Why I trust Jody Wilson-Reybould, and never again Justin Trudeau

A few ideas are in my head.

Jody Wilson-Raybould is also known as Puglaas, a title she explains in the speech I link to below.  I knew she had written a second book in the spring when it was announced, a process that had already been underway for quite some time.

For those confused about the timing of this book that coincided with the election, it is important to recognize that books are not written and published in a few weeks, and the timing was decided months ago. Even the timing of his election to coincide with the planned launch of this book is Justin Trudeau's personal mistake.

When her first book came out, I didn't notice as I had not yet started my anti-racism journey, and had not leaned about Indigenous Canada or become engaged in leaning about, thinking about, and helping in any way I can to fight for Indigenous Rights.

The attention this election is on the second book, which is focused on her time as an MP, joining cabinet, and being forced because of Justin Trudeau's lack of ethics felt forced to resign from cabinet.

I feel like much of the partisan talk is missing the context that she can offer, and that is more visible in her first book which was organized as a collection of speaking notes.

I want to highlight and suggest everyone read the speech she ended her first book with: Each of Us, In Our Own Way, is a Hiligax̲te. - Wilson-Raybould, Jody, 1971-. (2019, June 6). Feminists Deliver “Standing in Your Power, Using Your Voice” [O]. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0380803

 

This speech resonates the most with me as it summarizes what went wrong in cabinet.  She was trained from an extremely early age for a critical female role in her culture and nation, the Hiligax̲te, which is one that "correct the Chief's path".

Unlike in Western European culture and worldviews where women weren't granted political rights and responsibilities (and only recently partially gained), Puglaas is from a much more mature culture where women have specifically allocated political roles (which colonialism attempted to strip).

What happened with her relationship with Justin Trudeau was that Puglas did her job: as an MP, as a member of cabinet, as Attorney General, as Hiligax̲te, and as an Indigenous woman.

When I met Justin Trudeau in 2010 at his constituency office, I was also optimistic. He said all the right things, and as a technical person I thought it was amazing that a politician had a signed XKCD cartoon on his wall.

I think for much of the decade Canadians were enamored with Justin Trudeau.  He said all the right things.

Except, one by one, I think we all started to notice that his actions didn't match those words.

My previous article highlighted books by Arthur Manuel, which spoke about Justin Trudeau as well as his father.  What I read there about the Trudeau Prime Ministers has been confirmed from so many other sources.  While they speak progressive, including on Indigenous Rights, their actions are actually the opposite.


I have come to believe that, adjusted for the time period, Pierre Elliot Trudeau was more racist than Sir John Alexander Macdonald (I discuss why I believe that in the earlier article). Statues of John A are being removed, and I expect we will want to revisit a more honest version of the historical record of P.E. Trudeau.


Justin came into power in 2015 with an extremely large amount of political capital. Demonstrating what I have now come to believe is his extreme sense of entitlement and privilege, he burned through that political capital as if he thought it was infinite.

But.. the real world the rest of us live in has limits, and now Trudeau exist as an anchor pulling the Liberal party under. Much of the problems with the centralization of power into the leaders offices, including the Prime Ministers Office (PMO), is fallout of policy initiated by and deliberately not fixed by the Trudeau family.

• Lets work to fix parliamentary flaws which block holding a Premier or Prime Minister accountable.
• What did Justin Trudeau and the 2015 Liberal platform team do wrong on electoral reform

While there are people talking about other types of strategic voting, such as trying to avoid vote splitting which is caused by the lack of ranked ballots, I consider all of this to be short term thinking.

Canada has some serious problems to deal with, and on all counts: whether it is Women's Rights (he is a fake feminist), Indigenous Rights (he is a fake ally), or Democratic Rights (he is a fake progressive) -- Justin Trudeau is in the way and must be removed.

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.

Federal Election 2019: Left-wing parties and leadership

I've commented on the political right and center, and will offer some personal comments on the federal Canadian left.

As I mentioned with the first posting, I don't vote along party lines.  My vote for a candidate nominated by a party, or even a financial contribution to a candidate, is not in any way an endorsement of the party.  I believe nearly every party has great candidates (some of which I hope become or remain MPs), and they also have horrible candidates (who I hope don't get re-elected or elected).  Party affiliation alone doesn't mean anything to me.

New Democratic Party

I have donated hundreds of dollars to NDP nominated candidates because I wanted them to continue to sit in parliament, and I have donated to the campaign of an NDP nominated candidate who was the most likely candidate to oust a bad candidate (who happened to be nominated by the Liberals).

Of the parties long-term parties that nominate candidates where I live (PC which morphed into Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green), the party I felt least likely to have an affinity with is the NDP. I have my own beliefs, and don't want to feel judged as being either "with us" or "against us" as I've often felt when discussing politics with lifelong NDP supporters. It has always felt I needed to agree with them on every policy in order to work with them on any, and there were so many policy ideas they expressed which I believed were simply unworkable even when I thought their goals were in line with my own.


There is a video called "Lefty Boot Camp" made by Australian ABC Comedy that sums up the feeling I've all too often had when getting into political discussions with strong NDP supporters.





When Jack Layton became leader in 2003 he helped reshape the party to give it focus on areas of policy that more Canadians could join with. Under his direction and leadership we saw a historic high in the May 2011 election with the "Orange crush" that was partly due to huge support in Quebec. The "Orange Crush" was largely mirrored by a collapse in support for the Bloc Québécois in Quebec, clearly suggesting that the NDP and the Bloc were competing for many of the same voters.

After Jack Layton's death, the leadership moved to Thomas Mulcair. Many suggest the loss of seats in Quebec, and much of the gains the NDP had under Layton, was due to Mulcair's views on the niqab. Quebec started its movement towards a stronger separation of church and state, and Quebeckers were getting increasingly frustrated by the angry slurs being thrown at them from outside. As suggested in the video above, calling someone a "racist" who don't think they are racist (and there is no evidence they are racist) isn't going to change their mind, but it is going to make them dismiss or otherwise distrust you.

The party membership gave Mulcair a non-confidence vote for a variety of possible reasons: low seat turnout (which was largely due to opposing Quebeckers on secularism), opposing Alberta's oil industry (apparently the NDP brand matters more than anything else, and the fact Alberta had an NDP provincial government was supposed to flip the entire country), and a promise to balance the budget (which is one of the things which made the party seem more legitimate in the 2015 election).

The election of a leader who wears an opposition to Quebec's secularism on his head, and the fact that NDP devotees will shout "racist" any time someone brings up the entirely separate issue of religion, has put the NDP back into their pre-Layton position. I fully expect the continued fall of the NDP in Quebec will be seen in the form of a rise of the Bloc in Quebec.

Secularism

I believe in a strong separation of church and state (See: Freethought), and believe we need less religion in politics rather than more.

Due to my adoptive ties to India (see photograph of my wife and I ), I am very concerned about influence of religion on politics, with partition being one historical result.  Ongoing Hindu and Sikh nationalism (and the related battles, including terrorism - Air India Flight 182 comes to mind from a Canadian perspective) continuing to have harmful impacts.

I disagree with the suggestion that to be inclusive of religious views we need to bring religion beyond a persons private life and community, and bring religion into government.  I consider it insensitive of people with strong religious views to have them seek assistance from a theoretically secular government, and be confronted with a person prominently displaying symbols from a differing religion that has historically (or currently) been at war with the citizen's own religious community.

I consider religion to be a foreign political influence, and the display of religious symbols seems to put that government representative in a visible conflict of interest with the secular government they should be representing.

While I believe there is some hypocrisy in Quebec on religious symbols within government, given the ongoing Christian religious symbols even within their flag, I believe that they are headed in a more progressive direction.  There is no attempt to ban any religious beliefs, but there is a ban on promoting that religion through prominent religions symbols while that person should be clearly representing the secular government.  I wish there was as forceful removal of ostentatious Christian symbols from Quebec government, but what they are doing is better than what many other Canadian political leaders are suggesting.

I believe that to have a more healthy and inclusive society that is not constantly at war with itself we need less religion in politics, not more.

It should be obvious that the NDP membership, with their current leader as visible spokesperson, disagree with my views on secularism.

Democratic Deficit

I believe in participatory democracy, which is why I've considered it my duty to participate as a citizen including by being a witness at parliamentary committees (and an observer of easily hundreds of hours of parliamentary work).   Things work well when parliamentarians leave their "team jerseys" (party affiliation) at the door and work together as people.  The best committees can be observed when this happens, and the worst can be seen when hyper-partisan MPs repeat party talking points at each other.

My experience with many NDP MPs and supporters is that they are hyper-partisan.  I've heard many suggest that an MP that had been nominated by the NDP should be barred from crossing the floor.  This suggests that these elected members are expected to put party first, and the interests of the citizens in their constituencies later (if at all).  They see the party and the interests of the party as their constituency, not the people in the ridings.  This could be seen at the convention that ousted Tom Mulcair, where the fact that there was a NDP branded government in Alberta made party brand more important than policies that NDP candidates and supporters had been fighting for for years.

In any discussion on electoral reform the NDP pushed forward party lists, believing that all that mattered was that an interchangeable NDP nominated candidate won.  I have a hard time seeing this desire to draw a circle around every NDP supporter in Canada, regardless of where they live, to be any more than gerrymandering on steroids. I consider this attitude to be one that can only increase the democracy deficit, with more MPs having a stronger allegiances to their party brand than any policy or democratic principles.



I have many more things I've felt over the years about the NDP and its leadership, but they become examples of the same themes that could be seen on secularism and democracy.  The attack-pamphlets I've seen from the NDP aimed at the Greens, deliberately misrepresenting the Green's support for participatory democracy, shows how little the NDP is interested in working together with anyone not part of their party after an election.

Bloc Québécois

The Bloc has felt similar to the NDP in many ways, except in their case it is their belief that their interpretation of what Quebeckers wants that is their focus rather than the NDP with their party brand focus.

I understand why the Bloc exist, and consider it very unfortunate.  What unites the provinces has never been as simple as the more top-down federal parties have tried to suggest.  I don't believe it is helpful when "federal" leadership (often representing views of a minority of Canadians, focused inward on their parties) attacks Quebeckers for their beliefs.  The more some suggest that Quebeckers are somehow less Canadian because they have different beliefs, the more the Bloc will continue to exist.

I find it disturbing how much the other party leaders have been campaigning for the Bloc in this election, by constantly bringing up Bill 21.  I don't see how this is helpful to the unity of Canada to be so actively promoting the idea that a majority of Quebeckers don't fit into some other Canadian's idea of what it is to be Canadian.  I also suspect that if asked without the uncalled for angry name-calling, a majority of other Canadians would support the idea of moving forward with Canadian federal secularism.

Federal Election 2019: politically center parties and leadership

I posted earlier on the right-wing parties and leadership, and will continue my thoughts on the central parties and leadership.

Justin Trudeau, and the Liberal party of Canada

Rina Sen, Russell McOrmond, and Justin Trudeau (July 18, 2010)

I met Justin Trudeau in 2010 at his constituency office, before he became leader of the Liberal party.  I felt quite optimistic from that meeting, and at the time thought his stance on bringing young people into politics would be positive.

When he became Prime Minister after the 2015 election, he likely came in with the most optimistic feelings about him, and the most political capital of any Canadian Prime Minister.

He and his closest advisors then burned through that political capital as if it was worthless, and the Liberal party is back in a campaign where the best they have to offer is that they aren't the Conservatives.

I have come to think that Justin Trudeau took his self-granted "Minister of Youth" title more seriously than the "Prime Minister of Canada" title he was granted by being the leader of the party that won the most seats.  There were so many decisions he made that seemed to exhibit the naivety of someone with no political experience, rather than the son of a past Prime Minister who was given a privileged position for learning how real national and international politics works.

A few top-of-mind examples of Justin's personal or government mistakes:

Brown Face

For reasons that might be obvious from the photograph above that included my wife Rina, I have had the opportunity to speak to many people with darker skin about their feelings on "brown face".  They do not see it at all like Blackface which has a long history of non-black performers presenting a caricature of a black person that was insulting.  Context matters, and the same context simply doesn't exist with cosplay that includes other skin colors (that exist with humans or purely fictional).

Justin, as he embraced some of the youth and social media culture, seemed to be a willing participant in call-out culture (also known as outrage culture) that pretends that reality is so black-and-white, that context never matters, and often that facts don't matter.   While I don't think it is appropriate to be considering Justin to be racist because he cosplayed characters that happened to be non-white, I don't feel bad that the Minister of Youth is being attacked by a social-media style call-out youth culture.

SNC-Lavalin

Context matters.  While there was generally support during consultations towards the creation of a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in Canada, it was very inappropriate to bury the policy in a budget bill and then use it in the context of company that seemed to be strategically important for the Liberal Party.  Every time Justin said, "I'm not going to apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs", he is admitting wrongdoing as protecting jobs is not a legitimate justification for use of a DPA.

While this wrongdoing seems to play well in Quebec, it plays poorly in the rest of the country.  Like the Conservative party's focus on Alberta energy sector jobs at the expense of the rest of Canada and Canada's global reputation, this is an inability to see the bigger picture and Canada's best interests rather than narrow provincial or riding-specific interests.

Climate Crisis Policy

One second they declare a #ClimateEmergency and the next second they say yes to expand a pipeline.

This is shameful.
But of course this is not only in Canada, we can unfortunately see the same pattern everywhere...https://t.co/zVbWXnLBSQ

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) June 19, 2019

In Justin's attempt to be all things to everyone, he is failing everyone.

I see no future where Canada isn't failing in its international obligations on the climate crisis that involves continuing to subsidize and privilege the energy sector. While there can be some debate about what percentage of climate change is man-made, there can be no debate that the economy is 100% man-made. This imagining of an economy built on top of artificially "cheap" energy has always been in conflict with the natural sciences, even if some people have kept their eyes closed most of their lives.

If the purpose of purchasing the pipeline is to nationalize this distribution system, then that might make sense. Having inter-provincial and cross-state distribution of energy treated as if it is only the jurisdiction of a single province or the private sector never made sense. I have, however, seen no signs that this is the intention. In fact, it is hard to determine what the intentions are as there has been no clarity.


The same inexperience was exhibited with the carbon tax. The only way a carbon tax policy works is if it is a revenue neutral shift away from personal income tax, allowing citizens to make more efficient choices with their money. It is the policy that must be revenue neutral, in that any carbon tax collected must be transferred 100% to reducing personal income tax. 

Typical of what I've seen with Justin, he included a series of tax expenditures which meant that the policy was not revenue neutral.  Personal income taxpayers are effectively funding the separate (and in many ways incompatible) government programs embedded in the tax expenditures. By including separate government programs it also gave legitimacy to the claims from the Conservatives that this was an increase in taxes, even though it is clearly false to claim that a carbon tax is a tax on everything when compared to personal income taxes.

Electoral Reform

This was so badly botched, and so widely misunderstood, that I posting a separate article.

Elizabeth May, and the Green Party of Canada

The Global Greens is the partnership of the world's environmental movements, Green Parties, NGOs, Foundations, Think Tanks, Institutes and Individuals working cooperatively to implement the Global Greens Charter.  The Green Party of Canada has adopted that charter as core to its values, and includes Participatory Democracy, Nonviolence, Social justice, Sustainability, Respect for Diversity, and Ecological Wisdom.

Participatory Democracy, and the role of leader

Consistent with the principle of Participatory Democracy, the leader of the Green Party is "the public face and principal spokesperson of the Party".  The leader is not the CEO of a corporation that is able to dictate to MPs or candidates as if they are employees, as is all too commonly done in other parties. The federal leader also has no influence over provincial green parties, and should never try to speak on their behalf.

Helping Canadians to understand these core values seems like it would be a primary job of "the public face and principal spokesperson of the Party".  For better or for worse, however, most of Elizabeth May's political experience has been outside of the party.  This has meant that she is able to speak to the mainstream (largely national) media which wants to talk as if Canada is having a presidential election, even though the leader is intended to be one candidate among many, one MP among many.

This has allowed confusion to be spread by some of the more authoritarian parties like the NDP whose leader is claiming that the Greens would open debates on abortion and national-unity, simply because the Global Greens believe in participatory democracy which would discourage (some suggest outright prohibit) whipping elected members of parliament.

Lacking evidence based decision making in technology law

All too consistent with other parties, the platform includes bold statements which should be matters of debate within a parliament with adequate time to study.  I can point to technology law issues such as the so-called "right to be forgotten" which is alleged to be a matter of privacy, when it is more about protecting people from uncomfortable legally published facts.  I'm as uncomfortable with the "right to be forgotten" as book burning because what the books says are uncomfortable to an individual, group or government.

Questions around 5G should be a matter of spectrum policy, and whether private corporations should be granted exclusivity with digital technology, and if we need structural separation for wireless and wired digital communication.  There are vague references in the platform about weather forecasting and security, which suggest a reaction to foreign media reports.  What questions a committee is asked to study is important, as poor questions will often get poor answers.

The platform also suggests "Netflix and other foreign internet broadcasters are subject to Canadian Content (CanCon)", even though Netflix and similar digital native content distribution services are not broadcast.  When discussing the post digital conversion world, it is broadcasters like CBC/etc who are "foreign", and yet the Greens want to increase subsidies to this analog-era entity rather than shift funding to Canadian creators.

Analog-era media companies have spun a narrative that digital native companies are evil, and should somehow be crippled through analog-era regulation.  The effect being to ensure that Canada never successfully gains any benefits from the digital transition (with OSI model layered structural separation leading to greater competition and innovation being one).  This includes the "scary Google search and Microsoft Bing" attitude that is behind the "right to be forgotten".

Technology policy could have a positive impact on climate change, such as moving compute intensive activities north where cooling the computers wouldn't be as energy intensive.  Extremely cheap communications networks to bring the results quickly back to users on energy efficient displays from is critical to this efficiency.  Allowing analog-era vertically integrated media companies like Bell, Telus and Rogers to run the lower level communications infrastructure is a major barrier to this energy efficiency, so analog-era regulation of digital-era communications technology is even harmful to the climate. Computing as an industry is currently in the same order-of-magnitude as the airline industry.

Elizabeth May wishes people to focus on the science and not blindly block change when looking for solutions to climate change and other environmental issues, but appears to not be following her own advise when it comes to how to regulate modern information and communications technology.

Electoral reform

The policy which I find in most conflict with the Global Greens charter is the support for party lists  for electoral reform,. Party lists put the focus on the party bureaucracy and away from participatory democracy.  I suspect I know where this is rooted as many Canadian greens learned from the German Greens, which due to a specific problem in German history adopted an electoral system (mixed member proportional) to solve a specific problem.  I had hoped that the Canadian federal and provincial parties would learn to understand the inconsistency between support for party lists and participatory democracy, but was very disappointed by Elizabeth May's performance in the electoral reform committee.    If she had brought the Global Greens values into that committee, the compromise between the groups that want electoral reform (Some who want party lists, and some who reject party lists) might have become more obvious.  Unfortunately this is not what happened.

What did Justin Trudeau and the 2015 Liberal platform team do wrong on electoral reform

While partisans from opposition parties and supportive multi-partisan interest groups have their own take on what went wrong with electoral reform after the 2015 election, I'll offer a non-partisan take on what Justin Trudeau did wrong.

Platforms are increasingly decided by an inner-circle within the bureaucracy of a political party, in close consultation with the party leader and executive. They increasingly even ignore or contradict party policy voted on by members. It is therefore appropriate to focus blame for failures on those few individuals, rather than all candidates or elected members with that party affiliation.

We should start with a reminder of what was included in the 2015 Liberal platform

We will make every vote count.

We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system. 

We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting. 

This committee will deliver its recommendations to Parliament. Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform.

Lets parse what Justin Trudeau and his platform team did wrong with each component:

We will make every vote count.

This is a loaded term that means different, and often incompatible, things to different people.  The platform team were either unaware of the complexities of electoral reform, or were trying to deceive people into believing that it was their meaning that the platform was using.

We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system. 

If this commitment was strong, then other steps would not have been carried out in a way that would have predictably lead to failure.

We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting.

If the commitment was to have 2015 be the last federal election under FPTP, then why convene a committee that is constituted differently than any other parliamentary committee?  Convening a committee to study a variety of reforms, including a variety of things that a proportional system can be proportional to, should not start by forming a committee that is proportional to alleged support for political parties.

The idea that elections and parliament should be focused only on political parties, with no consideration for any other demographic trait of potential representatives, is itself controversial.  Misunderstandings and misrepresentations about these very different criteria for success is behind why reform is so hard in Canada.

An unbiased study would have found that the three most common things different people are focused on when voting in parliamentary elections are:

1. Those whose focus is on what party forms government. For them the choice is between the top two parties representing two visions, with there being little or no interest in other parties or the individual people who are candidates in the election.
2. Those whose focus is on what parties have seats in parliament. For them the choice is between the likely less than 10 parties who have sufficient support to gain seats, and they also have little or no interest in the specific individuals who are candidates in the election.
3. Those who want the people with the most voter support to act as representatives. For them party affiliation is one demographic trait among many, and want to be able to include other criteria in their decision of which people (plural) they believe could represent them.

Each group has different features of systems they believe is ideal

1. For this group, First Past The Post is the ideal system, as the single vote plurality encourages people to vote for one of the top two parties - otherwise the vote will split or be quickly exhausted.
2. For this group party lists are seen as ideal (some claim necessary), as the single party vote requires people to vote narrowly along party lines and thus makes any vote for a party count equally.
3. For this group any ballot that forces people to vote narrowly along party lines via party lists, or gives certain voters an unequal vote because they vote along party lines, moves us further away from making every vote count.  This group will reject any system which includes party lists or groups different candidates together along party lines.  They don't want their vote for one person to transfer to another person they didn't vote for. They might feel being forced to make a single choice among 10 options country-wide isn't much different than a choice between 2. This group also doesn't believe that there is only "one right answer" to a question with more than two options, so will want to either rank their choices or mark multiple choices they approve of. They will want their ballot to not be exhausted quickly and have no influence, so will want their ballot to be able to transfer beyond a small number of candidates (for instance via multi-member districts or similar).

This committee will deliver its recommendations to Parliament.

Between June 21, 2016 and November 28, 2016 the Special Committee on Electoral Reform carried out the study.  This was 6 months of study, with a final report being tabled in December which is 13 months after the government was formed.

A proper study would have determined the complexities of the different positions, recognized there was no consensus, and suggested a way to move forward that had a majority of support. Unfortunately by putting the focus on parties this biased the study towards parties and their interests, as can be seen by a number of the recommendations.

• The NDP and Elizabeth May were in group 2, and forced a criteria for success (a low Gallagher index) that group 2 wants, but that group 1 and group 3 both reject as being invalid (or even counterproductive, as it seeks to optimize for what some in group 3 consider harmful hyper-partisanship)
• The Conservative members wanted to embarrass the Liberals at any cost, and ensure that the Liberals couldn't fulfill their campaign promise.  As the opposition was granted a majority of the members on committee, it was trivial to orchestrate this by requiring a referendum.  Any time Canadians have been given a referendum on the Gallagher index it has failed, so these two criteria together guaranteed failure.
• The Liberals on the committee presented a Supplemental Report of the Liberal Members of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform which confirmed the complexity of reform and the invalidity of the Gallagher index as a criteria for success.  In doing so they essentially contradicted the authors of the 2015 Liberal platform as the platform suggested the issue could have a satisfactory resolution before the next election.  The Liberal caucus members admitting in their minority report that the platform team was wrong was the most surprising aspect of the report.

It was not surprising that the government response rejected recommendations 1, 2 and 12 relating to the Gallagher index (noting that testimony did not lead to that recommendation) with 12 also including the referendum.

Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform.

I will repeat where I started: "The platform team were either unaware of the complexities of electoral reform, or were trying to deceive people into believing that it was their meaning that the platform was using."

The ERRE committee work happened at a predictable pace, and left only 5 months to introduce and pass legislation.

As the 10 independent Electoral Boundaries Commissions could not complete a process to change boundaries within 5 months, or even necessarily before the next election, the quickly introduced legislation would need to work with the existing boundaries.   While that would satisfy the first and third group as they don't want districts redrawn, this would have been rejected by the group who want party lists or other systems which propose redrawing electoral boundaries.

As the second group often believe that systems based on ranked ballots in multi-member districts (STV) are "proportional" a compromise was possible. Unfortunately that was never offered by the opposition.  In fact the opposition and interest groups from group 2 continued to promote the idea that ranked ballot systems could be "improved" in the future by adding "top-up" party lists to better meet their Gallagher index criteria for success, making it impossible to have a reasonable discussion about any compromise.

With no compromise offered, and confusion continually generated by one of the groups ignoring the interests of other voters, reform was impossible in such a short time-frame.

The complexity of moving forward with reform should have been understood, and any promise of enacting legislation in a short time period should have started with stating the criteria for success and not falsely claiming that legislation would easily follow from some non-existent consensus on success criteria.

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.