On misplaced outrage

Before the rapidly-spreading outrage over John Ibbitson's article on seat redistribution goes too far, let's pause and check whether the headline and lede actually match the facts. And I'd think there's ample reason to think that most of the controversy is entirely manufactured.

Here's the area of apparent agreement, along with the parties' substantive positions:

Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic MPs and party strategists, speaking on condition that they not be named, stated this week that the bill has no chance of passage. Although all three national parties remain committed to the principle of equal representation for all Canadians in the House of Commons, in practice, the legislation that would advance that cause has virtually no hope of becoming law.
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Minister of State for Democratic Reform Steven Fletcher’s office said the minister was not available to be interviewed. However “our government is moving forward with the Democratic Representation Act,” said spokesperson Jessica Georgakopoulos. She added that “it is anticipated” that the bill will be brought forward for debate next year.

That supposition, however, is contradicted by higher officials within the government.

Liberal Democratic Reform critic Carolyn Bennett, from Toronto, said her party was not ready to support the bill “without robust consultation with the provinces.”

“This is no way to run a federation,” she said. “Where is the consultation? Where is the first ministers’ meeting? Where is any understanding of how this country is supposed to work?”

When asked whether she was concerned about the underrepresentation of visible minorities, Dr. Bennett said it is equally important to “make the rest of Canada more inclusive for people choosing to come to Canada.”

Although NDP sources said the party was split over the bill, David Christopherson, critic for Democratic Reform, predicted his party would ultimately have voted for it.

“We were prepared to support C-12,” he said in an interview. “And if [the Conservatives] are not going to move on C-12, they should bloody well bring forward something that deals with this.” Mr. Christopherson’s seat is in Hamilton, another underrepresented Ontario city.

Now, it's first worth drawing a distinction between predictions and party intentions. It's entirely possible that all parties could rationally believe a bill would go nowhere even while planning to support it themselves: e.g. if the Cons assumed that the opposition parties would unite against it and the opposition parties didn't think the Cons would actually move it forward, it's possible for all parties to predict a bill's failure while nonetheless supporting it.

Of course, that's not exactly the case here. But the main point of dispute looks to be the Cons' claim to want to advance the bill.

After all, if Fletcher isn't merely blowing smoke about the Cons advancing the bill and putting their weight behind it, then all evidence is that it would have the votes to pass. Even a split in the NDP would seem likely to produce enough support to move the bill ahead, and the Libs' process concerns sound like they can be dealt with relatively easily.

Which means that if C-12 doesn't move forward, the obvious explanation is that the Cons have chosen not to act on it even while knowing that it's likely to pass.

In sum, then, there's absolutely no evidence of agreement that the bill shouldn't pass. And any agreement that the bill won't pass looks to be based on the likelihood that the party in power will choose not to make it a priority, rather than some grand multiparty conspiracy to undermine it.

Of course, it's also worth noting that a slight reallocation of voting influence looks to be far from the most important issue in a system that's seen massive executive power grabs and abuse of unelected authority at the expense of our elected officials - not to mention far greater distortions in the value of votes based on the preservation of a first-past-the-post electoral system. But even to the extent seat reallocation is going to be seen as a litmus test for a party's commitment to democracy, there's no reason to take a "throw them all out" line in response to a misleading bit of media spin.

Update: And having expressed skepticism about the balance of the article, I'll also note that Susan Delacourt's post on "higher" officials overruling Fletcher similarly seems to be unsubstantiated in the article. Though I'd certainly be interested to know who claims the title.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Shocking

Who could have guessed that both beneficiaries of an unfair and antiquated electoral system would shoot down any talk of changing it?

On stonewalling

This weekend's Winnipeg Free Press story about a complete refusal to allow Steven Fletcher's briefing books to see the light of day has received plenty of attention. But I'm not sure there's been any discussion yet about an aggressive strategy by the Cons which has apparently gone unchallenged.

Here's the explanation which was apparently given to the Free Press about the process under the Access to Information Act:

A complaint to the information commissioner was made in September. This week, the Free Press learned because the PCO denied the information as advice to cabinet, even the information commissioner cannot request to see the documents in order to determine if the refusal was appropriate.

All the commissioner's office can do is ask the PCO to change its mind. The PCO said it wouldn't reverse its decision.

So what's wrong with this picture? To start with, it should be obvious enough that the information commissioner is able to request documentation from a government institution to support its denial of access. What it may not be able to do is to compel the PCO to hand over documents which are alleged to contain cabinet confidences - which looks like a rather important distinction from the message being sent to the Free Press.

That's particularly so since there's no lack of case precedents where commissioner reviews and court proceedings have been held based on the disclosure of documents to the commissioner's office to assess the application of the "cabinet confidences" exemption. As a result, the decision to stonewall even the information commissioner's attempt to review a refusal to disclose documents in the face of a contested claim of cabinet confidence looks to be a radical step for the Cons in making government less accountable.

Fortunately, there's another way to seek access to information where there's reason to doubt whether the cabinet confidence exemption applies. To the extent Fletcher's office has made a decision to classify its briefing books as privileged, that decision can be challenged in the Federal Court - and it seems to reflect a disturbing acceptance of the Cons' secrecy that such an option isn't even mentioned in the article as a last resort.

Of course, it's worth telling the story as to how the Cons are gumming up the works to the extent possible - particularly since that now extends to withholding records even from an independent officer with a statutory obligation of confidentiality. But it's equally worth noting that the Cons' stubbornness isn't the last word in the matter - and hopefully the Free Press and others facing similar declarations will be willing to see their requests through in order to get to the truth.

More history rewritten

There's plenty of good news in Harris MacLeod's latest, including most notably the fact that the NDP and Libs are working cooperatively on their respective prorogation proposals rather than merely sticking to their current public stances, as well as a few new or recycled talking points from Steven Fletcher. But unfortunately, MacLeod also takes the time to join in the disinformation campaign about the public's view of the 2008 prorogation showdown:

The last time the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament public opinion was on his side, with Facebook groups and rallies popping up across the country to protest the prospect of a coalition government led by former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville, Que.). This time, however, the prorogation has been political poison for Mr. Harper; in addition to mass public protests on Jan. 23, the Conservative lead over the official opposition Liberals has completely evaporated and the two parties are now neck-and-neck.

As I've pointed out before, there's indeed an important difference this time in that rather than public activism being evenly split between pro-Con and anti-Con forces, the public reaction has been almost entirely unfriendly to Harper. But it's still worth remembering that coalition itself actually had a substantial amount of public support as well - particularly now that the Cons are trying to paint it as an evil which requires that the PM exercise complete control over Parliament.

Learning by example

Sure, most Canadians would be concerned if it's true that one or more members of the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives might have acted as agent provocateurs at Winnipeg's anti-prorogation rally, including by attempting to pretend that a "Harper = Hitler" sign formed part of the protest. But let's be fair to the Con agitators: they're fully living up to the standards for honesty and civility set for them by Canada's Minister for Democratic Reform.

Shocking, positively shocking

So the Cons are no longer even pretending to care about doing anything about the Senate now that their unelected partisan hacks are about to outnumber the Libs' unelected partisan hacks. Who could have suspected?

On loopholes

Impolitical is right to criticize Steven Fletcher's over-the-top response to Senator Dennis Dawson's bill to make pre-election advertising fall under a party's election expense limit if it takes place within three months of the drop of the writ.

But there's a grain of truth to at least part of Fletcher's complaint. Any system where one or more political parties can change the effect of another party's actions after the fact would seem to be ripe for abuse. And that would be exactly the situation if an election call (whether due to a government seeking dissolution or opposition parties voting it down) can change how advertising purchased months earlier affects a party's ability to plan for an election.

Fortunately, though, there's an easy fix: eliminate the time limit altogether, such that all advertising expenses by a political party are considered part of its expenses for the next election campaign.

On its face, that might seem likely to prevent between-election advertising. But in practice, it could easily have just the opposite effect.

Since advertising would be subject to exactly the same rules - including election rebates - regardless of when it's incurred, the question for political parties would be when they're best off using a fixed amount of capacity to advertise. And it seems entirely plausible that a party could get more value purchasing advertising at a time when it can frame its own desired message without too much competition with an eye toward influencing the direction of a campaign well in advance, rather than forming only one part of the usual election-period bombardment.

Moreover, counting all advertising under election spending limits might even reduce the stigma of advertising outside of an election campaign. Rather than being seen as an unnecessary and unusual intrusion, any ads between elections could be perceived as a down payment which reduces the amount of advertising people will be subjected to during the next election campaign.

Either way, the parties involved would know in advance exactly how their spending between elections would affect their ability to advertise during the election campaign. Which would serve to put everybody on an equal footing, rather than creating a new set of bizarre incentives for parties to try to trap each others' pre-election advertising under an election spending limit.

In sum, rather than opening up a new set of loopholes through an artificial time provision, Dawson and the Libs would be well served to close the loop by making all party advertising subject to the same rules and incentives.

On false advertising

The national story about Steven Fletcher's controversial appearance at a University of Manitoba event last month has understandably focused on Fletcher's smears of a student newspaper and campus group. But there's another side to the story which looks at least as significant:

The event was hosted by the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives on March 19 and billed as a chance to hear from Fletcher in his role as the minister of state for democratic reform.

David Safruk, a politics major and incoming arts student council representative on the University of Manitoba Students Union, said the talk had very little to do with democratic reform.

"It turned out to be like he was in the midst of the campaign trail," said Safruk, who wrote a comment piece about the event in the U of M student newspaper, The Manitoban. "I believe it was much too partisan."...

(The Campus Conservative responsible) said he can understand some students were disappointed Fletcher didn't spend more time talking about democratic reform, because that is how the forum was marketed on posters around campus. He spoke for 45 minutes, McCreary said...

Fletcher said he was invited to speak at an event hosted by student Conservatives and he went with the intention to discuss how Conservative principles benefit students.

"I think Conservative values are student values," Fletcher said. "I was there to speak about the Conservative party and the role Conservatives play on campus. I wasn't asked to be there in a general way."

Naturally, the gap between how the event was advertised by the Cons and what Fletcher did with the opportunity to speak to students raises a couple of important questions.

Namely, is there anything more likely to depress interest in politics than have an event which promises to have the minister responsible for democratic reform discussing the prospects to improve public participation turn instead into an infomercial for the Conservative Party? And is there any doubt that the Cons are entirely happy if the end result is to frustrate anybody who cares enough about improving Canada's political scene to expect better than their constant partisanship?

Introducing the Harper Institute for Spreading Wingnuttia

Embassy reports on an interview with Steven Fletcher on the Harper government's plans to "spread democracy" around the world. But there's plenty of reason for concern as to just what kind of "democracy" the Cons plan to spread:

What exactly have you been doing on democratic governance and where do you see this issue and the non-partisan centre going over the next little while?

"In our platform, we made the promotion of bringing democratic values on the world one of the major focuses of our foreign policy. And this will be a new agency, non-partisan agency that will promote democracy abroad in emerging democracies to help build the institutions that make democracy function. This will be an agency that will work throughout the world and will ensure, or help ensure, that there will be healthy democracies amongst long-term stable growth that respects human rights right across the board....

"We need to help countries build the fundamentals of democracy, which include functioning political parties that are purpose driven and principled. We want to make sure that the other pillars that are important for democracy, such as human rights, freedom of the media, that there's significant civic participation from all quarters of a particular society, that women's voices are heard where that's not at the level we would like. And obviously free and safe elections."

Will your work be focused specifically on political parties or on some of the other traditional activities that CIDA has done, such as working with bureaucracies?

"We will be working with all stakeholders that are important in any functioning democracy. So that includes, first of all, the people, and helping grassroots organizations get organized into a party structure. We want to make sure that the institutions that make democracy possible are there, everything from a free media to the union movement, and everything in between. But it will be, our goal will be to develop or help develop principle-driven parties so that the people of these countries have a clear choice when it comes to advancing their country's goals and objectives."
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Since Iraq, some have seen democracy promotion as a tainted idea, something that serves ulterior motives. How do you counter those arguments that, first of all, Canada shouldn't be working with political parties? And how do you respond to people who look upon it as a neo-Imperialist idea?

"(P)eople who say what you just described, what is their alternative? And I think the alternative to democracy is not consistent with Canadian values and we are the Canadian government. And it will be a made-in-Canada agency to promote Canadian values."
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Have you spoken to the opposition parties as you're moving ahead on this?

"It will happen. I am relying on the Foreign Affairs and International Development [committee] report that came out in the last Parliament, and I certainly have a good sense of where parties are based on that....

"When things settle down on that front and we get the economic stimulus package through Parliament, I think that would be an opportune time to re-engage other parties."

Now, it's true that the idea of the centre arises out of a committee report with multi-party input. But the idea seems to have taken a few serious turns for the worse in the meantime.

After all, the idea of a "non-partisan" agency might seem entirely positive on its face. But it's rather less so when that term is now being defined by a party which has tried to claim non-partisanship in, say, appointing one of its key fund-raisers as the gatekeeper for federal civil service positions.

That goes doubly when the project is otherwise dripping with Con code words. We know all too well that "made in Canada" as applied by the Harper government on issues like climate change has tended to mean "sticking a finger in the eye of international consensus". (On that front, it surely can't be reassuring that Fletcher doesn't seem to think there are any lessons to be drawn from Bushco's mess in Iraq.)

And it's not hard to see obvious potential for abuse in the Cons' determinations as to what constitutes a "principle-driven party" which operates consistently with their definition of "Canadian values".

Of course, all of those concerns might be alleviated if the structure was actually being developed in a non-partisan or multi-partisan manner. But when the Cons have unilaterally decided that they don't need to consult with anybody else in setting up the agency, it seems far too likely that the result will be to favour the development of Con-friendly parties abroad rather than to actually promote democracy. And that doesn't figure to be a positive development either for the countries affected, or for Canada's position in the world.