Things are not Going as the Conservatives had hoped

The Conservatives in this country were hoping that the allegations of Chinese interference in the 2019 election would do to the Trudeau Liberals what the Sponsorship Scandal did to the Martin Liberals.

Of course they were always dreaming because the Sponsorship Scandal was actual, provable wrongdoing by people working for the Liberal Party of Canada, while the stories we have been seeing in the news about Chinese interference have been based on unproven allegations and innuendo. I have stated many times that in the 40+ years I have been observing Canadian politics there have only been two instances of true corruption at the Federal level. One of those instances was the fiasco of the Sponsorship Program. Although it was a good idea it was hijacked by unscrupulous people who helped themselves and the Liberal Party to some of the funds of that Program. The Liberals deserved their fate for that event.

The Chinese interference in our political system is not the same. No one party has benefited from their interference. All parties, at both the Federal and Provincial level, have probably benefited from it and I would wager a fair amount of money that none of them knew they were benefiting from it. I refuse to believe any politician in this country would knowingly take support from a sometimes hostile foreign government.

However, the Conservatives were hoping that they could infer just that by focusing on one such instance in 2019. That is why they want a Public Inquiry that focuses on only that one instance. Anything beyond that would only prove that they have also been compromised by Chinese interference in our politics, which would waste a scandal that would finally bring down the Liberals. It was never going to happen but the current iteration of Conservatives in this country have never let reality get in the way of a good story.

So any action by the government that did not give them that one focused public inquiry was always going to be met with outrage. That and the fact that the Conservatives have decided their best hopes of winning an election is to stoke that outrage in their followers. Hence the reaction to the announcement that David Johnston has been appointed the Special Rapporteur.

At the risk of prejudging his recommendations I think it is safe to say that he will not recommend just focusing on that one instance in 2019 if he decides that some sort of public inquiry is necessary to get to the bottom of foreign interference in our elections. 

In the end the idea that a public inquiry into foreign interference in our elections would bring down the Liberals was always something of a pipe dream. 

It must be exhausting

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for Pierre Poilievre just like I did with Mr. O'Toole and Mr. Scheer.

Him having to go full QAnon Trump on his twitter feed this past weekend followed by his capitulation in making the three MPs, who attended and had their pictures taken with a known neo-Nazi, suffer any consequences must be taking its toll.

All of the recent leaders of the CPC have had the same problem. They feel it is politically necessary to keep the most ardent MAGA Conservatives happy. They are a minority of the party and society but they are loud and they have the emotional maturity of a toddler. Really, if Mr. Poilievre does not constantly pay attention to them and their perceived needs and constantly validate their warped view of the world they throw a collective temper tantrum and make his life Hell. As an aside, it should be noted that they have not impacted Mr. Trudeau or his government one whit despite their best efforts. It is the CPC who they hurt the most and that is remarkable.

For some reason Mr. Poilievre and the leaders before him seem to go along with this and they do not even try to push back. 

I think the reason why is the misreading of the Harper victories. Remember that the CPC was only created in the early 2000s. They have gone through 7 elections and only won three of them. And two of those three were not very decisive victories. 

Finally, in 2011 Stephen Harper won a majority government for them. The way he did that was to throw red meat at his base for the first half of that election before pivoting to appeal to more moderate Canadians in the final three weeks. Helped along by an inept Liberal campaign and the collapse of the Bloc in Quebec, to the benefit of the NDP, and the CPC majority was born.

The CPC wanted to use the same strategy in 2015 but it was very apparent by the time they should have pivoted that victory was probably not going to be theirs so they just campaigned to save the furniture.

Both Mr. Scheer and Mr. O'Toole wanted to do the same in 2019 and 2021 but their efforts were always scuppered by their own followers.

The problem is the more rabid base of the CPC was not as big, loud and influential in 2011 or 2015 as it is now. Stephen Harper was able to pivot away from them during the 2011 election and subsequent government without too many problems. In short, the CPC was a different beast then.

Twelve years later the "right wing nut jobs" are the tail that wags the CPC dog. If Mr. Poilievre has any hope of hanging onto his job, let alone winning an election, he has to keep them happy, which is impossible when their whole political identity is to be profoundly unhappy. They are not going to let Mr. Poilievre pivot when it becomes necessary. 

And the situation is only getting worse. Mr. Scheer had this problem when he was leader but it was worse for Mr. O'Toole and it is becoming even worse for Mr. Poilievre. If an election does not happen until 2025 I can only imagine how much worse it will become for him.

Maybe, just maybe, he will push back and try to get a grip on the party. Then again, I have always questioned his political acumen so I am not so certain he will be able to do it. If he does not he could very well squander the opportunity to take advantage of a government that has been in power for a decade and for which many Canadians could be convinced to move on from if they like the alternative.

I imagine that the next few months and years are going to be even more exhausting for Mr. Poilievre.

Book Review: Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

I finished reading this book which was written by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbotson. 

There are two major schools of thought around our species' demographic future. There is the "pessimistic" view which roughly states that the world population will continue to climb throughout this century until we hit 11 billion people by 2100, with all of the social and environmental problems that would come along with that. Then there is the "optimistic" view which argues that in fact our population will peak around 2050 or so at around 9 billion before dropping off to around 7 billion in 2100. This book, as the title implies, falls squarely in the "optimistic" camp.

The authors do a very good job of explaining the opposing point of view and they acknowledge that the main proponents of that point of view, the demographers of the United Nations, have a very good track record of predicting demographic trends. Even though they only spend a little time on it they still present a compelling argument for believing the "pessimistic" view could be our future.

Then the authors refute that point of view in a way that is rather unique when it comes to writing about demographic trends. They combine statistics with personal interviews. The authors traveled the world to speak to people. They spoke to rich Europeans, poor Brazilians in the favelas of Sao Paolo, professionals in Nairobi, Mexican migrants in the US and Aboriginals in Austrailia. This leads to them pointing to a possible correlation of low birth rates with increased urbanization, increased education and the usual increase in living standards that goes along with both. They rightly point out that in all regions of the world birth rates are coming down, including in India, China and Africa, the places many demographers point to to argue that we are facing a demographic bomb. 

Once they have established this they spend a good part of the book writing what the implications of it could be to the various parts of the world. In some places the implications could be dire as depopulation and the aging of what is left could make it very difficult for countries to remain prosperous and stable. 

Being Canadian the authors argue very persuasively for the Canadian approach to immigration as the model to follow to mitigate the impacts of declining birthrates.

The books conclusion very effectively pulls together the various arguments contained in it into a very plausible vision of what the world could look like in 2100 and what may happen between now and then. It is speculative but the speculation is largely backed up by the arguments and facts presented in the book. In just a passing sentence they suggest there might be a correlation between urbanization, female empowerment and and political and economic development. That would be something that might bear further exploration.

However, (there is always a however) I found the book somewhat lacking in three areas.

The first was the book does not break any new ground. Although their method of reaching their conclusions are rather unique the arguments they make and the conclusions that they draw from them are not new. Although breaking new ground was probably not the purpose of the book anyway.

The second is their assertion that the United States will probably go through the century escaping the most negative impacts of the decline in population. They base this argument on them believing the US will continue to take in immigrants, with all of the positive impacts that come from that. This book was written in 2018 so it was before COVID and before it became obvious that MAGA had metastasized out of the White House to the Supreme Court, Congress and many States but the two authors are political commentators so they should have at least considered such a possibility. As well, it is argued in the book that as birth rates goes down around the world and living standards go up the number of people actually wanting to emigrate to other countries, the US or otherwise, will be greatly reduced. That puts a spanner into their argument about the driver of the US's continued success.

Finally, while being plausible their view of the future may be a little too rosy. Certainly their arguments support their views but alot of things would have to go right in order to achieve that future, which cannot be safely assumed. Currently there are 7 billion people on this planet and we are killing off other species at a prodigious rate, emptying and polluting our oceans, denuding the last of the major forests on the planet and consuming other non-renewable resources, such as rare-earth minerals, at an unsustainable rate. Even the authors agree that the world population will hit 9 billion people in the next few decades, which will probably only exacerbate these problems. By the time we get to the 7 billion people in 2100 the only nature that may be left could be in those small areas of the world protected by governments. The rest of the world will probably be dominated by us and the plants and animals that we have domesticated. At the end of this century there may only be as many people living in it as there are now but those 7 billion people may be living in a much less hospitable world.

All that being said this book is well worth the time to read, especially if you only have a passing interest in the topic of the book. It is a very accessible. It uses statistics to prove its arguments without getting bogged down in them and the writing style is easy to understand and follow without resorting to dense science speak and jargon. It is a book you can start to read at 1pm and be done by suppertime and have a good understanding of the issues and arguments surrounding the future population of our species when you are done.