Holding your nose or crossing your fingers

Here in Alberta, separatists are calling for a referendum on the question “Should Alberta leave Canada?” But they’ve been beaten off the starting line by a petition calling for a referendum that changes the question to: “Should Alberta remain in Canada?” The hope of the “Forever Canadian” campaign is that placing the onus on affirming Alberta’s place in Canada will head off a separatist referendum (the Chief Electoral Officer won’t permit two referenda on the same question, at least in a short time).

This is only possible because Alberta has legislation that requires the Provincial government to hold a referendum if 10 percent of eligible voters who voted in the last provincial election (yes, that’s 10 percent of those who actually voted) sign a petition requesting a plebiscite on a clear constitutional question. Before this spring, the number of signatures needed was more than twice as high. This change has widely been seen as the UCP government fanning the flames of Albertans’ resentment of Liberal governments in Ottawa and opening the door further for activists who would like to provoke a vote for Alberta to separate from Canada.

Now, I don’t mind saying that I am resolutely and emphatically for Alberta remaining in Canada. So I sympathize with the Forever Canadian campaign’s motivation. But I haven’t signed the petition (at least not as of this writing). That’s because I am also resolutely and emphatically against government by citizen-initiated plebiscite. We live in a parliamentary democracy. We entrust our representatives to deliberate and make consequential decisions on our behalf. If we don’t like what our representatives are doing, we can throw them out at the next election. When our elected representatives throw complicated and enormously impactful questions back at us and say “you decide,” they are refusing their responsibilities, empowering angry minorities and risking massive disruption that they should be responsible for avoiding. Even if a referendum is likely to affirm my preferred outcome, I still have trouble supporting it. I’m against the whole process.

Compromises

In other news, I just agreed to work a shift at a casino in support of Beaverhill Bird Observatory, who does really important work monitoring and promoting bird biodiversity in central Alberta. I support BBO wholeheartedly and casino money (the Alberta government gives a cut of casino revenues to community organizations) is a major factor in allowing BBO to do its work. But I also think that casinos are basically evil. I think it’s appalling that – instead of taxing people like me at a higher rate – our government has offloaded so much of its revenue-generation onto a fundamentally exploitative and socially harmful practice. But BBO needs these funds and they won’t get them if they don’t get volunteers to help out at their casino night. So how could I refuse?

Life is full of compromises. How do we know which compromises are just part of doing our best in a broken world and which ones cross the line into promoting that brokenness? I’ve sometimes used the metaphors of “holding my nose” vs. “crossing my fingers” as a heuristic for such occasions. There are times when we have to hold our noses and do things that kind of stink a bit; things that are less than ideal or not the way we’d like them done. But that’s different from doing something with crossed fingers as if we are disavowing what we are doing even as we do it. Crossed fingers implies a degree of dishonesty or a compromise of our integrity. I think perhaps I can hold my nose and sign that petition – I don’t love the process, but I want to advance the cause. But if working that casino night implies that I affirm people’s decision to gamble (or, all the more so, the government’s encouragement of it), maybe I’m doing that with my fingers crossed, and I should look out for my integrity. What would you do?