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At first, I thought it was some kind of an almost funny joke, naming a minister of prosperity.

Why not a ministry of magic instead. We could all use some more magic in our lives, to be sure.

Aside from the awkward sound of it, there are technical questions about this ministry, the first being ‘what is the middle class?’. The new minister, Ottawa Vanier MP Mona Fortier, told the CBC that she defines the middle class as “people who feel they can afford their way of life,” people who “you know, send their kids to play hockey or even have different activities. It’s having the cost of living where you can do what you want with your families.”

This is nor very comforting to skeptic. The minister herself does not know precisely who her ministry is supposed to serve.

Minister Fortier could have captured the truth about what the idea behind her ministry really is if she said she was the “minister of more money for most people” with most people is defined as everyone except the very rich and the poor.

The closest thing to a definition of the middle class that I have found, in an admittedly limited search, is based on dividing income into five brackets of 20% increments, and defining the middle class as those who fall in the middle three brackets.

By that definition, you still have to look at it all in terms of regions, because the cost of living varies by geography, and there is an urban/rural divide as well. Then there is the difference between ‘income of families’ and ‘income of unattached individuals’ to use Stats Can catchphrases. An individual making $45,000 might make the grade, a family, not so much. On the high end, a family making over $150,000 in some parts of the country would be upper instead of middle, but in some parts a family needs to hit the $200,000 mark to slip into the upper crust.

Essentially, the Trudeau government seems to think of the ‘middle class’ as a self-defining group, and apparently 70% of Canadians (68% of Ontarians) consider themselves to be part of the middle class. Some of those people might fit the statistical definition of the middle class, and some don’t. The ministry is therefore really about signalling to 70% of the population that the government is so concerned about their ‘prosperity’ that it is willing to spend their money setting up an office devoted to it, with staff, furniture and computers/cellphones etc. Middle class prosperity is so important, in fact, that it even warrants a minister and a limousine (with driver).

To be fair to the Trudeau government, just for a minute, during their first mandate they identified the reduction of poverty as a long-term goal, and Stats Can has developed data on poverty rates. And those rates have dropped in recent years.

As part of that effort, statistical work has been done to identify the poverty line in a systematic way across the country. It is based on how much it costs for food, housing, transportation, etc, and it is the line minimum that a family or an individual would need to comfortably cover all those costs.

According to Stats Canada, 9.5% of Canadian families were living under the poverty line in 2017, the latest year for which figures are available. The income level that defines poverty is based on 2015 incomes, so it would be up to 10% higher now, and it also varies from region to region. The national average for the poverty line, was $37,542 in 2015 dollars for a family of 4, half of that for individuals living on their own. With four years of inflation factored in, it is about $40,000 for a family or 4 in 2019, and $20,000 for an individual. In Frontenac County, where costs are lower than the national average, it might be a bit lower than that.

There has to be a gap between the poverty line and the middle-class line. Families earning $60,000 per year or less, and individuals making $30,000 or less, are by no means middle class in Canada in 2019. These families still drive their kids to hockey, but the money they spend on hockey hurts them, making it difficult to avoid debt. This group, up to a quarter of the families in the country, are those who are one or two setbacks away from slipping towards or over the poverty line. A cut in income, a layoff or an illness that would be manageable for those with a true middle-class income, can be devastating to this population.

This population will benefit from the cuts in income tax rates that have been announced, but only marginally because they are already paying less income tax than those with much higher incomes. Meanwhile, inevitable increases in the price of fuel, food, housing, and municipal taxes all hit this group much harder than those with higher incomes.

As the government devotes their attention to helping those who are doing well to do better, can they not spare a thought for those of us who are struggling to sustain what we have. All of the parties, even the NDP, love the middle class.

It would be really magical if they showed some love for the rest of us as well.

Published in Editorials

When the Speaker of the whose  asked him to withdrw his accusation,, Hillier said that he would “apologise for having to use that language to describe what the government is doing, but I am not going to withdraw it”.

With that he was asked to leave the house for the day.

When contacted later by the News, Hillier said that what brought him to the tipping point was his frustration that the “government is putting its own convenience over the health of so many people.

The latest events came about after the government announced on Monday night that they were going to limit debate on Bill 174 in order to speed up its passage. The bill, which was introduced the day before the Remembrance Day House recess, has only been before the house for a week and is slated for passage in early December.

One of the major concerns Hillier has with the bill is its omnibus nature. It is titled the “Cannabis, Smoke-free Ontario and Road Safety Statute Law Amendment Act.” Late last week, Hillier made a proposal that the Act be split in three, dealing with Cannabis in one Act, Smoke Free Ontario in another, and Road Safety in a third.

Now that the government is limiting debate on the omnibus bill, he is even more determined to oppose their actions.

“The Cannabis bill alone is a transformative and substantive piece of legislation,” he said “involving the legalization of the consumption of cannabis and setting up a cannabis retail corporation. There are many apparent contradictions in the legislation that need to be worked through in the Act. Instead they are planning to ram it through.”

Combining it with a new Smoke Free Ontario Act brings the rules around vaping into the same legislation as cannabis. Hillier has become an advocate for what he calls the “vaping community” and he describes vaping as “arguably the most effective tobacco harm reduction tool,” and he opposes restrictions that will come in when the new Act is enacted.

“The government is saying we would rather you remain addicted to tobacco than find a way to kick the habit,” and he points to the support he has received in opposing the legislation from followers of the website vapingisntsmoking.ca which has generated 7,000 email to the government opposing the new legislation.

The main objection to the Act is that is lumps vaping in with tobacco, which advocates of vaping see as contrary to what vaping is all about.

“Vape shops will be prohibited from displaying vape devices, components or juices, allowing their customers to handle vape products, or test flavours before purchase. This bill places further restrictions on areas of use, and where exemptions are made, those using vape products are forced to share spaces with those using traditional tobacco products” in an article that was posted on his website last week.

“The PC’s [Progressive Conservatives] have a bill in front of the house to mandate cameras on school buses, to prevent people from blowing by the school buses. They included that bill with this legislation to pressure us into supporting it in order to pressure us into supporting the rest of the legislation. It is a cynical move,” Hillier said.

As far as the Cannabis legislation itself, Hillier is concerned about vague wording and apparent contradictions.

“I don’t smoke or ingest cannabis, but I did in the past, just about everyone who is my age did, and certainly I know people who still do. I think the legalislation is long overdue, but the way they are going about this is going to make it very difficult. With few exceptions, the only place where it will be legal to smoke is in people’s own homes. They may not want to smoke in front of their children or other family members. There are a lot of issues here that are not going to be addressed.”

Hillier said that the standing committee that will consider Bill 174 will only be hearing from 28 people across the province, for five minutes each, between Tuesday and Thursday of next week. People need to get their name before the committee by Monday of next week to have a chance to be one of those 28.

Bill 174 will likely receive third reading about a week later.

Bill 174 can be viewed by going to ontla.on.ca clicking on “bills and lawmaking” and following the links from there.

(note - this article has been changed from a previous version which claimed, in error, that MPP Hillier called the government "god-damned liars", in the house,  which was not the case. He did use salty language in recalling the event after the fact to this reporter, but did never did use the word liars.)

Published in General Interest

Those of us who are over 55, have some memory of  Canada's Centennial year. I happened to be a kid living in Montreal in 1967, and as part of their efforts to make the World's Fair, Expo '67, a crowd pleasing success and to make it accessible to Montrealers, there was a family pass available for the entire run of Expo.

I looked it up, and even accounting for 50 years of inflation, the price was indeed pretty reasonable. $35 for adults and $17.50 for children for a seasons pass. For our family the total would have been $122.50 for the season. Allowing for inflation, it would have cost about $850 in 2017 dollars, still a pretty good price for a 180 day festival. We packed a lunch and went just about every day. We wandered about the site, got lost and found, ate soft ice cream, and saw every pavilion, including the Czech and US pavilions which were the best ones, the Czech for artistry and the US for the awe factor, a Geodesic dome with the longest escalator running way, way up into the centre of an open space.

Expo was controversial when it was conceived and throughout its construction, but it was a monumental success for both the City of Montreal and for the country, and between it and the thousands of Centennial arena's and parks that were built that year, the Centennial year was a huge coming out party for the country that had a lasting legacy.

When Canada 150, a prosaic name if there ever was one, came along, I was expecting something to happen, nothing on the scale of the Centennial year, but something to mark the moment in our nation’s history. Federal governments have become pretty good at waving the flag over the last 20 years, calling us the best country in the world whenever they get a chance. They have turned the Olympics, for example, into a patriotic event so much so that Canadian coverage rivals US coverage in its fixation with medal counts by Canadian athletes. But as our 150th anniversary approached, there has been nothing, it was met only with the announcement of a Canada 150 infrastructure program that is indistinguishable from any other infrastructure program that the government undertakes. There is no symbol of Canada 150 other than a stylized maple leaf, no song, no signature event, nothing beyond a bigger show in Ottawa on Canada Day and maybe a few more fireworks.

The shame is that, given the efforts locally to create memorable events this summer in communities around Eastern Ontario and across the country as well, it is clear that there is a desire among the population to mark the occasion.

Certainly in Frontenac County there is such a desire, as the list of Canada Day and Canada 150 events grows and grows.

Perhaps this is a marker of how Canada has developed as a nation of communities that are self reliant, with a federal government that exists in its own remote world, no matter which of the two old line parties is in power.

As we get ready to celebrate Canada Day over the next few weeks, we can look clearly at our successes and failures as a country. The country was built by bringing new people in throughout our history and that is our strength. At the same time we are finally starting to face, for the first time, the cost and continuing fallout from the fact  this country was built upon stolen land, that land remains stolen no matter how much time passes. Reconciliation with the Indigenous, First Nations, peoples in this country is not a tap that can be turned off and on when it is politically convenient, but an extensive, long term project.

If it can be accomplished, it will be a bicentennial project, requiring 50 years of unrelenting effort to achieve.

If that happens, the 200th anniversary will certainly outflank Canada 150 as a year to celebrate, and even the centennial as well.

Published in Editorials

“The closer you come to true proportionality, the more complex it becomes,” speaker Norm Hart told a discussion group gathered in Sharbot Lake’s Oso Hall last week. “(So) you can never achieve true proportionality.”

Hart’s part of the evening was focused on the different voting systems democracies use around the world.

In his talk, ‘Making Every Vote Matter,’ he explained the differences, similarities, strength, weaknesses and nuances of various systems used to achieve proportional representation, ie where the number of seats a party gets in a ruling body is wholly or in part based on the percentage of popular vote.

Hart outlined several alternatives to the current First-Past-The-Post system including the Single Member Party Proportional System, Multi-Member Proportional System, and ranked balloting.

He and his Citizen’s Democracy Forum compatriots advocate the Single Member Party Proportional System whereby all members are still elected and vote but their votes are weighted the portion of the popular vote they receive.

“Under this system, Elizabeth May would get 10 votes whereas each Liberal MP would get 0.9 of a vote,” he said. “It’s not that different from the current system in that we wouldn’t have to change any ridings but it would force members to have to talk to each other.”

He said this system requires a “threshold” of having to elect at least one member and getting 3 per cent of the total vote in order to prevent “fringe” candidates from creating an unworkable parliament.

The second part of the evening was turned over to Wagerville’s own Jerry Ackerman, who has a PhD from Purdue University in agricultural economics.

Ackerman’s presentation was less lecture and more debate stimulation as he and Herb Wiseman of Comer.org led a discussion of how the federal government’s fiscal policies have led to crippling interest payments on a public debt in excess of $600 billion.

Ackerman maintains that when Canada joined the international finance system in 1974, the Bank of Canada stopped funding the government and we began to borrow the needed funds from private banks.

“The consequence of this is that the compounded interest now owed to the private banking system meant less money available for the needed goods and services (hospitals, schools, roads) while the private banks have reaped enormous profits,” he said. “What a scam.”

Ackerman advocates a return to using the Bank of Canada instead of private banks.

“Until recently, most of us assumed that states can’t go bankrupt,” he said. “We have now learned our assumption was illusory.

“What happened in Japan, Asia, Latin American and recently in Portugal, Iceland, Ireland, and Greece can happen in the U.S., Canada, England, France or Germany.

“The decisive factor here is not the absolute level of debt, but the rapid growth of interest burden this debt entails, resulting from compound interest.”

Published in CENTRAL FRONTENAC
Wednesday, 12 April 2017 11:32

Big Pot, and big taxes, will rule the day

When I plant a garden each year, I am free to grow as much lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, squash, peas, beans, or potatoes as I am able to. Sometimes I grow extra and give some away. If I grow more squash than I can eat and my neighbour grows more beans, we can swap. That way we each have more variety of fresh vegetables on our table through the long, cold winter.

No one will stop me from growing 200, 500, or 1000 heads of garlic if I want to. It’s really no one’s business, certainly not the business of the state.

When marijuana becomes a legal plant in just over a year, if the Federal government adheres to its intended timeline, it will be legal to grow marijuana in my garden, along with all the other vegetables and herbs. But while I can grow two dozen basil plants if I want to make pesto, I will only be able to grow 4 marijuana plants. The proposed limit is 4 plants per household. Although I don’t use marijuana myself, I might want to grow it. I grow brussel sprouts, even though I think they taste like ear wax, because they are an interesting plant, climbing up to resemble an apartment building.

I can certainly see why there is going to be a law against selling garden grown marijuana, since the government will want to ensure that an orderly market takes hold in order to keep a safe supply, eliminate the black market and all its impacts, and maximize tax revenue. But in fundamental terms, as long as I don’t sell any of the marijuana I grow, it is not the business of the state what I do in my own garden. If I grow even a little bit and sell it, let the law come and get me, but if I grow a lot and just use it as compost fodder or perfume or rodent repellent, I say “back off government, get off my land”.

In practical terms, I can see why there needs to be some limit on home grown marijuana. If everyone could grow as much as they wanted, the market could be flooded and law enforcement would have a difficult time distinguishing between avid gardeners and those who are growing the stuff to sell it. To my mind, a 20 plant limit would accomplish that.

A lot of corporate money is being invested in the marijuana industry and it is looking for secure market access. There is a lot of money to be made. The corporate interests of this fast developing industry coalesces well with those of government officials who want to find a system for selling and taxing marijuana while monitoring and studying its use.  Limiting home grown marijuana production is but one aspect of this growing corporate culture around marijuana.

What it will do, however, is subvert individual freedom, create a homogeneous product and, in the end could lead to more criminality than a more liberal approach to home production would.

My basic complaint about the 4 plant restriction is based on the perspective that the state should only restrict my behaviour if what I am doing causes harm to others or society as a whole.  I can grow 20 varieties of tomatoes, some to eat fresh, some to preserve, some just to see what they look like, and it is not a concern of the state. Who would it hurt if I grew 20 varieties of marijuana for my own private purposes. If I sell that marijuana, or if I hand it out to students in the school yard, or to anyone under the legal age, that’s a different story.

But merely by growing it I am doing nothing to harm the social order, and I fail to see why the state feels a need to begin counting the plants in my garden.

Published in Editorials

Over his long career as an MP, Scott Reid has seen a lot. As a student of, and advocate for electoral reform he has also seen how the interest of parties in power affect their attitudes to changes in electoral systems.

But, he admitted freely in a phone interview this week that he was surprised when the Liberal government abandoned their commitment to bring in electoral reform two weeks ago.

“I did not see that coming. I did not anticipate they would walk away from it in that way. I thought they were going to take a different route,” he said. “Part of the reason it surprised me was the vehemence with which the Prime Minister insisted there was no way he was going to back down from his promise.”

Reid, who first began studying electoral reform when he was a staff member of the old reform party in 1996 and has been involved in debates around the development of a new electoral system for Canada ever since, said that he did not expect the Liberals would be able to bring in a new system for the next election as promised. He said he thought they would “wait a length of time, and then say we just can’t get there before the next election, and put it off for study in some fashion. I did not think they would abandon it.”

In anticipation of a delay, he had been talking to people and beginning to work on making sure that if a citizen’s assembly was constituted to develop a new system, that it would be done right in order to allow participation on a broad level and would lead to a detailed proposal.

Unlike the Reform Party, The Conservative Party that he represents as MP for Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston takes the position that they will not pursue electoral reform if in power. But they do support the position Reid has pushed for many years, that only by being accepted through a national referendum can any new system be viable for Canada.

To those that say electoral reform cannot pass in a referendum Reid says that 5 referenda on reform have taken place in different parts of Canada since 2000 and 2 have passed.

“Those aren’t bad odds,” he said, “and I just don’t agree with those that say people cannot be trusted to make decisions on complex proposals.”

This puts him at odds with Fair Vote Canada, a group that lobbies for electoral reform but is adamant that a referendum is not the way to bring it about.

Reid believes that if a system is designed that fits the needs of Canada, and it is put out in a straightforward manner to a fair vote, it can pass in a referendum and would be good for the country.

The parliamentary committee, which he co-chaired with NDP MP Nathan Cullen last year, asked the government to develop a system that would attain a defined level of proportionality and would then be put to a national vote. He believes that any new system worth pursuing must make the electoral system a more proportional system than the current one.

“While the Liberal members of that committee did not sign off on our final report, it was not because they disagreed with proportionality. They disagreed with the timing we proposed, which was to get it done in time for the next election. They were not opposed to proportional representation, in principle, as Mr. Trudeau now says he is.”

On February 9th, Prime Minister Trudeau said “proportional representation, in any form, would be bad for Canada” which seemed like a complete about-face from the position he took during the 2015 election and kept to until two weeks ago.

In studying Justin Trudeau’s statements about reform over the years, Reid  says he now thinks Trudeau may have been opposed to reform all along, noting comments made in 2014 and at other times.

“I’m starting to think that he never supported it, which makes his election promise and everything he said over the last 18 months somewhat suspect.”

Still, Reid does not believe that the project of electoral reform is dead.

“It was never put to a vote in Canada before 2000, but it has come up again and again over the last 15 years, and it never goes away completely.”

He noted that in Prince Edward Island, the next election, slated for October 7, 2019 will include a referendum pitting two options against each other.

After twenty years working on the issue, seventeen of them as an MP representing a party that is lukewarm to the idea at best, Scott Reid spent eight months last year travelling the country with a committee of MP’s who were committed to bringing about a change. He then saw the idea tossed aside like a dirty rag two weeks ago.

Yet he still thinks the idea of electoral reform and proportional representation is alive in Canada.

But it may be as hard to predict when that will happen as it was to predict the Liberal complete about-face on the matter that happened two weeks ago.

A series of rallies took place across the country last Saturday opposing the Liberal government’s change of policy.

Published in General Interest
Wednesday, 08 February 2017 12:56

MP Bossio on Electoral Reform

There are a lot of things that could, and have, been written about last week’s revelation that the Trudeau Liberals will not reform the electoral system even though Mr. Trudeau himself repeatedly promised they would before and after his party took power.

But let’s look at what a Liberal MP said.

Mike Bossio was narrowly elected in the new riding of Hastings-Lennox and Addington almost 16 months ago. I don’t know him but from what I’ve and read he is hard working, enthusiastic, and full of zeal to bring about positive change for his constituents. 

Late last week, he published an open letter on the government decision.

He argued that the government should not act on its own to re-write the rules of elections, seeming to favour a more democratic solution, a referendum perhaps, to make that decision.

“There is no consensus on which different electoral system to adopt. For a change of this magnitude, there needs to be much clearer support. If the Liberals, as the majority government, tried to ram through a change of this magnitude with so many competing voices, there would be as much and probably more concern from Canadians.”

Then he argued that allowing the voters to evaluate a proposed system and make the decision through a referendum, would be divisive.

“However, the last thing that Canada needs at this time of international and economic uncertainty is a divisive referendum campaign in Canada pitting us against each other and distracting all of us from what needs to be our top priority – good jobs for Canadians, and growth for the middle class and those working hard to join it.” (Nice pivot to the economy, eh)

If, and this turned out to be too big an if, the higher reaches of the Liberal party has actually been willing to actually work towards seeking a real consensus on a fair system by which members of Parliament are elected, they might have found one. But they did not do so and that is where the lack of political consensus on the matter came from.

Once again we know what we always knew. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives want any part of proportional representation, a system where every vote makes a difference in the outcome. The Liberal and Conservative Parties have traded power in this country for 150 years. They intend to do so for another 150.

Mike Bossio ends his letter by saying, “However, while our electoral system will not be changing in this mandate, this does not mean that there will be no electoral reform” and then goes on to talk about parliamentary reforms, which he knows very well is not electoral reform at all.  And the decision to abandon the project extends beyond “this mandate”. Whether this government lasts 4, 8, or 12 years, it will not reform the electoral system.

I suspect that Mike Bossio, in his more reflective moments, is uncomfortable with the letter he wrote last week.

He should be.

Published in Editorials

Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington MP Scott Reid, co-chair of the special committee on electoral reform, came to the role as someone uniquely suited to the task. He researched electoral systems for the Reform party in the 1990’s, and sat on a parliamentary committee studying electoral reform in 2004 – 2005.

A year ago, as the special committee was being contemplated, Reid said “I think the government has set itself a difficult timeline” given all the legislative hoops that need to be gone through in order to implement a new voting system. He also began what has become a very public fight with the government over his, and the Conservative Parties’, insistence that in order to change the electoral system the public needs to be formally consulted through a referendum.

At the time Minister of Democratic Reform Maryam Monsef said, “the government is committed to a robust consultation and I will not prejudice the outcome of that process by committing to a referendum.”
Later, Government House Leader Dominic Leblanc went further, saying “our plan is not to have a referendum, our plan is to use parliament to consult Canadians.”

A year later, the special committee that was eventually set up submitted a 300 page report to Parliament.
Among its recommendations are three key ones. The first is that a new system be created on one of the models of proportinal representation, wherein the riding system is modified in some way to ensure that the country-wide popular vote for each is reflected in the number of seats that party has in the legislature. For a party such as the Green Party that receives about 5% of the vote, it would mean they would have about 15 seats among the 338 in the house instead of the 1 seat they currently have. The committee did not provide the precise form of proportional representation, leaving that to the government to determine.

This would give the government a wide set of options as there are many variations of proportional representation systems, some of which do not tie the popular vote to seat count very well.  The committee also recommended that whatever system is proposed must score highly on the Gallagher index, a mathematical model that determines how likely a system is to yield a result in which the number of elected officials from each party corresponds to the popular vote.

The third key recommendation is that the new system be subjected to a straightforward referendum, with two  options, the current system and a proposed new system.

Reid said that one of the ways that he promoted the consensus that was eventually developed came through a letter he wrote to other members of the committee early on in the process. The letter pointed that if members of each of the parties’ on the committee stuck to their basic party policies on electoral reform, a compromise was possible.

“Both the Green’s and the NDP had policies in favour of proportional representation, the Conservative Party policy did not specify a preferred system but insisted on a referendum, and the Liberal Party had a policy that only said a new system needs to be developed and implemented,” he said.

The majority, 72% of people who appeared before the committee and supported change, favoured proportional representation, which was also the favoured option in public consultations

In her response to the committees recommendations, Minister Monsef said she was disappointed that the committee had not been able to do what it had been asked to do, recommend an electoral system. She has since backed down from those comments, but the government has said it is not considering a referendum. Also, if and whether a new system is to be developed and brought to Parliament for consideration by them is up in the air.

Reid told the News on Tuesday that it was clear to the committee when they were finalizing their work that their recommendations would not find favour with the government.

“One of the reasons we did not come to a final detailed proposal was that we knew the more specific we were about the system the more opportunity we would give the government to reject it. We thought that it would be less of a risk to leave the details for them to work out, with the benefit of the detail in our report, which looked critically at a number of options,” he said.

He added that he was not completely surprised by the government response.

He said he was surprised, however by the survey that was launched last week with a postcard campaign to every household in the country and through the website Mydemocracy.ca.

“The Minister said she was disappointed that the committee had not been specific enough, and at the same time they sponsor a survey that asks only very general, background questions. I asked the Minister last week to add questions about our concrete proposals to the survey, but that has not happened.”

The survey has sparked controversy since it was launched, and was the subject of a prickly interview on CBC radios As it Happens between Carol Off and the President of the Company that developed the survey.

See editorial And the Survey said ... (Part 2)

Published in General Interest
Wednesday, 07 December 2016 13:39

And the survey says ... (Part 2)

Last week, the governing Liberal Party of Canada received a comprehensive, detailed all party report on electoral reform which presents them with a set of options that they are not willing to undertake, including holding a referendum on electoral reform. In response, their representative to the special committee on electoral reform released a minority report which said that a referendum is not the way to go and that there is not enough time between now and the next election to put a new system in place. Therefore the promise made by Justin Trudeau in the election campaign of 2015,  “if we are elected to form government, this will be the last Canadian election that uses to first past the post electoral system,” cannot be kept.

At the same time, the Minister Responsible for Electoral Reform, Maryam Monsef launched a survey, online and elsewhere, to find out what Canadians think about issues of governance.
I filled it out today. The first bunch of questions makes statements and then asks survey subjects to indicate whether they strongly agree, somewhat agree, are neutral, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree. Later questions make statements and offer yes or no alternatives.

The survey tends to go over the same ground numerous times, which is frustrating. It asks if  eligible voters “should be fined if they do not vote”, and later it asks if “eligible voters should not be forced to vote”. Is this some kind of test to see if we are paying attention? Are they testing the strength of our opinion, or what?

The survey also asks questions that I did not want to answer. For example - “Members of Parliament should reflect the diversity of Canadian society, even if it means putting in place special measures to increase the representation of certain groups.” I don’t think diversity in Parliament, which I wholeheartedly support, should require special measures. What we need is a fair system that removes barriers to participation. If we need “special measures” then we have failed to come up with the best electoral system in the first place. We don’t need tokenism, we need democratic reform.

The survey asks if Canadian’s should have the option to vote online several times. Once it asks is online voting is acceptable even if it makes the voting system less secure, and then it asks if online voting is acceptable even if it makes elections more expensive. It also asks we think online voting would result in an increased turnout.

In fact we have had experience with online voting in this region on a municipal level, and it saves money, and has not resulted in any security issues with the voting system. It also, and this has been a surprise to some, not resulted in an increase in turnout.

In almost all other areas, the survey asks similar questions in different ways. The data analysts who designed it likely have their reasons, but it feels as if we are not being given enough credit for our ability to know our own minds. It feels like a test of our democratic intelligence rather than an opinion survey.

Then, when it is all done, the survey tells us what type we are. We are all either cooperators, guardians, pragmatists, challengers, or Innovators. What this means and why we are being categorized and how this is relevant I do not know, but is comforting that our government has decided to delve into personality types in order to turn consultation into something that feels more and more like a mindless Facebook survey you might fill out to kill time. I will say this, at least they did not assign Lord of the Rings characters to each of the types, but then again that might have been more fun.

The survey also includes an invitation to share results on Twitter and Facebook,  and to “join the conversation online” at #engagedinER or #mydemocracy.

According to the government, the survey has been in the planning stages for several months and has nothing to do with their decision to reject the key recommendations of the committee that they tasked with advising them on how to bring about electoral reform.

However, as MP Scott Reid pointed out, the url Mydemocracy.ca was only purchased on October 24th. It could be that the url was one of the last things that was done in preparation for launching this survey, for this survey, or it could be that the survey is intended to distract attention from the fact that the electoral reform issue has become a loser for the Trudeau government.

It could also be that the government has realised, shortly into their mandate, that a new electoral system is not their safest path to re-election in three year’s time.

I wrote an editorial a few weeks ago that questioned the efficacy of a survey by Frontenac County. The difference between that survey and this one is that while the data gathered by the Frontenac survey may have limited value for a variety of reasons, it was an honest effort at finding out what Frontenac residents think. This electoral survey strikes me as a purely political exercise masquerading as online engagement in the social media age.

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Published in Editorials
Wednesday, 11 May 2016 18:36

Reid to hold referendum on Bill C-14

Lanark Frontenac Kingston MP Scott Reid announced this week that he will place his vote on the upcoming third reading to the government-sponsored Bill C-14 in the hands of his constituents.

A ballot is being sent out through Canada Post's neighborhood mail to all post boxes in the riding, and can be returned postage free to his office.

The ballot includes references to arguments in favour and opposed to the legislation.

In the letter to constituents that accompanies the ballot, Reid says Bill C-14 would amend the Criminal Code to allow what the government characterizes as “medically assisted dying” - what is more commonly known as “physician-assisted suicide.” If the bill becomes law, it will be lawful for a physician or nurse practitioner to euthanize a patient, as long as a series of conditions are met. The conditions will be laid out in a provision which will become section 241.2 of the Criminal Code.

Four conditions must be met, according to Reid. They are that the patient is over 18 years old; the patient must have, in the words of the bill, a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” and natural death must be “reasonably foreseeable”; the patient must have made a voluntary and informed request for assisted suicide; and a second physician or nurse practitioner must agree that the first three conditions have been met.

In explaining his decision to pass his right as an elected official to vote on the bill to his constituents, Reid made the point that in matters such as this one, the conscience of each constituent “is no less worthy than mine. Therefore it is the people, not the politicians, who should be able to directly determine the direction the country takes.”

Reid said he will tabulate the results of the constituency referendum just before the final vote on Bill C-14 is called, which will be June 6 or sometime earlier. He encourages constituents to vote early to make sure he receives their response in time.

Within the body of his mailout, Reid includes comments in favour of the bill from Justice Minister Jody Wilson- Raybould; Anne Sutherland from the Canadian Nurses Association; and editorials from the Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Star.

Comments opposed to the bill include those from the Physicians' Alliance Against Euthanasia; Larry Worthen from the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada; Alex Schadenberg from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition; Andrew Coyne, columnist with the National Post; and Dying with Dignity.

For his own part, Reid talks about his concern that “conscientious objections of medical practitioners of medical institutions to provide or facilitate assistance in dying” should be protected in the bill if it passes, and he says he will work to have those protections included.

He asks that only one vote per registered voter be sent back to him.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
Page 1 of 2
With the participation of the Government of Canada