Category Archives: Democracy

Jul 01 2016
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Democracy, Economy, Government

Canada Day in Mariexit

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It is July 1, 2036, ten years after Maritime economic union prompted the full political amalgamation of Canada’s former east-coast provinces.

The regional nation still maintains what its political leaders insist is a strong and productive relationship with the Great White North, though tensions over energy agreements with the newly formed Republic of Newfoundland and Labrador occasionally flare.

Overall, however, the consensus in this sea-bound jurisdiction is that life is pretty good. Since the Mariexit from Confederation, the area has become a dynamic tourism destination for people who actually have money. It’s one of North America’s leading purveyors of geriatric care. Its manufacturing industries – dominated by artisanal outfits specializing in bespoke booze, recreational marijuana, all-weather outdoor clothing, and ceramics (lots and lots of ceramics) – generate almost enough tax dollars to pay off a fraction of the government’s debt every year.

Who cares that it hasn’t been able to afford its universities and colleges in years, or that its export trade in homegrown technology has all but ground to a halt, or that virtually no one under the age of 45 lives there anymore?

It cherishes its independence above all things.

Now, if it could only figure out where to locate its national capital region.

A good flight of fancy is always a useful way to address the question, “Where are they now?” In this case, whatever happened to Maritime Union?

Not too many years ago, a version of it cropped up on the convention floors of vision conferences. The assembled participants called it Atlantica, a crucial feature of which would be a cross-border partnership with New England. Writing recently in Progressmedia, Perry B. Newman, the president of an international business development and consulting firm based in Portland, Maine, reflected on those heady days.

“More than a decade has passed, and much has been done to advance the notion of a cross-border region whose economies are linked, and whose assets might take their place (in) the world” he wrote. “But it’s clear that more needs to be done, and it’s equally clear that we need our vision to evolve.”

He added: “Of course, it must be said that we’re not working (or thinking) in a vacuum. Even as we advocated for better connectivity and the reduction of barriers to trade and the movement of goods, during the intervening years the world turned upside down in ways that directly affected the vision and realization of a cross-border economic region.”

Indeed, it did. In fact, it’s still turning. Brexit is proof of that. And this raises an interesting paradox. At what point does successful economic integration among like-minded nations, states and provinces lead to their political separation from existing arrangements, such as, for the sake of argument, Canadian Confederation?

Most experts insist that this extrapolation is absurd. Still, most experts were fatally wrong about Britain’s decision to leave the European Union last week. Admittedly, that move was the reverse of migrating from economic tethers among countries to a single political entity incorporating all. (No United States of Europe is ever likely to emerge). But the principle is the same. When people are invited to think about their economic fortunes and conditions, they are prone to consider their political ones as well.

At its heart, though, the tenets of economic union in the Maritimes are sound – even if they only extend to a full examination of the often-pernicious effects of inter-provincial trade barriers.

We need not worry about a dystopian Mariexit as we forge ways to band together in our joint interest along the East Coast of Canada.

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Jun 30 2016
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Democracy, Economy, Politics

Stupidity on the rise

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Do the humble and picturesque Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scoria and Newfoundland and Labrador finally have something bold to teach the world – like, how to get along?

It seems clear that a good portion of western society is entering something opposite to the Age of Aquarius. In a provocative piece for The Atlantic magazine this month, entitled “How American Politics Went Insane,” writer Jonathan Rauch observes, “(Donald) Trump. . .didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump. What we are seeing is not a temporary spasm of chaos but a chaos syndrome.”

He continues: “Chaos syndrome is a chronic decline in the political system’s capacity for self-organization. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers – political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees – that have historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’ influence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal – both in campaigns and in the government itself.”

Then, of course, there’s the recent Brexit vote to leave the European Union. If nothing is done over the next two years (and, really, at this point what are the credible options?), Britain will go it alone in a continent that is becoming increasingly retrograde, isolationist and angry. Already, great swaths of so-called “leavers” are regretting their decision in last week’s general referendum.

Former editor of The Sun newspaper, Kelvin MacKenzie, was one of England’s most prominent voices urging the exit. Prior to the vote, he penned a column headlined “10 reasons why we must vote Brexit,” citing the near and happy certainty that Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne would, at last, retire.

Here’s what Mr. MacKenzie has to say for himself today: “When I put my cross against Leave, I felt a surge as if for the first time in my life my vote did count. I had power. Four days later I don’t feel quite the same. I have buyer’s remorse. A sense of be careful what you wish for. To be truthful I’m fearful of what lies ahead. Am I alone?”

To many of us in Atlantic Canada, these developments – firmly rooted in an almost hysterical fear of immigrants, ginned up by political demagogues –have been downright mystifying. After all, Great Britain – that mother of democracy – has been, for generations, a beacon of tolerance and good sense. With notable exceptions, so has the United States.

Lest we go down that same road, we, in this part of the world must be ever watchful of the inflammatory rhetoric that passes for informed opinion and reasonable commentary – the irresponsible and often hateful words that occasionally drip from the lips of the “I’m just saying” contingent. Fortunately, most of the time, we are.

We still recognize that immigration is one of the keys that unlock this region’s social and economic potential. We still understand that we are far stronger by working together than by freelancing our fortunes independently.

Mostly, though, we still respect and honour the shared and common public institutions that protect us from the heavy hands of the bloviating windbags who would, in their own, arched self-interest, raise alarms over trivialities or, in fact, nothing at all.

Does this make us better than everyone else, or just luckier? Who knows? But for now, as Canada Day approaches, it seems that we do finally have something bold to teach the world.

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Jun 28 2016
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Democracy, Politics, Society

Brexit’s dart to the heart

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Nothing unwittingly captures the folly of Britain’s decision, last week, to leave the European Union than do comments from the world’s reigning absurdist, the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States Donald Trump,

Having only just arrived to reopen his golf course in Scotland, the billionaire heir to impossible wealth tweeted, “Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!”

In an off-the-cuff interview with reporters, he elaborated: “I think it’s a great thing that’s happened. It’s an amazing vote, very historic. People are angry all over the world. They’re angry over borders, they’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over and nobody even knows who they are. They’re angry about many, many things in the UK, the US and many other places. This will not be the last.”

The curious problem with these remarks is, of course, the fact that Scotland voted 62 per cent to remain within the European Union and is now seriously considering a new referendum to separate from Britain to do just that. So is Ireland.

So, then, who does The Donald actually think took which country back, as he says, with “no games?”

Was it Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who told the BBC last weekend that she intends to spearhead a renewed effort for her nation’s independence from Westminster?

Was it Gerry Adams of Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein, who has, in vigorous protest to the Brexit vote, floated the idea of unifying his country with Eire as a bulwark against an increasingly belligerent England?

As usual, Mr. Trump is doing his level (if unconsciously ludicrous) best to increase Canada’s immigration rates – specifically, to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, where the color of one’s skin still tends to be as white as driven snow. After all, his special brand of xenophobia and populist outrage plays beautifully in places like “Little England” and “Outer Atlantica”.

But before we lick our chops at the prospect of somehow amalgamating London’s progressive urbanites with Boston’s disaffected Democrats within our own porous borders, we’d better be clear about a few incontrovertible facts of life in the global, 21st Century world we inhabit.

The first is: People in democracies make terrible mistakes when they are inchoately angry. They lash out like drunken bums on bingers, only to awake at dawn to ask, “My God, what have I done?”

The second is: The planet fairly brims with enterprising, calculating opportunists who are more than happy to drive wedges between people of otherwise good and temperate nature. The sharks among us swim for this conflict, because by fomenting it, they profit from it.

The third is: No one is ever truly satisfied with the decisions they make or the leaders they choose. All anyone can ever hope for is the wisdom and freedom to forgive, change and reconcile. This is the prevailing power of reasonable governments in stable societies.

The Brexit vote will affect every economy in the world, either directly or indirectly, including Atlantic Canada’s.

Here, we do ourselves a favour by ensuring that our borders are as open as our doors, our business is open-handed, our attitude towards immigrants is openhearted, and our concept of democracy is open-minded.

If we manage that feat, then we will reject the purchase of our minds that the absurdists and calculating suitors to our basest instincts among us insist.

Then, perhaps, tomorrow, people will tell villains like Donald Trump, “You’re fired.”

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May 06 2016
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Democracy, Politics

Biting the watchdog

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When governments and their duly appointed protectors of public probity begin to feud, the result is always, lamentably predictable: The poison infects the body politic, and no one is safe from the vile cynicism that now, too often, afflicts our democratic institutions.

What, for example, are we to make of the on-again-off-again dispute between the New Brunswick government and its auditor general Kim MacPherson about their proper, respective roles in the province?

The former wants to clarify what she should be able to do, to whom she should be able to talk, and how she should be able to investigate matters that cross her desk as the province’s chief forensic accountant.

The latter wants to clarify what that actual clarification means.

The issue is the new, proposed Inquiries Act, a bill the Gallant government hopes will settle any lingering confusion about the operational independence of its legislative watchdogs (the auditor general, the provincial ombudsman and a handful of others).

But was there any real confusion, until now?

A report in Brunswick News states that the new bill, “introduced by the Liberal government last week includes specific provisions that could restrict reporting on public hearings and even exclude the public from attending. . .Now, the province’s auditor general is questioning the changes.”

In an interview with the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, Ms. MacPherson declared that she has concerns with one section of the proposed legislation – specifically the one that removes her authority as a provincial “commissioner”, a position which currently endows her with the same powers as a Court of Queen’s Bench judge to launch investigations and inaugurate hearings on her own steam.

As she said, “I have concerns with repealing that section (of the existing Act).” Furthermore, she stated, she worries about the coupling of one line in the legislation that gives the A-G genuine commissioner authority with another that appears to insist that these powers, nevertheless, defer to government direction. In other words, Premier Gallant and his relevant cabinet ministers seem to be saying: Investigate, but only if we initiate and approve the object of your scrutiny. “For independence reasons, I thought that section should be decoupled so that the auditor general, when and if (he/she) thought it was necessary, only in very, very extreme circumstances, would invoke the powers of inquiry,” Ms. MacPherson noted.

What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with an independent officer of the government – mandated to keep a watchful eye on all things the public is owed a right and a need to know about the fiscal apparatus of its society – asking important questions, and getting answers?

Conversely, what’s right about an elected political regime curtailing the scope and effectiveness of these duties simply because these duties remain, without partisan or bureaucratic meddling, independent?

Now, as if to add further mud to the spring run-off around Freddy Beach, the Gallant government has decided, in estimable wisdom, not to decide. It’s sent the whole issue off to the law amendments committee where bills of this sort go to be remodeled, or, as often as not, to die.

Says Attorney General Serge Rousselle: “This is not a priority for our government. . .That said, in the spirit of collaboration and to listen to what everyone wants to say, I will propose an amendment to refer the Inquiries Act to the standing committee on law amendments.”

Not a priority for this government?

Who, then, wins under these circumstances? Ms. MacPherson? The provincial government?

Certainly, it can’t be the voters who, witnessing these shenanigans, might be forgiven for the cynicism they feel rising daily and all around them.

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Apr 05 2016
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Democracy, Government, Politics

Whistling a nasty tune

Few issues loom larger in New Brunswick than the condition of the provincial economy. But one that’s gaining traction is the increasingly spiteful tenor of public debate.

I’m not talking about placard-waving protesters or media-savvy talking heads. They’re playing a fair game in front of the cameras, greasing the wheels of democratic action.

I’m talking about actual politicians who would rather shoot from the hip than focus their sights on real targets.

None of this is especially new. Neither is it restricted to one party or another. Our system of government is deliberately adversarial. It should be. That’s one way we hold elected officials to account.

Still, human nature insists that at some point we almost always approach the line that signifies we have gone too far – in this case, the place where vigorous debate becomes needlessly acrimonious and, therefore, utterly useless as an instrument of change.

We’ve not quite reached this particular boundary in New Brunswick. We cannot, for example, hope to compare our political arena with the cage matches now underway in the U.S. election.

Would a New Brunswick politician utter the following Donald Trumpism just to sway a few nutbars? “You talk about George Bush, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time. He was president, the World Trade Center came down during his reign.”

Would a New Brunswick politician talk about immigration in this province the way Mr. Trump “discusses” the issue in his neck of the North American woods? To wit: “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Would a New Brunswick politician get cringingly personal the way Mr. Trump did about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during last year’s televised debate? “I know where she went,” the real estate mogul and reality-show star told a crowd of his fans. “It’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it. No, it’s too disgusting.”

Clearly, we don’t sink to these levels. Yet, we can detect a rising churlishness in New Brunswick’s political discourse. Indeed, it’s been rising for years.

When the Liberals were in opposition, they routinely, even reflexively, hammered away at the Tory government’s dismal track record on job creation, even though most reasonable opinion concluded that playing that particular card was a mug’s game. After all, despite their campaign rhetoric, governments don’t, in fact, create jobs.

Now that the Conservatives are out of office, they’re returning the favour. Said Opposition Leader Bruce Fitch the other day: “There are a number of crises the premier needs to address. (He) disappeared, came back and did his tour delivering a couple of job announcements. They are fine in themselves but there is a bigger question to be answered here. In the last 18 months, there has been a dismal failure in job creation under the Gallant leadership. He promised 5,000 jobs, we are down 6,000 jobs, so that is 11,000 less than promised.”

Mr. Fitch is not wrong about the state of the provincial economy. But the argument about the condition of his rival’s leadership actually goes nowhere if we still expect a government that hasn’t created jobs to suddenly become an employment-generating factory.

Now might be a good time to retire the lashing tongues, and explore ways to target the reasons for New Brunswick’s economic maladies together.

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Mar 24 2016
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Culture, Democracy, Economy

Natural selection in our backyard

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A blanket of snow covers the gardens that were white-free all winter long. Yet, the squirrels, raccoons and birds now come to visit. They know something that I, in my seasonal pique, have forgotten.

The world makes adaptation a necessary, not voluntary, rule of survival. We must, in New Brunswick, embrace new ideas for our own natural selection in an increasingly brutal, increasingly competitive society.

Or maybe the ideas are the old, gracious ones that we, in our haste to blame each for so many real and perceived ills, have forgotten.

Consider them, and consider them well: equity, inquiry, generosity, tolerance, and charity. These are the qualities of mind and character that nature selects exclusively for our species. These are the rules of survival we ignore to our shame and at our peril.

No Wall Street banker, hedge-fund manager, serial short-seller, greed is not good. It produces the vast gulf we see now between the tiny number of individuals who “have” everything, and the great mass of humanity who do not.

According to a Forbes Magazine report, quoting an OECD study, two years ago, “Rising (income) inequality is estimated to have knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth in Mexico and New Zealand, nearly 9 points in the United Kingdom, Finland and Norway and between 6 and 7 points in the United States, Italy and Sweden. On the other hand, greater equality prior to the (financial) crisis helped increase GDP per capita in Spain, France and Ireland.”

No politician, pundit, incessantly talking head, dogma is not good. It generates the appalling amount of decidedly uncritical thinking that hobbles enlightened decision-making – the sort of decision-making that engineers effective policies to fight climate change, systemic poverty, family violence, illiteracy and, yes, even crime.

These societal woes also come with a price tag, numbered in the billions of dollars a year. Poverty, alone, is one of the biggest line items in most governments’ account balances. Says the Canada Without Poverty website, “Poverty, thought of as economic deprivation, could be seen as expensive. In reality, poverty is one of the biggest burdens on the economic, healthcare, and criminal justice systems in Canada. In 2011, the federal government spent $19.9 billion on Employment Insurance benefits.”

It necessarily follows, then, that a more equitable, inquiring society is a more generous, tolerant and charitable one. It’s also, in straight economic terms, a more durably successful one.

It is one in which enlightened governments, following rules for maximizing the greatest good for the greatest number of people they represent, intervene when regulated capital markets flout the rules of survival for all but themselves (before, not after, economic calamity descends).

It is one in which the premiums on education, literacy and numeracy are subservient to no other public priority. According to one authority with the IZA World of Labour organization, “In many countries, even relatively low levels of basic skills in numeracy and literacy attract a wage premiums.”

Here, in New Brunswick, we possess the means – as scarce as they sometimes appear – to remake our economy as a more equitable, inquiring, generous, tolerant, and charitable one.

The effort would take no more money – in fact, less – than the federal government is already willing to spend on amorphous notions for funding short-term, job-creation schemes related to infrastructure and clean-technology initiatives in this province.

Our best ideas for our own natural selection are still the old ones – the ones that rarely, if ever, generate headlines on the government-funding circuit.

If we can adapt our thinking, we can survive. We can prosper.

Mar 24 2016
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Democracy, Government, Politics

The wisdom of the crowd

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When protesters shut down access roads to a Donald Trump rally in Arizona recently, prompting the improbably coiffed billionaire and reality-show host to instruct the interlopers to “go home” to their “mommies”, media broadcasters readily assumed those in his audience stood solidly with him.

I’ll wager, though, the truth was a little more complicated.

If I had conducted a straw poll onsite and at the time, I’m almost certain a third of the participants would have said the protestors should be arrested and tried for public nuisance, another third wouldn’t have cared much, and a final third would have shrugged their shoulders and mumbled something about every person’s right to free speech, even the disagreeable variety.

Politicians (especially candidates for office) and members of what was once classified so quaintly as “The Fourth Estate” expect black and white responses from John and Jane Q. Public on any issue – large or small, consequential or insignificant, even though they almost never get them.

Yet, the mantra is wearingly familiar: You are either for us or against us. You can’t be both. You certainly may not cradle any notion that democracy, in practice, is anything but fractious and polarizing.

It’s the same assumption that the chattering classes in the Atlantic Provinces make about the East Coast hoi polloi right around election and budget times, when the partisan bunting luffs ever so vigorously in the hot air.

Lately, however, in my travels around New Brunswick, a different picture of average members of the body politic emerges – one that’s more nuanced than monolithic. It suggests that most people are willing to entertain often-radical points of agreement to reach consensus on how to solve the persistent problems that afflict regional society.

Surprising are the number of voting citizens who firmly believe, regardless of their party affiliations, that forging much closer economic ties between provinces is a durable way to cut public deficits and debts.

They also think that the amount of government spending is less worrying than the lack of material return on each dollar invested. They are, for example, more likely to concur with the proposition that small-p politics should play no role in allocating (or curtailing) resources to higher education.

In fact, they are broadly convinced that entrepreneurship and innovation are functions of literacy and numeracy (not the other way around); that culture and the arts are engines, not byproducts, of prosperity; and that health care planning lacks only from a paucity of imagination among public officials who refuse to consider delivery models other than those prescribed by the status quo.

Most striking, perhaps, are the definitions people embrace for that long-abused rubric – the favorite of every politician, wearing his or her partisan colours proudly, who ever went to Government – leadership.

The notion that good leadership is “strong” or “unwavering” – that it springs, unbidden, from the souls of the anointed few who assume elected office; that it is impervious to the corrupting influences of circumspection and changing conditions – is, most average folks contend, ludicrous.

Rather, good leadership is about “respect” and “listening”. It’s about “setting an example” for others to emulate. Yes, it’s “decisive” and “consistent”, but it’s neither “rash” nor hidebound.

Few, it seems, are alarmed about peaceful, deliberate protest – except, of course, politicians and other members of the chattering classes who attend them.

Few are prepared to concede the point that holding an opinion precludes changing one’s mind.

These are the principles around which effective governments must finally rally if we have any chance of solving the problems that plague our various societies.

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Mar 23 2016
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Democracy, Economy, Employment, Government

Banking on survival

Resurgo is action in latin. And that's a dead language. Get 'er done boys and girls

A government budget is not that different from a personal one: In either case, we invariably break our promises to ourselves.

We start with the best information and the best possible intention. We tell ourselves that our revenue and income streams are stable; we make spending and savings plans accordingly. We close the books and go along our sunny ways until a computer model or online robot tells us we’re way too optimistic; too stupid to trust our own flawed perceptions of reality.

That’s precisely how the global economic collapse occurred in 2008. To my American cousins, I will provide a recap. (And listen up my fellow Canadians, because this affects you, too).

It all started with the assumption that the housing market in the United States was impervious to ups and downs. After all, weren’t mortgages the safest investment vehicle since God created sliced bread? No bank would make credit default agreements against this industry’s eventual failure. Until, of course, they did. In the end, that made the short sellers – who bet on a housing downturn thanks to utterly irresponsible interest rate spreads between homeowners and mortgage companies – rich, and the rest of the turtles. . .well, poor.

The poorer they, the average turtles, got, the richer they, the short-selling fund-managing sharks, became. Home-induced bankruptcies fuelled the new instruments of financial insurance, which finally decimated almost every major lender in the United States, before the feds swooped in like a batman with a broken wing to save them, with public money, from imminent perdition. In other words, my American cousins were twice. . .um. . .compromised through no particular fault of their own.

Welcome, dear reader, to the way the world works.

Welcome to the meaninglessness of splashy federal budgets.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s latest economic report does little for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. How could it?

To compensate for the utter lack of investment in strategic infrastructure – education, health care, roads, innovation and technology programs – by the former government of Stephen Harper, Mr. Trudeau would have had to drop the country into the $100-billion-deficit range, as opposed to the current $30 billion he’s just barely willing to tolerate.

Again, this is not precisely Mr. Trudeau’s fault. Oddly enough, it’s not even Mr. Harper’s. In their own ways, both have had to pretend to run Canada’s budgets in the interests of all Canadians. But the cause of the Great Recession of 2008 – the global financial meltdown of 2007 – is still with us, still perniciously affecting us today.

It reveals itself in the way so many middle-class people in New Brunswick can no longer buy affordable homes, pay for their kids’ university educations, build durable retirement accounts, or acquire sufficient credit to invest in small enterprises.

It continues to keep our revenue-generating private enterprises gun shy. Many no longer hire worthy youngsters to train. Banks no longer readily lend capital. Debt-riddled government guarantees are no longer worth what they used to be.

In the end, we continue to break all the best promises we ever made to ourselves in sunnier days.

Still, none of this is inevitable.

We can remake the world, right here in New Brunswick, without recourse to federal budgetary promises that are, at best, temporary, and, at worst, illusory. We can, in vibrantly unique ways, re-energize the entrepreneurial culture we once exported to the rest of Canada.

We merely need to remind ourselves that the promises we make to ourselves, our children and our grandchildren are the only ones that are worth fulfilling.

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Mar 23 2016
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Democracy, Energy, Environment, Politics

Juggling the balls of climate change

 

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New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant’s determination to be on the right side of history may be one of the signature features of his term in office.

And, why not?

Political leaders far older than he struggle daily to balance the competing and often conflicting demands and expectations of the people they represent. It is only the hubris of youth that convinces such jugglers that they, above all others, can keep all the balls in the air and, so, astonish and mollify a disparate and peevish crowd of voters.

Sometimes, it works just fine.

Former U.S. President John F. Kennedy (elected at age 44) had his Camelot and moonshots, his Peace Corps.

Current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (elected at age 44) has his clean-technology agenda and climate-change avowals, which he hopes will bring this nation closer to its true identity as an advocate for green sensibilities the world over.

Again, why not?

The problem, of course, is reality. It pulls and pushes, warps and wrinkles even the noblest aspirations. In the public sphere, fear and alarm masquerade as legitimate, dissenting voices. Paid lobbyists practice their smooth alchemy; industry associations exert their influence; and poorly educated citizen groups caterwaul from the sidelines of relevance.

The result is almost always inevitable: The political juggler drops the balls; bold, youthful aspirations fall to the ground; and the status quo remains intact.

I can’t confirm that this is happening in New Brunswick, but I will say that we’re getting there.

Fresh off the plane from Vancouver, where he met with his provincial counterparts and the prime minister, Mr. Gallant now vows he will “consider” pricing carbon in the province. As the Saint John Telegraph-Journal reported recently, the premier is “now listing a hike in the gas tax among an ‘array’ of carbon-pricing mechanisms the province could choose in efforts to strengthen its role in a pan-Canadian climate change plan.”

But, if Mr. Gallant was ever serious about ameliorating the effects of global warming in New Brunswick – and aligning himself to federal priorities on this issue – why was his campaign for office scrupulously devoid of such considerations? Why was his most recent provincial budget largely silent on these matters?

The province’s Climate Change Action Plan 2014-2020 offers little explanation.

“In New Brunswick, the impacts of climate change have already begun to appear,” it reminds us. “Temperatures are rising, high-intensity precipitation events are becoming more common, sea levels are rising and inland and coastal areas are experiencing greater rates of erosion and more frequent flooding. In other words, New Brunswick’s ‘normal’ weather is no longer what it used to be, and more change is anticipated in the future.”

As for “visions, principles and goals”, the report has this to say: “The actions put forward in New Brunswick’s Climate Change Action Plan 2014-2020 recognize that: Decisions must be based on reliable and accurate information; decisions must consider the implications of long-term climate predictions and their anticipated impacts on future generations; and that all New Brunswickers share the responsibility of responding to climate change and should therefore be informed and engaged.”

No kidding Sherlock. We know this. The only reason why this province has not embraced a truly effective policy to battle climate change has to do with competing interests that constantly agitate for keeping the province’s economy tethered to the past.

If Mr. Gallant and his crew are serious about transforming this small corner of the world, he and they will have to cross over the line into the right side of history, where no political jugglers need apply.

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Feb 09 2016
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Democracy, Politics

Membership has its privileges?

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Trust New Brunswick to tilt at the beast of federal complacency and partisanship. After all, didn’t this province help invent the Senate of Canada? Shouldn’t we, of all this great land’s citizens, now properly tame it, if not actually slay it?

Two senators from this fair province – and from two different parties, no less – prefer door No. 1. But how much luck are they having travelling the high road to reform?

Pierrette Ringuette, who was appointed as a Liberal senator but who has announced that she will quit the Grit caucus and sit as an independent, declared last week that “Canadians have been clear in their desire for a non-partisan Senate. The Senate, as an institution and senators themselves, should be working to remove partisanship from the chamber and with that goal in mind, I believe in taking the proactive approach and sitting as an independent.”

In this, she joins fellow New Brunswicker John Wallace, a former Conservative senator who is now an independent. At the time of his resignation last November, he stipulated in a letter, “Differences that I consider to be irreconcilable exist between myself and Conservative Senate Leader Claude Carignan and other Conservative Senate Caucus members regarding the required Constitutional roles, responsibilities and independence of Conservative Senators. These differences are fundamental to the roles and responsibilities that I have sworn to uphold as a member of the Senate of Canada.”

In an interview with the CBC’s Jacques Poitras, Mr. Wallace said, “I believe in order for the Senate to function as it was intended by the Fathers of Confederation. . .political partisanship, as much as it can be, has to be removed from the Senate,” he told CBC’s Jacques Poitras in New Brunswick. “Others can think otherwise, but I don’t want to find myself constrained by feeling that every time I go against the will of my political leaders, it’s an act of disloyalty.”

Still, as fine and noble as these sentiments ring, when it comes to the Senate of Canada, independence does not necessarily confer any privileges – except, perhaps, those of conscience. In the meantime, just try and get a committee appointment. Go ahead, Mr. Wallace, I dare you.

Since his resignation from the Tory caucus, the good fellow and other independents in the chamber are having a dickens of a time getting a seat on any of the signature quorums that essentially comprise the Senate’s raison d’etre. “The total exclusion of myself and other independent senators from any committee, it’s completely outrageous,” he told the Telegraph-Journal’s Adam Huras not long ago. “It goes right to the heart of the credibility, the reputation and the integrity of the institution. There couldn’t be a clearer example of that problem of irreconcilable difference than what this represents. There is a message that is being sent to me.”

For her part, though her political associations may differ from Mr. Wallace’s, Ms. Ringuette is sympathetic to her colleague’s cause, which is, naturally, also her own. “It’s a sad state of affairs,” she was quoted as saying last week. “You would think that individually and collectively with the events of the last three years that independent spirited senators would rise to the challenge.”

Actually, given those very events of the last three years, I would expect nothing less than the officious, foot-dragging, obstreperous behaviour from the partisan-aligned majority of senators we witness today.

Mr. Wallace’s and Ms. Ringuette’s principled stand, notwithstanding, notions of meaningful reform do not pass frequently through the Upper Chamber’s gilded doors.

Perhaps it’s time to slay the beast, after all.

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