Hey Liberals! It's the grassroots!

According to a Liberal candidate with whom I had a long conversation, there are no Liberal grassroots, locally or nationally.

Here's the story...

When the Green Shift was first announced, I was excited about the Liberal Party for the first time in my life.

So I contacted my local Liberal candidate to volunteer to maintain his website - keep it up to date with the latest news items, refresh its design, post events, etc. - and to help with canvassing. I also later volunteered my services to the Green candidate, an offer which she took up.

Got an email response from the Liberal candidate within a few days with a Thank You! and an advisement that I'd be hearing from his campaign.

Never heard a word from them.

Nor, coincidentally, did I receive a reply to an email of inquiry I'd sent to the President of the local EDA a year or so ago, a man well known in the community.

I too am known in the community both for my work through WISE on exposing local poverty issues - not appreciated by all, to be sure - and my having done such nationally-recognized work while living on extremely low income.

Am beginning to wonder now if my social status was the culprit - you know, I am and represent local throwaways, people with whom the LPC would prefer not to associate and who couldn't conceivably have anything to offer the great "natural governing party" or its local team.

Anyway, it's not as if the local campaign couldn't have used the help. The website never was maintained, events posted continued to be from a year and more ago, some even from the last election.

When I met the candidate in the last week before the election, I suggested that the local Liberals really needed to get their grassroots involved - at which point he said in a disheartened manner and apparent resignation, "There is [sic] no grassroots."

The implication from the subsequent conversation was not only an absence of "ordinary" Canadians in local and national Liberal campaigning, but also that said ordinary folk wouldn't be welcome by the Liberal elites - of which the shrinking party seems mainly made up.

The irony couldn't be more obvious. The success of a political party depends on its ability to win the hearts and minds of so-called ordinary Canadians, or at least enough of them who vote.

Yet a party can't win those hearts and minds unless they employ the use of said Canadians in their campaigns.

It's not all about throwing money around, as we've seen from the Conservatives' recent win and the gains by the NDP and Greens. It's about connecting to your supporters and including all and any who are willing and want to help.

NB: I've never met an "ordinary" Canadian.

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Electile Dysfunction Worsens in 2008

The disproportionality of our so-called representative democracy worsened in 2008.

Among the astonishing facts: The only party to have gained votes in Federal Election 2008 was also the only party not to have won a single seat to the House of Commons.

All other parties LOST VOTES. The following table, whose data was obtained through Fair Vote Canada, visually highlights how deeply eroded our democracy has become.

	2006	2008	Vote Change	Seat Change
Cons	5,374,071	5,205,334	down 168,737 votes	up 19 seats
Libs	4,479,415	3,629,990	down 849,425 votes	down 27 seats
NDP	2,589,597	2,517,075	down 72,522 votes	up 8 seats
Bloc	1,553,201	1,379,575	down 173,636 votes	down 1 seat
Green	664,068	940,747	up 276,679 votes	0 seats in HoC

Given the Conservatives gain of 19 seats (by our ridiculous and archaic first-past-the-post voting system), Stephen Harper claims to have received a "stronger mandate" to govern. On the contrary: In losing almost two hundred thousand votes, his party lost favour with Canadians.

Not only does Election 08 go down in history for the first in which voter turnout fell below 60%, it may also have gone down in history for delivering the least democratic result since the formation of Canada.

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Fair Vote Canada: Electoral dysfunction, yet again

Press Release - October 15, 2008

Fair Vote Canada

Electoral dysfunction, yet again

Greens deserved more than 20 seats - voting system also punished New Democrats, western Liberals and urban Conservatives

Once again, Canada's antiquated first-past-the-post system wasted millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an unrepresentative Parliament and contributed to a record low voter turnout.

The chief victims of the October 14 federal election were:

• Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
• Prairie Liberals and New Democrats: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
• Urban Conservatives: Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
• New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.

"How can anyone consider this democratic representation?" asked Barbara Odenwald, President of Fair Vote Canada.

Had the votes on October 14 been cast under a fair and proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seat allocation would have been approximately as follows:

• Conservatives - 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
• Liberals - 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
• NDP - 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
• Bloc - 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
• Greens - 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)

Fair Vote Canada also has data for each province on the number of seats won and number of seats actually deserved by each party.

Odenwald emphasized that any projection on the use of other voting systems must be qualified, as specific system features would affect the exact seat allocation.

"With a different voting system, people would also have voted differently," said Larry Gordon, Executive Director of Fair Vote Canada. "There would have been no need for strategic voting. We would likely have seen higher voter turnout. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We would have had more real choices."

Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a national multi-partisan citizens' campaign to promote voting system reform. FVC was founded in 2001 and has a National Advisory Board of distinguished Canadians from all points on the political spectrum.

- 30 -

Interested in learning more about electoral reform or volunteering to help spread the message? Then visit Fair Vote Canada's website and its new home for Canada's latest Orphan Voters.

[Press release reprinted with permission.]

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Historic Low in Voter Turnout Indictment of Gaming the Vote

Election 08 now goes down in history for being the first federal election campaign to have generated such public disdain that over 40% of the electorate didn't bother even to cast a vote. Only 59.1 percent of us showed up at the polls.

For Conservative voters, there was a greater incentive to get to the polls. In general, they knew that in voting FOR a party, their votes might actually count.

For most supporters of the NDP, Liberals and Greens, there would have been a depressing awareness that a visit to the polling station was going to be a useless exercise, that their vote wouldn't go toward electing anyone. Either that, or the elector had the distasteful 'option' of casting a vote AGAINST the Conservatives and for the party running second, one which they considered less than the best for Canada - that alone could have been a disincentive to show up.

Did vote swapping or strategic voting work? Not on your life. And the lowest voter turnout ever suggests that it helped achieve the opposite of what their proponents had wanted.

This is just one more argument for reforming our electoral system to one of proportional representation. I hope that federal Liberals, NDP and Greens across Canada will do their utmost to support the referendum coming in BC on May 12th, 2009.

Four years ago, British Columbians voted 58% in favour of changing our electoral system to the Single Transferable Vote, one which includes both a preferential ballot and multi-member ridings. The BC Liberal government's imposition of 60% for passage of that - and the coming - referendum, a threshold supported by the opposition NDP, ensured that the voters were denied. For voters who had favoured STV, the irony couldn't have been more obvious.

Now we get to do it all over again in just over six months.

If British Columbians manage to exceed that 60% threshold, then a change from first-past-the-post here could increase the public enthusiasm and volunteer effort for proportional representation across the country.

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Congratulations to NDP and its entire volunteer team

OK. 'Tis premature.

But am betting the NDP increase their number of seats by at least 20% compared to the 30 seats they had at dissolution. Which therefore calls for a big thumbs up to the team for a job well done.

Now am curious to see by how much they exceed that estimate.

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ID Rules: Two-thirds of Dalhousie students turned away

This news is disgusting and all too predictable:

At Dalhousie University in Halifax, nearly two-thirds of the students showing up to cast ballots on campus were turned away because they didn't have the necessary signed form from their university residence stating their address or were off-campus students, said Mark Coffin, vice-president of education on the Dalhousie student council. The form is the only way for some students to prove they live in the area, as many of them have IDs with an address from another region...

"You know, 1.4 million young Canadians didn't vote in the last election," Coffin said. "Well, these new rules aren't making it any easier for students to vote."

...[Elections Canada official Dana Doiron] said Elections Canada got a sense of how widespread the lack of awareness was at the advance polls when people failed to show up with the proper ID.

Guess which party is most served by this failure of our electoral system to be accessible to all Canadians? A change which was pushed by that same party?

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Carbon Footprint Award: Greens win, NDP last

The David Suzuki Foundation evaluated the carbon footprint of each of the four national campaigns. The results?

Green Party - 2.5 - to visit 26 cities
Liberals - 503.4 - to visit 68 cities
Conservatives - 514.4 - to visit 66 cities
NDP - 586.1 - to visit 64 cities

All parties bought offsets to compensate for their carbon footprint.

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Making system work not all up to voters

Someone over at another blog made the following comments:

All I am asking is that the rest of us ... appreciate how those most informed on this critical issue are so conflicted in our allegiances... Let’s hope that in the next government ... we begin the process of moving to a new electoral system where people no longer have to make such undemocratic decisions at the ballot box. [my emphasis]

I haven't linked to the post since it's the content which I want to address, not the person who wrote it and who included his professional accreditation after his name, as though to give extra force to his argument.

The comment is paradigmatic of countless arguments we've seen over the course of this campaign.

First, I've known people who never made it past fifth grade who've demonstrated more wisdom and perspicacity than all the academics and professionally-certified I've met combined. And I've met a lot of them.

Second, the other portion I highlighted employs less than all the facts by, for example, omitting one role which party leaders in this democracy should be playing.

Voters are never forced to vote this way or that, at least not in Canada, and we're certainly never forced to make an undemocratic decision. The democratic choice is always to vote for the party which represents the values, policies and platform which the voter thinks are best for Canada - and, for some voters, the world. If voters choose to vote other than this way, so be it. But don't suggest that we're forced to do so. We are not.

In this democracy, which is currently saddled with a two-party voting system, it is up to party leaders to make the system work democratically and to fix it when it doesn't. It is up to our party leaders, when necessary, to form a coalition government - indeed, a government which amounts to a majority - which represents the will of the people, as democratically expressed at the ballot box. That party leaders have never done so at the federal level is reflective of their choice to allow the voters' choice not to be honoured. It is these leaders' own moral failure, not that of the voters, to make our representative democracy work.

The argument employed in the above comment has placed the entire onus for the results of the current election on the backs of voters, whereas the responsibility lies with both voters and the parties we elect to make the current system work and to change it when it doesn't.

I agree that this system needs changing, urgently. In fact, beginning the process toward proportional representation should be the first order of business of the new government.

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Nanosophy: May likely hurt Green breakthrough

There's no doubt that the oblique and not-so-oblique comments uttered by May which urged Green supporters to vote Liberal or NDP or Bloc - but, by extrapolation, NOT Green - will prevent what likely would have been a Green Party breakthrough this election.

Nik Nanos (PDF), the pollster whose work and methodology I most respect, would seem to agree.

Elizabeth May will likely preside over the best showing for the Green Party of Canada in terms of the aggregate number of Green votes. Getting into the leaders' debate represented a breakthrough for the party but it is unknown what type of negative impact she had on Green Party support by telling Green voters to cast their ballot for the Liberals. [my emphasis]

I think May's negative impact on GPC support will outweigh any gains. Her intentional (?) obfuscations and duplicity have perplexed, frustrated and finally angered this Green Party supporter.

There's a GPC convention shortly after tomorrow's election... Should be interesting... Wish I could go.

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Subtlety from CBC: Two images

Currently on the home page of CBC's Canada Votes section, there's an image of two side by side head shots, those of Harper and Dion.

See anything interesting about the photos chosen or how they've been rendered?

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May is against, for, against, for, against ... strategic voting

Help!

I just have to wonder how often Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada, can be misconstrued in the media. Is it a concerted effort by all media types deliberately to distort her meaning or is there something about what May is saying which makes her position, at minimum, ambiguous? I mean this question seriously.

Here's the latest press release, issued from the Green Party of Canada a few hours ago:

Elizabeth May did not advise strategic voting

Green Party leader Elizabeth May has not called on voters to abandon Green Party candidates. A news story that states otherwise is misleading.

Ms. May did say that, "Being honest with the voters, I acknowledge that there is concern over vote-splitting in a small number of ridings. But I am not going to say 'vote Liberal here, vote NDP there.'

"I do understand how difficult choices can be due to the perverse results of the first-past-the-post voting system. Canada needs an electoral system that accurately represents how Canadians vote.

"I repeated over and over that I would not advise voters to vote for anyone other than Greens. Attempts to misrepresent my position on this issue are tiring. I do not support strategic voting and I have not advised voters to choose any candidate other than Green."

All media reports of May speaking about strategic voting have included direct quotes. Given the sheer volume of those reports, can we continue to believe there's no truth to them? That they're ALL putting words in May's mouth?

I'm always inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. But frankly, I'm getting tired of the number of times I've had to do that over the past couple of weeks regarding May's comments on strategic voting.

And that hasn't been the only issue on which May's words have gone back on themselves.

There was that kerfuffle awhile back over May's supposed remark on TVO's The Agenda, which had her purportedly agreeing with the statement: "Canadians are stupid'.

Alas, no guest on that show uttered such a sentence.

What one guest did say was: "Politicians think that Canadians are stupid."

The taped video of that program reveals that May never agreed with a statement which, we've already established, was never made. It did show May turning, in mid-sentence, to someone off-camera. She appeared to remark to that person, in response to something he/she said: "And I agree with that assessment."

Here's the problem. Neither did May say, "and I DISagree with that assessment," which she claimed in a follow-up program of The Agenda, to which she'd been invited in order to clear up the matter once and for all.

Moderator Steve Paikin, who had sat right next to May during the first program, said he had not heard her say 'DISagree' nor did he hear her say it on the video tape of the program which they both watched together. Moreover, it was clear to anyone else watching the video tape that she hadn't said 'DISagree' either. She'd said "agree." But on that second program May continued to insist, having just watched the clip of the first show, that she'd said 'DISagree'.

So, was that the end of it? No.

A couple of days later, May wrote on her blog exactly what most people had thought had happened - what I described above as the first explanation: turning to someone off-camera and agreeing with that person's unrecorded statement.

Which means that May reversed her own explanation as given in that second program of The Agenda.

This is why I'm not at all confident that what May is reported to have said by some media types (the few reputable ones) isn't exactly what she did say.

That aside, there are some peculiar goings-on with media bias particularly during this election.

Therefore, is it so totally out to lunch to suggest that, for example, The Canadian Press - which has been observed to have jettisoned any semblance of objectivity - isn't up to some mischief making? We've already witnessed CanWest media up to no good - e.g., Mike Duffy shilling for the neocons on CTV, ditto Craig Oliver also on CTV and CanWest newspapers across the country all dutifully falling in line with endorsements of Harper.

I wonder who owns The Canadian Press now?

Anyway, combine corporate media bias with May's loose tongue and all kinds of interesting things can happen. None of them, unfortunately, seem meant to further democracy.

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Cadman Affair: Harper expert says tape NOT doctored

The Conservatives' own audio forensic expert found the tape of journalist and author Tom Zytaruk, which had featured Zytaruk questioning Harper about his involvement in the alleged attempted bribe of former MP Chuck Cadman, had NOT been doctored.

A tape recording at the centre of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's $3.5-million defamation suit against the Liberal party was not altered as the prime minister has claimed, a court-ordered analysis of the tape by Harper's own audio expert has found.

The key portion of the recorded interview of Harper by a B.C. journalist contains no splices, edits or alterations, says the finding by a U.S. forensic audio expert.

The analysis was filed in Ontario Superior Court on Friday by lawyers for the Liberal party, despite attempts by Harper's lawyer to keep the opinion out of the court file until at least next week.

Harper sued the Liberals in the midst of a raging controversy earlier this year over claims in a book by B.C. author Tom Zytaruk that Conservatives offered late MP Chuck Cadman a $1-million life insurance policy in return for help defeating the minority Liberal government in 2005....

Former FBI agent Bruce Koenig, the sound expert Harper hired to prove his allegations [of doctoring], submitted a report dated Friday to Harper's lawyer, which also had to be sent to the Liberal lawyer, Chris Paliare, saying the contentious portion of the interview was uninterrupted.

Spread this news far and wide. Harper will want it kept far away from voters eyes and ears. Let's do our best to thwart his ambition.

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CAW Atlantic endorses Elizabeth May

Announcement from the CNW Group, October 8th. Just came up on my Google News Reader a couple of hours ago.

Les Holloway, CAW Atlantic Canada Area Director, announced today that the union is throwing its support behind Green Party leader Elizabeth May, in the Central Nova riding....

"It is critical that we do not re-elect a Harper Conservative government that will continue with its failed right-wing policies which have already cost our country hundreds of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs," said Holloway.

Holloway stated, "This ideology that you give everybody their taxes back, cut government spending to do it by deregulating everything and let the market take care of itself has cost us dearly in both life and economic well being, and it has indeed put us on the same course as the United States."

"Elizabeth May is an extremely intelligent and articulate woman and will do us proud as a Member of Parliament for Central Nova. She cares about what this unbalanced economy is doing to residents of Nova Scotia and elsewhere," said Holloway....

That's quite a coup, methinks!

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Response to Bob Hepburn's "Green Party should fade away"

Bob Hepburn, writing in the TorStar today, says that the Green Party should simply fade away "for the good of the environment." The following is my response.

How dare Bob Hepburn so outrageously dismiss Green Party supporters, who are as much citizens of this country as he is? Because that's what it amounts to when he suggests the Green Party should just "fade away."

Supporters of the Greens have as much right to build, and vote for a party which reflects their views as any other citizen of this country. It's not their fault that our embarrassing, archaic undemocratic first-past-the-post voting system functions as it should only when two parties exist.

No truly democratic country should force its citizens to choose between just two options. We need to change the system to reflect the various interests of our citizens, not force parties to die off.

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Tyee Reporter barred from Harper Rally

Other media personnel were admitted, but not The Tyee's reporter Geoff Dembicki. Read the whole account. It reveals even more interesting details.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke to what was most likely a packed room of supporters at Vancouver's Bayshore Westin hotel last night. The Tyee can't be sure though, because I was not let inside.

This was the second time the Harper team barred The Tyee from reporting on this campaign.

As the Conservative leader began his address in the Stanley Park Ballroom, several members of the media pleaded with event staff to be admitted.

The staffers held firm that the event had already begun and nobody standing outside was to be admitted.

I was running a few minutes late ... but I arrived at the ballroom before 7:00 p.m., the official start time of the rally, according to a Conservative press release.

Harper staffers were adamant that media were too late for the rally. After a few minutes, however, reporters from World Journal and Channel M were admitted to the ballroom.

Talk about controlling the message! I wonder who those "no comment" people were?

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Way... to... go..., Elizabeth!

Mike Duffy gets some of his own bad-tasting medicine and for a cure he sorely needs. Biased, much, Mr. I-Heart-Stephen Duffy?

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Quips from Opposition Leaders re Harper Economic Plan

Elizabeth May:
"He's offering tariff reductions to industries that can’t afford to import machinery, just as he’s generously given tax cuts to businesses that have no profits to tax. If this wasn’t such a serious matter, Mr. Harper’s policies would be a joke."

Stephane Dion:
"Mr. Harper showed his true colours today by saying that the current market conditions had created ‘some great buying opportunities'.... Mr. Harper said today that it is no time to change boats in a storm. But Mr. Harper has been asleep at the helm. We need to change the captain and his crew." [My emphasis]

That quote from Harper sickens me.

Who would be the people able to capitalize on these "great buying opportunities"? Not I. Not the increasing number of individuals and families whose household incomes are below or plummeting disastrously close to the poverty line.

And the "great buying opportunities" come at the cost of some of the most poorly-strapped Canadians, including seniors. The losses have been to their nest eggs. Therefore, many of those who invested in mutual funds and were reliant on them as a form of income support have nothing left with which to invest or take back what they've lost.

The headline of another Liberal media release caught my eye in the context of a CBC.ca headline. The juxtaposition of the two is hilarious.

Liberal headline: "Conservatives ditch censorship provision in a panic."
CBC headline: "'This prime minister isn't going to panic': Harper to Mansbridge."

Jack Layton:
No press release from them yet. No doubt there'll be a goodie or two to add here, once it does come out.

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Ugh... Am exhausted... Is it over yet?

Well, the title about says it.

Don't know how the candidates can bear it. The vast majority of them must be extroverts, the 60-odd per cent of the population that is energized by being in a room full of people.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true for introverts, of which I am one. Other folks exhaust us, not because we don't like people (most of us do), but because we invest so much of OUR energy into any exchange with another person - the Other becomes our sole focus of attention.

Even engaging with people online doesn't seem to help, although I thought that imposing a faceless barrier would.

How candidates can get hyped about the issues no matter how many times they have to repeat the same old thing also boggles this tired brain.

I canna do it day in, day out, without a break in between. And frankly, I get BORED with having to say and think the same thing over and over and over... Although I recognize the necessity of that if we're going to get our message out to as many people as possible.

So, what do you think? Are you just as frazzled as I am? Or are you just getting started?

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First Rae, now Layton

As I wrote yesterday, the argument both men are now using to sway voters to their party is no more rational when spewed from Jack Layton's mouth today than it was when uttered yesterday by Bob Rae. They are counselling voters to do the wrong thing, or the right thing in the leaders' own views but for the wrong reason from the perspective of voters.

Both leaders are shifting their own responsibility onto voters. That responsibility is to lead and to form a temporary coalition or alliance, if necessary, after the election. Such a coalition would either form a majority government - with due representation of each party according to the proportion of the popular vote it received and thus including Green representation - or agitate as one to begin a democratic, grassroots-lead process to reform our voting system and replace it with proportional representation.

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Rae: Liberals should target NDP

OK. This I don't like. As readers of this blog will know, I'm no fan of the NDP. But I'm even less a fan of flawed reasoning and tactics intended to scare voters into doing something they otherwise wouldn't.

The reasons given by Bob Rae today for urging Liberals to target their attacks now at the NDP are senseless. They're intended to scare voters into doing exactly what they shouldn't: vote on the basis of "who stands the most chance to form the government," rather than for the party whose policies a voter most supports.

Think seriously about how asinine that argument is.

Rae said the Liberals need to emphasize that voting for the NDP will only make it easier for the Conservatives to increase their seat count.

"In the last 10 days, we've really got to focus on what are the real choices. And I honestly believe the NDP is not a viable choice anymore," Rae said after rallying about 40 supporters.

"Jack might think he's Barack Obama, but he really isn't. He's Ralph Nader. The effect of voting for his candidates in most ridings is to perpetuate Conservative rule."

One might argue the reverse and it would be as equally self-serving.

Scene: Hypothetical NDP strategist argues to gathered supporters:

The NDP need to emphasize that voting for the Liberals will only make it easier for the Conservatives to increase their seat count.

In the last 10 days, we've really got to focus on what are the real choices. And I honestly believe the Liberals are not a viable choice.

Dion might think he's Barack Obama, but he really isn't. He's Ralph Nader. The effect of voting for his candidates in most ridings is to perpetuate Conservative rule.

What matters, or should matter, to each and every voter, is which party platform best represents that voter's values and offers the best solutions. And engaged voters should be working to make the party platforms known to their friends, co-workers and neighbours.

If I am to vote for the Green, NDP, Liberal or, for that matter, Conservative candidate in my riding, it will be because the party which that candidate represents coheres best with my own sense of what matters.

I'll not vote based on a self-serving argument such as that which Rae has put forward.

Yes, thanks to our embarrassing, archaic, anti-democratic first-past-the-post electoral system, voters face a prisoner's dilemma. However, no party or candidate should be encouraging supporters of other parties to vote for them simply because their own party of choice purportedly doesn't stand a chance.

Voters should not be asked to compromise their democratic right and obligation to vote according to what they believe would be the best platform for this country.

What voters need, after the election is over and after they have cast their votes, are leaders with the backbone to do what's right: to form a temporary coalition, if necessary, one whose representation reflects each party's percentage of the popular vote - hence giving voters a form of proportional representation. Then, approach the Governor-General to request that the coalition form the government.

The coalition's first order of business? As Elizabeth May in the October 2nd debate said,

"First we have to fix the electoral system. We have to put ourselves on the path to proportional representation so we don't run the risk of false majorities such as a majority of the seats with the minority of support."

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