Party Politics: Part 4, Working as a Sitting MP, With Lloyd Longfield

One of the things that should be top of mind for voters, but I find rarely is, is how well a candidate will be able to fulfill his or her duties if they get elected. To that end, after talking to a couple candidates and a campaign manager, I thought I'd talk to our local MP, Lloyd Longfield, about what his job is like. I enjoyed the conversation. I don't think a lot of it came as a surprise to me, but I suspect most people haven't had the same experiences. I hope what follows will help readers learn a bit more about what it's like to be a Member of Parliament. 

Lloyd in one of his offices hard a work. Image provided by his staff.

Cloudwalking Owl · How Hard Does An MP Work?

I think it's important for readers to savour Longfield's comments about not being able to do it all himself. This is an absolutely key point, one that I don't think a lot of people interested in politics have really thought much about. People who run for  politics generally have strong opinions about how things should be in the world. The problem is, however, that the 21st century is a very complex time, and people can only really develop expertise in very narrow fields. Lloyd mentioned several times through the interview about how important it is to be part of a team. This includes staff, volunteers, and, colleagues in the Liberal party.

Cloudwalking Owl · What Committees Does Lloyd Sit On?

One of the things I remember hearing MPs talk about is the value of the work they do in committees. It's easy to get the impression that the work of Parliament is the sort of childish shenanigans you see during Question period. (Remember them? We haven't seen much lately because of COVID restrictions in Parliament---but they will probably begin again once things go back to normal.)

In actual fact, the idiocy we see from news clips is just as good an indicator of how Parliament works as Duck Dynasty is about life in rural America.

I went to the trouble of finding the page where Parliament posts the results of the committee system. If you look there, you'll see a link for the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (PACP---if the acronym looks odd, remember, we are a bilingual country and it makes sense in French). Contrary to the rampant partisanship we see on line, the committee has members from the Conservatives, NDP, Bloc, and, Liberals. 

Looking through the web-page, I found a great many reports produced both by the committee, and the government. Pretty much at random, I downloaded their report titled Taxation of E-Commerce plus Government Response on the Fourteenth Report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts Entitled: Taxation of E-Commerce.

The report defines "E-Commerce" as it:

Includes physical products purchased online (e.g., clothes, books); digital products purchased and delivered online (e.g., music, videos); digital services (e.g., e-learning services, financial services); and supplies purchased online that are part of the sharing economy (e.g., accommodation sharing, ride sharing).

Consider this issue with regards to government revenue. I looked-up the Federal Budget in 2018 to see how GST revenue compares to other sources. According to a 2018 budget document, the feds predicted total tax revenues of $262.3 billion, with $36.5 billion of that from GST---or 14%. Now consider the tremendous growth in E-commerce that has happened during the recent pandemic (click on the following image to get better quality version). 

As you can see, there's been an explosion of part of the e-commerce total---retail sales. As an example of the issues that the PACP committee has to deal with, consider the following points.

If I want to hire a cab or stay in a hotel, I have to pay GST on my bills. But if I get an UBER or stay in an Air BNB---it gets kinda sticky. According to an official UBER page that helps their drivers and delivery people, they aren't working for a huge, multinational business but are instead independent contractors. This is important, because if an individual Canadian has a revenue of less than $30,000/year they don't have to pay GST on what their business charges. The same rule applies to Air BNB.

Not only does this notion that people are "sub-contractors" instead of employees short circuit the "$30,000 or less" rule, it also dramatically increases the cost of enforcement. That's because it's a lot easier to build a case for tax avoidance against a large hotel or cab company than lots of little guys with an extra room, or, a car and cell phone.

What this example---and lots more I could quote---means is huge, multinational corporations with billions in revenue have managed to avoid paying GST to the federal government. And that means that more money has to come out of our pay cheques in the form of income tax and the government has less to put into the services we'd like.   

Figuring out how to deal with this tremendous change in the way people do business is enormously complex. Lots of on-line businesses are headquartered outside of Canada. And, as I stated before, sub-contracting causes problems with revenue collection and enforcement. And this doesn't get into other side issues---such as, "How do Canadian content rules work with You-Tube music channels? Do you treat them like a radio station?". This means that a lot of different elements of the federal bureaucracy need to be consulted and accommodated in any legislation proposed to deal with these problems. As the Canadian Revenue Agency states in the Government Response,

Four categories of platforms have been identified in the strategy including the sharing economy (which also covers accommodation sharing), the gig economy, peer-to-peer selling and social media influencers. Each category contains unique risks requiring tailored compliance interventions. (p-2)
 

The committees of Parliament do a lot of complex work, and, there are a lot of them. (I counted thirty of them on the website.)

Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Time Do You Spend On Those Committees?

Longfield tends to be low key about his work commitments, but it seems to me that from my brief reading, Parliamentary committee work could easily become a full time job just in itself.

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Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Time Do You Spend On Constituents?

Lloyd talks about where he spends the majority of time---listening to constituents. This is absolutely imperative for a successful politician if they want to build support for re-election, and, come up with policies that work for the majority of people. From what he says, everything seemed to be aimed at listening to different people and coming up with a pragmatic set of policy options that help the most and annoy the least. This is a refreshing contrast to what I often hear from individuals who have a commitment to an ideological worldview and then try to force reality to fit into it. 

Of course, anything he hears has to be balanced against everything else he learns from other people. And he has to follow the direction that the leader, cabinet, staff, other MPs, and, the Liberal party set. And there's always the problem of ending up in a silo where he never gets to meet people who are really different from him. But those are endemic problems for everyone---at least he's saying the right things.  

Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Time Do You Spend With Other MPs?

One of the things that I never really understood---much to my detriment---when I was involved in the Green Party is how much of a politician's job involves just talking to other party members. You can't just come up with what you think are good ideas, you have to sell them to other people. Most folks won't read a policy brief, no matter how well it's written or how good a case it makes. So you have to sit down with them and talk face-to-face.

Part of this is just showing people that you aren't a total nut job because you have suggested something new (unfortunately, that was a big part of my failure as a Green.) Another part is learning how to express what you want in language that resonates with the person you're talking to. And part is working out quid quo pros with others where they support what you want in exchange for your support of what they want.

This sort of work is extremely time-consuming. It is pretty much invisible to anyone outside of the system. And it is absolutely essential to getting anything accomplished. 

Cloudwalking Owl · How Important Are Your Staff?

This is an important issue as staff not only help Lloyd do his other jobs, they also act as important intermediaries between the Canadian bureaucracy and the general public. 

This is tremendously important because rules and regulations have grown exponentially over the last few decades while at the same time, resources for paper shuffling have been reduced. To cite my own case, I sponsored my wife to become a permanent resident through a process that took over two years. Just to contrast this to the past, I've talked to draft dodgers from the 1960s who told me that they crossed the boarder, spent a few hours with the Customs Officers, and, walked out official Landed Immigrants. No one expects this sort of service nowadays, but I believe it is currently far, far too hard to navigate a whole range of government services---at all levels of Canadian society. 

I'm obviously not the only person who has had issues. If you look at Lloyd's website, you will see a whole section devoted to how his staff can help you with your problem. 

As I said, this is a problem that ranges from municipalities through provinces to the federal level. No one can blame Lloyd for this, but it is a tremendously important part of his staff's job to help find "work arounds" that make sure that people are just needlessly delayed and horribly inconvenienced---instead of suffering some sort of life-destroying, Kafkaesque, nightmare. (Like what may have happened to various interpreters in Afghanistan who weren't able to jump through all the hoops imposed upon them before the Taliban took over.)

Cloudwalking Owl · How Do You Avoid Burnout?

I've really tried to emphasize the amount of complex, teamwork that goes into being an effective MP. I've done this because I think a great many of the problems our society faces comes from the gob-smacking complexity of 21rst Century Canada. This means that almost nothing is easy to do. Indeed, I think that without the latest computer technology (which for the government seems to be at least ten years behind the private sector) the country would be effectively ungovernable.

I can see this because I'm very detail-oriented and have a lot of experience poking around in the minutia of politics. But lots of people I meet don't have a similar background and they tend to be oblivious to the chaos behind the curtain. And because they don't know all the players behind the scenes, they get upset that things don't change any faster than they do.

I understand the emotion. I get upset about a lot of things too. And unfortunately, a lot of "big" players don't seem to "get" that climate change has it's own time frame and it doesn't give a fig about politics and bureaucratic difficulties. Nor more human-sized issues. For example, if you can't find a place to live right now, you are in big trouble---and all the valid excuses in the world are not going to get you a roof over your head.

 

I get why sometimes we need people with a burning desire to right a wrong situation in government---and do it fast. But they either also have to be balanced by calm managers who can get things done, or, have some of that calm within themselves. I don't have that within me, which is why I never should be an elected official. But I understand the need, which is why I asked Lloyd what he does to avoid burning out every last nerve in his body. (That's what would happen to me if I was in his shoes.)  

Cloudwalking Owl · Is There Anything Else You'd Like To Add?

Again, the importance of working with others instead of following your brilliant, ideological lodestar. I do think, however, that it might be possible to build a team of advisors who aren't elected officials to help you work on policy. So I think that small parties can go into office with the help of people with history and expertise. But I do acknowledge that it's easier to help out when you are being paid to do it. Moreover, I think that it's easier to hear what someone is saying if you have to get their vote to get your bill passed than if they have to convince you purely on the merits of the issue. (Politics is the realm of inflated egos, after all.)

I like Lloyd Longfield. He seems to genuinely care. And he also sounds like someone who would make an excellent manager. Guelph could do a lot worse than having a "smooth operator" like him representing us. But I didn't see much of the "fire in the belly" that I got from Michelle Bowman and Aisha Jahangir. That's understandable, they are underdogs trying to get their foot in the door of Parliament. Lloyd got tapped by a sitting MP and asked to replace him. 

Politics is a strange place right now. The big problem we have right now, IMHO, is that many members of the voting public are pretty much oblivious to the huge problems that we've been ignoring for far too long. This constrains politicians because they simply cannot get too far ahead of the voters if they want to win election. But once they get into office, their hands are tied by those same voting dynamics. I've always seen the "point" of non-front row parties---like the Greens, NDP, Communist, etc---as being about educating the public during elections so the big parties don't get a totally free ride by pandering to people's prejudices. How successful they have been is impossible to judge, but that doesn't mean that the effort is a waste of time. 

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Anyway, that's enough time for Lloyd Longfield. As he mentioned, mental health has suffered more than a little during this pandemic. (I know at times I've become a little frayed around the edges.) So try to remember to be nice to each other.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Fifteen

Internal Alchemy, Taijiquan, and, Qigong

In addition to sitting and forgetting, and, holding onto the One, there is another important Daoist meditation system. It's called “qigong” (“chi kung” using Wade/Giles.) Actually, the term originally used was “neidan”, or “internal alchemy”, which is a more general term that encompasses all the different forms of meditation practice. But for historical reasons, a specific class of meditation practices associated with physical movement became separated from the greater category of internal alchemy and was renamed, hence “qigong”.

The first thing to understand is that internal alchemy was originally identified in contrast with “external alchemy” or waidan. This was the practice of trying to extend one's life through special diets and medicinal concoctions. No doubt some of this effort resulted in improved nutrition as people compared how different foods made them feel. Unfortunately, it also led to a lot of people poisoning themselves through actions like eating mercury and various poisonous plants. Eventually, external alchemy died out and was replaced by various meditation practices, which eventually ended up being call internal alchemy to differentiate it from external alchemy.

Fast forward to the Chinese Republic. At that time the government decided to encourage martial arts and other traditional forms of exercise in order to raise people's self-esteem and general physical well-being. One of the things they wanted to promote were a whole class of internal alchemy systems that were based on physical exercises. This included systems well-known today in the West, like taijiquan, but also other more obscure things like the “eight pieces of brocade” and the “five animal frolics”. There was one “sticking point” for the Republican government, however. It was not in favour of encouraging traditional Chinese religions, as they believed that they were superstitions. As a result, they didn't want to promote these exercises as spiritual systems, but rather just as physical exercises. Part of this campaign, therefore, involved doing away with the old term, neidan, and replacing it with a new one, qigong.

..........

Taijiquan is a bit of a special case. Many people do not realize that it is actually a martial art, but it is. This is an understandable misconception, as the overwhelming majority of people who practice it do so only as a form of gentle exercise. As such, they only do slow forms practice. But if you want to pursue it as a martial art all the various elements of any other fighting system can be pursued: tumbling, joint locks, kicks, throws, weapons, sparring, bag training, etc.

People who are “into” taijiquan will sometimes say that was created by the Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng after watching a fight between a crane and a snake. The more plausible story is that it was the developed by the Chen clan as its own fighting style. It was eventually adopted by Daoists as its own fighting style and along with Xingyi and Bagua became known as one of the three “Daoist” or “Wudang” “internal martial arts”. This probably came about through rivalry with Buddhism---which had it's own martial arts tradition based on the Shaolin Temple. (The Daoist religion has a competitive “me too” element that results in it trying to come up with its own distinctive rituals and symbols that mirror those of Buddhism.) Eventually, people modified it from a purely martial art into something that could also be used for internal alchemy (qigong) practice.

.........

What people call qigong (ie: the eight pieces of brocade, the five animal frolics, taijiquan, etc) is yet another venue for the elements that I have identified previously with regard to sitting and forgetting, and, holding onto the One. That is, the practice of learning intricate, complex moving exercises forces the person doing them to learn how to quiet their monkey mind. The taijiquan open-hand set, for example, has over one hundred moves and if you get distracted it is very easy to lose your place. In addition, many of the moves are very complicated and are very hard to learn how to do well. If you start thinking about things like what you want to eat for dinner or what happened at work, you will lose your place in the set and forget how to do those complex moves.

In addition, each of the moves requires very complex analysis of how the geometry of your body works. Your knees have to be “just so”, you have to remember to relax so your centre of gravity will drop, your posture has to be vertical, etc, etc. And in the midst of all this complex thought, you have to remember to breath! And this process never really ends. After regular practice for over thirty years, I still learn new things about the taijiquan form on a very frequent basis. This means that practicing the forms is an exploration of the Dao (or the One.)

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must dealt with! 

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I'm taking another vacation break, so there won't be anything next week. Take care of yourself and try to help each other. We're all a little fragile because of the pandemic.

 

 

Party Politics: Part 3, Managing a Campaign with Brent McArthur

Brent McArthur with someone I vaguely remember seeing before. Photo provided by McArthur.

I started this series about the "nuts and bolts" of how political parties work in a representative democracy with someone seeking a party nomination, Michelle Bowman, and then someone who'd already ran, Aisha Jahangir. Now I want to go behind the scenes with a conversation with a Campaign Manager, Brent McArthur. I started things off by asking him to introduce himself.

Cloudwalking Owl · Who Is Brent McArthur?

I think it's important to zero-in on Brent mentioning that his father was a politician. I did a bit of background reading on political membership in Canada and came across an article titled Factors Influencing the Decision of the Young Politically Engaged to Join a Political Party, by William Cross and Lisa Young (Party Politics, vol 14, no 3, pp 345-369).

That article deals with why membership in political parties has been and still is in decline in modern societies. As they state it, there is a worrying trend of young people not getting involved in the numbers that parties previously enjoyed.

The low rate of youth membership in Canadian parties currently stands in sharp contrast to the situation only a generation ago. Perlin et al. (1988) review the formal status accorded to youth in the major parties of the day and analyze surveys of delegates to the 1983 Conservative and 1984 Liberal leadership conventions. They express a strong concern that the over-representation of youth in party decision-making was distorting parties’ internal democratic processes. Twenty years later, such concerns have little currency. The shift towards plebiscitary forms of decision-making in Canadian parties has weakened youth organizations and reduced opportunities for young people to exert influence over leadership contests and other party decisions (Young and Cross, 2002a). [Cross and Young, p-348]

I won't bore you with the details of their discussion, but in a nutshell, this is what they say: 

1. Over a few decades (from the 1980s to the date of the paper, 2008), there has been a dramatic decline in youth participation in Canadian political parties
2. Presumably, if someone doesn't join a party in their youth, they won't later on. This risks parties "hollowing out" as the rank-and-file membership declines and parties become more and more controlled by paid professionals.
3. When polled, young people who are interested in exerting some role in society tend to split into two groups: those who believe that activist groups are better than political parties, and, those who think political parties are better than activist groups. (Young people who have joined political parties rank it as the most effective thing a person can do to change society, whereas people who've joined activist groups rank it as being the least effective.)
   
4. Young people who do join political parties have a much greater chance of having a parent who was involved in one. (Young people who do join have 62% chance that one of their parents has been a member in the past, whereas among young people in activist groups the number is only 28.4%.)

I'm a little concerned about this, as I have seen evidence in support of these issues during my time in politics and activism. On average, being involved in politics does seem to be something that people are born into---just like religion and class. And if fewer people are involved, then there will be fewer children that get introduced to it. Small changes will multiply over generations. 

Similarly, I meet people over and over again who seem to think that there is some sort of contradiction between activism and politics. Indeed, I stopped being involved with the Green Party mainly because I had always wanted it to be the one party that melded the two together---but once it gained some success, the new members overwhelmingly opposed being involved in anything except electoral politics. I think that unless people learn that they can walk and chew gum at the same time, politics will continue to have little interest for many engaged young people. I think that this is a really bad thing. 

Cloudwalking Owl · How Long Have You Been A Liberal

The back and forth between McArthur and I raises an issue that I've been wrestling with since I started thinking about this series of articles. I decided early on that I wasn't going to ask any members of the Conservative party to take part. I  didn't come to this decision lightly, but I think that recent behaviour by conservatives both here and around the world has pushed me to the decision that they simply aren't active participants in democracy so much as a force that is actively trying to undermine it. 

First of all, it's important to remember that it was the federal Conservatives who were behind a co-ordinated, national campaign to suppress the votes of Canadians through the "robo-call" campaign. Secondly, the party seems to have consistently courted the worst elements of Canadian society---to the point where former leader Andrew Scheer actually hired away a key member of Rebel Media to become his campaign manager. This vile undercurrent in the Conservative membership explains why someone like Max Bernier was appointed to a cabinet position by Steven Harper and came within a "hair's breath" of becoming the leader after him. (For those of you who might not remember "Mad Max", he founded the People's Party of Canada and has since become a darling of the anti-mask and anti-vaxxer groups.)  

Moreover, the federal and provincial Conservatives have shown repeatedly that they place ideology ahead of scientific evidence in particular and expert advice in general. The embarrassing way that the governments of Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and, Manitoba have repeatedly ignored scientific advice until the grim reality of case counts from Covid-19 forced them to back-track is just the latest examples of Tories shoving their fingers in their ears and humming loudly when experts tell them something they don't want to hear. Federally, the Harper government adamantly refused to take any action on the "so-called Climate Change" file---no matter what the science said. Doug Ford ripped up Ontario's cap-and-trade agreement with California and Quebec---even though his lawyers had to have told him that severing a contract has legal consequences and that the Federal government would then impose a carbon tax anyway. And Jason Kenney threw away over a billion dollars in support of an oil pipeline that would only have succeeded if Donald Trump had won the 2020 election---and any pollster would have said that there was a more than 50% chance of him losing.

Democracy can only exist in a world where people have respect for the rights of others. Any party that decides to actively deny people the right to vote rather than try to convince them to change their opinion has effectively given up on the democratic ideal. In addition, democratic discussion can't work in a society where key players have constructed alternative descriptions of reality based upon their particular ideological biases. By consistently following strategies aimed at subverting people's right to vote and lying to the public about important public policy issues, the Conservative party has walked away from the consensus that democracy is a good thing. As such, I have decided not to give them a platform that they have zero interest in earning. 

This isn't to say that there aren't good people in the Conservative party. I interviewed Michael Chong a couple years back and very much enjoyed the experience. But he seems to be a wild outlier and I don't see him as being in any way representative of the party. My only concern about him is why he hangs on with this gang. I suspect if asked (and he answered truthfully) he'd say that Canada needs a good Conservative party and if all the good people leave the worst elements will always control it. 

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Cloudwalking Owl · What Does A Campaign Manager Do

I suspect that the biggest value from a local campaign is that it's something of a symbolic display of a candidate's connection with the community. A well-run one shows that an individual has the support of many competent people who feel inspired to work together as a team in order to do all the things that McArthur describes in this clip. It's like a West-Coast aboriginal Potlatch, a Roman Triumph, the investiture of a monarch, etc.  

This is a useful metric for voters, because if a politician cannot get a large number of local volunteers working together to raise money, canvass voters, put up signs, etc, there is a very low probability that she is going to be able to effectively form a government and rule the nation.

Cloudwalking Owl · Is Volunteering On A Campaign A Good Education

I will add to Brent's point about being involved in a campaign being a good introduction to project management that it's also a way to learn how government works. Being a good politician isn't just about having good ideas. It's also about knowing how to sell them to both the general public and the government bureaucracy. It's also about negotiating priorities and dividing up scarce resources. If a politician can't do these things, their term in office will be a disaster. And it's not only important for a candidate to show that they understand these points and can organize a team to deal with them, it's also important for voters to understand what a government MP has to do to be effective. Volunteering in a campaign is one way to find this out.

Cloudwalking Owl · How Important Are Political Parties

Cynics might suggest that policy doesn't come from rank-and-file members but instead from professional lobbies. I think that that's probably right in some cases. But I don't think that there is any reason why a political party shouldn't listen to industry representatives when they argue a case. The issue is whether or not they have undue influence---it's an issue of degree, not kind. And don't forget that the larger NGOs, such as Greenpeace, also hire professional lobbyists to convince politicians about the necessity of a certain type of action.

I do think, however, that it is certainly true that rank-and-file members are able to introduce new ideas into a political party. But the process of getting those ideas onto the platform and to the head of the line of government policy takes an huge amount of work and a very long time. Most ordinary members lack both the knowledge of how to do this, and, the time for execution. Political parties are like oil tankers---they take a very long time to change direction.

That can be extremely frustrating for many citizens. They don't want to devote their lives to promoting a piece of legislation. I get that, but it's important to understand that democracy isn't something that you do once every four years when you vote and then forget about. It requires a great many people working together on an on-going basis. That's the work of  the Electoral District Associations (EDAs) that McArthur is talking about.

Probably the greatest check on undue influence by paid lobbyists comes from how many people are willing to put in the time and effort required to control and keep real influence over their political parties. If this wanes, then the vacuum created will inevitably be filled by individuals who don't care about the public interest. At that point we still have the empty shell of a democracy, but the substance has been removed. I believe that's what Brent's father meant when he said that democracy is a fragile flower that needs to be carefully nurtured.

Cloudwalking Owl · What Should People Learn About Political Parties

I mentioned above that I wrestled with the idea of bringing someone from the Conservative party to this discussion. I also have felt some concern about being seen as "too cosy" with bourgeois political parties in this series. As I've gotten older I have tended to become more and more radical in my politics. Moreover, at least a few of my subscribers are pretty left-wing too. But as an acquaintance  recently said to me, if you get too picky about who you will associate with, you run the risk of ending up in a party with only one member.  

I agree with McArthur that the majority of people I've met in all political parties tend to be well-meaning. But having said that, I also believe that most of the problems that beset humanity come from misguided people who are trying to make the world a better place based on a very flawed understanding of how to get there from here. 

I square this circle by adhering to the idea of "the broad front". That's the idea that just because people aren't in the same organization and don't share the same particular short-term objectives, it doesn't mean that they aren't going in the same direction. For many contentious issues, people sit on a Bell Curve. Some people tend to be "outliers", who are either late figuring out an important point (they are at -3 in the graph below) or ahead of most people (+3), with the vast majority in the middle (clustered around 0). But they all exist on the same continuum and eventually almost everyone will get to the same point.

Bell Curve, from Lukion Taulukot, c/o Wikimedia Commons.

The thing about politics is that it is always important to have people who "lead the way" (+3) for everyone else. These people raise the outlandish, yet important ideas that eventually become "conventional wisdom". But to really change the world, it's necessary to bring along the majority of people (the 0s). I think that's a very good way of understanding politics. It's all about influencing the majority of citizens as a way of changing the society we inhabit. Can it be frustrating? Completely---if you think you can see something much better than we have now but most others don't. But I have yet to think of any other way of creating a better world.

If this holds within political parties, it also holds between most of them. (As I mentioned above, I have grave concerns about whether the modern Conservatives do fit into this framework. And that's why I wonder if maybe they no longer are committed to Canada as a democratic society.)

Cloudwalking Owl · Is There Anything Else You'd Like To Say

We are in an election now, which probably means that these articles will get a lot more readers than they would have otherwise. But I wish people would take what Brent says to heart. Politics keeps on between elections. And if you really do want to have a maximal influence, you need to volunteer during the campaign---but the time you will really have more sway is between elections when most of the other party members are no longer involved. I spent a lot of time in an EDA myself, although now I'm doing the journalism thing, (which means I try to keep a distance from partisan politics). But I think that citizens in a democracy should feel something of an obligation to be as involved as they can in the functioning of politics. 

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That's enough for one week. Keep your distance, wear a mask, get vaccinated if you aren't already, and, hope that the fourth wave will be much smaller than the last one. 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with! 

Summer Vacation

After a Sunday spent sweating bullets and adding yet more damage to my old arthritic body (there was a plumbing nightmare), I've decided to take some time off from the Back-Grounder. I don't know when I'll get back to it, but probably before September.

Until then, stay safe and be nice to each other---. 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Fourteen

Holding onto the One

Another type of meditation practice is known as shou-i, or, “holding onto the One”. Harold D. Roth describes this practice as

---holding fast to the One entails retaining a sense or a vision of the Way as the one unifying force within phenomenal reality while seeing this reality in all its complexity.

(Original Tao, Harold D. Roth trans and commentary, Chapter 3, part XIII)

Whereas sitting and forgetting was about finding a quiet place to sit and ignore the world around you so you can focus on how your mind operates, holding onto the One is something that you try to do every other moment of your waking life. It is about reminding yourself to be aware of your surroundings and look for the subtle forces at play in it. If you remind yourself to look for subtleties, you will eventually begin to see them. And when you do, you will find yourself being able to achieve interesting results.

 

Let me give an illustrative example. Where I work I was once approached by a student who wanted the Library to install public computer printers that were able to print on both sides of a sheet of paper---to help the environment. I'm too low on the food-chain to have any influence, but I explained to him a strategy for getting his suggestion implemented.

 

I told him that there would be no sense at all trying to make a suggestion to any individual manager, as it would be ignored. Primarily, this is because he would just consider this proposal extra work with no value to his career. The solution, therefore, would be to do all the work for the manager and to submit the proposal in a venue where it would be visible to the manager's boss. The way to do this, therefore, was for him to write up a detailed proposal outlining the costs involved plus a source for the new printing equipment. This meant the manager really didn't have to do any work. And instead of just sending this proposal to the person who managed the public printers, I suggested he send the suggestion to the Library “Question and Answer Board”. Since all of these submissions went directly to the Associate Chief Librarian---who then passed them onto relevant managers with her comments attached---it would be impossible for the relevant manager to simply ignore, because it would be coming from his boss instead of just a student.

 

I outlined this strategy by first asking the student “Do you really want to get these printers changed?” That is because a lot of times people just want to vent, but can't be bothered to do any heavy lifting. The guy surprised me by saying “yes, I do”. And he also surprised me by actually following my suggestion. Two weeks later, I saw his detailed proposal posted on the Q and A board, and by the end of the semester the printers had been upgraded to do double-sided printing.

 

Holding onto the One has obvious similarities to Buddhist “mindfulness”. Both of them require reminding yourself that you exist and are an observer to your existence. Both are against “losing yourself in your delusions”. But holding onto the One has the added emphasis on looking for the subtle “Daos” that exist in our environment. In the example I gave above, I was explaining to the student the Dao of bureaucracy and how he could use my knowledge to exert some kung fu on it.

 

.........

 

Learning to hold onto the One is also a mental project, just like sitting and forgetting. You have to be aware of what your mind is doing to be able to really see what is happening in the world around you. You have to be calm to see what is in front of you. You also need to be aware of your biases if you are going to have some sort of objective viewpoint. So holding onto the One is also a process of learning about how your mind operates. And just as sitting and forgetting has potential dangers, so does holding onto the One.

 

If not done properly, the practice of constant careful observation can lead to an inability to ever relax and simply “be in the moment”. That too is important. In Japanese Zen this ability to just act without thinking is known as “mushin no shin” or “mind without mind”. It is an integral part of martial arts training, but it also blends into all of human life. To give an example, while sparring in taijiquan (ie: “push hands” or tuishou) sometimes I have had the experience of “just acting” totally without any forethought. The result is often that someone flies through the air, or, gets pinned with a joint lock. This is an interesting phenomenon, but paradoxically, to understand it you have to be willing to make the effort to hold onto the One and carefully observe the way your mind operates.

 

Consider the act of speaking or writing. Did you choose the particular word you just spoke? Perhaps you did, but how often do you stop and make the time to do that? In writing this book there have been times when I had to stop and think about exactly what word I wish to write. And, of course, I am constantly looking at the text and making changes to “polish it” to the point where it will be published. But even when I stop and make changes, the words just “pop” into existence. Again, think about the act of choosing. Did you choose the word you use? If so, did you “choose to choose” that word? Or did you just act? And even if you did “choose to choose”, did you “choose to choose to choose”? The point I am trying to make is that even in the most carefully contrived and worked-over human decision, there is ultimately an experience of a thought or action just popping into existence.

The unipede said to the millipede, “I go hippity-hopping along on my one foot but barely manage. How is it, sir, that you can control myriad feet?”

“It's not so,” said the millipede. “Haven't you seen a person spit? When he spews them forth, the big globs are like pearls, the droplets are like a mist. All mixed up together, the number that falls is immeasurable. Now, I just move by my natural inner workings but don't know why it is so.”

Zhuangzi, “Autumn Floods”, part 2, Mair translation

It is possible for someone trying to hold onto the One to forget this fact and change from observing the way things really are to fretting about how things should be, or, how things come about. This gets in the way of the spontaneous generation of new actions and thoughts. This situation is like the story of the centipede that was found paralyzed by the side of the road. When asked what happened, she answered by saying that someone asked her how she could control all her different legs. Once she started thinking about the question, she lost the ability to walk. She had succumbed to “analysis paralysis”.

 

Don't let that happen to you!

 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Party Politics: Part 2-B, Running for Office with Aisha Jahangir

Aisha Jahangir

In the second part of my conversation, I focused on asking Ms. Jahangir about the practical elements of her candidacy for Parliament. There's a saying from the military to the effect that "Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics, generals focus on logistics and stability". I find much the same thing in politics, where outsiders fixate on policy whereas people in the "thick of things" are more concerned about things like identifying supporters, getting the vote out, raising visibility through signs and social media campaigns, etc. The key point from this that I want to raise, is that it only takes one person---the candidate---to talk about policy, whereas you need a lot of volunteers to do all these other tasks. 

Even more crucially, there are some pretty deep skill sets necessary to run a good campaign. Most people would cringe at the complexity involved in reporting every dollar raised and spent to keep on the good side of the Elections Finances Act. Keeping track of individual voter intentions also require how to manage a database. Running a social media campaign needs someone who can navigate the delicate balance between forcefully defending their candidate while at the same time avoiding entanglement with the libel laws. Volunteer managers also have to learn how to motivate people to do the boring and tedious work that underlies any big enterprise, and, keep everything under control while having a deft enough touch to not discourage people' initiative and creativity.

Cloudwalking Owl · What Is A Normal Day For A Candidate

It's really important to understand how much work goes into running for office. This is especially important as there really aren't any guarantees about whether or not someone is going to win. People often complain bitterly about the fact that parliamentary pensions only require 6 years service as an MP. But the fact is that getting elected to Parliament is often the culmination of years and years of unpaid service to the political party---including running in ridings where he or she has no real hope of getting elected. Even if a "star candidate" gets "parachuted" into a safe one, this generally means that they are either interrupting a lucrative career because they think that they have something special to offer to Parliament, or, that they have devoted years to some sort of public service, which would usually be either volunteer or poorly paid. Unless there was some sort of financial "offset" like a good pension plan, it would probably be impossible to attract any star candidates---except the independently wealthy---to run for office. 

Cloudwalking Owl · Were You Paid To Run

This should be obvious, but I had to ask the question because of some of the things I've heard about politicians over the years. You can't run for office with any hope of winning without campaigning full time, but most people simply cannot afford to take all that time off work. The solution is that they get paid by their party to make up the difference. If this didn't happen, no one but independently wealthy people would be willing to run for office. 

It's also important to emphasize that the money that Ms. Jahangir talks about mostly comes from tax payers. That's because of our election financing system. When someone makes a donation to the party of their choice, they receive a receipt that allows them to get a credit back from their income taxes. It comes to:

• 75% of the first $400
• 50% of between $400 and $750
• 33.3% between $750 and $1,275 

In addition, there is also a subsidy for the Electoral District Association based on the percentage of the popular vote their candidate received in the previous election. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia 

---political parties and candidates are reimbursed for some of their election expenses. ( See Political Campaigning in Canada.) Political parties that received either two per cent of the national vote or five per cent of the vote in the districts in which they ran candidates get back 50 per cent of the money they spent. Candidates who received at least 10 per cent of the vote receive 15 per cent of the election expenses limit in their district. If the candidate spent at least 30 per cent of the limit during the election, the reimbursement increases to 60 per cent of what the candidate spent.

The most recent calculation of the candidate's spending limit for a federal election in Guelph that I could find was $130,000. According to the Elections Canada report on line, the local NDP spent $32,293 in both financial expenditures and in donated goods and services in the 2019 election. Since Aisha got 12.3% of the vote---over the 10% threshold---this means that the local NDP got a payment from Elections Canada of $19,376 to partially make up what was spent on her campaign.  

The key principle of our election financing system is that parties get reimbursed based on the amount of popular support. When you make a donation, you get a significant fraction of the money back during tax time. And, if it gets a relatively small percentage of the popular vote, the Electoral District Association receives at least half of the money it spent. Again, this means that you don't have to be rich to be involved in politics---you just have to have the backing of a significant fraction of the voters. This is entirely the right way to do things, and if you want to see what happens when rich people have far too much influence in politics you only need look South of the border.

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I put a lot of work into these articles. And people do read them. If you do, and you can afford it, why not subscribe? It's easy to do through Pay Pal and Patreon.

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Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Time Did You Have To Talk To Any One Person

The way you get the support that I mentioned above is by being visible and building a rapport with lots of people over a long period of time, which is what Jahangir is doing with all that face-to-face time with Guelph's citizens. It also comes from the brand that the NDP has built up over several lifetimes.

If memory serves, I can remember years ago reading about Prime Minister Jean Chretien being present at the funeral of janitor in Toronto. Why would he be there? As the news story told, this fellow had organized very large barbecues for the Liberal Party for many years. Chretien realized that this sort of activity is the absolute "life blood" of politics, and he could never have made it as Prime Minister without thousands of local Liberal party members doing things like this to support the organization. Of course, he couldn't go to every single supporter's funeral---but he could make it to the odd one. And by doing so, he was letting everyone know who the important people in politics really are. 

Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Freedom Did You Have As A Candidate

Aisha's mention of Dustin Brown raises an important point. Political parties are built of personal relationships between individuals. The ideology brings people together, but that's not really enough to sustain a group effort over the long haul. What really does is friendship between folks who learn more about each other. It's a great way to make friends. And, it's also a good way to learn about how people from other cultures, classes, races, etc, see the world. 

I often hear complaints about patronage appointments, where parties will put loyal members on boards and commissions governing things like crown corporations and regulatory agencies. Things can and often do go wrong with this process, but I think it's important to see it in the context of how personal relationships are the glue that holds a political party together. Moreover, I would argue that patronage is also important to ensure that government policy actually gets implemented. It is possible for a small group or individual in the bureaucracy to sabotage a policy if the people responsible for its implementation don't share the same goals as the party that designed it. And if a party can't get its policies implemented after they have passed, there's really not much value in passing good legislation in the first place. Putting a loyal party member into the top oversight position helps ensure that this sabotage doesn't take place. 

Cloudwalking Owl · How Many People Were There On Your Team

It's important to remember that when Ms. Jahangir refers to "eight people on her core team" that she's referring to management. She had a great deal more volunteers than that working on jobs like fundraising, putting up signs, calling people on the phone, going door to door, etc. Moreover, it's important to realize that beyond the local organization there were many more people working in the "head office" so there were regional organizers, candidate schools, radio and television advertising, a leader's tour, etc.  

It's really important always remember that the individual candidate is not alone---she's just the face of a very large team of mostly volunteers who are working together to promote their own particular vision of what Canada should be. 

Cloudwalking Owl · The Importance Of Political Parties

A lot comes up in this part of the conversation, but I'll just deal with two points. 

First, Aisha talks about the job of being am MP as someone who "brings the voice of the constituents to the House". This is certainly a common point of view, but I'm not sure that it makes a lot of sense. 

It's not that easy to really know what the "voice of the constituents" really is. Does she mean just the people who voted for her? Or does she mean everyone---even the people who profoundly disagree with her and the people who elected her? When there's a strong divide, does she argue for both sides and then step aside and not vote at all? 

Also, how does she know what the "voice of the constituents" is? Does she just listen to the people that call her office and send letters? What about the overwhelming majority of people who never do that? Years ago our local MP heard so many people call in and complain about same-sex marriage that she broke ranks with the Party and voted against this. And yet, when it became legal, did mobs storm Parliament and burn it down? Maybe most people didn't care, and it was just a loud minority that bombarded her office. The fact is it's really, really hard to judge public opinion with any accuracy by just listening to people who talk to you or write letters. That's why there are scientific polling methods---they help us learn what ordinary people really think without being fooled by organized campaigns by angry, yet small, groups.

And let's not forget that just because a value or idea is popular doesn't mean that it's right. Over human history large minorities have been racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. If you'd polled Canadians 50 years ago about the dangers of climate change, they'd have said that it was a total non-issue---and they'd have been completely and utterly wrong. Politicians aren't elected to just "bring the voice of the constituents to the House", they also have a responsibility to learn about the complex facts about the problems that the nation faces and craft programs to deal with them. If it is important for politicians to listen to "the people", it's just important for elected officials to listen to "the experts" and then sell what they hear to "the people". 

Michael Chong, photo by Tim Allman

Ms. Jahangir also talks about not seeing anything about political parties in the constitution. This is because of the fact that Canada's constitution has two set of rules that govern it: written and unwritten. This came up in a previous interview that I did with Wellington-Halton Hill's MP, Michael Chong. I thought the best way to explain it would be to simply quote his answer to me on a related question.

We have written rules and those can be found in the standing orders of the House of Commons----which anyone can download in a pdf document. They're also found in written law, for example the Parliament of Canada Act. They're found in parts of our written constitution, the 1867, and 1982 Constitution Acts, for example, and then we have the unwritten rules which are the conventions that govern a lot of what we do in the Commons and it's committees. These unwritten rules---or "conventions" as they are often called---can evolve.

Political theorists often say that the test for an unwritten convention is two-fold. Can it be articulated? Secondly, do the actors in a political system act in conformity with that explicitly defined rule? If the answer is "yes", then an unwritten convention exists. They can evolve, and many have for many years. In the early 1980s there was a Supreme Court reference to the conventions that govern our system. The government of Pierre Trudeau asked the court if the written constitution allows the government to unilaterally patriate the constitution back from the United Kingdom. He also asked whether the unwritten constitution allows the same thing.

The Supreme Court said "Yes" to the first one, and "No" to the second. So there's an example of how our system works. Sometimes the unwritten rules are at odds with written ones. So the two parts are always in tension with one another. All of which is to say that as a result, the vast majority of MPs---when they first come to Ottawa---do not know the rules and how the place actually operates. And it takes some years to learn.   

As Chong says, most candidates don't really know much about how Parliament runs. Luckily, there are schools that introduce newly-minted MPs to how it actually works and party veterans who are willing to mentor the newbies. 

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Political parties may not be in the written constitution, but they are still essential to democratic decision-making. Even if people did try to outlaw them, they'd still exist. Indeed, they belong to that class of ideas that you can chase out the front door with a pitchfork only to have them climb in through a back window when you aren't looking.

Consider the following scenario. Canada has a revolution and outlaws political parties. An election is held and individual representatives get elected across the country. There are over 300 representatives in the new Parliament and they try to pass new legislation in order to get things done. Lots of people have ideas about what should come first, which results in hundreds of new bills. Who gets to decide what order they come in?

Some bright bean suggests that Parliament have a vote to set the order. Another MP says that it would be ridiculous for the members to just vote on the order just using the titles of the bills without having some discussion about what the proposed law is supposed to do and why. But this will take a lot of time with 300 people all having an equal right to discuss each one. And again, who gets to set the order of the bills discussed to decide the order of passing them? 

Moreover, different groups of MPs find that they have interests in common. The MPs from rural Alberta, for example, decide that they want to do away with all environmental laws because they get in the way of making lots of money strip-mining their province. The MPs from the Northern Territories, in contrast, are concerned about Climate Change because if the permafrost all melts their infrastructure will collapse. In fact, both groups are so concerned about these issues that they start having meetings to discuss common strategies they can pursue to get the laws they want passed. 

One option they both pursue is reaching out to other MPs in order to see if they can negotiate some sort of deal that will get support from them in order to get the legislation they want passed. The Northern MPs find out that a lot of folks in the cities to the South are willing to support their opposition to fossil fuels if the Northern rural people will help support policies to build electric cars and public transit so urban folks can have good jobs. Similarly, the rural Albertan MPs are able to get rural people in British Columbia to help them in exchange for allowing timber companies to clear cut the entire province in order to provide good, unionized jobs cutting old-growth timber. They also reach out to rural people on the East coast who want to have good jobs running factory trawlers without quotas.

Coalitions are being born. Deals are being hammered out. And then bills get passed. In effect, political parties rise again. That's how political parties climb back into the House through the bathroom window after you chased them out the front door through a revolution. The only difference is that without a formal recognition of the role that parties play in democracy, everything happens behind closed doors and without the input of ordinary citizens.  

That's the important thing to remember. When I was young, people used to talk about decisions being made in "smoke-filled rooms". That was, people who ran the political parties up until then pretty much consisted of behind the scenes "wheelers and dealers" that the general public didn't really know much about. The idea was that at any political convention there'd be a room somewhere that you couldn't enter unless invited, and that was where all the important decisions got made.

19th Century Cartoon of Smoke-Filled Room. Wikimedia Commons. Cropped by Bill Hulet

Nowadays things are much different. There are laws that control how much money people can spend on leadership and nomination races, how much any single person can donate, and, what that money can be spent upon. Most parties also make the decisions based on membership votes instead of using delegates at conventions. 

Of course, this isn't to say that "jiggery pokery" doesn't still go on. But when people find out about it, they are often upset. And if things get bad enough, regulations eventually get brought in to try to stop it from happening. Corruption and regulation are involved in an arms race, so you can never say that it has been completely been eliminated. But having said that, political parties are now transparent and democratic in ways that go beyond the wildest dreams of voters from days of yore.

If---in some sort of wild flight of naive fancy---political parties were outlawed, all those generations of formal regulation and growing political norms would disappear with the formal political parties. But because political parties are an inevitable outgrowth of representative democracy, they would just come back again---but without all the checks and balances that have been painstakingly built up over the years.

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To be fair to Aisha, none of this information is really all that important to her and any other candidate. As Michael says, there will be lots of "old hands" in the party to explain things to her after she gets elected. The really important part of being a candidate is about knowing how to connect with the public, and that's exactly what she wants to do. But I do think that the general public could benefit from a greater general knowledge about how our democratic system works. (That is the point of this series of articles.)

Cloudwalking Owl · Is There Anything Else Youd Like To Say

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That's enough for one week and the role of candidate. Next time I'll be talking with someone who represents another part of a political party. Stay safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask and keep your distance where appropriate. Remember, we are now not much more than an island of relative stability in a world where COVID continues to rage on.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with.