Worth the Fee to Read It

The blogosphere is an interesting space from a political point of view, for it is highly unlikely that anyone would write about matters political who didn’t have some internal drive or passion toward it. What this means is that we are far more likely to find partisans online — both as writers and as readers/commenters — than we are in the broader public.

Writers, of course, write because they want to be read. So they look to join blogrolls and communities. These help bring new readers their way. But they often come with a price: one of converging upon the general view of that community. Add a few overt partisans to that mix, and slowly that community will become almost a reflexive mouthpiece for one party or another.

For those with active or independent minds, such communities can seem a straight-jacket.

Moreover, no community exists in isolation. The community itself will have a site, and feeds, which must be managed. Perhaps this effort is donated as a labour of love, but, more likely, it must be funded, by donations or by advertising. The net effect is that the community has a vested interest in reinforcing itself around its sources of income. How expulsions from the community can then occur isn’t hard to see.

I don’t — and have never — belonged to such a community. The reason for this is that I believe, deeply, that we should decide each issue on its merits. This can lead us into conflict with those who subscribe to the community’s position, “right or wrong”.

As an example of this, take the recent issue of Dan McTeague, MP, and his RESP tax deduction private member’s bill. Perhaps this is a worthy measure (I don’t happen to think so; I prefer simpler tax systems, and this is yet another complexity) but fundamentally my opposition to it stems from the bill’s disregard of Parliamentary tradition. Tradition matters to me: while it does change, it should change by express deliberation and consideration of what is being given up, not backed into in a fit of partisan excitement. I believe the Speaker erred in allowing this bill to proceed: while he might have been able to find no explicit restriction upon which to hang a denial of a bill like this which is all about restriction of revenue planned for in the budget, our tradition is that it is the budget which is voted up or down, and that such a measure should have been an amendment to the budget itself.

Does this then make me a Government supporter (as in last Thursday’s Ways & Means vote, which included an explicit repeal of the previously-passed RESP provision)? Obviously, yes, but as someone who shared an issue, not someone even who is necessarily doing it for the same reasons (the Government’s stated reasoning is that this would threaten the stability of the budget to remain out of deficit, which is also a truth, but only if no move is made to accommodate the new provision as a choice; the Government did not choose to challenge the affront to Parliamentary tradition, as it ought to have done).

Men and women of good will and engaged, active mind can disagree with one another without any sound and fury at all. My fellow writer — and one whom I respect deeply — Werner Patels, the author of Ideas and Issues, supported the RESP provision. Promoting post-secondary education and tax relief are also things I support; we disagree as to the methods to accomplish these (to some extent), and we obviously disagree about the value of hewing to Parliamentary tradition and the Canadian methods of responsible government. But we can share these, even commenting on each other’s writing, and the voice is never raised.

Compare that to the partisan! Both the Liblogs (the self-identified Liberal Party supporters) and the Blogging Tories (the self-identified Conservative Party supporters) wrote reams on this whole tale — opposed to each other, naturally — and both echoing the sound and fury occurring in the House. Here there was no cross-engagement, just a closed world encountering another closed world.

Most Canadians, as well, although they might vote for the same party again and again, do not identify themselves with one enough to actually sign up and become a member of a riding association, or be a regular financial supporter. (I have done the second, but for three different parties at various times Federally, and for three different parties Provincially, sometimes for years at a time.) One can share a great deal with a party and its policies — motivations might differ, but the direction is roughly aligned — and thus feel that supplying them with either the mother’s milk of labour or of cash makes sense. Parties, too, do not operate for free: in the words of the old Spanish proverb, “take what you want, and pay for it”.

Still, those of you who have followed my writings here and elsewhere know well that I prize the independent candidate, the person who will stand against both their riding and their party when needed. In other words, I value independent thinking and a willingness to trust that I, the citizen, will engage when we differ rather than simply shout you down unthinkingly, and try to encourage it. This is the legacy of Chuck Cadman’s last term as an Independent MP representing Surrey North; the thought of electing more such is why I support STV as a voting mechanism (there are times to consider changing traditional practice, and this is one of them, as I have argued earlier this month.

In the recent past it has been necessary to support the new Conservative Party. Canada needs more than one party of government. Much of my writing in the past month has criticized the Liberal Party, but not with the intent to say “Conservatives right; Liberals wrong”: it is because it is clear to me that the tearing apart of the old Progressive Conservative coalition during the second Mulroney Government has also deeply crippled and hollowed-out the Liberal Party, to the point where it is adrift. (In other words, the Chrétien years represented a period in which they didn’t need to be competitive and the inter-necine warfare that replaced external competition broke that party, too.) I have chosen to write about the Liberals rather than promote a new alternative in large measure because Canadians are deeply small-c conservative when it comes to parties: refreshing a known name gives that party a leg up, at least for a few decades.

But I have also — via the comments on my piece yesterday about how Toryism (which is not at all the core of the Conservative Party) and Greenism (if I can be permitted this abysmal neologism) are a natural pairing with many congruences over issues — been made to realise (thanks to my readers) that it is time for me to look more closely at whether I ought to be stepping forward more clearly for new alternatives in the Canadian political landscape, and broadening my public support where helpful. This may lead me to eschew the money side of politics for a while — the NDP’s insistence that one is simultaneously a member of both the Federal and Provincial parties simultaneously simply by being a donor drove me from continued support, for instance (although we needed and continue to need an ability to alternate parties in BC — and here the NDP is the Opposition — I ultimately could not stand with Layton’s Federal NDP), and I simply will not, any longer, give blanket support to any party that ties me down in this way. But the pen (or the pixels) still await.

I had said, earlier, that I might not vote in tomorrow’s by-election here in Vancouver-Quadra. On that score I have changed my mind. I shall vote. I believe that at this juncture I have managed to find enough commonality on issues to feel I am voting “for” rather than “against”. To that end, I shall, tomorrow, cast my ballot for Dan Grice, and hope that it is enough to push him past the other candidates to take his place on March 31 in the House, as the Green Party’s Deborah Grey.

Periodically, there comes a point where the Augean Stables of Canadian politics need a good cleaning. We have been there for a long time now. The Bloc and Reform were false starts. May this one turn out to be better.

Many, many commentators lump the Green Party in as part of the Canadian “Left”. They — and the NDP — consider the Greens to be a competitor of the NDP, appealing to the same voters. The left-hand side of the Liberal Party, in turn, worries about both of these other parties siphoning off votes. There have been calls to “unite the left” (just as, a few years ago, there were repeated calls to “unite the right”). But … wait. Is Green policy necessarily leftist?

There’s no question but that there are individual Greens who are clearly on the left-hand side of the Canadian spectrum, including (judging by her many public statements), the current leader, Elizabeth May. But the previous Green leader, Jim Harris, wasn’t: he had previously been a Progressive Conservative. Much of the stated policy platform of the Green party reflects a centre-right bent.

Now, the Green platform also contains a commitment to work within the global Green framework. In other words, here is a party with extra-Canadian links. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the “Kyoto Chant” will be a prominent part of Green politics. Kyoto “the treaty” is — in the Canadian context — a convenient symbol. But that symbol can work two ways: as a symbol that some problems require international co-operation to make action effective there’s nothing wrong with it. After all, preserving fish stocks and fisheries requires the same. How many Canadians, for instance, know that lessened water supplies in the Western United States has the US thinking of banning — entirely — the salmon fishery in the Western states (excepting Alaska)? Should Canada be thinking along the same lines with the BC fishery: intervening at the tenth hour (before the stocks completely collapse) rather than at the eleventh hour (as with the Newfoundland cod fishery)? In other words, a gaze that goes beyond one’s own borders and some international thinking isn’t necessarily amiss — or wrong.

But why would I say the most natural pairing are those of us who tend toward the “blue” end of the spectrum and those of “green” inclinations?

Part of this is my Toryism. I did not hold with Reform, am not a social conservative, nor am I a neoconservative (all three of these are really neo-liberals of the right). But indigenous Canadian Tories start from the notion that the reason for the state is a bond between past and future generations: to transmit, preserve and protect traditions, and to be good stewards of the country and its bounty so that future generations will prosper. How, may I ask, is that different from such Green notions as sustainability, a clean environment, transforming the economy to waste less, etc.? Aren’t these all acts of stewardship for the future? What about Green notions of including all of Canada’s communities in Canadian life? Isn’t that the preservation of tradition coupled with our tradition of opportunity?

Certainly the Greens stand for things we Tories might not want to stand for. They stand for a more pacifist and less activist approach to world affairs; we value our international commitments, which occasionally require us to fight, perhaps for years, in defence of Western values that are at the core of Canadian tradition going back before Samuel de Champlain ever started building moats and battlements on a cliff-top and beside a river in Québec. Green ideas pay less attention than perhaps Tories would to the Confederal nature of Canada and the essential role of its provinces. But these are points on which to agree to disagree. Much of what we do believe in, however, overlaps greatly — once we get past the rhetoric.

It is the rhetoric that keeps us apart. When the Harper Government introduced its Clean Air Act, for instance, the “Kyoto Chant” shouted it down. True, no Green MPs were involved in this, there being none in the House. But it was certainly heard from outside. Yet Greens stand for cleaning up the environment, requiring both businesses and consumers to stop treating our air, land and water as a free dumping ground, and for developing businesses that turn today’s waste into tomorrow’s goods, creating exports of green technology and good sustainable jobs for Canadians. Simply setting the mantra of “Kyoto or nothing” aside would have shown this remarkable degree of overlap — a degree of overlap not shared by the Opposition MPs (Liberal, NDP or Bloc) all of whom were more concerned with “keeping lumber communities going” or “preserving smokestack jobs” or “handouts for industry” (as well as doing the “Kyoto shuffle”, conga-line fashion, up and down the well of the House) and therefore opposed to the attempt to provide some stewardship for the environment and our children’s children’s future by the Government on multiple counts, not just one.

Unfortunately, such blindness affects the Conservative Party of Canada no less than it does the Green Party of Canada under its current leader, Ms. May, who lets her leftist leanings bind her to the media/pundit meme of being on the left, competing with the Liberals against any Conservative, and engaged, with the Liberals, in replacing the NDP. Meanwhile, the neoliberal elements in the CPC try to deny the Tory ideas of fidelity to the past coupled with stewardship for the future and argue against doing anything on the file, including seeking common cause with anyone.

I look at the Green candidate in Vancouver-Quadra (who, it has been suggested, may actually be polling second heading into Monday’s tilt at the ballot box — although frankly any single riding poll should be taken with a heavy grain of salt). Ms. May didn’t want Dan Grice to be the candidate. He won the nomination against her opposition. He has approached his attempt to win election as a Green MP by stressing areas of common cause and concern, avoiding internecine war “on the left” and emphasising a fair number of Tory values — all within careful fidelity to the platform of his party. He is, in other words, living what I’m talking about. (The local Conservative candidate, Deborah Meredith, on the other hand, equally opposed by the Prime Minister as the nominee [and not helped in any way — Harper even avoiding visiting the riding while in Vancouver during this campaign] nevertheless is toeing the party line, slapping “anti-crime” stickers on her signs. One more neoliberal seeking office. It is to weep.)

The Conservative Party of Canada’s principles are not at all at odds with Green Party principles. The platforms of both point out numerous tensions — but on both sides an appeal to principles would show the high degree of common cause and overlap that is already there, waiting to be put to work. For this is the future of politics: not the stale debate of warmed over leftist/rightist thinking but those who would compel action into pathways that their betters think up — the neo-Marxist musings of Liberal, NDP and Bloc policy — and those who engage in that inter-generational bond and create openings for a free and industrious people to work within limits that preserve, protect and defend the best of Canada for its future citizens for generations to come.

I know where I stand. I welcome any “Green Tory” candidate who knocks on my door, regardless of their party affiliation. I’d like them, of course, to carry a blue sign — Canada needs its deep roots in the Conservative tradition, too. But I don’t do neoliberals and social conservatives. If I need a Green to get a Green Tory, so be it.