Coalition

The last few days have been simply surreal.

At any rate, according to the CBC, a tentative deal has now been struck between the Liberals and NDP to form a coalition government. The government would last exactly two and a half years, the Prime minister, deputy Prime minister and Finance minister would all be Liberals.

The Conservatives have launched an all-out media blitz to turn public opinion against the coalition, but they are effectively powerless to prevent it since the opposition have a majority of seats in the House. It's therefore up to the Liberals (since the NDP is strongly in favour of the coalition) to decide whether they really want to take power at the beginning of an economic storm or instead let the conditions destroy the Conservative party brand.

As a general rule, it's better to be in government than in opposition, so my guess is that they will stick to the current deal with the NDP. Their task will therefore be to keep the Canadian economy afloat for the next year and half, and hope that the conditions improve before the end of the coalition.

It's very significant that the coalition deal has a precise lifespan attached to it. The Liberals and NDP obviously understand that the next year will be very difficult and want to avoid going to the polls right in the middle of the economic crisis. Actually, if they are lucky, the conditions will start improving in two years and the coalition will be able to take credit for the improvement. Of course, the opposite may happen, but once again, it's always easier to be the governing party.

The last question is of course: who will become Prime minister? I believe that the job should go to Stéphane Dion until a new Liberal leader is picked in May. He was after all elected democratically at the Montreal leadership convention which gives him the right to lead the party until he choses to step down (he has chosen next May). At any rate, if he were prepared to take all of the necessary and unpopular measures needed to confront the economic storm, the public outcry would die down after his departure and his replacement would be able to start governing on a strong economic base. He could therefore be a very useful political asset to the coalition.

Auto Sector

There's been much talk recently about the disastrous state of the U.S. (and therefore Canadian) auto industry. Just this week, the GM CEO said that his company risked bankruptcy in the next 14 days unless the U.S. government agreed to a multi-billion dollar cash injection. Analysts also expect Ford to fail in the next month unless the government steps in.

The U.S. auto sector is a politician's nightmare. It's clearly unproductive and unsustainable, but it controls millions of jobs. In other words: it should fail, but it can't fail.

This cartoon by Gable of the Globe and Mail sums the situation up:

Franco-ontarien

Mon conseil scolaire s'est donné la mission d'encourager chez ses élèves un sentiment d'appartenance à la communauté franco-ontarienne. Il a donc créé un nouveau département (le département de Construction identitaire) pour organiser des activités qui font la promotion de l'identité franco-0ntarienne.

L'objectif ultime de cet exercice n'est évidemment pas de renforcer l'identité franco-ontarienne mais de pousser les jeunes à parler en français. L'idée est simple: si les jeunes sont fiers d'être franco-ontariens, ils choisiront de parler plus souvent en français.

Le seul problème, c'est qu'on ne peut pas être des fiers Franco-Ontariens sans le français. La langue est la pierre angulaire de l'identité franco-ontarienne, est sans français, il n'y a pas de Franco-Ontariens.

Il y a donc un problème de logique. On ne peut pas encourager l'usage du français en essayant de renforcer l'identité franco-ontarienne, puisque cette identité d'existera jamais sans le français.

Le conseil scolaire devrait donc modifier son approche et mettre l'accent sur la langue et non pas sur l'identité. La première étape pourrait être de revoir le curriculum d'enseignement du français pour s'assurer pour s'assurer qu'il soit aussi exigeant que le curriculum québecois.

Note: j'ai parlé uniquement de mon conseil scolaire mais la situation est valable partout en Ontario.

The .isms

I have to participate this Thursday in a discussion which will be partly about the theme of multiculturalism in Canada. I'd therefore like to use this opportunity to test an idea.

Consider this question: Does a country’s choice of an integration policy really have a serious long term social impact? Does adopting multiculturalism rather than pluriculturalism, republicanism or the American melting pot system mean anything truly significant in the long term?

I have a feeling that it means much less that we often assume. Why? Because only the first generation of immigrants are significantly affected by their new country’s integration policy. The second generation, with a few much publicized exceptions, is born in the new country and inevitably takes that country’s culture. It doesn't matter to them whether it is multicultural, pluricultural, unicultural or anything else. That new country is their homeland its culture is theirs.

Canadians are very good at finding anecdotes to support the claim that multiculturalism is divisive. There point to the isolated Sikhs of Brampton, the Canadian-born Islamic terrorists whose disinterest in (or hate of) Canada can be apparently attributed to the government funding of their cultural events.

This logic might make sense if other countries in the world with opposite integration policies didn’t have exactly the same issues.

Take the U.S.: They are supposed to adhere to the “melting-pot” vision, yet they have many home-grown terrorists (many of which are white skinned) and were also the first to rename the Christmas tree to Holiday Tree. This is not something you’d expect from the country of the melting pot.

France is even more serious. It is supposed to be a republican country of one nation, one people, yet there are about 8 million resentful ethnic North-Africans detached from mainstream society living in the suburbs of Paris and Marseilles. It’s hardly one nation, one people.

It seems to me that the impact of integration policies is greatly overblown. They don’t seem to alter the nature of societies in practice the way they do on paper. In my mind, they’re much more about making new immigrants feel welcome and accepted than about changing the construction of society. In that regards, I would say that multiculturalism is a success because it makes it easier for first generation immigrants to keep alive traditions that are so important to their sense of identity and belonging.

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Cette chronique d'André Pratte montre que l'ADN et the Front national de Le Pen ont beaucoup de choses en commun...

Je veux aussi mentionner, pour ceux qui ne sont pas au courant de la nouvelle, que Poutine et Medvedev ont trouvé le moyen de modifier la Constitution russe de façon à guarantir qu'ils seront au pouvoir pendant les 26 prochaines années. C'est ce qu'on appelle un coup d'état sans éclats. Ca rapelle un certain homme politique allemand en 1933-35...

L’occasion du choc

L’économiste Milton Friedman est reconnu pour avoir popularisé le principe de « l’occasion du choc ». Cette idée veut qu’une crise soit le meilleur moment pour un gouvernement de mettre en œuvre des changements majeurs dans l’infrastructure sociale et économique d’un pays. Pour Friedman, une crise est un catalyseur qui rend les solutions « politiquement impossibles » des économistes « politiquement inévitables. »

La crise boursière a sérieusement porté atteinte à la crédibilité de l’approche « laissez-faire » de Milton Friedman mais son travail sur « l’occasion du choc » reste très pertinent. La débacle des marchés financiers, pourvu qu’elle se répercute sur l’économie courante, présente en effet une occasion en or aux gouvernements occidentaux de rénover leur système financier pour le rendre non seulement plus transparent, mais aussi plus vert.

On sait depuis longtemps que le réchauffement climatique est une bombe à retardement qui risque de ravager l’économie mondiale dans les cinquante prochaines années. Il n’est pas trop tard pour agir, mais il faudra un effort considérable de la part de tous les pays industrialisés pour corriger la situation. Cet effort devra s’orienter sur deux axes complémentaires: encourager la recherche et décourager la pollution. Des mesures drastiques comme l’introduction d’une taxe sur le carbone et la mise en place d’un gigantesque fond de recherche pour l’industrie verte seront donc nécessaires.

Or on a vu dans la dernière élection fédérale ce qui l’en coûte de proposer des changements importants sans le couvert d’une crise financière. Stéphane Dion a parié que les Canadiens comprendraient le bien-fondé de son Tournant vert. Il a perdu. Mais la nouvelle dégradation de l’économie, combinée avec l’élection d’un président démocrate aux États-Unis, change la donne. Il est donc permis d’espérer que les politiciens occidentaux profiteront de la crise pour jeter les bases d’une économie durable.

No Portrait Gallery

You probably won't have heard about this since the media barely mentioned it, but the Conservative announced last Friday their intention to fully cancel the project to build a National Portrait Gallery. The project had already become something of a farce when the government tried integrate it with the EnCana corporate headquarters in Calgary. This is just the final nail on the coffin.

The Conservatives cited the economic uncertainty as their reason for canceling the programme. This argument might carry some credibility if the portrait gallery were that expensive to buil. But in reality, it costs less than 50 million dollars, petty cash for the Government of Canada (and less than the cost of an election)

The real cause is not economic uncertainty, it's ideology.

Obama

So Obama is the new President. Good.

Two comments on that topic:

-Obama's arrival is necessarily good news for the planet as it means change from George Bush. Will he be a transformational president? We'll have to wait and see. He's definitely smart, well educated, and aware that the world is larger than Texas, so there's reason to be optimistic.
His first task will be to downplay expectations because there are millions of people expecting a miracle just as the economic meltdown is about to hit full steam. He should be fine in the long term, because the crisis will eventually be resolved, but the next few months mightn't be pretty.

-Is it just me, or did Canadians invest more emotional energy into the American election than into our own. For the past few days, my school has been filled with talk about Obama the Great and all of the wonderful things he represents. Many students stayed up all night with their parents to watch the coverage of his election victory and the Haitian-born students are still over the moon with excitement that finally, America has a black President.

I can only base myself on what I saw at my school, but the Canadian election didn't generate nearly as much interest or emotion. Certainly, no one at school stayed up all night to watch it. It's fashionable to bash the U.S. and to gleefully discuss its downfall, but if there's one thing that this election confirmed, it's that the America is still the country that makes us dream.