Promises, promises

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 180 Comments

What then are we to do with the entire notion of a campaign promise? I was there in September of 2008, the first week of that year’s election campaign, when Stephen Harper strolled into a fake media “breakfast” (he ate no food and drank only water) to announce that Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan should end in 2011. Coyne went ballistic. But at least he noticed that since the it-all-ends-in-2011 thing constituted a 180-degree turnabout from Harper, maybe another 180 was still possible. “You just never know.”

And indeed it was so. Though the prime minister has a hard time finding his voice on the issue this week, armies of leakers are suggesting on his behalf that the military mission won’t end in 2011, but that hundreds, even as many as 1,000, will remain to do training in Kabul. (Harper apologists, who are constantly having to figure out why his latest zig-zag was coming all along, will patiently explain that this will become a training mission, which is different from a combat mission. But it was precisely the notion of a training mission that Peter Kent ruled out in June when he said “there’s no wiggle room at all.” Now there’s room for a mambo parade.

We are left wondering, not for the first time, why we put the Conservative leader to the trouble of making election promises since he is only going to ignore them. Remember the $900 million diesel tax cut? Neither does he. Remember the promise never to go into deficit? Now you don’t have to. Remember six or eight carbon cap-and-trade schemes the Conservatives ginned up to block Stéphane Dion? Never mind.

Of course the laments on this can be multi-partisan. Chrétien’s vow to scrap, kill and abolish the GST. Gordon Campbell, RIP, on the HST. Some people are so livid over all this promise-breaking that they try to concoct schemes to hold politicians to their electoral vows with various penalties for infringement.

But what if the problem isn’t promise-breaking but promise-making itself?

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Would we better off without political parties?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 9:22 AM - 51 Comments

Scott Adams wonders if the Internet could replace political parties.

I think political parties made sense in pre-Internet times. It was a good way to organize and to produce candidates who had a legitimate chance of getting elected. Now it’s easy to imagine the Internet being a better platform for electing the right people. The problem is that there’s no way to get to a different type of system from here. The major parties are too entrenched to give up power, and belonging to organizations is a fundamental freedom … If Thomas Jefferson sprung back to life today, and learned about the Internet, I wonder how he would recommend changing the Constitution of the United States. I think he would favor banning political parties.

Gender gap

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 1:37 PM - 20 Comments

As he did with young and old voters, Eric Grenier compares how Parliament would respectively look if only women or men voted.

Women
Liberals 110
Conservatives 108
Bloc Quebecois 53
NDP 37

Men
Conservatives 141
Liberals 93
Bloc Quebecois 52
NDP 22

As John Geddes and I wrote during the last federal campaign, the gender gap can be pivotal.

Towards a more boring future

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 12:37 PM - 0 Comments

Glen Pearson calls for a less-entertaining politics.

Question Period in this town is a theatre of the absurd for the last few years now; everyone knows it and attempt to laugh it off. To even consider acting in such a fashion when pensioners are losing their way, food banks are facing record numbers, and those without jobs are giving up in despair is hardly the actions you would expect of pubic servants. In hard times, humour is always a welcome diversion. But not this kind, and not this way. The last thing we need right now is political tomfoolery disguising itself as compassion. South of the border this week, 37% of Americans voted, while 66% participated in Hallowe’en. That’s scary in any political scenario and there’s nothing funny about it.  It’s time to get back to decent, respectful and boring politics.

Votes from the big house?

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

In November’s mid-term elections, more than five million Americans won’t be eligible to vote. Most states prohibit jailed felons from casting a ballot (Maine and Vermont are exceptions), but laws in different jurisdictions can prevent those who’ve served their time from doing so as well. In Virginia and Kentucky, for example, anyone convicted of a felony is barred from voting for life.

Last week, the Supreme Court turned down an appeal from Massachusetts inmates who argued the law amounted to racial discrimination (blacks and Hispanics are jailed at disproportionate rates). And a federal appeals court recently upheld Washington state’s ban on allowing inmates to vote. But there are signs of change. According to a new report from the non-profit Sentencing Project, 23 states have changed their policies since 1997, returning 800,000 ex-cons to the voter rolls. And a bill pending in Congress would restore the vote to about four million former inmates.

Nicole Porter, who authored the report, says that in the U.S., “depending on where you are, your relationship to democracy can be very different.” But just as the social contract holds each person accountable for his actions, “the other end of that contract should be that all adults have opportunity to decide who represents them.”

A racist sniper on the loose

By Peeter Kopvillem - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Scanpix Sweden/Reuters

The success of the far right, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party in the recent elections shocked many Swedes, and brought thousands out to protest against the policies the party espouses. Now it appears someone has been taking racist sentiment to a new level, further eroding what was once a proud tradition of tolerance in this Nordic country. Last week in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, two female migrants from eastern Europe were shot and wounded through their apartment window. Two more shootings quickly followed, the latest in a long string of attacks over the past year that police fear is the work of a single sniper motivated by racism. Indeed, just prior to last week’s shooting, the authorities had issued a grim warning: “If you have dark skin you should be extra cautious,” said a police spokesman. “If you are in the risk group you should avoid lonely places like bus stops at night.”

Malmö police have solicited the aid of a veteran detective who played a major role in the apprehension of another anti-immigrant sniper who terrorized the Stockholm area. Those attacks took place in the early 1990s—when the far right had also been making political inroads.

Afghanistan: About that election…

By Andrew Potter - Monday, November 1, 2010 at 3:07 PM - 0 Comments

The reporting of the results in September’s parliamentary election in Afghanistan has been getting more grim by the day. Not only is there (as expected) a fair amount of corruption in the voting, and even the reporting of the votes. But now, there are allegations of corruption “in the process through which votes were announced invalid”. The attorney general’s office has been called in to investigate.

These are only allegations, and it could be simple gamesmanship by some of the losing candidates. But this is the nightmare scenario — that simply no one accepts the official results, with candidates making claims and counter-claims of victory, corruption, and unfair treatment. The IEC has said it will not return anyone to parliament who has not been legitimately elected. But if there isn’t general acceptance of the process by which legitimacy is is determined, then you’ve got serious, serious problems. After all, if Afghans can’t trust the IEC or the ECC, why should they trust the attorney general’s office?

Afghanistan: Election outlook darkens

By Andrew Potter - Monday, October 18, 2010 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

Above: The IEC tally centre in Kabul

Afghan officials are having a hard time meeting the already-low expectations for the September 8 parliamentary elections.

On October 4, Afghanistan’s Independent Elections Commission pushed back its own Oct. 9 deadline for announcing preliminary results from across the country to Oct. 17. The announcement was delayed yet again yesterday, with it now planned for Wednesday. The release of preliminary results was aimed at enhancing the public’s faith in the election by offering a sense of transparency to the counting, but this delay – just hours before the results were supposed to be released – has raised serious suspicions that heavy pressure is being put on the IEC to change the outcome “for a handful of powerful figures.” If there is anything to these suspicions, it is a seriously bad turn.

There are two ways an election can go wrong, through both the process and the content. First, through ballot-stuffing or vote-rigging or other forms of fraud, the actual electoral process can be illegitimate. But while we in the west tend to focus on the electoral process as the key to legitimacy, a few people I spoke to in Afghanistan think that what really matters is the ensuing content – that is, who gets into parliament. The Wolesi Jirga is the primary political instrument for holding the president in check, and a lot of observers were hoping for an injection of 20 to 30 fresh, young Afghan politicians who understand the notion of a loyal parliamentary opposition.

There is no question there was fraud. The day we visited the IEC tally centre in Kabul in early October, the IEC announced that Tuesday that it had invalidated part or all of the results from another 227 of Afghanistan’s roughly 5,400 polling centres, with audits and recounts in 339 others. Yesterday, the IEC said it would nullify wholly or partially the votes cast at 430 polling places, and that votes at another 830 sites were being audited.

But chief electoral officer Abdullah Ahmadzai stressed in an interview that while fraud had taken place at certain polling centres, there is no constituency in the country in which the credibility of the final result is seriously challenged. Everyone who was returned to parliament, he stressed, would be legitimately there. (NB: The electoral system for the Wolesa Jirga is by single non-transferable vote in multi-member district-level constituencies.)

There is a surprising amount of public trust in Mr. Ahmadzai and the commissioner, Fazal Ahmad Manawi. But as Alissa Rubin writes in today’s NYT, “nothing in their past could have prepared the two men for the level of pressure they now face from hundreds of candidates angry about the apparent outcome.” Not to mention from a president who is less than keen to face a parliament bent on opposing his will, however loyal it might purport to be.

Remaking the rules

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 13, 2010 at 2:31 PM - 0 Comments

Liberal critic Carolyn Bennett has apparently set off on a series of “democratic renewal” consultations.

The workbook that is provided to participants is dominated by question marks, but everything from the senate to electoral reform to open data appears to be on the proverbial table.

Read all about it: the new boss

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Darren Calabrese/CP

Last Thursday, the big front-page story in many North American newspapers, from the National Post to the New York Times, was the primary elections in the U.S., where Tea Party candidates scored stunning victories over established Republicans. The Globe and Mail also covered this, but left its prime real estate—the spot above the fold—for a story on a global university ranking, in which a handful of Canadian schools placed in the top 200. (The University of Toronto finished 17th.) The article’s third paragraph reveals that Times Higher Education, the body behind the ranking, has partnered with Thomson Reuters. It does not reveal that Thomson Reuters is the most high-profile asset of the Woodbridge Company Ltd., which had just announced a deal to buy the newspaper.

Thursday’s front-page story followed a shakeup of the Canadian media landscape. Both Woodbridge and BCE Inc. had been shareholders in CTVGlobemedia, but as part of the new deal, BCE said it would acquire 100 per cent of broadcaster CTV Inc., and Woodbridge would get an 85 per cent stake in the Globe and Mail, with BCE retaining the other 15 per cent.

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How bad will it be for the Democrats?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Larry Downing/Reuters

It is an American tradition that the president’s party loses congressional seats in the mid-term elections as voters chasten the party in power. Losses of 32 seats in the House of Representatives have been average since 1862. The wave on Nov. 2 is expected to be bigger—the only question is by how much?

Republicans now hold 181 House seats and need to reach 218 seats to form a majority. Analysts at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics predict a gain of 47 seats—20 more seats than they were forecasting just a few months ago, and more than enough to take control of the chamber. “We just haven’t seen the economic rebound that Democrats needed. The doom-and-gloom narrative is just building on itself,” says Isaac Wood, analyst for the Crystal Ball, the centre’s respected election predicting website.

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Not that I have anything against cats

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

“It was a summer of incompetence for the government,” Ignatieff said [during] a rare night home at his official residence—a glass of wine on the side table and a cat, Eric, on his lap.—From a report in the Toronto Star

As an electorate, we’re willing to put up with a lot. We tolerate the shenanigans in question period. We did our best to keep a straight face that time John Baird was appointed environment minister. But this is just too much: no nation should have to endure a choice between two cat lovers for prime minister.

Stephen Harper’s affection for felines is well documented. He has often been photographed cuddling with kitty cats. And the Prime Minister has served as “foster parent” to dozens of cats because he believes in helping creatures in need of kindness and refuge, unless they are Tamils or Helena Guergis.

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Sarkozy’s Roma stumble

By Charlie Gillis - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

GETTY IMAGES/ JACQUES BRINON REUTERS

When he promised five years ago to take a pressure washer to a housing project populated mainly by immigrants, Nicolas Sarkozy’s political stock soared. Two years later, when he invited disgruntled newcomers to “leave a country they don’t like,” the resulting publicity helped propel him to the Élysée Palace. So on a level of crass politics, France’s 55-year-old president had every reason to think his latest dip in the well of Gallic xenophobia would pay off. Seldom has a French leader gone wrong playing defender of la République against the intruding hordes.

How, then, did a Sarkozy government offensive against illegal gypsy encampments in the country’s central cities turn out to be such a cringe-inducing failure? It’s been four weeks since authorities began deporting ethnic Roma by the planeload. Yet with each “repatriation” flight back to Romania, a backlash has grown. With more than 630 Roma expelled and 117 squatter camps dismantled, officials with both the European Union and the UN were criticizing the exodus, noting that few of the gypsies appeared to understand their rights. By last week, the chorus of critics had expanded across political and religious boundaries. Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, condemned the operation as “a circus,” adding, “there are certain lines that must not be crossed.”

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United in apathy and distraction

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 16, 2010 at 3:21 PM - 0 Comments

Scott Payne asks David Frum for his thoughts on Canadian politics, a discussion of voter turnout philosophy ensues.

Declining voter turnouts are an outcome of changes in modern social life. They are the political cognates of declining church membership, declining participation in civic clubs, and so on. From Oslo to San Diego, we’re just no “joiners” the way people used to be. Maybe it would be better if we were. But don’t go looking to the specific defects of Canadian politicians to explain a phenomenon you see in almost every advanced country.

A quick look at relatively comparable democracies—excluding Australia and Belgium where voting is compulsory—shows there’s something to this. Though turnout in Denmark and Spain has remained relatively stable, there have been declines of one kind or another in England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.

Canada fares poorly though when those turnouts are compared. Continue…

Ignatieff’s summer of love

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 16, 2010 at 10:38 AM - 0 Comments

Aaron Harris/Bloomberg/Getty Images/ Christopher Wahl

The 17-year-old girl from Sarnia, Ont., asked him if he had any advice for young Canadians who are “charting paths for themselves toward a productive future.” Behind him, the local candidate and a few Liberal MPs were positioned to fill the screen. Behind them a half dozen enthusiastic young Liberals stood where they were told. Behind them a steel drum band played.

This was an interview for MuchMusic on a street corner in downtown Toronto. The girl wasn’t one of the network’s regular hosts. She’d written her questions on a piece of paper and she addressed him politely as Mr. Ignatieff. He hasn’t yet lost the urge to satisfy his interviewer and so he went on at some length, recalling some words he’d offered years ago at a university commencement.

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A democracy bonus

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 11:21 AM - 69 Comments

Eight years ago, in an essay for Policy Options, professor Bruce Hicks made the case—with reference to Athens—for the sort of tax credit now being floated by the Alberta Liberals as a response to declining voter turnout.

The Australian Electoral Commission, meanwhile, has a useful guide to their system of compulsory voting—Eric Weiner wrote a good overview of it for Slate some years ago. The idea of a tax credit has been floated before by politicians and observers in Canada, but it doesn’t seem that any jurisdiction, here or elsewhere, has ever followed through.

Professors Hicks, Peter Loewen and Henry Milner conducted an experiment in 2007 to test whether financially compelled voting necessarily led to greater political engagement. Their results didn’t demonstrate the increased awareness that is supposed to follow from compulsory voting, but there is too the argument that increased voting is a good thing in and of itself. Conversely, there is a case to be made that low turnout isn’t necessarily a problem—that those who vote accurately reflect the views of the general populace, that low turnout is a sign of general satisfaction, that high turnout is often seen in moments of crisis (and nations with dictators) and so forth.

The invisible generation

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 12:59 PM - 56 Comments

According to a new estimate from Elections Canada, 37.4 of Canadians aged 18-24 voted in the 2008 federal election.

At 58.8 percent, the official turnout at the October 14, 2008 general election is the lowest turnout rate in a federal general election since Confederation. As was noted in Elections Canada’s previous studies of voter turnout by age group2, the decline in Canadian electoral participation has been the focus of considerable academic research and analysis, particularly since the 2000 federal general election. While such research has identified a number of factors related to non-participation, the major reason for the decline in Canadian voter turnout over the past two decades can be traced to the continuing drop-off in voting among the youngest cohorts of electors. As confirmed most recently by Blais and Loewen (2009), there has been a persistent downward trend in the turnout rate of new cohorts of electors, beginning in the 1970s. Coupled with a noticeable decline in the life-cycle effect over the same time period, the result is that younger generations of electors are no longer replacing older generations at rates that are sufficient to maintain overall levels of turnout.

Personally, I blame myself

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 10:50 AM - 39 Comments

During last week’s chat, someone asked if I thought the public was, at least in part, to blame for the current state of our politics. My response was essentially “sure.” A couple days later, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg harangued the America public. And now here is Glen Pearson, quoting Aristotle and referencing Avatar.

Nobody talks like this anymore because of an abiding mutual contempt: citizens no longer trust their government, and politicians don’t trust citizens. The way we have chosen to deal with this is by creating illusions. Citizens claim to be concerned about their national political fate but then in the end don’t vote. Politicians tell people that their opinion matters but then often act as though it is their party, not the citizens, that is the ultimate arbitrator of their actions…

The last time I wrote on this subject, virtually all the comments agreed with me about politicians and then proceeded to say it has nothing to do with citizens. Well, that’s just not good enough. We are failing at both ends of the democratic exchange. We send our avatars out onto the playing field, while deep inside we know we should be doing better ourselves. Democracy awaits, but it won’t be healed by proportional representation, first-past-the post, or blind party loyalty. It will be bettered when we start speaking truth to ourselves.

Parliament: who needs it?

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 5:36 PM - 94 Comments

Government sources say they are contemplating formally shutting down Parliament at the end of every year, so the government can start afresh with a Throne Speech and a budget.— CP

Every now and then comes a moment of startling clarity, when the brain shakes off the cobwebs and you see things, as it were, for the first time. The Conservatives’ prorogation of Parliament is one of those moments.

Coming at a time when the government was under parliamentary subpoena to produce the documents it was withholding in the Afghan detainee affair, the decision to disband Parliament yet again—a second time in the space of a year, the third in 15 months—was at first unsettling, a case (so it seemed) of a government attempting to evade democratic scrutiny by suppressing the one institution empowered to hold it to account. But the news that the government now plans to make prorogation an annual event casts this in rather a different light.

In their usual bracing, unsentimental way, the Tories are simply confirming a fact that many of us have attempted to deny until now: Parliament does not matter. Once it may have acted as a check on the executive, in the days when it was a genuine legislative body, whose members debated bills, questioned ministers, and represented their constituents in votes of the House. But it has not performed that role for many years—decades, in fact—and it is useless to pretend that it has.

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Go and vote, whoever you might be

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

In most jurisdictions across Canada, voters have to either present ID or be vouched for by another voter in order to prove their eligibility to cast a ballot. Not in P.E.I. If you want to vote in the Island’s municipal or provincial elections, all you have to do is swear on a Bible that you’re who you say you are.

The province does door-to-door confirm–ation of its voter registry, meaning its electorate lists are very thorough. But unregistered voters still show up at polling stations. “You can really go from poll to poll to poll, all the different stations, and put in a vote,” says Charlottetown Coun. Melissa Hilton. The simple way to prevent this, she says, is requiring ID from anyone not on the voter list.

Lowell Croken, P.E.I.’s chief electoral officer, disagrees. He says voter fraud has never been reported on the Island, and that even though residents must prove their identity to vote in federal elections, it’s too much of a hassle to have the same requirement at the municipal or provincial level. “Proving one’s ID at a polling station . . . for some is very difficult, and some electors may unintentionally be disenfranchised,” he says. “Updating a new address on a driver’s licence may not always be a priority.”

Hilton argues, “If all levels of government were consistent with their guidelines and their rules I think it would make polling day so much easier.” But the councillor’s argument has fallen on mostly deaf ears. She tried to get Charlottetown to change its regulations, but city council voted down her proposal 5-4, saying it wanted to keep regulations consistent across the island, and that it’s the province’s job to make any changes. So, at least for the time being, elections officers will have to keep taking Islanders at their word.

Why moderate Republicans do better than Palin Republicans

By John Parisella - Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 6:39 PM - 35 Comments

It was not what Barack Obama expected one year after his historic victory. The Republican party showed it is far from extinct, winning governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia, two states that had until then been held by Democrats. A third contest with national implications was held in the 23rd congressional district of New York state, where the Democrats took a seat that had been in Republican hands for nearly a century.

Though both parties can claim to have made some inroads, this was a GOP night. The loss of Virginia by a wide margin suggests a large-scale defection of independent voters away from the Democrats. While the loss of New Jersey may have had more to do with an unpopular governor, there too, independents appear to have abandoned the Democratic party. That should not go unnoticed by Democratic strategists preparing for next year’s mid terms. The Obama coalition of a year ago was simply not in effect in this off-year election. Of course, Democrats can argue that Obama was not on the ballot. But unless they take note of Tuesday’s results and react accordingly, they are in for a rude awakening next November.

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The Interview: Chris Alexander

By Kate Fillion - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 2:56 PM - 13 Comments

Q:Why, after six years in Afghanistan, did you leave in May?

A: My wife and I left because we had a child and the children of UN employees in Afghanistan have to live elsewhere. Had that rule not existed, we might have stayed, because we felt it was a very welcoming environment for babies. In Kabul, life for families is relatively safe.

Q: Just after we went to press, six U.N. staff were killed in Kabul. Do you still think it’s a relatively safe place for young families?

A: Of course Kabul is far from entirely safe from terrorist attack, even though millions of people do live there with their young families. This attack was a cold-blooded attempt to prevent the UN from doing its job: supporting a fair and legitimate outcome from the second round of voting. It is sickening to think some in the Taliban leadership believe this sort of attack–the murder of innocent Afghan and international civilians–will help their cause. Its shows how radical and extreme they have become–and how dangerous. Until the sanctuaries housing the groups that train for and stage such attacks, especially North Waziristan, become subject to effective and sustained military operations, these dreadful incidents involving suicide attackers will continue. Everyone in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a potential target. My heart goes out to the UN family in Afghanistan: in spite of everything, they are showing fortitude. But they will need the support of the whole world at this difficult time. Continue…

Governing with consent

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 28, 2009 at 5:01 PM - 31 Comments

Last week, Mark Donald heralded a “tide of ennui.” This week, Andrew Coyne writes, somewhat less satirically, of our “deeply, deeply cynical political culture.”

On those notes, some math. Namely, the mandates of each government in our history, expressed not as a percentage of seats won or votes cast, but as the percentage of possible votes. In other words, what percentage of eligible voters actually chose to support the government that governs them. Continue…

Protests and a Nokia boycott

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 1 Comment

Thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets of Tehran last Friday after Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential cleric and former president, publicly called for the government to release those detained in protests following the controversial June presidential election. But even as those demonstrations were underway, a different kind of protest was unfolding as companies deemed complicit in the post-election crackdown were targeted with a boycott.

An opposition daily, Etemad Melli, reported that Nokia sales have been slashed in half because the Finnish firm provided Iran Telecom with the ability to monitor local communications from fixed and mobile phones late last year. For members of the “Twitter Revolution” who used their phones to tell the outside world of the protests and government crackdowns, there is a very real worry that their texts and videos will get them thrown in jail. An online watch group, OpenNet Initiative, recently reported that arrested activists were shown transcripts of their texts. Continue…