Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Apathy is boring

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 1:44pm - 54 Comments

While TVO’s Mike Miner thinks at some length about the significance of it all, that Facebook group, as of this writing, has 65,000 members. Stephen Taylor, lead rallier for Canada, has helpfully set the magic number for democratically legitimacy at 127,000 members, the number drawn by his cause a year ago.

Meanwhile, a rival Facebook group, promoted by the National Post to demonstrate how easy it is to rally tens of thousands to your cause, has 120 members.

Tags: facebook, house of commons, Ottawa, Parliament, prorogation, Prorogue, Stephen Taylor, The Agenda, tvo

More by Aaron Wherry

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

"the coverage was all about how awesome Martin was"

Hahahahaha.
Mike T.

doubt it muchly.
E.B.

Snap!
Lord Kitchener's Own

I love the rival FB page trumpeted by the NP actually.

Sure, it expresses apathy regarding prorogation, but it does so from the point of view of our democracy ALREADY being so far gone under Harper that his proroguing (or not) of Parliament is deemed completely irrelevant (I realize it's probably facetious, but it's funny!).

Here's a quote from the Info page for the group: "Harper has now put Canada into a state of Open Dictatorship, as opposed to the usual state of veiled dictatorship that is called 'parliamentary democracy'… So, while I despise Harper, I am not particularly upset by this, because I have no illusions about what the other puppets will do once they are in power". That's the group the NP is ENCOURAGING people to join (to little effect apparently, as it's only got 7 more people now…)

So, the National Post's chosen match up is between a group who are against prorogation, and a group who think that we're already living in a dictatorship, so why bother worrying about a meaningless prorogation of a Parliament the Harper government already ignores anyway?

LOL
http://intensedebate.com/people/john_g2708 john g

I think the whole idea of the news media trumpeting facebook group membership as some kind of measure of popular support is idiotic, lazy journalism, whether it's anti proroguation or anti coalition or whatever. Aaron is the one using number of members in a facebook group as some kind of metric, not me. I'm merely challenging him on why his chosen metric wasn't good enough to notice last year when it was even more wildly successful by his own standards.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SamDavies SamDavies

While I certainly wouldn't praise the greatness of FB protest, I wouldn't disregard it either.
Frankly, it is the day in day out communication choice for many Canadians.
Criticize it as lazy and whatnot, but it is the way things are…..

http://intensedebate.com/people/craigola craigola

And in spite of all the practice they give themselves, too.
http://intensedebate.com/people/craigola craigola

Occam's Razor, friend. Why would so many people join a Facebook group that was against proroguation? Because they're against it.
Dave

Both their readers, with 59 fake profiles each.
Reader

The paper ought to be referred to by its proper name, "the National Pos" :-!
Gayle

You know, there is a big difference. This facebook thing is truly grassroots.

Your protest was not.
Anon

And how much of that media coverage was sneery and dismissive, one wonders?

I was only tempted to sneer when I wondered at how "ungrassrootsy" it really was, but I didn't sneer at the idea of people choosing a form of protest just because it doesn't meet with someone's approval.
YSP

Wow, this must be their entire readership.
Lord Kitchener's Own

I don't know, Coyne seems no more apoplectic about this than he did about Martin's shenanigans.

As for how serious this all is, MAYBE laws are still being followed (I'm not sure ignoring a demand from Parliament that you produce certain documents is "following the law" precisely) but I don't see how proroguing Parliament right after choosing to ignore a demand for the production of documents by the majority of our elected representatives in the House is not a threat to our system of government. If prorogation can be used to make our government supreme over our Parliament that's a pretty serious threat. When a majority of the House of Commons says to the government "Do X", and the government says back to the majority of our elected representatives "Get stuffed, we're locking the doors and you can all stay at home" that's a pretty serious threat to our system of government.

Martin never ignored a confidence vote (a vote saying "the House thinks a committee should do X" is not a vote saying "the House does X", no matter how hard you squint) but he certainly ignored a vote in the House, so there's a little bit of a parallel. Except of course that when Martin ignored a vote he didn't like, at least he was there in the House a couple of days latter facing another vote. When Harper ran in to a vote in the House of Commons demanding he do something that he didn't want to do, he just ignored it and prorogued.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

Thanks, Tiggy! This must be the hundredth time you've called me a ConBot. I stopped being annoyed when I realized that you're afflicted with OCD.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

It will be interesting to see whether the Liberals are able to improve their revenues this quarter. If 50% of the members of the Facebook CAPP group donated $20 each to the Liberal Party, that would be $650,000 in new revenues.

Stephen Taylor's Facebook group may have "only" had 127,000 members in 2008, but tens of thousands of Canadians spoke with their wallets and donated money to the Conservatives in December 2008. The Conservatives set a record for the most money raised from individual donors in 2008, becoming the first political party to break the $20 million barrier in one year.
http://intensedebate.com/people/jolyon jolyon

"but tens of thousands of Canadians"

"Tens of thousands of Conservative Party members you mean"

Is there a difference? I didn't realize that once someone joined the Con Party they stopped being Canadian.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Nich Nich

It's unfortunate that not a single one of them will be able to say so publicly.
Ryan

I'm not sure that many conservatives really think it's worth the time or effort to join a Facebook group, though to be honest I wouldn't know, as I don't have a profile myself.

Thing is though, the anti-Harper Facebook group sees itself as serious biz; whereas the NP one is obviously a mock group. Besides, joining an anti-proroguement group I guess is the thing to do these days. It can make you look bipartisan (even though you're really just a liberal), makes you look hip (hey, I follow politics, look at me!) and young people always enjoy joining a crowd (admittedly there are some older folks in there but I bet the vast majority are young'ins like myself).
Mike T.

I wouldn't necessarily take that bet, but I'm pretty sure at least 2/3 are very unlikely to vote Conservative.
Anon

And Cons supporters do not click twice, unlike opposition supporters — well, maybe Cons supporters do click MORE than twice … so how many actual readers does this make then? lol
Anon

"It will be interesting to see whether the Liberals are able to improve their revenues this quarter."

I love how you *pretend* to be the voice of objective reason and apolitical insight, when you're the best ConBot the Conservatives have in their stable, quite often the first off the mark with the best channel-changing comments.

You're top-shelf. I hope you're getting suitably compensated.
anon

Hundredth time? You, annoyed?

Whaaa…?
http://intensedebate.com/people/craigola craigola

That's nice that you think that more than 70% would identify themselves as liberal. I don't know if you'd be wrong, but I do know that it's beside the point. I would bet the other 30%, then, are people who identify themselves as conservative, but they're not so foolish as to think the sun rises and sets out of Stephen Harper's arse, and as conservatives, don't much appreciate the denigration and manipulation for partisan purposes of Canadian institutions. That too would be beside the point.
Occam's razor, dear young Ryan, states that the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected. For example: Person 1 – Gosh, look at all those people who joined the Facebook group against proroguation of Parliament. I wonder why that is?
Person 2 – Well, perhaps it's because many of them identify as liberal, or they want to portray themselves as worldly and think joining a Facebook group will help them towards that end, or maybe many of them have some unknowable beef against the Prime Minister that would motivate them to join a group that they otherwise would not, or…or..
Person 1 – …Or maybe they're generally opposed to the idea of proroguing Parliament, frivolously or otherwise?
Person 2 – Oh yeah! Put that way, it makes a lot of sense!
Ryan

Are you saying that many members are joining because they're actually are anti-prorogation? I simply find it more likely that, since Harper is the cause of the prorogation, if one is liberal they must be anti-prorogation. I guess I have no proof of this other than the fact I used to associate myself with liberals and I hated Harper too for no real good reason (I thought he was anti-Canada or something).

I simply think it's just liberals at it again. They won't admit to it but, take a poll of the members in the Facebook group. I would bet $50 more than 70% identify themselves as liberal.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

Anyway, thanks for the backhanded compliment . Much appreciated. I'm glad you're a fan.