Bernier unplugged

WaterCar Python Amphibious Vehicle

Actually, it’s true: Ottawa mulls buying Windsor-Detroit Ambassador Bridge

Ever since Danny Williams was revealed to have been seeking treatment for a heart ailment across the border, the media have been observing a strange and uncomfortable silence about the matter.

On one hand, this reticence is commendable. Williams’s preference in health care is nobody’s business, and should remain, as far as possible, a private matter between him and his God. Though some claim this is a lifestyle choice, it’s far more likely that it is a result of something beyond his control. As such, it is not a fit matter for public commentary.

But once the story has, by one means or another, entered the public domain, that puts a different colour on it. At that point, the media are not just declining to report on something: they are actively colluding in a fiction. The issue is no longer Williams’s medical inclination. It’s the media’s refusal to acknowledge reality.

It’s not as if this were twenty or thirty years ago, when the mere knowledge that someone had a preference for American health care might have been enough to end his political career, or to bring social censure and humiliation upon him. In this more enlightened age, most people are more likely to react with a yawn. It is no longer unusual to see people who openly “go south,” from captains of industry to sports stars. Many Canadians have discovered they know someone like that — perhaps even a member of their own family. All that we are accomplishing by suppressing discussion of Williams’s case is to suggest that there is something embarrassing or shameful about it. Far from erasing a stigma, we are reinforcing it.

I’m not suggesting we should go around unmasking politicians who use American health care, but who prefer not to discuss it. But this taboo on reporting things that are already public knowledge is contrary to our natural urges as a profession, and as such strikes me as unhealthy.

SIGH: For readers who are puzzled by the first paragraph, Rob Silver’s comment below is well worth reading.

British PM plans to ditch first-past-the-post

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced he will seek parliamentary approval for a referendum to ditch the first-past-the-post voting system for Westminster elections.

Mr Brown said that the switch to the Alternative Vote system could be part of a “new politics” which would restore public trust in Westminster in the wake of last year’s expenses scandal.

In a wide-ranging package of planned reforms, he also confirmed that a draft Bill to create a democratically accountable House of Lords will be published within the next few weeks.

And he gave his backing to parliamentary reforms to give MPs more power over the running of the Commons, new avenues for public petitions to be submitted for debate in the House and the swifter release of official documents under Freedom of Information laws…

It is thought that the Commons will vote on the issue before it rises for its half-term break next Wednesday, and Mr Brown’s spokesman this morning insisted that enough parliamentary time remains for it to reach the statute book ahead of the election, which must take place by June 3.

Mr Brown confirmed that he will campaign for a move to AV – under which voters rank candidates in numerical order, rather than simply placing an X on the ballot paper – in the referendum, which he said should be held by October 2011.

So that’s reform of the upper house, more power for MPs, and electoral reform, in one go. Must be nice to live in a country that can, you know, do things.

Underwater plane bought by Sir Richard Branson

Opposition proposals to restrict the power to prorogue without Parliament’s consent have met with some skepticism. Critics deride the idea as unconstitutional and unprecedented. Unprecedented, that is, unless you count 369 years of precedent…

An Act to prevent inconveniences which may happen by the untimely adjourning proroguing or dissolving of this present Parliament, May 10, 1641. 17 Car. I. cap. 7. Statutes of the Realm, Vol. 103

Whereas great sums of money must of necessity be speedily advanced and provided for the relief of His Majesty’s army and people in the northern parts of this realm, and for preventing the imminent danger it is in, and for supply of other His Majesty’s present and urgent occasions, which cannot be so timely effected as is requisite without credit for raising the laid monies; which credit cannot be obtained until such obstacles be first removed as are occasioned by fears, jealousies and apprehensions of divers His Majesty’s loyal subjects, that this present Parliament may be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved, before justice shall be duly executed upon delinquents, public grievances redressed, a firm peace between the two nations of England and Scotland concluded, and before sufficient provision be made for the re-payment of the said monies so to be raised; all which the Commons in this present Parliament assembled, having duly considered, do therefore most humbly beseech your Majesty that it may be declared and enacted.

And be it declared and enacted by the King, our Sovereign Lord, with the assent of the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that this present Parliament now assembled shall not be dissolved unless it be by Act of Parliament to be passed for that purpose; nor shall be, at any time or times, during the continuance thereof, prorogued or adjourned, unless it be by Act of Parliament to be likewise passed for that purpose; and that the House of Peers shall not at any time or times during this present Parliament be adjourned, unless it be by themselves or by their own order; and in like manner, that the House of Commons shall not, at any time or times, during this present Parliament, be adjourned, unless it be by themselves or by their own order; and that all and every thing or things whatsoever done, or to be done for the adjournment, proroguing, or dissolving of this present Parliament, contrary to this Act, shall be utterly void and of none effect.

My colleague John Geddes has written a sensible, sobering article explaining just how difficult it will be for the government to balance the books solely by cutting spending, ie without raising taxes.

Yet the notion that layers of glistening blubber are just waiting to be hacked off is only a comforting delusion. There must be fat, sure, but the federal books are well marbled—the less-than-unassailable spending tends to be finely integrated into essential programs. No use pretending that finding savings huge enough on their own to balance the books again is merely a matter of will.

In fact, some of those most experienced on the subject think the task impossible.

Impossible? Impossible is nothing. It’s true, as John suggests, that it can’t be done just by cutting “waste, fraud and duplication”: not because it isn’t there, but because governments aren’t very good at getting at it. Another round of “expenditure review” isn’t going to do the trick, any more than the last several rounds did. But make some fundamental choices about what government should and should not be doing, be prepared to tackle a few entrenched interests, and the task looks quite achievable.

Suppose we were to try to erase the deficit in four years, that is by fiscal 2014. The timetable seems reasonable, as that is the period over which the Parliamentary Budget Officer reckons the cyclical component of the deficit would have been retired by economic growth, leaving only the structural component, which he estimates at $19-billion. So to wipe that out without raising taxes, the government would need to cut about $20-billion out of spending — not from this year’s projected total of $273-billion, but from spending in 2014, projected to be $296-billion. (Where did I get that number from? See page 22 of the September fiscal update, where the government’s five-year spending track is laid out.)

For simplicity’s sake, assume there is nothing we can do about the government’s biggest single spending program, interest payments on the debt — forecast to explode from just under $31-billion this year to $42-billion in 2014. So that means we have to cut $20-billion out of $254-billion in program spending. The $234-billion target that implies is $8-billion less than we’re on track to spend this year. Sounds tough. But this year’s figure is inflated by the enormous surge in one-time spending rushed out the door in the name of stimulating the economy. A better comparison would be with last year’s total of $208-billion. The 12.5% increase in spending this implies between 2009 and 2014 is just slightly more than the combined increase in prices (6.1%) and population (5.3%) projected over the same period.

So the task, in other words, is to hold spending more or less level in real per capita terms, that is after adjusting for inflation and population growth, with where it was last year. That’s hardly savage: In 2014, the government would still be spending the same amount of inflation-adjusted dollars per citizen as it spent in 2009 — which was 25% more inflation-adjusted dollars per citizen than it spent in 2000.

Can it be done? Start with Transfers to other levels of government. The Harper government has promised not to cut these, or not to cut them much. Yet these have been among the fastest growing items of federal spending in recent years, rising from $29-billion in 2004 to $46.5-billion in 2009. By 2014, they are projected to rise to nearly $60-billion, a 28% increase. Suppose instead these were held to the same inflation-plus-population escalator I’ve suggested for the rest of federal spending. On its own, that would shave $8-billion off federal spending, without reducing the real value of per capita transfers by a nickel.

Still, the provinces would squawk. So let’s go easy on them. Let’s just hold transfers level as a percentage of GDP. Instead of growing by 12.5%, as under the inflation-plus-population rule, they’d be allowed to grow 16%, in line with projected GDP (from $1.609 trillion in calendar 2008, my proxy for fiscal 2009, to $1.862 trillion in calendar 2013). They wouldn’t actually be cut, you understand. They just wouldn’t grow quite as fast as planned. That still yields $6-billion in annual savings four years out.

Continue…

David Frum, speaking in, and of, Venezuela:

In our modern world, we have two main systems of democracy. In the United States, France, and Mexico, the executive and the legislature are elected separately. Powers are separated, and each checks and balances the other. In Britain and the British Commonwealth, in Japan, and in most of Europe, the legislature is elected directly and the executive derives its power from the legislative majority.

Political scientists argue about which system is better.

But all agree on which system is worst: a system where the executive controls the legislature. You can call this system by many names: guided democracy, Peronism, socialism with Chinese characteristics.

By whatever name, the system of executive supremacy over the legislature amounts to the same thing: unchecked power. Such power can never be trusted. And those who most avidly seek such power are precisely those who can least be trusted with it.

I’ve posted this before somewhere, but for various reasons it feels appropriate to post it again. it’s from Vaclav Havel’s Summer Meditations, about his experiences as president of Czechoslovakia, later the Czech Republic.

Journalists, and in particular foreign correspondents, often ask me how the idea of “living in truth”, the idea of “anti-political politics”, or the idea of politics subordinated to conscience can, in practice, be carried out. They are curious to know whether, finding myself in high office, I have not had to revise much of what I once wrote as an independent critic of politics and politicians. Have I not been compelled to lower my former “dissident” expectations of politics, by which they mean the standards I derived from the “dissident experience,” which are therefore scarcely applicable outside that sphere?



There may be some who won’t believe me, but in my second term as president in a land full of problems that presidents in stable countries never dream of, I can safely say that I have not been compelled to recant anything of what I wrote earlier, or to change my mind about anything. It may seem incredible, but it is so: not only have I not had to change my mind, but my opinions have been confirmed.



Despite the political distress I face every day, I am still deeply convinced that politics is not essentially a disreputable business; and to the extent that it is, it is only disreputable people who make it so. I would concede that it can, more than other spheres of human activity, tempt one to disreputable practices, and that it therefore places higher demands on people. But it is simply not true that a politician must lie or intrigue. That is utter nonsense, spread about by people who – for whatever reasons – wish to discourage others from taking an interest in public affairs.



Of course, in politics, as elsewhere in life, it is impossible and pointless to say everything, all at once, to just anyone. But that does not mean having to lie. All you need is tact, the proper instincts, and good taste. One surprising experience from “high politics” is this: I have discovered that good taste is more useful here than a post-graduate degree in political science. It is largely a matter of form: knowing how long to speak, when to begin and when to finish; how to say something politely that your opposite number may not want to hear; how to say, always, what is most significant at a given moment, and not to speak of what is not important or relevant; how to insist on your own position without offending; how to create the kind of friendly atmosphere that makes complex negotiations easier; how to keep a conversation going without prying or being aloof; how to balance serious political themes with lighter, more relaxing topics; how to plan your official journeys judiciously and to know when it is more appropriate not to go somewhere, when to be open and when reticent and to what degree.



But more than that, it means having a certain instinct for the time, the atmosphere of the time, the mood of people, the nature of their worries, their frame of mind — that too can perhaps be more useful than sociological surveys. An education in political science, law, economics, history, and culture is an invaluable asset to any politician, but I have been persuaded, again and again, that it is not the most essential asset. Qualities like fellow-feeling, that ability to talk to others, insight, the capacity to grasp quickly not only problems but also human character, the ability to make contact, a sense of moderation: all these are immensely more important in politics. I am not saying, heaven forbid, that I myself am endowed with these qualities; not at all! These are merely my observations.



To sum up: if your heart is in the right place and you have good taste, not only will you pass muster in politics, you are destined for it. If you are modest and do not lust after power, not only are you suited to politics, you absolutely belong there. The “sine qua non” of a politician is not the ability to lie; he need only be sensitive and know when, what, to whom, and how to say what he has to say. It is not true that a person of principle does not belong in politics; it is enough for his principles to be leavened with patience, deliberation, a sense of proportion, and an understanding of others. It is not true that only the unfeeling cynic, the vain, the brash, and the vulgar can succeed in politics; such people, it is true, are drawn to politics, but, in the end, decorum and good taste will always count for more.

“As you know, as part of our economic action plan, one of the things we’ve of course done is to step up government advertising. One of the purposes of that has been to support media outlets during the recession that have been particularly hard-hit.”

– Stephen Harper, A-Channel Ottawa, Jan. 11.

As part of its scandalous disinformation campaign against our prime minister, the Liberal party is currently putting about this obviously fabricated quote. Is this what our politics has come to, that this sort of dirty trick would be tolerated? The idea that Stephen Harper, of all people, would publicly confess to such a ridiculous policy, is beyond absurd, and no serious person would believe it.

A. Satirist, Jan. 10

So Parliament will be dark the next two months. Can anyone say they will miss it? … This country has a lot of important decisions to make: about the economy, the Afghanistan mission, global warming, you name it…

In the present state of perpetual brinksmanship and uncertainty, it is hard for governments to plan for the long term or tackle tough problems like the deficit. Freed from the tyranny of Parliament, we should at last have the “majority” government everybody craves.

Stephen Harper, Jan 11

“The games begin when Parliament returns,” he explained. “The government can take our time now to do the important work to prepare the economic agenda ahead.”

“That said, as soon as Parliament comes back . . . the first thing that happens is a vote of confidence and there’ll be votes of confidence and election speculation for every single week after that for the rest of the year. That’s the kind of instability markets are actually worried about.”

The new Liberal ads get a broadly favourable review from friend Wells. Not so much from me. Can we please dispense with the Damien: Omen II mood music and snarky, insinuating voiceovers, the same stylistic devices used in every attack ad ever made? I know its only been several million times, but it’s really starting to get old. Just once, can we have a level-headed discussion about how we’re governed — without all the cheap theatrics?

Here’s the ad I’d like to see:

Rather than answer serious questions about its handling of prisoners in Afghanistan, the Conservative government has shut down Parliament. Your Parliament. The heart of our democracy.

This has got to stop. For years, governments of both parties — Conservative and Liberal — have been treating Parliament with contempt, gutting its powers, reducing its ability to hold governments to account. And now it’s come to this.

We’ll take our share of the blame for Parliament’s decline. Because we’re serious about fixing it. We want to put Parliament back at the centre of our democratic life.

Read the complete plan at Liberal.ca.

Or something like that.

It only takes about 30 seconds to read. But imagine if a party actually said something like that — if it talked to us as if we were adults? No cheesy crash-chords, no over-blown dramatics, no appeals to paranoia. Just level with us: lay out the problem, and suggest a solution.

I know. Never going to happen.

Today (Monday) is the 195th birthday of our first and greatest prime minister, the man who, in the title of Richard Gwyn’s terrific biography, “made us.” In any self-respecting country, this would be a national holiday, but as this is Canada, it isn’t — though it has, since 2002, been officially designated Sir John A. Macdonald Day, which at least puts him one step ahead of Louis Riel.

I trust you will all find appropriate ways to celebrate.

They’ve posted my latest column, which makes the case for shutting down Parliament altogether. From the comments it appears that about half the readers get the satire. Which is better than the usual average.

Actually, it wasn’t so much meant as satire as a demonstration of the seductiveness of undemocratic reasoning. So in a way it’s disappointing that so many readers could tell I was joking. I should have been more subtle.