Was Nigel Wright Reimbursed?

Was Nigel Wright reimbursed for the money he gave Mike Duffy? If so, where did money come from?

Abolish The Senate

Many Liberals, like many Canadians, are of the view that either the Senate should be abolished or it should be elected. This only goes to show that many Liberals have not given the matter much thought. It also shows just how abysmally bad the media coverage of the issue has been and that the media have focused almost entirely on the feasibility of changing the senate.

Canada is already a de facto unicameral state. Yes just like the queen, 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.

To try to argue as the supporters of a Triple E senate do that the current senate is both undemocratic and ineffective makes no sense. A body that adds nothing to the genuinely "effective" process can not take away anything either. The notion that the senate is undemocratic because it is unelected is as absurd as leveling the same criticism against the British monarchy. Both should scrapped yes. However, both are decorative.

The difference between electing senators and abolishing the senate is thus huge. It is the difference between abolishing an expensive debating society and transforming that debating society into a intellectual and democratic abortion.

The problem with an elected senate starts with implementation. 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, with the notable exception of Stephane Dion, remain largely mum on the subject.

Of course the problems with an elected senate go far beyond problems with how to implement it.

First arguments for regional representation 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 4,356,617 in the 905 and there are currently 32 seats for an average of just over 136, 144 people per riding. There are 5 ridings with over a 190,000 people in the 905, Bramalea - Gore - Malton (192,020) Brampton West (204,146) Halton (203,437), Oak Ridges - Markham (228,997) and Vaughan (196,068). By contrast there are 4,676,552 people in Sask, Man, NWT, Nuv, Yuk, PEI, NS, NFLD, and NB and there are 62 seats for an average of 75,428 people per riding. Moreover, there is but one riding in the 10, St John's East (100,559) with over 100,000 people. Given current growth trends, the 2016 census might show there to be more people in the 905 than the aforementioned provinces and territories. Now 15 seats are being added in Ontario, but Harper would have to give Ontario almost 70 seats to make things equal. 15 is just not enough. Of course, the problems do not stop there. Not only are the smaller provinces grossly overrepresented so too are rural areas in most provinces. For example, the riding of has Labrador has 26,728 people as compared to the riding of St John's East which has 100,559, Kenora has 55,977 and suburban riding of Oak Ridges - Markham 228,997, Miramichi has 51,996 and Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe 98,539, Kootenay - Columbia has 88,026 - Port Kells 160,129.

Second, simply by virtue of having provincial jurisdiction and provincial representation people living in Canada’s less populated provinces already have a means of leveraging far more attention and support from the Federal government than their numbers warrant. Danny Williams had the government's attention in ways that the mayors of Surrey, Red Deer, Brant, Fredericton and Churchill did not even though we are talking about equal number of seats in both cases. There is more. There is also the asinine Canadian tradition of handing out cabinet posts based not on talent but region.

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 140,204 in PEI the power to determine everything under provincial jurisdiction, provincial representation and 4 MPs well all the while giving the 228,997 residents of Oak Ridges - Markham (228,997) one MP is bad enough as it is. Piling on and giving the 140,204 people in PEI the same number of “effective” senators, as per the American Triple E Senate model, as 12,851,821 Ontarians is beyond stupid and grossly undemocratic. Equally silly is having one "effective" Senator for every 75,117 New Brunswick residents (10 senators in total) versus one Senator for every 733,343 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 lobbyist's 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.

Team Garneau Answers Survey

I sent out the following survey to candidates and Stuart from Team Garneau was kind enough to answer.

1) Canada lags behind behind virtually every other Western nation in terms of the number vacation days its citizens are guaranteed. Is it time that Canada bridge the vacation gap?

EU minimum is 4 weeks Switzerland 4 weeks New Zealand 4 weeks Norway 5 weeks

Stuart: Marc believes that it is essential to reconcile a more productive Canada with a better quality of life. However, at this time idont think he would commit to support a higher minimum vacation time, and believes that a larger national discussion with the provinces is required that benefits all parties equally.

Koby: Let me say again. Canada lags far behind the rest of the Western World in this regard. Yet Marc believes that Corporate interests and right wing premiers need to be consulted before bringing Canada in line with everyone else.

2) Should Canada legalize some form of euthanasia?

Stuart: This a difficult and controversial issue, and one that will require much more study. I think he is empathizes for the need for it but isn't totally there yet. As a man of science, Marc believes that all policy should flow first from a solid base of research, analysis and debate.

Koby: Yes policy should flow from a solid base of research, analysis and debate. And if this was Liberation therapy we were taking about and this would be perfectly good answer. However we are talking about euthanasia and there are whole sections of university libraries devoted to the subject. Marc might not have familiarized himself with literature, but it is absurd to claim that there is not enough been said on the subject to have an opinion.

3) Do you support the Legalization of marijuana?

Stuart: Marc supports the legalization of marijuana. Marc understands that rigorous scientific study is required before making any legislative decisions on the decriminalisation and legalization of marijuana but Marc fully supports the idea of regulating the marijuana industry in a manner similar to the alcohol and tobacco industries.

Koby: Good.

4) Would you scarp the F-35 contract?

Stuart: Marc has publicly questioned the government's position on the F-35 contract, and believes that the procurement process must be transparent and detailed. Should the F-35 fighter prove to be the best for Canada's defence purposes, then it should be procured. But there needs be a open tender process first.

5) Would you scrap the temporary foreign worker program?

Stuart: Marc believes we must do a complete review of the temporary foreign workers program. The Conservatives had vastly expanded that program and there are serious questions on how many workers are coming and their treatment when they get here.

Koby: Most important of all is why the government is paying to have hundreds of thousands of unskilled foreigner guest workers brought in for the sole purpose of driving down wages.

6) Every election there are a slew of grassroots efforts to get young people to vote in greater numbers. All have been miserable failures.

Getting young people to the polls is vital for the future health of Canadian democracy. Many Canadians in their 20s will move into their 30s never having voted and it remains to be seen just how many will start voting.

Do you support mandatory voting as the solution to this problem?

Stuart: To be honest, we've never asked him that question! He proposes we reform our democracy to a preferential ballot to make our first past the post system more representative

7) This is two part question. 1) Do you support reinstating the per vote subsidy? 2) If so, will you promise to help pay for such a subsidy by no longer making contributions to political parties tax deductible?

Stuart: Again, don't know if he would bring back the per vote subsidy.

8) Will you end the charitable status for overtly political organizations such as the Fraser institute and Manning Center?

Stuart: I don't think Marc would comment specifically on those two organizations.

Koby: I was not asking him to. They were just given as examples. I was asking if Marc would end the charitable status for overtly political organizations -- organizations,I might add, that do no charitable work whatsoever.

9) How much your vote counts for depends whether you reside near or in a major urban center. For example there are 228,997 people in Oak Ridge Markham and mere 55,977 In Kenora. There are 26, 728 In Labrador and 100, 559 in St. John's East. Would you support a measure calling for there to be equal representation within provinces?

Marc supports making sure our tidings better reflect population changes. That has been at the heart of the ongoing discussions on seat redistribution. It is controversial though!.

Koby: God knows why. If you live in or around Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver you are getting doubly screwed. Compared to ridings in other provinces you grossly underrepresented and you are grossly underrepresented when compared to rural ridings within your province. It is high time this stopped. There is only so much that can be done to address the largest provinces underrepresentation. However, there is no reason why an act can not be passed to insure that each riding within a province has roughly the same number of people.

10) Consider the following argument for the gun registry:

The number of legal gun owners in Canada, is huge (1.85 million) and with any large population certain very accurate predictions can be made about their future behavior. One thing we can know for sure is that a small percentage of "law-abiding duck hunters and farmers" will be convicted of a crime sometime in the future and that a small percentage will develop a mental disorder that will render them unsuitable for gun ownership at least for period of time. Now, even though this number is small in percentage terms, in absolute terms the numbers are quite large, in the 10s of thousands. Enter the gun registry. It made it easier for authorities to seize the guns of people who should no longer have them. Why? Because the onus is on the gun owner in question to produce any registered weapons. If the police do not have proof that someone owns any unrestricted guns, how can they demand that he produce them?

Do you find fault with this argument?

Stuart: As to your gun registry question, it is Marc’s stated position that the long-gun registry will not be brought back. Although supported by a majority of police associations across the country and by victims groups, it was strenuously opposed by many Canadians in rural areas across Canada. Marc has publicly stated that it is not his intention to spend more money to bring it back. Marc intends to focus on ensuring the protection of Canadians from gun violence through measures that will result in stricter penalties for those who commit crimes with a gun. As well, Marc proposes stronger interdiction measures at the border to prevent firearms trafficking, along with taking action to prohibit weapons that could be turned into assault rifles.

Koby: That is not what I asked. I asked if he found fault with the above argument. Apparently, Marc's commitment to rigorous debate stops when he feels the need to mirror the opinions of Justin Trudeau. Leaving aside a very weak legitimacy argument, the notion that Canada could reduce gun related violence by imposing tougher penalties on individuals who have committed gun related crimes is ludicrous. It certainly has not worked down south. Such measures also fail to address the issue of gun related suicides. The registry servers two purposes. One, "Studies have shown that in the US, states with both licensing and registration (versus one or the other) had fewer guns diverted from legal to illegal markets." Two, as explained above, it makes it easier to take guns away from gun owners who should no longer have them.

It should also be pointed out that calling for all hand guns to be registered, but not long guns makes about much sense as saying only pick up trucks should have valid registration but not cars.

11) Given the support for campaign spending limits, will you support a ban or least a limit on pre writ political advertising?

Pre-election, and indeed all government advertising is something that clearly needs to be looked at. The governing party in power shouldn't be allowed to spend taxpayers money on what has clearly become partisan advertisements and we should limit political advertising between elections. No one needs partisan spam!

12) What was the last two books you read?

13) What was the last two movies you saw?

14) What is your favorite non Canadian vacation destination?

Stuart: His favourite non-Canadian vacation destination? Space, of course! ;)

Koby: I do not know that he went there for vacation! But I like this answer.

The Judiciary Needs to be Remade

The moment of truth has arrived. The recent decision to grant status to non status Indians and Metis is just the tip of a very big iceberg. Bigger battles lie ahead. Given current trends the judiciary looks like it will not only grant Native peoples a veto over virtually every resource project in the country, but also ensure billions of royalties that now flow to the provinces will go to the bands instead. Furthermore, should the Supreme Court's pattern of treasonous behavior continue -- we are talking nation to nations after all -- and they cement Phelan's idiocy into law, race relations would be set back several generations and the feds and provinces will be out billions. For once the distinction between non-status and status Indian goes away so too does the ability of the crown to impose any income or excise taxes on native Canadians and Metis. On the one side will be 1.3 million native Canadians and a yet to be determined number Metis. On the other side, a shrinking number of work age Canadians will face a double whammy. Not only will they bare the financial burnt of all those baby boomers retiring, but they will also be picking up the tab for the only demographic group in the country with a fertility rate way above replacement levels. Invariably tax evasion amongst this later group will become endemic as chances for tax evasion increase exponentially and as they inevitably loose all faith in the system.

Extreme measures need to be taken. The government must remake the judiciary. Above all else, the government must remake the Supreme Court to insure that decisions like Phelan's do not become the law of the land. If that means politicizing the courts the way they are down south, so be it. Decades of judicial idiocy must come to an end.

Liberal Messaging: a Rethink is Needed

Political parties conduct polling to find out what issues favour them and what do not, develop their talking points accordingly, focus group these talking points and then repeat these tried and tested talking points every chance they get. Whether, such talking points make much sense does not matter a lick. What matters is soccer moms and Nascar dads or what have you like them.

However, such an approach has two main shortcomings, one minor, one major. The minor shortcoming is this. Just because a talking point tests well does not mean that people will never see behind the facade. Some talking points are like fruit. They spoil. Others are like Twinkies and stay fresh forever. It is hard to guess what kind of expiration date a particular talking point will have coming out of the gate. It could go rotten rather quickly. Moreover, the growing prominence of social media is surly going to mean that such talking points have shorter expiration dates in the future. All that being said, all a political party needs to do overcome this problem is to remain vigilant, restock the shelves when needed and throw the rotten talking points in the garbage.

The second shortcoming is not so easily overcome. Specifically, such an approach presupposes that these talking points will reach the public unfiltered and that is just not realistic. Trying to use the media as a vehicle for getting your message out is like trying to pass a message to someone across a large room by having a series of people whisper in the ear of the person next to them. What message is eventually received is seldom the same as the message given. Some people will hear about such talking points though an unsympathetic columnist or pundit, others will discover it buried in a lengthily article and so on and so on. None of these scenarios has been focused grouped for. People in focus groups are exposed to the talking point and only the talking point.

Liberals in particular would be fatally ill advised to ignore the latter problem. Being the third party they will be given less opportunity by the media to speak directly to Canadians and there is now an overwhelming body of evidence that 1) the bulk pundits are conservative and 2) the vast majority of articles about the Liberals are negative. The former goes a long way in explaining why the Conservatives have garnered so many more endorsements than other major political parties. In 2006 22 newspapers endorsed the Conservatives and 1 paper endorsed the Liberals 1 endorsed the Green Party and 1 the Bloc. In 2008 20 papers endorsed the Conservatives 3 the Liberals 1 the Bloc and 1 the NDP. In 2011 28 papers endorsed the Conservatives 2 the NDP, 1 the Bloc. As for the later, the last 4 McGill media election studies are a great place to start. I do not care how well a particular talking point focused grouped if it is buried in a negative piece or hammered by a pundit it is probably not going to be worth much.

That said, since being losing government in 2006 the Liberals have never acknowledged that this second problem even exists. As result, whenever a Liberal MP is invited on show such as Power and Politics along with MPs from other parties the MP does just what his NDP and Conservative counterparts do, viz., trot out a series of paper thin talking points in the hope that some sound bite is picked up and replayed for a larger audience. Needless to say, such a strategy is the anti-thesis of the old adage that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. The parties act as if the people who are not watching are far more important than the people that do watch. After all, no one with half a brain or any manners is impressed by someone repeating the same point ad nauseum and ignoring everything else that is said.

Of course, the Liberals carried such a strategy to absurd lengths during last year's English language debate. After having watched Ignatieff give a new stump speech at every campaign stop, the Liberals picked the debate, of all times, to have Ignatieff endlessly repeat the same talking points. In doing so, Ignatieff endeared himself to no one who actually watched the debate and 3.8 million Canadians watched the debate. The problems with the Liberal debate strategy did not stop there. Having Ignatieff endlessly repeat common Liberal talking points all but eliminated the chances of Ignatieff delivering a knockout blow. It is easy to defend what you know is coming. When attacking, the element of surprise is important.

Anyway, in order to combat such a short coming the Liberal party is going to have to assume the role of a liberal pundit class that simply does not exist in this country and that means the Liberal party will actually have develop some academically respectable arguments. Board based talking points will not do the trick. They are easy fodder for any well informed person and really lets be honest; the only ones listening to the Liberals these days is pundits and political junkies. The party needs to challenge the legions of conservative columnists least various Conservative positions become received wisdom. Factual errors need to be pointed out, non sequiturs need to be mocked and detailed arguments provided. The party needs to be vicious. Ignatieff talked 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. It also makes for good TV and good print. 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." Special attention needs to be given to the following papers: The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, Winnipeg Free Press, Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette.

Of course for such a strategy to be effective the Liberals actually need take stand on issues. A lot of the success Conservatives have enjoyed stems from the fact that however, stupid their policies, they have been only ones willing to put forward consistent set of policies (e.g., senate reform). When pundits talk about policy more often than not it is Conservative policies they are dealing with. Outside of the policies announced in Chretien's last year in power and Dion's disastrously ill defined Green Shift, the Liberals have not given the media much to talk about. Indeed, since 2006 the Liberals have almost abandoned the field altogether; they do not put forward polices; they do not put forward arguments; they do not refute arguments. They might tut tut and promise to "compromise", but this only hurts them. The former makes them appear to be the effeminate wimps the Conservatives claim them to be and the later makes it appear that the various Conservative polices have some validity when in actuality they have none. At best, the Liberals will sometimes take a stand in defense of the status quo. The gun registry is a case in point. When it existed they were for it; now it is proved too much trouble to defend. However, do not expect them to say much of anything when they do take a stand. They might note that the experts support them or mumble some vagary about public opinion, but they will not repeat the expert's arguments least someone take offense to what the experts are saying and want to shoot the messenger.

Labrador and other Riding Absurdities: How people in Canada's largest suburbs and cities are getting Screwed

How much your vote counts for depends not on what province you reside in (Canada's four largest provinces are grossly underrepresented) but also on whether you reside near or in a major urban center. If you live in or especially around Toronto, for example, consider yourself doubly screwed.

Ontario

Oak Ridges - Markham (Ont.) 228,997

Kenora (Ont.) 55,977

Quebec

Montcalm (Que.) 144,141

Roberval - Lac-Saint-Jean (Que.) 78,765

NFLD

St. John's East (N.L.) 100,559

Labrador (N.L.) 26,728

BC

Fleetwood - Port Kells (B.C.) 160,129

Kootenay - Columbia (B.C.) 88,026

There is only so much that can be done to address the largest provinces underrepresentation. However, there is no reason why an act can not be passed to insure that each riding within a province has roughly the same number of people.

Native Rights and Reserves: They are the problem

The long and troubled relationship between First Nation peoples and the Crown has blinded many to patent absurdity of the current situation. It has blinded them to the fact that Attawapiskat is a natural consequence of an economic and legal relationship built around Native rights, the reserve system, the Indian Act and Native Self government. In any other context this would be self evident. Indeed, imagine if the government happened to, oh, legally define what it means to be Chinese, created a department of Chinese affairs, created Chinese rights, reserved land for Chinese so defined and exempted Chinese living on reserve land from paying property taxes, sales taxes and in some cases taxes of any kind. No one would doubt that is a recipe for disastrous social relations. So, why would anyone doubt the same about Native Affairs, native rights and native reserves?

Of course the situation is even worse than just described. Not only has Canada set up hundreds of tax havens for Status Indians to take advantage of, it also provides incentives for Status Indians to stay on them or move to them. Specifically, the feds hold out the promise of free housing, a promise to pay for upkeep and the promise of never imposing not only no property tax or sales tax, but also in some cases no income tax. The federal government will pay for any needed infrastructure. Realizing, the patent absurdity of its ironclad guarantee, the government drags its feet, provides the bare minimum level of funding for housing, upkeep and infrastructure and to, add insult to injury, proceeds in less than timely matter. In other words, the government has every reason to create living conditions that repel even as its moronic promises attract.

In practice government foot dragging does not always work so well. Some of these tax havens are so isolated and so utterly economically unviable that the government is dammed no matter what it does. If it builds up these communities too much it runs the risk of attracting more people to them. However if it does too little, the very scarcity of jobs in these places ties people living there to land all the more. The less assets, work experience and education a person has the more attractive the prospect of obtaining free housing, however squalid, becomes. There is a long waiting for housing in Attawapiskat. This dispite the fact that the community has a staggeringly high unemployment rate and by any objective measure is a hell hole. A bird in the hand is better than two in bush as it were; a dilapidated house in the hand is better than the dim prospects of a better house elsewhere.

The only possible way out this mess, viz., abolishing native rights, abolishing the Indian Act and privatizing reserve lands, has been forever blocked by section 35 of the Constitution -- a decision, by the way, that renders Trudeau's time in office an abject failure. The best the government can do is to amend the Indian Act to allow for the creation of fee simple lands, thereby switching the financial burden of maintaining and upgrading housing from the federal government to individual home owners, and empowering bands to impose property taxes. This will give the people living in Attawapiskat and like communities additional economic incentives to leave. Namely, either property taxes and the cost of upkeep will drive people away in the absence of a job, or the prospect of using the capital from the sale of one's house and land will.

That said, introducing fee simple opens a whole host of other problems. For example, as the idiocy of native self government is maintained in all cases, non natives purchasing native lands would have no right to take part in band elections. There would be taxation but no representation. Such a situation would greatly depress real estate values on reserves -- especially on remote reserves. Band councils must be transformed into municipal councils. The notion of a government built around a legally defined race is not only economically problematic, it is ideologically putrid. Moving to a fee simple model also does not eliminate such lands as tax havens.

The reserve system, premised as it is on the notion of native rights, is a bureaucratic, fiscal, jurisdictional, legal, intellectual and sociological abortion that does nothing save waste mountains of money, breed corruption, black marketeering and poverty, encourage tax evasion (e.g., cigarettes), instill in the native community a vile sense of identity based on “blood” and breed racism in the Canadian society at large. If politicians and the media want to accept this as Canada's historical cross to bear, so be it. However, it is high time both acknowledge that the problem is intractable so long as the only possible solution, viz., the abolition of native rights and Indian Act and privatization of reserve lands, remains legally untenable.

Marijuana Legalization: High Time

A call to legalize marijuana will be met with some predictable responses. This is how you can rebut them.

The US will Never Let it happen

Yes Canadians understand some Americans would not be pleased about legalization. As such, Harper's musings about legalizing marijuana causing trouble at the border seem reasonable enough. The problem is this does not make marijuana prohibition any more legitimate in the eyes of the Canadian people. Support for legalization has been above 50% since 2004 and a recent poll in BC put it at 75% there. In BC in the last year 4 attorney generals, a large chunk of the medical establishment, a former police chief, the current mayor of Vancouver and 3 former Vancouver mayors came out in favor of legalization. Support for prohibition has all but collapsed in this province. Whether you think the marijuana issue an important one is somewhat beside the point. We as a society should not pass laws or keep others in place simply to placate foreign governments. We as a society should not be enforcing laws that no one believes in. This goes especially for laws that would result in Canadians languishing in jail. Any perception that Canada is enforcing laws to meet the illegitimate demands of a bullying third party, whoever that may be, is simply poisonous to the health of a functioning democracy.

All that being said, it was one thing for opponents of legalization to employ the let us not piss off the Yanks argument in 2004; it is quite another for them to dust this argument off now and act as if nothing has changed Stateside. Colorado and Washington State just voted to legalize marijuana. This changes everything. Indeed, it is hard to fathom Obama going to war with Colorado and Washington State over the marijuana legalization yet alone large portion of the Democratic base. Moreover, this is an issue that is clearly started to tip not only in Canada but also Stateside.

Obama's ability to push back is limited for other reasons as well. He freely admits to having marijuana in the past ("I inhaled frequently. That was the point") and his marijuana use is not a part of some redemption narrative, a la George Bush. It was a path he choice not to continue going down. Drug use was never presented as a demon he had to overcome yet alone one he still struggles with the way an alcoholic does with drink. This would leave him open to the charge of hypocrisy. Far more importantly though, the war and drugs, especially with regard to marijuana, has had a profound impact on the African American community in the States. If Obama was to toe the standard line, he would be in a world of hurt politically. The African American community would not, of course, abandon him, but they would be unhappy and their unhappiness would have the potential to throw his whole second term out of whack politically. His whole message of being a force for change would be called into question.

Finally, least we forget it was Obama that set help set the wheels of legalization in motion in the first place by declaring that he would not crack down on medical marijuana back in 2009. 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 the 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. It is not a question of if marijuana will be legalized in the US it is matter of when. Canada had best start preparing.

Talking points:

1) It is not matter of if the US will legalize marijuana, it is matter of when. Furthermore, this is likely going to happen sooner rather than later and Canada had start preparing.

2) We do pass laws or keep others in place in order placate foreign governments. This goes especially for laws that would result in Canadians languishing in jail.

Potent Pot

Potent pot is more myth than reality. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2002/11/the_myth_of_potent_pot.html

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.

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. It begs the following question. If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be okay to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?

Talking Points

1) 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.

2) If today's marijuana is truly different in kind from "dads marijuana", would it be okay to legalize "dad's marijuana", i.e., low potency pot?

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 black market relationship between dealer and buyer that serves as gateway.

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.

Talking Point

Every time someone goes to buy marijuana they come into contact with criminal elements with access to other hard drugs. This is your gateway. When Holland decriminalized consumption and made it available in coffee shops, heroin and cocaine use went down.

Schizophrenia and Marijuana

Epidemiological studies have consistently failed to show any kind of positive correlation between marijuana use and schizophrenia. 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 Columbia's Alan Brown, "If anything, the studies seem to show a possible decline in schizophrenia from the '40s and the ‘ 50,"

Talking Point

There has been an astronomical increase in the number of pot smokers since the 1950s and no increase in the rate of schizophrenia whatsoever.

The gangs will simply move on to other drugs

The market for marijuana positively dwarfs the market for all other drugs combined and marijuana is far and away gangs' biggest money maker. The notion that the gangs would simply shift focus and thereby maintain the same levels of profitability is absurd. Comparable demand for other kinds of drugs is simply not there. Moreover, such an argument rests upon a mistaken assumption. Namely, it assumes that the sure size and scope of the marijuana industry is limiting the distribution of other kinds of drugs. The reverse is true. Marijuana profits and sometimes even marijuana itself are providing the seed capital the gangs need to diversify operations (e.g., cocaine, heroin, human trafficking and guns) and to expand those other operations. This is one of the main reasons why we need to nip this in the bud.

Talking Point

It is not like the gangs have access to capital markets. Marijuana profits and sometimes even marijuana itself are providing the seed capital the gangs need to diversify operations (e.g., cocaine, heroin, human trafficking and guns) and to expand those other operations. This is one of the main reasons why we need to nip this, pardon the pun, in the bud.

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. The illegality of the product means that your production and distribution costs are significantly higher. Also demand for your product is always going to be less. People want to know 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.

Talking point

Molson executives do not worry about moonshine eating into market share. Demand for illegal products is not what it is for legal ones.

Joe Kernen is a Moron.

Joe Kernen has got his shorts in a bunch. He claims that Krugman owes him an apology for dismissing his and Becky Quick's preposterous assertions about the economy as Zombie ideas -- i.e., Krugman speak for ideas that have long since been debunked but are nonetheless continually championed by the right. Krugman owes him nothing of the sort. Joe Kernen is a self righteous prick and an ignoramus to boot. He got what he deserved. Indeed, it was Kernen that fired the opening salvo. Right off the bat Kernen implied that Krugman is so far out there intellectually that he is "almost like a unicorn" and that if Krugman were not there in person before him he would have a hard believing that an actual living person and economist to boot would hold such bizarre views. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/11/paul-krugman-cnbc_n_1664771.html With an opening remark like that Kernen had no right to expect Krugman to be civil. Not only was Kernen confrontational what he said was absurd. Krugman is not on the intellectual fringe and anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of economics understands this. In fact, that he is not on the fringe of the economics profession may be surmised by taking note of three basic facts. Krugman recently won a Nobel prize. He is a professor at Princeton and he is the co author of a leading first year economics textbook.

Kernen kept on pestering Krugman to name a point at which US government spending as percentage of GDP would be too high. A line of questioning that was continually undermined by Kernen's assertion that "Government spending as percentage of GDP is 25 and we will be at 40 to 50 with entitlements eventually." There is no advanced economy in the world with a level of government spending that is anywhere near 25%and the US is at 40% already. Furthermore, Kernen's implication that any country with a level of government spending over 50 is an economic basket case is absurd. Krugman pointed out that Sweden, for one, is no basket case.

As for Quick, she was even worse. She trotted out one absurdity after another. Most notably, Quick claimed incredibly that "If you are poor you are likely to die before you get your first medicare check. Life expectancy is 65." There is not a single county in the US with a life expectancy that low. http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualization/life-expectancy-county-and-sex-us-1989-2009#/news-events/news A 2008 study found by 2000, the life expectancy for poor Americans was 74.7 years. Of course, in order to fully appreciate the absurdity of such a claim it worth noting that life expectancy is an average and that if one was to look at the medium life span of poor Americans it would be higher. Very few people live more than 30 years longer than the average but there are plenty that die at 44 and younger. Furthermore, someone dying at 6 months of age is going to affect the average a lot more than someone dying at 100.

To say that Krugman can be prickly is an understatement. The Guardian's Decca Aitkenhead observations were spot on. "Krugman is not the most clubbable of fellows. In person he's quite offhand, an odd mixture of shy and intensely self-assured, and with his stocky build and salt-and-pepper beard he conveys the impression of a very clever badger, burrowing away in the undergrowth of economic detail, ready to give quite a sharp bite if you get in his way." http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/03/paul-krugman-cassandra-economist-crisis?intcmp=239 However, Paul Krugman's account of the whole affair is spot on.

"Wow. I just did Squawk Box — allegedly about my book, but we never got there. Instead it was one zombie idea after another — Europe is collapsing because of big government, health care is terribly rationed in France, we can save lots of money by denying Medicare to billionaires, on and on.

Among other things, people getting their news from sources like that are probably getting terrible advice about any kind of investment that depends on macroeconomics." http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/zombies-on-cnbc/

Conservative Senator Doug Finley is Full of It

Conservative Senator Doug Finley "It was a big-government approach that spent European welfare states into massive debt in the first place," http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/europe-needs-to-take-responsibility-for-its-own-mistakes/article4362749/

Doug Finley has blue eyes, but they appear brown because he is so full of shit.

The notion that the European "debt crisis", which began as a banking and currency crisis and is now becoming all three, is proof that the welfare state is unaffordable is absurd.

Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway: The right never seems to want to address just how well Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark are doing when it comes to debt. In terms of per capita spending and or in terms of government spending per GDP all 4 can be considered welfare states on steroids. Yet, Denmark has a net debt as a percentage of GDP of 1, Sweden -15 (Yes its assets are greater than its liabilities), Finland -57, and Norway -156. Canada has net debt to GDP ratio of 32.

Greece: Greece has never had an extensive welfare state. Government spending as percentage of GDP was slightly higher than Canada's was in 2006 and their 2006 rate is lower than what ours is now. Furthermore, as Greece is and always has been an economic minnow, in terms of per capita government spending Greece does not even register. Claims that Greeks are southern European Swedes is as false as Kevin O'leary Don Cherry quality rants about Greece being a bunch of lazy lay abouts that are being bailed out by hard working Germans. Prior to crisis your average Greek worker worked nearly 700 hours more per year than the average German worker. They also worked far more hours than Canadian workers.

Ireland: If Doug Finely had an ounce of intellectual honesty he would have tried to explain away the Irish situation. After all, prior to the down turn Ireland was a darling of the right. It had low corporate tax rates and was rated high on the Heritage foundation's "economic freedom" index. However, Ireland had a huge real estate bubble and when it burst, the Irish government transferred mountains of private bank debt onto public accounts. As a result, Ireland's gross debt GDP ratio went from 25% in 2007 to 108% last year. It should be noted that earlier on in the crisis, the right also lauded Ireland for its austerity program, but has since moved on various Baltic states due to no sign of a recovery in Ireland.

Spain: The Spanish were running surpluses prior to the down turn. Indeed, Zapatero's government ran a surplus in his first 3 years in office and in 2007 a surplus of 23.2 billion Euro was the biggest in the Euro zone. Spain's debt to GDP ratio was not a problem either. Spain's gross debt to GDP ratio was almost half of what it was in Canada in 2007. Spending did increase under Zapatero, but at a rate no more than under the previous regime. Government spending as percentage of GDP remained unchanged between 1999 and 2008. As for government spending as percentage of GDP, it was far less than any other major European nation and, I might add, less than it was in Canada.

Spain's deficit problem was not the cause of the crisis there. It was consequence of it. Like Ireland, Spain had a massive real estate bubble and in 2008 it also burst. This created the perfect storm. Hundreds of thousands quickly lost their jobs and began collecting unemployment insurance (800,000 Spanish lost their jobs in first three months of 2009), government revenues collapsed and most important of all Spain's banks began to fail. Mountains of private debt was transferred onto the public balance sheet and this trend shows no signs of abating. Spain's recent decision to ask the Troika for an additional 125 billion euros was not so it could shore up public accounts but rather so it could put yet more public money into shoring up its banks. To add insult to injury much of Spain's growth in the boom years was fueled by huge influx of foreign capital from the center of Europe. Spain, like all of the so called PIIGS, ran a massive capital accounts deficit. When things began to go south and Spanish credit markets began to seize, that capital was repatriated.

Of course, what separates Spain and Ireland and other Euro Zone countries crippled by collapse of the real estate market from the US and UK is that the latter still have monetary sovereignty and the former do not. Spain and Ireland can not reduce interest rates, devalue their currency and revert to quantitative easing. They surrendered their monetary sovereignty to the ECB and the ECB has done a terrible job managing the crisis. The ECB was slow to lower interest rates and they have only allowed one round of quantitative easing. In addition, the ECB's unwillingness to let inflation in the Euro Zone and Germany in particular to rise above 2%, mean that the only option open to Spain and the other PIIGS in lieu of a currency devaluation is to try to deflate their way to competitiveness. Not only is such a strategy unlikely to work for a whole host of reasons, deflation makes the debt crisis worse much worse. Spain's lack of options coupled with ECB's abysmal record, have investors fearing that Spain will eventually throw up its hands and do what Greeks are bound to do, viz., leave the Euro. As a resurrected Peseta is likely to quickly plummet in value, a decision to leave the Euro Zone would surely mean a sovereign default. What all this means is that while both the US and UK have deficit to GDP numbers that are as equally high or higher than in Spain and both have debt to GDP ratios that are far higher, both the US and UK can borrow at record low rates and well below the rate of inflation and Spain is forced to borrow at just below 7%.

For Canadians politics is a family affair

Voters generally do not judge a policy on its merits. Many do not have the time nor training to look at this or that issue objectively. This is no moral failing on their part. Voters have jobs, families and other interests. As the New Yorker's Louis Menand exclaimed, Plato had it wrong. More than a half century of work on voting behavior shows that the vast vast majority of voters do not a have a clue. Humankind is the unpolitical animal.

No do not get me wrong. Policy does still matter. It is just does not matter in ways that the pundits might think. Policy matters, for example, in so far as it is seen as a confirmation of a particular narrative about a political candidate or party. Take the NEP. More than a few pundits have claimed that the NEP sank the Liberals in Western Canada. The claim is ridiculous on its face. It was the fact that the Liberal vote collapsed in Western Canada in 1979 that paved the way for the NEP politically and not the other way around. The NEP was introduced after the 1980 election. The Liberals took 1 seat in the three most western provinces in 1979 election and 0 in 1980. The source of the collapse was the more emphasis Trudeau placed on individual rights and a commitment to linguistic equality the more the rest of the country, particularly the West, resented the Liberals' inability to put a stop to bill 178 and and 101 and its willingness to make special accommodations for Quebec. Quebec's Official Language Act spelled doom for the Liberals in Western Canada from the mid 70s until collapse of the Progressive Conservatives in 1993. To put in quaintly, Western voters reacted in much the same way a an aggrieved son or daughter might react to their sibling getting preferential treatment. As the years went by many of the initial grievances were forgotten, and the NEP, which had little impact outside of Alberta and was originally felt as insult to injury, grew into a cause that it never was.

Of course, Western Canada was not the only aggrieved offspring. Here too the origins Liberal misfortune is misattributed. The notion that somehow Trudeau era federalism was increasingly unpopular in Quebec is an effect posited as cause well after the fact. Indeed, that Trudeau era federalism was incompatible with Mulroney's soft sovereignty was always beside the point. Trudeau took 74 out of 75 seats in the 1980 election and 68.2% of the vote. He was immensely popular in Quebec and beyond anything else Trudeau had the complete trust of Quebecers. Quebecers had always believed that, love him or hate him, Trudeau and the Liberal party would always fight to create a place for the French language and culture inside Canada. With the signing of the Kitchen Accord, Trudeau and greater extent his party lost that trust and with that the Liberal party lost their strangle hold on Quebec forever.

Now even though Mulroney was the primary beneficiary of the ridiculously named "Night of the Long Knives" and an aggrieved Western Canada, Mulroney, nevertheless, learned nothing from Trudeau's troubles as he pressed forward with the Charlottetown Accord. He figured that he could promise Quebecers that he would right Trudeau's wrong and still keep Western Canada happy by promising its provincial elites the moon. He was spectacularly wrong. Western Canada was never going to concede that Quebec was ever wronged yet alone deserving of special treatment and that is precisely what Quebecers wanted. 56.6% of Quebecers, 60.2% Albertans and 68.3% of British Colombians rejected the Charlottetown Accord. More importantly for the PC party, they went from taking 49 out of 63 seats in 1984 in Western Canada to taking 0 in 1993 and from taking 63 of 75 seats in Quebec in 1988 to taking 1 in 1993.

Judging by John Tory's ill fated proposal to use public monies to fund religious education, Canadian politicians still have not learned that Canadian voters judge the fairness of how goods are distributed and or how a particular group is treated by reference paternal and maternal maximums.

The Liberals would do particularly well to understand this. Winning elections is not about who can pander to the most interest groups and minorities. It is about employing policies and rhetoric that matches up with voters entrenched understanding of paternal and maternal maximums that guide people's sense of fairness. This is what made the Liberals' earlier emphasis on universality such a success and their retreat to the particular (e.g., equity, collective rights, and, whether in theory or in practice, asymmetric federalism) such a marked failure.

Liberals can start by demanding that each riding within in each province contain an equal number of people and viciously attack any body that says otherwise. Juxtapose the riding of Labrador (26,364) and St John's East (88,002), Kenora (64,291) and Oak Ridges - Markham (228,997) , Miramichi (53,844) and Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe (89,334), and Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing (77,961) and Vanughn (154,206). Hold up the former in each pair as an affront to democracy and the latter as the aggrieved party.

Welfare State and Europe's debt Crisis

The European "debt crisis", which began as a banking and currency crisis and is now becoming all three, is said to prove that the welfare state is unaffordable. Greece, of all places, is cited as proof of concept. The problem is that Greece never had an extensive welfare state. Government spending as percentage of GDP was slightly higher than Canada's was in 2006 and their 2006 rate is lower than what ours is now. Furthermore, as Greece is and always has been an economic minnow, in terms of per capita government spending Greece does not even register. Claims that Greeks are southern European Swedes is as false as Kevin O'leary Don Cherry quality rants about Greece being a bunch of lazy lay abouts that are being bailed out by hard working Germans. Prior to crisis your average Greek worker worked nearly 700 hours more per year than the average German worker.

Meanwhile, the right never seems to want to address just how well Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark are doing when it comes to debt. In terms of per capita spending and or in terms of government spending per GDP all 4 can be considered welfare states on steroids. Yet, Denmark has a net debt as a percentage of GDP of 1, Sweden -15 (Yes its assets are greater than its liabilities), Finland -57, and Norway -156. Canada has net debt to GDP ratio of 32.

It is first and foremost a Currency Crisis

The Canadian media have a knack for coming up with wrong headline to describe a crisis or scandal. Two recent examples come readily to mind. The so called robo call scandal was not about the legality of robocalls at all. It was about misdirecting voters. Some of those misdirections were in the form of robo calls. Others were not. It should have been called the misdirection scandal.

However, what really irks me is the media taking to calling the currency and bank capitalization crisis in Europe as being a sovereign debt crisis. The origins of the current crisis are not European fiscal policy. Full stop. Greece does not count; its economy is tiny fraction of the overall European economy. No, the US was not the only real estate bubble to pop in 2008. Ireland and Spain, for example, had far bigger bubbles and when their respective bubbles burst their economies and banking sectors were laid to waste. As elsewhere, Ireland and Spain sought to recapitalize their banks on the public dime. (It is a shame that so little attention has been paid to the fact that since 2008 colossal sums of private debt -- by far the largest in history -- have found their way onto public accounts. ) Ireland's decision to bail out their banks, for instance is by far and away the biggest reason why its debt to GDP ratio has gone from 25% in 2007 to 108% last year.

Of course, what separates Spain and Ireland and other Euro Zone countries crippled by collapse of the real estate market from the US and UK is that the latter still have monetary sovereignty and the former do not. For you see, when the economy is in a crapper there are a number of things governments can do with respect to monetary policy. Most notably they can reduce interest rates, devalue their currency and they can print more money (so called quantitative easing). None of these things is open to the Spanish and Irish governments. They surrendered their monetary sovereignty to the ECB and the ECB has done a terrible job managing the crisis. The ECB was slow to lower interest rates and they have only allowed one round of quantitative easing. So while both the US and UK have deficit to GDP numbers that are as equally high or higher than in Spain and both have debt to GDP ratios that are far higher, both the US and UK can borrow at record low rates and well below the rate of inflation and Spain is forced to borrow at just below 6%.

Given Germany's unwillingness to let inflation in the Euro Zone and Germany in particular to rise above 2%, the only option open to Spain and the other PIIGS is to try to deflate their way to competitiveness. With the exception of Ireland and possibly Italy, this is not likely to work. Spanish workers, for example, already earn far less than German and French workers as it is. Spain needs to develop a more educated workforce and improve its capital stock to truly compete with Germany. This is not likely to happen in the current environment.

Deflation also makes the debt crisis worse much worse. The cruel irony is this in turn feeds back into the banking crisis. As European countries sank more and more money into bailing out the banks their ability to handle these increased debt loads in the absence of monetary sovereignty has imperilled their ability to pay down debt owed to the banks and to otherwise recapitalize them. Spain can not afford an additional 100 to 125 billion dollars needed to recapitalize its banks and so has asked the Troika for help. God knows what will happen if they so no.

Investors have long worried that Spain is going to decide that things are so bad it might as well leave the Euro. The Spanish might soon agree. This in turn would surely mean defaulting on its debts owed to central European banks.

Rocco Rossi is Wrong

The notion that the Spanish "socialist" government spent "well beyond its means" is silly. http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/full-comment/blog.html?b=fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/07/rocco-rossi-the-human-cost-of-the-eurozone-crisis The Spanish were running surpluses prior to the down turn. Indeed, Zapatero's government ran a surplus in his first 3 years in office and in 2007 a surplus of 23.2 billion Euro was the biggest in the Euro zone. Spain's debt to GDP ratio was not a problem either. Spain's gross debt to GDP ratio was almost half of what it was in Canada in 2007. Spending did increase under Zapatero, but at a rate no more than under the previous regime. Government spending as percentage of GDP remained unchanged between 1999 and 2008. As for government spending as percentage of GDP, it was far less than any other major European nation and slightly less than it was in Canada.

Spain's deficit problem was not the cause of the crisis there. It was consequence of it. Spain had a massive real estate bubble and in 2008 it burst. This created the perfect storm. Hundreds of thounsands quickly lost their jobs and began collecting unemployment insurance (800,000 Spanish lost their jobs in first three months of 2009), government revenues collapsed and most important of all Spain's banks began to fail. Mountains of private debt was transferred onto the public balance sheet. In fact, Spain's 4th largest bank is nothing but bad private debts backed by the government. To add insult to injury much of Spain's growth in the boom years was fueled by huge influx of foreign capital from the center of Europe. Spain, like all of the so called PIIGS, ran a massive capital accounts deficit. When things began to go south and Spanish credit markets began to seize, that capital was repatriated.

Now, when the economy is in a crapper there are a number of things governments can do with respect to monetary policy. Most notably they can reduce interest rates, devalue their currency and they can print more money (so called quantitative easing). None of these things is open to the Spanish government. They surrendered their monetary sovereignty to the ECB and the ECB has done a terrible job managing the crisis. The ECB was slow to lower interest rates, even tried to rise them last spring and they have only allowed one round of quantitative easing. It should be noted that since the downturn deficits and or debt have proved to be a lousy predictor of bond yeilds. For example, both the US and Britian have deficit to GDP numbers that are as equally high or higher than in Spain, both have debt to GDP ratios that are far higher, but both can borrow at record low rates and well below the rate of inflation. Bank capitalization, unemployment and a lack of monetary sovereignty have proved to be far better predictors.

Given Germany's unwillingness to let inflation in the Euro Zone and Germany in particular to rise above 2%, the only option open to Spain is to try to deflate its way to competitiveness. This is not likley to work. Spanish workers already earn far less than German and French workers as it is. Spain needs to develop a more educated workforce and improve its capital stock to truly compete with Germany. This is not likely to happen in the current environment. Deflation also makes the debt crisis worse much worse.

It is thus not a surprise that Spanish yields are rising and that it can not afford a further 60 to 90 billion Euros to recapitalize its banks. The ECB is asleep at the wheel and more than anything else investors are worried that Spain is going to decide that things are so bad it might as well leave the Euro. This in turn would surely mean defaulting on its debts.

Liberals need to embrace change least they share the fate of the Progressive Conservative party

The center of Canadian politics is not so much a place as a pose. How something is said is often more important than the substance of what is said. Indeed, while Canada might have the most educated population on earth, the vast majority of Canadians are as woefully uninformed as voters elsewhere. As the New Yorker's Louis Menand exclaimed, Plato had it wrong. More than a half century of work on voting behavior shows that the vast majority of voters do not a have a clue. Humankind is the unpolitical animal. What matters is striking a tone that resonates with most voters. That means sounding pragmatic, conciliatory, measured and above all temperamentally conservative well all the while saying next to nothing. Given the public's profound ignorance, there can not be really said to be an ideological center to appeal to.

Of course, the Liberals have long been masters of sounding centrist. However, what the Liberals have failed to realize is it also matters who is saying it. Striking the right pose is not enough. How centrist a party is deemed depends in no small measure on the party's chances of electoral success. In other words, the center often turns out to be no more than who is at the center of Canadian politics. What happened in 1993 with the Reform Party is great case in point. In 1992 the NDP was riding high in the polls, but as supporters of the Charlottetown Accord, the party was ill positioned to capitalize on voter discontent with the Accord, especially in Western Canada. The fledgling Bloc and Reform parties, on the other hand, were so positioned and in 1993 they turned out to be the protest vehicles de jour. The notion that the Canadian public shifted dramatically rightward in 1993 is simply inconsistent with what actually happened during the lead up to the election and during the election itself, viz., legions of PC supporters in Quebec moved to the socially democratic Bloc and legions of voters in the West moved to from the NDP to the far right Reform party. The Canadian public did not shift radically to the right just prior to the 1993 election and in so doing lay the ground work for the rise of the Reform party. No, the public was spectacularly angry with Mulroney's failed constitutional gambit and so voted in the Reform party in the West and the Bloc in Quebec to register their displeasure. In the process they set the stage for Canadian politics to shift radically to the right. Specifically, the election of a large number of Reform MPs gave the radical right a share of the microphone it had not enjoyed in Canada before. Unfortunately they have never relinquished the microphone and worse have mastered the centrist pose.

Defined as such the Liberals have no hope of occupying the center. The party is no longer at the center of Canadian politics; the NDP and Conservatives occupy that spot.

So what do the Liberals to do? For starters the Liberals must accept just how dire their situation. Namely, the party will be lucky to survive the next election yet alone win it. Thomas Mulcair poses an existential threat to the party. Mulcair will hold onto Quebec and in so doing will recreate the same conditions that saw the Liberals wiped out in Ontario in 2011. With no prospect of the Liberals winning anything out West or in Quebec, suburban Toronto will again break for the Tories, and urban Toronto for the NDP. Only this time the situation will be worse. The same thing could happen in Montreal and into the Maritimes. If the 2011 election proved anything, it was that the Canadian population feels no loyalty to the "natural governing party" whatsoever.

The only chance the Liberals have of avoiding the fate of the Progressive Conservative party is not as Andrew Coyne has said being "more Conservative than the Conservatives on some issues, more NDP than the NDP on others." No, the party must aim to blow up the status quo. It must strike a revolutionary pose and not a "centrist" one. Let the bleeding hearts bleed. It should no longer concern itself with what is politically possible, constitutionally possible or what the Americans might say. Let the chips fall where they may. Sacred cows need to be slayed. Only then will stand a chance of grabbing people's attention. Once they have grabbed the public's attention they can go after a portion of the electorate that the other parties will leave untapped. There is always going to be a portion of the electorate that is turned off by centrist language, who wants more substantive policy discussion and who has a clue. This is who the Liberals need to go after. It is pretty easy to sound smart when the other parties are doing their darnest not to say anything at all. Only then will the party stand the chance of attracting enough loyal followers to fight further elections.

I suggest that Bob Rae is not the man for the job. There is simply not enough space separating the NDP and Liberals with Rae as leader. You will have a former provincial Liberal leading the Federal NDP and former provincial NDP premier leading the Federal Liberal party. To make matters worse, Charlottetown Bob is just as willing as Thomas Mulcair is to play footsies with Quebec nationalists.

Even the posture the Liberals are striking with Bob Rae is all wrong for the task ahead. The Liberals are still trying to be all things to all people and so end up being nothing to everyone. They are still trying to be "centrist". Yes Rae can be cutting and quick witted and yes the Liberals claim to be the party of science, fact and evidence. However, the party continues to confuse compromise with nuance and being opinionated with being ideological. As for Rae, he wants to be liked. He is in no way an iconoclast the way Pierre Trudeau was and an iconoclast is exactly what the Liberals need right now.

After the 1993 election, the PC acted as if nothing much had changed. If the Liberals do not want to end up like the PC party, they should acknowledge that everything has changed and act accordingly.

Debates matter and playing to an audience that is not there is daft

Invariably I end up changing the channel whenever representatives of the major political parties sit down to discuss something. There is no ebb and flow of debate. It is almost always people repeating the same talking point over and over. If you heard their opening salvo, most of the time you have heard everything there is to hear.

Now I get it. The various parties hope that some sound bite is picked up and replayed for a larger audience and by saying the same thing over and over again the party representative assures that it is the point that the party wants to get across and not something else. However, such a strategy is the anti-thesis of the old adage that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. The parties act as if the people who are not watching are far more important than the people that do watch. After all, no one with half a brain or any manners is impressed by someone repeating the same point ad nauseum and ignoring everything else that is said.

Of course, the Liberals carried such a strategy to absurd lengths during last year's English language debate. After having watched Ignatieff give a new stump speech at every campaign stop, the Liberals picked the debate, of all times, to have Ignatieff endlessly repeat the same talking points. In doing so, Ignatieff endeared himself to no one who actually watched the debate and 3.8 million Canadians watched the debate. The problems with the Liberal debate strategy did not stop there. Having Ignatieff endlessly repeat common Liberal talking points all but eliminated the chances of Ignatieff delivering a knockout blow. It is easy to defend what you know is coming. When attacking, the element of surprise is important.

The post modern notion that somehow what really matters is who wins the spin wars in days after the debate suffered a fatal blow during last years debate. If you look back at the debate coverage, Harper was anointed the winner by the pundits and pollsters alike. The Conservatives won the spin war if you will. However, anyone watching the debate knew that it was Layton who landed the knock out blow. The NDP were handsomely rewarded. After the debate, the NDP surged in polls and Liberal vote collapsed. When you are in a debate the best strategy is to debate and not count on your party's spin doctors being able to convince people who did not bother to watch that you won.

This is how I summed up last year's debate two days after the debate took place.

http://themaplethree.blogspot.ca/2011/04/english-lanuage-debate-liberal-strategy.html

Debate highlights

The key to shutting down an opponent's attack is a quick fact laden response. Silences, pauses, stumbling starts and long drawn out explanations are all deadly. Stephen Harper was particularly successful in fending off attacks and is generally pretty good in this regard albeit not because his responses are substantive but because his delievery is polished. However, the best example of a defensive action on the night was by Duceppe. It was both polished and substantive. Harper mounted a formidable attack on the gun registry and Duceppe torn the talking point to shreds.

Stephen Harper: But what farmers and hunters keep asking is why every time there's a crime problem in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, there's suddenly more rules slapped on and more registrations slapped onto them in rural Canada. That has not been an effective measure to control crime. Every single elected police officer in the House of Commons has voted against the long gun registry, we need to focus on crime and on gun control that works and cost effective.

Duceppe: I would say that most of the Bloc members are in rural sectors. And the question between rural sectors and the city. Calgary is not a rural sector and you are against that eh? So when I look at the results that say 80% of people elected in Quebec support the gun registry, 62% of people elected in the rest of Canada want to abolish the gun registry. The real division was between Canada and Quebec that day.

Mounting an attack is different. You want to slow things down and you clearly lay out the issue. If you successfully wound your opponent, let him flounder. However, if your opponent is about to finish or is simply trying to run out the clock, do not be afraid to quickly interject. You want to draw out his answer as much as possible. Layton's attack on Ignatieff's attendance record was easily the best executed attack of the night. It was text book.

Layton: I have to pick up on something Mr. Ignatieff said, he said before you have to walk the walk and be a strong leader, and respect parliament, I've got to ask you then, why do you have the worst attendance record of any member of the house of Parliament? If you want to be Prime Minister, you've got to learn how to be a member of the House of Commons first. You know most Canadians, if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion.

Ignatieff: Mr. Layton, I don't surrender to anybody in respect for the institution of parliament and my obligation to the people that put me there. So don't give me lessons on respect for democracy (Layton interjecting) don't give me lessons

Layton: Where were you, where were you when I was standing up to Mr. Harper and voting against his policies, and you weren't in the chamber? You missed 70 percent of the votes, I think you need to understand a little more about how our democracy works that's my only point.

Easily the dumbest comment of the night was by Jack Layton. He said to Stephen Harper

"you used to care about the environment".

Marijuana Legalization Talking Points

A call to legalize marijuana will be met with a series of predictable responses. Here is how the Liberals should respond to each.

Potent Pot

Potent pot is more myth than reality. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2002/11/the_myth_of_potent_pot.html

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.

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?

Talking Points

1) 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.

2) 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?

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.

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.

Talking Point

Every time someone goes to buy marijuana they come into contact with criminal elements with access to other hard drugs. This is your gateway. When Holland decriminalized consumption and made it available in coffee shops, heroin and cocaine use went down.

Schizophrenia and Marijuana

Epidemiological studies have consistently failed to show any kind of positive correlation between marijuana use and schizophrenia. 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 Columbia's Alan Brown, "If anything, the studies seem to show a possible decline in schizophrenia from the '40s and the ‘ 50,"

Talking Point

There has been an astronomical increase in the number of pot smokers since the 1950s and no increase in the rate of schizophrenia whatsoever.

The gangs will simply move on to other drugs

The market for marijuana positively dwarfs the market for all other drugs combined and marijuana is far and away gangs' biggest money maker. The notion that the gangs would simply shift focus and thereby maintain the same levels of profitability is absurd. Comparable demand for other kinds of drugs is simply not there. Moreover, such an argument rests upon a mistaken assumption. Namely, it assumes that the sure size and scope of the marijuana industry is limiting the distribution of other kinds of drugs. The reverse is true. Marijuana profits and sometimes even marijuana itself are providing the seed capital the gangs need to diversify operations (e.g., cocaine, heroin, human trafficking and guns) and to expand those other operations. This is one of the main reasons why we need to nip this in the bud.

Talking Point

It is not like the gangs have access to capital markets. Marijuana profits and sometimes even marijuana itself are providing the seed capital the gangs need to diversify operations (e.g., cocaine, heroin, human trafficking and guns) and to expand those other operations. This is one of the main reasons why we need to nip this, pardon the pun, in the bud.

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. The illegality of the product means that your production and distribution costs are significantly higher. Also demand for your product is always going to be less. People want to know 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.

Talking point

Molson executives do not worry about moonshine eating into market share. Demand for illegal products is not what it is for legal ones.

The US will Never Let it happen

Canadians understand that the US, despite prohibition's crumbling foundation there, would not be pleased about legalization. As such, Harper's musings about legalizing marijuana causing trouble at the border seem reasonable enough. The problem is this does not make marijuana prohibition any more legitimate. Indeed, it is one thing to remain silent, for example, on American foreign policy for fear of damaging trade relations; it is quite another to send someone to jail for violating a law Canadians no longer think just in order to placate the US. Any perception that Canada is enforcing laws to met with illegitimate demands of a bullying third party, whoever that may be, is simply poisonous to the health of a functioning democracy.

Talking Points

1) We do not pass laws or keep others in place in order placate foreign governments. This goes especially for laws that would result in Canadians languishing in jail.

2) The US introduced Prohibition in 1919. Are you saying that Canada was wrong not to follow suit? Well then ..

Appeals to Strategic voting work when there are rats on a Sinking Ship

Brain Topp

For many years, Liberals have been eager advocates of “strategic voting” – the idea that it makes sense to vote for a party you don't support in order to avoid the election of a party your don't support even more.

A pitch to this effect has been part of the closing argument of every federal Liberal campaign since at least 1993.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/brian-topp/liberals-across-canada-are-being-hoist-with-their-own-petard/article2417189/ That might be true. However, there is little evidence that strategic voting played a role in 1997, 2000, and 2008 elections. 1993 and 2011 are a different matter. As the PC vote began to collapse in 1993, many traditional PC voters went in search of a new home and no doubt strategic considerations, certainly region ones, played a role for many. In Western Canada most followed the lead of the NDP voters, who had migrated over to the Reform party prior to the writ being dropped. (The NDP vote collapsed before the PC vote did in 1993. The PCs were tied with Libs going into the 1993 election. That was in marked constrast to the NDP. Going into the 1993 election the NDP were at 8% in the polls. They finished with 7% of the vote. In other words, the notion that NDP voters moved over to the Libs to block the Reform party is not there in 1993. As for 1997 and 2000, the regional makeup of Canadian politics, the unpopularlity of NDP governments in Ontario and BC and NDP support for the Charlottetown accord explain why the NDP vote did not return to normal until 2004. Strategic voting had nothing to do with it.) However, a sizable chunk of PC voters in Western Canada moved over to the Liberals. Most PC voters migrated to the Reform party in Ontario and in the Maritimes the PC vote moved over to the Liberals in NFLD and PEI and to the Reform party to lesser extent in NS and NB. Finally, in Quebec the PC vote moved over the Bloc.

Something similar happened in Ontario in 2011. As the NDP began to surge in Quebec, the Liberal vote in and around Toronto collapsed. Suburban Liberal voters moved in droves to the Conservatives and urban Liberal voters moved in droves to the NDP.

As for the 2004 election, two important things happened. One 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. Something similar happened in BC. Two, the Conservative party vote in 2004 was 6 points lower than the combined PC and Reform vote in each of the three subsequent elections and 7 points lower than than PC vote share in 1988 and 1984 election. In 2006 the conservative vote returned to a historically normal level.

In sum, voters think about voting strategically, but as a rule thumb only when their preferred party's election fortunes collapse mid election. The party's core will go down with the ship, but a sizable number of other supporters, like rats on a sinking ship, will seek refuge with other parties.

Walkom: Ottawa’s low-wage immigration policy threatens turmoil

The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom is one of Canada's best columnists. He is well informed, provides some good arguments and above all else tackles issues the rest of the media ignores. In yesterday's column he tackled something that has long irked me, viz., the huge numbers of temporary foreign workers that the Conservatives have allowed in. This is an issue the Liberals and NDP should be all over.

There is an implicit bargain in Canada regarding immigration. Canadians agree to welcome newcomers. In return, the government agrees not to use immigrants to drive down the wages of those already living here..

While never formally acknowledged, it’s a bargain that’s been in place since at least World War II, one that has prevented the kind of anti-immigrant agitation now roiling Europe..

And it is a bargain that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are deliberately setting out to break..

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley made the break specific this week when she announced that Ottawa will now let employers pay temporary foreign workers less than Canadians..

The Conservatives talk a good game on immigration. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney speaks of rationalizing the complex system used to decide who comes to Canada and of bringing it in line with what he calls the needs of the economy..

In last month’s federal budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said employers would have to make every effort to hire unemployed Canadians before they’d be allowed to bring in temporary foreign workers..

But in reality, the federal Conservative government’s entire immigration policy is geared to just one goal: lowering wages. ...

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1169568--walkom-ottawa-s-low-wage-immigration-policy-threatens-turmoil

Mike Gillis did a Terrible job in 2011-12: He should be Fired

First some back ground. The season before Gillis had sent a a first round pick, Steve Bernier and Michael Grabner to Flordia for Keith Ballard, a player whose salary the Panthers were desperate to shed. The move left the Canucks with no cap space to sign Ehrhoff. Ehrhoff left for Buffalo in the off season. To pacify the faithful Gillis signed a washed up Marco Strum. In order to make room for Strum, Torres was not resigned.

To the surprise of no one, save Gillis, the Strum signing did not pan out. So Gillis traded Samuelsson and Strum to Florida for David Booth, a player whose salary the Panthers were desperate to shed. If you are sensing a trend, you are not alone. Go to capgeek.com and hit Panthers. This will allow you to see what players the Panthers might want to trade for salary cap reasons. They are sure to be on the Canucks wish list. Anyway, Samulesson finished with more points in fewer games than Booth. Booth meanwhile proved to be better at slowing down Kesler than any opposing center.

To the surprise of everyone Gillis traded Hodgson and Sulzer for guy with 7 NHL career points and a career minor league D man who was a healthy scratch for last 6 games in Buffalo. Gillis amazingly claimed that Kassian would give the Canucks back the toughness they lost when Torres signed with Phoenix and in so doing put the Canucks over the top. Gillis had equally high hopes for Steve Bernier a few years back and Kassian is dead ringer for Bernier. So it appears that the old Marxian maximum applies to hockey. Misguided trades for power forwards occur "so to speak, twice. ... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Kassian finished with 3 points in 17 games with the Canucks and Gragnani added 3 in 14. After being benched in 3rd period of both game 3 and game 4 of the playoffs, Kassian was not dressed for game 5. He went pointless in the 4 games he played. Meanwhile Gragnani never saw the ice. Hodgson added 8 points in 20 games for Sabres and Sulzer 8 in 15.

The season is now over and the Canucks biggest decision is what to do with Robert Luongo. There are enough teams in the market for a good goalie and Luongo is still that. However, the rub is this. Gillis signed him to a ridiculous long term contract with a no trade clause. So the Canucks will have their work cut out.

Now, I do not know about you, but I think it would be a bad idea to let the man who traded for Ballard rather than resigning Ehrhoff, who signed Strum instead of resigning Torres and who traded Hodgson for Steve Bernier's doppelganger try to peddle an albatross of a contract that he signed. Gillis should be Fired.

By the way, this is how the numbers breakdown

Torres 15 goals 11 helpers

Grabner 20 goals 12 helpers

Hodgson 19 goals 22 helpers

Samulesson 14 goals 18 helpers

Sulzer 3 goals and 6 helprs

Ehrhoff 5 goals 27 helpers

David Booth 16 goals and 14 helpers and 4.25 million a season for another 3 years

Ballard 1 goal 6 helpers and 4.2 million for another 3 years

Kassian 4 goals 6 helpers

Gragnani 2 goals and 13 helpers

Luongo (age 33) 10 more years at a cap hit of $5.33 million