Election Day minus 7 and 6 - Momentum

Lenin and Layton

Day 31 and 32 - Poor Bob Rae, he picked the wrong partner. Those who live in Ontario remember Rae when he was the first and only NDP Premier in this province. He actually tried to control government spending by instituting "Rae-Days" or furlough days for government workers like teachers (me). I happen to know the very same type of thing is happening in California now - furlough days for teachers, and in other States and Federally. Most Canadians probably don't know this, why should they, they don't even know what's happening in their own country.

So, why am I picking on Bob Rae? It seems that the NDP (socialists who prefer orange to red) are big news in the waning days of this election. Maybe Canadians are acknowledging that we indeed have a fairly socialist big government that keeps growing despite the so-called Conservative Prime Minister Harper. The truth is Harper's minority government has made so many concessions to the NDP, we may as well have the NDP governing us. Bob Rae switched from Leader of the Provincial NDP, to leader-in-waiting of the Federal Liberals, and the Liberals seem to be fading fast in the polls - bad move for Bob.

Jack Layton, up there in the picture does bear some resemblance to Lenin in more ways than one. People say Layton is a nice guy (Lenin I hear was not), they would love to have him over for a beer - Layton not Lenin. I'm sure he is a nice guy, and while that might qualify him for a friendly beer, it doesn't mean you want him doing anything else. But who knows, a Layton government may actually be better than a Conservative one. Layton is anti-war, like Libertarians, so if his government brought our troops home, that would be a savings of lives and money. Several NDP provincial governments have actually been known to cut spending and act fiscally responsible when in power, Layton might do the same. I don't thing the corporations will like him though, but with six days to go Jack has momentum. The graph shows NDP poll results in orange and more can be found here.

  

Canada’s dirty little secret

Among the lies that are bandied about by Canada's politicians (not including me) during an election, is the one about Canada's fiscal restraint, and how we have our house in order compared to our American neighbours for example.
In the midst of this election campaign most of the "news" has focused on polls, parties, leaders and their whereabouts, with very little on issues that will affect everyone in the not-to-distant-future. An article in the National Post by Diane Francis highlights one of those issues. Her column Canada's Case of 'Dutch Disease' illustrates that the economy is not as rosy as the politicians paint it. Ms. Francis claims that much of Canada's current prosperity is due to the commodity boom fuelled by China's growth. If China were to stumble, look out.
I've written before on why I think China's growth is an illusion based their government's desire to export cheap stuff to the rest of the world, keeping their employment high, even at a loss, which they can absorb for the time being. At some point even they will not be able to continue, that could be months or years from now, its impossible to know. But when, China does stumble Ms. Francis says Canada gets badly hurt.
Her column comes after a report issued by a Montreal independent investment consulting firm MacroResearchBoard (MRB). Ms. Francis criticizes the report because "it ignores, as do politicians, Canada’s dirty little secret, which is that federal public debt to GDP may be the lowest in the developed world, but when provincial debts are included, the ratio is nearly as serious as America’s in relationship to GDP. To separate them is misleading because provincial debts are guaranteed by Ottawa. And a year from now, Ontario and Quebec alone will owe more than Ottawa, or half a trillion dollars." Ms. Francis goes on to say: "In fact, Eastern Canada’s economies resemble Michigan’s, Detroit’s or Spain’s, but are hidden by the boom in the West, led by Alberta.
But once commodity prices head downward, China slows or both, it will have a huge impact on Canada. This is the report’s important takeaway."
Ontario's debt is approaching $240 billion, Quebec's debt is approaching $236 billion, and the Federal government's debt is approaching $570 billion (April 25th, 2011). So the question is, how long before a problem occurs? Maybe when interest rates rise, do you think they ever will? This video won't make you feel any better either:

Election Day minus 8 - Into the heart of darkness

Day 30: Yesterday I spent much of the day at OISE part of the University in downtown Toronto. It was like a home coming for me, I had attended classes there about 40 years ago when I was a student getting my teacher's accreditation. Sadly, it hasn't changed much. 

I don't want to sound self-serving but I was at public forum of the Small Parties, like us. Well, not really like us, all that we have in common is we are just minor parties in the May 2nd election.

Many of the party reps present thought that the media ignore us in favour of the mainstream parties. Of course that's bunk. In the marketplace of political parties, the minor fringe parties are given short shrift for many reasons. Some of these parties are just plain single issue parties like The Marijuana Party, Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party, and the First Peoples National Party. Of course I would consider the Green Party a single issue party, and they should have been at this conference, because like us they have no representation in Parliament. They were invited, but chose to ignore it. 

No, the reason that we are ignored by media is that we are ignored by voters - we really don't have much to offer to the vast majority of voters who are too busy to select good political representation. The Greens of course emerged as a larger party to save the world from the scourge of human environmental recklessness, you know global warming and the like. But the writing is on the wall for them, they don't yet believe it, but they are yesterday's leftovers, maybe they will join the minor party group next election.

Other parties present were the Canadian Action Party, Christian Heritage Party, Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist Party, Pirate Party and the Rhinoceros Party. All but the Pirates and Rhinos (see picture of two members above) are state-loving power parties. The Pirates are interesting, not sure why they aren't libertarians but hey, I like the name. The Rhinos are funny, full stop.

One party I thought was interesting enough to sort of join is the Online Party. Like all the others they are interested in issues, but they aren't pushing anything, they are just polling apparently, and offering a place for issues to be discussed, very refreshing.

For me the whole thing was possibly a waste of time though, unless there is some real press attention (none that I have seen yet) from it that discusses issues, not just the fact we were a motley crew.

Each of the party reps and their helpers I'm certain, were dedicated to their cause and passionate about getting their particular message out. I respect that, and those that I met, and spoke to, seemed like good people, people I would like as neighbours (maybe not the Rhinos ;-) ). I knew that going into the University campus, a socialist hothouse, was not going to be fun for me, and it wasn't fun. Central Toronto itself tends to vote for left leaning parties and people. So going down there was like banging my head on a wall, it felt better when I left. Would I do it again? Not unless there was more to gain than I did this time. This was a mix of Stranger in a Strange Land and Heart of Darkness.

Election Day minus 9: Time to bunt

Day 29 - Baseball is the perfect game for summer, slow, gentle, and cerebral. That's right cerebral, it is a mind game, a game of strategy and probability. Team managers like to play the percentages. What are the odds of such-and-such happening in a particular situation? A good manager will try to choose particular tactics that have worked in the past in a certain situation, only because there is a likelihood they may work again. So there is a constant collection of data in the form of statistics that team managers can refer to, and the best managers have this data in their heads.

Today I had an opportunity to be at a local event, an all-candidates meeting in my voting district. I was asked by our party V.P. of Political Action to sacrifice my own attempt to gather votes for my campaign in favour of the party, the team. This is a common practice in baseball, if there are runners on base with the chance to score, subsequent batters may be asked to "sacrifice" themselves for the team, depending on the situation. How? Well,  a batter could hit the ball really hard into the air - creating a fly ball, but deep enough into the outfield so that a runner could advance after the ball is caught. Or a batter could be asked to bunt along the first base line. This forces the opposite team to throw to first, and get that bunter while whomever is on base advances. It's a sacrifice too, for the team.

Now lets be clear, my sacrifice today is not going to ruin my chance at being elected, far from it, but it does not look good in my community. For the sake of representing the party I appeared at a staged media event of minor - "fringe" parties from across the country that was held in the heart of Toronto.

I just got back from that, and I'm beat. The socialists of central Toronto have beaten me, air-heads that they are. I'll say more later.