On anticipated departures

With Canada's federal election still a month and a half away, it's obviously too early to be concluding that it will end the career of any of our current political leaders. (And we should keep that in mind given that far too much commentary treats the question of whether leaders will hold onto their jobs as a major point of speculation.)

But Ipsos-Reid's poll as to what Canadians want to see happen following the election does offer one noteworthy point of divergence:

If Stephen Harper and the Conservatives don’t win the most seats, 66% of all voters agree (40% strongly/26% somewhat) that Harper should resign as party leader, while 34% disagree (10% strongly/24% somewhat). Among Tory voters, 37% agree (12% strongly/24% somewhat) he should resign as party leader under this scenario, while 63% disagree (24% strongly/39% somewhat) and think he should stay on even if he’s no longer Prime Minister.

What makes that finding particularly noteworthy is the gap we've seen between the Harper Cons and the public's electoral choices before, and how Harper has gone all-in to ignore the latter where he sees any opportunity at all to cling to power.

The Ipsos-Reid poll then hints at yet another way Harper might seek to extend his stay on the political scene. Even if another party or combination thereof manages to form government, he might well want to stay around to pounce on any instability in that government. And while the Canadian public isn't particularly on board with that possibility, Harper's party seems to be.

As a result, we have yet another reason not to be satisfied with an election which leaves room for interpretation or spin. To the extent Harper won't listen to anybody outside of his own hand-crafted bubble, we can't expect to be rid of him unless an election result is so resounding that the people who were willing to hold Canada hostage to keep him in office see no choice but to give in.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Alice posts her scorecard for the 2011 election. And the NDP's overall results serve as a classic example of big changes overwhelming narrow-casting, as the party managed to make roughly equal gains in seats, 2nd-place finishes and rebate-eligible ridings despite the limited to non-existent overlap between the three measures of progress.

- It doesn't look to me like the numbers add up entirely. But Ipsos Reid's exit poll notes the striking breakdown of the NDP's support:

The New Democratic Party, which won 30.6 per cent of the popular vote, scored highest among recent immigrants, taking 41 per cent of the vote of newcomers who have been in Canada less than a decade.

But the Conservatives, who seized 39.6 per cent of the overall vote, won 43 per cent of immigrants who have been in the country longer than a decade.
...
In general, the Conservatives did slightly better among those born outside Canada (42 per cent) than those born in Canada (37 per cent).

The NDP was the only one of the three major parties to score higher than their popular vote among those born in Canada, winning 36 per cent of their ballots.

The left-leaning party captured 29 per cent among those born in another country.

The Liberals -who obtained 18.9 per cent of the national vote -did slightly better among foreign-born voters (22 per cent) and slightly poorer among the Canadian-born (15 per cent).

Which looks to me to signal that for all the talk about the Cons' ethnic outreach, it's the NDP which has actually built the strongest connections to communities of new immigrants. And at the same time, it also managed to both change the minds of many people who had voted for other parties (particularly the Libs) in the past to more than double their count among Canadian-born voters. All of which would seem to leave ample room for growth in 2015, particularly to the extent the NDP can follow the Cons' efforts in reaching out to longer-established immigrants through multi-language media and community development.

- Murray Dobbin asks whether the NDP needs to become the Liberals in order to match their past electoral success - which seems to me to be something less than clear given its second-choice support at its current ideological positioning. But I'll certainly endorse part of Dobbin's take on what civil society will need to do over the next four years (based on the real lesson to be learned from Bob Rae's tenure in Ontario):

Should those outside the party focus on keeping the pressure on the NDP to be true to its philosophy and Canadian values – doing what we can to counter the inevitable fire-storm of criticism the party as the official opposition, will face from the media? This is not really an option – it is a necessity. When Bob Rae won unexpectedly in Ontario, the left there – inexperienced with NDP governments – decided to implement a sort of honeymoon period during which time they did not criticize the government.

It was a fatal mistake. The media and business groups launched a merciless attack. What Bob Rae needed was thousands of unionists, anti-poverty activists, women and youth in the streets demanding progressive change – a force he could point to, to justify keeping his promises. But there was no one. While not wishing to give Rae a pass on his policy failures (backing away from public auto insurance being the biggest), the left helped drive him to the right by failing to demand he keep to the left.

- Don't worry pogge, I'm sure a Con majority will end the problem of reports showing the idiocy of their crime policies being suppressed by declining to have them written in the first place.

- Finally, Armine Yalnizyan talks about inequality and democracy:

Trusted

In case there's any particular doubt why the Libs have changed the subject from health care, Ipsos Reid offers the strongest answer yet:

Forty-six per cent of likely voters said they trust Jack Layton and the NDP most to manage health care in Canada, according to a new poll by Ipsos Reid. Thirty per cent of respondents said Stephen Harper and the Conservative party were most trusted and 20 per cent reported trusting Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal party more.

Now, this isn't the first time the NDP has ranked ahead of the Libs on health care among other issues - so there should have been plenty of warning signs even before the Libs developed their campaign plan. But the new polling offers a rather compelling signal that any focus on health care by the Libs would play right into the NDP's hands - and that likely explains the Libs' flailing to try to drive the election campaign in yet another direction.

(Hint: However proud the Libs are that their leader is roughly as popular as the man they consider unfit for office, any attempt to build a cult of Iggy will run into similar problems.)

On selective standards

Ipsos Reid's poll on perceptions of government action is being portrayed as representing an even split between issues which are favourable and unfavourable to the Cons. But before drawing any strong conclusions, it's worth noting how the poll was perfectly tailored to fit the Cons' messaging:

For its survey, Ipsos Reid asked Canadians if they thought the federal government was “getting things done” on various issues.

Here are the areas where a majority think the government is getting things done:
...
However, there are some other issues where a majority of Canadians think the government is “not getting anything done.”

Now, it's first worth noting that the choice offered to respondents makes for a rather incomplete picture. In theory, it's entirely possible to be seen as "getting things done" while believing that the actions taken are too slow, or represent the wrong choices to deal with a topic. So even absent some other distorting factor, the nominally positive responses are likely to signal that a respondent has heard the Cons talk about an issue - not that there's any particular agreement with the action taken.

But the larger problem is that the "getting things done" language perfectly mirrors the Cons' own choice of spin on their time in government - which means that Ipsos Reid's poll figures to do little but test and reinforce a message the Cons have spent plenty of time and money advertising to the Canadian public.

Once those factors are taken into account, it's downright remarkable that there's an even split between issues where the Cons are seen as associated with their own spin, and those where they're seen as doing nothing at all. And that fact would seem to suggest that a message about the Cons as a do-nothing government has plenty of room for a positive response.

Saturday Afternoon Links

From the wide world of weekend reading...

- The story of David Rotor and Douglas Tipple is aggravating enough on its face. But does anybody want to guess how many more similar situations didn't get investigated because the workers involved didn't have the same opportunity to set the record straight?

- Boris nicely criticizes the "free rider class" for wanting to pay nothing for vital public services:

Social science uses the term 'free rider problem' for individuals or groups that participate in or use something that others pay for. If you sneak into a show without paying for a ticket, you're free rider.

The Timmies anger crowd, free market fanatics, and Cons among us raise all sorts of noise about this. Free riders are welfare recipents or big government, receiving income and support from their taxes (my hard work you ungrateful bastard! Get a job!), universal healthcare, and all sorts of things where people or groups might be seen to benefit from the collective resources of a society. It's really easy to see how this appeals to the perpetually angry.

But see, here's where they get it wrong. They are compelled by their very existence to participate in the society they live in. They don't have to volunteer at a soup kitchen, but they at the very least must pay taxes and such that provide the basic infrastructure for the collective welfare. The more they argue for lower taxes and this and that, the more they essentially argue for right to be free riders, because somebody still has to pay for all that. Just not them.

But it's worth adding another similar concept into the mix to note an odd contradiction: how is it that the free rider class so frequently makes common cause with the rent seeker class in parties who seek to cut taxes while at the same time directing money toward corporate interests?

- Though maybe the answer is that neither has any appetite for funding actual worthy activities.

- Finally, following up on this post, there's another fascinating result in Ipsos Reid's most recent federal polling:

Harper was also the preferred political leader when Canadians were asked who was most likely to spend tax dollars wisely; three in 10 respondents gave him top marks for this, while NDP leader Jack Layton and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff were virtually tied at 18 and 17 per cent, respectively.

Now, it's noteworthy enough that Harper doesn't seem to have a great deal of trust on the issue compared to his party's standing in the polls. But the positioning of the opposition parties is especially striking: if the Libs are falling behind the NDP in issue terms on what's (however wrongly) seen as an Achilles heel for the New Democrats, then is there anything at all other than inertia keeping them in second place for voter preferences?

Wednesday Morning Links

This and that for your mid-week reading...

- Is there any doubt that if the numbers in its health-care polling (28% for aising taxes to better fund health care investing more in health care at the expense of other programs, 11% for encouraging private payment) were reversed, Ipsos Reid would be breathlessly trumpeting that "more than twice as many people support two-tier health care as expanding the public system!" rather than declaring that neither is a popular option?

But have no fear: having failed to get numbers that can be spun in that direction, they're instead helpfully declaring that the other 89% of Canadians will have no choice but to bow to the will of the one in ten who want to put health care up for sale.

(Update/correction: Ian rightly notes in comments that there's an even more significant "heads privatization wins, tails the public system loses" aspect to the question, as the option to increase health funding comes from the same size of "tax-dollar pie". Which all the better reflects the corporatist attitude: don't even make it an option for people to choose to pay the amount of tax required to provide valuable public services, lest it prove to be the most popular.)

- Dave raises what would be a good point if the Harper Cons had shown the least bit of inclination to operate in reality or respect international laws. But would anybody really put it past them to make a show of introducing legislation to appear tough on refugees, even knowing that it's utterly unenforceable in several different ways?

- Philip Slayton's article last week is certainly a useful starting point for a discussion of what role the judiciary should play in shaping public policy. But much as I'd like to see improved access to information from all levels of government, I'm not sure that I agree entirely with Slayton's concerns about the decision in Ontario v. Criminal Lawyers' Association. After all, it's a fairly large leap from the Supreme Court of Canada's application of the Charter in cases where individual rights are obviously implicated to the establishment of new rights related to access to information - and I'm not sure the court could have been expected to move the boundaries any further than it did.

- Finally, Chantal Hebert's latest points out the difference between leaders who have actually had use for new ideas, and the Harper Cons who have been dedicated entirely to clinging to old ones as a rationale for destroying recent progress.

On dual considerations

Both CBC and Ipsos-Reid give top billing on a new opinion survey to the 39% of respondents who think that dual citizenship should be eliminated. But it's worth noting that nationally - and indeed in each province - a significant majority of Canadians are in favour of allowing dual citizenship.

From the Ipsos-Reid press release:

As Canada celebrates its birthday this Canada Day weekend, a new Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of the Dominion Institute finds that four in ten (39%) Canadians are against the current policy regarding dual citizenship, and believe that Canadian citizens should not be allowed to simultaneously hold citizenship of a country other than Canada. On the other hand, a majority (61%) of Canadians are in favour of the current practice, and believe that Canadians should be able to hold dual citizenship, whereby one would be allowed to simultaneously be a citizen of Canada and of another country.

In other words, the poll apparently lacked a middle or undecided option. Which means that the 39% against dual citizenship is a far less significant number than it would be if, due to other options in the poll, it ranked anywhere near the number of respondents who prefer the status quo.

Meanwhile, the regional breakdown highlighted by CBC shows that even if respondents are broken down by their province of residence, the option of maintaining dual citizenship wins out by between 14% and 34% everywhere:

Breaking it down by province, Albertans were most opposed, with 43 per cent against dual citizenship. British Columbians had the least problem, with 33 per cent.

In sum, while the number of Canadians who see Canadian citizenship as incompatible with citizenship elsewhere is perhaps higher than one would like to see, the national consensus is still strongly in favour of permitting dual citizenship. And with younger respondents preferring to continue the status quo by an even wider margin, the poll merely confirms that Canadians figure to prefer to allow dual citizenship well into the future.

Update: Of course, it could be that the Cons will want to push to abolish dual citizenship no matter how strongly the public is against them. And I fear Robert may be right in musing as to how they could seek to force through a more restricted definition.