Has Tony Clement Twitter Blocked You Yet?

In the last while I’ve seen more and more people wondering why they have been Twitter blocked by Tony Clement.  Quite a few of them seem perplexed as to why Tony blocked them.

Well I was blocked by Tony ages ago, I didn’t even realize it for a while.  I didn’t stalk Tony, but if I saw him comment I sometimes replied.  I don’t agree with Tony on many things, I don’t expect him to agree with me. 

Democracy.

We live in a Democratic country.  Part of that means we should have the ability to exchange ideas, and disagree.  Just because we disagree on Twitter is no reason to block someone, I don’t even bother blocking trolls.

I ignore them.

If someone sends me a tweet that is not worth replying to, I don’t reply.  It’s that simple.  I have blocked a few on Twitter, most of them tried to send me to a corrupt website to try and steal my Twitter information or infect me with a virus, a few were trying to raise money for nonexistent causes.  I blocked and reported them.  Done.

What I think that Tony doesn’t get is that Twitter is a communication medium, a crappy one, but it is a means to getting your ideas out.  If you decide that you don’t want people seeing your thoughts and ideas it’s like you’d prefer to preach to the choir or to the “Amen corner”. It doesn’t help get your idea out, it just gives you a false sense that what you are saying is right. 

It’s a bit like the old saw, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room”.

The other thing I don’t think Tony realizes is that if he is involved in a Twitter conversation with someone who I follow, I get to see snippets of that conversation.  If it interests me, I can just click to see the conversation and lo and behold I can see what Tony is typing!

Now for those of you thinking big deal, you can’t interact with Tony, that’s not why I reply to those tweets.  I’m sending my message to the others who are following the same conversation.  I’m not talking to the “Yay” people or the “Boo” people, I’m looking for the people in between, the ones that don’t drink anyone’s Kool-Aid.

So should you take it as a badge of honour that Tony blocked you?  I don’t really think so.  I think it’s sad that a Cabinet Minister doesn’t want to hear from his constituents and doesn’t want them to hear his message, he doesn’t want you to know what he thinks.

Maybe Tony failed civics or maybe he just forgot how government is supposed to work.  If one is named to a Cabinet position, one no longer represents the riding that elected him.  A Minister represents all of Canada, not just a small segment.  And in the same vein of MPs sending updates to their constituents, Tony should be communicating with us, all of us.

And he should be listening.  He doesn’t need to agree, but he should hear what people are saying.

I guess what I’m saying is that if Tony thinks this is going to shut me and other people up, he’s got another thing coming.  That, and if you’ve got something to say, say it.  Who cares if Tony sees it, other people will.

TTFN

BC

BTW I don’t mean Twitter is crappy, it’s just a bugger to try and get a point across in 140 characters or less, especially with long twitter handles like @canada_bearcat.  Cheers!

UPDATE:  I am no longer being blocked by Tony Clement.  Not only that, he's following me now... Welcome aboard,  Tony.

What Happened to Political Discourse in Canada?

As a rule, Politics and Religion are two things that we don’t talk about in polite company. Both excite passions and can easily get out of hand if we don’t respect our fellow debaters.

Generally I don’t talk politics (or religion) in person.  I don’t need the headaches, I don’t need the hassle.

There was a time that I would discuss politics on occasion.  I recall a time when I sat with a friend and we were on opposite sides of an issue.  We discussed the merits of our sides, pointed out the defects in the other’s argument and when we were done, neither of us had won.  We both learned a little bit though and saw that our stance on either side was not perfect.

In the end the issue was decided at the polls, Mulroney won a majority and the GST was born.  One thing I took away from that discussion was that the GST was not set high enough.  Had it been higher, Personal Income Tax could have been lowered and even eliminated for entry level incomes.

But that was then.

Today, I don’t even bother.  The respect is all but gone. 

That was most evident this week when Paul Calandra made a mockery of Question Period.  QP has a long history of non-answers and some politicians have made a pretty good living out of dancing around questions or deflecting them into the corner leaving the Opposition little room to mount an attack. 

The media is now reporting that both the non-answer and the apology were handed to Calandra prior to both events happening by the PMO.  In my opinion, if the staffers in the PMO want certain answers provided in the House, they should run for a seat and give those answers themselves.

Let’s put it this way, had Calandra said something along the lines of “I acknowledge the question of the Honourable Member” and then segued to something along the lines of “it mirrors the acts of terrorism that the people of Israel recently faced” and finally going to wondering “why the Members of the Opposition were not as concerned about the attacks on Israel as they are about the threat of ISIS” or something along those lines we probably wouldn’t have said much.  It still answers not a single thing and even finds a way to poke at Mulcair but still within the limits of debate in QP.  Most of us would have been annoyed at the non answer, but it tries to contain the question and deflect it. 

I don’t have the silver tongue required to pull this type of thing off, but I hope you get the idea.  It’s why some MPs are remembered as legends for their gift of non-answers and others are going to be remembered as “Jackasses” (Helloooo Skippy!)

It doesn’t stop there, some like to blame the Internet, but the problem is the people.

How many times have you seen (or heard) people saying “don’t read the comments” on stories that involve politics?  It certainly doesn’t take long for the thoughtful answers (and there are some) to be pushed down the page by trolls of all different flags slagging each other and the politics they represent with strawmen, ad hominems and all the other tools designed to take the argument away from the issue at hand and direct it into whatever the devil it becomes.

I’ve been guilty of some of these offences, and I try hard to not stoop to using them and I’ll tell you it’s an uphill climb.  Another that I try to avoid is the name calling.  It’s the same rule that you followed when you were a kid.  When you resort to name calling, you’ve pretty much lost the argument and that goes for calling the politicians and the parties by derogatory names.  It cuts both ways folks, you might have noticed that I rarely use “Conservative” but instead use “the Harper Party”.  This is out of deference to my friends (yes I have some) who are conservatives (yes to that too) but find themselves without a party.  The Blue Flag has gone way over to the right and now they’re standing in the void between that one and the Red and Orange ones to the other side.

Of course all this goes in the dumpster if you want to troll and I’m in a mood to engage or if you want to use half truths to support your argument.  A Yiddish proverb runs “A half truth is still a whole lie.”  Don’t use them OK?

Look, if you want to talk politics and debate policy, be my guest, I might even partake, but furl you flag when you come in the door.  When we argue over what the best thing to do should be, the only flag we should really be worried about is the one with the two red stripes and a big red maple leaf in the middle.

Now if we could only get the folks in Ottawa to buy into this.

Cheers!

BC

Some By-Election Musings

Or, what if they held an election and no one showed up.

It’s been a week since the by-elections and I still can’t figure out what went on.  OK, I get it that by-elections generally have lower turnouts than full elections, but to set two records for lowest turnout is ridiculous.

I’ve heard from the apologists who say things like they had to run the elections then because of the time limits, or the almost helpful they should have gone to the advance polls if they couldn’t vote on the 30^th, but these don’t explain the incredibly lacklustre showings at the polls in Alberta.

The numbers from Ontario were far from overwhelming, but at 30% give or take a point or two the turnouts were not unusual for a by-election.  The best result was in Trinity-Spadina where the Liberals hoped to take Olivia Chow’s seat from the NDP and they did.  But this was hardly a major upset, that riding was Liberal before Ms. Chow and so it was more like retaking ground from the NDP.

But a win is a win.

On the other hand, if anyone should be suffering from election fatigue, it should be Ontario.  After all there was a Provincial Election just run here and these two ridings are part of the ongoing electoral circus that is Toronto’s Mayoral Race which feels like it is going on to its 48^th month.

So what in the name of Democracy happened in Alberta?

Granted, the timing of the by-election was a stinker.  Setting the date as the Monday before the semi-fixed Canada Day Holiday on Tuesday was in my opinion a brain cramp of the highest order.  Some people would get Monday off for a three day weekend, some would get a four day weekend, and how many people schedule their vacation for the first full week in July to get that extra day off?  Don’t all these people working in the PMO get Government Issue BlackBerrys to stay in contact with each other?  My not very smart phone has a calendar, surely theirs do too.

But no one said “Hey Steve, that’s the day before Canada Day?

Or was it part of the plan?

Generally low turnouts at the polls favour the incumbents, did they figure low turnout would help keep the incumbent party in place in Macleod and Fort McMurray?

In Fort McMurray it almost backfired, the Liberals increased their number of votes from the 2011 election and were for a while, threatening to take the riding. 

Or maybe everyone just figured that since it was Alberta, the Harper Party was a shoo-in?

I don’t know. 

If they had decided to hold these by-elections on the 23^rd of June, would the numbers have been better?  Something inside me says no.

When the Harper Party handed the Election Reform bill to Pierre Poilievre, I think they were looking at the whole thing backwards.  We really didn’t need any new rules to keep people from voting, we do a fine job of that on our own.  Maybe it would have made more sense if Skippy had set his mind to figuring out how to get people to go to the polls instead and then I wouldn’t be writing this.

Maybe we should give everyone who votes a free coffee and doughnut with a chance to win a new car.

We’d need a catchy name for that, though.

Laters!

BC

I’ve Been Pondering Canadian Democracy Again.

I’ve been thinking about Democracy in Canada again.  With two Provincial Legislatures currently prorogued and yet another omnibus bill in Ottawa I’m thinking that Democracy in Canada is in very poor health and someone is stepping on the IV line.

If we ignore the Senate for the time being, our government systems are pretty simple.  Periodically we have a vote to determine who will represent our ridings in the Legislative House.  These candidates represent various political parties and the party with the most seats is declared the government.

Generally the party with the most seats in the Legislature becomes the ruling party in the House.  It has happened that the party with the most seats has lost the confidence of the majority of members and the second place party has taken over the reins, but that is not a common occurrence.

The leader of the governing party is given the title of Premier in the provinces and Prime Minister nationally and is considered to be the nominal Head of State for their jurisdiction.  Our actual Head of State is currently Queen Elizabeth II because that is the way our system works.

Basically the way it works is that the Power comes from the Crown and is utilized by the Government which is selected by the People.

 

Now the people should be very important in this because there are so many of us, but we’re not.  The only time politicians are interested in us is when they are trying to get us to vote for them.

Now I said that the party leaders are nominal Head of States because in our system they are only considered to be “First Among Equals”.  What this means is that Stephen Harper’s voice carries no more weight in the House of Commons than Tom Mulcair’s or Bob Rae’s or Elizabeth May’s or even Rob Anders’ voice.

But this is basic civics, your kids will probably know this stuff better than I.

But we don’t live in a Democracy.  We live in a benevolent dictatorship.

The Supreme Soviet Harper Inner Circle (HIC) decides on what laws should be proposed and tells the Head of State.  The Head of State tells the membership and they in turn vote according to the dictates of their leader.  Pretty much sums it up, at least in a Majority Government.

Now we try to pretty it up with Committees and Private Member’s Bills but nothing happens unless the leadership of the Governing Party decides that it should happen.

What do I mean? 

Well, the last time we had an omnibus bill foisted on us there were almost a thousand amendments proposed.  Not one of these amendments was acknowledged.  They were all shunted aside and the omnibus bill was passed in the same form that it was originally tabled. 

Not one word was changed.

That’s pretty darn good for a document consisting of hundreds of pages and dealing with God knows how many issues.  The guys who wrote it up must be super geniuses.  Maybe they have business cards that say Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius or Jim E. Flaherty, Super Genius?

Did I mention that this particular omnibus bill was a Budget Bill?  So is the current omnibus bill in Ottawa.

What is so special about Budget Bills you might ask, well they are indeed special.  Traditionally Budget Bill votes are “whipped” votes.  Members are not allowed to vote their conscience or their constituents’ wishes.  They must vote to support their party.  For a traditional Budget Bill this is not such a big deal, it’s mostly nuts and bolts and about how the taxes get divvied up between departments, but omnibus bills have a nasty tendency to have lots of other things in them as well.

Our current omnibus Budget Bill contains the delisting of many lakes in rivers in Canada that were listed as “Navigable Waters” before.  What does that mean?

The Act applies to any interference of navigation – in, on, over, under, through or across – Canadian navigable waterways. http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/oep-nwpp-faqs-202.htm#a3

Among the rivers delisted is the Thames River in Ontario.  In Chatham there are docking facilities on the Thames right in the middle of the downtown area.  There are two draw bridges in Chatham to allow for tall masted sail boats to access this area.  Now the draw bridges will no longer have to be maintained and if someone owns property down river from Chatham they can build a bridge across and not have to worry if it impedes navigation as the Thames is no longer “navigable”.

Now the MP for Chatham Kent (Dave Van Kesteren) is a member of the Harper Party and he will have no choice but to vote in favour of this bill even though it is detrimental to his constituency.  There are other rivers in his riding that will be affected, but it matters not, he gets his marching orders and will do what the party says.

The irony here is that during the War of 1812, the Thames was an important battleground.  There was a going ship building industry in the area and the Thames was an important waterway, so important that the British tried to defend it.

The Indian leader Tecumseh died in one of these battles.  He’s mentioned in the 1812 ads we’re inundated with.

But since the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) is included in the Budget Bill for whatever reasons there will be no debate and no action.  No mere MP has a chance of standing up to the Party Leadership of his own party, especially not in the House of Commons.

In a Democratic country the Budget would include budget measures only.  Any changes to the NWPA would be handled in their own bill.  It could be discussed and debated and voted on, and if the local MP decided it was not in the interest of his constituency he could vote against it even if that vote would be cast against his own party’s bill.

You see, in a Democracy we would elect a candidate to represent us in the Legislature.  But that no longer happens.  Today we vote on which party gets to ruin run Canada for a few years and we get a party representative to tell us what a great job they are doing in Ottawa, or Toronto, or Edmonton or wherever.

It’s really too bad.  We have a pretty good country here and if we let the people run it we’d probably do okay.  Party politics is ruining our country and we are basically powerless to stop it.  Let’s face it, the government has always been run by parties and for the foreseeable future, they always will.  Only the government can change the way elections are run and they’re not going to kill the cow when they get the milk now are they?

Sorry about the civics lesson, if I messed it up let me know.  If you can see a solution to this morass, give me a hint.  A return to responsible government would really be refreshing…

Cheers! BC