A few random thoughts

Mark Carney has decided not to become involved in politics, at least not right now. This really does not surprise me. He is a man on a mission and if he would have become an elected politician he would have been constrained by that fact. Now he is free to pursue his mission as he sees fit without having to worry about being reelected. The Conservatives should not celebrate his decision too much. He is going to be pushing for action on climate change. He is very intelligent, knowledgeable about how both the political and business world works, extremely credible and considering he lead the Central Banks of two G7 countries he can be considered business friendly. He is going to make it very difficult for conservatives to keep their head in the sand over climate change.

Many conservatives are rightly accused of weaponizing outrage when it suits their purposes but those on the progressive side can do the same. We saw that with the Montreal Canadiens selecting Logan Mailloux at the recent NHL draft and the outrage expressed by many. While what this young man did was reprehensible we need to have a little perspective for the simple reason being that people eventually learn to tune out outrage. Really, if you become outraged about a young man taking and distributing pictures of a young woman without her permission people are likely to dismiss you when you become outraged by someone committing a more egregious act. In short, you diminish the impact of outrage if you constantly resort to it in every situation. Personally, I learned what this young man did, thought that is not right, but was then left shaking my head when I saw the over-the-top reaction to his selection.

What is up with the Ontario Conservatives? The creation of a vaccine passport is a winning proposition. It is widely popular amongst most Ontarians, with only Derek Sloan types being against them and vaccines. So it is a no brainer that the Ontario government should create one but so far they have completely refused to do so. There has been speculation that the Ford government's handling of the pandemic has made it vulnerable in the next election. The fact that they are pursuing a policy that plays to their base but could alienate a broad cross-section of the rest of the Ontario electorate may be a sign that there is some truth in that speculation.

Then there is my local Member of Provincial Parliament. He is a member of the Ford caucus and a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. Each quarter we receive a Householder from him, which explains what his government has been up to in Ottawa. All of the previous Householders have been Conservative blue and he always signed them with his name a party affiliation on the back. We received one last week and it was bright Liberal Red and his party affiliation what missing his signature. I double checked and has not crossed the floor so he is still an Ontario Conservative. My riding is a swing riding so maybe the Member's internal polling is showing he is in danger of losing 2022. One simple fact for the Ontario Conservatives is if they lose a riding like mine the next election night could be gruesome for them.

Anti-Vaxxers and Vaccine Passports

I received my second shot two weeks ago so I am fully protected against the COVID virus. Yes I know there are some limitations but, according to the science, I only have around a 10% chance of catching the virus and if I do then I will have only a 1% chance of having a serious case of it.

What does this mean for the anti-vaxxers? I am a bigger threat to you than you are to me. The statistics are hair raising. Close to 100% of the people dying from Covid are unvaccinated. A similar percentage are the ones needing hospital care as a result of the virus. That means if I encounter an unvaccinated individual and I have the virus, either because I am asymptomatic or it is on my cloths or hands or whatever, and I wind up giving it to the unvaccinated person he is in grave danger. On the other hand, if I encounter a person who has it I am unlikely to contract it and even if I do it will probably just be a mild case.

The stupidity of the anti-vax crowd is that they believe they will be saved by "herd immunity", without them actually knowing what that actually means. Herd immunity means that the instances of a given infection are reduced, not eliminated. It should be noted that only one infection has actually been eradicated, because of a global vaccine program, while many more are still around but not a prevalent. COVID is going to be the latter. It is not going away. It will be with us for the foreseeable future and we are going to learn how to live with it. Those who are vaccinated against it will be better protected than those who are not.

Although the idea of a vaccine passport is a good idea I do not believe an effective one will ever by created. Not that it matters because many businesses are going to require proof of vaccination in order to do business with them. 

Every year my wife and I go to Montego Bay to escape the Ottawa winter for a week. During these trips and during other trips to other warm locations in Mexico and the Caribbean I run across people from the US and Canada who are obviously the type of people who would support Donald Trump or Max Bernier. In all likelihood these folks will be the poster children for the anti-vaxxers and also they will be the poster children for being denied their winter vacations by the tour companies, airlines and resorts.

You see it will be a liability issue for these businesses and a whole host of other companies not in the vacation business. Just imagine if one of these unvaccinated yahoos came back from a vacation down south and developed a case of COVID within two weeks of their return. Those very same yahoos would then sue the vacation companies, resort and airline and if enough people became ill it would be a class action lawsuit. Forget that these unvaxxed assholes bear a large responsibility for their plight they would still receive a good payout from the vacation companies so that they can make any lawsuit go away.

So, to protect themselves, these companies will require proof of vaccination before allowing you to use their services. No vaccine, no vacation. This is going to be true of alot of companies as time goes on. Certainly the anti-vax crowd will complain and some politicians will make a stink over it but when those very same companies then tell those politicians that they will stop contributing to their election campaigns, if they try to prevent the companies from enforcing a "no vaccine, to service" policy, the politicians will back off.

Right now anti-vaxxers are not being vaccinated because they want to own the Libs or they saw something on Facebook or for other stupid reasons. So far most of them have not been impacted by their decision, either becoming ill or being greatly inconvenienced. Once the reality of their decision becomes apparent to them most of the ant-vax crowd will change their minds.

Residential Schools: A Personal Perspective

I never learned about Residential Schools when I was going through elementary and high school. The topic just did not come up. Then again I went through these schools in the 70s and 80s so it was a different world then.

It was only in University and afterwards that I began to learn about them and then it was only by chance. In an example of learning being a life long activity I kept learning more and more about them as more information came out. What I learned became much more troubling.

Now, of course, more than 1300 unmarked graves of children who went through this system have been found and it is reasonable to expect that the number will climb, by a great deal, going forward. My wife asked me how these children died. Many of them probably died of disease, such as TB and other ailments common to children before vaccines. However, a sizeable number of them would have died as a result of violence, abuse and neglect. Regardless, taking these dead children and burying them in unmarked graves instead of giving them back to their parents for burial according to their burial rights makes how these children died moot.

I do still believe that the people who set up and ran the Residential School system had good intentions, at least from their perspective. This is not to excuse what they did. After all we all know what the road to Hell is paved with. As well, any good intentions or motives they might have had does not absolve them of the outcomes of their actions. If I kill someone with intent, that is murder. If I kill someone without intent, that is manslaughter. Both are serious crimes and both carry heavy penalties.

As well, while I do believe they had good intentions I also believe that those intentions grew out of ignorance, self-righteousness and hubris. The politicians who set up the system believed they were "civilizing" the "Indians" while the churchmen who ran the actual schools believed they were saving the childrens' souls. It did not occur to any of them that the Indigenous people of this land did not need to be civilized or saved.

In short these people were not evil. They were blinded by ignorance and they were narrow-minded. 

Again, I am not making excuses, I am proposing an explanation for this tragedy. These men deserve the condemnation that they have been receiving. As well, the Catholic church has much to answer for and the current Pope is not going to escape that.

A great historical wrong was perpetrated on the Indigenous people of Canada long before many of us were born but it will be up to us to make amends for their actions.

American Slavery was not a Race Thing

So I got into an argument with a random guy on Facebook regarding the causes of the Civil War. As I state here the causes of the US Civil War goes way beyond slavery. Slavery certainly played a part but it was not the only cause and I would even argue that slavery was a symptom and not the actual cause.

As well, the argument eventually became about race because whenever you begin to talk about slavery in the US it always becomes about race. The key to this guy's argument was after the Civil War we saw the rise of the KKK, Jim Crow laws and all sorts of other laws that allowed for the legal discrimination against Blacks in the South. The one thing about bad behaviour in the South is it distracts from similar behaviour in the North. To many the North were saints who fought against slavery to improve the plight of blacks. 

Hogwash. Many of the discriminatory laws enacted in the South had counterparts in the North. In the North blacks could not work with whites in the factories. They were only allowed to do menial jobs or acting as servants only working for subsistence wages. They certainly could not hold public office or be educated for a very long time after Emancipation. Woe would be the black man that touched white woman let alone attempted to marry her. The examples of systemic racism in the North are just as bad as in the South. After all, some of the worst race riots in US history took place in Detroit, Michigan, a city so far north that Canadians in Windsor could see the smoke rising up from the burning buildings. As well, Dr. King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech within walking distance of the seat of government for the US more that 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. So the North was no better than the South when it came to the treatment of black Americans.

I would also point out that the fact that American slaves were black was the result of an historical accident. Slavery was an institution in the Old world long before the United States became an independent country. Slavery was practiced all over Europe. An interesting aspect of that institution was when it was at its peak the Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful states in Europe. 

In the 1500 and 1600s, the Ottoman Turks were constantly finding themselves in border wars and skirmishes with their white, Christian, European neighbours. When they won battles against these foes the officers that had money would be ransomed and sent home. The ordinary soldiers on the other hand would find themselves in Constantinople, which had one of the biggest slave markets in the world at the time. Further the Ottoman government allowed its vassal states in North Africa to prey on European merchant shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. When the Barbary Pirates and Corsairs captured these merchant ships they would receive money for the ship and the cargo and the crew, all white Europeans, would wind up being sold at the big slave market in Cairo. Interestingly these two slave markets would have buyers from Europe, men who were more useful as customers of the slave traders than being slaves themselves. They would not buy their fellow Europeans, of course, because as soon as they got them back to Europe they would be freed and their investment would be wasted. So those white Europeans would be sold to whoever else wanted them. The two slave markets sold slaves from as far away as Japan and China, along with people of the Middle East and Europe.

This went on for sometime but three things happened that began to change it. First, one country after another, in Europe, began abolishing slavery. Second, the Ottoman Empire began a slow decline and the supply of war slaves and slaves taken by the Barbary Pirates began to dry up. Third, some European explorers began going up rivers on the East and West Coasts of Africa and found a continent teaming with people, some of which were slavers themselves and who were happy to sell their slaves to these white people.

By the time the United States became an independent country the African Slave trade was the only slave trade in town. It was the only one around because the slave trading centres in the Eastern Mediterranean were a mere shadow of their former selves. So when Americans, from both North and South, wanted to buy slaves they could only buy the ones from Africa.

Americans bought slaves because they believed they needed them. They bought black slaves because they were the only ones available to purchase. They did not buy black slaves because they were black. The South also did not oppose the abolishment of slavery because the slaves were black. They opposed it for political and economic reasons and that is it.

To suggest otherwise is crap.

To the National Post: Both Justin Trudeau and Erin O'Toole Campaigned in Alberta This Week, Updated

The front page of the National Post today was quite amusing. You could almost see the gritted teeth of all of the columnists who wrote in the paper today.

They are gritting their teeth because we saw the latest and most compelling evidence that the public polls are right in indicting that the Conservative base is eroding.

First, the fact that Mr. O'Toole made an election style campaign stop in Calgary to assure Albertans that any government lead by him would change the equalization formula. As the the leader of the only party Albertans vote for he need not have done that. It would be understood. So maybe the Conservatives' internal data analysis is saying that Albertans do not seem to be as inclined to support the Conservatives this time and that they may be looking a one of the alternative conservative parties that have popped up in that province.

The second, Justin Trudeau also campaigned in Calgary and he subtly attacked the sitting conservative premier of the province.

There are several iron laws of Canadian politics. One of them is when a leader of a party campaigns in a party stronghold it is because they believe they are in danger of losing seats there. As a corollary when the leader of a rival political party campaigns in one of your party's strongholds it is because they also believe you will lose seats and that those seats will go to his party.

I would still caution Liberals to not read too much into recent political events. We are talking politics here and things can change rather quickly. However, there is a possibility that the apparent erosion of the Alberta foundation of the Conservative base is real and that it will last through an election. If that happens the Conservatives have no chance of winning. They were only able to win the 2006, 2008 and 2011 elections because of their iron grip on Alberta and their shaking loose enough votes in key parts of Ontario. If they lose just an handful of seats in Alberta their chances of winning go down to less than zero.

I am still not convinced that the Conservative base is really eroding. I do believe that when the chips are down and Albertans are voting for real their habit of voting for the Conservatives will kick back in. However, the actions of Mr. O'Toole and Mr. Trudeau this past week would seem to indicate that the Conservatives might actually have to work for it this time. And that leads to a whole other set of questions about how the Conservatives will expend their time and resources in an election if they cannot count on the support of Albertans when the writ is dropped. But that is a question for another time. 

Update: Yes the unofficial election campaign has started and the PM will probably drop the writ before Labour Day. None of the Opposition Parties want an election because the most likely outcome is another Liberal victory, with a high probability of a Liberal majority government. That is why the Opposition Parties have demanded the Ethics Committee be recalled to review something the Liberals did even through what they did is common practice for all political parties. They are hoping that some kind of controversy will discourage the Liberals from calling an election. 

Revisionist History

Yesterday it was announced that the Federal government and the Government of British Columbia have come to an agreement on funding subsidized day care in that province. This is great news for parents who have pre-school children needing care.

It is also a win for the Liberal government in a province where they are in a three way race with the Conservatives and the NDP. The Conservatives did not say boo about the agreement because they are going after different voters than the other two but the NDP was very quick to criticize the Liberals over the deal.

They were not actually able to criticize the agreement because it is a good agreement. So they criticized the Liberals by trotting out that old claim that the Liberals always promise to tackle day care but never follow through. To which it needs to be asked did you not watch the news yesterday where it was stated the two governments have an agreement? Also, did they not pay attention to the last budget which set aside a whole whack of cash to fund such agreements, saving the need to have Parliament agree to this particular one?

Some others have also pointed out that the last time the Federal government had an agreement with all of the Provinces to fund subsidized national day care the NDP joined the Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois in defeating the government that negotiated that agreement and trigger an election. An election the Conservatives won who then promptly canceled the agreement along with the Kelowna Accords which had also been negotiated by that Liberal government.

I am talking about the minority government of Paul Martin between 2004 and 2006 of course.

This is where the historical revisionists in the NDP step up. They flat out deny that they had anything to do with the canceling of these two agreements, even though they voted to defeat the government that negotiated them before they could be passed in Parliament. They blame everybody else but themselves. So here is the history of how this happened.

Between 2004 and 2006 the Martin government negotiated both agreements. All of the stakeholders for the two agreements had signed them but both needed the approval of Parliament before they could be implemented.

The Martin government introduced the enabling legislation for the two agreements in Parliament in 2005. They were working them through the House. 

Late in the Fall of 2005 the Gomery Commission released its final report on the Sponsorship Scandal and it was a damning report. 

(As an aside it should have been damning. I have stated several times before that I know of only two instances of real corruption in Canadian politics, one being the Sponsorship Program that lead to "Adscam" and the other being PM Mulroney taking a suitcase full of cash from Mr. Schrieber.)

The result of the damning report was the Liberal polling numbers tanked. So the Opposition Parties saw an opportunity. They had the issue that justified defeating the government and polls were saying that all of the parties would feast on the Liberals in an election. However, and this is crucial, in order for the government to be defeated ALL OF THE OPPOSITION PARTIES needed to vote against it. That included the NDP.

They duly did vote against the government in a non-confidence motion and Parliament was dissolved with the enabling legislation for both the Kelowna Accords and the National Day Care program dyeing on the order paper. In the succeeding election the Conservatives won under Stephen Harper and the rest is history.

The simple fact is both agreements could have been saved if the NDP would have voted with the government. They did not, so they had a hand in their eventual cancellation. They may not have pulled the trigger on the gun that killed both agreements but they did load it and hand it to Stephen Harper so he could do it.

I know why they voted against the government. It was on the ropes and it looked like, and it came to pass, that all of the Opposition Parties would pick up seats from the Liberals so they went for it. The other reason why they did it is if the Liberals would have been able to pass the enabling legislation for both agreements they would have been big wins for the government, the type of wins that might have saved them in a subsequent election. (Although probably not)

Note that I have no problem with the NDP voting against the government. They acted like all political parties do when they sense an opportunity to win. My problem is the denial of this fact by the NDP and its partisans and the historical revisionism they resort to in order to deny it. Before Jack Layton won the leadership of the NDP the party could claim it was the progressive conscience of Canadian politics but Jack Layton's decision to join the other Opposition Parties in defeating Paul Martin, and killing the Kelowna Accords and the National Day Care programs in the process, revoked that claim. And nothing the NDP has done since would allow it to reclaim that distinction.

Right now the NDP is just another political party in the Canadian Federal scene, playing the same game as every other party, just not as well and no amount of historical revisionism will change that fact. 

The Definition of Insanity

We all know one definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. If that is a true definition then the Federal NDP has been absolutely bonkers for quite some time.

This train of thought was triggered by a Tik Toc video released by Mr. Singh where he claims that all of the good work done by the government during the pandemic can be traced back to him. 

It is a tired old trope of the NDP to claim a) the Liberals are stealing the NDP's policy positions or b) the only reason why the Liberals propose progressive policies and bills is because the NDP "forces" them to do so. The NDP has been saying this since before it became the NDP.

What has been the result of this strategy? Simple, perennial third or fourth party status. No one believes them except for NDP partisans and the twisted arguments they put forward to "prove" their assertions would so offend Mr. Spock's sense of logic that they would drive him mad. It is interesting that the only leader of that party that did not resort to that argument was Jack Layton and we all know what he managed to do in 2011. When he died the NDP reverted to form and they have lost seats in the last two elections as a result.

The simple fact is the NDP have not figured out how to win an election at the Federal level. Mr. Layton might have been on to something but he never got the chance to see if it would push them over the top. Unfortunately for the NDP they forgot or ignored what Mr. Layton did to take them to becoming the erstwhile "government in waiting" and became insane once again.

As an aside, I have seen many NDP partisans mentioning that polls putting the NDP at 20% is bad news for the Liberals because it increases the chances of vote splitting. This just proves that many of these commentators do not really understand that concept. Vote splitting always benefits the political party that IS IN THE LEAD. So if the Liberals are indeed in the lead the split of the anti-Liberal vote can only help them not hurt them. If the Conservatives were in the lead then the split of the anti-Conservative vote would be great news for them, which is why Conservatives are always trying to create that split.

Further, in every election since 1984, the NDP has always polled well before the writ is dropped only to see themselves be around 5 points behind that polling when the actual votes are counted. That was even the case in 2011. 

So if we are look at current polls and take them as being accurate the most likely outcome of an election, if it was held today, would be

Liberals at 37%

Conservatives at 30% (assuming they hang on to their base)

NDP at 15%

Bloc at 4%

Greens at 5%.

That would work out to a Liberal government of about 180 to 190 seats. Of course if the Conservative base does erode down to 25% then the Liberal seat count goes up to around 200.  

Are the Conservatives Really in Trouble?

I have stated in this space and on other blogs many times before that the public polls cannot be trusted. So when you see a whole bunch of them indicating that the Liberals have opened up a double digit lead and that the Conservatives are in the 25% range you should take that with a sizable quantity of salt.

However, I have also stated that if you want to see how things are going look at what the parties are doing and saying. In that case there would appear to be some validity to the idea that the Conservatives are watching their base erode. I saw on Twitter that the Conservatives have released a video of a whole bunch of Alberta MPs extolling the virtues of the CPC to their fellow Albertans. That is odd because Alberta is the solid foundation of the Conservative base. The rest of the base my shift somewhat but they can always count on Conservatives in Alberta to vote for them. So why are they making such a video?

A few posts back I mentioned Erin O'Toole making a video stating that any government lead by him would defund the CBC and that such a video could be an indication of the erosion of the Conservative base because it would only appeal to that base. Promising to defund the CBC will not resonate with anybody but Conservatives and in actual fact would put off more than a few non-aligned voters.

The the Alberta MPs video could be another indication of the softening of the Conservative base.

Before Liberals and other Conservative opponents become too excited it should be noted that during the 2015 election there was a great deal of evidence to suggest that Stephen Harper was facing a similar problem. In 2011, Stephen Harper spent the first half of the election campaign throwing red meat at his base before pivoting in the last half to appeal to voters beyond that. That strategy along with a strong performance by Jack Layton and a pathetic performance by the Liberals lead to a Conservative majority government. In 2015, Stephen Harper started off with the same strategy but he failed to make the pivot half-way through, instead doubling down at throwing red meat at his base in the form of a niqab ban and a barbaric cultural practice snitch line. It looked like the Conservatives would be virtually destroyed. However, when the votes were counted, on election night in 2015, it was apparent that the Conservative base remained solid.

So no one should right off the Conservatives' ability to hang onto their base during the next election. Certainly Conservatives have other alternatives that they did not have in 2015 but that does not mean they will vote for those alternatives once they find themselves behind the little cardboard screens at their voting station.

There is increasing evidence that the Conservatives are losing their grip on their base. So the next election could wind up resembling 1993 when the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada shattered into three pieces. However, it is equally probable that when the time comes habitual Conservatives voters could go home to the CPC, maybe not being too happy doing it but doing so nonetheless.