Judgment Day

"It's there," he gasped. "Look—read—oh, do you—think it's—true? The—end of—the world—is coming to-morrow—at two—o'clock—in the afternoon!"

Crash! Felicity had dropped the cup of clouded blue, which had passed unscathed through so many changing years, and now at last lay shattered on the stone of the well curb. At any other time we should all have been aghast over such a catastrophe, but it passed unnoticed now. What mattered it that all the cups in the world be broken to-day if the crack o' doom must sound to-morrow?

"Oh, Sara Stanley, do you believe it? DO you?" gasped Felicity, clutching the Story Girl's hand. Cecily's prayer had been answered. Excitement had come with a vengeance, and under its stress Felicity had spoken first. But this, like the breaking of the cup, had no significance for us at the moment.

The Story Girl snatched the paper and read the announcement to a group on which sudden, tense silence had fallen. Under a sensational headline, "The Last Trump will sound at Two O'clock To-morrow," was a paragraph to the effect that the leader of a certain noted sect in the United States had predicted that August twelfth would be the Judgment Day, and that all his numerous followers were preparing for the dread event by prayer, fasting, and the making of appropriate white garments for ascension robes.

I laugh at the remembrance now—until I recall the real horror of fear that enwrapped us in that sunny orchard that August morning of long ago; and then I laugh no more. We were only children, be it remembered, with a very firm and simple faith that grown people knew much more than we did, and a rooted conviction that whatever you read in a newspaper must be true. If the Daily Enterprise said that August twelfth was to be the Judgment Day how were you going to get around it?

"Do you believe it, Sara Stanley?" persisted Felicity. "DO you?"

"No—no, I don't believe a word of it," said the Story Girl.

But for once her voice failed to carry conviction—or, rather, it carried conviction of the very opposite kind. It was borne in upon our miserable minds that if the Story Girl did not altogether believe it was true she believed it might be true; and the possibility was almost as dreadful as the certainty.

"It CAN'T be true," said Sara Ray, seeking refuge, as usual, in tears. "Why, everything looks just the same. Things COULDN'T look the same if the Judgment Day was going to be to-morrow."

"But that's just the way it's to come," I said uncomfortably. "It tells you in the Bible. It's to come just like a thief in the night."

"But it tells you another thing in the Bible, too," said Cecily eagerly. "It says nobody knows when the Judgment Day is to come—not even the angels in heaven. Now, if the angels in heaven don't know it, do you suppose the editor of the Enterprise can know it—and him a Grit, too?"

"I guess he knows as much about it as a Tory would," retorted the Story Girl. Uncle Roger was a Liberal and Uncle Alec a Conservative, and the girls held fast to the political traditions of their respective households. "But it isn't really the Enterprise editor at all who is saying it—it's a man in the States who claims to be a prophet. If he IS a prophet perhaps he has found out somehow."

"And it's in the paper, too, and that's printed as well as the
Bible," said Dan.

"Well, I'm going to depend on the Bible," said Cecily. "I don't believe it's the Judgment Day to-morrow—but I'm scared, for all that," she added piteously.

That was exactly the position of us all. As in the case of the bell-ringing ghost, we did not believe but we trembled.

"Nobody might have known when the Bible was written," said Dan, "but maybe somebody knows now. Why, the Bible was written thousands of years ago, and that paper was printed this very morning. There's been time to find out ever so much more."

"I want to do so many things," said the Story Girl, plucking off her crown of buttercup gold with a tragic gesture, "but if it's the Judgment Day to-morrow I won't have time to do any of them."

"It can't be much worse than dying, I s'pose," said Felix, grasping at any straw of comfort.

--Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Story Girl, Chapter 19: A Dread Prophecy
1911

(Available at Project Gutenberg.)

Canada's First Woman MP is my Idol

This post originally appeared here:

http://voteagainstapathy.blogspot.com/2011/04/canadas-first-woman-mp-is-my-idol.html

We now pause our regularly scheduled election coverage for a brief homage to this woman:

So I am a big fan of all the #deadPMs on Twitter. Recently they’ve been joined by some dead premiers, Fathers of Confederation, etc. and it struck me that the whole thing was becoming quite a sausagefest. Where, I asked myself, is Agnes Macphail, the most bad-ass dead woman MP in Canadian history? (It turns out there is an Agnes Macphail twitter but it’s been inactive for over a year.) So I Wikipedia’ed her, found the links to the Agnes Macphail Digital Collection, and discovered this 1928 speech (pages 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Basically Agnes Macphail is many shades of awesome. I think this quote aptly applies to most Conservative press conferences these days: “However, after reading the speech very carefully I think myself it is an exceedingly clever speech—how adroitly it says nothing at all!”

She also catches the economic signals foreshadowing the Great Depression:

I had the privilege, and I consider it a very great privilege, of visiting last summer very many rural homes in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and I certainly did not find in those homes the prosperity that I read about in the speech from the throne. I found people struggling to meet debt, and worrying over taxes and meeting the payment of their mortgages. I thought the conditions were particularly bad in the province of Manitoba. I believe it was said by some member this afternoon that they no longer grew grain in Manitoba. Well, I think that was true this year.
[…]
I do not consider that we can boast of our prosperity until that prosperity has reached the homes of the mass of the people. I think it is quite likely that the prosperity that has undoubtedly arrived in certain classes and sections of Canada will continue and will likely increase, until possibly it reaches boom dimensions, and will be followed by a crash or a long depression comparable to the one out of which we are just emerging [the depressed conditions following the First World War and into the 1920s].
[…]
One of the things to which I refer is the present Bank act. I notice in the Weekly News of February 3rd, printed in Winnipeg, that the Bank of Nova Scotia made a dividend this year of 16 ½ per cent, which seems a snug little dividend. The Canadian Bank of Commerce made a dividend of 12 per cent, with a bonus of one dollar. It was the same with other banks; evidently they are all making very great profits. Now there is a general feeling in farming districts that our banking system is not all it should be, and that some line of setting up a bank of issue and rediscount should at once be instituted.

Macphail was a pacifist, as you can see in her comments on the munitions industry. She first argues that international trade of arms and munitions should be banned (that would, actually, have saved us from so many problems…) and she’s against the private manufacture of arms:

I see no reason why the manufacture of munitions which are designed to bring about the death of human beings should be in the hands of private individuals who can and who have used this power for private gain. Let us now make a law stating that, if the worst came to the worst at any time in the future and we must face war, all property will be administered by the state; that is, there would be a complete conscription of wealth. I feel this would have a moderating influence upon certain elements in Canada.

Canadian industry had made HUGE money off the First World War (as had America industry) and Macphail may have been correct in fearing that munitions makers were ready to warmonger for their own personal gain. Or maybe she was just pissed at Sam Hughes for giving the munitions contracts to his buddies.

Macphail would have been pro-prison farms if she were alive today. (I also feel like the first prison farms were established around this time with her support, but have found no evidence to prove this.) Her arguments here are very similar to the ones used by protesters of the prison farm closures, except more patronizing:

In our whole system of taking care of prisoners we should look to the good that we can do to the prisoner while he is detained by the state, making him feel that the state is fair to him. That is why I want him to be paid a decent wage for his work, from which wage, of course, his keep must be deducted. We must never forget, too, that the family of the prisoner possibly suffers more than the prisoner himself, and when the prisoner comes out, there should be, shall we say, a fatherly hand of the government to guide that man into civil life, to re-establish him. So many of them when they first get out try for a few days or weeks to go in what we call a straight way, and not being able to do that they very soon revert to crime.

Here’s what she has to say on party politics and majority governments. I have to say I agree with her, more or less, on both fronts:

I am not interested in party politics; I am not interested in parties, although I must say in all fairness that I am very much interested in the people who compose the parties. I am at all times ready, and indeed anxious, to support legislation which to my mind is beneficial to the constituency I have th honour to represent—I believe that is the correct form—and to the country as a whole.
[…]
I do not believe that when you have a stable government—one with a very comfortable majority, you get a good government. I may be wrong; I sometimes am, but I think not in this case, and so, having in power a stable government, one with a very comfortable majority, a majority that unfortunately has been added to by men who should have known better [here she is referring to MPs not voters], I do not see how we can expect a legislative program that will be pleasing to our constituencies. But at least we are here to get for the common people of Canada the best that we can, and I am here sitting ready to be pleasantly surprised by the government.

What a superstar.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

This is How a Parliamentary Democracy Works

This post originally appeared here:

http://voteagainstapathy.blogspot.com/2011/04/this-is-how-parliamentary-democracy.html

The CBC have an article called "Ignatieff, Harper in war of words over minority scenarios". They've got that right.

So, here's the 411, to use Layton-esque slang. Yesterday, Michael Ignatieff said that if the Conservatives win a minority, but are unable to secure the confidence of the House, and the governor general asks the Liberals if they can form the government, he will try to do so.

He acknowledged that he could try to form a government — without going back to Canadian voters — if a Conservative minority is elected but subsequently defeated in the House of Commons. Moreover, Ignatieff made no apologies for that possibility — saying that this is exactly what would normally happen in a parliamentary democracy.

Ignatieff's comments set up a clear contrast with views held by Conservative leader Stephen Harper over the legitimacy of a government led by a second-place party and promise to be pivotal issues in the remaining days of the campaign.

He's absolutely right. This is exactly what would normally happen in a parliamentary democracy. It's called the Westminster system. In the Westminster system, electors choose the MPs that make up the House of Commons, and whichever party has the support of the House gets to form government whether it has the most seats or not. Usually the party that has the most seats gets to try first, but if things change, that party loses confidence but another party gains it, then that second party can form the government. Here's the hypothetical situation in question, according to Ignatieff:

"If Mr. Harper wins most seats, forms a government but does not secure the confidence of the House — and I'm assuming Parliament comes back — then it goes to the Governor General. That's what happens. That's how the rules work.

"And then, if the Governor General wants to call on other parties — myself for example — to try to form a government, then we try to form a government. That's exactly how the rules work. And what I'm trying to say to Canadians is, I understand the rules, I respect the rules, I'll follow them to the letter and I'm not going to form a coalition."

Seriously. Trust Ignatieff on this. He's right. That's what happens, that's how the rules work. I mean before he was a politician he used to study and teach this stuff for a living at some of the greatest universities in the world!

Stephen Harper sees things another way. He's already mentioned he thinks it's "undemocratic" that the second-place party rule. He also believes that Ignatieff is secretly talking about a coalition:

The Conservative leader said Wednesday he would be “honoured with any mandate” his party receives from voters on May 2.

But refused to discuss what changes to the party’s platform he would be willing to accept to keep the Conservatives in power if they win another minority.

Instead, Harper ratcheted up his rhetoric about the prospect of a coalition, calling it a ‘black hole” that would stall the recovery, provoke more constitutional squabbling, and trigger a “national-unity crisis.” He was likely referring to comments by Jack Layton in the English-language debate, in which the NDP leader said he was open to re-opening the debate on how to get Quebec to sign the constitution.

Harper also declared that an opposition coalition would lead to another referendum on whether Quebec should separate from Canada, even though it would be up to the provincial government to put forward such a vote.

“We don’t know what that government will stand for,” Harper said of a possible coalition.

“But we do know the general outlines. There’s no focus on the economy. There are tax hikes, and of course these parties have very dangerous and conflicting views on national unity and constitutional matters. So as I say, I think the option for Canadians to avoid all of this, is to vote for a strong, stable, national majority conservative government on May the second.”

Okay. First of all, it is FAR FROM a clear choice between a Strong Harper Majority and an Evil Reckless Coalition. Firstly, majorities tend to be more reckless than coalitions, who must remain moderate in order to appease all parties involved. Secondly, Ignatieff has said time and time again that he WILL NOT form a coalition, and in the hypothetical situation he has outlined he's not forming a coalition either. Thirdly, if there is a Conservative minority, what makes a minority stable is having the support of the House. If Harper refuses to co-operate with other parties, any minority he had would be lost very quickly. And I'm not even going to get into the allegations that a Liberal government will mean another sovereignty referendum in Quebec.

But back to the CBC article, where the leaders are bickering and trying to clarify their statements.

"I have never said I will vote against his budget," Ignatieff told reporters in Saint John.

Harper would have to negotiate support with the other parties and govern accordingly, he added.

"What I've said is, I want to form a government. I want to get … the most seats. I then want to offer a budget to the Parliament of Canada and seek its support. If he gets more seats than me or my party, then he will present a budget, and hey, you know what I do with a budget: I read it."

Harper says he wants to form a majority government. Ignatieff says he would be happy to form any government at all. Clearly this makes Ignatieff a volatile vigilante bandito. Even worse, the leader of a gang of volatile, vigilante, separatist, socialist banditos! But Ignatieff responds to Harper's comments about the coalition:

"No. I repeat, no," Ignatieff said to applause from Liberal supporters.

"I don't have a problem about coalition, and I don't have a problem about respecting the constitution of my country. With the greatest respect, I would tell you that Mr. Harper has a problem with both."

Later, Ignatieff said of Harper: "What does he think he is? The king here? It's 'my way or the highway' the whole time .… He has an obligation to present a budget that has the confidence of the House of Commons .… The ruthless, relentless disrespect for Parliament is why we're having an election here."

And Gilles Duceppe weighs in on the issue with clear insight, reminding me that during the leaders' debates some people commented that he has the best understanding of how our government works:

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe was critical Wednesday of what he called Harper's "no compromise" approach to dealing with the possibility of another minority government, calling it irresponsible.

Speaking with reporters in the Eastern Townships, Duceppe said Harper "needs to respect those whom Canadians choose to send to Ottawa to represent them."

Because, see, THIS is how the Westminster system works, THIS is how a parliamentary democracy works, THIS IS HOW OUR GOVERNMENT WORKS. We, Canadians, choose our MPs, based on the interests they're trying to protect. Then the MPs go to Parliament and duke it out there over who gets to form the government, based on who has interests in common. Your MP will presumably vote to protect the same interests WHETHER OR NOT their party is government. In the case of a minority government, it doesn't have that much more power than the other parties in terms of creating legislation, except it makes the budget. Whether a minority government is formed by the largest or the second-largest party doesn't really make a difference, because either way they have to work and compromise with other parties in order to pass their budgets and their bills. So, as Duceppe pointed out, Harper's refusal to work with the MPs the majority of Canada chose, in the case that he has a minority government, is incredibly irresponsible and WILL result in him losing confidence of the House.

This seriously feels like the King-Byng affair all over again. In that case, Mackenzie King's Liberals, who finished second to Arthur Meighen's Conservatives, formed the government with the support of the Progressives. The next year, when King's government was under threat due to a scandal caused by one of his ministers, King asked Lord Byng, the governor general, to dissolve parliament and call an election, but Byng refused. Since Meighen actually had more seats than King, Lord Byng wanted to give him a chance to form government before calling an election. Meighen was prime minister for only a couple of months before his government lost the confidence of the House. Then there was an election and King won a majority.

Moral of the story? Sometimes the second-place party makes a better government.

Also, I kind of want to be governor general. But that's another story.

Women, the Vote, and Raising One's Voice

This post originally appeared here:

http://voteagainstapathy.blogspot.com/2011/04/women-vote-and-raising-ones-voice.html

Equal Voice, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to getting more women elected to all levels of government, has a new initiative called the iCommit Campaign, basically asking young women to commit to voting in the election, and staying engaged in politics beyond. If you're a woman between the ages of 18 and 24, you should go do just that.

I've already displayed the graphic that shows voting intentions by age. Here's another one, voting intentions by gender:

This isn't as drastic as the youth vs. senior because it cuts across all age groups, but there is still an important difference. And if you, like me, are both young and a woman, well, you've probably noticed that the composition of Parliament mostly reflects the votes of older men (who also make up most of the composition of Parliament). That's why it's important, not only to vote, but to be politically engaged. We do need more women in Parliament. We don't have nearly enough women running for election let alone winning. As Jack Layton points out, it's a historic first that even 40% of NDP candidates in this election are women.

All this has made me reflect on the history of women's votes. Well, no, actually that's a lie. I was already reflecting on the history of women's votes because I wrote a paper about it two weeks ago so it's all fresh in my mind. (I'm a nerd, so sue me.)

You may not know this, but up until the 1840s it was common practice for women in Montreal to vote. When we think about the history of women voting, we usually think of the suffragettes. But I kind of like these earlier women who weren't necessarily fighting for anything, who just went out and voted like it was no big deal.

The thing you have to understand is that before democracy became the big new thing in the late 1700s/early 1800s, position in the social hierarchy was a much better indicator of your power than gender. Anyone who's seen The Tudors or Marie Antoinette will know that women in court had a lot of power. And poor women were just as likely to riot in the streets as their male counterparts.

In order to be eligible to vote in most parts of the British Empire, you had to be a subject of the King/Queen, over the age of majority, and hold a certain amount of property in your name (this was to keep the voting to the more prosperous members of society, rather than the rabblerousers on the street). Traditionally, property was held by men, who passed it down to their oldest son. In the absence of sons, a daughter might inherit some property in the richest of families (think Anne de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice), but not in families that were less well-off (think Mr. Collins and the Bennett sisters). Whoever did inherit would be expected to care for the widow (think Mrs. Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility). So women rarely held enough property to be eligible to vote, although they were not banned from doing so should they meet the requirements.

Quebec, however, maintained French Civil Law even under the British Empire. Under Quebec laws, property was jointly held by married couples, although the husband, as executor, was essentially considered to own the property. However, this meant that upon a man's death half of the marital property belonged to the widow, and the other half was generally split among all children who were of age. This meant that many widows of voters, especially those whose children were under the age of majority, were eligible to vote. It also meant that more daughters inherited property. And the "separation of goods"--a marital contract that stopped property from being held jointly by keeping it in the name of the person who brought it into the marriage--was common for upper middle class families like the Molsons (beer) and the Redpaths (sugar).

So in many parts of Quebec, and particularly Montreal, women were in the habit of voting. This was sometimes controversial, since polls were much more violent places in the early nineteenth century than they are now. And some people were afraid that married women who voted were being dragged to the polls by their husbands in order to provide an extra vote for the husband's chosen candidate. But all in all, women voters were accepted, especially the widows.

And then equality happened. The thing with equality is that it was all men who were born equal, not all people. It was liberté, égalité, fraternité. Women were kind of squeezed out of the political arena, firstly because most women who had power were aristocrats, and also because women were associated more and more with the private sphere: motherhood, domesticity, and being a good little wife. (Think the Victorian era, or maybe the 1950s.)

All of a sudden the idea of a poor little wife and mother being pushed onto the hustings and forced to say, "My name is x, I am a loyal subject of Queen Victoria, I have property worth x amount on x street, and I would like to vote for candidate x," in front of a jeering crowd of thugs, was unthinkable. (Yes, this was how people voted back in the day). Any woman who would do that willingly was clearly of questionable morality, and DUDE GUYS WE NEED TO SAVE THE WIMMENZ WHO ARE BEING FORCED TO PARTICIPATE IN DEMOCRACY!!!!! There was also a thing where they were afraid that if women could vote, women would try to run for seats, and then they would be pregnant all the time and never able to show up to Parliament, but that's just so ridiculous I'm not even going to try to unpack it.

In the Election Act passed in the Province of Canada (ie Ontario and Quebec) in 1849, buried in 30 pages of minutiae on determining county boundary lines and the legitimacy of returning officers, is this line:

Article 46: "And be it declared and enacted, That no woman is or shall be entitled to vote at any such election, whether for any County or Riding, City or Town."

Just one sentence! Just one sentence that in a stroke strips thousands of people of their voting privileges!

And it was such a non-issue that I haven't even been able to find a reference to it in any of the newspapers of the time.

So that's why I think it's important for women to vote. Because our government and our parliament were built in a time when people had that mindset. Most of the Fathers of Confederation were already in politics by the time that bill went through. Sir John A. Macdonald voted on it, probably without thinking about Article 46 because I'm pretty sure that's the shortest article in the entire Act. The only reason women got to vote again in the first place was a political ploy by Sir Robert Borden during the First World War, when he allowed the wives and mothers of soldiers to vote, knowing they would most likely vote for him and keep him in power.

Don't you think we should be reasserting our rights, reinserting our voices? I understand that a system created when the idea of women voting was counterintuitive, doesn't really speak to women. But that's exactly WHY we need to speak up for ourselves, why we need to get in there and MAKE things more accessible for women.

Because the old men that run our country right now? They sure ain't gonna do it.