Hello everyone, this week school is back in session after a short break and Tuesday was my first day back in classes. My professor opened the class by giving us back our midterm and apparently the results were disastrous. I was shocked and some students asked if he was joking, but no, he was completely serious. The midterm itself was 40 points, 10 short answer each worth 20 marks, and an essay worth 20 marks. He said that it was the short answer section that people struggled with. Couldn’t be me since I got 20/20 baby! On the essay I got 15/20, which I’m taking as a win. I haven’t written an essay in a very long time so I’m proud of myself. Could I have done better? Definitely, and I will on the Final and Research Paper.

I was scared to look at the comments he made but I also looked forward to it since I want to get better and better. When I checked for his pen marks it was only one tiny comment at the end next to my total: “Good effort. Read text for more content on Conservatism.”

This took me a while to translate since I had a hard time reading his handwriting. I believe this comment is because, while I did touch on conservatism in my essay as was required with the prompt, I focused more of my writing on Marxism. To be fair, when Marxism was taught in class it was during the last five minutes with no further elaboration in future classes which resulted in the topic being treated like a joke.

I took this essay as a bit of an opportunity to give Marxism the TLC it deserved. Was I perfect? No, but I think I did a better job than my professor. If I ever have the opportunity to rewrite it I will. I’d love to further discuss the issues I brought up without having to rely on my memory during a stressful hour and a half.

If any of you would like to see the original word salad, let me know. As of now, I’m too embarrassed to post it.

Anyway, after going over the midterm short answer questions he started the lesson. To be honest the topic itself isn’t worth writing about in detail here; in summary we just talked about Unitary government, devolution of power, constitutions, and. federation vs confederation.

I don’t find it necessary to go over all the definitions but of course there were some hot takes and weird comments I made note of during the lecture::

When we were learning about federations and constitutional entrenched power shared between Ottawa and the provinces, with said powers being difficult to change or take away, my professor used Danielle Smith (Alberta Premier) and her Alberta Sovereignty Act as an example of her trying to protect provincial powers from Ottawa. If you don’t know anything about Smith, consider yourself lucky. Every time she’s talked about in class I can’t help rolling my eyes. the Sovereignty Act would essentially allow Alberta to oppose federal laws that seemingly pose a threat to the federal-provincial division of powers. She pushed this Act to the forefront during the leadership race (whole other bag of worms) with the main focus being protecting Alberta from COVID guidelines and the new firearms ban Trudeau is trying to put in place. Oh, she’s also pushing private healthcare like the other conservative Premiers around the country. It fucking sucks here.

On the topic of confederations; I guess people thought Canada was one? I’ve never heard that before but apparently it’s a common enough belief that he felt the need to mention it. He defined a confederation as a union of independent states which got me thinking; would the USSR be considered a confederation? I did not ask him, I’m not that unhinged yet.

Moving on we just went over the responsibilities of the federal system and concurrent jurisdictions (provincial). Nothing super interesting during this lecture we learned about Roxham Road and how, apparently, their looking for a way of closing it.

We learned about the Residual Power Clause (example being the Emergency Act) and POGG (Peace, Order, and Good Government). Ottawa has the power to give declaratory power which is not really used anymore, power of reservation which is also not really used, and the power to disallow a provincial law within a year it has been passed this, too, is never really done. This is all according to my professor, by the way.

Challenges facing the. Canadian Federation was the final thing we went over in class. This whole last bit was my professor and fellow students just going in on Quebec. I’ll list off the problems and the subsequent comments made:

1. Quebec has not signed the Constitution; everyone just began to make fun of Quebec and the separatists. A student asked if Quebec should/would separate but my professor believes Quebec is far too dependant on the Canadian government to be able to separate. People started to laugh saying nobody would ever want Quebec anyway, mainly the US. According to my prof. France would approve the separation but the US would veto.

2. Equalization Payments; so this section was just about how because Alberta has the richest population, as in we have more rich folks here (hm I wonder why), Alberta pays more in equalization and Quebec gets that money, which seems to fuel the hatred Alberta has for Quebec.

3. Poor Treatment of First Nations; nothing about Quebec specifically but it is one of the biggest issues we have up here. Theres no clean drinking water, horrible housing, MMIWG, and much more we didn’t go over but I’m positive most of you are aware of.

4. Canada health transfer/Canada social transfer; the problem with this is that when the federal government give the provinces a budget for healthcare and social services, but sometimes provincial governments don’t use the money as it is intended. Instead of using the money for what it was meant for, some provinces will use that money to “balance the budget”. Weirdos on Twitter complain about government debt all the time but isn’t that debt way different than, let’s say, a credit card? We had a premier here pay off the Alberta debt but I don’t believe it actually did anything. I was either not alive or too young to see anything significant.

The Canadian Constitution is fairly rigid, meaning making changes to it is quite difficult; if we wanted to get rid of the monarchy, or “get rid of Charles” in my professor’s words, there would have to be complete unity among the provinces and it must be passed by parliament. And because of how not on the same page the provinces are, we’re not going to be cracking open that constitution any time soon. Most people claim Quebec is the main problem but I’d wager it’s Alberta and a few others kicking up a fuss.

We ended the class with a short discussion of the history of the Constitution Act of 1982. Quebec did not sign it at the time, sometime in 1987 (I think that was the year, its the one I wrote but I might have heard wrong) the Premier of Quebec at the time wanted in, but Manitoba was the one refusing to sign the new one (or something) this time because there was no protections of Indigenous Peoples.

That last bit is a bit confusing but if you were sat in class with me you’d understand the confusion I was listening to. Throughout the class I was surprised there was no mention of the war or China, but one of my classmates was a little late and I noticed she had a bunch of “stand with Ukraine” type pins on her back pack, one of which looked like the cancer ribbon but blue and yellow. No, I was not staring, she sits in front of me and when she took off her bag I saw. I swear to god I’m not a weirdo, I actually actively avoid looking at other people. I feel bad because when I saw flags before, both Canadian and Ukrainian, I wouldn’t bat an eye, my family likes to wave Portugal’s flag. But since the convoy and the war, the uptick in certain symbols hav made me wary. Not all flags, of course. The normal Ukrainian flag and Canadian one are fine but in certain contexts it’s unsettling. Hope that makes sense, I really don’t want to sound like an ass.

Anyway, that’s all I have right now. In terms of the textbook I actually have a document going with excerpts I felt necessary to make note of and later share. If it’s possible I’ll make sure to add a who said what on each quote so there’s some context.

If you have any questions let me know, I’m open to discussing pretty much everything!