The Conservatives
Stephen Harper ought to get used to governing with a minority government. Canadians are never going to give him a majority. Some of the most productive or well-run governments in Canadian history were minority governments: Lester Pearson’s (federal) and Bill Davis’s (Ontario) tenures come to mind. Harper should shelve his dreams of a majority and try and make his government the best damn minority this country has ever seen.
Conservatives just don’t get Quebec. Making the dinky arts funding cut (1.5% of the overall budget) made the difference between the Tories getting a majority and a minority. That was one of the most expensive funding cuts in history. Politicians are cynics by nature and they underestimate the pride of the people. Quebecers turned away from the federal Liberal party under Paul Martin when they discovered that huge money had been spent in that province on cheap gimmicks, like flags, in the belief that they would forgo their national aspirations. One would have thought that the Liberals’ chief political opponents would have picked up on that pride issue.
The Bloc Quebecoise
It is a shame this happened because, before the Harper blunder, the Bloc Quebecoise looked like it was going down the toilet as an irrelevant political force. If any party deserves to be relegated to the ashcan of history it is the BQ.
The end of climate change
This election also proves that we have turned the corner on climate change as a gathering political force (thankfully). Dion’s carbon tax had no resonance with the voters; the Green Party did not elect a single MP, including its leader, Elizabeth May, despite the fact that she garnered enormous publicity and was a bit of a media darling throughout the campaign. As a percentage of the popular vote, Green garnered no more than 7%. I had looked forward to the Greens bleeding votes from the NDP, but the only party that bled votes was the Liberals to the NDP.
Environmental activist, David Suzuki, has said he looks forward to the day the Green Party disappears from the electoral landscape. I don’t agree with much that Suzuki says, but I do on this point.
The New Democratic Party (God, how I wish it would change its name!)
I have to hand it to Jack Layton. He ran a hell of a campaign for the NDP. I don’t care for Jack and I have twice worked for a Liberal candidate who opposed him even though I am not a Liberal, simply because it was Jack running for office. He picked up additional seats and kept the popular vote at a respectable 18%. Keeping his guns focused on Harper and ignoring Dion, except bringing up the fact that Dion kept Harper alive for so long in Parliament, was a shrewd move.
I was sorry to see that Jack’s wife, Olivia Chow, kept her seat. It was nice to see Tony Ianno’s wife, Christine Innes gave her a scare, however.
Lisa Raitt
Finally, I should give a nod to Lisa Raitt, who knocked off the bumptious Garth Turner (well named, turned from Conservative to Independent to Liberal). I chuckled when I read Lisa’s website, with her “Coal Miner's Daughter" shtick; a gentler, kinder, Sarah Palin. But, unlike Palin, Lisa is very smart and knowledgeable. She is energetic, enthusiastic, and will be a good politician and representative for the Halton riding. I hope she gets a cabinet post – Transport might be right. Harper is thin on talent, so he should take a good look at Lisa.
In my corporate career, I took pride in mentoring people. Several left the corporate nest and have done well for themselves ever since. Whether they recognize it or not their successes have something to do with the opportunities and training I endeavoured to give them in their early years. I recently had lunch with a former protege who is doing good business as a coach and motivational speaker. She had forgotten that she used to be terrified of public speaking until I trained her and put her in charge of projects that required public speaking.
Lisa was another golden find. She had a bright prospect ahead of her as a Bay Street lawyer and was leaning in that direction, but I told her that her career would be better served working in the corporation that I then ran because of the broad experience it would offer, especially the political side of the place. I remember telephoning her in London, England, when she was working at the Inns of Court to make my pitch. She took my advice and now she is a fully-fledged member of Parliament (time to start those French lessons, Lisa, in case you know what).
May she have the wind at her back.
Some day I will have to drop her a line about my favourite federal issue, reforming the odious Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act.
I hope somebody in Lisa's entourage takes the time to telephone CTV and inform Lloyd Robertson of the correct pronunciation of Lisa's last name. It isn't as if he never heard of Bonnie Raitt.
Democracy and low voter turnout
Finally, a word about democracy. Much hand wringing goes on at election time over the low voter turnouts. I haven't seen the stats for this election, but I have seen and heard a number of pundits and commentators suggesting that there should be some sort of skills test to license people to vote, or that informed people would have an extra vote. TVO Ontario's The Agenda, with Steve Paikin, devoted some time to this subject last night.
This is all rubbish.
One citizen and one vote is the requirement to be called a democracy in the 21st century. I see the the low voter relative to informed voters in the same light as I see high fuel prices relative to carbon taxes. Why impose carbon taxes when high fuel prices are forcing behavioural changes that a carbon tax is supposed to encourage? Similarly, the people who do not vote are also the people who are not informed about politics, politicians and social issues (otherwise they would vote). The democracy marketplace is self-regulating in that sense and requires no bureaucratic interference. Those who don't vote get to be governed by those who do -- so what is the problem?
Australia has a high turnout (95%) because it is a legal requirement to vote. You are fined $50 if you don't vote. Are the voters in Australia better informed than Canadians who vote? I haven't seen any studies that would suggest so. Is Australia better governed than Canada? I think not.
Showing posts with label elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elections. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Thoughts on the impending Canadian national election
So we are having a national election in Canada on October 14. I will put my two cents in about that.
We have four political parties in Canada at the national level: Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Green. There is also a party called the Bloc Quebecois that currently serves no useful purpose and is regional only, being solely interested in the welfare of the province of Quebec, and only running candidates in that province.
The Conservatives have been in power for about 3 years, but they have a minority position, meaning that if a number of the opposition parties combine to vote against them, the government will fall. The Conservatives called this election because they believe the polls that show they have enough national support to be able to form a majority government. We will see. There are two weeks left, and that is a long time in an election campaign.
Conservatives
I have decided to vote for these guys because I think they have given us good governance over the past 3 years, not outstanding government, but good and steady government. They have not proposed anything really radical in that time despite the enormous efforts of their opponents to paint them as dangerous during the last election campaign. They have been fiscally conservative, carrying on the mantle left by the previous governing Liberals, and continue to operate a budget that has been in a surplus position for the past 15 years, making us the only G8 country to financially perform in this fashion. This surplus is used in part to pay down the national debt, which, in a time of a world-wide credit crunch, is no small bonus.
I also like them because they have not bought into the hoax of global warming brought about by human production of CO2. And they understand that as businesses begin to crash because of an impending global recession this is not the time to foist additional taxes on industry – it is the time to relax them.
With respect to their leader, Stephen Harper, I am less enchanted. He strikes me as being a very cold Mackerel and except for the very peculiar circumstances of Canadian politics over the last decade; I don’t think he ever would have been elected as the leader of his party. He strikes me as a guy who would have been a superb Deputy Minister in the government and his manner in governing his political caucus is very reminiscent of how DMs operate.
Mind you, he has some real idiots in his caucus, so keeping a lid on those political embarrassments is actually a testament to his abilities. The media mostly hate him because he is able to stop them from getting the juicy stories from his single digit IQ members.
On the downside of the Conservative current political promises, I think that allowing 14 year-olds to a get life sentences for murder is stupid. However, I don’t think there are many judges in this country who would hand out such a sentence except in the most egregious circumstances. I am also a little concerned about the opening up of Canada for sale to foreign businesses. On the other hand, my concern is tempered by the fact that we have to remain open for business in a deep recession in order to keep our economy alive.
Liberals
These guys are in freefall at the moment in the polls and may end up not forming the official opposition. I think the leader, Stephane Dion, is receiving the lion’s share of the blame for this. I don’t think it is deserved. It reminds me very much of the days of the Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark who the media ridiculed because he had no chin. We hear that Dion mangles the English language – well, so did Chretien, his predecessor two back, and he was elected to 3 terms in office, and he was a very effective Prime Minister despite that.
What is true about the Liberals, however, is that they have a platform of promising everybody everything. That was exactly the problem that cost the previous leader his job, so they appear not to have learned their lesson. Furthermore, it is clear that two best contenders for Dion’s job have not taken their loss lightly and would not be unhappy to see him get hit in ass by the door on the way out. Not a united party.
Finally, the total cost of their promises amounts to about $80 billion, the most expensive package of all the parties. And their green shift policy simply means more taxes for no apparent results -- it is shifting the green from your pockets to their pockets.
New Democratic Party
For the life of me, I fail to understand why this party continues to use this name. It has been around for more than 40 years so it certainly is not new. And from the many elites in this party I have personally dealt with, it is not any more democratic than the other parties.
I remember when I was first eligible to vote in a national election (1968) when I was an undergraduate in university. One of my English professors, who I admired, was the NDP candidate in the city where I was attending school. I went to hear one of his political speeches. He talked about the working families and getting them a better deal. He talked about all the wonderful spending programs the NDP had in mind for “social justice” (whatever that meant). During the question period he was asked by a member of the audience how the NDP would pay for this: “Why, we will tax the corporations, they have lots of money”, was the response. He didn’t get elected.
Now fast forward to 2008 and listen to the speeches of the current leader, Jack Layton. He could have dusted off the speech of my old English professor from 40 years ago and read it word for word. These guys never learn. They have no sense of how an economy operates.
The last time Ontario fell on its head and elected an NDP government, the government tried to spend its way out of a recession and virtually wrecked the economy of Canada’s most productive province. It took years to recover from that. Elect Jack Layton and the NDP at our peril.
Green
As you may have gathered by now, I am not much taken with the whole global warming thing, but I do believe there are other serious threats to our planet that need to be addressed, such as the rapid loss of biodiversity. I have no issue with a party that wants to filter government programs and spending first through an environmental filter, although, sometimes some of that “what’s good for the environment” can get a bit kooky: like banning chlorine, or not investing in nuclear energy.
I like this party mainly because I think it eats into the constituency base of the NDP, even though it is not strictly speaking a left wing party. I also think the time has come to offer an alternative choice to the voters who have gotten kind of jaded with the big three.
Its leader, Elizabeth May, does not impress me as much as its previous leader, and today I see there is some scuttlebutt running around the Internet that both she and other members of her party may be supporters of Hezbollah. Not good news.
She got herself invited to the all-candidates debate on Thursday and we will see how she performs. I hope somebody calls her on this Hezbollah business and gets that settled up. There is no chance Green will form the government, but I do hope they get a couple of seats and become a presence in the House of Commons.
We have four political parties in Canada at the national level: Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Green. There is also a party called the Bloc Quebecois that currently serves no useful purpose and is regional only, being solely interested in the welfare of the province of Quebec, and only running candidates in that province.
The Conservatives have been in power for about 3 years, but they have a minority position, meaning that if a number of the opposition parties combine to vote against them, the government will fall. The Conservatives called this election because they believe the polls that show they have enough national support to be able to form a majority government. We will see. There are two weeks left, and that is a long time in an election campaign.
Conservatives
I have decided to vote for these guys because I think they have given us good governance over the past 3 years, not outstanding government, but good and steady government. They have not proposed anything really radical in that time despite the enormous efforts of their opponents to paint them as dangerous during the last election campaign. They have been fiscally conservative, carrying on the mantle left by the previous governing Liberals, and continue to operate a budget that has been in a surplus position for the past 15 years, making us the only G8 country to financially perform in this fashion. This surplus is used in part to pay down the national debt, which, in a time of a world-wide credit crunch, is no small bonus.
I also like them because they have not bought into the hoax of global warming brought about by human production of CO2. And they understand that as businesses begin to crash because of an impending global recession this is not the time to foist additional taxes on industry – it is the time to relax them.
With respect to their leader, Stephen Harper, I am less enchanted. He strikes me as being a very cold Mackerel and except for the very peculiar circumstances of Canadian politics over the last decade; I don’t think he ever would have been elected as the leader of his party. He strikes me as a guy who would have been a superb Deputy Minister in the government and his manner in governing his political caucus is very reminiscent of how DMs operate.
Mind you, he has some real idiots in his caucus, so keeping a lid on those political embarrassments is actually a testament to his abilities. The media mostly hate him because he is able to stop them from getting the juicy stories from his single digit IQ members.
On the downside of the Conservative current political promises, I think that allowing 14 year-olds to a get life sentences for murder is stupid. However, I don’t think there are many judges in this country who would hand out such a sentence except in the most egregious circumstances. I am also a little concerned about the opening up of Canada for sale to foreign businesses. On the other hand, my concern is tempered by the fact that we have to remain open for business in a deep recession in order to keep our economy alive.
Liberals
These guys are in freefall at the moment in the polls and may end up not forming the official opposition. I think the leader, Stephane Dion, is receiving the lion’s share of the blame for this. I don’t think it is deserved. It reminds me very much of the days of the Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark who the media ridiculed because he had no chin. We hear that Dion mangles the English language – well, so did Chretien, his predecessor two back, and he was elected to 3 terms in office, and he was a very effective Prime Minister despite that.
What is true about the Liberals, however, is that they have a platform of promising everybody everything. That was exactly the problem that cost the previous leader his job, so they appear not to have learned their lesson. Furthermore, it is clear that two best contenders for Dion’s job have not taken their loss lightly and would not be unhappy to see him get hit in ass by the door on the way out. Not a united party.
Finally, the total cost of their promises amounts to about $80 billion, the most expensive package of all the parties. And their green shift policy simply means more taxes for no apparent results -- it is shifting the green from your pockets to their pockets.
New Democratic Party
For the life of me, I fail to understand why this party continues to use this name. It has been around for more than 40 years so it certainly is not new. And from the many elites in this party I have personally dealt with, it is not any more democratic than the other parties.
I remember when I was first eligible to vote in a national election (1968) when I was an undergraduate in university. One of my English professors, who I admired, was the NDP candidate in the city where I was attending school. I went to hear one of his political speeches. He talked about the working families and getting them a better deal. He talked about all the wonderful spending programs the NDP had in mind for “social justice” (whatever that meant). During the question period he was asked by a member of the audience how the NDP would pay for this: “Why, we will tax the corporations, they have lots of money”, was the response. He didn’t get elected.
Now fast forward to 2008 and listen to the speeches of the current leader, Jack Layton. He could have dusted off the speech of my old English professor from 40 years ago and read it word for word. These guys never learn. They have no sense of how an economy operates.
The last time Ontario fell on its head and elected an NDP government, the government tried to spend its way out of a recession and virtually wrecked the economy of Canada’s most productive province. It took years to recover from that. Elect Jack Layton and the NDP at our peril.
Green
As you may have gathered by now, I am not much taken with the whole global warming thing, but I do believe there are other serious threats to our planet that need to be addressed, such as the rapid loss of biodiversity. I have no issue with a party that wants to filter government programs and spending first through an environmental filter, although, sometimes some of that “what’s good for the environment” can get a bit kooky: like banning chlorine, or not investing in nuclear energy.
I like this party mainly because I think it eats into the constituency base of the NDP, even though it is not strictly speaking a left wing party. I also think the time has come to offer an alternative choice to the voters who have gotten kind of jaded with the big three.
Its leader, Elizabeth May, does not impress me as much as its previous leader, and today I see there is some scuttlebutt running around the Internet that both she and other members of her party may be supporters of Hezbollah. Not good news.
She got herself invited to the all-candidates debate on Thursday and we will see how she performs. I hope somebody calls her on this Hezbollah business and gets that settled up. There is no chance Green will form the government, but I do hope they get a couple of seats and become a presence in the House of Commons.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The devil is in the details, or, when it is appropriate to sweat the small stuff
You really have to hand it to the American election machine for its entertainment value. For months and months we have been treated to a savage fight between the Democratic candidates until Obama finally prevailed, but not without the party being severely scarred. This battle consumed about $500 million.
Now that the dust has settled, what is the latest issue?
Obama might not even be legally eligible to hold the office of President.
Article 2 of the United States' Constitution states:
The blogosphere is beginning to raise questions about the domocile of his birth. Officially, he was born in Hawaii. Apparently, that state treats birth certificates as a private matter. And Obama has declined to offer his certificate up for scrutiny. It is being suggested that since his father was Kenyan it is important to ensure he was born in the U.S.
John McCain was similarly challenged because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. He submitted his birth records to the Senate which declared him to be natural born beause he was born on a U.S. military base.
I don't know why Obama would withhold his documentation and give his political enemies just one more thing to challenge his credibilty or make the case he is elitist, but I really wonder why the Democratic Party, at the point at which candidates register to represent the party as the presidential candidate, would not insist, as a first step to acceptance of the registration, that the candidates prove the natural born requirement. It seems such an obvious thing to do.
If you managed a trucking company and somebody walked in the door to get a job as a driver, wouldn't you first want to satisfy yourself that the guy had a current valid driver's license before you bothered with anything else on his resume? Why should a trucker be put to a higher standard of elibility than the President of the United States?
What happens if it turns out Obama is not eligible?
Now that the dust has settled, what is the latest issue?
Obama might not even be legally eligible to hold the office of President.
Article 2 of the United States' Constitution states:
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
The blogosphere is beginning to raise questions about the domocile of his birth. Officially, he was born in Hawaii. Apparently, that state treats birth certificates as a private matter. And Obama has declined to offer his certificate up for scrutiny. It is being suggested that since his father was Kenyan it is important to ensure he was born in the U.S.
John McCain was similarly challenged because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. He submitted his birth records to the Senate which declared him to be natural born beause he was born on a U.S. military base.
I don't know why Obama would withhold his documentation and give his political enemies just one more thing to challenge his credibilty or make the case he is elitist, but I really wonder why the Democratic Party, at the point at which candidates register to represent the party as the presidential candidate, would not insist, as a first step to acceptance of the registration, that the candidates prove the natural born requirement. It seems such an obvious thing to do.
If you managed a trucking company and somebody walked in the door to get a job as a driver, wouldn't you first want to satisfy yourself that the guy had a current valid driver's license before you bothered with anything else on his resume? Why should a trucker be put to a higher standard of elibility than the President of the United States?
What happens if it turns out Obama is not eligible?
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Money and elections
Every time I read about the candidates running for President for the Democrats and the Republicans, about the half the coverage talks about their money raising. Apparently, you can't get elected unless you have a big election war chest and you can't get the money unless you are perceived to be a frontrunner or close to a frontrunner. While money is also important in elections in Canada it simply does not have the same prominence it appears to have in the U.S. It seems to give an aura of truth to the proposition that the United States is the best country you can buy.
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