A Citizen’s Journey Part One

This was written in late 2012 as a precursor to the NOW Initiative:

A Citizen’s Journey Part One: Progressive Independent Candidates 

or 
Reflections on almost thirty years of scattered political involvement up to and including the recent Calgary Centre By-Election. 


by James Davidge 
 


  

Before I knew what democracy was, or what the words voting and election meant, I was already all too familiar with the two letter symbol of the Progressive Conservatives. This was primarily due to the periodic abundance of lawn signs, lapel pins, buttons and brochures that would be scattered around all parts of our house during any given election season. 
 


My father, a senior partner in an Edmonton accounting firm, was a PC bagman and a reliable campaigner who, during one memorable spring, threw his hat in the ring to be a Progressive Conservative Party of Canada's nominee for the Member of Parliament from Edmonton Strathcona. It was one of the most exhilarating times of my youth. Out of his four children, I was the only one who was old enough to know what was going on while young enough to not be distracted by the many complications and commitments of adolescence.  I was quite impressed and enthralled by the effort of my father’s.   And, boy, did he put me to work. I recall folding brochures, stapling signs to wooden stakes and even going on solo door-knocking expeditions. In those days it was considered empowering and character-building to send a ten year old down dark, unfamiliar streets armed with nothing more than campaign literature and a poll map. Nowadays it would probably be viewed as neglectful parenting. 
 


This was only a nomination contest but its scale and build-up made it feel more like an election to me. There were eight nominees and the selection evening involved all PC members gathering in the University of Alberta's huge athletic building, commonly known as the Butterdome for its bright yellow colour. That night all the hopefuls gave rousing speeches with dad's, ever the accountant, setting a goal of readjusting welfare incentives. A fair criticism would be that his speech focused too much on policy and not enough on passion but dad had made his concerns known, a primary reason he ran. After one round, four candidates were eliminated. At the end of the long night, my father had come in second place to Jim Edwards. Mr. Edwards would later be voted in as Member of Parliament in the 1984 federal election that brought Brian Mulroney and the PC's into power.  
 


By the time I was fourteen, my personal politics had shifted significantly away from my father's.  Greatly influenced by my Uncle Gord's Woodstock album and my experiences at the Rocky Mountain YMCA's Camp Chief Hector (where environmental stewardship is deliberately fostered), I was often clad in a tie die t-shirt and a bandana head band. I now joke that I spent much of the eighties protesting the Vietnam War. When I was twenty, after finishing two years of university, circumstances led me to take a half-year off in which I went on two extended backpacking treks. The first was across Europe and the second across Canada. One of the only things I can recall about my in-between visit with my parents was my father taking me to an advance poll to vote for the PC candidate he was campaigning for. The PC's had just elected Kim Campbell as their leader. Jim Edwards had been the third place nominee and I confess to imagining a politically alternate universe where my dad replaced Mr. Edwards as part of that leadership race.  
 


On the day of the 1993 federal election, my Canadian cross country journey had landed me in Montréal. Regionalism had become all the rage with the Bloc Québécois campaigning for separatism and the newly created Reform Party pushing a "The West Wants In" agenda. The outcome shook our nation.  Jean Chrétien 's Liberals won a majority and the Reform Party became the opposition. The NDP's power shrank and the Bloc surged while the former Progressive Conservative government had been decimated to only two seats. I remember a mutually stunned conversation with a buddy in Calgary from a pay phone on rue Sainte-Catherine. We knew Canada's political landscape had been drastically altered. 
 


For many of the years that followed, I took a pretty commonplace, backseat attitude towards politics, assuring myself that it was enough to cast an informed vote. I was satisfied with Mr. Chrétien as our Prime Minister, notably when he kept Canada from supporting the United States' war with Iraq. I was never a fan of Alberta's longstanding premier, Ralph Klein, particularly with his apparent lack of concern for the environment or public education. When "King Ralph" stepped off his throne in 2008, I actively engaged myself in the effort to put a different party in power. Kevin Taft was leading a re-energized provincial Liberal Party in a bold attempt to defeat the Progressive Conservatives. Mr. Taft's previous writings about social concerns inspired me enough to go volunteer. I walked into my local Liberal candidate's campaign office and was immediately given the task of stuffing envelopes. I delivered flyers and actively utilized my various social networks to get Liberal signs up in my Ramsay neighborhood near downtown Calgary. Working as a scrutinizer on Election Day was an eye-opener. The poll was chaotically disorganized, with long, inefficient line-ups and mounting frustrations. There were people who complained of misdirecting phone calls. After the poll closed, the vote counting buoyed my spirits as Ramsay was clearly supporting the Liberals. My sign initiative had made a difference! This made things all the more disheartening when I returned home to discover that my candidate had lost the riding and that Alberta had elected even more Progressive Conservative MLA's than previously. 
 


In 2011, like so many people, I got caught up in watching Jack Layton's stirring national campaign for the New Democrat Party. At that point, with my daughter only two years old, my life was too hectic to get very involved (as we have all said). The only political energy I could muster was a humble contribution to my local candidate and an upload of an image of an NDP button to be my Facebook avatar. Collectively, small donations and social networking activity do make a significant difference in a campaign, but such relatively minimal on-line behaviour is now sometimes referred to as "slacktivism". Mr. Layton's far greater efforts raised the New Democrats to official opposition status for the first time ever. Tragically, the honourable Jack Layton passed away from cancer a few short months later. I was in Toronto promoting my graphic novels at Fan Expo Canada when his public funeral was occurring there. I met with friends for dinner after they had attended the event and they had been clearly moved by the experience. How could they not? A nation was mourning for the politically alternate universes that might have been. 
 


In early 2012, during the Alberta provincial election, I cast a ballot for the Progressive Conservatives for the first time since my dad had taken me to that advance poll almost twenty years earlier. PC leader Alison Redford, a red Tory if there ever was one, was a far more appealing choice than Danielle Smith and her extremely right wing Wildrose Party. Polling data had frightened many people into believing a Wildrose victory was at hand and even my very left-leaning wife was urging me to vote PC. This was, arguably, the first strategic vote I had ever cast. 
 


In the late summer of 2012, I was doing a routine scrolling of my Facebook homepage when my heart skipped a beat. Ashley Bristowe had posted that her husband, Chris Turner, was going to run as the Green Party candidate in the upcoming Calgary Centre federal by-election. The Conservative MP (a variety of alliances with various off-shoots had caused Progressive to disappear from the federal party name years earlier) Lee Richardson had stepped down from being a Member of Parliament to go work for Ms. Redford's provincial office. Chris was an internationally recognized author on sustainability and it was motivating to see him step up to the plate. I was one of about twelve people who attended the first door-knocking meeting in mid-September. A little over two months later, during the weekend before election day, I was incomparably invigorated. The Green Party had risen significantly in the polls and had garnered a considerable amount of their new support from the Conservatives. With the recent mayoral election on our minds, where Naheed Nenshi had come from behind to win a tight three-way race, there was an ambitious optimism in the constantly growing Turner camp. There were now 125 door-knockers amongst a volunteer campaign team that numbered greater than 300. During those last days of my pavement pounding commitment, I was speaking with confidence, clarity and urgency about Chris's vision of making Calgary a national idea lab for livable cities and sustainable solutions. 
 


Election night disappointed a lot of people. Joan Crockatt, the divisive Conservative candidate, won the election but with only 37% of the vote, a small value compared to the 58% that had sent Mr. Richardson to parliament in 2011. Harvey Locke, the Liberal candidate came in second with 32%, having increased his support from the start of his campaign by about a fifth. Chris Turner had earned 26% of the vote, almost tripling the Green Party's showing in 2011. 
 
Following the election, there was a lot of talk of vote-splitting and fingers pointed at the Turner campaign, accusing us of preventing Harvey Locke from winning the race. I would argue that if Chris had not entered the race, the Liberals likely would not have run a strong enough campaign to capture the support needed. We will, of course, never know as the number of politically alternate universes is endless following every election. What I do know is that, in a race as tight as this one was, no candidate who respects their supporters can easily back down as a last minute strategy to help defeat an opponent. Cooperation between parties would be most effective if established long before an election is called. 
 


What was so fantastic about the Turner campaign was this sense that we were working for something, not against. Our intentions were not restricted to just defeating the Conservatives. Our genuine hope was to send an intelligent, community-minded person to office; someone who has the specific knowledge required to help Calgary and our country move forward in a necessary direction; and we busted our humps trying to do so. While we clearly didn't achieve that mighty goal, we did help do something significant - the number of people who had voted for the Conservative in Calgary Centre had slipped far below the majority. This is an even greater consideration when one looks at the bleak 28% voter turnout. Sending someone to Ottawa with support from roughly a tenth of the eligible citizens hardly suggests a strong mandate. On my door-knocking expeditions, I spoke with many young people who told me, sometimes proudly, that they don't vote. As a teacher, those were, without question, the saddest moments of my amazing experience with the Turner campaign. 
 


One purpose for sharing these varied memories was to demonstrate that a person's political viewpoints and voting decisions are far more complex than supporting any one particular party platform. If we realize that in ourselves, how can we expect anything different from our elected representatives? And why should we? A good leader does not work to solely get what they want but helps navigate everyone through the murky waters of compromise, once a treasured Canadian value. 
 


It is with these considerations in mind that I am proposing that Calgary adopt a Progressive Independent Candidate Initiative.  
 
The initial intentions of the Calgary PIC Initiative would be threefold: 
 


1) To help facilitate a collective nomination process in Calgary ridings between the Liberal, New Democrat and Green Parties in selecting the best candidate from their riding to diplomatically advocate for the national platforms of all three parties. This candidate would pledge (before the writ is dropped to avoid contravening section 550 of the Elections Act) that, if elected, they would join any progressive party if required to form government, join any progressive party if required to form official opposition and, in the case of a two party conflict, would exercise freedom of action and independently decide based on the conscience of his or her riding. 
 


2) To develop and promote learning resources that teachers and youth group workers can utilize to encourage active political citizenship in our children.  Regarding this very serious concern, Social Studies teachers can’t continue to do most of the heavy lifting.  We need to provide every neighbourhood a variety of resources to civically motivate young people and, let’s be honest, the adults as well, which leads me to my final intention. 
 


3) To creatively seek further solutions to Calgary's increasingly abysmal voter turnout.  The situation is getting ridiculous.  After hearing that 72% of Calgary Centre did not vote in the recent by-election, I was ready to fundraise and buy bill-board space in the downtown core that says, “Over two-thirds of you did not vote in the recent federal by-election.  Next time, get off yer arses!”  However, there is a reason I’m not in marketing.  In 2009, Chris Turner and Naheed Nenshi both cut their political teeth by helping co-found CivicCamp, a downtown-based gathering (with an active web presence) dedicated to involving citizens in government decision-making.  We need activities like that happening in every federal riding.  If we mobilize more people to care about Canada’s policies, it will invariably filter down to provincial and municipal decisions as well. 

This is not an attempt to merge the three parties into one.  Each group brings distinct, valuable ideologies that speak to their supporters.  My belief is that a riding can select someone who is knowledgeable, responsible and considerate enough to represent all those viewpoints in contest with the Conservatives.  In this recent by-election, Brian Singh’s 1calgarycentre.com on-line forum was a noble attempt to unite progressive thoughts and votes to support a consensus candidate.  The impressive multi-faceted site included links to numerous debates that occurred between the candidates, most of which only featured the three “progressives” as Joan Crockatt avoided all but two public debates (and only attended those after the media started to pay notice).  In her absence, there were some great conversations that occurred, civilly contrasting the perspectives of the Liberals, the NDP and the Green Party.  What was often revealed was how much each platform and person had in common.  What also became clear was which candidates were better at speaking in-depth regarding the issues.  Fostering policy-based discussions to enable informed candidate selection would be a key mission of the PIC initiative.

Let me be perfectly clear, as a math teacher and fiction author I am by no means an expert on the intricacies and sensitivities of the current Canadian political system.  That being said, political thinking is often an attempt to meld numbers with fantasy.  Strategists basically use data to guide decisions that promote the hopes and dreams of their campaign, so I may not be in such foreign territory as one might initially think. 

Here is what I know – Conservative support is less in Calgary than a few years ago but in this current political climate, it can only be overcome if a consolidated effort is put forth against them.  When signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin famously remarked, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”  I know there are other people in Calgary working towards similar goals as mine and for things to happen effectively we must gather ourselves (and fast if we want to have our act together for the 2015 federal election). I do not want to reinvent the wheel, I will not accomplish this alone and I would happily integrate my ideas with what other people have already developed or plan to work towards. Please seek me out via my author website if you would like to invite me to your discussions or want to support this initiative. 

I want a Canada where we feel like elections are bringing us together not further separating us. I want 100% voter turnout. I want a community where we civilly debate the complicated balance that has to occur between economic sustainability, personal rights, social justice and environmental concerns. I want it to feel acceptable to politely discuss contrary politics at our dinner tables, with people that we meet and in our staff lunch rooms. We need a more engaged community and conversation is one of the best tools for that. Let's all be better at opening our minds, mouths and hearts. Things always improve if we are prepared to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty. If we can attend to our collective goals with a more dedicated effort, while remembering to say please and thank you, a great change is on the horizon. 
 


And it will be in our political universe. 
 


James Davidge is a Calgary-based public school teacher and author. His website is www.jamesdavidge.blogspot.com.