Well, that's coming along.
Following through on removing anti-democratic ISDS provisions from agreements could evolve into a mark of wisdom for the Canadian government, as it would clarify that electoral reform is not meant to be a fig leaf for democratic health.
I might add that I certainly hope that our member of Parliament, Mr. Bagnell, will take up the Prime Minister's inspiration. He could have beat him to the punch anyway, since he was well informed over the years on what ISDS is all about.
We need to reverse a dictatorship of ideas back to a marketplace of ideas that can be identified. In the current fashion of political elites who ignore the language, any language, of our country, and who instead favour artificial, deceptive language solutions such as globalization, which in reality is not internationalism but merely European provincialism of Chicago economics, it will continue to backfire. ISDS may attack again and attempt to penalize, with extortion, electoral reform legislation itself.
Carbon pricing is the enabling twin of social licence to do harm to economic and ecological survival by pushing back renewable, sustainable economies with oil and gas subsidies. One result is that protectionism and trade restrictions against renewable investments may continue, such as the 2011 NAFTA chapter 11 attack on domestic procurement in Ontario energy development. Racialized finance colonialism against the G77 countries, who pursue renewable leap-frogging and oppose the shackling to oil imports by carbon pricing in conjunction with other structural adjustment penalties in the Paris agreement, could have been avoided.
Canada is the country of Lester Pearson's imaginative diplomacy, of Harold Innis, and of Marshall McLuhan, who inspired high-tech as well as language awareness. Canada can provide substantive climate leadership as a historic pioneer of the climate crisis awareness.
How is it possible that the Treaty No. 3 first nations' final note to Energy East on their lands does not even reach the radar screen of the political pipeline coalition if not a lack of fair representation? Here is a very important aspect as to why first past the post needs to be augmented with such items as preferential ballots and proportional representation.
I think the details of those systems go beyond the scope of a 10-minute presentation, but I do come from some substance here. In the first half of my life, I grew up in West Germany, which actually has a first past the post mixed representation system. I know it in substantial ways. A lot of the flaws that are pointed out can of course easily be avoided by percentage thresholds. We don't want a fragmented House of Commons with 57 parties, like in the Weimar Republic. These things are easily taken care of.
After introducing the vote for women, first nations, non-Caucasians, and non-landowners, electoral reform once again is just catching up a bit further with old aspirations of fair representation. With old aspirations, it is important to invoke the spirit of the foundations of our country, which go back to the great ministry of our first prime minister, Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and his deputy, Robert Baldwin, who between 1848 and 1851 basically threw out the British landowner system and massively widened the voter base in Canada. This was perhaps the first really significant electoral reform in Canada.
Thanks again.