govt election campaign

Grade nine humanities Election time. www.nocalblogs.com This unit of work will involve you working in groups of four or five students from your class to develop a political party and then use that party to campaign in an election to be held within the school. You will be competing against about eight other political parties across three of the GATE humanities classes. Skills that will need to be used. Cooperation – working together in a manner appropriate to the circumstance Evaluation – making an informed judgment about the worth of something Synthesis – putting more than one element together with something else to come up with a new product Application – assessing how one thing could be used in a different context Speech and debate – clarity, pace, confidence. Critical thinking – being able to detect the need for a change in current thinking Creative thinking – “what if” type thinking Leadership – moving the group along in manner appropriate to the context Persuasion – being able to affect or influence the thought that others have Analysis – taking all the bits, mixing them up and coming up with a new idea Organisation – knowing what is coming and when Media Literacy – using and understanding all the information coming your way Knowledge – two central elements The aim is for you to develop a complete understanding of the political processes and structures that are used in Canada, and issues both from the past and those that face us today (or tomorrow). Make sure you have an understanding of what is meant by process and structure. What does a political party have to do to be successful? The things that you will need to complete, in terms of building your political party, are as follows: 1. A complete identity (name, slogan, symbol structure etc). Think about what will help students remember who you are and what you represent. 2. An exhaustive election manifesto (campaign promises – how many, what, when implemented, priorities). Think about the fact that all your bases must be covered. You have to have an answer for everything 3. A policy booklet (what you will do, in detail, if elected). Think about how to ensure that everything you say is consistent and thorough 4. A political, social and economic philosophy (what your party believes). This is what will help students attach an emotion to the factual stuff. Think about why we all love President Obama. 5. A campaign strategy. (tactics). You need to plan how you plan to capture votes – it won’t just happen. All tactics can be considered, but all must be vetted by your teacher. Hypothesize on how effective they will be before initiating them. 6. Preparing for debates, town halls and interviews (speeches, questions and answers). Try to anticipate what other groups will say, and have arguments ready to demolish and destroy. Try to think about inconsistencies, hypocrisies and inaccuracies that may arise. 7. Advertising. Pamphlets. Corridor speeches. Posters. Student gathering area televisions. Information in the bulletin. All are possibilities. 8. Tracking current events. You have to watch what is going on. What if something happens that affects your policy. You have to be current to be cool. 9. A thorough critique of an existing law. Prove that you have a solid understanding of real issues rather than just being good at a school project. Pick something that relates to what students find to be relevant. What issues do you have to research? In each box you will find a theme, essential questions and examples for possible use. Economics/Trade • To what extent is NAFTA working? • To what extent are our economic policies with other nations working? • To what extent should the government be involved in the economic system? - government debt and deficit spending - recession - regional inequities - US/Canada trade (softwood lumber, auto industry, etc) - taxation/GST Collective Rights • To what extent has Canada affirmed collective rights? - First Nations and Métis issues and concerns (land claims, poverty, unemployment, racism, etc) - Rights of minorities - Rights of official language groups - multiculturalism - bilingualism Justice • To what extent is the justice system fair and equitable for youth? • How do Canada’s justice system and the Youth Criminal Justice Act attempt to treat young offenders fairly and equitably? • What role do Canadian citizens and organizations play in the fairness and equity of Canada’s justice system for youth? Political System • To what extent should the Senate be reformed? • To what extent should our system of government be reformed? - how we elect our federal government - proportionate representation - mandatory voting - power of the executive and legislative branches of government - governor-general/Queen/head of state - role of the federal government Immigration • To what extent do Canada’s immigration laws and policies respond to immigration issues? - criteria for accepting immigrants and refugees - how individual and collective rights influence immigration laws and policies Regionalism • To what extent do transfer payments work? - regional inequities and concerns - federal/provincial relationships Foreign Policy • To what extent does Canada have a role in international affairs? - what should Canada’s international role be? - relationship with the US - Afghanistan - alliances and responsibilities: NATO, NORAD Sovereignty and Identity • To what extent is sovereignty an issue in Canada? - security - Arctic sovereignty - Canadian identity/culture Environment • To what extent should Canada go green? - environmental vs economic issues (tar sands, etc) - green tax In taking a position on these things, you need to think careful about the nature of the electorate. The electorate will be the other students in the GATE community. That represents a constituency of about 200 very insightful and critical people. You will have to get out to meet, persuade and convince them. You need to balance detail, clarity, truth, propaganda, lies and attractiveness. Class time and lunch time can be used. All classroom visits must be approved by your teacher. As well There is a lot of research here. For some advice on the steps to follow in effective research, read pages 175 and 176 of your textbook. Mind maps can also be helpful. How you organize your ideas will be as important has the ideas that you have. There will be some movies that we plan to watch during the course of this unit. They will all deal with the central themes of justice, power and politics/government. They will serve to provoke thought about some of the issues that you have to research. They will include: Bugs Life – challenging authority Gandhi – challenging authority Twelve Angry Men – justice and speech Primary Colours. – acquiring power Reflective questions 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Why did your party do as well/badly as it did? Why did the winning party appeal to so many? Why did the losing party appeal to so few? Why did you vote for who you voted for? What skills did you learn during this project? 6. What knowledge did you learn during this project? A possible schedule. Phase 1. Research the 23 items. Many can be found in your textbooks, but it would be worth trying to gain and advantage over the other parties by coming up with other more insightful ideas from your own sources. Any facts or statistics must be referenced if you plan to use them as part of your campaign. Notes and point form are acceptable. Your group will have to submit them (in electronic form) for a completion mark. Phase 2. Working with the research. You need to become familiar with the knowledge and ideas that you have amassed. Are there connections, causes, effects, priorities, rights and wrongs or inconsistencies? You might want to think about organizing your research graphically, or in the form of a chart. You will also need to submit evidence that you have completed this phase. Phase 3. Building your party. The first step will be to identify general principles. Think about your core values and beliefs about the way Canada should be governed. How can they be put into words? Think about what images and symbols best reflect those beliefs. This package of articles is designed to provoke you into thought on one or two of the themes you are asked to cover. United States – Canada softwood lumber dispute From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The United States – Canada softwood lumber dispute is one of the most significant and enduring trade disputes in modern history. The dispute has had its biggest effect on British Columbia.The heart of the dispute is the claim that the Canadian lumber industry is unfairly subsidized by the federal and provincial governments. Specifically, most timber in Canada is owned by provincial governments. The price charged to harvest the timber (the "stumpage fee") is set administratively rather than through a competitive auction, as is often the practice in the United States. The United States claims that the provision of government timber at below market prices constitutes an unfair subsidy. Under U.S. trade remedy laws, foreign goods benefiting from subsidies can be subject to a counterveiling duty to offset the subsidy and bring the price of the product back up to market rates. The Canadian government and lumber industry dispute the assertion that Canadian timber is subsidized on a variety of bases, including that the timber is provided to so many industries that it cannot be considered sufficiently specific to be a subsidy under U.S. law. Under U.S. trade remedy law, a subsidy to be counterveilable must be specific to a particular industry. This requirement precludes imposition of countervailing duties on government programs, such as roads, that are meant to benefit a broad array of interests. Since 1982, there have been four major iterations of the dispute. In April 2006, The United States and Canada announced that they had reached a tentative settlement to end the current dispute. Under the preliminary terms, the United States would lift duties provided lumber prices continue to stay above a certain range. Below the specified range, a mixed export tax/quota regime would be implemented on imports of Canadian lumber. As a part of the deal, more than $5 billion in duty deposits collected would be returned. Let the people decide Janet Albrechtsen, National Post Published: Thursday, January 15, 2009 Here I am in Canada again, receiving a few free lessons about your charter of rights. Almost every time I am in this otherwise great country, your Charter of Rights and Freedoms is making headlines for the wrong reasons. Reasons that Australians like me will be digesting as the push for an Australian charter of rights unfolds this year. This time it's the story of Winston Blackmore, who has had 26 wives and more than 106 children. Blackmore was arrested last Wednesday and charged with breaching B. C.'s criminal prohibition on polygamy. Winston says his fundamentalist Mormon beliefs on polygamy are protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which overrides B. C.'s Criminal Code. Lesson No. 1: The claim by charter advocates that human rights are universal and absolute is rubbish. No right is absolute. The tricky part is working out the qualifications applicable to broadly phrased pieties. And given that is the case, who gets to fill in the blanks? In Canada, your approach has unelected judges determining the real content of the rights of the citizenry. And they have tended to fill in the blanks in a way that expands Charter rights at the expense of legislative prescriptions. Indeed, for more than twenty years, no prosecutor in Canada has been game to press polygamy charges against the wife-collecting Mormons of Bountiful. The orthodox legal opinion was that the polygamy provisions of the criminal code clearly fell afoul of the Charter right to freedom of religion. B. C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal says polygamy is "intolerable ... I don't think right-thinking Canadians want the situation to persist." But, "if that section [of the criminal code] is invalid, we should let some court decide that." At least he's honest about who's in charge. Despite the hype about a charter being the sign of a progressive society, the opposite is true. Giving political power to a small bunch of judicial aristocrats is a backward step for a modern democracy. The fundamental flaw behind a judicially enforced charter of rights is that reasonable people can and do disagree about the limits of human rights. Polygamy is a classic example. Assuming the relationships involved are entered voluntarily by consenting adults and there is no hint of abuse, why should these families be prosecuted when those engaged in other relationships once considered unconventional are not? Now we get to Charter Lesson No. 2: Canada teaches us not to be duped by the fraudulent claims that are made in both Australia and Canada that a Charter of Rights preserves parliamentary sovereignty. The Canadian "notwithstanding clause" was meant to allow Parliament to specifically overrule Charter rights. This provision was the clincher that broke the deadlock over enacting the Charter more than two decades ago. It was meant to mollify the skeptics who argued too much power would be vested in judges. It was a ruse. The notwithstanding clause has never been used by the federal governmen to protect the democratic right of Canadians to determine the limits of charter rights. At the highest level Politicians have been too timid to enact a law that expressly limits so-called human rights in the Charter. And some have even called for the abolition of this protection of parliamentary sovereignty Australian Charter advocates are copying this wily ploy. They say a plain vanilla statutory charter which simply permits courts to make declarations of incompatibility won't threaten parliamentary sovereignty. But they know it takes a brave politician to snub something defined as a "charter right." Lesson No. 3 from Canada is that judges are unsuited by temperament and training, and lack the resources and skills to make responsible decisions about complex social and political issues. For instance, if Canadian judges decide in favour of polygamy in the Bountiful case, the far-reaching effects will not have been debated by the judges in the same way that politicians' actions are publicly blow-torched. Legalizing polygamy in the Bountiful case will immediately jeopardize Canadian immigration policy which prohibits polygamous Muslims bringing multiple wives into Canada. The nature of marriage and society's regulation of human relationships are complex and controversial. Decisions on them should be made by elected politicians in the furnace of the political process. Not by a small group of unelected judges whose hubris is usually matched only by their ignorance of anything not taught at law school. - Janet Albrechtsen is a weekly columnist for The Australian. A similar version of this article appeared therein. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Power and prestige of MPs on the wane BY RICHARD FOOT, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE - JANUARY 13, 2009 It is impossible to enter the House of Commons and not be awed by its architectural majesty. The sparkling stained glass, the gilded gothic stonework, the linen ceiling woven with Canadian heraldry all were designed to reflect the power and supremacy of the country's preeminent institution. Those who sit in the House are vested with authority and influence, by virtue of the citizens who elect them--or so the theory goes. In 1969, Pierre Trudeau made a mockery of all that, famously calling backbench MPs "nobodies" just 45 metres from Parliament Hill. Today, many observers believe MPs are "nobodies" not only out-side Parliament, but inside it too, a fate illustrated last month when Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued the House of Commons in the midst of a political crisis, suspending the power of its members to exercise their judgment in a confidence vote. "Members of Parliament used to count for something," says Donald Savoie, a political scientist and former federal bureaucrat who has written a series of ground-breaking books on the withering of Parliament. He says that when MPs become irrelevant--when the names on voters' ballots cease to mean anything-- is it any wonder Canadians regard politics with cynicism and despair? "These days, MPs are deeply, deeply searching for their role. There's a real sense of frustration there," Savoie says. "The problem is that our political institutions don't matter anymore. And when you lose sight of your institutions --when all that matters in politics is gaining and keeping power at all costs--this is what you end up with." The most serious blow to MPs' power came in 1968, when MPs themselves, under pressure from the Trudeau government, gave up their most vital function, the right to approve government spending. That power dated back almost 1,000 years to the signing of the Magna Carta, which required the king to give control of the public purse to his parliament. Canadian MPs once had the power to hold up government spending until the budget estimates of each department had been properly examined and explained. In 1968, in return for a longer question period and more research funds for opposition offices, MPs agreed to time limits on the process. If time ran out, billions of dollars in spending estimates would automatically be passed, whether or not they'd been approved. Former press gallery reporter Dave McIntosh called this a "devastating sellout" in his 1987 memoir, Ottawa Unbuttoned. "If Parliament had given up everything else... but kept control of the public purse, it would still be the country's supreme lawmaker," he said. "Now it is simply another stage in the bureaucratic process of spending your money." Conservative Senator Hugh Segal says the situation has "emasculated the core role of Parliament." If public money is wasted or used for purposes never approved, or if federal spending programs aren't working efficiently, MPs may not know about it until the auditor general tells them, at which point the fiscal year is over and the money has already been spent. Segal wants to force all government departments and agencies to publish quarterly financial reports, which would let MPs scrutinize spending as it happens. He has brought forward legislation that he hopes the Harper government will introduce before the spring. "Parliament has not had a meaningful impact on how the government is going to be spending money since the early 1970s,"he says. "There's no forum any more for MPs to discuss the future priorities of the country." Because they lack the power to ask substantive questions on government spending, MPs resort to gaining recognition in the carnival of question period, says Segal, crafting cheap shots designed not to solicit answers or to inform, but to vault themselves onto television with a sound bite. Perhaps an MP's most effective tool was being able to explain the mood of their constituents to the government, or your party. But even that role has now been under-mined by public opinion polls. Although the power of MPs is waning, they remain an important consideration for voters. A survey of the 2000 federal election by the Canadian Election Study --a group of political scientists from four universities -- found that while a majority of Canadians based their votes on party or leader preferences, 44 per cent, nearly half the electorate, was still influenced by local candidate choices, and five per cent voted solely for a local candidate. Liberal MP Wayne Easter, a 16-year veteran of the House who sat in the Jean Chretien cabinet and now is in the opposition benches, says Parliament isn't all washed up. Most MPs work long hours, he says, carrying out important tasks for individual constituents and vital work for the country--but the public rarely hears about such things because they're ignored by the media, particularly when there is no partisan conflict. Still, Easter admits, "MPs don't have as much power as they used to . . . certainly not on the government side anyway. It was bad enough during our government, but it's gotten worse." He says Parliament's mood has darkened, along with its stature. "It's not a fun place anymore. It's not collegial like it used to be. It's become bitter, vindictive and vicious, right through the whole system." In a speech last fall at Queen's University, former prime minister John Turner said Canada will struggle to attract good, new people into politics if the power and prestige of the House --the country's highest institution-- continues to erode. "Democracy doesn't happen by accident," he said. "In this country, we are taking it for granted. We're not paying attention. We're not attracting the younger generations into public life. "One of the reasons is that the role of the member of Parliament isn't what it used to be." © Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sovereignty In his final days in power, President George W. Bush asserted U. S. military "sea power" over the oil-rich Arctic on Monday, in another forceful rebuttal of Canada's claims of sovereignty over the Northwest Passage. The White House formally released the text of a sweeping new directive on the Arctic, two years in the making, just eight days before Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the 44th U. S. president and on the same day as Bush held his final White House news conference as president. Key elements of Bush's policy challenge the ambitious Arctic sovereignty agenda put forth by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that includes bolstering Canada's military presence and fostering economic and social development. The Bush directive reiterates the Northwest Passage is an international waterway--a rebuttal of Canada's claim of sovereignty over what is emerging as a major global shipping route because of the shrinking polar ice cap --and it highlights the boundary dispute in the resource-rich Beaufort Sea. "I think Canada has gotten a real wake-up call with this," said University of Calgary political scientist Rob Huebert, one of the country's leading experts on Arctic issues. He said he couldn't recall the U. S. ever articulating its disagreements with Canada "in such black and white terms.There was no effort here to sugar-coat anything." Huebert noted the bold assertion of U. S. interests in the Arctic came only weeks after a similar statement by European officials also posed challenges to Canada's polar strategy. The Arctic's untapped energy potential has sparked a 21st-century scramble in the Far North that has included a Russian submarine planting a flag on the North Pole seabed and Canada's expressions of its own Arctic aspirations under Harper, which include a greater military land and sea presence. Individual rights Man sues after "POLICE" t-shirt arrest By Nicholas J.C. Pistor ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Tuesday, Dec. 30 2008 A Belleville Police officer arrested a St. Charles man for wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word "POLICE." Now, Adam C. Weinstein, of St. Charles, has sued the department for what he calls a violation of his constitutional rights. According to police documents, Weinstein was arrested in 2006 outside a bar in Belleville for "impersonating officers." He was wearing a black t-shirt with the word police striped across the front and back under a sweater. The t-shirt became exposed when he removed the sweater because he was hot. "Those t-shirts are a sign of solidarity," said Howard A. Shalowitz, an attorney representing Weinstein. "How many people wear NYPD caps? Are they impersonating police?" According to the lawsuit, a waitress told Weinstein that some police officers wanted to speak with him outside the bar. Weinstein went outside, he said, and was greeted by Belleville Police Officer Jeff Vernatti. Vernatti, Weinstein alleges, asked him for his police credentials. Weinstein says he told the officer he didn’t have any credentials because he wasn’t a police officer. That’s when, according to Weinstein, the police officer started screaming curse words and became physically and verbally abusive. Weinstein says he was cuffed and later released by the officer, but made to take the t-shirt off while standing in the cold. Weinstein was ticketed for impersonating a police officer, but it was later dismissed. The ticket only alleges Weinstein wore the t-shirt. "I’m afraid to go to Belleville," Weinstein said in an interview. According to the lawsuit, Weinstein is a firefighter. Weinstein said he bought two of the shirts--one for him, one for his wife--at Leon’s Uniform Company in St. Louis while buying supplies for firefighting. The lawsuit was filed last week in St. Clair County. Vernatti and the city of Belleville are named as defendants. In 2005, Vernatti and the city of Belleville were sued for allegedly tasering a man. That case was later settled before going to trial. Belleville Mayor Mark W. Eckert declined to comment through an aide. A spokesperson for the Belleville Police also declined to comment. Vernatti couldn’t be reached for comment. Steven Beckett, professor and director of trial advocacy at the University of Illinois’ law school, said the arrest may be a violation of Weinstein’s First Amendment rights. "A t-shirt alone isn’t enough to arrest someone," Beckett said. "There must be some overt act."