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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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.

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

Aisha Jahangir, Facebook

In my last article on this topic, I interviewed Michelle Bowman to talk about the process of seeking the nomination to run during a general election. For this one I had a conversation with Aisha Jahangir to help readers get a feel for what it's like to run as a candidate. For those of you who don't remember, she ran for the NDP in the last federal election. (She recently was acclaimed as the candidate in the next one too.) 

Cloudwalking Owl · Who Is Aisha Jhangir

The first part of our conversation illustrates two things about Aisha that I want to emphasize. First, she's really got a "fire in her belly" for health issues. That's important, because there's a lot of work involved in running for office and the odds are pretty heavily stacked against her winning. And unless you are totally committed to the cause, the effort of running for election will burn someone out very fast. Secondly, we had a hard time finding a time to talk. That's hardly surprising, because she is a mother and a healthcare professional in the middle of a pandemic. I think that this is an important point, because it shows that she has the energy and drive to survive in the political sphere. And as the saying goes "If you want something done, ask a busy woman".

Cloudwalking Owl · Why Run For The NDP

Because Ms. Jahangir is so motivated by concern about the health system, I decided to "fact check" her. 

First, I tried to find out the percentages of full versus part-time work for Canadian nurses, but they were hard to find. The best I could get was a 2019 study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information that included numbers in it's break down by province---but they didn't have a nation-wide number. Here's the info for Ontario:

 

As you can see, only 67.5% of Registered Nurses and 55.6% of Licensed Practical Nurses are full time---the rest may be working 40 or more hours a week, but that would either involve working at several institutions at the same time, or, getting more hours but still being paid with a lower rate of pay plus no benefits (ie: payment into a pension plan). And, as we learned with our Long Term Care facilities, it is a really bad idea to have people working part time at different institutions during a pandemic. 

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I put a lot of work into doing interviews, editing them, fact-checking what I'm told, and, writing down the results. I also incur expenses for things like publishing the sound files on line, and, subscribe to a news rating service, an on-line library, and, several news sources. If you like what I write and you can afford it, why not subscribe? It's easy to do through Patreon and Pay Pal.

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As for the cost of drugs, comparing them across countries is really complex. Luckily I found a Rand Corporation study from 2021 that tried to do this by comparing US wholesale drug prices with those of several other nations---including Canada. Here are three graphs that show their findings.

 

The first thing to understand about these graphs is that the numbers for each country are a percentage of the US cost for a basket of drugs. That means if a drug costs $100 in America and the graph lists it at 200% of what the same thing costs in Canada, that means that it costs $50 here. That means, paradoxically, the higher the number is on the top of the individual country's bar, the less it costs in real terms.

The three graphs split the market into generics, patented brand names, and, the two types of drugs averaged out. In the US, copyright drugs are significantly higher priced than in any other country. But at the same time, generics seem to be cheaper there than in any other "developed" country. (I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if India produces cheaper generics.) The additional prices for patented drugs outweighs the savings on generics, though. Which means the total average drug costs in the US are more than anywhere else. 

Also, please note that these numbers are based on wholesale prices, not retail. That means that there may actually be a difference based on what sort of mark-ups are done in the actual pharmacy.

Once you understand the above points, you see that our prices in Canada are higher than France, Italy, and, the UK for all three aggregated groups of drugs. Moreover, Canada also pays more on average than the entire list of 33 nations that the Rand study used to base their study on. (The average of the entire list is the last bar labelled "All Countries".) It appears that drug prices are yet another example where we look great compared to our neighbours South of the border, but not so when compared to Europe. 

And, of course, we all know that Canada doesn't have a universal socialized prescribed medicine system. There are, however, several complicated "work-arounds" that exist to offer drug coverage to different segments of the population based on need. Rather than try to explain this, I'll just insert the following YouTube video produced by the Oncology Drug Access Navigators of Ontario (ODAN). This appears to me to be a non-profit that helps people with cancer navigate the complex bureaucracy which gives financial assistance to those who need it. (Of course, you have to wonder about how useful a government assistance program really is, if a non-profit comes into existence just to help people take advantage of the program. Couldn't the bureaucracy do a better job of helping people access the program?)

The above information brings together the two halves of a public health system. First, prices have to be controlled---which is where the "single-payer" side of our medical services comes into play. That is the process where the federal government tells medical providers what they are and are not allowed to charge for any given procedure. This prevents the doctors and hospitals from bankrupting OHIP. Canada is failing on that front because drug companies are charging more here than they do in other countries with single-payer prescription drug systems.

The second part is the government program that pays the costs of patients. A national drug policy would be able to bring in the cost savings of the single payer system, which would then allow the government to cover everyone through a universal system---instead of the current fragmented system where some folks have drugs covered by company benefits, others get it through a means-tested, or, age-based system, and, the folks who pay out of their own pockets. Without a government payment system, there are people who don't have either a private or government insurance program and find they cannot afford to buy the medicine that a doctor prescribes.

All of this is just to say that Ms. Jahangir's experience as a nurse seems to be pretty much spot-on with regard to nursing and drugs. 

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I've gotten into this in some detail because I think it's really important to understand people's motivation when they get into politics. At one time I thought that it was important for an MP to have as wide-ranging a view of issues as possible. That's because the government of Canada has look out for the interests of everyone on every issue. That invariably means that conflicts will arise between people's particular concerns. 

In my case, in the past I've been skeptical of the NDP because I suspected that when push comes to shove they were more interested in issues like healthcare than the environment---and would always trade concern over climate change off in order to get something like a national drug plan. And that's why I have a history of supporting the Green Party. (That's no secret if you know anything about me.)

But as I've gotten older, I have come to the conclusion that we all have different life experiences and it's asking too much to expect people to become dispassionate, logic-slingers like Data or Spock from Star Trek. Instead, I think it's a good thing for candidates to have their own passions and to let them out for everyone to see. Then voters will have a good idea about who they are voting for, and why. When the people who win end up in caucus and Parliament-as-a-whole, then they are going to have to "fight it out" to see what ends up being a priority.

I'm still concerned because people have a very strong bias towards what they've personally experienced in their lives. But if someone's passion is something I have lots of sympathy towards, like socialized medicine, I'll just have to hope that he or she will still have some room to support other issues too. Indeed, without broad and deep support for environmental issues, there's little sense in electing people who focus on the environment because the other parties and the general public will just sabotage all efforts at getting something done. Big issues require broad consensus to solve---.   

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This article has run on and I still have lots more to write about Aisha's experiences as a candidate, so I'll save it for the next instalment. Until then, get your shot, keep your distance, and, wear a mask. The virus is still out there and you can still get it and spread it even if you are fully vaccinated (everything is a question of percentages). Take care, things can still fall apart---look at the UK and Holland, if you want to see how badly.

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