(The picture on the right is entitled TTC Santa 3 and is by Roger Cullman. It is used in accordance to his Creative Commons license. This post has been crossposted to Transit Toronto and Metronauts)

It’s strange how the prospect of a plan to significantly improve and expand public transportation infrastructure in the Greater Toronto Area leaves me more discouraged than hopeful. But that’s the tone of the little voice that’s starting to speak at the back of my mind as I hear that Metrolinx, the regional agency set up by the McGuinty government to study the future transit needs of the GTA, is set to release a $55 billion plan chalk full of ambitious transit expansion proposals.

The problem is, this is the second grand plan to be released by the provincial player in two years. In July 2007, McGuinty shifted the political landscape with his ambitious MoveOntario 2020 proposal. This plan called for $17 billion in spending between 2008 and 2020 to build LRT lines, busways and subway extensions across the Greater Toronto Area and in Kitchener-Waterloo. The great advantage of the plan is that it implemented proposals that various cities had had on their books for a while. McGuinty promised that Queen’s Park would cover the municipal third of the capital cost, and it promised to fasttrack various environmental assessments to get shovels in the ground as soon as 2009.

MoveOntario 2020 promised to implement Toronto’s Transit City proposal whole-hog, to put LRT lines on — and, in some cases, beneath — Finch, Sheppard, Don Mills, Jane and Eglinton Avenues at a cost of at least $6 billion. The centrepiece of this plan was an LRT mini-subway on Eglinton Avenue between roughly Jane and Leslie. Featuring 90 metre platforms set between 500-800 metres apart, such a line could carry near subway loads, and certainly had the capacity to handle Eglinton’s projected crowds.

Along comes Metrolinx, whose draft $55 billion proposal argues that an underground LRT has insufficient capacity (an assertion I disagree with), and that a subway might be a better choice (an assertion I’m willing to entertain). There’s an odd proposal that the line could be a western extension of the Scarborough RT, but that’s simply ludicrous to my mind, since the Scarborough RT combines LRT capacity limitations with the high costs of subway construction. Either way, the result is a bit of a car-crash. The Eglinton LRT and subway proposals have met head on in the middle of a tight alleyway, and the drivers are now shouting at each other over who should have the right-of-way.

The debate over whether a subway or an LRT should go beneath Eglinton Avenue is a distraction to me. Either would be fine. Eglinton can support a subway, but an LRT can support Eglinton for less money. The questions we should be asking are, what can we afford to build, and what are we more likely to find funding to build? And, most importantly, what can we start building within the next two years?

The sum total of Metrolinx’s proposals are certainly tasty. If implemented, we get rapid transit of some form beneath Eglinton, we get an east-west subway through the downtown core. We get substantially improved GO train service, and even an extension of proposed Transit City LRT lines up Jane and Don Mills into York Region. We get light rail and bus rapid transit projects in York Region, Mississauga, Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo. We get a new network that makes it much easier to get around the Greater Toronto Area without driving. That’s worth spending money on, in my opinion.

But the plan also costs $55 billion — a number that’s sure to inflate in the coming years. If we hope to build these things by, say, 2030, that’s an investment of $2.5 billion per year. Compare that to the less ambitious MoveOntario 2020, which called for $17 billion in total spending by 2020, or roughly $1 billion per year (although that number has also increased through inflation and the fact that the time frame has compressed). Worse, in both cases, bread-and-butter issues such as funding for replacement streetcars and buses remain unaddressed.

So while I would be delighted if we could implement Metrolinx’s draft proposals, I have to turn to the McGuinty government and the people behind Metrolinx and say, “show me the money.” Indeed, McGuinty needs to start showing us the money to prove that he has a commitment even to the projects of the less ambitious MoveOntario 2020 plan. And the clock is ticking.

The delight I took over the original MoveOntario proposal was on the assurance that these projects would be fasttracked — that the environmental assessments were largely done or could be quickly done, and the province only had to sign its chequebook to get shovels in the ground. Provincial and municipal politicians looked me in the eye and told me that we would see construction begin on certain projects before the next municipal elections in 2010. In 2007, my great hope was not that the next big development after the release of the MoveOntario 2020 study would be yet another study. Whatever plan we choose, I feel that we need to have shovels in the ground by 2010, or nothing will happen.

Proposals to increase public transit infrastructure in southern Ontario has, for the past twenty years, been little more than vapourware. In this period, politicians have come forward again and again to propose great and ambitious plans before elections, only to find themselves too short of money to implement those grand plans after they are elected. Instead, the plans are studied to death. Network 2011, Let’s Move — they’ve all been consigned to the dustbins of history, and unless concrete work is underway by the time politicians are running for re-election, then the promise to build these new lines simply becomes a recycled election promise, of something the politicians will do before the next time they face re-election. Or the time after that. Or the time after that.

And Ontarians simply cannot wait any longer.

Further Reading

• Steve Munro: Where Should Metrolinx Be Going? (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

P.S. Comments for this post are now closed, as the discussion is taking place on the Metronauts version of this article, here…

You know, being seventeen and pregnant sucks. Being seventeen and pregnant in a small town’s high school really sucks. Now imagine having your condition advertised among 300 million Americans.

Forgive my language, but sometimes politics is just a sea of shit, isn’t it?

(Hat tip: Stageleft).

On Teenage Sexuality

If there is any benefit to be had from the sad revelation that Sarah Palin’s seventeen-year-old daughter is five months pregnant, perhaps it could be that it brings to the attention of more Americans of how prevalent the problem of teenage pregnancy can be. It can happen even to a governor’s daughter. It can happen even to a god-fearing family. It can happen even to a family that strongly advocates abstinence-only sex education. Perhaps even especially to a family that advocates abstinence-only sex education.

There has begun, at least, a debate in the blogosphere on the issue of teenage sexuality. One blogger, social conservative Suzanne of the Blg Blue Wave makes the following observation:

seventeen-year-olds have not finished growing. They’re still kids. Even the smart ones do stupid things. Most of them do, when their parents aren’t looking.

Abstinence cannot be purely a matter of individual will, especially the will of a seventeen-year-old.

The innocence of teenagers is one contributing factor to teenaged sex. They don’t know any better, they’re innocent.

Yes, they know what causes pregnancy, but teenagers are not always good at predicting the nature of the consequences of their actions. Magical thinking is part and parcel of the adolescent mindset. They plan their lives by excluding the possibility of bad things happening to them.

I know how liberals would respond to this: give them contraception.

(link)

The rest of her post repeats much of what she say about teenagers being unable to really control themselves, and the need of parents to take a more active role in the lives of these children. The latter part is a common sense statement, except for a couple of things. For one thing, she presumes that liberal parents don’t do this, which is, of course, bunkum. My parents are as liberal as you’ve ever seen, and they were deeply involved in my life as a teenager. And, for another, after chastising liberals for assuming that birth control wasn’t used in Palin’s case, Suzanne seems to work on the assumption that it was, either that, or she blithely overlooks the fact that Sarah Palin is no liberal.

And, finally, while chastising liberal parents for downplaying the potential consequences of sex, and avoiding taking more responsibility for their children’s actions — something that most liberals don’t do (my parents certainly gave me a curfew, and strict instructions on calling them, if I had to break it) — she offers very little in the way of concrete solutions other than, possibly, ‘lock up your daughters’.

As the father of two daughters, teenage sexuality has been something I have thought a lot about these past couple of years, even though their teenage years are a decade away. My two-and-a-half year old daughter is a spirited individual. It’s easy to flash forward to Vivian as a teenager and quake in fear over how those years are going to go. Vivian is outgoing and, more than that, she is fearless. She will cast herself off a cliff in total confidence that I will catch her, and I dare not miss. How will she throw herself into the world during her teenage years?

But, then, this is a quality I don’t ever want her to lose. I joke about taking up chainsaw sculpting in order to scare away prospective boyfriends, but if she chooses to love, I hope that she loves well, and if she chooses not to wait, then I hope that those moments are ones she looks back on fondly in later years, with no regrets.

And if that means that I have to deal with a teenage pregnancy instead, well… that’s when I roll up my sleeves, give my daughter all my love and support as a parent. Ultimately, there is little else that I can do.

And let’s not get too complacent about quieter Nora, either. Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who can really fool you.

So, what can I do before then? The best answer I can come up with, as the son of librarians, is to flood Vivian and Nora with information, and try to be as open as possible so that (cue laughter from parents of teenagers here) they can feel that they can confide in me, or ask me for help or love or support, no matter what the news. I’ll try to teach them that it’s better to wait but, failing that, I’ll point out where the condoms are, and tell them that if their boyfriends really loved them, they’d respect their wishes in wearing them, and if not, it’s time to walk away.

I believe that there should be no shame in sex. I’ll say it again: there should be no shame in sex. The act is the best way we know to make a baby, yes, but it is also a way for a loving couple to express that love to each other. Any two individuals who are of age, who are aware of and accept the potential responsibility of conception, should be allowed to make that expression to each other, without coercion, without fear, and without shame. Though marriage is a good place for it, I don’t see that it has to be limited to that institution.

Suzanne’s discussion about how to lower the number of teenage pregnancies has its heart in the right place, but it is wrong-headed. She suggests keeping closer tabs on your children, keeping them “innocent”, and while these are good ideas in and of themselves, they’ll likely not be effective all the time. Ms. Palin was an active mother, and intelligent woman, and passionate in her beliefs about sex and sexuality, and yet her daughter still ended up pregnant. It’s fair to suggest that we need to keep closer tabs on the lives of our teenagers, but it’s unreasonable to expect that we’ll ever control them.

Ultimately, the decisions are theirs, and while we cannot prevent them from making stupid decisions, we can still give them all the information they’ll need to make the right decision when the time comes — that they’ll wait for the right moment, or that they’ll use protection if they decide that now is the right moment — and we can keep giving and giving that information in the same manner that we keep giving and giving them love.

And ultimately, it’s love that is the best — and possibly the only — thing we can give our children. They may have to learn the hard way to take responsibility for their mistakes, but our duty as parents is to do our level-headed best to ensure that their mistakes don’t kill them, and don’t ruin their lives.

For more cake disasters, be sure to check out Cake Wrecks (link courtesy Cameron, the Canadian Lemming.

I’m Thinking Maybe Chris Bidmead Wrote a Version of this and Called it Castrovalva

I seem to be accumulating a major sleep deficit. It’s starting to affect my dreams.

I wanted to take a shower when I woke up, and had hoped to wake up before Vivian did, but then I heard Vivian calling in her bedroom. Erin went over to comfort her while I put on my underwear to say hello and tell Vivian that I’d be back soon; I needed to take a shower. So, I had a shower, and then I woke up. I’d dreamt the whole thing.

Vivian was calling, and Erin went to comfort her while I put on my underwear to say hello and tell Vivian that I’d be back soon; I needed to take a shower. So I had a shower… and then I woke up. I’d dreamt the whole thing again.

I had to dream this stupid thing three times before I finally, really woke up, to hear Vivian calling. Erin went to take care of her, and I had my shower.

At least, I think I did. Maybe this blog entry is itself part of the dream…

A Slight Overreaction

Some controversy has erupted over off-the-cuff comments made by Health Minister Tony Clement while in Denver attending the Democratic National Convention. Some bloggers are incensed by the fact that Clement would make jokes about the recent, fatal listeria outbreak.

The Canadian government sponsored a swish lunch reception at its consul-general’s Denver residence.

The food included bite-sized bits of beef, shrimp, tortellini and potatoes gratin. Health Minister Tony Clement, whose absence from Canada during the tainted meat crisis has not gone unnoticed, was there and introduced himself:

“I’m Health Minister Tony Clement, and I have to say I approved this food.”

(link)

Pogge writes: “So is anyone else reminded of Dubya looking under the furniture for the weapons of mass destruction?”

I have to say that I don’t see the connection. Bush’s joke is directly connected to his administration’s failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and makes light of his decision to put the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women at risk in what proved to be a foolhardy venture, so it’s easy to see why some people might be offended.

But Clement’s comments make no connection to the listeria outbreak. They certainly don’t make light of that outbreak. If anything, Clement’s comments were a joke about the nature of political advertising in the States (“I approve of this message”), and were understandable given the political venue he is currently at.

If you want to criticize Clement, focus more on the changes to the meat inspection process that happened under his watch. Or focus on the fact that Clement is in Denver hobnobbing with politicians rather than back in Ottawa rolling up his sleeves. But let’s not stretch things too far with this tenuous connection. That’s my advice.

I wouldn’t normally do this, but I’m about to wilfully violate the stated copyright terms of another blogger’s website.

Conservative Party supporter Sandy Crux has launched a website. As she is not a fan of the mainstream media and the bias she perceives in their reporting on all things Stephen Harper, she has taken it upon herself to set up a website listing the accomplishments of the Harper government in its over two years of power. Here’s a selection:

(3) Age of consent from 14 to 16 effective May 1, 2008 (Link)

We should note that, thanks to all party negotiations and the efforts of NDP MPs, a “reasonable age range” exception remains in place, which prevents the criminalization of sex acts between experimenting fourteen year olds. That’s reasonable, and a reasonable thing to mention in the accomplishments list. We don’t want to go down the path of absurdity seen in the United States.

(11) Chinese Head Tax — government apology on June 22, 2006 (Link) (Link)

That, I must admit, I appreciated.

(19) GST — Goods & services tax cut from 7% to 6% and then to 5% (Link)

This, as I’ve said before, may be politically expedient, but poor policy. More of our tax dollars are now being wasted in the administration of this tax, whose cut amounts to two pennies off a cup of coffee at Tim Hortons’.

(16) Fixed Election Dates — An Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act (Bill C-16), passed May 3, 2007 (Link) is an Act primarily for majority governments since minority governments can fall at almost any time when the opposition express a lack of confidence in the government.

Note the weasel words to get around the fact that Stephen Harper is threatening to violate the spirit of his own legislation.

The point is, it’s an unabashedly partisan document, which is fine and dandy as things go. The points Sandy raises as accomplishments are a good starting point, I guess, for a debate over what the Conservative government has actually accomplished. And debates abound. For instance, Sandy credits the Harper government for increasing military spending “to a post-war peak, including the delivery of four C-17 Globe Master strategic airlift aircraft”, but doesn’t mention that, late last week, the Conservative government quietly scuttled “multibillion-dollar plans to purchase a resupply ship for the navy and new patrol vessels for the coast guard.”.

But a debate is a debate, isn’t it? Sandy can make her arguments and we can make our comments, taking down any faulty logic. In the course of the discussion, we all learn things and come out stronger, right?

Except that Sandy has an odd little proviso on her website, which reads as follows:

Since election fever is in the air, consider this permission to use this list or URL in “conservative” election material or campaigning. It is one way to let the Canadian people know, from coast to coast to coast, what the Harper conservative government has actually done in their two and half years in power.

However, let me remind opposition supporters that this is copyright material and this is NOT permission for anyone other than conservatives to use.

Oh, really?

Oh, dear. I’m not a Conservative Party supporter. I’m likely to vote Green this time around. So, therefore, I’m a supporter of an opposing party, and I’ve just reproduced a portion of the list in the above website. What will Sandy do now? Sue?

And just how far do you think she will get?

Although we are currently embroiled in an act to reform the current Copyright Act, the old Copyright Act still applies in cases like this, and the act does talk about fair use and fair dealing. Furthermore, the concept of fair dealing has been significantly clarified by the Supreme Court of Canada in a 2004 ruling. While the decision does not contain exceptions for parody and satire, it does say the following:

“The fair dealing exception is perhaps more properly understood as an integral part of the Copyright Act than simply a defence. Any act falling within the fair dealing exception will not be an infringement of copyright. The fair dealing exception, like other exceptions in the Copyright Act, is a user’s right. In order to maintain the proper balance between the rights of a copyright owner and users’ interests, it must not be interpreted restrictively.”

(link)

What is one of the six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing?

“In general terms, those who deal fairly with a work for the purpose of research, private study, criticism, review or news reporting, do not infringe copyright.”

(link)

Criticism. Review. Or news reporting.

Criticism. Check.

Not only is Sandy Crux’s attempt to limit use of her publicly available work only to partisan Conservatives ultra vires, it’s quite simply undemocratic. She makes these fairly bold claims about creating a comprehensive list of Stephen Harper’s accomplishments, she tries to distance herself from the Conservative Party to enhance her credibility as an average voter, and she’s made the list available to fellow party members, and only fellow party members. What are they supposed to do with it? Print it out, and frame it? Or perhaps fold it up and stick it under their pillow to ward off the scary “Liberals win!” dreams at night? Or is it meant to be a set of talking points to engage the media and remind them of the good news behind Harper’s record? My money is on the latter. Clearly, they’re a set of weapons to be used to beat back opposition criticism.

And what are we who don’t necessarily agree with these debatable points supposed to do in response? Nothing?

Well, forget that.

The intent of the Copyright Act was to prevent the creation of derivative works — stuff that takes Sandy’s effort without accreditation, and which presents itself as its own original copy. I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure that if anybody were to take Sandy’s entire website, rebrand it a bit, and market it as their own original work, Sandy would be incensed, regardless of whether the individual was a Conservative Party supporter or not, and in spite of the fact that this is theoretically what Sandy gave blanket permission for that Conservative Party supporter to do.

Sandy does not seem to tolerate criticism very well. Various posts on her blog, and even on the Harper Accomplishments list have an interesting tendency of disappearing when the initial thrust of the post has been blunted by sufficient counter-argument. Her attempt to copyright her list For Conservative Eyes Only seems a spiteful swipe at those who would criticize the list, and an attempt to shut down debate on the points it raises.

Frankly, I’m disappointed. I thought she was bigger than that.

A story we should be watching over the next five days (though what, if anything, anybody can do about it is anybody’s guess) is the progress of tropical storm Gustav. Currently located between Haiti and Cuba, this storm has killed 22 people so far. More importantly, its most likely track puts it into the Gulf of Mexico where it will likely intensify. It will likely hit the United States as a major hurricane, possibly even New Orleans as a Category 3 storm.

Which, in cosmic terms, just simply isn’t fair.

The website to watch at the moment is that of Dr. Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground. He knows his stuff and has been tracking these hurricanes for years.

In the meantime, it seems we’ll have to pray for New Orleans. Again.

Conservatives: 127
Liberals: 95
Bloc Quebecois: 48
New Democrats: 30
Independents: 4
Vacant: 4

In my previous post, complaining about the possibility of Stephen Harper going back on his word and violating the spirit of his fixed elections legislation, one thing I could not understand was the need for it. We’ve seen previous minority governments rise and fall. We know that there is an easy way for Harper to live up to his word and still go to the polls, and that is to engineer his own defeat in a confidence motion. Why not take that simple measure when Parliament resumes on September 15?

Theories abound, but one intriguing explanation came from the commentator Breath of Fresh Air from this post:

Well, he COULD if Dion and team would show up in the Commons to vote….

This presumes, of course, that Dion continues to bow to Harper’s confidence motion threats in order to avoid an election, which I doubt. I suspect he himself knows that this tactic is starting to wear a little thin. I also think that he senses that the electorate is more in the mood for an election, now, and with the numbers of all parties going nowhere, there may not be much to lose in going now compared to going later. But then, he might lose that backbone he’s been growing. I won’t know until he goes back to parliament.

You won’t find a fan of Dion’s chickenhearted tactics of ducking confidence measures, here. Centrists such as myself, and many on the progressive side of the blogosphere have been increasingly incensed at Dion allowing flawed legislation to pass rather than risk losing an election. His strategy can be easily labelled cowardly, spineless, leaderless, take your pick… That is, until the Conservative Party starts complaining that Dion won’t take the bait and force an election.

You are a Conservative, why should you be complaining here? Your agenda is being passed piece by piece. Dion is being made to look like a fool. The only place where the Conservatives have any argument that parliament is being obstructed is at the committee level, and most Canadians, I think, won’t see it that way. They’ll note that much of the committee obstruction has been at the Conservatives’ own hands, and repeated complaints about the actions of the committees will lead some Canadians to wonder, just what is it that the Conservatives have to hide? At the very least, it will be seen as the government calling the pot black, and if Harper takes it further and calls an election without losing a confidence vote, breaking his own hyped promise, then it has the appearance of Harper stomping his feet, gathering his marbles and going home.

But if Dion won’t play ball and bring this government down, there is a way to bring the government down yourself, without breaking your fixed election dates law. As an extra bonus, it turns the Liberals’ own tactics against them.

Say you have a bill which has been deemed as a vote of confidence. Better yet, wait for a motion of non-confidence that Layton and his NDP are more than likely to bring forward this fall session. Check your numbers. The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois are likely to stand up as one and vote against the government. If Dion blusters, continues to disparage the government, but says that now is not the time to call an election, get ready. This is where it gets fun.

Give the motion of non-confidence an afternoon, then call a vote. Watch as the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois stand up to vote against it. Now watch the Liberal side. Hopefully Stephane Dion has shown up as the lone Liberal MP to cast his symbolic but ultimately useless vote against the government. Let him justify showing no confidence in this government without accepting the responsibility of bringing it down. Let him vote, let him sit, and then look at his face as he sits across from the Prime Minister, alone in a void of 94 empty Conservative seats, including his entire front bench, about to cast one of only 33 votes in favour of his government.

And then we sit and wait for the Liberal reaction. Will there be a mad rush to their chairs as Liberal MPs stumble in to (giggle) express confidence in this government? Or will there be stoic acceptance that, despite Liberal cowardice, the election that more and more Canadians appear to want is finally happening. Will the motion of non-confidence bring down the government by a vote of 83 to 33?

And if the Liberals complain about the Conservative tactics, just shrug and say, “we were sorry to hear that X number of Liberal MPs were unable to show up to vote, so we thought we’d match their numbers, so that their voice in parliament would be fairly represented,” recalling the Parliament tradition of the government and opposition MPs pairing off on critical votes, so that the absense of an MP on one side due to illness is matched by the absense of an MP from the other side.

If you’re feeling particularly creative, start coming up with funny excuses for each Conservative MP’s absense. I had to walk the dog, and he chased Kyoto up a tree. I was caught in traffic behind a Liberal limo. Deborah Gray ate my portfolio and I had to get a new one. Each time a reporter asks, and gets a funny story to print, it’s yet another reminder that this is exactly what Liberal MPs have done several times this past year.

Yes, it’s a game, but unlike the other foolhardy moves, this is a game that Dion has started. Harper gets the boost from finishing it. He works within the procedures of parliament, and doesn’t violate his own fixed election dates law.

Just a little free advice. Take it for what it’s worth.

Looks like an election is a distinct possibility in Canada between now and the end of the year. It must be something in the water, or possibly the barbecue sauce, as the various party leaders have come back from the summer break, energized and belligerent.

Harper in particular has been playing to his base, suggesting that he might have to think long and hard whether the current parliament is workable enough for him to bother with a fall session of parliament, or if he should just chuck it all in and try his chances with an election.

“Quite frankly, I’m going to have to make a judgment in the next little while as to whether or not this Parliament can function productively,”

(link)

As an aside, it is a little rich for Conservatives to moan about opposition obstructionism, especially considering that it has been Conservative members who have been doing a fair amount of obstructing at the committee level, and that the party itself wrote the book (literally) on how to obstruct the proceedings of parliament when the situation looked unfavourable.

The wording here is critical. We’re not talking about Harper and the opposition staring down the barrel of a confidence motion, either negotiating hard or playing chicken. That’s a day in the life of any minority parliament. That’s democracy in action. No. We’re talking about Stephen Harper leaving 24 Sussex Drive without provocation and making the trek to the Governor General’s residence to say that he has no control over parliament anymore, and that parliament should be dissolved and an election called well before the traditional four-year mandate of parliament expired.

That’s not without precedent, either. Most recently, Prime Minister Jean Chretien surprised the opposition by calling an election in 2000, roughly three and a half years into his mandate. In terms of minority parliaments, the 1957 government of John Diefenbaker was dissolved without a confidence vote, after the newly elected Liberal leader, Lester Pearson, made an ill-advised speech asking Diefenbaker that the Liberals be returned to government without an election because of an economic downturn.

There’s no doubt, under old rules, Stephen Harper could call an election whenever he wanted, however he wanted. There’s just one problem: there are new rules. In one of his first acts as prime minister, Harper and his Conservatives pushed through a bill that fixed election dates. No longer, he crowed, would a sitting prime minister have the unfair advantage of surprising the opposition with a snap election.

Some Conservatives have expressed doubts or frustration over the idea that Stephen Harper would dissolve parliament and call an election rather than wait to be defeated in a vote of confidence. Others, however, have been scrambling to justify Harper’s actions, to keep an election call off his list of broken promises.

Yes, I know all about the fixed election date legislation. But, two points must be considered: the first is that the legislation ONLY relates to majority governments and secondly, the possibility of “contingencies” have been written into the legislation. So, there are two reasons for an election before October 2009 — the government is a minority government and the functions of the government are currently in a state of “dysfunction.”

…

Without a doubt, if the PM pays a visit to the Governor General, you’ll have the usual suspects condemn him for breaking his word. But, given what the fixed date legislation really states, he certainly would not have done that. He is acting as a leader should and the average Canadian will simply see that he is a statesman who can make the tough decisions when it is necessary.

(link)

And here:

The fixed election date legislation was designed to prohibit a Prime Minister who has been given a full, majority mandate from voters from going to the polls early or later when it is politically opportune, ala Jean Chretien in 2000, a mere three years into his 1997 mandate. For some reason, Conservatives have been incapable of effectively communicating that point.

(link)

The suggestion that this legislation doesn’t apply to a prime minister of a minority government is, frankly, silly. Harper himself made sure of that when he set the clock ticking for an election in October 2009.

Ask yourself: why 2009? His government came to power in June 2006, and our constitution allows individual parliaments (not governments, parliaments) to maintain their mandate for five years. Tradition has dictated that majority governments call an election roughly every four years. Four years translates to an election in mid-to-late 2010. Five years translates to 2011. Harper picked 2009, or an election after just three years. While it is unusual for a minority parliament to last that long, it’s not unheard of. So the year Harper voluntarily picked to end his government’s mandate strongly suggests that he wanted to show that his legislation applied to his government as well.

I don’t doubt that loopholes exist in this legislation. I’m not expecting Harper to be hauled off in handcuffs if he approaches Michaelle Jean asking to dissolve parliament. I am aware that there was no constitutional amendment to wrest the power the Governor General has to call an election when advised to do so by our prime minister. But the fact remains that Harper would be breaking the spirit of the law if he called an election now rather than engineering his defeat in a confidence motion as previous minority governments have done.

Harper specifically brought in this bill to counter what previous governments sought to do: calling an election before the expiration of the mandate whenever the conditions were most favourable for them, and this is what he is doing now. Any excuses that Harper brings forward for going forward with an election now: obstructionism from the opposition; a need to clear the air and firm up the mandate, et cetera, can be brought forward by future governments when they feel the law should not apply to them. Harper, in passing this legislation, sets the precedent. If he disobeys the spirit of his own law, it becomes a law that isn’t worth respecting, and the “achievement” has to come off of any list of Harper Accomplishments for that list to remain credible.

Truth to tell, Harper’s broken promise would be, at most, a one day story. In the heat of the election campaign, other issues and other campaign miscues will take over the headlines, so I’m perplexed why so many partisan Conservative supporters are so desperate not to give one inch of ground, here. Yes, there may be bad optics in the fact that Harper broke a promise that McGuinty managed to keep, but it’s a small promise in a small issue.

But for me it’s another piece of the disturbing pattern that has materialized over the course of Harper’s two years in office. He was elected in 2006 promising to stop government power grabs, to be open and accountable, and to stop playing these games. He has failed to follow through on all counts. Indeed, if Harper breaks this promise and calls an election, it is yet another sign that he believes that the rules don’t apply to him.

And that’s just the sort of arrogance that got the Liberals punished in 2006.

Further Reading

• Harper’s Accomplishments
• Harper’s Broken Promises

(Update: 9:09): Mr. Sinister Greg offers up more evidence that this law is supposed to apply to all governments, majority or minority:

Tories are saying that Harper is not breaking the law because this is a minority Parliament and the law was only meant to stop “majority” prime ministers from pulling the plug and calling an early election. That is a wonderful and imaginative theory, but that is not what the government’s own House Leader and Minister of Democratic Reform (Rob Nicholson) said during the debate on the bill (emphasis added):

I believe all parties share the view that elections belong fundamentally to citizens. They belong to the people. All parties agree with the principle that the timing of elections should not be left to the Prime Minister, but should be set in advance so all Canadians know when the next election will occur.

I will begin with the description of the current process for calling general elections and I will discuss some of the difficulties associated with it. This will be followed by a discussion of the many advantages associated with fixed date elections. Finally, I will be very pleased to present the specifics of Bill C-16.

Currently, it is the prerogative of the Prime Minister, whose government has not lost the confidence of the House of Commons, to determine what he or she regards as a propitious time for an election to renew the government’s mandate. The Prime Minister then requests dissolution of the House from the Queen’s representative and if the Governor General agrees, he or she proclaims the date of the election.

What we have is a situation where the Prime Minister is able to choose the date of the general election, not based necessarily on what is in the best interests of the country, but what is in the best interests of his or her political party. Bill C-16 would address this problem and would produce a number of other benefits.

That sounds familiar. Has the PM lost the confidence of the House? Nope.

More here.

(The photograph above is entitled Field and is by Paul Love. It is used in accordance with his Creative Commons license)

That’s the way things go, sometimes. Sometimes new ideas just don’t work out.

In dealing with the rewrite of The Dream King’s Daughter, I’ve been working on three fronts: giving Polk’s character more of an edge, firming up the background of what the Dream King is, dropping Aurora’s foster parents in favour of her newly-surviving mother.

To introduce my readers to Dawn, I decided a prologue was in order, detailing the events surrounding Aurora’s conception and birth. I had some sparks, but the whole thing wasn’t gelling. The prologue was getting longer and longer, and I was frankly starting to come away bored and distracted.

I finally realized that one of the strengths of the first draft of The Dream King’s Daughter was how it began and I would be a fool if I tampered too much with the raw energy of the opening. This is Aurora’s story first and foremost, so she should be there when the curtains came up.

And, here’s the brilliant bit that I was so stupid to miss for so long: those flashbacks in the prologue could come back. After all, this is a story where Aurora gets a whole bunch of flashbacks by reading people’s dreams. Giving us a clearer picture of her mother Dawn, and the time she met the Dream King? That can take place later in the story when it’s dramatically appropriate.

The fact that I wrote, and subsequently dropped, 2,500 words is made less frustrating by the fact that: (a) writers do this all the time and (b) the material can be recycled elsewhere in the story. And, besides, we learn from our mistakes. For that reason, our failures are almost as important as our successes.

Anyway, here’s a section with a bit more polish. It’s part of the rewrite from chapter three, where we flashback to Aurora at twelve, and begin a subplot that parallels Aurora’s adventures at age sixteen. Enjoy!

The first dream that Aurora read belonged to her best friend, Anne.

It was at school, sixth grade, and Aurora was just hanging up her new spring jacket. Standing back to appreciate the dark denim, she bumped into Anne.

Anne caught her arm. “Hey! Watch it, you klutz!” But not unkindly. “Nice jacket,” she added.

“Thanks!” Aurora beamed. “Dad bought it for me on the weekend. We went out to that new place that opened up out by the power centre.”

“Wow! Sweet!” Anne smiled patiently as Aurora held out a sleeve so that Anne could touch the deep blue, almost black, fabric.

“Isn’t it neat?” asked Aurora.

“Yeah, neat,” said Anne. She turned away, unzipped her brown polyester coat, shrugged it off and tossed it onto a hook. It missed and flopped on the floor instead. Anne sighed and bent to pick it up.

As she placed it back on its hook, a slab of a boy shouldered her aside so she staggered. He threw her ragged brown coat on the floor.

“Hey!” Anne shouted as she steadied herself by grabbing a dangling parka. Then she caught her breath when she saw who she was talking to. Aurora started forward to help, then stopped. Roger had already won two fights that the teachers knew about, and more that they didn’t. If that wasn’t enough, Roger’s friend and henchman, Jack, was right behind him. At two against these two, the girls were outnumbered.

Roger sneered. “Get your own hook.” He shrugged his parka off and hung it from the disputed hook with sausage-like fingers. “I saw this first.”

Anne’s breathing quickened. Her hands curled into fists. “No, you didn’t!” she snapped. “C’mon, there’s no other hooks in the room.” She stepped forward to pick up her coat, but Roger pushed her back.

“Too bad!” He grinned at her. “Your trashy old coat belongs in the garbage, anyway.” He started to turn away, then stopped and looked back. “Unless you wanna make something of it.”

Anne gulped. So did Aurora.

There was an adult throat-clearing. Miss Daultry leaned in from the classroom. “Is there a problem here?”

Aurora opened her mouth, but Roger caught her eye. He and Jack folded their arms and stood, waiting.

Anne glared at the floor. “No, Miss Daultry.” She coughed. “Everything’s okay.”

The teacher frowned over her glasses, then turned away. Grinning, Roger and Jack followed her out of the coat room, into the classroom. Anne thumped the wall.

“It’s okay,” said Aurora. “Share my hook.”

Anne looked up at her, and gave her a tight smile. “Thanks,” she said. And without meaning to, Aurora looked into her friend’s brown eyes.

Anne snatches Aurora’s denim coat and runs across the classroom, laughing, impervious to Aurora’s pleas. She flings it out the window into a lake that has materialized in place of the schoolyard.

Aurora blinked. Her coat was still on its hook, and the classroom windows were closed. Anne had turned away and was slinking out of the cloakroom to take her seat as Miss Daltry called the class to order.

“Aurora,” Miss Daultry called. “Won’t you grace us with your presence.

The rest of the class giggled, but Aurora was too distracted to be embarrassed as she slouched out of the cloakroom to take her seat beside her best friend.

Aurora read her second dream before recess. As the rest of the class filed out, Miss Daultry pulled her aside and knelt down to face her. “Is there anything the matter, Aurora? You’ve been distracted all morning.”

Aurora kept her gaze on the lower half of the teacher’s face. “Nothing’s wrong, Miss Daultry.”

“You sure?” Her teacher gave her an encouraging smile. “Look, if anything is the matter, you can always talk to me.”

Aurora looked up, into Miss Daultry’s eyes.

Miss Daultry kicks back at her desk and pulls out a good book. Around her, the classroom stands empty, the windows white with snow. School is cancelled. No children today. Miss Daultry fumbles through a box of chocolates, picks one, and settles in to read.

Aurora blinked, then dropped her gaze to the floor. “I’m sure,” she said. “Nothing’s the matter. Can I go?”

Miss Daultry’s eyes narrowed and she looked Aurora up and down a moment. Then she shrugged and patted Aurora on the shoulder. “Okay. Get going.”

At recess, Aurora played hide and seek and agreed to be ‘it’. As the other kids ran away, giggling and laughing, Aurora hunted them down methodically, pouncing on each boy or girl she found, and looking them in the eye. Dreams flooded her, and she drank them in.

…I did it! I scored the winning goal!…

…I get to meet Santa! And they told me he wasn’t real!…

Jack glared at Aurora. “What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing,” said Aurora, and moved on.

…Yes! I just punched Roger’s face in!…

…No. The planes are back. The sirens are wailing. The bombs are falling again…

Pho Tse flinched back as Aurora stared at her a moment too long. “Stop it, Aurora! You’re weird!” She pushed past Aurora and ran for home base.

Aurora sat by herself as she ate her lunch. In the afternoon recess, while her school mates laughed and flung snowballs, she worked away at rolling her own snowman. When Anne ran up to offer help, Aurora accepted it grudgingly. She kept her arm down during lessons.

Finally, at the end of the day, she fumbled on her coat in the cloakroom, lost in thought.

“Hey,” said Anne. Aurora jumped.

“You okay?” asked Anne as she yanked on her too-small, salt-stained, balding fur-lined boots. “You’ve been quiet all day.”

“Why do you want to throw my coat into a lake?” said Aurora.

Anne froze. She looked up and laughed nervously. “What are you talking—”

Aurora looked into Anne’s eyes.

Anne laughs. Aurora’s denim jacket sails out the window and lands with a splash before sinking without a trace. Aurora sobs, standing in Anne’s ratty clothes.

Aurora glared. “You’re jealous!”

Anne gaped at her. “No— wha— Aurora!”

“Your want to grab my coat and toss it into a lake,” Aurora snapped. “You hate that I have a new coat and you’re in an old one!”

Anne gasped. “How did you—” Then her eyes flashed and she stumbled to her feet in horror, standing in one stocking foot and one boot. Her hands went to her hips as horror turned to outrage. “You read my diary!”

Aurora drew back. “I didn’t! I—” Then she froze. How else could she explain how she knew? But she didn’t feel like she should be the one to be ashamed, here. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve been jealous the whole time we’ve been together, thinking all those things behind my back.”

“You think I really meant it?” Anne snapped. She drew a shaky breath and her eyes glistened. “Yeah, sure, I wanted the things you had, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like you. It was just a dream. That wasn’t the only thing I thought about you. I still liked you. Until now! You traitor!”

Anne turned away and stormed out of the cloakroom. She came storming back to pick up her remaining boot, and stormed out again. But this time her eyes were more than glistening, and she was choking back sobs.

Aurora watched her go. Her cheeks were wet. She cleared her nose with a sniff.

(Please note, here there be spoilers)

Look, Stephanie, it isn’t you. It’s me.

It goes like this: :Erin: tells me that I’m a romantic at heart, and I think she’s right. I like a little bit of romance in my fiction. I like it when it spices up a fantasy novel. I like to give my characters romances. The challenge of two people falling in love is a wonderful plot complication to me. I like it when the boy and the girl live happily ever after. However, I suspect that I don’t like romance novels.

I tend to jump around in my writing and my reading. My favourite show is Doctor Who, which not only changes settings week to week, but sometimes genres. A romance novel is often, by its nature, formulaic. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy has some sense kicked into him by the feet of fate, and is able to appreciate it when boy gets girl back. Romance is a wonderful spice, but a steady diet of cumin or tarragon would quickly get dull, in my opinion. More than that, the fiction I like doesn’t have the requirements that romance books do. If characters fall in love with each other, that’s part of the story, but if not, that’s fine too, as long as the monster gets beaten. Sometimes if the characters stare lovingly into each others’ eyes too long, you start rooting for the monster.

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series is a vampire romance. It says so on the tin, so I only have myself to blame for picking it up if it disagrees with me. But I was intrigued. The big box bookstores across North America were setting up midnight parties at the beginning of this month to celebrate the release of the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, a tactic generally associated with the old queen of the young adult/fantasy publishing industry, J.K. Rowling. I’d also heard that Twilight fan fiction was slowly overtaking Harry Potter fan fiction at the various forums. Something was building. Was Stephanie Meyer to be the heir to Rowling’s throne? Should she be? So I bought a copy of Twilight to find out.

I may not have been the right person to find out.

The story starts with Isabella (Bella) Swan’s act of martyrdom, relocating herself from sunny Phoenix, Arizona to rainy Forks, Washington. The moody seventeen-year-old has kindly volunteered to leave her divorced mom and move in with her dad so that mom can travel with the new boyfriend.

Bella expects to hate Forks. She sees herself as an awkward, unpretty girl, who never fit in with the cliques at her Phoenix high school. Moving to a small town that she barely knows is bound to be her own definition of Hell. Fortunately, her father, the police chief of the town, is a hands-off dad. It is, however, immensely frustrating for Bella when Forks doesn’t deliver on its promised stresses. All of the boys can’t help looking at her, and the girls seem to be interested in basking in her glow. To her terror, it seems as though not one, but two boys might be interested in taking her to the dance.

At the same time as Bella unwillingly integrates herself into the school’s tame cliques, she notices a group of students which nobody has anything to do with. A “family” of five high-school students (foster children of a Dr. Carlisle in town) sits apart from the student body in lunch. They are inhumanly graceful, skip school on a whim, and frankly intimidate the rest of the students with their beauty. One in particular, Edward Cullen, seems alternately intrigued and incensed by Bella’s very presence.

So begins the mystery of Edward Cullen, who seems to want to stay away from Bella (and often tells her to stay away) but who can’t seem to bring himself to do just that. When he manages to save Bella’s life by stopping an out-of-control car with his shoulder, the truth comes out: Edward, like the rest of his family, is a vampire — one that abstains from human blood, but one with all of the biological urges, all of the inhuman strength and mental capacity that vampire lore provides. His is fascinated by Bella — by the fact that she seems to be the one person in this school whose mind he can’t read. And the two fall in love, only to have their perfect relationship (mostly just staring googly-eyed at each other) disrupted by tracker vampires who decide to hunt Bella for sport.

It is a testament to Meyer’s abilities as a writer that I got through Twilight. The woman writes well enough to keep me interested, provoking clear images of the setting in my head. The characters are well drawn, and the banter has moments of humour. The best part of the book, for me, was the first half as Bella explores the mystery of who Edward Cullen is. The sense of discovery gives that part of the book a freshness that pulls the reader along, and we do get to see the better half of Bella as she uses her wits and tenacity to finally suss out the secret from Edward.

On paper, Edward is also a fascinating character, forced to deny his bloodlust around humans, and clearly struggling when temptation (Bella) is thrust in his path. You could do a lot with Edward, and Meyer does make good use of him, although the effect is hampered by the decision (perfectly legitimate) to keep the story tightly in Bella’s point of view. As a result, the sense of Edward’s struggle was muted.

But I still came out of this novel irked by what I had read, and I know that I’m not alone. I’m sure part of my frustration is professional jealousy — that Meyer has managed to succeed far better than I have. But while I was similarly jealous over J.K. Rowling’s success, I still had to admit that Harry Potter was a very good novel series. The characters were well drawn and developed remarkably over the seven books. Rowling was an excellent narrator (Meyer’s style is more stilted) and there was depth there. The Harry Potter series could be seen as an exploration of the problems of racism, or even as an evisceration of the Thatcher years in England. Meyer offers no such depth here, only romance.

And while that was what Meyer advertised from the get go, I don’t get the sense of a real romance here. Bella and Edward do not grow together over the course of the book but are rather thrust together by authorial fiat. Meyer almost makes it work, but cannot help but achieve her goals by removing a fair chunk of Bella’s free will, and even her sense of self preservation. At the end of chapter ten, Bella tells us that she is completely and totally in love with Edward. Um… but why? She hardly knows the man, even though he has saved her life (twice) and she has sussed out his secret. In terms of character traits, Edward is too confused over his conflicting physical feelings for Bella to coherently articulate what is it that draws him to her romantically. But Meyer shoves that aside for longing looks and lots of caresses.

Finally, on page 248 as Bella prepares for her “date” with Edward the next day, we encountered the following paragraph:

“I intuitively knew — and sensed he did, too — that tomorrow would be pivotal. Our relationship couldn’t continue to balance, as it did, on the point of a knife. We would fall off one edge or the other, depending entirely upon his decision, or his instincts. My decision was made, made before I’d ever consciously chosen, and I was committed to seeing it through. Because there was nothing more terrifying to me, more excruciating, than the thought of turning away from him. It was an impossibility.”

At which point :Erin:, who had been sniping at the narrative occasionally, blurted out, “but why, Bella?! Why?!”

The “upon his decision, or his instincts” line describes two ways their “date” could go. They’re heading off into the woods. Either he would choose to love her, or he would choose to eat her, and those were the only two choices Bella was allowing. Indeed, she deliberately goes about telling everyone that earlier plans with Edward are cancelled, so as not to get him in trouble should he end up choosing to see her as meat.

Um… excuse me?!

Neither Erin nor I have been sold, at this point, that Bella’s desire to forsake option three (run like hell back to Phoenix) is anything more than a mental defect. This aspect of Bella is the root problem of Twilight. Bella starts well as a character; she’s sardonic, intelligent, somewhat standoff-ish — the sort of thing that many teenagers could identify with. But that’s the deck Bella is dealt with at the start of the book when she moves to Forks. She doesn’t grow this character; she doesn’t earn it. Throughout the first thirteen chapters, Bella doesn’t really discover anything about herself. Bella doesn’t change. And, most frustratingly, the only thing drawing Bella to Edward, other than raw sexual desire, is curiosity.

Even more alarming is the revelation that Edward has been sneaking into Bella’s bedroom at night, long before the two admit their love for each other, to just watch her as she sleeps. And she’s fine with that. I guess having a creepy stalker is okay if he’s hot. Bella acts like a perfect victim of abuse. She refuses to exhibit any sense of self-preservation, and wishes nothing more than to have her choices taken away from her and given to someone else.

All this becomes problematic given the shadow that Stephanie Meyer operates under. Nope, not Anne Rice: Joss Whedon. Girl power Twilight ain’t. And while it is good that Meyer set about charting her own path in the vampire lore, Bella’s character still makes me think that Twilight is what you’d get if you took Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, kept some of the humour, ditched the world-threatening baddies, kept the sex appeal, and then drained Buffy of almost all of her self worth as a character. This is Buffy as the dutiful wife, vampirism as a metaphor for an abusive relationship, without condemning the abuser.

It’s not that I object to the relationship between Bella and Edward, it’s that, unlike Buffy and Angel, or Buffy and Spike, Bella doesn’t grow in order to enter into her relationship with Edward, and she certainly doesn’t enter into that relationship as an equal partner. Had Meyer taken the time to show us the reasons, beyond sexual, beyond curiosity, that brings Bella to the decision to throw away her sense of self-preservation and fall in love with a vampire who isn’t yet sure if he can stop himself from killing her, then Twilight would have been a lot more powerful book. Had Meyer given us a Bella who maintained some control over her relationship with Edward, then I’d be far less inclined to want to shake the young woman, or wish someone else would call the police.

Instead, the relationship between Bella and Edward doesn’t really develop beyond the physical. Clichéd love-at-first-sight short circuits Bella’s development as a person. Bella constantly focuses on the inhuman beauty of her lover, his manly, muscular chest, his porcelain features, the fact that he sparkles in sunshine (gag!), and only gives passing mention to his intelligence. She is understandably flattered that Edward the Vampire would fight against his own nature to love her, but it is still a shame to see a supposedly modern female character, of above-average intelligence, to be swept up by looks and attention.

And Bella gives of herself, all the time, and very rarely acts for her own self interest. She loves Edward unconditionally when I think a more sensible character would have been at least more wary. Even her arrival in Forks is an act of self-sacrifice, putting herself in her father’s hands so that her divorced mother could follow around her new beau. This is a book about a girl who chooses to give all her choices away, and it doesn’t seem to get much better in the sequels.

The superficiality of Bella’s love for Edward makes me wonder at the message this is sending to teenage readers. Among doting fans, some express a longing for “their Edward” to come along. My advice to my daughters when someone like Edward shows up? Use pepper spray. I will be there to back you up with the baseball bat. That this book appeals to certain people isn’t a surprise: it ably captures our youthful perceptions of what first love is like. What it doesn’t capture is the reality of love, and I believe our daughters deserve better than that.

While I would not seek to keep this book out of anybody’s hands, I would be, frankly, disturbed if my daughters were to take it up.

Unless, of course, it was their intent to point at it and laugh.

Further Reading

• Scathing Book Review’s review of Breaking Dawn is… wait for it… scathing!
• A review of Twilight by Ruby.
• And, for the other side of the coin, Thoughts of an Aspiring Teenage Writer (who writes very well) loves the Twilight series and calls Breaking Dawn the best book of the year. (See also here)