X Marks the Spot

The Conservatives unveiled their election war room this week.

So far, it has been called "the fear factory" and "the Death Star."

I'm still relatively new to this industry, but this is the weirdest media event I've ever seen. Of course, that's why so many reporters showed up, and why everyone's blogging about it.

At the event, journalists were given a tour of the 17,000-square-foot office in the Ottawa 'burbs that will script the leader's tour, direct candidates to not say anything stupid to me and my colleagues, and create and disseminate pro-Harper and anti-Dion advertisements.

Why would the Conservatives invite journalists to this place?

1. To show they have their ducks in a row for whenever an election comes.

2. To show they have more money than Scrooge McDuck.

3. To simply get their names in the newspaper.

4. So they have a chance to get their message out. Their message right now is as follows: "We're prepared for an election we don't want. We want to have a nice, long summer with our families. Liberal leader Stephane Dion wants to force an election. Why? Because he hates summer and families nearly as much as he loves terrorists."

The truth is, though, that no Liberal in his right mind wants an election now. The polls have them way down, they don't seem to have anything under control, and the public still has those (put on a Quebecois accent) "Do you think it's easy to make priorities?" commercials in their minds.

The last thing the Liberals want is an election, and they'd probably be more likely to vote in favour of the death penalty than to rush into a spring campaign.

So, in other words, it's all in Harper's hands, and everyone knows this, and now everyone knows the Death Star is ready for when Darth Harper decides to close his fist on Parliament.

***

With the help of William Shatner, Rogers unveiled its new video phone that allows you to see the person you're speaking to.

I'll give ten points to anyone who can think of a reason, other than for the purpose of phone sex, why anyone would want this.

Canada has problems. There are ways we can all improve as individuals, and there are ways our leaders can improve our country.

But when you read something like this, it makes you happy to live in this country.

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, has banned the sale of alcohol during the Holy Week holiday.

Can you imagine having time off work and not being able to go to a bar, or a liquor store? It would be horrible.

Granted, the Venezuelan government said the reason for the ban is to reduce drunk driving deaths, but surely a system of laws and RIDE programs might be a more fair way of going about it.

I have always liked Belinda Stronach, and I have always thought Canada hasn't been fair to her.

And here's why I think Canada hasn't been fair to her.

We don't like rich people and we don't like attractive people. They are suspect. Their motives cannot be trusted.

Stronach already had everything she needed before entering politics. She had inherited from her formidable father both money and power. And she had inherited, though apparently not from her father, a nice face, a good figure, and beautiful hair. Somewhere along the way, she also learned to dress nicely.

She left university before graduating. She got a plum post at Magna. She had everything.

So why would she possibly want to run for office?

No Canadian with less money than Stronach will believe she was trying to improve the country in which we live. People simply can't believe that. Because she's rich, and rich people are mean and cruel and have motives so evil us middle class people can't even imagine them. Otherwise, how did they become rich?

Also, we don't like attractive people because they remind us that we're not as attractive as them.

So, because she's rich, we don't trust her, and because she's pretty, we don't like her. And I suspect because of those same reasons, many politicians don't like her. And that's one of the reasons she had such a hard time fitting in.

Or, she's an idiot who got in over her head.

One reason or the other. It's really hard to say. Either way, she's gone now, to a place where she'll make more money, and not have to put up with stupid news reports about spending too much time with Bill Clinton or Tie Domi.

“You know what the truth is? It’s some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me and I say ‘Yeah, yeah—ain’t it the truth?”’ - Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut made me fall in love with writing. Not alone, but he was one of the three.

It started with Douglas Coupland, whose book Life After God I happened upon in the White Oaks Secondary School Library in Oakville. Life After God had a great cover. That's why I read it.

I liked that book so much I found information about Coupland, and learned that he loved and was influenced by the works of Kurt Vonnegut, a great American satirist.

I went on to read Vonnegut.

And, just as I was when I read Coupland, I was amazed.

I remember thinking, "Wow, people are allowed to write like that?"

It was a revelation.

Writers are allowed to be funny and dismissive and confrontational and, provided they don't do it for its own sake, extremely offensive.

That's what reading Vonnegut taught me, and it's what I wanted to be taught, so I read exclusively Vonnegut for an entire year.

People generally like writers who confirm, or authenticate, their own prejudices.

Vonnegut did that for a lot of people who were suspicious of social hierarchy, of undeserved respect, of pride in self and country.

It was only two years ago when he was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was as if Vonnegut was officially passing the torch to Stewart. It was a torch passed to Vonnegut from Mark Twain.

This is from Vonnegut's interview with Stewart:

"I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy—because we’re experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that’s what’s going on now."

Everything he wrote was like that. All his answers in interviews were like that.
The things he said are the things they don't teach you in school.

And teachers probably shouldn't teach them in school, because if everyone knew what Vonnegut taught, schools would be empty, and libraries and blues clubs full.

Here are two more quotations to end on.

First, from an essay he wrote called Knowing What's Nice.

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

Worth remembering.

Finally, here's what he asked, in a Sunday Herald article he wrote, be written on his tombstone.

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC."

Elizabeth May is a Liberal dressed in a Green's clothing.

She is now a member of the Liberal Party.

Not officially, of course. But what are the Liberals saying when they agree to not run a candidate against her. They're saying, "We're fine with May winning that riding. We have no opposition to someone from another political party winning."

This is rather novel. And it begs the question, if the Liberals are all right with May winning out in Nova Scotia, why wouldn't they be all right with other Green candidates winning in other ridings. It's not like May's a low-level Green member. She's the leader. She has the final say on the direction of the party. So, why not split up the ridings. The Liberals will take the ridings they think they can win (I'm sure there's one somewhere!), and the Greens can take the rest, hoping for a miracle breakthrough, no longer hindered by the vote-gobbling Liberals.

In fact, why don't the Liberals and the Greens form a single party?

Of course, this is probably what they're heading towards. Fold the Greens in. This would, of course, upset a great number of Green Party members, but many of them, like many NDP members, are fringe thinkers politically. Let that dead weight join the NDP, put together a Liberal Green Team, and win an election.

What the Liberals really should have done is just ignore the Green Party and wait for it to fade away. One more election without winning a seat will hurt the fledgling party considerably.

On top of that, now that every party is a green party, what use is the Green Party?

They were becoming obsolete, until Stephane Dion made them relevant by signing Elizabeth May as a Liberal in a Green suit.

Not that any of this really matters. Elizabeth May isn't expected to win, and probably won't win. And we'll see where the Green-Liberals go from there.

***

In other moves of political brilliance this week, the Nova Scotia legislature passed a resolution saying they were really rather angry at the NHL for scheduling the Ottawa Senators-Pittsburgh Penguins game four hours earlier than Hockey Night in Canada usually begins.

Sid the Kid and his Pittsburgh Penguins will be on the television at 4 p.m. Atlantic Time (that's 3 p.m. our time), instead of 8 p.m. (7 p.m. our time).

The NHL decided to schedule the game in the afternoon in the hopes of roping in bored Saturday afternoon sports fans in the U.S.

This was offensive to Progressive Conservative backbencher Pat Dunn, who appears to have a lot of time on his hands.

He drafted the resolution.

It said that Canadians "want to see Sidney Crosby and the Penguins Saturday night on national television, and in the process, prevent the loss of nearly half a million viewers or more for the CBC."

Playing the Penguins game in the afternoon is stupid, I will grant Dunn that, but introducing and passing a resolution to say so is also stupid.

1. Action Democratique du Quebec leader Mario Dumont, who is leader of the official opposition in Quebec's minority government, said he's interested in working with the federal government to get Quebec to sign the Constitution.

Some slim background: Quebec never signed the Constitution in 1982. They have never signed it since then.

There was the Meech Lake Accord, which was going to bring Quebec into the fold, but that failed.

Then there was the Charlottetown Accord, which was to do roughly the same, plus some, and that failed.

And now Dumont thinks it's a good time to start discussing it.

It's a strange time to talk about it. A better time might have been last month, when he was campaigning as a leader of a major political party in Quebec during the elections.

You'd think, in a province that makes a lot of noise about separation and federalism and nationalism, you'd think he might want to bring this up as part of his platform. It does, sort of, maybe change the view some voters might have for him.

Which, of course, could very well be why he didn't bring it up.

2. Still in Quebec: a group of girls, between 10 and 14 years of age, were kicked out of a tae kwon do tournament for wearing their hijabs. Hijabs, in case you don't know, are head scarves that many Muslim women wear.

You'll remember, a couple of months ago, another girl was kicked out of a soccer tournament for wearing her hijab.

In both cases, safety was the concern.

Also in both cases, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

All sports have inherent dangers, and all competitors know what they are. Does wearing a headscarf increase these dangers? If the head scarf is loose and flowing and could accidentally be pulled hard enough to strangle someone or break someone's neck, then yes.

But they aren't.

In the case of the soccer girl, and these tae kwon do girls, the headscarves are near the head, tightly wrapped and tucked into their uniforms.

And here's the even stupider part.

In tae kwon do, they wear helmets. On top of their headscarves. You can barely tell these kids are even wearing head scarves.

It's Quebec, so, of course, this raises more talk about reasonable accommodation, which seems to be the way they justify racism in that province.

Reasonable accommodation is the thinking that says immigrants will be accepted, but they have to assimilate to a reasonable degree.

Dumont (again Dumont - this guy was a nobody about a month and a half ago), thinks Quebec should legislate what is expected of immigrants, and thinks currently there is too much blind acceptance going on.

Not that you asked, but I think Dumont is completely wrong.

And, again, not that you asked, but I think kids should be allowed to play sports, even if they're wearing religious head scarves.

Yann Martel, who wrote Life of Pi (and Self, which is actually, in my mind, better than Life of Pi), which won him the pretigious Man Booker Prize, has started an interesting website.

He plans to send Stephen Harper one book every two weeks.

He hopes this will help Harper reconsider his decision to cut $12 million from External Affairs for funding for promotion of Canadian artists in foreign countries.

It's really quite an interesting way to go about it.

And even if the Prime Minister doesn't read the books Martel suggests, perhaps the rest of us should.

The first book is Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych.

Here's the website: http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca/.

As you may know, there's a provincial election on October 10.

Between now and then, we will all be a little confused. Don't worry, we'll survive, and we'll try to work through it together.

The problem is not the election, which will be, as elections are, confusing.

The problem is that this year there will be more to worry about.

As well as electing members of provincial parliament, which is normal, we will also be voting on whether or not we want a new electoral system.

The new electoral system has been constructed by the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. We're going to call it "the Assembly."

The Assembly was made up of 103 Ontario residents. Regular people. Over the past many months, they learned about all the different ways you can elect your representatives.

They compared systems from other parts of the world with our own system.

They came up with an alternative to our current system.

On October 10, after voting for our favourite candidate, we will have to vote for which of the two electoral systems on offer we prefer.

Our current system is simple.

This election, there will be 107 seats in the Provincial Legislature (four more than the 2003 election). Each seat corresponds to a riding, also known as an electoral district.

In Mississauga, there are six ridings: Bramalea-Gore-Malton, Mississauga-Brampton South, Mississauga East-Cooksville, Mississauga-Erindale, Mississauga South, and Mississauga-Streetsville.

Each of those ridings is represented by a MPP. At least three, and as many as a couple of dozen, candidates will be running to become the MPP in your riding. You will read about them, and maybe meet them, and then you'll decide which one you like best.

On election day, you will walk into a school gymnasium or community centre, you'll go behind a cardboard apparatus, and you'll put an "X" beside the person you want to represent you in the Ontario Legislature.

If that person receives more votes than anyone else, that person becomes the MPP.

Easy.

It's called the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the electoral system the Assembly is proposing we switch to, or you can beat me to it and read about it here.

(If you haven't already, read yesterday's blog entry first.)

So, the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform has proposed a new electoral system.

On October 10, as part of the provincial election, we will vote on whether we like their proposal better than our current system.

Here's the Assembly's proposal.

It's call the Mixed Member Proportional system.

With this system, you get to mark two "X"s on your ballot.

The first "X" will be for the candidate in your riding who you want to represent you in the Ontario legislature.

The MPP for your riding will be the person on the first ballot who gets the most votes. This is exactly like our current system.

The weirdness comes in on the second "X," where you vote not for a local candidate but for the party of your choice, whether Liberal, Progressive Conservative, New Democratic, Marijuana, whatever.

That's the voting part. You choose the candidate you like. You choose the party you like.

Then the counting begins.

First, they figure out who wins the ridings.

In our current system (as of the October election), there are 107 ridings. In the new system, there will be 90 ridings. Those 90 ridings will take up 70 percent of the seats in the legislature.

That's the easy part.

Next, the counters will figure out the percentage of the popular vote each party received based on that second "X" you placed.

If the Liberal Party received 48 percent of the popular vote, but only has 36 percent of the seats from the ridings, they will get to choose more members to fill many of the remaining seats in the legislature.

Those people who are elected on the second ballot will come from a previously-published list made by each party.

There will be 39 such members, and they will represent the whole province, instead of particular ridings, and they will sit in the remaining 30 percent of the seats in the legislature.

In total, after all the counting is done, there will be 129 MPPs.

That's 22 more than we will have this year, but actually one less than we had from 1987 to 1999.

The end result will be a legislature that more closely reflects the desires of the voters.

If the Liberals end up with 48 percent of the vote, they will have roughly 48 percent of the seats.

That is the whole point of this new format - to make every vote count.

Tomorrow, in what promises to be a lively and vibrant post, we'll discuss some of the pros and cons of the new system.

(If you haven't yet read Parts 1 and 2 in this series, please scroll down and read them.)

All right, so I kept putting this off because I knew it would be a big post, and I knew I'd leave some things out, but now, here we are, forced to deal with the question at hand.

The question: Is the Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) system a better way to elect our MPPs than our current First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system?

The answer: I don't know.

I know my job is to take sides on these things, but I honestly just haven't decided.

There's simply too much to consider, and more information coming when the Assembly's final report comes out on May 15.

Here are the worries:

1. Perpetual minority governments.

Because a party that forms the government very rarely receives more than 50 percent of the vote, in the MMP system it is likely we will always have minority governments.

Because it's unlikely we'll ever have a majority government, it's expected we won't need to put up with the continuous brinkmanship we see in the federal sphere.

Instead, there will be regular-length terms of minority governments working with other parties to pass legislation.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Under MMP, if the Progressive Conservatives form the government after running on a revolutionary platform, with a minority government they will probably have a hard time passing the platform they envisioned and sold to Ontarians.

That's bad if it stops necessary measures from being taken, but if the measures are necessary, one other party will likely be on side, or be willing to find some middle ground and build from there.

From the National Post's April 17 editorial condemning MMP: "A real change of government becomes highly unlikely with (MMP), which produces a game of musical chairs with repeated recombinations of much the same group of consensus politicians."

On the other hand, as National Post columnist Andrew Coyne pointed out (while condemning his employer's editorial on the matter), "In recent years, Ontario has veered wildly, from the Rae NDP to the Harris Tories and back to the McGuinty Liberals, on the basis of relatively minor swings in voter support."

So, there will be minority governments and a need for consensus.

But, on the other hand, there will be minority governments and a need for consensus.

2. The emergence of crazy fringe parties.

For a party to have representation in the Legislature under MMP, it will need at least three percent of the popular vote.

It is possible for a one-trick party (anti-abortionists, say) to gather three percent of the popular vote. They will then get one seat. The larger their share of the popular vote, the more members they'll have.

There is a fear that this will result in many such fringe parties, and that those parties, in minority governments, will have too much sway in the legislature.

Surely if such parties are elected it's because we have a large enough number of fringe voters to support them. Just because most of us think fringe voters and the parties they support are crazy, those voters are still Ontarians and they deserve to be represented.

David Docherty, dean of arts at Wilfrid Laurier University, told Canadian Press he doesn't think fringe parties will gather much support.

"Will it change things dramatically? No, probably not. Just as if the Greens get two seats - will it change things dramatically? No, but at least they'll have a voice there."

Andrew Coyne (who has written the best piece on this so far), wrote about MMP through a federal lens: "The Green Party, with more than 660,000 votes in the last federal election, got zero seats. The Bloc, with barely twice as many votes, got 51 seats."

So, there will be more fringe parties, but how many more? Probably not many, and with only one or two members, it's hard to imagine they'd have much more power than they deserve.

On the plus side, there will be more fringe parties, meaning the Green Party, which does fairly well and probably deserves a seat, will get a seat.

(It's also worth noting that the Green Party, which is a fairly substantial machine, has so far only received 2.8 percent of popular support in an election, so to think that getting three percent of the popular vote is simple is ridiculous.)

3. 39 riding-less MPPs.

This is probably the toughest part of the MMP proposal, and one that won't be understood until the final report comes out in May.

39 of the MPPs elected under MMP would not have ridings. They would come from a list prepared by the political parties.

Who would these 39 people be, who would they represent, and to whom would they be accountable?

They would be paid the same as MPPs with constituencies, and their votes would count in the same manner as riding MPPs.

It makes one think this section of the Legislature could become a mini-Senate, since the members will be appointed instead of elected. The difference, of course, will be that there will be more turnover than the federal Senate, and the members will be more beholden than their federal cousins to the party line.

These people, in theory, will be members who will help balance the legislature to reflect Ontario - visible minorities, women, and other people who are under-represented.

It will also likely become a place where people well-liked by a given party will be rewarded.

They can be put near the top of the list, and if there is balancing to be done, they will get into the Legislature first.

It's hard to say how each party will build their lists, and that will be the most interesting question if MMP passes.

It's also worth knowing whether these members will be allowed to be part of the government's cabinet.

All of this will be seen more clearly on May 15.

There are many concerns with MMP, but these are the three that have stood out so far.

More will rise to the surface as more information comes out, and as the referendum nears.

Stay tuned, and stock up on Advil.

My friend across the aisle in the newsroom, the indomitable veteran of everything Mississauga, John Stewart, writes a brilliant blog for mississauga.com.

I'm always fascinated by the stories he finds, and impressed by the opinions he keeps.

I do, however, have to disagree with him on his April 27 blog, which states, "You have to think that The Green Party will get a lot more consideration from voters this time around, especially if the voluble (Elizabeth) May gets an opportunity to debate the other leaders on the national stage."

I hope he's right, but I don't think he is.

I think in the next election, the Green Party will do roughly the same, if not worse, than they did in January 2006.

That means staying with zero seats in Ottawa.

And that means the Green Party will have to do something radical, or slowly descend into irrelevance, in time for the election that follows the next one.

That is, if they haven't already descended into irrelevance.

Here's the problem: If every party becomes a green party, what role does the Green Party have to play?

Granted, it's hard to say the new Conservative plan to save the environment is adequate, but anyone who would want to vote Green, if they want a real plan to come out of the House of Commons, will vote Liberal instead of Conservative.

If the Green Party gets one or two seats, it doesn't really mean anything.

Only the Liberals, which say their environment plan will be better, will actually be able to produce something and pass it through the House.

The Green Party in Canada has always said it hopes people steal their ideas.

Their hopes have been answered, and simultaneously made them disposable.

They now work as a watchdog party, and, personally, I'm fine with that. When it comes to the environment, we can't have enough watchdogs in Ottawa.

***

Also, I'd like to wish Prime Minister Stephen Harper a happy birthday.

Our twenty-second prime minister turns 48 today.