On Federal Byelections

It is commonly held that Stephen Harper chose June 30 for the four recent byelections in the anticipation that turnout would be low. Even the advance polls, which were set for Friday and Saturday of what for many would be a long weekend, offered little motivation for the winter-weary to cast their ballots before escaping town. The turnout statistics show that the Prime Minister got his wish:

Fort McMurray-Athabasca (15.2 per cent)
Macleod (19.6 per cent)
Scarborough-Agincourt (29.4 per cent)
Trinity-Spadina (31.6 per cent)

However, according to Tim Harper, not everything worked out according to plan. He points out the following in his column today:

...there is a federal political trend that is unassailable — in nine trips to the polls under Justin Trudeau, Liberal voting percentages have grown nine times, in ridings as diverse as Labrador, downtown Toronto and Montreal, rural Manitoba and rural and northern Alberta.

Having achieved victory in two out of the four contests,

... it is the growth of the Liberal vote in Manitoba and Alberta in contests over the past seven months that could hold an omen for 2015.

In Brandon-Souris last November Trudeau grew the Liberal vote by 39 points, and in rural Provencher he grew his party’s vote by 23 points.

Monday, in the seemingly impenetrable Conservative vaults of Macleod and Fort McMurray-Athabasca, the Liberal vote grew 13 points and 25 points, respectively since the 2011 general election.

These numbers should worry Harper for two reasons. The first is obvious, if indeed a Liberal trend has been developing. The second, more ominous indicator, however, is that Harper's base, at least if the byelection numbers are to be taken as harbingers, are losing their own motivation to turn out at the polls; if this proves an accurate assessment of their mood, implications for the general election next year should be disturbing to Dear Leader.

Having won the 2011 election with 39.2% of the popular vote in which only 61.4% of eligible voters bothered to turn out, Harper knows that two things are eseential for next year's contest: a low general turnout and a high turnout from his base.

It would seem that the second part of his strategy needs some work. The first falls to the rest of us, if we indeed truly care about this country and its future.

Happy Canada Day

I was originally going to take the day off from blogging, but then, after reading the editorial in today's Star along with some letters reflecting what people would wish for Canada, I decided to briefly add my own thoughts.

Certainly, there are a number of challenges we face both as a country and as a society; traditional values of inclusiveness, consultation, negotiation, and compromise have all suffered badly under the Harper regime. But perhaps the gravest consequence of that cabal's rule is our aspirations as a nation; once grand in scope and vision (think, for example, of the nation-building involved in consturcting a rail system linking all parts of Canada, or the development of a national health-care system) they have grown muted, mercenary and small-minded. (Think, for example of Martha-Hall Findlay's recent sad assertion that building pipelines is a nation-building exercise.)

My own life-experience has taught me that we are at our best, both individually and collectively, when we have a deep sense of purpose; indeed, as we get older, no longer encumbered by the structure that defines so much of our lives during the working years, maintaining or rediscovering that sense of purpose is vital to the continuance of a meaningful life. The same is true, I believe, with nations. Under our current government, of course, there is no such purpose, unless you think it noble and worthwhile to despoil the environment, contribute to the growing catastrophe of climate change, or pay as little income tax as possible. Such cribbed conceptions reflect the souls of bean-counters, not leaders of society.

There is no dearth of projects to which Canada could aspire to, and in the process inspire the hearts and minds of the people. A national pharmacare program is eminently doable. Responsibly building a green economy would be another. A national housing strategy, a national childcare program, perhaps even a guaranteed annual income - all are within our reach.

We are approaching a turning point in our evolution as a nation. The upcoming election in 2015 will likely have far-reaching consequences for our future. Which vision will prevail, 'business as usual' or a bold rediscovery of our potential as a people and as a nation?

Avoiding Another Imbroglio: A Mound Of Sound Guest Post

This note from the Mound of Sound accompanied the post that follows:

Some of the course material I’ve been going through lately got me thinking about the conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq. I got thinking about them in the context of water and food security as well as climate change. Our corporate media really drops the ball in these situations. They look for one convenient villain, give it the pack journalism treatment, and then serve it up for public consumption. I have been writing for some time about growing tensions between Iraq and its upstream neighbours, Turkey and Syria, over conflicting demands to the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. Today I got out the maps and looked at water security in the context of the anticipated breakup of Iraq. The map that I have appended reveals how a hostile, Sunni breakaway state could wreak havoc on the Shiite south.

NATO’s former Supreme Commander Europe (Saceur) recently urged NATO states to come to the rescue in the turbulent Middle East. He didn’t overtly suggest that NATO forces be deployed on the ground in Syria or Iraq but he did argue that we need to reinforce and secure our fellow NATO partner Turkey against the insurgent forces just over its borders.

Two words that need to be kept in mind today – “mission creep.” Yes we have a clear duty to Turkey under the NATO charter, at least if it actually is attacked, but we must not allow that to extend into military campaigns beyond Turkey’s borders. The Middle East is becoming a cauldron of unrest and instability that they’re just going to have to sort out for themselves. As Western forces demonstrated so clearly in Afghanistan and Iraq, deploying “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” into that theatre yields lousy results and may even make the situation worse in the long term.

The Middle East appears to be at full boil with civil war raging in Syria and Iraq, suppression of democracy in the Gulf States, the reinstatement of military rule in Egypt, insurgencies blossoming across North Africa. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Unrest in the region could get far worse before it gets any better and the worst could last for generations, especially if outside states begin manipulating proxies in the region to expand their own geo-political spheres of influence. Cold War II could be waged along the Sunni-Shiite divide. No thank you.

Religious extremism is just one of the stressors fuelling instability across the greater Muslim world. Add to that the Iranian Shiite and Saudi Sunni sectarian rivalry. These religious tensions are compounded by the ongoing impacts of Western meddling in the wake of WWI when Britain and France carved up the Ottoman empire according to their European interests without regard to ethnic, tribal and religious realities on the ground. It never worked except at the muzzle of a gun. We needed monarchs, royalty real or imagined, and tinpot dictators to wield the sort of brutality needed to keep our newly demarcated states under control. Syria, Iraq and Iran are all products of Western meddling in the Middle East just as India, Pakistan and Afghanistan are all Britain’s doing in South Asia.

We get a lot of news reports about the civil war raging in Syria and Iraq today. The situation is so confused that it’s unclear whether it’s actually two civil wars or just one civil war being waged against two state actors. Our focus is drawn to Sunni Islamist radicals alternately known as ISIS or ISIL or al Qaeda in Iraq. Today the narrative of Western choice is that this is really all about the long-festering religious dispute between the Shiite and Sunni factions of Islam and today it’s the Sunni extremists poised to destroy Christendom (see, it really is all about us).

Back in 2003, the Muslims we feared were the Shia. Remember Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army? Remember the Badr Brigades? They were the intractable nasty shits that absolutely, positively needed to be wiped out if we were ever again to have a peaceful night’s sleep. So what happened? Well, the majority Shia got control of the Iraqi government and Muqtada decided to go back to his real passion – eating. His gang got absorbed into the new government’s security apparatus and got busy oppressing their former Sunni masters. Another squall in a much larger, more powerful storm yet to pass through.

Climate change is also playing a big role in destabilizing the Middle East. The crowds of young people who flocked to Cairo’s Tahrir Square might have been after democracy and an end to military dictatorship but they probably would have been crushed pretty quickly if it hadn’t been for a lot of their countrymen being furious at the government over high food prices and food insecurity, nepotism and the lack of opportunity, and various other complaints. Grievances are like a bag full of magnets. They attract and become attached. We look at the top magnet and say, “well, see, there’s the problem.”

Climate change actually sparked the brutal civil war in Syria that continues to rage. Drought triggered famine that triggered unrest among Syria’s Sunni majority. They weren’t getting a fair deal from the Alawite (Shia) government of Assad and they finally had enough. The al Qaeda bunch joined in after the uprising was already well underway. They piggybacked their religious war atop what was really a food security-driven civil war.

It should come as no surprise that climate change is also a significant stressor in the unrest in Iraq. The ‘fertile crescent’ of Iraq depends on the waters of two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. From those rivers was born the ‘cradle of civilization,’ ancient Mesopotamia. It is from their waters that Iraq irrigates its farmland. Those rivers are fed from the mountains of eastern Turkey, an area also hit with drought. The rivers pass through both Turkey and Syria and, when a region is plunged into drought, it’s never good news for the downstream countries, in this case Iraq. The Euphrates leaves Turkey to bisect Syria before passing into Iraq. The Tigris enters Iraq where Turkey and Syria meet Iraq. Within Iraq, the rivers pass through the Kurdish north and the Sunni central part of the country. The majority Shia are concentrated in the south, the end of the line for the Tigris and Euphrates. This map should give a pretty good hint at what could lie in store for the Shiite south if the Sunni extremists in central Iraq get control of that territory.



If, as many expect, Iraq dissolves along sectarian lines, this could leave the Shiite south at the mercy of their historic, Sunni nemesis in central Iraq. It could go pretty hard for the Shia at the bargaining table. Shiite Iraqis might have no choice but to seek the protection (and muscle) of Iran and, should that happen, all bets are off. The Shiite-Sunni divide could just be the next Iron Curtain for Cold War II between the Russians and Chinese backing Iran, Shiite Iraq and Syria versus the West as reluctant defender of a gaggle of rapidly destabilizing Sunni states. No good can come to us or them by allowing ourselves to be drawn into that sort of quagmire.

The conflicts underway and those to come in the Middle East will likely be multi-generational, another good reason for us to keep our distance. As we showed in Iraq, Afghanistan and, before that, Vietnam, we don’t do wars without end. To us, ten years is a stretch. and, if we ever needed a reason to wean ourselves off our addiction to fossil fuels, this one’s a dandy.

Well Said!

The other day I wrote a post critical of the 'blame game' being played by the NDP's Andrea Horwath to excuse her lack of progress during the recent Ontario provincial election. In a similar vein, Star letter-writer Michael Foley of Toronto offers his excoriating assessment of her rationalization:

Re: Liberal scare tactics cost party at polls, NDP leader says, June 26

I want to make this very clear, Andrea Horwath. I did not, nor have I ever voted out of fear. I vote for the leader who offers the best ideas for all Ontarians.
Horwath apparently lost because of an electorate that approached voting stations on wobbly knees, casting ballots with shaky hands, nervous sweat beading on worried brows. Not because of any missteps that she may have taken.

She lost and it was her own doing. She insults me and all who turned out to vote. It was her who abandoned her party’s founding principles not me. It was her who turned her back on core party supporters and values, not me.

Be an adult and accept the voters decision for what it is, with grace, and not with petulance and wrath.

.......................................................................................................................................

Canadians have recently been witness to the sad and now seemingly irreversible devolution of the CBC, fueled both by ongoing and deep government funding cuts and betrayal from within. Star reader Kevin Caners of Brockville reflects on the implications of this Harper-led assault on Canadian icons in this perceptive letter:

Re: CBC plan could cripple public broadcaster, June 25

As someone who cares deeply about this country, I can’t fully express how much despair it fills me with to watch as the CBC — one of the few forums we have as Canadians to both connect and reflect our culture and society — is systematically dismantled.

From the CBC to Canada Post, isn’t it symbolic that as we tear up the few remaining avenues we have as Canadians to communicate literally and metaphorically with each other, the Conservatives are busy with their vision of what it means to build a country — namely constructing pipelines to pump oil from one part of the country to another.

What an utterly sad thought that our message to our children, and the world, is that the thing we care most about connecting as a nation is not our communities, our aspirations, and our citizens, but our dirty oil, with export markets. Surely we have the imagination and confidence to see ourselves as something more than climate change deniers and hewers of bitumen.

I hardly recognize this Canada any longer. And it pains me to recognize what we’ve already lost in our haste. My only hope is that we Canadians who still believe in this country, start organizing now to make sure that the Conservatives’ sad impoverished vision for this country, comes to an end as of April 2015.

And then the true work of building a society — through our arts, culture and understanding of one another — can start anew. Time to get working.

Motor City Madness: A Mound of Sound Guest Post

The City of Detroit is the poster child for municipal meltdown. It’s generally known that Detroit is bankrupt after decades of steady decline and the flight of most of its wealthy (white) citizens. There is no shortage of graphic photographs of abandoned and derelict buildings, the remnants of once viable neighbourhoods.

Not everyone could afford to flee Detroit. Poverty was their invitation to stay put. However staying put in a city in collapse ain’t cheap. With businesses gone and wealthy residents gone someone still has to pay for basic infrastructure and that someone would be the poor who can’t afford to leave.

Enter Maude Barlow the head of the Council of Canadians and world renowned expert on water issues. Ms. Barlow wears many hats. In her capacity as founder of the Blue Planet Project and chair of Food and Water Watch, she has written a wrenching report to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water on the plight of Detroit’s left behind residents.

Barlow complains that Detroit’s austerity proconsul, appointed by the state governor, is breaching the human rights of Detroit residents by denying them access to clean, safe water. At the moment, water utility crews are being kept busy, very busy, cutting off water service to 3,000 homes each week. The city needs $5-billion in water service repairs and upgrades. Meanwhile the utility continues to lose water from broken pipes in abandoned homes and buildings. Someone has to pay for that lost water. Someone must pay.

Barlow isn’t pulling any punches. She’s directly accusing the government of using the water crisis to drive poor black people out of the city, to cleanse it in order to facilitate gentrification.

The case of water cut-offs in the City of Detroit speaks to the deep racial divides and intractable economic and social inequality in access to services within the United States. The burden of paying for city services has fallen onto the residents who have stayed in the economically depressed city, most of whom are African-American. These residents have seen water rates rise by 119 per cent within the last decade. With official, understated unemployment rates at a record high and the official, understated poverty rate at about 40 per cent, Detroit water bills are unaffordable to a significant portion of the population.

The City of Detroit declared bankruptcy in the summer of 2013. A high-priced bankruptcy lawyer was named its Emergency Manager with a mandate to get the city back on its feet financially by imposing a savage austerity regime. within the United States. Noting is off the chopping block, including water utilities, which are being considered for regionalization, sale, lease, and/or a public-private partnership and are currently subject to mediation by a federal district judge. The Detroit People’s Water Board fears that authorities see people’s unpaid water bills as a “bad debt” and want to sweeten the pot for a private investor by imposing even more of the costs of the system on those least able to bear them. The service cut-offs for anyone more than two months behind in payments appear to be the city’s last-ditch attempt to make up for lost revenues. A contract with a private operator seeking profits will only lead to greater hikes in service fees and even less affordable, more unjust barriers to equitable access to vital water. That this massive human rights atrocity is occurring near the largest group of freshwater lakes on the planet, with very little media attention, is a foreboding sign of the times.

The Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) argues that these water cut-offs to poor Detroit households need to be understood within a broader context of Detroit’s appeal in the real estate market. With its proximity to the Great Lakes and the Canadian border, the city is considered prime real estate, and is available at fire sale prices. People’s overdue water bills are being transferred to their property taxes and people are losing their homes as a result. Given the utility’s lack of interest in cutting costs or generating revenues by collecting on the arrears of business users, fixing leaking pipes, and cutting off services to abandoned homes, the organization sees the crackdown as a ploy to drive poor people of color out of the city to facilitate gentrification – what the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization refers to as a “land-grab.”

Barlow writes of residents who cannot bathe their children and who have no water for cooking, no water for sanitation. She writes of parents fearing the loss of their children due to child welfare authorities acting on state policy there by working utilities in all homes housing children.

It is a nightmare. Imagine living in a society where the poor cannot secure access to clean water. This isn’t some impoverished failed state. It’s the United States. If it can happen there, is any place really secure?

Lisa MacLeod Revisited

The other day I wrote a commentary on recently re-elected Nepean-Carlton Ontario Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod. In a thinly-disguised job application/op-ed piece for the Star, Ms. MacLeod talked about what is needed for revitalized leadership of her party, brought to electoral ruin by the soon-to-be-departed leader Tim Hudak. Perhaps not surprisingly, MacLeod's prescription for renewal seemed to reflect her 'skillset.'

It is a self-assessment with which not everyone agrees. In today's Toronto Star, two letter-writers point out what the party needs, and their prescriptions do not seem to include Ms. MacLeod:

Re: Ontario Tories need fresh leadership, Opinion June 24

When I read drivel such as this penned by Lisa MacLeod, it is difficult to drum up any optimism about the futures of Ontario, or its Progressive Conservative Party.

The Tories lost the election for one reason: incompetence on a massive scale. Instead of running with a few things that would have resonated with the vast majority of voters (hydro rates, and debt load on our children’s shoulders), true to form they handed their opponents coils of rope and voluntarily built the scaffolds.
It is quite apparent that Lisa MacLeod is positioning herself for a run at the leadership of the party, and I would extend a caution to anyone who might be under the impression that her fresh face is the ticket to party rejuvenation.

I met Ms MacLeod several years ago at a public meeting in rural Ottawa. Her personal brand of politics differs little from the all-too-familiar version: politics is nothing but the acquisition and retention of power — decency and concern be damned.
And the fact that she ran away from a discussion about our declining property rights shows that she really isn’t much different from Mr. Hudak, or the Liberals and the NDP, for that matter.

Jamie MacMaster, North Glengarry

MPP Lisa MacLeod could have saved a lot of ink and space by simply writing: pick me, pick me!

She is already looking to the next election. Listen up Tories: Ontarians don’t like elections. They cost money. Our money.

What we want for the Ontario Tories is a leader with intelligence, integrity, candour, honesty, a social conscience, and especially, the ability to work with all parties, to find the best solutions for Ontarians’ needs. Not your party’s needs.

That pretty much rules out all the old baggage carriers from the Mike Harris years – like Tony Clement and the neocons/Tea Partiers like Lisa Raitt.
Oh, and Lisa MacLeod.

“Red” Tories it’s time to take back the party.

Susan Ruddle, Waterdown

The Blame Game

The fact that I experienced physical and verbal abuse at the hands of my teachers during my Catholic education probably has a lot to do with my visceral response to arrogance. Having someone presume to sit in judgement on another is both a humiliating and ultimately enraging experience, one that most of us have probably experienced at some point in our lives; however, even that realization does not not in any way make the experience more acceptable or palatable.

It is therefore within the above context that I take great exception to politicians who presume to lecture us on our shortcomings as voters. Either we are the victims of 'the politics of fear,' according to Andrea Horwath, or the dupe of unions, or the failure of Tim Hudak's leadership, both of which are popular views of the Progressive Conservative Party.

Consider what a truculent, unrepentant Horwath had to say after finally emerging from hiding on Wednesday:

The NDP leader insisted Wednesday her party lost on June 12 because the Liberals frightened Ontarians into voting against the Progressive Conservatives.
“Look, the people in this province, they made a decision to basically choose fear — or to vote out of fear — as opposed to choose positive change,” she said.

Just in case we might prove resistant to such a simplistic and insulting analysis, the NDP leader repeated and expanded upon her insights:

“Out of fear, the people of Ontario voted. They strategically voted to keep Mr. Hudak’s plan off of the books . . . . That’s their decision to make,” she said of the PC leader who will step down July 2.

“That means we have a lot of work to do around the strategic voting issue.”

Apparently not given to much introspection, she has not considered stepping down as leader, telling all assembled that it was “absolutely not” a bad idea to force the election by rejecting the May 1 budget.

The Star's Martin Regg Cohn takes a less enthusiastic view of Horwath's 'achievement.' In his article, entitled Andrea Horwath shows hubris over humility, Cohn points out an objective truth:

News flash for New Democrats: The NDP lost three key Toronto MPPs and elected three rookies in smaller cities, winding up right where it started — in third place with 21 of the legislature’s 107 seats. .... Horwath lost the balance of power she’d wielded since 2011. No longer can New Democrats influence a minority government agenda.

Cohn is puzzled by the oddly triumphant tone that Horwath has adopted in light of her non-achievement:

And what has she learned? Party members and union leaders “have all said to me you’re doing great, you’re a good leader, stay on.”

Reporter: “You said you have no regrets with the campaign, but are there any mistakes that you might have made during this campaign?”

Horwath: “We were able to connect with a whole bunch of people that decided to vote NDP for the first time ever. We’re excited about that.”

Mistakes? She can’t think of any.

It would appear that Ms Horwath may have to await the mandatory leadership review at her party's convention in November to be brought down from her current lofty perch of hubris.

In case you are interested in how the Progressive Conservatives rationalize their loss, Steve Paikin's The Agenda is worth a view as well: