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Ever wonder how President Trump is doing in the eyes of Asian Americans?  My guess is no, but I can tell you anyway.

According to a Zogby Analytics poll taken in September, 31% of Americans of Asian heritage approve of their president's performance.  This is good news for Trump, given only 18% of Asian Americans voted for him last year, according to exit poll data compiled by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who surveyed 14,000 Asian Americans as they left polling stations in 2016.  According to the AALDEF, Trump did best with Vietnamese Americans (32%) and Filipino Americans (27%), but overall won less of the Asian vote than both Mitt Romney (21%) and John McCain (23%).

How is Prime Minister Trudeau doing in the eyes of Asian Canadians?  Beats me.  How many voted for him in 2015?  Who the hell knows!

Canada's leading polling firms collect a distressingly small amount of data when surveying Canadian opinions on politics.  Despite Canada's increasingly multicultural nature, categories of race, faith, and culture are almost entirely ignored.

Ekos sorts Canadian respondents into columns based on their geographic "region," gender, age, party support, education level, and "social class," and occasionally three broad immigration categories (not born in Canada, one or more parent not born in Canada, or both parents born in Canada).  They used to track whether respondents attended "religious services" either "frequently" or "never," too, but this doesn't appear to be done much anymore.

Angus Reid polls, at their most detailed, sort replies based on province, gender, age, party support, household income, and education, and sometimes whether they live in rural or urban areas as well.  Ipsos does geography, income, and — randomly enough — whether or not respondents have children in the home.

In addition to the standard foursome of age, gender, region, and partisanship, Forum Research used to occasionally insert two ethno-cultural sorting mechanisms, though the laughably anachronistic nature of their categories may explain why they're rarely seen anymore.  Their "religion" column, for instance, consisted of four flavors of Christianity  (Protestant, Evangelical, Catholic, and "other Christian,") with the rest asked to identify as either "non-Christian," or "none."  Their "ethnicity" categories offered three different ways to say "white" ("Canadian," "British, Scots, Irish, or Welsh," and "Other European") with everyone else having to exist in the binary of either "Non-European" or "First Nations."

Data on how Canadians voted is even worse.  We not only lack numbers on votes by ethnicity, but age, income, political opinion, and everything else as well, since exit polling is almost never done in Canada.

Exit polls, in which voters are asked immediately after leaving the church basement or grade school gymnasium who they are, who they voted for, and why, are the most accurate way to assemble a broad and detailed profile of the electorate's composition and feelings.  Unlike telephone polls taken some significant period of time before or after an election, on-the-spot exit polls are far less tainted by dishonest answers, and have the virtue of being pulled from a sample of people who actually voted, not merely had opinions.  The American gold standard is Edison Research's National Election Pool (NEP), whose election night data, gathered by over 3,000 workers in all 50 states, ("the largest single-day research project in the world," they brag) is used by all major American journalists and social scientists.  They hardly have a monopoly, however — as mentioned, groups as specific as the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund often compile their own exit polls as well, in order to offer the public more detailed, or esoteric, analysis.

Why exit polling isn't done in Canada has its roots in the different way votes are tallied in the two countries.  On election night, America doesn't have a centralized vote gathering entity like Elections Canada spitting out riding-by-riding results quickly and efficiently, so the American practice of exit polling originated as a shortcut for reporters to figure out who won without having to deal with a patchwork of regional authorities releasing counts on their own terms.  Exit polling's secondary use as a source of demographic data has been a casualty of Canada's divergence.

The end result is that much of what Canadian pundits, and indeed much of the Canadian public at large, think they know about Canadian politics is inferred from rather weak data, both in  accuracy and detail.  When the typical Canadian, be he at the coffee shop or the Toronto Star, speaks with great assurance about the way this or that group of Canadian votes or thinks, or why this or that politician won or lost — especially if their assertions involve any variable of race or religion — they probably have no idea what they're talking about, and are instead relying on lazy hunches about what "feels right" based on their own biases and stereotypes.

As Canadian politics comes to revolve more around questions of identity — the sorting and distribution of power, resources, and cultural authority amongst a diverse populace making contesting claims — the need to understand how those identities intersect with political opinion is more essential than ever.  Without someone willing to provide the facts, however, our most critical democratic debates seemed doomed to occur in darkness.

Written by J.J. McCullough

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


The Ontario Progressive Conservative leader has released a map for his election campaign that dovetails with broadly-held principles

In October, I helped end the long-running discussion of who Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown is.  A month later, Brown has helped end the long-running discussion of what he stands for.

Last weekend's Progressive Conservative policy convention in Toronto was highlighted by the release of a 78-page document entitled the People's Guarantee.  Designed like a high-gloss magazine, it includes 147 promises that Brown and his party will campaign on in next June's provincial election.

Here's the real kicker.  The People's Guarantee includes five major commitments that Brown must implement in his first term as premier or he won't seek a second mandate.

The list is as follows:

  • 5 per cent income tax reduction for the middle class (over four years);
  • significant funding for mental health services;
  • 12 per cent reduction on monthly hydroelectric bills;
  • 75 per cent refund for child care services (based on family income);
  • the implementation of a Trust, Integrity and Accountability Act.

As expected, the reaction to Brown's plan has been all over the map.

Some blue Tories, or right-leaning conservatives, are screaming bloody murder because they don't see significant fiscal accountability.  Some red Tories, or left-leaning conservatives, think he didn't go far enough in defending government's roles and responsibilities.  Some Liberals and progressives have mocked it, and warn that a hidden agenda will appear if Brown becomes premier.

It's also easy to cherry-pick some PC policies that are imperfect:

  • A carbon tax would be less than desirable, for instance, although the expensive Liberal plan for the environment has been far worse.
  • Uploading the Toronto Transit Commission's subways could be costly, but it would help expand and increase ridership and leave more money in city coffers to ensure better bus and streetcar service.
  • Matching Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's 10-year, $1.9-billion commitment to mental health funding could make some Ontario conservatives shudder, but our political movement isn't heartless.  It has always believed in helping those most vulnerable to better themselves and, in turn, better our society.

Nevertheless, Ontarians from all walks of life (including me) are quite content with his positions and strategies.

As a right-leaning conservative, I would have preferred a huge reduction in the size of government, bigger tax cuts, slashing away at wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars and chopping the bureaucracy at its kneecaps.

But these types of austerity measures, which were once useful tools for right-leaning parties, don't have the same appeal in today's political climate.  Politics has always been a game of ebbs and flows you have to keep pace with the ever-changing tastes and positions of voters.  Right now, they strongly lean toward a more balanced mandate between fiscal prudence and public spending and won't support parties and/or leaders who refuse to defend these stances.

Brown is, therefore, in a perfect position to take up this mantle.  His ideology is a blend of red Tory and blue Tory philosophies.  It enables him to take measured approaches to issues like responsible government, levels of taxation and funding of social programs.

That's exactly what the People's Guarantee is and stands for.  It's not "Liberal lite" or a "Say Anything" strategy, as some of Brown's critics have said.  It's a mesh of the PC leader's principles, the voters' principles and the province's principles.

Brown and the PCs have introduced a realistic plan for Ontario's political and economic future.

It's a vision that conservative luminaries like former Alberta premier Ralph Klein, former Ontario premier Mike Harris, and former Tory prime ministers Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper would have, and would still, approve of.

And, while they'll never admit it publicly, it's a vision that will give Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal government plenty of sleepless nights.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


The "ethical mire" that Bill Morneau has been plagued by is looking a bit threadbare, and yet every day, new attempts to keep this issue going are made.  The evidence of any wrongdoing is a further reach with every passing article, and we are now at the point where some journalistic outlets are inventing parliamentary procedure out of whole cloth in order to try and incriminate Morneau.  But how much longer than this realistically be sustained?

And make no mistake, the allegations get increasingly outrageous with each passing day.  This week, it's progressed to very carefully worded allegations that Morneau had engaged in insider trading with the suggestion that he sold Morneau Shepell shares a week before he announced tax changes that caused the stock market to drop by five percent, thus saving himself some $50,000.  Now, I say carefully worded because Pierre Polievre never did utter the words "insider trading," but just asked some very specific questions that linked a to b to c in such a way that that was the obvious insinuation, at which point the Conservatives flooded social media with lamentations that Morneau wouldn't answer the question (never mind that it was an obvious trap).  Poilievre also carefully timed his appearance in the Foyer afterward, waiting for most reporters to have left and when he had only a couple of minutes before needing to return to the chamber for a vote, so that he could carefully avoid spelling out his allegations (insisting that he wasn't going to speculate, never mind that it's exactly what he's doing) even when pressed by reporters.

Last week, the outrage was over this outsized concern that Morneau didn't consult the Ethics Commissioner before he tabled Bill C-27, which affects pensions in federally-regulated sectors.  Never mind that the news outlet invented this particular requirement the Ethics Commissioner not only never vets bills, but having her do so would violate both cabinet secrecy, and parliamentary privilege.  There's also the fact that when government bills are tabled, they're done so on behalf of cabinet as a whole, while the minister sponsors it as the minister for the reason that they have to answer for it on behalf of the department that the legislation affects not as an individual or out of personal interest.  If the minister were shuffled out of the portfolio, the new minister would be the new sponsor as the minister, not the individual.  And yet, the opposition who knows very well these parliamentary norms went on tirades for days as though Morneau not clearing the bill with the Commissioner was somehow this great violation of ethical norms.

These norms do not exist.  The procedure they are demanding is outside of parliamentary precedent.  The concerns around Bill C-27 themselves are largely overblown, since they don't solely benefit Morneau Shepell, nor do they demand any federally regulated business change their existing pension plan to a targeted benefit plan it merely gives then an option to do so (and as Morneau said in Question Period last week, it's not about existing defined benefit plans, but giving those private sector companies that don't have plans an option to create one for employees).  Of course, the fact that certain unions have tried to make this connection with Bill C-27 and Morneau's previous work on targeted benefit plans at Morneau Shepell as a way of discrediting a bill that they don't like doesn't make the allegations of a conflict of interest credible, but that doesn't stop either media outlets nor the opposition from framing these allegations in the most disingenuous way possible.

Even more dubious allegations come out daily, with constant attempts to link government contracts with Morneau Shepell many of them predating Morneau's election in 2015 as being somehow improper, never mind the legitimate procurement processes that go into establishing these contracts in the first place, but we're at the point where all anyone is doing is throwing things at the wall and hoping that something, anything sticks.

And this is really the part that is getting concerning about all of this is that nobody especially media outlets are stopping to think critically about each fresh allegation because there seems to be an interest in drawing blood and possibly taking down a minister of the Crown.  When presented with yet new allegations, we're not running them though a bullshit filter to say "hey, this doesn't really pass a smell test," while we're uncritically repeating every single utterance by critics that "this doesn't pass the smell test" as though each of those utterances had merit to them.  The vast majority of them don't, but that doesn't seem to get anyone to stop and think about it.  Each demand that the Ethics Commissioner investigate something is being treated as a major scandal, even though it's almost certain that there's nothing to find, or even that Mary Dawson will do anything more than her usual trick of reading her mandate and enabling legislation so narrowly that nothing falls under it (but that has as much to do with the legislation that MPs created and refuse to change, never mind how many times she asks them to do so).

With increasingly disingenuous and mendacious questions being asked day after day in QP, we should ask ourselves when is it time to take a step back from trying to constantly manufacture outrage over Morneau in the hopes of mortally wounding him?  The work of accountability is no longer getting done, as actual, real problems that the government should be addressing are falling to the wayside.  We had an Auditor General's report last week where virtually none of it was raised in QP, and the only chapter that was addressed was done so in a way to tie into yet another of the disingenuous questions around the Liberal Party's chief fundraiser.  How long can this particular farce carry on?  This outrage has been running on fumes for weeks now, and it's reliant on fiction to keep it going.  How is this any way to run a democracy?

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney Loonie Politics

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


All electoral reformers and fair voters' eyes are on British Columbia as they embark on a process that could potentially reform BC's electoral system just in time for the next provincial general election in 2021.

The BC NDP government has launched its How We Vote website.  British-Columbians are being asked for suggestions on the question (or questions) that will be on a referendum ballot about reforming the voting system.  In its consultation process, the BC government is also asking citizens for their input about what kind of electoral system they would like to have.

Just like the Federal Liberals, BC New Democrats promised electoral reform and were elected partly because of that promise.  Unlike the Trudeau Liberals, the BC NDP are moving forward on the issue, having already introduced legislation calling for a mail-in referendum.

B.C. voters rejected electoral reform in two previous referendums.  Can a third one be the charm?  Electoral reform referendums were held in 2005 and in 2009, but the changes to the system were not approved by voters.  In 2005, 57.7 percent of voters favoured adopting a new system, but the threshold for that referendum was 60 percent of votes cast.  The next one will be held by the end of November 2018.  This time around, for a reform to be successful, the threshold would require a 50 per cent plus one margin.  A much easier target, but one going against the precedent.

So predictably, the Opposition Liberals are opposing the move.  They are claiming this is all about the NDP rewarding the Green party for propping them up.  Liberal MLA Doug Clovechok even went so far as saying this move was undemocratic:"Can you say, tyranny of the majority?  That's exactly what proportional representation under Bill 6 represents."

Yes, of course, as opposed to the tyranny of the minority, which is what you get when a majority of voters vote against a party who still manage to form a majority government, thanks to the distortion of the current first-past-the-post electoral system.  In fact, in the past five B.C. elections, only one political party formed government after receiving more than 50 per cent of the votes.

One of the most persuasive arguments pushed by PR opponents is that moving to a system of proportional representation will put more power in cities at the expense of the rural voters.  Yet, under the first-past-the-post system, one party can sweep every single seat in any region, leaving no representation for voters of other parties, no matter how sizeable their  numbers.

True, there needs to be a way to ensure that the voice of the electorate can be represented in a more diverse fashion while keeping a fair regional balance.  If they can successfully do this, BC will become the first province to move away from first-part-the-post.

You can count on the NDP and the Greens to campaign hard in favour of proportional representation.  The Liberals will be campaigning against change, a difficult task.  But they are terrified that PR is going to make it extremely difficult for them to get back into power.  The fact that 300,000 Liberal voters aren't currently represented in the legislature by someone they voted for won't sway the party: they know that with electoral reform, the bigger prize is slipping away from them for the foreseeable future.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney Loonie Politics

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


t should be the easiest job in politics to earn more trust than Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne especially from members of the opposing party.  Having developed a rather spotty record in this area, Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown had the good sense to shift the conversation to policy with the release of the "People's Guarantee" at this weekend's party convention.  To the regret of many, we have no reason to expect a matching elbow.

Taking a cue from former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the PCs are eager to highlight five promises in particular: a 22.5% middle-class income tax cut, a 75% child care expense refund, a 12% hydro bill reduction, the "largest mental health commitment in Canadian provincial history," and new ethics legislation.  These five points are easy for most voters to remember, and relevant to a wide enough swath of them.  For more detail-oriented voters, there's much more to discuss.  Here are the best and worst of what the PCs have to offer for 2018:

THE BEST

Honourable Mention: "allow first responders to save pets trapped in hot cars without fear of punishment" (p. 69).

This is a relatively minor policy that will spark little disagreement.  It earns extra points for recognizing that people who neglect their pets, like people who neglect their children, deserve a smashed window or two.

#5: "mandate that all new elementary schools must include some form of child care spaces, be that all day or before- and after-school care facilities" (p. 33).

As the platform notes, 100,000 new child care spaces are already on track, but "they will not necessarily be located in the most convenient locations for children and parents, such as elementary schools."  Bringing these spaces together ensures continuity and convenience for both parents and children.

#4: "continue the expansion of the financial literacy pilot program into all secondary schools" (p. 70).

Sadly, all "they sure do need it" jokes have been exhausted, so we'll move on.  This would expand the pilot program that integrated "financial literacy, entrepreneurship skills, digital literacy, and career/life planning" into 29 schools province-wide.  By setting a goal to launch this program in all Ontario high schools, the PCs are filling a long-running curricular gap that will benefit every student.

#3: "dismantle cap-and-trade" (p. 73); "opt in to the federal carbon price backstop" and "return 100% of carbon price revenue back to Ontario families and taxpayers in the form of corresponding tax relief, as verified by the Auditor General" (p. 74).

If you're going to implement carbon pricing, this is the way to do it: by collecting the revenue in the most efficient way possible, and by holding yourself accountable for promised revenue neutrality.  Diehard carbon tax opponents won't be pleased, but two promised marginal income tax rate reductions (p. 35) may lower their defences.

#2: "introduce a new Ontario Child Care Refund to pay up to 75% of a family's child care expenses, or up to $6,750 per child (p. 31).

Delivery matters.  This refund is based on total household income, not the income of the lower-earning spouse; it will be delivered in monthly installments, instead of at the end of the tax year; and it ensures that lower-income households get the greatest benefit.  And because only child care-related expenses are eligible, there's less opportunity for any "beer and popcorn" cracks from the Liberals.

#1: "$1.9 billion to build a comprehensive mental health system" (p. 41).

$1.9 billion for an entirely new healthcare infrastructure sounds quite low.  That said, the PCs are correct that the "fragmented" services that are currently available are inadequate for a broad spectrum of mental health needs that cost $51 billion every year.  Their emphasis on suicide prevention counselling in Indigenous and Northern communities is especially valuable.

THE WORST

Honourable Mention: the document itself.

Who let this thing go to the printer?  It's rife with punctuation errors, typographical inconsistencies, misplaced graphics and unreadable text.  I'm surprised I didn't see the word "blurst" anywhere.

#5: "call on the federal government to match the new provincial subway funding commitment" (p. 54).

It's easy to fulfill a promise to ask another level of government for money.  It's also easy to blame that level of government for a project under your jurisdiction failing to move forward.  If a PC government wants responsibility for expanding subways, they'll have to take responsibility for paying for it.

#4: "The Scarborough Subway Extension should be built immediately" (p. 52).

The PCs are correct that Toronto needs more subways.  The Scarborough extension is not one of them.

#3: "bring back a Children's Arts and Fitness Tax Credit" (p. 32); "introduce a $500 Winter Tire Tax Credit" (p. 55).

Past studies have shown that tax credits for extracurricular activities for children often benefit upper-income families the most, and have little overall impact on participation in those activities.  As for the winter tire tax credit, insured drivers already enjoy discounted rates for their winter tire purchases.  Which brings me to . . .

#2: "eliminate geographic discrimination for auto insurance" (p. 55).

The platform cites a Globe and Mail article explaining that average rates in a particular area go up depending on such factors as traffic congestion, accidents, thefts, total numbers of claims, and claims costs and that good drivers will pay lower premiums no matter where they live.  Where's the discrimination?

#1: "distribute the remaining grocery store licenses and 12 pack LCBO allotments immediately" (p. 50).

That's it.  That's literally all the PCs have to say about the way we buy and sell liquor in Ontario.

Unbelievable.

Photo Credit: Toronto Sun

Written by Jess Morgan

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Canada and Cuba already have an established trade relationship, as do Mexico and Cuba, and Canada and Mexico

It's no secret that the North American Free Trade Agreement's future is in jeopardy.  But if NAFTA collapses, what will Ottawa do next?

NAFTA is in trouble largely due to U.S. President Donald Trump, who once called it the "worst trade deal in the history of the world."  And Trump's America First plan, rooted in economic nationalism, makes it difficult to promote trade liberalization.

At the same time, Canada and Mexico have their own interests to protect.

Tensions have been building for NAFTA's other trade partners.  Former Mexican president Vicente Fox recently told CTV News Channel's Richard Madan that he hoped Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wouldn't betray them "like Judas."  Fox also said of Trudeau: "He should open his eyes because sometimes what I get from him is that he will protect Canada even by sacrificing Mexico."

Fox's hyperbolic statements are legendary.  Nevertheless, it makes you wonder if Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is also concerned that the trilateral agreement could evolve into a bilateral deal.

Remember, Trump stood alongside Trudeau in Washington last month and said, "I think Justin understands this, if we can't make a deal, it'll be terminated and that will be fine.  They're going to do well, we're going to do well."  Note the one country missing from this equation that will do well, too.

Canada will maintain a strong trade arrangement with the U.S.  That's a given.

But what if NAFTA collapses?

The Trudeau Liberals seem to basically agree with the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper that trade shouldn't be solely focused on the U.S. and that our economic interests should be diversified.  The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union is moving forward.  And while the Trans-Pacific Partnership recently experienced turbulence (thanks to our PM), a partial agreement has been signed.

The federal government may also choose to build new trade relationships or enhance existing deals.  In particular, with Cuba.

Ever since then-U.S. President Barack Obama started the process toward reconciliation with this communist country in 2008, many western democracies have been intrigued by this economic possibility.  The hope is Cuba would ultimately embrace capitalism and the free market, and turn into a strategic ally.

But while communist and socialist parties have learned over time to accept some capitalist principles, they still don't completely accept that their countries should also move towards liberal democratic values.  Even if Cuba followed China's lead by mixing authoritarian political views with a market-based economy, real political and economic change won't occur until they embrace democratic elections, human rights, and individual liberties and freedoms.

Nevertheless, foreign companies will be encouraged to invest in Cuba, creating more jobs, goods and services.  The Cuban leadership can, therefore, keep promoting communist and/or socialist principles on the island, while triumphantly showing steps are being made toward more free enterprise.

For the Cuban hierarchy, it's the best of both worlds.

Trudeau would relish playing the dramatic role of the white knight who helped tame the stubborn Cuban communist beast.  His family's long-standing relationship with Fidel and Raúl Castro would be seen as a political advantage.  Progressives also love the fact he eulogized the former as a mythical working class champion who passionately defended universal health care and state-run education, even though he was nothing more than a brutal dictator.

Plus, Canada and Cuba already have an established trade relationship.  More than $1 billion in annual merchandise is traded between the two countries, creating jobs and economic opportunities.

Imagine if Canada enhanced its trade relationship with its Caribbean partner and added Mexico to the mix.  We already do business with both nations, and the Mexicans import Cuban rum, cigars, seafood and clothing.

Could NAFTA's collapse lead to the birth of a Canadian-Caribbean-Latin American Free Trade Agreement?

These days, anything's possible.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney Loonie Politics

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


As the government's bill to legalize recreational cannabis winds up debate in the House of Commons and prepares to head over to the Senate for some requisite sober second thought, the bill's sponsor in the Upper Chamber is looking to shake-up how the bill gets debated.  The problem is that the proposal is a bit overzealous for the nature of the bill.

Independent senator Tony Dean has proposed that the bill get the same kind of treatment that the assisted dying bill did having the relevant ministers before the whole Senate in Committee of the Whole to answer questions about it from all senators, followed by a managed debate process, which is largely unlike how the Senate tends to operate otherwise.  Said proposal is unlikely to get traction because the Conservatives don't appear to be in favour of it, and I suspect that he won't be able to get the Senate Liberals on board either, but the whole thing does give me a bit of pause because it's indicative of some problematic attitudes that are developing amongst newer senators.

But let's start by deconstructing what exactly is being proposed here, because already there are some pretty significant differences between how Bill C-14 on assisted dying went down, and the current cannabis legalization bill, C-45, is proceeding.  For starters, the whole pre-legislative process didn't happen in nearly the same way.  For C-14, there was a joint committee with MPs and Senators who dug into the issue and presented a report to the government, and once the bill was tabled, there was definitely a government response to what they had heard.  With C-45, the initial consultative process was done with a panel headed by former Liberal deputy prime minister Anne McClelland, and it didn't have the same parliamentary input.  Likewise, when C-14 was before the House of Commons, a Senate committee engaged in pre-study, which aims to do its work before the Commons committee has wrapped so that Senate suggestions for amendment can be implemented at that stage.  That did not happen with C-45, so already the ways in which the study of the bill could be hastened have been limited.

A major factor with C-14 was the fact that there was a looming deadline from the Supreme Court of Canada to change the law a deadline that had been extended once already, and it wasn't likely that the courts were going to grant another one, given that they set a deadline with the intent to light a fire under Parliament in order to get them to move on it something that the previous government wasn't motivated to do in the lead-up to the election.  Why it's important to note that deadline is because they had determined that there was a violation of Canadian's Charter Rights in being denied access to medical assistance in dying, which is certainly not the case with recreational cannabis.  The only deadline here is a political one that the government wants this in place by July 1st (despite the objection of some provinces), but that doesn't necessitate the Senate rushing a bill through the process.

And then there's the real crux of why Bill C-14 required a particularly different process for contemplation by the Senate, which is that it was a deeply moral issue for most Canadians, and parliamentarians were no different.  Senators in particular were motivated by this issue because it did seem to be a little closer to home for many of them, and that meant that there was going to be a need for a process that would allow for more buy-in from the chamber as a whole, rather than the usual study and drill-down that happens at committee not that every intervention in the Chamber was stellar, mind you.  But the fundamental issue itself under consideration with C-14 was vastly different than the issue with C-45 no matter what how you may feel about either recreational drugs or the ongoing criminalization of youth for simple possession.

Part of the problem with the process of C-14 is that it has set up a lot of terrible expectations on the part of the new senators and indeed, the general public who don't normally pay attention to what goes on in the Senate, and who got a glimpse when they decided to televise the appearance of the two ministers during Committee of the Whole.  We keep hearing, over and over again, from Senator Peter Harder in his attempts to bend the rules of the Senate to his way of thinking that C-14 was this pinnacle of achievement that needs to be kept as the Platonic ideal of Senate debate and that's a mistake.  What happened with C-14 was in response to a very particular set of circumstances that will probably never be replicated again, and people need to keep that in mind.  It's an exception and not the rule for a reason.

In an interview with the Hill Times, Dean expressed frustration with the way in which debates happen in the Senate, where often there are only one or two speakers before the debate gets adjourned for another day, and on it goes until debate collapses.  But trying to fit a management approach to debate in the Senate is ultimately a bad idea because it erodes the individual freedoms of senators in favour of the control of a very small group of actors who decide on how things will be managed, and it's why I oppose Harder's proposal for a Senate business committee to manage debate going forward.  There are ways to speed debate along, and to limit the adjournments, and he could move a motion to that effect, or have Senator Harder invoke time allocation, if he thinks he can get the votes to make it happen.  But aside from that, there is simple negotiation between the various caucuses in the Chamber to set timelines it used to happen on a frequent enough basis, before Harder came in, and everyone I've talked to has said that he tends to eschew the actual negotiation part instead of presenting wish lists as to when he wants bills passed, and it's partly why there is a growing backlog of bills on the Senate's Order Paper.  If Dean wants to establish timelines, he's free to negotiate with the other caucuses to do so.  But trying to replicate the C-14 process is unnecessary, overzealous, and a sign that he still is maturing in his role as a senator. 

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


The Internet thinks I want to see chess videos.  Which eccentrically is true, although it has been many years since I was actively mediocre at the board.  But it also believes I want to see Ontario government infrastructure ads, which suggests a misreading of the situation almost as gruesome as that of most governments.

The particular ad that got my attention, and my goat, is a slick little "Building Ontario" number that says "Infrastructure is more than just construction" then touts a new school, public transit and a hospital.  "It's how we build a strong community."  And you'll notice, at least if you're me, that Rashid Nezhmetdinov was an unappreciated attacking genius.

No, sorry, that was the chess video.  What you'll notice in that ad is that everything mentioned, in a soothing voice to cheery music, is governmental.  Evidently we don't build strong communities by volunteering, building a business or raising our own kids.  We do it through the state.

The ad doesn't argue these things.  It assumes them.  And that mentality could be building trouble because the state seems to be stretched well beyond its capacities without having any inkling that it is so, especially given a John Ivison column in Tuesday's National Post suggesting Canada could be in the early stages of a tax revolt.  He says an unexpected $2 billion drop in income tax revenue in Ontario "may have yielded the tax equivalent of a butterfly moving its wings in one jurisdiction and causing a tornado in another."

The Ontario numbers Ivison cites suggest that our governments are starting to slide down the back side of the Laffer Curve.  Yes, it's back, despite the chattering classes' persistent efforts to banish it through ridicule and denunciation, as though it were merely a matter of attitude whether excessive tax rates reduce revenue by stifling the economy and prompting active measures to avoid them.

Ivison argues that combined federal-provincial tax rates exceeding 50% in six provinces including Ontario and Quebec mark a significant psychological point beyond which avoiding the excessive tax burden becomes a priority.  But if so, it affects more than accounting.  It affects people's attitude toward the state, which for far too many Canadians has for far too long been one of indulgence.

Politicians are fond of the phrase "their fair share" when it comes to taxes.  But they never say what anyone's "fair share" is.  And more than 50 cents on a dollar doesn't strike almost anyone as fair, especially when it's them.  When the government takes more than half of every extra dollar you earn, it is not just hard to find the motivation given that you are probably already working hard and possibly also taking considerable risks in pursuit of income.  It also makes you feel abused and unappreciated.

For that reason, if there really is a tax revolt coming, it won't just affect taxes.  It will affect the ability of governments to spend, directly by reducing the money available and indirectly by reducing public intellectual and political support for ever-expanding government.

Such a development would bring serious trouble for our political class, because I see little evidence that they can even grasp the proposition that enough is enough, let alone that they could act on it.  The same day that Ivison's article appeared, a bewildered New York Times commentary on Germany's political paralysis approvingly quoted a German analyst lamenting the absence of a grand vision when "the German economy is thriving, meaning that the new government will be in the enviable position of having the financial means to develop projects and undertake reforms like never before."

Like never before?  Really?  An expansion of the state on a far grander scale even than from 1960 through 1990?  That's what you think current EU circumstances call for?  Yet which of our political parties does not also offer a grand vision of increased public activity and spending?

I do not think there is a province in Canada, or a nation in the West, where there is serious political or intellectual discussion about reducing the size of the state anything like the intellectual ferment we saw in the 1980s, however disappointing the results of Brian Mulroney, Mike Harris, or even Ralph Klein, Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan were in practice.  Except perhaps from a few outlying think tanks and weirdo journalists who spend their spare time watching old Mikhail Tal games.

Finance ministries and political war rooms may brush off this temporary dip in revenue.  The programs are beneficial and popular, and hence sustainable economically and politically.  But what if they're not?  A recent C.D. Howe Institute study saying "Canada's greying workforce will spell big fiscal trouble for future taxpayers" estimated that, among other things, "the present value of the unfunded liability for age-related social spending — amounts to $4.5 trillion."  It went on to make some prudent suggestions for staving off disaster which you can find on their website.  But are governments listening, or do they have their fingers in their ears?

If Ivison is right, this surprising Ontario fiscal news is just the beginning, and people in government should be making plans for the scenario in which revenue starts falling because the state is too big.  I don't ask them to like it.  But if it does happen and they're not ready, it will be checkmate, for them and us.  And it won't be fun to watch.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney Loonie Politics

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


The strategic brilliance of the staff and faculty of Wilfrid Laurier University really must be commended.  They've managed to turn a low-grade teaching moment into an international free-speech nuclear showdown.

You see, what happened was teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd showed a TVO clip with a debate about gender-neutral pronouns that included University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson.  Someone complained to the university and Shepherd was reprimanded under the WLU's gendered and sexual violence policy.  Then she was dragged before a panel of faculty and raked over the coals for nearly an hour.

On that panel was her supervising professor Nathan Rambukkana, another professor, Herbert Pimlott, and Adria Joel, the acting manager of gendered violence prevention and support at the university.

The panel, led by Rambukkana, started by assuming Shepherd was one of Peterson's students (she never was) and continued in fairly quick order until Hitler was dragged in.  The faculty show that they have plenty of familiarity with the popular figures on the dingbat right, by naming several.*  The worst part is when Rambukkana says, quite earnestly, Shepherd was in violation of bill C-16, which was the absurd bullshit conspiracy Peterson himself was peddling months before.

We know exactly how things went because Shepherd recorded the meeting.  You can hear the whole thing for yourself over at the National Post.  Naturally, WLU and Rambukkana decided that, once everyone knew exactly what happened in that room, they should apologize.  So they did.

But by waiting so long, they allowed the public debate on their actions to activate the worst parts of our society.

Take our friend Peterson.  Here's a guy raking in tens of thousands of dollars every month built initially on his idea that he wouldn't use the preferred pronouns of LGBTQ people.  In essence, he was being asshole, unwilling to be even halfway decent to the people around him, and indignant that people would ask him to**.  And in the way these things go, instead of calling him what he is — which, again, is an asshole — and left him to blather in a corner, he was turned into some kind of martyr for free speech when UofT mulled censuring him.  This is, of course, the worst thing you can do.

But we keep repeating it.  This strategy of going bananas every time he shows up is only working for Peterson, not against him.  The intention behind his censure was good — he was being cruel to vulnerable people — but the outcome was bad — it made him famous.

So this latest episode of a massive faculty overreaction at Laurier played right into the narrative that he's built up around himself.

If one of the adults had stopped for a even a second to see how far this thing had gone from reality, none of this would be happening.  If her professor had decided to handle the complaint like a reasonable person and just talked to his TA about the complaint, he could have avoided the kangaroo court, and likely solved the problem right there.

In his apology, Rambukkana, goes on at great length to say how much better he could have done.  But he also takes a lot of time to tell Shepherd what she did wrong though the process.  As if that moment was now, in an open letter, to make the points he should have made weeks ago, in private.

The initial failure here was a teaching assistant playing a clip in a seminar that seems to have been outside what the course called for.  As people with actual experience as TAs have pointed out, Shepherd was going beyond her responsibilities by adding her own material in.  How far is up for debate, but the clip she showed wasn't part of the professor's plan.  Fair enough.

If some adult at the university — say, her designated mentor â€” had just said, "Hey, you shouldn't do it that way next time, one of your students found it very troubling," this whole thing could have been avoided.  It would be a story of a professor-in-training learning a teaching lesson, which isn't a story at all.

It doesn't matter if the TA made the first mistake, the people who knew better have the responsibility to do right by everyone.  Instead, they decided to railroad Shepherd, and not back down until massive public pressure made them realize they were in the wrong.

Now the wet-brained right has picked up on the whole sorry tale.  And after finding a new martyr, they've predictably turned some of their rage onto the very people the faculty were trying to protect.

Instead of a story of bonkers international free-speech-crushing university bureaucracy, it would have been a story of a professor doing his goddamned job.  Instead of waiting until a full recording came out to apologize, one of the adults could have realized they were being absurd.  Instead of feeding an insatiable army of trolls, there would have been nothing.

But none of that happened, because nothing makes sense anymore.  The right gets to claim its won another argument and the left fights about who's most wronged, and the world burns a little more.

Great work, everyone.  Really great.

***

* In at least one instance, Pimlott drops Hitler, Peterson, and Richard Spencer in quick, rambling succession.  It's one of the most hilarious examples of academic wordsalad I've ever seen, so transcendental it can only be read as comedy.

** As @moebius_strip, a post-secondary math instructor, put it to me: "In the midst of the current controversy, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that a post-secondary instructor is probably in the top quintile if they can remember all their students' names by the end of the term.…I should emphasize that this stuff literally never comes up in my classes.  I don't need to know my students' gender ID.  I address them all using the pronoun 'you.'"

Photo Credit: Wilfrid Laurier University

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


A story out of CBC Saskatoon over the weekend made me despair for the state of our democracy once more, which is about how partisans of all stripes are flocking to buy Saskatchewan Party memberships in order to vote in the upcoming leadership race to replace Brad Wall.  After all, this is not only about who will lead the party, but it's also about having a direct hand in choosing who is going to be the next premier of the province, and who wouldn't want to take part in that?  The problem?  It's utterly corrosive to our system of democracy in this country.

To be clear, this isn't a Saskatchewan problem.  It's been happening for decades, and Alberta perfected it when the Progressive Conservatives were in power over the course of over four decades, and toward the end, it's certainly part of what led to their eventual downfall.  We also recently saw a similar phenomenon with the federal Conservative leadership contest, where people who nominally support other parties all took out memberships in order to vote for someone who wasn't Kellie Leitch, but for as much as they tried to channel that toward Michael Chong's bid, it certainly wasn't nearly enough to make an impact.  And in the end, its more lasting damage is the way in which people believe our system operates.

Part of these problems stem from the way in which Canadian parties have bastardized the Westminster system when it comes to choosing party leaders, going back to the Liberal Party in 1919, when they opened up the process from the caucus to a delegated membership convention to choose a new leader, settling on William Lyon Mackenzie King.  The eventual rupture that the move caused for how accountability works in our political system when King faced a caucus revolt in the face of a scandal, he reminded them that they didn't choose him and thus they could not remove him later widened when one-member-one-vote systems became more widely adopted.  When that happened, leaders started to claim a "democratic legitimacy" of thousands of voters who supported him or her directly instead of the handful of caucus members, and thus they were secure in centralizing their power and authority.  Accountability in our system has suffered greatly ever since.

But while this particular problem of removing the accountability of leaders is a big enough issue, the process of instant memberships is a much more insidious problem for how our system operates, because it subverts the entire party system.  Party memberships are supposed to be the way for ordinary citizens to interface with the process it's how candidates get nominated in order for their names to be on the ballot in the forthcoming election, and it's how party policy gets debated in order for it to be forwarded to a policy convention so that an election platform can be hammered out.  What instant memberships for leadership contests do, however, is sever that link between the grassroots and the party, and instead empower a leader who then gets to ignore the entire grassroots process.

Witness how it has become standard for leadership candidates to bring forward policy packages that they run on for their members to confirm, and their victory is seen as tacit support for those policies to be what the party runs on.  Where then does the grassroots, bottom-up policy development go?  While it may still happen on a pro-forma basis, its validity is largely devalued because policy has become the domain of the leader, and they can and on many occasions, have overridden the will of the membership in order to run the platform development out of their office.

Former Senator Lowell Murray, who was one of the last remaining Progressive Conservatives in the Upper Chamber, made the following trenchant observation shortly after his retirement, in reference to Alberta's instant-membership leadership system, and the loss of cohesion that it engenders:

Where is the commitment?  If the membership of a political party at the constituency level is so fluid and so amorphous, how can that party play its essential role of acting as an interlocutor of the people of that constituency and the caucus and government in Ottawa or Edmonton, or Toronto or wherever?  The short answer is that it can't, and then the constituency party is just a sitting duck it's completely at the mercy of the well-financed and permanent apparatchiks in the nation's or the provincial capital.

The key word there is interlocutor.  Your local constituency association should be the place where you, as the party member, can interface with the caucus, be it federal or provincial, whether or not your riding voted in a member from your party or not.  It should be the place where your concerns are funnelled, so that your voice is heard.  When the point of memberships is to validate leaders, that role is diminished, if not obliterated.

Leadership contests should not be a quasi-presidential primary system, and yet that's where we are doomed to end up so long as these wrong-headed processes are encouraged, and when they aren't being questioned by experts or the media.  And make no mistake there is presidentialization happening, from the centralization of power in the leader's office, to the disconnect between the leader and the caucus in violation of the spirit of the Westminster system, to the fact that we are now seeing leaders like Jagmeet Singh, who no longer feel compelled to run for a seat, and for whom pundits are giving them cover for such a blatantly wrong-headed position in the context of our parliamentary norms.  That we empower these wannabe presidents with instant memberships has caused so much damage to the way that our system operates.  Instant memberships don't empower citizens as some may claim they merely empower the leaders without any corresponding accountability mechanisms to keep them in check.  It's a kind of populism that has eaten away at our institutions, and will be very difficult to walk back from when we realize the damage that's been done.

Photo Credit: Chatelaine

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.