An interview with Mary Slade, Leeds-Grenville Green Party candidate

Why is the Green Party important?

Neither the Liberals nor the CPC have a real vision for where they want to go. The NDP do, but it’s a very narrow vision. I’ve been a Green Party supporter for a long time. Many of our ideas have been tried in Europe and around the world. The North American model of big business is unsustainable. Everybody has the jargon, but they’re just using it to win debates. It doesn’t translate into meaningful action.

Kim Sytsma is a director of the Ontario Cattleman’s Association. Kim claims that the car industry is 2.1% of the GDP of Ontario while the cattle industry means 1.4% of the GDP for Ontario economy, and yet no one is helping the beef or pork farmers. It’s fascinating that whenever the price of crude oil changes it is reflected immediately at the pumps, but when wholesale beef prices crashed during the mad cow scare, there was no change to beef prices in the stores.

Last election’s Green Shift Plan looked like a good policy, badly sold. Now your party has relabeled it and made it part of your platform.

While there were some communications issues associated with the campaign, the Green Shift Plan was basically sound. It should be. Dion and the Liberals stole it from us.

Why are you running as a candidate?

Over thirty years my husband and I have noticed a decline in the vibrancy of the area. Our young people aren’t staying. Those trying to create small businesses are strangled by government.

The cheese operation at Upper Canada Village was forced to close because it didn’t meet modern requirements. You don’t know that there’s anything wrong there, but the big business model doesn’t allow for traditional methods of production.

I know of local people involved in a small business promotion program, a federally funded, provincial government effort to help small business startups. October 9th of this year a letter came from Toronto which abruptly cut the program. It said they are putting money into the colleges for retraining adults and that was it.

So what’s wrong with the big business model?

Why bail out GM and Chrysler? They have already proven that they are not running companies worth investing in. We’re throwing bad money after bad. It’s a short-term solution to a problem we have known for years and years. We’re maintaining jobs in failing industries and not looking to jobs that provide a viable and sustainable future for Canadians.

Factory farms? I’m against them because they’re dependent upon herbicides, pesticides and antibiotics and are not good for the environment. They are ripe for contamination and economic blips and transportation complications. Small and local is tasty and beautiful.

So what do you think of food in Canada today?

We should produce as much food for our own population as we can. For one, we have a fairly good regulatory system within the country but we’ve had some catastrophes from things coming across the border. For another, we have a problem with obesity right now, and fresh fruit, vegetables and meat all taste good, even if you don’t like brussels spouts. I’m not about to legislate the Doritos-and-Pepsi lunch out of existence, but good food’s not as available as it used to be because of the distances people have to travel to get it and of course the distance the food has to travel, as well.

The papers are full of the locavore movement.

We’re just going back to our roots. It’s a fad which isn’t going to pass. Food is a necessity. You are what you eat. If you want to stay healthy, eat well.

What are your goals for the next six months, and how do you plan to achieve them?

To promote the Green Party from Gananoque to Kemptville, from Cardinal to Westport, and give voters an alternative to the other, more traditional parties.

So the Green Party is a fad?

Oh come on! It’s been a long time coming and it’s not going away. Food sustainability and water quality are ongoing issues. Carbon emissions are a world-wide problem. Social issues like child care, early childhood education and pensions are not going away.

A Green Party proposal is for the elimination of income tax for individuals who earn less than $20,000 per year.

Where is the Green Party on the political spectrum?

It is neither right nor left wing. It is for people and sustainability. It is pro-business where business is good for the country. It is pro-people because people are our future.

So is a vote for you a vote for a Stephen Harper majority?

No. A vote for me is a vote to have a representative in Ottawa to espouse policies which are not simply short-term solutions to problems created by falling polling numbers.

What we really need is proportional representation. It’s a fantastic idea because the first-past-the-post-system we have now does not allow a voice for new ideas in parliament.

Instead we have bad ideas like the current wave of stimulus spending which has simply given Stephen Harper a bottomless war chest with which to play politics. That’s not good government. It’s the Conservatives becoming the Liberals, throwing away money.

Harper broke promises to veterans and their families. His flip-flops on clear and open government, income trusts, and four-year terms show that this man is not a conservative.

An Intervew with federal NDP candidate Steve Armstrong

Steve Armstrong, federal NDP candidate for Leeds and Grenville, took time this week to answer a series of interview questions for this column:

How have things changed since the last federal election?

Things have become significantly worse. Just in August of this year 22,000 jobs disappeared in Canada. In the last year we have lost hundreds of jobs in Leeds-Grenville. Manufacturing is the backbone of the Ontario economy, and it is dying.

Gord Brown boasts of $20 million of stimulus money coming to Leeds-Grenville, but ridings in Canada have received an average of $147 million dollars each! And Leeds-Grenville is one of the most hard-hit areas in the country.

Waiting times at Brockville General Hospital (BGH) are horribly long. I recently had to take a friend to Kingston because there was a seven-hour wait at BGH. At BGH the staff are doing their best, but they need more resources.

Why is it vitally important that the NDP form the next government of Canada?

The three most important programs we have in Canada were all because of the NDP – Medicare, Canada Pension Plan and EI. We look after people, especially in bad times.

The NDP is the only party that has as its central goal the helping of Canadian citizens. Our policies are for Canadians, not rich corporations and banks. We have job creation ideas that will add employment in every city and town. Check out our energy retro-fit programs, for example.

The Conservatives and Liberals have destroyed our manufacturing in Canada. They have let our health care standards drop substantially. Free trade with Mexico only benefits corporations. It allows companies to move out of Canada (ie. Hershey’s and Black and Decker). Since the last election Stephen Harper without parliamentary authority has signed free-trade deals with eight countries including Columbia, Chile, and Panama. How can this help Canadians trying to find jobs?

In the 1990’s the Liberal government cut $29 billion out of Medicare. That is the main reason why our health care system in Canada is hurting today. The NDP will restore proper funding for our public health care. This will mean shorter lineups and more doctors and nurses.

People ask where we can we get the money? Somehow Harper found billions of dollars for his stimulus plan to help bail out foreign corporations, so I think we can “find” the money. But there is an easier way: get out of Afghanistan! We spend $200 million dollars a month there! How about spending that money on Canadians?

Does Canada need another general election at this time?

People did not want an election last year. When Harper started to think about it in late August of 2008, 68% of the people said they did not want an election but he called one anyway, breaking his own law.

Everybody seems to have a policy on EI at the moment. Care to comment?

We need to increase the pay! In today’s dollars the maximum EI weekly benefit in 1996 was $607. Today the same benefit is $447! That is crazy! All of the politicians have received substantial increases in pay to cover their costs, so why have they reduced benefits to people who have lost their jobs? Even the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the big banks say the EI benefit should be increased. The current NDP bill C-280 calls for an increase in weekly pay of about $50. That is still too low but they are trying to get the bill supported and passed by all parties. The final reading is on Sept. 28, 2009.

What is one local issue in this campaign?

We are one of only three ridings in Canada without a MRI machine! That is crazy. Every hospital needs one of these. Stop the shipment of money to Afghanistan for one day and we could have an MRI in Brockville.

Why should the voters of Leeds and Grenville choose you as their Member of Parliament?

I have been fighting for worker’s rights and the protection of our Medicare system since 1995. I am not a parachute candidate. I was born and raised in Brockville. The only time I left Brockville was to go to university. I have an honours B.A. in History. I know what mistakes the Canadian government has made in the past and understand what we must do to avoid repeating them.

I am a factory worker. I know what it is like to have a feeling you may lose your job. I work at Invista and they have announced layoffs of up to 240 people. I may be one of them.

The policies of the Liberals and Conservatives have decimated our great country. What future do we have? I know what needs to be fixed – just look at the past to see what has worked before. Get rid of the free trade policies with Third World countries, renegotiate with the US, get out of Afghanistan, create jobs when needed (like the New Deal in the 1930’s), and bring Medicare and EI coverage back to where it used to be.

Rocco Rossi, Tim Powers, and two parties headed in opposite directions

John Geddes interviewed Liberal National Director Rocco Rossi for MacLean’s this spring and Rossi most wanted to talk about the data base he had bought from the Obama camp. Over the summer Liberal donations have doubled and membership has grown rapidly.  Rossi’s focus seems to be entirely positive:  his interest is in the building of a new organization, one suited to the needs and the technology of the next decade.

Leeds residents may have seen Rossi in his kayak this summer as he made his very public fund-raising voyage through the Rideau Canal.  The text and video blog entries showed mostly what an energetic, good-natured fellow he is.  But he loves the Rideau, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Rossi respects the Conservative machine for their ability to fund a permanent campaign: “Last year they raised $21 million. We raised $6 million. You let that situation continue and democracy is at risk. No matter how good your ideas, no matter how good your leader, you won’t be able to present your message on an equal footing.”

Veteran Star writer Linda Diebel concluded her profile of the man:  “If Rocco Rossi can’t fix the Liberal party, maybe nobody can.”

I first encountered Conservative strategist Tim Powers in a Globe and Mail article on the weekend.  It was a brief diatribe attacking Michael Ignatieff, and its content seemed well beneath the paper’s standard.  Astonished that the estimable Globe and Mail would publish such tripe, I looked its author up.  Turns out he is vice-president of Summa Communications, consultant to CTVGlobeMedia (the Globe’s owner), a U. of Ottawa lecturer, frequent commentator on CTV, and point-man for Prime Minister Harper.

In the article he states: “Iggy the ‘world-class leader’ has in his nine months of leadership supported a coalition with the socialists and separatists, promised to raise taxes on occasion, abandoned EI reform and canceled his trip to China after talking endlessly about the importance of that travel. Seems more like the behaviour of a house leaguer than the No. 1 draft pick.”

I fear we can expect a lot more of this sort of discourse from the CPC over the course of the next few months, for while the Liberals seem to be drifting pleasantly along the high road in Rossi’s wake, the Conservative spokesmen are enthusiastically splashing around in the muck of half-truths behind Tim Powers.

A visit to the Liberal website

Apart from the new T.V. ads the most interesting part of the website is the network of activities for Liberal Party Members across the country.  They range from boat rides on the Ottawa to a national tour of the play, Trudeau Stories, to lectures about women in politics, get-acquainted meetings on campus, and so on.

Rocco Rossi seems to be having his way, and the new organization is active, involved, and with a grass-roots emphasis.

If anyone thinks that this is the same old Liberal Party of the Chretien/Martin trench- warfare era, he should check out the website at www.liberal.ca.

A visit to the Conservative Party of Canada website

If you mine deeply enough, there’s a lot of detail on conservative.ca.  The legislative record of the CPC government covers several pages and reads well.  It presents the impression of a government devoted to reducing taxes, law and order issues, and a nationalistic attitude toward the North and foreign policy.

Of course it’s hard to get past the first page.  One bit of teenage humour I rather enjoyed was the ad which read:  “Freak out your roomate.  Join the Conservative Party.”

The big surprise is that Michael Ignatieff is as prominent on the CPC site as he is on his own.  They’re making him a star.  The bulk of the creative effort has gone into putting together a spurious ezine entitled “Me:  It’s all about me” which pays more attention to the Liberal leader than he’s gotten all summer from the vacationing press corps.

For example the “Me” ezine denigrates “The Visitor’s” latest book by quoting Noah Richler’s review. A literate reader then has to find the original document and read it.  This is definitely not a good idea if you plan to vote CPC. Noah Richler is a very good read, and he’s not by any means as dismissive of Ignatieff as the tabloid would have the viewer believe.

The authors make much of a magnified Ignatieff signature, purportedly on the coalition agreement of last spring.  They show this as evidence that Iggie is a traitor to democracy, and will say or do anything to gain power.  They must think we’re stupid.  We remember that Stephen Harper signed an identical agreement with Layton and Duceppe in his attempt to dump Paul Martin a few years ago. It seems that every time Harper points a finger at Ignatieff, three point back at him.

As Rick Salutin put in a column last week, Stephen Harper seems to like to cast himself as a later-day Ronald Regan in his determination to defend the northern frontier from those pesky Russians who want our oil.  The North for the P.M. is a land where the next periscope may be the invaders, not where ten year old kids sleep outside and homeless.

Then another huge picture of Ignatieff appeared.  No mention was made of the senate appointments of the previous day, but now the site’s creators were blaming him for the Senate blocking passage of a tough-on-crime law.  So I guess the nine new senate appointments are Ignatieff’s fault.  When you go negative it’s hard to stop at www.conservative.ca

Life imitates art

Ex-M.P.P. Michael Bryant seems to have found himself in a situation which belongs only in a Tom Wolfe novel.  It reads much better in a book than on the front page of the Globe.  In the book we could sit back and enjoy Wolfe’s wit as the plot of Bonfire of the Vanities unfolded.  As news, the same plot is no longer fun.  Toronto doesn’t need to be New York, and Canada doesn’t need U.S.-style sensationalism.  We’re at our best when our streets are safe and dull, and our “masters of the universe” are best quietly envied and loathed from afar.

O Edward, thou art mighty yet.

Saturday’s Globe carried a very interesting interview with former NDP leader Ed Broadbent in which he laid a couple of things on the line. Canada’s population has grown poorer because of the gutting of social programs by Liberal and Conservative governments while tax cuts have favoured the rich.

He further asked, “What’s wrong with raising taxes?” This topic has been taboo in North American politics ever since George Bush Sr. suggested a tax increase to cover the cost of the first Iraq war and caused a voter backlash which handed the presidency to a bemused Bill Clinton.  But Ed Broadbent is retired, and probably doesn’t give a damn about re-election. He will tell it as it is.

In the next minority government, it will be up the the NDP to form a coalition with either the Liberals or the CPC and force an agenda which will reverse the trend to weaken Canadians’ security through funding cuts to social programs like E.I. and O.H.I.P.  After the successful Republican propaganda campaign against government health care in the U.S.A., protection of what remains of our socialized health care will need to be Layton’s #1 priority.

It’s too bad Ed’s around so seldom any more.

On federal politics: an interview with Marjory Loveys

Marjory Loveys worked for years in the Prime Minister’s Office.  I leaped at the chance to talk to a woman who understands federal politics.  Marjory is running for the Leeds and Grenville Liberal nomination.

Why is it important that the Liberal Party of Canada form the next government?

It’s worth looking at the current government and defining for ourselves what makes people so uncomfortable with Stephen Harper.  For me there are two things:  1.  he is mean and divisive, and I fear that over time Canada will become like him, meaner and more divided;  2.  he seems to have very little ambition for Canada.  I don’t see any big ideas coming from Stephen Harper; I don’t see big plans for progress for Canada.  I don’t see him excited about new industries, new technologies, or major reforms of any kind.  He likes the oil sands, law and order, and ethanol.  That’s about it.

Yes, but he’s an oilman, from Calgary.

He’s no oilman.  I worked with guys from the oil patch and they were builders.  They wore iron rings and they built things.  Stephen Harper is not a builder.  He has plenty of ambition for himself, but not for Canada.

What’s Michael Ignatieff doing talking up the oil sands?

It’s a big industry and a big resource, and it has to learn to operate sustainably.  In Calgary there are lots of iron rings and a can-do attitude.  In terms of climate change if we had fewer economists and lawyers and more engineers, we could accomplish a whole lot.  It’s like anything else.  You don’t do it until you’re pushed, and the trick for government is that we will push them in a way that works for them.

Engineers are taught to solve problems, and that’s what politics needs:  people to solve problems.  That’s what I did for ten years in Mr. Chretien’s office:  listen to all sides.  Find an approach that is supportive, not destructive, that works for everybody.

One blogger suggested that Michael Ignatieff should stop trying to appear a statesman and speak to Canadians the way he would talk to members of a book club.  Are there enough readers in Canada to make Michael Ignatieff our next Prime Minister?

I look at Mr. Ignateiff as someone who is learning very quickly in one of the toughest jobs in the country.   He has a strong philosophical framework for the job.  He has actually thought about the role of government.  He is liberal in the finest sense of the word.

Mr. Harper is like Mike Harris:  he doesn’t believe in the organization he is leading.  He is there to weaken it, not to make it work well.  He has instructed his MPs to make Commons committee work totally partisan and dysfunctional.  If Conservative Party of Canada MPs don’t like where the committee is going, they often get up and leave.

Stephen Harper is caught up in an ideology of not believing in government.  He does not believe in government as a force for good.  By contrast Michael Ignatieff believes in a government which functions well and is doing the right thing.

George W. Bush’s ideology demanded that he cut taxes, deregulate, and wage war.  He left the United States bankrupt.  To what extent has this Republican trend influenced the Conservative Party of Canada?

One of the great myths is that Liberals are spendthrifts and Conservatives are good fiscal managers.

The Chretien Liberals inherited a huge deficit from Brian Mulroney.  By the end of the Chretien years we had surpluses that were being used to pay down the nation’s mortgage.  Stephen Harper increased spending and cut taxes to the point where the surplus was gone before the recession began.  With no rainy day funds, the entire stimulus package was funded by going into debt.  No prudent family would run their finances this way.  We have seen this pattern in Saskatchewan, and in the United States in Republican years.   The right wing ran up the debts and the left wing paid them off.

What local and national challenges will the next government face?

The big challenge for Canada over the next few years will be to recover from the recession.  What I would push very hard for is more help for small business because they are spending lots of money on stimulus.  If you are a car company it’s great, if you build infrastructure it is great, but the vast majority of enterprises in Leeds and Grenville are small businesses, and Ottawa hasn’t beefed up support for small business.

Your next hurdle is to gain the nomination.  Why should members of the Leeds and Grenville Liberal association choose you as their candidate?

I know how government works and I know what it feels like to be in a small business and feel that you’re not being heard. I grew up in a village in Oxford County and I have seen a lack of understanding of rural and small communities in the federal government.

Mr. Ignatieff has made a commitment to use a rural lens on his policies.  This is his way of recognizing that one size does not fit all and he is committing that all of his policies will work for small towns as well as for cities.   I’m particularly interested in day care programs, for example.  They will need to be designed quite differently in rural communities than in downtown Toronto.

The plight of Suaad Hagi Mohamud

The Toronto Star is full of the story of Suaad Hagi Mohamud, a Toronto woman who went to visit her mother in Kenya and was detained by Kenyan authorites upon her attempt to return to Canada because her face didn’t match the passport photograph well enough.  Twelve weeks it took to get someone in the Canadian government to act on her case.  During this time she sat in detention, charged with attempting to use a false document.  The DNA test matched her young son in Toronto.  She is who she claims she is, driver’s license, OHIP card, library card, employer, the whole nine yards.  And yet Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan wouldn’t allow the consulate to help her.

This is ugly.  It looks very much as if the cabinet has decided to let the Somali woman stew a bit just to give the redneck voters something to feel mean about.  This divisive, mean-spirited attitude, separating Canadian citizens according to skin colour, harkens to the very worst traditions of Republican bigotry in the United States.  We don’t want the ghost of American racist Westwood Pegler here.  We don’t want our conservative-minded voters to be invited to “get their bigot on” as Pegler famously suggested.  That’s not what Canada is about, and if this sort of garbage produces political gains for Stephen Harper and the CPC, then Canada has already become a colony of the United States.

Debt and the Canadian family

I tacked the following onto a Globe article on student unemployment this summer and how the missing jobs will mean Dad and Mom will be hitting the bank up for more money.

Feel free to add comments about student loan programs and taxes, both pro and con.  If I get some useful material I’d like to turn it into a column in the Review Mirror.

Thanks,

Rod

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For a major source of the growing indebtedness of Canadian families, you need look no further than the hypocritical attitude of government toward student finances. Remember Chretien’s huge Millenium Scholarship Fund? For all the hype, does anybody know anyone who actually got any money from it?

When I was a kid at Queen’s, my summer jobs as a construction labourer paid the whole shot for the following year at university, and virtually the whole thing was tax deductible at the top category.

Today’s dirty secret is that university education in Canada is much, much more expensive than it was for the previous generation, and almost all of the cost is paid with after-tax dollars. What’s more, the bit a parent can claim comes off the bottom of the tax schedule, not the top.

During my years as a teacher of OAC students my heart went out to the parents of the kids I sent off to post-secondary. There was no way they would let their kids down, but they suffered through a raw deal financially and nobody would acknowledge it.

Breaking up the logjam of Canadian politics

Jeffrey Simpson’s column in today’s Globe speaks of the four blocks in Canadian federal politics, and how they consign Canadians to minority governments for the forseeable future.  The Conservatives hold the west and rural Ontario.  The Liberals hold urban centres in Ontario, English-speaking Quebec, and the maritimes.  The NDP pulls 15%.  The Bloc controls Quebec.  Simpson does not mention the Green Party in his analysis.

When speaking to veteran political observer and Leeds and Grenville Liberal nomination candidate Marjory Loveys this week I formed the impression that she is well aware of this logjam, but an interesting impression emerged from the discussion:

The philosophical differences between the NDP and the Liberals are certainly no wider than those of the Reform party and the Progressive Conservatives.  When’s the last time the NDP tried to nationalize a bank?  Oh wait:  the Republicans did that.  And Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada has practically nationalized the auto industry.  Uh… so what’s keeping the Liberals and the NDP from forming a coalition of the left to balance the CPC?  And the Green Party doesn’t fit anywhere on the political spectrum.  It’s a trend, a fashionable place to park a protest vote.  If the Liberal/NDP get a platform together and involve the Green trendites, a majority may well be within reach.

Don’t count the Left wing out just yet.

A response to Neil Reynolds

Neil Reynolds’ review of Michael Ignatieff’s speech last week in his column (The Globe and Mail, July 22, 2009) demanded a comment.  While I greatly admired Mr. Reynolds during his days as editor of The Kingston Whig Standard and even later as the founder of the Libertarian Party of Canada, I fear this review showed a careless reading of the subject and sloppy thought.

Mr. Reynolds:  You seem to be reviewing the speech you wish he had given, rather than the one he did.  I’m wondering how carefully you read the thing, frankly, for while bashing away for what the Liberal leader failed to say or said badly, you seem inadvertently to end up supporting Ignatieff’s main point in this carefully-veiled jab at his chief opponent: within the traditions of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, Michael Ignatieff is a better conservative than Stephen Harper.