Tag: election

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.)

RDtNVC: Verbal arts attacks

(Reason of the Day to Not Vote Conservative)

Being the odd man out on the arts funding issue, this is what Mr. Harper had to say about it: “I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala… claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough… I’m not sure that’s something that resonates with ordinary people.”

So, typically, kind of mean-spirited, somewhat insulting, somewhat misleading (since when are most artists rich?) — but that’s not what I want to focus on. See what he actually said there? What he used as his example? “I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala…”

You mean ordinary Canadian come home from work and immediately turn to — the arts?

Of course most Canadians don’t list the arts as “top of mind” issues. They simply take them for granted. It’s woven into the fabric of our lives. TV, galas, concerts, festivals, dance recitals, musicals, music downloads, CDs, DVDs, theatre, plays, museums, galleries, radio, novels, poetry, children’s literature, essays, magazines… It’s all part of the arts, high and low. And government helps fund a good part of them.

No political party would win if they pledged to make arts funding the biggest part of the budget… But none would win if they pledged to eliminate all cultural activity from this country, either. TV, galas, concerts, festivals, dance recitals, musicals, music downloads, CDs, DVDs, theatre, plays, museums, galleries, radio, novels, poetry, children’s literature, essays, magazines — we do want at least some of that to be made by Canadians, in Canada.

I leave you now with this hilarious video by Michel Rivard. Even if you speak French, it’s even funnier with the English subtitles on.

RDtNVC: Mispronouncing people’s names

(Reason of the Day to Not Vote Conservative)

It’s just rude, man. Shows a lack of respect.

It’s Stéphane Dion — Dee-ô, not Dee-Awnnnn. Silent final “n”.

He’s not a quintuplet.

Canadian federal election: Week 2 recap

The Liberals were much more visible this week, taking my advice by taking on Harper on a number of fronts, including childcare. The Liberal team was emphasized, which seemed wise. Dion explained the Green Shift on The Current podcast, and was, to my mind, clear and convincing.

The NDP and the Conservatives, meanwhile, were busily injecting a rare note of humour into the campaign. The NDP experienced the resignation of not one but two, toke-smokin’, car-drivin’, former members of the Marijuana Party as candidates for the party in BC, because they apparently didn’t bother to YouTube them before offering them the nomination. And the Conservatives, of course, had the whole “death by a thousand cold cuts” kerfuffle. Am I a bad person because that made me chuckle?

Anyway, this inspired the fourth apology by Harper since the campaign began (emphasizing why he’s so reluctant to let his candidates speak to the media), but the first that seemed to stick. And stick. Please, enough with the calls for his resignation, already! Lack of regulation might be the serious issue here. A dark sense of humour is not.

The US economy provided some excitement, with huge companies collapsing and stocks going on a roller-coaster ride in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. It ended only when the Bush government reversed its laissez-faire policies and stepped in with massive investment. (Fun fact: $1 trillion could buy you 5 billion iPhones. Or 1 war in Iraq.)

Canada never allowed sub-prime mortgages, and so isn’t at risk of this exact same crisis. But there’s a more general lesson here about what happens when governments aren’t involved enough, when companies (banks, meat) that need regulation don’t get it, when governments are downsized to the point of ineffectuality.

[Harper’s] inability to think in a positive, passionate way about large political projects shows starkly at this tense economic moment. In policy, he prefers to act small. His favourite word is modest. “Our plan is simple, modest and practical,” he said about a tax break for home buyers. As if he’d rather do nothing but, in a pinch, will settle for the least possible. His modest GST cuts give little relief, but they whittle government revenues down so he can claim we can’t afford much anyway. This week, he announced a ban on tobacco ads, which are already banned, and sales to kids, ditto. I know this “modesty” reflects Stephen Harper’s political philosophy and he could rattle on passionately about why government should do the least it can, for the good of us all. It’s the reason he wants a majority: so he can do even less and eliminate more. But he may be the wrong leader at the wrong time.

Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail

Canadian federal election: Stepping back to survey the week

The most interesting, and heartening, event this week was the Green Party being admitted to the leader’s debate after public protests of the initial exclusion. I heard leader Elizabeth May interviewed on CBC’s The House, and the woman is a breath of fresh air. She’s smart and articulate, but doesn’t hide behind that political “bull” filter that all the other leaders do.

The Conservatives have campaigned effectively this week, and this point certainly look to be on a victorious path. I’m not sure any of their gaffes—the infantile Dion cartoon (I’m just not linking to it), insulting the father of a slain soldier[had link here, but it’s no longer valid]—will really stick. But it certainly highlights to me just how mean and nasty significant parts of the Conservative crowd can be. Why so angry, folks? You’re winning!

The Liberals really weren’t very prominent, getting attention mostly for defending themselves against Conservative attacks. A good defence is important, but they need way more offence. It’s not as though the Conservatives haven’t left them plenty of targets. Start shooting at them, already.

The NDP, on the other hand, I’ve seen a surprising amount of. They’ve run an ad that I think isn’t too bad, though it’s a bit low on specifics. [Had link to this also; also no longer valid.]

I’ll end with some favourite comments from others this week:

But the mystery is: Why did the Harper-Layton-media juggernaut back down here? I never expected it. Jeffrey Simpson says they “misread public opinion,” which “insisted Ms. May be heard.” So what? The public wants lots of things. Usually it’s just ignored.

Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail

But increasingly, Mr. Harper himself looks like a deer frozen in the headlights of onrushing economic and environmental change. He insists now is not the time to risk a new course. But what does he propose?

It sounds more and more as if he is seeking a mandate to do nothing.

Ian Porter, letter to the editor

On some August nights, my father, a professor of economics and a rather conservative man, would phone me (during the cheap hours) to try to explain Stéphane Dion’s plan.

“It’s brilliant,” he’d say. “The cheapest way to lower greenhouse gases. It’ll lower income taxes, which slow growth …”

My father said Stephen Harper must know that it’s a good plan. “He can’t not know. He’s an economist. He’ll have an election before someone finds a way to explain it to the likes of you and his party goes down.”

Tabatha Southey, Globe and Mail

Reason of the day to not vote Conservative: Obstructing Parliament

We all knew it was just an excuse, but still, that’s what Harper said: that Parliament had become dysfunctional. That’s why we needed this election.

And if anyone should recognize Parliamentary dysfunction, it’s the Conservatives. After all, they wrote the book on it. Literally. A 200-page manual on making sure your representatives in Ottawa cannot get their jobs done.

The handbook, obtained by National Post columnist Don Martin, reportedly advises chairs on how to promote the government’s agenda, select witnesses friendly to the Conservative party and coach them to give favourable testimony. It also reportedly instructs them on how to filibuster and otherwise disrupt committee proceedings and, if all else fails, how to shut committees down entirely.

Reason of the day to not vote Conservative: For calling this election

While that not enthused about this election (Canadian elections are rarely very inspiring, are they), I’m not sure the timing itself is all that terrible. There was a good chance there would be one this fall or winter anyway—a few months sooner or later doesn’t make that much difference.

No, it’s the calling of this election I think should give you pause.

Stephen Harper looked us in the face and said it was unfair for the party in power to manipulate the timing of elections for partisan advantage. Not just empty words, either; he actually passed a law to that effect.

Has he actually broken the law? Well, until he and Ms. Jean are hauled out and arrested, I guess we have to assume he hasn’t—that the law has some wiggle room. That in a minority parliament, the party in power can, in fact, still find ways to manipulate the timing of the election.

But we all know that he has broken the spirit of the law. Because Mr. Harper was right back then; it is an unfair advantage for the party in power to control the timing of elections.

It takes a man of high-minded principle to give up power in the interest of fairness.

Mr. Harper has just demonstrated that he is not such a man. He was just pretending to be one.

Bringing Ontario’s “secret” referendum to light

The Globe and Mail‘s web column had an interesting article on Ontario’s referendum, bringing up a point I had really thought of before: This is not a choice between two equally valid options, our current electoral system vs. the proposed MMP. In fact, the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform has already weighed multiple voting systems, including our current one, and found them all wanting. They recommend MMP as the best option for Ontario. We are voting to ratify that decision.

So Ontarians should be incensed at how the government has distorted this fact, by having all official material pretend this is a neutral campaign between equal options. Your Big Decision. A (current) or B (MMP). Why aren’t they also telling us why the Citizen’s Assembly has already concluded that B is better?

And that’s online. On TV, they won’t even tell us what the A or B choices are! You have call a number or go online to get details. For heaven’s sake; why can’t the commercial at least give a clue what the referendum is about? Takes less than 30 seconds to say “electoral reform”.

Furthermore, in order to be ratified, the decision to switch to MMP must be agreed to by 60% of the electorate and 60% the ridings. 37% is enough to get you a nice majority government for a good four years. But to get actual democracy? Oh no, even 50% won’t do for that.

Of course, the government’s attempts at covering the issue and handicapping the vote wouldn’t matter as much if the media were doing a good job of informing the public about this, but outside of newspapers (read by your more devoted political junkies, typically), they are not. There was barely a peep out of them before the election started, and now they’re all about the religious schools debate and “promise breaking”. If they mention the referendum at all, it’s to say that “people don’t seem to know about it”. Well, duh.

I guess it’s clear I am voting for MMP. And since the media and government don’t want you to know why, I will explain.

a) Under the current system, a minority of voters gets the majority of power.

It takes only about 40% of votes to get a strong majority government, and that basically allows the government to do what they want for 4 years. 60% of voters are currently disenfranchised, not once in a while, but every single time. It’s unfair and absurd.

Not convinced? In recent Quebec and BC elections, parties have won majority governments despite getting a lower percentage of votes than another party. (In Quebec, the PQ over the Liberals; in BC the NDP over the Liberals.) That’s how distorted our current system is; even the party that wins more votes than any other doesn’t necessarily get to govern.

b) Our current system does not produce stability.

That’s what all the naysayers go on about. Oh, it will be unstable! Give me a break. Ontario is a case study in how this isn’t true. Ontario went from a radical left NDP government (elected by 37%) to a radical right Conservative government (elected by 42%), both of which caused the majority who didn’t want them to suffer under their more extreme policies. This, ironically, after the popular and balanced coalition NDP/Liberal government—exactly the kind of government we’d get under MMP.

c) Do not fear the political “appointee”.

The other thing the naysayers seem obsessed with is the appointed list of politicians who would balance out the legislature according to the electorate’s party votes. Again, I find this argument bogus. Political parties already pick their candidates (the ones whose names appear on your ballot), some by party vote, many by appointment. So I really see no difference at all between political parties picking who is on my local ballot and political parties picking who will represent the popular vote. Either way, ultimately, it’s parties who decide who has the opportunity to sit in the House. If you don’t like it, join a political party.

Furthermore, it’s not as if people currently know who the heck their local candidates are anyway. In small towns, sure. In bigger cities? As if. People already just vote for parties anyway. Under the new system, they’ll just have to do the same thing twice.

d) We will not have a “pizza parliament”. But the Green Party will have some seats. And that’s a good thing.

The Citizens Assembly weren’t idiots; there is a 3% threshold before a party can win a seat. So truly bizarre parties with no appeal will not win any seats, even if a few jokers vote for them. But small parties with serious appeal, like the Greens (or the Family Coalition, I suppose), will.

Make your vote count on October 10, so that your vote will count in the future. Vote for MMP.