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.

Capitalists & Carcinomas

‘Grow, grow, grow your profits’, ‘maximize’, and ‘super-size’,
capitalists together talking business, like cancer cells, conspire,
in furthering a greedy creed to multiply, proliferate, metastasize.

Capitalists and carcinomas alike share the same blind drive
to ‘increase productivity’; to expand, and merge, and acquire;
to ‘grow, grow, grow their profits’, ‘maximize’, and ‘super-size’.

Capitalists, and carcinomas conquer all without compromise;
and taking over everything, swallow smaller entities entire;
in furthering a greedy creed to multiply, proliferate, metastasize.

As the belly of the beast bloats, as vampire markets suck us dry,
we cure ourselves, for their pirates’ code is no longer our guide.
We refuse the greedy creed to multiply, proliferate, metastasize;
to ‘grow, grow, grow our profits’, 'maximize’, or ‘super-size’.

Capitalist- and carcinoma-survivors alike we arise,
develop business concerns of a reasonable size,
and by sharing the fruits of our enterprise,
together, each makes the most of our lives.

I'm Voting for Real Change: A Governent that Supports Seniors

At 71, I receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement, with a total annual income of about $15,000. Presumably, therefore, I would qualify for the bribe the Harper Conservatives offered the very lowest-income seniors in their latest budget.

But I don’t care how big an inducement the Harper Conservatives extend; respect for Parliament cannot be bought.

Beyond that, however, I can live quite comfortably on my low income because I lucked into a landlord who charges me a rent I can afford. This leads me to conclude that what low-income seniors need, more than a few additional dollars, is affordable housing.

I can also live quite comfortably on my income because I’m still healthy. I follow a life-style—exercise, nutrition, sleep, and work—conducive to continuing good health, but at some time in the future I will probably need home-care, and perhaps even institutional care. Therefore, along with everyone else, I need a system which can deliver whatever future care I may need at the lowest cost to myself and society.

(To digress, for a moment, much is made of the fact that people generally cost the health care system more at the end of their lives than at any other time, which is usually taken to refer to seniors. But young men who injure themselves in motorized accidents of different kinds, and other hazardous activities, can cost as much money to treat during, and at the end of, their lives, as do seniors.)

One burden on the health care system is that of seniors who are occupying hospital beds, although they no longer require that level of care. However, they do need more care than they or their families can provide, but they remain in acute care hospital beds because they have no other place to go. Again, the need is for affordable housing of all kinds, including residential care, to meet seniors’ needs and open up acute-care beds.

Traditionally, the federal government has played a significant role in providing funding for health care across the country; a tradition that has been under attack by both the Liberal, and the Harper Conservative governments since the mid-1990s. As a Canadian citizen I expect a reasonable level of care wherever in Canada I live, and I expect the federal government to provide its share of the funding to achieve that goal. I do not believe the Harper Conservatives support this view, and given a majority, will download as much of the health care costs onto the provinces as they think they can get away with.

The NDP, in contrast, understands that the Canada Health Act is designed to establish and enforce an equality of health care for all Canadians, wherever we live, and that the way to make savings is by incorporating the skills, experience, and knowledge of health care workers at all levels to devise the most effective and efficient ways of delivering health care, in hospitals, clinics, and people’s homes. A national pharmacare system to both evaluate and make volume purchases of drugs would also help lower health care costs, for everyone, including seniors.

The NDP understands all this. That’s why I’m voting for real change; I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

Esquimalt Lagoon Collage

For a change of pace from the election

The Harper Conservatives: Again Attacking Democracy

True to their ideological stance that each Canadian should have to look after ourselves and our families alone, while those with the most money band together to extract as much additional wealth as they can from the country, the Harper Conservatives are once more attacking a fundamental support of our democracy by vowing to abolish the per-vote subsidy for political parties.

The Harper Conservatives loathe the subsidy because it means that other political parties have enough funding to participate effectively both during and between elections, collectively attracting the majority of citizen support, from coast to coast to coast. The Harper Conservatives would much prefer to have the field to themselves. Abolishing the per-vote subsidy would be a big booted step in that direction.

As usual, the Harper Conservatives misrepresent the issue: We do not financially support parties we didn’t vote for. Each party (provided it receives at least 2% of the votes cast in the most recent general election), receives $2 for each citizen who voted for them. The amount of the subsidy, therefore, has been earned by that party.

Furthermore, in order to earn the subsidy, even parties which don’t stand much of a chance in a particular riding will still work hard to win voters’ support, thereby increasing debate, participation, and choice. All of which can stand improvement.

In an electoral system in which political parties survive only on the donations they receive, the Conservatives will always obtain far more money from their affluent backers than will the NDP, the Greens, and other parties from their mostly lower-income supporters. Even with donor limits, many more Conservatives and their families can each afford to give to the limit, than can the families of supporters of the NDP or Greens.

The money the Harper Conservatives blew on their vicious pre-election attack ads demonstrates what a deleterious effect wads of cash—and driving and ruthless ambition—can have on public discourse.

Voters like myself, whose ability to donate is far below the donation limit, would be rendered voiceless, if parties like the NDP had to survive solely on what we and other low- and middle-income earners can afford to give them.

The Harper Conservatives, well aware of their financial advantage, are determind to exploit it to the hilt. One can establish a virtual one-party state other than by force of arms, and if the Harper Conservatives get their way and the per-vote subsidy is lost, a Harper Conservative autocracy will be that much closer to being established.

An esential element in a fair and accessible electoral system is that citizens have the means to come together and find voices to speak for them. Such activities require organization, and organizing requires funding. The per-vote subsidy ensures that such funding is available to give voice to points of view other than merely those of the business upper-class who command the most bucks, the largest and most efficient organizations, and speak only for themselves.