". . . to put hardworking families first"

I’ve always been a bit of a political junkie. I grew up in a constituency that mostly elected Liberals, but in a province where the CCF (Canadian Commonwealth Federation) later NDP (New Democratic Party) had become the apparent natural governing party. My father voted CCF; he believed in the cooperative movement with which the CCF was easily associated, what with its declared socialist leanings, particularly as regards universal health care.

In keeping with the adage that the apple never falls far from the tree, I’ve generally voted for NDP candidates except when living in a constituency where it seemed more logical to vote strategically. In Spruce Grove, Alberta, I was a reluctant Liberal supporter.

One thing I have to admit; like most everyone else, a “victory” in Saskatchewan of the CCF/NDP was cause for celebration, even before I knew next to zero about platforms and policies. 

I’ve grown up some since then, but the feeling of victory/loss lingers, not unlike the triumph/failure of the Roughriders vs, the Blue Bombers nonsense. Remember “This will be our last “first-past-the-post election,” promise? Show me a political candidate whose primary interest is the country and its future as above his or her victory/defeat anxiety and I’ll show you a paragon of thoughtfulness and honesty hard to find in every liberal democracy I’ve observed. 

We’re again into an election cycle and I hope that most Canadians, as I also am, are weighing the options. Right now, I’m feeling discouraged about all the parties and living in a constituency that will vote Conservative even if the candidate should turn out to be a fence post, the incentive to be active, even to cast a ballot, is decidedly weak. Keeping in mind that my information is generally filtered by the media, what can be known doesn’t argue for certainty, doesn’t make choices clear. But here’s what the political scene looks like—to me—right now:

Liberal Party: I’m not bothered as much as some by Trudeau’s holiday with the Aga Khan, nor about the trade trip to China that wasn’t, not even about the Trudeau family parading through India in costumes too Indian even for ordinary Indians. I am, however, bothered by the Liberal’s sloppy communication skills, their band-aid approach to reconciliation with Indigenous People, the reneging on promised electoral reform, their tendency toward knee-jerk politics-of-expedience. I’d have to get past all this if the local Liberal candidate is to get my vote. In their favour, I thought the NAFTA episode was negotiated as well as could be expected. On pipelines? Well, the jury’s still out.

Conservative Party: Andrew Scheer seems to me now to be gearing up for a campaign that will heap scorn and whatever whiff of real or imagined scandal can be found to denigrate the Liberals, Trudeau particularly. At the same time, little is heard from him that would give me a reason to vote for the CPC candidate . . . policy-wise. He strikes me like a puppy-dog sniffing around to find anti-Liberal bones only; it’s a mentality I dislike. It’s not what great leaders project. “He is in politics to put hardworking families first,” the CPC website intones. Wonder who came up with that pithy policy statement.

NDP: Jagmeet Singh strikes me as a lead-wolf who’s running at the rear of the pack, trying to catch up, howling hoarsely once in a while to remind himself that he’s the leader . . . that’s the image I have at present. If only we’d chosen Nathan Cullen or Guy Caron or Charlie Angus or Nikki Ashton to lead us, the current disarray might have been averted. For a leader to have put himself in the position of fighting a bye-election in an election year smacks, unfortunately, of political incompetence. “Jagmeet is building a fairer, more just Canada where everyone can realize their dreams,” says the NDP’s website, pointlessly. (I can ignore for the moment the use of a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent.)

Green: The Green’s best shot at becoming a force in Canadian politics lies in the obliteration of the NDP, in the absorption of their vote share. The NDP seems to be doing its best right now to help them with this project. If the local Greens politicked flat out, put piles of money into my constituency, they’d still be happy to get 5 – 10% of the vote. I know that not-voting for a party because “they can’t win” makes a bit of a mockery of democracy’s greatest strength. Of course they can’t win if everybody decides not to vote for them because they can’t win! And thanks to Trudeau’s broken promise of electoral reform, the wasting of votes (like for the Green’s, the NDP’s, the Liberal’s in my constituency) will no doubt influence me to not-vote for the Greens again “because they can’t win.”

That’s it then . . . unless one of the parties comes out with a platform that can once again ignite my fervor for national politics. That platform would include at least these: 1) a specific alternative to first-past-the-post, 2) a reconciliation proposal with teeth, like eliminating the senate and replacing it with an all-nations treaty parliament in which Canada and First Nations would have equal representation, 3) a basic-income scheme to replace welfare and other current entitlement programs, 4) an energy plan that realistically projects both climate change mitigation and energy conversion needs well into the future, 5) a universal pharma-care plan, 6) a realistic plan for converting our military into a peace-keeping, disaster mitigation and search and rescue force paid for by reducing combat-specific provisions.

Present me with this platform and a leader with actual leadership skills and at least a modicum of charisma and you’ve got my vote! Even call yourself the Progressive Conservative Social Democracy Green Party of Canada (PCSDGPC) if you like. (If I get 100 or more comments below, I’ll get to work on forming the party. The acronym might be awkward; I think “Pizduhgipsee” would work, eh?)

. . . on the other hand, when every party we have now is a disappointment, do we really need one more??

Happy 130th Birthday, Jacob

the Vanishing Point

“Did you know that Jacob was 130 years-old when he uprooted his clan and moved to Egypt?”

“No, I didn’t, but thanks for the information. Seems an old age to be making such a major life change, don’t you think?”

I took a moment to think about moving at age 130. The oldest person I’ve known personally died at 105. She’d moved into a nursing home at 99. Egypt—as far as I know—hadn’t come up for consideration at that comparatively young age.

I’m 77 and the fact that I can go for a week at a time without fretting over my physical health or my wits (others may think that a bit of worry here might be in order) or my financial security, etc., is not enough to allow me to contemplate moving kin and camels to Egypt in, say, 53 years. I’m not alone in this, I think. Nobody in his right mind would move to Egypt these days. Hague, maybe.

There are those who believe that given current strides in biology, healthcare, genetics, etc., we will in the future see longevity reminiscent of Jacob, and Noah, and—hang onto your wheelchair—Methuselah. But such advances probably won’t ever be applied retroactively, so the chance that you or I will be able to move to Egypt at 130, there to enjoy our very-slowly declining years watching our offspring being taken into slavery, well, its a future we shouldn’t bank anything on.

Living long without ever being old, that’s surely what we long for. But surely that elusive thing we call “quality of life” deserves consideration. At the extremes, you can hardly blame someone whose life is a continuous misery for not saying, “Boy! I wish this could go on for 130 years or more!” At the other end, those whose life feels like an unending series of adventures can’t legitimately be chided for wishing it would never end. (I have to wonder if Jacob—when he was a young 110 or so—could still down-hill ski, snorkel, scream at the referee in a lopsided soccer game.)

In a splurge of depression and self-pity, Shakespeare’s Hamlet says basically that we’d all kill ourselves if it weren’t for fear of whatever lies after death: “. . . who would fardels¹ bear,/To grunt and sweat under a weary life,| But that the dread of something after death,/ The undiscover'd country from whose bourn²/ No traveller returns, puzzles the will/ And makes us rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others that we know not of?”

A person even older than I said to me recently that our earnest discussions about changing the world for the better were useless; that things don’t change, and, that since we (he and I) were old, we should spend our time and energy preparing for death. I replied that I wasn’t even finished preparing for life yet, thank you very much! I’m pretty sure the advice was coming from someone who’d never read Hamlet, who must have picked up this abysmal pessimism somewhere else. Possibly a contemplation of an upcoming memorial service for a friend in our age-range.

My heroes are people like Abe or Paula, who read voraciously until failing eyesight overcame them: paragons of autodidacticism,³ life long learners. Or people who enroll in university after retirement, not to start a new career but because their curiosity, their imaginations have never been put out to pasture. Or Grandma Moses. Or people who move house to another country at 130. 

Thanks, Jacob. Your 130 makes my 77 feel like adolescence! 

1Fardel: a burden. Think a backpack full of bricks as metaphor for a burdensome life.

2Bourne: border, margin. In this case, a border you only cross once.

3Autodidacticism: self teaching