Elizabeth Rhett Woods

Have a Heart, Harper

2012-01-10T10:53:00.001-08:00

I’ve been thinking of how heartless the Harper Administration can be; how totally indifferent they are to the harm their ideology causes—the waste of hundreds of millions of dollars on enforcing the ‘war on drugs’ instead of treating addicts, and regulating and taxing marijuana; their refusal to assist Canadians in trouble overseas, indeed, to make their predicament worse as with Omar Khadr, Maher Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazik, and others; the despicable conditions they’ve allowed to continue on Attawaspisak and too many other aboriginal reserves; the lies they tell—e.g. that MP Irwin Cotler was resigning, when he wasn’t—which they then have the effrontery to defend as free speech; the disgraceful way they treat wounded members of the Canadian Forces, fobbing them off with a paltry one-time payment instead of a decent pension—these are the actions of a heartless regime led by a man who cares only for power and money, and nothing for anyone who doesn’t blindly support him.

So I suggest that this Valentine’s Day we each send Harper a heart of our own devising, with our own message to demonstrate that we care, even if he doesn’t. I'm going to send mine in hard copy; it doesn't cost anything, and makes more of an impression than e-mail. Below is an example of a postcard I'm working on.

Inspired by Michael Campbell

2011-12-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

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

2011-10-22T14:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-22T14:34:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-19T08:03:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-04T07:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-17T15:26:00.001-07:00

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

Seeing

2011-06-17T08:53:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-07T11:55:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

Violet-green swallow

2011-05-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-05-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-05-16T20:51:00.000-07:00

A male chipping sparrow.

Life-Style Choices & Discrimination

2011-05-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

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

Eaglets Again

2011-05-10T08:40:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

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

I Weep for Canada

2011-05-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-05-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-27T18:03:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-26T20:37:00.001-07:00

Audubon's Warbler

Towhee

I'm Voting for Real Change--in Government

2011-04-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-20T21:02:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-11T14:31:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-04-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

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

Eagle

2011-04-08T12:01:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-08T09:47:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

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

Who Can Believe the Harper Conservatives?

2011-04-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

‘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

2011-04-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

For a change of pace from the election

The Harper Conservatives: Again Attacking Democracy

2011-04-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

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.

I'm Voting for Real Change: For a Party that Supports Our Veterans

2011-03-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, is because of the stand the NDP has taken in support of wounded veterans.

The New Democrat Veterans Affairs critic Peter Stoffer (a Nova Scotia MP representing Sackville-Eastern Shore), has been going after the Veterans Affairs Minister to, among other issues, review the near-wholesale denial of disability benefits to veterans.

Rather than operating to make sure injured veterans receive the support they need and deserve, the Veterans Review and Appeal Board (VRAB)--the members of which are, according to Stoffer, “often appointed because of their political connections and have little military or medical experience”--seems to be mostly on guard against spending any funds on anything so frivolous as a disabled veteran.

Of course, the example has been set for the VRAB by the Harper Conservatives, who favour a system, which, even when disability benefits are granted, has reduced them to a paltry one-time lump sum, instead of the pension veterans used to receive and have earned.

As a party founded by, and for, workers to advance the public good, the NDP understands that those who serve in our armed forces are workers in a very special set of circumstances, who not only must be given the respect due all workers, but also the special attention their special circumstances require.

The NDP probably wouldn’t phrase things quite the way I do, but I’m voting for them because I know that the NDP understands that the backbone, limbs, belly, and brains of the Canadian Armed Forces are the men and women who serve in its ranks, overseas and at home, and that decisions regarding equipment, arms, training, deployment, strategy, tactics, and care for the wounded, should be made while keeping the needs (and input) of those who will actually be using the equipment, taking the training, risking their lives, and suffering the wounds, firmly in mind.

That’s why I’m voting for a real change; I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca

Who Contrived to Bring the HST to B.C.?

2011-03-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

Troy DeSouza, as the Harper Conservative candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, has aligned himelf with the very government which connived with the B.C. Liberals to spring the HST on us (after the election, of course) by offering the debt-ridden Campbell Government a $1.6 billion bribe.

DeSouza and the Harper Conservatives will do their best to wash their hands of all responsibility, laying the blame entirely at the feet of the B.C. Liberals, but they cannot be allowed to get away with it. The fact is, that bribe by the Harper Conservatives was a deal the revenue-challenged B.C. Liberals chose not to refuse. Both the Harper Conservatives and the B.C. Liberals thought citizens in B.C. were too tame and timid to object, but the anti-HST campaign has proven how wrong their calculations were.

But if Troy DeSouza were to be elected, the Harper Conservatives will think they can get away with imposing anything they choose on us; they’ll regard us as wimps who will just roll meekly over and take whatever Troy DeSouza and the Harper Conservatives choose to dish out.

Furthermore, we can be certain that as a Harper Conservative, Troy DeSouza would never be allowed to stand up for us against government policies, if we were so unfortunate as to have him as our MP. With Stephen Harper’s hand on the throttle DeSouza would be lucky if he were allowed to say anything at all.

Since he’s running for the Harper Conservatives, Troy DeSouza is demonstrably supportive of those same Harper Conservatives’ active contempt for Parliament. As a consequence, he has proven himself to be incompetent to represent the interests of the citizens of Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

I, for one, do not want an MP who has so little respect for the job that they would support the Harper Conservatives and their contemptible behaviour in and towards Parliament.

I'm Voting for Real Change (3): Why the HST is a Bad Tax

2011-03-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca because the NDP understands what a very bad tax the HST is, especially for middle-income earners.

Economists tend to prefer consumption taxes over income taxes, because they believe that by cutting income taxes, more money will be available for investment, which will create jobs. It’s true that more money will be available to those who already have plenty, but there is absolutely no assurance that they’ll invest those savings to create jobs in Canada, and every likelihood they'll invest outside Canada to create low-wage jobs in some other country, depleting our manufacturing base even further.

Middle-income earners, in contrast, can’t save enough on income tax cuts to make up for the higher taxes they will pay on virtually every purchase they make, with the exception of food and rent and a few other items (and the purists among economists would tax even those). At the same time, the middle class makes too much money to benefit from any tax rebates, so they get whacked both ways.

In my opinion, one major reason why the rich are getting richer while the rest of us are not, is because of the shift from income to consumption taxes which enable the wealthy among us to pile up savings, while everyone else is walloped by the HST, other taxes, and an increasing number of user fees, as well as a lower level of essential social services.

Those on very low incomes, like myself, may benefit from the HST rebate (because we can’t afford to buy more than the few basic goods that aren’t taxed), but I would willingly give up the rebate to be rid of the HST, because I believe that we are all better off with a strong and stable middle-class rather than suffering the growing gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

The NDP understands this, and is in favour of a fair, and progressive tax system based on one’s ability to pay, and free of the ‘boutique’ tax cuts riddling the Harper Conservatives ‘Buy a vote here; buy a vote there’ budget.

Such targeted tax cuts (which again, benefit mostly those who already can afford to spend money on, for example, arts or sports classes) decrease revenues (a decrease exacerbated by corporate tax cuts), thereby driving up the deficit. Which the Harper Conservatives will then make us all pay for by cutting the services—health, education, transportation, and so forth—that we need for a sustainable quality of life.

For a fair and progressive tax system, and a government that would co-operate in getting rid of the HST in B.C., I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

A 20th Century Transportation Policy

2011-03-27T17:08:00.000-07:00

Troy DeSouza, the Harper Conservative candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, has a very limited view of what is needed to improve transportation throughout the region. His policies spring from deep within the 20th Century car culture, being focused on HOV lanes and highway overpasses with a passing nod to buses.

“Bicycle paths and walking trails are not a solution to a massive transportation problem,” DeSouza wrote in an op-ed piece in the Times-Colonist, in 2007, addressing the Colwood Crawl. Neither his campaign website, nor Googling his name for transportation comments, have turned up any evidence that he’s changed his mind re either cycling or walking, while the E&N Railway and LRT seem not to be within the compass of his thoughts at all.

In my opinion, Troy de Souza is totally out-of-touch with our real transportation needs on the South Island, and under Stephen Harper’s autocratic control, he would be toeing the Harper Conservative line instead of addressing the riding’s concerns.

I'm Voting for Real Change (2): Freedom of Mobility

2011-03-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

I’m voting for a real change in government: I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

I’m voting for the NDP because the Party understands that the route to true mobility of movement throughout the South Island for everyone is a first-class public transit system, combined with a number of other different transportation modes.

Instead of being bogged down in the kind of 20th Century-thinking that prefers highway over-passes to every other way of enabling people to go where they want to go, Randall Garrison and the NDP understand that only a combination of LRT, the E&N Railway, buses, boats, bicycles, walking, car-share co-ops, and private cars, will give us all real freedom of choice when it comes to moving around the region (and the province).

Only through a comprehensive strategy organized on a foundation of public transit will drivers be able to exercise real freedom of choice: To be able to drive one’s car when one wants to, not, as so often now, because one has to.

There is only one way to an open road, and building more freeway capacity—such as an expensive, land-swallowing overpass at MacKenzie and the Trans-Canada—is not it. Wasting millions of dollars to accommodate more cars will divert scarce funds from more up-to-date solutions, and keep us firmly stuck in a destructive car-first culture that severely hampers everyone’s real freedom of choice.

The NDP understands that a combination of transportation modes is needed to give each one of us the ability to move freely throughout the South Island without having to own a car, while at the same time giving drivers more open roads at all times of the day.

For real freedom of mobility and practical transportation choices, I’m voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

The Harper Conservatives: Big Crime's Best Buds

2011-03-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

By perpetuating the war on drugs the Harper Conservatives:
1) perpetuate the black market in drugs;
2) perpetuate Big Crime's profits from that black market;
3) perpetuate Big Crime's gang wars which endanger all of us;
4) perpetuate the squandering of billions of dollars on police and prisons;
5) perpetuate the poverty and lack of treatment for mental illness
which underlie so much crime;

therefore: the Harper Conservatives are major perpetuators of
the causes of crime.

The Harper Conservatives add injury to injury by planning to spend literally untold billions of dollars on prisons we don’t need, while having the unmitigated gall to refuse to tell us exactly how much! How can anyone trust the Harper Conservatives when they treat citizens with such contempt?

I will never vote for any of that contemptible Conservative crew.

I want a government with the guts to make a major move against Big Crime by ending the war on drugs in favour of legalization, licensing, regulation, treatment, and education.

Federal Election 2011--Voting for Real Change

2011-03-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm voting for a real change in government: I'm voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

By voting for Randall Garrison, I'm also voting for Jack Layton and the NDP. I could never vote for the Harper Conservatives because Harper is a liar, a coward, and a bully who cannot be trusted with power, nor for Ignatieff because his party's policies are inferior to those of Layton and the NDP.

I'm biased, of course; I've been a member of the NDP for 25 years. During that time, I have, on occasion, been extremely angry with some of the actions the Party has taken at both the federal and provincial level. I stick with them, however, because they are the party which agrees most closely, not only with my values, but also with the practical measures needed to express those values in everyday life.

For example, the NDP understands that investment in the care and education of young people at all ages, is the foundation of a truly sustainable economy.

The NDP also understands that, in order to deal with both the effects of climate change, and to have greater control over our economic lives, we must make a transition to many more small businesses and fewer large conglomerates. We need many more small, highly-productive, organic farms, for example, instead of massive feedlots which burden the land with wastes that, properly distributed as on small, mixed farms, would nurture it.

We also need more small local processing firms--wineries, bakeries, furniture makers, and manufacturers of machinery, and providers of technologies, suitable for small holdings--to best utilise all the land's potential.

The NDP understands and supports this kind of thinking. That's why I'm voting for Randall Garrison, the NDP candidate in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca.

In my opinion, a vote for the NDP is a vote for real change.

My Own Very Limited Investigation of 9/11

2011-03-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Another member of a listserv I belong to (on which arguments regarding what caused the Twin Towers to fall, burst into flame at irregular but frequent intervals) challenged the rest of us to read David Ray Griffins Debunking 9/11 Debunking.

To some extent I've taken up his challenge, concentrating on Chapter Three which addresses the collapse of the WTC 1, 2, and 7, because unless there is sufficient evidence (definite proof seems impossible at this late date) that the buildings were the victims of 'controlled demolitions' all the rest of his book about the timing of movements of Bush and his staff and colleagues, the non-scrambling of jets, and general and specific question of the 9/11 Commissions' report, is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.

In my estimation, Bush et al were demonstrably capable of making evil use of 9/11 to further their plans, already in progress, to invade Iraq; so far, I find it extremely difficult to believe they engineered 9/11 as a 'false flag' incident.

I'm undertaking this investigation because I'm curious and combative. As well as various debunking sites, I've read a lot of the stuff produced by various 9/11 'truth' proponents. I find it consists primarily of rhetorical questions, and tiny snippets lifted out of context to support their contentions.

For example, Griffin snips a quote from a paper by MIT professor, Thomas Eager, who has a long career as a metallurgical expert, and Christopher Musso, a graduate research student at the time, "Why did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering and Speculation"[1] that ". . . the number of columns lost on initial impact was not large and the loads were shifted to remaining columns in this highly redundant structure." thus apparently supporting Griffin's claim that the planes could not have caused the towers and Building 7 to collapse.

I checked the reference [2] and found that while Eagar and Musso did indeed state that, "While the aircraft impact undoubtedly destroyed several columns in the WTC perimeter wall, the number of columns lost on the initial impact was not large and the loads were shifted to remaining columns in this highly redundant structure," they then went on to write, in the very next sentence, "Of equal or even greater significance during this initial impact was the explosion when 90,000 L gallons of jet fuel, comprising nearly 1/3 of the aircraft's weight, ignited. The ensuing fire was clearly the principal cause of the collapse." Eagar and Musso's conclusion is clearly quite opposite to what Griffin purports .

If I'm still interested, I intend to post one or two other points re 9/11 at a future date, but at the moment, the impending federal election, has turned my mind to Stephen Harper, and how best to demonstrate that he is a man who cannot be trusted with even a minority government, let alone given the near-dictatorial powers of a majority.

[1] Published in JOM: Journal of the Minerals, Metals,& Materials Society, in 2001,

[2] http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

Heron Leaping

2011-02-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

This photo is one of several of mine on display at
The Overleaf Cafe, 1105 Pandora
(in the Medical Arts Building at Cook Street)
until the end of March, 2011
It was taken at Tower Park near Victoria.
The heron sailed in for a landing, ruffled its feathers,
as if settling down for spell, and
then leaped up like this;
I don't know why.

Five questions for NDP leadership candidates

2011-01-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

Will you pledge:

1) to move towards a more British-style MLA participation in the Legislature with free votes on most bills except those involving confidence motions, such as the Budget, or major pieces of legislation;

2) to institute a greater decorum in the Legislature by requiring NDP MLAs NOT to thump their desks, NOT to heckle, or otherwise behave like noisy children; to ask real questions, instead of rhetorical ones designed for a sound-bite, and in general to behave with quiet respect and dignity;

3) to pursue the legalization of marijuana by persistently and strongly lobbying the federal government to do so, on the grounds that the province of B.C. cannot afford to continue wasting taxpayer dollars on police and prisons while enriching organized crime;

4) to move to a greater and greater use of restorative justice with the long-term goal of having it replace most punitive justice procedures;

5) to institute a discussion of taxation with the citizens of B.C., comparing the pros and cons of progressive income taxes, consumption taxes in general, 'sin' taxes in particular, and user fees?

Letter to Globe & Mail re 'war on drugs'

2010-12-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, December 18th, The Globe & Mail ran a long editorial about the war against the drug cartels being waged by Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, exhorting them to greater efforts, without once mentioning that the foundation of gang activity and wealth is the 'war on drugs' itself. Below, is my response, with the parts edited out in italics; it was published in the G&M on Monday, December 20th.

"Your editorial wasted 752 words dancing around the elephantine fact that [T]he least expensive (in lives and money), and most effective single blow against organized crime in all three countries would be to legalize the possession of recreational drugs, and treat addiction as a medical problem.

"Legalization, while not a panacea, if followed by appropriate regulations, licensing, and taxation would address both drug use and addiction, while freeing millions of dollars for treatment and education that are currently wasted on a revolving door of police, courts, and prisons. And, without a lucrative black market for the gangs to fight bloody turf wars over, and without the need for addicts to steal, the rest of us would be much safer.

"As long as Harper, Obama, and Calderon persist in waging their war on drugs, thus continuing to make the minor problem of addiction into the major one of organized crime, they will remain the three best friends of the Hell’s Angels."

Sunflower Collage

2010-11-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

Omar Khadr--A Travesty of Justice

2010-11-09T20:46:00.000-08:00

Omar Khadr's guilty plea doesn't prove his guilt; all it proves is that, if you capture a badly-wounded child soldier (shot twice in the back), subject him to cruel treatment in an illegal prison for eight years, bring him before a kangaroo court in which judge and jury belong to, and represent, the organization that is bringing the charges against him, then, that person, faced with a foreordained finding of guilt, and the prospect of a sentence of twenty years or more, may finally give up, and accept a lesser, though still inhumane, sentence. The entire procedure is utterly disgusting.

I'm equally disgusted by the Conservative Government's shameful abandonment of Mr. Khadr to the U.S.'s mockery of a justice system.

I'm not a Muslim; I loathe all religions. I protest the treatment of Mr. Khadr because I loathe injustice more.

Vista collage

2010-10-21T19:53:00.001-07:00

Another collage based on the Harris Green

Tree collage

2010-10-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

This collage was composed from photographs of trees and
views on the Harris Green in Victoria

Bald-faced hornets interactions

2010-09-10T17:47:00.001-07:00

The bald-faced hornets quite often drink peacefully together, and then, for no reason discernible to me, engage in fierce-looking tumbling fights that sometimes end up with the combatants literally ‘in the drink’.

Bald-faced hornets

2010-09-10T17:32:00.001-07:00

I’ve become fascinated with bald-faced hornets—big black-and-white hornets which look fearsome but are not aggressive unless their nest is threatened. I put out a feeder for them to keep them away from my hummingbird feeders as the hornets drive the hummingbirds away, even though the hummers are much larger. This is a sterile worker female in flight.

Pond and fauna

2010-09-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

This is a photo I entered in the Monday Magzine photo contest in the category '10'.

The NDP and the HST

2010-08-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

I think Carole James and the NDP are making a mistake when they claim that nothing can be done about the HST for five years, when it comes up for re-negotiation. This stance only encourages the cynical view among voters that this is merely a cover to allow the NDP to keep the HST if they formed government

Instead, the NDP should take the stand that the solution to the HST is a political, not a legislative, one because, if the provincial Government pointed out to Prime Minister Harper that he stands to lose all 22 Conservative seats in B.C. over the issue in the next federal election, he might be open to terminating the present agreement. This is not an idle threat; if Harper refused to bow to the will of the citizens of B.C. he would indeed pay dearly for it at the polls.

The NDP should consider putting forward an alternative form of the PST--making it a value-added tax, like the GST, except that it would not be applied to services. If services are not taxed, restaurants, hair salons, notary publics and other service-based businesses would once more be exempt from taxation as they were under the old PST, while all businesses would benefit from rebates on the business-related PST they pay, just like the ones they presently receive under the HST.

For years, the NDP has been so afraid of the epithet 'tax and spend' that the party has failed to engage openly and honestly with citizens about the principles underlying the NDP's approach to taxation. The NDP should embrace the phrase, and every time someone tries to use it against them, the party should boldly assert, "Yes, like any government, we will tax and spend--unlike the Liberals, we will tax fairly and spend wisely."

Economists approve of consumption taxes instead of income taxes on the theory that the less income is taxed the more is available for savings to be invested in the economy. However, there is no guarantee that such savings will be invested in the Canadian economy.

The higher one's income, the more one benefits from the shift to consumption taxes which is one reason, I believe, why the rich continue to grow richer and middle income earners, poorer (the lowest incomes are somewhat protected by tax rebates). Middle income earners, while they may benefit somewhat from lower income taxes, still, when consumption taxes are imposed instead, do not have as much money left over after the necessities of life are provided for as do those on higher incomes and this gap widens every time income taxes are cut and consumption taxes imposed instead.

The NDP should start a conversation with the citizens of B.C. on all aspects of taxation, especially the relative benefits and down-sides of income and consumption taxes, and what combination of the two would be the fairest and most effective for all taxpayers.

Minister Tony Clement is no hero

2010-08-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

The following letter to a local radio station relates to a recent news story in which Tony Clement, Minister of Industry was treated by the media as if he'd actually rescued a swimmer in distress, when he'd done no such thing.

"What is this nonsense that Tony Clement is a hero? He didn't rescue anyone. Instead, he put himself in danger by diving into the river, fully dressed, without plan or forethought, and he's lucky he didn't have to be rescued himself. Clement's wife and father-in-law were the ones with the foresight to grab a life-jacket, and run down the river to intercept the swimmer. But this point is not given the prominence it deserves; instead the coverage focused on Clement's totally useless act.

"Clement's plunge into the river is on a par with his other plunge into stupidity--the replacement of the mandatory long form of the census with a totally useless voluntary form. Both are acts taken without an intelligent assessment of the situation. On the river, Clement only put himself in danger; with regard to the census, he endangers sensible public policies at all levels by degrading the quality of the information that organizations of all kinds, public and private, will have to work with in future."

Bushtits

2010-06-12T20:14:00.001-07:00

One female and two male bushtits. I assume they're siblings used to being in a nest together.

Female Anna's Hummingbirds Contending over Feeder

2010-05-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

Though the females do get into spats as the photo shows, they will also, at times, feed together.

Spider in Its Web

2010-05-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

The same garden spider at a different time.

Spider with Prey

2010-05-18T10:18:00.001-07:00

I took a series of photos of this spider dealing with a wasp that had blundered into its web.

Bushtit

2010-04-28T10:59:00.001-07:00

Bushtits are among my favourite birds. This is a male as can be told by its dark eyes.

Hummingbird

2010-03-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

Letter to Premier Campbell Regarding His Legacy and the Purchase of Western Forest Products Land

2010-03-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

Greetings Premier Campbell,

Whether you fight the next election, or not, it's never too soon to start thinking about your legacy: Will you be known as the premier who couldn't find the money to preserve a forest in perpetuity, but had $458 million to spend on a new roof for a sports stadium?

Or will you be remembered as the man who had the wisdom and grace to admit his government made a mistake regarding the Western Forest Products lands, and took innovative steps to rectify his error?

You and your government are not very popular right now, but enabling the purchase of the WFP lands would certainly enhance your image. Here's how to do it: 1) Immediately provides funds to UBC to purchase, and establish an experimental forest on, all 12,000 hectares of WFP land. (Perhaps one day to be known as the Gordon M. Campbell-UBC Experimental Forest?)

2) Raise the funds by issuing special 'B.C. Green Bonds' (Don't let the fact that the NDP has previously suggested using them to raise money for green projects; I'm sure they would support this initiative.) At a respectable rate of interest (between 3 and 4%), available in denominations as low as $50 (so that even those on relatively low incomes can participate); at a time when many investors are wary of the stock market and would welcome a safe and laudatory place to put their money; and because the funds would be dedicated to a cause about which many people in B.C. care deeply, it should be relatively easy to raise the approximately $100 million needed to purchase the 12,000 hectares of threatened lands.

The advantage of raising funds in this fashion is that, while B.C. Green Bonds would be debt, they would be the most useful kind of debt, creating a win-win situation for B.C. residents. We benefit, on the one hand, as investors (interest on the bonds), and on the other, as taxpayers (the acquisition and preservation of priceless forest and tidal habitats). In effect, we transfer our money from one pocket to another, and in the process, save a magnificent tract of land while making a modest income from our investment.

I'm sorry to have to mention it, but there is a question of trust where your government is concerned. To address the fact that many people in B.C. no longer believe that you will do what you say you will do, B.C. Green Bonds should have the following safeguards: 1) for sale to B.C. residents only; 2) sold through the province's credit unions; 3) to ensure that the funds are not swallowed up in general revenues, proceeds to be deposited in a special account at one of the province's credit unions, and to be disbursed therefrom to purchase the land; 4) if demand is vigorous enough, to expand the fund to purchase other endangered habitats.

But Premier, you must act quickly. The lands in question are being brutally logged as I write. You must stop the logging, and the sale of the land for real estate development, immediately (I'm sure a word to Stephen Frasher, CEO of Western Forest Products would do it) preparatory to your taking another visionary step (greater even than saving the Flathead Valley, because the people of B.C. could participate directly in partnership with you), for the lasting benefit of present and future generations.

Hummingbird

2010-01-17T20:32:00.001-08:00

A female Anna's hummingbird preening her tail.

Crow

2010-01-09T21:08:00.000-08:00

Flicker

2010-01-07T15:46:00.000-08:00

This flicker visits the suet-holder from time to time.

Stephen Harper is Morally Unfit to be Prime Minister

2010-01-05T09:26:00.000-08:00

Proroguing Parliament is only one more example of Stephen Harper's lack of moral character. It's not the fact of prorogation per se; it can be a reasonable and acceptable action to take; the current problem is when it was done, and why.

By proroguing Parliament between Christmas and New Year's, when he knew few people (including the media who were deep into their year-end reviews and interviews) were paying attention, Harper revealed his consciousness that the public would not approve of his move, and therefore announced it in the sneakiest way possible. Even with that strategy, the public is beginning to react and protest. According to the CBC, as of January 5th, "More than 25,000 people have joined an anti-prorogation group on Facebook following Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to suspend Parliament for two months until after the Vancouver Winter Olympics."

Harper called for prorogation for two selfish, partisan, anti-democratic reasons--to give himself time to appoint more Senators (remember when he promised not to do so?) and more crucially, to shut down the Parliamentary committee which was investigating the Government's policies and actions regarding Afghanistan detainees.

Beyond that move, Harper is morally unfit to govern because he is a liar, a coward, and a bully.

He lied most grievously in 2008, when he characterized the Opposition's coalition as an attempt to 'overthrow' the Government, when his Government exists only with the support of Parliament, and that coalitions, while they may be rare in Canada, are perfectly legal and acceptable. Canadians do not elect governments; we elect MPs who then put their confidence in one or more parties in the House to form the Government. Among them, the Opposition parties represented a majority of the citizens of Canada and should have been allowed their chance to express the will of that majority.

Among many examples, Harper's cowardice is exhibited every time he hides behind the troops, by falsely accusing the Opposition of attacking our soldiers, when he knows full well it is he and Peter MacKay who are under attack regarding what was done, or not done, to protect Afghan detainees from torture.

Harper bullies civil servants who don't say or do what he wants them to, by viciously attacking them (Richard Colvin for his testimony regarding the Afghan detainees); reducing their budgets (Kevin Page, Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose reports give the lie to the Government's propaganda); firing them (Linda Keen, former president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, who refused to allow the re-starting of the Chalk River reactor because she considered it unsafe); or refusing to re-appoint them.

Those not re-appointed include Paul Kennedy, head of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, for his scathing report on the RCMP's handling of the Robert Dziekanski case, and most significant of all, Peter Tinsley, chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission, who was conducting a tough investigation into what the Government knew, and when they knew it, regarding the treatment of the detainees. If Harper and Peter MacKay have nothing to hide, they would call a public inquiry into the handling of Afghan detainees, to settle the matter, once and for all.

Harper is a man who will say and do anything he thinks will aid him in his ruthless and relentless pursuit of a majority government, and the power to strip the federal government of all spending power for social programs, leaving the entire responsibility for health, education, welfare, and so forth to the provinces. By the time Harper gets through with this country, Canada will consist of little more 10 fiefdoms and a federal government scarcely worth the name. If he's ever given a majority, the man who wanted to 'firewall' Alberta will finally get his way ten times over.

Swan and gull

2010-01-04T09:39:00.001-08:00

This picture was taken at Esquimalt Lagoon in the summer of 2009. The swan was being chased by another swan, and the gull was just flying by.

Otters

2009-12-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

These two otters were at Clover Point in Victoria. Often see at least one otter in this vicinity.

Cover of my new book

2009-11-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

Hummingbird

2009-11-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

A male Anna's hummingbird in full plumage. A great deal of chasing and chittering going on between both males and females, and males and males. Since Anna's may nest as early as December or January, I assume these are mating activities.

Swans in Conflict

2009-11-08T10:07:00.001-08:00

This picture is one of a series taken at Esquimalt Lagoon. The two swans fought and chased around for some minutes.

Public Wealth and Private Benefit

2009-10-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

Because the B.C. Liberals are fixated on their deficit like a chicken with its beak to a chalk line, they're oblivious, both to the immediate harm they're inflicting on individuals, families, and useful institutions and organizations such as libraries, schools, and the arts, and to the longer-term damage they're wreaking on the economy by failing to invest in the healthy, well-educated citizenry we need to meet the challenges we face.

The first thing the Liberals should do after dropping the harmonized sales tax (HST), is to raise income taxes back to their pre-2001 level, thus restoring the $2 billion in revenue wasted when they first attained office.

If they still need to borrow money to invest in health, education, the arts, organic farming, and public transportation, the best way would be to issue B.C. Bonds dedicated to operating, maintaining, or building these essential elements of a civil society.

This would enable residents of British Columbia to invest directly and safely in our own province, something that would be welcome in today's uncertain economy. If the smallest bond was $50 or even $25, those with lower incomes could also participate.

The advantage of borrowing from ourselves is that our investments would work with our tax dollars to create both public wealth and a private benefit.

Thinking about Capital

2009-09-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

My working definition is: Capital is a pool of money utilized to bring together raw materials, workers, energy, equipment, and so forth to produce the goods or services people want and/or need. There is more than one way to organize capital; it doesn't have to be the present stockmarket/free market model with greed as its driving force; it could be state capital--organized primarily by government for the public good, perhaps through Crown corporations; or co-operative capital, organized through co-operatives for both private and the public good, the most democratic form. If greed can be controlled, all three forms can co-exist and work together.

Ethical Capital

Regardless of how capital is organized, or owned, there are values to be applied all along the process of producing the good or service--for example, is energy being utilized to assist workers rather than replace them? Are the raw materials being extracted or refined in environmentally-friendly ways? Are the goods produced recyclable? Is the equipment safe? Are the workers well-trained? And on and on.

A basic value should be that it is not acceptable, or ethical, for investors to invest only to make money. Or for companies to put maximizing profits and increasing shareholder value ahead of every other consideration, regardless of the damage they may be doing to people or places.

To be ethical, an investment must lead to some useful or beautiful good or service, produced by the most environmentally-symbiotic processes possible. Ideally, the workers would own the company they work for, but where this does not apply, an ethical investment requires companies to pay and treat their workers well, to co-operate with their unions, and to ensure their workers' safety and well-being on the job.

The Role of Government in a Sustainable Economy--Part 1

2009-08-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

This is the first part of an article which was published in this month's The Lower Island News. It appeared as one piece in the paper, but for the blog I've divided it into two parts.

In these days of climate change (however caused), 'peak oil', world-wide pollution of air, water, and soil, and countless other environmental ills and hazards, the concepts of 'sustainable economy' or 'sustainability' have become popular among environmentalists and the public alike. There are a number of definitions of 'sustainable'. The Brundtland Report, published in 1987, recommended that sustainable development should ". . . meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Unfortunately, the Report focused on 'sustainable development' which accepted growth; rather than 'sustainable economy', which doesn't.)

Herbert Daly, author of Steady-State Economics, first published in 1977, has defined sustainable development as development that doesn't lead to growth beyond the environment's carrying capacity, with 'development' meaning qualitative improvement, while 'growth' means a quantitative increase. The definition that I find the most satisfying is that attributed to various aboriginal cultures, "We do not inherit the earth from our parents; we borrow it from our children".

The role of a democratic government in a sustainable economy is to serve the public good; serving the public good requires government to approach citizens and their concerns with a co-operative philosophy and attitude that centres its attention on the well-being of individuals and their families, viewing them, not in isolation, but as members of one or more communities which overlap to various degrees.

The citizenry, in our turn, needs to view government as a tool which enables us to provide ourselves with the means--education, transportation, medical care, a healthy environment, and so forth--which not only create opportunities for earning a reasonably comfortable living, but also lead to a higher quality of life--including, but not limited to, breathable air, drinkable water, wildlife and wilderness (which we may never see but which enrich our lives merely by existing); fewer material goodies, and more immaterial ones--time and leisure, more relaxed relationships, both professional and personal; altogether less stress, to name only a few examples of the improvements we could enjoy if the focus of the economy was taken off making money as an end in itself, and turned to satisfying our needs in the most environmentally-effective manner possible.

Government is an essential player in the complex interweaving of human, financial, physical, and political elements which result in the kind of economy and society we choose to live in. From the point of view of the individual, government, and business economic activities flow to and from each other. To be useful, money must be pooled--saved--in sufficient quantities to invest, when it flows out of one pool and into one or more other pools. But 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 and flowing out, pooling and flowing out.

The capitalist economy that we operate in today is incapable of becoming a sustainable economy for three reasons. First, capitalists regard government as, at best, a necessary evil, to be minimized as much as possible. They ignore the fact that capitalists and their corporations depend on government for their very existence, from the laws creating limited liability, for example, to protection for intellectual property--copyrights, patents and trademarks--to the arbitration and enforcement mechanisms of the police and justice systems, and the negotiation of international trade treaties. Of lesser, but still considerable, value to business success are the benefits of various social programs, such as welfare (which helps support purchasing power), to a single payer health care system, (which minimizes a firm's health care costs for its workers).

Second, capitalism depends on ever-increasing growth to remain viable, and takes insufficient cognizance (to say the least) of the finite nature of the planet's resources, organic and non-organic, alike.

Third, capitalism cannot foster sustainability because it is focused--as business people never tire of telling us--entirely on making money, and increasing shareholder value, and nothing else. It is almost irrelevant to the true capitalist what product or service they invest in as long as they receive the expected return. As a corollary, capitalists regard making money as a sufficient excuse for foisting so-called 'externalities on the public--fish stocks depleted around the world by trawlers and other high-tech fishing boats; soil ruined and eroded through industrial farming; lakes destroyed to accommodate the toxic wastes of converting the tar sands into oil--are only a few examples of how capitalism encourages present generations to rob future ones of the planet's resources. But simply because we were born sooner does not give us the moral right to deplete the planet's wealth.

Unfortunately, far too many business people are proud of the fact that all they're interested in is making money, and non-business people have allowed themselves to be bamboozled into thinking this point of view is acceptable. It is not. Capitalism's buccaneering ways and Midas touch--which reduces all life to inedible gold--can no longer be tolerated in a sustainable society. If we are to evolve an economy which meets our real needs, other values must take precedence over mere money-making, which should be regarded as a means of achieving other ends, and not as a laudable end in itself.

The Role of Government in a Sustainable Economy--Part 2

2009-08-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

How we make our money is equally, if not more, important than what we make it from. It can no longer be seen as admirable, or even 'good enough', to invest merely to earn a monetary return; the admirable investor must become someone who reaps monetary return from investing in goods and services which serve real needs. (One might think this would rule out investing in sin stocks, such as tobacco. However, since the legal production and sale of tobacco to adults serves the needs of nicotine addicts while returning taxes to government, and preventing the development of a black market in tobacco, one can morally invest in a tobacco company, but not in a company like Plutonic Power, which intends to carve roads and transmission lines through the British Columbia wilderness to make money by selling hydro-electric power to the Americans.)

Business people and other capitalists often assert that only the private sector creates wealth; by 'wealth' meaning a surplus or profits, the difference between costs and revenues. But this assertion is nonsense. First, the private sector creates nothing without the necessary government legislation, investments in essential infrastructure such as education, and services such as police and fire; and second, government enterprise can create as much monetary wealth as private, as its surplus is also the difference between its costs, and its revenues (taxes, fees, and royaltie)). At the same time, government investment creates real public wealth and human capital--a well-educated citizenry, flourishing arts and sciences, high quality medical care and the promotion of health, organic agriculture, public transportation, and public broadcasting, to name just a few of the basic elements of a civilized society which governments can provide, not only more efficiently, but also more effectively, than private enterprise, which really cares only for its balance sheet.

For example, investing in public transit systems which attract large riderships by providing a high degree of mobility and convenience, would in turn help to reduce air pollution, and traffic-related deaths, and injuries, thus generally increasing our health and well-being, and reducing our need to use expensive acute-care medical facilities. Similarly, government investments in small, locally-oriented, organic agriculture enterprises (including value-added activities), would help to reduce smog and greenhouse gases, as well as providing nutritious food, both of which, again, would increase health and well-being, and decrease reliance on medical care. These benefits do not accrue to private businesses because they do not have a sufficiently wide base of returns. Government, because it raises taxes and fees from many different sources, can benefit from revenue flows no private company, however large, can command. Furthermore, a large proportion of government expenditures eventually flows back to government in various taxes and fees.

Of course, it is the revenues from taxes that capitalists object to, since they view taxation solely as a burden, a diminution of profits, to be minimized for themselves as much as possible (preferring that individual citizens bear most of the burden, while corporations reap most of the benefits). Businesses tend to regard government investment and spending (much of which, in fact, goes for salaries and benefits, and for the purchase of goods and services from the private sector) as a nuisance, a burden, an endless imposition, as if the money vanishes like water down a drain. Of course, it does not. As previously discussed, government spending and investment circulate throughout the economy, supporting purchasing power, and thus a wide variety of economic activities, just as private sector spending and investment does. Taxes create pools, and government investments and expenditures create outflows. In the process, we get two bangs for our buck, the good or service itself--health care, public transit, wilderness--plus the attendant and consequent economic activity.

Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' of the market, if it ever operated as theorized even in Adam Smith's day, cannot be relied on to deliver a sustainable society, or an economy that does not depend on endless growth to prosper. The market, in addition to serving private, not public, goals, only works properly for those who have sufficient funds to make the choices economists theorize that we make, and very often does not provide the paid work that is necessary to support the purchasing power on which the market depends. Only government has the scope and the resources to establish and maintain the indispensable elements of a civilized life and human-centred economy--education, health, mobility. Markets alone cannot serve the public good because marketeers have neither sufficient means nor sufficient interest in serving any other goals but their own.

Government is not our master, our parent, or our guardian; it is an instrument of our will; 'us' not 'them', and we should not allow capitalism's frequent and self-serving attacks on government to deter us from making government a better and better instrument for our public purposes by taking it, and the politics involved in its functioning, seriously enough to become engaged in them at all the various levels, and in all the various ways, open to any citizen who cares.

B.C. Health Bonds: Public Investment in Public Health Care

2009-08-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

Now that the election is over, the B.C. Liberals are no longer pretending to care about the welfare of British Columbians, as the current budgetary bloodletting by the regional health authorities demonstrates. The Liberals care only for money, and the wealthy men who control money, and they are much more worried about maintaining as small a deficit as they can (and keeping corporate taxes down), than about investing in health care. They are indifferent to the fact that their refusal to adequately fund operating rooms, and acute- and long-term-care beds (the latter being needed to free up the former) will, literally, hurt many individuals needing so-called 'elective' operations.

If the Liberals were sincerely concerned about health care, and if they also had any interest in easing the impact of the recession, they would address both issues by increasing funding for health care providers, instead of forcing the regional health authorities to cut both jobs and surgeries. By increasing health care budgets, the Liberals could tackle health and economic problems together, but their narrow, ideological view prevents them from seeing this. Instead, the Liberals are doing their utmost to undermine the public health system in order to create opportunities for private corporations to make a profit from the sick.

Where is the money for investing in public health care to come from? One source could be B.C. Health Bonds--government bonds, the income from which would be reserved entirely for health care. We'd still be increasing our deficit and debt, but taxpayers could also benefit from such government borrowing even as we were paying for it. And if the price of the bonds were modest, say $50, or even $25 each, then those on lower incomes could also afford to buy them.

Some may argue that such bonds have been tried before, and found wanting. True, a previous issue of B.C. Bonds lost money. However, those bonds were offered when competition for savings was relatively high, and were therefore sweetened with a tax break in addition to an attractive interest rate. These days, when many investors are seeking safety for their capital above all else, a decent rate of interest in government-backed bonds (which could be purchased only by permanent residents of B.C.) would likely prove very popular with the B.C. investing public, and no tax break need be added.

Properly spent, temporary deficits in the provincial budget would enable British Columbians to better weather the recession, especially if the government borrowed from us instead of from the banks, which, whether national, or international, suck their profits from our debt out of the province to the benefit of shareholders elsewhere. As long as we borrow from the private banks, our debt is only a liability. By borrowing from ourselves through B.C. Health Bonds, our debt would be both a liability and an asset for B.C. taxpayers.

Blue heron landing

2009-06-30T06:08:00.001-07:00

A different view of a blue heron. Taken at Esquimalt Lagoon just outside Victoria, B.C.

An Open Letter to Tzeporah Berman, David Suzuki, Dr. Andrew Weaver, and others

2009-05-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

To all environmentalists who are speaking and acting as if the carbon tax were the only measure of the Liberal Government: You are examples of how a good end--dealing with climate change--has been corrupted by the bad means of lending aid and comfort to a political party which will always put saving or making money ahead of any other consideration.

I ask you: Do you support Bute Inlet and other massive run-of-river projects? Are you not aware that their production, depending as it does on spring run-off, when B.C. Hydro has all the power it needs, does nothing for B.C.'s requirements and is intended for sale in the U.S.? Have you no worries over the NAFTA implications for such sales?

Do you support salmon fish farms? (In addition to their threats to wild salmon, farmed salmon gobble up millions of tons of small fish that other species depend on.)

Do you support land being taken from TFLs and developed, with all the associated carbon emissions from construction and roads, and the destruction of more wilderness?

Do you support the Gateway Project and the South Fraser perimeter road, which will only encourage more car and truck use, and therefore more emissions?

Do you approve of the fact that the Liberals have not adequately supported those who are trying to turn the E&N Railway into a commuter service, nor shown any interest in building light rail transit on south Vancouver Island, while consistently underfunding the bus system?

However good an idea a carbon tax may be, it does not trump these other grievous environmental insults, perpetrated and supported by the Liberals.

And on other issues, do you not care that we have the worst child poverty rate in the country; that seniors' needs for housing, especially long term residential care, are being neglected, and that new agriculture regulations favour large food corporations at the expense of greener alternatives of growing more food locally, saving, among other things, on transportation costs and emissions?

So far. you have chosen to spend your considerable personal prestige on behalf of a party which, by their actions over eight long years, have shown they care only for money and big business, because it is big business's money which keeps the Liberals in power.

If the Liberals are returned to office on May 12th , you will have to bear your share of the responsibility and shame for the further destruction of forests, rivers, fish, farms, and people's lives in B.C.. If the Liberals are returned with your help, I wish you all long and miserable lives in which to repent, for you will assuredly have helped make many other people's lives worse while assisting in the further destruction of our environment.

A bushtit in a hurry

2009-04-25T11:32:00.001-07:00

A pair of bushtits visit my suet-holder every day, and a larger group of bushtits comes by quite frequently. A great challenge to photograph as they're so quick moving, but a lot of fun for that very reason.

Letter to the Conservation Voters of B.C. re 'Anybody but Carole' campaign

2009-04-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

I'm appalled at your organization's wholesale dismissal of Carole James and the NDP Caucus. It's simply untrue that the NDP campaign "...is positioned against world-leading climate policies while not putting forward improvements or better alternatives."

Here is the NDP platform; looks pretty green to me.
---Introduce BC Green Bonds to stimulate jobs and investment in green infrastructure while reducing greenhouse gases.
---Fight climate change by setting hard caps on greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, to achieve a 33% reduction by 2020.
---Build on the work of leading climate change experts to develop a continental cap and trade plan, such as the plan proposed by US President Obama.
---Adopt California's tough vehicle tailpipe emission standards.
---Continue the moratorium on coastal drilling and crude oil tanker traffic on the BC coast.
---Immediately expand transit and alternatives to car use.
---Protect endangered wildlife with BC's first species at risk legislation.
---Restore Gordon Campbell's cuts to water, air and land protection.
---Increase support for our parks.
---Stop Campbell's gutting of the environmental land reserve.
---Restore independence to the Agricultural Land Reserve.
---Protect endangered rivers and watersheds.

By coming out against the NDP you are giving aid and comfort to the Liberals, and if they are re-elected we're going to get: More privatization of B.C. rivers for massive for-profit run-of-river projects like Bute Inlet (how green is that?); expanded fish farms that gobble up millions of tons of small fish that other animals in the sea depend on (how green is that--or don't you care about the rest of the world?); the Gateway Project and the South Fraser perimeter road which will encourage more car and truck traffic (how green is that?); a continuing lack of support for the E&N Railroad, or light rail transit, on Vancouver Island (how green is that?). Frankly, I think you are being totally irresponsible.

And really, you can't have it both ways--you can't say that NDP candidates who haven't been previously elected are okay while their colleagues who are incumbents are not; they are all part of the same party, and they all support Carole James as leader.

Apparently you're willing to sacrifice every other issue--such as the new agricultural regulations which have hurt small, local farmers for the benefit of large corporate farms and food organizations; the closing of schools and the loss of arts and music programs because of provincial underfunding of education; the increasing privatization of health care, and the neglect of seniors' need for extended care--to the carbon tax (and whatever else it is you don't like about the NDP's environmental platform. In doing so, you are, essentially, cutting off your nose to spite your face--or more accurately, cutting off your face to spite your nose. Which would be okay, if it weren't for the fact that the rest of us will suffer for it, if the Liberals get back in.

Shame on you; you are obviously not an organization which can be taken seriously.

Two gulls in conflict

2009-04-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

The white gull attacked the juvenile gull when it flew over to check us out, and eventually drove it far over the bay, and presumably, out of the white gull's territory. A few minutes later, the white gull flew back, and once more stood on the sand near-by, watching us intently as we ate our lunch. I threw it a peanut from time to time.

Re the Ministry of Heritage Destruction

2009-03-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

This is the slightly-edited text of a letter I e-mailed to James Moore, the Minister of Heritage, regarding funding for the CBC and literary magazines.

Why don't Conservatives actually conserve instead of constantly destroying?

You say, "If the CBC is in a position where there's not a return of ad revenue and then there are increasing demands on the CBC in order to fulfill its mandate and on top of that they're in a position where they have to now repay a loan, you'll see a real cannibalization of the CBC services across the country and that's not in the best interest of the broadcaster or taxpayers."

If, if, if--IF you would do your job and increase the CBC's funding to adequate levels, there would be no need for a loan in the first place.

At a time when the pathetic excuse for a government to which you belong is bullying Parliament to get your alleged stimulus budget passed, you stand by and watch 800 vitally important jobs disappear. What kind of stimulus is that?

In addition to starving the CBC you are now attacking those small literary magazines who don't meet your arbitrary quota of annual sales of 5,000 copies. For the sake of saving a few paltry dollars, you'll oversee the demise of one of the most important factors in Canada's development as a nation of internationally-recognized writers, many of whom got their start in the little magazines you obviously despise because they're not money-makers.

The love of money is the root of all evil, and you Conservatives love money above all else, except power.

But your actions, or lack of them, prove that you're not fit to govern, and the sooner we have an election and get rid of the lot of you, the better, before you destroy the country altogether.

Gull with crab

2009-03-09T14:58:00.001-07:00

This gull landed right in front of me and ate the crab, leg by leg. Easier to watch a crab being demolished in this fashion than a mammal.

B.C. businesses advocate against their own best interests

2009-02-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

The ads that the Independent Contractors of B.C. and the Coalition of B.C. Businesses were running, supporting the B.C. Liberals, and claiming an NDP government would threaten jobs and incomes, are examples of a profound misunderstanding of business's own best interests.

Aside from being misleading--it was NDP deficit spending in the '90s that kept the economy functioning during the Asian meltdown, by building schools and providing other public services which supported people's jobs and purchasing power--these ads attacked the party which would actually do the most for business. In addition to being more attentive than the Liberals, who tend to take business support for granted, the NDP's policies in themselves are good for businesses, especially smaller ones.

For example, the tourist industry often expresses concern about the bad impression the homeless make on visitors. The homeless are there because the Liberal Government refuses to provide the supportive housing and other services the mentally ill and addicted need. Why do B.C. businesses support a party whose parsimonious ways make conditions worse for business?
It's not as if the Liberals were good fiscal managers. On the contrary, their propensity for saving a few dollars in the short-term almost invariably leads to greater spending later on. For example, after refusing to pay $18 million to bury a high-powered hydro cable, the Liberals are now on the hook for upwards of $70 million to buy out the very home-owners the government fought against for so long.

Or how good was it for B.C. businesses when the Liberals shovelled over half-a-billion dollars into the German ship-building industry for boats that would have been better built in B.C.? Why do B.C. businesses support a government that wouldn't even allow B.C. shipbuilders to bid on the ferry contracts?

Similarly, every dollar the Liberals 'save' by refusing to adequately fund child care and by keeping welfare rates at punitively low levels, not only means less money is available to help keep local economies stable, but this cheese-paring policy also ends up costing us large sums down the road in lost productivity, property crimes, violence, police, courts, and prisons. For every dollar invested in children when they're young, we stand to save many more dollars when they're older, but the Liberals prefer to boast about being 'tough on crime' instead of doing something useful to prevent it.

Another example, are the vicious cuts to hospital and homecare workers' pay executed by the Liberals in 2002 to cover their $4.4 billion deficit (largest in B.C.'s history), due in great part to a previous $2 billion tax cut (most of which went to those who needed it least, while the rest of us paid for it in cuts to public services). If the Liberals had invested that $2 billion in improved training and higher wages for hospital and home-care workers, the money would have flowed through the economy from the bottom up (with nearly half of it being paid back to governments at all levels through various taxes) while tax-payers would have benefitted from improved access to better services. Furthermore, our tax dollars wouldn't be wasted in paying the profits of foreign companies, but would remain circulating throughout B.C..

Again, why do business people persist in supporting a government that costs them more money that it saves them? Do they not realize that the first people (after the recipients themselves) who would benefit if welfare rates were raised to a livable level, and if enough affordable housing were funded, would be local businesses? Not only would communities no longer have people living on the sidewalks, or camping in parks, welfare payments would immediately be spent into the economy, maintaining businesses all over the province. What use is a tax cut to a business, if its revenues are falling like a stone?

Business people love tax cuts (businesses can't function without government legislation, regulation, and spending, but they don't want to pay for it; they want citizens to pay), but tax cuts simply divide dollars into small, useless sums that together could be more constructively invested on projects that are useful in themselves, as well as creating or maintaining jobs. To take just one example, the $440 million the Liberals frittered away in 2008 on individual rebates to off-set the carbon tax, could have been much more fruitfully invested in green infrastructure such as the E&N Railway on Vancouver Island. But the Liberals preferred to try to bribe B.C. voters, and in exchange for a minor shot of cash, individuals and businesses alike now suffer from the lack of improved public transit.

Businesses prosper in Canada in large part due to the fact that we have a peaceful, orderly country with well-regulated financial institutions, and social programs such as health care and EI. The proposal that we need to lower business taxes to attract more investment into the country is nonsense. Taxes are only one, and far from the most important, of the factors considered when investing in a plant or company in Canada. To name only one business-friendly condition, single-payer public health care relieves business of much of the cost of providing health insurance for their workers.

I'm a senior who is deeply concerned about my future under a Liberal Government which intends to leave me at the mercy of private care I can't afford. The Independent Contractors of B.C. and the Coalition of B.C. Businesses, by running ads supporting the Liberals, are working directly against me and every other aging person in the province, as well as against children, the mentally-ill, and the unemployed. That's shameful.

But when they are simultaneously working against their own best interests, that's just plain stupid.

What to do about a recession--Part II

2009-01-25T15:55:00.000-08:00

In their article, "Don't Fix The Economy - Change It", published in December , 2008 by The Toronto Star, Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver offer "...six steps we can take toward a truly balanced budget that will allow Canadians, and all people on Earth, to live fulfilling, healthy, yet more ecologically compatible, lives."

The six steps are: Recognize that the economy is part of the biosphere; acknowledge that we need new institutions; acknowledge that unlimited growth on a finite planet makes no sense; expand the discussion; look beyond technological fixes; and greatly increase investment in educational and civic institutions.

To me, the two most important steps are to "recognize that the economy is part of the biosphere," and to "acknowledge that unlimited growth on a finite planet makes no sense", the second following naturally from the first. They lead also to a fundamental question: How are we to make a decent living while cutting back on consumption? My job so often depends on your consumption, at least under the present economic system.

Having used the term twice, what do I mean by a 'decent' living? It includes personal basics--shelter, food, clothes, mobility, and communication--within a context of clean air, water and soil, meaningful work, beauty, and leisure, which together constitute a civil society.

Many of these goods can be provided through education, health care, public transit, waste management, and other public services, which do not require individual entrepreneurship, or wealth (in fact, the private provision of public goods too often see service to the public sacrificed for profits for shareholders) but rather collective financing, co-operation, ingenuity, and use. There is still a place for private enterprise and profits, but they should be legally required to put service to the community on an equal footing with, or even ahead of, enriching their shareholders (which is their current legal obligation). In a highly civil society, investors would be motivated more by the desire to create some good--some useful product or service--than by merely the desire to make money. Money-making may be a necessary component of economic activity, but it should be regarded as a tool, a means to other, better, ends, and not as an end in itself. And let us not forget that it is the love of money which leads to all evil, not money per se.

But perhaps, the first step of all is to "expand the discussion" to introduce, and keep re-introducing, these concepts in order to bring about the recognition that our economy is utterly dependent on the biosphere, as are we all, and that we cannot have an infinitely expanding economy on a finite planet.

Since the West initiated much of, and has benefited the most from, the present lethally unrealistic economic system, it is up to us to begin the change, and not demand that China and India and others make sacrifices that we are unwilling to make ourselves. With regard to developing countries our aim should be to work with them to leap-frog over our mistakes and achieve a decent living without indulging in the orgy of consuming selfishness, led by the West, the planet is currently suffering from.

Therefore, what we should do about the recession is to use it as an opportunity to begin to take these six steps--which obviously must begin at the bottom--with the 'feet', the 'grassroots', most of us--and work its way up to the leaders who are still enmeshed in old-style, combative, money-worshipping capitalism. Stephen Harper, for example, may be relatively young chronologically but he has an old mind, aged in the brine of the love of money and ideology, and the hatred of opposition. He is capable of changing his tactics only when he thinks it will win him the next election, but has so far not shown any capacity for accepting that the old doctrines of competition and profit-maximization (which have always been injurious to many), are now outmoded, obsolete, useless, and incapable of benefitting anyone for longer than the shortest of short terms.

To enable the 'feet' to walk, we must first maintain and increase the purchasing power of those with the lowest incomes and those who have lost their jobs, including support for both renters and mortgage-payers. Government shouldn't give a penny to banks or credit unions but only to their customers and members.

Government and citizens alike must jettison the paralyzing and false dichotomy between the environment and the economy. The best way to ensure sufficient and sustainable economic activity is through investments in eco-friendly sources of energy, small-scale organic farms and local distribution channels, in increasing the wages and training of home support workers to keep as many elderly people out of institutions as possible, and to boost investments in students and post-secondary institutions, and in scientific research and the arts, to name only a few practical policies which will both support the economy and save money in the long run, giving tax-paying citizens a double benefit for each tax dollar invested--the services we need and a productive economy. Infusing as much cash as possible at the bottom will achieve, by 'trickle up', what 'trickle down' has never done, provide people with the resources they require to meet their needs, while beginning to lay the foundation for a less consumer-driven, more humane, more environemnt-aware, and sustainable economy.

What to do about a recession--Part I

2009-01-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

A common government response to a recession is to cut taxes (and consequently, spending, wherever it is deemed politically acceptable). Tax cuts, however, in addition to depleting the government's resources, benefit only those who have incomes large enough to be taxed, and ignore many of those most in need of support. Instead, the government should ensure that the purchasing power of those with the lowest, and/or the most jeopardized, incomes is maintained or even augmented. The Federal Government should, for example, make access to Employment Insurance much quicker, easier, and last longer (the fund has generated enormous surpluses while only 40% of those who have paid into it are able to obtain benefits from it; this number should be materially increased); introduce a negative income tax, and a refundable tax credit for volunteer work; and invest significant funds in affordable housing, public transit, local agriculture, and alternate sources of energy. These investments would not only address immediate needs, but also form part of changing the basic concepts and practices of our economy.

The Federal Government should also increase purchasing power by granting the provinces funds to increase welfare rates. These grants should be protected by contracts which stipulate that these funds are to be added to provincial payments, and expressly forbid the provinces from using them as a substitute for their own welfare funding (which would keep recipients on the same inadequate stipend). As a federal taxpayer (except for equalization payments), I don't want the provinces handed my tax dollars to spend as they wish (on a tax cut, for example, instead of welfare), but to receive them for specific purposes protected by contract. If a province, be it B.C. or Quebec, or any other, doesn't like the conditions, it can refuse the money and face the consequences from their respective taxpayers.

The policies suggested above would not only address people's immediate needs, but would also be effective in stabilizing the economy. When people's incomes are adequate for their basic needs--shelter, food, mobility, and communications--they are in a position to benefit from low prices on the expense side of their budgets, even though they may suffer from them on the income side.

From a certain perspective, it doesn't matter whether the interest rate or the dollar is rising or falling; or whether the price of wheat or gas or housing is falling or rising; whether we are in an inflationary phase, or a depressing one, or whether it is my price and your cost, or your price and my cost--these are all opposite sides of the same coins. This means that, whatever is happening, some people are going broke, while others are amassing fortunes--in either case, often through no particular fault or virtue of their own. Therefore, regardless of what the government may do to 'correct' the economy, some people will benefit, and others will be hurt. Usually, under present circumstances, it is too often the well-off who benefit from a tax cut, while the less well-off--particularly low income earners and the chronically un- or under-employed, who generally have the fewest monetary resources to cope with economic adversity--suffer from cuts to government services.

In the long run, however, taxpayers also suffer from service cuts, because social problems, when unattended to, don't go away, but grow worse and more expensive--witness the growing number of homeless people, and their associated growing costs, because governments simply will not fund sufficient affordable housing, or raise welfare rates to adequate levels. (To digress a bit, in this province, the B.C. Liberal Government's penny-saving/dollar squandering habits have led to the offer to buy out homes along the Tsawwassen power line for $70 million when the line could have been buried for $18 million, and the whole long, expensive wrangle with homeowners, and its even more expensive outcome, avoided.)

The economy does not need the government's attention and care; people do, and when their needs are addressed, the economy will improve. 'Trickle up' is the key; not 'trickle down', for not enough resources ever trickle down to make a real difference to those at the lower end of the income scale.

Beyond such immediate short term concerns, however, is the larger issue of humans learning to live within the finite restrictions of the earth's resources. In my next blog, "What to do about a recession--Part II", my starting point will be an article by Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver called "Don't Fix The Economy - Change It", published in the Toronto Star in December, 2008, which suggests a number of concepts which need to be brought into play to bring about the fundamental changes required for humans to live within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Wet Wren

2009-01-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

This Bewick's wren looks as bedraggled as many of us feel after an unusually snowy and cold and wet December and early January for Victoria.

Hummingbird

2008-12-21T07:24:00.001-08:00

I've put up two hummingbird feeders, which are visited regularly by two Anna's hummingbirds, one female and one male. This is the female.

Giving Up Politics (for a while)

2008-12-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

I have been so dismayed and dispirited by the Governor-General's decision to allow the Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament, and I become so enraged when I hear Harper or his minions spouting their vicious, divisive lies, that I've decided to forego politics for the next few months. This means not listening to political talk shows, or news about politics in Canada, not writing letters-to-the-editor, and not writing anymore political blogs. Instead, I shall be posting poetry and pictures expressing a more positive outlook on life.

But I need to vent just a bit longer, to express it all, get it out, and let it go--or at least let it out on a long, long leash.

Since I was prepared to tell Stephen Harper that he must accept the Governor-General's decision, if it had gone against him, I must accept it myself. I do--at least, I accept it philosophically, in that I accept that the democratic process does not always produce what I consider is the best result; nor do I call for any change in our Parliamentary system because of it. But I accept it with a heavy, heavy heart. By her decision, the Governor-General has delivered the country into the hands of a man who borders on megalomania in his obsession with destroying all opposition; a man who is a liar, a coward, and a bully; a man who doesn't hesitate to write off Quebec and stir up the West because he thinks he will benefit thereby; a man who is very likely complicit, directly or indirectly, in criminal acts in the taping and publishing of an NDP caucus conference call.

This is a man who, after mouthing platitudes about working with the opposition, deliberately went out of his way to provoke them, and when it backfired, took the coward's way out by asking for prorogation. Some Tory supporters have referred to prorogation bringing about a 'cooling off' period. Nonsense; the Tories will go on spewing their attack ads, telling their lies, and stirring up hatred against Quebec, throughout Christmas and beyond because they think it will be to their advantage. Harper and the Tories don't care that they've introduced months of uncertainty into people's lives; uncertainty which will hang like a black cloud over the holiday season; Harper and the Tories care for nothing but themselves, and attaining greater power.

If Harper ever gets a majority, watch out. He will balkanize the country by downloading all federal spending on social and other programs to the provinces, leaving a gravely weakened federal government responsible mainly for defence and foreign affairs. The concept that Canadians have a right to the same level of health, education, and other public services wherever we live in the country, and that federal tax dollars should be invested to ensure that right is realized in practice from coast to coast to coast, is utterly foreign to 'firewall' Harper who, driven by his Alberta-bred, corporate-supporting ideology, and spurred on by his partisan zeal to avenge Trudeau's National Energy Program, would reduce the country to ten provincial fiefdoms.

It amazes, as well as appalls, me that anyone can believe Stephen Harper will provide stable government. Over and over again he's shown that his lust for power, his hair-trigger temper, his vanity, and his hubris, will always lead him to go one, or more, steps too far, and create havoc where none need exist, as he has so recently demonstrated. Encouraged by the Governor-General, he will become even more insufferable; he will lecture us in that dead, condescending voice of his, spinning truth and facts into a tangle to obscure his real intentions. And I predict that in the new year, he will find some way to stick it to the opposition again in order to either trigger an election (he must feel he has the Governor-General where he wants her; how can she refuse a request for dissolution when she wouldn't for prorogation?), or to achieve the complete domination of Parliament that he craves. The man can't help himself; he is addicted to power.

I loathe Stephen Harper from the bottom of my heart; I devoutly hope to eventually see him hoist by his own petard; and I wish him a long and miserable life in which to repent of his sins.

There, I feel better--lighter, more cheerful--already. The next blogs will be poetry or photos or perhaps both.

Boomerang: Harper's Lust for Power Hits Home

2008-12-01T17:02:00.000-08:00

It is impossible not to ask: What was Harper thinking? For a man with an allegedly high IQ he has been behaving remarkably unintelligently of late, picking totally unnecessary fights. My supposition is that he thought the fear of precipitating another election would keep at least one opposition party, and probably the Liberals, on-side and the Tories in power. Which likely would have happened, if Harper, in a fit of hubris, had not only failed to offer an adequate financial plan (proposed spending cuts would have sucked $6 billion out of the economy at exactly the wrong time), but also attacked civil servants' right to strike, and proposed cutting off all public funding for federal parties.

The latter must have seemed a fiendishly clever ploy at the time--a measure which many Canadians might support (initially, at least) because they don't like money going to the Bloc. [However, that money keeps the Bloc in Parliament, and as long as the Bloc is in Parliament, Quebec has no need to separate. True, the Bloc looks out for Quebec's interests first; however, since they are a progressive party, what they consider good for Quebec is very often good for Canadians in other provinces as well; I'd certainly rather have them in Parliament than more Conservatives. And the irony of a separatist party helping to keep the country together delights me. But I digress.]

What Canadians don't need is a Prime Minister who plays political war games instead of (as Obama has been doing), consulting with the brightest and best from all sides, and bringing people together to address Canadians' concerns.

If the Tories had had the country's best interests at heart, they could have won the opposition parties' co-operation by bringing forward a package which showed real concern for laid-off and low income workers by including measures such as relaxing EI eligibility rules and expediting pay equity. Had they done so, (and had they omitted suspending civil servants' right to strike) the opposition would very likely have accepted it, and been willing to wait until next year for a major stimulus budget. And if the Tories had been sweetly reasonable about the economy, they might even have gotten away with cutting the subsidy to political parties, without eliminating it entirely.

But the Tories are incapable of being reasonable, sweetly, or otherwise. Instead, they had nothing positive to offer; attacked pay equity, and the right to strike, and then, in a blatant attempt to stifle all opposition, proposed to eliminate public funding for political parties. More recently, by taping and releasing an NDP caucus meeting (acts which are possibly criminal, and entirely unethical), Harper again demonstrated his fatal propensity to always go too far in his zeal to intensify his grip on power.

I'm amazed by how many people continue to support Harper and his colleagues. They should take a long, hard look at this man who never fails to take the meanest, most divisive course of action; a man who will say whatever he thinks will work at the moment, and blandly contradict positions he held not so long ago. For example, he found nothing wrong with being part of a coalition to topple Paul Martin; the process only becomes 'undemocratic' when Harper is the target.

Harper puts this pernicious spin on the actions of the opposition parties, when he knows perfectly well (if he doesn't, he's too ignorant to hold office) that they are operating in the finest of British and Canadian Parliamentary tradition--which is that the government is the party, or parties, which has the confidence of the House. Period. The Tories have squandered the confidence of the House with their crass partisanship, and now must pay the price.

Harper is a man who always puts personal expediency before his word, as when he decided to defy the spirit, if not the letter, of his own legislation fixing election dates (legislation which was expressly intended to prevent prime ministers from calling elections for their own political advantage) by calling a totally unnecessary election this fall because he thought he could get a majority.

Harper is a man who condones unethical, if not criminal acts, by allowing the release of an unauthorized taping of an NDP caucus meeting.

How can any self-respecting citizen want this man for Prime Minister?

Another viciously divisive ploy of the Tories is to foster the notion that the coalition is an eastern 'take-over'. As one who lives in British Columbia, I know it's nothing of the sort; there are members of the opposition parties in every part of the country, including Newfoundland and Labrador, and even Alberta.

The Conservatives are not competent to govern the country because they create trouble where none need exist; they divide Canadians instead of bringing us together; they are incapable of working with the other parties in a constructive and co-operative manner; they have no honour or ethics and they consistently put their lust for power ahead of the public good.