Leadership 2012 Roundup

A few leadership notes covering the gap between Sunday's informal debate and tonight's version in Saskatoon...

- Niki Ashton unveiled her justice platform, proposing a "judicare" program to ensure greater access to the legal system as well as soft drug decriminalization.

- Nathan Cullen took questions from Aaron Wherry, featuring his view that energy is the "elephant in the room" which isn't getting as much attention as he'd like in the leadership campaign.

- Paul Dewar earned a report from Tim Naumetz on his party-building plan, as well as a story from the Star.

- Thomas Mulcair strengthened his standing in Atlantic Canada with endorsements from multiple Nova Scotia MLAs, including Finance Minister Graham Steele.

- Peggy Nash talked to David Akin about the leadership campaign so far, including the fund-raising numbers released last week.

- Romeo Saganash appeared on CBC's C'est la Vie,

- Finally on the commentary side, Scott Stinson wasted plenty of space concern trolling over the fact that NDP leadership candidates haven't piled up money they wouldn't be allowed to spend before raising the slightly more relevant question of whether donor numbers might be an issue. And Ian followed up on some of the problems with Nathan Cullen's electoral cooperation plan.

Leadership 2012 Roundup

It's been another busy week in the NDP leadership race, with policies, events and endorsements galore. So let's jump right in...

- Niki Ashton released both a statement on multiculturalism and a health-care plan, with one familiar idea featuring prominently in the media's coverage in Saskatoon - and will be in Regina for a couple of events today.

- Nathan Cullen met with the Winnipeg Free Press in the midst of a prairie tour of his own.

- Paul Dewar unveiled an endorsement from former Ontario NDP leader Mike Cassidy, with the promise of another major announcement to come.

- Thomas Mulcair picked up what may be one of the more crucial endorsements of the campaign, adding a western MP to his list of supporters in Don Davies. And at the same event yesterday, Mulcair also unveiled his retirement security plan - though the idea of a voluntary top-up to the CPP seems more likely to reinforce concerns about Mulcair fitting awkwardly with the values of core NDP members, particularly since his plan sounds eerily like the one the Libs have pushed for the past few years (only with an extra dose of financial-sector involvement).

- Peggy Nash released a plan to move Canada toward women's equality, including a reinstated long-gun registry with legislated protection for its data.

- And Brian Topp released his democratic reform policy paper (featuring Senate positioning similar to what I've mused about recently), wrote an open letter in the wake of Lise St-Denis' defection, and addressed the Economic Club of Canada before a western swing of his own.

- Finally, to the reporting and punditry. Bill Tieleman offered a roundup of his second tier of candidates. Scott Stinson criticized Topp for not accepting the Cons' anti-tax rhetoric as an inviolable centrist consensus. Joanna Smith took a look at how the leadership campaigns are being funded. And Chantal Hebert's theory that the NDP's Quebec breakthrough was based on a desire for a more ecumenical form of politics figures to feature prominently in Cullen's message from here on in.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan follows up on the Conference Board of Canada's recognition that growing inequality is a serious problem for Canada by noting the similar observations around the globe:

There is a growing awareness that when the fruits of prosperity are so poorly shared, trouble is not far off, for the economy and for society alike. The Conference Board report is a reflection of the growing concern shown by the business press in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. in recent months, with stories ranging from national and international income trends to firm-level eye-poppers.

At Davos this year, the World Economic Forum named rising inequality as the “most serious challenge for the world”. Their survey of 580 global decision-makers led to the conclusion that “economic disparity and global governance failures both influence the evolution of many other global risks.” Tackle growing inequality, and you tackle the root of much dysfunction in the world.

- Scott Stinson is the latest to question the thesis that Stephen Harper has somehow made Canada into a more conservative country. But I'm not sure his counter is on point either: while the Cons have tried to put on a non-threatening face for the public at large, I'd be curious to see a trace of evidence that their party supporters have generally moved an inch away from the values that were indeed seen as contrary to those shared by most of the country.

- David Climenhaga points out that in the midst of the most volatile political environment Alberta has seen for ages, there's reason for optimism that the provincial NDP can build on the party's federal success.

- And Chantal Hebert notes one of the reasons why the party was able to break through federally:

A stronger focus on values also contributed to the success of the NDP — a party with no government track record but with a long history of treating equality and minority rights as party policy and of voting accordingly in the House of Commons.

On May 2, that history made it easier for many former Bloc Québécois and Liberal supporters in Quebec to find a second home with the NDP.

- Finally, it's no surprise that the U.S. offered the Harper Cons tips on how to better serve the oil industry in selling the tar sands abroad. But given the Cons' constant focus on putting the oil patch first, I would think it's noteworthy that they were seen to need the help.

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Alice's CPSA wrapup is well worth a read in general, but one bit of post-election analysis looks to have plenty of potential to carry over into the new Parliament:

From Ipsos-Reid’s work on leadership, Michael Ignatieff had been so far behind both Harper and Layton prior to the campaign, it begged the question for Darrell Bricker as to why the Liberals had pushed for an election at all. On key questions about preference for a coalition versus a Harper government, voters split 50:50 prior to the election (and the Conservatives finished up with 40 of the 50, and a majority government). But when asked whom they believed – Harper who said the opposition would form a coalition, or Ignatieff who said they wouldn’t – survey respondents sided with Harper 62:38.

And when asked pre-election who would have made the best prime minister of a coalition government, 59 per cent picked Jack Layton, while 27 per cent preferred Ignatieff and 14 thought Duceppe would. Moreover Layton was winning on every measure of likeability (including as the leader respondents would most like to have a coffee or a beer with), though Harper always topped the list on measures of competence (“who will get things done”). Bricker said the Liberals must have been seeing the same numbers, and said it was no surprise the NDP would have wanted to go to an election if they saw the same thing as well.

Of course the Libs no longer have to worry about public perceptions of Ignatieff - and it may be that an interim leader will avoid the worst of the ad blitzes that undermined their previous two standard-bearers. But there's little indication that they'll be able to avoid a leadership disadvantage for a long time to come, which may only help to entrench the election alignment going forward.

- Scott Stinson recognizes that Stephen Harper's political strategy is based on playing Canadians for suckers - leaving only the question of whether he'll remember the lesson by the next time Harper puts on a facade for electoral gain:

Over the last five years, anyone inclined to rationalize Stephen Harper’s latest foray into decidedly non-conservative territory always had the minority government to point to. His hold on power was tenuous, one could say, so there were times he just had to choke down his principles and take action to protect his party’s station.

So, when David Emerson crossed the floor in 2006, it was only so B.C. could have an experienced voice at the Cabinet table. When the Conservatives created a regional slush fund — sorry, economic development agency — for southern Ontario in 2009, it was simply a way to shore up votes in a key area. And when he began appointing partisans to the Senate in 2009 — in big blue dollops — it was just so his government could ensure that House legislation wasn’t held up by an unelected body.

He didn’t like doing these things, you see, but they just had to be done. Couldn’t be helped. Hold your nose, look away, and await the day when this unpleasantness was no longer necessary.

That day was supposed to have arrived on May 3. But as Wednesday morning’s events in Ottawa have made brazenly clear, the Prime Minister is not about to do a damn thing differently. Those of us who thought he might? There’s a word for that: suckers.

- But in fairness, Kady notes that the history of Conservative Senate reformers abandoning their principles when the opportunity for patronage arises is as old as Canada itself.

- Finally, Andrew Leach is right to note that reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions will require some significant action (which the Cons are only exacerbating by ruling out a cap-and-trade system). But the more important message is that continued delays out of the Harper government will only make matters worse:

Mr. Kent’s decisions will determine whether or not we are in a position to meet our Copenhagen commitments, and determine either the costs we incur to meet our targets or the costs we incur as a result of not meeting them. Meeting them will require the most aggressive GHG reduction efforts undertaken by any economy in the world, and the challenge gets tougher with every day we do not act. Not meeting them may limit access to markets for our exported products and access to capital for our investment projects. Inaction could also provide other nations with justification for the imposition of low carbon fuel standards or border adjustment tariffs on our products.

If we are not going to meet our targets because we are not prepared to impose the regulations which would be required, then we need a significant shift in our strategy internationally. We should recognize that the gold standard for global effort on GHGs, the EU, has imposed a carbon price on their economy which only amounts to about $20/ton today. Canada would be much better served by committing to match our effort to theirs, rather than committing to do more and delivering less.

With a majority government in hand, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mr. Kent can and should set a clear path forward for Canada on GHG emissions. Whatever choices they make, they will not be easy ones.

Tuesday Evening Links

This and that for your post-election reading.

- Erin recognizes the long-term positives to be drawn from yesterday's election results:

The NDP replacing the Liberals as one of the two predominant parties is hugely positive. Canadian social democrats have been striving for this realignment since they founded the CCF in 1932.
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In the next election, progressives should no longer feel that they must choose between voting NDP because it is progressive and voting Liberal to stop Conservatives. The resulting concentration of progressive votes for the NDP would produce substantial gains in English Canada. If the NDP can gain as many seats there as it just gained in Quebec, it would form a majority government.

The next four years will be tough. But there is a bright orange light at the end of the tunnel.

- Andrew Steele also hopes for positive results out of the election campaign, including this possibility which seems a lot more likely now that the next trip in the polls is years down the road:

4. The lessons of a long-term plan. The NDP was executing a long-term plan in this election. Jack Layton consciously chose to target francophone Quebec over the past four elections.
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His party continued to work in Quebec, and Mr. Layton clearly was focused on winning over Quebec francophones during segments of both debates. This time, the long-term plan paid off, and Mr. Layton and the NDP will be rewarded by a fundamental breakthrough.

It is a good lesson that politics is not won today or tomorrow but over the course of years. Deciding on a strategic course, sticking to the plan and adjusting tactically as you move forward is critical.

The good news is other parties will hopefully follow this methodology, getting out of the insular hyper-caffeinated world of Question Period and back into thinking about the big picture.

- Scott Stinson suggests that the media should be able to learn from the campaign as well:

More debates would help. Had there been one debate specifically on the economy, there’s a chance the leaders would have had to spend time defending their visions -and their platforms. Mr. Layton never faced serious questions about his economic plan during the two debates, a fact Mr. Ignatieff could only lament as he spent the campaign’s final week belatedly attacking the NDP’s “fantasy” numbers. It’s too bad: that exchange would have made for good TV.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the national media decided en masse to stop paying more than $10,000 a week for the right to join the leaders’ tours -a move that would essentially defund the highly scripted operations. It would be nice to see more -and more fulsome -debates. And it would be something if parties had to subject their economic plans to some sort of outside audit -one that compared Conservative apples to Liberal apples to NDP apples.

Is that expecting too much change? Is unrealistic to expect such radical reforms before the next campaign?

Perhaps. But change could happen. This was supposed to be an election about nothing.

- But then, pogge notes that the media itself was a major problem in its utter disconnect from the values of voters.

- Finally, Webb offers up what's probably the safest prediction coming out of the election results:

I'm going to make a prediction right here and now: Canadians will regret giving so much power to someone who was learning how to abuse it for the last five years. I'll give it two years for the grumblings to begin and three years before the sweat is really on. This is how I see it going, more or less:

The cost of the crime bill will skyrocket, especially for provincial governments. The economic pressure it creates will increase until it becomes unaffordable for either provinces or the country as a whole, and people will seek alternative measures for law and order. This will pit the provinces against the feds, and it will also pit Canadians against the possibility that their province and their country may go bankrupt. Austerity measures will be introduced and as a result taxes will go up. This will all go on against a backdrop of the energy industry making unprecedented profits each quarter with unbelievable subsidies. There will be a critical mass of discontent and that's about when the 'jets' will become another economic crisis we can ill-afford.

Wednesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Scott Stinson is the latest to note that the Libs' sudden concern for health care looks to have been fabricated solely for campaign consumption:

In the month of March, which ended with the dissolution of Parliament, the Liberal party asked many questions about tax rates, election financing and ethics. It asked questions about prisons, Bev Oda, the CBC and the Champlain Bridge. It asked questions about the environment, child care and fighter jets.

It did not ask any questions about health-care funding.

The same is true of February: zero questions about health care, save for a couple here and there that asked why the government wasn’t rushing to hold clinical trials for the controversial “Liberation” treatment for multiple sclerosis.

It’s a record that is tough to square with the Liberals’ newfound zeal for health care, the latest evidence of which was an announcement on Tuesday that former prime minster Jean Chrétien would join leader Michael Ignatieff on the campaign trail “as the Liberal team shares the Liberal commitment to protect universal public health care.” That statement came just a few hours after Bob Rae and two other Liberal candidates held a press conference in Ottawa to accuse the Conservatives of plotting to slash health-care funding in order to balance future budgets.

But if the Liberals had always intended to make this long-awaited election about health care, they sure took their sweet time getting around to it. The NDP asked at least 10 questions about health care in the House in the past few months, from the sanctity of the Canada Health Act to the need for drug coverage to, er, bedbugs.
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The Liberal party position as the only champion of public health would be just a touch easier to buy if its platform included anything about long-term funding other than a mushy promise to be “at the table for Canadians” when negotiating an extension to the 2004 deal with the provinces. Quality would be improved, costs would be contained, pressure on families would be relieved. Possibly pixie dust would be involved.

Mr. Ignatieff has been Liberal leader for more than two years, and he’s never said much about long-term health-care funding until now. But it seems to be the message he has chosen to try to revive a waning campaign. The question is, is it too late for the defibrillator?

- The Star calls for an end to the treatment of elected MPs like potted plants:

MPs of all political stripes ought to stand up for themselves – and, more importantly, their constituents. In a minority government situation, where a party needs each and every vote, MPs may find they have more power than they realize to effect the positive changes they feel they were elected to do. The parties – so eager to blame their rivals for turning Parliament into a gong show – should look themselves in the mirror. They need to examine how they choose candidates, and the kind of discipline they enforce once MPs get to Ottawa.

- Ho-hum, just another story about the public face of the Prime Minister's Office trying to arm-twist an independent organization into hiring the Cons' choice of chairs, then falsely denying that he so much as had any contact with the group involved. No need for ministerial responsibility here.

- Also, under-the-table cash payments to cleaners at 24 Sussex Drive. Move along, nothing to see here.

- Finally, Wheatsheaf points out the sad excuse for a response from Kelly Block when the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting asked about her position on funding the CBC:

Pop quiz

Scott Stinson has trouble with this whole "analogy" idea. So let's spot the non-natural phenomenon in his attempt to downplay the effects of the tar sands on the environment:

A photograph has been making the rounds on the Internet of a bison being chased by a grizzly bear along a road in Yellowstone National Park.

It’s a remarkable shot because the bison in question appears to have escaped the clutches of the bear mid-mauling. Chunks of its fur are missing, and it is literally running for its life, with a rather angry-looking Yogi in determined pursuit.

A park official told a Montana television station this week that the photo is real. Not that anyone at Yellowstone is searching for the bear, or its presumed victim. It’s just one of those brutal things that happen in nature.

You know what else happens in nature? Birds migrate. And so, this week, Alberta energy giant Syncrude again finds itself as the scourge of the oil sands because some of those birds took a detour and landed on one of its toxic wastewater ponds.