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Missing the Point of Occupy - Alternative Democracy in Action
Ottawa Sun May 9 2012

Anthony Furey seems satisfied with the state of Canadian democracy. I guess he’s easy to please and enjoys the limits of his imagination. Unlike Furey, the Occupiers are not content with the complacency of consumerism and allowing themselves to be governed by detached autocrats who prefer that working people vote every few years, pay their taxes, fight useless wars and otherwise bow their ovine heads in meek submission to co-opted politicians and backroom lobbyists like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.
The fact that Prime Minister Harper has consistently ignored the will of the people’s representative’s leads me to ask: Whose will is Harper’s unaccountable executive serving? By comparing the 2007 Federal budget with the results of an $83,000 Department of Finance poll, I found ample indications that the Harper government’s agenda is radically out of sync with the thinking of most Canadians. Canadian's identified wishes were right at the bottom of the budget: healthcare, environment and education. The results would certainly be the same if the poll was repeated today but Harper won’t make that mistake. Besides, he knows our needs better than we do.
Representative government limits the direct influence of working people to symbolic gestures like voting and answering polls. I think Canadians want and deserve a more direct role in governance such as citizen referendums and public participation in debates and forums. Without such action we are reduced to switching dictators every four years or so. Public apathy supports this ugliness by default.
He misses the whole point of the Occupy Movement and their tactics. The Occupiers choose to have no leaders out of self-preservation. Leaders are more easily targeted, misrepresented and attacked than committees. We need more direct democracy and less “political leadership.”