The Gasoline Tax Scam

Recently the Conservative government decided to help ease Ontario's problem with inflation by temporarily cutting the gasoline tax by 5.7 cents per liter. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about this with readers.

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First of all, let's look at how much gasoline costs have risen. Here's a bar graph that shows average Canadian gasoline price per liter that comes from the Trading Economics website. It's about par for the course that I could find in the mainstream media. 

The first thing to pay attention to is a subtle way the graph has been drawn in order to mislead readers. Take a look at the August 2021 bar. (It has the number "1.1" on top of it.) Now look at the June 2022 bar. (The last one, with 1.6 next to it.) Using a ruler to measure the bars on the screen in front of me, I see the former bar as being 150 millimeters tall and the latter as 900mm. Looking at their relative size suggests to the unconscious mind that in June 2022 gas cost six times as it did in August 2021. The fact of the matter, however, is that it only costs 45% more. This is an example in support of the idea that "there are lies, damn lies, and, statistics".

I've gone through statistics Canada data and created my own bar graph that will hopefully convey a more accurate picture of what's going on. 

The first thing to notice between my graph and the other is that my bars are representative of the total price of petroleum distillate whereas the ones from the other graph are designed to "sex up" the story, hopefully get it repeated on FaceBook, leading to more clicks on ads, and, therefore more profitable. (Don't forget, mainstream news is a business, geared towards making money, and, it does so by being entertaining---which includes stoking anger and fear---instead of informative.)

Beyond using a non-misleading bar size, I've increased the sample size from one year to ten. The idea is that it's important to put the present price increases into a larger context. Let me walk readers through my graph to illustrate this point.

Each bar in both graphs represent a month's average gasoline price. If you look at the first graph, you will see that it ends at June of 2022 and the one I made from Statistics Canada data goes to May 2022. The lowest price for the first chart is ten bars back from the end. Counting nine bars back from the end of my chart will take the view to the same place (it's bar number 77). If you go back another 12 months, you will find the lowest gasoline price in the last ten years (that's bar 65 or April 2020 when it was at $79.1/liter).  

The larger sample size illustrates that markets tend to bounce around. Sometimes things cost more, sometimes less. Right now the market is trying to correct itself from the pandemic (which isn't really even over yet) at the same time that the world's largest oil producer is under an embargo because it invaded it's neighbour. Surprise, surprise, right now the cost of gasoline is going up!

Once we've gained a little more perspective on the price increase, let's think about how much of an impact that 5.7 cents/liter gas tax has on the overall cost. If gasoline now costs as much as $2.00/liter, removing the tax is only 2.85% of the total cost. I might be a grump, but if something goes up by 45% removing a tax that only ads 2.85% to the price doesn't really help all that much.

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The next issue to think about is what inflation means for people. To understand this point, we need to understand the difference between "elastic" and "inelastic" demand. Elastic demands are ones that people can do without entirely or which can be satisfied by some sort of alternative produce. 

With regard to food costs, if the price of potato chips and soda pop goes up, people can just do without. If lettuce gets too expensive, you might find that cabbage is still affordable so you make coleslaw instead of Caesar salad.

Inelastic demand is the part of your consumption footprint that it's hard to do without. Both housing and transportation fit the bill---we have to have a place to live and the vast majority of Canadians live where they cannot walk or bike to wherever they need to be. And even if you wanted to find a cheaper place to live or way to get around, doing both requires a fair amount of long-term planning and may simply not be an immediate option no matter how much you would want them to be. 

But just because something is difficult doesn't mean that it's impossible. And this is especially true with regard to gasoline prices. It just requires a little forethought and long-term thinking. 

This is especially important with regard to transportation, because for the last few decades two contradictory trends have been working their way through the auto industry---ones that have a direct impact on the cost of gasoline. 

First of all, the energy efficiency of smaller cars has increased dramatically. Take a look at the first of three graphs I'm copying from a Conversation article. 

If you're having trouble seeing the numbers, click on the picture.

As you can see, between 2005 and 2013 there was a pretty substantial reduction in the liters of gasoline used to drive 100 kilometers (something like from 10 to 8, or 20%---that's the equivalent of a 20% reduction in the price of gasoline!) but this stalled and then started to go back up in 2015. What this means is that over the long haul, personal transportation is an elastic demand---you can cut the amount of gasoline you have to buy by choosing increasingly efficient types of vehicles. (I will ad the caveat however, that this only applies to people who have enough disposable income to pick and choose their ride. Poor people have to drive whatever second-hand car they can afford---which often means a gas-guzzler.)

Remember the "back-sliding" in fuel efficiency in the above graph that started in 2013? If you look at the next graph, you can see what caused it. (Hint, it had little to do with poor folks driving rust buckets.)

Even though trucks (which includes pickups, SUVs, and, vans in automotive discussions) have gotten more efficient than they used to be, they are inherently less efficient than cars. That means if a significant fraction of the population stop buying compact cars and switch to trucks, they are going to end up paying more at the filling station. And the difference between the two is going to be a LOT MORE than the 5.7 cents/liter tax the province levies.

So why have Canadians decided to buy gas-guzzling trucks instead of fuel-efficient compact cars? The simple answer is because they can afford it. The following graph shows the relationship between the cost of gasoline and the efficiency of the vehicles people drive. It's obvious that if the price of gasoline goes down, lots of people stop considering mileage when they purchase a vehicle, and, vice-versa. 

 

But that's just one part of the reason why people buy trucks. There's also a psychological issue at play. 

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Writing these articles takes a lot of time and effort. But I know that some people enjoy reading them enough to buy a subscription or toss something in the tip jar. If you can afford it, why not join them?  Paypal and Patreon make it easy to do. (Thanks Anthony for being so awesome!) And now you can also follow me on Substack---just look for Hulet's Backgrounder. 

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I grew up on a farm. We always had a pickup truck. My first paid gig as a kid involved growing sweet corn which my father took in the pickup to sell to a local grocery store. We used it to ship pigs to the slaughter house, move sand and gravel, the cement mixer and other tools, rubble, garbage, lumber, etc. It got dings, it got manure on it, it got scratched going down gravel roads and pushing through the bush on trails. It got muddy or dusty when I drove it out onto fields loaded with fertilizer. It worked just as hard as we did. But when we went to visit family or do something else non-work related, we drove the Chevy Chevelle (I know, that was a "muscle car" instead of a compact, but we bought it second-hand and my older brother was involved in the purchase.)

I am absolutely amazed at the extremely expensive, "tricked-out" pickups I see on the streets of Guelph. These aren't working trucks---they're fashion statements. Last week I saw one of these things drive over the onions in my boulevard garden because the driver was so far above ground that he lost track of where his wheels were. The beast looked something like the truck below.

The jpg file is actually labelled Cool Truck-Sexy Truck. (Give me a break!)

Not only did the vanity prop that crushed my chives and walking onions look like it had never done a day's work in it's life, it is also an inherently dangerous thing to drive. That's because---among other things---raising a truck like this pushes up the center of gravity (roll-overs on turns), lowers the ability of drivers to see around them (hence my crushed garden), and, towers over the "crumple zones" that are designed to protect other drivers in car crashes. And they get terrible gas mileage too.

So why exactly are people driving these ugly monstrosities? I cannot believe that it is for any other reason than because it projects the image of "masculinity" for people who can't think of anything more intelligent to waste their money on. This was driven home to me a few years ago when I saw a truck that had a set of fake testicles dangling from the trailer hitch.

The advert that went with this photo said these "truck nuts" cost $70.

What is going on here? I suspect that it's because a fraction of the population use trucks in the forlorn hope that some of the luster of the "macho red-neck lifestyle" will rub off on them. If you think I'm pushing things too far, consider the following advert.

(Having spent at least part of my life doing the sort of things associated with these "truck tropes", I feel that it should go without saying that this is nostalgic nonsense. There's nothing "cool" about dangerous, hard, physical labour. It doesn't pay all that well and leads to osteoarthritis.)

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There's another aspect to this tax cut that I think needs to be shouted from the rooftops, but which I've never heard anyone mention in the mainstream press. There's an opportunity cost to any tax cut. 

Opportunity costs are what economists call any the things you can no longer do because you made a decision to do something else. So if you decide to take the kids to Disney Land and this costs $2000, that means you can't put that money into a fund to support them if they want to go to university. In the same way, if the government of Ontario decides to cut the gas tax for half the year, this means that they won't have that money to put into hiring more nurses for our hospital emergency departments.

Ontario has a tradition of using gasoline tax revenue to fund public transit. In the 2021-2022 year, for example, Guelph received $3,247,990 from the province that was announced as coming from our gasoline taxes. (There was a one-time 'top up' from general revenue this year because of the decline in gas tax revenue due to the pandemic---but this wasn't to increase the amount paid, just to maintain it in the face of a shortfall because people were driving a lot less than usual that year.) In total, gas taxes funded provincial transit that year to the tune of $375.6 million.

This has been going on for a while. In the 2019-2020 year Guelph Transit received $3,150,233, and all the province's cities received $321.5 Million in 2014 and $332.9 million in 2015 . Please note, I am not saying that the provincial government is going to cut the amount of money it puts into public transit, only that it will have to cut what it funds somewhere. (If it just borrows the money, that too is another cut. That's because the current Ontario debt is around $400 billion, and the interest charges that the government had to pay on it in 2020 was $13.3 billion---the fourth largest item in the budget. And remember that the interest rates were very, very low in 2020. They are now going up, which will make that number grow---even if the province were to immediately stop all borrowing. This means that unless the govt stops cutting taxes and begins to increase them, it has to cut programs in order to service the debt.)

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I understand and sympathize with some poor schmuck who is trying to make a few bucks making deliveries for Amazon or one of the food delivery services. That's why I rarely use either. But I have zip, zero, nadda concern about people whining because it's costing them more to run their SUV, jacked-up pick-up truck, or, Winnebago. These are people who have heard and read about the risk we are all running of heading into a runaway climate catastrophe, who have enough disposable income to choose unnecessarily expensive vehicles, and, yet still choose to buy stupidly wasteful ones. These people made their choices, which suggest they were indifferent to the impact of those choices on other people, and, are now paying the price for their insensitive, crass decisions. Karma's a bitch---learn from it.    

What I find despicable (yup that's the right word) is that the Conservatives have decided that in the face of the real problems that poor people (ie: the poor slobs driving worn-out cars to deliver Uber Eats because they can't get a better gig) are having, they didn't come up with a targeted program to help these genuinely distressed people. Instead, they just threw away badly needed government revenue because of the symbolic effect it will have on the middle and upper income members of the province. I say symbolic, because it is so small that it will have pretty much no positive impact on any of them.

That's what happens when you elect a combination of people who make their decisions either on the basis of ideologically-based ignorance or opportunistic politics. Could someone tell me why there are so many people in this province who support these boobs?

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

Doug Ford, Elections Finance, and, the Notwithstanding Clause

I never thought that I'd be writing a column defending Doug Ford, but even a stopped watch is right twice a day. So here it goes---.

The media has been all a flutter recently over Ford's announcement that he intends to bring in the Notwithstanding Clause to resurrect Bill 254, or An Act to amend various Acts with respect to elections and members of the Assembly. All the other political parties are upset about this. But I've gone through and read the Elections Finances Act and on the face of it, I don't see anything terribly wrong with either Bill 254 or Ford's decision to bring it back to life from the judicial graveyard.

Could he actually be right?!!! Public Domain image c/o Wiki Commons.

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The key element that people are upset about is the "limits to free speech" that the Tories want to impose upon people. When I looked at the legislation, the key points that deal with this are an expansion of the ban on political advertising from six months to a full year before the fixed election date.

Frankly, I don't have a problem with this. One of the big differences between the Canadian and American electoral system is the shortness of our elections. Do we really want to get into a situation like the US where the moment you get sworn into office you have to start thinking about the next election? If we don't, then we need to have a ban on political advertising that is so long that no matter how effective it might be to influence human behaviour, it will all be totally forgotten by the time the writ is actually dropped. A year sounds just about right.

The second part is the move to limit the amount of money that can be spent on what's call third party advertising. Commentators have made a lot of noise about how this legislation is aimed directly at unions because of things like the following.

But reading the legislation it's clear that the same legislation that will "reel in" Working Families Ontario will also do the same thing to groups like Ontario Proud. And that strikes me as a totally unmitigated good.

I don't think that either the judge, media pundits, or, the opposition parties have really thought through how damaging this sort of third party advertising can be to a democracy. That's because as a general rule political parties tend to be moderating influences on hysteria. For example, hard as it may seem for some of us to believe, Ford has actually purged a couple extremist wingnuts from the PC caucus. 

Here's one, Belinda Karahalios, in question period asking a question that supports the idea that the Covid pandemic is being used to promote a sinister socialist plot. 

And here's another. Randy Hillier has become something of a hero for the anti-lockdown types. Here he is at a stupid ruckus in Peterborough.

Third party advertising dramatically weakens the power of the political parties, because it gives people with no responsibility to anyone but themselves the ability to radicalize citizens. In contrast, political parties are "big tents" with all sorts of different points of view. That means the advertising they support needs to have some sort of broad-ranging appeal if the party is going to have any chance of forming a government. This mitigates against extremism. 

Consider the following two examples. 

I can remember---back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth---that the federal Conservatives under Kim Campbell aired an attack ad that focused on Jean Chretien's partial face paralysis. It went horribly, terribly wrong for them because many people thought it looked like the ads were attacking Chretien because of a minor disability. And because it was an official Progressive Conservative advertisement, the party was punished for airing it. Here's a CBC clip that talks about this incident.

In contrast, consider this third party advert supporting the Conservatives that was aired on line during the last provincial election. Please note, it is a LOT WORSE than focusing on Chretien's Bell's palsy. It is aimed at Kathleen Wynne---and is profoundly sexist and homophobic. And yet, because it was aired by a third party instead of the Tories, none of the sleaze stuck to Doug Ford or his candidates. 

If you put third party advertising on the Web and promote it through social media, the problem becomes far worse. That's because the sorts of folks who would have freaked about the following advert would probably have never seen it anyway because of the way the artificial intelligence isolates people into their own "filter bubbles"---which means this sort of sleaze is even harder to control without formal safeguards of the sort that Bill 254 puts into place.

Political parties with any scrap of self-interest (let alone decency) realize that they damage their brand if they directly associate themselves with this sort of awful public relations. That's why it is important that we not allow wealthy individuals to fund campaigns that whip people into a frenzy of hate while at the same time allowing the party they support to feign ignorance of what is going on. If they want to make a mess---they should have to wear it. As near as I can tell, that's what will happen under Bill 254.   

(The exceptions to this notion prove the rule. When Erin O'Toole took over the leadership of the federal conservatives he clearly stated that he wants to move the party away from things it has done in the past because they will never be able to form a government if they continue to be known as the party that voted against a resolution condemning Islamophobia, passed the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Practices Act, and, suggested during the 2015 election that they wanted the RCMP to set up a Barbaric Cultural Practices tip line. All of these were far from subtle "dog whistles" to the Islamophobes of Canada that the federal Tories are "their guys"---and in making these signals, they've pushed the party to the brink of irrelevance.)

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I'm a little annoyed with the legacy media and the opposition parties because I haven't seen the issues I raise in this article in anything I've read or heard. This is part of why I publish "The Guelph-Back-Grounder". It's a lot of work though, and like everyone else I can use a bit more money than I already have. So if you can afford it, why not subscribe through Patreon or Pay Pal?

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This feeds into another complaint raised about Bill 254. People are concerned about increases to the amount of money individuals can donate to official campaigns. While I'm not a great fan of this sort of thing, I'm not too upset that wealthy people can donate $3,300 to the party and the same amount to a Constituency Association or campaign every year. I did gag when I read that candidates can donate $10,000 of their own money to their campaigns and $50,000 for a party leadership bid. But I am reconciled to the idea that I will never get all I want from just about anything. 

Moreover, we need to remember how much of our elections are financed by tax payer's money. 

• Corporate and Union money is banned. 
• There is a subsidy based upon the votes a party receives at the rate 63 cents for every vote cast.
• There is a substantive tax rebate for donations to a party.
  
• 75 per cent on the first $427 of donations in 2021
• 50 per cent on the portion of your donation between $427 and $1,423 in 2021
• 33.33 per cent on the portion between $1,423 and $3,238 in 2021.
•  If a candidate gets over 5% of the vote, the Constituency Association gets back 20% of what was spent in the election plus 20% of the maximum that it could have spent under the rules.

Readers might be tempted to think that it would be more democratic if donation limits were kept low and you had to raise your money in small individual amounts from lots of individuals. Unfortunately, parties have found that the best way to do it that way is by scaring the bejesus out of people. And this has gone a long way to create the dangerous polarization we already see. (I wrote one of my most popular articles on this subject: Fundraising is Making Us Angry.) I'm not so sure that we really want to encourage the political parties to raise an even higher fraction of their money through "rage giving".

There are a lot of other things in the bill---such as new significant fines levied against people who break the rules. But I think the above is enough to show that I think Ford has a good argument. Of course, all of my opinions are provisional and I'm willing to listen to good reasoned, factual opinions that differ.

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One thing that doesn't butter my parsnips at all are the dire warnings about the use of the Notwithstanding Clause, or, Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As of writing this article, I have yet to see any pundit or reporter explain exactly how this works. I suspect that that's because if the average reader knew it, they'd be a lot less vulnerable to the out-cry that 'the sky is falling'. 

The first thing to understand is that our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is interpreted by judges, and judges are fallible human beings. They make mistakes. If you look South of the border, where judicial review of laws based on a charter of rights has existed far, far longer than here, you will find numerous examples where the Supreme Court has rendered terrible judgements. For example, it recently ruled that states could refuse the medicaid expansion promised under Obamacare. This basically hamstrung the program in a great many Republican states and denied millions of people access to health insurance.

Because the US has no Notwithstanding Clause, there wasn't a lot Obama could do. In contrast, if this had happened here, Trudeau could have used Section 33 to temporarily over-rule the Court and force states to insure the poor. And after a few years of having health insurance, the odds are that the millions affected would have been willing to do whatever necessary to ensure that their coverage wouldn't be taken away. Moreover, with the threat of a Notwithstanding Clause hanging over their heads, the odds are the Supreme Court wouldn't have made such a ridiculous decision in the first place.  

Note that word "temporarily" in the above paragraph. Section 33 doesn't give Ford the right to just ignore the Charter, he can only postpone the judge's ruling. At that point there is the option of invoking the clause to temporarily ignore the ruling again, for another five years, and, so-on. This can go on indefinitely until a new government decides to give up, finds a work around, or, some new development renders the judicial ruling irrelevant.

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One of the ideas I hear from the mainstream media is that if Ontario uses Section 33 once, it will be so much easier to do the next time that the Charter will becomes fundamentally worthless. This is the old "slippery slope" argument. Here's a little secret that I will share with you: the slippery slope argument is invalid. 

Human beings and institutions have the ability to set limits on how often something gets used. How much do you believe in the following slippery slope arguments?

• once you try smoking cannabis you've "opened the gate" to harder drugs, like heroin
• if we legalize gay marriage, what's next? People marrying their dogs? sex dolls?
• once you stop doing what the church says, eventually all sense of right and wrong disappears

These are all slippery slope arguments---and they are idiotic. Drinking a glass of water doesn't lead to drowning. And using the notwithstanding clause doesn't lead to North Korea. 

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

Arithmetic Progression Thinking Versus Geometric Progression Thinking

I recently heard to an epidemiologist talking about the recent decision by the Ontario government to go back into some form of lock-down because of spiking COVID-19 variant infections. He mentioned that he thought the reason why Ford waited too long is simply because so many people have a hard time understanding geometric progressions. In effect, the only way to deal with things like this epidemic is by taking actions that would seem to a lot of people to be "over-reacting". 

As I see it, there are two very important things working here. First of all, people need to understand that there are two very, very different ways that a natural process can advance: arithmetic progression, and, geometric progression. In a nutshell, an arithmetic progression is one where a quantity is built by adding a fixed amount over and over again:  [{(A+X)+X}+X]+X and so on. A practical example of this would be someone who is using a shovel to dig a hole in the ground. The pile of dirt grows only one shovel-full at a time. 

In contrast, a geometric progression is one where the amount that is added in each iteration changes based on the amount of the previous one. Let's use the example of cats having kittens. If one mother cat has a litter of six kittens and three of them are females, and each of them has three female kittens the next year, and those kittens grow up and have three females the year after, and this continues forever, we'd be tripling the population of female cats every year: (A+Ax3)+(4Ax3)+(12Ax3)+(36Ax3)+(108Ax3) and so on. It should be obvious that if all cats are allowed to reproduce and there isn't a massive "cull" of kittens (like there is in the wild), we could quickly end up with far, far, far too many cats. This is why all humane societies have "spay your cat" programs. 

Sure, they're cute. But there can be too much of a good thing---.

Here's a pretty good video that explains geometric progression.

Well, what's the problem then? What this article is about is the fact that many people---like the king who played chess with Krishna---simply don't understand the implications of geometric progressions. 

I sometimes meet people who don't understand how interest compounds on debt---which is another example of the phenomenon. Years ago I met someone who'd gotten an interest-free home mortgage from a wealthy uncle and he didn't seem to understand what a tremendous thing this was. This was back about 25 years ago, and at that time the five year fixed mortgage rate was something like 10%. If that sounds freakishly high, how about we do a very simple calculation at less than that, 7%, over 30 years.

I went to one of those on-line mortgage calculators and plugged in the following info:

• $300,000 home
• $20,000 down payment
• 30 year fixed rate
• 7% interest

The results were a monthly payment of $2,000 and total interest paid out over 30 years came to $260,000. At zero % interest, that changes to $1200/month and, of course, zero total interest.

(This is a classic example of how "inter-generational wealth" has a tremendous impact on the lives of middle and upper class people.)

As I hope people now realize, the result of exponential growth can be a lot more than people intuitively realize---like the interest on their mortgage being almost as much as what they paid for their house, or, a geometric progression of rice grains on a chess board can eat up the entire world's food supply. 

There's one more thing that counters people's intuitive thinking: where the biggest hit kicks in. Consider the chessboard and rice example. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't realize that three quarters of the entire amount of rice that gets used up happens on the last two squares. That's because the second last square is double what came before, and the last square is double that. This means that the time for the Raja to kick over the board and have the chess master sent to the dungeon is when the progression is still just a few grains of rice on a square. By waiting until what is happening becomes obvious to everyone, it's just about too late to avoid bankrupting the kingdom.

It's exactly the same thing with the pandemic. If we wait until it is immediately obvious that the virus is getting out of control, it will totally engulf the province. That means that in order to avoid a catastrophe, the province needs to look like it is totally "over-reacting". That's just intrinsic to the nature of geometric progression.

And that's the problem with Doug Ford---as suggested by the unnamed scientist I mentioned in the beginning. He is obviously "going with his gut", and it is telling him that if he shuts down the province while there is still room in ICUs and only a few thousand people getting the bug every day, he's wildly over-reacting . But the truth is, by waiting so long, he is really wildly "under-reacting"---and this will create a lot of unnecessary misery.

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I was surprised to see that I've been putting out this news blog since 2016. Time seems to go by faster as I age---which is far from a novel observation. But it is a long time to be putting out stories on a regular basis. If you think these posts are useful---and you can afford it---why not subscribe? You get to decide how much you pay every month, and it's easy to do through Patreon and Pay Pal.

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It's always hard to ascribe motivations to public figures simply because you never really know what is going on between their ears. That's why many groups will immediately censor an individual for suggesting a reason why a person does a certain thing. But I'm my own person and sometimes why people do what they do is key to the story---and I think that this is one of those instances. 

Watching the entire Ford saga from Toronto city Council to becoming the Premier I couldn't help but think that this is a classic example of someone who thinks he knows better than all those damn "pointy-headed experts".  But to give the man his due, he is a successful politician who got elected Premier. That means he has his "finger on the pulse" of a lot of citizens in this province. More's the pity.

On one level I "get" what is going on here. I sometimes do calculations based on my research that produce results that I feel "in my gut" can't possibly be true. One example is a story I wrote about the real cost of "free" parking. I sweated over various calculations---including the one that suggests that that in Guelph the cost of below-ground parking adds something like $66,000 to the cost of the average condominium. I still feel a little weird using that number, but whenever I look at the calculations I can't find any mistakes.  

But I think the difference between myself and someone like the Premier (I'm speculating here) is that I have learned to "suck it up" and live with the anxiety that I feel when my "gut instinct" conflicts with the information I see before me. I don't think the Premier worries about stuff like this. Instead I can only assume he is used to following his instincts and just bullies anyone who disagrees with him until they give up trying to change his mind. Unfortunately, he's the Premier of the province and we all have to live with the results of way his brain works.

I want to explore this issue in a little more detail, but this post is already long enough. Next week I hope to expand on the issue of why some people see the world so differently than others. 

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Moreover I say unto you, we have to deal with the Climate Emergency!

Mike Schreiner Talks about Fear, Hope, Hard Truths, and, the Conservative Leadership Race

Mike doing the photogenic thing. Photo by Jason Hendriks c/o the Danforth Greens.
Used under the "Fair Use" copyright provision

Hulet: The next question is a bit philosophical, but that's how I roll. Let me set this up.

Years ago, after the 9/11 attacks I was asked to be part of a panel discussion and I was kinda horrified to hear one of the other panelists---a cabinet minister---go on and on about how totally freaked-out she was by the whole thing.

This gets me thinking about how you, as a politician---and Dao knows anything's possible nowadays---how do you balance showing your concern and sympathy while at the same time trying to be a force for stability and encouraging people not to give into their fears?

I'm asking this because after 9/11 almost all the politicians told us to panic as much as possible. Then our foreign policy turned our nations into wounded bears that proceeded to wreak havoc around the world. It seemed almost that you weren't patriotic or sympathetic to victims if you didn't act like the sky was falling. But that is exactly what the terrorists wanted governments to do.

I'd like to know if you wrestle with this question. If so, how do you handle it?

Schreiner: I've had to deal with this issue on something of a smaller scale.

Hulet: Like the Incel guy driving down that sidewalk in Toronto to kill women.

Schreiner: Yeah, yeah.

I think one of the first speeches I gave at Queen's Park was after the Danforth shooting. That happened right after we started sitting. 

What I try to do is balance empathy, condolences, grieving. Acknowledging the public trauma and the need to grieve with a call to unity, coming together and not using the event as an opportunity to divide or score political points. I think by taking that approach I've got a lot of positive feedback from people across the political spectrum---even from people who disagree with me on policy issues---even on the particular policies associated with the tragic event that happened. 

I think at some level we're motivated by either fear or hope. I tend to usually land on the side of hope because I think that those who follow fear tend to divide and conquer, or, to energize and mobilize things like the war machine. Those that land on the side of hope and resilience can overcome and develop solidarity. 

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Hulet: How willing are you to tell people something that they don't want to hear?

Schreiner: I have no problem doing that. Sometimes it's led to some of my most meaningful moments with people.

I'll give you two concrete examples. 

One of the very first events in the provincial campaign last spring was when the Guelph District Realtor's Association had all four candidates in to speak. I laid it on the line that I was adamantly opposed to opening up the Green Belt for development---period.

I knew that one of OREA's (the Ontario Real Estate Association) top priorities was opening up the Green Belt for development. Their argument is that the housing affordability problem is a supply issue driven by not having enough access to green space for new housing. All the reports I've seen argue that that is categorically false. I stated the facts. I stated my position. And I said the other ways that I'd support their industry and the important role realtors play in our society. Because they do pay a critically important role.

If you think about it, some of the people who support the most community events are realtors because they have a vested interest in the vitality, vibrancy and live-ability of a community. So I wanted to recognize all of that but I wanted to be really clear and honest. 

After that one of the board members of OREA---who wasn't from Guelph---came up to me afterwards and said "You know what. I was blown away by your speech and I was particularly impressed by your honesty, lack of bullshit, total transparency. When you  disagreed, you stated your case very effectively. I'm going back to OREA and say that maybe we should rethink our position on opening the Green Belt for development." 

At the very least I think it impressed one person because OREA never changed it's position. Which is okay because later when I was our MPP when I spoke to OREA I made the exact same case to the entire organization---over a thousand people were in the room. 

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I looked into OREA's website and I couldn't see per se anything that boldly said that the organization was interested in opening up the Green Belt for development. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't pushing that agenda, just that they were being careful about what they said in public. I did look through their submission to the 2019 "Housing Supply Action Plan", which was sub-titled A BOLD PLAN TO SAVE THE DREAM OF HOME OWNERSHIP IN ONTARIO. On page 24 it suggests that Ontario should "remove the straight-jacket of the 'one size fits all' growth plan".

This section goes on to add gems like the following:

Right now, that growth plan says that almost the entire GTA has got to look like Younge and Eglinton, the (previous government) has really put municipalities in a planning straightjacket. 

OREA CEO Tim Hudak, March 2017 

All of the GTA is supposed to look like this? Younge and Engliton in Toronto.
Photo by BradBeattie, c/o Wiki Commons.

It's hard to understand what OREA really wants, however, because while the above would seem to imply that they are opposed to high-intensity housing, it also has a policy of supporting what they call "as-of-right zoning". What this means is that they want the zoning around transit nodes (subway stops in Toronto, bus express lanes---like Gordon Street in Guelph) to be changed to allow intensification.

Over 30% of the space surrounding Ontario’s major transit hubs are predominately single-family homes with the capacity for up to 4 million new housing units, which, if developed, could support the expected population growth of the Province for the next 24 years (Ryerson CUR, 2019).

A bold decision to mandate as-of-right zoning along provincial transit hubs will not only build enough homes to satisfy Ontario’s needs for a generation, it will keep thousands of cars off our road and support our low-carbon transit systems.

A Bold Plan, p-10 

So they don't want to have places in the GTA looking like the corner of Younge and Eglinton, but on the other hand they want to change the zoning on areas where single family homes currently exist so developers can build housing for up to 4 million new units? I suspect that like any large organization, different members of OREA believe different things. Also, call me a cynic, but I suspect that what developers---and possibly at least some of the members of OREA---say in private to politicians is different from what they say in public.

One thing I have found, however, is a quote from the CEO of OREA---Tim Hudak (yeah, that Tim Hudak, past leader of the Ontario Conservatives)---talking about the "damage" the Green Belt has done to housing affordability.

“But in the Toronto area, the government’s created its own artificial barriers that are spiking prices,” he said. “So if we don’t address that, then I do worry that young people won’t be able to find a home of their own, and secondly, it will slow down economic activity.”

And, of course, there was Doug Ford's infamous statement to a select group of home builders during the last election. One can only suspect that if there hadn't been such a storm of outrage leveled against him at the time, OREA's website might have posted something a little less diplomatic on the issue.

I'm on the record as being in favour of loosening some municipal zoning regulations to allow more high intensity housing, so I am receptive to some of the OREA argument. But I don't think that more green field development is what's needed. So kudos to Mike Schreiner for standing up for the Green Belt at meetings where the public might not have been able to listen in.

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More recently I spoke to the Ontario Police Association and explained to them why I don't support carding. You could hear a pin drop in the room when I said that. Afterwards I had a lot of police officers come up and say that they totally disagree with me but they had more consideration for me as a politician than any other they'd met because no one had ever come into that room and just so straight-forwardly tell them something that they knew they disagreed with. I stated my case and that's led to some really productive conversations. 

I have to give the Police Association of Ontario---and their President Bruce Chapman in

Bruce Chapman, Twitter photo.
Fair Use copyright provision.

particular---tons and tons of credit because that led to lots of productive conversations about how we can improve policing and how we can particularly improve the community relationship. You know: issues around race, discrimination, profiling and things like that. 

And I realize that those are bigger issues in places like Toronto. But these issues are important in Guelph too. By having an honest conversation about it, this has led to additional conversations about other issues---which has led to mutual respect and more and better and deeper understanding of the challenges that police face, that I face as a politician, that members of the community face, that people who feel that they are being targeted face.

Sometimes I think as a society we're afraid to have those conversations but I think it's essential we have those sorts of conversations and I think that is part of what leadership is all about. 

&&&&

First off, let's see what a police "card" looks like. I couldn't find an example of what's called a "Toronto Police Services 306 Form", but I did manage to get an image of a Hamilton Police card. From what I've read, it is almost a exact copy---and it does have those onerous questions that people who've been "carded" complain about.

Sorry about the quality. This is the best image I could find. Photo from
CBC's Hamilton Police carding form is 'almost a carbon copy' of Toronto's.
Used under the Copyright Act's "Fair Use" provision.

If you are having a hard time seeing it (click on the image for a bigger version), the two questions that people find most annoying are "Gang/Club Description", and, "Parents: Divorced/Separated". The reasons why these are annoying: if an officer decides that someone is a member of a specific gang it could only be based on his own personal judgement/bias because street gangs don't wear uniforms and don't issue identity cards. And the second question seems to imply that anyone raised by a single parent is "damaged goods" and needs extra careful scrutiny.

This information is tremendously important because the people who design and manage security databases often don't put enough info in the database to let front line staff know enough to make a good "judgement call" of the relative danger that the particular person in front of them offers to society at large. As a Global News story by Patrick Cain about the complexity of erasing simple possession cannabis convictions pointed out,

The problem is that while police forces can enter the type of drug someone is charged with possessing into data which is sent to the RCMP, they don’t have to and often don’t, the force told Global News last May. So a record can show whether someone has a record for possessing an illegal drug, but not necessarily which one.

As well, someone found with a small amount of pot could be charged under one of two sections of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, one of which relates to marijuana specifically, and one of which is more generic.

What this could mean to a customs officer is that someone who is in front of them and that red flag for "possession" could mean heroin, crystal meth, fentanyl, or whatever. In addition, add a little paranoia about "maybe this minor charge was the result of a plea deal", and crossing the boarder becomes a royal pain in the butt for the rest of a person's life. 

Moreover, as another story  by Cain on the same subject points out,

Once data crosses the border, Canada permanently loses control over it, says immigration lawyer Guidy Mamann.

“Once the Americans have that information, they have that information. How is it going to be erased on the American side? You can erase it on the Canadian side, but that data has already been sent over.”

I also often seems that the people who design the databases simply haven't really thought about how to remove someone who has been put on it by mistake. For example, consider the case of a six year old Toronto resident who ended up on a no-fly list.

Once you are on a list, you can get stigmatized for life. And this has been going on for a very long time. I once met a guy on a train in the US who said that he'd given up on travelling to Canada because he'd been arrested while taking part in a protest against the Vietnam war---ie: 50 years ago---and gotten charged with something that put him on a list that was shared with Canada Customs. As a result, he said that every time he crossed the border he ended-up being hassled for hours. Another fellow I know made the mistake as a teenager of trying to cross the boarder into Canada for an afternoon with less money in his pocket than the Boarder Guards deemed sufficient---he gets such a hassle now as a middle-aged man that he's also given up coming to the "True North strong and free".

And don't think that this is just a question of inconvenience. Consider the case of Maher Arar who got onto a list because he talked to someone that the RCMP were watching and an FBI agent said that Arar had been identified by Omar Khadr while in Afghanistan. (Arar was actually in North America and under surveillance by the RCMP at that time.)  The result was him being kidnapped by American security officials and dragged off to Syria to be tortured. (Totally illegal and unconstitutional---buy hey, that's how America rolled in those days. This is why politicians shouldn't scream that the sky is falling whenever there's a terrorist attack.) 

If you really want to get all "sci-fi" about this, consider something called "predictive policing". What this is is a high tech version of the old movie trope of a detective making up a map where he identifies crimes with pins and then uses it to predict where the malefactor will "strike next". In effect, data is put into an artificial intelligence program and it spits out suggestions about where police should be concentrated. In and of itself, this is a pretty good idea. But, of course, a problem arises if the data that it works with comes from the same people who put a 6 year old on a no-fly list and don't seem to have developed a way to take him off it. Here's a rather long YouTube video (13 minutes) from Wired that discusses the key issues in some detail.

None of this is to say that our police and intelligence agencies shouldn't be collecting information and sharing it. We live in a world where a lot of crazy dangerous technology is floating around and we do have a very small, but unfortunately significant percentage of the population want to do serious harm to their fellow citizens. But the people managing the databases have to seriously "up their game" if they want to have the confidence of ordinary people. It's simply ridiculous in this day-and-age to have extremely vague charges put on databases where information that's found to be wrong cannot be purged. And the information has to be better sourced that a beat cop's assumptions about someone else he really knows absolutely nothing about.

So again, kudos to Schreiner for taking a hard stance about carding even in venues where the audience thinks that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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Hulet: This is kind of an "inside baseball" question. What does the election Doug Ford to lead the Conservative party say? Are there any lessons from this for the other parties---in the way that they choose their leaders?

Schreiner:  [Schreiner laughs]

Yeah. Maybe not have such a complicated voting system. One that allows somebody who doesn't get the most votes elected leader. That would be one thing.

Hulet: They have a transferable vote system---.

Schreiner: Yeah, but it is also weighted by riding too. 

Hulet: Oh, okay!

Schreiner: It was even more complicated than STV (Single Transferable Vote)---way more complicated than STV.

What delivered him [Ford] the leadership wasn't STV, it was the way in

Christine Elliot should have been
Conservative leader?
Photo by Jwiki2014, c/o Wiki Commons 

which the ridings distribution worked. STV actually led to Christine Elliott getting the most votes. But because of the way they do the weighting of the ridings---the distribution of the votes per riding---it's more of an Electoral College situation. Kind of like what happened in the US with Clinton getting more votes than Trump yet still losing.

Hulet: So in some Conservative Riding Associations an individual's vote is worth more than one in another?

Schreiner: Yeah. It comes down to how they do the weighting. I don't know how the formula works. Every time I've tried to read about it, it seems incredibly complicated.

So one lesson to be learned is to have a fair voting system!

Patrick Brown, past Tory leader.
Photo by Laurel L. Russwurm,
c/o Wiki Commons.

Number two is---I don't have a solution for this one yet---I haven't thought about it as hard because it doesn't affect the Green party yet. And this also goes back to how Patrick Brown was elected to lead the Conservatives---. 

We elect a leader by who can sell the most party memberships. Not by who has the best policies, or who has the most charisma, or who is the best campaigner, etc. 

Hulet: Or even who has worked the hardest---.

Schreiner:  [Schreiner laughs]

Or even who has worked the hardest for the party!

It's just who sells the most memberships. That is a horrible way of electing a leader. I don't care which party it is. So it's something that I should probably think about for my own party. 

Somehow we have to change the way we elect party leaders in this country. Doing it through selling memberships leads to all sorts of problems. The Conservatives are still trying to deal with all sorts of problems---bogus memberships, phantom memberships---around Patrick Brown winning the leadership---let alone Doug Ford!

On a broader level the takedown of Patrick Brown and the election of Doug For has shifted the debate we had on climate action in such a substantive way that it makes me wonder what else is at play, because I know there was a huge "axe the tax", anti-carbon tax, anti-climate agenda that led to getting rid of Patrick Brown and replacing him with Doug Ford. That's completely changed the national conversation on climate action, and potentially set Canada back another decade. Which at this point would be too late to prevent serious climate damage.

So the leadership race has had significant implications not only for politics in Canada but public policy and particularly climate policy.

Hulet: Sometimes it's like you are watching a still pond and then you notice that there are these big ripples and you wonder what is happening under the surface.

Schreiner: Yeah.

&&&&

The first issue that Schreiner is identifying is that the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario does indeed elect it's leaders with something like the American Electoral College. By that I mean that there is a trade off between "representation by population" and "representation by geography" baked into their selection process.

The key issues come in Article 26 of the PC constitution. One part says

26.5 For the purpose of apportioning ballot results among the candidates, each Electoral District shall be assigned up to 100 Electoral Votes.

and another

26.6 Upon the completion of a ballot, the votes cast in each Electoral District shall be counted. If 100 or fewer votes have been cast, each candidate shall receive Electoral Votes equal to the number of votes cast for the candidate. Otherwise,each candidate shall receive Electoral Votes equivalent to the percentage of votes cast for the candidate.

What this means is that if you have 4 ridings and the vote count breaks down like this:

• 88 votes for Ford and 12 for Elliot out of 100
• 76 votes for Ford and 24 for Elliot out of 100
• 92 votes for Ford and 8 for Elliot out of 100
• 929 votes for Elliott and 71 for Ford out of 1000

This means that Ford gets 263 electoral votes and wins the leadership whereas Elliott only gets 137---even though Ford only got 327 popular votes and Elliott got 973. (This is the same way that Trump beat Clinton.)

Shortly after the leadership race the leadership candidate that came in a close second to Ford---Christine Elliott---refused to concede defeat. As Ipolitics reported on March 11 of 2018, her campaign argued that

“Thousands of members have been assigned to incorrect ridings” her statement read. “For example, Mount Hope, inside of Hamilton, had its members assigned to Chatham-Kent, several hundred kilometres away. Our scrutineers identified entire towns voting in the wrong riding. In a race this close, largely determined by geography, someone needs to stand up for these members. I will stand up for these members and plan to investigate the extent of this discrepancy.”

Elliot is making a very serious charge here. She is saying that votes in one riding were switched to another. Potentially it could have had tremendously important effect on the final electoral vote tally. But this is a place where the trail goes cold---I couldn't get any detailed info about the individual Constituency Association vote count and there was a declaration that an internal audit didn't show any problems that would have been enough to influence the final result.

I also tried to find some numbers for the relative number of paid-up Ontario Progressive Conservative members broken down by Constituency Association, but didn't find anything. It might be that this exists somewhere, but I suspect that it is info that the party wants to keep secret. There are practical reasons for this in that it would help other parties decide where to put their scarce resources when an election comes.

Having said that, the CBC's Eric Grenier was able to get some internal vote tallies unofficially from the leadership race and he used them to write a story. According to him

Ford won not because more members supported him or because he could win in more parts of the province. He won because he was more popular in his best regions of Ontario than Elliott was in hers.

In addition, the transferable voting system that the Tories use also meant that after the first round of voting, the votes for Tanya Granic Allen---a strong social conservative---went mostly to Ford. Her votes were also very strongly clustered geographically in the Windsor area, which meant that they provided a lot of electoral votes to Ford.

(Incidentally, mixing an electoral voting system with a transferable vote ballot would add in the complexity that boggles Schreiner's mind. Every time lower-tier candidates would get dropped off the ballots and their votes were transferred to the voter's second choice, the percentage of electoral votes would have to be re-calculated, which would change the total vote tallies for the front-runners still on the ballot. This would make counting ballots at the same time both a tedious and surprising thing to watch---especially in a tight race.)

It seems to me that geography-biased voting system in the Conservative constitution "put the thumb on the scales" in favour of Ford. If so, this is yet another example of Stalin's dictum that it is often more important how votes are counted than whether or not you have a vote at all.

But having said that, to be fair to the Conservative party, politics isn't just a matter of people---but also geography. Canada, in particular, has lots of different subcultures spread over a huge geographic area. That's why, for example, in the 2000 federal election the Bloc Quebecois won 38 seats even though it didn't even run a single candidate outside of Quebec. Conservative parties all over the world have a hard time winning seats in urban settings. For a very long time the Ontario Conservatives have had the same problem here---their rural Constituency Associations are strong and their urban ones weak.

The obvious way to fix this problem is to bring in urban voters and listen to their problems so the party can create policies that appeal to them. That is probably why the "Electoral Vote" system was written into the Conservative constitution. If voting was simply a question of one person one vote, the people in weak ridings would be drowned out by the people in strong ones. This would mean that a party with a strong rural membership would never seriously consider urban issues---which would stop it from growing in urban areas. But, as Schreiner and Elliott point out, this means that the system is vulnerable to "gaming" by a smart campaign that can mobilize votes to take over these weak Constituency Associations. I suspect that the Electoral Vote system makes the Conservative party uniquely vulnerable because it magnifies the inherent problems that come from the second issue that Schreiner identifies: electing leaders based on how many memberships they sell.

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Yeah, it's blue type time again. I'll be brief. I think that most people who read this blog can afford to give me a buck a month. And if I could get that, it would prove that local indie news can be a "thing". You can pay through Patreon or Paypal. 

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There is a second element to this, namely allowing leadership candidates to sign up new members so they can vote for them.

The basic problem that Schreiner identifies is that people who get signed up in a leadership campaign are often people who have very little knowledge of or loyalty to the party. This can be extremely damaging to the ability of a political party to "stick to it's ideals".

The Conservatives have a especially interesting history with regard to party membership. There's an article by Tom Blackwell in the National Post website that raises some interesting points. It relates that just before Patrick Brown's career as party leader struck an iceberg and sank with all hands, he bragged about the party having 200,000 members. That's a pretty impressive number when you compare it to the 20,000 odd members that the Liberals say that they have. (Please note that the Liberal Party of Ontario doesn't elect it's leaders through a direct vote by party members---they still use delegates from Constituency Associations at a provincial convention. That means that there isn't anywhere near the same pressure to sell memberships during leadership races.)

But when Vic Fedeli---the interim leader who replaced Brown---took over he said that that was an exaggerated number and the correct figure was really only a paltry 130,000. But Blackwell got another quote that made things look even more complicated:

In an email sent Sunday, Thomas DeGroot, the party executive’s chair of IT, tells Jag Badwal, party president, and Marc Marzotto, the membership chair, that, “as requested,” he had reviewed the memberships.

“I can confirm to you that during Patrick Brown’s tenure, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario’s membership has grown to over 200,000, to be exact it has grown to 234,066 members,” he says in the missive, obtained by the National Post.

This confusion over how many members the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario actually has is troubling. Membership is very easy to define---it is the people who have their dues currently paid up and who are in the central database. It should be very easy to give a reporter a precise number. It's not as if people have to go into a room filled with filing cabinets and pour over paper membership forms anymore. If a party doesn't have a good grasp of who is or is not a member, for example, then it just stands to reason that there are opportunities to "game" the voting system---especially if you are doing it on-line.

Once the leadership race was over and it was time for the general election, another membership issue raised it's head. This YouTube clip from the CBC was released by a source within the Conservative party to the Liberals. It seems to show Ford himself directly breaking an internal Conservative party rule governing nomination races.

The issue is that Ford and his team were pushing his favoured candidate in a specific riding by paying for their memberships.

Tom Blackwell, from the National Post, had another story about this and got a Conservative former MP to speak on the record about this nomination race:

Bernard Trottier, who served as the federal Conservative MP in the neighbouring Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding from 2011 to 2015, told the Post he came to the nomination meeting to support Surma but was dismayed by the flood of new members he saw. He confirmed that a number of buses were used, but said he had no direct knowledge that Ford paid for any of their memberships.

“It really bugs me when people go out and recruit what they call insta-members. You just know you’ll never see these people again,” he said. “I don’t know if there were cash payments for memberships. It was just my observation that at this nomination meeting there were a lot of people you knew were not dyed-in-the-wool members. They were insta-members and they were trucked in from various buildings and so on.”

Trottier said such problems are endemic in the nomination process and argued the provincial party should follow the example of the federal Conservatives and ban cash payments for membership. By requiring a credit card, the payment can be matched with the actual member.

“Somebody with a big roll of $10 bills can buy memberships. The best way to inoculate against that is … no cash for memberships.”

Of course, the "insta-members" that Trottier is talking about are with regards to a nomination race for a specific candidate for Queen's Park. But it is obviously also the sort of thing that can make a big difference in the race for party leadership. And that's exactly the point that Schreiner is making---and admits could be a problem for any political party, even the Greens. 

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Even if you don't sell memberships and bus in "insta-members" you can still get an uneasy feeling about the way leadership races get made by selling memberships. Should the leadership of a party go to an outsider who is famous? Or should a leader be famous because of the work he's done for the party? Doug Ford seems to have built his "brand" through his relationship with his brother, the "Ford Fest" barbecues, and, his outrageous persona. I suspect that a great many old time Conservative members are wondering right now about how they could go back to the days of Bill Davis, who's motto was "bland works".

Bill Davis, from Ontario Archives.
Reference code: G 17-43, #3-27.
Photographer unknown.

&&&&

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

Making Up Our Minds: Mind Your Language!

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

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Loaded Language

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

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

False Dichotomies

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

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

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

 

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

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

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Plastic Words

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

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

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

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

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

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

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