We Have Ourselves to Blame for Our Corrupt Government

As the title implies, we only have ourselves to blame for our current ultra-corrupt majority government. They have stolen our government and our democracy right out from under our very noses. The Robo-call scandal is only the latest in a long line of scams, misdeeds, frauds and outright illegal and anti-democratic behaviour. Consider the following:

Stevie, the Evangelical Reformist

-The Reform Party of Canada was formed by the Evangelical Preston Manning in 1987 (yes THE Preston Manning of the Manning Centre who just recently had the reporter who broke the Robo-call story turfed out of his soiree). Another Evangelical, "Steve" Harper joined this bizarre collection of extremists in 1988 and became it's Chief Policy Officer. But these Western-Centric radicals  could gain no credibility east of Manitoba and the Reform Party was rife with unprofessional, partisan and unethical behaviour. They were too far out into right field, even for Blue Tories and were dismissed out of hand by the majority of the country.

- The Reform Party re-branded it self as the Alliance party and was led temporarily by a Jet-Skiing Evangelical, Stockwell Day,  who believes the earth is only 5,000 years old and that men walked with dinosaurs. But they were still a half-assed bunch of extremists that no one took seriously.

"Et Tu Peter"?

- In 2003, Peter MacKay became the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada based on the promise he would NEVER negotiate an amalgamation deal with The Reform/ Alliance bunch. A promise he promptly broke once elected leader. Whether he conspired with "Steve" Harper before hand we might never know. But we do know that MacKay went  from being the leader of a toothless non-party at the time, to a position of power and influence in the Harper Government, complete with models hanging off his arm and a brief "tryst" with the lovely  automobile heiress, Belinda Stronach.  And we watched this all happen.

-The treachery that allowed the merger of the Reform/Alliance party and the near-dead Progressive Conservative Party gave Harper and his Reform cronies control of the "Conservative" moniker which  they quickly adopted, dropping the "Progressive" label in the process, which suited their Ultra-right wing Neo-Conservative purposes. This gave the Reform Party the instant credibility they had long sought even though they were nothing more than carnivorous,  ideological wolves in Conservative apparel. And we watched and the main-stream media blithely and erroneously referred to this new party as "Tories" thus giving them even more undeserved credence.

- We watched as this new party, riding on the momentum of the Liberal's own in-house scandal (aided greatly by the RCMP who chose to make public, damning accusations about the Liberals  at the height of the 2006 campaign) managed to grasp a minority government for the first time.

- We watched as the "Reform/Conservatives" Prorogued Parliament not once, but twice. First to avoid the will of the people (which would have seen a majority coalition  govern us, at least temporarily) and again to avoid having to account for the Afghan detainee scandal (which they have never accounted for, despite the prospect of MacKay and Harper being seen as potential war criminals)

15 year old Omar Khadr, wounded by American soldiers

- We watched as Harper spent over three million dollars of tax payers money on legal fees to deny Omar Khadr his constitutional and international rights as a child soldier and keep him penned up in Guantanamo Bay .The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Harper Government was denying the boy his Charter Rights but stopped short of ordering them to repatriate him. Khadr was 15 when he was shot by American soldiers. He is now 23 years old and continues to be held on what can best be described as circumstantial evidence while the Harper Government continues to thumb it's nose at the Supreme Court.

- We watched as the Reform/Conservative back room boys, using American-style smear tactics, systematically destroyed the political career of one of the few remaining good men in Ottawa, Stephan Dion.

-We watched as Stephen Harper and his then director of communications, Kory Teneycke  secretly met with the heads of the ultra right-wing Fox News in the states. We subsequently .watched as the Prime Ministers Office pressured the CRTC to grant a bid led by Teneycke to licence  Sun TV News. We watched as Teneycke resigned over tampering with an Avvaz petition to stop the licensing of Sun TV news (alias Fox News North). We watched as Teneycke was quietly rehired. We watched Sun TV news become a reality.

- We watched as Kory Teneycke told delegates at a Manning Centre Conference (remember Preston the Evangelical?) that he would love to have the names of Left-leaning College professors and teachers so he could "make them famous" (meaning he would love to start a smear campaign against them and otherwise, silence them)

- We watched as the Reform/Conservatives, who campaigned with promises of more transparency in Government became the most closed and secretive Government in our history.

- We watched as Stephen Harper promised Senate Reform, then proceeded to stack the Senate with partisan cronies, mostly defeated Conservative candidates, so that no matter which bills were passed by Parliament, they would either be passed or defeated at the whim of the hyper-partisan Reform/Conservative Senate . Harper has appointed more partisan Senators than any other Prime Minister in our history.

- We watched as Dmitri Soudas, another Harper Director of Communication, put pressure on the Montreal Port Authority to hire as it's new Board President, a man sympathetic to the Reform/Conservative cause.

- We watched as the Government of Harper  systematically fired, silenced and otherwise ruined the careers of any pubic service whistle blower who spoke out against  the Reform/Conservative agenda.

- We watched as The Government of Harper sought to invest BILLIONS of dollars in a new fighter Aircraft, who's need is questionable, with out first tendering a contract or asking for proposals, all at the behest of our neighbors to the south.

- We watched as Stephen Harper ruled his party with an iron "my way or the highway" fist. We watched him silence his own party members. We watched as he forbade candidates from participating in  open campaign debates, we watched as he kicked people out of his campaign rallies on the basis of the content of their Facebook  accounts (who did these internet searches was never revealed) and we then watched as he stacked these rallies with rabid partisans who shouted down legitimate questions from the media. We watched as Harper limited questioning of any kind from the media at his campaign rallies.

- We are still watching Harper's attempts at dismantlement the CBC as he views them as being "Anti-Government". And we are still watching to see what he intends to do with the "war-chest" he is amassing in order to combat the main stream media, ALL of whom he feels, are too left leaning.

-  We watched as the Harper Government (as the Government of Canada is now officially called) was found guilty of Contempt of Parliament. No other government in the history of parliamentary democracy has ever been guilty of such an infraction. Neither Harper nor any of his Reform/Conservative cronies have ever been held accountable for this.

-We watched, silently dumbfounded, when it was revealed that the Reform/Conservatives had produced a 200 page manual on how to stone-wall Parliamentary committees in which the opposition held a majority of members, thus suppressing and otherwise, impeding the democratic process once again.

- We watched as the Government of Harper was found guilty of election fraud around the "in and out" scandal that occurred in the 2006 election. We watched as the party was given a slap on the wrist, a $52,000 fine. And we watched as the Harper-led Reform/Conservatives spun this guilty finding into a "victory"!

- We continue to watch as the Government of Harper refuses to answer or admit to any of it's indiscretions. Instead, it denies, deflects, minimizes or instead, sets out to attack and defame it's opponents rather than proving them wrong or taking responsibility for it's actions. The standard operating procedure is for them to tell the same lie so often that the electorate will come to accept it as truth eg:" Coalition governments are un-democratic".

And the above list of Reform/Conservative indiscretions is far from complete. We have watched for six long years as the Government of Harper has systematically engaged in unethical, undemocratic behaviour and blown us way off course using rhetoric and fear tactics. They have lied, cheated and  stolen from the Canadian people. They have ruined careers and lives and eroded the rights of Canadian citizens. And we have given this all, passing notice and shaken our heads at the deteriorating state of our democracy and done nothing but given them cart-blanch to rule as they see fit.  We have accepted it as the "new normal" and moved on with our lives- until now that the Robo-call scandal has come to light. We are finally waking up. We are finally beginning to take action. We are finally realizing that our very democracy is in grave peril. And we have no one but ourselves to blame as we watched passively, this dreadful progression and rise to absolute power of an idealistic, power-hungry mad-man. We should have seen this coming. Any political party that is born of treachery and deceit is destined to govern in the same manner.

Election Fraud Renders Election 41 "Null and Void"

Election 41 in May of 2011 was called because the minority "Government of Harper" was found to be in Contempt of Parliament due to lying  and being misleading to the  House of Commons (which is in effect, lying and being misleading to all Canadian People as these are OUR representatives). The  Opposition parties, in a rare show of solidarity, then decided they had lost confidence in the Harper Collective. Big surprise. The problem is, The dissolution of Parliament ended the whole affair right then and there. There was no follow up. No one was held accountable, no one went to jail or even had to resign. The question was asked and went unanswered, as to whether or not Stephen Harper was even eligible to run in a federal election having been found guilty of a federal offence. To make matters worse, the culprit at the heart of the whole affair, Bev Oda, is STILL a sitting member of the House of Commons which is an affront to Canadian people everywhere.

Would YOU trust this woman?

It has been discovered that The Government of Harper has prepared a 200 page manual on how to obstruct the business of Parliament and Parliamentary committees in the event that things might be going against the Reform-a-Con agenda.

Subsequent to the last election, the Government of Harper has plead guilty to Election fraud around the miss-allocation of funds in the 2006 election (the In and Out Scandal). Again, no one has gone to jail and nothing more than a $50,000 fine has been levied against the Conservative Party. An insultingly paltry sum.

 For a more in-depth catalog of Conservative fraudulent, obstructionist  and unethical tactics, see this article by Lawrence Martin here.

It is well known that the Harper and his band of merry pranksters (known as the Conservative Party of Canada) targeted a hand full of riding's for "heavy campaigning"  in the last election. Perhaps as few as 14, mostly in vote-rich Ontario. These were the riding's that the Cons viewed as potentially "winnable" and the possession of which would  push the Conservatives, who have never enjoyed better than  between 30% and 40% of the popular vote throughout it's entire time in power, into majority territory for the first time ever. One has to wonder how many of the supposedly 45 riding's (now up to 200) effected by the Robocall affair correspond to the riding's specifically targeted by the Conservatives for "saturation campaigning" in Election 41.

So given the track record of this fraudulent bunch of thugs who insist on referring to themselves as a "political party" (they give all legitimate political parties everywhere a bad name) and their lengthy history of obstruction of democracy and outright deceitful and illegal behaviour, the May 2011 election should be considered Null and Void by the Governor General if even ONE riding is found to have been in anyway effected by the Robocall affair. Election fraud is serious business, perhaps the most undemocratic in a very long history of undemocratic behaviour by this so called Conservative Party (they are really the old Reform Party of Canada in disguise). I seriously doubt that even our surly Republican neighbors to the South would stoop to such behaviour. This is the kind of behaviour one would expect from some sunny Banana Republic  or perhaps, an emerging Eastern Nation. It is the behaviour of a petty dictatorship trying to pass itself off as a legitimate democracy. It is totally and completely unacceptable for a Western Democratic nation to be engaged in any kind of fraudulent electoral activity. It is totally and completely unacceptable for Canada. It is time for the slaps on the wrist to end. It is time for the sacrifice of petty party staffers to end. It is time for full accountability from this organization that poses as a political party. It's time someone went to jail. And it's time Election 41 be declared no contest due to the length and depth of the Conservative's willingness to engage in illegal and obstructive behaviour. It's time for Stephen Harper to finally be held to account for his cadre of thieves and confidence men.

A Message to "Occupy Canada". Step One, Bring Down the Government of Harper

I am so heartened by the world wide spread of the "Occupy" movement. All over the globe, young people, old people, poor people, disenfranchised people, people who have just plain been ripped off by the Corporatists of the world, people who represent the "99%", are speaking out and trying their level best to reclaim our collective democracies and societies from the manipulative, destructive, self interests of the "1%" and their political shills. People from all walks of life are not only  saying: "we're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it any more", but are also saying: "we're on to you and we refuse to keep drinking your Kool-Aid".

All around the world, people are waking up, one by one. They are beginning to realize that "Capitalism", the word, the concept, the institution, that used to be synonymous with Democracy, freedom and equality, is, as it is currently being practiced, a lie. It is purely survival of the fittest wallet. And under the Corporatist doctrine, the rest of us, the 99%, what we think and feel,  don't matter.

Capitalism in practice, is merely a modernized form of feudalism that, through the skillful use of smoke, mirrors and clever marketing, allows the Proletariat, the 99% to mistakenly believe that our society is fair, equitable and democratic. It isn't. Our lives are not our own.  We are being thoroughly controlled by the Corporatist Barons. And we have been thoroughly sedated through the use of Hollywood and Sunday Football. As long as we have our movies, our reality TV, our beer and our big screen TVs for the big Sunday game, we believe that life is good and we are comfortable and happy. But it is an illusion we have been sold through the generations. And the Corporatist Barons and their political shills wrap themselves up in the flags of nationalism and have us believing that anything other than Capitalism is an evil enemy to be eradicated. And they inject us with lethal doses of fear and intolerance so that we believe we need protection from the Godless horde of undemocratic Non-Capitalists. It is a continuation of the "Red Scare", only with out the presence of the Soviet Union.

But the people are finally waking up  to the lies and the illusions. And the world wide "People's Movement" has finally come to sleepy, dreary, low-key Canada. It is a slow-growing, grass-roots thing. But it is here and it is beginning to take hold. Canadians, like their brothers and sisters all over the world are beginning to say "we want our country, our society and our freedom back". And it is a wonderful thing.

I had the opportunity to attend an Occupy Toronto General Assembly in one of the early days of the occupation. It was a beautiful if not somewhat painful thing to behold as it was grass-roots democracy in action. But each and every person in attendance had a right to speak, to have their say and each person's opinion, no matter how divergent from the popular one, was treated with respect. And things, regardless of the snails pace, got done. A Micro-society was being born before my very eyes and I was very much aware that I was but a tourist, that the Occupiers were the real deal, the revolutionaries, the heroes.

I was also painfully aware though, that aside from a strict adherence to the concepts of non-violence and mutual respect, there was an absence of consensus around the central focus and demands of the Occupiers. There are, it seems, so many societal ills that can rightfully be attributed to the "1%". And there are so many different people of so many different political stripes and belief systems who are coming together to reclaim our democracy and our equality. But I am eternally confident that consensus can and will eventually be reached. 

If I may be so bold however, this humble tourist would like to make a suggestion about where the movement might best place it's focus, at least in the first phase of the revolution (and the humble tourist imagines the human microphone passing his words to the assembled masses). I would suggest looking to the Iceland model for direction. The Iceland model has, thus far, contained three phases. The first phase involved firing it's ineffective and Corporate friendly government and replacing it with one by the people, of the people and for the people. The second phase involved telling the European Banks to "go stuff" their debt and then bringing the Icelandic Corporatists to justice. The third phase involved the People of Iceland rewriting their constitution to make it better reflect the will of the people and not the needs of the Corporatist Barons.

So I might suggest to the Revolutionaries of St. James Park and every other occupied park in Canada, that the place to start the movement is with the firing of the Government of Harper.  A Government of Harper, by Harper and for Harper. Every day that goes by during the reign of his  Government, democracy becomes less and less of a reality in this country. It becomes more and more about the will of Stephen Harper as he recreates Canada and Canadian society in his own twisted image.

It might be argued that Harper is the duly elected Prime Minister of our country. That he was elected with a "majority government" and as such, has the right to do what ever he wants because he was elected. I would argue back that 35% of the popular vote does not constitute a true majority. He was able to parlay that figure into the illusion of a majority government through the skillful use of smoke, mirrors and marketing techniques usually reserved for the selling of used cars. He is an ideologue, a dictator and a Corporatist sympathizer. He does not speak for the people of Canada, he most certainly does not speak for me. He is not my Prime Minister nor will I ever recognize him as such.

Add caption

So I might suggest that the most logical first step for the Occupy Canada movement would be to ensure that the Government of Harper is fired and is replaced by one that is more representative of and reflective of the will of the people, the 99%. And it should be forewarned that this new government might not necessarily be found in the traditional political alternatives. It is, I think, time to explore new political paradigms, or perhaps, to entertain such concepts as socialism, or at least, Social Democracy.

Once the Harper Government is brought down, under peaceful means of course, then and only then would the way be paved to put an end to the Corporatist agenda and to permanently end such Anti-citizen,  Corporatist trade deals as CETA. The enviro-criminals behind the Tar Sands could finally be brought to justice and Harper himself could finally be held to account for such things as his war crimes, his crimes against the environment and his violations of the the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (not to mention his contempt of Parliament, violations of the Elections Act and numerous other indiscretions too numerous to mention here).

So that is my advice to the Occupy Canada Movement. Make your primary focus the bringing down of the Harper Government. That is not anarchy, that is simply returning control of the government and the country into the hands of the people, where it rightfully belongs in the first place.

Mr. Harper, You're Fired!

Mr Harper.


As a citizen of Canada who's taxes in part, go toward paying your wages, I feel this financial arrangement places me and every other citizen of Canada in the position of being your employers.  As such Mr. Harper, I feel I must now express to you my great dissatisfaction with your job performance. You have broken the law on multiple occasions, the most serious of which was being guilty of the Federal Offense of contempt of Parliament.  In carrying out this offense, you lied to Parliament, the highest and supposedly, most respected institution in the land. Your actions were seen as obstructive to the committees and to the House itself in it's efforts to make informed decisions regarding the business of the nation. It was clear by your actions, that you had no intentions what so ever of allowing Parliament or it's various committees  to have full disclosure of what your planned actions were or what you intended to spend. In short, your minority Government of the time was clearly dishonest.


So Mr. Harper,the Parliament of Canada found you to be guilty of the offence of Contempt of Parliament. No other government in the history of Parliamentary democracy anywhere has ever been found guilty of this offence.  As such, being guilty of a federal offence excluded you from eligibility to run for public office.  You are therefore currently occupying the Prime Minister's office illegally and are disqualified from being able to form any kind of legal government despite the results of the May election in which you miraculously parlayed 30% of the popular vote into a majority government through the skillful use of lies, coercion, fear mongering and the application of marketing techniques usually reserved for the selling of used cars.


It is no wonder then Mr. Harper that the European Union has labeled Canada a "Rogue Nation". You yourself are nothing more than an opportunist and a  rogue  who is leading a pack of like-minded scoundrels. You are in your position illegally and you clearly do not speak for myself nor the majority of Canadians. Yet you continue to draw wages from our collective taxes as if you were entitled to run  our country, which you clearly are not.


So allow me Mr. Harper, to articulate this as clearly and as unambiguously as possible. As one of your many employers, I am now exercising my rights to unequivocally FIRE your sorry ass! Yes Mr. Harper,  you have 24 hours to clean out your desk and get the fuck out of Ottawa. You are fired, canned, terminated, downsized, ousted. You no longer work for me or the majority of Canadians. And don't be looking for a "golden handshake" here.  You would do well to consider yourself incredibly lucky not to serve any time in one of your new super jails for your indiscretions. Also, I intend to see that what ever pension you feel you may have earned, will instead be donated to Green Peace, the David Suzuki Foundation, the "Insite" safe injection site, Planned Parenthood, the Toronto Pride Parade, Kairos, The Summer Works Theatre Festival, The Canada Postal Workers Pension Fund, The Nortel Pension Fund and basically, anyone else you've tried to screw over while you were in office illegally.


So turn in your keys and clear out Harper. You're finished. Don't make me call security on you.

Invasion of the "Big-Ass" Pick-Up Trucks

It was a sunny Sunday as I drove to work in my  Honda. I toyed with the idea of being able to bike to work. But I live in Hamilton so living atop the Niagara Escarpment while working in the lower city all but excludes such brave environmentally friendly gestures. That and the fact that I don't actually own a bike at present.

Truck Toyz

At this point, I need to mention that  a pet-peeve of mine for quite some time, has been the growing number of big-assed pick-up trucks on the road. Not for any reasons related to the environment. But simply because they are a nuisance. Yes, a great number of them may well be "work" vehicles, but an ever increasing number also seem to be doubling as family vehicles as well. You see them everywhere, huge gas-guzzling beasts in pristine condition, complete with Children's car seats in the back. Yes, most of these monsters aren't just two seaters anymore. They come with club cabs, meaning there's additional seating space for the "chillins" and the family pets in addition to the usual cargo space.

I won't get into the psychology behind the surge in these enviro-terrors, so I shall refrain from making any comparisons between Freud's theory behind gun ownership and the current obsession with big-assed Pick-Ups. But it is a given that they are purchased almost exclusively by men.

The "Macho" image

But back to my sunny Sunday. I happened to notice on my usual 20 minute drive to work, that there seemed to be more of these behemoths on the road than usual, snarling things up on narrow side streets while forcing smaller vehicles to bow to their will on the main roads.  I wondered if it just "seemed" like there was a larger number of them on the road because of my being hyper-aware of them, or if there was in fact, a huge amount of these things about, helping to contribute to the financial success of the Tar Sands  while adding to the growing number of asthmatics in the city. I wondered to myself why there would be  a growing number of these Pick-Ups on the road when the amount of oil in the ground is shrinking by the day, bringing us ever closer to global economic Armageddon, and especially now when there is such awareness about the harm fossil fuels are doing to our environment. What ever the reason though, I was determined to do a little quasi-research when I was done work, just to see if I was imagining a "Pick-Up conspiracy" or not.

When my commitments for the day were complete, it was late afternoon though still quite sunny out. What I resolved to do was to drive around the city for one hour and actually count vehicles. But just knowing the number of Pick-Up trucks alone that I came into contact with seemed quite useless without that number being compared with other larger family type vehicles. So I divided a piece of paper into four parts labeled "Pick-ups", "SUVs", "Mini-Vans" and "Crossovers". My idea was to keep a running tally.

It soon became apparent that keeping a running tally of vehicles while driving was not only hugely inefficient (I missed a lot of vehicles), but pretty unsafe as well. So I trolled through parking lots counting vehicles. I started at the Staff Parking Lot for the Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre, a Male Dominated workplace for sure. The number of Pick-Ups went up. Then I went to a Walmart Parking lot and the number of Mini-Vans increased. But then I decided to prowl around some quiet residential neighborhoods where I could pull over at anytime to count vehicles. Much to my surprise, the number of these big-assed Pick-Ups increased in the quiet subdivisions. Now I should point out here that I did not include obvious work vehicles in my totals, only vehicles that seemed to have no other purpose than to be a means of personal or family transportation.

So after my hour's research, I found that Mini-Vans were the most used of the larger "personal" type vehicles at approximately 175,  thereby dispelling the myth of the decline and fall of the Mini-Van. SUVs of all makes and sizes totaled approximately 150. The number of "Cross Overs" was quite low by comparison at roughly 50. It should be noted that with all these types of vehicles, the drivers were observed to be almost equally men and woman. In the same period of time, I counted just over 100 huge-honking Pick-Ups. Again, these were not obvious work vehicles though some of them might well have been. These were the finely polished, club cab sportin, status symbols driven almost exclusively by men. So of the roughly 475 larger private vehicles I counted , a little over 20%, or one in five of these, were Pick-Up trucks. Indeed I am not imagining things.

But alas, my methodology was far from scientific. It did not take into consideration such things as days of the week, time of day, traffic patterns or rural vs urban  settings. And I did not count regular "cars" either to compare with my other numbers . So home I went to go online to search for some hard numbers. This is what I came up with:

For the first seven months of 2011, the highest selling new vehicles in the *U.S. were Ford F-Series Pick-Up trucks at a little over 300,000 in total sales. The Next was the Chevy Silverado (Pick-Ups) at just over 200,000. Then came the Toyota Camry (family car) at 175,000 then the Toyota Carola, Toyota Matrix (both family cars) and Ford Escape (SUV) all tied at about 150,000.

Yes, a good number of these Pick-Up trucks are going to be bonafide work vehicles, meaning they serve a specific purpose and are more than just show pieces.  But when the F-Series out sells the leading family car by more than 50%, it has to be wondered just how many of them are doing double-duty as family vehicles and over sized play-toys. How many are "non-essential".

But it also makes me wonder, with the price of gasoline firmly fixed above $1.25 a liter (at least here in Hamilton) and not likely to ever go below $1.20 again, why on earth would the car-buying public purchase gas guzzling beasts as a vehicle of "choice". With the fuel consumption of a Pick-Up being about double that of a family car and almost twice the price to purchase new, one has to wonder, does the average American/Canadian vehicle purchaser truly have their head up their ass??

And aside from the exorbitant cost of these beasts that have become prized possessions of the upwardly mobile middle-class, and the fact that they are contributing to our hurtling toward  global economic collapse when the supply of gasoline can no longer keep up with the demand, what of their environmental impact?

A Tailings Pond at the Tar Sands

Large Petroleum  companies are eagerly scouring oil from the earth in Alberta and leaving an environmental catastrophe in their wake, just to feed our ever growing addiction to Oil. We know this to be true, yet the car buying public seems to want to purchase ever bigger, more costly, more wasteful vehicles rather than smaller ones to help conserve on gas, to help reduce the toxic gasses our cars emit in addition to limiting the amount of greenhouse gasses the Tar Sands emits as it scurries to feed our collective addiction.

So while it is easy for us all to point our boney fingers at the big oil companies and the politicians who continue to profit from the unbridled sales of fossil fuels. "We the People" are not in the least bit blameless. We recycle a few cans and proudly proclaim that we are doing our bit for the planet. But when it comes down to making a concerted life-style choice like in the purchase of a vehicle for our families our just for ourselves, vanity and status seems to continue to hold trump and we are therefore just as much to blame for this crisis as the money grubbing Corporatists who eagerly feed our addiction.

* Figures courtesy of WardsAuto.com. Figures from goodcarbadcar.net show that in Canada, The Ford F-Series followed by Dodge Ram Pick-Ups to be numbers 1 and 2 in total sales with the Honda Civic being a distant third. Neither site listed Smart cars, which are rated at over 90mpg, on their list of top 25 selling cars in either the U.S., or Canada.   

The Power of Love

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world". - Jack Layton

Jack Layton spent most of his career in federal politics as an also-ran. He was always number three behind the Conservative's Stephen Harper, and the leader of the Liberal Party- Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, Stephan Dion, Michael Ignatieff - take your pick. Hell, poor Jack was even the third wheel behind Gilles Duceppe for awhile. 

But it seemed that divine providence had ordained that In May of 2011, Jack Layton suddenly and unexpectedly became a power to be reckoned with. The Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. An also-ran no more. The timing was never more critical for a leader with a social conscience and a vision for a more just and humane Canada to rise to power to counter the inexplicable ascension of the black-hearted, corporate driven, ultra-right-wing Conservatives to majority status. But God, in his often times mysterious sense of justice, saw fit to take Jack from us just when it seemed he was needed most.

But Jack left us a powerful parting gift, his final words to the people of Canada. In it, he spells out quite succinctly, all that is best in human kind as well as his vision for a kinder, gentler Canada. And his words have resonated around the country like a golden sonic boom. 

It is a peculiarity of human nature - a strength really - that when a loved one passes away, those of us who are left behind cling together and are united by the common bond of grief and of the loving memory of the dearly departed. It becomes a "noble obsession" that the final wishes of the deceased be honored at all cost. It is part of how we grieve, to honour the memory of the departed. And this "noble obsession" is a powerful force. One that can move mountains and, if need be, change the world. 

On another occasion when God's wisdom seemed absolutely baffling, he saw fit to take his only son from us, just when humanity seemed to need him most. But the power of his legacy, his memory and his vision for a more loving world has lived on for two thousand years. The power of the memory of God's son changed the world. 

Jack Layton was certainly no "messiah". Not by a long shot and he would cringe at the notion of anyone thinking to make such a claim. But Jack was most certainly, a man of the people. Everyone's friend, even to those who didn't know him. He cared about everyone, particularly those in need. He had a charisma and a charm that naturally drew people to him. When Stephen Harper was shunning and vilifying the members of the  media during the last election campaign, Jack was strumming his guitar and having sing-alongs with them. "Love is better than anger"

So even though we are now missing a noble leader to counter the creeping evil of the Corporatist agenda, we are now 35 million citizens strong, drawn together by the memory of a man who believed that  "...Hope is better than fear and Optimism is better than despair" and that the power of love could change the world.  A vision for a better Canada, just when we needed it most.