Category: Politics

Reason of the day to not vote Conservative: For calling this election

While that not enthused about this election (Canadian elections are rarely very inspiring, are they), I’m not sure the timing itself is all that terrible. There was a good chance there would be one this fall or winter anyway—a few months sooner or later doesn’t make that much difference.

No, it’s the calling of this election I think should give you pause.

Stephen Harper looked us in the face and said it was unfair for the party in power to manipulate the timing of elections for partisan advantage. Not just empty words, either; he actually passed a law to that effect.

Has he actually broken the law? Well, until he and Ms. Jean are hauled out and arrested, I guess we have to assume he hasn’t—that the law has some wiggle room. That in a minority parliament, the party in power can, in fact, still find ways to manipulate the timing of the election.

But we all know that he has broken the spirit of the law. Because Mr. Harper was right back then; it is an unfair advantage for the party in power to control the timing of elections.

It takes a man of high-minded principle to give up power in the interest of fairness.

Mr. Harper has just demonstrated that he is not such a man. He was just pretending to be one.

Canuck election

Well, like it or not, here we go, with federal politicians trying to draw to your attention away from Obama vs. McCain long enough for you to notice there is another election—one that you can actually vote in!

Me, I’m thinking of voting Liberal. I don’t usually do that, but I like the green shift policy, dammit, enough that I don’t care that Stéphane Dion’s English isn’t smooth. But if you can’t fathom him as your leader, I can see why you might want to turn to Jack Layton, whose English and French is pretty good, and whose party  has some reasonable policies of their own. Or, shake things up with the Green Party, who really do need a few elected seats in the House.

I think any of those choices are defensible. The only vote I can’t agree with is that for the front-running and likely winner of this election, the Conservative Party of Canada.

The reasons? Oh, so many reasons! In fact, time permitting, I could probably post a new reason every day.

Dolls, Mad Men, and the US election

So I just finished Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. It’s a novel about three beautiful women who all become rich and famous—but not without being victimized, betrayed by love, and addicted to valium (sedatives, the “dolls” of the title). It’s an addictive read, and while certainly not literary, I was left pondering just what the message was supposed to be here.

The novel is set between 1945 and 1965, or so, and the portrayal of women is something to behold. Like the assumption, throughout the novel, that a woman should quit her job—no matter how fabulous—the minute marriage or even just engagement is on the horizon. Pile on the more dramatic horrors of involuntary incarceration in a mental institution and choosing suicide over the potential loss of fabulous breasts to cancer, and you’re left feeling rather glad to be living in these times.

One gets a similar sense from the much-hyped TV series Mad Men, set in 1960. One character, Peggy, becomes the first “since the War” to do any copy-writing for the Stirling-Cooper ad agency feature. “It’s like watching a dog play piano” says one of the men, of Peggy’s writing abilities.

The most recent episode I watched focused on the Nixon-Kennedy election. The firm—which the creator notes is a “dinosaur”, destined to be rocked by the changes of the times, not participating in them—is backing Nixon. And having to accept that their man has been bested by the young, charismatic Senator from Massachusetts.

And here we are, with the year’s US election, and the old man of the Republican Party figures his best chance of defeating the young, charismatic Senator for Illinois is to put a young, dynamic woman on his ticket.

Good thing she didn’t quit her job when she got married.

My response to the Conservatives little Tax poll

Conservative MP’s keep mailing me. They give me these flyers that either say that they are great, or that some other party (usually the Liberals) are terrible, then ask me to check off a box on whether I agree with them and mail it back to them.

So far, I’ve only responded once, telling them I thought their GST tax cut was a stupid idea and they should really have just cut my income taxes. This is my response to their “Who do you think is on the right track on taxes?” question. After checking the Stephane Dion / Liberal box, I added this note:

You seem a bit confused by what the Liberals are proposing here. It’s not actually a tax on everything. It’s a tax on carbon emissions. Now, if that ends up affecting many products, that’s because our society has grown far too dependent on fossil fuels. Is this tax the best way to end that dependency? I don’t know. But it’s certainly better than doing nothing.

You also state that Liberals are desperate for money. Well, that’s a bit rich, isn’t it, from a government that has more or less squandered the big Liberal surplus on various spending programs and a very ill-conceived GST tax cut. Not too mention mailing me I don’t know how many of these silly little polls of yours.

But what’s more infuriating here is that the Conservatives are just hurling insults at the Liberals instead of engaging in an intelligent debate on this very important issue. The Liberal plan is crazy. It’s a tax on everything. It’s a trick that Dion devised downtown urban elites (and what does that one even mean? If you live downtown, it’s hard not to be urban, right? Which, of course, 80% of Canadians are. And “elites” just means smart, successful people—can’t imagine why Dion would think they have anything of value to impart!)

The Green Shift is not a tax trick; it’s a plan. You do tax carbon; you reduce income taxes. While designed to be revenue neutral overall, it’s not going to be revenue neutral to everyone, it’s true; those who pollute more will pay more.

Why don’t you talk about that? Why don’t you get into the specifics of it, and attack those where warranted, instead of hurling vague insults? Afraid that ordinary Canadians won’t get it, won’t understand? After all, they’re not very smart, not like those “downtown urban elites”… You said so yourself.

See, isn’t this fun? You should try it yourself.

Bringing Ontario’s “secret” referendum to light

The Globe and Mail‘s web column had an interesting article on Ontario’s referendum, bringing up a point I had really thought of before: This is not a choice between two equally valid options, our current electoral system vs. the proposed MMP. In fact, the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform has already weighed multiple voting systems, including our current one, and found them all wanting. They recommend MMP as the best option for Ontario. We are voting to ratify that decision.

So Ontarians should be incensed at how the government has distorted this fact, by having all official material pretend this is a neutral campaign between equal options. Your Big Decision. A (current) or B (MMP). Why aren’t they also telling us why the Citizen’s Assembly has already concluded that B is better?

And that’s online. On TV, they won’t even tell us what the A or B choices are! You have call a number or go online to get details. For heaven’s sake; why can’t the commercial at least give a clue what the referendum is about? Takes less than 30 seconds to say “electoral reform”.

Furthermore, in order to be ratified, the decision to switch to MMP must be agreed to by 60% of the electorate and 60% the ridings. 37% is enough to get you a nice majority government for a good four years. But to get actual democracy? Oh no, even 50% won’t do for that.

Of course, the government’s attempts at covering the issue and handicapping the vote wouldn’t matter as much if the media were doing a good job of informing the public about this, but outside of newspapers (read by your more devoted political junkies, typically), they are not. There was barely a peep out of them before the election started, and now they’re all about the religious schools debate and “promise breaking”. If they mention the referendum at all, it’s to say that “people don’t seem to know about it”. Well, duh.

I guess it’s clear I am voting for MMP. And since the media and government don’t want you to know why, I will explain.

a) Under the current system, a minority of voters gets the majority of power.

It takes only about 40% of votes to get a strong majority government, and that basically allows the government to do what they want for 4 years. 60% of voters are currently disenfranchised, not once in a while, but every single time. It’s unfair and absurd.

Not convinced? In recent Quebec and BC elections, parties have won majority governments despite getting a lower percentage of votes than another party. (In Quebec, the PQ over the Liberals; in BC the NDP over the Liberals.) That’s how distorted our current system is; even the party that wins more votes than any other doesn’t necessarily get to govern.

b) Our current system does not produce stability.

That’s what all the naysayers go on about. Oh, it will be unstable! Give me a break. Ontario is a case study in how this isn’t true. Ontario went from a radical left NDP government (elected by 37%) to a radical right Conservative government (elected by 42%), both of which caused the majority who didn’t want them to suffer under their more extreme policies. This, ironically, after the popular and balanced coalition NDP/Liberal government—exactly the kind of government we’d get under MMP.

c) Do not fear the political “appointee”.

The other thing the naysayers seem obsessed with is the appointed list of politicians who would balance out the legislature according to the electorate’s party votes. Again, I find this argument bogus. Political parties already pick their candidates (the ones whose names appear on your ballot), some by party vote, many by appointment. So I really see no difference at all between political parties picking who is on my local ballot and political parties picking who will represent the popular vote. Either way, ultimately, it’s parties who decide who has the opportunity to sit in the House. If you don’t like it, join a political party.

Furthermore, it’s not as if people currently know who the heck their local candidates are anyway. In small towns, sure. In bigger cities? As if. People already just vote for parties anyway. Under the new system, they’ll just have to do the same thing twice.

d) We will not have a “pizza parliament”. But the Green Party will have some seats. And that’s a good thing.

The Citizens Assembly weren’t idiots; there is a 3% threshold before a party can win a seat. So truly bizarre parties with no appeal will not win any seats, even if a few jokers vote for them. But small parties with serious appeal, like the Greens (or the Family Coalition, I suppose), will.

Make your vote count on October 10, so that your vote will count in the future. Vote for MMP.