Nobels Show How to Delegitimze a Prestigious Award

More election stuff on the way. I'm working on a huge article on electoral reform but I just had to comment on this. Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize. For those who don't know, the Nobel Prize is given to those who are supposedly the greats in their field for that particular year in chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace.

The peace prize was first awarded in 1901 and is quite the prestigious list. Rounding out some of the more known figures and organizations are the Red Cross, Woodrow Wilson, Lester B Pearson, Martin Luther King Jr, UNICEF, Mother Teresa, the UN Peace Keeping Forces, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dali Lama, Amnesty International, Yasser Arafat, and Jimmy Carter. It's quite a list of names and accomplishments, which makes my seriously question why Al Gore was given this award. Gore shares the award with the International Panel on Climate Change. Wikipedia provides a long and handy list of reasons why the awards were given to particular organizations or individuals. All were awarded for their efforts towards world peace or humanitarian causes, all except for Gore and the IPCC. The Nobel Prize Commission's reasoning states that Gore received the award for his "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"

The Nobel Peace Prize is not one without controversy. What makes Gore getting the award different is it was given not for world peace but for global warming. Gore is neither a scientist, nor has fought for world peace. Maybe he could win the literature award for best fiction if he wrote a novelized version of "An Inconvenient Truth". To me, this award seems to be purely politically motivated, which goes against the whole principle of awarding the prize. While most people don't care, I do because Gore has been spreading lies about climate change. Even the British courts have shown this, banning his movie from British classrooms due to nine major flaws in his argument. The movie can only be shown if the other side is presented, since it's considered a non-academic editorial piece. The prize should be revoked and handed to someone more deserving. I'm sure there is someone out there that has made major contributions to world peace and humanitarian issues, if the prize committee had done their job and bothered to look.

Climate Change is the biggest danger to the world today. Not because it is real, because it is not. It is dangerous due to the left wing propaganda campaign it has become. People like Al Gore are only using it to fuel hidden agendas and to gain wealth and political power. Wake up and smell the green crap.

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Time to Bring in Compulsory Voting

Yesterday's Ontario election saw the lowest turnout in the provinces history. I had originally estimated 60% based on unofficial results, however, the actual turnout was closer to 50%. I would call this election illegitimate based on that factor alone, since that was not a majority. I think Canadians, all Canadians, should be ashamed by these numbers. It seems to be a growing trend. Federal numbers aren't too bad but turnouts at the provincial, and especially the municipal level are unacceptably low. I believe it is time to bring in mandatory voting.

Mandatory voting is one of many electoral reforms that has been proposed for Canada in recent years. Some countries of note that use this system are Australia, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Greece, and Switzerland. In these countries, the punishment for not voting is usually a nominal fine. The system itself is highly controversial for a number of reasons. However, I believe the controversy to be unwarranted. Lets take a look at the reasons why people aren't voting, then the pros and cons of the system. I will be arguing in favour of it.

I believe one of the primary reasons for not voting to be simply laziness. People simply can't be bothered to do their civic duty, since they're so self absorbed in their own lives. This is the truth, however, it doesn't tell the whole story, particularly with turnout skewed towards the federal level. The irony about that is that in such a highly regionalized country as Canada is, more people tend to vote at the national level then the local one. Logically, it would be the other way around. Some political scientists have attempted to explain low turnout by saying that it's due to satisfaction with the status quo. I don't buy this, as logically, people would be mobilized to maintain it, rather than leaving the decision up to others who could possibly change things. The problem with many political scientists is they don't actually go out and talk to your average citizen. I do, and from what I've heard, people are highly dissatisfied with the status quo, but, they do not like any of the alternatives. Now, I'm no expert in the field as some of your supposed pundits and PhDs are, but this tells me something they seem to have trouble grasping. That is that leadership choices political parties are making are weak. Also, political parties are failing to gain the confidence of the people no matter who runs. Most people are unaware that they can spoil their ballot and that spoiled ballots are counted, even if it is off the record. The spoiled ballot count can be used to gauge the level of dissatisfaction.

So what if we were to impose compulsory voting. Everyone 18 and over who is a Canadian citizen would be automatically added to a the voters list. They can either vote or pay a fine if they do not. Some would argue that this is counter democratic since it's the government essentially forcing people to vote. Others say that having the uninformed vote is a dangerous prospect. I don't agree with those statements. First of all, people not voting is far more dangerous than forcing people to vote because it leaves decisions that effect everyone to increasingly smaller majorities of people. A parliament that was elected by only 50% of people does not fairly reflect society and it's current needs and values. Therefore, it is actually less democratic not forcing people to vote. The current system is ok if people are being mobilized on their own.
As for the issue of uninformed voters, I believe this to be a double failure by both the education system and the media. First of all, Ontario high schools do not dedicate enough class time to political science, aka civics. When I was going through high school, they had just brought ina mandatory civics course. However, it was only a two month half course. At university level, a basic political science course is usually two semesters long. I guess they would rather focus on more important subjects like PhysEd and Art rather than teaching kids the basics of the democratic system they live under. Ideally, I would like to see civics and law be made mandatory course in the Ontario curriculum. Civics should be a full semester. Also, there needs to be more political science offerings at the high school level at the higher grades to allow kids to further pursue the topic. Getting people interested in politics at a young age would go a long way to stamping out the apathetic and uninformed citizenry that has been plaguing the democratic process in Canada.
The media too needs to do a better job. Rather than just hiring these talking heads who drone on, they need to engage people more. Make it more interactive, and not just through online polls. The media devotes maybe only five minutes to politics on most evening news casts, yet 15min to sports. Lack of media involvement was directly responsible for much of the confusion regarding the mixed member referendum in Ontario. Once again, the media needs to be getting younger people interested. I praise efforts like Diddy's (aka Sean Colmbs) "Vote or Die", who try to mobilize young people to the polls but they still don't get them talking about the issues. That needs to change. I believe the media does have a responsibility to the public to perform such duties.

So with these failures and citizens' apathy, we need to bring in compulsory voting. We need to get people mobilized. The way I would do it is implement the Australian method. Australia is a good model to use since out of all commonwealth countries, it is the most similar to Canada both politically and historically. It's simple. If you don't vote, you have to pay a nominal fine. While fines usually don't work it will get a few more people out in the polls, since most people hate paying fines in any amount. A side benefit to the fines is that they could be used to pay for operating the election itself. A second reform would be to add a "None of the Above" choice to the ballot. Some US states use this. If None of the Above gets a majority of votes, a new election is automatically called. The problem with spoiled ballots is there is no way to tell if the person did it deliberately or accidentally. A "None of the Above" choice would count voter dissatisfaction officially. Thirdly, I think we need to make election campaigns longer. Though most people get sick of hearing it, I think one month is not long enough to properly discuss the issues. With most of Canada moving towards fixed election dates, extending campaign length is no longer the issue it once was. In the US for example, presidential campaigns start more than a year prior to the election. I'm not saying we should take it to that extreme, but 2-4 months is more appropriate. It gives citizens more time to think over choices and ask more questions and it allows politicians to reach more people in person. If we implement these choices, I believe they will go a long way to reversing declining voter turnouts.

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Ontario Election: No Change from 2003

Ontario lost today's provincial election. The only people to blame in this are the stupid Canadians. Those who would hand the Liberals another majority even after they've lied and stolen from you. This has been the most disgraceful election campaign I have ever seen. Ontarians voted clearly and they're saying: we want four more years of corruption, we want four more years of oppressive taxes, we don't care about the real issues. This election has shocked political analysts due to it's bizarre twists which morphed it into a one issue campaign about.

Now that I've lambasted you for being morons and gotten my sour grapes out of the way, lets turn to analysis. Results sit at 70 seats for the Liberals, 26 for the PC, and 11 for the NDP. The popular vote mirrors polls taken earlier in the month with 41%, 31%, and 17% respectively. From the last election, the Liberals lost one seat while the PC and NDP saw some small gains. The Green party did not win any seats but saw major gains in the popular vote, 8.3% up from 2.8%. Liberals actually lost traction in the popular vote from 2003, down five points from 46%. I've rounded off the percentages to the nearest whole number for simplicity's sake. We're basically where we were four years ago. No major changes. Once again, we see Toronto tipping the scales in favour of the Liberals, which gives them an unfair advantage in my opinion. I believe this us due to high numbers of recent immigrants (those who arrived from the Trudeau years to present) in these areas, who have traditionally voted Liberal.
The surge in the popularity of the Greens is also something worth considering. I believe they will continue to pull support away from Liberals provided the environmental movement maintains it's momentum. They likely won't effect the PC and NDP though, as this election has shown. These particular parties appeal to business and labour respectively. The environment is not traditionally an area of major concern for these two groups. The Greens strike a balance between the Liberals and PC ideology wise. They are not a single issue party, though environmentalism is a major bargaining chip.
As for turn out, I was watching the riding by riding results pop up on the TV. Results as a whole aren't available yet. 60% seems to be the average, though I consider this quite low. I would prefer to see at the very least 66% (two thirds) of voters turn out. In my opinion, an election cannot truly be legitimate if it doesn't get that amount of people turning out, since 40% is still a sizable chunk of the population. I believe it all boils down to people being too lazy. At the very least, you should spoil your ballot if you don't like any candidates. Spoiled ballots are counted, even though they don't effect the outcome. They still work by sending a message than you don't approve of anyone.
My own riding or Halton was a bit of a scare, originally reporting a Liberal victory, but it is officially a PC one. Halton has become a political football in recent years, especially after the Turner incident at the federal level. We're still without a federal MP in my opinion, since Turner is not legitimate.

One of the big things was the referendum, the first since the 1930s. Fortunately, the status quo has been maintained with 63% in favour of the First-Past the Post system compared to 37% for the Mixed Member. On this subject, I believe that Ontarians were poorly informed about the question. The pamphlet issued was of poor quality and TV ads only informed Ontarians to "understand the question" rather then explaining to them what it was about. I believed the media utterly failed on informing the public about the issue. The mixed member system is a complicated system. Despite the other problems relating to corruption which I mentioned a few months back, I believe it to be simply too complicated. I've seen textbooks that dedicate several pages to just explaining the basics of this system. It's Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is usually the best. Also, it would not lead to better democracy under our current system, since the smaller parties would still have no real power. Everything works in theory, but mixed member would have simply created more headaches than it's worth. If you truly do want to make Ontario more democratic, you would have to scrap the parliamentary system entirely and replace it with a US-based republic, or go with the full proportional system. The latter of which is used in a lot of European countries, but is prone frequent to political deadlocks.

So what does the next four years hold. I expect more of the same. Ontarians have shown that they're highly resistant to change. I believe McGuinty's first win was purely the result of strong dissatisfaction with the Harris government. I expect the turmoil from that last 20 years will start to cool down. Will this mean a "big red machine" is on the horizon. Perhaps, though it's far too early to call that. McGuinty is also riding on a time when the economy is relatively strong. If he continues more of his crap and we enter a recession, it may spell the end for him. Fortunately, this time he won't be able to break his promises, considering he made none to begin with.
As for John Tory, I think it would be best for him to resign as PC leader. He held to the religious school funding issue, even though he did not even have majority support in his own party. While his change of heart on the issue does show he listens to majority, the issue as a whole only provided cannon fodder for McGuinty. If he could not get the majority of his party to agree to it, the issue should have been dropped before it became public. That's a poor way of doing things. It would be wise for the PC party to elect a leader who is a veteran MP rather than a newcomer. Especially considering that Tory had already lost a major election campaign to become Toronto's mayor.
I would like to see Howard Hampton stay on as NDP leader, since I feel he was the only strong leader out of the three major parties, and the only one willing to discus real issues. He is certainly a far cry from the weak leadership of Bob Rae

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Road Laws Tougher but...

I'd have to say that Canadians are some of the worst drivers around. I've been to Mexico, the US, Latin America and nobody drives as aggressively as we do. The summer of 2007 was one of the worst summers for road accidents in recent OPP memory. Indeed, you see bad driving everywhere from people tailgating, speeding, driving way too slow, forming the impenetrable wall of cars in the middle lane on the 401, illegally overtaking, drunk driving, the list goes on. A new set of laws went into effect a week ago that would see people driving 50km/h over the limit, street racing, or driving aggressively have their license revoked for one week and their car impounded. Some say this violates due process of the law but others feel it will send a message to people. The OPP has said that they are averaging one impound every 30 minutes on Ontario roads. Some 150 cars were taken off the road at last check. In my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's rare you go out in your car now without having some sort of unpleasant experience due to dangerous driving. It seems drivers think they won't get caught or simply don't care. No matter how tough the fines are, people still do it. Case in point the deaths of two Brampton women last week at the hands of two young street racers driving daddy's cars. The women were killed when the younger brother attempted to illegally pass a dump truck on the gravel shoulder, and lost control. The incident triggered a chain reaction crash leaving two dead and a husband horrified as he watched his wife die. Now, you either have to be living under a rock to not know the OPP were out in full force targeting that kind of behaviour, or very arrogant to simply not care. They have been charged with criminal negligence causing death. The irony of the event is they received only minor injuries in the crash, likely because the one young man who caused the accident was driving an Audi, which are heavy vehicles that are built like tanks.

The problem with many of these dangerous driving cases once again happens in the courts. Take the case of the Toronto cabbie that was killed last year in a street racing incident. The two young men who killed him were given a slap on the wrist. Another incident that killed a Richmond Hill mother and father and the same kind of sentence was given. Once again, we have the tough laws there and the police are willing to enforce them, but the court system fails to treat such crimes seriously, even when guilt is proven far beyond reasonable doubt. I feel this is where things need to change. Until we get a court system that actually wants to apply the laws fairly, these incidents will continue.

Finally, we really do need more police on the road. Living in Halton, I rarely see the regional police patrolling the roads where as I see them all the time in Peel. The municipalities and regions are currently a road policing hole. There simply aren't enough cops out there enforcing the rules of the road. More need to be hired to do so. Also, the quota system should go for road infractions, in order to force police to target more serious vehicular offenders. Road safety should not be about how much money municipalities can make through fines.

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Weird Election Campaign Wrapping Up

I haven't posted anything for a few weeks, simply because this election campaign is just a joke. The Ontario election has turned into a one issue campaign on faith based schools. Though I disagree with this, it isn't a major concern, considering McGuinty's track record of outright lies and scandals. I'll say it, anybody that votes Liberal is simply an idiot. All they do is lie to you and take your money to give to their friends and to buy votes. If you vote for them, you deserve it, but I don't think it's fair to the other hard working people.

Howard Hampton put it correctly, trying to discuss the issues in this campaign is like trying to nail jello to a wall. So far, all McGuinty has done is discuss the faith based issue. That's despite long wait times, job losses, oppressive taxes, and a LONG list of broken promises from the 2003 election. Though I disagree with a lot of the NDP policies, Hampton seems to be the only strong leader who is willing to actually discuss the issues and what his party will actually do. All McGuinty does is toot his own horn about stuff he's never done. Opening, not closing hospitals?! What about trying to close Georgetown hospital and William Osler hospital in Brampton? Better education by dumbing down standardized tests to boost scores. He had to institute the health premium, the largest income tax increase in history, because he didn't know about the deficit?! He must have been the only person who didn't know about it. Has health care improved from the tax? Well, no it hasn't. No new nurses or doctors are being hired and wait times are still upwards of 9 hours in many hospitals. So basically, you're spending what amounts to 2-3 weeks worth of groceries to get no better service in return. Jobs lost, electricity rates going up, out of control urban sprawl, high tuition fees. All things McGuinty promised to change and never did. Why do we buy into this garbage that the Liberals keep feeding us? Why? Because the Liberals are good at telling people what they want. Ontarians, Torontonians in particular, are like lemmings, when one jumps off a cliff, the rest follow. Polls are putting the Liberals in a strong lead. I don't usually like to follow these polls since they're typically only focused on Toronto but they still paint a disturbing picture. Hopefully we'll end up with a minority government if the Liberals are given a win. If now, we're in for another four years of lies.

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