Public Education: Baby Steps Versus Playing the "Long Game"

Several years ago I was volunteering for a Green Party election campaign and I got "schooled" by a "hip youngster" with a degree in marketing about why it is important to not be what I'd call "punk and plain" about environmental issues during an election campaign. (I have a tendency to go on about unlimited economic growth being the ideology of cancer, among other things.) She told me that she had been taught that the key to effective advertising is to change people's behaviour and that that comes from appealing to them "where they are" instead of "where you'd like them to be".

She used the example of a fairly famous advert from my childhood, one that she said studies had shown did absolutely nothing to actually change people's behaviour. Here it is (ah, the wonders of YouTube!):

(Before we get too far, let me first admit that this video is somewhat racist. It plays to the "magic Indian" trope. This says that the First Nations peoples have some sort of inherent, genetic propensity to being environmentally groovy. While I think a case can be made that at least some of the tribal cultures are more "in tune" with nature, I don't want to give credit to the idea that this is something inherent in their genetic make up---which is clearly as racist as saying that all Chinese Canadians are good at math, and, all Black Canadians "have rhythm". Moreover, there is the whole point that the actor playing the role was actually an Italian-American who had adopted the persona and name of "Iron Eyes Cody". Having said that, I don't think that this invalidates anything I'm going to write after this disclaimer.)

Here's the other advert that her professor compared it to, one that actually is supposed to have made a real difference in how people act.

At the time I hadn't heard about this second ad, I was old, she was young, and I didn't want to get into an argument with someone who had studied marketing. But something about what she had said just didn't "sit right" with me. That was over 10 years ago, but I think I've finally figured out what I didn't like about what she said.

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Every time an organization creates and promotes a message it is going to have to decide whether it wants to "play the long game" or "seek out the low-hanging fruit". I would argue that our discussion wasn't about whether or not we were going to change people's behaviour, but actually about whether we were playing the long game or seeking after low-hanging fruit. Moreover, I'd suggest that just chasing low-hanging fruit is ultimately self-defeating in politics.

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On one level, this involves the message you are projecting to the audience. In the case of the "don't mess with Texas" ad, it is simply that you should put the trash in the can, period. The "crying Indian" ad is much more ambitious. It's trying to suggest that there is something inherently wrong with modern industrial society. That's why we have shots of him paddling through harbours with cranes, factories, oil refineries etc in the background. It's also why we have a zero-in on the huge traffic-filled highways before we see a bag of fast-food dumped at his feet. In short, the "crying Indian" ad was a critique of modern, capitalist, industrial society whereas the "don't mess with Texas" one was simply focused on litter.

Also, think about the people who were chosen in each different ad to represent the public viewpoint. In "Don't Mess with Texas", the heroes were two extremely well-paid NFL players. In "the Crying Indian" it was (I've already offered my disclaimers above) a First Nations member---certainly not a person of privilege. So it is a case of putting in the viewpoint of people who have the system working for them, and another who has probably seen nothing but exploitation from it.

The point I'd like readers to meditate upon is that it is always easier to do well in the short term if you have no problem with ignoring the long haul. For example, a government can almost always gin up the economy for a few years with tax cuts---if you don't care about the size of the deficit or the resulting wealth stratification in society. Executives can always increase the dividends they pay stock holders for a few years if they cut their research and development departments, and, avoid investing in new machinery---at the price of having the competition "eat their lunch" ten years down the road. Similarly, a political party can always do better in the short run by pandering to voter's pre-conceived notions than in trying to educate them about important issues---if they don't care about the long-term consequences for society.

And what exactly has been the trajectory of Texas since the "don't mess with Texas" ad first aired? Well, a quick Google search resulted in the following statistic:  Texas is 48th worst out of 50 states in terms of health risks from pollution.  (US News and World Report) (Obviously someone is messing with Texas after all---.)

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I suspect that at least some of my readers keep meaning to subscribe but never quite get around to doing so. It's not that hard. If you have a credit card (and I know that almost all of you do), all you have to do is sign up on Patreon or PayPal. But here's something new---why not have your community group buy a subscription? Unions, service clubs, charitable institutions---you all benefit from having local news. Why not subscribe? Or even buy an advertisement, for that matter. All sorts of groups used to buy ads in the old paper newspapers---what's stopping you from doing the same thing in the Back-Grounder? 

Drop me an email at thecloudwalkingowl@gmail.com if you want to find out more. 

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Both of these advertisements have become "icons" in the American psyche, so it might be useful to see how they have exerted their influence since they were first created.

Here's a clip from The Simpsons that plays on the "crying Indian" ad: 

And here's another advert from Texas that is an out-growth of the original "Don't Mess with Texas" ad: 

I've cherry picked somewhat, but I do think that there is some sort of rough generalization that can be discerned here. But the point I want to make is that almost all pieces of messaging can be divided into two different messages: the foreground and the background.

In the case of the clip from the Simpsons, the foreground message is clearly that there is something profoundly wrong with American society---hence the giant, rat-infested garbage dump. The background message is that native Americans have some deeper appreciation and respect for nature than the average citizen. In the case of the official Texas advert, the foreground message is "don't litter", but the background one is "have respect for the military" and even "we honour our Confederate traditions". (I suspect this last bit is unconscious and came about simply because an existing institution---the Texas Confederate Airforce---helped with the ad. Indeed, the organization realized this fact and in 2002 changed it's name to the "Commemorative Air Force".)

The original advert inspired a whole line of official ads aimed at the "don't mess with Texas" trope. Here is one that is more than a bit "loopy":

Here's one that is a bit more indicative of most of them:

And another official ad that plays on the usual tropes:

The real message of the "don't mess with Texas" ads is that "life is good, happy motoring is good, things are just fine in Texas---just don't toss your trash out the window of your car as you roar down the road on your way to destroying the planet!"

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In the recent election there were a lot of times that I thought the politicians were obviously pandering to public opinion polls without even attempting to make any sense. Two examples that immediately come to mind were the idiotic policies that the Conservatives and Liberals came up with to make housing more affordable. Scheer announced that he'd loosen the requirements that would allow more people to get a mortgage, and, he'd allow it to be paid off in a maximum 30 years instead of the current 25. Trudeau's offer was to expand the "First-Time Home Buyer Incentive".

Both of these suggestions are flat-out idiotic and would be immediately obvious as such to anyone who hadn't flunked first year economics. That's because they don't actually increase the number of houses being built, just make it easier for everyone to borrow money in order to buy one. If they were implemented, they'd just increase the cost of housing, and channel more money out of home-owner's pockets and into the banks.

Both the Conservatives and Liberals had to have known this fact. But the leaders looked at the polling numbers and decided that they had to say something that sounded like they were concerned about housing affordability. As such, both Scheer and Trudeau were deciding to "make baby steps" and "pander to people's preconceived notions" rather than try to educate voters about the real reasons why housing is so damned expensive. They were following the "don't mess with Texas" route instead of the "crying Indian" one.

They thought that they had to do this to win the election. But the problem is that by pandering to the ignorance of voters, they were making it that much harder to get them to accept a more reasonable policy later on down the road. If you keep telling people "there's no reason to make hard choices---it's all just peachy the way it is", it may be surprising, but it's true none-the-less, that a lot of them will actually believe it. And if you turn around and tell them something different at a later date---like "if you want affordable housing you are simply going to have to accept living in small homes in higher density neighbourhoods"---they are not going to be happy to hear it. In effect, every time parties do the "easy thing" and suggest that all people need to do is "make baby steps", they are dramatically limiting their ability to tell voters the hard truth at some time in the future.

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This problem has been identified a long time ago. Henry David Thoreau once opined

"There are a thousand people hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root."

Henry was no fool, he knew what was important.
Henry David Thoreau, Public Domain image by Geo. F. Parlow.
Public Domain Image c/o the Wiki Commons.

And that's the ultimate problem with taking "baby steps" in our messaging about important public policy issues: they only strike at the branch of problems while leaving their roots still strong and vigorous.

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Information Jamming, or, the Politics of Noise

One of the most annoying things I hear repeatedly is some self-proclaimed "ordinary guy" saying that "all politicians are the same", or, even the more basic "it's all bullshit". The reason why this bugs me so much is because only a moment's reflection should be enough to realize that this is total nonsense. Can anyone who really knows anything about Ontario---for example---say that Kathleen Wynne and Doug Ford "are the same"?

But having said that, I would draw reader's attention to the old proverb that says "When all candles bee out all cattes be gray.".

Here's a grey cat---and it's coming for you!

This can mean that if you don't know much, you can't distinguish between different individuals. It's obvious to me that these people who complain about the similarity between politicians are looking at them in the dark. The next obvious question to ask is "why?"

It might be easy---and accurate in some cases---to say that it's just a question of people being mentally lazy. But I think that what is more often happening is the result of a specific technique that has become more and more important in modern society, something I'm going to call "information jamming".

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Consider this analogy. You are a totalitarian government that is plagued by an outside agency that is broadcasting information you don't want your citizens to hear (think of NAZI Germany and the BBC during WWII). This means you have three different options.

First, you can destroy the enemy transmitters. Well, let's say that the enemy has a powerful air force and if you try to bomb the transmitters all you do is lose bombers and aircrews. The enemy also has a crackerjack intelligence service, which means you can't sabotage the transmitters either.

The second option is to confiscate people's receivers. This is an option, but difficult because they are really easy to hide and there are an enormous number already in people's hands. Moreover, you want to be able to use the radios to spread your own messages, so getting rid of them would be costly on a lot of different levels.

The third option is to find the frequencies that the enemy broadcasts on, and build really powerful transmitters yourself that can make a lot of "noise" that drowns out the enemy's info. This is the strategy that most totalitarian governments ended up following in the 20th century because it was the most cost effective. We call it "jamming the signal".

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Now simply change the idea from "radio signal" to "political information", and you can see how a new form of censorship has emerged in the 21st century.

The problem that reactionary forces face with the World Wide Web is that it is specifically designed to make it easy for the "signal" to always get through. This makes controlling the spread of unwanted information almost impossible. There is the vaunted "Great Fire Wall of China", but it is about as expensive to maintain as the original Great Wall. It is also just as permeable. If you want to get through it, it isn't that hard to find a way. I suspect that in the long run it will prove about as able to keep unwanted ideas out of China as the original Great Wall was at keeping out the Mongols.

Even if there was a way to keep the Web completely out of a nation, it would be economic suicide to do so. Commerce flows on it, and without the Web an economy would find itself impossible to function in the modern world.

This leaves jamming the signal as the only option. Unfortunately, a specific feature about how the Web operates makes it particularly vulnerable to this tactic.

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The Web only functions because of the existence of search engines---like Google, Bing, and, Duck Duck Go---that allow people to look up web addresses based on content. If you had to look for every piece of information by typing out the exact address of a specific website, most people would never use it.

A side product of developing good search engines is the creation of complex artificial intelligences (AI) that are able to create database profiles of almost everyone who uses the Web. And that allows the companies that create the search engines to sell targeted advertisements to companies that want to find the particular fraction of the public that would be most interested in what they have to sell. And, because the companies that create these AI sell huge amounts of advertising, they have the money to build these enormously complex networks that have bound the human race together in a way that has never before existed.

And, because these AI also allow companies like Facebook and Google to mechanize the enormous number of decisions that go into both finding a site address based on a information search, and, give you specific advertisements tailored to your life situations, there are no human beings involved who can decide what advertisements or website content is "real" and what is "fake". This isn't just an artifact of greed on the part of the executives running these corporations---there is simply no way these companies could be profitable if they had to hire enough people to oversee everything that is going on "under the hood".

This makes the existing Web particularly vulnerable to jamming attacks.

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The way to think about this is to consider a City Council meeting where some of the people present was allowed to bring in musical instruments, and, amplifiers turned up to "11"---and then they played during the entire meeting.

I rise on a point of order!!!
Iron Maiden at the Bercy Arena in Paris, July 1rst, 2008.
Picture c/o the Wiki Commons.

It doesn't matter how clearly and precisely someone was able to rebut the arguments put forward by Iron Maiden, Deaf Leopard, or, Black Sabbath---the odds are that no one would ever be able to hear them.

Even worse, the Mayor and the other Councillors will find themselves yelling louder and louder in futile attempts to get heard over the tremendous noise created by the rock band---which just adds to the cacophony. This would lessen their respectability in the eyes of ordinary voters. The result for anyone who is in the audience trying to find out what is going on will be alienation and a tendency to not bother showing up again to this exercise in frustration.

I'm arguing that that is exactly what is happening to politics on the Web.

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What I am trying to do with this news blog is to "push back" against the forces of disinformation that have recently created real problems for our democracies. I'm trying to show that through reason and evidence, it is possible to understand that all politicians "aren't the same" and that "it's not all bullshit". But in order to do that I need to show that it is possible to make some sort of income off the way I am doing things here. One of the ways, beyond Patreon and Paypal, is to simply send me money. You can send it by a check to "Bill Hulet, 124-A Surrey St. East, Guelph, N1H 3P9", or, if you know me by sight, you can just hand me some cash (thanks Stan for being so awesome!) 

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If any readers are wondering what the jamming signals being sent out look like, consider the following example. There's a website called the Buffalo Chronicle that appears to only exist as a means of creating fake news that can then be quoted by other parties with some veneer of plausibility. This would explain why an American news blog that purports to be based in Buffalo New York would have so many stories about the Canadian election. For example, when I looked at the home page while writing this story, I counted that four of the first six stories were about Canadian politics.  

• RCMP plans to charge Trudeau with obstruction in SNC Lavalin affair, following federal elections
• Tipped off by PMO, SNC Lavalin CEO left Canada fewer than 36 hours before he was to be arrested
• RCMP source says ‘security risk’ against Trudeau was contrived by PMO staffers
• Gerald Butts phoned Rosemary Barton repeatedly prior to CBC lawsuit against Conservatives

Why would a news source in America be devoting so much key "eyeball space" to a Canadian election? Well, there is the point that because it is outside of Canada there is no way that Elections Canada could go after the company for putting up what are, in effect, illegal negative advertisements against the Liberal party. It also means that it would be pretty much impossible for Justin Trudeau or any of the other people smeared to sue the company for libel. And, because it looks like a legitimate "news source", it is an excellent place for someone (or some organization) to post "hey look at what I just saw" stories to their followers on social media.

Tune up your guitars and warm up your amps---.

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One of the "complicating factors" of this problem is that our society is dominated by people called "free speech absolutists" (like Facebook, according to this article.) These folks think that the only way to deal with lies and disinformation is through more speech aimed at counter-acting the original statement. Unfortunately, this simply doesn't work when people have decided to use a jamming attack. That's because it is the same thing as saying that the solution to the NAZIs jamming radio frequencies is to come up with better arguments against Hitler on the BBC.

We've seen this happen before with regard to older forms of propaganda. That's why we have limits on election spending and campaign financing. It's a way of reducing the ability of wealthy political parties to jam the messages of everyone else. Businesses and unions are forbidden by law from giving money to parties because that stops advertising from flooding the market and jamming out the messages sent by points of view that are supported by people with less money. If society didn't do this, all the election advertising we'd ever see was stuff in favour of cutting taxes for the wealthy and removing "red tape" (ie: regulation for the public interest) that gets in the way of business "doing it's job".

Unfortunately, the naive sympathy of many people for free speech absolutism has let the jammers "weaponize" the idea of free speech, which allows them to complain bitterly every time they are denied a specific privileged position such as a cheap venue at a university. Indeed, it has become a common tactic for some fringe elements to get a foot in the door of a subsidized venue at a liberal venue like a university just so they can scream bloody murder about censorship when other people complain about why their particular institution is subsidizing a group that they despise. 

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A key point to understand when thinking about information jamming is that the forces that pursue it aren't trying to enter into a conversation where they hope to convince people based on the force of their arguments. Instead, what they are trying to do is destroy people's belief that there is any value at all in honestly talking about public issues. In effect, the jammers want to blow out all the candles so every cat will start looking grey. And at that point, people start saying "politicians are all the same" and "it's all bullshit".

I don't want to leave people with the idea that it is impossible to deal with jamming attacks. A lot of political activity is an "arms race" where every time someone comes up with an institution that helps make the world more democratic another person will come up with a tactic aimed at making it less so, and vice versa. I suspect that the fact that we've allowed the Web to be built by giant corporations that are financed by advertising has made it particularly vulnerable to these sorts of attacks. If that's the case then an attempt to "reel in" companies like Google and Facebook through increased regulation and taxation would be able to lessen this sort activity---if it was done right.

Moreover, the only reason why these attacks work at all is because our first-past-the-post electoral system creates vote-splitting, which means that even a slight change in the popular vote can make the difference between being in opposition and having a "majority" government. (Remember, because of vote-splitting the Liberals won a majority in 2015 with only 39% of the popular vote.) All the intense, crazy Web-based activity I'm talking about in this post is aimed at chasing a small percentage of the voting public. In a system of proportional representation---where there would be no "wasted votes", and therefor no vote-splitting---none of this stuff would be of much value to any party except one on the lunatic fringe. Adding together the parties that don't benefit from this nonsense, you can see that current polls would create a safe coalition consisting of 57% of people's voting intentions (Lib 31%, NDP 18%, and, GRN 8%, it becomes an overwhelming 64% if you add in the Block Quebecois, which might be a controversial inclusion).

But the first step is to raise awareness and create the vocabulary that will allow people to understand and discuss what is going on. I hope that this editorial will help do that for my readers. (If you think it did, please share it with your friends!)

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

A Conversation Over Spring Rolls

Last week I had a pretty deep conversation with a friend over a meal at the Wok's Taste restaurant. She was complaining that no one wants to talk about politics during this election. She asked me if I could think of a reason, but I was reticent to comment---.

I really enjoy her company and relish the time spent together. But we totally disagree about a lot of things. For example, she thinks that President Trump's attempt to get the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on Joe Biden's son is a great idea. She also thinks Brexit makes sense. I also think Lloyd Longfield is a pretty nice guy while she says that she had a glimpse of an Orwellian nightmare while visiting his maximum-security constituency office.

Intellectually, we come from totally different worlds. She has little formal education but has traveled widely, lived many adventures, and, is a strong adherent of Jungian psychology. I have a Master's degree in philosophy and am very committed to the idea that logic and evidence need to be at the core of human life.

I didn't want to directly answer her question about why people weren't talking about the election (ie: I didn't feel comfortable doing so) so we got talking about emotions. She thinks that they are wonderful things and that our society doesn't allow people to be as emotional as it should. I said that they are very dangerous and that a lot of problems come about because too many people let their emotions over-ride their rational mind.

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Spring rolls, photo by jeffreyw.
Image c/o Wiki Commons.

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I suppose it comes down to one's personal experience. If your experience of emotions is of people who can't control themselves being verbally and physically abusive, emotions can seem to be horrific and scary things. In contrast, if your experience of life includes being around people who bottle up everything in their lives and who are afraid of expressing their true feelings, then you probably are going to be in favour of "letting it all hang out".

I'm the guy writing the op ed, so I get to decide how I frame this discussion, and I am of the opinion that some emotions get far too much emphasis. As I pointed out in my last post (News as Reality Television), I think that sometimes what passes as journalism nowadays is more concerned about people's feelings than whether or not something is actually right or not. And I get profoundly upset when journalists just repeat what someone says without actually checking to see if it is true in any meaningful sense.

I also get a little concerned every time I hear someone talking about how much they like the "passion" that they see in a candidate. And there are a couple candidates in this local election that are REALLY passionate about what they believe in. The problem is that you can be passionate about things that simply aren't true. Moreover, I think that a lot of what I am hearing in discussions isn't "true" in very significant ways that aren't necessarily factual, but could be seen as being emotional.

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Let's look at an issue that has come to the fore because of the People's Party of Canada.

The first thing to consider is the question of whether or not Canada should force immigrants to assimilate to "Western values" or whether we should allow them to retain specific elements of the traditions that they bring from their home country. As the PPC states on their website:

Our distinct values are those of a contemporary Western civilization. They include: democracy; individual rights and freedoms, including freedom of religious belief and freedom to criticize religion; equality between men and women; the equal treatment of all citizens regardless of ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation; the rule of law; separation of state and religion; tolerance and pluralism; and loyalty to the wider society instead of to one’s clan or tribe.

I don't think that many folks of any stripe would take issue with these statements. As I see it, however, the problem comes down to that label: "Western values". The sticking point is the idea that the ideals espoused in the quote above can be described as something both intrinsic and exclusive to Europe and it's major white colonies: Canada, the USA, Australia, and, New Zealand.

I've read a great deal of history---both European and from around the world---and I can safely say that what we know of as modern democracy is not representative of the way most European societies have governed themselves over the past 2,000 years. Just about any system you can imagine has been used: absolute monarchy, imperialism, feudalism, radical theocracy, plutocratic republic, fascism, communism, and, probably a few more I haven't thought of. Why would we say that democracy is intrinsic to the European culture when about half of the countries that have it now only got it when they had it imposed upon them by bayonet point after WWII?

If democracy isn't intrinsic to Europe, it isn't exclusive either. To cite a local example---as many people have commented before me---one of the traditional role models for democratic decision-making comes from the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. I suspect that it would be possible to find similar examples among the various traditions that exist all over Asia and Africa.

Much the same sort of things could be said about the other things that the PPC talks about: women's rights, freedom of religion, sexual orientation, etc. Europe has had just as big a history of opposition to these ideals as the rest of world, and similarly you can find examples of their support around the world. The point is that these cultural constructs didn't only arise in Europe, instead they are universal human ideals.

So what does it mean when you say that all of these things are something that have only arisen from the nations of Europe? In effect, you are implying that they come about because of the only thing that truly is exclusive to European countries---and that is the so-called "white race". Given this fact, is it any wonder that many people see an appeal to "Western Values" as being implicitly racist?

I would argue that the above is implied from the ideal of "Western Values", even though I suspect that many people who espouse them haven't really thought through the logic of the idea. (Indeed, for many years I also thought that talking about "Western Values" made sense.) What this means to me is that many people can espouse these values without self-consciously deciding that they are a "racist" and that this is a good thing. (Although I would remind the reader that the reverse isn't necessarily true: while it's true that all supporters of the PPC aren't self-consciously racist, I do think that you could argue that a lot of the people in Canada who are self-consciously racist do support it.)

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This raises yet another question. When people talk about racism they have a tendency to emphasize the idea that some people are or are not "racists". I'd argue that it makes a lot more sense to talk about specific actions, ideas, or, policies and whether or not they encourage racial discrimination. 

There are people in the world who are racists and who self-consciously want to push a racist agenda. I'm not going to talk at all about them, as I think that they constitute a very small fraction of the population. Instead, I'm more concerned about the people who support actions and points of view that they don't see as being "racist" and which others believe have "racist implications".

The sticking point in a lot of loud arguments comes down to intent. People who want to support something like "Western Values" get called "racist" and they bristle because they think to themselves "that's nonsense! I don't think of myself as a racist, I don't support racism, I don't want to discriminate against others---I am not a racist!" The others who call these people "racist" think to themselves "why would someone do such a thing? they must be racists! why else would they say or do such things?"

The "intent" thing is what pumps up the emotions in the discussion. If instead you look at the question of whether or not a specific policy has "racist implications", you take the air out of "the emotional tires" of the debate. What if someone suggested, for example, that saying that Canadians are in favour of the universal human rights of democracy, equality between the sexes, non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, etc----instead of tying them to this pseudo category of "Western Values"?

At this point the question becomes "We all believe that racism is bad. What particular policies tend to foster racist discrimination? And what ones tend to lessen racist discrimination?" At that point we can talk about the question of immigration dispassionately. How much is enough? How much is too much? All governments have to make a decision about this, but no party before the PPC has ever made the issue so central to their entire policy. (For example, I've heard the local candidate suggest that immigration is key to problem of housing affordability.) Does that foster racism in Canada? Or does it diminish it? That's the question that I'd suggest makes more sense for voters in this election. 

More importantly, once the issue becomes "universal", then it ceases to be a question of one culture versus another. And at that point, the concerns being raised with regard to immigration could be re-framed into policy questions like "how could we bring more real democracy into Canadian society?", "how could we realize more equality between men and women?", "how could we bring about less discrimination based on sexual orientation?", and so on. There are parties that are promoting things like a move towards proportional representation (more democracy), increased daycare (more equality between men and women), and, standardizing the definition of a "hate crime" to include attacks on gays and trans people everywhere in Canada (less discrimination based on sexual orientation).

At this point, concern about immigrants "diluting" specific values becomes besides the point.

I freely admit that I have said and done things that are sexist, racist, and, homophobic. But I refuse to admit that I have ever been a self-consciously sexist, racist, and/or, homophobic person. I was just another human being stumbling through life trying to make the world a better place. 

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If you like what I write, why not subscribe? You can do it through Patreon or PayPal. 

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I would suggest that the above digression about racism and "Western values" is an example of how rational analysis can "tamp down" the extreme emotions that can be whipped into a frenzy and cause real problems.

To get back to my conversation with my friend over Chinese food, I talked about the importance of using reason to control violent emotions. I suggested that people don't want to talk about the election because so many people are so emotionally caught up in various policy issues that they are afraid that they will get into crazy arguments and lose friends. At that point I pointed out how profoundly I disagree with her on a wide variety of issues and I think she's gone down a few too many rabbit holes in the Internet. And I don't want to patronize her, or, lose her as a friend.

We had a few heated words at that point. She opined that she didn't see why my sources of information were so much better than hers. I said that telling the difference between a good source of information and a bad one is key to the separation of fact from falsehood.

Then she said that we share emotions with one another to build a bond between us---one that is stronger than just shallow acquaintance. She said that fact that we are willing to get emotional with each other---like we just did---reinforces the bond of friendship. And because we have that bond, even though we sometimes violently disagree, she will always want to be my friend. I responded that that sort of connection simply cannot be developed between people unless they are willing to invest the time necessary to really make the effort. And that people only have enough time to make such a time investment with only a vanishingly small number of people in our lives. This is why people try to avoid truly speaking their minds on emotionally fraught subjects like politics.

She disagreed and said that if you go about it the right way one can make the necessary connection very quickly. I don't know if she's right---but I will entertain the idea that she might be. And that was the way we parted still friends and both having benefited from our conversation. 
  
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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

News as Reality Television

I've recently started watching the CBC television news. I'd gotten out of the habit because I don't have any source of broadcast tv at home, but I found out that you can watch it the next day on YouTube. Having been away from tv news for a while, it's taken me some time for the novelty to wear off.

In addition, last week I went to an event held by the local energy efficiency group eMERGE titled Talk....as if Climate Change Mattered. I had a brief conversation with a couple of presenters about the role of media in climate discussions and was kinda distressed by what I considered their limited understanding. In particular, two of them seemed to not understand the limitations of video when it comes to discussing complex news stories.

In light of these two things, I thought I'd spend this weekend's Op Ed deconstructing last night's edition of the CBC National.

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What I'd my readers to understand is how much of the effort involved in doing television news is devoted to the craft of creating television---and how little is about presenting actual news.

To understand this point, consider the famous saying of Marshall McLuhan "The medium is the message". What he meant is that different mediums---such as tv, radio, newsprint, blogs, etc---all bring with them specific characteristics that dramatically effect the sort of information that they convey. 

Marshall McLuhan in 1945 (handsome devil, wasn't he?)
Public domain photo from Library and Archives Canada.
Image c/o the Wiki Commons. 

To cite one specific example, I wrote a weekly column at the Guelph Mercury for several years. Creating a daily newspaper was a tremendously complex enterprise that involved the sale of advertising, collecting news, and, amalgamating them into a form that could be printed and distributed on a daily basis. The amount of news that could be printed was directly related to the amount of advertising sold. If the paper didn't sell much advertising, it couldn't afford to print much news. And, if it didn't present enough copy that people wanted to read it wouldn't be able to sell much advertising. 

This two-sided dynamic resulted in significant limitations that publishers, editors, and, pressmen were always trying to negotiate with more-or-less success. The end result in my case was that the editor decided that my column would have to be about 800 words---no less, and, no more.

Writing anything useful in 800 words is something of a discipline, almost like writing Haiku. It was really difficult to bring in new concepts or discuss nuance. In contrast, writing this blog is a lot easier because I can use as many words as needed. In addition, I have the space to bring in visual aids like graphs, photos, and, videos, which allows me to explain things much more easily than if I just have rely upon my ability to create "word pictures" using English prose.  

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Television is another medium that dramatically influences content. And in particular it has a tremendous bias towards the visual and emotions. It also tends to hate abstract information. The absolute worst thing---according to television---is the dreaded "talking head". (That's the situation where an expert discusses a complex issue in picky detail. It's supposed to be profoundly boring.) 

Let me illustrate this point using last night's edition of the CBC news program. 

The lead story was the French leader's debate that ran from 1:06 to 4:08. The directorial "push" was obviously aimed at conflict. This included language like "combative right from the start" and talked about people hammering Andrew Scheer on the abortion issue. The "colour commentary" that was brought in discussed the debate like it was a prize fight. At the end, the "clip with legs" was an individual voter telling Jagmeet Singh that he should get rid of his turban and "look like a real Canadian".

The thing to remember is that each and every single scene that you see in a news show has been specifically chosen from many others because of its emotional content. Was that guy who told Singh to lose the turban indicative of the sort of reception he was getting in Quebec? Or was it just one isolated nutbar? We'll never know, but the director of last night's CBC news chose to include it because it is something that is startling and bound to raise strong feelings among the viewers. 

At about 4:08 we got a 30 second "teaser" about the "Face-to-Face" segment between Elizabeth May and several "undecided voters". Again, the clip is described in the same terms as a prize fight: "went face-to-face with voters" and "voters take the mike, Elizabeth May takes the hot seat in about 15 minutes". 

At about 4:40 we get to see a temper tantrum by Donald Trump during a news conference with the president of Finland. He complains bitterly about the House and its investigation of his dealings with the Ukraine. It is real news, but it is also very "visual" because Trump is a monkey that is willing to dance in front of the cameras. 

At 6:22 we get to see a segment where a member of the US House of representatives meets with her constituents in a restaurant to talk about why she decided to support impeachment. She has some reasoned arguments and people respond favourably. But the media gave "equal time" to a much smaller number of protesters outside who were proclaiming their support for Trump. Instead of focusing on the speech's details or the fact that a lot more people were listening to it instead of waving signs protesting, the story becomes about the conflict between different factions in America. 

Again, remember that we viewers will never ever be able to see the majority of footage that was discarded during the editing process. 

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After that we get a series of short, mostly factual, news stories one after another:

• 8:49 Police suicides
• 11:17 Death of farmed salmon in Newfoundland
• 13:27 Educational support workers potentially going on strike in Ontario
• 14:27 Delayed production of this year's flu vaccine
• 14:33 Concern that a new movie about the "Joker" might inspire violence

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At 17:08 we get to the night's main event: a cage match between Elizabeth May from the Green Party and five "undecided voters" from across the country. I really want to emphasize a few important points about this segment.

First, at almost a half hour in length, it is by far the longest part of the entire 45 minute newscast. 

Second, it consists of five individuals that the show's producers have specifically selected for this segment. They consisted of:

• a young mother concerned about affordable housing and childcare
• a farmer concerned about climate change and agriculture
• a First Nation elder from Old Crow in the Yukon concerned about climate change in both the North and the rest of the world
• a software developer worried about high-tech workers leaving the country
• a retired teacher concerned about how the government can get people to take climate change seriously

It's tremendously important for viewers to remember that these people were not a representative sample of the public. Instead, they were chosen because of their dramatic value to the show.

The other thing to remember is that none of these people were experts. They are simply "ordinary folks" without any sort of specialized knowledge that they could bring to bear on complex government policy. This means that they wouldn't be able to articulate any sort of informed question to ask Elizabeth May. But that's not what they were selected to do. Instead, they are there to be emotional and in the process evoke emotions from the viewers. 

To understand this point, consider the content of what was broadcast. At no point did anyone speak in anything but broad generalities. But as anyone who has ever tried to understand public policy knows, the "devil is in the details". Government is all about the numbers. In contrast, television is all about emotion. Remember that fact. Last night might have been "good tv", but did it actually tell you anything at all that would help you decide which party had the best policy?  

But the emotion was there. Indeed, at the last segment the farmer actually ended up in tears of---I don't know what, perhaps frustration---over the need to deal with climate change and agriculture (43:54). 

And if the emotion wasn't bubbling away on it's own, the host---Rosemary Barton---was quite happy to intervene and "stir the pot". In the section with the Elder from Old Crow, she found that there wasn't enough "friction" happening between the "undecided" Elder and Elizabeth May. So Barton intruded and asked May to tell the audience "what they had to give up" in order to save the planet. (May responded, reasonably, that they'd have to give up a lot more if they refused to do anything at all---.) 

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I usually talk about subscribing to the Back-Grounder, but if you want to make a lump sum payment that works too. (Thanks Werner, for being so awesome!) PayPal and Patreon make any sort of payment easy. 

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I'm not so much of a fogey that I won't watch television news. Sometimes a clip of video is much, much better than the best fact-stuffed "deep dive" written article. Sometimes I like to eat doughnuts too. But I try to base my diet on meat (or tofu), veggies, and, rice instead of doughnuts---otherwise I know I will start to look more like Homer Simpson than I already do. It's the same thing with news sources. People are much better off learning the "picky details" of most stories than they would be ruining their appetites with sickly-sweet emotional coverage. And above all else, they need to know the difference between the two. This is why I choose to read most of my news instead of watching it in video form. 

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Mike Schreiner, Part Five!

This will be the last of my articles based on my in-depth conversation with Mike Schreiner in January. It deals with a variety of subjects: the relationships between politics and activism, and, business and community; a short civics lesson, some talk about Parliamentary reform, and, what makes Guelph a special place.

Mike Schreiner, unattributed, c/o Wiki Commons.

A couple notes about how I've organized this interview.

I generally try to have a "light touch" in editing the actual interview in these sort of talks, but in this one I've had to do a little more than usual because Schreiner can sometimes have something of a "telegraphic" conversational delivery. I suspect that when he gets a chance to explain something that he is really engaged with but rarely gets a chance to talk about he hasn't developed an especially polished way to do it. But that's OK, most interviews you read anywhere are edited to make things clearer for readers, and I think that I've managed to retain what he meant to say.

One comment I've gotten about these sorts of interviews is that they are as much about me as the person interviewed. I thought something of an explanation might be useful.

When I interview someone I want to hear what they really think about a subject---at least as much as I can get them to say. To this end I never try to "cross exam" anyone. When I start an "on the record" interview I tell the people I won't try to play "gotcha" and make a fuss about an honest slip-up in regard to some basic fact or twist in language. I also tell people that if they say something by mistake that they don't want recorded to just say so and I'll make sure it doesn't end up in the blog.

I do this because I want to put the person I'm interviewing at ease and to really get close to what they really think---as opposed to just hearing what they think that I want to hear. This is a big problem with politicians who I feel sometimes have lost the ability to actually say what they believe because they spend so much time trying to package their "message" and avoid a "gotcha" quote.

The price that these people have to pay, however, is that when the final blog comes out I try to check their statements against the public record. That's why I put so much research into checking out the statements of interviewees, why my blog posts are so long, and, why I write so many long interjections into the conversation. Just because an important person says something it becomes newsworthy---but that doesn't make it factually true. It's an unfortunate problem that most journalists have lost track of this distinction between being "newsworthy" and "factually true". I'm trying to "push back" against that idea with this blog and I make no apologies for that.

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Hulet: Just because you are an American who has moved here, I'm interested in hearing what differences you've noticed between Canada and the US. In particular, what do you think we could learn from the Americans?

Schreiner: I'll answer as someone who came here, fell in love with Ontario, became a Canadian citizen, and, has no desire to ever leave---. 

If there's something we could learn from the US example it's related to why I chose the Green Party and became a green entrepreneur. I think I was inclined to do so because the US political culture and government often does such a horrible job of solving social problems that people are forced to figure out ways to do things on their own. So when it comes to activism and social change, there's a more entrepreneurial spirit of social change in the USA. 

In the 1960s in addition to the civil rights and anti-war movements there were groups of people addressing things like poverty, housing affordability, neighbourhood revitalization, etc. This kind of entrepreneurial, social activist tradition doesn't exist as much in Canada and that's probably one of the reasons I gravitated to the Green Party. I see the GPO as being an "entrepreneurial endeavour" for social change. 

Hulet: Sort of like Saul Alinsky's ideas about community organizing---.

Schreiner:  [He gets animated.]

Saul Alinsky, by Pierre869856,
c/o the Wiki Commons.

Alinsky is a great example.

Bye-the-way, a lot of people may not know this but Barak Obama comes out of the Saul Alinsky movement. He was an Alinsky-inspired organizer in Chicago. I have both Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals on my bookshelf. And they have tattered pages from being well-read.

We don't have as much of that community organizing effort in Canada. You were involved with that sort of organizing when you did your local currency project in Guelph.

Hulet: Quite a few things, actually.  

Schreiner: Walmart, OPIRG---you've been doing a ton of that work in Guelph. I would say that Guelph has more a culture that is supportive of that than any other place in Ontario. There're a lot of communities in Ontario that don't have the same sort of community organizing---I call it the "social entrepreneurial" approach. I am starting to see more of that here but we still don't have near the same degree of that type of activism happening here as in the 'States.

Hulet: Guelph is the exception that proves the rule because a lot of that activism came out of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) at the U. of Guelph.

Schreiner: Absolutely, yeah.

Hulet: Created in the USA by Ralph Nader. 

Schreiner: So much of the great stuff that's happened in Guelph came out of OPIRG. That includes things like co-op housing, the campus Co-Op, some of the solar, green energy stuff. 

Hulet: The wet-dry.

Schreiner: Yeah, tons of stuff.

I would say Guelph's OPIRG chapter is one of the most vigorous and vibrant PIRGs in Ontario. Historically. Of course, over its history it has ebbed and flowed.

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Because Schreiner comes from out-of-town, I think he's mixed-up work that the Campus Co-Op and a couple other groups have done with OPIRG's legacy. That's perfectly understandable. But just to set the record straight the big "legacy items" from it are probably the Speed River Project and the Wet/Dry facility. The former project naturalized the parks on the sides of the Speed and Eramosa rivers, plus did some remediation work on the small creeks feeding into both. In the latter case, OPIRG basically sold the Wet/Dry to the city and convinced it to take that leap instead of buying either a solid waste incinerator or just opening another landfill.  Other projects included things like organizing an anti-Apartheid campaign and administering the first government program to retrofit homes for energy efficiency---but those tended to be issues with a more national or international focus.

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Hulet: I have noticed that a lot of people look at activism and say that it's not a good thing. I am kinda surprised by that. I had always seen the people leading these movements as being heroes---like Saul Alinsky.

Schreiner: [He laughs.]

It's much more accepted in the United States. It's something of a two-edged sword. I would rather have a caring enough government that provides healthcare for people and provides housing and more public goods and services than one which doesn't. But in the absence of one that does, there is a more fertile ground for activism.

Hulet: We got single-payer healthcare because of people like Tommy Douglas going around little villages and small towns giving talks in classrooms and church basements.

That history gets lost. Instead we get what I call "the small-'l' liberal fallacy": that the solution to every problem is education. That suggests that no one actually has to do anything that involves much effort or confrontation because future generations will know better than we do and all improvements will come naturally---like ripe fruit falling off a tree.

It would be helpful if there was some appreciation that politics doesn't begin and end with voting, or even buying a membership in a political party.

Schreiner: Oh yeah! I would say that my philosophy of politics is that voting is just one little act in a whole realm of political actions one can do. One of the things that used to drive me crazy was how dismissive some journalists were about me prior to being elected because "Oh! You don't even have a seat in the legislature. How can you make a difference?"

I'd rattle off issues and they'd respond "How does anyone even know?" and I'd say "It's a lot of hard on-the-ground organizing work inspiring people and putting on pressure". And the Liberals, Conservatives, or, NDP, or some other party that has more power eventually takes it up and it becomes law or a new policy, or a new line item in the budget---they may get the credit for it. But there were a whole host of political acts that had to take place before that ever happened. I think that that's not appreciated enough in our political culture.

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Hulet: As a business man and a politician, what do you think about the fiduciary obligation of a business? And the limited liability laws?

Schreiner: If I had my way we would rewrite corporate law in Canada and "B" corporations would be the norm, not the exception. 

Hulet: Could explain what a "B" corporation is?

Schreiner: The "B" stands for "benefit". We have more in Guelph per capita than any other community in Canada---that's another wonderful thing about this city.

So "B" corporations basically look at social, environmental, and, financial sustainability and integrate all of them into the decisions they make.

Hulet: The triple bottom line?

Schreiner: The triple bottom line.

Under Canadian corporation law you have to maximize shareholder value so everything is based on the fiduciary responsibility of management to shareholders.

The challenge of not having something like a responsibility to the community and the environment in official corporate law is that you have to find another way to work them into the business. And the "work around" we do now is to create a third-party certification system. This can cause problems, however, because individual shareholders and potential investors may find that they either are not interested in following a triple bottom line. 

To cite one local example, the Woolwich Arms is registered as a "B" corporation. (It's not just the one pub---the entire "Neighbourhood Group" of restaurants and pubs.) 

Hulet: Oh, so it's a corporation. I thought it was just a single owner or partnership.

Schreiner: No, it's owned by shareholders. 

Bob Desautels at the bar in the Woolwich Arms.
Image from the University of Guelph website.
Used under the "Fair Use" copyright provision.

So Bob Desautels [founder of the Neighbourhood Group] had to buy out a couple shareholders before the business could resister as a "B" corporation. I think he said that publicly---.

Hulet: [I checked with Desautels on my own to make sure he was happy with this part of the interview.]

Schreiner: Perhaps this will become a private member's bill for me. One of the things the Green Party of B.C. is pushing now is to change corporate law to be able to publicly incorporate as a "B" corporation. A number of American states have already passed laws that allow business to do that.

What's nice about that is if you incorporate from day one as a "B" corp according to the official law of the state, then as an investor or share-holder, you are required to to follow the triple bottom line approach and cannot simply change your mind at a later date---like you can when you just decide to register with a non-governmental third party, like the Woolie has. I would love to see "B" corps become the basic type of corporation in Ontario. But for now, making it even an option that has stronger legal standing would be nice.

[Schreiner laughs.] 

It would be BETTER if it was mandated that you HAVE to do it that way! But we are a long ways from that. I do think that at least having "B" law on the books here would at least allow the Woolie, Grosche, Lucky Iron Fish, and other "B" corps in Guelph to incorporate as "B" corps instead of just doing the "work around" of registering with a third party.

This would prevent potential share-holder disputes and help bring in additional investors because it can be hard to attract capital investment and if they do---because they are now only registering as a "B" corps. That means that at some future point investors can demand that they cancel their "B" corp registration and just focus on maximizing shareholder value. This means that on one hand some investors may put money in under false pretenses and intend to eventually get rid of the "B" Corp registration, or, someone could invest in good faith believing that they are buying into a "B" Corp, but then find out it changes to a normal corporation afterwards. If a company could incorporate as a "B" Corp from square one, all this ambiguity would be removed.

For these reasons alone most "B" corps are sole proprietorship or maybe two-person partnerships---not multiple investors, which limits the growth of these types of businesses. 

Hulet: I suppose it would be easier to find investors if they had standing under the corporate legal system.

Schreiner: Absolutely! The other challenge once you've found investors is the point where 51% of the shares decide that they want to maximize profit instead of thinking about social and environmental issues. 

Hulet: Are corporate charters a federal or provincial responsibility?

Schreiner: It can be both. You can incorporate by either the federal or provincial regulations.

Hulet: So presumably this is something you could write up into a private member's bill.

Schreiner: Oh yeah. I've already sketched-out what the bill would look like. I just chose to protect Guelph's water as my first priority. 

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I found a website called "B Corp Net" that goes into great detail about the whole "B" Corp movement. It has a directory that allows you to sort out registered businesses according to country and city. Looking at it, I could see that there are 260 "B" corps in Canada, and 10 in Guelph. Going through the entire list for the country the majority of the companies seemed to consist of things like consultants, natural foods distributors, credit unions, craft breweries, and, tech companies. Some of the ones that I use are the Neighbourhood Group (I have been known to have a pint at the Woolwich Arms), Beau's Brewery (I like their Lug Tread ale), the National Observer, and, Bullfrog Power.

I do have some concerns, though. It appears that Danone and Flow Water Inc are also listed as "B" corps. Most people have heard about Danone yogurt, but did you know that the company also owns the following bottled water companies?

• Mizone (China)
• Volvic (France)
• Aqua (Indonesia)
• Bonafont (Mexico)
• Font Vella (Spain) 
• Zywiec zdroj (Poland)
• Villacencio (Argentina)
• Villa del Sur (Argentina)
• Salus (Uruguay)
• Hayat (Turkey)
• Evian (all over the damn place)

Flow Water Inc just seems like one of the "little guys" in contrast to the Danone behemoth, but they have their own little charm. Here's what they say about themselves on their website. 

No more plastic water bottles. Our package is mostly made of sustainably sourced fibers with a plant-based cap. Flow packs are made from 100% recyclable and +68% renewable materials. We're also B-Corp certified and pretty awesome all around.

Personally, I find it extremely hard to call any company selling bottled water "environmentally friendly"---let alone "pretty awesome all around".

But having said that, I am of the opinion that most progressive policy comes about the way someone eats a salami---one slice at a time. The slices that Flow Water Inc are eating right now are the fact that they have to supply social and environmental accounting statements and then accept a "B" corp impact score.

A screenshot of the Impact score of Flow Water Inc from the "B" corp registry.

Each of the Area Scores also breaks down into different categories, for example here's Flow Water Inc's Environmental score break down:

Another screenshot from the Flow Water Inc site.

As in any sort of regulatory system, it's efficacy all comes down to the standards it chooses to enforce, and, the rigor with which it does that enforcement.

Again, I think that any system that allows for the existence of bottled water companies sets its standards far too low. As for the rigor with which the rules get enforced, I'd suggest that they don't really mean much as long as registered "B" corps can pull out whenever they want.

But when I consider what I've heard from the vast majority of small business people (and the folks who work for them), this "B" corp thing is pretty ambitious. People don't like being "marked". And even existing accounting regulations seem beyond a lot of small businesses---which regularly get into trouble because they find themselves incapable of setting aside enough money to pay their taxes. Any sort of accounting for the community and the environment is going to take a lot of getting used to---no matter how essential it is to the well-being of society.

So while I'd like to see more being done, it might be that the size of salami slice that the "B" corps are forcing their registered businesses to eat is all they can handle right now without choking. But that is the sort of discussion that we hire politicians to work through. All I can do is report it.

Andrew Weaver, leader of the Green Party of BC.
Original image from BC Greens Media Kit,
cropped by Bill Hulet

In May 16th of 2019 a bill titled "Business Corporations Amendment Act (No. 2), 2019" received Royal Assent and became part of the laws of British Columbia. It was sponsored as a private member's bill by Andrew Weaver, leader of the Green Party of British Columbia.

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I was at an event a couple nights ago where a bunch of "communication experts" were talking about how to talk more effectively to people about the climate emergency. Frankly, I was tremendously underwhelmed. The message I got was that it's necessary to pander like crazy to people and not piss them off by telling them something that they don't want to hear. When I commented that we need to build indie media in order to fill the gap left by the collapse of newspapers, one bright bean opined that nostalgia for journalism is misplaced. He saw the future of news as being in Instagram. When I asked him how you could possibly do any proper news stores on a site devoted to pictures, he asked me where I'd got this (obviously to him) bizarre fixation on hard news.

Well, that's one end of the continuum. (The end that gets the grants and advertising dollars---it seems, though.) If you disagree, why not subscribe to the Back-Grounder? (Thanks Al for being so awesome!) It doesn't require big bucks, and it's easy to do through Patreon or PayPal. In exchange, I promise never to "dumb down" what I write.   

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Hulet: It's always a question of allocating time---.

Schreiner: Yeah, yeah. And how the legislature works is I can introduce as many private member's bills as I want but I can only put one on the order table. Private member's bills are debated every Thursday---there're three every Thursday---and they are chosen by lottery. Everyone who's not a cabinet minister gets to present their private member's bill. So on average you get to bring forth one a year. 

Hulet: Presumably you'd want to lobby the other parties to increase the chances.

Schreiner: Yes. You want to bring forward something you think the other parties will support.

There're two different approaches to private member's bills. First you want to make a political statement and you don't care if you get support from other parties. The other approach is that you want to get the thing passed even though less than 5% ever pass. So you write on what you think will get all party support. 

So my first one is one that trying to do both---and I may fail at both. 

[Schreiner laughs.]

But you never know. So because I know water is such an important issue in Guelph, I'm trying to extend the same protections that currently apply to the Oak Ridges moraine to the Paris Galt moraine.

And because a previous Conservative government brought that legislation in, I'm making the case that I'm just trying to take good Conservative legislation and let it protect the Paris Galt moraine too. 

That got us off on a tangent---. 

Hulet: Yes. but it was a good tangent.

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As a matter of fact, Schreiner was successful in getting the Paris Galt moraine protected under the same legislation that protects the Oak Ridges one. His private member's bill passed and is now law of the land:  Bill 71, Paris Galt Moraine Conservation Act, 2019.

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Hulet: What got me started on the Guelph-Back-Grounder was a bit of disappointment about the general knowledge of people about things. One of the worst examples I can think of right now occurred years ago when Stephen Harper was elected with a plurality of the seats and there was talk of the other parties forming a coalition government. It seemed to me that he was consciously trying to confuse voters into thinking we have a presidential system. He was saying "voters voted for me, therefore this idea that the other parties could form a coalition and run the government---that's just lunacy, it would be a coup d'etat!" And a lot of people just bought it because they didn't know how a parliamentary system is supposed to work.

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[The actual words that I could find Harper saying---as cited in a Globe and Mail article---were "“Stéphane Dion does not have the right to take power without an election”. I did find a quote from Harper's Revenue Minister, Jean-Pierre Blackburn---in Canada.com---who used the phrase:

"We're realizing that no matter what we had come out with in the economic statement, their game plan was set. It's a kind of coup d'etat," Blackburn said."]

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What do you think about the general knowledge of voters? I understand that you aren't going to say that they're a bunch of ignoramuses, obviously.

[Schreiner chuckles]

But do you think we could do a better job of teaching civics? At public schools, for example.

Schreiner: I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity to put something out on the record. I received 10,000 more votes than Doug Ford did. So for everyone who said that they voted for Doug Ford---technically, technically---I received 10,000 more votes than he did. 

Hulet: There was a significant vote split in his riding?

Schreiner: There was, there was. 

He won by a lower percentage than I did---it was a much tighter race. I'll just put that out there.

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I'm afraid that Mike got his percentages wrong here. I did some quick research on line and it turns out that Doug Ford got 52% of the popular vote with 19,000 votes in Etobicoke North, whereas Mike Schreiner got 45% of the vote with 29,000 votes in Guelph.  This paradoxical-looking vote didn't come about because of the relative populations of the ridings: 111,000 in Etobicoke North versus 115,000 in Guelph. It was instead because of the relative size of the electorate: 62,000 in Ford's riding versus 86,000 in Schreiner's.

For those of you who don't know, the "electorate" are the people in a community who are allowed to vote. The only explanation for the 24,000 person disparity between Guelph and Etobicoke North that comes to mind is the fact that landed immigrants cannot vote in provincial elections. I looked at the statistics Canada census profile for Etobicoke-North and the latest numbers show that 58,000 people who live there call a non-First Nation, non-official, language their "mother tongue"---which presumably would mean that they are immigrants. So I think a fair extrapolation is that compared to Guelph a much large percentage of the population of Doug Ford's riding are immigrants who have not yet received Canadian citizenship, and that's why Schreiner got a lot more votes, yet received a smaller percentage than Ford.

I consider this an understandable mistake---no harm, no foul.

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I think people are bombarded with so much info and so many things going on in their lives that they are incredibly informed but not everyone is going to be incredibly informed about everything all the time.

I don't know how to perform surgery but I know how our electoral system works. Actually there are a lot of doctors who can perform surgery but don't know how our electoral system works. It's a sign of the complexity of the society we live in. 

That being said, I do think we could do a much better job of teaching civics in schools---especially so of the basic mechanics of how government works. It makes you realize how much of our knowledge is driven by access to media because most people think our political system in Canada works much more like the US system than it does. 

A lot of people have a much better understanding of how a presidential system with three clearly and obviously different branches of government operates and they don't realize how a Parliamentary system works, or, that we really do have three separate branches of government in a Parliamentary system. 

Technically, cabinet is the executive branch of the government. So if right now you're a Conservative member of the legislature, and you're not a member of cabinet, you're part of the legislative branch that is there to hold the executive branch accountable. But unfortunately in our system---especially in Canada---there's so much party discipline that there's no accountability from back-bench MPs or MPPs for the governing party.

That's why during Question Period questions are allocated based on a roster of MPPs who are not in cabinet so that's why the Conservative party gets to ask themselves questions. That's because theoretically those back-bench MPPs---even if they are members of the ruling party---are not part of the government. They are part of the legislative branch that is supposed to hold the government accountable. 

People don't realize that because they see U.S. television where they see Congress, the House, the Courts. In other Parliamentarian systems---the United Kingdom in particular---you see a lot more back bench MPs asking "their own government" tough questions and/or voting against government policy. Much more than in Canada which has a much higher level of party discipline. 

Even basic mechanics like that people don't understand. And because of that lack of understanding they've forgotten that the Premier and Prime Minister hold that position based on the confidence of the legislature. So if that person has the confidence of the majority of members in that Parliament, it doesn't matter whether your party has a plurality or even a majority of seats or not. 

People don't realize that and in practice it's not how it works anymore. I think the country would benefit if it had more minority governments. Coalition governments have passed what I think are some of the best pieces of legislation in Canadian history: healthcare being one of them, the flag being another, social security, some of the better labour laws. But for some reason in Canadian political culture---it's not like this in Europe---people have an aversion to coalition government. 

Hulet: Well, traditionally we had one party that would never form a government  if there wasn't vote splitting.

Schreiner: Yes, that is true.

Hulet: If you want to get out into "the ozone layer" there are lots of different ways to reign in party discipline. I believe in Israel, for example, the Parliament has secret balloting.

Schreiner: Wow. That would really change things. 

I think that there are some easier things we could do. One would be to not require party leaders to sign off on nomination papers. It used to be that the riding association would make that decision. 

Hulet: That certainly would be an issue in Guelph's last provincial election.

Schreiner: Yeah! That's true.

[Schreiner laughs]

So that's created a lot of party discipline. 

Things like committee chair appointments. In the legislature if committee chairs were appointed by secret ballot instead of now where the house leader---as ordered by the premier's office---does it. It's all centralized. 

Standing orders (the rules that govern the legislature) are done by majority party vote. If that was done by secret ballot that would help. If the allocation of questions was done by the Speaker (elected by all MPPs by secret ballot)---let's say---instead of the party leader's office, that would also help immensely. 

There's a whole host of reforms. Actually, Michael Chong has written some of the best work on those sort of reforms----obviously federally-focused, but provincially applicable. 

So there are things that could be done to weaken party discipline. I wouldn't want us to go completely to where the U.S. is---where there is no party discipline because the down side of that is that you have lobbies trying to buy off every member of the legislature. At least in our system the really strong party discipline prevents lobbies from buying up the individual MPPs. But I think if we were more like the British system it would help.

Hulet: So some of those tweaks you've mentioned would have some significant positive impact?

Schreiner: Oh, yeah. I think they would certainly reduce the power of the party Whip and the leader's office. 

One of the change to the public financing laws in Ontario that I though was significant---and I'll give Randy Hillier, a right-wing Conservative credit for suggesting this idea during my testimony at a committee hearing. As you know, prior to being elected I was engaged in pushing for public funding of political parties. When I was testifying before a committee Mr. Hillier mentioned that if all the per-vote funding went to the leader's office it would strengthen it and weaken the individual members in their Constituency Associations. 

That's why some of the money now goes to the Constituency Associations. So in addition to each party receiving funding based on the number of votes they receive, each riding association does as well. So there's a certain amount allocated to each riding. Then that is divided up based on the percentage of vote the party receives in that riding---and the local riding association gets the money. 

I thought that was a brilliant little tweak that does put more power into the hands of the local constituency association. 

There are multiple little tweaks that could reduce the iron grip of party discipline. 

Hulet: That's a good example.

Did you have anything else of a "burning interest" that you want to talk about?

&&&&

Schreiner: I'm surprised you haven't asked me about climate change or the clean economy.

Hulet: Well you're in the Green Party---. I think most people know where you're coming from for that.

Schreiner: Because the Back-Grounder is a Guelph-focused publication---. One of the things I find intriguing when I travel across the province and the country, almost every journalist asks me what makes Guelph special and I've thought a lot about that. I'm glad a lot of our conversation today touched on different points of that. I think that the history, the role that OPIRG has played here, the entrepreneurial spirit of this community. the willingness to try things differently, to be a leader instead of follower, the caring and connected nature of this community. The number of artists, people who work in arts and culture. 

There's a lot of indigenous history---the meeting of the two rivers. This was the place neutral peoples would meet. 

There's a lot of elements that have made this a special place. And it was willing to take a risk and elect a Green MPP.  

There's been a lot of committed people working at community organizing over a long period of time. It's certainly not a perfect place---but it's a pretty remarkable place. 

Hulet:  Guelph's a strange town. It has a very conservative streak and a very progressive one too. 

Schreiner: Exactly. 

Hulet: I was talking to Karen Farbridge about this with regard to the community energy plan---which in Guelph is kinda aspirational. We have the district energy system that's sort of moth-balled. She was saying that it is "typical Guelph"---we're the first and it stalled. Then the rest of the country is---

Schreiner:  Passing us now! 

[Schreiner chuckles.]

Hulet: But that's another story---.

&&&&

At this point a staffer intervened and it was obviously time to end the interview.

My take-away from all five of these articles is that Mike is a person who has spent a great deal of his life thinking about and working on a wide variety of issues. Greens often get tarred with the brush of being a "right wing party" because they do tend to try to see market-based solutions to many problems. But they are also very much engaged in expanding social services and aren't obsessed with keeping taxes to the absolute minimum.

More importantly, I think the discussion of "B" corporations really does open up a debate about what exactly does it mean to be "right wing". Is a "B" corp really "capitalist" in any meaningful sense of the word? Even under the most radical forms of communism and anarchism there has still been a need to create corporations and syndicates to undertake large scale projects. And again, there has always had to be some form of currency to keep track of the allocation of scarce resources to one project as opposed to another.

Could it be that the real fundamental difference between "progressive", "reactionary", and, "radical" are the goals you choose to pursue instead of the means that you use to pursue them? Decades back the Greens in Germany adopted the slogan "Neither Left, nor Right---just out in front, leading the way!" I'd say that this pretty much sums up what I've seen of our current MPP.

&&&&

Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!