Angry in the Great White North

Obama and the Golden Rule

2012-02-03T20:41:02-05:00

Barack Obama describes his Christian faith in front of an audience, in part to justify his high-tax class-warfare policies.

But in case you had doubts, he assures you his Christian-inspired policies are right because other religions teach the same thing.

Um, that's not quite how faith is supposed to work.

When President Obama made an address at the National Prayer Breakfast, he explained that his class-warfare policies were rooted in his religious faith.

Does Obama have faith? He says he does, and apparently it's quite the show sometimes:

He added: "I have fallen on my knees with great regularity since that moment [upon meeting with the Reverend Billy Graham] -- asking God for guidance not just in my personal life and my Christian walk, but in the life of this nation and in the values that hold us together and keep us strong."

Falling to his knees? With great regularity? Maybe he really has discovered his Christian faith.

But then again, probably not. The problem is that while singing "Hallelujah!" and quoting the Golden Rule, the true Obama peeks through:

"I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God's command to 'love thy neighbor as thyself,'" Obama said. "I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs -- from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato."

He sounds like a toothpaste commercial. Three out of four major religions recommend the Golden Rule to their adherents.

The problem is simply this. If Obama were truly wearing an authentic and deep Christian faith on his sleeve, he wouldn't bolster his argument by comparing Christian teaching with other faiths. A person of faith doesn't need the agreement of other faiths to know that what he is doing is right.

It's simple really. Did Mohammad put the Golden Rule into the Koran? Who cares? If you pointed out a passage in the Koran that read like the Golden Rule in Luke 10:25, would it make me think that the Golden Rule must therefore be more significant than I had previously thought?

No more so than how my appreciation of Shakespeare would be enhanced if you showed me a quote from Hamlet that had been produced by a monkey labouring for years at a typewriter.

Which is to say, not at all.

In both cases, the correspondence is a product of random chance. On the one side is a divinely-inspired edict for how to live a good life and a quote from the greatest playwright of the English language, and on the other side are words that happen to look the more or less the same -- by accident.

And before the fatwa machine gets revved up, let me be absolutely clear. I am not drawing a parallel between Mohammad and a monkey.

I am drawing a parallel between Mohammad and a monkey with a typewriter.

OK, we can move on.

Back to Obama. On the one hand, he tries to ingratiate himself with the predominantly Christian audience (and by extension, the American electorate) by describing the Obama Revivalist Jamboree. But then he assures his left-wing supporters that really, he treats all religious beliefs as morally equivalent, and by inference, equally irrelevant, just like they do.

A person of faith wouldn't ever do that.

A person with no particular faith might, but then the clever ones wouldn't be switching back and forth in front of the same audience.

Meet the French Elephant

2012-01-17T18:13:27-05:00

Thomas Mulcair, a candidate for the leadership of the NDP and so the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, won't give any consideration to the discomfort many Canadians feel regarding Mulcair's dual citizenship. That other citizenship? It's French. Why did it have to be French?

Let's be brutally honest here. The news that NDP leadership candidate Thomas Mulcair would retain his dual citizenship should he ever become prime minister is generating a lot of discomfort, aggravated by the simple fact that his other citizenship is French.

Yes, that's the politically incorrect elephant in the room.

But for a lot of people, there is something in French arrogance that makes them particularly suspicious of people like Mulcair who have actively pursued that citizenship (as opposed to being French by an accident of birth).

Imagine a Prime Minister Mulcair engaged in delicate negotiations with the French President. The French President is trying to sway Mulcair to his side, away from a position that aligns Canada with the United States regarding this hypothetical crisis. So the French President leans over, and says, "Thomas, this is silly. We both know I am right on this. The Americans are cowboys who think life is like a comic book. You know this to be true. But you and I, we know how the world works, because we are French."

Am I being silly? Substitute "because we are New Zealanders" for "because we are French", and the whole thing sounds ridiculous. No Kiwi would ever say such an absurd thing. Only a Frenchman thinks the French are blessed with some sort of unique sophistication that puts them above other mere mortals.

I'm not imagining this. Recently, a French attempt to use the EU to run roughshod over the sovereign nations of Europe was vetoed by the British, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it clear that he thought the British weren't merely wrong, but that they lacked the intellectual capacity to understand "the subtleties" of the EU in the way the French can:

French president Nicolas Sarkozy launched an astonishing attack on Britain's attitude to Europe last night.

The furious French leader was branded the 'new de Gaulle' after claiming the British can't comprehend Europe because we are 'an island'.

'You come from an island, so maybe you don't understand the subtleties of European construction,' he snapped at BBC Newsnight's economics editor Paul Mason.

Mr Sarkozy had been asked whether it was right for the European Union to be attempting to block an EU referendum and install a coalition government in Greece.

Imagine Sarkozy stroking Mulcair's ego, appealing to him as a fellow Frenchman, commiserating on how exhausting it must be for Mulcair to have to deal with so many of the unsubtle Anglos.

None of the other dual-citizenships likely to be held by a Canadian prime minister (British-Canadian, Australian-Canadian, Jamaican-Canadian, and so on) makes me imagine a situation in which that appeal to the "natural superiority" of the Brit-Aussie-Jamaican-whatever makes any sense.

Just the French. Arrogance from their ruling elite comes as natural as breathing.

Hey, maybe there's a reason why Mulcair would hold on to that French citizenship despite the political damage it is likely to inflict on him in English Canada. I suppose if there's a chance that I might be caught with my Polanski showing, I would like to know that I could run to the extradition-proof safety of France where that sort of thing doesn't bother the ultra-sophisticated French. For Thomas Mulcair's sake, I hope his intransigence over the issue of Canadians wanting a Canadian prime minister, no ifs or buts, is rooted in something less unseemly.

Then again, I'm English, so of course I can't be expected to understand the subtleties.

The law, the facts, and hollering: Daniel Turp learns from Al Gore

2012-01-05T20:29:48-05:00

Daniel Turp, a separatist, wants the courts to apply Canada's Constitution to the decision by the Canadian government to leave the Kyoto Protocol. Exactly what part of the Constitution makes the Kyoto Protocol a forever-binding commitment is not spelled out. But no matter. Even if the law is not on his side, Daniel Turp is making an effort to get the mob on his side. Nothing trumps the law like a crowd of angry separatists.

As an amusing side note, none other than uber-environmentalist Al Gore has said that appealing to the mob is valid when the law or the facts are not on your side.

Daniel Turp, a former MP, wants the judiciary to override the will of the majority in the House of Commons.

Good luck with that.

Here is what Daniel Turp is complaining about with regards to the Kyoto Protocol:

A former Quebec politician is planning legal action against the Conservative government for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol, calling the move unconstitutional.

Daniel Turp, a former Parti Quebecois MNA and Bloc MP, said he is going to ask the federal court to block Ottawa's controversial decision, and is calling on Canadians to join his legal campaign.

"It's not abiding by the law, or the law on the books," said Turp, referring to the Kyoto Implementation Act passed by the House of Commons in 2007.

Turp, who now teaches international and constitutional law at the University of Montreal, launched an online petition for Canadians to support his plan because he believes "citizens should have a voice."

Now the online element of his effort is telling. Like any activist lawyer, he follows three rules first enunciated by none other than Al Gore:

When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.

Nothing hollers as loud as the mob, which is what Daniel Turp is trying to whip up. If the law, or for that, the facts, were on Daniel Turp's side, he wouldn't have to get a mob together coming out of the gate. But I think he knows that the law does nothing to prevent the duly elected government of Canada from leaving the Kyoto Protocol, as allowed by the Protocol. The Canadian legislation known as the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act is hinged on Canada's ratification of the Protocol (see the Preamble), so without the Protocol, there is nothing to implement.

In any case, legislation can be repealed, and in this case, it will be.

As for the facts, well, who really believes in global warming anymore? I think we've seen more than enough emails to convince most reasonable people that climate alarmists posing as scientists have long since despaired of finding enough measurable facts to support their global warming fantasy.

But back to Daniel Turp and his allegation that leaving the Kyoto Protocol is unconstitutional.

How exactly does Canada's Constitution make it illegal for the Canadian government to exercise its power to leave the Kyoto Protocol, as allowed by the Kyoto Protocol?

Heck, for that matter, who cares if Article 27 of the Kyoto Protocol didn't exist? Canada is still a sovereign nation, and what external power is going to brought to bear to compel Canada to be part of a protocol to which the elected majority government has decided it wants nothing to do with?

The article in the CBC is short on detail. Daniel Turp does not quote what part of the Constitution applies to this situation, and what part makes exercising the right to leave as described in Article 27 unconstitutional. Nor does it appear that anyone has posed the question, or if the question was asked, the decision was taken not to print the response.

That response, if there was one, I suspect consisted of the shrugging of shoulders followed by foam-flecked ranting about global warming and then topped off with some snide remark about how Quebec is far more enlightened or some such thing.

I am always suspicious of people who claim something they don't like is "unconstitutional". Invariably, the portion of the Constitution that applies exists only in their imaginations.

I am doubly suspicious of separatists and the way constitutionality is an elastic concept, bent in any way they consider convenient, under pressure from the mob if necessary (or even preferably).

Understanding why Michael Ignatieff lost

2012-01-03T21:21:08-05:00

It takes a special kind of casual arrogance to insult the people around you without seeming to even try. Former Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff, in writing about how Canadians will react to health care changes, shows he has that special gift.

There is a quote today that explains perfectly why Michael Ignatieff led the Liberal Party to such a historical loss in the last election. Without even seeming to try, he manages to insult Canadians everywhere.

The context is Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's announcement that future health care funding would tied to GDP, and that provinces would be allowed to pursue whatever strategies they want to improve health care. To that, Michael Ignatieff drops this one:

On his Facebook page after the Flaherty announcement, Ignatieff wrote: "Let's be clear where this will take us. We will cease to have a national health-care system. Instead we will have 13 systems, with different standards of treatment and care, and no incentives to learn from each other, share best practice or collaborate to lower costs."

Wow. Can there be any doubt about the arrogant and elitist nature of the Liberal Party in general, and of Michael Ignatieff in particular?

No incentives to learn from each other? No incentives to share best practices? When Michael Ignatieff sees average Canadians (rare as that occasion is, given he has retreated back to the rarefied air of academia), he sees people who are ignorant and slothful and incapable of mustering the energy to better their lives, should if by some miracle they knew how to do that. For Liberals in general, and for Michael Ignatieff in particular, destiny requires the Liberal Party and its glorious leader to lead the shuffling herd for the herd's own good.

Here's what's really going to happen with regards to health care. The quality of delivered of health care might indeed start to differentiate across the country. And that's a good thing! If I'm in Nova Scotia, and I hear in a news report that wait times in New Brunswick are 25% lower, or that Albertans enjoy access to three times the number of MRIs per capita, then I've got something to work towards. As a voter, I would get to my MLA and demand an explanation. I might start a group dedicated to finding areas of improvement and agitating for change. I'll work to support an Opposition party that is promising to make some serious changes.

Heck, I might even move to a different province!

And the effect of these things will be to push the laggards up the hill, the provincial politicians not wanting to face an angry electorate. The improvements might be the re-allocation of funds, or underwriting the cost of taking patients to where the specialized services are best, or indeed, looking at the economic fundamentals of the successful provinces and wondering if maybe, just maybe, there are structural problems with high tax rates and over-regulation that are acting as a drag on the local medical community.

Honestly, the details don't really matter. Indeed, the solution might be something we haven't even thought of, and that's rather the point. What matters is that differentiation is what powers change. What needs to happen is for the federal government to allow provinces and people to become empowered, and then use that power to strive to improve, ideally having some sort of example to follow or emulate.

Of course, all this self-empowerment and local problem-solving is anathema to the Liberals. So much so that Michael Ignatieff honestly believes it won't happen. He really thinks that we average Canadians will wallow in confusion and ignorance until such time as the Liberals will come to wipe the drool off our chins, we being too stupid to improve our situation on our own.

Of all the insufferable and insulting...

So there you go. That's why Michael Ignatieff led the Liberals to such a disaster and why he couldn't hold on to his "safe" seat. If the Liberals want to fix their party, they should stop apologizing for Michael Ignatieff, stop making excuses for his dismal performance, and instead admit that yes, Michael Ignatieff thinks we're all idiots, and that yes, he really was a terrible example of a party leader.

And then promise that the next batch of Liberals will be different. That the next batch will ask themselves, "What would Michael say?", and then say something quite different.

I'm not holding my breath.

Another gutless Liberal whines

2012-01-02T19:56:22-05:00

Another Liberal diagnoses what is wrong with his party. If Daniel Veniez is an example of what the modern Liberal Party member is like, the real problem is pathological gutlessness.

For an entrepreneur, Daniel Veniez is a singularly gutless individual. He has written an extensive piece on what is ailing the Liberal Party. Now you'd expect this former CEO, this former policy advisor, this former Crown corporation chairman, to call it like it is.

What we get instead is the tentative whining of a gutless Liberal.

At first blush, Veniez seems to be hitting hard:

The party is an even looser confederation than Confederation itself. In fact, it is a dysfunctional mess. Reporting lines go to multiple places, management accountability is entirely absent, and funds are allocated inefficiently. Everyone wants to be a big fish in a shrinking pond. Provincial offices have their own staff that report to provincial executives, who in turn want to protect their own turf. In any rational management structure provincial offices should report directly to the executive director at national headquarters.

An inordinate number of "commissions" serve no useful purpose other than being permanent fiefdoms and a power base for a few skilled operators. These lead to exclusion and a clique mentality. There's a "commission" for everything. If you're young, you've got one. If you're old, you've got one. A woman? No problem, there's one for you. Of course, where would Liberals be without an "Aboriginal" commission? Not to worry, we've got one of those, too.

At the national level there are "vice presidents" that represent you if you are English, French, and virtually everything else. I'm beginning to feel excluded because there isn't a vice-president for white middle-aged men with black hair. You get the picture. There are provincial and territorial associations with their own presidents, executives, staffs, constitutions, and way too many sacred cows.

Pretty harsh stuff, right?

Wrong.

There is a glaring omission of the sort that reveals the fundamental cowardice that bedevils all Liberals.

Where are the names?

Daniel Veniez lists every Liberal Party commission, but not by name. Here are the names: the National Women's Liberal Commission, the Young Liberals of Canada, the Aboriginal Peoples' Commission, and the Senior Liberals Commission.

Was that so hard?

Veniez writes:

And what would I do with all those commissions and fancy officer titles that mean nothing and do even less? They would be toast -- every last one of them.

Why can't he bring himself to write this instead?

The National Women's Liberal Commission would be toast. The Young Liberals of Canada means nothing and does less. The Aboriginal Peoples' Commission? Gone. The Senior Liberals Commission? Gone.

Now that would take some guts.

Here's another example:

An inordinate number of "commissions" serve no useful purpose other than being permanent fiefdoms and a power base for a few skilled operators.But changing it will be hard, because what people ultimately care about is themselves and their own space, not the health and vitality of the party as a whole.

Few skilled operators? That's a bit vague. How about being specific?

How about saying that Tanya Kappo, the president of the Aboriginal Peoples' Commission, cares only about herself, as do the other nearly dozen Presidents and Vice-Presidents of that Commission?

Why can't Veniez take the step of accusing Nicole Foster Woollatt, Sharon Davis, Alexandra Knight, and the rest of the Women's Commission cabal of being a drain on the vitality of the Liberal Party?

Is Veniez worried that Samuel Lavioe, president of the Youth Liberals of Canada, will burst into tears if Veniez actually names Lavioe as being complicit in creating a "fat, lazy, complacent, and obsolete" Liberal Party?

Why won't Veniez lay part of the blame for the current state of the Liberal Party at the feet of Senior Liberals Commission presidents Austin Bowman (English) and Marie Reine-Paradis (French)? Logic dictates they've been around longer and therefore have earned a larger share of the blame.

But Veniez makes vague references to petty fiefdoms and egocentric party apparatchiks, but won't take the lead of pointing fingers and naming names, and demanding that these individuals defend themselves against his accusations.

As long as the Liberal Party is being diagnosed by the likes of Daniel Veniez, these party "big fish" won't have anything to worry about.

The NDP floor crossing bill and double-endorsements

2011-12-27T18:50:20-05:00

Did anyone notice that bit of cleverness in the NDP's proposed floor-crossing bill? It has a synergy with the proposed demi-merger with the Liberals.

A few weeks ago, a private member's bill introduced by NDP MP Mathieu Ravignat would make floor-crossing by MPs a very difficult proposition:

Members of Parliament shouldn't be allowed to switch parties while in office according to a private member's bill from a New Democrat MP that is being debated in Parliament Wednesday.

Quebec MP Mathieu Ravignat introduced his private member's bill in September and it is up for debate for the first time. It seeks to prevent MPs from changing political affiliations during their term in office, something that has caused plenty of controversy on Parliament Hill.

According to the proposed legislation, a member who leaves his or her party would be deemed to have vacated the seat and he or she would either have to sit as an independent or run in a byelection.

The suspicion is that the NDP is nervous about their Quebec contingent bolting to the Bloc Quebecois in the face of some intolerable slight from the federal government (that is to say, any slight from the federal government) coupled with the NDP, as a party, being too distracted by being a national party to muster a necessarily severe threat to cause the breakup of the country, which is, of course, the minimum level of threat demanded by Quebeckers of their representatives whenever they don't get their way.

Could a crisis like this happen? I'll almost guarantee it if the leadership of the NDP goes to a non-Quebecker.

This bill, therefore, is the way the NDP is planning to use the power of the law to maintain the integrity the party, should the party be unable to do the job itself.

Or so goes that theory.

I think it makes sense, but I think there might also be a longer term plan behind this bill. The bill, as phrased, uses the notion of endorsement as the test of whether the MP is crossing party lines.

So if a candidate is endorsed by the NDP, wins the riding in an election, and then declares his intention to sit as a Liberal, that MP is crossing the floor.

Likewise, if a candidate is endorsed by the Liberal, wins the riding in an election, and then declares his intention to sit in the NDP caucus, that MP is crossing the floor.

Now keep that in mind while you consider what NDP leadership candidate Nathan Cullen is proposing:

Cullen asked for a mandate to negotiate an arrangement whereby local riding associations of "progressive federalist parties" (i.e., the Liberals and Greens) could be given the option of deciding to hold joint nomination meetings for the purpose of unseating a local Conservative M.P.

How are these ideas linked? Imagine that the Liberals and the NDP split up the marginal ridings between them. In some ridings, the NDP candidate runs unopposed by a Liberal candidate, enjoying the endorsement of both of the Liberal Party and of the NDP. In other ridings, the Liberal candidate runs unopposed by an NDP candidate, also enjoying the endorsement of both of the Liberal Party and of the NDP.

After the votes are counted, you have a minority Conservative government. The NDP comes second, and the Liberals third. Suddenly all the Liberals rush to the NDP caucus.

But wait, don't they have to sit as independents, or step down altogether? Either way, the NDP caucus is not suddenly inflated to a number sufficient to form a government. Not necessarily. If the MP was endorsed both by the Liberal Party and by the NDP, that MP could sit with either party and not trigger the obligations demanded of Mathieu Ravignat's bill. If the hypothetical election ended with Liberals in second place, and the NDP third, then the smaller NDP caucus could join with the Liberals.

On the other hand, no MP could cross to join the Conservatives or the Bloc Quebecois without being forced to step down first.

Ravignat's bill will never pass in this parliament, but if in some distant future election, the results put either a weak NDP or Liberal government in power, supported by the Liberals or the NDP respectively, we might see a bill like Ravignat's come back. It would be designed explicitly to game the system so that parties with a strong sense of identity and committed to a platform based on some set of shared values (the Conservatives or the Bloc Quebecois) are always at a disadvantage, battling a pseudo-merged Liberal-NDP party that fights as two distinct parties, but never against each other, and then simply rewrites the outcome of an election in whatever way works to put them in power.

The flip side of the Orange Crush

2011-09-26T18:29:53-05:00

Are the Liberals caught in a positive feedback loop?

During the election, I described the Orange Crush as an example of a positive feedback loop. Essentially, an increase in support for the NDP was picked up by the pollsters, then reported in the media, which then led to an increase in support, and so on, until the level of NDP support locked at whatever maximum it could reach (the party picked up all the support it would ever get).

Now I wonder if we are seeing the flip side. A positive feedback loop that is driving down Liberal support:

The Conservatives remain the most popular party for both genders (Men 43%, Women 36%). Respondents aged 18-to-34 pick the NDP first (38%), while those aged 35-to-54 and those over the age of 55 prefer the Tories (42% and 48% respectively).

Three parties-the Conservatives, the NDP and the Greens-are holding on to at least four-in-five voters who supported them in the May 2011 election. The retention rate is lower for the Bloc (75%) and the Liberals (70%).

That last tidbit of information is most intriguing for me. A 70% retention rate? Why? The election is over. There is no choice in front of the voters. Frankly, there is little reason for people to be thinking of who to support, leading potentially to the changing of minds, since the question won't matter for another four years. And yet, the Liberals are haemorrhaging support.

In other words, people voted for the Liberals, perhaps strategically, and realized that their vote was for naught. The disastrous performance of the Liberals and the constant noise in the media about mergers with the NDP are causing these voters to belatedly switch their support to the NDP or to the Conservatives. Remember that the Liberals earned only 18% of the popular vote. Now they wish they had that much support.

But what about The Latest Liberal Tour to Listen to Canadians? It won't make a difference. People aren't listening to Bob Rae or Ralph Goodale or Justin Trudeau. They just hear bad news followed by more bad news, and they are reacting accordingly, which generates even more bad news. And so on and so on.

I have to wonder, therefore, if there is no cure for the Liberal Party. The same dynamic that pushed the NDP up and up is driving the Liberals down and down. Each report of Liberal troubles just reinforces the downward pressure, feeding into the next report, which increases the pressure further. All that blather about Liberal values and such? It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Nothing can stop the downward trajectory until the Liberals hit whatever floor of support exists for them.

What happens then? The downward pressure could dissipate, especially if fading Liberal relevance gives the party a respite from negative reports in the media. But then the Liberals will have to have the banked resources to sustain themselves and then hope to drive upward.

I doubt that will be the case. Hand-in-hand with the lowered support will be donation levels dropping quarter after quarter, and of course, the public subsidy shrinking year after year. In other words, as the support drives down and down, so does the money. Without money, the Liberal Party might very well shrivel up and die once it drops below some critical mass.

All we can do is hope.

A solution for Thomas Mulcair (if he has the guts to demand it)

2011-09-20T17:59:44-05:00

The NDP has a historic opportunity to show Canadians how the party would enhance national unity. All the party has to do is give party members from Quebec a fixed minimum share of the overall vote.

Surely what is good enough for the country is good enough for the NDP.

Let's see if Thomas Mulcair has got what it takes to demand of the NDP what he demands of the rest of us.

Thomas Mulcair, the deputy leader of the NDP, is weighing his chances of successfully running for the leadership of the party. What's holding him back? The lack of NDP party memberships in Quebec:

Mr. Mulcair blamed low membership numbers in Quebec as the biggest obstacle to his candidacy, an issue that has concerned him ever since he started discussing a leadership bid last month. However, Mr. Mulcair is appearing increasingly pessimistic, leaving the impression that he might skip the race even though the party sided with his plea for a campaign that will run into the spring of next year.

Since when does the number of people in Quebec, or the lack thereof, matter to Quebec's influence and power? Thomas Mulcair himself explained this point to stupid English-speaking Canadians:

Government House leader Peter Van Loan on Monday said one of the government's autumn priorities is to introduce legislation to create an electoral boundary redistribution formula that would better reflect population growth.

Under that scenario Quebec, which now has 24.4 per cent of the seats and a little more than 23 per cent of the population, would see its share of Canadian MPs decline to just slightly more than 22 per cent.

The NDP has argued that Quebec should be guaranteed to maintain its current share of the seats. That would require the 338-seat Commons to be swollen further by boosting Quebec's allotment to 82 or 83 seats, from the current 75.

Earlier Monday, Mulcair told reporters that such a move is consistent with the 2006 "nation" motion and the 1991 Supreme Court of Canada decision.

"It would be an irony to say that Quebec constitutes - the Quebecois constitute - a nation within Canada and then the first thing you do is you reduce the . . . weight of Quebecers within the House of Commons."

It doesn't matter that there are less people living in Quebec and more in BC, Alberta, and Ontario. It doesn't matter that the principle that drives democracy is one-person-one-vote. What matters is that Quebec is Quebec, and unlike other provinces to which people are making an effort to move (perhaps to enjoy lower taxes, less intrusive government, a business environment free of pervasive corruption, and of course, not being subjected to government-sanctioned and government-enforced linguistic and cultural discrimination), Quebec doesn't need to earn power within confederation.

Quebec is Quebec, and so Quebec gets power for free, now and forever.

So if that is the system which Canadians across the country must endure, if the NDP has its way, then why is the NDP exempt?

Surely the NDP could show Canadians how unity is enhanced by giving Quebec special status, including enhanced powers, by giving the party's paltry Quebec ranks greater weight in the upcoming leadership race.

The NDP has 1,695 members from Quebec, out of a national membership of over 80,000. So by the numbers, the Quebec contingent figures just over 2% of the vote.

Increase that by an order of magnitude. Insist that regardless of the numbers, the Quebec membership of the NDP counts for 24% of the vote total. That means each vote cast by each member from Quebec is worth 10 times the vote of a member from BC or Ontario.

That would solve Thomas Mulcair's problem, and would act as practical example of how the NDP would manage confederation, keeping Ontario and BC happy while guaranteeing Quebec a fixed share of the vote in Parliament.

Come on, Mulcair, show us how it would be done. Stand up on your hind legs and demand that Quebec NDP members get extra value for their votes just because they're from Quebec and people from Quebec are special.

Or maybe Thomas Mulcair is just all talk. You know the type. Complains that other people aren't doing the "right thing", but can't even imagine being forced to do the same thing himself. Call him on it, and all you hear are the mealy-mouth excuses of a coward.

NDP: Campaign from the right, govern from the left?

2011-09-10T12:05:59-05:00

NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel is pleading for party unity as the leadership race kicks off. There is a specific audience for her words. I wonder if the NPI is ready to rise again.

It is said that the secret of the success of the Liberal Party in times past was its propensity to campaign from the left, but govern from the right.

I wonder if the NDP plans to turn that on its head. Nycole Turmel, the NDP's interim leader, made a plea for party unity as the the rules for the leadership campaign to replace the late Jack Layton were announced:

Turmel reminded the party that it needs to remain united as it heads into a previously unexpected leadership race following the Aug. 22 death of Layton.

"Every step we take, we will be watched closely," Turmel told members of the NDP federal council. "We must remain focused on the job of building our party. Jack showed us how we can do politics differently, how we can listen and respect other opinions and at the end of the day, remain united.

"And that is what we need to do today," Turmel continued. "We will make difficult decisions, but at the end of the day, we need to walk out of here and be united."

Turmel got one potentially divisive debate out of the way early when she revealed on Thursday that the party executive had decided not to recommend giving greater weight to union votes.

The 2003 convention that elected Layton leader was the first time the federal New Democrats used a one-member, one-vote system, but as with previous races it also gave affiliated unions 25 per cent of the vote.

Who is upset about this change to the privileges once awarded to labour unions? Well, the unions of course, and anyone on the hard left of the NDP (yes, the NDP has a right wing too, though to most people it is far left as well, but not as far left as the left part of the leftist NDP). Indeed, this leftist hard core is not above undermining the NDP leadership when they see it drifting to the right (which is still far to the left for most people, but relatively speaking, it is not as far left as the NDP's far left...you get it).

They've done it before, in 2001.

Back then, these troublemakers were led by the likes of Libby Davies, and they formed the New Politics Initiative in 2001, only folding in 2004 on the face saving excuse that the newly elected party Jack Layton was sympathetic to their views (though the reality that in three years there was no rush of people eager to declare themselves to be communists likely played a part as well).

So what was the NPI all about? The NPI had hoped to gain enough support within the NDP to push forward a plan to disband the NDP completely, and to build a new party of committed socialists and communists. The NPI plan went something like this:

Disband the NDP
Something magical happens
Win an election and create a worker's paradise in Canada, becoming the vanguard for a global revolution

The second step is clearly a bit vague, and yet many delegates to the NDP convention in 2001 felt that they needed more detail about the "how" of that second step, so the NPI resolution was defeated.

Fast forward 10 years, and the NDP is not only alive and well and the Official Opposition, but in order to avoid accusations that the party was the tool of organized labour, the special voting provisions for the labour unions have been excised.

The drift to the right has continued, and might be accelerating.

Time for a new NPI? Maybe, and I'm certain many of the old NPI warhorses are thinking exactly that. They thought the NDP was drifting too far to the right in 2001. Now in 2011, labour unions don't have special voting rights? The horror!

And that is what I think Nycole Turmel and the rest of the NDP leadership is worried about -- a new NPI sprouting up and causing trouble during the leadership campaign.

But as the NDP has realized, electoral success comes from moderating your views and quelling the concerns of potential voters who worry that the party is just a bit too extreme. Having a high profile NPI Redux in the news and demanding that leadership candidates declare their commitment to the ideas of every radical from Karl Marx to L Susan Brown would be a disaster.

So how do you keep the lid on Libby Davies and her ilk?

Well, if the NPI crowd does keep quiet during the leadership campaign, then I think the NDP is quietly planning to campaign from the right, and govern from the left, and has convinced the NPI types to play ball. Removing the special privileges for organized labour is part of campaigning from the right, that is, presenting a moderate face to Canadian voters. But once in power, the promise to Davies and the others is to govern from the left. High taxes, expanded and intrusive government, the erosion and elimination of individual rights and privileges, the creation and expansion of rights and privileges for special interest groups and victimization fetishists, punitive environmental measures and regulations selectively applied to successful free market corporations, the continued destruction of the traditional family in favour of State indoctrination of children, health care management by death cultists hiding behind phrases like "reproductive rights" and "dying with dignity", the replacement of party politics and bottom-up democratic mandates with identity politics justified by unaccountable top-down bureaucracies, ceding of Canadian sovereignty to trans-national unelected bodies like the UN, and all that other stuff leftist dreams are made of.

Shhhhhh! Keep all that under the covers until after an election win. Until then, act reasonable and centrist.

Campaign from the right, and govern from the left.

If Libby Davies and the other NPI alumni give the NDP a free ride, as Nycole Turmel is pleading they will, then I wonder if it is because Turmel and the NDP leadership have successfully sold this plan to Davies and the others.

That would worry me. A lot.

If, on the other hand, Davies and Murray Dobbins and the rest get back up their high horse and condemn Turmel and the others as class traitors, then at least I know that the NDP is truly drifting away the leftist crazies. There might be hope for the NDP after all.

I guess we'll see in the next few months as the NDP leadership campaign gets underway.

Not-so-nice thoughts regarding Nycole Turmel

2011-09-07T15:58:27-05:00

I don't have anything nice to say about interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel. Skip this post if you are easily offended.

While I was away on other business, the controversy regarding Nycole Turmel's recent, ongoing, and simultaneous memberships in sovereigntist Quebec parties exploded. I really wasn't going to cover this because (a) it's old news now, and (b) she's just the interim leader of the NDP, so she doesn't amount to much.

But I've gotten some emails since I came out of my cave today, and people seemed to want my take on this.

So here goes. It's not pretty.

When Turmel was being pummeled over this, she did an interview on CJAD, and she gave her lame excuse that she has joined the Bloc Quebecois in order to support a friend.

The obvious question was asked: If her friend had joined the federal Conservatives, would Turmel have also joined?

Her response: "I would not support a friend that is a conservative, as an example, ever ever. That is clear."

Ah, so she has a promiscuous attitude towards political affiliations, but her promiscuity has limits.

She has standards.

Ever watch Cops? It's my guilty pleasure. I recall an episode when the officer responded to a complaint at a truck stop. Behind the parked trucks, he interrupted a trucker soliciting sex from a truck stop prostitute. He separated the two, and fishing for an excuse to search the truck, he asked the prostitute if the trucker had offered to pay for her services with drugs.

Oh no, she said emphatically. "I'm a ho, but I'm not a crack ho."

She has standards.

Nycole Turmel jumps in and out of political beds, including the beds of those dedicated to breaking up the country, for the flimsiest of reasons so as to please her friends. Fine. But she won't jump into bed with the Conservatives. Oh no.

She has standards.

Do you know what a whore with standards is called?

A whore.

Liberals need to stop listening to Jean Chretien

2011-09-07T11:23:35-05:00

In watching the contortions being suffered by Liberal Party and NDP supporters over whether to attempt a merger or not, I am astonished at the single-mindedness of former prime minister Jean Chretien. He is looking out for himself, but Liberals foolishly think he's giving them good advice.

Should the Liberal Party and the NDP merge? The debate rages on.

You can divide the people in this debate into three groups.

The first group are those blinded by desperation. Mostly these are Liberals still shell-shocked at the election disaster that threw them into third place, but there are some NDP people in this group as well, their nervousness at being propelled into the role of Official Opposition by sheer accident metastasizing into near panic now that Jack Layton is dead. For these people, a merger is an emotional choice that they believe (for the Liberals) will return them to power and (for the NDP) will solidify and unify the party.

The second group are quite the opposite from being blind. Indeed, their sight is seared by blazing truth that a merger between the Liberals and the NDP will destroy both parties. The right of the Liberal Party, horrified at sharing a party with an unreformed socialist horde, will sheer off to join the Conservatives. The left of the NDP, horrified at sharing a party with capitalist stooges, will break away to form an uncompromising socialist party. Special interest groups within both parties will leave to look for new homes (for example, single-issue environmental activists will join the Green Party). Old guard members of each party will each create a new Liberal Party and a new NDP Party, and pretend the merger never happened. The pragmatists from both sides who couldn't care less about principles and policies will form the core of the new Liberal/NDP amalgam, but they will find that the new party doesn't seem much larger than either the former Liberals or the former NDP, and certainly is not anywhere close to the size of the two former parties combined.

So who is in the third group? It is a group of one -- Jean Chretien. He is agitating for a merger, but he isn't panicked about it the way the first group is, and it is hard to imagine that he can't see how the merger will almost certainly fail as recognized by the second group:

Former prime minister Jean Chretien is reopening the debate on a Liberal-NDP merger, arguing that a merger turned out well for the Conservatives.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Evan Solomon, host of CBC's Power & Politics, Chretien said the merger will happen soon or not at all.

"It will be done one day. It will come very quickly or not happen. Look at the way that Harper did that - Harper had MacKay there. [He] made a solemn promise in writing that never he will talk merging with the Reform [Party]. He's now the minister of defence. Things happen and they happen, sometimes, at moments unexpected."

So what is Chretien playing at? In all honesty, he is looking out for himself and his legacy. When the Sponsorship Scandal erupted, Jean Chretien bailed, and ensured that Paul Martin would be punished by the voters, not him. Chretien's party financing reforms permanently hobbled the Liberal Party, all but ensuring that Martin's successors, in turn, would fail as well.

And now this merger talk? Promoting an idea that would spell the end of the Liberal Party itself?

Gee, if that happened, then Jean Chretien would be remembered as the last successful Liberal Party prime minister in Canadian history.

Oh, wait a second...

Duh.

Of course Jean Chretien is pushing for a merger. It's all about Jean Chretien. It's always been about Jean Chretien.

But until Liberals admit that to themselves and to everyone else around them, they'll keep listening to him in awe and feeding his ego, even as he tries to lead them along a path that will end badly for everyone but himself.

Liberals hand the future of their party to Bob Rae

2011-06-19T12:03:14-05:00

The choice taken by the Liberal Party to avoid making a decision on a new leader for a full two years means that Bob Rae will have the time to make the party into what he wants to make it, leaving the next leader little choice but to carry on with whatever decisions Bob Rae has taken on a so-called "interim" basis.

I know it doesn't matter inasmuch as the Liberal Party is not all that relevant anymore, but I want to consider the Liberal plan to delay a leadership convention for a full two years. In that time, Bob Rae will lead them on what they call an "interim" basis.

This is absurd.

In those two years, Bob Rae will not be keeping the chair warm for the next guy, signing the occasional bit of paperwork. He is going to be leading the rebuilding process. He has already spoken at length about his goals to re-engage the grass roots, to turn the Liberal Party into a "movement", to wrestle the Conservatives and the NDP for support, and so on. To do any of this, the Liberal Party will need to set out a philosophy and matching policies. The Liberal Party will have to take stands on legislation that is going to be introduced over the next 24 months, and will have to respond to domestic and foreign events.

Traditionally, a true "interim" leader of a party with solid support can coast for a few months up to a leadership convention the leadership hopefuls are evaluated and one is chosen to put his or her stamp on the party. For a short time, everything can be put on hold.

But what is happening here is something entirely different. For two years, Bob Rae is going to actively drive the Liberal Party in some particular direction, and then sell that to people he is trying to entice to become supporters. And Liberals can't kid themselves on this point. You can't sell a ghost of a party. You can't hope to earn support, especially financial support, by telling people that your party's platform is a big "TBD". If Bob Rae is going to rebuild the party over the next two years, he's going to have to define the party over the next two years.

That means that when the next leadership convention comes, the choice will be between a leader who will continue whatever Bob Rae has started (assuming Rae's efforts enjoy some modicum of success), or a leader that is taking the party in an entirely different direction, thereby wiping out any progress made just two years before the next election in 2015.

By letting Bob Rae be "interim" leader for a full two years, the Liberals have essentially handed the permanent leadership to him. Oh, he might not stand as leader in two years (I think the "promise" not to do so is worthless, but let's take him at his word), but if Bob Rae is going to achieve the goals he has set for himself, the Liberal Party will not be a ship at the dock, fully patched up and with a fresh coat of paint, just waiting for the new captain to come aboard and set course. It will be fully under sail with a destination in mind - that destination having been set by Bob Rae. Whatever supporters the Liberal Party has at that time will be supporters because of the direction chosen by Bob Rae, so any leadership candidate who does not buy into Bob Rae's program will be at a disadvantage.

So which way will the Liberal Party go? I guess we'll see, but I'm betting that it will be towards the NDP. The Conservatives are too solidly united. The NDP, on the other hand, is a patchwork of prairie populists, central Canadian labour unions, urban latte socialists, and bemused Quebec separatists. By the time the Liberal leadership convention comes, the Liberal Party will look like NDP-lite, with Bob Rae and Thomas Mulcair each taking it in turn to trash each other then make conciliatory noises that sound like moves towards a merger. Whoever the next Liberal leader is, he or she won't have the luxury of time or money to change direction, unless he or she is willing to write off the 2015 election, because that will be the price to be paid to turn the Liberal Party away from whatever course is set by Bob Rae over the next two years.

When will those irrelevant Liberal bloggers fix their banner?

2011-06-11T11:34:11-05:00

How irrelevant are Liberal bloggers? They can't even be bothered to maintain their blog aggregation site.

The Liberal Party is irrelevant. Their utterances of their leader, Bob Rae, and their party president, Alfred Apps, are irrelevant. The newspaper columns that continue to be published by Liberal apologists are irrelevant, at least when those columns focus on the irrelevant Liberal Party.

And by extension, Liberal bloggers are the most irrelevant of all (bloggers are already irrelevant bottom-feeder and ankle-biters of the political process, so being a blogger aligned to an irrelevant party is far, far worse).

Having brutally established the current irrelevancy of the Liberal Party and their ilk, a quick visit to the Liblogs reveals the sort of sitting-on-the-couch, scratching-your-potato-chip-covered-belly laziness that typically afflicts the irrelevant. (Why was I at the blog aggregation site for Liberal Party bloggers in the first place? Habit really. First time in over a week. I don't know when, or if, I'll be back.)

So what's the problem? The banner still puts former leader Michael Ignatieff at the forefront of the montage of past leaders. That is the position where the current leader's profile would be found.

Besides the curiosity that comes from giving the most disastrous leader in their irrelevant party's history a place of honour, they are slapping their current leader in the face. Bob Rae will be Liberal Party interim leader for 18 months. The soul-crushing irrelevancy of his job will, in all likelihood, prompt him to make a move to the NDP -- promises made not to do so to the irrelevant Alfred Apps being irrelevant, of course. He might be the irrelevant leader of an irrelevant party, but I expect his tenure will be interesting (and he will quite possibly be the last "Liberal leader" ever).

Given the Michael Ignatieff's miserable political past, and Bob Rae's interesting political future, I would encourage whoever maintains that site to brush off the chips, get off the couch, and fix that banner. As it is, it puts a spotlight on their irrelevance. I don't think anything can fix it, but hey, give it a try, or just shut down the site altogether.

The election is an amplifier, not a reflector

2011-06-04T23:43:57-05:00

The electoral process is not meant to reflect the mood of the electorate, but to amplify it.

You're in a crowded room. Say it's a dinner party. Around you there are numerous conversations going on simultaneously, the flatware clinking on plates, perhaps a television droning in the background. And through the din you pick out the voice of someone trying to get your attention.

According to Jack Layton, you should be ashamed. You are listening to only a small portion of the sounds in the room, ignoring all the other voices that could be heard. Indeed, the sound of the voice you are listening to isn't even the loudest, not even over 50% of the total sound energy in the room.

But of course you listen to that voice. It's part of signal processing. Either by our own human abilities, or using technological assistance, we wade through all the noise and tease out the most significant information-carrying signal, and then amplify it so we can understand the information it is carrying.

Elections are a form of signal processing. Millions of voters and millions of opinions, and we have a process that teases out the most significant signal in that din.

And yet NDP leader Jack Layton repeats the lament of the left when they don't win an election, and that is that the electoral process somehow didn't work:

Mr. Layton complained that the speech did not include any of the items that were high on the list of NDP priorities, and he said he expected that the Tories would show some willingness to work with the other parties in the House of Commons. He said he was disappointed that the Conservatives, who "only received 40% of the vote," weren't pledging to be more cooperative with the opposition.

To an engineer who understands signal processing, pulling out that signal that carries 40% of the power and ignoring the the rest (not one signal, mind you, but numerous signals, none of them nearly as powerful) is perfectly reasonable.

That's why signal processing works. It figures out what the dominant and significant (in an information-carrying sense) signal is and brings it to the forefront, and treats the rest as noise., reducing or even eliminating those components.

Our First-Past-The-Post system does this brilliantly. It manages to reward the most coherent "signal" with a clear channel -- a parliamentary majority -- by amplifying that one strongest signal.

But the losers on the left complain about this. They want proportional representation so that all the little signals are heard as well, and just as loudly.

(Interestingly, I don't recall people on the right demanding proportional representation when their parties lose, nor do the people on the left seem at all embarrassed that FPTP has in the past rewarded their parties with majorities with less than 50% of the vote.)

When I adjust the tuner on a radio, I expect it to play only one station, not to overlay easy listening with rap music by letting the signals of two stations be piped through the speakers at the same time. I have a signal I want to listen to, and the technology I'm using allows me to listen to that signal even though it is swamped by competing signals.

I want that in my electoral process as well. I want a process by which the strongest consensus is amplified. The opinion that achieves the strongest support has that success amplified, and those opinions that find the shallowest support has that lack of broad conviction amplified as well -- though to be clear, this sort of amplification means that these weak signals are aggressively filtered out.

It seems perfectly logical and reasonable to me.

The Liberal Party and my favourite axe

2011-05-23T15:35:28-05:00

Did you hear about the man and his favourite axe?

How many columns and blog posts have been published that implore Liberals to look for new ideas? I've been seeing it over and over again.

We Liberals need to define the centre.

We Liberals need to decide what policies we want to adopt.

We Liberals need to figure out what we stand for.

There is a joke, popular among engineers, in which a man proudly shows off his axe to a friend. He declares this to be the best axe he ever owned. In fact, he likes it so much that he has replaced the blade twice and the handle three times rather than throw it away.

The joke, of course, is that what he is holding in his hand has long since ceased to have any connection to that axe from long ago.

These Liberals are like the man with the great axe. The Liberal Party is important. The Liberal Party matters. Canada needs the Liberal Party.

To preserve this party, therefore, they will engage in an exercise to decide what this Liberal Party means. Depending on what policies they adopt on questions of taxation, social programs, foreign affairs, the military, trade, and so on, it is quite likely that whatever emerges will have no resemblance whatsoever to the Liberal Party that suffered a crushing defeat under Michael Ignatieff in the last election, or that suffered a somewhat less crushing defeat under Stephane Dion, or ruled with majorities under Jean Chretien, or attacked Alberta's oil industry under Pierre Trudeau, and so on.

This is not to say that parties can never change or evolve. Of course they do. But they do so under some sort of philosophically-based set of guiding principles that provide some sense of whether a given policy change represents a radical departure for that party, and that sense feeds into the ease or difficulty with which that change is adopted.

Do you get the sense that these Liberals would have any difficulty in adopting any policy whatsoever? The glibness with which they declare their intent to define "what the party stands for" is shocking. What the party stands for should be obvious in some overarching sense.

No so with the Liberals. Several have said the Liberal Party must find "the centre". In other words, as a party, the Liberals never offer to lead, but only to pander.

Pandering is a sort of philosophy, I suppose, but not a very inspirational one. It's too elastic. Is the country in the mood for more social programs? The Liberals will be there to expand into provincial jurisdictions with programs funded by higher taxes. Is the country sick of taxes? The Liberals will be there to slash taxes and to download unfunded programs to the provinces. Either way works for the Liberals because as Liberals, they have no real philosophy when it comes to jurisdictional respect, taxation, the size and role of government -- except to say that on these issues and on any other, the Liberal Party will be there to say what they think you want them to say.

So like the axe in the joke, the Liberals will replace any part of any program and policy, and then hold up this new program or policy and declare it to be quintessentially Liberal.

As long as it seems popular, that is. When the shine comes off, it will get replaced with a brand new program or policy that is as definitively Liberal as the diametrically-opposed program or policy it replaces -- or so insist the Liberals.

The joke is funny because the man holding the axe is oblivious to the fact that his favourite axe ceased to exist a long time ago. The Liberals seem to understand exactly what they are doing. That's not funny at all. It's just cynical.

It's past time to chuck this axe away. Or perhaps to admit it has ceased to exist a long time ago.