NDP And Free Trade

Even though it never gets that many votes, there’s no question in my mind that the NDP has been a major bonus to the Canadian political scene. The amount of positive ideas that this party has presented and defended is just staggering. Medicare, women’s rights, social safety, affordable housing, and the list goes on.

But unfortunately, their views are sometimes overly simplistic and ignorant of economic reality. That is the case in one of their most recent fights: killing the negotiations for a free-trade agreement with South-Korea.

Free-trade isn’t always a good thing; we’ve had plenty of examples of that with NAFTA. As is normally the case with commercial agreements, there are winners and losers. But a trade barrier is a trade barrier, and in a globalizing world, there’s increasing evidence that they’re bad for the economy. The more countries there are competing (globalization means that number will increase rapidly), the more a small edge becomes important. And if Canadian firms lose their edge in Korea to other countries with free-trade agreements, such as the US, the economy will ultimately be hurt. This may be a gross simplification, but it’s what the economists are saying.

The NDP just doesn’t understand. The mere thought of auto jobs being lost to the Koreans is too much to handle, even though free trade would be good for the economy. That’s the trouble with having your heart in the right place: it sometimes makes you irrational.

New Plan?

When I first heard about the Conservative government’s plan to cut GHG emissions by 18 percent by 2020, I was actually quite impressed. It was astounding to see a party go from global warming denial to a real plan, especially when that plan seemed better than anything the Liberals had ever proposed.

But those were simply first impressions. As I started reading about this "new deal", I grew increasingly uneasy about the way the whole issue was being handled by the Conservatives. A few things made me especially mad, and have now convinced me once and for all that this government is simply not up to the task when it comes to the Environment.

The first problem is a purely practical one, which put back into question the actual validity of the plan, and which was raised by Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson in this morning’s paper. Namely: carbon emissions don’t have a price.

Putting a price tag on carbon emissions is absolutely essential for a long term solution, because otherwise, the plan needs to rely on successive governments to enforce it, which is highly unlikely to happen once the environment hype dies down. It is also a key to integrating the environment into the economy, which should be one of the government's top priorities.

But to be frank, the Conservative government actually seems committed to doing just the opposite. This is because it's whole ideology and policy is based upon a natural opposition between the environment and the economy, an opposition which even in the short term, doesn’t necessarily exist. But by spreading that impression, it can hope to be able to get away with minimal reductions by simply invoking an economic slowdown as an excuse.

Anyway, I’ll finish by pointing out that Germany is now planning a 40 percent GHG reduction by 2015. You can choose to make excuses, but the truth of the matter is, this new plan doesn’t have much new in it, and it makes Canada look just as dismal on the world stage.

Credibility

The Conservative attack ads have been mildly successful. They had a clear increase in the polls, but one could argue that the volatility of public opinion makes it meaningless.

But I think it they could have been extremely effective. What saved the Liberals was Dion. His apparent sincerity and principle allowed him to “rise above” the ads. Let’s be clear: Ignatieff wouldn’t have had a hope.

Well Dion seems keen on falling back down to those ads’ level.

On CTV’s Question Period he told his audience that he was considering running “contrast ads” attacking Harper on his broken income trust decisions. So basically, after telling Canada he “didn’t want to go that low”, he’s thinking of running attack ads.

Hardly a way of keeping your credibility.

Présidentielle 1

Ok, c’est terminé, les Français ont voté. Plus que trois autres élections (2 tours de législatives et 1 autre de présidentielle), et leur sort sera de nouveau fixé pendant cinq longues années.

Comme l’a si bien dit Jamel Debouze, ils ont maintenant le choix entre « Cendrillon et Joe Dalton ». L’un est un petit homme malhonnète et avide de pouvoir, l’autre est une jolie femme qui ne sait que faire sauf sourire. Les deux semblent avoir suivi les cours d’économie du Schtroumpf Financier.

Le pire, c’est qu’il y avait un candidat crédible, François Bayrou, qui semblait vouloir s’attaquer de façon responsable au piètre état de l’économie. Un candidat qui ne proposait pas de combattre le chômage en allongeant la journée de travail ou la dette en augmentant les dépenses. Mais pour le Français moyen qui vote (car les jeunes des banlieues ne votent pas), 9% de chômage et une dette de 1200 milliards d’euros, c’est moins important qu’une retraite à 55 ans et un emploi à vie.

C’est malheureux, mais il faut le dire : « Français, vous n’avez rien compris ».

Sack O’Connor NOW

I’m not saying that the mission in Afganistan is wrong, but if Harper wants to have any chance of selling it to Canadians, he better get rid of his incompetent Defence Minister: General O’Connor.

Once you’re finished reading these quotes, you’ll agree.

Mr. Speaker, our soldiers are the best equipped in NATO. Other nations come to see our equipment and they admire the equipment we have. We have provided the very best equipment to our soldiers.

Great, we are best equipped country in NATO. Even the US Army can't match our firepower!

…or not: “we are committed to rebuilding the armed forces and providing our soldiers, sailors and airmen in Afghanistan with all the equipment they need to survive and to be safe.”

"The president of the Red Cross also said that basically our procedures are absolutely spotless. He's quite pleased with what we do with prisoners."

Oooops, the Red Cross has a well known policy of not telling governments anything about the prisoners it treats. Michael Ignatieff even wrote a chapter about it in one of his books! The Liberals will obviously guess that this was a lie.

Sure enough, a few weeks later: "I fully and without reservation apologize to the House for providing inaccurate information for members."

Get the message Mr. Harper? Sack him. Even your personal taxpayer funded stylist wouldn’t be able to make you look that good!

Infrastructure

So our country’s little darling, RIM, has just had a screw up. Ah well, given the state of the company’s infrastructure, it was bound to happen at some point in time. It really was negligent to channel almost all of the Western hemisphere’s messaging traffic through a single center in Waterloo. One would have though that a firm as wise and business-savvy as RIM would have avoided this kind of a crisis by giving proper infrastructure the investment if deserves. I guess even the best of us make mistakes.

Though the share prices seem to have withstood the storm (for now), short-term Blackberry sales will obviously be affected and the trust of current users in RIM may be hurt.

This leads me to think of another story.

Last September, the Viaduc de la Concorde in Laval collapsed, killing 5 people and injuring 6 others. The media was quick to follow up on the tragedy by revealing that a large number of other viaducts and bridges all through Quebec were danger of collapsing, all because of underinvestment in infrastructure on the part of the Quebec Liberal government. This contributed strongly to its poor showing in the recent provincial elections.

So here’s the message: infrastructure might not win you votes or new customers, but it could easily cost you them.

Foreign Consulates

My family and I have been spending a wonderful year in Paris. The city is beautiful, the weather is good and I’M ON HOLIDAY!!! I really find it scary to think that had we not already committed ourselves to Paris by last July, this experience might never have happened.

To settle in France for the year, we all had to obtain a visa from the French consulate of Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, which was located in Toronto. As is the custom in that country, the consulate’s website was totally inadequate and my father had to spend hours on the computer to establish whether or not my brother and I had to be present in the consulate for our visa attribution.

To cut a long story involving typically difficult French bureaucracy and bad information short, he ended up making the five hour trip to Toronto on his own, only to discover that my brother and I had indeed needed to be present.

You can imagine his fury: he called up my mom to tell her that he simply couldn’t face a year in this crazy country and that the family was better off spending its sabbatical somewhere else! I’ll say it again, had we not already committed, we might never have gone.

This whole story would have been a minor issue if there had been a consulate office in Ottawa, but the French government had decided to shut it down a few years earlier, cutting the total number down to five. But I can’t help to think that with time, the number of individuals and small businesses which will have gotten so fed up with the consulates that they will have given up on their plans of traveling or doing business in France will end up costing the French economy more than a few consulates.

Anyway, all of this to say that Canada’s Conservative government should not make the same mistake by closing 19 consulates across the world, including two in Japan and one in Milan.

L'après-midi du hockey

Vous ne le saviez peut-être pas, mais la deuxième partie de hockey de la série opposant les Sénateurs d’Ottawa aux Pingouins de Pittsburgh se jouera ce samedi à 15h et non pas à 19h.

Et la soirée du hockey???

Ah oui, c’est vrai, la soirée du hockey se déroulera un peu plus tôt que prévu, mais la ligue n’avait malheureusement pas le choix. Vous voyez, NBC n’acceptait de diffuser la partie que si elle se déroulait l’après-midi, et bien que la ligue lui offre les droits de diffusion gratuitement, NBC est implanté aux EU et ses désirs sont par conséquent des ordres.

On aurait pu penser que la CBC, qui vient de signer un contrat de 100 millions avec la ligue pour les droits de diffusion des équipes canadiennes, aurait son mot à dire, mais bien évidemment, comme elle est implantée au Canada, elle est totalement ignorée.

Hé, mais c’est pas juste.

Non, ce n’est pas juste, mais pour que la CBC se fasse écouter, il lui faudrait des moyens de pression, et malheureusement, elle n’en a pas. Elle n’en a pas car, quoi que fasse la ligue, les Canadiens continueront à aimer le hockey et elle continuera par conséquent à acheter les droits de diffusion. C’est bien malheureux, mais le jour où la ligue se souciera de l’intérêt des Canadiens, ces derniers l’auront oubliée.

Disgusting

I am disgusted.

Canada’s unelected Minister of Public Works, Michael Fortier, has just announced the hiring of an “independent adviser” to investigate the polling contracts of the previous Liberal government. This “independent adviser”, Mr. Daniel Paillé, happens to be a former Quebec cabinet minister in a separatist PQ government. But, although one can legitimately question the Conservative government’s motivations for hiring a separatist to investigate a matter that some call the last chapter of the sponsorship scandal, Mr. Paillé’s political affiliation is not what disgusts me. After all, he’s still a Canadian citizen with the right qualifications, which is enough.

What disgusts me is the very nature of the job. Mr. Paillé is being paid around $1000 a day (+office and staff) to conduct an investigation into a matter that has already been covered by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser (who’s name Paillé had to be reminded of by the media). Why would the Coservatives want to spend taxpayer dollars on an investigation which had already been undertaken by the Auditor-General?

Let me give you some clues:
-the report’s release is set to coincide with a possible autumn election.
-unlike Justice Gomery, Mr. Paillé has no legal obligations so his report can be partisan or manipulated by the government
-it re-creates the buzz of the sponsorship scandal

This scheme may or may not backfire, but at the moment, I sincerely hope it does.

Trust: the Bottom Line

In Canada, we have this wonderful document called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees fundamental rights and freedoms to all Canadians, regardless of race, age or sex. Over time, it has become the best recourse for minorities who feel unfairly treated by either public or private institutions. These minorities can count on a sound and impartial interpretation of the Charter, because that task falls to the courts, which are comprised of highly qualified judges, selected on the basis of merit.

Sometimes, the verdicts are surprising and controversial, to say the least, but they are always accepted by the Canadian public because it feels confident that the charter is properly and impartially interpreted.

Now, imagine what would happen if ordinary Canadians with no background in law started picking the judges, in other words, imagine what would happen if judges were elected.

One doesn’t have to look any further than the US for an answer: Judges (who might not even be fully qualified) would go on expensive election campaigns, make bold promises (which would often be in contradiction with the law itself) to their electorate and often end up breaking them. Hey, doesn’t that look like a familiar job description. Yes, it’s the job description of a politician!

Now here’s my question: Do most Canadians trust politicians? NO

As a matter of fact, a CTV poll showed that only 14 percent of Canadians trusted politicians. Contrast that with judges, who are trusted by 78 percent of Canadians.

This trust of judges usually means that even their most controversial decisions are accepted, thus keeping the justice system fair, and effective. Now imagine if only 14 percent of Canadians trusted judges. Would controversial verdicts still be accepted and enforced, and if not, would the judges still have the guts to make them?

We all know that if judges were elected, there would no doubt be some abuse of the justice system by the electorate, and the position would also become financially restrictive as they would be required to go on expensive campaigns. But some people would still prefer to those “drawbacks” to a system of unelected and thus unaccountable judges. The issue of trust however, is more than a drawback.

If the courts are not trusted by the public, their decisions will not always be accepted by most Canadians, which will lead to a loss of credibility and thus of power to enforce decisions. But a fair and strong court is both the foundation of a proper democracy and of a just society. If judges were to lose our trust and thus the power to enforce their decisions, like in developing countries, we would be opening the door to all sorts of corruption and terrible abuse.

Who Cares?

When I heard about the mistakes in the French text on the Vimy Ridge Memorial, my first reaction was not anger but mild annoyance. Were French spelling mistakes on national monuments a rare occurrence, I would no doubt have been extremely angry, but it happens so often that it was simply another news item on the Globe’s front page. After all, it wouldn’t have been the first time: a few days before the new War Museum’s official opening ceremony, syntax errors were discovered in the windows which were supposed to spell “n’oublions jamais” in Morse code.

This is a bad sign.

Basically, a francophone such as myself is so used to the government making spelling mistakes all over the map that he’s only mildly annoyed when some are discovered on the Vimy Ridge Memorial.

But now, after giving some though to the matter, I’m angry. I’m angry because the mistakes have been there for twenty years and have no doubt been signalled to the government, yet they had to wait until a Radio-Canada reporter made the story national news before acting. In other words, they knew about the situation, but were so cynical and unconcerned that they waited until the news made the front page before fixing things.

When a government is so indifferent about one of our official languages that it puts Anglophone volunteers in charge of translating and reviewing texts into French, and waits twenty years before fixing the mistakes, something is wrong.

Where's Canada's Harvard?

I have a few years ahead of me before I have to start worrying about picking a university, but as I am curious and somewhat apprehensive, I’ve already started doing some basic research.

Though my parents who are both academics often remind me that there is more to a university than its ranking, I still decided to check them out. After after a few minutes of sifting through various ones, the truth dawned upon me: Canadian Universities were not world class.

Sure, UofT and Université de Montréal usually got placed in the high twenties, but both institutions are notorious for being overcrowded and having a bad atmosphere. Why didn’t Canada have a Harvard of its own? After all, Britain is 60 million and has 2-3 top twenties, the US is 300 million and has 15-17 top twenties. Canada being 30 million, shouldn’t it have one?

I know that this is a grossly simplified picture which ignores the structure and historical background of the institutions. But we must remember that while an increasing number of countries are being able to offer basic education, globalization is making it possible for those new workers to compete for traditionally Canadian jobs. The only thing that will set Canadians apart is advanced training, which requires good universities resulting from governmental investment.

It's true that having no top twenty institutions isn't necessarily a symptom of a bad university network, but it's certainly a sign that there' s still room for improvement.

Long Live Westminster 2

This is just a quick follow-up on my Westminster vs. Proportional post. I wanted to quickly talk about the effectiveness of Westminster governments. The nature of the system –parties don’t need a majority of the popular vote to win- means that one party usually ends up with a majority of the seats in the house. This gives it nearly absolute power on decision making for the length of its mandate. In other words, for four years, it can pass nearly any piece of legislation.

Not everyone considers this to be a good thing, but it undeniably makes for a more effective government. In the ever changing world, the capacity for quick response and strong decision making is absolutely crucial. A government needs to be able to pass a bill without having to waste time securing the support of another party.

It also makes it possible for the government to pass unpopular necessary legislation. Sometimes, governments are ahead of the people. They know the necessity of a reform but the majority of voters want to keep things the way they are. A classic example would be Paul Martin’s fight against the national debt. At the time, the cuts he made were unpopular, but Canadians quickly changed their minds once the deficit ended. The government had been ahead.

It would have been a nearly impossible task for that Liberal government had they not had a majority of seats. If given a chance, the other parties would have blocked most reforms in an effort to regain popularity. It should come as no surprise that European countries under proportional representation such as France and Germany have had terrible difficulty getting their debt under control.

I agree that Westminster is fundamentally undemocratic because a party can be in power without the approval of a majority of voters, but I don’t think the objective of our electoral formula should be to create "fair" representation; it should be to create a good government.

Long Live Westminster

There’s a prominent Socialist Party member in France called Laurent Fabius. He was appointed France’s youngest Prime-Minister in 1984 by then President François Mitterrand, and was recently in the race for the Socialist Party presidential nomination. Not only is this man the epitome of sleaziness and dishonesty, he was also a bad Prime-Minister. During his tenure, both the Rainbow Warrior and tainted blood scandals took place.

Svend Robinson was an extremely successful MP. Elected six times to ridings in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, he was an advocate for a number of important issues and was the first Member of Parliament to admit his homosexuality. Unfortunately, in 2004 he stole a $21,500 ring from an auction house while he was serving in office. He immediately returned it, but the damage was done. He decided to take a medical leave of absence as he was suffering from bipolar disease, and also stepped aside as NDP candidate for the 2004 election.

In last year’s election, Robinson re-entered politics by running for the NDP in the riding of Vancouver Center. He lost by a large margin. Had he run before his theft, he would have stood an excellent chance, but Vancouver Center voters just weren’t prepared to vote in a man who had stolen an expensive ring.

If we had to compare the positive impact of Fabius and Robinson, the latter would certainly come out on top. Yet Fabius remains an influential politician while Robinson has had to quit public life.

This says a lot about Westminster vs. proportional representation. Had Robinson lived in France like Fabius, he would simply have completed his community service hours and gone on living his normal life, because he would have stayed among the first on the NDP’s list. Instead, he has had to quit politics and get a job working for the BC government.

This really speaks in favour of our current system. Though it is sad that a man like Robinson, who had given so much to his community, saw his political career end, it is still a much better outcome than a crook like Fabius staying in office despite numerous errors and scandals.
With the Westminster system, everyone is accountable, even the Leader (just ask Jean Charest who nearly lost his seat despite his party winning the election).

To have a fair democracy, you have to be able to get the crooks out, even if they are first on their party’s list.