No More Shall I Roam

Toronto Police Chief Blair Needs to Step Down

2010-06-30T09:29:00.000-04:00

This shit is dangerous, for the Police and for Toronto:

In his first day of public appearances after the G20 summit, Toronto’s police chief needed a police escort to enter his own reception. As angry protesters chanted “Shame!” and called for his resignation, Chief Bill Blair tipped his cap and smiled at the crowd of about 100 people on his way into a Pride Week event hosted by Toronto police.

The only way for a police force of 5,700 to police a population of 500 times its size, 2,500,000, is for the vast, vast majority of the population to trust the police force completely and accept its legitimacy. Lying to the public about what the law is:

Earlier in the day, Blair admitted there never was a five-metre rule allowing police to search and demand identification from anyone who strayed too close to the G20 security perimeter.

is so completely unacceptable for a city's top law enforcement officer that it should have instantly disqualified him from continuing to hold the post. Following that up with a painfully embarrasing news conference where siezed "weapons" were displayed, and even that being dishonest:

Chief Bill Blair, who told reporters the items were evidence of the protesters’ intent, singled out arrows covered in sports socks, which he said were designed to be dipped in a flammable liquid and set ablaze. However, the arrows belong to Brian Barrett, a 25-year-old landscaper who was heading to a role-playing fantasy game when he was stopped at Union Station on Saturday morning. Police took his jousting gear but let Mr. Barrett go, saying it was a case of bad timing. Police also displayed a crossbow and chainsaw seized in an incident on Friday that they said had no ties to the summit. When asked, Chief Blair acknowledged they were unrelated, but said “everything else” had been confiscated from demonstrators.

is just compounding credibility-sapping lies. Blair needs to go.

2008-11-11T11:05:00.002-05:00

In Rememberance.

Deep thought

2008-11-05T08:39:00.000-05:00

If only the US had proportional representation!

A reality check on election turnout

2008-11-01T14:06:00.005-04:00

In what has to be the most exciting US election in recent history, with a woman candidate for VP, the first African-American presidential candidate, huge issues on the line, and with many states offering (by Canadian standards) enormous opportunities for early voting, turnout for the 2008 election is projected to be 60-64%.

By comparison, in the most pointless election in recent Canadian memory, where no one expected anything to change, and where new voter ID rules first came into effect, which caused problems at polling stations, there was much hand-wringing about voter turnout being at an all-time low — of 59.1%.

So yes, voter turnout in Canada is lower than we'd like, and we need to take real steps to improve things; but really - some perspective, people.

Election Notes

2008-10-15T09:43:00.005-04:00

Things I'm already tired of hearing:

"Oh, no! There'll be another election in a year!" or "$300 Million wasted". Geez, people. You live in a democracy; suck it up. That means that for the foreseeable future, every year or two you'll have to put up with a few weeks of bad political commercials, spend 30 minutes in the afternoon voting, and yes, pay for the process of choosing the country's government. Deal with it.
``Proportional voting!'' No. This is a terrible idea, would require modifying the constitution (where it is stated that MPs represent ridings), and would further lock in an already too strong party system. And no, your vote wouldn't `finally count' in a PR system -- your vote would be worth 3 one-hundred-thousandths of a seat. Is that really going to be enough to get people off the couch who wouldn't have voted otherwise?
``Stephen Dion needs to go''. Dion is clearly not a highly charismatic leader on a national scale; but this was known when he was chosen as the leader of a party rebuilding, and the others still couldn't win. It's not clear to me what Canadians or the Liberal party stands to gain from a liberal party leadership race; it's not like any great new leadership canadates have sprung up fully-formed in the party in the last months.

Things I'm anticipating being tired of hearing very soon:

``Merge the libs/ndp/greens!'' (un-cleft the left?) Another terrible idea. The Liberals and NDP legitimately disagree about policies, and the whole point of this democratic exercise is to sort out these disagreements, not to wish them away. Similarly, it was a loss to have the real differences between the rump of the PCs and the Reformers swept under the rug. This rush to a two party system is bizarre to me; the experience of our neighbors to the south suggests that this isn't a panacea.

Things I wish I were hearing more about:

``Low voter turnout''. It's being noted, but not much more is being said. I'm not particularly worried about the low turn out in this election - this was an election cynically called where everyone knew by the end that not much was going to change, so why bother? But the trend lines are worrying, and we need to find ways of getting people more involved in the process of governing our country.
``A high water mark for Cons?''. Is it ever going to be possible for Harper to win a strong majority? He might just have sneaked it out absent some own-goals in Québec, but really, conditions were almost the best possible - a couple stable years, some economic troubles on the horizion that we seem well poised to weather, an imploding Liberal party, and strong showings from not one but two “third” parties to split the vote.

MMP: Misdiagnosing the Problem, then Solving it Badly

2007-10-09T09:07:00.002-04:00

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:

*Participation Rates in Last Four Canadian Federal Elections*
Year	Participation
1993	69.6 %
1997	67.0 %
2000	61.2 %
2004	60.9 %

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:

*Survey Results: Voting Participation in 2000 Election, by Age Group*
Age	Participation
68+	83.3%
58–67	80.4%
48–57	76.4%
38–47	66.2%
30–37	54.2%
25–29	38.2%
21–24	27.5%
18–20	22.4%

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.

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.

I, for one, welcome our new Conservative overlords

2006-02-03T22:22:00.001-05:00

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.

Watch a lie propagate: David Frum Edition

2006-01-24T22:40:00.001-05:00

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.

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.
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.
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.

``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.
“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.
“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.)
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?

Election: More of the Same, and advice to the NDP

2005-12-11T13:10:00.001-05:00

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.

Why is Canadian diplomacy so much more successful abroad than at home?

2005-11-20T17:41:00.001-05:00

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.

A day is not enough

2005-11-11T17:08:00.001-05:00

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.

The harsh, harsh world of blog comments

2005-11-09T00:25:00.001-05:00

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>

Remember, you heard it here first:

2005-11-08T08:48:00.001-05:00

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.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives Making No Progress

2005-11-07T00:29:00.001-05:00

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:

It happened before;
It lasted a couple of months;
When it happened before, the Conservatives got a huge boost;
The Conservatives haven't gotten a huge boost this time;
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.

Ezra Levant Watch XI

2005-10-31T23:16:00.001-05:00

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.

The National Post Will Print Anything.

2005-10-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

The Nearly-National Post on Friday published an Op-Ed piece by thoroughly discredited American Enterprise Institute Scholar John Lott.

John Lott is a anti-gun-control advocate; he is the author of `More Guns, Less Crime', and in an extreme application of his theory, has argued that Iraq would be a safer place, including for American troops, if only more Iraqis had guns, and that Bagdahd has a lower murder rate than Washington, D.C. His op-ed argues broadly against Canadian gun-control policies. Gun policy in Canada is certainly imperfect — the Federal government has not exactly covered itself in glory with its implementation of a firearm registry — and a worthwile topic of serious discussion. John Lott, however, is not a serious scholar, and brings to this piece his usual mix of cherry-picked numbers, misleading statements, and balderdash.

Obviously, arguments should be assessed on their merits and not who makes them. However, being skeptical is always a good idea, and Lott has a long established pattern of intellectual dishonesty. John Lott is perhaps most famous for his sock puppetry, and in particular of his creation of a completely fictitious identity``Mary Rosh'', to defend his work online when it was being criticized. ``Mary Rosh'' absolutely gushed over Lott:

..and I have to say that he was the best professor that I ever had. [...] At least at Wharton for graduate school or Stanford for undergraduate, Lott taught me more about analysis than any other professor that I had and I was not alone. There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors more to be exposed to other ways of teaching graduate material.

When I took a class from him at the Wharton School of Business in the early 1990s he was even then considered one of the young stars in the profession.

The ``Mary Rosh'' identity was suprisingly detailed:

I am 114 lbs. and 5′6″.

and inflated Lott's resume

He had been a visiting professor [sic: he was a Olin research fellow, not a professor] at the university of chicago business school. I had him for a class at the Wharton Business School where he was a chaired professor [sic: he was an assistant professor, not a chaired professor], a position he held before he went to Chicago. After Chicago he was at the Yale Law School.

Lott's sock puppets weren't limited to Ms. Rosh, however. Lott also had imaginary friends post positive reviews of his books on Amazon (one of which he later blamed on one of his sons). Currently, Lott seems to be using a sock puppet called `Timewarp' to try to make a bunch of very favourable changes to the Wikipedia `John Lott' page; the original attempt was to make sweeping changes at 4am EDT one night.

Although these personal eccentricies show a disturbing willingness to engange in dishonesty, they really speak to his personal character more than his research. In his professional life, however, Lott fares little better. Besides his sockpuppetering, he is probably most famous for repeatededly quoting an apparently spurious statistic -- that in 98% of defensive gun uses, simply brandishing the gun is enough to protect the user, and only 2% of uses involve anything more. (This statistic is very favourable for the policies Lott is advocating; not only does it mean that carrying guns protect against crime largely without anyone getting hurt, but it allows him to argue that guns saving people happens far more often than is reported, because in the vast majority of cases, nothing actually happens worth reporting.) That 98% -- implying only 2% firings -- is very interesting, because it is in stark contrast to all the studies published on the matter — the closest of which comes up with a 21% firing rate. However, 2% is the same number as a misinterpretation of an earlier study. Pushed on where he came up with the 98% number, he has since claimed it came from a national survey he conducted — a national survey that there is no evidence that he has ever conducted.

In addition to this, he is widely seen to cherry pick statistics, misrepresent the work of others, and refuse to admit that he has made mistakes in his research even when others point out very clearly what has gone wrong.

None of this of course automatically discredits anything he writes now or in the future, but it makes the Post's decision to give him so much space on their op-ed page rather puzzling. How little credibility do you have to have for even Michelle Malkin to think that your loose and easy approach to the truth is hurting the team? And why would you give such a serial fabricator free space to present their arguments in your newspaper?

The piece itself is a slightly edited version of an article he wrote for the National Review online in mid-August. (How does the Post feel about publishing two-and-a-half month old recycled material, I wonder?) If you're going to read one or the other, I'd suggest you read the National Review piece; there, he links to sources for some of his claims, and you can sit back and marvel at his brazenness. Tim Lambert has already discussed the NRO piece, and I'll include many of his points here in discussing the National Post article.

For instance, in the very first sentance of the National Post piece, Lott starts:

With Canada's murder rate rising 12% last year [2004]...

Yipes! Twelve percent -- obviously something's wrong! Perhaps Canada's gun control policy is at fault! In the NRO piece, Lott (commendably) links to the source for that number -- a StatsCan daily report. It's instructive to realize that Lott is willing to start the entire article with a number so thouroughly cherry-picked. Upon clicking on the Statscan link, one finds:

The complete sentance from the StatsCan release is ``Canada's homicide rate rose 12% in 2004 after hitting a 36-year low the year before.'' (emphasis added). The graph representing the homicide rate is plotted to the right. Might that be relevant?
Overall crime rates per capita have been falling over the same period.
Violent crime has been dropping.
Robberies with guns have also been dropping.

All of these pieces of information are relevant for policy discussion on violent crime in Canada — and yet Lott picks one single-year increase to focus on. It's an important increase, especially for the families and loved ones of those people whose lives were violently ended. But one can't come up with useful solutions to problems by putting ideological filters on what data one wants to consider.

(It should be noted that the Post article, despite lack of links, is probably more honest than the original NRO article, which contains such howlers as claiming that the Canadian violent crime rate is almost twice that of the US; that's a result you can only get if you compare all Canadian assualts with aggravated assaults in the US. As a scholar of crime rates and guns, this is a distinction Lott must surely know, but ignored anyway.)

Lott then goes on to beat up a favourite strawman:

Mr. Martin's larger mistake is that — like most politicians in Canada — he puts his faith in gun control as a means to fight crime...

But nobody seriously suggests that guns cause crime, or even violent crime; violent crime long predates the existance of guns. But guns, like other man-made tools, are levers; they amplify the force applied by the user, allowing the same crimes to have more fatal consequenses. For instance, non-gun homicides are similar between Canada, US, and UK, but homicides with guns, and total homicides, are a factor of ten higher in the US. Neither nation has an obviously more murderous population, but the country with the guns has by far the highest murder rate.

Lott makes this point early on so that he can confound all crime and gun crime in a later point, when he says

The immediate effect of Australia's gun-control regulations was similar. Crime rates averaged 32% higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than in 1995.

Lambert, an Australian blogger, has handily made available a spreadsheet of Australian crime rates so that one can check the accuracy of this statement oneself. Of particular interest is the gun crime rate; armed robbery, in the years after the tightening of the regulatoins, fell after a small uptick; the homicide rate dropped; and the firearms murder rate fell by 27%. (One might also reasonably wonder why, in a late-2005 Op-Ed, Lott stops looking at statistics in 2002.) Indeed, misuse of statistics surrounding Australia's change in gun-control laws is so prevelant that even Snopes has an entry about it. You'll never guess which is the side abusing the statistics. No, go ahead; guess.

The nice thing about John Lott is that he keeps using the same debunked arguments and the same cherry-picked numbers again and again; so that one can generally look up what is wrong with his arguments. One can examine his use of the British crime numbers.

Perhaps it's suprising that John Lott still has a job; although apparently, at conservative think-tanks, as long as you write a lot of Op-Eds and maintain ideological purity, you can have a job for life. But it is dissapointing that the National Post continues to allow Lott space on their pages to mislead their readers.

Citizen Involvement in Canadian Democracy

2005-10-27T23:04:00.000-04:00

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:

*Participation Rates in Last Four Canadian Federal Elections*
Year	Participation
1993	69.6 %
1997	67.0 %
2000	61.2 %
2004	60.9 %

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:

*Survey Results: Voting Participation in 2000 Election, by Age Group*
Age	Participation
68+	83.3%
58–67	80.4%
48–57	76.4%
38–47	66.2%
30–37	54.2%
25–29	38.2%
21–24	27.5%
18–20	22.4%

The kids are alright

Lots of information, not enough feedback

Democratic Changes: The "Don't"s

The "Do"s

Summary

Ezra Levant Watch X

2005-10-24T22:14:00.000-04:00

I read Ezra like I can't help but look at a car wreck.

After a few months of shirking my duty, it's time to stare once more unflinching into the abyss that is Ezra Levant's column.

It's sort of refreshing to see that things haven't changed much over the past months. Previously, Ezra had demonstrated his power of mindreading by reading the minds of all Quebecois in determining how they want Ontario to vote in the next Federal election. In this week's column, he reads the minds of all potential American Tourists. In an amazing twist of events, when he considers the motives of other groups, it turns out they all have opinions which support his point of view.

You probably didn't hear about this at all, but StatsCan reported that American tourism to Canada in August was down 5.6% from July, and was the lowest monthly level for quite some time; overnight trips were down to levels not seen since the days of SARS.

Tourism experts across Canada (and even in the West) attribute this drop primarily to high gasoline prices and the rise of the Canadian dollar. Others even suggest it might be due to some Americans heeding President Bush's urging to `avoid nonessential driving'. But Ezra knows better. His uncanny mental abilities allow him to probe the minds of these people and directly see causes, without the tedious necessity of looking at data or, you know, asking them. He knows that the reason is Canadians savage, vicious outbursts of Anti-Americanism:

The obvious answer is that American tourism wasn't hurt by gas prices or currency fluctuations. It was killed by something else that Americans are thinking about when it comes to Canada in the past year.
Gee -- what could that be?
Could it be that Paul Martin's policy of unrestrained anti-Americanism has had an effect? Could it be some Americans -- not all, but certainly enough to cause August's 5.9% drop -- have made a political statement with their vacation plans, just like they have stopped drinking French wine?

(One might reasonably ask why the tourism spending of the ~49% of Americans who voted for Kerry and who are therefore probably fairly sympathetic to an anti-Bush sentiment wouldn't all but make up for the of the ~51% who voted for Bush; but Ezra's mind reading abilities are unlikely to be able to help us understand the motivations of liberals).

Sadly, I'm not blessed with Ezra's unique gifts, so I actually have to trudge through and read stuff to understand some of these things that Ezra can just See with his Sight. For instance, it wasn't at all obvious to me that, as Ezra said:

Some have blamed the rise in gasoline prices. But that doesn't make sense. Travelling from city to city within the U.S. is often a longer drive than heading up to Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, all close to the border. More to the point, the sharp drop in tourism was measured in August -- before hurricane Katrina spiked gas prices.

One of the reasons it wasn't obvious to me is that oil prices have been high all summer (although it's true Katrina spiked them even further), and those resulting high gasoline prices are effecting American tourists even in the U.S.:

Foliage tours are a major revenue source for tour companies in the Northeast. So President Bush’s request that Americans cut back on driving after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced refinery and oil rig shutdowns in the Gulf region has many foliage operators worried that business will suffer.

...A survey in mid-September by AARP found that 47% of those over 50 intended to limit travel and vacations as a result of high gas prices.

Indeed, the article points out that fuel prices have been higher all summer, and that airlines and parts of the tourism industry that rely on driving are `losing a bit of sleep at night'.

Further, the surveys referred to above are slightly older; a very recent survey says that 56% of Americans will travel less this holiday season. Indeed, an earlier survey by the same group said that 43% would travel less this just-past summer. Obviously, no survey can be as precise as Ezra's mind-reading powers -- Ezra can tell what you're really thinking, not just what you are willing to say aloud to those polling for surveys -- but it's worth considering; if that 43% of Americans who said they would travel less on average reduced their travel by, say, a very modest 13%, that would mean a total of 5.6% less travel...

The modest, but real, influence that gasoline prices are having on American tourists might well be why Buffalo is offering Canadians $50 in shopping if they stay in a Buffalo hotel (Shopping is Hopping in Buffalo!)

Might Canadian and US drivers have different responses to fuel prices? Is there a reason why American drivers might be even more prone to change behaviours? Why, yes. Canadians and US drivers have different senses of what is a `fair price' for a gallon of gasoline, and over the past weeks and months, US prices have been further above that price than Canadian prices, and it's perception of price increases, rather than the absolute value of those increases themselves, which drives consumer choices. And indeed, US drivers have been making some changes in their driving behaviour, even if only temporarily, and in ways varying from tourism to community college class schedules.

Similarly, a mundane like me can't immediately grasp Ezra's magical insight here:

Some have blamed the strengthening Canadian dollar, saying it has eroded Canada's economic attraction to Americans. But that doesn't make sense, either. The Canadian dollar is worth roughly 85 U.S. cents today. Last October, it was 81 U.S. cents (and it was 84 U.S. cents last November). Is an extra cent or two really the reason we have the lowest tourism from the U.S. in a generation? If the dollar is the reason, then one would have expected to see this tourism drop last year -- because between October 2003 and October 2004, the Canadian dollar rose from 76 cents to 81 cents -- a bigger jump than in the past year. And in the year before that, the Canadian dollar positively leapt from 63 cents to 76 cents, or 13 cents in just one year. How can a three- or four-cent rise in the Canadian dollar over the past year be to blame for falling U.S. tourism, if an 18-cent rise in the previous two years didn't flatten tourism?

You see, I'm confused because StatsCan has some basic tourism numbers from the very years he mentions:

*US Residents Entering Canada, 2000-2004, in Thousands*
Year	Visitors ('000)
2000	43,993.8
2001	42,871.3
2002	40,878.2
2003	35,509.5
2004	34,626.1

(It's worth pointing out that Paul Martin became Prime Minister at the end of 2003. Ezra doesn't suggest a reason for the fall in tourism before the nefarious anti-American Martin came to power, nor why the fall slowed as Martin came to power.)

So let's see -- huge jump in Canadian dollar between 2002 and 2003, check; smaller but still significant jumps in the currencies between 2003 and 2004, and 2004 and now, check...

And what happened before the years listed in the table? Well, 1999 and 2000 were Canadian Tourism boom years, as the US economy flourished under President Clinton. So perhaps as the economy slows down from that boom, and exchange rates re-balance, tourism is slowly falling back to previous levels.

But other questions are raised by the same StatsCan Press Release. Travel from, for instance Hong Kong was also down, by 15.7%, and from China by 8.7%. I wonder if Ezra believes that they were driven away by rampant anti-Hong-Kong-ism in Canada? Or how about why Canadian trips to the US are going up -- which makes perfect sense if the exchange rate is the main driver -- despite anti-canadianism in the United States. Perhaps it's just that Canadians are a hardier lot, a little less likely to have their feelings hurt? Only a psychic could know for sure.

Update: You, too, can contribute to the Ezra Levant Watch effort! Currently, the Ezra Levant Watch Archives are, sadly, only 5th on a Google Search for Ezra Levant. With a little effort, maybe we can bump this up to third -- above the location of his own column! If you enjoy the Ezra Levant Watch, please link to the archives on your blog with a text of `Ezra Levant' or `Ezra Levant Watch' and see if we can push it up the rankings!

Steven Harper: Little Engine that Could.

2005-10-20T21:53:00.000-04:00

Bless Steven Harper's little heart; he knows he can, he knows he can, he knows he can defeat the Liberals in Parliament and win an election:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said after a weekly caucus meeting yesterday that he does not believe he must wait until Nov. 14 -- the first scheduled opposition day -- to introduce a no-confidence motion that could force an election.

Good luck with that, Steven. No, seriously.

See, here's the thing. On the right is a graph basically all of the publically available polls from over the last few years (the points), with a crude smoothing (thick solid lines). The thin horizontal lines represent the results of the last election. (You can click for a bigger, less fuzzy version). And what one sees pretty clearly is a slow reversion back to the previous election (late June '04) results. Maybe, if one was inclined to be uncharitable -- and I am -- you'd point out that the Conservative numbers are still a little lower than before, and the NDP and Green numbers are a little high.

Given the make up of the current Parliament, you probably don't need any models to tell you what that means, but it's fun to use one anyway. Bump down the Conservative numbers a couple and the NDP and Green numbers up a couple in the Election Calculator (Guaranteed accurate predictions, or your money back!), and see that those results would give the Liberals and NDP combined a solid lock on the Parliament -- and that assumes that there isn't a voter backlash against the Conservatives for an unneccessary election being forced.

Whether the Harper Conservatives like it or not, the Canadian electorate as a whole hasn't moved very much since the last election -- or at least, is moving back to where they were before. So one is left with two choices -- either convince the Canadian voter, by means of innovative new policies or statesman-like behavior, that they should change their mind and vote for you; or whine and kvetch and try to throw monkey wrenches into the mechanisms of Canadian governance.

I wonder which tack the Harper Conservatives are taking?

The federal Conservatives are threatening to resume the disruptive tactics that shut down the House of Commons for three days last spring if they can enlist the New Democrats in a plan to take down the Liberal minority government.

Oh, right.

Update: The Toronto Star agrees.

Alas! Intellectual Freedom!

2005-10-18T09:08:00.000-04:00

For conservatives complaining about being discrimated against, this must be the final straw. After facing insuperable hurdles in the academy -- being required to support their arguments and provide evidence -- now intellectual freedom isn't even guaranteed in think tanks. Conservatives are having their academic freedom suppressed by... conservatives:

In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican commentator who has been increasingly critical of the White House, was dismissed on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas.
In a statement, the organization said the decision was made after Mr. Bartlett supplied its president, John C. Goodman, with the manuscript of his forthcoming book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."
Mr. Bartlett, who was a domestic policy aide at the White House in the Reagan administration and a deputy assistant Treasury secretary under the first President Bush, confirmed that he had been dismissed after 10 years with the center but declined to make any further comment.

Damn liberals -- er, conservatives -- er, anyone who doesn't exactly toe the current conservative line!

The Market Will Provide

2005-10-03T22:43:00.000-04:00

I have recently read one too many posts saying that one needn't worry about [problem X] possibly occuring in the future, because even if it does come to pass, market forces will ensure that there is a technological solution for [problem X]. (In this case, the issue is a long-term decrease in supply of oil, but it could just as easily be climate change or pollution or...)

Now, I'm very fond of my laptop computer. It is very good at what it does. I use it to write things. But I don't go around telling people ``I don't know if I'll be able to write that next bit; but don't worry, if I get stuck, my laptop will ensure there is a solution''. That misrepresents the role my laptop plays in the process, and it would make me look like a bit of a dolt.

Neither `the market', nor `market forces', have ever -- ever! -- invented an invention, or built a widget, or shipped a product. The market represents a way for potential producers and potential consumers to send signals that they are willing to buy or sell some goods or services. The market lets individuals know that there are incentives to produce, and that there are goods to consume.

When one talks about producing commodities, where there are few or no barriers to entry in the market, the presence of those incentives to produce are pretty much all you need to ensure that production will happen. If consumers are telling the market that they're willing to buy a hundred more units of guns and three hundred more units of butter, enterprising weapons manufacturers and dairy farmers will trip over themselves to make up the slack, and one can pretty much be assured that increased production will result. When you are used to considering such situations, it becomes easy to slip from saying `the market provides further incentives for production of butter, and since it is easy to shift resources to produce more butter, increased production of butter results' into the shorthand of saying `the market provides increased production of butter'. But this is only a shorthand. The market does not go out in the morning to milk any extra cows.

Entirely new technologies, and methods to solve new problems, are much harder to produce than guns or butter. Consider the case of medical technology:

His financial empire made him the equal of kings, his fortune was the envy of the merely rich. But in the summer of 1836, Nathan Rothschild was dying of an abscess leading to blood-poisoning, and all his wealth was to no avail. Today, a dose of antibiotics, costing a few coins, would have saved the 59-year-old banker. What would he have been willing to pay for that prescription?

Why didn't the market provide Nathan Rothschild with a technological solution to his illness? It wasn't because government intervention was causing market distortions. It wasn't because of lack of demand -- there was no shortage of people, rich or poor, dying of infections. It certainly wasn't because there wasn't a functioning healthcare market. Indeed, the middle of the 1800s was a boom time for medicines. In America, for instance, there was a huge and thriving market in quack medicines, prompted largely by the possibility of nationwide advertising that the new process of commercial lithography allowed . Lots and lots of vials of Lung Syrup, mercury, and various powders, tinctures, syrups, enemas and infusions were sold. There was a vigorous market response to the demand for cures.

Of course, few if any of them were any good. Despite all of that market activity, Penicillin remained stubbornly undiscovered for several decades. There was no market failure here; the knowledge needed to make a viable antibiotic simply wasn't available. The Germ theory of infection was just getting a toehold in 1878.

One could try to make an argument that the pace of progress has quickened, as our knowledge deepens and our tools improve. But in medical technology -- where there is large and intense demand -- only the diseases change. Many many Canadians suffer from cancer, and so again there is a thriving quack medicine market. But up to this moment, the market has failed to provide us with a cure for cancer.

Will technology provide a new cheap energy source before oil becomes scarce? I don't know, and neither does Steven Levitt or Matthew Kahn. But in trying to convince people that problem X cannot be a serious problem, because the market will provide a solution when necessary, they are sending the wrong signals -- that there is no incentive to work on solutions to difficult problems yet. That undermines the creation of the very solutions they assume.

Climate Change Denialism is Dead; long live Climate Change Denialism

2005-08-20T17:18:00.000-04:00

Or: How Real Science Reacts to Surprising Data

Science is an iterative process. New experiments and observations challenge some old theories and models, provide evidence in support for others, and hint at entirely new ones. The surviving theories make new predictions, suggesting directions for new experiments and observations. Slowly, fitfuly, but surely, researchers better understand what they study by continually challenging their ideas it with new data.

It's a cause for some excitement when there is a contradiction between established theory and measurement. Are the old theories completely wrong? Or did some previously-neglected effect, small in the cases looked at before, show itself to be important and require accounting for? Or -- as sometimes happens -- is the data wrong, or being misinterpreted? The fallout is always interesting to watch, because it's right here -- in the face of opposing evidence -- that the difference between science and pseudoscience is made clear.

Such has been the case in climate science with the satellite record of the global temperatures in the troposphere. The troposphere is the roughly 10km-thick layer of the atmosphere closest to the surface of the Earth, and is where weather takes place. It's the part of the atmosphere most closely coupled to the Earth's systems; thermally, and through the water cycle.

Naturally, then, if the Earth's surface and oceans warm -- which is undoubtedly the case -- one would expect the troposphere to warm ¹, and at roughly the same rate as the Earth's surface temperature. But for some time, this hadn't been observed. Both satellite measurements and balloon-borne measurements showed very little temperature change over the course of the decades, certainly much less than models of the atmosphere predicted. This disconnect clearly pointed to a problem, but where?

The difference of reaction of the science community and those who had already made up their minds that there could be no human-powered climate change was very instructive. Scientists, confronted with a body of evidence that pointed overwhelmingly one way, but one piece of data which pointed another way entirely, did the only honest thing; they shrugged their shoulders, said `I don't know', and commenced working on both models and data analysis to try to understand what was going on. On the other hand, those in the climate change denial community already knew the answer -- this data `proved' there was no global warming, and all the other evidence suggesting otherwise could be simply discarded.

In fact, the more carefully one looks at the differences in attitudes to the atmospheric data, the more instructive it becomes. There were two groups² looking in detail at the satellite data; the so-called RSS group, and a group at University of Alabama-Huntsville (which has a very strong space sciences department, being near the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center). The UAH group, led by Prof. Christy, was the group that, after data analysis, saw the much lower than expected warming trend; the RSS group saw a warming trend well within the range predicted by climate models. The scientists were puzzled by this, but those who knew there was no global warming knew exactly what to do; dismiss the RSS results entirely.

But things get more instructive still. The satellite record extends back to 1979, and while the UAH results had seemed to show a cooling trend up until about 1996 or so, the cooling trend got smaller and smaller. If you include the data beyond 1996, even in the UAH results, a warming trend is seen; smaller than the models predict, but warming nonetheless. For scientists, this was just another detail of the puzzle; the model and observations still didn't match, even though they both went in the same direction. But for those who simply knew there could be no global warming, this trend, however small, was a fact best avoided. Thus, some resorted simply to telling quarter-truths about the data; announcing that the satellite data actually showed a cooling trend, although this was true for only half of the data produced by one out of two of the research groups doing analysis. In doing so in such places as Tech Central Station, the authors failed to mention the fact that they had to focus only on one quarter of the available information to make such a statement, greatly misleading their audiences about the state of the science on the subject. For instance, one well-known climate change denier, Fred Singer, wrote as recently as this year:

And as long as weather satellites show that the atmosphere is not warming, I cannot put much faith into theoretical computer models that claim to represent the atmosphere but contradict what the atmosphere tells us.

although he must have known that in fact all available satellite data did show warming.

After years of others espousing such nuanced approaches to the facts, the scientists finally have their say in three widely reported on papers in this past week's Science Express. As is often the case, the science approach to unravelling a mystery makes a much more interesting story than the alternative. The Economist, somewhat uncharacteristically, has an excellent article describing the approaches taken to find the new results, as does the always excellent RealClimate and Scott Church posting at Deltoid.

One paper, written by a group lead by Steve Sherwood at Yale, examined the balloon data for the lower troposphere. Sherwood suspected that the data was at fault. The balloons, regularly released over 40 years from stations over the globe, carry with them little electronic thermometers to measure the air temperature. These thermometers were protected from direct heating by the sun by small sheilds, which worked imperfectly (the shields themselves got hot), so their temperature data needed to be corrected from this effect. However, over the years , the shielding got better, but the corrections for this data didn't necessarily take this into account; thus over-correcting the data for a now smaller problem of spurious heating could cause a real global warming signal to vanish. It was a good theory, but how to test it?

Sherwood's group simply decided to examine only the data that was always in shade, so that no correction to the data needed to be made. But what data was taken always in shade? Data taken at night. The Yale group found a rise in night-time tropospheric temperatures that fell nicely in range with the predictions of climate models. Absent these correction problems, the balloon data and model data now agreed very nicely.

A second paper, by members of the RSS group, critically examined the corrections to satellite data made by the UAH group. One major correction that must be made to satellite data is to make sure the satellite is where you think it is! As satellite orbits drift over time, their position may slowly change relative to their original orbit. In this context, one of the most important drifts is `diurnal drift' -- the orbital period may change, so that when you would expect to be observing night-time Earth, it actually catches a piece of daylit Earth. When you are measuring temperatures, this will make a significant change. In this paper, Mears and Wentz argue convincingly that the UAH group had been `correcting' the data for one satellite -- NOAA-11 incorrectly, indeed using the wrong sign. Other authors had earlier this year identified this satellite as being the likely source of the disagreement, but did not suggest a reason that the data from this satellite might differ. The UAH group have quietly accepted this criticism, updating and releasing corrected versions of their data and making a post on Tech Central Station. The two data analysis of the satellite data now both are in agreement with predictions.

The third paper, by a group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in California, points out how serious the disagreement would have been if the data had been correct. They ran a series of simulations using nineteen different models; in all nineteen cases, the models predicted a tropospheric rise in temperatures. Whatever the failing of any particular model, all nineteen agreeing that there should have been a significant rise in troposphere temperatures indicates that something deeply troubling would have been going on if the UAH and balloon-borne data was correct. Instead, it now shows that the nineteen computer models all are in broad agreement with the corrected data.

So given that we now know that the troposphere is, indeed, warming at rates entirely consistant with models which predict serious climate change, and that the all parts of our climate system -- the surface, the oceans, and the atmosphere -- are all warming at an extremely rapid rate (fractions of a degree per decade, rather than per century or over millenium) will the climate change denialists begin to change their tune? One might hope so. Certainly those who were genuinely open-minded but unconvinced until now might reassess, as Ronald Bailey at the pro-market libertarian magazine Reason has.

But sadly, genuine skeptics are likely the minority on that side of the debate, the evidence long since having piled up to an extent that left room for few. Those who toil in the pseudoscience mills such as the Competitive Enterprise Instiute. the American Enterprise Institute, or the Discovery Institute --where plausible-sounding, authoritative-seeming pseudoscience is manufactured to order for their funders, whether it is Exxon-funded bogus claims about climate change, software industry-funded claims about the dangers of Open Source Software, or Christian Right-funded attacks on biology and evolution -- are not genuine skeptics, seeking disinterested truth through evidence. Instead, they are paid persuaders, attempting to sway public opinion to a particular point of view -- that there is a controversy about topics where none really exists -- regardless of the truth of that claim. The reasons are political; to avoid regulation of carbon emissions, or to stave off buisness and government adoption of open-source software, or to teach one groups religion to all school children.

Thus already we have Steve Milloy claiming that the recent results demonstrating that climate models correctly predict even troposphere temperatures is not a big deal; `its only a few hundredths of a degree!'.

Le mensonge est mort; vivent les mensonges.

1. One has to be a little careful with obvious expectations, though; there's a lot of physics in there! For instance, the stratosphere -- the layer just above the troposphere -- is expected to cool under the effects of global warming. As things get hotter, it can cool faster by radiating away more energy, where as its main source of warmth -- which at that height is absorption of UV by ozone, not the warmth of the Earth -- doesn't change.

2. Having multiple groups analyze the same data is common practice in science; reproducability, or the ability for other independant groups to reproduce one scientists results, is another keystone of real science (and its absence is one of the warning signs of pseudoscience.) This makes scientific results robust against one groups errors, unintentional or otherwise. For instance, while you will often hear climate change deniers trying to dismiss the `hockey stick graph' because it is such a potent visual symbol of the recent rapid climate change, you'll rarely hear from those groups that the hockey stick reconstructions have been widely reproduced by independant groups using different methods. This is why reproducability is key; exactly so that scientific results do not hinge crucially on the result of one paper or one research group.

On the Added Value of Labour

2005-07-31T20:20:00.000-04:00

I find work stoppages fascinating, because it gives a brief measure of the value of the work which is being stopped.

Now, in fairness, the inferred value of the work is inflated if it is a short-term stoppage; alternate arrangements you have to scramble to make at the last minute are always going to be more expensive than alternate arrangements that you can make over the long term. But still, I think the numbers are instructive.

About 1,000 to 1700 truckers who drive containers into and out of the Port of Vancouver are striking in BC now, in part because their pay ($350-$400 a day) barely covers the cost of running a truck now that fuel costs have increased.

Keeping in mind that this short term cost might well be less in the long term, the widely quoted estimate (for which I can't find an original source) for the cost of the strike on the economy seems to be $75 million a day to the BC economy alone, counting only additional transportation costs -- and that number doesn't include other costs, such as loss of perishable merchandise. This doesn't seem unreasonable; the service of bringing goods from where people are willing to make them to where people are willing to buy them is obviously extremely valuable; without that service, there would be no point in making the goods in the first place. As an example, The Port of Vancouver is estimated to increase national GDP by $4 billion per year, and total economic activity by $8.3 billion, on goods of value $43 billion.

With the caveat of short-term replacement costs being higher than long-term replacement costs firmly in mind, the fact that it costs $75 million/day to replace the service provided by the 1000-1700 truckers makes one suspect that if they aren't collectively being paid some significant fraction of $75m/day there is a sense in which they are being underpaid. That would translate to $44,000 - $75,000/day each, vs. $350-$400/day.

This comes to mind when considering the various recent discussions of CEO compensation, such as that of the departing HP CEO, who after a less-than-stellar run as CEO had a severance package equal to something like three times the average expected lifetime pay of a doctor.

So an interesting question is, if all the CEOs in companies in BC, for example, went on strike, would it cost the BC economy more than or less than $75 million dollars a day? If they all took the month of August off, would Canada's economy lose $2 billion? Did HPs fortunes suffer by several million dollars every time its leader took a day off?

There's at least one data point on this; many of the CEOs of the worlds largest corporations go to Davos, Switzerland every January for the World Economic Forum, where they presumably are less productive than at their offices (or else, surely, they would simply set up permanent offices in Davos). I've yet to see any suggestion that there is an annual world economic slowdown that occurs predictably near the end of January.

Its clearly true that some CEOs have greatly increased the value of their companies, and its equally true that many have done just the opposite. Ideally, their pay would be closer aligned to the value they bring to the company; in a properly competitive market, this would be true. In a properly competitive market, this would also be true of the truck drivers.

The London Bombings

2005-07-07T23:53:00.000-04:00

My heart and thoughts go out to all the victims of the bombings in London, and their families and friends. I only know a couple of people in London, and we were fortunate that none of them were hurt.

Along with sorrow and anger, we can also feel admiration from the strength of Londoners -- expressed in many different ways. This is a city of men and women uncowed by thirty years of IRA terror and the Blitz. The courage and tenacity that have served the people of Britain and London, together, so well in the past will be with them in the days and weeks to come.

No one has ever seriously doubted that terrorism remains a deadly challenge. An open, free, society will likely never be possible to completely protect its citizens from those who are willing to go to any lengths to kill indiscriminately. But today reminds us that steps must be taken to defeat groups who are willing to kill innocents to achieve political ends. And because real lives are on the line, those steps, those policies, must be chosen because they work: not because they please one consituency or another; not because they poll well; not because they televise well. Policy failures have devastating consequences.

It's far too early to know exactly what has happened in London, and it might be that there was little that could have been done to forever halt this particular attack. But there are certainly some actions by world leaders that, done differently, could have reduced the danger we face today from acts of terrorism:

The US administration could have not undercut British security by blowing the cover of a double agent before British police were ready to make an arrest, allowing as many as five members of a cell to escape;
Governments -- Canada's, the US's, and doubtless many others -- could better fund (and more wisely) less glamourous parts of homeland security
Terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden should not remain free 46 months after the attacks of September 11, 2001...
because assets were pulled out of Afghanistan to fight a war in Iraq...
which has only since the invasion become a breeding ground for extremists...
who unnecessarily have access to explosives, army weapons, and radioactive material.
The Bush administration could have not decided to pass three times on taking action against the one terrorist leader, Zarqaui, who was in Iraq (although not the area Hussein controlled) for fear it would undermine support for the upcoming Iraq war.

I don't mean to pick on one government, but the most spectacular and public policy failures over the past several years have been disproportionately those of the political wing of one administration.

It's also true that, despite what some less-than-serious people have suggested, some actions which were done had no negative effects all on safety against attacks like this one:

Ballistic Missile Defense is of no use against low-tech high-impact attacks like these -- or indeed, like any attack that is even remotely likely in the coming decades;
Canada's not joining the war on Iraq would not have been the best use of all-too-scarce military resources, and would not prevent attacks;
and decrying the abuses in Guantanamo or the failures of Iraq policy ``emboldens'' extremists far less than the actual abuses in Guantanamo or failures of Iraq policy.

Seriously fighting the challenge of terrorist attacks, like any challenge facing us, means more than cheerleading one leader or one policy; it means making decisions with the best knowledege available, and seriously assessing the success of those choices and making changes if one is unsuccessful or a mistake. Improving chances of success means improving strategies as one goes on, and one can't do that without admiting mistakes and adjusting policies.

Update: Over at Pharyngula there is a post describing how good policies may have saved many lives during this attack.

Ezra Levant Watch IX

2005-07-06T00:33:00.000-04:00

I'm newly back to blogging, and so am still a little delicate, so I was going to skip taking a close look at Ezra Levant's column this week. But I just had to look, you know?

And what did I see? In the very first paragraph?

It's rare that there is any good news out of the Alberta provincial government these days. Spending is up fully 100% since the mid-90's, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Haven't we seen this somewhere before? Like in the last Klein-bashing column?

Note how the claim has graduated from `spending up 90% since 1996' to `fully 100% since the mid-90s'. And while before, the claim was at least technically true, if misleading (it would have been equally true to say that 2004 spending was down 12% in real per-capita terms since 1993), now it isn't; even with the 2005 budget, spending isn't up by fully 100% since the mid 90s, it's up nearly 100% (ignoring inflation and population growth) since 1996. Not 1995, not 1997; compared to either of those years, the increase was less. 1996 was a very special year, which is why the Canadian Taxpayers Federation chose that year to base the comparisons on. It's called cherry-picking, and the Canadian Taxpayer Foundation knows all about it; but at least when they do it, they take care to make sure what they say is still technically true.

Oh, Ezra! If only you took notes when you read these posts, you'd save yourself these easy, obvious mistakes!

(In further Ezra-making-previously-demonstrated-false-claims news, Scott Tribe takes Ezra Levant to task for claiming that the Liberals somehow conspired to make the Canadian flag in the Liberal party colours, thus sending a subliminal message... or something. Not only is this something that someone doing five minutes of reading would know is false, but it was something that was debunked last flag day -- mere months ago! -- after endless discussion on the blogs.)

It's really sort of amazing; I wasn't going to do a full read of the column, but Ezra can't even go two whole sentances without saying something completely -- and previously shown to be -- false.

The rest of the column is pretty weak. (I kinda think that, without me keeping an eye on him, he got lazy). He congratulates the Alberta government for easing restrictions on child labour (no, really) -- a decision opposed not just by a union spokesman he names, by some Western religous groups, amongst others. Now, maybe this policy is a positive change, and maybe its a negative one, but there's a lot of good arguments on the `con' side that have nothing to do with Ezra's suggestion of price fixing by unions.

The final paragraphs of Ezra's column he spends decrying the `junk science' that led to the delay in opening some sour gas wells outside of Calgary. If Ezra thinks that concern about sour gas is `junk science', I'd encourage him to demonstrate his righteousness by standing in a room full of Hydrogen Sulfide -- the gas that makes sour gas smell sour, and a broad-spectrum poison. Inhalation of traces of as little as 700 parts per million are routinely fatal, and 1000 parts per million cause immediate collapse (and eventual suffocation, because death is due to respitory paralysis).

In 2000 there was a Sour Gas blowout releasing 4% hydrogen sulfide -- 40000 parts per million -- into the atmosphere. Because of dangers like this, the Alberta Energy and Utilities board has previously refused plans for other sour gas projects, and one can understand why sour gas wells near a major city might be a cause for some caution. But of course, to Ezra, any such caution is simply ``bashing energy companies'' and ``junk science''.

Ah, Ezra. I missed you. Sort of.

Applet Blogging: What Would The Election Results Have Been?

2005-07-03T00:06:00.000-04:00

As a likely-incurable pollwatcher, I've been curious to have some way of guessing, even crudely, how it would translate into Parliamentary results. Historical data saying that over 45% (say) is needed for a majority is based on a somewhat different party makeup than we have today; the Conservative Party today is very different than the Tories of a decade ago, and draw from somewhat different supporters.

My own first attempt at a Parliament Calculator is below. It's based on last elections riding-by-riding results and current nation-wide polling numbers. I've had enough fun with it that I thought I should post it. (You'll have to have Java enabled to use the applet; please let me know if it doesn't work for you.)

Some data to try plugging in from the more recent polls is below:

Date	Lib	Cons	NDP	BQ	Green
Jun 25	36	29	18	11	--
Jun 20	37	25	20	13	--
Jun 18	34	29	16	12	6
Jun 9	34	26	19	13	9
Jun 5	37	23	21	12	--

The model used here for doing the seat predictions takes the riding-by-riding results from the 2004 election and scales each districts votes by the current polls in the new `election'; that is, if a party had gotten 20% of the votes in 2004 but was polling at 40% now, it would get twice as many votes in each district. In some districts, that will push them over the edge; in others, it won't make a difference. `Others' or `Undecideds' are assumed not to vote, or equivalently, to split the same way as the other voters. This approach is absurdly crude, of course, but it's instructive to see what an overall national rise or fall in voter sentiment does to the vote totals; and since the next election is likely going to be very similar to this one, resulting in a minority government with similar regional breakdowns, this approach is probably more reasonable than it might be in general.

(One nice way of testing this model would be to try to `predict' the 2000 elections based on the actual vote percentages (or, for that matter, poll numbers just before the election) and see how well it does; but that was before the wildly successful `unite the right' merger of the PCs and Reform, so a comparision isn't possible.)

I've been keeping track of polling data anyway, as below, so it's a simple matter to plug some of those numbers into the calculator.

As an attempt to see how things were trending, I took a look at the last twenty or polls that include the Green party (Update: that was what I had done before, but I had said I had selected the polls that omitted the Greens) and plotted the resulting seat numbers; the results are below.

It's probably not surprising to see that both the Conservatives and Liberals are somewhat down, and the NDP and BQ are up. If the NDP actually do pull in the nearly 20% they're polling at now, it seems quite likely they could win 40+ seats; however, it's worth noticing that the NDP were also polling at 20% right up to the end in the previous election, when in the event they only got 15.6% of the vote.

Happy Canada Day!

2005-07-01T12:27:00.000-04:00

This is my first Canada Day living in Canada for seven years, and I'm prouder than ever to call this place my home.

Canada is easily one of the best places in the world to live. We are healthy, wealthy and safe; We are making steps -- if uneven ones -- to becoming a country of even more freedoms and equality.

It's actually those steps we're taking which make me most proud; because being a great country, a great nation, a diversely great collection of people and peoples, is an undertaking which never completely ends, and Canada - and Canadians - have shown that generation after generation, they're willing to step up and our country a better place than they found it.

As Canadians, we have a shared understanding of goals to work towards, and a willingness to pull towards them. We know that Canadians, working together, can solve some problems much better together than if we each have to scramble and fight on our own. We believe that Canada is strongest when Canadians are treated decently and have the freedom and the resources to be healthy, educated, active citizens. We're a pragmatic lot, and know that policies chosen to pursue those goals should be policies which are shown to work, not policies wholy invented because they match someone's idea of how the world should be. We're a freedom-loving lot, and demand that we should be free to live our lives, make family decisions, and marry our loved ones without someone else compelling us to make the choices they would. And we know from experience that we can band together and set basic rules of fairness so that hardworking families get a decent deal from their employers, and so that even small Canadian buisnesses can compete in a fair market here at home. And abroad, we know that Canada should have a strong, united voice in the world, promoting our way - the Canadian way - the Third Way before the Third Way was cool.

Together, we can continue building this country, and work towards an ever improving True North; Strong, Free, and United. And it's that willingness to work towards those goals -- to face what has happened before and try to grow; to keep working regardless of those who say it can't be done or aren't willing to try -- that is what really makes me proud.

Back On The Keyboard Again

2005-06-30T21:29:00.000-04:00

Now that things are back under a bit more control, I'll be slowly working my way up to a more regular posting schedule. Eventually I'll be posting every couple of days here; but also, Pogge has been kind enough to allow me to post at his previously well respected site. I haven't quite yet sorted out what will go there and what will go here in this somewhat smaller corner of the web. Suggestions always welcome.

In the -- what, a month and a half? -- since I've last really posted, a lot has gone on, both in the Real Canada, and in blogspace. The real-world events have received enough comment from Canadian bloggers who weren't slacking off. In blogland, Timmy The G of Voice in the Wilderness took a hiatus shortly after I did, and started up again well before; it's not escaped my notice that not only is Timmy much faster to post than I am, but he even pauses from blogging faster than I do. I also notice with some sadness that Treehugger of The Heart of the Matter has hung up his mouse. On returning to Canada, I started reading a small handful of Canadian blogs; Treehuggers was one, as was Captain Flynn's of Against All Flags. Those blogs, and those at are still on my blogroll, where what convinced me to take part in this conversation.

Summer partial hiatus

2005-06-01T07:19:00.000-04:00

Hi:

There's been a long quiet period after some unexpected travel. Posting will probably be quite light over the early summer, and will pick up again in August or September.

How I Plan To Take Over the Country Once I Find Some Time

2005-05-13T01:38:00.000-04:00

Canadians are not an ideological people.

The country is large, and the winters are cold; the oceans are violent and the praries are remote. When the environment can so easily kill you in a fit of pique, if focuses the mind on reality, and pragmatic matters; wide-eyed ideologues are viewed skeptically by Canadians when they pause from tending to their daily matters to view them at all.

In most of recent Canadian political history, Canadians had two pragmatic, mercurially centrist, parties to chose from. The Liberal party was somewhat more to Canadians' taste, policy wise, but the Progressive Conservatives were a reasonable, pragmatic, centrist alternative, and when the Liberals did something annoying, Canadians voted them out and the Progressive Conservatives in for a while. The New Democrats -- which has policies that Canadians broadly strongly agree with -- were stuck in a very distant third, distrusted by Canadians because of the ideological nature of the party -- even though the actual contents of the ideology are pretty familiar and comfortable to Canadian voters.

But in the past few years, the Tories disappeared, to be replaced by the Conservatives; a staunchly ideological party that 65% of Canadians simply won't vote for, and much of the rest vote for only for the sake of misplaced nostalgia for the PCs. Left with only one pragmatic centrist party, Canadians kept the Liberals in power long after anyone in the party's upper eschelons deserved, and the party, too used to power and its priviledges, imploded.

Canadian voters now have three choices that, from the polls, they don't seem too enthusiastic about. In the Liberals, they have a party tarnished by corruption; in the Conservatives they have a party that has gone wildly ideological, despite (just) being able to behave reasonably in public; and in the NDP they have an ideological party never tested with the federal reins of power. Under these circumstances, it drives the Conservative partisans wild with rage that Canadian voters aren't flocking to them by the hundreds of thousands, because they've never understood the Canadian electorate. They are convinced that everything they've read about the American political system should apply here, and that any differences between what they see and what they expect means that it's the Canadians who are wrong.

So I've decided that, as soon as I can find a few free years, I'll fill the political void in Canada and no doubt sweep elections for the forseeable future. The plan is to form a new party, with goals to the left of the current Liberals and to the right of the NDP, but based on relentless, monotonous, pragmatism.

I'm not sure of the name yet, but something like the `Pragmatist Block' or the `Technocrats' (full name: `Quite Boring, Socially Progressive, Economically Moderate, Fiscally Conservative Technocrats of Canada that Just Get Stuff Done'). As a colour I'll choose a nice, reassuring grey that goes more or less with everything. The party constitution will consist of:

A list of policy goals -- universal, efficient access to world-class health care and education; a world-class buisness environment; a world-class quality of living for those who work for those buisnesses; freedom of Canadians to live their personal lives as they see fit; a robust infrastructure; a military capable of defending Canada and intervening meaningfully in regional conflicts elsewhere; a significant Canadian role in international institutions.
A commitment to ruthlessly adopt whatever policies are actually proven to work best to achieve those goals, and to widely disseminate the data behind these decisions.
An extremely stringent code of conduct for members of the party, with automatic ejection from the party if even quite minor conflict of interest or ethical lapses are shown.
An extremely stringent code of what is acceptable politics for party members, with automatic ejection from the party for making public statements questioning the personal qualities of other political figures, and points towards ejections for public statements made that aren't true statements about policies or policy goals.

With some hard work, this should be the greyest and most bland of political parties, with a completely transparent agenda that most Canadians will agree with most of, and one forbidden from getting into childish mud-slinging matches ("You're destroying the country!" "No, you're destroying the country!"...)

The next step is to begin running for provincial legislature seats in a couple of provinces that won't instantly turn off the rest of the country (NS and BC?), build up some steam, and then begin fielding MP candidates. It'll take a while for Canadians to get used to seeing the dull people in the grey flannel suits talking about subtle policy distinctions rather than making cheap shots about other MPs, and the media might never quite get it. After a while, though, I think Canadian voters will get into it; that'll be when we start the federal run in earnest, and have a grey-suit in the Federal debates amongst the eager-to-please, even-more-eager-to-squabble leaders of the other parties.

Suggestions are welcome, especially (as is the grey-suit way) for suitable policy goals, and nominations are open for local candidates. Be sure and get in early on this reasonably-exciting opportunity with moderate potential!

RSS has Ruined my Life: A Cautionary Tale

2005-05-10T10:21:00.000-04:00

For a long time, my blog reading -- including around Canadian corners of the blogging world -- was a pretty quick affair. I used bookedmarked collections of tabs in Mozilla to organize my blog viewing -- a Canadian tabs bookmark, a Science tabs bookmark, etc. When I wanted to catch up on my reading, I just went into my bookmarks.

Now this worked pretty well, but it was also silly in a couple of ways. As you've probably noticed, some blogs update much much more often than others, and pulling up all the web pages every time to keep up with the one or two really busy ones didn't make much sense. Also, after about 15-20 tabs in a bookmark, it starts to get unwieldy, and it's hard to select a particular tab.

So finally, following a series by pogge on RSS aggregators, I decided to take the leap and do my blog-reading a more sensible way. [Ed: Are you saying what happened is pogge's fault? JD: yes]. I put all my regular reads into a couple web-service-type RSS aggregators -- Newsgator and Bloglines -- and commenced to reading. Joy! Both were good services that kept me painlessly up-to-date on what was going on, regardless of what computer I was using.

It was so easy! And my reading was done so much more quickly. Sooo easy; soooo tempting....

And so, dear reader, my downward spiral began. Adding another RSS feed to your list is so simple! Bloglines even has you categorize it as you add it, so they stay neatly organized; a tidy hierarchy of sources of information, giving no indication of the descent into madness that awaits. How can anything so well-sorted, so foldered-and-alphabetized be anything but good?

Since I was no longer re-loading pages that hadn't been updated, only to flip to them and see the same articles, my reading was finished much more quickly! So I began to add more feeds to my list. Feeds for sites that I enjoyed or thought were important, but that hadn't made it to my daily-read tab bookmarks. More obscure science news sources; blogs that had made several posts that I had been pointed too but that I didn't read regularly. I was sure I could stop, but I didn't. When feeds for Parliament committees got added to my list, friends started murmurring, but I was oblivious. There were 80 or so feeds now.

Despite all the signs, I thought I was fine. Sure, I had to check up on the rss aggregator several times a day, but I was getting great content, well-organized, and with only one window open. What could be better? But something had to give, and it did. I only really started to realize what I had gotten into when, in my recent travels, I was away from any computer for four days and came back to 600 posts to go through. And that's during a time when Timmy was only lightly posting.

I've only just now finished getting caught up.

So take it from me, gentle reader. RSS can ruin your life. I expect to be travelling the country , speaking in high-school gymnasiums about the insidious dangers that RSS feeds pose. If you have a high-school student as a child, and they come home one day ashen and shaky, muttering something about OPML and XML, and begin deleting files from their computer, don't worry; just know that I've made a difference, and that they'll be ok.

Travel Time

2005-05-05T01:20:00.000-04:00

An unexpected bit of travel has come up; probably won't have much chance to post anything til Monday.

Ezra Levant Watch VIII

2005-05-04T04:05:00.000-04:00

Good news, Quebec! Ezra Levant is in your corner. This week, his francophone side showing, Ezra shows that he knows what Quebec wants, and especially what Quebec wants Ontario to do!

Yes, Ezra has his finger on the French Quebec, Fifth Column, pulse:

The West and French Quebec are lost to the Liberals for a generation; it's up to Ontario now. Here's hoping that Ontario will throw Martin out -- and hard. If it doesn't, don't be surprised if Alberta and Quebec throw Ontario out -- or more accurately, try to leave themselves.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking that since polls show the Liberals ahead of the Conservatives in Quebec, and in British Columbia the Liberals are a competitive second place, that they're hardly dead in either the West as a whole or in Quebec. You might also be suprised to hear that, though the motivations behind Quebec separatism are many and subtle, it's really Ontario voting patterns that rub the wrong way.

But you see, Ezra is in a bit of a lather. He sees the Liberals wildly unpopular, their poll numbers tanking -- and yet, the Conservative vote is remaining completely flat. He just can't square this circle, and it's driving him nuts!

He actually sounds quite plaintive in places...

The Conservatives have done everything Ontario voters "told" them to do to make themselves palatable as an alternative. Their leader, Stephen Harper, is young and bilingual and has made the party's policies more centrist....

These are reasons why Ontarians could feel comfortable switching to the Conservatives. But these are points about which reasonable people can disagree. Intramural disagreements within parties are the stuff of gossip columns, but they don't go to the core of government. And people can disagree about any particular policy, such as same-sex marriage.

Poor Ezra. He just doesn't get it.

Tilting at Windmills has a good discussion of why mouthing agreement with certain policies because you are `told' to doesn't especially resonate with the voters. And yes, although people can disagree about policies like same-sex marriage, you just aren't likely to vote for someone you disagree with about such a fundamental issue.

What it all comes down to is this:

A more politically attractive Conservative party couldn't be conceived. A more despicable Liberal party could not be conceived.

Poor Ezra! He's likely right. Right now, this very moment, is probably as good as it gets for the Conservatives. The Liberals, whose government was tired and uninspiring before it began actively self-destructing, are in a hopeless mess, and the Conservatives are on their very best behavior, with the entire right united behind them and the first policy conference successfully under their belt. And yet!
Looking at polling data¹ over the past 5 years or so, it's pretty clear that the natural level for support for the right-wing is a pretty flat 30%; it was slightly higher still in 2000, when there was as strong Progressive Conservative `Red Tory' vote, but that is no more. In extremes the Conservatives can bounce as high as 35%, such as the last two big Gomery Inquiry revelations, but after a couple of weeks they fall back down. The Liberal's firely plummet earthward really seems to benefit (poll-wise) the NDP and Greens, lately the BQ, and no doubt the undecided/other/disgusteds.
Now it's vote distribution, not percentage, that determines the seats in Parliament, but its hard to imagine any scenario where the Conservatives win a majority government with 30-35% of the vote. No matter how the Liberals are doing, Canadians seem unwilling to give power to the new Conservatives. This was true when the Liberals were polling at 60%, at 50%, and at 40%, and it is true even now when the Liberals are in the high 20s.

At some point, you just have to look around and realize that people don't want what you're selling. The Liberal cabinet could be videotaped devouring live kittens, and the Conservative party would briefly peak to 35% before dropping back. 65% of the country views the Conservative party as so far to the right of them, so alien to their view of Canada, that they wouldn't vote for Harper even if the Liberal caucus was roaming the streets of their neighborhood at night, breaking windows and setting garbage cans on fire.

Stephen Harper and Ezra Levant no doubt interpret this as meaning that two-thirds of Canada is out of touch, but they're wrong. This is the nice thing of a truly multi-party system; you can vote for the least of four or five evils. Just because you won't vote Liberal doesn't mean you will vote Conservative.

The fact that a Canadian political columnist doesn't understand this somewhat amazes me. I really think this misunderstanding comes from trying to apply lessons that the American right has used succesfully to Canadian politics; but Canada is a different country, with a different political system, and things just don't work that way here.

^* Technical notes; the data is from Politics Canada (thanks, Timmy) and the Angus-Reid Poll Archive (thanks, Declan.) For the smoothed curve I use an exponentially-weighted moving average which I'm not entirely happy with, also weighting by size of poll where available.

Tangled Bank

2005-05-04T02:49:00.000-04:00

This episode of Tangled Bank, a science blog carnival was kind enough to list a previous post of mine. I notice, too, that the Canadian blogosphere is well represented here; as far as I can tell, three Progressive Bloggers, and no Blogging Tories, hmm. Some I was familiar with, but not all; and reading a Vancoverian's take on the dread German Exploading Toad Phenomenon was a very pleasant surprise.

How to Write (this) liberal Blog

2005-05-02T01:03:00.000-04:00

Last post was my 60^th real post (eg, not a post about this blog, or warning about template changes, etc.) Now that it looks like this is going to be a longer-term thing than just getting a couple of rants off of my chest, I've been meaning to spell out, at least to myself, what I aim to do with this patch of blog-space; how to choose issues to focus on, what to write about, and how to write it. Today someone in another corner of North America provided a clue in the form of some 118-year-old advice first printed not far from where I live today. Via Majickthise comes this gem of an article. It was published during 1887 in `Secular Thought', a periodical printed from 1885-1911 in Toronto by the Canadian Secular Union, previously the Freethought Association. (You can search for the journal here, though it has defeated my attempts to link directly to a search result).

The article is titled `How to Edit a Liberal Paper', by Robert Green Ingersoll, and I think it gives some useful advice. I'll excerpt generously here, but you might want to read the whole thing:

A LIBERAL paper should be edited by a Liberal man. And by the word Liberal I mean, not only free, not only one who thinks for himself, not only one who has escaped from the prisons of customs and creed, but one who is candid, intelligent and kind -- that is to say, Liberal toward others. This Liberal editor should not forever play upon one string, no matter how wonderful the music. He should not have his attention forever fixed upon one question -- that is to say, he should not look through a reversed telescope and narrow his horizon to that degree that he sees only one thing....

Intelligent people ... have pretty well made up their minds what is false, and they want to know something that is true. For this reason, a Liberal paper should keep abreast of the discoveries of the human mind. No science should be neglected; no fact should be overlooked. Inventions should be described and understood. And not only this, but the beautiful in thought, in form and color, should be preserved. The paper should be filled with things calculated to interest thoughtful, intelligent and serious people. There should be a column for children as well as for men and women.

Above all, it should be perfectly kind and candid. In discussion there is no place for hatred, no opportunity for slander. A personality is always out of place. An angry man can neither reason himself, nor perceive the reason of what another says. The orthodox world has always dealt in personalities. Every minister can answer the argument of an opponent by attacking the character of the opponent. This example should never be followed by a Liberal man....

Nothing should be asserted that is not known. Nothing should be denied, the falsity of which has not been, or cannot be, demonstrated. Opinions are simply given for what they are worth.... The man who has some knowledge of the difficulties surrounding these subjects, who knows something of the limitations of the human mind, must, of necessity, be mentally modest. And this condition of mental modesty is the only one consistent with individual progress.

Above all, and over all, a Liberal paper should teach the absolute freedom of the mind, the utter independence of the individual, the perfect liberty of speech....

This was printed in a periodical largely dedicated to being skeptical about religion; I've left out the parts that are particularly about rejection of or skepticism of religion, because my interests are policy, not theology. I think what remains serves as an excellent standard to try to hold myself and this blog to. Many interesting topics; Science; no anger; slightly less slandering of Ezra; a commitment to truth. I may not always live up to that -- especially in comments -- but it's a good set of goals to have, I think.

Along similar lines, you may have noticed that the `masthead' on the blog has changed, and I now am a member of a `blogging club', the Progressive Bloggers. Pogge's thoughts on the matter pretty much mirror mine. I'm not really willing to march under any one political party's banner except maybe on an election-by-election basis; but I'm happy to have my posts listed as promoting broadly progressive goals; I'm also happy to have my voice alongside those of veteran Canadian bloggers as well as newbies like myself. And I hear the office parties are going to be a blast.

Now that I've sort of gotten the hang of things, I hope my next 60 posts are somewhat more focussed than the last, and I hope they become less sporadic; I thought I could sneak in a couple of posts during travel last week, but as you saw, there was a long (and, less forgivably, unannounced) dead period. Thank you for reading thus far, and if you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them.

Cornucopianism; or, `Close your eyes and the scary things go away'.

2005-05-01T05:26:00.000-04:00

I wrote a post earlier on what I think is an under-discussed part of the right's anti-science movement; it's been called cornucopianism in environmental discussusions, and it is the belief that there's an infinite amount of resources, so we never have to make any hard choices; things will always just work out.

Of course, no one actually believes the resources are infinite; advanced forms of the argument instead postulate that through the magic of Science! and Markets! and Government! everything will be alright. A perfect example of this appears in the comments of a post on peak oil at Voice in the Wilderness:

Given the amazing technological advances Man has achieved since we first used petrocarbons as fuel, it’s mind boggling to see Kunstler dismiss out of hand every possible alternative that would offer significant supplemental sources of energy to oil and natural gas...

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm rather fond of science, and it might well be that by 2037 (the most optimistic serious date I'm aware of for peak oil production, used in the US Department of Energy's 2005-2025 energy forecasts) we'll all be using moon-fuel to power our space-carriages. But is it definately true that, because of the Amazing Advances of Man, we don't need to worry about this stuff?

Sometimes I find it useful to look at actual data rather than getting caught up in Sweepingly Pleasing Futures. If you take a US energy production data for instance, as a proxy for developed-world energy production, you see that fossil-fuel completely dominates; bringing those other lines up anywhere near the level of fossil fuels will require historically unprecedented growth. (Examining developed world countries is probably most useful here since, let's face it, it won't be the current oil-rich nations which would be the first to suddenly switch to whatever hypotentical Energy Innovation is invented just in time. But world energy production, at least in 1998, was similar; 85.8% fossil fuels.)

When faced with specifics, the cornucopians generally try to fight their way back to the generalities. Who knows what riches the future holds? It would be foolish to predict. But for sure, the Onward March of Mankind will solve the problems. Now, admittedly, it sounds goofy when a non-believer like me says these things, but it's suprisingly persuasive, rhetorically. Who doesn't want to be told that everything will be ok, after all? It's very comforting. But does it make any sense to set policy this way?

Would you hire an accountant who took this approach? ``Ah, not sure what your balance is; but don't worry, things have always worked out; with some ingenuity I bet everything will be fine.'' Or would you take a loved one to a doctor who took this view? ``No, not really sure what they have come down with; but they've always come through in the past, I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm sure some other doctor will probably take care of it, without us having to do much about it; many of them are quite bright, you know.''

Would you trust any part of your life that you thought was important to a graduate of this `don't worry, be happy' school of thought? Or would you prefer someone who actually did some research and took the suggested prudent, preventative, action?

Of course, the starry-eyed optimists are right in a way; human ingenuity has come up with some solutions to the related problem of fossil-fuel consumption and climate change -- the Kyoto treaty, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade systems. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency has issued an innocously titled report, ``Impacts of Modeled Recommendations of the National Commission on Energy Policy'', which reports that near-Kyoto levels of greenhouse reductions would have negligable effect on the US economy. Yet apparently, this sort of human ingenuity and problem solving is exactly the sort of thing that the ``everything will be ok'' chanters are railing against. Apparently human ingenuity and problem-solving are only good if they come up with the preferred answers.

From their point of view, this makes perfect sense. It's in the nature of these fair-weather science believers that they believe in happy science -- Scientists will make it all ok! -- while ridiculing the bad news; they just can't believe in the very idea of peak oil, or climate change, or... so even modest costs are unacceptable. Of course, regardless of their belief, country-by-country and field-by-field oil production is peaking. Let's take a look at the graph above again; the production is given in `quads', or `quadrillion BTU'; one quad is equivalent to about 170 million barrels of oil. Likely total oil production from ANWR is about 10 billion barrels of oil, or about 60 quads; since it will be coming online as other reserves are depleted, it appears that US oil peaked three decades ago, and despite all the political and economic capital invested in US oil production, will never rise again. More ominously, some of the most productive Saudi oil fields have peaked. But for some reason, the ideal that total global oil production could peak is just dismissed.

That seemingly serious people passionately believe both that Science will solve our problems and the scientists who tell us about those problems are completely wrong just baffles me, and it's something I want to read some more about. One problem is that I'm hampered by lack of words for this phenomenon. I've been casting around for a better word than `corncucopians' for the believers in this constant someone-else-will-provide-sunshine-and-lollipops view of the world; please let me know if you can think of one.

While writing this post, it occured to me why this way of thinking bugged me so much. It's basically the same approach to life that someone who litters has; while tossing their garbage on the sidewalks or someone's lawn, some fleeting thought crosses their mind: `Ah, someone else will pick it up. It'll all be ok.'

Update: Same-Sex Marriage Letter

2005-04-30T04:29:00.000-04:00

After several phone calls to my MPs office, the staffers now feel sure that the `anti' constituent letter on same sex marriage sent to me earlier was sent by mistake; that is, there was no letter they can find that purports to be from me. It's likely that in the piles of letters on the issue, a letter I did send got misfiled, and eventually the wrong response got sent out.

When I had phoned the first time and was told that, yes indeed, that's the letter we send to constituents who have urged the MP to vote against the bill, I was very cross, and wrote

Someone wrote a letter to my MP in my name demanding that they vote against same sex marriage.

but this was jumping to a conclusion; it was just a simple office mistake.

Ezra Levant Watch: VII

2005-04-30T02:33:00.000-04:00

You know, on top of the stresses of editing a magazine, it's not easy churning out a column of six hundred words of half-truths, slurs, and assorted nonsense once a week. It's enough to make you give up entirely, after a while! But, rather than just skip a column, Ezra Levant did the next-best thing this week, and just copied the template of a column that's already been widely copied in the American right-wing blogosphere; the oft-mimicked `I believe' column^* by the late Michael Kelly.

Now, whatever one might think of Michael Kelly's columns, they were well-written, and Ezra doesn't favour himself with the comparision. Snipping out the Clinton-bashing words and pasting in some Martin-bashing words in their place doesn't really result in devastating political satire. Consider the opening lines:

I believe Paul Martin. I believed him Thursday night when he said he wants to wait until Judge John Gomery's inquiry into AdScam is over before calling an election. I believed him last year, too, when he said he didn't want to wait until Gomery's inquiry was over before calling an election.

Heavens! A contradiction about timing, between two statements seperated by a year! Gosh, could that be because almost two years would have been too long to wait, and 6-8 months wouldn't be? Especially since, with a break in the summer, not a lot of governing is going to be happening in some of those months anyway?

Sadly, it doesn't get much better from there.

There's probably more that could be said about Ezra's column -- it's interesting to see what counts as impossible contradictions in his head -- but really, if Ezra isn't going to put in the effort this week to actually compose a column by himself, I'm not sure I should put the effort into debunking it; I'm getting a little weary of putting more research into Ezra's columns than he himself does. If you want to read right-wing agitprop, you might as well just read the first version; at least it has the benefit of being original.

[*] That this column seems to be the only piece of Michael Kelly's work remembered on the web seems a shame. Michael Kelly's stewardship over The New Republic during the Stephen Glass affair, where a journalist simply made up entire stories, safe in knowing that anything he could fabricate anything anti-Clinton without scrutiny, seems to be omitted. Indeed, Kelly encouraged Glass, and as Eric Alterman reports, Michael Kelly's responses to two letters indicating early on that there were serious problems with Stephen Glass's reporting included the following diatribe:

You have shown that you are willing to smear someone's professional reputation without any concern for truth...I await your apology to Stephen Glass and to this magazine.

and dismissed another as

meritless: dishonest, wrongheaded and clearly motivated by devotion to ideology rather than by any concern for truth or accuracy.

But Michael Kelly's own dishonest, wrongheaded, ideologically-motivated trouble with the truth was a career-long affliction; the incomparable Daily Howler documents 96 of Kelly's whoppers).

Science Conference Blogging

2005-04-22T14:36:00.000-04:00

I'm at a science conference -- in particular, a conference of people doing computational science. So almost everyone here has a laptop, and one that they do real work on -- not just writing papers, but writing code and running small simulations. What amazes me is that the plurality of them -- maybe the majority -- are Macs, with most of the rest linux boxes, and a smattering of Windows machines. This is amazing to me; two or three years ago, the split was about equal linux/windows, with the younger crowd mostly running linux.

Ezra Levant Watch: VI

2005-04-19T16:32:00.000-04:00

Ezra Levant focuses his ire this week on Ralph Klein and the new Alberta budget. Now, some would argue that the new budget is somewhere between `prudent' and `dangerously underfunding certain social programs', but Ezra knows better:

One of the most frustrating calumnies Albertans hear is that our wealth is just a matter of oil-price luck, not hard work.

It's an insult, and a way of justifying federal expropriation of our provincial resources.

According to this canard, we didn't earn our wealth, we don't deserve it, and so there's no moral problem with taking it from us. And Premier Ralph Klein's latest budget is doing everything conceivable to turn this lie into a truth.

Because the truth is if it weren't for $50/barrel oil, Alberta would be an economic basket case now because of Klein's out-of-control spending.

I usually have no interest in interfering with right-on-right mudslinging, but looking at this week's column is instructive if only to see that Ezra is happy to use mudslinging, half-truths, and innuendo even to attack someone on his side. (On the other hand, maybe the apostate is always a greater affront than a non-believer; and keep in mind the quote from last week, "The most passionate hatreds are personal -- founded in failed friendships or broken promises.")

Nor is Ezra shy of undermining one of his points if he thinks it'll make his attack on someone sound more ominous:

One of the most frustrating calumnies Albertans hear is that our wealth is just a matter of oil-price luck, not hard work.... Because the truth is if it weren't for $50/barrel oil, Alberta would be an economic basket case now because of Klein's out-of-control spending....When oil prices dipped, those programs and schemes remained, and were the source of massive deficits.

Oil and oil prices aren't responsible for Alberta's wealth, you see; it's just responsible for the amount of money Alberta has. Completely different. Calumny to suggest otherwise, really. An insulting canard.

Still though, irresponsible spending can be a problem; is Ezra Levant right to be worried?

Why, when oil revenues rose by $3 billion or so over the past year, is the provincial surplus only $1.5 billion? ... It's not because Alberta is growing so quickly. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, provincial program spending was up 90% in eight years before this budget, compared to 15% population growth and 23% inflation over the same period.

Ah, yes. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation. They have a funny way with numbers. Do let's check these, shall we? Let's see, 8 years before the previous budget, that would be 1996. I used StatsCan data for total Alberta provincial spending, which since 1989 includes quasi-independant provincial organizations; the CTF data is available here, and is similar, but actually lower in the last couple of years (presumably because they don't include such spending). So any huge uptick in spending should be even more pronounced in my plots.

So let's see; is there anything funny about 1996, that they might use that as the baseline for lots of doom and gloom `90% increase' headlines? Oh, my, yes. 1996 reprented a significant low in total, nominal spending. Gosh, you don't think they might have chosen 1996 exactly because it would make the increase seem that much larger, do you?

I don't know enough about Alberta politics to know why there was such a dramatic drop in spending between 1993 and 1996, but I do know that you can make recent increases look awful big if you cherry-pick your starting points.

Still, its inarguable that spending is trending upwards, right? And Ezra and the CTF said that this can't be explained just by inflation and population growth. So let's take a look at per-capita spending in constant 1992 dollars. Ah; sadly, picking 1996 as the baseline again seems to have accidentally given a misleading impression. Spending is certainly much higher, in per-capita real terms, than it was in 1996, but it looks like at least 2004 spending is pretty much at historically average values for the past 15 years. (The statscan numbers measure slightly different things pre-1989, and CTF doesn't show pre-1989 data at all, so I haven't included these in the graph).

Now, if I were to cherry-pick numbers, I could point out that real per capita spending in 2004 is down 6% on 1993 spending (CTF numbers, inflation-adjusted, give down 12%). Actually, if I really wanted to cherry-pick, I'd point out that 2002-3 spending by their numbers as down 15% from 1993. Ah, the fun you can have quoting numbers without context!

After this little bit of recitiation of half-true, cherry-picked stats, Ezra then finishes up with a cheap personal shot:

But even that staggering rate of spending isn't enough for Klein. He has amended the Fiscal Responsibility Act to permit him to spend another $750 million in oil money next year. The Fiscal Responsibility Act was supposed to be the Alcoholics Anonymous for a Tory party addicted to spending -- the lock guarding the safe.

The lock on the liquor cabinet, you might say.

Now, I'm no fan of Ralph Klein; I think he's done a lot of reprehensible things. But I think bringing up `Alcoholics Anonymous' in the context of Ralph Klein, who has admitted to having an alcohol problem, is at the very least inconsiderate carelessness, and at worst it is using a fairly tawdry, sleazy bit of innuendo in a syndicated newspaper column to attack someone whose policies you don't like. Good old Ezra.

Why We Need Science To (Correctly) Understand The World

2005-04-19T01:42:00.000-04:00

In a recent experiment, subjects played a computer `game' where points were scored completely randomly, having nothing to do with what the players did. One group randomly got points 33% of the time, the other group 66% of the time. After 50 or 100 trials, the players were asked, amongst other things, for helpful tips for incoming players to score more points. Most of the players -- including even those who only got points 33% of the time! -- had helpful tips for incoming players, stuff that had `worked for them'.

I mention this because I find I'm spending more and more of my blogging time inveighing against anti-science, taking some inspiration from the effortless ease with which Canadian Cynic sticks it to evolution denialists; but I've never really gone into why science is important, and why it is probably the only way available to humans to understand the world around us.

How could the subjects in the above experiment have gotten it so wrong? Their actions had no impact on the results, yet they had crafted theories about how the point-scoring worked in the game, and believed that they had tested those theories. So what happened?

Humans are incredibly good at seeing patterns. Children as young as six months old can recognize faces, even faces of different species. But the downside is that we are so good at it that we find these patterns -- or faces, or `lucky streaks' -- even when none exist. The region of the brain which is responsible for seeing patterns can be imaged while the subjects watch lights flashed randomly, and when easily recognizable patterns that arise by chance -- repetition or alternation -- are broken, a strong reaction is seen. People just want to find patterns in events. This tendency to see patterns is called apophenia.

Now, seeing these patterns -- even if some aren't actually based in some significant underlying cause -- isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're (say) trying to figure out how to score points in a computer game. There are a variety of patterns presenting themselves to you, and you have the opportunity to see if they hold. Unfortunately, we humans have a long list of biases which shape our decision-making, and can sometimes mislead us. In the case of the computer game experiment, the most insidious is confirmation bias; the tendency to search for and be more convinced by evidence which supports a theory we're looking at than one that opposes it. When you're in the heat of a computer game and you find that going left left up down gets you a point, you may not really remember unless you're taking notes that you had gone left left up down just 10 moves ago and nothing had happened.

These two together -- seeing patterns everywhere, and being swayed by tidbits of confirmatory evidence -- are why the gamers thought they had insights into the scoring of the game to share.

"Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves." -- Richard Feynman

And this is why science is the way it is. We don't need science to teach us to look for explanations for what we see around us, or to tell us to collect facts that support our explanations. Humans are naturally creative, and we will happily hoard knowledge that supports our ideas. Science is about rigorously testing these new ideas, even the ones we really like, tossing out the ones that are shown wrong, and building upon only those that are left standing.

The old, dusty recitation of the scientific method that we were taught by rote-- theory, hypothesis, experiment, data, analysis, conclusion -- really is the key to how this process works, although it's a much more lively, combative, creative process then most of us got to see in school. A theoretician, trying to understand some observations, comes up with a theory; experimentalists (and now, computationalists) come along and say ``That's a lovely new theory you've got there; it'd be a shame if something happened to it. The most immediate consequences of your new theory are surprising results A, B, and C. Let's have a look, shall we?''. They go off and check to see if A, B, and C are true. There is no greater joy for an experimentalist than breaking a theory or finding an unpredicted phenomenon, and none for a theoretician than to see a theory take off and explain things beyond what they originally imagined. (There's no greater joy for a computationalist than to find someone who'll actually hire a computationalist, but that's a post for another day.)

This interplay is an essential part of doing science. Science was the original Open Source. Ideas and data are shared openly, increasing the ability both to build on others work and to tear it down. The Open Source software mantra, ``With Enough Eyes, All Bugs are Shallow'' in science reads something like ``with enough scientists, flawed theories are done for''. Although confirmation bias (say) may make it hard for one scientist to see problems in a beautiful new theory, another scientist in another country may not care for the theory at all and have no problems finding (and demonstrating) flaws in it. It doesn't matter how influential a figure you are; if your theory says A should happen, and people can demonstrate that A, in fact, doesn't happen, then your theory is broke. Maybe it's something that can be easily fixed, or the whole theory needs to be tossed, but you aren't going to fool anyone by claiming that the theory, as it is, is still good. The blogosphere should be so self-correcting.

Science is nothing more than a formalized, institutionalized way of critically testing new ideas. Ideas that work, pass; ideas that don't work eventually fail, although they may survive for a time. The fact that false ideas might survive for a while, even with rigorous testing, is disappointing, but the alternative to science -- the alternative to constantly putting ideas to rigorous tests -- is to allow all flawed theories to survive. People or administrations that dismiss science, or peddle pseudoscience -- and there are a lot of them, and they are well funded -- are hoping to make critical thinking unfashionable, and the rigorous testing of flawed ideas questionable. The only possible reason to do this is because they have flawed ideas that they hope to propagate.

I don't know if we will ever have a complete, true explanation for everything -- how the universe and the world work -- but I do know that unless you're willing to test, and test hard, every idea that comes down the pike and throw out the bad ones, you'll have lots and lots of falsehoods to choose from.

Ezra Levant Watch: V

2005-04-14T02:57:00.000-04:00

I'm always morbidly curious about what Ezra Levant will come up with next time, but I was especially interested this week, after bit of revealed sincerity last column. I wasn't sure if I was expecting a breakthrough, where Ezra starts actually being kind of respectful to people, or maybe some especially viscious truthfully-lacking attack on liberals and the French to sort of balance things out.

Even after pondering throughout the week, I was completely unprepared for what we did get in Ezra's column this week on hate speech laws...

a little wretched glimpse into Ezra's soul.

Ezra starts off with a piece of text surprising even from a SunMedia columnist:

We all hate something.

Liberals hate Tories. And vice versa.

A lot of people hate Saddam Hussein -- especially ordinary Iraqis. Many people hate George W. Bush -- including some Liberal MPs.

And who doesn't hate the tax department?

So let's ponder this for a moment.

See, I'm pretty sure that Tories don't hate Liberals, or vice versa. I voted Liberal in every election for a long time - was even a card-carrying member once! - and I don't ever remember any of my Tory friends trying to spraypaint graffiti on my house, or shouting for bad things to happen to me. Conversely, I'm pretty sure I'd recall if I spent much time stabbing pictures of them or trying to sabotage their careers. Sure, I think the current Conservative leadership is nuts, and I'll work hard to make sure they don't convince a majority of Canadians to vote for them, but hate Tories? I don't even hate Ezra Levant, or wish him ill, even though I do think Canada would be a better place without his column.

Who actually thinks that Liberals hate Tories? And even more, hate them with the same intensity that oppressed people hated a capricious dictator? Who thinks this way?

And yet, doesn't this shed an uncomfortable clarity on Ezra's writings? Can't you imagine this reflecting some trauma which shaped Ezra's life? A couple of children, who happened to be wearing Liberal red, teasing Ezra for wearing glasses or something on a schoolground years ago, finally saying `We hate you!', and a tearful Ezra running away, vowing to get back at them? Ezra as a young man growing up believing that members of different political parties necessarily loathe each other with rightful hatred, and vowing to hate `them' stronger, and more venomously, then `they' hated him?

Hatred doesn't have to be political, of course. The most passionate hatreds are personal -- founded in failed friendships or broken promises.

Ooof. There's some dark stories in there, I fear.

But even so, hating Liberals or the Canada Revenue Agency the same way an Iraqi might have hated Saddam? Really?

Welcome to Ezra's world.

Anyway, that's the sort of disturbing background to his column on Canada's hate speech laws, which are, justifiably I think, controversial. He starts off, as often he does, by mischaracterizing his opponent for the week (or, as the dinosaurs call it, building a straw man):

So how can Canada have a law -- in the Criminal Code, no less! -- that makes it illegal to hate? ... Hatred is a feeling. It cannot be outlawed, any more than the state can legislate love.

But of course, hatred isn't illegal, or all the Tories and Liberals would be in jail by Ezra's view of the world. Neither is simply expressing hatred. Canada's Hate Propaganda law outlaws `Advocating genocide' and `Public Incitement of Hatred'. Specificly excluded are private communications, all true statements, an opinion on a religious subject, any statements relevent to the public interest, or simply discussing matters that might cause hatred. You can stand on a street corner and shout `I hate those damned Roamawhovians! They suck!' all you want, and it won't breaking the Hate Propaganda laws; you have to be actively inciting others to hate them.

What could justify this prior restraint on speech? The argument is the same as shouting `fire' in a crowded theatre, or incitement to riot. Speech can lead to acts in which people are predictably hurt. Hate speech paved the way for massive killings in Serbia and Rwanda, as a wrenching interview makes clear:

Before, we could fool around among ourselves and say we were going to kill them all, and the next moment we would join them to share some work or a bottle. Jokes and threats were mixed together. We no longer paid heed to what we said. We could toss around awful words without awful thoughts. The Tutsis did not even get very upset. Since then we have seen: those words brought on grave consequences.

While Canada is fortunate enough not to have such seething currents of racial hatred that can explode into nationwide violence, we do have violent hate crimes here, too. Although regular national reporting on hate crimes in Canada is only starting this year, in 2001 and 2002 there were 153 acts of hate-crime violence and a total of 928 hate crimes over twelve major Canadian cities. The B'ni Brith reports that anti-semetic attacks are up in Canada, and attacks against Muslims briefly tripled in Canada after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Inciting hatred, online or in person can lead to violence, by making the hatred of some group of people appear normal. This is the reason why many countries have adopted these hate laws. However, inciting hatred does not invariably lead to violence, and this makes it difficult to know where to draw the line. This is no doubt something that societies will wrestle with for quite some time, and there are real arguments to be made on both sides. Ezra makes one decent point, that prosecuting such people gives their poisonous views more visibility than they'd ordinarily have; although since it's in the context of them being brought before a court I don't know how strong a point that is. Ezra's best argument, however, the one that he keeps coming back to, is that we all hate someone, so how bad can it be:

We all hate something. But these days, you'd better hate in a politically correct way -- that you hate haters like Ahenakew! -- or whisper your hatred in secret.

PS: Ezra -- we don't hate you. Really.

More Religious Freedom

2005-04-13T04:08:00.000-04:00

So I have a question for those who claim that refusing to rent apartments or wedding halls to gay couples is a matter of religious freedom.

Since religious conviction is the issue separating what would otherwise be a clear breach of law from an act of religious freedom, which of the following people should and should not be allowed to refuse to rent apartments and wedding halls to gay couples?

A person who believes that homosexual relations are sinful, but who is a member of the United Church of Canada, a congregation that is ok with gay people and same-sex marriage?
A Catholic, but one who goes to church only at Christmas and Easter?
A Catholic who has never attended church in their adult life?
An agnostic?
An athiest?

And if the distinction is drawn between points 3 and 5, how do you propose the law tell the difference between those cases?

And, if as I suspect, the answer really is that anyone, including the atheist, should be able to discriminate against gay couples, than can we please stop pretending this is about religious freedom, and admit that it's really just about being able to mistreat a vulnerable minority?

Equal Marriage: One Victory and One Question Mark

2005-04-13T02:42:00.000-04:00

One small victory for liberty and equal marriage. After debating the same-sex marriage legislation, a Conservative-sponsored amendment to the government's bill that would have rendered it meaningless by defining marriage to be between one man and one woman was voted down 132-164 on Tuesday. Thirty-four Liberals voted against same-sex marriage.

While that doesn't necessarily mean the government's bill will pass, it's a heartening step. More so considering the money funnelled from US right-wing religious groups to try to influence Parliament on this issue.

But it would appear that mass-mailed postcards may not be all that's going on. I recently got a five page letter from my MP, a Liberal cabinet minister who votes for same-sex marriage. Some excerpts follow:

Thank you for writing to me to share your observations concerning the government's introduction of legislation to permit the civil marriage of two people of the same sex. I share I your sentiment that this is an issue of great importance...

...As to how these [rights] should be approached in the light of religious convictions, I highly recommend an article by Reginald Stackhouse where the former Progressive Conservative MP and principal of Wycliffee College argues that we should accommodate differing views on the civil level without altering the respect for individual and differing religious principles...

My personal position has always been clear: I believe that extending the civil definition of marriage to same sex couples to enable them to share their lives in a situation of mutual responsibility would be benificial for our society as a whole....

I apologize for the length of this letter but I do hope that it enables you to understand my position....

It took me a while to follow up on this, but it seemed weird to me that I'd get that letter from my MP, particularly since I did not actually write Ottawa on this issue (since my MP was going to vote the right way anyway). The letter seemed odd, too, for its conciliatory tone. So I've finally gotten around to checking up on this.

Someone wrote a letter to my MP in my name demanding that they vote against same sex marriage. [Not. It was likely an office error].

Update: The very helpful constituency office staff are taking a look into this.

Update 2: Edited for spelling.

Update 3: Timmy, Robert, and Jim Elve have expressed concern about this. As of end of buisness Friday April 15, the office staffers hadn't been able to track this down, so we'll see what happens Monday.

Update 4: The letter was likely sent to me by mistake, not because anyone sent a letter claiming to be me.

The Unitarian Jihad Strikes!

2005-04-12T00:41:00.000-04:00

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Nail Gun of Looking at All Sides of the Question; what's yours?.

The Anti-Science Right

2005-04-09T23:47:00.000-04:00

Mahigan has a great post on `peak oil', commented on by Timmy, and it reminded me of something I've been meaning to post about -- anti-science in the right wing. Much has been written about this, including very recently at Vive le Canada, but usually in the context of the fundamentalist religous rejection of areligious science. This is a very timely issue, but it's only one part of the rise of science denialist culture on the right. There's another phenomenon I'd like to point to that doesn't get a lot of discussion -- the technophile who simply rejects and attacks the science they don't like.

Now, none of this isn't to say that there hasn't been anti-science from the (literally) non-reality-based parts of the left. In the 1990s, the `Science Wars' broke out in some parts of academia. `Science and Technology Studies' was the catch-all term for examination from the humanities of science in education and as institution with a place in society. Some researchers extended their post-modern analysis to questioning whether there was any objective reality at all, and one soon found feminist critiques of science, feminist critiques of reason, and new close readings of older philosophers in which we are told:

Feminist scholarship of science, which is truly monumental both in terms of quality and quantity, has analysed almost every branch of science. It has shown that the focus on quantitative measures, analysis of variation, impersonal and excessively abstract conceptual schemes, is both a distinctively masculine tendency and also one that serves to hide its own gendered character. And it has revealed that the prioritising of mathematics and abstract thought, standards of objectivity, the construction of scientific method and the instrumental nature of scientific rationality, are all based on the notion of ideal masculinity.

For some reason, this never really caught on.

Now as much as I might find these positions foolish, you have to admit a certain consistancy; if one denies the existance of an objective external reality, certainly you'll have to view the whole endeavor of trying to understand that reality just another strange set of rituals that humans sometimes perform.

As different as they seem, there's a certain kinship of this particular group of reality-deniers and the religious fundamentalists who (for instance) fight the teaching of science in schools; one group simply denies the existance (or accessibility) of an objective reality, and the other thinks that it is unimportant compared to the truth revealed to them in their particular religious texts. Both groups are consistantly and honestly applying fundamental principles in order to consider the search for truth.

But that is only one aspect of the science denialist community on the right today. Newly ascendant are those right wing technophiles who are big fans of science and technology, but when any science result conflicts with their ideology, they simply reject it and attack those scientists who dare to make such claims. The topic of global warming brings this out very strongly. In Canada, we have bloggers who say scientists who disagree with them shouldn't be allowed on the radio, that global warming research simply shows the `bias' of `ivory tower academics', dismiss scientific results as political, who are quick to jump to pseudoscience to fend off the science they don't like, who decide they are in a position to ``not quite buy the science'', or simply claim flat out that ``we can't come up with a science of global warming''. It is actually sort of amazing how fairly reputable conservative bloggers will start calling fairly dry scientific results fearmongering or a conspiracy of the Global Warming Hype Industry.

The right's disdain for inconvenient science can become fairly bizarre, such as when the editor of Alberta Beef Magazine writes articles in the Western Standard arguing against funding for BSE research, saying that such funding is nothing more than a make-work program for scientists and research institutes and that scientists have `ulterior motives'; and mocking the researchers as yet another conspiracy where `any deviation from the party line is treated with disdain'. Yes, the focus on BSE in the press doesn't help the beef industry, but does Will Verboven really think the industry would benefit from not investigating BSE? Or that the government should not fund research into a completely new type of disease vector? In the Western Standard, he goes even further:

Will all of this newfound enthusiasm and money for BSE research result in a cure? Perhaps, but then that would abruptly put an end to the government-funding gravy train. I suspect that's a nagging reality that will govern the pace of most such research.

Yes, he's accusing scientists he's never actually met of intentionally witholding a cure for BSE, a disease that kills people, so they can get more money.

Of course, this isn't a phenomenon limited to Canada. Lots of big international techie websites show this very clearly. One, Slashdot, is a perfect example. When a story comes up about some state attempting to ban teaching of evolution, posters will howl with outrage and mock those who call evolution `just a theory'; but when a story comes up about climate change, the self same posters will deride the overwhelming agreement in the scientific community, calling it (you guessed it) `just a theory'.

In the issue of peak oil, or any other natural resources discussion, this also comes up. Another recent development where you can see this is the aftermath of the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, where scientists had the temerity to give some rather dire news about natural resources.

So what to make of these cornucopians -- who believe in science when it suits them, but are quite happy to viciously attack the integrity, motives, and science of any scientist who presents a result they disagree with? Certainly they at least lack the consistancy and honesty of the post-modern crowd or the religious fundamentalists. But beyond that, I'm just stumped, which is why I had dragged my feet on this post. Why do some seemingly literate people so quickly dismiss -- or worse -- any scientific results that give them bad news, while unquestioningly accepting anything that strikes them as good news? I wish I knew.

No Ezra Levant Watching This Week

2005-04-05T02:19:00.000-04:00

The reason I focus some of my attention on Ezra Levant is not because I disagree so completely with him, and not that he's over the top, but that he is particularly egregious in his use of bad-faith half- or quarter-truths to further his points. I think that's reprehensible, and I think political discussion suffers when that brand of nonsense goes unchallenged. Thus the Watch.

Ezra Levant's column this week is, as far as I can see a completely genuine tribute to Pope John Paul II, a man that he apparently held great respect for. Ezra even manages, almost successfully, to keep the column free of snide swipes at the usual liberal enemies.

There are some bits I disagree with, and some counter-points I could make, but it would seem churlish to try to make an `Ezra Levant Watch' post out of the first actual genuine, respectful column I've read by Ezra Levant. So no Watch this week.

On Religious Freedom

2005-04-04T01:28:00.000-04:00

There seem to be people in blogland -- Peter Rempel might be one example -- who believe that religious freedom includes a right to treat other people badly; that one persons religious freedom rights override the rights of others. Thus we get people refusing to rent apartments or wedding halls to same sex couples defending their actions in violating the laws that cover participating in the rental markets saying `but my religion allows -- indeed requires -- me to treat these people shoddily, so it is alright.'

Leave aside, for a moment, the inanity of this argument. Ignore for the moment that (to pick an example at random) Biblical support for homosexuality being a sin is very weak (apparently, it matters about 1/500 as much as our duty to the poor, if mentions in the bible indicates importance) and brush aside the fact that even if homosexuality is a sin, Jesus wasn't famous for saying Thou Shalt Treat Sinners Crappily.

Ignoring all of this, those that cry `Religious Freedom!' as a justification for discriminating against same-sex couples (or people of different races, or people of different faiths) should at least be ashamed of themselves for mimimizing real violations of peoples religious freedoms, and for minimizing real religious intolerance.

Let's just take a brief look around the world in religious freedom news from the past couple of weeks:

In North Korea,
...people who are caught in an act of religious worship are regarded as having committed a political offense.
He says many of these people have been sentenced for political crimes and sent to penal colonies. He says about 200,000 North Koreans have been sent there without any judicial process whatsoever.
In China, days after unveiling new `freedom of religion' laws with much fanfare,
...at least ten foreign evangelical church leaders have been detained and then deported by Chinese authorities.
In Vietnam,
Human rights groups said officials in Vietnam's Central Highlands had shut down many churches and managed to force ethnic minority Christians to abandon their faith. They also said that several priests and Buddhist monks had been in prison, some for more than 20 years.
In Russia, the Russian Orthodox church is leading the way in having other Christian churches shut down:
In 1997, the Salvation Army in St. Petersburg was notified that it would be expelled from two meeting halls which it had been renting. The city unilaterally cancelled the contract which was supposed to last until the end of the year. In 2003, a court ruling completely banned the Salvation Army in Russia on the grounds that it is a “paramilitary organization”, as follows from its name.
In Malaysia, where a person's stated religion is recorded in official records, government officials are refusing to record conversions away from Islam.

Around the world, people are being imprisoned, barred from jobs or are tortured because of their beliefs, all because some bigoted people feel that it is morally necessary to mistreat those who are different. Those who too-quickly shout that their religious freedom means the right to mistreat others ought to give this some thought.

Update: Credit where credit is due...

Ezra Levant Watch: IV

2005-04-01T23:00:00.000-05:00

I read Ezra to stress-test monitors

Two for the price of one this week!

Because of my crazy schedule, I didn't get a chance to truly savor Mr. Levant's column last week; and it's a shame, because after weeks of recovery from the shock of Canada not joining a continental Ballistic Missile Defense plan, Ezra's back, baby!

He's back in fine fettle, and his mind is as sharp as it ever was. The Conservative Convention, where he handed out some trinkets, seemed to elevate his spirits. And it wasn't just his party, but also his paaartay!

Yes, many of us were deeply worried that Ezra would be headed for heartbreak -- like when no one shows up to the birthday party for the unpopular lonely kid, we were concerned that the Western Standard hospitality suite at the convention would be empty, and that this would again push delicate Ezra over the edge. But we underestimated Ezra; he was clever enough to have his party before the big party of the night got started.

What this meant, of course, was that people came to his party to warm up for the real party of the night -- the one with free martinis and Tom Cochrane -- the party hosted by Belinda Stronach. Belinda had more people at her dance party than were at Ezra's button give-away, and that made Ezra so mad that he had to write a column titled `Party Poopers', which he dedicates to excoriating

...preening Peter MacKay and his trophy girlfriend, Belinda Stronach.
The two of them cannot contain their impatience with their status in the party's second and third-tier, respectively. They both -- or each, or successively, one isn't sure -- want to lead the party.
Stronach dropped close to $100,000 on a leadership-style hospitality suite. She will learn that while pollsters and organizers can be bought, the Reform grassroots of the party cannot. It values policies and gravitas, not a clothes horse with an inherited name and money.

Yes, nothing says `gravitas' like a Reform MP. And how dare Stronach have inherited her... name?

But it's not just that Stronach and MacKay outstaged his party, of course; and it certainly has nothing to do with any sort of jealousy that Belinda likes Peter better than him. (Perish the thought!) No, this is partly about the `good old days', before the nasty Tories joined the Reformers:

I joined the Reform party back in 1990, when it was the Atkins diet political party -- all red meat and no sweetness.
The Conservative convention over the weekend was less beefy than the good old days of Reform...

(Not sure the macho posturing thing is going to win over Belinda, Ez...)

After a satisfying bit of Conservative-on-Conservative smackdown (I imagine MacKay and Stronach are still smarting from being called `Poopers'), this week Ezra turned his mighty guns back on the Liberal Party. The burning question was whether Alberta should feel more victimized by the current Prime Minister or his predecessor:

Who was the more anti-Alberta prime minister, Jean Chretien or Paul Martin? It's a tough call.

Now, it was Ezra's typical bad luck to write a column complaining that Martin hates the west the day before $1b in new aid was offered by the Martin government to farmers, and a few days before moved the Tourism office from Ottawa to the west and that the government started to get a little tough in fighting back on trade issues.

How does Martin display his hatred for Alberta? By teasing them and leading them on. You see, he does things like this:

Martin came to Calgary and was quite showy about it.

but then has the nerve to disagree with Ezra on policy decisions. Duplicitous, you see; pretending to care about Alberta as a province, but then publically -- for all to see -- making different decisions than Ezra would.

As an example of how Martin hates Alberta, he flagrently didn't appoint those nominated in Alberta elections in the recent round of Senate appointments -- just like he said he wouldn't last year. Now, you might think this demonstrates a certain amount of consistancy, but Ezra is having none of it:

He stuck his thumb right in our eye. Martin didn't have that courage -- he waited until a few months after the 2004 Senate elections and made his anti-Alberta announcement from Ottawa last week.

Well, except for the times when he made it clear he wouldn't appoint `elected' senators before the election.

Of course, even conservatives think piecemeal Senate reform is a terrible idea; does Ezra really want an elected, effective Senate where Alberta has 6 seats and Quebec has 24?

How lucky are you?

2005-04-01T21:20:00.000-05:00

Curious about how you're doing at the Roll Up The Rim To Win contest? Well, the posted odds are 1 in 9.

Taxes as Theft: A Thought Experiment

2005-03-25T11:14:00.000-05:00

I see the Taxes Are Theft idea is restarting its periodic trip around the right-wing blogosphere. The way these things work in the `Red Ensign Blogs for Rugged Independance!' world is that one such blog makes a post, and then all of the others make identical posts while linking lovingly to one another.

(The blogger leading the charge of the echo chamber this time is The Monger, whose previous appearence on these pages was for mocking the `Arch-Stupidity' of Angie Daze, an experienced relief worker, two weeks before last year's tsunami. Ms. Daze had displayed her `Ur-Stupidity' by reporting to a UN conference that extreme events such as flooding posed especially high risks for women. Two weeks later, of course, Angie Daze was proved horribly right, as has made the news again recently, and the snide comments made by the Monger and Jay Currie seem in even worse taste now than they did then. Neither, of course, have apologized or even admitted they might have been wrong and she might have been right.)

To evaluate this claim, allow me a little detour and participate in a thought experiment. Consider the most self-made buisnessperson you know or have heard of. Someone who had little or no help in putting together some amount of money or a thriving company. Now, how successful would that person be today had they had left as a child on a deserted island? Or been born in Darfur?

Living in Canada has enormous advantages for someone looking for a job, to create a buisness, or otherwise create wealth. There is a healthy, educated workforce, and wealthy potential purchasers of goods and services. There is an extensive transportation infrastructure to move goods and services, and a communications infrastructure increasingly important for the information sector of the economy. There is a strong, independant legal infrastructure for enforcing rights and contracts (allowing for trust in contracts between strangers, which improves economic efficiency). All developed nations have similar public goods; that they help individuals in those countries produce wealth helps explain the simple fact that there are many more rich people in developed nations than in undeveloped nations, even though developed nations account for only 1.2 billion of the worlds 6.4 billion people. The production of these public goods represents an enormous positive externality that everyone benefits from.

Put together, what is the total value of these public goods? To any particular person, the (economic) value is the difference between what they earn now and what they would be able to earn absent those public goods -- for instance, how much they would be able to earn if they were living today on that deserted island, or Darfur, or an ungoverned Canada. Since in Canada the average income is much higher than in countries without comparable public goods, even after you take out the amount spent on taxes, there is no question that, in total, the cost of these goods provides excellent value.

Given that the amounts are right and that the public goods provide good value, how to pay for them? The idea that taxes are theft comes from the fact that taxes are collected whether you like it or not, and `men with guns' will come if you refuse to pay. But it's not at all unusual for the justice system, and police, to come into play if you default on a contract; and taxes are part of the contract that we make with ourselves in a democracy. In exchange for the public goods provided, we pay taxes. We even set amongst ourselves the rates of taxation, and what sort of income, goods, or services should be subject to those taxes. All that's necessary to change the degree or nature of the taxation is to convince a majority of citizens that you are right; given how much everyone hates paying taxes, if ones point of view had any validity at all, you'd think convincing that majority would be fairly simple.

It is this same contract betweens citizens which means that police arresting someone isn't kidnapping; because of the primacy usually accorded to freedom of contract by the economic right, one would normally imagine that these contracts would be respected. Taxation laws, like criminal laws, are determined by the voters of the country; when someone asserts that taxation is theft, they are saying only that they disagree with the majority of voters; and that since they disagree, the law oughtn't apply to them. That doesn't work for criminal law, and it doesn't work for tax law. (If you're of that persuasion, you also have to rationalize away that God-made-Man said taxation is ok, so presumably is not theft.)

Occasionally one will hear arguments that the contract between citizens in a democracy isn't valid; for instance, because you don't have the opportunity to contract with another provider. But many contracts are this way; just as the government is the local monopoly for providing such public goods,Rogers is the monopoly for providing cable service in my building. I can't use the ``I'd prefer Comcast, so the contract isn't valid'' argument to claim that I should get my cable TV free.

Of course, in that case, I can choose to do without cable TV, and thus not have to pay Rogers anything; the fact that one can't `opt out' from taxes is also sometimes used to argue that the contract that includes paying taxes isn't a real contract. But what would choosing to do without the public goods look like? If someone would demonstrate to me how they plan on living in Canada while opting out of the legal system and its benefits, the transportation infrastructure, the communications infrastructure, the stable currency, the air and water protected by environmental laws, and interacting with those Canadians who are healthier and wealthier because of those systems, I'd have more sympathy for this point of view; but until then, this argument makes no sense at all.

And of course, there is an opt-out; one can get public goods while opting out of Canadian taxes the same way I could get cable TV without paying Rogers; I could move. Canadian income tax is based on residency, and if renegotiating the taxation contract isn't working the way you'd like -- if for some reason, the majority of Canadians won't agree with you about the degree and form of taxation -- then one could choose to move and consume another nation's public goods.

And that may be the most important at all. Those who make the `taxes are theft' argument -- not that the current tax laws should be improved, or that a current tax amount is too large, but that they personally having to pay tax is immoral and illegal -- want to benefit from the public goods provided in our democracy without paying for them. This point of view may be familiar; `I want it, and I want you to pay for it' is the policy prescription of every spoiled 12 year old.

Just Getting Back

2005-03-25T11:10:00.000-05:00

Just now getting back to blogging after having a small workshop take up a lot of my time.

Many of you are no doubt intensely curious about my current Roll Up The Rim To Win score. It stands at Jonathan: 0, Tim Horton's: 18. Using the stated 1-in-9 odds, the chances of being that unlucky are a slim 12%.

The Stupid Charter

2005-03-19T17:03:00.000-05:00

Via Scott Tribe, Ti-Guy, and My Blahg, we have this wonderful little gem to the right; one of those little fleeting insights into the thinking of some of the members -- indeed, opinion leaders -- of the Conservative Party of Canada. Apparently the brainchild of Ezra Levant, the pin makes it clear what some of our right-leaning Canadian bretheren think of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

So what do you think those Conservatives who wear these pins think is the stupidest part of the Charter? I.§2, where it's guaranteed that

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

freedom of conscience and religion;

freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

freedom of peaceful assembly; and

freedom of association?

Do you think it's §3, where Canadian's democratic rights are guaranteed? Or §6, where the right to move freely, within and in and out of Canada is granted? Maybe it's §7, including legal rights such as the rights to life, liberty, and security; protection against unreasonable search and seizure; and to understand the charges against them that they think are ridiculous?

Or do you think, as I do, that it's §15.(1) that they think is stupid:

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

And the next question is -- what is more reprehensible, being against treating all Canadians equally before the law? Or not having the courage to wear "It's stupid equality!" buttons, and instead dismissing the entire Charter, and all the rights it grants to all Canadians, as being stupid?

Believing that people should be free, that they are deserving of rights and liberties, sometimes means uncomfortable choices. It means even granting those liberties to people you don't like, to allow them to do things you'd prefer them not. That's what having moral principles means. These much-trumpeted values that Conservatives claim to hold dear don't mean very much when they can be applied selectively; when the moral principles such as freedom and liberty can be ignored when inconvenient.

There is an increasingly large rift between those who used to be called `conservatives' and the waxing right wing in Canada and the United States. The left, and those remaining old conservatives, are willing to fight for people's rights to do as they like and to live as they choose. We are going to have to defend the Charter - and in the US, the Bill of Rights -- against increasingly vocal and viscous attacks. Because in case it isn't clear, today, the left are more liberty-loving people than the right.

Ezra Levant Watch: III

2005-03-17T21:05:00.000-05:00

I read Ezra to atone for past misdeeds

I'm pleased to report that Ezra's slowly making it back from the brink, propelled by the power of positive thinking! Yes, Ezra is thinking happy thoughts this week; thoughts of the Conservative Party Convention this weekend. Maybe it's looking forward to the parties which is cheering him up - Ezra and The Western Standard will be hosting a hospitality suite (`In fact, it's worth coming to the convention just to attend our party!', he says in an email to Western Standard readers).

Ezra, being of deep wit and subtle thoughts, ponders the upcoming concention on many level.

Ornery western Reformers will sit down with tony eastern Tories. It will be fun to watch on many levels. Political style is one level.

Yes, on many level; he never actually mentions another level. Perhaps his editor was from the fifth, French, column and has been purged.

Perhaps he forgot about the others, because Ezra is greatly interested in this particular level:

So how will this mixture of delegates work? So far, it has worked out fairly well in Parliament, which is a greatly under-reported story. Stephen Harper has, in a short period of time, forged a fairly united party out of two fractious factions.

Well; maybe, maybe not. To the extent that he has, it has been through fairly harsh methods such as requiring MPs in Commons debates on heated issues to have their speeches pre-approved. Still, its a little uncharitable to bring these things up to Ezra when he's trying to cheer up and mend.

While Ezra is looking forward to the jockeying, he's a little worried the vast left-wing-biased media empires might take the disagreements, you know, out of context:

Not so in the Conservative Party, where the national media hunts for signs of discord, and turns the slightest politically incorrect utterance by an ordinary delegate into a screaming front-page scandal. Yes, Globe and Mail and CBC, I'm talking about you.

Normally, fairness would impel me to point out that those `politically incorrect' musings the media has chosen to make a big deal about -- such as when sitting MPs said that homosexuality is part of a `well orchestrated' conspiracy and should be outlawed and that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a `crutch' for `social libertarians' actually are fairly big deals; but Ezra's in a delicate state right now, trying to heal through happiness, and I guess I can let it slip this time.

He's really looking forward to this! Sure, the convention itself,

In the end, it will be a good convention -- a real convention, with real debates, not pre-scripted ones;

(Or pre-empted ones? Sorry, sorry; healing, happy thoughts) but it's the larger goal which has him thinking extremely happy thoughts:

...when the leader has a party with members to his left and to his right, but all united in the great Canadian conservative goal of our time: To end the inevitability of a Liberal future. It hasn't been this close in 17 years, it's got to work.

And this is ultimately what has him the happiest. And as for me, it suggests a terrific new slogan that I'll allow the Conservatives to adopt at their convention should they choose:

The Conservative Party: `End the inevitability'!

Update: Just a quick reminder that several contributers have made very useful Ezra-watching posts in the comments section; one provides a brief history of Ezra, and another suggests some other Ezra watching details.

Update 2: The second piece of information in the comments suggests that a particular poster in the Frankster forums is Ezra Levant; there is no confirmation that this is Ezra at all, and some particularly nasty comments have been made by that identified poster; I'll leave the comment there for people to follow up on, but I'm de-linking it from above, as I have no idea if it's true or not.

Apologies for being a little late on this episode of Ezra Levant Watch. The reason is all the more embarrasing after having detailed my safety procedures in last week's installment. After discussing the importance of my precautions, No-Roam readers, I grew careless and read several back columns in one sitting, with no one `spotting'. Many have noticed a brief pause in my blogging. Your thoughts and well-wishes in the aftermath have been greatly appreciated; my colour is returning, almost all of my vision is restored, and although IBM expressed some surprise at the state of my computer, they replaced it under warranty regardless.

The Responsibilities of Higher Education

2005-03-17T20:15:00.001-05:00

The more you think individualism is about clothes and food and holidays and not paying taxes, the more you will become similar and conforming and mediocre. Real individualism is about engaging yourself and being unafraid to be seen to getting involved and to be known for what you think.

A quote from a fantastic Convocation speech by John Ralston Saul to the University of Ottawa on, amongst other things, the responsibilities of a University education. Via Opinion Canada.

Margaret Wente: Duped by Charlatans

2005-03-15T23:56:00.000-05:00

Long-time No-Roamers will know all this stuff already, but apparently not top-rank Globe & Mail columists.

In her Tuesday Globe and Mail column (What the PM doesn't want you to know about Kyoto, which is so valuable that the Globe keeps it behind lock and key), Wente credulously describes the adventures of McIntyre and McKitrick; two men who combined have previously `refuted' climate change in reports where they: confused degrees of angle with radians (one being 57 times smaller than the other); made up their own fantastical temperature scale; and denied that the concept of `average temperature' even had any meaning.

Their most recent `discovery' is that if you abuse the statistical methods used by the original hockey-stick paper you can get nonsense. But the original paper did not do so; and in any case, a dozen independent research groups using different methods have gotten similar results. And the hockey stick is only one piece of a huge body of evidence.

That Ms. Wente published this column when the Globe ran a picture of Mt. Kilimanjaro bared of its 11,000 year old ice cap is all the more embarrassing.

Maybe McIntyre is an excellent mining consultant, and perhaps McKitrick is a passable economist. But neither show any interest in learning the science of climate change, choosing instead to stay on the sidelines and print any idea, no matter how hare-brained, that `disproves' climate change. If their success is measured by conning columnists and op-ed writers, they're doing alright.

On a related topic, the IPCC is a body which regularly assembles the scientific literature on climate change. Since it is an international scientific body, it is, by extension, unmitigated evil according to the right, and their reports dismissed out of hand. The always excellent RealClimate.org (motto: `every minute you read No More Shall I Roam is a minute you could have better spent reading RealClimate') has a two part series on how IPCC meetings actually work and a window into the multiple-year process of putting the reports together.

Update: This post is mostly about McKitrick & McIntyre; Declan at Crawl Across the Ocean has a nice post about Wente's article in particular.

Update 2: In comments, where Andrew keeps making claims that have been repeatedly shown to be false, he claims

I didn't read the links in your article (of which there were plenty) - but that doesn't somehow mean that I've not looked at both sides of the issue.

I'll leave it to readers to decide what `looking at both sides of the issue' can possibly mean if it doesn't include reading the rebuttals to what you are claiming.

Update 3: RealClimate discusses two more papers which seem to more or less definitively rule out the last standing bits of M&M's most recent `refutation' of the `hockey stick graph'; one of their points (normalization of PC components) is show not to matter, and in their work, they're shown to leave out an important step in building the reconstruction.

But what would the Lebanese Western Standard Think?

2005-03-15T15:33:00.000-05:00

The news is full of inspiring pictures of demonstrations in Lebanon; hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, flying their nations flag, happy that Syria is withdrawing troops and intelligence officers from their country.

If the right in Lebanon were like the right in Canada, here's what would happen:

Conservative bloggers would dismiss the protesters as `raving moonbats', and suggest the media is biased towards them;
Right-wing pundits would decry the childish Anti-Syrianism and deplore that the protesters define themselves in terms of being anti-Syria instead of pro-Lebanese.
Conservative bloggers would start proudly displaying an old emblem that was never officially a national flag of Lebanon, so to distance themselves from the outpouring of genuine patriotism;
Said bloggers would dismiss the actual Lebanese flag as being meaningless, as it is only two red stripes with a tree-related symbol between them, after all;
Hand-wringing articles would be published about the Great Lebanese Malevolence towards Syria;
and Lebanese CEOs would worry about losing contracts to Syria as a result of the demonstrations.

Canada: A Damn Fine Place to Live

2005-03-13T19:38:00.000-05:00

It's easy to forget, sometimes. As someone who's recently moved back, though, it's something I think about fairly often. Canada, and Canada's cities, are world-class places to live. (Link via the irreplacable My Blahg News.)

The most recent confirmation of this comes from a report by an international Human Resources company, Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Mercer examined quality of life study in 215 major world cities, and placed all of the Canadian cities examined (Calgary, Montral, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver) amongst the top 25. The report looked at thirty-nine quality of life statistics, including economic, safety, education, and transportation measures.

Canadians may be more familiar with the UN Human Development Index, where Canada routinely scores in the top five countries of the world. The HDI ratings examine average national achievements for people living in these countries in measures such as health and longevity; literacy and school enrolment; and economic standard of living. City indicies like the Mercer study, however, are much more specific; international consultancies study the quality of life and cost of living in major cities around the world for their clients to determine pay rates for employees working abroad. Pay rates must include adjustments for local cost of living, but quality of life measures are also used to determine whether or not extra `hardship pay' should be allocated. With these scores, expatriots working abroad in (say) Vancouver are out of luck -- no hardship pay for them.

The Mercer study's results on Canadian cities is in line with other such surveys, such as those taken regularly by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The EIU results, which don't consider Ottawa, place Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal in the top 10 of 130 cities in the world, and puts Calgary at number 16.

Update, Oct 2005: This year's EIU results again put Canadian cities in the top 25 -- Vancouver at number 1, Calgary and Toronto in the top 10, and Montréal in a 4-way tie for 16th place.

"With low crime, little threat from instability or terrorism and a highly developed infrastructure, Canada has the most livable destinations in the world."

Ah, back in Canada in the Springtime

2005-03-09T23:02:00.001-05:00

My Roll Up the Rim To Win score so far: Jonathan 0, Tim Hortons 6.

Ezra Levant Watch: II

2005-03-07T22:18:00.000-05:00

I read Ezra -- Better Me than You

It is a tough time for Ezra Levant. He still hasn't gotten over the decision -- which most Canadians agree with -- to not sign up to the US missile defence program as asked; to not sign a blanket agreement without any hard details on the table. It's a bit sad, because apparently President Bush has come to terms with the Canadian decision; but Ezra is taking it more personally. And no wonder. His fevered brain, still not quite recovered from the shock, has now grasped on to what he is sure the true reason behind the snub. Not that the program doesn't work; not that, in the words of one US missile defence supporter,

the president asked Canada for something he probably could not get from the Republican-controlled legislature in his own country.

No, it's much more insidious than that. You see, the problem is a fifth column within Canada. Not the usual fifth column; not just liberals. No, much worse. A 5(a)^th column -- or sixth column, if you will. A distinct column, if you catch my meaning.

Yes -- the reason is Quebec.

As Ezra explains, the decision is due to

The France-like anti-Americanism that infests the key province of Quebec, the province that counts to [Martin] more than any other, more than Canada itself, in fact.

Damn them! They are France-like, aren't they? And how dare Paul Martin -- Prime Minister of Canada -- like Quebec more than Canada!

In case you didn't find that convincing, Ezra provides his supporting information.

Martin knows that Quebecers are pacifists and anti-Americans. He wants to gain seats there. So he rebuked U.S. President George W. Bush to win points in suburban Montreal. Simple as that.

Simple, indeed. One might have hoped for further supporting evidence -- such as information from the Liberal convention. (But there a resolution opposing Missile Defence was taken off the table to avoid `rubbing salt in the wound' because it would have passed overwhelmingly, not just amongst the Quebec delegation.) Or from polls. (But in those, only 33% of Liberals supported joining, and indeed only 57% of Conservatives. And the same poll showed Quebecers only slightly more opposed (64%) than BCers (57%) or Ontarians (54%).) Still, if you are concerned about the lack of support for this point of view, please remember that Ezra is still in convalescence after the decision, and cannot get out as much as he might like to do `journalism' or `research'.

Ezra goes on to deplore Martin's lack of honesty, saying

Instead, he ordered our new ambassador to Washington to offer an after-the-fact rationale -- that it was all about softwood lumber and mad cow bans.

but unfortunately, this just isn't true; Martin and the rest of the government distanced themself from McKenna's comments instantly. But again, we must cut Mr. Levant some slack during these trying times for him.

For similar reasons, we have to excuse Ezra this comment:

Though it would be tough to think of why we wouldn't sign on to the U.S. proposal -- they spend all the money, we get half the benefit.

Out of sympathy, we'll leave entirely aside the `half the benefit' part. As to the `spend all the money' part, perhaps because Ezra has been stuck at home, he got this talking point from the blogs without knowing it wasn't true. Ezra doesn't know what Canada's commitment - money, manpower - would be under the program, for the same reason we don't know and Martin doesn't know -- no details of the plan were given. Canada was asked to sign onto a plan without any details of what would be required, and what would be provided, at all. In legal circles, there is a technical term for someone who signs a contract without knowing the details; the term is `the defendant'.

Still, there's some hope; Ezra is beginning to have some lucid moments, and there's some possibility he may yet make a recovery. At one point in the column, the fog lifts enough for him to type:

Canada should make its military decisions based on what we need militarily. Either we need a missile-defence shield or we don't.

On this, Ezra and I heartily agree.

Greenhouse effect

2005-03-06T00:03:00.000-05:00

There has been a flurry of news-making science about climate change in the last couple of weeks. Even the Economist, generally not one to side with the scientists on this topic, grudgingly agreed that some of this new work looks compelling.

Two of the new pieces of work recent work looking for warming not in the atmosphere, or on the surface of the Earth, where most look, but in oceans and lakes. The one which got the most press -- a continuation of earlier work -- looked at heating of the upper layers of the Earths oceans over the last 50 years, and found that the ocean surface had heated up by 0.5^oC over that time. If this seems like a modest change, consider that El Niño, which plays havoc with weather patterns on the western coast of the Americas, results from a temporary surface temperature increase of 2^oC or 3^oC in a very localized area -- and that the ocean heating isn't slowing down. Consider, too, that they examined two different climate models and changed several parameters to try to account for this heating -- and no natural forcings they could come up with could describe the observed heating very well, whereas the standard models for human-powered climate change matched their observations very nicely.

This touched off a furor on the blogosphere -- not so much among scientists, for whom this was a nice piece of work with more or less unsurprising results, but amongst others, who continue to passionately reject not only evidence that global warming exists and is human powered, but in fact that the greenhouse effect even exists.

I've written previously about climate change more generally; here I'll be a bit more specific, and try to give a brief explanation of the greenhouse effect, and how human activities are enhancing it. We'll start with a simple question:

Why is the Earth warmer than the Moon?

The average surface temperature of the Earth is about 15^oC (or 288 Kelvin); this can be measured very precisely in the modern era, but for our purposes right now it's enough to see that the average surface temperature is well above the freezing point of water, since we know that the majority of the Earth's surface is covered with liquid water. Most random bits of space have a temperature closer to 3 Kelvin (-270^oC); but the Earth has a nearby Sun from which it receives enough energy to keep it much warmer.

Because this energy which warms the Earth is easily measured, a very quick calculation can tell you nearly what the temperature of the Earth should be. Radiant energy from the Sun, almost all in the form of visible light, brings about 1400 watts per square meter of energy to the Earth; this can be measured by careful measurements of the sun. Because of the Earth's slightly eccentric orbit, this changes slightly (from plus 3% to minus 3%) through the course of a year.

Now, some of this energy is reflected, either by the Earth's atmosphere or the Earth's surface; that's why we get such fantastic pictures of the Earth from space. The amount of energy reflected can be measured; about 31% of the energy incident on the Earth bounces off either the atmosphere or the surface. That leaves 966 Watts per square meter. The Earth casts a circular shadow immediately behind itself; that tells us that the total amount of radiant energy striking the Earth is (966 W/m²) π(Earth's radius)².

If this were the entire story, the Earth would get hotter and hotter with each passing second as it absorbed more and more energy. But objects radiate away some of their thermal radiation as blackbody radiation. Very hot electric stove elements glow red; but at more familiar temperatures, objects radiate in the infrared; hotter objects glow both at shorter wavelengths and more brightly, which is why infrared goggles allow you to see (warm) people in the dark against (cooler) backgrounds. The slightly disturbing picture to the left is a cat photographed in the infrared.

The total amount of energy radiated per area by blackbody radiation is σT⁴, where T is the temperature, and σ is a physical constant. The Earth, then, if starting out very cold, would warm up under the radiation for the Sun, radiating away more energy per second as it warmed up; this would slow down the warming, and eventually it would reach the point where it radiates away as much energy as it receives. Similarly, if the Earth were much warmer, it would cool down by radiating more energy than it recieved until the incoming energy equalled the outgoing energy. At this point the Earth is in an energy balance - it gets as much energy as it receives - and it would stay at that temperature. This will happen when

960 W/m²πr² =4π r²σT⁴, or, T⁴ = (960 W/m²)/(4σ)

So what does this energy balance tell us? Plugging in the numbers, this balance tells us that if all our assumptions are correct, the Earth should have a steady temperature of 255 Kelvin, or -18^oC, which is clearly too cold. But the calculation we did, however simple, isn't wrong; the answer we got is a very good mean temperature for the surface of the Moon, which is at the same distance from the Sun and so gets the same amount of radiant energy.

So why did this simple calculation produce the Moon's temperature, but not the Earth's? And why is the Earth so much warmer than its neighbor? One explanation might be geothermal energy; the Earth has a molten core, which slowly `leaks' heat to the surface, and the Moon doesn't; perhaps that accounts for the difference. But when one measures the heat flow from the Earth, one finds that it is about 0.075 Watts per square meter over the surface of the Earth, or about 5000 times less than the energy from solar radiation; this can't account for the missing 33^oC.

Looking back, the weak spot in our calculation is the emission part of the balance -- the energy inputs are well known and well measured, and there aren't any other significant ones to add. On the other hand, we were just assuming that the Earth emits all its blackbody radiation into space. If the Earth couldn't emit all of that that radiation, then the energy balance would shift, and the Earth would be warmer than predicted, and warmer than the Moon.

Greenhouse Gasses

The most important difference between the Earth and the Moon is that the Earth has an atmosphere which can trap some heat that would otherwise be radiated into space. This trapping means that the Earth radiates less than it normally would; more energy remains than would normally at a given temperature. This shifts the balance of energy upwards, meaning in a steady state, the Earth is warmer. The most important mechanism for this trapping relies crucially on the fact that the two forms of radiation, incoming and outgoing, are different -- the energy coming from the Sun is almost all in the form of visible light, while the radiation the Earth emits as blackbody radiation is in the infrared.

There are many gasses that are essentially transparent to short-wavelength visible light but scatter longer-wavelength infrared light. This means that the Sun's rays pass unimpeded through them to the surface of the Earth; but the Earth's blackbody radiation is scattered as it travels upwards through the atmosphere. Depending on the concentration of these gasses (called `greenhouse gasses', on the basis of an analogy with how a greenhouse works), some fraction of the radiation never makes it all the way through the atmosphere, and the energy it caries remains, contributing to the temperature on the Earth. The amount of infrared that is transmitted to space can be observed, for instance, by weather satellite images in the infrared, like the black and white image to the right; that transmitted radiation can then be compared to what one would expect without any longwave trapping. Over long periods of time, these images can be averaged and the total infrared trapping can be plotted as in the map up and to the left, where red indicates a very high absorption of infrared radiation, and blue indicates very low absorption.

There are many greenhouse gasses. One of the most important greenhouse gasses is water vapour; weather satellite images in infrared are useful because the water vapour in clouds transmit less infrared radiation, making them stand out starkly against the warm, infrared-bright surface. Water vapor is actually not a very efficient greenhouse gas, but because there is so much of it in the atmosphere, it becomes important, making up approximately 60% of the greenhouse effect in the Earth's atmosphere. Other greenhouse gasses include carbon dioxide, which contributes about 20% of the total effect, methane, and man-made aerosols.

Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect, then, is a naturally-occurring effect, and a crucial one -- it makes the Earth habitable by keeping its surface temperature above the freezing point of water. It is also a very powerful effect; it increases the amount of heat at the Earth's surface by 10%.

However, the greenhouse effect need not be solely a natural effect. Any change in the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will increase the trapping of longwave radiation within the atmosphere, and contribute to a further increase in temperature.

Although water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas for the natural greenhouse effect, it stays fairly constant; it is difficult to directly change the amount of water in the atmosphere. If you could add a megatonne of water vapour into the atmosphere tomorrow, within a couple of days it would turn into a megatonne of rain and snow and return to the Earth's surface. However, it is fairly easy to change the concentration of other greenhouse gasses, and exactly this has been happening with CO₂. There is data from a variety of sources -- from direct measurements over the last 50 years, to measurement of concentrations in bubbles of air trapped in ice in Antarctica -- and their agreement is remarkable. Over the ten or twenty thousand years of reliable data, CO₂ concentrations remained around at about 260-280 parts per million in the atmosphere; since the 1900s, it has been rising sharply and is now at almost 380 parts per million. As the graph above and to the left shows, not only is this coincident with the rise in human-generated CO₂ emissions, it is also of nearly the same amount; atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen by about one half of the amount generated by burning fossil fuels, suggesting that, while the environment (particularly the oceans) can absorb about half of what is being generated, the other half is remaining in the atnosmphere.

It would be possible that it is a coincidence that this sudden increase in carbon dioxide concentrations occurring just when carbon emissions due to human burning of fossil fuels ramps up, and of a similar amount; unlikely, perhaps, but possible. However, there is further strong evidence that this isn't the case. Carbon, one of the most plentiful of elements on the Earth, occurs naturally in several different stable isotopes -- variations of carbon that have slightly different masses. The differences are small, and for simple chemistry it makes no difference; however, in the very complex chemistry of biological systems, it can. Biological systems have a small but measurable preference for lighter isotopes of carbon, which means that the carbon dioxide that comes from burning once-organic matter -- such as fossil fuels -- has a different isotopic composition than carbon dioxide from, for instance, volcanic eruptions. The recent increase in carbon dioxide corresponds to an increase in organic isotope ratios in the atmosphere, providing further evidence that the marked increase in CO₂ concentrations are due to burning of fossil fuels.

It is difficult to directly add water vapour to the atmosphere while changing nothing else; however, increased temperatures can lead to increased evaporation, bringing water from the oceans to the atmosphere. Because of the amounts of liquid water covering the Earth, even the tiniest increases in evaporation can lead to significant amounts of water vapour entering the atmosphere. Thus the heating due to greenhouse gasses like CO₂ is increased through a side effect -- increasing the temperature increases the amount of water vapour, itself a greenhouse gas, increasing the temperature still further. (In extreme cases, this leads to a runaway effect; higher temperatures means more water vapour meaning higher temperatures meaning more water vapour... this is what has happened on Venus, leading to surface temperatures which can melt lead. An effect that extreme could not happen on Earth, which is further from the Sun.)

Because of the complexity of the Earth's climate, there is real debate about the effects that the added energy input due to an increased greenhouse effect will have; but from the temperature record and the CO₂ record, as well as measured effects such as those announced in recent weeks in oceans and lakes, and the increased extreme weather events being seen by insurance companies, the evidence that drives the scientific consensus is essentially overwhelming that there is a human-powered component to Earth's greenhouse effect, and that it is begining to have effects not just on temperature, but on the climate.

Update: Maple Leaf Web has an excellent discussion on Global Warming and the Kyoto Protocol. An outstanding history of the research has also been written.

Update 2: I've made the additions suggested by Joel Shore in the comments.

RCMP tragedy

2005-03-04T08:45:00.000-05:00

My thoughts go out to the friends and family of the four RCMP officers killed in the line of duty yesterday.

Ezra Levant Watch

2005-03-01T09:09:00.000-05:00

*I read Ezra Levant -- So You Don't Have To**

Poor Ezra Levant has been driven completely mad by Canada's decision not to sign onto the US missile defence program.

Ezra begins robustly and rambunctiously enough; that by not signing up to a missile defence program that doesn't work when Canada has other defence priorities more current than 1964, Canada is reducing its standing in the world, and will end up like once-mighty Belgium. (Belgium again.)

By not joining a regional missile defence program, Ezra claims that Canada will be reduced to impotent, maple-syrup making irrelevance. He doesn't explain how; certainly the vast majority of the countries in the world don't really care one way or the other if Canada joins this program, and one would suspect that by spending new defence dollars on programs that actually do work would do better at enhancing our military capability than in spending it on one that doesn't. One country's administration seems to care a great deal, of course; but other than having one less meeting with them, it remains unclear how this decision will effect our global standing and our ability to do good in the world. There may be more fallout in Canada/US relations in the future, but probably not -- remember when trade sanctions were threatened when Canada didn't sign on to Iraq?

Now that silliness is just the sort of thing that one would expect from a healthy, Europe-bashing, Canada-bashing Ezra. Heartbreakingly, though, as we read on, the prose deteriorates, and there's one wrenching moment where we actually watch his mind break as he struggles to complete the column. By the end the poor fellow is no doubt drooling on the keyboard as he types in gibberish like:

The decision to void our half-century of defence co-operation with the U.S., to effectively end NATO and NORAD, is awful enough.

Yes, that's right -- to effectively end NATO and NORAD.

I asked NATO spokesman James Appathurai whether or not regional military cooperation tensions effect larger NATO goals; he responded:

I think I can definiatively say that they do not.

Despite profound differences between France and the United States over Iraq, you can see the close cooperation in NATO; together in Lebanon, fighting side by side in Afghanistan. This will not effect larger NATO projects. Canada and the United States work together in so many ways beyond the continental context, and they work together very well; the diplomats and politicians know and realize this.

NATO had a summit less than a couple of weeks ago, sure enough, things seemed to be going fine. Poor Ezra is now in such a state that he's apparently thinking that the 26 member nations will have to wind down the entire 56-year project because two member nations disagreed on a bilateral regional program. Ezra must be especially far gone to have not realized that Canada was providing BMD-capable data via the existing NORAD program, which too is in no danger.

I'm sure we'll all send Ezra our best wishes, hoping that he recovers by next week.

Update: There are more in a post at Sinister Thoughts, which is remarkable by being the first in the history of blogdom to mention both Ezra Levant and Candide.

Update 2: Via My Blahg News, it appears that NORAD may actually be expanding operations...

*Ezra Levant Watch will be now be a semi-regular feature, in which I enrich the lives of Canadians by reducing their need to read Ezra Levant's columns. Last week's Levant column, where Ezra pointed out that, literally, one sentance from Paul Martin is worth an entire column from Ezra Levant, seemed too boring a column to launch such an exciting! new! feature with.

The Complete Ezra Levant Watch Archives

2005-02-28T00:35:00.000-05:00

Ezra Levant Watch

Ezra Levant Watch XI	Oct 31, 2005	In which Ezra says that 77% of Canadians are stupid trained seals.
Ezra Levant Watch X	Oct 24, 2005	In which Ezra `knows the heart' of potential American tourists.
Ezra Levant Watch IX	Jul 4, 2005	In which Ezra repeats a bad stat, and roots for child labour and poison gas
Ezra Levant Watch VIII	May 2, 2005	In which Ezra speaks for Quebec, and explains this is as good as it gets for the Conservatives.
Ezra Levant Watch VII	April 25, 2005	In which Ezra phones it in and copies an American anti-Clinton classic
Ezra Levant Watch VI	April 18, 2005	In which Ezra uses his skills to attack Ralph Klein
Ezra Levant Watch V	Apr 11, 2005	In which Ezra accidentally bares a little bit of his soul
Ezra Levant Watch IV	Mar 21 & 28, 2005	In which Ezra thinks Peter MacKay is a Poopy-head, and discovers Martin's hatred for Alberta
Ezra Levant Watch III	Mar 14, 2005	In which Ezra vows to `End the Inevitable'.
Ezra Levant Watch II	Mar 7, 2005	In which Ezra spots a fifth, French, column.
Ezra Levant Watch I	Feb 28, 2005	In which Ezra is driven mad by BMD.

Cellucci, and the Canadians who Love Him

2005-02-26T19:00:00.000-05:00

Serving Americans with professional excellence, the highest standards of ethical conduct, and diplomatic discretion.
`Role of an Ambassador', U.S. Embassy in Ottawa website.

You've no doubt heard -- through the news, or through the thorough series of posts on the topic by the indefatigable Timmy the G at Voice in the Wilderness -- that U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci took Canada's passing on BMD poorly and publicly, saying some outrageous things:

The United States will decide when to fire missiles over Canadian airspace whether Canada likes it or not, says America's ambassador.

"We simply cannot understand why Canada would, in effect, give up its sovereignty"... The warning was no slip of the tongue - Cellucci repeated several times that Canada's decision had handed over some of its sovereignty to the U.S.

To say that these things are undiplomatic is to scramble for new depths of understatement. The Ambassador to the United States has publicly -- to newspapers, to whoever will listen -- said that

It is the policy of the United States Government that it will engage in military activities in an allies country without permission -- something that would normally be an act of war; and
Canada has formally ceded sovereign control of its airspace by not signing on with a particular U.S. defense project.

To understand how shocking this is, it is important to remember that it is normally considered scandalous for ambassadors to a country to make public statements about that country's internal politics. And these aren't just comments about cereal imports; these strike at the very core of nationhood, the monopoly of force within one's borders.

Naturally, while the first statement is astonishing, the second statement is completely wrong on its face. Canada's sovereign right to determine what military activities occur in its territory will always be Canada's -- as that of the United States will always be theirs -- and not signing on with an allies defense strategy will in no way change this.

Now, this isn't even close to the first public statement that the Ambassador has made which has been diplomatically inappropriate. In the recent past, Cellucci has publicly

Said that there may be more cases like the Arar case, where Canadian citizens would be seized in the US and rendered to countries like Syria which would torture them;
Criticized the Canadian government's decision -- overwhelmingly supported by the Canadian populace -- not to join in the Iraq war saying the US was `disappointed and betrayed', and threatening vague trade sanctions (which even American conservative blogger Dan Drezner thought was at least ham-fisted, if not worse;
And of course most recently, lobbied for Canada to sign on to missile defense.

Any one of these statements would normally be well beyond the pale for an Ambassador to make; still, Canada and the United States have a long friendship, and old friends get given a certain amount of latitude. These most recent statements, however, are simply unacceptable. You can't stay in a nation at that government's pleasure, keep telling the press that this nation has now given away sovereignty to the nation you represent, and expect to stay in that country very long. Cellucci will be leaving his appointment in March, and a replacement must be appointed anyway; Prime Minister Paul Martin should revoke Cellucci's diplomatic credentials and send him home. To ignore bad behaviour is to encourage it, not just in this Ambassador but in those to come. If you agree, there is an online petition to remove Cellucci, which is fun to fill out but ultimately fairly meaningless; better is to contact the Prime Minister and your MP.

Maybe even more troubling than the statements made by Ambassador Cellucci is some of the aftermath. Paul Martin has refuted Cellucci's comments in Parliament, raising the not very controversial point that "you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission". What's remarkable is that several Canadians on the right have disagreed with Martin, and sided squarely with Cellucci, arguing that the United States should have the right to fire weapons over Canadian airspace whenever they need to, permission or no.

What makes their statements even more surprising is that they ceded Canadian jurisdiction over its own airspace without even bothering to see if it was needed:

``U.S. officials at the Missile Defence Agency said that under ballistic missile defence, interceptors from launch silos in Alaska and California are aimed out across the Pacific and that their trajectory would take them nowhere near Canada.''

It would be one thing for Andrew and RJ, after some long period of reading and research, to have joylessly come to the conclusion that under some circumstances, the US, in defending itself, might not have time to consult with its old ally and take unilateral action over Canadian airspace to defend itself -- and as friends and allies, we should accept that. I would disagree with them passionately, but at least they would have some reason behind their statements. But this isn't what happened. Instead, in their eagerness to agree with the US Ambassador and disagree with the Prime Minister, they were happily ceding Canadian airspace -- Canadian airspace which is not theirs alone to give away -- to another country, when it was not even asked for.

And of course, this makes Cellucci's statements all the more craven.

Cellucci should be returned to the United States, immediately; others should remain where they are and feel somewhat embarrassed.

Update: pogge has a story on this as well.

Update 2: RJ claims in the comments that he was talking about not what the US should be allowed to do, but what in fact they could do. Given the strength of his comments at the time, I don't think I agree, but the reader can follow the links and decide.

Bad Science Reporting Can Kill You! Find out more Tonight.

2005-02-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

James at Hammer and Anvil correctly points to a problem in the reporting of science, although his analysis of the causes and cures is mistaken.

He says:

Wine is good for your heart, wine is bad for you. Wine is good again but in small amounts. Cholesterol is bad for you, don't get too much! Wait, don't cut back on the good cholesterol! Some of it is good for you!

and I think this is a pretty decent summary of how science is reported, especially on television. If tomorrow it was discovered that a compound in cooked hamburger increased intraocular pressure -- which would be a big deal, because it would increase risk of glaucoma -- the TV lead in would be ``A common family food found to cause blindness: Tune in at 7.'', and we would just have to count ourselves lucky that they restrained themselves from saying ``Hamburgers: the food that could make your eyes explode.'' If, a month later, another compound (or the same compound!) were found to slightly reduce the risk of cataracts, the lead in would now be ``Stopped eating hamburger for your eyes? New study states that hamburger is actually good for your vision! More tonight''.

To the audience, this is going to seem like science is a very volatile thing, with new studies being overturned or rendered irrelevant almost weekly, even though that's not at all what happened. It's extremely rare -- and enormously embarrassing -- for a decent piece of work to be `overturned'. A work's interpretation might be changed, or one line of research may end up, after enormous effort, to simply be a dead end, but only extremely seldom does a finding flat-out turn out to be wrong. Even the dramatic changes of the early 20th century -- general relativity and quantum mechanics -- were radical extensions of Newton's gravity and classical mechanics, not negations of them. But this building up of understanding, either slowly or in dramatic bursts, doesn't fit nicely before the commercial break.

So you get silly stories like Wine: Good for You, or Silent Killer? And of course, it's both; too much alcohol has negative health implications, but moderate amounts of wine can be mostly beneficial. High-cholesterol foods are generally bad, but some cholesterols are actually helpful, and with some care you can get the good stuff without the bad stuff. And so on, and so on. Some things that are good for you in one particular way are bad in another. The problem is that science - and especially new science - doesn't come in 5-second soundbites, the unit of currency of TV news. Science is nuanced, and the results have to be explained carefully to make any sense; but the three to five minutes that would take, and the actual scientist or dedicated science journalist it would require, is more than the local TV station is willing to pay. So a soundbite it remains.

Science, too, generally lacks TV-friendly dramatic conflict of winning vs. losing, which means most journalists are completely lost. They've learned that `objectivity' is easily obtained by turning every story into a `he said, she said' story, which has many additional benefits -- the story is very easy to do; it requires no specialized knowledge; and it requires no tedious investigation of the claims being made, a practice that used to be called `journalism'. While this an approach may work in politics (although I don't think it does), it is almost uniquely unsuited for informing an audience about the state of scientific research on a subject, where what matters is evidence, not opinion. While print media avoids the pitfall of soundbite-science above, it rushes to embrace the lazy `dueling quotes' approach to serious science news.

As with any weakness in a system, people will rush in with ways to exploit this to their advantage. Many well funded organizations -- well-funded ones like the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, for instance, or strange little ones like the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine -- all have `environmental experts' who are ready to give `anti' quotes for any report on global warming (or any other story their funders don't like), so that the reporter can have the second quote, file the report, and go on to the next story. Upon further investigation, however, these `experts' are almost never the sort of experts who have actually taken measurements of some effect, or performed extensive computer modeling, or written a published research paper in their subject of expertise. However, for the purpose of supplying a quote to the reporter, the affiliation with an official-sounding institution is all the qualifications reqiured.

On the internets, this has been taken to a whole new level by Tech Central Station, which was found to be created by the DCI group, an `astroturfing' organization who charges their clients to have seemingly grass-roots organizations begin sending letters to the editor, holding `concerned citizen' meetings, and the like, in favour of whatever their clients want. Tech Central Station articles unflaggingly hold the views held by the companies that fund it, with their opinions even changing as their funder's minds change, as the Confessore article linked to above points out in the case of AT&T and industry deregulation.

This combination of rapid reporting of new results in soundbite form without context, and the `pro/con' approach to reporting science, means that the public at large remains horribly informed about scientific research and results of the day. On issues where one side of the debate has a vested interest in keeping people poorly informed, such as on evolution and global warming, there is real money in exploiting these structural weaknesses of science reporting in the media, and the case is even worse. This has been pointed out quite clearly in the case of recent work describing the results of the greenhouse effect on warming of the Earth's oceans. In the ensuing discussion throughout the blogosphere, it becomes clear that many people genuinely believe that the greenhouse effect -- probably one of the best-understood effects in atmospheric physics -- is actual a debatable or controversial proposition, whether human-powered or not. I will do my bit and try to write an article on the greenhouse effect later this week.

What's to be done about this? We live in a society where science and technology are increasingly important, and yet the public in North America routinely tests shockingly poorly on awareness of the most basic science. Certainly education is a problem, but the media isn't helping. At the very least, more real scientists -- not fewer, as James at Hammer and Anvil argues -- need to be in the media, reporting on and giving context to, new developments. The scientific community is slowly realizing this, and outreach programs are now regularly part of the requirements for large scientific grants. A small outreach program in a community, however, no matter how successful, will find it hard to compete with all of the `Channel 7's of the world, telling us that new studies suggest that tapwater will melt your brains.

Let me just conclude an otherwise pessimistic post by giving some credit where credit is due; of major media outlets the CBC does a terrific job, with a real science staff. I used to read the top stories of Reuters science, CBC science, and BBC science daily, and CBC was routinely the best of the three, although BBC was extremely stiff competition (and, I'd argue, their web site is better).

Stephen Harper: Taking orders from the American Right

2005-02-20T18:31:00.000-05:00

Via the increasingly invaluable JimBobby, we find a CP report`George Bush Chided Harper on Missile Defence' which tells us:

The U.S. president used his trip to Canada late last year to bluntly voice irritation with Harper's enigmatic position on missile defence, sources on both sides of the border say.

and that

But the decision to raise missile defence with Harper was made weeks in advance and had nothing to do with anything Martin said, according to U.S. officials.

It's bad enough that weeks afterwards, Stephen Harper has not distanced himself at all from millions of dollars pouring across the border from the American religious right in an attempt to influence Canadian MPs on the same-sex marriage debate. But actually taking lectures from George Bush on what Canada's national security priorities should be when the proposed missile defence plan doesn't even work is a bit much. Shouldn't the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition party be a little more, well, loyal to Canadian interests and Canadian points of view?

Update: Voice in the Wilderness has a post on this.

On Stephen Harper's New Multiculturalism

2005-02-19T17:51:00.000-05:00

Timmy at Voice in the Wilderness has a post wondering about the Conservative Party's seemingly new policies in favour of Multiculturalism.

Given that the Reform/Alliance party is clearly the dominant faction in the current Conservative Party (see this discussion, including the comments in which a prominent right-wing blogger expresses his pleasure about moderates being weeded out), this would be a dramatic turnaround. Many remember Stockwell Day's opposition to allowing Sikh RCMP officers to wear a turban on the job. The Reform Party had at best a very troubled relationship with immigration policy, with Leon Benoit's insistance that immigrants would bring disease to Canada being approvingly posted at the white supremicist group Canada First's web page as part of their immigration kills campaign. (Warning: be sure you want to follow that link before clicking on it.) The Reform Party policy on multiculturalism was always to end all official government multicultural programs, the theory apparently being that vibrant, diverse, but well-integrated multicultural communities are just one of those things that happens on their own. Individual Reform Party members were identified as having connections to white supremacist groups such as the Heritage Front and the before-mentioned Canada First.

But that was the past, and the new Conservative Party has different leadership, and different policies. Certainly any shift to policies that better embrace diversity and multiculturalism should be welcomed. Some of Harper's own comments certainly shed some doubt on his longstanding commitment to these ideas, such as a statement from 2001:

"You have to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from Eastern Canada; people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into Western Canadian society."

Still, individual quotes can be taken out of context; and indeed his election campaign issue of making sure immigrants with advanced qualifications can use them in Canada was (and remains) an excellent policy suggestion, which would benefit both current Canadians and new immigrants.

So although his policy of wooing various minority groups over the issue of same-sex marriage, and his claim that true multiculturalism would mean respecting some groups reluctance to allow equal marriage, may be opportunistic, I at least am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being and assume his sincerety. Perhaps Stephen Harper truly does value the benefits of multiculturalism.

Being sincere, of course, doesn't mean he's right. And his claim that a true respect for multiculturalism means we must ban same-sex marriage is completely wrong.

The way to best protect multiculturalism -- to make sure everyone can celebrate our shared Canadian culture as well as another culture they are part of -- is to guarantee every Canadian the rights to enjoy their culture however they wish. By granting more freedoms and rights, not less, we help make sure that everyone can live as they please, in accordance with whatever social mores and customs they honour.

Rights are not obligations. By allowing same-sex marriage, we will not force a single person who disapproves of same sex marriage to become part of a gay relationship. The Charter guarantees for freedom of religion ensure that no religious group will be forced to marry couples that do not meet their religion's requirements. However, others who are part of cultures and religions which do accept same-sex relationships should have the right to marry their same-sex partner. That is the essence of multiculturalism -- allowing every Canadian the right to their culture. Rights must be given, not taken away.

The multiculturalism Stephen Harper is proposing -- where the rights of all Canadians are circumscribed by what each individual community would allow -- is proposterous. This is not a multiculturalism; this would be a Canada where every Canadian would need to obey the rules of every community, regardless of whether or not they are a part of it or share those beliefs. Members of some communities genuinely find the degree of freedom of expression in Canada shocking; to respect those values, should we restrict that expression for all? Devout members of some faith communities genuinely believe any form of interest on loans to be immoral; to respect those beliefs, should we change the banking systems for all? Members of at least one religion in Canada are themselves opposed to any form of invasive medical procedures; should health care for the entire nation be set accordingly, in the spirit of true multiculturalism?

Multiculturalism means allowing people from many different communities to live their lives according to their rules and customs, not forcing others to also conform to them. Stephen Harper is wrong. Truly respecting cultures means granting rights, not taking them away.

Stephen Harper: Not Allowing Gays to Marry is Like Interning Japanese during WWII

2005-02-17T20:06:00.000-05:00

..and not allowing Jews fleeing Hitler refuge into this country.

Cathie does a good job discussing this. All I can add is that it's a good thing Stephen Harper took the precaution of vetting all of his MPs speeches to Parliament so that no one said anything stupid. The last thing the Conservatives need in this debate is for one of their own to say something embarrasing.

Ezra Levant - Superman.

2005-02-17T19:44:00.000-05:00

My mother always taught me growing up that every person had their own unique talents. Being a comic-book reading boy, I always thought of those unique talents as super-powers.

Ezra Levant's special power is that he is superhumanly invulnerable to embarrasment. He can say the most astounding things, and when he's (inevitably) shown to be completely wrong in every meaningful way, the mortification -- mortification which would crush a lesser person like you or I -- simply rolls right off his back, and he continues on his way as if nothing had happened at all. Unfortunately, it's just not one of those superpowers which can be used for good. In the comic books, when you see the character Dr. Skulko introduced and his superpower is the ability to hide unnoticed in corners, slither quickly but discretely in the shadows, and make his voice sound like anyone else's, you know -- even if he's with the good guys at the start of the story -- that in the end, he's just not going to be one of the heros.

All Ezra Levant's columns are worth reading, of course; one of them, where he said that Canadians should `show our alliegance to' George W. Bush by signing up for ballistic missile defence and that to make any other decision would be `anti-American', was what started me blogging. His most recent column, which he appeared on Global last weekend to share, concerns the Gomery inquiry.

He is deeply concerned that no one has gone to jail yet for the sponsorship scandal. Now, we all want the people responsible for funneling money into friends' pockets to be accountable, although his rush seems impatient, since the inquiry isn't actually over yet. But he goes on to say that the Inquiry shows:

It is now clear that Canada could never have the kind of accountability first-rank countries demand of their leaders. We could never have a Watergate in this country, never an impeachment. Our leaders are above the law.

On TV, he was more explicit, and he said, with superhuman repetitivness, that things were much better in the United States. There, you have real accountability, not like in second-rank Canada.

Bizarrely, he also claimed that in the US, a President can get impeached, whereas a Canadian Prime Minister cannot be kicked out; he must be, even in this age of a minority government, unaware enough of parliamentary procedure not to know about votes of non-confidence and their consequences.

Now, in the United States, there was recently a 9/11 commission to look into some events of considerably more consequence than the sponsorship scandal, no matter how grave a breach of the public trust that was. And, in comparison to the sponsorship inquiry, where both the current and previous Prime Minister sat through several hours each of public, televised questioning, the 9/11 commision could only question the President of the United States for one hour, in private, with no notes allowed to be taken, not under oath, and with his Vice President by his side; and this only after a protracted battle with the White House which claimed that neither the President nor his security advisor should testify at all. Indeed, the White House had stonewalled the commission for months on documents and timetables, and had resisted the creation of the commision in the first place. (Compare this to second-rank Canada's situation, where Paul Martin brought the Gomery Inquiry into being.)

Ah, but you might say, that's different, that's about national security, not corruption. Ah! I'd answer, with super-speed; but surely national security is much more important, and requires more accountability, not less. Still, we could also talk about public money going to friends; for instance, we could talk about $8.75 billion CDN no-bid contracts to Halliburton, a company that Vice President Cheney once led and in fact is still paid by; especially when the company then proceeds to overcharge for services and indeed lost $23 to 76 million CDN worth of government property. That seems like something that should also get investigated, but has so far recieved zero public inquiries (compared to Canada's one, you see.)

So I can't wait for Super-Ezra to explain in more detail about the first-rank accountability in the United States so that we second-rank Canadians can learn more. In his article, he had to stretch all the way back to Nixon and watergate to find some in the United States, wheras right here and now in Canada we find an inquiry that has the authority to call past and present Prime Ministers to public testimony, and have won the two battles fought with them (on documents and on on Gomery himself).

Update: One more point on accountability; when questioned about accountability for some of his policies, the President of the first-rank United States said

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections."

By that measure, certainly, the Liberals had their accountability moment for the sponsorship scandal in Canada's 2004 election. Having the public enquiry as well is then going well beyond the standards of accountability in the United States.

Happy Flag Day!

2005-02-15T21:21:00.000-05:00

I know, it's almost over... Timmy at Voice in the Wilderness has a great post on the history of the maple leaf flag, as does Robert at My Blag. They, especially Timmy, have done such a great job that there isn't much for me to add.

Let me just say, then, that like many of us, I grew up with the Maple Leaf as the flag of Canada; it is the symbol both here and across the world of our land and what we stand for -- freedom, generosity, fairness, basic decency. Wearing it as a badge across the world, one finds out how much that people everywhere value what that means and what we stand for. Forty years after its creation, Canada's history -- the extraordinary times that strengthened our faith in our ideals, and ugly times that we gain strength from by facing -- are distilled into that symbol; and that flag, and that history, will guide us for the next forty, and the next forty after that.

Seven years ago I knew all of that, and yet took it completely for granted, having known nothing else. It wasn't until I returned, and saw the Maple Leaf flying on flagpoles and on Roots sweaters, on houses and on airwaves, that I realized how much it meant. And then, I knew, I was home.

A Missile Defence Shield that Doesn't Work? Where Do I Sign Up?

2005-02-14T22:26:00.000-05:00

Even if the US's proposed ballistic missile defence program worked, Canada has other defence priorities which must be met first.

But it doesn't. A simple test of the system failed. Again.

Given that there's no working program to sign on to, how did this even become a topic of discussion? Have the US administration get back to us when they can routinely shoot down a fast-moving missile that doesn't have a homing beacon on it, and isn't fooled by countermeasures such as are now standard equipment on Russian missiles. Otherwise, there isn't even anything to seriously discuss.

A Benefit of Minority Government?

2005-02-12T18:12:00.000-05:00

Apparently at least one columnist believes Canada joining the US Ballistic Missile Defense plan is dead in this Parliament (alternate link) because the Liberals can't round up enough votes in their caucus; indeed, even the Conservatives may have problems providing votes. So for this Parliament, at least, it seems there will be no bill calling to join the program. On top of that, a new poll shows a solid majority of Canadians opposing entry into the program, with 54% against and only 34% for.

And this, of course, is as it should be. As I've written before, Canada faces real dangers, and there are real needs for increased spending on Canada's national defence. Increased port security, increased infrastructure and transport security, and establishing our presence on our northern borders are enormous priorities. Beside the obvious military and security importance of each of these, they have in addition other important benefits -- enhanced reliability of our infrastructure will help in times of natural disaster; port security will increase our chances of interrupting smugglers; northern border security will give credibility to our claims of natural resources. Recognizing these priorities, our new Chief of Defense Staff has called for increased defence spending, and indeed there's some indication that such funding and some reorganization is on the way. This is all to the good.

Given these real challenges, those who propose ballistic missile defence to be a priority for Canada, and who suggest we spend money and manpower in joining such a program, are simply not taking the defence of our country seriously. And while there may be international relations benefits to joining this program, there is a word for people -- politicians or pundits -- who make national security decisions based on political expediency, and that word is not `patriotic'.

Update: Declan has a related post up on how things came to this point.

Note, too, that I don't think that participating is a bad idea under any circumstances. As Paul Wells points out, at one point Martin's position seemed to consist of participation under the following conditions:

refusing to permit any defensive missile batteries to stage in Canadian territory;

announcing he will pull out of any joint program if, at any point in the future, the Americans "weaponize space;"

refusing to pay a dime for any of this; and

demanding a prominent Canadian role in command and control.

I think these conditions are emminently reasonable.

Having foreign weapons stationed on your own territory obviously poses sovereignty issues;
Weaponizing space represents an enormous escalation, and one which we should be wary of endorsing now that, for instance, China has a space program;
We shouldn't pay for this, because we have more pressing security priorities; and
Command and control in anything that might occur over Canadian airspace should be a given.

Open Government

2005-02-11T03:05:00.000-05:00

The Globe and Mail today had a story reporting that the Canadian Newspaper Association is calling on MPs to give more teeth to Canada's Access to Information Act.

The context here is the Gomery inquiry; newspapers here have had great difficulty in getting access to sponsorship records through Canada's 1983 Access to Information Act. But regardless of the context, the newspapers are exactly right; Canada's Access laws need to be re-written.

On paper, the Information to Access law is pretty good. It is backed up by an Information Commissioner who reports to Parliament. Canada, like most other developed countries, has both privacy and access to information laws. Although Access to Information Act and Privacy Act regulations are obviously entwined, there are two separate commissioners, for Access and for Privacy, with each acting as advocates for their single issue. While this approach is modestly controversial, at least has the benefit of transparency; it is someones job to advocate explicitly for access to information, rather than personally weighing the pros and cons before deciding whether to advocate for your right to documents. Further, every government department has departmental information coordinators whose job it is to provide access to those departments' documents. There is a mechanism for periodic review.

But that's more or less the end of the good news. The Canadian Information Commissioner is an ombudsman, with investigative but not dispositive powers. There is no central Access agency, so unless you know exactly which department to look for a document, you have to make several requests to the various departments that might have the document. The exemptions that allow agencies to refuse access to documents under the Act are too broad; the `Cabinet confidences' exemption, in particular, allows far too much discretion. The exemptions have no expiry; in this respect, the Access to Information Act was actually a step backward from the British law which governed Canadian government documents before this, where documents became available after 30 years except under extraordinary circumstances. As a result, it is very difficult for Canadian researchers to get documents on Canada's military or intelligence operations past the end of WWII.

Worse, the Canadian law is very much focused on accessing individual documents. It leaves the question of opening government documents as one of individual files being opened to individual requesters. This isn't simply a question of there not being a large repository of open records (compare various US government agencies Freedom of Information Act `Reading Rooms'). In Canada's system, one can get access to any particular record with time effort (and only minimal fees), but the `big picture', which may require trolling through many documents, is almost impossible to obtain.

I try to avoid automatically comparing Canadian policies to their American counterparts, but in this case the comparison is instructive. The Canadian and U.S. systems have very different approaches, as an excellent report at the University of Saskatchewan library describes. While the 1966 Freedom of Information Act has its own structural weaknesses -- for instance, the availability of documents is very much subject to the whim of the Executive Branch -- it enshrines a positive right of the citizen to government information, and sets up a central document depository with real teeth that can require government agencies to provide them with information. This is lacking in the Canadian law.

The Canadian Law, written in 1983, has served us relatively well; but it is past time to re-write the law, based on what we've learned from our own experiences and that of other countries. It should be based 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.
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.
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.
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.

This would represent a radical departure from current Canadian practice, but arguably keeping the information of a democratic government from its citizens is a fairly radical tradition to have held this many years.

In fact, I'd go further. In this day and age, we must be aware of the increased importance of electronic documents. Indeed, many mundane government documents such as memos may never really exist in a hardcopy form. Having wide availability to these electronic documents would be of no use at all if Canadian's couldn't access the documents without buying someone's software -- or, worse still, if the company that made the software had long since gone belly-up and nothing was available that could read the files anymore. Because of this, there should be a very strong preference in the government for using Open Source software for creating documents, or, as a bare minimum, documents must be stored in Open Formats. There two important reasons are:

Accessibility: Citizens should be able to access government documents without being required to purchase software from a particular vendor. Open source software, or having the documents saved in format that is openly described, means that documents are never in a mysterious format which cannot be accessed except through WhizzoDoc 2009.
Data Permanence: Ever try to open a Microsoft word (or worse, Powerpoint) document written in a much older version of Word/Powerpoint? Or what happens when WhizzoDoc, Inc goes out of buisness and stops making software? If everyone knows the format a document is in and is free to write software to read that format, this no longer becomes a problem.

(There are lots of great stories about data permanence in the digital age. My favourite: On the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book, an enormous compendium of data of England from 1086, the British government New Domesday Project, with a similar wealth of knowledge of mondern England in computer form that could be used by schools or researchers of mondern England. The new digital `books' were stored on interactive videodiscs to be accessed with the then popular BBC Micro computers. Within 15 years, the new Domesday Books were completely inaccessible (know anyone with a BBC micro and an interactive laser disc player?), while the original domesday book sat in the National Library, accessible to researchers as it has been for 900 years.)

Several governments have made tentative steps in this direction, but so far only Peru has gone fully in the direction of using Open Source or Open Formats exclusively. The case is made for this approach extremely eloquently by a Peruvian congresman in this exchange of letters with Microsoft, who was none to happy with the idea and lobbied hard for the bill to be scuttled. If access to electronic documents is as important as access to physical documents, however, the requirement for open formats becomes quickly necessary.

Canadian government workings need to be as open to public scrutiny as possible; the Access to Information Act does not go nearly far enough to make those workings open. It's time to rewrite the law.

American Religious Groups Attempting to Influence Canadian Same-Sex Marriage Debate

2005-02-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

I got a nasty shock reading articles at Boreal Blog, Great White North, and POGGE this morning.

American religious right leaders -- leaders like James Dobson, who boldly outed Spongebob Squarepants as wickedly attempting to convert American children to gayness -- are no longer content with influencing only American politics. They are sending money and expertise across the border to Canada to influence the same-sex marriage debate here.

There are more serious issues here than whether or not the American religious right will find the characters of Nanlan obscene. There have been many calls for a national debate about equal marriage in Canada. But a national debate does not include foreign actors. This is an issue -- like missile defense, like involvement in wars -- that Canada has to decide for itself if it is a sovereign nation. It is not appropriate for James Dobson to lecture Canada on cabinet solidarity, a long parliamentary tradition which has no equivalent in the United States. Foreign groups have no business printing postcards to send to our MPs any more than they do trying to spend money on Canadian election campaigns.

Canadian religious groups certainly have a right to have their voice heard. In Canada, those groups do not speak with one voice, and they ought all be listened to. But we need to ask ourselves if American religious organizations ought to be allowed to have a voice in our national debate. When these religious groups are considered extreme even by American standards, then there is even more cause to worry.

The `Contact your MP' link on my sidebar remains active. Our MPs need to know that they should only be listening to genuinely Canadian voices in this debate.

Update: The more I think about this, the more disturbed I am by it. Do we really want someone who is proud that ``We have stymied the U.N.'s Treaty on the Rights of the Child, at least to this time'' (The US and Sudan are the only countries not to have signed this treaty) to have a major influence in Canadian politics? Do we want someone who fights to keep the ten commandments in courtrooms influencing our MPs votes? If, after funding one legislative effort, what if they decide to keep going and, as POGGE asks, decide to start targeting the teaching of evolution in Canadian schools?

Update 2: MyBlahg and Crawl Across the Ocean also have posts up.

Street-level Government

2005-02-05T13:51:00.000-05:00

An article by Peter MacLeod in the always interesting Opinion Canada newsletter discusses an important but much-neglected part of our democracy; constituency offices. These less-than-grand storefront presences are the backbone of our federal and provincial systems; they are where we direct our letters and phone calls to tell our representatives how to vote, they are where we visit when we have problems with or need information on government services.

The internet offers a high-tech way of creating public spaces for civic debate and individual participation in the discussion of issues of the day; it also allows for always-on online portals of information about government activities and opportunities. But ultimately, our representative democracy is about real people interacting, and about our MPs/MPPs/MNAs representing our interests in the capital -- both to the Parliament, and to the various agencies which help make the country run. I'm glad to see these less than glamourous branch offices of representative government get their due.

The Stupid Charter	Ezra distributes buttons calling the Charter `stupid'.
Ezra Levant - Superman	Ezra wishes we had accountability like a first-rank nation
Take Canada's Defense Seriously	Ezra says we should `grant him [George W. Bush] our alligiance' by signing up for BMD.