Liz Sandals, Part Two

Liz Sandals, Guelph's MPP
from 2003 to 2018
Image from Ontario Legislature Website

In the previous part of my interview with Liz Sandals we had been talking about the problem that the "Not In My Back Yard" (NIMBY) phenomenon was causing in the creation of affordable housing for Guelph. We continued by moving on to the sex ed curriculum that was a "hot button" in the last election.

&&&&

Hulet:  Well it seems to me that the problem comes down to 70% of people in Guelph own their own homes. And two things make people very conservative: their home and their children. If anything looks like it might affect either one of those things,  they instantly go into fear mode.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Hulet: As education minister I'm sure you've seen that with regard to children.

Sex ed actually started off as an off-shoot of the "safe schools" work when I was Minister of Education. So that's been my file all the way through by reporting to Kathleen first as her PA and then as the Premier. That's been my file all along. 

One of the things that I found really interesting was the perception that older people are automatically going to be against this. But I've had all sorts of seniors come up to me and say "It's about time someone actually did this right". And my suspicion was that probably they knew somebody. The teen that had gotten pregnant. Or the friend who was gay and always got bullied, or whatever it was.  They had some life experience of someone who had suffered because someone hadn't gotten the right education. 

So it was very interesting that the opposition was very much specific pockets. When we did the polling, when we first introduced it, it was one of the most popular things that we ever did. It was just that the opposition was extremely vocal. 

Hulet: So it was that "how deep is the support---or the opposition?" thing.

Yeah. When you did polling that was random---if we've learned one thing, it's that if you do random polling, it really isn't anymore. For example, if you do phone polling you're over-sampling seniors. But it was still one of the most popular things that we'd ever done!  

So the perceptions about how the population split on that one---. The perceptions weren't the truth. But a lot of the opposition wasn't about sex ed, per ce. It was about homophobia. Seeing the emails that came in on that---because a lot of that was directed on me---and what was directed at me wasn't nearly as vile as what was directed at Kathleen. It got to the point where my constituent staff and the Ministry staff wouldn't show me the stuff that we were getting anymore. 

Hulet: Well, I can attest that at my family events that things were said and all I could think was "What the Hell do you do about this?"

Yeah. Yeah! So much of the information that was going around was sheer nonsense. It was people who were deliberately misinforming other people in order to crank them up. 

Kathleen Wynne photo
c/o Australian Ministry of Trade
Public Domain, c/o Wiki Commons

Hulet: This gets into the "Ontario Proud" thing. There was just recently a Toronto Star article saying that there was a bit more to this than met the eye. And Jesse Brown at Canadaland did a piece saying that when he interviewed the people behind "Ontario Proud" they had been disingenuous about their funding---which now seems to have come mostly from a small number of wealthy developers.

I can't really speak about "Ontario Proud" but I can certainly say that social media was clearly what was driving the "We hate Kathleen" thing. There's no doubt that that was driven by---and I first saw it on sex ed---and that was pure, unadulterated homophobia and misogyny. But it wasn't just on the sex ed. What you could see happening was you would get a cluster of correspondence all of which would repeat one or two phrases. You could tell "Oh yeah, you're on that chain" because here are the talking points. 

I would never have seen the original, what was out on social media, or email groups, or whatever---but I would know what was in it. That's because I'd get a bunch of stuff with a cluster of talking points, and then three months later I'd get another bunch of stuff with a different set of talking points that would come back through the echo chamber. There's no doubt that social media has a huge part to play in stirring up this "I hate Kathleen" stuff. And, if at the door you asked "why?", then they often couldn't say why.  

Part of that was if the real reason was homophobia and misogyny they weren't going to tell me---the MPP, standing at their door. They aren't going to tell that they hate her because she's a lesbian. So they have to pull something out of the air:  "Hydro". Because that's what they've heard the most about. But there was a total mismatch between "do you approve of the policies?"---full day kindergarden, childcare, pharmacare for the young, free university tuition for low income youth,---. If you went through the list: "do you like that?" "oh yes", "do you like that?" "oh yes", "do you like that we closed the coal plants?" "oh yes", "cap and trade?" "don't really understand it, but we should do something about climate change", etc. People at the doors liked our policies---except selling "Hydro", and that's because they didn't understand that "Hydro One" wasn't "Ontario Hydro".      

&&&&

Just to give people an understanding of what "Ontario Proud" is, look at the following video. As the Podcast by Jesse Brown says in the headline: "This Facebook group gets more engagement than the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail combined."

Originally, Ontario Proud said that they were funded by small contributions by ordinary citizens. But in a December 11th report by the CBC, it turns out that a small number of companies with links to the development industry donated most ($459,000) of the half million dollar budge that the social media company used to fuel their message---including $50,000 from Nashville Developments (a developer based in Vaughan), and, another $50,000 from Merit Ontario (a group that represents non-union construction companies.) I'm not going to get much into the content, but the fact that the ex-Premier is portrayed by a man in a dress who smokes cigars might just be construed as slightly homophobic. As for the electricity policy, you might want to read a previous article I published on that subject to suggest an alternative point of view. If you do, you might be surprised to find out that there are really good reasons why some people's electricity bills are more expensive than others.

&&&&

As for the point that Sandals makes about the distinction between "Ontario Hydro" and "Hydro One", "Ontario Hydro" doesn't exist anymore. In 1998 it was split up into five different companies: "Ontario Power Generation", "Hydro One", the "Independent Electricity System Operator", the "Electrical Safety Authority", and, the "Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation". It's really important to keep these six different corporations (Ontario Hydro plus the five other entities it was broken into) separate in your mind. "Ontario Power Generation" is a crown corporation that is still owned by Ontario and it is in charge of major power generation stations---think nuclear power and Niagara Falls. The "Independent Electrical System Operator" is a different crown corporation that manages the electricity market in Ontario. It is what allows giant nuclear power stations and people with a few solar panels to be able to trade freely on a very dynamic electricity spot market. The "Electrical Safety Authority" is a corporation that sends out that guy who inspects your home wiring to ensure it won't burn the house down. The "Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation" manages the finances of all the different elements of previous obligations taken on by the old "Ontario Hydro", and, new obligations of it's successor organizations (where appropriate.) And "Hydro One"---the only privately-owned company---is in charge of all the power lines and transformer stations that connect all the places that generate electricity with the people who use it.

"Hydro One" was sold off because the government of the day decided that the general public didn't want their taxes increased to pay for all the deferred investment (in things like transit) that previous governments had simply "kicked down the road" for future generations to deal with. Ontario retained enough shares to believe that they still had power over the agency, although the opposition parties complained bitterly that this simply wasn't true. (Since Doug Ford was able to replace the CEO when he wanted, and a regulatory board in the USA has decided that Ontario still controls Hydro One, it would seem that the Liberals have been proved right. But what do I know? The Conservatives have a man in a dress smoking a cigar that says otherwise---.)  

&&&&

Later on in the conversation, I raised the issue of how well the government is able to communicate with the public.

Hulet:  When I was researching the stories I did on solid waste I was amazed at how much quite progressive legislation had already been passed by the government.  Even though I generally think of myself as being quite well informed about these sorts of issues, I had no idea about most of this. Why do so few people know about much of what gets done by government? Is it just that complex stuff just doesn't make it into the conversation?

Complex stuff doesn't make it. The other thing is the mainstream media---in addition to what I've said about social media---the mainstream media is part of the communication problem. Because there's no place where people actually get good descriptions of what's going on anymore. Newspapers that have lots of long, thoughtful, well-researched journalism on this topic or that topic---most people don't access it, and, it doesn't happen much. When I was young everyone turned on the tv to watch the CBC 11:00 news. So there was a common understanding from a neutral provider---maybe you tuned into CTV and they're more rightwing---so there was a bit left of centre and a bit right of centre. 
But there was a centre and everyone was working from the same facts. And then you could have the debate about the facts. But there's no central repository of where people go to get facts, because people go to the outlet that produces the facts that they like. 

So there isn't even a common understanding of what the facts are anymore. There's very little in terms of places you can go to get a detail understanding of anything even vaguely complicated. For example, cap-and-trade. So anytime I was doing an announcement in Guelph related to cap-and-trade money I would take the time to explain how cap-and-trade works. I would explain that there's a carbon reduction fund and all the money that comes from polluters buying carbon credits has to got here, and has to go into greenhouse gas reductions, and you can go see about the climate change action plan on line if you really care and it will tell you all the ways the money can be spent.  

When I did this you could see the media go "Oh crap. There she goes again. Another cap-and-trade speech." I doubt if any of the media ever tried to explain it the first time, but it was certainly usually "Oh, there she goes again!" But when I walked back into the audience, their response was "Oh. I didn't know any of that! I'm so glad you explained it." But when your audience is only 20 or 30 people---. You had to be in the audience during one of those announcements to get one of the detailed explanations. 

The same thing with the tuition. Well, I did tuition workshops all over the province. I would explain "this is how it works, this is what the math looks like, if you are of this income and you do this you get this much of your tuition paid". I'd walk through with parents, counselors, social workers, etc---this was eight months into the process---and again it was "I didn't know that". You feel like you are doing it, and doing it, and doing it, but no one in the mainstream media ever talks about it. In any depth---other than the headline. And if you work in the mainstream media you get rewarded for posting the short version on the Internet before the next guy does. So the shortest headline, and the guy that tweeted first, is what gets rewarded. It isn't, "Did you come back and write a thoughtful article and actually explain what's going on?" Or explain the implementation as its going---say this month, the next month, and the month after?               

Donald Trump, now there's a guy
who gets good press coverage!
Photo by Gage Skidmore
c/o Wiki Commons

Boring, bland Bill Davis.
Premier of Ontario for 14 years.
Photo by Hans Blohm,
c/o Wiki Commons 

Now Bill Davis---everybody said of him "bland works"---I don't think Bill Davis would get elected in today's media market. Because they're looking for something more interesting. They want to talk about Doug Ford, or Donald Trump, because that's what sells media. 

Hulet: There was that quote from CBS chairman Lesli Moonves about giving Trump so much free airtime "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS" .

Yeah. Yeah! 

&&&&

Here's a graph from an analytics firm, "MediaQuant", that was quoted by a New York Times article published in March of 2016. It deals with a specific period in the election cycle, but it gives an idea of the grotesque disparity in coverage that the corporate media gave to Donald Trump's campaign. This illustrates their support of Trump that Sandals mentions above.

Image from New York Times, used under the "Fair Use" provision of the Copyright Act

&&&&

Looking at the above graph and seeing the "Ontario Proud" rap video you see the stark alternatives that people face if they refuse to pay for their news. You can have propaganda machines or advertising-based media constantly sinking lower and lower in a desire for more "clicks". If you want the sort of in-depth coverage that Sandals says that most journalists won't give you, you are going to have to support indie media like "the Guelph-Back-Grounder". Fortunately, it's easy. All you have to do is go to the Patreon Page and sign up, or, toss something in the "tip jar". (Thanks Andrew for being so awesome and increasing your subscription!) You don't have to pay a lot, indeed some of the folks I personally support only get a dollar a month or a dollar a post from me. It doesn't seem like much, but if only 5% of Guelph residents gave a dollar a month for real news, this news blog would be making over $5,000/month.

So what's stopping you? 

&&&&

At this point our conversation veered off into a sort of generalized question about why it is that people vote for populists like the Doug Ford Conservatives.

We know that there are all sorts of people that voted for Ford, and given that we know that they liked that catalogue of things, but they had no idea that they were voting for getting rid of things that they liked. If you'd asked them "Would you vote for getting rid of pharmacare for children and youth?" they would have said "No. I'm not voting for that." But that's what he turned around and did within a month of being elected. 

And this is where we go back to the "short form". Then people are voting against something. So they're voting against Kathleen. But they haven't really thought about what the consequence of that is because it wasn't as if they wanted to undo everything she'd done. It was "We're just voting against Kathleen." 

Hulet: I wonder how much of that was just voting against "the world".

I think that's a lot of it. I'm mad, so I have to show that I'm mad.   

Hulet: I'm an "early adopter", but even I get sick of the rapid pace of change in our lives. I just get worn down. I think that there's a lot of people who are just mad about that part of the world.

There's also this change in civil discourse. I first ran for the school board about 30 years ago. So in one way or another I've been doing elections and politics for over 30 years. People will say things to you now that they would not have said to you ten or fifteen years ago. 

Hulet: Nasty things?

Yeah. Yeah. Just the nastiness of the conversation. The way in which people are "invited" to be angry, and then the way that they express their anger has gotten worse and worse. 

Hulet: When I was doing my research on the Carnegie Library being torn down I was struck by how polite the letters to the editor were at that time.

It's not universally true, but it's generally true that if people have written something long hand or something that they've done on a word processor then they've edited it, and shaped it, and sent off the final version; that comes out way more civilized than if they've sent something out on email. 

Hulet:  Fair enough.

People will put the craziest stuff in emails. 

Hulet: I will admit that I'm one of those people who have just hammered stuff out and sent it off when I was upset about something. This has caused a certain amount of embarrassment on my part---. Do you think it's just that change in technology? Or do you think people feel a little more empowered to just vent? Or maybe they are angrier? Or that they just feel more frustrated about the way the world is going? I think this a core issue---that anger is driving this populism. I think that this needs to be something that any politician has to wrestle with.

I agree with what you're saying. People feel angry and they feel entitled to be angry, and they are angry because people are feeding them things that are often untrue, and that makes them even angrier. I see the stuff that they've been fed in what would bound back at me---and it was patently untrue. People are deliberately feeding them things that make them angry. It isn't that if they were sitting on an island by themselves that they would be as angry. They're angry because they are living in an echo chamber and what keeps getting echoed is more anger. 

I honestly don't know how we counteract that. If we had the answer, we would obviously just do it.  

Just to get back to Bill Davis. I've gotten to know him a bit because of both having been Education Minsters. I like him. But I don't know how well he would play today as he did then. Because there's a constant need to "fill the space", the "media space"---be it social media or conventional media---with stuff that's loud and noisy and controversial. If what you are reporting is good news or responsible progress on a responsible project---it's not news.  

Hulet: From that point of view Donald Trump is great, he makes good copy.

And ironically CNN spends as much time on him as FOX, and in spending time on him, they're feeding him.   

Hulet: I'm glad politicians are thinking about this stuff, even if I don't read any news stories about them doing so.

One of the frustrations when you are in government is "How do you communicate to people what you are doing?" My experience being in government is that when you are able to communicate with real people---"this is why we are doing this"---when you have a conversation where you can actually explain "this is why it is this way instead of that way"---"yeah, I hear you. We could do that better, but this is 'baked-in' for this or that reason"---. People's response is "Oh. That's very helpful, thank you." 

You can have that human discourse, but how do you replicate that when what's bouncing around in the real space that people are living in is a whole lot of anger and a whole lot of five second clips? 

Hulet: We really do have to rethink the media. The funding model of supporting the most outrageous stories is dangerous. It's damaging to society.

I have obviously not figured out what we do about this. Going back to the Trudeau quote [In the previous article: "The art of leadership is staying exactly seven inches ahead of popular opinion"], there's another part to the problem. People don't think very far ahead. That's really what he's talking about. And there's a difficulty if you get too far ahead of the voters. But the problems that we need to address are long-term. So if you're talking climate change---that's not something you can fix in a three or four year mandate. If you're talking public transit, that's not something you can fix in a three or four year mandate. If you're talking about affordable housing in Guelph, that's not something you can fix in a three or four year mandate. If you're talking about public education, that's a twenty year journey to get a kid through post-secondary.  

All of these things that you need to do take a long time. 

Hulet: And it always seems easier to sabotage an existing program than it is to build a new one.

Exactly. 

If what the public reacts to---in terms of electoral support---is short-term anger, and short-term goodies. Like, "Are you going to give me a tax break?", then how do you fix any of the real problems---that arguably is what government is supposed to do because it's the stuff that you and I can't do as individuals. Increasingly what government needs to do are long-term projects. 

Maybe they always have been long term projects. You can look at the CPR crossing Canada. That was certainly a long-term project. 

Hulet: And there was a lot of political controversy about that too---.

Yes. Yes there was---.   

 &&&&

The thing about real conversations about substantive issues is that they never really come to an end. What does end is the time we can spend on them. And that's how my conversation with Ms. Sandals ended, with a glance at a clock and a hurried "I'd better be on my way." But I was very happy to have had the time to talk to a person that I hadn't really known that much about, but now I am very happy was my representative at Queen's Park for fifteen years.