Yes, I know we've got an election going in Canada, but sometimes other events in the world overshadow it. Ariel Sharon is lying in a hospital bed in Israel - whether he survives the current crisis is an unknown. Over here, we have Televangelist Nutbar Pat Robertson claiming that God smote Sharon for for dividing Israel.
If that isn't an example of how badly distorted Christianity has become in the United States, I don't know what is. I can't even begin to find words to describe my utter disgust for Pat Robertson. Lately, it seems as if the body politic of Christianity has been taken over by complete loons - whether it's Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps or some of the other organizations out there.
Reasoned, thoughtful comments have been replaced the howling irrationality of idiots for whom thought and logic do not matter.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Conservative "Justice" Policy
Stephen Harper - along with his advisors - needs a swift kick upside the head. Today, the CPC unveiled it's Get Tough on Crime policy.
Key features:
- Mandatory minimum sentences
- More police on the streets
- Increase the age of consent from 14 to 16
- Mandatory "adult" sentences for 'serious' crimes committed over the age of 14
- Expanded Mandate for CSIS (to include overseas activity - and goodness knows what else)
- Arm border guards
- Re-establishment of the Canadian Border Police to combat drug smuggling
- Shut down the Federal Gun Registry
Let's think about this collection of issues carefully for a moment.
1) Where's the money going to come from to expand our prisons? Mandatory minimum sentences are going to increase the load on our entire justice system - from police on the street through to prisons and probation officers.
2) Under Conservative thinking, a fourteen year old isn't smart enough to engage in sex (they do), but can be held as an adult for criminal activities?
- which is it people? At the age of fourteen, someone is either aware of their actions and can take responsibility for them, or they're not.
3) Last I checked the Youth Justice act provides mechanisms to handle offenders as adults even if they are under the age of 18. These are tools at the hands of the police and crown to use as needed. It seems to me that an 'automatic' tool simply handcuffs our law enforcement officials by imposing a politically expedient policy on all situations.
4) Expanding CSIS's mandate does not strike me as a useful thing to do. Given the recent fiasco in the United States over George Bush's little "spy on the neighbors" program, I have to think that Canada would do well to keep its spy agencies on a fairly short leash. (come to that I'm not at all sure I want Canada giving itself the mandate to operate extraterritorially without specific parliamentary supervision at the moment)
5) Arming the Border Guards and resurrecting the Canadian Border Police strikes me as a phenomenal waste of time and resources. Border agents are generally not dealing with criminals, and arming them really just leaves things open to bigger problems - especially without the significant training that police have in dealing civilian populations.
As for the "Canadian Border Police", I thought they got folded into the RCMP. Canada doesn't need "another police force" so much as it _might_ be beneficial to expand the RCMP.
6) Shutting down the Gun Registry is nothing more than a play pandering to the Alberta Redneck population. (The same people that really do want a gun rack in their truck...) Thanks, but no thanks. Registering a gun is no different to me than registering a car - get over it.
I don't believe that the registered gun discourages the criminal particularly, but the rest of the laws around storing the weapons does a lot to defuse domestic violence before it gets out of hand.
Oh yes - the Conservatives claim that they will "invest" in "programs to help at-risk youth avoid getting involved in gangs and drugs". Uh-huh - will this be like GWB's lovely "abstinence-only" sex ed policy in the states?
Key features:
- Mandatory minimum sentences
- More police on the streets
- Increase the age of consent from 14 to 16
- Mandatory "adult" sentences for 'serious' crimes committed over the age of 14
- Expanded Mandate for CSIS (to include overseas activity - and goodness knows what else)
- Arm border guards
- Re-establishment of the Canadian Border Police to combat drug smuggling
- Shut down the Federal Gun Registry
Let's think about this collection of issues carefully for a moment.
1) Where's the money going to come from to expand our prisons? Mandatory minimum sentences are going to increase the load on our entire justice system - from police on the street through to prisons and probation officers.
2) Under Conservative thinking, a fourteen year old isn't smart enough to engage in sex (they do), but can be held as an adult for criminal activities?
- which is it people? At the age of fourteen, someone is either aware of their actions and can take responsibility for them, or they're not.
3) Last I checked the Youth Justice act provides mechanisms to handle offenders as adults even if they are under the age of 18. These are tools at the hands of the police and crown to use as needed. It seems to me that an 'automatic' tool simply handcuffs our law enforcement officials by imposing a politically expedient policy on all situations.
4) Expanding CSIS's mandate does not strike me as a useful thing to do. Given the recent fiasco in the United States over George Bush's little "spy on the neighbors" program, I have to think that Canada would do well to keep its spy agencies on a fairly short leash. (come to that I'm not at all sure I want Canada giving itself the mandate to operate extraterritorially without specific parliamentary supervision at the moment)
5) Arming the Border Guards and resurrecting the Canadian Border Police strikes me as a phenomenal waste of time and resources. Border agents are generally not dealing with criminals, and arming them really just leaves things open to bigger problems - especially without the significant training that police have in dealing civilian populations.
As for the "Canadian Border Police", I thought they got folded into the RCMP. Canada doesn't need "another police force" so much as it _might_ be beneficial to expand the RCMP.
6) Shutting down the Gun Registry is nothing more than a play pandering to the Alberta Redneck population. (The same people that really do want a gun rack in their truck...) Thanks, but no thanks. Registering a gun is no different to me than registering a car - get over it.
I don't believe that the registered gun discourages the criminal particularly, but the rest of the laws around storing the weapons does a lot to defuse domestic violence before it gets out of hand.
Oh yes - the Conservatives claim that they will "invest" in "programs to help at-risk youth avoid getting involved in gangs and drugs". Uh-huh - will this be like GWB's lovely "abstinence-only" sex ed policy in the states?
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Shorter WingNuts: There's queer in every closet!
Over here we learn that Concerned Women For America is all worried about a "quiz/survey" on the Barbie website.
Apparently, they think that a drop-down list which gives the child the options of "girl", "boy" or "don't know" is going to spontaneously cause children to turn into transgender kids.
The probable - and rational explanation - is that whoever built the webpage in question cut-and-pasted the dropdown list from another piece of work, and simply changed the bits they cared about. Okay - at worst it's a harmless "oops". Will it irreparably harm anyone? No.
When the religious reich gets it through their collective thick skulls that there is no mass conspiracy among the LGBT to "recruit" people, they might just start to realize that humanity is incredibly diverse - and just maybe they will start to consider the notion that their God put a wide variety of people on the world for a reason or two. (and it isn't to provide them with a moral punching bag)
BTW - I find it mildly ironic that 'Concerned Women For America's Director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute is an amazingly masculine fella named "Bob Knight"...makes one wonder, doesn't it?
Apparently, they think that a drop-down list which gives the child the options of "girl", "boy" or "don't know" is going to spontaneously cause children to turn into transgender kids.
The probable - and rational explanation - is that whoever built the webpage in question cut-and-pasted the dropdown list from another piece of work, and simply changed the bits they cared about. Okay - at worst it's a harmless "oops". Will it irreparably harm anyone? No.
When the religious reich gets it through their collective thick skulls that there is no mass conspiracy among the LGBT to "recruit" people, they might just start to realize that humanity is incredibly diverse - and just maybe they will start to consider the notion that their God put a wide variety of people on the world for a reason or two. (and it isn't to provide them with a moral punching bag)
BTW - I find it mildly ironic that 'Concerned Women For America's Director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute is an amazingly masculine fella named "Bob Knight"...makes one wonder, doesn't it?
Thoughts on the Toronto Shootings...
Recently, there has been quite a rise in youth violence - most notably in Toronto, but also in other Canadian cities like Calgary.
At first, it seems almost incomprehensible what is going on, and then little pieces start to emerge - whether it be so-called "street gangs", or someone's sense of honor being impugned by being tossed out of a private party. Adding to the picture is a recent incident in Calgary where a 14 year old girl saved her own life by unloading the pistols her father kept around the house.
While our politicians voice their outrage, we get commentaries like Ted Byfield's on the subject tinged with all kinds of religious overtones.
The flaws in applying one's own religious morality/ethics to these situations are fairly obvious - starting with the painfully clear fact that Canada is no longer even vaguely homogenous in terms of its faith community. We have sizable communities from a huge range of traditions today, and it is unlikely that they agree on much other than to disagree with each other.
No, the problems need to be examined much more dispassionately, and in a reasoned manner.
It has been observed that the kids who are getting into these situations have "no fear or respect for authority". That may well be true. I know far too many cases where teens these days are sheltered from the consequences of their actions by their parents. If they break something, mom and dad pay the damages - and at most the child seems to wind up with a tongue lashing. Our society has been built around the notion of consequences for your actions. Whether the consequences were delivered by your parents or by others (teachers, school principals, the police, whatever), you bore them yourself.
Today, for whatever reason, parents seem a lot more willing to 'turn a blind eye', or worse, actually protect their children from the consequences of their actions on the notion that it's "just a phase", or "they'll grow out of it".
However, I'm not about to take such a simplistic view - it seems unreasonable to me to lay the blame at the feet of parents exclusively, or in the abstract notion of 'the poverty cycle'. The situation that happened on New Year's Eve in Calgary was clearly not one borne out of poverty, yet it bears a certain similarity to the horrors that have afflicted Toronto this past year.
There are more subtle factors at play here. It seems that the most highly publicized cases wind up involving ethnic communities - often the second generation descendents of immigrants who moved to Canada looking for a new life. (Again - I must caution the reader that although I am talking about these groups, I am not prepared to lay the blame at their feet exclusively either, this is an examination of some of issues that may well feed the overall problem)
Consider a couple that moves to Canada seeking a more prosperous life. To be sure, in many cases they find it, or possibly even the relative life of the working poor in Canada is simply that much better than they experienced in their homeland - who knows. Assuming they achieve a reasonable degree of economic success, it seems to me quite reasonable that they may well fall into the 'covering their children's errors' trap quite easily. Often, they may come from countries where their currency in society is defined by their family honor. A few dollars handed to the local judge/constabulary would conveniently cause a 'dishonorable' action to quietly disappear in their home country - so paying their child's fine for vandalism may seem to them a way of preserving their social status.
Of course, this is a gross distortion of Canada's culture as experienced by these people. It is distorted by the lens of their cultural assumptions, and the mismatch with Canada's cultural assumptions - in particular the reflection of some of those assumptions in law.
The next factor that I see bubbling into the picture is the change that any immigrant experiences moving to a new country. Canadian law differs considerably in its foundations from that of a lot of other countries in the world. Consequently, an immigrant parent may well feel that the "disclipinary tools" that they had before have been stripped away from them, and not replaced with anything. Our laws tend to proscribe, for example, corporal punishment. Similarly, many religious sanctions simply don't have the "sticking power" in a multicultural society where the different traditions may not even recognize the sanction as being a 'sanction'. This leaves the parents in a truly awkward space when it comes to disclipline of their children (To some lesser degree, this same problem afflicts "strict" Christian sects as well who may believe in corporal punishments such as "strapping".)
Then, one adds to the whole mess of cultural tools such as "honor killings" (which we nearly had one of in Calgary in November - were it not for a young lady's foresight in unloading her father's pistols). To someone of Western European descent, the whole notion of "honor killings" has become alien. We simply have no moral equivalent to understand the perspective from which such an action would arise. (Nor would I argue that we should) Again, the proscriptions in our laws against such things are not always fully understood by people steeped in other cultural traditions. This potentially means that they are working with a very inappropriate understanding of the social "currency" of family honor and how it plays in today's Canada compared to their own traditions.
When you blend all of these factors into a space where new immigrant families may well have to work two and three jobs just to pay the rent, or if they achieve economic success may not have the "social tools" themselves to cope with it - leaving them wealthy, but somewhat isolated from society by limitations of language and other challenges. Meanwhile, their children are much more able to adapt to the society around them, and may well be able to play their parents off against "external authority" figures such as the police in that cynical way that teenagers often attempt as they start to assert themselves as independant adults.
While zero-tolerance sanctions around guns and gang activity will certainly deal with the immediate crisis (superficially), I'm not so sure that those kind of actions even begin to address the underlying problems of adaptation that I am postulating as significant factors in the picture. (I freely admit that I have no statistical evidence to back up some of the points I am suggesting are issues here - they derive from a series of conversations in the last few days, and my own inferences based on what is in the news)
I think it is a gross mistake to try and "homogenize" our culture - but we do need to examine ways to build "bridges" into the various sub-groups of our society that are running in relative isolation to each other. Bridges that help the sub-groups integrate effectively with the mainstream of Canadian society without necessarily giving up the positive aspects of their own traditions.
[Update]: On CBC's Letter's page we find this letter (reproduced in full because I don't expect it to remain on CBC's website for long):
The author is going more after concrete solutions than I am, but underlying his analysis are some similar points to what I have raised.
At first, it seems almost incomprehensible what is going on, and then little pieces start to emerge - whether it be so-called "street gangs", or someone's sense of honor being impugned by being tossed out of a private party. Adding to the picture is a recent incident in Calgary where a 14 year old girl saved her own life by unloading the pistols her father kept around the house.
While our politicians voice their outrage, we get commentaries like Ted Byfield's on the subject tinged with all kinds of religious overtones.
The flaws in applying one's own religious morality/ethics to these situations are fairly obvious - starting with the painfully clear fact that Canada is no longer even vaguely homogenous in terms of its faith community. We have sizable communities from a huge range of traditions today, and it is unlikely that they agree on much other than to disagree with each other.
No, the problems need to be examined much more dispassionately, and in a reasoned manner.
It has been observed that the kids who are getting into these situations have "no fear or respect for authority". That may well be true. I know far too many cases where teens these days are sheltered from the consequences of their actions by their parents. If they break something, mom and dad pay the damages - and at most the child seems to wind up with a tongue lashing. Our society has been built around the notion of consequences for your actions. Whether the consequences were delivered by your parents or by others (teachers, school principals, the police, whatever), you bore them yourself.
Today, for whatever reason, parents seem a lot more willing to 'turn a blind eye', or worse, actually protect their children from the consequences of their actions on the notion that it's "just a phase", or "they'll grow out of it".
However, I'm not about to take such a simplistic view - it seems unreasonable to me to lay the blame at the feet of parents exclusively, or in the abstract notion of 'the poverty cycle'. The situation that happened on New Year's Eve in Calgary was clearly not one borne out of poverty, yet it bears a certain similarity to the horrors that have afflicted Toronto this past year.
There are more subtle factors at play here. It seems that the most highly publicized cases wind up involving ethnic communities - often the second generation descendents of immigrants who moved to Canada looking for a new life. (Again - I must caution the reader that although I am talking about these groups, I am not prepared to lay the blame at their feet exclusively either, this is an examination of some of issues that may well feed the overall problem)
Consider a couple that moves to Canada seeking a more prosperous life. To be sure, in many cases they find it, or possibly even the relative life of the working poor in Canada is simply that much better than they experienced in their homeland - who knows. Assuming they achieve a reasonable degree of economic success, it seems to me quite reasonable that they may well fall into the 'covering their children's errors' trap quite easily. Often, they may come from countries where their currency in society is defined by their family honor. A few dollars handed to the local judge/constabulary would conveniently cause a 'dishonorable' action to quietly disappear in their home country - so paying their child's fine for vandalism may seem to them a way of preserving their social status.
Of course, this is a gross distortion of Canada's culture as experienced by these people. It is distorted by the lens of their cultural assumptions, and the mismatch with Canada's cultural assumptions - in particular the reflection of some of those assumptions in law.
The next factor that I see bubbling into the picture is the change that any immigrant experiences moving to a new country. Canadian law differs considerably in its foundations from that of a lot of other countries in the world. Consequently, an immigrant parent may well feel that the "disclipinary tools" that they had before have been stripped away from them, and not replaced with anything. Our laws tend to proscribe, for example, corporal punishment. Similarly, many religious sanctions simply don't have the "sticking power" in a multicultural society where the different traditions may not even recognize the sanction as being a 'sanction'. This leaves the parents in a truly awkward space when it comes to disclipline of their children (To some lesser degree, this same problem afflicts "strict" Christian sects as well who may believe in corporal punishments such as "strapping".)
Then, one adds to the whole mess of cultural tools such as "honor killings" (which we nearly had one of in Calgary in November - were it not for a young lady's foresight in unloading her father's pistols). To someone of Western European descent, the whole notion of "honor killings" has become alien. We simply have no moral equivalent to understand the perspective from which such an action would arise. (Nor would I argue that we should) Again, the proscriptions in our laws against such things are not always fully understood by people steeped in other cultural traditions. This potentially means that they are working with a very inappropriate understanding of the social "currency" of family honor and how it plays in today's Canada compared to their own traditions.
When you blend all of these factors into a space where new immigrant families may well have to work two and three jobs just to pay the rent, or if they achieve economic success may not have the "social tools" themselves to cope with it - leaving them wealthy, but somewhat isolated from society by limitations of language and other challenges. Meanwhile, their children are much more able to adapt to the society around them, and may well be able to play their parents off against "external authority" figures such as the police in that cynical way that teenagers often attempt as they start to assert themselves as independant adults.
While zero-tolerance sanctions around guns and gang activity will certainly deal with the immediate crisis (superficially), I'm not so sure that those kind of actions even begin to address the underlying problems of adaptation that I am postulating as significant factors in the picture. (I freely admit that I have no statistical evidence to back up some of the points I am suggesting are issues here - they derive from a series of conversations in the last few days, and my own inferences based on what is in the news)
I think it is a gross mistake to try and "homogenize" our culture - but we do need to examine ways to build "bridges" into the various sub-groups of our society that are running in relative isolation to each other. Bridges that help the sub-groups integrate effectively with the mainstream of Canadian society without necessarily giving up the positive aspects of their own traditions.
[Update]: On CBC's Letter's page we find this letter (reproduced in full because I don't expect it to remain on CBC's website for long):
I now live in Holland but used to live in Toronto and am here for the Christmas and New Years holidays. It saddens me to see Canada's largest city slide towards what is considered average for most US cities.
The causes are the same: poverty and lack of perspective. Most of the perpetrators are young men on the periphery of mainstream society whose future is marred by the lack of their own work ethic combined with no real chance of entering the job market. Include a ready access to guns and you have instant headlines.
If Toronto really intends to change this, it must adopt a multi pronged strategy of sticks and carrots. The carrots should include real jobs and effective societal bonds. The sticks should include stricter gun law enforcement and more responsible parenting.
—Steve Belgraver | The Netherlands
The author is going more after concrete solutions than I am, but underlying his analysis are some similar points to what I have raised.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Let's See If I've Got This Straight...
Over here, we have George W. Bush defending a secret program he instituted to spy on his own citizens - without the transparency of a court vetting the requests. (Not that I have any belief that governments don't engage in such activities, but rather most of the time, they don't make major programs of it either)
Bush claims that this fiasco's leakage into the public is hurting "national security" interests. Bullfeathers. Clandestine programs such as this do far more damage to a democracy than any tin-pot conspiracy is going to. By doing this, Bush has essentially positioned the NSA and the FBI to operate in a mode little different than the East German Stasi, or the Russian KGB. Ordinary people now have to look "over their shoulder" when writing e-mail, or talking on the phone.
The story from The White House has changed so many times in the weeks since the story broke into public view that any claims by the Bush Administration about it's purpose, intent or scope are suspect. One day it's broad and far reaching, the next day it's "restricted to persons of interest"? Which is it?
Or, more cynically, is it - like the infamous PATRIOT act - little more than a thinly disguised attack on the civil and legal rights of American citizens?
Bush claims that this fiasco's leakage into the public is hurting "national security" interests. Bullfeathers. Clandestine programs such as this do far more damage to a democracy than any tin-pot conspiracy is going to. By doing this, Bush has essentially positioned the NSA and the FBI to operate in a mode little different than the East German Stasi, or the Russian KGB. Ordinary people now have to look "over their shoulder" when writing e-mail, or talking on the phone.
The story from The White House has changed so many times in the weeks since the story broke into public view that any claims by the Bush Administration about it's purpose, intent or scope are suspect. One day it's broad and far reaching, the next day it's "restricted to persons of interest"? Which is it?
Or, more cynically, is it - like the infamous PATRIOT act - little more than a thinly disguised attack on the civil and legal rights of American citizens?
First Thing In The Morning...
As I fell out of bed at 05:30 this morning, there was some commentary on CBC News about the election - and in particular Stephen Harper's "Priorities".
[Update]: This article just showed up on the CBC's calgary website. Anyone who thinks that the CPC isn't about to take a turn 'hard aright' on social issues is seriously deluded.
Notably missing from Mr. Harper's little list was the usual assortment of social conservative issues - gay rights, abortion, marriage law etc. Given that he kicked off the election on the gay marriage issue, the TheoCons have been oddly silent the last few weeks.
However, waking to Link Byfield being interviewed on CBC is its own unique form of early morning trauma. If what I heard is anything to go by, we can expect the TheoCons to come frothing to the surface after a Conservative government has been in power for a couple of months.
It makes me shudder to think about Harper anywhere near 24 Sussex, but given the current polling situation, it's conceivable. Harper's done much better "staying on message" than in the past, and the greater mass of voters aren't always cognizant of what isn't being said.
[Update]: This article just showed up on the CBC's calgary website. Anyone who thinks that the CPC isn't about to take a turn 'hard aright' on social issues is seriously deluded.
Notably missing from Mr. Harper's little list was the usual assortment of social conservative issues - gay rights, abortion, marriage law etc. Given that he kicked off the election on the gay marriage issue, the TheoCons have been oddly silent the last few weeks.
However, waking to Link Byfield being interviewed on CBC is its own unique form of early morning trauma. If what I heard is anything to go by, we can expect the TheoCons to come frothing to the surface after a Conservative government has been in power for a couple of months.
It makes me shudder to think about Harper anywhere near 24 Sussex, but given the current polling situation, it's conceivable. Harper's done much better "staying on message" than in the past, and the greater mass of voters aren't always cognizant of what isn't being said.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Back Into The Election Fray
After a few days of relative peace and quiet, the election has restarted.
While attempting to assert the moral high ground in the campaign, the CPC has stooped to exactly the kind of ad-hominem campaigning that they are accusing the Liberals of. Sigh. I'm starting to find Harper's nasal voice truly irritating - especially when he keeps on repeating his mantra about voting conservative for change.
Jack Layton's speech was actually pretty good - sadly it hasn't been getting any airplay. Instead, the sound bytes are focusing on his comments about Klander's blog. *sigh*
Martin played the day low key, as did Duceppe (or at least as far as I'm concerned) - why the Liberals are holding back is beyond - we'll just have to see. I hope that Martin's Liberals decide to talk ideas instead of slagging the CPC (the inconsistencies in the CPC's platform are their own worst enemy, as far as I can tell)
The highlight of the day was the official Green Party platform document was released. I've only read about half of it - while I don't agree with all of what they are presenting, it's definitely a major switch from the other parties, and relatively mainstream. While Harper prattles on incessantly about change, he has yet to convince me that he has any real ideas about changing government.
My initial impressions of the Green Party platform:
On the environment - a tad over the top (but not unexpected). I'm skeptical about amending the charter of rights in the manner they describe, but it would be quite feasible to introduce a Bill of Environmental Rights to express much of what they are proposing. (Oddly, some of that could serve quite nicely as a legislative "stopper" against US demands under NAFTA for access to Canada's water supply and other resources.)
The Energy platform will cause Ralph Klein and company to have kittens. However, I do think it's forward looking in the right directions. It is weak in dealing with short term energy crisis issues though. (for example, I think it is quite likely that we will need to invest in nuclear power generation to bridge the gap while some of the other alternative energy research makes its way into the realm of commercially viable on the large scale.
Like their energy platform, the Green Party's economic policies are intriguingly long range in their view. I suspect it would take at least a decade for the policies they would enact to be felt by most Canadians. Again, the environmental angle is uniquely positive.
The health care platform sounds distinctly like it has been snarfed from the NDP.
They have some significant proposals for electoral reform which could be very interesting if they could ever implement them.
Sadly, I doubt the Green Party will pull off much this time around. For a party that is actually forward looking - and views government as having a positive role to play in the growth of the nation - they have a lot of interesting ideas. If the Liberals are going to reinvent themselves again, the Green Party's playbook would be much more interesting to the electorate than ripping off things from the CPC or the NDP.
While attempting to assert the moral high ground in the campaign, the CPC has stooped to exactly the kind of ad-hominem campaigning that they are accusing the Liberals of. Sigh. I'm starting to find Harper's nasal voice truly irritating - especially when he keeps on repeating his mantra about voting conservative for change.
Jack Layton's speech was actually pretty good - sadly it hasn't been getting any airplay. Instead, the sound bytes are focusing on his comments about Klander's blog. *sigh*
Martin played the day low key, as did Duceppe (or at least as far as I'm concerned) - why the Liberals are holding back is beyond - we'll just have to see. I hope that Martin's Liberals decide to talk ideas instead of slagging the CPC (the inconsistencies in the CPC's platform are their own worst enemy, as far as I can tell)
The highlight of the day was the official Green Party platform document was released. I've only read about half of it - while I don't agree with all of what they are presenting, it's definitely a major switch from the other parties, and relatively mainstream. While Harper prattles on incessantly about change, he has yet to convince me that he has any real ideas about changing government.
My initial impressions of the Green Party platform:
On the environment - a tad over the top (but not unexpected). I'm skeptical about amending the charter of rights in the manner they describe, but it would be quite feasible to introduce a Bill of Environmental Rights to express much of what they are proposing. (Oddly, some of that could serve quite nicely as a legislative "stopper" against US demands under NAFTA for access to Canada's water supply and other resources.)
The Energy platform will cause Ralph Klein and company to have kittens. However, I do think it's forward looking in the right directions. It is weak in dealing with short term energy crisis issues though. (for example, I think it is quite likely that we will need to invest in nuclear power generation to bridge the gap while some of the other alternative energy research makes its way into the realm of commercially viable on the large scale.
Like their energy platform, the Green Party's economic policies are intriguingly long range in their view. I suspect it would take at least a decade for the policies they would enact to be felt by most Canadians. Again, the environmental angle is uniquely positive.
The health care platform sounds distinctly like it has been snarfed from the NDP.
They have some significant proposals for electoral reform which could be very interesting if they could ever implement them.
Sadly, I doubt the Green Party will pull off much this time around. For a party that is actually forward looking - and views government as having a positive role to play in the growth of the nation - they have a lot of interesting ideas. If the Liberals are going to reinvent themselves again, the Green Party's playbook would be much more interesting to the electorate than ripping off things from the CPC or the NDP.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)