So, the blog has been dark for awhile. There’s a variety of excuses, but ultimately, none of those really matter. Instead of lamenting over lost post potentials, let’s just move on to the subject of the day. I’m not sure if this will result in more regular postings or not,
Continue readingAuthor: Scott
Canadian Political Viewpoints: On Social Media and Bozo Eruptions
So, the blog has been dark for awhile.There’s a variety of excuses, but ultimately, none of those really matter. Instead of lamenting over lost post potentials, let’s just move on to the subject of the day. I’m not sure if this will result in more regu…
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: On Social Media and Bozo Eruptions
So, the blog has been dark for awhile.There’s a variety of excuses, but ultimately, none of those really matter. Instead of lamenting over lost post potentials, let’s just move on to the subject of the day. I’m not sure if this will result in more regu…
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Clearing the Air
Well, I think we need to talk about a few things.In truth, I struggled with quite a while on how to write this post. Yes, we need to address the elephant in the room that is the shooting in Ottawa; and I did try to on the day, but everything I attempte…
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Clearing the Air
Well, I think we need to talk about a few things. In truth, I struggled with quite a while on how to write this post. Yes, we need to address the elephant in the room that is the shooting in Ottawa; and I did try to on the day, but
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Clearing the Air
Well, I think we need to talk about a few things. In truth, I struggled with quite a while on how to write this post. Yes, we need to address the elephant in the room that is the shooting in Ottawa; and I did try to on the day, but
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: War Is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
I am a great admirer of George Orwell, the man whose quote has provided the title of this post. The first and last part of it are, sadly, greatly applicable to the situation we now find ourselves facing.Since the 1950s, the Western World has found itse…
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: War Is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
I am a great admirer of George Orwell, the man whose quote has provided the title of this post. The first and last part of it are, sadly, greatly applicable to the situation we now find ourselves facing. Since the 1950s, the Western World has found itself clenched in the
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: War Is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
I am a great admirer of George Orwell, the man whose quote has provided the title of this post. The first and last part of it are, sadly, greatly applicable to the situation we now find ourselves facing. Since the 1950s, the Western World has found itself clenched in the
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: To Hell With Tradition
Source: CBC News: Speaker Andrew Scheer Warns Mulcair and Others over Bias ClaimsSource: Library of Parliament: Standing Orders, Chapter One, Section 11.2 Anyone who has bothered to turn on the news during Question Period over the last, oh I’d say nine years, probably finds themselves in a continuing series of
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: To Hell With Tradition
Source: CBC News: Speaker Andrew Scheer Warns Mulcair and Others over Bias Claims
Source: Library of Parliament: Standing Orders, Chapter One, Section 11.2
Anyone who has bothered to turn on the news during Question Period over the last, oh I’d say nine years, probably finds themselves in a continuing series of disbelief when the whole spectacle is over. This wasn’t a trend that was started by the Harper Conservatives, but it was certainly perfected by them. Especially when one views the actions of one Paul Calandra.
Calandra rose out of the fall of Dean Del Mastro taking Dean’s place as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister; or more aptly, the PM’s mouthpiece when the PM isn’t in the House of Commons. Calandra made name, and a reputation, for himself when he served as Harper’s ‘deflector shield’ with regards to questions surrounding Mike Duffy and the Senate Expenses Scandal.
Calandra’s non-answers, outright dodges, and ridiculous non-sequiturs involving his family and pizza shops set a new low for decorum within the House of Commons. When it was all said and done, I think most Canadians thought the bar could not get any lower. It seems we all completed underestimated Paul Calandra.
Last Tuesday, Tom Mulcair rose to ask questions on Canada’s involvement in fighting ISIS/ISIL in Iraq. Enter Paul Calandra, who rejected the premise of the question put to him and instead went off on a tangent about Israel and whether or not Mulcair agreed with a position posted by a reported party fundraiser on Facebook.
Mulcair appropriately laughed off Calandra’s first response; even putting in a jibe about understanding Calandra’s confusion with I countries in the Middle East, but the question was about Iraq not Israel. Mulcair repeated the question, and again Calandra rose and provided more or less the same response.
Mulcair appealed to the Speaker at this point, noting that there are rules regarding relevance and asked that they be enforced. Again, Calandra spouted non-sense with response to the question put to him.
Of course, this led to Mulcair making a comment with regards to the Speaker’s impartiality (or lack thereof), which led to the Speaker finally taking action but against Mulcair and not Calandra. Mulcair was stripped of his remaining questions for the day, and Question Period moved on.
What followed was quite the media firestorm.
Numerous political reporters called it an unbelievable display, unheard of before in Canadian Parliamentary history. And then came the chorus of talking heads: some of the side of Mulcair, and others on the side of Speaker Andrew Scheer. (Unsurprisingly, no one really rushed to Calandra’s side.)
And so began a question of who was in the right and who was in the wrong.
Many condemned Mulcair for challenging the Speaker’s impartiality; while others agreed that Mulcair was right to challenge Scheer on the issue. So, how is it possible that so many of Canada’s best informed political minds could have such differing views? Surely, the laws of the land that govern the role of the Speaker and the House of Commons would prevent any sort of casual interpretation?
Well, written meet tradition.
Mulcair’s defenders were quick to point to House Standing Order 11.2,which states:
It’s not uncommon, and Scheer has done it often, for Speakers to reference past Speakers and their decisions when they make a judgement on something. That creates a lot of precedent that often flies in the face of the written rules and powers for the Speaker. Just because a Speaker in 1976 chose to read a rule a certain way, or ignore it, doesn’t exactly mean the same interpretation holds in 2014 for a similar, yet different, situation.
That brings us to the final question: What do we do about it?
Well, the NDP is trying to bring change forward, with a motion introduced this week to give the Speaker explicit authority to act during Question Period. However, the Conservatives have attacked the motion.
House Leader Peter Van Loan has argued about the motion turning Question Period into a “one way street” that would tie the hands of the government.
Well, here’s the good for the goose and gander argument. If the Conservatives defend Scheer’s inaction based on convention and tradition, then they need to look back to the Speaker James Jerome. In 1974, Jerome ended the practice of allowing Parliamentary Secretaries (like Paul Calandra) to pose questions to the opposition.
Furthermore, if we want to stick to convention, Ministers are conventionally not allowed to ask questions since they often provide answers on behalf of the government; the rules do not forbid Ministers asking questions, but convention says that only Private Members should do so.
So, conventionally speaking, the government side of the House shouldn’t be asking questions from the front bench (Cabinet) at least.
Van Loan, and his party it seems, want to have their cake and eat it too in this regard. Let us keep this part of the conventional tradition, but disregard this other. Either they have to commit wholeheartedly to whole bundled mess that is Parliamentary Tradition, or they have to work with the Opposition Parties to codify new and clear rules.
The NDP motion is looking doomed to fail thanks to no support from the Conservative bench. So for now, we’re stuck with the notion of conventional tradition as the guiding principle for how our Parliamentary system is administered.
The bigger problem, as I think we’ve illustrated, is not that the Speaker actually needs more powers (they already have them), they just need the will to exercise them.
People have already drawn comparisons to our Speaker and the Speaker of the House in the UK Parliament. Many have linked to the Speaker shutting down speakers from the floor, including the Prime Minister. Yes, Parliamentary systems evolve and we should be looking to other Parliaments to see what sort of improvements have been made and should be adapted here.
But until we accept that written rule and authority has more credence than past ‘convention’, all the reform in the world won’t do a thing.
Canadian Political Viewpoints: To Hell With Tradition
Source: CBC News: Speaker Andrew Scheer Warns Mulcair and Others over Bias ClaimsSource: Library of Parliament: Standing Orders, Chapter One, Section 11.2 Anyone who has bothered to turn on the news during Question Period over the last, oh I’d say nine years, probably finds themselves in a continuing series of
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Why We Need a Guaranteed Annual Income.
It’s been a little while since we last sat down and talked, so I’d like to take the opportunity now to correct that and try to move the conversation forward a little bit. As I mentioned when I posted that we would be re-engaging the blog, there’s a lot of
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Why We Need a Guaranteed Annual Income.
From the situation in Ukraine, the escalation of conflict between Israel and Gaza, or even latest poll numbers federally here for our own parties, there is certainly no shortage of things to talk about.
But, as is my want, I find myself gravitating towards an abstract big picture post rather than the current event one. And so with that in mind, I’d like to talk about an issue that has been creeping up on social media and other areas that hasn’t received a lot of mainstream media coverage. And that is the issue of the guaranteed annual income.
There’s been a lot of talk, mostly revolving around the social determinants of health, about the need to establish a guaranteed annual income (GAI). There’s also been references to the 1970s sample trial in Dauphin, Manitoba and the successes that came out of that social experiment.
We’ve talked a bit about work before on the blog, and not all of this is going to be new ideas. In fact, some of this may very well be repeating myself. However, I feel that in order to fully expand on this idea we need to recover ground that we may have already tread.
I would first like to start by calling attention to the asbestos mines of Quebec. Several summers ago there was mass panic in some Quebec communities over the worry that the federal government was about to sign on to deal that would basically kill off asbestos mining in the province. Naturally, there were photo ops for the Prime Minister and relevant ministers to visit Asbestos and declare their support for the workers in the community.
It’s a photo opportunity as old as time: coming out in support of established jobs, condemning (to a degree) the modernization of the trade market and its necessity to put products to bed after a period of time; which is always surprising coming from conservatives, given their attitudes towards free-market competition and the free hand of the marketplace determine what is and is no longer necessary product, but that’s a conversation for another time.
You may ask, I thought we were talking about a guaranteed annual income why you ranting about asbestos mines? The purpose of that is to highlight a very real truth about the capitalist marketplace economy: as we move forward both industrially and technologically, established jobs often are lost in the process.
So a community, like Asbestos, may go through turbulent changes due to the ever-changing nature of the market economy. No one likes to talk about jobs disappearing; in fact as a politician it’s political suicide to even go to a community and say that 20 years from now the jobs that your fathers and grandfathers had no will longer exist.
People like safe, they like familiar. Which is why when the market fluctuates and creates these changes there’s always demand do something about. Communities are always hit hard because despite the world moving forward, many of these places have remained in an economic time bubble. They commit to jobs that are disappearing, and at the same time they’re pushing younger workers to take over these jobs. Sooner or later they find these younger workers are now competing for fewer and fewer jobs as the market shrinks in that industry.
Compounding this issue, and making it subsequently worse, is the fact that many of these jobs that are disappearing due to changing economic market circumstances are high-paying, have benefits and will establish a young person’s life. It is not just a job, it is a career and many of these are disappearing.
In return, what we’re seeing every time one of these jobs disappear, is that their replacement is not a career but a job. I’m talking part time, I’m talking precarious employment situations, contract work with no guarantee of extension. I’m talking no health benefits, no savings towards retirement. We are pushing an entire generation out of well-paying jobs and into the complete and other mercy of an economic market that has already proven over several decades that it is anything but merciful.
And to make matters worse we are pushing them into an unstable service economy. Now, I suppose some of you are asking what is an unstable service economy? Let me provide you with a clear example: I want to think about the last time you went to the grocery store. Now, when you’re standing in line when you reach the end of that line is there a person standing behind the till or are you in line at the self-checkout machines?
I’m not attacking self-checkout machines, I actually quite like them as I find that they reduce the wait time in line substantially. What I am doing with this is illustrating a point: our marketplace is changing substantially, even something as simple and as reliable as our service economy is changing the methods in which service is provided to the consumer.
Fifteen or twenty years from now, the grocery stores of tomorrow are going to look a lot different. Instead of only three or four self-checkout machines they will be the vast majority with maybe only one or two lanes of actual human cashiers (and even I think that’s optimistic as I believe the number of actual honest-to-goodness human beings will be working in a cashier capacity will be closer to zero). One need only look to markets like Japan where automation and technology are rapidly replacing human beings in the service economy, these are jobs that we are forcing generation to accept and that in the generation’s time will cease to exist.
Which brings me to the first argument for guaranteed annual income: the marketplace will always change. There are economists who summarize the market as “it goes up, it goes down and nobody really knows why”. Which means, quite frankly, that we can never truly predict what the market will do. But the one constant we can always bet on is that the world is moving forward; it does not stay stagnant as time marches on and what that means is that our market changes with it which means the jobs that are here today will cease to exist tomorrow.
Which ultimately means that we can’t bank on the jobs of today to be here tomorrow. The marketplace is changing and will always change; we can’t say that 20 years from or now 30 years from now, high school students will be working in your local burger joint flipping burgers and working the till. Those jobs may not exist for human beings anymore, as we build machines that flip the burgers machines will take your order.
To summarize this point to absolute clarity, there is an idea in the free-market that anyone who wants work can find it. Anyone who wants to be productive has the opportunity to do. It’s the sort of idea that grew out of the 1950s fear of communism; it suggest opportunities are available for anyone who has the courage to seek them and praises those with the ingenuity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But as the market shrinks, opportunities shrink with it. Ultimately, we are going to reach a point where we aren’t going to have jobs for every able-bodied citizen in our country, in our province, or even in our cities, regardless of how much they may want to work.
Canadian Political Viewpoints: Why We Need a Guaranteed Annual Income.
It’s been a little while since we last sat down and talked, so I’d like to take the opportunity now to correct that and try to move the conversation forward a little bit. As I mentioned when I posted that we would be re-engaging the blog, there’s a lot of
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Back on the Horse
It has been awhile. The blog is still active, despite the appearance to the contrary. Yet another time period of feeling a bit uninspired struck, though it does seem to be on the way out. There is definitely no shortage of things to talk about, given the state of the
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Back on the Horse
It has been awhile.The blog is still active, despite the appearance to the contrary. Yet another time period of feeling a bit uninspired struck, though it does seem to be on the way out. There is definitely no shortage of things to talk about, given th…
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Back on the Horse
It has been awhile. The blog is still active, despite the appearance to the contrary. Yet another time period of feeling a bit uninspired struck, though it does seem to be on the way out. There is definitely no shortage of things to talk about, given the state of the
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Continuing the Thought
In the last blog post, I talked a bit about how the financial system in our democracy is ultimately harming our ability to vote effectively. If you didn’t read it, the long and short of it is we need publicly funded elections in order to really hand power back to
Continue readingCanadian Political Viewpoints: Continuing the Thought
In the last blog post, I talked a bit about how the financial system in our democracy is ultimately harming our ability to vote effectively. If you didn’t read it, the long and short of it is we need publicly funded elections in order to really hand power back to
Continue reading