Featured:
Friday, July 3, 2009 04:30 PM
Ed Stelmach: visionary?
Foresight is not a word often applied to Alberta's recent governments. The province has exhibited a tendency to careen from boom to bust (or at least cool-off) with an absence of long-term planning, which is how it surprised everyone by winding up in deficit (and having to raid a portion of its contingency fund).
Full credit, then, to Ed Stelmach - generally cast as just about the least visionary politician in the country - for attempting to think big. Although it remains to be seen just how much will be achieved by a panel that meets only twice a year, I'm assured that all sorts of resources being thrown at it and that a decent amount of background work has already been done. And while I'm not sure all of the dozen panelists will bring an equal amount to the table - having sat in meetings with David Dodge and Anne McLellan, I'm hoping their agenda will allot much more time for the former - that's quite a bit of talent Stelmach has managed to recruit from across the country.
More importantly, he seems to have gotten the scope right. Rather than obsessing simply over emerging intact from the current recession, Stelmach wants to know what Alberta can do over the next few years to prepare for the next few decades - to ensure, presumably, that his province is less vulnerable to future twists and turns in the global economy.
Of course, the fact that Alberta can count on a quick short-term recovery makes long-term planning much easier than it is in provinces that don't have resource revenues to rely on. But there isn't a province in the country that wouldn't benefit from putting big questions to smart people.
Link to this postMonday, June 29, 2009 06:55 PM
Taking off the gloves
For the first week of Toronto's labour standoff, David Miller declined to mount a public relations campaign against the city's striking workers - an approach that, by my estimate at least, was noble but self-destructive.
Today, he seems to have changed his tune. From the Star:
"I must say I am somewhat frustrated particularly with the inside workers, Local 79, who represent people like child care workers," [Miller] told reporters at an afternoon briefing. "The city tabled a monetary proposal before the strike which they have not formally responded to after a week of strike." ...
While he thanked Torontonians for their patience, he emphasized that the strike is about much more than garbage.
"I think it's very important for Torontonians to get people back to work, to find a way to resolve this at the table and to provide the services that people need. It's about much more than garbage, it's about summer camps for kids and all of those services that families count on in the summer."
To position unions as obstinate is not Miller's preferred approach; he'd clearly rather see himself as a bridge-builder, and avoid permanently alienating friends on the left. But as this battle drags on, he seems to be recognizing that he has to either pick a side, or keep taking fire from both of them.
Monday, June 29, 2009 01:29 PM
Hudak's clean slate (sort of)
CalgaryGrit makes a very smart observation about Tim Hudak's victory yesterday: "Hudak pulled off the rare feat of being a front runner who was also the top second choice preference among the supporters of the defeated candidates."
He attributes it largely to a lack of frontrunner resentment when you get away from leadership conventions, which I agree with (and have been on about at great length previously). But it does say something about Hudak that the anybody-but movement was fairly muted; clearly, he's a leader most people in his party can live with.
That's a good start, given what John Tory went through trying to unite his caucus. The question now is how he casts himself before the broader electorate.
All the speculation we've heard recently about Hudak favouring a Mike Harris model of conservatism is totally valid, because that's what he built his campaign around. But since the vast majority of Ontarians haven't been paying attention, he has something resembling a clean slate.
Remember - or don't, if you had better things to do in 1996 than follow the Ontario Liberals' leadership race - that Dalton McGuinty was perceived to be the most conservative of the contenders that year. He won his support largely from small-town Ontario, with a dash of social conservatism appealing to those who didn't want the party in the hands of Gerard Kennedy.
Outside of card-carrying New Democrats, there aren't a whole lot of Ontarians who today view McGuinty as much of a conservative. That's because they only started forming impressions sometime around the 1999 provincial election, or at least leading up to it.
Of course, leadership campaigns can lock new leaders into defining themselves a certain way, if they make binding promises in order to win them. Hudak may have done just that with his promise to scrap the province's human rights tribunal - a transparent attempt to win second-choice votes from Randy Hillier supporters.
Unless he promptly breaks that promise, he may have severely impeded his ability to smoothly transition from a leadership campaign to a general election.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 04:24 PM
Study in contrasts
In Quebec, the newly appointed minister tasked with helping revive the province's economy is a senior economist recruited from outside to run in a recent by-election.
In Ontario, the newly appointed minister tasked with helping revive the province's economy is a career politician who spent a previous, fairly unremarkable stint in the same portfolio.
Considering the extent to which the Premier's Office is behind the wheel on most economic development files, at least in Ontario, none of this is a definitive indication of how each province will fare. But particularly with an upcoming by-election in the vacated riding of a former economic development minister who didn't exactly get rave reviews himself, the provincial Liberals in one province could do a lot worse than following the lead of the provincial Liberals in the other.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 08:40 AM
Rest assured, Ignatieff does not think he's been weakened
If you're looking for a case study in Ottawa's level of discourse, this past weekend's interview of Michael Ignatieff by Craig Oliver does the trick nicely.
Oliver is one of the country's most experienced and respected television journalists; he should be more than able to draw the Liberal Leader out on issues Canadians care about. Instead, he spends about three-quarters of the 10-minute interview asking and re-asking (a) whether Ignatieff showed weakness in not bringing down the government and (b) whether he'll bring it down in the fall.
Before wrapping up, he eventually gets to a more interesting - if somewhat broad - question about how Ignatieff defines himself. But not once does he ask about a policy issue that goes beyond the EI dispute, let alone attempt to figure out what it is that the Liberals want to do differently from the Conservatives on matters of substance.
This is not exactly the phenomenon Susan Delacourt addressed in the Toronto Star today. But it nevertheless helps prove her point about the role of the media in turning Ottawa into what it's become.
Monday, June 22, 2009 04:56 PM
Those who forget history...
A quick question for the members of CUPE locals 79 and 416, many of whom were presumably in Ontario in the mid-1990s: Remember what role unions played in the fate of Bob Rae's NDP government?
While we're at it, a second query, equally easy to answer: What did those unions think of the government that followed Rae's?
Like Rae was provincially, David Miller is just about the friendliest Toronto mayor unions are going to encounter. He has, most notably, resisted pressure to outsource or privatize - something you can bet a more conservative mayor like Karen Stintz or even John Tory would be much more eager to do.
If they're not careful, that more conservative mayor may be exactly what the unions wind up with. Although it's somewhat logically inconsistent to blame a mayor for a strike after years of complaining that he's unwilling to fight the unions, Miller's critics are already seizing on Toronto's new surplus of garbage as emblematic of his mismanagement. If the city workers' strike drags on, and Miller doesn't wind up getting a pound of flesh from the unions, it could turn out to be the beginning of the end of his mayoralty.
If I were a city worker, I'd be inclined to give up my ability to bank sick days - definitely the hot-button issue at the centre of this dispute - take a few concessions from the city in return, and hand a political win to the mayor who doesn't have it in for me. From a union perspective, better that than paving the way for Toronto's version of Mike Harris.
Friday, June 19, 2009 01:03 PM
How to look busy without actually doing anything
I was about to get all up in arms about the federal government's latest stab at Internet surveillance legislation - specifically the apparent return to the plan to allow police to get personal information from ISPs without a warrant.
Then I realized there was no point. After all, it's not like the government is making any serious effort to pass this legislation.
That it was introduced at the very end of the spring sitting suggests that seeing lawful access through Parliament is not exactly a top priority for the Conservatives. It's just a way of throwing some red meat to their base - much like the various other law-and-order bills that have popped up lately, many of which are similar rehashes of past legislation that never went anywhere.
That's not because of failure; it's by design. Actually implementing these measures would (a) subject many of them to legal challenges and (b) mean the government would have to come up with new ones to throw to its supporters next time. Just keeping them perpetually on the table, but not in law, is much easier.
Thursday, June 18, 2009 04:54 PM
Today's pipe dream
How much less disrepute would federal politicians be in if more of them expressed themselves like Glen Pearson?
The MP for London North is not non-partisan; his latest post is more or less a defence of his leader. But like much of what he writes, it's sufficiently balanced - sufficiently honest - that it's credible.
In my discussion with readers earlier today, I went on a bit of a tangent (playing off Chris Selley's post, which played off my own) about how quickly Ottawa can ruin smart people by causing them to lose all perspective.
I declined to mention that the ones who aren't ruined have a tendency to be driven away. One wonders how long Glen Pearson has left.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 06:05 PM
eHealth's death knell
The departure of Alan Hudson as chairman of eHealth will be seen by many as predictable fallout from the controversy surrounding that provincial agency. But if the public isn't surprised, you can bet that many Ontario Liberals are.
There was much speculation the past few weeks that Hudson would be the last to fall. He was Dalton McGuinty's golden boy, perhaps more trusted by the Premier on health care policy than anyone else in the province. As such, there were predictions being made that David Caplan - the amiable but expendable Health Minister - would be thrown under the bus first.
That it was Hudson instead - or at least first - is a victory for fairness, since there doesn't appear to have been anyone more responsible for the problems that arose over eHealth. But it's also a huge concession by McGuinty that effectively signals defeat on any serious effort to digitalize provincial health records; with Hudson out of the picture, it's back to somewhere before square one.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 02:40 PM
Do they know it's summertime at all?
Denis Coderre, yesterday: "People are going to starve this summer and they want to know what will be done about employment insurance. What is [the Human Resources Minister] waiting for?
Our report, today: "Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff have reached a tentative deal to spare Canadians from a summer election that would see them appoint a blue-ribbon panel to help resolve their differences over boosting employment insurance benefits."
Now, I'm no expert on blue-ribbon panels, never having been asked to sit on one. But I'm pretty sure that it takes them more than a few hours - more than a few days, even - to reach their findings. So if I were to go out on a limb, I would guess that we're not going to see any legislated changes to EI until after this summer, starving children or not.
To be clear, a panel of Liberals and Conservatives taking a step back and deciding how best to reform the program sounds like an excellent idea. It's the sort of thing that, if this Parliament were remotely functional, would have happened without this week's silliness.
If that had been the case, those Canadians who hadn't already averted their eyes would have had reason to believe there are adults running the show. Instead, they've only been given yet more evidence that nothing they hear out of Ottawa should be taken remotely seriously.
***
Update: Lest you get the false impression that today's agreement could herald the start of a newly mature, cooperative effort to make minority parliament work, CP offers the following:
In an internal memo circulated within Tory ranks, the Prime Minister's Office appeared to be claiming victory over Ignatieff.
"The Liberals have reversed themselves on EI reform (their 360-hour demand has been abandoned) and withdrawn the threat to force an unnecessary summer election," the memo said.
"Instead, the Liberals will vote for the next round of stimulus in our Economic Action Plan."
Adam Radwanski Contributors
Adam Radwanski
Adam Radwanski is a member of the Globe and Mail's editorial board, and the politics editor for globeandmail.com. He was previously the managing editor of Macleans.ca, and from 2002-06 was an editorial writer and columnist at the National Post. Formerly a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and The Hill Times and the founder of Canada'a first online political magazine, Adam has also written extensively on arts - doubling as the Post's music critic from 2004-06. He was a 2009 National Newspaper Award nominee for editorial writing, and his blog was among the finalists for a 2008 EPPY award.