Author: Blank

We the Governed

The United States is nominally founded on the ideal that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The American federal government exists because the people of the United States chose to allow it to exist. The Constitution and its amendments recognize that persons have innate rights, that the American people collectively possess sovereignty, and that the government can only exercise the authorities that are granted to it by the people.

Canada never had a “We the People” moment. The Crown that governs Canada has existed since the Middle Ages. The Crown is an abstract legal entity that possesses all sovereign authority in Canada. 1867 was not a revolution, but simply a transfer of colonial management from London to Ottawa. To remove the right to execute authority from the Crown (while the Crown remains the source of the authority) a document signed by the monarch is required, either through the form of a Constitution or legislation. The Canadian Constitution removes almost all execution of authority from the Crown and gives it to the three branches of government. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms limits what those branches can do. Individual pieces of legislation remove certain powers from the Crown and invest them in ministers. Collectively, the Cabinet and the PM govern like near-monarchs because they exercise all the powers of the Crown. They are likewise limited by the law, the Constitution, and the rights that are recognized by the Charter. Note that these documents do not grant power to the government on behalf of the people: they limit the Crown’s power. Americans have collectively entered into a social contract to establish a government; Canadians have entered into a social contract with their government.  

Why does this matter? In my patriotic opinion, too often American ideas filter northwards without being adapted to Canada’s unique legal and governmental structure. Canadians and Americans do not have the same rights. The two nations have different national narratives concerning rights. The British Loyalists moved north to maintain their British rights when the American Patriots rebelled to assert their American rights. My fellow Canadians are more than welcome to use their voice and vote to stand up for what they consider to be their rights, but they should know what defined rights they currently have.

Canada needs a Unified National Capital Region

Canada should create a federally managed National Capital Region that removes Ottawa-Gatineau from their respective provinces and places them under federal jurisdiction.

The decision to spread the federal government across two poorly managed cities has created a situation where federal priorities, provincial politics, and municipal quagmires come into conflict five days a week. How many buildings that contain important functions to the country are in Gatineau? How many public service functions are disrupted by the regions inability to develop unified transit? What happens if the border is closed again? How many qualified candidates turn down a job, or move jobs, because of how disjointed transit systems are? In a worst-case scenario, what happens to those buildings and their contents if Quebec ever separates? Which police force has jurisdiction?

I doubt that Ottawa will ever develop a political class that is capable of governing the amalgamated Ottawa. Most Ottawa politicians are good people with honourable intentions who should never have been allowed to run a gamma-level city. The city of Ottawa appears determined to mismanage all things transit. Transit is technically a provincial responsibility, but the Ontario government (particularly the current premier) is focussed on the Golden Horseshoe.

Ottawa and Gatineau are bound together by the federal government’s decision to spread the capital across two cities. The daily commute of public servants is the most obvious manifestation of this union. Both cities appear to have been almost forgotten by their respective provincial governments. Creating the federal NCR would just be caving to the truth. Best of all, the NCC could be abolished.  

5 Reasons to Abolish the Crown

The Crown, and our current structure of government in which four levels of government manage the country, is at the heart of many of Canada’s most contentious issues. But when the Crown does get discussed, the discussion is about the more visible aspects of the Crown. like the role of the Governor-General, proroguing Parliament, the monarchy, etc. Other aspects usually escape the news and have to be found in academic literature, like the fact that the provincial governments have the same source of authority as the federal government. Or that no one really knows where First Nations governments fit within the federal-provincial-municipal structure.

A lot of people fixate on the fact that Canada is a democratic state with an unelected British Queen, but I don’t particularly care about that. The monarchy is just a symptom of the Crown-based system of government. Arguing that the monarchy is undemocratic is fair game, but the monarch has no real power left. They wave, sign papers, and spend the Sovereign Grant. Any recommendation to abolish the monarchy needs to include a discussion of what to do with the Crown.

I have read a thing or two about the Crown, and I do not recall anyone who recommended totally abolishing the Crown in Canada. Google “abolish the crown Canada” and you will find plenty of articles about monarchy, but none of them are explicitly about abolishing the Crown.

So here are my five reasons why Canada should seriously consider abolishing the Crown and find a new source of sovereign authority.

  1. The treaties with the First Nations are signed with the Crown. Eliminating the Crown would remove the shaky legal basis for Canada’s usage of its current territory. The Canadian government would have to come to the negotiating table with a fair and honest, or at least better, deal for the Indigenous peoples, and for once the First Nations would hold real bargaining power. Imagine what would happen to the economic situation of the First Nations if Canada had to pay market-rate rent.
  2. The Senate is composed of people who are undemocratically appointed by the Crown. Getting rid of the Crown opens the door to redesigning the federal government. The Senate can technically be abolished without abolishing the Crown, but they are both massive undertakings that require the consent of all ten provinces. We’ll get a 2 for 1 deal by lumping them together. The new federal government should be a fully elected, rep by pop, unicameral body.   
  3. The map of Canada should be redrawn to eliminate an entire level of government. Again, this could happen without eliminating the Crown, but it requires consensus from provincial governments who would lose their source of authority, so let’s make it a 3 for 1 deal. Divide up the country into about 30-40 provinces and get rid of municipal governments altogether. We’ll have two levels of government that have clearly defined areas of interest. The federal government will deal with matters of national interest, while powerful local governments that can tax, spend, and borrow will deal with local issues. Disagreements over resource development policy, transit, health care, etc. can never be eliminated, but at the moment there are simply too many levels of government and too many grey areas between federal and provincial jurisdiction. I’ll rant about that later.
  4. The office of the Governor General will be abolished. Is there any current need (forget historical reasons) for the governor-general? The PM will move into Rideau Hall and 24 Sussex will be turned into the Canadian Museum of Asbestos and Mould.
  5. I won’t have to listen to non-Canadians uninformed complaints about Canada’s monarchy.  

There are a few downsides to getting rid of the Crown.

  1. It could destroy Canada. The uneasy alliance of disparate provinces under Ottawa exists because creating a British-flavoured federal state in northern North America was preferable to the alternatives that existed between 1864-1949. Asking what type of government of Canadians prefer now opens the doors to the idea that Canada will never make sense. 1980 and 1995 would pale in comparison.  
  2. Canada loses important precedents. No Constitution can delineate powers in all possible eventualities, so we would have to restart the process of setting precedents.
  3. There is no guarantee of equitable treatment, no matter how we structure government. Ontario may still dominate the country, French Canadians may never feel like equal partners, pipelines may never get built, Indigenous rights may never be fully respected, and the territories will continue to melt.

Before any of this happens, the role of the First Nations in the decision-making process concerning the Crown needs to be settled. I could take a limited perspective and argue that, as nominally sovereign entities that have treaties with the Crown on a nation-to-nation basis, they are not involved in deciding whether that Crown should be abolished. Or I could argue that, as the Canadian citizens who have the strongest invested interest in the Canadian Crown, they must be seriously involved in the process. This is an issue for the 634 First Nations to decide themselves, which would be a massive undertaking.

Thomas Jefferson argued that prudence dictates that governments should not be disposed of for light and transient reasons. Abolishing the Crown because 41% of Canadians do not want King Charles III is a light and transient reason. Hopefully the country never hits a point where Canadians feel the need to violently overthrow the current system, but I wonder if a serious rethinking of our system could add value to “what to do” discussions.

Forget About Hooks

Since the dawn of mankind hooks have been used for fishing. They have relatively little use in academic writing. Too many intelligent students think that their essay needs a good “hook” at the start of the essay to catch their readers’ attention and draw them in. I don’t like that, I find it dishonest, and it devalues the entire essay. “My essay is so boring that I have to initially deceive the reader to make them read it.” Have some faith in yourself and write something that people want to read.

Most people decide whether to pick up a book by reading the title, which serves as the hook. The potential audience walks through a library looking at titles or sits at a computer scrolling through search results, so a grandiose first statement cannot serve as the hook if the title fails to pull them in. The first few paragraphs of the introduction have to include enough relevant information and ideas to get the potential reader to continue reading. In a way students have it easy, the TA is paid to read past the first sentence. But when a student has 5-7 pages, double-spaced they cannot afford to waste page space with unnecessary sentences. And believe it or not, what students learn in university has relevance in the real world.

Imagine that you are a tired student in a library trying to last-minute an essay about nuclear deterrence. You see a book entitled “Nuclear Deterrence in a Multipolar World” so you take it off the shelf and read the first sentence: “Since the dawn of mankind experts have disagreed on whether nuclear deterrence can achieve stable security in a multipolar system.” You then put the book back on the shelf because you think the author is full of it.

Now let’s reword that sentence to grab the reader’s attention. “In the post-Cold War multipolar system, in which multiple nuclear-armed states compete for regional influence without enforced allegiance to a superpower, deterrence models have to be updated to meet the needs of the 21st century.” That sentence could use a shortening, but it gives the basic elements of topic, time period, and general argument. If I want to read about the dawn of mankind I’ll go to Jared Diamond.

Most grabby, hook sentences add nothing and their removal only improves the essay. I’ll point out here that I am discussing academic style writing. If you want to work for the Daily Express then please ignore my little rant. If your high school teacher taught you how to write good hooks then be thankful that you received a good education, but understand that they have limited use beyond high school.

Purpose of this Blog

I created this site for three reasons, by which I mean four.

• I suspect that some of the things I learned during eight years of university and years of employment in research and analysis roles could benefit someone else. I want to write them down in a shareable format before I forget them.

• My brain may be turning to mush, months of covid side-effects and social isolation have not been good to it. I hope the process of writing will help re-form fading synaptic connections.

• Social media is slowly destroying our society. The primordial human brain is not capable of handling the forms of communication that have been created since the Internet became commonplace, no matter how much we claim that the prefrontal cortex is in control. Inconsiderate people who hide behind internet anonymity feel emboldened to say stuff that they would probably never say in person. People have always lived in their own bubble, but those bubbles are becoming far more specific. Some unfortunate souls go so far down rabbit holes that they lose touch with reality. Misinformation travels at the speed of physics. So to do my part to resist social disintegration I only publish stuff online under my own name, and I only write what I would say in person.

• Years ago my uncle insisted on buying me the domain ianweatherall.com to save it for when I want to develop a public persona. It took me a while, but I finally got around to using it. I am now findable.

Repetition and Synonyms

I dislike synonyms. If a sentence needs a synonym it should be reworded. For example, I tend to use the word “significant” far too often. It took me a while, but I eventually realized that my overuse of that word was because I used the same sentence structure over and over again. I also overused “because” for the same reason.

Example 1:

“The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia was a significant change Europe’s security situation. This is because it was the first active war on the European continent since WWII.”

This can be replaced with:

“Yugoslavia’s descent into violence started the first active war on the European continent since the Second World War, which worsened Europe’s already unstable post-Cold War security situation.”

I like the second sentence more. Instead of telling the reader that the war was significant I demonstrate it by giving the historical context.  Notable, noteworthy, outstanding, important, consequential, etc. would all fit in the sentence. Yet they add no value and simply cloak a poorly worded sentence with unneeded verbosity.

Example 2:

“Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s decision to use both fiscal and monetary policy to address Canada’s structural deficit was significant because it represented a significant shift away from the purely Keynesian economics that dominated Canadian thinking since WWII.”

This can be replaced with:

“Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ended decades of purely Keynesian economics in Canada by using a combination of fiscal and monetary policy to eliminate Canada’s structural deficit.”

An explanatory clause can be used without being introduced as such. The sentence would still sub-par if I had used “since” or “as” or “due to.”

Believe it or not, words have meanings, so the meaning of a sentence is changed by using a synonym. I have often read sentences by students where it is obvious that they used the internet to find a synonym and tossed it in without considering the specific definition of the replacement word.

So yea, if you think you overuse a word, you probably do. But consider rewording before going to the Internet for synonyms.

How to Avoid Semi-Colons

Some writers say that the proper way to use the semi-colon is to never use it. I think that semi-colons can be used, but only if it feels right. Which is to say, almost never. A sentence that needs a semi-colon it is probably too long. If I go ahead and use a semi-colon when I have any doubt about it, I have tacitly admitted to the inability to craft a better sentence.

 Smart people have big ideas that are unable to easily fit into one sentence, which is good. We need more big ideas. But if a smart person tries to write down their idea, they often think that they have to cram into one sentence. The human mind seems to think “1 idea=1 sentence.” The genius may have taken hours or weeks to bring that idea into fruition, and then they expect the reader to instantly grasp it in one sentence. That does not work, nor is it good writing.

I prefer to introduce the large idea at the start of the paragraph so the reader knows what I think. I then use the rest of the paragraph breaking down my thoughts. I prefer that method, I think it keeps the reader engaged. Many writers prefer to start with the build-up and then drop the idea at the end, which works fine if you have a dedicated reader.

My personal policy is to not have more than 1 semi-colon every 10 pages in the final version. Many writers like to fly through the first draft and thoroughly edit the work later. If you do this, please use as many semi-colons as you want. Then, when you edit, rewrite your long sentences into smaller, awesome sentences. And for the love of all things holy, please do not go out of your way to incorporate semi-colons.