Beautiful image; disturbing headline. I found this article from The Narwhal (April 13, 2023) helpful, and shared it via Facebook with this comment:
[There is] no point in protesting or even reasoning with these people. We are living under a dictatorship. But although they wield all the power, they're weak, out of touch with 21st-century realities, and out of tune with the heart and soul of Ontario. Our best recourse is to join hands, set aside all differences, embrace our farms, our rivers, our creeks, our towns, our cities, our neighbourhoods, give them all the love we've capable of giving, and as we do so, reach out to citizens who still care in cities like Peterborough, Belleville, Guelph and Hamilton, and to citizens who still care in the hinterlands, the farmlands, the lakelands, the northlands, and look for ways to work together to bring this province back to its senses, and to recruit, elect and appoint a new kind of leadership.
A friend responded in agreement:
Their time is at hand. Politics to the south are embracing green initiatives, and urban sprawl will be too costly to build and maintain, both for governments and for homeowners … . We are not seeing this quite yet, but it is inevitable. We will elect governments that understand and embrace this.
Another friend also agreed, but wasn’t quite as sanguine about prospects:
Yes, but the damage that will be done until the next election when (or IF) Ontarians wake up and realize what evil people the Tories are and turf them out will not be able to be undone. Their crooked cronies will have made their ill gotten gains.
My next post was about taking responsibility:
Me: We knew what was coming and did next to nothing to get our act together and prevent this from happening. There will be another opportunity in 2026, and who knows, maybe even sooner. It’s an unwieldy coalition of interests and attitudes that holds this kind of regime together, here, in the US and in the UK, and it might just collapse on its own accord.
Friend C: Who are "we"? And how would "we" have stopped it? The Tory mafia have a majority in the Legislature and pass whatever bills they want. Ontario re-elected this gang of thugs because far too many people have drunk the Kool-Aid. This province is full of self-satisfied affluent right wing bigots who love the CONS.
Me: By "we" I mean the people who care about these matters - basic civic concerns - and who agree that the general drift of what passes for "conservatism" nowadays is a danger to almost everything worth caring about. We carried on with our particular preferences, and with our eyes wide open allowed 17 % of eligible voters to give this "gang of thugs," as you put it, a whopping majority, and near absolute power over our schools, hospitals, universities, cities, towns, lands and waters. We may not be a majority (the "why bother?" movement can claim that distinction), but we are decidedly more than 17 %. We just didn't care enough to come together, think of ways to prevent this from happening, decide which candidate had the best chance for success, and muster the will to act and vote accordingly.
Friend C: I'm not sure that it was a case of not caring enough but rather not knowing HOW to come together to do something. Those of us who are of more or less like minds are not a movement or a party. We are diverse and in many separate social groups and areas. I'm uncertain how it could have been achieved.
Me: We didn't care enough to think about how. We didn't care enough to come out of our silos. We might have failed, but we didn't even try. We don't have to agree on anything other than who the best possible candidate is in each electoral district, with the likelihood of attracting a plurality of votes the primary consideration. Personally, I can't imagine a movement or a party of people who think like me -- a conservatory progressive, a neo-loyalist, a liberal-syndicalist, a democratic-monarchist. So I'll support and work with anyone and everyone I am reasonably sure would do a better job than the current Premier of Ontario and the powers who are propping him up from behind the scene.
Friend C: Well, I personally didn't know how to go about it. Certainly the Liberals ran a very poor campaign in the last Ontario election. Voter apathy is a huge problem. Your description actually fits me, I think. Shall we start a political party?
Me: Starting a party is separating, dividing, exiting. Sometimes that may be the best way forward. But right now, here, in Ontario, Canada, we need to come together.
There was a break in the discussion here. On further thought over the efficacy of a conventional partisan approach, I came back with:
Me: Starting a party would make sense if we began with a resolve not to run any candidates of our own, but instead, when an election comes around, deliberate among ourselves, choose the best candidate that has a strong chance of winning, and vote together in order to increase those chances and try to make our votes count. We would also be the only party that welcomed members of other parties, including ones that have been elected to office. The main focus should be something everyone can support -- like victory in a wartime situation. Environmental Sustainability. Peace. Progress. Prosperity. Nothing too left wing or right wing sounding, but not neutral or watered down either. Green Party core values and principles would be close to ideal.
Friend C: Agreed.
Me: Would it be OK if I polished this a bit and published it as a blog post? I could leave off our names, and I'd send it to you beforehand so you could polish your part of the conversation too.
Friend C: Fine with me.
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This exchange relates to what I’ve been imagining as an “omni-partisan” movement dedicated to achieving better integration and balance among the various spheres of democratic order in Canada. What I’ve been describing would be a relatively slow process: Take a year or so to develop the concept, set the preliminary steps, and work towards a launch in March, 2024.
With the Ontario government appearing to be going rogue on multiple fronts -- the latest news is that they’re ready to step in and take charge of Waterloo County/Region schools -- we may no longer be able to afford to be quite so patient and careful.
This Facebook exchange has helped me to collect my thoughts on what we can do next, including how to best take advantage of the by-election coming up in Kitchener Centre.
Without article from The Narwhal, an ad-free, no paywall, mandate, not profit-based, online magazine based in British Columbia, there would have been no conversation. I was able to share the article because it was commissioned and written to be read, not sold to those who can afford a subscription. Social media made the exchange possible.
Because it doesn’t rely on advertising, The Narwhal is immune from “Facebook’s Death Grip,” as a recent article puts it. It also means that this mandate -based endeavour doesn’t undermine the viability of commercial media like the Facebook and the other platform behemoths do.
Everyone who can afford to support this publication should do so, especially now that The Narwhal has expanded into Ontario. In a significant way, we all support it because it is charitable. The donors get a tax credit.
So what’s the best way forward? It’s too early to decide, but we may end up reaching the conclusion that the best way to protect those fertile green fields in that photo in The Narwhal may be to vote Green this time around.