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Friday, July 10, 2009 09:46 AM
All politics is local
Poor Stéphane Dion.
Mocked in attack ads for his annoyed response to a leadership race jab with “Do you think it’s easy to make priorities?” the former Liberal leader actually hit the nail on the head.
The single hardest thing about politics is picking the one or two, maybe three things you will push hard and complete, at the expense of the other twenty things you and your supporters want to accomplish.
Jean Chrétien was criticized endlessly for his dull and plodding regime that never seemed to reach for the stars, but that was a consequence of having his priorities – national unity, balancing the budget – and sticking to them ruthlessly.
Paul Martin was criticized endlessly for his mercurial and shambolic regime that always seemed to reach for the stars, without checking its footing first. Everything was very, very important for Martin – Africian aid, First Nations, productivity, the democratic deficit, the BRIC countries, human rights in China, etc, etc – resulting in no priorities and the Mr. Dithers label.
Stephen Harper started with a tight list of five priorities – accountability, GST cut, law and order legislation, financial assistance for parents, wait times guarantee – and actually achieved four of the five. But after that, the goals became unfocused, his regime became somewhat adrift, he ran a Seinfeld campaign about nothing but how bad the other guy is, and almost imploded his entire government with a non-priority attack on political party funding.
Now, Harper is reasserting his priorities, and in a group much tougher to roll over than the Canadian Parliament.
Link to this postTuesday, July 7, 2009 07:37 PM
Advise and consent
In the United States, abortion is a central issue of the current political cleavage, stereotypically placing pro-life Republicans against pro-choice Democrats.
In Canada, the issue is both less central to the debate between the parties, and less of a litmus test for the parties themselves. Neither the governing Conservatives nor opposition Liberals have a platform position on abortion, nor are they interested in upsetting the current détente on the issue.
Part of the reason for the low-profile of abortion as a political issue is the strong majority of the public in favour of legal access to the procedure. While in the United States neither the pro-choice nor pro-life side can consistently command a majority of public support, the issue is more settled north of the border. Depending on the question asked, somewhere between half and three-quarters of Canadians favour access.
As a result of this 20-year consensus, attempts to limit access to abortion procedures have moved away from a general approach to a more narrow-cast legislative agenda.
One of the more interesting examples in the Ontario was the 1996 vote on a private-members bill introduced by Progressive Conservative MPP (and recent runner-up for the leadership of the Ontario party) Frank Klees. The legislation called for parental notification prior to any abortion provided to a minor.
The argument in favour of parental notification rests on the core value that parents have a right to know what their children are doing. The argument against rests on the core value that patients have a right to privacy, and this extends to minors.
Parental consent laws are in place in more than half of U.S. states, but such regulation is far rarer in Canada. The technical reasons is that abortion in Canada is typically regulated through general medical legislation, leaving procedures like parental consent to the service provider. Most service providers choose to observe their patient’s ethical right to medical confidentiality, even in cases where that patient is a minor.
But the underlying reason is the general consensus to avoid abortion-related issues between the major parties.
Monday, June 29, 2009 01:29 PM
Winning wounded
Two months ago, the Ontario PC Party executive decided on a snap leadership election, over the objections of many in the party who felt that a longer race would both attract more new members and provide a more intense debate of ideas.
But a two-month timeline was set in hopes that it would be a fast and clean coronation of the only candidate with an organization-in-waiting, Tim Hudak.
On paper, Hudak looked imposing. A former cabinet minister and caucus veteran, but just 41 years old. The finance critic and a man with strong connections to the Harris-era organization. A Blue Tory in a time when moderate red was no longer in vogue, thanks to the failure of John Tory.
Hudak assembled a very strong campaign cabinet, including Tom Long and Leslie Noble who ran Mike Harris' back-to-back majorities. He ran away from the pack on endorsements, including the big guy himself, former Premier Harris.
The campaign strategy was simple: be the frontrunner and the safe consensus choice. Speak ill of no one, to maximize the second-choice growth potential. Let the party see a Hudak victory as inevitable, and it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Friday, June 26, 2009 08:41 AM
Here comes the pain
The second and last day of the PC leadership voting is here.
It will be interesting to see if the second day can make up for the mere 27 per cent turnout on Sunday. The thundershowers looming over Toronto would suggest probably not.
Because this is a leadership race, much of the voting is on the hypothetical variable of “who can win.”
To help PC Party members make this decision with more clarity, here is a brief outline of the first tranch of a multi-dimensional Liberal campaign they can expect to crank up in three days.
Thursday, June 25, 2009 11:45 AM
Seismic shifts, slender shuffles
While most normal folks were talking about the weather or the potential for a liquor store strike in Toronto, political junkies were fixated on a different subject. There were not one but two cabinet shuffles in provincial governments yesterday.
In Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty responded to the departure of Michael Bryant for the City of Toronto last month. This precipitated a small reorganization of the cabinet that consolidates responsibility for the economy in a lot fewer hands.
Since forming a government in 2003, the general direction has been to fragment responsibility for the economy among more and more ministers. First, McGuinty created the new Ministry of Research and Innovation in 2005, hiving that off from Economic Development and Trade. Later, he broke off a new Ministry of Small Business, and last year McGuinty split Economic Development and Trade into two separate departments.
The theory behind these moves was that adding more pro-business voices to the cabinet table, more salespeople for Ontario and more ministers focused on the economy would create more action and better results.
While the multiplicity of economic ministers did achieve results, it also created a diffusion of responsibility, making it hard to get all of the civil servants who worked for these various new departments running in the same direction.
So today, we see three departments – Economic Development, Trade and Small Business – merged back into a single department with a single strong minister, Sandra Pupatello, at the head.
However, the Premier took a different direction with the other new economic department formed under his watch. The Ministry of Research and Innovation has been a success story, cultivating new companies based around cutting edge technology. Rather than collapse that department into a super-ministry, the Premier kept it as a stand alone department, but reporting to John Milloy, who already has the portfolio of Training, Colleges and Universities.
This move links the public-sector research undertaken primarily within Ontario’s universities with the private-sector innovation champions by MRI. That should lead to better commercialization of the ideas generated by Ontario scholars.
Politically, the move places Milloy – who represents Kitchener, home of RIM and a growing high-tech cluster – in the position of champion of his home town’s booming research economy.
Monday, June 22, 2009 05:08 PM
Dying days
The voting in the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race began on June 21 and will conclude on June 25.
Reliable sources say turnout was low on Sunday, a worrying sign for all the campaigns and the PC Party generally. Low turnout speaks to a demoralized grassroots and a lack of excitement that is dangerous for a party that should be in renewal.
While Thursday is the last day for voting, Sunday could reasonably be expected to be the busy day. After all, with no legislated time off from work to vote, and relatively remote polling locations, this is not as simple as getting to the polls for an election to a legislature. Also, its reasonable to assume far more volunteers were available to the campaigns on Sunday than they will be Thursday, further limiting hopes of a big turnout in the second and final polling day.
The other challenge is apparently a lack of clear instructions on how to vote.
Most people in Ontario are used to a first-past-the-post ballot where you put an “x” next to your one and only choice for representative. The PC Party is using a preferential ballot which requires voters to number their choices. There may be a higher than typical number of spoiled ballots as a result, and fewer than expected votes shifting to second choices after a voters first candidate is lost from the ballot.
The race is also increasingly divisive.
An anonymous source is emailing and mailing a letter quoting a producer from TVO blaming Frank Klees for the faith-based fiasco.
Another campaign appears to be targeting New Canadian PC members with phony documents making implied threats of prosecution in an attempt to suppress the turnout of their opponents.
The Klees campaign appears to have conducted a very controversial poll. The Hudak campaign responded by attacking Klees, calling it a “push poll.” The Klees campaign in turn responded by saying the Hudak campaign broke its promise to not say bad things about other Conservatives.
Whatever the result next weekend, it is clear that the Ontario PC Party will emerge from the process less united than they entered it.
Thursday, June 18, 2009 05:40 PM
Grown ups and humble pie
Even cursory readers of this platform will know that I’m short-tempered about the normally superficial state of debate in our political scene.
Too much of our national conversation is taken up with trivia about who was at Hy’s and somebody’s slip of the tongue. It always seems to be about “us,” the political class, and not “them,” the people.
This gulf leaves most Canadians out of the conversation about their government, because we rarely talk about what matters to Canadians: jobs, security, affordable and accessible health care, clean air and water, and a better tomorrow for our children.
The last eight months have been an especially bad example.
Ideas are in short-supply from all four parties, as the struggle for short-term advantage overtakes all other considerations in this most wobbly of Parliaments.
Rhetoric is over-heated, with Denis Coderre’s “people will starve” claim only the latest in a long line of “tar baby” and “socialist-separatist coalition.”
The low-point was Ian Brodie’s proud admission that: “We resolved that the term 'competitiveness,’ the term 'productivity’ and the term 'innovation’ was never going to appear in anything we said or did in the 2005-2006 election campaign.” Nothing like purposely out-stupiding your opponents to really make your heart swell.
The blame for the conduct of all Parliaments falls on its first minister, as they typically reflect his personality. Just as in St. Laurent’s era the Commons was sleep and business-oriented, or in Diefenbaker’s it was mercurial and increasingly unstable, Harper’s Parliaments are growing increasingly obsessed with tactical advantage with no regard to long-term outcome.
So it is a blessed relief to have something productive and positive emerge that demonstrates there is still an ability to come down off the Parliament Hill pedestals and move files forward in a thoughtful way.
Thanks to yesterday’s compromise decision by Michael Ignatieff and Mr. Harper some positive results will emerge for Canadians.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 06:13 PM
Parliament without a cause
The current crisis in Ottawa has been compared to a game of chicken . There is actually an extensive literature in game theory in "chicken" and while this is not a true example, it still holds some lessons.
Game theory defines "chicken" or "hawk-dove" as a two-player game where both players would mildly prefer the other to yeild, but where neither yielding is the worst possible outcome.
The best illustration of Chicken was in the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause. Dean and another boy drive their cars off of a cliff, and the first one to jump out before the vehicles tumble off the precipice is the "chicken."
The cost of jumping first is real: shame. But it is also far more mild than the alternative: burning to death in gasoline filled wreckage. A reasonable person would leap from the car instantly. But would they, once they realize the other player is also reasonable and should jump early as well? The result is a stand off of rapidly escalating danger.
One of the strategies is to reduce ones own options. For instance, in the driving game of chicken where the cars head towards each other, the player can ostentaciously disengage the steering mechanism so he cannot swerve away. Then it is the other player who must swerve.
Unfortunately, options can also be reduced in such as way as to force a player into the disaster outcome. In Rebel Without a Cause, the second driver's jacket gets caught on the car and he cannot leap out before the car falls over the edge. His options were reduced as well, but in a way that forced him alone into the disaster; the only question is if poor James Dean would follow him to his death or leap first and be the chicken.
This last scenario illustrates the potential for outcomes that are lose-lose in the chicken scenario without being disasters for both sides.
The British liberal philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote at length about the game of chicken, comparing it to the brinksmanship of the cold war.
Since the nuclear stalemate became apparent, the Governments of East and West have adopted the policy which Mr. Dulles calls 'brinkmanship'. This is a policy adapted from a sport which, I am told, is practised by some youthful degenerates. This sport is called 'Chicken'. It is played by choosing a long straight road with a white line down the middle and starting two very fast cars towards each other from opposite ends. Each car is expected to keep the wheels of one side on the white line. As they approach each other, mutual destruction becomes more and more imminent. If one of them swerves from the white line before the other, the other, as he passes, shouts 'Chicken', and the one who has swerved becomes an object of contempt. As played by irresponsible boys, this game is considered decadent and immoral, though only the lives of the players are risked. But when the game is played by eminent statesmen, who risk not only their own lives but those of many hundreds of millions of human beings, it is thought on both sides that the statesmen on one side are displaying a high degree of wisdom and courage, and only the statesmen on the other side are reprehensible. This, of course, is absurd. Both are to blame for playing such an incredibly dangerous game. The game may be played without misfortune a few times, but sooner or later it will come to be felt that loss of face is more dreadful than nuclear annihilation. The moment will come when neither side can face the derisive cry of 'Chicken' from the other side. When that moment is come, the statesmen of both sides will plunge the world into destruction.
While the world avoided the disaster scenario in the 40-year long game of chicken known as the Cold War, our parliamentarians might not be so lucky.
There are two reasons why.
Friday, June 12, 2009 04:18 PM
Shaking it up at the finish
The Ontario PC leadership race is entering the final two weeks. Now is the time when the final adjustments are made in strategy to hopefully propel the candidate to victory. With a preferential ballot system, there is no opportunity to influence the result during the counting, so instead all effort must go into the closing communications argumen
Throwing some gas on the fire is a fascinating survey of PC Party members and their ballot choices.
Previous surveys were of likely Conservative voters, a very different pool of respondents. Whereas active party members are highly informed about the nuance of the campaign and the candidates, the broader electorate can be safely assumed to have next to no knowledge of the candidates beyond simple name recognition and possibly one or two biographical items.
The new survey adds credence to what is essentially conventional wisdom.
Tim Hudak appears to be the leader, but without the ability to win from first-choice votes alone. Christine Elliott is second, with Frank Klees continuing to surprise. Trailing the pack is Randy Hillier.
As such, the balloting can be predicted somewhat, which helps the campaigns develop their strategy.
If you know who you will face on the final ballot, leadership campaigning becomes easier. You know who are potential allies and who are potential opponents.
The survey buttresses what was already a reasonable assumption: Hudak will be on the last ballot; Hillier will not be on the second; and the only variable is if Klees or Elliott will face Hudak in the last round.
Here is some advice to each campaign in their final days, based on that scenario.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 03:12 PM
Lessons from Nova Scotia
Yesterday’s election in Nova Scotia produced the first NDP government east of Ontario , and a majority at that.
How did Darrell Dexter manage such a feat, and what lessons does it hold for other jurisdictions in Confederation?
Basically, it comes down to one thing: Dexter followed the correct path.
The NDP is split between two broad traditions.
On the one hand is the patient and incremental path of Tommy Douglas, drawn from prairie social gospel and sifted through a filter of Roy Romanow pragmatism and Tony Blair centrism. It remains the dominant stream in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
This stream isn’t the abandonment of past principle its opponents allege. In fact, it is utterly consistent with Douglas’s philosophy of demonstrating competency in order to be trusted to bring about change. Douglas and finance minister Clarence Fines prudently managed the finances and carefully planned for debt reduction and balanced books. The massive change they brought about in Saskatchewan took place over decades, with medicare only introduced in 1962, 18 years after Douglas first came to power.
This stream of the NDP is the one Dexter firmly aligned himself with: pragmatic, centrist, “conservative progressive.”
The other stream of the NDP comes out of a more radical tradition of demanding immediate change. Dave Barrett’s government in British Columbia in the early 1970s is perhaps the best example. It blew through the province like a comet, left a nationalized insurance system in its wake, and burned out three years later to spend another generation in the wilderness.
But most of the followers of this tradition never achieve government. It is more about the journey than the destination, attempting to win over Canadians to an undiluted socialism rather than to moderate to the realities of the political system and the values of the public.
Andrew Steele Contributors
Andrew Steele
Andrew Steele is Senior Consultant at StrategyCorp., Toronto’s elite public affairs firm. He was previously senior advisor to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. He also served as Chief of Staff to the Ontario ministers of Environment, Government Services and Management Board. Described by the National Post as a "hard-nosed political veteran," Andrew has played a role in more than 25 closely-fought campaigns in Ontario, British Columbia, the United States, and on the municipal and federal scene in Canada. In the private sector, Andrew designed and analyzed public opinion surveys and interpreted focus groups at one of Canada's top market research companies.