Party Politics: Part 5, Being a Party Leader, With Mike Schreiner

I wanted to talk to the leader of a political party to add some insight about what that job entails. Unfortunately, I understand that the major federal party leaders are far too busy to submit to the sort of long interviews that I like to do---even if they'd want to give a local news blogger a chance. The Green Party of Canada might have been an exception, but I didn't reach out to Annamie Paul because she is new to her job and, frankly, she's been suffering so much grief lately that I thought her experience wouldn't be terribly representative. So I decided to not even bother trying to find a Federal party leader to talk with. Luckily, the Ontario Green Party leader is in Guelph and he was willing to fill that void. 

As Lloyd Longfield mentioned in the last interview, Schreiner doesn't have a caucus to manage in Queen's Park. But he does have the experience of leading a party with members all across the province, so I think he will be able to offer some real insight into how a leader does his job. 

Mike Schreiner looking all "Leader-like". Image provided by his staff.

Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Of The Leader's Job Is It To Build Strong Riding Associations?

I raised the issue of building strong local Associations because one thing I've noticed over the years is that our modern media focuses almost exclusively on leaders while totally ignoring the organizations that sustain them. This is appallingly dangerous to democratic society. That's because an organizing strategy has evolved in response to this bias. 

What happens is someone manages to do successful stunts that draw the attention of the public. This used to happen through getting reporters to write something in a newspaper or broadcast on tv. Now, it happens through social media where "social influencers" develop followings who will send them money so the individual can then hire staff to create an organization to do their work. These staff members often have very little loyalty to a particular party and consider themselves hired guns that will work for whomever has money to pay them. They create the membership databases and the fundraising campaigns needed to sell memberships in a leadership contest. They also create the advertising campaigns that build support for their influencer leadership candidate.

I first saw this sort of thing happen when Elizabeth May took over the Green Party of Canada. For those of you who don't know, she never had anything at all to do with the Green Party until she decided to become it's leader. She was famous primarily because she came from a well-connected US family, had been involved in some high-profile environmental campaigns in the Atlantic provinces, worked as an advisor to the Brian Mulroney Conservatives, and, ended up head of the Sierra Club of Canada. She also has an absolute genius for milking her connections. (I have never met anyone who is such a shameless name dropper. I talked to her a couple times and she never missed an opportunity to let me know that she was friends with the Kennedys, Mikhail Gorbachev, and probably the Queen and Pope too.)

Because of her background, she was "famous for being famous" and was able to get lots more media attention than the other Candidates for the GPC leadership who's only reason for support was that they had worked years to build the GPC and actually knew something about it's ideals, structure, and, problems. The result was a huge influx of new members who didn't know anything about the GPC either, but who were eager to vote for her to become it's leader. (I suspect that the problems that Annamie Paul is suffering now is because the GPC has built itself around May, and that makes it very hard for someone without a similarly famous "brand" to take over.)

I don't want readers to see the above as a dig against Elizabeth May and the Greens. This process of bringing in a famous outsider instead of promoting someone from within is happening all over Canada and the US---with predictable results. Would Doug Ford have been elected head of the Ontario Conservatives if he hadn't been a brother of Rob Ford? Would Donald Trump have been President of the United States if he was just a failed Real Estate developer from New York instead of a self-promoting reality tv star?

The results of this rule by "social influencer" looks a bit like democracy, but in actual fact it really is just a new form of consumerism. The reason for this is because the local riding associations have progressively had their powers stripped from them and given to hired mercenaries that use media (both legacy and social) to build "flash mobs" that can be called up to make people party leaders.  

What is the result of bringing in outsiders who have no history or learned expertise with the party? Well, I've mentioned three examples above. From what I could see, May was a pretty good MP but didn't do much to build the grass roots of the party. IMHO Rob Ford has been a disaster for the province in that he is basically an incompetent boob. He does have the one saving grace of being willing to back-down and do the right thing---invariably too late and only after being dragged kicking and screaming, but at least he will often eventually listen to reason. Donald Trump? Well, his example hardly needs comment.

Mike Schreiner doesn't fit into this camp. He worked long and hard in the party, and, the community, before he got elected to his current position.

Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Work Goes Into Your Media Appearances?

The issue of media appearances is tremendously important. As I mentioned above, fame is now the currency of politics. If the voting public doesn't know anything about you, they won't give you money, knock on doors, or, put their "X" next to your name. That's why I often say that humility is a vice in politics.

This is especially important if you are starting out and don't have a long tradition or huge organization to lean upon. That's why it is so important that Mike Schreiner can get the "ear" of the media as often as he does. And I think he has been doing a very good job of this since before he got elected as Guelph's MPP. In fact, I've often been struck how much press he gets. It sometimes seems in the Toronto Star, for example, that he is the real leader of the opposition. That's because time and time again Andrea Horwath and Steven Del Duca seem somewhat invisible. To a certain extent, though, they don't have to have the same visibility as Schreiner, because their parties both have stronger and more well-established local presences.

 

loudwalking Owl · How Do You Balance Your Work For The Local Riding Versus The Entire Province?

Mike's got to put a lot of energy into Guelph because he doesn't have the caucus and government money that comes from that to keep up his presence if he focuses solely on the province. The important take-away-from this part of the conversation is that he has to see this as a balancing act:  put too much into the party and he could lose his seat, put too much into the riding and he won't be helping others potentially win seats elsewhere. 

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Cloudwalking Owl · How Much Power Do You Have As The Leader?

This is an important part of the conversation, because Schreiner identifies the way in which the constitutional structure of the Ontario Green Party limits his direct involvement in party management. First of all, in accordance with the way non-profits are routinely organized, the governing council of the Party (including him) only hires the Chief Executive Officer and allows her to manage all the other employees. This creates a "firewall" between the administrative and political parts of party governance.

Secondly, the party specifically allows local riding associations to retain the right to nominate a candidate to run in the election. This is tremendously important because it is the foundation for truly democratic governance. Contrary to what you will often hear people say, voters do not select the Prime Minister. Instead, they vote for a local MP, who then goes to Parliament where he and all the others in turn theoretically vote on who becomes the Prime Minister.

People don't see this because in all the other parties---except the Greens---the central party machinery has progressively stripped away the power of local riding associations to control who does or doesn't get to run for the party during an election. As a result, the individual party MPs have given up and forgotten that they ultimately get to decide who is or isn't going to be the Prime Minister. Instead, they just vote as they are expected to do so by the party whip. 

(The decision to elect the party leader by direct vote by the rank-and-file membership instead of through delegates at a party convention is also, IMHO, a catastrophic weakening of democracy because it strips away that power too from the Riding Association. People who are active in ridings know a lot more about the individuals running for leader, which makes them much less prone to fall for a "media influencer" or celebrity than an actual politician. Doug Ford and Donald Trump could never have become leaders of their parties if the Conservatives and Republicans still used the old delegate/convention system to select their leaders. Unfortunately, the Greens also use this direct-election system---although I understand that the provincial Liberals still use a delegate/convention system.) 

Cloudwalking Owl · What Is The Biggest Misconception You Hear As A Leader?

On the whole I suspect that Schreiner is correct. He does have a lot less power than most of the public probably think he does. And, yes the other party's leaders may have a lot more power than him in some ways, but I would still argue that they have less than many people think.

The thing about large organizations of people is that no matter how hierarchical they are on paper, there are still in some sense somewhat democratic. Most people probably don't know this, but even the leaders of NAZI Germany were tremendously concerned about public opinion. Years ago I read about how the Gestapo routinely read people's mail---often looking for evidence of rebellion, for sure---but also to keep track of people's opinions just to see which policies were popular and which were not. This information was sent up the chain of command to Joseph Goebbels who was very interested in it---to the point where he tracked the sorts of jokes people were telling each other. As I recall, there were actually times where the authorities decided that opinion was so opposed to various proposals---euthanizing the disabled, for example---that a policy was reversed, at least temporarily.

A similar example comes from ancient history. Between 27 BCE and 385 CE, a unit of the Roman Military---the Praetorian Guard---managed the personal protection and gathered intelligence for the Emperors. They also became notorious for murdering Ceasars that were unpopular with the Guard and replacing them with more willing puppets. We used to see much the same thing around what used to be called the "third world" as dictators used special military units to support them. And if peerless leader didn't reward the soldiers with enough perks, he ran the risk of being replaced in a coup d'etat. So no matter how much of an authoritarian you are, you still have to placate some sort power base to stay in office. 

You can see evidence of this in what is happening in the USA right now. Donald Trump has no official status in the Republican party, but most elected members spend a lot of time showing public allegiance to him. That's because Trump doesn't seem to have lost much of his influence over his rabid followers. And they have learned that they can control who does or doesn't get the party nominations needed to get onto the ballot. (Americans have a screwball system where nominations come from votes by the general public instead being restricted to only party members---like in Canada. And voter turnout for these nomination races is generally very low. This means that a motivated minority of people, ie: the MAGA crew, can easily control the outcomes.)

What all of the above shows is that no matter how the system is "rigged" to give a leader power, there is always some sort of constituency that they have to answer to. Generally this is limited and the power generally doesn't boil down to complete control or even power to get things done---but instead it does involve to the ability to stop some things from happening. The German public couldn't end the Holocaust, but they could save some of their disabled children from being killed. The Praetorian Guard couldn't save the Empire from the barbarian hordes, but they could remove an Emperor who didn't give them enough money in bribes. And Trump can't guarantee that the Republicans can win the next election, but he can ensure that a specific candidate won't get the nomination needed to run in it. 

The other party leaders do have a significant amount of power over the MPs in their party. They can refuse to sign their nomination papers, they can kick them out of the caucus, and, they can deny them the perks that come from a position in cabinet. But they cannot totally ignore significant slices of the voting public in order to push a policy just because it's the right thing to do. I suspect that's why Trudeau had the federal government spent $4.5 billion buying the Trans Mountain pipeline. It's not because he doesn't believe in the Climate Emergency or that this pipeline will pay for itself (if it could, then private investors would have bought it), it's because he can't totally alienate Alberta's voters and the provincial leadership without them sabotaging anything else he wants to do.

Think about what Trudeau did with this. He managed to blunt the argument that Ottawa doesn't care about the oil industry. Jason Kenney also threw away between $7.5 and $1 billion on the Keystone XL pipeline that was almost immediately cancelled by the American president. I suspect the calculus among Albertans will slowly grow that the federal Liberals tried their best, but it's time to wake up to reality and accept that the Climate Emergency is real and the province will have to diversify its economy. But if Trudeau hadn't made this sacrificial offering at the altar of Albertan stupidity, voters there would have continued to blame everything from the crucifixion of Christ to the eventual heat death of the universe on the Liberals. It's too bad that this money was wasted. It could have been better spent on something like national pharmacare or subsidies to wean people off fossil fuels. But that's the problem we have in a democracy---dumb people's votes are just as important as those cast by smart ones.

Similarly, Erin O'Toole can't come out in favour of vaccine mandates and dances around whether or not he'd ban M-14s (used in the Moncton shootings) or Ruger Mini-14s (the École Polytechnique massacre) because if he didn't he'd alienate an important fraction of the people he needs to vote for him if he wants to have a chance of becoming PM. I could say much the same about the NDP and unionized workers who support fossil fuels and the Greens about various forms of medical quackery. No matter who you are, if you want to get enough votes to have real power, you need to stitch together a coalition. That's why the saying goes that "politics makes strange bed fellows".  

Cloudwalking Owl · How Do You Avoid Burnout?

I've asked about burnout because I want to give readers a feel for how hard our elected officials work. It's like Lloyd Longfield said in the last post on the subject: being in politics is a vocation, not a job. You really have to accept that it isn't a job, it's your total life. I know that lots of people who retire from politics say that they do it to have more time for their family when the real reason is that they think that they can't win another election. But the excuse is grabbed at because it really does make sense. And lots of people do retire because they decide that they have lost touch with their families or why they wanted to run in the first place. That's part of why I get so upset when I hear people say things like "they're just in it for the money" or "all politicians are crooks". We ask a great deal of these people, and the easy way in which people accuse them of being a bunch of venal slackers tends to make me a little angry. 

Cloudwalking Owl · What Else Would You Like To Say?

I've mentioned in the past a couple times that I am very interested in spiritual wisdom. I've studied Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, Daoism, and, ancient Western philosophy in some detail and one thing they all seem to agree upon is total indifference to politics. I've thought long and hard on this, and come to the conclusion that this is extremely wrong-headed. 

As I see it, all of these traditions grew up in cultural contexts that were extremely authoritarian and where any idea of democracy and rule by ordinary people was so out of the question that it wasn't even a pipe dream---it simply didn't ever come up. Even in the one society where the issue was real---Periclean Athens---Plato has Socrates argue that democracy is a terrible system because it hands the state over to the uneducated mob. (History tells us that they did destroy the state by rushing into a terrible war that they ended up losing.)  

My response to all of this is to say that all systems of government fail eventually, and in terms of longevity, modern representative democracy has had a very good run. Moreover, I think that there is still a great deal of life in the concept. Right now it is going through a bit of a "rough spot", but I think that that is to be expected. 

People forget that we have gone through some tremendously consequential changes in the body politic over the last few decades. Women and racial minorities have much more influence now than over the last two millennia. Moreover, we are learning more about human influence on the ecosystem than people could have dreamed about in the past. At the same time, ancient systems of belief are in the process of being re-examined---and often discarded for being found wanting. It's hardly surprising that entrenched interests are profoundly upset at this turnaround and it is motivating them to fight tooth and nail against these changes.

The result is a period of extreme partisanship as groups of people who want more change fight against others that want to turn back the clock. I'm not one of those people who believe that progress is inevitable. But I do think that often things seem bleakest before real progress starts being made. I see the present as being a situation where people's definition of "common sense" is changing. And in those rare times when this happens, people's discussions get more heated and sometimes tempers flair to the point of violence. But eventually the dust will settle and after that a whole new version of "conventional wisdom" will emerge from the mess. At that point, people will pick up the broken bits, tidy things up, and, society will get on with the business of building a new world. 

It's not much fun living in these times, but it wasn't during the Great Depression or World War two either. (Or the sack of Rome, the Viking invasions, etc, for that matter.)

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That's enough for this week. Again, be nice to each other, wear a mask---and get your shot if you haven't already.

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

Mike Schreiner, Part Five!

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

Mike Schreiner, unattributed, c/o Wiki Commons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schreiner:  [He gets animated.]

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

Alinsky is a great example.

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

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

Hulet: Quite a few things, actually.  

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

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

Schreiner: Absolutely, yeah.

Hulet: Created in the USA by Ralph Nader. 

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

Hulet: The wet-dry.

Schreiner: Yeah, tons of stuff.

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

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

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

Schreiner: [He laughs.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hulet: The triple bottom line?

Schreiner: The triple bottom line.

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

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

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

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

Schreiner: No, it's owned by shareholders. 

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

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

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

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

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

[Schreiner laughs.] 

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

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

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

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

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

Hulet: Are corporate charters a federal or provincial responsibility?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another screenshot from the Flow Water Inc site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

&&&&

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

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

&&&&

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Schreiner laughs.]

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

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

That got us off on a tangent---. 

Hulet: Yes. but it was a good tangent.

&&&&

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

&&&&

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

&&&&

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

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

&&&&

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

[Schreiner chuckles]

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

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

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

Schreiner: There was, there was. 

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

&&&&

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

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

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

&&&&

Want to advertise a business or event? The Back-Grounder
has reasonable rates. Email thecloudwalkingowl@gmail.com for info.

&&&&

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schreiner: Yes, that is true.

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

Schreiner: Wow. That would really change things. 

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

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

Schreiner: Yeah! That's true.

[Schreiner laughs]

So that's created a lot of party discipline. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hulet: That's a good example.

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

&&&&

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schreiner: Exactly. 

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

Schreiner:  Passing us now! 

[Schreiner chuckles.]

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

&&&&

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

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

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

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

&&&&

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

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. 

&&&&

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. 

&&&&

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.

&&&&

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.

&&&&

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.

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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.

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