See? This is why you shouldn’t have voted Conservative!

Well, that didn’t take long.

I actually cannot believe that Parliament has just opened, and Stephen Harper already has me in a blind rage.

Step 1: Economic statement focus

Earlier in the week, I heard that the government’s economic statement was to focus on preserving a small surplus, plus some initial cuts.

I thought that was a very strange approach in a time when most economists, including conservative (small “c”) ones, seemed to be saying that spending and stimulus were the most important priorities at this time.

Still, I was only mildly irritated at this point. Sure, it suggested the Conservatives were bad economic managers. But I already knew that, and there is some comfort in being right. Plus, I still have a job, for the time being at least, and it’s Christmas. So why fuss about politics now?

Step 2: Cutting federal funding for political parties

This, I was not happy about, even before all kerfuffle arose.

Bully for the Conservatives that they’re so great at fund-raising they don’t need any help from the taxpayer. That’s what happens your party is the one that attracts most of the rich people.

But parties who attract more lower-income people who can’t afford to donate (NDP, Greens), or are currently in some disarray (hello, Liberals), still have the right to exist. No, more than the right; they must exist, or we don’t have a democracy. We have a Conservative dictatorship.

Step 3: The opposition rises

That is some hubris that caused Harper to think the other parties would actually vote for their own demise.

Now, it may well be politically wise for the other parties to say it’s the economic statement itself, and not the cutting of federal funding to political parties, that is the tipping point. I’ll come back to that.

But my opinion is that the party funding alone is enough reason to defeat this bill.

  1. It’s unbalanced. This bill came in to compensate for loss of other ways for political parties to raise money. Previously, corporations and unions could donate; now they cannot. Previously, individuals could give as much they wanted; now they’re capped at $1000. You can’t take the funding away without making other legal changes that allow the parties to compensate for that loss.
  2. It’s undemocratic. Funding is calculated on a per-vote basis (with the exception of parties earning less than 5% of the popular vote). It’s one of the very few ways in our system that (almost) every vote counts. Some people, particularly Green Party supporters, do cast their votes exactly for that reason: to get federal funds to their party of choice. Taking away the funding disenfranchises all who voted for a major party.
  3. It doesn’t help the economy. The amount is too small to matter. Now, there is something to be said for the mostly symbolic gesture. Freezing top-level government salaries and cutting perks also probably doesn’t really help the economy, but it’s just bad optics to be flying all over in first class while people are losing their jobs and savings. But party funding isn’t a luxury; democracies aren’t completely cost-free.

    If the Conservatives don’t want their share of that funding, they can give theirs back and dare the other parties to do the same (knowing that they won’t). That way the Conservatives can get on their high horse, where they like to be, without kneecapping their opposition.

But party funding probably is a dicey thing to defeat a government on, so the opposition is instead focusing on the content of the economic statement. And frankly, there is plenty to be against there, too.

  • Claiming they already stimulated the economy with 2006 tax cuts. Huh? Even ignoring that they selected the most non-stimulative form of tax cut possible—the GST—something you did three years ago is not going to have a new effect now.
  • Claiming a surplus based on bogus number, such as inflated projections for the price of oil.
  • No infrastructure programs at all, though it’s not difficult to find excellent candidates for these across the country.

But even at this point, I wasn’t quite in a blind rage. I was really kind of excited that the opposition was showing some teeth, and acting cooperative, and refusing to roll over for the bully at the helm. Until…

Step 4: Harper claims a coalition government is undemocratic

While we have been working on the economy, the opposition has been working on a backroom deal to overturn the results of the last election without seeking the consent of voters. They want to take power, not earn it.

Stephen Harper

Overturn the results? No consent of voters? Makes me crazy ever time I read or hear it.

Mr. Harper, the majority of Canadians voted against you and your party.

The majority of Canadians voted for four center-left parties who agree on a number of major issues.

Three of these parties won seats. Two are discussing forming a coalition government, with the backing of the third.

This could be the closest Canada has ever had to the makeup of the government reflecting their actual votes.

Step 5: ?

Who knows how this plays out. But if the Conservatives don’t change their statement, they deserve to go down over it. And that better not lead to an election!

In the midst of a global economic slowdown that may plunge Canada into a deep recession and threaten the livelihood of many Canadians, it would helpful if there were some adults in Ottawa. … While there is certainly a crisis, there is no semblance of crisis leadership here, and therefore no chance for national cohesion. The responsibility for that lies squarely on the shoulders of Stephen Harper.

— Globe and Mail editorial, How to compound an economic crisis

Martin Luther King dreamed of the day when men would be judged “by the content of their character.” By that benchmark, Stephen Harper has proved himself to be a nasty little man.

— Peter Blaikie, letter to the Editor, Muzzling the opposition

The miscalculations have been stunning. Mr. Harper’s strategy has accomplished already the near-impossible: to bring the Liberals and NDP together.

He had so many other, less partisan options at a time of economic crisis and grave national concern. That he acted in this fashion, at this time, was enormously revealing. And very sad.

— Jeffrey Simpson, Economist with a tin heart, politician with a tin ear

Whatever the debatable merits of distancing parties from taxpayers, this isn’t the time or way to change payments peripheral to dangers facing Canadians. It won’t save a single job, meaningfully reduce the ruling party’s runaway spending, or somehow make the democratic exercise cost free.

— James Travers, Harper has needlessly provoked this crisis

How can I resist you?

We saw Mamma Mia this week.

No, not the movie—that, we caught on the flight from Rome to Toronto.

It was a live stage play at Centre in the Square. An American touring production.

Darn, that was fun!

We had really great seats. In renewing the Broadway series subscription, we chose the new night being offered, and thereby ended up in the seventh row, right in the centre. Except for the bother of walking by so many people on the way to our seats, it was pretty much perfect.

And the show is just so entertaining. It moves along well, it has lot of humour, the singers were better than Pierce Brosnan :-), and you get to dance along at the end.

DH also enjoyed it, to his surprise. He asked how it compared to the Toronto production I’d seen some years ago, but I couldn’t remember that well enough. (Except I know my seats weren’t nearly as good.) I didn’t recall the TO production being quite as racy as what I saw, and I hadn’t remembered all the encore songs. But that could well be my memory and not actual differences.

Show we saw was sold out, but it’s also playing all next week. If you want a fun night out, I’d recommend it.

Trip to Italy

We really enjoyed our two-week trip to Italy.

For details, see Planning a trip to Italy in two weeks.

Or for just photos: Italy 2008.

It’s getting better all the time

Given my last post, I thought I should just update that things are going better. My little news break seems to have helped reset the brain out of panic mode. (The sun’s been nice, too.) Now I just have the normal “I’m about to travel; must remember to do x, y, and z” jitters.

Excuse for me for not blogging, but I’ve been a crazy person

Woke up in a panic
Like somebody fired a gun
I wish I could be dreaming
But the nightmare’s just begun

Ever do that? Wake up from a dead sleep in full panic mode, heart pounding, mind racing?

It’s happened to me a few times in the past couple weeks, and it’s quite unpleasant. I do not recommend it. And as sleep deprivation accumulates, the brain gets less and less effective. For the first time, I feel I have just a tiny understanding of what parents of babies and young children go through.

Don’t know why I feel so bad
Is it the weather, or am I going mad?
Don’t know why I feel this way
I don’t know whether I’m coming or I’m going
Can’t cover up, ’cause it’s obviously showing

Normally, I’m a fairly calm person, not given to emotional outbursts. So the number of times I’ve heard “You’re stressing me out!” in the past few weeks must be some sort of record.

I didn’t actually know, before, that stress was catching.

“Nice to know you’re human, too,” I also heard. Well that’s over-rated, I say.

Standing on an island
In the middle of the road
Traffic either side of me
Now which way do I go?
I should have stayed at home
I should have never come outside
Now I wish I’d never tried
To cross to the other side

So what’s been bothering me? Well, I’m not going to say. It’s personal, and it’s nothing dire—no cancer, no house burned down. It’s just stuff, that’s led to a lot more introspection than I’m used to, which is clearly bad for me. Frankly, I’m getting quite sick of myself.

Lyin’ awake in a cold, cold sweat
Am I overdrawn, am I going into debt?
It gets worse, the older that you get
No escape from this state of confusion I’m in

The Kinks: State of Confusion

And anyway, it’s gone beyond anything real, and I actually am panicking about going in debt, even though I have no real reason to do so, upcoming trip to Europe or no. And hearing all this bad economic news—not helpful! I’m like a walking Dow Jones average, overreacting to every new bit of information.

I thought, maybe a news break would help, then noticed how much news permeates my life. I wake up to CBC news (business news at 6:45), get up and get the paper (hard to get to the Arts section without passing by Business news with all its downward red arrows), cook dinner to CTV News 1: Your News first! (Business report at 6:30 pm).

So anyway, that’s why I haven’t been writing about politics much. But I suppose I should say something about the federal election results.

Given how bad the Liberal campaign was, it’s fortunate Conservatives managed to lose the majority on their own, scaring the Quebecois with thoughts of arts cuts and 14-year-olds in jail. But they did get a stronger minority, one that will take two parties to bring them down. Stéphane Dion didn’t dither in doing the right thing and stepping down, though this means the Liberals will again be spending all their money on getting a new leader, and not on winning power. There’s been lots of talk of uniting the Left. I’d love to see it, but won’t hold my breath.

Most disappointing for me had to be the local results, losing two excellent Liberal MPs: Andrew Telegdi (by 43 votes!) and Karen Redman. Redman lost to yet another “holy roller”—a social conservative, against gay marriage, pro-life, etc. So the whole region is now “served” by undistinguished Conservative members who will be as muzzled in office as they were running for it.

At least south of border, knock wood and all that, election results are looking to be much more promising. In fact, I was listening to Mr. Obama read from his own Audacity of Hope book today. It was very relaxing. He’s so smart, so well spoken.

It did, indeed, provide me some escape from the state of confusion I’m in.

Doing my bit for democracy

For the first time in my life, I voted in the early polls. That’s it, I’m done. Now I can focus on a truly inspiring Canadian contest: Who is Canada’s favourite dancer? (Seriously, if you haven’t seen So You Think You Can Dance: Canada? You should. It’s been delightful so far.)

But the economy is tanking, the polls are tightening, and the election is beginning to look like a bit of a booby prize—whoever wins this one is going to be blamed for the bad times, even if it’s not their fault.

So with all the market turmoil, can we just forget about combating global warming now? Wouldn’t that be nice. Remember, economic crises—we’ve gotten over them before, we’ll get over them again. Ecological crises—not so much. I’m going to quote Andrew Nikiforuk quoting Thomas Friedman, because they’re both real conservative guys:

By Friedman’s evocative accounting, the globe has now entered the “Energy-Climate Era” and faces several hot emergencies: petropolitics (it gives power and money to leaders who have earned neither); dramatic climate disruption; the rise of middle classes in India and China; and a real weapon of mass destruction, the catastrophic loss of biodiversity in the world’s forests and oceans. The global economy has become “a monster truck with the gas pedal stuck and we’ve lost the key.” Unless we switch to cleaner fuels, “our lives will be reduced, redacted, and restricted.”

And we’ve got about 10 years to do it. Cheery, huh?

Also interesting—because I just haven’t heard about it anywhere else—was Doug Saunders article about a scheduled meeting between presidents of the EU and whoever is Prime Minister on October 14. Subject: A potential economic partnership with Europe. Problem: All the Canadian provinces would have to agree with this, and Canadian provinces don’t agree on much. Saunders blames Harper’s policy of “open federalism” for just making this disunity worse.

Despite Europe’s stock market also being in a “boomerang” crisis, it’s still likelier to be a healthier trading partner in the next few years than the US, the source of the collapse. And it would be nice to have a PM who wasn’t philosophically opposed to getting all the provinces into one trading agreement with that lucrative market.

Vote for the animals

Now, I don’t think animal welfare should be the top issue in this campaign, but Canada’s penalties for animal abuse crimes are a little archaic, don’t you think? And the public gets regularly outraged when an appalling act of cruelty against an animal gets met with a slap on the wrist, as that’s all the law allows for.

So, I guess there is one area where I think we could get a little tougher on crime.

Anyway, WSPA sent a survey to all five major parties to ask for their stand, their platform, on animal welfare issues.

But without even looking up the results, can you guess? Can you guess which one party refused to answer any of the questions?

You got it. The Conservatives aren’t even willing to make a statement against kitten abuse.

Where’s the platform—under the sweater?

Jack Layton to Stephen Harper

An environmental take on strategic voting

Generally, I have to say, I hate voting strategically. However stupid it is in our “first past the post” system (and I still haven’t quite forgiven Ontarians for voting against changing it), I prefer to vote for something than against something else.

That said, I’m must admit to being relieved, this election, that the party I really do want to vote for also happens to be the party with by far the best odds of defeating the Conservatives in this riding.

But I come to this topic from an email I received from the environmental group, Just Earth.

What’s an environmentalist to do in the federal election? Even for card-carrying Greens, it is complicated. The party worst on the environment in general, and climate change in particular, is the Conservative party. All four others are better, although they differ on particulars. The Liberals have the excellent Green Shift plan, which the New Democrats reject, but the NDP is better on clean energy.

Strategic voting will be the option for many. A website has been launched that will help voters make a rational choice (www.voteforenvironment.ca). A riding by riding breakdown identifies races where the Conservatives won by a small margin, and are therefore vulnerable, and ridings where they are a close second and a threat. Some 60 ridings will make the difference, argues this (somewhat incognito) website.

With split votes, this would be the result: Conservative 147 seats, Liberal 76, NDP 34, Green 0, Bloc 49, independent 2.

If we “vote smart,” this would be the result: Conservative 97, Liberal 109, NDP 46, Green 1, Bloc 53, independent 2.

Not easy, though. Imagine being a federalist in Quebec faced with the “strategic” choice of with voting Bloc or getting another Conservative elected!

Also interesting was a report from the Sierra Club, which compares and grades the party’s environmental platforms as follows:

  • Green Party: A-
  • Liberals: B+
  • NDP: B
  • Bloc Québecois: B
  • Conservatives: F+

I must say, their assessment of the differences between Green, Liberal, and NDP on this front were smaller than I thought.

(Remember when votes used to get split on the right side of the political spectrum, too? I really miss those days.)

Canadian election week 3. Sigh.

By the end of the week, I was getting pretty grumpy with all involved.

  • The Liberals, for being organized enough to put together a great platform, but not organized enough to sell it.
  • The NDP, for being on the wrong side of the carbon tax issue, even though they have a leader who should have credibility and integrity on this issue, above all others.
  • The Conservatives, for… well, for a lot of reasons, as you know, but especially for pandering to the worst sides of human nature.
  • Far too many of my fellow Canadians, for responding to that appeal.
  • And the Greens, for… Actually, I didn’t get annoyed with the Greens. But I’ll also not convinced they’re quite ready for prime time.

So took a little break on the weekend, took in a little of that arts and culture ordinary Canadians don’t care about, traveled green (bus, train, feet), and found a few little positives.

  • My local candidates debate, where nobody seemed awful. And yes, I even mean the Conservative guy, who can’t be completely hopeless, since they actually let him talk to the media and all that. (Thanks be I’m not in Harold Albrecht’s riding!)
  • Some Facebook vote trading group has been started, in an “anyone but the Conservatives” bid. Say you want to vote NDP but live in a riding where they don’t have a chance, you trade your vote with someone in a more NDP-friendly riding, and you vote their choice for them.
  • All of our parties are still better than the Republicans and their leaders. There’s always that.
  • And, our media, at least some of it some of the time, providing the analysis and details that politicians won’t discuss.

And on that last point… A few favourites from last week.

On carbon taxes

It doesn’t matter how often proponents pledge to recycle carbon tax money into lower taxes on incomes and companies. It doesn’t matter how many economists argue in favour of pricing carbon through a tax.

The Conservatives have distorted the carbon tax idea and scared people. The economy would be “wrecked,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper says. Funny then that Demark, with a carbon tax for a while now, had higher per capita growth than Canada from 1990 to 2006: 36 to 32 per cent.

What, therefore, remains? Policy incoherence across Canada, and Conservative and NDP plans that won’t get the job done. Mr. Harper has not spoken in the election about his “plan,” except to say he has one. What is it?

So in May, the government published the latest iteration of an incredibly complicated regulatory plan, many of the details of which are still unknown. Normally, Conservatives consider complicated regulations as to be viewed with great suspicion. But their “plan” offers the mother of all regulatory schemes.

The plan contains lots of little programs for conservation and renewables. They’re mostly inoffensive, but they won’t bring many emissions reductions.

The silliest is the public transit tax credit, introduced in the 2006 budget as an emissions reducer. The vast majority of people receiving the credit were already riding public transit. By the government’s own numbers, the credit will lower emissions this year by a risible 30,000 tonnes at a cost of $220-million – a staggeringly high per tonne cost.

Jeffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail

That $773 dollar of your taxes per ton, folks. That’s so much better than the $10 a ton the Liberals are proposing! Those fiscal conservatives — they are so smart! I totally see why they vote for the party that is so wise about its spending.

On crime

The party’s obsession with crime-and-punishment policies repugnant to urban voters suggests one of two things: Either it is secretly worried about collapsing support on the Prairies – as if! – or else it actually believes that voters lust for vengeance against children (now known as “denunciation” among politically correct Martians – denunciation for life).

How is it that representatives who hail largely from Canada’s most badly policed, violent cities and towns presume so easily to lecture the leaders of Canada’s best-policed, safest city?

Torontonians both pay significantly more on policing per capita than other Canadians, according to Statistics Canada, and they enjoy significantly safer streets than the residents of virtually every town in the country – outside Quebec, which is both the safest and the most liberal-minded province.

Thus the fruits of being “soft on crime.” Crime rates have dropped an amazing 30 per cent since 1991.

John Barber, Globe and Mail

On leadership

Stéphane Dion is an odd case. He keeps yapping about his green plan even as party hotshots tell him the story line has changed, we’re off that stuff. Could he think it isn’t a show – that the planet really is in danger? Would that count as real leadership rather than the acted kind? Poor Stéphane. Could he ever play a leader? Doubtful, although if he got elected somehow, and everyone onstage – journalists, MPs – treated him as a leader, he might start feeling, and acting it. Ah, the magic of theatre.

Why hasn’t Harper the Strong pulled away from the field? Why is the Layton NDP stuck? How has the weak, frail Dion hung in – as if voters are seeking something outside the strong leadership box? Such as – weak leadership. Isn’t that what real democracy would be about? It would disperse leadership among its citizens. In ancient Athens, they chose most leaders by lot, after policies were established in public debate. They made an exception only for leaders chosen in wartime.

So maybe the leadership axiom isn’t so axiomatic. An Ipsos Reid poll this week found 62 per cent of Canadians say they’re most “swayed” by party stances on key issues versus 21 per cent by leaders. Pollster Darrell Bricker was so stunned, and so committed to official theology, that he insulted voters by saying he didn’t know if they meant it or were just trying to give “the right answer.” To gain what, his approval? Maybe someone should poll the pollsters on whether they think Canadian voters have any brains.

Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail

On quality of Conservative candidates

Among Conservatives, there is a lot of grassroots support for Chris Reid’s brand of conservatism. He wants to close the CBC and scrap the Indian Act and seems to have deep-seated rage issues – but Team Harper dumped him anyway. Word is that Stephen Harper draws the line at homosexuals with guns; and really, considering his record on that file, I can’t say I blame him.

As for the pro-drug, pro-prostitution Mr. Warawa, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office now says that, as of three days ago, he has changed his views and no longer believes anything he ever said on any issue whatsoever.

Rumour is that he has been run through a Conservative re-education camp. A few pistol whips from a flak-jacket-clad Peter McKay (“Who’s the bitch now, Warawa?”) topped off with a chemical lobotomy, and the boy is as good as new, a virtual Bev Oda – happy to be seen and not heard from ever again. He will make one hell of a cabinet minister some day.

By the sounds of it, when it comes to dealing with party dissidents, the Chinese government could learn a thing or two from our sweater-wearing Prime Minister.

Rick Mercer, Globe and Mail

RDtNVC: Increasing energy prices without compensating with tax cuts

There were two letters in the Record yesterday related to the carbon tax plan. One asked how charging for pollution could possibly reduce it — wouldn’t companies just pass the increased cost onto customers as higher prices? The other asked, wouldn’t it be better to just force big polluters to pollute less, via regulation?

Both good questions. Comes down intuitively favoring a regulatory or “cap and trade” approach over a carbon tax, as so well articulated by Jeffery Simpson in the Globe and Mail:

They [the Green Party] bring urgency to the debate that the Conservatives lack, and they’ve got one thing right: that carbon emissions have to be assigned a price, that a tax is a defensible way to do it, and that the revenues from the tax are best recycled into lower personal and corporate income taxes.

There is another way of finding a price, through a cap-and-trade system, as proposed by the Conservatives and NDP. This targets mostly large polluters. Some of the costs are then passed to consumers. Using the tax, a method favoured by many economists, gives carbon a price certainty but doesn’t guarantee a particular emissions result; using the cap-and-trade produces a particular result but at an unknown price.

Politically, the cap-and-trade is a much easier sell, since the eventual effect on the ordinary person is indirect, whereas changes to the tax system are in the faces of consumers. The easier politics of the cap-and-trade explains in large part why Conservatives, New Democrats and U.S. politicians like it.

It’s too bad we can’t have a reasoned debate between these two approaches, instead of the slanging match and attack ads about the “carbon tax” that the Prime Minister calls “insane” and says will “screw” Canadians and “wreck the economy,” something that’s not happened in any of the countries that have thus far introduced one.

Now, I’m think of writing my own letter to the editor on this subject, and I can’t just plagiarize Jeffrey Simpson if I do that. So here’s my draft, which I’ll refine later! [I’m such a technical writer, sometimes. Just can’t resist the bulleted list!]

Something that seems to be missed in all the wild claims about the effects of a carbon tax on the economy and prices is that the regulatory or cap-and-trade system offered as an alternative will also raise energy prices — and without balancing them with an income and corporate tax cuts.

A cap-and-trade system involves only the largest polluters. Total target emission levels are set and are assigned a price. Companies who pollute the most pay the companies who emit the least. But exactly as with a carbon tax, some of those extra costs are likely to be passed on as higher prices for consumers.

The reasons the most economics and environmentalists — groups that don’t typically agree on much — favor a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade system include the following:

  • By involving everyone, not just the largest polluters, the potential reduction in pollution is therefore much greater.
  • With a cap-and-trade system, there’s no benefit to companies that will never reduce their emissions below the overall target, so they won’t. With a tax, the more they reduce, the more they save–and the greater the environment benefits.
  • It rewards companies and individuals who are already doing well, environmentally. They get more back in income and corporate tax cuts than they pay in increased carbon taxes.
  • Corporate and income tax cuts are generally stimulative to the economy, freeing up more money for investment, savings, and spending.

The truth is, the environmental policies of all the political parties–including the Conservatives–are going to increase energy prices. The question is, do you want an income tax cut to help you pay for those inevitable price increases, or not? If you do, then you should vote for one of the two parties planning to implement a carbon tax: the Green Party or the Liberals.

(2023 Postscript: These are the roots of the Conservative war on carbon taxes, but interesting that they supported cap and trade at the time. Also interesting that the Liberal plan was to reduce income taxes as compensation rather than the current “revenue neutral” approach. Finally, so sad that so many years later Canada has accomplished so little on this front.)