Julius Ruechel

@JuliusRuechel

🧵A thread about growing anger in Western🇨🇦

It's deeply disappointing that NONE of the conservative parties at either the federal or the provincial levels are demanding Senate reform.

It is markedly absent in Danielle Smith's and Scott Moe's demands, it's nowhere to be seen in the platform of the federal conservatives, and even the PPC doesn't advocate for it.

It should be at the top of the list. It's the single most important demand by which to stop bad legislation in Ottawa that is harmful to the western provinces. It's so important that it was the #1 demand of Preston Manning's Reform Party in the 80s and 90s, which is the co-parent of the current CPC. But today... crickets.

Our undemocratic Senate is one of the keystones of Canada's predatory dysfunction towards the western provinces -- it has been a major western grievance for most of Canada's 158-year history. True liberal democracy with real checks on federal power is an illusion in Canada as long as this remains unchanged.

I have no illusions about how difficult this reform is to achieve -- Harper tried and failed for 10 years to reform the Senate.

And yet, by abandoning this, these conservative parties are effectively ceding the West to Eastern political domination, thus indirectly asking Western voters to accept their continued subordination to the East.

As it sits today, the best the West can hope for is a benevolent ruler in Ottawa. It's a form of serfdom, with modern characteristics. It's a broken system that will, in time, inevitably be followed by another cruel govt in Ottawa even if, by some miracle, the current one ends its ideological economic attacks on the West.

How many more Trudeaus (or his equivalents) will it take to drive this point home? Even if Ottawa cedes to Alberta's and Saskatchewan's demands today, you're only ever one election way from it all starting all over again.

Even if prosperity returns, prosperity is not a replacement for effective local political representation and limits on federal power -- if you have little say over the laws that govern your province, your political and social development will remain in someone else's hands and the regulations will be blind to the local needs of local populations.

Rights and local autonomy are far more than just a measure of GDP. Our provincial and federal conservatives seem to have forgotten this -- or are deliberately ignoring this and hoping voters don't notice in order to avoid rocking the boat.

Until the Canadian political system is fundamentally reformed to fix this, the West remains little more than a feudal possession of the East, left to beg for mercy when legislation is destructive or predatory, or propelled towards separatism as the only escape from this broken system.

Time and time again over our entire 158-year history, every attempt to fix this has been thwarted by all those who benefit from the status quo. I don't think it's fixable. It was designed not to be reformable. That's why I want WEXIT to happen. It must happen -- don't let any "Conservative" tell you otherwise. Appeasement does not lead to liberty.

Taxation and regulation without meaningful political representation is a form of feudal serfdom. Yet constitutional reform in Canada is unachievable because it requires permission from those who benefit from the status quo. It's not just the Eastern provinces. It's EVERYONE who benefits from strong centralized govt.

For example, the failed Charlottetown Accord (which included 1) Senate reform, 2) increased provincial rights, and 3) the devolution of significant powers from the federal to the provincial govts) collapsed because of a single indigenous MLA from Manitoba who refused to sign -- the collapse snowballed from there.

It's ironic that the same people who are so outraged by "inequalities", who virtue signal with land acknowledgements and every socialist claptrap imaginable, are utterly hostile to reforming a system that effectively holds their own countrymen in the geographic half of our huge country hostage to a deeply undemocratic political system designed for the benefit of Upper Canada.

WEXIT. It's the only way to break the stranglehold of a political system designed to enable serfdom.