rwmtest

One of the articles assigned for NS 115 students this week is an essay by Jessica Kolopenuk titled Provoking Bad Biocitizenship . ( https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1152 ) I do not have a background in biology or the medical sciences: that is the domain of my wife who teaches high-school biology to possible future doctors and scientists. I have spent decades involved in democratic reform, starting in the 1990's. I am inspired by the essay to think about how I might slide it into a domain that I am more actively engaged in. What is Democracy? Everyone thinks they know it when they see it, but lets copy a dictionary definition to have a common start. a : government by the people especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections Provocation 1: Canadian Confederation was not an example of a democracy Prior t...

In my New Years note yesterday , the last paragraph was about Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips, and why I felt he should be fired from his position. What he did was not a mistake, but a well prepared dishonesty that made him unworthy of being a cabinet minister. He was appropriately asked to resign. I feel the same way about Justin Trudeau.  We could discuss the SNC Lavalin scandal, his treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould, the WE scandal, Blackface/brownface, and his general flaunting of his lifelong privilege and belief in his own entitlement. Why I think Justin Trudeau is a bad Prime Minister and should be replaced isn't really my point.   My point is that with decades of manipulation by political parties and the media, there is no mechanism to hold Justin Trudeau accountable the same way that Rod Phillips was held accountable.  A bad cabinet minister was turfed from the cabinet for their individual incompetence, and parliament and the government moves forward withou...

While I've been thinking about electoral reform since the 1990's, I learned quite a bit since that time and thus changed my opinion with new knowledge. I wrote an article discussing one of the major changes since 1997 and 2017 when Canada was having consultations and had an active committee on electoral reform. This year I have been learning about Canada as part of my antiracism training. Learning about pre-contact Turtle Island and the First Nation, Métis and Inuit civilizations that exist in parallel with Canada and the USA on Turtle Island is critical to knowing what Canada is. As with electoral reform, I can remember what I thought prior to my learning.  I can recognize missing knowledge in other people that I also lacked, and want to share with them what I have learned.  What I can't do is unlearn and go back to what I thought in the past.  Please share with me any new information, but please don't expect me to go backwards to my lesser informed self.   During ...

Youtube regularly recommends videos of someone attempting to debate Canadian clinical psychologist and UofT psychology professor Jordan Peterson. I've also read articles written by several critics. I cringe when I read/watch these discussions as I feel embarrassed by the arguments used by Mr. Peterson's critics. While I don't agree with Jordan Peterson's conclusions, the logic behind his arguments in these discussions (debates, articles, etc) are sound while the arguments deployed against him are generally lacking. If all you had to go on were these critics of Jordan Peterson you would be forced to believe he was right, and his critics were wrong. Measurements and accuracy matter I have a background in natural sciences (STEM), which was part of my personal interests as well as training at university for computer science. When we need to measure something we work to be accurate, especially when we then put it into a model and/or formula to then predict some outcome. We c...

I disagree with Canada's adoption of US-style primaries where political tourists decide who will be treated as the leader/dictator of Canadian political parties. Party leaders in the Canadian House of Commons should be decided by and accountable to caucus members, and never the other way around (caucus members asked to be accountable to party "leaders") if we wish to have a healthy representative democracy. That said, there are possible outcomes of the CPC primary today that are interesting to different degrees. Election not decided by "runners", front or otherwise. The media likes to report on all elections as "races", where the fastest "runner" is the one that will win. There was constant talk about who was and was not a "front runner" during this primary. The fact is most elections don't work that way, and the media tends to not even correctly identify who is being elected.  For instance, in Canada individual voters do not d...

I've  read several articles discussing how hard it is to find good candidates for party leadership races. The federal Green Party and Conservative party, as well as some provincial parties, are looking for replacements for people who stepped down or were unreasonably kicked out. I wonder if it is finally time to discuss whether we should be having these party-run leadership races at all? In her chapter in Turning Parliament Inside Out , Elisabeth May reminded us that it wasn't until the 1974 federal election that party affiliations appeared on the ballots. The law also indicated that party leaders authorized candidates to have that party affiliation on the riding ballot. It was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that Canada broke from the tradition of the leader being decided by elected caucus members as is the case in most Commonwealth countries, and adopting a more US style of having party members elect the leaders. The changes for the 1974 election happened du...

While partisans from opposition parties and supportive multi-partisan interest groups have their own take on what went wrong with electoral reform after the 2015 election, I'll offer a non-partisan take on what Justin Trudeau did wrong. Platforms are increasingly decided by an inner-circle within the bureaucracy of a political party, in close consultation with the party leader and executive.  It is therefore appropriate to focus blame for failures on those few individuals, rather than all candidates or elected members with that party affiliation. We should start with a reminder of what was included in the 2015 Liberal platform We will make every vote count. We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.  We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting.  This commi...

As a current Conservative party member I have received fundraising calls from the Conservative party.  The worst so far was from someone who started by talking about the leadership race, and I mentioned I have made a donation to my candidate.  She then spoke about how this increases the donation limit for the year : that I can donate to the candidate and to the party. She then proceeded to list the party talking points, one of the first was how the Liberal carbon tax was a tax on everything.  To be honest, I didn't hear anything else she said as it was clear that there was no possibility I would be donating to my candidate -- Michael Chong -- and a party that was apparently campaigning against the only candidate that has resonated with me so far.  Michael Chong's revenue neutral green tax shift (from income to carbon) was the policy that made me take notice of the leadership race, and to learn about other policies we agreed on. As politely as I could I hung up ...

I have to admit that when I first heard that Michael Chong was running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) I thought: Oh, cute - a progressive conservative is running -- they'll squash him like a bug. I had an opportunity to hear Mr. Chong in person on Wednesday February 22 at an event hosted at the offices of OpenConcept (a business owned by long-time friend Michael Gifford).  There was about 30 guests there, and Mr. Chong's meet-and-greeting very quickly turned into a Q&A session. Most of what I heard I really liked.  Enough to decide to become a member of the party in order to vote in the leadership election in May (March 28 is the final date to become a member if you want to have your say).  I also made a $350 campaign contribution to Mr. Chong. I'll highlight three areas of policy he spoke about, the first being from that bulk of ideas I agreed with, then one area I am mostly with him but with some reservations, and one area I disagr...

A few partisan and multi-partisan groups including the NDP, Green Party (provincial and federal), and Fair Vote Canada have sent out announcements to their members about a "National Day of Action for Electoral Reform".  While I've been an active electoral reformer for many decades, I will be avoiding this event. Many of the reasons why were articulated in an earlier article on how Electoral Modernization is hard, but worth it .   It discussed how compromise and consideration of other viewpoints was critical to move forward. When Justin Trudeau and his election platform team  stated that , "We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system" they likely envisioned a specific campaign.  On one side would be those who wanted to keep the current First Past the Post (FPTP) system either because it benefit them or they were simply resistant to any change.   On the other side would be a broad ...

I can imagine a conversation between Russell McOrmond (1997) and Russell McOrmond (2017), and how that would go. Both of these individuals feel they have a good grasp of the problems with First Past the Post, and both feel they have properly analyzed the obvious solution to the obvious failure. These two individuals would likely hate each other :-) RM1997 would think RM2017 was arrogant for constantly bringing up the fact that he was 20 years senior, and in that last 20 years had: met many sitting MPs had long conversations with some sitting MPs - in constituency and parliamentary offices, as well as in the Government Lobby (that part of center block behind the curtains on the government side), the parliamentary restaurant, as well as private pubs and private homes. I've even been invited by sitting MPs to help represent Canada in front of policy delegations from other countries. attended many federal committee hearings (more than I care to count), and have been a witness in multip...

A  straw man  is a common form of  argument  and is an  informal fallacy  based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent. ( Wikipedia ) It is hard to engage in electoral reform conversations in Canada without having one of the two top straw-men thrown at you.  Which one you are thrown depends on which of the most common perspectives you hold. This is massive generalization, but Canadians could be divided into 3 groups. Everything is fine, leave it alone. Our voting system is broken, and the problem is a lack of proportionality (See Gallagher index ) Our voting system is broken, and the problem is plurality When it comes to choosing an electoral system, there are a number of interesting variations. People who believe that plurality is a feature, not a problem, in that it forces a "consensus" to form between the top two opposing visions of how to run the countr...