It was an election by younger people if the faces on TV are any indication. Mind you, at my age, almost everyone looks young!

It was also an election of change which inevitably means that “strategic voting” took the place of selecting the person that voters think will do the best job.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in my riding of  West Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Sea-To-Sky Country where the unpopularity of Prime Minister Harper and his local toady, John Weston, saw the Liberals (usually an endangered species here) swamp the Green candidate – a very good one indeed and former first class mayor of Whistler – who until a week ago seemed to have a reasonable chance. As soon as it became clear he couldn’t win, his supporters, panicked at the prospect of re-electing Weston and Harper, flocked to the Liberal, notwithstanding her wishy-washy stand on the proposed, hugely unpopular LNG plant in Squamish.

It was not only an election of change in the sense of getting rid of Harper, but people clearly want a change in our grossly unsatisfactory system. Parliament no longer represents the people and the people no longer feel connected with it. This is most important because it’s much like the old legal saw, “justice must not only be done it must manifestly be seen to be done”.  If people don’t see their parliament as working, it doesn’t matter what it actually does.

Real reform requires that MPs have power and appropriate prestige and be able to speak up for their constituents and consciences without committing political suicide.

The rejection of the Greens everywhere except in Elizabeth May’s own riding is sad but by no means permanent. For the Greens to do well there must be a system of proportional representation, where the will of the people is in fact reflected in those elected.

Mr. Trudeau has promised reform and I believe that he will rely upon Ms. May to a considerable extent. She gained considerable respect, prestige and affection in this contest and her influence will vastly exceed that of a lone MP.

Great responsibility devolves upon us the people. We must be prepared for change and we must – forgive me using this old saw again – stop making perfection the enemy of improvement.

To have change means just that – change, not just cosmetic alterations. As the debate ensues we must be open-minded and remember that almost any changes one can imagine would be better than what we have – or make it easier for further change to come.

Let me close by a couple of general remarks.

The Niqab issue was one of the most disgraceful in Canadian electoral history and demonstrated that even most bigots want to be fair, strange as that may sound.

The newspapers of Canada made horses’ asses of themselves and demonstrated, as if it were necessary, that their ethical base has been abandoned with their marriage to the fossil fuel industry as demonstrated here in The Common Sense Canadian beyond any question. The difficulty for Canadians now is where to get information and hopefully outlets like this will expand to fill that need.

We certainly will do our best. Although we are not a news gathering or dispensing outlet, we do hold firmly to the view that the “Establishment”, very much including governments, must always have their feet  held to the fire. We have done that and will continue to do so.

One of the great pleasures, in addition to seeing the back of Harper, is not having to listen to the unctious, anti-British Columbia, smug bullshit from finance minister Joe Oliver anymore.

Let me end with what I started with.

If Harper, in a back-handed way did indeed get young people involved, that’s a plus and, if permanent, a large one. Undoubtedly, the attractiveness of Justin Trudeau had much to do with it as he clearly understood that young people were sufficiently pissed off with the establishment to look for an alternative and he attracted them to the political remedy – something that’s been lacking in our political life for as long as I can remember.

It was a remarkable win for Trudeau – after a terrible start his comeback was stunning.

It is, clearly, a new era. It starts full of bright optimism.  Let’s hope it’s justified. At least we know that for those who believe in social and economic justice, the environment and fair play for all, it can’t possibly be worse.

If Canadians don’t see a commitment for major change from Monday’s winner, the nastiest and most divisive election in our history, by far, will be for naught.

Change is never easy and the results are never perfect. What one looks for is improvement and the ability to make future changes in case what you’ve done didn’t work out or further refinement is required. The fact is that through neglect and abuse of the system, our very institution of freedom and democracy, Parliament, has become the sword of autocracy.

What must change?

Caucus discipline has gone too far

Parliament, that is to say MPs, must be supreme again. When you think about it, nearly all our problems can be attributed to the unrestrained dictatorship of the Prime Minister. We don’t intend to elect a Supremo, but that’s what we in fact do.

We are hypnotized by what we’ve been taught and don’t question our beliefs. We tell ourselves that Joe or Linda will make a fine MP, whereas he or she will just be another fencepost with hair. In every respect, they will do and say precisely what they are told. They will deny it but it’s 100% true. If they get into cabinet it will be because the PM put them there and can fire them at will.

If backbenchers, they will obey implicitly for, as Napoleon said, “every foot-soldier carries a marshall’s baton in his knapsack”. Every MP, even a senior cabinet minister, knows that the PM cannot only fire them at will but throw them out of Caucus, the Party, and refuse to sign their nomination papers even if their constituency unanimously re-nominates them.

They all know this and need no reminding.

The theoretical ability of the government caucus to revolt and topple the tyrant exists but, for a host of reasons, it never happens..

There can surely be no doubt that this election is about change. The question is how.

Electoral Reform’s time has come

It requires leadership dedicated to change just as Pierre Trudeau demonstrated starting in 1976. It requires patience, but not too much, for reactionaries will delay so as to kill. It must have public participation but also a leader who has the guts to make a decision when the issues are all debated.

The change must be, in the first stage, to reform of the electoral system. The Senate can wait. I believe that some sort of proportional representation (PR) – perhaps mixed with first past the post – is essential. But there are many options to be debated, after which a political decision must be made. Perhaps options can first be put to referendum as in New Zealand. Most importantly, change must be seen to be coming – there must be progress at all times.

I’m not going to outline the unfairness and lack of democracy in “First Past The Post” here – amongst many others, I have written about it extensively. Suffice it to say that its supporters are mostly backroom boys who profit with unelected power when FPTP is in place.

I have suggested an additional way to give power to MPs which, for reasons I don’t understand, raises shrieks of horror – the use of the secret ballot, the safeguard voters have – in Parliament.

Whatever your prejudice in these matters, surely we can all agree that change must happen such that our MP represents our interests, not those of the PMO. That, clearly, is the principal message of this election.

And for the first time, this goal is within reach. Both Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair have pledged electoral reform should they form government. It is up to us to hold them to that promise after election day – especially if Mr. Trudeau should continue his late surge, all the way to a majority government. Once the keys to absolute power are in his hands, he will need ample reminding of his commitment to change the mechanism by which he achieved it.

A return to decency

But there is another critical matter. We must cast aside the meanness and nastiness of the past decade and return to the civility and decency for which we were once justly famous.

A year ago, no one had heard of a niqab, yet our prime minister has fought a campaign centred on an article of women’s clothing and the implication that somehow the safety of the nation depends upon it being banned or severely restricted.

We now have second-class Canadians – God only knows how many but in the hundreds of thousands – because, like me, they have dual citizenship. I’ve lived some 83 years as a 6th generation Canadian and, suddenly, by the stroke of a pen, I’m a second-class citizen because my Dad was born in New Zealand 110 years ago. Never mind the 6 generations, why should any Canadian, no matter how old their citizenship, suffer such a humiliation?

It has not been easy becoming a multi-cultural country – indeed, it’s not always easy being one – and some wish it had never happened. But it has happened and, to our shame, our children and grandchildren have adapted much better than their elders.

Considering where we once were – when Chinese and Japanese Canadians got the vote, I’d reached Law School, while it was 4 years after I had graduated before First Nations did. How unbelievable is that when you think on it?

There is no requirement legally or morally that we all like, let alone love, one another. But before Harper, we’d made considerable progress towards a national habit of civility and decency – we had problems, sore points, and issues but there was a national will to see them through.

Fanning the flames of prejudice

Not from everyone, as we have seen. There are, in all of us, prejudices from the past – some deeply buried, some not so deep. They can be fanned by unscrupulous politicians, as I remember so well as a kid when Barers’ Bakery in Kerrisdale was boycotted because people thought the Dutch owners were German; kids in my school went to concentration camps because they were Japanese, even though the RCMP Commissioner stated their elders posed no threat whatever. Such was the public fear that politicians civic, provincial and federal played on it to great political profit. The newspapers were no better.

After the war, there were huge changes. South of the border there were Jackie Robinson, our hero; the horrible Emmett Till case where a young black was brutally murdered for whistling at a white girl; books like Black Like Me and To Kill a Mockingbird; the little black kids being escorted to Little Rock Central High past jeering, spitting, white adults; James Meredith, a black veteran refused admission to Ole Miss, bringing troops and deadly violence; the Peace Marchers; Selma Alabama and “Bull” Connor and George Wallace; Rosa Parks and the bus boycott; the murders of Medgar Evers and the great Martin Luther King; the riots, the burning of black churches; the Supreme Court and the Brown v. Board of Education case; Lyndon Johnson and the 1965 Civil Rights Act – just to name a few ongoing developments that led to the end of Jim Crow and saw a national attitudinal change and a steady national move to racial justice, a move that still has a long way to go.

In Canada, we abolished racial discrimination in all matters legal, leading to a 1960 Bill of Rights under John Diefenbaker and the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms; slowly but steadily The Supreme Court defined the status and land rights of First Nations; attitudes towards Indians underwent a sea change; people across the land saw tolerance, civility and fairness to all become fashionable, if scarcely mandatory. But it kept getting better, especially as kids, mostly from interracial schools, grew up.

There was no going back … was there?

Perhaps not, but here was a prime minister and a major political party in support that saw a political future in playing upon latent prejudices, creating second-class citizens in order to fan fears he could then pledge to deal with. Many of my generation thought of Barer’s Bakery and  the Dutch family put out of business because it was said they were German, I thought of 10-year-old Michiko Katayama, the little girl that sat next to me just not being there anymore and I remembered how people talked about kikes, niggers and chinks. And how the politicians fanned the flames greatly assisted by the Press. But that was then and now is now.

Was it?

Surely, if nothing else, Stephen Harper and his lemmings have taught us that it if old fears can be revived and new fears manufactured, with some help from a compliant caucus and political party, that even now it can happen again.

God forbid we give him another opportunity to pursue his nightmare.

What a way to come to the end of a long life!

Thanks to Bill C-24, a breathtaking piece of legislation that the Conservative Government somehow snuck past most Canadians last year, I am now a second-class citizen, though born a sixth generation Canadian. Actually, that part doesn’t matter since the point is I was born an unqualified Canadian citizen.

What did I do to deserve this punishment?

My sin is that my father, in 1906, was born in Auckland, New Zealand. He came to Canada in 1913 as a child, grew up in the West End of Vancouver and married my Mom, a fifth-generation Canadian, in 1930. Then I made my fatal error. On December 31, 1931, in Grace Hospital, Vancouver, I was born.

How I became a second-class citizen

Fatal error because at that second my Dad passed his citizenship of birth on to me by operation of the law of New Zealand. No one asked my opinion.

Since then I have lived entirely in Canada, behaved as a Canadian, was educated in Canada, had four Canadian children, 8 Canadian grandchildren, a Canadian great grandchild, practiced law for 15 years as a Canadian, served as a cabinet minister in the British Columbia government and negotiated constitutional matters on its behalf, and then spent 25 years in broadcasting. I have received many honours. During that time I stayed out of jail and I think generally behaved in a manner befitting the description “good citizen”.

Now, the government of Canada has declared that I’m a second-class Canadian.

You may be one too…

I suspect there are thousands that don’t yet realize they are second-class Canadians. I say that because I remember many, many years ago I had an offer to work in the United States and discovered that if my mother claimed the American citizenship she was entitled to because of her father was an American, I could then have claimed citizenship through her. Now, the rule about Canadian second-class citizenship is not just that you may be a dual citizen but that you could be! (Just to show how silly this is, my Mom’s dad was born to English parents passing through Minneapolis to Vancouver, making him a dual citizen!)

In the system under which I was born, and which developed in my lifetime, whether one was born in Canada or not, if they were citizens, unless that citizenship was obtained by fraud, it get could not be revoked. Even then if there was fraud, it took a federal judge to make the decision after a full court hearing, whereas now a decision will be made by a single citizenship officer and there will be no opportunity for a live hearing or an appeal.

It’s said I have nothing to worry about unless I plan to be a terrorist. Why, then, you ask, would an old fart like me be worried about this?

I have every reason to believe that given an opportunity I will qualify quite nicely. Let me tell you how.

One man’s environmentalist is Harper’s terrorist

There is a proposed LNG plant for Squamish and if that proceeds I will join the thousands of my fellow citizens in protest. It is a very short move from there to being branded a terrorist by the Harper government on the basis that Woodfibre LNG, owned by a crook, is a “national undertaking” and that it’s terrorism to obstruct it.

Could that happen in Canada?

Do I really have to ask that question given of the behaviour of the Harper government, especially in the last couple of years? Now, I must admit I don’t plan to wear a veil or convert to Islam or other such “un-Canadian” acts.

One of my problems – and I candidly admit it – is that I am so angry I have trouble keeping my emotions under control.

What did I do to deserve this? How come because my father was born in a country that automatically conferred its citizenship on his children, I become subject to special rules in the country in which I was born and have spent my entire life? By the same token, why should anybody who only took their citizenship yesterday be subjected to this humiliation?    

Citizenship is a right…or it’s supposed to be                                                 

During my lifetime, citizenship has expanded to the point it has become a right, not a privilege as the government says, and a right which, once earned, is permanent.

At one time, one became a citizen just by being a British subject. But that was rightfully changed, then citizenship was finally granted to people who couldn’t hitherto get it because of their skin colour such as Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians and so on. Gadfrey, Daniel! We even “granted” citizenship to First Nations who had been here for millennia. Come to think on that, First Nations are members of two nations – are they dual citizens too? Where will their “terrorists” be deported to? Have these Harper geniuses thought of this?

We eliminated the distinctions between Canadians of recent immigration and those born here. We went all way from a very limited citizenship to an all-inclusive one where we all accepted one another as Canadians no matter where we came from or when.

We accepted people of whatever race, colour or creed without question. At least that was the theory.

Now, for God’s sake, we find that if a woman wears a certain piece of clothing, she is assumed to be about to murder us in our sleep or at least she is supporting people bent up on that!

No longer are our fellow citizens presumed to be peaceful and loyal but quite the opposite if they happen to be, for example, Muslims. If they are Muslims that wear garb consistent with that religion, then, of course, it is almost certain they’re out to get us.

What the hell is happening to Canada?

In my lifetime I have seen us go from a highly restrictive country to one which gradually changed its approach to newcomers to the point where we were all Canadians together, all working to eliminate the discrimination that too often comes with difference.

I look at class pictures of my 8 grandchildren as they’ve grown up and have a feeling of pride seeing the different faces of obvious different origins. I talk to my grandchildren about tolerance and decency and I’m proud of the approach they take.

I have never said nor would I that we must all love one another. Nor am I any better than anyone else – I must fight my own Devils inculcated in me from childhood. But I do fight them and most people I know fight them. So, I daresay, do most of you.

What the hell was the matter with this result? Where is this enormous danger that requires us to turn on Canadians of a different faith than our own and assume they’re about to do the country harm?

I apologize for being so passionate on this issue but after all this time and having reached this stage of life I simply cannot understand what has happened to my citizenship, my country, and so many of my fellow citizens who support people who would destroy the goodwill so carefully and so painstakingly built up over all the years I’ve been alive.

Why am I a second class Canadian?

Will someone please answer that?