Or, “How to Rebuild a Political Party, in as Few Words as Possible.”

As the rhetoric leading up to this weekend’s Liberal convention in Ottawa begins in earnest I must—I simply must—say my piece.

I am a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party of Canada. I joined… gee I don’t know, back when what’s his name with the squeaky voice beat out Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae for the party leadership. I joined because I was interested in having a say in who would replace Jean Chretien or Paul Martin or however you want to look at it. At any rate, I’ve stuck it out for exactly that reason: because I want to have a say in the party going forward but as the outlook turns grimmer every year I’m beginning to wonder if I can get my money back.

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Ah, the 2011 list. For a hack of a blogger like myself it’s my once-a-year bread and butter. This year instead of separating music, movies, and television I’ve decided to produce a comprehensive list and lump it all together. Hold onto your hats, and enjoy.

Favourite Films of 2011

I had a quick look around because I was curious and it seems like Tree of Life is topping everyone’s lists this year. We have it in the queue but haven’t got around to watching it yet. I’m curious now though and I wonder if it would change things if I were to watch it first.

The curious bit, however, about the two films that did make my list is that both feature the unmatched Paul Giamatti as the leading actor. This wasn’t intentional but when I looked at everything I’d watched this year and boiled it down to just a couple of my favourites… Do I have a particular bias towards anything that Paul Giamatti does? Perhaps. Is he undoubtedly the best actor working in Hollywood right now? Yes, sir.

Barney’s Version

Barney’s Version is a brilliant take on the novel by Canadian literary heavyweight Mordecai Richler. I remembering having to read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in my O.A.C. (Grade 13) English class. I probably only understood about a third of what I read at the time but I can certainly appreciate a heavily nuanced and deeply moving plot a lot more now that I’m older. Barney’s Version is a movie about love, marriage, family, and memory. It’s wonderfully-acted (duh), well-written (duh), and unfolds itself in a fantastically pleasing fashion distilling all the very best parts of a well-developed Woody Allen movie. Complicated, comedic, and charming sums it up pretty well too.

Win Win

Win Win follows in the same genre of comedy as another of my all-time favourite movies Lars and the Real Girl. I’ll sum it up like this: Small town, quirky characters, social conundrums, and the kind of plot that sometimes seems like something you couldn’t make up if you tried. Like Lars, we’re treated to ninety minutes of some truly great and wholly surreal story-telling about people, a place, and a number of situations we’d never even thought about before. In this film, Giamatti plays and small-time lawyer and high-school wrestling coach as if he were born for the role.

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Rob Ford lumbered into political office on the power of a lot of pretty pathetic promises. I didn’t vote for him but a lot of people did. Granted, the choices were miserable so it’s hard to blame everyone.

Nonetheless, one of the first things that Mayor Ford did upon taking office was to scrap the city’s Vehicle Registration Tax. A $60 charge for Toronto residents which appeared when you renewed your license plate sticker. When we lived in Toronto last year and I had to renew my plates I dutifully paid my $60. The fee went directly to pay for transportation infrastructure, something the city sorely needs to improve and, honestly, I pay enough taxes but I gritted my teeth and forked over the dough. I wanted to drive my car in an already congested city, I guess I gotta pay.

But of the few things Ford campaigned on eliminating the Vehicle Registration Tax was one of them and so it was the first to go. The elimination of the tax, Ford himself admitted, would cost the city about $64 million in lost revenue but would mean money back in the pockets of Toronto’s tax-payers and they could spend it however they wanted. Hilarious, given yesterday’s budget announcement.

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I’ve written about copyright several times before. Now I write more.

The Harper Government, now in a substantially more powerful majority position in the House of Commons, are poised to reintroduce the copyright legislation that died on the table last May. According to Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, the bill will be introduced in the exact same form it was left in before the election.

This is a problem.

To be fair, the most recent incarnation of the Conservative’s copyright reform has been, by far, the most balanced we’ve seen out of that government. They’ve tried before, several times, to introduce copyright reform legislation and always met with an enormous backlash of public opinion. After the latest bill was introduced Industry Minister Tony Clement made a concerted and very public effort to consult with groups that had expressed concern and hear them out. He heard them out and it seemed that he was really listening, but then the election was called, the writ dropped, and the bill met an untimely death.

The problem with the bill being reintroduced in the form it was last left in is that there were glaring—enormous(!)—issues with that bill. Through concerted consultation Mr. Clement discovered these issues. But this time around, according to the Harper Government, no consultations will be made.

In other words, they know the bill is broken, their previous consultations told them so, but they aren’t fixing a thing. Not a thing. Nothing changed or reworded or rejigged after all those consultations. Which really makes you wonder if it wasn’t all just window dressing from a government that, as a minority, really didn’t have a choice. They acted to appease; when push comes to shove, they don’t have to act anymore.

So the bill is broken. While it’s protections are, for the most part, fair and reasonable, the “digital locks” provision which has been in the legislation since the beginning is a fatal flaw.

To put it simply, despite any protections and provisions for consumers that exist in the law, if a piece of media is protected by a so-called digital lock, all consumer rights are null and void.

However, it gets much worse. In the midst of the Conservative’s last push for copyright reform cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the Harper Government actually lobbied to be put on a U.S. copyright watch list. Yes, if you can believe that. The Harper Government actually requested that we be put on an American copyright watch list—a list of prolific copyright violaters—that includes countries like China and Russia. We are on that list, at the request of the Harper Government, under the assumption that public pressure from the Americans would perhaps help pass the legislation through to law. Our government, lobbying a foreign government, to put pressure on our citizens. It seems pretty unreal.

So, there is a lot to worry about. We have a bad bill coming down the pipe. One that was introduced before, protested against strongly, and despite consultation was not amended in any form. And we have a government that, if the cables indicate anything, will do whatever it takes to push through this reform into law. For what it’s worth, both the Liberals and the New Democrats were opposed to the legislation the last time around. There’s also an enormous, well-organized protest movement that mobilized in the past and remains very active and energized. So, if nothing else, we can at least hope that the passage of this bill won’t exactly go quietly.

I wrote recently, in response to an article by Warren Kinsella, that merging the left wing of Canadian politics, while an immediate possibility, also possibly sucks.

My concerns are simple and, again, I reluctantly point you towards the American example. An example where a two-party system is beginning to demonstrate obvious flaws when put to the test. The far-right wing of the Republican Party—the Tea Party—is, in my opinion, threatening the collapse of the Republicans as we know it. From within.

In Canada, I worry that a merger of the left—a new party formed from the NDP and the Liberals—may result in something very similar. An eventual breakdown of the party from within its own ranks and the more fringe interests fight to be heard.

Without a doubt, the policy platforms of the New Democrats and the Liberals have become increasingly similar. In fact, neither are very dissimilar from the essentials of the Conservative Party. It’s all a matter of the creep towards the middle ground, something that all parties are guilty of. Terrible leadership aside, one of the problems plaguing the Liberals in recent elections may very well be the fact that the party that was once king of the middle ground is losing out as other parties creep in.

Nonetheless, a merger between the New Democrats and the Liberals would be, in a word, simple. And, lately, the rumours are flying.

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It wasn’t what I expected to hear as I stepped out onto the deck, blinking back the blinding Alberta sun.

“Jack Layton is dead.”

Maria and I spent the last week, from Friday until this past Saturday, out in Alberta seeing family. I spent the weekend that Jack died whipping around a lake on a Seadoo, sitting around the fire, and enjoying the company of Maria’s Albertan relations. A world away from our place here in Cambridge, from work (for Maria), and, in the way that only a good vacation can make you feel, from reality.

In that context—the context of being away from everything—news of Jack Layton’s dead was even more of a shock.

We were starved for information. On Monday afternoon we got on the road again, on our way to Maria’s grandparent’s bed and breakfast in Three Hills, Alberta, and we searched in frustration for the local CBC station. When we finally found it we listened, and listened. It became clear, quickly, that it was all too real. That the cancer must’ve been far worse than it appeared to be even at Jack’s last press conference, even when he stepped back from the helm, temporarily. But it had come so quickly, without warning, and it seemed to be impossible that Jack was really gone. Like that.

Jack Layton, who had led the New Democrats to mind-bogglingly incredible new heights. Who had taken Quebec by storm. Who had achieve what would have been nearly unthinkable even a year ago.

The thing that amazes me most about all the tributes that have been pouring in for Jack over the past week is the amount of people saying the same thing. Jack Layton was the reason why I first voted. Jack Layton was the reason I became interested in politics.

And the funny thing is, it’s true for me too.

It was in January 2003 and I must’ve been home one weekend from university; the start of the second semester of my first year. I remember clearly watching the NDP Leadership Convention on TV. It was the first political thing I ever did.

Jack Layton’s leaves behind a pretty substantial legacy. He led his party to historic highs, he inspired Canadians—especially, I think, young people and the marginalized—to become  interested in politics, and he was a genuine and kind person in the midst of politics.

But if the gossip out of yesterday’s Liberal caucus meetings have any substance behind them (and these things normally do) then Jack’s legacy may about to be, in the near future, even more incredible. A weakened Liberal Party merging with the NDP would not see the Liberals coming out on top, the New Democrats would lead. Canada’s “natural governing party” forced to merge with the left to survive, because of Jack. Now, imagine that legacy.

I just got done reading Warren Kinsella’s diatribe in The Walrus. It’s titled “The Biggest Losers” and, after reading it, I think the only real loser here is former Liberal strategist Kinsella himself.

For all his angry ranting and finger-pointing (not at himself, of course)—and I used to really like Kinsella, mind you—he manages to squeak out some interesting points. Namely, the the left needs to merge if it’s going to compete with the Conservative Machine and Overlord Harper. I’d like to explore this in two parts. First, at this point in the game, a merger between the Liberal Party and the New Democrats is going to be squarely in the hands of the NDP, not the Liberals. The Liberals have lost their chance to architect any sort of merger when they lost the election so badly. And, second, it’s possibly a very bad idea either way.

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