Pierre Trudeau's Memoirs

I have piles of books that I have set apart for reading as I have the time. Maybe that’s normal behavior for a lifelong bibliophile. I only proceed slowly because (1) I am a slow reader (or maybe a lazy reader), (2) I often get sleepy reading, and so don’t read far in one sitting (or reposing), and (3) I am really busy with other things. Nonetheless, I occasionally get a book read, unlike Theodore Roosevelt who is said to have read three books a day for much of his adult life.

This week I finished reading Memoirs by Pierre Trudeau. The book added depth and breadth to my perspective of the man who gave the rose a bad name. A powerful intellect was he.

He seems to have cared a lot about how his readership would judge him. He emphasizes in the early going his typical Canadian background: he grew up in modest circumstances. For crying out loud, the family summer home didn’t even have adequate plumbing.

Another notable aspect of the book is the coverage of his early adulthood. The man had courage and a well-developed sense of adventure, traipsing across Asia, including China during its civil war. I can see that he brought an unusual background to the Prime Minister’s office.

His sense of Canada --- the notion that the nation is a federation of sovereign people rather than an agreement between provinces and territories --- informed his approach to governance. He seems to have been a liberal at heart, although his legislation was often Liberal rather than liberal, it seems to me.

I recommend the book, or at least parts of it: many interesting photos of one of the most photographed people in history, and interesting anecdotes and explanations…… and excuses.

Water

I have long enjoyed watching water flow, and even more, I enjoy the sound of it doing so --- the breaking of waves on the ocean shore, a waterfall. Ancients, typified by Thales of Miletus, suggested that there must be some unifying force in nature. Nature wasn’t this random collision of various forces --- the chaotic interaction of the gods. It seemed natural that the force would be water. Water seemed to be pervasive: it was a liquid, a gas, and a solid. It moved under its own power; and what a power that sometimes was. So Thales saw water as the arche of which all consisted. 

Water is essential to human life. I have been involved for awhile in a project to resolve the problem indigenous Canadians have with accessing clean water. Typically, municipal water in Canada is clean. Water is tested several times a day. Better to drink tap water than water from a plastic bottle. Well, probably in most cases. But not so with much of the water available to First Nations people. Their water is often toxic with chemicals, and sometimes bacteria. The federal government has earmarked a couple billion dollars to resolution of the problem, but these funds have largely been manifested through central purification systems that do not make sense by reason of cost versus benefits and also because of their propensity to malfunction when there is no skilled help to fix them quickly. Our group has an innovative solution that I won’t detail here just yet. It is much more cost effective than anything I’ve seen suggested as a solution, and substantially more reliable so far as I can so far tell. Hopefully, we will be instrumental in enabling the lifting of many “boil water” advisories.

Wexit

This past weekend was a large demonstration in Edmonton in favor of what has become known as Wexit --- the interest in the four western provinces separating from the rest of Canada.  Or maybe the notion includes the western territories (such as Yukon) also. I read that there is a Wexit facebook group with about a quarter million members. I’d bet that a highly disproportionate number of them are from Alberta. I know that Peter Zeihan has long been speculating on Alberta joining the USA.

https://omny.fm/shows/danielle-smith/peter-zeihan-talks-about-a-canada-without-alberta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw5LjZ3Q7j4

Extricating BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba from Canada is not simple. First off, the political party that has the lion’s share of the western seats in parliament, the CPC, is not a separatist party. A strong separation movement would see the formation of probably multiple right of centre parties to wrest support from the Conservative Party of Canada. Methinks that would be a very daunting process. Further, there is the Clarity Act, a little known act of parliament that governs the process of separation.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-31.8/page-1.html

There are numerous hurdles to be cleared, and the process would take years, during which time the separation sentiment could easily reverse.

If there was separation --- a new Republic of Western Canada --- how likely is it that these four provinces would hang together? In my opinion, Canada is the glue that ties the western provinces together. It’s called Confederation. The four, trying to go it alone, would likely have a falling out, with one or more seeking admission to the USA with all that entails: taxation of gains on sale of principal residences, occasional institution of the military draft of sons to be shipped off to foreign soil to protect the interests of multi-national companies with their lives, estate taxes, Trump (yeah, I think he’ll win the next election), and on and on.

I don’t dispute that decentralization of power is the tidal wave of the last few decades worldwide, but decentralization can be accomplished quite nicely by shifting areas of jurisdiction from Ottawa to the provincial capitals. Maybe it’s time to revisit the power distribution.