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Exercising Your
Democratic Rights
By Perry Grey
“The
medium is the message” Marshall
Mcluhan
We are now into the second half of the
longest election campaign in recent Canadian history.
As usual all the parties are
discussing their future plans and what they will deliver if elected.
There is one serious problem with
most of their statements, most are not realised after the election.
We have to understand that candidates use
words that must be thoroughly understood by voters.
Sober reflection and analysis is
required, and this can be a challenge because many words have
multiple definitions.
Take for example the word commitment.
For many it means “an agreement or
pledge to do something in the future”, but for a politician it can
mean “an act of referring a matter to a legislative
committee”.
Compare these two definitions and
you can see how different they are.
This a good example of how words
can be manipulated to change the intent of the person using the
words.
George Orwell explored this
process in his novel 1984.
Orwell used the term “newspeak”
which has been described as follows:
“a
controlled language created by the totalitarian state Oceania as a
tool to limit freedom of thought, and concepts that pose a threat to
the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, and
peace.”
The word that describes this tendency is
obfuscate
(render
obscure, unclear, or unintelligible).
Those hearing or reading the words
can often be bewildered or confused.
The Canadian military relies upon a
single dictionary and the use of the first or primary definition of
a word in an effort to clarify the use of words.
This is not a universal practice
and even in the military it is not always followed.
We tend to use words that we
understand or with which we are most familiar.
This includes slang, patois and
vernacular.
Our language, regardless of
whether it is English, French or any other, is constantly evolving.
New words and definitions are
regularly being added to dictionaries.
The
Global Language Monitor
(http://www.languagemonitor.com)
calculated that there were more than one million words in English by
2009; however, only about 10% are commonly used.
Language proficiency varies from language
to language.
A simple language may require a
few hundred words, while a complex language requires thousands.
To be fluent in English, for
example, a person requires more than 20,000 words.
That is still only 20% of the
common words (20,000 of 100,000) and
less than .00002% of the entire
vocabulary!
Given the number of Canadian voters for
whom English and French are not their mother tongues or even their
normal languages, it means that many Canadians may be confused by
the words used by political candidates.
Often it is important to understand the
text, subtext and context of words.
That means understanding which
definition of each word is being used, the relationships between the
words and the information being communicated.
Complex communication increases
the obfuscation immensely.
This means that a person can even
be altering the meaning of their words by the use of irony or
sarcasm.
Thus the person actually means the
complete opposite of normal definitions of the words.
Going back to the definition of
commitment.
These are good examples of how
words can be manipulated.
A willingness to discuss issues in
a legislative committee is not a guarantee to actually doing
something.
For example, when the NVC was first
introduced by a Liberal government, there was an understanding that
it was “living legislation”.
The reality is that there have
been very few significant changes made since 2005, when Parliament
unanimously voted in favour of it.
More recently, Erin O'Toole has referred
to it as just the “veterans charter”.
In my opinion, this is a major
error because that simple three letter word is very important.
By dropping the adjective, he is
ignoring the fact that there is more than one “veterans charter”.
The “old” or “original” charter
became legislation in 1944.
Veteran Voice has long held that the NVC
is vastly inferior to the first or old Veterans Charter (OVC), and
that this discrepancy is not being properly rectified because the
federal government has not made significant changes to the NVC.
In fact, we believe that the
differences between the OVC and the NVC demonstrate that Veterans
have been disenfranchised by recent governments, namely the Liberal
Government which introduced the NVC and the Conservative Government
which has failed to ensure that it is “living legislation”.
The failures of the two ruling parties
pre-date the introduction of the NVC, as discussed in previous
articles.
Federal governments have failed
the Veterans Community by allowing the OVC to be weakened by policy
changes implemented by VAC.
Such changes began almost
immediately after the OVC became legislation.
If Canadians examine just these two
pieces of legislation, then they can understand the difference
between federal government commitments.
In fact, any political commitment
or legislation should have a warning attached as follows:
“Subject to change without notice”
Now some may accuse me of being too
cynical about politics, and this may be true some of the time.
I would argue that it is not true
all of the time.
There are just too many examples
of the failure of politicians to abide by their commitments.
One of the most recent examples is
the use of transparency and accountability by the federal
government.
Both words are examples of
newspeak
in my opinion.
Please note that the term federal
government is used rather than Conservative or Liberal government.
This is deliberate because the
same words are often used by politicians regardless of their party
membership.
The quote below the title of this article
highlights the challenges, which Canadians will face as they decide
how to vote on 19 October.
Marshall Mcluhan was a Canadian
philosopher who researched communications and the cultural use of
media.
He believed that media was often
more important than the information contained within the media.
This is why it is important to
understand the context and subtext in a message.
Some of the information may be
subliminal because of the tone or images associated with the
information.
A good example of Mcluhan’s theory is the
political poll.
Today, we are bombarded by polls,
particularly during elections.
Pollsters have been able to
develop this tool such that the results can be misleading.
There are a number of important
factors including how the questions are presented, the organisation
doing the survey (and by extension its clients), and the honesty of
those being surveyed.
It is only obvious after an
election whether the polls were accurate or inaccurate.
At which point, some pollsters
provide a report of why or why not their polls were good or bad.
In my opinion, a responsible voter needs
to be objective.
This involves analysing the
information being presented by candidates and comparing it to
history, specifically what a political party has done in the past.
All parties have done good things
and bad things.
Deciding what is important to you
the voter will influence how you vote.
Your own preferences are also
important.
One of the biggest problems in my opinion
is that voters must decide whether they are voting for the party or
its representative.
Increasingly, elections are more
about the party leader rather than the local candidate.
This is discussed in a paper
written for the Library of Parliament:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/researchpublications/prb0204-e.htm
It begins with:
“Many
Canadians, including Members of Parliament, believe that central
roles of Members of Parliament have been eroded over the years, and
that their rehabilitation is the appropriate objective of
parliamentary reform.”
Every politician has to make choices.
These are often influenced by the
interests of the people in their riding, special interest groups,
their party and their own beliefs.
We often hear about “party whips”,
who ensure that MP's vote with their party.
Failure to support the party can
result in being removed from caucus or being expelled from the
party.
If MP's are normally required to vote
with their party, then it reduces their options and they can not
express freedom of choice.
To a cynical voter (me), this
reduces the MP to a mindless drone.
What is the point of having
hundreds of MP's if they all must vote as ordered by their party?
Why not just have
everyone vote for the party leader
much like Americans voting for their presidents?
Some may argue that MP's, particularly
ministers and parliamentary secretaries, are responsible for more
than just voting in the House of Commons.
This is true; however, this work
is influenced by party doctrine and the advice provided by the
public service (unelected officials).
Draft legislation can consist of hundreds
of pages including many diverse topics, particularly omnibus bills
(which more than just mix apples and oranges as they mix rocks,
vegetables, etc.).
Most of the writing is done by the
public service and many politicians limit their study to a synopsis
of the legislation or just accept their party's stance.
Being a responsible politician
involves a lot of reading and listening, unfortunately the trend in
just supporting the party results in a reduction in reading and
listening.
Thus politicians can be lazy, and
if you do not believe this, then study the performance of MP's in
terms of attendance, participation in committees and related
activities.
In 2014, the House of Commons was in
session for 127 days (or 69% of the work year).
The average voter worked 213 days.
Most employers do not recognise
any days “working at home” unless this can be monitored, and yet
MP's can claim 31% as “working at home” (if one accepts that the 86
days outside of Parliament were in fact work days).
Again the NVC is a good example of a
political failure.
VAC wrote the draft legislation,
and it was not subjected to the normal review process by political
committees.
Politicians were encouraged to
support the NVC or be branded as anti-Veteran during a period of
remembrance (celebration of VE Day in 2005).
The NVC was accepted with almost
no political scrutiny and
become law very, very quickly.
By comparison, the OVC evolved
over several years and the
Canadian government was determined to be more generous to Veterans
of WW2 than it was to Veterans of WW1.
One problem with many elections is that
voters can be as lazy as their politicians.
This is obvious by the number of
voters who do not vote.
Voter apathy has increased in my
life time and in the most recent elections it has been among the
highest in federal elections:
2008 -
58.8%
(lowest in history since 1867)
2011 -
61.4%
(third lowest since 1867)
FYI, a good turnout is 70% or higher.
Voter apathy has encouraged some
politicians to support compulsory voting, but this does not
guarantee increased voting.
Sometimes, it results in spoiled
votes or voting for the candidate least likely to win.
Having to rank candidates (donkey
voting) is used in Australia and other countries, but it does not
mean that voters are less apathetic.
In an effort to determine how to vote, I took the vote selector
survey on
https://votecompass.cbc.ca.
There are several other surveys,
which are available including
https://canada.isidewith.com.
The result surprised me because it
was not what I expected.
This made me re-evaluate my
options.
Normally, I consider what is important to
me based on what each party includes in its campaign platform and
the political issues that are most important to me, specifically
Veterans issues.
I rarely learn about the local
candidates because they seldom share many of their personal views
and because much of their propaganda repeats the propaganda
supported by their party leader.
It would be nice if politicians could
exercise more freedom of choice rather than being motivated by fear,
guilt or cultural influences (gender, economic, spiritual, racial,
ethical and other factors).
This is why I support the privacy of
voting in an election and also why I do not participate in political
polls.
My vote is nobody's business but
my own.
Being Canadian means that we have the freedom to chose when voting.
We may not be happy with the outcome of an election, but we
can take pride in being responsible voters by exercising our
democratic rights.
We do encourage
everyone to vote and more importantly be interested in voting
objectively.
As Veterans, we showed our willingness to
defend our way of life even if it meant sacrificing our own.
To then not participate in that
life seems wasteful somehow.
The future of our country is far too important to be left to
politicians.
Perry
Gray is a Regular Force veteran, serving as both Publisher and Chief
Editor of VVi. Perry has been with VVi for 12 years.
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