Speech to Fair Vote Canada - Democracy

September 19th, 2013 Parliament Hill

Make Every Vote Count

• I give thanks to Fair Vote Canada for giving me the opportunity to speak today on behalf of the Canadian Untiarians For Social Justice and for ClimateFast.  I give thanks to the Algonquin people who have shared this land with us on which we stand.  It is a privilege to speak to you today.

• I have voted all my life in Federal, Provincial and Municipal elections.  I try to take the time to look at the candidates, weigh the issues, and see the political dynamics of the day.   A few times I have actually voted for the candidate that won.  Sometimes I voted for candidates I didn’t like as better than the alternative.  I often don’t feel represented by my government.
• Do you feel represented by your government?

• But today, this feeling of alienation I have is much stronger.  In the past, there was very little difference between the two leading parties, but they didn’t do that much.  They just tinkered with right and left policies.  A change such as the introduction of Medicare was a rare event.  Today, Stephen Harper is trying to change the very face and identity of Canada and I’m afraid of losing the country I love.

• This government is strongly committed to the status quo – a consumer society with low political involvement, where people sleep as the government quietly cedes the ability to control our own destiny to the private sector --through multiple free trade and investment agreements.  Stephen Harper has no interest in reducing our greenhouse emissions or our consumption of oil.  His only goal is to make Alberta and Canada an oil kingdom by tripling the production of the tar sands.

• For the next 12 days I will be fasting on parliament hill with a half dozen other people, in the hope that people all over Canada, and the world, will wake up and realize we must start making the transition to a new, renewable energy economy, and we must focus all our creativity and energy on this right now.  I believe the future of our children and grandchildren and of life on this planet as we know it is at stake.  I believe we cannot wait until 2020 to find solutions. 

• I believe it is essential we put in place a coalition of powers that will bring about this change in 2015.  2015 is a critical election for the well-being of Canada and the world. 

• But our main obstacle is First Past the Post. 

• As long as we maintain this competitive voting system, we maintain the illusion that one party can have absolute power if they can gather between 35 and 39% of the vote and win a majority.  When parties believe they can have that kind of power, they won’t cooperate.  They won’t take the risk of offending their base.  Instead they plan general policies that can mean almost anything in order to avoid offending some group of voters or another.

• There are only three ways to win government.  The first is to win a majority government.  The second is to create a majority through coalitions. The third is to have a proportional voting system that will give no-one absolute power and ensure that parties must talk with each other in an atmosphere of respect.

• Have you seen Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcaire preening their images, dreaming of power?  Each strategizing to knock the other out and grab that elusive majority?  Do you see opportunity for cooperation there?
• Do you think either of them would put proportional representation in place to ensure fair voting if they did win?  Do you think they would make any serious change in either energy policy or our relations with First Nations?

• This is not good news for us.  The 2015 election is our best opportunity to work together, in a loose coalition, with the objective of putting in place a system of proportional representation in the first term of whatever government is elected.

• Our current system gives our young people no reason to get involved to shape their own future.

• Our current system generates Santa Clause politics with every party trying to design the best goodie package to get the most votes.

• According to my brother, John Deverell, in his book, Democracy Eh?  a system based on proportional representation will allow parties to take positions and defend them with integrity, trying to attract voters to good policies. 
• A real democracy is based on an educated public, --familiar with the issues, --and able to discuss them because of good information --(based on sound research), --freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.  Instead, we seem to be heading towards a world of decisions made in secret, --based on little or no scientific evidence, --or pushed through parliament without reflection, or discussion, through omnibus budget bills.

• It is time for the Canadian public to get off the fence and take the plunge for a new voting system.  This is essential if we are going to have the public discussions we need to set new policies and strategies for our society.  We need to be in respectful discussion with one another – not win-lose cut-throat battles.  We have to change the culture of politics.

• Who are we as a people?  How will we establish a society that lives in mutual respect with our First Nations?  How will we establish a sustainable life style --that supports a quality of life on this planet for humanity --and for all beings?  What kind of a legacy will we leave our children and grandchildren --if we continue down the same old path, ignoring the terrible warnings we see every year about climate change.
• How will we put the politic into place to make this change in culture?  I believe we have to act our way into being.  We have to form the coalition now.  We have to decide how to work together.  And we have to vote it into being.  If the Liberals and NDP won’t cooperate, we either have to find a way to force them, or we have to do an end run around them.  But whatever strategy we pick, Proportional Representation is one of the fundamental building blocks of a truly democratic society.

• We need to nurture the “will to mutuality” in society and the concern for the common welfare.  If we want a respectful dialogue, If we want every vote to count, it is time for proportional representation.

• Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you.  Please, join us for our opening ritual for ClimateFast, September 21 at 7pm on the hill.  Check out our website at climatefast.ca for other events.  And join up with Common Causes, and Fair Vote Canada, to win a new kind of politics in 2015.
• All Our Relations.

Free As The Wind

Blog 2013 09 18 Free As the Wind

People get so worried when we talk about moving away from a carbon-based economy.  We so rely on the gasoline that feeds our car and the natural gas that warms our homes.  We don’t want to reduce our lifestyles.  But I believe in many ways, if we were to slow down a little and ride our bikes more often, life would be more fun.

I got my first bike when I was 10 years old.  Suddenly my whole world opened up.  The amount of the city and the numbers of things I could do without parental oversite increased exponentially.  I was free.  I had power.  I could go where I wanted to when I wanted to.  I loved it.  I explored the city of Saskatoon on my side of the river and I had a ball.

As an adult, I didn’t even have a bike for a long time.  I tried biking a few times but wasn’t in good enough shape to handle the hills where I lived.  Since I moved to Ottawa, however, things have changed.  With two knee replacements, I wanted to bike as a way of keeping my knees strong and bending well.  I bought a bike at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ottawa sustainability fair.  I lucked out and got a really good one—a Peugot. 

The first day I limited myself to riding up and down my tiny little street.  I was so tentative.  I had to practice turning around and see if I could still balance myself on a bike.   A few days later, I tried going up and down the streets in my neighbourhood where there was little traffic.  It’s amazing what you see and who you talk to when you are riding a bike through a neighbourhood.  You actually start to believe like you are in a real place, with real people walking around or sitting on their porch.  You see the place as warmer, and friendlier than when you just whiz by and never talk to anyone.  You find out about stores you didn’t know were there.  There’s a man selling vegetables right on my street—his own little market.

Gradually I built up the confidence to get out of first gear and go a little faster.  I learned how to ride in traffic.  I went to my Transforming Community Meetings about two kilometres away on my bike and discovered new neighbourhoods.  I started biking to the pool for my swim.  My bike became a useful tool I could use for transportation.  The next year I started riding my bike downtown to volunteer at USC Canada.  I found the river trails that go on forever in Ottawa.  What an exhilarating feeling to speed along the river in the sun and the wind, the water and the trees.  You feel so alive.  You feel directly a part of this wonderful living planet of interconnected beings. 

This year I find I have built up my strength so I can take the hills up the bridges without getting off and walking.  I can handle myself on roads where traffic is going 80 kms an hour.  I can use my bike as transportation to get to meetings 15-20 kilometres from where I live.  I can shop for groceries on my bike. 

I realized one day that when I use my bike this way I get outside to enjoy the natural world much more often for at least an hour or two.  I escape from my computer and breathe the fresh air.  Life is good.  Life is wonderful and I love it.  Stop thinking your life is going to be worse if we have to give up carbon and start thinking about the new opportunities you will have to enjoy life a different way.

Deep Gratitude

Today has been a very full day.  I announced my fast at church today and then went to my Global Justice group meeting.  So many people stopped to thank me and say they would give me their support.  Then I went on to my multifaith council meeting and found people there who wanted a poster to put up and who wanted to take the message to their communities.  I believe people really are hungry for climate action and they are glad we are raising the issue.

The city of Ottawa is hosting a street closing to promote a car-free day on September 22nd.  It is so good when the people and the city are working together toward the same goal.  We all need to make much more conscious choices about when and how often we use our cars.  Conservation is one of the most important ways we can reduce greenhouse gases.

Now all we need to do is to convince the city to take a stand against the Ottawa pipeline to bring Alberta dilbit across the Rideau River near Kemptville.  We are most concerned about the almost inevitability of a spill that may put our two acquifers at risk that supply water to Ottawa and surrounding communities.  Even more we are concerned that if the government succeeds to build these pipelines, they will tripple the production in the Alberta tar sands.  This expansion will offset all the gains we make in promoting conservation and renewable energy.  In addition, burning the oil produced will add another level of injection of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The process of organizing this fast has put me in touch with many wonderful people who are all doing everything they can to raise awareness, increase our respect for the earth, and promote a change of heart towards a different type of economy and way of living.  We have the passion and the creativity to do it.  We just need the support of our leadership for structural changes that will increase the effectiveness of our work.  That will be the subject of another blog.

Fasting

As I work every day to organize the events of ClimateFast the day when I will begin my fast draws closer.  September 21 to October 2 -- 12 Days.  What kind of a fast will I do and what will my fast be about?  I notice all my colleagues on the ClimateFast team are having similar thoughts.

How much can I give up?  What is the purpose of sacrifice?  Will I damage my health?

I do have health issues.  I take twice daily medication that requires me to have food in my stomach so I will not be doing a total food fast.  I will settle for two meals a day, morning and night, and will not eat meat.  Giving up beef and lamb is especially important because they produce so many greenhouse gases.  I am told that giving up eating beef is equivalent to giving up the use of your car.

My main thing will be the carbon fast.  I will not be using my car for the length of the fast.  My plan is to ride my bike or take the bus or walk wherever I go.  I am also buying all my vegetables at the organic farmer's market from local farmers.  We are planning to make light vegan salads and vegetable broth and green leaf soups.

The interesting thing is that as I become very intentional about every choice, I already feel like I am beginning the fast.  I am looking forward to it.  I become conscious and focused on every single thing I take in.  Fasting is an act of self mastery where you weigh the value of every decision and become conscious about how you are living.  It brings you into the present moment.

This is what we need to do.  If we are going to learn how to conserve energy we need to understand where it comes from.  How it is made.  Whether or not we really need to have that light on.  How warm we really need to have the house.  (Or how cold in the summer.)

Similarly, when we listen to our politicians telling us what we need for a healthy economy, we will have more awareness about what is based on the old ways -- the consumer economy -- and what policies will bring us forward into a world where we burn far fewer fossil fuels until we wean ourselves completely.

Withdrawal from fossil fuels will be very difficult.  We will need the tools of self-mastery.  And we will need to know why we should do it.  I'll be blogging about these things all through the ClimateFast.  I hope you'll join me.

Darlington is not Solution to Energy Problems

Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice

A national faith-based organization founded in support of Unitarian values

P.O. Box 40011, Ottawa, ON, K1V 0W8

President, Rev. Frances Deverell                                                                          president@cusj.org

August 9, 2013

To Premier Kathleen Wynne, Bob Chiarelli, Ontario Minister of Energy, and the Ontario Energy Board

Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice (CUSJ) (http://www.cusj.org) is a national, liberal religious organization founded to actively promote Unitarian values through social action.  CUSJ is a membership organization and when it speaks, it speaks only for its members and not for either the Canadian Unitarian Council or for any particular Unitarian Congregation.

Unitarians affirm the fundamental unity and interdependence of all existence.  We see this reality in the interconnections between people of all continents in our globalized world.  We see the peoples of the world as one community in which the security of each nation is entwined with the security of all others.  We believe the greatest threat to human security is global warming and climate change.  We believe the overwhelming preponderance of scientists who tell us humans are responsible for the speed with which it is occurring.  

The CUSJ Board believes we must all make it a priority to transform our ways of living toward sustainable economies that drastically reduce our energy consumption and the pollution of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  As a people, we must take responsibility for ourselves.  The well-being of our children and their children and their ability to enjoy life on this earth is at stake.

The principles of justice and the inherent worth and dignity and equality of all people requires that everyone should have equal access to the basic necessities of life.  If all areas of the world continue to focus on growth as the route to well-being, humanity will be on a collision course with the natural world.  We in the developed world have long used more than our share of energy and resources.  If we are to enjoy the fruits of growth, it must be through innovation and transformation to a new economy.  We must take immediate and dramatic steps to change our ways of living, to reduce greenhouse gases put into the environment, and to reduce our consumption.  Ontario can aggressively work towards this goal in a number of ways:

• Focus on conservation.  We are pleased to see Ontario put emphasis on conservation.  It is important and we must do even more in this area.  Review all policies with an eye to reducing consumption.  Building codes must require high efficiency standards.  New appliances must be state of the art low energy users.  Businesses and manufacturers must be strongly encouraged through a combination of carbon taxes and conservation incentives.  Home retrofit programs should be renewed and expanded.  City design needs to encourage low-energy public transportation and communities where people work where they live.  We need to move away from consumerism and militarism toward a different economic base.

• A strong public education program should back up these types of initiatives.  If this kind of aggressive program has to be sold, show leadership.  Sell it.  Help Ontarians to understand why we have to go this route.  

• Produce solid information.  Ontario should ensure that the best information on all sources of power is gathered and published in useable formats so that people at all levels – individuals, businesses, and governments can make the best decisions.  This information must not be biased toward one industry or another.  The gathering of this data should be publicly funded. 

• Congratulations to Ontario for eliminating coal as a source of power generation.  Finish the job.  This is a great success story to celebrate.

• Ontario should halt its plans for nuclear power development.  There are many reasons for this.  (see CUSJ brief to the Darlington commission:  Nuclear Power Brief 2011 03 31 CUSJ.)  Nuclear power uses far more greenhouse gases to produce than is claimed if you consider cradle to grave processes.  It is expensive to produce and costs are escalating.  It is uninsurable against disaster.  The Fukushima plant in Japan continues to pose great risks to human health around the world despite great efforts to contain the radiation.  We do not want to put our Great Lakes area at risk.  There is still no solution in sight for nuclear waste.  Burying it in the Great Lakes Basin is completely unacceptable.  Ontario should set as a goal to reduce the percentage of Nuclear Power in the mix down to zero as the plants we have age and must be decommissioned.

• Replace the baseload power generated by nuclear power with hydropower purchased from the James Bay area of Quebec as much as possible.

• Bring up the investment in both wind, solar, and small local water projects as well as biogas, heat pumps, and other sources of renewable energy as quickly as possible.  Learn as much as we can from countries in the lead.  Encourage innovation and new technology for power generation, storage, and for a smart grid to distribute the power.  Encourage new organization structures such as local energy cooperatives to help generate this power.  Make Canadians competitive in a new world.

• Encourage localized power generation wherever possible according to the particular situation and conditions in each place and each home and business.  Massive wind farms may be suitable in some locations but more of our power should be developed house-by-house and business-by-business.  The long-term strategy should be for a decentralized system—a flexible system that can increase or decrease power as demand changes.

• While, in the short term, an emphasis on natural-gas generated power may be necessary as the “cleanest” of the carbon-based fuels, it would be better if we can develop the new, emerging hydrogen potentialities.  In the long term, we must eliminate all carbon-based fuels.  They should be reserved for those uses for which there are absolutely no other alternatives.  A long-range plan should include phasing out carbon-based fuels.

The climate crisis can be seen as a terrible threat or a great opportunity.  We believe it is the responsibility of liberal religious organizations such as our own to remind our leaders that a better world is possible – a world where we stop damaging the capacity of the earth to sustain life and where we recognize our interconnection and our interdependence with all life as we know it.  It is not too late to take action.  We have a choice.

Our current economic and political priorities are generating massive disparities of wealth and poverty, in Canada and around the world. We allow a few people with concentrated wealth and power to control the public agenda in their own interests, without any accountability.  We destroy our own nest.  We foster human greed and ignore the consequences.  We will not be able to ignore those consequences forever.  Increasing numbers of extreme weather events are telling us that we are reaching a tipping point.  Hurricane Sandy in 2012 in New York, and terrible floods in India, and in Calgary in 2013 are but two examples.  Who knows who will be hit next or how much it will cost?  The time for serious action in the public interest is now.

Will you, the leaders we have elected to represent us in a democratic country, take the necessary action to ensure that Ontario has a healthy future for many years?  Our long-term energy policy is a critical element in ensuring such a future for our children and grandchildren.  We are asking you commit yourself to doing everything you can to promote a renewable energy economy for Ontario and to the phasing out of both Nuclear power and carbon fuels.  We join with ClimateFast (http://www.climatefast.ca) and many other grass roots organizations in asking for your pledge to a healthy energy future.

In faith,

Rev. Frances Deverell,

President, Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice