Some Compelling Reasons To Vote

H/t Memorial March for the Victims of Harperism




H/t David Suzuki Foundation

If anyone you know is not certain whether he or she is registered to vote, checking out one's status is easy by a visit to Elections Canada Online.

Meanwhile, the truly disenfranchised are getting some help in Halifax through something called the Identification Clinic.

The Identification Clinic is a volunteer group that aims to put IDs in the hands of the homeless and the disadvantaged.

One of the group's founders, Darren Greer,

found his first clients by walking up to people on the street, and asking if they needed help. They replied with an immediate and enthusiastic yes.

"A lot of them have had ID before and have lost it," said Greer. "They are so often asked for it, and refused services because of it, that they understand probably better than a lot of us what these IDs mean."

Not only will this project facilitate access to social services, but also to the voting booth, as the necessary identification will have been obtained.

God knows, in the election we all have a vital part to play.

And Now For You Youngsters Out There

Those words, or something very similar, were often uttered by Ed Sullivan when he had an act that would appeal to a youthful demographic. People of a certain age, or, because the Mound of Sound recently chided me about my use of euphemisms, old farts like me, will remember those times.

Today, it is hard to find something in the political spectacle of campaigns to appeal to the youngsters out there. Nonetheless, comedian Scott Vrooman warns them that political disengagement, and its logical conclusion, the refusal to vote, are not viable options:

A Site Young Voters Should Visit

I have written several past posts on the fact that for the most part, youth do not vote, largely because they see nothing on offer from any of the major parties dealing with their issues. The problem, of course, is that as long as they remain a minor presence at the polls, their issues will continue to be ignored. We only have to see the current political rhetoric revolving around the middle class to know who our politicos fear.

Change can only come when the young show that they are indeed a force to be reckoned with. I discovered a site yesterday that makes specific appeal to that demographic. Check it out, and if you know any young potential voters, send it along to them. Below is a sample of how Harpoon 2015 is approaching the problem.

Attention, Young People: Here Is Why You Should Vote

This brief but powerful video should be viewed by all those who are politically disengaged, especially our young citizens:



H/t OperationMaple

What A Cynic Might Say

A cynic might say that Joe Oliver's thinly-concealed plan to double the contribution limits of the Tax-Free Savings Account to $11,000, despite the fact that it will benefit only the affluent, will ensure the re-election of the Harper regime. After all, this is a government that has made a virtual art of appealing to the narrow self-interests of people over any concern for the collective.

A cynic might say that even though the majority of people will not benefit, they will think it's a good idea since so many regard themselves, as John Steinbeck so wryly put it, as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

A cynic might say that the Liberals and the NDP will offer only anemic objection to the plan as they cautiously hedge their bets for the October contest.

A cynic might also say that since the young don't vote, Harper and the others are strategically correct in tailoring their policies to those who do: the older and more affluent, or, as all three major party leaders like to call them, 'the middle class.' The young, so the story goes, are engaged in their own world of social media, technology and social life and hence can be dismissed.

While the cynic may be correct in all of the above, it is this last contention that, in the larger scheme of things, perhaps merits the most attention.

In the 2011 election, about 60% of eligible voters turned out at the poll. Among voters under 30, under 40% bothered to cast a vote. Research undertaken last year by Nik Nanos and former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page uncovered some very interesting data guided by this question:

What if 60 per cent of young people had voted?

His answer: Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives likely wouldn't have won a majority.

More importantly, he says the political debate would have been more hopeful and would have revolved around a broader range of issues if young people had been more engaged in the process.

The potential strength of the young vote lies in the fact that their priorities are different from the those of the majority who vote:

"What we find is that their concerns are much more diverse than older Canadians who are fixated on jobs and health care," Nanos said in an interview. "So if you're a younger Canadian, you're twice as likely to say that the environment is a top national issue of concern. You're twice as likely to say that education is a top national issue of concern."

His analysis also suggests older Canadians "are very cynical, they have less confidence in finding solutions" whereas younger people "are actually much more hopeful, have a higher level of confidence in finding solutions."

So why aren't they turning out?

A recent article in The Tyee offers some useful insights. A profile of Julie Van de Valk, a 20-year-old third-year geological engineering student at the University of British Columbia, reveals a young woman passionate about a number of issues, the environment and climate change at the top of her priorities. While she will vote in the upcoming election, she has little enthusiasm for any of the parties:

None of them, in her opinion, "are addressing climate change with the type of leadership that people who understand the issue want to see."

Harper's Conservatives have warned climate action could be "job-killing." But the Liberals and NDP haven't offered Van de Valk a very inspiring alternative. Neither party has clearly articulated to her how it would drastically reduce carbon emissions and shift Canada to clean energy. Meanwhile, both have offered qualified support to the oilsands. "That doesn't do it for me," she said.

So it almost becomes a chicken-or-egg question. Young people are disaffected because their priorities aren't represented by the major parties, and the major parties pay little heed to those priorities because young do not vote in sufficient numbers to command the attention and respect of the parties.

Brigette DePape and others like her are trying to change all that.

The former parliamentary page, you will recall, caused quite a stir in 2011 when she held up a sign in the Senate while David Johnson was delivering the throne speech:


With no regrets about what she did, and with no illusions that such acts change the world, she articulates a vision that will resonate with most progressives:

She wants a government that reflects the values of her generation and future generations. She wants an agenda that includes an equitable, compassionate society; treats the environment as a priceless public asset; addresses youth unemployment and student debt; respects the views of women, workers, indigenous peoples and racial minorities; and brings the nation together.

To those ends, DePape

was in Toronto last week as part of a five-city tour by the Council of Canadians to get out the youth vote. “I understand why most (young people) see voting as futile,” she told her first audience in Winnipeg. “In the 2011 election when I was a University of Ottawa student, someone asked me to go door-knocking. But I really didn’t see the point.

“Since then, I’ve had a change of heart. After four years under the current government (nine counting Harper’s two previous terms), I want to do everything in my power to see a government that reflects our values.”

She offers some sobering statistics to convey the power of the vote:

The Tories won nine of their seats by a margin of less than 1,000 votes. They captured Nipissing-Timiskaming, for example, by just 18 votes. Most of the 5,300 students at Nipissing University stayed home. They won Etobicoke Centre by just 26 votes. Had a few more students from the University of Toronto, York, Ryerson or Humber College showed up at the polls, they could have tipped the balance.

Working with groups such as Shit Harper Did, DePape is intent on changing things by convincing enough young people to make the difference she knows they can make.

DePape’s goal over the spring and summer is to build a team of youth leaders and collect 2,000 vote pledges in strategic ridings. In the fall, she and her associates will pull out the stops to collect on those pledges.

“We’re at a turning point,” she tells audiences. “We can be game-changers.”

For all of our sakes, let us all hope that she is sufficiently successful to convince people of that truth.

On Encouraging Political Participation

The other day I wrote a post on John Cruickshank's TED Talk about the low level of political participation among young citizens. His thesis was that as a society, we are losing our news-reading and news-watching habits thanks to the myriad options offered by our current technologies. Asserting that news reading is a skill, the devolution of that skill has affected our ability to think critically and be civically engaged.

A well-considered letter to The Star, however, argues that without structural changes in our political system, measures to encourage participation will be ineffectual:

Re: What's the big threat to democracy? Distraction, Insight Oct. 11

I read the dissertation by John Cruickshank on the threats to our democracy. Unfortunately, the analysis and subsequent conclusions are flawed.

The real threats to our democracy come not only from a disengaged younger electorate (understandable given the hardships they face relative to older generations in income, housing and equality of opportunity), but rather from a perversion of the existing democratic institutions by our current plutocracy.

Political parties have “gamed” the system to their advantage. Our current body politic is often about demagogues using power seized through campaigns of fear or misinformation to obtain power; with little recourse for voters if perverse and discriminatory policies ensue.

The newly elected representative quickly finds out that they are merely trained seals, told what to say and when, with little chance to have their views fairly considered on important matters.

To just encourage people to vote no matter what is not the answer. I would proffer that an uninformed voter is more dangerous to our electoral system than one who is informed but chooses not to participate. It could be argued that the uninformed who choose to exercise their right to vote are willing participants to the demagoguery that is pervasive.
Merely asking relatively uninformed citizens to go out and vote once every four years in the current antiquated system is not the answer. The answers will begin once we seriously consider measures to not only encourage civic engagement, but with an accompanying corollary of institutional reform.

This will include some type of proportional representation to better reflect the views of all voters, greater use of plebiscites, allowing recall votes, and having party leaders chosen by their caucus to make them more accountable to the members, rather the reverse. The guise of greater voter turnout will not lead us there.

However, if a major political party were to propose such visionary reforms, then we might experience a sea change in civic involvement.

David Dos Santos, Mississauga

Why So Much Ignorance In This Age Of Technology?

I have always thought it ironic that in this age of interconnectedness, when we have almost unlimited sources of information at our disposal, so many of us are abysmally ignorant of the things that should matter. The level of civic disengagement in North America, for example, has facilitated the devolution of so many of our democratic institutions into mere channels of undue influence for the minority, ensuring that the needs of the many are subjugated to the wants of the few. Inaction on climate change, the ongoing degradation of ecosystems, the ever-widening disparity of incomes and the erosion of social programs are but the more egregious examples of this decline.

John Cruickshank, the publisher of the Toronto Star, attributes this phenomenon to 'distraction.' In his paper, he writes about a recent Toronto Ted Talk (not yet available on the Ted site) in which he examined the problem through the lens of young people who, both in Canada and the United States, have a voter participation rate of about 40%. However, he points out that the lack of voter participation is merely the most obvious manifestation of the level of engagement:

Voting’s just the marker. More critical are civic interests, habits and knowledge: The debates in the lunchroom about taxes and spending or public meetings over a new airport or a mega-quarry. The less visible indicators of democracy’s vitality.

It’s no coincidence youth voting is so similar in the U.S. and Canada. It’s not a question of national culture. And don’t blame “the kids today.” It’s a decades-long shift. It spans generations and geography.

And it appears to be driven by the devices and content that now dominate and consume our waking lives — our smartphones and tablets, our laptops and PCs and, at least for a little while longer, our TV screens.

All of these devices, while potentially quite useful, also have a tremendous power to distract. How many times, for example, will you be at the computer when the email signal rings and you switch immediately to it? Or how about a link or a popup in an article that takes you far away from your intended purpose? (I'll just take a minute to watch that footage of George Clooney going to his Venice wedding. Oh yeah, now what was I just doing?)

All of which is to say that news has a far more tenuous grip on us than in days of yore. For Cruickshank, it becomes a simple equation:

No news habit. No engagement.

Those who have learned to pursue the news become politically active.

The drift away from substance actually began, he says, with the proliferation of cable channels that, for the less-than-committed consumer of news, offered a welcome alternative. Much Music, MTV, etc. had an allure that the nightly news didn't.

As soon as alternatives emerged, more and more younger people failed to learn news skills and habits.

They were looking for distraction, not information about the world.

But even if this population only reluctantly followed the news, their political behaviour was just like that of the most committed news junkies. They voted: 80 per cent of eligible voters went to the polls in the Canadian federal election of 1958 — the year the CBC television signal first went coast to coast.

Canadian citizens aged 65 and older were still voting at the 80-per-cent level in the federal election of 2011. But the participation rate of each successive age group Boomers, X’ers and Millennials were lower by a greater and greater margin.

Mirroring their increasing failure to develop news skills.

Cruickshank has some specific suggestions on how to reverse this terrible trend, which I will leave you to discover by reading his article.

You may also find these two brief videos about his Ted Talk of interest:

A Post-Election Reflection

I don't want to comment directly about last night's Ontario election, given that it has been incisively and very competently observed by others already. However, I want to address a comment my friend Tom, who voted Liberal, made on Facebook:

And here's why the system is broken: @51% voter turnout -- up marginally from the historic low of the 2007 provincial election. The winning party gets 38.6 % of those who voted, which means in the neighborhood of 19-20 % of the eligible vote -- but they have a comfortable, some have said overwhelming, majority!

I replied:

What you say is true, Tom, but barring electoral reform, the easiest way to remedy this problem is for more people to vote. As you may know, I have no sympathy for those who say they don't vote because there is no one to vote for, or they don't 'do' politics, etc. Laziness and inertia and apathy are poor reasons not to participate in the rights and responsibility of citizenship. In fact, to be quite honest, I have little respect for the kind of self-absorption that breeds such behaviour.

We are, of course, well aware of the fact that Harper achieved his majority government with minority support from the electorate, something that has apparently never bothered either that regime or its supporters. However, I suspect we will now be subjected to a barrage of right-wing commentary that will include the claim that because Kathleen Wynne was elected by a minority of eligible voters, she did not really get a mandate from the people. Such hypocrisy, however, is nothing new, but those who are truly distressed by the Ontario results need to look to themselves to blame if, in fact, they are among the 50% who did not vote.

Such is the price of indifference, sloth, and disengagement.

A Brief Programming Note

Since spring finally seems to be arriving in my place on the planet, it seems like a propitious time to take a day or two off from this blog and contemplate other matters. In the interim, I recommend the following for your perusal:

The Star's Thomas Walkom writes about democracy, voting and past democratic reform measures in his column today.

A series of thoughtful letters from Star readers provides an ample basis for some serious contemplation of climate change.

And finally, on the oligarchy that has essentially subverted supplanted democracy, the Mound of Sound recommends this interview with Thomas Krugman, who discusses a new book by French economist Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Pikey argues that modern capitalism has put the world "on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy—a society of inherited wealth."

See you shortly, and enjoy the long weekend.

An Issue So Many Of Us Grapple With

This letter to the editor reflects an issue I think most of us in the progressive blogosphere struggle with, as do the folks at samara:

Voter turnout is the key to federal change

Eroding the fabric of the Canada we love

The only way that we are going to get rid of King Stephen's Reign of Control is by getting out the vote. It seems that every time I pick up a newspaper there is at least one and often more articles about how the Harper government is ripping another piece from the fabric of the once democratic, compassionate society called Canada of which we were so proud. The most recent is a smear campaign on a retired military commander who just happens to be planning to run for the Liberals. As Lawrence Martin called it in the Globe, "the sleaze machine."

Canadian democracy is gradually being diluted. Social, cultural, scientific and information essentials continue to be diminished if not removed. Treatment of veterans has become a disgrace — no an obscenity. Everything we have valued about being Canadian is disappearing and we are at the bottom of many world lists including protection of the environment. This may be the most urgent — without a habitable planet, does the rest matter?

How do we convince those who have given up on government that their vote matters? It matters not only to them but to their kids and grandkids.

How do we convince them that their needs must be voiced and demanded; that this is the only way Harper can be defeated?

How can we leave these problems to parliament and expect any change? It won't happen. We need to find a way to get to our citizens — e.g. the youth who will be living with the disastrous results of Harper's policies; the marginalized who have long ago given up on the government and don't have the energy to fight — we need to help them to understand the importance of their vote. I'm not sure how to do it but it needs to be done and I invite and encourage folks to think about it and find a way to reach these voters.

Mary Lou Reiman, Hamilton

True On Both Sides Of The Border

Substitute parliamentary democracy for republic and Bill Maher's words are a stinging indictment of apathetic Canadians.

The Responsibility We All Must Assume

In a column entitled A disheartening year in Canadian politics published on Dec. 20, The Globe's Jeffrey Simpson recounts the corruption, buffoonery and scandals that permeate our municipal, provincial and federal governments. Whether we look at the antics of Toronto's Rob Ford, the widespread venality, graft and ties to organized crime endemic to Montreal politics as revealed by the Charbonneau Commmision, the gas plant scandal in Ontario or the diseased mentality surrounding Senategate, there seems little from which the average citizen can take heart.

In response to that column, a Globe letter-writer, Caroline Wang from Vancouver, offers an antidote that I think all of us who write progressive political blogs would heartily agree with. Rather than letting our disgruntlement and disillusionment be a reason to disengage from the political process, it should prompt all of us to channel our anger and become part of the solution:

Re A Disheartening Year In Canadian Politics (Dec. 20):

So isn’t it up to the “plenty of honourable and hard-working people” of Canada to change the unacceptable “culture of deceit, backscratching and venality” that appears endemic in political life and that caused the annus horribilis?

Jeffrey Simpson asks a good question: “How was it, with so many people complicit in the corruption for so long, that no one blew the whistle?”

If we want to see a change to the way of doing business that will promote a culture and system of legality and honour, this can only be done by Canadians who are “mad and disillusioned.”

The answer is not turning off. It is becoming more involved in order to challenge what is wrong.

Working together to stamp out the disease of “widespread, prolonged and systemic corruption” wherever it happens to be in our society is the first step to recovery.

Electing exemplary leaders who will shape our future and create a legacy that reflects and defines our national character is the only way to create the best from Canadian politics.

May 2014 mark the year that increasing numbers of us channel our inner Peter Finch and use our anger and our passion for a better Canada by devoting at least part of each day to learning more about the people and parties who have betrayed the trust that the electoral system has given them.

Back To Earth

I had planned this to be my first piece post-holiday, but Nelson Mandela's passing yesterday prompted my post about that giant who walked among us. I purposely kept it brief, since thousands upon thousands of words will be written about him in the days to come, a testament not only to his stature throughout the world but also, I suspect, to the rarity of such dignity, integrity, and moral greatness.

On to other matters.

One of the advantages to a week-long sojourn in Cuba, from which we returned late Wednesday night, is the fact that the Internet there is both slow and expensive; although I compulsively check my email at home several times a day, I feel no such urge when on the island nation. Consequently, I tend to catch up on the reading that I never seem to have enough time for while in Canada - retirement seems to impose its own disciplines, demands, and routines.

I always make sure to bring with me The Walrus magazine, a publication that does not shy away from longer forms of journalism. An article from a few months back made for some interesting reading. Entitled Repairing the House, now available online, its author, Andrew Coyne, offers an overview of the dysfunctional and essentially impotent Parliament we are all familiar with, a Parliament where backbenchers are little more than the proverbial trained seals doing the bidding of the party leader. Never has this been more evident than in the Harper administration, where all utterances are tightly scripted, predictable ('The Prime Minister has been very clear...') and limited. One has only to watch the incessant parroting that poses as answers both in Question Period or on shows such as Power and Politics to see this sad truth.

Yet Coyne suggests it needn't be this way.

Here are his observations and ideas for reform:

Prior to the 1919 Liberal national convention that elected Mackenzie King as its leader, party leaders in Canada had been chosen as they are in the classic Westminster model, still in force in Australia, for instance: by a vote of the caucus. It is this model, Coyne observes, that keeps the power of leaders from being overwhelming. It is what enabled, for example, the removal of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Kevin Rudd and his successor, Julia Gillard, in Australia. If practised in Canada it would, in Coyne's view, make party leaders more attentive to the concerns of ordinary MPs.

A related reform, lest a potentially rebellious member be subdued, is to the nomination of party candidates. In Canada, as a matter of law, no candidate may run for Parliament under a party banner without the signature of the leader on his or her nomination papers. It is therefore very easy for the leader to veto a nomination by withholding his/her signature. Coyne suggests leaving this process to the riding association.

A concomitant and necessary reform for this to work is in the riding association's nomination process:

It is beyond strange that in Canada, in the twenty-first century, nominations can still be decided by stacking meetings with instant members, hastily recruited for the occasion. A cleaned-up process for selecting candidates—if not formal voter registration, as in the United States, then at least a requirement that voters must have been party members for some decent interval—would seem therefore to be a third part of the solution.

Because of the reality of craven desire for power and advancement among our politicos, a fourth reform is necessary, argues Coyne - reducing the size of cabinet and changing the appointment process for key parliamentary positions.
Because cabinet is bloated at 39 positions (Coyne contrasts that with the U.S. at 16, about the same as Japan and Germany) it means MPs on the government side, if they keep their noses clean, have about a one in four chance of making it to cabinet (compare that to Britain, where the odds are more like one in twenty).

There is much more to the article, which I hope you will take the opportunity to read when time allows, but Coyne's ideas surely offer hope that things can be much better than they currently are, and would perhaps have the effect of renewing some faith in the democratic process and convincing more people to turn out at the polls, although I doubt that is something Harper and his cabal would like to see happen.

And yet some of these ideas may have the potential to be achieved, given that Michael Chong, conspicuous among Conservatives for his integrity, has introduced a private member's bill called the Reform Act. While limited in scope, it is nonetheless an encouraging sign.

So I am back on the political beat, where, regardless of whether I take a short or a long holiday, little ever seems to change for the better.

What If

....everything you thought you knew about our democracy was an illusion? The following video, made before the last U.S. election and directed toward an American audience, will doubtlessly resonate with Canadians who despair of our current state:

Oh I Can Think Of So Many Ways This Is Relevant

Food For Thought

H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Stephen Harper

ZZZZZZZZZZZ.... While You Were Sleeping

I trust this needs no explanation.



H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Stephen Harper

Who Is The Real Enemy?

I strongly encourage you to watch this deeply cynical but powerfully trenchant indictment of, well, of all of us.