If the Conservatives Get a Majority

If the Stephen Harper Conservatives get a majority in Parliament, they will take actions that will fundamentally change Canada during their mandate.

Here is what I see happening:
Within One Year-

1. The gun registry will be gone.
2. Canada will have agreed to spend in excess of $30 Billion on the F35 fighter jet.
3. Spending billions on constructing new prisons will have begun.
4. Proposals will be made to privatize some, if not all of the new prisons.
5. A Conservative back bencher will introduce a private member's bill to restrict abortion.
6. Funding of the CBC will be significantly decreased with hints of future privatization.
7. They will begin the process of appointing Supreme Court Justices with a much more socially conservative legal approach.
8. Plans will be put forth to increase privatization of health care.
9. The government will announce plans to continue to reduce taxes as the best way to "stimulate growth" in the economy and reduce the deficit.

By the End of Their Mandate- 2015-16

1. The fighter jet purchase will have proven to be a monumental money pit.
2. There will be significant cost overruns on prison construction and operation.
3. A larger percentage of the population will be in jail as part of the Government's "tough on crime" approach to dealing with social issues.
4. The CBC will have largely been privatized.
5. The make up of the Supreme Court of Canada will be radically different with the appointment of several Chief Justices who have more socially conservative views.
6. Canada will have a structural deficit as it stripped away its tax base while simultaneously increasing spending on military hardware and prisons.
7. The gap between rich and poor will have increased significantly.
8. Canada will have an increasing number of "gated" communities as the wealthy seek to protect themselves from the poor.
9. The Conservative Party image will have been shattered by a number of scandals, most to do with influence pedaling.
10. Canada will be a nation divided between those that have, and those that do not. It will be a sad place.

Voter Disengagement

With Canada one week into an election campaign I have been quite struck by my total lack of interest in the political theatre that surrounds me.  I glance periodically at the headlines, grimace and shake my head at some of the inane posturing, then move on to something that has more substance.  I note that I just don't seem to care what ANY of the politicians have to say, including those that I may agree with.  Why is this?

Well, it all seems so predictable.  Everyone strategizes to win, appealing to what their handlers tell them their base is.  Our first past the post electoral system guarantees this behaviour on the part of our political parties.

The vast majority of the Federal electoral districts are considered "safe" seats for one party or another.  My riding of Ottawa-Vanier is one of them.  I will vote for the Green Party candidate Caroline Rioux.  However, the odds are better that I will win the lottery, (and I don't buy lottery tickets), than is the possibility of her winning this vote.  Other than giving two dollars to the Green Party of Canada, my vote will not affect the outcome. It is exactly the same for the NDP and Conservative voters in this riding, (although their odds of upsetting the incumbent may be slightly better).

This scenario is replicated across the country in every riding that might be deemed "safe" for one party or another.  Do those NDP, Green or Liberal voters in Calgary Centre really think their vote has anything other than symbolic meaning?  Do they really think that they could possibly unseat Stephen Harper in this election?  Oh yes, we will hear the cry that "every vote counts" and "you can't complain if you don't vote", etc. etc.  But, the truth is, more and more voters feel they are being treated like sheep as they are herded into various voting pens.  They don't see their vote making a difference.

I want every vote to count.  Every voter in every riding needs to know that their vote makes a difference.  Whether you are a lonely Conservative in Liberal red Ottawa-Vanier, a despondent dipper in Alberta, or a Green anywhere in the country you will be more encourage to participate in democracy if you have a sense that your vote will make a difference.  Sadly, that currently is not the experience of the majority of voters.

This election will be decided in those 40 to 50 "swing" ridings where the seat may change hands, that are not "safe" for one party or another.  Voters in these ridings will be showered with an inordinate amount of attention.  All kinds of promises will be made to appeal to these voters in the hopes of scoring the big win. As to the rest of the voters across the country?  More of them can see the manipulative game that is being played.  Yes, many of them are voting, but not necessarily at the ballot box.  Increasing numbers of them are voting with their feet, as they walk away from those ballot boxes, and they will continue to do so until they feel their vote counts.

Don't worry - I'll be voting, at a ballot box, but I certainly understand why increasing numbers of us don't bother anymore.

A Personal Journey of Evolving Consciousness

Born in 1951, I was part of the leading charge of baby boomers growing into the sixties. Contrary to the myth of that decade that stated "if you remember it, you couldn't have been there", I still do retain fleeting glimpses of that time. It was nothing if not turbulent. I entered that ten year stretch of my life a starry eyed child of the fifties, filled with my parents ambitions for me. I left it a dark, surly, aging teenager, desperately searching for meaning in life.

I didn't know where I would find it, but I kept peering under rocks, rummaging through rubbish, opening different doors, looking for something to hold onto in the midst of everything that seemed so meaningless. What I did know was that my heart was not inspired by the Middle American dream that surrounded me.

Entering University in the fall of '69 I began to meet others who were picking through the same detritus of society. "What is all this about?", we were asking. It was an explosion of questioning and being introduced to new ideas. Whether it was studying Marxism, reading Nietzsche, Sartre, or a host of others, we felt challenged by new perspectives of being. Personally though, I really did feel bombarded. It often was hard to handle. Truth be told, I didn't handle it very well at all.

There was, however, one corner of my intellectual universe that calmed me, introducing me to the notion of "aha!" I developed an interest in Buddhist philosophy. Through reading the works of Shunryu Suzuki, Daisetz Suzuki, Allan Watts, and others, I found that I was constantly saying to myself "This speaks to me! This makes sense!" Not having been raised in a particularly spiritual home, by the age of twenty I had harshly judged all organized religion. I could not abide the bible-thumping guilt that I heard coming out of so many pulpits. It was adding fuel to our societal discord, splitting us into "us versus them - we are the chosen ones you are not" camps. It was part of the problem.

I heard no words in Buddhism, however, that spoke in such disrespectful tones. It didn't ask us to consider what divided us, but rather, what brought us together. The one phrase I loved from Allan Watts at the time was "As the ocean waves, the universe peoples." We were but points of exquisite light of universal consciousness. This spoke to my sense of uniqueness in experiencing "my" consciousness, whilst simultaneously breathing life and meaning into what was beyond. Yes, I was intimately connected with all that surrounded me. I was embarking, ever so slowly, on a path of appreciation of non-duality.

Over the years I found much debris on this path. I would choose dead end branches heading into the bushes, or leading to swamps. Sometimes the adventure was fun, other times, not so much. I would get lost, and need to confront my aloneness as I tripped and stumbled down a dark road. I was fortunate, however, to meet the occasional guide along the way.

Although I knew meditation to be an integral part of Buddhism, I spent more time reading about it, rather than actually doing it. It was part of the "practice", but that was where I seemed to get stuck. Having totally (and I mean totally) rejected the dogmatism and ritual of organized religion, I found it virtually impossible to integrate into my life the concept of doing something because I was supposed to. I would do what I wanted, thank you very much.

I also, however, had the sense of something missing. Over the years I articulated to myself and close friends my recognition that a religious or spiritual community was greater than its "dogma". It provided community, a sense of connection with others. This was something I did not have in my life.

Recently, I have met another one of those precious guides I spoke of earlier, Dr. Ian Prattis. He was giving a talk at a local community meeting hosted by Interfaith Sandy Hill last fall. In response to a question I posed about the "how" of becoming more engaged in social change he invited me to the Pine Gate Sangha. I really had no idea what to expect, but he seemed like a wonderful individual. I had first heard him speak on CBC radio about two years ago as he discussed his recently published book "Failsafe - Saving the Earth from Ourselves".

What I am discovering is that missing link of "community", or, in Buddhist terms, the Sangha. For me, I feel like I am coming home. Don't get me wrong. It is not that Pine Gate, per se, is home. Community is home, or, once again to switch to the Buddhist term, Sangha is home. Home is a place to nurture the seeds of life. Home is where you garden. Yes, I can garden on my own, without others, but I am finding it so much more enriching as I garden with others. This is what I am learning about at Pine Gate, as I garden and nurture in community, in Sangha. And, believe it or not, I've actually started the process of integrating meditation into my life! Home is where you make it, and, Pine Gate is becoming part of my home.

Corporations Are Not the Problem - We Are

I like to think of myself as committed to social change, and very concerned about what I see as a consumer driven society hurtling virtually out of control down a dead end track to environmental disaster. I know there are many around the world who share my concerns. What I often hear are screams of outrage against one corporation or another that is characterized as poluting the planet in its relentless search for profit while constantly urging us to buy things we do not need with money we do not have.

Yes, that rings a chord in the hearts of so many who are despairing at the plight of the world. We love to bleat about the horror of the oilsands, resource depletion or any other short term profit seeking corporate practice. But, when we start to dig a little deeper, are the actions of these corporations the root cause of this destruction? I don't think so. We are taking the easy "let's find someone to blame" route. Let's be clear, corporations can only sell something if someone else buys it, and we keep buying boatloads of the stuff. From Ipods to flatscreens to sushi to constant jet travel to cut roses in winter we the consumer keep lining the pockets of corporations with the proceeds of our insatiable desires. The planet is littered with the detritus of our consumption.

Rather than stamping our feet, going to protests and writing letters about these "terrible corporations" and the "capitalist footprint" on the planet, we need to be holding up a mirror to ourselves and our neighbours about how we are behaving. I don't like what I see.

If we want corporations to stop sucking the planet dry, we have to stop giving them the money to do it. Unfortunately, it seems that most of us are too addicted to consuming to really make this happen.

And yes, I am looking in the mirror as I say this.

On Turning Sixty

I ponder the prospect of turning sixty next year. My life, my mortality, my existence is coming into focus. This is no longer a rehearsal for what I will do when I grow up. This is it. This is my life. How I put one foot in front of another every day is how I lead my life. There is no escape. I am here. Now. I am responsible for the over fullness I feel when I eat too much. I am responsible for seeing my life as a rehearsal, instead of the real thing. I am responsible for the judgments I make. I am responsible for focusing on the shadows rather than the light that creates them. I am responsible for every particle of my existence. Every step, every breath, every thought. It is up to me to appreciate and experience, or not. It is up to me to choose to be awake and alive in every instant, or not.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics

I heard that somewhere, not sure where though.

This came to mind as I read today two very different presentations of statistics. First, from Dan Gardner, a columnist I often enjoy to read in the Ottawa Citizen. "Cheer Up", he tells us! "Things aren't nearly as bad as they seem." He then quotes recently published statistics from the United Nations Human Development Report 2010.

"Most people today are healthier, live longer, are more educated and have more access to goods and services. Even in countries facing adverse economic conditions, people's health and education have greatly improved. And there has been progress not only in improving health and education and raising income, but also in expanding people's power to select leaders, influence public decisions, and share knowledge."

He informs us that the report's findings tell us that:

-. All but three of the 135 countries have a higher level of human development today than in 1970.

-. A baby born today in almost any country can expect to live longer than at any time in history.

-. If children were still dying at the higher rates prevalent in the late 1970s, 6.7 million more children would die each year.

-. People around the world have much higher levels of education than ever before. ... No country has seen declines in literacy or years of schooling since 1970.

-. Since 1970, 155 countries -- home to 95 per cent of the world's people -- have experienced increases in real per capita income. The annual average today is $10,760, almost 1.5 times its level 20 years ago and twice its level 40 years ago. These increases are evident "in all regions."

-. Between 1970 and 2010, China's per capita income rose 21-fold, Botswana's more than nine-fold and Malaysia's and Thailand's more than five-fold.

-. The share of formal democracies has increased from fewer than a third of countries in 1970 to half in the mid-1990s and to three-fifths in 2008.

-. Overall, poor countries are catching up with rich countries in the HDI.

And then, later in the day, I pick up from the library the book The Bridge at the End of the World, by James Gustave Speth, where I read the following on the first couple of pages:

Half the world's tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second. About half the wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and another 20 percent severely threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about a thousand times fasther than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in sixty-five million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. Over half the agricultural land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration and desertification. Persistent toxic chemicals can be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.

Human impacts are now large relative to natural systems. The earth's stratospheric ozone layer was severely depleted before the change was discovered. Human activities have pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide up by more than a third and have started in earnest the dangerous process of warming the planet and disrupting climate. Everywhere earth's ice fields are melting. Industrial process are fixing nitrogen, making it biologically active, at a rate equal to nature's; one result is the development of more than two hundred dead zones in the oceans due to overfertilization. Human actions already consume or destroy each year about 40 percent of nature's photosynthetic output, leaving too little for other species. Freshwater withdrawals doubled globally between 1960 and 2000, and are now over half of accessible runoff. The following rivers no longer reach the oceans in the dry season: the Colorado, yellow, Ganges and Nile, among others.

No wonder so many of us are confused. But then...maybe it isn't so confusing after all. Maybe the reason the United Nations can report such a variety of improvement in human development indices is a direct result of humankind's gorging itself on the environmental riches of the planet, as described by Speth. Oh, some of us may be better off, for now. But, can it last?

Criticizing Capitalism Inside and Through Capitalism

A friend of mine regularly emails to a wide network of people articles that he finds of interest. Some of them are from more "mainstream" media such as the Globe & Mail, etc., while others are from the "alternate" press, such as Open Democracy, TomDispatch, Yes Magazine or Asia Times. He includes the full text as well as a hyperlink. I can only assume that he subscribes to Le Monde Diplomatique for when I click on the provided link, I am confronted with a paywall. I am, of course, grateful that my friend has provided the full text in the email for my reading pleasure.

The latest such article is titled "What's Left of the U.S. Left" written by Rick Fantasia. I appreciated his analysis and wanted to share it with friends. Over the past year or so I have usually found Facebook to be a quick way to share interesting links. But, of course, in this instance, the link takes you to a paywall. Now, ordinarily, this wouldn't bother me much. I understand that, the old adage of things being worth what you pay for them is usually true. And, certainly, good writing and critique has value. However, the crux of the argument being presented in this article is that there are "two lefts" in the U.S., which he describes as the "included" and the "excluded". As I read the article, I was beginning to wonder if the divide he described might have something to do with which side of the "paywall" you were on.

In his article he describes the "excluded" workers, otherwise largely known as the disenfranchised low waged non-union workers. He recounts how more than 15,000 activists of this group were in Detroit in June this past year as part of a U.S. Social Forum gathering. Participating in the event were representatives from the Excluded Workers Congress, the Domestic Worker Alliance, the Taxi Alliance, the Alliance for Guest Workers and the National Day Labourers Organizing Network, amongst many others. More than 10,000 of them marched through the streets "full of militancy, anger and colour". He laments that

"(t)here was almost no media coverage of the Detroit Social Forum in the US press, before or after, though the media had been saturated through the summer with reports of rightwing Tea Party rallies (some of which drew just a few hundred people."

He then rhetorically asks,

"Although the Forum took place in the heart of the auto industry, where were the auto workers?"

The answer, of course, lies in the fact that they, the auto workers, are part of the "other left", otherwise known as the "included" workers. They are part of the organized labour movement that has been far more successful in securing better wages and protection from the ravages of the economic downturn. As he points out

while their numbers have declined there are still some 50,000 auto workers and 128,000 retirees.

Fantasia then discusses the activity of this "other left". They were represented most recently by those who showed up at

a large demonstration in October in Washington DC called by a coalition of "progressive" groups, including the AFL-CIO (the country's biggest trade union confederation), the NAACP (national Association for the Advancement of Colored People), the national Council of La Raza, and the national Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This was the established institutionalised left, led by the main labour federation, the official labour movement that was able to bring well over 100,000 workers and others to Washington to show strength and draw public attention away from the Tea Party.

Fantasia pointed out that there

was little attempt to stir up the crowd, no march organized and no real sense of political urgency.

He concludes that these well organized groups have been

too close to power too often to want to jeopardize the position of their institutions.

His analysis certainly speaks to me. He is describing the notion of how power corrupts, regardless of the circle. From the smallest block party organizer to multi-national unions and corporations, for some people, power goes to their head and they often see the world only through organizational or "me first" eyes. Individuals and groups buy into the power trip, and we always need to be honest with ourselves about when it may be happening.

This, of course, brings me back to what "stuck in my craw" as it were, about not so much what this article was saying, but how I came across it. Here was an excellent, and intriguing article that criticized capitalism as well as pointing out that even within the "left" there are the "excluded" as well as the "included". Yet, it was posted behind a paywall that, by virtue of its existence, excluded many. Might one say that those who can afford to read it, don't actually need to, (as they are amongst the educated, financially privileged converted), while those who perhaps most need to read it, the "excluded", can't afford to? What a conundrum.

So, I posed this criticism to my friend, as I questioned why Fantasia was hiding his critique behind a paywall. He quickly came to the defense of Fantasia and Le Monde Diplomatique, saying that it was a struggling "progressive anti-capitalist co-operative" that deserved our support. While I couldn't disagree, I simultaneously wonder how we get the message out to those who most need to hear it, when they can't afford to pay?

I toyed with the idea of posting the article in its entirety, on my blog, but have, for now decided against this course, at my friend's behest. This led me to think of another topic; money, income, and how much is enough. It is rare, if ever, that people in our society are prepared to reveal their income, and what they spend it on. It is considered a "private" matter. I am beginning to think otherwise. I truly believe that, for the most part, we have reached the stage that "enough is enough". Welling up within me is immense criticism of those who draw bulky salaries or fat pensions whose biggest complaint (other than the airport lineups they must endure as they embark on their semi annual vacations), is that their taxes, and welfare rates, are too high. But, yes, that is another topic.