Harper mustn't get away with it

(January 28) - I have been at several rallies and demonstrations in St. George’s Square. None have been even close to the size of the one last Saturday. Organizers estimated about 500 people turned out. News reports put the number at 300. Either way, it far outnumbered previous rallies against wars in far off places. It dwarfed rallies favouring action to reverse climate change. It sent a message that should reverberate on Parliament Hill.

The government would hear it, if the government was there. It isn’t, and that’s why we were.

Most Canadians, if asked, will agree that going to war is a foolish way to sort things out. Similarly, they will tell you that global warming sends a chill down their spines. The challenge, the near impossible task, is getting them to stand in the centre of the city and say so as a group.

Threaten their democracy, however, and it’s a different story. Shut down their parliament when there is still work to be done, and awaken a slumbering beast. The rallies in Guelph and across the country proved that citizens are not apathetic. They are not unconcerned about the basic responsibilities of citizenship. Although most of us make cynical wisecracks from time to time, we depend on the politicians we elect to do their jobs. These politicians make the mistake of their lives when they confuse trust with indifference. Stephen Harper made this mistake.

He must now wear the consequences of his contemptuous scorn for the traditions and institutions that define our civil society. He and his supporters natter on about how other Prime Ministers at other times have also prorogued Parliament. They say this and sit back smugly pretending they have said something profoundly clever. They haven't.

They should look the word up in a dictionary. It is done to mark the end of a session, when the legislative agenda is complete. Our Prime Minister has used it twice when the agenda he set himself was far from completed. It was in danger of falling apart. He did it to play hide and seek with the voters. He has been found. He has been exposed. He has been called to account.

There is one more step to take. At the first opportunity when parliament reconvenes in March, the opposition parties should pass a motion of non-confidence. Put this government out of its misery. Give us the opportunity to get it out of our misery.

I am not confident. Many of the people in the Square on Saturday went to Knox Presbyterian for a panel discussion. It was standing room only in the hall. One young man asked the question on most of our minds: would the government fall on this issue?

Our MP, Frank Valeriote, was in prominent attendance. He had spoken at the Square and again in the hall. He said lots of wise and wonderful words accurately reflecting the thoughts of the assembly. In answer to the big question of the day, he said no. He didn’t think it would.

The opposition parties, Liberals and New Democrats both, can no longer hide behind the excuse that Canadians don’t want an election. Whether we do or we don’t, we need one. Most Canadians won’t mind. They never do. If an election is called, two-thirds will go out and vote. If one isn’t, the spirit shown across the country on Saturday will be hard to sustain.

If the Prime Minister gets away with this atrocious behaviour again, he will be encouraged to greater offences in the future. Look at the things he has done with a minority government. Be very, very afraid of what he will do with a majority.

Guelph’s superior to Waterloo

(January 19) - It was interesting to see a report last week ranking Guelph’s attractiveness to immigrants. We came in 13th in a field of 50 Canadian cities. We handily beat Cambridge, Hamilton and Winterpeg, but so what? Anyone should be able to thump those burgs.

Waterloo beat us! They came in on the A list of the top six cities. We were relegated to the 14-city B list.

What does Waterloo have that we don’t? They might have Blackberry’s world headquarters, but we’re the centre of the Linamar universe. Who cares if they have Jim Balsillie? We have Linda Hasenfratz. Waterloo has two universities. We only have one, but it’s a good one.

The Conference Board of Canada ranked the cities on 41 indicators. Obviously music didn’t count. We have the River Run Centre. If they want to see a concert they go next door to Kitchener’s Centre in the Square. Our stage is overflowing with top-drawer bands, ranging from the kramdens to The Speakeasies. Waterloo has lederhosen and polka kings.

We wash our garbage before putting it to the curb. They don’t even sort theirs properly. Waterloo Region will even pay us to compost their kitchen scraps when we get our organics facility up and running. I don’t know what the Conference Board was thinking. I’m an immigrant and I prefer Guelph.

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It is an awful mess down in Haiti. You can’t pick up a newspaper, watch the television news or surf the Internet without coming face to face with the awful tragedy that befell the people of that always sad nation. It was a natural disaster of a colossal nature.

The closest in recent memory would be the Asian tsunami. It killed about 300,000 people. The death toll in Haiti could reach 100,000. Its full impact is much wider than that. News reports say three million people, or one-third of the population, have been affected. They are badly injured. They are bereaved. They are homeless.

It is heartening to see the outpouring of generosity shown by individual Canadian contributions to disaster relief. If you do a little ‘googling,’ you’ll easily find a list of organizations that are helping. Donations can be made online, over the phone or at many financial institutions. Doctors Without Borders got my money. It could just as easily have gone to the Canadian Red Cross, or Oxfam, or UNICEF or several others.

No matter how badly any of us were hit by the recession, no matter how little we have in the bank, we are all better off than the average Haitian. That was true before the earthquake. It is more so today. Choose your relief organization and send them some money.

Be careful about giving money to people who come to your door with a collection bucket. It’s a horrible sign of the times that scam artists will take advantage of any tragedy to make a buck. Think of them as the local face of the global corporations Naomi Klein warns us about in Shock Doctrine. They seize on disasters to extend their control over devastated communities.

When the tsunami hit Asia in 2004, local musicians held a superb fundraising concert at the River Run Centre. It may happen again. Local musician and social activist Sam Turton sent an e-mail around last week. It seems that some local churches and community groups are in the early stages of thinking this through.

There are an incredible number of very talented people in and around Guelph. They give generously of their time and talents when the need arises.

If they come together for Haiti, I’ll stand in line to get tickets.

Virtual forums are not enough

(January 12) - Proroguing Parliament was arrogant, beastly, cowardly, despotic –go through the alphabet and find 26 suitably infuriating adjectives. It was all of this and more. It deserves to be called out and shouted down. But in the end it was legal. That is where the problem lies.

In 2008, the Prime Minister ended the session when faced with a non-confidence motion he was sure to lose. This winter, he was faced with a binding order from Parliament to produce documents related to the treatment of prisoners of war. He didn’t want to comply, so he shut the shop and sent the help home.

There has been immediate and widespread outrage across the country. There is even a Facebook group called Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament. In less than a week it grew to almost 120,000 members. As of Monday the group’s membership had grown to 151,000. There is even a Guelph chapter of this group with over 100 members.

How effective is Facebook as a tool for organizing political protest? We shall soon see. The test will be on Saturday Jan. 23 when the Guelph group is planning a public event.

You can’t change the world on a laptop. You can send messages, involve people in the issues, convince them of your arguments. But if it stays on the computer screen, nothing will change. Change happens when people get off their bums and go to the union halls, the church basements, the community centres and make their voices heard.

Virtual voices in virtual forums produce virtual democracy. It, in turn, produces nothing. If you want to do something to reverse the direction in which Stephen Harper is moving our country, get off the computer and get on the move.

Signing up on Facebook tells everyone you are unhappy. Doing nothing else tells them you are prepared to live with your unhappiness. That is exactly the thing Stephen Harper is hoping to hear.

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At the bottom of this whole mess lies a fundamental truth. It pains me to say it, but it is something with which I am in agreement with Stephen Harper. Unelected Senators should not overrule decisions made by elected members of Parliament. It is easy to cheer for the Senate when we don’t like what the government is doing, but it is still wrong.

Any agreement with Harper ends there. We differ on what to do about it. He has chosen to get down into the muck with the Liberals. He will appoint enough Conservatives so the Senate will blindly support anything he does. It will also block as much Liberal legislation as it can when that party gets back in.

The problem will not be solved. The situation will not be improved.

The Senate itself needs to be abolished. It is a useless relic from the old days of feudal England. When the old “nobility” adapted to the emerging parliamentary democracy, they had to share power with the “commoners.” They allowed a House of Commons to enact laws, but kept a House of Lords with the power to overrule what the people got up to. The Senate is our knock-off version of the House of Lords. Unelected and unaccountable.

To stop Prime Ministers in minority governments from proroguing Parliament at will, we need to get out from under the oppressive weight of a Queen, a Governor-General and 105 senators. Take the power out of the Prime Minister’s Office and give it back to the MPs. No prorogation until the majority of members vote for it.

Olympic protest missed the mark

(January 05) - If we can’t do stuff on stolen native land, we can’t do stuff anywhere in Canada. Or hardly anywhere. It was all stolen, seized, plundered and pilfered in the years following the European “discoveries.” Some reparations have been made as land claim disputes were negotiated with governments or settled in courts.

Leaders of the Squamish Nation govern land that encompasses North Vancouver up to and including Whistler. They are still negotiating their claims, and have entered agreements to preserve and enhance their rights during the Olympics. They had band council elections on Dec. 6. If the members of the Squamish Nation thought their interests were not being looked after by the incumbent leaders, they would have turned them out last month. There is no indication they did.

Marching up Macdonell Street chanting no Olympics on stolen native land doesn’t have much intellectual clarity. It makes about as much sense as no universities on stolen native land. Or no Guelph Transit on stolen native land.

There are lots of other reasons to object to the games. The International Olympic Committee has amassed enough power to bully and browbeat nations. It wields so much economic clout that committee members get what they want, when they want it. They set a standard for greed that corporate sponsors can only aspire to meeting.

There are reasons to support the Olympics, such as the good jobs created in the years and months leading up to them. They also give elite young athletes, people like our own late Victor Davis, a goal to strive for. They can prove they are the best in the world at what they do. Mind you, this would have more value if the billions spent on the games trickled down, somehow, to support national amateur sports programs and general physical fitness. This never happens in any meaningful way. The athletics are just a little side show to distract us from the bigger picture. The Olympics used to be all about amateur athletes. Not anymore.

It is certainly something worth protesting, but how? Blocking the passage of a young woman carrying the torch is a childish and churlish thing to do. It says nothing of value, makes no meaningful point. Better to turn off the television, at least until we see which team of NHL millionaires gets to the gold medal game. Boycotting the sponsors would make a difference. Somehow we have to cure ourselves of our obsession with mega-things.

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Stephen Harper has cancelled Parliament again. It’s the same thing he did last year at about this time and what I predicted he would do in last week’s column.

There is so much wrong with this it is hard to know where to start. When they broke for the holidays, MPs were beginning a serious enquiry into the treatment of prisoners of war. No matter what we think of the cause the other side fights for - whether Nazi or Taliban - individual soldiers, when captured, must be treated according to the Geneva Convention. There is strong evidence the defence minister knew these rules were broken, yet did nothing.

It is the job of the official opposition to hold the government accountable, to make sure it is acting within the laws and traditions of our country. If they don’t hold the prime minister’s feet to the fire, who will?

It is wrong for the Prime Minister to cancel the business of Parliament because he’s scared of the direction it’s going.

If we are in the mood for protest, let’s get going on this one.

And prepare for an election. We need one, badly.