Isn't it ironic?

Spot the irony in the lede paragraph of this story from today's Globe and Mail:

Ontario needs to create new universities with the soul purpose of teaching undergraduates if it hopes to maintain quality and halt the growing use of part-time faculty and large classes, says a new book on education reform.

Generations

One social phenomenon that I'm really interested in, but haven't really had a chance to work on is the nature and consequences of generational experiences. In Germany, you can't really understand social and political life of the Federal Republic without understanding the vastly different experiences of the various post-war generations. Even the most thoughtful observer can have a difficult time understanding how the social experiences of the previous and succeeding generations shape experiences. Everything is just *different*.

The motivation for this thought is a map I discovered on the Toronto Star's website this morning. The paper does a fantastic job of integrating statistical information with maps of the Greater Toronto Area to communicate patterns and trends. This morning, the paper published a map of the downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Riverdale with a red poppy on each address where a household suffered a combat death in World War I. It's a lot of households.

So put yourself in that generational experience; the one where in one Toronto neighbourhood, over the course of four years, household after household loses a son or a father in a particularly vicious way. And just imagine how that shapes that generation's views of the world and later lives.

On Currency Exchange Rates, Canadian Federalism and Alberta Politics

Jim Stanford has a really good (OK, great) column in the Globe and Mail today where he suggests that one way to rein in the rising Canadian dollar is to stem the control of oil exports from Canada. The easy, lazy way to bring the dollar down is to lower interest rates, but they are currently near zero. And, in case you hadn't noticed, in part because of these low interest rates and an economy that is, perhaps, not as bad as some had feared, housing prices in Canada are rising again. The Canadian Real Estate Association reports that average existing home prices in August 2009 were 11% higher than the year before, just before the meltdown happened in the United States.

A better way, according to Stanford, to address the dollar's rise, is to restrict our major export, oil. But here's where politics comes in. We've been through this before, in the 1979 oil price shock when three sets of players (Alberta/Saskatchewan, the federal government, private oil companies) all wanted a share of skyrocketing oil profits. That was what Trudeau's National Energy Plan was all about, making sure the national government got a share of the windfall, unearned profits that. Of course, the Alberta government wanted its fair share and reacted strongly.

The provinces argued that they were the "exclusive owners" of natural resources and, as such, entitled to all the profits, while the federal government argued that it maintained jurisdiction when resources were exported across provincial or national boundaries, and, really, they kind of had a point.

What people don't remember is that the two levels of government negotiated a settlement to the conflict that was partially enshrined in the 1982 constitutional agreement. The provinces ownership of non-renewable resources was clarified, but there were limitations imposed on a province's capacity to discriminate in prices vis-a-vis other Canadian provinces. In short, the compromise end to the NEP was a middle position that retained a role for the national government in making energy policy.

Then came Mulroney. In an effort to appease the mad-dogs in his Alberta caucus, and before he signed the Free Trade Agreement, he signed the Western Accord that ended any federal role in dictating exports or capturing natural resource revenues from energy exports. None. The Free Trade Agreement cemented this. Lest we let the Liberal Party of Canada off the hook, here, the NAFTA cemented this again, and federal tax exemptions and subsidies from the federal government laid the groundwork for the oil sands boom that is, in part, driving the rise of the dollar.

And now we're in this situation where some sort of political mechanism or capacity that could help restrict oil exports from Alberta and Saskatchewan would be immensely beneficial. And what I want to really stress is that this doesn't need to be a ham-handed, in your face effort that Pierre Trudeau was so keen to use; there are all kinds of subtle ways to reach common agreements in a federation. It doesn't even need to be clouded in terms of export controls; stricter environmental approval processes would help.

The problem is that a) the NEP and oil resources policy have become such a ridiculous lightning rod in Alberta that no federal government will touch it b) we are bound by external commitments (NAFTA) and c) the federal government (Liberals and Conservatives) has swallowed the deregulation ideology so whole, that anything else is off the table.

On a final note, domestic Alberta politics plays a role here because of its dysfunctional news media and party system that is unable to generate any sufficient and viable criticism of the governing party. Perhaps, if we actually had a functioning party system in Alberta, we could be a province that might be willing to address this issue. Sadly we don't.

So we'll keep on exporting oil and natural gas at breakneck paces, no matter what it does to the manufacturing industries in other parts of Canada and the rise of the Canadian dollar.

The German Election

I wanted to write a few thoughts about the German election last night. Basically it's pretty depressing. Both the parties in the coalition are going to insist on tax cuts, even though the German government is deep in debt. They're basically going to pursue a moderate version of President Bush's fiscal policy.

There are a few important things to point out. First, the new government is going to be a coalition government between the CDU/CSU - both moderate conservative parties - and the FDP, a liberal party in the historic sense of the word with a strong emphasis on individual performance, a free market and tax cuts, tax cuts and tax cuts. Second, this result came about almost entirely by a collapse of the SPD vote to 23%, its worst ever results in the history of the Federal Republic.

In part this collapse was caused by contingent factors; in particular, the party ran a fairly lacklustre campaign and never really emphasized its core values of income inequality and equality of opportunity. In part this collapse was the delayed consequence of the SPD's participation in government with the Green Party from 1998 to 2002. All governments have a life cycle of election, political capital, reform, stagnation, and then defeat (yes, even the Alberta Progressive Conservatives...their life cycle seems to stretch into the decades, not just the years). The SPD-Green government was no different. The party launched several reforms in social and labour market policy that were unpopular with elements of its base (they made it harder to get unemployment insurance and welfare for able-bodied adults after a long period and they increased the pension age to 67). In 2005, the SPD rescued enough of its base to remain in a grand coalition with the CDU/CSU, but four years after that, the bill finally came due.

On the left, the Left Party was able to capitalize on these unpopular reforms with empty populist opposition to them (for example, opposing the pension at 67, even though the increased pension age won't kick in for another 20 years, and even though a pension at 65 was devised when people were living on average to 69 or so.

Regardless, the bill finally came due last night and the left, the Greens and the FDP all increased their vote. This is where it gets really interesting.

The other factor behind the party's debacle last night is the long decline of what is called the "Volkspartei" in Germany: this concept is the idea of a party that declines to represent one particular class or group, but explicitly commits itself to representing and brokering between a wide swath of the population.

Through the golden years of post-war capitalism, both the CDU and the SPD were able to fulfill this role admirably, capturing at times up to 90% of the vote in parliamentary elections between them. But that was then.

It's a complicated story, but thanks to increased population mobility, the harder economic times, new, more complicated political issues, parties are just not able to speak to broad swathes of the population. The graph below shows the SPD's and the CDU's collective share of the vote over time, including last night's election.



*Facebook readers, please visit here: http://westofthefourth.blogspot.com "

For my Canadian friends, I think that this trend poses some interesting possibilities and insights for our own country. The same social trends causing problems for both the SPD and the CDU are at work in Canada. Historically, the Liberal Party of Canada has played this role of "Volkspartei", although we call it brokerage party in Canada. They have appealed to French and English, Catholic and Protestant, rich and working class as has been necessary at various times. But times are tougher. The Bloc Quebecois has effectively taken the francophone vote out of federal elections. And given the extent of the fiscal crisis and the very real political limits to federal spending today, will the Liberals be able to appeal politically to working- middle- and upper-class voters as they have in the past? What really, can the Liberals offer poor and middle-class voters today? Forty years ago they offered pensions and health care and they reaped substantial political benefit from that. Do you see them offering something similar today? I guess they tried it with child care, but that went nowhere; they were close to implementing it, but were thwarted both by strong provinces and by losing the 2006 election.

Are the current troubles faced by Ignatieff today in bridging over his Quebec wing just individual incidents? Or surface manifestations of a deeper, much more troubling crisis for the Liberal Party of Canada and brokerage parties in general?

*update*
HEre's a graph I did ccomparing the combined turnout of the SPD-CDU and the LIberals-PCs/Conservatives. Even now that the Conservatives have gotten their camp back together, the party system is more fragmented than when it was during the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Silver-Powers

The Globe and Mail has a feature wherein they invite one Liberal (Rob Silver) and one Tory (Tim Powers) to comment regularly on current affairs and politics. Rob is a

Toronto-based energy lawyer, entrepreneur and consultant. He currently advises energy companies looking to build clean electricity projects in Ontario.

while Tim

began his career as an assistant and advisor to the Honourable John C. Crosbie, then Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. Thereafter, he acted as advisor to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. He also served as the Director of Policy and Research to the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Presumably, the point of having the two provide comments is to provide some semblance of diversity in political commentary. What results instead is total agreement.

In the last few days, Rob Silver has attacked re-regulation of the airline industry, repeated the old canard that Canada's public health care system is "unsustainable", and attacked David Miller for giving in to trade unions in the Toronto garbage strike, attacked David Miller again, again, and then addresses a public opinion poll that suggests that 40% of Quebecers suggest that non-Christian immigrants are a threat to Quebec society, more or less calling Quebeois racist.

Tim Powers, on the other hand, appears mostly to take shots at Iggy: here, here and here, and defending the Harper government's economic strategy, talks about advice to some couple named Jon and Kate.

Tim Powers I could have a beer with. While Mr. clean energy consultant, entrepeneur, faux-progressive, downtown-Toronto-living, union bashing, health care baiting prick can go jump in the lake.

Linguistic Acrobatics

The human politician is an amazing species capable of stretching words and sentences in amazing directions.
From the Globe and Mail's news story about Tony Clement's reaction to a conflict between RIM and Nortel Networks. When asked if he thought Nortel Networks' assets were critical to Canadian security, the Clement replied:

“If I were to have an opinion on that issue at this particular moment in time, I would be prejudicing my own decisions,” he said. “This is a court process. It's not a government process. And the fact of the matter is, obviously these assets have a value, because there are companies bidding on them.”

Meanwhile, you may have heard that an Alberta Progressive Conservative MLA for Fort McMurrray was kicked out of the governing caucus for opposing policy. I dug up some of this dude's own linguistic acrobatics. While he was testifying to an inquiry about the dangers about oil sands development (he was both MLA for the area and Minister of the Environment at the same time), said the following:

Q (Mallon). I'm going to talk about the paragraph where you look forward to fishing with your grandson, and today you said granddaughter, but I gather from what you said today and what it says in the following paragraph that you don't have a
grandchild yet, or am I mistaken?

A (Boutilier). Actually my wife and I don't have a son or daughter yet, but we're in the process of privately adopting, so as a follow-up to our adoption, we expect to have grandsons and granddaughters.

and even better:

Q. You don't know if your department should be setting targets and bench lines over the things that they think are important?

A. I'm here as the MLA today. And I'm saying to you that I understand that those questions, I assume, you have asked to the actual technical people within Alberta Environment and the over thousand people that work for me within that department.

Q. When you appear here as the MLA, do you just turn off an area of your brain where you were the Minister of Environment?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Well, that's interesting. It's an interesting exercise. So you're not prepared to tell us in a general sense that the Alberta Environment ought to be setting targets and timelines with respect to those things that they consider important? Just consider that question. It's not a hard one.

Q. Are you or are you not the Minister of Environment? That's again a very simple question.

A. I appear this afternoon at this hearing as the --

Q. I know how you appear, sir.

For the full transcript of Boutilier’s testimony before the AEUB click here

May 1st!

We're getting close to international labour day and I wanted to take a moment to explain why this year's festivities in Berlin are likely to particularly interesting. Since 1987, protests by radical leftists and autonomists have sunk into substantial battles with the police. After a dozen years, the neighbourhood, the long-time center of Berlin's counterculture and leftist movements, got tired of seeing seemingly senseless destruction and instituted a street party to try to drown out the protests with fun. Last year, for a number of reasons, the protests died down to a very manageable level.

This year, however, things are expected to be hot, for a number of reasons.

In case you hadn't noticed, global capitalism is melting down and those on the left feel motivated to make a big statement this year, striking when the iron is hot, more or less.

The neo-Nazi political party, the National Party of Germany, has a demonstration scheduled earlier on in the day which a broad segment of the left (from the SPD to the autonomists) is trying to stop.

The same party has events scheduled in other cities in Germany as well, meaning that some regional police forces cannot release sufficient resources to the city of Berlin to deal with the situation there

Two extremely antagonistic Greek basketball teams are playing just over the river from Kreuzberg in an important game in the European Basketball league. Apparently the two teams really hate each other. The fans are expected to be released from their zoo around 11:00 pm, right when things usually get hot in Kreuzberg.

Radical left groups have been ramping up their vandalism this year, in an effort, I guess, to show strength, but also to test police tactics. Something like 86 cars have been set on fire since January 1st.

So....as we all pause to commemorate the people who actually create value in our society, let's all enjoy the show as the autonomists and the cops bash each other over the heads.