The Liberal Turning Point

It will be many years before the results of the last election are fully understood but I have no doubt that that election will be viewed as a watershed election in Canadian history. The simple story is that this election marked the death of the Liberal Party as it has been known for close to a century. While there may be a re-birth of the Liberal Party in some form over the next decade the interesting question will be “what will it look like?” This question really starts to point at what is really interesting about the last election, namely that there are many signs that it marks a fundamental shift in the subject matter of national debate in Canada. There are all the signs in place that a number of major changes have occurred (over a span of twenty years or so) in what people in Canada want to talk about and what actually determines their vote. This change is going to force a lot of people to think carefully about where they want to place their political efforts (if they want to place them at all).

The most obvious re-alignment that has occurred is in the emergence of a clear left versus right debate in Canada. While many Conservatives have viewed the Liberal Party as a quasi-socialist party the reality is that most true left-wingers have not thought of the Liberal Party in that way. Indeed, many NDP supporters have had a poor view of the Liberal Party for precisely this reason – that is, they viewed the Liberal Party as something of an economic wolf in sheep’s clothing. There is a great deal of merit to this position, particularly when one looks at the last twenty years. During the Chretien-Martin era the Federal government, under the leadership of the Liberal Party, engaged in a determined program of cost cutting and program termination which eliminated the deficit and greatly reduced the significance of the national debt. It also effectively removed the Federal government from almost any significant role in the development of social policy in areas such as health, education, childcare, social welfare or housing. These matters were left to the Provinces and much of the debate since then has really, for better or for worse, been a series of provincial debates.

This period began the process, I think, of disengaging young progressive voters (who by the way will often grow up to be old regressive voters) from the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party had captured a significant number of these voters in the past by harkening back to the days of Lester Pearson and the early Trudeau era when the Liberals were instrumental in rolling out a range of national social programs. That era is long ago now – the first Trudeau government is as far away from a new voter today as St. Laurent was from me when I cast my first vote; Pearson is as far away as Mackenzie King or Bennett. Even in the Trudeau era it is hard to identify a lot in the way of society changing social programs. Trudeau’s main contribution in the economic world was in the form of large scale economy engineering efforts to address the economic crises of the 1970’s and early 1980’s (for example the Anti-Inflation Act and the National Energy Program).

Despite these limited economic social progressive credentials, the Liberals managed to keep hold of many progressive voters because socially progressive people were largely gripped by other topics and, more importantly, the political agenda in Canada was largely gripped by other topics. If a person between the age of 18 and 33 or so were dropped into 1970’s and early 1980’s Canada they would not recognize the debate.

At that time the dominant topics of debate outside of French Quebec were: (1) how to maintain Canadian unity; (2) how to advance Canada’s interests on the world stage and (3) how to protect individual human rights inside of Canada. The Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives (who are definitely not the same as the Conservatives) did not argue over whether or not these topics mattered. Instead they argued over which party could best advance these interests. The Liberal Party with its strong French contingent, its internationalist leader and its agenda of introducing a Charter of Rights and Freedoms won all of these debates hands down. They further managed to keep the left-right debate from heating up by having a strong Bay Street cohort running the economic files and keeping a good chunk of the economic progressives engaged by riding on momentum from the Pearson era.

Then things changed. The Liberal agenda and mystique started to disappear. First, the Liberals won a number of their wars. Trudeau and Chretien successfully scotched the separatist threat by winning two referendums and passing the Clarity Act. In doing so though they burned all bridges to French Quebec. Second, Trudeau successfully embedded the Liberal’s old core agenda of protection for minority rights throughout Canada into the legal system (thus reducing the need to have a pro-minority rights political party). Third, the Pearson progressive momentum ran out.

On the other side of the ledger there was a concerted effort underway to change the channel. Preston Manning (a career politico), the NCC, the Fraser Institute, and the young Stephen Harper started a concerted campaign of ideas in Canada that paralleled the longer standing effort in the United States to move the debate to “why should the government be allowed to take my money?” As such these people framed the debate around the concerns of “taxpayers” (rather than citizens) and around the core principle of personal economic independence (and responsibility). While the social conservatives came along for the ride, fundamentally the focus for about twenty years was on making this the issue. National unity became an unimportant sideshow and, as the West become more powerful, increasingly a negative – many in the West would say “let Quebec go if it enhances my economic freedom.” Internationalism – the only international position to advance is that which advances Canada’s interests. The old 1970’s idea of being an “honest broker” or international boy scout does not matter. That is why, despite all the ballyhoo, the loss of the election to the Security Council did not matter – Stephen Harper did not care and he (and his movement) have convinced most Canadians not to care. In essence a majority of Canadians have internalized “it’s the economy stupid” and when they do the Conservatives win hands down in the present climate.

This may make things very challenging for socially progressive people over the next few years. No doubt it is exciting to have the NDP as a pure party of social progress and to have a clean left-right fight with no mushy Liberal middle. It will not be as exciting if that fight is always lost and there is no coalition or brokerage party such as the Liberals to advance a few of these causes. What may also be shocking to many on the left is that over the next decade the Liberals may well rebuild themselves as a party on the centre-right to resume their role as the alternative party to the Tories. They will be the weaker party – playing the role of alternative party to the new Natural Governing Party of Canada (the CPC) – but they would then become the home for Canadians wanting to ‘refresh’ governments when the CPC has been in power too long. For progressives this will not be a happy story as this will be a story of truly right wing parties switching places. It should not be discounted though – the Liberals have re-invented themselves many times: Blake was a Provincial rights advocate; Laurier a Free-trader; Pearson-Trudeau strong centralists and economic nationalists; Pearson-Trudeau big government; Chretien-Martin small government. The Liberals have a history of figuring out how to give the people what they want.

An even sadder story for progressive voters would be to see a strong progressive opposition that never, ever becomes a government. Think it can’t happen? See Alberta.

A Thousand and One Nights

A friend of mine recently asked me to write a short story about an experience. Another friend suggested to me that telling a story was no different than doing the thing.

So is a telling a story no different than doing? In other words, can the telling of a story of experience be the experience itself?

For me the telling of a story is other than experience. Experience belongs to the world and to the people who share in the experience. It is seldom – I would think never – clean and/or clear as it should be. Experience is rich with irrelevancies and incongruities that can – and should – be cast out of a story. Experience has no narrative; no moral; no point – it just is what it is.

Story on the other hand reflects nothing but the choice of the storyteller. The story of a person's first intimate moment can be fundamentally changed if the storyteller decides to mention the fact that their partner did not take their white gym socks off or that they were dumped the next week for the good looking fellow from the other school. These facts may be true or fictional -- it matters not -- the choice to include them colours and flavours the story.

A story is nothing but narrative; moral and the point. A good story is experience extracted to paint a picture for the intended audience. We choose in telling a story what we want our audience to know. We choose what we want them to know about us. We choose what we want them to know about the others in the experience. We choose what we want them to think is important or funny. We choose what to hide. We choose the tone. When we tell a story – even when it is not of our own experience -- we paint a picture of ourselves and the relationship we want to have with the person to whom we tell the story. We also define the relationship we want to claim we have with the subject of the story.

No story though can be as complete, unbiased or as uncaring as experience. As we have an experience we feel the good, the bad and the ugly. As we eat a delicious meal we try to convince ourselves that the tastes and textures are all we experience but in truth we see the sauce on the white tablecloth; we hear the couple at the next table; we feel irritation (or happiness) at what the others around us do or say. Beyond even those things that we notice (and later elide from the story) there are all the things that we do sense but are as much a part of the experience: the struggle in the kitchen to make the meal; the stains on the carpet disguised by the dark lighting; the waitress eager for the guests to leave. To relate all of this would make a poor story – we crave narrative, tone, moral – not just overwhelming description.

The telling of a story is in itself an experience – and a different one than the experience that provides the fodder for the story. Scheherazade and Shahryar are changed by Scheherazade’s stories -- not by the experiences related in the stories. It is in the way that Scheherazade refuses to finish a story when the sun rises; the way that she makes each story more engaging; the way in which she takes Shahryar way from himself that stays his hand and, in time, leads him to love her. It says much that she knew the stories that would entrance him.

Senate Reform in Canada

Yesterday's appointment of three still smelling losers to the Senate was a little reminder that there is still a need for Senate reform in Canada.

Actually reforming the Senate in any serious way is a massively difficult project under the Constitution given the amending formula's high hurdle for achieving any such change. That being said however, I think there is a way to do that would be successful and meaningful.

Now to understand this I think there are two things to bear in mind. First, I think the only Senate reform worth talking about is abolition. An appointed Senate is an affront in this day and age. It is obviously undemocratic and serves no legitimate purpose that I can see. The so-called "sober second thought" function is largely a joke since the only time such thoughts seem to occur is when the Senate majority can be called upon to ditch a project that the party leadership don't like (both CPC and Liberals have been guilty of this).

Second, an elected Senate -- without massive re-working -- is even worse in some ways. At least as they stand the Senators know that they are the illegitimate bastard children of politics and so keep a low profile most of the time and let the Commons have its way. If elected there will be no such constraint on the Senate. Suddenly legitimized we can expect that they will start poking their nose into all sorts of areas and substantially weakening the power of the Commons. Given the radically undemocratic distribution of seats in the Senate this would make what is already a bad situation in Canada worse. Further, given the weaker central government we have here in Canada (as opposed to the United States) the case for needing disproportionately empowered provincial or regional blocks in Parliament to ensure these interests are respected is weak. The Provinces do this quite well on their own thank you very much.

The simple route to Senate abolition then is this. A brave Prime Minister would announce "we are having a national referendum with one question : Should we abolish the Senate? Yes or No?" He (or she) should then promise that is this passes in every promise the resolution will be introduced in Parliament and, when passed, each Province will be asked to sign-on. If it does not -- then Senate reform will be dropped forever (or at least until there is a new government). It seems to me that this campaign would be a no brainer -- ask any ordinary Canadian if they would like to fire a Chamber full of unelected clowns with serious salaries, staffs and pension entitlements and you will get a resounding "yes" -- even in Quebec.

Then the question would be, would any provincial premier seriously try to turn a "yes" result into a chance to whine about other things when the result might be keeping these people in power?

Reviving the Blog

After a somewhat extended absence (who does not get distracted from time to time) I have decided to revive my blog and get back to some non-work writing for a change. Thanks for tuning in ... (or not, as the case may be).

The Federal Government Implements Ignorance is Bliss

The Federal government decided to scrap the mandatory long form of the census in favour of a mandatory short form and a voluntary long form. Of course, as any statistician will tell you a voluntary survey is largely useless due to the problems that come with selection error. That is, it is likely to be those who are specially motivated who will fill out the form and send it in while the ordinary Joe or Jane is likely going to to put off adding an extra piece of work to their life. Even if by some miracle a perfect selection-free sample was obtained there is no way to know this and so the results will always be open to being accused of being biased. Say, for example, the voluntary survey showed 35% of Canadians were atheists (or born agains) then the church (or secular humanist) leadership would point out selection error as the explanation whenever anyone wanted to act on these numbers.

Why this change you ask -- well here is the explanation given by the Globe and Mail and a spokesman for the government:

The move is a response to protests from some Canadians who resented the personal questions in the long form. Similar opposition has been raised in the United States by some Republicans opposed to Washington collecting and analyzing data.

“Our feeling was that the change was to make a reasonable limit on what most Canadians felt was an intrusion into their personal privacy in terms of answering the longer form,” Erik Waddell, spokesman for Industry Minister Tony Clement, said Tuesday.

Given that this information is locked away in the bowels of the archives and annonymously aggregated for analysis it is hard to see what the real priovacy concern is here. Furthermore, sometimes minimal intrusions into privacy should give way to the idea that decisions should be based on knowledge and understanding rather than ignorance and prejudice. Of course, this government has largely been dedicated to the idea of decision making on a data-free basis (see management of the prisons and crime file for this purpose) so why should anyone be surprised?

No Way to Do a Gun Control Debate

There is no topic after the abortion issue that gets tempers through the roof so quickly as the issue of gun control. In Canada we have had a lively and vociferous debate over the long gun registry for a few years now and I expect that there are more debates to come. In the United States the Supreme Court recently ruled that the Second Amendment applied to state and local laws thereby severely constraining the ability of these governments to limit or restrict gun ownership. I will provide a link to the judgment here but tell you to not bother reading it unless you are incredibly interested in the intricacies of American constitutional history. Reaction of course is polarized with the Tea Party and NRA crowd hailing the decision as a vindication of constitutional rights while the liberal pansies (as I suspect the NRA hooligans would call them) of the New York Times condemns the decision as a distortion of the history of the Republic.

Both sides of the debate seem crazy to me as they largely focus on a few obscure sentences written as amendment to the American Constitution in the circumstances of the 1790's and the 1860's. The debate is largely over which group of judges got American history right and properly understood what the connection between the right to bear arms and a well regulated militia might be. While this is of course necessarily of interest to the judiciary it should be of no interest whatsoever to sensible human beings living in this day and age. Instead, it seems to me, the real debate should focus on the question of whether it makes sense to entrench gun ownership and the ability to raise militias in the Constitution at all. That is, maybe the time has come in the United States to have a debate about whether or not to amend or expunge the Second Amendment. It is hard to see that debate ever happening however given the climate of the United States on larger issues.

What this makes me think however is the danger that comes with having an unamendable constitution. In the United States this hardening of the Constitutional arteries comes from the worship of the Founders and the acceptance as religion of American exceptionalism. We in Canada though have the same problem for a different reason -- namely the stark regional/ethnic divide in constitutional visions brought to light by Charlottetown and Meech which make it impossible to adjust the Constitution (except on highly local matters like the Newfoundland school system or changing the name of Newfoundland to Newfoundland and Labrador). While our 1982 Constitution is not that old and some of the problems are just starting to show, our 1867 constitution is definitely getting creaky (Senate reform anyone). However, we cannot have a healthy debate about these kinds of issues from first principles but instead -- like the United States with the Second Amendment -- have to turn it into a legal debate about the meaning of ancient legislation.

The Kahnawake Problem

The decision of the Kahnawake band council to cast non-aboriginals off the reserve has been in the paper for the last few weeks and is likely to continue to cause smoke for the next little while (it will be interesting to see if the Council actually enforces the eviction order). There is a curious thing about this affair however, why have the Conservatives not used this event as one of their usual occasions to condemn special race based rights for aboriginal people joined with a promise to reform the Indian Act? Lysiane Gagnon comments on this point in her column today where she frames the problem this way:

Why would Quebec and Canada tolerate the trampling of people's basic individual rights by a policy based on bloodline? The Quebec government is looking the other way on the pretext that Indian affairs is under federal jurisdiction, and no one raised a question in the National Assembly. Last week, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl lamely said that, even though he didn't like the band council's decision, he couldn't do anything since the move is legal and the first nations are “sovereign” on their lands.

The answer is actually easy in the case of the Federal government. The Federal government is busily entrenching exactly the same concept in the Indian Act for a much wider range of matters and cannot be seen to even suggest that there is a Charter or Human Rights problem. Last year the British Columbia Court of Appeal ordered the Federal to bring the definition of status in the Indian Act into compliance with the Charter. In doing so it identified a very narrow problem and skirted the much broader problem that the Indian Act incorporates a definition of Indian status which is a classic "blood quantum" approach -- that is, if you have enough non-Indian ancestors in the last two generations you are off the list.

This rule is draconian. It does not matter how culturally "Indian" you are or how connected to your community you are, if your momma or your poppa is not status and your parents are similarly "impure" -- you are off the list. You could have spent every day of your life on reserve but you are not an Indian. If you have a white dad but your sister has an Indian dad, she is on the list and you are off the list -- even if you lived on the reserve and she lived off. You could feel entirely a part of the community and be entirely engaged with the community but in the eyes of the Federal government you are no more an Indian than I am.

Being off the list means a number of things -- it means no a tax exemption, no automatic rights of membership and -- and this is why the Federal government is so circumspect about this issue -- no federal funding for medical, dental or education. You are officially the Province's problem and the Federal treasury is relieved off any issues related to you whatsoever. Likewise the funding levels for the band as whole can be cut back and treaty settlements can be made smaller as there are fewer Indians to deal with.

Thus Chuck Strahl cannot speak out about this because Chuck Strahl needs this. Despite requests by many aboriginal people to do away with the blood quantum rules and move toward rules based upon community membership, the Federal government has consistently (and this is true of Liberal governments as well) turned a deaf ear. To actually act on this problem would mean that the Federal government would not be able to look forward to the "Indian Problem" being solved by romance. Instead it would have to address its own race based discrimination in the status provisions of the Indian Act.

This issue, contrary to what Ms. Gagnon says, does not go back to just 1981. In fact, when one of the very first predecessors to the Indian Act was passed in the 1800's there were two Indian Acts passed -- one for Upper Canada and one for Lower Canada and each had a different definition for Indian. In Upper Canada it was a wider, community based definition that did not discriminate on the basis of sex. In Lower Canada it was similar to the present definition in the Indian Act with the old marrying out rule built in (that is, a woman who married out lost their status). Why the difference? Because the Mohawks at Kahnawake were unhappy about the number of non-Mohawks on their land.