Tag: Conservatives

Ontario votes

My bold predication for the Ontario election: Elizabeth Witmer, MPP for Kitchener-Waterloo, will retain her seat.

When voters turned against the Mike Harris, when they ran from John Tory’s school funding proposal, Ms Witmer, Progressive Conservative, still handily won her seat. She’s been in there for something like 21 years. She certainly not going to lose now, when the PCs are riding a “we’re tired of the Liberals!” wave.

This means, under our most undemocratic of electoral systems, me voting is just a waste of time. I am not voting PC, but whether I vote Green, Liberal, NDP, or Marxist-Leninist, whether I spoil my ballot or just sit at home watching TV, the result will the same. Ms. Witmer’s most votes will give the whole seat, and the choice I made will make no difference at all in who runs Ontario.

I will say I don’t have any particular issues with Ms. Witmer. Generally, I think she has been a good representative. And if Ontarians had been smart enough to change their electoral system four years ago, when they had a chance, I might have even have considered voting for her as my MPP, while selecting another party with my second vote.

But, Ontarians didn’t want more democracy, so we have the system we have, and a vote for Ms. Witmer is a vote for Tim Hudak. And I can’t do that.

I’ll grant that my distaste for Mr. Hudak was perhaps not on the most solid basis, initially: The man is just horribly boring to listen to. All he does is repeat sound bites, that nearly always contain the word “tax”. Tax grab. Sneaky eco-tax. Taxman. Tax on home heating.

It’s the most excruciating thing to listen to. (I’ve heard that Queen’s Parks reporters routinely leave his press conferences early, since all he does is repeat his boring lines over and over.) Four years of that? Not sure I can handle it.

Since then, though, he’s given some reasons of more substance to not vote for his party.

The numbers don’t work

As pointed out by that paragon of lefty, socialist thinking, The Toronto Sun, the PC’s economic plan doesn’t add up. Tax reductions and no cuts to education and health sounds great, but how do you pay for it? Truth is that after education and health, there isn’t a whole lot left to cut. So what’s the plan, here? Letting the deficit rise exponentially? Praying for miraculous growth in Ontario’s economy?

(Yes, all the parties are being somewhat unrealistic in their fiscal promises. The PCs are just the most so.)

Update: A rather damning and very detailed examination of just how much the numbers don’t work, courtesy of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. Graphs in Conservative Changebook misleading: At least three of the graphs present data that is clearly false. All of the others contain major errors.

Taxes probably will go up under Hudak

I’m not saying he’ll raise provincial taxes or the HST. But as several have pointed, he will not say whether he will continue to take over the cost of certain municipal programs, as the Liberals plan to do. If he does not (and remember he does have to cut somewhere), it is likely our municipal taxes will increase. OK, they always increase. But they will increase more. And unlike with provincial and federal taxes, which give credits for things like RRSP and charitable donations, there’s nothing you can do to protect your income against those ones.

Addition: The anti-green energy stance

Mr. Hudak wants a better world for his daughter (which I believe), but he’d cancel every green energy project he could? While there do seem to be some flaws in the Liberals handling of the alternative energy file, from what I’ve read, I still applaud the general direction. I believe it’s one of the most progressive in North America. It’s even earned a rare, specific endorsement from David Suzuki!

Xenophobia

Why are politicians allowed to bald-faced lie during elections campaigns, again? In election ads, which can’t be dismissed as an unfortunate slip of the tongue?

Because nothing, nothing has been more appalling to me than this party’s response to the Liberals plans to give tax credits for immigrants who are having trouble finding jobs in their field.

Hudak calls them “foreign workers”. He says the funding will go “outside Ontario”. “Ontarians need not apply.”

But only Canadian citizens would qualify for this tax credit—being a landed immigrant would not be enough. And it’s only for jobs in Ontario.

Hudak is just lying, and in the most xenophobic, divisive, hateful way possible.

Now, I don’t know that the Liberal plan is that wonderful. That professionals who immigrate have trouble finding work in their field is a real problem; I’m not sure how much this would solve it. And I don’t think comparing the PCs to the Tea Party is all that helpful a response, either.

But I do know that all Canadians are equal, no matter how long they’ve been Canadian. And if one group is being particularly discriminated against, it is reasonable for the government to see if something can be done to rectify that.

I won’t vote a party that promotes near-racism.

Unfortunately, what I do won’t make a difference.

Rest of Ontario: Good luck to you. Sorry I can’t be more help.

They’ll get away with it. But it’s still wrong.

This is about the Conservative Party of Canada, but it is not about the G8 spending (although they also got away with that, and that was also wrong). No, this is about phasing out the per-vote subsidy.

In 2003, the Liberal Party of Canada changed campaign finance laws to prevent unions and corporations from donating to political parties, and also capped the amount an individual could donate. To compensate the parties for that loss of income, they brought a per-vote subsidy. Every party that earns at 2% of the popular vote receives about $2 per vote earned.

The last time the Conservatives tried to get rid of this subsidy, it caused a revolt. The other parties banded together against them, formed a coalition, and tried to take over government.

This time, knowing that it’s resistance is futile against this dictatorship—sorry, majority government (hard to tell the difference)—the opposition is giving up without a fight. But opposed or not, what the Conservatives are doing is still wrong.

Official reasoning is spurious

The basic reason given for this is to save money. And sure, this will save about $24 million this year. But political parties, like anything else, take some amount of money to run, and it’s long been accepted that some of that should come from the public purse. If you’re looking to reduce in this area, why pick on this particular form of funding?

What about the fact that when you donate to a political party, you get back 75% of what you give (for the first $400). Whereas if you give to a charity like the Cancer Society, you get back only 25%. Does that seem right to you? The cost of the incredibly generous tax credit is about $21 million per year. Over four years, then? Around $80 million. And if you didn’t get rid of the credit completely, but just reduced it to the same level as what you get for donating to charities? Still about a $50 million saving.

The real reason is offensive

The Conservatives don’t need this subsidy. They apparently get so much money donated to them, they don’t what to do with it all. (In the 2004 election, they even tried laundering it through local ridings.) That’s why they run election ads all the time, not just during elections.

Other parties… Well, they do kind of rely on that funding.

So what’s this really about? Crushing their political rivals. Increasing the degree to which Canadians hear from the Conservative Party of Canada at the expense of other ideas. Trying to make their dictatorship majority permanent.

They’re also silencing voters

The Conservatives are not only hurting other parties here. They’re also getting rid of the only real way in which every federal vote (other than for very minor parties and independents) actually counts.

Because, in Canada’s ridiculous First Past the Post electoral system, most of our votes are wasted. If we had proportional representation, every vote would help form government. But under FPTP, only the votes for the winners do. All other votes have no effect on the makeup of government whatsoever. Whether your MP won by 10 votes or 100,000, he or she gets the seat and the other parties get bupkus. If you voted for anyone other than the person who won, you might as well have stayed home. The resulting seat count would have been identical, either way.

But… At least the party you voted for got funding. Your tax dollars went to them, to help them out next time. It’s not much, but it’s all we had.

Now, we have nothing. Now, most votes will be back to having absolutely no effect at all. Same as if you hadn’t voted at all.

What’s to be done?

Writing to your MP about this… would be a waste of time, I think. It’s in the budget; members of the Conservative Party have to vote for it. The opposition may or may not vote for the budget,  but whatever, it’s still going to pass.

Frankly, the only thing I can think of that would help is to take advantage of that juicy tax credit and donate to any and all federal parties—other than the Conservative Party of Canada.

 

Off my chest

When I say I found the election  results depressing, I mean it literally: when it was announced, I burst into tears.  Events that might otherwise have cheered me—the collapse of the Bloc Québecois, the election of Elizabeth May, even that entertaining bunch of new NDP MPs from Québec—were completely eclipsed by that Majority result. I had trouble sleeping, trouble eating, was given to random bursts of anger: The whole week has felt like a bad dream.

I’m only now starting to feel like I may be in recovery.

As with ScotchNeat, the thing I found most alarming in the result, and in the polling numbers throughout, was just how many Canadians were willing to vote Conservative at all. 25% of the population; 40% of the electorate: That’s a hell of a lot. Ultimately, you can’t blame this result on NDP vote splitting, or even the Liberals’ lacklustre campaign… Hate to be obvious, but the real problem here is the people who voted Conservative.

Because of those voters, will Canada remain as the worst Global Warming offender, not only doing nothing ourselves, but also trying to prevent other countries from making progress. Civil servants will continue to be fired if they dare to tell Canadians a truths the Conservatives don’t want us to hear. Aid to Africa will continue to decline, though it’s in Canada’s long-term economic interest that the continent prosper. More young men will go to jail longer, and learn to become better criminals. (And Conservatives will continue to hide how much that costs.) In this more dangerous Canada, police will no longer be able to rely on the long-gun registry information to help them solve crimes. The quality of Canadian social, scientific, and business research will continue to decline, not only because of funding cuts, but also because those groups no longer have reliable census data to work with. And so on, and on.

People who voted Conservative not only approved of all that, but asked for more, please. They watched all those horrible, negative ads and thought, “That’s for me! Those are my people!” I mean, I’d almost feel bad for them, and their dim view of humanity, if they weren’t dragging me down with them.

But, OK, fine, I’m in recovery. So, what the hell did happen in Québec? Damned if I know; I haven’t lived there in 20 years. But Chantal Hébert has an interesting and positive take on it.

And what the hell happened to the Liberals in Ontario? Don’t know either, but here’s a clue, maybe, in Glen Pearson’s report. He was a popular Liberal MP, expected to win his seat. In the end, he lost it to the Conservatives. But as he notes, the loss wasn’t completely a surprise.

Yet I’d had something of a premonition of the outcome during the last few days of the contest. At doors I canvassed I kept hearing certain stories about how I spent too much time in Africa, or that my voting presence in the House wasn’t too impressive. When I informed them that I only spent one week a year on that continent (Sudan), and that I take it on my holiday time over New Years and on my own dime, I could sense the hesitation in their voice. “Oh … that’s not what we heard when the Conservatives phoned us last night.”

….

It was frustrating, but I didn’t know who to talk to. It was only when the election was over that a good Conservative friend informed me that they had actually been utilizing a central office for phone calls and that none of them emanated from London itself. They had poured big money from afar into influencing my riding.

I’ll paraphrase for Mr. Pearson. In his riding, the Conservatives ran a centralized campaign to call people up and lie about him.

But, probably only in that one riding, right? Surely their central office didn’t call up other Ontarians and tell them “creative truths” about their Liberal MPs? Nah. I’m sure that had nothing to do with it…

Stephen Harper is afraid to meet me

In this election, it seems to me that the Liberals are campaigning relatively well. And that the Conservatives are campaigning relatively poorly.

The first week was all about “reckless coalitions”, which has been debunked and declared a distraction and makes them look a bit stupid, especially when quotes such as this are located:

… what will be the test is whether there’s then any party in opposition that’s able to form a coalition or working alliance with the others. And I think we have a political system that’s going to continue to have three or four different parties, or five different parties, and so I think parties that want to form government are going to eventually have to learn to work together.

— Stephen Harper (1991)

(Source TVO, via Procedure and Politics)

So why try that? Well, apart from their peek popularity having occurred when the other parties threatened to make the unpopular Stephane Dion prime minister by coalition, I also think they don’t want Canadians to remember what made the other parties do that.

For whatever reason, the Conservatives have a good reputation on the economy. They are especially proud of the stimulus package, Canada’s Action Plan. So proud they spent $26 million taxpayer dollars telling us it was wonderful. After the program was over. (More proof of their great fiscal management, of course.)

However. When last elected, as the recession was taking hold, the Conservatives presented a fiscal update that cut spending, and provide no stimulus whatsoever. Only after and because of the coalition “crisis” did we get a new budget, containing Canada’s Action Plan (with a segue through the proroguing of Parliament).

But how can the NDP and Liberals remind Canadians of that without playing into Harper’s talking points on their “secret coalition plans”? Best to say nothing.

So, maybe Harper isn’t really campaigning that badly. Maybe he’s achieved exactly what he wanted here, in poisoning  another perfect valid idea to the point it can’t even mentioned. Last election carbon taxes (still a toxic subject), this election governance by coalition.

Of course, this week we’ve moved on to the Conservatives’ excesses in shutting out those who disagree with them:

This last young woman, Joanna MacDonald from Guelph, is the one planning to start on online campaign called Stephen Harper is afraid to meet me, which I think is hilarious. And so I’m borrowing her line, since I also think something should be done to combat global warming, so I ought to be equally frightening.

Also fun? Rick Mercer’s Mr. Harper, are you on your meds? from Macleans, which takes pokes at all parties, starting with this:

The government was defeated on a confidence motion because they were in contempt of the Canadian Parliament—a vote that Stephen Harper immediately claimed did not occur. He didn’t argue about the semantics of the vote; he simply denied it happened at all, preferring instead to believe his government was defeated on the budget. There is evidence to the contrary: he was there and it was on TV, but still, as far as he is concerned, it didn’t happen.

 

And I can’t even blame this one all on Stephen Harper

This kinds of pisses me off:

Federal parties agree to scrap bill correcting voting inequalities

The Harper government and the opposition parties have agreed to quietly sink legislation that would have given Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta more seats in the House of Commons. As a result, urban and visible-minority voters will continue to be discriminated against in Parliament.

Under the legislation, Ontario would have received 18 new seats, British Columbia seven, and Alberta five, bringing all three provinces up to the level of representation in the House warranted by their populations.

Though the above is denied by the government, the bill has been given one day of debate so far, so it’s not exactly speeding on its way to passage. The fear, apparently, is of angering Quebec and Maritime voters.

So fellow Ontarians, BCers, and Albertans, if you really want to have an impact on the next federal election, you’d best move to another province, where your vote will actually have weight.

Because in Canada, everyone is equal. Only, some of us are more equal than others.

This maketh no census

I tell you, this federal government of ours certainly has a talent for making me enraged over issues I previously didn’t give two figs about.

I did this personality test thingie recently that said, on how I relate to other people, is that most of all, I just want them to make sense. Probably why I’m employed in the geeky world of computers, driven by the implacable software logic of 1s and 0s. And certainly why politics in general, and the Conservative party in particular, make me crazy.

According to Jeffrey Simpson in The Globe and Mail, making the long-form census optional was all Stephen Harper’s idea, and both Tony Clement and Jim Flaherty opposed it. But any points Clement might have gained (from me) for that initial stance has been squandered by his soldering on, defending the thing.

Of course, the particularities of the defense need to keep changing in light of those pesky facts. First I heard him on CBC Radio arguing that the optional census would be just as good, and if you can’t trust the government on that, at least trust Stats Canada! Because they were totally behind this!

That complete lie was exposed with the dramatic (at least in the world of stats) resignation of the head of Stats Canada over those allegations.

Round two. OK, so the data won’t be as good, but it’s worth it, because it’s just too much intrusion on people’s lives. Oh, and like the tax form isn’t? Way more personal, really, and not anonymized! Also, there was the irritating fact that there was no evidence of mass complaints about the census, and exactly zero people had ever been jailed for not filling it in.

Meanwhile, the list of those opposed to scraping the mandatory census continued to grow.

Round three. All these critics are just moochers on the federal government. They just don’t want to do the heavy lifting themselves, and get their own data.

Imagine. Thinking that a Federal government should centralize a service useful to all Canadians! Crazy talk! Of course, every level of government and every agency should raise their taxes and deficits and prices so they can all do their own mandatory census (let’s ignore they don’t power of law behind for that), then spend even more money trying put all these separate surveys together into a coherent package! That is so much more inefficient and time-consuming and expensive, it’s got to be the better way, right?

(Maybe this is a weird stimulus package?)

And the thing, this whole mess isn’t even giving the Conservatives a political advantage. It’s not like the other illogical things they like to get behind, like fighting imaginary crime, that will at least instinctively appeal to some. Nobody cares about the census.

Or they didn’t. But they now do, but they don’t agree with Conservatives, who are now at their lowest poll numbers in ages. Which would be the one thing to be happy about, except that no one other single party is really gaining tons of support either, so Conservatives would probably still win the damn election with another minority.

Plus ça change

What a day it was. Monday May 11, 1970.

Thirty-five women, with chains hidden in their purses, infiltrated the public galleries of the House of Commons. They shackled themselves to their chairs. During Question Period, they started to shout. The business of parliament came to a halt. It was the culmination of what became known as the Abortion Caravan, a defiant country wide trek aimed at putting the issue of abortion access on the national agenda. It called to mind some of the more audacious tactics of the suffragettes more than fifty years earlier – in the first wave of feminism. But this was very much a “second wave” event, in which abortion on demand symbolized a fight for women’s autonomy on every front.

Listening to a documentary about this on CBC Radio’s Sunday Report a few weeks ago was pretty riveting. First of all, I hadn’t heard of this event before. Secondly, it was quite extraordinary to hear so many women proclaim, so loudly, the importance of choice. Everyone seems to tiptoe around the subject these days. Ssh. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone.

One of the most striking clips was one of the women speaking with one of the male (of course) politicians—I didn’t catch who. She pointed out that he, being a privileged, wealthy man, would be able to arrange for a woman in his life to have a safe abortion, if she wanted one. But other Canadian women, those of lesser means and lower social standing, could not do this.

“So?” he replied.

“I couldn’t believe it, ” she recollected, this many years later. “It was so arrogant, so dismissive.”

Then today, there’s this:

No abortion in Canada’s G8 maternal health plan

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda said the government would consider funding family planning measures such as contraception, but not abortion under any circumstances.

“They just reopened the abortion debate,” [Bob] Rae told reporters outside the House of Commons. “We are saying to the countries that are the poorest: ‘We won’t apply the law that we have in Canada’.”

Or to paraphrase, we are saying, “So?”

Prorogue this

I’m late to this topic, but I did want to say that I am surprised, and pleased, that Canadians defied the experts and actually noticed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament, even though he did this during the Christmas holidays. And having noticed, that they didn’t like it. His poll numbers have fallen. Anti-prorogation Facebook groups continue to grow. Protests are planned for next weekend.

I also appreciate the journalists who pointed out that apart from the much-publicized goal of evading questions on Afghanistan, and adding Conservatives to the Senate, they are also delaying no fewer than three commissions probing areas that could prove embarrassing to them, such as campaign spending. It also killed all the bills in currently in progress. While I don’t much care whether that they killed their own fairly dubious crime bills, I do feel kind of bad for those diligent MPs whose private member bills also go back to square one now.

I say this even though I’m aware that it may not make that much difference in the long run. Canadians aren’t warming up much to Ignatieff either, so the next election is still the Conservatives to lose. Heck, they could even get a majority—who knows. Our democratic system has a lot of flaws. But it’s nice that not everyone has completely given up on it, regardless. I think Rick Salutin said it best:

Lorne Gunter says in the National Post that most Canadians today couldn’t tell you if Parliament is in session, and he’s probably right. But most Canadians don’t watch the CBC, either, yet they often want it there, just to prove the country and its culture exist. The same for Parliament: It proves democracy exists. I think most people sense it’s a pile of political pretense that is only minimally democratic, and that elections are what they give us instead of a real democracy in which we’d have a genuine say.

But why shut it down? At least it’s a token acknowledgment of what we deserve. And even as a pile, it is the achievement of centuries of popular political contestation, from the Magna Carta through the Chartists, the Canadian rebellions of 1837-38, the women’s suffrage movement etc. These are historic, if half-assed, victories that ought to be built on, not trampled on.

Canada went to war twice for “democracy.” Today, Canadians come back from Afghanistan dead to protect our democratic values and way of life. Do the Harperites think nobody gives a damn when you defecate all over those values, even if it’s a symbolic defecation over symbolic values and a largely symbolic way of life? Democracy isn’t just practical, it’s aspirational. It’s about trying to exert some control over your life, individually and collectively. Otherwise, what’s the point of a life? People draw a line, maybe more so when it’s about symbols, because once those are gone, there’s nothing left to take pride in and hold out hope for. So don’t treat our Parliament as a piece in your private chess game of power, eh? Show respect.

Today I agreed with Stockwell Day

So CTV News today was presenting a story about a protectionist “Buy American” bill that the US Congress has suddenly passed. And some MP (not sure the party) suggested that Canada should pass its own “Buy Canada”, to which I found myself replying, “Protectionism doesn’t really help stimulate the economy” only to find Stockwell Day, on TV, saying virtually the same thing, at the same time.

Dah!

Anyway. I can’t seem to bring myself into a lather over this budget and the projected deficit. It does seem a rather large deficit, but then again, there is an awful lot of opinion out there that stimulus is needed and deficits must be tolerated. Those opinions could be wrong, but I sure don’t have the knowledge to dispute it.

But greatly amused this morning when maverick CBC economics reporter Michael Helinka (not in favor of deficit spending, by the way) expressed pure amazement that host Matt Galloway actually believed that Conservative governments try to avoid deficits. “That is simply not true. Republicans, Conservatives—they do not balance budgets. Liberals and Democrats do. Conservative governments have that reputation, but it’s simply not borne out by the facts.”

Yes, I know, I’ve said it before, but it’s hard to let go of: Stimulus package or no, we would have been in deficit anyway, because the Conservatives frittered away the surplus with stupidly timed tax cuts and silly one-time expenditures. That’s what Conservatives do.

So I don’t know what it means that I agreed with Stockwell Day.

And, I suppose it doesn’t speak well of me that I also agree with faux Michael Ignatieff in this clip from 22 Minutes. But why don’t Canadians spend some time educating themselves about how the Parliamentary system in this country works? (Not to mention which parties are best at managing economies.) That way Conservatives could stop so easily manipulating their ignorance.

On Iggy, Izzie, Steve, and Nico

A few odds and sods here…

Ignatieff “coronation”

Someone asked if I was if I was OK with Michel Ignatieff being “installed” as Liberal leader. And I have to say, yes, I’m just fine with it, thanks. I don’t have that much fondness for the guy—took a real dislike to him during the last Liberal leadership convention—but whatever.

At least the Liberals did what I suggested by rapidly dismissing M. Dion and accelerating their leadership process. By contrast, the Conservatives never listen to my advice. So big props for that.

And frankly, now, or in May, what’s the difference? He was going to be the next leader anyway. I like Bob Rae better, but the man has serious baggage from leading Ontario during a recession. I can just imagine the Conservative attack ads on that theme.

With limited options and time, the Liberals took the best available course. Just hope this coronation works out better for them than the Turner / Martin ones.

Shark jumpin’

So, I’m OK with Iggy, but I’m not the least bit OK with Izzie. Stevens. Grey’s Anatomy?

Even if you don’t watch the show, you may have heard about its recent, most gallactically stupid plot line ever, wherein Izzie first has visions of (that was OK), then starts having sex with, her dead fiancee! No! Not OK! This isn’t Buffy! Dead is dead in this series.

Then I realized I never really liked Izzie anyway (apparently she was a great character in season 1, but since I’ve been watching this series, she’s been awful), so I could just fast-forward all of her scenes, then just enjoy the rest of the show.

That worked OK for one episode, but then I ran into problem 2: Melissa George. Introduced about the same time as the dead fiancee, she plays this super-annoying old friend of Meredith’s, now an intern at Seattle Grace. Fast-forwarding her as well proved a lot trickier, especially since she started flirting with Callie, whom I really like.

But wait… Why is Callie flirting with another girl? After doing a pretty good job of contrasting Hahn, who was just realizing she was a lesbian, and Callie, who wasn’t—but was just really taken with Hahn, this turn of events is nonsensical. (Melissa George, you are no Jessica Hahn.)

So Izzie, Melissa, Callie, and Alex (too many scenes with Izzie) are out, and now I’m little troubled about this strange new relationship between McSteamy and “little Grey”. Much more of this stuff, and there won’t be anything left worth fast-forwarding to.

Dance redux

As for more worthy television….

One more thing I liked more on the Canadian dance series: Each of the four finalist got a profile and moment in the spotlight before the results were announced. Despite the really excessive blah blah that resulted, it was much better than what happens to the runner-up on the US series—they are unceremoniously shunted aside while the winner is showered with confetti. Always makes me feel bad for them.

(And congratulations, Nico. A deserving winner.)

Steve and the Senate

As for our less deserving “winner”, Mr. Harper…

I can’t seem to bring myself to get that outraged about the new Conservative Senate appointments. P-M’s are allowed to appoint Senators. So he previously said he’d rather reform the House than appoint them. Small potatoes, really. I’m much more concerned about them stalling on Climate Change talks and underestimating the degree to which Canada is at risk from sub-prime mortgages.

I will say it is unfortunate the P-M is still busying himself with political games instead of dealing with real problems like those. But it’s unfortunately not surprising.

Also not surprising

D’oh Canada! Survey reveals Canadians barely understand their political system [This was a valid link at the time…]