I have been accused by a few people that my particular political bent prevents me from getting upset by perceived or real corruption on the part of Liberal governments.
This is wrong. I do not get upset by perceived or real corruption on the part of any government. The Senate Expense Scandal did not bother me. The bald face patronage of Mr. Ford does not bother me. The fact that Mr. Kenney is under two RCMP investigations does not bother me. Hell, even Adscam did not bother me.
The reason for this is simple. Humans using their position to help themselves and/or their family and friends is a human trait. We all do it and we have been doing for around 2 million years. It is part of the human condition and it cuts across partisan lines. To expect it to stop because a person gets elected to public office is about as reasonable as expecting public office holders to give up sex while they occupy office. Certainly, checks should be put in place to prevent abuse but I can guarantee you that every office holder will take advantage of any and all available loopholes regardless of what political party they belong to.
I am a big believer in not getting upset about things I cannot change. It is good for my blood pressure and it is good for my mental health. I cannot change human nature with my vote. Nor can I change it by other means. So I have learned to look past it and focus on the big issues that we face as citizens of Canada and as Homo sapiens.
How a government deals with the big issues or how a political party seeking a mandate to govern proposes how to deal with them is what is important to me. The governance style of a government is important to me. I will always choose a government that governs using evidence over one that governs according to their ideology. The competence of the government is important to me. How well do they handle themselves in a crisis? Are the actions they are taking during a crisis helpful or harmful?
Governments have a job to do and how they do that job and the outcomes that come about from them doing their job is what is important. The rest is not.
Friday, July 31, 2020
Thursday, July 30, 2020
I have Said it Before You have to Fight to win not Fight fair
Watching the ongoing WE saga and the tactics being used the Conservatives and, a little surprisingly, the NDP I am reminded of this post that I wrote back in 2009. It still applies.
Conservative Parties on this continent are playing the political game to win and they do not care how they win. The reason is they realize the Conservative Consensus is eroding and they are trying to reverse that. They will not succeed but that will not stop them from trying. It will only make them try harder.
I have stated several times in this space that progressive parties must copy some of these tactics if they wish to put the Conservative Consensus behind us before it cause more damage to the economies and societies of North America.
I know such a suggestion make progressive uneasy because they do not want to "stoop" to that level. Progressives believe that if they lose with honour they can claim a moral victory. What crap, the only reality is you lost and progress away from the Conservative Consensus is delayed some more.
Although I appreciate the positive style of the current Liberal Party I would say that I would not be too upset if they began to attack the policies proposals of the Conservative Party and that they become relentless in doing so. Do not stoop to personal attacks or scandal mongering but relentlessly question how the Conservatives will address many of the big issues of the day and/or pick their policy choices apart. It is a failure to do so that contributed to allowing Doug Ford and Jason Kenney to be elected.
The Conservatives and NDP Must be Happy about a Compliant Media
It was a grave political error to invite Prime Minister Trudeau to the Finance Committee meeting. It was an even bigger error to show up to that meeting with nothing new to ask him, with no great revelation that could have put him off his messaging.
You had to know that he would show up extremely well briefed and they should have known that he would have kept his wits about him regardless of how belligerent they became.
They failed to do all of this and the result is their one-and-only chance to question the PM over WE came and went with the PM on top. He managed to get his message out without any interference by any of the Opposition MPs.
Of course the invitation to appear before the Committee was tendered in the belief that the PM would turn them down, as most PMs in the past would have done. That would have given the Opposition another talking point. I could imagine the panic that gripped the leadership of the Opposition Parties when Mr. Trudeau said yes. At that point the leadership of each party should have got together "in a room" and come up with a strategy on how to question him. Instead, it was amateur hour. None of the Opposition Parties strategized how to question the PM and so all they did was give him a free hour in which to present his side of the story.
Which brings us to the media. Thankfully for the Conservatives and the NDP the media has been pushing the same narrative as them. The media is invested in that narrative as much as the Conservatives and the NDP so they will not let the PM's testimony interfere with that. However, he is the PM so I suspect that what he said will receive a fair amount of attention in the media over the next few hours and that is not good for said narrative.
Oh yes, many would not have been paying attention to this outside of what the media was telling them. So, the first time that many might actually focus on this issue will be to see Justin Trudeau being his usual calm self answering questions from increasingly frustrated and belligerent Opposition MPs.
What about the future? The questioning of the PM was supposed to be the climax. The coup de grace by the opposition. Instead it was a dud. I am certain that they will do their best to keep this thing in the news but once the PM has spoken many will wonder why they would continue to talk about it. You accused the guy of all sort so things. You questioned him on them and he answered the questions. What else is there to say?
A final note, Mr. Trudeau looked like he became more relaxed as the time went on. Hell, a couple of times I would even say he was enjoying himself. I imagine that he went in wondering if they would throw a curve ball at him, some issue or accusation that had not been discussed before, that we would have had to field. As it became obvious that they had nothing new he began to relax.
You had to know that he would show up extremely well briefed and they should have known that he would have kept his wits about him regardless of how belligerent they became.
They failed to do all of this and the result is their one-and-only chance to question the PM over WE came and went with the PM on top. He managed to get his message out without any interference by any of the Opposition MPs.
Of course the invitation to appear before the Committee was tendered in the belief that the PM would turn them down, as most PMs in the past would have done. That would have given the Opposition another talking point. I could imagine the panic that gripped the leadership of the Opposition Parties when Mr. Trudeau said yes. At that point the leadership of each party should have got together "in a room" and come up with a strategy on how to question him. Instead, it was amateur hour. None of the Opposition Parties strategized how to question the PM and so all they did was give him a free hour in which to present his side of the story.
Which brings us to the media. Thankfully for the Conservatives and the NDP the media has been pushing the same narrative as them. The media is invested in that narrative as much as the Conservatives and the NDP so they will not let the PM's testimony interfere with that. However, he is the PM so I suspect that what he said will receive a fair amount of attention in the media over the next few hours and that is not good for said narrative.
Oh yes, many would not have been paying attention to this outside of what the media was telling them. So, the first time that many might actually focus on this issue will be to see Justin Trudeau being his usual calm self answering questions from increasingly frustrated and belligerent Opposition MPs.
What about the future? The questioning of the PM was supposed to be the climax. The coup de grace by the opposition. Instead it was a dud. I am certain that they will do their best to keep this thing in the news but once the PM has spoken many will wonder why they would continue to talk about it. You accused the guy of all sort so things. You questioned him on them and he answered the questions. What else is there to say?
A final note, Mr. Trudeau looked like he became more relaxed as the time went on. Hell, a couple of times I would even say he was enjoying himself. I imagine that he went in wondering if they would throw a curve ball at him, some issue or accusation that had not been discussed before, that we would have had to field. As it became obvious that they had nothing new he began to relax.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
A short lesson on Contribution Agreements
The so called "We Scandal" has been occupying the Opposition Parties and the media for some time because, you know, we are not living through a global pandemic. Then again, the Liberals have no one but themselves to blame. If they would just screw up their handling of the pandemic and its economic fallout the Opposition and the media would actually have something substantive with which to criticise them.
Oh well, we are stuck with WE.
I have largely been ignoring the whole thing but I did listen to the public servants who set it up because if we were going to hear facts it would be from them. They did not disappoint.
One fact that stood out was the deal with WE was set up using a Contribution Agreement (CA). That is a key fact. Grants and Contributions are the main avenues for governments to give money to companies and individuals. As a result there are a great number of rules and regulations around providing them.
So what is a grant and what is a contribution? A grant is the government giving money to a recipient after they have met some set eligibility requirements. If you meet the requirements, you receive the funds and there is no control over how you actually spend the funds. Think of grants to university students. You may apply for a grant to help with your tuition but once you receive it you buy a new top-of-the-line stereo system instead. (No that is not what I did with my first student grant in the '80s, during my first year of university)
Contributions are an agreement between the government and a person or organization where the government agrees to provide funds to assist recipients in achieving objectives that align with the priorities of the government. There are eligibility requirements. If the recipient meets them they can then gain access to the funds. How the funds are spent are closely monitored by the government. CAs are legal agreements between the recipient and the Government of Canada.
The key to a Contribution Agreement is the recipient is not given any of the money upfront.
What did this mean for WE? Simple, WE signed a Contribution Agreement with the government to distribute funds to students. The amount was around $900 million but that money was not transferred to WE. It was set aside by the government so that WE could draw down from it to achieve the objectives of the program they were to administer.
Normally, when a recipient enters into a CA they must first prove that they have sufficient funds to achieve the project objectives without government assistance. The CA then stipulates how much government assistance the recipient can expect. Usually it is around 50% of the total. Example: if the recipient has a project that will cost $1 million they can ask for 50% of that from the government. In order to receive this money, however, the recipient actually has to spend the money and then make claims to the government, providing all of the necessary financial documentation, in order to be reimbursed some of their expenses. Usually those expenses include administrative fees, which are usually between 8 and 10% of the original amount and which are not included in the original. So using my example: the recipient would sign a CA for 50% of a $1 million project, for which they would be able to claim $550,000. If a recipient submits a claim for work not agreed to in the CA then it is rejected and the recipient is not reimbursed any funds for that work.
For the WE program it would be unreasonable for the government to expect the charity to have $900 million. As a result the CA was set up to provide WE with a series of cash advances. This does not mean the government just cut them a check. In order to receive the cash advances WE would have had to request them, providing a highly detailed plan of how they would use the cash advance. Once the plan was approved and they received the funds they would then have to track how they spent the funds and submit that to the government. The government would then review those expenses to be certain that they used the money as agreed upon in the CA and the documentation submitted to request the advance. If it was found that they did not use it as agreed upon THEY WOULD BE REQUIRED TO PAY THE MONEY BACK. The cash advances would never be for the whole amount available. WE would have had to submit several cash advance requests over the life of the program in order to receive the funds.
All CAs include plans for auditing how the funds are used by the recipient. If an audit finds that the recipient did not use some of the funds as agreed upon in the CA the recipient WOULD BE REQUIRED TO PAY THAT MONEY BACK. And trust me, if you owe the government money as a result of contravening a CA they will be ruthless in collecting it.
This is a key point because regardless of the relationship of the WE Charity to any government official, or to members of their family, they would not risk putting themselves on the hook for owing the government money by using funds in a way that contravened a CA.
Or to put it another way the founders and the management of the WE Charity would have been taking a very big risk in misappropriating any of the funds made available for their own purposes.
So, the WE Charity was never going to receive $900 million without strings attached and the opportunities to cheat the government would have been almost none existent. Those are the key facts in this whole issue. Most of the rest is partisan BS.
Oh well, we are stuck with WE.
I have largely been ignoring the whole thing but I did listen to the public servants who set it up because if we were going to hear facts it would be from them. They did not disappoint.
One fact that stood out was the deal with WE was set up using a Contribution Agreement (CA). That is a key fact. Grants and Contributions are the main avenues for governments to give money to companies and individuals. As a result there are a great number of rules and regulations around providing them.
So what is a grant and what is a contribution? A grant is the government giving money to a recipient after they have met some set eligibility requirements. If you meet the requirements, you receive the funds and there is no control over how you actually spend the funds. Think of grants to university students. You may apply for a grant to help with your tuition but once you receive it you buy a new top-of-the-line stereo system instead. (No that is not what I did with my first student grant in the '80s, during my first year of university)
Contributions are an agreement between the government and a person or organization where the government agrees to provide funds to assist recipients in achieving objectives that align with the priorities of the government. There are eligibility requirements. If the recipient meets them they can then gain access to the funds. How the funds are spent are closely monitored by the government. CAs are legal agreements between the recipient and the Government of Canada.
The key to a Contribution Agreement is the recipient is not given any of the money upfront.
What did this mean for WE? Simple, WE signed a Contribution Agreement with the government to distribute funds to students. The amount was around $900 million but that money was not transferred to WE. It was set aside by the government so that WE could draw down from it to achieve the objectives of the program they were to administer.
Normally, when a recipient enters into a CA they must first prove that they have sufficient funds to achieve the project objectives without government assistance. The CA then stipulates how much government assistance the recipient can expect. Usually it is around 50% of the total. Example: if the recipient has a project that will cost $1 million they can ask for 50% of that from the government. In order to receive this money, however, the recipient actually has to spend the money and then make claims to the government, providing all of the necessary financial documentation, in order to be reimbursed some of their expenses. Usually those expenses include administrative fees, which are usually between 8 and 10% of the original amount and which are not included in the original. So using my example: the recipient would sign a CA for 50% of a $1 million project, for which they would be able to claim $550,000. If a recipient submits a claim for work not agreed to in the CA then it is rejected and the recipient is not reimbursed any funds for that work.
For the WE program it would be unreasonable for the government to expect the charity to have $900 million. As a result the CA was set up to provide WE with a series of cash advances. This does not mean the government just cut them a check. In order to receive the cash advances WE would have had to request them, providing a highly detailed plan of how they would use the cash advance. Once the plan was approved and they received the funds they would then have to track how they spent the funds and submit that to the government. The government would then review those expenses to be certain that they used the money as agreed upon in the CA and the documentation submitted to request the advance. If it was found that they did not use it as agreed upon THEY WOULD BE REQUIRED TO PAY THE MONEY BACK. The cash advances would never be for the whole amount available. WE would have had to submit several cash advance requests over the life of the program in order to receive the funds.
All CAs include plans for auditing how the funds are used by the recipient. If an audit finds that the recipient did not use some of the funds as agreed upon in the CA the recipient WOULD BE REQUIRED TO PAY THAT MONEY BACK. And trust me, if you owe the government money as a result of contravening a CA they will be ruthless in collecting it.
This is a key point because regardless of the relationship of the WE Charity to any government official, or to members of their family, they would not risk putting themselves on the hook for owing the government money by using funds in a way that contravened a CA.
Or to put it another way the founders and the management of the WE Charity would have been taking a very big risk in misappropriating any of the funds made available for their own purposes.
So, the WE Charity was never going to receive $900 million without strings attached and the opportunities to cheat the government would have been almost none existent. Those are the key facts in this whole issue. Most of the rest is partisan BS.
Sunday, July 26, 2020
The Failing of Canadian Media
Last week the Global Television Network announced layoffs in its news division. This is just the latest announcement by the so called Main Stream Media about job losses. Job losses in the Canadian MSM can probably be called an epidemic by now as I do not believe any Canadian MSM organization has not laid people off in the last couple of years. And there is every indication that they will continue as most of them are still showing some financial difficulties.
So why is the MSM having such a hard time?
There are probably many reasons, not least of which, competition from non traditional sources of news available on the internet. However, I believe one big reason is the Canadian MSM has allowed itself to become propagandists for Conservative parties in Canada. That is a recipe for business failure.
Election, after election have indicated that Conservatives are a minority in this country. They are out-numbered by 2-to-1. So, catering to the minority it going to turn off the majority, which is going to lead to lower revenues and profits.
I am a case in point. I am political animal. I follow politics very closely and I used to watch many of the political news shows, like Power and Politics, quite often. Not any more. I have not watched any of those shows in a long while because they have just become a Conservative echo chamber. Even when they have a non-Conservative on the show it is usually a "Liberal" who has been out of politics for sometime and for whom the Liberal Party has moved on from. As well, I will no longer pay for my news. I do not watch TV news (although I did watch it for about 6 weeks when this pandemic really got started), I do not pay for any newspapers and I will not buy an on-line subscription either.
I am not alone.
By turning their backs on around 70% of their potential audience they essentially set themselves up to fail. Why are they doing this? Well, it is not a secret that much of the Canadian MSM are owned by ideologues who want to use their companies to push the conservative agenda in a quixotic attempt to convert Canada to a conservative country. So it is a race. What will happen first? Canadians will become more conservative or the MSM will essentially fail completely and become totally irrelevant. I would not take any bets on the MSM winning that race.
The funny thing is if a media company were to come along and actually just report the news without the propaganda it would probably make a killing. No spin, no sensationalism, no click bait. Just good old fashioned news that deals with the facts of the story and allows the consumer of it make their own conclusions. I would consume the news from such a company.
No industry can turn its back on 70% of its potential customers and expect to succeed. But that is exactly what the Canadians MSM has done. The outcome of the continued diminishing of the traditional MSM is inevitable unless they change that.
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
The Conservatives Missed an Opportunity
A few days ago I wrote a series of posts on Facebook to provide some context around the announced $343 billion deficit from the economic update. I did that because that number is an eye opener. I do not fall for all of the doom and gloom hype surrounding the deficit and debt but even I was rather wide eyed when I saw that number. That number had collective Canadian sticker shock written all over it.
I believed at the time that the Conservatives and the media would jump all over that deficit and the shock it might have caused and keep on jumping all over it for days on end. Instead it only lasted a single news cycle and then quietly went away.
I know why. The Conservatives and the media could not resist a perceived scandal and they have such a low opinion of Canadians that they believe that we cannot pay attention to more than one thing at a time. So, they had to make a choice.
They made the wrong one.
Regardless of what the Conservatives and the media think, scandals, real or otherwise, do not have the staying power that they seem to believe they do. Unless a scandal takes place during or immediately prior to an election they usually do not have a real impact on where voters place their X on the ballot paper. No election will be held for at least another year. The COVID virus will prevent one from happening until it is behind us, with January being the best case scenario for that to happen. As well, none of the Opposition parties are inclined to trigger an election, for a whole host of reasons and the Liberals appear to be focused on governing instead of playing political games.
So, if the Conservatives really want to challenge the Liberals in a year or so they should be laying the groundwork right now and the announced deficit was a big issue in which to start doing that. Most Canadians have been well conditioned by the chattering classes to be wary of deficits and debt, even if that conditioning is predicated on advancing a false narrative about them. Although the current situation would have been used to justify the current deficit, a relentless campaign against it, over the next year, would probably have paid dividends for the Conservatives.
Preston Manning proved that. When he took over as the leader of the Official Opposition in 1993, leading the Reform Party, he launched a relentless campaign against the deficit. He was so single-minded about it that many commentators began to ridicule him about it but it worked. His campaign against the deficit forced the Chretien Liberals to address it. Mr. Manning's plan was pretty simple. Force the government to deal with the deficit, which would have forced them to make some very hard choices around taxes and spending cuts to get it done and hope that the choices they made would make the Liberals so unpopular that Canadians would give the Reform Party a shot. Unfortunately for Mr. Manning his timing sucked and he launched his campaign at the beginning of what would be a 15 year period of very healthy economic growth. The result was employment increased, with the increase in government revenue and the decrease in government expenditures, allowing the government to bring the deficit under control without the tough decisions Mr. Manning was hoping they would have to make. It was a contributing factor to the Liberals' victories in 1997 and 2000.
Give Mr. Manning his due. He was the leader of the last Official Opposition that effectively opposed the government. No Official Opposition party, of any political stripe, has been nearly as effective as the Reform Party was between 1993 and 1997.
Really effective opposition parties play the long game. They take one or two substantive issues where they believe the government will be vulnerable for the foreseeable future and they relentlessly push the government on them. It is a little risky because if they choose the wrong issues they hamstring themselves but it has proven to be the best way to steadily wear down a government. Instead, the current Opposition parties are just pursuing non-issues and personally attacking the PM. Although that might play well to the base and it might bump up the fund raising it is not conducive to long-term success.
Maybe when the Conservatives choose a new leader they will change tack and actually come up with a coherent line of Opposition but considering the candidates for that position I would not count on it. If they do not then the Liberals are the prohibitive favourite to win the next election.
I believed at the time that the Conservatives and the media would jump all over that deficit and the shock it might have caused and keep on jumping all over it for days on end. Instead it only lasted a single news cycle and then quietly went away.
I know why. The Conservatives and the media could not resist a perceived scandal and they have such a low opinion of Canadians that they believe that we cannot pay attention to more than one thing at a time. So, they had to make a choice.
They made the wrong one.
Regardless of what the Conservatives and the media think, scandals, real or otherwise, do not have the staying power that they seem to believe they do. Unless a scandal takes place during or immediately prior to an election they usually do not have a real impact on where voters place their X on the ballot paper. No election will be held for at least another year. The COVID virus will prevent one from happening until it is behind us, with January being the best case scenario for that to happen. As well, none of the Opposition parties are inclined to trigger an election, for a whole host of reasons and the Liberals appear to be focused on governing instead of playing political games.
So, if the Conservatives really want to challenge the Liberals in a year or so they should be laying the groundwork right now and the announced deficit was a big issue in which to start doing that. Most Canadians have been well conditioned by the chattering classes to be wary of deficits and debt, even if that conditioning is predicated on advancing a false narrative about them. Although the current situation would have been used to justify the current deficit, a relentless campaign against it, over the next year, would probably have paid dividends for the Conservatives.
Preston Manning proved that. When he took over as the leader of the Official Opposition in 1993, leading the Reform Party, he launched a relentless campaign against the deficit. He was so single-minded about it that many commentators began to ridicule him about it but it worked. His campaign against the deficit forced the Chretien Liberals to address it. Mr. Manning's plan was pretty simple. Force the government to deal with the deficit, which would have forced them to make some very hard choices around taxes and spending cuts to get it done and hope that the choices they made would make the Liberals so unpopular that Canadians would give the Reform Party a shot. Unfortunately for Mr. Manning his timing sucked and he launched his campaign at the beginning of what would be a 15 year period of very healthy economic growth. The result was employment increased, with the increase in government revenue and the decrease in government expenditures, allowing the government to bring the deficit under control without the tough decisions Mr. Manning was hoping they would have to make. It was a contributing factor to the Liberals' victories in 1997 and 2000.
Give Mr. Manning his due. He was the leader of the last Official Opposition that effectively opposed the government. No Official Opposition party, of any political stripe, has been nearly as effective as the Reform Party was between 1993 and 1997.
Really effective opposition parties play the long game. They take one or two substantive issues where they believe the government will be vulnerable for the foreseeable future and they relentlessly push the government on them. It is a little risky because if they choose the wrong issues they hamstring themselves but it has proven to be the best way to steadily wear down a government. Instead, the current Opposition parties are just pursuing non-issues and personally attacking the PM. Although that might play well to the base and it might bump up the fund raising it is not conducive to long-term success.
Maybe when the Conservatives choose a new leader they will change tack and actually come up with a coherent line of Opposition but considering the candidates for that position I would not count on it. If they do not then the Liberals are the prohibitive favourite to win the next election.
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