The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Vote for Stalemate

I've left you all on tenterhooks, haven't I? 

Here we are well into the first week of the writ period and Publius has yet to throw his support behind any of the parties. No doubt each of the party leaders are anxious.

Have the years of anger and frustration at last exploded? Will he demand the overthrow of Stephen Harper at all costs! Even supporting the NDP if necessary!

Or will your humble correspondent ask you to consider the overlooked virtues of Michael Ignatieff? As soon as I figure out what those might happen to be. It'll come to me. Just give me a few moments...

No. I ask you on May 2nd to vote for paralysis. Vote for the status quo. Let us keep going down this particular road to our Canadian version of perdition. Do nothing. In politics it's usually best.

Let us forget the pretence that ordinary MPs are anything but parliamentary cannon fodder. We have a presidential election campaign being conducted within a parliamentary system. We must measure the chefs according to their sins, both venial and mortal.

None of the leaders are very palatable. We face a three way choice (four ways if you live in La Belle Province) between a pragmatist, a political incompetent and an economic illiterate. By relative merits it would seem that Stephen Harper is the best choice. Though in the same sense that manure is preferable to toxic waste.

The Prime Minister has effectively demanded a majority government from the Canadian electorate. The alternative, he says, is a stark one: The Grand Coalition of Evil. Lord Iggy's has insisted that he would never join such a Coalition. Even though he signed - belatedly - the December 2008 Coalition Deal. Who knows? The Grits triggered this pointless election. They just might be dumb enough to form a Coalition with the two other opposition parties. Such a move would destroy the Liberal Party for a generation. It would drive Blue Liberals and Grit centralists into waiting Tory arms.

A more practical danger is Stephen Harper winning a majority government. At some level I'm tempted to give the Tories enough rope to hang themselves. We had to be all middle of the road because of the minority blah, blah, blah. Fine. Here's a big thumping majority. Perhaps the Wheat Board and long-gun registry would go. Perhaps. The problem with compromising your principles to win a majority government is that you then have to compromise your principles to keep that majority.

The Conservative Party of Canada needs new leadership. Since there is little chance of Harper losing the keys to 24 Sussex in this election - unless The Toronto Star finally does locate that hidden agenda in a cupboard somewhere - only another minority government might force his resignation. Even a few seats short of the majority mark would start the countdown clock. This will be Stephen Harper's fourth election as leader of the united Right.

This doesn't mean a quick exit. Instead something similar to the aftermath of Pearson's second failure to win a majority in 1965. After two years, and with the prospect of another election looming, the bow-tie wearing PM was forced to bow out. Had it not been for 1967 being the centennial year, it's likely the Grit caucus would have pushed out the Nobel Laureate sooner. 

I'll leave to another time a sorting out of Harper's likely successors. We are on the hustings now. While the Harper Conservatives have proven a disappointment, that does not mean the Conservative Party itself does not have potential for re-generation. With governments through out the world being forced to retrench, now is an excellent opportunity for a fresh face to present a fiscally sound and smaller government political platform. A new vision of national unity could be projected, stepping away from two generations of Quebec appeasement and would - among other things - strengthen this country's economic union and wind down the inter-regional beggar-thy-policies of the last half century.

This is unlikely to happen if Stephen Harper wins a majority. It will be interpreted by both party operatives and the grassroots as a vindication - albeit a belated one - of incrementalism. That there has been very little improvement in the fortunes of conservative ideas and policies, only in the fortunes of the Conservative Party, will not matter. Winning has a powerful impact on perceptions. Often we don't care what we win so long as we win something. That a Tory Majority now would be a shallow victory for the values its members have long claimed will not be immediately understood.

Whether it takes a few years, or a decade, the stoical Conservative base will begin to revolt as surely as they did in Mulroney's last years. They will do so for the same reason. The party has not lived up to its avowed principles. It will be better for all if that process happens in next two years rather than later.

Another Tory minority government will keep the incompetents in the Liberal Party away from the levers of government, while allowing time enough to choose a genuinely small c-conservative leader and reorient policy. After three hard fought elections in five years, the finances of the Grits are precarious and their fund raising apparatus has yet to be properly modernized in wake of the Chretien-era campaign finance reforms. The opposition will be at its weakest in years. The Conservative Party the most susceptible to change since Harper's accession in 2004.

My best recommendations is to vote strategically. This is something of a gamble but it seems the percentage swings in the popular vote from 2008 will be small in most parts of the country. In ridings where a sitting Conservative MP has little chance of being defeated, if possible consider voting for a Libertarian or independent candidate. Even a shift of a few hundred votes would signal to local riding associations dissatisfaction with the Tories' leftward drift.

Where the Liberals hold relatively safe seats, a vote for the Conservative or Libertarian candidate would weaken the Liberal party - less money through the vote subsidy scheme - but not aid Harper's bid for a majority in a significant way. In the so-called Big Fifty swing ridings is where the call becomes harder

My own instinct would be to maintain the riding in the hands of the incumbent. Change as little as possible the political landscape in the Commons. These swings ridings will be watched closely by the local and even national media. It should be possible to tell where the political wind is blowing in most them through out the campaign. Local candidates also do independent polling. A step up in the nasty-factor in tactics by these candidates - such as out of the blue accusations of fraud - may give pretty good clues as to who is getting desperate. Extensive lawn sign vandalism is often another tell-tale.

In these swing ridings vote Tory to keep a Tory in power, or vote Liberal to keep a Liberal in power. A vote for an independent might easily allow a vote split in the wrong direction, changing the make up of the House of Commons. I would, however, make an exception in the cases of especially egregious local candidates. Julian Fantino in Vaughan comes to mind quite readily.

This might seem all a bit excessive. A few hundred or a few thousand votes can hardly swing an election one way or another? In a first-past-the-post electoral system they can and do. Pierre Trudeau clung to power in 1972 by a margin of two seats and a few hundred votes. In 2008 six ridings were subject to recounts because of the narrow margin of the outcome. The Tories are a dozen seats short of majority. This will be a hard and close fought election. Don't imagine the votes of you and your friends cannot make a difference.

Ronald Reagan famously joked that status quo was Latin for the mess we're in. For the longer term future of Canada, the mess we're in is a good place to be. For now.

 

Harper or Chaos!

Let us get lost again, my friends, in the fluffy blue sweater:

“Let me be perfectly clear: unless Canadians elect a stable national majority government, Michael Ignatieff will form a coalition with the NDP and Bloc Québécois,” he said.

“Imagine a coalition of arch-centralists and Quebec sovereigntists trying to work together. The only thing they'll be able to agree on is to spend more money and to raise taxes to pay for it.”

Part of this blog's schtick is putting a historical perspective on current events. So here it is: Stephen Joseph Harper will be channelling William Lyon Mackenzie King during this election campaign. Not just in his do nothing by halves that can be done by quarters pragmatism, but in his actual campaign strategy as well.

In 1935 the then Liberal opposition leader campaigned on a slogan of King or Chaos! It meant absolutely nothing. As with most of King's rhetoric, it conveyed stability, progress and prosperity all at the same time without committing to any particular position, except keeping the Liberals in power. Who can argue with success? The King-St.Laurent Liberals ruled Ottawa for the next twenty two years. I don't think Stephen Harper and the Blue Boys - shall we drop the now largely inaccurate term "conservative" for honesty's sake? - will have such a run of good luck.  

Let me be frank and admit I have no idea what the hell Michael Ignatieff is thinking. In fact the Liberal Party has exhibited nothing resembling a coherent strategy since Papa Jean walked out of Rideau Hall seven plus years ago. Replacing a tough as nails political operator with a dithering technocrat was not an improvement. Replacing the dithering technocrat with an out of touch professor made even less sense. Replacing that out of touch professor with another out of touch professor - albeit one with better English - is another mellon scratcher. If Justin wasn't waiting in the wings I'd suspect the next Liberal leader - to be chosen sometime in the early Fall of 2011  - would be Warren Kinsella's cat.

Maybe Iggy figured that with the poll momentum going Harper's way, it was best to pull the trigger now, rather than in three or four months when a Harper Majority comes to be seen as an inevitability. Perhaps a tenured professorship at Harvard is opening up in the near future. Or maybe Mackenzie King's crystal ball is on the fritz. Whatever the reason, Iggy's melodramatic performance during  Friday's non-confidence/contempt of parliament vote is his swan song. He's done. Liberals like to win - it is in fact the sole unifying principle of modern Canadian Liberalism - and Iggy's is going to lose and lose badly.

Friend Gilles has a cushy job for life. Not surprisingly M. Duceppe was a trade union negotiator for many years, so running the Bloc Quebecois comes naturally. You make outrageous demands, threaten to leave and eventually decide to stick around a bit longer when the management offers a sweet deal. What Gilles was doing with Quebec's hospitals once upon a time, he is now doing with English speaking Canadian taxpayers. It's a profitable bluff. Quebec is a strategically placed, first world economy that keeps crying poverty. No one seriously believes that Quebec is a "have not" province, certainly not in the way the Maritimes have been historically cash strapped. Transfers and equalization funding to Quebec is simply political bribery to let the rest of us go on with our lives.

Jack Layton wants to be Prime Minister. I want to be paid a million dollars a year to write these blog posts. The odds on millionaire Publius are a heck of a lot better. In addition to dreams of political glory, the former Toronto City Councillor is also looking to better the country:

“What does all this mean?” he asked. “Ottawa is broken. And it’s time for us to fix it.”

Very true. Unfortunately neither you, nor any of the party leaders, have the temerity to admit what is actually wrong with Ottawa. Let me give you a hint. It's not Stephen Harper's pragmatism. It isn't Lord Iggy's incompetence. Not even Jack Layton's spend till you're broke ideology. The problem with Ottawa is Quebec. Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois are merely the symptoms. Our national democracy is broken because part of the electorate refuses to participate.

In the 2006 and 2008 federal elections there were 308 seats up for grabs. That's 75 in Quebec and 233 in the Rest of Canada (ROC). The 2006 election saw the Conservatives win 114 seats in ROC and 10 in Quebec. The Conservatives did better in the ROC in 2008 winning 133 seats and holding on to their seats in Quebec. If we were to remove Quebec's 75 seats from Parliament a majority government could be formed with 117 seats. On that basis, including only their ROC seats, the Harper Tories would have won a strong minority government in 2006 and a clear majority in 2008. To say, as the opposition parties and the MSM have, that Harper has failed to seal the deal with Canadians is only partially correct. 

For all his faults, chronicled in some detail on this blog over the years, Stephen Harper has in fact convinced a critical mass of the interested Canadian electorate of his fitness to lead us. Those who vote for the Bloc Quebecois have declared their disinterest in Canada as a working proposition.

The Bloc Quebecois are not political party in any meaningful sense but merely a pressure group that has won election to parliament. It is because of this we find ourselves in a series of weak hung parliaments. The BQ offers no vision for Canada, only its potential destruction. It's bargaining position with the other parties in recent parliaments has been of routine blackmail. Vote what is in the best interests of Quebec, or else. 

As Edmund Burke observed in his Address to the Electors of Bristol:

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. 

Yet in our Parliament today there are members who proclaim themselves openly, and without any reservation, to be ambassadors from an interest hostile to the well being of a whole and united Canada. The Bloc Quebecois have no interest in achieving any conception a general good, or of participating in " the general reason of the whole."

If we want to fix our democracy, a very good first step would be for the three federalist leaders to declare their belief in the equality of all Canadians. From that principle they would promise to restore representation by population and oppose any policy of asymmetric federalism (granting favours to one province, or group of provinces, at the expense of the others). Such a declaration would signal clearly to the Quebec electorate that the ROC will no longer be blackmailed. It will be federalism calling the bluff of separatism. An independent Quebec is a fiscal impossibility today, unless the Quebecois were to become overnight libertarians, and over the long-term it is doomed by demographic trends. The pure laine are dying out.

I do not imagine that our political leadership will have the courage, or vision, to make such a declaration on their own initiative. Instead the people of Canada must force it upon them. It will come from the understanding that the succession of hung parliaments, myopic partisanship and politics of trivia is unlikely to end until we have a working and workable parliament. That cannot happen, not for any great length of time, with the continued presence of the Bloc Quebecois.

Update: Former Harris Cabinet Minister John Snobelen is pretty much on the same page regarding the traitors.

The Educated Voter

Mugabe's reign of terror continues:

Munyaradzi Gwisai, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe’s law school, was showing internet videos about the tumult sweeping across North Africa to students and activists last Saturday, when state security agents burst into his office.

The agents seized laptop computers, DVD discs and a video projector before arresting 45 people, including Gwisai, who runs the Labor Law Center at the University of Zimbabwe. All 45 have been charged with treason — which can carry a sentence of life imprisonment or death — for, in essence, watching viral videos.

Gwisai and five others were brutally tortured during the next 72 hours, he testified Thursday at an initial hearing.

(HT)

Well, at least Ian Smith isn't in power.

Let me confess that I'm an old imperialist. For the most part European imperialism was a good thing for the subject populations. This does not mean that the colonial powers did not exploit the native inhabitants, of course they did. Injustice is injustice. Life is also life. Czarist Russia has hardly Victorian England, though it was far superior to the Communist nightmare that succeeded it. The same can generally be said for Europe's former colonies, especially those in Africa.

Not perfect, but better than what else was on offer. Even the less enlightened colonial governments, the Belgians, the French and the Portuguese, offered the natives something resembling civilized government. A thing which few of these nations have seen since.

Freedom is indeed the right of all mankind, democracy, however, is simply a method of maintaining it. If history had proven absolute monarchy to be a better protection for individual rights, so be it. History, however, does not show that. It warns us about the dangers of concentrating power and of rulers who are unaccountable to their people. Mass democracy was a way of checking both problems. Power would be dispersed as far as possible among the people, and the rulers held accountable to a wide electorate. 

For mass democracy to work, however, you need an educated and civilized electorate. The pioneers in developing a stable mass democracy were the English speaking nations. In the United States, and the British settlement colonies, property and education were widely enough diffused that mass democracy was implemented easily and quickly. This was not the case with Britain itself, which possessed a large and semi-literate underclass.

With the steady expansion of the franchise in the nineteenth century, the British educated classes became anxious as to how intelligently the new voters would wield their ballots. To the Liberal statesman Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke, the answer was clear and dramatic: "we must educate our masters." 

Lowe's solution, unfortunately, was government education. He was, however, deeply suspicious of trade unions and would have balked at the modern bureaucratic system of schooling. The sad trajectory of public education should not obscure the essential wisdom of Lowe's observation, that those who wield the ballot must be sufficiently educate to wield it intelligently.

There are, of course, no guarantees that even the best educated (as opposed to the merely schooled) will behave in an intelligent, rational or fair manner. On the whole an educated citizen is more likely to choose candidates for office in a wise and fair sighted manner. There was a time when democratic systems produced statesmen like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Peel and Gladstone, rather than the pragmatic power lusters that deface public life today. 

What Ian Smith feared was that in granting black majority rule, to a population that was tribal and illiterate, was that in short-order civilized life would collapse. That is what has come to pass in Zimbabwe. The process has repeated itself across Africa, the degree of descent determined often by the degree of insanity of the particular President for Life. In the last decade there was been a sort of African awakening, with the emergence of semi-free countries like Uganda, Ghana and Botswana, as well as a moderating of the continent's less palatable regimes. Still, much of Africa is a long way off, in terms of living standards and rule of law, than it was in 1960.

Ian Smith's failure was not in refusing for fifteen to grant majority rule in Rhodesia, it was in failing to "educate his masters." We shouldn't get too smug in Canada. While schooling is nearly universal, education is not. The seat warmers in our public high schools are the voters of tomorrow. People unable to understand basic math and history are unlikely to be able, or willing, to demand a balanced budget or a free government.