Inspired by Michael Campbell

I listen to Michael Campbell (an investment adviser, and the ex-Premier’s brother) give his personal business opinions on CFAX 1070 nearly every weekday morning. I get my daily shot of righteous indignation, and it makes me think, refuting him helping me to clarify my own position on economic matters.

For Michael Campbell, business/capitalism is always right; while government (with the possible exception of the B.C. Liberals and the Harper Administration), the ‘left’, unions, the media (except for Mr. Campbell, of course) and the Canadian public are always wrong.

This morning Mr. Campbell was going on about pensions—how large they are, how under-funded, how taxpayers will have to fill the gap. While acknowledging that adequately-funded pension plans are preferable, the fact remains that whatever money we tax-payers inject into pensions will help support considerable purchasing power, which in turn will help support economic activity of all kinds. Far too many business people seem incapable of seeing beyond their immediate costs to how maintaining purchasing power benefits them all, whether by raising the minimum wage, increasing social assistance rates, or supporting pensions.

Thinking about pensions got me thinking about social assistance rates. If they were more far-sighted, small businesses would be lobbying the government to substantially increase them, including those for the disabled, as this would boost the revenues of local businesses across the province.

I suggest that in B.C. the rates be doubled (for example, from $610 to $1220 per month for a single employable person, which would still be under the poverty line); that every recipient be allowed to keep at least $1,000 a month of any money earned ($1,500 for families with children) before their social assistance cheque is docked; and that the artificial division between rent support and all other costs be eliminated.

(I do not understand the mind that stipulates that if a recipient of social assistance should, by some miracle, find a place to rent for less than the present allowance of $375, they should forfeit the difference, instead of that saving being available to cover other costs.)

Allowing an earnings exemption of $1,000 would provide a strong incentive to find work, while doubling the rate to $1220 would help provide the means—a place to live, a phone, a bus pass, decent clothes—all of which are necessary for finding a job.

Although a doubling of rates would double the provincial budget for social assistance from $1.6 billion to $3.2 billion, the multiplier effect would increase economic activity even more, while doubling the bang we’d get for our buck—significantly-decreased poverty and significantly-increased economic activity.

At the moment, we’re spending $1.6 billion to keep people in poverty; double the rate, and many recipients will finally have a realistic chance of getting off social assistance for good, in the long run saving us considerably more than the original investments.

BC Supreme Court Ruling Re Polygamy Upholds Bad Law

I am an a-religious person with no ties to any polygamous household.

The court’s decision was a triumph of moral indignation and bad law.

Everyone ignores the fact that all of the harm caused women and children in polygamous households has taken place even though polygamy is illegal. Where is the evidence that this law has saved one woman or child from harm?

The criminalizing of polygamy may actually increase the likelihood of harm because it encourages closed communities like Bountiful where it is extremely difficult to discover what is going on.

We need civil laws to protect women and children, such as one providing that all spouses (formally married, or common-law) have an equal share in the matrimonial home and assets. Under the present law, wives are dependent, at least partly because they have no matrimonial property rights in their home or household income.

The distinction between ‘poly-amorous’ and polygamous households is totally phony. It means that a man may live with as many women as he wishes, unless he marries them, whereupon he’s committed a crime. That’s ridiculous.

The automatic assumption that every woman in a polygamous household is a victim is insulting to them, and all women. The decision and the arguments upholding it are rank paternalism dressed up in the sheep’s wool most people pull over their eyes regarding forms of marriage they do not wish to recognize.

A Citizen's Response--Part 1

A Citizen’s Response to the Supreme Court of Canada’s Decision Re the Government’s Right to Criminalize the Possession of Marijuana

Part 1

On December 23, 2003 the Supreme Court of Canada declared that it is not a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the Government to criminalize the possession of marijuana. I am writing this response, not because I expect the Court to pay the slightest attention to it, but to open a debate with my fellow citizens as to the kind of laws we should be governed by, and our means of holding the Government to its responsibility to enact fair, effective laws. In Part 1, I will address some specific points of difference with the Court’s judgment; in Part 2, I will discuss some tests which should be applied to laws which limit our rights, and inflict harm (punishment) on us.

The point of view of the Court throughout is that of the state, and not the citizen. For example, it writes of the state’s “. . . interest in the avoidance of harm to its citizens” (p.3), rather than of the citizen’s interest in the avoidance of harm from our state, and seems not to have noticed the contradiction in the curious notion that to avoid citizens harming ourselves, the state has the right to inflict harm on us instead.

The Court seems not to take into account who the state (or more accurately, the state’s agent, the Government, through Parliament) is: ordinary women and men elected by their fellow citizens to serve us—not to set themselves up as our moral superiors, nor to punish us simply for behaviour of which they disapprove. Singly, or together, the state, Parliament, and the Government, are not our parents, our guardians, or our masters; they are our servants, and the primary function of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to keep them in their place. The Charter belongs to us, not to our institutions, and its proper function is not to benefit the Government, but to protect us from its excesses, and to set a standard against which laws which limit our rights can be measured.

In particular, I differ with the Court regarding a) its denial that the ‘harm principle’ is a principle of fundamental justice; b) its standard of ‘gross disproportionality’; c) its denial that the Government’s use of the Criminal Code for some recreational drugs and not others is arbitrary; d) its position that the end justifies the means; and e) its practice of denying citizens access to Section 1 of the Charter, unless we can first prove an infringement under other sections.

a) The ‘harm principle’

The ‘harm principle, as expressed by J. S. Mill in On Liberty, and quoted by both the appellant and the Court is “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. The Court’s denies that this is a principle of fundamental justice.

My position is that the question of harm caused to others by the citizen vs. harm inflicted on citizens by the state is one of fundamental justice. However, I would not define the principle as broadly as Mill does. The issue is not whether the Government has the right to exercise some power over us; obviously, it does, or it couldn’t function at all. The issue is not even whether the Government may use the Criminal Code to deal with some problems; the issue is whether the Government is justified in using the Criminal Code (an especially severe exercise of power) to punish actions which in and of themselves do not harm others in a criminal way. (I will deal with the distinction between criminal and other harm, and related issues, in Part 2.)

The Court probably would not agree with me, either. It argues that to be a principle of fundamental justice “. . . for the purposes of s. 7, it must be a legal principle about which there is significant societal consensus it is fundamental to the way in which the legal system ought fairly to operate, and it must be identified with sufficient precision to yield a manageable standard against which to measure deprivations of life, liberty or security of the person.” (p. 34)

I suggest that we have had such a standard for thousands of years: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. This means not only that one is allowed to exact an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, but further, that one cannot exact more than an eye for an eye. Since this dictum is found in writings which are part of the heritage of three of the major religious groups in Canada, I suggest there is ‘significant societal consensus’ that the harm principle is one of fundamental justice.

As for providing a manageable standard, take the following illustrative example: A citizen is sitting quietly at home, alone, smoking a joint, harming no one. The police arrive, and 1) break down the door, 2) ransack the house, 3) cart away everything from pipes to computers, 4) handcuff the citizen’s arms behind their back, 5) take them out to the squad car before the eyes of the assembled neighbourhood, 6) lodge the citizen in jail (perhaps 7) for a couple of nights, if the arrest occurs on the weekend, perhaps for even longer, if they can’t raise bail), and 8+) begin the long, involved, expensive process which will cost the citizen inordinate amounts of time, energy, money, and reputation, even if they are acquitted, and cost every one of us inordinate amounts of taxes. Harm by the citizen—0; harms to the citizen—7, and counting; harms to society—numerous (see Part 2 for a list). Although the harms in the example may seem relatively minor (until you actually experience them yourself) they are only the beginning—and already at least a tooth has been taken, for a fingernail paring. Which leads me to my second point,

b) the Court’s standard of ‘gross disproportionality’.

The Court holds that only harm that is ‘grossly disproportional’ to the offence is an infringement of the Charter. The treatment described above, or much worse, is not ‘grossly disproportional’ because ‘gross disproportionality’ to the Court means, “punishments that are more than merely excessive” [emphasis added]; punishments “. . . that Canadians would find . . . abhorrent or intolerable”. The Court’s view seems to be that, ‘merely excessive’ punishments, and other drawbacks of the law, “. . . are part of the social and individual costs of having a criminal justice system.” (p.42)

To some extent, this is true; no system of justice will be perfect, but that does not mean that the costs listed above are unavoidable, or acceptable. At the very least, in order to impose such costs, the Government has a commensurate responsibility to a) provide real benefits for those very real costs beyond merely having ‘a justice system’, regardless of its actual quality and efficacy; b) not to impose such costs without justifiable reason; and c) to limit those costs as much as possible. We do not live in ‘a free and democratic society’ if citizens must bear the costs of arrest, imprisonment, legal fees, and on and on, to support bad laws, or an unfair, ineffective justice system.

The Court has set the bar of disproportionality so high that the Government is largely free to harass and punish us for any behaviour of which it disapproves, regardless of the actual efficacy of its laws, or the harm they may inflict on citizens, and society as a whole. I do not accept that the Government should have that kind of power over me, nor do I agree that such power falls “. . . within the broad latitude within which the Constitution permits legislative action.” (Interesting that here the Court uses ”Constitution” and not “Charter”.) In my reading of Section 1 of the Charter, the fact that the Government must ‘demonstrably justify’ the reasonable limits it places on us, indicates that its latitude is not broad, but quite narrow. I will return to the requirement of demonstrable justification a little later.
c) arbitrariness

The fact that someone indulging in an equally, or even more, harmful drug (alcohol, for example) is not punished, while someone using marijuana is, is not, in the Court’s view, an arbitrary distinction, but merely the Government exercising its right to make criminal law as it sees fit. The Court reasons that criminalizing some drug use, but not others, is not arbitrary because the state has, as mentioned, an interest in “. . the avoidance of harm to those subject to its laws” (p.3), and “. . . . a particular interest in acting to protect vulnerable groups”, (among whom it includes pregnant women, and those with pre-existing diseases), stating that this is, “. . . also consistent with Charter jurisprudence affirming the state’s power to intervene to protect children whose lives are in jeopardy and to promote their well-being” (p.38). In the Court’s view, we are children upon whom the Government, whenever it apprehends a possible harm to us, has a general right to inflict even more harm to ‘protect’ us. Curious reasoning, to say the least.

We are not children. Pregnant, chronically ill, or not, we are adult citizens who are perfectly capable of deciding for ourselves whether or not to use any particular drug, and do not need the Government acting as our nanny.

Furthermore, in exercising its power to make criminal law, the Government has a responsibility to be fair and consistent. Since smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol are at least as potentially harmful to the user as heroin, cocaine or marijuana, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary (and in the teeth of the evidence that criminalizing drug use in fact encourages it, and supports the profits of organized crime), the decision to criminalize the possession of some recreational drugs and not others is purely arbitrary. In denying such arbitrariness, the Court takes the position that

d) the end justifies the means.

The Court declares, “For a law to be classified as a criminal law, it must have a valid criminal law purpose backed by a prohibition and a penalty,” (p. 3) and further, that “In particular, criminalization seeks to take marihuana out of the hands of users and potential users to prevent the associated harm and to eliminate the market for traffickers.” (p.38) [emphases added] In other words, the end justifies the means. In fact, as the laws which criminalize drug use amply demonstrate, bad means corrupt laudable ends. Rather than being eliminated, ‘the market for traffickers’, is created by the laws criminalizing possession, cultivation, and distribution. If marijuana (or any other recreational drug) were regulated, licensed, and taxed as alcohol is, the only black market would be one created by excessively high taxes. (There is a point beyond which citizens will not be pushed, and when the Government goes beyond this point, all kinds of undesirable consequences, such as black markets, smuggling, and increased violence, occur.)

Unfortunately, the Court does not allow citizens to make such arguments unless and until, we have proven an infringement of our rights under one of the other sections of the Charter, which, as has been shown, is extraordinarily difficult to do, given the Court’s standards and its bias towards the state.

e) Access to Section 1

Section 1, in its entirety, reads: “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

This is not some afterthought, tacked on at the end of the Charter to be used merely as a defence by the Government; this is the first section, the section which sets a standard for all which follow. It provides that any limits on our rights must be ‘reasonable’—not ‘grossly disproportional’—reasonable. And those limits must be ‘demonstrably justified’. The Government not only must have a good purpose in mind, it must also demonstrate that its means, in this case, the Criminal Code, actually delivers the desired results, in the context of ‘a free and democratic society’. Whatever else ‘free’ may mean to citizens, I’m sure most would agree that it begins with the right to be left alone by the Government, except for justifiable cause. (A right which, though not specifically mentioned, is protected by Section 26, which reads, “The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada.”)

But the Court regards Section 1 merely as a defence to an infringement of other sections. This is too limited a view. Section 1 is first and foremost, a standard against which legislation which limits our rights should be judged, prior to any specific infringements of other sections being proved. Regarding recreational drug use, my position is that an infringement of Section 7 does exist, but even if it did not, citizens should be able to challenge laws directly under Section 1, and make the Government demonstrate that such laws are both needed, and effective.

But the Court sees it differently. Braidwood, J. A., of the Court of Appeal, summarized the evidence of the harm caused by the prohibition itself. The Supreme Court states, “In effect, the exercise undertaken by Braidwood, J. A. was to balance the law’s salutary and deleterious effects. In our view, with respect, that is a function that is more properly reserved for s. 1. These are the types of social and economic harms that generally have no place in s.7.” (p. 45) However, the Court concludes, since “. . . the accused have not established an infringement of s. 7, there is no need to call on the Government for a s. 1 justifications,” (p.4) thus arbitrarily denying us access to the single most important section of our Charter, the one which sets the standard for the rest.

In Part 2 I will discuss the tests which citizens should be able to apply under Section 1 of the Charter to determine if the standard of a ‘demonstrable justification’ of a reasonable limit to our rights has been met.

A Citizen's Response--Part 2

A Citizen’s Response to the Supreme Court of Canada’s Decision Re the Government’s Right to Criminalize the Possession of Marijuana

Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed some specific points of disagreement with the Supreme Court’s decision that the Government has the right to criminalize the possession of marijuana. The most important of these differences is with the Court’s position that Section 1 of the Charter comes into play only after an infringement of one of the other sections has been found; that is, the Court regards Section 1 merely as an opportunity for the Government to defend an infringing law.

I take precisely the opposite view, that Section 1’s primary role is to provide a standard against which any limits the Government wishes to impose on our rights can be measured, and must be justified. This means citizens should be able to challenge laws directly under Section 1, forcing the Government to justify criminalizing recreational drug use, for example, by passing three tests: Is the law necessary? Is it effective? and Does it cause less harm, to individuals and society, than the harm it is intended to address?

The law must pass all three tests to justify limiting our rights by criminalizing our behaviour. If it does so, then any specific infringements can be dealt with (either justified, or corrected); if it doesn’t, then specific infringements don’t matter because the entire law would be cast out. This process would enable citizens, the Courts, the Government, and Parliament, to work together to craft laws which do the job intended, without unnecessarily intruding into citizens’ lives.

Necessity

To justify using criminal sanctions the Government must show that, of and by itself, drug use causes problems for people other than the drug user, severe enough to be characterized as criminal behaviour—that is, the Government must demonstrate that real crimes are involved.
Real crimes are those acts by which one or more people inflict specific, direct harm on one or more other people—e.g. murder, rape, theft, fraud, libel, etc.. Phony crimes are victimless crimes, acts which have been outlawed because the government disapproves of them. They include, among others, soliciting for the purpose of prostitution, the possession of certain drugs, and (formerly) homosexuality.

The peaceful, private use of drugs hurts no one else directly. Negative side effects (second hand smoke, for example) may be suffered by others, but these can be dealt with through means other than criminal sanctions (bans on smoking in public indoor venues, for example). If a drug user commits a real crime such as impaired driving, there are laws already in place to deal with the offence.

Government cannot use the crimes that addicts commit to support their habits—muggings, burglary, etc.—as evidence of the harm drug abuse itself may cause others. Those crimes are the result of the high prices generated by criminal sanctions, and not the consequence of addiction per se. If addicts could go to their own doctor for treatment as for any other medical problem, they would no longer have to steal to support their habit because it would be covered by medicare (which would be a significantly cheaper and more effective way to deal with the consequences of addiction than is the present practice of hunting down, convicting, and jailing drug users, over and over again).

Even if users are harmed, the Government must demonstrate that it is necessary to apply criminal sanctions—that is, that no other, less severe, laws will do. Many other activities may cause harm to the person doing them—mountain-climbing, racecar driving, scuba-diving, to name only a few. It makes as much sense to subject addicts to the rigours of imprisonment to protect them from heroin, as it would to subject snowmobilers to imprisonment to protect them from avalanches.

Furthermore, the Government can’t justify the continued criminalization of drugs by citing mandatory helmet laws as examples of an acceptable limit on our freedom. Hemet laws apply only when one is riding in public, and those who go bare-headed are not charged under the Criminal Code.

On the evidence, criminalizing recreational drug use is not only unnecessary, but actively counter-productive, a point I will return to.


Effectiveness

Closely related to the question of necessity is that of effectiveness. Criminal sanctions, because of their severity, can only be justified if they solve the problem they were meant to solve.
Do criminal sanctions prevent or treat drug abuse? No. Do they ameliorate the medical or social problems attributed to drug abuse? No; they make them worse. Are they enforceable? No. Despite thousands of convictions for drug offenses every year, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians continue to use illegal drugs. Do sanctions act as a deterrent to drug dealing? No. In fact, instead of preventing drug abuse, criminal sanctions have increased it by supporting a lucrative black market for over 70 years.

The most successful anti-drug efforts have been those against tobacco and alcohol, both of which are legal. While tobacco companies may be held in low repute, they are under far more control than a black market in tobacco would be, and they pay taxes. The same would hold true for licensed purveyors of recreational drugs; the government would have much more control over them than it has now over organized crime, as well as access to an additional source of revenue. When a more effective and less harmful approach is available to the Government (legalizing, licensing, and regulating), a more severe and less effective law (criminalizing) cannot be justified.

Harm to Society

The government must demonstrate that criminal sanctions do not inflict greater harm on society than the use of drugs itself. The harm caused by sanctions includes, but is not limited to:

1) Most of the problems associated with drug use are the result, not of drug use per se, but of criminalization, which pushes up prices, leading to an increased risk of innocent people being mugged, burgled, or otherwise robbed by someone seeking money for a fix. Making penalties more severe tends to raise the price, leading to more crime to pay for it, and drawing more people into the market, rather than deterring them. The enormous profits gained by organized crime further increase the public’s peril as innocent by-standers can be caught in the crossfire between police and gangs, or between gangs fighting amongst themselves to seize or protect this wealth;

2) the threat to privacy from increased police prying. There being no victims, drug use is difficult to detect, leading police to use such questionable tactics as wire-tapping, surveillance cameras, undercover agents, and entrapment to obtain evidence. This is intrusive, and sets a dangerous precedent, for the Government’s appetite for scrutinizing us will only grow if we allow ‘the war on drugs’ to rob us of our privacy. And since the police can, and do, make mistakes, no one is safe from intrusion (to say nothing of the damage and expense suffered by the owners of dwellings the police have broken into looking for drugs);

3) the billions of tax dollars wasted every year finding, convicting, and imprisoning drug offenders; money which could be more usefully spent on education about, and treatment of, drug abuse, and for more neighbourhood policing using foot and bicycle patrols. Further millions are lost by not taxing the profits of drug dealers;

4) the infringement of the right to practice the religious ceremonies of our choice. Constitutional challenges to the drug laws, based on freedom of religion have failed on the grounds that that freedom does not include practices which contravene the Criminal Code—a reasonable limitation re any rite which inflicts harm on others (including animals), but an entirely unreasonable one regarding the peaceful ceremonial use of drugs by adults.

5) the increased threat to public health (and the public purse) from AIDS and other illnesses because, fearing the legal consequences, people are deterred from seeking treatment for drug addiction (or can’t get it, if they do try), and continue to engage in unsafe practices such as sharing dirty needles;

6) the denial to patients of reasonable access to the medical use of these drugs; heroin for pain relief, for example, or marijuana for nausea, glaucoma, and other ills;

7) the increased likelihood that children will be tempted to use drugs. Illegality itself is an incentive to experiment, and inflated prices encourage dealers to get young people hooked as early as possible. It’s probably easier for a child to buy a joint than a cigarette or a beer, but if huge profits could no longer be made, most dealers would leave the business, making drugs harder to find. Those who continued to sell recreational drugs could be regulated in the same way purveyors of alcohol and tobacco currently are.

Harm to the Offender

As discussed in Part 1, the Government must not inflict greater harm on a person than that person has inflicted on others, because to do so contravenes the long-recognized standard of (not more than) ‘an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth’. The laws against drug use cause far more real harm to offenders (and society) than does drug use itself. Criminalization, then, is the equivalent of taking an eye for a fingernail paring, and cannot be justified.

The Proper Role of Government

Where do we draw the line? When is the Government justified in interfering in our private lives? Regarding the use of criminal sanctions, the line should be drawn between those acts which intentionally (or through willful negligence) cause direct harm to others, and those acts which do not. The peaceful use of, and trade in, recreational drugs is not a real crime (or even a misdemeanour); impaired driving, whether due to drugs, alcohol, or fatigue, is.

The mistaken assumptions underlying the war on drugs are: a) that the Government has the right to inflict harm upon us to save us from ourselves, and b) that the best way to deal with an activity the Government deems undesirable is try to eliminate it by making it a criminal offence. But when phony crimes are created, the outlawed activities escape control completely by being driven underground, where they flourish. To enjoy a freer and more manageable society, we need to focus on encouraging responsible use (which can include non-use, in some instances), instead of merely setting and trying to enforce blanket prohibitions.

When the Government uses force to save us from ourselves, it oversteps itself. Citizens wish to engage in various kinds of activities deemed vices by others, and the law, as has been shown over and over again, is powerless to stop us. The Government’s proper role is not to act as our protector, or parent, or moral arbiter, but to provide the legal framework within which adults can enjoy the ‘vices’ of their choice in a peaceful and orderly fashion. The Government’s duty is to ensure, among other things, that drugs are pure, accurately measured, and correctly labelled (including appropriate warnings, if any); that games of chance are honest; that prostitutes are of age, and free of disease; that brothels are small, quiet, and co-operatively owned; and that all who profit from such activities pay their fair share of taxes.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court favours what it sees as the state’s “. . . interest in the avoidance of harm to its citizens”, as if we belonged to the state, instead of the state belonging to us. It is not the Government’s interests, but the rights and interests of citizens that the Charter is intended to protect.

The Court would probably argue that the proper venue for protesting the law and trying to change is Parliament and the political process. It is true that this course should be pursued; however, the political process works best when the Court is cognizant of the fact that elections are often not well-suited to resolving single issues. Quite properly, voters tend to choose their representatives based on a wide range of considerations, and not on one issue alone, which means that, even if they support the legalization of drugs, they may choose to vote for a non-supporter of that position for other reasons that are more important to them. This is a valid choice on their part (nor would it be good for the country if elections were decided primarily on single issues), but that choice ought not to leave their fellow citizens without recourse against specific laws.

If, in this instance, the Court had chosen to declare that criminalization was unconstitutional, and thrown the problem back to the Government and Parliament for another try at solving it, then citizens would be given a real hearing on this issue in the coming election because Parliament would have to address it. However, since the Court has ruled that it doesn’t infringe the Charter for the Government to inflict harm on us when no commensurate harm has been caused, the political process has been defused. Not only will candidates have less incentive to discuss the issue (beyond, perhaps, ‘decriminalization’ which will do nothing except to whitewash the status quo), they are all too likely to throw the Court’s decision in the faces of those who think our Charter rights have been transgressed.

To make the political process truly responsive to citizens, we need a Court that is willing to give our interests at least equal standing with the Government’s; not a Court which interprets our Charter exclusively from the Government’s point of view.

Summary

In 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision upholding the Government’s right to create victimless crimes reduced us from citizens to children, ‘protected’ by the people we elect to serve, not master, us—our peers, ordinary men and women in both Liberal and Conservative Governments who have elevated themselves above their station by acting as our nannies. From this falsely superior position, the Harper Conservatives justifies its rush to criminalize drug use even more severely, indifferent to the inappropriateness and ineffectiveness of their policy, its horrendous cost, and the harm it creates for citizens and society alike.

The Charter should protect citizens from such legislated abuse, but I no longer believe the Supreme Court can be relied on to uphold the rights of citizens against the desire of the Harper Government to act, in the most vicious way possible, in loco parentis to adult citizens. Loco indeed are the consequences, for we are saddled with laws which create far greater harm than the harm they supposedly address, and no end to this insanity is in sight.

Open Letter to the Christy Clark Government

Re: Your hypocritical poor-mouthing in general and the Juan de Fuca lands in particular

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Apparently, you’re in such desperate fiscal straits that you don’t have the revenues to fund treatment and housing for the mentally ill; you can’t afford reasonable-sized classes in our public schools, and there are so many claims for parkland that the Juan de Fuca Lands just have to take their turn—to name only three of the areas where you have failed to live up to your responsibility to further the public good.

Claiming lack of funds is pure baffle-gab. You guys always find money for anything you want to do—$8 million for your ill-advised attempt to save the HST; $600 million for a fancy new roof on a sports stadium—so don’t tell me you can’t find the money to buy the Juan de Fuca Lands; that spin won’t wash.

If you don’t want to increase your deficit you could a) persuade the Pacific Carbon Trust to do something laudable with the public’s money they receive through schools, by buying the lands, and/or b) reverse the unnecessary income tax cut your predecessor made in 2001. Without that windfall for the richest people in the province, you might not be in a deficit position today. It’s time your wealthy business backers started paying for the quality of life they enjoy here, including our wild lands. B.C. is a high-class place to live and do business; there’s plenty of tax room at the top.

Among the many bad decisions the Gordon Campbell Government made, releasing thousands of hectares from the protection of a Tree Farm Licence without appropriate compensation, was among the most gratuitously egregious. So unnecessary; so focused on the welfare of a private company at the expense of the public good, this lack of care and forethought by that Government has created an obligation for you—the Christy Clark Government—to rectify the error by buying the land and protecting it in perpetuity as a park. (The recent Raeside cartoon in the Victoria Times-Colonist showing the sign at the entrance to the park as—The Gordon Campbell Provincial Park—is an idea worth considering. Surely it would ease the pain of owning up to, and paying for, your predecessor’s mistake, to see the Opposition and other opponents squirm at the designation. :-)

You have a little under two years to work your way back into public favour; to convince citizens that you really do understand where your duty lies. Ensuring that the Juan de Fuca lands remain forever un-logged and undeveloped would be a good step in that direction, as well as a long-term investment in the economy of the region.

Think about it.

LAUNCH PARTY

Coyote--A Tale of Unexpected Consequences

Moka House on Hillside (at Shelbourne)

Thursday, October 20th

7:00 p.m.

An Open Letter to Finance Minister Flaherty

The following is the text of a letter I've sent to Minister Flaherty.

Re Blancing the Budget

Greetings, Minister Flaherty,

Regarding your budget-balancing plans, in order to believe that you will cut government spending in ways which will cause the least pain to Canadians, I need to see that the first cuts you make are the following:

1. Instead of being ‘tough on crime’—but soft-headed about appropriate policies, why don’t you try being smart on crime, for a change?

Withdraw the omnibus crime bill, thus negating any need for more prisons—the most expensive and least effective means of influencing human behaviour, the last thing we need when municipal infrastructure (to take only one example) desperately needs up-grading.

To deal with the grievous over-crowding in prisons, you should see that a process is put in motion to release as many non-violent offenders as possible, under a variety of conditions—house arrest, half-way house, ankle bracelet, timely meetings with parole officer, etc—properly funded, thus obviating the need for more incarceration ‘capacity’, and saving millions;

2. Instead of buying an increasingly expensive untried fighter jet, replace the CF-18’s with a tried and true aircraft better suited to military, and search and rescue needs;

3. Remove all control of drug use and abuse from the Criminal Code and instead give the Health Ministry the responsibility of initiating a system of regulation, licensing, and taxation, adapted to suit different drugs. Marijuana, for example is safer than alcohol and can be controlled and taxed in all the ways that liquor is, while heroin would be available only by prescription.

You and the government of which you are a member, have a choice, Minister Flaherty: You can either persist with drug prohibition to the continuing endangerment of the citizenry, the waste of hundreds of millions of tax dollars, and the delight of criminal gangs; or you can regard drug use as, at worst, a medical problem, best dealt with outside the Criminal Code, and save hundreds of millions of tax dollars instead of, for example, gutting the environment ministry, which does work we really need.

Will you put the public good before your private moral view of drugs, Mr. Flaherty?

Unfortunately, I don’t believe you will, and the country will become meaner and nastier with every mean and nasty clause in your omnibus crime bill, and every additional prison cell.

Funding the CBC and Deficit Reduction

The following is based on a letter I e-mailed to James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Thursday, July 14th.

I listened to the Minister on CBC Radio’s On the Island this morning. He not only falsely denied the Conservatives’ pre-election promise to maintain or even increase the CBC’s funding, but he also had the effrontery to chide the CBC that it must do ‘its share’ for deficit reduction. This, even as the Federal Government of Canada, persists, through its holier-than-thou crusade against drug use, in squandering hundreds of millions of dollars annually to enforce drug prohibition.

It’s bad enough that drug prohibition doesn’t work; it’s worse that it turns a relatively minor medical problem into a major social one; worst of all is that the very laws enacted in the name of preventing drug use and addiction, actually encourage more drug use by creating and sustaining several extremely lucrative black markets, along with the criminal gangs who operate them.

The Harper Conservatives consider drug use immoral. However, it is even more immoral to make matters worse, as the Conservatives are now doing. All the social ills associated with drug use and addiction—thefts and muggings to obtain the price of a fix; gang wars and murders; our over-loaded prison system, and the erosion of our civil liberties—are directly due to the use of the Criminal Code to address a medical problem.

If the Government is serious about cutting the deficit, with the least pain for citizens, ending drug prohibition would be a significant first step. Not only would the Government save hundreds of millions of dollars annually on reduced police, court, medical, and incarceration costs (more prisons are the last thing we need), taxes from the sale of marijuana would add hundreds of millions of dollars annually to government coffers.

Think of it—cutting costs and increasing tax revenues while simultaneously delivering a major blow against organized crime by destroying their black market—all for the price of repealing some very bad legislation.

But Stephen Harper, that smug, self-righteous, despot-in-the-making, will never let good public policy trump his private punitive principles: The CBC’s funding will be cut, and criminal gangs will continue to flourish.

May 2, 2011 was a sad day for Canada; the Harper Conservatives are not a party that can be trusted with majority power, as the above examples demonstrate.

And this is only the beginning of four long years of Conservative dictatorship.

Consumer Debt

Periodically, and lately, with increasing frequency, a great to-do is made by economists, bankers, politicians, and the press, about the excessive level of consumer debt, now averaging around $140 of debt for every $100 of income. If any steps at all are taken by government or related institutions such as the Bank of Canada, to deal with the situation, they are generally counter-productive, as they lean to reducing or maintaining very low interest rates which, as is well-known, is more likely to encourage the taking on of new debt than the repayment of old. A much more effective tactic would be to raise interest rates, but this remedy is not applied precisely because of its effectiveness—the higher the rate the less people will borrow, and eventually, the lower their debt.

However, to stop going into debt means cutting back significantly on buying things, especially vehicles and housing, and the economy would very likely to go into a recession. And no one—no economist, politician, businessman, or worker—wants to advocate any debt-reducing policy that would trigger a recession and the loss of both dollars and jobs. (Stock market reports illustrate this mind-set—all doom and gloom when prices are falling, all good cheer when prices rise. And a rising dollar is taken as good news when, for an exporting country like Canada, it’s not good news at all.)

We’re living in an era of what can be called ‘climax capitalism’, the global dominance of multinational corporations with allegiance to no one but themselves, and symbolically at least, their shareholders. Unfortunately, for them and us, climax capitalism suffers from an inherent defect, a malignant brain tumour bred of greed, fear, and pride—an insatiable greed for money combined with the fear of shrinking, of losing size and power, and the concomitant pride at having ‘the biggest’ company or profits or market share, or whatever, around—which makes it unlikely they would be willing, or, indeed, capable, of surviving in a low, or no-growth economy.

Therefore, because of the cancerous pursuit of economic growth, consumers, goaded and tempted by advertising on all sides, are more likely to increase than to reduce their level of debt. And no one is going to do anything effective about it because no one is willing to take responsibility for the consequences. It’s growth at all costs, and debt is the price we pay.

Looting the House Next Door

A lot of outrage has been expressed about those who rioted in Vancouver recently. While not condoning destructive behaviour, I’m less judgmental than many, having particated in something similar myself. I understand how easy it can be to be carried away by a bad idea. The following poem is an excerpt from my book 1970: A Novel Poem

Since ‘private property’
had become a pejorative phrase—except for
one’s own belongings, of course—
perhaps it’s not surprising we looted
the house next door, thinking it abandoned,
we abandoned ourselves, and ran
from room to room and floor to floor,
snatching up small objects, anything
that lay to hand—Oh, the glee! the glee!

greed singing through us,
avarice humming in every cell,
we grab anything we can carry
—pillows, pictures, food, figurines
clothes we don’t need,
records we’ll never play,
books we’ll never read—but oh!

it was fun to take,
and take, and take,
and take, laughing

—in a fever to acquire
in a delirium of greed
we lugged home armfuls of stuff,
left it on the kitchen floor, and
going outdoors, lay about
the back yard, panting,

catching our breath, coming down,
coming back to ourselves,
a little awed, a little proud,
a little guilty, a little scared.

That night our visitors went home early.
They trailed away and the house was
unusually quiet for several days.

Next morning, shame-faced, we returned all
their things to the indignant owners, who returned
late the same night from wherever they’d been.
They moved away shortly thereafter.

Blue Mud Dauber Wasp

This is the beautiful but tiny wasp I never would have noticed if I hadn't been out hunting with my camera

Seeing

At various times, lately, when prowling the back yard, camera in hand, I practice really looking at things, really seeing them. Otherwise, my vision is often suspended somewhere between the object I’m ostensibly looking at and a more panoramic view, with the result that I’m actually seeing very little, I’m in sight-limbo. So whenever I remember to, I practice focusing on what I’m looking at, noting the details of what’s close around me--how individual blades of grass bend this way and that, a bit of gnarled twig, a grey, white-veined stone, that scurrying ant (too tiny, and moving too quickly to catch with even this lens--looking for the tell-tale twitch or flight or glint of wing that indicates a potential photographic target.

But after a while, I’ll deliberately switch to a more panoramic view, which is different than the suspension of vision in sight-limbo. In panoramic view, I catch the movement of insects and birds I would probably miss when concentrating on details close at hand. ‘Panoramic’ in relative terms, of course—twenty feet around me, instead of two, or sometimes hundreds of feet, a voluminous view as I scan the sky for an eagle.

Of coursed, in sight-limbo I’m usually thinking about something, usually something other than seeing, although thinking about ‘looking’ and ‘seeing’ (shades of Carlos Castaneda) can suspend true looking and seeing, as readily as thinking about any other subject. The ideal is to be Buddha-minded—aware of detail and panorama simultaneously—which seems to require stillness. And most depictions of the Buddha show him seated, though I have two little carved wooden Buddha’s with their hands in the air who appear to be dancing. And of course, it wouldn’t be complete enlightenment if one could only experience it while sitting.

Anyhow, in the garden I switch back and forth between detail and panorama, and still mostly get stuck in the middle, thinking about something and not really seeing. However, the camera does help to keep me focused on what’s going on around me. Because I’m looking for living, moving creatures to photograph, I’m far more observant than I used to be in pre-camera days, when much of my daily walk would take place in sight-limbo, the landscape going past as a backdrop to whatever drama was currently playing out in my head. Now, I’m much more attuned to picking up the darting movements that reveal where some bird or insect is, and am slowly building up a collection of all the various bug, bird, and (once) reptile life in the garden. There’s much more of it than there seems at first—like the beautiful turquoise-blue mud dauber wasp, so tiny—half an inch, at most—that, without the ceaseless hunt for food for the camera, I never would have noticed.

The Elimination of the per-vote subsidy for political parties--Harper's first step towards a one-party state

Isn’t it typical of the Harper Conservatives to eliminate the most democratic form of funding political parties—the per-vote subsidy—while maintaining the least democratic, the tax credit for political donations?

The Harper Conservatives claim that the per-vote subsidy forces tax-payers to finance parties they don’t support—which, typically for the Harper Conservatives, is simply not true. My vote directs where my tax dollars will go: to the NDP. The per-vote subsidy is far more democratic than the generous tax deduction for donation to political parties, which obviously favours those who a) have a taxable income (I do not); and b) can afford to donate any money at all, let alone $1,100 (the current limit per person).

As the party of big business, the Harper Conservatives raised 4 times the money ($17.7 million; with 3,400 people contributing at least $500) than the NDP, the party of working people and those on lower incomes ($4 million; 600 people contributing at least $500). Under the Harper Conservatives’ proposal, the wealthy will have even more influence over government than they do now.

One commentator made the argument that, without the subsidy, political parties will have to ‘work harder’ to present a platform that citizens will support, totally ignoring the fact that the per-vote subsidy already encourages political parties to do their best in each election to win votes, even if they can’t win a seat.

When political pundits bother to comment on the elimination of the per-vote subsidy, it’s generally couched in terms of Harper’s desire to eliminate the Liberal Party once and for all—as if that somehow makes it all right. However, while Harper’s first target may be the Liberals, the real target is all political parties, all of which will have difficulty raising the kind of money the Conservatives raise from their comparatively wealthier backers.

A one-party state is in keeping with Harper’s well-demonstrated desire to avoid dissent, and the elimination of the per-vote subsidy is a long step towards bringing it about.

Gulls Chasing Gulls Collage

Violet-green swallow

One of the things I like about this picture is the interplay of various angles and textures.

An excitingvisitor to the garden; fortunately it sat still a couple of times. Don't have a good picture of it in flight.

Do Civil Forfeiture Laws Trample Our Rights?

This question, which I've slightly revised, was asked by Victoria’s Time-Colonist newspaper on Thursday, May 19th . This is my reply, which the T-C published today.

Of course they do. Minister Bond’s claim that, “This isn’t about circumventing rights, or the court process.” is nonsense.
The creeping expansion of civil forfeiture laws at the provincial and federal level is another symptom of that metastasizing legislative malignancy in the body politic ‘the war on drugs’. Because of this disease our rights are increasingly eroded with each such legislative encroachment.

Real justice—the courts and due process—is not a profit centre; ersatz or ‘administrative’ justice is. As a result, impaired drivers go untried while police act as judge, jury and enforcer at the roadside, or in one’s home, with almost no right of appeal.

We do not need to sacrifice our civil rights to fight organized crime. The single most effective blow against it is to end the war on drugs, thereby dismantling the black market, and its enormous profits. Seizing a few goods, however immediately lucrative for governments, will do nothing to stem the cash flow generated by drug prohibition.

Unfortunately, we are now saddled with a government which prefers to impose its private moral views instead of improving our security, from both criminal gangs and greedy governments, by ending the war on drugs, and rescinding other unconstitutional legislation such as the province’s civil forfeiture laws.

A male chipping sparrow.

Life-Style Choices & Discrimination

There’s a great to-do about leader-designate of the B.C. Conservative Party, John Cummin’s position that being gay is a life-style choice, and therefore should not be a protected category under human rights legislation. The underlying implication is that if one’s behaviour is a matter of choice, others do have a right to discriminate against you on that ground.

I accept that being gay is not a life-style choice. What I don’t accept is that whether being gay is a choice or innate, creates a moral or legal difference regarding discrimination. If someone ‘chooses’ to be gay does that make it acceptable to beat them up for it? No. Or to deny them housing on that basis? No. Because someone has chosen to live in a certain way does not mean that others have a right to inflict harm on them for doing so. And because gays are beaten up and othjerwise discriminated against simply because they're gay, they should be protected by human rights legislation, whether one thinks they’re gay innately, or by choice.

If behaviour associated with a life-style choice—playing loud music, let’s say—does inflict harm on others, that’s a different matter, but then we should address the specific harmful behaviour, not the life-style choice per se.

Becher Bay Collage

Becher Bay doesn't actually look like this, but it feels the way this looks, at least to me.

Eaglets Again

When I started watching the eaglets this afternoon, all three were sleeping. Then George woke up (he’s almost invariably the first to become active after a nap) and flopped over to the Little One which was back in its usual place, hunkered down, head lowered. But when it raised its head, George attacked it. His beak is big but it doesn’t look like he actually inflicted any wounds. And there does seem to be a submission posture, as when the Little One hunkered down again, George desisted after a final bite or two. Later, George adopted the same hunkered down posture when Hugh went after him—although Hugh doesn’t seem to be into attacking the others all that much. On the whole, Hugh is too well-fed to want to do more than sleep. Occasionally Hugh and George sort of confront each other, beak to beak in what looks more like a feeding posture than a combat one, with the sideways twist of the head the adult uses when feeding them (but who do they thinking is feeding whom?).

One of the adults was sitting on a branch of the same tree overhead head, and eventually flew down and fed them. I think it was the male, as the profile seemed flat, but it wasn’t at a good angle to see. At one point when George was getting stuffed, and Hugh was not, Hugh made a half-hearted lunge in George’s direction, and then turned and bit at Little One (couldn’t see if he connected, or not).

A couple of times George and Hugh had their little bums pointing at the camera as they went through the humping motion that usually precedes defecation. “No, no,” I cried, waving the cursor over the screen—which worked! Or at least, they turned their bums away, but I put it down to coincidence, and have no expectations of future success. Last year, I missed all of the fledging of the one chick there was that year (a raven stole the other egg), because the lens had become opaque from being covered with feces. The year before, when there were three eaglets, I don’t recall the lens being dirty at all.

I’ve decided to rename the Little One, Lucy. Of course, I’m using very stereotypical names, based on their size and vigour. Hugh, in fact, may be Hilda, and Lucy could be Luke. Among eagles, I believe, females tend to be larger than males, but in this case I think the size difference is due to the fact that Hugh hatched first, and has always been bigger than the other two. Also, I don’t know when the difference in size shows up, perhaps not until they’re adults, or close to being; which is around four or five years of age, when they first mate.

Eaglets

I’ve been watching the three eaglets in the nest in Sidney on the camera that the David Hancock Foundation has set up. They’re growing incredibly quickly, and are now big enough to hit the camera if they defecate in that direction (the single chick last year finally totally covered the lens) so who knows how long I’ll be able to follow their progress. Presumably, the camera is in the best place, and couldn’t be placed anywhere else, but a foot or two higher would take it out of range.

The three chicks come in three different sizes. The largest is about twice the size of the smallest, with the third in between. I’ve ended up giving them names just to keep straight which one I’m writing about. The big one is Hugh, the middle one George (I don’t know why; I don’t like the name but somehow it attached itself to this chick which is the most active of the three, much more alert and always grooming itself which makes me wonder if it has lice or fleas, or both. Or perhaps it’s the new feathers coming in, much of the down has gone along the side of the neck), while the smallest is Little One. George attacked Little One quite viciously, and I wondered if it had been wounded, or even killed, but apparently not.

Hugh was sleeping near the front of the nest, and when it finally stood up I was amazed at how much bigger it was than the other two. I assume it’s the first-born. Hugh made a half-hearted attack on George, who successfully resisted. Will all three survive each other?

Then the female turned up with something fairly large in her talons. She stood on the carcass for a few minutes, constantly screaming and looking all around, very upright and alert. George headed for her the minute she touched down, Hugh looked up with interest, and Little One raised its head, but all the chicks hunkered down for a bit, when the female began to scream. But before long, they began to get restless, and she finally stopped screaming, and set about feeding them.

I think the prey was probably a rabbit, as she plucked off clumps of some kind of fluffy stuff and threw them about—looked much more like fur than feathers (the resolution is not all that sharp). She fed Hugh first, actually positioning herself closer in order to stuff the food down its throat. George waited a bit, although watching intently, and then butted in to get his share. In the meantime, Little One finally struggled up behind the female, and rather feebly tried to get in on the food. The female did eventually turn around, and fed it as well, so it’s not only an open beak which prompts her to feed them, she seems to feed each one in turn, even if they're not directly in front of her, begging.

At one point the male arrived, but didn’t stay long. Didn’t feed anyone, briefly rooted about with his beak in the nest cup, and then flew off.

When I left the site, the eaglets were once again settling down to sleep.

Courting Spiders

And now for something entirely different from politics--or maybe not.

I Weep for Canada

Too many of my fellow Canadians have seen fit to deliver us into the hands of a man without scruples; a man who is a liar, a coward and a bully, a man who will reduce the Federal Government to a ghost of itself; a man who will squander billions on jets we don't need; squander more billions on prisons we need even less, and put more addicts and mentally ill people in them; and generally make life worse for the already unfortunate.

And to ensure their hegemony will continue, the Harper Coservatives will strip public funding from political parties so that the Conservatives, backed by those who can afford to donate up to the limit (and the Harper Conservatives may cyncially raise that limit, if they don't open up donations to corporations again) will in the next election, have a war chest that may very likely buy them another term.

We are in for many long, dreary, anti-democratic, and despotic years under the most dangerous government this country has ever elected.

I despise Harper; he is a man without political morals, a man who should never be entrusted with the power of a majority, as he has already demonstrated how he will abuse it, allowing no dissent, refusing to tell us how he plans to spend our money; turning the PMO into a fortress of silence and control, imposing his narrow, vicious ideology on all of us. I predict that within six months there will be a private Conservative member's bill eliminating a woman's right to choose, along with another abolishing gay marriage.

This is my wish for Stephen Harper. May the power he's striven for so long turn out to be the worst thing that ever happened to him. May his victory turn sour in his belly, and crumble in his hands; may he drag his party down into the political gutter where it belongs, and may the downward slide to oblivion start for Stephen Harper tonight.

I Voted for Real Change--Will Canada?

Tomorrow we’ll find out how much real change is possible. I’m suspended somewhere between dread and glee—dread that the Harper Conservatives will prevail; glee at the prospect of the NDP becoming, if not government, then the Loyal Opposition, followed in due course, by the Harper Conservativ’s most feared outcome—an NDP-led coalition.

Anyhow, this time tomorrow, all should be clear—or clearer—there may be some close contests still undecided.

Harper Doesn't Trust Anyone--Not Even Himself

You can tell by his campaign behaviour that Harper doesn’t trust anyone—not even himself, yet the Harper Conservatives are asking us to trust their master, and vote for them. But how can we trust, how can we vote for, a man who so mistrusts himself?

Mr. Harper is so afraid of making a mistake, of letting something real and human slip from his lips, that he’s throttled down his availability to Canadian citizens, and even (or especially) to the press, so that when he comes to Victoria, for example, no one knows where he is to appear, and the media are bused to a secret location, where they are allowed to ask a measly five questions.

By running such a tightly-controlled campaign, Stephen Harper makes it clear he doesn’t believe in his ability to think on his feet; nor dare to appear before an assembly of citizens unless they’ve been carefully chosen not to disagree with what he says; a man who does not trust himself to speak to the electorate except within the tiny padded cage of his well-vetted supporters. But in thus so closely guarding himself, in being so successful in sealing himself off from citizens, Stephen Harper may have smothered his own campaign, for the NDP are now attracting voters from the Conservatives as well as from the Liberals and the Bloc.

Jack Layton, in visible contrast to the skulking Harper, takes on all questions. He is open and friendly, reasonable and practical. He may not always answer questions the way I’d like to hear them answered; I may not agree with every policy he and the Party have put forward during this campaign, yet even when I disagree with Jack Layton and the NDP, I feel sure I can trust what he says, and that he and the NDP will surely serve us better than any other party.

That’s why I’ve voted for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

Two Birds

Audubon's Warbler

Towhee

I'm Voting for Real Change--in Government

I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, because I want him to be one of many NDP MPs—enough to form a government.

I’ve quaffed the heady brew of a favourable, surprising—and delightful—poll, and I’m putting my spirited hopes into effect by voting for an NDP MP, and urging everyone to do likewise.

The Harper Conservatives, in their disdain for democracy, are making the false claim that we vote for ‘a government’. We do not. We vote for 308 MPs who choose our government from amongst themselves. Traditionally, the party with the most seats gets the first crack at forming government, but the Harper Conservatives make the sleazy, fundamentally anti-democratic claim that only the party with the most votes has the right to test the House, and that a coalition government would be ‘illegitimate’. Nonsense. If 155 MPs agree to support each other; they will form government, and there will be nothing illegitimate about it.

If the Harper Conservatives don’t know this, they’re too stupid and ignorant to be trusted with government, major or minor; if they do know it (and I’m sure most of them do), they’re too cynical and manipulative to be trusted. And this is only one of the many examples of how willing the Harper Conservatives are to distort the truth—nay, to downright lie—whenever it suits them. The truth is, the Harper Conservatives don’t care what the truth is. Parliament to them is at best a tool be manipulated, and at worse an enemy to be thwarted, by any means available. Parliament to us is—or should be—the means by which we take care of each other and our society, an expression of our will, not that of the Harper Conservatives.

But enough of those shabby-minded, drably dangerous men. I’m voting for real change; I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca. Of course, I’ve always voted NDP, regardless of the candidate’s chances of winning because I share most of their values and agree with most of their policies.

But for those who have always wanted to vote NDP, but didn’t think the Party had a chance of winning—now’s the time to vote as you really want to. For once you can vote for the NDP knowing that an increasing number of citizens feel the same way, and that if enough of you make that choice you will vote for the winning candidate; you will bring the country one step closer to real change.

Aside from anything else, wouldn’t it feel good to be part of a fundamental shift in who governs us, and how? Wouldn’t you enjoy, wouldn’t you love, broadening the political landscape, freeing yourself from the stale choice of either the power-greedy Harper Conservatives or the once-entitled Liberals, to choose the real alternative, the NDP? What a breath of fresh air that would be.

I’m serious—wouldn’t it be fun?—a glorious, heart- and soul-expanding joy to open the door to real change by voting the NDP into office? Of course, I’m biased, but the election is now far more exciting and promising than it was a week ago, before the NDP climbed up the polls into full view. Don’t let this opportunity slip away.

Vote for real change in Ottawa. In Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, I’m voting for Randal Garrison, the NDP candidate, to be our next MP.

The Poet at His Meal Among Students

for Allen Ginsberg

He eats cold curried chicken,
salad, whole wheat bread,
after a concert, hungry, eats it all,
and asks for seconds, his audience
imbibing beers around him, two
talking to him as he chews,
answers between mouthfuls,
emptying his plate, as they feed
on his attention, and drink
from his mind.

The Harper Conservatives: Agents of Death

I call the Harper Conservatives the agents of death because of their unwavering opposition to Insite (the safe injection site in Vancouver) despite the scientific, peer-reviewed research that shows that Insite saves lives*.

The Harper Conservatives don’t care if Insite saves lives. Going by their actions, and their refusal to heed scientific evidence, the Harper Conservatives apparently think that if an addict dies from an overdose, it’s their own fault; they’ve committed the sin of being an addict, and the place for them is prison, not a safe injection site.

The Harper Conservatives think they have a God-given right to impose their narrow, vicious, ideology (one cannot call it morality, since it inflicts so much harm) on the country, and they will do so the first chance they get.

Abortion? Harper has tried to fool citizens and soothe away well-founded fears, by claiming that, even if the Harper Conservatives gain a majority, he has no intention of introducing an anti-abortion law. I believe him. He won’t introduce it; he’ll leave it to some equally despot-minded, ideologue of a Harper Conservative backbencher to introduce a private member’s bill, which, with the support of a Harper Conservative majority would do away with a woman’s right to choose.

Gay marriage? The same; it won’t be done away with by a government bill, but a private member’s bill will achieve the same end.

There’s no escaping the fact that, if the Harper Conservatives gain a majority, they will, one way or another, do away with any of our rights they disagree with, and do their utmost to kill Insite, letting the addicts die where they may, and a civil, caring society with them.

[* “Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America's first medically supervised safer injecting facility: a retrospective population-based study,” Brandon DL Marshall, M-J Milloy, Evan Wood, Julio SG Montaner, Thomas Kerr, published in The Lancet, April 18, 2011.]

Great Viewing

For an illustrated exposure of Harper’s lies go to http://compellingcomics.justsomeguy.com/
CanadaVotes2011/Canada.html

I'm Voting for Real Change--For Future Generations

One reason I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, is because the NDP understands that the caring for, and educating of, children (and adults) benefit not only those receiving the care and the education, but are also primary sources of the well-being of society and the economy, as a whole.

Most of this blog is about education, which is a provincial responsibility. However, as a Canadian citizen I have an interest in seeing education properly funded wherever in the country I choose to live, which means there’s a role for the federal government to play, negotiated with the provinces, of course, as has been done many times in the past. Having said this, I shall not clutter up my thesis by trying to differentiate which level should play which role in the delivery of child care and education.

I’m a senior, and I’ve never raised a child, but I’m concerned for the welfare of those younger than myself out of enlightened self-interest. The better they are cared for and educated, the better I’m likely to be cared for, if and when I should come to need it. I’m likely to be better cared for, partly because the best education reinforces nurturing and empathetic instincts, and partly because the better educated our workforce is, the better the jobs they’re likely to have, and the more taxes they’re likely to be able and willing to spend/invest on providing for their elders as well as their children.

When I say, ‘better educated’ I include trades education. And in trades education I include English, second language(s), literature, art, the sciences, and history, as well as hands-on skills and the techniques and technologies that go with them. Just because someone works with their hands doesn’t mean they’re either socially or politically illiterate—that is, without an intelligent and large world view of their own.

The NDP, because of both its principles and its history, understands this, and because of its understanding, is willing to fund the resources necessary for the best education for everyone, including adults. The NDP also understands that those social and individual benefits in turn create economic activity of all kinds, so that investments in child care and education will pay dividends in productivity and profits.

Among the resources required are smaller schools (and smaller class sizes), and rural schools, which, wherever they were closed, and wherever possible, should be restored to their communities. The NDP understands that schools are more than buildings where children are taught; a school is the heart, brains, and muscles of many communities, both rural and urban. Schools are where meetings, theatre, markets, fairs, and many other activities important to the community take place.

The idea that saving some number of dollars by closing rural schools and busing children miles and miles to a large, centralised school should take precedence over both the well-being of the children subjected to this incessant travel, and the life and activities of the communities where the schools were located, has trickled down to us from those business people (not all business people, but many of the most powerful) for whom making money is the one and only justification for undertaking any activity, whatsoever, including the arts and sciences. [More about this in a future blog.]

Whatever dollar efficiencies may be realized by centralising the delivery of education, the effectiveness of such measures for the well-being of students and parents, pedagogical and communal, is much reduced. Effectiveness for those receiving the service should take precedence over cutting the amount invested in schools because in the long run both society and the economy will prosper from stronger small and rural communities, and government revenues will correspondingly expand. [This is the ‘trickle up’ or ‘rising tide’ theory of investment :-)]

To summarize, I’m concerned that children be well-cared-for and well-educated because it benefits society in general, and me in particular. My welfare and that of future generations are inextricably part of the same whole. The NDP understands this, and is willing to act upon that understanding.

That’s why I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

Stephen Harper Refuses to Accept the Truth

During the English-language leaders’ debate, Michael Ignatieff listed some of the evidence demonstrating the Harper Conservatives’ contempt for Parliament, including prorogation to avoid a defeat in the House (and a coalition government); and more recently, the Harper Conservatives’ refusal to tell Canadians how many billions their prisons and jet planes will cost us.

Stephen Harper didn’t deny the truth of Ignatieff’s charges (really, how could he? they’re a matter of public record), he simply refused to accept the truth. This is the mind-set of a man who believes he can order reality any way he pleases, just by saying so. I’m reminded of the Watergate tapes which recorded Richard Nixon and his henchmen playing about with various ‘scenarios’ designed to hide the truth. They, too, believed that what they said would prevail over the truth, and they almost got away with it.

When Stephen Harper says, “I don’t accept the truth,” he means, “I don’t care what the truth is.” All he cares about is repeating his lies often and insistently enough to fool enough people into voting for the Harper Conservatives to give them a majority. At which point we can kiss accountability and good government good-bye.

To the Harper Conservatives, Parliament is merely an impediment to the agenda of reducing the federal government to little more than police, prisons, the promotion of crime by expanding the ‘war on drugs’, military posturing with expensive jets, and free trade agreements of questionable benefit to Canadians.

If the Harper Conservatives get a majority, Parliament will be brought under the heel of the Prime Minister’s Office, so that it can the more conveniently be ignored. Parliament will become as dysfunctional as the Harper Conservatives can manage to make it, in their eyes existing primarily (or only), to rubber-stamp whatever oppressive legislation the Harper Conservatives see fit to impose on us.

And of course, with a majority, the Harper Conservatives will abolish public support for political parties, because the Harper Conservative know that their wealthy backers can afford to donate up to the limit for themselves and their family members, whereas the supporters of other parties do not have the financial resources to donate nearly as much (although the Liberals, as former darlings of the business classes, may eventually win back financing from that source).

Along with their many other lies, the Harper Conservatives claim that public financing forces Canadians to support political parties other than the one of their choice. However, since each party’s payment is in accordance with the votes they receive, we each direct where our tax dollars go by the party we vote for, and therefore, no one is forced to support any other party.

But the Harper Conservatives’ will continue to refuse to accept the truth in order to consolidate their grip on power, throttling democracy in the process.

Diagram for The Interplay of Government & Business Spending & Investment

This diagram belongs with the preceeding blog, but I haven't been able to figure out how to combine it with the text, so I've posted it separately. It's a bit crude, but I hope it illustrates the idea that government spending is an integral part of business activity, and vice versa. The small Body Politic between the two larger circles of government and busines is not intended to be symbolic, but is the result of trying to fit everything onto an 8 1/2 by 11 page.

The Interplay of Government & Business Spending & Investment

Business commentators often claim that government spending removes money from the economy. The growing population of seniors and our (I’m 71) increasing health care costs are a favourite example. The Globe & Mail, in their April 9th editorial, “The six per cent coalition”, pontificated with regards to spending on health care that, “Without pressure for efficiency, the system will drag down government, and personal, budgets,”

This opinion was based on a study by David Dodge, former head of the Bank of Canada, which, apparently, showed that “health services, public and private, could eat up nearly 20 per cent of gross domestic product by 2031, up from roughly 12 per cent today.”

What does Mr. Dodge mean by ‘eat up’? Where does he think the money goes? The implication is that the billions spent on health care somehow vanish into thin air. Which is nonsense.

Government spending on health care goes, of course, into the wages and salaries of many different kinds of health care workers, into hospitals and clinics, into equipment and supplies, medicines and therapies. These are all economic activities from which hundreds of thousands of people across Canada make their living.

Does David Dodge think they’d be better employed—doing what? Where would the economy make up for the loss of even the present 12% of GDP, let alone 20%, if we suddenly became so healthy we no longer needed medical care and the workers who provide that care? What other sectors of the economy should or could absorb those no-longer employed health care workers?

Instead of ‘eating up’ GDP, spending on health care contributes to GDP.

The trouble is, too many business-minded people insist on looking on government spending only as ‘costs’, never acknowledging the benefits to themselves, and continue to regard taxes as nothing but a burden to be reduced as far and as fast as possible—for business.

Government is an essential player in the complex interweaving of the human, financial, physical, and political elements which result in the kind of economy and society we choose to live in. Tax dollars spent on medical care, education, the arts, scientific research, transportation, small-scale farming, restorative justice, and well-being (the preventive aspect of a health) bring inestimable benefits in their own right, while at the same time, underpinning almost all other economic activity, especially the most useful kinds.

Governments also provide the legislation and its enforcement which enables most business to be conducted in a peaceful, orderly, and honest fashion, most of the time. Too many business-minded people seem oblivious to this all of the time.

To be useful, money must be pooled, through taxes or savings, in sufficient quantities to invest, when it flows out into one or more other pools. Taxes are the way we citizens pool our money to provide ourselves with goods and services that many of us would find difficult to procure for ourselves and our families alone. The economy doesn’t care where the money comes from—public or private sources are all one to it.

What matters is that the money keeps moving—pooling together and flowing out, pooling together and flowing out, and that it is spent on, and invested in, by governments and business alike, on the goods and services citizens need and want, while no longer degrading the environment in the process.

Whispering truth to power? Or a misplaced goose? Any other suggestions for a title?

Eagle

I Want Real Change: An End to the 'War on Drugs'

I want to make clear at the outset, that despite what I’ve written below, I’m still voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

One place where I and the leadership of the NDP part company is that I would like the election platform to include a promise to replace the ‘war on drugs’ with sensible policies for the legalizing, licensing, regulating, and treatment of, and education about, drug use and abuse. The leadership, of course, is leery of scaring away voters by having anything to do with so radical a policy.

But why not? Jack Layton’s personal reputation is very high, and deservedly so, but the NDP will not break out of its third party position unless it offers real change. Nothing could be a greater change than ending the 'war on drugs'—a collection of laws that have supported the lucrative profits of organized gangs for far too long.

Ending the ‘war on drugs’ is not a panacea; it would not prevent all crimes, and it would not take place overnight. It should begin with legalizing* the possession, use, cultivation, and trade in cannabis products under a legislative regime akin to that governing the liquor industry.

[* ‘Decriminalizing’ is the cop-out position, still based on the faulty premise that the Government has the right to harass adult citizens for using pot, only now the penalties are mere fines. What an arrogant insult. The ‘war on drugs’ inflicts injury on citizens, and substituting a lesser penalty does not make the unacceptable acceptable. The Government does not have the right to punish citizens for activities simply because the Government disapproves of them, based on the Government’s members’ private values. The Government is our servant, not our parent, warden, or our sovereign.

It is none of the Government’s damn business if I choose to use pot, or heroin, as long as I do so in a peaceful manner, without interfering in my neighbours’ and the community’s peaceful pursuits. Because heroin is a highly addictive drug, it would be acceptable to make it available only by prescription, but maintenance doses while an addict is under treatment, should be perfectly legal, and a private matter between the addict and their doctor, just as with any other illness. With this policy, addicts would no longer need to go to the black market for their supply. Without customers, the black market would wither away, and heroin would be much less available than it is now. And think of how many nurses and doctors could be trained and hired using the millions now thrown away on the futile enforcement of bad laws?

(Isn’t it curious that the Harper Conservatives, who believe in less government, are so zealous in continuing Big Brother’s unwarranted interference in the private lives of adult citizens?

(Unfortunately for the Canadian citizenry, the Harper Conservatives’ self-righteous, holier-than-thou, daddy-knows-best gut instincts submerge their ability to reason, or admit reality. Combined with their ruthless pursuit of a majority, their ideological insistence on practicing medicine without a licence leads the Harper Conservatives to push for spending untold billions on prisons, and to remain Big Crime’s best buds. But I digress.)

When the NDP promises more police to make streets safer for children, it is, like all the other political parties, addressing the symptoms, and not the cause, of much of the crime across Canada, not only the victimless crimes of possession, or dealing, but the thefts and muggings motivated by the need for a fix, and the bloody turf wars between rival gangs.

As with alcohol prohibition in the last century, drug prohibition is the breeding ground of crime, not a preventative.

Of course, there is a risk that the NDP could lose grievously if they acceded to my (and others’) wishes, and campaigned on ending the 'war on drugs', but one of the chief complaints of citizens is that politicians never tell the truth. The truth is that the 'war on drugs' is an abject failure, and the politicians who dare to tell that truth and promise to act on it, might be surprised at how much support they’d receive.

And I might be surprised at how little.

But what a relief it would be to have politicians who speak openly about laws that support the incomes of criminal gangs at the expense of the citizenry, and are committed to doing away with those bad laws. Politicians who understand that citizen-taxpayers are the ones who foot the bill for the police, courts, and prisons that have become, because of the present prohibitive laws, an integral part of the structure of criminal activity in our society. We pay; criminals prosper.

I’m still voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, because I believe he is by far the best person for the job, and despite my disagreement with the NDP leadership over what should be in the campaign platform, the NDP are still far closer to my values, principles, and practice than any other party, and more likely to bring about real change than the unspeakable Harper Conservatives and the third-place Liberals.

For anyone who wants to do their bit to defeat the Harper Conservatives, the strategic vote in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca is for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate.

Principles for a Sustainable Society

Below are excerpts from If Only Things Were Different(I): A model for a sustainable society, which I wrote and self-published in 1992. See more at www.elizabethrhettwoods.ca

Everything Connects
Everything connects, everything influences everything else, for good or ill. Benign, as well as vicious, circles can be established. Part of lowering health care costs is cleaning up the air, which includes reducing the combustion of gas and oil by reducing the use of our cars, which in turn depends on establishing better public transit. Improving public transit, in its turn, is part of developing both alternate fuels and vehicles, and a more leisurely life-style. A more leisurely life-style would reduce stress and the illness that stress gives rise to, which brings us back to lower health care costs again.

Beauty
Beauty, of both the natural and the civilized world, is an essential element in achieving and maintaining a sustainable society. The ideal is not a single standard of ‘artistic excellence’ as determined by academic criteria; the ideal is that we care about beauty, that we respect the work of artists because we know something about it, and that we be able to create beauty ourselves.

Work
The cornerstone of any economy is work. Not work in the abstract sense of labour, regarded merely as a cost of production, but work in the sense of an activity which has intrinsic worth for the person doing it. I distinguish, therefore, between a job, defined as anything done solely for the money it earns, and work, which is any activity done for its own sake, regardless of how much money it brings in.

Values
We can choose to guide our economic activities, not by such limited values as profits, costs, and cash flow, but primarily by those values which underlie all civilized behaviour, from making love to making money—personal values of honesty, good humour, patience, and compassion; aesthetic values of perspective, proportion, and harmony; and political values of equality and democracy.

Follow Me on Twitter

You can now find me on Twitter at ElizabethWoods@fmjab.

Who Can Believe the Harper Conservatives?

When the Harper Conservatives try to reassure us that that they have no hidden agenda, who can believe them?

If they ever achieve a majority, their backers will mount a relentless campaign against a woman’s choice re abortion and gay marriages. To maintain a majority in the following election, the Harper Conservatives are very likely to accede to the wishes of their core supporters, no matter how hotly they deny it now. The record of the Harper Conservatives demonstrates that nothing they say can be believed.

The Harper Conservatives are led by a man who, on first becoming Prime Minister in 2006, promised to co-operate with Parliament, and shortly thereafter condoned the production and distribution of a handbook instructing Harper Conservative MPs on how to block and frustrate the work of Parliamentary committees.

The Harper Conservatives brought in a fixed-election-date law that they claimed would prevent prime ministers from calling election when it suited them, and then broke the spirit, if not the letter, of that law as soon as they felt it would be advantageous to do so, calling a totally unnecessary election in 2008 on the trumped-up charge Parliament was unworkable—which was true only because the Harper Conservatives refused to work with Parliament, prompted and encouraged by the guidebook mentioned above.

The Harper Conservatives have decided, without any kind of tendering process, to fritter away billions of dollars on an untried fighter jet that grows more expensive with each passing month. Adding gross insult to gross insult, the Harper Conservatives refuse to tell the Canadian electorate what the actual costs will be, precisely because they know that even their backers might question the value of planes that in the end will cost upward of $100 million each, and may not perform as required.

Even worse, as the result of the Harper Conservatives’ vicious, narrow-minded, ideologically-driven policy of imprisoning even more offenders (instead of addressing the causes of crime—poverty, mental illness, and above all, the ‘war on drugs’) the Harper Conservatives intend to build a number of unnecessary prisons, and once again they refuse to tell us what the actual cost will be.

How can any thinking person support the Harper Conservatives? They lie whenever it suits them, withhold fundamental information from Parliament and Canadian citizen/taxpayers, and are firmly mired in the discredited American experiment of warehousing far too many law-breakers in prison who would be better rehabilitated in the community at much less expense.

The Harper Conservatives are a party led by a man who will do and say anything he thinks will win him a majority—which is the very reason why he must never be given one. Our Parliamentary system would give him far too much, unchecked power. With his mania for control, Harper has already proven himself to have the instincts of a despot-in-the-making who cannot be trusted with even minority power any longer.