Oil and water

Danny Williams and Ottawa just don't mix.

Ostensibly, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is a Tory. But it was fellow Tory Stephen Harper he lashed out at Wednesday in some of the most caustic language ever directed at Ottawa from the hinterland. Harper, said Williams, is a "fraud" for breaking a federal election promise to remove non-renewable resource revenues in a new equalization formula. Harper disputes the $10-billion that Williams says the province will lose under the formula.

Speaking to the St. John's Board of Trade, Williams was unrestrained in his contempt for his fellow Conservative:

"A majority government would be one of the most negative political events in Canadian history. This is a federal government willing not only to break their own promises, but they go so far as to break their own laws and call an election even though they mandated fixed election dates. There is nothing Harper will not do in order to win a majority government. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a party who purportedly offered a terminally ill MP a life insurance policy to get his vote."

That last was a reference to the late B.C. independent MP Chuck Cadman. The jury, so to speak, is still out on that unsubstantiated charge. But Williams pays no heed of niceties in planting insinuations.

We'd suggest the Grits jump all over the St. John's videotape for a campaign ad, save that Williams just four years ago had a similar dispute with...the Grits. Which prompted the fiesty premier to remove the Canadian flag from all provincial government buildings in a dispute with Paul Martin over resource revenue sharing. (Below is the Maple Leaf being lowered in front of the Newfoundland and Labrador legislature in December 2004.)

With the possible exception of Tory premier Frank Moores - later a lobbyist in Ottawa - every premier of the Rock since Joey Smallwood has given the nation a clinic on righteous indignation. This production has run longer than The Mousetrap on Broadway, and long ago grew tiresome. (Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald held similar grievances with Ottawa on revenue-sharing, but ultimately negotiated an amicable settlement.)

Harper is right: With only four of the province's seven seats not already in his clutches, he doesn't need a Newfoundland and Labrador sweep to attain his coveted majority. Williams, a former business tycoon, should know that when you don't have leverage, the alternative strategy of being sweetly supportive of federal Tory ambitions might better serve your purpose.

May day

Seems like only yesterday I was trying to figure out why an articulate, policy-seasoned leader of a credible national party was being denied participation in the leadership debates. All better now. The TV debates consortium has reversed itself and invited Elizabeth May (below) to join fellow leaders on the national stage.

Kudos to Jack Layton, who came in for special criticism in a previous post, for being a catalyst in this turnabout.

Shame

Explain to this young man, Cabill Dalasubramaniam, why Canada allows close to 900,000 of our kids to live in poverty. And why child poverty isn't an over-riding issue in this campaign.

Belinda and Barack

Belinda Stronach cut an impressive figure during her brief political career, as midwife to the modern Tories, twice elected to the Commons under the colours of two different parties, and holding a cabinet post in the Martin government before returning to her father's Magna International, Canada's largest auto-parts firm. With a front-row seat in politics and industry, Stronach has a unique perspective on the contraints to sustainable prosperity. As she says in this provocative essay, there's a widespread failure of imagination and will among politicians, who spend their time squabbling and trying to score political points rather than building on the economy's collaborative strengths:

"As I reflect on my departure from elected political life, I find myself not looking back but south...

"Yes, Barack Obama is a gifted orator capable of moving an audience and inspiring young people to care about politics. But what truly resonates within Americans who support the Democratic nominee is his pledge to transcend partisan divides, end gridlock and aggressively pursue ambitious projects, such as extending health care to all. He's dreaming big...

"To succeed, we must support politicians who look beyond just getting re-elected, who push beyond partisan limitations and short-term thinking, and who are dedicated to building a country, not just living in one."

Looking ahead a week rather than a quarter-century, our political leadership of various stripes has run the country on auto-pilot as industrial R&D has stagnated, entire sectors like steel and mining have been "hollowed out," and the manufacturing industry based in Central Canada has slipped into recession. All for lack of a national industrial strategy worthy of the name, which a G-8 country in a globalizing world increasingly dominated by emerging economic superpowers like China and India cannot afford. And which we're not going to see anyone propose in this campaign.

Stronach would be my candidate to spearhead a competitiveness institute that would marshall the best and brightest minds in academe, industry, science, politics, finance and labour to devise a prosperity blueprint. It's long overdue.

Who says real men don't apologize?

Harper has promptly apologized for an Internet ad posted Tuesday night in which a puffin defecates on the shoulder of Stephane Dion, an "inside baseball" reference that only political junkies would catch to former Grit leadership rival Michael Ignatieff's observations about the "noble puffin" during a trip last year to Newfoundland. "Belittling images are not fair game," the PM said, calling the since-withdrawn ad "tasteless and inappropriate."

The mischievous web designer blamed by the Tories has made the party's point, however, which is that Iggy is waiting in the wings to grasp the brass ring of Grit leadership should Dion wage a dismal campaign. Ask us non-junkies if we care. Actually, don't. We're in the midst of back-to-school season and other real-life issues, like whether the Jays can cling to their new third-place division standing for the balance of the regular season.

 

The noble puffin in its non-campaign environs.

Polls are for dogs

So, famously, said John Diefenbaker. A few posts ago I castigated Day One media obsession with polls showing Harper within striking distance of a majority government as the kind of "horse-race coverage" that blocks out analysis of real issues, also noting that early days polls are especially uselessless.

Sure enough, by Day Three the Globe reported that those Tory-heartening polls to which the paper gave page-one prominence were overly exuberant.

"A new poll indidicates that the rising support that the Conservatives rode into the campaign appears to have ebbed in the country's critical battleground ridings since the writ was dropped on Sunday."

So reported the Globe Wednesday. With the same page-one prominence, of course.

Issues, who needs ‘em?

Here’s what we learned from the front pages of the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star on Monday, Day One of the campaign:

The Grits’ campaign plane won’t be ready until mid-week, a cause of much grumbling among the boys and girls on the bus.

A poll shows the Tories are within striking distance of a majority. Stephen Harper is at pains to downplay that possibility, fearing Canadians will deny him absolute power if the scenario seems in prospect. In the midst of an image makeover as a family man, Harper seems unaware that his fellow party leaders also are married with children.

Harper says, “We have come to a moment that requires Canadians to choose.” (I’m game. I choose Tony Bennett over Michael Buble, and Cheetos over tofu.)

Did I mention the plane? The Grits’ tardy aircraft is 35 per cent less fuel-efficient than the Airbus 319 opted for by each of the Tories and NDP. (An irony, of course, given Stephane Dion’s centrepiece carbon-tax proposal, a backdoor means by which actual policy crept onto the front page.)

To its credit, the Star had a front-page editorial – a rarity in major North American newspapers since the middle of the past century – that was packed with issues afflicting Ontarians, from stalled healthcare reform to lost manufacturing jobs. This being the GTA-first Star, the editorial was unapologetically parochial; the woes of Canada’s 12 other provinces and territories got scant mention. But it least it was about things that matter, like putting bread on the table and inadequate nursing staff in the hospitals.

Otherwise, the coverage was all campaign tactics, strategy and logistics (did I mention the planes?), boilerplate quotes and “horse-race” coverage (the media obsession with polls, of particular uselessness in the campaign’s earliest days).

Stephane Dion was allowed to say that Harper has led “the largest-spending government in Canadian history” without fear of contradiction. (As a percentage of GDP, Macdonald, Pearson, Mulroney and Trudeau, among others, have Harper beat.)

With its editorial, the Star at least tried to set an agenda independent of the parties. No doubt you, dear reader, have one too, and it’s not about which cities the party leaders visited on Monday.

For decades the J-school instructors have railed against “handout journalism,” in which reporters merely convey what people in power want conveyed. If traditional print and broadcast journalism is going to survive the rapidly improving quality of analysis offered free by the better bloggers and online political journals in the blogosphere – and by Jon Stewart, to whom a majority of young adult Americans (and not a few Canadians) turn for the daily news fix – we’re going to have to become a lot more truly informative than this.

Layton’s missed chance

Jack Layton missed an opportunity to reinforce his gender-equality and environmental credentials by joining with other parties to freeze Green Party leader Elizabeth May out of the televised leaders’ debates. There is an animus between Layton and May that predates the Greens and their gambit to relieve the NDP of the mantle of environmental progressivism.

Rather than a gang-up with the other parties to deny May national TV exposure in the debates, Layton would have scored points all over the place by championing May’s debate participation – with women, eco-warriors, free-speech types, peaceniks (“world peace” is one of the Greens’ platform planks)...

Instead, the NDP looks, and is, churlish. So for that matter are the other big boys, who all talk a good line about their ardent desire to increase women participation in politics, but in this telling incident have denied them visibility.

And anyone who thinks five’s a crowd on a debate state, they missed the 10 Democratic presidential hopefuls who flapped their gums in that party’s early debates, and the 11 GOP candidates in the Republicans’ first half-dozen or so debates.

“Day 2 of the federal election and democracy is already taking a nose-dive,” said May. Well put.

Ill-fated slogans

Looks like the Tories have settled on “competent leadership” as their slogan. Fair enough. The Harper style actually invokes “inoffensive leadership” or “invisible leadership.” But Harper has seemed these past two and a half years like more of an “in-charge” guy than Dion, Layton or Duceppe, the latter so uncertain of himself he briefly sought the Parti Quebecois leadership.

But a warning: the competence card often comes up a joker.

Pierre Trudeau’s 1972 “The land is strong” culminated in a Grits’ loss of their majority. And Brian Mulroney’s 1988 “Managing change,” which belongs in Guinness as the most banal rallying cry in modern Western politics, was eclipsed mid-campaign by a awakening fear of the implications of the free-trade deal the Tories had struck with the United States.

Mulroney clung to a narrow majority, but not after one heck of a scare as Canadians on both sides of that issue were suddenly gripped with a belief that the country’s future was at stake.

Family values

Harper’s not alone in his “family man” makeover. Following the Tory lead, the other male party leaders are suddenly highlighting home and hearth. It makes me queasy. Using the spouse and kids as props is a staple of U.S. electoral politics. By refreshing contrast, the private lives of Canadian pols is traditionally just that – private.

A reminder that “family values,” properly understood, is adequate daycare, decent jobs and affordable housing for low-income workers with families to feed and clothe. One million Canadian kids live below the poverty line – a national badge of shame.

I don’t have it in for warm and fuzzy legislators – although it will be noted that Mackenzie King, the historians’ choice as our best PM, was a childless bachelor.

But I do want a leader who helps put one of my friends’ life back together, a teacher in a remote Labrador settlement who in her thirties succumbed to a breakdown after 11 years in which at some point in the school year one of her students was found dead of a drug overdose, had taken his or her life, or was beaten to death by a father or uncle. Some years, my friend buried two of her precious young students.

So family values, by all means. But let’s invoke the term as we repair families and communities in distress, and leave it to others to traffic in cuddly photo-ops.

Campaign wish list: 10 issues

This is a campaign that threatens to be about nothing. The Harper government is seeking a renewed mandate now simply to avoid the possibility of having to face the voters after the economic roof has caved in next year, or a string of potentially embarrassing formal inquiries on the conduct of the Tories has reported.

My subsequent posts will be brief, with updates through the day when appropriate. But to start off, here's a list of issues I'm sure many Canadians wish this election was about.

Ten important topics you won't hear much about in this campaign.

1. An exit strategy from Afghanistan. Canada's prolonged mission to one of the world's most geopolitically and topographically hostile war zones has accomplished nothing of much consequence, and at a cost of 97 lives lost among our armed forces and one of our most skilled diplomats. The Taliban are stronger than ever, as are the al-Qaeda operatives the Taliban shelter, both groups enjoying safe haven in the western border region of Pakistan, whose own unstable governance offers scant hope of meaningful cooperation from Islamabad.

Yet for all that our Afghan mission lacks clarity of purpose and popular support at home, our troops certainly do command widespread respect and affection, as they should, and that gives the Harper government a pass on the tough but necessary questions about what exactly we can realistically hope to achieve with a mission whose chief purpose, when Paul Martin's government launched it, was to improve relations with a Bush administration that will expire in four months.

2. The Canadian economy, long the envy of the industrialized world for its sustained, strong GDP growth and successive federal budget surpluses stretching back more than a decade - a record unmatched by any G-8 nation - is weakening finally, pulled down by a U.S. economy that is effectively in recession. Canada's export-driven manufacturing sector, based in Central Canada, is already in recession, and the impact of layoffs at Southern Ontario automakers and other manufacturers will soon migrate into the consumer economy.

None of the parties has a convincing plan for bracing against this storm, with job creation and enhanced training programs and a shift in our export economy away from over-reliance on the United States to cracking the dynamic markets of Asia.

3. Separatism. The appeal of Quebec separatism is at one of its periodic low ebbs, which won't stop Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe from the occasional demand for greater powers for his province. But the BQ leader, compromised by his flirtation with the leadership of the Parti Quebecois, won't have his heart in calls for enhanced Quebec autonomy and will focus instead on perceived threats to social and cultural programs under a renewed Harper mandate.

Meanwhile the separatist sentiment, latent for now, will not be squarely confronted with proposals for a new federalism and power-sharing arrangements, leaving outstanding perceived Quebec grievances unattended as fuel for the inevitable next Resurgence of separatist passions.

4. Climate change. A genuine effort to save the planet from this man-made scourge requires a more comprehensive, long-term scheme asking real sacrifice from Canadians than the parties have the will to promote. Harper already is demonizing the Grits' signature carbon-tax proposal (the Green Shift) as a mere tax grab. And the Liberal plan exempts so many vocational and other groups as to be ineffectual in its stated, worthwhile goal of both cutting CO2 emissions and discouraging the demand that has pushed up fuel costs for motorists and air travelers. (Even after its recent swoon, the world crude price of just over $100 (U.S.) - down from its July peak of $147 (U.S.) - remains far higher than its $70 (U.S.) of last year.)

The Tories' sensible plan for slashing conventional pollution needs to be coupled with a tough carbon-tax regimen if Canada is to boast a green commitment matching that of Europe  and even rapidly growing China, which has stricter fuel-economy standards than North America.

5. Health care reform. In contrast to the leadership position the Martin government took on this provincial responsibility, the parties today will hold back from advancing "game-changing" reforms that improve the quality and reduce the cost of patient care.

These reforms include the electronic medical record-keeping proposed in the U.S. election campaign by Democratic candidate Barack Obama, which would slash bureaucratic costs and, more important, reduce medical errors; and a much greater emphasis on preventive care to cope with, for instance, the epidemic in early-onset diabetes among youth and young adults, the cause of which often is traced to diet, fitness and other "lifestyle" decisions. A campaign against early-onset diabetes and other avoidable maladies could prove as successful as the campaign against smoking has been.

But federal party leaders will be reluctant to risk the premiers' ire in appearing to intrude in a provincial jurisdiction or to dictate lifestyle changes to Canadians.

6. Native Canadians. The Harper government scrapped the promising advances in Martin's Kelowna accord, before eventually unveiling its own, less ambitious version. The fact remains that too many of Canada's population of roughly one million Native Canadians live in developing-world conditions with appalling rates of alcoholism, illicit drug use, suicide and spousal and child abuse - all rooted in chronic poverty.

Federal programs continue to be managed ineptly, and rogue band leaders withhold federal funds from their communities for their own use. Breaking the cycle of despair  and dependency requires the kind of thorough overhaul of federal programs and practices that, no matter how urgently needed, won't win many votes and thus much attention in the hurly burly of an election campaign.

7. Poverty. Eighteen years after a unanimous Parliamentary vote to eradicate child poverty by 2000, an estimated one million Canadian children live below the poverty line. Alas, preoccupation with discrediting each other's leadership skills will keep the federal party leaders from proposing comprehensive schemes for addressing this crisis, which would call for increased affordable housing, daycare and tuition subsidies for single mothers seeking a hand up not a handout, and an effective campaign to reduce the rising rate of "deadbeat dads" who refuse to meet their obligations.

8. Infrastructure. Many if not the majority of Canada's bridges, hospitals, schools, water-filtration plants and other essential infrastructure are past their prime, and coping with more use than they were designed for.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, representing the more than 80 per cent of Canadians who live in urban areas, estimates that the "infrastructure deficit" in municipalities alone is $123 billion. Rebuilding world-class infrastructure would be a tremendous stimulus to the economy and strengthen Canada's long-term competitiveness. But the cost alone keeps pols from proposing anything substantial on this front, which typically requires the tragedy of a collapsed bridge or school cafeteria to provoke action.

9. Nuclear proliferation. The greatest threat to the planet in the short term isn't climate change but the thousands of unaccounted-for nuclear warheads and other nuclear bomb-making materials - or "loose nukes" - scattered across Russia and the other former Soviet republics. The epic tragedy of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and subsequent attacks on Madrid, Bali and London would be eclipsed by the detonation of even one nuclear device built by terrorists gaining access to loose nukes either directly or on the black market.

With it pioneering work in bringing about the treaty to curb land mines, Canada is diplomatically well suited to help spearhead the location and destruction of these lethal materials, in partnership with countries including the United States, where both Obama and his Republican rival, John McCain, have made a priority of reducing the world's stockpile of nuclear materials.

10. Immigration. Programs for integrating recent immigrants into the Canadian economy continue to be ad hoc, a jumble of federal, provincial and municipal initiatives that are poorly coordinated and inadequately funded.

Opening the door to refugees and other immigrants isn't enough. The newcomers require more immediate access to secure housing and more rapid recognition of their professional credentials. With the U.S., Canada is the only mature major economy not facing a decline in population by the mid-century, thanks exclusively to immigration. Future nation-builders need a genuine welcome to Canada in place of the current years of economic struggle in their new homeland. But because the issue still ignites nativist sentiment in some quarters - though far less than in the past - don't expect any party to come forward with a holistic program for making the world's brightest and hardest-working new arrivals truly at home.