Month: May 2011

The great variety of people that are the new NDP MPs

The Library of Parliament is busy putting together its pages for each new MP. Those pages include the occupation of the MP prior to being elected. The Library only has listed occupations for only about half of the new NDP MPs. Many of those MPs may list multiple occupations prior to their election. I went through those today and was struck, as you may be, of the great variety of professional backgrounds of the new members of that caucus. Here is the list of occupations for about 40 of the new NDP MPs. I'll update as the Library of Parliament catches up.

Activist, Activist, Actor, Agronomist, artistic diredtor, Assistant manager, Author, Coach, college instructor, Columnist, Communications adviser, Community activist, community activist, community activist, community activist, community development advisor, Community-development worker, Composer, Computer analyst, Consultant, Consultant, Correctional services officer, Criminologist, Director, Economist, Economist, Editor, educator, Employment consultant, engineer, environmentalist, Environmentalist, environmentalist, Environmentalist, Foreign-service officer, french teacher, gardener, guidance counsellor, horticulturist, industrial relations officer, information technology technician, Interpretive guide – museum, interpretive guide – museum, journalist, journalist, journalist, journalist, Journalist, labour relations officer, Labour representative, labour representative, Lawyer, Musician, musician, musician, policy analyst, printer, professor – community college, professor of political science, professor of sociology, Program coordinator, project manager, public relations officer, public servant, public servant, Public servant, radio host, research assistant, researcher, sales agent, security officer, security officer, singer, student, student, Student, student, Tax lawyer, teacher, Teacher, teacher, Teacher, teacher, translator, union officer, union organiser, volunteer worker, volunteer worker, writer, writer

Annals of re-branding, part 3: It's back to "Government of Canada" for the the very first funding announcement

For those keeping score, Stephen Harper's Conservatives have used a few different variations over the last five years when describing the activities of their government in official government press releases. There was the original, back in 2006 and stretching through to 2008, of “Canada's New Government is pleased to announce …” . Then, as early as May, 2010, we started seeing the “Harper Government pleased to announce…” template.

Today, we had our first “pleased to announce” kind of press release from the new majority Conservative government. And, one week in, at least, they've gone back to the plain vanilla “Government of Canada is pleased to announce …”

This is the first funding announcement so far as I can see coming from the government of the 41st Parliament and — this may come as a shock — it's money for an event in Saguenay, QC, which, after being part of the riding held by Conservative Jean-Pierre Blackburn for the last two Parliaments, is now the fiefdom of one of our new Quebec NDP MPs, Claude Patry.

So Patry wins whatever award there is for being the first MP of the 41st Parliament to bring home some of that Ottawa bacon! Well done, M. Patry!

What M. Patry won for his riding is $39,063 from Denis Lebel, the Minister of State for the regional development agency for Quebec, that will be used to help stage the Coupe des Nations Ville de Saguenay, a cycling event that will tourist dollars and other economic benefits to the Saguenay-Lac St. Jean region. (Lebel just happens to represent the riding to Patry's west but I don't want anyone to think I'm suggesting anything!)

And this seems like a good a point as any to invite you to follow along my reporting of each and every spending announcement this government will make between now and 2015 through my #OttawaSpends project on Twitter. The Harper government, during its last minority run from 2008 to 2011 made nearly 6,000 spending announcements and I tried to tweet out most of them and provide periodic updates at this blog. You can check in on the OttawaSpends project by visiting http://www.twitter.com/ottawaspends or, if you're a Twitter maniac, simply follow @ottawaspends. And if you are following me @ottawaspends be sure to read this explainer for the syntax and rationale for the project. As always, keen to hear your feedback and suggestions for this project.

 

NYT: Pakistani Army, Shaken by Raid, Faces New Scrutiny

Jane Perlez reports from Islamabad, Pakistan:

In some Pakistani quarters, the failure of the army and intelligence agencies to detect Bin Laden, or to do anything about him if indeed his presence was known, prompted calls for an overhaul of the nation’s strategic policies.

“Instead of making more India-specific nuclear-capable missiles, the funds and the energy should be directed to eliminating the terrorists,” said an editorial in the newspaper Pakistan Today.

The editor, Arif Nizami, said the American raid made a mockery of the Pakistani military’s bravura that its fighter jets could shoot down American drones. “You talk of taking out drones, and you can’t even take out helicopters,” Mr. Nizami said.

Some Pakistanis said they were more concerned about the fact that known terrorists were living in their midst than the violation of sovereignty by the Americans.

“The terrorists’ being on our soil is the biggest violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” said Athar Minallah, a prominent lawyer. “If Osama bin Laden lives in Abbottabad, there could be a terrorist in my neighborhood.”

The Internet could break. No, really, it could break.

Now, it's unlikely that it will break. Indeed, researchers publishing under the imprimatur of the The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) say as much in the opening of their report from last month on the “Resilience of the Internet Interconnection Ecosystem” [5.8 mb PDF]. (You do know that the Internet is not, in fact, one network but is, instead, the ultimate network of networks. I continue to argue with copy editors that the Internet, for that reason, should always be capitalized for the term describes only one thing and one specific thing — much like the third planet from the Sun which is always called Earth … but I digress). Hurricane Katrina, terrorist attacks, Mafiaboy — you name it — nothing has been able to bring the Internet to its knees … at least so far [pdf]…

…it does appear likely that the Internet could suffer systemic failure, leading perhaps to local failures and system‐wide congestion, in some circumstances including:

  • A regional failure of the physical infrastructure on which it depends (such as the bulk power transmission system) or the human infrastructure needed to maintain it (for example if pandemic flu causes millions of people to stay at home out of fear of infection).
  • Cascading technical failures, of which some of the more likely near‐term scenarios relate to the imminent changeover from IPv4 to IPv6; common‐mode failures involving updates to popular makes of router (or PC) may also fall under this heading.
  • A coordinated attack in which a capable opponent disrupts the BGP fabric by broadcasting thousands of bogus routes, either via a large AS or from a large number of compromised routers.

There is evidence that implementations of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) are surprisingly fragile. There is evidence that some concentrations of infrastructure are vulnerable and significant disruption can be caused by localised failure. There is evidence that the health of the interconnection system as a whole is not high among the concerns of the networks that make up that system – by and large each network strives to provide a service which is reliable, most of the time, at minimum achievable cost. The economics do not favour high dependability as there is no incentive for anyone to provide the extra capacity that would be needed to deal with large‐scale failures.

Liberal Party President Alfred Apps: Time for "rebuilding and renewal"

Liberal Party President Alfred Apps issued the following statement this evening:

On behalf of Liberals everywhere, I first want to thank and congratulate our leader, Michael Ignatieff, for waging a spirited national campaign. Mr. Ignatieff won the affection of all those who rallied to his side. He has earned the admiration and respect of all Canadians.

This is a profoundly difficult moment for our party.

Monday’s defeat was a deeply personal experience – for each of our hard-working candidates, for our tireless volunteers and for our many longtime and loyal supporters. Despite the outcome, Liberals everywhere can be proud of the battle that we waged together, as well as the tremendous team and the positive platform we offered to Canadians. Throughout this campaign, we have stood fast for democratic principle and for the kind of Canada that all Liberals believe in – progressive, compassionate, responsible – a Canada of hope for all Canadians.

But there is no avoiding the fact that we now face an historically unprecedented challenge. Our future as a party will depend, more than ever, on preserving our unity, broadening our vision and keeping clear and cool heads over the coming weeks and months about what we need to do.

As we reflect soberly and respectfully over the coming days on the democratic judgment of Canadians, we need to recognize that our party’s remarkable contribution to Canadian history was never a guarantee of its future health and success. We can only earn back the confidence of Canadians by rediscovering our confidence in ourselves and in the continuing relevance of our values.

It will take some time and it will not be easy.

In the wake of our defeat, we Liberals will have to reach out more broadly than we have in half a century to find a new generation of activists – to Canadians who love their country and are ready and able to fight for a new agenda of reform, to Canadians who care about equality of opportunity and are prepared to make serious personal sacrifices for the good of their fellow citizens, to Canadians who want to make a difference and are willing to demonstrate the courage of their convictions against all odds and come what may. We need to build a party that is a beacon for the Canada of tomorrow, rather than an echo of bygone glories – a party whose diversity truly reflects the Canada we are becoming.

Rather than wringing hands or assigning blame, we need to move forward to a reasonable period of constructive stability and collective reflection. My hope is that all Liberals will stand back, take the long view of our challenges and prepare themselves for the work ahead. While we all have to accept and learn from defeat, it does not mean that Liberalism is dead in Canada or that liberal values are suddenly misguided, or out of place or out of date.  Far from it.

Our commitment as Liberals remains to a resolutely centrist political party, to a program that blends and balances fiscal responsibility with social compassion, to a philosophy that understands the potential of a mixed market economy but believes in the power of government to achieve good, not only for individuals but also for the nation as a whole. We have always been a proudly pragmatic party, united around a broad and moderate consensus and a vision of Canada as more than the sum of its parts. We must not now surrender to tired ideologies, whether of the right or the left, in search of what can work in the real world to make the lives of Canadians better.

When Canadians are ready again for that kind of leadership – and they will be – we have to be ready to lead.

When a new Canadian consensus begins to emerge – as it will – Liberals need to be there to help shape it.

This is not the time for making rash judgments or drawing speedy conclusions. This is not the time for Liberals to be seduced by political expediency or parliamentary convenience.

This is a time for wide open debate, for moving forward together, for the broadest possible participation from Liberals in the major decisions that lie ahead. And all of us who occupy party offices across the land at every level of our organization need to steel our resolve and renew our commitment!

This is also the time for all Liberals to practice in our own home what we always preach to others – respect. As we move to rebuild, we must genuinely respect the honestly held viewpoints of each party member, including all in our deliberations. We must respect the bedrock principles of democratic process and ensure open debate on all major questions affecting our party’s future. Above all, we must ensure that the only agenda on the table is one that puts the Liberal Party first in the service of Canada and Canadians.

We can undertake the reform and rebuilding our party in a way that puts respect for people, for democracy and for our party first. If we do, I am confident that the legendary resilience and resourcefulness of ordinary Liberals will soon carry us all through to a brighter day for our party and for our country. The sheer enormity of the challenge ought to serve as an inspiration to us all.

Rebuilding and renewal starts with every Liberal but this is no time for the faint-hearted. We need Liberals with the energy and commitment who are ready to dust themselves off and get the job done. Please let us know how you want to help.

Is the ADQ's rise and fall in Quebec a lesson for the federal NDP? No

There has been much commentary in the wake of Monday's election debating the permanence of the NDP's leap into Official Opposition status. I believe the NDP rise is a permanent one.

But there are many who believe that the NDP's new significance on the federal scene will be a flash in the pan and that a new Liberal leader could reasonably expect to lead his or her party back to Official Opposition status in the 2015 federal election. One of the arguments common to this way of thinking is a comparison to the experience of the Action démocratique du Canada in Quebec over the 2007 and 2008 provincial elections.

Going into the 2007 provincial election in Quebec, the ADQ had 4 MNAs but ended up winning 41 seats and supplanting the Parti Quebecois as the official opposition against Jean Charest's minority government. In 2008, Charest triumphed and the ADQ was reduced to just 7 seats and lost official party status.

There are some fundamental differences between the ADQ experience and the federal experience that, I think, disqualifies comparisons of the two parties.

  • Jack Layton is not Mario Dumont. Layton has much more experience than Dumont did and, while I do not know the quality of the staff that advised Dumont through this period, Layton certainly has experienced, credible and street-smart advisors playing a senior role in his office and at the party.
  • The NDP has seen its popular support and seat counts grow in every federal election since Layton assumed leadership of the party in 2003. It has done better in 2004, 2006, 2008 and, of course, in 2011. This was a result of a deliberate multi-election strategy that paid significant dividends. There is no evidence to show that any of its political opponents has, in all those elections, figured out a way to put a dent in this slow but steady advance. The ADQ 2007 results appear to be a definite flash-in-the-pan that caught that surprised that party and its leader.
  • The ADQ entered the 2007 campaign with just 4 MNAs with any legislative experience. The NDP caucus for this Parliament has 35 members who were MPs in the 40th Parliament or previous Parliaments. That's two new MPs for every experienced MP. The ADQ had nearly 10 inexperienced MNA for every experienced one.
  • Charest “pounced” on his inexperienced opposition by calling a snap election in 2008, just 21 months after the ADQ  had been Official Opposition. If Harper is true to his word on fixed elections, the NDP opposition will have four years to convince Canadians that is, in fact, the “government-in-waiting”. That time, to gain experience and for new MPs to learn on the job, will be invaluable and make it much more difficult for the Liberals to “spring back.”