Month: September 2007

The staff of NDP MP Dawn Black are among the most creative and skilled when it comes to using federal access to information (ATI) laws to learn important details about the Conservative government's plans, policies, and initiatives. The latest ATI nugget from Black, who is her party's national defence critic, are some documents that show that officials at Canada's Department of National Defence prepared the speech that Afghanistan President Hamid Kharzai gave when he addressed Parliament on Sept. 22, 2006.
“…Karzai’s address to Parliament was an elaborately staged political stunt,” said Black, in a statement. “What Canadians heard was not the voice of the Afghan people, but the talking points of the Department of National Defence.”
When Parliament resumes next month, Black wants an emergency debate on this issue and will ask the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence to investigate DND's military communications strategy.

As the Canadian dollar hit parity with the U.S. dollar, some suggested this was hardly cause for celebration as the rapid rise of the dollar has meant massive job losses in Canada's manufacturing sector and in Canada's forestry and paper manufacturing sector.
A look at the data, however, suggests the correlation between the dollar's rise and job losses is weaker or stronger depending on when the measurement end points.

Here's the data checkpoints:

• For the month of January 2003, the Canadian loonie's average value was 64.88 cents US. By August, 2007, the monthly average was 94.5 cents, a rise in nearly five years of 45.7 per cent. In the same period, Canada lost nearly one in ten forestry and paper manufacturing jobs. For all manufacturing sectors, there were 129,000 or 5.8 per cent fewer in August, 2007 than there were in January, 2003. So that sounds bad but …
• Just comparing August 2007 to the beginning of 2007, the loonie and employment levels are all up. For the first eight months of the year, the loonie climbed more than 11 per cent; there are 30,200 or 23 per cent more people working in forestry; and there are nearly 60,000 or 2.9 per cent more manufacturing jobs.
• Things look less cheery, though, if we compare August of 2007 to August of 2006. In that twelve-month period, the loonie climbed 5.7 per cent; there are 7,700 or 4.5 per cent fewer forestry jobs; and there are 51,300 or 2.4 per cent fewer manufacturing jobs.

Data sources: Statistics Canada and X-Rates

A federal government that gets tough with industry when it comes to cracking down on chemical pollutants would find broad approval from the electorate, according to new public opinion research published by Environment Canada.
Canadians are also broadly in favour of the principle of slapping new taxes on consumer and industrial products that contain chemical substances.
Those are some of the key findings in a report, published in February but just recently made available online by Environment Canada's Public Opinion Research Group.
Here are the key bullet points from the report's executive summary:

• Canadians perceive industry to have the strongest influence on government (38%) when it comes to environmental policies and regulations, followed distantly by the Canadian public (18%). Notably, just 13 per cent of Canadians think environmentalists have the strongest influence on the government's green agenda. Just 10 per cent believe the latest scientific evidence is what drives policy at Environment Canada.
• In instances where Canadian public opinion is at odds with current scientific evidence, Canadians are more likely to prefer that the government base their decisions on scientific evidence.
• When asked to evaluate regulations on the environment, on food products, and on consumer products, in all cases a majority of Canadians feel that current regulations are not strong enough; environmental regulations are seen as particularly weak.
• Most Canadians feel the federal government, as well as companies that manufacture and use chemical substances, are doing only a fair or poor job of preventing or controlling the release of chemicals substances into the environment. The federal government, however, receives marginally higher ratings on this issue.
• The majority of Canadians (58%) are supportive of adopting a new environmental tax added to consumer and industrial products that contain chemical substances.
• Canadians place a high importance on purchasing products that are environmentally friendly.
• Canadian consumers believe that environmentally friendly products perform as well as non eco-friendly brands.
• Although many Canadians believe they cost more, most express a clear willingness to pay more for environmentally friendly products.

The survey was done by Environment Canada with the assistance of private sector polling firm Environics Canada. A total of 2,045 Canadian were surveyed in December, 2006. The report says it is accurate to within 2.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20 for the national sample.

Newfoundlanders go to the polls October 9 to pass judgment on the premiership of Danny Williams. By all accounts, this will be as close a coronation as you are likely to see. King Danny and the Progressive Conservatives of Newfoundland and Labrador may, in fact, sweep every single seat in the provincial legislature, a feat not accomplished since Frank McKenna did it in New Brunswick in 1987.

But those with a some knowledge of island politics say there may be one Liberal standing after the Danny-tsunami sweeps across the Rock and his name is Elvis Loveless (left). That's right — Elvis Loveless, the first-time Liberal candidate in Fortune Bay-Cape La Hune.

Elvis has been around politics for a while, working, for example, in former Premier Brian Tobin's office at one point and has, I am told, the potential to endear himself to voters. In other words, his personal popularity may be enough to overcome Danny's influence.
Now mind you, I'm sitting here in Ottawa and am forced to gossip about Newfoundland politics with expat islanders here who may or may not know what they're talking about. So if you're on the Island and you've got thoughts on Elvis or any other Liberal that might withstand the Danny-tsunami, please let me know!

Update: A friend from the Rock writes:

The federal Conservative Party is suing Elections Canada after Elections Canada ruled that the spending by some Conservative candidates in the last general federal election did not qualify as spending on local advertising but, in fact, was spending on national advertising.
The Elections Canada ruling had two chief implications. First, the local candidates were ineligible for thousands of dollars of rebates. Second, if, in fact, the spending was for “national advertising”, then the Conservatives would be more than a $1-million over their national spending limit — a serious violation of elections law.
The Conservatives, in their court filings, and in comments to reporters on this issue argue that everything they've done on this issue has been above-board, fully reported, and, they say, completely within the law.
In some cases, national party headquarters transferred money to a local candidate's campaign and then had the local campaign buy advertising that was produced and placed by the national campaign. The television ads were often, in many respects, identical to national ads except that, in the fine print at the end, it might say something like “Authorized by the agent for [insert local candidate's name here]'
Tom Flanagan, Harper's former chief of staff, seems to suggest in his new book, Harper's Dream, that this was one of innovations party organizers came across for the 2006 campaign.
“Even though there is a cap on national campaign spending, it is easy and legal to exceed it by transferring expenditures to local campaign that are not able to spend up to their own limits.” (p. 188).

[In the final days of the 2006 election campaign] The door … had been opened for a final wave of attacks. Liberal outrider organizations — feminists, gay-rights activists, law professors, aboriginal leaders, environmentalists — came at us in human waves, claiming that Harper would roll back abortion rights, use the notwithstanding clause to quash gay marriage, and repudiate the Kelowna Agreement and the Kyoto Accord. [David's note: Well,Tom, your guy did, in fact, repudiate the Kelowna Agreement and Kyoto and made a half-hearted attempt at rolling back same-sex marriage!] The Conservative Party simply can't compare with the Liberals in the depth and breadth of these external linkages; Real Women and Campaign Life can't compete with Egale Canada and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in terms of public funding and media clout. If the Conservatives can stay in power for any length of time, it should be a high priority to de-fund the support groups that the Liberals have cultivated so long with grants, subsidies, and access to the government.

From: Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007, p. 264

And here's one of those “outrider” groups that shut its doors on Friday.

“People expect conservatives to be tough. They believe in the values of self-help, individual responsibility, criminal justice, economic realism, and national interest. They look ridiculous, if they go around snivelling and complaining about fairness every time an opponent takes a shot at them. Political campaigning is a civilized form of civil war. The point is to win the war, not to complain that people are fighting. Leave the whining to the utopians who fantasize about conflict-free societies.”

From: Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007, p. 286

It seems pretty obvious from the content of their posts but Tom Flanagan confirms that Stephen Taylor and perhaps Steve Janke are the handmaidens of the PMO in the blogosphere. Flanagan, one of the key leaders on three of the four campaigns Stephen Harper has been engaged in over the last five years, writes (I have added the hyperlinks):

A final innovation [in Election 2006] was something we had not even considered in 2004 — links with the blogosphere…there was now a group who called themselves the “Blogging Tories”. Not being a blogger myself, I wasn't even aware of them until Adam Daifallah gave me the news at the May 2005 meeting of Civitas. I called Stephen Taylor, whose “Conservative Party of Canada Pundit” vies for prominence with Steve Janke's “Angry in the Great White North,” to get things started. Doug Finley subsequently appointed people to monitor the blogosphere and to get out stories that were not quite ready for the mainstream media… (p 232)
…In [the] most recent election, we also made a start on working with bloggers to amplify and diversify our message. (p. 288)

From: Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007 (p. 274-289)

Tom Flanagan's “Ten Commandments of Conservative Campaigning”

1. Unity The Conservative Party contains libertarians, social conservatives, populists, Red Tories, Quebec nationalists, and Canadian nationalists, plus many people who don't care much about any of these 'isms'. They all need each other. They can never win unless they try to understand each other and reach compromises that they can all live with.
2. Moderation Canada is not yet a conservative or Conservative country. We can't win if we veer too far to the right of the median voter.
3. Inclusion The traditional Conservative base of Anglophone protestants is too narrow to win modern Canadian elections. While preserving that base, we have to appeal to Francophones, Roman Catholics (44 per cent in teh 2001 Census of Canada) and other racial and religious minorities. The key to the long-term success of the Liberals has been their cultivation of minority groups. We have to take away that advantage before we can become the dominant political force in the country.
4. Incrementalism We have to be willing to make progress in small practical steps. Sweeping visions have a place in intellectual discussions, but they are toxic in practical politics.
5. Policy We have to develop well-thought-out policies and communicate them effectively. Since conservatism is not yet the dominant public philosophy, our policies may sometimes run against conventional wisdom. The onus is on us to help Canadians to understand what they are voting for.
6. Self-Discipline The media are unforgiving of conservative errors, so we have to exercise strict discipline at all levels:

   • there must be a complete plan for the campaign, so the leader is not forced to improvise;
   • staff must avoid the limelight and let the communications department deal with the media;
   • candidates must talk about the platform, not their personal beliefs, and (except for designated spokesmen) concentrate on local rather than national media;
   • members and supporters must be careful and dignified in all their communications, even e-mail and website postings.

7. Toughness We cannot win by being Boy Scouts. We have to conduct thorough opposition research and make use of the results; run hard-hitting, fact-based negative ads; and do whatever is legally possible to jam our opponents' communications and disrupt their operations.
8. Grassroots politics Victories are earned one voter at a time. Door-knocking, voter ID, GOTV [get out the vote] are the Holy Trinity that wins close races. We must extend the lead that we have opened up over the other parties in ground-level campaigning and grassroots fundraising.
9. Technology We are living in the biggest, fastest-moving communications revolution in human history. Each election campaign features new technologies. We must continue to be at the forefront in adapting new technlogies to politics.
10. Persistence Campaigning is a tough business, and mistakes are frequent. We have to correct our errors, learn from experience and keep pushing ahead.

From: Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007 (p. 274-289)