Arthur Manuel's books as a lens to the 2021 general election.

Some people are calling this the Seinfeld election -- an election about nothing. I don't see a significant change in the parties since the 2019 election, even if 2 of the parties with seats in the last parliament have changed leaders (Conservatives, Greens).

On the other hand, I have changed. I started self-directed anti-racism learning in 2020.  Some of what I had to say about the 2019 general election applies today, but I have a very different lens when looking at Canada.

• Federal Election 2019: Right-wing parties and leadership 
• Federal Election 2019: Politically center parties and leadership
• Federal Election 2019: Left-wing parties and leadership
• What did Justin Trudeau and the 2015 Liberal platform team do wrong on electoral reform

While I have read several relevant books in the last 14 months, there are two written by Arthur Manuel which I believe are particularly relevant to this election.
 

Arthur Manual (1951 – January 11, 2017) wrote about some of the general history of colonialism against this continent, but focused on events he and his father George Manuel (February 21, 1921 – November 15, 1989) had personal experience with.

While many try to put colonialism and the genocide that inevitably comes from colonialism into some distant past, the real story starts in the Roaring Racist 1920's and continues to this day.

Liberal Party of Canada, and the Trudeau Family

I was born in 1968, and my father in 1936. Justin Trudeau was born in 1971 and his father in 1919. We and our fathers are of comparable generations, and thus could have had similar experiences. We didn't.


The second book includes a quote from Leo Tolstoy (From "What Then Must We Do?") that was included in the 1983 Penner Report (PDF) on Indian(sic) Self-government in Canada.

I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all possible means -- except by getting off his back.

(Note: The picture of Trudeau on the back of a black boy was fake, but for obvious reasons given Trudeau's personality and continuous expressions of entitlement and White Privilege we all believed it was true)


Canadian governments were unilaterally imposed on this homeland by the British as an ongoing act of overt racism and white supremacy. Canada continues to push Indigenous peoples down so they can't built back their nations and economies.

I don't, however, believe that quote applies to all Canadian Prime Ministers and the governments they lead. Of all the Prime Ministers of Canada, with all the ephemeral parties with the word "Liberal" or "Conservative" (or sometimes both) in the party names, the above really only applies to recent Liberal PMs. Prior to that time no PM would claim to feel sorry for Indigenous peoples. They believed the only human right Indigenous Peoples should have is the right to be forcibly assimilated into European worldviews and governance systems (clear genocidal policies of "Kill the Indian, Save the Man", "Kill the Indian in the Child", stealing land and converting to European "Fee simple" property, etc, etc).


Much of these two books are dedicated to talking about P.E. Trudeau and Justin Trudeau. Each had a Trudeau Mania backing them and having them be considered "progressive", all the while they were actively carrying out overtly colonial and genocidal activities against Indigenous Peoples.

While Europeans like to believe their history is universal, European history is actually quite unique. Growing racism and related violations of human rights in the 1920's in Europe (between "world" wars and during the second) had serious implications on European colonies. This included European colonies in what the Europeans called the Americas (after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian "explorer" who claimed to have "discovered" the continents many thousands of years after Pacific Islanders are likely to have been doing trade with peoples from this continent).

In the 1940's, Europeans finally started to better understand some human rights concepts, and in the context of the United Nations (which the Europeans actively blocked Indigenous nations from joining) started to recognize that colonialism and the inevitable genocide that it causes must be considered crimes against humanity.

This brings us to Pierre Trudeau starting in 1968.  Europeans had been thinking about, started to adopt, and understand human rights in the 1950's and 1960's. We even saw a Civil Rights movement in the USA to try to gain equal rights for African Americans. Even with this context, Trudeau thought he would get away with a forced assimilation "final solution" to the alleged "Indian Problem" with the 1969 White Paper he launched along with then Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chrétien.

There has never been an "Indian problem", only a colonialism and genocide problem.

Also starting in the 1960's was movements towards so-called "Patriation" of the Canadian Constitution.  I suspect it was concern over a growing international movement against racism and colonialism that sparked these mostly Liberal Party leaders to seek to ensure that Britain could not make Canada less racist as they did when the British abolished slavery.

Prior to the passage of the Canada Act 1982 (Please read the actual text, not what Trudeau and others claimed it was about), the UK parliament had more authority over the laws of Canada than any governing body on this side of the Atlantic. While jurisdiction was divided between the federal government and provincial government in Canada, the UK could change any legislation including the constitution.

Arthur Manual discussed the Constitution Express, where Indigenous peoples fought against the "patriation" of the constitution and the exclusion of the rights of Indigenous people.  It was Trudeau yet again trying to wipe out any recognition of Indigenous rights.

It was with the lobbying in Canada and Britain that the British required a recognition of Indigenous Rights in the Canadian Constitution, and thus section 25 (Aboriginal rights and freedoms not affected by Charter), section 35 (Recognition of existing aboriginal and treaty rights), section 37 (Aboriginal peoples included in constitutional conference clarifying rights) were included in the Schedule B replacement of the Constitution.


If the Canada Act 1982 had not passed, the UK could have passed a single act of their parliament to incorporate the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Canadian law in the same way that the replacement Canadian Constitution including a Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a schedule of the Canada Act 1982. Unfortunately, since Britain made that step to try to absolve itself of any responsibility for its creation and maintenance of Canada, it is now much harder to force the federal and provincial governments to honor internationally recognized human rights and international law.

I may wish that Britain would rescind the Canada Act 1982, and fix some of the problems they created, but that is politically unlikely. Canada finally fully adopting UNDRIP will require a constitutional amendment, which is unlikely in the current overtly racist climate in Canada (especially in some of the provinces).

Arthur Manuel discussed Pierre more in the first book, and then sets the record strait on Justin Trudeau in the second book.

Not discussed as much as I would have liked is additional dishonesty about UNDRIP by Justin Trudeau. Given the Canada Act 1982, it wasn't possible for the federal government to directly pass UNDRIP into Canadian law as it wouldn't be compatible with the constitution, including the division of powers. The federal government and each provincial government must carry out a process to change all the existing human rights violating laws, as well as not pass any new rights violating laws. Solving even this problem in a more permanent way to disallow parliaments to pass human rights violating laws will require a constitutional amendment.

So passing a bill to force governments to change human rights violating laws is what was tabled multiple times in the federal parliament since 2008, and a version finally received royal assent last June in the form of Bill C-15.

In typical Liberal style, Justin Trudeau campaigned in 2015 on moving forward with TRC calls to action which included moving forward with UNDRIP.  This was clearly a lie. While he could have tabled a government bill immediately after the 2015 election based on Romeo Saganash's Bill C-469, he did nothing.  After waiting a year, Romeo Saganash re-tabled his bill which received the number C-262 and the Liberals deliberately delayed the passage of the bill in the House of Commons and Senate.  Then, again typical Liberal lies, they claimed that even though they had a majority government in the House of Commons and control of the Senate that somehow it was the Conservative party that delayed the bill.


"except by getting off his back"!


The only critique I have of either book is how statements made by then Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould about UNDRIP were interpreted.

Simplistic approaches such as adopting the United Nations declaration as being Canadian law are unworkable and, respectfully, a political distraction to undertaking the hard work actually required to implement it back home in communities,

(See: Notes for an address given at an AFN meeting in July 2016, and page 72 of From Where I Stand)

Given the unfortunate passage of the Canada Act 1982, what Jody Wilson-Raybould was discussing is merely a statement of the legal situation within Canada. There is no mechanism by which the federal government could unilaterally pass a law that would allow Canada (which has multiple levels of government and a constitution) to immediately adopt UNDRIP.


These statements are sometimes merged with statements regularly repeated by Carolyn Bennett, then Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs (Now Crown-Indigenous Relations), starting in May 2016.

The Honourable(sic) Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, today announced that Canada is now a full supporter, without qualification, of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Today’s announcement also reaffirms Canada’s commitment to adopt and implement the Declaration in accordance with the Canadian Constitution.

So which is it -- are there no qualifications, or will they be attempting to implement the declaration only in accordance with the Canadian Constitution which is partly responsible for the ongoing violations of human rights?

The Canadian Government had been discussing for some time the concept of a "Canadian definition of UNDRIP", which is simply not possible. There is only one Declaration from the United Nations which is UNDRIP, and that is the text adopted by the General Assembly on Thursday, 13 September 2007.  Nothing written before or after is UNDRIP, no matter what anyone claims or attempts to declare.

Canada (or some activists groups) can pretend all it wants that something other than UNDRIP is UNDRIP, but it is up to the United Nations to evaluate that -- it is not up to Canada or anybody else.



If you take these two statements together as if the Liberal party is one happy family (and we know how happy things went for Jody Wilson-Raybould), you would think both were statements pushing back against UNDRIP. I disagree. All evidence suggests that Carolyn Bennett and Justin Trudeau are fully aware of their roles in deliberately delaying Canada coming into compliance with human rights and international law.  I do not see evidence this was the case for Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was simply discussing yet another aspect of the dishonesty of the Trudeau family and the pro-colonial/genocidal aspects of the so-called "Patriation" of the Canadian Constitution.


Now... just imagine if instead of Justin Trudeau as the Liberal Party leader that it was Jody Wilson-Raybould.  I know which one of these people I wish weren't running in this election, and which was. Without the fake-feminist, fake-anti-racist Trudeau barking commands from his colonial throne, we have no idea what this powerful Indigenous woman might have been able to accomplish.

I look forward to when the international embarrassment of Justin Trudeau being the Prime Minister of Canada is over.

Conservative Parties of Canada

Whether I agree or disagree with a conservative (or Conservative), they tend to believe in what they are saying and are far more honest than the Liberals. I know where they stand, and it is easier to work with (or against) them.

One of the mistakes I made in 2019 was to be too narrow in what history I was contemplating. I noticed in 2011 that many people who otherwise voted for the Bloc Québécois nominated candidate ended up voting for the NDP nominated candidate. I incorrectly put the Bloc in my discussion of left-wing parties.

Canadian conservatives have split many times since the first of 11 British North America Acts imposed the governments of Canada against the interests (or even awareness) of the majority of the population. The antiquated electoral system Canada uses which retains the concept of vote splitting forces them to regularly attempt to merge into a coalition party rather than more regularly being able to form coalition governments. Due to this I don't understand why they don't have ranked ballots as a priority reform, but what they consider priorities regularly don't make sense to me.


Western Canada has wanted to dominate Canadian politics for a long time. The Reform Party was a splinter group that formed in 1987 as a Western-Canadian protest movement, and while they separately had seats they continue to have success as it is more correct to say the Reform party took over what was previously the Progressive Conservative party than the claim they merged.

For my views on so-called Western Alienation, the basis of that protest movement, see:

• Why I don't believe Alberta is bullied by extractive industries such as Big Oil

Even if most of the Conservative party MPs aren't from Western Canada, this European Supremacist ideology as it relates to Indigenous peoples and this land and her resources dominates the party.

The Bloc Québécois was a splinter group of mostly Progressive Conservatives that crossed the floor to form a new party in 1991 after the failed Meech Lake Accord.

I have read Sovereign injustice: Forcible inclusion of the James Bay Crees and Cree territory into a sovereign Quebec which clarifies with considerable references the illegality of a provincial government separating from "Canada" and retaining a land base. I have done quite a bit of other anti-racism reading, and finally recognize the Quebec sovereignty movement for what it is:

Yet another White Nationalist movement.
 

According to international law, as well as Canadian law confirmed in Supreme Court rulings, the Government of Canada doesn't exclusively own title over the land it claims to.  This includes what was considered Lower Canada, part of the former colony of New France that was conquered by Britain in the Seven Years' War. The Government of Canada has even weaker title claim over the extensions it unilaterally made to Quebec in the Quebec Border extension Acts of 1898 and 1912 (or the extensions to Ontario including 1912, or the unilateral creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, etc).

The notion that part of this land would be allowed by the international community to be conquered by a newly separated European derived government in a modern example of colonialism is absurd. If the French colonists wanted to naturalize to this homeland as the Métis did it would be an entirely different story as Indigenous peoples have a right to self-determination separate from the colonialists. There is simply no method for the French colony of Quebec (with or without the border extensions) to separate. Any attempt to forcibly do so would be met with international peacekeeping, and likely a civil war.

In the context of Canada, British Canadians, Irish Canadians, Scottish Canadians, French Canadians, Somali Canadians (, etc) are all merely part of Canadian colonial multiculturalism.  I'm of Irish, Scottish and French descent, and all of these ancestors are multicultural settlers and colonists -- these groups have ancestral lands and nations in Europe, but not here.

I'm not fully convinced Canada is a legitimate nation, so obviously reject the notion that Quebec or any other colonial division can be considered a nation.  There are many legitimate nations on this homeland, but none of them are of European descent. This is not Europe, and it is far past time some Europeans took their second foot off the boat.


If Quebeckers are relying on good relationships with the right-holders to the land that the Quebec government currently occupies, they had better improve that relationship quickly.  The relationship thus far has been horrendous, and their government has been lying to them about it. They should not assume that if various Indigenous title holders (peoples, not individuals) are asked if they want to remain in Canada rather than be part of Quebec that they will side with Quebec and want to form treaties with French colonists.


There are other more recent conservative splinter groups running candidates in this election.

The People's Party of Canada formed after Maxime Bernier lost the 2017 leadership vote, and he embarrassed himself even further than he had when he was a Minister during the Harper Government years. He decided to form his own cult (Umm... Political party). It is hard to take anything relating to this party seriously, given candidates seem to be spending much of their campaign time protesting hospitals and the public health of fellow citizens. They seem to take memes likely originating from Russia or China as if they were fact.

The PPC platform on "Indigenous Issues", which they claim is a "New Relationship based on mutual respect", is simply a repeat of the illegal colonialist ideas expressed in P.E. Trudeau's 1969 White Paper.  It is sad that our "educational system" is so poor that there are any Canadians who are so confused as to think that P.E. Trudeau's racist ideas are new or useful. I don't know how long this "party" will last.


The Maverick Party was originally called Wexit Canada, and founded in 2020. An even sadder White Nationalist version of the Bloc Quebecois, there is no ability for unilaterally imposed western provincial governments to separate from Canada and retain any land base.  Without the protection of the Canadian Constitution, that land reverts to being part of the North West Territories -- which is already running a far more advanced governance system than Alberta or Saskatchewan.  I may agree with the idea of ending the 116 year failed foreign workers program and replacing those governments with something less racist, but that is clearly not what Maverick is intending. Given the similarities to the Bloc (other than the floor crossing and ability to immediately send their leader to debates), I won't be surprised if they gain seats in parliament.

New Democratic Party

What I said about the party and leader in 2019 still applies in 2021.

There are individual MPs and candidates that are worthy of taking notice and supporting.  Most notable in my mind are:

• Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Center).  I've already maxed my federal donations to her. On twitter she calls herself "Proud Lakota", and has been an activist in this area of policy long before she considered becoming an MP.
  
• Matthew Green (Hamilton Center)
• Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay).  I've known him since he became an MP and caused the NDP to do a 180decree shift on Copyright policy (temporarily bringing the party into this millennium).  I have been very happy to see how well he does on Indigenous Rights, which I agree is more important.

As is typical with this mixed-bag party, I also noticed how Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona) spoke at the Heritage committee. She was strongly in support of granting the department responsible for colonial "Canadian identity and values" and its industry cheerleader CRTC more control over media than it does already.  As far as I'm concerned Bill C-10 will violate UNDRIP, but somehow Heather convinced her caucus to support this horrendous bill.

What needs to be said about the NDP is that when they are in government, as they have been in provinces such as BC, they don't act any different when it comes to the overt rejection of Indigenous Rights. Arthur Manual grew up on a reserve in the BC interior, and wrote about the BC provincial government throughout the books. It is an NDP government in BC that has been sending in the RCMP to forcibly and violently remove land defenders (IE: representatives of the rightful collective owners of the land - injunctions should be against the province and "developers"). As with the federal government, the NDP provincial government is trying to terminate Indigenous rights as a condition for land title negotiations.

Green Party

As a past supporter I have been sad to see the party failing. While the media has seized on the idea that the problems with the new leader relate to gender or race, it is the fact that the party has drifted even further from the Global Greens movement that is causing it problems.  I will be surprised if they have any seats left in parliament after this election.

The party could have learned from having a sitting MP with close ties to east coast indigenous peoples, but failures of the new leader forced Jenica Atwin (Fredericton) to cross the floor. Failures with the NDP (top-down party structure, currently disallowing floor crossing) meant that Jenica Atwin crossed to the Liberals which was not likely the most obvious choice.

Given we can't solve problems within the same mindset/worldviews that created them, I have come to believe that decolonization is a prerequisite to solving current environmental issues on this continent -- including our contribution to climate change. The Green Party has been extremely White over the years, and the party and movement in Canada has not done the work it needs to form good relations with Indigenous Peoples. Sometimes the ideas from conservationist types within the Green movement directly conflicts with the rights and longer-term experiences and sciences of Indigenous Peoples, and this was discussed by Arthur Manuel.

I believe the green movement in Canada must adopt decolonization as a core principle, and not be pushing European environmental notions, given it is European anthropocentrism which is the core of the problem.

When it comes to sustainable economies and democratic governance, the Indigenous peoples of this continent are centuries beyond where European thought is.

We should be following and supporting Indigenous peoples, not falsely suggesting we as peoples have the necessary experience to take the lead.

Why I don't believe Alberta is bullied by extractive industries such as Big Oil

Over the years I have read many articles discussing how people believe the province of Alberta has a cycle of abuse with Big Oil.

Until recently I agreed with this sentiment, that Alberta is the victim of an abusive relationship with extractive industries such as Big Oil.

Since my anti-racism training lead me to a different understanding of Canada, and a more unbiased understanding of its history, I now have a very different perspective.

Canada was created unilaterally by the passage in the British Parliament of the British North America Act 1867 to effectively be a corporate subsidiary of Britain, to be part of the British Empire, and to provide cheap resources to the empire (affirmative action for Whites and all that). It was never created to be a democracy, or to think independently.  It retains pretty much all of the British systems which were unilaterally imposed on this homeland.


The British Parliament passed many laws called the "British North America Act" between 1867 and 1964 (only 4 years before I was born).  Up until the passage of the Canada Act 1982, British law was automatically Canadian law, and the British Parliament could pass any laws it wanted to enforce in Canada. It was an Act of the British parliament in 1949 which added the Orwellian doublespeak titled "New Found Land" to "Canada". (George Orwell's 1984 was published in 1949).




Alberta was unilaterally created in 1905 by the Alberta Act out of a subset of what the British called the Northwest Territories in order to better administrate colonial expansion (meaning, free land, free resource extraction, affirmative action for whites, etc). It was created by the British corporate subsidiary, not by its inhabitants. Canada did not "buy" Rupert's Land, which Alberta was carved out of, from the Hudson's Bay Company.  The Hudson's bay company only owned an exclusive patent from the British Crown to do business in a region, and didn't own land which they could sell.

see Territorial Evolution, as well as Maps: 1667-1999 (And ask yourself why LAC removed these pages in the summer of 2021).


This article on farming in the Prairies gives a hint to what has been happening since the unilateral creation of Alberta.

Undermined at every turn: the lie of the failed native farm on the Prairies.

Why believe that it is the oil and gas industry that are bullying "Alberta", when "Alberta" was created as a corporate subsidiary to do what it is doing?

Understood in this context, Alberta was created as a type of permanent foreign worker program, which is quite different than the more recent temporary foreign worker programs.  This workforce was desired in part to replace the existing inhabitants, but largely to create a loyal workforce for extractive industries.  Given the loyalty to British worldviews, laws, and extractive industries exhibited by a majority of the settler inhabitants in the prairies today, this program was obviously very successful.

People confusing Alberta with a government created by the inhabitants of the region which Alberta claims control over creates confusion as to who and what is really in control.
 

The core problem is that these corporate subsidiaries acting as "provinces" have existed for far too long, and it is time to fold them in a responsible manner (make them pay for the damage they have caused, and the debt they have accumulated) as they are replaced with domestic naturalized (meaning, Indigenous) governance.



From the article:

Industries pay royalties to places where they extract resources, but Alberta’s royalty rates are embarrassingly, laughably puny. On the world stage, no one else on the planet comes nearly as close to simply giving their resources away for free than Alberta does. That’s why Norway has amassed a sovereign wealth fund worth more than $200,000 USD for every single citizen from the sale of its oil reserves — exactly the sort of thing that comes in handy when a crisis like Covid comes along — while Alberta has sold 45% more oil than Norway did over the same time period and still managed to end up nearly $100 Billion in debt.

For the people on Turtle Island to have done what the people of Norway did, this region would need to have been governed by people naturalized to the nations and worldviews of this homeland. Ongoing colonialism doesn't allow that to happen.

As with many problems with "Canada" and its subsidiary governments, I strongly believe LandBack is the only long-term solution.

UNDRIP, and the Conservative Party honesty about their support for ongong colonialism

I am interested in Canada implementing UNDRIP, so I watched APTN News' recent Nation to Nation episode on UNDRIP.

 

 

While I am skeptical about the Liberal Party and NDP's ability to move forward with UNDRIP, I do find the honesty expressed by many representatives of the Conservative Party to be interesting. Their focus is always on resource extraction, and how they are concerned that lawsuits against human rights violations might restrict resource extraction.

 

During the Indigineous Canada course I took this summer it was recommended I read the journal article Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. On page 4 the authors discuss two forms of colonialism.

 

Generally speaking, postcolonial theories and theories of coloniality attend to two forms of colonialism. External colonialism (also called exogenous or exploitation colonization) denotes the expropriation of fragments of Indigenous worlds, animals,plants and human beings, extracting them in order to transport them to - and build the wealth, the privilege, or feed the appetites of - the colonizers, who get marked as the first world. This includes so-thought ‘historic’ examples such as opium, spices, tea, sugar, and tobacco, the extraction of which continues to fuel colonial efforts. This form of colonialism also includes the feeding of contemporary appetites for diamonds, fish, water, oil, humans turned workers, genetic material, cadmium and other essential minerals for high tech devices. External colonialism often requires a subset of activities properly called military colonialism - the creation of war fronts/frontiers against enemies to be conquered, and the enlistment of foreign land, resources, and people into military operations. In external colonialism, all things Native become recast as ‘natural resources’-bodies and earth for war, bodies and earth for chattel.

The other form of colonialism that is attended to by postcolonial theories and theories of coloniality is internal colonialism, the biopolitical and geopolitical management of people, land, flora and fauna within the “domestic” borders of the imperial nation. This involves the use of particularized modes of control - prisons, ghettos, minoritizing, schooling, policing - to ensure the ascendancy of a nation and its white elite. These modes of control, imprisonment, and involuntary transport of the human beings across borders - ghettos, their policing, their economic divestiture, and their dislocatability - are at work to authorize the metropole and conscribe her periphery. Strategies of internal colonialism, such as segregation, divestment, surveillance, and criminalization,are both structural and interpersonal.

 

Reading this, and listening to the words of most spokespersons from the Conservative Party, you will recognize that they are being open and honest about their active support for ongoing colonialism.

What isn't as obvious is where other party representatives sit on UNDRIP, or possible future decolonization.

This is more complex, although the discussion in the Tuck&Yang article about the Occupy movement helps with context. While there is room for strategic and contingent collaborations with those who lean towards the economic and/or social left, there isn't going to be solidarity.  As I discuss in Eco-capitalism, eco-socialism, and decolonization, those whose focus is on the spoils of labour and other human activity (The 99% vs the 1%) will be on a different path from those who want to move that narrow gaze away from humans to non-human relations (the 0.9% vs the 99.1% within what is currently called the USA).

Wikipedia has a list of Indigenous Canadian politicians, and when you look at the federal House of Commons you see members who wore the team jersey of the Conservative, Liberal, NDP and even the Bloc Quebecois. I don't think it is appropriate to suggest that the willingness of an indigenous person to be within a party caucus indicates that those parties policies are compatible with decolonization, but only that there is strategic value to working within the settler-colonial governing structures.

I am curious to hear what other people think about whether there is movement within any of the current political parties away from the ongoing colonialism project? Do you see movement towards recognizing that colonialism isn't an event that happened in the past that current Canadians have no responsibility for, but something that is ongoing?

The Conservative Party of Canada's US-style primaries is counted today.

I disagree with Canada's adoption of US-style primaries where political tourists decide who will be treated as the leader/dictator of Canadian political parties.

Party leaders in the Canadian House of Commons should be decided by and accountable to caucus members, and never the other way around (caucus members asked to be accountable to party "leaders") if we wish to have a healthy representative democracy.

That said, there are possible outcomes of the CPC primary today that are interesting to different degrees.

Election not decided by "runners", front or otherwise.

The media likes to report on all elections as "races", where the fastest "runner" is the one that will win. There was constant talk about who was and was not a "front runner" during this primary.

The fact is most elections don't work that way, and the media tends to not even correctly identify who is being elected.  For instance, in Canada individual voters do not directly elect a Prime Minister.  We elect MP representatives in our districts who join and potentially change party caucuses. It is the entirety of the elected representatives in the House of Commons that decides who forms government, not individual district voters.

In the case of this primary election they are using a ranked ballot as well as a point system that allocates points equally among electoral districts no matter how many political tourists voted in that district.  This is nothing like a "one person, one vote" system.  The votes can transfer from one candidate to another based on the ranking on the ballot, and the weight of each vote is lower in districts with more ballots cast.

While a small number of journalists accurately reported this election, most did not.  While part of the job of the media in a democracy is to hold politicians to account, I have always wondered whose job it is to hold the media to account.

I wonder if Canadian representative democracy would be damaged by the centralization of decision making in unaccountable "leaders" had it not been for the all too common confusion of "Canadian" reporters who reported on Canadian elections as if they were similar in some way to US elections.  Would the CPC even be having primaries if not for media misreporting over generations?

All 4 candidates are possible

Given the way this election works, as opposed to how it was reported, all 4 candidates are possibilities.  It may not be how many #1 votes were cast that determines the outcome, but who was looked at by those with strong #1 preferences as their #2 choice.  The weight of an individual vote may change during each round, as the ballots of those who didn't rank additional choices are exhausted and no longer part of the count.

Leslyn Lewis

Ms. Lewis is seen by many to be a great #2 choice, for a wide variety of quite different reasons.   For the strong social conservatives her evangelical views, including strong anti-choice views, is seen as a plus.  For some social liberals her gender and race are seen as a plus, a refreshing change from the white maleness that dominates Canadian politics.

While I read interviews about her, as a past party member who voted in the last CPC primary I didn't receive constant campaign newsletters as I did the other 3 candidates.  I don't know if it was part of the plan to stay under the radar, and allow the other 3 candidates to provide ammunition against themselves in a future general election.

All of what I saw of her makes her the most interesting possibility during a general election, as different people can focus on different aspects of what is presented and come to very different conclusions.  I would speculate her influence on district voters in a general election to be more positive than the other 3 candidates, and some primary voters may have voted for her based on this reason.

Peter MacKay

I see Peter MacKay as a moderate compromise choice, much as Andrew Scheer was.  While Mr. MacKay tried to play up his social-conservative bona-fides during this election, that campaigning will hurt the party in a general election similar to how it hurt Andrew Scheer during the most recent general election.

I consider Mr. MacKay to be the least interesting possibility, and the least different from Andrew Scheer.

 

Erin O'Toole

What I found most interesting during the campaign is how much time the other two male candidates spent opposing his climate change plan.  This is because he had one, while Peter and Derek seemed to suggest that even recognizing the need to have a plan was somehow anti-conservative.  How it became Conservative policy to subsidize inefficiency and government debt remains confusing to me.

Mr. O'Toole is often grouped with Mr. MacKay as far as not being so visibly a social conservative, even though he used a "true blue Conservative" as a campaign slogan.  Like Mr. MacKay the attempt to push his social-conservative  bona-fides during campaign will come to haunt him during a general election.

Note: I have to admit to agreeing with his plan to defund CBC television, hopefully as a start to remove subsidies and special policy treatment from analog-era broadcasting and BDU's entirely.  This is 2020, not 1980...

Derek Sloan

Derek Sloan offers "no apologies" for his highly visible form of social conservatism.  If he somehow became leader it would be a gift to other general election candidates not nominated by the CPC.  What I read from his campaign put him very far outside of mainstream Canadian thought.

Should it be easy to find candidates for a leadership election that probably shouldn't happen?

I've read several articles discussing how hard it is to find good candidates for party leadership races. The federal Green Party and Conservative party, as well as some provincial parties, are looking for replacements for people who stepped down or were unreasonably kicked out.

I wonder if it is finally time to discuss whether we should be having these party-run leadership races at all?

In her chapter in Turning Parliament Inside Out, Elisabeth May reminded us that it wasn't until the 1974 federal election that party affiliations appeared on the ballots. The law also indicated that party leaders authorized candidates to have that party affiliation on the riding ballot. It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that Canada broke from the tradition of the leader being decided by elected caucus members as is the case in most Commonwealth countries, and adopting a more US style of having party members elect the leaders.

The changes for the 1974 election happened during Pierre Elliott Trudeau's time as PM.  His time is widely seen as the beginning of the centralization of government power within the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), as well as centralization within the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition (OLO) and other party leaders offices.


I strongly believe these changes have been very unhealthy for Canadian democracy, as the system that Canadians use to govern ourselves is entirely different than the US.

In the United States they have separate ballot questions for the Presidency, members of the House of Representatives, and Senators. They also have ballot questions for many other positions and ballot initiatives.

In Canada, we do not elect the government, our executive branch that is comparable to the US presidency. We rarely have referenda.

What we elect are members of the House of Commons, currently in 338 separate electoral district elections (although we have used multi-member districts in the past). The House of Commons then determines which party leader will become the Prime Minister, and the PM then selects their cabinet and is able to appoint many other positions (including Senators) which are directly elected in the United States.

Treating the position of Prime Minister as if it were remotely similar to the US President, and treating members of the House of Commons as if they were merely participants in the US Electoral College, are extremely dangerous concepts.


The only elected body Canada has is the House of Commons. The job of every parliamentarian who is not in cabinet is to hold the government to account.   This is true whether that member has the same party affiliation as the PM, of a different party affiliation.

This is true of other party leadership as well, and caucus members are unable to hold leadership to account if the leaders believe they have a mandate from other than caucus.


The Samara Centre for Democracy reports on many aspects of our parliament. In a recent report they indicated there was a herd behavior in that. "the average MP voted with their party 99.6% of the time. The most rebellious MP in the 42nd Parliament: 96.6%." This doesn't at all sound like parliamentarians holding the government or their party leadership to account.

The centralization of power in leaders offices that comes with being confused whether this is the Canadian or US system of government leads to an unaccountable government as a majority of the house are unable to do their jobs.

The confusion about whether we are electing a Canadian parliament or a Canadian President has also lead the media and other groups to focus reporting on the leaders and the extremely harmful concept of "party popular vote" during general elections. This further makes members of parliament less accountable as they do not get the scrutiny and perceived mandate they require in order to do their jobs as the only elected part of our system of government.

As we do not elect a President in Canada, and members of parliament are critical to the functioning of accountable government, Canadians must abandon this extremely harmful confusion of thinking that we have a similar system to the United States. What we end up with is a series of party leaders that believe they have a mandate to do anything they want, and that the members of parliament have less of a mandate than the party leadership.


I have a few suggestions to return our system of government to being more accountable.

• Immediately stop entertaining the idea that the general public or party tourists should have a vote in the leadership of political parties.
• Return to leaders being elected by caucus members, from existing caucus members.  Some parties need a spokesperson during elections as they don't have a caucus member willing or able to be that spokesperson, but the leader should be decided by caucus and already be an elected member of caucus.
• Elections Canada must stop reporting on the harmful and inaccurate concept of "party popular vote". It has never been true that every possible vote for a party nominated candidate is an endorsement of the party or its leader. Hopefully the media and various interest groups will follow suite and stop discussing this concept. Hopefully some of these interest groups will stop promoting harmful electoral reform which seeks to optimize parliamentary seats to "party popular vote".
• We should amend the law such that it is not the leader of the party that signs nomination papers. An alternative is for officials within the party to confirm riding associations as being party affiliated, and it be the riding association officials who are able to attach any party label to that riding's ballot.
• We should revert to the pre-1974 ballot which did not include party affiliation.

Conservative party members should stop pointing fingers at Scheer

You can see it all over the media: Conservative caucus members and other party members trying to lay the blame for perceived electoral failures at the feet of Andrew Scheer.  There have been multiple calls for his resignation.

As someone who actively watched and voted in the 2017 leadership race, I can only remind people that Andrew Scheer and the predictable outcome of the recent election was what party members wanted.  Andrew Scheer became leader not because of some slight of hand, which can easily be the case under voting systems not based on ranked ballots, but because this is what the majority of Conservative party members wanted.


The vast majority of Canadians recognize the climate crisis is the most important economic issue of our era, and agree that putting a price on carbon is a critically important tool in the toolbox.  This fiscally conservative tax policy long predates Justin Trudeau becoming an MP, so any attempt to label it as Justin Trudeau's idea only demonstrates a lack of understanding.  Even calling it a "left wing" policy makes no sense, as it is not a so-called "progressive" tax (IE: not focused on ability to pay).

When it was obvious that party insiders were campaigning against the best possible candidates if the Conservatives wanted to form a majority government, I asked:  Will the Conservative Party choose to fail like the US Democrats?

The outcome of that leadership race confirmed that the answer was: Yes, they did choose to fail.


The notion that a party should be allowed to form government when one of their most visible and promoted economic policies is opposed by a majority of citizens makes no sense.  If the Conservatives want to form government, they must change themselves and become more palatable to the rest of Canadians. It wasn't that Justin Trudeau's Liberals won as there were many reasons to be disenfranchised by that leadership, but that the Andrew Scheer Conservatives lost.


I strongly believe that if the party and membership had put down their blinders, and had the rest of the country in mind, we would currently be talking about a strong Conservative majority under Prime Minister Michael Chong or Prime Minister Lisa Raitt.

I put Andrew Scheer as #8 and Maxime Bernier as #9 on my ballot. This was not because I thought either had a credible path to become PM, but because there was actually even worse options to put below them.

I will continue to vote in Conservative party leadership races whenever I see candidates I consider worthy of being Prime Minister.  I wonder if I will ever have someone in my local riding nominated by the Conservative party that is worthy of my vote.  That has yet to happen, and that remains the choice of the party executive and membership.

Western Alien Nation

While researchers noticed the trends relating to greenhouses and the possible impacts on climate in the 1970's, it wasn't until the 1990's that computer modelling allowed a consensus position to form:  greenhouse gases were deeply involved in most climate changes and human-caused emissions were bringing discernible global warming.

It was in the 1990's that I took notice, and recognized that artificially cheap energy was always going to be far more costly than the promoters advertised.  This is the case for fossil fuel based energy, as well as nuclear.  The only viable future was one in which the full costs of energy was paid by the consumer, preferably with costs included directly by the producer with minimal or no exceptions.  The goal is energy efficiency, and not continuously switching between false claims of "too cheap to meter".



Due to the undue influence of the energy sector on the federal government, there has been considerable delay in doing anything.  It has been painful to watch decade after decade of politicians pretending there was no problem.

The best time to have started diversifying the western economy was in the 1990's, but successive provincial and federal governments did nothing.  This was especially true of self-called "conservative" governments who stuck their head in the (tar)sand and pretended that there was no problem.

I find it sad that the same "conservative" politicians are now talking about #Wexit, a western exit from the Canadian federation, largely due to their own failure to act on well established science.  It is understood that the Canadian economy as a whole will be impacted by a decline in one region, but angry talk of separation seems only to be dishonest politicians trying to deflect from decades of their own ineptitude.


If we want nation-building projects, it should be in the form of national publicly managed high-speed rail and (structurally separated) high-speed communications.  Increasing pipeline capacity for export markets only delays the inevitable downturn as ongoing fossil fuel (ab)use as an energy source is no longer tolerated.  The longer the delay, the higher the costs to Canadians.

Federal Election 2019: Right-wing parties and leadership

Personally I vote based on which person can best represent me in parliament.  While their party affiliation might make it harder for them to do that, my voting for them should never be misinterpreted as an endorsement of their party.  Having participated in and monitored committees and monitoring parliament over the years, I've observed that party affiliation is a poor indicator of where an MP stands on the policy proposals that I will be advocating around.

At the dissolution of the 42nd parliament, there were 6 parties which had at least 1 MP associated with them (The CCF is not a registered political party, so Erin Weir makes that 9 independents).  I'm going to divide the parties into pairs of parties on the right, middle, and left in the political spectrum.

Right-wing parties and leadership

Those of us who participated in the 2017 Conservative Leadership election will already have formed their opinion on Andrew Scheer who won that election, and Maxime Bernier who was in close second place.  We were asked to rank the candidates, and I researched all the candidates as I intended to rank the maximum 10 of the 14 candidates.  Andrew Sheer was 8th on my ballot, and Maxime Bernier was 9th.

Having received 49.05% on Round 13 of the Instant Runoff Voting system to Andrew Sheer's 50.95%, Mr. Bernier did the childish thing and (took his ball and went home.. err) formed his own party: The People's Party of Canada.  (I'm aware of there is a bit more that happened, but the narrow loss of the leadership race was the spark).


Neither of these candidates were people I was endorsing, or could stomach as Prime Minister.  I only believed there were still worse options in the 14 candidates.

While I'm a fiscal conservative, I'm also socially liberal and can't stomach socially conservative ideas. While I respected Andrew Sheer's work as Speaker of the House of Commons, a big part of his leadership campaign was to attempt to unite all forms of conservatism.  This was an explicit invitation for Conservatives who felt left out of the Canadian conservative movement under Stephen Harper who refused to allow social conservative issues to be brought forward by MPs.

Whether or not people feel that Andrew Sheer is himself socially conservative (pick your own *ist word) doesn't really matter, as he strongly wanted to bring social conservatives into the Conservative party.  I believe he has been successful, and we should expect the party to be quite different than it was under Harper -- which was also very different than the Progressive Conservative party before the Conservative party was formed.

I'm not convinced Andrew Sheer is a fiscal conservative.  One of the things that you will notice with a far-left fiscal liberal is the believe that the ability-to-pay should be the primary or only criteria for determining how taxes should be paid.  A more centrist or fiscal conservative will be more likely to use tax policy applied to specific goods or activities to be a mechanism to reduce government expenses or otherwise enact government policy.  Consumers purchasing less of these goods or carrying out those activities would in effect also be reducing their own taxes.

Andrew Scheer’s Climate Plan claims it is about technology and not taxes, but any subsidy either reduces fiscal capacity (at a time when the government will be called upon more to deal with the outcomes of the climate crisis), or have to be made up elsewhere: likely in income taxes which are focused on the ability-to-pay and don't help reduce government expenses.

The plan recognizes that the climate crisis is a global issue where we should be helping beyond our boarders, but then provides a so-called "green patent credit" which incentivizes patenting green technologies.  This will only make these technologies more expensive for those majority-world countries that will need cheap green technology the most.  A plan that actually wanted to have a positive global impact would fund patent-free research that could then be cheaply harnessed globally.

If I take Andrew Scheer at his word, his policies are only counterproductive to their intended goal making him an ineffectual leader.  If I am more cynical I could believe that Andrew Scheer disagrees with the vast majority of evidence of the impacts of the climate crisis, and human influence on it.

This could also only be only about jobs in strategic Conservative ridings, and that as leader he is willing to risk the Canadian economy and embarrass Canada on the international stage to theoretically protect a few jobs for partisan purposes.  If this sounds familiar, it should as this is the type of scandalous behavior the Conservatives are hypocritically using to attack the Justin Trudeau Liberals.

These are only a few examples of why I consider Andrew Sheer to be a social conservative, fiscal liberal - the opposite type of conservative than I am.


As much as I dislike Andrew Scheer, I ranked Maxime Bernier lower.  While I disagree with much of what Mr. Scheer believes in, I could at least tell where he stood.  Mr. Bernier seems to have no grounded political philosophy and will twist with the political winds around him (populist squeaky wheels and all).  He claims to be a libertarian, but when I was watching him closely as Minister of Industry I saw considerable evidence to the contrary -- and that he was willing to further perpetuate big-government manipulation of marketplaces, including in telecommunications.

Mr Bernier wishes to debate about what percentage of climate change is man-made.   While it might be legitimate for scientists to haggle over the exact percentage, there is no room for debating that the economy is 100% man-made.  It seems ludicrous to me that we would not make our economy more efficient and resilient, such as by reducing cost externalization and subsidies that benefit the energy sector,  regardless of the exact percentage of climate change that is man made.

Anyone that doesn't take the inevitable impacts of the climate crisis seriously, and isn't willing to make minor adjustments to the 100% man-made economy to minimize the harm to humanity (including to the economy), is not worth taking seriously.

Will the Conservative Party choose to fail like the US Democrats?

As a current Conservative party member I have received fundraising calls from the Conservative party.  The worst so far was from someone who started by talking about the leadership race, and I mentioned I have made a donation to my candidate.  She then spoke about how this increases the donation limit for the year : that I can donate to the candidate and to the party.

She then proceeded to list the party talking points, one of the first was how the Liberal carbon tax was a tax on everything.  To be honest, I didn't hear anything else she said as it was clear that there was no possibility I would be donating to my candidate -- Michael Chong -- and a party that was apparently campaigning against the only candidate that has resonated with me so far.  Michael Chong's revenue neutral green tax shift (from income to carbon) was the policy that made me take notice of the leadership race, and to learn about other policies we agreed on.

As politely as I could I hung up on her.

I also started to get emails from Maxime Bernier's campaign.  I never signed up for anything from his campaign, nor any of the other withdrawn candidates that endorsed him.  So I have to guess that the Conservative party itself added me to Bernier's list, as I opted-in to their list and to Michael Chong's list.

This reminded me of the US Democrats and how the party (staffers, fundraisers, etc) treated Clinton as "their candidate" even though Bernie Sanders was resonating with a whole new group of people who could have won the Democrats the Whitehouse.  Instead the party pushed (in ways some of us thought of as corruption) "their candidate" onto the ballot, and they managed to lose an election against a reality television star with no concrete policy ideas (just the run-of-the-mill angry political noise, what many are characterizing as "populism").

Has the Conservative party decided to give up the next general election and the possibility of their leader becoming the Prime Minister?  Maxime Bernier and I may have libertarian views, but the smaller you make government the more important it becomes what you believe must be left.  I do not recognize myself in what I hear from Maxime Bernier.

That isn't the same thing as saying that I won't be ranking him on my ballot.

The Conservatives will be using an advanced ranked ballot system.  Unlike a minimal-information single-X ballot, leadership voters need to think beyond who we most want to win the contest.  If we want to maximize the effectiveness of the ballot we need to rank all the way to who we would least like to win the contest.

While not focused on a single winner contest, an article by an Australian titled How To Best Use Your Vote In The New Senate System , specifically the question "I've numbered, say, 23 boxes and I don't like any of the other parties/candidates.  Should I stop now?", helps explain how to maximize a high-information ranked ballot.

A lot of voters - especially a lot of idealistic left-wing voters - are a bit silly about this and worry that if they preference a party they dislike they may help it win.  Well yes, but your preference can only ever reach that party if the only other parties left in the contest are the ones you have preferenced behind it or not at all! If that's the case then someone from that list is going to win a seat, whether you decide to help the lesser evils beat the greater evils or not. 

If Michael Chong becomes leader, I will be giving the Conservative candidate in my district a much closer look than I have in more recent elections.  Under our current electoral system it is the local candidate who needs to represent me, and their ability to do so is tied into the environment the party offers.  It is critical whether progressive conservative values (such as a green tax shift) will be embraced, or ignored by people who put blind ideology and slogans ahead of logic and evidence based decision making.

If Maxime Bernier becomes leader I know that no matter how good my local candidate is they won't be able to represent me, as a party that makes Mr. Bernier the leader will spend too much time chanting simplistic slogans and not enough time making evidence based decisions.

There is a line after which I won't be interested in voting for the locally nominated candidate as I will believe the party won't allow them to represent me.  As a progressive conservative (lower case as that party is gone) I can't support any of the social conservative candidates.  I think the party would lose many seats if one of the social conservative candidates won. I believe most Conservatives recognize that, so one of the social conservatives wining is unlikely.

If you exclude those who want to talk about their highly subjective idea of what constitutes "Canadian values" or "barbaric cultural practices", who do we have left?

I haven't made up my mind on all the candidates.  We still have 13 candidates, and only 4 more weeks to go.  I'm just very frustrated to learn that party staffers and volunteers are apparently campaigning against the best chance of the Conservative party leader being the next Canadian Prime Minister.

Why I joined the CPC to vote for Michael Chong

I have to admit that when I first heard that Michael Chong was running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) I thought: Oh, cute - a progressive conservative is running -- they'll squash him like a bug.

I had an opportunity to hear Mr. Chong in person on Wednesday February 22 at an event hosted at the offices of OpenConcept (a business owned by long-time friend Michael Gifford).  There was about 30 guests there, and Mr. Chong's meet-and-greeting very quickly turned into a Q&A session.

Most of what I heard I really liked.  Enough to decide to become a member of the party in order to vote in the leadership election in May (March 28 is the final date to become a member if you want to have your say).  I also made a $350 campaign contribution to Mr. Chong.

I'll highlight three areas of policy he spoke about, the first being from that bulk of ideas I agreed with, then one area I am mostly with him but with some reservations, and one area I disagreed.  Two are key elements of his platform: Economic Opportunity, Environmental Opportunity, and Democratic Opportunity.

Green Tax Policy

Mr. Chong is a GreenPAC endorsed candidate, and I was grinning from ear-to-ear when he was talking about his proposal for a revenue neutral shift from income taxes to a carbon tax (one much higher than proposed by the Liberals).  He even used the phrase "taxing things which are bad rather than things which are good", a phrase that has been used by the Green Tax Shift movement for decades.  (The shortform "Tax bads, not goods" confuses people as they think of the wrong meaning of "goods").

I have been a large supporter of the Green Tax Shift since I heard about it in the early 1990's.  Then I was a member of the Green Party, and remember one election where we were setting up a campaign office for the region (we didn't have the funding to have per-district offices).  This was a rental of a building where the previous  tenant was "H&R Block Income Tax".  I wanted us to put up a sign that said "Abolish" over the "H&R Block" part of the sign, but was opposed by some in the party which had more traditional lefty views on these issues (one of the first signs I might have been in the wrong party).


The question came up about why the carbon tax shouldn't be put into general revenue and used to increase fiscal capacity, reduce deficits/debt, etc.   His answer was that he wanted those other issues to be separate, and that this should be a revenue neutral shift so that the average taxpayer wouldn't be opposed to the tax (the average person wouldn't feel a tax increase, while those who pollute more than average would be paying more than those of us who pollute lower than average would be paying less).


The benefits of this policy are greater than he had time to discuss.  When tax-shifting you are taking something that is out of your hands and putting it into your control.  If you want to do something to reduce your taxes you can make better choices for your energy usage and other activities which are carbon emitters.  It becomes both carrot and stick, which is far more efficient than a stick-only approach that will meet with large political opposition from a wide variety of citizens.

Mr. Chong discussed how income tax is an inefficient tax, and that its introduction was only a temporary measure to help pay for Canada's involvement in World War 1.  While the last surviving war veteran from WW1 died in 2010, income tax is unfortunately still here.  To be clear, I'm not personally against taxes or government, but I think taxing income is the wrong way to go.

Electoral Reform

The question came up about where he stood on electoral reform.  He said that most of the proposals to replace our current voting system had some seats granted to political parties, and that we needed to reform political parties first before considering these types of changes.

I understand where he is coming from, but am disappointed with fellow Canadians that this is the answer.  He is correct in that nearly all the proposals that have come from the most vocal activist groups are party functioning, granting "top up" seats based on implied or explicit support for political parties.

A different direction could be taken, which is to take the party-focused features (Like optimizing for Gallagher Index style proportionality) off the table.  Ranked ballots in single and/or multi-member districts without top-up seats or above-the-line voting doesn't privilege party affiliation.  Moving from single-member districts to multi-member districts enables competition between candidates from the same party within a multi-member district, further diminishing the influence of political parties.

Unfortunately I can't fault Mr Chong for his views. If we went forward with a referendum today (maybe a ranked ballot, like was used in PEI and is being used to decide the Conservative Party leader), it is quite likely that some party-privileging system would be brought in and the excessive control over MPs by the party and party leader would only become worse.

We not only need to do as Mr. Chong suggests and reform parties, as well as both the upper and lower houses, we need to help educate fellow Canadians about the features of different voting systems and the risks associated with some of these features.

Merging government departments and agencies

This is one of those areas of policy that a few attendees had a problem with.

Mr Chong acknowledged that government shouldn't be treated like the private sector, and that the PM should not be thought of like the CEO.

He then proceeded to use private sector examples to explain why merging government departments would be a good idea.

There are many differences between the public and private sector, and this is one of those areas where the differences need to be recognized.   In a company, the company will work best when everyone is moving in the same direction.  If some branch thought the company was moving the wrong direction they could split off and form their own company that could compete or cooperate with the original company.

Governments don't work that way.  There are different departments with bureaucracies that have competing mindsets, and that is a good thing.  There is a monopoly on governance, and some branch that thinks another branch is heading the wrong direction can't split off and form their own government.  They need to hash it out within the structure of government, with there being debate between government departments that is not unlike the debate that happens between MPs in parliament.

While I believe there are efficiencies to be had in government, I believe merging dissimilar departments or even branches is harmful.  I still believe it is wrong for consumer affairs to have been added to Industry Canada (Now Innovation, Science and Economic Development) as that creates a conflict of interest within the department that would have been easier to negotiate if it were different departments (and thus different management structure trying to bring forward policy initiatives).

My political context

When I became politically active in the early 1990's I was introduced to the Green Party by someone who was familiar with the center-right German Greens. The Greens resonated more with me when the NDP was doing well (and lefties headed to the NDP), but I felt out-of-place whenever the NDP was doing poorly (and more lefties came to the Green Party).

I joined the Progressive Conservative party in 1998 because I was excited about the leadership campaign.  What David Orchard was saying resonated with me, and the party as a whole was more appealing the more the aspects of the conservative movement that didn't resonate with me moved to the Reform party.  I was called a tourist by Joe Clark during the campaign, and after that race which Joe Clark won I didn't really feel welcome.  Even though Joan Russow was leader, and her ideas didn't resonate with me at all, I returned to the Green Party as I believed at the time I had to be involved in a party to be involved in politics.

Starting in 2002 I started to meet more sitting MPs, and the more MPs I met the less partisan I became.  There were days when I would walk out of the office of an NDP MP and into the office of a Conservative MP, and it did not seem politically jarring at all.

I currently don't consider myself partisan, and find that there are candidates and MPs from every party who I share many ideas with, and well as MPs from each party which I don't share many ideas with.   I have found that political affiliation is a poor indicator of an MPs views on the issues that concern me the most.


While I still believe I'm politically center-right, I don't think I will ever feel at home exclusively with any party.  I suspect instead I'll want to become more involved with the individuals within the parties that I support.

Even from listening to Mr Chong for a very short amount of time on Wednesday evening I believe he is one of those individuals I can support -- and will be supporting as he runs for leadership of one of the two parties whose leader is most likely to become the next Prime Minister.

Whether or not Mr Chong wins, a good sized showing will demonstrate that there is support for the type of conservatism that he represents!  Whoever becomes the next CPC leader will need to listen more closely to these views.