Parliamentary Reform, an Interview With Michael Chong: Part One.

Last summer I interviewed the Wellington County Member of Parliament, Michael Chong. Like many leading Parliamentarians, Chong has a specific interest that he's devoted a lot of work towards: Parliamentary Reform. That's what dominated this conversation. I found it tremendously illuminating, so I hope readers will too.

Michael Chong sitting at his desk in his Fergus Constituency office.
Photo by Tim Allman.

The following transcripts have been edited to improve the reading and---I hope---still accurately convey the gist of what Chong had to say about a fairly complex subject.

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Hulet:  My first question is how well do most MPs understand how important the rules that they are working under are for the function of a real democracy?

Chong: I think most understand the importance but not many come to the job with a lot of knowledge, so they don't understand the implications. Our rules are both written and unwritten, and a lot of them have evolved through many decades and are only really well known to those who practice them. And that's one of the unique characteristics of the Canadian system. Unlike the US which has an entirely written constitution, our's is a hybrid that is partially written and partially unwritten. A lot of those conventions govern parliament and that's why a lot of MPs---when first selected---have very little idea about how they function. 

Hulet: So about the reforms that you have been promoting. Are they a response to how the unwritten rules have evolved? Or do you have a sense that sometimes people change written rules in order to change the unwritten rules? I'm wondering how much those two things play against each other in what you're doing.

Chong: The reforms that I've brought forward are an attempt to address both. They have changed considerably in our Parliament over the last 150 years. 

I often say to people that Sir John A. MacDonald would not recognize how the House of Commons operates. He would be familiar with the buildings of Parliament, but the rules---both written and unwritten---have changed a lot in the last 150 years. It has gone from a Parliament where the elected member was the primary organizing entity to a one where political parties---and particularly the leaders---are the primary organizing principle. And I think that that has fundamentally changed the system and diverted it from what the political constitution prescribes. 

We have written rules and those can be found in the standing orders of the House of Commons----which anyone can download in a pdf document. They're also found in written law, for example the Parliament of Canada Act. They're found in parts of our written constitution, the 1867, and 1982 Constitution Acts, for example, and then we have the unwritten rules which are the conventions that govern a lot of what we do in the Commons and it's committees. These unwritten rules---or "conventions" as they are often called---can evolve. 

Political theorists often say that the test for an unwritten convention is two-fold. Can it be articulated? Secondly, do the actors in a political system act in conformity with that explicitly defined rule? If the answer is "yes", then an unwritten convention exists. They can evolve, and many have for many years. In the early 1980s there was a Supreme Court reference to the conventions that govern our system. The government of Pierre Trudeau asked the court if the written constitution allows the government to unilaterally patriate the constitution back from the United Kingdom. He also asked whether the unwritten constitution allows the same thing. 

The Supreme Court said "Yes" to the first one, and "No" to the second. So there's an example of how our system works. Sometimes the unwritten rules are at odds with written ones. So the two parts are always in tension with one another. All of which is to say that as a result, the vast majority of MPs---when they first come to Ottawa---do not know the rules and how the place actually operates. And it takes some years to learn.  

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I think some background info would probably be useful here. For those readers who might not know it, the government of Canada didn't really have full control over it's own constitution until 1982. Great Britain had given all Commonwealth nations full legislative independence in 1931. But because in Canada the provinces couldn't agree upon an amendment formula, Canada had asked the UK that Canada's "constitution"---the British North America (BNA) Act of 1867---be specifically excluded from those laws that the Canadian Parliament could change. There had been changes to the BNA Act between 1952 and 1975, but those had been allowed because the British Parliament had amended the BNA Act in 1949 to give the Canadian Parliament the limited authority necessary to do those specific things.

Rene Levesque, Party Quebecois premier
from 1976 to 1985. Toronto Star photo
c/o the Toronto Public Library Archives.
Used under the "fair dealing" provision of
the Copyright Act.

The Liberal government under Pierre Trudeau wanted to find some way to bring the constitution "home"---specifically to enshrine Canadian rights and freedoms, and, to give the Supreme Court the power to preserve them from infringement by elected officials. But most of the premiers at the time were loathe to create new limitations on their power, so they had never agreed upon any sort of amending formula.  Moreover, at that specific time the government of Quebec was composed of separatists lead by Premier Rene Levesque. Since Levesque wanted to lead the province out of confederation, there was no way that he would agree to any changes to the constitution---simply because that would not only imply endorsing the Canada as a political entity, but also because by doing so it would remove one of the arguments for separation in the first place (ie: the continued ties to Great Britain).

As Chong points out, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the authority to change the constitution, but it couldn't do so unilaterally---there had to be significant support by the premiers too, but total consensus wasn't necessary.

Trudeau got his way because he held the threat of a referendum over the heads of the premiers and polling showed that his charter of rights and freedoms was overwhelmingly supported by ordinary voters, both within the entire country and the province of Quebec. This peeled off the other premiers and left Levesque all by himself. Incidentally, this political event is called "the night of the long knives" by Quebec separatists because they view it as an example of English Canada ganging up on Quebec. To contrast this narrative, polling of French-speaking Canadians seems to indicate that they are just as supportive of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the rest of the country. (In contrast, the politicians who supported the deal called it "the kitchen accord".)

In the end the Premiers outside of Quebec agreed to bring the power of changing the constitution back to Canada by accepting an amendment system that in most cases required support by two thirds of the Premiers representing more than 50% of the population. In exchange, Trudeau accepted the introduction of a "notwithstanding clause" that allows provincial governments the right to create legislation that ignores a provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms---as long as that exemption only lasts five years unless it is passed again in the provincial parliament for another five years.

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We've passed through another Yule, which is a time when I and many others tend to make donations to various charities and institutions in society. For example, I've made my yearly lump sum payments to the Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. I do this because both of these institutions are things that I use constantly. I'd like to suggest that if you regularly read the "Back-Grounder" that you consider subscribing or making a lump sum payment. It's not a charity, but I am trying to build an institution that is important to the proper functioning of a modern democracy.

I spend a lot of time looking at various forms of Guelph media, and I'm more than a little appalled sometimes by what I see. Some folks seem to have simply lost any interest in trying to find out the truth about anything. Instead, what I see far too often is simply what passes for "conventional wisdom" within their own particular social circle being repackaged and "sexed up" to increase the reader's emotional response. That is not what I do when I write an article. 

I often start off with an idea and discard it after I start my research because in looking at the "picky details" I came across something that just blows my mind. That's what I consider real journalism, as opposed to just creating "click bait". But it requires time and effort, and, it doesn't "do social media" well, because that is all driven by emotions---mostly anger. This pretty much precludes any ability to raise money through advertising, hence my appeals for subscribers.

If you think what I do is worth reading, I'd suggest it's worth paying for. So please consider starting the New Year right and go to Patreon or Paypal to subscribe, or send a cheque to "Bill Hulet, 124-A Surrey St. East, Guelph, N1H 3P9". 

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Hulet: Can you give me a specific example of an unwritten rule that has actually changed?

Chong: Sure. 

There are a number of unwritten conventions governing Question Period that have changed. For example you will notice today that question period questions are now limited to 35 seconds. There is no rule that says that questions and answers have to be limited to 35 seconds. That unwritten rule came about as a result of an agreement between the party whips and the house leaders in the 1990s. There was a discussion with regard to the way question period operated and this small group of people decided that they would limit the amount of time to 35 seconds. Before that, it was up to the discretion of the Speaker and people were often allowed up to a minute, or a minute and a half for a question; and a minute, minute and a half for an answer. So that's an example of a minor rule that has changed.  

Probably the biggest one I can think of allowed caucus to directly elect the interim party leader. That was done under an unwritten rule. For many decades in our history, elected members of parliament would directly elect---or remove---a party leader. That unwritten rule has evolved in that it is rarely used any more.  

Hulet: That leads into another question. What impact do you think changing the system from one where delegates at a leadership convention elect the leader to one where leaders are directly elected by the rank-and-file members has influenced the power of the party leader?

Chong: I'd say that it's massively grown the power of the party leader---particularly the Prime Minister. When delegates elected a party leader we were talking about a small group of about 1,000, maybe 2,000 delegates who would elect the party leader. And many of these delegates would be Parliamentarians themselves: MPs, Senators, ex-members, ex officio members of the party, and, so on. 

Because the group was quite small, the party leader was accountable. Today we elect party leaders through a one member, one vote system---and in most party's constitutions that doesn't happen very often. For most parties, once they elect a leader that leader doesn't face a leadership review if they gain power. 

For example, Jean Chretien was elected Liberal party leader in 1990 and did not have to face a leadership review vote ever during his time in power and did not relinquish power until October, 2003---13 years later. Not only was there no leadership review, during that 13 year time frame, most of the party members who had voted for him in 1990 were no long living or were no longer party members by the time 2003 came around. And the same was true for Mr. Harper who was first elected party leader in March 2004  when he resigned as party leader in 2015 he had never faced a party review vote. And most of the party members who'd voted for him were no longer party members or no longer alive by the time 2015 came around. 

That lack of accountability has strengthened party leaders considerably. So that's unlike the old system where party leaders were constantly and on a daily and weekly basis, accountable to elected members of Parliament. That's because at any moment in time they could remove the party leader----even if he was the Prime Minister. In the system we used to have, the system that is mostly existent in the UK and Australia---although they've gone through some rule changes more recently---the party leader is constantly having to make sure that they are accountable to MPs. And if they're not, they're removed. 

We've seen that countless times in Australia and numerous times in the last several decades in the UK. So party leaders have  to be constantly accountable to their MPs, who in turn have to be constantly accountable to their constituents. But here we have a system where party leaders get elected once and it's very difficult to remove them. The one limitation is that party leaders do face an automatic review vote by delegates at a nation policy convention after an election in which they do not form a government. So there is theoretical accountability in most party constitutions, but it's not sufficient. It's just not the same type of accountability that we used to have. Moreover, the moral authority of the delegates simply isn't as great as it used to be.

Hulet: Because the leader was directly voted into his position by the party rank-and-file---.

Chong: Yeah. And if the leader becomes Prime Minister there is no review vote. And actually, a point of correction. I said Mr. Harper never received a review vote after he was elected leader in March 2004. That's not correct. He was elected in March 2004, he had a review vote because he lost the election in 2005. But between that review vote and 2015 he never had a review vote because he was Prime Minister. 

Hulet:  You mentioned how long Jean Chretien went---.

Chong: He never had a review vote!

Hulet:  The immediate thing that jumped into my head was whether that long, long time without a review vote was why there was  that nasty internal battle between him and John Turner---.

Chong: Exactly! That's exactly what happened. So because there is no mechanism to remove a leader once they become Prime Minister, it becomes a massive battle in the caucus and the party that drags out for years. Because there is no mechanism, and so that's exactly what happened with the Martin/Chretien battles. 

Whereas in the UK and Australia presently, when there is a desire to remove the leader  it's a very quick process that happens in a matter of weeks, rather than years. And you're seeing that right now in the UK where Teresa May was told by caucus that she had to go. They were gentle about it, they didn't force a review vote to remove her, they simply said: "We'd like you to go, please give us your date for resigning" and she gave them a date. And that's why they are currently going through a leadership vote. 

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Jean Chretien. Photo
by Joe Howell. Image
c/o Wiki Commons

Photo by Andrew Rusk.
Image c/o Wiki Commons. 

For those readers who don't remember this (or were born after it happened), there was a long battle within the Liberal party between Prime Minister Chretien and the Finance Minister, Paul Martin. They both had factions supporting them within the party, and---as Chong says---there was no mechanism to formally settle their differences. The result was a sort of "underground" battle between the two groups that dramatically weakened party unity.

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I keep getting complaints that my articles are too long, so I'm going to end the first part of my interview with Michael Chong here. Next time I'll be talking about how the existing rules influence the day-to-day life of Parliament and get in the way of effective governance, and, while parties can cause problems, they are still essential to politics.

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Furthermore I say onto you, we need to deal with the climate crisis! 

Yule Shutdown plus Bonus Pod Cast

Howdy readers. This week is the winter solstice time and the lovely Misha has come for an extended visit. So I'm taking some time off from the blogging. Luckily, for the totally committed, here's a year end podcast from Adam Donaldson where he foolishly invited me to opinion opine.

https://guelphpolitico.ca/2019/12/18/guelph-politicast-201-guelph-stuff-2019-year-in-review/

Cool Celtic Tree---happy Yule!

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Furthermore I say onto you, we need to deal with the climate crisis! 

Loyalty

I've been looking at polls lately wondering exactly what a government has to do for conservative voters to change their voting intentions. According to FiveThirtyEight's poll aggregator, America is pretty much evenly split over whether or not Trump should have been impeached last night. (Click on the image to get a better picture.)

This and following images from FiveThirtyEight's article Do Americans Support Impeaching Trump?
Both used under the "Fair Dealing" provision of the Copyright law.

But if you break down those for or against impeachment by political party affiliation, you see a totally different trend.

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I find these graphs disturbing, not because people disagree with me about Donald Trump's impeachment, but because of the way the numbers break down. An outside observer would be excused if she assumed that support for or against impeachment is directly tied to whether or not she knows about what he did. Please note, that support for Impeachment was pretty much steady from March to September, but trended upwards in the end of September and beginning of October when a lot of news stories came out that explained how he leaned on the President of Ukraine in order to get Joe Biden smeared in time for the election next November.  

What's important to recognize, however, is that the baseline for that change was wildly different whether you were a Democrat, Independent, or, Republican. The Democrats started out at 76%, Independents at 41.7%, and, Republicans at 12.1%. They all dipped a bit in April, then stayed steady until the end of September. The upward trend in October was pretty much the same among Democrats and independents, but was barely noticeable with Republicans. 

Why do I think this is a big deal? 

It's because deciding to impeach a President should be a matter of whether or not he did something unconstitutional---and that should revolve around facts not opinions. And I would hope that people in any party should be able to look at the facts of the matter and come to their conclusions based on some sort of objective analysis. Having this dramatic divergence in opinion while looking at the same event means that a huge number of voters in the USA have simply lost the ability to see the world as it really is instead of how they think it should be.  

This bugs me, and I think it should bug everyone.

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If you find these articles interesting and/or useful, why not subscribe? As little as one dollar a month helps a lot. And it's really easy if you use Patreon or Paypal. 

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Years ago a quite successful city Council member by the name of Maggie Laidlaw went through several election cycles switching from party to party as a potential candidate. She started out in the NDP, ran as a candidate for the old National Party of Canada---which was a "one day wonder" under the leadership of Mel Hurtig---and almost got the Liberal Nomination for Guelph by creating a "flash mob" that joined that party just to get her the nomination.

I mention her because I can remember someone saying something to the effect that "that woman has no loyalty". I thought it odd, because I'd always seen her as being tremendously loyal; not to individual people nor to a given political institution, but to a set of very specific ideals, mostly based on environmental and social justice concerns. She had hopped from party to party simply because she'd never found one that really seemed to honestly commit to those ideals, so instead she kept looking for something that would give her the opportunity to push what she believed was "the right thing to do". 

Maggie Laidlaw, former Councillor Ward Three.
Image from her old website, used under "Fair Dealing" Provision.

This is not a terribly common way for people to involve themselves in politics. Instead, they usually develop an emotional attachment to a particular organization and eventually it becomes a question of "my group, right or wrong".

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The last few decades have provided various examples of where I have ended up scratching my head about why it is that a given person still has loyalty to a party that would seem to have absolutely zero commitment to the ideals that that person has built their life around. I've known people that genuinely seemed to be concerned about the climate emergency, yet they adamantly refuse to give up the party that wants to pile lighter fluid on the earth and burn it down. Or they talk about how they are committed to ending homelessness, but still support the party that curb-stomps poor people whenever it seems useful to do so for purely political reasons. I find it hard to believe that they are simply being duplicitous. Instead, I've come to believe in an alternative hypothesis---namely, that they order their lives around a hierarchy of values, where loyalty is actually more important than being hypocritical.

(It's fair to ask why I've never put these individuals on the spot and asked them that question. This raises an important issue in journalism. I've always been afraid that if I asked such a pointed and personal question that it would damage the professional relationship between me and them---and that would cut down on my access. Questioning someone's motives is a prime example of a "career limiting move" for a journalist. This is a tightrope that everyone who writes stories about leaders has to navigate. I hope that I haven't made too many compromises, but I have to admit that it does sometimes give me pause to wonder if I've gone too far in one direction or another.)

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I suppose one explanation for this problem differentiating loyalty to an ideal versus loyalty to a group or individual comes down to someone's life experience. I've got a Master's degree in philosophy and Maggie has a Doctorate in nutritional science, which means that we've both been marinated in a culture where loyalty is to the TRUTH instead of the institution or individual person. Perhaps if we'd had backgrounds where it all comes down to the leader or group it would have been totally different.

My family grouping---right or wrong!
Public domain photo of a painting by Charles R. Knight .
Image c/o Wiki Commons.

My understanding is that human beings evolved to live in very small family-based groups where loyalty to the group was an absolutely crucial survival mechanism. We have long since gotten past that stage, however, and now we must learn to put facts and logic ahead of our personal loyalty. If we don't we will suffer mightily not only for dealing with things like the climate emergency, but also any number of difficult problems that face the human race.

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Furthermore I say onto you, we need to deal with the climate crisis! 

Public Mobilization

In the last few weeks I've had some experiences that I think might indicate a pretty important issue that I think just about everyone else seems to have missed. I thought a quick discussion of this might help others articulate something that might be on the tips of their tongues without being able to clearly identify the problem.

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As regular readers might remember, I wrote a post a while back explaining just what "being on a war footing" meant during WWII. The idea is that we could speed up our efforts aimed at avoiding catastrophic climate change if the governments of the world got off their collective butts and started acting like they really thought that we are in a climate emergency. As a result, I've become something of a Diogenes wandering through Guelph trying to find a politician or bureaucrat who wants to put some effort into mobilizing the public to deal with the climate emergency.

Vainly looking for an official in support of public mobilization?
Diogenes Looking for a Man by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.
Public Domain image c/o the Wiki Commons. 

I made this question a couple weeks ago at a private meeting between Lloyd Longfield and a delegation from the Green New Deal and also a couple nights ago to the past Environmental Commissioner, Diane Saxe, during a city event. In both cases the result was the startled look of a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car plus a question to the effect of "what do you mean?". I don't think I was totally out to lunch, however, because in both cases at least one other person referred to my question in their's---which suggests to me that I'm not the only one wondering why people of good will in positions of authority simply won't try to engage the public to help with the climate emergency.

Diane Saxe: "Public Mobilization?
What the heck does that mean?"
Photo by Ontario government,
c/o Wiki Commons.

Don't get me wrong. My read of both Lloyd Longfield and Diane Saxe is that they are both really good people who care about the climate emergency. But as I see it, they are both people who come from a background that specifically selects against people who think about how to mobilize the public to deal with a specific issue. 

From what I've heard Mr. Longfield say, it seems that he comes from a background in engineering and business. Those are both fields where communicating with the public is not nearly as important as dealing with a specific problem that you solve either through mathematics and research, or, one-on-one deal making. 

Similarly, my understanding is that Ms. Saxe comes from a legal background where she worked as a mediator. And the absolute last thing that mediators ever want to do is draw the public into the conversation. And, as I've pointed out with an earlier post titled What is an Environmental Group?, most environmental organizations consist of a small number of professionals who fundraise for their campaigns either through a professional fundraising company, solicit donations from a small number of hyper-rich donors, or, sub-contract for the government. So her experience with environmental organizations would similarly ill-prepare her for understanding how to mobilize the public in favour of a specific issue. 

Another aspect of this comes from a future story that I'm preparing about parliamentary reform. In

Michael Chong:  "Don't expect modern
parties to nominate rabble rousers!"
Photo c/o his office. 

conversation with Michael Chong he pointed out that the independence of local Electoral District Associations in Canada has withered away to the point where the party leader holds all the real power when it comes to nominating candidates. This means that no one who amasses a profile and following in a riding on the basis of engaging the public would ever get a nomination---simply because that would almost by definition mean that she is not a "team player" who would willingly submit to party discipline. 

And if almost no one in Parliament is going to understand and support the idea that the average Canadian needs to "get riled up" to avoid catastrophic climate change, then there certainly aren't going to be any bureaucrats who will either. I worked for decades at the University of Guelph---which I nicknamed "the last outpost of the Soviet Union"---so I understand the bureaucratic mindset very well. The absolute primary responsibility of anyone in any sort of institution is "cover your butt". Generally the first response of an appointed official is to limit public engagement through things like controlling their access to information---not encourage them to actually do something!

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What's especially frustrating about this refusal to use one of the biggest weapons in the government arsenal is the fact that the people who want to make the world into a fiery inferno have no such qualms. Doug Ford is putting those Dao-cursed stickers on gasoline pumps.

Doug Ford has no problem at all with public engagement aimed at
helping the human race commit suicide! Image from a government website. 

And, of course, Jason Kenney---the Fuhrer of Alberta---announced yesterday that $30 million is going to be spent creating a propaganda machine touting the "true story" of how the tar sands are nothing but butterflies and rainbows. This is their first creation:

The problem with progressive political parties refusing to do any public mobilization is that the forces of evil have no similar qualms. And if you leave the field open, a lot of people will simply accept Ford and Kenney's nonsense if they don't see any push back. This creates a natural "base constituency" that will vote against any political party that does try to do something to stop total catastrophe. By not pushing the case for rapid mobilization to end fossil fuel use, progressives simply don't build their own core constituencies.

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So what would it look like if the government actually tried to mobilize the public to fight climate change? There is the example from WWII---.

For example, the government could try to cut fossil fuel use by encouraging car pooling or using public transit.

How about "When you ride alone you help destroy
your children's future"?

Or, it could create green future bonds to pay for programs like electrified public transit.

Children in a blighted, over-heated landscape?
Don't let your children fry, buy transit bonds!

How about a campaign aimed at encouraging people to invest in a greater efficiency life-style in order to create a fossil-fuel free future? 

People might object that I'm just rehashing stuff that's already been done. We have had energy-star appliances, financial incentives to put up solar panels, etc. But none of these have been sold emotionally. Instead, they've all been marketed through financial inducements. Indeed, the Liberals have made no attempt whatsoever to say that dealing with climate change is the right thing to do, or, that we have a moral imperative to do it---instead, ordinary folks could be excused if they thought that the entire thing just comes down to the carbon tax.

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I'll admit that I'm a little angry in this post. I've been getting increasingly steamed over the last few weeks as I see person after person refuse to admit the gravity of the situation that the human race is facing. People should throw their "objectivity" and "manners" out the window and tell the flat-out truth that fatuous dorks like Jason Kenney and Doug Ford are "fiddling while Rome burns". 

An additional minor truth that I am angry about is that people should be willing to pay for their news if they don't want to live on a diet of pablum and spin. If everyone who reads local news were to contribute a dollar a month to the news sources they like, Guelph could have a rich and lively independent news scene. Instead, most folks are content to just get the free stuff and let the advertisers tell you what they want you to hear. 

The difference is that if you pay for the news, you are the customer. If you get it for free, you are the product that the publisher sells to the advertiser. 

What would you rather be? Patreon and Paypal make supporting indie media very easy. 

The added benefit from this business model is that your news doesn't hide behind a paywall, which means that people who genuinely can't afford to support it still get it for free. 

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I get it. If you've spent your entire life looking at numbers, mediating disputes, negotiating contracts, implementing government policies, etc, emotions are scary, scary, scary. Emotional people yell at you. They don't make sense. They just make everything difficult.

But emotions are what get people to actually change their behaviour. And we can't solve the climate crisis simply through technology. People are going to have to change the way they live their lives. We can't just switch out internal combustion engines and replace them with electric ones and continue the "happy motoring" lifestyle. Increasing numbers of people will have to accept that they are going to have to live in higher density housing serviced through public transit. (Yeah---no backyard for the kids to play or drives in the country. Get used to it!) We won't be able to fly overseas every year or even every other year anymore. Things will have to change, and while a carbon free life doesn't have to be any less convenient or pleasant, a lot of people are very afraid of any significant change in their lives. If we don't work at emotionally engaging with people, we are not going to get them to commit to the program.

Instead, what I've heard over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, again for about 30 years is that "we have to make baby steps" and that "people can't handle the truth". Well, we are getting very close to "taking baby steps" over a damn cliff! It's time to be honest and emotional with the public. And the government needs to be part of that effort.

When other people pushed Diane Saxe on the need to engage the public, she did suggest that there are "groups" out there that can do that. She lauded "Fridays for the Future". But that's a bloody cop-out. In WWII no one in the government suggested that if we really wanted to stop Hitler we needed to get the school children out making a fuss. Instead, the government made the decision that they needed to get people cranked-up so they'd buy victory bonds, recycle scrap metal, grow their own veggies, accept rationing, etc. And they hired the very best people from the artistic community to fashion the images and ideas necessary to get everyone "with the program". (For crying out loud, the BBC even hired George Orwell to write propaganda for their Eastern service.)

We live in a sea of advertising. Every advertisement that people watch is implicitly telling folks that "everything" is OK. That there's no need to worry. Well, that's a damn lie. And we need some force in society to push back against this mountain of misinformation. And the only public force large enough to do this is the government. So if you have a chance to "bend the ear" of a politician, I'd suggest you bend it in the direction of trying to actually using public campaigns to get people emotionally engaged with the climate crisis. Because I simply do not think that we will be able to actually get the job done unless we do.

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Furthermore I say onto you, we need to deal with the climate crisis! 

What is an Environmental Group?

Years ago I can remember going through a directory of environmental organizations for Canada---long enough back that it was in a hard-bound paper book---and was amazed to find that OPIRG Guelph was listed as one of the biggest ones. On paper, it had thousands of members. This was my first exposure to the way almost all national "groups" are organized. That is

they generally consist of a very small number of full-time, paid staff plus some sort of fundraising company. "Membership" generally consists of simply writing a cheque---and absolutely nothing else. 

In the case of OPIRG, since every student at the U. of Guelph had a deduction given to the group as part of their student fees, that meant that they were---at least on paper---a member of it.

At the time, this somewhat freaked me out. My naive understanding of "membership" was that you had to actually do something for the group---maybe licking envelopes, maybe making phone calls, something---and that you also had to have the ability to control the group through things like electing the leadership. Since then, I've become a little more laid-back. I've learned that the overwhelming majority of people don't really want to become engaged with their world. They just want to live private lives. That's why the majority of union members don't do anything at all for their unions unless they get called out on a strike. It's also why most citizens have never been a member of a political party. It's also why most people have never done anything to support the environmental movement beyond cutting a check for Green Peace or the Sierra Club. Part of me still wishes we were all good citizens who felt a burning need to be actively engaged, but the fact of the matter is that most people don't want to do this. And to be perfectly honest---beyond the fact that this would be an extremely tedious way to live---a lot of these folks are doing really good stuff already. The world needs scout leaders, hockey coaches, poets, artists, master gardeners, etc, as well as activists.

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Also years ago, I was involved with four Green Party of Ontario riding associations that organized several Grand river watershed congresses. One of the tasks we took upon ourselves to do was identify every single environmental organization---of any type at all---that we could find in the watershed. These ranged from local chapters of large groups with broad appeal to the entire public---like Ducks and Trout unlimited; through very specific localized groups with general interests---like the Six Nations Against Pollution (SNAP); to very small groups that didn't even have a name but were organized around someone's kitchen table to deal with some very specific, local problem. We ended up with a database of hundreds of groups. And when we hired a space and held the first congress, and asked all the groups to send at least one person if they could, they filled the hall.

This exercise taught me something else. It might be that the largest, most visible, and, well-funded organizations may have very small memberships, but there are a very large number of invisible, poorly-funded organizations also with very small memberships that are out there doing great things in their local community.  

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I was recently given a scholarly paper by a long-time acquaintance of mine, Robert Case:  the Oral History of the Wellington Water Watchers. (You can download your own copy here.)  He co-authored the paper (with Leah Connor) as an attempt to create a record of this group while people's memories are still fresh. He's a professor and there was a grant involved, so it's an academic document---which ensures that the general public will find it less than a "ripping yarn". But I still found it very interesting for a couple of reasons.

Dr. Robert Case, image c/o University of Waterloo website. 

First of all, it is an attempt to write down the history of one of those "kitchen table" organizations that I found when we were organizing the watershed congresses. It goes right back to an incident where the founder, Mark Goldberg, noticed tractor trailers heading out of the Nestle bottling plant just outside of Aberfoyle. Goldberg is a professional environmental consultant, which means that he knows how to do things like dig up the extraction permit that the company has with the provincial government, which meant that he was able to learn about the size of their organization. He was concerned.

Mark Goldberg. Photo from the Innovation Guelph website.
Used under the "fair dealing" provision of the CopyRight Act.

This led to conversations with others, and eventually he brought James Gordon into the group. While Goldberg understood the science and the regulations, Gordon had a higher community profile and understood how to get people enthused about an issue. (Artists sometimes have that gift.)  

James Gordon. Photo by Trina Koster.
Image c/o James Gordon's "electronic press kit".

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The second thing that I found interesting was that this wasn't just your regular, run-of-the-mill kitchen table group. Wellington Water Watchers is also a "unicorn" in that it was able to mobilize and engage an enormous number of members. The paper identifies the different tactics it went through to raise awareness and then talks about a decision to start selling memberships.

"It wasn't like we had to do fundraising or anything like that. I think we actually started a membership. I can't remember how all of that went originally but through membership came a fee, came some fundraising to pay for events, you know the minutia." (founding volunteer)
"We had a post office box where you could send in your ten dollars become a member and we had quite a few people join," another founding member recalled, "I think about a thousand people." (p-15)

This is an incredible statement. If true, it means that Wellington Water Watchers was able to sign up a relatively huge number of people in a quite small geographic area. And it did it without spending a lot of money on professional fund raisers. Getting a thousand people to pony up $10 and send it to a post office box is incredibly difficult. I know, because I spent a fair number of hours working a membership list fundraising for the Green Party---and I was able to issue tax receipts worth 75% of the donations!

The only way this sort of thing happens is when there is a tremendous groundswell of anger towards an issue and no one has gotten around organizing these people before.

I know this because many, many, many years ago---before I'd done much activism at all---I was president of a local Taijiquan club and ran afoul of a slum landlord. The roof leaked like a sieve, the heat was pretty much nonexistent, and people started quitting the club because of the mess. I couldn't get a hold of the landlord because he lived in Kingston and wouldn't take phone calls. In desperation, I photocopied a sheet of paper inviting people to come and talk about the landlord and shoved them in the mailboxes of all the apartments in the building. I put up some folding chairs and made a big batch of tea.

I was amazed. The training hall was packed with extremely angry people. It turned out that this same guy owned not only this building, but many of the ones that were between Wyndham and Suffolk. He had bought the buildings with only a tiny down payment and he was trying to pay off all his debt with rents---leaving nothing at all for minor inconveniences like maintenance. People were so angry that, among other things, they all immediately agreed to withhold their rent. The result was that he lost the buildings and the tenants at least were able to save some money that they used for deposits on their next homes. (The rental situation wasn't ideal at that time, but it was nowhere as bad as it is now.) Better landlords bought the buildings, fixed them up, and the city moved on.

But what I learned is that when people are really, really concerned about an issue, starting a community group isn't a slog so much as an exercise in "surfing the wave".

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This is an interesting time for environmentalism all over the world. But in Guelph especially there are some especially interesting things happening. We have a lot of environmental organizing happening in this town. We have an exceptionally strong Green Party presence in the city. It was able to elect an MPP and give a candidate for MP a very strong second-place finish. We also have several members sitting on City Council. There are also two very visible protest groups working in the city: "Extinction Rebellion" and "Fridays for the Future". They have been able to get people out for regular Friday events for several months already. We also have people organizing lobbying efforts for "The Green New Deal". They have been able to fill very large halls for two events this year. Finally, there is also a monthly group that meets at Saint Ignatius for the "Citizens Climate Lobby". (I don't know much about them because I've never been able to justify the time to go out to one of their events.)

There is a "thing" in chemistry where you can create a solution that is "supersaturated". That's when you have managed to dissolve more of a substance into a solvent than the solvent can actually hold. This is not a stable state, and if you drop a tiny crystal into the liquid, it will quickly turn into a solid mass of crystals. In politics this situation can also exist. I'm of the opinion that Guelph is quickly reaching the point where it is "supersaturated" with regard to environmental awareness. If that's the case, we might very well find ourselves in a situation where almost over-night we find ourselves with a drastic change in governance followed by radical changes in how we all live our lives. I suspect that much the same thing is happening all over the world---we have just arrived at this point a little bit before everyone else.

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Poverty in Guelph: Part Three of My Conversation with Jaya James

In the first part of my conversation with Jaya James we talked about how the government interacts with poor people and how it is failing to deliver either financial or individual support to people who are struggling to survive in a complex and competitive society. In the second part, we talked about the social relationships that sustain us as human beings, and how these fall apart and fail the poor. In this last part, we talk about the individual psychology of poverty plus the relationship between Hope House and the institution that founded it, Lakeside Church.

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Jaya James, Executive Director, Hope House.
Photo by Bill Hulet 

Hulet: You mentioned earlier "the tyranny of the moment". Could you expand a bit on that?

James: I don't know where Mary Chrome got it from---she was our social worker for a while. But she 

Mary Crome, MSW, RSW.
Photo c/o Canadian Federation of
University Women, Guelph Chapter.
Used under the "Fair Use" provision
of the Copyright Act.

used that phrase a lot, so I have to credit her for it.

The tyranny of the moment is this idea---and I don't think it only applies to low income populations, but that's where my experience has been. When you are on low income you are always trying to figure out where you are going to get your next immediate need met. You're not thinking about a month, you're thinking about today.

So today "How are you going to get fed, clothed, sheltered". The next day you spend thinking "How am I going to get fed, clothed, sheltered". This creates this cycle that essentially means you are really focused on this moment in time and it discourages you from doing longer range thinking. 

And yet we all know that when we want to move towards a goal often we have to do things in the short term that may not get us there immediately but ultimately will get us to our bigger goal. So we have to have this "future gazing" experience. If you are spending all your energy and time trying to think of how to get food, clothing and shelter, or even about to get your emotional needs met, you don't have time to think about the future. "Where do I want to go?" "How can I make things different?" "How can I move towards what I want to do?" "How can I get this longer term situation addressed?"

Mary Chrome always used to remind us: "Remember that when someone comes in---and they might have eaten very well---but they need food "Now! Now! Now!"---remember that they are in the "tyranny of the moment"". 

At that moment they are hungry and they're afraid that they will not find food again. So if you can work through---without asking "Why?" questions but instead "What?". So help them list "So here's all the things that are available to help people exit out of that tyranny of the moment. They the can relax a little and say "Okay"". 

Sometimes it's as simple as giving someone a granola bar and letting them eat a little bit of the edge off. Then we can talk a bit about "what do you have in your cupboard back home?" Sometimes they do have food back home but they don't know how to use it. So if we've got those things, let's see if there are a couple of different meals that we can make with that. 

We can also ask "When was the last time you were in for a food market shop?", "Can you do that?" "No, you've already been in this month." "Have you been to Chalmers in the last two weeks?" "No? Then let's work that into what we're going to do."

When you are trapped in the sense of "fight or flight" phase. There again is that cognitive redirection in ability and you can't make wise decisions---or perhaps the most wise decisions. It doesn't mean you always make bad decisions. That's not the best way to phrase this---. 

Hulet: The window of opportunity shrinks and you have to grab the first thing you see. 

James: Right! You're grabbing the first thing instead of what you may actually want.  

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The issue that James is talking about when discussing the "tyranny of the moment" has all sorts of important ramifications that should be mulled over. Let's start with a common trope that is used to suggest things about why some people succeed in life, and some do not: the so-called "marshmallow test". When I searched for a video on YouTube that talked about it, I found a great many---here's the shortest one. 

It basically involves giving children an option involving a marshmallow: either eat it now or wait 15 minutes and get to eat two. The results were then compared to later life outcomes: Scholastic Aptitude Tests, body mass index, educational attainment, etc. This seemed to indicate that the ability to defer eating a piece of candy showed an innate ability to defer gratification that resulted in later life success. 

I suspect that the reason why this story is so popular---other than being an excuse to show videos of cute children fussing---is because it neatly fits into many people's preconceived notions about poverty. That is, that people are poor simply because they make bad choices. The problem with this idea---and many other similar ones---is that it is based on the flawed assumption that the world that each person inhabits is just like everyone else's. It is easy to look at these children from the vantage point of a safe, secure, dependable, middle-class life and see their behaviour as being the result of "poor will power". 

But what if you live in a world where nothing is safe, secure, or, dependable? In that world, things like marshmallows don't stay put if you leave them alone---they disappear. In that case, the old saying "the bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush" kicks in. That's what the "tyranny of the moment" is all about. 

Abraham Maslow, from Wiki Commons.

Abraham Maslow  was a psychologist who posited that people have a set of needs that stack one on top of another like the blocks in a pyramid. One has to deal with the first layer before they can even think about dealing with what goes above. He called this the "hierarchy of needs", and it explains "the tyranny of the moment" that James is talking about. 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Image by J. Finkelstein, c/o the Wiki Commons. 

Many people living in poverty are stuck on the first layer of the pyramid. They have day-to-day concerns about finding food, shelter, warm clothes, etc. This means that they have trouble even thinking about things like employment, safety, etc. And the idea that they would think about developing a connection in the community, self-confidence, etc, must just seem totally alien to people who are sleeping rough, begging on the streets, and, traveling from hand-out to hand-out. 

They can't reach any further up on the pyramid to deal with the other needs that are above them. But this creates enormous problems because this prevents them from dealing with the "5 dimensions of well-being" that James talked about in the last article on the subject.

• physical
• spiritual: that you are able to find meaning and purpose in your life, that you have a role in the world 
• emotional: that you're able to receive and deal with your emotions in a positive, healthy way---especially your negative emotions, how do you deal with them when you are really angry or frustrated, or ashamed
• relational: that you have a group of family or friends who would be "there" if you were to disappear or if something wrong was happening with you, and who would work with you, trying to get you back. encouraging, cheering you on 
• financial

Remember that James said 

If you are really strong in the other areas besides finance you're going to be OK because your community will take care of you. If you've got a really strong sense of what your purpose is, you will be out there pursuing opportunities. If you've got good emotional health, then you will be able to express yourself in a way that people can accept, or, at least can hear. 

The problem is, however, that the outrageously mean way we treat poor people in our society means that many people on Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program get stuck in the "tyranny of the moment", or, on the first floor of Maslow's hierarchy of values pyramid. Not only because the amount of money they receive is so paltry, or because the city hasn't been building social housing (or any for that matter) in sufficient quantities to keep people from "living rough", but also because of the ridiculous rules and regulations----plus the lack of sufficient front-line staff to help people negotiate it. Remember my quote from the Munk School of Public Affairs and Public Policy in my first article on poverty:

Social assistance recipients and their caseworkers spend a great deal of time filling out application forms and documenting their continued eligibility, rather than on activities that will help recipients move out of poverty. While accountability and program integrity are important, the current system understands accountability in terms of individuals completing paperwork, rather than in terms of accountability for producing results across the system.  

This sort of bureaucratic runaround goes a long way to maintain the sense of insecurity that leaves people on the ground floor of the hierarchy of needs, or, as James says, the tyranny of the moment. That keeps them from being able to work on whatever they lack in the five dimensions of well-being. Frankly, it's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit that anyone ever manages to claw themselves out of dire poverty.

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Hulet: I have to ask this---. What's your relationship to Lakeside Church?

James: In 2012 Lakeside Church created a separate legal entity, called "Lakeside Hope House". Definitely we were created by Lakeside Church. 

We just turned seven. Initially all the staff---it was just 2---and all the volunteers were from Lakeside Church. Separate legal entities, separate boards, but really from an influence perspective they were really, really, tightly tied.

Over time as they organization has grown there still have been people who have volunteered from Lakeside Church who volunteer and who financially support Hope House. And we still have a couple on the Board---we have a nine member Board---who attend Lakeside Church. 

Rather than completely controlling Hope House because that's where all the volunteers and board members came from, I'd say that now it's more of a "many stake-holder" in the work here. But we do have a separate board and have separate policies and procedures, and we are not a faith-based organization. That was the way they designed it.

Hulet: I thought I had to ask that.

James: To be honest I was completely confused when it was first explained to me. It took me several times hearing before I could understand the relationship.

Hulet: Thanks for explaining. I asked because that is an issue in this town. People are quite afraid of Lakeside Church because of what they see South of the boarder. The influence of evangelical churches on the life the nation. So I had to ask.

James: That's fair.

We're always afraid of the things we haven't had an experience with, or have had a negative experience with a specific group. One of the things I was surprised by---pleasantly surprised by---was the diversity of thought in the membership. Even on issues that I thought were very clearly defined in the evangelical tradition. That they don't all fall within the stereotype understanding of what that belief system should be. There is a real range of thought. 

That was eye-opening for me because I had always thought "they are one of those big churches"---I had always attended a small community church. In my mind "big ones" were always for show and they didn't have as much connection between people. And yet the individuals I met there impressed me so I thought that there was more to see and I shouldn't just paint them all with the same brush. 

Do they have some challenges and things that I don't agree with? Yup. But that's how it is with everything in life.

Hulet: It's been a problem in our modern society. People want to form into football teams and then smash heads at the scrimmage line. 

James: Yeah. We struggle with talking with each other and having real conversations. In general we all want to be with others that all think like us, which isn't healthy. 

If someone thinks different from us many folks think we have to vilify them---just because they think different from us---which gets back to my habit of saying to myself "just because they have a different though doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong". 

We do make values statements such as in general murder is wrong, but sometimes these ideas do different between cultures. 

For example, I have some friends who's way of dressing is different from the way that I think I need to dress. But we've found ways to communicate and have a relationship and talk through things like clothing without thinking "because you dress that way there must be something deficient about you".

We're never going to be able to deal with hard and big challenges of our world if we can't even have conversations about the simple things---like clothes.

Hulet: There's an idea I came across years ago that has stuck with me: "the community of the dialogue". The idea is that you can't have a community without an on-going conversation.

James: I like that. That may show up in something we do in the future. It's a beautiful idea. 

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This ends my conversation with Jaya James. If you think that these articles are worth reading, why not support the work I do? Of course, you can subscribe through Patreon or Paypal. If you have a business, or are on the board of a community group, union, etc, why not consider buying an advert? Contact me about rates. If you can't afford either, at least share a link over social media. 

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!