Last week, Jack Layton, leader of the Canadian NDP, took some Alberta NDP candidates and a whack of journalists on a 5,000 foot plane ride over the oil sands in Northern Alberta. It was quite the stunt. In fact, I'm surprised his plane didn't do a loop-the-loop just to finish it off.
The reason for Jack's 'press conference' was a particular policy announcement, that being if the NDP win the election they will cease all further development in the oil sands until emissions are capped through his cap-and-trade proposal (well, not "his" proposal exactly, kind of borrowed from the world's other leading lefties).
I consider myself to be politically left of centre, i.e. a bit of a liberal, and I am concerned about the environment just like everyone else. I think the NDP proposal is bold (although I have to wonder at the wisdom of tut-tutting at the oil sands from the carbon-spewing comfort of a jet aircraft, not exactly known for their fuel economy or clean emissions).
Then I started to wonder whether there isn't more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps this isn't an aggressive defence of the environment but nothing more than a piece of pragmatism. Perhaps Mr. Layton has decided that he will never make it to the Prime Minister's office and is, instead, in the face of a majority Conservative government, positioning himself for a career change. As recently as June, the U.S. Conference of Mayors condemned the oil sands developments for producing approximately three times the carbon dioxide pollution per barrel as conventional oil production and proposed a motion to stop using oil that comes from the Canadian oil sands.
Could Mr Layton be thinking of a new job and putting himself out there among the mayors as a fellow detractor, kind of a "look at me! I hate the oil sands too!!)? Is Jack the next Mayor of Detroit?
Hardly. I don't see the NDP doing particularly well next month (especially if today's Canadian Press/Harris-Decima poll is anything to go by) but I'm sure Jack will never defect away from Canadian politics. If there's one thing that the NDP has by the non-oil barrel load, it's innovation, from their "kitchen-table" thinking to support for cap-and-trade to universal prescription drug coverage. Whether all this is viewed as nothing more than rhetorical gimmickry by the electorate remains to be seen. Perhaps, if the NDP keep coming up with new, radical ideas, Jack may be the next political leader to be excluded from a political debate.
Then he'll really be getting somewhere.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
What do you get the Country that has everything? A new Prime Minister?
All this talk of Barack and John and the American election is interesting enough but now we have a REAL political battle to think about. Oh yes folks, on the 14th October, Canada will go to the polls.
I have to confess to being less than clear on the rules for calling a Canadian election; it may be something to do with the fact that there is a minority government in Ottawa, or maybe it's based on phases of the moon, the mating schedule of the loon, Jack Layton's tea leaves or even Stephen Harper's crystal balls.
Regardless, it's coming and how quick! I feel like the U.S. race has been going on since I was about 15 but, with the nominations and then the actual campaign, it's actually been about a year. Canada, on the other hand, only needs a month! In America, the electorate are wooed in a leisurely courtship full of sweet economic promises, emotional rhetoric, tearful party workers and God. Up here, we have been thrown into a frenetic orgy of what I can only really describe as political fetishness that is building up to a huge spurt of an election.
I really thought the Canadian campaigns would be dull but they are anything but! Who cares about the first African-American or the oldest American president in history when you have Canadians who talk about things like the 'green shift', bringing a kitchen table into the cabinet room and home retrofits, who hold press conferences on planes that aren't actually going anywhere, who arrest people for being too nice to the prime minister, who help the smaller parties by giving them the kind of publicity that Paris Hilton would kiss a homeless man for.
This is great stuff, and we're only in week one!
I have to confess to being less than clear on the rules for calling a Canadian election; it may be something to do with the fact that there is a minority government in Ottawa, or maybe it's based on phases of the moon, the mating schedule of the loon, Jack Layton's tea leaves or even Stephen Harper's crystal balls.
Regardless, it's coming and how quick! I feel like the U.S. race has been going on since I was about 15 but, with the nominations and then the actual campaign, it's actually been about a year. Canada, on the other hand, only needs a month! In America, the electorate are wooed in a leisurely courtship full of sweet economic promises, emotional rhetoric, tearful party workers and God. Up here, we have been thrown into a frenetic orgy of what I can only really describe as political fetishness that is building up to a huge spurt of an election.
I really thought the Canadian campaigns would be dull but they are anything but! Who cares about the first African-American or the oldest American president in history when you have Canadians who talk about things like the 'green shift', bringing a kitchen table into the cabinet room and home retrofits, who hold press conferences on planes that aren't actually going anywhere, who arrest people for being too nice to the prime minister, who help the smaller parties by giving them the kind of publicity that Paris Hilton would kiss a homeless man for.
This is great stuff, and we're only in week one!
Winter's Coming !
Not even the official end to summer yet and I'm already thinking about winter; snow, skiing, Christmas, log fires; I can't wait ! This is what my home town looks like at -30C.
It's one of the things that I really love about Alberta, that at the end of every summer I get really excited about winter coming because I know it's going to snow and I know it's going to get really, REALLY cold (for a few weeks at least) but that's all good! There's nothing quite like spending a day skiing in the Rockies with your family.
Friday, September 5, 2008
McCain Leaves a Sour Taste
If you're Canadian, you might think that this is a comment about the Maple Leaf Foods Listeria outbreak. But this has nothing to do with Maple Leaf's CEO, Michael McCain.
No, this is about the OTHER McCain, the one running for president of the United States, our little neighbour to the south.
I watched John McCain's convention speech on BBC World this week, a strangely psychedelic experience given the undulating skin and floating hair that had nothing to do with any chemicals in my body but was a side-effect of the low-bandwidth video encoding that my TV provider uses to squeeze more non-mainstream channels down the pipe to my house. To see John's cheeks stay in one place while his head moves is quite the experience.
But, like many, real, drug-induced experiences, this one altered my perception of reality, damaged my sense of well being and gave me nightmares.
And it wasn't John's Bush-esque oratory skills (or auditory as one of CNN's (couldn't take the melting-faces effect on BBC any longer) 'pundits' referred to them right after the speech - I didn't realise he was deaf as well) that gave me my bad trip.
No, my reaction was to the content of the speech, a speech so ultra-conservative, it could have been written by Margaret Thatcher's and Ronald Reagan's lovechild.
No, this is about the OTHER McCain, the one running for president of the United States, our little neighbour to the south.
I watched John McCain's convention speech on BBC World this week, a strangely psychedelic experience given the undulating skin and floating hair that had nothing to do with any chemicals in my body but was a side-effect of the low-bandwidth video encoding that my TV provider uses to squeeze more non-mainstream channels down the pipe to my house. To see John's cheeks stay in one place while his head moves is quite the experience.
But, like many, real, drug-induced experiences, this one altered my perception of reality, damaged my sense of well being and gave me nightmares.
And it wasn't John's Bush-esque oratory skills (or auditory as one of CNN's (couldn't take the melting-faces effect on BBC any longer) 'pundits' referred to them right after the speech - I didn't realise he was deaf as well) that gave me my bad trip.
No, my reaction was to the content of the speech, a speech so ultra-conservative, it could have been written by Margaret Thatcher's and Ronald Reagan's lovechild.
I can just imagine the speech-writers' pre-conference meetings:
"Okay we need to focus on John's strengths."
"Yeah, strengths. We'll he's not actually that strong but he's old. That's a kind of strength."
"Experienced, not old. And I don't really think we want to be highlighting his age. What about the thing's he's done?"
"Well he was at Vietnam; you know, the whole capture, torture, thing."
"Right. Vietnam. What else."
"He voted for more troops in Iraq."
"Okay, another war thing. What else?"
"His wife is young. Looking."
"He's Republican!"
"He's experienced!"
"Okay, War it is then. What could we use from that."
"Death?"
"No."
"Profiteering."
"That's not an election winner..."
"Well, I suppose you fight in a war."
"You're right! Fighting! That could be his thing! He's a fighter. He'll fight for this and for that and everyone will love him!"
"Yeah, we'll just put lots of fighting talk in between all the references to freedom and God and the delegates will love it."
"You bet. And, if they don't, we'll just direct attention away from him by talking about that Canadian guy who's company gave everyone Listeria. What's his name again?"
And so it was. In John McCain's speech, he says the word fight 25 times. That's a pretty strong theme and it certainly seems to have picked some popular opinion right out of Barack Hussein Obama's pockets. After all, like all absolutes, it's easy; he'll fight for all that's good, he'll fight for freedom, yada, yada.
But what does it actually mean?
Well, some of the specifics in his speech lay out Mr. McCain's particular style of fighting:
He said that Americans are "dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights" and that "no country ever had a greater cause than that." In other words, fight everyone not because it's right, but because you are right. In the big junior hockey league that is the world stage, God is the Republican coach, shouting from the sidelines for his team to beat on all the other guys.
He warned the "me first, country second crowd" in government that "change is coming". But what kind of change? More me-first? After all, isn't 'me first, country second' a particularly succinct definition of Conservatism.
He believes in a culture of life, whatever that means.
He believes in "personal responsibility" and unleashing the "creativity and initiative of Americans". I don't know about you, but I get nervous whenever anyone talks about unleashing anything. Fancy words are like fancy shoes; they cover up the hard skin which, in this case, is 'you're on you own - don't expect any sort of social conscience from THIS administration.' And, just to make sure everyone understood, he said he would open new markets to goods and services AND he would stop giving millions of dollars to countries who "don't like us very much" so I suppose that will give the States the biggest trade surplus in history! But, McCain's government will reduce government spending because, apparently, government spending is a really, really bad thing! I don't confess to being a political expert but I always thought that it was good for government to spend money on things like infrastructure, education, health, social welfare, you know, the little things.
Look back to the Social Darwinism theories that pervaded the American elite at the end of the nineteenth century and be afraid.
Next, John will cut taxes! Okay, fair enough, he is a Republican.
He'll make it easier to find and keep good health care insurance. How? A toll-free number? A new website design. Easier access to loans to pay the premiums? But, rest assured, he won't put that most evil of creatures, a bureaucrat, between you and your doctor. So it's still better to let people pay for healthcare (or have none) rather than get it for free. I mean look at places like the UK or Cuba or New Zealand or Ireland or Iceland or Denmark or Sweden or France. People are just dying in the streets because of those damn bereaucrats. We should round them all up and send them to somewhere really terrible, like Canada maybe?
For employment, Mr McCain says, "for workers in industries that have been hard-hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one." He is obviously referring to education where teachers who are "bad" will be "helped" to find another line of work.
Wow.
If only we could do that with politicians.
What about energy? John will attack it! Yes, attack! Nuclear Attack !! Nuclear is the way to go. Oh, and coal. Not that nasty old black stuff but good clean coal. Yeah, and there might be some of that other stuff, what's it called? The wind and the sun, that's it.
John McCain called his party, the part of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan and, as a tribute to the latter president, he is also promising us something that Ronald would be proud of, a return to the cold war. He laid charges that Russia "invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply."
Ehm, wait a minute. Replace 'small, democratic neighbour' with 'country' in that last statement and doesn't that sound a bit familiar?
John McCain is a brave man, there's no denying it but, sadly for me, he is also a Republican. He hates war but he knows it, it's his 'thing'. He's bringing the army barracks to small-town America. He wants a society where people do the best they can for themselves and fight for the prosperity of the country they call home but, unlike the army, helping your fellow soldier doesn't count. Taking care of the less fortunate, the hurt and the poor, doesn't count. Giving everyone a chance, regardless of ability, doesn't count.
In John McCain's army, I fear, lots of people will get left behind.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Back to School - Back to Reality
Both my kids ended their summer holidays this week, one returning to elementary school and the other attending for the very first time. Thank goodness; I was getting tired of being the only one in the house who had to get up early. Now both kids and, by association, my wife at least have to be up while the radio is still giving traffic reports.
When my oldest started school, in Scotland, we were so proud, and took lots of pictures of him with his little school tie and smart black trousers and little school blazer; looking just like the little gentleman, he positively glowed with the charm of stunted growth. However, second time around and with my youngest starting school looking like a cross between white gangsta and a Zellers TV commercial, it just wasn't the same. So much so, in fact, that we forgot to take any pictures of him (tell me he won't use THAT as an excuse for teenage angst, (tangst?)).
So, when my youngest attends again on Monday, we'll take some pictures and lie to him when he's older. Hey, it worked for "Where do babies come from..."
When my oldest started school, in Scotland, we were so proud, and took lots of pictures of him with his little school tie and smart black trousers and little school blazer; looking just like the little gentleman, he positively glowed with the charm of stunted growth. However, second time around and with my youngest starting school looking like a cross between white gangsta and a Zellers TV commercial, it just wasn't the same. So much so, in fact, that we forgot to take any pictures of him (tell me he won't use THAT as an excuse for teenage angst, (tangst?)).
So, when my youngest attends again on Monday, we'll take some pictures and lie to him when he's older. Hey, it worked for "Where do babies come from..."
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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