Tomorrow — Monday October 26th, 2020 — is #ElectionDay in two Toronto ridings.
Newly elected Green Party of Canada leader Annamie Paul is running to win the Toronto Centre seat vacated by former Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau (amidst WE scandal ethics questions) . Annamie is both a brilliant candidate and an excellent choice to represent this, her home riding.
Photographer Sasha Zavarella is running in York Centre, where another Canadian National Party Leader — this time Peoples Party of Canada’s Maxime Bernier.
Neither of these by-Elections will change the balance of power in Ottawa.
That means voters are free to vote for what they want — they don’t have to worry vote splitting will result in the party they fear winning majority power.
Since by-Elections historically have poor attendance at the best of times (and a pandemic is surely not one of those times!) fewer votes cast means these votes will have more weight. This is a brilliant opportunity for voters in these formerly safe seats whose votes never elect anyone to cast a vote that may be heard. Greens across Canada are rooting for Annamie, because the sooner our leader can take her seat in Parliament the better we’ll be able to hold the government to account.
It is important to remember the other big parties “whip” MP votes, which means their MPs represent their party first, because, if they don’t, they can lose party support which invariably means losing their seat. Whipped votes used to be a rarity, but in recent times they have become the default for NDP, Liberal and Conservative MPs.
Green MPs differ from other major party MPs because first and foremost they represent the constituents of their ridings. If there is a conflict between what is best for their riding or what’s best for the party, the best interest of their constiuents come first. Always.
If you live in either of these two ridings, your vote for Annamie or Sasha will mean something. We’ve seen what an impact Mike Schreiner has made as a single Green MPP. Electing another Liberal will just be more of the same old. But Greens will always make a difference.
And we can give our votes more power if we can convince our friends and families to vote too.
Even in our terribly unrepresentative voting system, voting is incredibly important. Even our vote is unlikely to change the outcome, it puts our choice on the record.
If you live in one of these ridings, please vote tomorrow. (And make sure to wear a mask when you do!) It is so important — and perhaps even more important:
VOTE FOR WHAT YOU WANT.
(Even if you don’t want what I want.)
If enough of us vote for what we want, we might just get it. And Annamie has an excellent chance of winning this one.
Decades after the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed the inherent right of Indigenous people to hunt and fish, both for sustenance and a #ModerateLivelihood, the Canadian Government has yet to work with the First Nations Peoples signatory to the Peace and Friendship Treaties to establish a reasonable definition of what that means.
Chief Michael Sack said,
“We’ll define our own moderate livelihood. We’re not here to have anybody decide anything for us. We’ll decide as a Mi'kmaq nation and and move forward that way.”
Which is why the Sipekne'katik First Nation decided to establish its own fishery infrastructure, launched exactly 21 years after the SCC’s Marshall decision. Donald Marshall Jr.’s son Randy Sack received the first of the seven moderate livelihood licenses (50 tags each) issued by the Sipekne'katik Fishery to the Indian Brook band on September 17th. To date a total of 10 licenses, each allows the licensee to use a maximum of 50 traps. That is a total of 500 traps. Contrast that with the 900,000 traps used by the Commercial Fisheries.
The reaction by Commercial Fishers has been violent, and Indigenous fishers have faced threats and intimidation, been shot at with flare guns, had their gear stolen or vandalized, trucks and boats destroyed, and since a Lobster Pound that dealt with Commercial and Indigenous fishers was targeted, vandalized and destroyed, others are refusing to do business with them. Today Chief Sack got a Court Injunction to help protect his people and their Moderate Livelihood Fishery.
“Charles: I think a lot of people don’t fully understand what the Indigenous communities’ rights are. They don’t fully understand that the First Nations have rights that are different from the privileges to fish that non-Natives have.” — Hakai Magazine: Mi’kmaw Fishery Dispute Is Not About Conservation, Scientists Say
An important Canadian by-election is underway in Toronto Centre. When Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau resigned, he left the Liberal stronghold unrepresented. But the reality is this riding has not been very well represented for decades.
Because it has been a safe seat, high profile Liberals (like Mr Morneau) are routinely parachuted in. Because they lack strong community ties, they represent the Liberal Party in Parliament, but don’t do a very good job for most of the people who actually live in Toronto Centre. That’s why all important social issues have run rampant here, despite the powerful MPs who are supposed to represent it.
Annamie Paul just won the Green Party Leadership while beginning her campaign to represent the voters of Toronto Centre. Even if she didn’t have strong ties to this community, Annamie Paul would represent the citizens of Toronto Centre far better than any candidate from the other major parties because Green MPs represent their constituents first.
Mike Schreiner has demonstrated what a single Green MPP can accomplish with a majority PC government. Imagine what Annamie Paul could do for her constituents in a minority Parliament!
I don’t live in Toronto Centre, although I worked there decades ago. It’s where I had my first experience of homeless people. Despite all the powerful MPs Toronto Centre has had since, not only has that problem grown, it’s spread nation wide without any end in sight. Only the Green Party has effective policies to address poverty and homelessness.
I am so impressed with Annamie I want to help. But though I don’t live there, I can lend my grass root support to her campaign by volunteering to make phone calls.
And you can, too. See what you can do to help elect this amazing woman. We need MPs like Annamie in the House of Commons if we are ever going to get our governments to make the changes that need to be made.
That’s why I’ll be making phone calls for Annamie this week. I hope you can help Annamie on some way too.
“I think it’s incumbent on the national government and (the Fisheries Department) to quickly pull together a meeting that brings all sides together to find a solution that the courts told us 21 years ago we needed to find, and that has to happen soon.” — Premier Stephen McNeil, Nova Scotia
Vehicle torched, lobster pounds storing Mi’kmaw catches trashed during night of unrest in N.S. : https://www.cbc.ca/1.5761468
Treaty of 1752, Article 4 reads, “It is agreed that the said Tribe of Indians shall not be hindered from, but have free liberty of Hunting and Fishing as usual…”
Destroying their equipment and stealing their catch is both a Treaty violation and a criminal offence.
I live in Ontario, have never been to Nova Scotia, nor am I Indigenous and I don’t eat lobster. But all the same I am furious about this entire situation. Mobs of white racist fishers are attacking Indigenous fishers, trespassing and destroying their property while RCMP stand around and do nothing more than turning their body cams off. These guys might as well be wearing white hoods and hammering burning crosses into the ground. 8
What ever happened to Canada’s vaunted rule of law? Mobs of white vigilantes are trespassing and destroying property.
It is up to the Federal Government DFO to announce that the Indigenous fishers are not breaking the law.
It is up to the Nova Scotia government to ensure the RCMP upholds thd law, which includes keeping the peace, preventing violence and arresting perpetrators.
If there are any non-racist white people in Nova Scotia, they need to get out and stand with their Indigenous neighbors.
Those of us who don’t live there can help in ways suggested in the list below, republished here to amplify the message.
WAYS TO SUPPORT MI’KMAQ ASSERTING THEIR TREATY RIGHTS IN DIGBY, NOVA SCOTIA (UNCEDED MI’KMA’KI)
What is Decolonization?Mi’kmaw Ancestral Relational Understandings and Anthropological Perspectives on Treaty Relations (Chapter 1): https://bit.ly/3cisdwY
UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES:
“Food Fish, Commercial Fish, and Fish to Support a Moderate Livelihood: Characterizing Aboriginal and Treaty Rights to Canadian Fisheries” by Douglas Harris & Peter Millerd:
A sunflower is the emblem of the Green Party of Canada. After spending most of my life as a nonpartisan voter, voting always for the candidate who would best represent me, regardless of party, I became a member of the Green Party of Canada in 2015 when my husband was asked to be a candidate.
Working for his campaign, I learned enough about Green Party policy to not only remain a Green after the election, but to throw myself into working hard to help build the Green Party between elections.
Because the fact is, Canada is facing many problems, but instead of fixing them, the best Canadian governments manage is promises and the occasional bandaid. So problems get worse. We have too many problems to keep kicking them down the road for our kids and grandkids. Which is why kids are leading #FridaysForFuture.
The Green Party has answers, and most important, the political will to make those answers work. Green politicians aren’t career politicians, they are smart people who know things need to be fixed and are tired of waiting for the others to make it happen. Individual action is important, but we need the power of government to make systemic changes.
We can try to ignore politics, but politics impact on all of our lives. The time has come to get involved.
As we enter the 2nd wave of #COVID19, if Green Party policies resonate with you… policies like Guaranteed Livable Income (a #CERB for all where no one falls through the cracks), Universal Pharmacare, Healthcare, Post Secondary Education, a National Housing Strategy, and Climate Action built on science not propping up the fossil fuel industry, it’s time to start thinking green.
The Green Party of Canada just elected a brilliant capable leader. We need to help Annamie Paul take a seat in the House of Commons. And what better way to do that than help her win the Toronto Centre seat just vacated by scandal ridden Liberal Bill Morneau.
If you’re a Canadian it doesn’t matter where you live, you can donate and volunteer. The time has come to be daring.
When I began Whoa!Canada I’d been determinedly non-partisan all my life. For various reasons I did end up joining a party —the Green Party of Canada—in middle age. Even so, I’ve worked to keep partisanship out of this blog. But the Green Party Leadership race, like any major party leadership, is important for all of Canada. TVO recognized this from the get go, but even so there has been very…
When I began Whoa!Canada I’d been determinedly non-partisan all my life. For various reasons I did end up joining a party —the Green Party of Canada — in middle age. Even so, I’ve worked to keep partisanship out of this blog. But the Green Party Leadership race, like any major party leadership, is important for all of Canada. TVO recognized this from the get go, but even so there has been very little serious coverage. In the Internet era, we’re no longer entirely at the mercy of MSM gatekeepers, so there’s been plenty to see online. Tonight CBC, Youtube and Facebook will present live election night coverage.
As most of the GPC Leadership campaign has coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, although a few of the Candidates had begun cross Canada tours when the shut downs hit, there has been very little opportunity for Green Party members to actually engage with leadership candidates face to face.
But that hasn’t stopped the Canadian Greens from putting on an excellent engaging leadership campaign. Interim Leader Jo-Ann Robert’s People, Politics and Planet podcast hosted interviews with all the candidates. We began with 10 candidates, and end with 8 going into tonight’s election.
