More on packing your bags vs. erecting a firewall

American blogger Pam Spaulding of Pandagon reveals that far-right Canadian social conservatives may actually be considering moving to the U.S. over differences with the path Canada is on. I'm sure they don't agree with much of anything that's gone on here in recent years, but they seem to be particularly up in arms over same-sex marriage:

The Reverend Tristan Emmanuel says that for evangelical Christians, "there is a form of persecution taking place in Canada." Emmanuel says the legalization of same-sex marriage, and hate crimes laws that criminalize discrimination against homosexuals, have fueled an intolerance against Bible-believing Christians.

The executive director of the Ontario-based Equipping Christians for the Public-Square Centre warns that that's what American evangelicals could face in the years ahead. Emmanuel is urging his fellow believers to help vote Canada's Liberal government out of office in next months' national election. But he says many Canadian Christians tell him they are ready to give up and move to the United States.

I found that I couldn't help but read that post in the context of the discussion we've been having about western separatists in the Conservative party. I've talked before about just how rare the emigration sentiment is among Canadian conservatives, but even aside from Emmanuel, I've noticed that this might be changing. I find that oddly heartening. Pam is clearly making fun of Emmanuel and the people he represents, but I actually have a great deal of respect for people who would consider a southward migration over political differences with the direction their country wants to take. As an immigrant who once faced a similar situation, that still makes a great deal more sense to me than trying to carve off a piece of Canada--against the wishes of many who live there--and make a separate country out of it. Not to mention that it's more of an individualist's response, which would seem to fit in rather well with many Canadian conservatives' other beliefs.

Alberta separatism in the Edmonton CPC

buckets over at Bouquets of Gray has been doing some terrific sleuthing in uncovering an avowed Alberta separatist who's been managing Conservative incumbent MP Peter Goldring's campaign for Edmonton-East. The campaign manager has been posting at the right-wing Free Dominion message board under the name of 'Psycho', and buckets recounts his escapades in great detail here, here, here, here, and here. This information unambiguously identifies Mr. Psycho as Gordon Stamp, who right up until today was a central figure in the Alberta Conservative Party.

I say "right up until today," of course, because only two hours and twenty-two minutes after Paul Wells got a hold of the story, Peter Goldring's campaign manager position became vacant. Yep, Wells got another one, this time with the help of the groundwork done by the incomparable buckets.

In case anyone needed any more ammunition against Stamp, though, there's plenty over at another web-based forum called Project Alberta. Unlike Free Dominion, which defines itself as a mere "Canadian conservative news forum for the discussion of conservative philosophy and activism," Project Alberta clearly aligns itself with separatists. Their stated purpose is as a forum that "seeks to advance Alberta's interests regardless of Canada - we seek to improve Alberta and Albertans PERIOD, whether that is in or out of confederation." Stamp began posting there in July of this year, and has been a frequent enough poster to ascend to the level of "Power Member."

In this conversation about the differences between the Alberta Alliance and the Separation Party of Alberta, Stamp has this to say:

The SPA goal (separation) is straightforward. But it is not sellable because many voters are thinking the possibility but do not want to jump right into the water. While Albertans are less cautious than most Canadians, we still prefer to stick our toes in the water to be sure the temperature is okay...

The AA philosophy resonates with more people because it recognizes the same abusive concerns of the federal Liberals. The AA has a list of demands that voters (and the media) recognize as truths. If those concerns are not rectified, then and only then will the separation question be presented to Albertans.

The AA follows the philosophy of "How to make friends and influence people" - the SPA strategy is to bulldoze everyone who stands in their way (as verified by the SPA supporters on this topic thread).

Considering that separation needs support (votes) from Albertans, I will follow the path that gets those votes..

In another posting about a dinner appearance by Ted Morton in Edmonton, Stamp contributed the following:

Morton's Edmonton dinner last night was very well attended - approximately 170 people at $30 each.

As expected, Ted knew his stuff. He spoke fairly well with a few slips of the tongue - almost as if he was nervous with such a large gathering.

The thing I liked was that he did NOT skirt any questions from the audience after his speech. In fact he came across better answering off the cuff than when he read his prepared speech.

As expected, he re-iterated that he was 100% opposed to Alberta separation. (That is his only flaw with me because I really respect his platform.)

To add insult to injury, Stamp's "signature" in that forum at the time was "Canada as a nation has no moral justification to exist..."

There's more where that came from, but I'll stop there.

How many other Alberta CPC candidates have avowed separatists in high positions, I have to wonder? One posting over at Free Dominion written by someone named Hailey suggests the following of two Edmonton-area incumbents:

I've heard that Rahim Jaffer has a significant number of western separatists working on his campaign and I quite believe that. That's Rahim.

I've heard the same thing about Rajotte - not sure I am convinced though.

And over at Project Alberta, this rumour of other separatists working for other Conservative candidates seems to have been confirmed by someone who posts as GoTedGo:

I too am working for a campaign that has a federalist leader. That campaign does not know I in fact support independence. For Gord to tell Peter Goldring of his separatist leanings puts Goldring in a very difficult position. He should not have done that, so that Goldring would have deniability.

The Bloc Québécois may be working to end Canada as we know it, but at least they're honest about their ambitions rather than trying to hide them behind a supposed federalist agenda.

[CTV Update: CTV is reporting the story now.]

[FreeDominion update: Dan McKenzie of the Dan Report finds that Free Dominion did some late-night maintenance last night.]

[MoreMedia update: The Globe and Mail, the Edmonton Journal, and the Edmonton Sun are reporting on the Gordon Stamp story now.]

[Goldring update: buckets has noted that Peter Goldring, who called the Free Dominion "extreme" when being interviewed by the Edmonton Sun, once spoke at their banquet.]

[Level-headed update: Stageleft tries to cut through the insults on both sides and figure out what's going on here. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but it's a great post and it has some great comments as well.]

Stability through proportional representation

If the Globe and Mail keeps this up, I'm going to have to renege on my promise to provide my readers with large portions of their proportional representation columns as a public service--I'm not any more interested than you are in seeing this blog become all PR, all the time. They're not quite to that point, though, and besides, this is a particularly good one. I promise I'll have something to say on another subject before the end of the weekend!

Over to John Ibbitson:

We'll know by the end of next week whether the income-trust scandal (the mere fact that it now has a name is a disaster for the Liberals) is resonating with the public.

Even if it has, though, the most the Tories can reasonably hope for is to close the gap between themselves and the Grits. Barring an electoral earthquake, nothing is going to push either party far enough ahead of the other to prevent another minority government.

In fact, as last Friday's column observed, the mostly likely outcome is a hung Parliament, with both the Liberals and Conservatives possessing between 115 and 120 seats, the NDP with far too few seats to influence the outcome of any vote, and the government of the day largely depending on the all-powerful Bloc Québécois for its survival.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

So it's time for opponents of proportional representation to explain themselves.

The argument most often put forward by detractors of PR is that it will lead to unstable Parliaments in which larger parties are held hostage to the agendas of smaller, special-interest parties, leading to repeated political crises and frequent elections.

The rebuttal is self-evident.

The Bloc is now in its fifth election, and has never been stronger. Even if its support wanes in future votes, there is no reason to think it will drop much below 40 seats, making it highly unlikely that either the Liberals or the Conservatives will be able to form a majority government in any future election. That's the political irony: Moving from first-past-the-post to proportional representation would actually make the House of Commons more stable.

Let's construct a PR Parliament, based on an unscientific blend of recent polls: We'll give the Liberals 34 per cent of the popular vote, the Tories 30 per cent, the NDP 17 per cent, the Bloc 14 per cent, and the Greens 5 per cent.

The 39th Parliament would consist of 105 Liberals, 92 Conservatives, 52 New Democrats, 43 Bloquistes and 15 Greens (in a 307-seat House). Such a House would invite a stable coalition of the Liberals and the NDP.

But what if, thanks to Trustgate (it has a nice ring, don't you think?), the Conservatives get 34 per cent of the vote and the Liberals only 30 per cent? How could the Tories ever govern with the support of the NDP? Would a coalition with the Bloc and the Greens be any less improbable?

Who knows? But such extrapolations can go only so far. After all, in a House based on proportional representation, the Green vote could go up and the NDP vote down; the Tories could break apart into two parties (and so, for that matter, might the Liberals), and entirely new parties could be born.

The point is that aspiring prime ministers would have to put their coalition cabinets together before they met in Parliament, complete with manifestos and memorandums of agreement, rather than lurching from Throne Speech crisis to budget crisis to Gomery crisis to dissolution, which was the history of the 38th Parliament.

A PR-based House would also be far more regionally representative. So strong is the Bloc right now, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals may be able to form a cabinet containing elected francophone Quebeckers. But a PR-based system would ensure that the 50 per cent of Quebeckers who vote for a federalist party in a federal election would be appropriately represented in the government, just as the roughly 15 per cent of Canadians who vote for Quebec sovereignty would be appropriately represented in the House.

There are plenty of other reasons to support proportional representation: It tends to improve voter turnout, and it more closely represents the popular will. But the most potent argument in favour of voting reform is the one that has most recently emerged: PR might finally put an end to Canada's spaghetti Parliaments.

Trustscam. How does that sound?

I said it first, of course, but Ibbitson said it prettier.

Electoral reform in the news

Three stories appeared in the mainstream media today that may be of interest to electoral reformers. The first is a CTV piece about Jack Layton, who's saying that proportional representation really will be the key to NDP cooperation in a minority parliament. And yes, he's said that before, but there's an explanation for why it didn't work out that way in the article. Good to finally hear the whole story on that.

The second is an election special on Fair Vote Canada and proportional representation--nothing new to most of you, I suspect, but it's quite informative for people who have just started to hear about the concept and are curious about what it's all about. It's a nicely balanced article, a mixture of proponents and detractors, with smart people on both sides. (What I really want, though, is to get these people in a room together and make them debate the issue, backing their arguments up with real-life examples from comparative politics. I'd buy a ticket to that.)

The other story doesn't actually mention the words "proportional representation," but it's arguably the most interesting of the three. It's an article in the National Post that started out with Harper's statement that the Conservatives wouldn't be willing to form a coalition with any party, but which ends up being about coalitions in general. It quotes Rick Anderson, a senior advisor to former Reform leader Preston Manning:

[Anderson] has become so disillusioned with the prevailing political culture that he has founded the Fireweed Democracy Project, which aims to promote democratic reform in federal politics. "If ever there was a country needing a coalition governance model in its democratic institutions and culture, it is 21st century Canada," he says. "[The political system] remains stuck in the past, better suited to excessively partisan combat than to legislative co-operation. This needs to change."

The article's exploration of coalition-based models fits in quite nicely with my own discussion of coalitions toward the end of my proportional representation FAQ. Coalitions are, of course, possible under first-past-the-post as well, but historically they haven't been a part of Canadian political culture, and it may well take PR to change that. It makes me wonder how things would have been different if Manning hadn't been ousted in favour of Stockwell Day way back when, actually. (Who knew there would come a day when I'd be pining for Preston Manning?)

Hat tip to the Jurist at Accidental Deliberations.

A Klander finger in every pie

I wonder if Klander will also be stepping down as the Liberal riding association president for Toronto-Danforth? Toronto-Danforth being the riding currently held by one Jack Layton, natch...whom Klander has dubbed "an asshole":

I'm going away for a couple of days so I thought I would find something smart and witty to put up on my blog before I left. Unfortunatley I couldn't think of anything so I just want to say that I think Jack Layton is an asshole... for no reason other than it makes me feel good to say it...and because he is.

Update on Klandergate

According to a few scattered, unlinkable comments in various conservative blogs, Sun columnist Charles Adler seems to have reported via his radio show Adler On Line that Mike Klander has resigned. This was confirmed by CBC Radio in their hourly news report moments ago, by CFRA News Talk Radio, and by this Canadian Press article. The CBC referred to Klander as "this election's first blogging casualty."

[Update: Paul Wells on the CP article: "CP is quoting a long-suffering Liberal spokesman to the effect that Klander was "a volunteer" who had no official role in the current campaign. This rather understates the guy's significance. He delivered Tony Dionisio to the Martin camp in '02, and together, they delivered Ontario. When Sheila Copps got uppity, Klander was dispatched to take proper care of her in Hamilton in '04. I fondly recall the first place I ever saw the guy: in the union-hall basement where Paul Martin announced to a breathless world in 2002 that he wasn't sure he could work with Jean Chrétien any more. That whole event was a Klander/Dionisio special. But they were just volunteers, you understand."]

[Sundate: The Sun newspapers are now reporting the story in their online edition as well.]

[Stardate: The Toronto Star has the story now, as well.]

[Macdate: Macleans is also reporting it.]

[CBCupdate: The CBC has their own story online now, rather than just recycling the Canadian Press story as all the other online media have done so far. It's also arguably a better story, quoting more of the blog rather than just paraphrasing, and it doesn't repeat that ridiculous quote from Stephen Heckbert about how Klander wasn't really all that important anyway. Good for them.]

[Sinister update: Greg from Sinister Thoughts lets us in on the fact that Klander's Liberal Party buddy and fellow blogger of questionable taste Chris Wakelin has also taken down his blog. Wakelin's google cache is here. Apart from a bunch of swearing, some nasty words about the CBC, and a likening of the sentiments in fuckthesouth.com to how he feels about the rest of Canada, though, there isn't anything too heinous there. But if you scroll down to the post he made on April 21st, you see the following: Decided to take down my last post. Even though it was in no way a criticism of anybody in Ottawa, I fear it may have been taken in different contexts than the satire of a speech. I sincerely, do not want to be seen as piling on. So I will self censor. While I admit to being extremely curious what, exactly, he took down, I have to applaud him for his prudence. Too bad a little of that didn't rub off on his friend Klander; he might not be out of work now.]

[CanWest udpate: CanWest has offered up its own story now, which has been reprinted in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, the Edmonton Journal, and the Vancouver Sun. Each paper writes its own headlines, though, and these are telling. The StarPhoenix opts for the benign "Grit resigns over Chow blog," the Journal says "Offensive blog costs Liberal organizer his job," and the Vancouver Sun story reads "Liberal organizer leaves over anti-Chinese remarks".]

[Globe update: The Globe and Mail wrote its own piece on the story, which differs from the others by quoting a lot more than just the Chow and Layton remarks. It also mentions that "a snapshot of the site is now being circulated on the Internet."]

[Citizendate: The Ottawa Citizen also wrote its own piece, and that piece also delved further into the nastier quotes from Klander's blog than the wire service stories did.]

[OttawaSundate: Columnist Michael Harris starts out his piece on the Klander story by saying "According to the latest CPAC-SES nightly tracking poll, the Liberals have a 10-point lead over the Conservatives. There is mystery in this."]

[Coppsdate: Former Liberal MP Sheila Copps writes a fairly damning column about Klander in the Toronto Sun.]

Klandergate?

It's Boxing Day, and it's time for some boxing. In a sheer wordsmithery sense, that is.

Around noon on Christmas Day, journo-blogger Paul Wells made a post proporting to reveal a blog maintained by the Sheila-Copps-busting, Tony-Ianno-running senior executive in the Liberal party, Mike Klander. Said blog included such gems as a picture comparing Trinity-Spadina NDP candidate (and Jack Layton's wife) Olivia Chow to a dog, musing over what makes people "look gay," and insults hurled at Layton and at Stephen Harper. Why the past tense? Well, it seems the blog has been taken down, and can only be viewed in the google cache, minus the damning pictures. The post also talks about a Toronto Star reporter who faced Klander's wrath after the story was exposed.

After all the gaffes made by Martin Liberals thus far in this campaign, I believed them to be capable of just about any level of stupidity. So I sat back, grabbed some beer and some popcorn, and waited for the media onslaught via a google news search on "klander". And waited, and waited. As of the stroke of midnight on December 26th, the only hit has to do with a Duluth, Minnesota Target assistant store manager. That gives me pause.

In the comments on Calgary Grit's post on the topic, buckets of Buckets of Grewal fame shares my growing skepticism. He points out that the URLs are different on the blog itself and on the google cache, and also says:

Yes, google cache can show you that there used to be a blog at klander.blogspot.com.

But we don't know who set up that blog and when the postings were made.

In theory, it's a great trick, no? Set up a blog in someone elses name. Make them look like an ass-hole. Then do a screen capture. Then delete the blog.

I haven't seen the Toronto Star story you mention yet: there is nothing at their site.

Other commenters go on to dismiss buckets' concern, even going so far as to suggest it might be a result of da drugs. Boxing ensues.

Honestly, I have no idea what to think at this point. Do I believe senior Liberals like Klander are capable of this sort of behaviour? Oh, yes. Do I believe some individual from one of the other parties is capable of setting up a fake blog to make it look like Klander did something on this level of awful? Sadly, that's also a yes. There are clearly more questions than answers here: If there's truth behind the Wells exposé, then why didn't even one mainstream media source pick it up over the course of Christmas Day? I realize that Christmas Day is the ultimate slow news day, but not even a tiny little mention? And yet if it isn't true, then why haven't we seen Mr. Klander broadcasting a denial all over kingdom come and threatening to sue the person who made him look like a complete jerk in front of God and the world?

Either way, though, heads are going to roll. And I suspect there will be more news on this when we wake up in the morning. Happy Boxing Day. Box away.

[Update: After finding the original Toronto Star article through Lexis-Nexis, buckets takes back his skepticism over in his other blog, Bouquets of Gray. Although there's no link to this on the Star's website, I have confirmed this through looking it up on Lexis-Nexis myself. This suggests that this is almost certainly real, but that no other media outlets picked up on it. Curiouser and curiouser.]

[Upperdate: Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor has sifted through Klander's ex-blog and summarized some of the worst of his posts. Taylor also has access to the so-called apology Klander posted before his entire blog was taken down. It read: It would appear that more people viewed my blog than the small circle of friends it was intented (sic) for. I apologize if anyone was offended by my comments...they were meant to be in jest. Anyway, I have removed my previous posts... Methinks Klander should be reminded that "I apologize if anyone was offended by my comments" is not actually an apology.]

[Upper-dupper-date: Angry in the Great White North has some more where Stephen left off.]

[Upper-dupper-date-date: Greg from Sinister Thoughts makes a connection between Klander and a 'Mike' who recently got a prominent mention in Warren Kinsella's blog, though he later discovers that it may have in fact been Mike Eizenga.]

[And another: Dr Dawg calls not only for Klander's resignation, but for his prosecution under section 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada.]

[Update the final: According to a few scattered, unlinkable comments in various conservative blogs, Sun columnist Charles Adler seems to have reported via his radio show Adler On Line that Mike Klander has resigned. This was confirmed by CBC Radio in their hourly news report moments ago (4:04PM Mountain Time on December 26th).]

Liberals for proportional representation

First of all, let me say that I have to take back at least part of the snarky post I made about Anne McLellan earlier this week. While I still think it's incredibly arrogant for her to think that she represents everyone in Alberta who doesn't vote Conservative, there may actually have been an intentional--albeit subtle--proportional representation message behind her rather odd comments at the Alberta Liberal strategies press conference.

Why do I say that? Well, she showed up on the doorstep of a friend of mine the other day, a friend who happens to be one of my Fair Vote Canada colleagues. When McLellan asked for his support in the upcoming federal election, he asked about her views on electoral reform and proportional representation...and believe it or not, she actually came out in favour of it. She stopped short of embracing the citizens' assembly plan so dear to Fair Vote Canadians--she thinks government should play a key role in any electoral reform--but the fact that she wasn't just agreeing with everything my friend said actually gives me hope that this was more than just an election promise. So here I am with egg on my face. Sorry, Anne.

And speaking of Liberals for proportional representation, the Globe and Mail's Roy MacGregor brought us this terrific column yesterday in which Lester Pearson's former EA comes out in favour of what sounds like Mixed-Member Proportional representation. It's a day old, but I was busy yesterday, and I wouldn't be me if I didn't provide the few stragglers still reading political blogs at this time of year with all their electoral-reform-Globe-and-Mail-column needs.

He is, many will say, The Grand Old Man of the Ruling Party -- and he, too, thinks the system is broken.

Tom Kent is 83 years old. The former principal assistant to prime minister Lester Pearson -- as well as former deputy minister, former Crown corporation head, former chair of a royal commission and lifelong intellectual spark of the Liberal Party of Canada -- believes that Canadian democracy is currently in such a bad state that the future of the country itself is endangered by elections such as the one we are now well into.

He even says that the current Prime Minister, Paul Martin, rose to power "in the most undemocratic way possible." He won the party leadership through money; he won the last election, barely, through a system that no longer reflects the country or the reality of 21st-century politics.

Then, to compound matters, the Prime Minister failed to follow through on his promise to fix what virtually everyone concedes no longer works as it should.

"He talked about democratic reform," says Kent from his home in Ottawa, "but he failed to do anything about it."

Earlier this week, Kent was one of 60 prominent Canadians offering his name to a Fair Vote Canada petition aimed at persuading broadcasters to commit debate time to this topic.

Democratic reform is, as all politicians and media are finding out as they travel about this grumpy country, a simmering issue that is thought to be tied directly to voter disenchantment and declining turnout.

Rethinking Canada's anachronistic first-past-the-post electoral system is nothing new to Kent. He began to worry about the "winner-take-all" riding system as far back as the 1960s, only then it wasn't nearly the destructive force he sees it as today.

"It didn't work as badly then as it does now," he says. "Back then, there were the two major parties and some smaller parties. And while it could be exhausting for the ministers to be in minority governments, it actually worked out pretty well.

"At that time, first-past-the-post had not produced what is now the fatal thing in Canadian democracy: the fracturing of the country through regionalism."

In Kent's opinion, the system "really broke" in 1993, when the long-standing Progressive Conservative Party fell to only two seats in the House of Commons and a new reality fell into place where Reform would stand for the West and the Bloc Québécois for Quebec, and Ontario would essentially decide who held the prime minister's chair.

Kent sees nothing in the immediate future but further fracturing of the notion of Confederation, an entangled and broken cat's cradle that includes Quebec separation, western alienation and confusion throughout the rest of the country.

Change, he says, is absolutely necessary, but change will come "only when people have reconciled themselves to the fact that without reform we're going to have continued fracturing." No one knows what the exact solution is to the first-past-the-post system -- that, presumably, would evolve over time -- but Kent himself favours a "mixed proportional" system much like that first suggested a generation ago in the Pepin-Robarts commission on Canadian unity.

Kent believes in a system that would combine some proportional representation with the current system of single-member constituencies.

As there are currently 308 seats in the House of Commons, each one held by the candidate who gets the highest number of votes in each riding, Kent suggests 300 such seats continue on that basis, and another 100 be added to more fairly represent general voting patterns. This would ensure everything from seats for the Green Party to extra seats to compensate for areas where the established parties showed well but not well enough to claim victory.

"The real question," Kent says, "would be if you went for such a system would you build a new chamber to accommodate the 400 seats, or would you just tear out the desks?" Kent believes tearing out the desks in the Commons would vastly improve decorum, making Parliament Hill more like Westminster.

"I think it would improve the level of debate," he contends.

But he would hardly stop there. He'd return power to constituencies so that policy bubbles up rather than filters down. He'd have the election financing money go to the constituencies rather than to party headquarters. Much of the current dysfunction has been caused by "the collapse of the party process" and the increasing consolidation of power at the top.

He'd set fixed election dates. He'd work to restore a proud, workable system of government to replace the current reality where "the policy people have all drifted away, the mechanics have taken over and the only policy discussion we have comes from an imported rock star."

But is it possible?

"Yes," he believes, though he's hardly optimistic.

His one hope, he says, is another minority system where the New Democratic Party clearly holds the balance of power.

And where the price of their support is not about taxes and programs. But rather the NDP "insisting" on real electoral reform.

A nice little present for electoral reformers everywhere.

Electoral dysfunction

Roy MacGregor rocks my world. But the Globe and Mail's columnists are (still) behind the subscriber wall, so (again) I'll cut just enough so as to not to enrage the copyright gods:

Is there a doctor in the House? The Peace Tower has gone limp; democracy is drooping.

In an attempt to show a bit more "edge," hoping to reach out to a younger audience, Fair Vote Canada is today launching a two-minute video on its website [starring Don Ferguson of the Royal Canadian Air Farce] that wonderfully parodies the well-known erectile dysfunction advertising campaigns.

[...]

Whether anything changes in time for the next election beyond this one is anyone's guess. Yes, as any politician knocking on doors these days is finding out, or any journalist tapping shoulders in Tim Hortons will tell you, the one absolute of this current campaign is a widespread sense among the voters that the system is "broke."

Earlier this week, more than 60 well-known Canadians -- including former politicians, current academics, authors and the cast of Air Farce -- joined with Fair Vote Canada in denouncing the current debate format and demanding that electoral reform be the focus of at least a portion of the remaining debates.

So many Canadians are just walking away from political participation that Fair Vote Canada says it has reached "crisis" proportions. In Iraq, 70 per cent of voters risked their lives to vote; in Canada, the turnout on Jan. 23 is likely to be the lowest on record, even if risk amounts to an icy driveway.

"There's such a deep visceral anger out there," says Larry Gordon, executive director of Fair Vote Canada and author of the Dr. Ferguson video. "People are convinced the system is broke."

Fair Vote has spent considerable time breaking down past results to show just how fractured it is.

"Did you know," Gordon asks, "that more people voted for the Conservatives in Ontario last election than the combined total for British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan? It's true. But that translated into only 24 seats in Ontario versus 61 in the western provinces. [Preston] Manning and [Stephen] Harper are always chastised for not having that breakthrough in Ontario -- but, in fact, there are Conservatives voting in large numbers in Ontario."

More dramatic is how the Canadian system of "first past the post" skews representation in Quebec. The Bloc Québécois received 1.7 million votes in 2004, which translated into 54 seats in a 308-seat Parliament. The New Democratic Party, on the other hand, received far more votes -- 2.1 million -- and yet ended up with only 19 seats.

As for the little Green Party, it received more votes in total than the Liberal Party got throughout the Atlantic provinces. The East put 22 Liberals in Parliament. The Greens got not a single seat.

"These are not flukes," says Gordon. "These are not anomalies. This is the way it is. We are not getting what we voted for at the ballot box." The notion behind the "electoral dysfunction" video is that a little satire might bring the discussion to "a whole new group" -- disenchanted young voters.

"We have reams of reports," says Gordon. "We have all the facts and studies. But young people tell us, 'You guys are a little stodgy.' We know this topic can be an eye-glazer. We know this is not a sound-bite issue."

One of the problems, he thinks, is the phrase "proportional representation" itself.

"It's a bad label. It misses our core principle, which is voter equality -- a belief that every ballot has equal value and should have equal effect in determining fair representation." Change will come, Gordon believes, only when continuing minority governments and rising regional tensions force the issue. And it will have to come, he equally believes, from the people.

"Politicians elected under the current political systems have tremendous conflict of interest," Gordon says. "Politicians tend to fall in love with the system that puts them in." People, on the other hand, are increasingly demanding change to a system they no longer have faith in.

"It's up to us," he says.

"We can't just roll our eyes and shrug our shoulders and walk away saying, 'It makes my head hurt.'"

The whole thing is here.

Cultural norms and vote disclosure

While it's not exactly something they test for in the infamous Canadian "points system," one of the things that always helps any new immigrant integrate is a certain knack for armchair anthropology. After all, it's only when you can figure out the differences between your culture of residence and your culture of origin that you have the option of altering your behaviour so that you come across the way you want to come across. But some differences are more elusive than others, and one of the things that took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out was the Canadian cultural norms for vote disclosure.

Case in point: I have frequent and regular discussions about politics with several of my local friends. These aren't political junkies like you and me, but they do pay attention to the news, and they think about politics pretty much every day. Sometime over the course of the 2004 federal election, though, I finally realized that not a single one of them had ever told me how they voted. Without even thinking about it, I asked one of them how he was planning to vote this time. He told me, but his body language and shocked expression told me that it had been a major faux pas to ask.

I've always been the type to poke at something until it makes sense to me, so I responded to this by taking an informal poll in a forum that consisted of about a third Canadians and half Americans. The question: "Are you comfortable with telling your friends how you're planning on voting in an upcoming election?" This prompted not only a terrific discussion, but also answers: of the Canadians who responded, two said they were comfortable, and eight said they weren't. Of the Americans who responded, every last one of them said they were. Light dawned. It's hardly publishable data, but the trend is pretty clear.

This is a fascinating distinction, and it's made all the more fascinating by the fact that the two cultures seem to completely switch places when it comes to disclosing your vote to a campaign worker. I've volunteered for a couple of campaigns since moving up here, and I'm constantly stunned by just how willing Canadians are to tell complete strangers how they're voting. If they're supporting that candidate, they'll tend to say "yes, he has my vote," or "I always vote [party x]," or "I'm afraid I'm voting for [party y] this time." The volunteers will spend hours asking people the same questions, and only very rarely is anyone unwilling to spell out who they're voting for. This is quite the opposite of my mother's experience doing similar work last fall for one of the U.S. presidential campaigns, in which every second person she phoned told her it was none of her business.

Deputy PM: Vote for me, and I'll represent all non-Tories

At the press conference where the Liberals announced their Alberta strategy today, they focused in on various things they want to accomplish in the province. Between announcements about transportation and infrastructure, one of the more self-serving goals Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan mentioned was better representation for Albertans who don't vote Tory:

Over a third of this population in every federal election voted for a party other than the Conservatives. Mr. Harper, we have a right to exist, and those people have a right to a voice.

I admit to being a bit confused by what her core message is supposed to be, here. If she's saying that the people of Edmonton-Centre should reelect her as their MP so that she can speak for all non-Conservative voters in the province of Alberta, well, that would seem to be a fundamental misconception of how representative democracy is supposed to work. If she's saying that the seat counts in Parliament should really reflect the percentage of the vote received by each party on election day, though, then I couldn't agree more.

Sending you James' way

I'm not generally a fan of just linking to another post without adding my own content, but James Bow made a really interesting post today about how Conservative-NDP cooperation might work in the case of a Tory minority government. It's something we should be discussing, and unfortunately the post has gotten woefully little substantive commentary so far.

So go, argue, stir up controversy!

A "silly immigrant" moment

When I first moved to Canada in the late '90s, there was a lot I knew about this country, having lived quite close to the border for most of my life, but there was even more I didn't know. To sort of poke fun at myself and my steep learning curve, I used to write down little anecdotes about crazy or amusing consequences of my ignorance of everything from car block heaters to postal outlets to Gravol. I called these the "silly immigrant" stories. If I were still keeping track of those now, I'd add this one to the list:

At the end of the Trudeau miniseries (which I'm embarrassed to say I didn't get around to watching until this week) there's a scene that takes place at a dinner at the Governor General's residence. I found the scene quite confusing--for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why the Governor General would be having a dinner without being present herself. I mean, she clearly wasn't there. Everyone around the table was a man, after all.

By the time I finally thought through what my assumptions were and consciously realized how faulty they were, the scene was over, and I had to rewind and watch it again.

It's always the little things, you know?

English debate roundup

You know, I'm very much a "look on the bright side" sort of person, but somehow I can't manage to come out of this debate with all that much good to say about anybody.

I expected Martin to be lousy, and he didn't disappoint. He seemed frighteningly out of touch, particularly when he essentially told the disabled woman to get a job, and when he had the temerity to utter the words "the major cities are doing well." (Does he not realize that this country is second only to Australia in its urbanness? Does he not realize that many of those city-dwellers vote Liberal?) He stumbled through most of his responses, his "they" rather than "we" when he was talking about Quebecers was a big no-no, and the my-father-was-Tommy-Douglas bit was truly annoying. He did hit a home run in response to the Quebec question, though, when he turned to Duceppe and ranted, and the angle on him was just perfect. I'd bet good money that that picture is going to be on the front page of the Globe and Mail and the Star tomorrow, too. [Edited to add: Wow! I must be psychic!]

I had high expectations of Duceppe, but he did disappoint. I think he's better in the other format; in 2004 he looked laid back, like he was just going to take it easy while the other guys got all riled up. This year he just looked bored. His one really good line was "the West wants in, and Quebec wants out." Clever. Although I did have to wonder, if he really believes so strongly that they shouldn't have a free vote on a question that has already been answered, as he said in response to the same-sex marriage question, then what's all this fuss about another referendum?

Harper was the surprise of the night--he is a superb debater, but tonight, at least 75% of the time, he was bad, bad, bad. It's funny, because I remember him being so excellent in 2004, and wishing "my side" were as good at making strong, rational arguments. This year, though, he had no energy. He'd clearly been told to smile, but when he tried, he just looked creepy. When he didn't, he looked depressed, as if he'd just found out his dog had died. I did enjoy it when he indirectly accused Ralph Klein of "dishonest fiscal management," but otherwise this was a terrible evening for Mr. Harper.

Layton was very hot and cold. When he was good, he was great. When he was bad, he was cringeworthy. The opening statement--bad. The turning toward Martin and ending up turning his back on the camera--really bad (though I suspect a lot of that was the camerawork rather than his doing). He also did the worst job of all four men of coping with being cut off prematurely. On the other hand, he was terrific on same-sex marriage--he looked both serious and sincere. Mentioning Saskatchewan directly was incredibly savvy, and I'm sure it won him some votes. He seemed like a really genuinely good person much of the time, with very little of the "Guy Smiley" that he's been so chastised for. My personal disappointment of the night, though, was that he didn't bring up proportional representation as a partial solution to western alienation. I know why he didn't--it's not something that you can explain in thirty-second sound bites, after all--but it was such a missed bet.

I sent in a question, and it even got as far as them writing back for my phone number, but apparently I didn't make the final cut, alas. Here's to a better round in January.

IP on the CBC

If anybody out there has ever been curious what my mug looks like in real life, I was interviewed for a CBC story on blogging and the election this morning. It will apparently air either tonight at 5:30 (Mountain Time) before the debate, or sometime on Monday. They're trying to get Monte Solberg, too. Fun, fun.

Of course, I looked at myself in the mirror after the journalist and cameraman left, and my head is one huge mop of frizz. I suppose that's what you get when you haven't bothered to get your hair cut since August. Sigh.

Small dead Un-Canadians

A while back, I wrote a post musing about how left-wing Americans spout off constantly about the possibility of moving to Canada, but right-wing Canadians never ever spout off about the possibility of moving to the U.S.

I guess I spoke too soon.

Election 2006: the beginning of the end?

Interlocutor from Civilization as We Knew It makes four seriously freakish predictions about the outcome of the January election. The most "out there" of the four include "at least two federal elections in 2006" and the prospect of there never again being a majority government "unless Quebec separates, the Bloc disbands, or the electoral system is significantly reformed." The most unnerving thing is that he may well be right--I can't fault his reasoning, anyway. And if he is, then this last minority government was just the beginning of a really major shakeup of federal political culture in Canada. Scary.

On the bright (although seriously weird) side, if Interlocutor is right, then we may well be able to gain support for some form of proportional representation on the grounds that endless minority governments are too unstable. Since, after all, proportional electoral systems tend to solve the minority instability problem by encouraging stable coalition governments. How's that for turning an anti-PR argument on its head?

Damn that Paul Wells!

I held my nose when Macleans brought back Barbara Amiel. When they promoted Steve Maich, I swore a lot, but I hung on. When they wrote a cover story called "Why Wal-Mart Is Good" with "facts" stitched together from an incredibly suspect Ryerson University study, I stared in disbelief, but I didn't cancel my subscription.

When they screwed around with the format, though, enough was enough. I'm hardly a granny, but there's only so long that I can squint at the page without getting a headache, and it's nearly impossible to tell advertising from news stories anymore. I was sad that I'd be missing all that great Paul Wells election coverage, but I was going to stick to my guns, read it until it lapsed, and then just not re-up. I could get my Wells fix in his blog.

That was then, though, and this is now. Because now Wells is following up his tremendous interview with new University of Alberta president Indira Samarasekera by revealing that he's going to start challenging the party leaders on post-secondary education. This makes it a whole new ballgame. So while others may be canceling in disgust, there's at least one subscription that Wells has single-handedly rescued by the skin of its teeth. Though I still have my hopes that he'll kick some sense into Kenneth Whyte...or at least kick him around a little bit.

(He's even a cutie, too. Who knew?)

Harper on Harper

Last week, an editorial appeared in the right-wing Washington Times about how having Stephen Harper as Prime Minister would be a late Christmas present for Bush. It described him as "pro-free trade, pro-Iraq war, anti-Kyoto, and socially conservative." Well, that characterization didn't sit well with Harper--at least not in the middle of an election--and he responded to the editorial himself (scroll down a bit). In his letter, he clarifies his positions on softwood lumber, the Iraq war, the Kyoto accord, abortion rights, and same-sex marriage.

At times like this, I'm always torn between two different mes: the dyed-in-the-wool-lefty-IP, and the immigrant-from-the-U.S.-IP. The former wants to stand up and say: "Yeah? Well, he's still wrong, and here's why!" The latter, on the other hand, is content to say: "Oh, my god, I get to live in a country where one of the most conservative politicians expresses great disappointment about the failure to substantiate the weapons-of-mass-destruction intelligence! And who openly says to right-wing Americans that he won't restrict abortion, and will hold the U.S. to their trade agreements! Oh, frabjous day!"

Both versions of me can't help but notice, though, that he doesn't utter a peep about the original editorial's charge that "If Martin's Liberal Party is re-elected for the fourth consecutive time, Canadian taxpayers will continue footing the bill for an expensive welfare state epitomized by its archaic government-run health-care system." Interesting.

Back to homosexual sex marriage

I do agree with all the people who are saying that the Liberals' pressure on Harper to confirm his stance on the notwithstanding clause and same-sex marriage is nothing but an attempt to distract from the Liberals' own screwups. But still, I'd like to extend a challenge to any journalists reading: the first one of you to ask Harper whether he supports homosexual sex marriage gets a big fat smooch from yours truly.