At Home in Hespeler

The House of Commons goes on Christmas break on Tuesday and on Wednesday Canada Post makes a major bad news announcement. Justin Trudeau, who worked 1 of every 3 days in the last session of Parliament, thinks a mid-week announcement a full two weeks before the holiday for us real people is tantamount to a document dump:

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said the timing of the announcement “is a demonstration of a tremendous level of cynicism… This is the government trying to minimize what they know is bad news.”

I guess Justin lives in one of the one-third of Canadian households who still get home delivery (full disclosure – so do I), just like he shows up to work one-third of the time.

But for a real Christmas news dump, perhaps the Pierroutte can look to his pals in Toronto, who on Dec. 29, 2009 settled a lawsuit with a Caledonia couple days before OPP officers we set to take the stand and testify as to their orders.

That, Mr. Trudeau, is what a “demonstration of a tremendous level of cynicism,” looks like.

They Still Deliver Mail? Canada Post, Justin Trudeau

Will the real Justin Trudeau please stand up?

There he is…

h/t Small Dead Animals via The Blaze

Silly Liberals Guy Fawkes, Justin Trudeau

Now that the election is over, some Hesplerian thoughts:

I agreed back in February or so with Gerry Nicholls that a Conservative majority was coming. Why? It struck me that Michael Ignatieff had lousy political instincts and would be terrible in a hard election. Contrary to the media meme that he ran a good campaign, he was terrible. On day one he wouldn’t answer a simple question about coalition, all the while insisting he was answering it. It was obvious to anyone watching he was evading, and he wasn’t good at evading.

By the end of the first week, we had the absurd, red door blue door quote to make fun of. By week two it was “Rise Up!” which we on the right were busy making fun of, but the Ignatieff campaign kept repeating. The Liberal candidate in my riding was using a #riseup hashtag on his tweets. Guys, when they are laughing at you, stop making the joke.

Then there’s the debates. Jack Layton clearly knocked out Michael Ignatieff in both debates. Not speaking french, I’ll leave discussion about that to others. The english debate, however, was in hindsight all Jack. It wasn’t the suggestion that Ignatieff doesn’t show up to work, although it was a good shot, but Ignatieff’s response that killed him. Here’s the right response:

First off Jack, your numbers are wrong, I have not missed 70% of the vote. Secondarily, as leader of the opposition, I have responsibilities beyond normal Parliamentarians. Those responsibilities reasonably keep me out of the house sometimes. It’s far more reasonable for the leader of the opposition to miss some votes than the leader of the third place party spend almost $1m of taxpayers money transporting himself and his wife all the way to Toronto.

Here’s what you don’t say, especially when the label the opposition has placed on you is arrogance:

I don’t need any lectures on democracy from you.

Ignatieff went for the latter response, and today the Canadian Forces are dumping the corpse of his political career over the side of a frigate off the coast of Peggy’s Cove.

Stephen Harper’s best move was one he was heavily criticized for. He offered to debate Ignatieff one-on-one, then withdrew the offer when Ignatieff jumped at it. At to that Ignatieff’s response to Layton in the debate that (and I paraphrase) he should stop acting like he has a chance at forming government. The opposition groups were working together, trying to unseat Stephen Harper. What Harper did by offering the one-on-one debate was put the fox in the hen-house of the coalition. Ignatieff confirmed that indeed, some pigs are created more equal than others in any possible coalition/co-operation. The game was on, and the NDP helped take down the Liberals.

Champagne notwithstanding, the NDP has a real problem. It is now the party of Quebec, having gained only 8 more seats outside of Quebec. Half their caucus is from one province. Quebec voters have long memories and don’t forgive perceived insults. So what do you call it when a party runs a bunch of inexperienced kids? If some of these very lightweight politicians emerge to show what they are not made of, Quebec voters may well turn on the NDP. And controlling political amateurs who have nothing to lose by going off reservation is going to be a Herculean task. The expression herding cats comes to mind.

Beside that, Quebecers will expect Layton to stand in the house and speak for Quebecers. It’s what is done. When he goes in to his “I speak for all Canadians,” schtick, Quebecers won’t be happy. But if he stands and starts doing Gilles Duceppe’s old “I speak for all Quebecers,” schtick, the rest of the country will notice and note. He will also now have to make up his mind on a number of issues where he said one thing on Quebec and another elsewhere, particularly out West. You can’t play two sides of the fence in Parliament. It will be a delicate balancing act, and one if he gets wrong, could be very bad for the NDP next time around.

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Note: Ruth Ellen Brosseau is already a problem

What’s next for the Liberals? If I were the Liberal Party of Canada, here’s what I would do.

First off, disregard any talk of Liberal/NDP merger. Not this time, not with the NDP having the trump cards. A Liberal/NDP merger only works for Liberals if it is the NDP being absorbed by the Liberals, not the other way around. Like the PCs before them, they will need more than one drubbing to get the hint.

That said, the goal is rebuild. And like a hockey team, the best rebuilds are youth movements. I am not a Liberal, and I don’t pretend to know everybody in the party. Insiders would be better informed on the talent within, but I would shoot with a guy like Justin Trudeau. Yes, I know what the detractors say: his father’s charisma, his mother’s brains. That may be so, it may not, but I would risk it all on him, or someone like him.

To be sure I’m talking about a long-term project. Your new guy has to be willing to go riding to riding, Liberal to Liberal and shake hands, discuss what’s important to them, and convince them to leave a few dollars in the collection box on their way out. Every riding, every Liberal need to shake your guys hand, look him in the eye and connect (note: I am using the masculine here, but it could just as well be a woman. The prose was just getting too bloody awkward trying to neutralize the gender).

This strategy depends on one uncomfortable fact: you have to be prepared to lose the next election. Not that you can’t win it – 4 years is a long time in politics – but that winning it is not your aim. Rebuilding the party, developing policies, improving the finances, those are the goals. Two election from now, and we are talking 6 – 8 years, you are looking to win. By then you have a veteran leader who has been through the wars, he has made his mistakes, and he’s ready to lead. That’s the route I would take and it is, I think, the only way to avoid the end of the Liberal party.

Of course, you could disagree and make 64 year-old Bob Rae your leader, just as the PC’s went back to Joe Clark. That worked so well for them, after all.

Ruth Ellen Brosseau lives in Ottawa and works at a student pub, does not speak french and has never been to Berthier-Maskinongé. During the campaign, she went on holiday to Las Vegas, and had to be called in Vegas and told to come back, because she was winning. The voters of Berthier-Maskinongé elected her to Parliament anyway: can we now do away with the myth that Quebecers are more sophisticated voters?

election '11 Jack Layton, Joe CLark, Justin Trudeau, Michael Ignatieff, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, Stephen Harper,  Berthier-Maskinongé

Michael Ignatieff said it, Justin Trudeau sent an email approving of it, Bryan May, my Liberal Party candidate, tweeted it:

If you get the grades, you get to go.

"One! One-Thousand Dollars a year"

The Canadian Learning Passport is the Liberals policy announcement of the day: $4,000 tax free over four years to every high school student who pursues post secondary education, $6,000 for low income earners. That’s $1B a year in students pockets to spend on tuition.

Of course, it’s only $1,000 net if tuition fees don’t increase. Education being a provincial responsibility, the federal government have no say whatsoever on tuition fees. They can throw money at schools, students and books, but they cannot control the cost side of the structure. No problem, I hear you Liberalizing, we’ll work with the provinces.

Yea, well, about that. Here’s the problem. Premier Dad, Dalton McGuinty, has 68% of his budget goes to health and education spending. Of a $113B budget, $77.4B disappears in those two line items. Next up is debt financing (interest on the debt) at $10.3B. There’s no money in the kitty.

Now your Dalton and the Feds just came up with $200M to throw into one of your big 2, your education system. Do you let the kids keep it? Or do you pull $200M from the budgets of the post secondary institutions and let them make it up in tuition?

That’s the problem The Canadian Learning Passport policy has. It will ultimately be, have to be, an indirect transfer payment to the provinces. Once it rolls out, tuition fees will likely go up across the country. It won’t be the students who benefit, or their parents, it will be the schools and the provincial treasuries.

The real problem with education is supply and demand – especially in university. Too many students are going, many who really don’t belong – creating huge demand for the few spaces. That drives the price of those spaces up.

At the other end, of course, too many kids are running around with degrees, to the point where car factories hire university graduates to work on the lines – and those graduates are glad to get those jobs. And it’s not that tuition is so expensive, it’s that jobs coming out of college don’t pay enough to pay off that debt in a reasonable time. Dentists leave school with $100,000 debt, but it is not a crippling debt due to their earnings when they get out. Social work majors may leave school with $25,000 debt, and wonder how they’ll ever pay it off.

Too many students means too expensive going in, not enough payback coming out. And giving kids $1,000 to go is going to push more kids in, raising the cost, lowering the reward.

Good governance is not just throwing money at people and problems, assuming those issues away. Good governance is understanding the direct and indirect impacts your policy will have. The Canadian Learning Passport is the former, with no consideration given to the root of the problem or the result of the spending.

Uncategorized Bryan May, Canadian Learning Passport, Education, Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff

If you grew up in a household where a picture of your “special friend,” Fidel Castro, hung on the wall, then you’d have problems with distinctions like “barbaric cultural practices” such as honour killings and female genital mutilation.

Hey, if your going to start defining good and bad cultural practices, next thing you know jailing journalists and torturing dissidents will be frowned upon, and then what kind of country will you have?

Silly Liberals Add new tag, Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau, Uncle Fidel