In this Election, Will I Give My vote to My Current Member of Parliament?

Our federal Parliament has now dissolved and the 2019 election has been called. Every eligible voter, all of us, must decide to whom among the candidates in our own federal constituencies we will give our vote. Will I vote for my current Member of Parliament (MP) the return to the next Parliament as my representative? No, I will not.

Why not? Partly for the same reason that I could not vote for her during the last election. At the time I found much about her candidacy that attracted my vote. Yet, to me, the sovereignty-deleting ISDS provision in so-called free trade agreements then under negotiation or pending negotiation had to be a major national issue (see my post from that time). I questioned each of our then candidates on this matter. My then MP, a senior Cabinet Minister in the previous government, easily supported her government’s ready abrogation of our national sovereignty through ISDS and its inherent characteristic of raising international corporations from being subjects of their home nations and welcome guests within other nations to be, in effect, non-territorial sovereign entities (I called them non-territorial kingdoms) equal in stature with sovereign nations. As a candidate, my current MP never answered my question or commented on the issue and that turned my vote away from her. After the 2015 election, I learned why she did not answer or address the issue as, instead of the “Real Change” promised during the election, the new government, of which she became a part as a Cabinet Minister, proceeded to perpetuate the previous government’s support for ISDS. Dismayed at this let-down, I later wrote an open letter to my new MP, made a submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade, and an open letter to our Prime Minister with my concerns, all to no avail. Sadly and to Canada’s shame, that the renegotiation of NAFTA into the USMCA removed ISDS had nothing to do with Canada’s negotiating position but resulted entirely from American effort. TiSA, still under negotiation with Canada’s participation continues to include possible “backdoor” access to sovereignty-deleting ISDS. As a Cabinet Minister in our current government, my current MP continues to support subsuming our sovereign right to govern ourselves as a free and independent nation to ISDS.

As a more immediate reason why I cannot give my vote to my current MP, I look at the SNC Lavalin scandal. My MP supports our Prime Minister in spite of his interference in the judicial process, an unethical and, likely, unconstitutional action that, in times past, would have either brought on the resignation of a truly honourable Minister of the Crown or generated a cabinet or even caucus revolt to force such a resignation. Not only that, but my MP then accepted, however temporarily, the appointment to replace Jane Philpott at her Cabinet Ministry when Dr. Philpott took the highly honourable step of resigning in support of former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Reybould’s concerns over attempted Prime Ministerial interference with her authority concerning the judicial case involving SNC Lavalin.

So, to whom will I give my vote? Right now, I simply do not know.

When I vote, I vote the person; I do not vote the party. I will listen to whatever all our other candidates have to say on various issues. In particular, I will listen for strong affirmation of judicial independence from political interference and for strong acknowledgement and support for Canada’s independence as a free, self-governing, and sovereign nation not subject to corporate overrule via ISDS. I will look for commitments to support and/or enhance Canada’s existing health care system. I will also want to listen to candidates thoughts on local issues of a federal nature.

Above all though, and even more importantly in consequence of the growing environmental crisis, I will look for substantial intention to contribute to bringing Canada into a strong role in precluding the impending world-wide anthropogenic climate disaster and ending the currently proceeding anthropogenic mass extinction of living species. I will anticipate learning of intended action to transfer subsidies away from carbon dioxide and methane releasing industries and personal activity, turning those subsidies over to industries and personal activities that involve no carbon dioxide or methane release. I hope to learn of support for an industrial activity that isolates carbon for non-carbon dioxide releasing purposes or sequesters it.

Delta candidates, I await all that you have to say. Please say it with grace and intelligence.

Our Moon Close in Line with Jupiter

Our Moon at first quarter and close to conjunction with Jupiter through very thin high cloud on the evening of 2019, September 5 at PST 9:17:40 pm with Olympus Pen-F at ISO 500 and 1/50 sec. through E.Zuiko-T f=250mm 1:5 fully open at f/5.

Lying low to my south-southwest, the Moon and Jupiter showed very nicely through the very high thin evening cloud. At this magnification, Jupiter appears as a very tiny but definite disk and shows some colour in contrast with the white of the moon. Click on the image to view it in its full sized glory.

Just Our Figs

Fig in the Tree, Ready to Pick

Three Fig Harvest in one of Angela's Falling Blue Bowls

Lunar Detail at First Quarter

A detailed portion of the Moon featuring Mare Serinatis, Menelaus Crater (mid-frame, near the top), the Caucasus Mountains (lower mid-frame, lower right of the mare), part of the Apennine Mountains (upper right of the mare, fading into the terminator), the break into Mare Imbrium with Autolycus Crater, Aristillus Crater, and the solitary Pico Mountain just showing on the terminator, part of Lacus Sominorum (in the bottom left corner), Eudoxus Crater (bottom, left of centre), and part of Posidonius Crater (on the left edge of the photo, just below centre).



A detailed portion of the Moon featuring a heavily cratered area along the terminator. Craters include Werner (on the terminator one-third of the way up from the bottom), Aliacensis (immediately above and just in from the terminator), Stofler (one-quarter down the terminator from the top, with a flat bottom and smaller crater damage on its rim at 10:00), and, just in from Stofler, Maurolycus (over two smaller craters).

These are telescope views, inverted, taken on August 7th with my Olympus Pen-F at ISO 200 and 1/25 sec. on my Dynamax 8, 2110mm 1:10, telescope at f/10 and 20mm eyepiece projection.

First Quarter Moon in Daylit Evening Sky

This is a shortly after sunset, evening view of the first quarter moon taken on 2019, August 7 with the sky still mostly daylit, hence the blue background. It is a fairly large image stitched from 2 exposures taken at (PST) 8:43:21 and 8:41:41 pm on Olympus Pen-F at ISO 200 and 1/160 sec. using my Dynamax 8, 2110mm 1:10, telescope at f/10 and at prime focus.

I did take another, using my eyepiece projection attachment and a 20mm eyepiece for nineteen more detailed images that I stitched together into a single large photo, too big to upload into Blogger.

Second Planetary Astrophoto, Saturn

Saturn, taken 2019, July 25 at (PDT) 12:10:07 am through my Dynamax 8, 2110mm f/10, telescope with a 20mm eyepiece projecting the image into my Olympus Pen-F camera at ISO 2000 and 1/30 sec. exposure. My telescope's RA drive clutch no longer engages, thus this photo was taken without tracking and hence the high ISO leaving the image quite noisy.

Saturn currently sits low in my southern sky in the constellation Sagittarius, so this view is through a lot of coastal atmosphere on a clear moonless night. Click on the image itself to see it in its full-sized glory. This is a telescope's view, inverted; I have not turned it to an upright normal view.