David: More and more, that's how people identify themselves, and of course, the government has put in place, as I said, a series of grants and a series of structures and programs which reinforce that tendency, because it's the old "divide and conquer" strategy. If they can get people dividing into groups, then they can play off one group against the other, and use them to get out to nominating meetings, to use them to work in elections. We had the latest example of the Immigration Minister having to step down, allegedly because she was, you know, bringing in strippers in exchange for work on the campaign, and also helping people if they gave free pizza. It's an interesting combination; you get a stripper and a free pizza. But these are the kinds-these are absurd examples, but this is the sort of thing that we're talking about. If you have a society in which the individual is dominant, the individual is free and powerful, this is a threat to government. This is a threat to politicians, so, much better that you weaken the individual and strengthen the sense of groups.
Steve: I think, too, it's in a country where there are people of so many different ethnic origins. If you have a society where you only identify with people who are of the same origin, and if your neighbor on the right or on the left or across the street aren't of the same origin, then he is not part of your community. Then obviously, you have a community that is starting to become dysfunctional. Where the old idea of neighbors helping each other, you know, because they're neighbors, because they belong to the same geographical community, then is weakened. In that regard, I thought it was kind of interesting-I don't know if you read the National Post this morning. They mentioned the fact that Norman Kwong is going to be appointed the new Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, and the Calgary Herald said that this is a wonderful thing, and it's an indication of how far we've come in terms of being a nonracial society. But we won't have gotten all the way there until people stop referring to people's ethnic origins in how we identify Canadians. I think this is a point, that it is time-I think it can be argued that fifty years ago, people of sort of non-founding nation, non-British and French origin, were-either felt themselves or were held to be somehow less Canadian. That is no longer the case. So I think it's sort of very important for Canada that we move beyond this sort of-it's one thing to recognize the quality of people of all kinds of different origins, but it's another thing to actually celebrate or invest the taxpayers' money into sort of solidifying these differences. David: Well, you know, you speak of Norman Kwong, and people of a certain generation-my age as older-will remember him as being a fantastic football player, very briefly with Calgary, and then with the Edmonton Eskimos. So, you know, among a certain generation his appointment could be seen as divisive. That is to say, if you identify yourself as a Calgary Stampeder fan, as opposed to an Albertan. You know, but just on a British Columbia note, I'd like to remind you that the first Chinese-Canadian Lieutenant Governor was here in B.C.-The Honorable David Lam, an absolutely marvelous human being, who has gone out of his way in many ways to try and break down the divide. Steve, you're absolutely right. Once we stop talking about people because they're appointed on the basis of their demographic characteristics, then we have achieved what we're trying to do, but we're a long way from that. We're talking about communities, neighbors. We've got situations now where we have people who are born in Canada, but when they get to first-year elementary school, they still can't speak English, because they're living in ghettos, linguistic ghettos. The government has encouraged that, and this is an absolute travesty. As far as ritual democracy goes, people like that-we're giving people citizenship after three years, even though they really may not know-they may know enough to get through an exam, briefly, but like most people who cram for exams, they quickly forget it. And if you don't partipate in the process, either because you haven't got the linguistic skills, or for other reasons, it's very easy for government to manipulate you. As I'm fond of quoting Edward R. Murrow, "If you have a nation of sheep, it begets a government of wolves." That's where we're at. Steve: It all sounds pretty gloomy. Now, do you think that there are any bright signs on the horizon? You mentioned this initiative here in B.C., where do you think that's going to lead? What do you see for the future?
David: Well, mankind, even though we all procrastinate, we tend to let things go until the eleventh hour no matter what the subject, we've historically demonstrated an incredible capacity to fix things-once people are persuaded that something needs to be fixed. I'm persuaded that over the course of the last five or six years, many of the opinion elites in this country, in the media and elsewhere, are starting to pay attention and starting to say, "Yeah, this is wrong, this needs to be fixed." So we're seeing some electoral reform initiatives started again here in British Columbia. Ontario is now going to appoint a citizen's assembly, based on our model, I understand. Other provinces are looking at the same thing. Even the Prime Minister is talking about the democratic deficit. Now, he's just doing that, of course, for partisan political purposes because his pollsters have told him that people are worried about it. He doesn't mean a damn thing about it, but the fact is that he's talking about because the polls say people care, and when people start to care about something, then you'll see change. The classic example: in the last federal election, an ethnic group took away the Conservative Party nomination from a long-sitting and very, very popular MP in Surrey, and this man was persuaded to seek reelection as an Independent against the partisan entities, including his own party, and he won overwhelmingly. He got forty-four percent of the vote. The next candidate was the Liberal, and he got only, I think it was, twenty-four percent-or, sorry, the NDP got twenty-four percent, the Liberal got sixteen. The chap that effectively stole the Conservative nomination only got twelve. If he'd gotten two percent less, he wouldn't have gotten his deposit back, nor any reimbursement from the Crown for his election expenses. That was a wonderful triumph of democracy, in large part because of how popular this individual was. But it shows that people are paying attention, so I'm actually very optimistic about the future for democracy in Canada. Steve: Okay, well, maybe we will end it on that positive note, and I thank you very much for this brief survey of some of the ills of democracy, and perhaps some of the bright signs that we have that things might improve. Thank you very much.
David: Thank you for inviting me.
