Voting at the malls — do your shopping and buy a Blanleil and a Given while you’re there

At its last meeting Kelowna City Council discussed reviving the idea of allowing voters to cast ballots at the malls. They better not leave out WalMart as a lot of residents go there too. And let’s also not forget places of recreation like golf courses. After all, people move to Kelowna for fun and leisure and not to get involved in community affairs, as I’ve been told by some such people myself.  Perhaps we can even have mobile units manned with election workers to make house calls for anyone who just doesn’t want to get off their duffs and go to a polling station. That should be a big hit with those who are too lazy or apathetic to leave their homes.

 

No, city council has come up with another clunker of an idea which will just treat the symptoms of the problem rather than the underlying cause, that being a general lack of interest of the populace in community affairs. Artificially boosting the voter turnout by making it even easier than it already is to cast a ballot won’t rejuvenate such interest and will only result in the election of candidates whose names have broad voter recognition like the incumbents. But perhaps that is why city council likes the idea.

 

To get to the cause of voter apathy would require an examination of the type of community that Kelowna has become in the past decade and why, and to take steps to rectify the problem. And that would be a much bigger task that just setting up a few more polling stations, and would require the admission that many mistakes in community building (or the lack thereof) have been made along the way. I doubt that even the new city council is up to that task as it mostly shares the same old thinking of previous councils on matters such as growth and development.  No, failing taking some radical steps i.e., getting to the root of the problem, council should just leave things as they are which is that those people who care enough about their community to make the effort to travel about three blocks to the nearest polling station get to choose its political representatives.

Good riddance to arrogance i.e., Barrie Clark, Colin Day, Carol Gran and Norm Letnick

Outgoing city councillor Barrie Clark, expressed his displeasure in the Capital News on the possibility that the new city council could vote against the downtown CD Zone on fourth and final reading saying “To totally defy the work of the predecessor that’s been going on for two years and to just blatantly cut that off now, I think would be a tragedy for Kelowna.” Fellow out-going councillor Colin Day had made similar remarks earlier suggesting that the prospect of the new council taking such action was unprecedented.

 

Well, these two retiring councillors should have thought of that before voting to give the CD Zone second and third reading. City council had the option at that time of leaving the matter for the new city council which was going to take office is just a few weeks to decide, but no, they wanted to make the decision themselves right then and there before allowing the voters of Kelowna to democratically choose a new city council which might have a different take on the matter. Clark, Day, Carol Gran, and Norm Letnick, who each voted in favour of the CD Zone, all decided not to run for re-election with Carol Gran leaving town shortly after that vote was taken. I would just like to say good riddance to this group of four. You will be remembered for your arrogance and you will not be missed.

 

 

 

A national coalition government is democratic and just

As quoted in the Daily Courier, Kelowna-Lake Country MP Ron Cannan referred to the prospect of a coalition between the Liberals, NDP and BQ as “irresponsible and undemocratic”. I don’t understand how this would be undemocratic? Perhaps Cannan can’t do the math, but these three parties combined got a total of 61% of the popular vote in the recent federal election compared to the 38% received by the Conservatives. The three potential coalition parties combined also got 163 seats compared to 143 for the Tories. Either way you count it, the newly formed coalition has more public support than do the Conservatives.

 

Having just had an election and given the cost of having another one so soon thereafter, it is only reasonable for the Governor General to give this coalition a chance to govern if  the Conservatives cannot muster the support of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons on a confidence vote. When this happens, Cannan, who has proven himself to be an even more mediocre MP than he was a city councillor, will find himself exactly where he belongs – sitting towards the back of the Opposition benches. This is not only democratic; it is also just.

 

 

Here is a good analysis of what brought this so-called “crisis” to a head by CBC’s Don Newman: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/12/05/f-vp-newman.html

 

How the rest of the world sees this in their headlines:

 

Huffington Post (US) — “Canadian leader shuts down Parliament in desperate attempt to stay in power”

 

The Austrialian (AUS) — “Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper shuts Parliament to keep power”