the daily snivel

  Happy Annual Public Urination Day!

Yesterday was Canada Day, our national holiday that celebrates the anniversary of Confederation, when a collection of provinces and territories variously colonized and conquered by the British formed a sovereign nation with its own constitution and laws. Canada, as a federated country, is now 137 years old.

As I live in the Nation's Capital, Canada Day is an especially big to-do here. Over 75,000 people will fill the downtown area. We get a fabulous fireworks display, we can see the changing of the guards at Parliament Hill, the Prime Minister gives a speech, and there are all manner of free concerts and outdoor events all day long. I like the common friendliness that people exhibit -- no one is in a hurry and everyone is your friend, emblazoned as they are in red and white clothes, face paint, and temporary tattoos. One young woman I saw had even painted a Canada flag across her bared breasts and was walking about and flying it proudly. I'm not sure I'd have done that (for one thing, no one wants to see me with my shirt off -- they'd be blinded by my pale Irish skin) but it is legal in this fabulous province of ours, and it's certainly brave and festive. Meanwhile, it's a treat to see so many children who are excited to have festive colours on, eat ice cream, wave a noisemaker or a sparkler, and watch the fireworks. I remember being that young and I remember marveling at the spectacle every year.

But as the evening wears on, the alcohol and mob-mentality do take a toll. Once the fireworks are over, those tens of thousands of people start to head to bars, and others make no secret of openly drinking the booze they've been carrying with them. People smash bottles, urinate against buildings, statues, and trees, light up joints, get into fights, yell, and push. Someone was stabbed on Elgin Street in a fight in the wee hours of this morning (in a city where you can otherwise count the yearly number of homicides on your fingers). That's the part of Canada Day that depresses me. Most people do behave themselves marvelously, but in crowds so large, even a small fraction behaving like idiots can have a small and contagious effect.

Myself, I went out to a fondue party at a friend's house, and we went out in a group to watch the fireworks from a beautiful vantage point on the Ottawa River. I got to spend time with my friend Celeste, who I'd unfortunately been neglecting since the school year ended, which was swell. I didn't see everyone I hoped to see, but I made the most of a day off and didn't think about my clients, my case work, or anything related to work or school for more than a few minutes (which is pretty remarkable for me). We had some very nice Canadian beer (Steamwhistle Pilsner and Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale), got nibbled by some Canadian mosquitos, and watched the fireworks terrorize Canadian geese, which were resting in the water along with ducks and seagulls not far from the explosions.

On the other hand, I got the vantage point of the unruly crowds as I tried to make my way home, squished into a crowded bus of noisy, singing drunks who draped Canada flags over their shoulders like capes, and yelled and swore at each other as they stumbled around crowded city streets. I had to remind myself they were really in the minority, loud and obnoxious as their beer-fueled bravado was. People do like to have a good time, and I was among them, and there really wasn't much mayhem -- certainly not as much as there could have been.

I think at the end I'm of two minds. My old friend Jennifer (not to be confused with my law school friend Jenn who is in New York for the summer, and managed to celebrate in the East Village with beer and poutine with a fellow Canadian) wrote a rather grumpy entry in her blog about loathing the Canada Day events in Ottawa, which I tend to disagree with, even though I saw plenty of stuff that made me sad and grouchy myself yesterday. I guess the moral is that at least the trouble people get up to washes up fairly well and sobers up fairly well and there are no lasting scars or disgraces to the city that a little paint, sleep, and underwear couldn't quickly cover up.

 

  Another conservative loses the popular vote

Take that, Mr. Harper.

For those of you unaware of Canadian politics, I should point out (if it wasn't staggeringly obvious) that our federal election took place yesterday on June 28. The governing party of the past 10 years, the Liberals, had been struggling under the erosion in public confidence caused by a number of spending scandals, while the Conservative Party (a coalition formed between the old Progressive Conservative Party and the more socially conservative Canadian Alliance Party) was making huge inroads in popularity as an electorate tired of the same old same old yearned for change.

I for one felt horrified at the prospect of a Conservative government, because I felt that the continuing remarks from Alliance (and now "Conservative") Members of Parliament regarding homosexuality and same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court, bilingualism, social spending, taxation, health care, and the constitution betrayed an otherwise hidden agenda of radical far-right ambitions that were smoothed over by the careful speech and repeated assurances that "Statement X by Member Y is not our Party's policy" by Mr. Harper, leader of the Conservatives. The cards were played so closely to the party's chest that all the rhetoric about change and trust and accountability couldn't divorce me, and most Canadians, of the distinct impression that something sneaky was afoot. In fact, 70.39% of Canadians voted for a party other than the Conservatives, indicating a resounding rejection of that ideology. I feel an extra bit proud of my country for that.

I think there is a place for rational discourse around contentious political issues. My ideas and beliefs aren't so sacred that they cannot be challenged. I think that it's only natural that people feel differently about complex social issues and I'm not saying I distrust and dislike the Conservative Party simply because it espouses a great many values that I do not. But while recognizing that candor is seldom even possible for a political party, I think politicians must be clear about their reasoned positions and not simply circle the wagons whenever a member of the caucus publicly states something that most Canadians don't really agree with. More likely than not, it just gives the impression that the party is saying "Not yet, stupid!"

There's a policy void that prevents voters from comparing such inflammatory statements against clearly outlined principles. The other alternative is to look at influential conservative think tanks and academics, such as the "Calgary School" of policy wonks largely responsible for the rise of Mr. Harper, and their record says little that is in any way encouraging because again all you see is hostility to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, public medicare, social justice, multiculturalism, and regulation of industry. The old PC party used to win large voter appeal because it balanced fiscal conservatism with a generally socially liberal policy outlook.

A crazy conservative Canadian blog says this about people with attitudes like mine:

See, even though we’re outnumbered among the population as a whole, social conservatives have one great advantage. Think about it for a second. When you picture a “social conservative”, who do you picture? I see a woman like Elise Wayne or a man like Stockwell Day. Middle aged, gainfully employed, and generally reliable. When I think of a social liberal, I think of a twenty-one year old community college student reading the latest issue of Maxim Magazine in a dilapidated basement somewhere. Which of the two is more likely to vote if properly motivated? The ranks of the social left are greatly inflated by a vast collection of largely useless debris who, in many ways, are more of a liability than anything else.

[emphasis mine]

As the election results more properly indicate, it's clear that most people of my generation are very liberal, and an awful lot of them vote. While it's a sad fact that only 60% of Canadians voted on June 28, only 29.61% of those voted for the Conservative Party. Every other major political party in Canada is socially liberal. Conservatives may be a minority in the population, but a lot of them couldn't be bothered to vote for the Conservative party either.

Last night, I nipped to the polling station between work and client intakes and marked my X for our local New Democratic Party candidate (Ric Dagenais). The NDP is considered a very "lefty" party (in contrast to the successful centrist stance taken by the Liberals), and I have few delusions that they would ever form a majority government, but the power a strong opposition party can wield over a naturally centrist governing party is great. Many of Canada's most prized social traditions were adopted by Liberal governments making use of the best ideas of the NDP and its forerunners. And given that we were almost certainly headed for a Liberal minority government (lacking the 155 out of 308 seats required) with the Conservatives as the opposition, a strong NDP presence would be a badly needed counterbalance by providing enough seats for the Liberals to form a governing coalition between the two parties.

My sister, some friends and myself went out last night after intakes to drink and keep a wary eye on the live CBC coverage, and the CBC obliged by displaying up-to-the-minute seat counts and pie charts showing which party was ahead. I don't think I was surprised by the result (it's essentially what I predicted when the election was called) though I was surprised by the level of punditry and poll-watching that saturated the discussion and predicted an imminent Conservative victory. You could almost see Mr. Harper licking his chops at the thought. It was a relief to go to bed knowing that I wouldn't wake up to a Conservative government that was ready to outlaw same-sex marriage, prohibit abortion, slash taxes beyond any workable threshold for the planned spending, and tinker with the constitution that we hate to see tinkered with so dearly that the last two attempts to amend it utterly collapsed. Not to mention that the Conservatives would have sent Canadian troops to Iraq when the public sentiment against doing so was, and continues to be, so high here.

I like the idea that at least the NDP will help keep a minority Liberal government honest and perhaps pulled a little more to the left -- assuming the government doesn't collapses in a wave of non confidence such that a new election has to be called anyway. It will be interesting to see how the government works -- I hope enough progress can be achieved in terms of passing the bill for same-sex marriage and decriminalizating possession of small amounts of marijuana. Now mind you, I didn't vote Liberal, but it really is one of those "devil you know" situations. The Liberals have a lot more reason to be honest and upfront in their dealings with public money and public trust given that they almost lost it all last night. I mean, I really want to believe better of the government than that it will walk away from this election concluding that it's managed to fool us all again.
Anyway, given how much in favour of Republican values the Conservatives are, what we have now is at least a government I think I can continue to be generally non-ashamed of. 

  The law of the land

This is an op-ed piece in today's Globe and Mail. It succinctly says what I cannot about why voting for the Conservatives tonight would just be a constitutional nightmare. Effectively, if a Conservative majority couldn't effect constitutional change legally, it would do so illegally. If a Conservative majority didn't like a decision of Canada's highest court, it would invoke the 'Notwithstanding Clause' of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to overrule it. If a bunch of cranky, fundamentalist extremists wanted to pass a draconian bill to criminally prohibit abortion, there probably wouldn't be a whip within the party to stop it.

So yes, I voted tonight, neither for the distasteful Liberals nor for the untrustworthy Conservatives.

Full article here... 

 

This article was e-mailed to me by my pal Jenn, and I am excerpting it here with a link to the entire article itself, available through the Toronto Star website.

I hope everyone in Canada has gotten it together to vote today.

W is for Women?
COLUMN: Will Bush's anti-woman agenda tempt Harper?
Date : Sunday, June 27, 2004

Source : The Toronto Star (CANADA)

BYLINE: Jennifer Wells

It was Richard Goldstein writing in The Village Voice who coined the catchphrase "stealth misogyny."

The piece, published in the spring of 2003, was an examination of the covert workings of George W. Bush and crew to undo decades of advances in women's rights. In succeeding months, the presidential agenda morphed from covert to overt, much like the administration's plans vis-à-vis Iraq.

For examples of the unspooling of women's rights advances, we can cite the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act, signed into law by the president last November.

...

Here, the Conservatives' Rob Merrifield comes to mind, the party's health critic having advocated third-party, you-can't-possibly-know-what's-good-for-you counselling for women seeking abortions.

Of course, this column isn't about Mr. Merrifield, nor his boss, Mr. Harper. It is not about Mr. Merrifield, Mr. Harper and their party because the Conservatives have offered little in the way of clarity on such matters as women's issues and gay rights. Except for the occasional off-message slip, as in Mr. Merrifield's comments, and those more recently by Conservative MP Randy White, who bemoaned our "misguided" courts, which "miss the conservative social reality of our times." Overriding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, suggested Mr. White, is a way to address such an imbalance.

Quickly thereafter, the cone of silence once again descended on the Conservative Party agenda in these matters.

With little material to work with, we turn again to the U.S. to view snapshots, not of what will happen, but of what can.

...

The president's on-line store offers "W for women" T-shirts, which feature an American flag waving out from the "W." It has a scooped neck, is all cotton, and can be purchased for $17.95 (U.S.). The T-shirts are a tiny part of a vast array of presidential merchandise, which, through ball caps and golf balls and mousepads, evince the many faces of Bush II. There's the "Interstate" merchandise line, which is very NASCAR looking. There's the "Farm-Ranch" line in green and yellow featuring tractor hats and belt buckles and a spray of barbed wire on the licence plate. And there's the minimalist "W" line, all subtle and black and perfect for Manhattanites.

...

Who is the real Stephen Harper? Who knows? His nurturing among the so-called "Calgary School" of wonks is of no help, at least as far as women's issues are concerned. The Calgary School of wonks sounds a lot like that old Chicago School of economists. I never heard Milton Friedman giving much room to women within his small government, low taxes, market forces theology.

<< The Toronto Star -- 6/27/04 >>