Re: Suck a lozenge

["M. Kolar" <wddm(at)mkolar.org>]

Milton MacPhail wrote:
> I am from Canada and we are on the verge of our second federal election
> in less than a year. Both of the leading parties want deep integration
> with the USA (you won't be able to tell the difference between the USA
> and Canada because there won't be any difference). I don't want that, so

Milton,
   I would not be that pessimistic. There is a guy who has been doing an annual
comparison of USA and Canada well for over a decade now (sorry, I cannot find
any reference to it right now, I have only heard him being interviewed on his
research by CBC at least twice in recent years). His comparison of various
indicators show that USA and Canada has actually been steadily diverging in the
last two decades. For example: US families are getting more and patriarchal,
while Canadian women are becoming more independent of men.
   In this process we've drifted so much apart, that Canada cannot be easily
swallowed by the US. But it occurred to me that if Canadians could somehow
participate in US elections, it would be a very good thing - the 20 million
Canadian voters could have changed to the benefit of the whole world the
results of the last two US presidential elections!

   What worries me more is how little even the Canadians are interested in
public matters. In B.C, they have a unique chance to change their political
system to make it somewhat more democratic (proportional representation), but
according to a TV report, two days before the Tuesday's referendum that will
decide this, 80% of B.C. citizens admit that they have no idea what the
referendum is about and do not know what STV (single transferable vote system,
which the referendum is about) is or means!

   By the way, I am also trying to revive Canadian Participatory DD
Association; see http://democracy.mkolar.org/pdda/ - could be of interest to
other Canadian WDDM members.
   In its list of DD links are several web forums discussing the STV. It was
also disheartening to see how intolerant many contributors to these fora are!

Mirek