Drawing Winnipeg's new electoral divisions

Like clockwork, that decennial ritual has begun again. The creaks and groans of the long-cold body can only mean it's beginning to stir. Soon, arisen, it will reclaim the mantle it once knew and the power it can still taste. That’s right; as readers of Curtis Brown's blog will know by now, the Electoral Divisions Boundaries Commission is back, and it will be sure to draw amazement from some and strike fear into the hearts of others.

Cheesy metaphors aside, I noted last year in my post-provincial election post that the redistribution of electoral boundaries will set off some pretty intense jockeying among incumbents over who gets to run where, particularly in regions where a seat has been eliminated. For example, in a region where five MLAs of one party see their seat count reduced to four over the same geographic region, you can bet it'll lead to some heated poll number-scanning, political organizing, and quiet deal-making. It’s Survivor: Manitoba for political junkies - literally, provincial politicians will be getting voted off the island.

I’m too intrigued by the whole process to wait patiently for the Commission to come up with their first set of proposed maps, so I’ve taken a close look at the numbers they've provided, which are based on the 2006 census data, to speculate on what they're likely to propose. While southern Manitoba is likely to see some dramatic redrawing of boundaries, I started first with my observations on Winnipeg. I'll consider non-Winnipeg and political implications of the demographic changes in future posts.

Winnipeg overview

I stated in my post last year that I thought the City of Winnipeg would see its share of the 57 seats go up from 31 to 32. However, based on the numbers, I no longer think that will be the case.

Based on the 2006 census data, the population of the city’s current 31 seats divided by the population quotient provided by the commission gives the city 31.44 seats, on average. Given that seats north of 53° (of which there are currently four) are allowed to be significantly below the quotient (with all other seats within 10% of 21,147), Winnipeg should stand a little above the quotient, which means the same 31 seats it’s had for the last ten years. By 2018, the number will likely move up again.

Within the city, the seats with the largest populations are Fort Whyte (a whopping 47% over the quotient), Southdale (22% over quotient), Seine River (15% over quotient), and Kildonan (7% over quotient). The smallest is St. Norbert (7% below quotient). What I found most interesting was that inner city seats are all very close to the quotient. It seems to me that in the last couple of redistributions, the inner city lost considerable numbers of voters and saw seats disappear as a result. This time, with an apparently more stable population, the inner city thankfully isn’t likely to lose any MLAs.

So if it’s clear that south Winnipeg -- driven by Fort Whyte, Seine River and Southdale -- must see improved representation, but that the city will stay at 31, where will the extra representation come from? The only reasonable answer is that existing constituency boundaries will be dragged southward to accommodate the growth in the south. My map's arrows (click on the map to get a larger, more readable version) and accompanying discussion illustrate what I speculate will happen.

East Winnipeg

On the east side of the Red River, there are 11 seats. Of these, seven (River East, Rossmere, Concordia, St. Boniface, St. Vital, Riel, and Transcona) are about 1,000 below the quotient, while Elmwood is close to the quotient, Radisson is above by about 1,000, and Seine River and Southdale are considerably up.

If the seven that are below quotient expand to their quotient level of voters, this will almost exactly match the amounts by which Seine River and Southdale need to shrink. This likely means that Radisson will move southward to become much more of a Windsor Park constituency; much of its northern portions will become part of expanded Rossmere, Concordia, and Transcona constituencies. Then, by taking of more of Windsor Park from Southdale, the old Radisson constituency allows the former to shed voters to achieve a near-quotient level.

Seine River also needs to shed voters to new constituencies. To achieve this, St. Boniface will likely expand southward, which will push St. Vital southward and Riel southward into former Seine River territory.

Southwest Winnipeg

In the southwest, things get interesting: Fort Whyte is 9,000 voters over quotient, which means it’s grown to nearly the size of 1.5 constituencies. How to rearrange the seats here to accommodate half of a new constituency? The one that seems an obvious answer is to take the south half of Fort Rouge (the only constituency to be divided by a river, something to be generally avoided in the creation of constituencies, I would argue) and turn it into a whole constituency. This generates the additional half a constituency needed to accommodate Fort Whyte’s growth.

How then to redraw the boundaries in the south end? I think it’s likely the commission will fall on tradition and carve out a Crescentwood, which was first created for the 1970s, then vanished in the 1980s, was re-created in late 1988, and then vanished again in 1998. As with its 1990s incarnation, Crescentwood would likely take the eastern portion of River Heights, the “planets” portion of Fort Garry, and the western portions of Lord Roberts and Fort Rouge.

With the Osborne Village piece of Fort Rouge, Lord Roberts will become much like the 1990s-era Osborne constituency. River Heights would move several blocks west to accommodate Crescentwood, which would push some of Tuxedo southward to take up some of Fort Whyte’s current territory. The new Fort Garry, robbed of the “planet” streets, would also snatch some of Fort Whyte’s current terrain. St. Norbert, with its below-quotient voting population, would also expand into Fort Whyte to ease some of the latter constituency's excess numbers.

North and west Winnipeg

The downtown portion of the old Fort Rouge riding may mean the revival of the old Broadway constituency, if it gets merged with the eastern part of Minto. That would mean Minto would get pushed westward into St. James which, along with Assiniboia, is slightly below quotient. As mentioned above, most inner city constituencies aren’t below quotient and so won’t be so much enlarged as shifted around.

An alternative for north Fort Rouge is to merge into the southern part of Point Douglas, the northern half of which would then get merged into some new redrawn versions of St. Johns, Burrows and Wellington. Wellington would then probably take part of Minto from the north, which would get several blocks of St. James in return. Overall, below-quotient Assiniboia, St. James, St. Johns and Inkster are likely to see some growth to balance the addition of Fort Rouge’s Downtown into its neighbours and the accommodation of over-quotient Kildonan.

Photo: Map of Winnipeg consituencies, from Election Manitoba's 2007 Statement of Votes, with arrows suggesting 2008 boundary movement.

A quick guide to Winnipeg protests

I'm a regular reader of David Watson's Waverley West and beyond blog and find it engaging, well-written and a valuable addition to the community. Lately, however, I've been following with some amusement his attempt to uncover some grand scheme behind last week's P3/city budget protest, made notorious by one attendee's ignorant attempt, via a sign, to put Mayor Sam Katz on par with Hitler.

Watson seems desperate to find a smoking gun showing that the provincial NDP or some other political organization organized the protest as part of some larger strategy to take on Katz. Is offensive sign holder Steve Mack an "NDP operative," he asks? Is protest spokesperson Mike Lennon an NDP-paid-for "protest leader"? (oops, he's already scratched that one off the list). Is the fringe Canadian Action Party "involved with the Katz defamation"? What if the "agent provocateur was sent by someone else in City Hall?" Watson also wonders, as he seems to struggle with just why Katz would be hiring people to film the protestors, is the plot "why Sam Katz was having the protestors photographed"? The drama has all of the twists and turns of a good conspiracy theory movie and I'm almost disappointed to see each new lead turn up with, well, nothing surprising.

It's been some time since I've attended any sort of political protest and I wasn't at the one at City Hall, but what happened seems pretty straightforward to me -- along the lines of the many hundreds this city has seen before:

1. For obvious reasons, unions and their allies dislike contracting out, P3s, privatization, and right-wing politicians who support such things.

2. Political demonstrations are not all that effective in swaying public opinion. Unions and other organizations organize protests to communicate with the public and with political leaders when other avenues are limited. If you can elect your people to public office with ease or get what you want through negotiation or simply by asking without having to protest publicly, why would you go to all the trouble?

3. The provincial NDP, especially when in power, does not bother to organize demonstrations as a political strategy because they have other, far more effective avenues for getting things done. If the provincial NDP decided that Katz was a thorn in the province's side (which they do not), they'd use their communications machine to back it up or recruit someone sufficiently high-profile to run against him.

4. No political organization or protest organizer with any brains or experience directs people to compare politicians they dislike to Hitler. How much ground did Katz's political opponents gain after the incident? Absolutely zero. If anything, the incident lost them ground. It's obvious that the sign was not the brainchild of any organization seeking to defame Katz.

5. Rallies against political policies are usually open invitation events held in public spaces. As a result, they may attract all sorts of people, including political organizers, members of any number of major or fringe parties, activists who regularly attend protests on any number of issues, people elected to public office, people who want to be elected to public office, people who have lost or who risk losing a job should proposed political changes pass, people whose philosphical or ideological sympathies are consistent with the protest's objectives, people who like crowds, lonely people, smart people, dumb people, people who are there for the free coffee, etc. For this reason, it seems pretty reasonable that lone individuals attending a protest cannot be said to speak for or represent the protest organizers or the entire collective body of protestors.

6. People attending political protests are motivated enough to take time out of their day and hang out for an hour or two regardless of the weather or other committments they may have. It shouldn't be surprising then that many attendees are dedicated political activists who are also avid participants in the political process in numerous other ways to support a range of causes or organizations.

7. Filming or photographing participants of strikes and political protests is nothing new. It's an extremely well-established and often-used technique throughout Canada and the US and elsewhere for (a) making participants feel "watched" and uncomfortable, so that they'll keep a low and non-militant profile and hopefully stay home next time; (b) discourage bad behaviour, by ensuring that photographic evidence will be available if things get out of hand; and (c) provide beautiful opportunities to shift attention away from the policies being protested to the protestors themselves when, for example, some clown shows up with an inappropriate sign.

8. As much as City Councillor Lazarenko is right to be shocked and offended at the sign one protestor chose to bring, trying to ban or limit protests isn't going to solve anything. Lazarenko, who according to the CBC, feels the city may have grown too lenient over the years in terms of what it will tolerate in a demonstration, is quoted as saying, "It gets to be like a mini-riot. It comes to a point where we lose control. The courtyard is for a peaceful demonstration."

Settle down, councillor; it was a peaceful protest, like one of many that happen in Winnipeg all the time.

Photo: A less-recent protest at City Hall. Depicted is a crowd gathered outside old City Hall, at Main Street and William Avenue, during the Winnipeg general Strike. Visible on the left are the Union Bank of Canada building and Leland Hotel.

The devious Mr. Katz

The mayor's office has released its detailed Service Based View of the budget. The document, which is available here, outlines a range of cuts to city services.

Shockingly, it was released just before the long weekend and a mere six days before the budget vote on the council floor. Its release also comes days after a public meeting in which citizens were invited to express their views on the budget. The Free Press covers the story here.

Can it all be coincidence that the mayor's office has released the bad news with virtually no time for the public to digest it, let alone debate it? Or, more likely, was this a sly attempt by our mayor to sneak some nasty cuts past the council floor when no one in the public is really paying attention? If the latter, it's more than just the usual lack of vision or fear of open debate; it's a wilful abuse of power.

Policyfrog has a great post on our mayor of "none" here. I'm personally keenly interested to see how each of our city councillors reacts to this one -- kudos to Councillor Gerbasi for drawing attention to the issue quickly.

Photo: Winnipeg's modernist City Hall (aka Civic Centre), completed and opened in 1964.

A punditry-inspiring week

What a week. While being buried in my work life, I've seen about 50 blog-worthy topics pass me by. See here for a small sampling of the utter ridiculousness. I've commented on a few items that provoked some thoughts.

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Quite a new low for the Liberals this week -- they're actually introducing a motion in the House of Commons blaming the NDP and Bloc for voting to defeat them in 2005. To quote Warren Kinsella: "Lord God Almighty, the Liberal Party of Canada needs help."

Mr. Dion and friends seem to be under the impression that their fellow parties are to blame for ending the long Liberal reign in Ottawa. Do they forget the voters who booted them out in the election that followed their defeat? Rather than pointing the finger for alleged wrongs committed by everyone else, can they not take some responsibility for the corruption and bad decisions that appeared endemic to their own party? Does the Liberal Party not look in the mirror and wonder if the source of their own troubles is staring right back at them?

It's more of the unspeakable arrogance we've seen before. Sounds like they're badly in need of some reflection time, of exactly the sort that comes with lounging in opposition for a long, long time.

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Speaking of Kinsella, he's calling the US Presidential race for McCain in the wake of the seemingly endless Democratic nomination race. I wouldn't go so far as to call it yet, but he's right - I'm worried about the Democrats' chances. The added months of publicity, fundraising, and organizing time that the Republicans have while the Democrats scrap it up can't be underestimated. When the dust settles in the Democratic nomination and the winner emerges, expect the Republicans to be well-prepared, waiting with boats of money and a battalion of attack ads.

It's a damn shame.

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A lot of people were shocked at the Alberta election results, particularly by the huge increase in Conservative seats at the expense of all three other parties that were represented in the Legislature. That came despite a whole lot of talk about voters being in a mood for change.

The result can be chalked up entirely to the Tory increase in Edmonton, which is the only part of the province where the opposition parties have a large concentration of seats. Tory increases in the opposition heartland, combined with slippage in parts of the province where it doesn't really make a difference (e.g., Calgary) equals a big increase in the majority.

At a glance, the overall popular vote didn't shift by a massive amount -- the Conservatives went up from 47% in 2004 to 53% in 2008, while the Liberals dropped three points to 26% and the NDP dropped one point to 9%. That's not a cataclysmic shift. For all the talk about the new Wildrose Alliance on the right, their 7% this time is below the 9% their 2004 counterpart earned. The Greens crept up from 3% to 5%, mostly as a result of two high-profile candidates who did well, but didn't come close to winning.

In Edmonton, though, the Tories soared from 31% to 43%, while the Liberals dropped from 41% to 33%. The NDP lost three points to land at 18%, which was enough to cost the two of their four seats, sadly including that of former leader Ray Martin. I wonder if Edmonton Liberal popularity in the Klein years was driven to some degree by Ralph Klein himself. The former Premier was a high-profile and not uncontroversial Calgarian, something that might not have entirely endeared him to voters in rival city Edmonton. Remove the Klein and see the Liberal balloon deflate, despite what most pundits agree was a better-run campaign by the party.

A big disappointment is that the voter turnout has dropped yet again, this time to a mere 41%. It's no coincidence that the lowest voter turnout in Canada happens to be in the province that's our closest thing to one-party state. There's not much point in voting when the outcome's pre-determined, so why bother? The Tories now have won a mandate based on 53% of 41% or about 22% of the electorate. How low does it have to get -- in Alberta or in any voting jurisdiction --before people start to question the government's very legitimacy? What then?

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Ed Schreyer, Manitoba's resident loose cannon ex-Premier, sure had something to say recently. Can you blame him? Did the boosters of Waverley West not do any research on the technical requirements associated with installing geothermal energy before announcing the project? Sounds to me like "geothermal" was a nice-sounding term some folks decided to slap in their PowerPoint presentations when it came time to do the dirty job of selling sprawl. It's more than a little disappointing.

The Rise and Sprawl has a some good comments on the topic.

Photo: Downtown Edmonton. The city shifted quite dramatically toward the Alberta Conservatives this week.

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.

New software does not an urban vision make

I was at the Winnipeg Chamber function on Friday for our Worship's annual State of the City address. About 1,000 folks were in attendance, which is a pretty spectacular turnout, I think.

In the opening moments, I chatted with a few people at my table about the issues or debates Katz would likely raise in his speech. I thought he might touch on some of the big debates going on now, such as Asper's proposal for a new football stadium, the Upper Fort Garry heritage park plan, or Katz's own water park pet project.

I thought Sam might even take a leap forward and provide us with some vision of what our city could be: a glimpse of a new, more environmentally conscious city, perhaps; a proposal for rehabilitating our declining transit system into something many of us could use and be proud of; some vision of Winnipeg as a centre of urban Aboriginal culture and pride; or even his seemingly forgotten promise of enhancing our network of neighbourhood community centres so that kids everywhere can take part in recreational and sporting opportunities. I was to be sorrily disappointed.

Katz's entirely-memorized teleprompted and very slow-spoken address began with a whole lot of name dropping, thanking each city councillor by name, as well as the new police chief, Keith McCaskill, and a host of other folks. He later again thanked each councillor at least two or three times, perhaps trying to emphasize that city council is all one happy family these days.

While I wasn't really expecting to be moved one way or the other by the mayor's speech, I was completely flabbergasted by the huge amount of time he spent yakking about CrimeStat, the city's one-year old software program for monitoring crime trends by neighbourhood. The audience was treated to explanations of how the system works, PowerPoint slides showing real crime statistics for the St. James neighbourhood, and scenarios of how such data might allow for quicker police responses to crime trends.

It's fine to mention the new techniques for monitoring crime, but I'm astonished with the amount of hot air that was spent on what amounts to a software purchase and a cool website page. I have no problem with a system that allows police to better monitor crime trends -- it is, in fact, part of their job to do just that. But should it be such astonishing mayoral speech-level news that the police are given an upgrade on the tools they use to do their job? What's going to be the highlight of next year's address: how Excel formulas helped improve the city's accounting workload? How city vehicles slid around less after being installed with winter tires?

The problem with Winnipeg's political leadership continues to be one of narrow vision. While other cities guide their projects with visions of what their urban space should look and feel like, Winnipeg confuses one-off projects with vision by continuing to tinker with the accessories: a park or a downtown shopping mall or a redesigned bus shelter or a software program don't equal a vision. These are things that should be guided by vision. Where is Sam's vision? Where does Sam see us in ten years? In twenty? What will or should life be like for Winnipeggers? How will or should non-Winnipeggers view our city? Sam? Hello, Sam?

The real crime is that of hopes and opportunities lost: what might this city look like had we had fewer vision-less mayors? What kind of Winnipeg might yet be possible?

Photo: Portage Avenue, near Hargrave Street, in 1920.

Environmental double-speak

Alberta premier Ed Stelmach, who bowed out of this week's

climate change summit of premiers, need not feel so defensive about his province's environmental record now that building roads has become a cornerstone of green policy.

Yes, you read that correctly. Forget about investing in transit or bike paths: according to this article, the federal and BC provincial governments are spending $790,000 of money earmarked for "greening" communities to expand a road in Nanaimo, BC. The news release states that the road expansion will reduce traffic congestion and idling, thereby helping to save the environment.

The argument is a laughably nice try, as even the idea that building roads automatically reduces congestion doesn't work: curiously, as soon as you build more and bigger roads to reduce congestion on an older road, the tendency is for the new roads to become as congested as the old almost as soon as they're opened to traffic. It's what author Anthony Downs refers to as "triple convergence" in his quite excellent 1995 book, New Visions for Metropolitan America.

Downs's argument follows the principle that there is a sort of marketplace associated with the use of roads. Where/when the demand for a given road space is high relative to its supply, users find alternatives to taking the congested road by travelling at different times (e.g., leave early to beat rush hour), taking alternate routes that are less congested, and using alternative means of transportation (e.g., biking or walking or rapid transit). Build a new road or expand an old one to increase the supply and there's suddenly less incentive for people to use any of the three alternatives, hence Downs's "triple convergence" of extra traffic to the new, suddenly congested roadway.

The rush for everyone to brand themselves as "green" has reached a feverish pitch, and we can expect pals and enemies of the environment alike to start touting their good work. In some cases, some of those jumping on this "green" bandwagon are under the impression that rest of us have fallen off the turnip truck.

Photo: rush hour traffic in Maryland.