An Oily Rot

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been granted new special powers after an extraordinary assembly vote in the main square of the capital, Caracas.
Mr Chavez will now be able to rule by decree for the next 18 months.

Why this was necessary is beyond me. The opposition boycotted the last elections, so Chavez already has total support from the parliament. It’s just another blow to an already-ill democracy.

Of course, when your country is as oil-rich as Venezuela, you have to screw things up pretty bad before day-to-day life gets worse for most people. We can see that in Iran as well, and even Alberta.

Chavez garnered over 60% support in the last presidential election. You can be popular and still be a tyrant. Tyrants can even be effective and benevolent, at least at first. But power corrupts, and that’s why democracies have checks and balances. As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It looks like Venezuela may learn that the hard way… again.

Lip Service

The most distasteful thing about majority governments is that they are essentially 4-year dictatorships. Excepting something so outrageous it drives the Governor General to use his or her significant but unused powers, there is nothing standing between a majority government and it’s agenda.

This is why it should come as a breath of fresh air when a minority government radically changes it’s policy to better suit the electorate, as the Conservatives have been frantically trying to do regarding the environment.

But it does not.

The Conservatives are only paying lip service to the environment, and normally this would be more than enough. As Michael Ignatieff said about toppling Saddam Hussein, “if good results had to wait for good intentions, we would have to wait forever.” The thing is, the other parties are either paying exceptional lip service, or good intentions and good results are actually lining up.

Every other party (or at least the leader) had cast itself as green long before the Conservatives identified the environment as a path to their own 4-year dictatorship. So if you’re concerned about the environment (and everyone’s been saying lately they are) you should vote that way. We shouldn’t settle for half-measures when the other parties are offering the real deal.

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From Beyond the Grave

Saddam Hussein strikes again!

Another addition to the long list of reasons why you shouldn’t let TV babysit your children.

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Three parents. So What?

It’s amazing what some people will get all riled up about.

The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that a child can have three parents. Specifically, the lesbian partner of the birth mother is now Mom Number Two. Apparently the three now-parents were already raising the child together, so all the ruling does is give legal recognition to reality.

Yes, it’s something of a grey area whether or not the courts have the power to make that kind of decision. The solution is for the government (whichever level has the authority) to modify the law to recognize these kinds of families. All the government would be doing is giving these parents solid legal ground on which to raise their children.

Yet, the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (“NAMBLA”) is acting as if this is just one more piece of the sky falling. They reiterate a plea for a Royal Commission on “the Future of the Family”… because when you seriously want to get something done in Canada, and fast, everyone’s first thought is “Royal Commission.”

This all seems a bit like the gay marriage brouhaha. Legislation recognizing gay marriage doesn’t create gay couples. There are already gay couples. It just gives them the same legal rights as heterosexual couples.

There are already three-parent families, except only two of the parents are legal guardians. This legal ruling (and eventually, legislation) will make three-parent families better families. It is no threat to “traditional marriage,” however that is defined.

2007: Domestic Outlook

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What’s in store for 2007? I doubt there will be a lack of things to blog about!

Ontario

There is a provincial election scheduled for sometime in October, the first of it’s kind in this province. I don’t doubt Howard Hampton when he says “I expect we’ll see 10 months of photo ops and press conferences.” On the other hand, the government doesn’t get to choose when to call the election, so I suppose it’s a worthy trade-off.

With the election still ten months away and polls reasonably close, it’s anybody’s game. Well, anybody except the NDP. Regardless of how well Bob Rae did at the Liberal leadership convention, his ghost still haunts the Ontario NDP. Still, this being the first election since the departure of Mike Harris, vote-splitting, and all that fun, the NDP stands to gain a handful of percentage points at least. But I digress. It is more accurate, and less distracting, to say the election comes down to Dalton McGuinty and John Tory.

I think McGuinty has done a decent job leading the Liberal government so far. Things were a bit shaky at first with the infamous broken promises and budget deficits, but aided by a cooperative economy things have gone (un)remarkably smoothly of late.
Tory has spent his brief time running the PC party by building up a personal image of respectability without committing to anything too substantial. The impression I’m getting is that he will govern more-or-less like the Liberals, except more honestly. He has cast himself, successfully I think, as a Bill Davis PC: Big on common sense and pragmatism, where common sense is always uncapitalized and never revolutionary.

All this leaves me pretty apathetic about the election, because either way we are going to end up with a pretty decent government. I’ll probably vote for the Liberals at the end of it all, only because they are already known and tested. But who knows what will happen in the intervening months. I certainly wouldn’t have to choke back my own bile to cast a ballot for John Tory, and I won’t lose any sleep if the pull ahead in the polls.

Speaking of losing sleep…

Canada

Stephen Harper is our Prime Minister. This whole business of minority governments is too complicated for me to follow without quitting my day job, so I won’t even speculate about when the government is going to fall or under what conditions. What I can tell you is I will not, under any conditions, be voting for a Conservative. I had high hopes after the last election, but they were quickly dashed. It makes me angry just thinking about it, and a bit nervous thinking about how much worse it could be.

Setting aside all that, I was very impressed with most of the Liberal leadership hopefuls, and have a good feeling about Stephane Dion. I’m glad too that Michael Ignatieff is now deputy-leader or whatever title they gave him. It would have been a shame (and a very bad way to signal “renewal”) if they had ostracized such a smart guy. Compared to the last few years, the Liberals have a bright future ahead.

I voted for the NDP candidate in the last election because it was the best way to vote against the Liberals without voting for the Conservatives. However, the way the NDP has been trying to work with the Harper government while criticizing the Liberals only makes sense in an abstract way. In practice, the enemy of your enemy should not be your friend when your party is as idealistic as the NDP usually is. Wearing the Liberals’ clothes does not become New Democrats.

And don’t forget about the Greens! They have a new leader who comes off a bit, shall we say, flowery compared to Jim Harris, but there’s no denying they have momentum. Could we see our first Green MP in 2007?

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It doesn’t look dull from here, and we haven’t even stumbled across the best unexpected stuff yet.

*credit where credit is due