First, as the rumors surrounding a possible Liberal-NDP merger were just starting to swirl, but after Michael Ignatieff had pooh-poohed the idea—but before he backtracked and said he wouldn’t rule out cooperation—I published a piece calling for frank discussion of some electoral arrangement.

Second, after Montreal was knocked out of the playoffs, I contributed to a series on how to bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada. In typical conservative fashion, I argued that the key was to build a better economy.

And third, as part of a series on how to improve the three main Canadian political parties, I had a piece arguing that the Tories needed to be thoughtful, be confident, and be unafraid.

I’m not sure the Mark will want to publish me as regularly as once a week, so if an article doesn’t appear over there, I’ll publish it here; otherwise I’ll provide a link here. But I do recommend bookmarking and visiting The Mark regularly—they’re doing interesting things over there, and as the community develops the site will only get better.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a rare public rebuke to close ally Canada on Monday, criticizing it for excluding key nations from a meeting to discuss the resource-rich Arctic. . . .

“Significant international discussions on Arctic issues should include those who have legitimate interests in the region,” Clinton said in a statement issued before the meeting had even begun.

“I hope the Arctic will always showcase our ability to work together, not create new divisions.”

Tuesday, March 30, 9:16 a.m.:

The United States would like Canada to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2011, the year Canada is scheduled to end its combat mission in the country, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told [the CBC].

Tuesday, March 30, 11:14 a.m.:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan will end in 2011.

***

Now perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to judge. Maybe this was an orchestrated pantomime by Clinton and Harper, with the Americans giving Harper cover to make withdrawal look like an assertion of Canadian sovereignty and independence. Or perhaps Clinton, in pursuit of American interests, wanted to goad Canada into a reaffirmation of its withdrawal commitment. But if we take everyone at their word, and assume no ulterior motives, this certainly seems like a diplomatic gaffe by Clinton.

Oh, and finally, it should be noted–and strongly emphasized–that the conduct of our foreign policy should not depend, in the slightest, on the pronouncements or mis-pronouncements of the American Secretary of State, or anyone else. Clinton was wrong to make her Arctic point the way she did, but Canada’s big enough to shrug it off, and it should have absolutely nothing to do with our decision to withdraw from Afghan military operations.

At the close of the debate I’ll re-post my material here, but for now please head on over to Catelli’s and check it out.

Tapper: There has been some criticism about the United States for not doing enough in Honduras to return President Zelaya. Do you have thoughts on that?

Harper: Well, as I said in our press conference here, I find this quite hypocritical. I would be quite—if I were an American I would be quite annoyed by that kind of question because the United States has been accused of—so regularly in my lifetime, particularly in our hemisphere – of meddling and interfering in the affairs of others.

Now we have a problem in Honduras and we have some people jumping up and demanding the United States intervene and meddle.

I think the approach taken by the American administration is the correct one. First of all, they’ve articulated the same values that Canada, Mexico and others have articulated and that is we need to see democracy and the rule of law restored in Honduras.

As you know, there’s two sides to that issue. The democratically elected government should be restored and that government should be committed to respecting the constitutional rules of that country.

I think we all agree with that. President Arias of Costa Rica with the Organization of the American States is leading mediated efforts. Canada and Mexico are directly involved in that mediation effort. We have been highly supported by the Untied States in the mediation effort.

The United States views are not secret. It has been pushing to see the same outcomes we’re trying to see and I think this is the appropriate approach for the United States is to be very forceful and very helpful and to work with others to make sure democratic norms are upheld in our hemisphere.

Harper’s seemingly unequivocal support for the American position is disappointing but predictable. But there’s enough equivocation between the lines to make me suspect that the Canadian delegation is having a significant positive impact on the negotiations. Harper makes two basic points: (1) don’t meddle—which means, don’t try to impose a solution from the outside (namely the restoration of Zelaya), but instead help Hondurans to achieve an internally negotiated settlement; and (2) the goal is the restoration of constitutional democracy—a principle that Zelaya violated at least as much as the army. I suspect that’s what Harper’s hinting at when he says “there’s two sides to that issue;” at least, I can’t think of another, better, plausible explanation for that statement.

In short, while the Canadian government’s initial response to the Zelaya ouster was hasty and ill-considered, it seems as though the government has moved towards a much more balanced and appropriate position, and there is reason to believe—or at least hope—that it is using its position as a (dare I say) honest broker to shape negotiations over the future of Honduras. That strikes me as a good thing.

THE CANADIAN PRESS – RANKIN INLET, Nunavut — Governor General Michaëlle Jean, on the first day of her trip to the Arctic, gutted a freshly slaughtered seal, pulled out its raw heart — and ate it.

And yes, there’s a picture.

The big news in the expatriate community is a recent change to the Citizenship Act under which children born to Canadians abroad are only entitled to citizenship if at least one of the parents was born inside Canada. In other words, Canadian citizenship now only passes for one generation outside the country.

The change has its merits and demerits; I’ve explored some of them on my blog. But whatever the merits of the amendment, you can’t change the definition of Canadian citizenship without changing what it means to be Canadian. Or can you?

I’m a Canadian citizen, though I currently live in the United States. But because I was born overseas, any kids I have during my stay in the States won’t be Canadian citizens. Having kids right now is a purely speculative notion (to my mother’s chagrin), but the idea that my hypothetical kids wouldn’t be Canadian has got me thinking about what being Canadian means.

Living in the United States, I think about being Canadian a lot. Maybe it’s just me; maybe it’s an expatriate thing. Either way, living here has undoubtedly increased my sense of Canadian identity. Part of it is linguistic. (I once had to spell out the word “produce” before a midwestern friend could understand what I wanted at the grocery store.) Part is cultural: for all our self-congratulation, Canada is remarkably racially homogenous (at 86% white) compared to the United States (75%). Part is geographic: we complain about the frost in October, but I tell you in all honesty that I miss it. (Not too much.)

Most of all, Canada is where I come from. It’s part of me in a thousand different ways, some obvious, some not, but all contributing to who I am. I want to pass that on. I want to say to my children: your ancestors lived on the land from time immemorial; your ancestors crossed the seas; your ancestors fought one another, and then made their peace; your ancestors confronted a land that cannot be tamed, and learned to live with it (and off it); your ancestors went to war, time and again, to fight for freedom and justice, not always without honest reservation; your ancestors persecuted one another, felt shame, begged forgiveness, and forgave; your ancestors stood tall, lived honest lives, held out a helping hand, said please and thank you. I want to say to my children: you have the spirit of the north inside of you. I want to say to them: you are Canadian.

Can I say that, if my children aren’t citizens? If they never vote, or expect to vote, or pay tax? If they pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America? Can my kids be Canadian, even if they aren’t Canadian citizens?

Why not? Tying Canadian identity to Canadian citizenship reduces Canada to a mere political entity, to a government. But it’s more than that; it’s a nation, with a national history, a national culture, national past-times, national quirks, national shames and national triumphs. Surely there’s more to being Canadian than having a passport. Surely being Canadian is being a product of all of the experiences of all of the Canadians who have come before.

The recent change to the Citizenship Act seems to have been drafted on the assumption that, for many Canadians living abroad, identity and citizenship are the same. That’s probably true: those who don’t identify as Canadian won’t bemoan the loss of citizenship; those who do will take the steps necessary to pass citizenship along. But I suspect there’s a third group: those who want to pass along Canadian identity without passing along citizenship. If I’m right, tightening the citizenship rules might result, somewhat paradoxically, in the growth of a new sort of Canadian diaspora, connected culturally and emotionally to the motherland even while connected politically and socially to countries around the world.

That’s what I’ve been telling myself, anyway: I’m not Canadian because I’m a citizen, I’m just Canadian, and it follows that my kids don’t have to be citizens to be Canadian as well.

But, for all that, I’d still rather they were.

The proposal is simply to adopt a single transferable ballot within each riding. Representatives (whether MPs or MPPs or what have you) will still be apportioned according to population within contiguous geographic bounds–i.e. ridings–but each voter within that riding will be able to indicate a second and even third ‘choice’ on their ballot. If no candidate receives a majority of votes within the riding based on first preferences, candidates receiving votes below a certain threshold will be disqualified and ‘their’ ballots recast according to those voters’ second preference. If there is still no majority winner, the process repeats until there is.

Having a single transferable vote system within ridings would–unless my math is wrong–eliminate the main objection to the First Past the Post System, namely its propensity in multi-party democracies to grant majority power to a party winning only a plurality of votes. If a government is formed by the party winning a majority of seats, and if each seat is held by a candidate who has ultimately received a majority of votes (whether first-preference or first-through-third preference), then a majority government will enjoy the electoral support of a majority of voters (assuming ridings are equal or roughly equal in population–and I’d be all for ensuring that this is, and continues to be, the case).

It’s not PR, by any means; but I happen to be one of the neanderthals who things that in a broad and diverse nation, expressions of geographic interest play an important role. In any case, it strikes me as being an incremental improvement that gets us closer to a truly proportional system of representation without scrapping the existing system entirely.

Thoughts?

Mr. Galloway received a preliminary notice of determination by the Canadian Border Services Agency that he might be inadmissible to Canada, I gather based in large part on his public admission that he provided funds to Hamas, a banned illegal terrorist organization, which would seem–on the face of it–to constitute grounds for inadmissibility under Section 34(1)f of the Immigration Refugee Protection Act.

Okay. Here’s my question: what is a preliminary notice of determination by the Canadian Border Security Agency? The Canada Immigration and Refugee Protection Act doesn’t mention preliminary notices. Neither do the regulations promulgated under the act. In fact the phrase “preliminary notice of determination” doesn’t appear on the Immigration Canada website.

So when Minister Kenney says, matter-of-factly, that Galloway “received a preliminary notice of determination by the Canadian Border Services Agency that he might be inadmissible to Canada,” I have to ask: what the heck is that? Neither the statutes nor the regulations provide for a pre-application determination of admissibility. Does the ministry regularly evaluate potential applicants? If so, under what circumstances? Terry Glavin has suggested that Galloway’s parliamentary staff contacted the Canadian High Commission regarding his speaking tour, and that the “preliminary notice” was written in response. That may be so; but is there any other documented instance of a potential applicant receiving a “preliminary notice of determination” in response to such an inquiry?

I should mention again that I don’t think Kenney did anything wrong here; indeed, I think that’s true even if the “preliminary notice” was sent on his instruction. But if that turns out to have been the case, it raises interesting and important questions about a minister’s ability to keep aliens out of Canada. As I argued last month, use of the “preliminary notice” effectively forecloses judicial review of that interesting and important question. In light of the judiciary’s over-reaching in other areas, I can understand why that may be politically desirable. But at the very least it’s worth noting.

Finally, notwithstanding my curiosity, at the end of the day I agree with Kenney on the fundamental point: Galloway was never refused entry to Canada, because he never sought it. Had he sought it, he could have pursued an appeal in the courts. I think the Federal Court erred in allowing his preliminary injunction suit to proceed; but the fact that Galloway didn’t actually seek entry demonstrates, to me, that for Galloway the goal was never access. It was publicity.