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Steps to Planethood
- 1. STEPS TO PLANETHOOD THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP The case for global citizen suffragettes!
- 2. Dulce et decorum est pro provincia mori
- 3. I AM CANADIAN! This is great beer, eh? THE GREAT WHITE NORTH
- 4. Lawyer leading the charge
- 5. Section 91 B.N.A Act 1867 Legislative Authority of Parliament of Canada 91. It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters not coming within the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces;
- 6. $$$$$$$$$$$ 2003 $800 billion for military $69 billion for development
- 7. NATIONAL VS PROVINCIAL POWERS OTTAWA
- 8. FEDERALISM Principle of Subsidiarity Each function should be carried out at the closest possible level to the people affected and at the lowest level consistent with the efficient performance of the task.
- 9. federal, national, provincial government
- 10. FEDERAL POWERS – National versus Global – a comparison! City Province Nation Global (U.N) Popular yes yes yes no elections Taxing yes yes yes no power Law-making yes yes yes veto ability Binding yes yes yes no courts Standing yes yes yes no forces
- 11. UN TO THE RESCUE! Is there a fire? Should we put it out? Where can we get firefighters? Where can we get firetrucks? How can we get them to the fire? Who is the fire chief?
- 12. PARIS WWII
- 13. EUROPEAN COAL AND STEEL COMMUNITY 1952
- 14. “I AM A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD” vote vote why no vote?
- 15. How might we create a higher level of decision-making for global issues? Functional Institutions and Treaties Global Peoples’ Assembly and World Constitution Union of Democracies Regional Unions – build and federate Parliamentary Assembly and UN Reform
- 16. EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT DIRECT ELECTION BY THE PEOPLE
- 17. Support Civil Society Organizations
- 18. “Don’t expect politicians, even good ones, to do your job for you. Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow.”
- 19. GLOBAL CITIZENS WANTED Support the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly http://www.uno-komitee.de/
- 20. “Our job is to gather the kindling wood until such time as a spark sets it off.”
Editor's Notes
- STEPS TO PLANETHOOD: THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP The Case for Global Citizen Suffragettes The photograph of earth in this slide is known as the ‘Blue Marble’ and it is considered to be the most widely distributed image in human history. It was taken in December 1972 by the crew of Apollo 17 some 23,000 miles out in space en route to the moon. This picture illustrates that we have made enormous strides in transportation and communication in the last 100 years. But we have been less successful in the skillful political management of our planet. So let’s talk about how we can do better. Let me start with a question. If relations between British Columbia and our neighbouring province of Alberta were to deteriorate because a dispute over oil and gas claims, and if our provincial Premier held a press conference and and made a stirring declaration of war, how many of you would be willing to fight and die for your province?
- Could we have a show of hands, please? Do you need more time to think about it? I was hoping that this question might strike you as being a bit silly. Yet, as we have just passed Remembrance Day November 11, you are aware that millions of people – many of them young men and women like yourselves – have given their lives for their countries because of disputes that political leaders were unable to resolve. I’ll let you think about this question – whether you’re willing to give your life to fight Albertans – dulce et decorum est pro provincia mori – how sweet and honourable it is to die for your province – (that’s not really our provincial motto for anyone confused!) and deal with this – why does the proposition of fighting for British Columbia seem strange? It seems odd of course because British Columbians and Albertans share a common identity and loyalty as Canadians.
- B.C. may be a distinct political unit but we are embedded in the larger constitutional arrangement of Canada. We vote for our provincial Premier, but we also vote for a Canadian Prime Minister, and so we have influence and interests at both levels. This is our system of Canadian Federalism where we have Parliaments with elected legislators both in provincial capitals such as Victoria, and at the national capital in Ottawa. Also when there is a serious dispute between Alberta and B.C., we have courts in place, and we don’t need good soldiers – we just need good lawyers - to lead the charge!
- (Obviously you have (not) had experience with lawyers. But at least the holes they make are in our wallets and not in our torsos!) And that brings us to a final point. It would be pretty dumb of us to declare war on Alberta for a very, very good reason. We don’t have an army. And neither does Alberta. At this level, we are demilitarized. As an aside, should the Premier of B.C. engage in any erratic behaviour – a distinct possibility judging from our local history – no one from Ottawa or Calgary would preemptively decide to bomb our legislature or hydroelectric facilities or TV stations to teach us a lesson. In our system, the offending individual is charged and arrested and tried in a court of law. We don’t believe in vigilante justice or punishing whole populations.
- Now, I hope you are willing to admit that compared to the rest of the world, Canadians have a relatively good political system. Sure we squabble about the cost of health care, about minority language rights, about equalization payments and, we westerners, in a fit of pique, we have even threatened to let the easterners freeze in the dark. But our system generally works. It was designed to give ‘peace, order and good government’, as per the famous wording in Section 91 of the British North America Act which brought our country into being, and it has generally delivered these goods for 138 years. Now this leads to another question -
- – could our system of good government provide a model for how to better manage the many problems that beset us at the global level – problems of war and poverty and human rights, and epidemics and natural disasters? Through better global governance, could we divert to better use the billions of dollars spent on guns, bombs, cruise missiles, fighter jets and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons? In 2003, for example, the world spent $800 billion on military expenditures versus just $69 billion for development. I think we can come up with a better system of global governance. Before we pursue this thought, let’s zero in on some of the essential concepts that have made our Canadian system work.
- The founders of our country were trying to reconcile two opposing requirements – the need for a strong central authority to keep the country together and satisfy growing commercial interests, and the need to preserve regional and cultural autonomy demanded by Quebec, Ontario and the Maritime colonies. A unitary government could not provide the requisite flexibility, so jurisdiction was split between central and provincial authorities. Areas of control that they thought demanded national application – largely financial and economic matters - went to the federal government and items they thought could be handled locally, largely social and cultural, went to the provinces. Of course, there turned out to be a lot of overlap, especially as social, technological and economic conditions changed, and as a result, we’re still trying to fine tune the formula. But this brings us to the basic concept of subsidiarity, an essential principle of federal systems:
- ‘Each function should be carried out at the closest possible level to the people affected and at the lowest level consistent with the efficient performance of the task.’ Now, could we apply this basic principle to the world in an attempt to address various problems? In other words, could we have city government for matters that can be handled at the city level,
- provincial government for province-wide matters, national government for country-wide matters, and a limited democratic world government for those problems like the environment or war and peace that cannot be resolved by independent nations acting alone? For example, a hole in the road in front of your house can be fixed by the municipality, but could there be an environmental authority with responsibility for fixing the hole in the ozone layer? Let’s take a look at how global governance is currently structured, in comparison with other levels of government.
- FEDERAL POWERS – National vs Global – comparison! When you examine this chart, there is a revelation: The U.N. lacks most powers of government which are available at city, provincial and national levels. Essentially a forum for countries to meet and debate, the UN has no popular elections, no independent sources of revenue, only a minor ability to pass laws especially because of the veto, and little ability to enforce them through courts and police action. The Secretary-General at the U.N, it is said, is more secretary than general. So it should not surprise, despite the immense contributions of the UN in the field of humanitarian relief, improvement in health, and mediation of conflicts, that there are still many failures such as the tragedy of Rwanda where the world community stood by as hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in a genocidal outbreak.
- If we experience a fire in our neighbourhood, we expect our fire department to arrive immediately and to deal with it effectively. The UN is supposed to put out various fires but it has no authority to set up a fire department. When smoke is detected, the member states must first debate whether there is truly a fire, then whether it’s in their interest to authorize firefighting, and then figure out how to provide the U.N. with firetrucks and fire personnel. Too often states bicker while fires rages out of control. Now the idea of some kind of world authority that could be popularly elected, raise its own monies, and make and enforce decisions, even in a very limited jurisdiction, might strike you as somewhat wishful and utopian. But think about this. Some people argued that slavery would never be abolished because it had existed in many different countries for thousands of years, and was even found in the Bible. Yet today slavery as an institution has almost completely disappeared.
- Another more relevant example is the development of the European Union. About sixty-five years ago, when World War II was in full swing, Germany and France, among other countries, had fully mobilized their economies and peoples in order to kill each other on land, in the air, and over the seas. This action followed previous conflicts between these countries including the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800’s, the Franco-Prussian War of 1872 and the further catastrophe of WWI in 1914. But in 1952, with the memories of destruction still fresh, the French and Germans took an unprecedented step of ceding national power over an important part of their economies to a supranational European Coal and Steel Community.
- Instead of each country having its own steel industry (vital to weapon-making), they pooled their resources and integrated their economies. Along with four other countries, they also set up a European Atomic Energy Agency, and a European Court with a long term view to bring about ‘ever closer unity’ among the nations of Europe. After much evolution, the European Union today has open borders, a common currency, and a European Parliament of 732 members directly elected by 344 million eligible European voters. If you were to ask a German or French person today whether they are ready to go to war with one another, I believe you would get quite a different answer than you would have 65 years ago. This kind of war now seems ridiculous, just as it does between B.C. and Alberta. While these populations still consider themselves French or German, they also share identities as European citizens and share power over common European institutions.
- So my proposition to you is this. If we are to abolish war as an institution in the rest of the world, then we need to similarly embed all countries in a larger structure of global government, just as BC and Alberta are embedded in Canada, and Germany and France are embedded in the European Union. This of course means that we have to develop an identity as global citizens, and create those democratic world institutions that provide us with control by means of direct voting rights. We vote for Councillors at City Hall, we vote for MLA’s in Victoria; we vote for MP’s in Ottawa – why shouldn’t we vote for parliamentarians to represent us at the United Nations to provide the good government which is so demonstrably lacking at the global level? Bringing about such a vote won’t be easy, but creative people have come up with many possible ways to bring about a new level of democratic global government. I don’t have time to go into details, but I’ll list a few.
- How might we create a higher level of decision-making for global issues? Develop functional institutions that assign power to solve global problems at a level higher than the nation-state. (e.g The European Coal and Steel Community) Create a World Constitution endorsed by a World Convention of peoples called together for this purpose. First start a union of interested democratic countries and add others over time. Build and then amalgamate regional blocs like the European Union. Add a people’s parliament to a reformed U.N. and gradually strengthen its capabilities. This last idea, a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, would follow the example of the Parliament of the European Union.
- This latter was originally an advisory body only with appointed representatives as part of the European Coal and Steel Community. It converted to direct elections in 1979, and it gradually assumed more and more law-making powers to become a legitimate voice of the European peoples. In the same fashion, a few motivated countries along with the support of civil society organizations, could create by treaty a UN Parliamentary Assembly, and thereby plant the seed of a body that could tackle the enormous ‘democratic deficit’ which exists at the global level. Now if you accept my argument that we need a new level of global government including the opportunity for all of us to vote, and if a Parliamentary Assembly at the UN seems like a good place to start, how can we move this proposal forward? Two suggestions: While we each can work on our consciousness as global citizens, power to make structural changes rests primarily in the hands of politicians. So firstly we need to be involved in politics, especially at the national level, and need to be careful whom we elect. Canada has a proud history of supporting the UN and the rule of law, but there are also deep pressures on us to ally and integrate ourselves with those who believe the world should be run by the guys with the biggest and best weapons systems. Someone has to resist that trend and make demands for a democratic voice at the global level. That someone can be you.
- Secondly, beyond individual efforts, another way to influence politicians is to become involved in civil society organizations that have the ability to lobby government. There are thousands to choose from, and a few examples of organizations you can join are Amnesty International, Project Ploughshares, the United Nations Association, and the World Federalist Movement. These organizations keep politicians on their toes and can help bring about the kind of incremental changes that are both evolutionary and revolutionary. Big breakthroughs of recent times – such as the Land Mines Treaty and the creation of the International Criminal Court – the first permanent global tribunal for prosecuting the most serious violations of international humanitarian law (genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity) – would not have succeeded without the push that Governments received from grand coalitions of international non-governmental organizations representing the popular will.
- “Don't expect politicians, even good ones, to do your job for you. Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow.” We cannot expect that getting a vote at the global level will be easy. It will not be won without a fight. But neither was it without struggle for women, long denied the vote, who claimed their rights, organized, and eventually prevailed after decades of protest. We too must consider ourselves global citizen suffragettes. We must stake out our democratic claims, counter all the arguments that our rights are neither necessary nor proper, and hold out until our demands are finally met. People, not just nations, must have a voice at the UN, a reinvigorated United Nations with sufficient powers to solve the grave problems we lay at its doorstep. That’s the end of my formal presentation, and I hope you’ve found some weighty ideas to ponder. But I’d also like to tack on two very specific invitations for you to continue educating yourselves and to become activists in a global movement for change.
- Firstly, the Vancouver Branch of the World Federalists meets the 3rd Thursday of each month close by at Oak St at 49th Ave. Please come by, hear some excellent speakers, and get involved in promoting our agenda of building global community and international law. Our Movement has lobbyists in Ottawa, in Washington, and at the United Nations. Our program includes supporting arms control treaties, backing better UN Peace Operations, ensuring Canadian compliance with environmental treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol, and calling for substantial U.N. reform. These are all important steps in advancing the cause of a just and democratic global order. Secondly, please consider starting a student ‘global issues’ club on campus. If you do, our local World Federalist branch would be delighted to help you locate excellent videos and speakers to get you started. I’ll leave some contact information so you can get in touch, and, if interested, we can schedule an event.
- As a concluding note, let me say that we can each make a unique contribution to changing the world. ‘Our job is to gather the kindling wood until such time as a spark sets it off.’ So please make it your life’s mission to gather some kindling wood and make some sparks! Thank you.