Thank you, committee members.
Thank you to everybody who is here. Thank you to the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, on whose territory we are meeting. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
In my opening statement, I would like to add context to a discussion that perhaps too often is overly technical. Therefore, I'll start off with only one particular observation of detail. The following six words are the first point I'd like to make that concern the public communication of this project. We should try to build consensus in our country by building on the familiarity with the current system. These six words are “first past the post will stay” as part of electoral reform, with possible components such as proportional representation and preferential ballots.
This should be the headline—those six words. Coming consciously from the foundations of Canadian democracy, it is what I believe will decide the outcome of this courageous project also by making it survive, hopefully past another election.
In Canada and beyond, there's a dangerous malaise of disenchantment and cynicism with political representation and political leadership. Electoral reform can become a constructive element of wider democratic restoration. Part of the Prime Minister's good fortune during the election was that he touched on the aspect of technocratic authoritarianism with regard to his father, and Michael Pitfield's Privy Council procedures.
Since those days of Trudeau senior, a shift from a marketplace of ideas toward a dictatorship of ideas has gone much further. Many people don't look at the corrupt and protectionist details of so-called globalized free trade, which is not about trade, and simply blame these democratic crippling flaws on politicians as a quasi-evil species.
Serving the brevity of the occasion, if it were possible to reduce this problem of cynicism, which is relevant to electoral reform, to one source mechanism, we might have to call it out as investor-state dispute settlement that serves up protectionism for big pharma and big oil cartels, etc.
With a triple punch, ISDS allows multinational monopolies to de facto legislate and cripple the reputation and integrity of parliaments, as well as ruining the honour of the crown. One, break the law. Two, raid the Treasury with arbitration panel penalties. Three, make off with or destroy livelihoods and poison land.
Recently, the Prime Minister, certainly as far as North American government positions are concerned, presented us with another novelty by stating that ISDS might have to be removed from CETA, the comprehensive trade agreement, and the European trade agreement, as it has become an absolute no-go with all remaining European Union member governments.