Newly elected MPs should demand action across party lines
To the Expositor:
I wanted to see an end to “false majority governments” that saw a party—any party—again come to power with less than 50 percent of the support of Canada’s electorate. Such governments do not represent the will of the people.
Be they led by a Harper, a Trudeau, or whoever comes next all these false majority governments continue to give us is more of the destructive and divisive type of wasteful build up under the one, then tear down under the other type of go-nowhere, spin their wheels governance that has unfortunately become the norm. One that further entrenches our divisiveness and reinforces the growing polarization that pits neighbour against neighbour. They breed little more than cynicism and growing despair amongst our youth.
They at best—or should I say at worse—produce the expected short term bottom line returns of the exponentially richer and richer corporate élite whose lobbyists (aka pimps) command the ear of both Liberal and Conservative “war room” strategists.
In my books neither Trudeau nor Scheer earned or deserved the customary four year rah-rah-rah chest pounding that false majority governments produce. That is to say, little more than more of the same old same old longer term lose-lose for all.
Given such, the best I could hope for—and got—was a minority government.
With a recession well in sight and a helter-skelter ecologically unsustainable future little more than at best a decade away, our days of kicking the can down the road are coming to an end as the end of the road is well in sight. Or at least it is for those who care to look beyond the extra gruel our newly elected have offered to add to our bowls as an enticement to look no further than I, I, me, me, my.
On a go-forward basis, it is my hope to see all newly elected and returning MPs demand to work across party lines on the development and implementation of an agreed-upon 10-year climate action plan that will bring us the systemic changes that our times call for if they have any respect for the reverence of life beyond their own.
It’s called a Green New Deal.
It is my contention that we should all ask our elected MPs if they are prepared to demand such of their respective party leaders. I am also personally of the opinion that MPs who cannot agree to such are little more than robotic shills who cannot think beyond party scripts.
I’d like to believe the failure of MPs to push for and come to an in-Parliament agreement on a progressive 10-year climate action plan that is in keeping with the IPCC’s warnings will see us back to the polls sooner rather than later and not simply back to the streets in ever-growing numbers.
People are looking for a way out of what is a poor and increasingly worsening environmental situation. If our élites and our (or should I say their) elected politicians simply slip back into their same old, same old rhetorical partisan choruses, we may as well turn off the light at the end of the tunnel.
Gary Champagne
Ottawa
