More on Deficits

The proper deficit figures, presumably from more current GDP information:

Canada: 3.3%
U.S.A.: 13.6%
Japan: 9.9%
Britain: 9.8%

The same editorial concludes:

It is time to stop these juvenile exchanges and move on to an adult conversation on what should be done after the recession to bring the budget back into balance. Ignatieff has said he would be open to the idea of raising taxes. Harper isn't. Would he undertake massive spending cuts or continue to run deficits? Canadians deserve an answer.

I couldn't agree more. Ignatieff made much of his intention to respond to personal attacks by attacking the CPC's record, which he has done. But the criticisms reported so far haven't contained much substance at all. Perhaps his demand for Jim Flaherty to be fired just made a better story than anything else he might have said, but until I see those other things, I'll remain unimpressed.

Speaking of Deficits...

From here:

[Stephen Harper] added that, despite a deteriorating financial situation across the world, the Canadian deficit is a third to a quarter of the size of the shortfalls faced by the United States, Britain and Japan and that the money is being borrowed at historically low interest rates to help create jobs and build infrastructure.

Projected Canadian deficit: $50 billion CAD = $44.6 billion USD
Projected U.S. deficit: $1800 billion USD
Projected U.K. deficit: £175 billion = $279.3 billion USD
Projected Japanese deficit: ??? (anybody?)

But these things are usually measured as percentage of GDP, I gather.

IMF 2008 says:
Canadian GDP: $1.510 trillion USD
U.S. GDP: $14.265 trillion USD
U.K. GDP: $2.674 trillion USD
Japanese GDP: $4.923 trillion USD

Thus:

Canadian deficit: 3.0% of GDP
U.S. deficit: 12.6% of GDP
U.K. deficit: 10.4% of GDP
Japanese deficit: ???

Yup, Steve is telling the truth.

For once.

Conservatives Raising Taxes?

Here

In short, the following words by Stephen Harper:

“What we’re not going to do, is every two or three months, come up with another economic policy, another budget, until we need to raise taxes.”

Are misinterpreted by Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale as meaning that the CPC has a secret plan to raise taxes. I'm as happy as anybody to pick on the CPC, but this herring is as red as they come.

I mean, Conservative deficit spending and tax hikes? Steve would never live it down.

It's On

The Globe and Mail catches up.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper continued this new, aggressive tack in the Commons yesterday, engaging in sabre-rattling as he flatly rejected Mr. Ignatieff's proposals to boost access to employment insurance and warned he was ready to fight an election on this.

I believe that settles it: it's on. Ignatieff made clear that he'll fight an election for EI reform and Harper agrees. The two party leaders have been getting increasingly blustery, and neither looks likely to back down. People in the know disagree with me, but in a self-contradictory way:

The Liberals, anxious not to be forced to look like they're dodging a fight, have double-timed the selection of candidates and advanced the deadline for their election platform to have it ready in weeks.

But senior strategists on both sides said they don't believe there will be an election this spring.

Here, Lawrence Martin wonders why the Liberals are being so polite when they could have savaged Harper for his prorogation. Perhaps Iggy is trying to emulate Obama and remain above all that, but I doubt that he could paint himself as such an idealist at this point. Nonetheless he keeps things pretty high-brow in his response:

"Now, when we're in the middle of the worst economic crisis this country has faced in a generation, all the Conservatives can think about is getting together in some basement room and working on some attack ads. Is that serious government?"

Rules are for other parties

... especially our own rules.

Fixed election dates? Sure, we campaigned on 'em and pushed 'em through. But we can still call an election a year early.

Elected senators? Maybe next time.

Parliamentary review for Supreme Court appointments? It's not like we have a Parliament anyway, so nyah nyah nyah.

Seriously. How can you re-elect these people?

The Framing of Michael Ignatieff

Just short of two years ago, Stéphane Dion was chosen as the new leader of the Liberal Party. Outside of Quebec, many people hadn't heard of him until then and didn't know anything about him. The Conservative Party was thinking ahead; this man would be their biggest competitor in the next federal election, and they had an opportunity. Enter the frame.

The first major piece of media about the man himself was the slogan: "Stéphane Dion is not a leader." Twenty months later an election was called, and Dion's biggest problem was the public's perception that he is not a leader. If there's one thing for which you have to respect the Conservatives, it's their tactical acumen.

Now, finally, Dion's first mistake has taken its course and he's stepped down to make room for Michael Ignatieff. What have we heard about the latter? He went to Harvard, he spent a lot of time in the USA, and he used to support the Iraq war. In Conservative-speak that will be, "He's an ivory tower elite, out of touch with ordinary Canadians, and he flip-flops on the issues." I hope that he won't make the same mistake as Dion; the race is on to see who can frame Ignatieff first and best.

Clearly, he's well aware of the above. The Globe and Mail reports:

Mr. Ignatieff's response to the prospect of the Conservatives quickly launching attack ads against him was further evidence of his ability - as Mr. Harper once boasted - to take a punch. Rather than bleat about Conservative mean-spiritedness, he all but dared his opponents to take aim at him. "The least I can say is that we are in a situation of parliamentary crisis," Mr. Ignatieff said. "It would seem to me a very serious mistake to engage in partisan attacks against the party leader at this moment. I hope I make myself clear."

Way to kick things off, Iggy. Not only is he daring them to try it, he's framing himself in the process as a man who's not to be trifled with, just the sort of thing that might have saved Dion early on. This is the hard edge that the public needs to see. Now give us more.

Prorogued

Everybody* knows by now that Parliament has been prorogued until mid-January, thereby sparing Harper from tomorrow's confidence motion.

At first I was going to write something about how I disagreed with the Governor General's decision. If her discretion in the matter exists for any non-ceremonial purposes at all, then surely those include preventing the Prime Minister from evading confidence motions? And is the spirit of all these rules not to ensure that whoever holds that title has the confidence of the house?

As I did my best to consider the opposing arguments, though, I really couldn't think of a good rebuttal to this one: Parliament will resume in less than two months, and if the opposition's coalition can't hang together that long then they shouldn't be governing the country. Certainly there is a cost; we lack a proper government when we really need it, but I think that one way or another we'll be better off afterward.

If the coalition holds together, we'll at least know that they can offer some stability, and we'll have a government that balances the interests of a majority of the electorate. If it disintegrates, we'll have Conservatives who know that they can't get away with the sort of machinations seen in last week's economic update, and most likely will have to behave like a minority government for the first time since coming into power.

Another possible side-effect is that the Liberal Party finds a new leader in time to take up the reins. A recent poll in my local paper concluded that a strong majority of Canadians are against having Stéphane Dion as their Prime Minister, even in the Liberal stronghold of Ontario. Personally I'm more tolerant of him than most (are the people who claim that "Stéphane Dion is not a leader" aware that they're just regurgitating the punchline of a two-year-old Conservative attack ad?), but when centre-left voters are unwilling to support a centre-left coalition, you know there's a serious problem. The best possible outcome, which is admittedly a lot to ask in a short time, is that by January we have a coalition with the support of the majority of Canadians.

I close with an example of Peter MacKay's magnificent powers of reason:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay defended the Conservative leader's move, saying the Governor General was "duty bound" by precedent and parliamentary procedure to accept Harper's prorogation request.

...

"This is certainly an unprecedented situation that we saw unfold."

She's duty bound by precedent in this unprecedented situation? Riiiight.

* Or at least, every one of the three of the people who might read this.

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?

Why are Canada's Olympic athletes so fat and lazy?

Yesterday's Toronto Star offers up some poll results:

68% of Canadians "find our athletes' performance moderately or completely unacceptable."
50% of Canadians "were disappointed at our athletes' failure to win medals before today."
30% of Canadians "feel the government is to blame for our athletes' performance so far."

Here, one of my (presumably) countrywomen asks "Why are Canada's Olympic athletes so fat and lazy?" I had hoped it would be satire, but it doesn't appear to be.

1. Meanwhile we've had (as of today) 24 top-8 finishes. How awful and shallow to consider that failure and focus on pointing fingers, while sitting safely here on our couches in front of CBC Television. Mike Brown was reported as nearly in tears after his 4th-place finish in the 200m breaststroke. Since when is a 4th-place finish bad? This obsession with medals is hardly sportsmanlike, in my opinion. Hey, Canada, let's stop blaming and start supporting.

2. B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell wants Canada to fund and foster a "culture of sport". Meanwhile the federal government is hacking away large blocks of arts funding. How about a culture of art? A culture of intellect? Let's not devalue the natural talents of all the millions of Canadians who aren't athletes. How about funding social or environmental programs? Is it more important to win Olympic medals than to reduce carbon emissions, provide good health care, home the homeless, etc?

3. What are the Olympics all about, anyway? Sometimes there seems to be a disturbing undercurrent of measuring national or even racial superiority. It's a show of strength, a flexing of national muscles. Why, after all, are governments so intent on pumping money into it at the expense of their own citizens, many of whom live in poverty? Not naming names; the guilty are legion, in varying degrees.

* * *

Michael Phelps has a genetic oddity that causes his muscles to produce half as much lactic acid as other athletes, which means that he recovers more quickly from exertion, and which should be helpful in almost any sport. To me, this points out that success in the games isn't just about effort and spirit. Not to disparage his effort, I'm sure it was Olympian, and I know that he's trained from a young age. But so did many other competitors, and he crushed them (though only emotionally in the case of Milorad Čavić).

A larger population increases the probability of finding such tailor-made athletes, more money makes for better training, and having athletes raised in appropriate environmental conditions can result in beneficial adaptations. In light of the superiority of Kenyan runners who'd trained in natural low-oxygen conditions all their lives, moneyed countries began building hypobaric training chambers for their aerobic athletes. Pretty soon I'm certain that genetic engineering will be involved (if it hasn't begun already).

What does it mean to win or lose an Olympic medal under such conditions? As the science and technology evolve and become more difficult to regulate than drugs, the spirit and effort will be increasingly marginalized we'll be left with a highly-televised sham. Is it avoidable? I don't see how.

There are other parties, you know

Here, Stephen Harper tells us,

"In the past few months, and particularly over the summer, we have seen increasing signs that this Parliament is really not working very well any more. It is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Quite frankly, I'm going to have to make a judgment in the next little while as to whether or not this Parliament can function productively."

Let's see how far back our political memories go: In 2007, which party was caught red-handed distributing 200 pages of Parliament-disrupting-dirty-tricks to all of its MPs? Which party is systematically evading or ignoring Parliamentary summonses? Who answers pointed ethical questions in Parliament with lawsuits? It's pretty clear that this entire scenario has been brought about deliberately.

The Conservative party simply doesn't want to make do with a minority government. They don't want discussion or compromise. They want their majority. Increasingly it appears their strategy is to bring Parliament grinding to a halt, blame the Liberals, and call a new election before their funding scandal from the previous election really hits the fan. And then blame the Liberals some more. I'll bet you $100 (I'd bet more, but I'm only a student) that they've got an ace in the hole for election time, they're going to produce something newly scandalous about the Liberals at a key moment, to try to secure their majority.

I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: How long should we go on picking between two corrupt parties on the basis of who was less corrupt in the last 4 years?

Openness and Accountability

That was the Conservative platform, yes? Sorry, Stephen, but there is no way you can mash words together so as to make that compatible with having your party members systematically evading and ignoring ethics committee summonses. Calling the committee a kangaroo court doesn't explain why members of your own party quit and accused you of dirty tricks. Obviously you did something wrong, and you're making it impossible for us to learn the details. That's pretty much the definition of closed and unaccountable.

I've decided to start making a list of all ways in which your party is open and accountable. I'll be fair and keep both positive and negative examples, and I'll do it for the other parties as well. Then when it's election time I'll ignore the attack ads from all sides, and just consider my list.

I think everyone knows that one of the underdog parties will win in that case, though, right? They simply haven't had the chance to sully themselves in public. Which reminds me of an argument I keep hearing for why we shouldn't elect the New Democratic Party: "They have no administration experience." Well no wonder... you never elect them. By that logic we should just switch to the two-party system, and spend the rest of our elections trying to decide whether the Conservatives or the Liberals are less corrupt.

A Brief History of Corn Biofuel in Canada

A recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Corn-based ethanol: The negatives outweigh the positives, spurred me to do a little research about this. I had some opinions on the matter which I hadn't really taken the time to thoroughly examine, but I felt that columnist Jeffrey Simpson was being a little too gentle in his criticism.

According to a Library of Parliament primer, the federal government has been preparing for a biofuel push since the mid '90s - the Liberal Party era - through various economic incentives. In 2006 the Conservative government announced a strategy to have ethanol and biodiesel account for 5% and 2%, respectively, of what's sold at the pumps, which included $345 million for research and agricultural development. In 2007 that number was increased to over $2 billion, and a tax rebate for "green cars" was introduced. This is notable because the rebate was quietly removed from the 2008 budget. Which makes you wonder: why would it be better to funnel money into corn ethanol rather than low-emission vehicles? You might argue that it's simply a matter of spending efficiency, but the evidence would not be in your favour.

A recent report (among many similar ones) from the non-partisan C.D. Howe Institute is quite damning. It concludes that, even if corn biofuel has any positive net effect on greenhouse gas emission, the cost per tonne of CO2 reduction is seven times that of the alternatives. Furthermore the environmental impact of growing, harvesting, milling, transporting, and fermenting the corn is arguably worse than that of simply burning gasoline, and many of the published green-house gas (GHG) reduction figures are per litre consumed, which hides the fact that ethanol produces less energy, resulting in lower fuel efficiency. So even before considering all of the distribution-related factors, the decrease in GHG emissions is already slim. After considering other factors, it is possibly nil or even negative.

The main question on my mind is whether or not any of this was known when the federal government's policies were enacted. Most of the research cited in the Howe Institute report comes from the 2000-2007 period, which leaves a bit of uncertainty, but it seems clear that at the very least, there was significant debate about whether or not corn ethanol offered any benefits when the Conservatives made their big announcements. We have a great many ways to spend $2 billion with more clear-cut benefits. Why this?

Here are a few things we know.

• Canada's canola and soybean crushers were lobbying for the biodiesel move - precisely the one announced in 2006 - since well before the current federal government came into power.
  
• A side-by-side comparison between a map of 2006 federal election results and a map of agricultural land usage is fascinating, if unsurprising. Guess who voted Conservative?
• Food prices were already well into their rise in 2006 and corn ethanol was already a suspect at the time.
  
• Once upon a time, Kory Teneycke was head of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, a lobby group for Canada's biofuel producers. He has a history of involvement in politics, spanning all of Canada's major right-wing parties. His sister-in-law works as an assistant to the Prime Minister's wife. In 2007 he joined the Conservatives as Director of Research, and as of this month he's the PM's director of communications.
• Our Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Gerry Ritz, has a personal relationship with ethanol industry lobbyists.
• Many of these lobbyists have ties with the Conservatives. I don't have a unified source for this, but look up some names and the trend starts to become pretty clear. This is not particularly surprising or contentious, given that conservative policies tend to be most favourable to industry, but it's still worth bearing in mind because conservative policies don't tend to favour the environment. When they do, I tend to wonder what else is going on.

At the very least, there are some massive conflicts of interest and callously ill-informed decision-making driving the Conservatives' biofuel policy. That's being charitable. I'll let you come to your own conclusions, but my own is that Canada has been scammed, big-time.