In B.C., 'yes' has the edge

With all eyes on the fate of Belinda Stronach's relationship, something truly unprecedented may be happening in British Columbia. And I'm just a little stunned.

See, most of the time I think I've got a pretty good grip on what developments are likely to actually occur and what ones are not. Sometimes, though, something wonderful and completely counter to expectations threatens to happen, and I start feeling like I'm really some closet pessimist in idealistic pragmatist clothing. From the Globe and Mail:

The Yes forces in British Columbia's battle for electoral reform are demanding the newly re-elected Liberal government press ahead with changes to the voting system, despite incomplete results in Tuesday's referendum. Ballot counting was suspended early Wednesday with the Yes side leading in 72 out of 73 ridings that had reported results so far. The province has 79 ridings. To succeed, the referendum proposal that would give Canada its first system of proportional representation needs a simple majority in 48 ridings and a 60 per cent majority in the provincewide popular vote.

On the other hand, the last time something like this happened, I went to bed thinking the federal NDP would almost certainly hold the balance of power in the House of Commons. So I'm just going to go hide with my head under the pillow for a while, would somebody wake me up when all the votes are counted? Thanks.

[Update: The initial counts indicate a majority that falls short of the 60% threshhold, with a final vote count to follow on the 30th.]

Belinda's choice and some of its consequences

In case I have a reader or two who happen to live on the other side of the moon and haven't heard about this yet, let me start by pointing everyone at the story of the day. In a nutshell: Conservative MP Belinda Stronach has crossed the floor and is now sitting as a Liberal.

This would be a big deal any day of the year, but it's a far bigger deal a mere two days before a vote of no confidence based on some rather precarious math. To recap: There are 308 seats in the House of Commons, but one riding is vacant, which means that whichever side ends up with 154 votes is the one that wins the prize. The alliance between the Conservatives and the Bloc has 153 votes, and the Liberal-NDP pseudocoalition has 150, so both sides fall short of the magic number. This leaves the three Independents. Most recently, Carolyn Parrish has said she would vote with the Liberals and the NDP; Chuck Cadman has said he'd vote according to whatever his constituents tell him in a poll, the results of which should be in tomorrow; and David Kilgour has said he's inclined to vote to bring the government down, but will vote to support them if Canada commits 500 Canadian combat troops to help protect refugees in Sudan. The prime minister seems disinclined to do that just to please David Kilgour, so it's been looking pretty certain that the Liberals would lose on Thursday by at least one vote (i.e., Kilgour's), and possibly two (i.e., Kilgour's and Cadman's).

So what does this mean politically? Well, the most important thing, of course, is that it makes the math precarious again. It's looking less and less likely that the alliance of the Conservatives and the Bloc will have enough votes to defeat the government on Thursday. The Conservatives have already said that if they're not successful, they will let sleeping dogs lie and stop trying. The prime minister has also promised, in his highly publicized television address, that he will call an election himself within thirty days of when the Gomery inquiry reports. We don't know exactly when this will happen, but it will be sometime later this year. This puts us in a situation where we might have an election as early as the end of June, but we could also have one in July, August, or even sometime in the fall.

Just so that the process story doesn't overshadow the actual practical consequences of this, let me also bring up a couple of other possible political consequences of Stronach's move. The first thing that comes to mind is that if the existing Liberal government survives through June, the same-sex marriage legislation will pass. If it survives longer than that, we could still see the Liberals' national child care plan come to some form of fruition, and even the decriminalization of marijuana, currently stuck in committee. And of particular importance to this proportional representation fan, it's interesting to note that Stronach is now a cabinet member, and one of her new responsibilities is Democratic Renewal. She's also far more open to entertaining the possibility of proportional representation than just about anybody else on that side of the aisle. This may be almost enough to offset the huge loss the movement will sustain by having the eyes of the media entirely on Stronach instead of on the B.C. referendum. Here's hoping.

In B.C., the 'yes' vote is climbing

I'm on the executive for Fair Vote Edmonton, the local chapter of Fair Vote Canada (a multi-partisan citizens' campaign arguing for a voting system that incorporates at least some measure of proportional representation). At our annual general meeting last month, we discussed the fact that the current referendum in British Columbia on the STV form of proportional representation was almost certainly to fail, though not because people were necessarily against it, but because they didn't know enough about it to vote yes. Among those who did know about it, we were told, there were more in favour than not, but unless more British Columbians informed themselves before Election Day, the likelihood of reaching the 60% threshhold necessary for it to pass looked pretty slim. I figured this was unlikely to change in just a month, and therefore haven't really been paying regular attention to polls on the subject.

Apparently I gave up too soon. With the B.C. provincial election now twenty-four hours away, things may finally be moving out there in Lotus Land. According to journalist-cum-blogger Andrew Coyne (a fellow supporter of proportional representation):

In the last couple of weeks, interest has surged. And as people have informed themselves, support for electoral reform -- the particular model before the voters is called the single transferable vote, or STV -- has grown. The latest Ipsos-Reid poll puts the Yes ahead 55-45. That's still short of the 60% needed -- plus a majority of the vote in 60% of the province's ridings -- but it's getting closer.

I'm still not holding my breath that this is going to work out, but I'll have all my limbs crossed until the end of the day Tuesday. I still prefer mixed-member proportional to STV, but if B.C. makes this happen, the chances of citizens' assemblies on voting reform being established in other provinces (and maybe even federally) suddenly shoot way, way up.

Tangentially, I have to add that one of the exciting things about being involved in the push for proportional representation has been the non-partisan nature of the issue. There's something really kind of wonderful about sitting in a group of people whose views are diametrically opposed to yours in almost every way, but still agreeing to put aside your differences for the sake of this one conviction you have in common. Coyne, who's clearly been paying more attention to B.C. than I have, says this seems to be the case there as well:

Meanwhile, a grassroots Yes campaign has made the case for reform through the media. And I mean grassroots: both business and labour have largely stayed out, in terms of any largescale mobilization of money and manpower. Indeed, the whole debate has crossed party and interest-group lines. There are New Democrats who love STV, and union leaders who hate it; conservatives in favour and business leaders opposed; and every other combination.

Now if only we could teach Ottawa a thing or two about playing nicely with others!

The naiveté of cynicism

Given the current political climate in Canada, it's perhaps unsurprising that there have been a lot of songs sung in praise of cynicism these days. From the teeming masses to Rick Salutin (who seems to have assumed the position of the Globe and Mail's patron saint of cynicism), everybody's been pretty quick to agree that politicians are simply a corrupt lot, and it's therefore unfortunate but unsurprising that the Liberals have been caught doing naughty, naughty things with taxpayers' money. As someone who has little time for cynicism (see tagline above), my first reaction to the pervasiveness of this attitude was despair, and my second one was anger. But then a realization set in that melted all that away. You see, cynicism, for all the respect it gets from an awful lot of pretty smart people, is actually pretty ... naive.

I mean, think about it: Idealists get a bad rap for not being able to critically examine evidence and draw hard conclusions based on it. But this kind of universally-applied scornful negativity demonstrates at least as strong an inability to think critically or draw any kinds of nuanced conclusions. The assumption that politicians are all inherently bad because some politicians have done some bad things is a hugely flawed way of perceiving the human condition. Politicians are human beings, and as such they're possessed of the same flaws and the same merits as any of the rest of us. This implies that like the rest of us, they'll be doing good things some of the time, and some other part of the time they'll be either screwing up or screwing people over. But apart from clinical psychopaths, no one is as self-serving as a true cynic wants to make them out to be. And I'll even take it one step further than that: those who choose to demonize or dismiss entire groups rather than asking hard philosophical and psychological questions about what makes us all do bad things sometimes don't even deserve to call themselves thinking people.

While I certainly agree with Justin Trudeau that the Liberals need a good long time-out, I have no illusions that replacing them with the Conservatives or even the NDP would give Canada a government that would do the right and ethical thing all the time. On the other hand, I also don't believe the fact that politicians are human beings implies that voting or campaign work is a complete waste of time. We may not be able to divide the world into the black and white of "good guys" and "bad guys," but there are certainly better policies and worse policies, acceptable behaviours and unacceptable ones. And if, while we're working to elect the people who genuinely want to serve the public and whose ideas and ideals we can respect, we simultaneously take a long, hard look at the things about our system that make it easier for fallible human beings to take advantage of it, then real improvements suddenly look a whole lot more likely. Dismissing politics as a whole by saying that no decent candidates really exist and that true systematic reform is impossible isn't merely cynical; it's sloppy thinking. And while sloppy thinking may well make for the occasional amusing political cartoon, newspaper column or blog post, it's certainly not the foundation we want to be building the future of the country on.

Peak oil perspectives

Anybody who's been a part of the left wing of the political spectrum for any length of time has always been at least dimly aware of the concept of an impending global oil shortage. Until fairly recently, though, it's been discussed as one potential environmental catastrophe of many. Maybe our landfills would overflow and encroach on our cities, maybe we would pollute the air until it became unbreathable, maybe we would run out of water, maybe the oil wells would run dry. Which one would happen first was never an issue because we could stave them off for a while by recycling, supporting green power, using low-flow shower heads, and driving less frequently. And besides, all of these horrible things would probably all happen after we were long dead anyway, so they wouldn't have an impact on us personally.

These days, though, an impending oil shortage has gotten a lot more press, and is being discussed as something that might well be imminent, if not already happening. For about three years, a growing group of people has been using the Internet to spread the word about what has come to be known as the "peak oil" movement and how it could change the lives of us all. A few Canadian bloggers have recently started paying attention to the issue, and I myself started sinking my teeth into it last fall. From what I've learned, there seem to be five major perspectivs in this debate, each of which has a very different outlook on the near future. This website, which does an excellent job summing up the differences between them, has respectively dubbed them the "Pollyanna scenario," the "optimistic scenario," the "plateau scenario," the "pessimistic scenario," and the "Head for the Hills scenario."

So what does this particular idealistic pragmatist think? Well, first off, I really don't think the Pollyanna scenarios--the ones that have the oil not running out and us living in a world full of ever-increasing industrialization and oil consumption without any immediate repercussions--seem terribly credible. Most of the online material I've read from these folks has been incredibly sarcastic, as if it were more important to make fun of the people who believed in the more pessimistic scenarios than it was to say anything of substance, and even the more serious stuff has an air of "la la la I can't hear you" about it. But leaving those scenarios out still leaves a pretty wide range of possiblities, each of which I think is as likely as any other to actually happen, ranging from the "we're going to be crunched, and the future is going to be hard, but we'll eventually make it through and maintain a high-technology, low-energy society" perspectives through to the "most of us are going to die, very soon, and those who survive will end up living in a post-industrial wasteland" perspectives. Mainly, I think we don't know, and can't know, exactly what's going to happen, and while the great minds of the world will theorize all they want, nothing they say is going to change that simple fact. When it comes to the peak oil question, I am deeply suspicious of anyone who claims to have all the answers, and equally suspicious of points of view which seem to be inexorably tied up with a particular ideology. Anyone who tries to predict the future from a knee-jerk political stance is going to automatically going to be granted somewhat less credibility from me from the get-go, even if I'm sympathetic to a lot of what they stand for.

In practical personal terms, this means that I don't believe in making drastic changes to my life based on potentially false assumptions about what we think might happen, but sticking my head in the sand isn't an option, either. I might not know precisely how the future is going to change, but I am convinced that it will change, and I believe that there are things I can do now to make some of those potential futures a lot easier on myself. I can decide to eat healthy foods and exercise regularly now, so that I won't be as likely to have any self-inflicted disabilities if life suddenly were to get a lot harder. I can learn skills now that could be of great benefit under a more pessimistic scenario and which wouldn't hurt me to have under a more optimistic one. I can list and develop skills and traits I already have that could be of use in a post-industrial economy. I can decide not to take on any more pets after my current ones die, so that I won't be responsible for any small furry beings who might live twenty years into an unknown future. I can decide to see the world and spend time with faraway people I love now, because someday it might not be feasible or even possible. But no matter how much thought I give this stuff, it still all boils down to the fact that we just don't know what's going to happen. If, like some of my friends, I could convince myself that the more pessimistic scenarios were right on the money, it would actually be freeing in certain ways, because if you know how things are going to go, you can actually make plans. You can decide to quit your job, sell your house, and live off the land in a commune to try to make the inevitable future a little easier on yourself when everybody else wants to join you in another ten years. You can decide to move to a warmer or a cooler climate where you won't need heat or air conditioning when the worst happens. You can decide to quit donating to and working for causes that matter to you, and stop worrying about conserving power because hey, no matter what you do right now, you're all doomed anyway. I really think that kind of thinking is a trap, though, because not only do you end up working yourself into an unnecessary frenzy, but you're virtually certain to be wrong about some pretty major things. And where does that leave you then, not to mention the rest of the world?

So for now, I'm just going to keep reading, keep thinking, keep learning, and most of all, keep enjoying the life I have, whatever that life ends up being. (While I go on recycling, supporting green power, using low-flow shower heads, and driving less frequently, of course.)

Web references:

• Summary of the five major perspectives on the peak oil debate (with many links and recommended writings from each of the sides of the debate)
• Oil Analytics (a bunch of general information put together by two Boston-based Cornell grads)
• From the Wilderness, the information site set up and maintained by left-wing activist Michael Ruppert
• Criticism of the peak oil movement (and again here) from the right-wing Center for an Informed America, run by a guy named Dave McGowan
• Russia proves 'peak oil' is a misleading Zionist scam (nothing like making those ideologies transparent right from the start!)
• Crying Wolf: Warnings About Oil Supply (a somewhat less ideologically based optimistic scenario)
• Life After the Oil Crash (a somewhat less ideologically based pessimistic scenario)
• Interview with Matthew Simmons, CEO of the world's largest energy investment bank
• Why doomsday scenarios are always wrong
• Criticism of the criticism of peak oil
• A Letter From the Future (almost certainly wrong, but even if only some of it is right, it's still chilling)
• Hubbert Peak of Oil Production (a site explaining the concept)

Books written for lay audiences:

• Deffeyes, Kenneth S. 2005. Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak
• Cooke, Ronald R. 2004. Oil, Jihad and Destiny : Will Declining Oil Production Plunge Our Planet Into a Depression?
• Darley, Julian. 2004. High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis
• Campbell, C.J. 2004. The Coming Oil Crisis
• Goodstein, David. 2004. Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
• Heinberg, Richard. 2004. Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World
• Leeb, Donna and Stephen. 2004. The Oil Factor: How Oil Controls the Economy and Your Financial Future
• Mandel, Michael. 2004. Rational Exuberance : Silencing the Enemies of Growth and Why the Future Is Better Than You Think
• Savinar, Matt. 2004. The Oil Age is Over
• Deffeys, Kenneth S. 2003. Hubbert's Peak : The Impending World Oil Shortage
• Heinberg, Richard. 2003. The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
• Mason, Colin. 2003. The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe
• Smil, Vaclav. 2003. Energy at the Crossroads : Global Perspectives and Uncertainties
• Vaitheeswaran, Vijay V. 2003. Power to the People : How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet
• Gold, Thomas and Dyson, Freeman. 2001. The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels
• Mitchell, John V. and Selley, Norman. 2001. The New Economy of Oil: Impacts on Business, Geopolitics and Society
• Economides, Michael, Oligney, Ronald, and Izquierdo, Armando.2000. The Color of Oil : The History, the Money and the Politics of the World's Biggest Business

Academic papers:

• Bunger, JW. 2003. Peak oil production. Oil and Gas Journal, 101 (40), 10, October.
• Bunger, JW, Crawford, PM, Johnson, HR. 2004. Is oil shale America's answer to peak-oil challenge? Oil and Gas Journal, 102 (30): 16, August.
• Campbell, CJ. 2002. Petroleum and people. Population and Environment, 24 (2): 193-207, November.
• Duncan, RC. 2003. Three world oil forecasts predict peak oil production. Oil and Gas Journal, 101 (21) 18-21, May.
• Edwards, JD. 2001. Twenty-first-century energy; decline of fossil fuel, increase of renewable nonpolluting energy sources. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 74: 21-34.
• Kelleher, K. 2004. How long will the oil age last? Popular Science, 265, 2, August, 33-4.
• van Mourik, M; Shepherd, R. 2004. Investment incentive concerns overlooked in peak-oil debate. Oil and Gas Journal, 103(10): 18, March.
• van Mourik, M. 2002. Peak oil and economics: some lessons from offshore. Energy Exploration and Exploitation, 20-1 (6-1): 61-69. Special issue.
• Williams, B. 2004. Next big thing: peak oil. Oil and Gas Journal, 102 (15): 15-15 April.
• Williams, B. 2004. Peak-oil, global warming concerns opening new window of opportunity for alternative energy sources. Oil and Gas Journal, 101, (32) 18, August.

Web-board or interactive blog discussions on the topic:

• Peak Oil and Gas: Why We're All Dead
• Peak Oil is Here
• Peak Oil is a Myth
• Bill Maher board discussion of peak oil
• Zogby discussion board about peak oil

Why Stephen Harper should be worried today

As anticipated, last night's House of Commons vote passed a motion calling on the government to resign. Stating that this is was not procedurally a vote of non-confidence (and technically, they seem to be correct in that), the Liberals have refused to step down.

The real story here, though, isn't in the overall outcome of the motion, but in the details of a few individual MPs' votes. As I've mentioned before, the math of this matter is such that the fate of this government will ultimately rest in the hands of a few Independents. And it seems that both of the Independents who were present (David Kilgour and Carolyn Parrish) voted to keep the government in power. The only reason this particular motion was able to pass was because of the absence two Liberal MPs and of Independent Chuck Cadman (who was in the middle of a chemotherapy treatment at the time of the vote, but who has previously stated he would likely vote with the government). If all three of them had been there to vote with the government, then the motion would have been a tie, which would be broken by the Speaker, who is a Liberal:

Two Liberal cabinet ministers, Irwin Cotler and John Efford, missed the vote, as did Independent MP Chuck Cadman, who is recovering from chemotherapy. Mr. Cotler was in Montreal at the funeral of a close relative, and Mr. Efford was having medical treatment in Newfoundland.

Mr. Cadman said he has yet to decide how he would vote on a no-confidence motion and said he would need a few days notice if he were to attend a vote in the future.

Had all three been in the House and voted with the Liberals, the Speaker likely would have broken the tie by siding with the government. Last night's numbers suggest the Tories can't be assured of future wins on no-confidence motions.

The Tories flew in two MPs who have cancer, Dave Chatters and Darrel Stinson, who got standing ovations from all parties when they rose in the House for an earlier vote.

Independent MP David Kilgour voted with the Liberals, but said he will do so on a future no-confidence vote only if the government takes strong action in Sudan.

So what this motion really does is remove some of the mystery surrounding the way Independents like Parrish and Kilgour would likely vote on an official no-confidence matter, and the results suggest that if the Liberals can get everybody to Ottawa on the day it happens, we may not be seeing a spring election after all. Politically the Liberals look pretty bad today, but unless Harper can get Cadman on his side, this vote was anything but good news for the forces who are calling for Paul Martin's head on a platter.

Another case for proportional representation

A Globe and Mail editorial published today makes a case today for a tweaked version of MMP, or mixed-member proportional representation. This is similar to the system I brought to people's attention last year as "the German system." I'd still prefer the actual German system, but it's great to get some of these ideas out there. The editorialists outline the findings of the Pepin-Robarts commision in 1979 to add 60 seats to the House of Commons to introduce a degree of proportional representation while preserving the direct links between voter and representative at the heart of a single-member constituency system. The purpose? Resolving regional underrepresentation and alienation, which "corrodes national unity." The Globe then explains that in 2004, the Law Commission of Canada proposed a system in which two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons would be allocated as they are now (with elections within ridings and the winner taking the seat), and one-third would be selected proportionally.

As the Globe goes on to say:

Essentially, such a mixed electoral system is the approach this newspaper endorses. Canada would benefit from an injection of proportionality into its single-member constituency system. While such a blended system introduces its own challenges (not all members of Parliament are equal; some have constituents and some don't), it is probably the least of the many potential evils out there. The presence of some MPs without constituency business should help raise the quality of committee work, an important check on the power of the executive. Moreover, these "proportional" MPs would also have to face the voting public, albeit by region rather than by riding. And by introducing regional representatives directly into the House of Commons, the mixed system produces a recipe for Senate abolition (though that abolition would require reopening the Constitution). [...]

Many proponents of electoral reform are looking not just for greater proportionality but for cultural change. They prefer minority governments, believing they will promote coalitions and consensus-building and thereby introduce more representativeness and civility into legislatures. While civility would be a welcome development, we prefer a system that, while more proportional, still allows for strong governments led by coherent parties. Last week's budget shenanigans in Ottawa should be warning enough of the perils of letting small parties gain disproportionate leverage over large ones. Making this the rule rather than the exception would be bad reform. [...]

The advantages of a mixed electoral system are many. Voters would still know their local representative and could petition him or her on issues of concern. Election results would more closely approximate overall intentions without rendering majority governments an endangered species. New parties would have a better chance of gaining entry to Parliament, but, with a threshold of 5 per cent in any region to qualify, the bar would be high enough to discourage extremely narrow parties. Accountability would be preserved.

The art and science of journalistic narrative

I could hardly be a bigger fan of American journalist Brian Montopoli. His analysis over at the Columbia Journalism Review blog of the way the U.S. news media covers political events is always unusually astute, and his scathing critique of my beloved (and much-missed, since my emigration) National Public Radio may have broken my heart, but it couldn't have been more accurate. But although his latest piece roasting the new boss at U.S. news channel CNN is as well written as ever, it seems to circle his point without ever quite hitting it. This is because Montopoli is missing a crucial element: that of the art and science of narrative.

Montopoli begins by telling us that the new CNN president, Johnathan Klein, has been lauded as a hero of the journalistic revolution because he's bringing the public more news and less spin by emphasizing the character-driven story, or narrative arc, in the events CNN reports. Then Montopoli shows us how this theory actually plays out in practice, offering up the example of how the 24-hour news station focused almost entirely on the runaway bride story in hour after hour of coverage over this past weekend. This isn't news, Montopoli argues, this is the quest for a classic narrative arc without any regard for substance:

Klein claims that CNN has "been working hard to find provocative, character-driven news stories. We've been emphasizing storytelling." If it wasn't before, it's pretty clear now what Klein means by "character-driven": he wants stories with clear narrative arcs, with heroes and villains whose roles can be conveyed in twenty-second blocks. The problem with this philosophy is that neither news nor life is ever so neat.

The key missing piece here is that the narrative arc, based on what linguists and psychologists have learned in researching the phenomenon, is an inherent part of the way the human brain makes sense of personal experience. This structuring of life happens every time a child tells his teacher about why his homework is late and every time one spouse tells another about the crazy antics of the boss that day, and remarkably, narrative exhibits the same basic structure across languages and across cultures. Although people certainly vary in their skill at recounting stories, all narrative of personal experience has a central conflict, a build, and a point or a "punchline" when it can be declared finished. One thing we learn as young children as a part of the acquisition of our native language is how to pick and choose among our experiences to sort them into a narrative; in other words, how to recount only the things that are deemed relevant for the story to flow into an arc. When people tell stories about the boss tripping over his shoelaces, for example, they will leave out things that don't move the story toward the Big Payoff (like the secretary being absent that day or the fact that it rained that afternoon). And the preferred ordering of events in a narrative of personal experience often isn't chronological, but the way that makes for the best build to a climax.

As Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps point out in their brilliant work of psychology and linguistics Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling, this structure isn't merely optional; it's essential. When people recount the events of their lives to others, they don't spout off disjointed details; they transform those events into narratives of personal experience with a clearly identifiable structure, every single time. When a witness testifies in a courtroom, the ordering of the questions the lawyers ask and the way he structures his responses help both participants co-structure events in to a classic narrative. Studies in the nursing profession have found that nurses who are able to transform the daily events of their job into narratives not only have a better chance at avoiding burnout, but they also tend to be better nurses. And in the realm of psychology, learning how to sort events into a narrative arc with a clear beginning and an end is a key component in how sufferers from post-traumatic stress disorder recover, and how people with learning disabilities can learn to cope with their neurological problems. Narrative can't be dismissed as a mere journalistic oversimplification of life; it's a crucial part of the way the human brain works. And when journalists write up news stories as narrative arcs, they're doing what every last one of us does on a daily basis: making sense of the world around us in the very best way our brains are equipped to process it.

The real problem isn't with the journalistic practice of teasing a narrative arc out of otherwise disjointed events, and it's not that "neither news nor life is ever so neat." The problem is that when CNN offers up an endless parade of runaway bride relatives as news, what they're peddling is more akin to the narrative arc of a bad romantic comedy than the narrative arc of a Booker Prize-winning novel. And as Canadian journalist Paul Wells regularly points out, it's not just the obviously superficial stories that are the culprits, either. When political journalists provide news consumers with an endless loop of stories telling us that the outcome of the anticipated no-confidence motion against the current Canadian government could "all come down to Chuck Cadman's vote!" and recycle the same tired old clichés about "explosive testimony" at the Gomery inquiry, they're not giving us astute political analysis, they're giving us a popcorn flick. And while the latest episode of "The Libranos" may well be entertaining enough to keep newspapers flying off the stands and all eyes glued to the CBC for a while, it's not going to teach us very much about how exactly things got the way they are or what this tells us about our political process, and it's not going to outline the steps that whoever forms the next government can take that might prevent things from going the same way again.

Can I be Slovenia?

It was only about a year ago that I was bragging to Rivka of Respectful of Otters fame about how lovely it was that the Canadian blogosphere wasn't splintered ideologically the way the U.S. one is. What a difference a few months makes. What we're seeing happening, right before our eyes, is the Balkanization of that blogosphere, starting with the Blogging Tories and followed up by the Blogging New Democrats and then the big-umbrella left, the Progressive Bloggers. In a few years, we'll all be analyzing how it all happened, so take notes while you can.

I find the whole phenomenon both exciting and sad. Exciting because it's made otherwise invisible blogs suddenly visible, which is a wonderful thing. Sad because it seems we're destined to turn into the echo chamber that the U.S. blogosphere is, and I don't like that one bit. Blame it on the polarization of the current political climate, blame it on the rapid growth spurt of Canada-specific political blogs, blame it on something else altogether, but I'm already feeling kind of nostalgic for the good old days when everybody but everybody was reading Andrew Coyne and Warren Kinsella even if they didn't agree with a thing they said.

To counteract this trend, I'm going to go out of my way to keep reading my daily dose of right-leaning blogs alongside the usual suspects, and I'd encourage others to do the same. Let me recommend Andrew Coyne, Colby Cosh, and Bound by Gravity; I rarely agree with anything they say, but that doesn't stop me from being continually in awe of the way they say it. And Balkanization may be inevitable, but I'll keep fighting the lousier side effects of it as long as I can.

In the news: no to spring election, yes to proportional representation

A spring election grows less likely all the time. Chuck Cadman is now saying he'll probably vote with the government on a no-confidence vote, and if that doesn't work, Martin may try wielding the Sword of Senate Appointments:

Sunday on Question Period [the television show, not the parliamentary procedure], independent MP Chuck Cadman indicated he will likely vote with the Liberals and the NDP on a non-confidence issue. If two other independents -- both former Liberals -- also stick with the government, it's unlikely that a Conservative-Bloc Quebecois motion could pass. And there might be other moves in the works to deplete the opposition's strength. CTV's Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife reported Sunday that Liberals have been talking to four Conservative MPs about accepting Senate seats in the coming weeks.

And the Globe and Mail is indicating that even some Conservatives are starting to doubt the need to unseat the current government, and even their deputy leader Peter MacKay seems more chastened than anything:

Tory deputy leader Peter MacKay struck a similarly ambiguous tone . "I wouldn't call it inevitable," he said yesterday. "I think that the leader will still want to hear from caucus and get a cross-section of feedback from right across the country." Mr. MacKay noted that, given the balance of forces in Parliament and several cases of ill health among MPs on both sides, the Tories may not be capable of toppling the Martin government.

As if that weren't enough, there's been a flurry of interest in proportional representation over the past few days. Be still, my MMP-loving heart. Last night on CPAC there was a documentary called "A Fair Race" (including Ed Broadbent declaring that we'll probably have MMP here in Canada within two elections). The Globe and Mail is also doing a huge spread on it this week, and to kick things off, we've got an editorial arguing "if it's broken, fix it":

Critics say all this talk about voting reform is a waste of time. The voting system works fine as is. If it ain't broke, why fix it? In fact, our current first-past-the-post system has grave failings. It is time to change it. [...] Federal elections regularly produce wildly disproportionate results. In the 1979 Pepin-Robarts report, the Task Force on Canadian Unity observed that in every federal election since 1896, the winning party had ridden to power with more seats than its portion of the national vote would have suggested. Slight shifts in voting could translate into massive seat accumulations, as in 1935, when the Liberals nearly doubled their seats from 91 to 173 even though their vote shrank by half a percentage point.

In the same paper, Geoff Read argues that the alliances we're seeing among federal parties lately are how things *should* work, and are in fact actually what the public wants:

Despite the predictable outcry from Canadian conservatives, the present alliance between the NDP and the Liberals is, in fact, the logical expression of the electorate's will. Were the Canadian electoral system more truly democratic, utilizing a form of proportional representation, the seats held by the Martin Liberals would have been significantly reduced and the NDP's increased. The Liberals would then have faced a choice between forming either a coalition government of the centre-right, incorporating the Conservatives, or the centre-left, in co-operation with the NDP.

Voters in British Columbia are in the middle of an election that includes, alongside the main aim of electing a new provincial government, a referendum on whether to stick with first-past-the-post or opt for a form of proportional representation. Polls have shown that the yes votes are in the majority among people who know about the referendum, but since an astonishingly low number of people do know about it, it's seemed doomed to failure. Here's hoping this sort of thing serves to educate a few more people.

Why I *can* join the Progressive Bloggers

The debate surrounding the emergence of the Progressive Bloggers has been really interesting to follow. I'm sympathetic to the argument Greg at Sinister Thoughts makes that "Liberals do not share the same point of view as New Democrats, who also have differences with the Greens," and in fact, I'm generally pretty opposed to unite-the-left movements. I still hopped on the bandwagon, though, and I don't see that action as inconsistent with my views. See, to me, the blogosphere is more about ideas than it is about parties. I am a partisan New Democrat, but this is not a New Democrat blog; if I hold an opinion that's out of synch with the party line and feel like talking about it here, I'm not going to let a party membership stop me from doing that. On the other side of the coin, I'm not going to stop being critical of the Liberals simply because I share a blogroll with some of them. Group blogrolls are about nothing more than making it easier for your blog to be found by people who might want to read it. Anyone who wants to read anything more into it than that is squinting too hard, as far as I'm concerned. Besides, do the NDP-leaning bloggers really want to let the Liberal-leaning bloggers lay claim to the term "progressive"?

By the way, I've also tried to join the Blogging New Democrats, but despite the fact that I sent Robert of MyBlahg fame my URL several days ago, I haven't gotten a) added to the list, or b) a response to my emails. Is anyone else having this problem?

The quotable ... Mr. Murphy?

Did anyone else notice that today's Globe and Mail is the first one since Jean Brault's testimony that didn't have anything about Gomery or Canadian federal politics above the fold? Maybe everybody involved has secretly gotten together behind the scenes and declared an unofficial Day of Rest, a moment to catch their breath.

What we do get is Rex Murphy's column about how things were destined to explode in this way because we didn't have hockey season this year, which is actually more amusing than annoying for once. It also includes this little gem:

The radiations from the Gomery commission keep the whole play in motion. Warnings from Alfonso Gagliano — that Paul Martin, by initiating the Gomery inquiry in the first place, has inevitably set the stage for the breakup of Canada — rewired chutzpah from the ground up. If the sponsorship mess has renewed the separatist cause, it is a truly bold ingenuity to blame the inquiry into the mess for what that mess has so perversely achieved. I hope no doctors were watching. Illness will now be the fault of diagnosis; we'll blame the Band-Aid for the cut, and the cough on its syrup.

Show of hands, now: how many of us were already thinking something much like that, albeit somewhat less clever?

Green confusion

Ever since last summer's federal election, I've been hearing a charge coming from many other New Democrats that the Green Party of Canada is deliberately obfuscating its message so as to usurp some of the people that would traditionally vote NDP. I simply don't buy it. The Greens' website and their party literature are quite straightforward about what kind of party they are, and the times I've heard individual Greens speak in public, their message has been consistent there as well. After talking with some of the people who are thinking of voting Green this time around, however, it's pretty clear to me that many of them nonetheless think they're supporting a different kind of party than the one that's actually getting their vote. It's not the Greens' fault; they're making it more than apparent that their proposed policies differ strongly from the ones found in other Green movements around the world. Their supporters just aren't listening.

To some degree, this kind of confusion is perfectly understandable. Worldwide, the Greens are quite clearly identified as a left-wing movement that focuses on environmental issues. In Germany, for example, the Greens are associated both in practice and in the public consciousness with a progressive economic and social policy, and the movements in New Zealand and the U.S. have taken similar approaches. In Canada, however, things look quite different. Green Party leader Jim Harris is a former Progressive Conservative, a Red Tory. He's a management consultant and a motivational speaker to large businesses who describes himself as a green conservative and his party as eco-capitalist. Two of the major planks in the Canadian Greens' platform include corporate tax cuts and taxing resources rather than incomes. Their solution to the abuse of the environment by the business sector isn't tough new legislation and enforcement of existing legislation, but voluntary compliance. Despite the fact that same-sex marriage was a major issue in the 2004 federal election, the Greens didn't have an official stance on it until February of 2005. They have no identified stance on abortion rights, and no proposals for how to address the income gap. In August of 2004, they hired a former assistant to an Ontario conservative cabinet minister as a party advisor. Last winter, there was an advertisement on the Greens' website for a conference on "environmental conservation and economic conservatism," at which former Reform leader Preston Manning was a featured speaker. Joan Russow, a leader of the Canadian Greens in the pre-Harris days, has lamented their sharp turn to the right and states that she can no longer support them. The 2004 Greenpeace "report card" gave the NDP a better "grade" on the policies that matter to them than the Greens, and Greenpeace and the Sierra Club both endorsed the NDP over the Greens in the 2004 federal election. One of the Canadian Greens' slogans is "not left, not right, but straight ahead." This is quite clearly not a progressive party. They're not even pretending to be one.

Now, I'm certainly not trying to tell you the Greens don't deserve a voice on the federal scene. On the contrary, the merger of the right-wing Reform-Alliance and the more moderate Progressive Conservatives has left former Red Tories disenfranchised, and it seems reasonable and appropriate that these people would want to make room for themselves on the political spectrum. I'm not even going to try to convince you not to vote Green--if you read their platform and like what you see, then by all means, tick their box on election day, whenever that ends up being. But if you're planning on voting Green because you think you're voting for a fresh new progressive perspective on the Canadian political scene, then you've made the all-too-common mistake of associating them with the other parties around the world that label themselves as Green. The Canadian Greens are nothing more and nothing less than Red Tories, with Red Tory ideals and a Red Tory agenda with an environmentalist bent. They pay lip service to social justice, but their proposed policies suggest that they believe that environmental issues can and should be addressed separately from issues of social justice and consumer culture. And every last one of their potential voters should be making quite sure that's actually what they want before heading to the polls.

The best show in town

I realize that not all of you follow Canadian politics, but you might want to think about giving it a chance, 'cause at the moment it's the best show out there. You want action? It's right here. Intrigue? We've got it. Shady villains and sympathetic heroes, each marred by tragic flaws? Look no further.

Let's have a recap, shall we? Over the past year and a bit, the long-ruling Liberal party has been embroiled in the fallout from the discovery that more than $100 million of federal money has been diverted into party coffers (as well as the personal pockets of several of its supporters), via several pro-Liberal advertising agencies. We've known about this for a while, and the Liberals have even won another election since it first came out, but a few weeks ago some particularly juicy details were made public. A former ad executive testified at the public inquiry into the matter about how he was repeatedly asked to give cash donations to the party or put election workers on his payroll in exchange for lucrative sponsorship contracts. His testimony (which not only sounded like something straight out of the Sopranos, but which was also broken by occasional emotional moments where he actually cried on the stand) was shrouded in secrecy due to a brief publication ban, awakening the positively feline curiosity of everyone in the country that made absolute sure we would all know about it the moment the ban was lifted.

Since then, there have been rumblings of an early election, and as the governing Liberals are weakened by a minority of seats in parliament, it's quite within the realm of possibility that the opposition could bring them down less than a year after they assumed power. There are four parties in Ottawa these days: the centrist Liberals on the government side, and across the aisle in the opposition we've got the social democratic NDP, the right-wing Conservatives, and the separatist Bloc Quebecois, the latter two of which are gunning for an early election. They're claiming the moral high ground by saying that they're shocked, shocked to find that corruption has been going on in this establishment, but it seems more likely that they're salivating over polls that show them both in mighty fine positions: the Conservatives would likely win an election if held now, and the Bloc would be poised to pick up as many seats as they've ever had. Yesterday the leader of the Conservatives made it official: he's going to take the first possible opportunity to topple the government.

In every good story, though, there's got to be an obstacle to the protagonist getting what he wants, and in this one we've got plenty of those hanging about. The first glob of mud in the Conservatives' waters is the recent marriage of convenience between the NDP and the Liberals, in which the NDP has demanded that more money in the proposed budget be spent on the environment, social housing, foreign aid, and tuition reduction, and in return they'll prop up the government. The Conservatives and the Bloc are both gnashing their teeth, but we're not to "curses, foiled again" quite yet. There are 308 seats in the House of Commons, but one riding is vacant, which means that whichever side ends up with 154 votes is the one that wins the prize. The alliance between the Conservatives and the Bloc has 153 votes, and the Liberal-NDP pseudocoalition has 150, so both sides fall short of the magic number. Enter the Independent Members of Parliament, who are easily the most colourful characters in this particular epic. At the moment there are three of them, which means that the Liberals need the support of all of them to stay in power, while the Conservatives only need one. Needless to say, they're all being heavily courted. The most popular three people in Ottawa are:

Chuck Cadman, who was elected to Parliament as a member of the far-right-wing Reform party (which has since merged into the Conservatives), but in the last election, he lost his nomination, ran as an Independent, and squarely beat the official Conservative candidate into a pulp. True to the old Reform ideals, he has said that he would vote however his constituents want him to vote. Last week he was saying he would support the government, earlier this week he changed his mind and said he'd probably side with the Conservatives, and now this morning he's saying oh, well, maybe not. He also happens to be currently undergoing chemotherapy on the other side of the country for a form of melanoma, and it's not out of the question that he might be too ill to make it to the vote at all.

Carolyn Parrish, who gained some degree of notoriety (as well as a number of fans) a couple of years back when she was overheard by an open microphone saying: "Damn Americans ... I hate those bastards," and after last year's U.S. election referred to President Bush as "a warlike man" and stated that she was "dumbfounded that he won." Her most recent stunt last fall involved tossing a George W. Bush doll on the floor and grinding it under her heel on a satirical television show, after which the current prime minister booted her out of the Liberal party and she began sitting as an Independent. Parrish has said she'll side with the Liberals on this one, but there's definitely no love lost between her and the current prime minister, and her picture also happens to be in the dictionary next to the word 'volatile.' Who knows what she'll do.

David Kilgour, who was a member of the predecessor to the Conservative party until he switched to the Liberals in 1990, is a fundamentalist Christian who has disagreed with many of his party's stances, most notably same-sex marriage. However, it was the most recent revelations in the corruption scandal that finally got him to leave the party two weeks ago, at which point he also began sitting as an Independent. Kilgour is the biggest wild card in the bunch, since his defection is so recent and his indignation so apparent. He's currently out of the country and hasn't been able to be reached for comment, but his last word was that he was considering all of his options. He's abandoned both the Liberals and the Conservatives, so he doesn't have any party loyalties, and he's said he's not running in the next election, so he's free to do whatever suits his fancy.

And I haven't even gotten into the old feud between different factions of the Liberal party, recently rekindled by testimony from a man loyal to the *previous* prime minister alleging that the *current* prime minister was once personally involved in some *other* shady dealings in the awarding of contracts. Or the courtly old gentleman knee-deep in the corruption scandal who testified that due to his advanced age, he can't possibly remember all the details anymore. Or the unprecedented address given by the current prime minister a week ago, pleading for his political life. Or the resurgence of Quebec separatism threatening to break up the country. I mean, bring out the popcorn. You can't make this shit up.

Linkage

Someone's got to take the fall: Paul Wells may go on about Stars, but really, if today's federal Liberals need a theme song, it's got to be R.E.M.'s "Falls to Climb". When the movie comes out--you know, the one with Sean Connery as Jean Chrétien and Tom Selleck as Jean Brault--they're really going to have to get the rights.

To deal or not to deal: The NDP offered their support of the budget to the Liberals in exchange for the nixing of corporate tax cuts and funnelling that money into various underfunded programmes. Layton gave Martin twenty-four hours to make a decision (Paul Wells: "make a decision? you cruel, cruel man."). The first word was no, and then when everybody started talking about what a bad decision that had been, he changed his mind. (Way to make sure the Mr. Dithers label sticks *forever*.) My verdict: a big win for the NDP (though really, it would have been a win either way), a big sacrifice for the Liberals (as they've now made sure progressives will view the NDP as an alternative to the Liberals), a big annoyance for the Conservatives (as this may mean they can't call an election, depending on what the Independents decide), a possible big win for me, as I might be able to vote in this election yet. Good news all around.

Numbers, numbers: There's been a new poll since Martin's speech. Some high points: the majority of Canadians want to wait until the Gomery report for an election, the who-would-vote-for-whom data is unchanged, though the swell of Conservative support may have been stopped. Nothing too exciting here unless you're a polling geek like me.

Prescient idealistic pragmatists: This is what I wrote the day after the federal election last summer. Sometimes I scare myself.

I am not a crook

Any thoughts on what Paul Martin is likely to say tomorrow night?

I'm thinking it's got to be something like: "My fellow citizens, I make you a solemn promise to dissolve Parliament at the very moment that the last Gomery witness leaves the stand later this year. But until then, the inquiry must continue, and so must this government."

Or maybe it's: "These are difficult times, and in difficult times, difficult compromises must be made. For this reason, I am hereby recommending that this government propose a bill introducing radical reforms to our parliamentary system, including the proportional representation so strongly embraced by my colleagues across the aisle in the Conservatives and the NDP so that the Liberals won't be reduced to a mere two seats in the upcoming election."

(What? Come on, a girl can dream.)

Nice chewy data

A new EKOS poll is out. Some tidbits:

If a federal election were held today in Canada, the leader of the Conservative Party would become Prime Minister. If people were to change their minds, the second choice among most Canadians would be the NDP (social democrats). Fifty percent of Quebeckers would vote for the separatists, and the NDP is in first place in B.C. and the Prairies. Among Canadians who make less than $20K a year, the NDP is the first choice, and among Canadians who make $100K a year or more, the Liberals are the first choice.

Sixty-two percent of Canadians surveyed think an election call should wait until after the inquiry is complete.

Sixty percent of Canadians surveyed think the current Prime Minister was involved in the sponsorship scandal.

Social issues remain at the top of the list of important issues in the next election (even before "ethics and accountability").

Sixteen percent of Canadians surveyed have still not heard of the sponsorship scandal. (???)

Respectful of Beavers

A certain cuddly marine mammal of my intimate acquaintance has written about the latest developments in the Gomery inquiry in her well-traveled blog. It's everything that was needed to counteract the ill-informed conservative American voices strutting around the blogosphere as if they'd even heard of Canada before last Saturday. And in addition to that, you get her inimitable wit, which I wouldn't dare try to match, publication ban or no publication ban.

Of course, now that the ban has been lifted and the Canadian media has juicier things to write about, she's not likely to get quite as much of a hit count jump as Captain Ed did. Or a mention on CTV News, or articles about her in the Globe and Mail, or ...

What I *can* say about the Gomery rumours

The ban was a stupid idea. That much is clear now, even if it wasn't when it was put in place. But the puffed-up, American-neocon bravado of the only people who have been writing about it (and the U.S.-specific ethos that's been driving that writing minus any sense of the Canadian context) has been driving me batshit. In so many ways, it would have been better for everybody had these American bloggers just gone on being ignorant of Canada, especially since the ban is likely to be lifted imminently anyway. If I were a conservative Canadian, I'd be embarrassed; as it is, I'm just disgusted. I'll just add that it's not the desire for a ban (I understand and mostly agree with the reasoning) that has made me think less of Judge Gomery; it's the fact that he actually thought it would *work*. This man actually thought a short-term publication ban would be possible in the digital age, which only proves how out-of-touch this man is. And that, if nothing else, concerns me a great deal.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I'm sorry for not providing more context; as a resident of Canada, it seems that I'm probably not allowed to link to the sites in question even from a blog, and I'd rather not get deported, thankyouverymuch. But this news story at least alludes to some of the more interesting aspects. Note particularly this part: In an interview with The Gazette, the blogger, who cannot be identified for fear of violating the publication ban, said he had no idea the sponsorship scandal even existed before being contacted by someone who was present for Brault's testimony. "Somebody contacted me and said, 'I've got some information on this story.' It took about 24 hours for me to do some research on the issue at hand before I could make sense of the information that I was being given."

I have little doubt at this point that the information the blogger was given was accurate. I also have little doubt that he was manipulated by someone--probably someone in the Canadian Conservative party--with an agenda that reaches far beyond the supposed question of "free speech". The fact that this American blogger didn't know anything at all about the scandal until twenty-four hours before writing about it only made him an easier mark for a certain kind of spin on the story: a la "Stick with me, baby, and I'll make you a star." After all, the "currency" in blogging is your hit count. It was an ingenious way for a very clever someone to manipulate the tone of the only stories Canadians read about the testimony, at least while the ban is in effect. And all that at absolutely no cost, political or financial.

If nothing else, though, it sure makes for an exciting case study in how the Internet, and more specifically blogs, can force entire governments to stand up and take notice. We'll be analyzing this one for years to come.

And a can of whipped cream, and a roll of duct tape ...

There's an interview with the Prime Minister's priest about the definition of marriage in this week's Macleans (Canadian newsweekly). Most of it is pretty much what you might expect from a Catholic from Québec, but it includes this marvelous exchange:

Macleans: In this divide, which side are you on?

Father John Walsh: I find it difficult to come down on one side. We think of family as being a man, a woman, two children, and a gerbil, you know?

What it actually says is amusing enough, but consider for a moment the fact that I initially misread this statement as: "We think of MARRIAGE as being ..."

I was quickly able to piece it together, but alas, in the intervening ten seconds my head had already exploded.