Friday, May 9, 2025
Matters of Interest
Bloc Québécois Defies Ill-Advised Decision to Invite Charles III to Give Throne Speech
• Longest Ballot Project for Battle River--Crowfoot
Letters to the Editor
• What Did Carney Reveal by Telling Trump
"Canada Is Not for
Sale?"
• Doing Justice to Historical Memory
Matters of Interest
Bloc Québécois Defies Ill-Advised Decision to Invite Charles III to Give Throne Speech
On May 27, members of Parliament will hear this from the Usher of the Black Rod:
"Mr. (Madam) Speaker, The King commands this Honourable House to attend His Majesty immediately in the chamber of the Honourable the Senate."
Bloc
Québécois MPs have informed that they will refuse to
follow this command and will not attend the King of England's Speech
from the Throne.
They also announced their intention to introduce in the House a bill ending the obligation for Members of Parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the King.
The question is: will they agree to swear the oath to take their seats, or will they do as the Parti Québécois members did in the Quebec National Assembly, meaning: resist, fight and win?
The bourgeoisie, thanks to the protection afforded by the King's democracy and its institutions, can usurp the decision-making power of the state. They believe that the Members of Parliament thus elected are not accountable to their own people and that Canada is not accountable to the peoples of the world. But this is not what the people of this country want.
The distressing spectacle offered by the forthcoming Speech from the Throne (which sets out the reasons why the next parliament is being convened) will show just how excluded, marginalized and persona non grata the body politic is in the face of the King's elected representatives.
A good first step in affirming Canada's sovereignty would be to abolish the oath of allegiance MPs swear to the King. Far from being proof of their honour, it is humiliating and an act of Canada's humiliation as well.
All institutions of the monarchy should be abolished. The one million dollars this two-day visit of Charles III and his wife is predicted to cost, which we are to presume includes the cost of ironing the King's shoe laces, along with the $70 plus million spent annually on the vice-regal houses and their retinues in Canada should be donated to the food banks and homeless shelters to help cover their expenses in the coming year.
The King's personal fortune should be further charged for reparations for the cruel treatment on the basis of which his fortune was amassed since the British declared the Doctrine of Discovery whereby they claimed ownership of lands "discovered" in the name of the Queen or King, regardless of the existing Indigenous populations and their sovereignty, and all the cruel deeds which resulted from this.
So too the King should pay reparations for the acts of enslavement in Canada and the Caribbean, the deportation of the Acadians and the plunder of Canada's resources on which his and his family's extensive fortune were built.
It is high time Canada became a Republic with a constitution written by the people that vests sovereignty in the people, not the English monarch.
Longest Ballot Project for Battle River--Crowfoot
Nominating
candidates for the Longest Ballot in the September 16, 2024 by-election
in the LaSalle–Émard–Verdun riding in Montreal
The Longest Ballot Committee has announced that if at least 200 people sign up before May 12, the committee will try to "make a long ballot happen" in the Battle River--Crowfoot by-election should Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre run in that riding whenever it is called.
The
Longest Ballot Project gives a voice to all those Canadians who want to
see the anti-democratic electoral process reformed to eliminate the
first-past-the-post method of counting ballots and and enable Canadians to enact their own electoral act.
"It would benefit voters if politicians recused themselves and passed decisions about election rules to a permanent, independent and non-partisan body such as a citizens' assembly," the Longest Ballot Committee wrote in an email.
The Longest Ballot Committee contributed 85 of the 92 names on the ballot in Poilievre's Carleton riding, making the ballot almost a metre long. The Committee reports that Elections Canada had to begin counting the advance poll votes in Carleton six hours before the polls closed on April 28, and the full count was not complete until the day after the election.
Poilievre lost his seat in the Carleton riding in the 45th general election which he had held for 21 years. Poilievre was neck and neck with Liberal Bruce Fanjoy but after the advance ballots were fully counted, he lost to Fanjoy by a substantial 4,315 votes. According to official rules related to MP's pensions and severance pay, an MP who loses his seat and is not old enough to start receiving a pension (55 years of age for reduced pension or 65 years for a full pension after six years as an MP) is entitled to severance pay equivalent to half a year's salary. In the case of Poilievre, this means he will receive $154,850 at tax-payers' expense this year.
MP Damien Kurek, who was re-elected for the Conservative Party in Battle River--Crowfoot for the third time, said he would step down "temporarily" -- understood to mean for this election cycle -- so that Poilievre can run there in his place.
Prime Minister Carney has already said he will call the by-election quickly to allow the Conservative leader the chance to head the official Opposition in the House of Commons.
Kurek can resign once parliament is convened. He must wait for 30 days after the Chief Electoral Officer publishes the official results in the Canada Gazette. The waiting period relates to the period set out in the Canada Elections Act for any elector in a riding or any candidate to file an application to contest the election results. In both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, it was a month before the results were published in the Gazette.
MPs must resign officially by notification to the Speaker from their seat in the Commons.
Assuming a similar period for official publication of the results (May 28), Kurek may not be able to resign until June 28. Then, after he resigns, the by-election can be called after 11 days.
Given that official notification must be given to the Speaker, it is not clear how this takes place when Parliament is not in session as is likely to be the case on or about June 28.
Once the by-election is called the campaign will be 36 to 50 days long, depending on what the Prime Minister decides -- in the case of Poilievre probably a 36-day long campaign. It is usual practice for the other cartel parties in the House to virtually concede the riding to a party leader seeking a seat in the House by not running serious campaigns. One suspects that if it were up to them they would acclaim Poilievre the MP for Battle River--Crowfoot, but since it will not be known if anyone else wants to run against him until the close of nominations, this might arouse too many cries of lack of respect for the democratic process.
Battle River--Crowfoot is considered a safe Conservative Riding with
Kurek handily winning his seat with 82 per cent of votes cast in the
45th general election. Poilievre is said to have visited the riding
after which he said: "People in these communities feed and power our
country. It will be an honour to work for their support to return to
Parliament, hold the government to account and champion common sense
values for Canada."
Despite all of this, nothing is yet decided
as in-fighting is reported within the Conservative ranks over the fact
that the Conservative Party did not form the government despite the
commanding lead it had prior to the election and arrival of Carney on
the scene as leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister. The fact
that Poilievre lost his own seat is also not so easy to dismiss some
Conservatives are reported as saying.
From the perspective of
the Longest Ballot Project all of it nonetheless underscores the need
to change the electoral process which brings political parties, not
Canadians, to power.
To reach the Longest Ballot Committee to volunteer to be a candidate on the Longest Ballot in Battle River--Crowfoot, send your name, address and email to longestballot@gmail.com.
Letters to the Editor
What Did Carney Reveal by Telling Trump
"Canada Is Not for
Sale?"
During Prime Minister Carney's meeting with President Donald Trump on May 6, he told Trump "Canada is not for sale."
According to Carney, "having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it's not for sale. It won't be for sale, ever."
Leaving
aside that the campaign was 36 days long and did not last "several
months," the first thing to point out here is that there is no record
of Donald Trump ever offering to "buy" Canada. He has repeated over and
over that Canada should become the 51st state, saying that all that has
to be
done is to erase what he calls the imaginary line separating the two
countries.
In an interview on the weekend, in answer to a reporter's question, Trump said that he didn't see the necessity to invade Canada. The point of course is his use of economic coercion not agreement to achieve the integration of Canada into the United States none of which is discussed seriously by Carney or any of the premiers and party leaders who all support the program of letting narrow private interests plunder Canada's resources required by the U.S. war machine.
The second question which comes to mind is who is Carney referring to when he says he spoke with the "owners of Canada?" This is the same Carney who invited Charles III to deliver the Speech from the Throne. The official title of Charles III is, should we forget: Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch, our Sovereign Lord, Charles III, now, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, and Sovereign of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
According to the conception of sovereignty the King's official title conveys, Canada is a "possession" of the English King, his property, meaning that the English King is the owner of Canada.
When speaking with Trump, did Carney mean that he checked with the King who told him Canada is not for sale?
Hamilton Steelworkers
Doing Justice to Historical Memory
If the Canadian government were one which wanted to honour the Canadian forefathers who fought, suffered and died for the Great Victory over Nazi-fascism, it would welcome such mass initiatives (as the celebrations of Victory Day) aimed at encouraging Canadians not to let their own history of struggle and triumph be forgotten.
This
would be truly patriotic, truly in the interests of all the people who
live in Canada. Instead, it claims that such events as the Immortal
Regiment are somehow "Russian propaganda," as if it is not natural for
the people who are descendants of the nation which lost the most, the
Russian
people, to take the lead. Canadians should not be swayed by this
fraudulent and arrogant facade of geopolitical interests, and should
join such events with pictures of their forefathers who fought. They
should bring whatever they believe to be their symbols or flags of
Victory. I know this would be
extremely welcome among the Russians in Canada who organize these
events. All Out to Honour Our Parents, Grandparents, Great-Grandparents
and Great-Great-Grandparents!
Unfortunately, this problem goes further than the Immortal Regiment. TML's coverage of the Great Victory itself is important. The May 9 date is in general marked as a sidenote by media and so on, but it is never celebrated. No significance was given to the fact that this is the 80th anniversary of the world's victory over Nazism, Canada's victory over Nazism. If I may say so, Canada's participation in the Great Anti-Hitler Coalition is the greatest merit it has ever earned as peoples. It is to Canada's great honour that it not only fought Hitlerite Germany, but fought alongside the Soviet Union, which waged all the decisive battles.
When the Soviet peoples' fate was in the balance on the Volga, on Stalingrad, when all of ancient Russian civilization was endangered by the Nazi-fascists and their ideology of extermination of Slavs, they could count on the Canadian people as a reliable friend. Canadians stepped up beyond even government aid to the Soviet Union; workers donated their little earnings and savings to the Soviet effort. And, of course, the determination of Canadians to volunteer in numbers never seen before or after for the war effort is significant in itself.
It is anything but a sidenote, and in my view it is a crime against the people to label it as such. The Canadian government's insistence on obfuscating the Great Victory since the Cold War leaves the distinct impression in one's mind that there are ulterior motives for this. There is a lingering Cold War fog, as well as the post-2014 hate fanned for everything Russia. There is the ahistorical myth that the U.S. saved the day, as well as the absurd, insulting, outrageous and utterly infuriating notion that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union can be equated -- both taught in schools to the next generation of Canadians.
These very widespread claims are perhaps the only reason this obfuscation is tolerated by people, who amidst all the pressures of present-day society may not feel as connected to the Great Victory. But even then, I know that many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians who are Slavs, as well as Jews, know that the Red Army saved us from certain doom and extermination. For us, this was not an abstract world war, and the Eastern Front in particular was not an abstract war, but a war of life or death. It was modern Soviet civilization, led by the Russian people, with our leader Stalin at the head, or certain death under the Hitlerites.
I also know that many millions of truly honest, progressive, patriotic Canadians hold the memory of their loved ones in great honour and respect for fighting against the Nazi beast. To assert themselves as proud peoples, as honourable and patriotic, a great first step would be for Canadians to demonstrate this love of their forefathers and what they stood for by participating in events on May 9. It is the most sacred date in humankind's history -- without Victory, humanity would have followed an extremely dark path. And Canadians have not only the right but the duty to celebrate their Great Victory.
And on a personal note, my thanks to the Party for being the only force in Canada to emphasize the Great Victory. In my centuries-old peaceful village in Bosnia, 400 Serbs — mostly women, children and elderly -- were slaughtered by the collaborator Ustaše in the most savage ways over just two days in July 1941. The first to be killed was our neighbour Bo o, who seized the gendarme's weapon defending our innocents, and with all his strength yelled, "Long Live the Red Army! Long Live Russia!" before the gendarme shot him. His memory, the memory of our martyred 400, the memory of my family members who suffered immensely (and some who were killed) for saving Serbs from certain death, for refusing to kill their neighbours, for cursing the criminal Catholic priests and collaborators, for daring to fight as partisans, live forever in me. May 9 is for all of them, to whom I owe everything.
Reader in Niagara
Fourth Montenegrin Proletarian Brigade in Bosnia circa 1942
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