Occupy Demands

8 things we need to see in order for us to leave willingly:

1. We want to see our government officials actually come and participate in general assemblies and the occupation. We want to see them interact with our movement rather than try to ignore, disregard or actively try to undermine it.

We want to see the Occupiers come and participate in our democracy rather than ignore, disregard of actively try to undermine it. We've had seven provincial and federal elections in the past year, the incumbent won every time, and voter turnout was down every time. Write down your tent-mates names and phone numbers, call them up next time there's an election, and Occupy a voting booth.

In a democracy there are many ways to engage elected officials, but requiring them to visit every interest group's assemblies is neither pragmatic nor fair. Kind of like if every interest group occupied parks for weeks on end.

2. If the City of Edmonton can give over $100 million in subsidies to a billionaire conglomerate, we should also be able to invest in City services, not cut them. We would like to see the $10.5 million in City service cuts eliminated and the property-tax hike apply not only to Edmontonians, but to the Katz group as well.

Cuts? The proposed 2012 City of Edmonton budget has a $43.6 million increase in spending. The 2011 budget was $82 million higher than 2010, out of a total budget of a whopping $1.8 billion, to which I'm sure the Occupiers contribute far less than they receive. If those are cuts, I'm going to ask my boss for a big one.

3. We want to see an end to the corporate influence over our democratic process. In Alberta this means ending the cozy relationship the government has with the oil industry. We want independent monitoring, a fair royalty regime, and an end to the open-door policy that the government has with oil representatives. We want a government, not a public relations firm.

What if it were illegal for corporations to make political donations, if there were modest caps on what individuals could contribute, and if who gave what to who were a matter of public record for everyone to see? And why does that sound so dang familiar?

And what if there were an Alberta Royalty Review, an independent panel you wouldn't find in Venezuala, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else, which resulted in a new Royalty Framework that adopted the great majority of its recommendations, including increasing royalties by 20%. Dang - now why does that sound so familiar too?

Amazingly, all of this was accomplished through democracy years ago, and without the need for protests. Perhaps the Occupy movement could use a DeLorean?

4. We want to see wages, pensions, employment insurance, social assistance, workers compensation, AISH and disability benefits at minimum indexed to the average increases in salary and bonuses for the top ten CEOs in this country. We also want to see the gap between the richest 100 Canadian CEO salaries ($6.6 million in 2009) and the minimum wage decrease.

Even if that were even remotely within the jurisdiction of a municipal government, do you really want there to be a relationship between a small, select group of highly-educated people who have taken great risks, and invested virtually every waking hour of their lives to their businesses and the guy working at the kiosk in the lobby where they buy their morning coffee? What does one have to do with the other?

If we're improving the financial situations of the lower and working classes (which we are), why should it matter if the upper class is doing even better? Envy?

If you'd prefer a system where the poor get kicked in the face as long as the rich get kicked between the legs, there are a number of impoverished nations that will accommodate you and your tents. Those of us who wanted to help the lower and working classes while being happy for the upper class can stay here (in our houses).

5.We want to see fully funded public health care and pharmacare programs.

Well then good news! Since the Canada Health Act was adopted in 1984, I'm pretty sure this demand was met before most of you were even glints in the milkman's eyes.

6. We want to see free post-secondary education. Education is a right and anyone that has the desire to better themselves by going to college or University should be able to do so regardless of income and without being saddled with a huge student debt.

For everyone to get a free post-secondary education we will need coercion, for which we have three options. Either place guns to the heads of educators to teach for free, or guns to the heads of taxpayers to pay the educators to teach or - my favourite - guns to the heads of students to sell coffee at the kiosk in the lobby to pay the educators to teach.

Hm - that last one's not a bad idea actually. Save a tent for me.

7. We want to see all Free Trade agreements adhere to the country with the most stringent environmental and labour laws, not the worst. (For example, NAFTA’s Chapter 11, giving corporations in one country the right to sue a foreign government over ‘potential loss of profits’, regardless of the environmental consequences, should be abolished.)

A demand to modify the North American Free Trade Agreement - I don't know why the mayor hasn't gotten on top of that yet, but I'm sure he's grateful to have potheads in tents to sort out the complexities of international trade relations for him.

If you really want to wait this out that's fine, but if John Turner and Mel Hurtig vowed to live in a tent back in 1988 until problems with the Free Trade Agreement had been worked out, they'd really start to smell by now.

8. Canada signed the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; now we want our government to implement it by giving our First Peoples all the rights contained within it, including the right to Free, Prior and
Informed Consent on all energy developments on Indigenous Territory.

That's a great idea. There are thousands of people working in various government departments and thousands of people employed at oil and gas companies dedicated to community relations and land management legalities for First Nations, and this would finally give them something to do (other than get really awesome at Minesweeper).

In closing, I'd like to thank the Occupy movement for these wonderful ideas, and I can totally see why this required sitting in our public parks for the past month. There's absolutely no way any of this could have been figured out in their own homes.

I wish foreign governments would give their citizen's money to their banks more often, so that people living in completely different countries where regulations prevent that sort of thing from happening can get together more often and come up with ideas that have already been raised and in many cases implemented long ago.

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