Vol. XX, No. 4 & 5, April & May 2002
The Western Separatist Papers
has been published (usually) monthly by W.S.P. Ltd. since 1983. Address all
correspondence to WSP, Box 143, 255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. Western Canada V8V 2G6.
A one-year subscription is $15.00. Members of the Western Canada Concept receive
the WSP with their membership.
Send e-mail to kzubko@shaw.ca. Visit the WCC on the web at: www.westcan.org
Phone us at: 250-727-3438
or fax us at: 250-479-3294
To the Editor:
Found your website today and you have put my worst fears into reality. The West is far more likely to separate than Quebec - they aren't going anywhere but like a spoiled child will throw a temper tantrum until they get what they want. The West could actually separate and become self sufficient (you have the seaports and the natural resources).
Or you could all become really rich and become part of the US (you know they would love British Columbia and the Oilsands) a deal like that would maybe the Louisiana Purchase of the twenty-first century. But I digress. The only way to keep the west and Canada from tearing itself apart is through senate reform.
The latest census data does not help. We need a concept similar to the Triple E senate but the Liberals will never bring it in as they know they could lose power. The only way I can see it happening is if Ottawa realizes the west is upset and ready to go.
Don't go the Quebec route of talking separation but wanting to keep the best parts of Canada. A separation is a separation - complete. If you could even start talks with the US about a relationship similar to that of Puerto Rico and the US, with the Western provinces and the US Ottawa would sit up and notice.
I don't want to see the west leave. Canada is the best country in the world but I hate the political climate we now have. There is no opposition - with the voting system we have the Reform taking the west but unless they can take Ontario (with most seats in the Golden Horseshoe) they will never be a viable opposition.
The west will continue to provide the oil and Ottawa will continue to tax it to fund programs that benefit Quebec.
As an easterner (yes you have support here too) what can we do?
I understand you must be very busy answer me if you want to or can. You could maybe set up a discussion forum on the website for open discussions about topics. Maybe a chatroom format could be set up with meeting established meeting times that people can monitor or join in on.
Sincerely
Michael Dawson
[Editor's Note: Although this letter was written for earlier publication, and the Alliance leadership has since been decided, it contains some truths that remain constant, no matter who the leader is.]
To the Editor:
It is difficult to feel any inspiration with the current Alliance leadership contest. After what happened with that party's self-inflicted train wreck last year, courtesy of Chuck and company, the new leadership race appears to be a gathering of “all the King's horses, and all the King's men.” There is Stockwell Day, who had to resign because he failed to obtain the blessing from the powerful Manning clique, and also we have three wannabes who all say in one form or another, “I am better than Stock!”
What has been the case against Stockwell Day? His Jet Ski and wet suit? (Why? Athletics appears to be a major Canadian religion.) His verbal gaffes? (Never mind that Stock's gaffes have received more press coverage than those of certain Liberal cabinet ministers!)
When the pseudo-populist campaign against Day surfaced into the open last spring, it was claimed by the anti-Day forces that Stock was unelectable as Prime Minister. To whom is he unelectable? Despite the Liberal dirty tricks, despite the media smears, and even the mistakes made by Stock and the Alliance brass, the Alliance won most western seats in 2000. If, for sake of argument, Western Canada was a separate nation-state, the Alliance would be the government, Stock would be Prime Minister, and the Liberals and the NDP would be the opposition. When Stock's detractors say that Stock, or anyone else for that matter, is not going to succeed they really are saying that any possible Alliance leader has to be marketable and acceptable to the powers-that-be in Central Canada.
But, hey! Was not the Reform Party created because many Western Canadians found that despite their years of loyalty to the Tories that the West was still being ignored by the Mulroney regime? Was not the Reform Party founded on many firm principles to bring about fundamental change in Ottawa, namely in the distribution of powers between the federal and provincial governments.
I remember when the Reformers were really pushing forward the issue of a Triple-E Senate, and when Stan Waters became our first and probably our last elected senator. Ever since Reform morphed into the Alliance there has been really no word on this issue. Has the lust for power meant a sacrifice of principles?
Also I remember when Deb Grey first refused the gold-plated pension for M.P.'s and then she continued to expose this gravy train well into the 1990's. It was only just prior to her knives falling on Stock that the Reform den mother signed up for the pension as well as voting herself a hefty pay raise. Has this lust for power corrupted even the best of the original Reformers? Leaders also lead by example, and one sets an example by standing firm on matters of principle. To use her own words, Deborah Grey is “no leader” either. Yes Deb, there is certainly “no shame in admitting that.”
Failure to win in Central Canada appears to be the only excuse for tearing the Alliance apart, and for making Stock Day the most pressing issue in national politics. Sometimes social conservativism is used as a scapegoat for Stock's failure. It is claimed that only if the Alliance could have the right “socially moderate” leader then it could make that expected breakthrough in Ontario, and perhaps Quebec.
I am from Ontario originally, and I have to disagree with that reasoning. Being from a small city, there are many in Ontario who share western values. In the 2000 election the Alliance came well within a whisker of winning some old rural Tory ridings such as Hastings-Frontenac, Haliburton and Leeds-Grenville, and this happened even with the split vote with the Tories. In metro Toronto and in other urban areas the Alliance was way behind the pack.
One reason for this is that when many Ontarians vote in federal elections they think about the Quebec issue. They look for a leader and a party who will keep Quebec happy. If Quebec is not happy then it will separate, Canada will fall apart, we may become Americans, and the sky will fall.
The Liberals maintain that their party is the only part that can do just that. Western-based parties and leaders (save perhaps a Joe Clark) simply are not in this league. The west is regarded as too remoted form confederation's ground zero, and westerners are seen as not being able to understand Quebec enough to keep them from separating. Indeed the west is remote, and one only has to drive across the miles of rock through northern Ontario to understand this. With this geographic reality would it not be a legitimate question as to why the western provinces should even remain in Canada?
If separatism is not a legitimate option, then could someone suggest something better than the Reform/Alliance/DRC game of hitting heads against the walls on Parliament Hill? At the rate the Alliance is going it will go the way of the Progressives, Social Credit and the CCF. Either it will fold, or it will merge with the Tories on Joe Clark's terms. The only difference is that the Alliance is going out with a bang and not with a whimper!
Yet, western independence does not carry the kind of emotions one finds in Quebec. The West's case is political and economic, and not about the more emotional issues of language and culture. Western Canadians on the other hand, have great sentimental attachment with their kilt n' kin in Central Canada and Atlantic Canada, even if they vote Liberal.
To use an example, one could ask as to where would Doug Christie feel at home? In Vancouver's Chinatown, since that is in Western Canada, or in Cape Breton? Would Doug feel more at home at the annual Sikh parade in Surrey, BC, or at the Highland Games in Maxville, Ontario? The answer to this question should be obvious. Of recent note, Western Canadians have joined in the euphoria over the gold medal victories of Canada's Olympic Hockey teams.
Yet, there will come a day when even the almost religious emotion of sporting events will fade, and when the nostalgia for the old Canada will pass, and Western Canadians will have to apply some reason.
Alex Greer
Victoria, BC
To the Editor:
I was delighted to see your coverage of the “Botheration Scheme” as published by Joseph Howe in 1865 in Nova Scotia, and reprinted in your February newsletter.
He had it right as history has played out; the shotgun wedding of Nova Scotia with the Colonies of Upper and Lower Canada (Quebec) has proved to be a disaster, as Ottawa usurped all the power and initiatives otherwise vested in the self-governing colonies of the period.
As a native Nova Scotian of over 10 generations (going back to the days of the United Empire Loyalists), I can put Q.E.D. to his fears and predictions.
Once a totally self-sufficient colony with self-government for close to 100 years, that spawned the birth of the Royal Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia through its shipbuilding and world-wide sailing fleets (at one time the fourth biggest in the world), its treasury was full, whilst Upper and Lower Canada were near bankrupt, from their ongoing civil wars.
It started its decline after it was conned into confederation, by Charles Tupper and his battalion of upper Canadians, who arrived on the scene to “protect” the Nova Scotians from the “terrorists” of the day, the Fenians. Whilst Howe's legislature voted 18 to 1 against confederation, Tupper and crew set about making their deals, promising prominent merchants and MLAs, senatorships if they joined. The rest is history – Tupper was knighted by Queen Victoria and even Howe turned up in Ottawa as a Senator in due course.
The message that Howe tried to get across was that Nova Scotians were doing very well with their own self-government and didn't need a central government 800 miles away trying to tell them how to fish and build ships and a thousand other things, including massive international trading around the world. It was the Hong Kong of the day.
Alas, what we see there today, and in Western Canada, are poor provinces, a declining standard of living, higher and higher taxation, neglected oceans and resources and what appears to be a total indifference and lack of understanding of the matters that are most important to us in the west and east.
Imagine what this once great land would have become, if those powers that once made Nova Scotia so famous and rich were given back to the Provinces. British Columbia might have become like Norway, who with only 4 million people, became one of the richest countries in the world, with less land, smaller oceans and far fewer resources than British Columbia.
Norway now has the third biggest fleet in the world and has less than 2% unemployment. It is not part of any European Union or Free-Trade deal; it does its own thing and does it well. It also needs no immigration or refugees to do so.
Joseph Howe had it right in his condemnation of the “Botheration Scheme” (Confederation). Leave the provinces to look after their own affairs and we'll all prosper, but leave it up to a central government 3000 miles away and we'll all go down the road to ruin, as our social and economic fortunes are sacrificed for their priorities and wealth.
Robert Ward
From Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
In self-imposed exile
To the Editor:
Former Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau has been honoured by the Federal Government. His picture has appeared on a commemorative postage stamp. One hundred and twenty million dollars has been set aside for scholarships in his name. A proposal has been put forth to rename Virginia Falls, “Trudeau Falls.” Today he has been nominated Our Greatest Canadian. He wouldn't win that honour in Western Canada.
This is the Prime Minister who gave the finger to prairie farmers and told them to market their own grain. This is the man who drove his motorcycle around Montreal dressed in a German uniform while Canada's finest were off fighting the war to free France. This is the man who admired the communists so much he wanted to implement that form of government in Canada.
He deceitfully added Schedule B to the patriated BNA Act and changed our government from a free, open society to a nation with a civil law, in which the politicians held themselves above the law and the people as second class citizens. He effectively emasculated Parliament and placed the power in the hands of appointed judges who are known to make judgments based on political gain rather than points of law.
He ran the government by Orders-in-Council emanating from the Prime Minister's office without proper debate. He forced the Official Languages Act on an unwitting public without a thought to the rights of the people and the ultimate awful cost to Canadian taxpayers. He was well aware this would not bring unity to Canada. He disbanded the militia units that had always been a fountain of patriotism and a source of strength for national defence.
He forced through the National Energy Policy that drained 500 billion dollars from Alberta and gave it to Quebec. He began the equalization payments and development funds that year by year saw more than 80% going to Quebec.
Trudeau tried to take the Royal out of the R.C.M.P. Failing that, he underfunded the force to the extent they were unable to do their job properly.
He ignored the fact that Bill 101 was unconstitutional and watched silently as the English of Quebec were oppressed because of their language and many were driven from the province.
He perfected the process of deficit financing and unwarranted spending that borught the National Debt from 2 billion dollars to 160 billion dollars by the time he left office, leaving our children and grandchildren to pay the bill. The National Debt hangs like a millstone around the neck of every Canadian taxpayer. Canada has become the highest taxed nation of the G-7. Our standard of living has fallen from number one to 18<M>th, below Spain and Italy.
The policies implemented by Mr. Trudeau have caused the ugly head of racism and prejudice to rise in an otherwise peaceful, tolerant nation.
Worst of all, we have lost the one thing that made Canada great, our free, open parliamentary democratic form of responsible government.
Pierre E. Trudeau was the most un-Canadian Prime Minister in all the history of Canada. The question is, who would vote him the best?
John J. Fisher
North Battleford, SK
The Western Separatist Papers welcomes your letters to the editor, including your questions for Doug Christie. Please send them to kzubko@shaw.ca, or WSP, Box 143, 255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. V8V 2G6, or fax them to 250-479-3294.
OTTAWA--Canadians who decided to buy an airline ticket Monday were slapped with more taxes. The country's new airport security fee took effect, adding a surcharge of $24 on every round-trip ticket. The federal government announced the tax in December, saying it was needed to provide tighter security following the September 11 attacks in the United States.
“I think it's silly, when you look at the cost of air travel now,” said one disgruntled passenger in Gander, Newfoundland. . . . Before this new fee was added, taxes, charges and user fees had already in some cases almost doubled the cost of an airline ticket. Some critics said this new added cost to passengers will just hurt an airline industry that's just beginning to recover from Sept. 11. . . . The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has complained that passengers flying into remote airports with no security equipment will still have to pay the tax.
[Source: CBC WebPosted Mon Apr 1 2002
In an information sheet produced by Pacific Coastal Airlines, it was pointed out that the Canadian fee is three times that of the security fees introduced in the U.S., after September 11th. The Canadian fee is $12/one-way flight, compared with the U.S. fee of $2.50 or $4.00 Canadian/one-way flight.
The U.S. has provided for an exception to the collection of this tax when aircraft with 60 seats or less are operated to or from a non-sterile area, which is the case for many local flights, short haul flights and low cost air transportation. Canadian are forced to remit this tax, without exception.
“I don't think that in the last 10 years the programs in Africa of poverty reduction have been successful. Africa has regressed over the last 10 years rather than progress economically,” Mr. Chrétien told reporters yesterday, adding that “we have to reward improvement.”
Canada spent $696-million on development aid to Africa last year and has averaged between $500-million and $700-million annually in recent years.
So what does our Prime Minister do, but create a new plan to give more money: “Canada has committed an extra $500-million in foreign aid to Africa to help implement the G8 plan once it is finalized.”
Source: April 6, 2002 “Africa aid policy a failure, PM says; Poverty not reduced: Progressive nations will be rewarded under new plan” Sheldon Alberts, National Post, Saurabh Das, The Associated Press
(The following excerpt is from an article in the April 17, 2002 National Post, by Andrew McIntosh)
The federal government has placed at least $7.1-billion of public money beyond the reach of parliamentary and Cabinet oversight by giving it to private foundations whose spending cannot be scrutinized, Canada's Auditor-General warned yesterday.
In her spring report to Parliament, Sheila Fraser also raised alarms about the government's growing use of “contingency funds” -- designed to cover “miscellaneous and minor expenses” -- which pay out multi-million-dollar grants to industry and groups before their approval by Parliament.
“Accountable government requires that members of Parliament be able to approve the government's plans for spending and scrutinize the results of that spending,” Ms. Fraser stated in her report.
“The government is disregarding this essential principle with increasing frequency,” she added. “When Parliament is out of the loop, taxpayers lose their say in how government spends their tax dollars.”
She said no more money should be transferred to such foundations until a full public debate on the matter has taken place.
Broadly, Ms. Fraser said that since 1990 the federal government has set up 77 similar “arrangements” -- it did not specify their nature more exactly -- to which it has disbursed $32.2-billion.
Ms. Fraser took specific aim at the federal government's creation of nine different foundations since 1996 to which it has transferred $7.1-billion, much of which has been sitting in bank accounts for years as officials decide how to spend it.
(end of excerpt)
Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.
Benjamin Rush
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke, April 3, 1777, letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
Ayn Rand
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change...[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition.
H.L. Mencken
In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
Alexis de Tocqueville
By Doug Christie
In all the high tax regimes, Canada, Britain, USA, Australia and New Zealand, there are certain common developments which reveal a pattern of control and elimination of freedom. These involve the various “wars on.”
The war on drugs produced vast increases in police powers to tap phones, to survey private activity and to regulate what people place within their own bodies. Seen in this light, it would have been viewed as intrusive. Rather, the war on drugs was presented as saving people from an evil they simply could not resist. In later years, it is being generally recognized that the largest and most effective factor in preventing drug abuse is education through advertising and even cigarette use is curtailed through such means, as well as merely reducing or eliminating consumption in public places. The war on drunk driving likewise has vastly increased revenue and police powers as well as regulation of drivers although the danger of impaired drivers is demonstrably higher than drug abusers' self-destructive tendencies.
The war on prostitution was promoted as a necessary prophylactic (if I can use that word) against social, venereal and immune deficiency diseases. It gave police in Canada powers to arrest for a wink or a nod, a person communicating for the purpose of sexual activity.
The war on pornography and hate likewise gave bureaucrats what the Supreme Court held was a necessary power to decide what others should not see, even if it was not what they themselves would be unable to resist or reject. A perfect recipe for hypocrisy was sanctioned and pious bureaucrats were set up with absolute power to censor and ban books, literature and pictures which were viewed as having hateful or pornographic content.
Only those desiring to see or read the proscribed material were able, if they so wished, to bring the matter to court (at their own expense of course) to see if the learned bureaucrat was indeed right. This itself was turned into an expensive and convoluted legal nightmare which few civil libertarians could or would attempt to unravel. Hence we have a censorship force which is virtually unchallengeable.
The war on poverty likewise has been sold as a means to achieve more beneficial distribution of wealth. This allegedly salutary goal is again achieved by a vast increase in state powers to tax and allocate wealth allegedly to the deserving and needy but usually to youthful beggars with two dependent dogs lying on street corners.
The latest war the state has undertaken is the war on terrorism. This latest war is the most effective at destroying freedom, privacy and reason and by far the most expensive. Just when the military budgets of the world were in danger of becoming less onerous, and the state, on the verge of being less necessary to protect us, a new threat has emerged.
This one is more valuable because it is never defined. It can never be defeated because it demands a response to an unknown enemy. If anyone ever questions the need for the surrender of taxes or freedom in its cause, the person can be attacked as disloyal or an enemy sympathizer. The war on terror is like George Orwell's perpetual war for perpetual peace.
The target in the war on terrorism is constantly shifting according to political expediency and the need for control is only limited by the imagination of the controller and the ability to communicate even a plausible pretext of an imaginary threat. All opposition is silenced with the scorn of the insider, knowing the secret fears that lurk in the hearts of men.
The war on hate preceded but to some extent, parallels the war on terror because ethnicity which one would associate with an adequate precaution against terror must not itself be allowed. This would be stereotyping or racial profiling, and such activities are “inherently wrong.” This is so especially when such policies are particularly rational and logical.
Reason and logic must be first suspended in the war on terror. Otherwise the trust in government is only temporary and conditional on common sense. Common sense is the prerogative of ordinary minds and thus cannot be controlled by “experts”; common sense must therefore be outlawed or discredited.
Governments today demand absolute obedience and blind obedience is the best. Thus truth being no defence to a hate crime is the perfect explanation why it is wrong to take special precautions against young to middle-aged men with middle-eastern appearance or Arabic or Muslim names.
If the average citizen could apply such obvious precautions, the trust in government would be significantly diminished because everyone could make their own inquiries and reach their own conclusions about the alleged threat. Far better to outlaw discrimination on any basis so the same expensive and intrusive precautions will be submitted to blindly and willingly by all citizens equally thus searching the baggage of the 70-year-old white grandmother becomes just as mandatory as the 28-year-old Arab Muslim with the strange-looking golf bag.
Thus the public will more readily accept the surveillance and control of all email, or website or Internet communication, and thus accept a far larger budget for domestic spying. Rather than trust the people, the people must be taught to trust their government.
In Canada it was necessary to create an illusory white supremacist movement, using a paid agent, Grant Bristow of CSIS to achieve a media frenzy and increased public support for a larger domestic spy budget after the “fall” of the Soviet Union. No more is that necessary.
Even the incompetence of the agent and his near criminal conduct, though successful to incriminate the leader of the opposition at a crucial political period, became too hot to handle when the media broached the subject and a whole cover-up inquiry was necessary to remove blame from the government. Such fiascos are no longer necessary. The public are more blindly accepting now. The media are uniformly “responsible” or compliant depending on how one looks at it.
Everywhere in Australia, Britain, USA, Canada or New Zealand, government security agencies can go about their secret business unchallenged, unaccounted for and unquestioned. Politicians can't be trusted to know and certainly not the people what is being done on their behalf and at their expense. What a windfall!
What a disaster for freedom this war on terrorism has been. The story of the possible involvement of the CIA or foreknowledge by the Mossad keeps percolating beneath the surface but always people are told and believe they must trust their government and believe in the rightness of their cause no matter how many Iraqi children or Muslims are killed in other places.
The current political climate is a recipe for mindless slaves and power politics. Knowledge is the only way to escape the web of lies and half-truths with which they control the tax slaves and envision a new world order of total socialist utopia.
“They” are all Al Quaeda or “whatever” and don't you question this any more than you question our bombing of Serbia or whatever else we tell you. Just pay your taxes and keep your doubts to yourself. This war on terrorism could go on for years.
As George Orwell predicted in “1984” Mr. Goldstein and our five minutes of hate, which was repeated over and over again from different places so that Osama lives forever in our present time.
There are eight separate statements to which we are asked to give consideration and upon which we are supposed to vote in our referendum. Most are general and have a principle of fairness and equality as a basic premise. The only one which contains an inherent contradiction and hidden and ominous uncertainty is point 6.
It reads: “Aboriginal self-government should have the characteristics of local government, with powers delegated from Canada and British Columbia.”
This statement in its first premise is clearly contradictory. Perhaps it is deliberately ambiguous so that it create little or no conflict in the referendum. But the people deserve to know what this means before they vote on it.
The most important aspect of local government is the principle of universal suffrage. Everyone gets to vote in local elections, subject only to a few residential requirements which are race-neutral and equally applicable to all citizens regardless of race or ethnic origin. Is this what is meant by local government in point 6?
If so, it will only take a few years before these tribal self-government units are assimilated as residents who rent upon these lands or even own portions of them if this is possible. (another interesting unanswered question is the right to alienate or sell native land.) who are non-native outnumber those who are native. Even the term native is a misnomer as clearly being born here is not enough to qualify for the title. If universal suffrage is required in aboriginal self-government, areas as a condition of local self-government it is doubtful that aborigines will agree to it, or accept it. If it is not required are we merely setting up little racial ghettoes where non-aborigines have less rights because of race? Isn't this an unanswered question of major proportions which we should know before we vote yes or no?