Scott Etches in the Political life

Scott Etches Overview

Scott Etches was born December 16th, 1960, in Sakatoon, Sask.. Saskatchen is the home to many small town farming communities. These communities were built by neighbors helping neighbors, building barns and mending fences. This has been a major influence on the life of Scott Etches who has kept a committment to serve his community in the best ways as he sees fit. These have ranged from Community banking systems, Serving as an elected official, Recording Engineer and a champion of non-profit online initiatives. Scott Etches is always ready to step in to fill in the blanks not covered by Government and other NGO's to adhere to his Mission Statement. Working towards inclusive healthy communities making informed decisions

Scott Etches

Chung King House of Metal

Direct Access Democracy 2000 - 2006

After the successful acquisition of my project Alarmcam.com by US Oil and Gas Scott Etches had the financial means to devote time to the non-profit sector. Scott considered the future of democracy in the age of the information. With the goal to strengthen the relationships between the political consumer and their elected officials, he started DirectAccessDemocracy.net. Scott thought that there was no reason for the constituent not to be involved in the political decision making process if they so chose to do so. The political consumer should be able to profile themselves in what areas of political concern that was most important to them. The idea was that when a bill or vote came before an elected assembly that the constituent could be notified of such considerations and participate in the debate via the web. There could be dedicated forums on the issue and online polling of registered voters to cast a ballot as they saw fit. This information could be available to the elected official who could use it as a guide in the decision making process. I was naive as to the level of participation possible for the constituent as they had their lives to run and not the government. We elect officials to do due diligence and consider the compromises necessary to achieve a balanced legislation that is practical. In other words there was only one person who used it to continue to express his outlandish opinions while I was an elected official.

Talkon.ca - 2002 -2005

Scott Etches was traumatized by September 11th, 2001. He had lived in NYC for well over 10 years and knew friends and family who worked at ground zero. Horrified as he was, Scott was completely distraught over the willingness for revenge that would bring such horror to other innocent people as we reacted with swift "justice". Scott Etches ws disturbed the idea of cluster bombing Kabul. He doubted we hit any of the terrorists there but surely did damage to families already torn apart by previous Russian occupation. Scott has no interest in bringing his pain to others for temporary emotional satisfaction and watched as the basic fabric of American values were eroded away as we conceded to the objectives of our enemies. They wanted to disrupt the values we held dear, they did. We surrendered those values to our hate and rather than using the Constitution to address rightful justice we forgo its guiding hand and initialed the Patriot Act. Only one politician stood by the Constitution and called for surgical Marques of Reprisal to get the "evil doers", Ron Paul. He argued that the United States should not get into protracted wars and that the Constitution was good enough to deal with any threat to America. He was right. Instead we have a never ending war that is only growing.

It became corporately unproductive for organizations to allow the free political discourse that is central to democracy. Throughout North America online forums for such discussion were closed down. Without Free Speech and an avenue for the citizenry to express themselves Scott Etches realized that democracy itself was being blinded with fear. To that he opened Talkon.ca to keep the political conversation open. It became one of Canada's leading political forums and as such became a target of scrutiny by other interested media organizations who wanted Scott to moderate some of the outrageous comments some individuals made. Charges were filed under the hate crimes laws of Canada by a leading corporate media interest which were dismissed by the RCMP after investigation. The policy of Talkon.ca was, no editing, your words can bury yourself. One of the important lessons for Scott was learned at his time he spent at Chung King but reinforced at Talkon.ca with clarity. Many media organizations are owned by "people". People have political agendas and will use their companies to get their message out while marginalizing opposing points of view. Who owns the media owns the message. Even Scott used the medium of Talkon.ca to allow people the right to have their say, unedited. That was the agenda of Scott Etches.

Federal Election 2004

This was Scott Etches' first incursion into Federal politics in Canada. Scott ran as an independent who by no way independent of the community, Scott was interdependent. His first task was to gauge community need. He knew he wasn't going to win but wanted to bring up in public debate issues that did not fit into the party brochures. Scott Etches realizes that party politicians represent their party to the people and not the people to the elected assembly. One main issue had come to prominence while having discussions with the Mayors of Mission and Maple Ridge. Municipalities have no power in the Canadian Constitution. They are secondary citizens to the Provincial Governments. The Union of Canadian Municipalities had been advocating the Federal Government to open up Constitutional talks to address this issue. Scott Etches contacted all the independent candidates across Canada and urged them to make this a talking point of their campaigns. Prime Minister Martin did cave but Scott suspects it was mainly due to the pressure the Union had been putting on him. Rather than agreeing to open up talks on the Constitution he instead agreed to allocate the GST gas tax for infrastructure being directly paid to the Municipalities. Conveniently at this time articles started appearing in the Abbotsford News about the Talkon.ca forum which appeared to try to lead people to believe that Scott was by allowing hate speech and that he was promoting it. It back fired and it turns out that many other people also believed it necessary in Democracy to give an unfiltered forum to the voice of the people. The vote count was in and Scott Etches had the opportunity to demonstrate one of the top ten percentages for an independent in Canada that election. He also appeared on a CBC radio program which explored the roles of independents in an election. Besides being able to bring up important non-party platform issues he also noted at that time the possibility of holding a swing vote to Parliament if it was a tight race. It was a tight race and the other independent on the show, Chuck Cadman who disagreed with me on this point as being improbable, did go on to being that swing vote as an independent. Score one for independents being able to serve their communities without being tied down by a party leash.

BCSTV, Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform

The Provincial government wanted to put the idea of Electoral reform to the People in the form of referendum. They had convened a task force comprised of randomly picked citizens to review the intricacies of election processes and decide on the best one. After months of education and debate the task force came to a conclusion on what was best for BC. The government then wanted to put that informed decision to the citizens who were not educated on the matter. Scott Etches started a campaign to educate the population on election reform. he was allowed in the Provincial debates to have a time frame dedicated to electoral reform debate. Scott was willing to pick either side but more often than not Scott Etches was left to argue with himself onstage as no one seemed to know anything about the Electoral Systems they were voting on. While debating himself he would point his finger at himself and exclaim: "You sir are a cad and a fool". It was still difficult to grasp even with humor thrown in. Scott finally found what works. To have people vote using the two systems while entering the debate and announcing the results of each at the end of the discussion. Results they understand. If the Canadian Government wants to hold a referendum on electoral reform they should first have the reformed system be done alongside the regular election process as a demonstration so people can see the conclusions and have a referendum on it the next general election.

MissionTV, 2003 -2005

Missiontv, a slideshow of information on charitable organizations. MissionTV was an initiatie to deploy a not-for-profit information channel in highly visible local locations within the District of Mission. Various businesses and events allowed space in which information on charitable organizations coud be displayed on monitors to the general public. This allowed non-profit organizations a vehicle to get their message out in no-cost manner. Service providers were allowed to present graphics and textual information on a slideshow similar services.

Senior Citizens Barter Bank, 2004 -

The Senior Citizens Barter Bank was a financial tool in which seniors could barter services instead of cash (which they did not have) to improve the quality of their lives. The lesson of that project is that people need to be needed. In Canada we far too often see people only as recipient of services rather than active participants in the service delivery. If an elder wakes up knowing they are needed by others then they have a reason to remain active and healthy. The idea was borrowed by several deployments of the idea worldwide. In China they saw a migration of young people to the major urban centers which left the elders to fend for themselves in rural areas. China tapped into the wealth of experience of their elder population to provide services to each other as the younger generation had been the social security net for the family units. This was initiated in the Cedars Assisted Living facility. What is amazing is the breadth of talents and services offered by our seniors. The seniors community has a wealth of skills that can be deployed as a benefit to that community which will enable them to become increasingly independent to live rewarding lives.

Non-Profit Housing Associations, 2002 - 2005

After Scott's participation in the 2002 civic elections for the Municipality of Mission he was recruited to serve on the board of the Mission & District Senior Citizens Housing Association(Welton Towers). Scott Etches was promptly elected as the Finance Chair. Listening to other board members Scott was urged to do something about the crippling interest charges levied by CMHC. Having been negotiated in the early eighties the association was paying 12% on the mortgage financing. After a hard fought battle Scott convinced CMHC to let the Association to renegotiate with a private lender at 4.25%. They also forgave loans on repairs to the building and in total we saved the association almost a million dollars. This allowed the Association to also break with the political mandates of the Federal Government. There is an important note here that as a community association without being trapped by the letter of the law the association beame much more adaptive to meeting the needs of the community. Rather than just being for seniors the community recognized the need to provide affordable housing options to victims of domestic violence, the disabled and other hardship cases. Our new found financial stability was leveraged to become a partner in the Mission Association of Senior Housing which built the Cedars project. Judith Ray, the nurse of Terry Fox, was the main driver for this project and working with her inspired Scott to undertake the development of The Senior Citizens Barter Bank.

Mission City Council, 2005 - 2008

Scott Etches accidentally got elected. Scott did though work at forming City Council even before the election was fully underway. One of main problems with people running for office is that they will say anything to get elected. They promise this, they promise that. Election time is one of the few times that people actually pay attention to politics and Scott Etches wanted an informed slate of candidates for them to choose from. As soon as the election was called, Scott called up all the candidates running and asked them to come to a Public Information meeting. At the meeting were representatives from all the various community groups and associations, that wanted to participate. They were each given time to explain to the would be politicians what their organizational needs were. It was great to see in action. Instead of gunslinging politicians promising to sweep the streets clean if elected, we had a group of informed advocates of what could realistically be done to better our community. One main point stressed by the RCMP is that we needed social development to reduce crime. Scott knows they tire of being babysitters for poor parenting.

• Social Development Department: This was a jewel in the crown of all the people in ission who cme together and had a format to put their ideas from print to action. The cadidates elected were the politicians who got the message from the community. Upon election we gathered all interested organizations , groups, associations and individuals or other together into one gymnasium and with a facilitator outlined the communities priorities. Social Justice with healing circles. This was what Scott believes was the best deterrent to future crime. Liz Clay was instrumental in educating me on the importance of resolving and healing internal community conflicts threw healing circles rather putting the "undecided" criminals into a punitive system that would turn them to the life long crimminals.
• Long Term Financial Planning: Planned growth strategy with adaptation of Development Cost Charges as to not saddle current taxpayers.
• Youth Engagement: Something worked. Property crime in the District of Mission went down over 40% within the first two years with auto theft dropping 67%.

Northern Assesment

After a divorce Scott was despondent and left Mission to go as far away as he could. He went to the arctic having convinced himself he would explore the concepts of co-governance. Scott will not reveal too much on this now pending soon coming legal action outside the jurisdiction of Canadian courts but Scott will say that he have never in his life seen such institutional corruption. No where, not even in south east Asia where they are amateurs in comparison to the institutional destruction of lives. There is no point in Canadian reconciliation while the criminal justice system has just replaced the residential school system.

Federal Election, 2015. Independent Candidacy

Scott Etches intended to run in the Federal Election campaign of 2015 but after trying to arrange a time with the NWT returning officer for when he could submit his papers, the officer disappeared. When Scott was in the final days before the nomination papers submission to Elections Canada was due Elections Canada kept referring Scott to his number which ended him back to the Ottawa office. The returning officer did have time to take the candidacy papers of all the parties though. A new returning officer was appointed just after Scott was to have his papers in. Its all in black and white on the Elections Canada website for times of appointments of returning officers. Did I mention wholesale institutional corruption in the north yet? Elections Canada did not get back to Scott Etches on this one. CBC Marketplace did not report or investigate his complaint. CBC would not investigate it but later called it a failed attempt at an independent run, the marginalization. See CBC News North the episode just before the election. Got to love the media. Well its just that you have to know them, the boys. Scott learned to expect such behavior in teh north by Canadian institutions.

Federal Election, 2015. Voter Engagement

Voter Engagement: Having engaged the youth in the community to work on Scott's independent campaign he did not want to let them down as they did so well getting over three hundred signatures on his nomination papers. Scott re-tooled it into a "get out the vote campaign". So the challenge was on how to get a traditional non-voting hunter gatherer tribe to buy into the whiteman's election process. Voter participation in the NWT went up 10% but in Inuvik it skyrocketed up by 35%. Kids just don't know the system is rigged against them and if they keep that attitude, it can't be. They may be too young to vote but not too young to have an opinion on their future. The poster that got the elders to vote simply said ...... We have to teach our kids to hunt on the Changing land. There was a picture of a Mother polar bear with a baby bear. Scott thought it best not to use a picture of Stephen Harper and Peter Mckay as then everyone would have wanted to vote twice for the Liberals. Scott Etches was vary careful not to try to iinfluence the opinions of the constituents.

US Federal Election - Arctic Restaurant 2016

It was important to Scott Etches to involve himself in the US election when he realized that the current slate of US politicians did not have the capacity to respond to the Trump candidacy. He had faith in Trump from the beginning that he would win as he ran on evokiing emotional reactions. Scott knew to use an opponants strengths to his advantage. Trump has only one asset. His name. He values that above all else. Scott acquired the name of his Grandfather's original brothel in Whitehorse and took the lease on the original location. Publicized with cartoons to bridge the gap between his grandfather profiting off of women's bodies to our now President-elect continuing the core family business with his various beauty pageants. Also encouraged a few people in Florida to distribute my poster targeting the Hispanic community: "Don't Vote, Nobody wants to speak Spanish". The Hispanic community did come out to vote. Much like Candidate Trump's campaign it was not one built in intellectual arguments. It evoked an emotional reaction that could not be intellectualized away later. Never argue with feelings, it never works.

Arctic Restaurant - Post-election: Protect the First Amendment. Scott believes President Trump when he says he will rip open the First Amendment because of the way he was treated by media. He's a novice politician but he is not getting used to it. Though this is a threat to democracy. If we lose freedom of the press then all else is lost. Freedom of the Press is Democracy's hard line in the sand.

Electoral Reform, Canada

To convince the Federal Government to hold an using a non-binding electoral reform sysem of choice alongside the binding first past the post election so the constituents can tangibly see the two systems in operation with results. Let them vote once they have used the system and can judge the results in the next Fedeeral Election.

US Election, 2024

Scott Etches will be ready to run as the first Canadian Presidential Candidate, just in case Donald Trump wants to run for a third term. If he does, Scott is sure the Constitution won't be in effect at that time. Scott realizes that in order to be convincing to the American public, he will have to do what they love. Become a money hoarder like the President. In order to do it responsibly it will be important for Scott to ensure that everyone profits. Scott has shelved various business plans to raise significant capital. Scott Etches hopes now that he is considering running for President that he will get secret service protection. ;)