Canadian Musings

Blog site Let it Bleed points (via Instapundit) to this article about a possibly innocent, possibly frightful incident wherein fourteen men acted suspiciously aboard an aircraft.

Got an email earlier tonight reminding me of a few simple facts. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachussets has become a chief attack dog for Sen. John Kerry's Presidential bid.

This is the same Kennedy who left Miss Mary Jo Kopechne behind to die in the waters underneath the Edgartown Bridge in July 1969 after drinking and driving. The same Kennedy who asked a cousin to take the blame while he rushed off to cook up the best alibi he could think of.

This is the same Kennedy who was thrown out of Harvard on his ear 15 years earlier -- for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final. The man the US Army denied a commission because he cheated on tests.

It is important that everyone understand the depths to which the Democratic Party has sunk in its lust for pure power. That they have demonstrated that they are not interested in solving America's problems, just their own.

A comment on AndrewCoyne.com mentioned that had about 16,500 Liberal voters in specific ridings voted Conservative instead, that Mr. Harper would be Prime Minister.

We can debate the exact number, but it's in that range. I've duplicated the effort, and here's the list I came up with of the closest riding wins by the Liberals (margin over the Conservative candidate, province, and Elections Canada riding number):
134 AB 48011
164 ON 35046
313 ON 35058
407 ON 35013
721 AB 48012
1295 ON 35004
1380 ON 35066
1965 ON 35035 (NDP placed 2nd)
2071 BC 59019
2184 NL 10002
2253 ON 35057
2486 ON 35008
2663 ON 35009
2728 ON 35063
2743 North 62001
2800 ON 35003
2916 ON 35038
2999 North 61001
3008 NB 13010
3016 ON 35076
3106 North 60001
3301 ON 35069
3513 NB 13009
3656 PE 11004
3747 BC 59023
4034 ON 35010
4054 PE 11002
4124 NL 10004
4134 NS 12011
4175 PE 11001
4731 ON 35040 (NDP placed 2nd)
4853 ON 35042 (NDP placed 2nd)
4857 PE 11003

A couple comments are in order: the ridings in the North have a very small population, so although the absolute numbers of voters may be small to swing the riding, the percentages are significant. These ridings may be excluded from any 'swing' calculations.

To calculate the number of voters, divide the margin of victory in half and round up (or add one as necessary) to create a Conservative win in the riding. Add the results for 18 ridings to give the Conservatives the most seats in the election.

Three ridings from this list are in the Ottawa area, where it was revealed shortly before the election that one Conservative candidate had some legal issues. It is not unreasonable to conclude that these would have been Conservative victories but for these problems.

Once again I'm seeing a delay (a couple hours and counting) between when I publish a new post, and when it's showing up. Even a simple template change is AWOL. Is Blogger caching the pages now? If so, why wouldn't the cache at least be marked as expired once the blog is updated?

Makes ya go "Hmm."

Chalk up another complete failure for the United Nations: the Polish military have accomplished in less than a year what the UN failed to do in over a decade. They have uncovered chemical munitions in Iraq.

Yahoo News carried the story, but so far I haven't seen it covered by the main news outlets (CNN, etc). Presumably the passing of legendary screen and music figures is more important than admitting they were wrong.

Let's be clear: this does not indicate there was a recently-active chemical weapons progarm. All it proves is that Hussein's regime was lying to the world about having destroyed all of his banned weapons.

I just posted an entry on Proportional Representation which shows up in my index but does not show up in the blog view. Hmm. I'll have to see what's going on.

Update: And now it seems to be showing up. Oh well, I guess now I don't have to worry.

Colby Cosh raised the question a couple weeks ago. Now Andrew Coyne has commented on it. Should Canada move to a Proportional Representation electoral system?

Absolutely not.

Let's go over just a few of the problems.

Not all voters in Canada are equal today. Each riding in PEI represents a population of fewer than 34000 while an average riding in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario represents more than 106 000. (Data: Elections Canada) Of course, not all of the population is eligible to vote, and we note that the riding of Malpeque, for example, has only 24640 voters (Data: Statistics Canada). So some voters are already carrying more than three times the weight federally as other voters.

So-called PR would erode the power of voters in rural or geographically large ridings (which already have a reduced voter turnout and smaller voter population) and increase the power centers in areas where voter turnout is higher and population is more densely concentrated. There is no reason to believe that these rural ridings would consistently elect a different party if turnout were higher, but PR would reduce their rights to representation just the same.

PR fails to address the underlying problems with democracy in Canada today: it continues the delegation of power to the various parties rather than only to the elected representative. Instead of having an MP answer to the party whip, they must be held to account by their constituents. They must be able to speak and vote on behalf of all of their riding's population rather than giving up their voice to the privately-selected leadership of their party. Where necessary, they should be free to do their own horse-trading, rather than having party negotiators choose what policies to compromise in order to gain the compromised support of some other party.

And depending on what system would be implemented, when we examine PR as an idea for a democracy, would we eliminate the secret ballot so as to assign an MP to each voter? Who would be declared elected if I disagree with several policies of the party, but agree with the policies of my local candidate (and offer that candidate support to influence the party's policies)? Who would pretend to speak for those who cannot or did not vote? On what geographic basis should such a scheme operate? And who, precisely, would the electors be voting for - a prioritized fraction of a party slate?

Apparently, Germany's system allocates about half of the seats to locally-elected representatives, and another half to a prioritized fraction of a party slate. So one would assume that it is impossible for anything other than a party policy to be passed: even if individual members voted according to their own will, they cannot get more than half of the votes without the explicit support of at least one party. While such a system may be efficient at passing legislation (party negotiators would trade off their priorities on an ongoing basis), there is no reason to believe that this strengthens the voice of the people. It can be reasonably concluded that the power is delegated to the parties, not to the MPs, under such a system.

Instead, we could perhaps consider separating the election of the administration from the election of the House of Commons: we need to recognize that these are separate functions and that the legislators must not be enslaved by the administration as they are today. The administration would be elected on a national basis, and would be freed to select members of the cabinet from those most qualified to serve rather than from among MPs who have no capabilities in the field. Members of the House would be elected on a local riding basis, and would represent all of their constituents and not just the plurality who voted for them. After all, we're supposed to have a secret ballot.

Proponents of PR include fairvotecanada.org. I have not yet found an organization which truly believes in fair reform of the electoral system in Canada: one that believes that the people's voice, not the party's voice, needs to be strengthened.

So Toronto has collectively elected a very large contingent of Members of Parliament who have each vowed to not reduce taxes.

Think Torontonians will shut up now about 'not getting their fair share'? While I would hope so, I'm not going to hold my breath.

These are politicians who have promised to take more money from Toronto and give it to the rest of the country. What part of the party platform do these voters not understand? And to make it worse, some of the loudest whiners are people who say they want to take from the rich regions and give to the poorer regions. There's absolutely no way anyone can consider Toronto one of the poorer regions: the density of the population makes providing services cheaper there than anywhere else in the country.