Friday, December 29, 2006, 04:23 PM - Miscellaneous
;)
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Thursday, December 21, 2006, 10:50 AM - Miscellaneous
Have a Blessed Christmas and 2007
Vicki
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Friday, December 15, 2006, 05:51 PM - Electoral Reform
TOP SECRET!
Key dates for Ontario's democratic revolution:
January 31, May 15 and October 4.
Do not – repeat, do NOT – let this information get into the
wrong hands. Forward only to trusted friends.
An Open Letter to Fellow Ontarians:
Is the idea of fundamental democratic reform so frightening that Ontario's major media are afraid to cover the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform?
Your guess is as good as ours, but the headline above summarizes their apparent attitude. The unfortunate result is that most Ontarians remain unaware of an unprecedented and historic opportunity to dramatically reform Ontario's political system.
What's the Big Deal With the Citizens' Assembly?
The Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, composed of 103 randomly chosen voters, has been empowered by the Government of Ontario to study and recommend a new provincial voting system. Their recommendation will be put to Ontarians in a referendum to be held next fall.
What's At Stake?
Political power. The future direction of our province. Legislation on issues like health care, education, the environment.
The voting system matters. It matters a lot, because the voting system allocates political power, creates parliaments and determines who forms governments. That in turn determines who calls the shots on issues that affect our families, our communities, our society and the environment.
How Bad is the Current System?
It's intolerable. Ontarians (and all Canadians) suffer the effects of using the world's worst electoral system – first-past-the post.
Typically, a party gets about 40 percent of the votes, wins 60 percent or more of the seats and then wields 100 percent of the power, as though it had a majority mandate. Meanwhile opposition voices are diminished and other minority voice are completely shut out of the political process.
In each election, millions of Ontarians cast wasted votes that elect no one. Results are so distorted the last time we elected a legitimate majority government – one actually put in place by a majority of votes cast – was in 1937.
Are There Better Ways to Vote?
Yes. Almost all major Western democracies scrapped first-past-the-post voting last century, and adopted voting systems designed to treat all voters equally and give fair and proportional election results.
More than 80 democracies now use these fair voting systems. Each has developed a version to fit its own distinctive political culture and geography. Ontario can do likewise.
What Are the Key Dates for Our Democracy Revolution?
The Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform will issue its final report by May 15. If the Assembly recommends a new voting system, Ontario will have a referendum on that recommendation on October 4 in conjunction with the next provincial election.
The Citizens' Assembly members have invited Ontarians to tell them what electoral values and principles matter most to you and/or what type of voting system you would like to have. Between now and January 31, citizens can make their views known through online submissions or by attending and speaking at one of the Assembly's public consultation meetings.
What Can You Do To Make It Happen?
Fair Vote Canada, through our Fair Vote Ontario campaign, is leading the fight to encourage the Ontario Citizens' Assembly to recommend a fair voting system based on proportional representation. When the Assembly does, we will then lead the Yes campaign for the October 4, 2007 referendum.
Here is what you can do between now and January 31:
1) Most important: forward this email to friends and other email lists!
2) Check the Assembly's website www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca. Review their public consultation guide.
3) If the Assembly is holding a public meeting in your community, plan to attend, take your friends, and speak up.
4) If you cannot attend a meeting, submit your comments on the Assembly's web site, encouraging Assembly members to scrap first-past-the-post and recommend a new, fair voting system.
5) Visit the Fair Vote Canada www.fairvote.ca and Fair Vote Ontario www.fairvote.ca/ontario website. Learn more about the issues and our campaign.
6) Volunteer to help the Fair Vote Ontario campaign and help win the October 4 referendum: Ontario@fairvote.ca
Democratic reform is a do-it-yourself project for citizens. We cannot depend on the media or those in positions of power to lead the democracy revolution. It's up to us! Let's do it!
Yours for a strong democracy,
Larry Gordon
Executive Director
Fair Vote Canada
26 Maryland Blvd.
Toronto, ON M4C 5C9
www.fairvote.ca
info@fairvote.ca
Ph: 416-410-4034
Fax: 416-686-4929
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Wednesday, December 6, 2006, 12:41 PM - Electoral Reform
Taking a look at the new leader of the Liberal Party, Stephane Dion, I have to wonder how much protecting our democracy is worth to him.
This article gives us some insight:
“But Dion said for now it's important to think strategically.
"If we have a party vote, he'll say that I muzzled my MPs and that if I had let them vote freely the motion would have passed," Dion said of Harper.
"Maybe from a strategic point of view, it would be better to have a free vote."
The meaning of democracy is government by the people. Canada is a representative democracy. Rather than all of us voting on every issue that arises, we elect people to vote on our behalf.
Mr. Dion’s reason for allowing a free vote is not to protect the integrity of our democratic system. It is because he is thinking strategically.
Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton are not at all concerned about the democratic process. They require their MPs to vote according to party line.
We, Canadians, must see that there is a something very much at the centre of voting along party lines. This is, whether or not Canada will remain a free country.
These leaders, by playing on our emotions, gain our ascent to restrict other Canadian’s democratic right to vote according to traditional moral values. However, that is not democratic.
There should be no whipped votes in Parliament.
Canada is still a free country!!
Let's preserve our democratic process!!!
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006, 11:00 AM - Miscellaneous
Ron Gray, Leader of the CHP
November 28, 2006
PM’s Québec resolution is clever—and wrong
Are the Québécois really “a nation within a united Canada”, as the Prime Minister’s motion in Parliament states?
Maybe, depending on the definition of “nation”; like other bad bills in Parliament in recent years, this resolution employs terms without defining them—which makes for bad legislation and bad resolutions. In any case, the resolution is still wrong.
It’s important to remember the circumstances out of which this resolution arose: first, Liberal leadership contender Michael Ignatieff said Québec should be recognized as a nation; that put the issue of separatism—and the fact that Québec has not signed the Constitution—back into play. Then, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe offered a resolution in Parliament stating that “the Québécois are a nation.”
That was mischievous: it plays upon the fact that “nation” in French can have a different meaning than “nation” English; it can also mean the same.
In French, one meaning is simply a group of people of a common origin; another is a group which characterizes itself by an awareness of historic, social or cultural unity, which chooses to live together; and a third is a group of people that constitutes a political community, in a defined territory, identified by sovereign authority = a state. It can also mean just “a collection of individuals which composes a population.”
The Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, defines “nation” as “an extensive aggregate of persons, so closely associated with each other by common descent, language or history as to form a distinct race or people, usually organized as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory.”
In short, the definition can be the same, similar or quite different in the two languages, depending on the viewpoint of the speaker. And speakers with an axe to grind can exploit potential differences.
Prime Minister Harper’s revision of the BQ resolution was clever: adding the words “within a united Canada” seems, at first glance, to defuse the clearly separatist intentions of the BQ resolution. But the PM’s motion has two inherent weaknesses: one weakness that it shares with the BQ motion, and one weakness of its own.
The fault share by both resolutions, BQ and Conservative, is that by identifying “the Québécois”, they exclude Les Acadiens and Francophones outside Québec; also excluded are Anglophones and Allophones inside Québec.
Those are divisive statements that only a separatist like Mr. Duceppe might make. The divisiveness of his exclusionary vision of who is a Qébécois—a virtual apartheid—is both the weakness and the sin of the separatist movement. Mr. Harper should not have bought into it.
The other weakness is vividly revealed by the fact that while Mr. Duceppe at first bristled with hostility against the change, he later embraced it. Why? Because, he explained, down the road it can be used to strengthen the Separatist cause: “See, even the Western-based Tories recognize that the Québécois are a nation!”
It would have been far better to leave Mr. Ignatieff alone in his semantic blunder, defeat the divisive Bloc resolution in Parliament, and get on with showing that Canada really is a united country by governing for the good of all its people.
The separatist fringe in Québec today depends on a core of only about 20 per cent. When that number rises in the polls, it is usually in response to insensitive statements by non-Quebeckers. But today’s young Quebeckers are more focused on the globalist challenge than on demanding an independent nation; and they know that Francophones have a much better chance of keeping their language and their culture (which historically included a very strong Christian heritage, as some are re-discovering) within a bilingual Canada: a unilingual Quebec in a sea of 300 million Anglophones, and facing a global economy that is predominantly English, would find mere cultural survival very difficult.
This resolution merely inflames yesterday’s arguments and divisions. It was tactically clever—but strategically unwise.
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Monday, November 20, 2006, 01:05 PM - Morality
I have spent some time considering where we have come as a society in my lifetime, the perception of who Christians are, and the role of family in society.
This country was built on a tradition... a heritage... that allowed for individual freedom within parameters that prevented us from transgressing against our fellow Canadians.
Canadians have allowed values to be removed from both the public and private arenas. This was done in part by allowing the media and social activists to twist truth to meet their own agenda.
The media and social activists have taken it upon themselves to define who Christians are. Once successful in re-defining the beliefs of our founding fathers as narrow and bigoted, they helped us to see that we should be ashamed of the traditions that built this country. The traditions that allowed individual development within parameters that protected society.
From there they turned their attack on the family.
We, Canadians, under the tutelage of the media and social activists have left this nation floundering under waves of relative thought with no basis in logic. We are trying so hard to be inclusive that we have left behind common-sense. One of the most obvious areas has been in the dismantling of our families.
Families, once considered the bedrock of a society, have been under attack for many years.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen the change from strong families, supporting one another and helping each other grow, to disconnected families which are reaching the point of being out of place in today’s world.
Of course that is not to say that families were perfect before. I do believe that they provided a healthier and safer environment in which to raise our children. The security for a child of knowing that mom and dad will ‘always’ be together and that ‘my’ family will always be there for ‘me’, is invaluable.
With the arrival of no-fault divorce we saw the gradual redefinition of family. We saw the arrival of ½ families, step families, we await the verdict on whether legally there can be two mothers and one father in a family, which is one step from polygamy.
We have re-defined family to the point that it means almost everything and therefore it means almost nothing.
Marriage was not a contract between two people. It was a vow made to each other, in the presence of witnesses, made before God. A vow is a promise. A part of that promise is ... until death parts us.
It has been expedient to forget that the marriage ceremony involved a lot of promises made to each other. All of them for the development of a healthy home and family.
For the sake of future generations, we must introduce our children to stable family units. The baby-boomers are the last generation to recall how it felt to grow up secure in their family. Let’s not wait until there’s no-one left to remember what family should be.
Perhaps it’s time to revisit the issue of moral character. When we make a promise, the promise is morally binding. It brings us to the heart of trust. If we cannot trust each other to keep a promise to someone we have loved, how can we be expected to keep promises made before the electorate.
Moral character should be demonstrated before someone is allowed to represent us and make decisions that affect every citizen of this country.
2. FAMILY STABILITY
We believe that the prevention of hardship (rather than its alleviation after it has arisen) is the key to reducing welfarism, and that the stability of the family is basic in this regard. We believe that government assistance should be given to humanitarian and church-based programs which minister to the hurting, strive for reconciliation in marriage through counseling, support those involved in crisis pregnancies, and seek to help an individual overcome those factors (physical and spiritual) which inhibit self-reliance. We favor assistance for the deserving poor through programs which encourage individuals to be self-reliant.
source
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