Un petit conseil aux membres PLCQ : ne mangez pas votre chef!

Les choses vont mal pour les libéraux au Québec. Le parti stagne dans les sondages, la machine électorale est en pièces, le chef est impopulaire et le parti manque d’argent. Si la situation se maintien, on peut exclure dès maintenant la perspective de gains libéraux dans la Belle Province.

Beaucoup de voix se sont élevées cette semaine pour critiquer le leadership de Stéphane Dion et de sa lieutenante québécoise, la Sénatrice Céline Hervieux-Payette. D’abord, c’était le vice-président anglophone Steve Pinkus qui qualifiait publiquement l’aile québécoise du parti de « famille dysfonctionnelle » et sommait Stéphane Dion de venir « brasser les choses. » Puis, c’était au tour de l’ancienne ministre libérale Liza Frulla de miner le leadership de Dion en affirmant qu’il « manquait d’instinct politique. » Et maintenant, il y a cet ex-candidat dans le château-fort bloquiste de Joliette, Pierre-Luc Bellerose, qui affirme avoir des appuis au sein du parti pour dépouiller le chef libéral de sa carte-membre en faisant appel à l’article (3.7.1) de la Constitution libérale.

On peut comprendre que les militants soient fâchés, mais là, c’est du suicide. Comme le rapellait Denis Coderre (et je prends la peine de le citer parce que c’est l’une des rares fois où il aura dit quelque chose de pertinent) : « On a un chef, il va être là à la prochaine campagne électorale. Il faut commencer à être loyal envers le parti. » En effet!

Stéphane Dion n’ira nulle part avant la prochaine élection. Les militants du parti ont donc intérêt à travailler avec lui plutôt que de le brûler à petit feu. Et qui sait; s’il obtient l’appui de toute la machine électorale, peut-être même qu’il réalisera quelques gains.

Get Out Of Our Turf!

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan unveiled his latest budget today at Queen's Park. There's not much to it: a billion more for infrastructure, some money for skills training and some small tax cuts; in short, nothing that will make Ontarians remember this budget a week from now.

More disappointing was the federal government's response. Yesterday, in Toronto, Jim Flaherty gave a long speech were he criticized the Ontario government's handling of the economy and gave a list of expectations for the new budget. He then rented one of Harper's many pitbulls, the obnoxious Pierre Poilievre, and made him the governments official spokesperson on the budget (Poilievre is of course, a great expert on the economy, having dropped out of his university program at the University of Alberta to work in Stockwell Day's office).

Visibly, the Conservatives have made it their policy to attack the Ontario government. Why? Nobody knows, but they obviously think it will get them votes.

What I'm starting to get fed up with, though, is Ontario's reaction. I mean, there is such a thing as a provincial jurisdiction, and the Ontario budget is clearly a provincial jurisdiction. The federal Finance Minister therefore has no say in its content, and should be sent packing if he tries to interfere. Yet Ontarians have been largely passive. They've let Jim Flaherty cheaply throw attacks against their Premier, regardless of whether or not they were legitimate.

It's time for the the McGuinty government and Ontarian people to start getting mad. Think of what if would have been if Flaherty had turned up in Edmonton or Québec City instead of Tonronto. Ontarians don't need to be always fighting, but they should make it clear that they won't let themselves be exploited.

A Few Words On The By-Elections

Eastern news chains can claim whatever they want, last Monday’s by-elections results were no victory for the Liberals. The party lost one bellwether riding to the Conservatives, came within 162 votes of giving up a stronghold in Vancouver and won decisively only in Toronto where they were running two high profile leadership candidates. Actually, these by-elections were much more of a loss and another small blow to Stéphane Dion’s leadership.

But the ones who are really in troubles are the New Democrats. They lost popular support in three out of four ridings and finished the evening virtually tied with the Greens in terms of votes cast. Even more worrisome, their two largest drops were in Ontario (-6,59 % and 9,9 %) where they need to do extremely well to increase their seat tally in the next general election. For a party that has been able to act as the de facto official opposition for the past six months, this is extremely troubling news. Hopefully, it will mean that they stop spending all their time attacking the Liberals on behalf of “working Canadians” and start putting forward some truly innovative policies that made their reputation in the days of Tommy Douglas.

So what do these by-elections all mean? In the broader scheme of things, not much! The Conservatives are definitely winners, but the fact that they did so poorly in Ontario indicates that they’re still not capable of taking a majority. The more interesting trend to watch will be the evolution of the Green Party’s numbers. They grabbed nearly 10% of votes cast, which means that for the first time, their elections numbers are matching the polls. These Green votes will be a big part of the next general election. Will they stay Green? Or otherwise, where will they go?

Deux articles

Je serai parti jusqu'au 17, mais entre temps, je vous montre deux articles que j'ai écrits pour le journal de mon conseil scolaire.


Guérir notre système malade

Notre système de santé souffre d’un grave problème d’accès. Cinq millions de Canadiens sont aujourd’hui sans médecin de famille; notre moyenne nationale de 2,2 médecins pour 1000 habitants nous place en 22eme position sur les 28 pays de l’OCDE. L’année dernière, le temps d’attente moyen pour des soins spécialisés (interventions chirurgicales, tests de dépistage) était de 18,3 semaines. On parle ici de 42 semaines pour un remplacement d’articulation, 24 semaines pour une opération des cataractes et un à deux mois pour une imagerie médicale.

Or s’il y a un problème d’accès, ce n’est pas par manque d’investissement. Tout au contraire, les dépenses gouvernementales en santé augmentent de façon exponentielle et représenteront bientôt plus de 50% du budget des provinces et 10% de notre PIB. Si on compare ça avec d’autres pays comme le Japon et le Royaume-Uni qui dépensent respectivement 7,9 et 8,0 % de leurs PIB en soins de santé, sans toutefois avoir de problème d’accès, on voit de sérieuses raisons pour s’inquiéter.

Tout simplement, nous dépensons per capita beaucoup plus que la majorité des pays développés et obtenons beaucoup moins. C’est d’ailleurs précisément ce qu’a conclu le réputé Frontier Centre for Public Policy dans une étude où il a comparé la gestion des ressources en santé au Canada et dans les pays de l’Union Européenne.

Le temps est donc venu d’avaler notre amour-propre et de nous inspirer des modèles étrangers qui fonctionnent pour améliorer notre système de santé qui ne fonctionne pas. Il est vrai que, avec les États-Unis comme seul voisin, nous devrons inévitablement mieux rémunérer nos médecins qu’ailleurs, mais ceci n’explique pas en soi notre incapacité à construire un système de santé accessible. Comme premier indice, je noterai que le taux d’obésité est de14,3 % au Canada mais de seulement 3,2 % au Japon; et que seuls 2,6% des enfants Suédois vivent sous le seuil de la pauvreté par rapport à 15% des Canadiens. Visiblement, les étrangers ont élucidé un mystère qui nous échappe encore: la prévention coûte moins cher que la guérison.

Une Alternative pour les artistes

Quand il s’agit de faire le saut à l’école secondaire, les jeunes artistes de la région d’Ottawa ont plusieurs options. L’Ecole Secondaire Publique De la Salle offre un programme de formation artistique réputé par lequel sont passés plusieurs artistes importants de la communauté. Le Collège Catholique Samuel-Genest et le Lycée Claudel ont pour leur part des harmonies sérieuses, et pour ceux qui sont prêts à faire le saut à l’école anglaise, Lisgar et Canterbury ont chacune des réputations qui dépassent les frontières de la province.

Mais une option qui est trop souvent oubliée, c’est l’Ecole Secondaire l’Alternative. Grâce à son horaire unique et son programme d’apprentissage autonome, l’Alternative offre un environnement propice à l’émulation artistique qui permet aux élèves de combiner la réussite scolaire avec la pratique quotidienne d’un art.

Parce que, voyez-vous, l’Alternative n’est pas une école comme les autres. Contrairement aux plus grandes institutions secondaires qui fonctionnent comme des gigantesques machines à enseignement, l’Alternative cherche véritablement à répondre aux besoins individuels de chaque élève et dispose des moyens pour le faire. Les classes sont petites, les professeurs sont dévoués, et le système d’enseignement individualisé donne aux élèves la chance d’apprendre de façon entièrement autonome. Mais le mieux pour les artistes, c’est l’horaire : à l’Alternative, la journée se termine à 13h30!

Les après-midi sont libres. Les peintres peuvent travailler sur leur dernière toile et les musiciens peuvent préparer un concert, les comédiens peuvent apprendre leurs nouvelles répliques et les danseurs peuvent répéter leurs enchaînements. Finies les journées infernales et improductives, à l’Alternative, les arts et le scolaire peuvent être combinés. Je prends donc cette dernière phrase chers lecteurs, non sans légère gène et culpabilité, pour vous sommer tous de jeter un regard sur l’Alternative si jamais vous décidez d’entreprendre une carrière dans les arts.

Scandal Brewing

We may have a pretty serious scandal brewing in Ottawa; certainly very bizarre.

In a soon to be released biography of the late Independent MP Chuck Cadman who famously kept the Liberals government alive in 2005 by voting for the budget, it is alleged by none other than Mr. Cadman's widow that two Conservative Party officials offered him a 1 million dollar life insurance policy in exchange for voting against the budget. For a man diagnosed with a terminal illness, this was a pretty tempting offer. And just to add another curious twist to it all, Mr. Cadman's widow in currently running in her husband's old riding... for the Conservative Party.

But things get more serious. The CBC has been given this evening a scratchy tape where the unmistakable voice of Stephen Harper is admitting to Cadman's biographer Tom Zytaruk that two party officials had indeed met with Cadman and offered him some sort of money deal.
"The offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election" said Harper.

He doesn't mention anything about a million dollar life insurance policy, but it is nonetheless cash, which is clearly illegal.

So where will this thing go? Nobody knows. It could turn out to be a fabrication, in which case we'd have a second edition of the infamous Gurmant Grewal tapes. Most likely, it will simply disappear and be shelved for lack of evidence and new revelations. If it were to have legs though, it could be a killer to the government.

The big thing is that amazing tape. Steven Harper's voice playing on a scratchy recording and telling a biographer about a money offer to Cadman, making sure to ask beforehand "this is not for publication?" I couldn't have thought of anything more damaging to Mr. Harper at this time; Maybe Stéphane Dion will start believing in god!

Anyhow, regardless of what transpires, there are a few mind-numbing questions that need answering:

-why is Dona Cadman, a Conservative candidate, alleging in a book (and confirming again today) that the Conservative Party tried to bribe her husband? What does she gain?
-how on earth could a life insurance policy been found for a terminally ill man? Was it really a life insurance policy or just a plain money offer?
-how can the Conservative Party deny an allegation coming from one of its own candidates? against a tape recording?
-why did Dona Cadman wait three years to release that information? Was this all planned in advance to try to hurt the Conservative Party?

The affair is all so bizarre. I mean, I'm not a great believers in conspiracies, but just smells so awfully odd. For tomorrow, at least, we'll have to see how Stephen Harper defends himself against his tape recorded admission that money was offered to Chuck Cadman. Things will only keep getting more interesting.

Budget

So the budget will pass. No surprise.

In fact, this wasn’t really a budget. The economic update delivered last fall was the budget; this is just a repetition of the same.

It’s long been the practice of governments to under-promise and over-deliver. Chrétien was a master in that art. But this time, the government has effectively under-promised and under-delivered. Really, there was no other way. The GST cut is has cost so much that, with the current economic woes, the government has simply run out of cash. And even though this was a very thin budget, they’ve already had to break the 3 billion dollar cushion which was traditionally inserted in the budget as a defence against unexpected economic disasters like 9/11. It’s unlikely, but, by the end of the year, the Conservatives could be in deficit.

The sad note of this budget is the environment as the Conservatives have clearly decided that it would not become an election issue. All they’ve included is a 500 million dollar plan for building public transit (needless to say, it’s peanuts), 300 million for nuclear research and 240 million for a “clean coal” plant in Saskatchewan. To put things into perspective, the GST cuts will cost 12 billion dollars a year.

So it looks like we’re destined for the status-quo. Let’s wait for the next budget!

Smart En vironment

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic carried out yesterday the world's first commercial flight of an aircraft powered with biofuel. “This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected,” he told reporters after the flight.

Clearly, there’s some good intent on the part of Branson and his firm. They seem serious about helping to address global warming, and have invested a significant amount of money into improving the energy efficiency of their firm.

But looks can be deceiving. This flight used a biofuel mixture of coconut and babassu oil. And while I couldn’t tell you the mixture’s exact carbon footprint, I’d be prepared to bet a significant chunk of change that overall, it’s about the same as plain old gasoline.

Why?

Because once again, when accessing the environmental impact of biofuel, we made the classic mistake of only factoring only the carbon emissions of the fuel consumption while forgetting entirely about the production. Biofuels are supposed to be carbon neutral because they produce very little CO2 during combustion and take carbon away from the atmosphere as they grow. But in fact, we’re realising today that the environmental impact of growing organic matter for biofuel makes it just as bad for the environment as fossil-fuel gasoline. Remember, biofuels are in most cases derived from corn or the sugar cane. To grow they need green space, water and heat. But finding space usually means cutting down trees and watering the crops excessively. So once you factor in all that heating and water, that biofuel business doesn’t seem quite as exciting.

This isn’t the only time this kind of thing happens. There was an article in a recent publication of the New Yorker magazine which essentially explained that lamb or apples imported from New Zealand have a lower carbon footprint that locally bought lamb or apples. Why is that? Because New Zealand farms don’t use fertiliser and the government doesn’t subsidize them.

So what does this teach us? Simple: we need to be careful and smart about helping the environment.