Canadian Musings

According to published reports, a Federal Government Minister has suggested that it's anti-Canadian to question and challenge the Federal Liberals.

This is outrageous. Questioning our government is not only important, it is our duty in a free society. That a Minister of the Crown fails to understand that gives us one more reason that the Canadian people need to speak with their votes to put these people out of office. Yesterday could not be soon enough.

The latest poll is out! Conservatives are at 36% and climbing! Liberal support has fallen to 27%.

What does it all mean?

Who knows. On the surface of it, the numbers are just numbers and are otherwise meaningless. They certainly don't tell us what sort of results an election would produce in Canada.

Because in Canada, we don't vote on a national scale. We only vote on a local, or so-called Electoral District Association ("EDA") level. Within our own riding, as it were.

So before we look at the polling information, let's look at a few of the key factors in deciding which party will win the most seats, and then we'll have a better idea what information the poll has to include before we can draw any useful inferences.

To have your vote count in an election, you have to be eligible, and you have to actually cast a valid ballot. In Canada, spoiled ballots are a small enough percentage that they just "fall into the noise" of the calculations - other errors dominate by far, so spoiled ballots can safely be ignored.

Once a candidate receives a plurality of votes within their riding, their presence counts equally with other elected candidates towards naming the governing party. So population and propensity to vote need to be normalized. That is, if one part of the country has more active voters than another part of the country, a survey would need to take that into account before projecting a seat count in the House of Commons.

Finally, non-uniformity needs to be taken into account. That is, we cannot simply say that the Conservatives will get 36% of the vote in each and every riding. Some ridings they'll get more, while in many ridings they'll get significantly less.

A quick summary: in order to relate polling data to a possible election outcome, we need to understand the regional breakdown and the likelihood of the respondent to go out and vote.

By way of example, there are four federal seats in PEI and three in the North of Canada. Currently, all seven are held by Liberal MPs. Yet the total population of these seven ridings is very low - about or less than the total population of two more "average" ridings. In all likelihood, the polling data don't tell us much about how the people in these seven ridings may vote - the sample size would be too small to be of any statistical use. Of those seven ridings, only one could be considered close for these purposes (i.e. as a percentage of votes cast), so we can still statistically expect the Liberals to win six of these seven ridings.

It's time we got a whole lot more sophisticated in our interpretation of polling data.

Federal NDP leader Jack Layton is reported as being willing to "prop up" the Liberal minority government if he wins a few specific concessions.

Too bad he was educated in Canada. Otherwise, his math skills might be a bit better. You see, of the 308 seats in the House of Commons, there is currently one vacancy. Meaning that a majority vote requires 154 supporters to ensure its success. The Liberals have 132 MPs, and the NDP have 19. That only totals 151. The Conservatives and the BQ have 99 and 54, respectively.

There are three independents: Mr. Cadman (who ran as an independent after losing his Conservative riding nomination), Ms. Parrish (kicked out of the Liberal caucus), and Mr. Kilgour (who resigned from the Liberal caucus).

So in order to claim to be propping up the Liberal government, Mr. Layton is promising to deliver not only the votes of all of his caucus members, but also all the votes of all three Independent MPs. Three MPs over whom he has limited influence.

What a slimy claim to make, to suggest he can deliver on that.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005/04/18/1002506-cp.html
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/process/house/partystandings/standings-e.htm

I know how infuriating the media can be. The public expects them to deal in facts, yet so much of what they put out is pure fiction. And I'm not just talking about the confusion between opinion and fact.

In March of this year, Canada lost four fine RCMP officers in the line of duty. Early reports suggested that the individual responsible for those deaths was running a marijuana grow-op. Then, the media suggested that only twenty pot plants were found, and that it was a "chop-shop" being run by this individual which attracted the police attention.

Turns out the media did a terrible job on such an important story. Turns out it was the 283 pot plants which led the officers to do what they did, even if it was not the pot plants which led to the initial call for help.

[Ref: Hansard, April 12, approx. 9:30pm]
http://www.parl.gc.ca/38/1/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/080_2005-04-12/han080_2130-E.htm

The general topic of Electoral Reform is popular, with various activities going on in British Columbia to experiment with how Members are elected and various fora for public participation elsewhere in Canada.

But why fiddle with the knobs when its the innards of the system which need fixing?

Let's separate the administration of the government from the creation of the laws. This will have two immediate and far-reaching effects: one, to allow the various Ministers in charge of the various governmental departments to be chosen from among truly qualified candidates for the role among all Canadians and not merely those lucky enough to have been elected to Parliament as members of the governing party; two, to create a new sense of accountability to the electorate among all elected members of the House of Commons.

The accountability is enhanced if there is political separation between the Party and the Member: if members are expected to vote on behalf of their constituents over the behalf of their party. This will not eliminate political alignment, as like-minded folk are likely to vote in similar patterns. This will not eliminate party discipline on matters of import. But it will reduce the influence wielded by a single leader in what has often been described as a democratic dictatorship in Canada.

The broadening of this system to enable an Elected, Effective, and Equal Senate is also important, but this and other reforms become part of a larger reinvigoration of federal politics. Other aspects include elimination of the role of the Monarch within government, and a more visible separation between federal and provincial governments.

The Federal Liberals are taking it on the chin once again this week.

The Auditor-General released her report on various security procedures, and concluded that there are significant holes in those procedures. Her office was not asked to look for any specific instances of security failures, so the fact that she didn't find any is unremarkable.

Yet in the House of Commons, Minister Pettigrew claimed that nobody has been found to have a Canadian passport who should not have been issued one. Or words to that effect. Immediately, the name Ressam jumped to mind. Did Pettigrew really mean that issuing Ressam a Canadian passport was intentional? Am I wrong that one was issued?

There are stories going around, and the Gomery Commission may well be collecting evidence on this matter, that the Federal Liberals have been caught accepting and even soliciting kickbacks for advertising contracts, and that even the PQ got in on the act provincially. So much for Chretien's "federalist friendly" ad agencies.

All this seems to have made Prime Minister Martin worried enough to pull the specific clauses mentioning Kyoto from the omnibus budget bill, despite his cabinet's protestations earlier this week that that would never occur. Good. Discussion about the Kyoto Accord should occur in the Environment committee, not the Finance committee.

Even with that backpedalling, though, and despite opposition assurances that they're in no rush to force another election, there are a growing number of pundits expecting a federal election to be called sooner rather than later. The question is, will Paul Martin still be the Prime Minister by the time his buddy Bono rolls into town for a U2 concert this coming November?

The Gomery publication ban has advanced the discussion surrounding what it means to publish information, and continued to raise the existant questions regarding where material is deemed to have been published, for the purposes of enforcing various laws, such as copyright, censorship (e.g. of offensive and disgusting material), and publication bans.

I reside in Canada, so Canada can try to lay claim to jurisdiction over anything I type, even if I send it out of the country. And it can try to lay claim to jurisdiction to anything I read (whether I intended to read it or not), regardless of where it originated. How 'bout if material exists, but no individual has been proven to have read it or tying it to any individual author cannot be proven? How can anyone prove that I didn't have guests over who may have used my computer? (My IP address can legally be tied to my house.)

A quick search of the web will turn up a recent case wherein material physically published in one jurisdiction (maybe it was Australia) was found, for legal purposes, to have been published in another jurisdiction (the US?) by virtue of a few copies of the publication making their way into the other jurisdiction. With search engines and the like, everything on the web can be considered to have made its way into any number of foreign jurisdictions.

How can I possibly conform to all the laws around the world at all times, given the breadth of laws around the world? China is famous for restricting certain political speech. How can I fail to violate their laws by what I say here in Canada?

These are all relevant, and difficult legal questions. Michele Malkin has an interesting round-up of various related discussion. So much to ponder.

A lot of pundits have declared that Canadians don't want an election "right now." And why should they? Someday I'll mark up a calendar but I'm pretty sure I'd be hard pressed to find any time when an election is neither imminent nor particularly recent within all of Canada. With ten provinces, plus the federal government all holding elections on their own schedule, plus municipal elections (which are on a more regular basis, but who knows when that is?), there need to be an average of over two elections every year (excluding municipal). We'll say there's sixty days from the day the election is called to the day of the election. The pundits talk about an "imminent" election for a couple months before that, and about the "newly-elected" government for several months after that.

There's no escape.

The Ontario government think they've taken steps to address the problem by declaring in advance when they'll call the next election. But a minority government doesn't get that "luxury" in Canada. And it really does nothing to address the voter fatigue caused by the sheer volume of election days in Canada. (Not that voters get to vote in all the elections in all the provinces, but they do hear about them.) Just as hearing about the U.S. Presidential election for a year or so in advance contributes to voter fatigue.

Much better is the American system where Election Day is on the "same" day every year: the first Tuesday following the first Monday in the month of November. Which is to say the first Tuesday except not on November 1. And then, you vote for everyone and everything that you need to vote for. All at once. Except for special elections and primaries, which really don't occur that often and don't get the same level of participation. Where are the wise leaders in Canada who can give us a truly better system, instead of toying around with academic games which reduce electoral responsibility, such as "Proportional Representation" or "Single Transferable Ballot" systems. Making the problem worse (by reducing the responsibility of every elected Member to fully represent even those constituents who dod not vote for them) does not solve the problem.

There has been plenty of thought put into the international implications of censorship in general, and of a publication ban in particular over the last couple days. And while I would not advocate anyone break the law, we must also defend our freedoms.

There have been posts on a couple websites (I won't link them; that would violate their point) that apparently legal advice has been given which suggests that the very mention of a certain weblog in the U.S. which has posted information which would appear to violate the ban is iteslf a violation of the ban.

CTV News has reported the name of that site on the air (on CTV NewsNet), and I would hope that mentioning CTV (being an indirect reference to the apparent violator) is not itself in violation of the ban. After all, CTV gets mentioned probably millions of times a day, by all sorts of people. Surely I can refer to a specific story which they covered. I have not mentioned any of the names of those giving testimony (which may itself be the lawful subject of the publication ban), nor have I repeated anything of the testimony given. Nor have I attempted to even characterize said alleged testimony, which is supposedly not part of the ban (as long as it does not claim to represent that testimony).

And if I can mention CTV NewsNet, surely I can also mention Instapundit, whose coverage of this story is especially interesting as they are an international observer of the absurdity of the Canadian political situation. And for those who, unfortunately, were victimised by the Canadian education system, it is not spelled "Instipundit."

Judge Gomery's publication ban on testimony given by [some witness](*) is a terrible example of the state of affairs in Canada. Bloggers are now being threatened, not by Gomery, but by other lawyers claiming to carry the authority of Gomery's ban under threat of jail time.

This is the state of affairs in a third-world kleptocracy, not one claiming to be of the first world order.

Bloggers are now being threatened over simply citing the name of a particular source outside of Canada (and thus outside the purview of Canadian Law, if everything Canada says about Americans is true). This is atrocious.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms claims that "Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;

b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

d) freedom of association.

Of course, there is ample reason to believe they don't really mean anything by it, except to claim to know a few pretty words. They certainly clobber those "fundamental" freedoms at every opportunity.

How can naming a website violate a publication ban? What about naming another website which names that alleged violator? Surely that added degree of indirection is no claim to innocence if the direct link is tantamount to guilt. What about a third or fourth degree of indirection? Is Kevin Bacon guilty? Surely the lawyers who are doing the threatening are aware that the World Wide Web is highly interconnected, and that many web sites link to many other web sites. What is their test for predetermining guilt with no presumption of innocence?

Are these lawyers aware of the punishment available for uttering threats, and for fraudulent intimidation tactics better employed by criminal gangs?

Which is another thing that bugs me: we now have Canadian lawyers claiming that their clients have the protection of the U.S. Constitution. Get a grip, people! You don't have these rights in Canada!

(*) Update: A closer reading of the publication ban seems to suggest that it's possible that it applies not to the testimony given, but rather to anything which might identify the witness giving such testimony. Or, possibly, the publication ban was sloppily written, or possibly it extends the law into areas beyond what the law allows. I'm not a lawyer, and I have not obtained any legal advice. But I have removed the name of the witness from this post, if only to underscore the ridiculous nature of the publication ban. I almost never get any traffic on this site (it's not my first goal), but after posting this post I got a record number of hits (seven). By removing the name of the witness, I'd guess that count will drop again to normal levels (zero). A very interesting discussion on the topic of the ban can be found over at Mader Blog.

Gotta love the Internet to do some research: everyone uses different units, but you can find the conversion tools you need online, too. Well, some of them.

This post is a follow-up to the one below, where I posit that environmentalists should be all for a reduction in Canadian timber subsidies.

I'd love for any commenters to provide better numbers, but it would seem that we lose one acre of BC forest every 66 seconds, or about 1300 acres per day (475 000 acres per year). I haven't yet found equivalent numbers for other provinces. This acreage could absorb just under one million (0.9M) metric tons of Carbon Dioxide every year.

Making the wild guess that BC has half of Canada's forestry industry, we're talking about two million metric tons of CO2 left in the atmosphere which would otherwise be absorbed. Every year. And if we further make a wild guess that it takes five years for a newly-planted tree to absorb as much as the large and mature tree which was cut, we'd be up to about ten million metric tons of CO2.

I don't have solid numbers on domestic consumption versus foreign export, nor on how much exports would decline under a true free-market system for determining stumpage fees. But it's clear that a significant impact would be made.

According to Greenlink: each acre of forest absorbs 48lbs of particulates, 9lbs NO2, 6lbs SO2, a half-pound of carbon monoxide, and 100lbs of carbon every year. (Converting 58 393 sq. mi. to 37 371 520 acres for 70 000 000 metric tons of CO2 suggests about 2 tons CO2 per acre per year.)

Another website suggests that one tree will remove about 3kgs of CO2 in a year.

Another website, after some unit conversions, suggests that each litre of gasoline requires about 0.25 tree to remove the resulting CO2 (about 2.5kg) over the course of a year.

Just imagine how much CO2 we'd absorb by not printing newspapers!

http://www.greenlink.org/gec/trees/facts.html
http://www.elements.nb.ca/theme/climatenb/djeffery/enerplan.htm
http://www.finkl.com/fafa/why.asp

The treehugger crowd have lost yet another chance to show that they are actually concerned for the environment, rather than just trying to be leftwing moonbats looking for love and attention.

Canada has, for decades now, sold 'stumpage' rights to logging companies at below-market prices for the lumber. It has been in a trade dispute with the United States over this practise for many years as well. In the U.S., lumber companies must pay market rates for their source material, or buy the land and grow it themselves. A much more expensive way to get wood than in Canada.

What's the result of Canada's approach, other than creating an uneven competitive landscape between Canadian and American lumber companies? There are significantly more logs harvested in Canada than would be under fair market pricing. This should upset not only every treehugger, but everyone who is at all concerned about the environment. Every Kyoto-promoter should rail against this atrocity, as the young trees grown to replace the cut forest do not absorb as much carbon dioxide.

Indeed, I haven't done any calculations, but you can bet that raising the stumpage fees (even to a market auction) would not only raise more money for the federal coffers (and reduce the theft from each of our pockets), but reduce the amount of money the government will waste on ill-considered projects in the name of "environmentalism."