Grazzt requested

A comparison of our Reform Party and the American Tea Party movement, and anything the Americans can learn from the Canadian experience with a successful fledgling grassroots movement.

Unfortunately, due to societal differences, the answer is “probably not a lot.”

First off, a quick dime’s worth of exposition for Americans unfamiliar with the history of Canadian politics: the Reform Party was a political party that spun off from the old Progressive Conservatives¹ back in the late 80s, grew to dominate western Canada’s conservative political scene, and then rebranded itself as the Canadian Alliance party because they decided they needed a stupid name too before ultimately re-unifying with the remnants of the PCs to become the new Conservative Party of Canada, which the Reformers dominated far more greatly.

Now, with that exposition out of the way, the first distinguishing factor between the Reform Party and the tea partiers is that Reform had its genesis as an explicitly regionalistic party. Reform was created for no other reason than to address western Canadians’ conservative political concerns. Now, granted, you can argue that the tea partiers are disproportionately located in one portion of the United States (e.g. the South, and to a lesser extent the Midwest), but their concerns aren’t really regional in basis.

The second distinguishing factor is that the Reform Party had its real arrival as a national force (okay, still primarily a regionally based national force, but even so, one able to compete electorally across the country) because the Progressive Conservatives from whom they split off were the party in power. The PCs had attempted an ambitious and unpopular Constitutional reform which failed, plus instituted the GST² and led the country during a period of recession and were deeply, deeply unpopular. The new, invigorated base of the Reform Party was thus former PCs. Again, you can attempt to draw similarities by suggesting that the majority of tea partiers are somewhat disaffected Republicans, but there are less Republicans than Democrats in the USA and they’re not in power. This is why you see tea partiers more interested, in a lot of cases, in “taking back” the Republican party by supporting tea-party-friendly candidates over moderate Republicans: they’re still reacting against the party in power, but the party in power is the Democrats, to whom they’re ideologically opposed.

However, the tea partiers have the same problem that Reformers did back in the day, which is that the bulk of the political mainstream sees them as stupid hicks who are, at the very least, slightly racist. The Reform Party dealt with this by disavowing or dropping support for the occasional prominent member or candidate who fucked up and said something too obviously racist or homophobic in public, but generally didn’t bother reprimanding or commenting when one of their run-of-the-mill members did so. This is at least in part the reason why the Reform Party – and later the Canadian Alliance – never really broke through in Ontario or Quebec, which are more liberal provinces than the western half of Canada generally.³

And ultimately, it’s worth remembering that the Reform Party’s success at finally becoming mainstreamed into Canadian politics (rather than a permanent opposition party) only happened when they merged with the remnants of the old Progressive Conservatives, a rebranding which made them more accessible to the Canadian general public. However, that rebranding also caused them to become slightly more moderate, or at least to accept more moderately conservative politicians into their framework. I don’t think the tea partiers are really interested in doctrinal inclusivity – mostly because a lot of them don’t have any fucking clue about policy other than they like to shout a lot – so this route to success might pose problematic for them.⁴

Finally, note that this rebranding created a balancing act which is problematic because Stephen Harper is probably the only politician in the entire party that the old-school moderate Tories and the right-wing Reformers will accept as a leader, and Harper can’t be the leader forever: as he straddles the fault line of the conservative movement in Canada he gets stretched further and further, and more and more of the old Reformers grow alienated. Eventually, they’ll demand that one of their idiot MPs take command, and that’ll work about as well as Stockwell Day’s tenure as leader did.

1. Yes, we all know it was a stupid name. Whatever. [↩]
2. New sales taxes have always been a formula for unpopularity. [↩]
3. People think British Columbia is some sort of massive hippie commune because of the existence of Vancouver, but outside of Vancouver there are people so conservative they’re still not sure about these newfangled telephones. [↩]
4. And finally, although I don’t want to get into the details, a parliamentary system such as Canada’s is a lot friendlier to the genesis of new parties than the United States’ governmental system is. [↩]

…working on this in response to the Adam Giambrone sex scandal.

Hey, this is the most exciting Toronto municipal politics have gotten in ages!

It’s never been an actual secret that John Baird, Canada’s current Minister for the Environment, is gay. He’s just not openly gay; he doesn’t advertise it because, well. Tory.

Anyway, the Tory candidate running in a Toronto MP by-election was asked about the Tories’ record on gay issues, and was challenged to name one openly gay Tory MP, and she named John Baird. So he’s basically been outed.

This is almost entirely meaningless, except for the life-affirming fact that gay people can now take pride that they can be stupid dipshits just like straight people. And isn’t that a wonderful thing?

So I don’t know if the non-Canadians have been paying attention, but this latest bit of Stephen Harper’s fuckery should probably merit it. Remember this story the next time you complain about your country’s politicians, because there simply isn’t a more pathetic political class in any first-world country than Canada’s.

See, the thing is that right now, the Tories are undergoing a bit of a scandal. Well, they’re always in a bit of a scandal – that’s Canadian politics for you – but right now there’s the Afghan detainee scandal, wherein it increasingly appears that the Conservative government did not merely turn a blind eye to what happened when Afghan detainees were transferred to Afghan custody – where those detainees were almost certainly tortured – but in fact deliberately tried to cover up the fact that they were taking a blind eye (seeing as how that would be illegal). There’s been numerous calls for a independent public inquiry to investigate the matter.¹ The Tories have been very clear that this will not happen on their watch.

However, the Tories have come up with a clever tactic to hopefully make this all go away: Stephen Harper has prorogued Parliament. Or, in less arcane English, he’s shut it down until the budget is due in March, over two months from now. This is the second time in a year Harper has prorogued Parliament in order to buy time and make a difficult political situation go away; the first time was to avoid a coalition government from removing him from the seat of power, which was, to say the least, ethically questionable.

But there isn’t anything questionable about this time: Harper and the Tories are simply trying to buy time so that people will get distracted from the scandal, hopefully by the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. And there’s no question that there’s no other reason for them to do this: Harper’s excuse is that the federal government needs to “recalibrate” its response to the economic downturn, which is just an insult to Canada’s collective intelligence. Harper proroguing Parliament stalled progress on his own crime bills – which are terrible, terrible bills, don’t get me wrong, but that he’s done it illustrates just how desperate he is for this to go away.

If Canada’s political leadership had any balls worth mentioning, Harper would be a walking dead man politically. But they don’t, so he might get out of this intact. Which is a shame, because a goddamn three-year-old could pin him to the wall if he felt like it. This is pathetic, a new low in Harper’s only very slender respect for the political traditions of this country: he and his government simply don’t give a damn about the politics of compromise. All those years of jerking off to the Bush Administration’s antics taught Harper the wrong lesson: namely, that government only works when you’re willing to play by the unwritten rules.

It’s not an incorrect lesson, because it’s true. But in order to use it, you have to be amoral in the worst kind of way. And look who we’ve got as Prime Minister.

1. Unsurprisingly, Bob Rae has had to basically lead the Liberals on this issue. This is partially because Michael Ignatieff’s track record on torture makes him look like a staggering hypocrite when he tries to talk about the issue, and partially because Michael Ignatieff is a useless limpdick. [↩]

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

I’ve also done another of those “hey look at these comments” posts , this time about David Miller announcing he won’t run for a third term as Mayor of Toronto.

And if you haven’t read this Leonard Pierce special, you should.

So the Tories up here in the Theoretically Frozen North have managed to stave off an election once again, and what irks me is that they did exactly what they pilloried the Liberals and NDP for doing last year: namely, they got the Bloc on their side with governmental concessions. Somehow I doubt the screaming harpy chorus that cried out “cooperation with the Bloc is treason” when Stephane Dion suggested that maybe the parties which received the support of a majority of Canadian voters should run things will find their indignation quite so stoked.

People complain about the American media all the time, and with good reason, but the Canadian media has its own set of quirks that can really be annoying. One of them is the conceit that governing in Canada’s seemingly permanent minority government environment is difficult, and it simply isn’t. The Harper government figured out the two-part secret of how to do it a long time ago: run policy through the Prime Minister’s office and administrative channels of the government rather than legislating through Parliament, and bribe the Bloc whenever things get dicey.¹ The fact that the Harper Tories have figured out this relatively simple equation and the Canadian media by and large has not is depressing; the fact that the Harperites could figure it out and then be basically dogshit at the actual job of governance, moreso.

Still, we’re most likely stuck with the useless assholes for another couple of years until the Liberals realize that Michael Ignatieff was a huge, huge mistake. (For American readers: Michael Ignatieff is kind of like Evan Bayh, except you want to punch him in the face even more.)

1. You can bribe other parties, but frankly it’s simplest to bribe the Bloc: you just find something the Quebec government wants, and give it to them. That’s the power regional parties bring to the table. [↩]

Iggy Popped

Poor Michael Ignatieff. For months he’s been neck-and-neck with Harper in the polls, and people have been warning him that if he doesn’t force an election soon it’ll make him look weak. Then no sooner does he say he won’t support the government any longer but his support drops by ten points, because people say they don’t want another election. Even the publication of a nearly hagiographical profile in The New Yorker probably can’t cheer him up now.

So what’s behind the about-face? Were people’s eyes just bigger than their electoral stomachs? Personally I think the not-another-election thing is a smokescreen, a rationalization for the ugly truth: people feel they ought to want to vote for Ignatieff, but nobody really does. Outside of the West nobody much wants to vote for Harper — certainly nobody wants to hand him a majority government — but they’re not ready to vote for Iggy either. He’s the classic case of someone who looks good on paper, the computer-selected date that generates no chemistry: he’s everything we say we want in a prime minister, but when it comes down to it we just can’t get behind him.

The reason, I think, is that he isn’t mean enough. It seems odd to say it, since Canadians are renowned for our polite and easygoing nature, but the fact is we like our leaders to be sons of bitches. Sure, we tell ourselves we like Trudeau because he was charming and did pirouettes and brought home the Constitution, but what we really liked was that he fought with US presidents and gave people the finger and invoked the War Measures Act. No wonder Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark — nice guys both; try to get anyone to say a bad word about Joe Clark — didn’t stand a chance. Mulroney was certainly mean: the only thing more dangerous than being his enemy was being his friend, always a temporary condition. And Chretien? The man choked a protestor! He made jokes about people being pepper-sprayed! He FOUGHT OFF A BURGLAR WITH A PIECE OF INUIT SCULPTURE! (That’s to say nothing of the damage he did to the English language daily.)

But Ignatieff is in a bind, because if he goes on the attack too much he’ll sound like he’s lecturing, which nobody ever likes. He also seems to be a guy who instinctively plays defense rather than offense, which doesn’t bode well for him. So Harper, whom we all say we don’t like, will probably stay, because he’s mean enough for us to respect him. (He’s also learned the secret to governing with a minority, which is to bypass Parliament completely and run the country through the PMO.) And we’ll all grumble and complain about the money that was wasted for yet another election that doesn’t change anything, and six months later we’ll be wondering why Ignatieff doesn’t man up and bring down the government already.

Revenge of the third banana

In all the hoopla around the Marvel-Disney deal and the Warner-DC restructuring, one point that’s come up again and again is the rich bank of characters each publisher owns, with the assumption that this is a good thing. The problem is that each company only owns one or two genuine first-tier properties (with first-tier being defined as “someone with whom a non-comics fan is almost certain to be reasonably familiar.”) For DC it’s obviously Batman and Superman; for Marvel it’s Spider-Man and maybe the X-Men or the Hulk — the X-Men weren’t really familiar to non comics-fans before the movies, but their fanbase was enthusiastic enough to guarantee good sales, while the Hulk is well-known to a certain part of the population which is, unfortunately, not the part that goes to movies. When you’ve only got a small number of properties, you’ve got to get them right: it took eight years for Warners to relaunch the Batman franchise after Batman and Robin, and they’ll probably have to wait ten years before the stink from Superman Returns blows away.

The success of Iron Man has people saying that the future is in the second-tier properties — which is a reasonable argument to make if you forget about Daredevil, Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider. I would argue, in fact, that Iron Man was successful because it wasn’t a comic book movie, or at least it didn’t look like one to the general public. After all, no matter how successful a comic book is, there simply aren’t enough fans to make a movie successful, never mind a franchise; you’ve got to appeal to people who don’t read the comic, and in most cases the trappings of a superhero comic — the costume, the secret identity, even the superpowers — work against that. But Iron Man, as presented in the movie, doesn’t have any of those things. The suit is presented as a tool or a vehicle throughout (note the direct comparison to a car), and the emphasis is always on Tony Stark as the pilot of the suit; we’re not invited to conflate the two into a single identity, as we are with Batman or Superman. As well, note that the villain uses the exact same technology as the hero, removing the two-origins problem that afflicts so many superhero movies. Even though it’s not actually more plausible than a typical superhero story, Iron Man feels more believable to people who aren’t accustomed to the tropes of superhero comics.

So are those thousands of characters, the ones that Disney just paid a mint for and Warner just realized they own, actually worth anything? Sure — but not the way people think they are. It’s very unlikely that Deadpool or Green Lantern or Thor or Wonder Woman are going to be franchises or even successful movies — cripes, I don’t know why Wonder Woman is even still a comic — and, more to the point, a flood of unsuccessful superhero movies, like the one that followed the 1989 Batman, will most likely make comic-book movies in general radioactive. If either studio is sensible, they’ll focus on the properties they own that, like Iron Man, can be sold to a broader audience: it’s probably no coincidence that the next two DC movies to hit the screen will be Jonah Hex and The Losers, both non-superhero comics. Another good example is Blade: could anyone have guessed that a supporting character from a long-cancelled comic would wind up being one of Marvel’s most successful licensed movies? But in fact it was the lack of baggage, the absence of superhero trappings that let Blade just be an action/horror movie, and that’s what let it be successful.

See, as comics fans we tend to assign an inordinate value to these properties, but to the movie industry they’re just more grist for the mill: they don’t care if something’s had one issue or a thousand, they don’t care if someone read it by flashlight under the covers when they were nine, they just want something that can be quickly made into one of the hundreds of scripts that keep the development cycle flowing — the more cheaply the better. If I were a production company, I wouldn’t even look at a DC or a Marvel property; I’d be scanning the small presses and webcomics, looking for the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Men in Black.

A few comments from yesterday’s general blogrequest post were Canada-themed and today is Canada Day and all, so it seems appropriate.

Lurkerwithout: Why people who call Canada “socialist” are, you know, stupid

Well, they’re kind of not entirely wrong. They’re wrong to directly equate socialism with communism, which they do all the time. But the modern point of balance of government is between socialist impulses and capitalistic ones, and Canadian society is certainly more socialist than the United States is. (Then again, most of the first world is more socialist than the United States is, but that is neither here nor there.)

But it is important to point out that officially, Canadian corporate tax rates are lower than American corporate tax rates. (Of course, unofficially there are so many loopholes in the American tax code that American-based corporations effectively pay barely any tax or often no tax at all.) The tax expense of being a Canadian citizen is not staggeringly higher than that of being an American citizen, and when you take into account that our taxes pay for most of our healthcare it’s probably about even.

But the counterpoint to the actual monetary argument is one of people’s attitude towards government. Canadians may gripe, but in the end we genuinely like government services and there is a general cultural attitude of being willing to pay taxes for those government services. Certainly we’d like to pay less, generally speaking, but there’s a difference between wanting to save money and the American anti-tax attitude that treats taxation as nothing more than theft.

So there’s that.

Canadave: I’d be interested to know what you think Canadian TV needs to do to in order to become\stay interesting and\or relevant.

Honestly, this is kind of a gimme question, because right now I think Canadian teevee is mostly already doing the right things: creating lower-than-American-budget television shows with pre-guaranteed markets (Canadian and American networks) that are of decent quality. I may not like The Listener or Flashpoint, but that’s because I watched them and decided they were just not my thing; it wasn’t because they were bad shows.

Would it be better if the Canadian television industry wasn’t one that over-relied on simulcasts of American shows with Canadian commercials and re-airs of old American content? Yes, undeniably. It wouldn’t be hard, either. Just limit a channel to, oh, fifteen hours a week of prime-time American shows. Even in the heyday of the old traditional “fall season” format of television, this would have only amounted to nine hours of Canadian shows in prime-time per week, which isn’t onerous to achieve (and a fifteen hour cap would have let Canadian networks air all of their most popular American shows, easy – you miss out on re-airing According to Jim, oh darn).

But given the refusal of the CRTC to make Canadian networks do anything that might make them cry bitter tears, I think things are about as good as they can be right now.

Bunnyofdoom: Your thoughts/feelings on being Canadian and what it means to you, and/or your idea of what Canadian Identity is.

You know, it’s funny, because whenever somebody asks me this question I always think of that episode of Friends where Phoebe is blathering on about past lives, and Joey gets worried because he thinks he doesn’t have one, so she responds, “Oh no, sweetie! You’re brand new!” Which is weird both because Canada is 140ish years old now and because I’m flashing to friggin’ Lisa Kudrow on a question about Canadian identity, but nobody ever claimed that I don’t have issues.

But I think of that because Canadians don’t have an identity in the way that the French do, for example. “Polite, friendly and considerate” is a nice stereotype to have, I suppose, but A) it’s a little overblown and B) just about everybody is polite and friendly.¹ Germans might be humourless, but they’re polite and friendly about not laughing at your jokes. Italians might sleep with your wife, but they will be polite and friendly about it. And so forth.

We’re still a young country, and unlike America, which was born in the sort of circumstance which immediately invents a national character, we were essentially created out of compromise and convenience. “Polite and friendly” is the sort of stereotype that gets invented in the absence of a national character. It’s like a default precisely because it’s so bland and inoffensive.

So we’re essentially a country in search of a national character. There are some appealing options beyond “we like hockey,” and one of the reasons I’m a member of the New Democrats (much as it pains me to admit it) is that I think the NDP provide the best opportunity to expand upon our instinctive search for a national character in ways that I approve of. (The Tories have their own ideas, which I disagree with. The Liberals like bland and inoffensive.)

1. Except the French, and possibly the Koreans. [↩]

A while back, one of my commenters asked me why I had such a low opinion of Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal party “leader” here in Canada. The events of the last few weeks have demonstrated why my opinion of Ignatieff as “useless limpdick” is precisely correct.

Some background for non-Canadians. Things here right now are not exactly peachy, much like in the rest of the world. (We’re better off to an extent because our banks weren’t allowed under Canadian law to take the Debt-Gambling Plunge of Death ™ that the rest of the world’s banks so eagerly performed. Interestingly, the reason for this is because under Paul Martin, the then-government-leading Liberal party decided it was a bad idea, despite intense lobbying from the banks and the Tories – including Stephen Harper – to remove those restrictive laws. Why nobody mentions this any more is something I do not quite understand.)

Long story short: the Harper government claims that their stimulus spending is very successful. This is despite most of the stimulus spending actually having been used for capital investment or job creation or, you know, actual stimulus type things. That in turn is because the Harper Tories are frankly pretty shit at their jobs. Now, one of the ways government can spend money very efficiently to create immediate economic stimulus is to boost employment insurance benefits.¹ Ignatieff wanted the government to boost EI payments, because the unemployed turn right around and spend the money and it makes the economy go wham. Harper did not want to boost EI payments, because then the government would be giving money to jobless people, and that makes Tories cry.

When Harper said this, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe immediately said they’d vote no-confidence in the government again, because they hate the Tories like poison anyway and this was just another opportunity to make that point. Ignatieff, however, decided to play chicken with Stephen Harper and say “I want W, X, Y and Z or I will topple your government.” This was moronic, because there is absolutely nothing that Harper likes better than getting to have an election and blame other people for it. Ignatieff was essentially promising to give Stephen Harper what he loved best – or else!

Now this in and of itself would be questionable, but the bigger problem is that Ignatieff decided to play chicken without having the balls to go all the way with it. Because what happened? Stephen Harper said “no,” and Ignatieff caved. Caving is what Ignatieff does. He’s been doing it ever since he became the party leader. Partly he’s been doing it because his support within the party comes from the big Bay Street wing of the party that has whatever money the Liberals still have left, and they want things handled a Certain Way. But mostly he’s been doing it because he is, as previously stated, a useless limpdick who wants to be seen as “reasonable.” So he had a Big Secret Meeting with Harper, and came out and said that the Liberals would support the Tories.

Understand: ten days ago, the Liberals were steamrollering the Tories in Ontario and Quebec polls. (Which, for the Liberals, are really the only ones that matter; if they pick up seats it’s going to be in central Canada, not in the East or West.) Now they’re back to dead even when the country really doesn’t like Harper that much. And why is this?

It’s because Michael Ignatieff is a useless limpdick. Nobody wants to vote for a chickenshit, and Michael Ignatieff is the worst kind of political chickenshit. Stephen Harper isn’t, regardless of whatever other faults he may have. That’s why he survives.

Top comment: Looking at the comments, I can’t help but notice that even Canada’s failures will forever be looked upon as cheap imitations of U.S. failures. – Benman

1. Here in Canada, we have “employment insurance” and welfare. The former is essentially something you pay into every month, and then if you lose your job you get some money for a while in place of a paycheque. The latter is classic welfare. What is being discussed here is employment insurance. [↩]

In the fingerprinting post on Monday, will writes:

I’m still not clear on how the police having my fingerprints — or my DNA — on file could be used to oppress me.

Abandoning the dire fantasies of totalitarian government – for that is what they largely are – we can find the idea of oppression in harm inflicted on the citizen that is, by and large, unintentional. I’m not talking here about the Glenn Beck school of “I have to pay taxes and so I am oppressed.” I’m talking about mistake.

Like I said before: I’m not anti-cop. Cops do a hard job and most of the time they get it mostly right. But they never get it entirely right. There are always people who slip through the cracks of proper procedure. I spent a year working for the Innocence Project at Osgoode, helping people challenge convictions they argued to be unjust, and in every case where I think there was someone genuinely innocent convicted of a crime, there was a common thread: the police had already decided that this person was guilty.

Again: the police are right, most of the time, when somebody is guilty. But not always. And it’s the not-alwayses that become the horror stories of the justice system. The spouse isn’t always the person who murders their partner, regardless of how common it is for that to be the case (and it is common, believe me). The black drug dealer might be a drug dealer, but it turns out he didn’t kill anybody. And so on and so forth.

And so this is how having your fingerprints on file can be used to oppress you: you are a suspect in a murder that you did not commit. The police regard you as the likely culprit. They look for evidence to tie you to the crime, and because you knew the guy, hey what do you know your fingerprints are all over the place. The police have your fingerprints already, which paints you in the eyes of a jury as a shady individual. That combination of circumstantial evidence and worsening of your image is enough to get you sent away to a lengthy jail term for a crime you did not commit. And you can’t appeal based on the evidence being wrong – the justice system doesn’t work like that. You can only appeal on points of law, not points of fact (IE, you can argue that your fingerprints were wrongly introduced as evidence because the potential for creating bias outweighed the probative value of the evidence – but, in all seriousness, good luck with that approach).

The police have a tough job. Sometimes they take shortcuts. It happens, we shouldn’t really judge them for it, and most of the time it doesn’t hurt anybody – except when it does. That’s why we need institutional safeguards built into the system to make sure that poor evidence collection methods aren’t abused. And that’s why de facto fingerprinting of individuals who haven’t even been arrested for a crime is wrong.

The Tories introduced legislation that would allow police to collect fingerprints before a person is charged with a crime and would not require the police to destroy those fingerprints should the person never be charged. The Tories argue that this is about “streamlining” the affairs of police to make them more efficient. But here’s the thing. Consider this quote from Rob Nicholson, the Justice minister:

“Crime is constantly evolving in Canada so it is crucial that our criminal justice system evolves with it.”

Now, I like Rob Nicholson. But what the fuck does that even mean? Let’s be blunt: the only reason for this legislation is to give police the power to collect fingerprints of people who can’t be proven to be criminals, or even can’t be charged with a crime because there’s reasonable and probable grounds to charge them with a crime. How comfortable are you with the police having that power? Because I’m not.

I’m not reflexively anti-cop, or even generally anti-cop. I think cops in Canada do a valuable and difficult job and most of the time they do it very well. But here’s the thing: since policing is always going to be a political hobbyhorse of one stripe or another, the cops always feel a bit besieged. That sucks and it’s not fair to them, but it’s not fair that doctors are expected to be miracle-workers or that lawyers are fodder for jokes about amorality when we all know that we should be making those jokes about accountants instead.¹

But the practical public downside of the cops feeling besieged is this: they tend to close ranks when one of their own is accused of wrongdoing, be that accusation merited or not. Usually it isn’t. But when it is, they protect bad actors within the system. And I this is exactly why I don’t like giving the police additional powers that are obviously and blatantly fodder for abuse – and this is definitely an abusive power just waiting to be used improperly.

Top comment: I look forward to you getting telepathic judges and super-speed cops to deal with the rampaging mutant criminal element. – lilacsigil

1. Take that, beanpushers. [↩]

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist. But ALSO, I have a point/counterpoint column about the Tamil protests here. And on top of that, my first summer column for thecourt.ca is here, although it’s really just a longer, more serious-sounding rehash of the diversity arguments from last week.

So yesterday there was a very big protest here in Toronto, as Tamil protestors trying to get Canada to intervene in the Sri Lankan Civil War closed down the Gardiner Expressway for about five hours. The protests were certainly illegal in that they obstructed traffic without a permit, but were almost wholly nonviolent. (The police later announced that they arrested three people out of over three thousand.)

The following comments are taken from the CP24, Globe and Mail and National Post coverage.

IF YOU WERE REAL MANLY MEN YOU WOULD HAVE STAYED BEHIND AND GOTTEN SHOT BUT YOU DIDN’T DO THAT SO FUCK YOU

WHY CAN’T YOU BE LIKE THOSE OTHER BROWN PEOPLE?

MY HAVING TO TAKE LOCAL ROADS IS JUST LIKE WHEN YOU GOT YOUR VILLAGE BOMBED

IT’S ALSO LISTED IN MY HOMEBREW ANNOTATIONS TO THE FOURTH EDITION “IMMIGRANT’S RULEBOOK”

CATS AND DOGS SLEEPING TOGETHER

ALSO BANNED: THE SWASTIKA, THE FASCES, AND THE… THINGY THAT AL-QAEDA USES ON THEIR FLAG, WHATEVER THEY USE

THEY HAD LOTS OF GEARS AND A PLACE TO PUT A WATER BOTTLE SO YOU KNOW THEY MUST HAVE BEEN EXPENSIVE BIKES

THE CANADIAN WAY TO ACCOMPLISH THINGS IS TO WHINE REPEATEDLY UNTIL YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT – ER, BUT NOT HOW YOU’RE DOING IT

AND THEN THE OPPRESSED MASSES OF BMW DRIVERS WILL HAVE THEIR REVENGE

NOTHING SAYS “FREE SOCIETY” LIKE RANDOM SPOT CHECKS!

I GOT A SUR-GRIP ™ ON IT AND EVERYTHING

THOSE DARN PROTESTERS ALWAYS DRIVING DOWN PROPERTY VALUES

WHY AREN’T THEY PROTESTING ABOUT HOW THE NEW STAR TREK MOVIE DESTROYS THE VISION OF WHAT TREK IS SUPPOSED TO BE? I COULD GET BEHIND THAT

BROWN PEOPLE ARE LAZY!

SO, SO LAZY!¹

AND BY “ENFORCEMENT” I MEAN “POLICE BRUTALITY”

SEE, IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE SOME BROWN PEOPLE ARE ALSO ARABS AND ARABS HAVE TOTALLY CRAZY NAMES LIKE KLINGONS OR SOME SHIT²

IF YOU WERE REAL MANLY MEN YOU WOULD HAVE STAYED BEHIND AND GOTTEN SHOT OR MAYBE YOU WOULD HAVE GOTTEN SHOT IN AFGHANISTAN BUT YOU DIDN’T DO ANY OF THAT SO FUCK YOU

NO I MEAN IT

THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR LETTING PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO PEACEABLY ASSEMBLE, DIPSHITS

SHE DEFINITELY SAW ONE OF THEM WAVING A SIGN AND IT HAD SHARP EDGES AND MAYBE SHE COULD HAVE GOTTEN A REALLY NASTY PAPERCUT

AND MY POINT IS THAT… UH… WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO PEACEFULLY PROTEST, I GUESS

IF YOU WERE REAL MANLY MEN YOU WOULD HAVE STAYED BEHIND AND GOTTEN SHOT BUT YOU DIDN’T DO THAT SO FUCK YOU AND ALSO FUCK THE PEOPLE WHO LET YOU INTO MY COUNTRY

NO REALLY I’M TOTALLY NOT SOME WHITE GUY SPOUTING OFF ON THE INTERNET

YOU EXPRESSING YOUR OPINIONS AND BELIEFS MAKES RACISTS MAD AND THAT IS ONYOU, BUDDY

BECAUSE WHEN I THINK “LENGTHY CONFLICT BETWEEN TWO RIVAL FACTIONS ON A SMALL ISLAND OVER THE RIGHT OF GOVERNANCE,” I CERTAINLY DON’T THINK OF THE IRISH

UH, WELL, TECHNICALLY AMERICA IS THE MELTING POT AND CANADA IS THE MOSAIC OF CULTURES, BUT I NEVER READ MY THIRD GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOK SO NEVER MIND

CANADA IS POWERLESS TO INTERVENE IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS… “PEACEKEEPING?” WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

WE TOTALLY KICKED SOME HEY-HOW-ARE-YA HEY-HOW-ARE-YA ASS! GOOOOOO WHITE PEOPLE!

I, TOO, AM UPSET THAT WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING STAR TREK

RACE IS IRRELEVANT SO STOP PRETENDING TO BE WHITE SO I CAN LOUDLY NOT CARE ABOUT WHAT COLOUR YOU ARE

THERE IS TOO MUCH TOERANCE

JUST LIKE THE IRISH!

IF CITIZENS TRY TO INFLUENCE HOW CANADA CONDUCTS ITS RELATIONS, IT MIGHT GET A SOCIAL DISEASE

ALSO THE SHEEPLE REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS THAT WE GET BACK ON THE GOLD STANDARD

ALL THESE BROWN PEOPLE MAKE ME NERVOUS

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USING CHILDREN TO PROTECT ONESELF FROM BOMBING RUNS, AND BRINGING CHILDREN ALONG TO A RALLY, BECAUSE IN BOTH CASES YOU CAN EXPECT TO HAVE THE AUTHORITIES VICIOUSLY ATTACK YOU. FARTLEBERRY HAS SPOKEN!³

“THEY’RE LIKE CHILDREN! LIKE LITTLE MONKEY CHILDREN!”

I WAS ONLY INTO THIS SCENE BEFORE IT GOT POPULAR ANYWAY; NOW IT’S, LIKE, METALLICA’S “BLACK ALBUM” OR SOMETHING

TAMILS CONTROL THE MEDIA! THE JEWS SOLD THEM THE MEDIA AND NOW THE TAMILS HAVE IT!

(UM, DUDE, MAKING FUN OF YOU PEOPLE USING ALL CAPS IS MY SHTICK, QUIT PRE-EMPTING ME)

YES, WHAT WE NEED TO DO IS FOLLOW THE SANE, SOBER EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION POLICIES THAT HAVE CAUSED SO LITTLE ETHNIC STRIFE AND ABSOLUTELY NO RIOTING OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT

I JUST WANT TO SEE THEM USE THE WATER CANNONS

I JUST WANT TO SEE THEM USE THE WATER CANNONS WHILE ON HORSEBACK

YOUR OCCUPYING A HIGHWAY ON LATE SUNDAY EVENING AND ACCUMULATING A NUMBER OF MISDEMEANOUR CHARGES OUTRAGES ME BEYOND ALL EXTENT FOR REASON

AND FINALLY…

Top comment: No real Canadians were inconvenienced by these protests, because as everyone knows, REAL Canadians ride their horses everywhere, hitch them up outside their igloos, and go eat their poutine and Timbits in polite silence.

My hat (made of real Canadian beaver fur, from real Canadian beavers) is off to all those brave men and women in their cars on the Gardiner protesting the presence of the Tamil protestors.

I myself plan to immolate myself (or at least develop a very inconveniencing sunburn) in front of the Eaton Centre to protest this protest. – Slab Beefbroth

1. See, what’s ironic is that one of my former roommates is a professional chef. He’s whiter than I am, and he speaks Tamil, because he has to, because Tamils are as to Canada as Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Salvadorans and Cubans are to America – they’re the backbone of restaurant and kitchen staff in every city in the country, because they can cook anything and they don’t mind working the crazy hours. Tamils work ridiculously hard, and not just in the culinary industry where they dominate either. But of course they’re brown people so naturally somehow they must be scamming welfare. [↩]
2. Which – I mean, come on, if there are funnier names in the world than Tamil names, which even they admit are long and elaborate to the point of craziness… [↩]
3. I could have posted dozens more comments like this, and it particularly bothers me that there’s this expectation that brown people should expect to get clubbed down by police for peacefully protesting. [↩]

Ezra Levant on George Galloway’s being barred from entering Canada:

Good friends, and friends of freedom of speech say I’m not being consistent — that I should be for Galloway’s right to be wrong. I am; I don’t think he should be arrested for being a racist, terrorist-loving buffoon. I think he should be arrested for raising money for a criminal terrorist organization. That’s not speech I’m against, that’s fundraising for terrorism I’m against. But that’s not my main point: my main point is that Galloway has no “right” to come to Canada. He’s not Canadian.

I’m all for his free speech — elsewhere.

First off, charges that Galloway has raised money for Hamas are wildly overblown. His participation in/organization of the Viva Palestina aid convoy only qualifies as “aid to Hamas” on the grounds that Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinian people, and thus any aid to Palestinians (the vast majority of whom only manage to survive now thanks to various international aid programs and food donations) has to go through Hamas.

(This would be one of the many reasons that the quasi-official nature of Palestinian governance is a neverending bugbear from an international law standpoint: if Hamas is the legitimately elected government of Palestine then without an official declaration of hostilities Canada can’t actually do anything (because you can’t really say that an entire other country is a criminal organization without completely debasing the term), but if Hamas isn’t a legitimately elected government then Canada is ignoring gross human rights violations on the part of Israel that it has sworn to uphold and is thus violating its own treaty obligations. Many other First World countries have this same thorny issue, which is why none of them ever really officially decides what Hamas actually is.)

Of course, that aid also has to go through Israel, but apparently the fact that the Israelis let the entire convoy through – except for a fire engine and boat which the Egyptian government pre-emptively disallowed, and if anybody can explain why a fire engine would be dangerous please let me know – would imply that they didn’t think Galloway’s “fundraising” was dangerous to the state of Israel. Considering that the aid consisted entirely of humanitarian materiels (food, blankets, toys for kiddies, et cetera), it’s not surprising that the Israelis would let it through. Then again, until the Americans complained, the Israelis weren’t letting dried pasta into Gaza. So who knows.

Oh, and as much as Bernie Faber of the Jewish Defense League might claim otherwise, Galloway wasn’t “smuggling” goods to Hamas. Smuggling traditionally does not involve the type of political grandstanding for which Galloway is known. Because that’s not smuggling. Galloway has never been caught committing any sort of crime, and this is because Galloway knows exactly where the line he can’t cross is. One might, if one was so inclined, draw parallels to religious bigots who have a good grasp of the boundaries of criminal hate speech laws and who metaphorically are all too willing to walk right up to that boundary and wiggle their ass at it.

But none of this is the real issue. The real issue is that Levant’s suggestion that this is an immigration or administrative problem is the worst kind of semantics. It’s semantics because this is entirely about the Conservative government choosing to abridge Galloway’s ability to speak in Canada, using a cheap excuse to do so.

Consider the staggering incongruity of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in complaining that Galloway supports a terrorist organization when Kenney himself attended a rally of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran in 2006, less than a year after the Canadian government declared it to be a terrorist group and a declaration which was upheld by the current Conservative government as recently as this past November. (In fairness, once people found out about Kenney’s attendance, he first claimed that he hadn’t attended the rally, and then when pictures showed up of him at the rally, claimed he hadn’t known it was the PMOI holding the rally and that he had been tricked. Given that Jason Kenney is a very, very stupid man, this is actually slightly plausible. But only slightly.) Given this context, you might think that Kenney’s judgement of Galloway’s potential security risk is suspect, but apparently Ezra Levant trusts him.

Levant’s argument is that Galloway’s supposed criminal acts (for which he has never been tried, because no judge would ever convict him, because as much as certain parties might wish otherwise delivering food and medicine to Palestinians is not yet a crime in Britain or Canada) are good reason to prevent him from speaking in Canada. That’s his position. He can say “no, I think it’s a good reason to bar him from entering Canada and thus as a consequence he can’t speak,” but when Galloway’s entire purpose for visiting Canada is to speak then the two are obviously conflated and pretending otherwise is, as stated, nothing more than semantics.

It’s just the sort of useful semantics that lets Ezra Levant pretend he isn’t an enormous hypocrite, that restricting George Galloway’s ability to speak isn’t restraining free speech because he can describe it a different way thanks to the technicalities of Canada’s constitution. But of course he is being enormously hypocritical, because freedom of expression isn’t derived from the concept that it’s something that just sort of belongs in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but from the idea that speech has intrinsic value in and of itself. Levant has spent the better part of the last few years passionately arguing the latter point; now that it’s become inconvenient for him to do so, he has cheerfully abandoned it.

Which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

Bob Rae to Stephen Harper.

So I’ve gotten a bit of mail about CUPE Ontario’s decision to recommend a “ban” on Israeli academics in Canadian universities, most likely because I’m currently attending Osgoode Hall Law School, which is at York, which is the subject of a prolonged strike on the part of CUPE.

And… well, what is there to say, really? Other than that CUPE remains seemingly determined to be the stupidest, most offensive cariacature of a union possible. Really, demanding that Israelis apologize for what’s happening in Gaza right now – I don’t see how that’s any different from going up to a Muslim and demanding that they apologize for (9/11 / terrorism / oil prices / et cetera). It’s the practice of applying collective guilt to a populace, which is both morally bankrupt and completely stupid at the same time, not to mentional fundamentally irresponsible.

It’s yet another laughable attempt at public relevance from the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Fuck them.

I have a friend at law school named Jack (pseudonym of my own choice). Jack is intelligent, works hard, and clearly already has a disgustingly impressive career ahead of him. Jack is also a Tory (he’s worked for the Minister of Justice), and we like to argue politics all the time because arguing politics with a friend who disagrees with you in good faith on serious issues (in our case, mostly philosophical differences over taxation and the size and appropriate power level of government) is something that just makes you sharper for arguing your own case, as well as forcing you to think hard about your own positions in the process.

Last Monday, I got to come into class and watch him be annoyed with Stephen Harper for overreaching. This Monday, he got to come into class and watch me be annoyed with the Liberal party in general, and it’s for the same reason I always get annoyed with the Liberal party. As Jack said to me, “how can you support, even slightly, a party that’s only interested in power?”

And of course anybody worth supporting in the Liberals – Stephane Dion, Gerard Kennedy, Ken Dryden, Garth Turner, Justin Trudeau, Martha Hall Findlay, et cetera – isn’t just interested in power. The problem for the Liberals is that people of this stripe are perceived to be a minority. And the reason that people think serious, dedicated public servants are a minority in the Liberal ranks is because they are a minority in the Liberal ranks.

The coalition debacle – and make no mistake, at this point it’s a debacle – is simply one case in point. It’s been less than two weeks since the coalition agreement was announced. Since then, half a dozen Liberals have publicly stated they’re against the coalition, including that useless limpdick Michael Ignatieff. Guess what, assholes: the moment to say you were against the coalition? Was before you stopped thinking it might work. Don’t try to convince anybody that you were taking time to deliberate about whether or not it was the right thing to do; we all know you were just waiting to figure out whether or not the public liked the idea.

The sad thing is that the public could have been convinced to support the idea, if the Liberal Party had had the balls it never ever seems to fucking need. “This is a perfectly normal procedure in Canada’s Parliamentary system; we’ve just never had occasion to use it.” “Germany has coalition governments all the time and their government works just fine.” “We represent sixty-two percent of the popular vote in Canada; last I checked, that was a majority.” “Stephen Harper was trying to get a coalition government formed in 2004 and he didn’t seem to think it was such a horrible idea then.” The Tory arguments against a coalition government were so hypocritical and base and just plain stupid that it should have been easy: just get everybody you can to a podium somewhere and let them take turns making the Tories look like asshats.

Except that didn’t happen, did it? It didn’t happen because the Grits didn’t want to get on board and risk their asses, precisely because most of them never want to risk their asses. It didn’t happen for the same reason Stephane Dion’s leadership collapsed: precious few in the party were willing to step up and go to bat for the team, not when it would get in the way of their own political futures. (The idea that stepping up and fighting on principle can create a political future is foreign to these idiots, I swear.)

It’s a party full of Liebermans, a collection of spineless twats with beliefs so vaguely defined that they can mean anything and be anything except something. People have blamed Stephane Dion’s image for being the reason why the Conservatives came out ahead in the last election, but that’s not it at all – when people saw Dion in the debates, they liked him more. The problem with the Liberal Party is that people think they’re weasels, and they know that the Tories stand for something. They might not agree with the Tories on most things, but at least, they figure, the Tories are neutered by Canada’s general political beliefs. (Whether or not this would be the case in the instance of a Tory majority government is up for debate.)

In the choice between “fuck you” and “eh,” people will choose “fuck you” more often than “eh.” That the Liberals still don’t get this is one of the reasons their party is gradually dying.

Graeme (who is worthy of a vote for Best Non-Partisan Blog, incidentally) is somewhat wrong here:

As Adam Daifallah, one of Canada’s more thoughtful conservative commentators, points out, a coalition government would short-circuit the Liberal Party’s “wilderness years”, a time of rebuilding and reflection it sorely needs in the wake of scandal and defeat. The Progressive Conservatives went through a similar process post-1993, and it worked wonders for their electability. Wilderness years are important to the Liberals, because Canada needs a solid Liberal Party. It’s political mutability makes it a party of the center, which is the only logical position from which to govern a modern, cosmopolitan state.

The Progressive Conservatives did not regenerate their electability. The Progressive Conservatives had “wilderness years” followed by slow and steady extinction. The 1993 election, along with the formation of the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois, killed the party and left a small electoral rump that didn’t quite realize it was dead yet, not until Peter Mackay shot it in the head in 2003 and gave the newly-birthed and much further-right Conservative party a touch of centrist respectability.

Moreover, the problem that the Liberals have isn’t a lack of ability to govern well or a lack of ability to attract voters (despite the recent electoral drubbing). The problem that the Liberals have is that the Conservatives were ready to trick out the new system of party funding before they were, and the Tories pushed that advantage as far as it could go. Worse, the Tories are willing to essentially cheat by running negative advertising well in advance of an election, the calling of which remains in their hands for as long as they’re in power. If there was no move for a coalition and Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff or Steve Furtzwinkel became the Liberal Party leader next week, one week later you’d start seeing Tory ads on the airwaves. “Steve Furtzwinkel: Not A Leader. Not Someone We Can Trust.” And then, come the election, the best-case scenario is that people aren’t sure about Furtzwinkel’s ability to lead, and the worst-case is that they’re sure he isn’t ready.

Do not doubt for a second that the Tories – and Stephen Harper in particular – lack an understanding of the power of political narrative. Harper’s entire governing style is geared towards this method while he has a minority: govern relatively divisively and use it to your advantage, by forcing the Liberals and others to either vote against the ridiculous proposals (and then call an election, which Canadians at this point loathe) or suck it up and vote against them (and then be labeled divisive and partisan and “not willing to make minority government work”).

That kind of institutional abuse of power is difficult to defeat, so I fully understand why the left-wing parties have decided to not play Harper’s game, where their choice is always lose or lose.

This Globe and Mail column is correct in that the Liberals, NDP and Bloc have an important job in front of them that they cannot, for the sake of the country, fuck up, but it actually manages to understate the importance of the task for progressive politics as a whole.

Simply put: discrediting Stephen Harper as a leader will shred Conservative politics for years.

The interesting thing about Stephen Harper is that he is more popular than his party is (this, despite general public acceptance of the belief that Harper is a cold fish – he is regarded as a competent technocrat). The last election was largely about transferring Harper’s personal popularity to the party as a whole, but the lack of ability to attain a Tory majority can be seen as evidence that it didn’t really work.

The problem for the Tories is that beyond Stephen Harper, they really have nobody ready to lead the party.

Peter Mackay is the obvious next-in-line, but Mackay suffers from being a gormless twat whom nobody really likes; moderates don’t like him because they think¹ that he sold the Progressive Conservatives out to the crazy Reform gang, and right-wingers don’t like him because they think² that he’s a weaselly moderate. Mackay also had the bad luck to be involved in that patently stupid “calling Belinda Stronach names” mini-scandallette which didn’t really piss anybody off, but didn’t impress anybody either. Finally, Peter Mackay looks like a boring accountant. He is the definition of “inessential person.”

Jim Flaherty is the Minister of Finance and in Canadian politics, traditionally that role goes to someone who is known for being really smart and able to make tough decisions. Flaherty is both of these things, and also a folksy public speaker (never to be underestimated). However, he is also very conservative in his fiscal policies, and since the election has been embarrassed by his blatant campaign lies about how Canada wouldn’t have to run a budget deficit anytime soon. More importantly, if Harper gets ousted, it’s going to be because of Tory policies regarding the worldwide economic meltdown being the exact opposite of what every other country on the planet is doing (namely, massive public works infrastructure investment as a vehicle for economic revitalization). Flaherty is exactly responsible for that. If Harper goes, Flaherty’s political career is dead in the water.

Stockwell Day is a former Tory leader and well-liked by social conservatives, but he is a national joke because he is well-liked by social conservatives (we’re a rather liberal country, remember) and also because he is frankly a bit of a dipshit. Well, okay, actually he’s a lot of a dipshit. Three-quarters dipshit. Primarily dipshit. He is a Dipshit-Canadian.

And those three are the good options. Looking down into the ranks?

Chuck Strahl is a well-liked moderate, but he doesn’t speak French well and there’s that whole “I have incurable lung cancer” thing. Rob Nicholson has the right politics to succeed in the party and out of it, but he’s never had a really high-profile government position until his recent tenure as Justice Minister, and Justice Minister isn’t even in the top five most important jobs in Cabinet. Jean-Pierre Blackburn is smart but a political nonentity. Rona Ambrose isn’t ready yet and even if she were she’s too young³; Christian Paradis has the same problem but even worse. Jim Prentice is a shitty liar⁴, his tenure as Minister of Industry was a bad joke, and his firm opposition to same-sex marriage bans earned him the enmity of the social-con wing of the party. John “Mister Shouty” Baird is a blowhard and has a track record of looking stupid in public. Gordon O’Connor’s career is tied to the war in Afghanistan, and even those Canadians who support the war in Afghanistan on grounds of responsibility don’t actually like it. Tony Clement was lucky not to get turfed in the last election. Jason Kenney is intemperate and not that bright. Vic Toews is a deeply horrible man.⁵

About the only name I can come up with who isn’t a placeholder/rebuilding era candidate is Lawrence Cannon, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs. And I don’t know if he’s up to the job, or even wants it. (Seriously, you have to be kind of crazy to want to run Canada. We’re a freakishly neurotic country, you know.)

And that’s the problem for the Tories; their bench isn’t deep. Taking out Harper as a credible leader of the party (and causing him to lose the party will almost certainly do that) means the Tories have to rely on said bench. Good luck with that, guys.

Contrast to the Liberals, who have a heap of fresh leadership candidates who are both relatively young (but not too young) and ready for the job and capable of running a strong campaign. Of course, the Liberals’ problem is that all of those candidates have to get past Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, which is depressing when you think about it.

1. Correctly. [↩]
2. Also correctly. [↩]
3. 39 is too young to be a national leader. Sorry, but it’s true. You ideally want your national leaders to be past the potential midlife crisis stage. [↩]
4. Never underestimate the importance of being a good liar in political life. Yes, that goes for the “good guys” as well. [↩]
5. Also, he looks eerily like Jack Layton. [↩]