Canada's Back

The Conservatives used to complain that the Liberals were hypocritical for talking a good game but not taking a lot of action on the climate change front. I guess we all knew that once in power the Conservatives would avoid this hypocrisy by refusing to talk a good game.

For example, see this Maclean's article headlined, "Suddenly the World Hates Canada" To be honest, I'm not sure how this means Canada's back¹, since I don't recall the world hating Canada at any point in the past, but I'm sure Harper can explain.

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¹Harper, in a 2007 speech, noted that since the Conservatives had taken charge, Canada was 'back as vital player on the world stage'.

Carbon Tax Politics

For a change, here's a couple of observations on the politics of carbon taxes after watching two elections where it was a fairly significant issue:

Although you might think that making a carbon tax revenue neutral would be an effective tactic to neutralize the ‘tax grab’ line of attack, in practice people seem unwilling to buy into the notion of a carbon tax being revenue neutral.

The B.C. Liberal government, first elected in 2001, has done only one thing consistently throughout it’s 8 years in power – cut taxes. They’ve never shown any desire to increase taxes nor, at the time they introduced the carbon tax, did they have any need to do so. They specifically outlined the measures they would take to ensure the tax was revenue neutral including tracking and regular reporting with adjustments to the offsetting tax cuts as necessary to ensure no extra revenue was collected due to the carbon tax. On top of all that, they have a provincial media which is effectively an extension of their party. It's hard to imagine anyone ever making a more convincing case to an electorate that their carbon tax was indeed revenue neutral. And although it is difficult and risky to assume I know how things would have gone in the counterfactual situation where they did not take these measures, I don’t see that they got much of a payoff from all this effort to ensure revenue neutrality.

One of the bigger risks to support for the tax, both in B.C. and federally, was that other levels of government might come out in opposition, where their area would be hit relatively harder by the tax (for example).

Finally, one of the arguments against the tax from rural residents and people in smaller towns was that they had no option to reduce their carbon usage – where city folk had the option of taking transit, they had to drive everywhere.


So here's a suggestion: Future carbon tax proposals should scrap the notion of revenue neutrality and instead guarantee regional neutrality. Mandate that all revenue from the carbon tax will be returned to the region it was collected from, where it will be used exclusively for public transit development.

Note that this effectively downloads the real decision to local governments which can reduce their own transit funding and substitute in the money they get from the new tax - effectively make the tax back into a revenue neutral one for their area - or use the money for increased transit funding as 'intended'.

Of course it goes without saying that it is dumb to *campaign* on bringing in a carbon tax, that is the type of thing you do in your first or second year of being in charge...

Question Answered

After the federal election, I asked, "Can the Conservatives keep chasing the Quebec nationalists without alienating their rural anglophone supporters in the rest of the country? Or will they refocus on the 905 region which could also provide them enough extra seats to form a majority?"

I guess we know the answer to that one!

On the other hand, in the same post I predicted that the Liberals, "seem likely to elect Ignatieff as their new leader and swing to the right in an attempt to regain the ground they have lost to the Conservatives over the last two elections."

Which is going as predicted so far, and I suspect having Ignatieff in charge of the LIberals will make it harder for the Conservatives to make inroads into the 905 area.

The Election

Sadly, I haven't and won't have much time for commenting on the election.

So in short, my preference this election is for the Liberals. I see Stephane Dion as an intelligent person with integrity who shares my primary concerns (environmental issues, child poverty) and the green tax shift is very smart policy in my opinion. Watching the debate, I get the sense that Dion is also aware of the threat posed by peak oil, realizing that moving away from dependence on oil and gas for our energy needs is the key to our propserity going forward.

Second choice would be Green and then NDP third, although I think voting Green instead of voting for the greenest mainstream leader we're likely to see for a while is counter-productive unless one is a very hardcore Green.

Strategically, the best plan for progressive voters is probably an 'anything but conservative one', voting for whoever has the best chance of defeating the local Conservative one in your own riding. Luckily, for me in Vancouver centre, the best chance to beat the Conservatives is the Liberal candidate, Hedy Fry - so that's one way at least, that our archaic election system won't mess with my vote this election.

Some of the reasons I don't want to see the Conservatives in power:

1) The environment. The Conservatives have a mindset where environmental protection is in opposition to economic growth and economic growth takes precedence. I don't sense that the Conservative party believes in the threat from climate change or has any real intention of trying to do anything about it other than the minimum it can get away with. As an Alberta based party, they can't really be expected to lead the move away from dependence on fossil fuels either.

2) Iraq. If the Conservatives had been in power during the run-up to the Iraq war Canada would have joined in. Who knows what could be around the corner in terms of potential ill-advised military adventures in the next few years. Electing a Conservative party would increase the chances of Canada joining into such a venture.

3) Lack of conservatism - with a small 'c'. Someone with a conservative mindset generally wants to respect tradition, to limit growth in the power of the government, and to respect the checks and balances built into the political system. However, in my opinion, the Conservative party wishes to remake this country into one much more similar to the U.S., as opposed to the 'second tier socialistic country' (in Harper's words) that it is now (in their opinion).

But in pursuing this goal the Conservatives see the traditional institutions, the checks and balances as things that stand in their way. So, far from wanting to reinforce the strength of Canada's independent institutions that check the government's power and to work within the system, the Conservative's want to weaken those institutions and remove anything that prevents them from remaking the system as they wish. This was expressed by Harper in a rare moment of candour when he referred to how the courts and the media and the Senate and the civil service would prevent them from fully implementing their desired plans.

In government we have seen the Conservative party at war with the media, at war with Elections Canada, in a battle with the nuclear energy safety regulator and further Conservative government will lead, in my opinion, to more attacks on and more weakening of, the independent institutions that provide a check on the government.

4) Income inequality - My belief is that a reasonable equitable distribution of income is one of the primary foundations of a country that people want to live in. Conservative policies, in particular tax cuts for which the vast majority of the benefits go to the wealthy, tend to work against income equality, which I see as corrosive to the health of the country over the medium to long term.

5) Fiscal management - The Conservative party is made up of many strands and one of the few things they agree on is that they want to take power and they don't want to pay for government services. Wanting to take power leads them to increase spending, and not wanting to pay for government services leads them to cut taxes. The result is deficits, which we see time and time again from right wing governments. Given the still substantial public debts the country has, we need to keep paying down the debt further as quickly as reasonably possible and the Conservative party is the one I least trust to do that.

This is just off the top of my head, so I'm probably missing things, but that's a rough approximation of where my thought are for this election campaign.

Green Shift vs. Black Shift

So, the Liberal party is proposing higher taxes on carbon offset by lower taxes on income, with what they are calling the Green Shift. Meanwhile, the Conservative party is proposing lower taxes on carbon, offset by higher taxes for future taxpayers (who will pay interest on the debt not paid off due to the tax cut on oil).

It seems like a pretty clear choice to me, but no doubt the Conservative plan will play well with people who want what is easy now and who don't worry about the future.

Getting Back to Basic

Greg over at Sinister Thoughts made me laugh with this post, which helps explain why federal politics seems to be stuck in an endless loop these days.

Someone really needs to move the punditocracy's cheese.

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¹ Important: Go read Greg's post before reading this footnote.









So you see, that wasn't a typo in my title after all, it was just a clever pun on the programming language called 'Basic'. What do we learn from this? Any time you see what looks to be type-o, misspelling or improper punctuation on this sight; you should just assume that it is something clever, even if you're not clever enough to see how it is so clever.

The Conservative Coyote gets Hit by Another Anvil

I know, I haven't written much about policy lately but I'll get back to that soon, I promise. In the meantime, I was reading the Star this morning when I broke out laughing after coming across the following quote from Conservative party house leader Jay Hill (referring to late Thursday night when the Bloc, NDP and Liberals all agreed to invoke closure and force a vote on the budget when the Conservatives weren't expecting it and didn't have everyone in the house for a vote),

"It's going to be extremely hard to know whether we can trust anyone after what happened on Thursday night,"

Just in case it isn't clear yet, here's some advice for the Conservative party: you can't trust the NDP, you can't trust the Bloc Quebecois and you definitely can't trust the Liberals. I'm not sure about the independents, but I'm guessing you can't trust them either. Heck, after Stronach crossing the floor and Grewal sabotaging his own party, you can't even trust your own MP's.

Trust has a very important place in our society - but parliament hill is not that place.

I'm thinking this is all part of the top-secret, Acme-inspired, Conservative Coyote Plan to shake their label of being 'scary'. You see, the trouble is that, in an ideal world, the Conservatives would like to have a majority government and (potentially) do some stuff that many Canadians would find scary: signing on to the next U.S. foreign adventure, defying the courts by denying rights to gays, cutting taxes and increasing spending plunging us back into deficit, adopting a 'climate change? you don't believe all those silly scientists do you?' policy, starving or shutting down the CBC, removing Federal support for various programs (scientific research, gas tax money for cities), etc. etc. Continuing with the ideal world, the Conservatives would like to shake their 'scary' label without having to shake their scary policies.

Giving lip service to abandoning their scary plans of old hasn't worked well so far - which brings us to the Coyote plan. Anyone familiar with the roadrunner cartoon will remember that while, in real life, being hunted by a coyote is a pretty scary thing for a roadrunner, in a cartoon, the coyote is so consistently, humourously, pathetically inept, that instead of being scary, the coyote is actually kind of endearing and you almost want it to catch the roadrunner sometime.

Maybe this is the Conservative plan, but I'm no political strategist so don't take my word for it.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic (did I mention pathetic)

Silly me, I've been writing a political blog for months now and I actually thought that, in responding to the stupid bill-bargaining deal the Conservatives proposed yesterday (see my last post), the Liberals only had two options: a) say yes or b) say no.

I should have realized that the Liberals follow their own third way - say yes, but publicly state that they are saying no.

I actually thought the Liberals would just tell the Conservatives to take a hike - if not because if it was the right thing to do, then because it just made sense: if they lost one of the votes then why wouldn't the Liberals want to face the polls as the party that went down fighting for tolerance, the charter, spending for cities, spending for education and so on? And if they won then they get the legislation passed and the appearance of having integrity and steadfastness at the same time.

Maybe, Liberals might argue, they are just acknowledging that the Conservatives can throw up procedural hurdles to slow the legislation down, but if that was really the case, I'd expect rhetoric along the lines of 'We'll do everything in our power to get this legislation passed' from the Liberals, not, “I would like to get to report stage in the spring and do the vote on report stage in the spring,”, as Liberal house leader Tony Valeri is quoted as saying.

These comments only make sense to me coming from a Liberal party that doesn't really care that much about getting the same-sex marriage bill passed.

Liberal party slogan for the next election: "Canada ain't broke, so don't expect us to fix anything".


Update: June 24 - Those Liberals are tricky. Turns out they wanted to publicly state that they had said no, still send a signal to the Conservatives that they would go along and then turn around and backstab the Conservatives a few days later.

You sure can't believe a word these guys say, but at this point it looks like they may try to get same sex marriage legislation passed before the summer break, so perhaps I should retract some of my criticism above - perhaps. At this point I'll beleive it when I see it.

Update: June 29 - seeing is believing, and credit where credit is due, Same Sex Marriage legislation passed last night.

And I Thought Danny Williams was Childish...

The Conservatives joining up with the Bloc to shut down parliament because they aren't willing to wait one week for a non-confidence vote on the budget is bad enough*. But this:

"the Conservatives will continue to attend at least one Commons committee: the one debating same-sex marriage, to which they are adamantly opposed."

is really nuts. The one thing more important in their mind than ensuring that parliament does nothing between now and next Thursday is making every last possible effort to prevent gay people from getting married?

I guess it all makes sense when you consider the Conservative Party slogan for the next election: "Vote for a Conservative Government - We Dare You".


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Side note: Danny Williams is still childish.

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* For the record, I think Martin should have held the vote on the budget this week. But I think it would have been wiser and more impressive for the opposition to let the public be the judge of his decision to wait, not trying to sit in judgment themselves.

What Now?

What's the difference between China and Canada? China keeps its currency down vs. the American dollar by legislative fiat, while Canada does it by making the markets nervous with endless political shenanigans.

More seriously, in the aftermath of yesterday's dress rehearsal for a vote of non-confidence in the House of Commons, I thought the clearest commentary came from Chantal Hebert in the Star who wrote,

"This morning, more than ever, Canadians are presented with two competing narratives.

The first, put forward by the Liberals, depicts the Conservatives as a power-hungry, opportunistic opposition willing to make a pact with the devil - in this case the sovereignist Bloc Québécois - to precipitate a premature election before all the facts on the sponsorship scandals are in.

The second, put forward by the Tories and the Bloc, features a Prime Minister so desperate to cling to power and escape the wrath of voters that he is willing to milk the public treasury and subvert the democratic will of Parliament to do so."

It seems pretty clear to me that both narratives are true, which doesn't speak too well of any of the major political parties.

I guess the question now is, what's next? Prime Minister Paul Martin has committed to having a vote on the budget next Thursday (the 19th), no doubt out of a desire to let the B.C. election get completed before the Federal government steal the spotlight.

So one of two things will happen:

1) If the vote on the budget is defeated then we'll have an election this summer. This would be good for political junkies like me, and (hopefully) also for the Green Party which should benefit simply by virtue of not being a part of the current parliament, but I'm not sure it would lead to a government any less dysfunctional than the current one.

2) If the budget passes then it's not so clear what happens next. Will the Conservatives/Bloc admit defeat and stop trying to bring down the government, or will they continue to try to topple the government at every opportunity hoping to sway the one or two MP's whose support they need to get a vote of non-confidence passed? It seems as though, even if the Liberals get the budget passed, the government is not likely to make it too much further or accomplish too much between now and the fall (when Martin has already promised to hold an election after the Gomery Inquiry wraps up), but I'm no political insider so your guess is probably better than mine.

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Blog - Undisciplined Thoughts on Just About Everything

Sometimes I feel as though my head is a giant tub filled with various thoughts about politics, the economy, society etc. and by starting this blog I have created an opening in the tub which allows some of those thoughts out. The problem is that the opening is tiny since, due to the effort required by choosing topics, finding links, organizing thoughts, constructing paragraphs, editing and so on, the amount of stuff which can actually be posted on is pretty small. And of course it doesn't help when your internet provider (Telus) leaves you disconnected for a week.

Besides this, spending a few days away from the internet made me want to have more variety in my posts. So I decided to do a little experiment and just type for a while on whatever topics have been on my mind lately with no discipline or real organization whatsoever.

Important! This last sentence was a warning that, even if you've made it this far into this self-indulgent post, you probably shouldn't really continue on. Proceed at your own risk of wasted time, keeping in mind that you're only young once.

So anyway, I've been thinking about the upcoming battle to (maybe) bring down the federal government. Is it just me or is it ridiculous that the health of some MP's could be a factor, since they may be too ill to get to the House of Commons? What century is this? I'm not keen on seeing the government fall since I'd like to at least see the legislation on Same Sex Marriage pass first, but I don't want to see it continue on because someone was too sick to vote.

Meanwhile, if this is true it's really sad - not to mention likely counter-productive. Bad enough when parties bribe their own members to keep them in line (did I mention we should shut down the Senate) - now they're bribing the opposition as well? Of course if it's not true, it's even more sad. I guess we'll see.

It seems like a bunch of people are re-considering voting Liberal under the sponsorship scandal circumstances but can't bring themselves to vote for the gays-are-separate-but-equal, made-in-Canada-solutions-to-Global-environmental-problems, cut-taxes-increase-spending-but-don't-worry-about-the-budget, ask-how-high-when-Americans-say-jump-and-tie-ourselves-ever-more-closely-to-their-dangerously-unstable-economy Conservatives or the surplusses-are-bad, fifty-point-government-plans-will-solve-every-problem, electoral-reform-is-was-will-be-our-#1-priority NDP party.

I'll probably explore my thoughts on the NDP in greater depth and more fairness in a later post (it's half written in draft already). For the Conservatives it seems like there is a disconnect between what voters want (a clone of the Liberals) and what the Conservatives want (a clone of the U.S.?). The time honoured approach would seem to be for the Conservatives to just pretend to be a clone of the Liberals for the purposes of getting elected and then do whatever they feel like once they are in charge. For now, while I welcome their move to the centre, I'll probably treat any Conservative promises on Child Care or Kyoto with a grain of salt or two.

Anyway, I invite people looking for alternatives to join me in voting Green in the next election. In moving to the Centre the Green party has positioned itself as being similar to the Liberal party but more innovative on the revenue/environmental side and more libertarian/easy-going/less-uptight/not-so-puritanical/call-it-what- you-will on social issues (such as marijuana legalization).

Moving on to provincial politics, B.C. votes in two weeks. The most important thing is for people to get out and vote 'Yes' to the referendum on switching the electoral system to the Single Transferable Vote. As a voter, I can't see why someone would favour a system which gives them very little choice over one which gives them a lot of choice. As a democrat I can't see why people would favour a system where there is a huge disconnect between the votes cast and the representatives elected over one where the distribution of seats in the legislature bears some resemblance to the votes cast.

Aside from the referendum, the 3 main parties contesting the election are the Liberals, NDP and the Greens. I've read all the platforms but need a couple of days to digest it all before posting in detail. A quick thought for now is that I wish (like always) that I could go for the 'make your own pasta' option where I get the Greenolini noodles with a creamy NDPfredo sauce and chunks of roasted Liberal on top.

On issues like RAV and the Olympics I favour the Liberal approach of supporting big projects that will make B.C. a better province long into the future. But then stuff like the ill-fated Coquihalla privatization plan shows how the Liberals get carried away with their ideology in the face of common sense.

Plus their attitude to the environment, the provincial park system, First Nations and Unions is way too extreme for me.

On Health Care everybody wants to spend more so there's not much to choose there. I do like the Green plan of shaping the tax system to lower taxes on stuff good for your health (i.e. sports equipment) and raise taxes on stuff bad for your health (like junk food). This will be a far more efficient approach to preventitive medicine than ad campaigns urging B.C. residents to eat their vegetables or whatever it is the NDP and Liberals seem to be planning on this front. The Green platform has a number of ideas I think are terrible (such as reducing university tuition to 0 eventually) but is also filled with a number of really good ideas (campaign finance reform being a standout).

Overall it's going to be a tough decision for me and may require some thought on various vote deciding methodologies (strategic voting, vote my conscience, marginal voting, flip a coin etc.). That's probably a topic for a post in itself as well.

Let's see, what else. This is kind of sad. The corporate battle to fence off information and charge people access to the info-petting zoo is continuing on all fronts. I'm guessing that public libraries will be the final victims of this trend. Rented a movie the other day (A Series of Unfortunate Events - great artwork on the credits but otherwise disappointing - Jim Carrey was especially irritating) and there was a big message at the beginning about how you wouldn't steal a TV so why would you download a pirated copy of a movie. Of course if my neighbour had a 60 inch TV and I could make a free copy for myself leaving his TV perfectly intact, I *would* do that. Any my neighbour wouldn't stop me. Talk about a lame analogy. Still, the whole copying=theft meme is the big media corporations' biggest weapon in trying to make people feel guilty about something they really shouldn't.

The NY Times had a long article last week about how TV makes you smarter (it's in the pay archive now). Basically the article took about 3,000 words to say that because years of intensive practice has made people better at watching TV (so now we like shows which are more complicated, have more storylines and explain things less than in the past) it must be making us smarter. No mention was made of how smart we could be if all those hours spent watching TV were spent reading. Or how much less fat people would be if they spent some of that time exercising. Or the implications of TV watching for consumerism, erasing the line between childhood and adulthood, levels of social capital, etc. etc. etc. If only Neil Postman was still alive he could have given that waste of space the smackdown it deserved.

Here's a question, does it seem logical that the person appointed by the U.S. to be ambassador to Canada should be someone who actually has some interest in the country? Is it better to have someone who knows nothing and thus comes in with no preconceptions? I think if I was appointing ambassadors I'd try to pick people with some knowledge of where they're going, especially for my country's closest neighbours. Maybe ambassadors are just irrelevant patronage appointments like Senators and I should just ignore them. Of course if I'm going to take this approach, I'd like our mainstream media to go along as well and not treat every pronouncement by the U.S. ambassador as front page news.

And finally, on a lighter note, some advice for all you blogging kids out there: don't walk between parked blogs, don't blog with your mouth full, wait at least an hour after eating before blogging, and never, never cover more than one topic in a single post.

The Last Days of Paul Martin

Interesting times at the Federal parliament these days, what with Paul Martin taking Jack Layton up on his offer to support the Liberal's minority government in return for changing the budget to get rid of some corporate tax cuts and increase spending on students, the environment and foreign aid (among other things).

My thoughts on this are pretty much Calgary Grit's thoughts. I'd be surprised if this modified budget ever gets passed and it looks like we'll be heading to another election soon - an election where the big story will be how much Liberal support collapses and whether it defects to the NDP, the Conservatives or the Greens.

It's a good thing that nobody can take away Paul Martin's legacy as the Finance Minister who helped put (and keep) our fiscal house in order, since I'm guessing that the history books will (somewhat unfairly) not look too kindly upon his brief time as Prime Minister.


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While I'm on the topic of CalgaryGrit, check out this post as well, if only for the excellent title. I wish I'd come up with that one.

Speechfest Roundup

Well, since I'm a night owl who lives on the West Coast, maybe I'm in a good position to offer a roundup of what my favourite bloggers are saying about today's little speeches (my own thoughts are in the post below this one).

Paul Wells figures that Martin accomplished his main goal, delaying the election:

"Martin wins the big play. It is a moment of consummate irony: it's the play Chrétien used against him. "OK, I'll leave, but on my schedule." I will be amazed if the next three days' polls don't show overwhelming support for letting Gomery report."

and he also identifies Layton as a big winner for focussing on some actual issues.

pogge agrees that Layton made a favourable impression, after rounding up some favourable Layton comments he notes:

"They're all talking about Jack Layton on an equal footing with Martin, Harper and Duceppe in the midst of a scandal that involves Liberal corruption, the possible fall of a government and national unity issues. That in itself is a victory. The fact that they all say nice things is gravy."

Timmy at Voice in the Wilderness disagrees with Wells and figures that Martin's effort, while valiant, wasn't enough,

"This is a stink that will live with the Liberal Party for a long time. I truly believe Martin is unfairly tainted by it, but it doesn't make him any less damaged goods. Life is unfair, and politics even more so."

Andrew at Bound by Gravity figures that Layton came off the best of the bunch and is well positioned to be the one to observe that most people on the centre-left figured Layton did a good job while most of the right were unimpressed (what does this say about Andrew himself?):

"Remember - it doesn't matter what a CPC voter thinks of Layton's performance (he'll never get our votes) - only what the left-leaning voter thinks matters to Jack."

Andrew Spicer agrees with Timmy

"Let's get used to it...

* There will be a new election soon
* There will be a Prime Minister Harper"

and figures he could live with that if it's only a minority government.

CalgaryGrit figures Layton was the best of the bunch but is skeptical that the whole TV appearance had any impact,

"Basically, I don't think this will make a huge difference. Everyone rehashed what they've been saying for the past few weeks. Martin looked really good, but he was followed up by half an hour of opposition leaders who also looked good bashing him. Still, he'll get most of the media clips so it was likely worth the risk. I'll be very curious to see if this has any real impact on voters - my gut tells me no, but we'll see."

The Gritty one also echoes my reaction and commenter Neil at Andrew Spicer in decrying the 4 pm start on the West Coast.

Adam Radwanski makes a good point (in my opinion) that even if Martin wins (on getting the election delayed) he loses,

"What he's still trying to do is win the Gomery debate, which is impossible. The only way for the Liberals to win the next election is to make it about something other than the Adscam. But what he's effectively done is ensure that, whenever the election is, it'll be almost exclusively about the scandal. Hell, he more or less promised as much."

Greg at Sinister Thoughts thought Layton made a good impression and warns Harper not to get too overconfident,

"Harper looks like a guy who thinks he has the world by the balls. He already thinks he has a majority. He must, he brought up a "made in Canada" environment plan again. Forget about honoring Kyoto, that's so last week. Remember Mr. Harper, you lost the election in a weekend last time. Don't count your seats before the votes are counted."

Alan at Gen X at 40 figures that Martin did well, but won't win the election. He also calls Harper on some mistakes,

"Harper did not do well. There is nothing stopping Paul Martin from the TV spot and Harper was wrong to imply here was any time of convention relating to the Prime Minister presenting on the TV. Harper wrongly said that Martin asked to be the one to fix the scandal. Martin said the opposite. He said he will call the election for 30 days after the final report."

Damian at Babbling Brooks focusses on what he felt was Harper's best line (when he suggested that non-Quebecers shouldn't let Quebecers get ahead of them in the demanding accountability sweepstakes), noting that,

"In three sentences, the man praises the integrity of Quebec voters (nurturing nascent CPC support), and challenges the Rest of Canada (read: Vote-Rich Ontario) to demonstrate the same degree of principle. From where I sit, the subtle jab at Ontarian pride is brilliant - especially given the implication that Quebec is setting the standard. If they were listening - a big if, I know - Canadians in the Centre of the Universe won't sit still for that."

He also sees no reason to wait on an election.


Justin at Flash Point Canada is proud of Martin.

Cathie from Canada liked Martin's performance and figured that circumstances could be working in Layton's favour,

"So if Layton becomes the government's saviour over the next month, this could be Layton's big chance to shuck his Toronto-alderman-not-ready-for-prime-time image and finally demonstrate to the country that he IS a leader."

Sean Incognito nicely matches tonight's speakers with their film noir alter egos.

JimBobby wasn't too impressed with the decision to hold a national broadcast on such a trivial topic and doesn't figure it will help Martin anyway,

"I reckon it don't matter whether we hold the vote today or next January, the GrittyFellers is all washed up - leastwise fer the next 10 years or so."

Matthew at Living in a Society is still pretty upset about the whole affair:

I give Martin some credit for trying to take responsibility but it is far too little, far too late.

Finally, Darren Barefoot is more of an issues guy, and thus was easily most impressed with Layton:

"I'm not crazy about Layton's party, but he's by far the best speaker, and is far succinct that his fellow speakers. It's also the best-written speech, pointed without being catty. He wins my respect by not focusing on the scandal, but on what government should be doing instead of the scandal."

So what does it all mean? My general impression is that in the short term, the centre-left of the spectrum was impressed by Layton seeing that the country still needs to be governed and felt that Martin made, if not the best, then at least an improvement out of a bad situation. People were generally non-committal / negative about Harper's performance with a lot of negative comments about his speaking ability / posture / mannerisms etc.

Notwithstanding all that, the general feeling is that when an election comes, it's not going to go well for the Liberals. Where there's most disagreement is on the timing of the election. My feeling is that unless the polls consistently, overwhelmingly show the public is against having an election now, the Conservatives and Bloc will be unable to wait. Not waiting likely won't cost the Bloc anything but it may backfire on the Conservatives.

One thing which will be interesting to see is how many voters aren't willing to vote for any of the three main parties under the circumstances. Anyway, it should be an interesting year - it's too bad about policy.

Here's Hoping

Well after Paul Martin's little speech tonight, it looks like an election this year (sooner or later) is a sure thing. With that in mind, here are a few of my hopes for the coming year in federal politics:

Here's hoping that at the end of the Gomery inquiry and the subsequent criminal investigations we will be able to sort through all the accusations and denials and blame passing so that those who were innocent will have their names cleared and those who betrayed the public trust will get the punishment they deserve.

Here's hoping that all parties take from this mess a clear message that Canadians have no tolerance for the corruption of our political processes.

Here's hoping that they don't take the message that it's better to sweep this kind of thing under the rug rather than hold an inquiry to find out the truth.

Here's hoping that the damage done to relations between Québec and the federal government can be repaired. While I only lived in Québec briefly, I have a lot of respect for Québec and Quebecers and this country would be much the poorer for their absence.

Here's hoping that people don't read into this affair that all politicians and civil servants are crooks and liars. I'm certainly no insider but I've held a few jobs in both the Federal and Provincial civil service and, in my experience, the vast majority of both politicians and civil servants are people of sincerity and integrity. In fact, one of the drawbacks of working in government for me is that there is so much concern for accountability and transparency that sometimes it's hard to get things done (i.e. you have to have an open competitive bidding process to buy a stapler). Having said that...

Here's hoping that every party comes into the next campaign with a platform which includes clear, sensible changes to the rules and procedures of government to ensure that this kind of thing can't happen again - and that nobody asks us to just trust them because they're not the Chrétien Liberals and they wouldn't do that kind of thing. Maybe Andrew Coyne could be put in charge of this.

Here's hoping that if the Liberals win the next election they don't take it to mean that they can get away with just about anything and still get elected.

Here's hoping that if the Conservatives win the next election they stick to policies like clean government, good financial management, effective environmental stewardship, and care for the less fortunate members of society - policies that a majority of Canadians support - and that they don't go down the fiscally reckless, corporate giveaway, scapegoating of the poor and minority road like other right wing governments have done in the last 10 years in North America.

Here's hoping that if the NDP gains power from an election that they use it to bring in proportional representation so we no longer have to worry about people elected by 40% of the population governing like they got 100% of the votes.

Here's hoping that our unelected network executives will bow to the will of the people and allow the Green Party leader to participate in the televised debates. Now more than ever Canadians need to be informed that they have more options than a choice between the ghosts of corruption present and corruption past.

But most of all, here's hoping that among all the politicking and maneuvering for position and breathless horserace reporting, people and politicians actually manage to find some time to debate some issues and to move forward on legislation to make the lives of Canadians better which, last time I checked, was what government was supposed to be about.

Kyoto Plans

The Liberals have released their very Liberal plan for meeting Canada's Kyoto targets.

As far as I can tell, it follows what is beginning to seem like the Liberal party blueprint:

1. Identify problem
2. Announce intention to create plan to address this problem
3. (later) Announce intention to create plan to address this problem
4. Announce plan to allocate money to solve problem.
5. Allocate money to solve problem
6. Announce plan to solve problem. Plan will contain little or no regulatory rules or financial mechanisms to achieve goal but will instead create a [insert fuzzy buzzword here] fund which will be responsible for distributing allocated funds to various recipients who are theoretically capable of using said funds to take action to solve problem. Also, plan should extend over numerous years but be presented with a single dollar figure in order to sound more immediate and impressive.
7. Announce each allocation of said funding as if it was new money being devoted to solving the problem.

Now, you'd think that given recent history they may want to shy away from the "create fund / disperse money from fund" approach to solving problems, but apparently not.

Of course I am being pretty unfair, the plan does contain a modest expansion of the Clean/Wind Power Production Initiative (which creates a financial incentive for renewable power development) as well as the 'negotiated' deal with the automakers who have 'volunteered' to reduce their emission by 25% and it does (plan to) impose some (likely inadequate) regulatory requirements on large emitters to cut back their emissions as well.

Perhaps people just focus on the funds which are created because it is these which contain the big price tag in terms of government spending. Still, I remain skeptical about the efficiency and transparency of the central funding approach and would prefer to see something along the lines of a carbon tax which would allow people to make their own decisions about where to cut back without having to go through a bureaucratic process of 'selling' emission reductions to the government.

Overall, my initial reaction was neutral/slightly negative, mainly due to the excess of bureaucracy and shortage of market-based solutions, but in the course of writing this post and thinking about the problem a bit more, it's probably improved to neutral/slightly positive. They could do a lot worse.

Speaking of which, I criticize the Liberal plan, but that doesn't mean I was too impressed with the NDP plan or with the Conservative approach of pretending the scientists are all wrong - although that may be changing(!)

And just so you don't think I only criticize without offering any ideas of my own, I wrote about this topic in more depth (including my recommended Kyoto plan) here.

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As an aside, Annex 4 of the report makes for a good (very high level) summary of the evolution of climate change science over the last 15 years or so.

Sponsorship Scandal

I meant what I said earlier about this being a dull topic for me, but it's important enough in it's (potential) impact on Canadian politics that it's worth a post, so I'm going to take the easy way out here.

The best mainstream report on the 'explosive' testimony of Jean Brault at the Gomery Inquiry was the 4 part story in the Globe.

The best commentary on the web was from pogge, who has an interesting take with lots of good comments. I don't agree with his assessment that Martin should resign. I figure he called the inquiry so we could find out the truth, and it will be up to the voters to decide how much they want to punish the Liberals for their mafia-like antics which wasted a total of at least $5 of each taxpayers money over a 10 year stretch.

I agreed more with James Bow who posted his opinion at the e-group that, under the circumstances the Green Party looks like the best bet for the next election. Of course I voted Green last election, so it's not a big surprise that I agree with that assessment.

So that's enough about that.

Dropdown Menus Are on the March

I've been wanting to add some more links to the site - specifically to some more sources of information such as the media, government, think tanks, statscan, etc, but my sidebar is already pretty lengthy so I decided to put them in dropdown boxes (but don't worry, I will still continue to spell blog 'b-l-o-g' and not 'b-l-a-h-g'). The reason I mention this is to invite anyone who has suggestions for information sources to either email me or post a comment somewhere.

For now, the first list I've added is one for the websites for the (national) political parties. In visiting all the party sites (in order to get the url's) I noticed that while all the parties from the Bloc & Greens on down seem fairly focussed on policy, the Liberal, Conservative and NDP sites all look more like leadership cults than political parties at first glance. Kind of disturbing.

The Budget: Part 1

I was going to title this post, "$13 Billion for the Military!!!!!!!" but I somehow resisted the urge. So, the budget. First off, the relevant documents (i.e. the budget) can be found here.

There's lots of documents there so I recommend this summary as a good starting place. For some context, I recommend reading last year's summary as well.

2005 vs. 2004

Comparing last year's budget to this year's, I see two main differences:

1) The 2005 budget has a similar number of expenditures, but the numbers are a lot bigger - i.e. it is a much heavier spending budget. The 2004 budget contained $3.6B (combined tax reductions/new spending) for 2003-2004, $2.2B for 2004-2005 and $2.5B for 2005-2006.

This year's budget contains $10.8B (again combined tax cuts and spending) for 2004-2005, $7.4B for 2005-2006 and $8.8B for 2006-2007 (note: this includes both spending / tax cuts announced yesterday and the results of the health summit and the equalization deals with Nova Scotia and Newfoundland).

2) The 2005 budget is a five year plan while the 2004 was only a two year plan.

While the 2005 budget has $7.4B for the upcoming year and $8.8B for the year after, it also has $11.1B for 2007-2008, $16.3B for 2008-2009 and $21.1B for 2009-2010.

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General Impressions

If you read this blog regularly at all, you'll know that I would have preferred a larger commitment to debt repayment but under the circumstances, retention of the $3 billion contingency fund to be allocated to the debt (if it's not needed), combined with continued conservative revenue forecasts¹ by the government is probably the best that could be hoped for on this front.

In terms of the spending and tax cuts, most of what was offerred generally made sense, but there were certainly lots of items on the spending side that I'm skeptical about (more on that in part 2). Also, while I like the idea of cutting taxes by raising the basic minimum amount rather than cutting the rates in the actual tax brackets, I would have preferred to see the timing profile of the tax cut to be the same as the spending profile. To be clearer, tax cuts only take effect starting in 4 years whereas spending starts now. Personally, I feel that the biggest expenditures needed in Canada right now (education, health and infrastructure) are all primarily non-Federal areas of responsibility so it makes sense for the Federal government to continue scaling back it's role in the economy to make room for more taxes to be collected at the provincial /municipal level.

My biggest concern however, is that it is a...

Sneaky Budget

Why sneaky? Because of the shift from a 2 year horizon, to a 5 year horizon. Given the media's propensity to report budget items using as few numbers as possible, this allows the government to present spending totals which appear 2.5 (5/2) times as big as would normally be reported for a budget.

Take a random $1B/year expenditure - under the old budget rules it would have been $2B - now all of a sudden it's $5B.

Or consider tax cuts. Using a two year horizon, this budget contains basically no tax cuts. Next year's budget? Same thing. Not until 2007 would the tax cuts show up (in the second year of that budget). So the shift from 2 years to 5 years magically allows the government to announce tax cuts where there aren't any (at least not under the old planning rules).

The reason I think this trickery is dangerous rather than just irritating is because what do you suppose will happen next year? Can next year's budget afford to increase spending / reduce taxes in 2009-2010 by another $21.1B. And if so, what about the 2007 budget and the 2008 budget?

To put it another way, this budget contains on average a $13B increase in spending / tax cuts for each of the next 5 years. If every budget were to do that, it would add up to an extra $65B for each year. And if, on top of that, we keep spending $10.9B more than we budgeted like we did this year, well you can see that this kind of thing isn't sustainable over the long haul.

For now, federal spending is fairly low compared to post WWII norms so it doesn't bother me too much to see funding restored to a number of areas such as the military but I worry that 5 year plans as opposed to 2 year plans will build in a tendency for government to over-commit its resources as we move forward.

In order for a series of 5 year commitments to add up to the same total as a series of 2 year commitments they have to be only 2/5 (40%) the size (per year). But as I mentioned earlier, the new funds per year is much higher in this budget than the last one, so it's a bit of a double whammy.

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So overall, I would have preferred more debt repayment as well as more targeted (read: smaller/fewer) spending increases in certain areas. Also, the tax cuts, while well designed, should start sooner, and most importantly, the shift from a 2 year horizon to a five year horizon is both sneaky and, in the long term, likely to do more harm than good. Still, it could have been worse.

Part 2 will look at (and give opinions on the worthiness of) the various individual spending items.

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¹ The budget says that, "The federal revenue-to-GDP ratio is projected to decline from 15.3 per cent in 2003-04 to 14.5 per cent by 2009-10, reflecting one-time revenue gains last year as well as the impact of the tax reduction measures announced in this and previous budgets."

I'm not really sure what one-time revenue gains they're talking about - sure they sold their remaining shares of Petro-Canada but I can't see how that accounted for more than 0.1% of GDP worth of revenue. Also, by my understanding, any tax cuts to take effect for next year are fairly small.

I'm sure lots of people will (many already have) say that this is just more Liberal lowballing to leave room in future budgets for new announcements and that may be true, but, having worked in government on a few occasions I suspect that somewhere in the Finance department there is a financial model which forecasts these things and this model probably expects that when taxes are cut that gov't revenue as a % of GDP should decline and isn't adjusted when that fails to happen (as it did this year).

Sticks and Carrots May Break My Bones…

...but words will never motivate me.

With the date when the Kyoto Accord comes into force approaching (Feb 16), the next couple of weeks should see the Federal government once more try to come up with a sensible plan for how to implement it.

So far their approach has consisted primarily of spending money to repeatedly ask people to stop emitting so many greenhouse gases. To nobody's surprise this campaign of words has accomplished nothing and the time is coming to bring in the sticks and carrots.

(Note: a stick is when the government makes the emitter pay and a carrot is when they make the taxpayers pay)

An article in the Globe today suggests that the government is mainly looking at carrots (subsidies for 'green' vehicles, lower taxes on co-generation plants, rebates on energy efficient appliances, extending the Wind Power Production Initiative to include not just wind but other renewables and so on).

But after talking about the various carrots for the whole article, the last line is:

The government is considering forcing auto makers to make a 25-per-cent improvement in fuel efficiency by 2010, and compelling business emitters to meet greenhouse reduction targets

so there may be some sticks in the plan as well.

If the Liberals are looking for ideas, the NDP has lots. As far as I can tell, their plan has 44 points, and seems at times to be simply a list of anything any government somewhere has ever done to try to reduce fossil fuel use.

Still, like a man with a machine gun in a shooting gallery, they do manage to make a few direct hits (such as implementing an emission trading system for large emitters and mandating appliances to meet energy-star standards), and the Liberals could do worse than to cherry-pick the ideas they like from the NDP plan (they'll probably need NDP support to get the budget passed anyway).

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In trying to decide what makes a good plan vs. what makes a bad one, I was forced to think about why we need the government to intervene in the first place.

I see three reasons: The primary one is that our pricing system is not working properly. Our emitting of greenhouse gases carries a cost, but that cost is not captured in the price we (or industry) pays to emit. That is, when you buy gas, the price doesn't include the potential cost of the planet's climate changing.

The second one is that it seems like industry often needs a push from government before it will develop new, more efficient ways of doing things. It seems odd, and certainly I'm not saying that business doesn't innovate, because it does constantly, but when government comes in and sets a standard, it focusses attention on that issue, and also reassures companies that they won't be losing a competitive advantage by pursuing something their competition is not spending any money on.

The third reason is that people tend to be irrational when they buy things in that they put more weight on the up-front cost then they do on the life-cycle cost. i.e. They buy the cheap appliance without thinking about how much they're going to spend on electricity or they buy the gas-guzzler and don't worry about the cost of gas.

Keeping these problems in mind, I generally prefer solutions which try to fix the inaccurate pricing signals or which set standards that force industry to innovate and at the same time prevent people from making the worst of their irrational purchasing decisions.

What I don't like is when the government comes up with a whole pile of one-off incentives and rebates for specific items which they have decided would be the best things to focus on to reduce emissions.

As an example, the government may decide that the best way to get me to cut back my emissions may be to give me an incentive to buy a hybrid vehicle. Or they may decide that the best way is to make bus tickets tax free so I can take the bus to work. Or they may decide the best route is to subsidize me renovating my house to make it more efficient or to subsidize me buying a more efficient washing machine. But really, why not just raise the price of emitting across the board and let me decide for myself where I want to cut back. It seems like I know what would be a smaller sacrifice for me better than the government does.

So to make a long story short, my recommendations for implementing Kyoto would be as follows:

1) Raise the federal gas tax by 10c/L, and simultaneously cut the GST to 6%. The intention is to make this a purely revenue neutral change. Not a tax increase or a tax cut, just a redirection of taxes from general goods to gas.

2) Implement an emissions trading system (with a suitable time-lag to allow industry time to prepare for it). The trading system would allow for a certain total amount of industrial emitting (with the total allowed declining over time) and auction off the rights to emit. That way whoever the emissions are worth most to (i.e. whoever is producing the most value) gets them.

3) Honour and build on the existing commitments to expand the Wind Power Production Initiative to provide a 1c/kWh for any new green energy sources up to a cap of 10000 MW. The current plan, provides a roughly 1c/kWh subsidy to the cost of wind power for the first 10 years of operation for any new wind plants, up to a limit of 1000 MW.

4) All new appliances should be mandated to meet energy-star requirements within 3 years. Because people are irrational and will take the lower upfront cost even though it means higher energy costs down the road, I think the government needs to enforce a higher standard in this area.

5) Match California vehicle standards for fuel efficiency and emissions. In order to allow auto manufacturers to be reasonably efficient, it's helpful for them not to have to deal with too many different sets of rules. By matching our standards to some of the toughest ones in the U.S. we can help create a common market for carmakers to target.

6) Reduce investments in road projects and divert infrastructure money to transit projects and an expanded hydroelectric grid. Almost everyone agrees that government has a role to play in building infrastructure. What's not so clear is how much of a role the federal government should have. But given that they already spend a lot on infrastructure projects around the country, it makes sense for them to refocus from building more roads to building more transit and supporting development of renewable energy sources.

For example, a hydroelectric link between Manitoba and Ontario could potentially allow Southern Ontario to close down some of its coal plants which are among the biggest emitters in the country.

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I guess the biggest problem with this plan is that it could be political suicide, but hey I'm an optimist (plus, I'm not going to be up for re-election). As this random example I came across on the web indicates, raising gas taxes (even in a revenue neutral way) may not be all that popular. Reading stuff like that just leaves me amazed that the country is in as good shape as it is.

So far, the various details which have been leaking out seem to suggest a reasonable plan, but I hope the Liberals don't chicken out and go with all carrots and no stick, and I hope they don't just put together a laundry list of small targeted subsidies and rebates and tax breaks and programs and incentives rather than sending clear across the board pricing signals and demanding that industry meet a higher standard where that is appropriate. I guess we'll see.

Dividing the Herd

I remember, way back, reading a story in the book Taran Wanderer (by Lloyd Alexander), in which the protagonist, Taran, is forced to divide a herd of cattle between two untrustworthy locals (their herds have been mixed together). Since neither of the two locals would trust him to divide the herd fairly, he comes up with a clever solution - one local will divide the herd into two halves and the other one will choose which half he wants.

I've been thinking about various potential government policies with economic implications (such as Kyoto, or environmental protection in general) and I've decided that we need a somewhat similar solution for our Federal politics (the ones that influence the economy anyway):

I propose that the NDP decide what our priorities should be and set targets, and the Conservatives are put in charge of getting as close as possible to these targets.¹ The Liberals would of course still retain all the official reins of power including titles and the ability to make patronage appointments.

The way I figure, everybody wins. The NDP gets what they really want, which is improvements to our overall quality of life, the Liberals get what they want, which is the trappings of power, and the Conservatives get what they want, the ability to prevent all those crazy socialists (in their view) from building up a big welfare state and bankrupting the country.

OK, that's bit cynical and unfair (especially to the Liberals), but I still think it could be an effective model.

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¹ Actually this isn't all that far from the Green Party platform in the last election.