How Canadian conservatives lost their nerve
By Andrew Coyne - Friday, October 7, 2011 - 79 Comments
Andrew Coyne on the big leads squandered by the Manitoba and Ontario Tories
Trevor Hagan/CP
Six months ago, the Progressive Conservative parties of Ontario and Manitoba were riding high. A Winnipeg Free Press poll in March gave the Conservatives a 12-point lead over the incumbent NDP, 47 to 35. The trend in Ontario was broadly similar: a March Nanos poll put the Conservatives nine points ahead, while as late as June, a Toronto Star poll had them 15 points up.
Yet the Manitoba Tories were defeated Tuesday, and the Ontario Tories suffered the same fate. What happened?
Neither could pretend they were up against an insurmountably popular leader. Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal premier of Ontario, was regarded as such a liability for his party—a poll in March put his approval rating at 16 per cent, just slightly ahead of Jean Charest among premiers—that they began the campaign with ads featuring McGuinty talking about how unpopular he was. Greg Selinger, the former NDP finance minister turned premier of Manitoba, was often compared to Paul Martin or Gordon Brown: solid enough, but without the popular touch of his predecessor, in this case the invincibly likeable Gary Doer.
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Do the math
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 3 Comments
Nate Silver measures the impact of campaign advertising.
Campaign ads matter more when a candidate can outspend the opponent. This simple fact sometimes gets lost because people fixate on the content of ads. But the volume of ads may matter more. Consider the 2000 presidential election. In the final two weeks of the campaign, residents in battleground state were twice as likely to see a Bush ad as a Gore ad. This cost Gore 4 points among uncommitted voters. The same thing happened in 2008, when Mr. Obama vastly outspent his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
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Nothing to see here
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 1 Comment
A number of recent findings by the auditor general apparently won’t be studied at committee.
One study would have called witnesses to look at the behaviour of former integrity commissioner Christiane Ouimet, who former auditor general Sheila Fraser found conducted herself inappropriately and retaliated against employees she thought had filed complaints against her. MPs would have likely also questioned why the government paid her $534,100 in severance … Fraser found in a separate report that the Department of National Defence did not follow some of its own rules when it bought new helicopters, which still haven’t been delivered. Total costs weren’t disclosed to the Treasury Board at key points, and decisions were made without the required oversight and challenge by management boards within National Defence.
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Ontarians: voting with their butts for Nobody
By Colby Cosh - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 7:08 AM - 95 Comments
Get ready for the Voter Turnout Nerds: you’ll be hearing from them today. Oh yes. It would not be like them to stay silent after an Ontario election in which fewer than half of technically eligible voters appear to have cast a ballot. The Turnout Nerds don’t care who won or who lost: they care about the mathematical purity of the electoral exercise. They’ll be everywhere you look in the media, ready with their diagnoses and their nostrums and, most of all, their disapproval.
It’s not the people who have let us down, they’ll tell us; it’s the government that has let the people down, fostering apathy (most heinous of all political sins) by failing to implement Brilliant Idea X or Salutary Scheme Y. But at what point do the people, apparently so deaf to the allure of electoral reforms and renovations, stop believing the Turnout Nerd’s comforting assurances of goodwill? Nothing seems to raise the holy quantity of Turnout very effectively. Any momentary rise seems to be followed by a more precipitate plunge. Are the electorate and the Turnout Nerds headed toward a frightful mutual collision with terrible truths about democracy?
Seven provinces, including Ontario, have adopted fixed election dates, partly as a response to the Turnout Problem. When the Harper government introduced fixed dates in 2006—we all remember how well that turned out, don’t we?—this was one of the stated goals: “One objective of setting fixed election dates is maximizing voter turnout.” Dozens of experts and quasi-experts made this argument, and we now have data from enough fixed-date elections to venture a conclusion on this noble experiment:
Prov Elxn Change in Turnout BC May 17 2005 +2.8% PE May 28 2007 +0.5% NL Oct 9 2007 -9.5% ON Oct 10 2007 -4.1% BC May 12 2009 -7.2% NB Sept 27 2010 +4.0% PE Oct 3 2011 -7.4% MB Oct 4 2011 +0.7% ON Oct 6 2011 -5.2%* NL Oct 11 2011 ? SK Nov 7 2011 ? *early estimate
[Points thumb downward, blows raspberry]
As provinces scrambled pell-mell to adopt fixed election dates, a few sociologists and political scientists pointed out that our municipal governments already have them—and that turnouts in Canadian municipal elections, possibly as a consequence, are feeble. Fixed election dates are also a characteristic of American electoral systems, as are pathetic turnouts at every level.
And what else do Canadian municipal elections and U.S. federal and state elections have in common? Huge incumbency advantages. Fixed dates are supposed to relieve a crucial advantage of incumbents in traditional Canadian elections, yet it’s the damnedest thing—if my math is right, incumbents won seven of the nine fixed-date elections in that table, and are extremely likely to be 9-for-11 a month from now. (I wouldn’t recommend establishing any crazy expectations about increased turnout in Newfoundland and Saskatchewan, either.)
Did we make a boo-boo? Did our democracy slip on a banana peel? Turnout Nerds sought fixed-date elections in the name of their obsession with voting as a simplistic moral imperative: it is starting to appear not only as if they failed on their own terms, but that their tonic for democracy may have had unanticipated, or at least undisclosed, side-effects. The Nerds’ next crusade will probably be for electronic voting, and if you think citizens are cynical about electoral politics now, wait until the apparatus falls into the hands of the people who gave the world golden hits like PC LOAD LETTER and PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.
It is not that the Turnout Nerds have some vast constituency of voters who share their concern. Voter turnout is the kind of imaginary issue that spurs people to parrot pieties to pollsters, but the turnout itself is a perfect revealed-preference measure of how much people actually care. Aside from a few unfortunates who slip and fall or get hit by buses on their way to the polls, there can be almost no such thing as a person who is really concerned about turnout, but who stays home on Election Day. We all have near-total control over whether we turn out or not. The cost of going to the polls is pretty much zero. So the issue, if there is an issue, must be that a lot of people think that voting isn’t even worth the zero—that they personally accomplish nothing or less than nothing by voting: not even the reinforcement of a useful social norm or the cultivation of a private sense of satisfaction. Some of them are surely right about this.
The true place of the Turnout Nerd in the media ecosystem is to fill space—to give us something to talk and worry and argue about in the absence of authentic information about what stirrings and yearnings lie behind the raw vote totals. But the Nerd, with his worrywart ways focused on one principle of political health, may be having the same destructive effects on our political life as any other fundamentalist or monomaniac. These people are the orthorexics of politics. Ask Kenneth Arrow: the creation of a political system is always a balancing act between virtues, a compromise, a kludge. Greater political “engagement” and “involvement” are vague virtues at best; and more “excitement” is, if you ask me, an indubitable positive vice.
So can we start politely ignoring the Turnout Nerd? Heck, I won’t even insist on the “politely” part.
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Dalton McGuinty: Partial Comeback Kid
By Paul Wells - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:14 AM - 58 Comments
“Admit it,” a Liberal campaign guy said to me at the Château Laurier while those last few seats were see-sawing back and forth, “If I had told you six months ago that we’d be on the cusp of a majority tonight, would you have believed me?”
Nope. Six months ago I’d have said Dalton McGuinty was toast with a stake through his heart. Or whatever your preferred mixed doom metaphor is. The Liberal has run a doughy, amorphous government, strong on primary schooling in my opinion, but lackluster with the occasional big mess elsewhere. Most Ontarians couldn’t pick Conservative Tim Hudak or New Democrat Andrea Horwath out of a police lineup but they figured surely anybody had to be better than this boyo.
That changed. McGuinty took a licking but he keeps on ticking. His party lost 18 seats. Eleven go to the Progressive Conservatives, seven to the NDP. Reporters get super-excited when it’s unclear whether a government will hold a majority of seats, but even if he falls one short, at 53, McGuinty is close enough and the affinities between his rivals so few that he’ll be able to govern comfortably for quite a while. He’s already outlasted Mike Harris and David Peterson; he’ll have had the job for about a decade before he has to decide whether he wants to try a fourth time. No, I don’t expect him to. But he’s already proved surprising. Continue…
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Dalton McGuinty wins again
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:00 AM - 7 Comments
Ontario’s unlikely premier now ranks among the most successful politicians of his generation
Twelve years ago, after an underwhelming first provincial campaign as Liberal leader, Dalton McGuinty’s future was in some doubt. The columnist in McGuinty’s hometown paper, the Ottawa Citizen, duly wondered if he was a lost cause.“Should the Liberals keep Dalton McGuinty as leader? Now that the dust is starting to settle on his mediocre election campaign, it’s a question they are going to have to ask. The quick and easy answer is that there’s no one better on the horizon so Dalton’s the man. One can imagine the positive reception this idea receives among Tories. They’d like to see McGuinty keep the job until mandatory retirement age of 65. What better way to assure another 50-year Tory reign?”
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Backroom brains: first ‘Moneyball,’ now hardball in ‘Ides of March’
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 10:37 PM - 0 Comments
Ryan Gosling (left) as the press secretary; George Clooney as the candidate
George Clooney, who directed The Ides of March, likes to call it a political thriller. Which may be putting too fine a point on it. Insofar as politics is a game, as opposed to a mission, it can be seen as a sports movie, a less sentimental Moneyball, with the backroom boys trying to win the White House rather than the World Series. In his finest directing effort to date, Clooney casts himself as a left-wing Democrat in a presidential primary race. But he’s not the star, just the supporting player. The movie belongs to Ryan Gosling, who portrays Clooney’s hotshot press secretary, a golden boy whose tender ideals hit the wall in a game of hardball involving sex, lies and interns. This, in fact, is so much of a backroom story that Clooney’s character did not even appear onstage in the 2008 play on which the movie is based. The play, which bore the decidedly less sexy title of Farragut North, comes from Beau Willimon, who was a young writer on presidential hopeful Howard Dean’s 2004 Iowa campaign. Presumably he knows whereof he speaks.
The Ides of March burns along with a shrewd, whip-smart script, and when I first saw it, just before TIFF, I instantly hailed it as this year’s The Social Network. The analogy seemed obvious: it’s another brainy backstage intrigue about diabolical ambition, dirty tricks and betrayed loyalty. Well, since then I saw Moneyball, which was co-scripted by Aaron Sorkin, and now of course everyone is comparing that movie to The Social Network, which Sorkin wrote. Continue…
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Election night in Ontario
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:40 PM - 15 Comments
With Dalton McGuinty’s side on the cusp of a majority, the TV networks are projecting a reelected Liberal government in Ontario. Results are here.
Depending on your level of interest, it could be a long night.
12:07am. So that was interesting. I spent the evening pretending to know what I was talking about by arguing that no one knows what they’re talking about.
12:24am. Paul Wells, who knows what he’s talking about and has spoken with someone who knows even better, files from the Chateau Laurier.
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Scenes from the Occupy Wall St. protest in NYC
By Guy Godfree - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 7:36 PM - 1 Comment
Thousands gathered in New York City this week to join the burgeoning movement
1Scenes from the Occupy Wall St. protest in NYC
Before the march
NYC - Wednesday, Oct 5: Protesters gather at the north end of Zuccotti Park (or Liberty Park Plaza) before beginning a march to City Hall. (Guy Godfree/Maclean's)
1 of 21 Photos
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Steve Jobs and iEverything
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 6:20 PM - 1 Comment
From the original Macintosh to the iPod to the iPhone, Steve Jobs helped upend nearly every facet of the tech industry
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Chong keeps on
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 5:19 PM - 4 Comments
Conservative MP Michael Chong is still trying to push Question Period reform.
Now, Chong is 123rd on the list of MPs with motions or private member’s bills they would like to table in the House — far enough down that it will likely take at least two years before he gets a chance to re-introduce his motion.
But Chong isn’t giving up. He’s been in discussion with other MPs, who he hopes will use their slot — chosen by lottery — to table his motion from last year. ”I think these changes need to be brought to question period, and I’m encouraging other members and the government to think about bringing them forward. So we’ll see what happens.”
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Here for gazebos
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 4:52 PM - 4 Comments
No sketch today on account of some Ontario election responsibilities. In lieu, here is the Prime Minister’s answer this afternoon to the question, in regards to Tony Clement, “Does the Prime Minister realize that the minister has lost all credibility?”
Mr. Speaker, if this is a reference to the G8 funding, I think this has been looked at thoroughly by the Auditor General. The government has accepted those recommendations. There were 32 projects. They were all public. They all came in at or under budget, and they are all good projects for the area.
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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 4:26 PM - 11 Comments
Jobs’s story reminds us not only of the heroism of the entrepreneur, but of the nobility of craft
Someone was on CNN last night comparing Steve Jobs to Edison, Ford and Disney in one, and for once it didn’t seem like the usual Apple fanboy hype. Jobs had Edison’s flair for innovation (and his ruthlessness in exploiting others’ ideas), Ford’s concern for process, and Disney’s sense of the culture.So much of what the computer became was made possible or driven by Apple that it’s difficult to separate the two, just as it’s difficult to separate Apple’s story from Jobs’s. Often he wasn’t the first, but he took things that others had tried and failed with and made them succeed, by doing them better (Microsoft’s formula was a little different: it took things that others had done first and did them worse.)
His emphasis on the primacy of design, his fanatical attention to detail, his strategic vision—standing by the closed, proprietary, all-in-one model even after it had been “proved” wrong, long enough to see it triumphantly vindicated—would make him a business legend quite apart from any innovative wonders. That’s significant not only for Apple, but America—at a time when the Big Three and other long-time industrial titans were being eclipsed by foreign competition, often from low-wage economies, Jobs showed how advanced economies could still compete: by innovation, design, quality. And of course, marketing: there really was none better at delivering the sizzle with the steak.
And there’s the sociological impact: more than anyone else, Jobs made technology cool, and not just technology but business itself. I can’t remember young adults discussing business strategy, back when I was one of them, with the intensity that today’s young adults do about Apple’s, at least among the tech-minded. But these days that’s just about everybody. He not only made geeks hip, but made everyone into a geek, at least a bit—including, not insignificantly, women, who in the computer age’s early years would have not been caught dead using a computer, should anyone have thought to ask them.
Before Apple, the scientific and artistic worlds rarely intersected. After, a “techie” was as often as not a creative type. With a Mac, technology could be used not only to make things, but works of the imagination. Artists, musicians, photographers, film makers, even writers—one by one, they all entered the digital world.
I can’t think of any other business figure whose death would have prompted such widespread mourning, especially among people you would not ordinarily have thought would have any interest in business. One well-known tech-girl tweeted last night that she was hugging her MacBook Air while she watched the TV coverage. I don’t think it was just because he made great products. I think it’s the vision he offered of what business could be, what it could mean—that being in business could be a meaningful way to spend your life. Jobs’s story reminds us not only of the heroism of the entrepreneur, but of the nobility of craft: of what an honourable activity it is to make useful, beautiful things for each other, even if you make a fortune doing it. .
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Week in Pictures: October 3 – 9, 2011
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 2:28 PM - 0 Comments
The week’s best photos from around the world
0Week in Pictures: October 3 – 9, 2011
Anderlecht's players celebrate after Dieudonne Mbokani's goal
Anderlecht's players celebrate after Dieudonne Mbokani scored the second goal against Lokomotiv Moskva during their Europa League Group L soccer match at the Lokomotiv stadium in Moscow September 29, 2011. Mikhail (Voskresensky/REUTERS)
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‘We’re not perfect’
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 1:45 PM - 16 Comments
A day after one of his mayors is reported to have mused on the best way to avoid access to information laws, Tony Clement manages to miss a scheduled appearance at an international conference on freedom of information.
Clement says the incident was a “mistake” and had nothing to do with recent controversies over his role in G8 infrastructure spending. ”It never appeared on our schedule,” he said in a telephone interview late Wednesday, adding he would apologize to organizers on Thursday. “Obviously, we made a mistake — we’re not perfect. I’m going to have lots of people looking into this in the morning.”
Meanwhile, the interim auditor general has mused again that, in regards to the use of border infrastructure funds for G8 Legacy projects, “lawyers could have an interesting debate as to whether any laws were broken.”
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A-G slams lack of transparency in G8 legacy spending
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 1:32 PM - 9 Comments
‘Rules were broken’
“Rules were broken” when the federal government went on a spending spree in Conservative minister Tony Clement’s riding ahead of the 2010 G8 summit in Muskoka, the federal auditor-general told reporters after a hearing before a Commons committee on Wednesday. The spending wasn’t properly documented, nor were explanations given to the Parliamentarians charged with overseeing government expenditures, said interim Auditor-General John Wiersema. The $50 million in spending on projects ranging from a gazebo to new public washrooms was completed without a paper trail, and no government documents exist to justify the 32 projects undertaken in Clement’s Parry Sound-Muskoka riding. “It’s not right,” Wiersema added.
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Obama acknowledges “broad-based frustration” against banks
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 1:11 PM - 2 Comments
U.S. president calls on financial industry to stop “deceptive practices”
U.S. President Barack Obama told a news conference on Thursday the Occupy Wall St. protests that have been spreading throughout the U.S. expose the “broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.” Obama also lashed out at the financial industry, accusing banks of resisting attempts at reform to prevent another collapse. “For us to have a healthy financial system, that requires that banks and other financial institution systems compete on the basis of the best service and the best products and the best price,” he said. ”And it can’t be competing on the basis of hidden fees, deceptive practices or derivative cocktails that nobody understands and that expose the entire economy to enormous risks. “
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Anti-miscarriage drug DES causes multi-generational health problems
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:56 PM - 2 Comments
Up to 10 million are estimated to have been exposed
DES (or diethylstilbestrol), an anti-miscarriage drug widely used between 1940 and 1970, has been linked to health problems—including breast cancer, infertility, difficult pregnancies and early menopause—in the daughters and the granddaughters of women who used it. Sons of DES mothers also have been found more likely to develop testicular cysts and other problems. A form of artificial estrogen prescribed to pregnant women between 1938 and 1971 with mid-pregnancy complications or previous miscarriages, DES was discontinued when it was found daughters of women who used it were developing a rare vaginal cancer. It’s estimated between four and 10 million people were exposed. The drug’s cumulative harm will be documented in The New England Journal of Medicine this week.
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Clement fails to show up for conference
By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:53 PM - 4 Comments
Embattled minister doesn’t bother to tell organizers
For the first time, Canada is hosting the biennial international gathering of information commissioners this week in Ottawa, but the federal cabinet minister slated to kick-off the conference, embattled Treasury Board President Tony Clement, failed to show up this morning—and apparently didn’t bother to alert organizers that he’d be a no-show. The Canadian Bar Association is co-sponsoring the event with the office of Suzanne Legault, Canada’s information commissioner, hosting freedom-of-information watchdogs from 22 countries. Clement was scheduled to open the proceedings with remarks today at 8 a.m. Clement, who’s responsible for the administration of the Access to Information Act, failed to show up because he was attending the weekly Conservative caucus meeting on Parliament Hill, a few blocks from the hotel where the conference is being held, according to his spokesman. He is under fire these days for G8 spending last year in his riding, and some critics also allege he has used his personal email, rather than the standard government address, to skirt access-to-information rules.
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Light reading
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 5 Comments
The government’s latest budget implementation bill—Bill C-13—measures 642 pages.
It is broken into 22 parts. In all, it impacts about two dozen acts of Parliament. Part 1 includes 27 different measures. Part 13 “amends the Judges Act to permit the appointment of two additional judges to the Nunavut Court of Justice.”
Here, again, is a young Stephen Harper lamenting the scourge of omnibus legislation.
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Venezuela to seize houses for state-run tourism project on Los Roques islands
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:31 PM - 2 Comments
Chavez accuses ‘high bourgeoisie’ of privatizing the expensive tourist hotspot
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared Wednesday that the government will seize private property and assume control of the pristine Los Roques islands, making them a state-run tourist destination. Located just north of Venezuela’s coast, the archipelago features long, white sand beaches and rich coral reefs. The islands are also an expensive tourist hotspot. Private homes have been built on some of the islands. “There are some supposed owners. They privatized it, so to speak, the high bourgeoisie, including the international set,” Chavez said, speaking over the telephone with a Venezuelan television station. Since his election in 1999, Chavez has nationalized several sectors of the economy, including parts of the oil industry. The practice has made him popular with the country’s poor, while ostracizing members of the business community. Chavez didn’t give a timeline for the nationalization of the Los Roques islands, but said that the government will build hostels “for the people,” while using confiscated yachts to ferry them to and from the islands.
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Steve Jobs’s commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:29 PM - 0 Comments
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Bringing Afghanistan’s democrats out of the shadows
By Michael Petrou - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:28 PM - 5 Comments
It is fitting that Terry Glavin begins his book Come from the Shadows: the Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan with a quote from George Orwell — who once said it is not enough to oppose fascism; one must stand against totalitarianism in all its forms.
Orwell, a far-left anti-fascist who took a bullet in the throat while fighting Franco’s brutes during the Spanish Civil War, was angered by the inability of too many of his fellow leftists to counter dictatorial thuggery in those with whom they shared a common enemy. Stalinists got a free pass because, ostensibly, they opposed fascism; they didn’t deserve it.
Glavin, also of the left, is frustrated by the limits of his supposed comrades’ solidarity and internationalism. Afghanistan’s democrats — its students, human rights activists, women, socialists and secularists — should, by rights, be championed and supported by the western left. They are, after all, fighting for the same things liberals in Canada struggled for and earned over the last century. What’s more, they’re fighting for these rights against an explicitly fascistic strain of religious and ethnic extremism embodied in the Taliban. Continue…
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Puppet MPs
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 11:59 AM - 32 Comments
The CBC finds a couple of defeated Conservative candidates doing the work of MPs.
One of them, Cecil Clarke, ran for the Conservatives in Nova Scotia’s Sydney-Victoria riding, losing to Liberal Mark Eyking by fewer than 1,000 votes. Now he’s a federally paid consultant, travelling the province meeting with businesses and individuals. He’ll get $135,000 a year for three years.
“There’s a whole host of issues that have to be dealt with …,” Clarke told CBC News. “I would say, you know, that I’ve had a very positive relationship with the government of Canada.” Clarke’s task of listening to people and letting them know what the federal government has to offer sounds a lot to Eyking what an MP should be doing.
“We hear about puppet governments,” said Eyking. “Now we’re going to have a puppet MP.”
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Charest to announce inquiry into construction industry: report
By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 10:45 AM - 0 Comments
Quebec premier said to be considering semi-private inquiry into widespread allegations of corruption
According to a report in La Presse, after months of mounting pressure to do so, Quebec Premier Jean Charest will announce an inquiry into the province’s construction industry. The announcement will reportedly be made sometime in the next two weeks, ahead of the provincial Liberals’ convention the weekend of October 22. The inquiry isn’t expected to be entirely public, as the provincial government is considering allowing witnesses to testify in camera. It’s equally unclear who will lead the inquiry. Jacques Duchesneau, the head of the province’s anti-collusion investigative unit, has called on the government to lean on a group of three judges to look into widespread allegations of corruption within the industry.
