Lawrence Cannon, no friend of Canadians

As the Tories launch their latest round of plans to secure a majority government, they might find getting off the ground is easier if you first get rid of the anvil sitting in the luggage bay.

The anvil in question is Lawrence Cannon, our federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, and no friend of Canadian citizens travelling abroad. In this weekend's Globe, both Rex Murphy and Gerald Caplan eloquently describe Cannon's bungling and bizarre comments that make clear his inability to stand up for the citizens his government is supposed to represent. If law-abiding Canadians find themselves in trouble abroad, who can they count on if not their own government?

The latest mistake -- trapping Toronto woman Suaad Hagi Mohamud in Kenya after Canadian officials wrongly denied she was Canadian -- has resulted in a $2.5 million dollar suit against the government. Abdelrazik, the Canadian citizen trapped in Sudan for over six years until a court forced the government to bring him home, will likely cost the government millions more. Money of course doesn't make up for the grief and trauma experienced by the victims.

While we can't personally blame the Minister for every mistake made, it's his inability to speak up and resolve issues that we should question. In some cases, his department is
completely silent when dialogue with a foreign government is clearly warranted. In the case of Abdelrazik, for reasons still never thoroughly explained, his department deliberately created additional roadblocks to prevent the citizen's return home.

The question now is how much more will this Minister cost Canadians before he finds the exit?

Polling mysticism

So today's poll has the Tories "flirting with a majority." Now wait... didn't yesterday's poll have them in "a dogfight" with the Liberals?

Apparently, yesterday's competitive Liberals are now suddenly today's underdogs fighting even to stay above historic party lows (of which their reported 27% would certainly be). The NDP, whose 12% in today's poll put them well below their 2006 support levels, were just two weeks ago at 19% and apparently well-positioned to make gains. Back then, the Greens found themselves at 7%, a standing barely above their 2006 election result and far short of their apparent rapid ascendance to 13% in the latest poll.

As political observers, we all ooh and ahh at each new horse race figure that's printed in the papers, trying to read into the numbers some sort of truth about who's ahead and who's behind and who's going to be sorry and who's going to be rewarded. The art of poll watching has taken on an almost mystical quality, with its high priests quick to ascribe some dramatic trend or, in some cases, validate the various notions and myths their particular political tribe feels a need to hold on to (which includes partisan false bravado).

For political junkies, prognosticating election results after every poll makes for fun exercise, but it's fairly pointless, for a number of reasons:

• First, most of us who read about polls regularly know some of the reasons that poll numbers jump around: sampling (± a certain percentage, 19 times out of 20) and various sorts of non-sampling errors, and the way survey questions are asked (debates continue about what question wording best replicates how voters are likely to respond upon arriving at the polling booth, something that Blackberry Addicts were never exactly shy about raising).


• Second, polls taken in between elections are often more about party brands than they are about the true competitive standing of each party relative to one another. It's what I often call a "parking lot" effect, in which poll respondents instinctively "park" their vote in between elections. Asked by a pollster who they'll vote for and they'll tend to blurt out whatever party brand they roughly associate with or that happens to be top of mind. The Liberals and Greens tend to be beneficiaries of this tendency in most parts of Canada.


• Third, pre-election campaign polls don't take into account party organization, finances, gaffes or infighting, strategic positioning, the name recognition of incumbent "star" candidates, media exposure, and party messaging, all of which play a huge role in that complex game of chess that plays itself out in each election campaign.
  

For these reasons, the hype that follows most polls tends to be pretty hollow. A better analysis might take into account some of the above factors.

The Greens, currently buoyant in most polls, have considerably less ground organization, campaign experience, cash resources, star candidates, or media exposure than the other three national parties and will almost surely sink when the next election campaign goes live. Nik Nanos, of SES Research, suggests that the Greens typically drop 1/3 of their vote from the last poll to the actual election. That's after the deflation of the Green balloon that's likely to occur during the campaign itself.

The Liberals, in their current state of endless infighting, fundraising difficulties, mass retirement of MPs and loss of valuable potential candidates, to name just a few of their problems, had best shape up and fast if they expect to hold the 27% to 35% the polls currently peg them at.

Worse for the party is the unenviable position they keep backing themselves into: critiquing the government but then doing all they can to make sure it isn't defeated. For them, voting to defeat the government in a confidence motion means risking catastrophic losses in an election (for some of the reasons noted above), yet supporting the government or abstaining from confidence motions means branding themselves as a "weak" opposition that has little alternative agenda to that of the government.

A weak, indistinct, vision-less Liberal Party is one that's going to find itself wedged in an election between the Conservatives and the NDP when centre-right Liberals find they have no reason to vote for a "me too" Liberal rather than a Tory and when centre-left Liberals find that the alternative vision they're looking for lies only with the NDP. Is it any wonder, then, that the Tories and NDP are literally trying to goad the Liberals into an election, while the Liberals are finding ever new and interesting ways to contort themselves in an attempt to avoid just that?

We live in very interesting times.

Photo: a map of the 2006 federal election results.

Another myth busted

Tories always like to go on about how they're the most fiscally responsible of the parties. A lot of Tories even identify this one issue as their reason for being Tory. It's not surprising then that Tories seem to always be convincing themselves that the NDP is secretly spending wads of money and driving us ever closer to bankruptcy and economic ruin. Popular culture even seems to support this: supposedly, if you're on the left, you're a do-good spender; if you're on the right, you're a prudent saver.

If the current election campaign is any indication, the idea of fiscally prudent Tories is a myth. With ten days to go in the campaign, the Tories are well ahead of the NDP in spending promises. According to Michael Benarroch, chair of the department of economics at the University of Winnipeg, the value of Tory spending and tax cuts is now up to $888 million. Promised tax cuts and new spending by the NDP, in comparison, total $400 million. Even the Liberals, who have no hope of achieving official party status, much less of forming government, have promised less than the Tories.

These are big numbers, but what do they mean? Well, the 2007-8 Manitoba budget forecasts $11.8 billion in revenue (to $11.6 billion in spending). Tory promises add up to 7.5% of budgeted revenue, more than double the NDP's 3.4%.

The real question is how will the Tories pay for their promises? I'd like to know what programs they'll axe, what assets they'll sell, or what taxes they'll raise or user fees implement to make up for their 7.5% bite out of the provincial budget -- or do they even know? If the Tories aren't that serious about winning, it would explain how they feel they can promise the sun, the moon, and Winnipeg Jets stars to anyone and everyone in the hopes of picking up a few seats. So much for Tory prudence, fiscal or otherwise.

It's the sort of Tory campaigning that makes even Tories not want to vote Tory. Just ask the federal Conservative Party, whose apparent embrace of social spending, Quebec and the environment has some party loyalists mulling over whether to refound the old Reform Party. No word on whether they've also approached Jean Chrétien to succeed Stephane Dion as Liberal leader.

No, the reality is that Tories don't mind spending our tax dollars at all. They don't even mind pouring those dollars right out the window, as long as they're going to pay for the right things. I'm still working out the Tory list of good and bad spending, but here's a summary of what I have so far:

Bad spending: social programs, housing, water stewardship, public education, poverty-reduction, pro-active solutions to crime

Good spending: tax cuts for Tuxedo-ites, selling off public telecoms at firesale prices, overpriced American health care consultants, new jails, bailouts for venture capital fund investors, $180 million private sports franchises

Ten days to go and the Tories are at $888 million. Will the Tories' promises surpass the $1 billion mark? In this election, just who should we worry about breaking the bank?

And the race is on...

Lots of posting today!

Tories fail to run full slate of candidates

There are sure to be some red faces in the Tory backrooms today. Nominations have closed and, after falling short in Flin Flon, the party was unable to field a full slate of candidates in the election.

Rightly or wrongly, the ability to run a full slate of candidates is almost always taken as a key indicator of whether a party is organized and serious about winning or whether it's a fringe party. Even the struggling Liberal Party, which was unable to run a full slate in 1999, was able to secure a name on the ballot in all 57 constituencies this time around. This is a big blow to Tories, indeed.

The race in Flin Flon will now be fought between NDP incumbent Gerrard Jennissen and Liberal challenger Garry Zamzow. That's if you can really call it a race: Jennissen took 73% of the vote in the last election.

The failure to run a full slate will be especially hard for the Tories' reputation in northern Manitoba. In some election campaigns, the Tory leader doesn't even visit the north. Now, long accused of neglecting and ignoring the north, the Tories won't even be offering residents of part of that region the chance to to vote for them.

Adieu, Monsieur Rocan

Longtime former Tory MLA Denis Rocan didn't follow through with his threat to run in the provincial election. He had suggested possibly running as an independent against Hugh McFadyen in Fort Whyte. The other obvious option for him would have been to run as an independent in Carman, where he was challenged and defeated for the Tory nomination. Frankly, running in Carman (where the Conservatives got 52% of the vote in 2003) would've been his best shot at winning.

I have to say I think Denis Rocan is a pretty decent guy, having met him once in the 90s. I could probably never vote for him myself, but I've heard he was a solid representative and hard worker in Carman. It didn't seem to do him much good within the Tory ranks, however -- he was booted out first as the candidate when he lost the nomination race and then from the caucus after he broke ranks and supported the NDP's budget.

Wellington recap

The race in Wellington continues to attract a lot of media attention, especially now that former New Democrats Conrad Santos and Joe Chan are running as independents against their old party. Flor Marcelino, the NDP's candidate and editor of the Philippine Times, looks like a great candidate. She'll do well.

The little parties

In addition to the three most established parties, the Green Party and the Communist Party are running candidates. The Greens will be on the ballot in 15 constituencies, while the Communists will be an option in six. The voters in Fort Rouge will have the most choice in this election, with six candidates to choose from: a New Democrat, a Conservative, a Liberal, a Green, a Communist, and an Independent.

The Green Party leader, Andrew Basham, is running directly against Premier Gary Doer in his constituency of Concordia. Andrew Basham's mother, whose basement he apparently still lives in, is running in Wolseley, where the Greens captured about 19% of the vote in 2003. After the infighting that's plagued the Greens since then and the NDP's general dominance of the environment as an issue, there's little hope they'll be able to even come close to repeating their 2003 result.

Manitoba's Communist Party, a perennial competitor and probably the most active such party in Canada, is also running. Most of its candidates are the same names that appear on the ballot election after election.

I once spent a little while chatting with Darrell Rankin, the party's leader, after he happened to knock on my door in one election. As a candidate, he struck me as quite interesting, engaging and intelligent. I wasn't quite as impressed with the party pamphlet -- complete with a headline praising the regime in North Korea -- that he left behind.

A day at the races

I'll be posting some seat-by-seat predictions in the very near future. However, I may wait to see what the next provincial poll numbers are before weighing in on the really close races.

My guess is that, with the relatively sleepy pace of the campaign so far and the inability of the Tories to land any punches, the next poll will show an increase in NDP support over the last poll, with the Liberals and others down a couple points each, and the Tories holding steady. Then I expect the NDP to come out a few points below those numbers on the night of May 22. My assumption is that there are many fickle and wishy-washy voters who, once alone in the dim light of the polling booth, will vote for change regardless of who's in power or how well they've done.

The last poll before the campaign started showed the NDP and Tories neck-and-neck at 40%, with the Liberals at 15%, and others holding what's left. To compare, the NDP received 49% in the last election, with the Tories getting 36%, the Liberals 13%, and others 1%. If the poll numbers stay as they are when people vote, it's likely the NDP would be re-elected with a majority by winning a pile of Winnipeg seats by a small margin, while the Tories stack up giant majorites in places like Steinbach, Emerson, and Pembina.

In the next poll, the Liberal numbers will be the ones to watch: provincially, the Liberals almost always fall during the campaign, which tends to benefit the NDP. The Tories usually have the best chance of winning when centre-left voters are split between the NDP and the Liberals. If the Liberals buck the trend and creep upward, it may cut into NDP votes in southern Winnipeg and toss those seats to the Tories. In contrast, if the Liberals sink below the 13% they got in the past two elections, the NDP may be able to pick up Inkster from the Liberals as well as Southdale and Kirkfield Park from the Tories.

To compare with 2003, the pre-campaign polls then put the NDP ahead at 44%, with the Conservatives at just 30% and the Liberals at 21%. Mid-campaign polls showed the NDP surge to 51% and 55%, while the Liberal numbers dropped off and the Tory numbers stayed static. On election day, the Tories "pulled" their vote well and ended up with 36%, still well behind the NDP's 49%.

A second thing to watch in the next poll will be the Winnipeg/non-Winnipeg split in the numbers. The last study showed the NDP down 8 points in Winnipeg and down 15 points outside of Winnipeg compared to the last election. If the party picks up, will it be in one region or both?

Astonishing facts

Emerson and Springfield, now both staunchly Tory seats, were once NDP seats.

In 1973, Steve Derewianchuk, the NDP candidate in Emerson, took 2,374 votes, beating out the Tory with 1,937 votes and the Liberal with 1,768 votes. The victory was relatively short-lived, however: Albert Driedger regained the seat for the Tories in 1977. Driedger later went on to represent Steinbach in the legislature. In Emerson in 2003, the Tories took 59% of the vote to 21% for the Liberals and 19% for the NDP.

Rene Toupin won Springfield for the NDP in 1969 and 1973, but lost it in 1977. Andy Anstett narrowly regained the seat for the NDP in 1981, only to lose it to Tory Gilles Roch by 55 votes in 1986. Almost immediately after being re-elected as a Tory in 1988 (and being subsequently denied a cabinet post), Roch crossed the floor to join Sharon Carstairs's Liberals, which had just become the Official Opposition. The Tories easily regained the seat in 1990 and have held it ever since with ever-increasing majorities, which come largely due to an influx of wealthy Tory voters into new subdivisions in places like Oakbank. In 2003, the Tories won the seat with 61% of the vote, to the NDP's 31%.

Tory justice: lock up the poor

If the Tories get elected to government on May 22, we're going to need to find ourselves some Robin Hoods real soon.

In case you missed it: on Sunday, Sheriff Hugh unveiled plans to lock up Manitoba's poor.

I am not making this up. Here's the 411 on the Tory plan:

Q. What's the gist of this proposed Tory plan?

A. Under a Tory government, anyone with a previous conviction for certain types of charges will be denied legal aid.

Q. Will this really mean that the poor will be disproportionately and unfairly locked up?

A. The Canadian Bar Association's position on legal aid is that, "without legal aid, the most disadvantaged people in our society would be effectively barred from protecting their rights and interests through the legal system. Our sense of justice and democracy demands that this barrier be removed." (thanks to Curtis Brown for this source - check out his comments on the issue).

Q. So what's the rationale for the Tories' plan, anyway?

A. Apparently, they believe it will generate cost savings: “Manitobans should not be held financially responsible for the crimes of gang members and drug dealers,” said McFadyen. “After just one conviction, lawyers will be on their dime.”

Q. How much does it cost to incarcerate a person?

A. According to StatsCan's Juristat (quoted by prisonjustice.ca) it costs $259.05 per prisoner per day to incarcerate a federal prisoner and $141.78 per prisoner per day to incarcerate a provincial prisoner. That comes to about $95,000 per year for a federal prisoner and $52,000 for a provincial prisoner -- far more than the average per-case cost for Legal Aid, which ranges from $223 to $12,564 depending on the type of charge, according to Legal Aid Manitoba).

Under the Tory plan, expect incarceration rates to rise -- incarcerate just a few people who'd otherwise have been acquitted in a fair trial and so much for your cost savings!

Q. Will the Tory legal aid policy take more criminals off the streets?

A. Consider first what the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has to say.

Section 10 (b) states: "Everyone has the right on arrest or detention to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to be informed of that right."

Sec. 11 (d) states: "Any person charged with an offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal."

It's not unreasonable to conclude that the Tory policy increases the possiblity of an accused person who DOES represent a threat to society walking free if they can prove or if the judge decides that their right to a fair trial was violated due to inadequate legal representation. Expect the opposite to happen a lot more, too: more David Milgaards, Donald Marshall Jrs., and Guy Paul Morins.

Q. Who in Manitoba is most likely to get locked up under the Tories's plan?

A. Aboriginal Manitobans, who have average lower incomes than the provincial average, will be disproportionately affected. Aboriginal people in Manitoba make up 14% of the general population (according to the 2001 census), yet are 70% of the total prisoner population (in 2004-5, according to Juristat; quoted by prisonjustice.ca). According to Aboriginal People in Manitoba 2000, the share of women prisoners who are aboriginal is even higher than the male share.

For the Tories to launch into a tough-on-crime, let's-get-rid-of-legal-aid tirade without speaking to these issues smacks of a rather ugly sort of intolerance in their ranks. I'd say it's suprising, but then the 1988 report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry did lie gathering dust through three terms of Tory government.

Q. So what should we do if the Tories somehow manage to get elected on May 22?

A. Hope that Robin Hood, Little John and Friar Tuck make their way here from Sherwood Forest, and fast. The poor are going to need their help.

Update...

The race in Wellington became more interesting probably mere moments after I posted on it. The Free Press today reports that NDP candidate Angie Ramos has withdrawn from the race. Flor Marcelino, the publisher and editor of the Philippine Times newspaper, will apparently be the new candidate. The party has until May 8 to nominate or appoint the candidate, find 100 folks in the community to sign the nomination papers, and file them with Elections Manitoba. Despite the ongoing drama, the party will win the seat easily as predicted in my last post.

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I have to commend Blackberry Addicts for their post today on Hugh's ridiculous attempts to be taken seriously on the crime issue. See also Dan Lett's clever take on the issue of Winnipeg as crime-ridden here and here.

Tories will tell you that crime is rising even when it isn't. They'll also tell you their punitive prescription is the road to lower crime, when every study on the subject points to the opposite. Real solutions are unfortunately a lot more complex than Hugh playing tough guy.

This debate reminds me of a hilarious take on the Tory world view, dubbed the "Tory cycle of life" (from Liberal blogger Centre of Canada):

Stage 1: Pre-Conception - Every Sperm is Sacred
Stage 2: Gestation - Abortion is Murder
Stage 3: Birth to Age 6 - Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child.
Stage 4: Age 6 to Age 12 - Lay on the Lash
Stage 5 Age12 and Older - Hang’em High

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Manitoba Hydro and McFadyen's Tories

In the last week, we've heard a lot of debate about whether Hugh would privatize Manitoba Hydro once elected Premier.

The NDP was the first to raise the issue by warning voters that, regardless of what the Tories promise, they will privatize Hydro. The Tories countered by saying simply that they'd never, ever do such a thing. The Filmon Tories said exactly the same thing in the 1995 election about MTS, promptly before selling that, the NDP point out. It sure doesn't help the Tories' case that Hugh was one of the architects of the Filmon government's privatization of MTS and an alleged advisor to the Ontario government on their experiment with privatizing Hydro.

In a bid to reassure us all, the Tories actually held a big press conference, handed out bottles of water, and spent what amounts to one campaign day to announce they'd pass a "Legacy Act" that would essentially prevent Hydro from ever being sold. It's a risky move, but it's one that will probably pay off, I think.

In an otherwise funny take on the issue, Curtis Brown describes it as being "as defensive a posture as you'll ever see in a political campaign," which is never the place a campaign wants to be. Of course, bending over backwards to address the issue loudly and clearly while the campaign is still in its early days almost certainly blunts the "they'll sell Hydro" attacks in the coming weeks.

So will the Tories sell Manitoba Hydro?

It seems to me the debate thus far has missed the boat a little. Reviewing track records, resumes and personal blog posts are all fine, but when I reflect on whether a party will keep a particular promise if elected, I turn to what I know about their ideals and what the party stalwarts believe and preach daily. Tories of the modern variety believe in privatization. It's a fundamental tenet for them that the market is the best allocator of labour, investment capital, wheat and other commodities and -- yes -- hydro-electric power.

Elect the Tories and they may not sell Hydro in their first term, and maybe not even in their second term, but given enough political capital, they will sell it. You can bet the bank (or public utility) on that.