Letter to the Editor

In late October, I was engaged in a workshop discussion of social and environmental issues with the Council of Canadians in Red Deer Alberta. I was impressed with the great interest that was taken by the local population of this relatively small community, in what some call Red Neck country.

The convention hall was filled to capacity to hear Maude Barlow and a panel of Alberta interest groups speak on Saturday. Although the general audience was from Alberta, the members had arrived from Newfoundland and British Columbia and every province in-between. All were required to pay their own accommodation and meals, but this deterred few from attending.

Energy policy, the erosion of health care, genetically modified organisms, trade pacts and many other subjects were brought forward by the guests and answered by the panel. Following the speeches someone asked, "why do the Scandinavian and Benelux countries have so much more success in the struggle for social justice and environmental concerns than we in Canada, and the United States?" Someone explained it away by suggesting that Europeans have a much better awareness of the issues and that their social conscience is somehow different from ours.

I was not particular happy with the panel response to the question. There were close to 800 people in the room and all were there because of their social conscience. Most of us were in the gray-haired and bald-headed category -- definitely not your typical radicals. All of us are having our views excluded from governmental policies. I went back to my hotel determined to bring it up for general discussion the next day.

After a lively discussion on Sunday we concluded several things:

• That European countries, except for Britain, all have some form of Proportional Representative government.
• That with Proportional Representative electoral systems, the people always elect some candidates with an agenda for social and environmental issues.
• That Canada's First Past the Post electoral system by its overly simplistic nature nearly always favours the election of candidates with a corporate agenda.
• That there is only a handful of countries still hanging on to our type of system - notably Canada, Britain, the USA, India and a few Caribbean countries.
• That the bombing of the planet into submission over the past 50 years was led by those countries which retain our type of electoral system.

The audience of members and supporters were taken aback by the implications of these statements as they were later presented.

The instinct to survive is a strong instinct. We all want to succeed in this global game of monopoly in which we play. This need for money and the things that it provides presses us to support political parties and to field candidates who will assist us in reaching these goals and aspirations.

When a person realizes that the electoral system of Canada weeds out the compassionate side of human qualities and leaves only the aggressive side of our characteristics, it reveals profound ramifications. It reveals that there are many views and environmental concerns not represented in Parliament.

Corporate power largely controls the government by making its own rules through lobbied concessions and International Trade Agreements while the power of the people is being eroded to the point where we will never recover a semblance of control.

John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the USA, is quoted as saying that parliament "should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large, as it should think, feel, reason, and act like them."

This sounds like good logic to me. Our destiny should come from our combined efforts and concerns and not from the will of corporate executives behind boardroom tables.