Oh those fat-cat artists

I'm guessing that Stephen Harper is either lying again, or has never met a real live artist. "Stephen Harper ... draped himself in populism and said he sided with regular folks who aren't troubled that his policies rile fat-cat artists or people 'in ivory towers.'"

Fat-cat artists? Really? Really?! I mean, I know a few artists myself. They're slim and largely non-feline. And they're also just getting by - working class, at best. The Green Party offers some numbers on this:

In 2000 the average employment income in Canada was $31,757. Actors that year earned an average of $21,597, painters and sculptors $18,666 and musicians and singers $16,090. By comparison, a senior government manager averaged $65,020 in 2000.

The poverty line is currently set at $20,778. So... maybe actors are the fat-cats, rolling around in a bed made of the $800 that they're raking in beyond the poverty line? The Prime Minister of Canada, on the other hand, is making only $280,000 or so. Poor guy.

UPDATE: I think this is the original quote from Harper that the Globe & Mail refers to:

I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people, you know, at a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough when they know those subsidies have actually gone up - I'm not sure that's something that resonates with ordinary people.

So he didn't actually use the term "fat-cat", just implied it. I'm not sure what gala he's talking about, but I assume that he's referring to film industry ones. In which case he's being extremely disingenuous in implying that the actors/directors/etc. you might see at such galas are in any way representative of average artists in Canada.

Leaders debate revisited

A column from Lysiane Gagnon here. Summary: the Green Party should not have been allowed into the leaders debate because they don't meet established "clear and perfectly fair" criteria of proven popular support and Commons representation.

Clear? They aren't clear to me, because they've never been cited by the broadcasters consortium or any of the articles I've found on this issue. Apparently they aren't clear to Ms. Gagnon either; she goes on to say that popular support "should ideally be measured by the percentage of the vote won in the previous election" and "a threshold of 5 per cent... seems reasonable." 'Should', 'ideally', 'seems reasonable'. All the terms one expects to see in reference to something that's absolutely clear, right? If they're clear then why speculate about what they ought to be?

She goes on to write: "The other rule was that the party had to be represented in the House of Commons. Yet, the Greens have no MP elected under the party's banner." They don't have an MP elected under the party's banner. They do have an MP. Are the rules clear here? Does the broadcasters consortium have it written down somewhere that the MP has to be elected under the party's banner? Or is Ms. Gagnon being, perhaps, a little disingenuous here by sneaking in the word 'elected'?

Really, this article misses the entire point. Elizabeth May was able to "elbow her way into the major leagues" because the other party leaders, not "the rules", were offered as the reason for her exclusion. If the rules had been clear and fair and cited as a reason for May's exclusion, that might have been the end of it. They weren't cited because their nature and application aren't clear at all. The article does nothing more than interpret that uncertainty so as to support a particular point of view.

Stephen Harper speaks on arts cuts

Here. From the article: "Mr. Harper flatly denied any ideological underpinnings...."

See, that's called lying. As I've mentioned before, the Conservative party's own leaked memo complained that "left-wing" artists were benefiting from the grants. Not that they were "political" or "right-wing" or "radical" or anything else. Just that they happened to espouse ideology that's opposed to conservatism.

So which is the lie? The internal memo leaked at the time, or the public statement a month later during an election campaign? Gee, I wonder.

In their own words

The Globe and Mail is running a daily selection of quotes from the major party leaders. My two cents here:

Stephen Harper says

"Being a family man ... a father of school-age children is a big part of my life. People say it must be tough to balance your family life with being prime minister. In fact if I didn't have this family life I don't think I could stay balanced as prime minister."

"We will not be getting into a bidding war [of election promises] with the opposition. That is a fundamental choice of this campaign: do we stay the course or do we go back to an agenda of tax and spend."

"My opponent [Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion] has said he wants to tax things that are bad ... taking groceries to market, is that bad? Allowing airplane transportation - the shipping of goods across the continent around the world; business and passenger transportation - are these bad things? No, these are essential things for the economy."

I think it's very telling that he only stops talking about the Liberals to make the irrelevant claim that he is a family man. This is only a limited selection of quotes, of course, but it's reflected in his campaign. The ads so far have been "Stéphane Dion, scratch'n'lose" and "Stephen Harper, family man". Good on you, Steve, but what's your agenda?

Stéphane Dion says

"I have a hearing problem and it may be linked to that."

"I challenge Stephen Harper to debate this seriously, to stop to lie to Canadians, to not try to win an election by lying. And to be honest for once."

"Yes, I love the beginning of this campaign. The fun is in the Liberal Party. The 'party' is back in the Liberal Party. And I've been told ... speaking about fun and party, we have some burgers somewhere to eat."

#1 is in regard to his alleged lack of proficiency with the English language. Dion shouldn't dignify personal criticisms by trying to defend himself against them. I wasn't paying much attention to his delivery until he brought it up. And if he's going to challenge Harper to be honest, he should really just dive into the attack and start pointing out lies. Taking the high road is admirable but if he's going to define himself in relation to his adversary, he'd better be clear about what's wrong with his adversary.

Jack Layton says

"Winds of change are blowing south of the border and many Canadians are catching that sense of optimism for a better North America - and indeed a better world."

"When we see Mr. Harper claim to be standing up for the North and to have a vision for the North, he'd better start by controlling the pollution and taking action to protect the North from the toxic discharges of his friends in the big oil companies."

"There is a sweater on over his agenda. I'm not sure it changes the agenda, however."

#1 is a continuation of the Harper equals Bush tack, and it's getting tired. That anti-Americanism card isn't going to win new votes, it's preaching to the choir. Layton needs a new line.

Gilles Duceppe says

"These elections will be an occasion to raise a primordial question - what kind of society do we want to live in?"

"Lots of people are family men. It's not All in the Family, it's an election."

"That candidate said very openly that self-whipping is a sacrifice they have to do. I question myself on such practices."

#2 is on point. #3 is in reference to Nicole Carbonneau Barron, an Opus Dei member running as a Conservative in Quebec. Way to take the low road, Gilles. Her religion is none of your business.

Elizabeth May says

"You across Canada: Please pay attention now. Don't tune in CNN. Tune in our networks. Yes, the McCain-Obama fight is interesting, but this is our future."

"It's Day 2 of the Canadian election and democracy's taking a nose-dive."

"I'm grateful for the outpouring of outrage that we're seeing across the country."

#1 is so right. I was thinking about writing a whole post on it. I meet people yammering on about Obama, McCain, and Palin all the time and they don't know squat about local politics. They seem to feel that being well-informed means knowing about American politics because "they affect the whole world." Maybe so, but local politics affect you.

Thoughts on the Leaders' Debate

Day-old news: The Green Party will not be invited to the leaders' debate. Various reasons have been offered, but none of them is especially compelling. Here's my analysis:

1. The excuse from the broadcasters' consortium was that the other party leaders refused to attend if Green Party leader Elizabeth May were allowed to. For that matter, I'm sure that Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion would be happy to have the floor all to themselves. The other leaders' desires should not be the issue. This is a chance for the public to find out what the party leaders are all about; if some of them are about boycotting a debate with a leader whose party is supported by around 10% of Canadians (nearly as many as the NDP, and more than the Bloc Québécois whose leader was invited), then they've made their statement. Let it stand. May can have the floor to herself while the others' positions remain unvoiced, but clear:

Harper: "Why do you need to hear from anyone else when you've got me?"
Dion: "Harper's not coming? If there's nobody around that I can compare to George Bush then I've got nothing left to say."
Layton: "There ain't room in this left for the two of us."

2. The NDP and the Conservatives have both painted May as a second Liberal candidate because of her and Stéphane Dion's agreement not to run candidates against one another in their own ridings. Stephen Harper added "I think it would be fundamentally unfair to have two candidates who are essentially running on the same platform in the debate."

This is just weak. Their platforms are not the same, and someone minimally informed can point out numerous differences. There may be some overlap, but that didn't stop the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties from both participating in the May 1997 leaders' debate. They were similar enough to later merge into one party... guess whose? The fact that the Green and Liberal parties aren't running candidates against one another's leaders is trivial. It's much more important to note that the Greens are siphoning off Liberal votes, which thoroughly undermines the idea that they will somehow bolster the Liberals' position. It benefits the Conservatives if anyone.

3. BQ leader Gilles Duceppe said "The rules are the rules are the rules," citing the fact that the Green party has no elected MP (their one MP is a converted former independent). But nobody else mentioned these rules, not even when the broadcasters explained their decision, so are they really the rules? And if they are then why did anybody ask you and the other party leaders? The rules should have resolved the question, right? Come on, now you're just making shit up.

UPDATE: A caller to a local news discussion on the topic claimed that there's a 19-seat cutoff for participation in the leaders' debate, and it has been exercised before. If it's true, it would be an acceptable reason, but why hasn't anybody else mentioned it?

He Finally Called It

The foreplay is finally over. Stephen Harper has requested that the Governor General dissolve parliament for an election on October 14th. Here's what I want to say about it:

Strategic voting is a huge mistake!

Today Ipsos-Reid reports that 33% of Canadians intend to vote strategically - i.e. vote to keep the party they dislike out of power rather than to put a party they like in power. To them: don't do it!

I confess, I've done it before. We feel we only have two viable options right now, the Conservatives (CPC) and Liberals (LPC). Those who dislike the Conservatives can vote Liberal or NDP, but everybody knows that the NDP won't win and then the Liberals will be less likely to defeat the Conservatives.

I will hazard a guess that most of the 33% are of the variety I just described. In Alberta, the Conservative stronghold, the figure drops to 28% which confirms my feeling that more Conservative voters genuinely like the party. In our last federal election the Liberals pulled 30.2% of the vote (103 seats) and the NDP pulled 17.5% of the vote (29 seats). Now, how unreasonable is it to think that even 40% of those strategic voters are people who like the NDP but will vote otherwise out of fear? Supposing that's true, the numbers are suddenly reversed. The NDP becomes our viable alternative to the Conservatives.

At the very least, we can say that with that many voting for a party they don't genuinely want to see in power, the political landscape is very different from what it could be. And it's a short-sighted approach. You try to make your next four years better but you do nothing to improve the long-term prospects. We'll only secure other options for ourselves when we decide to bite the bullet, let the bad guys win one, and send a message to the country that there are more than two viable options.

My bias is probably clear enough, but I'm not even trying to argue for one side or the other. I'm arguing for honest voting. Check the box next to the candidate you want to see in parliament, or next to the party you want to see in power. It's that simple, and it's the only way to get out of this lesser-of-two-evils rut we're stuck in. That won't happen by itself. We can bring it about only when we stop waiting and stop reacting.