Tag Archives: Canada

How to not solve the economy problem

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I’ve heard that Stephen Harper has a degree in economics. Maybe this would be more apparent in his governing if he weren’t so preoccupied with destroying his political opponents and attempting to set up a golden age of conservatism in Canada. The economy, it seems, is the thing that no one will shut up about, even though most people probably have no idea about what’s a good or bad plan to save it.

Let’s have a look back at the election. The Conservatives constantly pushed the fact that there would be no deficit. I mentioned to some people that that was a retarded idea. The surplus was already getting tremendously thin because of Harper’s previous tax cuts. It was incredibly stupid to make a promise that would box them in like that, especially given that the word crisis was being thrown around.

Essentially, the Conservatives had two choices. One was to break the promise and go into a deficit by spending on a stimulus package. The other was to do whatever it takes to balance the budget. One of these ideas was good economics. The other idea would have prolonged a recession. Thankfully, the Conservatives decided to go with good economics. Unfortunately for them, it now looks like they’ve either lied during the campaign or they just learned some introductory macroeconomics in the last week or two.

To compound on that problem, the Conservatives decided not to take an opportunity to fix the economy this week, but instead tried to destroy the opposition by taking away public financing for political parties under the guise of protecting the economy. I can’t really blame them. If their goal is to ensure permanent Conservative control of the government, then this was an excellent opportunity. If their goal is to save Canada’s economy, this is pretty much the worst thing they could be doing.

In 2003, Jean Chretien introduced some legislation that would ban corporate and union money donations, lower the personal donation limit, and create a public financing system in which each party would get $1.95 per vote per year. This way, we remove lobbyist influence and at the same time, the parties that have traditionally relied on this money won’t suddenly implode.

Now Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty want to take away this subsidy. It’s not difficult to see why. The other parties rely on the subsidy to survive. The Conservatives don’t. In scrapping the subsidy, the Conservatives will essentially bankrupt the opposition and make it impossible for them to ever challenge the Conservatives again. This is even more suspicious after the election that was seemingly called for no reason – except to drain the finances of the other parties.

The worst part is that they tried to cover this up as something to help the economy. If you want to reform party financing, go ahead, just don’t try to pass it off as a consequence of fiscal policy. And I don’t care what you think about the current state of party financing. Trying to defeat your political opponents by deliberately running them out of money is not a win for democracy. Even more so if it leaves any opposition completely crippled.

And why is Stephen Harper so terrible? Because he only saw two outcomes to this. Either there’d be another election, which he would pretty much be guaranteed to win, likely with a majority, or the parties would wallow in their weakness and get trampled by losing all of their money and being unable to operate. He obviously didn’t think the other parties would have the spine to seriously consider a coalition. He also obviously miscalculated. And so instead of trying to solve our economic problem, he’s inflicted a political crisis on himself, all because he couldn’t let the opportunity pass to give the other parties another kick to the shins.

And now, we have the Conservatives trying to fight back by doing what they do best – spreading misinformation. Already, we’re seeing them paint the opposition as greedy and trying to undemocratically overthrow the government. This is why Civics was required in Grade 10.

So at this point there are a bunch of things that the Conservatives would like for us to forget. They’d like for us to forget that they were trying this exact same thing back in 2004 that the opposition is doing now. They’d also like for us to forget that they only had 37.6% of the vote and only have a minority government. Finally, they’d like us to forget that this minority government and coalition government stuff is how the parliamentary system is supposed to work.

Interesting times for Canadian politics, that’s for sure.

Canada ~After Story~

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Now that the little distraction that was the American Presidential election is now over and we’re all feeling chipper that Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States, we can roll our eyes back towards this land of ice and snow and start killing snow moose for walrus-men consider the political dynamic here.

On October 14th, Canada held its 40th General Election. On the surface, it seemed like nothing changed. Seats were flipped and Stephen Harper remains a Prime Minister with a minority, just as it had been since 2006. But for the two major players, the Conservatives and the Liberals, everything has gotten considerably worse.

Yes, Stephen Harper managed to get the Conservatives another term in power and even gained a bunch of seats. But, he’s failed to get a majority after facing a severely weakened Liberal party twice. He couldn’t do it against Paul Martin and a Liberal party that was caught in a scandal. He couldn’t do it against Stephane Dion, even after controlling the narrative about Dion being a weak leader and shoving misinformation to everyone about the Green Shift. It’s becoming less likely that he’ll see the majority that he’s been fighting for since he became leader. This draws us to consider who might be succeeding him and it appears that there’s no one obvious yet. This will be a problem for them.

On the other hand, the Liberals couldn’t be in worse shape. Most of the seats that were changed were ones that were red. The party is in a poor state financially and with another leadership race so soon after the last one, the strain on the monies will only get worse. The party’s share of the popular vote is getting gobbled up by the NDP. The chances that the Liberals go the way of the Progressive Conservatives is getting larger and larger and the next leader will be determining whether the Liberals survive or not.

And that brings us to the Liberal leadership race. Immediately, we’re faced again with Michael Ignatieff facing off against Bob Rae, but things are looking a bit different today than it was two years ago. For one thing, there isn’t the cornucopia of candidates running. This time, we aren’t seeing the bitter divides between the two frontrunner camps that plagued the last race. It looks like the Liberals have realized the situation they’re in. And in addition to the sombre mood of the party, there’s the sombre mood regarding the economy.

These two factors greatly reduce the chance of anything like Dion’s from-behind victory from happening again. On the other hand, from the endorsements and support that he’s been getting, it looks like the party is almost ready to just hand Michael Ignatieff the leadership. On the plus side, it doesn’t seem like there will be an irreparable rift between the two frontrunner campaigns this time around. However, I’m not happy with the near-presumption that Ignatieff will just take a stroll until May and win. I think he should have to fight for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be getting much of one.

I’ve honestly never understood how it was possible for Bob Rae to become a serious contender to lead the Liberals. I know he’s smart and has all the qualities for the job and it looks like a lot of Liberals do too. But outside of that, there are too many people who have a dislike for him, regardless of whether or not he deserves it. It doesn’t matter if he’s changed his positions or that he may have done the best he could in the early 90s, you can bet that the Conservatives will attack that angle relentlessly. Just look at how they controlled Dion’s image.

The other guy is Dominic LeBlanc. He’s young, smart, and is apparently a fine MP. His biggest challenge is the fact that we’ve been hearing nonstop about Rae and Ignatieff for over two years now, while he’s relatively unknown nationally.

I guess it’s fairly obvious who I think should be the next leader of the Liberals by default. But I will qualify that by revisiting the 2006 leadership race. In 2006, I thought Gerard Kennedy should be the leader. He swung more to the left side of the party and had a pretty good record. As the Minister of Education in Ontario, he did a lot to fix the screwups that are the reason that Mike Harris is so reviled by students.

Michael Ignatieff on the other hand was not those things. He’s definitely more of a centrist. His initial support for the Iraq war threw a wrench in his campaign. But most importantly, he was a very new MP and had just returned from the States. Before his return and shortly after it, there was speculation that he returned to try to run for the leadership of the Liberals. The question to me was why we would want someone who came back just to do that?

Two years later, through his time as an MP, we’ve learned a lot more about him. He’s definitely intelligent, but more importantly, he’s also very articulate. Despite being away from Canada for so long, he has an excellent understanding of the national culture. He’s got a vision for Canada, as a nation and for our standing in the world. He has the progressive values that the Liberals stand for. He’s not one of the old-school guys from one of Chretien’s or Martin’s camps. He’s got the support of the party. He understands that the party desperately needs to be transformed and rebuilt. And he’s likely not going to get trapped and smeared by the same Conservative strategy that took down Dion.

He’s someone I can respect and someone who’ll probably be able to make me switch my vote back to red.

October 14

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Let’s talk about Canada and October 14.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have problems with Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. Harper keeps a fairly tight leash on his party and its members. He governs as though he has a majority by forcing confidence motions. His party deliberately obstructs Parliament. His party ran attack ads for a year before the election. Beyond my problems with his ethics, I’m also not a fan of conservative ideology, whether fiscal or social. I just don’t believe that cutting services and taxes is a good idea.

Stephane Dion and the Liberals are a lot more interesting. I had my reservations about Dion, since he pretty much has no charisma, which is important to have when campaigning. I have no doubt that he’d make a pretty good Prime Minister. The problem, of course, is getting there. He’s reasonably smart, is a progressive, and doesn’t seem to hold contempt for democracy like Harper does. His platform has stuff that I can agree with, and while I’m not a huge environmentalist, I can understand that the Green Shift is a way to tackle global warming and poverty at once.

Finally, we have Jack Layton and the NDP. Much of the NDP platform is similar to that of the Liberals, except for their proposal to reverse corporate tax cuts. The most notable thing for me is that their stance on digital issues is a lot more firm than that of the Liberals. Jack Layton also has been a pretty good leader, if a bit aggressive in attacking the other parties. Of course, they carry the stigma of Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP, who managed to make everyone forget that and somehow end up as a prominent Liberal.

Our Best Friend

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“I want us here in New York to imagine if extremist terrorists were launching rocket attacks across the Mexican or Canadian border, would we stand by or would we defend America against these attacks from extremists?”

And the Americans wonder why the average Canadian bloody hates them. I wonder if they would “defend America” or stand by if extremist terrorists were launching rocket attacks at them from Israel.