The world oil supply is running down and we have no ready substitutes.

Climate change is happening now – stronger storms, more devastating wildfires, rising sea levels, diseases spreading – the list goes on, and there is every indication that it will continue to worsen.

The US economy, upon which the world economy still depends, is unstable due to corruption at the top, from most Congressmen to presidential advisors all being former bank executives.

Our leaders are not moving quickly enough to protect the economy in general, never mind your or my livelihoods in particular. Some of our leaders are actually doing things to worsen the situation, such as denying the very existence of climate change or ignoring the ever-rising price of oil.

We are facing “interesting times.” The turbulence has begun, and it’s buffeting us from all directions. Have you ever had the experience of going for a walk and, no matter which direction you were going, the wind always seemed to be in your face? That’s what the future is going to feel like for many people.

I could (and have) proposed large-scale responses to the situation, which frankly at this point need to be a WWII-scale mobilization to re-industrialize and re-do our living arrangements to drastically cut oil dependence immediately and, long-term, eliminate pollution of all kinds by moving to a ‘restorative economy.’

But we’re not going to do that in the foreseeable future, are we? Or anything even remotely close. If you take your family’s security seriously, then you will do what you can to buffer yourself against the coming storms. The best way I have seen to do that is Transition Initiative, and you should seriously consider joining (or starting) one in your area.

TI is a completely grassroots, apolitical initiative, and this is what they do:

Transition Network helps communities deal with climate change and shrinking supplies of cheap energy (peak oil). This process, which we call Transition, aims to create stronger, happier communities.

That’s how we’re going to get through this; by working together in local communities. As the Transition Network site puts it well:

What we are convinced of is this:

• • if we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late
  • if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little
  • but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Your level of involvement can be minimal or massive; the choice is yours. Here are some things that local TIs do:

• Teach people how to grow a garden, save seeds, preserve foods
• Educate people by showing documentaries about peak oil, climate change, solutions, and more
• Host online and IRL forums to discuss and learn
• Show people how to insulate their homes or build a solar greenhouse

Like it or not, the world is changing. You can adapt, or not.

The NDP just won a historic number of seats and, had vote splits gone differently, could have formed the government. One reason the NDP wasn’t a runaway winner is because many Canadians don’t see the NDP as ‘leadership material.’ That is, they’re useful in opposition, but you could never trust them with the levers of power.

The NDP needs to change that perception by showing leadership now. Don’t passively wait for the Harper Government to present a throne speech to which you can respond, or legislation which you can decry. Present some of  your own ideas now; you need to show Canadians that they should have put you in power.

Reform the Senate

Stephen Harper was elected years ago on a promise to reform the Senate. Since then, all he has done is stuff it with partisan hacks. So, call him on it. The NDP favours abolition of the Senate, but would certainly support Senate reform. Harper has a majority and no more excuses not to attempt Senate reform. Excuses or not, you can’t count on him to do and certainly not to do it right.

The NDP should propose Senate reform now, and call out Stephen Harper to respond. Propose sensible reforms that are widely acceptable, and if Harper uses any of your proposal he concedes that the NDP has leadership potential.

Make it something like this:

The numbers in red are Senate Seats.

This balances the regions while giving more populous provinces more seats:

• Atlantic Canada: 8 seats
• Central Canada: 8 seats
• Prairie Canada: 8 seats
• BC: 4 seats
• Northern Territories: 3 seats

To these provincially elected seats, add 4 more for First Nations (however they want to put people on the Senate) and 3 more for scientists put forward by the scientific community.

That’s 38, which is plenty and will save us money over the current arrangement. The Senate should not match population the way Parliament does; two bodies full of partisan hacks doing the same thing is one reason the NDP would like to abolish the current Senate. Instead, we need to balance the power of population with the power of the region.*

Structure elections as some form of proportional representation or run-off, so we start to move away from this divided, us-versus-them, vote-splitting nonsense.

And finally, make the term in the Senate much longer than Parliament, because you need these people thinking in terms of generations: what is best for Canada and our great-grandchildren. Senate terms should be at least 10 years and better 15-20 (capped at age 75 or senility, whichever comes first).

The NDP needs to show leadership: Why are they the better party to lead Canada? One way is by proposing Senate reform and thereby putting Harper on the hook to fulfil a promise he made a long time ago.

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* Balancing the Power of Population with the Power of the Regions

At various times in Canada’s history, more populous – and therefore better politically represented – regions have imposed their will on lesser populated areas. Trudeau’s National Energy Program (NEP) was one such example, in which the people with the oil – Albertans – had to accept a lower-than-world price to effectively subsidize Ontario and Quebec.

This is not fair and it is also damaging to the country. Requiring Alberta to take a lower price meant less revenue for Alberta, and less foreign income for Canada. It also meant that Canadians used more oil because it was cheaper, and therefore today we are less efficient and we have less oil remaining to sell.

In order to prevent a “tyranny of the majority” in which more populous areas take advantage of less populous ones, we need to give some power to people who represent regions. This balances the power of population with the power of the regions, as in the proposal.

The Liberals devastated, although nowhere near as bad as the Progressive Conservatives were in 1993. The Bloc almost wiped out. A single Green, finally and deservedly, elected. And the Conservatives and NDP on top for the next 4-5 years.

What will a Harper majority bring? Will the worst fears of the ABC’s (Anything but Conservatives) be realised? Certainly Mr. Harper now has free rein to spend billions on prisons and fighter jets.

I suspect that public funding for political parties will be chopped, and soon. The NDP stand to get a great deal more in public funding than they ever have – triple the amount they received last election – and with that kind of money they can challenge the Conservatives in a serious way. By cutting public funding, the Conservatives can hobble all their opponents seriously.

That said, cutting public funding risks a backlash; there could be an outpouring of support for the other parties, especially the NDP. Mr. Harper will make this worse if he does something like privatize CBC.

But this is minor. Mr Harper has been dreaming of a majority for a long time, and  you can bet he has some plans to make use of his new power. At the same time, he is somewhat constrained by claims of being fiscally conservative. He has promised to balance the budget within a few years, and at the same time he loves to slash taxes/government revenue. All of that combined with a sluggish economy is not going to provide a lot of money for shiny toys.

Of course, that might mean that Mr. Harper focuses on the social engineering parts of his agenda, as at least initially they cost less. By this I mean he may well order a crackdown on pot, may implement ‘mandatory minimum’ sentences for more crimes, and will likely cut budgets for things he believes should be privatized (education, aspects of health care, for example) or that speak inconvenient truths (all government science departments, for example). U.S-style copyright enforcement is coming. There will be lots of corporate-friendly deals, from ‘free’ trade to special subsidies and tax breaks.

Will Mr. Harper push further? Probably, but how? He will be constrained by budget, and the provinces are expecting to negotiate a new deal on health care. He has already committed billions for fighter jets and prisons, though was sketchy on where the money would come from.

Quebec

Quebec is now a more complicated situation, if that is possible. Quebecers went NDP in a  big way, and the impression around the net community is that many are disappointed that the rest of Canada did not do the same. That is, Quebecers did their part as Canadians to bring in a progressive government, and the rest of us did not hold up our end. Some are pointing to this as evidence that Quebecers do indeed see the world in a different way.

I think there is some truth to this; Quebecers showed courage voting for change the way they did. It reminds me of a key difference between the respective hockey teams: When the Canadiens have a poor team, the fans stay home and management gets the message. When the Leafs have a bad team, the fans still fill the stadiums and buy the merchandise, and so management produces the worst team the fans will accept. Quebecers take action when the situation is not acceptable; the rest of us need to learn that lesson from them.

I think a resurgence of separatism is quite possible, and will be reflected in the next provincial election. The federal NDP would be wise to fight tooth-and-nail to advance Quebec’s progressive agenda; the rest of Canada would benefit, too.

Ontario

Ontario, or really the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is who shafted Quebec by sending many new Conservative MPs to Ottawa. However – did they really? If you look at the individual riding results, in many cases the Conservatives benefited from vote splitting. Next time, Toronto, get it together and agree on who you’re going with.

There is an Ontario provincial election in October. Historically, Ontario has elected the party opposite to the one in power in Ottawa; given what just happened in Ottawa, the Ontario Liberals would be favoured to win this fall. However, the Liberals have been in power since 2003, numerous suspicious deeds have come to light, and Ontarians may well feel a desire to change them.

But to whom? The Ontario Conservatives are not particularly liked and of course Ontarians just sent plenty of Conservatives to Ottawa. It could be time for Ontario to give the NDP and Greens a shot again.

BC

BC also has an election…sometime. Premier Christy Clark has no seat in the Legislature, as she won the Liberal leadership after Gordon Campbell resigned. She could call an election at any time, as it looks bad if the Premier is unelected. She could also run in a by-election, assuming a safe seat can be found. Currently, the only open seat is not a sure thing, and it would look really bad if the Premier continued to govern after failing to win a seat.

A provincial election is no sure thing for the BC Liberals, either. They’ve been in power awhile and are starting to smell, now there’s a Conservative federal government, so BC voters might just decide to put the NDP and some Greens in charge for a bit. (If public sentiment tips this way, I think there is a real chance that some Greens would be elected.)

Overall

It seems likely to me that the harder Mr. Harper pushes his social engineering agenda, the more likely he is to face unfriendly governments in various provinces (Saskatchewan, which has had a budget-balancing NDP government recently, has an election this year, too). Not that he won’t do some of it anyway; I’m just pointing out the likely backlash.

He is safe cutting taxes and spending money, but squaring this with his alleged fiscal conservatism will be difficult. He will have to at least appear to be on track to balancing the budget or he’ll lose his ‘steady hand on the economy’ reputation.

There are also new expectations that come with majority; for example, Mr. Harper no longer has an excuse for not attempting to reform the Senate, or scrapping the gun registry, or implementing some of the other measures blocked by the Opposition under the previous minority.

Mr. Layton and the NDP have 4-5 years to broaden their base, and they should not waste a minute. There is a very good chance that Canadians will be looking for a change after a long majority Harper government, and the NDP want to be that change. They also want to get building while they’re still getting the per-vote subsidy, which Mr. Harper committed to ending if he gained a majority.

The NDP could do a better job of presenting their values and vision, and then reinforcing these through their platform. Much of what the NDP wants to do is along the German/Nordic model and would be quite popular with many more Canadians than normally vote NDP. Mr. Layton and his new, expanded team need to focus on getting their vision and values to Canadians over the next several years so that next election, the choice is clear.

The Liberals are not out, but they may be reduced for the foreseeable future to something like their current size; it depends how well the NDP do at communicating their vision and values. If the NDP do well, the Liberals are in big trouble and should get used to being on the outside for awhile. Which is not necessarily bad; the Liberals need to decide what they stand for and then stand for it.

The Greens finally have an elected MP, and it’s their leader, Elizabeth May. She will be a strong voice, and her election embarrasses those who kept her out of the leader’s debates. Will she be a breakthrough winner that opens the door to many other Green seats? If the NDP does well, then no.

The next election is the NDP’s to lose. I think Mr. Harper cannot help but push too far, as he has done repeatedly in the past, and enough Canadians will have had enough of him that a credible alternative will win. The NDP must use this time to show how they are that credible alternative.

OBL has been reported dead. This leads me to three possibilities:

1. He really is recently deceased, meaning prior rumours were wrong. If so, points 2 and 3 hold for the US/World generally and Canada specifically.
2. US: There goes a big part of the justification for being in Afghanistan. Americans are sick of being at war, no matter what Bill O’Reilly and the CEO of Halliburton want to think. This is the perfect opportuinty for Mr. Obama to say Afghanistan should become a UN peacekeeping mission – of which the US is not a part - or simply to annouce a timetable for withdrawal. Either way, everyone is relieved. If the Afghanis really do not want to be dominated by the Taliban, then they need to prepare to stand up and destroy them. As the uprisings in the Middle East have shown, only if the people unite against an oppressor can they have a chance to be free.
3. Canada – There goes a large part of Stephen Harper’s fear-based agenda. Not that the whole thing was based on fear of OBL and Al-Queada by a long shot, but OBL was the foundation upon which the War on Terror was built. Canadians are sick of this war and would like to go back to peacekeeping. The only fella tha’s likely to do that is Jack Layton. The official death of OBL can only hurt Harper and boost the NDP. The timing could not be worse for Harper.
4. The fourth possibility is this: It is possible that previous reports of Mr. Bin Laden’s death were correct, and it is just now being officially reported by the United States. If so, points 2 and 3 still stand. The only danger is that Americans somehow discover that Mr. OBL had been dead for some time and their government knew it.

UPDATE: While I have no reason to doubt the official U.S. version, it is awfully convenient that bin Laden was buried at sea.

For the vast majority of pop drinkers, if the restaurant doesn’t have Coke, Pepsi will do just fine. And to many Canadians, the difference between the Liberals and Conservatives is like that between Coke and Pepsi: not worth worrying about.

I believe this explains a big part of the ‘NDP surge’ that has pushed the NDP well past the Liberals in the polls. Canadians can see that Ignatieff’s Liberals are not much different than the Conservatives, as much as they try to make out like they are worlds apart. Both Ignatieff and Harper would have put our troops in Iraq, both love the tar sands, neither has any sort of plan to meet environmental commitments like CO2 reduction or to ‘green’ our economy the way prosperous economies like Germany, Norway, Denmark, and even China and Brazil are doing.

In short, both Ignatieff and Harper will continue to follow the United States, even as the U.S. economy continues to stagnate and American moral authority continues its decline.

The Liberals are well known for ‘campaigning from the left and governing from the right,’ and I think Canadians just decided it was time to vote for the real thing. Too many broken promises by the Liberals over the years have eroded trust in their ‘brand.’

Coke and Pepsi spend billions on marketing to get you to buy their products, but ultimately there’s not much difference. Looks like Canadians have decided it’s time for a switch.

With all due respect to Jean Chretien, he is a big part of the reason that many Canadians no longer trust the Liberal Party. It wasn’t just Adscam, during which Mr. Chretien was the:

Prime Minister of Canada at the time the Sponsorship Program was established and operated. The Gomery Commission, First Phase Report which assigned blame for the Sponsorship scandal cast most of the indemnity for misspent public funds, fraud on Chrétien and his Prime Minister’s Office staff, though it cleared Chrétien himself of direct wrongdoing.

That was bad enough. But for many of us, there is a long history of big talk and little action. To give three prime examples:

1. The Liberals campaigned against NAFTA – but then embraced it once elected
2. The Liberals campaigned against the GST – but then embraced it once elected
3. The Liberals signed Kyoto – but then did less than nothing to meet that commitment

Tell me again why we should trust Liberal promises?

For me, the Kyoto betrayal offers a particularly compelling reason to not vote for the Liberals. Had Mr. Chretien’s government redirected oil and tar mining subsidies to green energy – say solar thermal, wind, and geothermal – then today there would be thousands of clean and green jobs in these fields in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The prairies would be an ‘energy superpower,’ but in clean energy and high-tech jobs, the way Denmark and Germany are today.

Subsidies to tar mining amounted to approximately $1.5 billion taxpayer dollars per year in 2010. Multiply that by the number of years since Kyoto was signed in 1998 and you get a heck of a lot of money: $19.5B in today’s dollars. That’s also a lot of jobs:

• Siemens plans to build a CDN$ 120M wind turbine factory in the UK, anticipated to create ~2,200 jobs
• GE plans to build a CDN$ 160M wind turbine factory in the UK, anticipated to create more than 2,000 jobs
• The Pembina Institute estimates that “for every million dollars invested, an average 36.3 jobs are created in the energy efficiency sector, 12.2 jobs in the renewable energy sector, and only 7.3 jobs in the development of conventional energy.”

That was an opportunity squandered and an international commitment broken. Using the Pembina Institute’s figures, Jean Chretien’s Liberals could have put us on the path to creating 237,900 jobs in the prairies just from the subsidies alone.

The Liberals campaign from the left and govern from the right, and it looks like Canadians have finally had enough and are going to elect the real deal.

The polls are pointing to another Conservative minority – but that will very rapidly translate to an NDP minority or NDP/Liberal coalition. (All this assumes that current polls are roughly accurate. And as a disclaimer, I admit that I am in favour of an NDP-led government this election.)

Even if the Conservatives manage a minority, they will be pulled down by the NDP; they really don’t have a choice. It’s not some big conspiracy; if the Conservatives did not have the confidence of the other parties before the election, they certainly won’t have it now. Put another way, the NDP and Liberals voted non-confidence in the Harper Government about 30 days ago, and so they cannot support that same government now without losing tremendous credibility.

Mr. Harper may get a week or so, but will be shot down at the first opportunity. It may be a defeated budget (budgets are always confidence motions), or the NDP and Liberals may simply put forward another motion of non-confidence.

Following that, Jack Layton will approach the Governor General and ask to form a government. The Liberals will certainly agree to support them, as Mr Ignatieff will be in the process of stepping down as leader and the party will need time to re-rebuild after two disastrous elections. The first one they blamed on Stephane Dion; this election shows that the problem was not Dion, but the Liberals themselves. They failed to inspire Canadians with any sort of vision and many Canadians still don’t trust them.

What will Mr. Layton and the NDP do once in power? This, I admit, is an open question. I suspect that they will fairly quickly reverse some of the Harper Government’s less popular decisions, like the no-bid fighter jet purchase, reinstate the long-form census, and so on.

I hope he will also publicly unmuzzle Canadian government scientists; even if the NDP do not, I suspect that the civil service will feel free to speak out under a worker-friendly NDP government. This is good news for truth and government transparency, and certainly for getting some action on climate change.

The NDP has also committed to redirecting tar mining subsidies to renewable energy, and they would be wise to make this a priority. If Jean Chretien had done this the day he signed Kyoto, many thousands of ‘green’ jobs would have been created in the prairies by now and Canada would be a world leader in renewable energy.

There will be a lot of people nervous about an NDP government; they are either CEOs of major corporations or they are average folks who bought the line about the NDP being spendthrifts.This is not true; the NDP has done decently governing the provinces they have led, for example. It would be a smart move for Mr. Layton to have several ‘fireside chats’ to explain to people what his government is planning and why. It will settle nerves and reduce resistance to change.

Because, in reality, an NDP government will change Canada – I think for the better. In many ways, it will be a return to values so many of us hold dear, from peacekeeping to a sound public health system. We will be less influenced by the United States and instead will align more with European/Nordic values.

This latter is very good for Canada, as the United States is in economic and moral decline while over the pond there are several examples of sound economies embracing the future: Germany, Norway, Denmark, and others are aggressively moving to renewable energy, net-zero housing, walkable cities, and much more. All of this is vital in a world where the price of oil keeps going up – along with concerns about climate change.

The reason that the Harperites are so terrified of an NDP-led government is this very reason. The last time the NDP had a significant influence, we got universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, the 40-hour work week, and a whole lot more. Another stint at the wheel by the NDP could forever sink Conservative dreams of following the U.S. in every possible way, from participation in various wars of occupation to mandatory imprisonment for minor transgressions to slashing the social safety net to ribbons.

The Cons are petrified that Canadians will start to take a serious look at countries like Germany, Denmark, and Norway, and then wonder why we can’t have six week vacations, union members on the Boards of Directors of corporations, and a solid resource and manufacturing economy.

I was speaking with a friend of mine the other day, a staunch Conservative and normally willing to put up with Harper, who said there is no way Bruce Carson is getting the job he did unless he knows where the bodies are buried.

If the Conservatives want to reward a crony – and my friend would admit they do it, point out that the Liberals did it and will do it again, and so what, it’s the way of the world – then they put him in a position where at least he can’t do them damage. You don’t put a disbarred lawyer with multiple fraud convictions – does it really matter two or five? – a bankruptcy or two, and a twenty-two-year-old ex-escort wife in the PMO. You just don’t.

If you do this kind of stuff, and certainly I agree that the Liberals did and will again if given the chance, and that the Conservatives are doing it now and will do so again if given the chance (one reason I’m going NDP this time), then you don’t put cronies with dirt that could reflect on you in positions where that dirt is very likely to be uncovered. Like the Prime Minister’s Office.

It’s like a gang of bank robbers making a guy on the FBI ‘Wanted Posters’ the lookout.

So why on earth would Harper appoint such a guy to such a high profile spot, unless, as my (possibly formerly) Conservative friend said, he knows where the bodies are buried? Does he have some leverage on top echelons of the Conservative Party, either thanks to knowing dirt or being responsible for bringing a lot of money their way?

And then after his stint in the PMO, it looks like the Conservatives took care of him with a nice gig:

After politics, Carson was appointed executive director of the Canada School of Energy and Environment in Calgary, apparently after an international talent search. The school received $15 million in start-up funds from the federal government in 2007 and its deputy director, Zoe Addington, was a former aide to Industry Minister Tony Clement and former cabinet minister Jim Prentice, when he had the industry and Indian affairs portfolios.

What does Carson have on the Cons?

I know that Dr. Keith Martin, a good man, has won this riding repeatedly in the past – but he stepped down and a new Liberal candidate is in place.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Martin just before the last election in which we were opposing candidates, him the incumbent Liberal and me just trying to represent common sense as a candidate for the Green Party of Canada. Dr. Martin saw the writing on the wall; as more people moved into the suburbs of Langford, the riding grew more Conservative. In recent elections, the Conservative share of the vote had been steadily increasing, and indeed in the 2008 election, Dr. Martin won by only 68 votes.

I was accused of nearly handing the riding to the Conservatives in that election, as I garnered 8.2% of the vote, an increase of about 1,500 from the previous election and nearly enough to sink Dr. Martin. (Assuming, of course, that I was taking all my votes from him, and not from any Conservative/NDP/independent candidates. And rather unfairly ignoring the droves of former Liberal voters who stayed home.)

This time around and Mr. Ignatieff is no more popular than Mr. Dion was – less, even. Honestly, I don’t understand why. He seems like a sharp cookie, decent guy, a little arrogant but then they all seem that way; I think that Canadians are just done with the Liberals, at least for now. They’ve become too much like the Conservatives, so one of them has become irrelevant.

Given all this, Liberal turnout in EJdF is likely to be low again, to say the least, and that could easily allow the Conservative candidate to win.

However, Randall Garrison is back for the NDP, by all reports a strong candidate. Can’t say I’ve met him, but people I respect and who have worked with and/or campaigned against Mr. Garrison say he’s a good guy. In the 2006 election, he came in second place, not far behind Dr. Martin.

There is a real chance that this riding could change hands this election – the question is to whom. Liberal and Green voters are the deciding factor in this riding:

• If they vote Liberal or Green, very likely the Conservative will win
• If some switch votes to NDP, very likely the NDP will win

In the past, I have been totally opposed to strategic voting, but I’ve since realized that a) we must work within the political system we have, even while trying to change it, and b) there are better ways to support a party than simply voting.

Real Liberal supporters in EJdF should pair their votes; at least you would be helping elect a Liberal in another riding, given that this one is a lost cause.

I do think it is time to give the NDP a chance. The other major parties need to rethink their strategy, change leaders, and come up with a compelling vision. I wouldn’t say Jack Layton and the NDP have such a vision either, or if they have they haven’t communicated it very well, but at least the NDP is more likely to take some important steps in cleaning up Ottawa and in shifting us more toward the German/Nordic economic and social way of doing things, and less American.

If you’re a Liberal in Esquimalt Juan de Fuca, pair your vote so you see a Liberal elected somewhere, and vote NDP at home. The alternative is to see Esquimalt Juan de Fuca go Conservative, possibly at a time when the NDP will become the governing party.

If you’ve read my election ponderings, you’ll know I’m hoping for the NDP to make a breakthrough and have some real influence in the Canadian government. I think we need it.

At the same time, I was a Green Party candidate when Elizabeth May was the leader, and we have our differences on how things should be, and I’m no longer a Green Party of Canada member.

So you might not expect me to suggest that if Elizabeth May does not win her seat, the future Prime Minister should appoint her to the Senate. (There are three open seats.) While I disagree with Ms. May on some things, she is exactly the kind of person who should be a Senator: encyclopaedic, big picture knowledge, knows what works because she’s seen it being done somewhere, passionate, sometimes truthful to a fault.

And that would also give some voice to the hundreds of thousands of Green voters – almost one million in the last election – who will otherwise get completely shut out on election day.

It’s the honourable thing to do, and the right thing to do. Good when those collide. Just do it, Stephen/Jack/Ignatieff.

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By the way, my picks for the other two open seats would be Ed Broadbent and Peter Lougheed.

UPDATE: This riding poll says that Elizabeth May is leading in the riding and is projected to win.