Meet an Alberta Progressive: Sherry McKibben

One of the primary objectives of this series of podcasts, Meet an Alberta Progressive, is to demonstrate that progressives are a diverse group of people with diverse backgrounds, but to help us all to think about where our commonalities might lie.

Speakers are asked to provide a brief biography, some statements on why they love Alberta, what it means to be a progressive, the hopes they have for Alberta and what quality of life looks like.

Today, I bring you Sherry McKibben. Sherry is a social worker by profession and has been active in the social services and non-profit sector for many years. She has been the Executive Director for three Edmonton area non-profits including HIV Edmonton and the Boyle McCauley Health Centre. She has also served as city councillor in Edmonton Ward 3 and as President for the Alberta New Democrats.

Please, meet Sherry McKibben.




- music in the podcast is CC licensed by _ghost.
- photo courtesy facebook.com

Manning Centre misses opportunity

In his book Don't Think of an Elephant, George Lakoff provides a metaphor for conservatives as the strict father figure, where as liberals are the nurturant parent. Upon first reading I have to admit I didn't completely buy the metaphors as a way to collectively describe the baskets of conservative and liberal viewpoints.

While I am loath to pigeonhole myself and others using simplistic labels, I am definitely more likely to be described as a liberal than a conservative. So when I found myself at this past weekend's Conference on Alberta's Future, hosted by the Manning Centre for Democracy, I was excited to get a sense of what the vision for our future looked like through the eyes of conservatives.

It really was a shame then that I left without hearing the big picture vision.

Please don't get me wrong, I appreciate the opportunity that I was given to be there and I applaud Preston Manning and the centre for putting the event on. No matter what your political stripe is, it's important to encourage civic engagement and discussions on big picture ideas. I just felt like the vision, a sense of what the ideal Alberta looks like, wasn't delivered. In fact the session titled "Vision for the Future of Alberta" ended up being an election style debate between PC MLA Kyle Fawcett and WAP leader Danielle Smith over who can do a better job pandering to oil and gas interests. Interestingly the first speaker to mention "Quality of Life" was former Liberal MLA Mike Percy, well into the second day.

What I learned most from the weekend, I learned by comparing this event to my experiences at the Reboot event I attended in Red Deer in November. What I learned is that Lakoff's view of conservative ideology as the strict father figure holds some truth.

That conclusion comes not necessarily from what was said, rather it comes from how the event was conducted.

In the leadup to the Reboot conference, delegates were asked about what topics they wanted to discuss at the event. At breakfast on the first full day we were given dot stickers with which we could vote on the suggested topics to determine what would be discussed. From that point on people picked the tables they wanted to be at and discussion ensued.

The day before the Alberta's future conference, I was emailed an agenda filled with predetermined subjects and preselected speakers. I applaud the organizers for bringing in challenging speakers like Percy and Pembina Institute's Marlo Raynolds, but in the end very little time was given to hearing from delegates. After 30 minutes per topic focussed on the speaker, there was a mere 20 minutes provided for discussion and it was based on whether you agreed or disagreed with the speaker. In essence, the entire topic was dominated by the agenda set forward by the speakers.

By the way, I would use the word "experts" instead of speakers, but the men who presented on Health and Education in Alberta are economists (one of whom is from BC). Hardly experts in the field.

The intent of the event was not to bring concerned citizens together and provide them with an opportunity to share their vision for what might be possible in Alberta in 25 years. From what I could tell, the intent was to bring people in one room to get them on-message as far as what the Conservative playbook should look like over the next few years (oh yeah, and so Manning could unofficially, yet overtly, place his support in the WAP camp). I heard a lot about the need for greater privatization, freer markets, smaller government, decreased spending and robust growth in the oil and gas sector, but to what end? What is the Alberta that we will create by implementing these ideologies?

In what can only be summed up with "Whaaaaa?" the day concluded with a presentation of the summaries of the table discussions, where the group voted on them. I would love to tell you what we were voting on, but I hadn't a bloody clue. Somehow without knowing what was being discussed at any other table but mine, I was supposed to endorse these documents as accurate representations of the discussion... and at the same time endorse them to be "taken forward to Albertans," whatever the eff that means. These votes garnered a weaker turnout than the last provincial election!

I decided to abstain from the votes, not that it mattered since father knows best anyway.

In the end I think these tweets summed up the strict father feeling best:

• @ChrisLaBossiere - I can't help but feel I wasn't being asked for my opinion or ideas as much as being polled or herded through someone elses. #projectab
• @djkelly: ORDER! ORDER! (The most overheard phrase at #projectab)

I guess my ultimate conclusion is this - as we think about how we need to reengage people and reinvent our democracy, will the strict fatherhood model really provide us with the change we are hoping for?



If you are interested in other progressive takes on this conference read:

• Shannon Sortland
• Duncan Kinney
  
• DJ Kelly
• Chris LaBossiere, or
• Ken Chapman

For some more conservative views on the event try:

• Gemma Beierback
• Stephen Taylor

What it means to be a progressive.

Happy New Year everyone. Welcome to 2010. Is it everything you thought it would look like?

I remember the new year of 1990 very well. I was 10 and it was the first time in my memory that we were celebrating the start of a decade. I remember vividly thinking about the future - the nineties - and what they would hold. I think that was the first time I really thought about the year 2000.

As a ten year old dreaming about ten years into the future, your imagination runs wild with possibilities. Sure there are no flying cars, but I do remember imagining boxes that sat on your hip that could do anything you needed it to. It was a phone, a calculator, a watch and a walkman; whatever you wanted it to do, it could do it. I think it was even a candy dispenser and a grappling hook. I'm so glad those geniuses at Apple keep thinking about the future and all its possibilities. (I can't wait for the grappling hook app to come out!)

Nonetheless, there is a point to me telling you about how I was a nerdy kid with a vivid imagination, because I want to talk about what it means to be a progressive and the most important thing about being a progressive is dreaming about the future and imagining all of the possibilities it brings. I also think that being a progressive means understanding that we are all in this world together and thinking about others.


Planning for the future.

A progressive takes the long range view on issues, assessing what the needs of society will be in 5, 10, 20 or 100 years. We look at the world that exists today and compare that to the world that we want our kids to grow up in. We understand cause-and-effect relationships and consider the consequences of our decisions.

In the context of Alberta today, progressives think seriously about the long range implications of energy management. We have a clear understanding that burning fossil fuels negatively affects our environment and we, as living creatures, depend on our environment to sustain life. We also understand that we are lucky to be sitting atop the amount of oil that we do and that that oil will be in greater and greater demand as global supply decreases. In other words, the oil under us will be worth more in the future than it is now and therefore we shouldn't be in such a rush to get it out of the ground and sell it off at the lowest price.

Planning for the future also means making smart investments that you know you will need down the road. First off, that means investing in education. The best thing we can do for ourselves and our children is to ensure that those children are as smart as they possibly can be. The world is changing rapidly and the rate of change is increasing. The issues of tomorrow will be solved by the children of today. But smart investments also includes public transportation and sound urban planning. Through migration and reproduction, Alberta's population is exploding and most of those people will live in our cities. We need to plan today for Calgary and Edmontons of 2 - 5 million people. But we can't keep expanding out because we need to maintain and invest in agriculture - that many people need lots of food. We need to look at major centres around the world to see how they have managed large populations and large population densities.


We are all in this together.

The politics of us and them is over. The world is a finite space and we are approaching 7 Billion people. The population density of Canada is 3 people per square kilometer, but the global population density is 45 people per square kilometer. We have one world that we increasingly realize is a place that we have to share. We can no longer afford to think about our friends and enemies, because we need to think about all of us.

The advent of the internet and cell phone have allowed us to understand how close we are to one another as human beings. Last year, millions of North Americans had the ability to join an uprising on the streets of Tehran via Twitter. A conflict half way around the world was humanized through the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, recorded on a cell phone and delivered to our desktops. Real people connected in real time.

Progressives understand this deep inter-connectivity of humans, whether its within our communities, cities, province, country, region or world. Facebook allows us to share our lives with hundreds of our friends and acquaintances all the time and it allows us to rally around causes and issues with the click of a mouse. There are multiple layers of community that exist and regardless of our differences, we have to live together and look out for one another.

Understanding that we are all in this together means replacing politics (which is about power) with processes for collaboration (which is about problem solving). Progressives are looking to step past the Cold War rhetoric of us versus them, east versus west or capitalists versus socialists and are looking to talk about how to establish meaningful systems to solve the problems that impact our lives.


Thinking about others.

If you have a sense that everyone is in this game of life together, you start to think about how you are the same as others and how you are different. Progressives think about the plights of others and think about those that have a different path or perspective on life. We understand that there are two types of issues: issues for individuals and issues for the collective.

Issues for individuals are those matters of personal choice for which your choices have little to no impact on others. While it is difficult to explore this area in its entirety, I am referring to issues related to religion, sexuality, morality, censorship and personal freedoms. To speak very generally, progressives feel that individuals should be free to do what they wish, so long as they are not bringing harm or risk to others. In short, issues for the individual should be settled privately and should not be part of public discourse.

I think its important at this point to talk about the progressive value of diversity and how it relates to citizenship. At some point, given the size of the global population and the variations in population density, we must understand that Canada will be a destination for many for a very long time. Progressives understand this and value the diversity and varied perspectives that immigrants (and other minorities) bring. We go past the ideas of tolerance, acceptance and melting pots to the values of respect, understanding and multiculturalism.

Issues for the collective refer to those issues where public value or public impacts exist. On these public issues, debate needs to occur in order to come to settlement on the issue. As I said, today's progressives understand and appreciate differences and individuality and therefore recognize the value of open, honest and respectful debate. Settling issues is not about power, it is about searching for the common good and determining solutions to help get us there. It also means that those people who are "in-power" have an obligation to use it wisely, to consult and to respect the perspectives of the minority opinion.

Finally, progressives understand that matters for the public interest which have costs associated with them, need to have those costs adequately funded. We do not begrudge paying reasonable taxes because we recognize that they fund important programs that benefit all of us like, roads, schools, hospitals and policing. I believe as well (although I am loath to attach this belief to other progressives) that these obligations should be borne to a greater extent by those of greater wealth. I believe this simply because they are in a better position to afford the expense and they will benefit through the economic well-being of others.



It is not easy to try and describe what it means to be the person you are. In many ways this felt like writing the executive summary to my manifesto. Ultimately, many of the ideas I expressed in this post have not been fleshed out, but hopefully I can do that over time on this space.

Thanks for reading.

New party or no party?

I want to take another opportunity to thank everyone for Reboot Alberta. I originally had the names of those four wonderful pioneers and the two hard working associates written here, but I don't want to assume that they have come out completely.

At two points this weekend, I had to make a difficult choice about two conversations of which I could take part. In a nutshell, one conversation had to do with creating a new party for progressives in Alberta and the other one had to do with creating a broad movement for progressive change. Both times, I chose to join the movement conversation and now I want to use this post to sum up my thoughts on that issue.

First off, I want to be clear. I have great respect for everyone who decided to sit in on the new party group and in particular, for all of the people that are working so hard to develop the Renew Alberta concept. I hope that those people will take this critique in the spirit of which it is intended, which is an examination of the pitfalls that can lie ahead for that group. Secondly, I want them to know that I am very interested in the concept and will likely find myself at home in that party.

The main reason we need a new party in Alberta is because we have a strong and complex system in place that needs changing - and the traditional legitimate way to achieve that change is by supporting a party that can achieve it. Furthermore, between here and fundamental change there will be elections and I will need a place to park my vote and direct my efforts.

Thus, my conundrum. As I tweeted incessantly, the party system is part of the problem, but the party is the vehicle with which that change is most likely to occur. Partisan politics has gone awry. The single biggest issue in our parliamentary system is the position of caucus whip. Members cannot engage in meaningful debate about how they truly feel on the floor of the legislature because the caucus will have already voted on each issue. There is no point listening to the points brought forward by the opposition because you are not allowed to change your mind. Legislature debate is an absolute farce and everyone in the system knows it.

I remember the day in social ten when we had a class debate. I remember how everyone studied the issue came in to class with points prepared and chose which side of the room to sit on based on their preconceived stance. I remember how we politely (for the most part) listened as each person presented their points of view. I remember students getting up and moving to the other side of the room because of some passionate points being presented from the opposition.

Maybe I'm still too idealistic, but what is wrong with that? What is wrong with having an open and honest debate about the direction government should head, being humble when we triumph and being proud when we lose.

The problem is the parties are too worried about losing the pockets of power that they have already established and they have party whips to maintain their appearance of strength and solidarity. The floor of the legislature is seen as a vicious battle ground and you better ensure your troops are in line.

The idea of forming a new party is very seductive. Hearing from across the room the birth of what could be the next big party in Alberta was like being one of the Argonauts hearing the sirens on the rocks.

But all too often ambition is inversely proportional to the distance one is from power.

Which makes it very hard for the party to change the system that they just used to obtain power, right Mr Harper?

In the meantime I will be proud to be part of the group that works to keep the party pioneers honest.

PS - Alberta Liberals doomed in an un-party state, in today's Edmonton Journal is a great piece with impeccable timing. Happy Reading!

I'm coming out!

For many of you, what I am about to say won't come as much of a surprise. For those others, you may want to sit down.

For some time, I feel like I've been leading a double life. I have this secret that I've been hiding from too many people for too long. I kept a very significant part of my life private from many people, because I was worried about the repercussions. I've been worried that some people might not agree with my choices or approve of people like me. In fact, there have been people who have been ridiculed, bullied, fired or even physically hurt for promoting the lifestyle that I want to live.

While I was a teacher I would go into school and be the person that I felt my colleagues, students and the community wanted me to be. Yet, at night I would go home and spend hours on websites interacting with other people like me, and reading about their lifestyle. At social gatherings I would avoid bringing up how I really felt because I didn't know how people would react or whether they would even want to talk to me anymore.

This weekend without telling most of my friends, family and coworkers I left town and went to a hotel with a bunch of other men (and some women, too) just like me and went to a space where we all felt more comfortable being ourselves and talking openly about what we want our lives to be like.

So here it is... I'm a progressive Albertan

Phew, I feel so much better now.

Okay, so maybe it's not that much of a surprise, but I am going to change my life a bit because of what I took away from Reboot Alberta this weekend. I'm not going to worry about talking about politics anymore - in any social circle. I'm going to tell more people about my blog. I'm going to ask you to follow me on Twitter. I'm going to use my facebook profile to advocate for change.

It comes down to this. We deserve to have a better province and we are not going to get it unless we talk about what it should look like. I want to hear what you think about Alberta and what you think about politics. I want you to bring it up with me in conversation. We are going to disagree, but that's okay. I'm not going to think any less of you and I hope you won't think any less of me.

So, thanks for reading and before you go I have three things to ask of you.

1. Visit the Reboot Alberta website.

2. Share this post with others you know - on Twitter, on Facebook, by email.

3. Consider coming out to your friends.

Let's start affecting the change that we want to see.

Progressives gather to Reboot Alberta.

What do you get when you put 100 progressive thought leaders in a room?

http://www.moviesounds.com/topgun/target.wav

Actually, what you get is a number of absolutely incredible discussions about what Alberta should look like and how we should get there.

I have relished in the opportunity that Twitter has given me to discuss issues of importance to Alberta with a diverse group of people. I am now so happy with the opportunity that Reboot Alberta has given me to meet those people (amongst many others) and have a deeper more interactive discussion.

At Friday night's reception, I kept asking the question, "what hopes or expectations do you have for this event?"

The general answer was "not much" or "a good conversation." Good answers.

The spirit of the event has been about getting together without pretenses or defined outcomes and find out where our commonalities lie. We came into the room as progressives, but we all came with diverse definitions of what that meant.

The morning featured a nice breakfast and an exercise in determining the 15 themes that would make up the discussions for the morning. I found myself in conversations about engaging youth, open and honest government and bridging the urban/rural divide.

The discussions were meaningful, respectful and diverse. In essence what democracy should be about. The focus was on creating the best Alberta that was possible. In my mind, the goal now is to create a governance system that achieves what Reboot has. A system that enables meaningful, respectful and diverse dialogue on making Alberta the best place it could be for all citizens. We have great potential and politics too often get in the way.

The challenge, as the afternoon discussions revealed, is to come up with a vision for the change we wish to pursue and a strategy to obtain it within the contexts of the system that currently exists.

There is much work still to be done.

The four Ps of governance

I am getting really excited about this weekend and Reboot Alberta. I'm looking forward to a meeting of progressive thought leaders that will focus on the future of this province. Most of all, I'm looking forward to meeting so many of the people that I have come to know online.

In advance on this meeting, I have decided to finally write this post on governance that I have been thinking about for some time.

In order to have effective governance, the stakeholders must have a strong model for collaboration. Effective collaboration relies upon a good understanding where the commonalities and differences lie amongst the stakeholders and an open acknowledgement of those differences.

Governance comes down to a hierarchy of four levels of opinion: Philosophies, Principles, Policies and Practices.

The model is an inverted pyramid because the practices of government need to be based upon the policies set forth by the policy makers, which in-turn are based upon their principles which are based on a set of fundamental philosophies. It is a pyramid because there are a fewer number of philosophies that guide an increasing number of principles and a larger number of policies and practices.

A collaborative decision-making group, whether it is a political party or a school board, must start from a basic set of agreed upon philosophies. These should be broad and general statements for which everyone can easily agree on. If a philosophy is to be stated, then little attention should be paid to the specific wording as it is the idea that is of fundamental importance. A philosophy should describe the general purpose of the group.

Once the group is clear on their collective philosophy, then they need to be open about their individual principles. Principles are those individual beliefs that change little over time that guide one's decision making. In a group, even those with high levels of homogeneity, individuals will have differing principles. An effective collaborative group should have a large number of common principles, yet will still have some differing principles. The ability to collaborate will depend directly on the group's understanding of where their principles differ and a respect for those differences.

The first two levels are preliminary to the decision making process, they relate to the biasses that the group or individuals within the group hold. The next level is the decision making level. Policies are the set of directions that the legislators give to their administrators as to how programs are to be delivered. It is a given that legislators will differ in opinion on individual policies, so it is essential that open, honest and respectful debate occur in the setting of policy. Unfortunately, too often, political trade-offs are used to set policy resulting in inappropriate policy. As a result of the debate there will be, for lack of better words, winners and losers. There must be no problem with this - it is a result of the process and there should be no shame in it.

Finally, there is a subtle but important difference between policy and best practices. The realm of policies should be constrained to those matters for which clear answers do not exist, whereas those matters for which best practices exist should be left to the hired experts. The policy should guide the bureaucracy, but the execution (practice) should be entrusted to those people hired to do it.

With that mind, good luck Rebooters!