No More Shall I Roam

Why do we have representatives in our democracy?

This isn't a rhetorical question. In a time when we can vote online in polls dozens of times a day, why do we need representatives at all? And what is their proper role?

I've worried about this before, and the issues haven't changed. The Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) vote in Ontario brings it to the fore again, and in a more direct way than I would have imagined. It is particlarly odd to see some bloggers, who seem so anxious to `protect peoples votes' by pushing MMP be so quick to dismiss those same people's opinions when it turns out they're not all that interested in the idea.

Let me lead off by saying that I'm on the record as not being especially enamoured by the current First Past the Post system, but it is always possible to make a bad situation worse.

The proposed MMP system, which is not as bad as it could be, would maintain 90 riding MPPs but add another 39 party-list members; the party-list members would be voted for separately from the riding MPPs. The theory being that voters, disillusioned by having only a ~one in 50,000 say in who their local representative is, will be drawn back into politics by also having a ~one in 150,000 say in which party gets to appoint a party member accountable only to the party leadership to a list seat.

And thus the question at the head of the post. Why have representatives? If we're going to have 30 more pure party-line voters in Queen's Park, why bother? Why not just split up those 30 seats and give Dalton McGuinty and John Tory and Howard Hampton extra votes in proportion to the party list ballot?

A lot of bloggers have been arguing passionately and sincerely for this sort of electoral reform for quite some time; they are intelligent and well-informed, and have been busy debunking lots of truly poor anti-MMP arguments (which are often just hastily re-treaded pro-status-quo arguments). But the problem is misdiagnosed -- I think because most bloggers are fiercely partisan, and so tend to quite innocently see greatly strengthening the party system as a good in and of itself -- and the proposed cure makes the actual underlying problem worse.

I'm going to excerpt from a previous post here, because I think it still applies.

Elections are coming, sooner or later, and there has been much discussion since the last one about election reform. This is a useful and worthwhile topic of discussion, but I worry that discussion of the mechanics of Canadian elections overshadows a much more fundamental problem -- that of participation in those elections.

I worry a great deal about this -- not because of partisan concerns, that such-and-such party would do better if only more people voted (I'm so reluctant to sign up to political parties that I haven't even gotten around to joining the Non-Partisan Bloggers group yet.) And it's not because of some abstract idealism -- wouldn't it be nice if more people availed themselves of their democratic rights.

I have more fundamental worries. Democracy works because citizens agree to respect the outcomes of elections, and the governments that they produce. As participation declines, more people feel that the election results -- and the governments they produce -- aren't really representing them.

Where did all the voters go?

Looking at the data starts to drive this home. Voter participation has been falling steadily over more than the past decade:

and when you look at age cohorts, you see why -- the strongest factor in voter participation is age. The younger the citizen, the less likely they are to vote:

The kids are alright

It's easy for old fogies like myself to blame low youth participation in voting on generational factors — saying that todays kids' cynicism, general disaffection, and bad music is at fault. But in Canada at least, this just appears to be false. Although Canadian youth are increasingly not participating in politics, they are participating in their communities at similar rates to other age groups. According to the National Survey of Giving and Voluteering and Participating, youth don't seem significantly more less participitory; they just take part less in traditional politics. If you ask youth about voting, they will agree that voting is important and that policies should be put in place to encourage other youth to vote, but will also answer that they have never voted before. Attempts have been made to increase the youth vote, but they have been unimpressive. (Elections Canada has a Young Voters site with, unhelpfully, a `Games Corner' section).

These trends don't represent apathy towards politics in general, in youth or in the population as a whole. Canadians are not especially cynical about politics, or even Canadian party politics — a majority think that joining a political party is a useful way to contribute to society! — the problem is they don't feel there's an easy way to directly be involved.

Lots of information, not enough feedback

Declan at Crawl Across the Ocean makes this point about involvement in an excellent pair of posts which sketch out the policy-making process in Canada, and nicely show how little explicit room there is for direct involvement of most Canadians in the crafting of Canadian policy. There aren't many options for being involved between voting once every few years and becoming a full-time activist. And today, when one can pay bills online and instantaneously see the change in your bank account, waiting for the opportunity to vote once every few years doesn't feel like you are very involved in the political system.

This growing imbalance between getting information and giving feedback — hearing about policy choices and their impacts several times a day compared with casting one ballot four times a decade — contributes to the feeling of voting not really making a difference. There is very widespread support for political reform, because 61% of Canadians want more direct say in policymaking, but how is it to be done?

There have been many words written about how the `wired world' has changed things, but this is surely hokum. Blogs certainly allow everyone to have a voice about political matters, but so do neighborhood pubs. This isn't to disparage their usefulness — I like pubs, and I like blogs. And even if many political blogs are badly thought-out, poorly researched, nonsense, or are simply the most technologically advanced form of `me too!'ism in human history, the fact that there are so many and, in aggregate, widely read, means that there is certainly an interest in participating in the national and provincial debates on issues, even if there isn't an institution now to connect those debates to policy choices. But they reflect a demand for ways to participate, not (in their current state) a means.

Democratic Changes: The "Don't"s

So what is to be done? Of course, could simply make voting manditory as in Australia. Maybe surprisingly, the manditory voting policy there is extremely popular. This would surely raise voting participation rates, which is probably a (modestly) good thing in and of itself; but it doesn't solve the underlying problem of people not being able to find a way to participate more directly.

Some recent attempts to repair the electoral system, by focusing on a adjusting the details of how Parliamentary representatives are chosen, may make the situation worse, rather than better; the electoral system may be slightly improved while weakening the larger democratic input.¹ This is why I'm very skeptical of multi-representative ridings, or proportional representation In both cases, responsibility for representing any one consitutents views to parliament is either diffused to several representatives, or disappears altogether. This further distances people from the political process.

I've written before about the importance of `retail' democracy — about the importance of having a particular store-front I can go to find my representative and complain, or push for a particular vote on an issue. Despite the failings of our current system, I know exactly which phone number to call about a particular issue before Parliament; and one way or another it is the job of the person on the other end of the phone to represent my neighbors and I.

Other proposed systems simply place too much emphasis on political parties. Proportional representation is the extreme example, but multi-representative ridings are nearly as bad — they assume that as long as the party representation in Parliament (or the legislature, or..) is more proportionally allocated, then more democracy will surely result, even if the individual constituents no longer have a specific voice in the Commons. This is surely a mistake. Entire books have been written about the state of political parties in modern democratic systems, to say nothing of articles. The importance of political parties is fading around the world, and this can only be a good thing. Five, or ten, or twenty parties could never encompass the diversity of political views that Canadians hold, and restricting Canadians political input to selecting from a pre-set menu of policy combinations is a mistake.

The "Do"s

Indeed, one problem afflicting retail democracy is that the current party system is too strong; it's an overly-rigid caricature of the system it was originally based upon. Why bother lobbying your MP when you know that the real decisions are made by party leadership?

Free votes are not a panacea, but the Canadian Parliament needs more of them. Changing the system tomorrow so that every vote is a free vote actually removes some accountability; when you are voting for your local representative, often the only thing you know about them is their party affiliation. Removing all requirements that they vote for the party means that for some years your MP could consistantly vote against your expectations.

It's perfectly reasonable, then, that major party platform `planks' be enforced by party leadership; but anything which isn't explicitly described in the platform the party campaigned on should be a free vote. Issues which come up for the first time during the Parliamentary sessions shouldn't be decided by fiat by party leadership; citizens should have every opportunity to push their individual represntatives on new issues as they arise. Note too that this strongly encourages the parties to implement the platforms they actually ran on, since in nothing else can they solidly count on their backbenchers to automatically support them.

There is already an increasing demand by Canadians for this sort of real representation by their MPs; indeed, somewhat overwhelmed rookie MPs can get briefings on how to handle and encourage citizen involvement. But freeing up non-platform votes would mean that individual citizens had a much better chance of having their voice directly heard on new issues in Parliament, and this can only be a good thing.

Of course, as time goes on, we may want to make even more drastic changes. An increasingly informed and connected electorate may not always need to 'outsource' their voting on policies to a proxy like an MP. Many experiments in direct democracy are taking place. The experience in Sweden seems to be that increased direct democracy has produced more informed citizens — after all, what's the point of being informed about the issues if your participation in the issues is limited to the election of a representative once every few years? On the other hand, California's more restricted (but in some ways more powerful) form of direct democracy has both had successes and caused problems.

Summary

The web and blogging has increased the ability for Canadians to take part in a national debate, as the TV did before it; but institutions for allowing Canadians increased participation in the making of policy decisions have not changed. There will always be Canadians who want to spend a lot of their time being activists for some policies, and they have organizations that can harness their enthuisasm and amplify their voice. There will always be Canadians who are happy to just vote, or not to participate at all; they, too, can be content with their participation. But for a growing number who want to have a say without committing to becoming semi-professionally involved in politics as it is today, democracy is a frustrating buisness. They are informed enough to contribute to the policy-making process, but have no way to do so. If democratic institutions don't keep up with this change, not only will a huge pool of enthusiasm and ideas go wasted, but disillusionment and disengagement will grow. And we can't afford for that to happen.

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1: That's not to say that I don't think the current system should stay as it is. Instant runoff voting, or approval voting, would be a vast improvement over the current system; it would mean that, far more often, the winner of the election would be someone acceptable to the majority of their constituents. This would be a good thing, and would reduce the incentive for people to try to game the system, like with the disasterous `merge the right' movement.

Well, no, but here are some policies we might be able to agree on

I fully expect to spend the duration of the coming Parliament making a list of things to be undone in the next. However, the Conservatives have control of the government now, having won a modest mandate for change and have the opportunity to show Canadians like myself that they can be entrusted with the government side of the House. There are a lot of things the Conservatives could do that would fit in very nicely with the themes they ran on that I would happily endorse. In the spirit of cooperation necessary for a minority government to work, the No More Shall I Roam editorial board will, over a few posts, offer some policy proposals that should meet with both Conservative and NMSIR approval.

Proposal 1: Accountability: Rewrite the Access to Information Act

The Conservatives ran largely on corruption/accountability. From a statement issued soon after the election:

Our first priority will be to clean up government, make it more open and more accountable to taxpayers. We will do this by way of the federal Accountability Act. Given that we expect the release of Judge Gomery’s second report and since every party ran on platforms that included accountability measures, I’m confident that we will find broad-based consensus to move forward on these changes and on this legislation.

The Conservatives haven't yet given a comprehensive description of what will be in the Accountability Act. Likely it will contain new restrictions on what both lobbyists and parliamentarians can and cannot do, and on how contracts are tendered. While there are more prohibitions which could be useful, the scandal that launched the Gomery Inquiry did not happen because of loopholes in existing laws; they were allowed to continue because there was not enough public scrutiny and transparency. In particular, the Canadian Newspaper Association, in a February press release, the Canadian Newspaper Association President said:

"The inquiry has heard how top officials deliberately withhold information from the public and order bureaucrats to twist the rules to prevent the truth from getting out," Ms. Kothawala said.
   "There is nothing to indicate that these practices have stopped. The credibility of the entire regime of access to information has been shaken and the only remedy is rigorous reform. When freedom of information works properly, not only is it a disincentive to abuse, but you find out about it faster and can deal with it more expeditiously," she said.

One major impediment to transparency in the Canadian federal government is inadequacies in Canada's Access to Information Act. The act, which was no doubt written in good faith, actually makes it relatively easy and inexpensive for individuals to obtain particular documents from the government. However, there are fairly serious failings, which I have written about before. In particular, if you don't know exactly what document you are looking for, or in what department it resides, you are out of luck. There is no repository of released documents, so even if, unbeknownst to you, someone else has already gone to the trouble of finding a memo you'd find relevent, you won't have access to it unless you go through the same steps. In an internet-enabled world, this is simply unforgivable. So is the fact that there is no central Access agency; rather there are separate agencies in each governmental department. There is an ombudsman, but with no teeth; the ombudsman can only make reccomendations. Exemptions, including one for `Cabinet confidences', are far too broad, and have no expiry.

As a result, here is my first policy proposal for the new Conservative government, one that we should be able to agree on, and one that in addition ought to win some friends in the press corps. The desired outcome is greatly increased transparency within the government, and increased access to the workings for citizens, journalists, and researchers.

PCompletely rewrite the Access to Information act, on the following principles:

• Canada's government is our government, and self-governance means the ability for detailed examiniation of government workings.
• Unless there is a pressing public-interest reason for a particular document not to be made public -- immediate national security implications, ongoing criminal investigation, or individual privacy concerns -- Canadian government documents should be available to Canadians. The onus must be on the government to demonstrate that a document remain secret.
• Requests for documents go through a single federal Access agency, run by an independant Director with authority to compel documents from departments, crown corporations, or even the Privy Council. Existing Access agencies within departments would then become part of the infrastructure connecting the centralized federal Access agency to the departments.
• After 25 years, documents automatically become available. Some reasonable mechanism must be available for the goverment for the extremely rare cases of those documents where even 25 years later, public interest weighs more heavily for keeping a document secret than in making it public. Such an appeal would have to be reviewed every five years.
• A central repository, either by department or nationally, run by the National Archives, should be made, where all government documents that are clearly not sensitive should automatically go to be stored and broadly categorized. This leaves the Access to Information process only to documents that need some consideration before being made available.
• When available in electronic form, these documents should be available online.
• Documents that are opened under the Access to Information act would be released not only to the individual requesting the documents, but to the repository as well.
• Electronic documents routinely generated within the government should be saved in an open format (eg, not a proprietary format like this year's format of Microsoft Word) so that the documents remain accessible and searchable years later.

Most OECD nations implemented some sort of access to information legislation in the '70s or '80s. This rewrite of the law would place Canada in a leadership role in making governmental workings accessible to its citizens, and would meet the Conservative's stated goal of increasing accountability of the government. The Conservative government should include such a measure in its Federal Accountability Act.

In October of last year, the `National' Post published a rehashed Op-Ed by disgraced `scholar' John Lott, who even Michelle Malkin finds unsavoury due to his take-it-or-leave-it approach to the truth.

In this Op-Ed, John Lott made some very typical (for him) claims; that Canada, a country with gun control, had huge amounts of crime, and in fact the violent crime rate was twice here than it is in the United States. Tim Lambert, long familiar with Lott's work, thouroughly demolished the nonsense, and I echoed Tim's points. The most important point was that Lott was deliberately comparing apples and watermelons; StatsCan's definition of `violent crimes' is much broader than that in the FBI's uniform crime report, and if you actually make the apples-to-apples comparison, Lott is of course completely wrong and the violent crime, category by category, is higher in the United States.

Now, this isn't some obscure point that nobody knows; international comparison of crime is fairly routine buisness, especially between Canada and the US, and those who do it realize very quickly that every nation tabulates things differently. You can often make meaningful comparisons by re-tabulating the data, but just looking at `headline' numbers between countries can cause trouble. It caused so much trouble, in fact, that statscan very helpfully produced a report which could have been called ``US-Canada Crime Rate Comparison for Dummies'' in summer 2001 pointing out where you can and where you can not just blindly compare the FBI and StatsCan's total crime numbers.

Some of the highlights:

• Crimes totals that can be compared, sometimes with some caveats: homicide, robbery, breaking and entering, some thefts, arson.
• Crime totals that couldn't be compared directly: sexual assault, headline `violent crime' numbers (“First and foremost, Canada's violent crime rate contains a greater number of violent offenses...”), headline `Property Crimes', and headline `Total crime'.

Given that, should we be surprised that Lott zoomed in on headline `Violent crime' numbers? No, of course not. Still, he did, and why not? By making a suprising claim, he gets read more and generates some talking points, and there is no downside; it's not like his American Enterprise Institute job, or his `credibility' as an Op-Ed writer, are at risk from him printing lies; and it's not clear the National post much cares, either.

Monkey see, monkey do; David Frum, seeing how well it worked for John Lott, decided to play the same game in the same hallowed pages.

1. America's crime problem has dramatically improved, while Canada's is becoming seriously worse. Toronto's 78 homicides in 2005 appears to compare favorably to the homicide totals of the three American cities cited by the Star. But those 78 Toronto homicides in 2005 represent a 28% increase over the 61 homicides recorded in Toronto in 1995. Meanwhile, the three U.S. cities cited by the Star each achieved dramatic decreases over the past decade: Chicago down 46% from 823, Washington down 46% from 365, Baltimore down 17% from 322.
   More broadly: Canada's overall crime rate is now 50% higher than the crime rate in the United States. Read that again slowly -- it seems incredible, but it's true. It's true too that you are now more likely to be mugged in Toronto than in New York City.
2. America's crime problem is becoming concentrated in ever fewer places, while Canada's is spreading out to ever more places.
   The United States is a huge country, and it will always be possible to find a jurisdiction with shocking crime numbers. The overwhelming majority of Americans, however, live in places that are becoming steadily safer. Since the early 1990s, crime rates have dropped in 48 of the 50 states and 80% of American cities. Over that same period, crime rates have risen in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and in seven of Canada's 10 biggest cities.
3. While American cities and states are adopting anti-crime policies proved to work, Canadian cities and provinces are adopting policies proved to fail.

It's difficult to list all the innaccuracies in the above list. Let's just start with some of the easiest.

1. ``More broadly: Canada's overall crime rate is now 50% higher than the crime rate in the United States. Read that again slowly -- it seems incredible, but it's true.''. Incredible yes, true, no. This is exactly the same ``mistake'' that Lott made. The total crime rates in Canada are broader; the number put out by the FBI (as well as StatsCan) is `Total Selected Crimes', and the ones `selected' for inclusion in the US are fewer than those in the United States. Read the fine manual.
2. “It's true too that you are now more likely to be mugged in Toronto than in New York City.” As far as I can tell, this is completely made up. I don't see that anyone has uniform numbers of `mugging'. If Frum means the (comparable!) violent crime of robbery, then the 2004 rates (2005 numbers aren't out yet for the US or for Canada) for the GTA are 103 per hundred thousand, and for metropolitan NYC they are very nearly twice that, 199 per hundred thousand (it narrows somewhat to 200 to 300 if you only include the cities proper). I can't find any combination of meaningful numbers that comes even close to supporting Frum's claim.
3. “Meanwhile, the three U.S. cities cited by the Star each achieved dramatic decreases over the past decade: Chicago down 46% from 823, Washington down 46% from 365, Baltimore down 17% from 322. This is true, but misleading. These three cities weren't chosen at random; they have had enormously high murder rates over the last 1-2 decades, and herculean efforts have been made to bring the murder rates down (including gun control laws.) It is true that murder rates have gone down in those cities — which is terrific news. And it is true that they are going up in Toronto. But let's take a quick look at a comparison: (I couldn't find a good Baltimore series, although the rates in the last few years seem similar to Chicago — anyone have any pointers?)
   It's great that the murder rates are going down in those cities, and it's certainly possible that Toronto could learn valuable lessons from their experiences; but let's keep things in perspective. If Chicago drops its murder rate down to the point where one murder is committed for every seven that is now, then it'll be in Toronto's ballpark.
   (By the way, I haven't stopped plotting at 2005 to avoid Toronto's terrible uptick in murder rate; that would bring Toronto's up to about 2.0-2.5, as far as I can tell. But these numbers are for metropolitan areas, and while I know Toronto's total was 78 for 2005, I don't know what the combined GTA number, and thus rate was, for sure enough to plot it. And I don't have any of the other city's 2005 numbers for compairison. But you wouldn't even see the uptick to 2.5 on this plot.)
4. But this isn't a fair comparison, right, since those murder rates are so high? And besides, “Since the early 1990s, crime rates have dropped in 48 of the 50 states and 80% of American cities.”, right? Well, also plotted is data on average homicide rates for large (more than one million people) US cities; it's lower than Chicago's numbers, but not hugely, and still much, much higher than Toronto's. If Toronto's policies are `proven to fail', American cities would do well to fail as badly as Toronto.
   Further, what's often missing from this discussion is the fact that Toronto's number of murders — that's absolute number of murders, not even murder rate per capita — is down from 1991; that is, Toronto's murder rate is also down from the early 1990s, Mr. Frum.

The frustrating thing is that crime and justice policy is always in need of improvement, and there's a real increase in gun crime in Toronto, and serious people should want to seriously address the problem; but people like Frum or Lott just want use crime, death, and cherry-picked numbers as another opportunity to push their pre-chosen policies. There is almost nothing in Frum's article that is both true and relevant.

Now, after Frum had his turn, it took a few more weeks for any more right-wing pundits to jump on the `Crime in Canada is higher than in the US' train. But just recently, another gun-control-opponent Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation wrote an Op-ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram [subscription required; also available at MichNews.Com] that repeated one each of Lott's and Frum's lies and took it just that crucial bit further. As summed up by the innoccuous-sounding `National Center for Policy Analysis

• Canada's overall crime rate is now 50 percent higher than the crime rate in the United States; since the early 1990s, crime rates have risen in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and in seven of Canada's 10 biggest cities.
• In 2003, the violent crime rate in the United States was 475 per 100,000 people, while up north, there were 963 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
• The figure for sexual assault in Canada per 100,000 people was more than double that of the United States, 74 as opposed to 32.1, and the assault rate in Canada was more than twice that of states, 746 to America's 295.
• In 2005, Toronto had 78 murders; that's a 28 percent increase in homicide since 1995.

And for some reason it's this one that's really pissed me off. It includes the Frum lie comparing total selected crimes; it includes Lott's lie comparing violent crimes; it cherry picks Toronto homicide numbers, ignoring the inconvienient fact that the murder rate has dropped since 1991, when is when the process of tightening of gun control laws began. But it really pisses me off because it's playing games with sexual assault. And it's the same game played by Lott and Frum. Let me quote from the first page, the executive summary, of the same report I've mentioned before:

It was found that the Canadian offence of sexual assault could not be made comparable to the American offence of forcible rape.

Or, for more details:

2. Comparisons Not Recommended
2.1 Sexual Assault

Due to significant definitional differences, it is impossible to compare sexual assault in Canada to forcible rape in the United States. Following the Canadian Criminal Code, the Canadian UCR compiles statistics on three types of sexual assault: aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, and simple sexual assault. These three sections are not grouped together but are spread along the offence seriousness scale to match their respective maximum penalties. In contrast, the American UCR crime index contains only one narrow version of sexual assault [Italics added]. The offence of forcible rape is limited to forced sexual intercourse by a male against a female. This crime differs from the Canadian sexual assault offences, which are neither gender-specific nor confined to sexual intercourse. Although Canada does not describe sexual assault in the Criminal Code, sexual assault can be defined as an assault of a sexual nature that does not require sexual penetration. Therefore, comparing the Canadian sexual assault offence and American offence of forcible rape would not be reliable.

Sexual assault statistics from StatsCan include many, many offenses — including groping — which are much less serious than the crimes included in the FBI UCR Sexual Assault category, which consists soley of rape. It is wildly inappropriate to compare these numbers. Nor is this obscure knowledge; as of my writing, this report comes up as the first result from a google search of “‘sexual assault’ Canada ‘United States’”

So here's the path of the lie as far as I can see it:

• Aug 2005: Lott claims violent crime is twice as rampant in Canada as in the US; this is untrue, and comes from fallaciously comparing two different statistics from different countries.
• Oct 2005: Lott makes other claims about Canadian crime rates in the National Post, equally cherry-picked.
• Jan 2006: Frum play the same game in the National Post, comparing incomensurate `Total Specified Crimes' numbers
• Jan 2006: Gottleib includes the Lott and Frum false comparisons and goes for the trifecta, comparing Canadian Sexual Assault numbers, which include groping, to US forced rape numbers. Gottleib's article is picked up on by some of the usual suspects such as NewsMax, the National Center for Policy Analysis, Mich News.

Who knows where it'll show up tomorrow?

So far, the election poll results are suggesting that we'll get a very similar result to the last government (the plot to the right shows the polling results since the lead-up to last election, and the thin horizontal lines show the election results from June 04.) You can plug in the results of your favourite poll to the No More Shall I Roam Election Calculator, but the results so far should be fairly clear.

I've heard several times that the NDP doesn't seem to be sure whether they're running against the Liberals or the Conservatives. This is almost certainly true, but it means the NDP leadership is missing the point. The NDP is having the same problem as the Conservatives -- they can't break through their ceiling of support. (20% in the case of the NDP; 30% in the case of the Conservatives). The NDP is making a mistake in trying to seperate itself in terms of policy from the Liberals and Conservatives, as demonstrated by the leaders of those parties taking turns gushing over the importance of public health care and childcare. The NDP is already on the same side of policy issues as the majority of Canadians. The issue in breaking the 20% mark in voter intention for the NDP is whether or not they would be competent, responsible administrators of Canada's affairs as a significant part of a new minority government. Jack Layton needs to stop pushing particular policies and start speaking reassuringly on basics of governance — reasonable economic policies, the proper role of government and private business, and government programs which are already doing a good job and don't need to be expanded or funding increased. It may well be too late to make a difference in this election, but if in the long term the NDP hopes to be a significant voice in Parliament, it needs to convince Canadians that it can be more than the Liberals' Jiminy Cricket-like external concience and that it could be a trusted actor in Canadian governance.

For the Conservatives, the situation is the opposite; the basic beliefs of the party are anathema to those of most of Canadians, and so you have the bizarre, unconvincing spectacle of Steven Harper absolutely gushing his support for public health care. Here I don't know what the solution is, but some of the ironies should be clear; this election would certainly result in a Progressive Conservative majority had the party not `united' with the Reform party. The Progressive Conservatives, being a long-established, well-trusted, steady hand would have been an obvious alternative to the Liberals, and after 12 years, Mulrooney's many legacies would have been largely forgiven. Short of the Conservatives dumping Harper and reverting to the PC past, it's not clear what could be done to improve the Conservative's chances. If given the current Liberal government the Conservatives can't break 30% in voter intentions, the future looks bleak.

The Liberals, on the other hand, are running against themselves. The obvious strategy for them to take would have been to don the mantle of reform; to bring in lots of visible young new blood, propose new ideas, and distance themselves as much as possible from the Liberals who have been in power for 12 years. This, however, seems structurally impossible for the Liberals, and probably won't happen until they convincingly lose an election — at which point the resulting bloodbath will leave room for a younger faction to take control of the party and take it in new directions.

A little while ago I was able to attend an event put on by the University of Toronto Political Science Student Union, a discussion on `real-world' Canadian Diplomacy. It was a pretty impressive event; Michael Kergin, Canadian ambassador to the US (and who was ambassador during and after 9-11) was one participant, and David Wright, who was amongst other things Canadian ambassador to NATO during the war in Bosnia was the other.

The discussion was instructive, but it left me with at least one major question; why is Canadian international diplomacy so much more successful than Canadian local diplomacy? Why does a country which has long history of successes in selling its vision of disarmament to the world, which continues to this day, have such trouble selling a vision of Canada at home? Why does a nation that has such sophistication in pursuing negotiations abroad have such a disasterously ham-fisted approach locally?

It should be obvious that this isn't an idle question. With the new leader of the PQ promising to call a referendum as soon as possible, and with others happy to fan the flames of Alberta discontent for short-term gain, this is a question of immediate importance. Finding a practicable answer is made the more difficult by the fact that the federal Liberals have made direct government selling of Canada to Canadians basically radioactive for a generation.

The dichotomy between international diplomacy and intranational diplomacy is real, and striking. Surprising for many Canadians is the importance of Canada's diplomatic role in the Cold War; probably less suprising is Canada's role in the UN, or the International Criminal court. This level of (successful) particpation in major international diplomacy has always been part of Canada's history; indeed, it's interesting to see how much more sophisticated and participitory Canadian foreign policy was throughout the first part of the 20^th century than, for instance, Australia's was, despite the fact that the two countries were of similar size and had related histories.

However, one can take a look at cases where essentially the same policies are advocated for in both the international and local realm, and see the differences. Compare the success of Canadian international environmental diplomacy with much less succesful job of selling at home. Whether it is the Kyoto protocol or the Montréal protocol, much effort is (rightfully) extended in the field of international diplomacy to try to meet Canada's interests in these issues, but little or no effort is made to convince Canadians or even the provinces on these issues.

This has been noticed by others. Clues as to what is going on might lie in Canada's lagging in `public diplomacy'. While Canada's foreign policy is becoming more inclusive, and is allowing citizen groups and NGOs to play more of a role, there is little or no effort into public diplomacy — selling `ordinary people', rather than fellow diplomats, on issues of interest to us. This is true both domestically and abroad; the most rudimentary of foreign public diplomacy programs, things like cultural and educational exchanges are not a high priority and are being cut back.

There are likely historical cause for this rather imbalanced approach. Canada's long history of having to engage in diplomacy with its continetal neighbor the United States over very basic matters doubtless shaped a much stronger foreign diplomacy over its history than it would have had otherwise (such as, for instance, island nation Australia).

On the other hand, this success in government-to-government diplomacy does not automatically carry over to government-to-citizens diplomacy. Indeed, Canadians are very distrustful of such an approach. The very basic idea of `projecting Canadian values' is rather controversial. Canadians are distrustful of anything that smacks of propaganda, and are now very likely to be distrustful of anything involving the government and public relations firms.

But we have to learn to start doing this, and doing this well. Whether it is citizen-to-citizen or some other approach, there is much to be gained. Consider `diplomacy' with Quebéc. The following somewhat suprising article from Opinion Canada, makes strong points about what we have to work with:

• Seven out of ten Quebecers report being very or somewhat attached to Canada.
• Only 34% would vote yes to their province becoming a completely independent country with no ties to Canada.

Almost all of the rest of support for separatism in Quebéc is very soft, and varies very strongly depending on the wording of the question. A strong, competent public diplomacy push could move referendums and separatism off the table for a generation. Canada needs to learn how to do this.

112,182 Canadians have been killed while in military service. Countless more have been wounded; and more than 100,000 are right now spending at least part of their lives and careers associated with the military, protecting this country and its ability to project good into the world.

A day is not enough to thank those Canadians, past and present, for their service to our country, but it is a start. Throughout the year, one can send email, letters, postcards, or small care packages to our soldiers posted at home or abroad. We can work to ensure that the defence department has the funding to provide them with the best possible equipment to keep them safe and aid them in their jobs; and we can remember, as we read the news, what they are willing to give up for their country and their fellow citizens.

Take a moment — a brief moment — to feel sorry for poor Paul Deignan, Ph.D. Candidate in the mechanical engineering department of Purdue. Last week he went over to Bitch, Ph.D. (a terrific blog) and made a dick of himself trolling. We've all made inappropriate comments before; anyone can have a bad day.

As always happens, Paul got called on it, by other commenters; this only egged him on. By the end his worst comments were deleted, and he was banned, as per the posted policy of the blog. Most of us have the good sense to slink away at that point, but not Paul; he sent a threatening email to another commenter (`Wally', a professor at another institution), who forwarded it on to Paul's advisors, letting them know what their student was doing. When someone is acting obnoxiously while advertising the fact that they are in a program — indeed, using it as a credential — it makes the program look bad. The advisors likely will want to know.

Well, Paul presumably got spanked by his advisors, and now is threatening lawsuits against Dr. B. and the commenter (`Wally'). You can read about it from Paul's point of view in pitiful detail at Paul's blog, where he's already estimating the amount of money he's going to win. You can read more about the whole sorry incident from a more reality-based perspective at Pharyngula, Science & Politics, MetaComments, Buridan's Ass, or Unfogged, Norwegianity, or Corrente Wire.

According to Paul,

My claim is to the statement of fact of sending threatening e-mails and a yet to be resolved question of "spoofing IPs".

Oh, yes, Paul? That's libel, and actionable, is it? Ok, how about this:

Paul Deignan is also ignorant of the law, full of himself, shows every indication of being unpleasant to work with, and — if he is willing to launch lawsuits based entirely on comments on a blog — is likely litigious to the point of being dangerous to hire as an employee.

I expect Paul will now want to sue me. Indeed, I'll keep the following button on my sidebar:

The button is courtesy of Adam Kalsey's Button Maker, in spiffy Bitch, Ph.D. colours. You can make your own there, or use the following HTML:

<a href="http://roamnomore.blogspot.com/2005/11/harsh-harsh-world-of-blog-comments.html">
<img src="http://static.flickr.com/24/61484837_8777a76293_o.png" 
     width="80" height="15" border="0" alt="sue me, paul!" />
</a>

The Globe & Mail reports:

Indeed, the poll finds that if an election were held today, the three main parties would enjoy almost exactly the same levels of support as the last election. In June of 2004, the Liberals received 37 per cent of the vote, the Tories 30 per cent, the New Democrats 16 per cent and the Bloc Québécois 12 per cent.

All of the political parties and their supporters had better start getting used to those numbers; unless something dramatic changes, those are going to be the poll numbers we see for a while.

There's been much attention lately given to the fact that in the light of the latest damning report by Justice Gomery, recent polls have the Liberals falling to within a statistical dead heat of the Conservatives. And while that's certainly news, a single or pair of polls should never be taken out of context.

When one looks at the context of the numbers over the past months, a couple of points besides the Liberals precipitous fall become clear:

1. It happened before;
2. It lasted a couple of months;
3. When it happened before, the Conservatives got a huge boost;
4. The Conservatives haven't gotten a huge boost this time;
5. Right now, the Conservatives can't seem to reliably break 30%.

This can't possibly be good news for the Conservatives, because there are no more revelations coming. The Febuary report will be full of very useful recommendations about what to do next, but no more juicy or salacious details. Even if an election were held today, using the best numbers for the Conservatives, a crude estimate suggests that the Conservatives would have an even more perilous minority than the Liberals have now. And with every day that passes between the release of the Part I of the Gomery report, it looks like things are likely to revert back to the numbers of last election.

If this is bad for the Conservative Party generally, it's horrible news for Stephen Harper in particular. Of special interest is a poll of 2000 Canadian adults by Ipsos-Reid over Oct 25-27, which has two interesting nuggets which haven't gotten as much headlines as the Liberal's faltering fortunes. The first is in response to the question, “Which of the federal party leaders would do the best job of cleaning up corruption uncovered by the Gomery Inquiry?”

Paul Martin	25%
Jack Layton	25%
Stephen Harper	22%
Gilles Duceppe	9%
None	12%
Don't Know	8%

and the second is the answer to the question “Do you agree or disagree? - Regardless of what’s being revealed by the Gomery Inquiry, I’m more likely to trust Paul Martin as prime minister than Stephen Harper.”

Agree	51%
Disagree	40%
Don't know	9%

It's one thing for the Conservatives not to be able to consistantly break 30% when the Liberals are mired in corruption and uninspiring government. After all, the Conservative Party is a new party, and Canadians are cautious about giving a new party the keys to the Government side of Parliament. It's another thing entirely for Stephen Harper to be trailing Paul Martin in trustworthiness (although in fairness, it's within the MoE for the first question.)

If the Conservatives can't get into majority-government levels of voting intention now, there's simply no hope of them becoming a governing party in the forseeable future. At some point, people will have to accept that the Reform takeover of the Progressive Conservative party has been a dismal failure, and someone from the Tory wing of the party is going to have to take the reins f power from Harper.

I read Ezra. Don't make the same mistake I did.

There's a 77% chance that Ezra Levant thinks you're `stupid' — a `trained seal' — one of `the worst'.

It's possible, of course, that you don't get the same warm glow that I do from that news. If it's the sort of thing you might relish, however, you'll probably enjoy this week's column by Ezra Levant, even if you find it jarring to see Ezra's picture right beside that of the SUNshine girl, `The Mark of A Serious News Outlet™'.

Now, it's obviously not news that Ezra Levant thinks Canadian institutions are stupid. But this going directly to the source — actually going out and calling 77% of Canadians stupid trained seals — and the worst sort of stupid trained seals, apparently — is a little shrill, even for Ezra. So what is causing this most recent outburst?

Now, Ezra doesn't think that of 77% of Canadians are stupid just because they have stubbornly not signed up for the Western Standard Cruise yet. And it isn't because of the low turnout for the Western Standard Writing Contest, although you can certainly appreciate how disappointing it must be for Ezra to find out that, for yet another year, there will be no decent writing at his magazine.

No, the issue is a recent poll commissioned by CanWest on the eve of Condoleeza Rice's visit to Canada. This, by the way, is the poll that showed

Seventy-one per cent of the respondents agreed with the statement "I value and respect the United States and its citizens -- it's just that I disagree fundamentally with their government."

which is about the same as an earlier poll in late 2004; this all sort of makes Ezra's worries about rampant anti-Americanism seem silly (and note that the 71% doesn't include those Canadians who agree fundamentally with the Bush government.)

What's got Ezra all good and lathered up is the results on trade and the US refusal to abide by NAFTA rulings on softwood lumber:

• Three in four (77%) Canadians indicate that Canada should restrict energy exports to the United States if the government there does not abide by the panel's ruling; and
• 78% agree "the Canadian government should actively look for other markets like India and China for our softwood lumber and energy exports even though government officials in the United States say it could further damage the trade relationship between our two countries".

and he doesn't care for that at all:

“..a stupid answer...”

“Martin, and the 77% of Canadians cheering him on... Martin and the trained seals who applauded his envy and anger...”

“But where are the oil patch's supposed defenders? Where is the co-opted Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers? Where is the somnolent government of Alberta? Where is the distracted Conservative Party of Canada? Where are our advocates?
I quote again from W.B. Yeats' terrifying poem, The Second Coming: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."”

He is probably even more upset that the `restrict energy sales to the US' option got majority support in all regions of Canada, even in the West.

(A more intelligent take on the same poll results than either Ezra or I can write is over at Tilting at Windmills.)

Ezra quite rightly points to a problem with this, that almost all of our fossil fuel exports go to the United States, and so does our fuel-transporting infrastructure; to divert significant amount of our exports to overseas would take time, as infrastructure is re-built. But from a spreading-of-risk standpoint, it makes no sense at all to keep the status quo; should the US head for a slowdown and US demand for energy drop, it would be surely good to have the infrastructure to sell elsewhere.

On the other hand, while this is happening, Canada could presumably simply charge US companies, oh, I don't know, say $5 billion in duties to import the petroleum. Much as Canadian infrastructure is geared towards the status quo, so is the American infrastructure; and importing the difference through, for instance, the Gulf of Mexico is unlikely in the short term as repairs are continuing from hurricane damage.

But what would happen if we tried such a thing? Ezra predicts fire, pestilance, and plague:

Massive unemployment in Alberta and the killing off of resource-based growth in B.C., Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Corporate and personal income tax from the energy sector would evaporate, putting Canada back into a deficit. Unemployment insurance payments would spike and the TSX -- of which the oil patch is the hottest sector -- would be devaluated. Capital would flee as U.S. investors retreat to safer havens and interest rates would rise to staunch the exodus of capital -- hurting every mortgage-owner in the country.

Ezra provides no evidence for this, of course, nor does he explain how, in a world with continually increasing demand for oil, being a fussy seller (rather than a net importer, like the US) is a serious problem causing massive unemployment. He'll no doubt explain this next column.

I'll end this post uncharacteristically charitably, with a bit of advice for Ezra. He presumably has a policy option he wants to advocate for — continuing the 99% of oil sales to the United States, and not diversifying our export energy markets. That sounds like a very poor policy option to me, but he might have an easier time convincing people than he thinks; another recent poll gave very different results:

Conversely, 33 per cent of respondents believe Canada should seek new markets in China or India for Canadian oil and gas that is currently sold to the U.S., and 16 per cent would retaliate by imposing duties on some U.S. exports to Canada.

suggesting that the answers depend strongly on how the question is asked, meaning that support either way seems very soft. But here's the thing, Ezra. If you want to convince people that your suggested policies are right, you'll need to take another tack rather than just keep calling them stupid. If you and your colleagues try policy discussion, rather than simply insults, maybe the Conservative party will rise above 30% in the polls.