January 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from Jay Currie written in the month of January 2006.
After I write this James Bow’s beer money is on its way. I was entirely wrong as to my projection of a 50 seat CPC caucus. Crow for dinner for a few days.
That said, this was hardly a triumph. 124 seats is barely enough to govern and certainly not a mandate for significant change. The most encouraging element of the CPC win was that they managed to elect a surprisingly large caucus from Quebec.
What is a bit disturbing is that the Tories were skunked in the City of Vancouver and the City of Toronto. These urban voters were unimpressed with the CPC though the Tory vote overall went up 6.7%.
For Harper to govern he is going to have to develop a series of coalitions on particular issues. In effect Harper is in the same position as the Dumpling was. The main difference being that he does not have the baggage.
The dumpling has never looked better than he did in his rather jaunty concession and resignation speech. He looked like a man who, have been shouldered with a burden far heavier than he could bear, was relieved to be rid of the weight of office. I was watching the election with Kevin Grace and we speculated as to the Liberals trying to stay on; one look at Martin made it very clear he hadn’t the stomach for it.
The big winner of the evening was, of course, the NDP. Ten new seats. The ability to look Buzz in the eye and say drop dead.
From my own political perspective the universe unfolded as it should. The CPC won but did not win big enough to implement much in the way of socon social policy. The Liberals have been sent to the wilderness to cleanse themselves of the arrogance and hubris which accumulated over their years in office.
For the Tories the next year or two will be an opportunity to demonstrate their fitness to govern and their ability to avoid the traps the socon wing may set. The fact the CPC did not win a seat in Vancouver or Toronto will be attributed to many factors but it would be foolish to discount the impact of the SSM farce.
For this mandate the Tories need to govern with their eye firmly on their next, real, mandate. The good news is that the Opposition, while it will certainly give the Tories a chance, will be in a position to yank the chain if the fundys attempt to impose their agenda. Unfortunately, this also means that the Conservatives will have a difficult time implementing such things as the renuciation of Kyoto, the rollover provisions for capital gains taxation, revisions to the Indian Act or support for American and world efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Harper ran a far better campaign than I thought he would. Focused, intelligent, policy driven and, most importantly, disciplined. As importantly, the media - perhaps embarassed by its performance last election, perhaps fed up with the Dumpling - was at least reasonably fair to the Tories.
The other element which I think shiffted was that the scare tactics of the Maude Barlow left were less effective this time round. They still worked to a degree, but the sheer panic at the thought of a Harper government seemed absent. If the CPC works at it, it should be able to entirely marginalize the Barlows of this world. And the place to start is to cut off the funding to the assorted agencies and organizations which support such people.
Harper and the CPC have won a trial run. A chance to prove that they can run the government and propose and pass a relatively cautious legislative program. With luck they will understand that they do not have a majority and should not govern as if they do.
Finally, the CPC needs to recognize that the next campaign has started. Thje same discipline is needed, the same capacity to focus on policy, the same caution on socon issues are the only way that the Tories can ensure that they will be in a position to earn the trust and the mandate of Canadians.
Written by jay on January 24th, 2006 with 30 comments.
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One of the sillier elements of Canadian election law is that it is illegal to publish the results which have occured in Nfld. in British Columbia until the polls close in British Columbia.
One of the best things about Canadian election law is that it has no force or effect in the United States. Fresh from publishing the blacked out Gormery testimony which may very well cost the Liberal Party this election, Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters announces:
CQ will start live-blogging the election starting at 6 pm Central Time this evening, with frequent updates as information “crosses my desk”, so to speak.captains quarters
It really is about time for Elections Canada to realize that you can’t control the internet any more than you could control long distance phones.
Thanks Ed!
Written by jay on January 23rd, 2006 with 5 comments.
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Concerned: Outside the James Bay liquor store there was an earnest, drab, 60 something woman, all grey uncut hair and Birkenstocks thrusting an equally grey, badly printed, tab sheet from the Council of Concerned Canadians into the unwilling hands of the beer buyers. It was the first sign of canvassing I’ve seen this go round.
Signs: We hiked up into Fairfield to catch the first garage sales of the season. A fair sprinkling of NDP signs, few Liberal or Tory signs and all the Green signs were on public property.
Beers and Popcorn: I suspect Scott Reid may go down in the footnotes of Canadian political history as the first entirely unelected hack to actually lose a sitting government an election. If you look at the polling, the Liberal decline pretty much started when Scott so eloquently expressed his, and by extension, the Liberal Party’s contempt for Canadian parents.
Nightmare: While the polling as the election closes suggests the Conservatives have a significant lead there are lots of plausible scenarios in which that lead will not translate into a majority. But the nightmare is the scenario in which it does not translate into government at all. All that needs to happen is for the Bloc to win 65 plus seats in Quebec and the NDP to hit 40 across the country. This would leave the Tories and the Grits to fight it out over 203 seats. Propose the Tories take 113 leaving the Liberals with 90. Who forms the government? The Dumpling would have - by the unwritten constitution he so recently trashed - the right to meet the House and to attempt to govern in coalition with the NDP. The Bloc might well sit on its hands for the sheer delight of haviing the Dumpling to kick around for another year or two.
Agendas: As elections go this one has pretty much failed in terms of setting a positive agenda. It has been about the Liberals having nothing to say and the CPC making sure it said nothing. If the Liberals are defeated - and I think they will be - it will be because they have run out of vision and been caught by scandal. If the Tories win, and I think they will, it will be because they have learned to run a disciplined campaign to reassure the wary and because Canadians have, finally, recognized that the Liberals are morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Regardless of which party wins, neither will have anything like a mandate for radical change. The Dumpling because he has essentially spent eight weeks putting out fires rather than enuciating a positive program. The CPC because, in their quest for power, they have carefully promised to follow the main outlines of the Liberal agenda for Canada.
The Right Outcome: At this point Canada needs to be rid of the Liberals. But we do not need a horde of evangelicals brooding in the backbenchs waiting for the Conservative Party to get on to their agenda. So long as there is even a possibility of those zealots furthering their agenda the CPC cannot be trusted with a majority position. So, sadly, the best outcome, until the CPC deals with its socon problem, will be a decent minority. Harper needs to have the opportunity to govern. And he needs to have the opportunity to further define the CPC away from the religious right. A minority would give Harper both opportunities while firewalling Canada from the excesses of the fundy taliban.
Written by jay on January 23rd, 2006 with 8 comments.
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Paul Wells points to the membership list of ThinkTwiceCanada... Be afraid, be very afraid…these are the very people who know best. these are the nannies. And they will be waggling their finger at anyone who does not mind their warnings.
Written by jay on January 19th, 2006 with 3 comments.
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Breathlessly Sean Holman at the Public Eye Online reports,
Conservative MP Diane Ablonczy and her longtime supporter Gerrie van Ieperen appear to have been involved with an initiative to counter the media’s perceived left-wing bias via the blogosphere, according to a collection of emails leaked to Public Eye.
the public eye
This will come as huge news to folks like Bob Tarentino. Here’s the bullet Sean, there are lots of us who have been blogging about leftish media bias without the assitance of CPC MPs. but, hey, if they want to come to the party late we’re delighted to see them.
The trouble is that the dedicated CPC bloggers miss the real essence of blogging which is that it is anarchtic. Bloggers do not toe the party line at all well which is why so many of the Blogging Tories are so utterly unreadable. (As are the Prog bloggers and the LibLogs.)
Party line does not make it in blogging any more than it makes for interesting MSM journalism.
The funny thing is that politicians see blogs as an extention of MSM and therefore subject to the same level of co-option. Which is to say that generally politicians entirely miss the point. The only politician who seems to get it is Monte Solberg. Who, I note, has been embraced by the Canadian blogosphere simply because he brings a sense of humour to his blog and obviously writes it himself.
Update: the Zerb is on the job
Written by jay on January 19th, 2006 with 3 comments.
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Diplomats and statesmen since the Treaty of Westphalia had grown accustomed to seeing nothing smaller than nation-states. This conceptual blindness prevented foreign ministries, academics or the United Nations — the very name a testament to the limits of its sensibility — from understanding that sub-national units under the banner of a world religion could arise to challenge the established international order. It was simply impossible, and yet it was. In retrospect all the signs were there. Though globalized business, unprecendented mobility, worldwide communications long weakened the prerogative of nations, they were still regarded as supreme.
belmont club
Out in the real world, some distance away from Canadian politics, Iran is going about the business of acquring a nuclear device. Or is it Iran?
A more accurate description would be that there are factions in iran who are in control of elements of the state and are willing to use them to acqire nuclear weapons….for whom? For themselves? Or for assorted terrorists? Or for Iran?
It is very difficult to see a significant difference between the functioning of Iran and the functioning of pre-invasion Afghanistan. Essentially, both nations were rules by religious wackos for who death was a blessed release and the notion of a nation state was subordinate to the idea of a religious community in opposition to the rest of the infidel world.
England went through much the same sort of thing during the Cromwellian Commonwealth. the good news is that that Commonwealth did not have nuclear weapons. Zealotry armed with plutonium is a rather different issue.
At this point the only question is whether or not the West will sit on its hands as the ayatollahs become nuclear capable. Naill Ferguson writes interestingly about the origins of the Great War of 2007 in the Telegraph. What will prevent that war is a continuation of the Bush doctorine of pre-emption. (Tyee readers may want to skip this bit as it may give them the vapors - you too Kevin.)
Mark Steyn, writing in the Telegraph suggests,
Why not tap into their excess energy right now? As the foreign terrorists have demonstrated in Iraq, you don’t need a lot of local support to give the impression (at least to Tariq Ali and John Pilger) of a popular insurgency. Would it not be feasible to turn the tables and upgrade Iran’s somewhat lethargic dissidents into something a little livelier? A Teheran preoccupied by internal suppression will find it harder to pull off its pretensions to regional superpower status.
the telegraph
. This represents the low end. The high end is to take seriously the sheer number of people who are threatened by a nuclear capable Iran and get on with the purely military job of taking out the regime.
The ayatolahs and their pawns are little loved by a growing middle class and a full scale invasion would not be unwelcomed by a significant section of the Iranian population. The question is whether or not the West has the gumption to actually bell this particular cat.
For the moment it does not. Or, to be more accurate, the Europeans cannot imagine war. But war is about the only thing which will stop the Iranian march to nuclear power status. And given that the Iranian leadership has been pretty specific as to where Missile #1 will be aimed, it is certainly time to begin to think seriously about striking preemptively.
Diplomacy is now worse than a joke - it’s an incentive. And if there is to be war I hope that Harper and the CPC have the courage to ensure that Canada is involved on the side of our allies.
Here’s Wretchard’s solution,
So what’s important is speed of action that leads to an internal revolution and regime change to minimize the impact on the poorer countries. We’ll need a multi-pronged effort, rubbling the nuke factories and related infrastructure, freezing international commerce and bank accounts, while maintaining an armed embargo of all large (truck, ship and pipeline) traffic in and out of Iran (that will damage the oligarchy’s pocketbook, power and prestige).
the belmont club
This is entirely doable. And it needs to be done. Nearly immediately. The only thing I would add is that an international force should take and hold the Iranian oil ports. Embargo is one thing, actually holding the taps is another and rather more powerful thing.
Written by jay on January 19th, 2006 with no comments.
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Standing on guard for thee…federal public servants take it on the road.
Estimated Number of Room Nights / International Travel
(April 2003 to March 2004)
CANCUN, MEXICO 800
HAVANA, CUBA 556
PARIS DE GAULLE, FRANCE 14,716 (Adrianne no doubt needed some sherpas)
Nice work if you can get it.
Conservative Life has the details on the hotels our hardworking public servants had to stay in.
I can’t imagine what in the world Canadian public servants could find to do in the City of Light given that is the capital of what is essentially a third level diplomatic and military power and a second rate economy. By comparison, the public service spent only 10,000 nights in Washington which, when you think of it is mildly more important in the Canadian scheme of things than France. (And, admittedly, within a day’s comute from Ottawa.)
But, more to the point: we live in an age of instant communication. The internet and all that. Why in God’s name do these folks have to fly around the world in the first place?
Written by jay on January 19th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove used a campaign stop in nearby Strathroy to call Conservative Leader Stephen Harper a separatist whose Alberta-born political principles place him outside mainstream Canadian values.
He seemed to agree with questioners that Quebecers vote for the Bloc Quebecois over the Conservatives.
the star
Last election it was CPC supporters bearing gifts to the Liberals, this election, lamers like Hargrove, in full panic and utterly detached from Canadain reality, are returning the favour.
He’s probably pissed that the Dumpling is going to be in no position to deliver that Seante seat.
Update: I had missed the last graf of Paul Wells:
“The CAW head seemed to suggest that Quebecers should even vote for the Bloc Québécois if it meant keeping out the Conservatives. ‘I would urge them to stop Stephen Harper in any way they can,’ he said.”
Paul Martin stood appreciatively beside the union boss while he said this. It matters who you choose to lead the country, and what his values are.
inkless wells
Written by jay on January 19th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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I’ve told my caucus repeatedly, if you make conservatism relevant to ordinary working people, you make the most powerful political philosophy in Western democratic society,” Mr. Harper said, looking relaxed and speaking candidly in his hotel room during a campaign stop in Ontario’s cottage country. “Where Conservative parties are successful, and successful on a sustained basis, that’s what they do.”
Mr. Harper noted that the working class, particularly in provinces like British Columbia, tended to move away from his party in 2004.
“Not that we lost it all last time, but it rolled back. That surprised me a bit because that’s obviously the element I’m from and I don’t think we’d done anything terribly different,” said Mr. Harper, whose father was an accountant.
globe and mail
Andrew Coyne calls this “a realignment” and, from his perspective it may be; but while I hitchhiked up and down Galiano Island I got a lot of rides from “the working class”. Basically old hippies who turned their hand to carpentry or plumbing in order to follow their dreams on Galiano.
While many of these folks smoked pot, hugged the trees they were not chainsawing for fire wood and thought gay marriage was just fine; they had zero interest in having the government intervene in their lives or take their money. They made this stick with everything from small pot plantations to a thriving, and entirely untaxed, wine and beer industry through to a strong preference for cash rather than cheque transactions. It was not that they were so much anti-government as they were keen to be simply left alone.
The old style socialist, “government is good”, nanny statism of the NDP and, increasingly, the Liberals, simply was beside their point. Pace Kevin Brennan who suggests,
I don’t see any party actively making the case that Canadian federalism is a good thing, and that the federal government should be actively doing stuff–even though a very substantial number of Canadians believe it.
tilting at windmills
The number of people who see government as the solution rather than as the problem is dwindling and dwindling fast.
The only groups who might embrace a message of bigger better government are a certain sort of urban unionist yuppie and the only reason why they would is that they would stand to personally benefit. Herein the great cleavage in the NDP between the actual working class and the psuedo working class of teachers, social workers and unionized civil servants.
The old working class, the working class of the IWA and the UAW, made things. Real things like lumber and cars. When sales went up and profits went up they felt themselves entitled to a piece of the pie they were helping to make. The bargaining was tough, the strikes intense; but labour and capital knew that they had to keep the business alive to make their money.
The new working class knows that its money comes from holding the taxpayer to ransom. And those taxpayers include a great number of the old working class.
It is not in the least surprising that the old working class, the guys pounding nails in civil servants’ island getaway homes which they could never afford, are less than impressed with the Liberals or the NDP. The last thing they want is endless taxes, endless debt and money being poured into social programs their kids are never going to have a chance to get into.
So they are going to vote for Harper and no one should be in the least surprised.
Written by jay on January 17th, 2006 with 27 comments.
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yyc, in comments to an earlier post says:
A 9% margin over the liberals resulting in a 6 seat margin over the liberals. No party has over got over 40% and gotten the low seat count you cobbled together.
The road to 50 a Tory minority
Propose for the moment that the CPC takes 30% of the vote in Quebec and wins zero seats. Basically a million votes in vain. Implausible? Not really. 30% spread evenly across all 75 ridings with a Liberal collapse could easily have that effect.
Equally, propose that the Tories take every one of the seats in Alberta with a 80% share of the popular vote. Implausible. Not really.
Here’s the thing, national polls are meaningless unless they can be mapped to at least the regional level. The super majorities in Alberta and the widely dispersed “strong showing” in Quebec mean that nearly a million and a half CPC votes may well be entirely wasted.
In the last election in Quebec 3,438,255 voted. So 30% is about 1 million votes. In Alberta 1,274,997 voted and 30% off that is 400,000 and change.
Last time out, 13,564,702 Canadians voted which means that 40% is roughly 5,200,000. When you look at the polls and consider how the regional breakouts are likely to fall, the Tories’ 40% this time could well put them in a minority position.
Written by jay on January 16th, 2006 with 8 comments.
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