Category Archives: Democracy

Jan 30 2015
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Democracy, Politics

Speak up about New Brunswick, whomever you are

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How delicious is the irony, how coarse and familiar are the political moats and keeps this government – indeed, every provincial regime since New Brunswick joined confederation some 148 years ago – dig and erect to protect their silos of interest.

Just as the Liberal regime of Brian Gallant invites citizens of this jurisdiction to suggest ways and means for improving the business and order of elective representation here, the premier, himself, chooses to take a broad swipe at two men who have done nothing but accept his request.

Are not provincial Ombudsman Charles Murray and Child and Youth Advocate Norman Bosse also citizens? And, in the course of their duties as officers of the Legislative Assembly, are they not, perhaps, better qualified than most to offer sound and cogent advice to the body politic?

What, indeed, disqualifies their opinions – apart from the fact that, as agents of civil administration, their utterances can, and do, embarrass the temporary overlords of the common weal?

A week ago, in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, Messrs. Murray and Bosse issued a stern rebuke of the current and common practice of staying any and all investigations into potential conflicts of interest by elected members of the Assembly who have, for whichever reasons, ceased to sit as functioning MLAs.

In their joint commentary, the two officials point out that “when allegations of misconduct are made against our elected representatives, all New Brunswickers have an interest in the result. If an MLA has been unfairly accused, that Member deserves to be exonerated by a completed process, rather than have their reputation permanently marked by the accusation. Where the Member has erred, they deserve the censure appropriate to their misconduct and all Members can learn from the guidance the investigation provides.”

Moreover, they state, “Requiring investigations to end when a Member resigns or is defeated gives an incentive for trivial complaints and encourages delay and non-co-operation on the part of the investigated – a problem Conflict of Interest Commissioners past and present have noted in their reports.”

In fact, a simple legislative solution exists, to wit:

“A similar loophole for lawyers was closed in the statute governing the province’s Law Society decades ago with very little debate. If we allowed Doctors to end investigations about their conduct by resigning (we don’t), the Legislative Assembly could be expected to react with outrage. Why the double standard?”

Why, indeed?

But rather than embracing this worthy advice, Mr. Gallant decided to shoot from his hip, declaring, in effect, that none of this was Messrs. Murray’s and Bosse’s business. Responding to questions, the premier declared last week that he was “a bit surprised to see the ombudsman and the child and youth advocate speak about this.”

He continued: “I’m not 100 per cent sure exactly why they felt it was their place to make (a) comment. This is the conflict of interest commissioner’s role and we will certainly speak to him to see how we can improve the rules. . .I’m not sure how the child and youth advocate has a role to play when it comes to conflict of interest with politicians.”

Again, though, doesn’t everyone in this province have “a role to play when it comes to conflict of interest with politicians”?

Or should we all just shut up whenever an elected representative, accused of wrongdoing and under investigation, chooses to avoid a public roasting by resigning his post or refusing to re-offer?

More to the point, perhaps, is this: What is the role of this province’s legislative watchdogs, if not to point out when New Brunswick’s various emperors have somehow forgotten to wear their clothes?

Suggesting that a duly appointed ombudsman and child and youth advocate should stick to their knitting betrays a fundamental misapprehension of how a healthy democracy works.

In our system, justice, law and morality should never operate behind moats and keeps and silos, guarded by politicians and their intellectually corpulent operatives. 

All of this smacks of politics-as-usual, back-room smarminess, something that New Brunswick can no longer tolerate (if it ever could).

Bravo, watchdogs!

Keep biting the hands that swipe you.

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Jan 22 2015
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Democracy, Economy

Whose money is it anyway?

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When attempting to embarrass the filthy rich into parting with a few ducats from their dragon hordes, timing – which is, itself, the fount of all great wealth – is everything.

Oxfam knows this, which is why, on the eve of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (a swank soiree for the world’s movers and shakers, or, depending on one’s political leanings, satanic masters of the dark arts), the international anti-poverty organization has released its most recent research paper on the unequal distribution of mammon across the planet. And the tale it tells might curl a philanthropically inclined billionaire’s toes.

As the summary document, Woking for the Few, plainly states, “Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one per cent of the population. The wealth of the one per cent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.”

Meanwhile, “The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world. Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. The richest one per cent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012. In the US, the wealthiest one per cent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis

growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.”

Oxfam allows that some inequality can be a good thing, as it tends to “drive growth and progress, rewarding those with talent, hard earned skills, and the ambition to innovate and take entrepreneurial risks.”

Overall, though, that’s not how the world is working.

“Widening inequality is creating a vicious circle where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs from the top table,” Oxfam’s Executive Director Winnie Byanyima told the Guardian this week. “In developed and developing countries alike we are increasingly living in a world where the lowest tax rates, the best health and education and the opportunity to influence are being given not just to the rich but also to their children.”

As the report points out, runaway economic inequality creates permanent upper and lower classes, which constrain the flow of capital to deserving and innovative programs and projects. That, in turn, dampens overall growth and exacerbates poverty and homelessness. It also tends to widen existing gulfs in opportunities, particularly those between women and men.

What’s more, the research reports, “In many countries, extreme economic inequality is worrying because of the pernicious impact that wealth concentrations can have on equal political representation. When wealth captures government policymaking, the rules bend to favor the rich, often to the detriment of everyone else. The consequences include the erosion of democratic governance, the pulling apart of social cohesion, and the vanishing of equal opportunities for all.

“Unless bold political solutions are instituted to curb the influence of wealth on politics, governments will work for the interests of the rich, while economic and political inequalities continue to rise. As US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, ‘We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both.’”

The question, of course, is: How much more concentrated can the world’s wealth become before any notions of democracy or, for that matter, market capitalism – which theoretically, at least, encourages fair and open competition – become quaintly invalid.

Still, many who perch at the right end of the political spectrum prefer to propagate the specious argument that fortune favours, by and large, the talented, hard-working, well-educated, and courageous, (not, as is more often the case, the entitled, corrupt and protected).

The rest of us shouldn’t envy hordes of wealth, but celebrate them as beacons of hope and inspiration: There, but for the failure of our own character, go we.

If only that were true. And Oxfam is not the only, or even most influential, voice pointing out the patently obvious on this subject.

“Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won,” Warren Buffett ruefully observed in 2011 It’s been a rout.”

Of course, as the third-richest man on the planet, he can afford to be embarrassed.

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Jan 16 2015
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Democracy, Society

Monkey see, monkey do when we ignore democratic institutions

The gorilla in the Senate is biding his time

By all means, throw up your placards, raise your standards high, moisten all the blowhorns your lips desire. Still, know that without the public institutions a free and open society demands democracy is as brittle as an oak leaf in a January wind.

Five million people marched across the streets of major capitals in Europe last week to support the laudable and necessary principles of free speech and expression. They locked arms – jews, muslims, christians and atheists, alike – to send a message to the brutalists of the world that they will not be silenced by threats or bullets. They chanted the mantras of democracy lovers everywhere: all must be heard and heard must be all.

But when they returned to their cozies and alcoves, to their apartments, flats and houses, to their mansions and villas, they faced the same conundrum they had left only hours earlier: a growing and appalling gulf between those who have and those who have not; and, even worse, a conviction that the mechanisms and apparatus of the democratic principles they cherish are hopelessly ruined.

And the spiritual disease is spreading rapidly and everywhere.

“As each U.S. election cycle rolls by, public life seems to grow more rancorous, frayed and fragmented, with the 2014 midterms being no exception,” writes Pooja Gupta  in a recent online number of the Journalist’s Resource (which bills itself as a project of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Centre and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative. . . an open-access site that curates scholarly studies and reports).

“There is a palpable sense that something deeper is at work in America, some sea change in the underlying patterns of life. . .A 2014 study published in Psychological Science, Declines in Trust in Others and Confidence in Institutions Among American Adults and Late Adolescents, 1972-2012, (finds that) trust in other people has sharply declined since the 1970s, reaching historic lows in 2008 and in 2012. In 1972-74, 46 per cent of American adults reported that they trusted most people. This dwindled to 33 per cent in 2010-12. Conversely, 51 per cent of American adults reported skepticism in others in 1972-74, increasing to 62 per cent in 2010-12. These results were mirrored among high school seniors, whose trust in others dropped from 32 per cent in 1976-78 to 18 per cent in 2010-12.”

What’s more Gupta reports, “Confidence in institutions also hit an all-time low in 2012 for both adults and high school seniors, after highs in the late 1980s and early 2000s and lows in the early 1990s, late 2000s, and early 2010s, with trust in the military being the only notable exception.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that Canadians’ confidence in their own Parliament has been dwindling for years. Data, current to January 2013, from the Conference Board of Canada suggest that citizens of this country believe their politicians deserve nothing better than a “gentleman’s C” in the performance of their duties. This represents a precipitous drop from heady levels recorded in the 1960s.

What accounts for the malaise? Apparently, your guess is as good as mine.

Or, as the Conference Board blue-skies, it could be that over-educated young ones – you know, the ones who can’t find jobs thanks to an economy that’s monolithically geared to produce oil, gas and low-paying retail jobs – are pissed off.

It could be that too many people are otherwise engaged updating their social media profiles hoping that their legions of followers give a hoot (they don’t).

It could be that all these factors, both social and economic, have left a bitter taste in the mouths of those who have been, over the past decade or two, sold a bill of goods by politicians who like to think they know what they’re talking about, but who are, all too often, only lightly interested in the good of the many at the plausible expense of their own meagre reserves of power and influence.

But if these factors have soured us on our system, then it remains to us, and only us, to rebuild it or replace it.

Our public institutions – a sound and principled bureaucracy, a sage and independent judiciary, a Commons and Senate ever vigilant against incompetence, prevarication, waste and corruption – are the monkey bars of our democracy. They are the skating rinks and splash pads of our civic commitment.

By all means, raise your standards high for our shared principles of justice and liberty. But don’t ignore the social architecture that will raise them even higher and, in fact, keep them there.

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Jan 13 2015
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Culture, Democracy, Media

Testing the meaning of tolerance

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Irony is, after all, its stock in trade.

How surprising is it, then, to learn that, just before the fatal attacks on 12 of its staffers last week, the French satirical organ, Charlie Hebdo, was well on its way to organ failure – the victim of falling sales and dwindling readership?

Now, it will live forever, not so much as a worthy compendium of political commentary and provocative humour, but as a symbol of French resistance to tyranny. (Not exactly what the gang of murderous thugs, brandishing kalashnikovs and invocations to the prophet Muhammad, was hoping to achieve).

Then, of course, around the world there were organized marches in memoriam for the dead and in solidarity for the principles of free speech. In the City of Lights, alone, gathered a throng of 1.5 million comprising people from all walks of life – some deserving to attend; some, in the opinion of many, not so much.

According to a piece in the Guardian online, “Press freedom campaigners condemned the presence of world leaders attending the unity rally in Paris on Sunday who have poor records on human rights and the free press in their home countries. Reporters without Borders singled out leaders from Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as being responsible for particularly harsh environments for journalists. These countries rank respectively 159th, 154th, 148th, 121st and 118th out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom in a league table compiled by the group.

“‘We should show solidarity with Charlie Hebdo without forgetting the world’s other Charlies,’ said Christophe Deloire, secretary general of the campaign group. ‘It would be intolerable [if] representatives from countries that reduce their journalists to silence profit from this emotional outpouring to. . .improve their international image. . .We should not allow the predators of the press to spit on the graves of Charlie Hebdo.’”

Naturally, this said nothing about the quality of the publication’s satire, itself – a topic that has, understandably, garnered little attention ever since Paris conferred honorary citizenship on the magazine, the national government announced a bail-out fund of one million euros so it can, in the words of French Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin, “continue next week and the week after that and the week after that.”

Indeed, reported Reuters, “Albert Uderzo, the 87-year-old who created the famed French comic character Asterix, announced he would come out of retirement to help illustrate the irreverent weekly, which plans to print a million copies of its next edition next Wednesday.”

All of which may have irked Atlantic magazine writer Scott Sayare into penning a rare online screed. “Charlie’s hope, according to its editors, is to show believers the folly of their faith,” he writes. “This can hardly be called an undertaking of tolerance, that other virtue of liberal democracy.”

In fact, he jabs, “the impulse to consecrate Charlie Hebdo in a moment of horror and anger – an impulse felt far beyond France – is eminently comprehensible. But one may mourn the dead and condemn their senseless slaughter, and hail their courage in carrying out a mission in which they deeply believed, without celebrating the magazine for virtues it did not espouse.”

Frankly, he notes, “until the killings, Charlie Hebdo was not much celebrated or even particularly valued – publicly, at any rate – by the French, though the many slander cases brought against it came with a certain amount of publicity; as of 2012, its weekly print run was about 60,000 copies, about a tenth of what the country’s most popular news weeklies sell. . .Charlie Hebdo is not a racist publication. . . The magazine is, however, intolerant of religion and believers of all sorts, and smug in those anticlerical convictions. Dialogue with its opponents was never of much interest, and it has repeatedly chosen to target some of France’s most vulnerable inhabitants for provocation. . .It is a publication that champions its speech rights with all the crude prurience and vitriol and rhetorical excess the law permits.”

And yet, one could argue persuasively, that it is precisely such coarseness – once, not very long ago, dismissed and derided by the French establishment – that has galvanized, through tragedy, a nation and much of the western world.

How brutally ironic, indeed.

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Jan 12 2015
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Democracy, Law, Society

Tragic lessons from the desks of Charlie Hebdo

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If the barbarians who slaughtered 12 people at France’s satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, last week thought they were killing free speech at the point of their automatic rifles, they were sorely, absurdly mistaken.

Nothing ignites the fire of democracy in the belly of open – too often, casually complacent – societies than the massacre of innocents.

And, make no mistake, despite their habitual, even offensive, run at the world’s religions, the editors, writers and political cartoonists who died at the hands of a cadre of Islamic fundamentalists were, by any reasonable comparison with their assailants, utterly guiltless.

The wits and wags of Charlie Hebdo used their minds and pens to poke holes in the dangerous dogmas and priggish pomposities of their targets of derision. They didn’t grab guns and blow away their ideological nemeses like so many deer caught in the headlights of fanatical blood-lust.

As the still-civilized world mourns the obscene events in Paris, it also stands firm and united in its determination to, again, enshrine the principles of a free press as a requisite condition of an unfettered and enlightened society.

Canadian editorial cartoonists – marking the passing of four of their French peers – have come forward, joining their voices with hundreds of others around the world.

As CTV reported on Thursday, “In Halifax, Michael De Adder and Bruce MacKinnon both drew poignant pieces for the murdered. De Adder’s cartoon showed a hand writing out the words, ‘freedom of speech,’ with extremists trying to stop the hand from completing the words. . .MacKinnon’s showed a tattered French flag flying at half-mast, with a pencil serving as a flagpole.”

Said Bruce: “As negative and traumatic as this is, it has the opposite effect because it proves our relevance. It shows that what we do has an effect and does matter.”

Added Mike: “I’m actually more jazzed to continue what I’m doing.”

Their colleague, Edmonton Journal cartoonist Malcolm Mayes, praised his fallen, overseas comrades for their courage in the face of numerous threats over the past several years from would-be – now confirmed – Islamic terrorists.

To CTV, he said, “They weren’t cowed, they weren’t afraid. They stood their ground and that’s what people have to do in the face of threats like this. . .I’m not going to change the way I draw or change my opinion because someone threatens me.”

Opined Terry Mosher (a.k.a. Aislin), who made his professional bones afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted on the editorial pages of the Montreal Gazette: “Satire is poking fun and questioning hopefully all of our institutions and our attitudes. Nothing is ever 100 per cent right. So the whole purpose of satire is to test your system and see if we can poke fun at these things and question them – obviously, I believe in that very strongly.”

Sadly, too many young, radicalized thugs around the world simply do not share similar values. Even more lamentable is that some of them possess the means and the opportunity to wreak havoc – on the societies that have accepted them without much compunction – at will.

We can, of course, react with force – hunting down likely perpetrators George W. Bush-style, throwing them into internment camps, subjecting them to state-sanctioned torture, and conveniently forgetting where we left the keys to their locked cages.

We can, naturally, launch drones to blow up their enclaves and, in the process, a few thousand innocent bystanders and call that “collateral damage”.

Or we could take to the generally safe streets we call home – as millions have over the past few days since the Charlie Hebdo tragedy – and declare that freedom is a universally accessible commodity; that speech is the mechanism of democracy; that live ammo is the last resort of a peaceful, productive civilization just as it is the first of an authoritarian, paranoid one.

We could take a breath and remember to get back to the hard, sometimes perillous, work of promulgating the worthy, essential notion that the free expression of ideas defines us as thinking humans, not killers or murderers or vile barbarians.

Those who died at the offices of Charlie Hebdo understood this. They weren’t martyrs. But they were heroes of democracy, and our memories of them will live longer than those we now revile of the savages who ended their lives.

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Jan 09 2015
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Democracy, Politics

Are we becoming a nation of political quitters?

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It is entirely possible, if stunningly depressing, that mainstream politicians in Canada are finally listening to those they purport to represent: the disenfranchised us.

For years, the disenfranchised us have spoken from all points on the political spectrum about the fundamental corruption of ideas sacrificed at the altar of partisanship; about the seedy incompetence that infects all levels of elective office; about the unseemly horse-trading of democratic principles between ancient interests that masquerades as fair, just and equal representation.

For years, the disenfranchised us have voted with our voices and our feet: Loudly decrying the steady perversion of a system that no longer appears to be built for us and steadfastly withholding our mandates at the ballot boxes by refusing to participate in a process we consider rooked and ruined.

Now, many who have thrown their hats into the political arena in recent years are scooping up their dusty, battered head-toppers and loping home in rueful agreement with the great unwashed they all-too-often ignored.

Some quietly.

Some, not so much.

“Looking back, I, like so many people, got into politics thinking I knew a lot,” Graham Steele, Nova Scotia’s former NDP finance minister in the defeated Darrell Dexter government, told the Globe and Mail’s Jane Taber last fall.

“What I knew a fair bit about was public policy – and what it takes you a long time to learn is how public policy gets twisted and distorted and eventually you get taken over by the desire to win, to be re-elected.”

Taber’s interview coincided with the release of Steele’s memoir, What I Learned about Politics, and her excerpts from that work were as equally revealing as was her intrepid report of the man’s late-season remorse and regret:

“There was hardly any point to who sat in my chair or who was on which side of the House. None of us was dealing with the real issues. There was no fundamental difference between us. . .Like the sex drive among primates, the drive to be re-elected drives everything a politician does. . .Spend as little time as possible at the legislature. There are no voters there, so any time spent is wasted.”

What’s more, he writes, “Keep it simple. Policy debates are for losers. Focus on what is most likely to sink in with a distracted electorate: slogans, scandals, personalities, pictures, image. Find whatever works, then repeat it relentlessly. . .Fight hard to take credit, fight harder to avoid blame.”

Finally, “Deny that these are the Rules of the Game.”

The irony, of course, is that none of these tactics actually calibrate to enhance voter confidence in the political process or in public institutions. And, so, they amount to an elaborate shell game elected representatives kid themselves into believing is winnable. The electorate knows better, but without a valid alternative, it, too, plays along; the losing streak broadens and becomes structural.

After all, if everyone’s a sucker, isn’t everyone a winner?

Today, the political horizon is brimming not with losers or winners or even suckers; but with quitters.

A recent report from the Conference Board of Canada observes that “Canada scores a ‘C’ and ranks 14th out of 17 peer countries (in terms of voter turnout). Only 53.8 per cent of adult Canadians voted in the 2011 federal election – the second-lowest (showing) in history. The decline in voter turnout in Canada may be due to lower participation of young people.”

No kidding, Sherlock.

Meanwhile, the Board perseveres: “A. . .study for Elections Canada noted the decline in voter turnout in recent elections is mainly due to lower participation of young people, and that ‘it is part of a demographic trend that shows every sign of continuing well into the future.’ In 2011, only 38.8 per cent of the population aged 18 to 24 voted.”

Under these circumstances, should there be any great wonder that the negative feedback loop between electoral confidence and elected representation continues to spiral downwards?

There goes Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale. Farewell Wildrose Danielle Smith in Alberta. Who takes over from Prince Edward Island Premier Robert Ghiz? No one in his caucus; that’s for certain.

We, the disenfranchised us, finally salute you – for you have finally become us.

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Dec 15 2014
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Democracy, Government, Politics

The banality of evil is alive and well in the “civilized” world

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The casual brutality with which man treats his fellow man is nowhere near as surprising as is the astonishment with which so-called polite society greets the news of such ritualistic barbarism.

Torture is, after all, a bestial remnant of humanity’s atavistic past. Is it not? And where it still occurs in the world’s dark enclaves, where fanaticism festers and seeps like an infected wound, surely civilized principles of democracy, justice, faith and moral rectitude will soon ride like horsemen of the apocalypse to smite the villains where they stand.

Certainly, it can’t happen here. “Canada,” Foreign Minister John Baird declares with all the certitude of a specimen of the most evolved species on the planet, “does not torture.”

Perhaps not, but members of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency – whose religious, educational and social pedigrees do not stray far from Mr. Baird’s, or, for that matter anybody else’s in this country – most assuredly have. And, according to findings released last week by the American Senate Committee on Intelligence, they have done so with relish.

According to a Global News synopsis, gleaned from the 500-page executive summary of the Committee’s 6,000-page report, CIA operatives routinely deployed despicable tactics to extract information from the detainees and often undocumented prisoners in their clutches in the years following the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington, D.C..

These measures, Global reports, included: “Rectal rehydration, a form of feeding through the rectum” for which “the report found no medical necessity; ice baths; water boarding; weeks of sleep deprivation; slapping and slamming of detainees against walls; confining detainees to small boxes; keeping detainees isolated for prolonged periods (i.e. 47 days in one case); threatening prisoners with death or by telling them their families would suffer, including harm to their children, sexual abuse of the mother of one man and cutting the throat of another man’s mother.”

The news swept through the world so rapidly, so remorselessly, that the U.S. government ordered all of its embassies and consulates on high alert, for fear of reprisals.

Meanwhile the Democratic chair of the intelligence committee, Senator Diane Feinstein, had this to say: “History will judge us by our commitment to a just society, government by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say ‘never again.'”

Where have we heard that before?

The wretched truth is that, for years, all media, everywhere – apart from Fox News, of course – have reported the awful abuses of the past several years. Till now, officialdom’s response has been to deny, deflect and distract, feeding successfully into the general public’s determination to keep its head firmly planted in the sand. Among those who allowed that such interrogation practices probably comprised standard operating procedure during the George W. Bush era, the compelling argument was that if they saved even one innocent life from terror, they were justified.

In fact, though, according to the Committee report, they haven’t and, so, weren’t.

Indeed, no credible evidence indicates that the torture of one, or many, ever averted organized predations on hapless citizens of any country. Tragically, such gruesome methods  just might have inspired them.

So, then, whose terror-filled lives are we gamely facilitating, anyway?

Predictably, U.S. President Barack Obama praises with one fork of his tongue the “patriots” in his intelligence community to whom, he insists, his nation “owes a profound debt of gratitude,” and with the other fork abjures: “What is clear is that the CIA set up something very fast without a lot of forethought to what the ramifications might be. . .Some of these techniques that were described were not only wrong, but also counterproductive because we know that oftentimes when somebody is being subjected to these kinds of techniques, that they are willing to say anything to alleviate the pain.”

Spoken like a true technocrat.

Shall we willingly forget that treating people in this way makes monsters of us all? Shall we ignore the slippery slope that delivers our righteous ambitions into the pit of our barbarity?

What price do we, in our comfortable lives, pay when we manifest surprise at the depth of our own depravity?

Not my business, we say.

Sorry, fellow animal; but, again, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Dec 08 2014
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Democracy, Government, Science

Out of the labs and onto the campaign trail

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Federal scientists are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. That’s why they recently formed a committee to, you know, “take a decision” as to whether they should become, um, more “politically active” in the run up to the next general election.

Yes sir, that’ll show Stephan Harper and his crude bunch of beach bums who like to kick sand into the faces scrawny of nerds clutching slide rules.

Under the circumstances, then, it is perhaps appropriate that the acronym for the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, the union representing 15,000 government researchers who now find that their activist bones are aching is PIPSC, which one might waggishly contort into “pipsqueak”.

Still, as the Hill Times reports this week, the “move” to become formally agitated is “an unprecedented step from the union, breaking from its non-partisan position, to run and ‘evidence-based campaigned aimed at informing voters of the current government’s record. ‘Our members who are scientists and certainly feeling the brunt of the policies and cuts that have led us to take this exceptional position,’ said Peter Bleyer, a special adviser to PIPSC president Debi Daviau, speaking on her behalf.”

Others with less tentative natures might more properly ask Ottawa’s eggheads: What took you so long?

For years, the Harper government has treated publicly funded science as its own private think tank. It has systematically prevented researchers on its payroll from discussing their work with peers and colleagues elsewhere in the country and world and routinely run interference with the media.

More than a year ago, PIPSC released its own evidence: “A major survey of federal government scientists. . .has found that 90 per cent feel they are not allowed to speak freely to the media about the work they do and that, faced with a departmental decision that could harm public health, safety or the environment, nearly as many (86 per cent) would face censure or retaliation for doing so.

“In particular, the survey also found that nearly one-quarter (24 per cent) of respondents had been directly asked to exclude or alter information for non-scientific reasons and that over one-third (37 per cent) had been prevented in the past five years from responding to questions from the public and media.

Finally, “the survey found that nearly three out of every four federal scientists (74 per cent) believe the sharing of scientific findings has become too restricted in the past five years and that nearly the same number (71 per cent) believe political interference has compromised Canada’s ability to develop policy, law and programs based on scientific evidence. According to the survey, nearly half (48 per cent) are aware of actual cases in which their department or agency suppressed information, leading to incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading impressions by the public, industry and/or other government officials.”

This is, of course, standard operating procedure for any class of leaders whose need to control the message exceeds its willingness to accept the facts, however inconvenient these may be.

Still, if this nonsense is occurring, the odds are it’s happening not just once and a while, but daily. If that’s true, why hasn’t PIPSC been more regularly and reliably vocal about the problem, until now? After all, public attitudes in Canada towards scientists and science, in general, are warm compared with those in certain parts of the UnIted States and Europe.

According a Council of Canadian Academies’ study, published earlier this year, “Approximately three-quarters of Canadians agree with statements such as ‘all things considered, the world is better off because of science and technology’ and ‘science and technology are making our lives healthier, easier and more comfortable.’”

The research also found that on “an index based on standard survey questions assessing beliefs about the promise of science and technology, Canada ranks 9th out of

17 industrialized countries. . .On an index based on standard questions assessing public reservations about science, Canada ranks 1st among the same 17 countries, indicating low levels of concern about any potentially disruptive impacts of science and technology. Public reservations about science in Canada have also declined on average since 1989.”

Given such evidently widespread support for science in the vast lay segment of the Canadian population, perhaps it’s time PIPSC considers changing its name to more accurately reflect a new, less hesitant brand statement – something like “fighting injuries to evidence, research, common sense, and enquiry.”

Call it FIERCE.

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Dec 01 2014
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Democracy, Government, Law

In the policy-maker sweepstakes, the Supremes win

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It’s bad enough for a sitting government with an entire justice department at its disposal to be judged broadly inept on matters of law. But to be found so wanting by one of the country’s leading conservative think tanks?

Gadzooks! Et tu, Brute?

But there it was last week for all to witness: The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s 2014 pick for policy-maker of the year.

The winner was (cue drum roll) the Supreme Court of Canada. The reason was (cue kazoo) it managed to wipe its hallowed chambers with government lawyers 70 per cent of the time in big, landmark cases.

Allow into evidence, if you will, item #1: The federal Tories wanted an elected Senate and thought they could push a form of one through legislative channels without opening up the Constitution and all that pesky inter-provincial wrangling that is, in fact, the very essence of Confederation.

The Supremes’ response: “Sorry, fellas, it’s not gonna happen on our watch.”

This almost dismissive “now-off-you-go-and-play-nice-for-a-change” routine transpired seven times in 10 Supreme Court considerations of government cases. Apart from the Senate decision, these included key matters involving aboriginal title and land claims, prostitution, the appointment of Supreme Court justices from Quebec, cybercrime, truth in sentencing, and retrospective repeal of accelerated parole review.

For Benjamin Perrin – an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Law and a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute – who who picked this year’s top policy-maker, the decision was a no-brainer:

“The policy and legal impact of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions of the last year are significant and likely enduring; the Supreme Court of Canada was a remarkably united institution with consensus decisions on these significant cases being the norm, and dissenting opinions rare; and the federal government indeed has an abysmal record of losses on significant cases, with a clear win in just one in 10 of them.”

What’s more, if there had been a concerted effort to stack the court with justices who could be counted upon to tow the Conservative Party line, that effort seems to have failed miserably. “(Mr. Perrin’s) analysis showed that the court reached a consensus decision in 80 per cent of these cases – higher than the average over the past decade,” a Macdonald-Laurier press release stated.

Added Mr. Perrin, himself: “There is no evidence whatsoever of any observable split in the Court’s decisions on significant issues between the six judges appointed by Prime Minister Harper and the three judges appointed by previous prime ministers.”

Make no mistake, these are no trifling matters. Mr. Perrin correctly observes that 2014 hosted a disproportionate number of landmark cases. The government’s losing streak effectively handed the keys to the castle to the judicial branch.

“In its decisions on significant constitutional matters in the last year, the Supreme Court of Canada has made bold decisions that fundamentally affect the way Canadian Democracy functions,” he writes.

Furthermore, he concludes, “The most significant and enduring impact of the Supreme Court of Canada in the last year will be its interpretation of the amending procedures in the Constitution Act, 1982, in its reference decisions related to Senate reform and the appointment of judges to the high court from Quebec. Taken together, these decisions entrench the Senate and Supreme Court of Canada as institutions that are virtually untouchable. Changing the composition of either institution has been determined to require the unanimous approval of the House of Commons and the Senate as well as every provincial legislature.”

So, then what happened in 2014?

Did the government know the law well enough before it argued its cases before the court? Or, did justice lawyers feel that discretion was the better part valor (or, at least, their own job security) before politely suggesting that their political masters were out to lunch on one or more points of precedent?

In any case, Mr. Perrin thinks a post-mortem is in order. “Until this is exhaustively done, it would be premature, as some commentators have suggested, to conclude that there is a fundamental rift in values between the federal government and the Court.”

Maybe, but from where this commentator stands, it sure looks that way.

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Sep 29 2014
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Democracy, Government, Politics

Is PR an idea whose time has come?

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Calls for a systemically more representative government always seem to follow a deeply unsatisfying election. Last Monday’s vote in New Brunswick produced no deviation from this familiar – and, for some, increasingly tiresome – norm.

After all, here was the spectacle of five jockeying, jostling, jiggling parties, only two of which had any chance of securing a meaningful number of the legislature’s 49 seats. (David Coon’s Fredericton South win for the Green Party was the exception that proved the rule).

Here was another pitched battle in the seemingly endless war between the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives over whether or not to allow hydraulic fracturing in a province that has, in fact, permitted the drilling practice for years, and with no evidence of environmental harm accruing.

And here was a fractured plebiscite, replete with technical glitches and calls for recounts, in which, despite all efforts to the contrary, much of the electorate politely declined their invitations to the cotillion.

Unofficially, 373,337 New Brunswickers did their democratic duty. Nearly 200,000, who were eligible to cast a ballot, sat this one out. . .again.

That was the lowest voter turnout on record (65 per cent) – lower than the 2006 and 2010 elections (68 and 70 per cent, respectively)

According to a CBC report last week, “Jamie Gillies, an assistant professor of communications and public policy at St. Thomas University, said low voter turnout is in part a generational problem, which won’t be easy to fix. ‘This is a feeling among a lot of people who believe that voting as a civic duty does not matter. It does not matter who we elect on election day.’”

Need we even wonder, then, why people like Kelly Carmichael are calling for an entirely different – and fairer – way to participate in our democracy. She’s a spokesperson for Fair Vote Canada, a national group that advocates for proportional representation.

The organization’s definition is succinct: “Proportional representation is any voting system designed to produce a representative body (like a parliament, legislature, or council) where voters elect representatives in proportion to (their) votes.”

As it was, in our existing first-past-the-post system, the Liberals earned 43 per cent of the popular vote, but more than half the seats in the Assembly. The Tories’ garnered slightly better than a third of the vote, but won more than 40 per cent of the house. The Green Party took one seat with seven per cent of the vote. The NDP (13 per cent) and the People’s Alliance (2.1 per cent) were out of luck, left only to shuffle along old Freddy Beach’s cobblestones.

If Ms. Carmichael and her like had their way, all parties would have emerged with some degree electoral representation: Liberals with 21 seats; Progressive Conservatives with 17; the NDP with six; the Greens with three; and the People’s Alliance with one.

Lamentably, in Canada, proportional representation has been a notoriously hard sell, not among voters, but among those who have the most to lose under such a system: the political establishment, members of which often spout the most egregious generalizations and spin the most outrageous myths about the process.

They say it’s uncommon and unstable. They say it would, in New Brunswick, generate confusion, instability and deadlock. It might even embolden the secret extremists among us who, given a chance, would seek and secure representation for themselves in the Assembly.

The reality is, however, that proportional representation is the most common electoral system in the world, favored most major democracies – though not Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

As for instability, Fair Vote points out on its website, “Since Italy reformed its voting system in the 1990s, Canada is actually now the most unstable of the major democracies, with twenty-one elections since World War II to Italy’s eighteen.”

Finally, the facts simply don’t support the claim that our present system – which can, and frequently does, reward lightly supported candidates for office with absolute power – is somehow inherently better equipped than proportional representation to prevent the barking lunatics in our midst from joining our various assemblies and parliaments.

Of course, no system of self-government is perfect. In fact, oftentimes, it’s a democracy’s flaws that suggest the very strategies for improvement.

This was, indeed, the case last Monday in New Brunswick, where one system of representation pointed, in its failure, to the promise of a better one.

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