Margin Notes: Names, Changes, and Details

TORONTO, ONTARIO - It seems like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is even worse than other broadcasters in using events in the news as an excuse to play related popular music. Boy George in the news? Run some Culture Club. Something about celebrity theme parks? Run Dolly Parton. Since the 6-August-2009 death of iconic movie director John Hughes, I've lost count of how many times I've heard Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me", used in his movie "The Breakfast Club," after a story on Hughes. Yes, it's a great song--I've had it at #166 in my all-time list, but his other movies had soundtracks. Couldn't someone have played "Holiday Road" by Lindsey Buckingham (from the National Lampoon's Vacation) or Oingo Boingo's title track from "Weird Science"?

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Most of the press coverage (including the CBC) of the New Democratic Party convention in Halifax, Nova Scotia this weekend has focused on the failed motion to re-name the party the "Democratic Party." While for the sake of accuracy, I liked the idea of re-naming it the "Social Democratic Party" instead, but if the desire to keep the NDP initials was strong, a suggestion I heard from a Conservative was to re-name it the "Neo-Communist Dinosaur Party." I guess that would make the former Progressive Conservatives the "Petrified Corporatists." (I was always disappointed that when the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties reunited they didn't adopt the name "Conservative-Reform Alliance Party," or CRAP--which was actually proposed.)

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A new sign went up at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre as viewed from Bremner Boulevard in Toronto, Ontario on 15-August-2009

There may not have been a change in party names in Halifax, but there have been changes near Toronto's waterfront this week. Lower Simcoe Street finally opened underneath the railroad tracks west of Union Station on 14-August-2009, allowing traffic a route to the waterfront between York Street and Spadina Avenues, and just to the west along Bremner Boulevard, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre finally received a clear exterior sign facing south.

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The new playground equipment for Toronto's Roundhouse Park had been installed by 15-August-2009, but the Grand Trunk Railroad didn't exist in 1929

Above portions of the Convention Centre, Roundhouse Park is rapidly approaching its re-opening. Amongst the recent construction milestones was the installation of new playground equipment in the park's southeast corner. Appropriately enough, some of the equipment looks like a locomotive, but the markings are interesting. "GTRR 1929" seems to pay homage to the Grand Trunk Railroad and the 1929 opening date of the John Street Roundhouse, but the Grand Trunk didn't exist in 1929. Apparently, it was simpler legally to use the name of a defunct line rather than still-existing Canadian Pacific that built the roundhouse.

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Ed Freeman, leader of the Heritage Toronto walk through the Deer Park neighbourhood, held up a 1920's picture of the bridges carrying St. Clair Avenue East over Yellow Creek on 16-August-2009

Exploring fine details like that are one of the joys of going on Heritage Toronto walks. Today, I had the pleasure of walking through the Deer Park neighborhood and learning details like where Glenn Gould lived (in the Park Lane Apartments on St. Clair) and where the railings on Avoca Avenue came from (the 1890-era bridge over Yellow Creek, dismantled in the 1920's). More coverage of the walk will be forthcoming in a future post.

Economics: Mackenzie On Why Canada Was Hit

TORONTO, ONTARIO - As fate would have it, the Education Committee of the local Parkdale-High Park New Democratic Party happened to schedule weeks in advance a session about the economy on a night when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and opposition leader Stéphane Dion both appeared on television to make their cases to the Canadian people. Neither of leaders gave a memorable speech or said anything new. The NDP event, on the other hand, featured economist Hugh Mackenzie's views on the current situation, some of which were very informative.

One thing I had never understood about the financial crisis was why, if Canada had a sound banking system unlike the US, there had been (and to some extent, continues to be) a liquidity problem for businesses. Mackenzie pointed that businesses in Canada, like their US counterparts, had long ago stopped relying on lines of credit from their banks for their day-to-day cash needs, and were also participating in the short-term paper market, in which they effectively traded short-term bonds as required overnight to maintain liquidity.

A compelling (at least at the time) reason to use the short-term paper market was that those loaning money could invest in structured investments--which contained other paper assets, which had come to include the bundled bad mortgages from the United States that have played such a central role in the crisis--in order to earn another 1%. When the crisis hit, nobody would buy the structured investments, not knowing what they might hold, and that meant money was no longer being exchanged; the liquidity had run right out of the market.

While the smoke has cleared somewhat, Mackenzie pointed out that the difference between the interbank rate--what banks charge each other for overnight loans--and the corporate loan rate has gone from 20 basis points before the crisis to 1600 points today. That's right, it used to be a 0.2% difference and now it's 16%! It's not hard to imagine how that makes things tough on businesses.

Probably the most amusing story of the night was Mackenzie's recounting of his encounter with the Quebec travel agent who gave away trips to the Caribbean if it snowed on a given day. It had snowed, so he had to provide the trips, but Mackenzie found out that the travel agent didn't care, since he had purchased insurance. What kind? A weather derivative. Mackenzie felt that pretty much proved the case that derivatives are not different than gambling.

People at the meeting were mostly looking for answers of what should be done now, and while Mackenzie did have some suggestions, his real bottom line was not reassuring. Fundamentally, the Canadian economy is too integrated with China's resource needs and the industrial needs of the US to recover on its own. The best that can be done in Canada is to try to be ready to capitalize on the next uptick in the economy when it eventually occurs. He pointed out that the 1981 recession, while deep, was recovered from in about four years because plants were largely kept intact and people laid off. The 1991 recession was not nearly as deep, but recovery took longer. Mackenzie believes that is in large part because plants were shutdown and dismantled. The 2008 recession may be deeper than the 1981 recession, and again plants are being permanently shut down.

In Hugh Mackenzie's opinion, it might be a very long path to recovery.

Politics: When I Knew It Was Lost

TORONTO, ONTARIO - From the earliest returns last night, it was clear that one of the few Liberal pickups in all of Canada was occurring in my home riding of Parkdale-High Park. Gerard Kennedy, longtime Member of Provincial Parliament from the riding, defeated incumbent New Democratic Party Member of Parliament Peggy Nash convincingly, 43% to 36%; it was not close, and ElectionPrediction.org got it entirely wrong, calling it for Nash. While some were surprised at this result, I didn't need to wait for the official count. By mid-afternoon, it becoming obvious that Kennedy would win the election.

Last week, there had actually been a rumor that the Liberals had pulled their campaign forces out of the riding. I have no idea where that rumor came from and never saw any evidence of it--by the end of the week, the Liberals were placing new signs all over the place before the holiday weekend, and apparently a DVD of Kennedy's message was distributed to registered voters on Saturday, but not being a citizen I was not treated to the technological campaigning.

Another rumor that was apparently mostly untrue was that many long-standing Liberal activists from the riding were not organizing for Kennedy, effectively sitting out of the contest. It is true that a number, though certainly not all, of the people canvassing the riding for Kennedy--and serving as scrutineers on Election Day--were from outside the riding.

In contrast, the Peggy Nash campaign was about as grass-roots as a well-organized campaign with a chance to win will ever be. I never met a Nash volunteer that did not live or work in the riding. While her role in opposing Stephen Harper's Conservatives in parliament was certainly recognized and appreciated by her supporters, their tendency was to talk about her local presence first.

The campaigns in some sense reflected this difference. Nash emphasized her accomplishments within the riding, things like keeping the Rennie Rink open and helping to save the Revue Cinema. Kennedy, despite a strong local record during his time with the Food Bank and as MPP, tended to emphasize the importance of stopping Stephen Harper and "preventing [him] from doing to Canada what Mike Harris did to Ontario." Local emphasis came second.

Tactically, the campaigns also diverged. Nash ran a classic, identify-your-supporters-and-make-sure-they-get-to-the-polls campaign. All of the emphasis on Election Day for the NDP was in making certain that their known supporters made it to the polls. The Liberals certainly did the same, but in addition to that, there was a tremendous outreach to undecided voters with campaign materials (the DVD being just an exceptional example) that swamped NDP efforts to do the same. The Liberals appeared to have more money to spend in the riding (it will be interesting to see in the ultimate filings how big the gap actually was), and they weren't afraid to spend it, mostly in the closing days of the campaign when people were actually making their decision.

So how did I, as a volunteer for the Nash campaign, know it was over? After spending the morning knocking on the doors of known Nash supporters in one of the 193 polls that make up the riding, I was resting outside the polling place, waiting for the latest update on which voters had actually arrived to vote. A taxi drove up, and a younger woman assisted an elderly woman to the polls. The NDP would have been prepared to do the same thing for its supporters, but what really struck me was that the Liberal volunteer assisting the woman was someone I hadn't seen before that morning and indeed would not see the rest of the day. The Liberals were clearly leveraging their entire party-wide organization, despite the rumors to the contrary. Whereas the NDP was well-organized and had people assigned to each poll, the Liberals had that, plus a substantial number of floating volunteers. The Liberal juggernaut had been released, and there really wasn't going to be any stopping it.

I kept working, and was substantially successful in my assigned task of getting about sixty Nash supporters to the polls, but I was not surprised to wake up this morning and find that Gerard Kennedy had 20,715 votes to Peggy Nash's 17,330 in a turnout that was rather anemic at 66%, but still better than the national figure of 59%.

One thing that Kennedy and the Liberals should be absolutely complimented on in this campaign is that it was clean. Unlike the last provincial contest, in which NDP candidate Cheri DiNovo was smeared by the provincial Liberals, Kennedy did not personally slam Nash. He simply argued his good points against Nash's, touted the Liberals above the NDP, leveraged his party's campaigning strengths, and won the election.

On CBC Radio One this morning, there was a report that the "Big, Red, Liberal Machine" had rolled through Toronto. Indeed, it did, and it rolled right over Peggy Nash.

Politics: Margin Notes on the Debate and More

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Early in the primary process I actually went on the record as stating that a presidential race between John McCain and Barack Obama would likely be best for the United States, as both were positive, forward-looking individuals who didn't hate each other and offered clearly contrasting visions for the future of the United States that the voters would be able to choose between without the race having to focus on personal attacks. Of course, despite getting that pair of candidates, the race hasn't turned out as I had hoped and there has been more focus on personality and lipstick than substantive issues.

The debate last night, though, reminded me why I had made that statement nearly a year ago. The event was civil, focused on issues, and the contrasts in economic and foreign policy were clearly delineated. Neither candidate overwhelmed the other, and neither damaged himself with a consequential mistake. Voters leaning toward one candidate did not likely change their minds as a result of the debate. Undecided voters looking for guidance should understand their choice clearly now, and that's good for democracy.

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Surprisingly, I think the loser of the debate was moderator Jim Lehrer of the Public Broadcasting Service's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, a show that I listen to regularly. In the past, I have always been impressed with Lehrer, but I thought his attempts to try to get the candidates to engage one another early in the debate were unconstructive. If the candidates want to speak just to the audience with substance, it is not necessary to force them to challenge one another. The best way to handle that kind of situation is to have the moderator follow-up on each candidate's responses. Lehrer did some of that, and made his points rather subtly, but I really longed for the late Tim Russert, whose style would have been perfect for the circumstances.

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It is well known that the #1 song on John McCain's iPod is ABBA's "Dancing Queen". However, after the unconventional behavior McCain engaged in last week, suspending his campaign and saying he wouldn't show up for the debate until a bailout package was completed, then participating in the debate even though no agreement had been reached, it would seem the more appropriate ABBA song is "Take a Chance on Me" (just #3 on McCain's top 10).

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On the "Week in the News" hour from NPR's On Point this week, Jack Beatty speculated that the strange moves by McCain were designed to distract attention from Sarah Palin's poor performance in an interview with CBS News' Katie Couric. After watching that interview, and without any official explanation from the McCain campaign, it is hard to discount that possibility.

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Think an electoral college tie is unlikely? It actually seems possible to me. If John McCain wins the same states as George W. Bush did in 2004, and Barack Obama wins the same states as John Kerry EXCEPT that Obama wins in Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa (each of which is likely at present) and McCain wins in New Hampshire (where he led in the polls earlier this week), that would result in a 269-269 tie. Of course, in 2008, it appears that a tie goes to the Democrats, as the race would go to the House of Representatives, where the Democrats will almost certainly be in control.

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People in my riding of Parkdale-High Park in Toronto are sometimes confused between their Member of Parliament and Member of Provincial Parliament. Both are relatively recently-elected, female, and from their respective New Democratic Parties (the provincial and federal parties are technically different organizations). Yet, the reason for the confusion never really hit home until I saw this picture of MP Peggy Nash and MPP Cheri DiNovo together in this picture from a Nash campaign flier:


In case you're confused, Nash is on the left and DiNovo is on the right.

If the NDP was cloning candidates in the late Baby Boom, I'd like to see them run more of the clones in additional ridings around here.

Politics: Fear Has No Place in Politics

TORONTO, ONTARIO - In an interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC Television's The National last Wednesday, New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jack Layton was asked whether he "feared" a Conservative majority in the House of Commons. To his credit, Layton wouldn't give in to the concept of fear, saying that fear was "not a term I tend to use," though he viewed a Conservative majority as something that "I'm doing everything I can to prevent." Mansbridge followed up, asking him again whether he specifically "feared" a Conservative majority, and Layton expounded on his original response, saying that a Conservative majority was "fundamentally wrong for the planet."

Of course, Layton likely didn't make this statement on principle. Historically, when voters "feared" a Conservative majority, or a Liberal majority, they have run away from the smaller parties and voted for one of the two traditionally-larger parties in hopes that they would be more likely to contain the other party. So, had Layton said that he feared the Conservatives, it would have been interpreted as a tacit endorsement of the Liberals by many voters.

Yet, Layton happened to be correct on principle--voters should never vote on the basis of fear. His statement that "I tend to say we have a better alternative. We've got a future that can be filled with hope and real change" is a much more future-looking, positive statement than telling the voter to fear not voting for his party.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that fear has no place in modern life except in circumstances of actual, immediate physical danger from a violent or potentially violent criminal. Fear evolved as an emotion to make human beings take extremely conservative (in the literal sense of that word) decisions when there was a threat to their family. Before civilization, there were many threats that could result in the deaths of the entire family if humans did not heed noises in the night or encounters with previously-unknown things in the environment, from new plant species to people from other places.

When fear is invoked, freedom of action is inhibited. The external threat intimidates the person feeling fear. The fearful person no longer cares about their own personal wishes, they simply give in to the intimidation for survival's sake. In some cases, the fearful person may instead react violently, taking overly-aggressive action in attempt to stomp out the threat instead of giving in to it. In neither case does the person act in a rational way.

Today, those reading this message live in a very different environment, a complicated society that protects its members from external threats. It may occasionally fail in these protections, usually because of political incompetence. A properly-functioning government keeps crime under control, for example, and warns its residents about impending natural disasters, then helps them recover afterward.

In this kind of society, there is really no place for fear. There is no reason to be intimidated into acting against one's personal interests, and there is no reason to lash out at a threat that is better addressed by the society as a whole. The only exception is an interpersonal criminal situation in which one's person or family is threatened by a criminal temporarily outside of the reach of the society.

Politicians do not need to invoke fear. By trying to incite fear, they are either trying to intimidate the voter away from acting in their best interest, or to cause them to lash out irrationally. Thus, any voter that sees a candidate trying to incite fear should not succumb to that fear. They should instead ask why that politician is trying to intimidate them and question their motivations.

More politicians should make statements like Jack Layton made to Peter Mansbridge last week, refusing to give in to fear and instead offering a positive alternate vision. If voters follow the positive visions, politicians will eventually stop the fear tactics, and that should be the outcome we all desire.

Politics: The Real Threat To Conservatives

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The current flare-up over the Leadership Debates in Canada is revealing that the real threat to the Conservatives in this election is the Green Party, not the Liberals.

I have found the behavior of the party leaders after the decision yesterday by the consortium of networks to exclude Green Party leader Elizabeth May from the Leadership Debates quite revealing. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the leader of the Conservative Party, cited the deal between May and Liberal leader Stéphane Dion to not run opposing candidates in their ridings, claiming May was actually the Liberal candidate in her riding of Central Nova. He went so far as to predict that May would endorse the Liberals before the election is held.

The concept of a party leader with 306 candidates running nationwide abandoning them to endorse another party is absurd, as May quickly pointed out. If the pool of voters that might vote for the Liberals and the Greens was really the same set of people, one would think that Harper would want to encourage the comparatively-small Greens to take votes away from the Liberals and make the task of creating a Conservative plurality easier. Since he isn't doing that, there must be some other motivation.

Could it be that Harper is actually worried about the Greens taking away votes from Conservatives? The only party leader that publicly called for May's participation in the debates, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, doesn't seem concerned. The Green Party's historic emphasis on the environment shouldn't appear especially attractive to a Liberal, as Dion has proposed the Green Shift carbon taxing scheme that moves in the same direction as desired by the Green Party, one of the reasons that Harper cited in claiming they were really the same party. Yet, why would a Liberal-leaning voter jump ship to the Greens on the basis of the environmental policies when the Liberals have a similar policy and would seem to be in a better position to actually be elected and implement the policy?

Similarly, a NDP-leaning voter would seem to have little reason to shift to the Greens. The NDP has a different perspective on the way to address climate change, calling for a cap-and-trade arrangement on carbon emissions instead of a carbon tax, but leader Jack Layton often speaks about prioritizing the environment and indeed spent most of Monday critizing the environmental condition of the province of Alberta. But, again, even if a NDP-leaning voter strongly preferred a carbon tax to cap-and-trade, why would that voter defect to the Greens and not the Liberals? Layton's opposition to having May in the debates seems to be much more likely rooted in keeping protest votes that are not environmentally motivated from going to the Greens, a position that is nearly indefensible for a party that itself often begs for attention.

Even the Bloc Quebecois speaks out enough on environmental issues, favoring the Kyoto Protocol and taxing non-renewable resources even if they favor the Hibernia project such that the idea of a voter abandoning the BQ over environmental issues seems absurd.

Yet, if one were a Conservative-leaning voter that had environmental concerns, there would be a reason to defect to the Greens. While Stephen Harper claims that the environment and the economy are at odds, Elizabeth May rejects that thesis and professes that sustainable economics and sustainable environmental policies go hand-in-hand. She has increasingly emphasized sustainable economics, including in a recent interview with CBC's "The Current". This provides a reason for Conservatives to consider the Greens--they can maintain their fiscal responsibility and not claim that it's impossible to do and keep the economy going. Furthermore, one look at the European economy seems to imply that May's vision might actually be achievable.

I have yet to personally meet a former Liberal or NDP supporter that has switched to the Greens. On the other hand, I know several former Conservatives, particularly former Progressive Conservatives, that are looking closely at the Greens or have started to look at them. I suspect that's the real reason Harper opposes and Dion supports Elizabeth May's inclusion in the Leadership debates.

The public reaction to the exclusion of Elizabeth May from the debates has been substantially negative. It should be. The real standard for inclusion in the debates should be electing a member of parliament from that party (by which indeed the Greens would not qualify on the basis of Blair Wilson's change of affiliation) OR by running candidates in at least (say) 90% of the ridings across the country (by which the party does qualify). If a party is organized enough to be running candidates across the entire nation, it has a voice that deserves to be heard at the Leadership debates. To my knowledge, this standard would only add the Greens to the present debates, not any of the other Federally-registered parties that at most have fielded a handful of candidates across the country, usually in regional or urban clusters.

If the policies of Conservatives, Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc are defensible, then they should be able to promote them in a debate, whether Elizabeth May is there promoting the Green Party or not. Harper, Layton, and the Bloc's Gilles Duceppe should be ashamed for causing her to be excluded from the national forum.

Politics: Canadian Election Expectations

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This post may read to some as advocacy of the NDP or the Greens, but I believe that misses the point. What I'm really talking about is rejecting expectations--usually set by rival parties--and actually looking at what a party may do in the future. Fundamentally, elections are supposed to be about the future, are they not?

Nothing frustrates me more than to hear someone say "the NDP will never form a government" or "the Greens will never form a government." The odds might be quite long, and perhaps there are good reasons to not want them to form a government, but dismissing the possibility of any party running candidates all across Canada taking power is not healthy thinking, in my opinion.

In a general election, every seat in the House of Commons is up for grabs. If a party is running candidates in each riding, they conceivably can form a government. Believing that they cannot just makes it more likely that they won't--and results in defeatist, US-style politics.

Canada doesn't suffer from nearly the incumbent inertia experienced in the United States. Canadians actually "throw the bums out" when desired, and there should be pride in this ability and tradition--and a recognition that this means anything can happen.

If the NDP didn't believe this, could they have recruited Thomas Mulcair to win in Outremont?

I am not saying that the history of a party does not matter. I hold my suspicions of the Liberals and the Conservatives based on their past governments (I'd cite other parties, but they haven't formed governments lately) just like everyone else. If you believe Stephen Harper lied egregiously in this past minority government, that Stéphane Dion broke a promise by proposing a carbon tax, that Jack Layton hasn't shown adequate leadership in parliament, or that Elizabeth May engaged in back-room dealing the the Liberals, then those might be good reasons not to vote for their parties. The past performance of individuals does matter, and the people that they bring with them does matter.

But, I don't understand why many Liberals didn't give Stéphane Dion a chance. Sure, he had some baggage, especially in Quebec. Yet, I listened to the candidate speeches during the 2006 Liberal Party convention, and I found that Dion--and, indeed, most of the Liberal candidates--articulated a cohesive, electable vision. Just the same, since he won that leadership race all we hear are complaints about him being too professorial, too weak, unable to win, and so on. The pre-conceived notions of Dion have dominated the media. Almost nobody has seemed to care about what he could do moving forward.

Yet, I look at the actual record and don't see the evidence. Many fault me for being too tolerant of pragmatic practicing of Machiavellian politics, but did it really make sense for Dion to show "strength" by bringing down the Conservatives in 2007 when the appetite for an election was even lower than it is now? Is an energy policy not all that different than what Al Gore wanted to propose in the early Clinton administration really too "professorial"?

Lest this seem like a defense of the left-wing parties, Stephen Harper has clearly been a victim of perception and expectations in the past. Who believed that he could govern the country from a minority position for more than two years? Even within the Conservative party, there seemed to be skepticism of his ability to be viewed as a leader. Now, every poll seems to show him regarded as the strongest leader. If all voters believed the nay-saying, would Harper have gotten the chance he has received to prove these expectations wrong?

Elections need to be about the future, not the past. I advocate throwing away the common perceptions and expectations, taking a careful look at what the candidates (and by that, I mean in a riding as well as at the party leadership level) are saying, evaluating their ability to deliver what they promise in the future, and then making a decision. It might not be the same decision made based on what "everyone" is saying.

If each Canadian actually did that, there might be a lot of expectations proved false and perceptions changed in Canada. Furthermore, I'm not so certain the beneficiaries would be the NDP and the Greens--it might well be the Liberals or even the Conservatives. After all, having expectations would be contrary to this post.