A gift that keeps on giving the whole year

We are in the midst of our two Christmases, as the wife’s family is in town to celebrate the season this weekend before we go back to the farm to hang with a house full of Hucks.

It may be bad form to brag about what one receives through the Yule gift exchange, but I have to shout out props to Prairie Boy for fixing me up with a present with a social conscience:

Free Mark Steyn, and have yourself a very merry Christmas.

Go Riders

After living a full life, Doug Berry, the Winnipeg Blue Bomber coach, died. When he got to heaven, God was showing him around.

They came to a modest little house with a faded Blue Bomber flag in the window. ‘This house is yours for eternity,
Doug,’ said God. ‘This is very special; not everyone gets a house up here.’

Doug felt special indeed, and he walked up to his house.

On his way up the porch, he noticed another house just around the corner. It was a gorgeous white and green three-story mansion with a 50-foot tall flagpole with an enormous Saskatchewan Roughrider flag, and in every window, he could see Saskatchewan fans.

Doug looked at God and said, ‘God, I’m not trying to be ungrateful, but I have a question. I was a good coach, ran a clean program, took the Bombers to the Grey Cup, and came close to winning a national championship.”

God said, ‘So what do you want to know, Doug?’

Doug asked, ‘Well, why does Kent Austin, the Saskatchewan coach, get a better house than me?’

God said, ‘Doug, that’s not Kent’s house. That’s mine.’

A Canadian Senate Model

This is an idea I’ve had for some time now, and I thought I’d better put it down before I forget it for good.

Senate reform is a complicated process, which would involve an intense national debate, consultation and referenda. I do not suggest that this would be an easy undertaking but for the purposes of this post, I only offer a possible model which might result once all the hard work has already been done.

I use the American model as a base, though I am aware of the failings of such a federalist system. Pork-barrel politics ensues on Capitol Hill, where pet projects are tacked on to legislation in order to get a particular bill passed through either the House or Senate. At the same time, the Senate is effective in maintaining a balance between the highly populated states and the rest of the Union — as important as California and New York are to the American economy, neither one of them holds absolute sway over the national agenda, partially due to the distribution of authority to the Senate. In the United States, a senator from Rhode Island has as much opportunity as a distinguished senator from Texas. That’s equality.

Contrast that situation with Ontario holding one-third of all the seats in the House of Commons.

The Canadian Senate was supposed to work in the same fashion, except on a regional scale. Dividing the nation between the regions of Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and the West might have made sense at one time (though I don’t see it myself), and is the most enduring defense on behalf of the status quo today. However, I don’t buy it.

The Senate consists of 105 members, which are divided into 4 main regions: Ontario and Quebec have 24 senators each; the Maritimes also have 24 — 10 in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and 4 in Prince Edward Island; the four provinces of the West — Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan — have 6 senators each. Newfoundland, which joined Confederation in 1949, is not included in any region and holds 6 senators, while the three territories of Yukon, Nunavut and Northwest Territories have one senator a piece. Any moderately intelligent observer can immediately see the disparity within the make-up. But it’s more than disparity that’s involved — it’s the arbitrary reasoning which endures without acknowledging the realities of the Canadian demographics.

Whereas the American constitution had enough foresight to imagine a growing federation in which states would join and evolve over time, the Canadian framers devised their own scheme in a suspended time warp. What’s even more confounding is that Sir John A MacDonald, First Father of Confederation, had already been considering westward expansion in order to hold off
American movement into the North West Territory and British Columbia, and thus must have contemplated additional provinces to the Dominion, yet endorsed a Senate structure which could not evolve from 1867 onwards.

We, as Canadians, have an obligation to correct the mistakes of our forefathers (many of whom, I might add, conceived the Dominion in the midst of a roaring party in 1864).

Either we go the route of increased federalism, or we don’t. If we choose the latter, then I end this discussion, as the milquetoast federalism represented by a regionally divided Senate should be abandoned altogether.

If we go the other way, however, we must take the arbitrary nature of the current structure out of it, and prepare for future provinces (and future provincial relationships). Thus, I propose to have equal number of senators for every province in Confederation.

This is where it gets good. In order to placate the proportional representation fetishizers out there, we will not have first-out-the-gate elections when it comes to senators (I’m going democratic here; any fans of the blatant government patronage of today can go elsewhere). Instead, each province will elect three senators — at the same time. Any number of candidates can put their names on the ballot. I would suggest that no party affiliation be included on the ballot, but I’m not married to the idea. The point is that if the first-place candidate does not garner 50% of the vote, it doesn’t matter, because all three candidates chosen do not need it to get to Ottawa. What this does guarantee, however, is that minorities (in the political sense) have an opportunity to become decision-makers.

For example, in a supposedly conservative province like Alberta, in all likelihood a conservative would end up first on the ballot. A second conservative might also win a seat; however, the chances that a different party affiliation might get the third position in the Senate are greatly increased. This is because a voter would be allowed only one vote on any given ballot. No complicated weighted voting scheme is needed, nor would there be any requirement to make two or more choices. The top three candidates get in.

I propose that elections be held every two years, and that senators serve six-year terms. Therefore, there would be three elections before a sitting senator would have to run again. As this gives a sitting senator a term which would extend at least two governments, a method of continuity in parliament would exist. If we limit a senator to only two consecutive terms, that would give them up to 12 years in order to accomplish something useful, after which we should hope they move on to more meaningful aspirations. It would also allow a senator to move into a lame duck stage in his second term in which he would not be beholden to partisan shenanigans.

In this model, then, there would be ninety senators from the provinces. Add in one senator chosen from each of the territories during a given election, then the total would amount to 99.

To sum:
3 senators per election per province (1 per territory);
2 years between elections;
6-year terms;
12 years maximum;
99 senators in total.

And that’s it.

There are weaknesses in this model, and I would concede several points, including holding elections every three years instead of two. However, I do believe that this would be a welcome compromise between the current Canadian model and the American federalist model. It allows for regional growth, it provides equality between the provinces, and it removes the problem of Ontario controlling the government agenda within the Commons by simply bypassing it.

I do not expect such a model to be adopted any time soon. In fact, there is a strong chance that I will either be dead and gone, or that the country has split apart, before this to be considered.

That said, I do believe that fresh, independent thinking has to occur in order to solve the current dilemma afflicting our upper house.

Alas and Wo’

The tri-annual debate on the terminology of Calgary ward representatives has come and gone, with city council voting — once again — to retain the title of ‘alderman’ as opposed to the apparently more progressive ‘councilor’. I tend not to get drawn into these debates, as politically correct nomenclature is one of the more petty of the time-wasting preoccupations of elected governments of our society. However, I tend to see what the intelligentsia have to say about any given issue before I make any judgment of my own in order to ensure that all bases are covered. Thus, I go to the always cogent Naomi Lakritz of the Calgary Herald to see her opinion — and take the exact opposite tract:

You go, girls. Yes, you — Druh, Diane and Linda — you aldermen. Thank you for upholding a Calgary tradition dating back more than 100 years, by voting down the idea of changing “alderman” to “councillor.”

And thank you for putting paid to the silly notion, promulgated by the Citizens for Calgary Councillors, that women are such timid little rabbits that the suffix “man” will scare them away from running for office. Let’s see. Today’s woman is considered gutsy, competent, smart and fearless — but she morphs into a wimp when a common three-letter suffix registers in her delicate ears? That is just plain insulting, if not hopelessly 19th-centuryish.

Thanks, Naomi. For being so shortsighted and wrong in almost every other issue which has been denigrated by her lacklustre pen, I am now convinced that city council got it wrong in their decision.

It is not that Lakritz was incorrect in criticizing women’s groups who campaign on behalf of benighted women politicians, who should be tough enough to repel the slings and arrows of outrageous misinterpretation in the political arena; If a woman can’t take the heat, she shouldn’t run for office, full stop. However, reacting to such a push by a woman’s advocacy group by rejecting their pleas out-of-hand because they are, well, a women’s advocacy group is nearly as stupid as suggesting that women do not run for office because of the prevailing conditions.

What’s missing in the argument is not the ‘man’ in alderman, but the ‘alder’. Derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for ‘elder man’, alderman is a misnomer. It has nothing to do with being an old person as much as it has nothing to do with being a man. More importantly, it is a confusing title, as convention has shifted in almost all cities in the country, and any citizen unfamiliar with the term might not understand to which organization an alderman might represent. In other words, any person who sits on a council ought to be called a councilor — because they sit on a council.

But governments, much like law societies, love their anachronisms. This goes especially for the leadership, who generally do everything in their own power to try to distance themselves from the unwashed masses by placing an emphasis on their high and mighty positions. The reasons why the term ‘alderman’ is retained is the same as why a sitting mayor is referred to as ‘his worship’, and why judges and solicitors are so eager to don their fancy-dan robes. None of these conventions have anything to do with their actual roles, and if any of them were suddenly obliterated, absolutely nothing would change with the outcome to government policy or legal rulings. (I mean obliterating the titles, not the people themselves — that’s another topic altogether.)

These high-falutin’ titles simply elevates them above the rest of us. And who doesn’t want to make themselves feel better than everyone else, especially if it is unearned?

I am a traditionalist and I understand that ceremony has value; yet there are times when tradition gets in the way of practicality, and in the case of the Name the Ward Representative contest this is especially so. I never expected Lakritz to understand this — I am not a cruel man — but perhaps there is an opportunity to compromise: instead of either alderman or councilor, maybe she would accept ‘councilman’ as an alternative.

After all, I would hate to insult her feminist sensibilities.

My Winter of Discontent

I’m back.

Three weeks ago I was laid off from my company of seven years, which was the instigating factor in my taking a hiatus from blogging. While one might be fooled in thinking that I would have less time to do blogging, the truth is I have been more busy in these past three weeks than I have been in my past three years of work. I was bored, unstimulated and quite unhappy in my position, so getting let go was certainly not a low-point in my career.

Further to this, I hold no animosity toward Divestco or its employees. There are good people in that company and I have no regrets on my time spent there. Of course, there are some issues with which I did take issue with the company, but I do hope they get their act together and solve their problems brought about by management and the present energy economy in Alberta. I am, after all, a shareholder.

Now what?

I’m not sure. As some of you readers already know, I have been undergoing a process of self-discovery for some time now. What I have discovered is that I am an excellent communicator, I have an inherent political acumen, and am particularly capable of forging relationships. I have an interest in professional development, organizational theory and political philosophy, among many, many other things.

I’m investigating a career in communications, public relations or human resource consultation. If anyone out there knows of any opportunities, I’m all ears. As I am also considering going out on my own to pursue these endeavors on a contractual basis, again feel free to pass on any work that you may have to offer.

In the meantime, the search continues.

Go Riders.