The Greg and Mail

Attawapiskat, and the intractable problem of Canada's Aboriginal people

2011-11-30T19:59:00.000-08:00

This week Canadians awoke to a news story that arises with depressing regularity. The native community of Attawapiskat had declared a state of emergency. The population of around 2,000 were living in crowded, squalid conditions. Many were reduced to sleeping in tents, and there was no functioning water system. Winter comes early in the north and the community was in desperate need of help.

This is not an uncommon occurrence in Canada. Many of our native Canadians living in northern communities live in similar conditions. What is puzzling to many non-native Canadians is why this is so. After all, the Federal government poor billions of dollars into these communities every year. Where does the money go? Over the past 5 years the community of Attawapiskat has received about 92 million dollars from Ottawa alone.

This problem will not be solved by providing temporary aid to Attawapiskat. It will continually arise in other aboriginal communities and it's time we re-thought the way we "help" native Canadians. For starters there is a reluctance in polite circles to acknowledge that for many communities the band council functions like a feudal kingdom, rewarding supporters and harming dissenters. The band council system on many reserves could be very accurately described as a system of kleptocracy. If native self-government is not seriously addressed and we keep funnelling money to these dysfunctional band councils we will keep getting the same result.

Many of these northern reserves are in geographically isolated locations. Locations that have no road access during the spring and summer months. Some of the members of these reserves can earn a living as hunting and fishing guides, some work in mining operations (about 100 of the Attawapiskat reserve work at a local diamond mine). Nevertheless, the reality is that there is not sufficient employment for the vast majority of northern reserve residents. Native Canadians have the fastest rate of population growth of any group in the nation. It is time that we recognized that maintaining a young, geographically isolated, community is simply not economically sustainable. At some point incentives must be put in place to actively encourage aboriginal Canadians to do what people the world over have been doing for the past century - move to urban settings. Canada's urban aboriginal population has been growing very rapidly in recent years, but so has the population in isolated reserves. One great incentive to allow natives to move would be to allow residents of reserves private ownership of their homes and land. As the development economist DeSoto has said, private property was the basis for the growth in prosperity in western European nations - why would deny it to native populations?

In the short term the emergency on the Attawapiskat reserve needs a response. In the medium and longer term a complete reassessment of the relationship between the federal government and aboriginal governments needs to be rethought and when this happens everything should be on the table. The status quo isn't working and hasn't for decades.

A parable

2011-11-24T19:41:00.000-08:00

A reasonably comfortable family of 27 was comfortably ensconced in a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, and everyone was content. One day the family members came running as one of their youngest members cried that her toys were on fire. Her older siblings refused to help her put the fire out, after all, their toys were not on fire. Mom and dad agreed that the little girl had created the problem for herself. She simply had too many toys that she'd used the family credit card to purchase. So the lesson was delivered and the fire was allowed to burn.

After a while, one of the older siblings yelled that the fire had spread and his toys were also on fire. His older siblings were concerned but ultimately the toys on fire were his. Again, mom and dad decided that this was good opportunity for the slightly older sibling to learn a lesson about acquiring too many toys using the family credit card.

Everyone was shocked when shortly thereafter one of the teenagers yelled that his Iphone, Ipad, and Notebook were also on fire. Now there was some consternation. There were a lot of fires and they seemed to be spreading. Mom and Dad conferred and once again agreed that it was probably good for the kids to learn a lesson. Although mom was a bit more worried now and was more reluctant to let the fires burn. "Mon dieu" she was heard to mutter as the fires burned.

Mom's clothes started to smolder shortly there after, but dad stuck to his guns, it was time everyone learned the consequences of over consumption.

Eventually the fire cured the problem of over consumption. The house burned to the ground. Lesson delivered lesson taught. The only thing wrong with Dad's logic was that perhaps the middle of a house fire is not a particularly good time to start teaching lessons. Thus, the children Greeced, Sprained, Ironed, Bunga'd, and parents Burgundied and Teutoned found themselves homeless.

St. Buffett and the secret dispensation

2011-11-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago the billionaire investor Warren Buffett made headlines when he published an open letter in the NY Times inviting the President and Congress to tax the rich more heavily. Apparently hands that were too broken to write a cheque to the US Treasuury were suitable for typing out his plea to tax billionaires more heavily.

There is a problem with the US tax system that St. Buffett identified - individuals whose income derives from investments are taxed at a far lower rate than those taxed on income. The very rich deriving most of their income from investments pay a lower rate of tax than the ordinary working stiff (in this case Buffett used the example of his secretary and his employees).

In today's NY Times there was more news about St. Buffett, but this was not the kind of news to burnish a saintly image. Over the past year St. Buffett has built a position in IBM (his first tech investment). This news was hidden from the public by an obscure clause in the SEC filings that allows him to buy large numbers of shares in IBM (and other companies) without publicly disclosing he is doing so. From the Times: " Mr. Buffett's special treatment from the SEC is not new - he has long taken advantage of an obscure rule to avoid disclosing his bets to the public before he is good and ready."

Here' an idea Mr. Buffett, why don't you write a letter to the President begging him to toughen SEC regulations, close loop holes, and start making billionaire investors play by the same set of rules as main street investors. I'll be more impressed by St. Buffett's moral probity when I see that public letter published in the NY Times.

Canadian Wheat Board and the Romance of the Family Farm

2011-11-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have seen an ad recently running on TV decrying the abolition of the Canadian Wheat Board by the Harper government (see the ad here http://www.youtube.com/embed/GtICYolaX38). In it a rugged Canadian wheat farmer stands next to a steamroller and lambastes the Harper government for its plans to do away with the wheat board. The ad cuts to a shot of a steamroller with the tag line "This is how the Harper government harvests wheat." It's a very effective ad (made by a friend of mine who is a VP at the ad agency that produced it). It's effective but largely misdirected and on a purely economic level completely wrong.

The CWB in its modern incarnation was formed in 1935 with the primary purpose of putting a decent price under wheat and barley for western farmers suffering from the effects of the great depression. It did this by forcing all wheat and barley farmers to sell to the CWB, who in turn marketed the crops. They were able to negotiate a better price for the crops because of the size of the operation and the elimination of competition between individual farmers.

Over the years a minority of farmers have objected to being forced to sell their wheat to the CWB and would prefer to market their product privately (there are some provisions for this in the existing arrangement but it is complicated). Large agriculture producers such as Cargill, and producers located closer to transportation and the US market have been petitioning to end the CWB for some time. Smaller farmers and those in more geographically isolated communities are bitterly opposed to ending the CWB. The Conservative government is about to eliminate the Board.

It's long overdue. When I expressed this view on my friend's FB page I was assailed by the great defenders of monopoly and agricultural subsidy everywhere. One person mentioned that ending the CWB would have the same effect as the end of supply management of hogs in Manitoba in the 1990's (many smaller producers were driven out of business unable to compete with the cost advantage enjoyed by larger operations). Undoubtedly some small, geographically isolated, wheat farms will be driven out of business by the elimination of the wheat board and the more competitive market in grain prices.

Too bad. I was accused of callousness by another writer. It may seem callous to see some farmers put out of business because they are not competitive. But for every supplier there is a consumer. Protecting farmers at the expense of the consumer could be considered equally callous. For example, people on fixed incomes and low incomes pay a premium to subsidize non-competitive farming operations. Why should the interests of some farmers be put ahead of the interests of seniors, single moms, and low income households?

As Pierre Trudeau once bluntly remarked to prairie grain farmers "Why should I sell your wheat?" Exactly. The government has no business in coercing membership in the wheat board. While they're at it they should also consider ending supply management in dairy products. Our current supply management system results in Canadians paying some of the highest prices in the developed world for cheese, eggs, and milk. In today's Globe and Mail a letter to the editor pointed out that a woman flying from London to Toronto bought a piece of cheese in England for the Canadian equivalent of $1.99. The same brand of cheese in the same quantity goes for $6.99 in our grocery stores.

Why do Canadians put up with this? Worse why do they oppose changes that would lower their grocery bills? I think the answer is partly tied to a romantic image of the rugged, flannel clad, farmer toughing it out in the field and eking a living from the frozen tundra. The protection of Canadian dairy farmers would not be tolerated if we expanded the same policy to the auto industry. If we applied supply management protectionism to cars we would drive the Canadian equivalent of a Lada, but pay the same price for it as a Toyota.

The Harper government will probably be successful in dismantling the CWB (law suite notwithstanding). Hopefully this will embolden them to take on supply management in dairy. This is a persistent source of conflict with our trading partners and is a major reason why we are not part of broader trade negotiations for the Pacific region.

When the Harper government decides to tackle dairy supply management here's an ad they can use. An old lady goes to pay for a quart of milk. A real Canadian dairy farmer is standing next to the cash register and reaches into her wallet and hauls out a $10.00 bill. The tag line, "this is how Canadian dairy farmers produce milk".

China meet Japan, you have a lot in common

2011-11-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

There was a long article in today's Globe and Mail on the slowing rate of growth in the Chinese economy. There are many in China and the west who are predicting the rise of China as the preeminent economic power sooner rather than later. I think they're wrong, because we've seen this movie before. It was called Godzilla takes Manhattan.

In the mid- to late '80's it was widely accepted that the Japanese economy was going to eclipse the US economy as the largest in the world. After all, the Japanese were the largest foreign holders of US debt. Japanese companies built everything from cars to electronics at a higher quality level and at competitive prices. Japanese companies were buying up US companies left right and center. We all knew what the future would bring and it would Japanese economic supremacy.

But then something happened. The Japanese economy went into the tank in the early 90's, in part a consequence of a bursting speculative bubble in real estate, followed by a banking crisis. The Japanese economy went into a funk and it never came out. It's debt to GDP ratio now sits at 200%, the highest in the developed world. Suddenly things that had been overlooked earlier came into focus. Japan had a rapidly aging population, a population that was shrinking. It lacked the dynamism and creativity of the US, and most importantly it had banks that were very closely tied to the ruling political party. One of the consequences of the Japanese banking crisis was that banks that were effectively broke, loans that were never going to be paid back, were never properly accounted for. 100's of billions of toxic debt was never accounted for, the government never forced illiquid banks under. Banks were afraid to loan to other banks (having no idea how much toxic shit they might be carrying on their balance sheets), banks were afraid to advance loans to businesses. The Japanese economy has not recovered.

Fast forward to China today. An economy characterized by ferocious growth, Chinese companies buying western companies, China is the largest foreign owner of US debt. Sounds familiar. And that's why we might want to reflect on the Japanese experience.

China has population problems (different from the Japanese problem but just as significant). They currently have about 30 million young men of marriageable age more than women of marriageable age. Underestimate the social dislocation produced by this imbalance at your peril. More importantly the Chinese banking system and it's close integration with the Chinese government make the Japanese look like models of probity in comparison.

This is from Mark MacKinnon's report in today's Globe and Mail: "The problem [shrinking economic growth] was unlikely to effect the wider Chinese economy, Prof. Chovanec said; the state has more than enough cash to prop up the official banking system by swallowing non-performing loans, essentially pretending they don't exist. "The magic of the Chinese financial system is it's all supported by untabulated, undisclosed, contingent liabilities. The government is the ultimate backstop for everything."

As the Japanese found out, and more recently the US, lack of transparency in banking creates nightmares for governments, but most importantly, nightmares for citizens. China meet Japan, you have a lot in common.

Organizing the Lumpenproletariat

2011-11-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

The writings of Karl Marx spend considerable time extolling the revolutionary potential of the working class. For Marx they represented the vast majority of society, and with the right leadership could become a force for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. It didn't happen for a variety of reasons and the marxist complaint of "false consciousness" on the part of the working class is gross insult to the supposedly revolutionary workers. False consciousness is what marxists call workers who are non-revolutionary and often content with their lot. Marx also identified a class of society a rung below the poor, exploited, working class - the lumpenproletariat. The lumpen were the lowest rung of society but possessed no revolutionary potential at all. In politically incorrect terms they were the scum of the earth - ex cons, drug addicts, alcoholics, vagrants, hookers, pimps, the mentally ill, and other ne'er do wells. According to Marx they were incapable of developing a revolutionary consciousness and not of any particular use to a working class revolutionary movement. Lenin on the other hand found great use for their criminal inclinations The Occupy Wallstreet movement has recently begun to experience an influx of the lumpen into their illegal encampments and to put it mildly they are not being welcomed with open arms by the Occupiers. Nevertheless, the Occupiers should take a moment to revel in their success; they've achieved something Marx thought was impossible, they've organized the lumpen. So here's to you Occupiers, the real 1 % aren't the bankers, they're the lumpen and now they're your problem to manage.

The Greg and Mail is back

2011-11-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

After a prolonged absence I've decide to revive the Greg & Mail. 2012 is an election year in the US, the euro is in grave danger of going the way of the dodo, and the US economy is about to take the Japanese route to stagnation, so I figured this is a pretty good climate for getting this thing going again.

A quick comment on Greece. At first I thought Prime minister Papandreou was being shrewed in calling a referendum on the EU bailout package. It would enable him to credibly print drachmas "just in case" the people of Greece decided to reject the terms of the bailout (pretty good chance of that happening). This would mean that the printing of drachmas could be printed without provoking a full on banking crisis (it would after all be plan B).

Today he announced there would be no referendum. So I'm thinking that he's not shrewed he's throwing darts at a dart board for policy inspiration.

The folly of bailing out the big three

2008-12-10T17:09:00.000-08:00

The more I think about the auto bailout the worse I think it is. Don't bailout companies that have failed. In doing so you reward losers and create competitive hurdles for their successful competitors. Worse, you grossly interfere in the necessary reallocation of capital. Companies going bankrupt as a consequence of poor products, decision making, facing superior competition is a consequence of the efficient allocation of the productive capital of society. In short, it's what makes capitalist societies prosperous.

Governments, as everyone from Friedman to Thatcher said, know nothing about running car companies (and shouldn't be investing in them). Indeed, they don't know anything about investing, so they should not be taking equity positions in these companies.

So - what should they do? For my money if the US is going to kick in 15 billion, and Canada 5 billion, let's do what governments should do - provide income support to workers and retirees in transition. The US government should pick up the health care/pension obligations of the big three when they go tits up. In return they should be at the head of the line when the businesses are liquidated. Anybody who owns shares in these companies or bonds will just have to take a number.

In southern Ontario the collapse of the auto sector would be a tremendous blow. So spend the 5 billion on worker retraining, temporary income support etc. (A selfish side note, community colleges would be big beneficiaries in this).

By bailing the firms out you are building impediments to important structural adjustment. The point is that not only do the firms that can't survive need to go out of business, but their parts suppliers need to as well (or find new sources of business).

It is one thing to nationalize the banks to keep the whole finacial system from collapsing (and I still have some serious doubts about this course of action), but it is a very slippery slope to start bailing out every business that comes along with its hand out. And imagine how the dealership network (about to be dramatically contracted) feels. Lots of support for the line workers and parts makers, but god help you if you are a salesman, mechanic, etc. in any of these dealerships. The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers through bailouts. (As a side note, one of the great dangers of government being this directly involved in the economy is the potential for governmental corruption.)

So, support the citizen not the business.

My 5 cents worth (I'm anticipating the inflation that will set in if the governments keep up the stimulous past the point of where it should be. If I thought for a second anyone, or group, was smart enough to do this, I'd still be a communist. The market knows best and if you fuck with it sufficiently, and long enough, you'll pay a ferocious price - literally.

Stephan Dion - the 98 lb weakling

2008-10-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

So Stephan Dion finally resigned as Liberal leader today. Good riddance. This was a guy that I had some respect for in the past. He took it on the chin to take on the separatists in Quebec largely crafting and defending the Clarity act and letting the separatists know they couldn't just walk off with Quebec on their terms.

Since becoming leader of the Liberal party his deficiencies have become glaringly obvious. He can't communicate (in either of the official languages). He's tone deaf to things people really care about (hint - nobody is lining up to pay a new tax they don't understand. They're still smarting from the last new tax they didn't understand, the GST). Even those that understood the Green Shaft, did not believe it would be revenue neutral. Governments are constitutionally incapable of bringing in a genuinely neutral tax.

So, he couldn't communicate, proposed selling the family farm to back the Green Shaft, and shut out any advice that did not agree with his. And today when he resigned he knew exactly who to blame for this. The Conservative party - they created a bad image of him in their advertising.

Wow! Did it come as a surprise to Mr. Dion that the Conservatives might try and make him look bad? Why did he let them create this impression. The Conservatives could only craft his image because he couldn't craft one for himself. Dion came off looking like the 98 pound weakling on the beach. Yep, Mr. Dion that nasty Mr. Harper beat you up, and later tonight he'll be fucking your girlfriend. That's your fault not his.

Someone should buy Dion a copy of The Prince. If he'd read that the professor might have a better idea about how to corral his unruly caucus, deliver an efficient bitch slap to the PM, and have the masses shower love and praise upon him.

Instead of blaming others for creating a false image of him he should look in the mirror, embrace the weakling within and slink back to the academy where he so clearly belongs.

A parable about the economic crises

2008-10-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

I had another one of those interesting chats with my brother yesterday. Everyday they get a report from their economics division called the Blast (boy is that well named). Yesterday one of the things they reported on was the expansion of liquidity (money) that has occured as governments move in coordinated fashion to try and pump liquidity into the frozen credit markets. He said the exansion of available capital is off the charts. At that point I expressed some concern - since the problem we are suffering started with a twenty year binge on easy money, doesn't making more of the stuff available potentially make things worse? Yes, was the response. If we don't anticipate when the market turns around it could produce ferocious inflation, and that reminded me of an event that occured at my friend David's cottage a few years ago:

One day Frank, David and Scott decided to have a fire. Not only would the fire burn off some recently cleared brush but Frank's kids could use it productively when it burned down a bit to make smores. Everyone was stoked.

The wood was stacked and ready to go. At that point Frank (Greenspan), decided that the fire could use some help getting going and he poured a bottle of bbq lighter fluid (accerlant - cheap money) on to the wood. There was no need to worry about anyone getting burned because it would soak in and burn off in an orderly fashion. No sign of irrational exuberance yet.

Some time later, Scott (China, Japan, etc.) decided the fire might start quicker with a little gasoline, so he emptied a jug of gasoline on to the wood. No need to worry that anyone would get hurt, it would be a quick infusion of accelerant and a roaring fire in no time. All this acclerant caused the fire to erupt (market melt down), and it burned higher and harder than any one expected. It was out of control.

Along came David (Bernanke, Paulson). He was going to bring the fire back under control in an orderly manner. Armed with a garden hose 20 feet too short, and with very little pressue he gamely tried to hose the beast down.

The fire was now burning so fast that it looked like it was going to consume all the wood in no time at all. That wouldn't do becuase Frank's kids wouldn't get their smores. What to do? Maybe add some big logs to the fire to keep it burning, but logs that wouldn't be consumed too quickly (the bailout).

Still the fire burned harder and faster than anyone had ever seen. At this point Frank decided the only solution might be more liquidity - he ran to the shed for more gasoline. He reassured a nervous Scott and David that this would only be used if the fire started to burn out too quickly, and just to keep the fire going.

Now they were standing around a roaring fire with cans of gas wondering when to add it to the blaze.

And that is where we are at now.

2008-10-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

I was furiously slamming my head in the door this afternoon after hearing the fair haired mayor threatening yet another tax increase next year.

So I decided to look into the way our city has been run fiscally over the past five years (my suspicion was - not well). The results were fascinating. For anyone interested in the raw data it can be found in a City of Toronto document here http://www.toronto.ca/budget2007/pdf/2007far_stat.pdf - that's the beauty of democracy, the ugly truth is hidden in plain site.

I've crunched the numbers as percentages, something very useful for comparison purposes and something the original document does not do (for obvious reasons). There is no other way to say this except that our city is being terribly mismanaged from a financial point of view. Here are some of the highlights (low lights?):

Rate of inflation Canada 2003 - 2007 - has averaged around 2.4% a year (Stats Can).

Population increase City of Toronto - + 3.2%
# Full time City of Toronto employees - +5.2%
Total assessment increase - +24%
Increase in net long term debt - +47%
Interest charges for long term debt - + 31%
Tax revenue - +13%
Transfers from other levels of Gov. - +16%
Total government spending - + 23%
Revenue from residential and commercial property tax - +12%
Total Revenue - +15%
Salaries, wages and benefits - + 20%
Material expenditures - - 83% (yes that's a decrease of 83%)
Expenditures on contracts - +25%
Interest on long term debt - + 15%

Ok so to sum up: inflation has increased by a little over 10% in this 5 year period. The assessment base has increased by 24% (reflecting a booming real estate market), but on top of the assessment increase the government has increased property taxes by 12%. All of this while piling on long term debt to the tune of 47 %. Despite the bellyaching of mayor Miller about other levels of government not treating Toronto fairly we've seen transfers from them up 16%. The number of full time municipal employees is expanding faster than the population of the city by 2%. And it's a good time to be a municipal employee because you will have seen your wages and compensation rise by 20% at a time that inflation has only added 10% to the cost of living. Look at the increase on interest charges on long term debt + 31%.

Can anybody pretend this city is being well run or that this is sustainable. These figures only go to 2007, so we haven't seen the increase in revenue resulting from new taxes on land transfer,plate renewal, etc. And on top of this the Mayor says "More sir?". If this socialist horde can manage to screw things up this badly during economic boom times, god help us when things slow down.

Palin as sovereign

2008-10-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

In Hobbes's great book Leviathan he managed to piss off the monarchists who had supported Charles I (and he was perceived to be a supporter of the monarchy).

Why? Because one of the central themes of Leviathan was that it didn't matter who was sovereign. To preserve order a sovereign was required, but basically any one who could keep the peace would do. Just as long as they could mobilize enough fear to get the people to obey the law and preserve the social order they were qualified to be sovereign. This enraged those who supported divine right monarchy, and a long standing tradition in political theory going back to Plato and Aristotle that there were certain characteristics necessary to be a ruler. Hobbes was setting the bar very low.

Palin's appointment as McCain's VP nominee is the fruition of Hobbes's argument. Quite frankly if she becomes VP, there is no reason her retarded son Trigg couldn't do the job at some point in the future. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln fought to create and preserve a tremendous democracy and this is what it comes to.

I can't decide if this represents an indictment of US democracy or is sign of its institutional robustness. Perhaps Hobbes was correct - no previous experience or special ability is necessary. I have no doubt after listening to her berate, chide, and mock democrats, community organizers, and pretty much anyone that disagrees with her that she will have no difficulty mobilizing the requisite amount of fear necessary to get the citizenry to toe the line.

Fortunately, it doesn't look like Ms. Palin is going to get that close to the top job for now, but it is reasonable to assume that the Republicans will find another like her to throw up the food chain four years from now. They now have an established record of appointing complete idiots to the number two or number one position (Spiro Agnew, Dan Quayle, G. W. Bush).

Oh fuck

2008-10-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

Marx, markets and the bailout - all that's solid melts into air

2008-09-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

Last week US secretary of the treasury, Hank Paulson, went cap in hand to Congress to ask for a bailout in order to rescue the US banking system. Burdened by bad debt and uncertainty about that debt the credit market has seized. The ball park figure for this bailout was 700 billion dollars.

In return for stabilizing the US banking industry the US tax payer would gain an equity stake the institutions being bailed out, and the Federal Reserve would be given greater regulatory and oversite powers.

For the dozen or so marxists still breathing this must have seemed to be a dream come true. The US government was about to effectively nationalize some of the largest private capitalists in the US, and the US taxpayer was about to become their owner. Better still the amount proposed was close to what the US government spends on the military on a yearly basis. Marxist peaceniks everywhere were about to get a two for one - nationalization of the US banking system and a redirection of financial resources from military spending to that nationalization (after all, if you're buying banks you can't be building tanks).

Astonishingly, this last minute resurrection of marxism seems to have collapsed as of today. The congress voted down the bailout. Responding to the pressure of "mainstreet", congress refused to bailout wealthy bankers. Let that be a lesson to them.

This is an example of how civic mindedness is often harnessed to pure idiocy. It seems to have escaped the attention of mainstreet that the red ink sinking the banking sector is attached to names - the name on the mortgage, the line of credit, the credit card, the car loan, etc.

Forget, for a moment, that all of that credit is about to get alot more expensive (where it can be had at all). Getting any credit will be more difficult for mainstreeton the street. People who run small businesses are already seeing banks shrink their lines of credit or calling them in altogether. If things continue to get worse (and they will, with a bailout or without) they'll start calling in personal lines of credit.

Suddenly the most powerful animal on earth, the US consumer, is going down for the count. While leftists, environmentalists, anti-US imperialists everywhere are giving a lusty cheer, they may want to consider the implications of a sudden and unpredictable collapse of this animal. North Korea is an economy almost devoid of consumption and consumers. I'm sure the air is cleaner, the diet lower in red meat, the per capita consumption of energy lower than anywhere else on earth. Of course those North Koreans don't really enjoy the benefit of all of that low consumption lifestyle. They're too busy gathering grass clipings to eat for dinner. Bon apetite commrade.

In an attempt to save capitalism capitalists decided it was necessary to socialize the banking sector. Deciding to kowtow to the man in the street, US legislators refused. In this scenario Marx would have been on the side of the capitalists and Aynn Rand on the side of the man on the street. How whacked is that?

The Green Party and the debates

2008-09-10T16:01:00.001-07:00

Thanks to the complicity of Steven Harper and Jack Layton the broadcast coalition that televises leadership debates decided not to include Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party. What a difference a day makes. Due to an outpouring of indignation by the Canadian public that decision has been reversed and she will be included after all.

The traditional reason for excluding the Green party hinged on the fact that they had no elected representatives in the House of Commons. After a former liberal, now independent MP, joined the Green Party they have one representative. This a back door way of gaining representation, but it is representation none the less.

The sad thing about Ms May's inclusion is that the ususally chaotic and incoherent shout fest that passes for the leadership debate in Canada will only be louder and more chaotic. If anything, the best idea would have been to leave Gilles Duceppe leader of the BQ out of the English language debate. The BQ only fields candidates in Quebec, they are a one issue party (the promotion of Quebec sovereignty).

Failing that let's hope the debate moderators are armed with stun guns to ensure that each candidate has time to answer a question and the debate is something more than shouts of indignation. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to equip Jack Layton (Jack in the box) with a ball gag.

Maverick McCain

2008-09-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

If I'd heard John McCain described as a maverick one more time in last night's RNC convention speeches I'd have puked. If McCain was a maverick he would have gone with his gut and selected Joe Lieberman to run as his VP nominee. He didn't because Lieberman used to be a Democrat, and has rather liberal views on abortion.

A true maverick would have done the GOP a favour and chosen a running mate that would have clearly indicated that the religious right can go fuck themselves and that they have no special hold on this party. He didn't do that and that's too bad. A bunch of guns and god religious nuts have once again highjacked the party and it seems to have escaped their notice that the social conservative thing is a hard sell outside of towns with a population greater than 10,000 people.

Some maverick, some party.

Response from PM's office to the open letter posted below

2008-09-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

Below is the response from the Prime Ministers office to the e-mail I'd sent regarding the listeriosis poisoning that has afflicted Canada this August. I'd note one thing about the response - Harper runs a government in which his MP's can't so much as scratch their nuts without his approval. But suddenly he has discovered that he has cabinet ministers, and that when things go wrong that's their responsibility. Leadership we can trust indeed.

Dear Mr. Narbey:

On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to thank you for your e-mail, in which you raised an issue which falls within the portfolio of the Honourable Gerry Ritz, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board. The Prime Minister always appreciates receiving mail on subjects of importance to Canadians.

Please be assured that the statements you made have been carefully reviewed. I have taken the liberty of forwarding your e-mail to Minister Ritz so that he too may be made aware of your comments. I am certain that the Minister will give your views every consideration. For more information on the Government's initiatives, you may wish to visit the Prime Minister's Web site, at www.pm.gc.ca.

L.A. Lavell
Executive Correspondence Officer
for the Prime Minister's Office
Agent de correspondance
de la haute direction
pour le Cabinet du Premier ministre

Sarah Palin's abstinence problem

2008-09-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

By now pretty much everyone who cares knows that Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is 5 months pregnant. If the McCain campaign is to be believed this was revealed before Sarah Palin was added to the ticket. This raises eyebrows on a few counts.

Apparently the girl will be marrying the dude who knocked her up. I`ll bet she will - all those shotguns her mom and dad keep around will come in handy now. Sarah Palin is an advocate of abstinence education, instead of teaching adolesents about birth control and safe sex. I wonder how that's working for her?

If it is true that Palin knew about her daughters pregnancy and told McCain about it it raises a few questions about her judgment and his. I`m sure Mrs. Palin loves her daughter, but she`s got a funny way of showing it. It doesn`t seem responsible to subject the young woman to this type of media scrutiny, nor the father of the child. For McCain`s part he chose a very under qualified Sarah Palin over many good candidates. She was supposed to appeal to the socially conservative base of the party. I`m not sure choosing a running mate with an unmarried, pregnant teenager, is really going to appeal to this wing of the party.

However, if he really wanted to have a running mate with these family values he didn`t need to go to Alaska - he could have found plenty in just about any trailer park in Arkansas. And it would have helped him lock up the south.

2nd act for W. and New Orleans

2008-08-31T17:18:00.000-07:00

Poor, poor, poor New Orleans. A grand city city with a dodgy location. For the second time in three years it looks to be slammed by a serious Hurricane. The city will survive the hurriane, like it did Katrina. What it can't survive is the same president being in office for both.

George the second virtually ignored the first hurricane, and when he did get around to noticing it his crony in charge of FEMA was unleashed on the reconstruction (will any of us forget "Heck of a job Bownie!"). Needless to say Brownie is long gone, and the reconstruction of levies is behind schedule.

Nevertheless, for those of us looking for signs of hope it appears George the second is capable of learning from his mistakes after all. He is scheduled to speak to the Republican nomination convention tommorow night. Looks like he's decided to can that. That's mighty presidential of him. the good news is that he's learned a lesson. The bad news is that for a second time in three years the future of New Orleans will hang in the hands of the same president.

An open letter to Prime Minister Harper

2008-08-31T17:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

I am writing to you regarding the deaths resulting from lysteriosis poisoning that seem to have originated in a Maple Leaf processing plant in North York Ontario. I understand that the government of Canada ceased publishing plant rankings on March 31, 2008. These rankings and reports were no longer published as a consequence of lobbying by the meat packing industry. By all accounts they were upset by the bad publicity that resulted when the press accessed these reports using freedom of information requests.

I write to you as a Conservative, and as a long time defender of free market capitalism. Since you have a background in economics I'm sure I don't need to point out to you that markets work most efficiently and to the greater good where there is information. Your government in this case has taken steps to remove information from the market. Consumers have been deprived of a critical tool for determining how they will allocate their resources (in this case what brands of food they will buy).

As a Conservative I would have expected you to understand the importance of government carrying out some functions that are either not economically viable for the market to perform, and basic activities to protect the health and safety of the citizens of the country. I am not advocating the return of the "nanny state" here. I do expect that government will have some procedure in place that prevents its citizens from being poisoned by food or water. Can you explain why the US has a more robust inspection and reporting system for meat packing than Canada does? Why should I have to go to the USDA to get information on Canadian packing plants?

I understand Canadians might be heading to the polls soon and apparently you want to run on the effectiveness of your leadership. I would think very seriously about this in the wake of this incident. As a Conservative I hope that you address this matter head on, and announce changes to the examination and reporting of Canadian meat packing plants. Anything less would be a dereliction of responsibility, and a gross absence of leadership

The terminal stupidty of Hillary Clinton and some of the Democratic party

2008-06-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton's sad attempt to claim the Democratic nomination reached a nadir this weekend, She tried to get the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated at the convention. While she was trying to seat these delegates she was also trying to claim that she should be the nominee because she received more of the popular vote than her competitor Obama. This is the equivalent of the black character in Blazing Saddles threatening to "blow this niggers head off", while holding a gun pointed at his own head.

Here's why. One the one hand Hillary says every elected delegate should be recognized and seated at the convention. Because Michigan and Florida moved their primary dates forward they were informed (well ahead of the primaries) that their delegates would not be seated. Subsequently neither Clinton nor Obama campaigned in those states. Obama was able to remove his name from the Michigan primary - Clinton did not.

Ok - so Clinton wants all the delegates recognized (she won both states, but did not win every vote in Michigan where she ran against "nobody" - and how are Nobody's delegates to be seated?). Fine. At least she recognizes that nominees are selected by delegates. She doesn't have enough delegates, super or elected, to win the nomination.

But then things get weird. The Clinton campaign has started to run adds claiming that she should be the nominee because she has won more of the popular vote. With Florida and Michigan included her math is a bit fuzzy, but the argument totally contradicts her desperate desire to see the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated.

Hillary Clinton is a bright woman. So when she entered the race for the nomination she must have known that the nominee is selected by delegates (either super or elected), not by popular vote. Her campaign made a fatal mistake - they figured they'd win big states like Texas, California, and New York. And they did. And if she were a Republican, she'd be laughing right now because they use a "first past the post" system for allocating delegates - i.e. the person with the highest vote total gets all of the delegates.

The Democrats apportion their delegates on the basis of popular vote - by state. Therefore when Obama competed well in NY, TX and CA he carved into her delegate count. Furthermore, because he then went on to win contests in North Dakota, Oregon, etc., he picked up delegates in states the Clintonistas didn't really bother to contest. Too bad, so sad.

Clinton's sorry end game has now taken a page from Al Gore's playbook (and when you take a page from Gore's playbook you're in big trouble). Gore won the popular vote in the presidential election he lost to George W. Bush. This is part of the reason why people like Michael Moore refer to the election as having been stolen. The election was not stolen. Presidents in the US are not selected by popular vote. This was a deliberate decision by the framers of the constitution to build in some form of state equality and to limit the damage that populists might inflict on a new and vulnerable mass democracy. They are selected by electoral college votes. The candidate that gets the most of those gets the presidency. Full stop. If you don't like those rules change them or don't run. But don't complain if you get the popular vote and find yourself waking up the next morning in your double wide trailer instead of the white house.

Hillary knew the rules going in. She doesn't like the outcome. Too bad. But she reminds me of someone who tries to change the rules of a board game mid-way through. This is the hallmark of sore loser and that is exactly what we have here.

Dogs, cars, garbage, and the triumph of the nanny state

2008-05-30T13:08:00.001-07:00

In 1949 Friedrich Hayek published a work called The Road to Serfdom. It was a liberal attack on the various forms of socialism and communism. It was also a warning that the policies of the post-WW II liberal regimes were simply a kinder and gentler version of what the socialists were seeking to build. Allowing the state to regulate increasingly large elements of citizens lives would ultimately lead to the development of what Thatcher called the "nanny state". A state of soft totalitarianism in which the minutiae of daily life would be increasingly regulated.

Well the nanny state is alive and well in David Miller's Toronto. The fair haired one has championed increasing powers for a revamped Toronto municipal government. This system will emulate municipal structure like those in NYC and Chicago catagorized as strong mayor systems. Well NYC and Chicago have had strong mayors for both good and bad. Bad in 1968 when the strong mayor of Chicago (Richard Daily) allowed Chicago police to beat the shit out of political protestors and delegates attending the Democratic convention. Good when Rudy Guiliani cleaned up NYC.

Our "strong mayor" looks like he is going to use his new powers to establish 1970's style nanny state. There are 3 recent indications to suggest this:

1) Garbage and recycling. Toronto recently spent 220 million to buy the Green Lane landfill near London Ontario. It is publicly committed to diverting 80% of it's garbage within the next 5 years. In order to encourage TO residents not to use a resource they just purchased they wheeled out (literally) new giant sized recycling bins. In the inner city (picture narrow streets, row houses, semi-detached residences, coops, etc) there is nowhere to put these behemoths. The inner city is not the suburbs. Many residents don't produce a great deal of waste or recycalables. Could they continue to use the small bins or clear plastic bags - no. Were the old recyalable containers recycalable? No. Were the to be treated as garbage? No. So most residents of the inner city await a Maoist pronouncment from on high about what to do with the old bins and the Monster trucks sitting in our front yards.

2) Cars. The fair haired one hates the Gardner expressway. He has wanted it demolished for well over a decade. This is, in part because of his publicly stated dislike of cars. If David Maoller doesn't like cars the rest of us should get over them as well. He has proposed the demolition of the elevated Gardner expressway between the Don River and Jarvis St. The justification is that it will open up access to the lake. Excellent idea. Except that the old elevated expressway will be replaced by an 8 lane road level avenue. The citizens who use the existing expressway are told to suck it up - these are the changes necessary to create a great city.

3) Dogs. This summer 18 students will be fanning out accross the city to peer in windows of homes to ascertain whether the owner has either a dog or a cat. This will be compared against the licence data base and the offending pet owner will be targeted for fines. This is not, the city assures us, a tax grab. No it will be used to pay for the services of Animal Control. Right, but didn't our property taxes pay for Animal Control?

While the city and the fair haired ons have great energy for these worthy social control programs the streets are filthy, on the basis of my observation while walking my mutt in the ravines around Toronto illegal dumping is up, and you can't swing a cat for hitting a panhandler. Cities should do a couple of things - provide drinkable water, dispose of trash, and fix roads. All of these things have gone by the way side. Meanwhile mayor Maoller continues to concentrate on more inventive ways to remake the way Torontonians live and more inventive ways to turn the suffering population in a cash machine.

Death of a lightbulb

2007-04-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Liberal government of Ontario announced its intention to introduce legislation that will see the humble incandescent light bulb banned from use by 2012. This simple step (emphasis on simple) will represent the equivalent of taking 225,000 cars off the road, or the energy necessary to power 600,000 households (wouldn't it be more efficient to just blow up Ottawa in that case?). In addition the Ontario Power Authority will be sending out coupons to Ontario households worth $44.00 to help off-set the cost of more expensive Compact Florescent bulbs (CFBs).

If I thought for a second this step would prevent Greenland from becoming, well, green again, I might get behind it. But anyone who's reflected on the reports released by the International Commission on Climate Change will quickly realize it won't make a whit of difference in the struggle against global warming. The Chinese will thank us for our efforts and more than make up for our sacrifices with increased green house gas emissions.

So, what will this move accomplish? For starters our homes will be lit the same way most of our workplaces are. Think Asian noodle house and you'll get the idea. Incandescent light bulbs produce light by running a current through a wire (filament), the wire provides resistance and the filament glows - voila, light. We also get heat as the critics point out. However, living in a cold climate the ambient heat produced by these bulbs may not be such a bad thing.

Incandescent light bulbs produce a warm light (people tend to look better in it). I like it because at it's best it resembles the light that is produced by fire. A neighbour of mine recently replaced his incandescent bulbs with CFBs and the light that comes out of his house makes it looks like he's filming a movie or operating a grow op - (hmmm come to think of it...).

There is also the issue that no one seems to want to confront regarding the mercury in CFBs. These bulbs contain small amounts of mercury. When the whole province is compelled to switch over to them these small amounts of mercury are going to have a cumulative effect. Will we have monthly hazardous waste collections to pick up peoples burned out bulbs? What about bulbs broken in the house and the mercruy released as a consequence?

Let's talk about compulsion for a moment. The government has been promoting the use of these bulbs recently. Why not allow consumers the choice? They won't allow the choice because they know what the outcome would be. Most consumers would not voluntarily load their houses up with lamps and lights loaded with CFBs. So they have intervened in a market transaction. That's bad for everyone. The manufacturers of CFBs know their lights look bad and have been doing research to produce CFB's that more closely emulate the light of incandescents. If the government forces everyone to buy CFBs and bans incandescents then the competition is removed and there is no need to continue the research. If the market competition were permitted to work without interference the manufactures of CFBs would be forced to improve their bulbs and as a consequence many consumers would voluntarily move to using CFBs.

For my part, I will be laying in a supply of incandescents, a couple cases in the basement. I will not switch until CFBs are produced that provide a similar kind of light. I will take burned out incandescents and grind them up and eat them with my cereal. The nanny state can go piss up a rope and they can have my incandescent light bulbs when the pry it from my cold dead hand. Long live the incandescent bulb!

And another thing

2007-03-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

A quick add on to yesterdays entry on the woeful state budgetary management at the City of Toronto. While inflation is running at a rate of 1.25%,the City of Toronto will pay wage increases of an average 3.25% this year to the approximately 50,000 (!!!) City of Toronto employees.

Part of the reason for these wage increases has to do with the Mayors pledge the first time he ran for office that he would not consider outsourcing unionized jobs at the city to the private sector. Then he sat down and 'negotiated' with those very same unions he had pledged to protect. They have him by the short and curlies and they know it. Until the Mayor changes his position we can look forward to future wage increases consistently outstripping the rate of inflation, with the predictable consequences for the local tax payer.

Lastly, the budget for running the fair haired mayor's office is going to increase by 30 % this year. Yup - that's not a misprint. Why has the office of mayor become so much more expensive? Well the mayor has more power after some changes to the way municipal council is organized (not that much more). So what does the mayor need? Well, two new meeting rooms, two new policy advisers, and the assistants required for two new policy advisers.

I'm glad he's hiring some more policy advisers, he desperately needs some good advice. Sadly, if he keeps dipping into the intellectually diminished pool of socialists he's been taking advice from we may find that these two new advisers cost us much more than their salaries.

The City of Toronto's tax woes and its foolish Mayor

2007-03-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

Some mornings I hate to turn on the radio. This was one of them. Toronto's mayor, David Miller, was commenting on the budget for the City of Toronto. It is about 70 million dollars short. He had committed to raising taxes at the rate of inflation and he was now announcing that that would not be possible. As usual he blamed the Provincial government for this. What he said in this interview really woke me up. He stated that since gas and oil were large elements of the city budget, and they had risen above the average rate of inflation the saw "no reason to cut program spending because oil was expensive."

Really. I guess it hasn't occurred to the fair haired one that oil and gas are expensive for the people paying municipal taxes as well. By his logic, I shouldn't cut down on spending money on restaurant meals to compensate for this expense. And, if I had the power to force my neighbours to pay for these things I wouldn't. But unlike the mayor, I don't.

The financial management of the city is a disgrace. Despite claiming that he has limited tax increases to the rate of inflation he has not. According to City of Toronto figures published in the Globe and Mail today, inflation was close to 0 in 2003, and we got a 3% tax increase. in 2004 it was 1.5% and we got a 3% increase. Same for 2005. This year inflation is 1.26% and we are getting a 3.8% tax increase. Overall city spending has increased 9.3% for this year (think about that - the cost of everything went up on average 1.26% this year and the cost of running our municipal government increased almost 10% - the increase was about 5 times the rate of inflation).

The single largest budget item is police 785 million. I'm not sure we get very good value for money here. I fail to see the point of handsomely compensating a largely disinterested, and thuggish presence, that mostly live outside of the City of Toronto, to police us. The next biggest expense is Corporate and capital financing at 539 million. Sounds harmless enough, but it basically means that the second most expensive part of our budget is interest payments, and everyone should be worried about that. Next, social services come in at 296 million dollars. After that, shelters and public housing come in at 277 million dollars.

Separating social services from shelters and public housing is a bit of legerdemain. These are social services and if they were grouped together and reported this way the second largest expenditure in the city budget would be social services. The city really needs to consider this. Social services are a fine thing, but they should not be payed for with property taxes. Property taxes should be used for municipal services and infrastructure. To put it in perspective, while we spend almost 600 million dollars on social services, we spend 272 million dollars on public transit. That's insane. Public transit is a service the municipal government should support. If the City of Toronto wants the province to get serious about picking up more of the costs of our social services it should begin taking steps to sell and privatize public housing. Make housing support for the poor a provincial problem once again.

Unfortunately for the suffering tax payers of Toronto the yearly mugging will go on and on and on. The reason for this is because Miller and the majority of socialist councillors that we elect to council every year know little to nothing about economics and fiscal responsibility. And so far they can can get away with it because the electorate seems to know less.

It is said that blonds have more fun. If that's true our fair haired mayor must be having a blast. And why not the humble tax payer seems to have an inexhaustible supply of cash.

The Loud Revolution in Quebec

2007-03-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

The province of Quebec went to the polls tonight and produced an astonishing result. As things stand the Liberals might be able to form a minority government with the support of the ADQ. The separatist PQ was reduced to third party status. It almost certainly means that the Liberals and PQ will be electing new leaders in the near future. What does this mean for Quebec, and more importantly for the federal Conservative party?

Some quick tea leaf reading. I recently finished reading the first volume of a biography on Pierre Trudeau. It covers his years from birth until 1968, including the critical years of the quiet revolution that took place in Quebec in the 1960's. At this time the Union National (the party of Duplessie), and the Crediste (a social credit party) lost influence in Quebec. They lost first to the Liberal party and in the late '70's to the separatist PQ. The PQ was able to attract voters in rural areas that had traditionally voted for the Union National by appealling to nationalist sentiment. However, the PQ was largely committed to an urban platform and socialist government policy. The Liberals were 'federalists' (which in the Quebec context means they were less committed to extortion than their PQ opponents). There was a seemingly permanent division in Quebec politics between these forces.

After reading the Trudeau bio I wondered what happened to the largely conservative rural voters who had once supported the Union National? Had they become supporters of a European style socialist party (PQ) supporting independence? Well we got the answer tonight - Non. They want more powers for Quebec, but they don't want socially liberal public policy (and like voters everywhere, they want more government services for less taxation). ADQ leader Mario Dumont shrewdly discerned and pandered to this unserved conservative constituency. He was going to protect Quebec culture (no more accomodation for ethnic - read Muslim - minorities). He was going to offer tax relief, while shaking Ottawa down for more money (the usual blackmail approach of Quebec). However, he was different from the PQ, he was not going to hold a referendum on separation.

For Quebec the implication is that they have invested the leader of a non-party (until now the ADQ has held a maximum of 4 seats in the assembly) with extraordinary power. The 'party' has been assembled quickly and the usual contingent of cranks have appeared on their voter list. It will be a challenge for the young Mr. Dumont to turn his movement of social protest into a functional political party capable of winning elections, and ultimately governing the province.

The results are a mixed bag for Stephen Harper and the federal Conservatives. In the last federal election Harper made a point of playing kissy face with Dumont. However, he also poured a pile of cash into Quebec prior to (and in the middle of) the election campaign in order to show that the Liberals were as capable of extorting cash from the federal government as the separatists. He lost on the Liberal bid, but won on the ADQ bid.

So all things being equal, if the Conservatives keep polling in the 40% range for the next couple of weeks we can look forward to them engineering their own downfall, and Canadians heading to the polls before the end of the year. This is something I would not have predicted 2 weeks ago. So strange times for Quebec ahead, and as usual political events in Quebec continue to punch above their weight in the rest of Canada.

Reasonable accommodation and Islam's problem with women

2007-03-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

On Monday Quebecer's go to the polls to elect a new government and for a change the interminable issue of separation is not one of the major issues in this election. This time leaders of the three main political parties (Liberals, PQ, and ADQ) have been trying to get ahead of the issue of 'reasonable accommodation'. Specifically, there have been a number of instances involving accommodating minority Muslim practices that have provoked a backlash amongst Quebecer's, especially those in rural areas.

These requests for accommodation are not exclusively tied to the Muslim community. In Montreal in the fall a religious school for orthodox Jews provoked a controversy when they paid the YMCA accross the street from their school to install reflective glass on the windows of the workout room so that the bodies of women exercising could not be seen by the staff and students of the school.

I will focus on several recent cases in Quebec and the rest of Canada involving Muslim requests for accommodation. In each instance I will argue that the request is both unreasonable, and ultimately the result of a view of women held by a segment of the Muslim population that cannot be reasonably accommodated in modern, secular, western democracies.

The cases are as follows: 1) Some niqhab wearing (veiled) women voters in Quebec did not want to show their faces to the poll officials when they voted in the upcoming election. The decision (since reversed) was to accommodate this request. 2) A student enrolled in the fine arts program at the University of Western Ontario wanted to be exempted from the life drawing (sketching nude models) requirements of a required course. The University said she was free to skip those assignments but she would receive a grade of 0 for those assignments. 3) At the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto the gym has set aside several hours a week for the gym to be used only by women after a Muslim student protested that she could not exercise with men and wanted a portion of her student fees refunded because she could not use the athletic facilities. I will take each case in order.

1) In order to reduce voter fraud it is common to request some form of photo ID from voters to ensure that the person on the voters list is actually the person casting the vote. It is not reasonable to request a blanket exemption from this requirement. If I were to show up to vote at the next election wearing a mask elemental justice would require that I too be allowed to vote without the returning officer verifying my identity. Reasonable accommodation in this instance would be to offer to make a female returning officer available to verify the ID of the voter. But the voter must be identified. If this is not acceptable the individual does not have to exercise her democratic liberty (unlike Australia there is no requirement for citizens to vote in this country). In this case the individual has chosen to place their perceived religious obligations above their obligations as a citizen and it is their choice. No need for further accommodation.

2) I ran into a version of this issue years ago with a student who was a Christian evangelical. He objected that a required course (Humanities) used a textbook that was "Godless", and taught ideas that ran against his faith. He wanted to be exempted from the course because it ran against his conscience (this is very similar to the Muslim woman wanting to be exempted from the life drawing portion of her course at Western). I pointed out to the student that the text was "Godless" because it was not a religious studies course. I went to the associate dean to discuss this issue with him. It troubled me. His response was that no one was forcing the student to attend our College, that the course requirement was required of all who attended and wished to graduate from the College, and that no one was required to accept the teachings in the course and text. Lastly, he pointed out that the purpose of a liberal arts component to any education is to provide breadth of experience to the ideas of others. In short, he said the student doesn't have to take the course, but he won't graduate from this institution if he doesn't. Fair enough.

3) The University of Toronto has started down a very slippery slope. If a student can request a portion of their activity fees rebated because her interpretation of her religion makes it impossible for her to use the athletic facilities look for more of these types of exemptions to be requested. For example, student fees often fund activities staged for the students by the student government - often there is alcohol served at these events. Should non-drinking students be rebated a portion of their fees? These fees also fund campus clubs. Almost every college and university campus in Canada has a Bi-Gay-Lesbian-Transgendered (etc. etc. etc.) club. Why should non-Bi-Gay-Transgendered students fund that? Especially those who are religiously opposed to this expression of sexuality? The best response U of T could have made was to say "use the services you can use according to your interpretation of your religion and avoid the services you can't use". Every other student does the same thing. My student fees as an undergrad funded the athletic centre (I think I might have accidentally wandered through it at some point). It funded gay positive clubs (never got around to attending one of those events), it funded the campus evangelicals (sorry missed those as well).

The common pattern in all of the above complaints revolves around the interaction of women and men, human sexuality, and the public participation of women in the public life of the community. Some followers of Islam have a problem with all of the above. It is rooted in their interpretation of their religion (not all Muslim's share this interpretation and have far more enlightened views). For those (including the women) who want to uphold an ancient desert code of sexual subordination and separation of women we should let it be known that they will not be accommodated in Canada.

Ulitmately these requests for accomodation are an attempt to force sexual segregation on the general populace. If reasons for this segregation can be provided in secular terms we should give them serious consideration. If they are presented in religious terms we should point to the generally secular nature of the public sphere and deny them.

This is not a case of Islamophobia. But Mulsim's may want to ask themselves why the Muslim religion is so often coming into conflict with some of the basic commitments to liberty and equality in western societies. An honest examination will reveal that their view of equality between the sexes is a major source for that conflict.

The Personal is Political...too bad

2007-03-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards held a very hard press conference today. He announced that his wife, who had breast cancer, now had bone cancer (it was detected in one of her ribs). This is terminal cancer.

This announcement is sad at so many levels. Firstly because a wife/mom is going to be dead 'before her time'. Secondly, because something so profound and important becomes fodder for CNN and other news media. Lastly, because Edwards stated that he would continue his campaign for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party.

I found it significant that he made the announcement and did most of the talking at the press conference. Edwards is a second tier candidate for the Democratic nomination. It is astonishing that his political ambition is so great that he has decided to continue campaigning for the position in light of his wife's condition. She, for her part, announced that she would continue campaigning for him. What a waste.

Running for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party is not a part time job. It requires all of the candidates time. If Edwards wants to mount a credible run he will not be there to support his wife as she weakens and eventually dies (although she will try to be there for him as he campaigns). Perhaps it is her life's aim to be on a constant political road show, but I doubt that.

In the 70's feminist scholars coined the phrase "the personal is political" as a way of arguing that domestic arrangements were part of a larger political system. In Edwards' case we see a reversal of this concept - the political is personal. Political considerations have overwhelmed the basic, human, considerations of obligation to family.

For my part I think his presidential ambitions are dead in the water. There are very few of his supporters who will continue to back a candidate so clearly ambitious and callous. When this story broke I was sitting at a bar eating lunch (surprise). I asked the bartender (a young woman) a hypothetical question - would you vote for a guy running for president while his wife was dying of cancer? She was shocked at the suggestion. So good luck to Mr. Edwards. Hopefully, better judgement will prevail and he will spend the time he has remaining with his wife more fruitfully.

Smilin' Jack Layton's Shakey Grasp of Economics

2007-02-27T16:31:00.000-08:00

A minor scandal has erupted recently in southern Ontario - gas has become very expensive again. The cause of the sudden rise in the price of gas was a refinery fire in one of Imperial Oil's Ontario refineries, coupled with a CN railroad strike (making it difficult to bring in supplies by rail). Many stations have had to temporarily close because the pumps have gone dry. This has resulted in a certain amount of panic buying by consumers, and has quite predictably driven up the price of gas at the pump.

As usual the general response to this increase in price has been to blame the real bad guys - the oil companies. Oil companies are rapidly gaining on Jews as the favourite source of blame for all things wicked. It has been suggested that at a minimum they are colluding to fix prices to their advantage. More wild speculation has suggested Imperial oil may have set the fire at their refinery themselves.

In this conspiracy theory minded climate one would expect some degree of moderation and calm from our elected politicians. For the most part this has been the case. Not from the leader of the NDP - smilin' Jack Layton. Nope this unreformed socialist knows just who to blame and what should be done. According to Jack:

"The companies claim, 'Well it's supply and demand and we're short of supply, so we're going to increase the price.' In our view that's gouging."

Actually, it isn't gouging - it is just as the companies state a matter of supply and demand, and if Smilin' Jack is really looking for who is to blame he need look no farther than the customers (the same people who sensibly avoid voting for his party in droves). It's pretty simple: if there are 10 consumers who want an orange, and there are several retailers selling a total supply of 15 oranges there will be price competition and oranges will be reasonably priced. If 10 customers want oranges and there are only 4 oranges however, the competition for those 4 oranges will drive the price up. The price will only decrease if more oranges become available, or some of the 10 customers decide to purchase a different fruit. This is a concept a 10 year old can understand - but apparently not one the leader of the NDP can understand.

Poor Jack would be entirely lost if the lesson was extended to price elasticity. Layton's comments, outside of their gross ignorance raise another issue entirely - i.e. the quality of his political judgement. The NDP is going to be in a dog fight in the next election to keep NDP voters from straying to the increasingly popular Green party. He needs to convince voters that the NDP will give them everything, and more, than a Green party will. Well, he wants government to regulate the price of gas to protect consumers from the big bad oil companies. Exactly how serious is he about the environment? After all, high oil and gas prices are one of the best means for decreasing consumption of these commodities. Does the green NDP want to decrease consumption of petroleum products or not? Apparently not only does Jack know jack about economic matters, he doesn't seem to know jack about political tactics either.

This will be depressing for the dwindling supporters of the NDP, but good news for the rest of us. We need not trouble ourselves with the thought that these guys might actually form a government ever. Good thing to, because if you wanted to know what Canada would look like under an NDP government you wouldn't need to look much farther than Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. The slow motion crash that is the Venezuelan economy these days tells us everything we need to know about the efficacy of socialist economic policies.

David Miller's One Cent Solution

2007-02-26T20:43:00.000-08:00

Today we hosted The Toronto Summit. A conference dedicated to addressing the multiple woe's facing the City of Toronto. Make no mistake, there are some serious problems here. We have expanded municipal debt to historically high proportions. In order to fund the public transit authority we have beggared the capital budgets for roads and transportation, public parks, libraries, etc. As the proposed budget stands our municipal government is a life support system for the TTC.

Our fair haired mayor's response has been to lead a campaign to see the city government receive 1 cent of the GST consumption tax levied by the Federal government. This is a wrong strategy on so many levels.

1) The problem Canada's largest cities confront is grounded in our constitutional history. Canada was created in 1867 when the majority of Canadians lived in rural communities. Rural communities are over represented electorally. The largest Canadian cities essentially fund economic basket cases such as Nunavut, and large portions of the east coast and rural Canada. Cities are creatures of Provincial jurisdiction and exist exclusively at their whim. Cities powers of taxation are a gift from the provinces. The political status of Canada's largest cities is essentially that of a beggar. This is perverse given that the largest cities are begging for a portion of the wealth they generate from higher levels of government that distribute that wealth to parts of the country that are not economically self-sustaining. Ultimately the solution to properly funded cities will have to be found in constitutional change.

2) There is a bad disconnect between revenue generation and spending in the existing arrangement. In short, the city of Toronto relies on transfers from higher levels of government for some of it's revenue and the highly regressive property tax for the majority of it. If we were to get 1 cent of the GST as the mayor wishes we would get about 420 million from the federal government. But this revenue and the way it will be spent are grossly disconnected. A portion of a consumption tax, levied by a higher level of government, eventually trickles down to a lower level of government. This is like a child receiving an allowance. Don't be surprised when the lower government acts like a child and spends irresponsibly and comes back for more money. The best way to make governments fiscally accountable is to give them the responsibility to raise and allocate revenue.

3) There is a problem with spending at the municipal level of government in Toronto. There has been no serious discussion about whether it is appropriate to use property taxes to fund an extensive system of public housing, transportation, and other social welfare measures while the physical infrastructure of the city is allowed to deteriorate. Municipal governments have some basic responsibilities - roads, garbage, parks, water, public health - after which everything else is bonus. If we don't have access to the tax revenue to provide more extensive services we should up-load to the Province and Federal government and refuse to fund and pay for services they are responsible for. We should sell off the public housing that was transferred to us by the provincial government, close down the immigrant settlement programs the city funds with little support from the federal government (settlement is their responsibility), close down the adult education component of the Toronto Board of Education.

4) I make these modest proposals as a way of getting everyone to think about the change that really needs to occur. The city of Toronto and the other large municipal governments need to be given the taxing authority to tax income. This was given to New York in the 1970's after that city's near brush with bankruptcy. This is a serious, and generally fair, form of taxation. Most importantly it would force municipalities to become serious about their spending. They would be responsible for generating the revenue necessary for funding the services they provide and if they came up short they would have no one else to blame but themselves. Additionally, it might force them to stop funding Cadillac services on a Sunfire budget. Lastly, people understand income tax and the relation between the pay check and the tax in a way few people will ever understand the arcana of property tax and mill rates. Taxation works best when it is most transparent. Politicians levying income taxes are held to account to a much higher degree that politicians levying property taxes are not.

So with all due respect to the fair haired one - he has good intentions, but his proposed solution will be a failure all round if he is successful (and he won't be).

An Incovenient Wind

2007-02-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

The newest secular Saint flew into Toronto yesterday and Torontonians responded like the provincial hicks we are and turned out in droves to hear the sermon. Of course I'm referring to Saint Al of Gore. He was here trotting out the same dog and pony show that promise to turn him into an Oscar award winner, and in all likelihood, the next President of the United States.

If saint Al really cared about global warming the biggest contribution he could make to reducing it would be to shut up. The lemmings who turned out for the privilege of being able to stand outside the lecture hall at U of T actually said some things that make sense. They said stuff like: "From my perspective, it is a form of religion...", and "You can't hear that message enough...", and, "It was not our intention to have a religious approach but it was our understanding that it was that kind of movement that people were craving; that kind of spiritual connection in their gut". (All quotes from Eco-Pilgrims gather to 'heed the Goracle', by Anthony Reinhart, Globe and Mail Feb. 22)

Yes global warming and our response to it is very much like a new religion. I can't say that I'm terribly surprised. Religion is something like mould, it flourishes in the dark, dank, recesses of the human mind. In the absence of rationality, dispassion, and context, the ability to believe almost anything thrives. Thus the millenia of global warming and cooling that have been going on long before humans made an appearance on the scene is almost entirely overlooked. Heck those patterns have continued after we made our appearance on the scene. There's a reason a why the frozen hunk of rock and glacier in the Atlantic was once called Greenland by it's human inhabitants.

Still, the scientific consensus is that human activity is having an impact on this long history of global warming and cooling (as one would expect). It's just that the horde tend to over-exaggerate that impact. For example, in a quick test designed by Roger Pielke Jr., Director of the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado the majority of viewers of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, failed a 5 question quiz on the scientifically agreed upon impacts of global warming. Not surprisingly, they also overestimated the worst case scenario. (For the quiz itself see Margaret Wente's column in Feb. 22, Globe and Mail). Dr. Pielke is not a crank, he thinks global warming will have a negative environmental impact, he just thinks that we should be putting more energy and investment in adaptation. Not a bad idea. If the environment is like a large ship (slow moving and hard to redirect) turning off the engines won't prevent it from continuing to move.

The issue that has everyone up in arms is what should be done about it. Well, there's not much that can be done about it. People tend to overlook that the wealthiest capitalist nations on earth have been creating cleaner and more energy efficient cars, appliances, homes, etc. since they first industrialized. Neil Reynolds in his Globe and Mail column of Feb. 21, pointed out that if Canada were to reduce its GHG emissions to zero, China would pick up the slack in a mere 18 months. I'm sure there are bootleg copies of An Inconvenient Truth floating about in China but I'll bet it's not a real big seller. Let's let the Goracle take his slide show on the road to Shanghai and see how his message goes down there.

Everyone wants a cleaner environment. Nobody likes to breath in shit and see their city submerged by rising oceans. Businesses don't like to waste energy because energy costs. The greatest contribution to curbing GHG's would be to encourage both China and India to shrug off their communist and socialist political systems, develop a genuinely functioning capitalist economy (not the cowboy copies of it they currently operate) and let the market develop cleaner and more energy efficient societies as we are doing in most of the capitalist west.

In the meantime, Al Gore will continue to jet about the US preaching the new gospel of global warming and wait for Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton to beat each other into a bag of shit. And then, with great humility, the guru will step forward and accept the nomination of the Democratic party and commit himself to healing their wounds. Don't be surprised if Al also walks on water, and raises a dead person or two, in the next year or so.

For my part I'm looking forward to the point where Al gets nailed to a cross - an environmentally sensitive cross (one made from recycled toilet paper and phone books). Because human beings need their religion but they have a nasty tendency to kill their idols.

Trudeau the Legislator

2007-02-19T17:35:00.000-08:00

I've been reading the first volume of a very fine biography of Pierre Trudeau by John English. It's good timing because it's the 25th anniversary of the repatriation of the Constitution, with the addition of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The bio is called Citizen of the World, and I'll skip the obvious jokes about the author's last name. This bio covers Trudeau from birth until 1968. English has had access to all of Trudeau's archives. This is a formidable archive. Unlike Freud, Trudeau did not destroy correspondence - even correspondence that would shed a negative light on his legacy. It includes report cards from grade school, high school essays, and all correspondence.

We discover that Trudeau as a young man was a Quebec nationalist, proto-sovereigntist, conservative catholic, and sympathetic to fascism. Furthermore, the biography confirms what earlier bio's have made clear - Trudeau was a deeply committed Catholic all his life.

As someone who fell in with politically extremist elements when I was the same age as Trudeau (my folly was Trotskyist) I know that the thought of the adult cannot be judged by the standards of the youth. Youthful extremism often gives way to more nuanced views, and this was certainly the case with Trudeau.

I would argue that Trudeau's adult obsession (the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) was a direct consequence of his youthful political development. Understanding the motivations behind the extreme, illiberal, views he held as a youth he knew better than most the importance of repatriating a constitution that included explicit protection of individual liberties. Reason triumphed over passion. Ultimately, 25 years on, the constitution has made the Canadian government far more accountable to the freedoms of individual citizens.

Trudeau is often compared to Plato's philosopher king. Indeed he quoted Plato when announcing his intention to run for the leadership of the Liberal party in 1968. Trudeau has greater kinship with Rousseau's Legislator (for better and worse). The Legislator plays a pivotal role in Rousseau's work The Social Contract.

In order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed. This intelligence would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it through and through; its happiness would have to be independent of us, and yet ready to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would have, in the march of time, to look forward to a distant glory, and, working in one century, to be able to enjoy in the next. It would take gods to give men laws.

The Charter is flawed in many ways, and Trudeau was similar to, but not, the Legislator. Just as well, because the Legislator in in the Social Contract ultimately has to remake human nature. Trudeau did not set out to remake human nature. His gift, as a legislator, was to remake the relationship between the people and their government, and he did just fine.

What would Jesus do?

2007-02-14T19:38:00.000-08:00

Ok, I should offer a disclaimer up front. As an atheist I really couldn't give a rat's ass what Jesus would do. But I was prompted to this line of questioning by a mass e-mail I received today.

The e-mail is from the ECP (Equipping Christian's for the Public square). I'll leave aside any comment on the idiocy of the acronym. This is a new Canadian organization dedicated to tub thumping for upholding Judeao-Christian values. You know, the usual Judeao-Christian values like making terrified pregnant teenagers bear children against their will, executing criminals, discriminating against homosexuals, keeping kids ignorant about how human reproduction occurs, and ensuring that the word Darwin is never uttered in a public school room ever again. Basically they're concerned about the same stuff Jesus was.

The email contains the predictable fear - militant Secularists (unlike the non-militant Christian fundamentalists), etc, etc, etc. Here's a taste from the email:

"...Yet this is precisely what militant secularists are at war with. This culture war has been around for more then a generation, but unfortunately it has taken such huge casualties like the destruction of marriage and the redefinition of the family for us to recognize its malignancy and terminal threat to the nation. "

Consider the language here - militant secularists, at war, huge casualties, malignancy, terminal threat. I've seen demonizing like this before, unfortunately it was in Nazi and Soviet propaganda pamphlets. I'm one of those "militant secularists". The majority of my friends are Christians of some shape or variety. I even have a few Jewish friends. Furthermore, they aren't at war with me, and I'm pretty sure they don't describe me behind my back as that "malignancy".

I do know that some of my Christian friends do genuinely Christian stuff (like volunteer at a homeless shelter, try and establish links between private schools in Canada and schools in Africa, and other stuff that they are just so Christian they keep to themselves). Obviously they are in for a disappointment when they die. Christ and his dad (God) are going to bar them from heaven because they weren't serious enough about protecting the family by keeping loving individuals of the same sex from marrying. Man are my Christian friends in for a rude shock.

As an atheist I never find myself asking "What would Jesus do?" But if I did, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be sending out spiteful mass e-mails appealing to the worst elements in our human nature. I think I know what Jesus would do - he'd tell the EPC to go and piss up a rope.

What the world needs now.... is Richard Nixon

2007-02-09T18:20:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Margaret Macmillan's excellent book "Nixon in China" recently. I've been a Nixon revisionist for many years now. Given the current 'leadership' in the US, this book has made me nostalgic for Tricky Dick.

Macmillan points out that in dealing with both the Soviets, and ultimately the Chinese, he took the view that it was not simply a matter of containment vs. diplomatic engagement, but a combination of both that would serve US interests best. What a concept. Imagine if that were applied to say - Iran?

Nixon is easily one of the most despised American Presidents, and that is too bad. He had the misfortune to become President at a time when a mass, and largely independent media, recast American politics. For the record he negotiated Detente with the Soviets, the first Strategic Arms Limitation (SALT) treaty, ended the Vietnam war, and opened diplomatic relations with China. On the domestic front he pushed through the Environmental Protection Act, and legislation requiring all contractors with the Federal government have an affirmative action hiring policy. In short, by any contemporary measure he was an extremely effective President.

By comparison one of the most beloved US presidents, John Kennedy, was a prescription drug addict, suffered from venereal disease (a side effect of banging hookers), failed to push through a significant piece of legislation through the US Congress, authorized the disasterous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and began the escalation of US forces in Vietnam.

By almost any measure Nixon was a better President. Kennedy's Bay of Pigs failed to overthrow Castro (and the Cuban population is still paying the price). When Nixon's administration decided to back the overthrow of the marxist President of Chile, Salvador Allende, they succeeded. While the military dictatorship of Pinochet resulted in the death of thousands, Castro has outdone Pinochet by a whole other magnitude. By the crude calculation of the morgue Nixon succeeded in a way Kennedy did not.

The black mark on Nixon's record is Watergate. Nixon authorized the cover up of a burglary carried out by operatives of his campaign team. Nixon was a deeply, and problematically, paranoid man. He is probably the closest thing my generation will come to seeing a living Shakespearean tragic character. His ambition and ability were tremendous, and his self doubt was so great it totally undermined him.

But in the long view of history is the authorization of a cover up of the Watergate burglary really that important? After all Bill Clinton remained President after being impeached for lying about not having sex with "that girl". Well she gave him a blow job, he came on her dress, and she inserted his cigar... Is it better to have a frat boy as president? Rwandan's don't think so.

Nixon may have had the misfortune to be born too early. Nixon was a skilled, and highly intelligent, thinker when it came to foreign affairs, and I often find myself asking "What would Nixon do?" when it comes to the troubling issues regarding Iran and North Korea, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't pursue a course of strict isolation for Iran, and he would have found a way (through back channels) to engage Hamas. We could desperately use a Richard Nixon right now.

The appalling treatment of Taliban detainees

2007-02-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the investigative efforts of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran Canadians have discovered that three Afghan detainees may have suffered facial bruising after being captured by Canadian forces.

I'm appalled. How could we treat people involved in combat operations against NATO troops so callously? Facial bruising? Awful. Clearly our interrogators are due for a serious dose of sensitivity training.

Canadian media reported worse news this evening - the detainees were handed over to the Afghanistan government and they don't know what has happened to them. (My heart is bleeding so badly right now I may not be able to finish this entry).

Since there is a sovereign government in AF it is entirely proper to hand these captives over to the custody of that government - and if we have a problem with the treatment of the prisoners after that it is best to take it up with the government of AF - and not Canadian forces.

I'm curious about Professor Attaran's motivation in this affair. Is he really concerned about the treatment of prisoners (if so - there are a ton of captives in many other locals that are treated a lot worse - China?). I suspect he opposes the NATO mission in AF. Fair enough. But to listen to the media coverage you would think that Canadians had committed the equivalence of the Mai Lei massacre. A bit of perspective would be useful here. If I were a captured Taliban I would expect some facial bruising as an optimal outcome. After all, we are talking about a culture which plays a game on horse back involving a headless goat.

Tortillas and gas

2007-01-23T16:16:00.000-08:00

Amazingly this isn't an entry on food and flatulence. It is actually about alternative uses for corn, and how government meddling in the free market is creating a mess for Mexico's poor.

This week the President of Mexico, Calderon, announced his intention to place price caps on the cost of corn. Calderon is generally a supporter of free market policies but felt compelled to take this step after Mexico had witnessed the price of corn rise by a third in recent months. This is a serious issue for poor Mexicans because the corn is used to make tortillas, which are a staple of the Mexican diet.

The culprit behind the rise in price is the voracious demand for corn in order supply manufacturers of ethanol (an alcohol based fuel additive). In particular, increasing demand for corn by ethanol producers in the United States has led to a dramatic decrease in the US export of corn.

Environmentalists love ethanol. Al Gore loves ethanol. Ordinary people worried about global warming love ethanol. People worried about US dependence on middle eastern oil love ethanol. Ethanol burns cleaner than fossil fuels resulting in lower emissions, and contributing to reduced greenhouse gases. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that parents have begun naming their children ethanol.

So what's wrong with ethanol? Almost everything. Independent studies have largely confirmed that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than you get from ethanol. One study conducted by a scientist at the Berkeley College of Engineering, figured that it takes 65% more energy to produce ethanol than you get from it (link to the study http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/0305/patzek.html). This is when you take into account the energy used to produce the fertilizer, the fossil fuels burned in harvesting and transporting the corn, and the energy used to convert the corn to ethanol.

This hasn't stopped the large ethanol producers from being able to convince governments in Canada and the US to mandate that gasoline contain increasingly higher amounts of ethanol. Governments love to pass this type of legislation because it makes them look like they are taking decisive action on the environment.

Additionally, farmers and agri-business love ethanol production because it drives up the price of commodities like corn, and ensures that massive government agricultural subsidies continue to flow. Between 1996 and 2002 farm subsidies in the US amounted to almost 16 billion dollars per year. Of that almost 3 billion was devoted to feed grains, of which corn is a major component.

In the meantime, pity Mexico's poor as a staple they eat is converted to fuel and excreted out of the tail pipes of SUV driving Americans and Canadians. Calderon can pass all the legislation he wants to try and protect the price of corn in Mexico. However, as a signatory to NAFTA Mexican farmers are entitled to continue to export corn to Canada and the US. If the price remains high in those countries (and why wouldn't it with demand high, and government subsidies high) the Mexican government will have no choice but to pay Mexican farmers the market price of corn in order to keep it in Mexico. If the Mexican government had that kind of cash to fling around it's a fair bet that corn tortillas wouldn't be a staple of the Mexican diet any longer.

This is the story of a vicious circle called more. In this case more government regulation of fuel, begets more agricultural subsidies, which begets more price controls and subsidies in Mexico. This idiotic situation is a pure creation of bad government policy creating a crisis where one would not exist if the market were simply permitted to operate as it should. Now that Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman has died I'm sure he is having his first experience of spinning in his grave. There may be more than a few Mexican's joining him soon.

The Barbarians in the nursery

2007-01-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

Last week in Vancouver a woman gave birth to sextuplets. The odds of this happening naturally are over 5 billion to 1 (seriously). Not surprisingly she and her husband had been taking fertility drugs to increase the likelihood of pregnancy. Multiple conceptions are one of the well known possibilities arising from using fertility drugs.

It is not uncommon in these cases for doctors to engage in selective reduction of the fetuses (aborting some) to increase the health and chances for survival of those that will be carried to gestation. This apparently wasn't a possibility for this couple - they are Jehovah's Witnesses and are opposed to abortion. Consequently they gave birth to 6, 1 lb 8 oz babies. Not all of them (if any of them) are likely to survive. They will very likely require a blood tranfusion (which their parents being good Jehovah's Witnesses) will probably refuse. If they do survive they will cost the public health care system millions of dollars over the course of their life time (which will probably be short).

Let's, for a moment, put aside the obvious question - If God doesn't want you to have abortions or blood tranfusion, which part of the bible permits fertility treatment? The significant question we need to confront is a humanitarian question. We need to grapple with the issue of whether all human life regardless of the circumstances of it is really sacred. I'm going to suggest it is not.

About two months before the sextuplets were born a woman in Vancouver gave birth to twin boys joined at the head (picture a clock's hands at the 20 minutes past 8 position to get an idea of how they are joined). In the last article I read about these children doctors expressed considerable pessimism about the possibility of being able to surgically separate them. The condition of the fetus' would have been known to all prior to their birth, and yet they were brought to gestation.

In the United States, parents recently went public with their decision to render their severely brain damaged daughter a 'permanent child' through performing a hysterectomy, breast amputation, and the administration of drugs designed to stunt her growth. She is so severely disabled (she cannot role over unassisted) that they made this decision to make it easier for them to care for her.

At what point does 'care' and compassion become their opposite? It is difficult for me to believe that six seriously underweight premmies, or two joined at the head twins, or a surgically mutilated vegetable (sorry - that's what she is) are better off for their parents care.

In the past when I mentioned that infanticide was common to almost all human cultures prior to the availability of safe, medical, abortion my students often reacted with horror - considering a culture that practiced infanticide barbarian. To be perfectly honest, after these three recent cases I'm not sure who the barbarians are anymore.

Canada's opposition to Afghanistan

2007-01-08T19:55:00.000-08:00

It's hard to make sense of the opposition to Canada's participation in the U.N. sanctioned (ISAF), NATO mission in Afghanistan. Even applying a charitable interpretation to this opposition it is difficult to accept the outcome of Canadian withdrawl from this mission (or ending its combat role). Let's try and break down the arguments (these positions come from a sampling of commentary in the papers and call in radio shows and as such represent the 'view of the people'.

The 'left' (or idealist) arguments against involvement include:

1) Canada should provide reconstruction support, not combat support.
2) Canadian forces could be more profitably deployed to Darfur to head off the ongoing genocide occurring there.
3) Our participation in Afghanistan is basically our contribution to the US war effort in Iraq (insofar as it frees up US troops for Iraq duty) and as such we have no place there.

The 'realist' arguments (these aren't 'right' per se, they are pragmatic):

1) We can't do what the British and the Soviets failed to do, so we should stop sacrificing our soldiers in an unwinable effort.
2) The James Baker - his response to the failure of the US to commit troops to peacekeeping operations during the ethnic cleansing that occurred during the Bosnian civil war - "We don't have a dog in that fight".

Let's start with the first set of objections: 1) the first objection is based on pure ignorance. Security and humanitarian support are inseparable. There is simply no point in supplying aid, rebuilding schools and hospitals only to have the Taliban fighters destroy them or use them in their fight against the government in Kabul. Furthermore, given the treatment of international aid workers the last time the Taliban was in power it is difficult to imagine many NGO's being willing to take on the tasks of reconstruction. So those who advance this argument want the reconstruction to be carried out by the Canadian military without allowing them to create the conditions necessary for security. Or they want someone else to do the fighting while Canadian troops do the reconstructing. This is a position of gross moral hypocrisy. And we would have to look to our loyal NATO allies the French for guidance in this. This is largely the position adopted by Jack Layton and the NDP - no strangers to gross moral hypocrisy.

2) The genocide in Darfur is critical. But those who advocate the deployment of Canadian troops to Darfur are overlooking some important details. 1) There is already a UN sanctioned 'peacekeeping' operation in Darfur. The Sudanese government will not accept an effective peacemaking deployment there. They're quite content with the totally ineffectual African Union force. Heck, when the AU forces aren't 'protecting' the tribes from the Janjaweed, they are robbing them themselves. 2) If they don't like the idea of Canadian forces in combat roles in Afghanistan, would they be any happier about Canadian forces in combat roles in Darfur? And bringing an end to slow rolling genocide in Darfur will take the commitment of combat force.

3) The Bush administration fucked up it's overthrow of the Taliban (consider that the warm up), and then went on to royally fuck up it's invasion of Iraq. Pretty much everyone, of every political stripe, can agree on this. So what? It's fucked up - so what do we do now? One option is to say "The US made this mess let them clean it up". OK, but what about the vast majority of Afghani citizens, the women, those who want some kind of 'normal' civil society? Should they be left to twist because we want to "teach the US a lesson"?

As for the arguments of the realists. 1) Nobody else has been able to conquer Afghanistan so we shouldn't bother. Well, there is something to be said for this argument, except that we aren't trying to conquer Afghanistan. We want to stabilize Afghanistan. What does this mean? They can pursue their more or less backward interpretation of Islam, but they have to educate girls and let the ladies out of the house every so often. They can continue to play their game on horseback involving headless goats, but they have to stop fostering international terrorist organizations. They have to ease back on the opium crop a bit. And maybe stop blowing up century old monuments of the Buddha. We're not asking a lot here, just make a nod to the '60's (the 1760's).

2) Well, James Baker is right "we" - meaning me right now typing this - don't have dog's in lots of fights. But for a realist he should know that the world is far more complicated than this simple realist calculation. As the US discovered with Afghanistan the first time, it turned out they had a dog in a fight they hadn't fully realized. Realists should know better than most that failed states represent a special threat to global security and they should go to the top of the list for international intervention and rebuilding.

That said, I have some grave concerns about the NATO mission in Afghanistan. It is primarily that there is an insufficient comittment of troops (specifically combat troops) to make the operation a success. And it galls me (pun intended) to see our close NATO allies, the French, withdraw their troops from a combat role.

But of a number of possible bad outcomes stabilizing Afghanistan (with Canadians particpating in a comabt role) seems like the best of several worse outcomes. It's time for Canadians to stop just supporting the troops and opposing the mission and get behind the mission as well.

Islam, Darwin and Sex Selection

2007-01-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

"One of the causes that made the French fall down in the Second World War was the sexual freedom". This is the opinion of an Iraqi Doctor (an intern) on p 430 of Geroge Packer's excellent book on Iraq. He is trying to explain the problems with sexual equality between men and women.

Now nothing would make me happier than to think that Simone d'Beauviour's pimping for J. P. Sartre resulted in the defeat of the French at the hands of the German army in WWII. But call me old fasioned - I think the Maginot line might have had a little something to do with that.

As I’ve written in this blog before, Islam has a woman problem. This issue is going to be a critical litmus test for the progress of Islamic culture in the years to come. A female freedom index correlates very strongly with economic prosperity and social stability. Much of the Islamic world (both Sunni and Shia) have centuries to go in this index, and aside from the oil bonus, live with the economic, cultural and social consequences of not being able to deal with "the woman problem".

One indicator of this comes up pretty regularly in Packer’s book on Iraq (The Assassin’s Gate). As the insurgency gained momentum both Sunni and Shia regions began to assert demands on women to ‘veil up’ and dress modestly. At one point in the book he reports on a meeting with western educated Sunni’s in Jordan who blamed the American practice of “invading houses and dishonouring women” as one of the sources of complaint fueling the insurgency.

Wait a second – you mean men, unrelated to the women of the household, entered the house without a male relative present . Wow. In the west we would call this an improperly executed search warrant and treat it as an evidence issue. Imagine non-related men and women coming into contact without a male realtive present? Well the Saudi's can't, so they don't have public movie theatres.

Darwin could very well explain the reluctance of Islam to give women genuine freedom. It’s called sex selection and in its most basic form it means females choose and men compete. Now the easiest way to deal with this from a male perspective is to enslave women, make them property, or impose onerous cultural burdens upon them. That has been the practice amongst non-modern civilizations (including western ones). In the west we have slowly, slowly, grown out of this and have largely moved to a culture of equality between men and women. That means living with the consequences of sex-selection, and as with everything else in life, the outcome is not necessarily going to be fair or equal.

This is bad news for loser guys and good news for winner women. Women can use the Darwinian gifts imparted by nature to maximize their advantage (including the gifts of brains as well as beauty), and men (including stupid or unattractive ones) must compete for their affections in the free market. Women have the liberty to select the most fit partner for them - no more arranged marriages, honour killings, etc. More importantly, in public life (work, politics, etc.) the most able women are also able to make their contribution to the well being of society. We no longer sideline the productive input of 50% of our population.

In their own way Islam recognizes the Darwinian imperative. Packer also reports on the Shia practice of leasing (my word) wives. Unmarried females can be leased out to unmarried males for periods of time from a day to weeks or months. Rent a wife?

In the mean time, our friends in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan (pick your favourite backward Islamic part of the world and insert here __________) continue to expend a considerable amount of energy trying to keep women controlled. Well good luck to them. Hoepfully, they will also come to appreciate the benefit to all concenred resulting from genuinely equality.

Nation Building and the Van Halen problem

2006-12-28T19:31:00.000-08:00

I have been reading George Packer's excellent (and very depressing) book The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. It is a lengthy chronicle of just about everything that went wrong in Iraq (lots). Like me, he was a pre-war advocate of regime change. After many visits to post-invasion Iraq it is safe to say that he is both shaken and stirred. If you read one book on the Iraq adventure this would be the one.

One disturbing trend re-appears time and time again in his book - the huge expectations of the newly liberated population. Van Halen recorded a song called Everybody Wants Some, and it is safe to say that that is the expectation of the Iraqi populace. Uncle Sam didn't simply liberate them from a tyrant, he arrived with a big check book.

Sadly, the corrupt and criminally stupid Bush administration has squandered billions in 'reconstruction' aid that has immediately found its way onto the balance sheets of Haliburton (and not into the pockets of ordinary Iraqi's). Is the creation of an Iraqi stock market within the first 6 months really a critical issue?

That said the 'nation building' approach has a couple of serious problems. 1) If the nation builder is the US (unilaterally) there will be huge expectations regarding financial resources. 2) The UN and the EU talk a good game on nation building but neither are prepared to commit the financial and military resources to make it a success (i.e. France as part of the ISAF, NATO, mission in Afghanistan won't commit its forces in a combat capacity – disregarding the prime directive that there can't be reconstruction without security).

More significantly when authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are overthrown the problem of a repressed, passive-aggressive, and dependent population has to be confronted. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes punish initiative and inventiveness. A huge, passive, largely government dependent, population is inherited in circumstances where the government has been dismantled. In short, a nation of free riders is inherited and they see the invading power (particularly a powerful one like the US) as a blank check, and passively wait for the liberators to solve all their problems - with significant payouts to all concerned.

This doesn't have a simple solution (Germany is still living with the economic and social consequences of absorbing the derelict industries and communist 'work ethic' of East Germany). At a minimum the Van Halen problem should rank very highly in the calculations of future regime change actions. Ultimately dependent populations can’t be made independent overnight and a prolonged period of transition should be planned for. Germany and Japan both had significant post-war II US military presence and assistance for almost a decade.

The French - always there when they need us

2006-12-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

“France – always there when they need us”. Once again they’ve lived down to this bumper sticker saying. This time they are withdrawing the troops they have committed to the ISAF, NATO lead, mission to the relative safety of Kabul. They will no longer be used in a combat capacity.

Canadians, the Dutch, and the Yanks, are getting chewed up trying to secure southern and western parts of the country from a Taliban resurgence. Jacques Chirac has decided it’s time for reconstruction. If he had been in De Gaul’s place he would have advocated reconstruction aid before the Nazis had been defeated in France.

It’s a disgrace. The French are afraid of the Taliban, afraid of the Americans, afraid of their own Muslim population, afraid of free trade in agricultural and cultural products,and afraid of Polish plumbers. It might just be easier to say they’re afraid of the world. And they have one of five permanent seats on the UN Security council.

Worse still, this NATO mission is threatening to make NATO (a terribly effective fighting alliance during the cold war and immediately after), a joke. It is an alliance premised on the mutual defense of all member nations – attack one, and fight the them all. Right now it looks more like a buffet – swing by the table, pick the missions you want, contribution you like, and role you want to play.

I have said it before – look up the word perfidious in the dictionary and it will say “see France”. At this point, give the mission some more Romainians and a 1/2 dozen Polish plumbers and send the French home.

Bob Rae's Failed Bid for Leadership of the Federal Liberal Party

2006-12-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

The Liberal party of Canada elected Stephan Dion as its new leader on Saturday afternoon (earning me ten bucks in a bet I made regarding the outcome). One of the prohibitive favourites Bob Rae failed in his bid to become the leader of the Liberals. Thank god.

Bob ran a campaign 'lite'. Let's not get bogged down in policy particulars. You should vote for Bob because he's as bright as Ignatieff, but more politically experienced. Wait a second - didn't the NDP under Bob Rae's political leadership almost destroy Ontario's economy during a ferocious recession in the 1990's? Didn't Bob arbitrarily re-open generous public sector labour agreements (agreements his government had negotiated) and rescind the terms of those agreements? Didn't he dither about how to respond to the recession and in the process double the accumulated debt of the provincial government (before deciding to reduce government expenditures)? This is political leadership?

Not to worry - Bob told us he was humbled by this experience and said he had learned from it. He refused to ever acknowledge that he made a mistake and completely ballsed up his handling of the recession.

Well I don't think Bob learned as much as he lead us to believe. His campaign for the leadership ran up a debt of $ 840,000.00 - this is almost twice as much as the next closest competitor (Dion with about $430,000.00). This, in a losing cause. I don't think Bob's learned anything at all. He'd be much better off back in the NDP -a party firmly committed to spending more than the government takes in. He resolutely remains wedded to the socialist love of spending other people's money - whether it is available or not.

Let's hope this marks the swan song of Mr. Rae's political career. We simply can't afford to keep him in 'public' life.

David Miller's 'Mandate'

2006-11-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

The City of Toronto municipal elections were held last week and David Miller was re-elected mayor winning in all but two of the city's wards. Good for him. He almost immediately used this re-election to make his pitch for a 1 cent portion of either the provincial or federal consumption tax (7% provincially, 6% federally). He said "We won't take no for an answer" - repeatedly. Anyone who's ever dealt with a two year old will recognize both the resolve and the logic.

Not surprisingly both the premiere of Ontario and the federal Minister of Finance came back quite quickly with their response - go piss up a rope. The fair haired mayor was under the delusion that beating a couple of nobodies in an election 'contest' would give him clout equivalent to that of the Daley dynasty in Chicago. It didn't.

The mayor needs to bray less and think more. He needs leverage. The way our governments are organized he has precious little - but not zero. For starters, the Conservative government of Mike Harris handed off 10's of thousands of public housing units to the city in the 1990's. These buildings were largely built in the 1950's and 60's and are in bad need of renovation. It beggars the city budget to try and take responsibility for these units.

So, like Margaret Thatcher in the 1980's the city should sell these properties. After all - they're ours now. Even if you are not a fan of Thatcher, here is an issue that could get the attention of the higher levels of government. Every non-provincially mandated service provided to social service recipients should be suspended (or more precisely the threat to suspend it should be made). Since the province, so considerately, dumped the badly maintained section of the QEW that runs from the Humber River to highway 407 on the Toronto government they should threaten (seriously) to impose a toll on that section of the highway - this would have the added benefit of getting the attention of both the provincial and federal levels of government who are so devoted to the service of the suburban 905 constituency.

In short, if the fair haired mayor is serious about gaining greater taxing authority this would be a much better way to go about it. Making empty threats scares no one. Oh yeah - but to make the kinds of threats necessary to make the higher levels of government sit up and take notice would be more credible coming from anyone but a socialist - socialists don't sell public housing. And it wouldn't hurt if he could show that lefty Toronto council could actually put their own expenditures in order. I'll save that for another entry.

Ding dong the witch is dead

2006-11-08T20:54:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld is gone. Thank god. The war in Iraq is his war. It's tempting to lay the blame on the 'brains' behind the war - Paul Wolfowitz. In truth Wolfowitz was motivated by a genuine desire to see the democratization of the middle east. It was Rumsfeld's responsibility to make that a military accomplishment. And he botched it.

John Kerry rarely gets off a good line (at least correctly) but he got one off in the 2004 presidential debates when he said the US deployed its troops in Iraq and left the plans for reconstruction on the desks in the State department. Those in the State department shouldn't feel too bad - they left the plans for a successful prosecution of the war on the Generals' desks. That was Rumsfeld's responsibility. He took on two very risky bets at the same time 1) that Iraq could be successfully invaded and Saddam replaced with a functioning democracy; and 2) that this could be done with a military light approach. I'm not a gambler, but I can't imagine one touching this with a stick.

I love the Bush Jr. Presidency because it is finally lifting the popular view of Richard Nixon's presidency out of the basement (Dubbya is replacing him). That's great because in my view, Nixon wasn't the monster he's often made out to be.

In the same vein Robert Macnamara's reputation is in line for an elevation. He was widely reviled as the Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam war. Now historians are beginning to suggest Rumsfeld might just have been worse.

Good riddance.

Daniel Ortega and US midterm elections

2006-11-06T15:37:00.000-08:00

So it looks like former Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega is about to get elected as the president in Nicaragua. This just goes to show people really do get the government they deserve in democracies.

What has been disturbing about the press coverage of Ortega's run for the presidency is that many journalists have commented on the brutality of the Sandanista, the run away inflation, and the wreck that he made of the Nicaraguan economy; but practically none of them have reported that in the 1990's his step-daughter brought charges against him for sexually assaulting her from the age of about 14 until she was 17. He did not even bother to defend himself. As an elected politician he simply invoked his right not to face prosecution. So every democracy gets the child molester they deserve. At least the US democracy had the decency to run it's child molesters out of town on a rail (Thomas Folley - hope his 're-hab' is going well).

Ortega is reportedly a different man now. He has become 'religious' (finally found time to marry the woman whose daughter accused him of molestation). In fact he's become so religious that he supported a Nicaraguan law that bans all abortion no matter the circumstances. Good to see he's consistent - if he'd knocked up his step-daughter when he was molesting her she would have had to have his kid under this law. Nice.

I don't think he's so different though. He is supposedly no longer a 'marxist', yet one of the main planks in his election platform has been the promise of "free" health care. Only marxists can make this kind of promise. There is no such thing as "free" health care. Evertyhing has a cost (the cost of using resources one way rather than another). The resources to cover the cost of "free health care" must come from somewhere, and it's a pretty fair guess where Ortega thinks those resources should come from.

The 'new' Ortega is the worst of all possible worlds. A moral Catholic pursuing marxist economic policies. The moral perfidy of the left knows no limit. Well the Nicaraguans elected him and it looks good on them.

In the mean time the US mid-term elections appear set to restore some sanity to an executive office that is out of touch and un-responsive. It looks like, at a minimum, the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives, and might (might), win control of the Senate. Amazingly this is one of the mid-term elections that turns the conventional wisdom (all politics is local ) on it's head. We would need to go back to the '94 election (voters reacting against a Clinton presidency and a disastrous economic recession), and '72 (voters reacting to the Watergate scandal) for a similar upheaval in usually very predictable voting habits. This time immigration, and the war in Iraq are the issues that seem to have bit and taken hold for the electorate. President Bush's injunction to 'stay the course', 'not cut and run', and 'we are winning', are clearly an affront to even moderately well informed voters who can see that the Iraq adventure has been a total balls up from beginning to end (it will end). Most importantly, anyone with half a brain can see that the ball has been dropped with respect to North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan (boy were they looking past that).

So the US voters are about to get the government they deserve and it is almost enough to restore ones confidence in mass democracy. The Nicaraguans will learn, but it is long and uncertain process with almost as many steps backward as steps forward.

Freedom of religion act

2006-10-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

The Harper Conservatives - sorry - the New Canadian Government, has decided to introduce a Freedom of Religion Act. Recognizing that holding a vote to overturn the legislation permitting same sex marriage would fail, this is the fall back position. Basically it would permit religious authorities to refuse to marry same sex couples, refuse usage of their facilities to them, and allow justices of the peace (JOP's) to refuse to marry same sex couples in civil ceremonies when it conflicted with their religious beliefs. As an added bonus, religious authorities would be able to preach a jihad against homosexuality from the pulpit and be exempted from Canada's hate speech laws.

As a civil libertarian I am no fan of Canada's hate speech laws but just about everything about this proposed legislation is dumb. Unfortunately it's also clever.

The legislation is dumb because it is redundant - the constitution already protects religious belief, homophobe preachers, priests, imams, and rabbi's, can all preach public hatred of homosexuality and opposition to gay marriage with impunity under the existing constitution. They could also refuse to marry same sex couples under the same provision (we have indelicately commingled the sacremental and secular functions of marriage in our existing laws).

It is also dumb because the administration of the bands of marriage is a provincial responsibility so there would be the obivous constitutional challenges - provinces guard their responsibilities (however minor) jealously in Canada.

There is good political policy behind this misguided law and good political instinct. So here is why it's a shrewd political move on the part of Stephen Harper.

On the political policy front: A church/mosque/synagogue should be free to set out a list of requirements for those who want to rent a church hall. Should Jehova's Witnesses (non-drinkers) be forced to rent a hall for an oktoberfest bash? A Christian Fundamentalist in Ontario was fined by the Human Rights Commission because he refused to print gay pride parade adds. This strikes me as wrong. Part of taking freedom of conscience seriously means respecting choices others make even when we don't agree with them (as long as they are not directly harming anyone). If this guy is the only printer in Ontario they have a legitimate claim. But if other printers are available he should have the right to refuse their business for principled reasons. Similarly, if the church holds a monopoly over banquet facilities the state may want to legislate access to them. If the church doesn't - people are free to rent banquet facilities elsewhere. I'm of the view that a morally pluralist society can legislate tolerance but not acceptance. Nor would it be desirable to do so.

As to the political motivation for introducing this legislation it is easy to see. I don't understand what motivates the red meat conservatives (social conservatives) but I do know that if you want to avoid fraction and strife in the Conservative party you have to throw them a bone every once in a while and that is all Harper is proposing. If you want to measure this legislation in terms of 'effectiveness' - it will have no impact on anyone's day to day life. In terms of its symbolism a bunch of red necks will be able to go to sleep at night, pat them selves on the back (a manly, heterosexual, back) and congratulate themselves on a job well done. And Canadian society will contintue on - unchanged.

Fear, loathing and well.. more fear in T.O.'s Mayoral contest

2006-10-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

In TO we are rushing toward a municipal election scheduled to be held at the beginning of November. The incumbent mayor, David Miller, is on track for a coronation on election day. His major competitor on the right (Jane Pitfield) has the charisma and smarts of a sponge. So imagine everyone's surprise when former Liberal Party president Stephen LeDrew threw his hat into the ring at the last minute this week. Let's start with loathing and move toward fear.

Mr. LeDrew had a couple of awkward moments during his press conference. For starters he had to answer questions about declaring personal bankruptcy recently. He's a lawyer. He owes revenue Canada over 300,000 dollars. When asked about his bankruptcy he replied that paying for his children's education (read private school tuition) came before his obligation to pay his taxes. This guy is a nob on so many levels it's hard to list them. But I'll try.

Nobody who has declared personal bankruptcy should be allowed anywhere near elected office - if you can't manage your own consumption you have no business being allowed near public finance where the temptation to spend tax payer's money will be far greater. Secondly, when asked about the punitive education tax levied on Toronto businesses to pay for a Provincially mandated equalization education tax he said it wasn't an issue in this election. Really. We have a tax that acts as a disincentive to business investment in Toronto in order to subsidize education outside of the city. The GTA receives almost 50 % of migrants to Canada every year (over 100,000 people), and Toronto picks up a huge chunk of them. Our education system has needs that North Bay doesn't face. But apparently Mr. LeDrew doesn't think this an issue. I wouldn't let someone this lame run for dog catcher let alone make him Mayor.

So lets move on to fear. Jane Pitfield has declared that she would reopen the recent vote to increase councilor salaries by 9%. I know most of us think that politicians are horribly over payed. Truth be told they have terrific responsibilities. They work hard, and have to do a considerable amount of face time with the average voter. This is ugly work. Most importantly - you get what you pay for. If we want councillor Rob Ford engaging in profanity laced drunken tirades at Toronto Maple Leaf games we should keep the compensation at the current level. A mayoral candidate pandering to a crudely populist issue like this doesn't inspire confidence.

Lastly, we have the fair haired mayor. David Miller has committed to not raising taxes above the rate of inflation. Are you kidding? This is a no brainer. Very few people understand the way property taxes work. Property taxes are assessed on the basis of 'actual value' in Ontario. The value of each assessed property is mulitplied by the mill rate (how much of the total tax base is each single property responsible for). We have had a runaway real estate market for almost a decade (meaning the base value of many/most properties has risen). If the tax rate had remained unchanged it would have provided an increase in municipal revenue by virtue of rising property values. Our government has not only taken this increase but it has piled on an absolute tax increase of around 3% a year under Miller's supervision.

None of the mayoral alternatives is particularly attractive. Jane Pitfield is running a campaign on 'policy stunts' and Stephen Ledrew can't manage his own houselhold budget (and seems to be personally committed to cheating the public purse). So that leaves us with the fair haired Mayor who says that he'll keep on piling on tax increases (albeit at the rate of inflation) while enjoying the windfall of assessment increases. It is enough to make one weep.

Toronto and the tragedy of the fair haired boy mayor

2006-09-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

It's municipal election time in Ontario. In Toronto the election for Mayor won't even be a contest. And that's a real shame for us Torontonians.

Two issues from this week reveal the challenge we face when we re-elect the fair haired boy Mayor David Miller. Mayor Miller re-confirmed his support for tearing down the Gardiner expressway from the DVP to Yonge Street. Then he stick handled through an untendered contract to build new subway cars for the TTC. If you are a Toronto tax payer both of these should make you very concerned.

The untendered contract for subway cars is very worrying. Supposedly we are going to get value for money and best of all keep 300 Bombardier employees working for five years in Thunder Bay. We are assured that the city is getting value for money. How do we know unless the contract is subjected to a competitive bidding process? This comes on the heels of the Bellamy Commission report into a computer leasing agreement that was untendered and resulted in the Toronto tax payer being taken to the cleaners. Furthermore, since when did the Toronto tax payer become responsible for employment in Thunder Bay? As I recall, northern Ontario was up in arms when there was a proposal to dispose of Toronto's waste in the Adams mine. They won't take our waste but will gratefully receive our employment welfare courtesy of an untendered contract.

It gets worse. The boy Mayor admitted today that only 51% of the contract will actually be Canadian made - the other 49% produced in the US. Make no mistake - I am not making an anti-US argument here. Anyone who knows anything about modern industrial production would know that the complete subway cars would not be produced here. He might be able to sell welfare employment for Thunderbay, but lets see him try and sell it for Indiana.

As for the destruction of the eastern end of the Gardiner expressway, the boy Mayor suggested that this would be part of the mythical process labeled "waterfront revitalization". I wonder if the fair haired one has actually ventured further south than Front St. and further east than Yonge? If he had he would notice that there are a ton of really big buildings right on the water front (they're called condo's). If he ventured further east and south he'd notice that there is a functioning port/industrial area (the salt we put on our roads in the winter is shipped in here amongst other things). There's a sugar refinery. The Don Valley Parkway merges with the Gardiner expressway. Lastly, if the Gardiner is torn down, the six lane Lakeshore Blvd. would take the traffic the Gardiner used to. I don't know about you but I'd far rather cross under a highway than across one. The Gardiner should be the least of his worries when it comes to waterfront revitalization.

Lastly, the fair one admitted that he wasn't sure how the city would pay for the demolition of the Gardiner. I think I know. The Mayor is a good socialist and there is no great planning cause that he wouldn't willing increase our property taxes to fund. Great cities like New York have rid themselves of well meaning socialists. Cities like London have elected socialists only after they have recognized the error of their ways (Ken Livingston). But like the good masochists that we are we will continue to elect them mayor and give control of city council to them. Unfortunately the right wing of council is a disorganized freak show. And so the last bastion of the Soviet empire will continue on here in Toronto.

Hugo Chavez and Buffoonery at the UN

2006-09-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

Last weeks address to the UN General Assembly by Hugo Chavez may not mark the nadir of the institution (unlike Kruschev he didn't bring a shoe and pound it on the podium) but it's close.

The laughter of every representative of a two pot dictator was audible when Chavez referred to the sulfurous smell still present from George W. Bush's speech the day before (Bush was of course referred to as Satan). How refreshing - it seems the left has found Jesus.

Chavez came armed with a copy of Noam Chomsky's book Hegemony or Survival and recommended all Americans read it. Chavez must really hate Americans, nobody should exhort anyone to read the badly argued rantings of Chomsky. How bad is Chomsky? - well he figures that the major media in the US are involved in a conspiracy to hush up US imperial actions abroad. How does he know this? He found the evidence in the New York Times and Washington Post. Seriously - pick one of his books and add up the number of citations from those two sources alone.

I wouldn't be so happy with him if I was a Venezuelan. Oil (a non-renewable resource) is retailing for 12 cents a gallon in Venezuela, (by comparison it's almost a buck in Saudi Arabia). Furthermore, he is subsidizing the 'Bolivarian' revolution abroad by making subsidized oil available to his allies in Cuba, Brazil, and Bolivia. In short, he is using a non-renewable resource not to build industry and infrastructure in Venezuela. Furthermore, his arbitrary renegotiations with oil companies already operating in Venezuela are making future investment in oil infrastructure a dicey prospect.

Chavez's rant ultimately hurts an already badly discredited institution. If the UN is to perform its function of reducing conflict and limiting imperial power this is not the way to go about it. Even if Chavez is correct in his criticism of the international behaviour of the US his performance last week won't help the more sober member nations change that behaviour.

Chavez has clearly linked his fortunes to Iranian mental case Ahmadinejad, Kim il Sung, and the dictators of Beijing. Good luck to him. For the life of me I can't see why the left sees anything to admire in this caricature of political leadership.

Jack Layton's bad math

2006-09-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today Canada's leader of the NDP Smilin' Jack Layton lamented the fact that Canada's spending in Afghanistan is 9 to 1 in favour of military expenditures over reconstruction expenditures.

I'm not sure the two can be separated so conveniently but that didn't slow down Jack. So, let's give the perma mustache his wish. Let's reverse the expenditure. We'll spend 9 times as much on reconstruction as we do on fighting. Would the outcome please his socialist soul any better?

I doubt it. For starters the Taliban and the narcotic cartels kill aid workers (they interfere with their austere interpretation of Islam and the business of growing opium). They burn down the schools and clinics set up to educate and provide health care for women. So a to reverse our expenditures would be a colossal waste of money.

Plus the Canadian forces left with the 1 part of the equation would be even less equipped and less capable of defeating the Taliban and narco-terrorists than they already are.

None of this should be surprising. The NDP seems to be constiutionally committed to pissing away resources in the service of 'good intentions'. This is a fine illusion for the young but at some point you have to grow up. As the old saying goes - If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. They aren't, and they don't.

Let's hope the mouth that roared gets nowhere near the levers of government. A guy that was a menace at the municipal level of government is turning into a tub thumping, opportunistic, pest at the federal level.

Jack Layton, the NDP, Afghanistan, and Immanuel Kant

2006-09-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

Jack Layton's recent suggestion that Canada lead negotiations with Taliban forces as part of a withdrawal strategy for Canadian forces stationed in Afghanistan just goes to show how unprepared the NDP would ever be to play a significant role in any future minority government - let alone lead the government.

Layton is deeply committed to the myth of Canadian exceptionalism (our armies don't fight - they keep the peace - and we are uniquely suited to this task because everybody loves us baby). This is, of course, a crock and only survives in the Canadian collective unconscious because as a nation of immigrants fewer and fewer Canadians actually have any knowledge of Canada's role in the major conflicts of the 20th century. This myth is further aided by the anemic history taught in the public school system.

Even if it was the case that Canadians make great peacekeepers Layton is overlooking the fact that the majority of the world conflicts requiring U.N. 'peacekeeping' attention aren't peacekeeping operations at all - there is no peace to be kept in southern Lebanon, Darfur, or Afghanistan.

Security trumps development. There is no point risking the lives of development workers only to have the Taliban abduct them and use them as hostages and destroy the infrastructure they have rebuilt.

The great moral philosopher Immanuel Kant observed that to will the end one must will the means. If Layton wants to see freer women and a more open society in Afghanistan then he needs to recognize that that will not be achieved by negotiating with and accommodating the forces of nihilism and destruction in Afghanistan.

It's time for Jack and the NDP to back up their commitment to equality and human rights and that means really getting behind our men and women deployed in Afghanistan.

Mexican labour and Barak Obama

2006-05-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

Ah, it's been a while since I've updated this thing. My apologies - had a case of spring fever.

Today millions of predominantly Mexican workers illegally present in the US withdrew their services as part of a growing protest to champion more reasonable US immigration/work requirements, and provide some mechanism to legalize the status of the (estimated) 12 million workers who labour in the US illegally.

It is my view that while an 'open doors' policy on immigration would be chaotic and unworkable - so is the current arrangement. People who maintain a stable residence in a country, and who work in that country, and especially who pay taxes in that country, should be eligible for citizenship. It is a matter of fundamental fairness and justice.

Naturally, many US citizens are concerned that the influx of Mexican labourers will drive down the wages of US citizens in certain industries. They are right to be concerned. Here's a suggestion - if you're a US citizen whose got a kid thinking of going into the domestic servant/agricultural worker/house painter/etc. line of work - steer them away from that. There won't be much money in it.

As for Barak Obama - good for him for supporting the protests today. This is a hard position to take in the Democratic party because many of the jobs the undocumented workers are 'taking' have traditionally be done by the same voters who favour the democrats. This is going to be a 'third rail' political issue for some time to come.

The seal hunt and 'activist' concern for animal welfare

2006-03-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

Today's Globe and Mail reported on a confrontation between anti-seal activists and sealers. Dropped in the middle of the article it mentions that even without protestors disrupting proceedings the sealers are having a miserable time of it.

This is because we had such a warm winter that the little bits of ice the seals are floating on are melting and the pups are drowning before they can be clubbed to death. Why are the protestors out there? Given a choice between being quickly dispatched by a club to the head and drowning I'm pretty sure I know which exit I would choose. Many animal rights activists base their argument on a version of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism. Bentham argued in the 18th century that if a creature could experience pleasure/pain then we had the same duty of care (ethical responsibility) for them that we have for human beings. Well, that cuts both ways.

If it is true that seal pups are drowning and the anti-hunt activists really cared about the 'well-being' of the seal pups they would do the decent thing and pick up a club and help out.

OPSEU Strike, Free Markets and Efficiency

2006-03-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

As some of you are aware the union I am involuntarily a part of has been on strike for over two weeks now. I noticed a curious phenomenon this week with respect to picket line duties.

Unions, in general, are not great supporters of unbridled free market capitalism. Indeed much of what they struggle for on behalf of their members represent the placement of impediments to the efficient functioning of businesses and the market.

That said, the union seems to like a free market very well when we are on strike. Not surprisingly not all picketing times and locations are equally popular. So at different campuses and at different times picketers are offered 'deals' by the union in return for picketing. For example, at Humber you can get a 'two for one' deal by picketing between 5 and 7 pm. You get credited with four hours of picketing for doing two. Or if you 'spontaneously' attended the rally organized by the union this week you were credited with 6 hours of picket duty. This is nothing more than a picket duty market designed to bribe members into taking on less attractive picket duties (evenings for example). Rewards are offered to try and create a more effective and efficient picket line. Fair enough.

Imagine that! The union, when we are on strike, behaves like any other employer by using a system of incentives to improve the efficiency of the picket line. So how anti-capitalist is the union? I don't know, but it does remind me of the old George Bernard Shaw joke: A man asks a woman to sleep with him for $1,000.00 dollars and she agrees. Then he asks her to sleep with him for a dollar and she says to him "what kind of woman do think I am?". The man replies that "we both know what kind of woman you are, now we are simply haggling over the price."

I think I'm getting a very good idea about what kind of organization the union is. Now if they would just come over to the dark side so we could get this thing settled and get the kids back to class.

Deep weirdness in the new US budget

2006-03-17T13:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the US Senate voted 52 - 48 to pass a budget that will let the US accumulated debt rise to almost 9 trillion dollars (thats right a Trillion, I guess a billion doesn't buy what it once did). This is deeply troubling on many levels. For starters it imposes a debt burden of almost $ 30,000.00 dollars for every man woman and child in the US (Source: Alan Freeman - Globe and Mail). This is combined with record high levels of debt for American consumers.

Much of the debt is being funded by Japan and China. In short, US consumption is fueling the growth of the Chinese economy. The Chinese are emerging as a serious regional/global hegemon. How much sense does this make?

Sometimes deficit spending is necessary and can be economically productive (every one of the allied powers in WWII ran a deficit to fund their war effort). Furthermore, deficit spending can promote the development of 'infrastructure' within a nation that benefits current and future generations (highways, electricity grids, schools, hospitals, etc.). But this spending is for very dubious purposes - entitlement programs that need to be rethought, restructured, and re-funded; the war in Iraq (this might be a justifiable expense but it looks like the mission to establish a successful democracy in Iraq will be a failure in the short term - anything under 20 years); lastly, the tax cuts to the wealthiest American citizens and corporations are unforgivable at any time when a government is running a deficit.

Responsible governments must raise the revenue to pay for what they spend. Full stop. Right now, the vast American middle class has no idea what the war in Iraq is really costing (their kids are not fighting it and they aren't being asked to pay for it). Imagine the reaction amongst the middle classes if they were to confront federal tax increases to pay for the war when the Bushies were cutting taxes for America's wealthiest citizens?

Canadians shouldn't feel too smug. Our fiscal house is in good order but when the Titanic that is the US economy begins to go down, our little trawler will be sucked right along with it.

Lastly, deficit's for the most part are an unpardonable tax on future generations to pay for current consumption. It is very difficult to make an ethical case for governments running deficits, and especially not doing it continuously and in greater and great amounts.

Barak Obama and a shout out to my pal George

2006-03-15T17:48:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit of a (only a bit) of dweeb, so when I was visiting my folks in the states a couple of summers ago to build my mom a dining room table I watched every night of the coverage of the Democratic party's convention. I was blown away by Barak Obama's speech. It was politically centrist, funny, and confidently delivered. He just may be the Democratic parties 'great white hope'. Well, lets not get too carried away - he's an elected senator now, and he is going to build a voting record before he runs for the Democratic nomination. It's hard for senators to get elected for a whole bunch of reasons, but the voting record is a big one. It doesn't help to have a voting record where you vote for a war before you vote against funding it (like Kerry) and then make that public yourself. So we'll see about Obama. Curiously having a slightly contentious voting record may work to his advantage - it will distract the press from some youthful indiscretions.

He got an absolutely great line in about Cheney at the Gridiron dinner the other night (reported by Maureen Dowd in the NY Times this morning). Apparently he reported enjoying the biathlon in the he recent winter Olympics (x-country skiing combined with shooting). Then he turned to Cheney and said "Probably not your sport Mr. Vice-President."

That's great - let's hope for more great things from Obama in the future.

My colleague George has started a blog that deals with current events written in a Socratic dialogue format. It's very well done - and would be great for anyone who teaches a current events type of class for getting a debate started. There is a link down at the bottom of my blog where my profile is. http://socraticdialogues.blogspot.com/

OPSEU Community College Strike and the Bell Curve

2006-03-09T18:28:00.000-08:00

So I started my new job today while the strike is on (hat's off to my pal Red who found a space for me in his company). My disapproval of this strike has been clearly stated earlier.

I believe I may have characterized the bargaining strategy of our bargaining team (hahaha - you just hate to see those two words strategy and OPSEU bargaining team in the same sentence) as at the very least bizarre, and at worst imbecilic. I had the temerity to suggest that the Premiere of the province might not be willing to rush in and legislate us back to work or involve himself directly in the negotiations (the bargaining committee asked him to do this the day we went on strike). What are they smoking? And Dalton said today we'll just have to sort it out for ourselves. Haha and hahaha.

For months, and the last couple of weeks I have been saying to any of my colleagues and friends that I care about that we were going to have a strike. Why would the local union double the contributions deducted from our checks if they didn't plan on using it? So here we are. I know picketers have considerable fears of being on the receiving end of violence when they picket. This is never acceptable. But I'll bet there is one union 'brother' who's really worried about picket line attacks and that would be Ted Montgomery - not from the students, but from the membership.

All of this just goes to reinforce the lesson of the bell curve (regression to the mean). You can take a bunch of people (in this case community college profs) and put a whole bunch of letters after their names, but a whole bunch of them will be dumb and act against their self interest, and more importantly the interests of their students, and spend the next month wandering around a picket line trying to figure out why they are there, what they'll get out of it (squat), and how they'll get out of it (ask Ted). Look's good on them.

And in the mean time what about the students???

When the Levee breaks

2006-03-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

A friend took me out to hear some music last night at Hugh's Room (an excellent place for music in the west end of Toronto). It was a duo who played acoustic country/blues/fingerstyle music. Excellent night of tunes. They played an old blues tune, When the Levee Breaks (I think it was originally done by Son House but I may very well be wrong about that, and was amped up and immortalized by Led Zepelin).

Anyhow, I was thinking about that tune today after I heard George Dubbya Bush's press conference from New Orleans. He stated that the Army Corps of Engineers would have the levee's rebuilt in time for next years hurricane season, and - get this - they would be "as good as or better" than the levees that were there orignally.

As good as?... If they aren't building them better (period) what the heck are they doing? Poor, poor New Orleans, a fine and noble city that certainly deserves a President with a few more brains than this one.

What the OPSEU strike and Iran share in common

2006-03-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

This may seems like an odd linkage to some of you. OPSEU is the Ontario Public Service employee's Union, and by now everyone knows who President Amhadinejad is. What Iran and OPSEU share in common is that they are both run by complete mental cases. My hostility to the deranged Amhadinejad is well established and can be read in entries below. I'm going to focus on OPSEU.

Every community college professor in Ontario is a member of OPSEU (or at least required to pay dues and be governed by the contract OPSEU negotiates with the community colleges). We are on strike now. The negotiating team (lead by chief mental case - Ted Montgomery) has taken us out on strike. Are we on strike for higher wages (nope). Better benefits (nope). We are on strike for 'workload' issues. Theoretically, this would involve more fulltime faculty and smaller class sizes.

In a private sector union if it's leadership tried to strike over something this indirectly beneficial to the members the bargaining team would be drawn and quartered. The bargaining 'strategy' was to make workload a strikeable issue. The administration for the community colleges knew that if we struck that we would be legislated back within a month and the work load issues would go to binding arbitration and the union would get fuck all there. So, we are now going to forgo a month or so of salary, pension contributions, benefits, and a 10% hair cut in wages over the July/August pay period. The bargaining committee's strategy all along seems to have been hoping that they could drag the provincial government into intervening in the conflict. We are still running provincial government deficits in Ontario, and predictably the government has told the union to go piss up a rope.

This was the bargaining teams strategy! For several months I have been telling my students and other faculty that we were going to have a strike because the bargaining team simply wanted one. There are some fools who believe the 'strike option' must be exercised in order for it to remain credible (our last strike was in 1989). We didn't dare go on strike when the Harris Conservatives were in power because they would have left us out for 6 months or more (we would have been left to twist).

If the idiocy of the bargaining committee isn't bad enough, it is outmatched by the membership. I can't tell you how many of my colleagues said they did not want a strike and then proceeded to vote in favour of a strike (on the assumption that if you want peace you should prepare for war). This may be true in some circumstances, but I was pretty confident that the mental cases who made up our bargaining team simply wanted a war under any circumstances and a strong strike vote was simply putting a loaded weapon in their shakey hands.

It was shocking walking the picket line this morning. Almost everyone I spoke to was dismayed by the strike. Some even asked if talks were continuing (no). These are college professors! They voted for a strike - they new Montgomery and the rest of the bargaining team were a deranged crew spoiling for a fight. Many objected to the way the union communicated (or more precisely failed to communicate) with them over the issues. They objected to the patronizing way they were addressed by the bargaining team. And they voted for a strike. Well it looks good on them.

The best conversation I had on the line today was the one about de-certification of the union. I'm all for that (it won't happen for a bunch of reasons). In the meantime the bargaining committee needs to be driven out on to an ice flow.

Lastly, the committed union members keep asserting that they are striking in order to improve things for the students (remember them - the reason the whole system exists in the first place?). Right. Well if they care so much about the students - ask them, let them decide next time whether we go on strike or not.

2006-03-05T18:55:00.000-08:00

Link to another Seal related blog entry:

For any one interested here is link to a blog entry from someone who has done some research and presents some facts about the seal hunt. It's well worth a read.
http://ctcthoughts.blogspot.com/

Sir Paul and the Seal Hunt

2006-03-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

Paul Mccartney has decided to weigh in on the moral legitimacy of the annual seal hunt in Newfoundland. Last night he and his ex-model wife debated the premiere of Newfoundland (Danny Williams) on Larry King.

He had been photographed touching a baby harp seal (just lying on the ice looking all innocent - the seal, not Sir Pal)that under the terms of the hunt couldn't be killed by hunters in any event.

This is one of the things that drives me crazy when rock stars/celebrities get involved in political issues. They don't even know half of what they are talking about (I'll save my rant on Geldoff/Bono for another entry). Sir Paul's wife, Lady Heather Mccartney, blighthly asserted that the income generated for the 5,000 families that participated in the seal hunt could be replaced by other sources of income. Such as? It sure won't be cod fish. The very caring Mccartneys are putting the interests of seals before human beings. Fair enough. They are welcome to do so.

But here's a thought. Maybe the Sir Pauls should put their money where their mouths are. If they want the seal hunt ended they could do it by paying the seal hunters NOT to go out on to the ice and kill baby seals. But I guess it's much easier for them to take the 'moral' high ground and beat up on a bunch of poor ignorant Newfies than actually take steps to eliminate a practice they find repugnant.

Guess we all know where the lyrical inspiration for Let it Be came from now.

A Yale Education for Afghanistan

2006-03-02T15:10:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading an excellent article by Chip Brown in the Sunday New York Times magazine. It focuses on the transformation of a young man who represented the Taliban in the US and his experiences as a student at Yale. Toward the end of the article Ramahtulla is quoted as saying:

"You have to be reasonable to live in America. Everything here is based on reason. Even the essays you write for class. Back home you have to talk about religion and culture, and you can win any argument if you bring up the Islamic argument. You can't reason against religion. But you cannot change Afghanistan overnight. You can't bring Enlightenment overnight."

Too true, too true. The very hard lesson learned by the 'west' after their wars of religion was that religious toleration (and later moral pluralism) required that the disputants present arguments in a fashion that those that did not accept the belief structure of their opponents could accept. The great American political philosopher John Rawls made this a cornerstone of his theory of liberalism.

We could probably do more to advance the development of a stable, modern, Afghanistan by sending about 10,000 of their most promising students to University in the United States than all of the Opium eradication efforts combined.

Conservative party gets inclusive

2006-02-27T13:58:00.000-08:00

If you needed any further evidence that the Conservative party just doesn't get the cities it arrived today. I received an e-mail for a fundraising event for the Conservative party of Canada in Mississauga (no, I won't be going). But a sentence in the invite just reached right out and smacked me between the eyes. Here it is: "The entrance fee for this event is $20. There will be ethnic food, drinks, a cash bar (run by the hall), music and entertainment."

Ah yes - ethnic food! How inclusive is that? None of those crustless Wonder bread sandwiches for this bastion of white, male, privilege. No siree, we're going all inclusive on their asses - we'll serve ethnic food! How damned hip is that? I wonder if the providers of the 'ethnic food' will also be expected to provide the entertainment? Yep, could hanging a few rainbow flags around the ballroom be far behind?

It may have escaped the attention of the Conservative's that in Mississauga "ethnic food" would be your British grandma's Sunday roast. Meanwhile, everyone else is tucking into shawrma, pad thai, ox tail soup, etc. etc. etc.

This ain't your fathers Conservative party - It's your great-grandfathers. Time to get back to the future.

Why we fight

2006-02-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

I went to see the excellent documentary Why We Fight last night. Michael Moore should be sentenced to watch this until he learns how to make a decent documentary. The director is clearly no fan of the military/industrial complex but to his credit he gives the neo-cons the opportunity to make the best case they can for a unilateralist US foreign policy. Additionally, he really captures the moral nuance involved in good people doing 'bad' work. It was first rate, and somewhat depressing.

That said, there are a couple of things that bothered me about the film. 1) Much was made of the strategic interest the US had in controlling Iraqi oil. The thesis advanced by the film was that as Saudi Arabia became increasingly politically destabilized the US would need to have secure reserves elsewhere - Iraq. While this may be true, the US relies on Saudi Oil imports for less than 20% of it's over all supply. While this supply is important I think Gwynne Dyer (who is interviewed in the movie) has a better take on why US control of middle eastern oil is so critical. He suggests that the US is primarily concerned about controlling China's access to middle eastern oil. Interestingly, this is a position that is not advanced in the movie.

Secondly, one of the stories follows a Vietnam vet, ex-NYPD cop, who lost his son in the World Trade Centre murder. He wants a bomb painted with his sons name to be dropped on Iraq - fair enough (the man's grief walks off the screen and catches you in the throat). In the end he feels betrayed by his government when he realizes that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. A good chunk of the message of this movie is that the military/industrial complex has manipulated people into supporting a war that they wouldn't have if they had facts. Well, I participated in a debate a couple of months before the US invaded Iraq and I supported an invasion. I did not advance connection with 9/11 (or WMD) as reasons for removing Saddam from power. Anyone who read a quality daily newspaper knew there was no connection between Iraq and the attack of 9/11. So, the question is who's responsible here? Is it the Bushies, or the vast majority of US citizens who refuse to read a quality daily newspaper? There's a very easy way to be mislead by your government - don't read. Government's by necessity mislead their population - we know that, it's our job to keep them honest.

Lastly, the US comes in for considerable criticism for throwing it's weight around in international affairs. Like it or not it's an empire. If the US were to stop being an empire tomorrow does anyone think for a second a new empire wouldn't emerge? The real question is who do you want to be the hegemonic power in the world? Has the US done plenty of bad things as a global hegemon? You bet. Did the USSR do plenty of bad things as a global hegemon? You bet - Afghanistan, Hungary, Czechoslovakia anyone? Global powers do bad things, but they also do good things. That's why Kofi Annan was in Washington a couple of weeks ago to plead for a commitment of US troops for Darfur. Everybody knows that the fastest way to put an end to the genocide occurring there would be the commitment of a significant commitment of US troops. So if you don't like the US as a Global hegemon name another country that could credibly carry out the function and do so in a more 'ethical' manner. China (with its robust respect for human rights) anyone?

If the US is going to play this global role (and the truth be told the majority of Americans don't want to) the burden should be more evenly distributed. It's time to bring back mandatory military service (the draft). This would give every American citizen a special insentive to scrutinize the foreign policy directions of its leaders.

Hell is other people - especially Canadians

2006-02-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

Hell is other people:

Jean Paul Sartre once remarked that "hell is other people", of course he was right, but especially if those other people are Canadians. I've been forced to build a brick wall in my back yard so I can go and beat my head against it when reality just seems too weird, and this morning was one of those head thumping days.

The front page of the Globe and Mail revealed the results of a poll dealing with the deployment of Canadian troops for the NATO operation in Afghanistan. 62% are against sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan. But 48%% support further participation in the war on terror. Huh? Is it possible that that many Canadians don't know what the word 'participate' means? If we aren't sending troops to Afghanistan to prevent it from sliding into a narco-feudal failed state what do they have in mind? Perhaps 'good will' visits from one of our famous curling teams addressing kindergarten classes in third world hell holes around the world advising the kiddies that terrorism is bad.

Have the 62% of Canadian air heads who participated in this poll forgotten that before America dislodged the Taliban government in Afghanistan the Taliban had done such an excellent job of driving women indoors that they were beginning to develop all manner of health problems associated with vitamin D deficiency? That girls had been prevented from going to school? That 'adulterers' were being executed? That they were best pals with Osama Bin Laden and provided al Queda with logistical support and a base of operation? Finally, have they forgotten that under well established international law the US was quite within it's rights to attack Afghanistan after September 11, 2001?

What would this 'enlightened' 62% propose as an alternative? That NATO do nothing and Afghanistan be allowed to return to a chaotic, ungovernable, state? A state only noticeable for the amount of heroin it exports and the terrorists it fosters. It is very possible that the enlightened 62% of Canadians are a bunch of selfish junkies who would welcome this outcome (they are certainly on drugs). What I really suspect though is that they want someone else to do the heavy lifting. Canadians love the myth of Canadian peacekeeping. We dispatch troops, they hug kids, they are loved, they bring peace and then they go home. Well that's just bullshit. It is a myth akin to Michael Jackson's belief in the goodness and innocence of 'chilun' (an innocence he seems to be determined to strip them of). Peacekeeping has evolved into peacemaking, and it requires troops who are well armed, well trained, and who are going to have kill those who are determined to undermine the conditions necessary for peace.

Obviously the enlightened 62% of Canadians who don't want a Canadian military presence in this operation don't care for the people of Afghanistan (don't they deserve a chance for peace order and good government too?); they don't care about the soldiers we are deploying on this operation; and, they don't care about their own well being - because a terrorist harbouring, heroin exporting, Afghanistan is going to be a threat everyone.

Iraq's Civil War

2006-02-23T13:14:00.000-08:00

Could things in Iraq get much worse? With the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Sammra an all out Iraqi civil war seems almost certain. A recent report by Paul Rogers for the on-line site Open Democracy (link http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/burning_3295.jsp) cuts a dispiriting picture. In the attempt to oust Sunni jihadi's from Sammra the population has dropped from 200,000 to 90,000. The morale of US troops is low, and their behaviour worse. The story cites an example of the bodies of two jihadi's being strapped to the hood of a Humvee like deer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not worried about the population of Sammra, I'm concerned about committing US troops to a battle that can't be won, and turning basically good kids into homicidal maniacs in the attempt to 'win' Iraq. Soon enough the US troops in parts of Iraq are going to have the same experience that the Russians have had in Chechnya - you can almost destroy a whole city (Grozny) but you can't make the insurgency go away.

This operation was ballsed up from the outset. Rumsfeld's bloody minded insistence on trying out his pet theory of what an American military 'light' could achieve was dead wrong for this operation. In different circumstances with the prior commitment of the international community to take on reconstruction after the US had removed the regime it might have worked, but under the circumstances that existed when the US invaded Iraq those conditions were not in place. The deliberate disregard shown for the State Department plans for reconstruction was another mistake. There is so much more that went wrong it would take a book to document it (and there are plenty of those appearing almost daily now).

In my humble opinion there is nothing else to be gained from continued US involvement in Iraq at this point. There is much to be gained from withdrawl. For starters the foreign jihadi's who are infiltrating Iraq for the purpose of engaing the far enemy (the US) will lose their target. Secondly, with the withdrawl of US troops there will be a genunine incentive for the Iraqi population to weed out the insurgents. Whenever the US withdraws the Jihadi's will claim their victory. In the meantime the continuing war is hurting recruitment, and damaging the morale and moral character of the soldiers serving in Iraq. It's time to leave, and let the Iraqi's figure out for themselves what kind of a state (if any) they want, and how much bloodshed they are prepared to commit in their pursuit of narrow parochial concerns.

Lastly, if the US is to act as an empire 'light' (and I have no objection to that) the burden of enforcing the empire must be more equally born. It is not acceptable to grant tax breaks to the rich and ship poor kids from the south and the mid-west to do the fighting. It's not acceptable because it won't work, and it's not acceptable because it is immoral. It may be time for the US to consider reintroducing the draft - with no exceptions.

Marxism is coming to China

2006-02-15T09:10:00.000-08:00

That's right the Chinese government has decided that what the Communist party needs is a good healthy dose of Marx. Geoffrey York reports in today's Globe and Mail that: "Faced with an ideological vacuum, Beijing is launching a massive campaign to modernize Marxism and make it relevant to the contradictions of today's China. It has reportedly allocated as much as $25 million (U.S.) to recruit thousands of Marxist scholars to compile more than 100 new texbooks over the next decade."

As a former Marxist (god confession is good for the soul)I was at first delighted. It even crossed my mind that it might be fun to go to China for a few years and work on those new Marxist text books. Then reality hit. The Chinese Communist party is pursuing this strategy as part of their plan to reduce corruption in the Party. They're in for a rude shock. If my experience is anything to go by, the most ethically challenged, hypocritical, and yes, dishonest people, I've encountered here in the Western world were individuals who considered themselves to be some shape or form of Marxist. I could regale you with the tales of perfidious behaviour on the part of the very left-wing political science faculty at York University in the days when I was a grad student there, but I will demure.

Furthermore, a good whack of Marx is very likely to completely destroy any ability to reason logically amongst the Party cadres. Take this sentence from the same article. Mr. Cheng, a Communist Party official was lamenting the widening income gap in China, but was confident that with the judicious application of Marxist principles this could be under stood. "It's difficult, I admit, to explain it theoretically." Ah very good Marxist - make sure you get the theory correct. Ignore reality - like the reality that China has a free market capitalist economy, and that it is rapidly modernizing, and those two factors alone will produce a pretty big income gap. We'll get back to Mr. Cheng later and see if he's got the theory worked out.

In the meantime I hope the Communist Party keeps Marx's work under carefull lock and key. They wouldn't want it falling into the wrong hands (say the massively poor urban proletariat, or desperate peasants in rural areas). After all, they have nothing to lose but their chains. Who knows 56 years after the Communist revolution in China, communism might actually be on the agenda again.

2006-02-12T15:07:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney shot a man:

Really. I'm not allowed to make that up. Apparently they were on a Quail hunting expedition (is that guy still a Republican?) and he turned to fire and hit one of his companions spraying him with buck shot.

Now, I know this looks bad. Just another gun happy Republican shooting first and ascertaining the facts later. Apparently the guy he shot was a 78 year old lawyer. It wasn't an accident. It's just part of the Bush Whitehouse's plan to move ahead on tort reform. No need to panic. But if you are one of the many lawyers I happen to know - stay out of the Vice-presidential hunting parties for awhile.

2006-02-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

Orwell's Animal Farm and the Canadian Health Care system:

Andre Picard's column in today's Globe and Mail was a real blast from the past. He wrote a column defending Canada's Soviet era health care system. He basically argues that while competition may produce minor improvements for consumers of burgers, this should not be extended to something as important as health care. His conclusion reminded me of the 'paradoxes' encountered in Orwell's Animal Farm. Can anyone with a remote command of the English language make sense of a sentence which reads: "Paradoxical as it may seem, less choice may mean more and better health care." If Mr. Picard substituted the word automobile (a purchase of greater consequence than a burger) for health care in that sentence would anyone believe him? We would all be driving Lada's if Canada's health care model was extended to the production and sale of automobiles.

Mr. Picard commits two errors in his reasoning in this column. The first is that the only alternative to a government mandated one payer system is a U.S. style medical system. Britain and France, for example, use a 'blended' public/private health care system that has been ranked superior to both the U.S and Canadian systems in World Health Organization studies. Secondly, he assumes that a blended system would favour "...those from socioeconomic groups with access to information, transport and the financial ability to choose between public and private care...". Yes. In case he hasn't noticed our existing system does this as well. Clearly he didn't read his colleague Margaret Wente's article from a couple weeks back about her hip replacement experience (and how she successfully 'worked' the system to get consultations with specialists, and find the best surgeon, etc. etc.)

Here's a news flash - the educated and wealthy almost always get better everything than the rest of us. They can afford nicer clothes, they live in the nicest houses, and drive finer cars. They drink better wines, and eat better food. And even in our single payer health care system, they get better care. Those are the perks of wealth. The question worth asking for the rest of us is: Does trying to yoke the wealthy to a single payer health care system actually produce a better outcome for those of us who are not wealthy? If the WHO is correct, the answer is no. So we have to live with a system that is outperformed by the French system by a considerable amount. Really, should we accept having a worse health care system than the frommage eating surrender monkeys?

2006-02-08T15:07:00.000-08:00

The cartoons:

The technical details of uploading the cartoons to my blog defeat me. So failing that - for those of you who haven't seen the original cartoons here is a link to them.

http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/dossiers/documents/danemark_musulmans.html

Yelling blasphemy in a riled up middle east

2006-02-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

A colleague of mine raised a very interesting issue yesterday with respect to free expression and J.S. Mill's harm principle. Mill had argued where the actions or words of an individual were likely to cause a concrete harm to others the government was justified in limiting their expression. The famous example of this is that one does not have a right to yell fire in a crowded theatre.

To paraphrase the fire example the question becomes should one have the right to blaspheme in a riled up middle east? In this case the authors of the cartoons (and the newspaper that published them) already had the clear example from Salman Rushdie that being perceived to have slighted the Prophet would produce a strongly negative reaction in large parts of the Muslim world. Furthermore, with the invasion of Iraq there are already very strong negative feelings in much of the Muslim world directed towards western nations and the United States in particular. To that extent the reaction we saw this week was entirely predictable, and is comparable to yelling fire in a crowded theatre.

I couldn't disagree more. The reaction of the crowd in the (very) geographically confined theatre is the reaction any reasonable person might predict under those circumstances. Would a reasonable person predict widespread rioting, the burning of the Danish embassy, and death threats on the basis of cartoons published months earlier and a continent away? I don't think so. As some journalists have pointed out - there aren't a pile of Danish flags in the middle east waiting to be snapped up and burned. There was careful organization to these 'spontaneous' outbursts of outrage. The Islamicists are stirring the pot. The blame for the rioting, deaths, and arson, rests squarely on their shoulders.

But even if it didn't who cares? Why are western nations pandering to the Muslim fanatics in the first place? Peter Worthington had it exactly right in his column today: "We are nuts to pander to threats and violence by militant Muslims... Fear more than sensitivity influences our media, so we become more responsive to Muslim sensitivities than to truth or the concerns of any other group... Closer to home, our politicians and media go to absurd lengths not to offend Muslim extremists precisely because we fear their reaction." I don't recall widespread Christian rioting when Monty Python portrayed Christ hanging on the cross and singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".

Lastly, Iran has announced that they are going to publish a bunch of cartoons on the Holocaust. Of course they are more than welcome to do so. What I can't figure out is how they can publish cartoons about an historical fact that they routinely deny ever having occurred? Iran's behaviour in this matter is simply one more confirmation of their slide toward pariah state status in the international community.

Free speech for me but not for thee

2006-02-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

Free speech for me but not for thee:

Interesting times in the middle east these days. As the smoke from the remnants of the Danish embassy in Damascus clears I have a few more thoughts about Muslims and editorial cartoons.

The official line from the 'non-islamicist' Muslim world is that free speech is a fine thing but it should not be extended to allow for the deliberate ridiculing of a person, or community's, 'core' religious beliefs. What these 'moderates' have failed to explain is why 'core' religious beliefs deserve some kind of special privilege. And let's pretend for a second that we decided to limit free expression to accommodate core beliefs. There wouldn't be a McDonald's left in North America because some Hindus would be upset about the offence caused by the eating of beef. All that good porn that I like to surf on the internet would be gone because some Jesus freak's understanding of his 'core' beliefs would be offended. Oh, no more movies on Friday night because orthodox Jews would be pissed off at people going to see movies on the Sabbath. I could go on but you get the point.

The very wise J.S. Mill understood this point perfectly when he wrote his marvelous little book "On Liberty". The only way to take liberty seriously is to limit it only when a concrete harm to another will result from the exercise of liberty by another individual. Most emphatically he ruled out "offence", "hurt feelings", etc. as a justification for limiting an individuals liberty. The "offence" is in the mind of the hearer, it's up to them to deal with it (and not by burning down the Danish embassy). However, if Iran, lead by it's mental case leader Ahmadinejhad, doesn't want to trade with Denmark, fair enough. (Gosh did I just call him a mental case - my apologies to mental cases everywhere).

Lastly, I seem to recall free speech being invoked by Muslim governments to defend Egypt's production and broadcasting of a multi-part miniseries on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. "Hey" they said, "it's just free speech". Sure, state sanctioned news papers all over the middle east regularly portray Jews as monkeys, and their editorial columns refer to Jews as sons of monkeys, and pigs, etc. - but it's just free speech. You bet it is, and if it's good enough for anti-semites it's good enough for the rest of us. It's time for the majority of the Muslim world to grow up (nothing radical here - just seperate mosque and state and develop a sense of humour and irony) and join the 21st century. Failing that, Huntington was correct and we've got a bit of a civilizational clash on our hands. I know where the smart betting money will fall.

2006-02-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

The Life of Mohammed:

When was the last time you read about Denmark? They've been in the news plenty lately. A Danish newspaper published cartoons that (gasp) portrayed The Prophet in an unflattering light. Now much of the Islamic world from the middle east to Indonesia is going nuts. The Prophet isn't supposed to be depicted, let alone mocked. Salman Rushdie, and more importantly an Italian and Japanese translator, learned this lesson the hard way.

Every time Samuel Huntington's thesis about the 'clash of civilizations' seems to be going the way of the dodo the Muslim world seems to come along and breathe life back into it. Remember Huntington had a chapter in his book about Islam's Bloody Borders. There was an excellent documentary on PBS this week about the Al Quida franchises that have sprung up in Europe. The extremists they interviewed that are supporters of Osama regularly refer to westerners as crusaders when they aren't referring to us as infidels. No clash here. That Huntington guy was just totally out to lunch.

I guess much of the Islamic world is not ready for their version of Monty Python's Life of Brian, or any number of other films that have also suggested that Christ was, well, less than Christ like. It's also rather curious that repressive regimes all over the middle east are going nuts over the importance of balancing free speech with respect for religious tolerance as they fill their own prisons with dissenters and encourage the most hateful expression directed at Jews.

Until the most observant Muslims decide to leave the middle ages behind Huntington is going to be a regular touch stone. I, for one, can hardly wait to see the peace and prosperity that sweeps the middle east when Iran and it's mental case leader, Amajadinejhad, acquire nuclear weapons. If I was a Danish politician I'd certainly get to work on a nuclear program of my own.

2006-01-31T17:06:00.000-08:00

A bunch of nobodies:

Who realized that when Pierre Trudeau described MP's outside of the House of Commons as a bunch of nobodies he accurately predicted the field for the upcoming Liberal leadership contest.

McKenna, out. Tobin, out. Manley, out. Stronach, possibly - does anybody know what she thinks about anything? Cordiere, Couchon, - anyone heard of the them outside of Quebec? Ignatieff - too bad he speaks in complete sentences. There are many many more, equally unimpressive.

If I were Stephen Harper I'd be feeling pretty chuffed this week. Clearly the brain trust at the upper end of the Liberal food chain has figured out that they are going to be riding the pines in opposition for a while and decided to sit this round out. They'd better hope the Conservatives don't start getting some 905 representation because if they do the Liberals might be looking at spending a decade out of power.

All of this assumes that Harper and his party can maintain discipline and avoid drooling on themselves. Only 20 months or so will tell whether they can manage this.

One thing that makes me sad is the demise of the old style leadership convention, held in a hockey arena, with delegates being desperately wooed in hospitality suites, and hours of aimless speculation on the part of a huge team of political experts. I'll miss Mike Duffy swigging brewski's down on the convention floor. Really, I used to just disappear, not answer the phone, etc. when these things were on. Ah well. Bring on the new, democratic selection process and the bunch of nobodies.

2006-01-29T12:49:00.000-08:00

Still on Hamas:

There was a report in the paper yesterday that Hamas would move to make Sharia a "source of law" for the Palestinian Authority, but would not impose Sharia on the Palestinian population. That's probably a good thing.

The other announcement was much worse. They announced plans to introduce sexual segregation into the education system because, as one Hamas leader pointed out, Switzerland with it's mixed education system had the highest rate of teen suicide in the world (huh?). Oh well, they also announced their intention to Islamicize the educational curriculum. I think that's a great idea because the Palestinian economy isn't already enough of a basket case. Oh, I'm sorry did I say Palestinian economy. I should have written the chimera that passes for an economy courtesy of over a billion dollars in aid they receive from the wealthy countries of the western world.

Yes sir, I've long thought that one of the most pressing issues faced by the Palestinian authority was not turning out enough qualified Islamic scholars. Clearly there are far too many engineers, MBA's, Doctors, and other assorted detritus amongst the Palestinian people right now, and a good influx of Islamic scholarship is long overdue. If Hamas's educational experiment works, we'll have emulate it here in the west and start reintroducing St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to the curriculum.

Well the Palestinians are about to learn one of the most valuable lessons of democracy - be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.

2006-01-27T18:15:00.000-08:00

Palestinian election:

With the election of Hamas on Wednesday many observers of international events have panicked and predicted the sky was about to fall. I think they just might be wrong.

I'm no fan of Hamas. Every time the Israeli government assassinates one of their leaders I raise a toast. That said I think they represent a good chunk of the Palestinian population in their unrelenting hostility to the very existence of the state of Israel. They are religious extremists, and I detest religious extremists of every stripe (check out Sam Harris's book The End of Religion for a very funny trashing of just about all of the world's religions)but the middle east is full of religious extremists - so they are representative of their portion of extremists.

Here's why I don't think the election of Hamas is the end of the world. If the Palestinians are to have a functioning state of their own they must have a government capable of exercising sovereign control of whatever territory is agreed upon. The Palestinian Authority currently can't do that. Hamas, when they aren't killing innocent Israeli kids in pizza parlours, manages to organize and provide education, health care, and other social services. In short, they have the discipline and organization to actually run a state organization. This will be necessary if any progress towards an independent Palestinian state is to be made.

Sometimes peace can only be negotiated by the cold, hard eyed, sons of bitches. Well the Palestinians have 'em now. If the Israelis have any brains they'll elect Likud under the leadership of Netanyahu in March. Then both sides will be represented by the cold, hard eyed, sons of bitches. Unfortunately for the CHESOB's they will still have to work toward some kind of negotiated settlement if they are to satisfy the aspirations of the people that elected them. Unlike, Abbas, and Arafat, and Perez, they will actually be able to sell any agreement they make to the hard liners in their ranks.

Lastly, the Bush government is taking some heat because in their haste to encourage democracy in the Arab middle east commentators have pointed out that if there were genuinely free elections in Egypt, and Syria, the fundamentalists would win. So what? Let 'em. The Bushies are about democracy (not liberalism). You might be able to foist a democracy on people but they have to learn the virtues of liberalism (individualism above collective interests, constitutional limitations on governments) for themselves. The west learned those lessons the hard way with about 200 years of religious wars during the reformation and counter-reformation. The Muslim world is due for their reformation. It will only come by letting the fundamentalists come to power. And guess what - eventually their citizens will get sick of theocratic government and they will embark on their own liberal revolution.

This process will be drawn out. It will begin with democratic revolutions in the Muslim middle east. For the Western world we should encourage reform and treat the new theocratic democracies that spring up in the middle east the same way we dealt with the Soviet Union. Containment. And slowly, but surely, support the forces of reform within the countries themselves. The young people of Iran have already tired of their Islamic republic. Let's gently give them whatever support they need to throw it over, and move on.

2006-01-25T16:39:00.000-08:00

Election post-mortem:

Well I've been a bit of a blogger slacker recently (have been hitting the party circuit too hard). Time to get back to daily updates. The election results were interesting on a couple of levels.

1) Pollsters. They did better at predicting the popular vote than last time (except for Allen Greg's firm the Strategic Council), but their seat predictions were not great. Once again the market out performed them. UBC had a futures market on the election (308 participants betting a total of over $95,000.00). Their seat predictions were pretty close to the final outcome (as of Sunday night they were predicting 127 Cons., 93 Liberal, 54 Bloc, and 33 NDP). The pollsters have a problem with the algorithm they are using to translate popular support into seats. There's simple solution to this - it's called proportional representation.

2) Ontario voters. Short of catching the local Liberal candidate sodomizing the family pet most urban Ontario voters continue to vote Liberal. This is puzzling on so many levels. 12 years of Liberal government and practically no attention paid to the increasing problems faced by the GTA (problems grossly exacerbated by St. Pauls downloading of costs in order to get the federal budget under control)and we keep electing Liberals. Come on, could a bunch of fetus eating westerners really do any more damage?

3) The Bloc - looks good on ya Gilles. No 50% of Quebec voter voting Bloc. 4 fewer seats than they started with. I think at the beginning of this blog I suggested Quebec separatism was on a roll and the federal government would be hard pressed to deal with it (at that time I was assuming a Liberal minority government). Scratch that. Separatism is dead in the water. Harper will devolve a bunch of powers to Quebec (and other provinces) and we might actually be witnessing the beginning of the end of the Bloc. Good riddance.

4) I figure with the fully blown civil war in the Liberal party (and potentially a dozen credible candidates for the leadership of the party) we'll get 20 to 24 months of Conservative government before the next election call. What will that result in? We'll be paying lower levels of taxation, the provinces will have more control over programs they are mandated to provide by the federal government, same-sex couples will still be able to get married, and gun toting punks will be spending a little more time in prison courtesy of tax payer expense. Oh and rifle toting hunters might be freed from the idiocy of the gun registry. All in all not a bad outcome.

5) Conservatives ran the best campaign, followed by the NDP and Jack Layton's beaux risk (Friend's lend us your vote). The Bloc ran a poor campaign. It's not their fault what they are selling is a hard sell - send us to Ottawa so we can gum up the works and perhaps work toward separation. Worst campaign was run by the Liberals. Actually, that's unfair - the Liberals failed to run a campaign at all.

2006-01-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

Predictions:

And so it comes to an end. To be perfectly honest I wouldn't have predicted the dramatic change in the Conservative fortunes, especially if they emerge, even remotely in la belle provence.

By the time the results roll in I'm going to have my hands full hosting a gloriously drunk crowd of friends and assorted hangers on at my election party. So before things get completely out of hand, here are my predictions.

136 Conservative, 74 Liberal, 69 Bloc, 20 NDP. There will be no independents and no Greens elected.

Harper will be the first Conservative Primeminister from the west since Joe Clark (I know I'm over looking Kim Cambell here). Let's hope his political instincts and math skills are a little sharper than Joe's.

We'll save the crying, hand ringing, gloating, and election analysis for tommorow.

2006-01-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

And in the end it comes down to the ovaries:

So, after a ferociously long campaign it ends with Paul Martin challenging Steven Harper to state what he really thinks about reproductive freedoms. Yep, the old abortion issue rears it's ugly head in the last week of the campaign. Stevie Wonder invited this with his careless remarks about the potential bias of the Supreme court. That was a Thomas Kaberle pass right across the front of the net and St. Paul couldn't help but jump on it. Now he can claim Harper would appoint a bunch of neo-cons to the bench and next thing you know every Canadian woman under 50 would be wandering around knocked up whether they wanted to be or not.

Of course it would have been better if they hid Harper for the last week of the campaign, but oh well. Harper should suggest that if St. Paul is so concerned about the judiciary he may want to give parliament a bit more of a say in the appointment of Supreme court justices instead of concentrating the decision in the PMO. But he won't, and his vote will tank in Ontario as the voters in the GTA forget about the incompetence, theft, and arrogance of the Liberal government. Yes sir, after the election we'll all be poorer, but god dammmit, some of us will still be able to get an abortion. It would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.

No more talk now of Quebec and it's place in confederation, provincial/federal relations, accountability, the proper role and function of the Canadian military, taxation, daycare policy, health care. Now the election is down to the wire and it's all about the ovaries.

For my part I'm going to show some cojones and vote for the Conservatives, and hope like hell we can show these Liberal jokers the door.

2006-01-17T16:44:00.000-08:00

It ain't over 'till it's over:

Stevie Wonder said one of the stupidest things of the whole campaign today. He said don't worry - if we get a majority, it won't be a real majority because the Liberals will still control the Senate and there is also the Supreme court. Wait a second - is he saying that the Conservatives are not capable of controlling themselves but we shouldn't worry because the Liberals and the Supreme's will be there to keep them in line? If I were the Liberals there'd be a whole new ad campaign tommorow morning, I'd be on that like white on rice. Fortunately the Libs have run such an inept campaign there is no danger they'll pick up on it.

Only in Canada.

2006-01-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

Make that a double:

I'll have whatever Smilin' Jack Layton has been drinking lately. You really have to hand it to him, he has engaged in some pretty creative campaigning over the course of the election. But this is the best yet - the "Hey buddy can you spare a vote" approach might just work in Toronto.

Admittedly, it is a tad emasculating to suggest that you think so little of your party that you ask for someone's vote "just this one time" in order to encourage the Liberal party to clean itself up. Still it might just work.

In an earlier post I suggested that the students voting at the U of T might just tip the balance in favour of Olivia Chow in Trinity Spadina. Guess I'm not the only one thinking that way. As a result of complaints from the Ianno campaign Elections Canada has put the kibosh on plans to set up polling station on the U of T downtown campus on election day. I still don't think it will help him.

So here's a toast to smilin' Jack. Bartender I'll have one of whatever he's drinking. Come to think of it, make mine a double.

2006-01-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not making this up, I'm not kidding:

Is it just me or are the Liberal attack adds the worst attack adds ever? First of all there is the marshal drum beat against a grey, grainy, picture of Harpers face that slowly comes into focus. Ok - the marshal drum beat. It's Steven Harper, not Pinochet for god's sake.

Then there are the carefully edited quotations from things that either Harper himself has said, or that have been said about him by US right wingers. In one Harper is quoted as saying "You won't recognize this country", if the Conservatives get into power. Excellent, that's exactly why we're changing the government, we've had quite enough. Really, that's what the voters mean, they're not making that up.

Then there is the voice. A woman's voice, to try and appeal to women who traditionally support conservatives at a lower rate, and who have had a hard time warming up to Cold Steven. Interestingly, this hasn't worked and in today's Globe and Mail the support of women for Harper was only 4% behind the male support for him in the polls. Really, they said that, I'm not making it up.

I sent an e-mail to my friends to warn them (I'm hosting an election party election night) that if I heard one more of those adds we'd have to listen to the results on the radio because the TV would have met with a bad end. Really, that's what I said, I'm not making that up.

I'm not sure who the Liberal ad company road tested these ads with but they've been on for over a week now and they seem to have had zero effect on public opinion. I think it was a bad idea on the part of the Liberals to think that they could run a carbon copy of their last campaign which they have largely done. It was a bad idea because their campaign last time only produced a minority government. It's also a bad idea because you can only say Steven Harper will rape your mother, eat your children, and sell Canada to the US so many times before people begin to wonder if you aren't more seriously deranged than the mother raping, children eating, Canada selling candidate that you've been slagging. I said that, really, I'm not making it up.

2006-01-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

One of the dumbest remarks of the campaign:

Well the Saturday papers have already begun the grim task of picking through the entrails of the Liberal campaign to try and figure out where it all went so horribly wrong. It failed on a number of fronts (most campaign strategists will tell you to try and avoid police investigations in the middle of a campaign), but the single biggest failure was the failure to campaign before Christmas.

In a post early on in the blog I asked where Martin was. Evidently the plan was not to put many resources into campaigning pre Christmas because no one would be paying attention. Boy was that a mistake. Stevie Wonder had three weeks of uninterrupted face time with the Canadian public and he put it to good use with his 'policy a day' announcements. Even if you disagreed with the Conservative policy announcements, at least it was evident that here was someone who wanted to be Prime minister because there were policies and changes they wanted to put into place.

In a perfect world, nobody would have payed attention to Stevie wonder, but they did. In perfect world, when you're ready to start campaigning you wouldn't lose a week trying to fend off questions about a police investigation. In a perfect world the attack adds that worked so well the last time would work all over again (nobody in the Liberal party seemed to take the Harper make-over from this summer seriously - too bad for them). In a perfect world nobody in your party would be so dumb as to run an add criticizing your opponent for wanting more troops stationed closer to large cities. What was the purpose of this? In Toronto just days after Christmas a young girl was gunned down on Yonge St. by punks shooting the place up. I'll bet there were few Torontonians who would have been delighted to see a troop presence on the streets. What about Quebec? The only thing you are reminding them of is the time troops were actually deployed on the streets, namely during the FLQ crisis.

If I were St. Martin, I'd have that campaign worker taken out into a public square and have him beaten like a rented mule. But oh yeah - St. Paul said he approved the ad himself!

Here is a reason everyone, even people who like the Liberal party, should be glad to see them defeated next Monday - the current group of them are incapable of learning from their mistakes and cleaning up their act. One of the dumbest remarks I've come across all weekend comes from this comment by Pierre Ladouceur (a campaign strategist developing ads for the Liberals in Quebec): "Do you remember anything that was said in the month of December?" he asked yesterday. "I don't think there's much value to the month of December... Really the campaign started on Jan. 2". (Globe and Mail A 7). What is the colour of the sky in his world? Has he noticed that the Liberal campaign has yet to get started? This guy and the rest of the whole stinking bunch of them need to ride the pines for a while.

Oh, and if I were designing adds for Quebec, they would feature bags of money and the tag line, "But we threw bags of the stuff at you - vote Liberal".

2006-01-12T14:14:00.000-08:00

Oh Canada:

It's appropriate that Joni Mitchelle's song "A Case of you" which included a reference to O Canada in the middle of it, was on an ablum called Blue (great album by the way). After the election on the 23 there will be quite a bit more blue in Canada - Conservative blue.

Political scientists have noticed that futures markets set up by betting operations often are more accurate predictors of the outcome of elections than public opinion polls. This is for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones is that people who put their hard earned cash down to bet on the outcome of a contest are highly motivated to get the best information avaiable. They are like track bettors. Well currently on Tradesports.com you can buy a share in a future Liberal government for around 20 cents. A share in a future Conservative government will run you almost 80 cents. Liberal shares have tanked this week. The Conservatives shares are way up.

If this can't be changed by Friday, it is reasonable to assume that the Conservatives will at a minimum win a minority government and possibly a majority.

If you are going to an election party (and there will be betting on the outcome of the election) you may want to watch Tradesports.com for a few days prior to the election. I did this for months leading up to the last US presidential election and it resulted in me winning a bet with a colleague that resulted in a fine meal, and a fine afternoon, spent at Jamie Kennedy's Wine Bar in Toronto. A word to the wise however. The market sometimes goes screwy on the election day itself - I actually showed up at my friends place on election night and conceded defeat based on what happened on the market that day.

2006-01-11T12:08:00.000-08:00

A wedge a wedge, my kingdom for a wedge:

Poor St. Paul is now totally desperate. A wedge issue is an issue that is used to pry soft supporters of an opposing party away from that party. For example, promising minimum sentences for possessing a gun is an attempt by the Conservatives to attract soft supporters of the Liberals after a sweet young girl was gunned down by punks in Toronto after Christmas. It's a time honoured election technique and with the right wedge it works.

Unfortunately not for Paul. First he tried to use the notwithstanding clause of the constitution as a wedge. Ooops - after a shrug of indifference from the electorate at large he has now gone in search of a new wedge. This time St. Paul is promising that a Liberal government would lead an international panel to ban the weaponization of space (funny there's that space issue coming into it again, maybe he could put Marc Garneau on this file). Well, first of all there already is an international treaty that mostly does this. Secondly, the kinds of weapons I suspect he would like to ban would include the kind of things that the Americans would like to include in a missile defense system and so they might not be willing to go along with this new initiative (a Canadian Prime minister can only deliver so many kicks to the shins of Uncle Sam before he starts to receive a good old fashioned butt whupping, and I think this PM is dangerously close to the edge). Unfortunately when Uncle Sam delivers that butt whupping it's not the Prime minister who pays the price, it's auto workers, loggers, and farmers. Lastly, what exactly is wrong with the militarization of space? Why is that special? Every other part of the planet is militarized.

Ultimately Martin is making a desperate bid to say that Stevie Wonder is just like George W. Well St. Paul, Canadian voters may have been born yesterday, but they've been up all night and I don't think you're about to fool them with this one. The next wedge you look for will be in your golf bag after your retirement from political life.

2006-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

A Couple of Thoughts on last nights leadership debate:

Last nights leadership debate (the final one in English) was a considerable improvement over the format of the last one. The candidates had an opportunity to respond to one another and the questions by Steve Paiken were clever and designed to draw the leaders out a bit.

There were a couple of surprising comments in the debate, I'll go in order of the surprises.

1) Paul Martin promised to remove the ability of the federal government to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and freedoms. This was a big promise but a weird one too. For starters, the vast majority of the Canadian population doesn't really know what the notwithstanding clause is or why it's an issue. Secondly, I'm not sure how a Martin government could accomplish this. One way would be to change the wording of the not withstanding clause and specifically remove the right to invoke it for the federal government. I'm not sure that Martin could accomplish this because it would require provincial cooperation and I strongly doubt that the provinces would accede to this change. After all it would put tremendous pressure on the provinces to renounce the notwithstanding clause themselves and I'm not at all convinced that the provinces would be will to do this. The only other alternative would be to pass legislation in the house forbidding the federal government from invoking the notwithstanding clause. That's fine, but as a piece of legislation it could be over ridden by any future government by passing legislation reinstating the right of the federal government to avail themselves of the legislation.

This was a really puzzling promise. I just haven't seen a groundswell of Canadians wandering around cussing and swearing about 'that damned notwithstanding clause'! Oh well, at least this a promise that won't cost us anything. If the plan was to drag Stephen Harper into a debate about the role of the courts and how they should be balanced against parliament he failed miserably.

2) Harper said if he were to make any constitutional changes he would enshrine property rights (yahoo!). Amazingly none of the other candidates took him on about this proposal - it was simply ignored. Of course Stevie Wonder would have about as much luck persuading the provinces to join him in this constitutional amendment as St. Paul would have. For starters, Quebec would never agree because achieving an independent province is going to require wide spread theft on the part of the Quebec government.

3) Jack Layton said he would arm border guards. Good for him. The guards have been lobbying for this for a long time and given their work I think it's long overdue. I can now see the NDP law and order platform rounding out - "It's not guns that are the problem, just guns in the hands of the wrong people".

4) Kudos also go to Gilles Duceppe who criticized the federal government for hiring 10's of thousands of bureaucrats to oversee the Canada Health act instead of giving more power to the provinces and spending the money not on bureaucrats but on doctors and nurses. Imagine that, health care spending actually being spent on health care workers.

Lastly there were disappointments, mostly from Harper. He says publicly that he supports the current one-payer health care system. Furthermore, he says he supports agricultural subsidies and supply management (an issue I've written about below). Martin seems tired and desparate and just plain out of ideas. When he's lying he flaps his hands, when Harper lies his eyes shift from side to side.

2006-01-09T11:07:00.000-08:00

Some New Year hopes:

What a campaign the Conservatives have run. This will be studied by parties with uncharismatic leaders everywhere. The 'policy a day' at the beginning of the campaign showed the Conservatives as a party of positive ideas - a party people could imagine running government. Harper smiled a ton, and was on the news everyday with a good news announcement. The slogan - Stand Up for Canada, was brilliant. Most importantly, Stevie Wonder invested in a case of duct tape and the dinosaurs from out west have been completely silenced in this election. No idiotic musings about re-introducing the death penalty, or re-criminalizing abortion.

Poor St. Paul. He started out negative and just has nowhere else to go at this point. He got totally sand bagged by the RCMP investigation into the budget update. It happened before x-mas, but it lasted just long enough to remind the voters about what a bunch of arrogant pricks the Liberal party has become. Furthermore, every day you spend defending your Minister of Finance is another day when you are not trotting out new policies and spending priorities. It didn't help that one of his star candidates (Michael Ignatieff) keeps getting tagged for supporting torture light (he doesn't I've read the book), or that Marc Garneau thinks separatism could be laid to rest in Quebec if Gilles Duceppe and Andre Boisclaire could join him on a trip into space. Now Garneau is a bona fide astronaut, and I'm sure a very capable individual, but there's something basically wrong about this suggestion. Duccepe and Boisclaire are separatists - I think they already have a working familiarity with outer space. I hope Garneau doesn't get elected - I think the rest of Canada has had quite enough spacemen from Quebec in the House of Commons for the time being.

Here's what I hope: When Harper forms a new government I hope he develops a terrible case of amnesia and forgets about all those dumb spending priorities he has announced during the campaign. I hope he remembers he's a conservative and gives a whack of our hard earned cash back to us. I also hope he remembers that a little competition can go a long way to encourage efficiency and loosens up the federal reigns on the existing health care system. I hope he uses the next big case of duct tape that I'm going to send to him to keep the mouths of the dinosaur wing of the conservative party taped shut. Most of all I hope he's serious about decentralizing the Federal government and that will be just enough to pull the rug from under the feet of Mr.'s Boisclaire and Duceppe.

2006-01-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

Predictions - sure to be proven wrong:

Just got back from a few days visiting my folks in the land of the freeish and braveish. So back to full time blogging. I'm going to make the first of a series of predictions that I'm certain will turn out to be wrong on election day. Here goes.

Olivia Chow will win Trinity-Spadina for the NDP against long time incumbent Tony Ianno. She fell a couple of thousand seats short the first time she ran, and a couple of hundred seats the last time. The political commentators all made a big deal about the condos on the lakeshore (part of that riding) and the fact that condo buying yuppies would be reluctant to back an NDP candidate.

Perhaps. But let's look at the election timing. Usually elections are held in the summer when the downtown campus of U of T is largely deserted. Not this time. There will be students, and being young and guileless, they are more inclined to vote NDP. Let's not go crazy here; first, students who are often apathetic voters will have to register to vote in Trinity-Spadina, and then they will actually have to go out on election day. That said, are there a couple of hundred U of T students who will make a difference in this riding - bet on it. Olivia wins Trinity-Spadina, you heard it here first.

2005-12-29T17:35:00.000-08:00

Last entry for 2005:

I'll be resuming in the New Year when the campaign resumes. I'm going out on a limb here with my first prediction for 2006. The real question will be how many seats will the Liberals win in B.C., how many will they keep in Quebec, and how many elected liberals will be serving prison sentences after the RCMP investigation?

To close out the year I've included an e-mail I sent my good friend Red today. Red insists the Liberals are better than any of the alternatives, and that in any case Paul Martin is a saint who has never erred. Red - friends don't let friends vote liberal.

Original e-mail message:

Ok John, do you remember an e-mail I sent about a month ago pointed out that it was highly inappropriate for Ralph Goodale to introduce what was, in effect, a pre-election budget in an economic update before a parliamentary committee. I seem to recall writing - at the time - that budgets are highly secretive documents because they set government economic policy and create losers and winners. One of the highest breeches of parliamentary procedure is to have a budget leaked. That is why reporters get advance access to it, but they are locked in for hours ahead of the budget reading in the house.

Now I'm not saying Goodale himself leaked anything, but it is increasingly looking like there may have been a leak on the Income Trust policy prior to his testimony. It was wrong, and stupid, and politically cynical, of Goodale to try and sneak in a Liberal 'budget' before the non-confidence vote. I'm not at all surprised there is an RCMP investigation. I'm not at all surprised to hear Paul Martin say yet again that another cabinet minister is competent, that there is nothing wrong, and if there is something wrong, yet another investigation will get to the bottom of it. What about ministerial accountability now?

Hey what about having a high ranking party official run a blog comparing Olivia Chow to a Chow dog (ha ha ha - I split my side laughing at that). Or calling Layton an asshole - because it makes him feel good. This guy worked in the Martin camp. He certainly puts the Klan in Klannerman.

You keep on telling yourself that there's nothing wrong with this bunch, if it makes you feel any better. Before you go to bed tonight, dig out your Oxford dictionary and look up the definition of casuistry - the liberals are masters of it.

regards, Greg

2005-12-28T17:07:00.000-08:00

RCMP investigation into Liberal Economic update:

I mentioned near the beginning of this blog that it was highly inappropriate of Ralph Goodale to issue what amounted to a pre-election budget as a financial forecast immediately before the government fell. The reason for this is that there is a degree of secrecy and confidentiality that surrounds budgets that have no equivalent for financial forecasts.

Why does this matter? Because government economic policy is going to benefit some and harm others. The secrecy is supposed to ensure that everyone gets the good news and the bad news at the same time. The RCMP is investigating the economic update because Goodale announced that the government was going to back away from plans to limit and possibly tax income trusts. Prior to Goodale's testimony before a parliamentary finance committee, there was a spike in trading on income trusts. Quelle surprise!

This is an indication of 1) possibly corruption, 2) incompetence 3) callous disregard for the customs of parliament. All of these added up reveal at yet another level how casually the Liberal government takes it's responsibilities, and how much it simply assumes some kind of divine right to govern Canada.

2005-12-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

The Cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder:

If you're feeling a little blue these days, here's something to raise your spirits.
Don't read this late at night - you'll wake the household with your laughter.

Mulroney to Peter C. Newman on the biography Newman was planning to write on Mulroney:

"Your book is going to be such a best seller because it's a colourful, astonishing story. It's absolutely unbelievable. The publishers don't have to worry about whether this thing is going to sell. The only question they're going to have to wonder about is whether they've got enough paper in the forest to print the fucking books. That's all they have to worry about. I'll tell you this, if there ain't a good book in this, there's not a good book in Canadian history. So there you go."

It get's worse believe it or not.

2005-12-25T18:28:00.000-08:00

Ho Ho Ho:

Merry Christmas everyone. The campaign has gone into hiatus for a week or so. So will I. My ex-wife was kind enough to get me a copy of Peter C. Newman's "The Secret Mulroney Tapes" for x-mas. Until things get going in the new year, I'll share some of the 'highlights' over the next week.

End of the first round of electioneering awards go to Jack Layton for having Rush on his Ipod! Come over to the dark side Jack. Your daddy was a Mulroney cabinet minister after all.

2005-12-23T15:48:00.000-08:00

The calm before the storm of attack adds:

Today's Globe and Mail reported that the Liberal party has begun to make available to Liberal candidates material to be used for a more negative campaign that will take place after the Christmas break.

One such item states that Harper and Duceppe "would work together to eliminate national standards and weaken the federal government". What I find interesting about this is that both the Liberals and the national press would consider this to be an attack ad. Perhaps it's time to have a frank converstation about the role of the Federal government in confederation. This might be an issue the Conservatives might want to go balls to the walls on. What exactly is wrong with weakening the powers of the Federal government? Our constitution was created in 1869, the division of powers between Provinces and the Federal government were premised upon the needs of a society that was predominantly rural, and an economy that was predominantly agricultural and resource based. Keep in mind that many of the 'social services' that most Canadians take for granted today, were made provincial responsibilities, primarily because at the time those services were considered a relatively small governmental responsibility and were generally provided by private, religious, charities. Times have changed, shouldn't our constitution?

Let's take our cherished health care system as one example. The Provinces claim that the Federal government provides about 16 cents out of every dollar spent on health care by the Provinces. The Fed's say this is nonsense, and they pony up half the cost. The Federal claim is certainly incorrect. I have seen numbers in the press that estimate the federal contribution for health care comes in around 30 - 35 %. Imagine you go for dinner with your friend. He's a bit broke and you agree to let him pay only 30% of the final bill. How would you feel if he claimed the right to order all the dishes and drinks? That's effectively what the Federal government is doing with with the CHP (Canadian Health Plan).

The Provinces provide a range of services to their citizens that were largely a second thought for those who signed the BNA act. The Federal government has the preeminent taxing ability in the nation, and yet most of the public services that Canadians rely upon are provided by Provincial and Municipal governments. Perhaps it's time for a serious reduction in the role and scope of the Federal government in Canadians life.

What is interesting is the perception that even rasing this as an issue is somehow beyond the pale, and fodder for attack adds. If we're going to get into a nasty argument, complete with name calling, let's make it about something important.

2005-12-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

Jack Layton's Policy Proposals for Canada's Aboriginals:

Yesterday, Jack Layton (NDP) outlined the highlights of an NDP government's policy on relations with Canada's Native population. It's worth paying attention to, because if the Liberals are returned with a minority government they may need to enter into a formal coalition with the NDP. The NDP will be in a position to extract concessions from the Liberals and this may be one such area.

Relations with Canada's native population are an important issue, and one that will get more important. The native population is the fastest growing segment of the Canadian population. They are young, poor, overly incarcerated, and undereducated in comparison with the rest of the Canadian population. Furthermore, while there has been significant urban migration amongst the aboriginal population the majority live in rural, often isolated, and economically unviable, locations. Make no mistake, this is going to be a front burner issue for any Canadian political leader for some time to come.

Credit goes to Mr. Layton for being the first leader in this campaign to address this issue. Unfortunately there is very little to recommend his policy proposals. His proposals are: 1) Recognize the Canadian government's responsibility for the residential school fiasco, and have the Prime minister issue a formal apology on behalf of all Canadians. Thanks, but since I didn't even get to Canada until 1968 he can save the apology on my behalf. The best part about this proposal is it doesn't cost anything. 2) Create a commission to report back to Parliament on the progress on land claim negotiations. Gotta love socialists - lets set up a committee. What'll it do? Report back! How about this - why don't we save the resources and put them into the land claim negotiations themselves? You know aim at getting results. We can direct the auditor general to report on negotiation progress. 3)Developing economies in native communities. Realistically, this is a non-starter. Unless the reserve land sits on top of significant mineral wealth, or the population returns to a traditional way of life, there is very little economic hope for the isolated reserve communities. There is only so much demand for fly in fishing camps, and hunting guides. That coupled with the rapid population increase means that realistically the future for most young natives will be in cities. 4) Promises to deal with native over representation in prison, and under representation in post-secondary education. Motherhood statement. Who can oppose that?

The best part of the press conference was when Smilin' Jack was asked what his proposal would cost. A fair question. Without a stammer, or blush, Jack said the cost estimates would be available later in the campaign. God that's refreshing. It must have been the heyday of the welfare state back in the 1970's when a politician was able to make a campaign promise without having to bother figuring out what it might cost and how they might pay for it. I had one of those '70's flash backs, pulled out my earth shoes and rocked out to a little vintage Peter Frampton.

Good for Jack raising the issue in the first place. Too bad he decided to stand on motherhood statements. Worse still, consider Jack's cavalier attitude to public finance when he and St. Paul climb into government together. The NDP has never found a problem that can't be solved by throwing a few billion at it. Good thing the Supreme court has legalized group sex - the next parliament will have some very interesting couplings, and I think someone's going to get screwed.

2005-12-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

A couple of thoughts on Quebec:

There was an interesting article in today's Globe and Mail on the success the PQ has had recruiting and appealing to Quebec's allophone voters in recent years. The last time Quebec immigrants came up in the context of separatism a visibly drunk Jacques Parizeau was blaming them and the Jews for the defeat of the last referendum.

Well times have changed. The prevailing assumption was that a desire for separation would never take serious hold amongst non-native Quebecois. The thinking was that as Quebec accepted more and more immigrants to maintain its population the appeal of separatism would melt away.

Wrong-o. The separatists have worked hard and diligently to win allophones over to their cause, and to paraphrase the Globe article - the Quebec brand has more appeal than the Canada brand (particularly amongst younger allophones). Short of Quebec Premiere Jean Charest pulling a miracle out of his ass in the next Quebec election (or PQ leader Andre Boisclaire resuming his fondness for coke), the PQ will win the next provincial election. And there will be another referendum (on another vague question), and this one might just be successful.

So what does that have to do with this election? Well those of us in the ROC (rest of Canada), may want to give some consideration to the question of which party, and which party leader, would be best equipped to assist the Federal forces contest another referendum; and which party, and leader, might be best if the worst case scenario materializes.

Coincidentally, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper was in Quebec today, where he announced that as Prime minister he would devolve more power to Quebec (and other provinces - yeah!), and permit Quebec more independent international representation (i.e. they could participate in UNESCO - yawn). To be honest, I'm not sure this strategy will be very successful - after all, both of those policies would simply result in the Quebec government strengthening it's brand name at home, and help it further establish itself as a credible independent government abroad.

Still, we do know that given an honest, straight up, question (do you wish to end your relationship with the Canadian federation and become an independent nation?) the majority of Quebecers will never vote to separate. Once again, we will get the 'sovereignty association' question (do you wish to become an independent nation, but retain all the bells and whistles and benefits of remaining within Canada?). And this time, I think they'll go for it.

So who do you want to sit down at the negotiating table? Who will make sure Quebec accepts it's fair share of the national debt? Who will stand up to Quebec when the Cree in northern Quebec insist on remaining a part of Canada (over 95% voted to do this during the last referendum)? Who will protect Labradour's borders (maps in Quebec school books show labradour as being a part of Quebec). Who will be most likely to tell them to go piss up a rope when they insist that they wish to use the Canadian currency, but also want representation on the board of the Bank of Canada? Who will, politely, but firmly, close the Canadian Armed Forces bases in Quebec and take all of the weapons (I know, a tommy gun, and a first aid kit) back within the borders of a sovereign Canada?

It's no secret amongst my friends that I think Quebec would be happier (although not materially better off), and the ROC would be much better off, with an independent Quebec. It's time for them to go, now we simply need to think about the dissolution strategy.

I'm not sure any of the current crop of leaders is quite equipped to do this. Truth be told, when the time comes I want a hard eyed son of a bitch leading Canada, and protecting Canadian interests. None of our current leaders come close, but I think Harper will just have to do.

2005-12-18T12:12:00.000-08:00

Green Party Platform Growing in Thin Soil:

I had great hopes for the Green party defending generally free market policies without the religious baggage of the Conservatives. As promoters of free market economics have often pointed out, the best way to defend the environment is to find a way to price the cost of polluting it. The Green party of Canada is certainly open to this but after checking out their web site and campaign platform it proved to be quite disappointing.

You can check out the Green party's platform at http://greenparty.ca. I must warn you it is dangerously thin. They may be the only national political party promising to introduce legislation to ban road side zoos. I'm sure this is a critical issue for the animals in those zoos, but does anyone think this should make the top 100 issues in a campaign platform?

On the economy they favour ending federal subsidies for oil and gas exploration (yahoo - in general I'm not a big fan of government subsidies of any kind). They are for more wind power (unless you're a bird, who isn't?). They want to end federal subsidies for the Newfoundland seal hunt (happy Harp seals can be found clapping furiously for this policy). Again, should this even make it into a campaign platform?

There are some very disturbing and quite frankly disagreeable elements to their platform. On health care they are unequivocally opposed to any private provision of health care. How unequivocal? - they would encourage the government of Quebec to invoke the notwithstanding clause to avoid complying with the Supreme Court decision that ordered them to change their legislation and permit Quebecers to obtain private health insurance. Trust me guys, the Quebec government has no lessons to learn from anyone when it comes to invoking the notwithstanding clause in order to violate their citizens rights.

Also disturbing was their take on foreign policy. Basically they would like to see greater disengagement with our neighbours to the south. Specifically, they would be more critical of the US involvement in Iraq (better check the barn door on that one fella's - that horse is long gone). By the way, didn't they hold reasonably successful elections in Iraq this week? The Iraqi fellow who runs the news stand where I shop was certainly pretty pleased when he proudly showed me his ink stained finger. Additionally, they would press for the removal of all troops from Afghanistan, and replace them with an international force to supervise reconstruction. Now, the US was attacked by terrorists based in Afghanistan. They had U.N. authorization to attack Afghanistan. The job isn't quite finished there. Why would this be a foreign policy priority for us? There is nothing on trade, nothing on agricultural subsidies, nothing on who we should be sucking up to if we're going to shaft the US on a more regular basis. Their foreign policy part of the platform looks like Swiss cheese.

Quite frankly, their platform (and web site) looks like it was designed by a thirteen year old on a dare from his friends. If they were to lavish the same kind of attention on the environment that they've lavished on their election platform, we'd be living in a desert. These guys are not yet ready for prime time.

2005-12-17T10:21:00.000-08:00

Correction Supreme Court's same-sex ruling:

In the blog entry below I stated that the Supreme Court had ruled that the definition of marriage (restricting it to a man and a woman) would be unconstitutional. I was wrong.

The Supreme's refused to rule on that issue because they argued the proposed legislation to extend marriage to same sex couples made the issue irrelevant. They did, however, say that changing the definition to include same sex couples flowed from the principles of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Still, one doesn't need to psychic to figure out that if the definition was changed back, the Supreme's would, in all probability rule that change unconstitutional.

2005-12-16T12:17:00.000-08:00

No standing on Notwithstanding:

Does anybody know what colour the sky is in Stephen Harper's world? In last nights French language leadership debate Mr. Harper solemnly declared that he would not invoke the notwithstanding clause to over rule a Supreme court decision upholding the right to marry of same sex couples.

Let's have a lesson in prezzel logic. 1) Canadian government sends a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada. It wants to know if it would be unconstitutional to change Canada's marriage laws to include same sex couple. 2) The Supreme Court says no, and indeed our existing law is discriminatory. 3) Government introduces legislation to recognize same sex marriage. So far so good - now things get weird.

4) Stephen Harper says he'd hold a free vote in the house of commons about returning marriage to the heterosexual definition. 5) Fairy dust time again - let's say those who oppose same sex marriage were successful in that vote? So the law is returned to it's original state. 6) That law is challenged before the Supreme Court - and guess what - Supreme Court rules that the hetero only law is discriminatory. 7) Now Stevie wonder has two choices (accede to the Supreme's ruling and change the law - again) or invoke the notwithstanding clause of the constitution and continue to violate the equity rights of gays and lesbians. Well - now he's said he won't invoke the notwithstanding clause.

So can anyone tell me what Stevie wonder is thinking? Why would he waste the governments time, resources, and energy in an effort doomed to fail? Could he be pandering to the religious fundamentalists (of all religious stripes)? Why bother? The Jesus freaks aren't about to start voting liberal. Go ahead Stevie, piss 'em off and drop the same-sex marriage stuff already.

2005-12-16T12:07:00.000-08:00

$1.75:

Nope - it's not a rap artist. It's what your vote is worth in the next election. Every political party that surpasses 2% of the popular vote will be rewarded with that handsome amount for you taking the trouble to go to the voting booth and vote for them. Admittedly it may not seem like much but those almost-twoonies have a way of adding up. This was one of Jean Chretien's last legislative initiatives. He was trying to reduce the influence of corporate (and union) money in the electoral system. Subsequently, political parties would receive money from Elections Canada based on the popular vote they receive.

This means that even though the lowly Green Party can't get a seat at the debate table, with 6% of the popular vote it stands to pocket enough money to begin to make it competitive. I'll be writing on the Green's in a future blog entry, but for the time being fiscally conservative voters who are cheesed off with the religious fundamentalists in the Conservative party, might want to give these guys a sniff.

Furthermore, anyone tempted to engage in Buzz Hargrove endorsed strategic voting might want to think again. By voting for the least worse party (instead of the party you would like to see elected), you deprive them of your vote on election day, and your $ 1.75 in funding. At a minimum if you don't vote for the party you really support, make sure you send them $ 1.75 after the election.

2005-12-15T09:39:00.000-08:00

Election debate timing:

This weekend many, many, people are holding Christmas parties (it's the last weekend before Christmas). Coincidentally, the only pre-christmas leadership debate, in English, is taking place on Friday night. Like many English speaking Canadians I'll be at a Christmas party, and will miss the debate.

I love conspiracy theories (although I rarely believe them), but the timing of this debate stinks. The party leaders and their representatives (in conjunction with the Canadian media) set the date for the debates and the format. Why on earth would the four leaders choose the Friday night for their first English language debate (What do they have against Mon., Tues, or Wed.)? You'd almost think they didn't want anyone to see it?

Wait a minute - maybe they don't? After all - it's a rerun of the last debate 18 months ago.

Martin - still no compelling reason for wanting to govern Canada, except how scary the guy with the 'hidden' agenda is.

Harper - same policy platform - but please note my new haircut, and how unscary I've become in the last 18 months.

Duceppe - Third verse is the same as the first - They're still for separatism, but vote for us because we'd like all of the seats in Quebec.

Smilin' Jack Layton - same policy (well, now he likes the Clarity act - guess he finally noticed those separatist guys sitting next to them in the House of Commons). Vote NDP, vote for the perma smile.

Come to think of it, I'll probably drink less at the Christmas party than I would have if I'd stayed home and watched the debate. Perhaps they should dub this the 'health care debate'.