Tag: politics

Power to the people?

Much of the news recently has been either terrifying—the economic outlook, the failure to address global warming) or infuriating—pretty much everything the federal Conservatives have been doing, particularly their retarded Omnibus crime bill…

(Results that came up when typing “omnibus crime bill” into Google:

Omnibus crime bill sets stage for future mess

StarPhoenix – 2 days ago

By Doug Cuthand, Special to The StarPheonix November 18, 2011 The Harper government’s omnibus crime bill is heading through Parliament on the fast track, …

Omnibus crime bill misses the mark‎ Toronto Star
Bar association blasts tough-on-crime bill‎ Vancouver Sun
Conservative crime bill a long-lasting mistake‎ Brandon Sun)

And also  the fact that they are being petulant, nasty jackasses in the House, instead of sitting back and basking in the fact that they can do anything they damn please for the next four years.

So when  I saw the story about the peaceful, unresisting UC Davis students being casually pepper-sprayed at point-blank range by a police officer, I initially saw this as just more nasty news.

It just reminded me of the excesses the Canadian police forces brought down during the G20 summit, and not even just against protestors—also against a lot of people who just happened to be there.

Photo of G20 detention

(The above is not a photo is not of Guantanamo. It’s a Toronto G20 temporary jail, clearly depicting the human rights violation of leaving people handcuffed once in a secure area. And 90% of these people never should been arrested at all…)

And nobody’s really been held to account for that.

But the UC Davis story seems to be going a little differently.

For one thing, if you watch the full 8 minute 30 second video (instead of just the 1 minute 30 second pepper spraying), you can’t help but be really impressed at how the students handled this.

First of all the students are not being threatening in any way; the police office is just being a dick. As if pepper spraying seated students at point blank in the face one time isn’t enough, he then does it again, and again.

The crowd responds: “Shame! Shame!”. And they begin to act and move together. And one point, they do seem to have the police officers surrounded. And then… They offer a “moment of peace.” “You can go. We won’t stop you. You can go. You can go.”

And the policemen do retreat.

It’s kind of cool, and nearly gives me hope.

And sure, there are a ton of YouTube trolls posting horrible comments, but the UC Davis University has also been flooded with complaints about the incident. The mainstream media is all over the story. The officer involved has already been identified and suspended (OK, with pay, but it’s a start).

And to those who think these kids don’t even know what they’re protesting about (“What do they want?”), note that these ones do have one really specific target: The university plan to raise tuition fees 80% next year (with no plan to improved the education quality by 80% in compensation). Source: Interview with a pepper-sprayed UC Davis student at BoingBoing.

Is this a turning point?

These are a few of my favorite tweets

I didn’t get Twitter for a long time. I’d go there and not really see the point. In practical terms, I didn’t really understand how anything of value could be provided in 140 characters. And there was all that talk of people just tweeting about what they had for breakfast.

Now, though, I’m addicted.

I initially signed on based on a friend’s advice to do so just to get a good Twitter-name, even if I didn’t do much with it right away. Turned out she had a point; most variations of my name and my most commonly used web pseudonyms were already in use by others. But I did find an available combination.

Twitter has a bit of learning curve to it. I started by just following a small number of people and trying to figure it out from there. I soon learned that a lot of power is in the link; sure, you can’t say that much in 140 characters, but you can link to those details. (And to photos. And to videos.)

But when I’m say addicted, it’s not to tweeting itself, which I remain a little gun-shy about. (Apparently I have tweeted 28 times in total.) In fact, I’m still not completely clear on who sees what when it comes replies, direct replies, direct messages, retweets, private message… ? All in all, it’s easier to just listen, most of the time.

Currently I follow 59 accounts, some of whom haven’t tweeted in two years, some of whom tweet so frequently, I don’t know how they stay employed.

Among my favorites are the following.

@Elizabeth May:  A lot of the politicians I follow tweet mostly dull platitudes, toeing the party line. Elizabeth May (federal leader of the Green Party, but you knew that) tweets more like a real person would. I particularly enjoy her tweets from Parliament Hill, which give insight into things that wouldn’t necessarily make the media:

I had planned to make a statement marking Remembrance Day. I am shocked the CPC has blocked my chance to speak.

They didn’t like the point I was making. 40 years 1913-1956 closure used 10x; in last 40 days, 7x

Conservatives keep limiting debate. They have the votes. Not sure why everything has to be forced thru.

Ban asbestos motion. First vote to keep asbestos trade, our PM.

John McCallum asked Tony Clement about an answer by tweet! Twitter seems to be Clement’s only forum 4 G8 $ Q’s. Baird takes all Qs in QP.

Though must say it’s not exactly improving my opinion of the Conservative Party of Canada.

@simont400000: He being Simon Townshend, the much younger brother of one Pete Townshend, and who also tours with Roger Daltrey. Been kind of fun “following” him on tour:

Great show in Vancouver. Smokin’ crowd! Two shows left on tour and the TCT charity gig in LA. Come along… 2.5k a ticket. Rock n’ Roll!

And his random tweets are also kind of funny:

@Kimmittable: I’m a real fan of your earlier work.” I said that to Joni Mitchell once and she told me to Fuck off. True!

And if you’re wondering what it’s like to not be famous yourself (though he is himself quite a talented composer and musician), but hanging with the very famous:

Getting home from tour is strange… no daily sheet, no room service, no living from suitcase or doing laundry – no gigs. Not being a pop star

@dizzyfeet: This being the moniker of Nigel Lithgow, producer of American Idol and judge on So You Think You Can Dance. It’s in the latter capacity that I’m interested, but I don’t follow anyone else connected with that show. Nigel’s feed is just hilarious as he so frequently engages in public battles with those who reply to this tweets. There’s a whole “Moron” meme running through his feed that you’d have to read back on to completely understand.

RT @Clamanity: @izzyfeet Emmy voters are morons. [I KNOW. I’VE BEEN HANDING OUT #MORON NUMBERS ALL NIGHT. HA, HA!]

He’s also satisfyingly blunt (not mean) in posting his opinion. He’s recently been listed on “Recommend people to follow on Twitter”, so I’m not the only one to notice the fun to be had here. His response:

Welcome to all my new followers. Thank you#NewYorkPost I felt truly proud. Bring on the#Morons.

Of course!

@karenscian: Who? Right! She makes Simon Townshend seem famous. She’s my city councillor. Who has actually gotten in trouble for tweeting during council meetings.

But her feed covers a great deal more than the goings-on at Waterloo City Hall. She comments on Waterloo news in general, federal and provincial politics, food, family… An eclectic mix that very often seems to jibe with my own interests.

And I’ll leave the last tweet to her.

Oh Twitter, you are such a procrastination-enabler.

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.

Mr. Layton

I know, like we need more commentary on this. I’ll try to be brief.

I’ve been surprised by the strong response to Jack Layton’s death. I’ve been just as surprised how much I share in the feeling. Like going to track down what you think is an obscure song and finding it in the iTunes top 10.

So many Canadians were tweeting on the day of his death, RIP Jack Layton trended not only in Canada, but worldwide, leading to puzzled members of the global twitter-verse to respond with items like, “RIP Jack Layon. Whoever you are.”

That was kind of funny.

A lot of people have said they felt very sad about his death even though they’d never voted NDP. Me, I actually did vote for that party while he was leading it. Heck, I even attended a rally of his once. I’d like to say it was terribly inspiring, but the truth is, I left a little underwhelmed. I think that was his first campaign as NDP leader, and he still had some work to do in learning to inspire the troupes.

But he did get better at that, I thought, even as pragmatism had me voting Liberal the last couple elections. Since that party’s rather stunning performance in the last election, and the equally stunning reaction to his death, of course there has been a lot of attempts at analysis. Most notorious was Christie Blatchford’s, who accused Canadians of show and Layton of cynical manipulation. It’s not just that it was too soon (mere hours after he died); I think she was just wrong, on both counts.

John Doyle, Globe TV critic (of all things), was one of those who, I think. got it more right. Jack persisting through that campaign, which looked hopeless for the NDP at the outset, armed with that cane, yet refusing to give up. Shades (pale shades, but nevertheless) of another Canadian icon, Terry Fox. The man dies, but the movement…? That remains to be seen.

I know some people who just don’t get this whole thing. Who didn’t like him that much, who just don’t feel it, who are tired of hearing about it. Which I can appreciate, because even though I share in the feeling, this “week of Jack” has been a bit much.

But still, I just had to watch the funeral. Which was kind of amazing. Very inclusive (French / English / native, multi-denominational, gay / straight), funny, sad, moving. When Stephen Lewis describe Jack’s letter as “ultimately, a manifesto for social democracy” and got his first of several standing ovations, I thought, “the Conservatives are in trouble.” I’m bad at political prognostication, so I could be wrong about that. But who knows. Optimism is better than despair, right? I think someone said that.

And the opening of that eulogy also, I think, hit the nose on why so many have been so unexpectedly affected by this.

Never in our collective lifetime have we have seen such an outpouring, so much emotional intensity, from every corner of this country. Jack was so alive, so much fun, so engaged in daily life with so much gusto and so unpretentious, it was hard to focus, when he was alive, on how important that was to us, until he was gone…. Jack simply radiated an authenticity, an honesty, and a commitment to his ideals that, we now realize, we were thirsting for.

He tapped into a yearning that politics be conducted in a different way and in that difference, would emerge a better Canada.

Here’s to a better Canada. Thanks, Jack.

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.

 

LRT referendum: My two cents

I totally agree with the featured letter to the editor in the KW Record today:

Mayor should show some leadership

🙂

(And for what it’s worth, I’m in favor of moving ahead with LRT. We just can’t afford to keep building and maintaining more roads, and I think a train system will be a more effective alternative than buses.)

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…

Election positivity

At times, this election campaign has made me really cranky. With politicians. With the media. With other Canadians.

But it hasn’t had all been bad. To my surprise, some things have actually been inspiring. Who would have expected that?

Votes mobs: The enthusiasm of youth

Inspired by a Rick Mercer rant, vote mobs are groups of young people who swarm political functions or other public spaces, encouraging people to vote.Will they actually turn around the typically dismal showing of voters under 25? I don’t know, especially that the timing couldn’t be worse for university and college students.

But regardless, they’ve left behind a nice YouTube legacy, like this one from McMaster:

Civil online debates: Yes, we can

The typical comments section on most political articles (or YouTube videos) tends to make you despair for humanity as a whole. But under this article in an American online publication (decent in itself) is a bunch of really well-informed, civil, intelligent comments from what seems to be across the political spectrum. (Until a spammer joins in at the end. Ah well, better that than a troll.)

And though I’m biased from knowing the blogger, the non-partisan Procedure and politics has been a nice oasis of rationality, showing that you can calmly dissect how politicians and the media sometimes get it wrong, all without calling anyone a “stupidhead”. (Also a great place to learn about Britain’s upcoming referendum, if you were wondering about that. Or maybe you didn’t even know they were having one?)

The return of oratory

I’m a sucker for a great orator. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kennedy… I don’t know if these guys were great leaders. But they sure talked nice. I loved listening to all of them.

In Canada, we haven’t  had a great federal orator since… What… Pierre Trudeau, I think?

Or so I thought. Until I actually started listening to Michael Ignatieff speak. It started at their platform announcement, part of which I watched online. This was in the midst of all the commentary about Harper’s “bubble” — not taking questions, hiding from the public. So to see Ignatieff speaking so easily, so clearly, sans notes or teleprompters, answering questions from everyone, at such a strategic juncture—I was kind of impressed.

But it was only after coming back from vacation, having missed the debates (where, I hear, Ignatieff didn’t do that well), I found this YouTube video getting a lot of play:

That I became really really impressed. I liked what he said. And how he said it. And apparently, that wasn’t even him at his best.

I started to wonder if I was just in some weird Liberal spell here, when Rick Mercer (him again!) commented on a similar experience:

And then there was Prince Edward Island, where, in a curling club, Ignatieff showed off a set of skills I had no idea that he possessed. From a pure showbiz perspective he killed. Speaking without a teleprompter or notes he gave perhaps the best speech I have heard since watching Gen. Rick Hillier address the troops in Kandahar.

His speech also inspired this non-partisan song on voting for what you believe in–“Rise Up Canada!” (A song for Canada’s 2011 Federal Election):

Of course, people like Blair, Clinton, Obama, and Kennedy all had such personal charisma, their elocutionary skills were just icing on the cake. With Ignatieff, it’s the whole cake. In this day and age, that seems to not be enough. But damn, it’s nice to hear anyway.

Creative protest: Hanging with the cool kids

I like civil debate, and I like neutral calls to vote, but I have picked a side. So, I’ve also appreciated the many people, much more creative and eloquent than I, who have to the same conclusion about who they are voting for, and produced online materials as to why. There’s tons of it, but I’ll just mention a few. I’ve already tweeted about Shane Koycan’s powerful “Wasted Votes” video. (He’s the spoken-word poet who appeared at the Olympics by the way: the “We Are More” poem.) I also enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s comparison of the Conservatives to a vaccum salesman who insists you buy his product, but won’t tell you the cost.

And this mock ad—Too Smart for Canada—made me laugh out loud. So close to the actual ones, some people think it’s real.

The NDP surge

Of course, we don’t yet know if this will stick and have a real effect in the end. All we can know for sure, is that among those that were polled, there has been a shift. In Quebec, the NDP has risen considerably; that has been spreading to other regions. And why does this please me?

  • It’s thwarting the ambitions of both the Conservatives and the Bloc, my two least favourite parties. Although I don’t believe it will turn out that way, one poll actually had the NDP + Liberal seat count at greater than the Conservative–without the Bloc at all. That would be good for Canada.
  • It shows that many Canadians will respond to a positive message. (Even the NPD “attack” ads were kind of chirpy positive.)
  • It shows what a political leader can achieve when not hobbled by two years of personal political attack ads run by the party in power. (Why is it even legal to run election ads between elections, by way?)
  • They’re the only major party talking about electoral reform, one of my pet issues.

I’m not afraid of NDP policies or what them having more power might mean. All evidence shows that the NDP becomes very pragmatic once handed power. And if you look closely at what they’re proposing, it’s full of caveats that gives them plenty of wiggle room to ensure Canada does not become a deficit-ridden, high-tax, socialist mess.

But this is in no way changes how I plan to vote. The conditions, for me, remain the same. Local polls show no evidence of an NDP surge. Plus, my local NDP candidate is a 27-year-old with no political experience at all, whereas the Liberal one is a past MP with a record for actually going with his conscience against his own party, which is a rare thing indeed. And another thing I view positively.

Two more reasons to like Arcade Fire

Currently offering their amazing The Suburbs album for a mere $3.50 for high-quality download. Wow.

Their exceedingly polite blog post encouraging Canadians to vote. Only, maybe not Conservative...

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.