Non Sequitur

The Globe and Mail has one of its business section articles where it tacks a bunch of different stories onto one another...

The first story is about the housing market and starts,

"National Bank of Canada worries that the impact of rising interest rates on the residential housing sector “could be dire” in Canada. 'Though the Bank of Canada has done well to set its rate normalization process in motion, the fact remains that the stakes at play are high, with home prices and household debt at record levels relative to income,'"

The second story is about what's the mind of our finance minister and starts,

"Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says a solution to Europe's debt problem will be the top issue for the G20 summit in Toronto this month."

I hope Mr. Flaherty remembers that we have debt problems of our own...

Not Partisan

One of my recurring themes here on the blog is that one of the problems with right wingers these days is that they have no ability to distinguish between things that are partisan in nature and things that aren't. See here or here for a couple of examples.

Just in case there are any right wingers out there who want to change this habit, here's a tip for the future. When a serious economic crisis threatens the country*, that is not the time for partisan games.


* On the off chance someone wants to try and argue we're not facing a serious economic crisis, save it. The prices of our main exports are plunging, our major trading partners are in recession and facing worse, some of the largest employers in the country are on the verge of bankruptcy, with many more of the country's biggest most stable companies needing to raise funds at distress prices and trading at levels that suggest very high risk, our housing markets are falling fast, government budgets are coming under increasing strain, and we're only getting started. Just because the coyote hasn't looked down yet doesn't mean we haven't run off the cliff.

P.S. What's wrong with Andrew Coyne these days? For someone who supports proportional representation he seems awfully bent out of shape at the idea of having a government that actually represents a majority of the votes cast for once.

And he's making all sorts of crazy arguments of the sort you'd normally associate with loony national post types (such as Colby Cosh who actually sees a day of trading in which the TSX dropped less than U.S. markets (comparing like sector to sector, e.g. financials were down 9% in Canada, 17% in the U.S.) and thinks that this proves that 'Money has cast a vote' against the coalition. People who have yet to realize that the TSX is heavily weighted in commodities and that on a day when commodities do poorly, the overall TSX index will do poorly, really shouldn't be commenting on the stock market, but that's what I get for reading the national post where the only qualification required is ideology not actual knowledge.

Catching Up

Last week was pretty busy so I missed commenting on a couple of things.

First, via One Damn Thing After Another, I see that when Telus decided to block customer access to some anti-Telus websites, they also inadvertently (I assume) blocked access to a large number (at least 766) of other sites. That's Telus for you, you can count on them to not only do the wrong thing, but to do it incompetently.

Second, after first allying with then questioning the legitimacy of the Bloc Quebecois, shutting down parliament, playing on prejudices, entrapment, whining, whining , whining and more whining in their failed bid to gain power, the Conservatives despaired and hauled out their strategy of last resort: promoting sensible policies - in this case making transit passes tax deductible. We can argue about whether it is the best way to correct the market imbalance in favour of automobiles or whether it makes sense to fund this measure instead of Kyoto, but it is a reasonable idea which would make the country a little bit better - maybe Andrew is finally getting through to the Conservative brain-rust.

In Lieu of...

...actually writing anything myself, I'm just going to keep linking to other stuff I happened to like. Take this post by Mahigan at True North for example, which talks about the recent struggles of the Conservative party and is worth a read purely for the sheer variety and density of insult contained within, never mind the actual content. If rantings are ecosystems this post is a rainforest.

A sample:

"The unholy marriage of the Progressive Conservative party and the Social Credit Reform Alliance party didn't make much sense in the first place. It was an opportunistic circular firing squad type of arrangement forged by two groups of perennial lusers desperate to change their circumstances. It always more closely resembled a case of the last two drunks left in the bar at closing time going home together because they both knew they weren't going to do any better than it did a real partnership. Throwing the Canadian Taliban into the mix only made it worse."

but you really need to read the whole thing to get the full (pungent) flavour of it.

Why Do the Conservatives Hate Democracy?

Via, Sinister Thoughts, it seems like the Conservative party is blocking any progress on electoral reform in the Federal government. I guess they must still be hoping that they can get 35-40% of the votes in a future election and form a majority government. As Greg says,

"The question is, why are the Conservatives, who see threats to democracy everywhere, blocking attempts to improve our democracy?"

Update: From the comments at Greg's post I see that perhaps the Conservatives are just blocking all government business regardless of what it is. My title was meant to be humorous (see my explanation in the comments) but if they keep this up, I'll have to start wondering if the Conservatives, perhaps don't hate, but have a certain contempt for our democracy. (Certainly the Liberals have shown their share of contempt for our democracy as well recently, but two wrongs don't make a right in my book).

A Short Walk in the Mud

I have to admit I was a bit puzzled by Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper's reaction to the budget last week, and I thought that Warren Kinsella was rightly critical of his performance (in his feb 24 post). More generally, ever since the last election, I haven't really gotten the feeling that Harper's heart is really in the battle to form the next government.

Despite widespread fatigue with Liberal government, the ongoing sponsorship scandal, the humourous yet disturbing mismanagement of the Missile Defence file, the inability to actually come up with a plan on Kyoto and the media predictably going straight from their 'Martin can do no wrong' storyline to their 'Martin can do no right' storyline, the Conservative party is failing to make much of an impact with voters and are still polling below the combined vote of the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties back when they were still separate parties.

Rather than focusing on reducing Federal intrusion in Provincial affairs and putting tax cuts ahead of spending, the Conservatives seem to be bogged down in an attempt to convince minority voters to vote for them because they are willing (just in this one case?) to deny rights to one particular minority the other minorities don't like.

But besides all this, there's times when I see Harper in a scrum with reporters and he just has this look in this eye, and I can't help but feel that he's thinking, "If these dumbass journalists ask one more ignorant question which shows how little they know what their talking about, I'm going to make what Chrétien did to that protester look like a friendly greeting." Not that I don't sympathize sometimes, but that kind of thing comes with the territory, being a leader of a federal party and all.

And it's not just me thinking this and wondering, "Has anyone seen Stephen Harper?"

You put it all together, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Harper take a short walk in the mud¹ some time in the next year or two and announce that he is stepping down as leader of the Conservative party.

Which brings me to the reason I started writing this post in the first place, to speculate on a potential replacement for Harper. Now, Calgary Grit has a good post up handicapping potential replacements for liberal leader Paul Martin, but I thought that, rather than start with the prominent people, I would start with the qualities necessary for the job, and see if it brought anyone to mind. This way we won't be limiting ourselves to the obvious choices.

So what qualities would a good Conservative party leader have? (I'm trying to see this from the perspective of the typical Conservative voter which may be a bit of a stretch, but I'll do my best)

1. Ambition: One of the biggest problems with Harper's leadership has been the sense that he doesn't have the drive to do what's necessary to make the Conservatives into a party which can take power. A new leader would have to be someone who has shown a clear desire to set Canadian policy and to have clear ideas on what that policy should be - i.e. someone who really wants to run the country.

2. Improve relations with the U.S.: Given our strong economic and political ties with the Americans, it is essential that the new leader avoid getting dad angryimprove relations with our supremely powerful neighbours.

3. Proven dedication to Conservative priorities: For example, tax cuts and military spending (and not being happy with a budget which puts these off for years).

4. High Profile: While a party can succeed with a relative unknown at the helm, it would be advantageous to have someone already familiar to Canadians, especially to help with the trust factor which the Conservatives are struggling with.

So who fits these criteria? Stronach? Mackay? Lord? No, the answer is clearly: Paul Cellucci.

The timing is perfect since Cellucci is just coming to the end of his term as American ambassador to Canada. True, Cellucci is said to have a lucrative private gig set up but do we really think that the offer to become Prime Minister of Canada wouldn't lure him back into politics? If any public figure has shown an ambition to set Canadian policy over the last few years it has been Cellucci. Whether issuing vague warnings about our drug policies or rhetorically styling himself as the arbiter of Canadian sovereignty, he's probably made more headlines criticizing the government's actions than Harper has and Harper is the leader of the official opposition.

As for improving relations with the U.S., what could be better than having their former ambassador to us as our PM? Who could do a better job crafting Canadian policy to meet with the approval of the Bush administration than a man specifically appointed by them to manage our country?

In a similar vein, who could doubt the commitment to tax cuts and military spending of someone appointed by George Bush? And he not only has a significant public profile here in Canada, he's reasonably well known in the U.S. as well.

As an added bonus, Conservatives already like to dismiss any criticism of their policies as just being knee jerk anti-Americanism and that argument would be that much more effective with Cellucci officially running the party.

And finally, think of it from Cellucci's perspective. Is there a more time-honoured path to taking over the reins of an empire than by successfully running one of its outer provinces? I think not.

Sure, there may be some technical issues (e.g. citizenship) to overcome, but from where I stand it's all coming together for Cellucci in 2006.


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¹ Given 20 years of global warming and the difference in political tenure between Trudeau and Harper, I figure a long walk in the snow translates into a short walk in the mud.