Before I vote

I'm writing this from Ottawa, the seat of our fragile democracy.

We don’t talk politics a lot, but we did—albeit briefly—at supper last night. It’s discouraging. Our party leaders are rolling out the promises by the ream, again: more money for your children’s future, more affordable housing, more for healthcare, more, more, more. And in our heart of hearts, we know that if these promises are ever kept, it will be like parents buying their kids every neat thing their heart desires . . . on Visa or Mastercard! Because the overriding promise, of course, is that taxes will be reduced, not increased to pay for the pledged goodies.

How did we get here? In this rapidly changing age, how is it we still do our politics like cavemen? We all know that government is not like parents in one way, not charged with “social engineering” the population to fit some preconceived ideal. 

Our federal government’s central responsibility is to do the budget for providing those things we have in common: infrastructure, safety, energy, food security, healthcare, global involvement, etc. 

Good parents know how to say “no” when necessary. They recognize the difference between the fundamental and the frivolous. Good parents know the comparative value of things, have the knowledge and the fortitude to choose. They don’t buy their children’s affection with money they don’t have. Good parents are open and honest; they explain their choices.

Only good people become good parents; only good people make good politicians. That’s possibly why many of us have lost faith in the party system of democratic politics; the majority approached in a recent straw poll indicated that they vote for the party, not the person nominated by the party. There are practical considerations for doing so, of course, but the downside is that the group of 350 or so we end up choosing to set priorities for us and enact our national budget on our behalf might well contain far more incompetence than necessary. We ought to choose our representatives far more critically than we do, don’t you think?

Some would say—justifiably—that our flawed political system has still resulted in our living in the best country in the world. That’s a judgment easily made, of course, but the general consensus—I think—would be that we have found a workable balance between individual autonomy and the public good. 

But, saying we live in the best country in the world might be a fine sentiment for Mount Royal residents, while it would undoubtedly sound hollow in Attawapiskat or Vancouver’s Hastings Street. Were our federal politicians truly the carefully-considered choice of their constituents without the load of party baggage they carry, the attention to the potholes in our democracy might get their due attention.

I live in Carlton Trail-Eagle Creek constituency. My current MP is Kelly Block, former mayor of Waldheim and a Conservative Party of Canada candidate. The others are: NDP-Jasmine Calix; Liberal-Rebecca Malo; Green Party-Dean Gibson; People’s Party-Cody Payant and Glenn Wright is running as an Independent. 

How on earth are voters going to get a fair picture of the qualifications and personalities of this crew without effort? Rebecca Malo has a Facebook page as do Jasmine Calix and Cody Payant. Glenn Wright is mostly known to us as one who has previously run for the NDP and was hoping to secure the nomination this time around, but didn’t make it. He too can be found on Facebook.

I’ve already called this one: Kelly Block will get as many, or more, votes as the others combined, but who knows if that won’t miss out on a representative with super intelligence, experience and qualifications.

And then come the photos of Trudeau in blackface, Harper with paint and feathers and the primary-school playground fight is on. “He hit me first.” Sheesh. What do we do with that?

If you were hoping for guidance in choosing where to place your X, only one suggestion comes to mind from this quarter: know as much about the candidates as you can, discard those who are primarily reactionary and from among the rest, pick the most grounded, the most well-spoken, the best educated, the one who talks most about issues and least about the opposition. 

Because, in the end, no matter to which party you feel an affinity, which party you feel you owe loyalty, any party will do well if their elected members are genuine, are “good folk.”

I think. 

I could be wrong. But I've never done blackface, although my brother did once. 

A Post-election Harp

Don't jump; it's only four years!

I was right about one thing: “the economy” is issue enough to win an election. Harper harped and harped on “the economy” to the exclusion of other issues and it turned out to be the winning formula.

 What I was wrong about was pretty much everything else: I thought “contempt of parliament” was basic enough to our democracy to turn the tide. I thought the selective de-funding of agencies as a back-door policy-making strategy would strike more people as fraudulent. It didn’t. I thought the dictatorial management of Harper’s backbenchers would make enough of a difference in local politics to get some voters to say, “Now wait a minute; what about MY issues.” It created a barely-perceptible ripple. I supposed that a substantial block of anti-abortion, pro capital punishment Conservative supporters would revolt at Harper’s ineffectiveness in promoting rightist social issues. They didn’t.

All of which serves to convince me that the 60% majority that lost the election—practically speaking—has its work cut out for it.

 A functioning economy is a wonderful apparatus; it distributes needed goods to people, encourages entrepreneurship and innovation, rewards hard work and punishes slothfulness. But this isn’t the economy that Harper was talking about in the campaign; he was talking about “less government, lower taxes, highest possible growth” model, the very model that brought the USA to its knees and is keeping it there.  It’s the model the corporate world has convinced a lot of Canadians is somehow a basis for stability and wellbeing, when it is actually its opposite. Boom and bust economies—and I hesitate to even call them ‘economies’—are the mothers of unemployment, disappointment, short-term gain for long-term pain, massive profits for a few, the high-speed rape of natural resources . . . 60% of Canadians know the risks and cast their ballots against it. It wasn’t enough.

Harper won the propaganda battle.

But let’s not worry too much. Four years of Harperism will be plenty to disenchant even their base. Harper is presiding over a caucus divided—some of our Saskatchewan MPs for instance, are expecting this majority to produce socially-conservative reforms, which it won’t. Lower taxes means less revenue for health care, the military, you name it, and cutting will be required. Cuts alienate people, even the Conservative voters who bought into the myth that you can spill half the pail of Kool-Aid at the picnic and still have more for everybody will begin to feel disenchantment. Backbenchers will turn on their leader.

But I was wrong before and I could be wrong again. Maybe less government, more guns, lower taxes do pave the road to happiness. Maybe the corporate world will actually ensure that the benefits of less government do trickle down to the masses. Maybe you actually can put the toothpaste back into the tube.

We have four years to find out. For many people, it feels like the Babylonian exile has just begun, and so I would like to comfort them with the words of the prophet Jeremiah in 29: 4ff: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce, Marry wives and beget sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters and you may increase there and not dwindle away. Seek the welfare of any city to which I have carried you off, and pray to the Lord for it; on its welfare your welfare will depend.” Putting aside the diversion that women are spoken of as if they were brood mares, there may be good advice embedded here for the disappointed 60%.

              

I'm fed up, by George

Jasper Station

Here’s something new besides Election 2011 for which I may sue somebody. You may have heard it among the thousands of ads we’re exposed to—even while watching the news. “By George . . . it’s George—exclusively at WALMART”

At WALMART, no less. Henceforth, don’t look for me at Sears, The Bay or Work Wearhouse. WALMART has appropriated me for their “exclusive” use. Used to be, classmates in elementary school would taunt me with “Georgie, Porgie, puddin’ ‘n’ pie, kissed the girls and made them cry.” Now I expect I’ll be greeted with “By George . . . it’s George.” How can I and all the other Georges go on after this?

If that isn’t depressing enough, how about the election rhetoric we’re supposed to swallow day after day? My good friend, HS, and I agree. Democracy may be a wonderful ideal, but the way we do it these days, i.e. party-system acrimony, is dumbing down the population. The competition for seats has become the underlying theme, as if it were the world cup of propaganda; the issues are only trotted out as absolutely necessary to support that propaganda. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between the competition for sales among the big box chains and our politics, except the retail world may still retain a smidgen of respect for our intelligence, 'by George . . . it’s George' notwithstanding.

CBC interviewed some voters in a car dealership in Northern Alberta the other day. They will all vote for Stephen Harper. One said, “Ah, we’ll probably vote Conservative, and then be ashamed of what we get.” If that doesn’t sum it all up, I don’t know what would. He’s obviously grasped in his own way the absurdity of party politics in our day.

HS suggests that change will never come from the top, and I agree. At any given point, the persons in government see it as a detriment to their interests to effect a change. That’s our Gordian Knot. But I look at Libya, Egypt and Tunisia and realize the other truth that HS iterated forcefully: change has to be forced by the people, by you and me.

So here’s one proposal. A vote strike. Let’s all agree to spoil our ballots, or stay away from the polling stations altogether and back our refusal to participate with a clear message and a bold demonstration that we want a more civilized governance model, and then insist upon it. There would be massive upheaval for a time, but look at Egypt; if you’re serious about change, you have to put some money where your mouth is.

Here’s one example of what we’ve allowed ourselves to become: that debacle we call a “Leaders’ Debate,”—that display of petulance, bad manners and false accusations wants to exclude Elizabeth May because the Greens had no representation in the last parliament. Well excuse me, this isn’t about who GOT elected, but who WILL BE elected! Every Canadian who votes will see a representative of each party on the ballot and will choose among these equals. It is in our power to make Elizabeth May prime minister, and for the leaders currently in office to deny that we have a chance to oust them and choose someone else—say Jack Layton or Elizabeth May—is tantamount to holding the ballot in contempt.

But then, contempt for the people, their parliament and now, their ballot, seems not to be a deterrent politically.
This, too, shall pass. But only if we want it badly enough and exercise some courage.


If you happen to see me this week, don’t greet me with “By George . . . it’s George” or I will take you to WALMART against your will, chain you to the ladies’ wear rack and make you spend a whole day absorbing the ambience of consumerism gone mad. Or I’ll make you sit through the entire leaders’ debate.

Two scenarios specifically designed to prepare us for the rigours of hell.

Election blues and some autumn-garden wonders

Election BluesÓ

by George Epp

As a kid, I and a couple or three of my siblings walked to school in the spring and fall: half a mile east, one mile south. Some years, the telephone post at the junction where we turned south was plastered with election posters. Walter Tucker was the Liberal Candidate in our constituency, and I would probably have drawn a mustache on him if he hadn’t already had one.

At the time, the only credible rivals for government in Saskatchewan were the Canadian Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Liberals. I clearly remember how most of our neighbours supported the Liberals, but that my father was a staunch follower of Tommy Douglas and his democratic socialism. That meant that perversions of the CCF name—as in “Crazy Cat Farmers” for instance—were taken as personal insults when hurled out as playground taunts.

Elections were serious business and volatile emotional experiences.

I think I still take elections too personally, probably in part as a result of those childhood experiences. The New Democrats have always been my team, like the Saskatchewan Roughriders or the Montreal Canadians; a Grey Cup or Stanley Cup loss for the home team still stings, although less with the passage of time.

Seeing Conservatives in office is like having a sharp stone in my shoe.

Mind you, it’s not just about loyalty to my father and his political allegiances. I’ve become convinced through my courses in university and my years of teaching in the humanities that the cooperative (socialist) model is superior to the competitive (capitalist) model as a way of doing government. The debate on this subject is certainly being reopened by the “Wall Street Crisis” going on in the US at the moment. Capitalism has made such a gigantic blunder that it can’t think of any other way to save itself except to appeal to taxpayers to rescue it. Had the US been governed after the Social Democratic model, government might long since have reined in the excesses of corporate greed and the country would have been spared the spectacle we’re currently watching.

The astounding thing is that many people still believe—apparently—that the “invisible hand” that guides the workings of an unfettered marketplace will also lead us all to the best possible world. Greed should never be allowed to drive the bus; to ride in it maybe, but under a watchful eye. It’s a government’s role to act as guardian of the public interest and to ensure that resources are distributed equitably enough to provide the basics of a reasonable life to everyone. For this, there must be controls on those who would make their living by speculating with and manipulating the economic system in order to become wealthy without actually providing any goods or services for the public.

I may vote strategically this election. My MP is a Conservative who believes that crime can be fought with harsher punishment and that day care centres cause women to go out to work when they should be raising their children. Whichever Candidate comes closest—in my opinion—to being able to deliver a challenge to this kind of thinking may well get my vote, although I may stand in the voting booth for a long time with pencil poised, struggling to look beyond old allegiances and at the big picture.

Election Coming

Me at White Sands, 2007

So October 14^th will be the big day. An election that we don’t need and shouldn’t be holding, particularly since the law (to hold elections every four years) enacted by the same government that is calling this one is being flagrantly broken.

Coincidentally, the US presidential vote will take place just weeks after ours. The Republican ticket now includes a woman who is a self-described “hockey mom” and a “pit bull with lipstick,” and a man whose campaign organizers seem to believe that he deserves to be elected because he suffered much as a POW. Meanwhile, the Democratic ticket features a relatively inexperienced presidential candidate who has had some shaky moments in the campaign but represents the best hope for change in a discredited political establishment.

For me, of course, names like Harper, Dion, Layton, May or Duceppe won’t be on the ballot, let alone McCain or Obama. I have to decide whether or not to vote for incumbent Maurice Vellacott or one of his opponents. To help me choose, he’s placed another brochure in my mailbox featuring a get-tough-on-criminals message with the conclusion: “The Conservative Government is standing on the side of law-abiding families and taxpayers. Prison perks have to end.” Vellacott wants to see an end to tattoo practitioners serving prisoners, the closing of smoking rooms and a withdrawal of the right to vote.

It’s the typical conservative response to trouble: meet deviance with force; punish harshly; “they asked for it.” It was Bush and Cheney’s response to 911, and caused them to jump swiftly to choices that were seen in retrospect to be foolish in the extreme.

The problem with this mindset is that, logical as it may seem, it’s ineffective. According to Vellacott, prisons are about “accountability, public safety and punishment.” Prisoners are locked up to pay a debt to society. The problem is that after sentences have been served and the debt paid, we are left with the hardened and broken husks of human beings, incapable of reintegrating, partly because they have been treated like animals in the prison system. This is not doing a favour to “law-abiding families and taxpayers.” This is substituting harsh retribution for a more considered approach to crime and punishment.

Conservatives tend to leave rehabilitation and reconciliation out of their dialogue. That’s why Bush’s foreign policies have failed so utterly, and that’s why another four years of the Harper Conservatives will continue to push our justice system and our foreign policy closer to the retributive model, a model of the past, not the future. Our military budget line will rise faster than our foreign aid line.

In a time when care of the environment, particularly, is front and centre on the global agenda, we can’t afford to be led by the conservative mindset. The Harper record is clear: “Do no more than you have to to keep the tree huggers off your front porch.” Harper appears far more interested in Arctic sovereignty than in Arctic conservation and—as he let out in a recent news conference—that has much to do with the oil that may lie under the Arctic waters.

With any luck, Americans will shake off the Bush legacy, and will refuse to be swayed into thinking once more that their security lies with the pit bulls. With any luck, we Canadians will recognize that conservative thinking in our country is taking us steps backwards when we need to go creatively forward.

Prison-perks is a non-issue in comparison to the global hurdles we face.

We need an MP who recognizes this.

Saskatchewan Election - Postlude

Well, it’s over. The results were more or less as predicted: Saskatchewan Party 37, NDP 21, Liberals 0, Green 0. Popular vote: Liberals 8% (down), NDP 37% (down), Saskatchewan Party 51% (way up). Although the Sask Party won a few urban seats, the rural/urban, Conservative/Social Democrat ideological split is relatively intact.

We woke up this morning to an inch or two of snow. Harbinger?

Agnes and I manned the hospital poll where we accommodated three voters and sat restlessly for four hours. I read a chapter in Stephen Lewis’s Race Against Time (The Massey Lectures of 2005), poked around in the recesses of the hospital to see what goes on in the kitchen, the labour room, the recovery rooms, the physical therapy unit, etc., drank hospital coffee and kibitzed with the nurses and doctors.

An elderly gentleman from Beardy’s-Okemasis Reserve was wheeled into our voting area by a nurse and we accommodated him as best we could. I took his declaration and gave him a ballot, showing him the space where he was to write in the name of either the party for whom he would like to vote, or the name of the candidate. He said, “I vote NDP,” and at that point, I gave up all pretense of secrecy, gave him a pencil and an open ballot on the table and in a very shaky hand, he put down what approximated the three letters well enough to be read.

We took the poll to a room where a just-admitted sweet old lady wanted to exercise her franchise and was surprised when the nurse told her she didn’t even have to sit up to vote. After voting she said, “Thank you, this was fun. I didn’t know voting could be this easy!”

In Rosthern-Shellbrook constituency, a lot of the right people would have to stay home for the sense of urgency in voting to return. The Conservative (Sask Party) candidate won by a hefty majority. In Martensville Constituency to the south of us, Nancy Heppner had 80% of the popular vote the last time I checked last night. The three hospital votes we garnered did something for the voters, possibly. They did nothing for the results, I expect.

Our premier elect is of Mennonite Brethren background, I’m told. A camera and microphone followed him as he plowed through the jubilant crowd at his victory celebration and I overheard an exchange in Low German: “Na Brad, wo jeet et?” Answer: “Gout. Nu ha wie Licht von Boven!” (“How’s it going, Brad,” Answer: “Great, now we have light from above.”) Light from above. In his speech, Brad Wall kept repeating the phrase, “Hope beats Fear,” The audience was chanting it with him at the end. I’m sure that poignant phrase will go down in history alongside “I have a dream . . .” and “Ask not what your country can do for you. . . .” But I shouldn’t descend into sarcasm; that genre is best employed before the election but after the same, sounds like sour grapes.

But my grapes are a bit sour this morning. Lorne Calvert was very gracious in losing, almost jubilant in fact, and I sensed that he was relieved that he was going to get a break from being blamed for every civil servant who goes astray, every pothole on every road and every venture that turned out to be less than hoped for. If you must lose, losing an election is not the worst scenario. Office carries a burden; I think it was Allan Blakeney who said that governing is an uphill climb, and every year in office adds another stone to the backpack. I think the NDP are going to relish a few years of their opponents taking it on the chin for a change.

Anyway, life goes on. This morning, I will spend half an hour cleaning bathrooms, etc in the library, I’ll go for coffee with my cronies and try to be polite when the election comes up, prepare for an evening meeting of the Rosthern Writers Group where we’ll discuss a great short essay by another member and a novel chapter of mine.

I’ll have to watch out at the corners today; riding a bike can be hazardous on ice and snow.

Saskatchewna Election Chapter 3

I'm sitting at my desk, where I'm supposed to be until 10:00 PM because it's revision day for enumerators. This is the day we make any last minute additions and corrections to the voters' lists and the returning office will phone us with any changes that come in to their hands. Naturally, it's a beautiful day out; I am allowed to enjoy the sunshine and blue sky through my window.
The leaders' debate was a debacle with three men in suits talking simultaneously and loudly much of the hour, and very little information actually being promulgated. I think it was water under the bridge in any case: the latest polls have the Sask Party 20 points ahead of the NDP in popular support with the Liberals way behind. It led to mixed feelings last night as I listened to a lecture by my favourite New Democrat in the world - Stephen Lewis - and realized that the fervent idealism and social conscience that characterizes him used to characterize the Saskatchewan CCF/NDP movement. I hope it will again, but that will have to be under new leadership. Lorne Calvert has lost the confidence of many party members and electors, and a dehorned bull can only bellow and kick up dust; he can no longer gore.
So what do we have to look forward to, here in the heart of medicare? Well I think the future will resemble what we would have seen federally had that other Stephen won a majority two years ago: lower taxes, trimming of arts and social programs funding, corporation stroking, law and order emphasis, etc. And likely deficit budgets despite the strong economy. And highways. The Sask Party backbenchers like highway construction and every secondary road in the province will be crying for money.
Stephen Lewis was magnificent. About 800 or so people gathered in the Great Salon at TCU Place in Saskatoon to hear him. His talk was about the scourge of inequality and he was a guest of the Saskatchewan Law Society. He talked about the AIDS/HIV situation world wide, about the UNs attempts to pass human rights conventions to protect children, women and the disabled and gave us an interesting statistic on this last convention. To be adopted as an international commitment by UN members, 20 countries have to ratify it. Only 7 have. Canada is not one of them. On the convention on children, all to the worlds governments have ratified it except Somalia and - you guessed it - the USA.
A further statistic was even more troubling. Lester Pearson once talked the developed world into adopting a goal of .7 % of GDP for foreign aid. All the G8 countries are moving closer to this target except Canada. Canada's contribution to foreign aid is actually declining by this measure.
Lewis said that the most troubling issue currently facing the world generally is the inequality of women and men. He told horrific stories of the abuse and rape of women in several African countries, particularly Congo, and said that in many parts of the world, the protection of women and children - even in countries that have ratified the UN conventions designed to protect them - the conditions for women and children are actually deteriorating. The UN has known about the problem in Congo and chooses to do nothing. It seems the Security Council can only think in terms of national security of borders and security against terrorism these days. There is little interest in women and children suffering in that august body.
And now, Saskatchewan is going to join the rest of the country in choosing "free enterprise" governance, where the major emphasis will always be the growth of the economy and may the devil take the hindmost. In that, we are more and more similar to our G8 friends and the World Bank.
By the way, did you know that the World Bank stipulated some time ago that countries borrowing money would only be granted loans if they applied user fees to health and education services? All across Africa, as a result, millions of children are not in school and cannot get appropriate medical treatment because they don't have the money to pay the user fees. I thought Lewis was on the verge of apoplexy when he told us this. Apparently the World Bank has been appropriately shamed into reversing this policy, but much of the damage has been done, and in one country, the sudden arrival of over a million students in school has created a major facilities and personnel crisis.
Well, that's not exactly about the Saskatchewan election, but then, it's all of a piece, isn't it?
In passing, Lewis divulged - tongue in cheek - his favourite election campaign strategy. He suggested that people favouring, say, an NDP candidate should go door to door after midnight, wake up the households and announce at each that they were campaigning for the Saskatchewan Party or the Liberals.
In four days we vote. I have revised my prediction: Sask Party 42, NDP 18, Liberals 0, Green Party 0.

Saskatchewn election Chapter 2

The Saskatchewan election, 2007, got more interesting when an actual candidate rang my doorbell on Saturday. It was Ron Blocka, running for the NDP, and he gave me his card and asked if I had any questions. I said, “Not really, I’ll check your platform on your website,” and speeded him on his way, assuring him that he had my vote, and, of course, that was really all he wanted to know. In provincial elections, the NDP is my default position, unless strategic voting makes sense, which it seldom does. I live in a rural riding, and rural Saskatchewan tends to be Conservative on election day. I counted ballots in the rural poll in the last federal election and the proportion of the votes was roughly 20 to 7 to 4 (Conservative, NDP, Liberal). Voting Liberal or Green or NDP here reminds one of that old saw: It appears to be the right time for a futile gesture!

Agnes and I will do the hospital poll, which means we’ll sit in the nurses’ room for five hours and accommodate maybe 5 people who would be unable to exercise their franchises without us. Fortunately, I have a few good books on the go right now, one being Where War Lives by photojournalist, Paul Watson. I’ll review that on the other blog (http://ca.360.yahoo.com/geoe41) in a few days.

Last time we did the hospital poll, I came to the conclusion that democracy is a very clumsy, costly and time-wasting affair, what with enumeration school, enumeration, deputy returning officers’ and poll clerks’ school, and then, of course, the election day itself, when numerous people have to be hired again to man the many polls in the province. There are reasons for all the paper work, obviously, most of which have to do with protecting the integrity of the electors’ choice. I can’t argue with that, but I mean to come up with a new system that doesn’t require so much bureaucracy, and if you have any ideas, I’d like to hear them.

A Colombian-Canadian Rosthernite told me the other day that in Colombia, every voter has a card that entitles him/her to vote, and that the card is punched when voting, an act that is mandatory. If you are later asked to show your card and it’s not punched, you are subject to penalty: a fine, I think.

It’s interesting that Ontario’s electorate turned down the idea of a proportional representation electoral process. I doubt that they understood it. It’s not easy to explain in a few minutes, but I believe its time has already come and gone, and still we cling to the archaic old British system as if it were the very definition of democracy.

Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the parties seemed to have shelved the notion that the actual legislation and governance of the country’s affairs is what they’re there for, and the jockeying to determine the most propitious date for another election seems to be uppermost on everyone’s mind. Don’t they ever feel just a little bit silly when they ponder what they’re doing?

I can hardly wait for the leaders’ debate tomorrow at 6:30 on CBC Saskatchewan. Brad Wall against Lorne Calvert with David Karwacki trying really hard to be more than a fifth wheel (third wheel?). Mostly these debates turn out to be almost too embarrassing to watch, with three men spouting platitudes and hurling asinine accusations at each other simultaneously. I hope they regulate the spectacle better than they have in the past.

I have to watch them, though. I think it’s akin to picking at a scab, or running to see a fire. I can’t help myself.

Here’s my prediction of the outcome: Saskatchewan Party 35, NDP 22, Liberal 1.

(P.S. Let me revise that slightly since the Saskatchewan Party has had to fire one of its candidates after the nomination deadline for uttering slurs against certain races, women and others: SP 34, NDP 23, Lib. 1)

Saskatchewn election

It’s election time in Saskatchewan, and election work here often falls to seniors, retired people who don’t have to punch a clock. In the 2003 election, I took on the enumeration of the electors in the Rosthern Rural Poll, #4, and so I was asked to do that again. I didn’t hesitate. I enjoyed driving through the country and meeting my rural neighbours then, and I enjoyed it last week.

Dogs and muddy roads are the worst hazards. Country folk need dogs for security, to announce the arrival of strangers like me, or escapees from the Prince Albert Penitentiary, or coyotes come to bother the chickens. Only once did I stay in the car for fear of dogs; mostly they were big, fluffy brutes that wagged their tails and beckoned me to alight and scratch behind their ears. A few times I feared that I’d be licked to death, but mostly they lay on the front porches and observed me with mild interest.

The countryside around Rosthern has changed. I’m sure well over half of the occupied homes are now acreages, with dilapidated outbuildings in many cases and tenants who are either retired farm couples renting their land to someone else or people employed in town who have acquired a place in the country because they love the rural scene. I visited only a handful of farms where domestic animals were still kept. In fact, I found few people home during the day because they were at places of employment in Rosthern, Prince Albert or Saskatoon.

The family farm is apparently on its last legs. I recently visited friends in Blaine Lake who live on a pleasant farmstead where she paints and he does what retired teachers do. They told me that the entire township in which they live is now owned by three corporate farms, and as we drove home, we passed a field where four identical combines were parked in a field, waiting for the weather to clear. The future of rural Saskatchewan is being inexorably reshaped; there will be no going back.

Elections have changed as well. It seems nearly all the campaigning is done with posters and flyers, and messages from the leaders on radio and television. One candidate’s campaign manager phoned me with three requests: would I vote for his candidate, would I consider going door to door for him and would I be prepared to post a campaign sign on my lawn. I said no to the latter two requests, partly because I’m not sure support for this candidate is unanimous in my house.

We’re probably going to see a change from the NDP to the Saskatchewan Party this time around. As in much of the west, there’s a decided split between the two major parties around the rural/urban axis, and it looks like there’s too much tiredness in the NDP to inspire their traditional support. The Liberals, I’m afraid, are going to run in the shadows again.

Democracy. One person, one vote. First past the post takes all. I met an elderly lady in the street the other day and we chatted very briefly. She said—with a great deal of conviction, I might add—that it didn’t matter whom we elected; once in office they would be as corrupt as the last guys, and if an honest one should slip through, he’d be driven off the hill in no time! There’s a lot of that kind of cynicism around. It’s obviously not completely earned, but the sentiment is probably strong enough to discourage young people from participating in the process, and like our countryside, our political landscape may be doomed to fall into corporate management hands, characterized by abandoned ideals. A relic. Rickety outbuildings of a barely-remembered past.