New BC NDP leader Adrian Dix. Photograph by: Adrian MacNair

This was, again, rather a fluke, but when I returned from North Vancouver today I saw that the BC NDP leadership convention wasn’t over yet so I headed over to see who the winner would be. When I arrived at 5:30 they had just showed the second ballot and Adrian Dix was the frontrunner with 7,748 votes, Mike Farnworth at 6,951 votes and John Horgan at 5,034 votes. So Dix and Farnworth went to a final ballot, with Dix being chosen the new leader at 9,772 to 9,095 votes.

You can get this information on any news website, but I thought I’d post up some of the photos I managed to take. It was funny because during the lull the large screens showed the Canucks game and the crowd was louder for the two goals that were scored in the second period than they were for Adrian Dix.

My camera didn’t perform very well inside the building either, so I’ve chosen only the best six. Click on the images for the high resolution version if you so desire. I took pictures of MLA Jenny Kwan and city councillor Kerry Jang but those didn’t turn out.

The current selection of ideas being proposed by the usual faces in Ottawa has to be among the most deluded I’ve heard in quite some time. The only party that appears to be displaying any fiscal common sense is the Conservatives, and that’s only because they’re not going to open the floodgates again until 2015.

It’s positively bizarre, actually, to listen to the Conservative proposals for the 2011 election, since they all take place in 2015, or the year that Canada’s deficit will magically be balanced. From the announcements he’s made, one would think Stephen Harper was actually running in a different time period than the others. A $500 fitness tax credit and income-splitting are just two of the big ticket items voters can expect a half decade from now.

Whatever spending promises have been made by the Conservatives, however, they pale in comparison to those made by the “Nanny State Professor”, with $8 billion in big-ticket social spending over the next two years. And they’ll somehow be paid for without raising income taxes (which isn’t exactly true, since they plan to raise corporate rates back up to 18 per cent).

The Liberal plan is big on the party’s attempt to corral the family vote from the Conservatives, adding $8 billion in new spending. $1 billion would go toward Registered Education Savings Plans (which personally appeals to a parent like myself, since my RESP isn’t tax-deductible while RSPs are), $1.2 billion would go to daycare, $700 million to better GICs and $400 million to energy retrofits (which is a bit of a policy lift from the Conservatives).

To say the Liberal budget is unaffordable is an understatement, although this seems remarkably similar to the same sort of pie-in-the-sky promises made by the Ontario Liberals when Dalton McGuinty reached out to put a chicken in every pot that was hard done by the Harris era.

It would be one thing if we were running large surpluses for Ignatieff to make these kinds of spending promises, but during a deficit it is frankly irresponsible. The sheer enormity of it all suggests the platform is aimed more at election racketeering than good policy-making. The last thing we need are more social programs that can be expected to balloon in cost over the next decade.

As for Jack Layton, he’s mostly out-to-lunch as usual. He’d create a jobs program that would be funded by returning the corporate tax rate to 19.5 per cent, proving once again that socialists don’t understand the fundamentals of economics.

There is one aspect of the NDP spending platform that deserves a closer look. His $103 million promise to improve benefits for military veterans is admirable, and certainly affordable when compared to the fact the Conservative government is willing to spend $100 million on the commemoration of the war of 1812.

Not that Layton is really in this two-horse race. Nor is Ignatieff, if you look at the polls lately. But Harper is taking some deserved heat for saying today that he wouldn’t meet the Liberal leader in a man-to-man showdown in front of the cameras (though it has been pointed out that Sun TV is willing to accommodate when they launch in late April), giving CBC reporter Terry Milewski the opportunity to call him a chicken to his face.

The Conservatives are also constrained by the fact that they have said on the record they won’t change their budget, so the amount of vote-buying they can manage is limited to things that extend beyond the current budget projections, hence the reason for their bizarre tax promises in 2015.

Perhaps the best thing to hope for is a majority government, not because I believe the Conservatives deserve one, but because it would test once and for all the argument that the government’s fiscal credibility has been compromised by the demands of the opposition. That, and the fact we wouldn’t have to hear about unaffordable universal programs until sometime in 2015.

If you listen to the NDP, hiking minimum wage and burdening businesses with greater operating costs is a good thing because companies can afford it. But increasing the cost of applying for criminal pardons is “a commercial transaction” of the justice system, even if keeping the costs at $150 for 17 years is straining that system.

Well, what’s wrong with increasing the fees for a pardon request? These people committed a crime against society, and now they’re asking to have that transgression permanently removed from their record:

NDP public safety critic Don Davies is now calling for a committee hearing into the issue, arguing there was no warning and no good reason given for the increase. He is also warning that it’s dangerous to bring in the concept of user pay to the justice system and that new pardon cost will be prohibitive to some Canadians.

That’s right. To criminal Canadians.

Here’s the thing. Even if you only apply the 2011 rate of inflation of 2.3 per cent, $150 in 1994 is now worth $221. But the rate of inflation is historically low. The rate has actually averaged 3.26 per cent over the past 90 years, which would set the value of $150 in 1994 dollars as being $259.

The Conservatives are setting the new fee at $631, which is really only an 8.82 per cent annual increase compounded to the value of $150 in 1994 dollars. It doesn’t sound like a giant leap or much of a financial risk, considering as many as 75 per cent of pardon requests are granted.

Photo: Chris Wattie/Reuters

Sometimes I think that Jack Layton exists just to delight in teasing the Liberal Party. At any moment when the Liberals seem like they might be in danger of finding a section of vertebrae, the NDP sidle up to Stephen Harper and play “let’s make a deal.”

Not that I really think the Liberals will ever defeat this government on a confidence vote. Their near-perfect record of supporting the Conservatives has been untarnished for half a decade now, and there doesn’t seem to be any danger of that changing with Ignatieff’s suitcase at the helm.

Even as the socialists were having a frank talk with the Conservatives, I suspect Michael Ignatieff was still busy mulling over the possibility of doing something. With political reflexes like that, you’d imagine this man would have got around to declaring war on Germany in 1946.

What I find even more surprising is that the NDP made the deal in the maelstrom of the Bev Oda affair, which I suppose in the world of the 24-hour scandal cycle in Ottawa may as well have happened in ancient Babylon. Still, I expected a half-hearted squeak from the NDP, and the rattling of a few paper sabres. Sheesh, they don’t even go through the formality of impotent threats anymore.

The reason for the NDP’s eager announcement that they have wrung hard-fought socialist concessions from the Conservative government — like cutting taxes — is pretty clear. They’ve taken a beating in the polls of late, and would lose as many as 16 seats if an election were held today.

This is interesting, because even though the Liberals would gain 15 seats, it wouldn’t come at the expense of the Conservative Party, projected to gain a single seat. They would come all from the boys in orange, which makes their unwillingness to oblige even the unrealistic prospect of defeating the March budget nothing more than a spectacularly irrelevant work of fiction from Gloria Galloway.

It’s amazing that some pundits even entertained the idea that the opposition would play parliamentary roulette with the current poll results showing a resurgent lead over the Liberal Party. We’ve established the gutlessness of the Liberals, and the NDP have no interest in trading away their tiny presence in the House of Commons on the basis of principle.

And some might even ask what principle has to do with anything? The actual policies of the Conservative government are difficult to assail from a socialist perspective, their “sullen, haughty, can’t-be-bothered-tone” notwithstanding, of course.

It’s also rather difficult to criticize the Conservatives for their apparent flexibility of ethics, when the other contenders for the government seem to so willingly let these transgressions gather the dust of irrelevance in time for the weekend. Like so many other grievances that have disappeared in arrogant, contemptuous refusal to address them, the opposition has dutifully returned to their rightful place at the dog’s water bowl of power.

So, when do I expect the Conservatives to be answerable to the past two and a half years of malleable principle and rubbery promises? Well, I don’t know the date, but I do know that it will come at a time and in a manner of the choosing of the ruling party. To expect any differently would be to ignore the “not” in Oda’s memo.

That appears to be the argument put forth by pollster Nik Nanos, who raised fears of a two-party state in Canada just as it is in the United States.

The current $2-per-vote subsidy is given to qualifying federal parties who win at least two per cent of the national vote. Currently all parties but the Conservatives are heavily dependent on this form of democratic welfare, with the former raising $4 million more than all other political parties combined last year.

Nanos said the smaller parties would have too much difficulty raising financial support without the $2 per vote, which would eliminate $5 million from the revenue stream of the NDP.

“If we took the proposal to its logical conclusion, this would probably lead to a two-party state, that would be the logical long-term conclusion,” he told The Hill Times. “The current regime, whether you love it or hate it, sustains minority views with funding. The green party is probably a good example.”

I suppose you could use the same argument to subsidize newspapers, television stations and magazines. Since people are too cheap to spend a couple of bucks on their favourite source of news and information, perhaps the government should subsidize that involuntary participation?

It seems to me that if 2.5 million people in Canada can bother to get out and vote for the NDP, then they can bother to scrape a toonie from the bottom of their Bolivian fair trade coffee fund and ante up for democracy. Otherwise, quite honestly, I couldn’t care less if the NDP went the way of the flying donkey.

And let’s face facts. Although the Conservatives have an incredible fundraising team that goes to the well to squeeze every last drop it can get, at least the party is hustling and rustling up enough money to sustain itself. The other parties, in particular the Bloc Quebecois, are coasting through the effort, proving that age-old axiom that welfare only creates complacency.

Former Conservative strategist Tom Flanagan suggested Canada allow political contributions on their tax forms as in the United States. This might work, I suppose, in a kind of passive participatory way. It’s sort of like a democratic afterthought.

Truthfully, at $27 million annually, politically subsidies are but a pebble in the pothole of the federal deficit. But I don’t see the point in financially rewarding either party or people for partaking in what is supposed to be voluntary democracy. Incentivizing voting with bribery is hardly an inspiring message for our anemic politics. Remove the political welfare and let’s see whether Canadians can put up or shut up.

Photograph by: Jason Payne, Postmedia

When the BC NDP look back on 2010, they can only wonder where it all went wrong.

After nearly a decade on the sidelines, the BC Liberals had hit rock-bottom support among people angry over the HST and Premier Gordon Campbell. The backlash was so severe, in fact, that it gave the NDP a reported 21 per cent lead over the Liberals, according to a Nov. 5 poll conducted by Angus Reid.

For the good of the party, and possibly the province, Gordon Campbell announced on Nov. 3 he would step down as leader of the Liberal Party, pending a convention in late February that will choose a new one.

The resignation left two of the four parties in British Columbia without a leader. The BC Conservatives ousted their leader, Wilf Hanni, immediately following the May 2009 election in which they failed to win a single seat.

For a time, the NDP were riding high, and seemed secure to become elected to government in 2013.

Then, it all went terribly wrong. NDP MLA Jenny Kwan and a group of at least a dozen other dissidents — dubbed the baker’s dozen for some reason that escapes me — decided to suddenly pick this moment to stab NDP leader Carole James in the back. The ensuing bloodletting from party infighting resulted in James stepping down to secure the peace, leaving three parties in the province completely leaderless.

Since that time, the BC Liberals have managed to revitalize their polling numbers, thanks to a large jump from popular CKNW radio host and former deputy premier, Christy Clark. A Dec. 23 poll from Angus Reid shows the NDP and Liberals tied at 38 per cent each, a swing of 21 points over just seven weeks.

Why the dissidents decided to suicide bomb their own party is unknown. While I’m sure they had their reasons, the party’s chances of winning the 2013 election now seem slim to none.

Carole James, who had been leader of the party since 2003, had never been overly popular in the polls. Only two months ago she was riding a 25 per cent approval rating, even as her party enjoyed support from 47 per cent. But opposition leaders have traditionally fared poorly in polling, and this is historically true in both provincial and federal politics.

Worse than ousting James at a point of great momentum for the NDP, it doesn’t appear as though anybody is ready to step in and take the reigns. MLAs Mike Farnworth and Adrian Dix are the frontrunners in early polling, but there’s a problem with either of those choices.

They’re men.

According to the BC NDP’s own constitution, the next leader of the party has to be a woman, unless the males currently occupying the positions of president or treasurer resign. The current president is Moe Sihota and the treasurer is Bob Smits, neither of whom would be likely to step down without a fight.

This only complicates matters further for the self-destructing NDP. Not only did they sabotage their own success at a critical moment of Liberal weakness, but they appear to have ousted the only candidate without a penis who could lead the party to a successful win the next election.

Nor has there been any talk about bending the rules of the constitution, meaning the one-third affirmative action policy will take precedence over picking the best candidate for the job.

A permanent leader for the party won’t even be chosen until April, meaning there will be at least two months in which the Liberal Party will have a leader who can heap scorn on the disarray that is the NDP party. Worse still, that leader will likely be Christy Clark, a charismatic and popular female candidate polling higher than any NDP candidates right now. The irony may quite literally devastate the NDP.

It’s always fun to play soothsayer, and then look back and see how utterly wrong you were. I thought I’d compile a list of predictions for the new year, in no particular order, and see what comes of it.

1. MSM Election-Watch
Rife with endless speculation, but I don’t see the opposition parties pulling the trigger in 2011, which means the Harper government goes four years. Whenever the Liberals begin softening their stance, the NDP start voting against the government, and vice versa. Even if both begin voting against the government, the Bloc Quebecois will probably vote with the Conservatives just to keep the ball in their court.

2. Ignatieff stays as Liberal leader
We can expect the same-old same-old from the federal polling scene, as Michael Ignatieff continues to struggle as Liberal leader, and his party remains between three and five points back of the Conservative Party. I do believe Ignatieff will be ousted, however, following an election loss in 2012.

3. Detainees and dithering in Afghanistan
At some point the detainees spinning wheel will overshadow the mission in Afghanistan again, and will dominate the news even as the countdown to the end of our military mission there reaches zero. When Canada is left struggling to find a post-combat training mission in the country, the opposition will point their fingers at the government, even as they distracted it with the detainee bloviating.

4. Julian Assange self-aggrandizes, media lionizes
In desperation to keep in the spotlight, Assange releases files that slightly embarrass the United States. Meanwhile, public opinion shifts away from the self-promoter as the more neutral Open Leaks launches. Assange martyrs himself again by getting arrested.

5. More global cooling, blamed on global warming
Hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires will all be blamed on global warming, even as the temperatures dip for the third year and record cold and snow sweep across Europe. Desperate alarmists blame it on the “ice cube” effect, whereby they argue the world is temporarily cooling because the polar ice caps have melted large chunks of ice into the oceans, cooling the waters.

6. More dhimmitude, even after another large terrorist attack
A dramatic terrorist attack will take place outside of North America, but will be given only peripheral attention by the western liberals, who will continue to blame the problem on foreign occupation and a few bad apples.

7. Israel ups the ante against Iranian Nukes
With intelligence reports that Iran is on the verge of a breakthrough, Israel is forced to act covertly against Iran, sparking international condemnation for the preemptive strike. Hamas and Hezbollah respond by launching terrorist attacks on Israel, and the responding force is also condemned. A Canadian flotilla to Gaza is turned aside, but not boarded, by the IDF.

8. Pakistan gets worse
It becomes clear that Pakistan is now more deadly than Afghanistan or Iraq, as insurgents launch more terrorist attacks than anywhere else in the world. The Pakistani Army is forced to take action, resulting in insurgents fleeing across the border to hide in Afghanistan. Extremists gain a stronger foothold in surrounding “stans”.

9. United States economy rebounds, but nearly bankrupt
Obama’s $150-billion monthly deficits continue, sending public debt over $14 trillion. The economy rebounds but unemployment gets higher as there’s no money left to pay people to “stimulate”. The United States is forced to contend with an overextended military in multiple conflicts that have drained the treasury. Austerity requires unpopular measures that drive Obama’s approval rating below that of George W Bush’s low water mark. Expect protectionism and more insular policies.

10. The rise of Sarah Palin
The soccer mom populist poises herself to lead the Republicans to a shot at becoming the first female President, riding a cusp of Tea Partyism and anti-Obama sentiment. Liberal heads explode the world over.

11. The European Union cracks
As the European Union invites more Euro-value-dragging partners in from the former Eastern Bloc, this time the Balkan states, a large country (like Germany) throws in the towel and leaves the Euro to save itself.

12. The BC NDP blow it
With Gordon Campbell gone, the Liberals rebound and the BC NDP are unable to find a charismatic leader to take the reigns. Infighting results in fracturing the party among the baker’s dozen dissidents and the James loyalists. The HST survives the referendum.

I kid you not. And I thought they didn’t believe in negative campaigning. Dan Gardner (talk about muscular writing) of the Ottawa Citizen reveals what’s at the core of Jumpin’ Jack Layton’s thought, Vladimir Ilyich he is not.  No ringing call for “Peace! Bread! Land!”

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton faces a problem that has plagued the left for 30 years: Nationalization and wealth redistribution have vanished from the intellectual climate.
Photograph by: Mark Blinch, Reuters, Ottawa Citizen

…Layton elaborated. “If you look at the new approach to energy, for instance, it’s all based on decentralization, particularly around energy efficiency. My buddy Amory Lovins likes to talk about negawatts. If you can save a megawatt cheaper than you can produce one, then go out there and save it. And by the way, you’ll also create more work by doing that. And we’ve got lots of negawatts out there. We’ve got lots of homes, we’re moving into the heating season, and they’re turning up their furnaces, if we have people out there with caulking guns, insulation, and new tripleglazed windows, all over the country, people apprenticing, young people having jobs in their local area, you wouldn’t have to fly to the tarsands for a three-week shift or a two-week shift and then go back home for a week. You’d be able to work right there in your own community, upgrading the building stock.”

Now, I like triple-glazed windows as much as the next guy, but we were talking about global politics at a pivotal moment in history. This sounded like the third bullet point on page six of a really boring campaign brochure. Could there be a clue here about why the left is failing to seize the day?..

The piece is Norman Spector’s “The column I wish I’d written” today. Well chosen.  As for the V.I. guy:

Nice threads, at least Jack has that in common.

Mark
Ottawa

This November 18 telegram looks like a pretty good diplomatic report to me.  This excerpt is mildly amusing in view of current politics:

…
Martin’s Minority Government Stable, but Weak
———————————————

4. (C) After governing in majority for ten years, the Liberal
Party called elections June 28 to gain a mandate for PM
Martin, who succeeded Jean Chretien in December 2003. The
Liberals were hurt by a scandal involving the disbursement of
public monies in Quebec, and the Martin government was
reduced to minority status, the first in Canada since 1979.
In the first week of Parliament, Martin was able to loosely
win over the New Democratic Party, putting him neck-and-neck
with the Conservatives and the separatist Bloc Quebecois. Both
the Liberal-NDP and the Conservative-Bloc alignments
[emphasis added] are very tentative, however, and different
issue-driven coalitions are likely to emerge on an ad hoc basis…

Via Denise. As for current politics: “La coalition has already won one victory…”.

Mark
Ottawa

The United States has been the world’s worst warmonger for over two centuries.  I guess they should have turned the other cheek to the Japs and also not responded to Hitler’s declaration of war. The world would certainly have been a better place. And, having actually bothered (at long last, delaying for good domestic political reasons) to get into the Second World War, the United States thereafter should have given Stalin and the Soviet Union free rein to try and wreak their will around the globe, starting with turning western Europe Communist one way or another.  And let Kim-il Sung, with Stalin’s and Mao’s backing, conquer South Korea.

Hell, perhaps better yet not to have fought the Civil War and left the Confederate States of America a free, independent and slave state (though ending slavery was not the purpose of the war, either not fighting it or losing it would have left the peculiar institution fully in force).

I give you Gerald Caplan, a true soul of Canada’s New Democratic Party:

Canada enlists in America’s permanent war for peace

Why “Canada’s National Whatever” publishes such venom, if only online, is a very good question. By the way, the ideologically-blinded and ignorant Mr Caplan seems not to realize that the US Marines went “to the shores of Tripoli” after war was declared on the United States when it refused to continue paying tribute to buy off the Barbary Pirates.

What a bitter and small-minded fool. A true useful idiot.  If the Marine Corps did not exist perhaps God would create them.  My personal theology or something.

Update:  What may really underlie Mr Caplan’s rant (and the views of many other Canadians):

…
The leaked diplomatic cables, dating from January 2009 to June 2010, cover a huge range of issues and include ”lively commentaries” to Washington about a host of world leaders. A series of leaks is thought to deal with Canada’s ”inferiority complex”…

It’ll be fun city watching our greatest and goodest go ape-shit.

Mark
Ottawa