The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 800 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 13 trips to carry that many people.
Since both the NDP and the Liberals will not allow anti-abortion candidates to run for their respective parties, I suggest we need a new progressive party that will. We need a party that stands for the right of all people to vote their conscience. Why can’t a progressive party commit to Edmund Burke’s:
” To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,–these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.”
Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms clearly guarantees freedom of conscience. Both Mulcair and Trudeau, in not allowing anti-abortion candidates to run for their respective parties, are overriding this right. Neither the leader nor the party should be allowed to do this.
The right to life is also an important right which needs calm discussion. I believe all women have the right to control their own bodies. However, an unborn baby also has a claim on the right to live. Obviously this is one of the most difficult debates we can have, and it will not be easily resolved, if ever. There are no absolutes involved, and political parties should not take it upon themselves to rule on an absolute answer. A political party should be inclusive encouraging debate on this important issue.
Yesterday I had a problem with Driver Detective not loading. I phoned their support desk. The technician said they could fix it and asked for remote access to my machine. I granted it and watched as a technician fixed the problem.
During the process the technician asked if she could check my machine for other software issues. I agreed, and she ran a program that looked like a PC Optimize and Registry cleaner. It found more than 19,000 errors! She said my machine needed a technician and their technicians could fix it online in an hour.
She then went into a sales pitch, trying to sell me the servicing contract so she could begin. She wanted $350, which I was not willing to pay. I told her I had bought the machine only six months ago from Best Buy, who had set it up and transferred my files from my old failed machine. The computer was still under warranty and I would contact Best Buy’s Geek Squad.
The technician replied that her company was better than Geek Squad and that they had experienced many difficulties with Geek Squad-fixed machines. She said all her company’s technicians were certified and her company was registered with the BBB. (She was in Delhi…do Indian companies belong to our BBBs?)
I still wanted a second opinion and she offered a yearly subscription for $190. I wasn’t agreeing to anything more. She said that many Windows programs needed by third-party software were disabled on my machine and that was why Driver Detective stopped working. She also said Geek Squad would only fix hardware and not fix the software problems. I still insisted on a second opinion and she gave up. She said the Driver Detective program was fixed and I could contact them after. We disconnected.
After that exchange I was extremely suspicious, so I tried to run my Norton 360 and found she had disabled it. My Action Centre was also showing problems. I enabled Norton 360 and updated it (she had removed all the updates). I then ran a system restore and did not allow several programs running in the background to finish what they were doing. The restore worked but took a while. I then ran a full Norton 360 scan and it found two programs it thought were suspicious: Optimizer and RegCleaner. I had Norton fix both and remove them.
After the full scan and tune-up my machine is working fine. I think it is back to normal. And I have removed Driver Support/Detective and any programs installed during the period of remote access.
I am very pleased by today’s (March 21, 2014) announcement: Marc Nadon’s appointment rejected by the Supreme Court. “Today’s judgment will be of great importance, especially in constitutional matters,” said Sébastien Grammond, who represented two groups of retired Quebec judges in the case. “First and foremost because it makes important statements as to how the Constitution of Canada can be amended.”
This decision is a defeat for Harper’s agenda. I firmly believe his trying to sneak an amendment to the Supreme Court Act through in an omnibus budget bill was part of an ongoing program to consolidate power in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Prime Minister’s hands. Our Westminster system is under attack.
Our Westminster system of government has evolved over centuries. In this system the Prime Minister is supposed to be responsible to Parliament. Many died to establish the supremacy of Parliament. I believe the supremacy of Parliament in Canada has been under attack for a few decades now and Harper has done the most damage, especially in reducing the PM’s responsibility to the House of Commons.
As MP Michael Chong says, “It is clear that decades of changes to Parliament have weakened the role of MPs and centralized that power in the party leaders. As a result, your democratic representation through your elected MP has been much weakened over the past several decades.” and “In Canada, unlike the US, citizens exercise only one vote at the national level: a vote for their local MP. Canadians rightfully expect that their local member be able to represent their views in Ottawa, and not the other way around.”
If we truly want to honour our Canadian parliamentary tradition, I believe we ought to support Michael Chong’s bill. In Chong’s words: “The Reform Act proposes three simple reforms to improve Parliament by restoring local control over party nominations, strengthening caucuses as decision making bodies and reinforcing the accountability of party leaders to their caucuses in the House of Commons. These reforms will better empower MPs to represent their constituents and allow them to stand on issues of importance to their constituencies. The Prime Minister and other party leaders would still be immensely powerful under the proposals in the Reform Act. It’s just that they wouldn’t be all powerful.”
“The ideas in this bill are not new ideas, but very old ones. They are the ideas that Canada’s democratic institutions were founded upon in the 1840s, after the Rebellions of 1837. If enacted, the Reform Act would restore Parliament to the way it worked in Canada for many decades. It would strengthen Baldwin and LaFontaine’s principle of responsible government, making the government more accountable to the people’s elected representatives. Furthermore, many of the reforms proposed in the Reform Act are similar to current practices in other Westminster parliaments in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.”
I really can’t understand why Canadians are not out in the streets agitating for this bill. I also can’t understand why some Canadians still support a party that would, if it succeeds in its program, dangerously undermine Canadian parliamentary democracy.
To me, the proposed installation of 22 statues of Canadian prime ministers in Kitchener’s Victoria Park is part of the creeping Americanization of Canada of which George Grant warned us in his 1965 book Lament for a Nation. Grant felt there was an emerging Americanization of Canadians and Canadian culture. As Grant said, “Canada was once a nation with meaning and purpose.”
In the Westminster parliamentary system, our prime ministers are not equivalent to U.S. presidents. A prime minister is not our chief administrative officer, head of state, or commander-in-chief. The Canadian prime minister is just that: the first minister of the crown, first among equals. He is not elected directly, except as an MP by his own constituents, and he is responsible to the House of Commons, the same as all other ministers of the Crown.
Canadians already behave as if we have a presidential system, and government MPs have come to behave as though they are employees of the prime minister, who signs their nomination papers. The media reinforces this perception, as does the party whip. Michael Chong’s Reform Act, introduced in the House of Commons in December 2013, is Canada’s best hope at pushing back creeping presidentialism.
The statues proposal is an Americanization. In Canada, Parliament is supreme and the government and prime minister are responsible to it. The statues proposal is unintentional contempt of Parliament. Canadians should be resisting this Americanization and the concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office. This concentration of power in the PMO is at present the greatest threat to Canadian democracy.
We celebrate our history by respecting our traditions, which includes respecting Parliament. The achievements of our great prime ministers were actually the achievements of all their ministers and the parliament to which they were responsible. This is the history lesson that we should be teaching.
The NDP has convinced itself that Canada does not need a Senate. I have been a “leftie” for more than 55 years and belonged to the party in the 1960s and 1970s. I do not agree with them on this issue. I believe we need the Senate. You need only to look at Harper’s government to see why: it is secretive, arrogant and careless with democratic niceties (as John Ibbitson said in his Globe and Mail article of May 27, 2013). Can you imagine what this government would get away with without a chamber of sober second thought?
The Senate, supposedly nonpartisan, can initiate discussion and legislation on issues that political parties find too hot to handle. It can hold up and send back to the House of Commons legislation that the government has rushed through using closure. Note that while they can amend Commons legislation and send it back, they cannot overturn it, contrary to what NDP leader Thomas Mulcair suggests, and they can send it back only a limited number of times. What they contribute is the time for both houses to look more closely at those all-inclusive omnibus bills favoured by Harper’s government.
But to do this job the Senators have to be truly nonpartisan. Senators need to exercise unbiased opinion, mature judgment and free conscience. They owe Canada their industry and sound judgment. They betray Canada if they relinquish their judgment to a party platform. I was appalled when I read that Harper made all his appointees to the Senate swear allegiance to the Conservative Party platform. An elected Senate either first past the post or proportional system would involve political parties and parties requiring their members to vote in accordance with the party line on significant legislation, on pain of censure or expulsion from the party.
In The Globe and Mail of May 27, Tom Flanagan offers a possible solution based on “the Mother of Parliaments, the original source of our own Constitution.” I like the idea of a prime minister at the beginning of his term (perhaps in his oath of office) committing to “seek advice for all future Senate appointments before recommending them to the governor-general… as is now done with appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada.” Of course, you cannot have the recommendations reviewed by a House of Commons committee, but you could have them reviewed by the province the individual senators are supposed to represent.
Some fundamentalists feel uncomfortable with set prayers being read in church. They feel it a hindrance to zealous praying by the Spirit. The Spirit actually can speak quite clearly though the words of a written prayer. The church of the Old Testament made extensive use of set prayers.
The Psalms are written prayers to be read out loud by the worshipers: a Hebrew Book of Common Prayer. The majority are constructed in four sections: 1. a brief invocation of God, often no more than the divine name; 2. a cry for hearing and help; 3. a statement of the nature and causes of the misfortune; and 4. a prayer for deliverance. Psalms 15, 24, 50, 75, 85, 118, and 121 are actual liturgies: the spoken (read) parts of old Hebrew services.
Christ himself made use of a set prayer in the New Testament when he taught his disciples a form to pray by, the Lord’s Prayer. The church of the Apostles used liturgies from which we get our most moving and beautiful prayers. Surely the Holy Spirit speaks whenever we recite the Nunc Dimittis from St. Luke 2. 29: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, / according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, / which thou has prepared before the face of all people; To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, / and to be the glory of thy people Israel. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.”
Some of the most devout men of all ages composed and used written prayers where the voice of the Spirit is clearly heard. Saint Chrysostom’s prayer is just one example: “Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests: Fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen.”
So often with extempore prayer the petitions go on and on and do not particularly inspire the congregation. After they are over, not all who heard them remember them. Through the ages many people filled with the spirit, and good Christians all, have used liturgical prayers with serious and sincere devotion. From personal experience I can attest that reciting the prayers in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer help me in meditating on the worship and in contacting my inner spirit. For me the liturgical prayers make my devotions lively, useful and meditative.
My younger grand-daughter, Nora while shopping with her maternal grandmother, saw a terracotta warrior replica she thought looked like me. I eventually bought and repaired it (was damaged and being sold “as is”). It now sits in our backyard under our Japanese lilac tree.
To counter the notion that elected officials should merely be delegates and blindly follow the party line, I think all elected representatives should subscribe to Edmund Burke’s principle of representative government.
“.. it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
During the debate and vote on Bill C-38 I became very uneasy about political parties requiring their members to vote in favour of a party policy against their conscience and writing into their party policy phrases like “introduce legislation without a free vote” and “members shall vote in favour of.” Jack Layton did not allow a free vote and punished Bev Desjarlais for voting against Bill C-38 even though her vote was clearly a matter of conscience and personal religious conviction. Voting your conscience and religious convictions are an equal right to be protected at all costs.
The parliamentary system of government as we inherited it is based on the principle of representative government. Political parties complicate the system since their members are required by the party to vote in accordance with the party line on significant legislation, on pain of censure or expulsion from the party.
We have the United States as an example of what happens when party discipline is less important and voting against one’s party is more common, resulting in a dysfunctional government. The Canadian party system, because of party discipline, does allow the party which has the confidence of Parliament to govern.
I do not, however, think that party discipline should be so strong that it stifles independent thinking. In the last federal election all the Conservative candidates toed the party (Harper) line and didn’t debate issues. This is not good for democracy. Equally, the NDP establishment requiring party members to vote against their conscience is bad for our representative system. I have always looked closely at my local candidates as to how open they are to voting their conscience.
I like Thomas Mulcair because he was not the choice of the NDP establishment. I think it would be a good thing for him to work toward changing the NDP constitution to include Edmund Burke’s principle of representative government. It would make the NDP more democratic and more attractive to people who elect their representative on the basis of more than the party line and leader.
I admit to leaning somewhat left politically. When I was younger I was a card carrying member of the NDP. Even worked for Dan Heap and Barbara Beardsley. Since moving to Kitchener, I have voted Liberal more than once; the last time voting strategically to stop a Harper majority. So I have more than a passing interest in the NDP leadership race.
I listened to some of the NDP leadership candidates’ speeches Saturday night and Broadbent’s commentary after on CBC’s Politics & Power and TVO’s Agenda. Last night, I lost all respect I ever had for former party leader Ed Broadbent, who had been credited with the most successful election result before Layton led the party to 103 seats in the House last May. No Mulcair’s speech didn’t bomb.
I agree with former party leader Alexa McDonough when she said that she didn’t think any former party leader should take “a sledgehammer” to any of the contestants, considering how it could be used against them by political opponents back in the House of Commons. I also agree with Former MP Lorne Nystrom when he called Broadbent’s comments unbecoming of a former leader.
Broadbent is too vocal a supporter of candidate Brian Topp. Broadbent should never have been so critical of Mulcair in interviews last Saturday. Leave the attack ads to the Harper Conservatives. They have no place in the NDP!
Eric C. Bow 