We made a Podcast! I think they turned out super well. You should definitely check them out as they get released in the coming weeks. I will update this post to include mine once it’s released. My episode was about German Propaganda during World War Two. I learned a lot about cause and consequence through my episode. I truly considered the effects of the war on both groups of people. It was very interesting to see how effective and quick they’re propaganda was. It taught me that we need to watch out for propaganda and fake news in our own lives.
Above is my podcast episode, it is apart of a collective class podcast. If you would like to learn more about all kinds of interesting aspects of the war. Go check it out. You can learn about the rise of german tanks, the failure of appeasement, music in the war, or whatever else catches your eye. There will be 23 episodes each focusing on something different in the war. New episodes are released daily so check back in.
So this project was obviously about World War Two but what did we study? The answer is, so many different topics. This was to give us a baseline understanding of the war and prepare us for our podcasts. We also read books and discussed them in literary circles. My book was called the Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender, I would highly recommend it. The book gives a super interesting, but very sad look into the lives of children, particularly Jewish Children throughout the Holocaust. Throughout this book I became interested in how the Nazis divided the communities so fast. They split up neighbours, friends, even family just because of there ethnicity. It just took them a few days after invading Poland which is mind boggling to me. I then decided to research how it works and why it was so effective. This led to my podcast topic.
“How might we use stories to better understand the causes and consequences of WWII?” That was our driving question. Something I thought about through all of our assignments and even answered in our Podcast Episode. In my opinions stories are a key way to understand the causes and consequences of WWII. They help you connect with people and they’re a good way to spark a personal interest into researching this tragic event. However I think its extremely key to read stories of both sides in order to consider both sides and how people can be mislead so quickly. We can use this research to better determine the causes and consequences, and look out for these signs in our own lives.
After my last post where I reflected on the results of the election our class was split into different groups and we each have to make a political party. The Political Parties should be focused on solving problem we don’t think any of the current political parties solve. I’m in a group with Nate, Logan, Sophia, and Indy. We’ve named our party the Traditionalist Party of Canada. We aim primarily aim to solve income and wealth inequality while improving the Canadian economy.
This graph is a good visualization of Canadian wealth inequality.
Sounds like a big task right? While it is, there is a lot that goes into solving wealth and income inequality. First you need to understand how big the wealth gap is in Canada right now. As well as how its grown over the years. A good example of this is that Finances of the Nation suggests that the top 1% of Canadian hold 25.6% of National wealth. This is much higher then the 10% the one percent held post WWII. The wealth of the one percent seams ridiculous compared to the 4.5% of the wealth held by the bottom 50%. Covid-19 has only made wealth inequality grow. During the pandemic the wealth of the one percent of Canadian has grown by over 20 billion dollars. While the wealth of the bottom half of Canadians has slightly declined. These estimates were provided by the National Observer.
Now understanding income inequality and affordability and how it has gotten worse over time. Burying a home which was a normal and relatively easy accomplishment in the past is now incredibly difficult if your not rich. Just how much easier was it in the past? Check out this article on Seattle housing over time (even though it’s not a Canadian website it’s a near identical story across all major Canadian cities) or you keep reading this blog post. For example the median household income in BC in 1980 was $21,000 per year. That adjusted for inflation is around $67,000 per year. The average home in BC was $68,000 in 1980 that adjusted for inflation is $216,000. Now the median income a household is $90,000 per year but the median house in BC is $736,000. That means in 1980 the average house was 3.2 times the median household income but in 2021 it is 8.2 times the median household income. That is a massive difference and clearly something needs to be done to change that.
concept by money house from coins
This is where the Traditionalist Party of Canada comes in. If elected we would make housing more affordable. This would be done through lowering BC and Ontario housing prices by 35%. That might sound like a lot but that would set these housing markets back just 5 years. This would be done a number of ways, first of all we will ban all future foreign buyers from the Canadian Market. Only Canadian residents may purchase property in these places. There however would be exemptions in tourist locations such as Tofino. We will also ad a house flipping tax. It would be a large sales tax on houses which were sold within two years of being purchased. Finally we would make laws to repeal strict zoning ordnances which keep housing prices high.
In addition to making housing more affordable we will increase wages in Canada. This will be done through decreasing education costs as well as increasing high paying industries in Canada such as mining, oil and gas and tech. This will create more high paying trades jobs as these industries typically have high median wages. The median wage in all these industries is over $60,000 per year and there is many high paying six figures jobs in all these industries. Allowing these industries to flourish in Canada will help all aspects of our economy.
I hope you learned a lot about income and wealth inequality in Canada and how the Traditionalist party of Canada can fix it. To sum up the Traditionalist party of Canada. We aim to fix income and wealth inequality in Canada by modelling our economy after the successful economy throughout the 50s-80s.
With the Canadian Election Coming to a close I have been reflecting on the results. After two weeks of learning about how the Canadian government is structured and how the election process works I have some interesting ideas. These ideas have helped me better understand the democratic process in Canada. The sources I used to research statistics about proportional representation voting were fairvote and Ace Project.
My main idea is why Canada should abolish the current first past the post voting system. In order to understand why we need to change the Canadian Election System we first to understand how it works. Canada is both a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. This means that Canada elects our leaders but the Queen is our head of state. Instead of the leader who got the most votes winning the election. The leader who’s party wins the most ridings gets to lead Canada. Ridings are smaller sections of Canada. In each of these ridings we elect one MP (Member of Parliament) to the house of commons.
The 2019 election map
I believe Canada should abolish this system as it doesn’t always represent what the majority of the country wants. Canadas current system simply doesn’t respect the popular vote. I never quite realized how significant this was until I looked at this years election results. The Conservative Party won the popular vote but the liberals won 32 more seats. This seems insane to me. The Conservatives got over 200,000 more votes then the Liberals. That’s a similar population to the Kelowna metro area! This clearly shows that Canadians as a whole favoured the conservatives while certain areas, where their votes have more influence preferred the liberals. I don’t think this represents Canadas fundamental freedoms. Particularly free and fair elections and equality rights. No one person’s vote should carry more power then another’s vote. Our current elections are not completely fair. The other way this system is exploited is how parties focus on swing ridings. Swing ridings are ridings where the vote is very close between parties. Therefore parties focus more energy campaigning there in order to gain more support. Riding which are safe seats, this means that they typically elect the same party, get less focus during campaigns. This leads to these areas being under represented. Check out more information on swing ridings in Canada here.
Although it says BC on this chart Canada’s federal election tell a similar story.
If you’re wondering whether ditching this system works, it does! Many developed nations have moved onto this system and experienced many benefits. Countries which no longer use the first past the post system have 7% higher voter turnout. It also much more likely that an individual helps elect a representative. In Sweden 95% of voters help elect a representative, while in Canada just over 50% get this privilege. Abandoning this system will also force parties to collaborate with each other and pool there resources. This leads to more decisions reflecting the overall opinions of the country.
Changing the system would have so many benefits. Not only would elections be more fair, voters would be more encouraged to go out and vote. Particularly in ridings which normally vote the same party in to office. If a party gets 30% of the votes, they get to make 30% of the decisions in government. This would force parties to work together and it would help lead to better representations for all Canadians of different socio-economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.
I first started questioning this systems when I was looking at the student vote results. I thought the NDP had won as they had the most votes. Then one of my classmates pointed out to me that the liberals won. This shocked me as both the conservatives and NDP had more votes then them. It wasn’t a small difference, the Conservatives had 10,000 more votes then the liberals and the NDP had 35000 more votes. That is a significant difference. The student vote only involved around 800,000 students.
One of my biggest issues with our current system is how we use the first past the post vote. This simply means that only one candidate can win in each riding. It doesn’t matter how many votes the other candidates have. This leads to voter inequality. Ridings are not organized based on collective interest. In many ridings, such as my own (Burnaby-North Seymour) there is very different interests among separate areas of the riding. Burnaby and Seymour’s respective populations are quite different socio-economically. If two candidates both get a large number of votes they should be able to represent us together. I think that this would lead to more even representation.
A good example of a riding where two candidates were both popular is in the West Vancouver, Sunshine Coast and Sea to Sky Country Riding. Liberal Candidate Patrick Weiler had 19,424 votes or 33.6% of the vote. While Conservative Candidate John Weston had 17,247 votes or 30.2% of the vote. That’s a tiny difference and it is clear they are both fit to represent their people. Check out the results across different ridings in canada here.
Of course switching electoral systems would require a lot of work but I think it would make Canada a better place. Certain peoples votes shouldn’t carry more weight then others just because they live in different places. Canada needs to change electoral systems now to better represent the people living here.
