Theyunderstand there’s been an active, conscious, successful classwar against them in the United States over the past several decades.As they say repeatedly, they are sick and tired of struggling to makeends meet while 1per cent of the American popul…
Continue readingAuthor: Rural
Democracy Under Fire: The Samara Report – The Outsiders Manifesto
Samara is anindependent charitable organization, founded in 2008 to study citizenengagement with Canadian democracy. Their work focuses on threeareas: political leadership; the participation of citizens in publiclife; and public affairs journalism. The…
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: More Parliamentary Contempt
Dale Smith clearly outlines the Conservativescontempt for parliamentary process – here is his recent post infull.The government introduced its fall budgetimplementation bill today – while the entire Finance Committeeis currently on tour doing pre-b…
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: Libs reject Coalition
The Ontario Election iscoming down to the wire and it is increasing looking like a minoritygovernment with an almost equal split between two if not threepartys. The headlines say “ TheOntario election remains a three-horse race four weeks into thecam…
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: What are they hiding?
Recently MPGuy Caron called on the Commons public account committee to resurrect14 studies that were left unfinished whenParliament fell last March. Seven of the 14 are complete and justneed to be tabled in the House of Commons, they include studies in…
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: Citizens drive out of their way to vote
But not by choice. Manyrural residents who have just received their (cards) were surprisedto learn that they are expected to travel beyond their localcommunity to vote despite their being a polling station much closer.In some cases this involves drivin…
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: Ontario to use Tabulating Machines
Some Ontario ReturningPolls will be using ‘Tabulating Machines’ to count the ballots, thisappears to be an experimental initiative and limited to a few pollsin each area. During ‘training’ the Returning Officers (at least inthis area) were unaware of …
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: Access to Information – Ours or Theirs?
Thisrecent article highlights just how much informationforeign governments (in this case the U.S.) are able to obtain aboutyou or I, meanwhile details of the agreement on almost all of thethree dozen separate initiatives in the Beyond the Border action…
Continue readingDemocracy Under Fire: The Politics of Respect
As Stephen
Lewis said in his eulogy “To hear so many Canadians
speak so open-heartedly of love, to see young and old take chalk in
hand to write without embarrassment of hope, or hang banners from
overpasses to express their grief and loss. It’s a…
Democracy Under Fire: Elections Canada Report
I will briefly return from my summer
hiatus to bring a couple of things to your attention, first up a few
things from the recent report by Chief Electoral Officer Marc
Mayrand.
( stat_report2011_e.pdf
)
Much has been said in the past about
the…
Democracy Under Fire: Democracy Under Fire Surrenders!
After a a few weeks
reflection I have concluded that the fight to protect our democracy
must continue without my weekly posts for a while. As have many
others, I have found recent events both depressing and disconcerting
and must take some time to abs…
Democracy Under Fire: Predictable Chaos
Just one day before
probably the most important election in Canadian history we have no
idea where things are going to end up, it appears the threat of a
conservative majority has been headed off but just as scary is a
conservative minority. The fact …
Democracy Under Fire: Principles of Parliamentary Democracy
Peace,
Order & Good Government is the title a blog about
exactly that, a recent post contained links to some opinion and
reports from some individuals well versed in constitutional matters.
If you think that this election is going to either make such …
Democracy Under Fire: Senator Banks Speaks Out.
Senator
Tommy Banks recently wrote a longish article about the choices we
face next Monday, whilst found in at least one place under the
misleading title ‘Conservative
Senator Speaks out’ (Senator Banks
is a Liberal
Senator) the opinions expressed
a…
Democracy Under Fire: The Frustrated Voter!
It is
frustrating listening to all the promises as to what our politicians
will do if elected when we cannot even get a clear picture of what
they did when in power. With the previous government having been the
most secretive and controlling in Canadi…
Democracy Under Fire: Will our Constitution Survive?
I think it is sad that the majority of
Canadians don’t understand the basic workings of their own
government. This ignorance speaks to a major failure of the
education systems across the country as well as to the apathy
brought on by relative pro…
Democracy Under Fire: The Week That Was, Secrecy, Lies & Rising up
I may be totally
depressed by the futility of trying to effect change using our first
past the post voting system and the total lack of any indication that
any of the incumbent partys will do anything to change it, but unlike
far to many of our citize…
Democracy Under Fire: The Harper Legacy – Series Suspended
Just like the harper
regime I am going to break my promises and suspend dialog, my
intention to document Harpers antidemocratic actions and words over
the last few years is simply too depressing for me to continue. As I
follow the daily promises an…
Democracy Under Fire: Is this Democracy? -Updated
“Harper’s
strategy of refusing to take more than five questions a day from
reporters amounts to a gross disservice to the public. Four of the
permitted questions (generally two in French and two in English) go
to reporters following Harper’s cam…
Democracy Under Fire: The Harper Legacy – Part 2
The Rise to Power,
In Opposition and Before 2004 – 2006
When the 38th
parliament fell in Nov 2005 the mantra from Mr Harper was about
bringing in an “Open and Accountable” government and
early in 2006 he was given a chance to do that. It wa…