Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Canada Page 5 of 6

Canadian Election Today, Monday, October 19th

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On October 18, 2015

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At the beginning of the election, the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) was leading, Conservatives were in second, and the Liberal Party was in third.

Now that we’re going into the election, the Liberals are polling first, Conservatives second, and the NDP is third.

What happened? As I’ve been distracted this election, I asked one of the savviest Canadian observers I know for his thoughts.

For much of the election, the NDP and Liberals were polling even. Then Harper started demonizing Niqabs.

Unfortunately, this strategy played well in the province of Quebec and because the NDP was not on board with it, their numbers in that province crashed.

This dropped NDP’s numbers below the Liberal party.

Next, the “Anyone But Harper” dynamic kicked in. With dropping numbers in Quebec, the NDP’s national numbers began to look bad. At that point, those on the left who wanted Harper out more than they cared about who would replace him flocked to the Liberals as the party which could displace Harper.

We’ll see how the actual election runs. Polls have been unreliable in a number of elections lately. Still, it doesn’t look good for the NDP.

The Liberals, under Justin Trudeau, have voted for most of Harper’s signature bills, including C51 (which gutted civil liberties.) If the Liberals get into office, they will be 90 percent as neo-liberal as the Conservatives, but less obnoxious about it.

The best chance now for a decent government is if the Liberals get a minority and make a deal with the NDP for support.

This is disappointing, but at the end of the day, Canadians will get the government they deserve. Mulcair has spent years opposing Harper while Trudeau has supported him. Any Canadian paying one iota of attention should know this.

And if making it so Muslim women can’t wear the Niqab is more important to Quebec than voting for an actual left-wing government, well, yes, sorry, “deserve” is the right word.

Still, we’ll see. Fingers crossed.

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The Writ Is Dropped and the Canadian Election Is On!

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On August 2, 2015

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Prime Minister Harper has dropped the writ. The campaign is about twice normal length, with the election on October 19th, a bet on Harper’s part that his money advantage and superiority in third party money will matter more in a longer campaign.

Harper’s been PM for ten years, though only since the last election has he had a majority government. He’s changed Canada significantly. Economically, he ended the mixed economy policy which had been Canada’s strategy for well over 100 years, letting manufacturing wither on the vine, while doubling down on resources. He invited in record numbers of guest workers, and his government underwrote residential mortgages, leading to a housing bubble which is now, in relative terms, almost twice as large as America’s was when it popped.

The result of all of this is the worst economic showing of any Prime Minister in post-WWII history. Tying the Canadian economy so heavily to oil and other resources turns out to have been a bad bet.

Harper has also instituted what might be called the “paranoid style” of governing. Ministers are on a short leash, and scientists and bureaucrats are not allowed to speak to the press without going through the government.

All of the Conservative Party’s victories have seen cheating by the Conservative Party, with multiple criminal investigations. In response to this, Harper removed Election Canada’s mandate to investigate electoral fraud, and its mandate to encourage turnout.

In civil liberties, Harper has annulled about half of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with the aid of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, the son of the late Pierre Trudeau, who ran Canada in the ’70s and into the early ’80s.

Justin was leading in the polls from the moment he was selected Liberal leader until he had his party vote for bill-C51, the bill which gutted Canadians’ civil liberties. That decision saw the New Democratic Party, the only one of the big three parties to oppose the bill, swing into first place, a lead it has kept in most (but not all) polls, marginally, since then.

Traditionally, the NDP has been the third party. In the last election, under the charismatic Jack Layton, it surged to second place, but after Layton’s death from cancer and the coronation of Trudeau, it has been solidly in the third place.

This is an important election for Canada. If the NDP wins, and especially if it forms a majority government, there will be changes that matter. One shouldn’t overstate them; Mulcair, the NDP’s leader, has gone out of his way to reassure the business community. But Mulcair has also been consistent in his attachment to the environment, in his dislike of the tar sands, in his understanding of Dutch Disease, and the mixed economy. He has promised not to raise the retirement age, and on a variety of other neo-liberal agenda items, he has been in opposition. He has also promised to abolish Canada’s unelected Senate, and to move to some form of mixed-representative government (some geographic seats, some party list seats.)

Canadians, overall, are tired of Harper, mostly because of the economic news but also in part due to his paranoid style of ruling (and it is ruling). However, Harper’s support is concentrated geographically in the West and southern Ontario, and it is certainly possible he could still win.

The current dynamic is mostly about Trudeau’s liberals shooting at the NDP, the NDP shooting at the Conservatives with a few shots back at the liberals, and the Conservatives mostly concentrating fire on Mulcair.

For as long as I’ve been alive, the Liberals have always told people to vote strategically: to vote Liberal to keep Conservatives out, because Liberals had the best chance of winning. It is delightful to see the shoe on the other foot now.

We’ll see how it plays out. I think the odds slightly favor the NDP, but there’s a long campaign ahead, and I expect the Conservative party to cheat. If it comes down to only a few seats, as it probably will, that cheating could make the difference.

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Canada’s Left-most Party, the NDP, Moves Ahead of the Neo-liberal Liberal Party

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On June 6, 2015

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I am amused:

Canadian Federal Poll Results

Canadian Federal Poll Results

This is entirely the result of the decisions made by Liberal Party leader, Justin Trudeau, and by NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair. After Parliament was attacked by a mentally ill man, the Canadian Prime Minister, Harper, decided to push through a surveillance and police state bill, Bill-C51. This bill voided about half the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom.

Immediately after the attack, support for the bill was in heavy majority territory. So Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, decided to support it. Mulcair decided not to support it.

But Canadians turned out to be more sensible and principled than Trudeau thought (indeed, I was surprised, though I would have done as Mulcair did as a matter of principle); as time went by and the details of the bill came out, they turned against it.

More importantly, left-wing swing voters turned against it. And seeing that it was supported by the Liberal party, they turned against the Liberal party and towards the NDP, whose principles now appear to be driven by something other than polls.

Or, as I sarcastically noted some time ago, “I’d like to thank Justin Trudeau for single-handedly reviving the NDP’s election chances.”

Justin Trudeau is, for those who don’t know, the son of the great Pierre Trudeau, who ran the country through much of the 70s and 80s, and who is beloved by many on the left (and truly hated by many on the right, and in the West). Justin is also quite pretty, and has beautiful abs, which he showed off in a boxing match he won.

He was the heir-presumptive from the moment he was coronated by the Liberal Party (calling it an election implies there was any chance the Liberal Party wasn’t going to choose him)—the polls consistently showed the Liberal Party under him as the main opposition party to the Conservatives.

Meanwhile Mulcair kept just doing most of the right things. And one day Justin, who was always quite clearly a neo-liberal with few actual left-wing beliefs, made an error of judgment and character which left-wing swing  voters weren’t willing to overlook.

This is exactly the circumstance I was talking about in my article on ideology and political parties. Exactly:

Let me put this precisely: The job of a political party is either to get a few specific people into power, or it is to offer a clear option to the voters. If it is the second, then your job is to make sure that option remains available. In many cases, if you do so, you will get into power fairly soon—after two to three terms. In other cases, if you are a minor party, it may take decades.

If you genuinely believe in your policies, in your ideology, whatever it is, then that is fine. The public has a right to choose, you just make sure they have a real choice and not a menu that is all of the same.

Your job is to offer a clear choice. Mulcair, fairly consistently, has offered that clear choice. Perhaps he did so out of principle, perhaps he did so out of strategy, perhaps it was both, I don’t know. But it has paid off. If he had offered the same as the Liberals, those voters would not have gone to the NDP. (I happen to believe, in this case, that it is principle.)

The election is still some way off, and there is no way to be sure who will win. But this has changed a multi-year dynamic in a significant way. Last election made the federal NDP the official opposition party, but it did so on the back of the personal charisma of the previous NDP leader: Jack Layton. One election is not a pattern.  Two elections start becoming one.

If the NDP either wins the election or becomes the official opposition again, one will be able to make the case that they are one of the two main parties. At that point, strategic voting starts cutting heavily against the Liberals (a thought which brings most NDP supporters great schaenfreude). If you want the Conservatives out, you must vote NDP, not Liberal, so as to “not split the vote.”

I find that funny beyond describing.

And as for Trudeau, he was always an empty suit: A man cruising on his father’s name, “le Dauphin”, with no real accomplishments or weight of his own. Since their coup against Chretien, the Liberals have repeatedly selected as their leaders either men with little charisma (Martin, Dion), no weight (Trudeau), or neither weight nor charisma (hello Michael Ignatieff). Perhaps they should decide to believe in something other than being in power, and in doing so, deserve to be in power.

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Alberta Elects the New Democratic Party (NDP)

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On May 6, 2015

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This is fairly extraordinary: For non-Canadians, the NDP is the most left-wing party in Canada and Alberta is the most right-wing province in Canada. It’d be like an Elizabeth Warren-inspired party winning Texas. (As a Canadian let me say that this is amazing and almost unthinkable even a few years ago.)

Following were NDP’s key promises:

  • An increase in the corporate tax rate from ten to twelve percent;
  • A $15/hr minimum wage;
  • A review of the royalties that petrocarbon producers pay (which have plummeted in recent years);
  • A ban on corporate donations for elections;
  • A phase out of coal power.

Alberta is the heart of the modern conservative revolution in Canada and was the fastest growing economy during the last fifteen years, thanks to massive increases in oil prices. Alberta also saw a rise in immigration from other parts of Canada, which I suspect had played a huge part in this surprise vote.

I am more interested in whether this means Alberta might be in play during a federal election, however. Traditionally, Alberta has gone right-wing in super majorities, federally. If it’s willing to vote NDP at the national election (which, so far, polls don’t show), the next election may be far more interesting than this one.

Canadian elections can be volatile; there have been a lot of upsets recently and the polls have gotten it wrong repeatedly. Federally, the Liberal Party seems most likely to win, but it’s leader, Justin Trudeau, has been caught flat-footed a number of times, tending to support the same policies as the Conservative Party.

I’m hoping, and now have slightly more hope, that the NDP wins instead.

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Falling Oil Prices Are Mostly Bad News

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On November 5, 2014

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Yes, it’s nice to play less for gasoline and heating fuel, but while some of the decline in oil prices are a result of the new unconventional oil supplies which have come on line, much of it is that the world is going into recession—demand is down from every major economy.  That’s not good.

Yesterdays’ post showed what happened in the US job market over the last 6 years.  It never recovered for most people.  Remember, in terms of business cycle that was the recovery and the boom.  Those were the good times.

As for oil, the drops are to many conventional oil producers advantage if they can sweat them out. Much of the unconventional oil which came online is not viable below $80/barrel. The viability numbers you see for countries like Saudi Arabia are not their profit break even numbers, pumping Saudi oil costs less than $10 a barrel, rather they are what the Saudi government budget needs.  But the Saudis can handle a few years making less if it send their competitors into bankruptcy.

Remember that in the late 90s oil was under $20 a barrel.  I would want to see oil under $40 a barrel, with excess supply, to expect an economy as good as the late 90s one was.  Remember also that this is not the first time this “run a shitty economy until new sources of oil come on line” play has been tried—while the details were different, this is exactly what Carter, Reagan and the Fed of the late 70s and early 80s did. Temporize waiting for the new oil supply.

But while new oil did eventually come online, notice also that the economy never really got good ever again: you have about 4 good years in the late 90s and the rest is crap (again, for ordinary people.  The wealthy did very well).

Finally, those fools in places like Canada (my home and native land) who thought the good times would never end and that letting the mixed economy (aka. manufacturing) die, are about to reap the whirlwind.

All Commodity Booms End.  No exceptions.  Always.

Repeat that until it sinks in.

The old Canadian economy ran as follows: during times when commodity prices were high the Canadian dollar went up making our manufactured goods uncompetitive, but we used the money from selling commodities to subsidize manufacturing.  During times when commodity prices were low, the profits from manufacturing were used to subsidize the the resource producing areas of the country.

Harper, that feckless provincial incompetent and neo-liberal ideologue, has broken the Canadian mixed economy, which existed before him for over 100 years.  This is probably because he’s an economist, meaning he was indoctrinated to believe neo-liberal dogma.  Or perhaps he’s just a fool, hard to say.

The only Federal leader who understands the Canadian mixed economy is NDP leader Mulcair (Justin Trudeau, while has nice abs, is not very bright, unlike his father, who was a genius.)

It might not be too late to rebuild Canadian manufacturing during the oncoming recession.  My fellow Canadians, think carefully about who you vote for, especially those of you in Southern Ontario. Your housing values will not stay where they are if Canada’s entire economy is based on boom and bust commodity cycles and there are no jobs except in resource extraction, flipping burgers and finance.  Mulcair tried to warn you, years ago.

Learn.  Or reap the consequences.

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The Attack In Ottawa will be used to justify losing more rights

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On October 23, 2014

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Prime Minister Harper pretty much confirmed it:

‘Our laws and police powers need to be strengthened’

Yup.  Never let a crisis go to waste. I’m very sad that MPs and their staff were scared, and I’m sadder that a soldier lost his life.  But one attack does not justify increasing the police state.  However, if Harper wants it done, it will be done, a Canadian Prime Minister with a majority might is very close to a dictator, and in practical terms only the Supreme Court can check him.

Freedom in the West, such as it was, was nice while it lasted.

Observations on Canadian NDP leader Mulcair and the politics of class

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On March 30, 2012

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Last weekend, the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) elected a new leader: Thomas Mulcair, an MP from Quebec, who was a minister in the provincial Liberal government there, before he resigned rather than open a park for development.

Mulcair was the front runner, and his victory was hardly a surprise.  Many NDPers thought that he would move to the center and would abandon left-wing principles in pursuit of power, and a number of key members of the prior leader’s team have left.

I had my doubts, but Mulcair has gone a long way to assuage them in just a week.  First, this, in his first day in Parliament:

Speaking to reporters afterward, he laid out his concerns for the state of the Canadian economy and accused the federal government of neglecting workers as it promotes the extraction of natural resources, mainly in Western Canada.

“That’s driven up the value of the Canadian dollar, made it more difficult to export our own goods. We’re killing our manufacturing sector,” he said. “The way the Conservatives are acting has had a devastating impact on good jobs with pensions.”

There was a lot of whining from Alberta about this statement, but it’s just a fact.  The classic Canadian economy was a mixed one, which combined resource extraction and manufacturing.  When manufacturing does well, resources generally don’t.  When resources do, manufacturing doesn’t.  In the old model this was considered a strength, since it meant that part of the economy was doing well, no matter what resource prices were.  And when one sector was up, it was meant to subsidize the other sector.

Resource booms always end.  Every single one.  The oil boom will end, the question is when.  If Canada doesn’t have a manufacturing sector left when the boom ends, we will become a basket case South American country.  And Alberta will become the new Maritimes (remember, the Maritimes was originally a resource boom area.)

Politically speaking, this is also smart, because the NDP just isn’t going to get a lot of MPS out of Alberta in specific or the Prairies in general.  If attacking the tar sands, and calling for Canada to add value to resources before shipping them out of the country costs votes there, so be it.  The battleground is not Alberta.  Alberta went all in with the Conservatives, and they have to live with that.  There’s no point in pandering to Albertans, it would take a huge shift in voting to gain many more seats.

The places in play are the Maritimes and Ontario, and it is there that the election will be won or lost.  It is Ontario which has been losing its manufacturing due to the high dollar, and the Maritimes has been treated shoddily by the Conservatives as well.  So on both politics and economics Mulcair’s stance is a good one, which appeals to the regions where the NDP can make gains and pisses of people who would never vote NDP anyway.

Then there was this, yesterday, when the Tory austerity budget was unveiled:

“The Conservatives have caused the problem by gutting the fiscal capacity of the government,” Thomas Mulcair, the newly crowned NDP leader, said Wednesday.

“Now they’re saying, oh, gee whiz, no more fiscal capacity in the government, we know what we’ll do, we’ll start cutting the services of the government.”

Oh my, pointing out the obvious.  Conservative tax cuts and reckless spending caused the defict.  But tax cuts for rich people are sacrosanct, so old folks will have to wait till 67 to retire.

And this:

“Everything indicates the Conservative budget will be synonymous with cutbacks and job losses. A few months ago, the Prime Minister promised textually, in this House, that he would not touch pensions, would not cut health transfers to the provinces, would not touch services to the population?” Mr. Mulcair said. “Will the Prime Minister live up to his word, or will he break his promise?”

And then, Harper cut pensions and cut health transfer to the provinces.

Ouch.  That had to smart.

Yeah, I’m liking Mulcair.

One of the things which has distressed me most about the West is that no one on the left has really been willing to hammer the politics of class.  Mulcair, who has also hit inequality, shows some signs of doing so.  It is conventional wisdom that tax increases won’t fly, but the polling data doesn’t support that, at least not if you want to tax the rich and make that clear.  Heck, if even Globe and Mail readers (the primary business newspaper in Canada) want tax increases and more spending, I think we can conclude that it’ll fly (yes, I’m aware of the limitations of that particular poll).  But even the upper middle and lower upper class think that the true rich should pay their share.  Coming out of Quebec, which is somewhat insulated from the political culture of the rest of North America, Mulcair seems willing to play class politics, and seems to know how to do so.

So far, so good.  And as for the budget, Prime Minister Harper isn’t going to get the cuts he wants from the public service without causing great pain.  Nor is cutting other forms of spending going to help the economy.  Harper better get down on his knees and pray to God that there isn’t a major downturn in China, because he’s betting everything on resource prices.  If they crumble, the Canadian economy will go with them.  And so will Harper’s job.

This is opposition politics 101: whatever the government does, you oppose. If Harper’s bet on the resource economy works, then the Conservatives will get another term.  If it doesn’t, the NDP needs to be seen as the party which opposed his policies.  Mulcair is positioning them for that, and doing so in a way which allow him, if he gets in power, to put in place policies which will reward the constituencies he needs to win—everyone not attached to the oil teat.

RIP, Jack Layton, Federal New Democratic Party Leader

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On August 22, 2011

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If you haven’t heard, Jack died of cancer.  I only saw him in person once, at a Toronto council meeting back when he was a city councilor, but he impressed me at the time as one of only three councilors who showed decent respect to the citizens giving testimony.  I didn’t know then, and don’t know now, if it was savvy politics, genuine feeling, or both, but it felt like both.

Following politics closely, as I have, I have contempt for the majority of politicians, a contempt most of them have earned.  Jack Layton is one of the few I respected.  This is not because the NDP is the party in Canada whose ideology most closely approximates mine, I’ve had cordial contempt for most of the NDP’s federal leaders during my lifetime, it’s because Jack seemed to combine ability with a genuine calling to help people.  He seemed to want to do the right thing, for the right reasons.  That’s rare enough in everyday life, it’s beyond rare amongst experienced politicians.

Losing Layton is a big blow.  It’s common to say things like “Canada is at a crossroads”, but this really is an era of crisis, and one where countries will be making choices which will determine how prosperous, free and equitable they are for generations.  The current Conservative government is making choices which will cripple Canada economically, destroying much of what was built over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, making us into nothing more than a country which subsists on resources, a position which will leave us very subject to shocks, and as the Conservatives are implementing it, will make us more and more unequal.

The Liberals are not, unfortunately, a credible option.  They, as with most “centrist” parties in the world today, simply want to go to hell on the slow road.  Electing the NDP, then, is our only chance.  They might not do the right things, but they are the only party which would even consider doing the right things.  And Layton was a strong leader and one whom many Canadians genuinely liked.  The nickname “Smiling Jack” started out derisive, but it became a term of affection.

I hope the NDP will elect another strong leader, and one with genuine beliefs he or she intends to put into action if elected Prime Minister.  In the past the NDP has had a tendency to elect weak leaders who are aesthetically pleasing to the party’s constituents.  Neither Canada nor the NDP can afford to make the leader a statement, the leader must be a leader, and must be able to lead the party effectively, both in the next election and as Prime Minister.

If there is an afterlife, I’m sure Jack’s still smiling.  May he smile on all of us.  I don’t normally offer condolences to public figure’s loved ones, but as Olivia Chow was one of the other three councilors in that Toronto council meeting all those years ago who impressed me, I offer her my best wishes.

Jack will be missed.  But the best thing we can do in Jack’s memory is to continue his work, and make sure that the next government is NDP, and that once in government it does the right things.

RIP Jack.  The torch has fallen from your hands, but you led us farther than any of us would have dreamed. It’s up to us now.  You’d say it always was, and be right, but the world is genuinely better for you having lived.  There is no higher praise, and few of your generation of politicians can say the same.

P.S. Layton may be the only Canadian politician in my lifetime who could say something like “Love is better than anger, hope is better than fear”, and have me believe he meant it.  Because he actually lived his life that way and tried to help others live their lives that way.  Honestly, he’s the first public figure who has died in my life where I’m actually sad.

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