Attention Canadian Youth! Mike Thinks You're Morons

Seig heil to all my readers. I have now proclaimed myself the infallible ruler of the nation. Get ready to do my bidding. Ok, you're probably thinking at this point that I've gone right round the bend. Well it's not so crazy because it would probably be quite easy just to take over the country and make myself emperor of Canada. Especially given how blasé people are when it comes to their leadership, namely those under 25. If you're in that age group and you're reading this, my comments are obviously not directed at you. I got a chance to view CBC's "Screw the Vote" documentary today. Yes, I know it's five years old but judging by the reaction from the rest of the class, it's just as relevant today as it was back in 2004. The spoof "don't vote" campaign looked at why Canadians 18 to 25 have the lowest voter turnout out of any age group; 22% turnout at the time. The documentary annoyed and frustrated me. So I figured I'd do an unabashed writeup of the top five reasons why young people don't vote, then bust the BS wide open.

1. I'm too busy to vote
Whaaaa.... (cocks head like a dog that's head a strange noise). By law, all employers and schools must provide time to for their people to vote. A full hour I believe. Plus there are plenty of advanced polling stations that allow people to vote early. What on Earth could be so pressing in your personal life that you can't make time to drop a piece of paper into a box?! Ok, maybe if Grandma died I'd accept that excuse but seriously, nobody is so busy they can't take five minutes out of their day to determine the future of the entire country/province/city.

2. Voting is inaccessible
Polling stations are everywhere, heck they even have them on university/college campuses. Internet voting just dilutes to process into something akin to American Idol. Get up off your fat ass and drive five minutes to your nearest polling station. And for the love of god please don't tell me you're too busy to do that.

3. Youths/minorities are disenfranchised
"So yah, like, all the people in Ottawa are a bunch of old white men who don't represent my [insert race, ethnicity, religion, bohemian lifestyle of choice]." Uh huh. So not voting is the best way to get representation for your people? Well of course it works! I mean look at all those black people who didn't vote for Obama en mass... oh, bad example. Well we all know that Punjabi people in Brampton can't vote for Indian MPs.... oh, sorry, another bad example. This is the absolute largest pile of bullshit I've ever heard from young people and minority groups. The reason nobody in Ottawa is there to represent you is because you deliberately choose not to vote or run for office to protest that there's nobody in Ottawa to represent you. If you actually think not voting is the best way to encourage representation, you're a dumb ass.

4. My vote is wasted under the current system
Ok, you've already heard my rant about proportional representation. You want to change the system to get smaller parties in for more direct representation of the people by switching to a system where faceless representatives are picked from a list, written up by the same old white dudes you hate so much so they can get all their old white buddies in office. There's a vary good reason for keeping the fringe radicals out of the lime lite anyway, because it creates nightmarish deadlock and nothing gets done. So all you end up with is a bunch of crazies who answer to no one. Smaller ridings might help votes get better represented, or a "none of the above" option may help. Seriously though, a single vote counts a heck of a lot more than no vote at all.

5. Democracy is just a way to get the man to keep oppressing you
Yah, some people actually consider this a legitimate reason for not voting. Of course we cannot accuse Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Castro, Mao Zedong, Mugabe, the Taliban, Gadhafi, the Khamer Rouge, Pinochet, Ho Chi Mihn, Tojo, Franco, and Kim Jong Il of ever oppressing anyone, especially minorities. If you actually believe that not voting is the best way to stick it to the man, you're an ass hole. That's the best way to get the true dictators in power.

Note: My swearing here is a parody of the "Screw the Vote" documentary, which uses similar language. So much for the prim and proper CBC.

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Proportional Representation or How I Learned to Let Nutjobs Run the Country

Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May is once again pushing for proportional representation for the House of Commons. She feels the current system of "first past the post" elections are unfair to alternative parties. It's worth addressing this issue again since British Columbia recently voted in a referendum to switch their electoral system to the needlessly complex "single transferable vote" system. It was voted down of course since naturally, nobody understood it. It's hard to get excited about electoral systems but it ends up effecting us all. Arguably our current system has a lot of issues but is not nearly as problematic as the nightmare that proportional representation would be. Currently the candidate with the most votes wins their seat in parliament. Which ever party wins the most seats rules the House. Under proportional representation, rather than counting the number of votes for an individual candidate, only votes for the party are counted. The House of Commons has 308 seats. I'm going to use the figures from the 2008 election to show how this would work, rounding numbers off to make it easier.

Current System
Conservatives: 37.65% of popular vote, 143 seats
Liberals: 26.26%, 77 seats
NDP: 18.18%, 37 seats
Bloc: 9.98%, 49 seats
Greens: 6.78%, 0 seats
Independent: 0.69%, 0 seats
Christian Heritage: 0.19%, o seats
Marxist-Leninist: 0.06%, 0 seats
Libertarian: 0.05%, 0 seats

Proportional System
Conservatives: 37.65% of popular vote, 116 seats
Liberals: 26.26%, 81 seats
NDP: 18.18%, 55 seats
Bloc: 9.98%, 31 seats
Greens: 6.78%, 21 seats
Independent: 0.69%, 2 seats
Christian Heritage: 0.19%, 1 seats
Marxist-Leninist: 0.06%, 0 seats
Libertarian: 0.05%, 0 seats

I know this doesn't equal 308 but of course somebody can't have half a seat. However, you can see how the playing field changes when popular vote is factored in as a whole rather than per individual candidate. Left wing parties in parliament would have gained a significant amount of power had this system been in place. It especially benefits the greens who would have gone from no seats to 21. May sees proportional representation as a free ride to power. Some have argued that this would enhance democracy but like so many things, what looks good on paper doesn't always work in real life.

The biggest flaw with proportional representation is the question of accountability. Under the current system, members of parliament are directly accountable to their constituents. This is why people like Garth Turner, Wajid Khan, and Blair Wilson lost their seats in the last election. They betrayed the trust of their voters. Proportional representation completely wipes out the local riding system and local candidates in favour of a list. Parties draft this list of 308 names with the party leader at the top and the most favourable choices in descending order. The problem with this system is two fold. First of all, it separates the citizen from their representative. There is no local representative to contact as everyone is based in Ottawa. In a country as vast as Canada, a lot of issues would likely get ignored. If candidates are caught doing unscrupulous activities, it is up to the party to deal with them. The public has no say. While it is more democratic in terms of allowing smaller parties for a shot at seats, it removes a great deal of interaction between citizens and their government. Proportional representation is a system ripe for abuse. The second issue is one of patronage. A common complaint about the current system is that it fails to ensure that the best candidates for the job lead ministries. Proportional representation opens the door to changing that but the list based on favouritism is also widely open to abuse as party leadership moves their friends and biggest campaign contributors to the top, ensuring that they get seats regardless of whether they're qualified or not. The temptation to stack the list with patronage appointments is just too strong and opens the door for corruption combined with lack of accountability. This system in actuality is far less democratic than the current system. It may benefit May but it doesn't benefit us. Besides, the current system is hardly broken so why try to fix it?

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Another Conservative Minority, Garth Gets the Boot

Once again, I'm on a roll predicting election results. The Conservatives managed to not only obtain another minority government but also strengthened their standing from the previous parliament. It's not the result that conservative supporters wanted but the election worked out extremely well in their favour. The Harper Conservatives gained 19 seats from the previous election, just missing a majority by 12 seats. They hold 143 seats in parliament. According to the popular vote, the Conservatives lead the Liberals by eleven points holding at 37%. NDP leader Jack Layton also has a lot to be happy about. The New Democrats increased their number of seats by eight and now hold 37. Despite this, their popularity in terms of the popular vote is only up slightly.

The Liberals, however, don't have much to celebrate. As predicted, Stephane Dion pulled a John Tory with his highly controversial Green Shift. As I had said before, people are totally willing to care about the environment until it starts to inconvenience them. This likely swayed a number of people away from the Liberal party. During tough economic times, people do not want to hear they'll be paying more for something that will give them little to no personal dividends. Liberal support has plummeted. The Liberals lost 27 seats. While the other parties have held steady popular support, the Liberals dropped an astounding 4% in the polls. This just proves that the pre-election polls are not reliable as they had indicated we would see a vary close race. In reality, it was far from it. My guess would be that the Greens had been stealing a lot of Liberal votes. It's not surprising since both party platforms were almost identical. Elizabeth May has nothing to be happy about either, loosing the one seat they had illegitimately held in Parliament before the election. Their popular vote is up a mildly impressive 2.47%. Even without a Liberal candidate running against her, May was still unable to gain her own seat.
Voter turnout for the election, according to Elections Canada, was quite low. Only 59.1% of Canadians voted. There are approximately 23 million registered to vote. The low turnout could also have contributed to the Liberals drop with people simply not voting, or spoiling their ballot.

Another thing worth noting is that the saga of Garth Turner finally has ended. The rouge MP who betrayed his voters by crossing the floor of Parliament after promising he would not is no more. Garth took a pounding in his home riding of Halton, loosing out to handpicked Conservative candidate Lias Raitt. Garth lost by over 7000 votes, trailing Raitt by 12%. Halton riding had a voter turnout of 60%. Turner had become extremely arrogant during his term in office and in my opinion had done little for Halton other than embarrass us. This represents a major defeat for him. Other recent turncoats such as Wajid Khan (Streetsville) and Blair Wilson (West Vancouver) were also handed defeats. Khan lost to Liberal candidate Bonnie Crombie by 10%, or 7000 votes. Voter turnout in Streetsville was well below the national average at 53%. Recent Green party hero Wilson, who gave the Greens their first seat in Parliament by crossing the floor from the Liberals, was also given the boot. I think it's fair to say Wilson had his butt handed to him. Wilson lost by an incredible 14,000 votes to Conservative candidate John Wetson. Wetson beat out Wilson by a whopping 30 percent. Wilson did manage to narrowly beat out NDP candidate Bill Forst by 0.1%. Turnout in Vancouver West was higher than the national average at 63%. Not one of the recent floor crossers managed to retain their seat. (Belinda Stronach did not run in this election) I think this shows that Canadians have become vary intolerant of this act and the election results prove it. I believe it to be an affront to democracy. This process should be banned.

The next big question after this election is what will happen to Dion. The Toronto Sun is raising this question. Tom Axworthy, former principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau and chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen’s University, said: “The Liberal party has always given its leaders two chances. It never has not.” However, no Liberal predicted that they would loose so many seats, let alone suffer a huge drop in the popular vote. I am still predicting a leadership race within the Liberal Party in the near future, despite Axworthy's comments. Dion has proven himself not to be the right leader of the party. He hasn't exactly instilled a lot of confidence with Canadians. Dion is basically the Federal government's John Tory. He goofed with a hugely unpopular campaign promise combined with weak leadership and it dragged him down. The Liberals have far better candidates they could field as leader so it's a mystery why they choose Dion.

You can get the full official 2008 Election results on the Elections Canada website.

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Green Was the Flavour of the Month

For about the last thirty years, the environment has shifted into and out of the public sphere of concern. The 2008 Canadian federal election has brought it to the forefront in a big way for the first time in Canadian history. The Liberals and Greens are pushing harsh environmental reforms to stop "global warming". With all the fear mongering, guess who's leading the polls? Neither. In fact, the environment is what's sounding the death of the Liberal Party of Canada. At this point, they are at serious risk of collapsing into an insignificant fringe, just as Joe Clark's Tories did in the 1990s. For years we've been told to go green or else risk destroying the planet, and people believed it, so we thought. At first, 2008 seemed like it would be a banner year for the environmental movement, that is until a sting of unfortunate events happened.

First we saw an unusually cold and snowy winter, which brought record snowfalls to the Ontario, Quebec, and the US North-East. That was followed by a wettest summer in years with average temperatures after pro-global warming people predicted it would be the hottest and driest on record. In fact, this is the third year in a row where IPCC estimates where way off base. You can't just call that a casual, short term trend following their own logic. It proves definitively that the current models are wrong. Scientists who would try to dismiss that have their heads in the sand. These being the vary same people that call a typical week long summer heat wave definitive proof of anthropogenic global warming. However, to argue whether global warming exists or not is irrelevant at this point.

People like to join bandwagon causes, that is until something bigger comes along. Canadians and Americans are an easy enough people to read. They will join an cause only provided that they are not somehow inconvenienced by it. Until recently, the global warming movement sat just fine with people since they could feel good about themselves buying a Prius, organic local foods, and using "green" cleaners. This really didn't cost them anything or inconvenience them in anyway. Then things changed. In the United States, the sub-prime lending crisis reached critical mass as Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac went into receivership. They were followed by Washington Mutual and AIG. People are rather easy to frighten and the speech by George W Bush didn't help things much. People soon began imagining the return of bread lines and tent cities akin to the Great Depression of the 1930s. For years, we've been told that green policies will not hurt the economy. That may be true, if times are good. If times are bad, green is the economy's worst enemy. We already have Stephane Dion and Elizabeth May proposing carbon taxes that will hurt industry. We all know that when industry has to pay more tax, it does one of two things to cover it: it gets passed onto consumers, or employees get laid off. As costs rise, the standard of living drops. The carbon tax will have a negative effect on the economy. How much so is a moot point. The thing is that now people feel it to be a threat. They are now inconvenienced by the green movement to the point of having their jobs threatened. People don't give a rat's behind about helping the planet if they are poor and don't have a job. The threat of that has been enough to derail Dion's Green Shift. Human beings are naturally more interested in preserving themselves, to hell with everything else. The green movement is as I predicted, the flavour of the month. That month is now over as we entre a bitter economic winter. Green is dead and it's taking the Liberals down with it.

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Election 2008 Gaffe & Idiocy Tracker

People seem to like it when politicians make mistakes and embarrass their party. So lets track the gaffes just for fun. All parties welcome. If you find any, please post links to articles in the comments section.

First off, we have Lesley Hughes, a Liberal candidate for the riding of Kildonan-St Paul in Manitoba. A mother and writer, Lesley thinks September 11th was a joint conspiracy by the CIA and the Jews. So much for Liberal multiculturalism and political correctness.

Of course, what would the Gaffe Tracker be without something from good ol' Garth Turner. The much despised Liberal MP for the riding of Halton in Ontario. Whether he's faking going door-to-door campaigning, this rotund fifty something enjoys dinner by candlelight, long walks on the beach, and putting his opponents on "death watch".

Next we have Andrew McKeever, the NDP candidate in the riding of Durham Ontario calling US war deserters "crybabies". An irony for a party that wants to pull out all troops from Afghanistan immediately.

Lee Richardson, the Conservative candidate for Calgary Centre blames crime on immigrants.

Stephane Dion thinks his own party members should be ignored.

While Steven Harper is being blasted for saying Canadians can't relate to artists who attend "rich galas".

NDP candidate Julian West from BC has been removed by the party for exposing the naked truth.

More to come!

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Liberal Promises Tip the Scale at $80 billion

According to the National Post, Liberal campaign promises have topped the $80 billion mark. That's $80 billion in additional spending on top of what the government currently sends out. Comparatively, the Conservatives have promised $2 billion and the NDP $16 billion. Liberal spending promises work out to be roughly an additional $2484 per Canadian. The big question is where the Liberals are going to get that money. The carbon tax is starting to make more sense now. While Keynesian economics states its a good idea to spend during hard economic times, you can't spend money you don't have and you can't take more money from people who don't have it. Of course that's assuming the Liberals would follow through on their promises, which I seriously doubt they would. Canadians couldn't afford the tax hike to pay for it, meaning that the country would likely be put further into debt and deficit by these plans. Who says the environment wouldn't put heavy costs on our economy.

The desparity between the other two parties and the Liberals is also worth noting. The Liberals are promising 5 times the spending than the their next closest rival. Do the NDP and the Conservatives know something they don't? Yep, it's that the government can't afford it. I wonder how long it will be before Dion uses the McGuinty defence when he has to break promises and raise income and corporate taxes.

Source: National Post

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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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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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Liberal, NDP Platforms a Joke

This election is turning into a three ring circus. There are no strong leaders and even weaker platforms. All three major parties have successfully managed to outrage me. The Liberals themselves are up to their usual antics. Dalton once again claimed he would not raise taxes, but according to CTV, when pressed by reporters he refused to make that promise on camera. This is a major red flag. He says he will review the controversial health tax, but has already refused to reduce or repeal it, making a review pointless cajoling of the electorate. For the spending McGuinty is doing, tax increases are very likely in the near future. I expect the same round of broken promises as we say last time around.
The liberals also plan a province wide ban on cosmetic pesticides. Products which are safe and legal according to the federal government. Such a ban would put hundreds of landscapers out of a job. Most of the other pledges are attempts to buy votes. $300 for university and college students for text books. A little too late for me. Another $3.1 billion by 2011 to an already well funded education system, likely for the sole purpose of increasing teacher salaries. I expect very little of that would actually end up in the class room. Also a ban on trans fats in school cafeterias. Also he plans to cut the PST on bicycles and helmets. Why not cut the PST on necessities instead like say food and clothing? Many US states don't pay sales tax on those items. From the looks of it, this platform seems to be targeting a specific group. It's heavy on the environment and social services, stuff that's only important too... you guessed it, the City of Toronto. Well not so much the city itself but the crunchy granola types that live there. Interestingly enough, there was no word of a financial bail out for the city, perhaps the only smart decision McGuinty has made. However, like so many Liberal election plans, Ontario ends at the Toronto city limits.

Now for the NDP. They're big on the environment. I've been repeatedly questioning why this is even an issue. One NDP plan is good, rapid rail on busy routes, though I expect only for Toronto. Howie also wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions by closing all coal power plants. One thing missing is new power plants. It's amazing that in such a society that it totally dependent on electricity that anybody would even consider reducing supply. Also he want to cut emissions on the road. I'm not sure what that means. The news report on CFRB didn't go into depth about it. In my opinion, the environment is not an important issue considering all the other crap that's been going on.

I still hold onto my 10 things I would like to see that I wrote back in June. So far no party is offering anything close. I have to say that the 2007 Ontario election is offering up the worst crop of politicians since the Peterson/Miller/Ray days. Unfortunately the alternatives to the big three don't have a snowball's chance in hell so it leaves many big questions of who to pick, or whether to vote at all. I cannot bring myself not to vote but I expect low turn out this time around. On that, I say this to McGuinty: a low voter turn out does not mean you're doing a good job.

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Religious School Funding a Bad Idea

I think this is one of the first election's I've experienced where I did not know who to vote for. It seems that all three candidates running for the major parties are poor. I usually vote conservative but John Tory has struck a nerve with me on the issue of religion and schools. I consider myself a secular conservative, a Libertarian Republican to borrow a US term.

I strongly believe that church and state should be separated. To use an extreme example, take a look at Iran of pre-2001 Afghanistan. The merging of church and state clearly has been a negative for those countries. Here we try to keep them apart, and so we should. That is why Tory's plan to extend funding to faith based schools bothers me. There are two reasons why it does. First of all, why do we need multiple education systems when the public system is fine as it is. School is supposed to prepare one for higher education or the job market, not for religious instruction. That's what church is supposed to be for. I have been a strong opponent of the Catholic school system for that reason. I'm not one of these people who wants "God" removed out of every government context like many atheists in the US however, I don't think its unreasonable to keep it out of schools. This is yet another case of multiculturalism run amok. This country spends way too much time and effort trying to please everyone, which is impossible.

Secondly, there are also numerous economic factors that make this a huge problem. The Ontario government spends a huge chunk of the budget on public education. Despite what Liberals and teachers would have you believe, it is a very well funded system. However, full funding to faith based schools would put a serious strain on the budget. Now you may be saying "But Mike, I choose which school I pay for through my property taxes." Maybe so but 100% of education is not funded that way. Most money goes into a single pot and is dolled out according to what these schools "need". They'll all want new buildings, their own texts, supplies, hire their own staff, etc. to fulfill their "special needs" as a faith based institution. All that costs money, money that has to come from somewhere. By doing this, we will cheapen the public system and then we really will have funding issues. I don't like the idea of my tax dollars going to fund a system that supports something I don't believe in. My tax dollars don't fund the local church or mosque. Why should they go to find religious schools?

Yet another thing regarding religion and schools mentioned by Tory as also upset me. He supports creationism in schools. In an article with the Toronto Sun, he noted that he supports evolution as part of the Ontario curriculum but also would like to see students learn about the alternatives. The problem with these "alternatives" is that they have absolutely no scientific merit. Where are we, Kansas? Evolution is a proven scientific theory. Creationism, or intelligent design, or what ever the hell you want to call it has no place in public schools.

I want Mike Harris back.

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Family Day?

Wow, just... wow. The Liberals actually think that making a statutory holiday in February will get Ontarians to give them their vote. While I've seen many tactics for buying votes, I have to say this is a new one. I have to say that this both disgusts and insults me at the same time. Quite a feat.

The sad part is, the Liberals may be onto something. The fact that this is even being discussed is a great piece of social commentary. It just goes to show how full of ourselves we must be that the Liberals would even consider this to have even an off chance of working.
The cause for these desperation tactics has become obvious. Back in January, I predicted that the Ontario Liberals would receive a minority government in the October election. Sure enough, that's where they stand right now. They hold 40% of the popular vote, which just stuns me after all the crap they've pulled, but this still isn't enough to claim a majority of seats in the legislature. The Liberals are hinging this holiday on that. They say that they will only make Family Day a statutory holiday if they are given a majority. This is essentially blackmailing voters.

Will this tactic work? Who knows. An informal internet poll done by CTV (with 350 respondents as of right now) shows that 69% will not change their vote based on this. Still, 31% said they would. While this only reflects CTV viewers, it presents a nice snapshot of our society. At least 108 people can be bought with something so cheap and selfish. It also seems to be an integral part of what's amounting to a poorly managed political campaign being put forth by the Liberals. In essence, McGuinty is just throwing last minute money at people in hopes of buying votes. This has what the Liberals have done time after time (more notably at the federal level) yet people still keep falling for it.

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Want My Vote? 10 Things that Need to Change

We're coming up to another Ontario election and boy, we're in quite a mess. McGuinty hasn't exactly been honest with the public and has made many questionable decisions. So, here's a list of 10 realistic things that need to be done to fix Ontario.

1. Eliminate the Health Tax: The controversial "health care premium" enacted by McGuinty after promising not to raise taxes. Ontarians on average are paying $900 more in tax to the province while the health system has seen little improvement. Scrap it.

2. Eliminate the City of Toronto Act: This act gave Toronto special privleges and taxing powers. So far, Toronto's socialist city council has been abusing it and threatens to tax the city into the ground. Does Toronto really need all that power? It's also highly unfair to other communities that end up paying the bulk of the cash used to fund the cities projects.

3. Return Municipal Terms to 3 Years: McGuinty, in order to suck up to David Miller, made municipal council terms four years instead of three. Four years is far too long a term for those positions in my opinion and makes councils even less accountable.

4. Keep Coal Plants Open: Coal fired generating stations should remain in operating indefinitely. Clean coal technology should be put into place to cut smog if that's such a big concern. McGuinty's concept of forced conservation needs to stop. Smart meters should also be eliminated. Lakeview power plant in Mississauga also needs to be reopened and we need more nuclear plants to keep up with demand caused by excess development.

5. Improve Transit Outside of Toronto: Every time McGuinty announces a new transit plan, it only benefits Toronto while ignoring other growing communities. GO service on the Milton line (which services two major cities) for example needs to be more regular. It's also time to plan for the future. Diesel GO trains should be phased out in favour of high speed electric trains. This type of train which is used extensively in the United States and Europe and can travel up to three times as fast as the current diesel models; and they build them in Canada! There's a lot of talk but we need to stop being afraid to invest in infrastructure.

6. Reduce Fees for Higher Education: It has been recently found that certain user fees colleges and universities have been charging are illegal. All incidental fees that do not directly fund education (ones that fund so called "campus life") should be either optional or eliminated all together.

7. Quit Dumbing Down Education: School is a place to learn, not a place to pad standardized exam results to make Ontario students look better than they are. We need to make schools more student friendly, unlike what has happened in recent years that's made them teacher-centric again. Teachers are there to do a job and they should be fired if they cannot do it. Let their union whine. We're only selling short our kid's futures if we let them have their way. We also need to make school boards more fiscally accountable.

8. Slow GTA Development: GTA growth is happening at an out of control pace due to corrupt municipal councils. Make the Green Belt means something and put the breaks on urban sprawl.

9. Get Tough on Crime: Ok, so Ontario doesn't make the laws in the criminal code but it doesn't mean that it can't fund police better. The OPP also needs to be made more accountable as in the past couple of years, they've become increasingly incompetent.

10. Fix the Health Mess: Americans often tout our health system and we sure like to toot our own horns about it but it's certainly not something to be proud of in its current state. People, even those in serious need, often get ignored in emergency rooms for hours on end, or have to wait months for badly needed surgery. Start opening up some private clinics to ease the burden and try and encourage more clinics into communities that lack them. Many people end up in the ER because they lack family doctors and have nowhere else to turn, which is what's causing the ER crunches. The health system needs reform, not more money.

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If it Ain't Broken...

The McGuinty Liberals have been proposing some electoral reforms throughout their tenure in office. Of course you all know about the fixed election dates, which was a good idea. Their latest one however, is highly questionable.

Do you know what a mixed member proportional government is? No? I didn't think so. Well it's an electoral system. The one we use now is commonly referred to as first past the post, where the person with the most votes wins. They don't have to have the majority of the popular vote, just the most votes. Mixed member proportional is similar. Here's the mechanics of the new system. The current Legislative Assembly in Ontario would be expanded from 109 seats to 129 seats. 90 of these seats would continue to use the old system. The remaining seats would use proportional representation. Mexico uses this system for its Chamber of Deputies (the lower house), remember that, it's important.
Proportional systems work like this. When you go to the ballot box, you'll have to vote twice. One for a person for your riding as you already do now, and again for a party. The remaining 39 seats will be divided up by this second vote. Say the Liberals get 40% of the popular vote, the Conservatives 30%, the NDP 20%, and the Greens 10%. The 39 seats would then be divided up to directly reflect those numbers. The Liberals would get 16 seats, and so on. Who gets to fill these seats is chosen from party lists. A party selects 39 people and ranks them from first to last choice. In the above example, the Liberals would choose the top 16 people from the list. Voters have no input on who gets on those lists.

The first obvious question about this system is why. Well, the idea is to give fringe parties such as the greens some representation in the legislature. It is argued that it gives more fairness since in a multi-party system, it is unlikely that one party would receive the required 50% plus one to give them a true majority. However, is this system really necessary in Ontario? No. There's nothing really wrong with the current system in terms of how our leaders are elected. If the Liberals want to reform something to make the system more fair and equal, try getting rid of that silly party discipline rule. Secondly, the lists would just reek of patronage positions and elitism. Gordon donated $1,000,000 to the party so he's at the top of the list. Frank is my buddy so he's definitely going on there. How is that fair to voters when they don't even get to choose the people who will represent them? Back to Mexico. The system for their Chamber of Deputies was created by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a highly corrupted party that has similar ideology to the Liberals here. They set up the system for the same supposed reasons, but twisted it to make sure they would always get the majority of proportional seats. What's stopping the Liberals from doing the same here?

Mixed member proportional representation is just a bad system, plain and simple. It confuses voters it will do nothing to improve democracy. A referendum will be held during the next provincial election in October regarding the issue. Now that you know how it works, be smart and vote no.

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