Were We Betrayed by the Liberals?

The government of Canada has informed Parliament and the Canadian people that contrary to their stated position before the election - they will not be pursing changes in how the government is elected. For the next election and the foreseeable future - we will still be using the " first past the post" system. 

If one only looked at the social media pages for any news - one could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that the federal Liberals had just  betrayed the Canadian people in a particularly heinous  fashion that would insure that they would never get elected again. I think there are a number of points that need to be considered.

One is that anyone who only reads social media pages to find out what is happening - probably should not be allowed to vote. It is one of the great obscenities of our times that virtually anything that is published on line is taken as the gospel truth.

Secondly and more importantly, the federal Liberals only got 39.5 of the popular vote (yes - Trudeau's Liberals got a smaller percentages of the popular vote than did Trump). I suspect that a relatively small number of people switched their vote because he promised to change the system. For those handful of people or for the political pundits who have nothing better to write about,  to suggest that this is a poorly thought out or cowardly decision does a disservice to the issue. To construct a political dialogue where one party is wrong and therefore everyone else is right will only ensure that the issue never gets resolved.

I think those of us who feel a bit let down ( I didn't vote for that party so perhaps I have no right to feel disappointed) we wanted a change because we thought that the parties that we support - especially those who have traditionally been a bit on the near fringes of the left (to consider the current NDP to be of the left would shame  J.S Woodsworth or Tommy Douglas)  would get more seats. What I never thought about was that perhaps some "fringe" parties on the right side of the political spectrum would also get more seats. If for example, we had had proportional representation in the mid 1990s - the Reform party would have sent far more members to Ottawa than would have the Green party. That is not what I wanted.  What I want is for my party to have a better chance to have influence while other parties are stopped from any possibility of controlling  the government's agenda. Unless we can guarantee that outcome, perhaps we should be careful of what we wish for.

I think it is clear that some changes would be useful. But I do not think there is a consensus as what those changes should be, nor do I think it is clear as to how to achieve that consensus. The federal Conservatives wanted to have a referendum.  Historically Canadians have not done well with such national, provincial or even city wide votes on a specific topic.  A referendum would consume the Canadian Parliament, the members of that institution and the government as a whole for months - months where there are many important issues to resolve (e.g. how to deal with Trump). It is questionable if Canadians would devote enough attention and even real study of the issues before they voted or if they would just vote along traditional party lines.

If we are to have a useful conversation about how we want our votes to count - then somehow we need to divest any attachment to a specific party or spot on the political spectrum. Even more difficult - we must be able to accept that other individuals regardless of their allegiances can do the same thing. That is not going to happen anytime in the near future.

Do Protest Marches Work? Part 3

Perhaps because of the memories of the pictures of Martin Luther King marching down the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, the huge marches against the Vietnam War or the crowds of people in the central squares of Cairo or Tunis, we have been convinced of the need for large numbers of people protesting to effect any change. But what we seem to have forgotten is that these protests started with the actions of a small number of people or even just one. In our haste to convince the world that these change are critical, we have ignored  Margaret Mead's advice " Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has".   

Ghandi never planned on leading over a hundred thousand people to the sea to protest the British Salt Tax, Mohamed Bouazizi would never have dreamed that his self-immolation would lead to the protests of the Arab Spring, and Rosa Parks never imagined that her decision to sit at the front of the bus would lead to marches down the main streets of Montgomery. They made a personal decision to do what they thought was right. In some cases I am sure that they hoped someone else would be supportive - but that is not why they did it. They did not wait for some committee to organize a protest in long meetings using Robert's Rules of Order nor did they wait until there were enough people agreeing to meet at a certain point, at a certain time. They just did what felt right.

One of the most memorable people I have known was a young man who, if you had looked him, looked like a bum. In fact, in a way he was. He frequently travelled riding the rails. He sometimes looked as if the dirt from the road had been permanently etched into his skin. He had gotten use to having few possessions as it is hard to jump on a moving train if you are carrying too much stuff. We spent a few days travelling together - me driving my car back from my two year stay in BC, him going back to the Maritimes. At every road side stop along the Trans-Canada where we had pulled over so he could smoke, he would walk around and pick up the trash on the road and put it in the garbage cans; if there were no cans, he put the trash in his pockets until we stopped somewhere there was one. Not a big deal - certainly what he was doing would never change the world - but it changed my world and that perhaps is enough. I now, a few times year, walk along the dike beside the Cowinchan River just outside my house and collect the garbage that others have left behind.

There are a million things that we can do as individuals that can cause change. Simple things such as saying thank you as if you meant it to the bus drivers, bank tellers and clerks that serve us; not wasting our money buying presents for family members who don't need them, teaching our children that those of us who live in a privileged part of the world have a responsibility to support those who don't, reducing our wasteful use of resources, remembering the profound difference between wanting something and needing something and incorporating that difference into our daily lives or just being kind. The possibilities are limitless.

We also can talk to each other. It is far too easy to condemn those who disagree with us. Most, if not all of them, are not the enemy. We need become, if not their friends, at least good neighbours who care about them and their lives.  If we stop demonizing them - perhaps those on the other side of the fence will stop doing the same to us on the left.

The are some overwhelming issues that we need to deal with. There is a time and a place where people need to stand up and say enough is enough. But let us make sure that before we do that - that we have done all of the other stuff first. A long time ago, when I was first advocating (somewhat loudly) on behalf of some individuals who lived with a disability, I learned that if one is going to do that sort of thing - one needs to makes sure that you have done all of the other steps well.

We need to go back to the basics of creating change and re-learn how to do those things well.

Do Protest Marches Work? Part 2

If in fact protest marches, at least by themselves do not create change in government's or corporate policies - what will?

Francesca Polletta fifteen or so years ago published a book called Freedom is an Endless Meeting. In the text she, amongst other things, discusses how some social movements developed the capacity to make decisions. One of the points that she makes is that during the active student movement in the 1960s, an extraordinary amount of time was spent in people talking to each other, learning to listen to each other and making decisions in a way that everyone participated in (consensus). It was a slow, sometimes painful and almost always exhausting process. But it worked in that hundreds if not thousands of young people learned how to participate in a political process and perhaps more importantly they learned  to listen to what other people thought. They also learned that actions are more powerful when everyone agrees with that action.

It seems to me as if we have tried to take a short cut. We have gone from someone saying that there is a problem and then a small number of people deciding that "we" need to protest. If one looks at the writings of Micah White, the co-creator of Occupy Now (see his book The End of Protest), or read the L.A. Times discussion of how the Women's March was created - it is clear that there was virtually no discussion among the millions of people who participated, there was no process by which the people got to know each other, learned to listen to what each other were saying and certainly no one ever sat down and through long hours of endless meetings developed a consensus as to what the problem was and how to address it. While perhaps we are redefining who is on top - it is quite clear that the various movement were designed from the top down, not from the bottom up.

And that is why it is not working. We are in too much of a rush - we want to do something and we want to do it now. We want to see some results from our concerns before we have even determined what the problem is. While, as I have discussed elsewhere, social media may be a wonderful way of reaching out to people and telling them what is happening, it is never a discussion. The format does not engage individuals with each other. Endless re-postings of when and where is a poor substitute for small and large group discussions. It feels as if we are comfortable in having other people define the problem and create the solution. On any given day, somewhere in Canada, there is some sort of workshop or meeting where a well known presenter will drone on about the most recent attack by either the government or the corporate elite and telling us that we must protest - we must stop them. They may be right, but I think I would like to be part of that decision making process.

Protests do have some benefits. If the protest is focused on a specific problem, if there is a reasonable solution being proposed and if the people marching have the same goals - there can be results. Particularly if the local provincial or federal politician is from the Opposition, one can get provincial or national attention.  People, if the group is cohesive enough, get to meet each other and hopefully start to be engaged in a dialogue. If the protest is loud enough or has enough community support, the sheer fact that people are expressing their concern does inform the larger community of those concerns. It makes the people feel good and that hopefully will encourage them to continue. But if people go to the protest expecting to see changes - and no one has done the necessary work - then those protesters will once again be disappointed. How many times can one be disappointed before you stop going/caring?

To be continued

Do Protest Marches Work? Part 1

On the third Saturday in January, on all seven continents, there was a massive protest march. While the roots of this protest came from the US and some of its citizens' immense dissatisfaction with their newly installed president, women (and men) from around the world made it clear that there are a range of issues related to gender that are just not being dealt with. And they are right. Individual governments' responses to the concerns from the LGTBQ communities, the need for women to be in absolute control of what kind of medical care they receive, pay inequity, lack of opportunity, protection from violence etc is less than inadequate. In fact, the lack of progress in dealing with these issues can only be described as disheartening. If nothing else one would think that that many people protesting would get the attention of someone.

But did it? I think one could make the argument that the protesters that Saturday had exactly as much influence on public policy as have those at Standing Rock in North Dakota or had all of the people who camped in public parks during Occupy Now or the hundreds of students who camped out on the streets in Hong Kong or those who circle danced during the days of Idle No More, or the millions of people who in the last twenty or so years have protested against pipelines, damns and poor government policies. Absolutely none!! I can think of only two successful Canadian protests in the past twenty years: the Quebec university/College student protest of 2012 and the various protest against clear cutting in parts of B.C. most notably Haida Gwaii and Clayoquot Sound. It is worth noting that these protest were highly focused on very specific issues and managed to engage people from diverse backgrounds - all of whom agreed with the purpose of the protest.

I suspect, for Canadians, that the current idea of massing as many people as possible to march down a city street has its roots in watching the all too brief television clips of civil rights marches in Georgia or Alabama or our romantic remembering of standing outside some American Embassy protesting the Vietnam war. There is a popular impression that all or at least most of the people of my generation did that sort of thing and that it worked.  But there are two problems with that myth. One as Jennings points out in his article Residues of a movement, the number of American university students who protested the war were in a minority.  While similar data is not available for Canadians, I have no doubt that there was an equally small percentage of Canadians who were active in the protest movement during the late sixties and early seventies.  Secondly, I have never read anything to suggest that the protests in themselves alone had any real impact upon the American or any other government.

Which is not to say that the process of protesting last Saturday was a waste of time. People feel good about participating and about being part of something bigger than themselves;  they feel as if they have done something good. There is a possibility that the collective effervescence (sociology term for the glowing feeling one gets after participating in rituals such as attending church) that was generated because people were engaged in this somewhat ritualized activity might encourage them to participate in a similar activity. But as religious congregations who understand know - it is not enough to make people feel good - you have to get to know them so that they feel welcome to participate next time - which is why the minister/priest etc shakes your hand as you leave or there is coffee available afterwards. Whether or not people, in spite of feeling good about the last experience, would be prepared to march again next weekend and the weekend after remains in doubt. It should be noted that the successful student protest in Quebec happened day after day. I suspect those participants felt as if they were welcome and that their presence had an impact.

So why do people protest, why do people participate in marches?  Why do people do something that has generally not been very useful? What is it about our nature, especially those of us in the west who live reasonably comfortable lives, that allows us to believe, in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary, that walking down a street, waving some placard will have any impact upon governments or large corporations?

Perhaps more importantly - we should be asking are there other ways of protesting that are more effective?  Are there other strategies that will facilitate change?

The Dangers of a Single Ideology or Can a One trick Pony ever Change His Mind - part 2

Given that a bully now is in control of the political and economic agenda of the US, Canada needs to decide what to do about it. How do we, as a country, live next door to what has always been a bit of an elephant (we are the mouse) who has fairly frequently been less than careful as to where to put its feet and now appears to not even pretend to care? There are two clear choices - act like the Dalai Lama or become as protectionist and as aggressive as Trump.

The former model suggest that Canada follows its present course of trying to find that impossible balances between the economy growing and protecting the environment, between accepting refugees and overwhelming our capacity to support newcomers, between encouraging those who are different and supportive of those who are afraid of change and of supporting individuals in terms of education and health care while not running out of money. This path would require us to ignore the posturing of Trump and to do what we think is right - knowing that we might get it wrong on occasion.  Canada would continue to be, and even enhance our role of being leaders in the international community when it comes to looking for constructive ways of engaging other countries.

This strategy of giving because it is right to do so, of not fighting back because it is wrong and always looking for the peaceful, non-confrontational approach has not work out that well for Tibet. The people have no power to control their lives or their environment, their culture has been eroded by the thousands of Chinese who have moved into their country and by the foreign laws that have been imposed upon them. Every year it feels as if fewer and fewer countries and individuals can envision a time when Tibet will be free of the Chinese government. The danger of this approach for Canada is that Trump and his minions will see Canada as being even more ineffective and irrelevant. The risk of Canada being consumed by American policies specifically around trade, immigration  and human rights would be overwhelming and perhaps unstoppable. The very fact that the Trudeau government has delayed announcing its peace keeping commitments while waiting for a clearer picture of Trump's international policies suggest that we are already on a slippery path of policy subservience. What about the decriminalization of marijuana or protecting our waterways? Will they be on hold if the US says no? It has happened before.

At the other end of the continuum, Canada could react aggressively to Trump and his apparent plans to impose a tariff on soft wood lumber, demand a bigger cut of the oil that will flow the Trans-Canada's pipeline and renegotiate or dismantle Nafta. For example if a tariff is imposed upon lumber being shipped south - stop shipping it. As before, house builders in the northern States who have become dependent upon our wood to build houses - will have to do without. The last time a tariff was imposed - it was those builders who complained. Perhaps at the same time Canada should impose a tariff on products coming into Canada. This of course would cause immense hardship upon families who depend on the income from our lumber companies to survive and make some of the things that we buy from the USA far more expensive. Not only would the government need to assist those companies but as well would need to create a method by which families and individuals affected would be supported. But it would give the US government a clear message - if you can't negotiate in good faith - go somewhere else. Maybe it is time that we recognize that allowing the US to be our biggest trading partner is a bad idea - especially if they do not respect us.

There are obvious thousands of options along the continuum. But there needs to be a national conversation of how we should respond. Yes - we are always ready to negotiate, always ready to look for ways will enhance both countries. But being a "push-over", of accepting a bad deal because any deal is better than nothing might not be the best option.  Somehow, while remaining true to our convictions - we need to be clear that any trade war will affect their economy too. In spite of the USA's greater economic size - we must see ourselves as equals. Trump can only negotiate from a position of power if we allow him to do so.

We teach our children that we, as a society, need to stand up to bullies. Perhaps it is time that the adults started to do what we tell our kids to do.

The Dangers of a Single Ideology or Can a One trick Pony ever Change His Mind

I have fought the temptation to comment on the last month of the new America under Trump - yes I know that it has in fact been less than a week - but it feels like a month. I have lost that battle.

There is so much to say, and for a Canadian most of what I would say would be a waste of time. I am not too sure if Trump has any understanding of our history or our relationship with the country he now runs. In fact, I am not too sure if his understanding of that country is much deeper than the top 1%.  For Canadians to rant and rave what a buffoon he is, or how misguided his first few executive orders have been seems to be a useless expenditure of energy.  I find it absolutely mind boggling that people can defend some of his outrageous comments, that the phrase "alternative facts" seems to be accepted has being the same as the truth or that one person can undo so many things, so quickly. But those things are happening.

If his executive orders only affected citizens of the US, perhaps I would be less concerned. However,  his comments and his decisions may affect my life in Canada. That, I think, gives me the right and the responsibility to think about and to comment on occasion. It is not enough to sit back and say - not my problem.

Mr. Trump only has one set of skills - he knows how to negotiate from a place of strength. He does it by being bombastic, occasionally by bullying and in general, acting as if he is total oblivious to anything outside his narrow tunnel of vision. There is no sense that he knows how to compromise or that he is a team player. Any country that wants to/needs to negotiate with his government is at an extreme disadvantage because he assumes he is in a position of power. I suspect for Trump, negotiation only means how can I brow beat/manipulate you to give me what I want. As soon as that does not work - he throws a hissy fit, changes the rules or walk away from the table blaming the other party. That strategy might work when one is planning on building a hotel - I don't think it works when you are running a country. Unless of course everyone is too afraid to stand up to him.

It seems as if the "big" three American automakers might be among the first CEOs to stand up and salute their new leader. There might be some advantage on getting rid of the Japanese/Korean auto makers that have, for the last 30 years, consistently outsold the American car companies. If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler companies are told that they can only sell cars in the USA if those cars are built in the USA, but are given the right kinds of incentives including the breaking of unions and tax incentives that ensure greater personal and corporate profits - such a policy may make sense to them (but not to the thousands of Americans who work for Honda, Toyota etc.).  In spite of the fact that those CEOs know how complicated and how intertwined the three countries are (Canada, USA and Mexico) in the building of our cars, they are not standing up and telling the president that he is wrong. Perhaps the dangers of them disagreeing in public with the president may be deemed to be far greater than any benefits.

It is a slippery slope. If the first group of companies bow down - then it become increasingly harder for other companies to disagree. And who will want to? Oil companies will kiss Trump's feet if he limits or eradicates  any environmental standards, banks will praise him if they are deregulated, the far right will dance in public if gay rights, woman's rights and any other segment of society other than theirs, loses legal protection, both large and small corporations will sign up to be on his donations list if what little protection left for unions is taken away and the poor sot who voted for him will be thankful if life doesn't get any worse.

If change is going to occur, or at the very least if citizens of the US want to slow down the destruction of what they have, marching in the streets is not going to do it. Member of unions need to stand up and use what power they have to get the CEOs and stock holders to listen, employees of the federal government need to stand up and say what is happening to the health care or to the environment. People have only power when they are prepared to put their economic power on the line. That means the best paid people in the US, those who have good jobs need to stand up for others who are not so fortunate.

I am afraid however, that they too will be too afraid to voice their discontent. In the new world where the leader says that only his view and his beliefs are of value - it seems far more likely that people will act the same way.