Elizabeth May’s Diabolical Plan to Change Canadian Politics

Elizabeth May’s diabolical plan was tucked away in plain sight, in a tiny publication on Vancouver Island:

“What I want to be able to do is get better research and support and make it available to backbenchers who don’t get much help from their own parties.
‘There are lots of MPs in a parliamentary committee hearing, with an expert witness giving evidence, who have their chance to ask a question but they basically tread water. They’ve got nothing useful to say; the reason for that is they don’t have the resources to know the issue very well, they don’t want to look like buffoons but their party isn’t supporting them to be effective. So, our party can support them to be effective, but I can never take credit for that because that would ‘out’ somebody.”

The compliant media has been running cover for her since then, downplaying the plot:

“A single seat in Parliament isn’t much; it’s somewhat laughable to suggest, as she did on election night, that she’ll be able to use it to change Ottawa’s culture.”

But now the Government House Leader admits that May can hold the entire Parliament “hostage” by asking questions and submitting amendments to bills! Imagine the gall, in a place known for expediency and unanimous consent!?

Some of the compliant media let the secret slip, however. The cat’s out of the bag. They named May as Parliamentarian of the Year!

One morning this session, at the start of parliamentary business, Elizabeth May and Liberal MP Frank Valeriote ran into each other in the House of Commons. They had both been there late the night before for a debate. Valeriote apparently assumed that May had had the misfortune to be assigned a morning shift in the House. “He looked at me and he was so tired he forgot that I didn’t have somebody ordering me around,” May recalls. “He said, ‘Oh jeez, did you get House duty again?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, my leader’s such a bitch.’ ”

#IdleNoMore Prayer Rally in Regina

A bitterly cold -16 Celsius temperature didn’t deter over 100 people from turning out to voice their concerns about the Conservatives’ omnibus bill C-45 passed in haste last week. The people also were there to support the First Nations leaders who attempted to confront the MPs in the House, and now must be consulted by the Senate and the Governor General. C-45 removed long-standing federal environmental protection from most of Canada’s lakes and rivers, and the threat to water is not taken lightly by First Nations, organizers of the event explained.

- The crowd was in support of protected fresh water.

Victor Lau, Leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan

How People Vote is Broken #cdnpoli #election2012

A great many people yesterday voted for people they don’t really believe in. They voted for Obama, or Romney, because they felt there was no other choice compared to the danger of the unknown, or the risk of a too-familiar vote split to let a kleptocrat win.

I’m not certain what forces and situations need to come together to kick off a political shift like the kind seen after Brian Mulroney left the Progressive Conservatives to scrape up two seats in Parliament in 1993, but that sort of party-reputation-gutting hasn’t befallen the Democrats yet. It hasn’t even plagued the Republicans in the form of a consequence they’ll react to meaningfully. They can still taste power that is only two or four years away (instead of the monumental shift in priorities required).

No, the GOP will continue to nominate male, blustery speakers who prattle on about rape and abortion because those subjects divide and excite passions in some voters. And they will later either bring America into the theological state they crave, or fail utterly and implode their party like a male Kim Campbell.

And in Canada, Conservatives are plagued with the same lack of well-built and well-funded political options. The merger of the Reform Party and Progressive Conservative Party left right-wing voters with a single, mindless, power machine and no clean escape. The lack of Proportional Representation in our elections left us vulnerable to illegal robocall schemes to suppress votes, and pressed similar parties to merge when they should not have done so in the interest of democracy. Now we must worry about the left wing parties merging into one, instead of co-operating to bring us electoral reform first.

What would it take for Conservatives to toss the current bunch of crooks and cheaters under the bus and decide to build a new party that could have some respectability? Paper evidence isn’t enough. Audio recording of a bribe is not enough. Audio recording of an election crime isn’t enough. Why does power motivate millions to ignore obvious crimes and vote anyway for the Obamas and Harpers of the world?

Our democracies fail because they favour well organized [criminal] professional politicians and power seekers over less organized, good people. Our electoral systems are broken, and we use broken/defective/corruptible techniques instead of improving.

So instead we end up with FIPA:

And Mercer doesn’t stop there with the blunt presentation of our anti-democratic government:

5 Years For Good Behaviour

Will the NDP live up to its latest promise? So far, Elizabeth May (who was oddly omitted from this story even though she pioneered the modern foray into non-House-heckling) has made due with venting on Twitter, rather than interrupting proceedings in the House of Commons with witty rejoinders to the government’s many bonehead gaffes. I guess that means she’s with the child pornographers, eh Vic Toews?

.@saskboy It does provide a civilized way to vent. And stay in touch with Canadians who are also disgusted by QP! #cdnpoli #hw—
Elizabeth May MP (@ElizabethMay) April 05, 2012

The NDP may have difficulty holding their tongues and twinkle fingers.

Green Party of Sask AGM ; Hot Wind

I helped out at the Green Party of Saskatchewan’s AGM this year. It’s the first Green anything AGM I’ve been to. I’ve previously been to a Sask Liberal leadership convention as a member a decade ago, and the NDP convention last year as (a blogger) media. The results of the executive elections are available, and there’s a TV clip from local CTV News.

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@saskboy @rlegaarden I have it on good authority that wind turbines are the leading cause of herpes.—
Bill Oates (@wjoates) April 30, 2012

The anti-wind power crowd will be all over this story, purposefully (or accidentally) misrepresenting it as saying that wind turbines “cause” global warming. In fact, if you read it to the end, you’ll see the warming on the ground is localized. Needs more study, but it’s pretty unlikely that it contributes in the same significant way as coal fired electricity that wind is replacing.

@saskboy @rlegaarden The onion had all of this stuff figured out a while ago irregularclimate.planet3.org/archives/wind-…—
Dan Moutal (@scruffydan) April 30, 2012

One. Stop Subsidizing Fossil Fuels

Two. Put a price on carbon. These are two easy things to do in legislation which will have the crucial effect of curbing air pollution.

If the market is the God of the modern political power brokers, then the market has to contain the solution to climate change. We have until roughly 2015 to halt a rise in green house gas production. After that year, we have to get to lower levels or we will cause climate change that cannot be reversed to stop mass extinctions and suffering for all people.

Yesterday I saw the ridiculous comment from an anti-Occupier in Regina who thinks Occupy protesters don’t understand the world economy. Actually, Occupiers understand very well, which is why they are in the streets protesting, and will be working in the coming years to change economic systems to benefit the majority of people instead of the 1% wealthiest alive today.

Would You Vote Over The Internet?

I trust computers… to do what their potentially untrustworthy programmers tell them to do. Because it’s computer code that could be corrupted, there’s little means for the layperson voter to verify they aren’t being swindled.

That said, online voting is becoming inevitable, and may be required to pull young voters into participating in our democracy. The election results will swing wildly to the Green Party and others favoured by those under 30, once voting can be done from anywhere.

“Would you vote over the Internet?” That’s the FUNNIEST poll question on cbc.ca EVER. Everyone who doesn’t click Yes, but votes, is lying ;-)

Go Green

I liked the joke at the end of this victory speech too.

Bill Clary – Green Candidate in Wascana Riding

Wascana’s Bill Clary and I discuss the Broadcaster’s Consortium who conspired to keep Elizabeth May and the Green Party out of the 2011 election’s televised leaders debate. The CBC Ombudsman, former Prime Ministers, and millions of Canadians objected to the decision, but the corporate media won this year, after being embarrassed in 2008 successfully due to public outrage then.

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Bill, and the other Wascana candidates get asked a tough question on child poverty, while at the URSUnion forum at the University of Regina:

Bill’s response is near the end of the video.

Attack Ads Don’t Work Because You’re Smart?

If attack ads don’t work, then why have I heard them repeated to me by ordinary Canadians even though the ads contain fabrications and distortions that a child should be able to see through when it is explained to them?

Why is the “coalition” a “threat” or a “coup”? Why is Ignatieff not “coming back for you”? Why are the Greens a “one issue” party?

Because they’re not! Period. Each of those is an untruth (a lie) paid for sometimes with the help of your tax money (in the form of tax rebates to citizen donors, or 10%ers in the mail), and often as the result of money that should not be allowed to shape political thought in a democracy. And each I’ve heard ordinary Canadians say as if they are facts. When lies are accepted as facts, democracy dies a bit more, and that’s not my claim — it’s backed by history.

There are too many fooled people in Canada, and bad people are poised to reap the rewards of the misinformation they’ve sown into the brains of the unwitting. The question is, are Canadians going to be annoyed enough by the attack parties to do something about it before their freedom of thought is replaced by freepdom of thought?

Canadians stopped allowing cigarette advertising because we admitted it was killing people. The same realization needs to spread about political advertising that contains lies and kills our democracy. When commoners lose their ability to peacefully influence the political system in Canada, we know that people will die (rebellions and revolutions are never without casualties, and they do happen even in Canada too, sadly).