I have thought and
written about issues around several elections by
now – municipal, provincial and federal. This
time let’s start with climate action, my biggest
concern of the moment. This summer I had seen a
few hopeful signs around the climate crisis. I
have written about the Ontario response and
remaining needs. There was an Ontario government
success in reducing CO2 production from
electricity generation, although nuclear power
production remains. But the next challenge for
Ontario is reducing transportation CO2
production (cars, trucks, buses, trains,
planes). Then comes reducing CO2 produced by
heating buildings and CO2 some industries
produce. What about those?
Yes, it was
positive to meet people at my cottage co-op this
summer who drive electric cars and who persuaded
Ottawa to explore converting buses to electric
buses. Yes, I was surprised to find that out of
12 co-op families, 3 have hybrid cars and 2 have
electric cars. Yes, I can now look out over the
bay at Waupoos and see the windmills of Wolfe
Island on the skyline, and I know more have been
built on Amhurst Island over the last year or
so. I can see rural solar panels. Yet climate
and CO2 has been an issue from the beginning of
this century. Climate was on my list of election
issues in 2011. When I look out at the streets
in North York now, they are not like my cottage
coop. Not 1% of cars seem electric and hybrid.
Wind and solar are not a major fraction of
electricity supply. Toronto has the odd electric
bus. No one even talks about moving from natural
gas and propane to geothermal for heating houses
and cottages. We are only just over 10 years
from 2030. The Paris climate agreement target is
almost upon us. So far very little has been
done. There is no widespread sense of emergency.
Yet I have other concerns during this election
period.
Over almost two decades of
refugee work the refugee serving community got
nowhere on allowing a spouse and children –
immediate family – of refugees to immediately
come and join a refugee in Canada. We helped
move the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention and other international human rights
bodies to urge Canada to better ensure rights
and to abandon the dreadful “Security
Certificate” designation for non-citizens and
improve recourse for immigration detention.
Neither has really happened. Some things
happened. Canada has an appeal on the merits of
sorts for most refugee status decisions. But a
formal hearing with due process is still lacking
for everyone who faces deportation to a real
risk of consequential torture or family
separation. And a series of international human
rights cases against individual deportations by
Canada show good due process is needed. Judicial
review by leave is all that is offered, and it
just isn’t good enough when it comes to Canada’s
promise to ensure constitutional international
rights put at risk by deportation. But I should
mention another step forward. Thanks to the
Senate, the recently adopted Citizenship Act
allows all Canadians, including naturalised
ones, to be secure from arbitrary expulsion from
Canada. The Extradition Act still needs a major
overhaul to focus on the UN Model Treaty
elements and good formal independent hearing on
each of the issues. Letting a Minister weigh a
grab bag of rights and overseas political
interests just isn’t good enough. In general,
this election has missed out on showing concern
for a just society where courts put a
priority on the primacy of the Constitution and
on protecting the rights of those before them,
and where the government gives thoughtful
support to international efforts to promote
human rights.
Others have spoken
more eloquently than I about the new dangers
undermining privacy and allowing surveillance. People
end up on lists of names that block air travel –
“no-fly” lists. And there is an undermining of
rights to peaceful protest especially around
environmental issues or issues of pollution from
extraction industries. I have recently concluded
that at this point in human history a
government’s job is to help create non-polluting
sustainable jobs rather than pushing for more of
the historic coal oil and gas industries that
are best left with the last century. The
story of Tommy Douglas shows what a province can
do to encourage employing industries. And there
is scope for co-op legislation that facilitates
worker takeovers or other co-ops to make or
service or supply things – why not co-ops for
community power or even electric cars. Italy has
law to facilitate co-op companies. Where there
is legitimate concern over environmental risk or
pollution, or significant concern by an
aboriginal people, fossil fuels are best left
with the other fossils.
After the election
of the Ford government in Ontario I deeply felt
the inadequacy of a form of democracy where I
cannot vote for what I really want to vote for.
In
that election, although the majority voted for
Liberal or New Democrat members and quite
similar progressive policies, the majority of
legislature seats went to the Conservatives -
Conservatives that overall received fewer votes.
My voting now is overshadowed by my fear of
inadvertently allowing a party I do not want to
succeed win the election, rather than voting for
a party I want to vote for. So, a re-vitalized
democracy is now a much greater priority for me.
I want a form of voting that allows me to vote
for what I want! I could do that in Germany or
Ireland or Australia! In 2011 I wanted
parliament to make big decisions like whether to
go to war or which company gets big contracts.
Now I also want parliament, the elected MPs, to
have more power – at least to decide who is
allowed in their caucus and to call for a
leadership review. The current quasi
dictatorship of the Prime Minister’s office has
to gradually disappear – and not re-appear with
the next election. The Prime Minister has to be
just that – a first among equals.
I want a more
equitable tax system where individual Canadians
get overdue provision for needs like pharma care
and dental care for their tax dollars, and where
banks and other corporations do not get handouts
and bailouts to give CEOs golden handshakes for
errors of judgement and opportunities for
offshore tax evasion. If companies are too big
to fail, make them smaller! Review of taxation
is of little value in itself. It needs to be
directed by what is needed – removing poverty,
developing a robust middle class and avoiding
the accumulation of the major fraction of the
country’s wealth and growth in its economy into
the hands of a tiny minority of the people.
Perhaps reviewing the limitations of liability
to reduce them would help? It is facile to
suggest corporations create jobs. To me
they seem bent on creating as few jobs as they
can and using more robotics and offshore phone
services. Tax breaks for resource extraction
industries make no sense. They can hardly
develop the kind of jobs in Canada that any
responsible government would want to create. How
about big tax breaks for companies installing
and maintaining solar panels or geothermal
energy systems?
I want a
government that at least tries to call out the
best in people. I don’t accept that people in
general are self-serving and looking out
only for themselves. The Buddhist middle way
seems far more human to me than the big push for
the top. My Canada does not have to be the
biggest, best and richest country in the
world. But Canada can call out the best
human characteristics, not the greed, fears and
self-interest. I would be happy to be part of a
society that can distinguish the pursuit of
happiness from the pursuit of wealth and that is
capable of calling greed for what it is. I want
a society where need attracts support and
sharing, and where enough is enjoyed as enough.
Hardly a great thanksgiving moment. I hope but
fear again in this election.