CalgaryLiberal

Archive for June, 2010

We don’t trust judges so we put in place mandatory minimums.

We don’t trust pardon boards so we go to the 11th hour to deny a pardon to someone who likely wouldn’t have gotten one anyway.

We don’t trust politicians so we demand that they spend more time accounting their endeavors than governing.

We don’t trust politicians so we pull them in front of tribunals, commissions, and everything else.

The governing party doesn’t trust Canadians so they lock them away for a narcotic that is less addictive and less harmful than cigarettes.

The governing party doesn’t trust Canadians so they put more and more legislation limiting their rights.

Gerrymandering is a mainstay of politicians and bureaucrats unwilling to trust the people.

The governing party doesn’t trust Canadians to make the right choice on their television choices so they subsidize an ideological channel.

The governing party doesn’t trust bureaucrats, Canadians, or its own politicians so it churns out MEPs (Message Event Proposals) to shut down any changes, any accountability, or any semblance of openness.

The governing party doesn’t trust reporters and Canadians so they shut down freedom of information requests.

There is a low estimate of the human spirit and of humanity in Ottawa. The Liberals over the last few months call it the “Culture of Deceit” and the “Cult of Fear”. The NDP say it’s the same old politics by the same old people. The Conservative continue on with their triumphalist pandering. The same can be said of Edmonton.

But where’s the trust?

The Conservatives have always spoken about local government in their past elections, but they’ve done the opposite. The NDP want equality for all, but their rhetoric has turned to political pandering and, in all seriousness, they have undermined every position they’ve ever taken with Jack Layton’s leadership. There’s no trust there by Canadians for these guys.

There’s no trust for judges, for people, for politicians, or for neighbors.

This is broken. This is wrong.

We need to trust. Although trust will be abused, it will be challenged, and it will be sometimes irrevocably destroyed, we need to trust. We need to trust people to make the right decision most  of the time and live accordingly.

In the field of law this would be realizing that we shouldn’t persecute based on punishment but on righting the wrongs of the abused trust we put into people. Allow for the expectation that we are our brother’s keeper, that we are supposed to protect one another, and that society expects that we be kind to one another. And when this trust is abused? Seek to heal the broken trust and make right what was wronged. Have the criminal re-earn the trust that he or she has broken.

Allow for pardons. Allow for pleas. Allow for justice not based on arbitrary feel good rules and mandatory minimums. And recognize that justice is not formed on the basis of writing laws against specific groups or specific individuals but the considerations of how such laws would protect and serve the entirety of the nation.

In gaming and in entertainment this means not punishing loyal customers who chose to play their paid for media on all their tools, whatever they may be. Allow for the expectation that people will not abuse what they treasure–but at the same time coming down hard on those who notoriously abuse this trust, like mass pirates or bootleggers.

In politics it’s to assume that people are doing good or trying to do good–and expecting that politicians, of whatever stripe or creed, should be held to a standard above that of what they now currently wallow in.

And when politicians break that trust? Have them re-earn it. Force them into an election, test their mettle, and make them decide whether or not they are worthy of Canadians’ trust.

Allow for reasonableness. Allow for common sense (the little of it we have). Allow for leeway and judgment. That’s trust. And we need more of it. We are shutting down our humanity otherwise.

The expectation of trust, of reasonableness, and of good judgment is a harrowing thing, too. To feel that trust is both at the same time rewarding as it is a frightening experience–something that tends to overwhelm the few that have rarely been touched by it. It binds people together, it brings peace to the hearts of many, and reinforces upon itself over time… while, at the same time, the pressure of feeling trusted can bring out the best in people.

If at every turn some is expected to steal, and is acted against; is expected to kill, and is acted against; is expected to lie, and is acted against; and is expected to cheat, and is acted against, we reinforce a terrible, terrible crime on peoples’ minds.  Where we expect terrible acts people assume it’s a common occurrence and that it is the norm. It isn’t.

Humanity is good.

It should be treated as such, and by that treatment and expectation we’ll engender something better. Let’s ditch the culture of deceit.

(1) Gerrymandering by the PCs.

Gerrymandering is the magical art of placing ridings in places that, on the whole, are bad for your opponents and good for your team.

An example would be changing Edmonton around so that NDP are competitive against the Liberals, thus splitting apart the centre to far-left vote that tends to go against the Progressive Conservatives overwhelmingly. With this split a PC candidate can get lucky in Edmonton more often than not.

Another example would be looking at Alberta in its entirety and seeing the rural-urban divide take place.

In essence, rural Alberta goes PC. Every election. Give rural Albertans more seats and have rural Albertan votes count for more (on average rural voters have their votes count 0.1 extra vote person person than a city dweller) will then give the PCs a majority every time.

Then, coupled with this, split up the cities in such a way that urban areas bleed into rural districts so that most of a riding vote PC, takes off a minority of other voters who would vote otherwise from another constituency, and land more seats for the PCs.

On top of these two things we then have splitting up inner city ridings in such a way as to divide opposition parties in such a way that PC wins are almost assured.

This last point, on the Albertan divisions of seats, is essentially what the PC government has done.

“The Stelmach administration’s sticky fingerprints are all over this report,” says deputy Liberal leader Ms. Laurie Blakeman. “There’s been major tinkering with boundaries in Edmonton to reflect personal requests from Tory MLAs. Edmonton-Southwest, for example, is a mess.”

Blakemen goes on to say that:

“Edmonton should have received two additional seats, Calgary three, with the balance subtracted from sparsely populated rural ridings,” Blakeman says. “Our position all along has been that constituencies should be redistributed, not added. But the influence of the Premier’s office has preserved rural seats solely for the benefit of his party.”

(2) What do you do when you collect $181 million extra on education property taxes, are about to cut 500 teachers from the already devastated public system, pushing for increased class sizes, and have called for drastic cuts in the education system? Well, if your the PC government you continue on, ignoring the injustice done to students everywhere in this province.

Hugh MacDonald, the Finance Critic for the ALP, has this to say:

“This money would undoubtedly ease the pressure on Alberta’s school boards if the government would actually use it for schools,” MacDonald says. “There’s no reason whatsoever to deprive our children of a good education, not when the additional revenues from education property taxes more than cover the government-created shortfall.”

It makes you wonder what the Progressive Conservatives are thinking.

We all know what the Wildrose would do, anyways.  They’d cut everything, from property taxes to the schools that children are in, in their right wing, devil-may-care alternate universe.

Take one of their polices as an example: MLA pay.

They just want to toss the subject to an independent committee. Huh. Well, err, that’s nice and all, but shouldn’t it be up to the people of Alberta rather than a bunch of people that the common Albertan doesn’t even know?

The ALP provided for this at their policy convention last month–in fact, they made it so that all pay increases for MLA required that those increases would not take place until after an election.

So Albertans would chose whether or not their tax monies were being used well. They can toss out the bugger if they don’t think so, or they can increase his pay if they believe that he/she did well by their book.

And their other policies? Mindless, center of the road, never-insult-any-one-else, say nothing, and low key stuff. There’s nothing new here.

A provincial police force? Not going to happen. Klein ruled it out for a reason.

An Albertan constitution “Within the framework of Canada”? Well, err, so they’re adding rights that have been enshrined for a solid 1,000 years via common law and property rights. And the emphasis on adding “Free Speech” to the human rights code is strange, since it’s already included in the now 20 year old Albertan Bill of Rights.

And bringing up gun control? It’s a say nothing resolution. It panders to everyone by saying the party doesn’t want to stop people from owning guns but tosses “arbitrary reason” as a clarifying phrase so that, in fact, a WAP policy would be that they would remove the rights of gun owners for non-arbitrary reasons… Which is, essentially, saying that that they accept gun control, but they don’t accept gun control, but they do accept gun control. The writer of the resolution is playing both sides.

The support of nuclear power resolution is interesting. In fact, that’s quite a draw for me. The thing that’s troubling with it though is that it wont pass–the libertarian faction of the WAP wont let it pass, the climate change denialists will vote against it out of principle,  and fearful folks will vote it down out of being ill-informed on the subject.

It’s just lame. And it’s the same old game. It’s just a smorgasbord of old Reform and Progressive Conservative policy points, with old tired ideas, and not an ounce of sense. The Wildrose Alliance in their policy conference is playing it safe and saying nothing, essentially.

Personally, I think they’re scared of their 15% “solid” support in the polls. It’s down quite a bit from their leadership vote last year. And they’re scared of the drop in people thinking Alberta is heading in the wrong direction:

The results show that 64% of Albertans believe the government is on the right track more or less, and only 31% believe it is on the wrong track more or less.

The WAP are acting conservatively. They’re making small policy on big issues. It’s lame and it is simply more of the same.

As I wrote before on another post, the WAP is in trouble in more ways than one. They’re just not tough enough.

Yesterday I wrote about defending the First Past the Post system (FPTP). While I recognized it fulfilled a goal, did so adequately, and had benefits not normally laid at its feet, I also noted that it had some drawbacks.

Specifically on the issue of not have the concept of a “mandate” for candidates if they won with less than 50% of the electorate’s vote.

My solution would be that we allow for people to say on their ballot that–if their first choice isn’t liked much by their fellows–they would be willing to settle on another candidate that they mostly agree with.

Here’s the problem with parties and people. At no point will anyone anywhere agree with another person 100% of the time. There’s compromises at the party level, between candidates, in caucus, between politicians and bureaucrats, and at many, many other levels. There’s even compromises within the electorate in the form of accepting a candidate they didn’t vote for representing them in Ottawa or Edmonton. Then there’s an active compromise by the electorate sometimes argued in the form of  “strategic voting” or “ABC”–Anything But Conservative.

It’s there already so extrapolating and putting voting a compromise option on the ballot would be sensible.

The Alberta Liberal Party at last month’s policy convention voted in favor of this–almost unanimously, in fact–solution.

Here’s the resolution is on page 21 at this address.

The ALP has called for a very simple formulation that had been the mainstay of Albertan politics since almost its inception, at least until it became uncomfortable for the reigning party of the Social Credit party in the late 1950s. Alberta has always been an innovator in elections–in fact, the Albertan legislature has felt the changes of dozens of innovations, which were all shut down in 1959 with the Social Credit trying to stave off a Progressive Conservative upswing.

Essentially the system in place was that of ranking your favorite candidate, then your next choice that you’d settle with, and then your next choice. If the election turns out that no one candidate received 50% then the first choices of the bottom candidates will be removed and the second, third, and so-on choices would have those votes put into play.

Here’s an example:

Say Ed receives 35% of the vote and Danielle receives 35%. Then 30% goes to David.

David would be lopped off the ballot, but all the people who voted for him that had second choices–being either Ed or Danielle–would have those votes counted toward them.

What happens then is that either Ed or Danielle receives the rest of those votes and the electorate states that it had chosen one candidate–with some tolerating the preferred choice and others whole-heartily supporting that choice.

This is IRV, or Instant Run Off voting, and is a solid system to create a system that solves this acceptance of a politician as a representative of a riding.

This allows for the supporters of a candidate and those tolerant toward one candidate to work together to get a candidate that most of the people in a riding would at least be able to tolerate. That’s the gift of IRV. That’s the goal of this–to get everyone on board and everyone voting because in this system no vote is wasted because everyone is brought into the decision of who will represent what.

And the best thing is that the benefits of FPTP would still, for the most part, exist while the problems with our system would be solved with a solution we’ve used before.