Saturday, January 06, 2007

First Ten Principles of the New Canada movement interesting

The political New Canada movement, which kicks off with today's meeting at Strathroy and a future meeting in Cambridge on the 20th, is one that is based on respect for nine principles: Individual Rights, Government Finances, Environment, Federal, Provincial and Municipal areas of Responsibility, Individual Choice, Canada’s External Affairs, the Supremacy of Parliament over the structure of our National Government and its Courts, the developing of the Canadian Federation, Canada’s Founding Cultures and International Peace and Security.

Now these former Reform Party and Ontario Party federal members used these first ten principles to move forward their policy direction as they start their process of official party registration, at first blush, one must ask what the exact ideology of this organzation is so one can determine after careful analysis of what coherent structural characteristics it has that makes it differ from the Big Three in Ottawa and their own token Antagonist for Separation and how it would benefit the average Canadian voter to have such a different option made available for them in the next federal election.

Simply put here, one can already see a distinct societal difference between the first principle of "We will ensure that all Canadians citizens and provinces and territories are treated equally under the law at all times." and the ninth principle of "We will work to ensure that Canada’s founding cultures – British, French, and Aboriginal – are respected as 'integral' to Canada, while at the same time celebrating our wide cultural diversity." with a promise of a brand "new and larger" immigration policy that "will allow more to enter Canada provided they speak one of the country's founding languages, are a proven non-threat to national security and the health of Canadians, and adhere to new Settlement Programme requirements to qualify for Canadian Citizenship".

Equality is when one treats another completely the same without any differences, whether they be linguistic, racial or cultural, the first and ninth principle, as well as the brand new larger immigration policy of New Canada don't jive with each other, either all of we Canadians are equal, or some of us Canadians are more superior while other Canadians are more inferior, one just simply can't have it both ways, having one's cake, along with the eating of it too, most likely wouldn't really want it to be like that anyhow, truthfully as equality is as close to justice as one can get and justice is something all progressive democratic reformers must work forward towards every day of their political lives.

We must thank, laude and respect the political New Canada movement's honest efforts to bring progressive democratic reform back to the federal electoral stage, but I kindly suggest they go back to their constitutional drawingboard to decide whether principle number one or nine remains, as one of the two will not survive a town hall meeting here in Ontario and likely not Canada as a whole either, let alone a national policy convention federally and would be rightly thumbed down by its collective internally to maintain the democratic grassroots integrity of the organization externally.