Arjun Singh...

Happy 2012! 2011 a good year.

2011 was an exciting year for me. Worked on some great volunteer initiatives through the truly wonderful Kamloops Ending Youth@Risk fundraising team and through my awesome Rotary club. I got my MA and went on a cross Canada research trip in the spring. Marsha and I both got our Master Degrees! I was able to work with an incredibly capable and diverse group of people on a campaign for Kamloops City Council and was elected. And I was appointed co-chair of the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation, a group of people who share a strong passion for promoting vital public engagement and commnity conversation work across the country.

 

An Awesome City Council Campaign...

For more info on my candidacy, visit Your Kamloops.

I'm running for Kamloops City Council again. This has been an amazing campaign so far and we are now into the last month. I've got a very strong group of caring people around me (some are pictured above) and we have been working on many different fronts. We are now into high gear - forums starting soon, signs up and more being distributed, advertising being designed and published, and media coverage intensifying. All this helps us touch people with a messages that promote what we're calling "Smart Thinking, Community Linking". No I'm not always smart but I want to be thoughtful and innovative. I always to do as much homework as I can on issues. I also want to link different people across the community and work for the greater good of Kamloops. I don't want to be seen as a representative of any specific interest group.

For more information, I welcome you to visit my campaign website and/or my facebook page.

Photocamp at Northern Voice 2011 #nv11

I really enjoyed attending photocamp at Northern Voice this year. John Biehler is a great presenter, very easy to understand and unintimidating. Lots of folks attending had SLR cameras. I had my point and shoot panasonic and my iphone. Still I got a lot of inspiration and some good pointers. Camerasim is a great web tool to simulate taking photos with different SLR settings. I downloaded instagram on to my iphone and love how easy and fast it is to take and share cool photos.

Northern Voice 2011: T-Shirts and April Smith - #nv11

 

I very much enjoyed attending Northern Voice again this year. Arriving at the conference Friday, I was a little taken aback that a hashtag had stolen the marquee spot on the official t-shirt but I guess change needs to be embraced. I will miss new editions in the "bloggable" series of tees, but I'm happy that an almost complete set of that series graces my clothing closet at home.

Ok, enough inside baseball.

April Smith kicked off the conference on Friday with an awesome keynote about her work using social media, most notably smartphone video, to bring attention to the stories of residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Her work is touching and inspirational and April comes across as such a positive can-do person. April herself is a resident of the Downtown Eastside and has lived on a very modest income. Her Northern Voice talk has got me thinking about work for which I could use her company, Aha Media. I can only assume others are thinking the same.

I also attended 11 other sessions at Northern Voice 2011. Will blog about those in the coming days.

Putting Together My Thesis Paper and Pondering Canada's Political Future...

Wow! That was some election last week. Congrats to the Conservatives, the NDP, and the Greens on their successes. Good luck to the Liberals as they rebuild. I really had hoped for a better result for the Liberal Party.

I have been quiet here because I am in the last throes of my MA thesis. Heading to the Northern Voice conference in Vancouver on Thursday evening and have many many pages to draft before then.

Putting Together the Parliamentary Puzzle: Week Four of the 41st Federal Election in Canada...

  

Well, we are in the final stretch of this election campaign and I gather more and more people are starting to think about their role in helping put together the parliamentary puzzle. Many of you are likely puzzling over how to vote. I voted today and it felt awesome but I know I had a tough time deciding. A couple of ideas that sometimes have helped me make up my mind:

• Think about the issues that really matter to you
• Phone or email your local candidates and ask them questions on those issues
• Read the party platforms that I link to in this post.
• Read some of the media summaries of the various party platforms - here, here, and here. This tool offers you a questionaire that gives you some sense of what party best matches your views. Note: none of these pages and tools is perfect but they hopefully provide some food for thought.

Wordmaps for the Intros to Platforms of Political Parties Running in the Canadian Federal Election.

Cross Canada Dialogues Inspire Some Perhaps Surprising Tips on Encouraging Canadian Youth to Vote (#elxn41)...

Based on the Cross Canada dialogues I hosted in March....

Three Tips on Encouraging Youth to Vote

Seeking Respect and Understanding Policies: Week Two of the 41st Federal Election in Canada...

I am Asking for a Respectful Process

Let's take all the personal slights out of it for a second! Here are four great Canadians who share a a whole heck of a lot in common, but who also represent substantially different philosophies and strategies on some key issues.

Yes, there is a lot of emotion and intensity in politics, especially in election campaigns, but I think it helps immensely if we come at it all from a place of respect. The all or nothing, my way or the highway arguments may cause many people to stay away for fear of making the "wrong" decision. I've heard the fear of making the "wrong" decision from a few people. And it is a true shame, I feel.

I myself have been fretting over this with my own personal voting decision. Are the major political parties in Canada really all that far away in their policies and platforms? I am just going to do the best thinking I can and then vote accordingly. If we don't, as citizens, continually ask for respect from our political leaders, political candidates and importantly from the media, the message will not get heard. 

 

Trying to Wade Through the Policy

All the 4 parties who are running candidates from coast to coast to coast have now unveiled their policy platforms. All these documents are long and I doubt many Canadians would want to read them from beginning to end. People might also legitimately question whether the politicians will keep their promises, as parties of all stripes have betrayed the trust put in their words. This is a true dilemma. A real big hairy problem, in my view. I kind of like Andrew Coyne's suggestions in this regard. But, what do undecided voters who are trying to figure stuff out do in this election?. Well, my best suggestion today would be to read through the online introductions to the different party platforms. These introductions offer a broad brush overview of where each party stands. Then if you are interested in more depth on the platforms or on specific policies, you can easily find out more. Here are the links to the platform introductions:

• The Conservative Party
• The Liberal Party
• The New Democratic Party
• The Green Party

 

 

 

 

Photo Credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/4459642795/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattjiggins/5593394428/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kashmera/3679933265/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ignatieff/5604197211/

Clarity and Confusion: Week One of the 41st Federal Election in Canada...

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/itzafineday/2819981798/in/pool-844816@N20/

For 9 days last month, I traveled Canada and talked to many young Canadians about voting, politics, and government.

I went to Whitehorse, Toronto, Sioux Lookout, and Moncton. I also hosted a dialogue in Kamloops, my own community. I am so thankful to have had these incredible conversations before the start of our current federal election campaign. They have anchored my thinking and provided me with some personal clarity as to the issues I feel are most important in the election.

There's a quick couple of things that strike me about the first week of the election:

1. The Narrative is Shifting in a Good Way
   I was surprised by how many young people I talked to internalize a sense of inertia in the system. One young lady in Toronto, an ardent NDP supporter, saw little point in voting at all because it was only the Liberals or Conservatives who could form government. At the start of the first week of the campaign, there was much talk about how support for the Conservatives was so very solid and how it would take almost a miracle for the Liberals to catch up. This type of talk, so early in a campaign, always surprises me. I helped lead the pro-STV campaign in the 2009 BC referendum on electoral reform, and our polling numbers swung 20% in the campaign. Once a campaign starts, the levels of support can be incredibly fluid. The Liberals have had a stronger week, it seems to me, and the polling numbers are narrowing. The NDP have lost a bit of support, but again this is very early days. Jack Layton seems to be running a strong campaign. This is a good thing for democracy in my opinion (and my conversations seem to suggest it as well), because when people feel there is a competitive race, they seem to pay more attention and their desire to participate increases.
   
2. The Amount of Information Available Can Certainly Confuse
   I am trying to follow the election as closely as I can, but it is very difficult to follow even a small percentage of the coverage. Then also, a lot of the coverage is not really on the policies and promises. It is about who is ahead and who is behind. Not really useful, in my opinion. A strong common thread running through my conversations on my cross Canada trip is that young Canadians would like to access solid information on policies and platforms. They are generally not really interested in all the negative bashing that goes on. This, in fact, can confuse them even more. In this vein,I really like the CBC sponsored Vote Compass online private survey. It's not perfect, but I found it really easy to use.  It's one way of getting some sense of which parties might match most closely with one's opinions at this early stage in the campaign. I don't imagine many Canadians are going to read through each party's platform, but it might be a good idea to contact your local candidates to ask them questions on issues that matter to you to see where they stand.