“Samuel Lount's and Peter Matthews' graves are marked with a broken marble column to symbolize two lives cut short” — and (some will say) to symbolize a dream of Canadian freedom and democracy that is still not quite complete.

This coming Friday, April 12 will mark the 175th anniversary of a significant event in the history of Toronto (and even Ontario and Canada writ large), that hardly anyone remembers now.

On the morning of April 12, 1838, close to the present-day intersection of King and Toronto streets downtown, Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were publicly executed, for their quite moderate roles in the quite moderate (and immediately failed) Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.

An old letter from John Ryerson to his brother Egerton Ryerson (after whom the present-day university is named) suggests something of the great sadness the deaths of Lount and Matthews originally evoked : “At eight o’clock today … Lount and Matthews were executed. The general feeling is in total opposition to the execution of those men. Sheriff Jarvis burst into tears when he entered the room to prepare them for execution.”

The Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, in which Lount and Matthews participated, remains a controversial historical event. Yet over the past decade or so, fresh writing by such historians as Jeffrey McNairn, Carol Wilton, and Albert Schrauwers has placed the rebellion in a broader story about the growth of popular democratic culture in what we now call Ontario, during the first half of the 19th century.

A 19th-century artist's rendering of the public hangings of Lount and Matthews, Toronto, April 12, 1838.

The British-appointed Lieutenant Governor Francis Bond Head described the equally controversial (if even less well remembered) Upper Canadian election of 1836 as a “moral war … between those who were for British institutions, against those who were for soiling the empire by the introduction of democracy.” And in this broader context Lount and Matthews, whatever else might be said, sacrificed their lives for what our Constitution Act, 1982 alludes to as the “free and democratic society” we enjoy in Canada today.

Samuel Lount especially is beginning to appear as (in the words of Ron Stagg at Ryerson University, a longtime student of the subject) perhaps even a “better symbol of the struggle for democracy” in the early history of what is now Ontario than the heretofore legendary 1837 rebellion leader, William Lyon Mackenzie (grandfather of Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1921–1926, 1926–1930, 1935–1948).

Lount and Matthews Commemoration Salon 2013 at the Gladstone Gallery

There have been a few attempts to cast this kind of mildly revisionist history of the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion in a brighter public light over the past generation or so. A less than successful but still pioneering movie called “Samuel Lount” appeared as long ago as 1985.

Twenty years ago, in late June 1993, “friends and family” of Lount and Matthews gathered at the Toronto Necropolis cemetery, where the two rebels of 1837 lie buried, to honour their memory and place a new plaque beside a commemorative stone originally erected in 1893. The Toronto civil rights lawyer Charles Roach, who sadly passed away himself just this past fall, also organized a few Victoria Day commemorations of Lount and Matthews in the early 2000s.

Last year a new group known as the Lount and Matthews Commemoration Committee began what it hopes will become an annual April 12 remembrance of the struggle for democracy in Canada for which Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews died, on April 12, 1838. The Committee’s initial commemoration took the form of an early morning vigil, at the time and on the spot Lount and Matthews had been hanged 174 years before.

At the Gladstone Gallery.

The crowd at this early morning vigil last year was enthusiastic but inevitably small. For the 175th anniversary of the Lount and Matthews hangings this year the Committee has been moderately more ambitious. Along with a second early morning vigil, on the evening of Friday, April 12 there will be a Lount and Matthews Commemoration Salon at the second-floor Gallery of the Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto, from 7 to 11 PM.

As Committee chair Ashok Charles explains, Salon participants will be able to meet in a relaxed atmosphere and talk with others interested in such still controversial subjects as Lount and Matthews, the rebellions of 1837–38 in both Upper and Lower Canada (ie Ontario and Quebec), and the Canadian democratic heritage.  Drinks can be purchased downstairs at the Gladstone. At the Gallery upstairs there will be snacks, videos, presentations, and the downtempo music of DJ Hans Ohm.

A.J. Haines (r), Member of the Provincial Parliament for St. Catherines, presenting the key of the William Lyon Mackenzie home at Queenston to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (l), June 1938.

Somewhat more formal but quite brief presentations will be held between 8:30 and 9:30 PM. They will include  a sketch by noted William Lyon Mackenzie King impersonator Sean McCann, a musical tribute from modern jazz artist Wally Brooker, and a memorial on the vagaries of the 1837 rebellion at the late 20th century Toronto city hall by former City Councillor Tony O’Donohue.

Committee chair Ashok Charles stresses that everyone who may or may not be interested in Lount and Matthews is more than welcome at the Salon. In keeping with their democratic commitments, there is no cover charge. You may show up at the Gladstone Gallery whenever you like between 7 and 11 PM for free.

(Though in keeping with the often stormy ethos of old Upper Canada elections, you will still have to pay for your own drinks.)

And see also Ashok Charles and Randall White, “Lount and Matthews Commemoration Salon,” on the excellent ActiveHistory.ca website.

As Jane Taber has also reported: “The party had wanted to show it can reinvent itself by becoming more open. It went some of the way by deciding to create a new class of ‘supporters’, who do not have to pay a fee to become a party member or join a riding association, but can vote for … a new Liberal leader.”  And delegates elected the 42-year-old Mike Crawley as party president, over the 59-year-old Sheila Copps (even if she does have “a good sex life”).

Those of us who harbour progressive left libertarian sentiments (as in, eg, Bernard Crick’s description of George Orwell as “left-wing, but also libertarian, egalitarian”) cannot help but be pleased as well that “an overwhelming 75 per cent of delegates” voted for “ the legalization and regulation of marijuana.”

(Even if: “The marijuana resolution is not binding on the leader or the party. And delegates rejected a proposal to remove the leader’s veto over the contents of future election platforms, so there’s no guarantee the party will ever actually campaign on the idea of legalizing pot.”)

At the same time, it apparently remains one of the problems of the federal Liberals that for all too many years now they have been a party of what passes for an old establishment in Canada. And, at best, it is apparently going to take considerably longer in the wilderness to shed this establishment past.

Thus even though the party went some of the way towards showing “it can reinvent itself by becoming more open …  by deciding to create a new class of ‘supporters’”(in Ms. Taber’s fine words again), “delegates rejected a US-style primary system to elect its leader.” And the new president, “Mr. Crawley, when asked what system he preferred during the presidential debate Friday night, was non-committal.”

Much more importantly for potential Liberal voters such as myself, only 38% of delegates voted YES for resolution 114 : “Canadian Identity in the 21st Century … BE IT RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada, urge the Parliament of Canada to form an all party committee to study the implementation of instituting a Canadian head of state popularly elected and sever formal ties with the British Crown.”

As the counterweights editors explained last week, “That’s democracy.” And we ardent supporters of an altogether and thorough-going post-colonial Canada at last can take some heart from continuing support for this ultimate democratic reform cause from the likes of  Liberal youth vice-president Sean Sutherland, and  Montreal MP Marc Garneau.

Like other supporters of a democratically elected Canadian head of state in Canada (on the Westminster parliamentary model of India, Ireland, Iceland, and other such places), I certainly intend to keep doing whatever I can to advance what strikes me as a crucial cause for the long-term future of our country. In this particular context, there is one obvious small thing I can do. And I have quickly discovered that, in reaction to the fate of resolution 114, that is what I intend to do.

Many Liberal opponents of the resolution, that is to say, have not been at all shy about stressing how if the party did support even just studying the prospects of some ultimate severing of our current residual “formal ties with the British Crown,” they would withdraw their support from the party. I find myself wanting to make clear, in the only small but immediate way I can, that this “divisiveness” cuts in more than one direction.

So … as someone who has often voted for the Liberal Party of Canada  — especially in the more recent past — I will certainly not be doing any such thing again, until and unless it reverses the position that 62% of its 3,200 biennial convention delegates have now taken on the future of the British monarchy in Canada!

Of course, no one will notice (or care) what I do, in my small corner. But I have no doubt that I am far from the only former Liberal voter who will now be taking this position. The ultimate democratic reform of politely moving beyond the British monarchy as Canada’s official head of state is growing into a more  fundamental issue than many who still identify with the old establishment think.

The counterweights editors have nonetheless already offered “Two cheers for Nathan Cullen’s ‘plan to unite the left that just might work’” on this website. And I would now like to add an additional cheer myself, in the wake of this week’s news that: “In his democratic-reform plan, Mr. Cullen is advocating a plebiscite to look at the future of the monarchy. This would come into play when —  or if — he becomes prime minister … He told The Globe Wednesday that ‘Canadians have never been asked’ about the issue except through the odd poll of 1,000 or so respondents … ‘and I think Canadians have a right to be asked,’ he said.”

On the excellent BC website The Tyee yesterday Andrew MacLeod noted that Mr. Cullen had first broached this subject in a November 29 post on his own website. Mr. McLeod noted as well that: “Interestingly, the topic of the monarchy came up in a Nov. 18 interview with The Tyee, details of which are soon to be published. Cullen mentioned the monarchy as an antiquated institution and said it ‘irks me as a democrat’ … However, he dismissed acting on it. ‘It’s not a top priority for me,’ he said. ‘It becomes very distracting. An emotional and distracting debate when you’re trying to work on poverty and social equity.’”

I would add another cheer for whatever happened to prompt Nathan Cullen to change his mind about the “distracting” nature of the fate-of-the-British-monarchy-in-Canada over the 11 days between November 18 and 29. I don’t myself think this issue is at all distracting “when you’re trying to work on poverty and social equity.” The 19th century relic of the British monarchy in Canada in fact continues to serve as a prop for anti-democratic elitist elements in our political culture today, that only distract us from struggles against all forms of inequality.

I am pleased as well to align my cheers for Mr. Cullen’s monarchy plebiscite with my cheers last month for the Young Liberals of Canada’s “Resolution 114 at the upcoming Liberal Biennial Convention, to be held in Ottawa, January 13–15, 2012.” As some may recall, this proposes “that the Liberal Party of Canada, urge the Parliament of Canada to form an all party committee to study the implementation of instituting a Canadian head of state popularly elected and sever formal ties with the British Crown.”

Of course, it may well be that Resolution 114 has no more serious chance of being accepted at the January 2012 Liberal Convention than Nathan Cullen has of becoming the next leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada / Nouveau Parti démocratique du Canada. But the hard political fact remains that at least some factions in both of Canada’s traditional progressive political parties have now crawled out of the woodwork on the big symbolic democratic reform issue of the future of the British monarchy in Canada.

And I am pleased as well that at least some of the scepticism I expressed this past summer about the extent to which “neither the federal New Democrats nor the federal Liberals in Canada have themselves quite grown up” has already proved at least a little too extreme?

Who knows? The “ultimately winning free and democratic cause of the independent Canadian republic” that will once again bring “the Conservative party in Canada to its knees (a place it has so often occupied, after all, ever since the death of John A. Macdonald in 1891)” may actually be at least a little closer than even its most ardent advocates of the present day have hoped?

Conservative Tim Uppal holding daughter Kirpa, 3, with his wife Kiran and son Nihal, 1, at his campaign office in Sherwood Park, Alta.: May 2, 2011. Photograph by: Candace Elliott, edmontonjournal.com.

[UPDATED MAY 19, 20]. There is at least a strong perception that Senate reform will be one of the key issues on the early agenda of the new Harper majority government in Ottawa. (See, eg: “New momentum for Senate reform” and “Then it will be on to Senate reform.”)

In speculating about today’s much-touted federal cabinet shuffle, yesterday Althia Raj and Tobi Cohen at Postmedia News were also suggesting that: “With Harper’s Senate reform agenda now on the front burner, a new player may also replace Steven Fletcher as minister of state for democratic reform.”

This has proved an apt speculation. The new cabinet announced today may be far from earth-shaking. But it is “dotted by nine new faces,” including “Tim Uppal from Edmonton-Sherwood Park … the new man in charge of democratic reform.”

Tim and PM Harper.

Whatever else, Tim Uppal MP is walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time proof that Stephen Harper’s new Conservative Party of Canada is not your grandfather’s (or even your father’s) old Anglophile Canadian Tories. And he may prove a cunning choice as point man for whatever exact moves the Harper majority government intends to take on its step-by-step journey to serious renovation of the still unreformed Senate of Canada, at last. (Or so at least it seemed until: “Harper’s office announced just after Wednesday’s cabinet shuffle that Larry Smith and Fabian Manning were getting their seats back [via old-style prime ministerial appointments!]. They resigned to run for election, but both lost. Josée Verner, who was Canadian Heritage and Intergovernmental minister under Harper but lost her riding on May 2, is also getting a Senate seat [via the same old-style tricks].”)

* * * *

2010 Olympic Torch Relay in Fort Saskatchewan; l to r: Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, Fort Saskatchewan Mayor Jim Sheasgreen, member of the RCMP, and Edmonton-Sherwood Park MP Tim Uppal.

Tim Uppal was born in New Westminster BC in 1974, but “has spent most of his life in Edmonton,” Alberta. He “comes from a very hardworking and proud Canadian family,” which “originally came from northern India, Punjab. In Canada, his grandfather worked on the railroad system that helped build this country and his father worked in coal mines and sawmills in Alberta and British Columbia.”  Before his political career, Tim Uppal helped “run a family business in Sherwood Park Mall” in Edmonton, and “was a Residential Mortgage Manager for TD Canada Trust.”

Uppal “ran for the Canadian Alliance in the 2000 federal election in Edmonton Southeast, where he lost to David Kilgour [the Conservative apostate who became a strange Alberta Liberal] by less than 5,000 votes. In a re-match in the 2004 federal election in Edmonton-Beaumont, Kilgour defeated Uppal, who was now running for the Conservative Party of Canada, by just 134 votes.” Uppal “subsequently lost the Conservative nomination for the 2006 election in Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont to Mike Lake.” But he finally “won the nomination as the Conservative candidate for Edmonton—Sherwood Park in the 2008 election.” And even though “some members of the riding association board quit in protest” and backed an independent conservative candidate (James Ford), this time Uppal managed to win the seat “by a margin of 1,668 votes.”

Not all conservatives in Edmonton-Sherwood Park have supported Tim Uppal. But he has now taken the seat twice — in 2008 and 2011 — as the official candidate of Stephen Harper’s new Conservative Party of Canada.

In the election this past May 2, 2011 Tim Uppal “won his seat in Edmonton-Sherwood Park with a 15-per-cent vote margin over his closest rival as of late Monday [once again the independent conservative James Ford], joining the ranks of his party’s majority.” He “said he is looking forward to working with a majority government. ‘It’s going to be a stable government that will continue running the economy well. … You’ll see more of that. And with a majority government, all the important legislation that we’ve been trying to bring forth in the past won’t be stalled and gutted by the opposition now.’”

Ever since Bert Brown, “a farmer from Kathyrn, Alta … plowed the message ‘Triple E Senate or Else’ into his neighbour’s barley field,” the kind of Canadian Senate reform that has its modern beginnings in Alberta in the 1980s has been too often viewed elsewhere as some red-neck rural populist’s fantasy, unsuited to the increasingly diverse urban Canadian federation of the 21st century. (Actually the  Triple E Senate or Else’ here comes from the CBC website: my own perhaps equally hazy recollection is that Mr. Brown just ploughed the three letters “EEE” into his “neighbour’s barley field.”)

There certainly remain some crucial problems with Mr. Brown’s “Triple E” Senate reform concept for Canada today. And if Tim Uppal is going to do more than just shepherd the two outstanding Harper minority government bills on Senate term limits and Senate elections through a new Canadian House of Commons in which Mr. Harper and his party can pretty much do whatever they like, he will have to come to grips with these problems.

Tim Uppal and members of his campaign team in Edmonton -Sherwood Park.

Having a hard-working urban-based Canadian Sikh in a blue turban preside over whatever is to be done could nonetheless prove some form of intriguing and even innovative asset — symbolically at the very least! We will still, of course, have to wait and see what finally happens, down on the ground, in the real world of Canada and its often fractious provinces (some of whom have threatened to take any Senate reforms they do not like to court, to test their constitutionality, regardless of what the majority in the federal Parliament at Ottawa may decide).  But here’s hoping that Mr. Uppal from Edmonton will finally be able to do something sensible with the Canadian so-called “upper house” of Parliament, that Mr. Harper himself so aptly christened “a relic of the 19th century” some five and a half years ago.  It is about time, and the new majority government has no excuse to fail on this file yet again. As Tim Uppal has said: “with a majority government, all the important legislation that we’ve been trying to bring forth in the past won’t be stalled and gutted by the opposition now.”

UPDATE MAY 19: Through the vagaries of my ordinary work schedule, I did not catch up with the news about the reappointments of former Senators Larry Smith and Fabian Manning (who were defeated in their attempts to actually get elected to the Canadian House of Commons) , and the fresh Senate appointment of defeated  Canadian Heritage and Intergovernmental minister Josée Verner, as announced by Harper’s office just after Wednesday’s cabinet shuffle, until early this morning.

NDP leader Jack Layton has criticized these appointments, and said “Mr. Harper talks about Senate reform but he’s doing things in the same old way, in fact even worse.”

You don’t have to be the leader of the official opposition, however, to smell some kind of dead fish  in all this. Here’s Scott Stinson in the relentlessly conservative National Post: “It’s not just that Mr. Harper decided to appoint three more unabashed partisans to the Senate. It’s not just that the Senators-to-be, Larry Smith, Fabian Manning, and Josée Verner, were rejected by Canadian voters only two weeks ago. And it’s not just that the PMO’s announcement of the appointments was seemingly timed to be as contemptuous of the public as possible — just after the new Cabinet was announced, and mere moments after the Prime Minister had completed a question-and-answer session with the media in Ottawa. It’s all of it, in one tidy package: more patronage, less respect for democracy and less accountability. He’s long since given up the pledge to only appoint “elected senators,” of course, but it takes some gumption to swallow all those principles at once … Marjory LeBreton, the Senate government leader, defended the appointments — for the man who made them wasn’t around to explain them to the press — as part of the Conservative plan to reform the Upper House, which would include elections. But the government seemingly had control of the Senate. If it is serious about reform, it could get started on that particular can of constitutional worms right away, and if it ultimately found that it needed more numbers to implement its package, it could appoint more senators at that point. There is no other way to view Wednesday’s announcements other than that they are pillow-soft landing spots for Tory cronies who failed to land jobs on May 2.”

To talk about these three appointments as somehow “poisoning the well” for any more serious future reform efforts somehow engineered or otherwise presided over by the new democratic reform minister Tim Uppal is no doubt not quite apt in some ways. The Harper Conservatives now have their majority in the already elected branch of Parliament, and can do whatever they want, when they want. On Senate reform, as on everything else, what Mr. Layton thinks really doesn’t matter. (And of course what journalists like Scott Stinson write matters even less — to say nothing of what people like me may think, outside or inside the office or anywhere else!) Yet the appointments certainly do make you suddenly sit up and wonder whether Mr. Uppal or Mr. Harper or anyone else inside the new majority government in Ottawa ever will really do anything worthwhile about the unreformed Senate of Canada?

UPDATE MAY 20: There has been some additional discussion in at least a few organs of the mass media, on both Tim Uppal’s new role in the current Harper Senate reform agenda, and the three fresh old-style appointments announced on Wednesday.

See, eg: “Premiers heap scorn on Harper’s latest Senate appointments” ; “Audacious Senate appointments are Harper’s gift to Layton” ; and “Senate appointments part of plan to democratize upper house: PMO” (the kind of Orwellian double-think argument that only people who genuinely do believe the relevant public is quite stupid can make, as Scott Stinson’s National Post article yesterday shows quite nicely).

“Tories drop an ‘E’ from Senate reform plan” also clarifies (or at least appears to) that the new majority government’s current step by step Senate reform agenda goes no further than the two term-limit and Senate election “consultation” bills which the old Harper minority governments introduced — twice! (Though I think myself that this is not all that bad a thing, for the time being. The so-called missing “E” of equal provincial representation here is unworkable in a Canadian context. And more realistic change to the existing provincial distribution of Senate seats, which is ultimately necessary for any serious approximation of the Senate’s crucial regional representation agenda, no doubt, requires further study and debate, as well as the kind of “opening up the Constitution …  can of worms … that’s not something that we’re looking at,” as Tim Uppal explains. If Mr. Uppal were really taking his job seriously, he might at least want to somehow help start the further study and debate required. But, in the real world right now … )

Finally an article by Andrew Potter in Maclean’s (“Got Senate reform if you want it”) raises what strikes me as an unhappily defeatist perspective on the serious reform agenda of the past quarter century. But it also underlines an apparently very realistic question at the moment: “ In the end, though, all of this might be just whistling in the wind, since it isn’t clear Stephen Harper is serious about Senate reform. Even such a mild reform as a more legitimate appointments process would involve the prime minister actually focusing his attention and expending some political capital. Given Harper’s fecklessness on this score, it would appear that the status quo continues to serve everyone’s interests, except those of Canadians.”

Our deep sympathies to those directly affected by today’s 8.9 earthquake disaster in Japan, which apparently ranks as the world’s fifth largest since 1900. Here at home in Canada we are fortunate that sections of the BC coast recorded up to a metre in the rise of water but no damage from the tsunami generated by the earthquake. In Japan itself more than 1,000 people are feared dead — and the estimate may rise.

As the week of March 7–11 that maybe was or was not in Canadian federal politics closes, two new polls on party standings have thrown some almost abrupt cold water on the more or less enthused speculation about such themes as “can opposition get Harper on abuse of power instead of budget?” — that I joined myself just two days ago.

The first (and most damaging for the lead Liberal opposition party) is an on-line poll of 1,021 Canadians conducted between March 8 and 9 by Angus Reid/Vision Critical. It “gives Stephen Harper and his Conservatives 39% support compared to 23% for the Liberals. The NDP is at 17%, while the Bloc and the Green Party are tied with 9% support.”

The second (and somewhat less damaging, for the Liberals at any rate) is an  EKOS Research poll of 2,892 respondents  conducted between February 24 and March 8. In cross-Canada round numbers this gives the Conservatives 35%, the Liberals 28%, the NDP 15%, the Green Party 10% and the Bloc Quebecois 9%.

The argument that House Speaker Milliken’s two “black eye” contempt rulings against the “Harper Government” this past Wednesday have crystallized some damaging new abuse-of-power case against the Conservatives has also been aggressively challenged by Tory guru Tim Powers, in a Globe and Mail column neatly headlined  “Black eyes will heal and leave no visible scars on Tories.”

Still more to the point, celebrated (if currently vaguely disaffected?) Liberal guru Warren Kinsella is arguing that going for a fresh federal election right now “and going on the ethics theme, will lead to a majority Harper Government … Look at the polls, folks. If you take Quebec out of the picture (where the Bloc utterly dominates, anyway), the Reformatories have A TWENTY POINT LEAD in English Canada. Twenty points! That’s massacre time.”

Kinsella goes on: “I like the ethics theme as a ballot question. I do … But here’s the problem: voters are pretty skeptical about ‘scandal’ stuff … it takes weeks and months to publicize and explain something like the ‘in and out’ conspiracy — Hell, it took Harper more than a year to capitalize on the sponsorship stuff. It’ll take too much time to tell the story right.”

Frank Graves at EKOS seems to be offering similar advice. He is urging that “it would be ‘prudent to park’ the enthusiasm for an election that seems to be emanating from the opposition parties and ‘hope the accountability and character issues can percolate and blend to provide a more forceful challenge’” somewhat further down the road.

So … will advice of this sort (which no doubt does smack of considerable common sense, in some respects) finally persuade the opposition parties and their current parliamentary majority to back down from voting non-confidence in the second Harper minority government, when push finally comes to shove during the week of March 21–25 (and/or perhaps the week of March 28–April 1)?  The counterweights editors on this site are currently divided on this question, and are reserving judgment. Perhaps somewhat too foolishly, I have less hesitation about rushing in and saying NO.

To make a long story very short, I think a bit too much toothpaste has already come out of the tube to get it all back. And more importantly, if the opposition parties back down on the abuse-of-power and contempt-for-democracy-and-the-majority-of-the-Canadian people theme now (a  more apt characterization than “ethics,” it seems to me) — and finally continue to keep the government in office — that will seriously reduce their credibility on the theme down the road.

(Once the genie is out of the bottle on this kind of thing too, it can’t go back without losing  power. Moreover, the case here, I think, is a bit different from the sponsorship scandal of yore: and it is still a little too early to try to measure even its short-run impact on popular opinion.)

Anyway, only time will tell definitively of course. And I certainly could be wrong — about whether there will be an election this spring, and about whether an election now does ultimately make sense, for the forces of progress and the great long-run cause of a stronger Canada.

Probably the most interesting thing about politics — and especially democratic politics — is that anyone can always be wrong, at any time. (And occasionally, history does suggest, that even includes opinion polls!)

One of three Dana (Woodward?) posters for the 2008 Canadian federal election — “a take from Shepard Fairey's Obama poster” of the same vintage. Everywhere in 2011, it seems, times have changed? Photo: Amanda Woodward.

Flipping through the rather slender electronic file on the federal NDP motion for “a national referendum on abolishing the Senate” — slated for debate in the Canadian House of Commons today, after some procedural wrangling yesterday — forces you to dwell on just how beleaguered the cause of progress in Ottawa has become lately.

The concept is to include a Senate abolition referendum on the ballot for the next federal election. And: “According to NDP leader Jack Layton, ‘We’ve got to deal with fundamentals of democracy in the next election because you cannot trust Stephen Harper with our democratic institutions.’”

On the theoretical surface, all this does focus on a key current issue in Canadian federal politics, and makes a certain obvious kind of sense. As Chantal Hébert explains in today’s Toronto Star: “The fact that a regionally distorted body made up of patronage appointees holds the power to thwart the legislative will of the elected House of Commons has long contributed to Canada’s democratic deficit … In this Parliament, the recently acquired Conservative majority in the Senate has been used to kill or delay bills passed by an opposition majority in the House.”

Yet as Ms. Hébert herself, Robert Silver in the Globe and Mail, and the National Post editorial board make clear (among many others elsewhere no doubt), the Layton NDP proposal for a Senate abolition referendum makes no practical sense at all. (Just for starters, even if such a referendum were to result in a Canada-wide vote in favour — which all extant opinion polls on the subject suggest is unlikely — doing the deed would require a constitutional amendment, for which the requisite degree of provincial support would almost certainly not be forthcoming.)

* * * *

It is a sign of one of the several weaknesses of the current democratic reform postures of both the Layton New Democrats and the Ignatieff Liberals, I think, that the National Post editorial board actually has an at least half-more-convincing position on the increasingly urgent practical question of Senate democratization.  It notes that the Harper minority government’s current Bill S-8 “would allow provinces to hold elections for nominees to the federal upper chamber, who would then be recommended for appointment to the governor-general by the prime minister.”

And (sensibly enough, I also think myself) the Post editorial Board urges that passing Bill S-8 into law “would be a first step to transforming the Senate into a truly effective and representative governing body, and bringing Canadian democracy into the 21st century.”

At the same time, there is another seminal Achilles’ heel in the Post editorial board position that finally reduces it as well to an impractical exercise in trying to create a pie-in-the-sky version of Canada, doomed to never see the light of day in anyone’s real world of politics. As part of its wind-up to urging Bill S-8 as an effective first step, the board argues that: “Instead of abolishing the Canadian Senate, we should reform it according to the well-known ‘Triple-E’ mantra — making it equal in its regional distribution, elected in its membership, and effective in its legislative role.”

There may be a bit of room for common sense here in the phrase “equal in its regional distribution.” But if this is taken to mean “equal provincial representation,” as the original so-called “Triple E” reformers intended, in our current political circumstances Quebec will never agree to this kind of proposal — for its own good enough reasons. And in similar circumstances (I would bet a lot of money on, myself at any rate) it is almost certainly the case too that Ontario would side with Quebec — once again making the requisite provincial agreement for a constitutional amendment impossible.

* * * *

So … to make an all-too-long story very short, why don’t both the Layton New Democrats and the Ignatieff Liberals come up with a fresh Senate democratization proposal, that repairs the current Achilles’ heel of the Triple E concept — and points toward some altogether practical light at the end of the tunnel?

Eg, they could both agree to support the Harper government’s current Bill S-8, to achieve some initial progress on the “elected” E, in exchange for a parallel bill (or, more likely no doubt, amendment to Bill S-8) on a future scheme of provincial representation in an elected Senate that would make sense for Quebec (to achieve some initial progress on the “equal” E).

What would such a scheme of provincial representation look like, you may well ask? No doubt as well, a committee of some sort would have to be struck to inquire into the matter in depth. But just as an example, several years ago a fairly wise and experienced observer of the Canadian Senate reform scene proposed one version of a provincial representation scheme that might work for Quebec, on the Globe and Mail website. And, thanks to the wonders of the world wide web, this proposal is still available for consultation today — just as a point of departure.

The main point for the moment is that some serious movement in this kind of direction would at least bring the current debate about Senate reform and the fundamentals of democracy in Canada today out of the altogether impractical fairy-tale world in which it is now stuck — in all three Canada-wide parties that currently have seats in Parliament. And that would set us on a road to some kind of serious approach to reforming the now so patently obsolete (and even ridiculous) upper house of the 1867 confederation, that could actually work in the very end.

Randall White is the author of a number of books on Canadian history and politics, including Voice of Region: The Long Journey to Senate Reform in Canada, and Ontario Since 1985.

Lauren O’Nizzle, “a 20-something Internet kid living in Toronto, Canada,” dressed in “my owl sweater” which “reminds me of an essay by Harold Innis” — about how “the richest flowering of an empire comes just before its decline and fall.”

Once upon a time, the near-great economic historian Harold Innis began his 1947 “Minerva’s Owl” Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Canada with: “I have taken the title from that striking sentence of Hegel ‘Minerva’s owl begins its flight only in the gathering dusk…’”

As much more recently explained by Lauren O’Nizzle, “a 20-something Internet kid living in Toronto, Canada  …. The gist of Innis’s ‘Minerva’s Owl’ essay is that the richest flowering of an empire comes just before its decline and fall.”

Some proposition of this sort might also be applied to one of the more bizarre features of the Stephen Harper Conservative minority government in Canada today. And that is its strange last-gasp enthusiasm for the now almost totally vacant symbolism of the British monarchy in Canada — unmatched since John George Diefenbaker, Prime Minister of Canada, 1957–1963.

(And as just another example of the impressive lack of fear of contradiction in Mr. Harper’s political thought, he apparently does not believe the monarchy qualifies for the same “relic of the 19th century” label he at least once so aptly applied to the unreformed Senate of Canada, which still owes so much to the British House of Lords.)

Princess Diana chats with Prime Minister Trudeau in Ottawa, June 15, 1983. Her tragic death in Paris, on the last day of August 1997, was one of several beginnings of the end of the British monarchy in Canada in the 1990s.

It can only be Mr. Harper’s rampant (and, it must be said, undemocratic) prime ministerial enthusiasm for the British monarchy that has prompted the Daily Mail online, back in the one of the old mother countries on the north side of the English Channel, to report just yesterday: “Canada has been chosen as the destination for the first official overseas tour that Prince William and Kate Middleton will undertake as man and wife … Despite polls suggesting Canadians are ambivalent towards the monarchy, the pair are expected to be mobbed by fans.”

Mmmm … The latest of the “polls suggesting Canadians are ambivalent towards the monarchy” would seem to be the one from late this past December, reported on by Barbara Yaffe at the Vancouver Sun with: “Ho Hum About William and Kate … An end-of-year Angus Reid poll highlights the ebbing love affair between Canadians and the British royals … Nearly two thirds of us would like to see a Canadian serve as Canada’s head of state … Just 21 per cent favour Canada remaining a monarchy.”

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A more recent sounding of popular sentiment on the matter in Lauren O’Nizzle’s current city of residence took place just this past week, on the website of the cp24 TV station, which asked “Will you go see William & Kate when they visit Canada this summer?” Some 5% of respondents were Undecided, 24% answered Yes, and 71% said No.

The Canadian fur trade in the east, from Lahontan’s Map of Canada, 1704.

You might wonder why PM Harper is so keen about a declining and falling institution that only 21% of the early 21st century Canadian people believe in? The answer would seem to be that he does not worry unduly (or even at all?) about the opinions of the democratic majority.

According to John Ibbitson in today’s Globe and Mail: “The Conservatives have crafted a plan, it appears, to obtain a majority [of seats in Parliament] while winning only about 37 per cent of the [Canada-wide popular] vote.” (A feat made possible — maybe — by the current increasingly dysfunctional blending of our “first-past-the-post” electoral system with five more or less credible political parties running in federal elections.)

Meanwhile, the offshore Daily Mail may be confident that Prince William and Kate Middleton will be “be mobbed by fans” this summer. But the Monarchist League of Canada is worried.

The Canadian fur trade in the west, 1821–1870.

This past Wednesday the League’s Message Board was asking: “Has anyone read through the commentary various posters have been writing in response to today’s announcement [about the “Upcoming Royal Tour”]? It seems to be much worse than what we saw last summer with the Queen or the previous autumn with the Prince of Wales … the opinions expressed in the ‘comment boxes’ on the CBC website are surely not reflective of what we should expect from Canadians … As a public broadcaster, the CBC should be striving to educate Canadians about their own heritage rather than jumping on to the apathetic/cynical/republican bandwagon.”

Meanwhile again, Ivan Sandoval, another “Internet kid living in Toronto, Canada” (and a rising young Canadian republican activist) has just started up a lean-forward new website called Canadian Republic/Republique Canadienne : A Blog For Canadians Who Want A Republic/Un Blog Pour Les Canadiens/Canadiennes Qui Veulent Une République.

Harold Innis canoeing on the Peace River, 1924, researching his 1930 classic on The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History.

Our own best wishes and high hopes go out to this new project. We too believe that our “own heritage” in Canada is much deeper and more diverse and democratic than either the Monarchist League or Stephen Harper seems to understand.

The Harold Innis who Lauren O’Nizzle admires so much (a man once somewhat jocularly described by the Times Literary Supplement in the United Kingdom as “Canada’s first and perhaps only genuine intellectual”) did understand the real depths of the Canadian heritage — more than three-quarters of a century ago. The transcontinental fur-trading “Northwest Company,” he wrote in his still classic book of 1930, “was the forerunner of confederation and it was built on the work of the French voyageur, the contributions of the Indian, especially the canoe, Indian corn, and pemmican, and the organizing ability of Anglo-American merchants.” Maybe, as “a public broadcaster, the CBC should be striving to educate Canadians” about the real Canadian past!

This is Vancouver, in November? Apparently it is, on the morning of November 25, 2010, near Fraser Street and King Edward. Photograph by: Ian Smith, PNG. Canada, it would seem, really is starting to change, at last?

The news that “NL premier Danny Williams announces resignation” will bring different thoughts to different minds on the Canadian mainland. In Ontario, eg, the point that his “resignation comes before a provincial election scheduled for October” will prompt some to wonder yet again whether Dalton McGuinty, also facing a provincial election scheduled for October, and also “elected premier in 2003,” might be announcing his resignation soon as well.  (Our continuing advice on this front: don’t hold your breath.)

Others who were especially struck by the speculations of former Brian Mulroney chief of staff Norman Spector a few days ago, “Is Harper preparing his exit?,” will wonder again whether Premier Williams’s resignation foreshadows some similar announcement from the office of the Prime Minister of Canada himself, not too much further down the road? (You “have to wonder,” Mr. Spector is advising, “why else his government would have granted Bill Clinton’s foundation a special designation that puts it on the same foot for tax purposes as domestic charities.”)

The latest EKOS poll on Canadian federal politics — which reports that “the Conservatives are once again establishing a significant lead over the faltering Liberal party” — may raise at least some doubts about Norman Spector’s speculation. And something similar could be said about the prospect that, in the new age of Rob Ford, the Harper Conservatives may finally make inroads into the Greater Toronto Area, with the victory of former police chief Julian Fantino in the Vaughan by-election this coming Monday.

And of course there’s lots of snow in Alberta right now too: “Parks Canada Mountain Safety Programs manager Marc Ledwidge disembarks from a helicopter on a tour which included a stop at Shadow Lake. Photograph by: Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald.”

At the same time, even in the latest EKOS poll the Harper “Conservatives are now very close to their moving average over the past year, which is still well short of their achievement in the last election” (to say nothing of the majority government that continues to elude the Harperland juggernaut).  Even if they do win in Vaughan this coming Monday, there is not much as yet to confirm that some Rob Ford effect is breaking out federally in the Toronto region at large. (The Conservatives have gone up a bit in the region since the last EKOS poll, from 34% to 36% in round numbers, but so have the Liberals, from 36% to 40%.  And, in the words of another recent headline, “EKOS accurately predicts Rob Ford’s victory,” closer than anyone else!)

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So … just supposing Norman Spector is onto something, and Stephen Harper actually has already  started wiring himself for his next career — on the wider international scene, say, where “access to NATO leaders [grateful for Canada’s recent Afghanistan extension, eg], and to people like Bill Clinton, would be a lucrative calling card.”  Danny Williams, it has been reported, is justifiably proud enough of his legacy to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. If Stephen Harper were to follow in his footsteps, even before the next federal election (in which, even with the latest polls, it still seems likely that he would fail to win a majority government, yet again), what would be his legacy to the people of Canada?

“This Canada Line train couldn't make it across the Fraser River Bridge between Richmond and Vancouver on Thursday because of ice and snow. Photograph by: Ian Smith, PNG.”

Our own view here is quite clear and quite certain. Without any doubt, Mr. Harper’s greatest contribution to Canadian federal politics has been to at last bring Western Canada (or at least the most western parts of Western Canada) more securely (and contentedly) into the modern Canadian federal system — or the northern North American confederation of 1867 (legatee of the transcontinental multiracial northern fur trade, from the Atlantic to the Arctic to the Pacific, in the wake of the US Civil War, etc, etc), or whatever else you might like to call it.

The latest EKOS poll offers some pretty clear evidence of this as well (again for at least the most western parts of Western Canada). Among other things it asked: “How much do you trust the government in Ottawa to do what is right?” The regional breakdown of the “Almost never” answers was: Saskatchewan/Manitoba 31%, Quebec 30%, Atlantic Canada 23%, Ontario 23%, British Columbia 16%, and Alberta 15%! At the other extreme, there was a parallel regional breakdown for “Most of the time”: Quebec 24%, Saskatchewan/Manitoba 24%, Atlantic Canada 27%, Ontario 28%, British Columbia 33%, and Alberta 37%. (Or, in the age of Stephen Harper BC and Alberta are the provinces both least dissatisfied and most satisfied with the federal government in Ottawa. Tell that to someone who says Canada is a Central Canadian conspiracy!)

“The historic and majestic Banff Springs Hotel sits amidst the frosty valley foilage ... Photograph by: Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald.”

The great failure of Stephen Harper in this context, in our view, is that the late 20th century Western regional critique of Canadian federalism has included some potentially very positive and constructive elements, from coast to coast to coast, which Mr. Harper now seems to have quietly given up on even trying to mobilize. At its best, at any rate, the West in the past generation (perhaps especially its most westerly and most prosperous parts) has spoken up for a more confident and forthright — and more democratic and regionally balanced —  federation of the 21st century, less hamstrung by the obsolete genteel hypocrisies of an earlier era in the St. Lawrence Lowlands of southern Ontario and western Quebec.

Down on the ground, in this world of we ordinary people, the extent to which this western view of democratic reform has at last acquired a popular Canada-wide constituency is reflected in the recent Angus Reid “online survey … conducted in the days after Conservative government senators killed a bill that a majority of elected MPs in the Commons — sitting in Opposition — supported.” This survey showed that: “Most Canadians—69 per cent—support the idea of an elected Senate …  while just 30 per cent would like to see the upper chamber abolished altogether.”  Moreover, a “sizable majority – 63 per cent—supports a nationwide referendum to decide the future of the senate.” And these “survey findings are consistent with poll results in the past two years.”

“Highway 99 in Richmond, 6:51 a.m. Photograph by: Courtesy, DriveBC.ca.”

Mr. Harper began his career as minority prime minister of Canada with some inspiring rhetoric about the present still unelected and unreformed Senate of Canada as a “19th century relic.”  You can say (and some still do) that he has tried to introduce serious albeit merely “step by step” Senate reform proposals, but the opposition majorities in the parliaments he has faced as a minority prime minister have not been prepared to co-operate. Yet in fact Mr. Harper has not done what any serious proponent of Senate reform would have to do to convince parliamentary majorities. His step by step proposals have not even touched on the questions of regional and provincial representation that are so crucial (especially, eg, in Canada’s one francophone-majority province of Quebec). Mr. Harper has been content to use Senate reform as a low-minded wedge issue, in an effort to shore up his partisan regional support, without wading into the deeper (and no doubt more challenging and risky) waters of Canadian patriotism and idealism, that will finally need to be stirred if any kind of serious Senate and other democratic reform in our 19th century relic of a political system is ever going to happen.

Meanwhile, the recent Angus Reid survey also “showed 61 per cent believe Harper’s decision to name Conservatives to the upper chamber despite his longstanding opposition to an appointed senate is hypocritical.”  Yesterday Gloria Galloway at the Globe and Mail was wondering “Is Harper systematically ‘snuffing’ out democracy in Senate?” She went on: “Opposition MPs are worried their private-member’s bills will meet a similar fate to that of Bill C-311, the NDP climate-change legislation that was killed without debate last week by the Conservatives in the Senate — or that the bills will just be allowed to die … And constitutional experts say any move by Conservative senators to block the advancement of opposition private-member’s bills as the Prime Minister Stephen Harper locks his grip on the Red Chamber later this month would be an abuse of government power.”

“While a light snow fell Wednesday at Simon Fraser University, a few guys decided to get in some passing drills on the frozen pond. Photograph by: Dixon Tam, Special to the Vancouver Sun.” (Notice jersey worn by one guy in Western Canada.)

Mr. Harper, it has been said, never reads the Globe and Mail. So he will no doubt not be troubled by such mere Central Canadian journalism. Yet if Norman Spector’s recent speculation is more or less on the money, and Stephen Harper actually has already started wiring himself for his next career, beyond our modest shores as it were (a kind of Michael Ignatieff in reverse?), his legacy to the people of Canada is going to be so much less than it might have been, if he had really had the courage and breadth of vision to seriously dig into the long overdue democratic reform of the 19th century relic that remains the unelected and unreformed Senate of Canada. As matters stand, he will just be remembered as the prime minister who made more egregiously porcine old-style raw patronage Senate appointments, in a shorter period of time, than any other holder of the office since 1867 (or something like that). The West in this sense has not conquered the bad old system back east. It has finally given in and even made things worse than before — in a far shorter time than many of us in other regions who still do believe in serious Senate reform hoped was possible. (And perhaps this is why more people in Saskatchewan and Manitoba than in any other region of the country — including Quebec — still “almost never … trust the government in Ottawa,” even with PM Harper from Calgary sitting so aggressively on the throne in the PMO?)

As amazing, in some ways amusing, and even constitutionally troubling as the case may be, we now know that the answer to this question is yes. (See, eg: “NDP outraged as Senate kills climate change bill”; “Edmonton MP disappointed with the Senate’s latest decision”; “Tory senators kill climate bill passed by House”; “Senate kills climate-change bill ahead of UN talks”; “Canada Senate Kills Climate Change Bill”; and “Canada senate kills climate bill ahead of UN summit.”)

Perhaps the most elegant response we’ve stumbled across has come from Aaron Wherry at Macleans.ca. In a very economical item archly entitled “Today’s constitutional crisis,” Mr. Wherry simply reported that “Conservative senators called a snap vote last night [ie on the evening of Tuesday, November 16, 2010] and defeated Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, that was passed by the House in May.”

Aaron Wherry then quoted PM Harper in an earlier incarnation: “‘We don’t believe an unelected body should in anyway be blocking an elected body,’ he told a news conference in Calgary … ‘We are looking for the opportunity to elect senators, but if at some point it becomes clear some senators are not going to be elected, the government will name senators to ensure that the elected will of the House of Commons and the people of Canada is reflected in the Senate.’”

Perhaps PM Harper’s most outrageous and/or hilarious response to the rank hypocrisy in all this (to say nothing of the, in principle at any rate, potential constitutional crisis) is captured in two recent articles from the Winnipeg Free Press: “Harper uses outrage over unelected Tory senators to promote Senate reform” (talk about Orwellian “Doublethink”) ; and (even harder to cite with anything resembling a straight face): “Harper government tries to speed passage of Senate term-limit bill … The Harper government is asking for opposition support to speed approval of a bill that would limit senators to eight-year terms … The move appears aimed at capitalizing on opposition outrage over the defeat of a climate-change bill by Conservative senators this week.”

After it had asked: “Would the emerging new raw-patronage Conservative majority in the still unreformed and unelected Senate of Canada actually defeat even a private member’s bill duly passed by a clear majority of MPs in the elected Canadian House of Commons?”, the article posted on this site not quite eight weeks ago raised an additional question: “And what would be the practical political consequences if it did — in the next Canadian federal election say?”

We would like to be able to report that all this is the absolute last straw for PM Harper and his new Conservative Party of Canada. We would like to be able to confidently predict that in the next election, whenever it may come, Mr. Harper and his party will pay dearly for the now utterly appalling travesty of his alleged Senate reform policy, and his now utterly undeniable practical contempt for what he himself has pretended to deeply respect as “the elected will of the House of Commons and the people of Canada.”

Alas, the real world of Canadian federal politics remains more complex, morally ambiguous — and even, we feel bound to agree, more tragically twisted — than it ought to be. Despite Stephen Harper’s intermittent populist democratic rhetoric out of office, we remain light years away from the kind of much-needed democratic reform that veteran Ottawa observer Lawrence Martin alluded to just last month.

What has just happened in the unreformed Senate of Canada just strengthens Mr. Martin’s conclusions: “As has been seen and has been said, our democratic system is a sham … an antiquated system, an elected dictatorship that drives away voters and occasions serial abuse of power … The new frontier is a new democracy, a grand reform that brings our system into the 21st century, that ends one-man rule, creates an elected Senate, introduces real checks and balances. Such a grand remake might require constitutional change. … The mere thought of it brings out all kinds of nervous Nellies who dream small. But it might be time to show that kind of courage.”

(We would only add, not “might be,” but very definitely “is”! And there is also one thing we are altogether certain of now: Stephen Harper will never lead anything like the real democratic reform our 19th century relic of a Canadian political system increasingly desperately needs.)

We would again like to thank Graeme MacKay for his generous policy on the use of his editorial cartoons. CLICK HERE for more of his excellent material.

English catwalk and lingerie model Abbey Clancy, fiancée of English striker Peter Crouch (Spurs), poses in bodypaint for the 2010 SI Swimsuit Issue. Sports Illustrated.

TORONTO. TUESDAY 6 JULY 2010. 4:00 PM ET. If you have any feeling at all for the way Old Ontariario used to be, even just back in the dark ages of the 1950s, say, you may have found it difficult to resist some nostalgia over Queen Elizabeth II’s farewell perambulation around Queen’s Park in this city, earlier today.

At the same time, Governor General Michaelle Jean’s husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, is no doubt onto something when he “tells France’s L’Express that what Quebecers understand as ‘British Canada’ is … fraying.” My own father, who passed away as long as a decade ago, liked to make a similar point. His father came to Canada from South London in the United Kingdom in his early 20s, in the early 20th century. My grandfather thought Canada should become “more like England.” My father thought Canada should become more like Canada.

As M. Lafond has aptly observed, times finally are changing in the early 21st century. Yet even now there is something in the water still being consumed in some regions of the anglophone Canadian mind which quietly whispers that the high road to progress is still to at least try to become more like the United Kingdom. (And as the cp24 TV footage from Queen’s Park today showed, even well-groomed older ladies of ultimate African descent, originally from the former British West Indies, can share this sentiment.)

Yet, while the United Kingdom without doubt remains an intriguing place, for many different people in many different parts of the world, two recent controversial clusters of political and economic events suggest that present-day scepticism about the higher culture and deeper wisdom of the British experience may not be entirely misplaced. Consider, first, a recent editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail: “Britain’s budget is an example for the G20, and Canada … It is tackling the deficit challenge, an undertaking all the more remarkable because the country is led by a coalition government of two parties with strikingly different ideologies.”

Model Danielle Lloyd and fiancé, English midfielder Jamie O'Hara (Portsmouth), attend the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Sports Illustrated.

It isn’t just that the Toronto Star ran a contradictory editorial, at about the same time: “New economic clouds … The latest economic signals from the United States are disturbing; they ought to give our political leaders reason to pause before embarking on draconian austerity programs.” (Or that Paul Krugman has been offering similar advice in the New York Times: for the latest installment see “Punishing the Jobless,” on July 4. For balance — in the incredible Canadian tradition of “conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription” — it probably should also be noted that David Brooks in the same paper has been urging still further second thoughts, closer to the views of the Globe and Mail. See, eg: “A Little Economic Realism,” on July 5.)

On July 5 as well Bryan Gould in The Guardian in the UK itself was worrying aloud that: “The coalition is lacking a Lib Dem voice … This assault on economic common sense has proved Nick Clegg is ill-equipped to stand up to the George Osbornes of the world [Mr. Osborne is the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer or finance minister in the current Liberal-Conservative coalition government in the UK] … How else to explain the extraordinary spectacle of a supposedly left-of-centre party and its leader tamely endorsing a budget strategy that is positively perverse and that threatens a re-run of the global recession that similar neoliberal doctrine produced less than two years ago?”

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Model Alex Curran, wife of English midfielder Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), attends the Launch Party for Hilton Liverpool in England. Sports Illustrated.

Some might answer Bryan Gould by urging that Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg has compromised on his economic policy views, in order to advance a bold political reform agenda that his new Conservative colleagues like even less than he likes their economic policy views. Yet Hélène Mulholland in The Guardian has just reported on various flies in this ointment too:

“Constituencies axed as part of Westminster shakeup … Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, confirms referendum on electoral reform but faces criticism over dissolution change … the government faced accusations of committing a U-turn after Clegg announced that the government has increased the majority needed to force a dissolution of parliament to two-thirds … But the deputy prime minister [ie Clegg] said a vote of no confidence in the government would still require only a simple majority. If, after a vote of no confidence, a government cannot be formed for 14 days, parliament will be dissolved and a general election held … Clegg said the two-thirds majority needed to dissolve parliament would make it impossible for any government to ‘force a dissolution for its own purposes’ … [Labour Party front bencher Jack] Straw told Clegg … [that the] two-thirds vote was completely superfluous.”

Hmmmm … Just on the face of things, it does seem that Mr. Straw has a point. There also seems some prospect that a winning (or even any?) referendum on electoral reform (ie “proportional representation”) — as early as May 5, 2011 perhaps? — “has the potential to disrupt the coalition since David Cameron and almost the entire Conservative party oppose voting reform.”

O well … The good news, apparently, is that: “The most spoiled, pampered and over-hyped group of soccer players at the World Cup are close to getting their wish … Not content with letting down a nation with a series of pitiful performances in South Africa, it now appears that players on the England team will now get greater access to their infamous WAGs (wives and girlfriends) for future tournaments … Head coach Fabio Capello attempted to ban the WAGs from this World Cup, describing them as a ‘virus’ following their big-spending, hard-partying ways during the 2006 World Cup … Now, according to a report in the Sun newspaper, Capello feels he should have allowed his squad to take a two-week holiday with their partners before heading to South Africa, instead of embarking on an intensive training camp in Austria..”

Carly Zucker arrives at a restaurant in London with husband, Chelsea footballer Joe Cole. Sports Illustrated.

Who knows? Maybe similar retreats will follow soon enough, on the austerity budget and bold political reform — when similar failures follow on these fronts too?

(Or, I feel obliged to add, maybe not of course, in the truest, most indigenous, post-colonial, independent all-Canadian spirit! Here in Canada we believe in: austerity if necessary, but not necessarily austerity; further stimulus if necessary but not necessarily further stimulus; bold political reform if necessary, but not necessarily bold political reform, etc, etc, etc. And we didn’t have any team at all in this year’s World Cup — that will probably be won by Germany in any case, the local smart money seems to claim. Whatever … God Save O Canada, and the Quebecois nation in a united Canada, here in the bilingual, multicultural, and northern North American second-largest national geography in the entire world today — from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and on and on and on.)