Even a few days ago, who woulda thunk it? Justin Trudeau and his red tide sweep the nation to a majority government, washing Steven Harper out to sea. For many progressive voters, it was too decisive – if only Mulcair hung in there a little more and we faced instead a Liberal-led minority government…But if ending the Harper era was the main objective of this “change” election, then beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.

So here we are. And if Tony Blair is any kind of a model for what happens next, then big, bold promises for things like electoral reform have a way of falling by the wayside with a strong majority government. As my colleague Rafe warned in these pages a few days ago, “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.”

Mr. Trudeau made some impressive promises, indeed, on his path to victory. And it would be a shame if we Canadians who gave him this mandate for change, now let him off the hook. So herewith a list (in no particular order) of the promises we really need kept – lest we too forget:

1. Electoral Reform

This is the grand daddy of them all. Once again, we are reminded of the manifest unfairness of our first past the post system, as a leader who won under 40% of the vote is left with 100% of the power. Mr. Trudeau – along with Tom Mulcair – pledged to change this and we need to hold him to it. We may never get such a good opportunity as this again if we fail to seize it.

2. Cancel Bill C-51

As my friend and anti-C-51 crusader Steve Anderson corrected me, Mr. Trudeau did not actually promise to cancel Bill C-51 after he got into power (a presumptuous declaration that now seems, if conceited, at least correct). He did however say he would “amend” it or repeal parts of it. So he will need to be held to that – with a little extra prompting to go further and kill the darned thing. The issue – which proved a major self-inflicted wound for Trudeau early on in the campaign – has hardly gone away. If anything, as the chorus of prominent voices and persistent citizen movement around the issue demonstrate, it is only growing. Killing it would be good politics and a bone to throw to the above-mentioned progressive voters who backed Mulcair.

3. Follow through on First Nations commitments

Mr. Trudeau called attention to Canada’s disgraceful inequity of water quality, pledging to end all boil water advisories in First Nations communities within five years. This is no small feat but it must be done. He has also joined the NDP and the UN in calling for a national Inquiry into murdered and missing Aboriginal women – something he insisted he will do “immediately”. Finally, Trudeau has earmarked half a billion dollars a year towards First Nations education.

Mr. Harper’s shameful evasions and non-answers when questioned about the lack of clean drinking water on reserves and murdered and missing women marked a low point on the campaign trail – even for him. Let’s hope Mr. Trudeau’s actions speak as loud as his words on this file.

4. Invest in public transit

Mr. Trudeau differentiated himself from both his opponents with a ballsy commitment to deficit-fund much-needed infrastructure in this country, including public transit – to the tune of “$20 Billion or more” over the next decade. This is a tangible way to tackle our climate challenges, make our economy more efficient and offer affordable transportation choices to lower-income Canadians. And wouldn’t it be refreshing if this kind of federal support could alleviate the transit policy gridlock that continues to frustrate provinces like British Columbia.

5. End fossil fuel subsidies, invest in clean tech

Mr. Trudeau has vowed to uphold a G20 pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies and committed $200 million and year for “strategies that support innovation and clean technologies in the forestry, energy and agricultural sectors”. He will earmark another $100 million in support for clean tech companies. That’s not nearly enough – paling in comparison to other industrial nations like America, China, Germany and Brazil – as we have often demonstrated in these pages. Which is why we need to push our new PM not only to keep this commitment, but to expand on it. But compared with Mr. Harper, who absolutely gutted our innovation funding, Mr. Trudeau’s attitude is a welcome change.

6. Don’t forget the “middle class”

Whatever the “middle class” is, Mr. Trudeau should keep his promises to recalibrate our tax structure more in favour of regular Canadians and less in favour of corporations and the wealthy. These reforms don’t go far enough, but following through with them would be a good start.

7. Work with the provinces on health care

Mr. Trudeau has promised a new health accord with the provinces – something which Mr. Harper, in his characteristically antagonistic and aloof manner, let expire and linger in that fashion for over a year and a half. Health care was strangely absent from this campaign, relative to its importance to Canadians. But Trudeau’s commitment to thaw relations with the provinces and invest in programs like home care is sensible and much-needed.

8. Welcome more Syrian refugees

Mr. Trudeau committed to boosting the number of Syrian refugees welcomed by Canada to 25,000 by the end of this year, and possibly more. Time is ticking and the situation only worsening by the day, so he had better get down to it.

9. Leave the Niqab – and divisive politics – alone

I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping this is the last we hear of niqabs. Mr. Trudeau took the right stance on this divisive issue – even though it could have cost him politically (and did very much cost his “change” rival, Mulcair – who said politics was fair?). Good for him and good for Canada that the Lizard of Oz failed this time around. Let’s hope, as my colleague Rafe Mair has discussed in these pages, that with Mr. Trudeau comes a return to decency and civility in our politics and society.

10. What the heck – legalize pot

This one is number 10 for a reason, but while he’s at it, keeping the above promises, Mr. Trudeau might as well get on with it and legalize marijuana. It’s high time (forgive me) Canada got with the program – four former attorneys general in BC are backing legalization because of the issue with organized crime and the underground drug trade, while a number of US states have already taken the leap. With Harper gone, it would be nice to leave behind his irrational crime-and-punishment agenda and the pot file is as good a place as any to start.

A few promises he didn’t make but should

Mr. Trudeau would show wisdom and leadership by reinstating the many environmental protections gutted by his predecessor through a series of horrendous Omnibus Budget Bills – such as the habitat protections in the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and our environmental assessment processes. While he’s at it, he should unmuzzle our government scientists and reinstate their funding for important initiatives like air and water quality monitoring, climate research, and clean tech innovation.

Mr. Trudeau did not propose a price of his own on carbon, leaving it instead to the provinces to set their own. It’s nice that he at least acknowledges the importance of the subject – dedicating some rhetoric to it on the campaign trail – but he would do well to follow the NDP’s lead towards a national cap-and-trade system or at least an expanded role for the federal government in this issue.

He would also do well to rethink his devotion to trade deals like the TPP (it’s not too late to halt Canada’s involvement by not ratifying it in the House), and the European CETA deal.

As for pipelines, let’s face, none them are a good idea in this climate – literally and figuratively. Exporting raw bitumen scarcely benefits the Canadian economy – certainly nothing like we’ve been told by the oil lobby. And with these prices, there’s no market for it anyway. Moreover, in an era of global warming (something that has been excluded from the National Energy Board’s reviews of projects like Northern Gateway and the TransMountain Pipeline), it’s grossly irresponsible for Canada to continue down this path. So double down on your clean tech investments, Justin, and put the pipelines on the shelf.

Finally, we British Columbians are very concerned with the impacts of the proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. While this is BC Premier Christy Clark’s baby, the program has benefitted from federal tax credits (these should be reversed, in keeping with Trudeau’s promise to end fossil fuel subsidies), massive export licences from the NEB, and a peculiar double-standard on tanker safety, whereby the Harper government banned tankers on the East Cost but blessed them here. Not even the NDP openly criticized the program during the federal campaign and, while Howe Sounders concerned about the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant will be glad to see the back of Conservative MP and LNG cheerleader John Weston, it would be nice to see his Liberal replacement, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, step up on the LNG file. And Mr. Trudeau would do well to distance himself from this fool’s errand of Premier Clark.

Of course, none of the above will happen unless the public now holds Mr. Trudeau to his promises and pushes him to go even further. Stephen Harper is gone. Now the real work begins.

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?