Margin Notes: Pirates, Police, Duceppe, Calendar

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Just about everyone has heard about the increasingly bold attacks by Somali pirates to take over just about any type of ship off the eastern coast of Africa. What I cannot believe that I had not heard until reading an opinion piece by Katie Stuhldreher in the Christian Science Monitor was that the whole piracy crisis started with violation of local fishermen's rights by foreign fishing vessels. Of course, a Somalia with a functioning, legitimate, and adequately powerful government is a pre-requisite to returning the region to some degree of normalcy, but I had no idea how the pirates' self-legitimacy was traced to loss of fisheries.

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This exhibit at Toronto's Police Museum on 5-December-2008 introduced the visitor to cannabis paraphernalia

I checked out anti-crime measures on a much more local level this week by going to the Toronto Police Museum on College Street between Bay and Yonge. This was a worthwhile visit, as amongst other things I learned that the Toronto Police first used a one-way radio in 1935, and had two-way radios starting in 1946, which both struck me as quite early. Other highlights included an early semaphore-like traffic signal and a 1920's-era jail cell.

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Another thing I finally did in my third holiday season in the Toronto area was to take the Neighborhood Bus Tour of the Cavalcade of Lights. I don't recommend doing it--just walk down Yonge Street, through Yorkville, and around Nathan Phillips Square, and the majority of the lights on the tour will be seen. The tour guide I had didn't even provide any notable quotations.

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The quote of the week had to go Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, who may be the only leader who will come out of the current political crisis strengthened in any way. Asked about whether he would support a Conservative budget in January, Duceppe stated (in English), "Well, if my grandma had wheels, she'd be a tractor." Apparently, this is a French saying to point out the absurdity of a premise. Duceppe's grandmother didn't have wheels, and the Conservative budget won't be supported by the Bloc.

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Speaking of Duceppe, much has been made about the fact that Canadians outside Quebec do not have the opportunity to vote for his party. I would like to see someone run a poll to find out how many people WOULD vote for a Duceppe-led party outside of Quebec. I would not be surprised if there would be a measurable amount of people that would look past the separatist portion of his beliefs and decide that Duceppe is a more realistic and effective proponent for social justice than the Liberals or even Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party.

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Layton and Liberal leader Stéphane Dion appeared together at the pro-coalition rally in Toronto on Saturday. One wonders when Dion's final public appearance as a party leader will be. As Chantal Hébert stated on The National, "Cats may have nine lives, but Stéphane Dion has nine deaths." He might only be on number four or five, though my count is closer to twelve.

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Twelve, of course, being the number of months in a year. It's time to think about calendars for the year 2009. While I recommend supporting groups such as the Friends of the 4449 steam locomotive or the Swansea Historical Society in Toronto by purchasing their calendars, I do make my own railroad calendar each year with a photograph for each month that I took in that same month of the preceding year. My 2009 calendar is finished and a preview is available. If you'd like one, contact me and I'll make sure you're in on the less expensive bulk order. It was a little weird to find my 2008 calendar essentially everywhere I went on my November trip to Washington state.

Politics: Only the Liberals are Shaky

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I wanted to substantially avoid Canadian politics for awhile since parliament is prorogued until late January, but there is a point that needs to be made. All this material about the "coalition" falling apart is not precisely correct--what is really falling apart is the Liberal Party itself. Sound familiar?

Like it or not, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois aren't likely to withdraw from their arrangements with respect to the coalition on their own volition. For the NDP, this is not just a chance to remove the Conservatives and Stephen Harper from power, but a chance to actually do some governing as part of the coalition. After being demonized as separatists (and falsely called part of the coalition) by the Conservatives, the Bloc has no interest in anything that could be construed as helping the Conservatives.

The only party that might pull out of the coalition is the Liberals, and that's what Liberal Member of Parliament Jim Karygiannis really meant when he said yesterday that he "cannot see it holding together" until the end of the year. The antecedent of "it" in his sentence was clearly supposed to be the coalition, but the coalition isn't changing unless the Liberals initiate it.

The problem, just as it was in the last election campaign, is that the Liberal party seems utterly incapable of rallying behind present leader Stéphane Dion. While I have long had difficulty understanding the internal rejection, it is clear that the Dion response to Harper's statement on Wednesday night--which some have dubbed the "Blair Witch Project" speech for its poor production values--didn't help Dion's standing. While the Prime Minister wasn't exactly impressive that night, Dion looked less polished than most high school student body presidents.

Furthermore, if the October election had a clear conclusion, it was that Dion had been rejected by Canadian voters. The Liberals were the only party to lose seats and their percentage of the vote was the lowest in the party's history. If anyone lacks a mandate to govern, it is Stéphane Dion, and that is the main substance of the argument that the coalition would be illegitimate which I happen to agree with. Change the leader of the coalition, especially to Michael Ignatieff, and suddenly a lot of people are much more comfortable about the idea.

When people like Jim Karygiannis say that the coalition will not last through the prorogation, what they are really saying is that Dion will not last as the coalition leader or as Liberal Party leader through the prorogation. It seems extremely likely that Dion will be replaced, and while that might open the door for the coalition to break up, that is not a foregone conclusion.

A Liberal leadership race is already underway, one that was supposed to finish in May. Instead, the Liberals will probably find a way to choose between Ignatieff, Bob Rae, and Dominic LeBlanc as soon as possible. One assumes that LeBlanc, as the least known of the three, is unlikely to come out the winner. Between Rae and Ignatieff, there is a clear calculus. If Rae wins, there is the distinct possibility that more centrist MP's in the Liberal Party may cross the aisle and join the Conservative Party, giving the Conservatives a majority (this may happen anyway, but that's a topic for another day, and it is certainly more likely if Rae, a former NDP member, were to become leader). If Ignatieff were to become the leader, Rae supporters would have nowhere to go. For this reason, I expect Ignatieff to become Liberal Party leader, and thus the leader of the Coalition.

Ignatieff has seemed lukewarm about the coalition, particularly in light of negative poll numbers towards it, so it is possible that he might pull the plug on it, assuming the Conservatives are smart and present a reasonable budget in January (which I used to think was a given, but in light of the past few weeks, I wouldn't put anything past Harper). If the coalition does still exist and votes down the government, there is no way the Governor General will not call an election, considering that Prime Minister Harper will request it and one of the parties has a new leader. If the coalition folds and the Conservative government survives, then the next time the Conservatives overreach like they did in the Fiscal Update, the government will fall then and an election will be called.

The bottom line? I expect Michael Ignatieff will become the leader of the Liberal Party as soon as the party can figure out how to do it. Then, one way or another, there will be another election, and how that one turns out will have mostly to do with how the Conservatives and Stephen Harper behave between now and then.

Politics: Liberal Horses

TORONTO, ONTARIO - In the 30-September-2008 episode of the CBC Television satire show "This Hour Has 22 Minutes", comedian Geri Hall made fun of an apparent demographic focus by the Conservatives on single women by "chasing after" Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion. I doubt Harper was harmed or helped by the encounter; he looked modestly stiff (this is Stephen Harper, after all) and upon prodding did play along with the joke by speaking in a robotic voice. On the other hand, I suspect Dion might have been helped somewhat by the piece, in which he donned sunglasses and a leather jacket and stated "Hasta la vista, Stephen." While his earnestness certainly wasn't hidden, he seemed to be enjoying the whole thing--indeed, having fun with it--a lot more than Harper, counter to the professor stereotype with which he has been saddled. Once more, the thought went through my mind--why won't the Liberals rally behind this man?

Ever since the December 2006 Liberal Party convention at which he unexpectedly was elected party leader over favorites Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, Dion has had trouble unifying the party. Despite placing his rivals in prominent positions within the party, there have been persistent stories of Rae and Ignatieff supporters undermining his leadership. The Conservatives capitalized on his perceived weak position and his relative difficulty with the English language with an advertising campaign that has left the image of a shrugging, ineffective Dion burned in the public mind. On any call-in talk show talking about the Federal election, there will be at least one caller saying, "Dion just isn't a leader."

The image seems to stand in contrast to the Dion that has appeared publicly during the campaign. During both the French and English language debates, Dion made strong debating points, threw significant accusations at Stephen Harper and Jack Layton, and seemed little like his professorial image. In most polls, he "won" the French debate. His opinions tend to be quite forward-looking, yet are not devoid of immediate political concerns--comments on my previous post on electoral reform revealed that Dion has actually supported an intellectually superior system, but seems to be talking about a lesser reform for political reasons. In interviews across the country, he has demonstrated a deep grasp of issues, whether one agreed with his opinions or not--and presumably, almost all Liberals do agree.

Recently, I asked my barber to explain to why Dion had such trouble getting respect. "I'll tell you what's wrong with Dion," he said. "There were two stallions running for election, and a bunch of ponies. The stallions were so focused on each other, that they didn't notice the ponies getting together and electing a pony. Dion is that pony; he is not a stallion."

It would be one thing for the Liberals to abandon Dion if a clear successor "stallion" was waiting in the wings. Some may feel otherwise, but I don't see one. Rae, who had finished second in the original ballot in the 2006 convention, has the burden of his record as NDP Premier of Ontario in the 1990's. One of the first things I learned about upon moving to the province was "Rae Days," an austerity measure in which public employees were given ten unpaid days off per year. To this day, Rae is ridiculed for that and other actions as premier. With a worst-case scenario in this election in which the Liberals may have few seats outside of Ontario, having a party leader with fundamental issues growing a coalition in the party's remaining stronghold could conceivably be a near death-knell for the Federal party that many delegates would likely try to avoid.

Current Deputy Leader and leader on the first-round ballot in 2006, Michael Ignatieff may not have any such political baggage, but he may not even be re-elected to parliament. In his Etobicoke—Lakeshore riding, just across the Humber River from my residence, Conservative Patrick Boyer is making an issue of the fact that Ignatieff lives in Yorkville instead of the riding and by my observation is winning the lawn sign game.

Fourth-place finisher Gerard Kennedy, currently running as the Liberal candidate in my own riding of Parkdale-High Park, is far from guaranteed to win election himself as he has taken on popular NDP incumbent Peggy Nash. Even if he does pull out a victory, he faces the same Rae and Ignatieff forces that have undermined Dion, as he is ideologically similar to Dion, with only the added advantages of native English speaking and a lack of political baggage in Quebec. Similarly, any other candidate will face the same Rae and Ignatieff forces that have so weakened Dion.

So, in my opinion, there is no clear "stallion" out there to take over. And, in the absence of such a figure, I don't understand why any Liberal would want Dion to falter. Then again, I'm not a Liberal, and maybe that's why I don't understand.