Author Archives: brucescribe

Apr 02 2014
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Politics

The great undoing of Torytown is underway

 

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When the pugnacious in politics – especially those who specialize in knocking the noses of the national press gallery out of joint – finally get their comeuppance, that’s news. Or so the media mafia decrees.

How else do you explain yesterday’s near-blanket, front-page coverage of former Stephen Harper hit-man Dimitri Soudas’s ouster as executive director of the national Conservative Party?

Indeed, the reporting was almost gleeful, if not particularly nourishing.  

“Dimitri Soudas, a long-time Stephen Harper loyalist handpicked by the prime minister. . .was forced to resign after a series of incidents where he personally intervened in a tightly contested nomination race on behalf of fiancee and MP Eve Adams,” the Globe and Mail fairly crowed.

“The Conservative Party went so far as to conduct its own investigation, combining through emails and phone records, to determine whether Mr. Soudas had breached a provision in his contract as executive director of the Tories that stipulated that he must recuse himself from Ms. Adam’s efforts to secure a nomination.”

Plainly, he had and, so naturally, the pundits treated themselves to a field day. The Globe’s Campbell Clark opined that Mr. Soudas “lost his job for being the heavy for the wrong person. He was for years. . .willing to get tough with journalists, MPs and party officials, to fire blasts of venom and throw his weight around.”

Mr. Clark’s colleague Lawrence Martin observed in his column, “The young and extremely partisan Mr. Soudas, who had previously served in the Prime Minister’s Office as one of the so-called boys in short pants, was hired to be the party’s principal election organizer. But he meddled too much. . .”
Still, as low-hanging fruit in the well-fertilized orchard of Ottawa’s crimes against common dignity go, the Soudas affair is a relatively easy pick, just as was the Nigel Wright-Mike Duffy-Pamela Wallin-Patrick Brazeau Senatorial Sincapades last year.

Alleged taxpayer-funded bad guys and their various misdemeanors, malapropisms and misdirections are always more fun to cover than are the creaky beams and girders that support the entire system. But, it is the failing apparatus, the crumbling infrastructure, of governance, itself, that contains the most important story. 

In fact, a great undoing in Torytown is underway – one for which the Harper government’s well-publicized gaffes and controversial policy directions are not singularly responsible. Little, almost banal, mischiefs are adding up and taking a toll.

The Canadian Press reports that a federal study, released last fall, on the advantages and disadvantages of expanding the Canada Pension Plan was actually far more nuanced than Department of Finance officials were prepared to admit publicly. 

The government line had been (and still is) that hiking CPP premiums and payouts would kill thousands of jobs. But, according to the CP story, “a summary of the study’s contents, prepared for then-finance minister Jim Flaherty, shows the job-loss claim was based on a misleading assumption.”

What’s more, according to a briefing note from which the CP quoted, “In the long run, expanding the CPP would bring economic benefits. Higher savings will lead to higher income in the future and higher consumption possibilities for seniors.”

Meanwhile, turning its attention to the Department of National Defence, The Canadian Press reports that the feds have effectively wasted more than six years of “research and planning” for new search and rescue aircraft. Says the news service: “A briefing prepared for the former associate defence minister, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, spells out in detail how the project, which has been grinding its way through the defence bureaucracy since 2004, was being further sidelined.”

The actual note, obtained through an access to information request by CP, stipulates “that the work completed on the project prior to 2011 is no longer valid and cannot be leveraged in the new procurement strategy.”

Finally, in a revelation the novelty of which ranks right up there with snow in Canadian winter (now, spring, perhaps), The Ottawa Citizen quotes the Public Policy Forum on the growing “lack of trust and understanding between bureaucrats and their political masters.”

Hmmm. You think?

Taken separately, these tidbits from the front lines of policy making might seem to appear as mere cracks in the foundation of otherwise responsible governance. 

Taken together, though, they form a troubling pattern of disingenuousness, buck-passing, waste, general incompetence, and mistrust.

Of course, it’s easier to make news of these qualities when we attach them to an individual or two, and not the system that affects them.

 

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Apr 01 2014
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Municipal Affairs

How to take ‘yes’ for an answer in politics

 

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Metro Moncton richly deserves its pride of place as one North America’s most attractive municipalities for businesses. In fact, according to a new KPMG report, pound-for pound, the Hub City may be the most free-enterprising on the continent.

As the 2014 Competitive Alternatives report states, “The cost leaders in the New England/Atlantic Canada region are the Atlantic Canada cities of Moncton,

Charlottetown, and Fredericton, all with costs nine percent or more below the US baseline. Costs are somewhat higher in Halifax, St. John’s and Bangor, while Manchester (New Hampshire) and Burlington (Vermont) have the highest 

business costs among the smaller cities in this region.”

Of course, money isn’t everything. Foresight also counts for a lot in the fortunes of any community. That’s why the long-running ‘will-we-won’t-we-push-me-pull-you’ saga of a rumored, though not actually realized, downtown centre has been such a frustrating anomaly in the city’s urban oeuvre – a rare instance in which Moncton has sacrificed its youthful swagger for a geriatric shuffle.

In fact, an unmistakable fustiness permeates the Request for Proposal (RFP) that City Hall has sent to prospective builders, as if councillors and staff are tripping over their own feet in their effort not to get ahead of themselves lest they (gasp!) actually hit the ground running on this thing.

The real problem has always been, and remains, existential. What do we – and those we elect – actually want a downtown centre to do? Opinions clearly vary and to the extent that they do, the actual character of the urban core hovers just out of view, beyond our grasp. 

Shall we embrace, as the RFP stipulates, the “Moncton Multi-Use Sport and Entertainment Facility” or the “Moncton Downtown Centre” or, simply, “Downtown Centre”? What does “Multi-Use” mean?

We know one thing: It means being flexible enough to accommodate two sports teams, which might not otherwise prosper here 

“The Downtown Centre will be the home of the Moncton Wildcats, and the Moncton Miracles,” the RFP says. “The Moncton Wildcats. . .will be a major tenant at the Downtown Centre. All of the Moncton Wildcats’ hockey and business operations will be located in the Downtown Centre, and the Moncton Wildcats will play approximately

thirty-four (34) home games per season, as well as any playoff games at the Downtown Centre. . .The Moncton Miracles basketball league franchise is a charter member of the 

National Basketball League of Canada (Atlantic Division), and plays twenty (20) 

regular home games per season.”

But, in calling for a mere 7,500-seat capacity (hardly better than city’s 40-year-old coliseum, whose fate as a refurbished trade centre and show location is linked to the downtown centre’s progress), officials are inadvertently raising uncomfortable questions about the broader utility of such a facility, particularly as an entertainment mooring for the downtown.

Still, the RFP insists, “The Moncton Downtown Centre development project is a major local project which has been part the City’s development and planning vision for many years. This Project has a high degree of visibility, as the Downtown Centre will be one of the most important new buildings located in the City, and the Province, for many years to come.”

Really? How so? 

“The Downtown Centre must encourage downtown residential development: 

The City envisions the Downtown Centre as a catalyst for downtown development, giving more people a reason to live downtown,” the RFP continues. “Specifically, the 

City is seeking design proposals that facilitate the City’s objective of resulting 

in more people living downtown, higher density forms of development, and a 

variety of housing options, including a mix of unit types and tenures (i.e. rental 

vs. ownership).”

City officials are not wrong to appreciate the catalytic effects of architecture and design on housing, retail and hospitality development in the downtown. But to properly re-imagine a busy, densely populated, and diverse urban core, we must articulate a fuller cultural agenda, and in greater detail, than we have for its new anchoring edifice.

Bold, aggressive strategies with no guarantee of success are what made Moncton one of the world’s recognized “smart cities” at a competition in New York a few years ago. That this city boasts the international airport it does owes everything to its habit of making a productive nuisance of itself at all levels of government.

Nothing less is called for today, and there’s no reason to start taking ‘no’ for an answer to the questions the future poses. 

 

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Mar 31 2014
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Government, Politics

Who vouches for real democratic reform?

 

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You have to hand it to him. When faced with utter, public repudiation the likes of which might send more seasoned political warriors running for cover, young Pierre Poilevre merely restocks his rhetorical ordnance and grins for the newsreel.

For more than a month, Canada’s minister for state for democratic reform (age 34, in case anyone is counting) has been thumping tables, insisting that the nation’s electoral system is grievously flawed and, so, requires an immediate and wholesale fix. He has even taken to penning editorials for major newspapers to ram his points home to “elites” about whose opinions he does not ordinarily care.

“Many of the government’s critics have reacted with predictable hyperbole to the Fair Elections Act. (Bill C-23, now in committee),” he wrote in a piece for The Globe and Mail last week. “Yet the bill is common sense. . .The bill requires voters to choose from 39 pieces of acceptable identification to prove identity and residence. Photo ID will not be required, but simply having someone vouch for a voter’s identity – without so much as a utility bill to back it up – will no longer suffice.”

To reinforce his arguments, Mr. Poilevre has relied heavily on the work of Harry Neufeld, the author of Elections Canada’s compliance report on the 2011 ballot. Quoting liberally from the report, the junior minister wrote: “‘Errors that involve a failure to properly administer these procedures are serious. The courts refer to such as irregularities which can result in votes being declared invalid,’ it reads on Page 5.” 

Moving on, chip appropriately balanced on shoulder, Mr. Poilevre, taunts, “If you don’t like that, try this, on Page 14. . .‘Too frequently, the errors are so serious that the courts would judge them to be irregularities that violate the legal provisions that establish an elector’s entitlement to vote.’ Further, Mr. Neufeld noted that the sorts of vouching errors that occurred in the riding of Etobicoke Centre ‘could contribute to a court overturning an election’.” 

The problem is that Mr. Neufeld, himself, isn’t buying anything Mr. Poilevre is selling and really wishes the young fellow would stop quoting him “selectively”. Even more damning, he told reporters following a parliamentary committee meeting last week that Bill C-23 should be either amended or killed outright, because “it appears like they’re (government) trying to tilt the playing field in one direction. . .theirs. It makes me wonder whether this process is really being administered in a completely neutral way.”

And what say you, Mr. Poilevre to this rather unequivocal rejection of your noble scheme by the very man on whose findings you base your entire case for reform? 

“Mr. Neufeld is entitled to author recommendations, he is not entitled to author he law,” the minister rejoined last week. “That (the law) is left to parliamentarians. And at no time did I ever claim to agree with his recommendations. I don’t agree with them, and that’s why they are not in the bill.”

Apparently, two public officials, like two physicians, can agree on a diagnosis; just not the course of treatment. This, of course, assumes that the two are equally qualified. In this case, however, they are not. Worse, one is carrying a gross weight of partisan baggage.

Mr. Neufeld is right to worry about the tens-of-thousands of people (possibly, as many as 500,000) the Fair Elections Act’s interdictions on vouching and voter registration cards will alienate from the democratic system. He’s also right to speculate about the minister’s motives for leaping to conclusions the evidence does not support.

According to a Globe story last week: “‘A large number of irregularities did occur, but there is no evidence whatsoever that any voters fraudulently misrepresented themselves in the vouching process,’ Mr. Neufeld said. The errors included mixing up the vouchee and voucher or failing to fill in the date, he said, adding of Mr. Poilievre: ‘I think he has been selectively reading and quoting from my report.’”

Of course he has. That’s what a loyal government member does. And the thicker his skin, the better the troops perform in the trenches where truth and ideology fight the eternal battle for supremacy. 

 

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Mar 28 2014
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Climate

Snow-bound by the weather gods

 

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“Across Prince Edward Island, all public and private school systems, along with colleges and universities, shut down in the midst of a howling snowstorm,” The Canadian Weather Trivia Calendar helpfully reports. 

Hello, Canadian spring. You seem awfully familiar to me. Have you, by any chance, met Canadian winter? Oh yes, Canadian winter and I go way back. 

Friends of mine from England are visiting. Months ago, when they began planning for this trip – which would begin in Halifax, wend through the Maritimes en route to central Canada and points west of the American prairies – they asked me what sort of outerwear would be suitable for the Maritimes at the end of March.

I said something like, “Well, that sort of depends on the year, but you can be pretty safe with a sweater and sturdy raincoat, maybe some rubber boots.” 

Friends of mine from England are no longer speaking to me. Fortunately for what’s left of our relationship, they’re staying in a hotel. Besides, it’s not as if they can get out my front door any time soon. 

But, really, how was I supposed to know? The weather app on my iPhone is less than useless. Only four days ago, it seems, meteorologists were calmly predicting steadily improving, springlike weather. It was just possible to imagine the crocuses, narcissuses and tulips peaking up from the good earth. And then. . .

“Across a large swath of Atlantic Canada, people who ventured outside Wednesday felt the cold sting of a massive spring blizzard that brought much of the region to a standstill,” The National Post reported on Wednesday. “Most schools and government offices were closed in the Maritimes, flights were cancelled and traffic along some of the busiest streets and highways was virtually non-existent amid knee-high drifts. Even the Confederation Bridge to P.E.I. was temporarily closed as powerful gusts howled across the Northumberland Strait.”

Isn’t it marvelous that when the central Canadian media report on something as verifiable and straightforward a storm they still manage to get the facts about our region wrong? Note to NP editors: It doesn’t stake Snowmaggedon 2014 to close the Confederation Bridge; sometimes a light breeze and a dash of sea fog will do the trick.

But I digress.

The experts are divided on what all of this actually means. Of course, that’s what experts do; they become divided at the drop of mukluk. 

Some think the unusually cold, unusually long and unusually snowy winter this year is proof positive of global warming’s effect on the climate (extreme events and seasons – a product of increasing amounts of energy in the atmosphere – are what the models predict). “Scientists call it Santa’s revenge,” The Globe and Mail reported in February. “It’s the theory that persistent weather patterns at the mid-latitudes – like this winter’s tediously long-lasting polar vortex or California’s severe drought – are a direct consequence of climate change heating up the Arctic.”

Others think the persistently inclement weather doesn’t mean a thing. Or, at least, not yet. According to to Scientific American piece in 2009, “‘You can’t tell much about the climate or where it’s headed by focusing on a particularly frigid day, or season, or year, even,’ writes Eoin O’Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor. ‘It’s all in the long-term trends,’ concurs Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.”

Still others have thrown up their hands, turned off their cell phones and headed south for the remainder of whatever season we in the Great White North have decided to call this.  

In fact, the only point on which everyone in the business of forecasting the weather seems to agree is that they all got it horribly, embarrassingly wrong. (Everyone, that is, except the decidedly unscientific Farmer’s Almanac).

“Not one of our better forecasts,” Mike Halpert, the acting director of the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States, told Bloomberg Businessweek last month. 

The piece continues: “The center grades itself on what it calls the Heidke skill score, which ranges from 100 (perfection) to -50 (monkeys throwing darts would have done better). October’s forecast for the three-month period of November through January came in at -22.”

On the other hand, unpredictable weather generates its own, comforting precedents. 

Here’s the rest of that Weather Trivia Calendar report: “Federal and provincial offices also closed, including Canada Post mail delivery, and seniors couldn’t get Meals on Wheels.”

In fact, that was March 27, exactly two years ago. 

Funny how it seems like only yesterday.

 

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Mar 27 2014
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Government, Politics

Canadians chime in on ‘unfair’ Elections Act

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Those habitues of the Ivory Tower who have, from time to time, harboured serious misgivings about the average Canadian’s commitment to democracy in this country need worry no longer.

Thanks to his Fair Elections Act – which purports to reduce the risk of voter fraud by eliminating “vouching” (in which a voter vouches for another if the latter lacks sufficient ID) and rewriting much of the rulebook to render Elections Canada more accountable, but also less independent – Pierre Poilievre, the federal government’s Minister of State for Democratic Reform, has done more in one year to light a fire under his fellow citizens’ butts than an invading army could in 10.

Having passed its second reading, Bill C-23 (officially saddled with the cumbersome descriptor, “An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts”) represents Mr. Poilievre’s earnest effort to fix what he and his political masters perceive is a seriously flawed system.

The problem is, the more time one spends examining the substance of the proposed legislation, the less one tends to agree with its sponsors and proponents. The most contentious issue is the attack on vouching, which would very likely undermine the democratic rights of First Nations citizens, students in transition and residents of old-folks homes, among others.

In fact, according to an Angus Reid Global poll last month, “Canadian support for changes to the Elections Act proposed by the Harper government is highest among those who aren’t aware of the issue. Among those who are familiar with the contents of the Fair Elections Act, 44 per cent say they support it and 56 per cent are opposed. However, among those who are only aware of the issue in passing or who are just not paying attention, that support rises to 53 per cent, while 47 per cent say they’re opposed.”

How this breaks down along party lines is instructive, of not especially unexpected. “When it comes to awareness and political affiliation,” the pollster reports, “awareness is highest among past Liberal and NDP voters (25 per cent and 24 per cent respectively) followed by past Conservative voters (18 per cent).”

Meanwhile, the survey indicates that Canadians, in general, are fed up with the Conservative government’s fetishistic tinkering with the cogs and gears of a system that is not, essentially, broken. Angus Reid Global interprets its poll results bluntly: “Canadians do not trust the motives of the Conservative government in introducing the proposed legislation, and do not feel the Harper government’s impact on the democratic process has been positive.”

Not that Mr. Poilievre hasn’t done his level best to knock some sense into our recalcitrant noodles. In an opinion piece for The Globe and Mail earlier this week, he decried his critics’ “hyperbolic” reaction to the Bill, which, he insists is “common sense. “Canadians instinctively understand that these changes are reasonable and fair. That is why they have not shared the critics’ hysteria.”

Again, though, that’s not entirely accurate.

Yes, a group of international scholars have grabbed headlines by claiming, in an open letter to national media, that “the governing party in Canada has proposed a set of wide-ranging changes, which if enacted, would. . .undermine the integrity of the Canadian electoral process.”

And, yes, an assemblage of Canadian academics recently echoed these sentiments when they publicly stated, “Beyond our specific concerns about the Bill’s provisions, we are alarmed at the lack of due process in drafting the Bill and in rushing it through Parliament.”

But, increasingly, what fills the letters and comment pages of print and online versions of major media are the grumblings of the the hoi polloi, i.e., the Great Unwashed. i.e., you and me.

“The Harper government’s latest assault on democratic ideals and practices with its proposed Fair Elections Act, while roundly criticized, is at least consistent in its semantic tactics with earlier attacks, notably in the 2006 Federal Accountability Act,” writes Neil Burk of Nepean, Ontario. “As the fair Elections Act has nothing to do with fairness principles, the Accountability Act is unaccountably silent on accountability principles.”

His screed appeared in the Globe’s letters section on one of two days this week during which the newspaper published nine archly critical, and well-written, letters from readers.

No, no, all you professor of political science, fear not.

From the recent evidence you may deduce that the condition of democracy in Canada is just fine, after all, thank you very much.

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Mar 25 2014
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Government, Idiocracy, Politics

And now for something completely different: good news for New Brunswick. . .sort of

 

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New Brunswick may be drowning in debt. In fact, practitioners of the wooly science of fiscal forensics may have already pronounced this province dead on arrival. But don’t we just do a bang-up job reporting our woes to the rest of the world?

The C.D. Howe Institute says we deserve a little praise for a change. Specifically, Colin Busby of The C.D. Howe Institute tells the Saint John Telegraph-Journal that, according to his annual study on government spending overruns in Canada (also known as “The Pinocchio Report”), this province does “reasonably well” predicting its financial condition. We are, in a phrase, “middle of the road”, which is better than road kill, I suppose.

What’s more, we’re brutally honest with ourselves and the rest of the country about the hobo clothes we’re forced to wear. “New Brunswick is one of the jurisdictions where you can clearly find comparable numbers,” Mr. Busby says. “You simply find what the budget promises were and then find the numbers in the public accounts and compare them. That’s a positive story for New Brunswick.”

Still, he adds, “When it comes to spending overruns and the ability to hit budget targets, either overshooting or undershooting (New Brunswick) is not in the range of Ontario and the federal government who have done a significantly better job in terms of holding to what they promised in their spring budgets.”

Here’s how the numbers shake out: Over the past 10 years, cumulative overruns, expressed as fractions of 2013/14 budgeted spending, were highest in Saskatchewan (36 per cent), Alberta (26 per cent) and Manitoba (22 per cent), lowest in Canada, overall (one per cent), Ontario (five per cent) and Nova Scotia (seven per cent).

New Brunswick overspent by $1.2 billion over the past decade, which is bad. On the other hand, averaged out over the period, we came in less than 15 per cent off our annual targeted goals, which is good. Sort of.

For a finance minister, there is, I’m guessing, a certain comfort in knowing, with any degree of accuracy, just how badly off your jurisdiction is in the scheme of things. It’s a little like being sentenced to an indeterminate jail term. At least you know you have a cot; let’s just hope your bunk buddies in the bond market aren’t complete psychos.

But, in the larger context, how instructive or useful are these sort of statistical parlour games?

That New Brunswick manages to “present well” is vastly less important than its moribund economy, the structural instability of which makes accurate budget forecasting a near impossibility (a fact which suggests that the province’s reasonably fair reporting record is more a function of good luck than good prognostication).

Meanwhile, the Conference Board of Canada forecasts continued stormy economic weather for the province. “Prospects for New Brunswick’s economy will remain dim for at least one more year,” it said in its revised winter outlook earlier this month. “Cuts in the potash industry, and the closing of the Maple Leaf Food plant in Moncton, will limit economic growth to 0.8 per cent in 2014.”

How will this affect the next round of budget promises?

An even more intriguing question is whether a fully functioning shale gas industry, which should make us all filthy rich, will also make our elected officials filthy liars, though through no fault of their own.

The C.D. Howe Report notes the paradox common to provinces rich in natural resources: Their budgets are even farther from target than are those of patently poor provinces, such as New Brunswick. Economic instability, it seems, cuts both ways.

“Jurisdictions that are more dependent on natural resources showed sizable positive revenue biases: Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and labrador and Alberta all had biases of eight to 10 per cent,” the Institute noted. The natural-resource dependent jurisdictions that more affected by commodity-price swings also had low accuracy scores.”

So, then, the more money a jurisdiction has sloshing around in oil and gas wells, the less veracious are its budget forecasts.

What a delicious irony.

Still, if I had to choose, I’d rather the province I call home be recognized for the power of its industry, than the accuracy of its numbers-crunchers.

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Mar 25 2014
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Politics

How to punch below your pay grade

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From my attic perch, overlooking a handsome residential street in downtown Moncton where summer occasionally deigns to make an appearance, I am master of all I survey – at least within the four walls that contains this, my worldwide headquarters.

So, naturally, I – and I, alone – determine the conditions (the where, the when and, crucially, the amount) I pay myself for the good work I perform on behalf of various clients who still appreciate a well-wrought phrase, a bon mot, from time to time.

In fact, I did this just the other day when I awarded myself a $13.56 weekly raise, which was nearly enough to cover the cost of four liters of milk and plenty to score a bottle of plonk wine.

No bosses hovered at my shoulder to dispute my self-evaluation; no trustees in bankruptcy (knock wood) pestered me with questions about my moral ambiguities. It was just me and the cheque book, and in the memo field I wrote, “There you go chief, don’t spend it all in one place.”

Apparently, our esteemed servants of Canadian democracy operate in much the same way. The question is: Should they?

News comes down from The Hill Times that Members of Parliament and Senators of this great and forgiving nation will receive pay bumps of 2.2 and 2.5 per cent, respectively, effective April 1, despite the fact that these rates exceed both the country’s current annual GDP and inflation growth rates. Their reasoning: Well shucks, folks, this is the way things are done in Fat City.

Frankly, I don’t object to the amounts as much as I do to the process. And in this I am not alone. “We’d much prefer to see politician salaries set by a panel of everyday Canadians who don’t work for the government,” Gregory Thomas of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation told The Times. “We don’t agree that it is a good idea for politicians to set their own salaries because there is an evident conflict of interest.”

I’m not sure what he means when he says, “everyday Canadians.” But, I’m inclined to take his point anyway. On the other hand, the politicians are right about one thing: the practice is not without precedence.

Last year at around this time, Senators hiked their annual salaries and perks by nearly $3,000 to keep up with the Joneses in the House of Commons. That meant that, henceforth, Upper Chamber residents would pocket about $135,000, compared with about $160,000 for MPs. These boosts followed a three-year freeze on their compensations.

And, boy, some of those compensations were handsome.

For a Senator, the base salary was $135,200. But if you were fortunate enough to be the Speaker, you could expect an additional $56,000. If you were Deputy Speaker, you could count on pocketing an extra $26,000. The bonus for being the government’s leader in the senate was a whopping $76,800.

The government Whip earned $11,000 above base pay grade; the opposition Whip snagged $6,600. The bonuses for most committee chairs ranged from nearly $12,000 to $6,000.

Nice work, if you can get it. It’s little wonder that the notorious and nearly disgraced Mike Duffy had trained his keen eye on this particular prize for so long.

Again, though, the fee schedule is less troublesome than the specter of entitlement that always attends star chambers whose members think that other people’s money (namely, yours and mine) is their fair game.

According to The Times, “in the United Kingdom, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has been in control of MP salaries since the expense scandal in 2009, which uncovered MPs claiming inappropriate and at times exorbitant expenses, like the case of one MP who expensed the cost of building a moat to his office budget. Members of parliament in the U.K. had their salaries frozen for two years, starting in March 2011 at ($124,000 CDN) a year.”

Something like this is an obvious solution for Canada. Why not institute an independent review and approval committee, not unlike any public utilities board in the country, to set and monitor compensation packages for elected representatives?

Why must we tolerate the appearance of collusion at the general public’s expense?

After all, unlike me, MPs and senators in this country are not free agents. They are not the masters of all they survey.

According to our Constitution, we are.

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Mar 24 2014
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Municipal Affairs

Put Moncton’s future in the hands of the willing

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It’s fast becoming apparent that if the community of interests that comprises Greater Moncton intends to erect any of its many imagined monuments to civic pride and progress (including, but not limited to, a downtown events centre) it must turn to private enterprises, voluntary organizations and institutions to get the job done.

Governments, it seems, are otherwise occupied counting their dwindling supply of loonies and obfuscating the public debate with impenetrable statements like the one Moncton City Manager Jacques Dube issued the other day to a Moncton Times & Transcript reporter on the subject of concert dates for Magnetic Hill:

“(City) staff need a couple more weeks to prepare final recommendations in relation to potential changes to concert and event governance, organizational structures and any new financial parameters regarding future concerts and events at Magnetic Hill, the Stadium, the Coliseum and other city venues.”

From this, it seems entirely reasonably to conclude that bafflegab-production has usurped actual event-prospecting over at Casa del Mudtown.

The good news is that just as some city officials and elected representatives (not all, to be sure and to be fair) take their time figuring out how they feel about our live sports and entertainment scene – i.e., whether or not a new events centre should support a full-blown, downtown renaissance, or just itself; whether or not Magnetic Hill will ever again attract the likes of the Rolling Stones, and 75,000 fans, for one weekend of gloriously bacchanalian spending – some of us, at least, are willing to pick up the ball.

I’m not especially fond of summitry in any of its guises. Too often, events involving a few hundred people, representing a few hundred different points of view, convened to “get things done” produce precisely the opposite effect. But the final report of the recent “Greater Moncton – One Region, One Vision 2014” conference suggests that this gathering was the happy exception to my rule.

Most impressive, perhaps, was the degree of unanimity it achieved on concrete issues that affect all sectors and industry segments in the metropolitan area.

All participants agreed, for example, that the tri-city area must draw more talent, more immigrants, into its orbit. “Our economic, cultural and social advancement will be strengthened through attracting more newcomers to the community,” the report observed. “Even the professional sectors are having a harder time attracting workers compared to the recent past.”

Though summiteers complained about the federal government’s notoriously ineffectual temporary foreign worker program, some suggested solutions they, themselves, could offer, such as “strengthening the linkages between industries and educational institutions; and raising the profile of industry among young people.”

Other priorities included engendering greater “industry-specific collaboration” to address joint problems; nurturing entrepreneurship and “strengthening the start-up ecosystem (involving) access to capital, mentorship and guidance and physical incubation spaces; and “fostering Greater Moncton’s role as a regional services centre” especially for the nascent natural gas industry in the province.

Of course, we know a community is largely on the right course when its members – ably articulating its advantages as well as its challenges – find that its strengths and weakness are actually two signs of the same municipal coin.

By summit consensus, for example, one of Greater Moncton’s top 10 competitive boons is its “entrepreneurial spirit”. At the same time, one of its key drawbacks is the “lack of new entrepreneurs.”

These two facts, juxtaposed as they are in the same urban headspace, immediately suggest strategies for real progress – the obvious one being to leverage the experience of existing entrepreneurs to mentor, promote and provide new opportunities for promising, youthful startups.

This is the type of active, collaborative, inventive, and mindful approach to solving problems and, frankly, just getting things done that this metropolitan area needs now, before it grows inured to habitual underachievement in governments at all levels.

So says the Summit report: “The success of Greater Moncton over the past 25 years has been in large part due to cooperation and collaboration. The 2014 Greater Moncton Economic Summit was the start of a process meant to rekindle this spirit of collaboration.”

We may only hope that from Moncton City Hall’s perspective that process comes just in the nick of time.

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Mar 21 2014
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Municipal Affairs

Get the comedy out of city hall and onto a proper stage

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How many times shall we pose the existential query that pertains to Moncton’s, as yet entirely fictional, downtown events centre? How much patience must we yet muster before we finally obtain an answer?

To build or under-build: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous Council,

Or to take arms against a sea of dragging feet,

And by opposing trip them?

Naturally, I extend my deepest apology to Bill Shakespeare’s phantom, both for mangling one of his finest soliloquies and for inappropriately inserting it into the wrong fantastical genre.

After all, Hamlet is high tragedy, whereas the play underway at Moncton City Hall seems more, in form and function, an Italian farce, if by this we accept the dictionary’s definition of a “light, dramatic composition that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters and broad humour.”

According to The Moncton Times & Transcript’s Cole Hobson, reporting yesterday, “a preliminary copy of the potential RFP details that the centre must have a minimum of 7,500 permanent seats, which is significantly lower than figures that have been discussed in the past and not much larger than the current fixed-seat capacity of the Moncton Coliseum, which sits around 6,500.”

So irked by this were the organ’s sturdy, fearless opinionators that the lead editorial in yesterday’s T&T concluded in righteous exasperation, “A new centre, based on the original concept of seating in the 10,000 to 12,000 range with an ability to be expanded in the future, would cost $100 million or more, but would attract a far greater variety of events and thus generate the kind of entrepreneurial interest that would lead to at least another $100 million in related development.”

As to the kicker, “If this council can’t embrace the future, it might as well cling to the past,” I heartily concur. And I don’t even come from here.

In fact, I come from a couple of places where this sort of nonsense happens all the time, where institutional hemming and hawing and corrosive uncertainties among the penny-wise and pound-foolish virtually paralyze municipal chambers. Even when they don’t, the decisions are invariably absurd and counterproductive. (Halifax City Council’s endless debates over which view of the harbour should take precedence over the construction of which mixed-use high rise are legendary).

Which brings us back around to the little matter of seven-thousand-five-hundred seats. I’ve said it once; I’ll say it again: That’s not enough to do the job of a proper multi-use events centre. So, then, why bother?

A proper multi-use events centre draws and hosts gigs from every possible quarter of the world’s $4-trillion entertainment-and-sports-industrial complex. That means its capacity must meet a specific threshold to attract a wider variety of performances and events. Below this mark of 10K-15K seats, we’re stuck with, at best, serving the status quo; at worst, losing business that was once ours to venues in places like Summerside (Sound familiar?)

On the other hand, if we do it right, according to a research report by Moncton-based Jupia Consultants, we can legitimately expect that a new centre will annually “attract between 317,000 and 396,000 people. . .generating between $12 and $15 million in spending.” In the process, it will “support retail, food service, accommodation and other services in the downtown,” where it “should also support residential growth.”

We know this, don’t we? We’ve been yakking about it for years. And for years, we’ve been chasing our tails in City Council like the bumbling protagonists of the 19th Century stage trifle, The Italian Straw Hat.

To his credit, Mayor George LeBlanc has been clear and consistent on the issue. In yesterday’s piece, he said that he “personally” believed in “something in the range of 9,000 seats, plus suites and club seats. . .which would bring the total capacity up to about 10,000 seats. . .I think at this stage of the game, we really need to be looking forward, not backward.”

Yes, we do, and before we come to the grinding realization that we, in this community, have lost interest in taking a bold, leading role in our own lives.

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Mar 20 2014
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Politics

Farewell, Jim, and don’t let failure smack you on the way out

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First, the excellent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announces that the North Atlantic’s ice pack is (just barely) showing signs of (gasp, can it be true?) breaking up.

Then, intrepid scientists at NASA announce that they have identified, for all time, the point at which. . .well, time began.

And if that isn’t enough to tickle a polar witch’s fanny, Canada’s official trustee in bankruptcy, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, announces that he’s had it with politics and so shall, several dozen months before the next federal election, take his leave of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet and try to land himself a real job in the private sector.

Which is another way of saying that, in Canada, time can and does stand still, just when you least expect it.

“Yesterday, I informed the prime minister that I am resigning from cabinet,”Pal Jimmy (we can call him this, since he is, now, one of us again) wrote in in his official statement. “This was a decision I made with my family earlier this year, as I will be returning to the private sector.”

But not before issuing a few well chosen, nicely crafted words on his own behalf:

“I am grateful to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for providing me with the opportunity and responsibility to serve Canadians as their Minister of Finance since 2006, one of the longest serving Finance Ministers in Canadian history.

“As I reflect on my almost two decades in politics, I am proud of the accomplishments of the governments I was part of, provincial and federal. In my time as Finance Minister, I am proud of the work I have done to help manage the deepest economic challenge to face Canada since the depression of the 1930s and ensure Canada emerged stronger and as a recognized economic leader on the international stage.

“Along with managing Canada’s performance during the global economic crisis, I am pleased our government brought forward positive measures to make Canada one of the world’s best places to do business. . .I also made it a priority to help improve the well-being of people with disabilities.

“My goal was always to get Canada back on track to a balanced budget after the large deficit we agreed was necessary in Budget 2009 to combat the Great Recession and protect Canadian jobs. As outlined in Budget 2014, I followed through on that commitment. There is no doubt that Canada’s budget will be balanced in 2015.  Canada’s fiscal position is the envy of the developed world. All Canadians can be proud of the country’s performance.

“Now, I will focus on life beyond politics as I return to the private sector. I believe that I have served my country, province and constituents of Whitby-Oshawa to the best of my abilities and thank them for their continued trust and support for almost two decades. . .Thank you, Jim Flaherty.”

No, Jim, thank you.

Thanks to your determination to get the country “back on track” from whichever imaginary hell more powerful cabineteers than you spectrally raised to frighten the pajamas off taxpayers, Canada has become a mewling, paranoid simulacrum of its former self.

We no longer care about employment insurance recipients. We dismiss young people and educators as easily as we do environmental scientists. We can’t even care properly for our veterans of foreign wars.

Thanks to your fiscal leadership, Diamond Jim, Canada has become a meaner, tighter nation. Your policies may have saved the country from going down the road with Greece, but was that ever really the danger?

Wasn’t the real danger the encroaching degree of incivility and mistrust your buddies on the Hill did nothing to mitigate in the villages, towns and cities of a once-tolerant, open-minded, open-handed nation?

Forget the fact that Canada’s GDP has been handed over to natural resources industries. Forget the fact that public investments in science and technology serve only the status quo and, so, produce, no material or intellectual gain.

Forget all of it, Jim.

YER outta here!

Can’t say I blame you.

Can’t say I’ll miss you either, as the weather warms and the secrets of the big, wide universe are revealed just in time for your first Big-Bank interview in the corner office where black holes go to thrive.

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