Canada's General Election Looks Like a Bad Kabuki Performance

Normally, I find Canadian General Elections to be rather boring. For 150 plus years, Canadians have been governed by either the red party or the blue party. Now, since neither party can attract 40% of the popular vote, the election is decided by which party will receive the benefit of the systemic distortions that the first-past-the-post voting method brings about. In the last election, the red party was awarded all of the 61 seats available in the Maritimes although it had only received 56% of the popular vote there. This was enough to give the red party a majority of seats in Parliament and full control of the government. No wonder the leader of the red party, Justin Trudeau, reneged on his electoral promise of changing the voting system.

But this general election is turning out to be something different. It reminds me of the Japanese traditional theater, Kabuki, in which the actors dress up in vivid costumes, wear a lot of make up, and strike dramatic poses to make contact with the audience.

In the Canadian version, Justin Trudeau has had photos of him unearthed, revealing him dressed up like a genie from the Arabian Nights, wearing dark brown make up. Say no more. A picture is worth a thousand words, but this time the staging has gone awry.

Coming after a multitude of photos showing how cool our Prime Minister was supposed to be, these photos suggest something totally different. Without his staff photographer there to stage the shot, these photos suggest the real character of the person playing out his role in our political theater, one that is certainly not very flattering.

In this case, the pose, the costume, and especially the make up shout out racist hypocrite.

My oh my, how is the audience going to react? Certainly, many Canadians will feel like they were duped into thinking that Justin Trudeau embodied the values of social justice. Looking at these photos along with the video showing him as a young man wearing black face, I can't help but think that a great many voters who voted for the red party in the last election will either vote for the green party or decide to sit out this election and not go to the polls.

So the only real question left to be decided in this is whether Trudeau's abysmal Kabuki moment will be enough to oust him as Canada's Prime Minister.

Fortunately, this crappy telenovella will soon be over.







 

When It Comes To Boring Nobody Does It Better Than Canada

A Group of Canadians Watching the Leaders Debate

Same as it ever was . . .
Same as it ever was . . .
(Once In A Lifetime, The Talking Heads)

It's a moody Manitoba mornin'
Nothing's really happening, it never does (Moody Manitoba Morning, The Bells)

Having lived for almost all my life in Canada, I am struck by the boring sameness of life in the Great White North.  Yes, there are some interesting places to visit and some interesting people to get to know, but, all in all, living here is like watching the snow melt.

I think it has something to do with the geography.  In a travel brochure you might see some appealing photos of Quebec City, Peggy's Cove, Niagara Falls and the Rocky Mountains, but what the brochures fail to mention is the vast distances separating our sights of interest and how excruciatingly boring it is to traverse those spaces of the big empty.

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I know.  I come from the prairies.  Living in Winnipeg was cool, but ask anyone what it is like to drive in or out of Winnipeg on the Trans Canada Highway.  The greatest danger comes from the fact that the land is incredibly flat and the road is incredibly straight.  It is so boring that people fall asleep at the wheel while driving, leading, of course, to tragic consequences.

A couple of years ago, I decided to drive from Ottawa to Winnipeg and traversed our largest province, Ontario.  Let me tell you, the Canadian Shield is interesting for about fifteen minutes of the two full days of seeing nothing but rocks and lakes and trees and the occasional Tim Horton's, Canada's favorite coffee and doughnut shop.  So boring that my two sons sucked me into an argument when leaving Thunder Bay about whether Terry Fox is a Canadian hero just to yank my chain in order to break up the monotony.

I can also attest that driving from Winnipeg northward to Thompson, Manitoba, and along Quebec's Lower North Shore are as boring if not more so than driving across Ontario.  Some would argue that the most boring drive is from Montreal to Toronto.  It's difficult to decide.  To do so would involve an extremely boring conversation I would rather avoid.

Regardless, if people are to survive and prosper in Canada, they need to be genetically endowed to be able endure long periods of time where nothing much happens and to fill those days, weeks, months, and years, with mind-numbing routines in order to pass the time.  Life in Canada is about exciting as paying down a 25 year mortgage.

My father, on the other hand, lived through some remarkable times.  He grew up during the Depression; went off to fight in the Second World War; played professional football; brought up two kids that saw a man walking on the moon.

Not me.

The only iconic moment that comes to mind thinking about the last fifty years in Canada was Paul Henderson scoring the winning goal with the time running out in the final game of the Canada-Russia Summit Series in 1972.  Not a lot has happened since.  Like what?  The Charter, NAFTA, Justin Bieber?  That's about it.  History is what happens outside of Canada. OK. The Raptors winning the NBA title was pretty awesome.

Which brings me to Canada's current General Election, which will go down in history as one of the most boring electoral campaigns ever held, as about exciting as driving across Ontario.

In fact, Canada's present social contract has been in place for more than 40 years.  All we do is tinker at the periphery.  Raise or lower taxes slightly.  Add on an additional social program here and there.  Nothing that would rock the boat.  Steady as she goes.

All in all, it comes down to which leader can do the least harm.  Four more years of the same, or four years of someone brand new that is trying to convince us that there are no big plans in the works?  These are the choices?

In any case, whoever forms the next government will probably not have a majority of seats in Parliament.  Nothing new there.

Stay tuned.  Given how the first-past-the-post voting system does not work very well with multi-party elections, I am sure that the either the Red Party or the Blue Party will be the recipient of an electoral distortion that will either one a majority of seats. Ho hum. Same as it ever was.

After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Let's keep on chugging along with what we got, and thank God we are not living in Central America, a place where you can't sit patiently and watch the snow melt.

Connecting the Dots Between Electoral Systems and Income Equality

At long last, people have realized that the politics of economic growth are conceived to enrich the top 0.1% of the population at the expense of the bottom 99%.

However, one huge question remains: how do you fix the system?

The answer is that you have to change the electoral system that enables a small minority to effectively buy the politicians that will do their bidding. To do this, we have to get rid of selecting our elected representatives by the single member plurality method more popularly known as first-past-the-post.

If ever there was a voting system designed to favor rent seeking, the economic term for buying favors, it is first-past-the-post. I love the name because the horse race allusion captures what happens in the stands at a race track: being able to pick the winner backed by a significant wager pays off handsomely.

Let us remember that there is no greater return on investment in countries that use first-past-the-post than making a financial contribution to a political party coupled with a post election lobbying campaign. In the market, competition is fierce and investments to increase market share or profitability are fraught with uncertainty as competitors try to gain advantage in a zero-sum game. So, instead of trying to tip the entire playing field in one's direction, it is much easier to increase profits by getting those who set the rules of the game to intercede on one's behalf with a government contract, favorable legislation, or fiscal policy.

This is how the top 1% reap the lion's share of the nation's wealth. They hedge their bets, so it doesn't matter who wins the election. Both parties that offer government options to the electorate are funded by or by those who owe their social standing to the one per centers. Consequently, electoral campaigns come and go, focusing on peripheral issues, leaving in place the cumulative gains that the constant lobbying piles up for those in the upper most echelons of the society.

Indeed, accumulating favors is relatively easy to do when polling data tells you where the political parties stand relative to one another and all that is required is to pick which candidate will garner the most votes in each single electoral district. No messy formulas that award seats on the basis of the popular vote. Few surprises with regard to which candidate from which party will get elected. As a result, it is not difficult to identify who needs to be influenced in order to obtain preferential treatment and a cosy symbiotic relationship between politicians and their financiers comes about.

No wonder the anachronistic first-past-the-post resists attempts to replace it with other electoral systems that give better representation of the popular vote. To change the voting system, especially for one that gives proportional representation, increases the uncertainty of the results and consequently increases the risk of getting a return from one's campaign contribution.

In fact, multiparty coalitions are much more difficult to influence since there is no one who can wield authority in a unilateral fashion. Moreover, when everything has to be negotiated, there are no guarantees that the negotiated agreement will deliver the goods. In the process of negotiation, one's preferred outcome may fall off the table in the process of reaching an agreement.

To change the political economy so that there is a more equitable distribution of a nation's wealth, the demos, in other words the 99% who are effectively under-represented, must ensure that the transfer of political power from the electorate to elected officials that occurs as a result of election is done in a truly democratic fashion.

This will not occur as long as the first-past-the-post system is in place. To change the distribution of wealth, people must disable the political institution that enables the concentration of wealth in the first place.

(This post first appeared in November, 2011.) 

Too Many Bozos On This Bus

Desperate times require desperate measures. The privilege of the old stock citizens, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, is being threatened in the USA, the UK, and in Canada. It's just a question of demographics. 

Low birth rates combined with the arrival of many immigrants from around the world, in other words, people of color, give rise to demographic projections that the old stock will soon be outnumbered. As a result, long standing privilege could be threatened

In all three countries, there exits an unholy alliance between the ultra rich and the plebes from the old stock. On the one hand, the ultra rich do not want to be funding the social programs that are extended widely to the population at large. On the other, the old stock wants to maintain their perceived superior position in the status hierarchy so they give their votes to the political parties that want to conserve how the society is structured.

Trying to point out to the old stock that well-funded social programs like health care, child care, and post-secondary education, to mention just a few, would also be beneficial to them is, for the most part, a waste of time.

Tribal identities take precedent over rational thinking. Therefore, twenty-first century politics in these three countries has morphed into a weird form of infotainment where buffoons can become the leaders of the ruling parties and their supporters don't seem to mind.

How else can you explain (other than the rigged electoral systems) the presence of Donald Trump as the President of the United States, Boris Johnson as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Doug Ford (brother of Rob Ford) as the Premier of Ontario, the largest and most populated province in Canada.

All three are clown-like in their behavior, and this personality trait appears to be an integral component of the new electoral strategy for right wing political parties. The more outlandish the leaders, the better.

We know from cognitive research that stimulating the reptilian brains of humans is the best way to get them to behave in a certain manner. With regard to politics, tribal identities and fear can be easily manipulated so that the higher cognitive functions like reason never come in to play.

For instance, research has shown that when conservatives were exposed to evidence demonstrating that a partisan belief was false - such as a report demonstrating that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction or that lowering taxes doesn't increase government revenue - they became more convinced than ever that those beliefs were actually true.

In other words, leaders who tell lies and behave erratically not only invite criticism, they benefit from it by solidifying support among their supporters since their brains will go into overdrive to protect their tribal identification with their party and its leader. 

Off-the-wall statements like: build a wall to keep out Mexicans and get them to pay for it, leaving the European Union will be beneficial to the Brits, or promising people from Ontario a buck a beer might seem so ridiculous to risk losing votes, but such tactics actually motivates supporters to go out and vote in general elections that have low participation rates. 

Essentially, the idea of winning over undecided voters on the basis of a well-thought out electoral platform that includes measurable objectives and lays out realizable plans to achieve them are a thing of the past. Instead, governments are now formed on the basis of galvanizing core supporters with clearly communicated boundaries of us and them and fomenting fear about what the others would do to us if they ever gained power.

As well, the buffoonery of the leaders divert attention away the real political agenda that is being advanced for the benefit of the ultra rich. Any outlandish statement a leader makes is quickly picked up by social media and is given sufficient political spin so by the time it appears in an individual's news feed, it has been sufficiently altered to confirm the recipient's political beliefs. So much for reasoned political debate. 

Given the systemic distortions that the electoral systems in all three countries bring about, any advantage that can be gained in mobilizing the core supporters is then amplified when the popular vote is then translated into electoral college votes in the US, or number of seats in Parliament in Canada and the UK. Importantly, it isn't necessary to garner the greatest number of votes. In fact, all that it takes is to win a sufficient number of electoral districts and the voting system will take care of the rest.

So, don't expect any significant change within the Anglo-American Empire as long as the old stock voters provide the ultra rich the means to maintain their political power. Eventually, demographic change may tilt the playing field in the other direction, but I wouldn't count on it. Moreover, those who presently control the political agenda will not leave quietly. They will go out with a bang not a whimper.

  

Will Quebec Finally Become a Distinct Society Politically?

These are interesting times in North America. There are general elections looming in both Canada and the United States. In 2019, Canadians will decide if they want to continue to be led by Justin Trudeau, and in 2020 Americans will decide if they want to be led by Donald Trump. 

In Quebec the situation is different. The biggest decision facing the population is whether it will continue to elect its government with an outdated electoral system that regularly distorts the outcome of how the voters actually voted. For example, in Canada, Justin Trudeau leads a majority government with only 39% of the popular vote, whereas in the United States, Donald Trump is the President despite the fact that he obtained fewer votes than Hillary Clinton.

As should be expected, the question of democratic legitimacy remains a central issue to how both Canada and the United States are governed. In both countries, governments were formed that did not respect the desires of the electorate as expressed by the popular vote. In short, the systemic distortions produced by the respective electoral methods allows for a the will of the majority to be circumvented in favor of the desires of the few.

The question concerning the democratic legitimacy of elected governments in both countries is nothing new. Attempts to change the voting system in Canada have come and go for more than 100 years. In the United States talks about changing how the electoral college elects the President surface when its method produces a democratically unacceptable result as it did in the last Presidential election in 2016.

The continued use of such overtly flawed electoral systems brings to the surface the cultural values of the nations that use them. Evidently, there must be a larger societal good that is advanced in the place of having fair elections. Taking into consideration the very large inequalities in the manner wealth is distributed in English speaking countries -- the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada are among the worst offenders among developed countries -- the electoral systems in place in each of these respective countries advance the desire to concentrate great wealth with a small minority at the expense of the majority of its citizens.

In Quebec, however, although the province uses the same first-past-the-post voting method like the rest of the provinces and states in North America, the inequality in the distribution of wealth in Quebec is significantly smaller. In 2016, using the most widely used measure for wealth distribution, Quebec's Gini coefficient (0.292) was almost identical to Germany's (0.291) and more in keeping with Sweden (0.273), Finland (0.264) and Norway (0.250) than that of the United States (0.457).

Having lived in Quebec for twenty-five years and having learned to speak French fluently, I can attest that from a cultural perspective Quebec is a distinct society when compared to the rest of North America. Maintaining the continued survival of a French-speaking community requires much more concern with the well-being of the collectivity than a simple focus on the well-being of the individual so common in English-speaking societies. As a result, the state is much more present in the social-economic sphere, the most obvious example being the language laws that promote the use of French and limit the use of English in commercial activities. Moreover, there is strength in numbers so the Quebec government actively supports the formation and the well-being families via generous maternity and paternity leave, government-subsidized day care, and inexpensive post-secondary education. 

Indeed, the very fact of being a French speaker in Quebec carries with it a deeper concern for the well-being of other French speakers because the continued survival of the community requires a level of attention to its overall health not found in those regions in North America where a laissez-faire mentality reigns. Consequently, although how the Quebec government performs is always under scrutiny, its continued presence and legitimacy in the society is not subject to debate as is the case in the rest of North America. For instance, people in Quebec pay higher taxes than those living in other states and provinces, but there exists a widely-held realization within the population that those taxes are converted into social programs that benefit the entire population.

Historically, these fundamental cultural differences have fueled the political desire to create an independent state in Quebec, separate but associated with the rest of Canada. There were two referendums (1980 and 1995) concerning the creation of a sovereign state but in both instances the proposal was rejected. Subsequently, the support for a sovereign state has waned but those fundamental cultural differences remain, which brings us to the question of the decision to use a different electoral system in Quebec than in the rest of North America.

Notwithstanding the continued desire to create an independent state in a significant minority of the population, there is a proposal on the table to change the electoral system in Quebec supported in principle by three of the four political parties represented in the National Assembly that would bring its political system in much better alignment with its political culture than the one in use today that was transplanted upon North American soil by the British.

In summary, single member plurality voting (SMP) systems (better known as first-past-the-post) allow for the strongest minority within a country to rule as if they were the majority and to impose their agenda upon the electorate despite the fact that their agenda is very often at odds with the desires of the majority. In fact, elections in countries that use SMP do not have as there objective to reflect the voting intentions of the electorate. 

Rather, the distortions inherent to the systems tilt the voting intentions towards a single party that will be declared, more often than not, the winner of a winner-take-all contest and awarded the right to rule as if it had the support of the majority of the voters. As a result, we can say that this type of electoral system produces an authoritarian government which lacks democratic legitimacy but rewards those who finance the electoral campaigns quite handsomely. This is one of the legacies of the British Empire.

Conversely, if we look at Europe and, in particular, countries that are small, relatively homogeneous, and like Quebec, that need to protect and promote a historic, linguistic community (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands), we notice that their governments are consensual, arising from the use of electoral systems that do not distort in any meaningful way the composition of the respective national assemblies from the popular vote. 

Consequently, the authority to govern is not based on the systemic distortions inherent to the voting method and the ensuing governments represent a variety of viewpoints since these voting systems (proportional representation) do not normally award a majority government to a single political party.

Presently, the new voting system being considered to replace the outdated British variant is a proportional voting method and the current Premier of Quebec, Francois Legault of the Coalition Avenir Québec party promised that he would implement the change, unlike the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, who made the same promise in the last federal election but then broke it once he became Prime Minister.

It has been said that the willingness to change the electoral system is proportional to the proximity to power. Once elected by a SMP system, the political parties that propose to make the change when in opposition invariably find the reasons not to make the change once they form the government.

Clearly, the ball is squarely in Francois Legault's court. What remains to be seen is whether he will act in a politically expedient manner, or bring Quebec into the twenty-first century by breaking with the past to give Quebec an electoral system that reflects its distinct culture.   

America Is Ruled By Those with a Cold, Cruel Heart

The purpose of government is not merely to afford pleasure to those who govern, but to make life tolerable for those who are governed.       Bertrand Russell

Growing up an hour's drive from the Canadian- American border, I have always been somewhat in awe of what Americans can do when they put their minds to it.  Indeed, the "can do" spirit is something quintessentially American. It is woven into the fabric of the American dream, for better or worse, but is something to behold and to wonder.

After all, Americans invented the nuclear bomb, which, as odd as it may seem, put an end to the scale of  carnage and horror thar occurs when nations engage in total warfare as was the case in the World Wars. As it turned out, the mere thought of mutually assured destruction has to this day prevented the major military powers from taking each other on.

Years later, when I was a boy, I watched in real time on a black and white television in the comfort of my living room as the first man, an American, set his foot on the moon.  It still boggles my mind that not only were they able to put a man on the moon, but that we could witness this truly historic event unfold nearly a quarter million miles away -- live

Presently, you are reading this text thanks to the communicative power arising from yet another American invention, the Internet, which has given birth to the World Wide Web and all the applications we can download to do things that our forefathers never had dreamed of with a simple tap on a screen.

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Yet, with all this imagination, with all this know how, the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen is unable to provide for and take care of all its citizens.  In fact, as reported in The Atlantic:

For the first time since the 1990s, Americans are dying at a faster rate, and they’re dying younger. A pair of new studies suggest Americans are sicker than people in other rich countries, and in some states, progress on stemming the tide of basic diseases like diabetes has stalled or even reversed. The studies suggest so-called “despair deaths”—alcoholism, drugs, and suicide—are a big part of the problem, but so is obesity, poverty, and social isolation.

It's as if those who govern have turned their backs on those who are governed.  When it comes to health outcomes in the United States, there is a steep social gradient.  In short, the richer you are the longer you live and with a better quality of live.  Conversely, the poorer you are, chances are that your life will be shorter and be plagued by a number of ailments brought on by lifestyle choices that are difficult to escape.

Importantly, it doesn't need to be this way.  It is not as if God has ordained this state of affairs.  Unfortunately, many Americans, in particular within the ruling class, behave in concordance with the belief that wealth, as well as skin color, is a sign of divine favor, while poverty and sickness are the sign of moral decrepitude and skin color is a sign of moral and spiritual degeneration.  In other words, in America God's chosen few are rich and white, like the founders of the nation.

This twisted cultural meme, a weird mutation of the Calvinist doctrine of election, has been embraced by America's ruling elite throughout the nation's history.  This point was brought to my attention during my last trip to New York City, where upon visiting the National Archives, aptly located in the financial district, I learned that Broadway, the longest and most famous street in the Big Apple, was originally built by African slaves on what was left of a trail forged by the Indigenous peoples living on Manhattan.  In fact, since its inception as an English colony, the creation and accumulation of wealth in America has involved and often depended upon the exploitation of an underclass, which in this case involved the exploitation of those who were thought to be subhuman.

Today, things have changed, but nowhere near what we could expect from a civilized nation in the twenty-first century.  For instance, in almost all of the developed countries in the world, adequate health care provided to the entire citizenry is thought of a basic human right.  After all, no one knows what the fates have in store and misfortune may fall upon any of us.  As a result, in developed nations basic health care is made available to everyone.

Not so in the United States of America.  In the US, where health care is delivered for the most part by the private sector motivated by the desire for profit, the guiding principle informing the system is "pay for the service, or die"!  How Christian!

It's not difficult to see why.  Extending adequate health care to people of limited means requires the financial participation of the wealthy.  Indeed, the inclusion of millions who were previously uninsured into the Affordable Care Act (ushered in by President Obama), so that they could enjoy the benefits of being eligible to receive health care beyond their individual capacity to pay was predicated on a surtax levied upon the wealthy, those with incomes of more than $200,000 per annum.  Now that the republicans control Congress, the Office of the President, and the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act has been repealed and replaced by the aptly named, the American Health Care Act, which eliminates all the taxes in the previous act that were included to pay for the subsidies that help people buy insurance, estimated to add up to $592 billion.  Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that over 10 years, 24 million fewer Americans would be covered under the present bill who otherwise have had insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

So, what is the future for these 24 million Americans, who most probably will find themselves without health insurance?  Obviously, those who rule America don't give a shit about them: "let them fend for themselves and may God have mercy upon their sorry-ass souls."

What a missed opportunity to bring America within the fold of civilized nations.  Instead, the core values of Social Darwinism have once again been unleashed.  The exploits of the exceptional will be applauded and the plight of the downtrodden will be ignored.

America, a great place to visit, but thank God I don't live there.

Canada at 150: Stll an English Settler State

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

(the more things change, the more the stay the same)




That's pretty much how I feel about living in Canada in the second decade of the twenty-first century.  Yes, this country has seen a lot of changes, from the building of the trans-national railway to the creation of the information superhighway.  Yet, when it comes to our political economy and our system of governance, we are still what we were 150 years ago, an English settler state.

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Looking back at the Europe's imperial conquest of the rest of the world, Britain did something different as compared to the Spanish and Portuguese when it decided to people on a vast scale some of its colonies with successive waves of English settlers and thereby established control of large territories occupied by indigenous peoples: the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  In fact, with the exception of the United States, which fought the British to win its independence and to become a republic, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are still part of the Commonwealth, a vestige of the former British Empire, and still have a hereditary monarch, Queen Elizabeth, as their head of state.


What amazes me is how resilient this form of governance has turned out to be, resisting any substantive change to the manner in which we govern ourselves for 150 years.  Think back to Canada at the time of Confederation in 1867: approximately, one million people spread out over a huge expanse of land, with the majority living in rural sectors.  This is a time that predates electricity, air travel, and the internet.


Without question, the scale of the economy and the amount of communication within and between peoples in different nations was tiny as compared to what we experience today.  You would think that given the monumental change we have seen in the manner in which Canadians live their lives since Confederation would be reflected in Canada's political institutions.


Apparently not.


Living in the twenty-first century, a time in which I regularly chat via Skype with my fiancé who lives in South America at no additional cost than my connection to the Internet, and that I can pull up onto my screen the latest edition of daily publications from around the world like the New York Times, The Guardian, or Le Monde in seconds, I am absolutely flabbergasted that we retain a system of governance that embodies a hereditary monarch, an appointed Senate, an electoral system that uses a voting method (first-past-the-post) in which each and every vote does not count equally, and that the system grants what constitutes the powers of an elected monarch (in Canada the Prime Minister can declare war without the consent of Parliament) to the leader of a political party that did not garner the majority of the popular vote.


WTF?  How is it that we have done so many marvelous things over the last 150 years but we have never gotten around to creating a modern, democratic, nation-state?


What also boggles my mind is not only do we cling to an outdated system of governance but that even making a relatively simple change, like creating an electoral system in which the representation in Parliament accurately reflects how people voted, is next to impossible. 


How complicated can it be?  If we are going to tell the world we are a democratic nation -- the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that we are a nation that adheres to the values of if a free and DEMOCRATIC society --  the least we could do is create and use a democratic electoral system.


However, it has been my experience that the most powerful political institutions in Canada, the Prime Minister and the Supreme Court of Canada have, in effect, resisted bringing Canada into the twenty-first century with regard to the nature of its political institutions.  The former refused to honour a campaign promise enshrined into a Speech from the Throne (so much for the symbolism) to change our aberrant voting method that dates to the middle ages, while the latter refused to hear a case that challenged the constitutionality of the said voting method, but did find the time to pronounce on what are the acceptable limits of bestiality.  Go figure.


Given this turn of events, I have become resigned to the fact that I will not see Canada make any qualitative changes to its status as an English settler state in my lifetime.  Sure, I am free to marry another man if I wanted to, and end my days with the assistance of a doctor if I so choose, and will soon be able to buy marijuana legally if I so desired, but although these things maybe important to others, they matter not to me.


What I would really like to be able to do is to participate meaningfully in the way this nation is governed, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.  Instead, what I am being offered is the opportunity to smoke a joint at my leisure so to take the edge off the discomfort that arises when I reflect upon how the state makes sure that my political voice and the voices of more than a million other Canadians who take seriously the health of the global climate are effectively silenced.


Happy Birthday Canada!  Unfortunately, we are going to have to part.  You may embody many admirable qualities, but not the one that matters most to me.