Alan Pickersgill - The View From Here

(January 28) - I have been at several rallies and demonstrations in St. George’s Square. None have been even close to the size of the one last Saturday. Organizers estimated about 500 people turned out. News reports put the number at 300. Either way, it far outnumbered previous rallies against wars in far off places. It dwarfed rallies favouring action to reverse climate change. It sent a message that should reverberate on Parliament Hill.

The government would hear it, if the government was there. It isn’t, and that’s why we were.

Most Canadians, if asked, will agree that going to war is a foolish way to sort things out. Similarly, they will tell you that global warming sends a chill down their spines. The challenge, the near impossible task, is getting them to stand in the centre of the city and say so as a group.

Threaten their democracy, however, and it’s a different story. Shut down their parliament when there is still work to be done, and awaken a slumbering beast. The rallies in Guelph and across the country proved that citizens are not apathetic. They are not unconcerned about the basic responsibilities of citizenship. Although most of us make cynical wisecracks from time to time, we depend on the politicians we elect to do their jobs. These politicians make the mistake of their lives when they confuse trust with indifference. Stephen Harper made this mistake.

He must now wear the consequences of his contemptuous scorn for the traditions and institutions that define our civil society. He and his supporters natter on about how other Prime Ministers at other times have also prorogued Parliament. They say this and sit back smugly pretending they have said something profoundly clever. They haven't.

They should look the word up in a dictionary. It is done to mark the end of a session, when the legislative agenda is complete. Our Prime Minister has used it twice when the agenda he set himself was far from completed. It was in danger of falling apart. He did it to play hide and seek with the voters. He has been found. He has been exposed. He has been called to account.

There is one more step to take. At the first opportunity when parliament reconvenes in March, the opposition parties should pass a motion of non-confidence. Put this government out of its misery. Give us the opportunity to get it out of our misery.

I am not confident. Many of the people in the Square on Saturday went to Knox Presbyterian for a panel discussion. It was standing room only in the hall. One young man asked the question on most of our minds: would the government fall on this issue?

Our MP, Frank Valeriote, was in prominent attendance. He had spoken at the Square and again in the hall. He said lots of wise and wonderful words accurately reflecting the thoughts of the assembly. In answer to the big question of the day, he said no. He didn’t think it would.

The opposition parties, Liberals and New Democrats both, can no longer hide behind the excuse that Canadians don’t want an election. Whether we do or we don’t, we need one. Most Canadians won’t mind. They never do. If an election is called, two-thirds will go out and vote. If one isn’t, the spirit shown across the country on Saturday will be hard to sustain.

If the Prime Minister gets away with this atrocious behaviour again, he will be encouraged to greater offences in the future. Look at the things he has done with a minority government. Be very, very afraid of what he will do with a majority.

(January 19) - It was interesting to see a report last week ranking Guelph’s attractiveness to immigrants. We came in 13th in a field of 50 Canadian cities. We handily beat Cambridge, Hamilton and Winterpeg, but so what? Anyone should be able to thump those burgs.

Waterloo beat us! They came in on the A list of the top six cities. We were relegated to the 14-city B list.

What does Waterloo have that we don’t? They might have Blackberry’s world headquarters, but we’re the centre of the Linamar universe. Who cares if they have Jim Balsillie? We have Linda Hasenfratz. Waterloo has two universities. We only have one, but it’s a good one.

The Conference Board of Canada ranked the cities on 41 indicators. Obviously music didn’t count. We have the River Run Centre. If they want to see a concert they go next door to Kitchener’s Centre in the Square. Our stage is overflowing with top-drawer bands, ranging from the kramdens to The Speakeasies. Waterloo has lederhosen and polka kings.

We wash our garbage before putting it to the curb. They don’t even sort theirs properly. Waterloo Region will even pay us to compost their kitchen scraps when we get our organics facility up and running. I don’t know what the Conference Board was thinking. I’m an immigrant and I prefer Guelph.

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It is an awful mess down in Haiti. You can’t pick up a newspaper, watch the television news or surf the Internet without coming face to face with the awful tragedy that befell the people of that always sad nation. It was a natural disaster of a colossal nature.

The closest in recent memory would be the Asian tsunami. It killed about 300,000 people. The death toll in Haiti could reach 100,000. Its full impact is much wider than that. News reports say three million people, or one-third of the population, have been affected. They are badly injured. They are bereaved. They are homeless.

It is heartening to see the outpouring of generosity shown by individual Canadian contributions to disaster relief. If you do a little ‘googling,’ you’ll easily find a list of organizations that are helping. Donations can be made online, over the phone or at many financial institutions. Doctors Without Borders got my money. It could just as easily have gone to the Canadian Red Cross, or Oxfam, or UNICEF or several others.

No matter how badly any of us were hit by the recession, no matter how little we have in the bank, we are all better off than the average Haitian. That was true before the earthquake. It is more so today. Choose your relief organization and send them some money.

Be careful about giving money to people who come to your door with a collection bucket. It’s a horrible sign of the times that scam artists will take advantage of any tragedy to make a buck. Think of them as the local face of the global corporations Naomi Klein warns us about in Shock Doctrine. They seize on disasters to extend their control over devastated communities.

When the tsunami hit Asia in 2004, local musicians held a superb fundraising concert at the River Run Centre. It may happen again. Local musician and social activist Sam Turton sent an e-mail around last week. It seems that some local churches and community groups are in the early stages of thinking this through.

There are an incredible number of very talented people in and around Guelph. They give generously of their time and talents when the need arises.

If they come together for Haiti, I’ll stand in line to get tickets.

(January 12) - Proroguing Parliament was arrogant, beastly, cowardly, despotic –go through the alphabet and find 26 suitably infuriating adjectives. It was all of this and more. It deserves to be called out and shouted down. But in the end it was legal. That is where the problem lies.

In 2008, the Prime Minister ended the session when faced with a non-confidence motion he was sure to lose. This winter, he was faced with a binding order from Parliament to produce documents related to the treatment of prisoners of war. He didn’t want to comply, so he shut the shop and sent the help home.

There has been immediate and widespread outrage across the country. There is even a Facebook group called Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament. In less than a week it grew to almost 120,000 members. As of Monday the group’s membership had grown to 151,000. There is even a Guelph chapter of this group with over 100 members.

How effective is Facebook as a tool for organizing political protest? We shall soon see. The test will be on Saturday Jan. 23 when the Guelph group is planning a public event.

You can’t change the world on a laptop. You can send messages, involve people in the issues, convince them of your arguments. But if it stays on the computer screen, nothing will change. Change happens when people get off their bums and go to the union halls, the church basements, the community centres and make their voices heard.

Virtual voices in virtual forums produce virtual democracy. It, in turn, produces nothing. If you want to do something to reverse the direction in which Stephen Harper is moving our country, get off the computer and get on the move.

Signing up on Facebook tells everyone you are unhappy. Doing nothing else tells them you are prepared to live with your unhappiness. That is exactly the thing Stephen Harper is hoping to hear.

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At the bottom of this whole mess lies a fundamental truth. It pains me to say it, but it is something with which I am in agreement with Stephen Harper. Unelected Senators should not overrule decisions made by elected members of Parliament. It is easy to cheer for the Senate when we don’t like what the government is doing, but it is still wrong.

Any agreement with Harper ends there. We differ on what to do about it. He has chosen to get down into the muck with the Liberals. He will appoint enough Conservatives so the Senate will blindly support anything he does. It will also block as much Liberal legislation as it can when that party gets back in.

The problem will not be solved. The situation will not be improved.

The Senate itself needs to be abolished. It is a useless relic from the old days of feudal England. When the old “nobility” adapted to the emerging parliamentary democracy, they had to share power with the “commoners.” They allowed a House of Commons to enact laws, but kept a House of Lords with the power to overrule what the people got up to. The Senate is our knock-off version of the House of Lords. Unelected and unaccountable.

To stop Prime Ministers in minority governments from proroguing Parliament at will, we need to get out from under the oppressive weight of a Queen, a Governor-General and 105 senators. Take the power out of the Prime Minister’s Office and give it back to the MPs. No prorogation until the majority of members vote for it.

(January 05) - If we can’t do stuff on stolen native land, we can’t do stuff anywhere in Canada. Or hardly anywhere. It was all stolen, seized, plundered and pilfered in the years following the European “discoveries.” Some reparations have been made as land claim disputes were negotiated with governments or settled in courts.

Leaders of the Squamish Nation govern land that encompasses North Vancouver up to and including Whistler. They are still negotiating their claims, and have entered agreements to preserve and enhance their rights during the Olympics. They had band council elections on Dec. 6. If the members of the Squamish Nation thought their interests were not being looked after by the incumbent leaders, they would have turned them out last month. There is no indication they did.

Marching up Macdonell Street chanting no Olympics on stolen native land doesn’t have much intellectual clarity. It makes about as much sense as no universities on stolen native land. Or no Guelph Transit on stolen native land.

There are lots of other reasons to object to the games. The International Olympic Committee has amassed enough power to bully and browbeat nations. It wields so much economic clout that committee members get what they want, when they want it. They set a standard for greed that corporate sponsors can only aspire to meeting.

There are reasons to support the Olympics, such as the good jobs created in the years and months leading up to them. They also give elite young athletes, people like our own late Victor Davis, a goal to strive for. They can prove they are the best in the world at what they do. Mind you, this would have more value if the billions spent on the games trickled down, somehow, to support national amateur sports programs and general physical fitness. This never happens in any meaningful way. The athletics are just a little side show to distract us from the bigger picture. The Olympics used to be all about amateur athletes. Not anymore.

It is certainly something worth protesting, but how? Blocking the passage of a young woman carrying the torch is a childish and churlish thing to do. It says nothing of value, makes no meaningful point. Better to turn off the television, at least until we see which team of NHL millionaires gets to the gold medal game. Boycotting the sponsors would make a difference. Somehow we have to cure ourselves of our obsession with mega-things.

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Stephen Harper has cancelled Parliament again. It’s the same thing he did last year at about this time and what I predicted he would do in last week’s column.

There is so much wrong with this it is hard to know where to start. When they broke for the holidays, MPs were beginning a serious enquiry into the treatment of prisoners of war. No matter what we think of the cause the other side fights for - whether Nazi or Taliban - individual soldiers, when captured, must be treated according to the Geneva Convention. There is strong evidence the defence minister knew these rules were broken, yet did nothing.

It is the job of the official opposition to hold the government accountable, to make sure it is acting within the laws and traditions of our country. If they don’t hold the prime minister’s feet to the fire, who will?

It is wrong for the Prime Minister to cancel the business of Parliament because he’s scared of the direction it’s going.

If we are in the mood for protest, let’s get going on this one.

And prepare for an election. We need one, badly.

(December 29) - When this year started, I made a commitment. I would lose weight and get into better shape. I end the year on the same note.

Twelve months ago, Tiger Woods had one thing in common with people everywhere. He’s a better golfer than I am. By the end of the year, I had one thing in common with thousands of others. I’m a better person than he is.

It has been an interesting and memorable year. My granddaughter had her second birthday, my father had his last. Lynne and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Of people who used to be children, my oldest turned 40 and my youngest reached her quarter century.

My older brother turned 65. My younger brother celebrated his 61st birthday by going on a 122-mile bicycle ride. Sixty-one miles out, 61 miles back –in one day. I didn’t match that, but I did get my first set of hearing aids. That’s something neither he nor Tiger has.

But 2009 wasn’t all about me, was it?

It was a lot about political brinkmanship in Ottawa. At the start, we almost had a coalition government of the Liberals and the NDP. It failed because the leaders of the two parties counted their chickens before they hatched. They didn’t anticipate how the prime minister would respond to what ended up as amateur hour on the opposition benches. Like a pair of inept chess players, Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton thought they had Stephen Harper in checkmate. They didn’t realize he had one decisive move available, and he used it to checkmate them.

By year’s end, the Conservative government had put itself in contempt of Parliament. A vote was passed requiring the government to release certain documents related to the treatment of prisoners of war in Afghanistan. The government flatly and boldly refuses. What can the opposition do? They spent the last year propping up Harper’s government. If they find a way to do something, Harper will repeat his coup de grace. He’ll end this session of Parliament and go away until spring.

When the year began, Stéphane Dion was on his way to becoming only the second Liberal leader who didn’t become prime minister. At the close, Michael Ignatieff seems set to become the third.

At the provincial level, the roles are almost reversed. It is the Liberals who are mired in ongoing scandals such as eHealth and the Lottery Commission. They are floundering, stubbornly clinging to power while showing little imagination or vision. They now float the idea of selling the LCBO, even though it is the biggest money maker they have outside income taxes.

The provincial Conservatives are equally adrift. They sound foolish when they criticize the Liberals for doing the very things they have long advocated themselves. The NDP’s Andrea Horvath is leading a focused and credible fight against the Harmonized Sales Tax and other symbols of Liberal mismanagement.

In the municipal arena, it has been another year of achievements and disappointments. In total, the former outnumber the latter. They opened the new city hall. They also opened Norfolk and Wyndham streets. The sewer pipes they found were a sight to behold. There are more streets to fix next year, so get your shock absorbers tuned up.

We will have a municipal election in 2010. We might have a federal one. We won’t have a provincial. Beginning next week, candidates for city hall can declare themselves, start campaigning and raising money.

Of all the things we’ll do next year, the most important will be to sift through all the noise and focus on the facts.

(December 22) - Forget all that rubbish from the lunatics who say Christmas is under attack by invading hordes of immigrants. It isn’t. It was beaten senseless by the credit card companies ages ago.

You don’t have to be a practising Christian to have a pleasant Christmas, or to wish a merry one to people you meet. I’m not and I do.

It’s the season for remembering friends and giving a little something to people you don’t know. That’s why we buy a couple of extra non-perishables with our groceries. Instead of bringing them home, we drop them in a food bank bin. Not knowing who will be on the receiving end makes the giving more meaningful.

The same spirit lurks in the background of the very successful United Way drive this year. The $2.66 million raised will go a long way for those who have been hit hard by the recession. Tough times bring out the generosity in most folk.

It is time to hand out warming mugs of eggnog. First in line should be all of you who donated to one or both of the United Way and the food bank. Without you, a lot of families would not have much of a Christmas at all.

I’ll offer another mug to our mayor and councillors. They did a good job of dealing with the mess left behind by higher levels of government. Regular readers know I would have liked to see a higher tax increase to preserve the services we need. Oh well. That’s behind us now.

We lost bus service on holidays, but kept sidewalk snow plowing.

We delayed the opening of the east side library branch, but helped downtown businesses by keeping free on-street parking in the downtown.

I’ll offer an extra mug of eggnog to Coun. Maggie Laidlaw. She made a motion, which went un-seconded, not to delay the library branch opening. The delay has been accepted by the library board. Laidlaw’s motion had no hope of success, but it was a graceful gesture. It would have been nice if the Ward 1 councillors had supported it, just as a nod to the good people on the other side of Victoria. I hope those residents understand that in June they will have a library branch to be proud of. It will be worth the wait.

It appears we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. I have raged against the Laird Road interchange on the Hanlon for many years. I don’t intend to stop. But the raging shouldn’t happen on Carden Street. Take it down Woolwich Street to MPP Liz Sandals’ office.

The problem is with the province. I am told they have a hold on land east of the Hanlon, which can’t be developed until the interchange is built. So no eggnog for the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Transportation who refuse to let go of outdated traffic flow concepts. Give them a lump of coal instead. They are the ones who can alter the plan and unlink its components.

We started squeezing the Hanlon land 30 years ago. Much of it was run of the mill farmland. Not particularly sacred, but the corn was good. When the province decided to build a four-lane highway from an arbitrary spot on the 401 to Woodlawn Road, they unleashed a chain of events with its own internal dynamic. It is hard, almost impossible, to stop.

I’ll offer a mega-mug of eggnog to the first person to come up with an effective plan to divert the provincial government from its mega-project mentality.

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, do it wisely.

(December 15) - Tonight’s budget is not so much an admission of failure as an accusation. Councillors have found themselves stuck between a snow drift and a bus pass. The forces that brought them here are out of their control.

The accusations of failure must be directed higher up, to the federal and provincial governments. For the past 30 years, they told us the solution to our economic problems is to cut taxes and reduce government spending.

It was a lie. The economy today is in worse shape than it’s ever been. It is true enough that there is only one taxpayer. My taxes go to support the services provided by all three levels of government. That didn’t just start today. It’s been the case for as long as I can remember.

Before we get into the debate about the city budget, remember one thing. Taxes are not evil. They are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.

We pay taxes to get everything from universal health care to weekly garbage collection. There is a cost to everything, and it has to be paid. When you add up all the services provided by all levels of government, you come up with the final bill. The full cost of living in Canada. It’s a lot of money. It has to come from taxes.

When one level of government cuts taxes, the burden falls onto lower levels. By the time it reaches the city, there is almost nowhere left to go.

Federal and provincial governments can run deficits. Cities can’t. All they can do is choose between undesirable options. Two of them are to raise taxes or cut services. There is a third option, but I’ve never heard anyone raise it until now.

We are consumed by a fear of a tax increase. All of us. The councillors who charge it, and the rest of us who pay it.

Tonight, we’ll see the distance they will go to avoid one. Eliminate sidewalk snow plowing. Raise the price of university student bus passes, even though all students pay $61 per semester whether they get one or not. Build an east end library branch but leave it sitting unopened until June. Why do all this and more?

To avoid paying more taxes.

What we can’t hear is a willingness among the members of our community to bite the bullet. The citizens who make Guelph the city we all want to call home are not accepting the consequences of the choices they have made over the past 30 years. They are not sitting at the kitchen table telling their kids it is time to face reality. We have demanded lower taxes, and now we can’t fund summer camp programs. Wives are not telling their husbands about the city’s third option: “Well, dear, we have brought ourselves to a nine per cent property tax increase, so we’ll need to cut back on the number of digital TV channels we receive.”

Oh no. We’d rather save $89,000 by eliminating a dining room program at the Evergreen Seniors Centre.

We have come to the point where everyone must suffer except us. Everyone but me must pay the price for the fiscal mismanagement of the federal and provincial governments we elected. That is not how to build a community. It is an insult to our parents and grandparents, the people who made great sacrifices to build the country that is being dismantled before our eyes and with barely a whimper of protest.

A 9.2 per cent tax increase is not fair to me. A 4.5 per cent increase is not fair to my community.

To whom is council responsible?