I’m continuing work on my ‘vote visualisation’ tool, because I believe that anything that brings greater transparency to our democratic process is a good idea.  Take it for a spin, and let me know what you think, and what features should be added.

I know I could speed it up by caching the data rather than retrieving it from the government data feed on every request.  But already I think it’s enough to show how obsessively ALL our MPs follow party lines. I still find this disturbing; I’d much rather a representative who cares about what Barrie citizens think more than he cares about what the party whips think.

In a windowless office near Las Vegas, Nevada, an American Air Force operator controls one of the deadly Predator drones that fly over Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere.    He hunches over his keyboard and joystick, squints at his computer monitors.  He presses some buttons, and on the other side of the world, a few lives are quietly erased.

Then at the end of his shift, he gets into his minivan and drives home to his house in the suburbs.  Perhaps he takes his dog for walk.  Maybe he plays catch with his kids, or has a few friends over for a barbecue.  He waves politely at his neighbour.  On Sunday he goes to church.

What would it feel like to be that guys neighbour?  The thought fills me with a profound disquiet.  I live on a street populated with accountants and software developers and police officers and teachers.  In general they are quiet, friendly people.  I like them.  But I never have to look at them and wonder how many mothers and fathers and children they have killed today.  Would I want such a person living next to me?  Would I let my kids visit their house, knowing that they are capable of taking another human life with little more effort than filling in an Excel spreadsheet?  How would I feel standing next to him in the pew at church at Christmas, singing together about the Prince of Peace, and goodwill to all mankind?

The more I think about our society’s quiet acceptance of death dealing flying robots, the more it worries me, but I worry most of all about the type of person who apply for and perform a job controlling one.

Politicians do not spend a lot of time thinking about the issues they vote on, as I noted yesterday.

I just wrote a little tool to demonstrate this.  Have a look at this visual representation of recent votes in the House of Commons?

Vote Visualisation.

And then ask yourself this – are our representatives carefully considering all the facts before them, and then voting on each issue in a manner that best represents their constituents?

Or are they mindlessly following party orders?

The good news is I’ve discovered that the Canadian government has a very good web interface for tracking recent votes in parliament.  Seriously, go check it out here, see how your MP has been voting recently.

The bad news is it gives a clear demonstration that our politician vote purely along party lines.

Take vote 631, for example.  Every single Conservative voted to close down the Experimental Lakes Facility.  Every single Liberal, NDP and BQ member voted to keep it open.

We could read these results in two ways.  Perhaps, by a strange coincidence, every single Conservative member reflected on the views of his or her constituents, the value of performing fundamental ecological research, and the role that basic research should play in evidence based policy making, and came to the eventual conclusion that it was not in Canada’s best interests to keep the facility open.

That would be, I grant you, a rather strange coincidence.  But the alternative explanation is that none of our representatives paid careful attention to this issue, and all simply voted the way their parties told them to.

I’m a firm believer in representative democracy, but that word representative is important.  Are we to believe that the residents of every single Conservative riding are against publicly funded research, and the residents of every single NDP, Green and Liberal riding are in favour of it?  Or are our politicians paying more attention to their party whips than their constituents?

If they are, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Democracy works when people make their voices heard.  We need to be paying more attention to how our MPs are voting; congratulate them when they get it right, and reprimand them when they get it wrong.  They are, after all, working on our behalf.

And at least thanks to the internet we can easily watch their activities now.

On Wednesday I received a letter from the school board informing me that our local elementary school would be closed due to ‘a day of political protest.’  (The Elementary Teacher’s Federation of Ontario clearly decided not to call it a ‘strike’, because they know they are no longer in a legal strike position.)  Yesterday, I received a phone call reiterating that the school would be closed.

After  making alternative plans for my children for today, I found out mid-morning that the schools ARE in fact open.  The Ontario Labour Relations Board has confirmed that ETFO’s actions were illegal, and the union was instructing its members to break the law.  The school board has announced that the schools are open, and apologized for the short notice, noting that the timing was beyond the school board’s control.

I am, at this point, disgusted by the actions of ETFO.  My children are fortunate enough to be taught by some incredibly motivated, engaging and talented teachers.  I have seen them time and time again demonstrate a devotion to their calling, and a passion for equipping the next generation of Canadians for adulthood.  And so I am deeply frustrated when they are ordered by their union to refrain from doing their jobs, and fulfilling the calling to which they have dedicated their lives.

The person directly responsible for this is Sam Hammond, the president of ETFO.  He claims that the union is ‘standing up for democratic values’.  And yet he is encouraging teachers to directly break a law that was decided upon by a democratically elected, representative government and confirmed by an independent judiciary.

The mechanisms of democracy in Canada are still in place and functioning correctly.  Mr Hammond, though, is not presenting a role model to our children of a respectful, responsible citizen.

A critical element of a functional democracy is an informed electorate.  It is one of the most important checks against rampant corruption and abuse.  Intelligent, well informed voters can ensure that checks and balances are put on government actions, and that the profits that arise from the sale of the country’s resources are spent on improving the lives of citizens.

So if you happened to be a corrupt politician, benefiting from bribes and kickbacks, you would have a strong desire to keep the populace uninformed.   Now, in the past this was easier to do.  You could, for example, mandate that only state approved information sources were to be used.  Citizens are only allowed to read the ‘Banana Republic Daily.’  Perhaps you would fire teachers and close down schools in an attempt to keep the population illiterate.  Or maybe you would put restrictions on travel to prevent the spreading of ideas.

Today, though, in the age of the internet and free information, it is much harder to stop people from learning, discussing, and sharing ideas.   So what alternative does the poor corrupt politician have?

One obvious idea presents itself.  If you can’t stop the populace from consuming information, then maybe the next best step is to pre-emptively stuff them with false, misleading, or simply useless data.  Keep their brains occupied with the trivial, the meaningless, or the politically convenient.  Better yet, try to scare them off of sources of information that have not been vetted.  Teach them to be afraid of ideas that come from outside the country, that come from other political groups, that come from rigorous, peer-reviewed, reproducible research.

What would you end up with?  A country that was deeply distrustful of foreigners, of intellectuals and of political opponents, but very well informed perhaps about local sports franchises, television dramas and the lives of non-political celebrities.

Fortunately, I can’t think of any places like that.

I talk about reconciliation quite a lot.  I’m convinced that it’s one of the concepts at the heart of the Christian faith.  But today I found out about some folks that are actually getting on with the hard work of reconciliation.

The Parent’s Circle is a joint Palestinian Israeli organization of over 600 families, all of whom have lost a close family member as a result of the prolonged conflict.

I am inspired to see Palestinians and Israelis who have every reason to resent, distrust and hate each other, sitting down together and working towards peace.

Take some time to read their stories, such as this one from an Israeli who lost family members in a rocket attack and later had the chance to meet Yassar Arafat, the Palestinian leader who signed the order authorizing the attack.

We need more people like this. People who can come out of a tragedy and go beyond assigning blame and calling for revenge.  People who can concretely work towards peace and reconciliation.

One thing I have hugely appreciated about having children in the Ontario public school system is their commitment to character education.  Integrity, respect, cooperation and responsibility are not merely buzzwords but are taught, modelled and reinforced at every opportunity.  Which causes me to run into difficulty when trying to explain the current labour dispute to my children.

Students in Simcoe county schools are encouraged to demonstrate these character traits: Integrity, responsibility, cooperation, caring, respect, optimism, honesty, empathy, courage and inclusiveness.  In general, I have seen that the staff at our local school have genuinely modelled these traits as well as taught them.

However, I do not feel that I can say the same thing about the education ministry or the teacher’s unions.   When Lauren Broten, the education minister, unilaterally imposes an agreement on the province’s schoolteachers, this is not an act of cooperation.  When Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario accuses the government of ‘disgraceful misuses of power’, he is not demonstrating respect.

When unions call on teachers to withdraw from all extra-curricular activities, this cannot be understood as being a caring act towards our children.  And when all parties talk past each other and accuse each other of being disingenuous, they are not displaying the character trait of honesty.

I would like to be able to tell my children that the teachers, their unions, and the government sat down together in an atmosphere of cooperation and respect, that they listened to each other with empathy.   That they  honestly and courageously looked at the very real financial constraints the education system is dealing with, and figured out how best to provide a caring and inclusive education system for all of our students.  And that they then went forward with optimism to implement their ideas.

But at the moment, I unfortunately cannot.

At some point in this month every parent of a child in the public school system may find themselves scrambling to figure out what to do with them, as the various teacher’s unions threaten strike action.

I find this deeply frustrating on several levels.  As a parent, I am concerned that my children will suffer from this action.

Ken Coran, the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, says that he is  “very hopeful that the public will see that we are trying to do what is best for the students,” but I find it hard to see how stopping classes, field trips and extracurricular activities is ‘best’ for students.

As an Ontario citizen, I’m frustrated with my government.  We expect a number of things from our representatives, one of them being to provide a comprehensive education system for our kids.  My MPP, Rod Jackson, does not seem to have any useful information on his website regarding the labour dispute.

More than anything, I, and the students I have spoken with, are frustrated by the lack of clear communications.  We would like it if all parties could state their positions clearly, without demonizing their counterparties.  If the government, the teachers, and the unions truly have the students’ best interests at heart, they will work together productively to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

image from The Guardian

The European court of human rights, just like Canada’s supreme court, ruled that member states should not ban prisoners from voting.  Unfortunately the UK government is dragging its feet in implementing the required reforms.

This is a legal decision that I’m proud to say Canada got absolutely right.  I’m convinced that denying prisoners the right to vote is very dangerous to democracy.  We should not be creating large classes of people who have no say and no stake in our political processes.

This might make some people uncomfortable, but that is kind of the point.  If prisoners were to actually form a political constituency, we would have to have an ongoing dialog about crime, punishment and rehabilitation.  Every time election season rolls around, politicians rush to hold public debates in nursing homes, at city hall, and in schools.  What would happen if they also held them in our prisons?

I believe it would help ensure that we as a society didn’t conveniently ignore the correctional system.  Politicians would have to be actively engaged in issues of prison conditions, recidivism, parole, prisoners’ families and rehabilitation.

The stated mission of Correctional Service Canada is ‘encouraging and assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens.’  At it’s heart I believe that this can be a fundamentally redemptive process – recognizing social brokenness and taking active steps towards building a more healthy, whole society.

And ensuring that both victims and perpetrators of crime remain connected to our political conversations is one important step in helping this happen.