Tag: Politics

Off to the Races

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Today the writ has dropped. We are off to the races.

This event has much less meaning than it used to. Back when elections could be called on any day convenient to the Majority, this represented the true start of a civilised and tolerable 28-day election period.

We no longer live in those more-civilized times.

Our elections are now drawn-out American-style affairs where everyone can see them coming years in advance and every decision made by government is based on their fixed timing. This campaign has been the longest in BC history, really starting 25 months ago when Christy Clark won the leadership of the BC Liberals, or maybe 2½ months later when she won her By-election. Hard to pick a specific start date, but we have been bombarded with campaigning and advertising for more than a year. The lawn signs and campaign finance disclosures starting tomorrow are really just a new phase.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”.
              – Premier Clark

The worst part is that we have had to endure a year of a government who is campaigning instead of governing, and the next damn government is going to do the same thing. The fact the Liberals have spend the last 6 months asking the opposition to disclose their election platform shows that they have failed to understand the role of government vs. opposition outside of the 28-day campaign period…

…wait, I’m going off on a rant here, and that was not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to talk about how elections impact community. New Westminster is in many ways a small town, and this is even more apparent at election time. Our concerns are often local, the same familiar voices pop up – you will likely see Dave Brett helping at the Queen’s Park All-Candidate event, and me helping out at the NWEP one, and people will flood to Tenth to the Fraser to get the best local on-line coverage. We know Bill Zander will have something to say at a Public Meeting, and Ted Eddy will write a letter to the Paper before this is done. Often, the same issues come to the surface, and we know where many people stand on those issues, and we know the grudges people have. Grudges are easy to hold, hard to move past.

However, 29 days from now, we are all going to have to keep living here in the same small community, the “winners” and the “losers” together. How we conduct ourselves in the next 28 days is going to frame how we work together to keep building this community that we all care enough about to go through this.

Going into this election, we have a great field of local candidates. I have had the opportunity over the last few months to have lengthy sit-down conversations with three of the four declared candidates. I feel confident that any of them would represent New Westminster well in Victoria. They are all approachable, honest, and good listeners. Their ideas vary somewhat, but I get the sense they all have the best interests of New Westminster and BC in mind, and that they want to serve this community for the right reasons. A “bad” result for New Westminster on May 14th is pretty unlikely. It doesn’t have to be divisive – elections can be about bringing people together.

The only “bad” result will be if we spend the next 4 weeks talking about what divides us (“Socialists” vs. “Free Enterprise”), instead of talking about what we all aspire towards, and how our plans to get there differ. The political system, representative democracy itself, is just a tool that allows us to set collective priorities and pool our resources towards achieving popular goals. We know we disagree on the pathway (that’s why we have elections) but we all share the same goal – a safe, prosperous, livable community.

The politics itself should never be the goal. If it is, you are doing it wrong. Argument for argument sake is part of the reason people become cynical about the process.

I know who is getting my vote this time. As someone at a recent political event (and self-confessed “Angry Young Tweeter”) reminded me, no-one is 100% sure until they write on the ballot; so with that in mind I will declare myself 95% certain. I plan to attend events and hear all of the candidates speak, and I hope I can have meaningful dialogues with each candidate to see where our ideas merge or diverge. I am even helping organize an All-Candidates event, one that will hopefully attract a diverse crowd to meet the Candidates. But I don’t think I am going to “declare” who I am voting for right now. I might blog about it before the end of it all, but for now, we’ll hold onto the secret ballot. That said, my regular readers probably know who I am supporting, and you might see a bag sign in my front yard before its all over (if Ms.NWimby will let me).

More important, I want to keep the lines of conversation to all candidates open. For good reason: In a “small town” like New Westminster, politics can be personal, but campaigning shouldn’t be. Political disagreement for me has always represented the start of the discussion, not the end.

Just look at James Crosty. We spar quite a bit on twitter, call each other names and ridicule the hell out of each other’s opinions or ideas. He is usually wrong, of course, but so am I. Neither of us have very good grammar. Yet we always seem to laugh at ourselves as much as at each other, and none of this disagreement has prevented us from shaking hands, sharing a conversation or a beer. I consider James a friend, and even when I disagree with him, I perceive that his only interest is in making his community a better place. We have the same goal, we just see different pathways towards it, and that is what makes our conversations fun. I learn from James, and I hope he learns from me, even if only by cautionary example!

In contrast, I was at an event recently where one of the campaign workers (not, I hasten to add, the Candidate) asked me if I would sign the Candidate’s nominations papers. I said “sure”, and she confirmed I was an eligible voter and lived in New Westminster (-all good-) or if I had signed anyone else’s papers (-uh oh…). You see, a few weeks previous, I had signed the nomination papers for another candidate running locally. The campaign worker’s reaction was like I had spit in her face: a mix of incredulity and disgust. I tried to explain that the person whose forms I signed was good person, running for the right reasons, honest, etc. etc. The campaign worker left in a huff and sent me dagger-eyes for the rest of the event.

It occurred to me afterwards that she should have immediately identified me as a “soft supporter” (I was at her candidate’s event, after all) and turned the charm on to make me feel welcome and important, and try to convince me the merits of her candidate. Instead, she made me feel like an outsider who should be treated with suspicion. Clearly, she did not feel the same about community and politics as I do. Or maybe she just cared more abut the path than the destination. I don’t think she lived in New Westminster.

So I am calling on Candidates, Pundits, Twitterers and Trolls to try to keep it above the belt, try to hold on to your sense of humour. You can take the issues seriously without taking yourself too seriously. The more voters we can get to polls from all sides, the more included people will be, and the stronger a community we build.

I hope to see many of you on May 4th for a real community-building all-candidates event.Then i hope you all vote.

Misogyny and Christy Clark

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Twitter is a world of strange interactions and misplaced meanings, often a result of over-ambitious editing to hit the 140-character limit. Inevitably, meanings and feelings are sometimes misconstrued. So I let the occasional personal insult slide off my back- the price you pay for being in the fray. I get called everything from a fascist / nazi to a commie / pinko, and have been counted among the “New West undesirables”. I get called an idiot (which is not far from the truth) and a know-it-all (which underestimates my brilliance, IMHO). Often, like in that last bracketed clause, it is the result of my lame attempt at sarcastic humour.

Very occasionally (and I only remember doing this twice in 7000+ Twitter exchanges) I have to react and call the person out for launching a personal attack. Interesting that both occasions were people calling me a misogynist for suggesting Christy Clark is not very smart, and may not be fit for the job of Premier of the Province.

“Misogynist” is one of those poorly defined insults that is really hard to react to. Partly because misogyny is common in our society in various forms, but except for a few obvious examples (I’m looking at you, Vatican) it is often subtle and difficult to define. I also recognize that, like racism, misogyny can be personal or can be so culturally/institutionally entrenched in a society that it is almost invisible while being omnipresent. (Kids in the Hall skit: Cop 1 “You ever hear anything about sexism on the force?” Cop 2: “No. I haven’t heard any of the guys mention it.”)

As a bonus, a middle-class white male like me trying to defend against the charge runs the risk of sounding like that person who says “I’m not racist! I know lots of black people!” If you are looking for a better informed and surprisingly nuanced discussion of misogyny, I suggest you spend some time hanging around over on Jarrah Hodge’s Blog. She is a New Westminster- based writer and academic, and provides accessible insight for those of us who don’t commonly think about these things in our everyday lives.

That said, a working definition of misogyny is the dislike, distrust or hatred of women. This can often be expanded into the objectification of women, but I sense that objectification is a result of one of the first three- it is just one recognizable symptom of the attitude, not an attitude in itself. What is not misogyny is dislike, distrust, or hatred of any single woman (unless, of course, you have these feelings because she is a woman, but again, this is more a manifestation of the bigger attitude).

There are people in this world I dislike and distrust. When struggling to think of an example of someone I “hate”, I get stuck on Dick Cheney, but really, I don’t have a lot of time for hate in my life. There is no-one, I can confidently say, that I dislike, distrust, or hate, because of their gender or ethnicity. I try very hard to judge people on their character and ideas, even when (especially when?) I disagree with their ideas. Through trying to understand opposing viewpoints, though thoughtful debate of ideas, is how I learn about the world. Dishonesty in thought or action usually earns my distrust, intellectual laziness usually earns my dislike. Overseeing the wholesale slaughter of 200,000+ innocent people for political ideology and greed and feeling no compunction about it after, as Mr. Cheney did, earns him a little of my scarce hatred.

My dislike (not hatred) of Christy Clark is not about her gender, it is about her lack of thoughtful ideas, her failure to lead, and what appears to be a stunning lack of self-awareness. She may not be a bad person, but she is a bad Premier. In some sense, she is indistinguishable from Bill Vander Zalm – a shilling salesman of simple ideologies with no cogent ideas, nuance in thought, or understanding of complex systems.

A couple of years ago, when she was nominated, I was uncertain what it meant, because I was uncertain who Christy Clark was (relative to, for example, Kevin Falcon or Darth Coleman). I didn’t listen to her Radio Show, and was not dazzled by her leadership run. I really disliked some of the decisions made by Kevin Falcon, so I admit to having some early hope that she would come out of the gate and put her stamp on the Province and differentiate herself from the person she defeated for the Leadership of the Liberals. Maybe she would arrive with a few good ideas to set a practical course for the Province, even stem the tide of shitty news arriving from Ottawa. Alas, over time, she has repeatedly failed to fulfill that early hope.

Actually, I have the same concerns about Justin Trudeau right now. Much like Christy Clark, he is telegenic, and sure seems to speak well to a room of supporters. People who like Justin Trudeau seem to really like him. They say “he is an inspiring speaker- and makes you want to follow him”. I just can’t shake the impression, reinforced whenever I hear him discuss any substantive issue, that he is a lightweight. He has neither the intelligence of Mark Garneau nor Martha Hall Findlay. I suspect Trudeau possesses neither the gravitas to lead our nation on the world stage, nor the intelligence to effectively manage a complicated multi-billion dollar enterprise like our Government. Stephen Harper (as much as I dislike the guy) clearly has both, as does Elizabeth May (not that she will ever have the opportunity) – and it has nothing to do with their gender.

The accusation of my misogyny came after I made a joke on Twitter about the Premier’s education history. But first we need to set up the context. The Premier was making one of those inspirational speeches to the already-converted when she kind-of compared herself to Margaret Thatcher, then turned that inspiration into an apropos-of-nothing and ridiculous criticism ofthe NDP in a demonstration of contrast. I quote (you can hear it yourself by going to the April 9 Episode here and starting at 1:33:00):

[on the topic of Margaret Thatcher] “She was a woman who endured the most withering kinds of criticism any woman – anyone in politics in the last 50 years – has endured, but she never, ever wavered. She stuck to her guns every single day. She pulled that country back from the brink, I would argue, by sheer force of will. 

Everyone around the world knew what Margaret Thatcher stood for. 

Contrast that with the guys were runnin’ against in this election. My opponent was in Prince George, Thursday last week. He was speaking to the Forest Industry, and in his speech he said ‘ya know, forest industry, I think you guys are entitled to reasonable profits’. (chuckle) And I thought to myself when I heard that: ‘what does that mean exactly?’ What’s a ‘reasonable profit’? And who decides what a reasonable profit is? Is it the Government who gets to decide what profit is reasonable for you? And if the Government is deciding what’s a reasonable profit for you, how long until they are deciding what a reasonable paycheque is for you to take home to your family?”

I’ll skip whether there is an implied self-comparison to Margaret Thatcher for now, the point was how the Premier parlayed that into a woefully unintelligent attack on the “guys [she’s] runnin’ against”.

You see, in British Columbia, the forests are Crown land. They are a public resource that belongs to the citizens of BC, just like water, natural gas, and minerals in the ground. When a company makes its profit by extracting and selling a resource that belongs to the citizens of BC, it is specifically the job of Government to determine how much of the profit made from that extraction and sale goes to the Company, and how much goes into public coffers to compensate the citizens of BC for the use of that finite publicly-owned resource. If the company profit is too low, we will not have enough companies deciding to come extract resources here, and the industry (and revenues and jobs, etc.) will suffer. If the profit is too high, then the citizens of BC are not receiving adequate compensation for their finite resource, (revenues suffer without a consummate increase in jobs, future supply is unnecessarily eroded). Where to find that middle ground? “Reasonable Profit” sounds about right to me.

As for the Government deciding what a “reasonable paycheque” is- does the Premier remember that it was she who raised minimum wage in the Province. Yes, the Premier herself, representing the Government, decided what a “reasonable paycheque” is for the lowest wage earners. Don’t get me started on Net-zero mandates for civil service paycheques.

Now, the joke string on Twitter began when someone other than me suggested that perhaps the Premier had to go back to civics class to understand the role of government, or at least first year Political Science. I then suggested that maybe this was taught in third year university, because we all know she didn’t get that far.

Har dee har har. It’s 140 characters, what do you want? A Heller novel?

It may not have been that funny a joke, but it sure as hell was NOT a misogynist joke. If she was somehow prevented access to University due to her gender, you might have a case; but she apparently had no trouble getting into three Universities, two of them of the expensive European variety, she just couldn’t pass enough courses to earn a degree.

Now, I’m not saying misogyny doesn’t exist, or that Premier Clark is not the recipient of some criticism that is clearly rooted in misogyny. Just go over to Alex Tsakumis’ blog (but turn off your speakers before you go there- yes- he has auto-start music on his homepage!) and see the language he uses to describe the Premier (and worse, that in the comments strings). I don’t think he hates her because she is a woman – so in his defense the out-of-scale hatred may not be rooted in misogyny- but the language and attitude he uses to criticize her is dripping with a twisted, sexist, misogynistic attitude that turns most thinking people off (and, based on his presence in the media, turns many others on!). This is that fuzzy grey zone of entrenched misogyny that makes self-assessment so difficult- it may not be intentional, and Tsakumis may be blissfully unaware of it, being a white guy like me who never had to deal with misogyny in his own life. Like the old saw about pornography- you might not be able to strictly define misogyny, but you know it when you see it.

When I go back through all of my writings on this blog that reference the Premier (easy to do, go up to the top left corner and enter “Premier” or Clark” into the search engine), I cannot find anything that my middle-class white dude brain would characterize as misogynist. Admittedly, I may be blind to it, but I would love if someone pointed it out to me.

Just as I was not being misandrous when I called Stephen Harper a “Dick” for the way he threw Helena Guergis under the bus at the most politically opportune time (I was instead being profanely critical of a single person’s personality faults). When I call Christy Clark “Premier McSparklestm” I am poking fun at what I perceive to be a carefully cultured but cardboard persona that combines “folksy” charm with the sheen of a well-oiled used car salesperson.

That may be an affect, and effective when shuckin’ to a room of the converted, or when makin’ deals with them folks over in Asia that need our energy and bring us jobs that really, really, you know, support hardworking BC families.

But I want something other than a vicious sales job when I choose a Premier of the Province. I want to see honesty, an ability to understand and relate complex problems, not bullshit simple solutions, an understanding that the entire world actually exists in that big fat grey zone between “Socialists” and “Free Enterprise”, not in some epic battle between them.

I want someone smart. And Christy Clark isn’t that.

The Wrong Tool for the Job

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Yeah, the Pacific Carbon Trust is crap.

It is a poorly conceived and brutally executed waste of taxpayers’ money, invented and mismanaged by a government that is either willfully corrupt or stunningly incompetent. But that doesn’t mean Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by the burning of carbon at a rate that the planet’s biosphere cannot buffer is not an issue that Governments need to take immediate measures to address.

I was amongst those whinging about the Pacific Carbon Trust years ago, and I was frankly shocked to see how close the Auditor General report paralleled my criticism of the program. The gist, repeated ad nauseum by my strange political bedfellow at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, is that cash-strapped cities and school districts are forced to pay money to Encana and other multi-national corporations to do things they would have done anyway, to create the illusion that Government operations were “carbon neutral”.

There was some flawed thinking from the onset, even if there were good intentions. Creating incentives to reduce the carbon impact of government operations was a good idea. Putting a price on carbon use is also a good idea. Causing government operations that cannot meet “zero carbon” goals to invest in offsetting activities may also a good idea, if well executed. Forcing every government entity to buy their carbon offsets from the same “Crown Corporation” run by entrenched kleptocrats was a terrible idea.

Giving these government entities access to a within-the-Province, one-stop-shop offset isn’t in itself a bad idea, but forcing them to purchase their offsets from that singular entity changes the game. The entity no longer has to compete on the burgeoning global carbon market. It knows it has buyers (actually, the more Government policy discouraged other carbon reductions, the more customers it will have!), it’s only problem is finding sufficient sellers to fill the need. That is not a healthy way to run any market. This is the same flawed market that makes it a bad idea to allow “free enterprise” to run a health care system: when your customer can’t say no, why provide a quality product or price your product fairly?

Well, I guess it works for the Mafia. but who wants to be their customer?

Worse, Municipalities that had their own internal carbon-reduction projects could not use their own carbon-offset money to fund them. For example, let’s imagine the New Westminster School Board decides to build one of their schools (stick with me here!) to be truly carbon neutral – ground-source geothermal with ATES, solar thermal water heating, and non-fossil electricity. That will cost more (up front, anyway) than running a gas boiler, but will result in real greenhouse gas reductions. At the same time, they are still burning carbon for their vehicle fleet and in their older buildings, so they need to buy offset credits. The School Board are not permitted, by law, to apply the cost of implementing those carbon savings from their new school to offset the carbon produced by their own legacy systems. They must instead buy those credits from the Pacific Carbon Trust.

That’s asinine.

This is nothing new, this has been going on for quite a while, and people much smarter than me have been saying for quite some time that the Pacific Carbon Trust is a piss-poor way to manage government carbon offsetting. Only now, when there is a hugely unpopular government heading for a wood-chipper election and the Auditor General report on the Pacific Carbon Trust Comes out, does the media pay any attention to the fiasco.

Unfortunately, much of this criticism from “conservative” parts of the conversation suggests that this is an example of how the entire idea of pricing carbon, from carbon taxes to offsetting schemes to the very idea of reducing emissions is a waste of time and “hard earned” taxpayers money.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Some go so far to point out that “prominent environmentalists” like Dr. Mark Jaccard are highly critical of the Pacific Carbon Trust, without making clear that Dr. Jaccard argues vehemently that we need to be doing more, not less, to deal with our greenhouse gas output, and the Pacific Carbon trust is not a failure primarily because it cost the taxpayers money, but because it failed miserably to do the thing we were paying for it to do.

(side point – calling Dr. Jaccard a “prominent environmentalist” is about as ignorant as calling Albert Einstein a “noted physics advocate” or Rene Leveques a “well-known Nordiques Fan”. Dr. Jaccard is a highly respected Nobel Prize winning scientist whose research has global impact and whose area of study is the one topic the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is most ignorant of- Economics.)

So let’s make things clear: anthropogenic global warming is still happening. Actually, it is happening faster than we in the scientific community expected. The IPCC worst-case scenario projections for atmospheric carbon, surface temperatures, ice loss, ocean temperature and pH changes, and sea level rise have all been exceeded in the last 5 years. the economic and societal costs of this are going to be monumental unless we do something really soon to manage the issue.

The Pacific Carbon Trust may be the wrong tool for the job, but this doesn’t mean the job no longer needs to be done!

Tunnel to Nowhere

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

Last week a few friends and I dropped by the Ministry of Transportation’s open house on the future of the Massey Tunnel.

MoT is currently doing “public consultations” on which flavour of tunnel fix/replacement the people like best, following the announcement by soon-to-no-longer-be-Minister-of-Transportation Mary Polak announcement that the tunnel replacement is the next critical piece of transportation infrastructure that needs to be built. Or, to translate roughly: screw you Surrey and UBC/Broadway, we are doubling down on dumb road building ideas from the last century.

At the consultation meetings we were told there would be 5 options for the future of the tunnel:

Option 1:

 Fix the Tunnel we have: Upgrade the lights, air-moving, emergency, and other mechanical systems (which are archaic, being built at about the same time as Sputnik, and hardly upgraded since). This would also involve a seismic upgrade of the tunnel to modern standards (and a young engineer in the room assured me this was very feasible, but would not provide a cost), and upgrades to the adjacent intersections at Steveston Hwy and Highway 17.

Option 2:

Replace with a Bridge: This would involve placing a bridge essentially on top of the existing tunnel footprint (again, I was assured they could do this, and who am I to doubt Engineers?). The suggestion was a cable-stayed bridge of similar design to the Port Mann 2, and make no mistake: this bridge will “provide increased capacity for all users”, although no specific lane count was provided.

Option 3:

Replace with a new Tunnel: This would presumably mean digging a new tube adjacent to the exiting one, and one again no lane counts were provided, but “increased capacity” is offered. Tunnels are generally considered to be much more expensive to engineer than a bridge, especially in loose substrates (and this substrate is as loose as they get), so I’m going to go ahead and say this idea is dead in the water (excuse the pun).

Option 4:

Twin it: This would involve doing both Option 1 upgrades to the existing tube, and building another bridge or tunnel next to it to achieve “capacity increase” goals. This is the literal lipstick on the pig option that will not satisfy anyone, as the cost savings in building a 4-lane bridge over an 8-lane (note- my numbers, not theirs! They won’t talk about lane counts!) cannot possibly be more than the cost saved by upgrading the existing tunnel. If they are feeling flush, they will take Option 2, if they are frugal, they will take Option 1, this compromise is unlikely to be Goldilocks’ choice. Dead in the water.

Option 5:

Far-off Sibling: As opposed to twinning in the same spot, this option would keep the tunnel and build another crossing elsewhere: not twins, just siblings. No way Richmond is going to go for this, and the same cost argument for Option 4 exists. Dead in the water.

The other argument for the bridge is, of course, removing a perceived impediment to harbour travel in the Lower Fraser River. Currently, the River is dredged to 11.5m depth (at considerable expense) to allow Panamax ships to pass during most river/tide stages. This won’t be quite enough for fully laden liquid bulk carriers that want to bring Jet Fuel to South Richmond (they will need to be only 80% laden to pass safely).

Suggestions that the River will soon be dredged to “New Panamax” depth of 18m are foolishly optimistic, considering the cost, engineering and environmental challenges that would face anyone attempting to modify the Fraser River that way. Six extra metres of sand for a 250-m-wide path over 30km is what is technically called one hell of a shitload of sand. It would move the saline wedge of the river tens of kilometres upstream, well past where Delta and Richmond farmers draw water to irrigate and harvest crops. I can’t thin of what it would do to fragile salmon stocks or endangered sturgeon. This is a crazy pipe dream. Besides, the Port’s business model is no longer taking things on and off of ships, it is developing real estate for truck warehouses. Why would the Port be interested in spending their own money in dredging rivers when they can enjoy the subsidy of asphalt roads.

The missing point during these consultations was raised several times during the Q&A session: there were no costs mentioned. Not even order-of-magnitude estimates were provided, or “high-medium-low” scaling of costs related to each alternative. Which makes the whole consultation thing a little premature. How can we (the taxpaying road-using public) meaningfully respond to which is best if we don’t have the price?

“Would you rather eat Kobe Beef or a Stouffers Salisbury Steak? Don’t worry about the price, we’ll tell you later which you chose.”

I’m sure the people of Tsawwassen (especially those planning monumental but short-sighted car-oriented retail development) want the biggest, widest bridge they can get (and no tolls, of course), but if you ask the average British Columbian Taxpayer if they want to spend $250 Million fixing the tunnel or $2.5Billion replacing it, you might get a very different answer! (That said, letter writers to the Delta Newspaper are more nuanced in their positions that a smug North-of-Fraser know-it-all like me might have expected)

A final problem with the entire rush-to-consultation before election production is that they are not being straight-up about the “need”. If the tunnel is old and needs repairs: fix the damn thing. If the river draft is a problem: tell us that and make the Port pay for replacement. However, MoT is suggesting that growing congestion is the real driver, but this is not only untrue, they are using the wrong tool to fix it.

First off, Massey Tunnel traffic is going down, and has been for a while. Part of this is less people are driving and more are moving to the alternatives, another part is that the tunnel only avails you to traffic chaos further north. Traffic can only get so congested before the traffic stops arriving. Before anyone replies with “stunting economic growth” argument – this drop in traffic has happened during a time of unprecedented growth in population, industry, and land value on both sides of the tunnel! I’m not sure Delta or Richmond could have tolerated growth faster than it has arrived in the last decade or two.

Secondly, as was pointed out at the consultation meetings by MoT representatives themselves, the real congestion problem at the tunnel is that the vast majority of the vehicles in it are not moving “goods”, or even more than one person. Single Occupant Vehicles represent 77% of the traffic. By comparison, transit represents 1% of the traffic, but moves 26% of the people going through the tunnel:

…all images courtesy Ministry of Transportation’s glossy
consultation materials, which  I didn’t ask permission to use,
but hey, I’m a taxpayer, so I paid for them. 

The MoT representative even shared the “surprising” point that of people travelling though the tunnel to get to Vancouver proper, more than 50% were on Transit, not driving. I was only surprised that he was surprised. To anyone who pays any attention to transportation trends in the Lower Mainland, this seems obvious. And it isn’t the result of some fluke of statistics, because This is what Vancouver planned! This is the model set out in the Regional Growth Strategy, in TransLink’s long–term planning documents, in the Livable Region Strategy: this is the model for the region! I find it shocking that an MoT representative would be surprised to find alternative transportation planning works in the Province, and there is data to demonstrate that.

Or maybe I shouldn’t, as we still have a Ministry of Transportation that sees the world through the windshield of their car (or their yellow trucks), and the only transportation plan they understand if roadbuilding. This is why the Minister is sitting in her office off of the Langley Bypass (“best idea for a road ever”), making the Mayors of Surrey and Vancouver fight for the few transit crumbs she may feint to toss their way, while boldly announcing billions for roads to nowhere. This is how she feels no shame in proudly declaring the 10-year-delayed Evergreen Line as “on track”, while making up glossy consultation brochures for the next freeway and while failing to provide basic operating expenses to keep TransLink running busses at the level of service they provided 5 years ago…

So go to the MOT site and fill out the survey they have running until April 2.

Tell them to build the alternatives (light rail or other transit South of Fraser, restoring funding to TransLink, replacing the real goods movement choke point in Greater Vancouver: The 104-year old one-lane Westminster Train Bridge) and they might see the need for this tunnel replacement go away.

Let’s fix the tube we have, and move on to solving real problems.

Envision 2032 Survey

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Some of you may remember the Envision2032 event that took place last November.

It was a two day event where Day 1 included a collection of inspiring and informative talks on the topic of Sustainability, and one random blovator rambling on about Richard Nixon or something.

Day 2 was a more interactive event, where people talked in round-tables about a variety of topic areas, and described how a sustainable community looked to them. This was the first step in a longer process being run by the City’s Planning Department to develop a community sustainability framework.

As described by Mark Allison, Senior Planner for the City, the sustainability framework that will result from this process, “Envision 2032”, will create a “lens” through which future plans, policies, practices and projects will be viewed. This will become a major guiding document that will impact, potentially, every decision made in the City for the decades to come, so it is, uh, kind of important that we get it right.

Coming out of that initial kick-off and early consultations, the City has now developed some draft “Description of Success” (DoS) statements. These are broad, visioning statements the essentially answer the question: what are the characteristics of a sustainable community?

The City is now asking stakeholders (and if you live or work in New Westminster, that means you) to review and comment upon those DoS statements. And to do so, they have set up a Survey Monkey survey, which you can access here:    www.surveymonkey.com/s/envision2032DoS

You only have until March 31st to fill those surveys in, so please go to it soon!

Note the survey is broken up into 11 policy areas, some will no doubt be more interesting and important to you than others, so don’t feel you need to delve too deeply into every single one. If you are a wonk like me, you might want to spend a few hours deliberating over this stuff, but if you just want to be heard, pick and choose the parts where you think you can contribute. As you will see, you could spend hours doing this survey, or be out of there in 10 minutes. It’s up to you.

Rather like people who say “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about who wins”, I say if you do not take a bit of time early on in a processes like this, you have lost some of your argument when you then whinge about the results of the process. Blanket disagreement with the statements is a valid form of comment, but it might be more useful if you actually take the time to describe better statements, or point out where the statements are flawed. Of course, if you agree with them, then also say so! Remember, democracy is when decisions by people who bother to show up.

Rarely, for me, I am going to reserve my comments until the survey period is over, so as to not poison the well. I suspect if you bother to read my blog (Hi Mom!) you either agree with me, or strongly disagree with me on these topics, so why would I try to change your mind, or give you fuel for the fire (respectively) prior to your going over to the survey and completing it yourself?

In the meantime, I have already done my survey, but will provide a bit of more informed opinion here after the 31st, and after I do a bit more research:

Climate keeps on changing

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

There have been a couple of intersecting stories recently relating to how our Federal Government is dealing with the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Cynics say they are doing nothing about it, but I counter they are taking a strong, nuanced, and multi-faceted approach to the issue; one common to theocratic Petro-States the world round.

They are lying to the public, and then making sure no-one on their payroll can call them on the lie.

First the lie part.

You might remember last month when that most Orwellian of federal officials, Minister of “Environment” Peter Kent, suggested that Canada is making real progress, and is already half way to meeting our 2020 Greenhouse Gas targets as set out in Copenhagen Accord in 2009.

The Copenhagen target was based on emissions we put out in 2005. Here is the Government’s own data on GHG emissions (in Million tonnes of CO2 equivalents):

2005 (the date upon which targets are hung): 740 Mt
2010 (the most recent data provided by the government): 692 Mt
2020 (the target): 607 Mt

Now, I’m a geologist, which basically means I’m not so good at math, but I’m pretty sure 692 is NOT half-way between 740 and 607. But it gets worse.

Reading through the Ministry of Environment report, you can see that much of the reduction up to 2010 is a result of the recession that hit in 2008 (which I don’t see the Harper Government taking credit for…). Much of the rest is a result of this little nugget:

“ For the first time, the contribution of the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector to achieving Canada’s target is included in our projections.”

So, they have fudged the numbers going forward to include landuse changes. That may be a valid way to count net GHG impacts, but introducing it halfway through makes it look like something has changed when, in reality, nothing has!

Even with this fudging and the fortunate (in hindsight) global recession, the report does not project that Canada will meet its target of 607 Mt by 2020. See Table ES-1 where it shows emissions since 2010 have been creeping back up after the recession, and we will be putting out 720 Mt per year in 2020. This is a 2.7% decrease from 2005 numbers, but not half-way to 607 Mt. Not even close.

Of course, the problem with telling lies is that someone might call you on it. It is one thing if this is a political opponent (you can dismiss it as partisan bickering, who in Politics “owns” the truth?). It would be something different if those people work for the Government, especially if they are the people who collect this data. So in true theocratic Petro-State style, the Harper government has a three-prong attack against science:

First you stop new science from happening:
Then you stop existing scientists from talking.
Then you limit access to historic science.

Eventually, the facts hit the memory hole, and there is nothing to stop the buddies who funded your unlikely rise to power from re-writing the laws of the land for a singular, psychotic, self-destructive purpose.

How long can this go on?

Environmental Forum – debrief

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

In the end, it all went remarkably well!

It started as an idea in the mind of NWEP member and consciousness-raiser Virginia Ayers, and after much hand-wringing, many meetings, and an alignment of stars, last weekend’s Environmental Policy Forum turned out very well, in spite of some last-minute organizational spackle application!

 The opening phase of the event, where people were asked to present ideas, concerns, issues and post them on out tack boards went well. In hindsight we could have stretched this time out, as the interactions in front of the board were happening well ahead of our more formal discussions. It was the meeting of minds and people during this early phase that made the rest of the day successful and, “primed the pump” for greater in-depth discussion.

Although not every topic on the bard made it to the table discussions, NWEP data-cruncher Peter McMartin has already entered all of the post-it note comments into a database, and is working out how best to make a searchable or otherwise suitable display of the data. So the ideas are not lost, and may form the nucleus of future discussions. Be sure the NWEP will refer back to them when looking at future events.

Once all the ideas were up on the boards, a furious voting period ensued, when all participants were asked to vote for their “top pick topics”. The facilitators high-graded the highest-vote topics (and categories of topics) and made up 5 roundtables for discussions. The topics that rose to the top were and interesting combination of the usual New Westminster issues, and hot topics of the day:

Transportation (and dealing with traffic pressures on New West)

Food Security (GMO crops, pesticides, local and organic food)

Solid Waste (details around, and alternatives to, waste incinerators)

Green infrastructure (building codes, reducing the impact of our built environment, carbon tax)

Air Quality (especially impacts from all truck through-traffic, and the expansion of coal ports).

I was, unfortunately, running around doing other things (see below) and was not privy to all of the discussions that ensued. Word-of-mouth has some relatively benign and positive discussions where it was easy to forge a common position (i.e. food security) where other topics (I’m looking at you, Transportation) resulted in a more complex discussion, and many counter-points raised.

There were a few common themes that tied many of the topics together. Many touched on climate change, the “transportation” theme clearly interacted with “air quality” when talking about truck traffic, and “air quality” concerns were obviously related to the trash incinerator topic. This (I hope) clearly demonstrated than sustainability is a complex topic, and easy answers are hard to find, as every change in one are impacts other areas in sometime unforeseen ways. Hence the need for “systems thinking” when we approach these complex problems.

However, the one overarching theme, the one that each of the groups included in some way in their report-out, was the need for more education on every issue. This included us, as citizens, needed more education on the impacts of the various waste-to-energy technologies, and it meant more education of the general public on the hows and whys of Port approval for projects that impact the greater community, and on the impacts of vehicle exhaust on our health. As an NWEP member, this was one of my take-aways from the event- people want to be better informed on issues, and the NWEP can help with that role.

And, last but not least, the four candidates vying for our Votes in May seemed to be pleased with the event. They had ample opportunity to hear from a wide breadth of the electorate. We had a good turn-out considering it was a warm, sunny weekend day in March, and maybe they would have liked to have spent those couple of hours door-knocking, but they were all game to a rather free-form discussion. They were all provided an opportunity to interact with the discussion groups and to provide a short speech afterwards.

One bonus was that our local community web-based TV volunteer group NewWest Dot TV was there to film and live-stream the event. This provided the opportunity during the relatively dead-air time of roundtable discussion for each of the candidates to be interviewed by some clown in a cheap suit. Clearly the clown was out of his element doing interviews, having both a face and a voice more suited for newspapers, but the candidates were great, providing concise and clear answers to his rather simplistic and idiotic questioning (starting about 45 minutes into the live stream now visible on the Newwest.tv website).

Interviewing Clown, Patient Candidate

Thanks to the NewWest.tv folks, the reporting out of the tables discussions, and the short speeches by the candidate are also view-able, for them that couldn’t show up. The NWEP will also be “reporting out” over the next month or two on their website. I have no idea what it will look like, but stay tuned!

Personally, I had a great time at the event, and thought it went really well. Because I have a loud voice, I was asked to emcee the proceedings, which with a successful event like this, allows me to receive lots of kudos from the happy participants. Appreciated, but I really only helped a little with a few tasks them yapped loudly at the crowd. This event was the brain child of Ginny Ayers, and between her incredible idea-generation and problem solving, and Karla Olson’s boundless energy and ability to get things done, about 90% of the entire project was managed. I’d also like to thank Andrew Feltham, Reena Meijer Drees, Kathleen Somerville, Antigone Dixon-Warren, Virginia Bremner and Mary Wilson for being conversation-facilitators at the individual tables, and to Alex, Peter, Anna, and probably a few people I am forgetting, for helping with the set-up & tear down and all the other tasks that made it happen.

And especially thanks to the 40+ random New West folks from all walks of life who showed up on a sunny Saturday to make for a fun conversation.

NWEP Environmental Policy Forum

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.
Tomorrow, the New Westminster Environmental Partners are trying a bold experiment in grassroots environmental policy development. I have been privy to some of the organizing, and have been asked to act as an MC and facilitator at the event. However, I have been amazed to watch other NWEP members put this thing together, and come up with, what I think, is a remarkable plan. 
The genesis of the idea is the upcoming (not yet officially begun!) election (even though it has not yet been called), and we already know who our local Candidates will be. The NWEP could get together in our group and come up with some policy ideas, raise holy hell about a specific issue or two, but how do we know we are representing how the Community really feels about an issue?
Was there some way we could poll the “environmentally engaged” populace and get ideas? Since our budget is too small to get Ipsos on the phone, one of our members had the idea for this forum.
The event is envisioned as an exercise in grassroots policy development, with the aim to encouraging lots of lively discussion and sharing of ideas. Fitting with the NWEP’s mission, the main theme will be “environmental sustainability”. However, the topics will be generated by the citizens who show up, not by the NWEP board.
Of course, we can anticipate what some if them will be (transportation, coal terminals, climate change?) but who knows what will come up in the early part of the event when we ask people to post their ideas and concerns?
After a short period or idea collection and a voting mechanism to choose the “hottest” topics, we will break the room up into several smaller groups. Each of the smaller groups will flesh out the idea at that station. Again, NWEP people will be there to help the conversation along, but it will be the participants doing the talking, and the NWEP will be doing the record keeping and note taking.
This will be the fun, dynamic part. I frankly have no idea where these conversations are going to go. I anticipate some topics (LNG comes to mind) will draw a wide breadth of opinions, and the goal will not be to argue and debate the merits of opposing positions, but to find the common ground – the essential underlying ideas or philosophies where agreement can be found (even if the details differ), or even where the real friction rests- the point where people cannot agree.
Either way, the discussion will no doubt create an interesting record of the community’s concerns, documentation of where the community conversation and the level of education that the community has on some of these (obviously controversial) topics.
The Candidates who have agreed to attend (listed in politically-neutral alphabetical order here: Hector Bremner, Judy Darcy, Paul Forseth and Terry Teather) will NOT be taking part in these discussions, but will instead be circulating around the room, eavesdropping, hearing the conversations, and no doubt taking notes. Because only after we do this community conversation and each group gives a very brief report out of the results of their conversation, will the Candidates be asked to comment on what they heard, what they know about the issue, what their feelings or their position is on that topic.
The hope here is that the candidates get to hear what the people are saying, then report back that they have heard the concerns of the citizens. In a perfect world, we would like to think that the candidate who is successful in May will take those ideas to Victoria, and be they in Government or Opposition, they can speak clearly with their community’s voice.
I was explaining this to a politico I ran into in town today, and he asked “why would candidates agree to show up just to listen? Can’t you give them more time to talk? ”
So to counter the cynicism of that mindset, I am glad to report we at the NWEP told the candidates what the format was, that their speaking part of the event was going to be relatively short and late in the event, but for the first hour, they were going to be listening, and all of the candidates agreed to attend. I think this speaks to the quality of local candidates we have.
So I am excited, if a little nervous. I honestly have no idea how this will turn out. If it goes great, we may have a new model that can be adopted for other policy areas (economic development? Education? Health Care?). If it goes less than great, we will at least create a written record of the conversation and have a better understanding of where the community stands on various environment and sustainability topics. As we all spend so much time in our own policy/political bubbles, staring inwards at our own ideas, we can all benefit from sharing ideas with the broader community, even if it means we have to hear ideas we don’t agree with. Actually, specifically because may hear ideas we don’t agree with.
Also, the event will be recorded by the good folks at NewWestTV, there may even be a webcast on the day of, (I have no idea if this is technically possible!). Also, the NWEP will collect the conversations and condense them into a document that will be published on our website before the election writ is dropped.
So , I hope to see you there! I’m a scientist by training, and some the funnest parts are when you don’t know what the results will be, but you just throw the switch and collect the data, and let the numbers fall where they will.What could possibly go wrong? 
Sapperton Pensioners Hall- 318 Kearey Street- Saturday, March 9, 1:00pm to 3:30 pm.

Digging Deeper

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

I love it when I agree with the people I am disagreeing with.

Chris Bryan, the Editor of the New West News Leader, is building a reputation for some compelling opinion pieces. This week, he definitely hit that mark with his column entitled “New Westminster’s traffic discussion must dig deeper” .  It is compelling because I can agree and disagree with almost every idea in the column.

The essential question (if Bryan will afford me the benefit of paraphrasing) is: “How long can New Westminster resist the paving over of our neighbourhoods to service the cities on our borders?”

My simple answer is as long as we are here. Because what is the alternative?

Yes, Surrey (pop 468,000) and Coquitlam (pop 126,000) would love it if New Westminster (pop 68,000) would get the hell out of the way and allow their residents to get from house to work or shops quicker. I would argue that is firmly in the category of “not our problem”.

Douglas Adams, in my second favorite piece of absurdist writing, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy discussed the idea of building freeways through people’s homes:

“Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.”

This was just as relevant to Arthur Dent’s house and his planet, which were (spoiler alert) both destroyed to make way for bypasses, as it was to Jane Jacobs in Washington Square Park (spoiler alert) which she helped save along with the soul of Greenwich Village and New Westminster in 2013.

I’m not sure why we, in New Westminster, the first City in British Columbia, the former Capital of the Colony, and the original heart of the region, should give a rat’s ass what upstart suburbs like Coquitlam and Surrey need, now that they have built huge communities of sprawling auto-oriented neighbourhoods whose very economic survival relies on their expanding populace having an unfettered ability to drive through the New Westminster community – through our very neighbourhoods.

It isn’t our intractable resistance to plowing over our City that got them into this mess, it is their continued choice to develop on the assumption that we would eventually plow our City down to accommodate their needs.

Yes, The Strange Case of the Bailey Bridge is a great example of how New Westminster concerns itself with preserving its character and historic neighbourhoods instead of sacrificing everything we are to allow Coquitlam to build (to quote Chris Bryan) “a rapidly growing big-box retail area, and… the redevelopment of Fraser Mills into a residential community housing thousands of new drivers poorly served by transit.”

Perhaps a better example is the history of Braid Skytrain Station. Coquitlam was given the opportunity, back in the 1990s to have SkyTrain service to Maillardville. Fears of the “CrimeTrain” and density caused Coquitlam to resist rapid transit in their most historic neighbourhood, and the line and station were moved to more forward-thinking (and more historic) New Westminster.

By their own preference, Coquitlam instead got 8 lanes of Highway 1, and 6 horribly congested lanes of Lougheed Highway in Maillardville. They are now afraid that 7,500 people living in Fraser Mills will be the gigantic strawpile that breaks the back of their community. It may dump too many cars across their shiny new overpass into the traffic quagmire of their own (terrible) planning. A 4-lane Bailey Bridge and overpass looming over Sapperton will surely afford them some temporary relief, but only by pushing the traffic pinch point, idling pissed-off drivers and livability impacts a few hundred metres into New Westminster neighbourhoods.

These bad planning decisions were not made by New Westminster- in fact we were not even consulted on them. Why should we suddenly acquiesce to their unanticipated “needs”?

So Coquitlam is willing to finance the slow destruction of our 150-year-old City? Thanks, but no thanks. Their generous offer only makes us enablers.

Instead, New Westminster is taking the principled, responsible stand. We are leading the region in building a compact, transit-friendly, sustainable community. We are developing a Master Transportation Plan that builds on our current strength as the Municipality with the second-highest alternative transportation mode share in the Province (excuse the emphasis, but this is a pretty big point!). We are making it easier for people to live, work and shop in the same community. We are building mixed commercial-residential developments on SkyTrain lines. We are increasing density, and are taking risks building office space and investing in community amenities.

For those who must move across the region, we are making it easier to do so through transit, through cycling, through car-sharing. We are making genuine efforts to reduce our community’s load on Coquitlam and Surrey roads. The results are demonstrated in our region-leading alternative mode share, and we are aiming to do better!

So do we need to “dig deeper”? Hell yes. We all do. We are facing major growth, climate, and economic challenges. In New Westminster, that means we need to have cojones to say to our neighbours that their car-driving problems are a result of their poor planning, and we are terribly sorry, but you are not going to fill our community with pavement to solve them.

If Coquitlam wants to put 7,500 residents in Fraser Mills, they had better figure out a way to move them around that doesn’t include cars passing through Braid and Brunette.

If Surrey needs a billion dollars to expand rapid transit to serve their growing population, we will be the first to step up and advocate to senior governments on their behalf to get them the transit system of their dreams. But if they want to spend that billion dollars to expand a freeway bridge into the heart of our City, they will have a hell of a fight on their hands.

We are ready, Chris. We are ready to help the region move forward and fulfill its Regional Growth Strategy, its Regional Transportation Plans, its Sustainability Plans.

It may look to them like we are “dug in”, but we in New Westminster are actually leading. Maybe it is they who need to dig deeper.

Independence

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

With the Provincial election just around the corner… Oh, no wait, it is still months away despite an unofficial and unaccounted campaign that has been running for almost a year… the local candidates are lining up as expected. The four parties we can all name have New Westminster candidates that fit their party’s brands very well (depending on whether you agree with my rantings below, this is not necessarily a compliment), and then there’s the spectre of an independent candidate running.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: I am a local candidate voter. I don’t belong to any Party. I have voted for candidates from pretty much every party, from the Reform Party of Canada to the Marijuana Party, but I don’t remember ever voting specifically for a Party in an election.

As a natural critic (some would say whiner), my political opinions have tended to veer to the political left when there is a more conservative government in office, and towards the political right when there are more progressive governments. Taking on-line opinion surveys meant to test “what party fits you best” tends to stick me right in he middle of the Green Party platform, but that is mostly because I think that shitting in our own nest is probably a bad idea.

When it comes to candidates, however, I want to meet the candidate. Call me old-fashioned, but I think the Westminster system of representative democracy is built on the idea that we, the constituents, select someone to represent our community’s interests at the Legislature, not a person to represent a Party in our community.

This is, of course, one of the bigger problems with the current Conservative Party of Canada, who have ramped up the Party-uber-alles philosophy of governance that so irritated Stephen Harper when the Liberals did it that he helped create a new Reform Party specifically to fight it. At this point, the most frustrating part is that Harper is so damn effective at being what he used to hate. Not a single Conservative MP can find even the slightest flaw in any piece of legislation the Party has created. So you end up with situations like local Conservative MPs explaining that closing a local Coast Guard base will make our coast safer instead of challenging their own party to make better choices for their constituents.

This situation has different effects during the election cycle. Last Federal Election, it was the curious case of the missing candidates. Why would a candidate in a riding where one Party has a significant majority bother to show up for all-candidates meetings? To hear the concerns of constituents? (pause for laughter). When the MPs role is to represent the Party to the riding, and the party platitudes platform is on the TeeVee, why bother showing up and risking saying something inappropriate? Why bother meeting your constituents? You might disappoint them!

I suggest the problem with Party Politics is the Party itself, and the power vested in the Party. The fact our current Federal Government refer to themselves (and force the Civil Service to refer to them) as “The Harper Government” more than the hopelessly old-school “Government of Canada”, shows that the Parties understand their Power, and are willing to put themselves, their name and brand, above that of the Country they are trusted to run.

So if the problem is the power of the Party, then maybe we should consider what the Party system gives us, and how we could do without it. Parties make voting “easier” for those not interested in learning who they are voting for. This is because they create a ready-built campaign machinery to keep the entrenched in power. Parties provide a central funding pool with which to purchase advertising to smear their opposition get their message out. They also make the first-past-the-post system so effective at giving a group with 37% of the popular vote an absolute majority to do what they like in Ottawa for 5 years.

Worse, the system results in too many people holding their noses while they vote for a person or a party they don’t necessarily like, because it is better than the alternative. This, more than anything else, is the reason so few people bother to vote anymore: there is increasingly little to vote for. In our hyper-cynical age, more people will show up to vote against something than will to vote for something. Parties leverage this cynicism and stoke it through negative advertising. (This is why I predict, even without the NDP investing in negative advertising, Premier McSparkles is her own negative ad, and there will be an increased turnout this Provincial election over the previous one).

So what is the alternative? Independents?

I would love to see a system where we only have independents – where the entire Party system and its funding mechanisms are abolished. Follow me for a bit here.

At election, we send 308 independent local representatives to Ottawa to sit in the House of Commons. Yes, many candidates will align on topics and form defacto parties around certain issues, but without the whip system and without the centralized funding mechanism, there will be no reason for an MP to not vote freely on a different issue. In the inevitable horse trading of votes in the House, the representative will only have to answer to their constituents. Not to a party, not to a leader, and certainly not to a mid-level political hack called a “whip”. The only thing that will influence their re-election chances is how well their community feels they were represented.

Many people smarter than me have mentioned how effective Elizabeth May is as an MP. There are several reasons for this: she is a student Parliamentary Democracy; she is damn smart; she works her ass off; and she is a true believer in Democracy as a Principle, and as a way to solve problems. However, much of her power is also a result of her unique position of being effectvely an independent who can still use the mechanisms built up to support the Party System.

So how to we break down the Party systems that separate us from representative democracy? We make Parties and their economic models illegal. At election time, everyone runs as an Independent, with only local funding and organization. When 308 independents are sent to Ottawa, their first job would be to select a Prime Minister, a deputy PM, and a Speaker. Those three then create a caucus, drawn from the MPs in the House and (this is not as shocking as you might think) unelected experts in various fields. Only elected MPs get a vote in the house, but every vote is a free vote, and the majority of the house can lose confidence in the Government Caucus only with a majority vote on a confidence motion.

Oh, there are problems with this idea. Some suggest lobbying and influence peddling would likely be more attractive, so strict controls would need to be introduced. However, with the current system in Ottawa, one needs only to lobby the PMO, and they will bring along 160 votes. A party-less system would make lobbying individual members a more daunting task, and can hardly make the lobbying situation worse than it is is today.

We would also have to do something about the current Parliamentary Retirement Castle and Party Fundraising Department we call the Senate. but that’s another blog post.

So I have a soft spot for independents. I am an engaged local voter, and like the idea that the person we send to Ottawa or Victoria represents our community there. I even agree with the premise that more Independents make for more effective governance.

Would I vote for an Independent for New Westminster in this upcoming Provincial election? Yes. Keeping in mind that that a candidate’s lack of Party affiliation is no more proof of their capability than their affiliation is. If that Independent was to convince me that they could effectively represent New Westminster, and would work their ass off to assure we are represented, them I could vote for them. But it is a tough job to be that effective in our current system – I’m not sure there are too many Elisabeth Mays to go around.

At this point, I am still a local candidate voter, regardless of whether they represent a Party or are independent. Either way, it should be a good election, as we have strongly motivated candidates.
Game on!