A cartoon at the top of a National Post article explains quite well what has gone wrong with the Green Party of Canada, but for the opposite reasons than the journalists are suggesting.
I was an active campaigner for the Global Greens movement within Ontario and Canada in the 1990's, hosting websites, and doing pretty much everything short of putting my name on the ballot. I've lived in Ottawa since 1987, and felt it inappropriate to parachute elsewhere or put my name forward as a uni-lingual anglophone. Several of my bilingual friends have had their name on the ballot.
In a culture that valued such things I might be considered a community elder and knowledge keeper of the movement from that period. Given we don't live in such a culture, I'm being told by Annamie Paul supporters that I'm just an "angry white man".
If you look at the Global Greens Values, it includes Participatory Democracy. This means that the Green Party Leader is supposed to act exactly as described in the cartoon: to be a spokesperson for the democratic participants and not be promoting her personal views above others.
Until recently the Green Party had 3 elected MPs, who need to be understood as the democratic caucus that directs any bureaucrat operating outside of parliament. This includes Annamie Paul who was only "elected" by political tourists who voted in a contest external to parliament. She is not an elected parliamentarian, and thus her opinions on policy don't matter any more than any other unelected member of the party.
Her job is to support caucus members, never suggest a gag order, and never to allow her personal views to conflict with democratically established party policy and especially never conflict with elected caucus members.
The fact that Annamie Paul didn't do her job correctly forced one of those caucus members to cross the floor. Floor crossing is exactly how you hold otherwise unaccountable parties to account, which is the direction that accountability should work. Party bureaucracies should NEVER have the ability to hold caucus members to account.
In a healthy democracy political parties, if they exist at all, exist at the pleasure of caucus members and not the other way around.
I was technically a Green Party of Canada member during the last "leadership race", and was sent a ballot. Since none of the caucus members put their name forward I didn't vote. None of the people I consider to be legitimate possibilities to be leader in a participatory democracy were on that ballot.
Gender, race and religion.
For those who want to claim this dispute is about gender, race or religion I want to point out some important details.
- Jenica Atwin
- Is a woman
- Stepfather is Ron Tremblay, the Wolastoqewi Grand Chief. (see some language classes).
- Married to Oromocto First Nation band councillor Chris Atwin and has two sons.
- Is technically not Indigenous to this continent, but is as close as a person without Indigenous ancestry can currently get. If Canada wasn't blocking self-determination of Indigenous nations, who knows what would have been possible.
- Her views on what is happening in Palestine is consistent with the majority of those Indigenous to this continent.
- Annamie Paul
- Also a woman
- Is visibly BIPOC
- Converted to Judaism in 2000, the religion of her husband and also two children. Judaism and other Abrahamic/Semitic religions (Christianity, Islam, and other factions) are indigenous to Palestine, but not to this continent.
- Her views on what is happening in Palestine is consistent with the majority of European colonizers on this continent.
What is Democracy, participatory or otherwise
If people want to learn about Participatory Democracy, and democracy in general, Europe and its colonies are not the best source.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy has been a participatory democracy for possibly a thousand years, while Britain and Canada have been eligible to be considered less advanced hierarchical (derived from feudalism) representative democracies for less than 100. Britain didn't become what we would recognize as a democracy until 1928. Canada didn't become eligible to be considered a democracy until the UK passed the "Canada Act" in 1982. Prior to the coming into force of that Act, the UK parliament had more influence over the laws of Canada than anyone on this side of the Atlantic.
Typical of anti-democratic Canada, the government sent in the RCMP to depose the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council (spokespersons, not European-style feudal lords/dictators) in 1924. Canada unilaterally installed an Indian Act Band Council bureaucracy which is responsible to the Canadian Crown and not citizens. Band councils are not responsible governments -- Colonial Canada opposes responsible governments.
- Brief to The Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, for the study of the Subject Matter of Bill C-15
- Haundenosaunee Confederacy Creation
- Is Canada a democracy?
If Canada supported democracy and human rights, as it claims in its widely distributed propaganda, it would restore proper relations with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council and disband its imposed Band Council bureaucracy. Canada would honour the Haldimand Tract Moratorium, and stop arresting land title holders for protecting their land, and even arresting journalists for reporting on Canada's unlawful activities.
Zionism
There is a long history behind this. While Zionism is generally considered to have been founded in 1897, it is what happened a few decades later that needs to be understood.
When the Christians of Europe and its colonies wanted to get rid of Jewish people in the 1930's and 1940's, a few different strategies emerged. The German solution became known as the Holocaust, and the British solution became aggressive Christian support for Zionism (Let Jewish people live, just not here).
For further context:
As of this moment indicates:
- 2,173,180,000 Christians (31% of world population), of which 50% are Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, and 1% other.
- 1,598,510,000 Muslims (23%), of which 87-90% are Sunnis, 10-13% Shia.
- 1,126,500,000 No Religion affiliation (16%): atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. One-in-five people (20%) in the United States are religiously unaffiliated.
Islam, like Christianity, are Abrahamic religious splinter groups, which together with Judaism (which due to less colonialism and conversion, only represents 0.2%) represents nearly 60% of the global population. Abrahamics splinter themselves further into Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Sunnis, Shia , etc, etc.
The political trick that is regularly used is that in a region where one of these splinter groups is dominant, others will be oppressed by that dominant Abrahamic group. Given the impact globally of colonialism and conversion (regularly forced), focusing on uplifting Abrahamic religions oppressed by other Abrahamic religions only gives more power for Abrahamic religions to maintain their status as oppressors.
People who want to know where the opposition to LGBTQ communities, misogyny, and human superiority (anthropocentrism, at the heart of global climate change and many other critical global problems) comes from should take a close look at the book of Genesis. Contrary to those who are playing the Abrahamic branch-name-game, these problems are in all Abrahamic religions and not only the one that in any region is being claimed to be the "bad branch" while trying to uplift other Abrahamic branches.
Hindus represent the 4'th largest grouping. Hindu is a name that was given to Indigenous peoples of India when foreign religious colonizers came to the subcontinent. The occupation by the Islamic Mughal Empire was followed by an occupation by the Christian British Empire.
There are several other Indigenous religions of India (Sometimes called Dharmic religions) including Hinduism, Buddhism, Janism and Sikhism. As with Turtle Island (what the peoples near where I live call this continent), Abrahamic religions are the religions of the colonizers and oppressors.
Our direction should be decolonization if we want to protect the oppressed from the oppressors. The Standard Abrahamic trick of "look, over there, an Abrahamic religious group being oppressed", never mentioning that it is nearly always by another Abrahamic faction or by a group trying to protect themselves from Abrahamic oppression, only furthers their goal of colonization.
What Christians did to Jewish people in Europe in the 1940's should have been followed by aggressive removal of the political power of Christianity and other Abrahamic religions in Europe and their colonies. That is not remotely what happened, and the problems continue. The Christians yet again created a "not me" title to point to, and continued with their activities. Genocide against Indigenous peoples is ongoing on Turtle Island, only reduced to a rate that won't get noticed in the same way it was in the 1940's in Europe.
Palestine was under British Christian occupation, so along with other members of the British Empire that had control of the newly formed United Nations they partitioned Palestine as part of the Christian Zionist "solution" to what European Christians considered "the Jewish Problem".
Britain partitioned both Palestine and India in 1947, and the fallout of those partitions are ongoing long after the British "officially" left.
It is hard to estimate how many people died due to India's partition, but 200,000 to 2 million deaths 10 to 20 million displaced is one set of estimates. The British murdered more directly during the occupations. Add the between 5 and 6 million Jews that European Christians murdered, and how many non-Christians were murdered on this continent -- but Christian Colonial Canada doesn't talk about any of these atrocities in these terms and always tries to point elsewhere.
The grassroots Green Party membership position on what European Christians have caused in Palestine is the more globally valid position.
It is not, however, compatible with the views of colonial British North America. It is something which the Green Party should learn to avoid discussing, as any substantive conversation about Zionism in Canada will have a huge and well funded backlash.
