Why Political Parties Are Important

Last Monday there was a joint news conference by Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. They both said that they were still interested in being members of Parliament, but weren't interested in being members of political parties. Instead, they want to run as, and, if elected, sit as independents.

Jody Wilson-Raybould,
Photo by Erich Saide, image c/o Wiki Commons.

I took the trouble to watch Raybould's entire press conference on YouTube, and I have to admit that I wasn't impressed. I thought most of what she said consisted just of empty platitudes, but there were a few things that "jumped out" at me. I thought I'd take the time to "deconstruct" them for my readers, and in doing so explain why I was so disappointed.

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There is less room for partisanship in our evolving democracy.

The thing about the word "partisan" is that it really just means "someone who supports a particular point of view". If you are totally against "partisanship", you are ultimately against basing your politics on anything but immediate expediency. (That's the expressed viewpoint of Donald Trump when he says "he's a "deal maker".) I find it pretty hard to believe that this is what Raybould means. In fact, it's pretty obvious to me that she's a "partisan" in favour of her own particular way of wanting to do politics, as opposed to some other type. Reading between the lines, I might assume that what she means is that she's opposed to party loyalty based exclusively superficial reasons. But I'd suggest that that is not a fair understanding of why the various members of the Liberal party do what they do.

As an independent I will be truly free to take the guidance of the citizens of Vancouver Granville and to represent you. I will not have to try and convince myself that just because the way it has always been done means that it must continue to be done this way.

A lot of politicians make noises about "taking the guidance" of the citizens, but that's pretty much an empty slogan. That's because it is enormously difficult and expensive to scientifically poll an entire riding in order to find out what people really do think about an issue. It's certainly not enough to just listen to the people who call your office on the phone, write you emails, or, show up at town halls---all of those avenues are easily manipulated by organized campaigns to sway leaders. As Liz Sandals stated when I interviewed her, she could read letters and emails from constituents where the same few talking points repeatedly came up over and over again---which indicates that they had been organized by some sort of organization (party, church, website, etc) to push a specific agenda. How exactly is listening to these campaigns an improvement over supporting a party's agenda?

Moreover, people's opinions are pretty much worthless unless they are informed. We have lots of folks spewing misinformation like "vaccines cause autism". What if a majority of the phone calls to her constituency office supported a ban on measles vaccination? Would Raybould "take the guidance" of her voters and vote in favour? Or would she follow her conscience and the best evidence that has been presented to her? Isn't part of the problem we face as a society that there are entrenched interests who have learned to effectively use propaganda to get people to do things (like denying climate change) that are objectively not in their own interest? Where What does Raybould's "principled stance" mean in this situation?

And that last sentence (I will not have to try and convince myself that just because the way it has always been done means that it must continue to be done this way.) seems to imply that the only reason MPs won't support whatever it is she is proposing is because of some sort of inertia. Does she really believe this? Or is this just another partisan smear---but one that favours her worldview instead of another's?

Before 2015 I'd never been involved in federal or provincial politics and I'd never been a member of a political party. My leadership experience before running to be your MP has been in the indigenous world. Advocating for transformation in the relations with indigenous peoples. As some of you know, in my cultural teachings, we strive to work though consensus. While there are a diversity of views, tensions and challenges, we do not entrench them in political parties. And we often frown on personal ambition. 

She freely admits that she has absolutely zero experience in parliamentary politics. She hasn't even had a membership in any political party. And yet, she ran and was immediately made the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. Then she had a disagreement with the head of her party, and made a big stink over something. She got kicked out of the caucus and now wants to tell all the other politicians how they really should act.

This reminds me of a sort of fundamentalist preacher I used to hear during my childhood in "Jesusland". They used to go on and on about how awful they'd been and all the terrible life choices they'd made before they found Jesus. But now they had him in their hip pocket and they wanted everyone else do what they said they should do---specifically because of their past history of making bad choices. When I heard this, the immediate thing I thought was that it all boiled down to "I made lots of horrible life choices in the past, and now I want you to follow my latest one".

The situation isn't exactly the same. But I am concerned about her reference to "consensus". The thing about that ideal is that it gives enormous power to whomever wants to veto and prevent something from happening, but precious little to anyone who wants to do anything. Moreover, it also involves ferocious battles over who gets to define what the "status quo" is, and what is "innovation" (ie: that thing that is easily vetoed.)

The commitment to consensus, the importance of speaking the truth, and striving to honour and uphold each other. These are the core values of my culture and teachings. 

The big issue is deciding what exactly "the truth" is, and what does it mean to "honour and uphold each other"?

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These are the ultimate questions, aren't they? I often meet people who think it is remarkably easy to identify the "truth" of any problem. Generally, if they let me, I find after asking a few questions that they really don't know very much at all. This is what is known as "Socratic questioning", and it's the basis of philosophy and science. (I was dealing with it in my last editorial Truth is a Conversation.)

One of the things you learn by being in a political party (and I was for many years) is that there are a great many different ideas about "the truth" and it is tremendously difficult to create any sort of consensus about what it might be. And if you want to work together as a group towards a common purpose---be it winning an election or preventing runaway climate change---it is tremendously difficult to create a process where everyone feels "honoured" and "upheld".

It's not only a question of people having different points of view, it's also that no matter where you are in the "party food chain", you simply cannot be involved in every decision that directly affects you. The party leadership consists of many people who are all tremendously busy with the demands of government business, party business, dealing with the media, meeting with community leaders, constituents, and, preparing for the next election. And when you do get a chance to bring your concerns to someone, they have to consider how a specific decision will seem to people who don't know what you know, and who live in totally different circumstances. Moreover, all the people you deal with are human beings who get sick, are tired, are under stress, who are carrying baggage from their childhood----who basically make just as many stupid mistakes as everyone else. In fact, being in a political party is much like being in a giant, fractious, crazy family.

You have to have a thick skin and be tremendously aware of the frailties inherent in the human condition to be successful in politics. You also have to learn that "The perfect is the enemy of the good".  And the key thing you have to learn is that you cannot work with a group if your bring to it the attitude of "My way or the highway". 

If Jody Wilson-Raybould had been involved in the Liberals for any length of time she would realize how incredibly hard it is to "get along" with a huge number of people who have different personal histories, different points of view, and, different life situations. It's not a trivial thing to do. But if you can manage to do it, you are doing something of great importance to society. You are working with an institution that "stitches together" the nation and forges some sort of common worldview that can make things "work". It does this by creating a mechanism where people can get together and make the compromises that are necessary if people are going to live together---not in harmony, but at least without burning the house down. That's why we have political parties. 

I don't want to sound too harsh, but in the light of my experience in politics, I couldn't help but think that her entire 15 minute press conference was just a lot of empty verbiage that meant pretty much nothing at all. Indeed, it reminded me of an episode of the sitcom Cheers that I'd seen years ago. I found a scene from it on YouTube. Take a look and see if it rings "true" to you.

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One last point. Elizabeth May approached Raybould with a suggestion that she join the Green Party. That was, IMHO, a perfectly acceptable solution to both her and Philpott's situation. It is very difficult to get elected as an independent for purely practical reasons. It might seem that the two MPs would find themselves a better "fit" in the Green caucus anyway.

But then May said something in an interview that was absolutely extra-ordinary. She said that she would step aside and let Raybould run for the leadership of the party---presumably with her endorsement. In effect, she was treating the party leadership like her own private possession that she was free to give away to someone else. I mentioned how appalled I was by this at a breakfast meeting and someone immediately piped up and said how hard May works, and how committed she is to the environment. Luckily someone else immediately replied for me by saying that it was possible to be hard working and committed, and still have a tremendously wrong-headed view of leadership at the same time. (That allowed me to keep my powder dry.)

Elizabeth May is also someone who'd never been involved in the Green Party before she became leader. As it transitions away from her being the only elected member of Parliament, I suspect that there are going to be internal battles as something like an "internal culture" begins to grow within the Green Party of Canada. Just remember that this isn't a betrayal of anyone's ideals---it's just a symptom of childhood's end and a movement towards developing an adult point of view. I do, however, wish people would get rid of the "star candidate" complex that parachutes people into high public office with absolutely zero experience in political parties, though. 

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This week I saw a twitter rant from Adam Donaldson about how hard it is to get people to support indie media in the city. He made the perfectly reasonable point that if 1,000 people did a two dollar a month subscription to Guelph Politico, he'd have the sort of financial independence that would allow him cut a great deal of stress out of his life. Indeed, he said he was on the verge of calling it quits because it's so hard to get support from the community. I could say much the same thing. What triggered this was a complaint by someone who missed the good old days of the Guelph Mercury.

Well, I wrote a column for three years at the old Merc, and those days weren't really all that good. And I too get a bit miffed when I hear nostalgic whining about how great it was when a pile of dead trees that had been bled dry by corporate vampires like Conrad Black was delivered to your door every day. For a very long time before it died, it was a dreadful paper. And it cost a great deal more than $2/month too. We have well over 100,000 people in this city. If people had the idea that they need to pay for local news just like anything else, and were willing to pay a trivial amount of money through a Patreon subscription, we'd have a thriving independent local news culture in this city. But you've got to actually do it. 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Making Up Our Minds: Truth is a Conversation

Part of being a writer in this day and age is the fact that you have to market yourself. And that invariable means that you have to engage in social media. To that end, I have Twitter, Quora, MeWe, Instagram, Linked In, FaceBook, and, Reddit accounts. One of the many things I hate about doing this is the fact that I routinely meet people who seem to be mortally offended whenever I try to get them to "engage" with ideas. That is to say, that many folks get quite upset if you question something they write on these boards. For them, it's simply enough to espouse an opinion, and profoundly rude (or "troll-like") to ask for some evidence for that point of view, or, offer an argument in opposition.

This isn't surprising. Many folks simply don't have much experience in having to justify the ideas that they hold. It might simply be the case that all the people they meet hold roughly the same opinions, so different points of view simply never arise. It might also be the case that most folks they meet just want to be "polite" and "get along" with them, so they've learned to "bite their tongues". (Anyone who knows me might be surprised to hear that I can actually do this, and indeed I often find myself doing this at family get-togethers.)

I can remember the class in my first year of university where I realized what is going on in these sorts of situations. I was taking an intro philosophy course and the professor was asking people what they thought about a specific notion. He would get them to say, then he'd ask a simple question in response "Why do you believe that?" A significant proportion of the class tried to weasel out of answering by saying "well, that's just my opinion". But the prof would have nothing of that, "but surely there's a reason why you believe that, isn't there?"

What he was trying to do was get us to learn about the importance of conversation and argument in finding the truth.

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That first course at university was based on reading a translation of Plato's

Thrasymachus of Athens.
Image from The Great Thoughts Treasury.
Used under the Fair Use provision.

Republic. In it the historical character, Thrasymachus, espoused the idea that we express today as "might makes right" or "victor's justice". This is the idea that there not only is there no objective thing as "right or wrong", but that people don't even really believe in it anyway. Instead, what we call "right" is what the powerful want, and, what they don't want is what we call "wrong". Anything else is just "window dressing".

This is a very extreme position to support, because to prove it correct someone would have to poll every human being on the earth and decide that they too all believe that "might makes right".

Plato, copy of a portrait by Silanion.
Image c/o Wiki Commons.

The "might is right" argument is obviously not true simply because there are countless individuals who do right simply because they think it is right. As the prof all those years ago said "It simply is demonstrably true that lots of people do selfless things just because they think it's the right thing to do---not because the powerful coerce them. For example, in war some people actually jump on grenades to save their fellow soldiers." It might be true that the powerful trick other members of their society into believing moral truths that actually aren't true. But that's not what Plato has Thrasymachus arguing in the Republic.

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I am mentioning this anecdote from my past to illustrate an important point about scholarship. Scholars don't simply assert that such-and-such an idea is "true" and justify it because it's their "opinion" and "everyone's entitled to their way of looking at the world". Instead, what they do is bring forward potential ideas---"hypotheses"---and enter into a conversation with other people who study the same subject. If a consensus emerges among the experts in the field that a specific hypothesis is in accordance with all the evidence and logical analysis that people can bring to bear on the subject, they eventually describe it as a "theory". And once the experts accept the value of a theory, they then use it as the foundation for further exploration.

People who haven't studied epistemology---the study of how we know what we know---might find this somewhat disturbing. That's because most people naively believe that we live in a world of "hard facts". It's kinda scary for them to think that something as nebulous as "building a consensus" is involved in defining "truth".

But if you know anything about how science operates, this is exactly how it does. A fellow who is an acknowledged expert in the field---because of his Master's or Doctorate---submits an article in a peer-reviewed journal that offers a suggested hypothesis. The "peers" are other experts in the same field, who are able to exert some "quality control" over what gets published in that particular journal. They keep out the obvious nonsense and authors who aren't really qualified to enter into the discussion because they lack the credentials.

Once the article has been published, it is then read and discussed by other people with relevant expertise in the field. They then enter into a conversation with one another about the ideas put forward. If it's a paper in the sciences, people might do things like recreate an experiment described in the paper. They might also put forward suggestions about how this hypothesis could be tested in other experiments. If it's in the humanities---like philosophy---it might spur future papers that will discuss the points raised in the original paper. In both cases, the essential issue is the conversation and how it furthers human understanding. If enough people agree that this hypothesis makes sense, eventually it starts being called a "theory" and people just assume it's true and build upon it.

This is how the theories of evolution, gravitation, electricity, vaccination, etc, all came into being. It is the process that led to the creation of the computer, modern medicine, space travel, etc. It's also how the scientific method that I've described above became accepted among modern scholars.

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Please note in the above that nowhere have I made room for the "lone genius" who toiled away in obscurity and who was right even though everyone else thought he was wrong. Instead, I'm suggesting that this is a co-operative process where lots of different people work together and everyone has at least some connection with the "establishment" that allows for their acceptance in a club with a strictly limited membership.

Galileo Galilei.
Image c/o Wiki Commons.

One of the tropes that people learn from the popular media is that there were persecuted, reviled figures who turned out to be "right" after a lifetime of isolation. One of the stock figures in this was Galileo Galilei. As the story goes, he supported the heliocentric worldview even though everyone was against him and he ended up spending years in house arrest for struggling against the church. The truth is far different. Galileo was no outsider. In fact, he was a respected academic who held the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Pisa, and, taught geometry, mechanics, and, astronomy at the University of Padua. Everyone with the same level of education as him agreed with his basic ideas about physics and astronomy. What he was, however, was an extremely abrasive person who took great delight in insulting high church officials---who were outside of his academic circles. If he'd been just a little more "politic" and not been so antagonistic, they would probably have ignored him instead of putting him on trial for heresy and sentencing to many years of house arrest. He was certainly no "lone genius" who was "at odds with the scientific establishment".

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I notice that there's a new "indie media" source in Guelph. I won't mention it by name, but I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed. I can't figure out what it is trying to do other than recreate all the flaws that exist in the already existing corporate world. As near as I can tell, most of the articles are just rewrites of other people's stories, press releases, stuff gleaned from social media, and, the odd quick phone interview. What's the point? 

I started the "Back-Grounder" because I got sick of reading shallow, "he-said/she-said" stories where the reporter obviously hadn't done any research. It takes time and effort to even write these weekend editorials (as I hope that this example shows.) Moreover, I'm trying to get people to used to the idea that they should pay for news. That's really important, because if you don't pay for the stories the money comes from somewhere else---like advertising and data scraping. And both of those funding mechanisms have profound effect on editorial content. I don't just mean that advertisers will pick up a phone and kill a story (although I suppose that does happen occasionally), but rather that editors routinely tell journalists to "hype up" stories to encourage clicks.

If you don't want to read stupid, shallow, over-hyped stories then you have to be willing to pay for well-researched, objective news. It's really no great secret---. 

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I'm mentioning these issues because I meet a fair number of people who have read some obscure crud on the Internet and believe that they know more about things like climate change than the overwhelming majority of experts in the field. It's important to understand that what counts is the discussion among the experts not just one particular voice.

I recently watched a YouTube clip from a Fox News program. In it a Dr. Patrick Michaels, who is described as "director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute", talks about climate change. Please note, this is not an academic or scholarly body. Instead, it's a political organization funded by the Koch brothers, who's job is to create libertarian talking points to disseminate through the media. It's main job is to create propaganda, not search for the truth.

At about 3:15 in the video, a graph comes up that Michaels says shows that the computer models that every other scientist (except the Russians????) uses to predict global warming---are fatally flawed.

The "Christy Graph", from the Website "Skeptical Science".
Image used under the "Fair Use" provision of the Copy Right Act.

Being the silly fool that I am, when I saw this on my tv (which plays YouTube videos too), I paused the program, jumped up, and, instantly looked for it using a Google search.

What I was doing was trying to find some of the conversation that surrounds the graph. I'm not a climate scientist, so I know that I don't know enough to even begin to have an informed opinion about what this guy was saying in this interview. But I am a Master of Philosophy, so I understand how science is supposed to work, so I went out and sniffed on the Web to look for what I could find.

I found several websites that identified this image as being quite famous. It is the "Christy Graph" (named after the man who created it:  Dr. John Christy.) Fortunately, the Guardian has an excellent article that neatly brings together a great many of the problems that people have identified with it, I would strongly recommend reading it. But if you don't have the time, here's the case in point form:

• Baseline alignment. Not having studied statistics, I simply don't understand this point. But that's not a problem, as the conversation is supposed to be taking place between experts---and all we non-experts can do is watch from the sidelines
• The uncertainty ranges are ignored. Statistical graphs generally shouldn't consist of lines, but rather individual brackets that show the range of potential values. That's because when you deal with the real world most measurements come with significant margins of error. For example, we wouldn't say "3", but rather "between 1 and 5". This is just an artifact of the tools we use to gather information. And once you do this, a lot of the divergence between what was predicted and what we see in the Christy graph disappears.
• The chart just averages together different sets of raw data. Some of people who collected the raw data that is brought together in the graph are disputed for one reason or another. If you think that some data is not as good as others, then you might want to find some way of weighing the better data more heavily than the stuff you feel kinda "hinky" about. It might be that there are differences of opinion about this, but then that discussion should be part of the presented information. 
• The chart wasn't peer reviewed!!!!! This should be a deal-breaker. Only experts will know enough to be able to tell if this graph makes any sense or not. And to be honest, no journalist should waste any time on anyone who is trotting out something that hasn't passed the basic scholarly "smell test" of peer review.
• The average temperature measurement is taken at 25,000 feet, whereas we live on the surface of the planet. What???
• There is lots of other evidence---besides what the Christy graph is based on---that suggests that the computer models are working just fine. 

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Please remember that I'm not trying to settle a claim about a specific graph or climate change in general. What I am trying to do is point out is that any specific isolated claim is pretty much irrelevant. People shouldn't listen to a YouTube video or read one statement on line, and come to a conclusion. Truth doesn't arise from one source, but rather from a conversation among the community of experts. It's unfortunate that most journalists don't understand this fact. It's even more unfortunate that there are well-funded organizations (like the Cato Institute) that exist just to create well-crafted, talking points designed to confuse the public. 

In a real conversation people pick an argument to pieces, the original author tries to answer those concerns, and, if a real problem is discovered, she modifies her hypothesis to accommodate these issues. Journalism and the Web don't work that way. News and opinion makers almost never pay attention to the conversation. Instead, what they do is look for a "good quote" and then move on.

If you do want to learn about an issue, use the wonderful resources that we have through search engines to look at the conversation between different people. And always look at the credentials of both the person making a claim, and, the source that is publishing what they have to say. Don't just read one article and decide based on that!

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Karen Farbridge Interview: Part Three

After talking a bit about housing and development in the last part of the interview, I tried to start some "blue sky" thinking. One of the things that I rarely get a handle on with community leaders is some general sense of how they view the world and the big issues that we face as a culture. Instead, if you follow the news you only get to see how they deal with "one damn thing after another". But how they deal with the here-and-now is often based on how they see the big picture.

The same photo I've used in the other posts.
From a University website, used under the "Fair Use" provision.

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Hulet: Just to expand on the wealth stratification thing---.  Just to set this up. I worked with a lot of young people at the university and it's like they live in a totally different country than I do. The thought of just getting a full time, permanent job with benefits just by applying is just not possible.  At the university to even get hired as a housekeeper you have to go through a temporary contract. For other jobs, people stitch together a bunch of part time jobs and then they have to use their cell phone to keep track of their schedule from one job to another. We call that "precarious work" and the "gig economy". Where's that heading? Can any of these people ever buy a house? Start a family?

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I did some research and found out that my experience at the university is not the same as in the rest of the economy. While temporary work is expanding everywhere, it appears that it is worst in the educational sector---which is where I used to work. Here's a graph from a report by the Parliamentary Library that breaks down temporary versus permanent employment by sector. If you look the sixth bar graph from the top, you'll see "Educational services", which obviously have the highest percentage of temporary positions.

"Permanent and Temporary Employees by Industry in 2017"
From the Parliamentary report Precarious Employment in Canada: An Overview.
Used under the "fair use" provision of Canadian copyright law.

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Farbridge: That income inequality is only getting worse. It's not going the other way. The accelerant is going to be automation. 

Hulet: I'm just asking because I was approached by a politician---several elections ago---to write up some "wedge issues" to differentiate that party from others. I focused on trying to come up with a variety of things that would help these young people in the "precariat". Zero interest in any of them. But I did see that the Liberals under Kathleen Wynne took on one of them---the Canada Pension Plan expansion---and eventually it was expanded to the entire country. She also created the Guaranteed Annual Income experiment.

Farbridge: I think that's the solution. It's a structural solution. I'm sure that there will be some unintended consequences, but there are unintended consequences with our current system.  But I do think that's getting at the core of the issue. 

If you give people---I think it was Mike Schreiner who really hi-lighted this for me. If it is going to be the gig economy, it it is going to depend on people's entrepreneurialism. To be an entrepreneur is fine if you are in a fairly privileged position because you've got to be able to feed yourself while this business, right? If people have that sort of basic income taken care of it frees up their creative capacity to start a new business and that business doesn't have to feed an entire family. It can supplement a family, right? But still add significantly to the local economy and meet a need and deliver good service or whatever it is, right? 

To me the flip-side of the guaranteed income is that it will be more supportive of people being more creative and entrepreneurial. The musician will be able to "make it", right? 

Hulet: I was talking to a tree surgeon who mentioned the Canada Child Benefit---the one that Harper created and Trudeau changed so it was aimed at lower income people. He said that it was tremendously important to him when he was starting his business. It allowed him to keep in business when he was just starting up and he was wondering if he would make a go of it or not. And that is considered a "guaranteed income" too.

Farbridge:  Yeah. A bit of one. As is the Old Age Security, right? It's not as if we don't have some elements of it. 

The other side of it is just the administration that's behind so many of our social programs.

Hulet: The problem is that we will have to increase taxation.

Farbridge: Not necessarily. That's not what the research that Hugh Segal and some senators did on Guaranteed Annual Income. And a number of years ago the reform party was a big advocate of a Guranteed Annual Income because it got rid of the administrative costs. For them they thought it was going to be less costly. It would remove a lot of costs---so it's not necessarily more expensive. 

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It's important to understand a significant distinction between two things that often get lumped together: guaranteed minimum income, and, universal basic income. People routinely lump the two together, but from what I've seen the two things support very different public police objectives. 

The key difference between the two is that a universal basic income goes to every citizen in the nation, whereas a guaranteed minimum income is given out based on a means test. It might seem odd that anyone would suggest that Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and, Warren Buffet should be paid money from the government, but that proponents are trying to do two things by making the project universal. First, they are trying to build broad-range support among the entire community. Second, they tend to be people who focus on the issue of dismantling the entire edifice of the welfare state. That is, if everyone is getting a cheque from the government, why do we need employment insurance, welfare, disability pensions, etc?

In the past there have been other innovative policies that suggested that a lot of money could be saved by changing from one way of doing things to another. For example, in the 1960s there was a concerted effort to shut down mental hospitals and "deinstitutionalize" the mentally ill. On paper, this was a good idea as these complexes cost a lot of money and were dreadful places to live. The idea was that if the giant facilities were shut down the money saved could be used to set up more human-sized facilities like group homes and outreach programs that would be better at helping people with psychiatric issues. Unfortunately, what happened is that the politicians focused on "saving money" and ignored the bit about "redirecting resources to new facilities". The result is that guy "with issues" who begs on Wyndham Street and sleeps under the bushes along the river. It's tremendously important that the same thing doesn't happen again. 

In contrast, the guaranteed minimum income simply involves setting a financial "floor" below which no one is allowed to fall. If you make less than it, the government simply sends you the difference so you have money for rent, food, etc. 

We can understand these issues by looking at the history surrounding the "baby bonus". After World War Two the government decided that they didn't want a recreation of the Great Depression, so they designed social policies to help returning servicemen and to redistribute money through the economy. One of them was something like a universal basic income for children. This was the "baby bonus", which gave each parent a set amount of money for each child under a certain age. (When I was young, it was said to be enough to keep them in shoes.) 

It was done away with under Brian Mulroney, but something similar was brought in under Stephen Harper. In 2015 it gave parents $160/month for children under six years of age, and, $60/month for children between six and seventeen. The key point to remember is that this was a universal income program---if you were a billionaire, you still got the money.

After the Liberals assumed government in late 2015, they changed it into a guaranteed income program. That means that the amount you get is based on how much your family makes a year, and, how many children it has to support. For example, if your family income is less than $30,450/year you will get $541/month for a child under six, or, $457/month for a child between six and seventeen. (I won't get into the complexities of multi-child households.) 

As you can see, from the two different programs, if you stop giving money to middle-class and wealthy parents, it frees up a lot of money for people who are really struggling. This is why it's really important for people to understand the difference between these two types of programs!

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This whole post is dealing with complexities. The world is a really complex place and if we are going to have any hope of understanding what is going on around us, we need to get some grasp of what's going on. Businesses routinely subscribe to information digests---like the Back-Grounder---to cut through the fog that comes in when you get all your news from the daily press. But most people don't know about these things because subscriptions are generally really expensive and they hide behind solid pay walls. They aren't meant to be general interest publications, but they are a very successful part of a news media that is in free fall everywhere else. I'm trying to create an information digest for ordinary voters. 

The Back-Grounder isn't meant to be something that you consume like the nightly news or a daily newspaper. It's supposed to be like the old journals that were bound and saved for future reference. And as such, it can have a lot more influence than just a daily, ephemeral news source. But that sort of thing requires people who are willing to pony up money to support it. The Back-Grounder will never hide behind a pay wall, because what it is about is of importance to all voters. But we need to build a culture where people---and institutions, maybe your union, political party, or, other group would be willing to buy a subscription---financially support the sort of thing I'm doing here. So if you can afford it, please consider supporting the work I do through Patreon or toss something in the tip jar. Even small donations---if regularly supplied---can make a difference. 

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Hulet: I have a sneaking suspicion that what underlies a lot of the problems our society faces boils down to things just being too darn complicated.

What I'm doing with this blog would not be possible five years ago. There wasn't enough info that I could access on line to be able to do research that way, and I wouldn't be able to propagate it, and I wouldn't be able to advertise it before social media. I've got the this groovy second-hand phone that is better than the best tape recorder I could afford before---.

But every time you have something that magnifies your ability to do something the economy and society adapts to it. And it starts off as this wonderful force multiplier---to use a military term---then it quickly becomes a necessity and if it's not there you're screwed.

We have this gig economy now because we can and now the whole society has to have the gig economy or else everything would all fall apart.

Farbridge: As the technology is developed, so much more responsibility is off-loaded onto individuals, right? Just take banking. You used to go into your bank and you would go to your teller, and your teller would manage everything for you. Now you have to manage your on-line account, your passwords. It's become more complicated than what it used to be, right?

Hulet: As I turn into my grandparents---I ramble, I forget things, words---I miss the teller who would say "Oh don't worry Mr. Hulet, we'll take care of that".

Farbridge: I think there'll be a new service of people who help you manage your on-line activity. 

There's so many layers to all this. For example, I have to stay at hotels, I have this Starwood Rewards Card, right? So I get a notice---and I'm just one of a lot of people who use this in the Marriott chain---that there'd been a major hack and data breach. And they didn't just get phones and emails; they got credit cards and passport numbers---they got it all. For identity theft. So then the company gives you---I'm sure they're trying to be helpful---a half a dozen things that you can do to protect yourself. I thought "Hang-on, it was your data breach, right?"  I've got to do all these things now? I've got to sign up for a service that will track my info on the "dark web" and let me know if my data is being sold to anybody. 

And I've got to do this, and I have to do that---??? That's complicated---for a stupid little rewards card that maybe gave me some points---so maybe I got bumped to a bigger room?

[Karen laughs in exasperation.]

And that become normalized. Maybe that's what you're saying. And we don't even recognize the increase in complexity. 

Hulet: You're a very smart person---you've got a Phd, you've "turned the wheels of governance" for a city. I have a master's degree. What about people who aren't intellectuals, who just do some mindless job and want to watch the Leafs on tv after a tiring day's work? I can hear them thinking when they see something like this "What? What am I supposed to do?" "Dark web---what the Hell is that?"

Farbridge: Well, I'm not going to do it. I just deleted the email and I'm just going to have to take my chances on this one because I'm not going to add that extra layer onto my life. It'll probably lead to something else, right? 

Have you read Sapiens? [Sapiens: A Brief History of Human Kind, by Yuval Noah Harari] It's the first part of a trilogy, a history of intelligence in humans, "sapiens", from it's dawn to today. The other two books are Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

Yuval Noah Harari. Photo by  עץבעיר.
Public domain image c/o Wiki Commons. 

In Sapiens he has a very compelling line where he says---getting to your point about complexity---that we keep layering on these things thinking that they are going to make life easier but they just end up making life more complicated. 

He starts with agriculture. Moving from being a hunter-gatherer was supposed to be so positive, but it had all sorts of negative consequences. That's one of several examples. 

He says we're not very good---once we are in "It"---at being able to step out and say "Is this really working for us?"

[Karen chuckles.]

We're just on a path---a trajectory, right? 

Hulet:  I don't know if you heard the interview between Michael Enright and Gwynne Dyer on populism. [It's here, at 1:02:03.] He said we're going through a transitional stage. Part of that is this populism that's popped up like leprosy all over the body politiic. The more I look at the world the less I see any conscious activity. As you say, no one's asking "What's going on here?" Everyone is just running in their own little hamster wheel---. It's a headless monster being created by all our own individual drives. 

The hamster wheels go faster all the time and I wonder that even if we lived in a socialist utopia we'd still all be living wretched lives just because of the complexity. 

I'm just wondering if this manifests itself in a city's inability to deal with housing, transit, and, all these other problems that manifest themselves. Environmental issues too. Dyer thinks we're just going through a phase. 

Farbridge: Definitely we're in a transition. Jeremy Rifkin  talks a lot about us being in a third industrial age, and that there are three parts to it: transportation, energy, and, communications. 

Jeremy Rifken, photo by Stephan Röhl.
Public Domain image c/o the Wiki Commons. 

The first industrial revolution was steam power---the locomotive and the printing press. The next one was centralized electricity, cheap oil and gas, the television, the telephone. That sort of thing. Now we're into renewable, localized energy, autonomous vehicles, and, the Internet. 

The industrial age was very disruptive for people at the time. The next one was disruptive to certain people. And this one is too. 

So I agree that there is this sort of thing going on---it's just that the speed and the size of the population accelerate the potential risks:  climate change. 

I do think that we're in the energy transition regardless of climate change. The main thing is that this energy transition will lead to a lower carbon future. The question is "Can it be accelerated fast enough to make a difference?"

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Hulet: I was encourage to hear one of the speakers on today's CBC Current talking about mobilizing to a "war economy" to deal with climate change. I though "Hallelujah---that actually made it onto the CBC!" I can remember giving that talk to Guelph Council 20 or 30 years ago.

Farbridge: My first talk to Council on climate change was in 1994. You might have been one of the other delegations. I know I wasn't the only one. I know Maggie Laidlaw was there too. 

Anyway. I still have the text of that talk and I could give it today and it wouldn't be dated or embarrassing. That's a sad thing.

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Hulet: What are you doing now? 

Farbridge: I chair the Meridian Credit Union Board, and I chair a subsidiary of the Meridian. So that's a big chunk of my time.

Hulet: So the Meridian is a big deal---it's not just a local credit union?

Farbridge: Yes, it's across the province. It's the 3rd largest credit union in Canada, with $20 billion in assets. We have a leasing company and a national digital bank. I'm doing stuff for Meridian every week. It's not just me dropping in every once in a while for a board meeting.

Another thing that I do is consulting work. I'm in five communities right now. I develop and deliver the engagement program in Oakville and Brampton for them to develop a community energy plan. And then in New market---do you remember GEERS? [Guelph Energy Efficiency Retrofit Strategy]---they're still talking about it here. But New Market's doing their version of it. I do the engagement for that process.

The engagement part is just translating the data and analytical work into something people can actually adapt to it.

Hulet: You mean staff? Or the general public?

Farbridge: Staff, public, various stakeholder groups, yup.

And that sort of work will go into Windsor as well. And then I work in Vaughn doing a project. I work with a number of collaborators in the community energy planning space. At universities---York university in particular, Guelph, and then some organizations as well---some not-for-profit organizations too. So I identify barriers to the energy transition and community energy planning and where we need to address those barriers.

The project in Vaughn is looking at financing tools and doing a risk assessment for municipalities. Municipalities are concerned about risk---that's been a barrier moving forward. So we go in and engage in a workshop around identifying what the real risks are and how do we mitigate them.

Hulet: So it sounds like the community energy initiative has become a real movement.

Farbridge: Oh, totally. There's 300 of them across the country. We were one of the first in 2007---now there's 300 community energy plans. I would say right now we're getting into the second wave of sophistication---both on the engagment side and on the analytical side.

Hulet: Another thing that was started in Guelph---

Farbridge: And is dead here.

[Farbridge laughs.]

Hulet: Dead here, but taken up everywhere else.

Farbridge: We're still widely recognized for leading it. Those are examples of projects I'm working on.

I'm part of a group that's developing a three day professional development course for land use planners around community energy planning. That will be offered through York University as a class, but part of it will also be offered on-line.

It's interesting where we got our funding for that, it was the IESO (the Independent Electricity Supply Operators) gave us most of the money to develop that course. Then the electricity distributors associations and, then the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has given us extra money to put more of it on line and make it more accessible across Canada. 

As you said, it's a movement, it's a wave. A lot of stuff going on and then I'm the vice chair of QUEST (Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow.) That's a national organization promoting community energy planning across the country. 

Hulet: That's encouraging. I was kinda depressed when I did my story about the district energy hubs. 

Farbridge: I get to do a lot more about community energy now than I did when I was mayor. I was just a champion for it here---I wasn't working on it. Eventually all this stuff will come back here---but we will have missed a lot of opportunities. 

Hulet: The district energy systems. Is anyone building those?

Farbridge: Yes.

Hulet: So there is a chance that they will come back in Guelph?

Farbridge: The assets are still there. There were people who wanted to buy them. But the city wouldn't even take their calls. Because this didn't fit the narrative, right? If they were such a terrible idea, why is the private sector wanting to buy them, right?

Windmill [the company that the city is partnering with to develop the Baker Street lot for the new library]---the density is high enough to connect the district energy hub to what they're proposing. So maybe there's an opportunity for them to buy the assets that are downtown and broaden the system for their project. 

At some point someone will come in with a plan. It's just harder to retrofit---we've missed all the Metal Works condos. Once the heating and cooling is in place it's at least 20-30 years before it's time to replace existing plants. 

Will it include a hook-up to the downtown district energy system?
An artists's impression of what the Baker Street project might look like.
Photo from the Windmill site, used under the Fair Use provision of the copyright Act.

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Making Up Our Minds: Mind Your Language!

One of the things that every citizen needs to remember is that there are a lot of very smart people in this world who want to trick you into supporting some action that isn't in your own best interest. One way that they often do this is by manipulating language to confuse you. I thought I'd devote this weekend's editorial to some of the more common tactics that political weasels employ.

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Loaded Language

This is when a politician uses words that have a specific assumption that supports them is "baked into" their meaning. For example, conservative politicians have gone to great lengths to get Canadians to call refugees who cross the border outside of the customs entry points "illegal immigrants". In actual fact, what these people are doing is perfectly legal and in keeping with the United Nations refugee rules. The problem is that Canada has an agreement with the USA that suggests that since America is such a mellow, immigrant-friendly place, that there's no need for anyone to come from there to claim refugee status in Canada. (And then came Trump---. Maybe this "Safe Third Party Agreement" wasn't such a good idea after all.) This rule doesn't invalidate international law, however, so these people are not "illegal" in any way, shape, or, form.

Unfortunately, the lazy-ass, mainstream media haven't "pushed back" against this blatant attempt to confuse voters, and most of it has adopted the phrase themselves. This has allowed the Conservatives to pretty much take over the debate and force the other parties onto their back legs. This has damaged political discourse in Canada and allowed the alt-right a way of making immigration---which has historically been seen very positively by most Canadians---into a political football. 

False Dichotomies

People will sometimes manipulate a conversation to strongly imply that there are only two possible options and then force you to answer "yes" or "no". Sometimes this is done to create phony statistics in favour of a given point of view. This is called a "push poll". I remember a pollster explaining the concept to Peter Gzowski (an ancient CBC radio host) by polling the general public about whether or not Knowlton Nash (an equally ancient CBC tv news reader) wore skirts that were too short for decency. (Of course, Nash never wore a skirt in his life.) 

My personal favourite example is the basis of a Gary Larson cartoon.  

Gary Larson cartoon from the Far Side,
used under the fair use provision of the Copy Right law.

 

One recent example of a false dichotomy is the idea that the only two choices that Canadians face is to either destroy the Albertan economy by limiting oil production, or, avoid doing our bit to prevent out-of-control climate change. The assumption seems to be that there is something wrong with Albertans in that they are genetically incapable of doing anything else than work in the tar sands. (Poor souls---is it the result of some sort of in-breeding?) The idea that they might want to fund their government by putting in place a sales tax (like all the other ox-like,  dull, subhuman provinces) or diversify their economy (again, like the other ox-like, dull, subhuman provinces) seems to be impossible to contemplate. (There's no sense wondering what the poor, feckless souls did with the royalties they charged on all their conventional oil. Conservatives are notoriously bad with money. They just don't seem to be able to help themselves, poor dears. Just witness what Doug Ford is now doing with the Ontario budget.)   

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Last Thursday I heard a talk by Patti Broughton about the Guelph Arts Council. Afterwards I had a brief talk with her, we exchanged business cards, and, I decided to join the organization. I told her about the Back-Grounder and she said that I should join, even though this is a journalism project rather than fiction. The membership is $30/year, so there's one more expense that I've taken on with this publication. Unfortunately, she'd never heard of it before. What that tells me is that I should be putting more effort into letting people know about it. So, I'm asking readers to consider sharing the link to my blog with the other people on social media. I need to take advantage of "word-of-mouth" advertising just as much as I need subscribers. So while I like it when people click on the "like" button, I also would like you to click on the "share" one too.  

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Plastic Words

One last thing I'd like readers to consider happens when politicians use "plastic words". These are phrases or descriptors that seem to mean something, but when you ask people to define what exactly they think that they mean, you get very different explanations. One of the best use of these comes from an environmental debate that goes back decades. 

In 1972 an international think tank called "The Club of Rome" published a report titled Limits to Growth that put forward the totally obvious (if your head isn't stuffed firmly up your butt) observation that economic growth cannot continue forever on a planet that is not also growing. The idea was that there is always a "limiting factor" in any population that stops it from growing beyond a certain size. These could be a specific essential nutrient, or, it could be that beyond a certain point the ability of the ecosystem to recycle waste becomes overwhelmed and the organism poisons itself.

Unfortunately, the world dominant religion---capitalism---is based on the idea that economic growth can continue forever. And as we all know, for many people whenever facts conflict with ideology, facts always have to go out the window. That means that the "punk and plain" words of the Club of Rome report had to be sabotaged and safely removed from public discussion.

An innocuous title, but yet one of
the most effective pieces of anti-environmental
propaganda ever produced! 
Image from the Wiki Commons. 

Enter the Bruntland Commission, which came up with an alternative to Limits to Growth, known as Our Common Future. The genius of the slime-bags behind this was that they came up with a plastic phrase---sustainable development---which then drove the phrase "limits to growth" completely out of public discourse.  

The "great thing" about this term, is that it allows people who want to save the world (ie:  who want to have sustainability) to use the same words as those who want to sustain the existing status quo (ie: who want to have sustained economic growth.) At that point, the discussion about whether or not the human race should still be growing like crazy, cutting down forests, polluting the oceans, etc, stopped being honestly discussed because everyone agreed on the same thing. Wow! Plastic words are like magic. 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!

Leading by Example

Years ago I was doing some banking with some volunteers in the local Green Party riding association. Basically I had to cosign one volunteer Chief Financial Officer off the bank account and put another one on. This resulted in my standing on the sidewalk with a woman while we waited for another guy to show up. One of the woman's co-workers happened by and they had a bit of a conversation. He asked what she was doing and when she explained, he started up with the usual "yeah, this is all idealistic but no one actually walks the talk---people are all hypocrites" blather.

It was a bitterly cold winter's day. The roads were clear but a blizzard was coming in and there was a howling wind with snow flurries. In the midst of this guy's rant our fellow rolled up on his old Dutch bicycle. The cynic's mouth literally dropped and his eyes bugged out. He simply couldn't believe that someone was so concerned about climate change that he would ride a bicycle in that sort of weather. It rendered him actually speechless to see someone "lead by example".

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In the struggle for Indian independence there was a campaign titled "Swadeshi" that used "leading by example" to encourage Indians to think about how their day-to-day decisions impacted their country's economic independence from the British Empire.

Basically, the idea was that India's rural poor had been grotesquely exploited by an economic system that forced peasants to grow cotton, ship it to England, where it was turned into cloth, which was then shipped to India where it sold for less than that created by domestic production. This kept the peasants poor and stopped local Indian industry from developing as a competitor with Britain. 

The Congress Party of India sought to raise people's consciousness by encouraging people to buy cotton and spin thread which they then sold to artisanal weavers to make a special type of cloth known as "khadi", which they could buy and make their own clothes from.  Indeed, this was such an important campaign that people staged protests where they burnt English cloth to show that they would no longer buy or wear it. People bought their membership in the Congress Party with homespun thread. At one convention, Mohandas Gandhi (then President of the party) devoted a 40 minute talk to quietly sitting on a stage with a spinning wheel making thread for the weavers. 

Khadi is still sold in India.
This image from the Womenweave
organic co-op. Used under the "Fair Use" provision.

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When I first started working on this blog I wanted to make it an "open book" project. That is, I thought that I'd keep track of my hours and thereby tell readers how much time I put into researching and writing these missives. I quickly decided keeping track of my time would be a waste of effort. To a certain extent most of my life is now devoted to the project---I go to events and talk to people and that helps with stories. Even when I'm at home by myself I am often reading or listening to podcasts. Even when I'm not doing much of anything at all, at least part of me is always thinking about a story.

What I can do, however, is mention in this blue type whenever I spend some money for the blog. To that end, this week I sent $100 to the Linux Mint project because I upgraded the operating system on my computer. I did this because they had stopped sending security upgrades for the version I'd been using for about five years.

If you'd like to help me with these and other costs---plus give me some money to offset all those hours spent researching and obsessing---why not subscribe through Patreon or toss something in the Tip Jar? If nothing else, share the stories you like on social media.

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Gandhi was a real master of the concept of "leading by example". Unfortunately, a lot of this is lost on people who don't understand the issues he was dealing with. For example, he started out trying to be a "proper English gentleman" during his legal career. This involved wearing a suit and tie. But eventually, he stopped trying to "ape" the British and instead decided that he would live and look like an ordinary, poor Indian. This helped immensely in his attempt to connect with the Indian masses---who were alienated from the tiny Anglophile elite who tended to lead the independence movement.

Gandhi, seated in the middle. The early elite, Anglophile.
Original image from Life magazine archive.
Public Domain image, copyright expired, c/o Wiki Commons.

A later Gandhi who was actively trying to court the vast majority of Indians.
Another public domain image. From the The New Indian Express website.

This process also extended to attempts to change the attitudes of Indians with regard to what Gandhi considered their own particular prejudices. For example, at the first Congress Party of India convention he attended he volunteered to be in charge of providing and cleaning the latrines. As an upper cast Hindu (Gandhi's father had been a prime minister in one of the "princely states"), it would have been seen by most people as absolutely bizarre for him to take on a task that should only be done by a Dalit (the horribly exploited class of "untouchables" created by India's caste system.) But this was just another case of his trying to build bridges between the different groups. The existing divisions between the different religions and castes of India had been exploited by the British for centuries. Gandhi not only saw a moral imperative in breaking down these barriers, he also saw that many people would not support independence if it meant that majority Indians would be free to horribly exploit their particular minority group.  

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The reason why I'm going on about this issue is because I think that it's time the environmental movement started to exploit the tactic of "leading by example". I say this because this is one of the few ways that it is possible to change the minds of the 30% or so of the population who are fighting absolutely tooth and nail against doing something to stop the human race from committing mass suicide.

There's a retired University of Manitoba psychology professor by the name of Bob Altemeyer who devoted his career to studying what motivates right wing people---both leaders and voters. The conclusion he came to was that these people are pretty much impervious to evidence and logic. But the one way that they do tend to change their worldview is through personal and vicarious experience. That is to say they build their worldview around people, not ideas.  

Let me illustrate with a couple examples. 

Altemeyer did some research on worldview changes among people who go to university. What he found was evidence that the old adage of "the fellow lost his faith when he went to college" is actually true. A lot of people do go through profound worldview changes. But what he found was that it wasn't because their course work enlightened them. Instead, it was because they were exposed to a lot of different people with different life experiences. It was the informal social interaction that destroyed their preconceptions about the world. 

Let me illustrate with one of these "worldview changes" that people have gone through in our lifetimes. At first the idea that gays could marry was opposed by a majority of Americans. But now a majority are in favour of it. What changed? Because of court rulings and a concerted campaign for gays to "get out of the closet", a lot of people who were opposed to gays in principle found out that some of the people in their lives who they really liked or respected were, in fact, gay. This forced them onto the horns of dilemma. They either had to drop kick these people out of their lives or change one of the basic building blocks of the way they viewed the world around them. In many cases, they chose the latter instead of the former. 

Chart from the Pew Forum webpage, presumably used with
their permission, as they have it set up to easily download.
Click on the image for a clearer image. 

This isn't a question of demographic shift (ie: "civilization progresses one funeral at a time"), because if you break the survey sample into different age cohorts you see the same change in attitudes.

Pew Forum et al. As you can see, lots of people---regardless of age---changed their minds about gay marriage at
roughly the same time. Altemeyer says this didn't happen because of evidence or logic.
Instead it was learning that uncle Fred was gay and Aunt Muriel is a lesbian.

(If you are interested in learning more about Altemeyer's work, he published a free to download Ebook that on the subject. If you are interested in learning more on the subject covered in this post, you might want to read my first book Walking the Talk. At the top right side of this site there is an advert for it with links to where you can buy it either as an Ebook or paperback. The paperback is also on sale at the Bookshelf downtown. And the public and university libraries each also has a copy.) 

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One of the first things that I saw after Steve Dyck announced that he was running for the local Green Party of Canada nomination was a snide remark about the fact that he was currently in Central America. The idea was that if he really believed in climate change as an issue, he wouldn't have blasted off a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere for a frivolous winter vacation. This isn't a "one off". The web is awash with memes talking about the disconnect between what leading environmentalists say about the environment and how they live their lives. Here's a small sample that I'm sharing with you under the "fair use" provision of the copyright law. 

From the "Bookworm Room" 

From "The Top 12 Celebrity Climate Hypocrites"

From "Leading Malaysian Neocon"

From garyvarvel.com.

     

I could post a lot more of these. The point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of folks out there who think that if you really do think that climate change is an existential threat, then you should live your life in a way that looks like you really believe it. I think that they have a point. 

If an environmentalist says that the world is reaching a crisis point over carbon dioxide, then they shouldn't be jetting around the world to go to on vacations, conventions, to visit family, etc. This isn't to say that your particular trip is going to tip the balance, but learning to do without this is something that shows that you really mean what you say. Otherwise, it looks like you want other people to give up their "goodies" while you keep yours. And that stinks. Even worse, it is sabotaging the environmental movement when we need to bring as many people "on board" as we possibly can. 

This isn't to say that many environmentalists haven't already made big changes in the way that they live their lives. But some high-profile environmentalists still seem to live excessively "large lives". But the point is that there needs to be a conscious campaign to harness the symbolic value inherent in "living the like you already live in the world you want to inhabit". Gandhi knew how to do that, I don't see why modern environmentalists cannot do the same thing. 

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Furthermore, I say to you---climate change must be dealt with!