Join the new world

I am running for Congress in the next elections for the CNC although in Alberta. Instead of writing a single platform I want to write a series of articles on the issues of the day. The first four parts of my platform are as follows:
Part 1 - Foreign Policy
Part 2 - Hospitals
Part 3 - The Military
Part 4 - The Economy

In this the final (yes it’s finally over!!!!!!) part of my platform presentation I want to address a couple of miscellaneous issues.

Bilingualism: I don’t speak or write French. I’m not proud of the fact but neither am I apologetic. It is just a fact. I took four semesters of high school French. In Saskatchewan. In the 1970s. You can see why I’m not a master linguist in any language but in particular French. (I may be a cunning linguist but that’s a whole other discussion and not for this group). In essence I have two choices personally: I can take my chance with Google Translate – and we all know how bad any translation program does – or I can trust my Francophone readers to either read English better than I read French (not hard) or be willing to use either Google Translate or the translation function built into eRepublick Plus. Or you know, not read anything I write.

That’s me personally. Government needs to be held to a higher standard. While no one can mandate that debates be held in French or that every post on the Legislative forums be translated into French, it is incumbent on Government to translate laws and important statements or announcements into French and not to depend on people to use Google Translate to find out what their government wants them to know.

Transparency: There’s a lot of talk about transparency from members of Congress, and I agree that it’s a big issue. When I started as a member of Congress, Congressional transparency consisted of saying how you voted in the Country Administration section of the game itself, and that was it. The problem with that is that most of the work of Congress goes on in the eCanadian forums. You may actually see all 40 members of Congress casting votes on the Country Administration page but that number goes down significantly when you look at votes in the Open Door and Closed Door Congressional polling. This has reduced a bit more now that Speaker Moffington has introduced voice votes in which members have to write their votes instead of clicking a radio button using the forum polling system. This new change does serve to aid in gauging exactly how members have voted and in that way aids transparency although I don’t believe that it aids efficiency. Still, for me true transparency doesn’t end with how voting records.

What I look for in a member of Congress is someone who contributes to the debate, who makes suggestions and tries to improve bills they agree with and provides explanations for their opposition to bills. I don’t want members of Congress who follow party policy in lockstep and whose sole contribution to the debate is “Yes sir,” “No sir,” “How high shall I jump sir?” I get enough from my real life member of Parliament. During my previous three terms in Congress I made every effort to be an active member. I posted a comment on most issue and I tried very hard to know and understand the issues that I was voting on. It is the duty of a member of Congress to participate. The only thing more galling to me than seeing a member elected who only votes on the Country Administration screen and who neither votes nor posts in the Congressional forums, is to discover that one of the people who defeated you in the election doesn’t participate in the Congressional forums. I haven’t always posted my votes, but I promise that if elected this term I will post my Administration Votes, and my Open Forum votes, but I will also state the number of times and the number of days on which I have posted in the Open Forums section during the term.. Because the very least that a member of Congress owes to the people who vote for him is to show up.