What did he mean?

In a recent interview at the G20 sumit Stephen Harper said, of Canada:
"We also have no history of colonialism."
To me this seems quite racist, though perhapse he was just unclear. However there are reasons to be suspect of his motives. I've never really trusted him on issues like this for reasons such as his calling the Liberals' same-sex marriage bill "a threat to any Canadian who supports multiculturalism." Which is also the opposite of true.

And we're back.

After an unannounced and unjustified hiatus of around four and a half months, we're back. It won't happen again, we promise. Look for more frequent updates in this space starting now.

The front page of the Globe and Mail features our favourite Vulcan/Russian/American count (pictured to the left) flanked by two doughy Conservatives, all angry, all announcing their total willingness to go to the polls over EI reform, deficits, and slow spending of bailout money.

Even with all the shouting, though, it's pretty clear that there won't be an election anytime soon, even if the Liberals do present a confidence vote at their next opposition day. They would need the support of both the Bloc and the NDP to do so, and it's pretty clear that the NDP is not ready to fight an election right now.

The NDP have lost a couple points in polls as the recession deepens, and the rise in popularity of the Liberal Party under Ignatieff has squeezed the NDP in many of the 36 ridings they currently hold. At the last election, the NDP won by less than 10% in over a third of these ridings, with both Liberals and Conservatives coming in close seconds (as shown to the right). A couple points' fall in popularity could push the party down to 23 seats or so, and it's never optimal to go into an election on the defensive.

Even worse, a lot of these tight ridings are in expensive media markets like Vancouver and Toronto, and the NDP can't necessarily afford to compete right now. During the BC election, the federal NDP took flack for their attempts to undercut the provincial party with their fundraising, and in the first quarter of 2009, the party had one of their three worst fundraising quarters since the start of 2005.

In these circumstances, it's not surprising that the NDP haven't started candidate nominations, and that at least one NDP MP has stated that the party isn't interested in elections until 2010. However, there are a couple key tests before the Liberals' opposition day (if it ever comes) which could convince the NDP that an election might actually be worth it:

1. The provincial election in Nova Scotia, on 9 June. Polling is sparse, but currently it seems the NDP are ahead (maybe well ahead) of the Liberals and Conservatives. An NDP majority government in Nova Scotia would be a huge morale boost, and would show that the NDP can compete in the recession.
2. Possible federal by-elections in New Westminster-Coquitlam (in Vancouver suburbia) and Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley (northeast of Halifax). The former was formerly NDP territory, and the latter until recently had a hugely popular independent MP. No date has been set yet, but NDP wins would be a big ego boost and could likely put the party in election mode.
   

Even if the NDP is ready and willing for an election (and the Liberals and Conservatives don't back down), the Bloc would still be needed to take down the government. I'll discuss their election readiness later.

L'shana ha'va'a b'Yerushalayim

So I've sort of been sitting on this one, waiting for a post from my blograde Allan, but it's been a lengthy wait, so I'm going to go ahead and post about what's going on in Israel and Gaza, and what Canada should have been doing while the government enjoyed its lengthy Christmas break.

First off, I initially supported Israel's actions pretty strongly. While a two-state solution seems viable and reasonable in the long run, Hamas's unliateral end to the truce and its tendency to fire rockets into Israel represent some pretty strong apathy towards long-term political solutions, and a response targeting Hamas installations seemed more than reasonable. Israel does after all have the right to self-defence.

Since then... well, the Israeli response has gotten unreasonable, and both sides have been sort of vacillating on the topic of peace deals. For once I find myself agreeing with James Zogby when he says that the situation is in need of adult supervision, and kudos to France and Egypt for working in that direction..

Harper's response to the situation has been muted and delayed. Almost two weeks after hostilities started, and one day after the UN Security Council considered the issue, he called for a ceasefire, and hasn't really said much else.

This vague and inoffensive position is a reflection of the seemingly low priority the government has accorded the Mideast peace process - our ambassador to Israel had zero prior Mideast experience, and the Foreign Affairs website makes no visible mention of the Middle East at all. This may be part of a Conservative strategy to court Jewish and Muslim voters at the same time (although it's not clear there are that many single-issue voters in either of these groups) - or it might just be a lack of enthusiasm for dealing with possibly-complicated issuesby a tenuous minority government.

Canada dropped the ball on evacuating its citizens from Gaza - much like in Lebanon in 2006. At the time, Conservatives criticized the high cost of evacuating Canadian citizens - but the fact remains that they retain their Canadian citizenship, and ending recognition of dual citizenship would be far out of the international mainstream. The government has a responsibility to evacuate these people promptly.

At the same time, the government has a responsibility to protect citizens currently within its borders - not much has been done to prevent stupid attacks by people who cannot distinguish everyday Jews on the street from the Israeli government. (The article isn't from Canada, but I am wholly unconvinced that the same sort of things couldn't happen here.) During the election campaign, the Conservatives promised $3 million to protect religious institutions; the Liberals promised $75 million. It would cost very little political capital to adopt such an initiative, and demonstrate some response on the part of the government. Hoping to see something like this in the next budget.

If this post has put you to sleep, tune in soon for a more stats-friendly discussion of some exciting new poll results. There will be graphs. Seriously.

Close races (part 1 of 3)

For the next few posts, I'm planning to consider the close races from last elections - the battleground ridings which are realistically most likely to change hands in the next election (barring a major game-changer). Specifically, I'll be looking at ridings within the following arbitrary margins of victory:

• A 10 percent margin (of which there were 78)
• A 5 percent margin (of which there were 41)
• A 1 percent margin (of which there were 12)

Out of 308 ridings, this is quite a few with a close margin, which says something reassuring about the state of Canadian democracy. I'll be discussing the three categories separately, since the relevant effects and strategies are very different in these three cases.

Today, the ten-percenters. These are the ridings where a substantial shift in public opinion (which may be coming; I'm optimistic) or concerted local efforts could conceivably shift the vote. A whole lot of ridings fall into this category, in the following sort of distribution:
As would be expected, most of the close races are in Quebec and Ontario, with the Conservative-dominated Prairies and much of BC essentially noncompetitive. The smaller parties see most of their seats in competitive ridings - almost a quarter of Bloc seats and over 40% of NDP seats fall into this category.

It's also worth noting who's coming in a close second in these seats. (Note that the totals here don't add up to the ones above as some ridings had close three-way races.)
As shown, the Liberals saw the most close losses in the election - especially in Ontario and Quebec. The Conservatives, on the other hand, have a particularly strong opportunity in BC, where they came within ten percent of victory in nine of the the fourteen seats they do not already control.

With so many tight races, there is serious potential for lots of seats to change hands in the next election. What can the Liberals and Conservatives be doing to swing some of these tight races and maximize their chances of forming the next government?

The Conservatives should focus their attention on the big urban areas around Toronto and Vancouver, as they stand a high chance of picking up seats in these areas. Appointing all those Conservative party activists to the Senate probably did not help the party's chances in these regions, and nor does the party's gag policy on is candidates. Big cities are media-heavy, and the Conservative Party does a poor job of equipping its candidates to face the media.

The Liberals' efforts would be best focused in Quebec outside Montreal, and in southwestern Ontario, where they lost several very close races to the Bloc and the Conservatives, respectively. In addition to a leader fluent in English and less concessions and assistance to the Green Party, the party should be seeking to address the economy. Bailouts for the auto and forestry sectors - as the party has been seeking since Dion's adorable YouTube video- will play well in these areas as the economy tanks.

More Parliament pls

So, a couple weeks ago, I missed this story dealing with a major change in the way seats are allocated in the House of Commons. Basically, the number of seats allocated to BC, Alberta, and especially Ontario are set to increase drastically as they are guaranteed at least the representation that Quebec enjoys under various grandfather clauses. How will these changes affect the electoral landscape?

Under the new rules, with 33 new seats for BC (7 new seats), Alberta (5 new seats), and Ontario (21 new seats), the ratio of seats will change appreciably. The outer ring represents the current rules, and the inner ring the new one:
At first glance, it would seem that increases in seats for overwhelmingly-Conservative BC and Alberta would help the Conservatives in the next election. However, it's probably worth a closer look at some of the specific effects that could arise here:

1. The seats are going to be created in areas of BC, Alberta, and Ontario with high population growth. In particular, Vancouver and Surrey in BC, Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta, and Missasauga, Brampton, other parts of the Toronto suburbs, and Kitchener in Ontario are likely to see new seats. In Alberta, these are very likely to be strongly Conservative, but in Ontario and BC the new seats will come in regions which are currently largely Liberal, with some NDP and Conservative MPs. Given the closeness of several results in these areas (Kitchener-Waterloo, Brampton West, and Vancouver South were all decided by margins of less than 0.5% in the most recent election, and Vancouver-Quadra saw a similarly close by-election in the spring), new boundaries could have significant impacts in existing ridings.
   
2. The change in Liberal leadership may help Liberal prospects, especially in Ontario - 51% of Ontario voters approved of the switch to Ignatieff. Lots of new seats in Ontario could represent an opportunity for Liberal pickups. It seems the Conservatives were initially reluctant to give Ontario so many more seats, as this original proposal from last May shows. (For what it's worth, Ignatieff enjoys a 46% approval in BC in the same poll, and 41% in Alberta.)
   
3. The new House of Commons will see reduced electoral opportunities for the Bloc Quebecois. Since the Bloc only runs candidates in Quebec (obviously), a smaller proportion of seats for the province means a lower maximum on the number of seats the party can hold. The large number of new seats outside possible Bloc territory could increase the possibility of a majority government - or, at least, a coalition arrangement that did not (formally or otherwise) include the Bloc or depend on Bloc support.

If anyone has any thoughts on these changes, feel free to leave your comment.

It's not easy being Green

That was perhaps an overly lengthy holiday break - back to posting, now.

In the last election, the Green Party earned over ten percent of the vote in forty ridings. That's a pretty impressive take for a party with no seats; moreover, they are distributed across the country:
These Green ridings are heavily distributed in big urban areas, unsurprisingly - Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver all feature prominently. Perhaps more surprisingly are the overall winners in these ridings; many of them feature a Conservative MP, and some (likely the Calgary ridings, or Stockwell Day's Okanagan-Coquihalla) are the safest Conservative seats of all:
Almost three-quarters of that pie (29 ridings out of 40) is blue; clearly, the Green party is flourishing in righty ridings. Some (like my blogging comrade Allan) would suggest that this is because the Green party is "stealing" or splitting the vote in a Naderesque fashion, but consider the following histogram for the margin of the Conservative victory in those ridings:
This graph shows just how well the Green Party does in Conservative-heavy ridings; in the average riding where the Green Party won more than 10% of the vote but the Conservatives won overall, the margin by which the Conservative Party won was more than 30% of the total vote. In Calgary Southeast and Wild Rose, the Green Party placed second while the Conservatives picked up over 70% of the total vote.

In these 29 ridings, a (very unlikely) total shift of Green vote to the second-place party would lead to only two ridings changing parties - both Kitchener-Waterloo and Saanich-Gulf Islands would have gone Liberal under these circumstances. Under these circumstances, it is ludicrous to accuse the Green Party of "splitting the left vote" - generally, the Greens do well in ridings in which there is not a huge left vote there to split.

Why is the Green Party doing its best in very Conservative ridings? It seems likely that, in such ridings, voters recognized the inevitability of a Conservative win, and responded accordingly, through one of the two following actions:

1. Voters did not vote strategically in these ridings, and instead voted for their favoured party, and this meant a very large Green share. This seems unlikely, as it would imply a far greater preference for the Green Party than was relected in polls, but it could be that sites like VoteForEnvironment really did help the Liberals significantly.
   
2. Liberal voters in these ridings were demoralized by their party's poor standing in polls and did not bother to come out and vote, while Green supporters all voted anyway (as they never expected their party to win). This seems far more likely; in the heaviest Conservative ridings (with a share of over 70% for the Conservatives) the voter turnout averaged a dismal 40.2%, far lower than the Canadian average of 59.1%. (In Medicine Hat, barely one-third of voters turned out to vote, which is a bleak statement about Canadian democracy.)
   

This points to a deficit in get-out-the-vote operations by the Liberal Party, and a general enthusiasm gap. Hopefully this was just a one-election type thing, but what should the party be doing to attract voters in an increasingly Conservative-dominated political culture?

To beat the house, you've got to stack the deck.

In case you have yet to hear, the Upper House (Senate) is once again full. Full of senators that is. (I'm sure it's been full of certain other things fairly reliably since confederation.) Harper of course said he would not appoint senators, and he has now appointed a total of 20. (That is, 18 just now to make sure they go Conservative, 1 when elected to have a representative from Montreal (to pander), and one 'elected' from Alberta.) So I though I'd say a few words about senate reform.

There have been many attempts to and suggestions on Senate reform in this country. Under Trudeau (is there anything he didn't do?) there was a proposition to turn the Senate into a 'House of the Federation'. This would have been appointed half by the federal government, and half by the provincial governments. It would have increased the representation of BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland. (The last three are questionable as all three provinces are already incredibly overrepresented compared to the 4 larger provinces.) This house would also have been given the power to veto legislation for 60 days, or permanently if it was of linguistic relevance and a majority of both English and French senators voted to veto. (What about people who speak both or neither at home?) At the time, many other groups came out with their own ideas. Most of which turned the Senate into a provincial hand in the federal affairs of the country where the members would be appointed by the provincial legislatures, and vote as a block. In the end nothing happened as Ottawa and the provinces could not agree, and there were more important things on the table.














How things are now.






Later, in and around the early 80s, Senate reform resurfaced, especially in Western Canada. Much of the problem was that BC and to a lesser extent Alberta were underrepresented compared to Quebec and to a lesser extent Ontario. (It should be noted that Quebec and even more so Ontario are just as underrepresented with respect to the 6 smaller provinces.) The battle cry was condensed around the three 'E's:

Equal: More equal distribution across provinces (here meaning each province gets the same, also know as less equal)

Elected: The Senate should be democratic (cause they don't cost enough as is)

Effective: The Senate should do more then it does (now that we have computers to do the spell checking)

limitEd: Senators should not be allowed to stay until age 75 (this isn't one of the three, but usually goes hand in hand)

This became the favoured model in the west, and a battle cry in Alberta. Alberta's specifically favoured plan (as of 1985 and 2003) involved every province having 6 seats (2 per territory) elected from each province/territory as a whole under a multiple-member system. This Senate would have a delay veto (as above, but longer), and the ability to ratify non-military international treaties. The senate would still not be able to topple to government.














The Three E Plan (Tall lines are bad.)







Under the Progressive Conservatives the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords contained some Senate reform. Meech Lake would have forced the Senate appointees to come from lists put forward by the provinces. The Charlottetown Accords would have given each province 6 seats (1 per territory) to fill either by election or appointment, and also have given the Senate the language veto of Trudeau, the ability to delay money bills by 30 days, and force other bills into having to pass a vote in the combined houses. In the end, both accords dies for other reasons.

In the last few years Harper has latched onto the issue, specifically the democratic nature of the senate, and limited terms for its members. The big problem he doesn't talk about is that changing the Senate is for the most part a Constitutional thing, and thus requires consent from the House of Commons, the Senate, the GG, and two thirds of the provinces representing at least half of all Canadians. Harper likes to say that it has been the Senate that has so far stood in his way, but he has of course not had a majority in the House of Commons either, and the provinces have yet to agree to anything. In fact, Harper has tried to craft his Senate changes so as not to need provincial assent, but 4 of the provinces constituting 66% of Canadians (ON, QC, NB, and NL) have said that these changes must have provincial consent (meaning they likely don't agree with him, and in truth, the constitution agrees with the provinces on this one). This of course hasn't stopped him from tabling motions to limit terms to 8 years (was S-4, then C-19 this fall) and force provincial consultation on appointments (was C-43 then C-20 this fall). Neither had passed by this fall's election, and to my knowledge neither has been reincarnated since the economic crisis.














How I would do it. (Give 15 to ON, 7 to BC, 5 to AB, 2 to NL, MB, SK; new total: 138)



Personally, I agree that the Senate should be reformed somehow. That said the '3' 'E's are not the way to go. By giving each province an equal number of seats you severely disenfranchise the big provinces. I support the idea of it not being directly proportional so as to help the smaller provinces have their own voices, but Ontario and Quebec make up 61% of this country, and so they should get more seats than the west or the east. I also consider the idea to be a power grab on behalf of the Conservatives. If each province were given 6 seats, the Conservative friendly western provinces would lose no seats, while the more Conservative poor regions would loose 42 seats (taking into account a gain of 2 for PEI). Under this system there could be a Conservative Senate majority with just 33% of Canadians given a strong showing in the West. This is only intensified if the Senate becomes elected. At the moment, the Senate does little aside from minor amendments and thorough second readings of legislation (hence being called the body of "sober second thought"). If the senate were to become elected, I'm sure it would begin to wield its almost House of Commons like power. If this were to happen and the senate were not at least mostly proportional to population then we would no longer be even as democratic as we currently are. That said, if it were elected on a proportional basis, why bother having it, as it would just be a second House of Commons.

Why not limit their power (so that they can't impinge on the democratic House) throw a few extra seats at the 6 most western provinces, and then let the provinces decide for themselves how their seats are filled. In the end, they would likely end up elected anyway. The one problem with this is that in the even of provincial appointments, what party would the appointees represent federally? The provincial parties and federal parties in this country do not parallel well. The PQ and Bloc may agree, as likely do the Alberta PC's and the federal Conservatives, but the PEI PC party is nothing like the federal Conservatives, the Quebec Liberals do not necessarily get along with the federal Liberals (their leader was a PC), and the Saskatchewan Party has no federal analogue (the list continues, I do not).

In the end though, it seams Harper has decided that he wants what he wants, and he will violate his earlier principles to do it. While I don't fault the guy as a politician for doing it, doing it for reform is not really as necessary as it sounds. There was at least some senate support for the Murray-Austin amendment (fairly large reform proposal) in 2006, and in the 2004 election all 4 parties supported change to the Senate. I'm sure even today support could be found for a reasonable proposal amongst Ignatieff's Liberals. Besides, Harper himself said that if he could not get reform passed, he would like to see the Senate abolished, a position supported by both the NDP and the Bloc. So while the appointments can't hurt, I suspect this is more of a political smoke screen, hence the phrase: "If Senate vacancies are to be filled, however, they should be filled by the government that Canadians elected rather than by a coalition that no one voted for". (Which is of course politically charged and wrong, as the coalition is just as elected as they are.) It would have, of course, been political suicide to have let the appointments pass, risking more non-Conservative appointments. That said, Mr. Martin appointed at least two senators who identified as PC, not Liberal.

In the end this isn't so bad though.
If you don't trust him or his party, take heart that even after these 18 appointments the senate will be: 38 Conservative, 58 Liberal, 3 PC, 6 independent (or other). Even with 8 Liberal senators leaving in the next year, there will still be more Liberals than Conservatives.
If you do trust him, and were committed to reform, this is probably a good thing, so be happy. Besides, many of the appointments weren't so bad.
However, if you were hoping he would finally keep one of his silly promises long enough to be hung with it, be disappointed that once again he has chosen politics over ideology. Because in the end, that is how you beat the House.