profiting from thisoil wealth requires repressive tactics against critical citizens ‐tactics we would normally associate with the Chinese state,not Canada. The events of the last month have ensured that Iwill never take my rights as a Canadian citizen for granted again.That is both sad and encouraging. Sad that I ever had to questionthem, and encouraging because I have been reminded of another lessontaught to me by my parents: the best way to stop a bully is to standup to him. I invite you to join me in expressing your voice on whatis perhaps the most pressing moral crisis facing our nation today.

Together we can hold thisgovernment to account and prevent the dismantling of Canadian civilsociety and the further erosion of citizens’ rights.

Andrew Frank is a Canadiancitizen, and the former Senior Communications Manager withForestEthics Canada. He is also an instructor in the EnvironmentalProtection Technology program at Kwantlen PolytechnicUniversity, in Surrey, British Columbia.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/79228736/Whistleblower-s-Open-Letter-to-Canadians

T/Hto Dale Smith for this one

UPDATE: see-

Whois Andrew Frank and Andrewsblog

Prime Minister Dad

2012-01-22T08:22:00.001-05:00

In case you missed itRick Mercer latest “rant” once again says what others,myself included, say in a page full in just a few sentences, and onceagain he is right on the money.

RicksRant as broadcast 17,01,2011

Democracyis very messy. In fact on paper it doesn't even make a heck of alot of sense. For starters it involves all of us, and by all of usI mean the people. And what’s worse, people’s opinions,which only leads to debate. And let's face it, no matter whatthe issue, for every sensible person on either side there aretwo idiots who are addicted to the sound of their own voice. Ishould know I'm one of them.

But lately, I’ve noticedthat some of the messy parts of democracy are slowly being doneaway with. Like debate. Remember debate? No, neither do I. It'sbeen a while.

For example, a couple of months ago, StephenHarper decided to change the name of the Canadian Navy to TheRoyal Canadian Navy. There was no debate. He just announced it.Now personally I don't care one way or the other, but people inthe navy do. Some of them love it; some of them hate it. But theimportant thing is nobody asked for their opinion. Who careswhat they think? They just serve in the Navy. Who cares what wethink? We just pay for it. Nope, dad said, end of story.

Andnow we have this pipeline business. Now I realize I should have paidmore attention to this a year ago, but like a lot of Canadians it'sjust showing up on my radar now. And honestly, I don’t knowif the pipeline is a good idea or a bad idea. But the good newsis I no longer have to look at both sides. None of us do. No,because dad has made it perfectly clear, there’s only oneside to this issue. And anyone who thinks otherwise is an enemyto Canada. I’ve got to say this is way better than the olddays when we had the burden of being informed citizens on ourshoulders.

No, now we have a new job: to be seen and notheard. Welcome to Canada 2012. His house, his rules. God savethe King.

http://www.rickmercer.com/Rick-s-Rant/Blog/January-2012/Prime-Minister-Dad.aspx

More recent home truths from Rick about ourfailing democracy Hereand Here.

Due Process versus Economic Interests

2012-01-15T08:13:00.003-05:00

Itshard for someone blogging about democracy to ignore the recentefforts by our Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver to call intoquestion the perfectly legitimate concerns by both Canadian citizensand environmentalists from outside of Canada about the impacts of theproposed Northern Gateway Pipeline by calling such people “Radicals”and how “Theyuse funding from foreign special interest groups to undermineCanada’s national economic interest”.Much has been said across the internet since he made this statementdefending those 1000s of citizens and groups who have registered tospeak to this proposal some of whom we may be sure will be speakingfor and on behalf of the several foreign owned oil companies whoare no less a “foreignspecial interest group” thanare some the environmentalists.

This is clearlyinterference in what is supposed to be an independent and unbiasedenvironmental assessment of said proposal, that such a statementshould be made before the hearing are barely underway once again showhow little regard the Harper regimen has for democracy and dueprocess.

Although it is quiteobvious that an oil pipeline over the Rockies and through thepristine forests of BC and oil tankers plying the waters of BCs innerwaterways would create a grave risk to one of the most beautiful andecologically special regions in the world that is not the point here.The point is that the hearing to decide if this is something whichsomething Canadians want, if it presents to grave a risk to proceed,if the citizens directly effected by the construction AND thepossible aftermath, must be both unbiased and SEEN to be unbiased. Itwont be of course, how can it be with the millions and millions ofdollars profit at stake for big oil, their pockets are deep but theminister is concerned that a little 'foreign money' going to thosethat would oppose this project would 'undermine' the process.

Having just returnedfrom kneecapping the process of trying to come to consensus aboutfuture efforts to reduce human impact on the environment I would notexpect much from our Environment Minister Peter Kent either, he alsoobviously has no regard for democratic process. Did you hear of anydebate in the House about withdrawing from Kyoto prior to thatautonomous decision being announced, I sure did not! As for actuallydoing his job, encouraging debate, and enabling protection ofCanadian land, air, water, flora and fauna...... don’t holdyour breath!

We must be aware thatHarper is not the only one who has embraced the mantra of “fatherknows best” and has decided that if the citizens don’tlike the way he his doing things then lets not change what we aredoing but change the rules so that they cannot stop the process evenif they want to. The Ontario McGinty government some time ago reducedenvironmental hearing criteria and municipal control over any windturbine installations in Ontario. Once again it matters not whetheryou support or oppose such projects being inflicted upon ruralOntario but that the affected citizens have NO SAY in where, how orif, such industrial generators should appear in their community.

We wonder when MrHarper will make his next move and take a leaf out of Mr McGintysbook and suspend or reduce such hearings for the oil industry. Butwait - A report in today's Globesuggests we could soon be seeing another instance of Harper bullyingand intimidation tactics. They say “The Conservative-dominatedCommons finance committee is set to begin a review of the charitysector, and several activists say government MPs have told businessgroups that the committee will look at the environmental sector’stransparency, its advocacy role and the flow of funds from outsidethe country. “

Seems that they arealready working on that one!

I am not the only oneconcerned.

“I think it’sinappropriate for a minister or a prime minister to interfere andintervene and frankly to intimidate an environmental process as itwould be to interfere or intervene in a court case,”

Liberalinterim leader Bob Rae

The purpose of an environmentalassessment is to ask tough questions and hear the answers. Why doesMr. Oliver so strongly object to this? Do we no longer live in ademocracy? Do our citizens no longer have the right to ask toughquestions and express their opinions?”

SierraClub of Canada Executive Director John Bennett

“Therepeated attacks on environmental review by your government meritmention. The federal law for environmental review was firstintroduced under the Mulroney government. Your government hasdealt repeated blows to the process, both through legislativechanges, shoved through in the 2010 omnibus budget bill, and throughbudget cuts. “

GreenParty leader Elizabeth May

When I started thisblog 3years ago I was 'concerned about our democracy'under the Harper regime's minority government, now I am simply scaredto death of what this dictatorial and ideological oligarchy is doingto our long standing and hard won democratic processes. We can agreeor disagree on any particular issue but when the processes to come toa decision are attacked, ignored or circumnavigated, be they suchhearings as this or within the house of commons, then we havearrived at the point where those that have compared Harper with adictator with a similar name may just be closer to the truth than wecare to think about.

The Real Outsiders – Disengaged Citizens.

2012-01-08T08:35:00.000-05:00

Havingfinally gotten around to reading Samara's report TheReal Outsiders: Politically Disengaged Views on Politics andDemocracy,published late last year I will give a brief synopsis of theirfindings along with my reaction to their findings. In their focusgroups from a variety of social economic backgrounds they comparedthose who considered themselves 'engaged' in politics with those whodid not , not surprisingly both groups indicated frustration withboth politicians in general and with government bureaucracyspecifically. Most of my extracts and comments will focus upon thosewho feel that neither of the above are serving them well and who havethus become 'disengaged'.

Twomain themes seem to run through the responses, firstly

“We are too busy with our own lives.”

“nine times out of ten I just have so much other crap on my plate.”

“I have a job. I got school. I have friends. I don’thave time.”

“I don’t feel I have a role in politics”

“the best way for me [to cope] is just not to care about them.”

Thisis understandable, particularly for those for whom it is a dailystruggle just to keep their head above water, in an earlier post Ilooked at howincome affected democracy, here then is yetanother possibility, those struggling to make ends meet, working longhours, looking after family and so on simply don’t have thetime or inclination to follow the daily shenanigans of whatever partyis currently in power. The little sound bites that the spinmachines produce that they catch on the news are their sole exposureto our “political system”. No wonder so many are cynical,turned off and less than knowledgeable about our democracy and itsgovernance.

Secondly “why should I care for the system if the system doesn’t care forme?” In the

end, many expressed feelings of fatigue. They were tired of having to “fightall the time to be

heard.”

“When a problem arose that

required government assistance—be it finding

a job, securing a daycare spot, or addressing

overcrowded schools—they expected little of

theirpoliticians and little of their government.

Importantly, when disengaged participants

experienced difficulty with the system, there

was little conceptual separation between the

role ofcivil servants and the role of politicians.”

Perhaps this is themost revealing part of this study, that for many folks governmentprograms and the difficulties in obtaining answers or assistance isdirectly linked to the political side of things and the local MP orMPP is often viewed as the front door to such things.

For mostof the people we spoke to, government

wassynonymous with politics. Thus a negative

experience in accessing government services

or receiving poor service from the office of a

Member of Parliament were equally likely to

shape an individual’s negative perception of

thepolitical system.

In theory our membersof parliament are not there to guide us through the government mazebut to representus during decisions being made on our behalf inthe various legislatures, in practice the complexity of ever changinggovernment programs and the often uncaring response we get from somedepartments means that we NEED someone to help us through the maze.Our local MP or MPP seems to be the place of last resort in suchstruggles. That is not how it is supposed to work but that is how itIS working. When such effort fail is it little wonder that folksblame the politician or the system equally and are 'turned off'politics.

In a healthy democracy, the

political system will respond to the issues the

publiccares about, in part because the public has

theability to hold politicians to account for their

actions.Instead, we heard about untrustworthy

politicians and an unresponsive bureaucracy.

Earlierreports from Samara showed that even manypoliticians were unsure of their role in our democracy, are theyrepresentatives of the people or of the party or advocates or thedoorway to government services. In the present circumstances it isindeed hard to tell whether they are all of these things or none ofthem. One thing is clear, such distinctions need to be clearlyspelled out and the status quo changed to make them more accountableindividually rather than as just a mouthpiece for their party, andgovernment services must be streamlined and made more accessible tothe public so that the MPs can get on with the job of holding thecurrent centralized “government” to account.

Only when the publicfeel they are being listened to will they start to become 'engaged',perhaps that is why so many of us are being ignored?

Samara's ExecutiveSummary says “(P)oliticallyengaged Canadians feel, despite their frustrations with politics,that the system does work for them. They believe in their ability toeffect change. “

Icount myself as fairly 'engaged' but I for one seriously doubt my (orany other non lobby group member of the public) ability to effectchange, particularly withing the increasingly oligarchical system ofgovernance we are seeing of late.

Democracy Requires Dialog

2012-01-01T10:02:00.000-05:00

So says my tag line forthis blog and it is my belief that such dialog is fundamental to notonly democracy and governance but for the good of society in general.

With that in mind formy first post of 2012 I will highlight a few of the variousorganizations, blogs and websites that are promoting dialog anddiscussion that I have become aware of in my internet travels.

In no particular orderhere are a few of my favorites, do take a look and get involved....

ProgressiveBloggers THE site to visit for daily acompendium of blog writings from a variety of 'progressives'.

CanadianGreen Bloggers Undeniably focused upon theGreen point of view but you will find a variety of opinion here also.

DemocracyWatch Duff Conacher has long been advocatingfor democratic reform and Government Accountability.

FairVote Canada Advocating for proportionalrepresentation and reform of our voting methods you will find muchhere about voting methods.

MeasuringDemocracy Samara Canada continues with itsefforts to measure democracy by interviewing former MPs and seekingpublic opinion.

TheSixth Estate compiles lists of partisanappointments to various committees, boards and government positions.

DaleSmith gives us a daily synopsis of the goingson in the House of Commons with links to details and opinions on thesubjects of the day.

PeaceOrder & Good Government The title of the blog tells you ofits content, would that we had more of it. (Good Government that is)

SudburySteve If you can wade through Steves often looong posts you willfind much of interest and more insight from a Green perspective.

I'mPolitical Nancy blogs daily about political issues, a greatsource for checking out what has or is happening on the federalscene.

And just because Iparticularly want to promote dialog within the rural population .

RuralVoices Network a new initiative from the Ontario Womens Instituteto seek input from, and develop an online forum for those who liveaway from the centers of population and power.

The list is by no meansall encompassing (you will find a few more in the side bar), there are new writers surfacing daily whounderstand that allowing a very few of the elected politicians backedby unelected interest groups and corporate big wigs to direct thedialog about our democracy is unacceptable. Only when the majority ofcitizens realize that doing nothing is even more unacceptable willthe gradual erosion of democratic principals be reversed. Keep onbloging ladies and gentlemen your efforts DO have an impact.

Seasons Greetings

2011-12-24T08:34:00.005-05:00

May you all be safe, happy and healthy during this season

of celebration, giving & receiving.

May 2012 bring equality, fulfillment, contentment

& true democracy to us all.

It Stinks On The Hill

2011-12-18T08:36:00.002-05:00

Justin Trudeau'sperceptive description of one of the Harper Regimes mouthpieces gotme to thinking! Out here in rural Canada we are used to theoccasional smell wafting up the hill from the nearest agriculturalenterprise but it is no big deal, a fresh breeze will come alongshortly and dissipate the odor. Over on the other hill, the one inOttawa, its a different story, not only is there a overabundance ofbovine and equine excrement but unlike out here in the country whereit falls to the ground and fertilizes the flowers they deal with itdifferently. Up there they carefully package it in lies and deceit,wrap it up in secrecy and finish it off with a bow of utter contempt,it matters not, it still stinks when unwrapped!

With the above in mindhere are a few of the more recent packages found laying around andstarting to smell really bad.......

Codifyingsecrecy- Marc Garneau asked about the government’sattempts to move committee business in camera across the board. Thatmeans that while witness hearings would still be public, any othercommittee discussions would be madesecret, including any motions that theopposition might make (only to be subsequently voted down). Thiswas noted yesterdayby Kady O’Malley, and echoed by Elizabeth Thompson on two ofthe committees they’ve been covering.

So that firmthat the Conservatives hired to do thereprehensible political dirtbaggery in Irwin Cotler’s riding?Was hired by a number of Conservatives during the lastelection, including the would-be Speaker himself. Was this mentionedin his ruling? No, it was not.

Top bureaucratsin Ottawa have muzzled a leading fisheries scientist whosediscovery could help explain why salmon stocks have been crashing offCanada's West Coast............... documents show the Privy CouncilOffice, which supports the Prime Minister's Office, stopped KristiMiller from talking about one of the most significant discoveries tocome out of a federal fisheries lab in years.

(This package just got unwrapped here.)

A federal court judge issued a declaration thatAgriculture Minister Gerry Ritzoffended the rule of law by introducinglegislation which did not comply with the Canadian Wheat Board Act.The existing act requires the minister to consult with the CWBdirectors and hold a plebiscite among CWB producers before makingchanges to the CWB monopoly. Ritz has declared that the generalelection last spring served as the only vote he needed since the vastmajority of CWB ridings voted for Conservative MPs.

TheHarper team made accountability a cornerstone of its pitch forgovernment back in 2006, ................ But the ethics organizationreports that theHarper government has failed to live upto its promises. “Five years after the Federal AccountabilityAct became law, dishonesty, conflicts of interest, excessive secrecy,unlimited donations all are still legal,”

Twoyears ago, during the H1N1 pandemic, it was reported that there wasan unusually large cluster of infections at the St. Theresa PointFirst Nation community in northern Manitoba. Health Canada did anepidemiological study to investigate and determined at least some ofthe likely causes. Butsomeone, in his infinite wisdom, decided the study should remainsecret.It took an access to information request by the WinnipegFree Press and afollowup complaint to the information commissioner to obtain even aredacted copy of the report.

Signed Sept. 20 and effective immediately, thepolicy says the Mounties must consult and get approval from PublicSafety for communications regarding non-operational matters “PRIOR(emphasis in original) to public use” for almost everything. On“major operational events,” all communications need to beshared with Public Safety Canada officials “for informationonly” prior to public use.

Accordingto the document, the goal is to ensureadvance notice of “communications activities,”“consistent” interdepartmental co-ordination, better“strategic” communications planning, and more “integratedGovernment of Canada messaging.”

Thereare an estimated 1,500 communications staffers working in ministers’offices and departments, including 87 in thePMO and PCO. Soon after Mr. Harper won power, the Prime Minister’sstaff started deciding which reporters could ask questions, skippingthose they suspected weren’t in the government’s favour.Media access to the Prime Minister and his caucus, in general, hasbecome minimal. (so there are lots of folks in the PMO to package allthat 'stuff'!)

There are many morehidden packages laying around with strange odors coming from them butthats about all I can take in one post. We are all in deep shit andsomeone is really busy hiding the shovels.

(Sorry Ottawa, best getused to it, there is no fresh wind forecast for 3 or 4 years and eventhen we could have a wind from the wrong direction.)

Does Income change the Outcome?

2011-12-11T08:17:00.001-05:00

By now you have allseen the OCED report that says “The richest 1% of Canadians saw their share of total income increase from 8.1% in 1980 to13.3% in 2007”. It was this discrepancy along with the actualamount that the rich take home compared with the average working man that spawned the Occupy movement.Recently questions are being asked, and rightly so, as to if or howthis effects our democracy and I will get back to that in a minute.First, so that we can truly see what this divide real means let uslook at the actual numbers (as provided by Stats Can for 2009), belowis data extracted from two separate Stats Can tables combined foreasy comparison and with % columns added. Click on table to enlarge.

Data extracted from - http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil106a-eng.htm

- http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a05?lang=eng&id=1110008

Whilst all the dialoghas been about the top 1% and the remaining 99% I prefer to take alittle broader view. It can be see for instance that only just over5% of individuals made more than $100,000 whilst the remaining 95% orso are below that threshold. The same column indicates that a fullquarter of individuals took home less than $15,000 and that themedian income was $28, 840. Please note 'median' is not the same asaverage, this indicated that an equal number of individuals made morethan $28, 840 as did make less. It does not of course show theobscene salaries (and other perks) of those few at the very top but(presumably) includes them in the 'making above $250,000 category!.

A warning here statistics can be spun any which way and are reliant upon the inputdata so if for instance some of those very low income individualsfiled income tax (which is I presume where this data came from) toget the gst rebate and some did not it would skew the numbers, aswould the use of offshore accounts and creative bookeeping from themore affluent. Never the less I find it more revealing to look atactual income levels rather than saying the gap is getting wider orthe top XX% is getting XX% more than the bottom XX%, that to me ispretty much meaningless!

I have transferred thefamily incomes to the chart for the same income levels forcomparison, make what you wish of them but do note that nearly 10% ofFAMILIES bring home less than $25,000. One final note before I moveon, the report also says that “Since the mid-1980s, annualhours of low-wage workers fell from 1300 to 1100 hours, while thoseof higher-wage workers fell by less, from 2200 to 2100 hours.”Its not so much the change that bothers me but the fact that thosewith low income who NEED the hours cant get them, whilst those whocould afford to make room for a few more fellow workers by reducingtheir hours do not. Not as simple as that perhaps but sharing a jobmay be better than more on unemployment or welfare?

Any way, my excuse forposting this was to talk about if such disparities of income effectour democracy, I recently heard a discussion on TVO on this verysubject where one speaker said yes, the rich (particularly thecorporate rich) have greater access to government via lobbying and'consultation' than do the poor. Another speaker (I believe it wasPreston Manning) said that so long as 5 or 6 citizens can form apolitical party, expand it and develop it into a viable option thendemocracy is alive and well! Well Preston you may have done that butthe party you formed is no longer in existence and conditions todayare a far cry from those days, nor does the ability to form apolitical party constitute all there is to democracy. The ability tospend vast sums of money to publicize and promote your point of viewhas been clearly shown to be necessary to get the voters to take anynotice, a fact that our current government has grasped only too wellwith their ever expanding 'publicity' department in the PMO and theirremoval of per vote funding to developing and smaller partys.Additionally, those that are on the upper rungs of the income laddercan better afford to contribute larger sums to the party of theirchoice than can the guys at the bottom for whom a $50 or $100donation is a big hunk out of their budget.

So yes, income doesindirectly effect our democracy by a disparity of both access andfunding to political partys and thus effect both the platform,actions, and media attention of whatever party the rich or poorsupport gets. Money and the ability to spend on advertizing shouldnot affect the way the population votes and the party who gets to runour government for a while, but it clearly does, and indeed recentlydid, enough so that the conservatives 'bent the rules' so that theycould spend more. Meanwhile just to rub salt into the wound the veryservices that the folk on the lower end of the ladder, and those whohave just been pushed back one more step, need are being cut. “EmploymentInsurance processing centers are being cut from 120 to 19.”NINETEEN! across the entire country with “Thenumber of unemployed Canadians increasing for the second straightmonth, climbing by 20,500 to 1,394,700.” I bet these folk believe there is a effect upon democracy andgovernance by income values!

And that’s theway it looks to this lower income Canadian as service cuts loom, fulltime jobs disappear, and banks and corporations report increasingprofits and I feel helpless to effect the choices that various levelsof government are making.

The H@$#&r Government.

2011-12-04T08:26:00.001-05:00

Regular readers willknow that I refuse to use the phrase that links OUR Governmentdirectly with the leader of the Conservative party, preferring to usethe more accurate term when referring to that portion of governmentcoming under direct control of this dictatorial leader, that beingthe 'Harper Regime'.

We must respect those thousands of governmentworker who work for us in the Canadian Government and who areforced to use that untenable phrase by directive of said regime, andmake no mistake despite all the denials the use of said phrase wasand is a directive of said leader and his personal (and everexpanding) crew of mini dictators in the PMO. Thanksto the The Canadian Press and their persistence if obtaining freedomof information documents on this issue we cannow specifically say that when Dimitri Soudas, wrote to Canadiannewspapers asserting "no directive" went out to civilservants to use the offending phrase and that "Nothing could befurther from the truth," he was lieing on behalf of the regimesleader, Mr (you wont recognize this country) Harper.

The use of this headingon press releases and other official documents is offensive enoughand according to “top former civil servants” “breaches both communications policy and the civil service ethicspolicy” but the so very obvious lieing and cover up once againshows this regime up for exactly what it is.

All that said, wecannot entirely blame the Harper Regime for the persistence of thisphrase, yes government employees have little choice but to followdirectives from above but the press, and indeed us bloggers, do NOThave to legitimize this phrase by continually repeating it. Simplysubstituting the single word 'government' or 'Harper' or 'the PMO'where appropriate or, if you prefer as I do, 'The Harper Regime' andrefusing to publish anything with those inaccurate, self serving andunethical words attached would quickly bring to an end such'branding' of OUR government.

There has been muchwritten this week since the CanadianPress broke this story, unfortunately theyalmost all, in criticizing the use of the word “Harper”in conjunction with the word “Government”, actually usesaid phrase and thus increase its use and visibility, much I wouldimagine to the delight of the Harper Regime!

This then is a call toall reader of this blog to cease and desist using the phrase “The(offensive word removed) Government” and to ask others whopublish on line and in print, and even broadcasters in radio and TVto do the same. Its a small push back against this oligarchal regimeagainst whom we have so little recourse, but in my view it is ameaningful one.

A t/h to Impoloticalfor picking up on the Canadian Press piece on this and the many otherwho followed suit but will you all please start using a more accuratephrase when describing or alluding to the current 'government'.

re·gime/riˈZHēm/

A government, esp. an authoritarian one.
A system or planned way of doing things, esp. one imposed from above.

ol·i·gar·chy/ˈäliˌgärkē/

1. A small group of people having control of a country,organization, or institution.

2. A state governed bysuch a group

Statscan to stop charging for data.

2011-11-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

Embassy Magazine(recently) broke the story thatall of Statistics Canada's online data will not only be made free,but released under the Governmentof Canada's Open Data License Agreement(updated and reviewed earlierthis week) that allows for commercial re-use.

Theabove from Eaves.ca, he goes on to say (inpart).....

(T)here may betougher news on the horizon for StatsCan. With every departmentrequired to have submitted proposal tocut their budgets by either 5% and 10%,and with StatsCan having already seen anumber of its programs cut, there may befewer resources in the organization to take advantage of theopportunity making its data open creates, or even just adjust to whathas happened.........

The winners fromthis decision are of course, consumers of statscan's data.Indirectly, this includes all of us, since provincial and localgovernments are big consumers of statscan data and so now - assumingit is structured in such a manner - they will have easier (andcheaper) access to it..........

The first thingeverybody will be waiting for is to see exactly what data getsshared, in what structure and to what detail.........

Therein lays the rub,announcements are all very fine but exactly what will be included andhow long will it be until all data is available is something we mustwait and see what happens. All to often both government and otherusers are basing their decisions on data that is anywhere from a fewmonths old to 5 or 6 years old, we all know that statisticalinformation on (for instance) family incomes from the 2006 census isutterly useless in todays economy. Given the governments failure toretain the mandatory portion of the long form census care must betaken to get too excited about free data that may be less thanaccurate due to poor input data.

All in all its a stepin the right direction but we wonder how the reduction in revenuecoupled with the across the board departmental cuts will impact theirability to collect and analyze data.

NOW how about data fromall the other government departments being made freely available,particularly on where and how all out tax dollars are being spent ANDaccess to documents requested through freedom of information requestsbeing actually provided in a timely and open manner. Opening upaccess to Statscan data whist handicapping their ability to collectaccurate data and making it ever more difficult to get informationand data from other government departments may just be another one ofthose Harper regimes smoke screens. Time will tell!

Not Important?

2011-11-20T08:18:00.003-05:00

“There are two rules at thecentre of Parliamentary democracy. First, any politician given actualresponsibility must have an elected mandate. Second, government isaccountable to all politicians with an elected mandate. “ Sosays The Fifth Estate in a rebuttal to a recent article by JohnIvisin. In doing so he makea number of important observations about how our parliament issupposed to work and how it is being increasingly subverted into ameaningless & dysfunctional shadow of its former self.

I agree with everything said andhave therefore re=posted this article in full (My bold):-

A few days ago, I suggested that themainachievement of the Harper regimewas something few people had noticed yet: a new style of democracy, àla George Bush and Hugo Chavez, where only the election resultsmatter: once you’re elected, the rule of law no longer applies.Now JohnIvison of the National Post has taken up the same point.Well, sort of. You see, Ivison is ~~anirredeemably moronic pro-big-government flake~~(a journalist?) without an apparent shred of criticalthinking ability or even basic knowledge of how Westminster democracyworks.

There are two rules at the centre ofParliamentary democracy. First, any politician given actualresponsibility must have an elected mandate. Second, government isaccountable to all politicians with an elected mandate. Now, allmajority governments skirt with violating this principle, all thetime. They break laws. They stonewall investigations. They lie tojournalists. And occasionally they close down debate in Parliament inorder to ram a bill through.

According to Ivison, that’sfine and dandy. He says the government has a “right” topass legislation, because it won the election. This “right”trumps the whining crybabies in Parliament who want to debate thebill. According to Ivison, in other words, Parliament is anirrelevant talk shop. Now, certainly the vast majority of MPs agreewith him that there is no need for maturity, intelligence, or anyremotest shred of independent thinking in their workplace. But theyare wrong. And so is he.

It will probably come as a greatsurprise to people as apparently oblivious and ignorant to basicconcepts of representative democracy as national newspapercolumnists, and Postones in particular, but no government has the“right” to pass a law. It actually has no rights. You cancheck, in the Constitution. What the Prime Minister has is theresponsibility to ensure the consent of Parliament to pass the lawshe wants to pass. Today, all politicalparties claim the right to command this consent whenever they want itfrom their members, and those members agree, and almost nobody callsthem on their bullshit. I challenge anyone toexplain how democracy could be anything butdysfunctional when party discipline reigns supreme.

But what we are talking about nowgoes beyond party discipline. The Conservative government has statedin practice, if not by policy just yet, that Parliamentary discussionis no longer relevant. They have done this by demonstrating that anytime the opposition parties make some token opposition in Parliament,they will invoke closure on the debate and hurry the bill through.Their supporters, like Ivison, cheer them on as they do this.

I’ll be the first to admit thatParliament has become a rather sad spectacle, but the solution fromauthoritarians like Stephen Harper and quisling tools like Ivison isto do away with the instituion entirely and say that Parliament justdoesn’t matter: what matters is Ivison’s totallyfictitious, bogus, trumped-up “government rights” to dowhatever they want in between election campaigns. I’m not surethey’ve thought through the long-term consequences of this.Because the major consequence is to take Parliament out of theequation entirely and simply agree that the prime minister can dowhatever he likes.

Here’s how Parliamentarydemocracy is supposed to work: the prime minister is any person whocan get a majority of MPs to agree to accept his leadership. That’sit. Political parties and all their ilk aretraitorous leeches who corrupt this process and turn Parliament intomere showmanship. In this, the NDP and the Liberals are no lessguilty than the Conservatives. But just the same, right now it is aConservativegovernment which is going one further step and suggesting thatParliament has no role in debating legislation except to meekly standby while the Prime Minister’s Office dictates legislation.

People like Ivison presumably feelthis doesn’t matter because the all-powerful leaders in the PMOwill always return to the ballot box every four years or so, and thenif voters have been too harassed by the government, they can gettheir revenge. But in an age of declining election turnouts, it’sworth asking how long it will be before a Prime Minister given thesort of pre-eminent power Ivison thinks he should have decides thatit’s not really worth going back to the ballot box anyways.

That future autocrat won’t beHarper, despite some particularly upset leftist bloggers saying lastMay that we’d just seen Canada’s last election. It likelywon’t even come during Ivison’s chosen career asapologist for authoritarianism. But so long as we accept thatParliament is subordinate to the Prime Minister’s Office ratherthan the other way around, that day is coming.

I’m very sorry that these plainfacts about democracy will no doubt be unwelcome to thoseanti-democratic forces who insist that we have to shut down debate sothat we can pass the laws now, now, now, fast, fast, fast, and “getthings done” and “bring change” and so on and soforth ad nauseam.That’s not how democracy works. Democracyis not about making sure the leader can act quickly and withoutopposition. If that’s the sort of government you think issuperior, there are plenty of them in the world, and you’rewelcome to move to whichever one you think will make you happiest.Personally, I suggest thisone.

Origionalyposted at http://sixthestate.net/?p=2718

The Floor Crossing Delema

2011-11-06T07:15:00.000-05:00

“The floorcrossing tradition reflects the importance of preserving theindependence and mobility of members of Parliament to vote with theirfeet when they feel it is in the best interests of their constituentsor the country to do so.”

So said Dale Smith in arecent post........

And therein lays thedilemma when political partys with whom a particular MP is affiliatedwill not countenance any independent thought or action that does notfollow 'the party line' it can leave an MP who truly does representhis constituents (a rare animal indeed) little choice if he or she isto remain true to their original commitment.

Dalesfull post follows, he is right on the money with this one.......

Yesterday the NDP had second reading debate on abill that would attempt to ban MPs from “crossing the floor”to another party. Mathieu Ravignat, the bill’s sponsor (thoughthe same bill has been introduced repeatedly by Peter Stoffer butnever actually debated), said he felt the bill would somehow restoreCanadians’ faith in our democracy.

“This bill also reflects a fundamentalobjective of my party, which is to do politics differently in orderto renew people's trust in elected officials,” Ravignat said indebate.

And of course, he brought up David Emerson andBelinda Stronach to illustrate his examples of people who supposedlytraded away principle for power. Except that people forget thatStronach actually had legitimate reasons to cross the floor, from theiron-fisted discipline that was being imposed on a party, thatresisted her attempts to bring cultural change from within, that usedhuman rights – and especially gay rights – as tacticalwedge issues, and which marginalised her from the discussions despitegiving her a relatively high-profile critic position. But hey, shecrossed the floor just for a cabinet seat! She must have beengrasping for power! Except that the government could have toppled thevery next day, which was something she was fully prepared to accept.

Nobody mentions Scott Brison crossing the floor indebate. Unwilling to become the token gay poster boy for the“tolerance” of the new Conservative Party, Brison found aparty that respected his fiscal conservatism and social progressivity(seeing of course that his former party, the ProgressiveConservatives, ceased to exist). But do the defenders of this billbring him up? No, of course not.

And of course what David Emerson did wasreprehensible, no matter that he may have justified it as being inthe best interests of his constituents to have a representative inCabinet. Nobody denies that. But he also knew the consequences of hisactions, and didn’t run again. At the same time, voters in theridings held by Stronach, Brison, and others who did cross the floor,returned their MPs to Parliament, obviously feeling that theirreasons were sufficient.

The bill itself has a number of technicalflaws and loopholes, and is aimed at making MPswho want to leave their party be forced to sit as an independent, andthat they be forced to resign and hold a by-election before theybecame a member of another party. Never mind that they could simplyvote with the party they wished to cross to until the next electionand run then. They could even join the caucus and simply not paytheir $5 membership fee to become an official party member until suchtime as the next election, when they’d have to face anomination race anyway (which they may not win – such thingshave happened to floor-crossers in the past).

But technical flaws aside, the bill doesn’tactually do anything substantive to address Canadians’ faith inpolitics or renew trust in elected officials. In fact, what it doesis say that an MP is no longer to exercise their own judgement andindependence, and that they must in fact submit themselves to thetyranny of the party.

“According to the Library of Parliament,there have been approximately 194 floor crossings sinceConfederation,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel inspeaking out against the bill. “The floor crossing traditionreflects the importance of preserving the independence and mobilityof members of Parliament to vote with their feet when they feel it isin the best interests of their constituents or the country to do so.”

And that is exactly the point – sometimes anMP needs to vote with their feet. Party leaders can become drunk withpower or abusive. Party cultures can change around them despite theirbest efforts. And it also gives primacy to the party and not theindividual MP, even though our entire system is predicated on therole of the individual. We vote for individual MPs – not aparty slate. As such, we are placing our faith in the judgement ofthose MPs. If their conscience demands that they walk out of a partythat they can no longer stand with, we have given them the authorityto do so with the proviso that when the next election comes around,we must hold them to account for that decision.

This bill affirms that MPs cannot be trusted toexercise their own judgement on the basis of one bad apple, andattacks made on the character of a select few others, which don’tnecessarily reflect the reality of their situation. This is a sadstatement for any sitting MP to make because it admits that theythemselves cannot be trusted. It also seeks to capitalise on anyvoter anger of the “betrayal” of a floor crossing whiletempers are still hot, which serves nobody’s best interests.Knee-jerk reactions are not the means by which we should hold ourelected officials accountable.

Gimmicks like this bill don’t serve torestore trust – it just reaffirms cynicism. And that’sthe last thing that we need right now.

Occupy Democracy

2011-10-29T08:39:00.001-04:00

Theyunderstand there’s been an active, conscious, successful classwar against them in the United States over the past several decades.As they say repeatedly, they are sick and tired of struggling to makeends meet while 1per cent of the American population has 40 per cent of the nation’swealth.Whilst it is not as clear here in Canada there islittle doubt that such divisions not only exist but are indeedwidening and that many folks are indeed 'strugglingto make ends meet'. That the few are getting richerwhilst the many are increasingly paying more to multinationals whocontrol much of the basic necessity’s of modern life seems tobe the theme that is emerging from the Occupy movement.

What has not emerged,at least not in any meaningful way, is thedisproportionate influence that both the rich and the corporate worldhas upon our democracy. It is this influencethat in no small way may well be the reason for the ever widening gapbetween the rich and the less affluent. After all does government'consult' with the average Joe on the street or the independentbusiness owner in small town Canada, do large political contributionscome from the guy making minimum wage, or the fat cat to whom a largecontribution to the party coffers will be but a miniscule percentageof their income.

It is my contentionthat the very rich be they individuals or corporations have a greaterchance of effecting government policy and election results than therest of us by their choice of party support and thus the fundsavailable for blanket brainwashing via television advertising, and bygreater access to those in power than most. The removal of the pervote 'subsidy' is, in my view, a deliberate move to furtherdisenfranchise the lower income voter and enhance the support ofthose in the upper income brackets.

Given that, accordingto statscan (2009 figures), only around 5% of individuals make over$100,000 and around 50% of us make under $30,000 is it any wonderthat so many folks are not happy with the influence that the uppercrust has upon our daily lives.

One of the things thatgets ~~many~~ some folk upset is the lack of reliableinformation on our economy, corporate profits and rising cost ofgoods. Statscan has many charts and numbers available however manylong term records are only available on a pay for use basis (and itsNOT a nominal fee but a considerable amount per download, in thehundreds of dollars for any amount of data), once again the averageJoe is locked out due to income considerations.

Assuming you get thedata it is then open to interpretation, let us take the availabledata on the consumer price index for instance, as it is on suchthings that the Occupy movement is in part focusing on.. According tostatscan 2009 had a CPI of 116.5% over the past 7 years (2002 beingthe base year), we all know that the cost of living has gone up morethan that over that period just by looking at our bills. From thesame chart we see the following , food 123%, shelter 123%,transportation 118% (do you believe that last one, I dont), the pointbeing that the figures that are spouted by those telling us how rosyit is are AVERAGES. A further look at the break down of food pricesand we see poultry & dairy 130%, bread & cereal 138%, fats &oils 140%! The point being if you buy a lot of the items whoseprices have risen dramatically or comprise a large part of yourbudget (gas, heating oil and insurance come to mind) and little ofthose whose prices have remained stable then such figures aremeaningless and yet these are what we are told is how our economy isdoing or what the AVERAGE wage is or what the cost of living is. Itsall a shell game and without open data EASILY and FREELY available wecannot refute the political spin.

That may not be mostfolks view of a commentary on democracy but to me knowledge is thekey to unlocking the door to change.

(For an eye openingseries of charts on the U.S. Employment / Compensation / Income gapover the last several years do check out 'Here'sWhat The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...”), similar comparisons for the Canadian economy could not be found!

The Samara Report – The Outsiders Manifesto

2011-10-16T08:17:00.003-04:00

Samara is anindependent charitable organization, founded in 2008 to study citizenengagement with Canadian democracy. Their work focuses on threeareas: political leadership; the participation of citizens in publiclife; and public affairs journalism. They have conducted Canada'sfirst-ever systematic series of exit interviews with former Membersof Parliament in Canada and have released a series of reports thatuse these collective narratives to shine light on how Parliamentworks, and share MP’s advice on how our politics can beimproved.

These interviews were shared in a series of fourreports that cover the MPs' backgrounds and paths to politics; theirtransition to public life and the ways they view their roles; howthey describe their time in Parliament and their relationship withtheir political parties and their advice, recommendations and bestpractices. They have recently released their final report in thisseries.

These are the fourreports-

The_Accidental_Citizen

This report willfocus on the first part of those interviews, where the formerParliamentarians discussed their motivations and paths to politics.It sets the stage for a larger series of reports based onthe MP exit interviews. Our purpose is neither to applaud norembarrass MPs, but to understand political leadership and the role ofParliamentarians in our system.

Welcome_to_Parliament

This report is thesecond in a series sharing the stories and advice of these 65Parliamentarians, each of whom dedicated an average of nearly ten anda half years to national public life, acting as a bridge betweenCanadians and their government.

Its_My_Party-_Parliamentary_Dysfunction_Reconsidered

The report outlineshow the MPs expressed embarrassment at the public displays ofpolitics in the House of Commons, saying that little constructivework takes place there. Instead, the MPs said their mostimportant work was done away from the media spotlight, in the lesspublicized venues of committees and caucus meeting.

The_Outsiders_Manifesto

Canadians know verylittle about those men and women—leaders like our Members ofParliament—and what they've learned serving on the front linesof our democracy. MPs' experiences can offer tremendous insight intothe successes and failings of our democracy, and yet they're rarelyconsulted about what should be done to improve our democraticprocess,

Below you will find afew 'teasers' from the final report, there are many surprises inthese extensive summaries of the MPs comments and I recommend thatanyone interested in our parliamentary system past, present or futureread each of the four reports.

'The first areain which MPs focused their recommendations was the nominationprocess, the point at which a political party, in each of Canada'selectoral ridings, chooses its candidate for the federal election.Many of the MPs to whom we spoke, despite winning their nominations,expressed discomfort or outright disgust with the way these decisionswere made and the lack of transparency and local engagement in theprocess.

'Manysaid they were left to their own devices to determine how to go abouttheir job, how to navigate the intricacies of parliamentaryprocedure, and even how to hire appropriate staff. As one MP put it,"Rookie MPs are, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the dayafter they're elected. Unless you've established the right contactsand you've got the ability to find your own way and ask questions, itcan be a pretty overpowering situation."

Another simply blamed the leadership of thepolitical parties and the culture of antagonism in the House. "It'sgoing to come from the leadership on top. I really would like to seeparty leaders from all parties engage in sober debate, and notthrowing the malicious barbs back and forth," one MPrecommended.

'Several felt thatthe Speaker should be more empowered to enforce good behaviour. "Tome the decorum should be simple. Run it like I did my Grade 8classroom. Stop it and stop it now. You point at him and put thecameras on [those] who are causing too much disturbance, then let thepeople talk about it back home," said another MP.

'Many MPs claimed committees were where someof Parliament's best work took place, where MPs could transcend theinflated partisanship of Question Period and make policyrecommendations that best reflected the interests of the country as awhole. As such, their recommendations centred on reducing politicalparty influence over the committee process, and putting in placeguidance to ensure committee work was better reflected in thelegislative process.

Specifically, anumber of MPs, including two party leaders, suggested reformingcommittee regulations to weaken the ability of political partyleaders to replace MPs on committees mid-way through their mandate, atactic used to delay work from moving forward, or to stop it alltogether.

Several MPs wereconcerned that committee work didn't have enough influence over thelegislative process, and that committee reports were often shelvedwithout proper consideration. "Where committees have more power,a lot more things are going to get done there," one MP said.Another recommended that committee reports should be brought forwardas Parliamentary motions, to ensure greater profile and debate of thework. "You spend all this time on committees. Surely thereshould be some way to have motions on your recommendations. But thereisn't. There's just a minister who takes it and says, ‘Thanksvery much, we'll veto that. Goodbye,'" he said.

Given the recentshelving of a number of reports from the Public Account Committeethe latter three points are particularly of interest! We also wonderwhy these MPs all wait until they 'retire' before speaking out and ifthe current lot will actually do anything to improve things. Notholding my breath on that one!

Do visitthe Samara web site and support their work togive us a better insight into how our democracy is working and how wemight improve it.

More Parliamentary Contempt

2011-10-08T08:42:00.000-04:00

Dale Smith clearly outlines the Conservativescontempt for parliamentary process – here is his recent post infull.

The government introduced its fall budgetimplementation bill today – while the entire Finance Committeeis currently on tour doing pre-budget consultations around thecountry. What’s more galling – is that they’ve putsaid bill up for debate tomorrow. You know, while the finance criticsare out doing those pre-budget consultations, and giving their staffsome 24 hours to digest 650 pages so that they can create briefs forthe other MPs who will have to debate it. Oh, and the briefing withdepartment officials? Won’t happen until the 18th, which isonce the finance committee members are back after the break week nextweek.

Added to this, the government unveiled the Waysand Means Motion as part of the supply cycle yesterday – andgave the MPs six whole hours to read over all 250 pages said motionbefore they had to vote on it. While the finance committee includingthe critics are not in the House.

In other words, the government has decided tothumb its nose at the fundamental basis of parliamentary democracy inthis country. Sure, they have a majority and these bills are going topass – but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’tbe robust and informed debate. That’s the whole point ofParliament. If the government is going to release budget bills andsupply motions – you know, the kinds of confidence measuresthat governments live and die by – and stymie the ability ofthe opposition to actually examine these bills and motions and givethem robust and informed debate, then why bother having a House ofCommons at all?

Yes, these motions will pass, but debate isimportant. Informed, robust debate is important. The Ways and Meansmotion passed without MPs knowing what they were actually voting on.This budget implementation bill isn’t going to see informeddebate, but we’ll get the Conservative MPs reading preparedstatements about how the opposition needs to support the EconomicAction Plan™, the NDP saying that the government needs tocreate jobs and fix pensions, and the Liberals tutting at both sidesabout being “too ideological.” And the debate will not berobust, informed, or worth the time of our august institutions.

The Conservatives are treating our parliamentarydemocracy with contempt. And I fear that Canadians simply don’tcare.

http://www.xtra.ca/blog/ottawa/post/2011/10/04/Treating-the-supply-cycle-with-contempt.aspx

Dale continues to bringmore of thiscontempt to our attention in this post.including the Parliamentary Budget Officer thoughts on the justreleased costing for the 'tough on crime bill' which he calls “totalobfuscation.”

We can expect MUCH moreof this from the dictatorial Harper Regime in the coming months andyears and all we can do is watch and remember for the next election -where much of the pubic support for alternative partys is about to beremoved in a self serving move by said regime!

Libs reject Coalition

2011-10-03T08:08:00.000-04:00

The Ontario Election iscoming down to the wire and it is increasing looking like a minoritygovernment with an almost equal split between two if not threepartys. The headlines say “ TheOntario election remains a three-horse race four weeks into thecampaign, with the one and only televised leaders’ debate doingnothing to end the dead heat between the Liberals and the ProgressiveConservatives or budge support for the New Democrats.

Then we have one of themajor parties say in an open letter to the Hudak conservatives that:-“ any instability and uncertainty will take Ontario off track,”adding he is “running to form a Liberal government — andonly a Liberal government.

“There will be nocoalition with either your party or the NDP”.

Do these folk live insome kind of an alternative dream world that the rest of us knownothing about? It is strongly probable that Ontario is going to landup with a minority government and I have said here many times thatminority governments are not necessarily bad, it dependents upon thewillingness of those elected to work together for the good of theelectorate. That a leader who could well be in a position to formsuch a government should rule out a formal arrangement with anotherelected party to govern in cooperation with other elected MPPs BEFORE such a choice become inevitable strikes me as asuicide mission!

I have to this pointbeen very unsure of where my vote should go, they each are promisingexpenditures that cannot be recouped without major increases inincome or major cuts in service but NONE of them will sayspecifically where these moneys are going to be found. This recentdevelopment leave me with pretty much a choice of none of the above!As former bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said insofar as theirfinancial plans are concerned they are all lying (or living in lalaland), and now it would seem that some of them at least are doingthe same regarding the possibility of a coalition, saying I will notwork with the 'other guys' no matter what!

Should, as seems quiteprobable, we get a minority situation it will be necessary for ALLpartys to cooperate to get us out of this mess and avoid a secondelection in the near future. That one, and possibly two of the majorplayer should reject such cooperation BEFORE the cards are even onthe table shows what a state of affairs our political world has cometo. We know the federal scene has been in this partisan gridlock forsometime, but I was under the mistaken (perhaps naive) belief thatout provincial politics had not quite reached that sad state ofaffairs, guess I was wrong.

As a rural resident Ihave not seen a candidate at my door in the 50 years I have lived inthis great country (why bother talking to the minorities when thecity folks can get me elected without your vote!) , right now thebest advice I can give any of the candidates in my area is don’tshow up at my door unless you are prepared to hear some hard truthsabout politics in Canada!

What are they hiding?

2011-10-01T08:10:00.000-04:00

Recently MPGuy Caron called on the Commons public account committee to resurrect14 studies that were left unfinished whenParliament fell last March. Seven of the 14 are complete and justneed to be tabled in the House of Commons, they include studies intocosts related to the renovation of Parliament's West Block, thehelicopter procurement deal, and the regulation and supervision oflarge banks.

The majority of Conservative MPs on the committeequashed Caron's motion, they also barred the public from that meetingdespite there being nothing confidential being discussed.

One of the main concerns expressed by manyobservers, this one included, with a majority Conservative governmentwas that the secrecy and difficulty in obtaining information aboutsuch items would increase. It would seem that those fears were notunfounded given that this oversight committee is charged with studying issues of transparency, of accountability and publicexpenditures. That they would not table the seven reports alreadycompleted indicates that as always they are hiding something in thosereports that reflects poorly upon their governance. Nothing new aboutthat, expect much more of this sort of thing in the coming months andyears!

Meanwhile they continue to ram massive billsthrough the house without proper debate or consideration of theconsequences. I have to agree with the Green Party on this one:-

“The omnibus crime bill is 103 pages long. It holds nine separate bills, some of which will create major changes to the Canadian justice system. Harper wielded his majority as a bludgeon this week and limited debate to a mere two final days before sending it to the Conservative dominated committees for approval.

The worst of these changes are ethically and economically expensive. They look back to the 19^th century instead of responding to the realities of the 21^st century. A government that respected its citizens would allow reasonable time for examination, debate, and change—and not limit parliamentary debate to an average of less than six minutes per page!”

So the omnibus bill now goes to committee and wehave already seen how those are going to work under this government........ as a conservative rubber stamp without regard to differingopinion, nothing new here!

Citizens drive out of their way to vote

2011-09-25T08:57:00.001-04:00

But not by choice. Manyrural residents who have just received their (cards) were surprisedto learn that they are expected to travel beyond their localcommunity to vote despite their being a polling station much closer.In some cases this involves driving 20 to 30 Km and past one or moreof those nearby polling stations! In one community near this writersresidence folks within walking distance of the polling station musttravel to one of two places some 10 to 20 Km away to vote whilstresidents from further away must vote at the local polling stationwhere they (the local residents) cannot. I must presume that this isnot an isolated incident in just our area as the practice of denyinglocal residents access to the local polling station seems toencompass several of the polls that I have checked around here.

As one of thoseaffected I contacted Elections Ontario to make them aware that theyhad a major problem with such arrangements being a big disincentiveto voters. Here is the response I received.

“ReturningOfficers must consider a number of criteria to find the most suitablevoting locations including convenience for electors; the location’scapacity; the extent to which electors are likely to be familiar withthe location; any significant barriers that electors will encounterin reaching the location; and any other factor that may be relevantto the proper conduct of the election.

Additionally,recent amendments to the Election Act require that all votinglocations are fully accessible. To meet these new requirements,Elections Ontario has developed comprehensive Site AccessibilityStandards to help Returning Officers find the most accessible votinglocations in their electoral district.

Thechanges we have made to selecting voting locations mean that somebuildings which have held polls in the past are no longer used. Insome instances, electors may therefore have to travel further to avoting location than in the past.

Inthe examples you have cited, it is true that in some instances theremay be other voting locations that are closer geographically, howeverthese locations are already at capacity. The electors would then beassigned to the next closest accessible location”.

Given that just a fewmonths before Elections Canada managed to find suitable locations toenable voters to, for the most part, vote within or close to theirlocal community I find the excuses given disingenuous to say theleast. They say “Theelectors would then be assigned to the next closest accessiblelocation”, howeverin our own case there are no less that threepolls closer than the one to which we have been assigned!

I have, by usingmultiple searches for addresses via the ElectionsOntario search engine, (not a user friendlyprocess) and by questioning local area residents, produced the mapbelow of one particular rural area which as far as I can tell is anaccurate representation of the poll locations. It clearly shows therather illogical way the polling places are allocated. We know thatElections Ontario has beenunder pressure to better accommodate those with physical disabilitiesbut doing so by putting disincentives to vote up for many othervoters hardly seems productive.

Clickon MAP to enlarge

(Myred overlay on the EO map, the circles represent polling stationlocations)

A poll clerk at one ofthe advanced polls told me that there is already considerablediscontent with the voting locations (this not from the areamentioned inthe original post on my other blog), as anotherwho worked in previous polls said “It’sbroken on all levels and no amount of tweaking is going to fix it –it needs a major overhaul.”, Whist talking about the federalelection it is clear that the same hold true at the provincial level.The allocation and placement of polling stations is most certainly'broken'!

Itslong past time for 'electronic voting' be it by phone, on theinternet or by machine at a poll location – preferably allthree! Elections Canada is working on such an initiative I believe.Let us hope that any system devised is shared across the country withboth the provinces and municipalities- or will everybody devise theirown system each different from the next? I think we all know whichway that will go!

Ontario to use Tabulating Machines (updated)

2011-09-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

Some Ontario ReturningPolls will be using 'Tabulating Machines' to count the ballots, thisappears to be an experimental initiative and limited to a few pollsin each area. During 'training' the Returning Officers (at least inthis area) were unaware of this wrinkle and training officers wereunable to answer most questions related to such machines. As one whogenerally supports the move to using technology to enhance the votingprocess I do not want to detract from any moves to improve our votingsystem.

HOWEVER I have beenunaware of any per-election announcements regarding this, as as itseems those that will be overseeing said machines. Being in closecontact with an individual who worked for Elections Canada during thelast election I am aware of some problems during the federal electionbut initial observations seems to indicate that the OntarioProvincial election has far more problems in its voting process. Itis not sufficient that the voting process must be free of bias,interference and possible miscounts it must be SEEN to be free ofsuch impacts!

Whist the move to havefar more days for 'advanced polling' is perhaps a good thing,previous polling clerks have said that the previously very limiteddays produced 'very limited response' and that they were ' not busy',we wonder how 'busy' the returning clerks are going to be over theweek that advanced polls are open. We also wonder how how muchthought has gone into the introduction of 'Tabulating Machines' intoan area without prior notification, and how the voting public willview this update when they vote..... AND how the verification processwould work in the event of a recount!

This post is not in anyway intended to detract from the voting process in this province, Ihave at this point full confidence in the voting system, however Iwill be keeping a close eye on the results and process from the“Tabulating Machines' being used for the first time (in so faras I know) in the Ontario Elections.

Its not technology, itsthe process, and the public acceptance of the process ........

UPDATE:- These machinewere firsttested during advance polls in the Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brockby-election. “The ballot marking device will allow electorswith visual impairments or physical disabilities to mark their ballotindependently. “

The Process.

For you interest hereis how the tabulating machines work. The voter is handed a ballot(larger cardboard sheet aprox 8 x 11) inside a folder, the voteropens the folder and then makes their selection in the usual mannerand then closes the folder and hands it to the returning officer whothen (without opening the folder) offers the ballot up to the machinewhich extracts the ballot from within the machine, an audible soundis heard as the ballot is accepted and dropped in the box below. Sofar as I know the ballot is counted in real time and the resultsforwarded to the local district elections office electronicaly atthat time. It is unkown to this writer how those votes are storedeither localy or at the district office, I do note however that thehard copy of the ballots are retained at the local polling station.

I understand that thosewith .disabilities' are able to produce a ballot using ' assistivevoting technology' using this same machine. “Voterswith limited or no vision will be able to mark and generate a ballotby following step-by-step audio commands. Voters with physicaldisabilities will be able to use “sip and puff”technology or paddles. “ It is unclear however if thisoption will be available at the selected advanced polls that areusing the 'Tabulating Machines' or if they must travel to thedistrict returning office.

Access to Information – Ours or Theirs?

2011-09-11T14:14:00.000-04:00

Thisrecent article highlights just how much informationforeign governments (in this case the U.S.) are able to obtain aboutyou or I, meanwhile details of the agreement on almost all of thethree dozen separate initiatives in the Beyond the Border action planare “closely held” , i.e. unavailable to the generalpublic or even our MP's. So in other words your government isnegotiating providing even more information to U.S. Law enforcementwhist at the same time withholding information as to what exactlythey are negotiating, seems a little one sided to me!

Read on.......

More than a dozen Canadians have told thePsychiatric Patient Advocate Office in Toronto within the past yearthat they were blocked from entering the United States after theirrecords of mental illness were shared with the U.S. Department ofHomeland Security.

Lois Kamenitz, 65, of Toronto contacted theoffice last fall, after U.S. customs officials at PearsonInternational Airport prevented her from boarding a flight to LosAngeles on the basis of her suicide attempt four yearsearlier.........................

So far, the RCMPhasn’t provided the office with clear answers about how or whypolice records of non-violent mental health incidents are passedacross the border.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didnot respond to a CBC News request for comment.

According to diplomatic cables releasedearlier this year by WikiLeaks, any information entered into thenational Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) database isaccessible to American authorities.

Local police officers take notes whenever theyapprehend an individual or respond to a 911 call, and some of thisinformation is then entered into the CPIC database, says Stylianos.He says that occasionally this can include non-violent mental healthincidents in which police are involved.......................

RCMP Insp. Denis St. Pierre says information onCPIC not only contains a person's criminal record, but alsooutstanding warrants, missing persons reports and information aboutstolen property, along with information regarding persons of interestin ongoing cases. It also can contain individuals' history of mentalillness, including suicide attempts.

The database contains anything that could alertauthorities to a potential threat to public safety and security, andall CPIC information is available to the U.S. Department ofHomeland Security, St. Pierre says. There are a few exceptions,including information regarding young offenders, which isnot available to American authorities.

The administrations of Prime Minister StephenHarper and President Barack Obama are in talks over a perimetersecurity deal that would include further cross-borderintelligence-sharing as part of a joint border securitystrategy.

In an Aug. 29 news conference in Toronto,Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told reporters that the privacyrights of Canadians remain top-of-mind during discussions aboutcross-border law enforcement programs........... OH REALY!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/09/08/f-border-mental-health-privacy.html

Notonly that but said discussions are all but a done deal according tothisarticle......

U.S. and Canadian negotiators have successfullyconcluded talks on a new deal to integrate continental security anderase obstacles to cross-border trade.

Negotiators have reached agreement on almost allof the three dozen separate initiatives in the Beyond the Borderaction plan, said sources who cannot be named because they are notauthorized to speak publicly on the matter. The few remaining itemsmostly involve questions of wording and should be settled in time foran announcement in late September......................

Opponents have raised alarms that an agreementwould cost Canadians both sovereignty and personal privacy. Butfailure to implement the agreements could further impair the world’smost extensive trading relationship, and put manufacturing jobsacross the country at risk.

Details of the agreement are closely held. Butgoals outlined earlier include specific proposals to co-ordinate andalign such things as biometrics on passports, watch lists,inspection of containers at overseas ports and other securitymeasures..........................

The action plan is expected to propose making iteasier to obtain temporary worker permits and documents such as theNEXUS card to circumvent Customs lineups. Factory shipments could beprescreened at the factory rather than at the border to ease passage.

The sources said much of what is proposed willnot require legislation, although some if it will require budgetoutlays............................

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/us-canada-reach-new-security-deal/article2160465/

Meanwhile in thisrecent Green Party mailing our attention is drawn to another areawhere government is not only seeking to access your privatecommunications without warrant but doing it by including it in otherlegislation in a massive 'Omnibus' bill.........

Harper’s Conservatives plan to table an omnibus crime bill that contains some very bad legislation. Three of the more disturbing items lumped in with the omnibus Crime Bill are collectively known as the “Lawful Access” legislation:

Improving Access to Investigative Tools for Serious Crimes Act (C-50)
Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act (C-51)
Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act (C-52)

The Green Party supports efforts to tackle cyber crime, but is deeply concerned about the erosion of Canadians’ privacy. Currently, government agencies must show probable cause and obtain a court order before tapping your phones, and intercepting your mail and online communications. If this bill is passed, government agencies will be able access your online communications without a court order--they need only tell your service providers that they have a ‘reasonable suspicion’.

In this context, reasonable is a dangerously flexible word that threatens your right to privacy. A reasonable government would give each section of the crime bill the attention that it deserves, encouraging debate and a clarification of possible, unforeseen consequences. Omnibus bills are known to make profound changes to unrelated aspects of administration and policy, especially because Parliament can’t properly study them.

With a majority government, knowing that it can pass every piece of legislation that it creates, the Conservatve government shows a disturbing contempt for Canadians by continuing the practice of linking highly dubious laws to those upon which we can all agree................

No further comment required!

Then there is thisfrom David Dodge retired Governor of the Bank of Canada whichpoints out that Each (Ontario Provincial) leader is promoting“impossible” economic plans that unrealistically promiselower taxes and improved services for a province that he believes isfacing a shrinking tax revenue base.
“Whoever wins will be seen to have lied to the public,”he said.
Some extracts follow........

During a recent early morning breakfast meeting in the Torontooffice of his law firm Bennett Jones LLP, he says itis “unfortunate” that most senior civil servants have“hidden a bit,” from the long-standing tradition ofspeaking their minds about public policies in speeches, publichearings or committee sessions.
“I believe that Canadian citizens are more intelligent andmore able to deal with things than the political operators believe.The foundation of a good public policy is really an open dialogue andopen debate.”.....................

In Europe and North America, households are bogged down by debts,job growth is stalled and governments are burdened with too muchdebt. Add it all up, he says, and “clear and real economicgrowth is not in the cards for some time.”
How bad will it get? To this question, Mr. Dodge responds withanother: “Are we in North America and Europe facing a Japanesedecade?” The question will not be directly answered, but hisimplication is clear: Most of the industrialized world is a long wayfrom economic recovery.................

Given the current strength of the Canadian currency and fragilityof the U.S. economy, he says, “we in Ontario are in anextremely difficult position.”
The worst of it, he says, is that none of the province’sthree political parties appear willing to admit that jobs andcorporate tax revenues are at potentially at risk. More disconcertingare the absence of viable economic strategies and incentives toattract manufacturing investment...............

The Politics of Respect

2011-08-28T07:52:00.001-04:00

As Stephen Lewis said in his eulogy “To hear so many Canadians speak so open-heartedly of love, to see young and old take chalk in hand to write without embarrassment of hope, or hang banners from overpasses to express their grief and loss. It's astonishing.”

It was indeed, I am not a particular supported of the NDP but both Jack;s words in his final letter and Stephen's words in the eulogy struck a particular cord with me and, judging from the reaction to both, I am not alone in that!

“ Jack, I think, tapped into a yearning, sometimes ephemeral, rarely articulated, a yearning that politics be conducted in a different way, and from that difference would emerge a better Canada.

That difference was by no means an end to rancour, an end to the abusive, vituperative practice of the political arts. The difference was also, and critically, one of policy -- a fundamentally different way of viewing the future of Canada.

His remarkable letter made it absolutely clear. This was a testament written in the very throes of death that set out what Jack wanted for his caucus, for his party, for young people, for all Canadians.”

So many of us are sick of the way our politicians behave, the divisiveness created by inflexible party lines, the constant slagging of the other guys ideas and proposals that to hear a call for respect and “an economy that would embrace equity, fairness, balance and creative generosity.” at what was undoubtedly one of the largest public morning for a leader in some considerable time was perhaps just what we needed to give us new resolve to change things for the better.

“Jack understood that we are headed into even more perilous economic times. He wanted Canadians to have a choice between what he described as the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and an economy that would embrace equity, fairness, balance and creative generosity.”

We can but hope that the rich and powerful, those politicians with the power to initiate change (at least one of whom was present during the funeral) and those who sit across the isle in the House are as moved by these words as I was. Unfortunately I suspect few of them will be.

“We're all shaken by grief but I believe we're slowly being steadied by a new resolve and I see that resolve in words written in chalk and in a fresh determination on people's faces. A resolve to honour Jack by bringing the politics of respect for all, respect for the Earth and respect for principle and generosity back to life.”

Thank you Jack (and Stephen) for your words of encouragement and guidance, as the Reverend said “the torch has been passed” now it is up to us.

“Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world...................

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

Jack Layton 1950 -2011

Elections Canada Report

2011-08-20T08:48:00.000-04:00

I will briefly return from my summer hiatus to bring a couple of things to your attention, first up a few things from the recent report by Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand.

( stat_report2011_e.pdf )

Much has been said in the past about the cost of an 'unnecessary' Election when it seems that some use this as an excuse to NOT hold the government of the day to account by going to the people before the next scheduled date, well folks at a cost of just $12 per person it seems to me that taxpayer cost is NOT a factor in such decisions. The now defunct per vote 'subsidy' was minuscule by comparison but I am sure that Harper will find a way to also cut the budget of Elections Canada to his advantage. I suspect that the cost to political partys and their supporters, particularly that spent on negative TV advertising, is much more of a factor. Unfortunately such choices are no longer available federally.

With the Ontario election period not even started yet we have already been bombarded with negative ads (supposedly from 'citizen groups') the cost of which must run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seems the success of such tactics by the Harper regime has been taken note of by the provincial back room boys!!

The second piece of news is the ongoing study of moving towards on line (and / or other electronic voting methods) for the next federal election. Much has been said on both sides of this debate both in regards to federal election as well as provincial and municipal elections, I will not repeat it all here. I will however say this:- I believe it is inevitable, will indeed increase the citizen participation particularly amongst the 'younger' crowd and a secure COMMON system should be developed for all such elections. That said there is, as I see it, one major hurdle to be crossed that being 'verifiability', the ability to do a recount of the votes in the event of any problem (or perceived problem) with the software, hardware or personnel involved, and I do mean the actual votes NOT what the computer SAYS are the votes. This all goes to our confidence that the system cannot be corrupted and that our votes are indeed counted as cast. Perhaps some kind of computer receipt that can be recast in the event of problems or other feedback mechanism can be designed. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this initiave.

And lastly Elections Canada has also released the official poll by poll results of the 2011 federal election for those that wish to see where withing their riding they won or lost support, not that it will have a lot of validity in either the upcoming provincial election or the next federal election some 4 years up the road. Available at http://www.elections.ca/scripts/ovr2011/default.html

Democracy Under Fire Surrenders!

2011-05-22T08:50:00.002-04:00

After a a few weeksreflection I have concluded that the fight to protect our democracymust continue without my weekly posts for a while. As have manyothers, I have found recent events both depressing and disconcertingand must take some time to absorb the ramifications of the Harperregimes majority. I therefore will be only posting an occasionalarticle here in the coming months whilst we all see if our fears cometrue. In my previouspost I made some predictions which turned out to bemostly wrong, in the hope that I will this time be totally wrong herethen are my predictions for for Canadian politics in the next fewyears.

The 'New' Harper Regimewill increasingly restrict accessto information and control what and when Ministers, MPs and Civil Servants can say to the press and the public. TheParliamentary Budget Office will, with the non renewal of KevinPage's contract, turn into a mouthpiece for thegovernments latest budget spin, the existing staff will all resign.Numerous reportsand inquiries will simply die a slow and quiet deathin committee having been blocked by the conservative majority, thefew that make it through will be so gutted as to be meaningless.Election financing will, as promised, go through major changes, thepervote funding will be gone, corporate donations will bereinstated and limits for individuals will be raised, the taxpayerswill continue to 'subsidize' both individual and corporate fundingto partys far in excess of the amount previously designated to theper vote funding. We will all be subject to mail-outs, televisionadvertising and newspaper articles telling us how great the Harperregime is doing on an ongoing and regular basis all paid for out ofgeneral revenue, the conservative party war fund will be built to thepoint that during the next election they can 'buy' enough publicityto totally overwhelm any other partys attempt to get their point ofview before the public.

In there efforts to ensure that they, and only they, will be heardrules will be put in place for future debates which will eliminateall but the largest partys by seat count from such publicdiscussions. Harper will build his new mediacenter, will notanswer questions either there or in the HoC lobby, oranywhere else for that matter, but simply issue pre recordedpropaganda from his control center. The press will continue to printor broadcast this spin for lack of any other information available.The PMOsbudget and staff will continue to expand whist allother departments will see drastic cuts, watchdog departments andcommittees will be particularly hard hit. Auditor-General SheilaFraser's replacement will not be nearly as open &outspoken and will take most of the next 4 years struggling to getaccurate information and fighting for authority to investigatevarious government agencys.

Harper will be returnedfor a second majority before enough of the voting public wake up togetout and vote him out. Electoral reform choices willNOT be put before the public in 2015 despite an ever increasing callfor such a referendum by both the public and most political partys.It will be at least a decade before such changes take place.

There – 100%wrong, I really hope so, but I fear all too many of these things willcome to pass and there is NOTHING we can do to stop it short oftaking to the streets, which of course will give Mr Harper the excuseto bring in more draconian police powers and justify his expandedU.S. Style prison system.

And that my friends iswhy I will be ceasing to produce further articles on this blog forthe foreseeable future, I simply see no point in flogging a deadhorse. I may pop back from time to time to point out a particularlyegregious hit against our democracy but there are a numberof bloggers far more active and informed than I doinga fine job of doing that, I hope that, unlike I, they have thefortitude to continue to use the internet to spread the word....until that too becomes 'government'controlled!

Thank you for yourtime, I'm done for now.

Predictable Chaos

2011-05-01T09:19:00.000-04:00

Just one day beforeprobably the most important election in Canadian history we have noidea where things are going to end up, it appears the threat of aconservative majority has been headed off but just as scary is aconservative minority. The fact that the Harper regime has NO respectfor parliamentary convention and has clearly said that they WILL NOTwork with others should they return with a minority means that IFsuch a thing happens we are doomed to yet another constitutionalcrisis brought on by their inability to recognize that ourparliament IS a coalition in which MPs elected from all partysand all parts of the country are charged with working together forthe benefit of us all.

Whilst I really hopefor an NDP or Lib minority government, supported by a few Greens I amnot optimistic that enough voters are aware of what will happen ifthe Harper regime gets back in. With that in mind here is myprediction, which I truly hope does not happen but fear it will.

The Conservatives willform government with a reduced number of seats, they will promptlytable a budget with a number of measures that the majority of MPscannot support, one of these measures will be the elimination of theper vote subsidy that allows the smaller party's to remain viable,they will not however eliminate the subsidy for donations directly tothe party and may well increase the upper limit so that theircorporate friends can further bribe them to not tax their enormousprofits. No discussion or amendments will be considered, it will be atake or leave it challenge to parliamentarians.

After much blatheringand backstabbing the House will defeat the budget thus sending harperback to the governor general where he will ask for ANOTHER election,this request will be refused as the GG has little choice but to askthe opposition (no matter who they are) if they can get theconfidence of parliament. Having repeatedly rejected the idea of acoalition government the opposition will attempt to form a governmenton an informal, day to day basis. Mr Harper will be screaming fromthe house tops 'I told you so, I told you so' and repeating his liesabout the constitutionality of 'coalition' governments and proceed tototally ignore convention and parliamentary rules in his bid toretain power thus finally proving for once and all that he is a powerhungry lier and totally amoral.

The outcome will besuch that the parliamentarians must work together, as they should doanyway, in order to minimize the crisis that will be hovering on theparliamentary doorstep for days and months, they will not do thisvery well.... but a hell of a lot better than under a Harperdictatorship. The newly appointed conservative senators will underthe direction of deposed King Harper do everything in their power tofurther disrupt the parliamentary process, question period willbecome so loud and personal that the speaker is unable to control it,however few if any MPs will be ejected from the chamber.

All of the above willnot take place should either the Libs or NDP squeak through with aminority government, although the House will still need to be a lotmore cooperative than is currently the norm, and Mr Harpers bleatingwill have a reduced effect, except to show how he is NOT a teamplayer unless he is the “Leader”, and that the senateconservative majority will still block much good legislation out ofspite! SOME parliamentarians may even learn to work together afterwatching the newly elected Greens in action.....

Parliamentary andelectoral reform will not feature in any proposed legislation in theensuing months or years despite the clear need for such demonstratedby this ongoing “crisis'.

The only really goodthing coming out of all this is a Green MP in the House and that bothMr Harper and Mr Ignatieff will be replaced as leaders within 6months.

One final prediction.This writer will become so disgusted with the whole thing that hewill cease to follow and write about the decline of our democracy,retire to his rural enclave and go back to nature. He will nothowever cease to worry that Canadian democracy is going down thetoilet.

Vote– Vote – Vote – Vote – Vote – Vote -Vote

VoteABC

Thank you for your timeand goodnight.

Principles of Parliamentary Democracy

2011-04-28T12:22:00.003-04:00

Peace,Order & Good Government is the title a blog aboutexactly that, a recent post contained links to some opinion andreports from some individuals well versed in constitutional matters.If you think that this election is going to either make such mattersirrelevant or resolve them you are dreaming in technicolor. We willin fact in all probability simply move from one constitutional crisisto the next simply because our politicians either cannot, or willnot, work together for the good of all Canadians.

I will let POGGEtake it from here, extracts from the articlesmentioned follow:-

One approach to fighting fiction with facts by Helen Forsey has been to compile and share a list of myths and misrepresentations. These include the idea that coalitions are evil and illegitimate, that Canadians elect the prime minister and a government, that defeating a government on a confidence motion forces a fresh election. The most dangerous fiction is the idea that if the opposition accepts the Governor General's invitation to replace a government that has lost the confidence of the House, this would amount to an "illegitimate seizure of power."

Recently, Professor Emeritus Peter Russell organized a non-partisan workshop for leading Canadian academics and political thinkers to begin a process to create a how-to manual for the country if the next election produces an unclear result. The full report deserves to be read in its entirety. In the meantime, here are 5 key principles to remember when the going gets tough. My thanks to Peter Russell for sharing these and encouraging their dissemination.

1. Parliament is the core institution of Canadian democracy. The House of Commons, its elected chamber, is the one body elected by all Canadians.

2. When Canadians go to the polls they elect the House of Commons not a government. The right to govern goes to the members of the house who can secure its confidence.

3. The prime minister is the servant of the House of Commons and must be accountable to it all times.

4. When no party has a majority in the House of Commons, it is for the House to decide what kind of government it will support. In these situations, the House basically has three choices: 1) a coalition government of two or more parties who share cabinet posts; 2) a minority government in an alliance with two or more parties who agree to support it on the basis of agreed upon policies but who do not share cabinet posts; 3) a minority government that works out agreements with opposition parties issue by issue.

5. The Governor General's role is to exercise the crown's discretionary reserve powers only when necessary to permit the proper functioning of parliamentary democracy.

Writer and activist Helen Forsey, daughter of the late Senator and constitutional expert Eugene Forsey, has this to say:-

This election really is about our democracy. Canadians have a right to expect fairness, honesty and respect from our system of government. Instead, the Harper regime has given us five years of injustice, corruption and contempt.

Harper uses a stack of fairy tales about our parliamentary system to trick people into thinking they have to vote Conservative in order to avoid disaster. In reality, his threats about the opposition “seizing power” or forcing a fresh election are shameless scare tactics based on lies.

Lie #1: Coalitions are evil and illegitimate.

•Not true. Coalitions are totally constitutional, and can be the most sensible way to govern co-operatively and respect the will of a majority of voters.

Lie #2: Canadians elect the prime minister.

•Not true. We elect some 300 Members of Parliament to the House of Commons.

Lie #3: The party that wins the most seats necessarily forms the government.

•Not true. The governing party must win – and keep – the confidence of our elected MPs through confidence votes in the House.

Lie #4: Defeating a government on a confidence motion forces a fresh election.

•Not necessarily. If a recently elected House votes to defeat a government, the Governor General calls on the leader of the opposition to form a government and seek the confidence of the House.

Lie #5: It is an illegitimate “seizure of power” if the opposition accepts the Governor General’s invitation to replace a government that has lost the confidence of the House.

•Not true. In fact, the opposition has what amounts to a constitutional duty to try to form a viable government with the recently elected Parliament, with no need for a repeat election.

For more information, see How Canadians Govern Themselves at www.parl.gc.ca/publications.

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights, a centre within the University of

Toronto, Faculty of Law hosted a panel discussion of leading constitutional scholars following the

prorogation of Parliament in 2008 and after further discussions recently produced a report entitled “Adjusting to a New Era of Parliamentary Government”

They say:-

“While the constitutional conventions discussed in this report may seem somewhat

removed from the concept of rights, they are essential to the realization of democratic

rights in Canada. Without transparent and accountable systems of government, citizens’

democratic rights to participate in those systems are undermined and may be rendered

meaningless. This report is a solid step along the path to a greater understanding of our

uniquely Canadian version of Westminster democracy.”

After reading this important and long overdue examination of this subject I found this bit to be the most telling:-

“One of the areas where adjustment is needed is the lack of clarity and agreement

around important unwritten conventions of our parliamentary system of government.

Constitutional conventions are at the heart of our system of responsible government. To

be effective they need to be agreed upon by the political leaders of the day. Political

debate about these unwritten principles and practices of our constitution has the potential

to plunge the country into a serious constitutional crisis.”

In their recommendations they say:-

“There would be much less risk of a parliamentary crisis following an election in

which the result is not clear if there were an authoritative set of guidelines such as New

Zealand and the United Kingdom now have in their Cabinet Manuals. “

That says it all, reading of their discussions it is clear that whist the 'conventions' may be fairly clear to most of us there are not (for the most part) 'rules' set down and thus, as we have seen with recent governments, there is much room for abuse. We cannot let successive governments interpret those 'conventions' to suit their political agenda, we must seek consensus on setting some 'rules' (good luck with that!). There is much more in this report and it is, as they say, a good first step. I seriously doubt however that anything meaningfully will come of it no matter who gets the most seats on May 1^st. The points raised about what to do with a 'hung parliament', confidence votes, and who is able to govern 'with the support of the House' may well be front and center once again however with another minority government elected as seems highly probable.

The full report deserves to be read in its entirety. (235k PDF)

There's also an excellent article by LawrenceMartin on iPolitics.ca about Harper's methods, and howthey've "brought Canadian democracy to new lows."

Here's a bullet list of Harper'sactions Martin discusses in the articlecourtesy of Catch22

TREATMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY PROCESS

Prorogations of Parliament
Contempt of Parliament
Scorn for parliamentary committees
Challenging constitutional precepts
Lapdogs as watchdogs
The Patronage Machine
Abuse of Process

INFORMATION CONTROL

The vetting system
Public service brought to heel
Access to information
Supression of research
Document tampering
Media curbs

INTIMIDATION OF OPPONENTS

Afghan detainees
My way or the highway
Personal attack ads
A democratic party?
Legal Threats

A BIG tip o the hat to POGGE for this one, and a honorable mention to Catch22.

Senator Banks Speaks Out.

2011-04-26T12:44:00.001-04:00

SenatorTommy Banks recently wrote a longish article about the choices weface next Monday, whilst found in at least one place under themisleading title 'ConservativeSenator Speaks out' (Senator Banksis a LiberalSenator) the opinions expressedare clear and accurate. What follows is a series of highlyedited clips from the piece to catch yourinterest, I recommend you read the full article available athttp://langleytoday.ca/?p=8198and numerous other places on the internet.

“Wewill choose between openness or secrecy. Betweenlistening or refusing to listen. Between someone who respectsParliament or someone who disdains it. Between things we can andwill do now or things that, (provided of course that everything goeswell), we might do in five or six years. Between someone who answersall questions from Canadians, or someone who won’t acceptany.

Over the past few years Mr. Harper’sgovernment has quietly engineered so many changes that there are someways in which our country is barely recognizable. Many of us don’tyet realize the extent of those changes, because many of them havebeen brought about very carefully and gradually – almostimperceptibly in some cases. This is diabolically clever. If thesethings had all been done at once, there would have been loud protestsand reactions. But moving just one little brick at a time doesn’tcause much fuss – until you realize that the whole house hasbeen renovated. And we’ve hardly noticed.

Theseare changes that are at the very heart of who and what Canadians are.They are changes to the protections that used to exist against thetyranny of the majority – or against a single-mindedmy-way-or-the-highway autocrat. These changes are losses to our veryCanadian-ness. Let me remind you of some of them:

TheLaw Commission of Canada was created by an Act of Parliament in1997. It worked very well. It kept an eye in a sort-of avuncular way,on necessary reforms of the law, including election law. ........ TheCommission was created by an Act of Parliament, and any governmentwanting to shut it down should have been up-front about it. It shouldhave come to Parliament with a Bill to rescind The Law Commission ofCanada Act...........
But to Mr. Harper, Parliament is aninconvenience......... so, rather than proposing the abolition of theCommission (a proposal about which there would have been prettyfierce debate on all sides), they just eliminated all funding for itin the federal budget. Governments can do that. Poof – no LawCommission.

Nice and quiet. Just one little brick.Hardly noticed.

Then there was the CourtChallenges Programme, set up in 1994, which was the means bywhich a bit of legal help could be provided to a private individualor small organization who didn’t have a lot of money, and whowas taking on, or being taken on by, the Government of Canada. Itleveled the legal playing field a bit. It was a perfect example offundamental Canadian fairness.................

But Mr.Harper doesn’t like being questioned, let alone challenged.It’s so inconvenient! Solution? Quietly announce that the CourtChallenges Programme is being, er, discontinued. Poof – noCourt Challenges Programme – no court challenges.

Hardlynoticed.

The Coordination of Access toInformation Request System (CAIRS) was created (by aProgressive-Conservative government) in 1989 so that departments ofgovernment could harmonize their responses to access-to-informationrequests that might need multi-departmental responses...........

CAIRS was killed by theHarper government because “extensive” consultationsshowed it wasn’t valued by governmentdepartments..........Wasn’t there some other purpose and usefor CAIRS? Didn’t it have something to do with openness andaccountability? .............. CAIRS was an inconvenience to thegovernment.

So poof – it’sdisappeared. And, except for investigative reporters and other peoplewho might (horrors!) ask questions, its loss is hardlynoticed..............

All these changes were donequietly, cleverly, and under the radar. No fuss. No outcry. Just onelittle brick at a time. .............

Mr. Harper firedthe head of the Canadian Wheat Board because he was doing his jobproperly. He removed the head of the Canadian Nuclear SafetyCommission because she wanted to make sure that the Chalk Rivernuclear reactor was safe.

Hardly noticed.

Thereare many more things that were hardly noticed: Cuts to funding forthe Status of Women, Adult Learning and Literacy, EnvironmentalPrograms, museums funding, and more. All quietly, just one brickat a time.

Hardly noticed.

As tocampaign promises..........

They campaign on a platformof transparency and accountability; but they’re now tryingto discredit the Parliamentary Budget Officer that they created,because he’s trying to do the job that they gave him. Mr.Harper said that our form of government, evolved over centuries fromthe 900-year-old British Westminster tradition, was all wrong. We hadto have fixed election dates, because otherwise, democraticprinciples would be trampled. ”Fixed election dates”, hesaid, “stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar.They level the playing field for all parties”.

SoParliament (remember them?) at Mr. Harper’s insistence, passeda law requiring fixed election dates, which Mr. Harper promptlybroke.

Somebody once said that we get the kind ofgovernment we deserve. What did we do to deserve Mr. Harper? He oncesaid that we should all “Stand Up for Canada”. Well,let’s do that. We just have to decide whether the presentversion of Canada is the one that we’ll stand up for. Or standfor.

Thank you
Tommy Banks

(an Alberta Senator.)

Senator Banks iscorrect, the highly insidious nature of the Harper era cuts tovarious institutions essential to democracy have been HardlyNoticed amongst the political turmoil and tight informationcontrol that is the Harper Regimes modus operandi.

The Frustrated Voter!

2011-04-24T07:34:00.001-04:00

It isfrustrating listening to all the promises as to what our politicianswill do if elected when we cannot even get a clear picture of whatthey did when in power. With the previous government having been themost secretive and controlling in Canadian history it is hardysurprising that such information is hard to come by. With that inmind here are a few reports that may surface after the election andsome that you can view now. Knowledge is power, which is why thepublic is kept largely in the dark!

Reportsyou wont see

Auditorgeneral's report on G8 spending -

IndustryMinister Tony Clement’s local constituency office collectedapplications for a G8 Legacy Fund seven months before Parliamentapproved the spending.

The funding, nearly $50-million inbeautification and civic projects for the Tory minister’s ParrySound-Muskoka riding, was brought before Parliament in November,2009. A draft report by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser says theConservative government misled Parliament by making it part of aborder infrastructure fund.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/g8-funding-proposals-preceded-parliamentary-approval/article1982916/

Anyreport arising from the initial study of the first few documentsrelating to the Afghan prisoner fiasco :-

Despite amulti-party request to cough them up, the panel of judges overseeingthe release of long-secret documents related to the Afghan detaineeabuse scandal say a report and an initial set of documents would beready for release as early as Friday — if only Parliament wasstill sitting.

http://www.canada.com/news/decision-canada/Parties+call+judges+release+Afghan+detainee+documents/4617645/story.html

The report regarding the IntegrityOfficers lack of integrity:-

Canada's interim integritycommissioner is the blaming the federal election for refusing todisclose a highly-anticipated report, making it the third documentthat has been shelved because of the campaign.

The Office of the IntegrityCommissioner came under intense scrutiny last year after AuditorGeneral Sheila Fraser issued ascathing report into ChristianeOuimet's tenure in the position.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/18/cv-election-integrity-commissioner-report-343.html

Thereare a few reports you can see and perhaps should see:-

Firstup Samara's MP exit interviews:-

Today wereleased the third installment of our MP exit interview reports.Entitled “It’sMy Party: Parliamentary Dysfunction Reconsidered,”it highlights thefrustrations that former MPs feel about the way politics is practicedin Parliament.

The MPssaid that decisions from party leadership were often viewed asopaque, arbitrary and even unprofessional. Furthermore, thosedecisions often ran counter to MPs’ stated motivations forentering public life in the first place: the desire to practicepolitics differently.

Itswell worth reading this report and the 2 others that preceded it iffor no other reason than to see how little the Actionsof individual MPs in the HoCfollowed their actual beliefs and how much power the 'party' had overtheir actions. Remember theseare EXITinterviews, in other wordsmost of these MPs were not part of the Rrcentgovernment. We wonder how much worse it has got since theseindividuals left the House? We also wonder however if the MPsdisliked the power the party had over their actions, why they didnothing to change things, but in fact enabled yet more abuse of ourparliamentary system whilst in office by not speaking out at thattime?

Thenthere is this one on the arts:-

OnApril 5, the Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) sent the leadersof the five major federal parties a series of questions relevant tothe arts, culture and heritage sector. We are publishing theresponses we received in their entirety, without any edits orcommentary. In order to facilitate comparison among the parties'responses, we have formatted their answers in a table format,according to each individual question asked. An empty table indicatesthat we did not receive an answer to that particular question.

NOTE- The Conservative party declined to comment on ANY of the questions,apparently they have no policy on such matters! I note also that theGreens were asked for and provided their position on such matters,nice to see them included in such dialog!.

http://ccarts.ca/en/advocacy/bulletins/2011/1611.htm

Andhow about The Parliamentary Budget Officers take onthe F35 costs

DNDmaintains that the average unit acquisition cost of the F-35A will be$75 million—including upgrades and overhaul.

The PBO forecasts that the average unit acquisition cost of the F-35A will be approximately US$128 million—excludingupgrades and overhaul.

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/PBO-DPB/documents/F35_QA_EN.pdf (700k PDF)

There area number of other less published reports by the PBO that may be wortha look regarding other spending estimates, which can be found at -

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/PBO-DPB/index.aspx?Language=E

AlsoMr Page's report to the Standing Committee on Finance back inFebruary can be seen here -

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/PBO-DPB/documents/EFAU_20110215_EN.pdf

Alsofor those who believe that everything is just rosy and we can justcarry on without worry, here is something that most of us knewinstinctively and is particularly troubling for the thousands ofCanadians STILL looking for work :-

Consumer prices rose 3.3% inthe 12 months to March, the largest year-over-year increasesince September 2008. This advance follows a 2.2% increasein the 12 months to February.

Energy prices increased 12.8%during the 12 months to March, following a 10.6%advance in February. Gasoline pricesincreased 18.9% in March, followinga 15.7% gain in the 12 months to February. Pricesfor fuel oil and other fuels increased 31.3%, while electricityprices rose 4.3%.

Pricesfor food purchased from stores rose 3.7% in March, the largestyear-over-year advance since August 2009. This increase followsa 2.0% gain in February.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/110419/dq110419a-eng.htm

Thefirst thing to do is elect people who give a damn about integrity,open government, the jobless, the small businesses that provide somany of the new positions, and those who would strengthen our socialfabric. I will not say who you should vote for, but will say itcannot be someone who supports King Harper if you have ANY regard fordemocratic governance. Vote, vote for the person of your choice, butplease vote ABC.

Rememberif the information on your voter card does not match your currentaddress you have until 6pm on April 26^thto change it at your local Elections Canada Office or you may beunable to vote. Go to http://www.elections.ca/ for more information.

Vote– Vote – Vote – Vote – Vote – Vote -Vote

Will our Constitution Survive?

2011-04-21T09:05:00.002-04:00

I think it is sad that the majority of Canadians don't understand the basic workings of their own government. This ignorance speaks to a major failure of the education systems across the country as well as to the apathy brought on by relative prosperity.

But while this ignorance is sad, and somewhat dangerous, it is no less than morally repugnant that the Conservative Government would exploit this ignorance for party political gain. This combination of ignorance and partisanship demonstrates that the democratic freedoms which we take for granted are extremely tenuous and can give way at any time. If the citizens of a nation are unaware of their rights and responsibilities, and equally unaware of the processes and limitations of their government, they cannot be called upon to defend themselves or their institutions.

We must demand, above everything else, constitutional accountability from our elected officials. Because regardless of a party's particular beliefs or policies, if we cannot depend upon them to stand up for the constitution, then all the rest can be swept aside like gossamer.

http://kirbycairo.blogspot.com/2011/04/will-our-constitution-survive.html

The Week That Was, Secrecy, Lies & Rising up

2011-04-17T08:30:00.001-04:00

I may be totallydepressed by the futility of trying to effect change using our firstpast the post voting system and the total lack of any indication thatany of the incumbent partys will do anything to change it, but unlikefar to many of our citizens I have not gone blind and deaf to theHarper regimes shenanigans. Read on:-

So much for fiscalresponsibility

The Harper governmenthas quietly approved increases in the maximum salaries politicalstaffers are entitled to receive. In addition, suddenly out-of-workstaffers could find the blow considerably cushioned if the Torieslose the election. That's because the government has also approved a50-per-cent increase in the maximum separation pay political aidescan receive — up to six months from four — and that's ontop of severance pay.........

That means a chief ofstaff to a senior minister is now classified as anywhere from anEX-02 (maximum salary of $131,000) to an EX-04 (maximum $168,000). Adirector is classified as EX-02, a press secretary or policy adviseras AS-08 ($102,000), a senior special assistant as AS-07 ($96,000)and support staff as up to AS-05 ($78,000).

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/special/federal-election/national/tory-staffers-to-gain-financially-under-changes-approved-by-harper-govt-119563529.html

More secret plans emerging

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has beenworking on a secret project to build a $2-milliongovernment-controlled media centre, a newspaper reported Monday. TheToronto Star obtained documents through the Access to Information Actthat show the plan, code-named the Shoe Store Project, has been inthe works for a year........

According to documents, the new centre could givethe government control over which journalists attend newsconferences. The government would also have the ability to do its ownfilming at the events, and could provide the footage tojournalists, instead of letting them film the events themselves, theStar reported.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2007/10/15/media-pm.html?sms_ss=twitter&at_xt=4da2621992d39e34,0

G8 expenditures illegal?

The Harper government misinformed Parliament towin approval for a $50-million G8 fund that lavished money on dubiousprojects in a Conservative riding, the auditor general has concluded.

And she suggests the process by which the fundingwas approved may have been illegal.

The findings are contained in a confidentialreport Sheila Fraser was to have tabled in Parliament on April5........ a Jan. 13 draft of the chapter on the G8 legacyinfrastructure fund was obtained by a supporter of an oppositionparty and shown to The Canadian Press.

The draft reveals that a local “G8 summitliaison and implementation team” — Industry Minister TonyClement, the mayor of Huntsville, and the general manager ofDeerhurst Resort which hosted the summit — chose the 32projects that received funding. It says there was no apparent regardfor the needs of the summit or the conditions laid down by thegovernment.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/972725--tories-misinformed-parliament-on-50m-g8-fund-auditor-general?bn=1

More lies and spin.

Canada's auditor general has rebuked theConservatives for recycling an unrelated quote by her about aprevious Liberal government's security spending in a parliamentaryreport on the costs of the G8/G20 summits in Toronto lastsummer.........

The report quoted the auditor general as saying:“We found that the processes and controls around that were verygood, and that the monies were spent as they were intended to bespent.” But in a scathing letter addressed to members of aCommons committee on Friday, which was received by the clerk andmembers on Monday, Fraser said the quote had nothing to do with thesummits.

Instead, she said, the Conservatives inserted an2010 comment she made during a CBC News interview on securityspending by a previous Liberal government after the 9/11 terroristattacks a decade ago. “The comments attributed to me in the[Conservative] report are completely unrelated to G8/G20 spending,”Fraser writes in her letter.“I would appreciate it if thereport could be modified as it is clearly erroneous.”

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/11/cv-election-weston-ag-fraser.html

And yet more lies

PARLIAMENT HILL – A Conservative Housecommittee report that wrongly quoted Auditor General Sheila Fraserendorsing controls over $45.7-million the government spent onquestionable projects at the G8 summit last year also takes astatement about security cost estimates for the G8 and G20 summitsfrom Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page out of context.

The document suggests Mr. Page gave security costsfor the summits a passing grade after they were held, when in factthe quotation the Conservatives attribute to him was plucked from areport on government estimates he prepared before the meetings wereheld last June.

http://www.hilltimes.com/dailyupdate/view/125

Then there is outright electoral bribery

Two Conservatives have quit their own ridingassociation in Vaughan north of Toronto, accusing incumbent candidateJulian Fantino and the Conservative government of handing $10 millionin public funds to a private non-profit group involved in a majorhealth-care development.

Richard Lorello, the local Conservative candidatein 2008, says he resigned because a federal grant, announced in Marchjust before the election was called, is earmarked for the VaughanHealth Campus of Care (VHCC), which has two of Fantino's fundraisersas prime backers.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/04/12/fantino-riding-association-resignations.html?ref=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Blocking the studentvote and challenging Elections Canada

Some 700 votes cast ina special advance ballot at the University of Guelph on Wednesdayshould not be counted, say the Conservatives.......

In a letter sent Thursday to the Office of theChief Electoral Officer, the party alleges (that ) The pollingstation was not sanctioned by Elections Canada......

The Conservative Party of Canada and its candidatefor the Guelph riding, Marty Burke, “have a number ofchallenges and complaints with respect to the ballots now collectedduring this supposed polling event,” says the letter.......

But Elections Canada media adviser James Halelater told the Guelph Mercury that this is the thirdelection in which the university has held a special ballot on campus.Hale also said this is the first time it’s ever beenchallenged.

“Part of our mandate is making the vote asaccessible as possible. So we look at outreach programs,” hesaid. Hale said Election Canada often holds special polling stationsfor groups with traditionally lower voter turnouts, such as students,First Nations, seniors and the disabled.“It’s never beenchallenged, not to my knowledge,” he said.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/975223--tories-challenge-special-poll-at-university

Update re the abovefrom Elections Canada.

While the initiative atthe University of Guelph was not pre-authorized by the ChiefElectoral Officer, the Canada Elections Act provides that electorsmay apply for and vote by special ballot. A special ballotcoordinator, appointed by the local returning officer, oversaw theactivities at the University of Guelph. All information at ourdisposal indicates that the votes were cast in a manner that respectsthe Canada Elections Act and are valid.

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&document=apr1511&dir=pre&lang=e

And yet theantidemocratic lobby wins

Elections Canada is ordering its returningofficers not to set up any more ad hoc polling stations on universitycampuses. But the votes of University of Guelph students whoparticipated in one of these special ballots will stand......

Elections Canada issued a statement Friday thatreaffirms special ballots are to be used to assist electors likesnowbirds or military personnel who cannot get to a regular pollingstation.

"Once Elections Canada officials were madeaware of the local initiative in Guelph, the returning officer wasinstructed not to engage in any further activities of a similarnature," the statement says.

The University of Guelph vote was overseen by aspecial ballot coordinator and the votes were cast in a manner thatrespects the Elections Act, the statement says.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2011/04/15/18008691.html

PLEASE NOTE - Itis important to know that any elegable citizen can vote by 'specialballot' by filling out the form (as did the Guelph students ahead oftime) and going to the local Elections Canada office set up to acceptchanges in address or voter information and which location will beshown on your voter card or by searching your riding at ElectionsCanada . Way to go for the 700 or sostudents who voted in the midst of their exam period at this specialballot and to the folks who organized it, the question is not whetherit was legal but why other universities do not request similarspecial polls and why Elections Canada has now turned away from suchinitiatives.

And finally, perhapstoo little too late, Mr Ignatieff get passionate about theabove......

“We’ve got a prime minister who shutdown parliament twice and Canadians kind of shrugged,” he said.“We’ve got a prime minister who’s found in contemptof parliament. It’s never happened before in the history of ourcountry and people say, kind of, ‘So what?’ We got aprime minister who tried to shut down the long-form census and peoplethought, that’s crazy, but kind of, ‘So what?’ Andthen we have a prime minister who just went out and smeared a memberof his own caucus, tried to destroy her public reputation, and peoplesay, kind of, ‘So what?’”........

“And then we’ve got a prime ministerwho’s got a convicted criminal who was his chief of staff.Convicted five times of fraud and people say, kind of, ‘Sowhat?’” ..........

“And then we’ve got a prime ministerwho’s got, right now, in his election campaign, four peopleaccused of election fraud. And people say, ah, kind of, ‘Sowhat?’ And then we’ve got a prime minister who allowsonly five questions to the press, the press are following him around,they only get five questions and if they ask six he walks away. Andpeople say, kind of, ‘So what?’ And then we’ve gota situation where at Guelph university the other day, students linedup for two hours, some of them voting for the first time in theirlives, to vote. And a Conservative operative tried to shut it downand stop it and some smart Conservative lawyer downtown tried towrite a letter to get 700 votes by Canadian students disallowed in afederal election in Canada and people say, kind of, ‘So what,it’s just all political games, who cares?’”........

“Rise up! Rise up!” he cried.“Why do we have to put up with this? Rise up! Rise up! …Rise up! This goes beyond partisan politics! This goes beyond theLiberal party! This is about our country! This is about ourdemocracy! Rise up! Rise up!

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/16/the-commons-rise-up/
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swfbin/watch_as3-vfl8FxtT4.swf

Who cares? I do,and I hope a hell of a lot more Canadians who can see where another'Conservative' government under Harper will take us will indeed riseup!

The Harper Legacy – Series Suspended

2011-04-10T08:45:00.004-04:00

Just like the harperregime I am going to break my promises and suspend dialog, myintention to document Harpers antidemocratic actions and words overthe last few years is simply too depressing for me to continue. As Ifollow the daily promises and spin emerging from the election trail Isee less and less hope for Canadian Democracy, whilst the harperregimen did indeed need to be held to account, and the only meansleft to parliamentarians was indeed declaring their lack ofconfidence in said regime, this election is rapidly becoming a farce.

With a never endingseries of negative ads from the conservative war machine both beforeand during the election period, with the pollsters still pushing themisconception that the conservatives have 35% or so support when infact that is the level of DECIDED voters, and anywhere from 40 to 50%of eligible voters have not made up their minds or are totally turnedoff by the whole thing. With our antiquated first past the postvoting system forcing people to vote for candidates or partys they donot support simply to rid ourselves of this dictatorial regime. Withjust a small chance of the only party to really express much concernabout the stateof our democracy to have any real influence in thenext parliament and with the “Media Consortium” activelyworking to further reduce democratic debate in this country. Withnumerous 'allegations', inquiries and legal actions regardingwrongdoing by our former government stalled, suspended, swept underthe carpet or otherwise eliminated from proceeding until long afterthe election is over. With the media still faithfully reportingHarpers every 'rally' where only the party faithful or 'approved'spectators are allowed to attend and where reporters questions areseverely limited or ignored if not to his Kingships liking. And so itgoes on sending this tired old blogger into a political depressionand forcing me to suspend operations for the good of my mental heath,whilst I hope for a liberal minority supported by both Greens andNDP, whichever way it goes it will be a long time before ourdemocracy recovers from recent abuses, if ever.

With the above in mindI will simply place a few links below to some articles both old andmore recent which bear rereading and consideration before you decideupon your options on May 2^nd. I wish I could do more butif I continue to follow this election and write about the preceding 5years of democratic destruction I will so depressed and disgustedthat I will fail to vote, which is of course the aim of those thatwould rule by decree.

First up the TraversShamocracy series:-

Travers:Tiny cuts making democracy a sham Sham-ocracyseries:
Part 1: MPs' spending secrets

Part2: Canadians turned off

Part3: Young people tuned out

Part4: The media's role

Part5: Watchdog or lapdog?

Part6: Risks of rewriting rules

Part7a: Reaction to MPs' spending

Part7b: Paliament's fissures

Travers:The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy

Travers:Harper's dark democracy creates dangerous legacy ...

Travers:The year of governing secretly - thestar.com

Witnessinga democracy's decline - thestar.com

Travers:Harper happy to play games with Parliament

More reading on thethreats to democracy:-

Q&A:Elizabeth May on crisis in Canada

http://democracyunderfire.blogspot.com/2009/05/threats-to-democracy_28.html

http://democracyunderfire.blogspot.com/2010/01/harper-regimes-attacks-upon-democracy.html

http://ruralcanadian.blogspot.com/2008/11/democracy-under-attack-again.html

http://www.straightgoods.ca/2011/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=283&Cookies=yes

http://rabble.ca/news/2011/01/ten-reasons-oppose-harper-candidate-your-riding

The list is endless, asmust be the fight to protect democracy but I for one am getting verytired of banging my head against that wall!

Is this Democracy? -Updated

2011-04-06T10:08:00.001-04:00

“Harper’sstrategy of refusing to take more than five questions a day fromreporters amounts to a gross disservice to the public. Four of thepermitted questions (generally two in French and two in English) goto reporters following Harper’s campaign, while the fifth isallotted to a local scribe, wherever the Conservative news conferencethat day happens to be staged. .....

It’s ironic. TheConservatives came to power promising more accountability, moreopenness and more access to information. Those principles matter themost in an election, when people need as many answers as possible tomake an informed choice.”

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/967919--editorial-harper-s-five-question-policy-a-disservice-to-public

“Two young ladieswere removed from a Conservative rally in London because a Facebookpage showed them posing with Ignatieff, I was unaware of some of themore sinister details, details that potential voters both young andold should take note of.

While the ejection of two young andnew voters is deplorable enough, it seems the real story here is thefact that the RCMP was acting in a political capacity by removingthem at the Conservatives' behest.”

http://politicsanditsdiscontents.blogspot.com/2011/04/harper-campaign-misuses-rcmp.html

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/969309--harper-s-closed-door-campaign-marches-woman-out-of-rally-in-london?bn=1

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/05/cv-election-harper-ignatieff-rally-923.html

A Dartmouthvolunteer who helps homeless veterans was turned away from a StephenHarper election rally last week and the man calls it a slap in theface to those who have been injured in service of their country.

On Thursday, Jim Lowther and fellow veterans advocate Gary Zwicker went to theHalterm container pier on the Halifax waterfront hoping to get a fewminutes with Harper, or at least to watch his speech. But aConservative staffer in a suit and tie denied them entry at the gate.

http://nor-re.blogspot.com/2011/04/man-of-people.html

When a candidatefor the position of Prime-minister wont take questions and restrictsattendance to his already limited 'photo ops' we must ask is this thesort of man and the party we want to lead the country into thedigital age of open and accessible information. Can we believeANYTHING he says when he was previously elected on a platform of'open and accessible' government?

UPDATE 6 Apr 2011
Another university student says she was barred from a Conservativeevent with Prime Minister Stephen Harper — this time because ofher environmental activism.
Joanna MacDonald, a fourth-year environmental sciences student atGuelph University, says she pre-registered for Harper's electioncampaign event at the school Monday. But after arriving with afriend, MacDonald says she was directed to a desk where she was toldher name had been flagged and she was asked to leave..............
MacDonald was told the RCMP was doing the screening for theConservative party event and since she has no criminal record —nor any political party affiliation for that matter — shedemanded to know why she was being flagged.
An unidentified official eventually told her it was likely becauseshe had participated with the Sierra youth coalition on climatechange at the Cancun conference last December.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/special/federal-election/national/student-says-environmental-activism-barred-her-from-harper-campaign-event-119294134.html

The Harper Legacy - Part 2

2011-04-03T08:49:00.010-04:00

The Rise to Power,In Opposition and Before 2004 – 2006

When the 38^thparliament fell in Nov 2005 the mantra from Mr Harper was aboutbringing in an “Open and Accountable” government andearly in 2006 he was given a chance to do that. It was indeed thesubject of part of the ensuing throne speech as follows:-

BRINGINGACCOUNTABILITY BACK TO GOVERNMENT

Noaspect of responsible government is more fundamental than having thetrust of citizens. Canadians' faith in the institutions and practicesof government has been eroded. This new government trusts in theCanadian people, and its goal is that Canadians will once again trustin their government. It is time for accountability.

Torestore this trust, the first piece of legislation the Governmentwill bring forward will be the Federal Accountability Act.

Thisomnibus legislation and the associated Accountability Action Planwill change the current system of oversight and management bystrengthening the rules and institutions that ensuretransparency and accountability to Canadians. Thelegislation will ban institutional and large personal donations topolitical parties; it will ensure that positions of publictrust cannot be used as stepping stones to private lobbying;and it will provide real protection for whistle-blowers whoshow great courage in coming forward to do what is right.

TheGovernment will strengthen the capacity and independence ofofficers of Parliament, including the Auditor General, tohold the Government to account. It will increase the transparency ofappointments, contracts and auditing within government departmentsand Crown corporations.

Effectivechecks and balances are important, but they are not enough. The trustof citizens must be earned every day. The Government willwork to earn that trust.

This from what we nowknow became the most controlling, secretive and unaccountablegovernment in Canadian history. Non of the above has in fact takenplace, just the opposite has transpired. The question then becomes'if they lied about this what else have they said that reveals their un-trustworthiness. Some of Mr Harpers words whilst in oppositionand earlier when the president of the National Citizens Coalitionare quite revealing given his attitude to the parliamentary system once he was in power. Lets take a look at a few.

“And I thinkthe real problem that we're facing already is that the governmentdoesn't accept that it got a minority. “

“When agovernment starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent isfrankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority togovern.”

“WhetherCanada ends up as one national government or two national governmentsor several national governments, or some other kind of arrangementis, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion “

“If you want to be a government in aminority Parliament, you have to work with other people.”

“It’s the government’sobligation to look really to the third parties to get the support togovern.”

“The government can only be brought downbecause it alienates several parties in the House.”

“What the government has to do, if itwants to govern for any length of time, is it must appeal primarilyto the third parties in the House of Commons to get them to supportit.”

And finally this mosttelling quote -

"Itis the Parliament that's supposed to run the country, not just thelargest party and the single leader of that party,"Harper said on Sept. 9, 2004, alongside Duceppe and Layton at a newsconference on Parliament Hill. "That's a criticism I've had andthat we've had and that most Canadians have had for a long, long timenow so this is an opportunity to start to change that."

And yet once in powerhe has demonstrated no desire to work with other MPs, has proroguedparliament twice to avoid a confidence vote and now denies that heever even thought of collaborating with other partys to take power. A party that fires any government commission chair that dares todisagree with them and controls MPs to the extent that even his owncaucus have little choice but to follow along with what the PMOdictates. He has made a concerted effort to 'cancel dissent' and tosilence those who have expressed a divergent opinion, particularlythose 'independent' commissions and committees. More on that in laterposts, lets look back at earlier times....

Between 1997 and 2002, when Harper was out ofpublic life, he served as president of the National CitizensCoalition, a conservative think tank and lobby group that hascampaigned prominently on many libertarian, anti-worker andanti-public service issues over the years including:-

Opposition to fairtax reform; privatization of public sector services; court challengesto electoral laws that would limit third party spending; mediacampaigns attacking grants for the arts, advocacy organizations, andsocial science research; attacks on public funding for what it calls"interest groups" such as human rights or women's groups.

Harper opposed new federal legislation thatplaced restrictions on political advertising of private interestgroups during federal elections. Harper took the federal governmentto court, arguing the legislation violated constitutional rights tofreedom of expression, freedom of association, and the right to vote.

Harper represented the Reform party in the HoC from 93 to 97 but quit his Parliamentary seat and was namedVice-President of the NCC the same day laying the groundwork forpolitical power through the creation of a new political party heintended to lead according to his own strategic vision.

It seems quite clear that Harper will do and sayanything to forward his own agenda which seems to be getting andkeeping power and helping out his corporate private sector friends. Iam not going to dwell upon this period of Harpers history except tosay the ideology of the NCC is clearly front and center in morerecent times, the attacks and de-funding of womens groups continues,the suppression of scientific research and dialog continues, the pushfor funding of political partys by the rich and the suppression ofpublic funding continues, and the push for 'smaller' (read morecentralized PMO controlled) government continues.

With files from TheHarper Index and MapleLeaf Web and several other sources.

On a personal note if the Harper regimes goal isto make us so sick of political BS and to make us feel as if there isno hope for improvement in our democratic processes then they aresucceeding, I for one am experiencing great difficulty in remainingoptimistic. My personal funk is not helped by the media total lack ofobjective reporting on the many road blocks that Harper puts in theirway. That they remain largely silent about his control of questionsat his numerous 'photo ops' across the country and continue topromote his spin and 'talking points' without question does not bodewell for our democracy. The Media is as just guilty for thedemocratic deficit as are the politicians of all stripes.

Anti-democratic News Media

2011-03-30T08:49:00.003-04:00

Ithas been reported this morning that the news media barons havedecided that you shall not hear from all the political leaders in anyupcoming debate, but that Elizabeth May who had the support of over900,000 voters right across Canada in the last election will beexcluded. This is particularly galling when a regional party, theBloc,with only a slightly higher popular vote and NO representationoutside of Quebec is included. Who gave them the right to decide whoyou can and cannot listen to, who gave them the right to effectivelypre-decide who should have the opportunity to put their views beforethe public, why should we allow a few corporate big wigs toartificially spin the odds in favor of the incumbent partys.

It matters not which party you supportthis is once again an affront to democracy, not this time by theHarper regime but by the corporate media barons, it is unacceptableto exclude a party who represents the wishes of so many Canadians.

I have no doubt that there will be thesame outrage that a similar decision last time brought about, it waseventually changed to include Ms May and any citizen who truly caresabout democracy must once again let these media types thatpre-filtering the news and political debates is no less a measure ofcontempt for democracy than the Harper regime has shown of late.

Elizabeth May MUST be included in thedebate if it is to have ANY legitimacy in helping us decide who REALLYcares about our parliamentary democracy.

Sign the petition athttp://demanddemocraticdebates.ca/

The Harper Legacy – Part 1

2011-03-27T08:38:00.001-04:00

Introduction - Thenext 5 weeks

Given the pre electionattack ad's put out by the Harper regime we must assume that MrHarper believes that the past actions of a political leader dictatethe future actions of both the leader and the party. With that in mind it only seems prudent to examine in detail the past actions ofMr Harper and his regime prior to, and since, taking power. Over thenext few weeks it is my intention to do so. As always I will focusupon statements and actions impacting upon our democraticinstitutions, the availability of accurate information necessary forparliamentarians and the voting public to make informed decisions,and other such actions and statements that show how this regime hasshow total disdain for democratic processes.

Over the next few weeksrational debate and factual information will no doubt be in shortsupply and what little may be found will be lost in a cacophony oflies, spin, untruths and selective or revisionist history. I hope forthe most part to avoid such political traps but make no mistake Iwill be seeking and discussing items that specifically show whatdamage the Harper regime has done to our parliamentary democracy forI truly believe that to continue down this path will lead us to asituation where 'we the people' will have even less say in ourdestiny than is now the case. I note that in the opening hours of thesalvo the Mr Harper is already lying (as he did in 2008) by sayingthat they never considered a coalition in 2004, to quote Mr Duceppe:"Mr. Harper called us to a hotel.....We changed the rules thatday....Mr. Harper lied this morning. Hewas going to form a coalition in 2004 with the Bloc."and despite Mr Ignatieff's commitment to not form a coalition it mustbe remembered that this is a perfectly legitimate form of governmentwhich Mr Layton has not ruled out.

I hope to cover thefollowing periods of Harper's 'rise to power' and will attempt toprovide links to reliable sources giving the details of the variousstatements and actions so that readers may satisfy themselves thatthose things listed did indeed take place and may read more aboutthem if desired.

I am aware of a numberof 'lists' giving an outline of such actions created over the lastfew years, and have in fact created some of my own since Harpersdisdain for parliamentary convention became apparent, if you know ofany such compendiums fell free to post a link to them in my commentssection or drop me an email. I suspect however that I will have nodifficulty in filling pages with instances of this regimesanti-democratic actions, but may have difficulty in keeping my poststo a reasonable length.

Here then are mytentative sub titles and periods to be covered over the next fewweeks:-

The Rise toPower, In Opposition and Before 2004 – 2006

The First Try,Early Election 2006 – 2008

The Second Try,Parliament Suspended - Twice

The Current Mess,No Respect -2010 -2011

Conclusion,Choices & Results

I expect to show thatthe legacy that the Harper regime leaves is that of the mostdictatorial and secretive anti-democratic government in Canadianhistory. That in waning hours of this session Conservative houseleader John Baird used the phrase “Tyranny of theMajority” and said

"We find ourselveshere today faced with the most partisan of attacks from an oppositioncoalition bent on defeating this government at all costs." todescribe the actions of the majority of our duly electedrepresentatives is but the latest indication off how little they careabout democracy.

I hope readers willfollow along as I review the rise of this destructive regime andcarefully consider if continuing on this path is constructive for ourdemocracy and the future of our parliamentary system of governance.It is increasingly looking like this election is going to be, atleast in part, about the abuse of democracy by the Harper regime, butlet us all keep ALL the partys feet to the fire and get somecommitments for parliamentary and electoral reform whilst we have thecandidates attention.

Standing Up for Democracy

2011-03-20T08:35:00.004-04:00

The following letter has been recently publishedat http://plblack99.blogspot.com/, I do not know Mr Black and can only say that I agree wholeheartedlywith him, we must indeed focus upon the attacks by the Harper regimeupon our democratic institutions and show Mr Harper that contrary tohis recent statement Canadians DO care about our democracy.

DearMessieurs Ignatieff, Layton, Duceppe and Ms. May

Inthe 2006 election, the Conservative Party’s slogan was “StandUp for Canada”.In the coming election, your common slogan must be “StandUp for Canadian Democracy”.

Iknow that you will explain to Canadians why you disagree with variouspoliciesof the current government. I am asking that, in addition, you remindCanadians of the numerous practicesof Stephen Harper which are undermining our democraticinstitutions -Parliament; the Judiciary; the Civil Service; and Canadians’right to information and the truth from their government:

AbusingParliament

· ShuttingDown (Proroguing) Parliament twicein 5 years, once to avoid a non-confidence vote which would havebrought their government to an end, and once to avoid providinginformation to Parliament on whether our armed forces werecollaborating in torture.

· IgnoringCanadian Legislation – afterpassing legislation to establish a fixed date for federal elections,the Prime Minister called an election in 2008 in violation of the newlaw. Recently, four senior Conservatives were charged with willfullyexceeding spending limits in the 2006 election campaign.

· DisruptingParliamentary Committees – theConservatives prepared a secret 200 page manual to guide ConservativeMPs on how to subvert the work of Parliamentary Committees.Conservative MPs adopted these tactics on many occasions. This is thetype of political “thuggery” one expects in Russiaor Zimbabwebut not in Canada.

· Refusingto Answer Questions – Ministersrefuse to answer questions during Question Period and refuse to allowtheir staff to respond to questions when summoned by ParliamentaryCommittees.

Underminingthe Canadian Judiciary

· Recently,Minister Kenney criticized Federal Court judges for renderingdecisions he didn’t agree with. He was sending a message abouthow they should behave in the future. Such remarks show contempt forjudicial independence – an absolute necessity in our system ofgovernment.

Attackingthe Civil Service

· Firingor maligning civil servants who don’t agree with the government– the head of theCanadian Nuclear Safety Commission (Linda Kean) was fired forordering the shutdown of the Chalk River reactor; Richard Colvin, arespected Foreign Service Officer, was ruthlessly subjected topersonal attacks by the Harper Conservatives as a result of histestimony to a parliamentary committee; the Parliamentary Secretaryto the Defense Minister sent out emails promoting the purchase ofF-35 airplanes and demeaning the former Assistant Deputy Minister ofDefense’s concern about the sole-source deal as “BS”,without any explanation of this distasteful comment.

· Lyingabout Senior Civil Servants – MinisterOda said that the CIDA President supported the government’sdecision to eliminate funding to Kairos. Months later, the Ministeradmitted that her statement was false. The Minister of Industryclaimed that the Chief Statistician (Munir Sheikh) supported thegovernment’s decision to substitute a voluntary census surveyfor the traditional long form survey. Mr. Sheikh resigned hisposition in order to tell Canadians that a voluntary survey could notdo the job of a mandatory census (i.e., the government lied about hisadvice).

Lyingto, and Hiding Information From, Canadians

· Thegovernment claimed that hundreds of Canadians had complained aboutthe intrusiveness of the long-form census. Yet, the government wasunable to substantiate this claim, and the Privacy Commissioner ofCanada hadreceived just three complaints about the census in the last decade.

· Thegovernment has introduced a dozen crime-related bills. Yet, whenasked by MPs about the expected costs of this legislation, so thatthey can decide its merits, the government claimed that suchinformation is a “Cabinet confidence”. It looks more likeCabinet arrogance and secrecy about Canadians’ public affairs.

So,my hopes rest with you to remind Canadians of the extreme steps whichthe Conservative Party, underits current leader,is prepared to take to remain in power. And if Stephen Harper everachieved a majority in the House of Commons, he would wield nearabsolute power in his tyrannical approach to governing. M. Chrétienwon a (false) majority government on three occasions with only 40 percent of voter support, and Mr. Harper has the same opportunity underour discriminatory, unrepresentative electoral system. I very muchhope that, collectively, you can prevent him from doing so.

Sincerely

PeterBlack

FormerPublic Servant

Governmentof Canada

T/H to http://wmtc.blogspot.com/2011/03/standing-up-for-canadian-democracy.html

This is of course amuch foreshortened list of the many instances where the Harperregime has shown total disdain for our parliamentary system. Whilstthe opposition's recent awaking to the fact that bringing such abusesto the attention of the public and the HoC is long overdue let us notforget that they do so more for political reasons than for any greatconcern for our democracy. Only if we the public make this an issueduring the coming weeks or months when candidates appear on ourdoorsteps, and make it clear that the protection of our parliamentarydemocracy is a condition of receiving our vote will much change nomatter who replaces King Harper.

For 'them' to care wemust show that 'we' care. Let us make parliamentary and electoralreform an 'up front' issue during the next election – which maywell be called as early as next week.

More Contempt, More Secrecy, More Stalling

2011-03-13T08:20:00.001-04:00

I have been trying hardto NOT turn this site into an anti Harper Regime rant but it is verydifficult given that said regime is constantly providing moreammunition to reinforce the position that they are indeed anantidemocratic bunch that will ignore or stall any and all rulingsthat question their actions.

The last week has seenthe opposition finally bring some of these abuses of power to thefloor of the House of Commons, a long overdue move but perhapsunderstandable in that given the Harpers regimes practice to makeeach and every sticky issue a vote of confidence and thus force anelection.

At this point failureof the opposition to pursue these issues through to what may well bethat very outcome can only be called antidemocratic in and offitself.

Several vote this weekwere focused upon democratic issues. There are the two rulings by thespeaker of the House that The Harper Regime is in contempt ofparliament. One for refusing to supply details of the costs andoperational requirements of the proposed F35 fighter purchase, thecost of their cuts to corporate taxes as well as documents related tothe cost of the tough on crime proposals. The other for thealteration of documents in the KAIROS funding fiasco.

Thisis the essence of the Speaker's ruling:"However,there is no doubt that an order to produce documents is not beingfully complied with, and this is a serious matter that goes to theheart of the House's undoubted role in holding the government toaccount... For these reasons, the Chair finds that there aresufficient grounds for a finding of a prima facie question ofprivilege in this matter."Note those words: "a seriousmatter that goes to the heart of the House's undoubted role inholding the government to account."This is a very seriousfinding, by the Speaker of our Parliament, whose job is to uphold ourrights as citizens when our Parliament meets to debate our affairs

Thesecond ruling of course is re Bev Oda:

Milliken also ruled against embattledInternational Aid Minister Bev Oda, who is accused of lying toParliament with a tortured explanation of a political decision todeny funding to a long-standing charitable organization, KAIROS, thatoften disagreed with Conservative policies. Oda first suggestedbureaucrats had rejected the KAIROS application before it wasrevealed that someone had inserted the word “not” intofunding documents after the bureaucrats had okayed the cash, in orderto stop the money from flowing.

The next step: theSpeaker has given his approval to House of Commons committees toinvestigate and vote out a recommendation to the full Parliamentwhether in both cases the Conservative Government and Bev Oda wasindeed in contempt of Parliament.

And remember thespeakersruling on the afghan documents 11 months agoarising from the refusal to comply with the previous house of commonsmotion to produce said documents some months before that and thecontinued lack of action on this file.

The federal governmentbreached parliamentary privilege with its refusal to produceuncensored documents related to the treatment of Afghan detainees andmust provide the material to MPs within two weeks, Speaker PeterMilliken has ruled. (April 27 2010)

Houseof Commons has adopted a motion, on December 10, 2009,ordering the production of Government documents related to thetransfer of Afghan detainees from the Canadian Forces to Afghanauthorities,

The committeedeliberations regarding which documents may be seen by our electedrepresentatives continue to be stalled and we wonder exactly what, ifanything, will come of this. I have said before its all very wellhaving rules, and getting the speaker to rule if such things shouldbe taken to committee but if there are no penalties for ignoring hisrulings, stalling committees charged with deciding what to do andgenerally putting things off for months if not years, then whybother?

Add to all this thefact that two Conservative senators and some senor Conservative staffhave been now charged in the 'in and out scheme' that Harper insistsis 'just an accounting error” and his recent reply whenconfronted with the fact that the Speaker has twice more ruled hisgovernment in a prima facie case of breach of privilege, Harpershrugs and says, “Youwin some, you lose some.” And hey, isn’tit awful what happened in that hockey game.

Prof. NedFranks, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Queens University suggests, “to put it kindly, that the government is,at a minimum, ignorant of the rules and principles governingparliamentary democracy and, to put it unkindly, that they don’tgive a damn and they’ll try to get away with what they can."

Then there are theconstant anti democratic attack ads using out of context andmisleading quotes from the opposition leader, that would be groundsfor legal action but for one thing, politicalparties are exempt from broadcast advertising standards.Whats with that?

There is however onepolitical ad that is pro democracy and points out the harm that allthis negativity is doing to our democracy by turning off voters,check out the GPC Changethe Channel on Attack Ads video

It seems to me the theterms 'The Harper Regime' and 'Antidemocratic' are synonymous andthat any reference to this lot and 'open and accountable is anoxymoron. No wonder I am having trouble separating democratic issuesfrom partisan issues.

My thanks to thevarious bloggers who I have quoted and linked to in this piece, itsgetting hard to keep up without help!

March 5 2009

2011-03-06T08:31:00.003-05:00

That is the date of thefirst post here at Democracy Under Fire which means that I have nowbeen posing articles and opinions about our Democracy weekly for twoyears now. The first article dealt with the “PublicConsultations on Canada’s Democratic Institutions andPractices:” as commissionedby our “New” Conservative Government in January of 2007.

At the time when the'consultations' were made the 'public' had a “sense thatpoliticians are not to be trusted.” and that partieswere “losing attention and respect from their potentialclientele or members. They (were) generally perceived asnon-accountable and perceived as neither good norespecially honest in communicating. Aspersions were cast on thequality, clarity, and ethical integrity of party platforms.”

One must wonder whatsuch a survey would reveal now, particularly if it were to cover abroader range of 'consultations' than did the original. I suspectthat the public opinion of politicians and political partys hasdiminished considerably since then, I know mine has. I started thisproject with a concern for where the governing party was leading uswith regard to the respect of our democratic conventions and rules,and spent some time examining exactly how our parliamentary systemworks, or more correctly how it is supposed to work, (do take thetime to browse a few of those early posts or check out some of thelinks in the side bar if you need some basic information in thatregard).

I have learned much inthe last two years, not the least of which is that most politicalparty's have little respect for said rules and conventions and willuse or ignore them depending upon whether that is advantageous totheir particular situation. The other thing I have learned is thatthere are no immediate penalties for abusing our parliamentary systemand even if after a lengthy process some ruling is made regardingsome wrongdoing said rulings are largely ignored or circumvented (theAfghandocument fiasco come to mind). The penalty a politicalparty pays for wrongdoing is served up by the public at the nextelection but the information they need to make that judgment ishidden, spun, discounted and often forgotten by the time such anopportunity come around.

The third thing I havelearned is that if one follows the political news from multiplesources on a regular basis, and like myself have a thing for open andhonest discourse and playing by the 'rules', then it soon becomesvery depressing. I cannot feel optimistic about the future of orCanadian Democracy, I started two years ago as “concerned”I now find my self in a position of close to despair in that regard.That one political party (with opposition partys looking on) over aperiod of just a few years can take our admittedly flawedparliamentary system from flawed to dysfunctional to bordering on adictatorship without major outrage by the majority of Canadians showswhat an uninformed and self-centered lot we all are.

The project wasoriginally started with encouragement and input from a fellowblogger, unfortunately she soon fell under that cloud of depressionthat following federal politics seems to bring on and returned to theperhaps more important and certainly more rewarding tasks of raisingfamily and becoming more self sufficient. How much longer I cancontinue to do this and retain my sanity remains to be seen, I mustvoice my admiration for the severalbloggers that follow such thing on a daily basis.write far more articles than I and maintain a balanced and largelyunbiased point of view.

This then is a bit of acry for help, if you feel strongly about the subject of our democracyand democratic processes, if you like beating your head against abrick wall, if you can set aside for the most part your politicalviews and concentrate upon the PROCESS rather than the ideology, ifyou want to share you views occasionally (or frequently) with the fewreaders that check out this blog each week then contact me. I needall the help I can get before that black cloud of democraticdestruction totally envelops us all.

James Travers RIP

2011-03-03T18:48:00.002-05:00

We are saddened to hear of the passingof James Travers columnist extraordinare, protector of democracy andwinner of a National Newspaper Award in 2009 for his column entitled:“Thequiet unravelling of Canadian democracy.” His writings inlarge part encouraged us here at Democracy Under Fire to keep goingdespite a seemingly endless series of attacks on our democraticinstitutions.

Our condolences go out to his family,friend and colleges, he will be missed.

Information is Essential.

2011-02-27T08:41:00.002-05:00

With a federal electionpossibly in the offing in the near future I have been checking up onthe actions of my current member of parliament. In doing so I havefound two great sites that allow you to do just that far easier thanon the official government site.

They both have a 'Howthey voted' page for each Bill and for each MP, a page showing thestatus of any particular bill and clips and links to eachstatement in the house by your MP. After having previously tried tofind such information on the official site it is a real pleasure todo research via these 'unofficial' sites. There is an ever increasingeffort by various citizens and organizations to 'mine' suchinformation and present it in an easily searched and readable form,such efforts and those who use their expertise to make suchinformation readily available to the 'technically challenged' must bethanked.

So check outhttp://openparliament.ca/ and http://howdtheyvote.ca/ both have a great deal of information but Openparliament inparticular has links which allow you to subscribe by email or RSS tokeep track of your MPs actions. Something we all need to do MUCH moreof.

I have added these two to the 'Democracy on the web' links in the side bar where you will find a number of other useful web sites in this regard.

If you know of, or havea particular favorite site for obtaining information on governmentactions, spending, promises or other important data then let me knowin the comments or by email and I will update this post with thelinks.

Democracy in Peril?

2011-02-20T08:21:00.003-05:00

“I am no fan of hyperbole. The notionthat democracy in a safe, successful, wealthy country like Canada,constitutionally dedicated to “peace, order, and goodgovernment,” could be “in peril” may strike somereaders as over the top.” Sosays Elizabeth May in an op-ed piece for the GulfIslands Driftwood -, she goes on to point out thatshe and a number of noted historians and constitutional experts donot think that is an unreasonable statement, and that Ned Franks,respected constitutional expert and professor emeritus at Queen’sUniversity, echoing (historian) Ron Wright, suggested our primeminister should be referred to as “King Stephen I of Canada.”.

I fear both she and the good professor are correctand the fact that “the majority of Canadians have said theybelieve we directly elect our prime minister.” (we electindividual members of parliament who may collectivity decide who isthe PM) is further proof of how deeply troubled our democracy is andhow little voters really know about our parliamentary system. Shealso speaks of how the PMO is undermining what little say that thosewho we DO elect really have by directing staff to evade subpoenas toappear before House of Commons committees. Do read the fullarticle, the Green Party leader seems to be the only political leaderwho shows any concern for the ongoing and ever increasing attacksupon our democracy by 'King Stephen' and should be thanked andsupported in her quest to bring such misuse of power to ourattention.

This week there are several other items thathighlight the way in which the Harper regime shows it utter disdainfor a democracy where parliament and the public are, or at leastshould be, fully informed and consulted in the process of determiningthe future of our country and our people.

First up Kevin Page with his recent report to theCommons Finance Committee when he appeared before committee Tuesdayhesaid that in his 25 years in the public service, nogovernment has used the umbrella of “cabinetconfidence” to hide tax data or justice legislation costs, andreiterated that this lack of data means that Parliamentarians arelosing their control over the finances of the nation.

Whilst no transcript is available of his remarks(that I can find) his speaking notes saythis:-

“There isgenuine concern that Parliament is losing control of its fiduciaryresponsibilities of approving financial authorities of public moniesas afforded in the Constitution. In the recent past, Parliament wasasked to approve changes to crime legislation without financialinformation or knowledge of monies set aside in the fiscal framework.“

and

“The PBO alsowishes to note this Government provided Parliament details onspending restraint by

department andagency in 2006 prior to parliamentary approval of financialauthorities as did the previous government in 2005 on its expenditurereview exercise. This raises the question as to why the applicationof Cabinet confidence with respect to restraint measures appears tohave changed in such a short period of time.

Further, theapplication of Cabinet confidence has been used to withholdinformation regarding the

assumptions used totranslate the private sector economic forecasts into Finance Canada’sfiscal projections.”

In other words thegovernment is now keeping secret some of the information needed bythe PBO to make accurate projections and thus for parliamentarians tomake an informed decision upon the state of the country's financesand the suitability of the upcoming budget.

Next up Andrew Coyneregarding the bizarreBev Oda affair:-

In times past —not under the last government, but in any previous — a ministerwho lied to Parliament, even once, would be gone, immediately: if notout of any genuine sense of shame or remorse on the part of thegovernment, then certainly out of a sense that it could not afford tobe publicly associated with such deceitful behaviour. But thisgovernment, and this Prime Minister, seem instead to be bent onriding this out. They do not deny that she lied. But neither do theyacknowledge that she did. They simply do not address the issue atall. Instead they make another point altogether: that the ministerwas within her rights to overrule her bureaucrats. ............

The ingredients ofthe Oda affair — bureaucrats as fall guys and ministers aspawns — are evident throughout this government. And all stemfrom the same source: a refusal to deal openly with the public, toexplain the reasons for its actions and take responsibility for them— because to do so would require the government to concede thatits actions have reasons, an underlyingintent, a purpose, a philosophy, an ideology.And the Harper government’s whole philosophy is to have nophilosophy, or none that it acknowledges.

I have said on thesepages before that whist I do not necessarily agree with thisgovernments agenda regarding legislation and finances it is not therewhere my major concern lays. It is the MANNER in which these thingsare done, as Andrew says “, with “secrecy, deception,stonewalling and contempt for Parliament” and I might addcontempt for our Democracy and the Canadian Voters.

As noted at the topElizabeth May has been pointing this out for some time now and I nowsee that Iggy is finally starting to make a similarconnection between the Harper regimes actions and thedangers to our democracy and parliamentary conventions. Whist Ms Maycan , until and unless she gains a seat in parliament, do littleabout that other than bring it to the publics attention, Iggy and therest of our parliamentarians CAN and MUST stop this insidious slidetowards the crowning of King Stephen.

Finally, a damningpiece about howthe House of Commons actually works on a day to day basiscan be found at Macleans. This brief clip is but a small part of thelong 5 page essay that highlights how badly our whole system of'debate' in the HoC and our governance needs to be brought up todate and made more relevant.

“The last two years have been marked bydirect challenges to parliamentary authority: from last year’sbattles over detainee documents and the government’s rejectionof calls for political staff to testify before parliamentarycommittees to a current squabble over the government’s refusalto turn over technical information related to its own legislation.But if the government is susceptible to charges of disrespect, theopposition—divided and fearful—has not always functionedas an effective check on authority.”

You can say that again -" theopposition has not always functionedas an effective check on authority.”

A reminder.

2011-02-13T08:22:00.000-05:00

It was just a littleover a year ago that the Conservative regime avoided accountabilityin the House of Commons by suspending parliament for the second timesince coming to power. You will recall that just before theparliamentary break the House requested (and were refused) access todocuments related to prisoner transfers in Afghanistan, and shortlyafter returning finally in late March the speaker ruled that theymust be produced. That bit of 'accountability' STILL has not happenedwith a parliamentary committee STILL deciding what can and cannot beseen.

This year they havedecided to return as normal after the Christmas break but are busyflooding the airwaves with partisan attack advertising previouslyonly seen during election periods. Is this a step forward orbackwards? Its hard to tell, but to my mind it does not bode well forour electoral system when the government of the day shows so littlerespect for both our duly elected opposition MPs and for our citizenswho, it would seem, are expected to believe this crap.

A year later and so faras I can see our Parliamentary system is still 'non functional andstill in 'crisis'!

With the everincreasing secrecy from this 'government', the latest being acompletely closed door on information regarding the 'negotiations'regarding Trade and Border Security (previously known as the Securityand Prosperity Partnership), we wonder what else they are hiding andwhats coming next. One such thing is the budget and despite muchposturing by all side there is no way of knowing if it will pass orif the public will have another shot at selecting a more accountablelot of MPs to 'serve' us (is that an oxymoron?). Should an electionbe called we have a real problem, that being does one vote for theman or woman, the party, the platform, past performance or what. Manywill no doubt vote for 'none of the above' by failing to vote at all,although thats no solution I find it increasing hard to blame them,the choices are far from clear. I for one will vote for none of thosecurrently with a seat in the HoC, they have all had their chance andfailed miserably, its time for some new ideas and less jaded folksto have a go. We particularly need those that would seriously examineand consider changes to our electoral system (they have all said theywould, but once in a position to do so totally caved and have donenothing) and respect and improve upon our parliamentary system andrules.

I see little hope ofthis actually happening but submit that the status quo where MPs votelike sheep with their party and around 20% of the adult populationenable a handful of uncountable power hungry demigods to dictatethe future of our nation is unacceptable.

Democracy

2011-02-06T08:24:00.000-05:00

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.

H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

For Richer or for Poorer

2011-01-30T08:32:00.001-05:00

It seems that there arestill some folks that cannot see the difference between taxpayerfunding of political partys by a per vote subsidy and taxpayerfunding by tax credits for individual donation, and the TheJurist had a great breakdown of the numbers last week

Apart from the factthat the former amounts to a relatively minuscule amount and thelatter exceeds that by a considerable factor, the former is spreadacross partys by the number of votes the get and the latter, whilst25% is directly from the supporter, is largely (75%) paid for by usall but directed by the greatest amount of donation, there is anotherdifference.

It is this. If a partysplatform appeals to the typical working man, low income families, theless fortunate in our society, those desperately seeking work inorder to support themselves and their families, and each of thosesupporters makes a modest donation commensurate with their ability todo so, it will differ considerably from those who do so from astronger financial position both in the ability to find the funds andthe cost to the taxpayer..

If 10,000 folks in the$20,000 income bracket scrape together a donation each of say $50 theparty of their choice will get 500,000. Interestingly most of thiswill come directly from the individuals and in most cases they willreceive LITTLE OR NO tax relief as it is improbable that the extratax credits (minimal as they will be for that small donation) willalter their tax position.

If 10,000 folks in the$100,000 income bracket make a similar donation (percentage wisebased upon income) their $250 donation (an amount much easer to comeby than the $50 for the less fortunate) will raise 2.5 million andgiven their tax bracket it is a given that the full 75% tax rebatewill be taken, so that around 1.8 million will come from general taxrevenue and just 25% from the individuals.

It can be clearly seenthat those partys with a platform supporting those with a moreaffluent lifestyle and failing to support the less affluent in outsociety have a real advantage when it comes to fundraising andtaxpayer support. Which is, I submit, why one particular party isonce again trying to skew the funding model even further in theirdirection.

It is this same mindset, I believe, that has led to the childish, immature andanti-democratic spate of TV ad's emerging from the Harper regime.Simply put if they can push reasonable and clear thinking Canadiansto the point where their view of our political system leads then todisconnect, walk away in disgust, fail to support any party and notvote, then all that leaves is the rabid right, the extreme left, thenut bars and the easily led who believe all the spin. And thusly willKing Harper come to get his One Party dictatorship, not by democraticmeans but by default!

Many have said that thenext federal election will be a turning point for Canada, there islittle doubt that this is true. The question is will it mark a returnto a more democratic and inclusive government or a further decentinto a more anti-democratic and exclusive autocracy. Its your choiceCanadians, stand ready to make it, but please do not do so based uponthe lies and spin currently being aired on your television set.

On Political Advertising and Funding.

2011-01-23T08:26:00.001-05:00

With the recent roundof 'advertising' by political partys and the character assassinationcontained in many of them one has to wonder what, if anything theyhave to do with our democratic process. When you add thisout-of-election-period spate of 'advertising' with the recentstatement from our ruling regime that they will once again seek todiscontinue the per vote funding that gives opposition partys, largeand small, a least a fighting chance of getting their message out tothe voters and countering the resources available to whatever partyis currently in power, then we must conclude damn little!

One must conclude that,at least so far as the ruling regime is concerned, its all aboutretaining power and demonising any that might challenge that, aboutuntruths and innuendo being more effective than truth andinformation, about how money can buy or influence voting pasterns. Atthis point the opposition must be congratulated for not sinking torespond with personal attack ads but concentrating on policy howeverI wonder if this is going to now be the norm....... a constant yearround barrage of political advertising by those partys that canafford to pay for such unnecessary and partisan posturing.

The opposition doeshave an excuse, they were after all 'attacked' plus it is their JOBto hold the government to account and to point out flaws inquestionable legislation and spending. I do hope they continue totake the high road as things escalate as they no doubt will.

It would seem that thisis all in preparation for yet another test of seeing who blinks firstas the budget is presented, GreenParty Leader Elizabeth May had this to say recently:-

“A PrimeMinister in a Minority government preparing a budget should bemeeting with Opposition leaders. The Finance minister should be doingthe rounds with opposition finance critics. Key stakeholders shouldbe getting a lot of time for their proposals to fight the deficit,while continuing economic recovery and creating full-time,well-paying jobs.

But collaboration and olive branches arenot in Mr. Harper’s repertoire. Attack ads clearly are.........
Clearly Mr. Harper is in no mood to make Parliament work. Theseads are the Parliamentary equivalent of a declaration ofwar............. Attack ads are anti-democratic by definition.
Itturns out they are also anti-Canadian. Thanks to Toronto Starjournalist SusanDelacourt’s blog "Ad standards"I read the pleafrom Advertising Standards Canada to political parties.“

With this all in mindperhaps any political advertisement should be required to show thefollowing disclaimer during the entire length of the broadcast or atthe bottom of every newspaper or on-line advertisement.

“Politicalparties are exempt from “truth in advertising”requirements of the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards. “

It seems that not onlycan MPs get away with untruths and personal attacks in the HoC and be protected by'parliamentary privileged' but the political partys can fabricate anykind of fiction for their advertising with no repercussions, at leastso far as the broadcasting and advertising industry is concerned.Hardly news, but hardly the sort of thing you would expect in a'democratic' country either.

We cannot leave thissubject without pointing out one lie that is being recirculated insome of these ads, that being that a coalition government is somehowwrong, unconstitutional and a thing to be feared. I call BULLSHIT. Iwill not repeat here the many arguments that show it is both alegitimate form of governance or point to the many democracy's acrossthe world that have (or have had) a coalition government, I willhowever say that I am disappointed that the opposition have sostrongly rejected the notion that such a cooperative government ispossible when we all know that if and when it become politicallyadvantageous to do so they will rapidly change their tune and seek toform such an alliance.

Must we descend furtherinto a what can only be called a majority dictatorship from ourcurrent minority dictatorship before our “representatives”and the citizens who elect them wake up a realize that democracy isfar more precious than one particular ideology or another, and lies,spin and personal attacks have no part in such a system.

Random Reading

2011-01-16T08:36:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from articlesI have recently read – no further comment required!

ElizabethMay - While Canadian political culture is not steeped invitriol and hatred, the trend lines are not good. We areallowing increased levels of incivility to creep into our culture. Abuse, vilification of political opponents, is becoming increasinglycommonplace. The nastiness of anonymous postings on websites Imentioned in my last blog. That new anti-social use of socialmedia is a large part of the problem, but it is not the full extentof it. Mainstream media is turning nastier. Even beforethe Sun Media TV channel gets to the airwaves, its “star”players, people like Ezra Levant and Lorrie Goldstein, are bringing alevel of rude, boorish behaviour to Canadian radio and TV. Ourpolitical discourse has dramatically worsened in the last five years.The heckling and abuse in Question Period set such a low bar thatcitizens turn away in disgust. Treating each other with respectis a foundational aspect of a decent society. “Todisagree without being disagreeable” has long been a Canadianway of discussing differences. We are losing that.

JamesTravers - Identity has long been a Canadian crisis. Livingnext door to an economic and cultural giant makes we-the-pygmies alittle nervous and a lot self-conscious.

Understandable as that entrenched uncertainty is,it masks a more immediate challenge. If the 21st century is to belongto Canada in ways the 20th never quite did, Canadians must abandonthe notion that they are merely clients of the state and assert theirrights as owners of the country.

The difference betweencustomer and proprietor is pivotal. Customers are content with thetimely delivery of pleasing goods and services. Proprietors mustsafeguard the long-term stability, growth and competitiveness of theenterprise................

Citizens content to be clients can shrug awaythose concerns. Canadians who remember that they own the place can’tafford to be so complacent.

GloriaGalloway - The three independent federal watchdogs createdby the Conservative government operate largely behind the closeddoors of their own offices and, after one was exposed this fall forhaving done little in three years, critics are asking questions aboutthe effectiveness of the other two.

The case of IntegrityCommissioner Christiane Ouimet, who investigated just seven of the228 complaints from public-service whistleblowers she received duringher tenure, left many in Parliament questioning how the problems inthat office had gone unnoticed.................

Karen Shepherd, who washired to ensure that politicians are not being unduly influenced bytheir well-connected friends, has never found anyone guilty ofbreaking the rules in the year and a half that she has beenCommissioner of Lobbying.

And, in more than threeyears as Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson has discovered just oneperson, a Liberal MP, to have violated the Conflict of Interest Code.At the same time, she has absolved cabinet ministers, Conservativestaff, a Conservative MP and the government itself of myriad allegedindiscretions.

The Canadian Press - A new studyranks Canada dead last in an international comparison offreedom-of-information laws — a hard fall after many yearsbeing judged a global model in openness. The study by a pair ofBritish academics looked at the effectiveness offreedom-of-information laws in five parliamentary democracies:Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Ms. Legault, whose office resolves complaints fromrequesters, said while the study has methodological shortcomings,just-published government statistics covering the 2009-2010 fiscalyear nevertheless support the finding that the regime is broken.

“We can use our own data, and come to theconclusion that our system is in decline,” she said.

Only about 16 per cent of the 35,000 requestsfiled last year resulted in the full disclosure of information,compared with 40 per cent a decade ago, she noted. And delays in therelease of records continue to grow, with just 56 per cent ofrequests completed in the legislated 30-day period last year,compared with almost 70 per cent at the start of the decade. Ms.Legault's office also suffers from a chronic lack of resources,creating backlogs, while the law does not give her the power to orderthe release of documents.

The HarperConservatives first came to power in 2006 on an explicit promise toreform the Access to Information Act dramatically but have largelyfailed to deliver after five years in power.

Governmentof Canada - The Government of Canada currently makes asignificant amount of open data available through variousdepartmental websites. Fall 2010 will see the launch of a new portalto provide one-stop access to federal data sets by providing a“single-window” to government data. In addition toproviding a common “front door” to government data, asearchable catalogue of available data, and one-touch datadownloading, it will also encourage users to develop applicationsthat re-use and combine government data to make it useful in new andunanticipated ways, creating new value for Canadians. Canada is alsoexploring the development of open data policies to regularise thepublication of open data across government. The Government of Canadais also working on a strategy, with engagement and input from acrossthe public service, developing short and longer-term strategies tofully incorporate Web 2.0 across the government.

In addition, Canada’s proactivedisclosure initiatives represent an ongoing contribution to open andtransparent government. These initiatives include the posting oftravel and hospitality expenses, government contracts, and grants andcontribution funding exceeding pre-set thresholds. Subsequent phaseswill involve the alignment of proactive disclosure activities withthose of the Access to Information Act, which gives citizens theright to access information in federal government records.

Eaves.care the above - On the open data front, the bad is that theportal has not launched. We are now definitely passed the fall of2010 and, as for whatever reason, there is no Canadian federal opendata portal. This may mean that the policy (despite being announcedpublicly in the above document) is in peril or that it is simplydelayed.......................

Possibly the heart stopping moment in this briefcomes in the last paragraph where the government talks about postingtravel and hospitality expenses. While these are often posted (suchas here)they are almost never published in machine readable format and sohave to be scrapped in order to be organized, mashed up or comparedto other departments. Worse still, these files are scattered acrossliterally hundreds of government websites and so are virtuallyimpossible to track down. This guy hasdone just that, but of course now he has the data, itis more easily navigable but no more open then before. In addition,it takes him weeks (if not months) to do it, something the governmentcould fix rather simply.

The government should be lauded for trying to makethis information public. But if this is their notion of proactivedisclosure and open data, then we are in for a bumpy, ugly ride.

Finally if youhave not already seen it do read this lengthy summation of theatmosphere in Ottawa from the TorontoStar “Fear and loathing in Ottawa”

MP's – Why are we here?

2011-01-09T08:53:00.000-05:00

Recently StevePaikin of TVO spoke to Allison Loat of Samara Canadaabout their second report based upon MP exit interviews titledWelcometo Parliament: A Job With No Description . Thestartling bit about this report is that the 65 former MPsinterviewed, many of them having served for 10 years or more, couldnot even agree upon the basics of why they were there.

Following their firstreport, TheAccidental Citizen?, this report documents thewidelydisparate and often conflicting views the MPsexpressed as to the essential purpose of their role and what theyfelt they were elected to accomplish. They also acknowledged feelingunprepared for their roles as Parliamentarians, and said theyreceived littleor no formal training or orientation.

Here are some extractsfrom the report highlighting these troubling findings, remember theseare based upon interviews with FORMER MPs and it seems highlyprobable that things have deteriorated in the period since these MPsfirst were elected.

“ Ultimately,our 308 Members of Parliament all hold the same essential position.Given this fact, we were surprised that the MPs lacked a sharedunderstanding of the job’s key components, responsibilities andexpectations. For example, two-thirds of MPs we interviewed spent atleast a portion of their time in Ottawa on the opposition benches, soit came as a surprise that only a few mentioned holding a governmentaccountable as part of their job.”

“A similarlysmall number mentioned engaging the public in determining thepolicies that shape our country and communities. Even those MPs whodefined their role as representing constituents were unlikely to talkof such engagement. This raises important questions about therelationship between Parliament and the citizenry, themes we willaddress in future reports.”

“But, at thesame time, most Parliamentarians we interviewed arrived in Ottawawith neither a concrete understanding of what they would be doingthere, or how they could go about doing it. The MPs gave a widevariety of responses to questions regarding their role in the Houseof Commons. “

“Furthermore,our group of MPs was given almost no orientation or training, and wasforced to devise their own means of preparing for the job. Theirprior experience was seldom considered when it came to theirlegislative and committee appointments. “

“Theorientation is terrible,” one MP declared. “You getthere, they take you in the House, they give you a book [on]constituency rights and responsibilities, the former Speaker talksabout being in the House, and that’s it. There’s noorientation. There is no training. There is nothing on how to beeffective,” said another MP. “You learn by the seat ofyour pants,” admitted a third MP.

It is difficult tosummarize the opinions of the former MPs on the above as they were sovaried and contained few common threads, about the only thing theydid agree on was the lack of orientationand how long it took to get up to speed, youwill have to read the full report to get a clearerpicture of what these views were. Suffice to say here that the viewof their job ranged from representing the views of theirconstituents, their own views or their partys views; advocating fortheir local area or the country as a whole; proving assistance totheir constituents or focusing upon life in Ottawa; communicatingwith those who elected them or having little regard to local viewsand many other far ranging diversity of opinion.

A small minorityeven said:-

"Collectivelywith colleagues, [an MP] must play a role as a watchdog of governmentactivities, and ensure that the government [pursues] the publicinterests and spends money wisely." and“The House… as a place… to hold thegovernment to account has to be rethought,”

The report sums it uplike this :-

“Together, our 65 MPs used an astonishingvariety of terms and concepts to describe the very same position.This immense variation should give pause to anyone concerned with thepolitical process.

We would hope thatMPs should be in general agreement as to why they are in Ottawa andwhat they are supposed to be doing there. Furthermore, Canadiansshould have an understanding of what to expect from their electedrepresentatives. As it stands, it is not clear that Parliamentarianshave a shared conception of an MP’s job description, whichlikely makes it difficult for the electorate to have a clear vieweither.”

SeveralConstitutional experts have said that the rules of engagement in theHoC and other constitutional conventions need to be examined,clearly defined and written down, it would seem that the role andduties of those appointed to the House need to be similarly defined!

.....................

Samara is charitableorganization that studies citizen engagement with Canadian democracy.This project began when co-founders Alison Loat and Michael MacMillanlearned that exit interviews, common in many organizations, had neverbeen undertaken systematically in one of the most importantworkplaces in our country—our federal Parliament.

Coalition a reality?

2011-01-02T08:20:00.001-05:00

With the possibility ofan election once again (still?) in the news it was good to see thatGov. Gen. David Johnston has been busy brushing up on constitutionalgovernments in case he is called upon to navigate a choppy politicalcrisis. That hehas said that he sees nothing wrong orillegitimate with coalition governments and recognizes that “anygovernor general who has that role in a constitutional system likeours, from time to time will be confronted with questions where thereis an element of discretion,” is encouraging. Wouldthat the attitude of our official opposition was equally encouraging.

As one observersaid in a reply to Scott'spost “Add the GG’s remarks to the factthat Harper and crew seem quite unfazed by the installation of acoalition government in Merrie Olde Englande. I think the fractiousnature of recent Parliamentary discourse (QP) could make the idea ofa cooperative coalition quite attractive to many Canadians. Adedicated educational approach by would-be coalition partners wouldbe beneficial, too.

The big problem isthat Ignatieff has been unequivocal in his rejection of a coalition.He’s played right into Harper’s framing of a coalition asillegitimate and painted himself into a corner.”

That sums it up verynicely, not 5 minutes after the last attempt to form a coalition fellapart the leaders resumed attacking each other and have, by theircontinued and ongoing rhetoric of trying to frame their individualpartys as the ONLY choice, doomed us to yet more “dysfunctional”parliamentary shaninikins. The reality is that WHENEVER the nextelection take place it is highly improbable that any party will geta majority, unless perhaps some of the conservatives dirty washingthat they have been so desperately trying to hide sees more light ofday, .... AND the electorate takes any notice of such revelations.But then the alternative choices for our citizens are rather hard toselect, does one choose the NDP or Greens in a effort to have somealternate views in the House or select the Conservative Lite alsoknown as the Liberal party, either way a minority is probable.

Unless you are amanipulating control freak with little or no regard for parliamentaryconvention and rules, and apparently some 30% of our citizens arequite happy with such running the country, a functional minoritygovernment requires a degree formal agreement of cooperation betweentwo or more partys...... its called a coalition folks. That the scaretactics of the Harper regime have not only convinced so many of ourcitizens that such cooperation is untenable and 'unconstitutional'but that the official opposition is reinforcing this belief withtheir anti-coalition rhetoric is clear indication of how thesepoliticians put themselves and their party before us and our country.

Anotherobserver highlights the direction that things aregoing in with this observation:-

“Interms of the last 40 years, our Parliament is sitting a lot less anddoing a lot less,” says Queen’s University politicalscientist Ned Franks.

Franks saysgovernments have compensated for prolonged parliamentary timeouts byincreasingly cramming all manner of unrelated legislation intomassive omnibus bills, which allow for little individual scrutiny ofthe various measures. They’ve also resorted more frequently topassing general enabling legislation, giving the government broaddiscretion to act in future without going back to Parliament forapproval.

Theupshot is that the government evades scrutiny and Canadians are leftin the dark about what their federal politicians are upto..................

Thisdoesn’t necessarily mean the Harper government is legislatingless. Franks said the government pushed about half of a normal year’slegislation through in a single bill — this year’smassive budget implementation bill that included varied measuresdealing with all manner of subjects from environmental assessments tothe post office to the future of Canada’s atomic energyindustry. “

Its clear that NONE ofthe large political partys can be trusted to run things on their ownand that only a wide range of ideas and views in the HoC will producea balanced and generally acceptable outcome. That is how parliamentis suppose to work but with the precedent set by the current minoritygovernment I doubt that parliament (or the senate) will ever be thesame again, I morn for our democracy and hope that a coalition FORCEDupon the politicians by the voters choice will smarten them all up.

What we did not get for Christmas.

2010-12-26T08:07:00.000-05:00

Last year Isimply asked for a functional and democratic parliamentand said “I hung my xmas stocking out and would have loved tosee it bulging with new cooperation, accountability, access toinformation and other nice surprises but I woke up to see just apartisan lump of coal in the toe. Maybe next year….”

No such luck, so Iwent back to my 2008s wish list hoping to see a moreencouraging return on my list, that year I asked for much more but itseems over the intervening two years NON of these things have come topass. The list remains unchanged and just as badly needed now as thenso ever an optimist (although it becoming more difficult to remain soeach year) I will repeat my wishes this year with little real hope ofgetting any of it..

I want ALL our MPs toput Country before self and Party.
I want consensus notconfrontation to be the norm in the HoC.
I want truth not spin andpropaganda from our leaders.
I want our scientists, bureaucratsand commissions free to speak their minds.
I want a strong andindependent Senate to maintain those checks and balances upon ourlegislators.
I want a functioning parliament for more than just 93days a year. (we did do a little better this year)
I wantparliamentary rules strengthened, codified and followed. (and got theopposite)
I want penalties for MPs and Leaders who attack or abuseour democratic systems.
I want less “votes of confidence”and more “free” votes in the HoC.
I want our electoralsystem to be reviewed and made more representational.
I want partypolicy to have more effect on voters than party disinformation.
Iwant alternative partys to have a fair chance of being heard andelected.
I want the notion of minority or coalition governmentsbeing a bad thing removed.
I want independent “made inCanada” rules for our Health, Drug and Food systems to remainjust that..
I want less integration and regulation “consolidation”with the U.S. not more. (again we are getting to opposite)
I want“the man of steel” Kevin Page and the ParliamentaryBudget office to be able to continue their work without interference.(I am surprised and pleased that he continues his work despite thedifficulties his department faces in getting information and funding,although I understand he will not be renewing his 'contract'.)
Iwant the Auditor General to be able to publish her reports at anytime, not just when parliament is sitting. (She also continues to doa sterling job of revealing the waste and misuse of governmentresources)
I want Canada to retain or regain control of ournatural resources and our major manufacturing and financialsystems.
I want that “open and accountable” governmentthat I was promised last year. (That was really wishful thinkingwasn't it?)
I want public servants, federal, provincial andmunicipal employees to realize that the taxpayers pockets are all butempty and reduce their demands for “more”. (Its beenpretty quiet on that front but I suspect as the spending restrictionstake hold in 2011 we will hear more on this one)

Is that asking toomuch? At this point I would settle for a glimmer of hope that some ofthese things are even being considered but I suspect that all of uswill go away again this year with a promise of sweets but land upwith something that leaves a bad taste in our mouth!

A Small Incident....

2010-12-19T08:39:00.002-05:00

.....in Great Brittanis perhaps an indication of where our 'democracy's' are headed worldwide, it is a symptom of the over reaction by governments to what isadmittedly a troubling tendency of a relatively small group ofreligious extremists to want to kill those who do not agree withthem. Western democracy's must indeed be on guard against suchfanatical extremism but this is ridiculous......

Here’sone example of the intimidation of peacefulprotest by the young that is happening all over Britain. NickyWishart is a 12-year-old self-described “maths geek” wholives in the heart of David Cameron’s constituency. He wasgutted when he found out his youth club was being shut down as partof the cuts: there’s nowhere else to hang out in his village.He was particularly outraged when he discovered online that Cameronhad said, before the election, that he was “committed” tokeeping youth clubs open. So he did the right thing. He organized atotally peaceful protest on Facebook outside Cameron’sconstituency surgery. A few days later, the police arrived at hisschool. They hauled him out of his lessons, told him theanti-terrorism squad was monitoring him and threatened him witharrest.

The message to Nicky Wishart and his generation isvery clear: don’t get any fancy ideas about being an engagedcitizen. Go back to your X-Box and X-Factor, and leave politics tothe millionaires in charge.

There have been manysuch reports at home and abroad coming not from countrys wheredespotic regimes rule but from supposedly democratic country's. If weallow our governments, the police and the 'security forces' to getaway with this kind of nonsense then those fanatics have already wonthe war. As has been seen here in Canada its all to easy forauthorities to trample upon our civil liberties in the name of'security', hold citizens for sometimes extended periods withoutrecourse, restrict travel of individuals with no proof of wrongdoingor otherwise circumnavigate our legal system all in the name of'protecting us from terrorism'.

We now learn the theSecurity and Prosperity Partnership that previously raised suchconcern from citizens on both sides of the border was in fact notscrapped but merely carried on behind closed doors and as before withno parliamentary (or citizen) input. Under the guise of making theborder 'more open' for trade and commerce a move is afoot to'harmonize' our regulations with those of our neighbors to the south(read - change ours to suit them), and to create a 'North AmericanSecurity Border' (read – become as paranoid and restrictive asour American counterparts).

Even when ourgovernment deems it necessary to bring such things to the attentionof parliament with some proposed changes to laws or regulations itis often buried in the depths of some bill purporting to be a stepforward and rarely studied in depth by our parliamentarians. Shouldit be questioned or further study or debate be needed the all toooften it is rammed through using 'whipped' votes where all ourrepresentatives follow their leader like sheep right into theabattoir.

As each day goes bywith more and more news of abuse of our existing systems both civiland parliamentary I begin to despair whether there is any way off ofthis slippery slope to authoritarianism. That the elite in both thepolitical world and in the corporate world seem to think that the'common man' will be forever content to struggle under the everincreasing burden of more regulation and less choice of our owndestiny whilst they line their pockets on out dime just rubs salt inthe wound. In Europe as governments try to correct their mistakes ofallowing the corporate world to dictate their monetary policy, bycutting programs and support to the common man whilst largely leavinguntouched the corporate crooks, the citizens are taking to the streetin their thousands.

I do hope that we donot reach that point here in Canada but I fear it is not far off, theausterity signals are coming from government already and this coupledwith the highly authoritative and controlling regime currently inpower is almost certain to create even further hardship anddiscontent amongst many of our citizens. Unfortunately at this pointI am not sure that a change of leadership would make much difference,particularly when the alternative is best described as 'The Same butDifferent' and both of the major partys refuse to even consider (atleast publicly at this time) working with others representingalternative views. It is long past time that these political partysstarted working for the common man who elects them rather that thecorporate interests that fund their back-room deals, but I feel itmay well take rioting in the streets to get their attention. Theyneed a profound shake up and getting just 25% or 30% support from theever decreasing number of us bothering to vote is not going to changea damn thing no matter who wins.

The Week of Revelations?

2010-12-12T08:43:00.002-05:00

Its been a week ofrevelations, or perhaps that should be a week of confirmations ofwhat we already knew, but either way the reports of the AuditorGeneral and Ontario Ombudsman have given several thing a little morelight of day. A number of other press releases and news reports thisweek have shown that Democracy is indeed Under Fire, I am not surewhether I should be depressed that such things are going on or gladthat the manipulation of our system of government is being brought tolight.

The following are but afew of the reports this week, if you can read these and then say thatour democracy is not in trouble then you are either brain dead or soblind that you should not need those rose-coloured glasses that youare wearing!

Read them andweep.......

Prime Minister StephenHarper nominated Ouimet as commissioner on June 12, 2007, saying her"unique combination of skills and experience [would] serve herwell as she leads the implementation of the new regime for theprotection of whistleblowers."

It didn't turn out thatway, given the AG's findings, and one must question whether this wasthe intent of Mr. Harper all along, to undermine the Public SectorIntegrity Commissioner position and let public sector whistleblowerstwist in the wind.

http://impolitical.blogspot.com/2010/12/harpers-integrity-commissioner.html

“Our votingsystem creates a large risk of the most anti-democratic of alloutcomes, which is a majority government that got the minority ofpublic votes,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May. May was grantedthe right to intervene in a case before the Quebec Court of Appealthat argues the current electoral system in that province violatesthe Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/890489--democracy-groups-take-aim-at-canada-s-electoral-system

“Afull year after Parliament demanded those documents, this charadehasn’t made a single document public. It flies in the face ofthe Speaker’s ruling. Instead of holding this government toaccount, my opposition colleagues are helping to shield records atthe heart of this investigation,” said Defence Critic JackHarris. “If they couldn’t see it six months ago, surelythey can see it now: We need a public inquiry.”http://farnwide.blogspot.com/2010/12/parliament-is-submissive.html

It will be twelvemonths ago Friday that the Commons passed a motion demanding thegovernment release documents revealing what ministers and generalsknew about Afghanistan prisoner abuse. Since then, an ugly fight thatincluded the padlocking of Parliament and a celebrated ruling bySpeaker Peter Milliken fizzled into a hapless skirmish, leavingCanadians none the wiser.

Conservative prospectswere so bleak last December that Harper prorogued Parliament —thinly claiming the government needed time to recalibrate its agenda— rather than disclose documents widely believed to be damning.But oh what a difference a year makes. Today Conservatives areclimbing opinion polls, pressure for an inquiry is below zero andLiberals along with the Bloc are mired in a glacial process that hasyet to make a single document public.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/903851--travers-harper-escapes-political-control-prisoner-scrutiny

“By changing thelegal landscape without fanfare in this way, regulation 233/10operated as a trap for those who relied on their ordinary legalrights,” wrote Marin in his exhaustive post-mortem.....

“The effect ofthe regulation … was to infringe on the freedom of expressionin ways that do not seem justifiable in a free and democraticsociety,”

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/902817

TheHarper government is bracing for a backlash over a border securityagreement it is negotiating with the United States, anticipating itwill spark worries about eroding sovereignty and privacy rights, adocument obtained by The Globe and Mail shows...............

The communications strategy for the perimeter security declaration –which the document says will be unveiled in January, 2011 –predicts one of the biggest potential critics will be the federalprivacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. That’s because the dealis expected to increase the amount of data exchanged between lawenforcement and other government authorities in both countries.

http://pov-mentarch1.blogspot.com/2010/12/welcome-to-your-authoritarian.html

Canada is underpressure from U.S. officials to further comply with American securityrules which in some cases, threatens its sovereignty and the privacyof its citizens. As a result of the war on terrorism, the U.S.government now has more power to restrict air travel and is not onlydictating North American, but also international security measures.
Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act would requireCanadian airline carriers that fly over the U.S. to provide theDepartment of Homeland Security (DHS) with passenger information.This includes name, date of birth, gender, as well as passport anditinerary details when applicable.

http://beyourownleader.blogspot.com/2010/11/canada-surrenders-sovereignty-and.html

If the concepts ofpower, representation, justice, equality, citizenship and humanrights figured more prominently in public debate, then we would haveat our fingertips an analytically rigorous set of ideas that bothreveal and explain the uneven distribution of influence and resourcesthat undermines democracy at this time. Taking transformative actionto rebuild our political fabric would follow from each of thosestarting points. Yet all six themes have lost traction relative tothe totemic markers of our time, notably competitiveness,productivity and economic growth.

http://reviewcanada.ca/essays/2010/12/01/canadian-political-science-missing-in-action/

There are times whenall our politicians fail Canadians, and even the most partisanamongst us have to admit it they’re all behaving like fools.And the actions of the major three parties when it comes to Bill C-12is one of those times.C-12 is a government bill that theConservatives have been in no big hurry to pass, and the oppositionparties have shown no particular desire to push them on.

http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2010/12/conservatives-liberals-and-ndp.html

A remote area ofMexican desert is popularly referred to as the 'Silent Zone'. Radio communications are said to fail there due to local magneticfields, and some claim that conversations cannot even be heard whenpeople are in the Zone. Is the Senate in danger of becoming asimilarly afflicted zone? Quite possibly, although not byreason of naturalcauses.
http://www.albertasenator.ca/hullabaloos/?article&542

Perhaps the whole ofCanada is in a silent zone, because our political masters sure do notseem to be hearing us, or if they are our words are left drifting inthe wind.........

Fair Representation not coming anytime soon.

2010-12-05T08:31:00.000-05:00

But for JohnIbbitson's bit in the G&M the demise of the billto bring just a little more proportional representation to ourCanadian parliament would probably gone unnoticed. It seems that ALLour representatives in the HoC, or a least all their party bosses,have decided quietly amongst themselves that bill C12, a bill tobring the number of MPs more closely aligned with population growthwill be shelved.

To quote Ibbison“Sources report that the Conservative, Liberal and NDPleadership encountered strong resistance to the bill among Quebec andMaritime MPs, who correctly argued that their regions would haverelatively less influence in the House. The Bloc Québécoisopposed the legislation from the start.

The Liberals andConservatives especially feared that passing the bill could harm theelectoral prospects of their Quebec MPs. Facing caucus revolts andpotential electoral losses, the government shelved the bill.”

In other words whogives a shit about democracy or fair representation when we (theparty) may loose a few seats in an already over represented area.What chance then of getting ANY support for the far wider electoralreform that is sorely needed in this country, those now in poweralong with those who think they may have a chance to regain powerwill fight tooth and nail to retain the status quo because it servesTHEIR interest. When will these folks who are supposed to berepresenting the best interests of their Constituents and OUR Countrystart putting those interests before self and Party? Not until theyare forced to I suspect.

The imbalance ishighlighted by Ibbitson by pointing out some numbers from the recentby-election - “The need for the bill was manifest inMonday’s by-elections. In the exurban Toronto riding ofVaughan, 120,864 voters were entitled to cast ballots. But WinnipegNorth has only 51,198 electors, making a vote in Greater Torontoworth less than half the value of a vote in Winnipeg.”

Even worse are thesenumbers from StageLeft -

“Liberal MPKevin Lamoureux will take his seat in parliament to represent theriding of Winnipeg North after collecting 7,303 of a possible 51,198votes - that's 14.26% of the electorate.

Conservative MPJulian Fantino will take his seat in Parliament to represent theriding of Vaughan after collecting 19,260 of a possible 120,864 votes- that's 15.94% of the electorate.

Conservative MP RobertSopuk will take his seat in Parliament to represent the riding ofDauphin--Swan River--Marquette after collecting 8,176 of a possible53,549 votes - that's 15.27% of the electorate. “

No matter which side ofthe equation these MPs are on it would seem that they can hardly saythat they have the support of their constituents or indeed trulyrepresent the riding from which they come. True, the turn out waspathetic, not that such apathy is uncommon in by-elections, or forthat matter general elections. If the question was asked “whydo you not vote” I suspect many respondents would say “Becausemy vote makes no difference, even if the person I vote for wins the'party' will dictate how he votes anyway, so why bother”!

I maintain (despitethat I am one of those minorities whose vote will have less cloutshould proportional representation ever take hold, a rural resident)that representation that more closely follows the actual wishes ofour citizens can do nothing but improve the way in which ourdemocracy works. I will mean a broader range of views will actuallysee the light of day in parliament, it will mean less of a monopolyof power by the long established partys, it will mean more citizenswill feel they have greater control over who gets elected and mayeven wrest a little power back from those Political Partys who thinktheir way is the highway and everyone else is to be ignored.

Returning to thekilling of Bill C12, its not all bad. In these times of fiscalrestraint the addition of 30 new MPs would costus a minimum of 18 to 20 Million a year if we includesalaries, pensions, office budgets, allowances and services providedby the House. Its hard to gain any perspective when our governmentproposes to spend millions on fighter jets designed for war when oursearch and rescue folks still do not have new helicopters and ournavy still does not have any heavy ice breakers to patrol ournorthern waters. Whenour prime minister and his ministers have increased their ownspending by 16.5%, when Harper's office expenses ballooned to$9,894,370 (Yes, thats almost 10 MILLION in “office expenses”)in 2009, when the Conservative government spent $100 million onpolling over the past five years.

It seems to me it isnot MORE MPs we need, but BETTER MPs working for the betterment ofour citizens rater than the “Party”, representing a moreevenly distributed number of citizens and elected in a morerepresentative way!

Defending Democracy

2010-11-28T08:13:00.000-05:00

In any civilizedsociety there must be rules which we all generally follow, in ademocracy hopefully we have at least some input at to what thoserules are even if only by selecting those who make them. There willalways be those who do not fully agree with such rules and whilst weall have a problem with some of them we generally follow them as todo otherwise leads to anarchy and chaos. We have in such a democraticcivilized society a number of ways to indicate our displeasure whensuch rules are not to our liking, voicing our opinion to those thatmake the rules or kicking them out at the first opportunity or pressuring those responsible by publicly making our views known inletters, blogs, print or in the streets.

Non of these methods isparticularly effective for the individual citizen and sometimes suchprotests get out of hand and a few individuals go 'over the top' andpromote or participate in violence and / or property damage in orderto 'get attention'. Whilst I perhaps understand such frustration I donot condone it, again I believe this is the path to chaos.

This brings me to thepoint of this post, the lack of respect on BOTH sides, protester andlaw enforcement, by a few individuals that brings into question ourability to remain a peaceful and cohesive society. Recentreports have clearly shown that thereare SOME who are tasked with upholdingthe rules that our governments have placed upon us(whether we agree with them or not) have been abusing the powervested in them to enable them to do this difficult and sometimesdangerous job. Worse, their colleagues, who cannot help but be awareof such abuses, stand back and do nothing, either at the time orafter the fact. There have been a number of well documented caseswhere such abuses of power have either been highlighted in court orin official inquiries but little if anything has been done to correctthe problem or penalize those responsible. I view such lack ofaccountability a real problem for our democracy, for our societydepends upon us having at least a passing respect for our legalsystem, not only from the average citizen but also from those whoenforce it and from those who decide upon the penalties for 'breakingthe rules'. If the majority of citizens come to believe that thelegal system, of which our police are part of, does not work or isbiased then it clearly will not work and cannot help but eventuallyfail. As with government if those at the top do not respect the rulesthen what incentive is there for the citizen to follow them? Is thiswhy we need more jails?

How can our system oflaw enforcement (or government) survive, as other than an arm of adictatorship, if there are no repercussions for those responsible forupholding the rules, and they are not subject to the same rules andsame punishment as the average citizen who does the same thing. Notonly must there be equal treatment but such treatment must be seen tobe done openly, equally and investigated independently of the verysystem that these folks are part of. When fellow officers eitherthrough a sense of loyalty, fear of repercussion from colleagues, orsome other repercussion of speaking out, remain silent in suchsituations they are no less responsible for the ever decreasingrespect with which their job is held than those that abuse the powerthat such jobs hold. Continuing in this direction is a recipe formore civil unrest not less, its a difficult job, do your job with asmuch restraint as possible officers, but do not protect those amongstyou that clearly cannot be trusted with such power.