Rob Ford, Out Of The Mayoral Race

Anyone who follows my Twitter account may have noticed that it recently got its first rebrand in its existence. This is the result of my having taken over Andray Domise’s campaign for Ward 2.

From what I understand of running a campaign, it is usually inadvisable to publish your election strategy, but I feel that it is necessary to provide some clarity into our thought process as we continue to solicit donations. When we started this campaign, we were running against a field of unknown candidates. Doug Ford had committed not to run again and there was a rumour that Mikey Ford may join the race. Despite the lack of Fords in the race, we were upfront and clear with everyone we asked for support: We will most likely be running against a Ford.

Since Mikey’s candidacy materialized, we have worked hard to position ourselves as the natural front runner that the Fords will need to keep down. I am writing in part to thank every single person who has supported us thus far, be in through donations, volunteering, or simply helping to signal boost on social media. The response has been overwhelming and we can’t show our appreciation enough.

In politics, as any donor, volunteer, or supporter will know, the asks never end. We always need a little bit more. So before I ask again, I will do what I did at the beginning of the campaign and make clear the obstacle we are now facing: We’re running against Rob Ford.

Rob Ford is now out of the mayoral race. This is good news for those who look forward to a brighter future with a mayor willing to work with council, but it may be very bad news for the residents of Ward 2. For fourteen years, Etobicoke North has been run like a fiefdom by the Fords, who have stymied growth, denied service upgrades, a generally kept its residents dependent on their patronizing benevolence. Rob Ford has obviously developed a taste for being a politician and he’s not going to give it up.

Andray is currently working on some exciting policy platforms:

1. Local bus loops designed to get people to their grocery stores and places of worship in a timely and dignified manner.
2. Etobicoke is chronically under-served for youth services and we’re working to build a youth centre to support families and young people.
3. Toronto is a leading world city in innovation and technology and we’re bridging partnerships with local businesses and non-profits to bring an innovation hub and the accompanying jobs and infrastructure to Rexdale.
4. The collapse of the Woodbine Live project left a literally gaping whole in the ground and Andray intends to be the responsible city partner this area needs to see the benefits of development that have mostly skipped over Ward 2 entirely.

We have a plan and we’re asking for help to make it happen. We need people to canvass the neighbourhood, to make calls, to get our message out, and we need donations. But you have to know what you’re getting yourself into if you sign on. It means a race against Rob Ford.

The New Answer to Separatism

Yesterday, Paul Wells wrote a column about Stephen Harper’s recent penchant for taking credit for the decline of separatism. This column, judging by Wells’ mentions on Twitter, appears to have annoyed more than a few Liberals. As a Liberal myself, though neither senior nor anonymous, I would like to extend a Liberal olive branch towards Wells. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the article was excellent and exactly the kind of piece we should want to see more of in the public discourse. On top of being a worthwhile piece in its own right, the piece is also valuable from a Liberal perspective for its analysis of Quebec.

Wells mentions explicitly and more than once that Harper taking credit for separatism’s decline is a counter-intuitive assertion. It is not a controversial statement to suggest that Canadian political media is rather consensus-driven, with each journalist either trying to define themselves as the prophet of the current consensus (say Peter Newman on the death of the Liberal Party), in opposition to the consensus (Ezra Levant’s ridiculous “media party” attacks), or, somehow, both (John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker in The Big Shift). Wells’ thought experiment doesn’t fit neatly into any of these categories and I’m willing to give full credit to Wells for what I can only assume is a glibly self-conscious nod to Ibbitson and Bricker when he mentions their pet term, the “Laurentian elite”. I read this less as an endorsement of their nonsensical phrase and more as a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of how out of place his analysis is in our current political conversation. There is very little room for serious political thinking for its own sake. That Wells has done just that is certainly laudable.

Beyond Wells’ piece as an interesting contribution to a wonky discussion, the piece is also an interesting attack on a self-perceived Liberal strength. Personally, I was impressed by Justin Trudeau for helping out in the Quebec election, not simply because working against a separatist party is a good in itself (from a national unity perspective), but because it was easy to argue that he was working against his own electoral self-interest. Liberals are perceived as strong on the national unity front and Trudeau working against the separatist parties takes away that electoral boogeyman. Rather than being able to tell the ROC that Trudeau would be the only one able to keep the country together, the Liberals now have to win on their own merits. Wells’ piece challenges that logic in two ways – first, whether, they deserve that reputation, and second, whether the Liberals would be wise to do so. On the first point, I have no intention of minimizing the contribution to our federation made by our Liberal forbearers, but I think the second point is a much more interesting debate.

Going into the next federal election, the Liberals will need to prove that they are the natural alternative to Stephen Harper’s governing Conservatives. While a big part of that will involve working against the Conservatives, the age old wisdom is that governments defeat themselves. If that logic holds, the Liberals big task, beyond working against the Conservatives, will be jockeying for position with the NDP. There is an argument to be made that the NDP is the most separatist federal party ever – they oppose the Clarity Act, they have committed to reopen the Constitution (since that is what would be required to get rid of the Senate), they have committed to get Quebec’s signature on the Constitution if it’s ever opened, and, worst of all, they could form government (unlike the Bloc!). The NDP, with a little analysis, could be presented as a walking Constitutional crisis. The question becomes whether that is an argument worth making.

Harper’s approach to separatism has been akin to The Simpsons’ when the ads came to life in The Treehouse of Horrors: just don’t look. Whether or not you credit Harper for the decline of separatism at both levels, Wells’ point is valid – it looks like it’s working. Only history will show whether Harper has been successful in this regard, but Quebec may now be a province that makes its demands like any other – by voting for its MPs rather than on sovereignty. Liberals have learned a lot in the past eight years about what parts of our party need to be left in the 80s and 90s, and our tactics regarding separatism may well be one of them. We should be very careful to write off Wells’ analysis, lest we open a wound that is finally beginning to heal.

Another Senate Scandal is Happening and Nobody Cares

The Senate, a favorite fundraising punching bag for both the NDP and the Conservatives, is back in the news. This time, rather than an expense scandal or an unearned patronage or just general senatorial bad behaviour, the Senate is in the news for what seems like a rather innocuous reason: it’s starting to empty out. The debate now is whether Harper is constitutionally required to appoint Senators since, according to Rosemary Barton, the PMO has said “that as long as the Senate continues to be able to deal with government legislation there is no plan to fill any of those seats”. While most would consider an arcane constitutional discussion relatively mild in comparison to the drama that has played out in the Upper House until recently, I would argue that this is in fact much worse. Rather than our Government showing us that a lesson has been learned from their last mess, all of the conditions that lead to the Senate Scandal are being repeated, almost exactly, despite the benefit of hindsight.

Aside from a cavalier attitude towards public monies and what one assumes is a fraternal bond among criminals, what Duffy, Wallin, and Brazeau have in common is that they were all appointed to the Senate at the beginning of January 2009. If we recall, at that point, the opposition parties were in the process of organizing themselves into a coalition to bring down the Government. As many people have pointed out since then, Harper was in real danger of losing his status as Prime Minister and, as a consequence, his ability to appoint Senators. Even though this democratically legitimate coalition did not come to govern, the possibility at the time was very real. At the same time, Harper was playing the same game he is now, letting vacancies in the Senate accumulate showing off his Reform roots to pander to a specific segment of his base. The problem became, that if he lost Government, the next PM would likely be able to take back the Senate quickly by filling those vacancies. According to Mark Kennedy, “Harper feared a Liberal-NDP coalition would stack dozens of vacant Senate seats with his political foes.” As a result, Harper appointed a whole slate of Senators to prevent a hypothetical Prime Minister Dion from doing so after assuming the PM’s mantle. Skip ahead a few years and you have the main players in the Senate scandal. It is not a stretch to argue that in the rush to have them appointed, these incoming Senators faced less than adequate vetting.

All of these conditions – Senate vacancies, the possibility of the balance of power changing, rushed appointments – are being repeated. Even if the Liberals weren’t out-polling the Tories, the results of an election are never preordained. There is a real possibility Harper will not be our Prime Minister within the next year and a half, give or take. If that is to happen and the Senate vacuum still exists, we’re left with two possibilities: either Harper will leave dozens of empty Senate seats for his successor to fill or we’ll see a repeat of January 2009. Because we’re in what could be a constitutionally untenable situation, we have only Harper’s past behaviour to go on to evaluate which situation seems more likely.

There are good, honest, hardworking, and intelligent people in the Conservative Party of Canada. Harper has the time, the resources, and the mandate to empower them to serve their country in the Senate. As experts much more qualified than I have argued, he probably has the responsibility to do so as well. But on a practical level, Senate appointments are a tangible and visible part of the legacy of a Prime Minister’s time in office. The Senate scandal has been a glimpse into what Harper’s legacy could have been if he had stepped down in 2009. These new vacancies will be filled and, in all likelihood, they will be filled by Harper. It is not a matter of “if” it is a matter of “how”. And that “how” will be, for better or worse, a part of the legacy of Harper’s time in office.

Missteps and Counter-steps

Matt Gurney has an interesting piece (with an excellent URL) in the National Post regarding Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais’ letter to NDP MP Charmaine Borg. Gurney suggests that the letter was not misogynistic, as the NDP claim, and that the NDP’s reaction itself is the real problem. I would argue that misogyny is not always as obvious as Gurney would like it to be and that his column reinforces some unfortunate myths regarding calling out systematic discrimination.

This exchange was not “an opportunity for a female MP to take on a well-established (male) politician and fight for what she believes in on an equal footing.” Certainly Borg had the opportunity to take on a male politician, but to claim it was on an equal footing ignores not only the systematic gender discrimination at play in our political conversation, it ignores the fact that a Senator, from the governing party who will never have to face the electorate again, making off-side remarks is much more powerful than a first term MP without critic portfolio.

Gurney suggests that the letter was “insulting, rude, over the top and uncalled for” but not misogyny, which “is defined as ‘a hatred of women.’” Hatred, as defined in that same dictionary is either “a very strong feeling of dislike” or “prejudiced hostility or animosity.” Judging by the NDP’s reaction, we could then reasonably infer their meaning as “prejudiced hostility or animosity towards women” without violating the dictionary definition. Moreover, neither definition includes any reference to intentionality or deliberateness, so it’s clear that hatred, and therefore misogyny, can be expressed unconsciously. Gurney has already established the hostility and animosity within that definition, so our task remains to establish that Dagenais’ remarks were prejudiced and directed towards women more generally than at Borg specifically.

The NDP is often praised for having the most female MPs by percentage out of any party in the current Parliament (and for scoring top marks for diversity generally among their current MPs), but the sad truth of the matter is that all parties nominate minority candidates in ridings that they don’t expect to win. This is why, in the same list I just cited, the reduced Liberal caucus scored the lowest marks for diversity: the safest ridings are most often given to white men. Dagenais, in his remarks, suggested that Borg was only elected because of Jack Layton, and that she would not have been elected otherwise.  This comment, according to popular wisdom, would be correct; she ran in a sacrificial riding and won, like most of her Quebecois colleagues, male or female, because of Layton’s surging popularity. Ridings like Trinity-Spadina in 2008 and Toronto Centre in 2013, where two competent, qualified women both have excellent shots at winning get to battle it out on their own merits are unfortunate rarities. Dagenais’ comments attacked a woman on the basis of systematic discrimination against women. Without digressing into systematic ways in which women are excluded from the political conversation, or the fact that he thought he could get away with an attack that was “uncalled for” on a woman, using prejudice against women to attack a woman is misogynistic.

Now, whether we agree or not that Dagenais’ comments were misogynistic, the most troubling part of Gurney’s article was when he stated that:

Accusing Sen. Dagenais of misogyny is like calling someone racist or homophobic. It is a very serious allegation that Ms. Borg and Mr. Cullen have made, and it is not even remotely supported by the evidence. He probably has grounds for legal action (though, for optics, he should probably hire a female lawyer, and praise her effusively in public).

I am a white straight man. Calling me racist, or homophobic, or misogynistic is not grounds for legal action, nor is it really an insult; it’s suggesting that I made a (grave) mistake. None of these words imply that your prejudices are intentional; in fact, it implies the opposite because even the most die-hard bigots at least think they are in the right. We collectively have to come to the understanding that even with the best of intentions, we can be bigoted. Even if Dagenais made his comments without the slightest trace of malice, he is responsible for the context into which they intervene. This logic is already at place in Gurney’s piece when he suggests Cullen’s intervention was itself almost “paternalistic.” Gurney correctly identifies that Cullen’s best intentions are not a defense against a sexist misstep.

(Though in this case, I would argue Cullen was completely in the right. I’d rather have my House Leader taking on Senators than my backbenchers.)

To conclude with a remark on Gurney’s conclusion: it is neither the NDP’s, nor Borg’s responsibility to speak for women, nor do I think they would claim so. Moreover, it is not “unbecoming” to call out a colleague on their sexist behaviour, nor is it victim-crying to suggest that sexism undermines our female MPs’ abilities to do their jobs.

The Shame of Shame

Writing in the Ottawa Citizen, Scott Reid has an interesting piece on shame as it relates to the current degraded state of Canadian politics. His observations are apt, but I believe that further context is required to discuss shame as it relates to our contemporary political situation. I would argue that shame is primarily the responsibility, not of politicians, but of voters.

Reid states that “we need to restore shame to its central and valued place in our politics. Because shame works. And without it, not much else can.” He is correct in his argument that shame is a central mechanism of the functioning of our democracy, or in fact any democracy, because a shared sense of values are a necessary basis for any political consensus. At its core, any political system relies on the good will of its citizens (whether voluntarily given, e.g. in a democracy, or coerced, e.g. in a dictatorship). But I would argue shame still plays a central role in the functioning of our democracy and in our elections. It’s not that shame has gone away, or that there has been a “deliberate and gradual extinction of shame” from our political conversation; rather, shame is something that voters experience as opposed to politicians. We are responsible for the people that we trust enough to elect, and when they abuse that trust it is us, as voters, who should feel ashamed. When politicians resign in shame, it is for abusing that trust. They may feel ashamed for their actions, but the act of resigning is to spare us further shame.

I would argue two factors make this less common: hyper-partisanship and the move away from voter responsibility. In the first case, as politics becomes more and more partisan, we identify more strongly with politicians who share our partisan affiliations, and therefore are less likely to view their actions as shameful. In the second case, since we have been taught more and more to expect politicians to do things for us, rather than on our behalf, we feel less and less responsible for their actions, and therefore, less likely to be ashamed of ourselves (and thus them). Ironically, telling politicians that they should be ashamed, rather than voters, is likely only to exacerbate the problem, rather than alleviate it, because it is only perceived as an attack on the tribe.

It is only when both of these are overcome that shame can function in contemporary politics. As an example, I’d point to the 2008 election in the United States, where even Republicans were campaigning against George Bush. They were ashamed. Republican voters were ashamed. In the following midterm, Democrats were ashamed of having squandered their power, and they lost. Likewise in Canada, after the Sponsorship Scandal, Liberals were ashamed of their party and their leadership. When conservative voters finally abandon Harper, it will likely be out of shame as well. Personal shame. Rather than tell Rob Ford he should be ashamed, we should be asking Ford Nation if this is who they want representing them.

If we want to combat this growing lack of shamelessness of our politicians, we need only to look in the mirror (partisans especially). We are responsible for the politicians we elect and they will only improve if we demand it. If we want to change the system we can’t be so afraid to blame voters that we absolve them of any responsibility whatsoever.

Partisan Electoral Reform

I can’t help but look at the electoral reform plans put forward by Andrew Coyne and Joyce Murray and wonder what they’re thinking. Cooperating to win power to enact electoral reform is a huge suggestion that has very clearly not been properly thought through by either of them. By framing cooperation as an electoral reform issue, rather than simply as a method for replacing the Harper government, these plans are not only misguided but they actually weaken both of the positions that they appear to advance.

Coyne states, regarding the Conservatives, that: “the longer they stay in power, the more opportunity they will have to change the rules to their advantage, and the harder it will be for any opposition party to dislodge them.” Looking back, at the Conservative record, this is true; whenever they’re given the opportunity to change the rules to benefit themselves – like when they reduced the cap on individual political contributions, or when they eliminated the per vote subsidy – they take it. But this is precisely why we must not follow Coyne’s plan: because it follows the Conservative pattern exactly. Instead, we need to break the cycle of each party changing the rules to entrench themselves once they take power. If anything, following suit legitimizes what the conservatives are doing. We can’t change the rules as a way of crying foul because somebody else changed the rules.

My concerns with Coyne’s plan are the ethical issues that surround such an idea, which he skates over quite quickly in establishing his case. He writes:

It will be objected that much of this is merely an expression of the parties’ self interest, or more charitably that their principles show a remarkable tendency to align with their self-interest: under proportional representation the Greens would win many more seats than the one they have now, as until recently would the NDP, while the alternative vote tends to favour middle of the road parties like the Liberals. Fair enough. I happen to think these are also useful reforms in the public interest. But it is to those parties’ supporters I address myself here: to their self-interest as much as their ideals.

This is not a point that can be skirted, it must be addressed directly: I can think of nothing worse than changing the rules of a game with the express intention of handicapping one participant. The subject of electoral reform has attracted many intelligent, thoughtful people to discuss its merits; perverting it into another partisan ploy will undo all of that effort if, as we’re claiming to improve the system, we are seen to be penalizing the Tories. If electoral reform comes to Canada it must be at the insistence of Canadians, through a referendum, or with the cooperation of all parties. The idea of explicitly excluding the Conservatives from the process of reform cannot be condemned in harsh enough terms; that we might even consider at all it is a damning indictment of our political conversation.

Aaron Wherry does a very good job, in Maclean’s, dealing with the logistical issues with the Coyne/Murray plan, but even if it’s practically untenable, its proponents will still tout it as a plan that is sound in theory. It’s not enough that this plan will never be enacted, we need to put to rest the notion that electoral reform can solve petty, temporary problems. Suggesting that we undertake electoral reform with an explicitly partisan intent is to taint the very foundation of our democracy.

Non-partisan partisanship

The conversation about rebuilding the Liberal party has been dominated by two different narratives. The first is that there is no shortcut to power and that a sustained renewal will take modesty, hard work, and time, rather than just a new leader and more divisive partisanship. The second is that while we have to pay lip service to the first position, Harper has forced our politics into a presidential mode; since people voted for Harper or “Jack”, we can do nothing without a name of equal measure to put on the ballot. That second position, one which I have generally favoured, took a beating yesterday with the allegations surrounding the attempted recruitment of Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney. This is a bad situation so we should take this as an opportunity to redefine our rebuilding conversation so that something like this does not happen again.

I can understand, completely, the impulse to recruit Carney; from the Globe piece on the subject: “Mark Carney was cast as the perfect alternative to Justin Trudeau.” He is a substantial figure, trusted nationally and internationally, and he covered just about every flank the Liberal party needed shored up with his combination of Western roots, fiscal credentials, and charisma and likeability.  Even better than his impressive résumé  is the trust that he inspired in Canadians. In a relatively recent piece by Andrew Coyne, titled In Canada, credibility trumps power. And it isn’t even close, he writes that people trust Carney in a way that they wouldn’t trust a Prime Minister. This trust is “partly personal, partly institutional” and it means that we recognize Carney as a man of principle who puts public service above his own interests. And, much of this is true; Canadians do have a high opinion of Carney, likely much higher than their opinion of Harper, making him a very attractive candidate for leader (on paper). The problem that his Liberal boosters didn’t seem to consider was how fragile that trust could turn out to be.

Partisan politics has become very ugly and with that has come a need to keep certain institutions above the fray. The courts, the Governor General, the Bank of Canada; all of these need to be kept beyond reproach for our political conversation to function. And while our history has been by no means perfect when it comes to keeping these institutions non-partisan, generally they function as such and enjoy the credibility that Andrew Coyne outlined. It is difficult to overstate how bad a politicized Bank of Canada could have been and so after the piece in the Globe ran, the reactions were predictably strong. One of the best was the sustained (but completely lucid) outrage from Mike Moffatt on Twitter:

Why central bank independence is important. Carney, IMO, has been too tight with policy. Honest mistake or is he trying to sabotage the CPC?

— Mike Moffatt (@MikePMoffatt) December 15, 2012

If I’m the NDP, I’m questioning how non-partisan Carney’s Dutch Disease comments were.

— Mike Moffatt (@MikePMoffatt) December 15, 2012

We’ve seen what happens when monetary policy is used for partisan ends.It’s a disaster.As such needs to be avoided at all costs.

— Mike Moffatt (@MikePMoffatt) December 15, 2012

I know the LPC want to reform, but trying to become like the sleazier parts of the Nixon Administration is not a great direction.

— Mike Moffatt (@MikePMoffatt) December 15, 2012

It’s important to include the last point, the Nixon comparison, because of just how damning that accusation could have been. Stephen Gordon, writing in Maclean’s, took a similar position to Moffatt’s about the damage this could do, saying flatly, “if we are extremely lucky, this episode will be quickly forgotten.” To be clear here, I think this is the most likely outcome; Canadians seem to be forgiving about attempted shenanigans and I predict the response generally will be “no harm, no foul.” So I’m speaking to Liberals when I say we need to accept and understand just how bad this could have been. We’re reacting here to the possibility of a recruitment; an actual recruitment could have been a disaster.

From the Globe article, Carney is alleged to have be Frank McKenna’s choice for leader. That needs to sink in because that means we’re talking about the Messiah’s Messiah. But instead of the second coming, we’re left with pre-made attacks from both sides just waiting for him. Rather than a new direction with a Liberal saviour, there would be a direct link that could be made between him and every sin of which the Liberal party has ever been accused. In context, an attempt to rise above the ugliness of partisan politics may have succeeded only at tarring another good man with the same ugly brush. And this is the lesson: there’s no rising above it.

As much as I hate to see the Liberal party pulled through the mud on account of some “unnamed senior Liberals” (again), on balance, I would say the controversy that is emerging around the party’s failed recruitment of Mark Carney gives us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. We are not going to get past the leader-driven reality of our political conversation but we also can’t short-circuit it; credibility is not all that transferable. There is no eminent Canadian, beyond reproach, who can step forward and lead us back to the promised land. They will get pulled down into it. That’s why, if Carney is the anti-Trudeau, I support Justin Trudeau now more than ever. Our only hope is a fighter who can get in the mud and get dirty, clashing with the other parties, who at the end of the day will remember their principles after they win. That, right now, is the best we can offer Canadians.

This is the counter-intuitive lesson of this whole experience: if we want to be non-partisan, we have to be partisan first. If we want peace and electoral reform and cooperation, we have to fight for it first. The Liberal party is full of good people, passionate about their ideals, who want to do good for this country, but so are the other parties. We’ll keep having these kinds of problems, as long as we keep pretending.

We’re not above partisanship.