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(Editorial from the Mascaret election issue.)

Last month, I decided to stand up for fiscal conservatism and social justice and the environment, and run as the Green Party candidate for Moncton- Riverview-Dieppe.

I lasted two weeks. Ho ho ho.

It wasn’t the campaign: it was the national party administration. It has lost touch with the grassroots.

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(Getting tired of repeating myself in email, so here it all is.)

Here is my version of my brief tenure as a federal candidate for the Green Party of Canada in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe.

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Excerpt from my email to the leaders of the Green Party:

I have also given an interview to the Ottawa reporter from the Times & Transcript detailing that, among many other things, I am withdrawing because I felt the process of my selection was improper. I recommend that, although time is short, a proper meeting be held to select the new candidate. I will turn over my campaign materials, such as they are, to the new candidate.

There are things I have said in the interview that will be difficult to hear and I imagine some of them can be argued one way or another. Bear in mind, however, that the locals were willing to put aside their complaints and support me, despite the inappropriate process by which I was selected. I could have remained the candidate and benefitted from the problems I see. However, we are supposed to be about transparency and accountability, and if we hide from our problems, we are no better than they, and prone to exactly the problems that cripple them. I feel that much of what I have said will ultimately create a stronger party that I will be proud to maintain membership in - something that cannot be said of any other party in Canada.

Therefore, effective immediately, I am shutting down this campaign blog.

I’m not normally one to take horoscopes seriously, but Mom brought home this week’s Free Will Astrology:

Writing in November’s Esquire, Chuck Klosterman described the National Football League as one of the most successful socialist institutions in the world. As evidence, he notes that rich teams in the biggest markets are required to share their revenue with poor teams in small markets. The league’s best franchise in recent years, the New England Patriots, has won so many games because its star players have volunteered to accept reduced salaries, making more cash available for the team to assemble the best possible collection of second-line players. I recommend a similar approach to you, Aquarius. It’s a propitious time to bring the NFL’s brand of communalism to the group or business or tribe that’s so important to you.

It’s almost mindbending to think of the NFL as socialist, considering how aggressively corporate branded it is, and how much sheer money it pulls in. But it shows that we can learn new techniques from very unexpected places.

I just spent an hour removing Viagra-sales vandalism from a site I operate that used to, so to speak, not have doors, but will now have locks and require keys, all so that some jerks can make a little money.

Well, no, not a little money. If the internet is a superhighway, these guys are creating gridlock - without paying for gas or even the cars they drive! Spam costs practically nothing to send; all they need is some cheap software, a CD full of addresses (often advertised for around $49) and a free dial-up account. They send out millions of emails. If they only get a thousand responses on a $50 product - not hard to get when they’re asking millions of people - they’ve made $50,000. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

Spam is what happens when environmental controls aren’t good enough, when politicians don’t understand technology and it outgrows legislation. Spammers constitute a vanishingly small percentage of the internet, but they consume far more than their share of its resources. Since the election fever caught us all, I haven’t had time to manually go through my spam folder. I’ve let over 11,000 pieces pile up since November 21. I’ve only received around 500 legitimate mails over the same time.

Sending spam is even easier when a virus writer is involved. It’s estimated that an unsecured new Windows computer will be infected with something within 20 minutes of being plugged into the internet (which is why I have a Mac and why my brother is very strict about what goes on his Windows computer). The chance is increasingly good that that infection will turn the computer into a blind pipeline to pump out more spam.

Even if you’re not unknowingly abetting it, you still pay - your internet provider pays for the bandwidth to receive the spam, and the computers to process it. It has to pass those costs on to you. Then there is the cost of your time to go through the spam and throw it away. Junk mailers, whatever other sins they commit, actually subsidize the postal system; spammers only profit off everyone else’s investment. They are constantly looking for new free online facilities to exploit: they shill on blogs and wikis and force people - people like me - to spend even more time removing and preventing their garbage.

In 2004, United States alone, that cost topped $10 billion dollars, and spam volume has doubled since then. Spam also far too often contains illegal and downright vile content; I have often received disgusting enough standard pornography and recently started receiving child pornography.

Like most environmental problems, spam requires an international solution. However, their abuse is obvious and all governments - except a few who profit explicitly by encouraging spammers to base there - would have a better virtual ecosystem by banding together to prevent it. An international agreement to make mass mailers bear the true cost of their advertisements could be a tiny stepping-stone toward co-operation on more vital issues.

For more information about the true costs of spam and the impact it has on you, please visit the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email.

Dear Christian Science Monitor,

I agreed wholeheartedly with “On the hunt for a conspiracy theory” until it offhandedly labeled Environmental Illness as a hoax.

When I was well, I taught myself to read, took ballet and gymnastics, and was a published author. Then I turned five, and began a lifetime of pain, throat and viral infections, and months-long bouts of bronchitis. The tissue at my joints was so swelled up that walking gave me huge, visible bruises.

Five years ago, I saw an MD specialized in Environmental Illness. I was cynical and suspicious, as Environmental Illness is often “treated” with unscientific and possibly hazardous placebos. I insisted on being treated scientifically.

Since then, research, prescriptions, physiotherapy, and strict avoidance of a ton of natural and synthetic antagonists have much improved my quality of life. Ten years ago, illness made me quit school. Now, I am running for office, and start an MSc in January.

Environmental Illness is not a “neo-con plot” or a hoax. Lumping it in with other falsehoods is how I got to stay sick for 25 years, and be a drain on society instead of a pillar of it. I am the living contradiction of your intellectual laziness.

Camille Gabrielle Taylor

I read the Monitor often, though I am not a Christian Scientist. It is generally an excellent publication that provides incisive coverage of global issues, and should not be confused with religion-centric magazines like the Watchtower. For its scope, detachment and honesty - it’s won seven Pulitzers - it is most like the Economist, and a terrific example of how religion can contribute positively to modern society.

From About Us at csmonitor.com: The idea is that the unblemished truth is freeing (as a fundamental human right); with it, citizens can make informed decisions and take intelligent action, for themselves and for society.

A good goal for all public servants.

This morning I toured the Open Hands Food Bank with Green Party leader Jim Harris.

Though, we almost didn’t.

What they do at this food bank is amazing. It is a big, cold warehouse, with a large hole in the front room ceiling from water damage. They have one paid staffer, Linda, a tiny, energetic, take-no-guff woman (”I’m the Mother Superior,” she said, “and Betty is Mother Hubbard. I wish I could work as hard as she does.”). She used to wear suits, but it’s cold, and the volunteers dressed for warmth and comfort, so so does she. They all work way more hours than they’re supposed to, they can’t afford to get the roof fixed, and they’re dealing with people who are hungry, broke, desperate, and often not in the best state of mind. That Linda and Betty still care - and it’s obvious they do - is miraculous by itself.

I got there early, since my mother knows where everything is in Moncton. Tracy from CTV was already there with her cameraman.

Linda told us about Operation Christmas Child, a program that gives Christmas gifts to children overseas. A lot of the donated gifts can’t be shipped, though, because they’re perishable or breakable. These are distributed to food banks here instead - shampoo, candy, little toys - and given out with the food.

Then Jim arrived, unfortunately late, since they’d gotten lost. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a green-striped tie. He tried to get straight into the bank tour, starting with a sound-bite about poverty - how the balanced budget was balanced because the Liberals had taken 45 billion dollars of Employment Insurance premiums - and remember, this is a fund people pay their own money into so they can get it when they need it - and cut eligibility and benefits.

I think this felt to Linda like some guy in a suit had barged into her space and was trying to make political coin out of human suffering - it must have been something on the level of that badness because she completely flipped out, on camera. Refused to take us on the tour; lectured Jim for a good stretch of time about inadequate government attention to poverty because it was full of people who’d never been poor. Her speech was so damn amazing I wish I’d given it myself. I’d love to see people like her running the leaders’ debates - people who work unnecessarily hard with pitiful resources - with leaky roofs! - because our government is - whether it consciously realizes it or not - engaged in social Darwinism.

After she’d vented a while she did seem to realize Jim was actually a decent guy, and later even teased him about the suit, ruffling his lapels and saying, “I know you have to dress like that.” She took us around the food bank and told us about how when she gets eggs - she buys eggs, hot dogs and bologna with the $2 food bank coupons we donate with at the grocery store - she cuts the cartons in thirds and gives out four eggs at a time. “It looks like we have a lot of food,” she said, pointing at a dozen large packing boxes, “but those are all just cookies. We take what we can get.”

Linda apologized for “shooting my mouth off,” and Jim said, “we like people who shoot their mouths off in the Green Party.” I said, “I hope that’s true!” and pointed to myself, grinning.

I chatted a bit with Betty, and told her, I did know about being poor, that I was disabled myself and scraping by on a pitiful disability stipend… Then we all went back out front, and did a nice picture with Linda, me, Mom and Jim.

Then Jim, David, Mom and I went over to the CTV station. Jim took out a beautiful little Green logo lapel pin, and said, “this is like the Green Party’s Order of Canada. David Suzuki has one, and he wears it.” He pinned it to my lapel, thanked me for being one of the 308 men and women standing as candidates this election, and said I was his heroine. And I, it’s true, I blushed. Aw shucks, Fearless Leader. You’ll make a believer of me yet.

(This editorial appears in the December 2005 issue of Mascaret.)

I meant to say one thing: vote. Your vote means cash for the party you support. Now I’m saying two things: I’m the Green Party candidate for Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe in the January 23 election.

The rock bottom cash value of your vote is $1.75 in federal funding, per year, if you vote for a party running a full slate, and it gets 2% of the national vote. If you vote for a party running an incomplete slate (or even just one riding), they must get 5% of the overall vote to qualify.

That said, in June 2005, the Canadian Action Party, the Christian Heritage Party, the Communist Party of Canada, the Green Party, the Marijuana Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, and the Progressive Canadian Party, all filed to have the 2%/5% cutoff abolished. Their counsel, Professor Peter Rosenthal, said “it is unconstitutional to withold those funds from these parties merely because they received fewer votes. The payment is per vote anyway; why can’t a party that receives a small number of votes get a small amount of money?”

So if you support a small party, but are demoralized about voting, vote! Make sure that when the case is resolved, your party gets more money. Give a token of future support.

I wrote that much, then started thinking, who’ll I vote for? Then I thought about how broken our government is, and got angry at our uninspiring leaders. I’m not speaking against the Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe candidates; we’re all facing a big picture problem. Our democracy is broken.

In 1993, the Tories got 16% of the vote - and 2 seats. The Reform Party got 19% of the vote and 52 seats. For the Liberals: 41% of the vote, and an “overwhelming majority” of 177 seats.

Now that the right is more or less back together, we’re seeing similar math: 30-40% Liberal, 30-35% Conservative, 15-20% NDP, then the Bloc, Greens, Independents, and so forth. All we did in 1993 was shove the problem ahead half a generation or so, during which time, Canadian politics stagnated.

(Though, the stagnation’s older: what Tory wouldn’t trade Stephen Harper for last generation’s Brian Mulroney; respectively Layton for last generation’s Broadbent or Martin for last generation’s Trudeau?)

Winner-take-all keeps getting weirder, voter turnout lower, and candidates less forceful. It feels like only two types of Canadians will engage such a bad system: those who can manipulate it and those who want to fix it.

I’m the latter. I’m not from New Brunswick, but have off-and-on spent around a third of my life here, with my closest family. I was born in British Columbia, and have also lived in Ottawa, Silicon Valley and Oregon. I came back to Canada because I like Canada more. I’ve crossed it coast to coast repeatedly by rail and plane, and once even in a Volkswagen minibus.

I’ve also seen unbelievable waste while working in the heart of Canadian government, at HRDC. And I’ve seen incredible stretching of tiny budgets at Status of Women Canada; a near-heroic department crippled by our government’s transparent indifference to women’s equality.

Then, after many years’ warning, my health finally collapsed. With a fat folder of doctor reports, I learned how the government works from the outside. I waited years for appointments which the government would cancel without notice, and was assessed by consultants who had no health qualifications. Though I had dozens of sheets from elite medical specialists detailing my disabilities, and a fistful of prescriptions, the system I encountered is so cruel and inhumane that it requires the sickest Canadians to fight until we drop. My elected representatives either couldn’t help or made it worse.

Canada is rich. We can afford good health care, a clean environment, peacekeepers, and to feed and shelter all our citizens. But I’ve seen firsthand how we get stupidly lousy value for our money. During the Y2K upgrades, staff were given complete old computer systems. (While the computers might have been buggy, the monitors and keyboards were not.) All the programmers in one department were given expensive new computers “in case” they had to work from home on snow days. A friend brought home six sets of high-end speakers because they were being thrown in the trash. I literally tripped over a $15,000 server that sat in the hallway for months while staff bickered about whether it was precisely what was ordered - but nobody wanted to turn it on to check.

Every March, every department blows whatever’s left of its budget on anything they can think of: new phones, new chairs, new brochures. It’s all standard in Ottawa; I could give a hundred similar examples happening while my prescription debts piled up. (Catastrophic drug coverage? Hah!) Nor is it new; during the Mulroney era, another friend’s father, a high-ranking civil servant, used to spend every morning on the phone to family in Asia and every afternoon at the gym.

The more I reflected as I wrote this editorial, the more I realized I wanted to vote for someone who believed in good government because they knew bad government literally destroys lives and that has got to stop. So I decided instead of just sitting here editorializing, that I would run for Parliament myself, as the Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe Green Party candidate. I want a better Canada. Whomever we send to Ottawa had better understand what they’re up against; I learned it by force.

Vote on January 23. Especially if you think your candidate won’t win. If we are really headed for another minority, the dollars your vote brings might make the difference next time. But maybe if we quit playing with strategic voting, and cast our ballots for the government we truly want, we’ll be pleasantly surprised. If we can’t do worse, why not go for better?