PMO Faux Pas

The Prime Minister's Office's press release to annouce the appointment of Norman Kwong as the new Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta was entitled as follows:

Prime Minister appoints new Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta

Of course, as a vice-regal and representative of the Queen, Paul Martin does not make that appointment; the Governor-General does (see section 58 of the BNA Act). I guess Paul Martin is forgetting to hide that he unofficially exercises head of state powers.

Congratulations Spencer Keys!

Spencer Keys, a one time member of this House, has according to unofficial results been elected President of the UBC Alma Mater Society.

Spencer Keys is a true reformer in the vein of others on this blog. He dreams, as do we, of student associations that are credible and competent.

Good luck Spencer!

A Domestic Diva's Supreme Court Ruling

So, Martha Stewart may get out of prison early after all!

A recent US Supreme Court ruling may give judges greater latitude in imposing sentences. Here's a snippet from USA Today:

The Passing of Her Honour the Honourable Lois Hole

It is with great sadness that I announce to this House that Her Honour, the Honourable Lois Elsa Hole, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta has passed away. Mrs. Hole will be respected and remembered for her undying support of numerous public causes. In particular, this House will remember her support of post-secondary education and her time as Chancellor of the University of Alberta.

Comments to Her Excellency's family can be entered in condolence books on the Office's web site, the Legislature Building, or the Old Arts Buidling on the University of Alberta campus as well as at other locations.

As a fellow representative of the Queen, I ask that the House give a minute of silence in tribute to Lois Hole.

Down go the flags, down go the morals

While I'm still wasting time, I'd like to put in a good word for Danny Williams. I'm hardly the biggest fan of the provinces, but in my opinion, New Found Land these days has a lot more to complain about than the perpetually whining Alberta Aliens or the perpetually-outraged Québec nationalists, particularly re treatment at the hands of Paul Martin over oil and gas revenues.

From none of the large provinces would the federal government demand fiscal conditions for releasing the money, Alberta non plus. If it is true that the feds are demanding this, it means that they are treating Newfoundland like an untrustworthy, idiot stepchild. To do this, and yet defeat the purpose of the agreement by reneging on the equalization payments issue, is really pretty stinky. (The purpose of the agreement being that they need to raise the Newfoundland standard of living by injecting more revenues, through oil!)

So lowering the flag is kind of childish. Since we hardly ever pay attention to Newfoundland, we'd probably never have heard of it without the stunt. So it "lost them support" in the rest of the country. Yeah. This, from people who never otherwise supported or opposed it. They didn't know. And, full disclosure, until this stunt, neither did I.

Random House

I sez, "PR blah blah blah Steve blah constituency."

And Chris sez, "Steve blah blah irksome blah blah."

And I sez, "Oh, screw it all. I'm bored of talking about voting systems. Let's just pick 'em randomly and let 'em sort it out on their own!"

Tsunami Relief

There's really not much that I can add to the volumes of writing elsewhere about the disaster in south-east Asia. A year ago at this time, I was in Thailand and Singapore. Unlike Kim Burchett, whose blog I recommend for its ruminations on programming language design (e.g. Dataflow Languages, Put it in the syntax), we didn't visit the southwestern part of Thailand with its beaches.

What I can urge you to do, however, is to donate to a major charity. I chose Médecins Sans Frontières, but the federal government has a list of several reputable charities to which donations will be matched on a one-to-one basis by the feds through January 11th. My understanding is that these donations will also be considered part of the 2004 tax year.

Do your part.

Voting systems: mmm, crunchy.

The Honorable Member for Steve Smith congratulates me for my proposal without, apparently, appreciating the context in which I gave it. I intended it as a weak reference to Jonathan Swift's original Modest Proposal, which was of course something far more radical than mine. My point was to emphasize the arbitrary nature of representation schemes that are fundamentally dependent on defined constituencies. Each one carries an inherent political bias that overemphasizes the representation of some form of interest and underemphasizes the remainder. In the case of most schemes extant or proposed, this bias is geographical/propertarian (to use the term from Le Guin's novel The Disposessed). Proportional representation, on the other hand, lets the voter itself choose the criterion under which it is represented in that the voter directly selects political positions. I would hardly claim that it is perfect, but it solves what is to me a serious problem with constituency-based proposals.

The Member has a point in that he has never said that he supports FPTP. Fine. Then he clearly supports some other model where representation is based on some arbitrary factor other than voter policy preferences. These systems may alleviate some of the worst problems with FPTP, but I'm not convinced they work as well as PR. There is an article in today's Ottawa Citizen about problems with Alberta's old STV system, but it's a pay article (argh), and its purpose is to support traditional FPTP.

Canadian Blog Awards Nomination

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to bring to the attention of this august House that it has been nominated in the 2004 Canadian Blog Awards under the Best Group Blog and Best Blog Design categories. A round of applause is surely in order, Mr. Speaker, for the efforts of the POlloI, and I would so beg your indulgence.

A number of worthy publications are in the running, so to speak, and I should like, for a moment, to list a few of my favourites from that list: our periodic correspondents Ian and Kevin at Tilting at Windmills, one-degree-removed (via Sarah Eve Kelly) not-quite-acquaintance Colby Cosh, and of course, Liberal polemicist and bon vivant Warren Kinsella.