Conservative X

The Long-Form Census Debate

2010-09-03T16:09:00.001-07:00

One of many links here.

As I mull on this, I have a few observations:

The long-form census was divisive if accurate, and at best a joke.

The questions about heritage were, for example, idiotic. I could argue that the fact I come from a Scots-Welsh mix tells something about me, but I would be stretching the point. Now, basic identifiers such as Cascadian, black, etc. might have medical statistical value, but even that is doubtful in a forum where you are asking people to fill out the forms themselves. For example, how many generations back do some of us have to go to inherit some Native American blood, or have a few Caribbean pirates in our line? Genetics being what it is, I am white as can be, but there are Buchans in the Caribbean who linearly are in my family tree and have a coal black visage. Whose to say the same blood and same genetics don’t predispose us to the same risks? It’s just not a reliable to trust what we think we know about ourselves to provide such data, which is of such questionable value.

Worse than just being idiotic, some of the long-form census questions were invasive given their lack of rational purpose. Having our governments know too much about us is ludicrous given how poorly managed the data is, and how poorly used it is. If they had a track record of making insightful future-forward pronouncements based upon the data, it would possibly be defensible, but the governments in Canada have no such track record. They choose to simply ignore facts that don’t suit their policies of the day (all brands are equally guilty). That dishonesty begs whether they need more than the bare information, given they can’t mange successfully regardless. And the fact Statistics Canada is a reseller of data is worrisome, given the identifiable nature of that data. We can’t generally trust them with the data.

But details of those arguments aside, there is a fundamental unfairness about what the long-form census claimed to provide. It was being leveraged to help specific causes, rather than as a tool to understand the dynamic changes in population. And, frankly, given the ebb and flow of people – and the speed of population changes – it was constantly outdated. It just isn’t a functional tool for the modern world, when that data is more dynamic than ever.

Basic social justice demands that we are responsible to our populace, but the path to get there isn’t about gathering mounds of saleable statistical data. It would be far better to debate, for example, what the government should be doing socially, than to debate the mechanics of a census that is of doubtful use. But that would require real thought, and apparently our media today lacks the integrity to actually explore the root problems of our society, and prefers to focus on the dumb shows.

Tamil Refugee Shuffle

2010-08-11T12:38:00.001-07:00

First, I’ll state flatly I’m pro-immigration. My gut feel is that immigration is the best hope the human race has of waking up in a century and not peering out at a wasteland. We either need to have children, or bring people from elsewhere to fill the gaps in our society. Since population growth is a serious problem globally, our birth rate is essentially not a terrible thing if it’s flat, and that means relying on immigration to shape the future. Redistribution is preferable to increase.

I have no preference as to who comes from where, except in as much every incomer needs to come here because of what our society represents, not to transplant the society of the place they’re coming from. I’m perfectly okay with Chinatown equivalents in any city (familiarity for the newcomers can be helpful, and healthy, and the cultural pools are enlightening); and I couldn’t care less about overall religious beliefs, and would welcome a mosque nearby so I could regularly meet the 99.9% of Islam who aren’t running around blowing up people. But, if you bring yourself to Canada, be capable of conforming to the laws and mores of the society, in so much as not imposing a warped world view over our already warped world view. Affect the change, in other words, by becoming part of the society and changing it over time by expressing the wisdom of what your specific culture has to offer. Don’t expect the society here to change instantly to accommodate yours, and realise your culture is not your society. Please bring your cultural variances into play, because we need the variety. If you can do that and be productive, come soon and bring your equally productive friends.

So, I’m staunchly pro-immigration, basically as long as the incomers accept that they are coming to a society that has its own context, not transplanting their social context with their culture. We don’t need slum-mentality from afar, as we have our own; and we certainly don’t need any extra intolerance. When you come to Canada, leave the bad behind and embrace the good while sharing your cultural accomplishments. I’m fairly certain the miniscule percentage of the populace who would slap a racist label on the attitude I have, include very few legitimate immigrants, most of them being hard-working people who actually came to Canada for the very reason it has opportunity and advantage.

Having said that, we probably should start sinking ships like the Tamil-refugee vessel we’re about to let land. It’s harsh, but the reality is we have systems in place to deal with immigration that, even if flawed, have to be respected. If it was just refugee queue-jumping here, I probably would be less harsh, but the problem really is that we have a high chance that some of the people onboard the ship are, or were, or will be, terrorists. Out of two hundred, if even two are, then we are sending a message to the neighbours we depend upon for trade, and the world, that we are the soft-touch nation of choice. And, worse, we are encouraging the awful practice of herd ships, which essentially cram in illegal human cargo and ship it elsewhere. We open an avenue where, eventually, after being repeatedly burned, we’ll get the same bizarre anti-immigration attitude that it has taken decades to largely divest ourselves of.

I think ultimately the test of a nation’s quality is that it balances world need against its own social need, and refugees test a society. Unlike most immigrants, even the best refugees are running from something terrible, often a brutal regime. That psychological stance comes with them, and they are given almost no real integration assistance, which makes them far less likely to be successful in our society. Even the best immigrants, in terms of ability and education, struggle in our society because we have almost no real systematic assistance to help them come to terms with how Canada is different from their point of origin. We can’t actually afford it, I suppose, but my guess is we sacrifice a great deal more in the near-term by not affording it. Taking a refugee, even a legitimate one, into Canada, though, is exposing the system of immigration to a control failure – and that means it is unfair to the nation, to the legitimate immigrants who struggle through frustrating channels, and finally to the very refugees who will end up as an underclass in their new society.

Far more problematic, though, is that we rely upon partnerships with nations that are damaged if we ignore the real responsibility we have to reject false claimants. It’s offensive to me, as well, to have to pay the cost of trying to figure out who is a valid refugee and who is a plant, because we frankly haven’t the resources to waste.

And from a humanitarian point of view, I find it deeply offensive that we accept this form of refugee immigration at all. That’s where my statement about sinking such vessels comes from, even though I’m not literally serious when I write it. We need to stop this sort of dangerous voyage, and the only way to do that is to make the payoff invalid. Sinking a ship is cost-effective; flying every one of these people back home is probably humane. But unless you do it, unless you take a hard-line on this sort of thing, you encourage it – and encouraging greedy people to ship human cargo in filthy conditions is not, and never has, been a Canadian stance.

G20/G8: A Boondoggle at a Billion

2010-06-28T10:32:00.001-07:00

Shockingly, the conservatives lost my vote with the price tag of their own boondoggle. Who to vote for now that they are all equally useless? I suppose no one. sad.

Why My Cash Remains In My Bank Rather Than My Member’s Coffers

2010-06-27T10:34:00.001-07:00

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100627/tax-agency-workers-100627/

About 3 months ago I started to withhold my usual donations to the party, primarily because of nonsense like the link above provides evidence for within government. I hope that other conservatives (the real ones, rather than the pretenders presently soaking us for cash) follow suit. There is no excuse for not managing these issues.

More Corruption

2010-05-05T17:28:00.001-07:00

I’m going to have to change this blog’s name to “Conservative Watch” if this crap keeps up. (MP Shory accused in giant mortgage fraud)

It strikes me that Jaffer and Shory are two examples of a standard we don’t need anywhere in politics. More proof all politicians are corrupt?

Yes, I know, innocent until proven guilty – but, really, where’s the doubt? You funnel fraudulent loans through your legal trust fund? It’s a matter of cash flow. It’s physical and real. You cannot, ever, deflect the truth. But, hey, maybe his partners did it, or a legal secretary, or anyone but him. Santa Claus might have a hand in it.

One more so-called conservative proves to be an outright criminal mind, and I’ll have to chop up my membership card.

Copyright Disaster

2010-05-05T17:24:00.001-07:00

Read this. If true, conservatives just jumped the shark into the same pockets US politicians have been in for years. Sad, pathetic, and just depressing.

Wither Thou Cash?

2010-05-03T18:12:00.001-07:00

I’m a staunch fiscal conservative, and have in the past financially supported my cause, but of late I’ve been hesitant about tossing my resources into the ring for three reasons:

Unlike politicians, who have no performance requirement to get paid, I actually work for a living, and my earnings are directly affected by their lack of imagination, and their horrific overall inability to manage a buck. As I have watched them piss away my tax dollars lately, I’m hesitant to give anything to any campaign, since I expect that money is as poorly used as the money they blew collectively (all parties take some responsibility here) on the unnecessary debt we took on to escape a recession that wasn’t anywhere as bad (in Canada) as the ones in the 80s or 90s. I’m troubled by the belief they are as pathetically incapable of managing their campaign finances as they mange the public ones. Deeply troubled.
Again, unlike politicians, I am a solid middle class earner (on the high end, thankfully), and my resources are limited somewhat. The more I donate to a cause (of any kind) the more basic value I expect. For example, I expect conservatives to be conservative. I also expect the people I help elect to be something other than corrupt; I expect them to, in fact, be sickened by even the vague taint of corruption. But lately I’m watching gyrations that suggest at least a part of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) I support is as corrupt as any past Liberal government. I don’t believe this of the Prime Minister, or any of the key Ministers, but I do believe that below them is a less than respectable haze of questionable folks. Most of these are the unelected dross who come into play when a politician gets his office, and a number of instances of their behaving questionably disturbs me. The Jaffer affair defines this slippage away from what is solemn duty toward pork barrel bullshit. I don’t lately see value in the actions being taken, but I see stalling and excess. This offends my conservative mind deeply, because I struggle to see how this is better than the largess of past governments. Show me value – show me you earn my support – to keep my support. If a politician is too lazy to do that, they need to reconsider their chosen field.
Finally, the fact is that this time of year exposes things. Seeing the massive corruption that is evident in the United States (Goldman Sachs, for example; or Obama’s ties to the Climate Exchange in Chicago and its ties to Goldman Sachs) makes me leery of a government that is silent on these matters. We were pushed into massive spending by external circumstances, and by bad fiscal policy that is not conservative in its approach, and now we are silent when we are seeing the fallacy of that policy elsewhere? I have never bought the idea that our governments must be cheerleaders of the American agenda; I detest watching us toady to American interests – not because I disrespect the United States and her people, but because I view us as a unique entity. But lately we are following the Obama path too much, failing to question it when it must be questioned, and have abandoned basic conservative approaches in favour of some autocratic nonsense. I don’t want to support any politicians who become puppets of foreign nations, whether they are our closest neighbours or not.

Where will this lead? Where do actual conservatives head when the party that supposedly represents them fails to do so? All questions to answer some day soon, I expect.

Harder & Harder to Believe

2010-04-30T08:15:00.001-07:00

Read this.

I am finding it harder and harder to believe that Jaffer wasn’t given some form of preferential access to government programs, regardless of whether he benefited. This is influence peddling at its worst, and maybe a sign the Conservative government of Canada is about to damage itself even in the eyes of staunch conservatives like myself. Sad.

This is why politicians are viewed as untrustworthy…

2010-04-27T09:14:00.001-07:00

Read this.

Right now in Canada we have a growing perception that all politicians are crooked, brought to us courtesy of the fact politicians of every stripe are so busy hacking at their own industry they forgot to govern the country.

As a conservative I suppose I should defend the three CPC Ministers who have now revealed contact between their offices and staff and this Jaffer clown, but I can’t. They need to track this kind of nonsense, and be careful about it, and even though I know nothing untoward likely happened between the Ministers and the clown, it looks bad, and further reinforces that they are all fiddling while the nation burns.

How Dumb Do Politicians Think We Are?

2010-04-26T09:57:00.001-07:00

Read this.

So Ignatieff will put more Canadian food on our tables: good for his optics perhaps, but bad for us if we fall for this tripe.

The reality of the majority of this country is we have a fairly short (but increasingly longer) growing season. So, we are more or less dependent on Mexico and the far southern US for our winter vegetables. Not entirely, mind you, but still largely – unless we want to limit our diets severely. This fact alone makes expending resources to force Canadian food onto our tables of limited value. The value proposition is so low this is really a farm subsidy, and while I might agree we need to encourage farming with some creative subsidies, this is the kind of ill-conceived crap that modern politicians seem to be fond of, but never consider beyond the flapping of their lips.

The fact of local produce is that it is often more expensive than the junk produce most of us eat. That is because local producers have a lower volume condition, and their costs are quite a bit higher than some of their foreign counterparts. Yes, the produce may in fact be healthier, but the price will be higher. So, exactly who is this effort going to benefit? The vast unwashed majority who can often barely feed their families a fresh vegetable now? Are we going to subsidize them to buy it? Or are they left out, and what we’re talking about is another subsidy focused on the upper-middle class and elite classes? (For disclosure, I am definitely upper middle class myself.)

I would call this a vote-buying effort, but my guess is that it is a focused one, and even if he was elected with a landslide he would never execute this plan. He would run straight into every scrap of NAFTA that controlled our ability to offer farm subsidies. What this probably is, is a way to deflect the decision he made on the long gun registry and a way to protect the Liberals being forced to vote against the closure of that boondoggle. My guess would be this cash would go to the very regions where the resistance against that registry in Ontario is strongest.

Another obvious fact of this pork barrel nonsense is that it was announced in Ontario, where they need to buy votes, rather than in the breadbasket core agricultural centres out west. That smacks of desperation.

Welcome to the Inflation Trap

2010-04-18T12:05:00.001-07:00

This article is instructive.

One of the complaints real conservatives had about the stimulus program was that given how short a recession we faced (and it was mild in Canada, as recent data is proving), this glut of taxpayer funded infrastructure spending would cause a serious inflationary cycle to take hold. My prediction was within 7 years of the recession mark, we would be in a bad way, in a much deeper recession, due in large part to the severe inflationary pressure caused by over-stimulus of the economy. I’m shortening that prediction, and going to suggest that by 2014 we will start to drag the economy into the deepest recession we will have faced in thirty years, and all of it will historically point back t two related factors:

Our professed conservative government acted foolishly in spending, doing so for political reasons that had nothing to do with sound economics; and
Our major trading partners, who suffered immensely, will not have been able to rectify their systemic issues in that span.

What is sad about this is a real conservative is in charge of the government, and he’s an economist, and he had to have known the risk of this was higher than the rewards – but politicking trumped awareness. I lose no respect for Prime Minister Harper, since he was pushed into a bad spot politically, but I sadly expect him to bear the brunt of this stupid decision when the time comes, and I know for certain tax-and-spend liberalism will ensure a much deeper decline when it happens.

As well, the idea that no one could have foreseen this, if anyone makes that claim, is just plain ludicrous. I’ve taught micro- and macroeconomics and could have written out this scenario in plain prose. You cannot inject billions into an economy fast enough to curb a recession within 18 calendar months of its start, and none of the numbers supported the panic of 2008/2009 (not in Canada). What we saw was a stock-driven collapse, a financial system strain, and a credit crunch. This was an adjustment, as all markets must adjust when inflated. Yes, we saw unemployment, but the changes were structural and overdue – and my guess is that the jobs that return will not be the jobs that were lost, because structurally we have abandoned manufacturing – and real goods are the only productive goods that will not be destroyed in the next financial adjustment.

I’ll add to this another observation: despite the indicated “profits” of the auto makers, one or both of the pair that took massive taxpayer handouts will be on the ropes again by 2014, because by rescuing them we created an artificial market condition that will have to unfold and be rectified. And what we created was a market where a number of weak players (badly managed, top-heavy, etc.) are progressively eroding the few strong players by not allowing them to fill what would have been a natural market void.

Now, I return to my daily head-shaking, wondering what the Hell happened to real conservatives.

Michael Ignatieff: More Shilly-shallying

2010-04-15T07:12:00.001-07:00

Michael Ignatieff flip flops again (here), this time on the Quebec health care user fee issue. This is the problem one faces when someone is appointed as leader rather than earns the position.

One More Black Eye for Conservatism

2010-04-13T09:35:00.001-07:00

This is why people do not trust politicians (rightfully so). Far too many examples of atrocious judgement. What idiot thought this conflict would not come to light?

Quebec & Canada: Is the Party Over?

2010-04-10T18:07:00.001-07:00

This is in response to The Honourable Mister Duceppe’s ongoing quest for sovereignty.

First, let me say Canada would be culturally poorer without Quebec, because Quebec always has been distinct. Anyone who has spent any time there, even briefly, is completely aware how different Quebec is when compared to any other part of the country. The only similar degrees of difference are evident in the far north, where isolation makes the cultural base even more definite. So, there’s no argument: Quebec is distinct.

Having said that, the reality is this whinging political stance from Quebec is a tired refrain. The province would be far worse off fiscally if it separated, and the Bloc/PQ must know so. The numbers are fairly clear in terms of gross transfers, and suggest that Quebec society would have to make significant sacrifices if they were to separate, both in terms of services offered and the quality of those services. This would be magnified if they were a separate nation-state, because they would have no choice but to do one of two things – pay Canada to maintain some aspects of their infrastructure, or completely fund those. While it’s true Quebec largely has separated systems, the intricacies of disengaging from the Dominion of Canada are going to be costly – more so for Quebec than the rest of the country.

This concern is magnified further when you ask what portion of the national debt of Canada it is that Quebec would have to take on? Would it be proportional to population, or based upon percentage services received per capita? If the latter, the rough numbers suggest Quebec would get a slightly higher average load of debt per capita. If purely on population, the debt is still significant and that means on top of its provincial debt, Quebec suddenly receives another few tens of billion in hard debt.

Fiscally, I can’t see how Quebec, as a separate nation, would fare better. At the end of the day, it would create a fiefdom for politicians who seek glory, but not much else would change.

But beyond the fiscal issue, how would Quebec’s current borders be maintained if tracts of First Nations lands chose to stay in Canada? There is something fundamentally wrong about separation if we prevent them having that choice while respecting Quebec’s choice. We would have to support the right to choose separation for all or none. So, if we agree that Quebec can separate – and I think any province must have that option in a democracy – then we have to address the issue of First Nations who wish to do the same, or, in effect, prefer to take their chances outside the fledgling nation of Quebec. As much as Quebec wishes to claim nationhood, these First Nations already have it in the governance sense. Some separatists have in the past said this is a fantasy risk, but it would be fundamentally wrong to deny basic rights to a group who has seen enough abusive ignorance from us to last well into the next two centuries. I also suspect the world would take a dim view of repressive exclusion of requests from First Nations to remain in the Dominion. If Canada has to respect separation as a choice, then it has to also respect the citizens who wish to remain associated – and First Nations peoples are Canadians presently, whether they are hyphenated or not.

I understand the dream of separation, and the fantasy it represents, but like most ideals it seems a dysfunctional pursuit. I would really wonder how Quebec imagines it would fare in a continent where outside its borders there is almost no distinct French presence. (Contrary to what some claim, statistics being lies, outside Quebec there are very few pockets of pure French.) Do they really think business could be effectively conducted with the United States without essentially using English as the language of trade? Or will exclusive trade with French-speaking nations take precedence? There are so many complex questions of how to manage to make Quebec viable as a standalone nation.

But all that aside, I think the real question that needs to be addressed by Canada is echoed in what Mister Duceppe is flogging around the country. He says that we know what Quebec wants, and it is now up to us to make an offer that makes Quebec stay. before trying to answer that question we probably should observe some facts:

Canada has an enormously expensive public service where costs are incurred in every transaction to ensure bilingualism is maintained (not, oddly, an issue in Quebec, where the idea of French-first is flaunted pretty regularly). Now, if we were to lose Quebec, would the nation have to maintain this? Or, could we declare our national language as English, and drop French as a priority? How much would this save us? This isn’t just a public service issue either, but a mercantile one, because packaging in this country is basically doubled by the French requirements. Even in a place like Alberta, where south of Calgary you have trouble finding a primarily French-speaking person, every package must have both languages (not entirely true, but functionally true). So, if we were to shift away from bilingualism, what would we lose versus what would we gain? And would the combined cost savings of eliminating public service duplication and merchant packaging conditions benefit us? These are serious long-term fiscal considerations, and my guess is the argument can be made effectively that losing bilingualism would have a net economic benefit.
Would raw transfer payments be reduced? That is easy to answer, because it is an absolute yes. Quebec isn’t the drain on the nation some think, but it does get a disproportionate amount of specific transfers, and inside the borders of that province rules differ as to control of public money. I won’t suggest they are worse, and they may in fact be better, but I will observe that the way things happen in Quebec is sometimes a sore point for outside provinces. Quebec doesn’t play by the same rules as the rest of us, and that irks the people who have to respect the rules elsewhere. By eliminating Quebec from the transfer formula, the rest of the country would technically be better off instantly.
If the debt was shared out upon separation, we would also be better off technically.
Ignoring monetary concerns for a moment, the rest of the country would have to consider the side-effect of losing Quebec in terms of political movements. As it stands Quebec has an enormous impact on governance opportunities, regardless of who is elected. Eliminate the seats coming from Quebec, redistribute by population, and there would be a more stable political foundation for the country that remained. In any Parliament like the one we have, we have an enormous problem when a percentage of the political seats is being held by separatists, because by definition they cannot have the national interest at heart. As it stands today, if Quebec was taken out of the mix, Conservatives would probably gain a slight majority, though ultimately the other parties would also gain significantly – specifically the NDP, who might actually represent a viable alternative opposition. So, part of the consideration has to be whether the nation gains from the departure of Quebec in terms of opportunities for representative governance.
Culturally, too, we have to make some considerations. The oddity here is that while we would lose brilliant artists, we would not lose the substantial cultural contribution they have made in the past, which is already an ingrained presence in English Canada. In a peculiar way, while it is likely Quebec would turn inward culturally, it is conceivable Canada would benefit here, as well, since a departure of the Quebec component of our active cultural mosaic would actually create an opportunity for English Canada to recognise its own distinctive qualities, which are presently obscured by arguments about French-distinction.

The list of considerations would go on, obviously, but I would be remiss to not observe, being I am a fiscal conservative, that from a purely economic standpoint, if we made a full separation, and dropped language policies quickly, we would create a stronger national base in a few short years. Quebec is, by its own choice, so separate now from most of our fiscal considerations that it would be hard to consider loss of that economic element of the nation as being negative. And, being a fiscal conservative, I stand by the idea that strong economic bases will improve all other choices – money is fuel.

On an entirely personal level, not being a separatist, I would suggest that separation for Quebec is not a good option – but technically, I’m not entirely certain the fallout from separation would be a bad thing. I can see the dynamic benefits of such a choice, and I wonder if maybe it is time for the rest of the country to answer the question Mister Duceppe is posing with a question of its own: “Does the rest of Canada have a possibly brighter future without Quebec?” If the answer to that is we may, it may be our choice to make. It may be that Quebec separatists are, in an odd way, the avenue whereby we can make that kind of decision. And if the merits of separation are strong for us, maybe we should gracefully accept that Quebec society wishes to be separate, and instead of wasting time and energy (and money) to avoid that eventuality, we should focus on making the separation happen.

There will be some who view this cynically as “the best defence is an offence” and turn off their minds instantly, but I think that does a disservice to the ideas of separation. Maybe the rest of the country needs to make a choice in its own best interests, and let Quebec experiment with its own nationhood. Given our long history together, if you want to draw a parallel with a marriage, it may really be important that we assess whether we are stronger apart than together. So, rather than being angry and fighting to maintain dysfunction, we could all just ask the most basic question: “Does Quebec leaving give us a chance to streamline our governance models, improve our base economic elements, and create a future where the country of Canada is made stronger by its differences, rather than hamstrung by them.

Michael Ignatieff: Crown Prince of…well, nothing.

2010-03-24T22:57:00.001-07:00

What to say about Ignatieff?

This is a man who wants to be Prime Minister of Canada, but cannot even really manage a party. he was essentially appointed to a seat in a strong riding, acclaimed as leader in a non-event, and ever since we’ve all been tortured by his rambling, though frequently coherent, pretences. I say pretences, because given he’s been the King of the Liberal Party of Canada for the last year, roughly, I would defy anyone to define what he actually stands for. Verbiage, perhaps? Self-flagellation in the name of intelligence? Really, and here I am not being dismissive of liberal ideas, is he even actually a liberal? It’s impossible to tell.

Count Ignatieff is brilliant, I am told, but the fact is I know plenty of very smart people, some who never went to school, and not one of them seems incapable of demonstrating their actual intelligence. This man does, and almost monthly he spouts words that appear calculated to make one doubt him. Sure, they are expensive words (as grandma used to say), made up of a multitude of syllables, but they come across empty. He contradicts himself in deeply meaningful ways, even if you accept his views can change, and he always looks angry or uncomfortable – even when he smiles. This is a man who is either one of those educated people who is not actually intelligent, or his arrogance is actually so intense he has no conception of how he projects. History will probably prove both partly true.

I mentioned the idea that education is not equivalent to intelligence, and I can apply an observation on this topic about people like Ignatieff. They tend to confuse credentials with capability. They also tend to be the people for whom accomplishments equate with value, who never question if real value is had by way of those accomplishments. Yes, he taught at famous places – but so what? It means nothing. It in no way qualifies him to do anything. When liberals bang on about how we dumb conservatives carp that he isn’t Canadian because he was successful elsewhere, they entirely miss the issue. Yes, dumb conservatives do get stuck on that absence for 30 years (most of it in England, mind, which even idiots think of as less traitorous for some reason). But those of us not so dumb, a vast majority of conservatives, might observe that the issue isn’t his absence or his fawning proclamation he was American, which was just an awkward burst of hubris on his part, but that after being away that long he doesn’t understand his audience. That’s his problem in that regard. He’s an intellectual, and a global citizen, but he knows almost nothing about real Canadian lives. He has no conception of the average voter in this country, because he has never been one. What his absence has done, coupled with his education, has convinced him he has qualifications that never have extended from education – they come from experience. What his arrogance has done is cemented that attitude.

It is his arrogance that is killing his opportunities. Stephen Harper may not project himself dramatically, Jack Layton may be a rampant socialist mouthpiece, and Gilles Duceppe may be a separatist shill – but every one of them has a fairly fixed identity. In his arrogance, Ignatieff commits missteps that defy identity. Last year he threatened to topple the government, against all advice, and then found out how badly that would have cost the Liberal Party of Canada, so he backpedalled awkwardly. It wasn’t a graceful dance, as Pierre Trudeau might have managed, but a plodding stagger, which, in even the eyes of some entrenched liberal thinkers, made him look weak. Bravado yes, but courage was absent. And now recently he was played by someone in his caucus – and of this I am certain – into proposing a G8-related motion. he clearly never considered the context, never asked his own Liberal MPs, and created a fail-scenario where none was even remotely likely until he waded in spitting rhetoric. His own MPs killed the motion, which was bad enough; but, worse, it was a motion without substance. The very idea Canada can dictate such things to the G8 summit countries, or the third world, is ludicrous. We haven’t the clout to open that debate effectively on so many fronts. And so he created a situation that opened a wound the country has no interest in opening (the shades of abortion debates), to force a motion that means nothing to the average voter regardless of ilk while those same voters are still dragging themselves form a recession, and ensured he looked weaker still by allowing his caucus, or some element of it, to hijack his opportunities.

And we still have no actual idea what the “new” Liberal Party of Canada stands for. There is no alternative proposal of policy that differentiates it, and absolutely no clear indication of how a Liberal government would differ. Liberals cannot cling to the fallacy they are better fiscal managers, because they had a hand in this deficit condition, and because realistically their vaunted surplus was raised on the back of provincial transfer cuts, pressuring health care, and pilfering from the Employment Insurance fund (legal though it may have been). The record speaks, and it tells a story that a rational voter – of any political stripe – can’t entirely dismiss. Were the Liberals all bad? No. But were they saviours? Hardly. The structural problem in public services, the lack of sustainability, is largely a Liberal legacy. The downloading impact on provinces was the same.

My point is that history is a bad foundation to rebuild the Liberal Party of Canada. In ten years maybe we will have forgotten the sins of that past, but it is too fresh. The only course is to rebuild the party, and make it “new.” The problem is that they appointed a leader who is not new, has no new ideas, and cannot define himself as either a leader or a progressive thinker. For all his praised intelligence, he looks foolish – and it is fairly clear his own foibles are magnified by the men who would be king next. Anyone who thinks Bob Rae is Ignatieff’s friend is ignorant of how many of these missteps have been funnelled through that Teflon lens. Ignatieff is becoming a self-fulfilling joke, and looks increasingly like Paul Martin did when the party old guard Chretien had instilled butchered him. The night of long knives Ignatieff faces will be worse, because he has no evident personal merits that scream of past accomplishments that matter. So he is brilliant, and maybe he even knows the name of every Prime Minister of Canada, but he is not accomplished in the eyes of the average Canadian – and he never will be, because his personality defies it.

Michael Ignatieff is the crown prince of nothing, though, so one can’t entirely blame him. When I write that, what I mean is that the Liberal Party of Canada seems to be a complete vacuum. It cannot clearly define policy, cannot offer alternatives, and seems some bizarre conglomeration of centrist, leftists and Quebec-focused rhetoric. What few ideas it proposes (there have been a few) are really not new, and have largely been dysfunctional on the Canadian political landscape. A key example is the Dion-induced stupidity that was the Carbon Tax. While most of us want better environmental results, most of us are intimately aware that big government isn’t the best route to that – it’s as clumsy as using a shotgun to shoot flies. That the party was dumb enough to suggest a tax at election time, with such an ill-defined and poorly communicated scheme behind it, was suicidal. But not because it was a Carbon Tax, really – because it was a tax. It was the standard tax-is-the-answer argument we have seen fail, foisted on a public that was clearly expressing taxes were not an acceptable go-to for every looming problem. It was an old-guard idea that was bound to fail.

The problem, of course, is that by appointing a stumbling non-entity to the leadership role, the Liberal Party of Canada magnified the vacuum they represent. he is a focal example of what fractured, self-serving, detached policy does to any political movement. He highlights not the opportunities of liberal thought, but the pitfalls of tax-and-spend parochial thinking. This idea that the government can better decide our priorities than we can is not a central tenet to modern liberalism, but an aberration of a past when individual mobility of thought was restricted. This mistaken adherence to disproved policies, and outmoded methods of addressing challenges that are different than they were forty years past, is why even liberals are disenfranchised by the party. Ignatieff is only the lightning rod, and a symptom of the deeper rot.

For conservatives (small-C), which describes the vast majority of this country, regardless of their politics, old-style Liberalism is dead before arrival, because we are pinched left and right by globalisation, both in good ways and bad ways. What liberals need is a voice that speaks to their core social mindset, while accepting the fundamental realisation that even liberal thinkers recognise the inherent requirement of sustainability. In this country, mostly a centrist mix of fiscal conservatives who are general social liberals, the overwhelming majority of people would be apt to say, “we love the idea of comprehensive social networks, but we realise we have top pick and choose and sustain those programs, and the status quo is therefore not acceptable.”

But after Ignatieff, who will the Liberal Party of Canada appoint next? Will the old guard, so desperately convinced they are the natural governing party of Canada, pick Rae? Maybe Justin Trudeau? Frankly, either choice or most in between will just further erode the party, because Rae is a socialist, well known for his inability to manage even a province, and far too many people realise now that Pierre Trudeau was the root of many of our unsustainable programs. He was an idealist of sorts, and the ghost of that, combined with shrinking margins in social contexts, will slaughter the party if they foist a new Trudeau on the nation. The fact is, unless the party itself changes some fundamental way, it will become an historical oddity.

You would think as a real conservative I would be overjoyed by the weakness of the Liberals, but I have friends who are small-L liberals, and I take no joy in the choices they are offered at polling stations. No one is expressing their view effectively. I also realise that my chosen brand, the Conservative Party of Canada, suffers because of that weakness. Without a strong opponent, conservative core strengths cannot shine, because there is no lucid debate. Right now Parliament is a screeching forum for unnecessarily divisive and pointless debates, rather than a forum for basic discussion of views that shape this country. The New Democratic Party provides no real balance, being socialist and focused on that dwindling market (non-union workers know the NDP has no real interest in them). The Bloc Québécoise is a regional hangover of a mostly dead movement, and so provides no national discussion at all, which is sad because Gilles Duceppe is a brilliantly insightful man who could have national value to Quebec and Canada. And fringe movements like the Green Party are mere distractions, because they have no scope of view – and, in the case of the Green Party, are led by poor, poor excuses for leaders (shrillness does not incline attention).

Michael Ignatieff is part of the reason the Liberal Party of Canada is dying slowly, but to blame him would require both believing he has something of substance to lead, and believing he could provide leadership. The former is doubtful at present – there is no proof of substance; and the latter is irrelevant, given some aspect of his caucus is clearly preparing him as a sacrifice. he is the crown prince, or Count if he prefers the title, of nothingness. That he is too blind to grasp it, and evidently too weak to fix it, makes me feel sorry for him – another accomplished academic with no real or important skills.

Political or Not So Political?

2010-03-24T22:00:00.001-07:00

I spat some semi-political randomness on my other blog: Check Your Brain At the Border, the Ann Coulter Story

Jack Layton’s Son to Bless Toronto

2010-03-05T09:23:00.001-08:00

You can read the story that prompted this here.

The scariest words in the English language may be “politics runs in the family,” because they are a euphemism for, “this being has no actual skills outside rhetoric and bending the truth.”

The idea of Toronto electing someone like Michael Layton makes my entire body shudder, because even the media recognises the only thing this lad has going for him is he is “Jack Layton’s son.” As soon as you are referred to as someone’s son, in the national media, it implies you are defined by them, and thus implies you have no self-definition. Whether Layton the son has anything going for him is essentially irrelevant from this point forward, because either the media was too lazy to define him otherwise, or he defines himself that way, or he nothing more than someone’s son. Regardless of the option you choose, Toronto is now being offered a tired, environmental socialist to replace a socialist, bred by a family of politicians. And will the city of Toronto expect anything to change with this not so new blood?

This post isn’t really about Michael Layton, obviously. It’s about how we seem to think doing the same old thing repeatedly will generate positive change. Elect a politicians son, folks, and you get a politicians son with no new ideas, and a built in isolation factor. No politician's son (or daughter) grew up in what one would call normal circumstances; they are of the autocracy. Just as Justin Trudeau offers nothing useful other than his last name, neither will Michael Layton – and it has nothing to do with them as people. They were bred and shaped to draw blood from the public purse like vampires will – and vampires, despite modern takes, aren’t your chum.

What Toronto should do – and this is from someone who spent time in that fine city – is vote for anyone and everyone who has never worked for the public service, never held a public seat of office, who has no relatives currently drawing public payrolls, and is under the age of 30. Yes, it would result in a fairly radical change, but for the better. Why for the better? Well, because while half the candidates would be self-serving, that would still leave half of them as something akin to altruists. And half value is better than none, which is what career politicians and their families offer. Better still, they would be too green to steal with impunity, as they would get caught quickly. But the half who were decent, would make changes to suit what they suffer, and alleviate the woes that the city suffers. That’s because they are tired of being trodden upon by no-change politicos.

So, Toronto, reject Layton’s spawn, and vote wildly for everyone who isn’t already entitled to the degree political families are. Look back at the last decade of decline in Toronto, and you’ll know that four years plus of radical changes couldn’t be worse. Just don’t vote the same-old-same-old and then bitch that it hasn’t changed.

Conservatism Revisited?

2010-03-04T13:44:00.001-08:00

What is a conservative? That question, lately, seems to have no ready answer in what passes for modern conservative movements, which seem to either be fundamentalism in disguise, or liberalism with “family values” tacked in mindlessly. Even my party of choice here in Canada has evidently lost sight of conservatism in favour of “value statements” and old pork-barrel style politicking.

If I was to pick a few traits that do define conservative thinking, they would be these:

We believe strongly that fiscal prudence is a requirement of good governance;
We believe government scale is a hindrance to a progressive society; and
We believe it is not the government’s place to set a social agenda, only to govern.

Sadly, what we have creeping into this movement is some bizarre fundamentalism that is to our collective detriment. I can illustrate easily.

As a conservative I have no interest in God. The fact is, whether you believe in God is irrelevant to good government, and absolutely every effort must be made to separate God from politics. There are several obvious reasons for this, but one more basic reason that is likely not so obvious: good governance is about mechanics, not approval or faith. As soon as God steps into the mix, there is a tendency to govern by way of faith. We see it now (in all brands of politicians), who seem ignorant of economic flow to a degree where they put their faith in prognostications by economists to measure growth and thus recovery. Any actual economist who remembers their basics would admit readily that economics is a descriptive science that never has had any specific ability to predict trends beyond theoretical boundaries. As soon as you excise God as a contributor to government mechanics, you end up with mechanics, and that means you can manage the processes and systems effectively or ineffectively. It doesn’t require faith to turn a bolt, and government, from a true conservative view, is about turning bolts. More succinctly, a real conservative knows the process of governance is not moral, or values-based – it is purely mechanical.

Having said that, I note that God isn’t the issue – governance is. But when you make God part of anything political, your focus becomes skewed. Whether God is real or imaginary isn’t important, either; what is important, is that the distraction is unnecessary for good governance.

Digressing some, I can observe that to an actual conservative (speaking here, obviously, in terms of governance models), homosexuality is an irrelevance. That is an issue for society, religion, etc. The idea that a government has any role to play in legitimising or demonising such things is wrong-minded, because it is impossible for a governing mechanism to really influence internal views. It has to be, otherwise we would be ants, with no independence of thought or movement. Even in a tyranny, the best that can be done is to direct you to appear to think some certain way. It is superficial – but bind politics to fundamentalism and you create a society where there is a tendency toward thought-control.

One of the fundamental differences between liberalism and conservatism is the former is about social engineering, or paternalistic. But by allowing fundamentalism to rot conservative thoughts, we become liberals by default. The difference then becomes not how our governance models differ, but some argument about value systems, which has no net benefit in providing good government.

The point of this rambling post is to snapshot a thought, not argue a point: and that thought is a simple one, being that we need to reclaim our conservative stance for what it promised to be, not what some facets have made it. You cannot battle blind liberalism with blind faith, and there is no place in government for faith. This is a mechanical process, and it needs to be treated as such to be efficient, effective, and responsive to the society it serves. What society chooses to accept is not the domain of a democracy to deny or enforce. All a democracy should do is define a framework that says, clearly and loudly, that the people who comprise that democracy may act within its bounds without prejudice, but must respect that government is not and should not champion any social cause. Government should be about infrastructure to provide fundamental services, and nothing more.

Where Did the Stimulus Money Go?

2010-03-03T18:41:00.001-08:00

As a fiscal conservative who is rethinking whether he should really be aligned with any current Canadian political party, I have to look back over the last year and wonder where the stimulus cash went. My daughter’s children (if she has any, and for disclosure purposes she is 4 now) will be paying against this debt, and, frankly, I can’t point at any real benefits from it, since the economic rebound occurred before the cycle of stimulus could actually have generated change. Basic economic cycles last over years and decades, not months, and anyone ignorant of that should stop reading now and go fetch any reputable economics textbook. What is probable is that in about 2 years we see a period of high inflation that is directly the result of the stimulus spending, while we are struggling with a fiscal deficit that is recurrent, systemic, and likely to bury revenues by restricting the grown of middle-income earners, who are our major source of taxation dollars.

I could tow the party line on this and say the spending was necessary, but my instinct is that lie is going to be proved one long before any political benefit comes from the side-effects of the lie. Economics has a way of biting one on the arse before long, and bad economic policy is the primary cause of long-term grief. In the USA the economic policy has been wrong since Greenspan took hold, or before, and here in Canada it has been wrong since the middle of Mulroney’s term. In the USA the problem was a reliance on false growth as an indicator of financial stability, and here was a reliance on the currency position of our dollar in relation to our major trading partner. In the case of both countries, the fundamental problem was the same: an ignorance about real productive returns versus inflated perceived returns. Or, in English, almost all economic policy in both countries was based upon foundations that were wrong, ignoring the deep slide that comes when an economy turns its back upon manufacturing, and pretending inflated bases provided a foundation to measure productive growth.

Making things is what defines a healthy economy. But we make almost nothing now, and that means that we can’t measure the economic engine by productive increases, since most of us make nothing tangible. Tangible goods, despite what the Wall Street types want us to believe, are necessary to provide objective measures. We don’t eat cell phone minutes, or good service, but food – which is tangible. We don’t sit and relax in an RRSP return, but in a chair. When you stop making tangible goods, or allow the price disconnect to affect what you do make, you are aiming for a serious problem in your economy.

Rambling aside, the issue I have with stimulus is that it flew in the face of rational thought. We live in a capitalist economy – regardless of whether one likes the idea – and the bail-outs and such essentially skewed every market they touched, giving us no advantages at all productively, and creating a delay. We basically borrowed billions to hide the problem deeper, so that when it must be addressed it is egregiously complex. Worse, on the side of public works, we appear to have poured billions into transient works, which have very little lasting impact on productive growth. Or, at least, we have no accountability to show the value.

If I buy new software for my business, I buy it after doing a value-for-investment calculation. That doesn’t mean I’ll be right, but I still do one. I ask, for example, ‘Will these new tools make me more productive?’ I buy when I believe the answer is yes, and delay purchase when it appears to be no. The impression about the stimulus spending, though, is that no one has asked about the productive value of the investment. Money was spun away aimlessly to satisfy various fiefdoms, creating a mishmash of valueless activity. So, in 10 years when the inflationary cycle has crippled us, almost nothing we invested in will be relevant.

Can I support a government that was even party to such largess without any evident value return? More to the point, can my daughter, or her children, or the children of those children? The cycle has to stop somewhere.

But then I am sick, so I ramble. Nonetheless, what is the point of being a conservative when conservatism is tarnished by this type of idiotic tripe?

The Throne Speech and the Gender-Neutral Anthem

2010-03-03T14:17:00.001-08:00

I am a committed conservative, and a true fiscal conservative. Upon realising the gender-status of our national anthem was a priority to the degree it showed up in a throne speech I nearly vomited. At this juncture, with a massive structural deficit (caused by all the stooges in parliament), we have somehow reached a state of raw stupidity that inclines us to expend effort trying to make our anthem gender neutral? How, in the name of all things rational, does it matter at all? How, given the need to constrain spending at every turn, does raising this issue even make sense?

Pretend for a moment that the gender-status of a song is relevant, to anything, and you would still have to realise there is a time and place for such drivel. A throne speech is not about political correctness that exceeds rational thought, or shouldn't be, else it becomes a pure waste of time. To even have an issue like this (a non-issue, really) raised in a throne speech makes the whole purpose of those speeches suspect, because it positions this as some sort of priority, which given current economic realities is ludicrous. Even if this mattered, now would not be the time, given how tough the decisions are that must be made. To spend even a cent on such a thing is insulting to a degree that makes me cringe.

The government should try an approach that is actually conservative, minority or not, and avoids the extreme stupidity necessary to foist such obscurity upon a nation that can’t pay its bills.

I am, right now, so stunned by this horseshit I am moved to nearly cancel my membership and pull my financial support entirely. Pathetic pandering to political correctness is what got us in this state financially, and to prioritise something is pointless in a throne speech is just unforgivable.

Canada and the Taliban Torture Circus

2009-12-13T20:08:00.001-08:00

First, let me say that I think torture of any kind is a wrong-minded approach to obtaining information. It is too likely to produce false information, or information so skewed as to be dangerous for reasons of details. Having said that, I also recognise that torture is a tried and tested method of obtaining information, and in some cases will produce results that might otherwise not be possible. The problem with any tried method, is that its few past successes can overshadow the worst aspects of its use, and in extreme circumstances lead average people to mistake the validity of the methods themselves. Torture is, in a word, wrong. It is not wrong because it is immoral; it is wrong because it descends to the level of the entities we, as a free world, claim to stand against. Efficiency is an evil path to follow in all human relations, and torture is, in a way, an efficient method to break the spirit of any opponent. If widespread use is made of it, the enemy will fall because it will lose its psychological integrity, and anything directed to the destruction of the human spirit is wrong. It shows the deepest form of disregard for what it is to be human.

Now, having written that, one might expect me to hold the belief that Canada needs an inquiry into its Afghan prisoner handovers, etc. If I thought that anything useful would come out of the process, I might even be apt to accept the idea, but I know it is a political lever, and none of the bleeding hearts proposing such a step are thinking beyond the optics as they apply to politics. The problem when we substitute politicking for rational thought is that the end result is always damaging without producing positive change. It is acceptable to dig up unpleasantness when the end result will be valid, positive change; but when the impetus is political, the outcome will never be positive. Why? Simply put, it is because the inquiries begin with a defined agenda, and the outcome is either predetermined, or will end up being entirely ambiguous.

So far, we have allegations heaped on allegations, most of them coming directly or indirectly from Richard Clovin, who evidently held his tongue an awfully long time, and who has admitted that he made many of these accusations based upon third- and sometimes forth-hand hearsay. Mind you, that does not mean the accusations are false, only that the evidence is highly suspect; the problem, of course, being that evidence is required to carry any long-term weight behind those accusations. Still, setting aside the truth or fallacy of the accusations, it still leaves a number of serious questions, the paramount one being why it took Clovin more than 3 years to find the courage to go public. If he was indeed as outraged as he claims, what stopped him from acting sooner? Forgoing the tired line that he was appointed by Liberals, which while true is probably irrelevant in this case, I suspect we will eventually find out some departmental slight prompted his ego to sting, and he decided to embarrass the government – and he probably would have done it regardless of which party was in power. Any time I see high moral outrage from a diplomat, 3 years too late, I know the moral outrage is false, because actual moral outrage requires an immediate action from anyone with a moral compass. Ethics don’t even enter into this (such as the ethics of a diplomat exposing his national interest to ridicule over hearsay); there is nothing wrong with blowing a whistle, so long as the act is done when the source of the apparent outrage is fresh. Any delay longer than a few days, means the individual has an agenda, and the longer that delay the more personal it will be.

As for the “he’s a liberal” rant, it smacks of a weak grasp of the human situation to use it here. After all, Ignatieff was, not so many years ago, a supporter of torture to obtain information. Whether he retracted it becomes irrelevant, when one considers politics is about the optics, not the rectification of immense stupidity. Basically, if the LPC wants to make torture an issue, it will have to offer up Ignatieff on a skewer while it does it. The man made statements, in writing, that showed his grandiose intellect in action, where he supported torture. Now, tracking that fact, one has to assume either he was mistaken in his position (which is essentially his retraction), or that he is withdrawing his statements for political reasons (true even if he has changed his mind). The problem with his stance is simply this: if he even thought, for an instant, torture was an acceptable form of warfare, he is a fool, and certainly not a liberal thinker. Any liberal, however small the L in their stance, would balk at the very idea. Most conservatives, in fact, balk at the idea. We may grasp why it occurs, but the idea that we would condone it is a sickening one. yet, all considered, if this is some LPC ploy, if Clovin is a liberal schemer, it is a scheme that will backfire so badly as to maim the party further for a few decades. It is inconceivable, even to someone as rabidly conservative as I am, to believe the LPC is that ignorant of politics. They may be ignorant of the populace, but politics…no.

A simpler explanation also holds for this, which means beefing it up is unnecessary. Clovin was pissed off by something in his career – maybe he didn’t get a cherry assignment he sought – and consequently, after 3 years, his outrage suddenly surfaced anew. In essence, he appears to be a narcissist who is using this to serve a purpose of his own, not for some political lever – though the fools in Parliament have glommed onto this issue, with the shallow thinking of a mob. The only actual question is when the media will tire of flogging the accusations, and bother to actually investigate the man who made them well enough to determine his trigger. At the very least, this investigation would add either substance to the accusations (prove Clovin has nothing to gain by them), or will call into question the entire issue (allowing us to examine it without the angst-level the media has ignited).

Now, that aspect of this dealt with, I have a few thoughts about the reason this issue doesn’t resonate with Canadians. The reason is not, as some rabid liberals have promoted, that Canadians are insular, stupid, or ignorant of the issues. The reason is because we are all smart enough to know the difference between hearsay and evidence, and while most of us probably accept that the Afghan government resorted to torture at some junctures, we all have a gut feel that our troops, regardless of rank, are honourable enough that by now some of them would have stepped forward. The revelation that we know of at least one instance where the troops turned over a prisoner, then reclaimed them when torture was evident or suspected, is proof of this view. Our troops are fighting for human beings in Afghanistan, and I am entirely confident they are decent, caring, and capable human beings – they will not betray the values that make this fight acceptable. The politicians who have failed to grasp this are likely to pay an enormous price, not because of this issue, but because it exposes the underlying problem they have – they are detached from the average Canadian and the values that describe us. And, worse for the opposition members who flog this dead horse, is the reality that those values are not so divergent for Canadians, whether they be from the east or west, newly landed or here for generations, or wealthy or poor. We, as a people, have the same essential beliefs, even when we have vastly different views on how to achieve the ends we seek.

I also think it wise to remark that the often repeated diatribe about conservatives being for torture because we are talking about the Taliban is tripe. I resent immensely when anyone expresses such a belief, because it is politically motivated and essentially untrue on all levels. The vast majority of us do not condone torture, would not use it against our worst enemies, and have never said it was acceptable. What we will say, and on record, is that we find it sickening to hear these complaints from individuals (Taliban here, but insert any terrorist you wish) who have no respect for human rights at all. These chaps throw acid in the faces of children who want to go to school because the children are girls, and commit atrocities that are so reprehensible that it renders those committing the acts subhuman. They do this in the name of religion, warping Islam to suit their deficiencies, harming not only their own people, but the very religion they claim to adhere, but deeply affecting our ability to relate to the nation of Islam, which is arguably less prone to personal violence than Christianity has ever been. In the end though, all that aside, the offence at being said to support terrorism against terrorists comes down to a basic fact that it is an attempt to demonise an ideology that has no fundamental component that even hints at such a stance. Contrary to some liberal statements, conservatism is not Nazism, or any other form of hate; it is a belief that change must be managed, and largely, in the modern world, a systemic belief that fiscal restraint and sustainability is the key to national strength; yet, too, it is not nationalism, which is a weakness the Canadian conservative movement has not succumbed to, having battled against it effectively from the ground up.

The facts of this issue are basic: the accusations are almost all hearsay at best; the accusations are not that the Canadian troops participated in any systemic torture campaign, but that the Afghan provisional government did; and the evidence we do have shows that whenever possible the Canadians stood firm against handing over prisoners when suspicion of torture was evident. If we examine the evidence, we end up with a clear indication that while mistakes are always going to be made, our military did not fall prey to what must have been an overwhelming desire to break the enemy, even while the enemy used the tactic of terrorism, which is a widespread form of indiscriminate torture.

To suggest we need a public inquiry into this is a distraction and pure politics. It would do nothing more than undermine the troops we have risking their lives for humanitarian reasons, given we have almost no evidence that would be of reasonable quality. It would be a media circus (which is the reason the media is flogging the idea), and a political circus. And if it does happen, even if we exposed a hundred cases of suspect torture, we would accomplish nothing positive, since it is certain our military is already trying to counter such activities. It would be far wiser to have the government introduce a bill to reaffirm our position against torture, and extend existing mechanisms to prevent it, than to play politics with an issue of human rights.

And, finally, it would be interesting to see if our media could behave like they were actual journalists and attempt to actually confirm innuendo as fact before printing accusations like this. Or, having allowed them to be printed, invested some resources to honestly investigate them. As it stands, this will only further serve to prove two things: the media is a poor excuse for a fifth estate; and journalism has become base entertainment. I cannot imagine how actual journalists, regardless of political stripe, must feel about this awful sensationalism. If we can no longer count on an impartial fifth estate, who fact checks and does its upmost to separate truth from fiction, we are left to exist in a purely political arena, and that is a socially suicidal position.

The Stelmach Effect

2009-11-08T21:58:00.001-08:00

Here in Alberta we have a Premier in Ed Stelmach who probably causes most actual conservatives to feel ill, but then so does the party lately. That they voted in support of his leadership is likely going to cost them the government in the next election, because doing so shows they have no conception of the views of the average conservative in this province.

Contrary to what “city folk from the east” think (this is always means Toronto, to those who haven’t caught on), Alberta conservatives are not a troupe of flaky holy rollers. In fact, most of them, even if religious, have almost none of the traits the media ascribes; and most conservatives around the country have few of the associated lunatic right-wing traits. Just like in the Liberal Party we have our nutcases (no offence meant to the mentally ill, who are far less reprehensible than these flakes), but by and large the common shared conservative trait is one of a desire for fiscal restraint. We recognise it was almost unavoidable to create a deficit in the face of the global meltdown, but we also reject it as praiseworthy. Necessary evil is more descriptive, and it rankles even when so described. (You show me a conservative who likes the deficit we just created, or the bailouts, and I will point directly at someone who isn’t a conservative.)

But back to what I call the “Stelmach Effect,” which is a handy term to apply to any conservative politician who is so detached from the core of his support he can’t but fail.

Stelmach is now claiming that after the leadership vote, he will start to look at what can be done differently in Alberta. What that really means is he is in terror of handing the next election to the Wild Rose Alliance, and beyond that it means nothing because if he had that ability to lead any change he would have bloody well done it already. This is a man who, surrounded by sycophants apparently, had to have a leadership vote to wake him to the fact his constituents are unhappy? Where has he been the last couple years? How could he have missed the discontent?

Conservatives in this province are angry about almost exactly the same things that anger a liberal thinker, with the basic difference we attach to every concern the phrase “must be able to pay for a solution in a sustainable way.” We are irritated by poorly executed health care, angered by despotic practices in government, and concerned about the environment. We watch people who claim to be conservative pissing away money endlessly on schemes than benefit few, if any, outside their immediate circle. We watch the health system fumble the inoculation program, entirely because the bureaucrats who sit in the highest levels of its byzantine halls couldn’t plan to save their life. And, yes, shocking though it may be, most of us who are actual conservatives are seriously concerned about the environment – we just tend to be sceptical of any scheme to make improvement that begins with a tax, since we are doubtful it would ever be applied correctly or fully. (Most of us would even admit that the climate seems to be changing, though we would be apt to question the cause is as simple as interest groups make out. We don’t discount the idea, or even the science really, but we do question the vested nature of the interests that push their ideals wrapped in a “spend, spend', spend” mentality.)

The probable outcome of an election in Alberta in the next couple years, barring some dramatic return to actual conservatism, will be we are saddled with the Wild Rose Alliance. It isn’t that they are scary (they are no more scary than any other politicians), but if it happens the province then trades practised incompetence for inexperience. Given the first thing that happens to any politician, which is a direct assault on their ideals by the bureaucrats, it is doubtful the Wild Rose Alliance can make any positive change. They will end up buried by protocols that have nothing to do with good governance, and everything to do with status quo, end up looking foolish, and abruptly descend into chaos.

I have no idea what Ed Stelmach is like as a human being, but I can describe him as a political animal, and that description is not pleasant. It begins with the words “self-serving,” and ends with the words, “leading an entrenched and entitled government that is either incompetent or corrupt.” As long as he “leads,” and he has yet to actually lead anything in the way of positive change, the governing party in this province is ensuring its fortunes wane. The problem, of course, is if he were to step down the vacuum would be filled by another void. So far as is visible, there isn’t a leadership candidate worth a fleck of dust on a bee’s arse.

The question for real conservatives isn’t so much if the Conservative Party in Alberta collapses at the polls, but when the trigger is pulled to put it out of our misery. The only save they can make is to actually start behaving like conservatives, actually start serving their constituents, and pioneer the changes necessary to sustain end-user services into the future. It’s doubtful they can manage that, given they haven’t bothered to even try since they were elected last time out.

Another question, of more concern for the real conservative, is whether the “Stelmach Effect” will damage the CPC at the federal level in the next election. There is a legitimate fear that Toronto sees this fumbling house of fools as a symbol of conservatism, and west-east communication is so bad it is unlikely the eastern view will be informed enough to see that Alberta conservatives don’t particularly find this present brand worthy of their patience. The media certainly won’t help, but not because of the bias some people claim to see, rather more because factual reporting doesn’t sell, and they need controversy and adversarial stances to churn a profit. To have intelligent reporting observe how similar the actual wants of the conservative and liberal thinkers is, would be destructive to their bottom line. God forbid (whichever god you like) the eastern voter realise that most westerners feel alienated not by the east, but by the city of Toronto. If that ever happens, the bulk of the ridings outside Toronto could easily shift conservative just out of a sense of affectionate understanding. (I come from Northern Ontario, and, frankly, the entire Northern part of Ontario has suffered provincially and federally for decades because Liberal governments have marginalised the north. There aren’t enough votes for them to give a damn, and they pay lip service without ever really engaging. The best the North could do for themselves would be to vote conservative for no other reason than to send a message that they grasp the dismissive attitude and reject it. The fact is that voting NDP and Liberal is why the North is ignored, and repeatedly raped of resources to serve Toronto’s core.)

It will be interesting to see if the “Stelmach Effect” is as strong as I suppose it might be, and whether Harper can offset it. (I think he can.)

Respect for the Prime Minister

2009-09-21T17:45:00.001-07:00

My first real political post here is apolitical in the sense it isn’t specifically going to project my conservatism.

I am increasingly irritated by people who disrespect the office of the Prime Minister of Canada. This goes whether the sitting PM is Conservative or Liberal. It’s unnecessary, defeatist, and displays a degree of ignorance that bodes ill for our society. You do not need to “like” the Prime Minister to be respectful, and you do not need to fawn over the man who sits in the chair to respect the post itself. This enormous disrespectful stance is one of the key reasons this country is not what it could be. When we disrespect the primary government position in our Parliament, it becomes impossible to present a united front against the important issues – we become distracted by pettiness, rather than remain focused on cooperative progression. In a dictatorship this kind of expectation of respect is ill-advised, but in a democracy it is ludicrous and unforgivable not to show it, because unlike a tyranny we have the option to regularly change the person who holds the seat by way of a formal electoral process. When we arbitrarily disrespect the Prime Minister, we create a situation where we will never improve the external or internal opportunities to get better people into governance positions – and that is shameful.

When Jean Chretien was Prime Minister (I voted Liberal the first time he became PM, as my local Conservative candidate was atrocious), I cannot say I “loved” him dearly; but he was entertaining at times, and, always, I respected his political skills, his intuition, and his enormous capacity to push issues forward. Did I agree with him? Seldom. Did I “hate” him? Not at all. Would I have gladly seen a Conservative government before he had a chance to sit in the PM’s chair a second time? Sure. But…I respected him, and that allowed me to respectfully disagree with him.

When Paul Martin became Prime Minister, I was not a fan. To be direct, I found the man smug, arrogant, and a blowhard. I respected his accomplishments, and his ambition was astounding, but I would gladly have told him to his face he wasn’t of the stuff that makes a PM. I was, in any event, proven correct when after years of Chretien having a stranglehold on the nation, Martin managed to self-destruct (though, to be fair, he was set up with few hopes). Yet, even while calling Martin the worst type of politician, I would respect him. No one useless rises to that position without they have some skills, I once read; and I agree.

Now that Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister, I have to say I think him fit. I won’t demand agreement on the point, but I will observe this man has gone to the arctic circle more than any other sitting PM, has stood firm for the country (including Quebec) on international issues, and has managed to sustain a minority government longer than any other PM since 1921. No matter what trash one wants to talk about Prime Minister Harper, he is reasonably effective given circumstances. Maybe there is some truth he seems at times devoid of personality (though, one might want to check out this link to find otherwise), but would you rather have a flash cove in the chair or a man who works? Take a look south of our border to see the effect of flash, and consider it may be best to trade some charisma for conscientious effort.

We need to begin to respect the Prime Minister as something more than a target to pillory. We need to raise the standard we hold the office to, because that is the only way we will ever have the best reach for the office. Until then, we will suffer the likes of Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, men who have nothing to offer but rhetoric that isn’t even self-consistent, who aspire to the seat not because of a sense of greater purpose, but because they look upon the title as some entitlement given the scale of their egos.

So, whether in agreement or disagreement, respect the office; that is the way to ensure future greatness for the country.

Welcome

2009-09-20T09:37:00.001-07:00

People who know me even vaguely are generally aware I have a deeply fractured world view, and yet remain a staunch small-C conservative. This new blog is designed to isolate the folks who hate my politics from suffering my opinions, and to allow those same folks to be vicious at will. The only comments I will ever delete will be ones that contain vulgarities, or so many spelling/grammar mistakes no reader could possibly manage to read them. That said, I may even leave some of those up if they contain a kernel of wisdom.

Before I end this post today, I want to be clear I am a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party of Canada, am becoming active in the riding I live in (Medicine Hat), and while I listen to all viewpoints, I’m not likely to change fundamentally. That said, anyone who knows me at all is aware I apply logic to my politics, not emotion, so one never knows – maybe some day I’ll wake and embrace the Greens. (I expect the planet to be ten feet deep in solid ice before then, but you never know. If the Greens want me, they have to first rid themselves of that opportunistic beast they pretend is a leader.)