Real, Meaningful Action In Canada. Now.

Real, Meaningful Action in Canada. Now.

The North American continent is humming with the dissatisfaction of large segments of people.  Similar dissatisfaction is mirrored in Europe, in the Middle East, and even in China.

In Canada, the most potent source of action is being totally neglected.

People are assembling, sitting-in, camping, marching in protest against neo-liberalism, which is, in essence, the integration of private Corporations and governments (in league with military and police forces) to wrest power from the hands of the people and to place it in the hands of “the one percent”. 

The neo-liberal process goes forward….

The government of Stephen Harper makes pious statements about human rights at the Commonwealth Conference in Australia, about wanting to protect the population against crime in Canada. It does so as it moves towards increasing repression of the population, to greater internal corruption, and to the removal of democratic freedoms from Canadians.

The most potent instrument to fight neo-liberalism provincially and federally and to fight the corruption of the Stephen Harper alliance is in the hands of Canadians.

It is not being used.

Every Canadian of voting age has a representative in the rooms where the sell-outs are happening, where freedoms are being ripped away, where “treaties” denying Canadians rule over their own country are being ‘legitimized’ [made into law].

The rooms are not secret. There are about a dozen or fourteen of them. The national room is called the House of Commons.  In each province (and north of them), the room is called the Legislative Assembly or the Parliament.

But there are much smaller rooms all over Canada called “constituency offices” – places where our “representatives” meet the public. [If those are closed, our “representatives” have homes in their constituencies.]  Canadians have the right to demand to see their representatives, to be present in their offices – if necessary to meet them in their homes.

Wherever five or ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred … or more Canadians can get together – anywhere in Canada – they can call the constituency office or the constituency president and demand loudly and publicly to meet with their “representative” – their MLA or MP (of whatever party), and to meet him or her NOW. 

At meeting, they can demand that representative return immediately to his or her party [caucus].  They can demand [whether the representative is Green, Liberal, Harperite neo-liberal, NDP, or other] that he or she publicly commit to fight, to call on “the Party” to confront the sell-out of the people– actively  - in “the room” and come back to the constituency and report in a public meeting … without any delay.

They can occupy the constituency office of the MLA or MP while waiting for the answer from “the Party” in “the room” [the House of Commons, the legislature, etc.] 

They can demonstrate.  They can insult the representative if there is delay. They can demand the representative resign.  They can petition the representative to resign. They can demand “the leader” meet with them to explain inaction, truculence, refusal to represent the wishes of the constituency population.

They can occupy the leader’s offices.  They can demonstrate against any political representative anywhere in the public sphere. 

They can make particular and multiple demands. 

They can demand no tar sands pipeline, or no pipeline through the U.S.A.

They can demand an end to Free Trade Agreements, now.

They can demand an end to all fish farms in Canada.

They can demand criminal investigation of Stephen Harper, Tony Clement and John Baird over the G8 spending scandal.

In B.C. they can demand criminal investigation of Gordon Campbell, Christie Clark, the president of CNR – any and all involved in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR.

They can make so much legitimate, democratic, constitutional noise and so many demands upon their representatives that directions will change … really change … or representatives will reveal they are bought, bribed, coerced, threatened into silence and do NOT represent.

If that last is the case, then concerned Canadians will know what they have to do.  Dump their representatives … fast.  As a start. After that … well ….

But before that, political parties will be so shaken, so frightened, so threatened that I suspect changes will happen very, very fast. If not …?

Canadians have been brain-washed to believe their democratic political system is not in their hands.  It is.

What are Canadians waiting for?