Liberals have no answer for Tory Crime Agenda

Liberals now seem to recognize that they can not lessen the popularity of the Conservative crime agenda by falling in line behind the Conservatives. So what are they doing about it?

Well, at first blush it appears that have tried to put the subject in a different light. The Liberals have reminded the public that "US style mega- prisons" come at a cost and questioned just how Canadian such policies truly are. "Canadians know that spending billions of dollars on US-style mega-prisons to lock up young people will only produce more hardened criminals. It’s a failed American crime policy, and it just doesn’t work."

Such an approach is really a non starter though and that is why I think the Liberals are up to something else. In words of great voting behavior researcher Philip Converse, the vast majority of voters show a lack of “constraint”: That is, they hold incompatible beliefs. Many voters simply do not recognize that tough on crime measures necessitate the building of "mega-prisons". If asked, they will say that they support the former but disagree with the later. In other words, however popular such denunciations of "mega prisons" might be it is not likely such talk will do anything to arrest the popularity of the Conservatives tough on crime agenda.

The Liberals know this of course. Indeed, that probably explains why the Liberals denounce "mega-prisons", but do not promise to scarp the Tory policies that necessitate the building of these "mega prisons". The Liberals seem content to take way whatever the get from talk of "mega prisons" and otherwise take their lumps.

That is a mistake. This is what they should have done

First, the Liberals needed to quit talking about how criminals are sentenced and draw attention law itself. Second, they needed to pick an hot button issue that would draw starve the Tory agenda of any oxygen.

Now settling on a hot button issue you need to find one that have support of sizable chunk of the population. Something that is supported by only 10 to 20% of the population is non starter. Beyond that though what you what you really looking for in a hot button issue is one in which the arguments for one position are way stronger than the other side and the public has the capability of understanding them. After all, hot button issues generate a lot of press. You get all this and you have a perfect storm. Your opponent may start off with most of the public on his side but if his talking points are savaged by the media and an informed public over a long period of time, he is going to hurt in the polls. The more prominent or controversial the issue the worse it gets.

SSM is a good example. The population was spilt on the issue but likely voters were solidly yet against it. However, even though the Liberals had been rocked by the Gomery inquiry findings in the spring of 2005 and slipped below 30% in the polls, with SSM debate dominating the headlines over the next few months the Liberals surged to 38 percent by the time SSM came into law. Meanwhile, Stephen Harper was dressing up like one of the Village People and many pundits were writing him off. It is the process not the polls that really mattered and the Conservatives where on the wrong side of history. Their position was morally and legally bankrupt. The arguments against SSM sucked and the media let them know this.

Legalizing marijuana holds that same promise.

Polls consistently show that the Canadian public supports the legalization of marijuana by a wide margin. So the public is receptive to the idea already. However what really matters is the arguments for legalizing marijuana are far more robust than the arguments keeping it illegal. Indeed, the later are often so bad as to have earned the name "reefer madness". The policy's potential lies in the cost to the Conservatives of having their "reefer madness" talking points savaged by the media and the informed public an for extended period of time.

Jack Layton and Potent Pot

"The potency of today’s marijuana is making NDP Leader Jack Layton think twice about endorsing its legalization.

'Marijuana has changed a lot since my youth, I can tell you that, so I am informed. I’m told it is a heck of a lot stronger,' he said during a campaign stop in Surrey, B.C., where he outlined his anti-gang proposals."

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/971204--party-favours-election-ephemera

I find it hard to take anyone who muses about the supposed dangerous of potent pot seriously. About that "adult conversion" Jack, it is time to put up or shut up.

Potent Pot

Potent pot is more myth than reality.

However, even if one assumes that potent pot is a reality it is certainly nothing to be concerned about. Indeed, saying that potent pot is reason for keeping marijuana illegal is akin to saying that alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. It makes no sense. The pharmacological affects of consuming 1 "chemically supercharged" joint, as various US attorneys like to say, versus x number of "dad's joints" would be no different if the amount of THC consumed is the same. As for consumption, just as people do not drink the same volume of gin as beer, the higher the THC level in pot the less people consume. Hence, ironically more potent pot may be a welcome development. After all, one of the most prominent health effect related to marijuana, if not the most, is that it is usually smoked. The more potent the pot, the less people have to smoke to achieve the same high. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School concurs, so does Mitch Earleywine of the University of Southern California and so does UCLA's Mark Kleiman.

That said, if potency is the concern, then it should be legalized. After all, the only way to regulate the potency of pot is to legalize it. Moreover, so long as the drug is illegal, producers will seek to increase potency. The higher the potency the smaller the package the smaller the package the less likely they will get caught.

Finally, the attempt to scare parents that have grown up on marijuana by distinguishing between potent pot and “your dad's marijuana” is too clever by half. After all, it begs the following question. If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be ok to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?


The US will Never Let it happen

Proposition 19 failed, but the issue will likely be revisited in 2012 and this time it stands a very good chance of passing. Voter turn for mid term elections is always significantly less than when the presidency is up for grabs. For proposition 19 to have stood any chance of winning Democrats, and the young needed to be energized. They were not and stayed away in droves. Even with everything stacked against them, though, the yes campaign still garnered 46% of vote.

Legal production of marijuana in California will make the legislation of marijuana elsewhere in the US all but inevitable and extension in Canada as well. Obama is not going to go to war with California in order to maintain a federal prohibition. Indeed, it was Obama that set the wheels of legalization in motion by declaring that he would not crack down on medical marijuana. For you see, unlike in Canada, in California, for example, one does not have to be afflicted with a particular aliment to be eligible for medical marijuana. A doctor can proscribe marijuana for whatever they see fit. Needless to say, such a system is ripe for abuse and the Bush administration was right to see medical marijuana program as a potential Trojan horse. But Obama let wooden horse to be wheeled into California and other States anyway. In so doing, Obama has allowed the medical marijuana industry in California and elsewhere to grow to the point there is no saving prohibition from Odysseus. There are more medical marijuana dispensaries in LA than Starbucks.

The Black Market will live on

It is one thing to illegally sell a legally produced product and make a profit, e.g., black market cigarettes. It is quite another thing to illegally produce and sell a product (e.g., moonshine) in market where there is legal competitors. The reason is simple. People want to know that what they buying and consuming. So when given the choice of buying an illegally produced product versus a legally produced product they are going to go with the later. (There is one notable exception and that is when an illegally produced product is successfully passed off as a legal one, e.g., fake brand name goods). That is why no matter how much Canadians drank during the time of American prohibition, I am sure that it never crossed the RCMP’s mind that American moonshine might become a competitor of Molson’s.

The gangs can not walk and chew gum at the same time.

One of the arguments that I have repeatedly come across recently is that should marijuana be legalized then the gangs will move onto other things. I prefer to call this the gangs can not walk and chew gum at the same time argument.

The problem with this argument is that the gangs are already into other things and it is profits from marijuana that are helping them do that. In the context of Canada, marijuana profits and sometimes even marijuana itself are providing the seed capital the gangs need to expand operations into the States, for example, and to diversify operations (e.g., cocaine, heroin, human trafficking and guns). This is one of the main reasons why we need to nip this in the bud.


Gateway Drug

Researchers have rightly noted that people who have try marijuana are statistically more likely try other illicit drugs. This gave raise to the theory that there was something about marijuana that encouraged drug experimentation. Marijuana, it was alleged, is a gateway drug. This, in turn, was given as one more reason to keep the drug illegal.However, the gateway drug theory has until recently fallen on hard times for lack of an intelligible mechanism. The problem was that there was no coherent explanation for why marijuana would lead people to experiment with other drugs. Without this explanation doubt was cast relationship being more than mere correlation.That said, in recent years researchers have breathed new life into the theory, albeit with a sociological twist. According to the new version, it is not marijuana's pharmacological properties that serve as a gateway, but rather marijuana's illegal status. Specifically in the process of illegally procuring marijuana, users are introduced to the criminal elements with access to other illicit drugs and hence it is the forged blackmarket relationship between dealer and buyer that serves as gateway. Ironically the gateway drug theory has been turned on its head and used as reason for legalizing the drug. The Canadian Senate employed the new and improved version of the gateway argument as a reason for legalizing the drug.

In this context it should be noted that when the Dutch partially legalized the sale of marijuana, heroin and cocaine use went down despite an initial increase in marijuana use. Dutch use of hard drugs remains well below the European average.


Schizophrenia Marijuana

Epidemiological studies have consistently failed to show a positive correlation between marijuana use and schizophrenia and there is no causation without correlation. Specifically, should there be a causal link between marijuana and schizophrenia, there should be a positive correlation between marijuana consumption and schizophrenia, but such a correlation is conspicuous by its absence. Despite a massive increase in the number of Australians consuming the drug since the 1960s, Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland found no increase in the number of cases of schizophrenia in Australia. Mitch Earleywine of the University of Southern California similarly found the same with regard to the US population and Oxford's Leslie Iversen found the same regard to the population in the UK. According to Dr. Alan Brown, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University,

"If anything, the studies seem to show a possible decline in schizophrenia from the '40s and the ‘ 50,"

Much of the evidence linking marijuana to schizophrenia suggests not that it causes schizophrenia but rather that it may cause the earlier onset of symptoms in people who would sooner or later develop schizophrenia. Much to Gordan Brown's dismay, this was the opinion of Dr Iddon.

Dr Iddon, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on drugs misuse [Britain], said the study did not convince him it was time to return cannabis to class B. "I don't think the causal link has been proved. I think cannabis might - possibly for genetic reasons - trigger psychosis at an earlier age." The MP, who is also a member of the science and technology select committee, said there was a danger of criminalising "hundreds of thousands of young people" if the status of the drug was changed. "If Gordon Brown changes the class of the drug, it won't be evidence-based but for political reasons," he said.

Public Debt: Common Myths

Myth 1: Government spending under Trudeau and Pearson accounts for most of Canada's debt

The notion that the Trudeau and Pearson spent Canada into debt is laughable. Leaving aside the fact that most of Canada's debt accumulated under Brian Mulroney, when Trudeau left office Canada's debt to GDP ratio was slightly less than it was under Diefenbaker and for most of 60s and 70s debt to GDP ratios were well below what they were in 1960. Moreover, it was only Trudeau's last term in office that deficits to GDP reached troubling levels and that had nothing to do with new government spending.

Monetary policy and not government largeness explains Canada's debt crisis in the 1990s.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the US Fed and other Western countries declared a war on inflation. They purposely drove the economy into a deep recession by greatly increasing interest rates. An example should put things into perspective. In April 1980 interest rates stood at already ridiculously high 13%; three months later the US Fed had raised them to 20%. The war was won, but it came at a terrible cost. Sky rocketing interest rates meant that the amount of money used to finance the debt went through the roof, the spike in unemployment greatly reduced government revenues and the unemployment insurance claims put further stress on government coffers.

By the way, the last of those ridiculously high yield bonds had run out by 1993 and by 1992 new bonds were issued at a much lower rate just in time for Paul Martin. Lower interest rates also drove demand and helped lower the Canadian dollar against US dollar.

Myth 2: Canadian government spending is out of control

Using the mid 1990s as a reference pundits such as Andrew Coyne like to point out that government spending has grown by leaps and bounds. Indeed, it has. The problem is government spending in the mid 1990s was lower than it was at any point since the 1950s and given the demands of a modern economy, such low levels of spending were unsustainable. In other words, what we have witnessed in the last 10 years is not a spike in government spending but an inevitable and needed rebound. The amount of government spending in Canada as percentage of GDP is lower than most Western countries and is even lower then what it is in the States.

Furthermore, what is true for other countries in recent years is also true for Canada. What accounts for most of the deficit is a massive decline in revenues and not "Canada's Action plan".

Myth 3: The debt crisis in Europe is a result of government largeness

The acronym PIGS make it seem that Europe's debt crisis is a result of government spending. This is simply not true. Prior to the down turn, Spain, Ireland and UK were in fine fiscal shape. All had gross debt levels that were lower -- in the UK's case much lower, than they are here and Spain and Ireland were running surpluses.

However, Europe was vulnerable in the same way that the US was vulnerable. The Europeans had allowed real estate bubbles to develop. Once real estate bubbles started deflating all over the western world, the UK and Ireland pumped huge sums of money to prop up their banks and furthermore took responsibility for enormous private debts incurred by their banks. As a result, their debt to GDP ratios sky rocked. In the less than a year Ireland's debt to GDP ratio doubled!

At the same time as governments everywhere were busy saving their banker's bacon, government revenues collapsed as unemployment rose and governments were saddled with higher bills for things like unemployment Insurance. This was certainly the case in Spain. A 10% plus jump in unemployment meant the government revenues tanked just as unemployment claims spiked.

Meanwhile, Italy and Greece already had higher debt levels and huge problems especially on the revenue side. Tax evasion is widespread in both countries. This is especially true in Italy's case. The situation is Italy is so bad that the former government proposed that every Italian's income be made public so that people could rat out tax evaders.

The back drop to Europe's debt crisis is questions about the feasibility of the Euro and worries that the true European debt crisis lies in wait.

Debt: While there is nothing to suggest that the timing of the current crisis was consequence of government largeness, a rapidly aging population endangers every major European economy --- at least outside of Scandinavia. Europe's "implicit debt", most notably generous but uncosted public pensions, will become more of a problem as Europe ages. This is especially true for the PIGS. Italy is Europe's oldest country and, if memory serves, Greece has its lowest birth rate. Many Europeans have been loath to embrace immigration for fears that it would erode national identity. Ironically, Europe must now embrace higher immigration if it wants to maintain its current way of life.

The Euro: Greece has been in and out of default for a good portion of the last hundred years. What makes this most recent crisis different is that should it default the future of the Euro would be in called into question. As Paul Krugman et al, have suggested default may be impossible to head off default. The problem is that countries in Greece's position have traditionally devalued their currency in order to get back on their feet again. (To very real extent that is exactly what Canada did in the 1990s.) So long as Greece uses the Euro, that option is not open to them though. In order for Greece business to complete with their German counterparts, for example, there most be real reduction in Greek wages. If Greece was not a Euro member, it could accomplish the same by devaluing its currency. What holds true for Greece also holds true for Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

Myth 4: This is 1995 all over again

No it much more likely that it will be 2007 all over again. Canadian consumer debt, most it related to spike in housing costs, is almost as high as American consumer debt was prior to the crash and in Vancouver it is higher. And again the crisis in Europe and US was brought on by a private debt crisis, associated with various real estate booms and helped along by a spike in oil prices in the summer of 2008, that in turn created a public debt crisis. As for our much lauded banking system, Spain's banks are no less conservative in their lending practices than Canadian banks, but a real estate bubble in Spain inflated and burst nonetheless. And why has the cost of housing gone through the roof since 2006? Well, the Conservative government decided pour fuel on an already red hot real estate market. The Conservatives extended the mortgage amortization period from 25 years to 30 years in February 2006, extended it to 35 years in July of 2006 and extended it yet again to 40 years in November 2006 During this period they also reduced the needed down payment on second properties from 20% to 5% and allowed for 0 down on one's primary residence. Ever since the down turn, Jim Flaherty has been scrabbling to undo the damage his past actions have done. Flaherty first reduced amortization period from 40 years to 35 and again mandated a 20% down payment on secondary properties and 5% on primary properties in October 2008 and on March 18th he reduced the maximum amortization period to 30 years. Never once acknowledging that it was he who raised the amortization period to begin with, Jim Flaherty has repeatedly over the course of the last 2 and half years that reducing the amortization and increasing the minimum downplayment was the right thing to do. "In 2008 and again in 2010, our government acted to protect and strengthen the Canadian housing market," The problem is it is too little too late. The best Flaherty and Conservatives can do is prevent further damage. Weather it be Bloomberg, Paul Krugman and, if you read between the lines, Mark Carney many are worried that Canada is headed for a crash that would drive Canada deep into debt. For one thing, since 2006 Canadian mortgage and housing corporations liabilities have gone from 100 billion to 500 hundred billion. If the housing bubble bursts and Canadians start defaulting on their mortgages, the Canadian tax payer will be picking up the tab. The Canadian government guarantees all that debt.

Major Problems with Influential "Anatomy of a Liberal defeat"

http://www.ces-eec.org/pdf/Anatomy%20of%20a%20Liberal%20Defeat.pdf

The authors imply that Liberal gradually declined as minority and catholic voters everywhere slowly left the party. However, had the authors of the study tied their musings to shifting regional voting patterns they would have come to different conclusions.

In 2004 Liberals share of the popular vote went up almost everywhere. It was up in BC, Alberta, Sask, Manitoba, NB, NS, PEI, NFLD. However, the party took a massive hit in Ontario and Quebec and lost its majority as a result.

Now, what happened in the former was Ontario voters returned to the NDP after an 11 year hiatus. Between 1965 and 1993 the NDP vote in Ontario never diped below 19% and never topped 22%. The party's share of the vote was very predictable. However in 1993 the NDP took only 6% of the the vote and their share of the vote stayed low for the next two elections. They took 10% in 1997 and 8% in 2000. Then in 2004 they went up to 18%. They took 19.5 in 2006 and 18% in 2008. As Ontario has by far and away most visible minorities in absolute terms, an 10% NDP uptake in the Ontario coupled with a 6.8% Liberal downturn in the province could mean that what is passed off as the start of a national trend (i.e., Liberal minority voters leaving the party first for the NDP and then later the Conservatives) was really no more a province returning to traditional voting patterns.

Of course, that is not the only thing wrong with the implication that Liberals lost as minorities everywhere deserted the party. The Liberal share of the national vote went down 6.5% in 2006, but the Liberal share of the minority vote went up slightly.

Equally problematic is the implication that the party lost as Catholics abandoned the party. The problem is this. One can not seriously address the decline in the Liberal share of the Catholic vote without commenting on declining Liberal fortunes in Quebec, but that is what the authors do. As of 2001, 83% of Quebecers referred to themselves as Catholics. The next highest was NB at 54%. Outside of Montreal the number is much higher. Only 74% of Montrealers identified themselves as being Catholic. By comparison Quebec City is around 95%. Anyway, between 2000 and 2006 the Liberal share of the popular vote in Quebec fell 24%. Outside of Montreal the decline was even more dramatic. In Quebec City, for example, the Liberal vote was a third of what it was in 2000.

Lastly, the seismic shift that happened after RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's named then-Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale in a criminal investigation in the middle of the 2005 2006 campaign should have have prompted authors to question people's self reports.

"Reforming" the Senate is a Terrible Idea

Constitutionally senators have all kinds of power and every once in a blue moon the Senate has stalled major pieces of legislation (e.g., free trade and the GST). However the aforementioned instances of stalling are so rare they are the exceptions that prove just how "ineffective" the senate truly is. Moreover, no senate I can think of has pursued a legislative agenda of its own accord; opposing legislation is one thing; purposing legislation is quite another. The reason the senate is not an "effective" body is that senators are not elected and as such lack legitimacy. Furthermore, senators are members of legitimate federal political parties and the parties that they belong to are loath to have their unelected members exercise real authority least their actions undermine the party. Finally, the fact that it is the ruling federal party and not, say, provincial governments that appoint senators defines a clear pecking order, with the Senate answerable to the House.

Harper, of course, wants to reform the Senate. Being unable to reform the Senate in one fell swoop, Harper has proposed electing Senators piece meal. Under the Conservative plan, new senators would be elected and would be limited to serving out a 8 year term. The elephant in the living room is that if the senate's lack of effective powers flows from the senate's lack of legitimacy, then electing senators might provide the senate with a degree of legitimacy it currently does not hold. One problem with proceeding thusly is that current senators are free to serve until the age of 75. As a result, Harper's actions could either transform an unelected political body with no real power into a largely unelected political body with real political power or commit Canadians to the farcical and expensive act of electing people to office who hold no real power. Always content to play the Tin Man and Lion to Conservatives scarecrow, the Liberals remain largely mum on the subject.

Setting aside problems associated with implementation, is the cause of democracy even served by reforming the Senate? Well, the Reformers always held that the regions needed more say and an “equal” “effective” and “elected” senate is the best way of achieving a balance between population centers in Eastern Canada and the rest of us. However, such a conception, and for that matter an "effective" version of the current senate, does not stand up to scrutiny. The problem is fivefold.

First such an argument rests on a false contrast; seats in the House of Commons are supposed to be assigned on basis of population, but in actuality that is not the case. Consider the 905. There are currently 4 plus million living in the 905 and there are currently 32 seats for an average of just over 127,000 people per riding. There are 6 ridings with over a 140,000 people in the 905, Bramalea - Gore - Malton (152,698) Brampton West (170,422) Halton (151,943), Mississauga - Erindale (143,361) Oak Ridges - Markham (169,642) and Vaughan (154,206). By contrast there are 4.5 million people in Sask, Man, NWT, Nuv, Yuk, PEI, NS, NFLD, and NB and there are 62 seats for an average of 72,000 people per riding. Moreover, there is but one riding in the 9, Selkirk Interlake (90,807), with over 90,000 people. Given current growth trends, there will be more people in the 905 than the aforementioned provinces and territories by 2011. Given population growth, Harper would have to give Ontario alone another 70 seats to make things half way equal.

Second, the people living in Canada’s less populated provinces have a mechanism to assure that regional concerns are addressed; it is called provincial jurisdiction and provincial representation. By the very nature of living in a province with a small population, the 135,851 people in PEI have plenty of ways of addressing regional concerns that are not available to, for example, the 136 470 people living in Mississauga - Brampton South.

The third reason is that while one person one vote is bedrock principle of any democracy, one province one senate vote is something else entirely. People, not provinces, deserve equal representation. A province is no more or less than the people that make up that province. Giving the 135,851 in PEI the power to determine everything under provincial jurisdiction, provincial representation and 4 MPs well all the while giving the 170, 422 residents of Brampton West one MP is bad enough as it is. Piling on and giving the 135,851 people in PEI the same number of “effective” senators, as per the American Triple E Senate model, as 12,160,282 Ontarians is beyond stupid and grossly undemocratic. Equally silly is having one "effective" Senator for every 72,997 New Brunswick residents (10 senators in total) versus one Senator for every 685, 581 BC residents (6 senators in total). And that is what the current configuration gives us.

Four, as Benjamin Franklin put it, having two equally matched houses makes as much sense as tying two equally matched horses to either end of a buggy and having them both pull. Having two houses is not only a lobbyists dream, it is a recipe for political gridlock and pork barrel politics. The only thing that would be worse is if one needed 60% of the votes in the senate to overcome a filibuster.

Five, leaving aside the fact that no province has a second chamber, most having abolished them long ago, and that there are numerous examples of unicameral nation states (e.g., New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, South Korea and Portugal), we already have a de facto unicameral state as it is -- just ask the supporters of a Triple E senate. After all, one can not argue on the one hand that the current senate is undemocratic and so contributes to the "democratic deficit" and on the other hand argue that the senate is “ineffective”. A body that adds nothing to the genuinely "effective" process can not take away anything either.

Conservative MP John Weston and the Gun Registry

John Weston:

"We all support the licensing of people who own firearms and the registration of prohibited or restricted weapons (such as handguns). That's not going to change; this Conservative government is unwavering in that. We know full well that criminals don't register their guns and that's what makes the long gun registry wasteful and ineffective,"

http://www.nsnews.com/news/Chief+Const+Lepine+Save+registry/3539157/story.html

Criminals can not register their guns. Being able to register a gun presupposes that one has a Possession and Acquisition Licence and a criminal record is grounds for being denied a PAL and for a PAL being revoked. However, this does not mean that some criminals do not try to register their guns. "More than 1,500 Canadians were refused licences for their guns from 2006-2009, on the basis of background checks triggered when they went to register the weapons." The most common reason for denying these gun owners a license was that they were a risk to others. "The program revoked another 6,093 licences in the same period as a result of continuous screening, court orders and complaints to its public safety line. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/gunregistry/article/863178--why-gun-control-is-really-a-gender-issue?bn=1

Semantics aside, Weston's argument does not make much sense. Car thieves can not register their ill gotten goods with ICBC either, but I do see anyone giving this as a reason for not having to register cars. To make matters worse for Weston, it is impossible for him to on the one hand throw his support behind registering "prohibited or restricted weapons (such as handguns)" and on the other hand demand that long guns no longer be registered. After all, the reason he gives for the latter is that criminals do not register their guns. So, he should be calling for the entire registry to be abolished. Weston can not have his cake and eat it too.


Weston:

"This is a big distraction. It has been politicized. There is an unfortunate need for the Liberals to defend their waste of the $2 billion by continually coming up with justifications.

The Conservatives like to hammer the Liberals over the cost of the gun registry and rightly so. That said, the gun registry's 1 billion dollar price tag does not have any baring on whether long guns should be registered. What matters is whether the annual cost (between 1.5 and 4 million dollars) of registering long guns is worth it. Implying that the initial cost over runs justify dumping any part of the gun registry now is akin to saying the gazebo in Tony Clement's riding should be blown up because the Conservatives spent 1.3 Billion on a three day conference . http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/liberal-staffer-accuses-tories-of-trying-to-discredit-auditor-general/article1667099/ It makes no sense.

Now as for the justifications the Liberals have given for continuing to register long guns, other than to point out that the fact that the gun registry is used x number of times each day by the police, the Liberals have said remarkably little about the gun registry over the years. Their refusal to say much more has hurt them. They would have been in much better place had the continually come up with justifications.

Moving on, it is rich of Weston to imply that the Liberals have politicized the issue more than other parties. Not only have the Liberals not continually come up with justifications, they have spent a fraction of the Conservatives have on the issue. The Conservatives have spent money on radio ads and billboards. The Liberals have not. Not much has changed since Weston made these comments. The Conservatives were first ones to raise the issue this election and seem to be the only party wanting to talk about it.



Weston:

"This is a big distraction. It has been politicized. There is an unfortunate need for the Liberals to defend their waste of the $2 billion by continually coming up with justifications.
There's an Angus Reid poll that says 72 per cent of Canadians want the registry scrapped. There was a nationwide survey of rank-and-file police officers that said 92 per cent of them thought the registry was ineffective."

In 2006 Conservative candidate form Ajax Pickering famously said “The facts don’t matter.” I see John Weston is of the same mindset.

The auditor general put the cost of the gun registry at just under 1 billion, no Angus Reid poll ever showed those numbers and and this so called nationwide survey of rank and file police officers was chat room poll and so was no more scientific than Ted White's many "polls". My hat goes off to the North shore News for pointing this out.

"Setting up the registry ran notoriously over budget, reaching nearly $1 billion, according to the federal auditor general."

"In fact, the Aug. 24 Angus Reid poll of 1,005 Canadians reported that 44 per cent favoured scrapping the registry, with 35 per cent opposed and 21 per cent unsure. The police survey was an unscientific online poll conducted by an Edmonton officer on a police chat forum. The forum's operator later disavowed the survey, calling the results "mixed and inconclusive."

http://www.nsnews.com/news/Chief+Const+Lepine+Save+registry/3539157/story.html

By the way, one of the most recent poll showed this.

"Overall, 48 per cent of those surveyed believe it's a bad idea to abolish the registry, with 38 per cent supporting its abolition. (Harris/Decima interviewed just over 1000 Canadians. A sample of this size has a margin of error of 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.)"

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/gunregistry/article/863178--why-gun-control-is-really-a-gender-issue?bn=1

John Weston:

"The answer remains that we don't have any documented cases -- that I know of -- where the registry has performed its avowed purpose," he said. "In each case, if you look closely the registry would not have saved the victim. It's not doing its job. All it's doing is intruding on the liberties of Canadian farmers, duck hunters, and other law-abiding gun owners."

The gun registry is, first and foremost a tool for seizing guns from people who should no longer have them. I doubt even Weston would deny that it makes the seizure of guns easier. This was the thrust of what West Vancouver police chief Lepine said.

"Having a detailed inventory of the 4,029 registered firearms in West Vancouver helps police with court-ordered seizures of weapons from convicted offenders, said Lepine. If legally held weapons are stolen and eventually surface somewhere in the criminal economy, the registry records give officers a place to start in their investigation, he said.

"The next one is public safety. We get calls from mental-health providers saying 'We're concerned about a particular individual.' We'll do that check and go and seize (their firearms) so they don't harm themselves or someone else."

http://www.nsnews.com/news/Chief+Const+Lepine+Save+registry/3539157/story.html

The problem is that Weston refuses to acknowledge that sometimes legally registered weapons need to be seized because the owner has, for example, been convicted of a crime. In this he is not alone; I have yet to hear a Conservative acknowledge that there have been thousands of "Canadian farmers, duck hunters", who acquired a criminal record over the last 12 years and over the next 12 years there will be thousands more.

As for specific examples, Weston must not have looked very hard.

“I think we've probably prevented some major events,” says Dr. Barbara Kane, a psychiatrist in Prince George, B.C. The RCMP has called Kane asking whether she is concerned about certain individuals applying to register a gun. She believes such a call prevented tragedy after a millworker was fired.

“He could easily have gone into one of the mills and done something bad,” she says. “But we were able to get his guns away from him.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/gunregistry/article/863178--why-gun-control-is-really-a-gender-issue?bn=1

Simple and Needed Democratic Reforms

Ban on political advertising outside of election time: Spending limits are designed to level the playing field and to lessen corporate influence and in process make campaigns more about issues than money. However, the effectiveness of such measures is undermined if parties are allowed to spend whatever they want outside of election time.

Make it so that political donations are no longer tax deductible: The Conservatives want to eliminate the political subsidy and so force political parties to raise their "own money". As usual, Harper only thinking of what political advantage could be gained and not at all about what is good for the country. Canada should be increasing the public subsidy and reducing the importance of donations -- also publicly subsidized -- by no longer making political contributions tax deductible. There are two reasons for doing so. The first is obvious. Making the political parties more beholden to those with money is a bad idea. Two, the more emphasis placed on fundraising, the less time politicians have to spend dealing with issues and serving the community. The extreme case is what has happened in the US. Bill Clinton lamented that an ever increasing amount of time occupied by fundraising and by the end of second term it occupied most of his time and the time of most senators. That was more than 10 years ago. Things are 100 times worse now. We want our politicians believing that politically it more advantageous for them to spend time representing their ridings than it is giving speeches at serious of $100 dollar a plate fundraising dinners.

Eliminate the distinction between local and national political adverting. This would prevent another in and out scandal from happening.

Mandatory voting: Seniors vote in much greater numbers than young people and so politicians pay them more attention. The lack of attention paid to younger voters leads the youth to pay even less attention to politics and on it goes in a vicious circle. Moreover, anyone who has ever worked on a campaign knows that most of the focus is not spent convincing people to vote this way or that, but rather identifying party supporters and then to pestering them to show up on voting day. Make voting and mandatory and parties would spend more time focusing in on the issues and lot less time tracking down supporters.

Liberal Platform

The Liberal platform did contain any surprises. Virtually everything had already been laid out before the election or in the opening days of the campaign. Sadly, it is a real mixed bag. I quite liked the Liberals learning passport, thought their family plan and pension top up plan mildly interesting, and was amazed that they could come up with a childcare plan that much worse than the poorly thought out plan Paul Martin trotted out. The rest is largely forgettable. I liked the party's commitment to net neutrality and their decision to increase language funding for immigrants, but a commitment to increase the number of family class immigrants is prime facie dumb, and commitment to equity had me momentarily longing for a Conservative majority.



What the Liberals needed to do was to establish themselves as categorically different from the Conservatives and this regard Igantieff's platform is a miserable failure. Take away the empty rhetoric about prisons and planes and the major tenets of the platform are not all that different from what the Conservatives might offer. The one thing that used to separate the Liberals and Conservatives, viz., the Liberal's tepid social liberalism and Tories robust social conservatism are gone. I find this development puzzling. After all, even though the Liberals had been rocked by the Gomery inquiry findings in the spring of 2005 and slipped below 30% in the polls, with SSM debate dominating the headlines over the next few months the Liberals surged to 38 percent by the time SSM came into law. Meanwhile, Stephen Harper was dressing up like one of the village people and many pundits were writing him off.



Since then the Liberals abandoned social liberalism and have pretty much turned all their attention to tweaking the tax code. As a result, the Conservatives do not seem so scary anymore, Canada is no longer "cool" and the Liberals have lost their commanding lead amongst younger voters and urban voters. A commitment to social liberalism was the party's only chance of making a breakthrough in Quebec and forming government, but the party decided stick to tax deductions instead.

Liberals should not be so quick to celebrate a NDP downturn

Virtually every poll shows the Conservatives are up and that they hold a 10 point lead in Ontario. Worse recent polls show the Conservatives are up in Quebec. If this holds, we are headed for the Conservative majority.

Despite all this, Liberal bloggers remain strangely optimistic. I do not share their optimism. Sure, there are some signs that the Liberals have made hay at the NDP's expense, Igantieff is not Dion and there is no Green Shift, but weak a NDP, especially in BC, helps the Conservatives a lot more than it helps shore up Liberal ridings in the 905. The following NDP ridings are in serious danger of going Conservative.

Edmonton Strathcona
Western Artic
Saut Ste Marie
St. John's East
Burnaby Douglas
New Westminster Coquitlam
Welland
Elmwood Transcona

Moreover, a weak NDP all but gives Esquimalt Juan De fuca to the Conservatives. Esquimalt Juan De fuca was a Keith Martin seat and not a Liberal seat.

Liberals Have to Roll out Policy

So long as the Liberals continue to do little more than defend the status quo, questions about a coalition will dog them and so will questions about why we are having this election. Voters need a reason to support the Liberals that go beyond Stopping Harper from changing the things for the worse.

North Vancouver: Liberal Chances

The Liberal share of the popular vote in North Vancouver fell 5% in 2008 and Don Bell suffered his first ever defeat. However, Bell should hold his head high. He faired far better than most Lowermainland Liberal candidates. To wit

Burnaby New West - 14.52
Vancouver Kingsway - 14.43
Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission - 13.63
Burnaby Douglas - 13.61
New West Coquitlam - 12.3
Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam - 12.26
Langley - 11.99
Richmond - 11.98
West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country - 10.89
Delta Richmond East -9.9
South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale - 9.77
Vancouver South - 9.57
Vancouver Center - 9.37
Vancouver East -6.19
Fleetwood-Port Kells -5.5
North Vancouver -5.04
Surrey North -4.58
Vancouver Quarda -3.57
Newton-North Delta 2.17
Abbotsford 3.6


Moreover, one look at a 2008 election map shows North Vancouver to be a real outlier. The Liberals decline was not nearly as marked in Surrey as it was in the ridings close to North Vancouver. It was down 5.5% Fleetwood-Port Kells, 4.58% in Surrey North and up 2.17% in Newton North Delta. By contrast, the Liberal vote was down 13.61% in Burnaby Douglas, 10.89 in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country and 9.37% in Vancouver Center.

It should be noted that the 2008 Abbotsford vote totals are skewed. Unfounded allegations were made against Liberal candidate David Oliver in the 2006 election and rather than fight them Martin and company decided to Dwingwall him. (Liberals should not complain that the Prime Minister is loath to dismiss a minister no matter how solid the evidence against him. After all, Stephen Harper learned first hand that whole heatedly embracing scandal, publicizing it and using it as means of undermining various factions within his own party as Paul Martin liked to do, is daft.) A better comparison than 2006 is 2004. The Liberal candidate that year took 19.94% of the vote. That was 3.7 higher than what the Liberals took in 2008.

In sum, Bell lost because Liberal vote was down 944,350 outside of Quebec.

What happens in North Vancouver in 2011 will also be decided nationally. The question for Liberal supporters is will things return to what they were in 2004 and 2006 or is 2008 the norm. With the later looking more likely and Ignatieff looking set to join Dion, John Turner and Paul Martin as the fourth rider of the Liberal apocalypse, North Vancouver Liberal candidate Taleeb Normohamed could fair rather badly indeed. That, though, will not reflect baldly on Taleeb. He is a good candidate. He is well spoken, and very well educated. Furthermore, he has surrounded himself with competent and confident people. However, he is not a "star candidate", he has virtually no name recognition, and he has few ties outside of the Ismail community. He is not going to change many minds in a mere 38 days and that is what he needs to do. No one in a similar situation could. Identifying the Liberal vote and pestering them to go to the polls is not going to be enough. (Anyone who has ever worked on a campaign knows that most of the focus is not spent convincing people to vote this way or that but rather identifying party supporters and then to pestering them to show up on voting day. It is yet one more reason why there needs to be mandatory voting.) With Don Bell gone, North Vancouverites are likely to fall in line with voters in near by ridings. There are just not enough self identified Liberal supporters left to pester.

The Liberals Need to be the party of Change not the Status Quo

I have said before and will say it again talk of fiscal responsibility and democratic institutions bore the public to tears. It is not worth an ad campaign.

The Liberals need to focus their attacks on prisons, fighter planes and corporate tax cuts. The former might be related to the latter list, but trying to explain that to the public is a lost cause.

Most important of all the Liberals need to juxtapose prisons, fighter planes and corporate tax cuts with something. For way too long now the Liberals have set themselves up as the defenders of the Status Quo from the party that wants to destroy it, viz., the Conservatives. This is a bizarre position for an opposition party, yet alone an ostensibly liberal one, to take. The Liberals need to embrace change and more importantly to develop policies that offer a clear benefit to all Canadians.

I have said before I will say it again. The Liberal's early childhood education program is an obvious place to start. It is a mess. The Liberals should abandon what they have now and follow in Ontario's footsteps and offer all day playschool and Kindergarten to every 4 and 5 year old in the country. The benefit of any child care or early childhood education program lies not with just the material benefit it offers parents, but also with how well it allows them to plan for the future. A promise to provide 250,000 new childcare spots does not only parents to plan for anything. Full day playschool and Kindergarten does.

Now I have also said that also repeatedly said that the Liberals need a policy that will suck life out of Conservative's get tough on crime agenda and that a promise to legalize marijuana would do just that. However, I feel that I am flogging a dead horse. So I suggest that the Liberals open up the euthanasia debate instead. It will not get the same attention, it is a much more complicated issue and it can not be constrasted with anything yet allow the war on drugs, but it has strong public support and it would be popular in Quebec. It is certainly a better strategy than promising to seek federal funding into a Quebec City arena.

Finally, the Liberals should promise to give Canadians 4 weeks of vacation a year. Currently Canada lags behind only the US in terms of how much vacation it mandates. 4 weeks is the minimum in virtually every other Western country. Such a promise would take some of populist winds out of Stephen Harper's and Jack Layton's sails and it would be a great fun calling Harper a kill joy.

"The Anatomy of a Liberal Defeat"

http://www.ces-eec.org/pdf/Anatomy%20of%20a%20Liberal%20Defeat.pdf

The authors imply that Liberal gradually declined as minority and catholic voters everywhere slowly left the party. However, had the authors of the study tied their musings to shifting regional voting patterns they would have come to different conclusions.

In 2004 Liberals share of the popular vote went up almost everywhere. It was up in BC, Alberta, Sask, Manitoba, NB, NS, PEI, NFLD. However, the party took a massive hit in Ontario and Quebec and lost its majority as a result.

Now, what happened in the former was Ontario voters returned to the NDP after an 11 year hiatus. Between 1965 and 1993 the NDP vote in Ontario never diped below 19% and never topped 22%. The party's share of the vote was very predictable. However in 1993 the NDP took only 6% of the the vote and their share of the vote stayed low for the next two elections. They took 10% in 1997 and 8% in 2000. Then in 2004 they went up to 18%. They took 19.5 in 2006 and 18% in 2008. As Ontario has by far and away most visible minorities in absolute terms, an 10% NDP uptake in the Ontario coupled with a 6.8% Liberal downturn in the province could mean that what is passed off as the start of a national trend (i.e., Liberal minority voters leaving the party) was really no more a province returning to traditional voting patterns.

Of course, that is not the only thing wrong with the implication that Liberals lost as minorities everywhere deserted the party. The Liberal share of the national vote went down 6.5% in 2006, but the Liberal share of the minority vote went up slightly.

Equally problematic is the implication that the party lost as Catholics abandoned the party. The problem is this. One can not seriously address the decline in the Liberal share of the Catholic vote without commenting on declining Liberal fortunes in Quebec, but that is what the authors do. As of 2001, 83% of Quebecers referred to themselves as Catholics. The next highest was NB at 54%. Outside of Montreal the number is much higher. Only 74% of Montrealers identified themselves as being Catholic. By comparison Quebec City is around 95%. Anyway, between 2000 and 2006 the Liberal share of the popular vote in Quebec fell 24%. Outside of Montreal the decline was even more dramatic. In the aforementioned Quebec City, for example, the Liberal vote was a third of what it was in 2000.

Liberals and Crime

Tom Flanagan crowed after the 2006 election that there are certain issues that just favour the Conservatives. The example he gave was the economy. No matter how successful the Liberals were in balancing the books and creating jobs, Conservative research suggested that when it came to economics people trusted the Conservatives more than they did the Liberals. It does not much of leap to suggest the same is true for crime. After all, to presume that the public has a working knowledge of each party's justice policies is giving the public way too much credit; the public trades in stereotypes and they are always going to believe that Conservatives are tougher on crime. This is especially so now. The Conservatives are in power and for this reason alone what they say with regard to crime garners headlines. By contrast, past Liberal support for some those Conservative tough on crime measures has drawn almost no attention at all. Of course, even if the Liberals were able to convince Canadians did support this or that Conservative measure, the Conservatives have a fail safe. They have claimed and will continue to claim that the Liberals had ability to introduce such policies when they were in power and failed to do so. No one likes a Johnny come lately.

So if the Liberals can not lessen the lessen the popularity of Conservative tough on crime agenda by towing the Conservative line, just what can they do? Well, they can try put the subject in different light. And at first blush it appears that have tried to do just that. The Liberals have reminded the public that "US style mega- prisons" come at a cost and questioned just how Canadian such policies truly are. "Canadians know that spending billions of dollars on US-style mega-prisons to lock up young people will only produce more hardened criminals. It’s a failed American crime policy, and it just doesn’t work."

The problem with such an approach is this. In words of great voting behavior researcher Philip Converse, the vast majority of voters show a lack of “constraint”: That is, they hold incompatible beliefs. Many voters simply do not recognize that tough on crime measures necessitate the building of "mega-prisons". If asked, they will say that they support the former but disagree with the later.

The Liberals know this. Indeed, Liberal marijuana policy, for example, is premised on there being such wide cognitive dissonance. On the one hand the Liberals have long maintained that Canadians should not be saddled with a criminal record for consuming something that is, after all, less harmful than alcohol. It is this light that Chrétien famously joked about having a joint in one hand and the money to pay for the fine of having it in the other. “I will have my money for my fine and a joint in my other hand.” On the other hand, just as they long downplayed the affects of smoking marijuana they have long stressed the importance of stiff penalties for trafficking. Both positions are wildly popular with the public, but run the two positions together and it is as if Chrétien said this instead. “I will have my money for my fine and a joint in my other hand. Having paid my fine I would hope the cops find the person who sold it to me in put him in jail for a very long time.” If the act of consumption is not deemed overly ruinous then the whole punitive rationale for trafficking comes crashing down. Add to mix an acknowledgment on behalf of the Liberal party that marijuana can serve a medical purpose and you have a conceptual train wreck as a policy.

Liberal supporters should take two things from this. One just because it Ignatieff is decrying "mega-prisons" now does not mean the party has seen the light. When it comes to crime, the party seems to have no qualms speaking out of both sides of its mouth. Two, however popular such denunciations of "mega prisons" might be it is not likely such talk will do anything to arrest the popularity of the Conservatives tough on crime agenda.

No, the only way the Liberals are going to be able to arrest the popularity of Conservative's get tough on crime agenda is by putting a legal elephant right in the middle of the room. Promising to legalize either marijuana or prostitution would do the trick. Hot topics draw in an ordinate amount of attention generally and starve any related issues of any oxygen altogether.

The question then becomes would either policy would pay off politically. With regard to the later I just do not know. However, with regard to the former I am convinced it would be a political winner for the Liberals.

Polls consistently show that the Canadian public supports the legalization of marijuana by a wide margin. So the public is receptive to the idea already. More importantly, the arguments for legalizing marijuana are far more robust than the arguments for increasing the penalties for trafficking. Indeed, the later are often so bad as to have earned the name "reefer madness". As with SSM, the advantage of such an issue lies not with the popularity of such a proposal per say as the cost to the Conservatives of having their talking points savaged by the media for months on end. It is the process not the polls that really matter. I do not care what the issue is if your talking points been savaged by the media and informed public over a long period of time, you are going to hurt on the polls. The more prominent or controversial the issue the worse it gets.

Liberal Messaging

Since Peter Donolo took over, Liberal messaging has been 100 times better. Still, problems remain. The party badly needs an attack dog or dogs. Politics is a blood sport. You have to be prepared to give as good as you get. If the Conservatives want to dig up old quotes, the Liberals should do likewise. It is laughable that Conservatives have been able to play the nationalist card with quotes like these from Harper lying about.

"Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status"

"Any country with Canada’s insecure smugness and resentment can be dangerous."

The Liberals also need to start developing additional talking points aimed not at a broad audience but at political pundits, and political junkies. Above all else the party needs to challenge the legions of conservative columnists least various conservative position become received wisdom. Factual errors need to be pointed out, non sequiturs need to be mocked and detailed arguments provided. Again the party needs to be vicious. Ignatieff talks about wanting to the be the party that bases its decisions on sound reasoning and science. A good way of establishing such a reputation is take a conservative pundit out to the wood shed on occasion. When a conservative columnist retires the Liberals should share Trudeau's lament: "I'm sorry I won't have you to kick around any more." Darwin had Thomas Huxley; the Liberals need their own bulldog.

Lastly, the Liberals need to touch on hot button issues again. Since the 2006 election the Liberals have steadfastly avoided them. Politically this has been disastrous. Social issues have always been the Conservatives Achilles' heel. Of course, the ability of the Liberals to capitalize on such issues by just talking about them only goes so far. So long as the Liberals show an unwillingness to put forward socially liberal policies, the Conservatives are not likely to oblige the Liberals by talking about hot button issues. The Liberals have to put forward a socially liberal agenda in order to fully capitalize.

Liberal problems run deep

The Liberals think that they can win the next election by rolling out a safe middle of the road platform. They are wrong. There is no push to throw the bums out and there is no evidence whatsoever the Liberals are gaining any traction with the public. The Conservatives have the advantage of being the party in power, they are better organized, their policies clearer, their messaging is generally better and they have far more money. If the electorate if given a choice of voting for middle of the road Conservative platform and middle of a road Liberal platform, they are going to go with the Conservatives.

So the question is can the Liberals turn things around. I doubt it. Igantieff is looking older and more gray by the day, there is nothing in the platform to hold the public's attention for very long and even though talk of fiscal responsibility and democratic institutions bore the public to tears, the party seems determined focus on them nonetheless. All of this is obvious.

What is less obvious is this. The Liberals seem blind to the fact that some of their core philosophy, viz., a commitment to equity and collective rights, is deeply unpopular with large segments of Canadian society. Weather it be the funding for religious schools in Ontario, or special treatment of Quebec many Canadians are deeply offended at the very suggestion that government monies and policy should be used to protect and or foster minority interests. Furthermore, weather one believes that employment equity, for example, actually makes the government less efficient is beside the point, a commitment to equity is incompatible with the liberal notion of a government built around merit. Hiring the best person for the job is far cry from using the government as a counterpoint to perceived and actual deficiencies in the private sector employment. So long as the philosophy of equity rules, conservatives will have an easy time claiming that government is the problem.

It gets worse for the Liberals. With the party long since having abandoned a commitment to universality it is not surprisingly that many Canadians believe that the Liberals are solely committed to using public monies to benefit minorities.

All of this is one more reason why it is vitally important that the Liberals recommit to universality and that the the party develop policies that offer a concrete benefit to Canadians -- all Canadians.

Childcare is obvious place to start. The problem is that the Liberal,s early childhood education program is unmediated disaster. The goal of the program was ostensibly to work with the provinces to set up an early childhood education program for children under 6. However, to the average voter this amounted to little more than a vague promise to provide more daycare at sometime in the future; they could not figure out what this would mean for their lives. To add insult to injury, the Liberals willingness to consider different deals for different provinces has muddied things all the more.

If the Liberals reintroduce such a program in the future, they need to present it in a form in which voters can understand, with a clear time line and that they make sure they offer parents a clear and tangible benefit. They could, for example, promise to provide all day preschool and kindergarten for every 3 and 4 year old in Canada two years after an election.

Marijuana prohibition is comming to an end: the Liberals need a Plan

Proposition 19 failed, but the issue will likely be revisited in 2012 and this time it will likely pass. Voter turn for mid term elections is always significantly less than when the presidency is up for grabs. For proposition 19 to have stood any chance of winning Democrats, and the young needed to be energized. They were not and stayed away in droves. Even with everything stacked against them, though, the yes campaign still garnered 46% of vote.

Legal production of marijuana in California will make the legislation of marijuana elsewhere in the US all but inevitable and extension in Canada as well. Obama is not going to go to war with California in order to maintain a federal prohibition. Indeed, it was Obama that set the wheels of legalization in motion by declaring that he would not crack down on medical marijuana. For you see, unlike in Canada, in California, for example, one does not have to be afflicted with a particular aliment to be eligible for medical marijuana. A doctor can proscribe marijuana for whatever they see fit. Needless to say, such a system is ripe for abuse and the Bush administration was right to see medical marijuana program as a potential Trojan horse. But Obama let wooden horse to be wheeled into California and other States anyway. In so doing, Obama has allowed the medical marijuana industry in California and elsewhere to grow to the point there is no saving prohibition for Odysseus. There are more medical marijuana dispensaries in LA than Starbucks.

The Liberals need to come up with a plan. Canada needs to come up with a plan. The loss of the billion dollar industry, albeit an illegal industry is going to have an impact.

The natural response, indeed, the only response, is to beat the Americans to the punch. Far from being political poison, political legalization has a lot of upside for the Liberals. It would drive a wedge between libertarians and Theo cons. It would appeal to people who would otherwise would not vote -- most notably young Canadians. It would be popular in the very provinces and regions that the Liberals actually have a chance of making headway, e.g., urban Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec. It would garner a lot of positive international exposure. It would leave the Conservatives defending discredited Reefer Madness arguments. Above all else, the lynch pin in the opponents arguments, viz. that the US will not stand for it, is quickly be worn away.

Liberal Corporate Tax Cut talking points nowhere to be found

Corporate tax cuts promises to be one of the main points of contention during the next election. So one would think the Liberals would have a stack of well developed talking points devoted to the issue, but alas one would be wrong. Go to the Liberal website and this what you will find.

"The Conservative plan is to put us another $6 billion into debt by giving more tax cuts to profitable corporations – when corporate taxes are already low."

That is it.

Christ. You would think that Liberals would point out that the annual cost would be 6 billion a year and as such cost would quickly add up to one hell of a lot more than just 6 billion, but that little ditty seems to be lost on the Liberal staffer who wrote the above blurb. They might also have pointed out that 6 billion pays for a hell of a lot of daycare spots.

Moving on. How low is low? It would nice if they put Canada's corporate tax rate into context. At the very least point out that it lower than the States.

How profitable is profitable? Corporate profits in Canada have long been higher than pretty much any where else. Pointing this out would greatly undermine the Conservative position.

Europe's debt Crisis in a nut shell for lazy ass conservative bloggers

"One of the problems is, the Liberal message is being seen in the UK, Spain, Ireland, Greece, California etc. Right now, the Liberal message is more social programs which means higher taxes."


My God. Do not be so lazy. For starters, understand the difference between Liberal and liberal. There is nothing liberal about the Liberal party of BC for example. They are conservative. Take the time to read up on what actually happened in Europe, the governments in power at the time, their policies ect. It beyond ludicrous to lump the UK, Spain, Ireland, Greece, California together.

Greece has always been an economic basket case. For Christ sake, it has defaulted 7 times in since 1945.

However, prior to the down turn, Spain, Ireland and UK were in fine fiscal shape. All had gross debt levels that were lower -- in the UK's case much lower, than they are here and Spain and Ireland were running surpluses. All 3 though had allowed huge real estate bubbles to inflate.

Once real estate bubbles started deflating all over the western world, the UK and Ireland pumped huge sums of money to prop up their banks and furthermore took responsibility for enormous private debts incurred by their banks. As a result, their debt to GDP ratios sky rocked. In the less than a year Ireland's debt to GDP ratio doubled!

At the same time as governments everywhere were busy saving their banker's bacon, government revenues collapsed and governments were saddled with higher bills for things like unemployment Insurance. Some European countries tired to make up for a huge drop in demand by introducing various fiscal stimulus and this inflated their budget deficits greater still. However, in no case was the fiscal stimlus package particularly large. Indeed, in many cases their was no fiscal stimulus at all. This was the case in Ireland. Not only was there no fiscal stimulus there, the Irish government also made deep cuts to social services and sharply raised taxes.

Needless to say, the kind of Hoover economics now being practiced by all of battered European economies -- with the notable exception of Iceland -- is not addressing the underlying problem, viz., a sharp decline in aggregate demand and an associated decline in government revenues. To further complicate matters is that a common currency has meant that Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece have not been able to deflate their currency in attempt to become more competitive and short term interest rates are already at record lows. As such, many still expect the worst. For them, it is not a matter of if Greece and Ireland will default on their debt obligations, but when.

So could such a crisis happen here? Damn skippy it could. Canadian consumer debt, most it related to spike in housing costs, is every bit as high as American consumer debt was prior to the crash. And again the crisis in Europe and US was brought on by a private debt crisis, associated with various real estate booms, that in turn created a public debt crisis. As for our much lauded banking system, Spain's banks are no less conservative in their lending pratices than Canadian banks, but a real estate bubble in Spain inflated and burst nonetheless. And why has the cost of housing gone through the roof since 2006? Well, the dumb ass Conservative government decided pour fuel on an already red hot real estate market. In their first year in office the Harper government increased the mortgage amortization period from 25 to 40 years, allowed for 0 down mortgages, and reduced the down payment on secondary properties from 20% to 5%. Ever since the down turn, Jim Flaherty and idiots have been scrabbling to undo the damage their actions have done. The maximum amortization period will soon be reduced to 30 years, and already a 20% down payment is required on secondary properties and 5% on primary properties. The problem is it is too little too late. The best Flaherty and idiots can do is prevent further damage. For one thing, since 2006 Canadian mortgage and housing corporations liabilities have gone from 100 billion to 500 hundred billion. If the housing bubble bursts and Canadians start defaulting on their mortgages, the Canadian tax payer will be picking up the tab. The Canadian government guarantees all that debt.

The media and the Liberal Message

The Liberals seem to have realized their ability to ability to get their message directly out to the Canadian people is very limited indeed. Perhaps this is why the party has not bothered developing extensive talking points on the most central of issues. One is not going to find the Liberals, for example, saying anything interesting about corporate tax cuts. The party seems happy just to have the media mention their platform. Such a minimalist strategy extends to the ads they produced recently. One ad draws attention to the F 35 purchase and the other ad to the planned corporate tax cut. Nothing else is said in either ad.

Fair enough. Such a strategy does have its advantages. Besides, most talking points aimed at the lay public are both stupid and simplistic and are a complete waste of time. The less of them the better. However for the Liberals to abandon entire issues altogether is fool hardy. The Liberals need to start developing talking points aimed not at a broad audience but at political pundits, and political junkies. Above all else the party needs to challenge the legions of conservative columnists least various conservative position become received wisdom. Factual errors need to be pointed out and non sequiturs need to be mocked. Be vicious. Ignatieff talks about wanting to the be the party that basis its decisions on sound reasoning and science. A good way of establishing such a reputation is take a conservative pundit out to the wood shed on occasion. When conservative columnist retires the Liberals should share Trudeau's lament: "I'm sorry I won't have you to kick around any more."