30 activists occupied the offices of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston MP Scott Reid in Perth on Friday afternoon (February 14), between noon and 4pm. The activists were hoping that Reid’s staff would be able to arrange for a phone call with Reid from his office at Parliament Hill.

Reid was not in his office, however. He was in British Columbia for family reasons and was not available, so the protestors stayed until 4pm. They did meet with Lanark Frontenac Kingston MPP Randy Hillier, who shares office space with Reid, when he arrived at 3pm.

The protest was instigated by Anna Stewart, who said she decided to heed “the call out from the Wet’suwet’en for solidarity actions.”

She contacted her friend, Satinka Shilling, who was the NDP candidate in the most recent Federal election, and they began a Facebook thread to plan a peaceful occupation of Reid’s office.

“We know that Scott Reid is pro-pipeline, but we wanted to ask him if he feels he can justify the actions of the RCMP when the supreme court has said that the hereditary chiefs have jurisdiction over the land that the RCMP is seeking to remove them from. We did not get to ask him about that last week, but we will tomorrow,” she said, in a phone interview on Tuesday night (February 18th).

“My ask will be that he take a stand. I don’t see how he can argue that he is against Indigenous rights.”

Stewart did end up engaging with Randy Hillier last Friday, “even though I told him that we were not actually there to engage with him on this, because it is a federal matter. ”

On Monday, Hillier published a statement on his website and publicised it on twitter. The statement calls for an end to the Indian Act, which many indigenous people and their supporters agree with, but he also said some other things.

He said that “small groups of radical, privileged and dishonest idealogues are attempting to derail Canadian society.”

Stewart does not know if Hillier was referring to her, or to the other members of the group that occupied Hillier’s office on Friday.

She said that her motivation for action in this matter comes from her convictions about the rule of law.

“What’s driving us to act is our engagement with the issues. We all occupy the land that we inhabit, and we see what is going on in the ancestral Wet’suwet’en lands and we know that it is illegal to ask a police force to remove people from land that they have the legal right to occupy. This is not about our privilege,” she said, “it is about respect for the legal rights.”

In his posting, Hillier took exception to the groups that he says have “successfully stifled our freedom of speech through coercive political correctness, distorted our education, rewritten our history, abused freedom of assembly,”.

He also challenged the idea that Indigenous peoples in Canada have been victimised by European settlers.

“Neither I, any of my ancestors, nor the vast majority of my fellow Canadians have oppressed the Indigenous peoples of Canada. My ancestors and the history of Canada demonstrates beyond any doubt that consensus, not conquest, was the relationship between the European settlers and the native Canadians. Just as new Canadians arriving today, the first European settlers came here to flee injustice, religious persecution, and poverty in their own countries; and through these struggles, mistakes, and corrections, we have this great nation. We are all Canadians and no one deserves a pejorative label regardless if they have been here two days or two hundred years.

Anna Stewart said that after reading Hillier’s statement she is concerned about the fact that Hillier glossed over the actions of successive governments.

“I worry that people will see what he wrote and become emboldened by it. I worry that people will say this is about a small group of radicals, even though 10,000 people protested in Toronto on Monday. This is really about the Wet’suwet’en and their struggle to assert their rights. That is what we are focussing on.”

It’s often been said that on St. Patrick’s Day, everybody’s Irish. It’s much the same on Robbie Burns Day, everybody’s Scottish.

Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington MP Scott Reid has Scottish roots. His MPP counterpart, Randy Hillier does not but that doesn’t stop him from donning the kilt, downing a wee deoch-an-doris, and carving up the haggis.

For a few years now, Reid and Hillier have been celebrating the Scottish holiday in Perth and Verona, and last Sunday was no exception.

As piper Steve Brooke led the procession, Hillier carried the beloved sausage while Reid followed with a book of Robbie Burns’ words.

And this year, Hillier finally wore a kilt, the Maple Leaf Tartan, to the event.

“I don’t want this to go to his (Hillier’s) head,” said Reid. “But last night in Perth, a lady told me ‘I like your knees but I like his better.’”

Reid said he was pleased how everyone, including Hillier, has embraced the Scottish celebration.

“To me, this is what Canada is all about — tolerance, inclusiveness,” Reid said. “It’s a very Canadian thing.”

As Hillier prepared to carve into the haggis, Reid gave a brief history lesson on the Scottish poet, referencing Burns’ Address To The Toothache and Written By Somebody On The Window Of an Inn at Stirling on seeing the Royal Palace in ruin.

“Scott and I enjoy doing this,” Hillier said. “I guess that’s why we do it every year.”

Hillier then acknowledged local council members Ron Vandewal, Pat Barr, John McDougall and Brent Cameron.

As to his Scottish garb, Hillier had this to say.

“I’m not Scottish,” he said. “But I do enjoy haggis and a bit of scotch.

“I noticed yesterday that I had a much bigger sporran (a purse of sorts worn at the front of a kilt) than Scott but today he has a bigger one on.”

Then, after Reid had deftly avoided any mention of politics, Hillier couldn’t resist pointing out that there is an election looming in Ontario.

“This is an important year,” Hillier said. “In June, you’ll have a chance to accept the status quo that hasn’t let Ontario become everything it can be or go down a different path.

“Ontario has had some very Toronto-centric policies lately and we need to show how important rural Ontario is.”

Hillier then told a story about how, last September, he was invited to ceremonies commemorating the 225th anniversary of the very first Ontario Legislature in 1792.

“MPPs from the very first legislature were invited and Frontenac was one of them,” Hillier said. “And the very first act passed by that the first legislature was an act to end slavery in Ontario.

“Those first representatives took action and hopefully we can return to that.”

The gathering ended with the singing of Auld Lang Syne.

The last time we all went to the polls was for the Federal election way back in the fall of 2015, when the 10 year old Steven Harper led Conservative government was tossed out in favour of the Liberals under Justin Trudeau. This year the 14.5 year run of the Ontario Liberals, during which time Dalton McGuinty was elected 3 times and current Premier Kathleen Wynne one time, will be on the line on June 7th. Riding redistribution, which came into effect federally in that 2015 election, will be mirrored at Queen’s Park after this coming election. Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington Conservative MPP Randy Hillier will be contesting the new Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding against Amanda Pulker-Mok of the Liberals, Anita Payne of the Green Party, a still un-named NDP candidate, and perhaps other independent or small party candidates who may come out of the woodwork in the run up to the election.

Our readers in Addington Highlands will be part of the new provincial riding of Hastings, Lennox and Addington (HL&A). Former Conservative Federal Member of Parliament Daryl Kramp, who lost the Federal election in the HL&A riding to Mike Bossio in 2015, was chosen last August as the Conservative candidate in the new provincial riding, and has been campaigning ever since. The other parties have not selected candidates as of yet.

While the local election will not heat up until the writ period, which starts in early May, on a provincial level the contest has been under way for at least a year, perhaps longer.

The thinking as recently as 3 months ago was that the Liberals were headed to certain defeat to the Conservatives, but the polls have tightened since then. We will be watching the provincial election over the next few months, reporting as the candidates surface for the various parties, and trying to get a sense of how riding redistribution will affect the local race.

In the 2015 Federal election, The Lanark Frontenac Kingston riding went to Scott Reid, the long serving Conservative Party incumbent from the former Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding. While Reid’s margin of victory decreased from earlier elections, that could have been more a reflection of dipping Conservative Party fortunes nationally than the impact of riding redistribution. In Frontenac-Hastings, the riding swung from the Conservative to the Liberals, leading to a surprise victory for Mike Bossio over Daryl Kramp.

We will look at the candidates as they are announced and will provide coverage of the local election in May and early June, when we will publish profiles of the candidates and will hold all candidates meetings at two locations.

The municipal election will be the subject of our attention at the Frontenac News over the summer and into the early fall. There will certainly be a good number of current council members who will be running again, and a smaller number who will be stepping away from municipal politics at the end of the year. The first thing to watch for after May 1st, when the nomination period opens, is whether any current members of council decide to take a run at the incumbent mayors in Frontenac County. If any do it will open up the council vote and create a more competitive race overall. And if the previous election is any indication, running for council as an incumbent can be anything but a sure thing. In Central Frontenac the last time around, only two of the 7 incumbents who sought re-election kept their place. An incumbent lost in each ward, as did the sitting Mayor, Janet Gutowski. The other townships were not as volatile, but there were hard fought races in many wards, and in the mayoralty races. We will also be closely watching Addington Highlands. If Reeve Henry Hogg does indeed step down, the race for Reeve will be pretty wide open, and it will be interesting to see if any of the current members of council decide to step up to the plate.

We began our early coverage of the election this week by polling incumbent heads of council (reeves and mayors) as to their intentions. We will continue to report on the intentions of current members of council and others who are ready to declare their candidacy as they come forward over the winter and early spring. After May first we will report on nominations as they are submitted in the townships, and our coverage will swing into higher gear after nominations close on July 27th. In the run up to the election we are planning to hold all candidates meetings in each ward where our paper is delivered, as we have done in the past, and we will profile the candidates in September and early October. We will also look at the issues that will be contested in the election, from development pressures in South Frontenac, to the septic inspection issue in Central Frontenac, to the fallout from the rebuild of the township office and the onset of the One Small Town initiative in North Frontenac. The underlying issue of taxation and service levels in all townships is another concern will will address in our coverage.

Scott Reid is one a very few active politicians in Canada who were active in Preston Mannings Reform Party. The Reform Party became the Canadian Alliance and eventually the Conservative Party of Canada under Stephen Harper.

But back in the Reform days ideas about reforming democracy were a major part of the party program, and were one of the attractions for the Ontario based Reid to join the party and begin working in Preston Manning’s office. Among the ideas taken on by the party were a commitment to direct democracy to deal with what are sometimes called “moral” issues such as abortion, same sex marriage, and assisted dying. The legalization of marijuana was one of the issues on the Reform party list for a direct vote.

That is one of the reasons why Scott Reid decided that, for the ninth time in is 18 year carreer, he would hold a vote of his constituents and follow the majority opinion when the vote is called in Parliament, which could happen in late November.

When contacted this week to answer a question about the number of voters who have responded to the referenda over the years, Reid said the numbers varied and since the ridings have changed twice, each time resulting in smaller numbers of constituents, it is hard to compare the numbers.

It is is clear from the numbers he provided that one of the major factors in the response to his mailouts is the nature of the issue at hand. The largest number of responses, over 9,000, was the vote on the Civil Marriages Act. His most recent referendum, which was not tied to an actual vote on an Act but on the stance Reid should take about whether a referendum should be required for a change in the system through which MP’s are elected, received under 1,500 responses.

“I don’t necessarily judge a process by the percentage of voters. Some decisions don’t need to reflect just the opinion of the MP, or as is mostly the case, their party. In some cases my constituents have had me vote against the wishes of my party,” he said.
Reid considers his referenda as one of the tools he uses to be responsive to the public and be effective as a politician. He held a referendum on riding boundaries in 2003, but ten years later he did not.

“The referendum was not particularly effective, so the next time around I engaged with municipal councils and local politicians in a different way, and I think it was a more effective way of influencing the result.”
Constituents who have received the mail out for the marijuana vote, can return them over the next couple of week’s, as Reid and his staff are committed to waiting until the vote in the house is pending before cutting off the vote and beginning to count the ballots.

The ballot also includes a second question, about whether 19 is the right age for marijuana to be legally available. That is a provincial and out of Reid’s jurisdiction but he will pass the results on to the provincial government, and local MP Randy Hillier.

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.

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)

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.

Click here to read Part 1

In June of 2005 Scott Reid, who was already the Conservative Party critic for the FedNor department, which oversees economic development in north and eastern Ontario, was given the added task of being the party critic for Democratic Institutions.

He remained in that role until the Conservative Party became the governing party in 2006. While the party was in power, Reid served as deputy house leader and as a committee chair but never sat in cabinet.

Now, under interim leader Rona Ambrose, he has again been named to the shadow cabinet as critic for the department of Democratic Institutions, a role that fits with his political and academic background. During the recent campaign, he once again expressed his interest in reforming how politics is done in Canada, whether through more free votes in Parliament, citizen referenda, or changes to the electoral system.

Reid has long advocated for a “ranked ballot system” to choose officials such as party leaders and speakers of the house, and in general elections as well.

With the new Liberal government having made the commitment to come up with an alternate electoral system in time for the next election, Reid may be in a position to influence that process as critic for this department.

When the matter was last considered in 2005, he advocated for a citizens' forum to come up with a system, rather than a Parliamentary committee. He has also done work on open democracy and the functioning of Parliament for 25 years, having started his career as a constitutional advisor to Reform Party leader, Preston Manning, in the 1990s.

The new Minister for Democratic Institutions is Liberal Maryam Monsef, who represents the riding of Peterborough. She is the first Afghani-born member of the Canadian Parliament, having emigrated to Peterborough in 1996, when she was 11. She is a graduate of Trent University and ran for mayor of Peterborough last year.

In her mandate letter from Prime Minster Trudeau, Monsef was given the explicit responsibility to oversee changes to the way senators are elected, and to lead the process of electoral reform, among a long list of other duties.

She was also tasked with maintaining: “close collaboration with your colleagues; meaningful engagement with Opposition Members of Parliament, Parliamentary Committees and the public service.”

MP Scott Reid has a bit more time available these days than he normally would at this time of year because Parliament has been prorogued.

In what might seem an odd coincidence to some, he is using some of that time to work on what he describes as his major political passion, promoting democracy.

As Scott Reid told a room full of grade 10 students at Granite Ridge Education Centre (GREC) on Tuesday, Sept. 17, Canada does not use the form of democracy that he most favours. He prefers the way the Swiss govern themselves, pointing out that while in Canada citizens vote in a government once every few years, in Switzerland major public issues are settled through referenda. In 2010 Switzerland held six of them; in 2011 only one; in 2012, twelve; and by the time 2013 is finished there will have been nine.

Scott Reid’s comments came about as part of an exercise in democracy organized by GREC teacher Randy McVety. The students were presented with a proposal, and then asked to move their chairs to one of four corners of the room, the far left if they were strongly opposed, left if they were just opposed, right if they were in favour, and far right if they were strongly in favour. For the purposes of the exercises, two votes were cast for the more emphatic responses, and one for the more moderate.

But before counting the votes up, the students were invited to say why they had chosen as they had, and a moderated discussion took place. Then Scott Reid went to the corner that represented his vote on the matter and made his case.

The question that precipitated his comments about Switzerland had to do with the minimum voting age in Canada. By a significant, though not overwhelming, majority, the 15 and 16-year-old GREC students supported lowering the voting age to 16.

Students in favour of the change argued that the driving age is 16, and if someone is deemed capable of driving, why not let them vote. As well, they thought that lowering the voting age would help entrench the habit of voting. Another student argued that since voting takes place once every four years, a 17-year-old who is not eligible for the vote has to live with the consequences of the result while they are 18, 19, and 20.

Scott Reid was moderately in favour of the status quo, noting that it is consistent with the age that people are eligible to join military.

The other proposal that was bought forward was about marijuana laws.

For this question, Randy McVety had those students who favour full legalization of marijuana, so that it will be produced and sold in much he same way liquor is now, to sit in the strongly in favour section; those who support decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana were to sit in the in favour section; and those who support the current laws were to sit in the opposed or strongly opposed sections.

The largest group of students sat in the strongly opposed section, although a number of students sat in the strongly in favour sections as well.

A wide-ranging, animated debate ensued, with some students arguing that marijuana is safe; others that it is dangerous; some saying it is a gateway drug to more dangerous drugs; some saying the current state of affairs is unworkable and should be scrapped; and some calling for more enforcement.

When it came to his turn, Scott Reid bounded down to sit with those in favour of full legalization.

He then took the stage and asked the students to name two things that Barack Obama, George Bush Jr. and Bill Clinton have in common.

“They have all been US presidents, and they have all admitted to smoking marijuana, and they all oppose legalizing marijuana,” Reid said. “I’ve never smoked marijuana, or cigarettes, but I favour legalization.”

Reid went further, saying that drug policies in North America are illogical, wrongheaded, and inconsistent.

“Let’s talk about gateway drugs and dangerous drugs,” Reid added. “The most significant gateway drug is cigarettes, and the drug that does the most damage is alcohol, and they are both legal, and should be in my view.”
He pointed out that an attempt was made to make alcohol illegal, “and it was a disaster.”

On this issue, Scott Reid differed from not only the majority of the students in the room, but with his own Conservative Party as well, which he pointed out has toughened the penalty for possession of marijuana.

“I was the only one in my party who voted against that legislation,” he said.

Reid may have been in the minority at GREC and a lonely figure in his own party, but his views are supported by the many across the country. Polls in recent years have consistently shown that a solid majority of Canadians, up to 66% or more, favour decriminalization of marijuana, and a slim majority favour legalization. And it is not the youth vote that drives these results. Thirty-five to 54-year-olds are as strongly in favour of change as are those under 35.

Using the weighted vote system, Randy McVety determined there were 42 votes in favour of the status quo and 36 for either decriminalization or legalization.

Scott Reid then spent the rest of the morning in smaller classroom settings at Granite Ridge Education Centre.

Scott Reid, who is likely to be the only person to ever serve as MP for the Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington riding, appeared before Frontenac County Council last week with an update on the riding redistribution process and its impact in the region.

“I had expected the riding redistribution process to be complete by now,” Reid said, “but while the final boundaries have been announced across the country, that has not been done for Ontario.”

Reid explained that one of the issues still to be finalized in Ontario involves the changes to his own riding.

His expectation is, however, that the entirety of Lanark County, as well as most of Frontenac County (the exception being Howe and Wolfe Islands) will make up the bulk of the riding. What is up in the air is if and how far the new riding will extend into rural Kingston.

The boundary commission has proposed extending the riding south into Kingston as far as Highway 401, but Reid, after consulting local Kingston politicians, has proposed extending the riding further, so that it will encompass the entire former Pittsburgh township, which was part of Frontenac County until 1998, but is now included in the amalgamated City of Kingston. The proposed boundary would be the 401 at the southwestern edge of the riding, but to the west, the Cataraqui river would form the boundary until it spills into the St. Lawrence river.

Reid's proposal is countered by Kingston and the Islands MP Ted Hsu, who is urging the commission to keep the existing Kingston and the Islands riding, which includes the former Pittsburgh township, intact.

The problem with that, according to Reid, is that it would give Kingston and the Islands a population of 125,227 (17.9% above the commission’s target population per riding of about 108,000 people) and Kingston Frontenac a population of 90,178 – 15.1% lower than the target)

Reid has proposed calling the new riding Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, which has the advantage of being easier to pronounce than the current riding name, Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington.