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.

Letter to Hill Times Re: Are political parties undermining democratic practices?

The following is the unedited version of the letter to the Hill Times editor that became: Canada’s electoral system needs to truly modernize, democratize: McOrmond

It was in reply to: Are political parties undermining democratic practices? which referenced a letter that Elizabeth May wrote.

---

I read Ms. May's letter, and I found it odd that while acknowledging what Ms. Wilson-Raybould had written, Ms. May decided to double-down on the problem.

Referencing her preference for an electoral system that optimizes for "party popular vote", she is promoting the very thinking that creates the hierarchy of unelected power.

Peoples of this homeland have had systems of democratic governance for longer than Europeans and their colonies have, and we should be looking more closely at those.

Party Representation, mislabeled Proportional Representation, is the opposite to what most Indigenous nations use.  In the diversity of Indigenous systems the leadership are spokespersons, and never treated as the CEO of a corporation (or Feudal Lords or Monarchies, to reference the relatively recent colonial history), or allowed to treat elected members of parliament as employees.  Granting seats in parliament merely based on party affiliation will only make these problems worse.

While there are electoral systems to move us away from the divisive system of First Past The Post, optimizing for "party popular vote" moves us in the opposite direction.

As an early start, we should be removing party names from ballots, disallowing party executives to manipulate the local nomination processes, and ensuring party leaders are elected by (and always accountable to) fellow caucus members.

While still based on a colonial constitutional monarchy, the governance systems used in Nunavut and Northwest Territories are far more advanced than used in the provinces or federal government.

Has the Green Party of Canada abandoned the Global Greens Values? And why Zionism keeps cropping up.

A cartoon at the top of a National Post article explains quite well what has gone wrong with the Green Party of Canada, but for the opposite reasons than the journalists are suggesting.

I was an active campaigner for the Global Greens movement within Ontario and Canada in the 1990's, hosting websites, and doing pretty much everything short of putting my name on the ballot. I've lived in Ottawa since 1987, and felt it inappropriate to parachute elsewhere or put my name forward as a uni-lingual anglophone. Several of my bilingual friends have had their name on the ballot.

In a culture that valued such things I might be considered a community elder and knowledge keeper of the movement from that period. Given we don't live in such a culture, I'm being told by Annamie Paul supporters that I'm just an "angry white man".

If you look at the Global Greens Values, it includes Participatory Democracy. This means that the Green Party Leader is supposed to act exactly as described in the cartoon: to be a spokesperson for the democratic participants and not be promoting her personal views above others.

Until recently the Green Party had 3 elected MPs, who need to be understood as the democratic caucus that directs any bureaucrat operating outside of parliament. This includes Annamie Paul who was only "elected" by political tourists who voted in a contest external to parliament.  She is not an elected parliamentarian, and thus her opinions on policy don't matter any more than any other unelected member of the party.

Her job is to support caucus members, never suggest a gag order, and never to allow her personal views to conflict with democratically established party policy and especially never conflict with elected caucus members.

The fact that Annamie Paul didn't do her job correctly forced one of those caucus members to cross the floor. Floor crossing is exactly how you hold otherwise unaccountable parties to account, which is the direction that accountability should work. Party bureaucracies should NEVER have the ability to hold caucus members to account.

In a healthy democracy political parties, if they exist at all, exist at the pleasure of caucus members and not the other way around.

• Lets work to fix parliamentary flaws which block holding a Premier or Prime Minister accountable.
  

I was technically a Green Party of Canada member during the last "leadership race", and was sent a ballot. Since none of the caucus members put their name forward I didn't vote.  None of the people I consider to be legitimate possibilities to be leader in a participatory democracy were on that ballot.

Gender, race and religion.

For those who want to claim this dispute is about gender, race or religion I want to point out some important details.

• Jenica Atwin
• Is a woman
  
• Stepfather is Ron Tremblay, the Wolastoqewi Grand Chief. (see some language classes).
  
• Married to Oromocto First Nation band councillor Chris Atwin and has two sons.
• Is technically not Indigenous to this continent, but is as close as a person without Indigenous ancestry can currently get. If Canada wasn't blocking self-determination of Indigenous nations, who knows what would have been possible.
• Her views on what is happening in Palestine is consistent with the majority of those Indigenous to this continent.
  

•  Annamie Paul
• Also a woman
• Is visibly BIPOC
• Converted to Judaism in 2000, the religion of her husband and also two children. Judaism and other Abrahamic/Semitic religions (Christianity, Islam, and other factions) are indigenous to Palestine, but not to this continent.
• Her views on what is happening in Palestine is consistent with the majority of European colonizers on this continent.
  

What is Democracy, participatory or otherwise

If people want to learn about Participatory Democracy, and democracy in general, Europe and its colonies are not the best source.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy has been a participatory democracy for possibly a thousand years, while Britain and Canada have been eligible to be considered less advanced hierarchical (derived from feudalism) representative democracies for less than 100. Britain didn't become what we would recognize as a democracy until 1928. Canada didn't become eligible to be considered a democracy until the UK passed the "Canada Act" in 1982. Prior to the coming into force of that Act, the UK parliament had more influence over the laws of Canada than anyone on this side of the Atlantic.


Typical of anti-democratic Canada, the government sent in the RCMP to depose the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council (spokespersons, not European-style feudal lords/dictators) in 1924. Canada unilaterally installed an Indian Act Band Council bureaucracy which is responsible to the Canadian Crown and not citizens. Band councils are not responsible governments -- Colonial Canada opposes responsible governments.

• Brief to The Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, for the study of the Subject Matter of Bill C-15
• Haundenosaunee Confederacy Creation
• Is Canada a democracy?
  

If Canada supported democracy and human rights, as it claims in its widely distributed propaganda, it would restore proper relations with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council and disband its imposed Band Council bureaucracy. Canada would honour the Haldimand Tract Moratorium, and stop arresting land title holders for protecting their land, and even arresting journalists for reporting on Canada's unlawful activities.

Zionism

 

There is a long history behind this. While Zionism is generally considered to have been founded in 1897, it is what happened a few decades later that needs to be understood.

When the Christians of Europe and its colonies wanted to get rid of Jewish people in the 1930's and 1940's, a few different strategies emerged.  The German solution became known as the Holocaust, and the British solution became aggressive Christian support for Zionism (Let Jewish people live, just not here).


For further context:

• World Population by Religion

As of this moment indicates:

• 2,173,180,000 Christians (31% of world population), of which 50% are Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, and 1% other.
• 1,598,510,000 Muslims (23%), of which 87-90% are Sunnis, 10-13% Shia.
• 1,126,500,000 No Religion affiliation (16%): atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. One-in-five people (20%) in the United States are religiously unaffiliated.
  

Islam, like Christianity, are Abrahamic religious splinter groups, which together with Judaism (which due to less colonialism and conversion, only represents 0.2%) represents nearly 60% of the global population. Abrahamics splinter themselves further into Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Sunnis, Shia , etc, etc.


The political trick that is regularly used is that in a region where one of these splinter groups is dominant, others will be oppressed by that dominant Abrahamic group. Given the impact globally of colonialism and conversion (regularly forced), focusing on uplifting Abrahamic religions oppressed by other Abrahamic religions only gives more power for Abrahamic religions to maintain their status as oppressors.

People who want to know where the opposition to LGBTQ communities, misogyny, and human superiority (anthropocentrism, at the heart of global climate change and many other critical global problems) comes from should take a close look at the book of Genesis. Contrary to those who are playing the Abrahamic branch-name-game, these problems are in all Abrahamic religions and not only the one that in any region is being claimed to be the "bad branch" while trying to uplift other Abrahamic branches.

• Is religious freedom camouflaging ongoing colonialism and empire building?

Hindus represent the 4'th largest grouping. Hindu is a name that was given to Indigenous peoples of India when foreign religious colonizers came to the subcontinent. The occupation by the Islamic Mughal Empire was followed by an occupation by the Christian British Empire.

There are several other Indigenous religions of India (Sometimes called Dharmic religions) including Hinduism, Buddhism, Janism and Sikhism. As with Turtle Island (what the peoples near where I live call this continent), Abrahamic religions are the religions of the colonizers and oppressors.


Our direction should be decolonization if we want to protect the oppressed from the oppressors. The Standard Abrahamic trick of "look, over there, an Abrahamic religious group being oppressed", never mentioning that it is nearly always by another Abrahamic faction or by a group trying to protect themselves from Abrahamic oppression, only furthers their goal of colonization.


What Christians did to Jewish people in Europe in the 1940's should have been followed by aggressive removal of the political power of Christianity and other Abrahamic religions in Europe and their colonies. That is not remotely what happened, and the problems continue. The Christians yet again created a "not me" title to point to, and continued with their activities. Genocide against Indigenous peoples is ongoing on Turtle Island, only reduced to a rate that won't get noticed in the same way it was in the 1940's in Europe.



Palestine was under British Christian occupation, so along with other members of the British Empire that had control of the newly formed United Nations they partitioned Palestine as part of the Christian Zionist "solution" to what European Christians considered "the Jewish Problem".



Britain partitioned both Palestine and India in 1947, and the fallout of those partitions are ongoing long after the British "officially" left.

It is hard to estimate how many people died due to India's partition, but 200,000 to 2 million deaths 10 to 20 million displaced is one set of estimates. The British murdered more directly during the occupations. Add the between 5 and 6 million Jews that European Christians murdered, and how many non-Christians were murdered on this continent -- but Christian Colonial Canada doesn't talk about any of these atrocities in these terms and always tries to point elsewhere.






The grassroots Green Party membership position on what European Christians have caused in Palestine is the more globally valid position.

It is not, however, compatible with the views of colonial British North America. It is something which the Green Party should learn to avoid discussing, as any substantive conversation about Zionism in Canada will have a huge and well funded backlash.

• Discussion of BDS movement toxic to mainstream politics

 

 

Eco-capitalism, eco-socialism, and decolonization

Albert Einstein once said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

While I couldn't articulate why, I have been skeptical of movements such as eco-capitalism and eco-socialism for a long time. I have even been skeptical of the potential effectiveness of the Green New Deal. With my recent anti-racism learning I believe I've figured out an important missing piece in my own thinking.

 

I was stuck inside the bubble of a "western worldview", and could not figure out any way to effectively solve environmental problems within that bubble.

 

Bob Joseph, author of a few books I would recommend, provides a (very) simplified summary of some of the differences between indigenous peoples worldviews vs western worldviews. Those differences that are not directly related to our relationship with our environment have come up in other materials I've read/watched relating to anti-racism.

Indigenous worldviews (I) vs Western worldviews (W)

 

1.(I) Spiritually orientated society. System based on belief and spiritual world.
1.(W) Scientific, skeptical. Requiring proof as a basis of belief.

This area is more complex than the article had room for, given there hasn't been a bright line between Christianity and western philosophy or science given the common origins within the Roman Empire. What I have noticed is that western religious views tend towards the hierarchical, rather than spirituality coupled with non-interference we see in indigenous societies.

The Roman Catholic church has yet to repeal or even apologize for the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493. This created the doctrine of discovery that resulted in the ongoing harm of colonialism against nations not previously subjects of a European Christian monarch. Not only has Canada not dealt with the harm from Christian run residential schools once they were finally closed, but Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario still offensively operate Catholic schools.

My own strong support of secularism comes from a rejection of the harmful influence that the foreign political hierarchy within many religions has often had on governance. I believe in spirituality, but not the imposition of a narrow experience of spirituality onto governance.

2.(I) There can be many truths; truths are dependent upon individual experiences.
2.(W) There is only one truth, based on science or Western style law.

The western belief in objectivity is discussed in the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo as one of the pillars of white supremacy.

There is a western claim that science is objective. While science provides a method of answering questions, what questions are asked and how observations are interpreted remain subjective. Indigenous science recognizes this, while western science does not and will regularly be oblivious to the biases of the scientist (or those directing and/or funding scientists to focus only on specific questions).

Western style law doesn't try to understand individual experience, but focuses on hierarchical enforced obedience built upon the monarchies the worldview formed from. This is finally being discussed in the west under the title of "Defund the Police", as there is a gradual recognition that enforced conformity is not a healthy way to organize a society.

I have noticed this same problem exists in capitalist societies as well as socialist/communist societies. While small communities can exercise capitalism and/or socialism without top-down oppression as there are other ways to maintain social cohesion, I've yet to see any example of these systems being scaled up without considerable problems with excessive and violent enforcement.

While some politicians in Ottawa have recognized there are "victims of communism" and even created a memorial in Ottawa, they have yet to recognize there are equally "victims of capitalism". Like asking a fish what water is, they are oblivious to the impacts.

3.(I) Society operates in a state of relatedness. Everything and everyone is related. There is real belief that people, objects and the environment are all connected. Law, kinship and spirituality reinforce this connectedness. Identity comes from connections.
3.(W) Compartmentalized society, becoming more so.

Today there is an "election" happening in the USA, the westernized part of which is so obviously compartmentalized that different ideological camps don't appear to exist on the same planet.

This isn't an accident, but what results when you build strongly hierarchical governance systems (so much economic and political power in the hands of so few), and treat people as consumers with some "entitlements" rather than as citizens with "responsibilities" to all relations. No matter who wins this election, that systemic problem will remain and the system will remain easily exploited by corrupt individuals. This systemic vulnerability has obvious environmental implications.

 

My mind has always been comfortable with everything being connected, which has made the computer networking part of my job easy. It has made talking to people about politics harder as most people consider different subject and policy areas as separate, and don't as easily see the "unintended consequences" of changes in one area on another. (IE: the IMO obvious impact of anti-circumvention legislation being added to "copyright" on the right-to-repair in agriculture or transportation).

 

4.(I) The land is sacred and usually given by a creator or supreme being.
4.(W) The land and its resources should be available for development and extraction for the benefit of humans.

This is similar to  (3), this relates to (7), as indigenous views recognize relations not only with fellow humans, but also animals and the land (water, air, etc). Just as some westerners consider human life and property rights to be sacred, indigenous consider more than humans to be sacred.

Start with this understanding of worldviews, and then read "a little lesson in the basics of economics" from Scott McLoed.

Westerners tend to treat land as having no inherent value, and thus don't believe they should have to provide adequate compensation for that value when they extract from land, or be barred from extraction beyond the carrying capacity of that land.

This has been my view of the energy sector in the prairies for as long as I can remember.  While prairie politicians constantly claim that sector has been the single largest contributor to Canada's economy, I believe it has been the single largest contributor to Canada's debt. Exploitation of the land beyond its carrying capacity is not wealth, but debt that will need to be paid down at some point in the future. The global climate crisis is only one example of where some of that debt repayment is due.

(See also:  Why I don't believe Alberta is bullied by extractive industries such as Big Oil )

5.(I) Time is non-linear, cyclical in nature. Time is measured in cyclical events. The seasons are central to this cyclical concept.
5.(W) Time is usually linearly structured and future orientated. The framework of months, years, days etc reinforces the linear structure.

Being future-oriented often also makes westerners unable to fix past problems caused by their worldviews, which they believe it has nothing to do with them. Canadians born here like to believe that any harm from colonialism has nothing to do with them, not understanding that colonialism is an ongoing project they are currently involved in.

6.(I) Feeling comfortable is measured by the quality of your relationships with people.
6.(W) Feeling comfortable is related to how successful you feel you have been in achieving your goals.

For many westerners this is synonymous with (8), where their primary goal is amassing wealth for personal gain.

7.(I) Human beings are not the most important in the world.
7.(W) Human beings are most important in the world.

This is obviously connected to environmentalism, as you are always fighting against western worldviews whenever trying to recognize any inherent value in anything that isn't human. It has even been hard to get some western thinkers to recognize the inherent value in other humans, or think of other humans as more than human resources to be exploited for personal gain.

8.(I) Amassing wealth is important for the good of the community
8.(W) Amassing wealth is for personal gain

And not surprisingly, the phrase "moderate livelihood" is only ever applied to indigenous treaty partners, and never Canadian or other foreign economic interests.

Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics, has written about this in the context of food security for a long time. We don't have a problem with the production of food, but the distribution of food. In other words, famine is closely linked to poverty and growing more food doesn't solve famine.

We have no shortage of prosperity in the world, but a problem with an inability of some (primarily westerners) to recognize the need to share. It is not the case that those who have amassed the most wealth did so by contributing the greatest value to the economy, but through exploiting seriously flawed economic policies. It is those policies which manufacture poverty and famine, and not the fault of any individual.

These are obvious flaws in Adam Smith's Capitalism (British economist, born in Scotland, authored "Wealth of Nations" in 1776) which Karl Marx's Socialism (German, born in 1818, published Das Kapital between 1867-1883) tried to account for and propose corrections. I do not, however, believe other problems caused by western worldviews can be corrected by remaining within a western worldview.

I have noticed that the most socialist thinking people I've ever had discussions with are not interested in living within our means, or having better more-than-human relations. They are narrowly focused on ensuring that the spoils of exploitation of non-humans are evenly distributed between humans. They try to make adjustments to who wealth is amassed for(8) without attempting to recognize that this is not the only critical flaw in western worldviews when it comes to attempting to build ecologically and socially sustainable societies.

I became familiar with eco-capitalist theories when I was involved in the Green Party (Ontario and Canada) in the 1990's, where much of the thinking came from the eco-capitalist German Green Party. While I was a strong believer in the 1990's, I've become more and more skeptical over the years. It felt to me that most of the ways in which eco-capitalism is flawed was shared with eco-socialism, and in fact the socialists seemed to want to increase the rate of non-human exploitation in order to raise what they considered to be the standard of living for all humans globally(7).

Eco-capitalists and eco-socialists will each try to merge environmental politics with their existing focus on human labour and other human activity(7). For them, the differentiating question is how great a separation there is between the owners of the means of production and labour(8).

 

What if instead of focusing on Europeans and their worldviews, we looked more closely at what peoples of the content that Europeans call "North America" learned before Adam Smith or Karl Marx were born? I believe we would end up with something that would not be as much in internal conflict, even if it had some overlap with thinking that was built upon western worldviews.

To be clear, I am not talking about going backwards in time. Peoples with indigenous worldviews have existed in and continue to exist in parallel with people who were born on this continent with western worldviews.

What I am discussing is decolonization, which in my mind includes North Americans moving away from European (western) worldviews and adopting more current domestic worldviews and laws. This will have many components, and will need to be done gradually, but should be understood as the ultimate goal rather than merely moving between various economic systems built upon flawed western worldviews.

 

In the short term I believe #LandBack and honoring treaties is critically important, allowing indigenous communities to recover. It is hard for them to help the rest of us adopt more healthy worldviews while colonialism is still pushing them down. While there are many conflicts between indigenous and western law, even if Canada became more legitimate and respected their own laws (including at least respecting the English interpretation of treaties that were written down) it would be a massive improvement over the current ongoing colonialism project.

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For further and more advanced thinking on this topic, a transcript of a speech given by Russell Means in 1980 is available: Revolution and American Indians: “Marxism is as Alien to My Culture as Capitalism”

Listening to him talk to a US Senate Special Committee in 1989 reminds us of how similar and dishonorable the Canadian and US western worldview colonial governments have been.

 

Participatory democracy vs corporate media

I watched a video which CPAC put up of the new Green Party leader Annamie Paul speaking with reporters.

 

 

I became increasingly annoyed at the number of times reporters asked the same form of question. In their corporate minds, Annamie Paul was just placed as the CEO of the corporation called the Green Party of Canada. They wanted to know the many different ways that she would dictate commands to those the media insisted were subordinate to her, whether that be staff at the party, elected members of parliament, or candidates.  She had to constantly remind them of what a "healthy democracy" looks like.

Many of the biases of these reporters were obvious, even though these reporters would likely falsely claim they weren't biased.

As I have watched Canada's democracy decline over my lifetime, I have noticed that rather than the corporate media holding politicians to account that they are only making things worse.  Rather than recognize that democracy is more healthy the more decentralized it is, the corporate media has constantly manufactured fake scandals when any group displays healthy democratic traits by having disagreements in a bottom-up rather than top-down fashion.

 

The Global Greens Charter sets out the principles that bind Greens from around the world together:

• Participatory Democracy
• Nonviolence
• Social justice
• Sustainability 
• Respect for Diversity
• Ecological Wisdom

 

My greatest critique of Elizabeth May and the current federal council has been their willingness to abandon the first principle (participatory democracy) in order to appease Canada's anti-democratic corporate media or align themselves with the corporate structured parties.

I believe Elizabeth Mays support of "party proportional representation" (measured via the Gallagher index) was itself an abandonment of this first principle. Political parties are merely corporations, and a centralizing focusing on corporate brands over participants or representatives is unhealthy for democracy.  While Canada needs electoral reform in the form of ranked ballots in single and/or multi-member districts to make representatives more representative of citizens, electoral systems focused on corporate proportionality only makes the existing corporate focus worse.

I also believe the idea of having a leadership 'vetting committee' was an example of the problem.  While I strongly oppose the adoption of US-style primaries as it is unhealthy for Canadian democracy, having a top-down group deciding who is allowed to be nominated makes this bad situation worse. While the party may sometimes need a media spokesperson separate from the caucus elected leader (especially whenever there isn't an elected caucus), that person should never be falsely treated by the media as some sort of CEO.

It is beyond time for reporters employed by Canada's corporate media to recognize their harmful role within Canadian democracy.  The media can't oppose a healthy democracy and then be surprised when fewer and fewer people are willing to go to them to find out what is happening in Canada.  If they want public support, they need to switch to offering the public service of holding politicians to account.  This means treating elected representatives as accountable to citizens, not acting as if MPs were employees working within "elected" corporations (IE: political parties).

While I support participatory democracy over representative democracy, lets at least ensure that elected representatives are never expected (or preferably even allowed) to have loyalty to corporations over citizens.

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.

2020 Green Party of Canada leadership race

With Elizabeth May stepping down, the Green Party of Canada will start a leadership race starting in the new year and ending in an election at the fall 2020 convention in Prince Edward Island.

While I am currently not a partisan, I plan to re-join the party to participate in the leadership vote, just as I did for the Conservative party leadership to show support for Michael Chong.

I don't know who the leadership candidates will be yet, but given I have history with the Greens I suspect I will have strong preferences.  I haven't received details yet, but I hope they will be using a modern voting system for the leadership that actually allows preferences.

I first learned about the Green Party some short time prior to the 1995 provincial election, directly from the then provincial leader Frank de Jong who also lived in Ottawa at the time.  He understood the international context of the party, and explained to me in numerous personal conversations the principles behind what is now called the Global Greens charter.

• Participatory Democracy
• Nonviolence
• Social justice
• Sustainability
• Respect for Diversity
• Ecological Wisdom

(The 10 key values of the GPO at the time are available on the Wayback engine).

Like Frank, I consider myself "socially progressive, fiscally conservative, and environmentally aware" (See historical leader profile).  Ignoring some odd problems surrounding a free speech issue, we pretty much always got along and I shared many values with Frank.

I offered my technical skills to the party and hosted websites, as well as participated in policy and other conventions.  While I was asked several times, I never put my name on a ballot as I am uni-lingual English and believe this isn't appropriate for a candidate running in Ottawa.  Several of my friends did put their name forward in Ottawa area ridings.

In the 1990's there wasn't a separation between provincial and federal parties, and the Ontario party organizers essentially organized the federal party within Ontario.  When there was federal elections in 1997 and 2000 we participated from Ottawa, but I didn't quite see myself in what I heard from Joan Russow.  She didn't seem to mirror the values I had understood the greens to stand for, but being a partisan at the time I didn't question whether the federal party had to have the same underlying values that made me interested in the Green Party of Ontario within Ottawa.

Then Copyright Happened. 

(See: Introduction to the Canada DMCA Opponents forum.  This forum later became digital-copyright.ca )

As technology property rights is very important to me, I discussed this area of policy across party lines and started to meet members of parliament. I came to realize I had as much in common with some of those MPs as I did with some of my fellow Green Party members.  There were MPs in the same parties I had strong disagreements with, and there were strong disagreements within the Green Party.  My experiences from this area of policy made me realize that party affiliation was not an important determination of what policy persons and politicians I could work with and those I could not.

That brings me to today.  When I vote, I vote for the person who can best represent my values.  Provincially that is sometimes a person nominated by the Green Party, and sometimes not.  Federally I have felt that David McGuinty is the most (lower-case) green thinking candidate in the district I moved to in 2003, and I vote for him despite having absolutely no trust in the Liberal Party of Canada (or its various leaders other than Stéphane Dion).

While the leader is only one person among many, they set the tone and help recruit like-minded candidates.  As much as Elizabeth May has repeated current green party policy that she is only the primary spokesperson of the party, not in control of it (and can't whip votes), she has put a major stamp on the party and what candidates will run.

I don't know how things will change.  Federally I obviously supported Chris Bradshaw as he was a close personal friend before and after his interm leadership roll.  I never got to know Jim Harris I was spending far more time on technology law than party politics during his time.  I was happy to see the organization grow, partly as organizers and supporters of the historical federal Progressive Conservative party went different ways with the merger/takeover of the PC party by the Reform/Alliance party.


I've not had personal conversations with Elizabeth May, and have mixed feelings about the policies she puts forward even if I am far more supportive than I was of Joan Russow.  I expressed some of these concerns in a posting during the election.

That said, I am very grateful for Elizabeth May's ongoing work with the greens and for her constituents in public life.

---

My hope for the future leader:

• I want someone with a science background.  While Elizabeth was very strong on climate and environmental issues, I found she (and whoever she was using as advisers) lacked a STEM background whenever other technology or technology law issues came forward.
• I want someone who understands and believes in the principles behind the Global Greens charter.  While I have a stronger connection to the historical 10 key values of the Ontario party (which included Grassroots Democracy, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Personal and Global Responsibility, and Gender Equality/Feminism), these are all values that the short-form 6 values of the global greens should be understood to include.
• I want someone who recognizes the need for parliamentary and democratic reform, but helps articulate and promotes reforms that are consistent with green values and not those which temporarily appear politically expedient. I think Elizabeth's participation in the electoral reform committee was a major missed opportunity.  Joining the NDP with their promotion of the Ghallagher index, which only promotes the centralizing interests of party executives, is inconsistent with green principles.  It is also inconsistent with the parliamentary reforms Elizabeth has personally spoke about for decades.  Expressing some of those personal and global green principles might have enabled rather than blocked electoral reform.
• I want someone who can articulately and calmly explain what makes the green principles different that those of all other parties, and not to mimic the other parties because they are perceived as being historically successful.

I don't expect the federal leader to be "socially progressive, fiscally conservative, and environmentally aware", but if the federal Greens have a leader closer to the above then they may again attract candidates (and grow a caucus) that can include some of these people.   Diversity is a value and potential strength of the Greens, but only if the executive allows that diversity to exist within the party.

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.

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.