A Grey Price

A collection of grey comments on politics (broadly defined), focusing mainly on Canada but with the occasional glance south of the border

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Unions and the Free Market

Okay, so, labour politics are a big deal in both Canada and the United States right now. The specific details of each situation are important, but there are some broad trends that need to be discussed seriously. Namely, trends in the way unions and their relationship to the labour market are being represented. Conservative politicians and a large swathe of the general public denounce public sector unions (basically the only unions) for demanding salaries and benefits higher than those found in the private sector (ie, in non-unionised jobs). These unreasonable demands are represented as distorting the labour market, crippling business, and ultimately doing damage to the broader economy.

This analysis can be very compelling, especially if you are watching unions insist on benefits far beyond what you personally happen to be enjoying. And unions aren't doing a good job articulating their own arguments. It seems self-evident that unionised workers earn more than they deserve when compared to non-unionised counterparts operating in the free market. This is because unionised workers do make more than they should, if you accept that the free market should be deciding what people should make. But I think a quick review of basic economic theory establishes fairly conclusively that we don't want the free market determining wages and benefits. Here's why.

Fundamentally, the free market is about supply and demand. Workers demand jobs and supply labour. Employers demand labour and supply jobs. When the need of the employers for labour is greater than the need of the workers for jobs, the workers hold the more valuable commodity (their labour) and can force the employers to compete with one another. When the need of the workers for jobs is greater than the need of the employers for labour, the employers hold the more valuable commodity (jobs) and can force workers to compete with one another. Either way, free market competition ensures that the group possessing the more valuable commodity (jobs or labour) is able to supply that commodity to the other group at a rate maximising the profit for the group possessing the valuable commodity. In this way, competition determines free market value. Here are some concrete examples.

After the black plague decimated the population of Europe in the middle ages, there were not enough workers remaining to fill all the jobs. As a result, employers were forced to compete with one another to attract workers. Each employer tried to offer potential workers a higher wage than the other employers, until they were offering the highest wages they could without destroying their own profitability. Because the supply of labour was scarce relative to the demand for labour, the price of labour went up. Workers benefited from the increased value of their labour. Employers suffered. Those who could afford labourers survived; those who could not afford labourers dwindled or collapsed.

A similar situation has characterised certain specialised industries for the past few decades. In these industries, mostly engineering or technology, the demand is for highly skilled workers, which are in short supply relative to the availability of jobs. As a result, workers in those fields are able to command high wages and benefits without any union support.

In situations, however, where the supply/demand relationship is reversed, the consequences are quite different. For instance, in the early days of the industrial revolution, many cities were flooded with unemployed workers seeking jobs. As a result -- exactly the inverse of the above situation -- employers had the advantage and workers were forced to compete. Workers that could offer the most labour for the lowest wages got jobs. The remaining workers, unable to purchase the expensive jobs with their devalued labour, starved.

In both cases, the free market reliably maximises profit by forcing competition based on relationships of abundance and scarcity. In the latter case, it was soon noticed that the free market's remorseless selection process was vicious toward those who could not, for whatever reason, compete successfully. In extreme cases, where competition for jobs was especially fierce, this meant mass suffering and death. As a result, it was generally agreed (after much wrangling) that we could afford to exchange some of our profits to avert mass suffering and death. We got wonderful things like the minimum wage, maximum work weeks, and workplace safety standards to serve as checks on worst nastiness of the free market. This moderately reduced the profits of employers but was generally good for workers, who were, after all, human beings.

That very long explanation takes us to unions. Unions, succinctly, are the result of all the workers getting together and asserting that a simple free market wage is unacceptable. Instead, they generally demand wages in proportion to the profitability of the employer.

This is, obviously, quite a wrench in the works of free market capitalism. Essentially, it is the workers collectively refusing to compete with each other when such competition would leave them enormously disadvantaged relative to the employer. When unions are successful, they reduce the profits of their employers and raise the wages of their members.

So let's start trying to be more directly relevant to right now. Many governments (including Canada's current Conservative government) view private corporations as the main engine of economic and job growth. The simple equation articulated by economic conservatives can essentially be summarised as "more corporate profits = more jobs." So the goal of these governments becomes the maximisation of corporate profits; corporate taxes are slashed, subsidies are given, and corporate regulations (as checks on the free market) are opposed or abolished.

This tactic is effective in increasing corporate profits and would be equally effective in decreasing the unemployment rate if the corporations were, in fact, using these profits to hire new workers. But they're not. They are hoarding it, usually by writing themselves enormous pay-cheques. This is because corporations, as free market agents, do not feel an essential mandate to create jobs; they feel an essential mandate to maximise profit. Creating new jobs in Canada and the United States is not, right now, an effective way to maximise profit. Let me explain!

Corporations, simplifying enormously, generate profit by providing a commodity (ie, a good or a service) to a market. The value of the commodity is determined by demand for it. If you're a corporation, you produce more jobs so that you can produce more commodities to make more profit. But if the market's demand for your commodity is already met in the maximum efficient way, you have no motivation to expand. The only thing that can happen to incentivise you to expand is the expansion of the market. If the market isn't expanding, you just sit back, having reached maximum efficiency, and collect your profits.

So giving more profits to corporations only produces jobs if producing jobs will allow corporations to produce still more profits. If there's no motivation for the corporation to produce more jobs, they will just absorb the profits.

There are two demographic things going on here which are relevant. The first is the vast, vast resource of unskilled labour now available in India and China, where there are basically no regulations on the free market. That means that, in those cases where a corporation can increase profits by increasing jobs, they will increase jobs in China or India, where they can pay extremely low wages. The second demographic thing is the static or declining consuming power of the North American market. Because North American labour has been effectively de-unionised over the past several decades, North American wages have frozen or declined in real terms. That means that the North American consumer market has frozen or is currently in decline. Without consumer growth, there is no growing demand for commodities, so there is no growing demand for jobs regardless of how much extra profit conservative governments give to corporations. With consumer market decline, employers are incentivised to lay off workers so that they don't over-produce commodities relative to demand. In those rare instances where employers are incentivised to expand services, the job creation occurs overseas.

In case you think that job creation overseas, by the way, increases consuming power overseas, think again. It does a little, but there is a sharp cap. Because there is a vast group of workers seeking jobs and no real floor on how little you can pay them, the consuming power of those workers will have a similarly low ceiling. This still creates some increased demand, especially for subsistence goods, but those populations will remain utterly impoverished until the number of available jobs exceeds the number of available workers, which is not anytime soon.

Hopefully you see where I am going. If you want to grow the economy, you need to grow the consumer base. Throwing money at corporations only creates jobs when the money allows the corporations to reach previously unreached markets. Otherwise, the corporations just keep the money.

The problem with our economy is clearly not that corporations don't have enough money to expand their services. The problem is that there is no significant unmet demand which corporations could be motivated to try to meet. This is because people do not have enough money to buy more than they are already buying.

Before you go further, you have to decide what you mean by "help the economy." If you mean "make the current super-rich even more super-rich," then the current approach works just fine. If you mean "reduce unemployment and raise the economic standard of living across the population," then the obvious thing you need to do is work to increase the population's consuming power. And the way you do that is by increasing the purchasing power of the population. As a government, one way to do this is by cutting taxes on the middle class, thereby giving them more money. But, based on the current fiscal situation of most governments, that would be a very dumb (albeit popular) move.

The other way you do it is by promoting unions. Without unions, corporations pay their workers free market wages (or as close to that as labour laws will allow). In circumstances where labour is cheap because of vast supply (like right now), that means that even very profitable companies can pay very low wages. But when you have unions, the workers insist that their wages be raised in proportion to the corporation's profitability. Corporate profits diminish (they weren't doing anything helpful with those profits anyway), but suddenly your population has more money and, thus, more consuming power. More consuming power means an expanded market; an expanded market means room for economic growth and more jobs.

So governments right now are doing exactly the wrong thing economically and large chunks of the population are, ridiculously, cheering them on. The remnants of the middle class may be able to survive for another generation or two by using their accumulated capital to acquire specialised education, thus making themselves more desirable commodities as workers. But as long as the free market has free rein, most of the population is going to see continuously less and lower-paying jobs, and eventually the effect of shrinking market demand will reduce the number of skilled jobs and squeeze out the remaining middle class.

tl;dr -- You're not going to get population-wide economic growth without a) more unions or b) the black plague.

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Yes, Brigette, there is a santa claus

What Brigette DePape did was deeply Canadian. It was quiet, dignified, and eminently sensible.

Let’s be equally sensible in our response. Anti-Harper alarmism aside, it is a serious problem that our system produces unstoppable four-year Kings of Canada with the assent of a quarter of the population. That should offend your conscience, whoever you are, and (in that much if nothing else) you should tip your hat to this young girl and the frustrated outrage she embodies with such Canadian dignity.

First, we need electoral reform. Proportional representation is unacceptable for a number of reasons. But a system of alternative voting with elimination rounds would allow a community to come to a consensus about which candidate best represents them. It is an almost banal truth that many MPs only represent minority slivers of their vote-split ridings. If a more sophisticated voting process would allow the majority of citizens to agree on a particular candidate, that should obviously be preferable to anyone not blinded by purely partisan goals.*

Second, we need parliamentary reform. And I’m not even talking about the senate. We elect a parliament of representatives to govern us collectively, not a single individual to rule us autocratically. But we’ve fallen into the habit of running our elections as if they were presidential elections, and most representatives become potted plants sitting in the commons behind the Prime Minister. This should not be. Party discipline needs to be relaxed massively, so individual MPs can vote according to their constituents and consciences. The Canadian practice of using whips and indefensibly massive cabinets to control caucus as carrot and stick needs to end. Parliament needs to hold government to account even in majority situations. Until this change happens, Canadian democracy cannot legitimately be called healthy, no matter what happens with senates and queens.

Third, and most importantly, the Canadian population needs to start caring. When politicians get on radio and TV, they only talk in hyper-simplified little jingos and slogans. To someone who follows politics closely and knows the issues, this habit is deeply insulting and infuriating. But they do it for a reason: because most Canadians don’t follow politics closely. These politicians are counting on the fact that most of their audience will be forming opinions on issues based only on impressions gained while listening to soundbites, so they’re spinning soundbites and refusing to give serious, specific answers. Serious, specific answers will alienate an audience with no real interest in the topic.

So Canadian politics, like politics elsewhere, becomes a business of competitive slogan-writing. The only answer is for the population to become engaged and interested enough that everyone is insulted by the sloganeering, instead of just us few. When everyone is insulted by the solganeering, it will have to stop, and politicians will be forced to give serious answers to our serious questions.

Yes, that seems like a naive dream. Yes, history and inertia are against us. But now we — we young Canadians — have an affirmation that such a change is possible. We’ve watched Egypt. We’ve watched something in Egypt happen that we’ve been led to believe was just an impossible fairy tale; people started caring, a lot, all at once, and things changed. It’s not too much to hope for. Things don’t have to be this way.

So yes, Brigette DePape, “Stop Harper.” Not because of jet planes or neoconservatism or hidden agendas, but because Canada shouldn’t be ruled like this. We deserve a House of Commons full of members who legitimately represent the choice of their constituents and who are empowered to fulfil that representative function. We need people to care about government. We need people to understand that the Canadian system needs reform. We need people to understand that, despite the impressive formality of the big throne and the vaulted ceiling and the officers in shiny uniforms, this situation is unacceptable.

* It is not true, by the way, that AV would necessarily lead to more left-leaning government. This system would clearly have helped conservatives immensely during the Chrétien years, for example. And even today, in ridings where Liberals and NDP voters together would outnumber Conservatives, it is not safe to say that "the consensus was left-leaning." This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the Canadian Liberal Party, which has always had a strong centre-right element. To get to the point: it's very clear (based on last-minute voter shifts on May 2nd) that the NDP is definitely not the second choice of many Liberals. The real function of AV would be to produce a more democratic and representative parliament, not a necessarily more conservative or liberal one.

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Wow, look at the Americans

If you want to feel really, really good about Harper's election, go watch the Republican primary debate just hosted by Fox. None of the "candidates" there are actually expected to have a chance at the nomination. (In fact, it's difficult to see any figure in the Republican Party right now who could be considered a serious candidate). But, nevertheless, some of the things they are saying are flatly horrifying. Here's a quick list:

- eliminate the corporate income tax

- elminate the minimum wage

- continue the recent run of union-busting legislation

- instantly repeal Obama's healthcare reform

- abolish the IRS and replace income tax with consumption tax

- slash medicare spending by half

- invade Iran

I really, really believe that it's important not to be too cynical about these things. Surely some of these stances must reflect personal convictions on some level. But... oh wow. If corporate America and the super-rich did own these politicians, this is exactly what they would be proposing.

The candidates mostly decorated these positions with high talk about "freedom," by which they mean the free market. But a free market is only good for corporate actors. For individuals in their capacity as workers and in their capacity as humans (requiring food, healthcare, and income), that list of policies would be unthinkably disastrous.

Essentially they are trying to force us back into a labour economy with no unions, no minimum wage, and no equalising wealth distribution via taxation and public services. Take a look at the quality of life for the average person in the early industrial world if you want to see where that leaves us.

Canadians tend to believe in equality more than freedom when it comes to market principles. If a free market allows for a more profitable health insurance industry, Canadians will be unsatisfied because that free market leaves people dying in the streets. If a free market in a job shortage allows companies to pay less than the cost of living, Canadians will say that's unacceptable because it leaves people's children starving.

I feel like I can safely say Harper is lowering the Canadian corporate tax rate because he believes it will stimulate the economy. I feel like I can safely say that these Republicans want to eliminate the corporate tax rate because they want to attract corporate funding for their campaigns, without which American elections are unwinnable. Their professed ideologies are wallpaper for that fundamental motivation. I say that as someone who really hates cynical, nasty readings of any politician's motivations.

Here is a speech that tells you everything you need to know about American politics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXzZz0_rIzY

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Fortress Toronto, before and after

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Wow, look at the Liberals

Am I the only one noticing this?

Some of the most beautiful and articulate and compelling defences of the Liberal party are coming out this week. The remaining Liberals are shell-shocked. They're crushed, they're devastated, and their voices have a sadness that almost borders on despair. They're often almost eulogising their party. And they're presenting a clarion-clear vision of what Liberal means in Canada, along with a defence of its role in our public life. And they're passionate; you can instantly tell that these people aren't opportunists or cynical power-seekers. Love them or hate them, they're Liberals because they believe the Liberal Party has something incredibly good and important to offer Canada.

So: where was this during the campaign? Over the past five weeks -- maybe over the past five years -- you could reasonably be excused for not knowing what the Liberal Party stood for. They puttered about high speed internet for rural areas and tax breaks for families and odds and ends of other targeted bribes, but you never got a clear vision of what Liberal really meant.

I mean, retrospectively, I think they even said it. I'm sure Ignatieff produced the phrase "fiscally prudent and socially compassionate" a thousand times, but it was just thrown off as a sort of empty slogan. During the election, they were telling us what nice treats the Liberal Party would give us if we voted for them. Now, they're standing amid ruins and trying to defend why the Liberal Party deserves to even exist. This is the sort of core expression of identity and vision and purpose that could have won them real support and following.

When Ignatieff didn't resign immediately, I was disoriented and attributed it purely to his own arrogance. It's clear that Bob Rae (who, let's be honest, has been doing most of the real Liberal leading lately) sat him down and told him he was done. But now we hear a range of less senior Liberal MPs wishing he had stayed on. There's a sense that the Liberal Party needs a renewal that goes far deeper than just a new leader. There's a sense that a leadership race right now will only divide the party and catch them up in bitter old divisions. They have years before they need to enter another election, and they aren't even official opposition right now, so there's no real urgent need to replace the leader. But it's too late for that now.

A staggering number of old potential leadership candidates have simply vanished with this election. It's hard to imagine how it must feel to be a Liberal now, looking around at all the suddenly empty chairs where former giants once sat. The aristocracy of the Party has been more than decimated. Trudeau hangs around looking pretty, but let's all concede that he's not leadership material now, if he ever will be. Bob Rae is leadership material; indeed, any other leader will probably find himself or herself either totally dominated by Rae or engaged in constant power struggles with him. But, in addition to being essentially unelectable in Ontario (outside of his riding, anyways), his judgment strikes me as being very bad. I think much of the blame for the histrionic tone of the Liberal opposition over the past few years can be laid at his door. He'd be a very bad choice. Dominic LeBlanc might be a better choice. Other alternatives are... startlingly unapparent. Carolyn Bennett will probably be a candidate, but she's so conspicuously an upper class Torontonian (she has much in common with Nancy Pelosi, actually) that she might alienate other parts of the country.

Anyways, that speculation is probably really premature. My point here is that this election may end up being really good for the Liberal Party and, actually, good for Canadian democracy. We now have a small group of people reconnecting passionately with their core deeply held beliefs. They're broken and they're (very humbly now) trying to figure out what they can do to best represent Canadians in a moderate, responsible, and progressive way. The only thing they have left, now that they're stripped to their bare bones, is a fundamental aversion to ideological radicalism. In a famously moderate country with a commitment to peace, order, and good government, that's not a terrible sort of group to have kicking around your democracy.

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Here's a link giving us the business world's opinion of Harper's win. Some interesting points:

I don't read a lot of business news, but the use of the word "investors" strikes me as odd. Apparently "investors" were scared by the NDP and "investors" are happy that Harper will cut corporate taxes and let the Alberta oil industry do whatever it wants. Who specifically are these investors and how do they express these opinions? It's curious! Is "investors" just a code word for the author's sense of what would be best for corporate interests?

Another important (and subtle) thing to note: there's a paragraph happily explaining that Harper will probably approve the merger of the Toronto and London Stock Exchanges (they don't bother to call it a merger, actually, although Canadian media do. This article names it for what it is: a takeover). Then there's a paragraph starting with "however" that cites Harper's refusal to consider privatising healthcare.

Notice that and remember it. Harper's economic strategy revolves around pleasing "investors," whatever that means.* And "investors" don't like public healthcare. Private healthcare produces more profit, which makes "investors" happy.

This is not me trying to be melodramatic or make stupid comparisons between Harper and the bought corporate lapdogs of American politics. But it is an extremely important point to be conscious of, for liberals and conservatives alike. Pleasing corporate interests may actually (no, really) be good for our economy, but there has to be a line drawn in the sand. That particular interest group is concerned exclusively with generating profit, and a Canadian government has other priorities. We cannot subscribe to the moronic proposal that a free market solves all ills, although a certain degree of market freedom is indisputably necessary to maintain a competitive growth environment. Some things in our society need to be exempt from the profit struggle. On some issues -- like healthcare -- we need to tell "investors" that we don't care what their opinion is, because government doesn't exist to serve them. So far, whatever his other failings, Harper is doing just that. His decision to prioritise the happiness of investors before the public good in the issue of the oil sands (the poor, anxious "investors" are apparently "scared" of environmentalists and left-leaning politicians) needs to be evaluated in a similar light.

* Publicly funded job-creating infrastructure projects are arguably better for economic stimulus (per the much-ignored advice of the Canadian finance department), but the general conservative view (ie: the view with which Harper overrules the finance department's recommendations) is that such interventions are beyond the purview of government. We only got stimulus spending in Canada because we were lucky enough to have a minority parliament. Now the Conservatives happily take credit for its success while ending all its manifestations and replacing them with incentives for private sector activity.

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Harper outsmarted us all

Okay, here's a jumble of loosely connected thoughts and impressions:

Clearly Harper understands Canadian politics better than me and most of the pundits I've been listening to. He made himself the "stability" choice in this election, and he made everyone else the "chaos" choice. It worked, people bought it, and now he's in charge. Either he's one of the most masterful politicians of our generation or he's very, very lucky.

If the wild NDP self-congratulation going on right now has a little bit of a guilty tinge to it, it possibly should. There was every reason to believe Layton could have been PM this week. Instead, the orange surge clearly split the vote in Ontario and handed a significant number of Liberal seats to the Conservatives. NDP will angrily deny this, but a quick look at most of the results in the now-blue GTA will confirm it. Strategic voting was vilified (for legitimate reasons), with the Conservative majority as a clear consequence.

Even if you believe that the Liberals and Conservatives are equally wicked, a Layton-led NDP/Liberal coalition could easily have been a stepping stone to a more progressive government in future years, and it would have spared Canada four years of unbound conservatism. On the other hand, a progressive population that only voted strategically would never have produced an NDP surge. That surge was one of the most hopeful signs of democratic vitality in Canada in recent years. To deal effectively with this (major) problem of strategic voting, we need to think very seriously about the Alternative Voting system described in this cat video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiHuiDD_oTk. It's much, much better than the sort of proportional representation scenarios that usually get thrown around. Now that we have a Conservative majority, we certainly won't make any such change (although the Conservatives must remember their years of painful split votes under Chrétien). But think about it nonetheless and keep it on your mind for 2015. That's when we next get to intervene.

And, on a different note, I want to say something quickly about our political culture. People often complain about the Americanisation of Canadian politics, and you're already hearing more of that now that we appear to be moving toward a two-party system.

My response to that is, bluntly, if you don't want American-style politics, don't be an American-style political actor. The biggest obstacle to healthy political life in the United States is the intense, vicious, no-holds-barred loathing that the parties there feel for one another. Their discourse -- and I aim this as squarely at the everyday person as the propagandists -- revolves around presenting opponents as horrible monsters or deranged morons or malevolent enemies that must be defeated.

Removed from that battle to an extent, it's clear that Republicans and Democrats -- demographically and geographically -- have a lot of common interests and even, if I may say so, laudable ideals and values. If they could resolve to treat each other as decent people with whom they have disagreements, they could make significant steps toward forming the sort of class consciousness and solidarity that would allow them to instigate the sort of reforms that are badly needed. Their real disagreements can and should remain subjects of intense, passionate debate. But having intense disagreements without casually attributing evil or stupidity to your opponent is one of the key components of engaging as an adult in a diverse society.

So, just as bluntly, Canadian progressives need to stop talking about Canadian conservatives as if they were baby-eating monsters. And vice-versa. If you're not willing to acknowledge the intelligence and dignity and human worth of your political opponents, then you're part of the Americanisation problem in Canada. Worse, you're probably a little bit of a bigot. As Canadians, we have a lot of common interests and values. If we keep sight of those, we can survive a Canada ruled by Harper or Layton without entrenching a bitter, petulant divisiveness like the one that animates the sleepless cycles of Fox and MSNBC.

This is one of the reasons we should perhaps be happy about the replacement of the Liberals by the NDP. The Liberal Party's treatment of the Harper government was almost farcical. Surely it is appropriate for the opposition to criticise the government and surely the Harper government had lots to criticise, but when your entire discourse revolves around demonising people who are realistically only a few degrees away from you on the political spectrum, all of your criticisms lose credibility. You become obstructive to a discussion process that acknowledges the contributions of multiple points of view and works toward solutions that satisfy more than one narrow category of partisans. And if you can't engage with people who think differently than you, you don't have a place in Canadian politics, where multiculturalism and difference is the raw fabric with which we must work. Luckily, Layton seems to do better in that department (despite the frequent histrionic interventions of Pat Martin).

So, wrapping up, I think we need to transition toward Alternative Voting, per the British cats, for the health of our democracy. We need a political landscape that is flexible and fluid and responds to the needs of the population. A Liberal/NDP coalition would have been a great place to do that. I have no idea why Harper would even consider it over the next four years (though he was clearly the second choice for a significant number of Liberals this election), but certainly it's something Layton should be thinking about. If Harper intends to be as great-spirited as his speech tonight implied, maybe there's hope. If Harper chooses to act like Harper has always acted up to this point (slightly less than great-spirited), there's no hope. But after this election, who can claim to know what the future holds?

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Coalitions and the east coast

It's a little ridiculous to be posting predictions like this is a football game. In twenty-four hours, we'll all know for sure how the seats are going to fall out. There's not much to be gained at this point by scratching our heads and trying to read the future.

Except that it's really fun, I guess. Guardedly, I'm going to stick with my pals at EKOS and predict a Conservative minority followed by the NDP, Liberals, and BQ, in that order. If the NDP and the Liberals together outnumber the Conservatives (as they very well may), there is little doubt in my mind that some sort of coalition arrangement will transpire. Jack Layton will probably be our prime minister by this time next week, unless something goes seriously awry.

Layton really likes to be the guy who "makes parliament work" through collaboration, and the Conservatives will be rather desperate to form government, so some deal could possibly transpire. But that seems doubtful. Layton knows that his new support is largely anti-Harper, and it will turn on him if he's seen to prop up another Conservative minority. It's also hard to imagine him passing up a real chance to be prime minister, even if it involves making concessions to a bruised and battered Liberal party.

One place that does not get enough coverage is Atlantic Canada. EKOS stays quiet on maritimers (ergo the media stays quiet on them) because EKOS only has small sample sizes there. But those small samples show a transition to the NDP at least as dramatic as Quebec. If they're not an anomaly, a significant number of seats could go orange on the east coast.

It's not sufficient to say "vote strategically" or "vote locally" or "vote your heart," because there are strong arguments for doing all of those things. But, happily, if you can vote, you are an adult. You can walk and chew gum. You can evaluate multiple factors when voting. Look at your local candidates, look at the federal parties, look at previous results, and think hard about vote-splitting. Have an eye on a goal, weigh all the factors, and vote thoughtfully.

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Rick Mercer on the ground war

Here's an article by Rick Mercer:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/28/is-stephen-harper-a-hologram/

Read it! It's a really interesting (though slanted) characterisation of the leaders' campaigns as they tour the country. I've never been a huge fan of Mercer, but he's showing a little bit of insight (if not humour) these days.

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What is Harper thinking?

The Conservative campaign so far has been entirely about scaring Canadians into voting for them. Without a Harper majority, the economy will collapse, Quebec will separate, the military will crumble into dust, and, now, trade with the United States will cease to exist.

So, fine, that’s a tactic you can try. But why are they still trying it? We’re almost done with this campaign. The Conservative team has not won a single percentage point in any poll with their current approach. And now, on the home stretch, all they can produce is more things we should be terrified about.

It’s not working. It didn’t work three weeks ago, and it’s not working now. What are his campaign strategists thinking? Why can’t the richest and most powerful political party in the country find professionals with the ability to tack into the wind? Anyone looking at this situation with a clear tactical mind should be able to see that this message is not resonating beyond the Conservative base. Is the Conservative strategy being planned by ideologues so invested in their message that they can’t adapt to the pragmatic realities of the campaign?

The obvious alternative would be generating some positive virtue to attract new voters, since it’s clear Canadians aren’t that scared of a Canada without Harper. Commentators — even conservative commentators — have been scratching their heads about the Conservative campaign. Why isn’t he running a Reagan-style “Morning in America” campaign? Why all the glowering? They produced a few extra bribe-style tidbits partway into the campaign (this probably hurt them more than it helped them, since it implied they were ready to just throw around money beyond their supposedly solid budget), but the tone has remained consistently ominous and foreboding.

Harper is widely acknowledged to be an extremely shrewd politician, but there’s no sign of that shrewdness here. Perhaps his skill at autocratically managing parliament is better than his skill at charismatically reaching out to new voters. But he’s a proven chameleon; many of his old radical views have been quietly tucked out of sight in an apparent attempt to avoid alienating Canadian moderates. This complete lack of versatility is just odd.

Someone on the Conservative team has tunnel vision and isn’t seeing the writing on the wall. Maybe it’s Harper himself. But if they thought this sort of campaign was going to produce a majority, they were clearly dead wrong. Everyone who can be won by fear is already voting Conservative, apparently.

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Less abstractly

You should be really, really excited or horrified about this election right now, depending on where you stand. No one has any idea what's going to happen. The NDP surge could split the vote and give the Conservatives a majority. The NDP surge could result in an NDP minority government. The NDP surge could result in some sort of Liberal/NDP coalition. Or something entirely different could happen. Vote distribution will matter a lot, with the Conservative support concentrated in Alberta, the Liberal support concentrated in the GTA, and the NDP scattered all over the place.

Anyone who claims to know what's going to happen is a fool or a liar. The ball is in the air, and the wind is blowing in many directions at many speeds. Where it will land is totally unknowable, nevermind where it will roll once it hits the ground.

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Chrétien knows how to get it done

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/04/27/cv-election-ignatieff-chretien.html

Here is the inimitable Jean Chrétien giving a speech for the Liberals. It is an amazing speech. It's worth watching if you love Chrétien, the Liberal Party, or just good, rousing rhetoric. But it's also interesting to contrast against the 2011 Liberal campaign, which has been largely a flop with not much in the way of redeeming features.

I understand that Canada is a federation of convenience. I understand that the provinces are extraordinarily diverse demographically, geographically, and culturally. I understand that we have no real unifying national identity to speak of. I understand that Canadian nationalism as it emerged from the World Wars was mostly taken up as an emotional force as a propaganda tool to advance federalism in Quebec. But still -- when that old man stands up and declares "Vive le Canada!", a little tingle runs down my spine, and I want to shake my fist in the air.

A few weeks ago on CBC's Cross Country Checkup, Rex Murphy went off on a slightly uncharacteristic rant. He complained about the way politics is being done in this country, with parties that carefully section out segments of the population and offer them bribes (I am paraphrasing). His familiar Newfoundland voice echoed with yearning as he wished aloud for a leader with a national vision -- a leader who would ask us to vote, not just for which bundle of goodies we believed in, but for a vision of Canada that could inspire us. He evoked a country where the fisherman in Newfoundland cared about the farmers in Saskatchewan and vice-versa. He evoked a country where the employed cared about the unemployed, where the well cared about the sick, and where the old cared about the young. This is the sort of party you could care about, the sort of party you could believe in and support with pride in your heart.

And when Chrétien lists off accomplishments that reflect that sort of Canada -- accomplishments like Medicare, Canada Pension, the Charter of Rights, and so many others -- your heart can't help but swell, not as a Liberal, but as a Canadian, that people so far-removed and different from one another could treat each other with such care and respect and dignity.

None of the current leaders are expressing that sort of vision. The reasons for this are anybody's to guess, but I blame the culture and conventional wisdom of campaign strategists. They've got election politics down to a very specific science, with targeted audiences and careful demographic tracking and vote suppression and informed-sounding soundbites. Amid all this careful managing, there's no room for a vision of Canada like the one Chrétien forged in the furnace of separatism.

The particulars of campaigns are almost meaningless. Everyone knows that election platforms are exercises in creative writing with no real connection to reality, and everyone knows that the actual business of governing contains endless unexpected hoops and hurdles. Beyond the particulars, what matters is vision and priorities. And no one is presenting a vision of Canada that lifts us up and inspires us.

If you want to give a little prayer before May 2nd, pray for politicians with vision and compassion for all the people of Canada. We've had really, really good luck over the past century. We've taken groups of nations with wildly different interests and we've managed to work together and look after one another. In human history, this is a big deal. We need politicians willing to pursue the great challenges of the twenty-first century, the medicares, charters, and official languages of new generations. We need to address the needs of our aboriginal communities. We need a sane energy policy. We need a compassionate foreign policy. But what we need most is a society composed of Canadians invested in helping and supporting one another, in uplifting the disadvantaged, and in working together despite our differences. If our country is one we can be proud of, it's because we've been led by people who believe in those things.

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Here's a link to the newest EKOS poll.

So, of course, as soon as I finish writing that last post, the NDP manage to snag some comet and ride it up into the sky. Maybe Ignatieff's little plot has shifted part of his ABC support back to the left; maybe casually conservative or undecided voters -- still hostile to the Liberals after years of King Jean and sponsorship -- have finally started to notice the long list of Harper abuses. It's not entirely clear where the new NDP surge is coming from; the EKOS numbers suggest they're taking Conservative voters, but NANOS shows them mostly gobbling up Liberals.

The EKOS analysis speculates this might mean a parliament where the NDP and Liberals combined could outnumber the Tories, which launches us into a whole different sort of game. And if the NDP momentum keeps pushing it higher (no one else has any right now), we might dare to begin to whisper "Prime Minister Layton?" in hushed tones of awe and amazement.

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a clever post to draw you in

We might as well just have the election tomorrow and get it over with. The party leaders have more or less shown themselves incapable of budging the polls in any direction. Canadians aren't paying that much attention and they certainly aren't changing their minds. It's hard to see the point of two more weeks of cross-country name-calling. Barring some extraordinary and unlikely change, the election is going to return a parliament composed of almost exactly the same proportions as the one just dissolved.

The real fun is going to come after the election. Harper likes to kick losing parties while they're down. The campaign finance reform of 2008 is a perfect example, and you could see him swinging his foot in anticipation as early as the first week of the election. 

Jim Flaherty, Harper's finance minister, indicated that, in the event of a new Conservative minority, he plans to put forward an identical budget to the one which helped trigger this election, essentially grinding the heel of the Conservative boot into the neck of a defeated opposition. Harper wants them to know that they're good and beaten so they don't go thinking a minority parliament means anyone but the Conservatives is going to get their way. The only previously credible alternative for the opposition -- a coalition -- was successfully destroyed by the prorogation trick and the subsequent vilification of the Bloc Québécois.

The gradual revelation of Ignatieff's intent, however, has made that Conservative strategy much less viable. Assuming the Governor General plays ball, the Liberals can essentially offer parliament a second choice. And the Liberals will happily make all sorts of concessions to the other parties in crafting a budget. So if the Conservatives put forward a budget that no one likes and refuse amendments, they're essentially handing the government to Michael Ignatieff. I cannot imagine why they would do that, so I expect to see the Conservatives pursue some serious bargaining. The Liberals need to persuade both the Bloc and the NDP if they want to form a government; the Conservatives only have to persuade one or the other. Whether or not the "Separatists and Socialists" are willing to bargain with the Conservatives is another question entirely.

Harper is right about one thing though: a Conservative minority government would be more stable than a Liberal minority government, assuming the Conservatives were willing to act like adults. The Conservatives are able to pass legislation with any one of the other three parties. The Liberals would have to have either the support of the Conservatives (which seems very unlikely to happen on any issue) or the support of the NDP and the Bloc together. That means that, under a Liberal minority, Layton or Duceppe would both have veto power on any legislation -- a serious consideration.

It is a real tragedy that Harper has successfully closed the door on a potential coalition government, which might have given us some real stability, though it seems unlikely that the Liberals and NDP combined will have the numbers to do it even if they wanted to. Perhaps that is what Michael Ignatieff was counting on when he ruled out the possibility, if we are somehow willing to give him any credit for foresight.

With the reality of the numbers in front of us, it may be that the best thing to wish for would be a renewed Conservative government under new leadership. Harper's failure to secure a majority (which seems safe to predict at this point) could reasonably justify his replacement, ideally with a more moderate figure. His success as an autocrat has relied on presenting parliament with the choice between supporting his legislation and forcing an election. If the Liberals remain waiting in the wings as a viable alternative to form government without an election, parliament acquires a threat with which to frighten a Conservative government into cooperation. And, really, if a minority government can't fairly achieve the support of at least one other party for its exercise of power, it clearly doesn't deserve that power.

So the results of the election are almost assured to be identical to the last parliament in terms of seat distribution, but we might reasonably hope for a very different type of government. By raising the prospect of a minority Liberal government arising even in a situation where the Conservatives have more seats, Ignatieff has given our parliament some teeth with which to defend itself. We can all call out our polite thank-yous to him as he's hurled headlong out of the Liberal leadership next month. Unless he's prime minister. And, oddly, knowing which party is going to get how many seats gives us no hint as to which it will be.