Rediscovering Democracy

Since I became eligible to vote many years ago, I have participated in every federal, provincial and municipal election that has been called. Even though it has become something of a cliché, the assertion that voting is a sacred duty has never been far from my mind.

And yet, for all of that, up to a few months ago, I was seriously considering doing something I had never done before: going to the polling station and officially declining my ballot. In that contemplation, I felt a righteous justification.

Why did I consider that option? First of all, of course, the Progressive Conservatives were never a consideration. Just like those who are gun-shy about the NDP after Bob Rae's Ontario premiership, I have never forgiven nor forgotten the depredations of the Harris years, an era when government sought to pit citizen against citizen, stigmatizing people according to socio-economic status and drastically cutting funding for an array of programs, an experience from which we have never fully recovered. And of course, there was the bone-headed move by these self-proclaimed fiscal masters of selling a 99-year lease on the lucrative highway 407 for a mere pittance.

Kathleen Wynne's Liberals were off my radar, having betrayed all Ontarians by the majority sell-off of Hydro One, the publicly-owned power transmission utility. Her justification? To broaden ownership and raise cash for green infrastructure, all without raising taxes. Of course, the first billion dollars was used to eliminate the government's deficit. Currently the government receives about one-third of the revenue from Hydro One it was receiving before privatization, and estimates are for the loss of billions over the longer-term, billions that government can ill-afford to surrender.

So that left the NDP for me to consider, and for the longest time I discounted offering them my support. The last election was triggered by Andrea Horwath's greed for power, despite the fact that the party held the balance of power over a minority Liberal government. And Horwath ran a campaign where the term small businesses was uttered regularly to the exclusion, if memory serves me, of any reference to the working class or working folks (the latter term seeming to have become part of today's political nomenclature). The closer they thought they were to power, the more to the right they tilted, the same error Thomas Mulcair made in the last federal election.

So prospects for voting seemed dim. What changed my mind? It was this column by the Star's Martin Regg Cohn, a journalist for whom I have a great deal of regard. Written at the end of February, it was a piece lamenting the increasingly low turnout in Ontario elections, a trend he sees as a real threat to democracy:

In the last two elections, barely half of Ontarians bothered to cast a ballot — an embarrassing 48 per cent voted in 2011, and a dispiriting 51 per cent turned out in 2014.

They were the worst showings by civic no-shows in our democratic history. And far worse turnouts than in any other provincial or federal election ever.

With the next election coming in roughly 100 days, Ontario’s democratic deficit is creating a crisis of confidence that no party can solve alone. No matter who wins on June 7, the worsening turnouts will prove a losing proposition for everyone — the politicians and the people.

This downward spiral undermines the very assumptions upon which democracy is based:

More than six in 10 Ontarians (62 per cent) believe that “the legitimacy of the government is called into question” if less than a majority of eligible votes are cast in a general election, according to the polling by Campaign Research.

I hope you will read Cohn's entire piece, plus other articles he has written within the past year on democracy. Simply go to the search function on The Star website and put in his name.

In closing, I cite his final sentence in the above-referenced article:

Democracy is an opportunity. Which is why a vote is a terrible thing to waste.

A Time To Bask

After so many years spent in darkness, Canadians can, perhaps, be forgiven for feeling exuberantly good about themselves once again and letting the world know it. And, according to Martin Regg Cohn, there is more to what is happening than narcissistic indulgence.

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged to jet-lagged refugees early Friday morning, “We get to show not just a planeload of new Canadians what Canada is all about, but we get to show the world how to open our hearts and welcome people.”

There is much to be said for a nation-state self-consciously showcasing its treatment of stateless refugees. Far from being empty symbolism, it serves as a defiant testament of Canadians coming to the aid of people a world away.

For far too long a country denigrated far and wide for what the Harper regime did in our name, we are now not only rehabilitating our reputation but also trying to offer the world a better way:

At a time when much of the world is stooping to new lows, Canadians are cheerfully rising to the occasion. Not because we are better than anyone else, but because our leaders — political, ecumenical and civil — are belatedly bringing out the best in us.

Lest we fall into hubris, however, some stark realities need to be remembered:

We have not been tested like Germany or Greece, both brimming with migrants of indeterminate origin. By virtue of our splendid geographic isolation, we are largely spared the waves of boat people who risk drowning at sea, or the stampedes at border crossings that wreak havoc with sovereignty.

We can afford to take our time, consider our options and select refugees with our own timelines linked to the latest headlines. We get to “cherry-pick” families in remote Middle Eastern camps, where families are pre-vetted by the United Nations as bona fide refugees.

Despite these facts, however, perhaps our ability to reach out may have additional benefits, especially for our cousins to the south, many of whom are currently in the thrall of a demagogue:

It is a well-timed counterpoint to the fear and frothing that has swept the U.S., a country 10 times larger than ours that is taking but 10,000 refugees (a mere 40 per cent of our target).

As the New York Times noted Saturday, “The Canadian public’s widespread embrace of a plan to accept thousands of Syrians stands in stark contrast to the controversy over the issue in the United States.”

And who can watch the following clip, from last night's NBC Nightly News, without feeling good about our country?



As we all know, politicians come and go, and countless policies are born and often die. But something tells me that despite all of the evil we are capable of as a species, there will always be a goodness that resides within us, ready to respond when it is called upon by the right people and the right circumstances.

Critical Thinking - Yes. Fear Mongering - No.

Last week I wrote a post critical of Rex Murphy's CBC opinion about how the Syrian refugee situation should be handled by Justin Trudeau. At first blush, his view that more time should be taken in admitting 25,000 to Canada seemed reasonable. However, digging beneath the surface of those comments, one could see that Rex was really trying to inject fear and suspicion of them into the equation. I ended the post by saying that the timelines for bringing the refugees to Canada are a fit topic for debate, but Rex's subtly subversive cant is not.

Always an advocate of critical thinking, I offer as a contrast some comments by the Star's Martin Regg Cohn, who, while questioning those very same timelines that Rex seemed to, does so in a forthright and responsible way, without resorting to the demagoguery that Murphy did. Whereas Murphy plays the fear card in urging a slowdown, Cohn argues that the evacuation of 25,000 refugees is quite doable, but having them all come here by the end of this year will put huge strains on the infrastructure needed to accomodate them:

Thanks to the prime minister’s gambit, the Ontario government is scrambling to find every square metre of provincially owned property that it can place at the disposal of refugees arriving in the December cold. That means a couple of recently decommissioned hospitals in the GTA, schools with space to spare and other safe havens that Infrastructure Ontario can ferret out from its portfolio of barren buildings across Ontario, according to a senior provincial source.

Cohn attributes political motivations to the rush:

Meeting the December deadline is about electoral credibility, not practicality.

Bluntly speaking, it’s an easy deliverable for a newly elected government trying to show its mastery of events during its first 100 days in power. The question isn’t whether it’s workable, but wise.

The above perspective certain offers a positive contribution to the debate, but Cohn also sharply distinguishes himself from xenophobes and fear mongers like Murphy with the following:

Much has been said about the need to delay resettlement in light of heightened security fears after the Paris terrorist attacks. The impulse is understandable but unfounded. To be clear, Canada is drawing upon a pool of the Middle East’s most vulnerable refugees — mostly women and children — who have been languishing in UN-vetted camps for years, not secretly infiltrating Europe’s porous borders.

The bigger uncertainty isn’t security but capacity — the exigencies of timing, the shortages of accommodation and the harshness of the Canadian climate in late December.

Responsible journalism versus cleverly-disguised prejudice. Sometimes they are not the easiest to distinguish.

The Luddites of Education

Throughout my career as a high school teacher, I believed, as I still do, that education is one of the prime tools by which society can be bettered and critical thinking cultivated. And yet there are Luddites among us who would severely circumscribe the use of this all-important mechanism, preferring that we limit access to ideas and thinking that they find personally objectionable. Two stories from my experiences sadly attest to this reality.

Once, many years ago, one of my students had chosen Robertson Davies' Fifth Business for independent reading. Early in the novel, a Baptist minister's wife is struck in the head by a large stone encased in a snowball, an incident that starts a cascade of events with profound effects on the fortunes of the protagonist. During a parent-teacher interview, the mother of a student who had chosen the novel, herself the wife of a Baptist minister, objected bitterly to her daughter reading the novel because of its alleged disrespect toward religion (solely evidenced by the snowball incident), assertively opining that such material had no place in schools. I told her that as a parent, she had the right to object to her daughter reading the book, but that NO ONE had the right to ban others from reading any given book.

A second incident during a telephone conversation with a Muslim parent, many years later, went along exactly the same lines; in this case, the man was objecting to his daughter reading Flowers for Algernon, also chosen by the student for independent reading. He objected to a scene entailing some brief and quite circumspect sexual content, and went on to say such material should not be available to students. Again, I told him exactly what I told the Baptist minister's wife.

So how is this relevant to the world of politics? Here in Ontario, a microcosm of the larger pluralistic Canada within which we all live, there has been much heated contention by a small group of right-wing Christian fundamentalists and those from other conservative religious backgrounds, many of whom are immigrants, over the revamped sex-ed curriculum slated to go into effect in the fall.



In this morning's Star, Martin Regg Cohn observes that the same dynamic is at work that I experienced in the two above incidents, noting that parents already have the right to remove their children from class when material they object to is being taught:

Apparently that’s no longer enough. Now, the protest movement wants to prevent everyone else’s children from hearing the updated Health and Physical Education Curriculum — an update strongly supported by teachers in the public and separate school systems, and broadly supported by parents who want the best for their children.

To be clear, the protesters are not only demanding a right that they already have — an exemption from the curriculum — but are insisting that everyone else hew to their world views of sexuality, pedagogy and ideology. They want to water down a curriculum prepared by experts after years of deliberation and consultation in order to accommodate their own interpretation of sex education in 2015.

In other words, “My child, my choice” translates to: “Your child, no choice.”

Cohn points out that such intractable and intolerant thinking could provoke a backlash against our practice of reasonable accommodation, and it is a risk being made worse by the usual suspects: the political right-wing desperate to curry favour among social conservatives:

At the most recent protest, the darling of the anti-sex-ed movement, MPP and recent PC leadership candidate Monte McNaughton once again took the microphone to proclaim his fidelity to the cause. Significantly, he brought “greetings” from Patrick Brown, the new leader he helped elect at last month’s Tory convention.

Although we reside in the 21st century, it would seem that the thinking of far too many people resides yet in a much earlier time, when ignorance thrived and education was looked upon with suspicion and disdain. It is time we all grew up.

Thursday Morning

H/t Toronto Star

The events of yesterday were undeniably tragic. A young man, Nathan Cirillo, died. As I noticed on a Facebook posting by my cousin's wife, Nathan was a friend of their son with whom he played organized hockey. Six degrees of separation and all that, I guess.

Nonetheless, I have to confess that when I heard the news on CBC radio, my first thoughts were twofold: how these events could work to Harper's electoral advantage (I could immediately envisage the attack ads juxtaposing Harper's "strong leadership and stand against terrorism" against Trudeau's talk about searching for the "root causes" of terrorism), and how this could very well provide a pretext for further erosion of our civil liberties. Like frightened mice, many people aid and abet anyone or anything to ensure the comforting illusion of security.

Fortunately, I found a measure of balance in two Star columnists this morning, Martin Regg Cohn and Thomas Walkom.

Cohn's words bring some much-needed perspective to terrorism:

For terrorists, killing people is merely a means to an end. By far the bigger objective for terrorists is to terrorize — not just their immediate victims, but an entire population.

A soldier lost his life Wednesday. And parliamentarians lost their innocence.

But the nation must not lose its nerve.

Public shootouts or bombings are carefully choreographed publicity stunts that require audience participation to succeed: If the public gives in to fear, and the state succumbs to hysteria, then the shootings or bombings have hit their mark. If the audience tunes out the sickening violence, the tragic melodrama is reduced to pointlessness.

And he quickly gets to what, for me, is the heart of the matter:

The risk is that we will overreact with security clampdowns and lockdowns that are difficult to roll back when the threat subsides.

Terrorists will never be an existential threat — our Parliament and our parliamentarians are too deeply rooted to crumble in the face of a few bullets or bombs. The greater risk is that we will hunker down with over-the-top security precautions that pose a more insidious menace to our open society.

Thomas Walkom, while acknowledging that events such as yesterday's have a very unsettling effect, reminds us that Canada is not exactly in virgin territory here:

In 1966, a Toronto man blew himself up in a washroom just outside the Commons chamber. He had been preparing to take out the entire government front bench with dynamite. But it exploded too early.

Other legislatures have had their share of trouble, most notably Quebec’s national assembly, which was attacked in 1984 by a disgruntled Canadian Forces corporal.

He shot and killed three as well as wounding another 13 before giving himself up.

In 1988, another man was shot after he opened fire with a rifle in the Alberta Legislature building.

And no one who is of a certain age can ever forget the FLQ crisis of 1970 which led to Pierre Trudeau imposing The War Measures Act, which effectively suspended civil liberties across the country, a measure that was widely embraced at the time.

Walkom ends his piece on an appropriately ominous note:

We seem headed for another of those moments of panic. The fact that the gunman attacked Parliament has, understandably, spooked the MPs who pass our laws.

It has also spooked the media and, I suspect, much of the country.

The government wants to give its security agencies more power over citizens. The government wants to rally public support for its war in Iraq.

On both counts, this attack can only help it along.

If we are not very careful and vigilant, the real threat will come, not from terrorist attacks, but from our putative political leaders.

Is Andrea's Day Of Reckoning Drawing Nigh?

Andrea Horwath, the current leader of the Ontario NDP, about whom I have written the odd past post, may indeed soon be facing the consequences of her recent decision to force an Ontario election that ran the risk, happily averted, of the election of a right-wing Progressive Conservative Party under former leader Tim Hudak. While Hudak was speedily dispatched for his loss, Andrea has thus far been dancing around the choices she made that so inflamed so many party members and supporters.

Today, Martin Regg Cohn's column suggests that the tune to which Horwath has been gamboling may change abruptly starting next weekend:

Ahead of a formal leadership review scheduled for November, Horwath will face the NDP’s provincial council this coming Saturday and Sunday to explain her controversial tactics — before, during and after the election.

“Andrea is fighting for her life,” says one long-time party worker who has sat in on the party’s internal machinations in recent months.

“Among a very large section of the activist base there is little more than contempt for her,” said the NDP loyalist, who requested confidentiality to speak candidly about the manoeuvres.

As many are aware, the more tantalizing the prospect of power became, the more willing Horwath was to recast her party as a centrist-right entity, thereby destroying, of course, any prospect the former 'party of principle' had of being perceived as anything more than a group of populists who wanted to form the government for the sake of being the government. Her gleeful abandonment of the balance of power her party held in the last legislature to pursue the heady power that only the office of the premier can offer has led many to perceive her as a traitor to the party:

It’s no secret that the top leadership of the Canadian Labour Congress has undisguised contempt for Horwath after she refused to support a public pension plan for Ontario (along the lines of an enhanced CPP) which the labour movement holds dear. The CLC’s new leader, Hassan Yussuff, viewed Horwath’s actions as a personal betrayal and is known to have described her as “a coward” who should be dumped.

Most of the Ontario Federation Labour’s member unions are also deeply unhappy with Horwath’s moves, not least her refusal to meet them as a group.

“If the vote were held next week, she wouldn’t hold on,” predicts one party veteran.

And there are also other reasons for party members' disaffection:

In anticipation of a leadership review, Horwath’s team rammed through changes at a pre-election council meeting allowing her inner circle to reclaim — and reallocate — any unused delegate slots 45 days before the November convention. The move was widely seen as a naked power grab orchestrated by the leader’s office, contravening party rules that constitutional changes can only be agreed at full conventions.

By flouting the rules, Horwath has riled grassroots members who were already apoplectic about an opportunistic campaign platform that lacked the party’s imprimatur and descended into pandering.

While Ontario provincial politics may seem of little relevance to those living in other parts of country, the fact is that the lessons of arrogance are universally applicable. Perhaps Andrea's fate, whatever it turns out to be, will be instructive to others.

Andrea Comes Down From Her Perch

But only a little bit. And only because her campaign is being criticized from within.

As I noted in a recent post, Ontario NDP leader Andrea's Horwath's hubris following what almost everyone else would call a failed Ontario election campaign has been both unseemly and wholly unjustified. She initially avowed that she had no regrets about causing the election, terming it a success despite the fact her party lost key Toronto ridings and, more importantly, the balance of power. However, now that she is being publicly taken to task by both Peter Julian and Cheri DiNovo, Horwath seems to be tempering her pridefulness:

After weeks of downplaying the defeat at the hands of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals on June 12, which saw the New Democrats lose the balance of power in a minority legislature, Horwath on Tuesday conceded “the result of this election campaign was bittersweet.”

“We lost some seats in Toronto, which is very concerning to us. All three of those MPPs were good and it’s troubling that all three lost their seats,” she told reporters at Queen’s Park.

Her admission of error came after DiNovo granted an interview to The Torontoist, in which she described the results for the party as "a debacle from the beginning, from day one”.

DiNovo blamed those results on a wholesale drift from traditional NDP progressive values: poverty, child care, housing, and education.

Pointedly, she observed that "at the end of the day it’s about who we are as a party and what we stand for that we need to look at as New Democrats.”

Showing more understanding of what true leadership entails than Horwath does, DiNovo says the NDP will not regain frustrated supporters by portraying the recent election as progress, which has been the official line—focusing on the fact that the party improved its share of the popular vote by one per cent, and that efforts to attract voters outside of Toronto yielded gains. “It’s important for our voters in Toronto to know that we did not see that campaign as a success” because “I think voters appreciate honesty.”

It appears that, belatedly, Andrea Horwath may be realizing the wisdom of her colleague's insights, but not with any real grace. In today's Star, Martin Regg Cohn says that when the caucus finally met on Tuesday, DiNovo, a United Church minister, was told to take another vow of silence.

Nonetheless, as a response to those criticisms,

... a more contrite Horwath confirmed this week that she is changing her staff — and changed her tone. Where last month she was “proud of the achievements,” this week she scaled back the bravado by acknowledging the “bittersweet” reality in Toronto.

The political reality for all caucus members is sinking in. The spring election they triggered has deprived them of the balance of power, leaving the party destabilized and demoralized.

With the Liberals enjoying a majority for the next four years, the NDP leader has lost her leverage in the legislature. Over the next four months, she must regain her legitimacy within the party.

It is clear that Ms. Horwath has her work cut out for her.

UPDATED: Gerald Caplan's Lament

The NDP exists for a reason: to express certain principles and to represent certain voters. Today it is not easy to say what the Ontario party’s principles are or for whom it speaks.

This lament, which Gerald Caplan places near the beginning of his open letter to Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, expresses both the sadness and the frustration I suspect many feel. For those of us who still believe that government can be a force for positive social change, Andrea Horwath's direction and leadership as it is emerging during the Ontario campaign has been a profound disappointment. No vision. Just what many call populist policies or 'chequebook issues' that promise a modicum of relief from a few financial burdens, while leaving the fundamental underlying issues untouched and unspoken.

Her rejection of a progressive Liberal budget in the hope, presumably, of pursuing political gain, disappointed many, as Caplan makes plain:

Here was a win-win for the party: Many of those in need – the NDP’s people – would have directly benefited, and the NDP could have taken the credit. It would’ve been an entirely plausible claim, since it was true. The Liberals crafted it expecting your support. I expected it too, as did many others. Our disappointment was compounded when you could offer no sensible rationale for doing the opposite.

Pointedly, he chides her for what is missing in the current incarnation of the NDP:

No coherent theme, no memorable policies, nothing to deal with the great concerns of New Democrats everywhere: increasing inequality, the precarious lives of so many working people, reduced public services, global warming.

Instead, here is where her sights seem to be set:

...your real target seems to be business people large and small. Yes, they have their needs too, some of them legitimate. But they also have their parties who cater to those needs. If business want a sympathetic party to support – and they do – you can be sure they don’t need and won’t buy the NDP.

There are, of course, those die-hard NDP politicos who will be outraged by Caplan's letter. A circling of the wagons seems a natural reaction when attacked by one of your own. But what they need to remember is that he speaks for many who have grown disaffected with a party apparently more interested in pandering than in adhering to principles that provide a voice for those who have none.

For me, he speaks a sad but undeniable truth: the NDP has lost its way.

UPDATE: The discontent expressed by Gerald Caplan is spreading:

You may also like to check out these links here, here and here.

UPDATED: An Invitation To The Dance Party

What dance party is that, you ask? Why, the one being hosted by the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party whose name, it is rumoured, is in the process of being rejigged into the New Dance Party.

At least, that is how it appears to this political observer. As I opined yesterday, Ms. Horwath seems to be in the midst of an identity crisis, at least if her silence on key progressive issues such as the minimum wage is any indication. But perhaps that crisis is to be short-lived, given the letter she has sent to Premier Kathleen Wynne which included the following declaration:

“I will not support any new taxes, tolls or fees that hit middle-class families".

Funny thing about that much sought-after middle class, which, by some estimates, encompasses those with a family income ranging from $40,000 to $125,000. While no one would suggest greater taxation for those at the lower end, why rule out even greater progressive taxation for those in the middle to upper range?

The Star's Martin Regg Cohn has this to say about Andrea's metamorphisis:

After five years as leader, she has repurposed the NDP from a progressive movement to a populist brand, appealing to the broad middle class ahead of the working class and the welfare underclass.

As Cohn points out, this should surprise few:

Horwath’s about-faces on traditional party orthodoxy turned heads during the last election. The NDP echoed the anti-tax Tories in demonizing the HST, which major unions had defended as a way to fund social programs. Horwath’s surprise campaign pledge to lower taxes on gasoline, and her latest opposition to most transit taxes, have exasperated the environmental movement (most of her Toronto-area MPPs have signed a pro-transit petition, but not Horwath). Unionists pushing for a new public pension fear she will resist any mandatory plan that imposes premiums on her new-found small business allies.

The reason is obvious, of course: political opportunism. Put succinctly, as Cohn expresses it: She likes to win.

So in order to perfect her dalliance with a new constituency, I recommend Ms Horwath take dance instruction from the experts, represented below in two distinct styles:





UPDATE: Premier Wynne anwers Horwath's ultimatum.

Andrea Horwath: Labour's Fair-Weather Friend?

In light of her refusal to say much about anything, a political disease she may have caught from her federal cousins, Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath is being viewed increasingly as little more than a political opportunist. Probably the most recent example of this sad state is her reticence to articulate a position on Ontario's minimum wage.

Two weeks ago, Martin Regg Cohn offered this:

When did the party of the working poor lose its voice? Listen to the sound of Horwath clearing her throat when she finally emerged from the NDP’s Witness Protection Program this week — nine days after the panel’s exhaustive report, and nine months after its work started.

“Well, look, I respect the work of the grassroots movements that have been calling for the $14 minimum wage, but I think that what our role is right now is to consult with families that are affected, as well as small business particularly that’s also affected,” she told reporters Tuesday.

But as an acerbic Star editorial yesterday pointed out, the burning issues of the day demand that she start offering some real articulation of policy:

Horwath’s recent suggestion of consulting with business on wage increases is clearly redundant, given the fact that a panel of business and labour leaders just filed such a report — after months of discussion.

In the absence of ideas, it’s unclear what the so-called party of the people favours. Wage increases tied to inflation, like business owners? The $14-an-hour minimum wage pushed by anti-poverty activists? Given the fact that a decent wage for the lowest-paid is a key part of building a healthier society, Horwath’s silence is inexcusable – even if understandable as a short-term political tactic.

The editorial goes on to include other of the NDP leader's sins of omission. Absent is any commentary on:

- how to deal with gridlock in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area

- Premier Wynne's proposal for a made-in-Ontario pension plan

- plans for a sustainable provincial energy plan

Perhaps Ms Horwath was brought up to respect the proverb, "Silence is golden." At this stage in her life, however, considering the position of trust she has been given, she should also realize that to avoid the accusation of cynical political opportunism and expedience, it is an adage more honoured in the breach than the observance.

Then again, maybe her answers are blowin' in the wind.

Pension Reform

More of the white stuff has fallen, and I can ignore the importunate call of the snow shovel no longer, so I will make this brief with two reading recommendations for your Sunday morning discernment.

In today's Star, Martin Regg Cohn writes convincingly on the need for real pension reform, but he predicts that the provinces' finance ministers, who will be meeting today and tomorrow, will get nothing from federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. The latter will trot out the standard 'now is not the time- the economy is too fragile' line, but with more and more people destined to retire in relative poverty, the time for delay is over.

The fragility-of-the-economy-argument is given short shrift in another Star article by C. Scott Clark, a former Federal Deputy Minister of Finance, and Peter Devries, who was Director of Fiscal Policy when CPP was last reformed in 1998. The writers show how that tired argument has been used repeatedly to try to stop past measures:

The last significant structural changes to the CPP (and Quebec Pension Plan) were made in the late 1990s. At that time, CPP contribution rates were doubled, an independent investment board was established and the program was put on a sustainable basis. The arguments now being used by the government are not unlike those made by anti-reformers in 1997. Opponents argued that doubling the CPP premium rates would have a major negative impact on economic growth and job creation. This did not happen.

They go on to cite how the the economy was deemed too fragile when the government replaced the federal manufacturer's sales tax with the GST in 1991, and when the mid-90s saw the Liberals impose tough fiscal measures to deal with the deficit. In neither case did the economic sky fall in.

I'm convinced that we Canadians are far too passive, giving free reign to a government that makes its lack of responsiveness to the needs of Canadians a virtue. Until that changes, all we can likely expect is more of the same blather and inaction on the part of the Harper cabal.

A Peak Behind the Political Curtain

If, like me, you are of the firm suspicion that governments regard the needs of its citizens as largely secondary to those of its corporate backers, you will derive much from Martin Regg Cohn's column in this morning's Star. Entitled How corporate Ontario gets its way at Queen’s Park, the piece confirms the subversion of the people's interests at the hands of money, powerful lobbying, and venal politicians.

As discussed in an earlier blog entry, construction giant EllisDon has been engaged in an intense lobbying effort to get the Ontario legislature to rescind a 1958 agreement that binds them to using only union labour which, they assert, puts them at a competitive disadvantage. As part of what Cohn terms the lobbyist-industrialist complex that lubricates Ontario politics, the company, a contributor of massive sums of money to the Liberal Party and, to a lesser extent, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (with promises of more in exchange for their legislative support), attempted to 'call in its markers' through a Conservative private member's bill geared specifically to freeing it from its union obligations.

Thanks to some deft lobbying by StrategyCorp, EllisDon was able to secure Liberal backing for the Tory MPP’s proposal — a conspicuous display of bipartisan co-operation. The two rival parties went even further by agreeing to prioritize the controversial EllisDon bill, speeding it through the legislature.

Premier Kathleen Wynne publicly defended the bill as a necessary corrective for EllisDon. It was an unusually passionate defence of a bill circumscribing union rights, coming from a premier widely viewed as a labour-friendly progressive.

The motivation for such generous Liberal cooperation? Perhaps it had something to do with EllisDon's own 'generosity':

... EllisDon, its subsidiaries and executives, have been shockingly generous donors to her [Wynne's] party: more than $125,000 to the Liberals in 2012 and more than $40,000 so far in 2013.

And what the Tories didn’t say publicly was that EllisDon had given them a still-generous $32,000 last year and some $14,000 so far in 2013. Now, they were hoping for even bigger contributions if they went to bat for the company. Indeed, the latter was confirmed by an email from Conservative Randy Hillier in September.

Interestingly, all of these acts of political prostitution were ultimately unnecessary. Because the company had appealed an Ontario Labour Relations Board ruling that had granted it a two-year exemption from its union obligations, last month Ontario’s Divisional Court granted it a permanent exemption.

But the political hijinks and corruption didn't end there:

Seizing the opportunity, Wynne ducked. In light of the latest court ruling, she publicly dropped her support for the EllisDon bill — provided, she noted, there were no further court appeals from the unions.

Alas, the union has launched an appeal, but, because further legislative support of the company would have made her lack of principle obvious to even the most benighted, Wynne has decided to offer no further support to EllisDon.

All in all, a tawdry affair that shows the massive role that money and corporatism plays in Ontario politics, protests of principled purity by all participants notwithstanding.

The NDP - Just Another Political Machine - UPDATE

Although I will likely vote NDP federally in the next election, I am under no illusion that the party is much different from its two major competitors. Indeed, I see it as occupying the middle ground that the Liberals once laid claim to, and quite frankly, compared to the latter's leader's apparently policy-less platform, Thomas Mulcair looks statesmanlike and intelligent.

Of the NDP in Ontario, the province in which I reside, I am less certain. While leader Andrea Horwath has made noises about doing politics differently, increasingly she and her party appear to represent nothing except the same old backroom machinations aimed at maximizing seats at the expense of principle. A strong case in point is found in today's Star column by Martin Regg Cohn. Entitled NDP fights for its soul in Scarborough civil war, it tells the rather sordid tale of how disgraced former Toronto City Councillor Adam Giambrone, wending his way back from political purgatory, essentially 'muscled out' Amarjeet Kaur Chhabra, the very person he thought best to contest the upcoming Scarborough byelection.

But at the 11th hour, Giambrone had second thoughts — concluding that he was the best choice. He telephoned his fresh recruit, Chhabra, to confess that he would challenge her for the nomination.

In no time, Giambrone rounded up a posse to push him over the top at the weekend nomination meeting.

Unfortunately, these new supporters did not appear on a printed list of members signed up before the 30-day cut-off, and 12 names are being contested. Given that she lost by only two votes, the betrayed candidate, Amarjeet Kaur Chhabra, by all accounts an ideal choice, is prepared to take legal action to invalidate the nomination that Giambrone 'won.'

Party leader Horwath appears to be missing in action on the whole issue.

Unquestionably, when party democracy takes a back seat to political expediency, it cannot bode well for the future.



UPDATE: Amarjeet Kaur Chhabra has announced that she will not be pursuing legal action over the subversion of her bid for the NDP Scarborough nomination. She said that while she remains “disappointed” in the NDP over the debacle, she is letting the matter drop because the Aug. 1 vote is so close.

For Your Sunday Reading Pleasure ...

Whether or not you live in Ontario, you may find Martin Regg Cohn's column of some interest in illustrating the fractured and uneven relationship that Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has with the provinces. Writing in the voice of Ontario residents responding to Flaherty's finger-wagging over the MetroLinx proposal to raise the HST one point to help meet the GTHA's transit needs, he observes,

Your latest letter takes federal-provincial pugilism to a new level of aggression — lecturing and hectoring [Ont. Finance Minister] Sousa by telling him what he already knows: That he cannot create a regional GTA sales tax, a tax he has neither imposed nor proposed.

He goes on to point out Flaherty's hypocisy as well as his intransigence in meeting with his provincial counterpart to discuss federal involvement in addressing transit funding, once more underscoring the rather limited 'skill-set' (divide and conquer seems to be their default position) the Conservative Party of Canada brings to the table in federal-provincial relations.

All in all, a rather good piece of writing to enjoy on a Sunday morning.

Cynical Politics - Ontario Style

It is likely a truism to observe that the value burning brightest in the hearts of most political parties is the passion to get and retain power. Concern for the public good is at best but a very distant secondary concern.

We are reminded of this fact by the reaction of Ontario's political opposition to Kathleen Wynne's winning of the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, thus rendering her the next premier of the province. In his column today, The Star's Martin Regg Cohn offers the following trenchant observations:

With graceless timing, Tory Leader Tim Hudak disgorged an attack ad on the first business day after Wynne’s weekend triumph.

Next, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath laid a crass political trap of her own by demanding a costly full judicial inquiry into cancelled gas plants (which the NDP also wanted cancelled) instead of letting MPPs and the auditor general do the accounting job they’re paid to do. To be clear, Horwath’s first “ask” was to demand Wynne arrange her own hanging.

His column goes on to point out the patent hypocrisy in the attacks, hypocrisy that includes Hudak's complaint over losing four months of time in the legislation owing to the crass McGuinty prorogation after announcing he was stepping down. Despite being in apparent high dudgeon over this waste, he refused to support an NDP plan to tighten the rules of prorogation.

In Cohn's withering assessment, Andrea Horwath appears to be morally in tune with young Tim:

Horwath, who first demanded that prorogation be constrained, made no mention of that — or any other constructive idea — in her Monday news conference (or 10-minute private phone call that followed with the incoming premier). Instead, Horwath invited Wynne to sign her own death warrant by — improbably — setting up a commission to provide opposition ammunition in time for the next election.

Cohn goes on to point out that the auditor general will be releasing his report in March on government waste, so such a probe would also seem to be redundant.

The columnist deduces that instead of trying to co-operate for at least a few weeks to pursue the public good, as they were elected to do, both leaders and their parties [p]erhaps ... have concluded co-operation is too risky, lest it undercut their bedrock support.

Therein lies yet another instance of the abject failure of politics in our country.

Pension Envy

That's what Martin Regg Cohn, in his column this morning, calls the resentment stoked by the right-wing towards those who enjoy defined-benefit pensions.

In what passes for debate in the debased arena we call contemporary politics, politicians of the right, most notably Tim Hudak, have declared public defined-benefit plans unaffordable and unfair:

“Our pension system should be fair, not gold-plated for some and non-existent for others,” he began (my italics). “Generous plans are the norm for many government employees while a majority of workers . . . have no access to a workplace pension at all.”

As Cohn points out, the alternative he is advocating, Pooled Registered Pension Plans, are

...merely glorified RRSPs — they make no pretense to paying a reliable pension. The only certainty is that they will make future retirees poorer and investment advisers richer (thanks to fat management fees), while leaving all of us more exposed to the inevitable social costs of dealing with a wave of financially exposed seniors.

Yet despite that, the public clamours to bring everyone down to the lowest level rather than putting pressure on politicians to implement an enhanced Canada Pension Plan, one that would allow participation by everyone. Such reform has been demanded by several provinces, but it would seem that pressure exerted by the powerful financial lobbies have scotched that possibility for the time being.

But of course, the fate of any reform, be it political, economic, or social, ultimately rests in the hands of the electorate, the same electorate that is currently engaged in sniping at fellow citizens thanks, in part, to being such easy and eager targets for manipulation by their political 'masters.'

Some Questions Leadership Aspirants Need To Answer

I have recently written some posts bemoaning the paucity of policy undergirding the campaigns of those who would become the next leader of the Liberal Party, both on the provincial (Ontario) and federal level. Substituting for substance are tired bromides and platitudes that, in an earlier, less cynical age might have been sufficient to inspire, but now fill the seasoned observer with ennui and suspicion.

I was pleased to see Martin Regg Cohn addressing the issue in this morning's Toronto Star. Lamenting the lack of substance in the provincial leadership race, his piece lists six questions he says aspirants need to answer:

1. With unemployment hovering at 8.3 per cent, what’s your concrete plan to not just create but keep well-paying jobs?

2. Should motorists pay for driving on congested roadways? (road tolls, congestion fees, etc.)

3. Can you make future pensions a present-day priority?

4. Do you have the political stamina to tackle welfare reform?

5. As a rookie premier, will you stay green?

6. How do you persuade people to back you, while you’re cutting back on what you give them?

While these are all excellent questions, I hope Mr. Cohn remembers that it is the responsibility of journalists not only to ask these questions, but also to ensure the politicos don't simply fob off non-answers in response.

McGuinty's Magical Thinking

“We’ve been through tough times before. This is one more.”

At his leadership review yesterday, that was Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's rather understated response to his recent string of political misfires, misfires that include his costly efforts to win seats in the last election by shutting down two gas-fired power plants at great expense to the taxpayer, his failed attempt to bribe his way to a majority government in the Kitchener-Waterloo byelection, and his hamfisted and unnecessary strategy for reducing the provincial deficit by stripping teachers of their collective bargaining rights, despite the fact that teachers had offered a two-year wage freeze.

Apparently, Canada's answer to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker remains upbeat about future prospects, even though the teacher bill and the proposed broader public-sector wage freeze could prove very costly through court challenges to their constitutionality.

Indeed, it would seem that McGuinty's groundless optimism is infectious. As reported by Martin Regg Cohn,

Happily for the premier, a solid majority of party delegates (85.8 per cent) backed him in a mandatory leadership review — even as public opinion polls show he has the approval of less than a third of all Ontarians.

Perhaps the Premier's political instincts are failing him; at the leadership review, he seemed to think that a few platitudes about teachers would undo the political fallout of his folly as he reflected on “working with the best teachers anywhere — Ontario teachers.”

With his party now sitting at 20% in the polls, I suspect he is going to have to do a lot more than that to mend some seriously-damaged fences.

Inconvenient Truths for the Corporate Sector

Given that recent reports have helped to puncture the myth of job-creation benefits arising from corporate tax cuts and corporate welfare, I was pleased to read Martin Regg Cohn's article in this morning's Star.

Entitled NDP leverages vote results to pressure big business to create jobs, the article discusses the current popularity of the provincial NDP in Ontario. Leader Andrea Horvath used her leverage in the last budget to both secure a tax hike on the income enjoyed by the wealthiest Ontarians and prevent another scheduled corporate tax reduction; the party also blocked Premier Dalton McGuinty's ruthless bid for a majority government in this month's by-election in Kitchener-Waterloo through the victory of NDP candidate Catherine Fife.

As Cohn reminds us, she also won McGuinty's pledge to look seriously at a job-creation tax credit that would reward companies for increasing their payrolls. Horwath argued her $250 million program, modelled on a similar U.S. plan, would deliver better value for taxpayers' money that is now doled out to corporations with no strings attached.

That pledge is about to come to fruition through McGuinty's new Jobs and Prosperity Council, chaired by Royal Bank CEO Gordon Nixon, hardly likely to be favorably disposed to such a notion. As Cohn makes clear, Nixon embodies the corporate welfare and tax leakage that the NDP condemns: Canada's banks benefited handsomely from a series of Liberal corporate tax cuts, reaping record profits without creating the kind of high-value jobs that merit taxpayer subsidies. He has, however, promised to hear Horwath out on her proposal

Let us hope that a clash of ideologies does not prevent some productive recommendations from emerging. I suspect that ignoring increasing public awareness of the injustice of unproductive tax cuts could prove politically costly to the beleaguered McGuinty.

Uncommon Wisdom From The 'Common' People

That is the best way to assess the fact that last night, despite all of his gerrymandering, Dalton NcGuinty was decisively thwarted in his ruthless drive for the majority government he had been denied in the last general provincial election.

Thanks to the people of Kitchener-Waterloo, both he and the leader of the Official Opposition, young Tim Hudak of the Conservatives, are looking decidedly vulnerable today. A good analysis of that vulnerability can be found in Martin Regg Cohn's column in this morning's Star.

And just before I leave the topic of politicians who forget who they are elected to serve, I am reproducing a letter I came across yesterday in The Spectator. The observations made by the writer, Mark Kikot of Burlington, are ones that our arrogant political 'masters' would be wise to bear in mind the next time they contemplate the bald pursuit of power at the expense of the electorate.

McGuinty scapegoats public-sector workers

Premier Dalton McGuinty is demonstrating through his current strategy for dealing with the deficit that behaving like a conservative government is easier than being a liberal government, and that behaving like a corporation is easier than being a government.

Those Ontarians who have accepted the corporate mindset as the controlling metaphor in their lives, and the corporate structure as an inescapable reality, would argue that any responsible government should function like a business. Costs that cannot be sustained must be offset by cuts in order to produce a supposedly more efficient, hopefully more effective, and clearly more profit-driven organization; in other words, the ideal model for governance is the lean mean machine.

While any sensible person should acknowledge that we cannot continue to live beyond our means, any sensible person should also recognize that the debt incurred by a government must be shared by all the sectors of the society that that government represents.

By targeting primarily the public sector, and the educational sector in particular, in its attempt to balance the books, the McGuinty government has made scapegoats of those public sector workers who provide social services that improve the quality of life for all Ontarians. In adopting this politically convenient strategy, McGuinty has created the impression that the deficit is entirely an in-house problem, instead of a problem for which the private sector is also responsible. It is unreasonable and unjust to expect the deficit to be reduced almost exclusively at the expense of public sector employees who make on average much less than $100,000 a year, while private sector employees who make between $100,000 and $500,000 a year pay taxes at pre-deficit rates, and corporations continue to be granted privileged tax status in the hope that they will create jobs.

The McGuinty government in its bull-headed idiocy is moving forward with legislation that ignores the collective bargaining process and imposes working conditions, not negotiated contracts, on teachers and other educational workers. There can be no social contract without contractual agreements.

Mark Kikot, Burlington