Ontarios recently voted down a proposal to modernize their archiac first-past-the-post sham electoral system to proportional representation. You'd think that slogans like "your vote = my vote" or "each person, one vote!" would get them thinking about just how people come to power in Canada. But the political commentators have spoken, they just didn't get it, they didn't know what "mixed member" meant, so instead of investigating their voting rights, they conservatively did away with the nusance notion that something is deadly wrong with their democracy.
Canada will not be able to deal with a changing world. So long as a party can only enter parliament by scoring a majority in any one riding, smaller movements with broad
national support, but who are fatally diffused, like the Greens (10%) or Feminists, will never contribute to the progressive coalition parliaments that the rest of the democratic world enjoys (except the UK and USA, the two other hold-outs on the question of proportional representation). We will have to wait until the old-farts in the old-parties retire, until new good ideas and unconventional threats can be dealt with by the new blood of the much saner younger generations.
Ontario, you suck.
All you need is politcal will, from a small, but power-tipping party. In Sweden, the Greens, hovering between 5 - 8 % of seats, and were pinnacle in the once ruling Social Democracts centre-left coalition. So, Sweden greened, not because people here are ecological messiahs, but because there was a green party with teeth.
To me, this is the most important issue in Canada.
Anyway, I bought a guitar this weekend! Now come the dark days of the Nordic winter, and the vit. D deficiency induced ballads of darkness and dejection. The leaves yellow, the shadows chill the bone, and its dark by six o'clock. Hopefully, I'll be able to find a nice project in the southern hemisphere for two months come January.
