Posts tagged Canada

The Loss of Jack Layton

24
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Jack Lay­ton, 1950–2011

Amer­i­cans, even those who have a strong polit­i­cal bent and pop­u­late web­sites such as Log­a­rchism, tend to be blind toward the pol­i­tics of other countries.

So it was that a major Cana­dian polit­i­cal fig­ure died a week ago today, and few on the south­ern side of the bor­der marked his pass­ing. I’m here to rec­tify that, at least for the cor­ner of the world I control.

New Demo­c­ra­tic Party leader Jack Lay­ton died Mon­day, August 22, at the age of 61.

Since 2006, the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment (a par­lia­men­tary sys­tem) has been con­trolled by the minor­ity party, the Con­ser­v­a­tives, led by Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper. In the 2011 elec­tions, Cana­di­ans stirred up the House of Com­mons, giv­ing the Con­ser­v­a­tives a major­ity but weak­en­ing the tra­di­tional Lib­eral oppo­si­tion. Con­ser­v­a­tives now con­trol 166 of a total 308 seats in the House of Com­mons. There are four oppo­si­tion par­ties hold­ing seats — the New Democ­rats (102 seats, with Layton’s now empty), Lib­er­als (34), Bloc Québé­cois (4), and Greens (1). Tra­di­tion­ally, the Lib­er­als and Con­ser­v­a­tives have alter­nated gov­ern­ments, with the Bloc Québé­cois (formed as a Que­bec sep­a­ratist party) and New Democ­rats (formed from a fusion of Social­ists and labour/​workers par­ties) rel­e­gated to shout­ing on the side­lines. For the first time in Cana­dian his­tory, the New Democ­rats (formed in 1961) are the offi­cial oppo­si­tion party, with the Lib­er­als and Bloc Québé­cois weak­ened con­sid­er­ably from their ear­lier pow­er­ful role. (more…)

Is Hate Speech A Right?

188
1 year ago
by filistro in

Like prac­ti­cally every­body else on the planet these past cou­ple of years, I’ve been read­ing The Mil­len­nium Tril­ogy by Stieg Lars­son. It is a bril­liant fic­tional depic­tion of a remark­able woman who suf­fers a great injus­tice at the hands of a covert, rogue gov­ern­ment agency in Swe­den. But even more than the intri­cate plot­ting and deft char­ac­ter­i­za­tion in Larsson’s three books, one of the things I will remem­ber most is this pas­sage from the final book in the tril­ogy, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (page 219):

 Swedish democ­racy is based on a sin­gle premise: the Right to Free Speech (RFS). This guar­an­tees the inalien­able right to say, think and believe any­thing what­so­ever. It embraces all Swedish cit­i­zens, from the crazy neo-​​Nazi liv­ing in the woods to the rock-​​throwing anarchist—and every­one in between. Every other basic right, such as the for­ma­tion of gov­ern­ment and the right to Free­dom of Orga­ni­za­tion, are sim­ply prac­ti­cal exten­sions of the Right to Free Speech. On this law democ­racy stands or falls. All democ­racy has its lim­its, and the lim­its to the RFS are set by the Free­dom of the Press reg­u­la­tion (FP). This defines four restric­tions on democ­racy. It is for­bid­den to pub­lish child pornog­ra­phy and the depic­tion of cer­tain vio­lent sex­ual acts, regard­less of how artis­tic the orig­i­na­tor believes the depic­tion to be. It is for­bid­den to incite or exhort some­one to com­mit a crime. It is for­bid­den to engage in the per­se­cu­tion of an eth­nic group.

This pas­sage makes per­fect sense to the cit­i­zens of many coun­tries but it seems baf­fling and con­tra­dic­tory to Amer­i­cans, even quite lib­eral ones, whose con­cep­tion of free speech is that “free means free,” and any restric­tions on speech mean free­dom is cur­tailed and ceases to exist…a sit­u­a­tion they sim­ply can­not countenance.

(more…)

Canada Will Soon Be Penniless

0
2 years ago
by filistro in

Canada serves as a use­ful lab­o­ra­tory for test­ing inno­v­a­tive poli­cies that even­tu­ally make their way south and are adopted in the Unites States. Legal­ized gay mar­riage, open-​​service mil­i­tary and uni­ver­sal health care are all cur­rent poli­cies whose suc­cess in Canada has helped to sup­port a strong push for accep­tance south of the border.

It will be inter­est­ing to see if (or when) Amer­ica is ready to adopt Canada’s next bit of sen­si­ble fis­cal pol­icy.

A non-​​binding Sen­ate com­mis­sion is expected to rec­om­mend before the end of 2010 that Canada abol­ish the penny. This issue has been under dis­cus­sion in Canada for years and has gained momen­tum based on the suc­cess of sim­i­lar moves in New Zealand and Aus­tralia. Both coun­tries abol­ished their penny almost 20 years ago with none of the prob­lems that oppo­nents had pre­dicted. An addi­tional fac­tor push­ing Canada toward a pen­ni­less soci­ety is that fact that a penny now costs 1.5 cents to pro­duce, mak­ing it more costly than its face value.

Aus­tralia and New Zealand still fre­quently use retail prices with 1 cent incre­ments but round off to the near­est nickel, and the same pro­ce­dure will likely be used in Canada. The abo­li­tion of the penny is a pop­u­lar idea on Canada, and almost cer­tain to pass though par­lia­ment after the Sen­ate makes its final recommendation.

The dif­fer­ence in small cur­rency in Canada and the United States becomes quite obvi­ous when you spend time in both coun­tries. Canada no longer makes dol­lar bills, instead using a gold-​​tone dol­lar coin called the “loonie” in ref­er­ence to the image of a north­ern loon on the obverse. The loonie was first intro­duced in 1987, fol­lowed by the “toonie” (a two-​​dollar coin) in 1996. The Cana­dian mint says each coin costs about 16 cents to mint and lasts an aver­age of 20 years. Paper cur­rency cots 6 cents per bill and has a lifes­pan of 1 year.

The toonie has always been pop­u­lar but the loonie was strongly dis­liked by the pub­lic at first. Peo­ple com­plained they already had enough change in their pock­ets, and thought the loonie would be incon­ve­nient and bulky. That feel­ing has com­pletely changed and Cana­di­ans now love their loonie. It is con­ve­nient for use in vend­ing machines, at the car wash and the parkade, and greatly reduces the bulk in people’s wal­lets. Ten one-​​dollar bills form a sub­stan­tial wad in a bill­fold, while ten loonies can get lost in the bot­tom of a pocket.

In fact, most peo­ple find the lack of bulk one of the major charms of their loonies and toonies. A brief search through your jacket pock­ets, your change purse and the coin dish in the kitchen can come up with forty or fifty dol­lars you didn’t even know you had…and that’s always a nice sur­prise. It’s good to find you’re richer than you thought.

Once Cana­di­ans are finally pen­ni­less, they’re going to feel even richer.

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Courtship and Marriage

0
2 years ago
by filistro in

We all know the dif­fer­ence between courtship and mar­riage. Courtship is an excit­ing, heady time, a ver­i­ta­ble whirl­wind of pos­si­bil­i­ties. It’s time con­sum­ing, expen­sive, exhaust­ing and won­der­ful. We spend our time mak­ing and hear­ing big promises, pre­sent­ing our­selves at our best, try­ing hard to please. Men hold their stom­achs in, keep their liv­ing spaces tidy and pre­tend to enjoy for­eign films. Women wear uncom­fort­able push-​​up bras, shave their legs every day and pre­tend to enjoy foot­ball. The future is shiny and bright, and this time it’s going to be great.

Then comes mar­riage, and sober real­ity. There are debts to pay, dis­ap­point­ments to endure, new fam­i­lies to adjust to, and even­tu­ally a throng of small peo­ple for whom we are end­lessly respon­si­ble. Life changes from a series of adven­tures to a litany of prob­lems. And yet within mar­riage lies real oppor­tu­nity for growth and advance­ment. Man­ag­ing debt teaches finan­cial pru­dence, dis­ap­point­ments fos­ter cre­ative adap­ta­tion, dis­agree­ments stim­u­late accom­mo­da­tion and respon­si­bil­ity cre­ates matu­rity. Two peo­ple learn how they can pool their efforts to build a solid, sat­is­fy­ing life.

I think cam­paign­ing and gov­ern­ing are anal­o­gous to courtship and mar­riage. Cam­paigns are excit­ing, treach­er­ous, vibrant times, fraught with lies we style as “promises.” They are are mad episodes in the life story of most coun­tries, mer­ci­fully short peri­ods of reck­less spend­ing and wretched excess that are soon replaced by the bor­ing neces­sity of respon­si­ble governance.

Except in the United States. Like a ser­ial phi­lan­derer, Amer­ica lurches from one courtship to the next with barely a pause to drink the cham­pagne and taste the wed­ding cake. There’s a brief hon­ey­moon (often spoiled by rainy weather), a few nights of crazy sex and later some bit­ter accu­sa­tions: “You’re not at all what I thought you were…” “Oh yeah…well you said you had your stu­dent loans all paid off…” And then the coun­try is off on its next courtship.

This is because Amer­ica for some rea­son sched­ules its elec­tions in advance, as if they were Olympic Games. I’m not a spe­cial­ist in polit­i­cal sci­ence or com­par­a­tive government…but does any other large coun­try do this? Canada is a par­lia­men­tary democ­racy rather than a repub­lic, and its sys­tem is strik­ingly dif­fer­ent. Dur­ing a Cana­dian fed­eral elec­tion, can­di­dates from var­i­ous par­ties run for seats from every rid­ing in the coun­try. The party gain­ing the most seats forms the gov­ern­ment, and the leader of that party becomes the Prime Min­is­ter. The PM and his party have a man­date for no more than five years, after which an elec­tion must be held. How­ever, elec­tions can be called at any time dur­ing the five-​​year term…if the PM feels it’s a good time because he’s up in the polls, if he wants a new man­date for a par­tic­u­lar large pol­icy, or if his gov­ern­ment has been top­pled by a suc­cess­ful vote of no-​​confidence.

When the PM drops the writ for an elec­tion, a date is set six weeks in the future and the cam­paign is on. It’s fast, it’s furi­ous, and it’s all over in lit­tle more than a month. The new gov­ern­ment is seated, and the busi­ness of gov­ern­ing begins again.

Peo­ple who are opposed to the per­pet­ual cam­paign that occurs in the United States have pro­posed var­i­ous solu­tions. One is the sin­gle six-​​year pres­i­den­tial term…and this is one of my favorite seri­ous dis­cus­sions on the topic, dat­ing back 30 years.

Along with the sin­gle six-​​year term, many pro­pose that Sen­ate terms become nine years, stag­gered at three year inter­vals, with Con­gress com­pletely chang­ing every three years. New cam­paigns would not begin as soon as the old lawn signs were taken down. Politi­cians would not be forced to begin fund-​​raising the day after they’re sworn in. The bribes of lob­by­ists would be some­what less tempt­ing. Law­mak­ers would have time to learn their jobs and get to know their con­stituents. Amer­ica would exchange the wild excite­ment of per­pet­ual courtship for the qui­eter com­forts and ben­e­fits of marriage.

It’s worth think­ing about. Con­stantly buy­ing flow­ers, shav­ing your legs every day and won­der­ing all the time if you’re being lied to…that’s a really exhaust­ing way to live your life.

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