Keep it civil, Warren

This morning, I pointed out the public fact that Warren Kinsella has clients in the oil industry who might have an interest in him attacking a policy that puts a price on carbon. I knew he would not like this, but I didn't think it was that big a deal.

He overreacted and thought he scored a point by pointing out that I don't work for him. No kidding.

However, as a Jew, I find his most recent comment to be in quite bad taste:

"UPPERDATE: He's getting some support, however - from the white trash/white supremacist crew. Not so good."

It goes without saying that I have no interest in the support of any "white supremacist crew". I also think it goes without saying that Warren has crossed a clear line here by implying otherwise.

Sent from my wireless Blackberry

Everybody has a bias

I've always been very respectful of Warren Kinsella on this blog, even when I disagree with him vehemently on topics like Paul Martin. I don't intend to change that.

One new disagreement seems to be that I support Stéphane Dion's tax shift initiative while Mr. Kinsella pans it without even considering the positive arguments, such as the decrease in other taxes.

I think it's only fair to take a look at Mr. Kinsella's list of clients before you consider his attacks on Stéphane Dion's tax shifting idea. They include:

Coalition for a Sustainable Environment (An industry conglomerate including Canadian Petroleum Products Institute)

Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc.

Greyhound Canada Transportation Inc.

Michelin North America Inc.

I believe that these are all clients who would have an interest in opposing a shift to carbon tax (not certain about Greyhound).

There's nothing wrong with Kinsella representing such groups. They are perfectly legitimate businesses that do useful and necessary work. I just think that such representation makes his comments on carbon policy somewhat suspect.

I recognize that this post might well lead Warren to attack the policy even more. He will probably buckle down and try to defend his former comments. That's fine. It doesn't change his client list.

UPDATE

I think it's fair and respectful to take information that's public knowledge and highlight it. I admit that I'm biased because of my Liberal leanings and elected position. Why is it a crime to point out that Kinsella has his own bias based on clients? I'm not saying he shouldn't represent them; I'm saying readers need to know what might be motivating him when he only points out the negative in the carbon tax shift policy and starts talking about the "next Liberal leader". There is no "outrage" here.

As for Warren's claim about my supposed "lobbying", it's simply not true. Like everybody else in the world, I was once looking for work. At that time, I did try Daisy (among other companies) and obviously Daisy didn't give me a job. I'm sure the same thing has happened to many people. It's not a big deal.

FURTHER UPDATE at 3:45pm

I suppose I'm not surprised by WK's response, although I was hoping he would be more reasonable about it. The way I look at this, I would never write anything against the interests of my clients. If I did, they wouldn't be my clients for very long! The suggestion is not that Warren is doing something wrong, but that people should think about these things.

Would I have pointed it out if Warren hadn't started musing about the "next Liberal leader"? Probably not. That's my bias and everybody knows it. That doesn't make me wrong, though. Neither does Warren's bias make him wrong. Nevertheless, it has to be considered. I was hoping somebody else would point this out, but they didn't.

I have no intention of making this some sort of sustained attack. Neither do I intend to apologize, because I think this was fair comment. I do, however, intend to remind people as required, if required.

You want change? Thank Clinton

For a long time, I thought Hillary Clinton would be the right choice for the Democrats. I changed my mind after I learned she was arguing that she should be chosen because she is the preference of white Americans. However, that does not change my basic support for her continuing in the race.

Democratic bloggers and Obama supporters all seem to want change in the American political system. In their minds, that change comes from a leader who will supposedly change the way things are done in Washington. Frankly, I have my doubts that any leader will be able to do that as long as money plays such an important role in the political process. When they can spend in a day what the leader of the Liberal Party spent in 10 months, it is no wonder that they suck up to lobbyists who donate money!

But there is another fundamental problem with American politics. That is the way that individual politicians get treated like God's Chosen People as soon as they win something. Incumbents have advantages similar to municipal politicians in Canada and "leadership" has become the ability to give a prepared speech in an emotional manner. If you win once, you tend to win for life.

Now, the Democrats have a real election going on. It is close and some people are voting in primaries for the first time in generations. The complaint of many Obama supporters seems to be that he has already won and Clinton is pulling him down. Essentially, they are arguing that he needs to be at some unreachable level of greatness if he is to be a successful politician. No normal person could ever be president.

I don't buy it. I think that's the wrong way to do politics and it is one of the major reasons why Americans feel disconnected from the process. The very idea of voting for or against an untouchable seems anti-democratic to me. People need to know the real strengths and weaknesses of their politicians to make reasonable decisions. I think many people who don't vote are really just rejecting a bunch of people who seem like fakes. They want real people to lead them.

Many democrats have forgotten this. They have forgotten that democracy is about elections and voting. It is not about picking your favourite person and just expecting the rest of the country to give you your wish. It is about proving that you are the right person and respecting those who disagreed. It is about challenging your leaders and forcing them to explain themselves. (I wish we Liberals had done that with Paul Martin so that he could recognize his weaknesses before it was too late.) It is about having Hillary Clinton get up during the Democratic convention to give a speech, force a vote and lose. That is the sort of right that is required in a democracy.

Hopefully, next time, the third and fourth place people like John Edwards and Bill Richardson will also be able to stay in the race. Imagine a real convention where Democrats had to evaluate their candidates at a deeper level than who can make the best youtube video. Conventions don't need to be Goebbelsesk rallies of righteousness. They only create people who seem like leaders. Real democracy involves competing candidates who don't drop off because they ran out of money. It leads to a vote and the voters can actually say they had a choice. That is what creates real leaders.

We need an honest debate about carbon

I have to admit that I'm the sort of person who thinks the Liberals should release details of the carbon shift idea as soon as possible. Until we do that, we leave it open for the Conservatives to make things up and repeat them over and over again until Canadians believe the lies. Even if we eventually show that the plan is not what they say it is, we will have to beat down that misperception before we can build an understanding of what we are really proposing. That is the unfortunate reality of Canadian politics today.

But...

Imagine a world in which the media only reported facts and opinions. Imagine a world where the media reported that the Liberals are close to proposing a plan that would shift taxation from income and investment to carbon, but that the details are not released. Imagine a world where Craig Oliver asks John Baird, "Why are you calling it a gas tax when the Liberals have said that they will not increase tax on gas?" Imagine a world where we could have an adult discussion about politics based on the facts at hand.

In such a world, right now we would be debating the concept of a carbon tax. We would be saying the Liberals and Greens support it, the Conservatives and NDP oppose it, but we all agree that the goal is right. We would be analysing the policy proposals of each party and how they intend to fight climate change. We would be saying the Conservatives have a plan based on intensity, the NDP have a plan that involves higher taxes and higher spending and the Liberals claim to have a plan that will be revenue neutral but have not yet proven it.

We would be cynical about each party's claims and we would hold each and every representative to the test of honest political discourse. Nobody would come out smelling like roses, but at least we would see the broad strokes of a major philosophical disagreement. We would help Canadians understand what our different political parties believe and how they differ at a fundamental level.

Such a conversation would be wonderful. It would be like watching Sunday morning American news shows where a Republican spokesperson can actually complain about Karl Rove turning religion into a political issue. It would be like a world where we treat Canadian politics as a serious topic with no room for untruthful bluster. It would be like we are all adults debating ideas that will affect our country and the world for generations.

Our political parties each have an ideological basis for what they do. The Conservatives tend to trust the market to deal with new problems. The Liberals tend to believe that government should stimulate people and the market to do what needs to be done. The NDP tend to believe that government should spend money to fix problems. We are seeing this cleavage as clear as day in the debate over a carbon tax. At least, we would see it as clear as day if we could remove the barrier of bluster that misleads people.

The media are the filter and people like Andrew Coyne, Paul Wells, Jeffery Simpson, Lawrence Martin and the Toronto Star Editorial Board deserve praise for their honest analysis. I'm sure there are others who I am missing, but I will do my best to point them out as it happens. Hopefully we will see the same honesty in headlines on front pages and 20 second reports on TV. If Canadians are confused about politics, it is because the media don't report it clearly. If they understand, then it is because the media are doing their job. Hopefully, our next election will be a debate about ideas and not a test to see who can leak the most misleading story.

Stephen Harper did not write the Clarity Act

A little history.

The argument about the constitutionality of a referendum question about Quebec secession began as a legal argument in court. Under the leadership of Jean Chrétien and Stéphane Dion, the federal government submitted three questions to the Supreme Court of Canada. After the Supreme Court answered those questions, Stéphane Dion had the Clarity Act written, convinced cabinet to adopt it as Liberal policy and led it through the House of Commons. In the process, his and his family's lives were threatened and he was under 24 hour RCMP protection. He was drawn as a rat by Quebec cartoonists and generally had his reputation destroyed in his home province for doing something reasonable in which he believed.

Meanwhile, Conservative cultists claim that Stephen Harper wrote the Clarity Act. Sometimes this sort of idiocy makes me wonder why I even bother to try taking politics seriously.

Dion's speech

I'm at the Canada Club lunch with Mr. Dion as the main speaker. The room is packed with Liberals and, presumably, other business people.

The speech begins with standard of living and the
environment. Dion will teach Harper how to say "Fight against poverty" in both official languages. Not a bad joke.

We will not adopt the Conservative approach of hoping the problem will go away, but make bold choices.

We will lower taxes on good things like income, innovation and investment. We will shift them to bad things like pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

"Cutting the right taxes". "Putting a cost on pollution".

He points out that the Clarity Act was supposed to be good policy and bad politics. He knew that Quebeckers wanted clarity instead of confusion. "Good policies must be good politics...Canadians deserve no less than that."

"We need to make polluters pay and put the money back in the hands of Canadians with the right tax cuts."

Dion is making the argument that Canadians are smarter than the elites think they are. He is going to do the right thing and speak over the heads of the elites to the people. He believes that the people are ahead of their politicians.

"The time has come to do what is right; not what is easy."

To back up his case, Dion quoted both David Susuki and Tom D'Aquino in favour of putting a price on pollution. He got some genuine laughs.

"We need to be brave, not blind."

Dion then moved into some praise for the McGuinty Government and concluded.

I think the crowd started with some hesitation and ended with a belief that Dion can do it. As we all know, it is not going to be easy to convince Canadians. We will be fighting against a Conservative spin machine that will do everything it can to cloud and confuse the issue. The answer for Liberals is not to get scared and back off; but to sell the idea because it is the right thing to do. We all know it's risky, but everything in life is risky. If it works, it will be well worth it.


Sent from my wireless Blackberry

Maybe a tax credit?

Today, I am going to hear Stéphane Dion speak to the Canadian Club. Hopefully, he will shed some light on this pollution tax shift idea and give us details. If we leave the vacuum for too long, I fear that we might lose our chance.

On that note, I'm shifting my own view of what the policy should be. How about:

We are going give every Canadian $1000 back on their taxes. We will also raise taxes on pollution that will cost $1000 on average. That way, people who pollute more than average will pay for their pollution, while people who pollute less than average will save money.

For the policy wonks out there, I envision doing this by giving a tax credit so that you get it whether you pay taxes or not. For families, maybe you get 50% for each dependant since there is a real carbon cost for children, but not the same cost as each adult person. I think this deals with any concern for injustice to those with low and/or fixed income. Am I missing anything?

Carbon and Tobacco

In Canada, we have sin taxes. Normally those are associated with tobacco and alcohol. I don't really count alcohol, though, because I don't consider it a sin. Tobacco, on the other hand, is something that I think we can all agree to have little or no positive benefit for the people who smoke it. I think we should make some exception for cigar smokers who like to relax every once in a while, but regular use is good for nobody.

The real bane of the tobacco smoker is cigarettes. They taste horrible unless you are addicted, smell bad and don't last very long. They are essentially nicotine+cancer providers and nothing more. As far as I am concerned, there is little or no reason to smoke cigarettes regularly when you can buy some sort of nicotine gum or patch instead. As a result, I am all for taxing them as much as possible as long as you don't make the price so high that everybody is bootlegging them.

Most Canadians would probably agree with this argument now. However, I'm pretty sure that when cigarette taxes started going up, the average person wasn't dancing in the streets. Instead, a bunch of people smoking packs a day probably saw it as a tax grab. That doesn't mean it was a bad idea, or that governments lost elections over it. It just means that people learned to accept that a sin tax had a good argument behind it.

I think a tax shift to carbon pollution would be very similar. Many people are addicted to overuse of products that release carbon into the air. We all know that this is a bad thing and we all want to stop it. However, the reality is that many of us are addicted. So why not tax carbon pollution like we tax tobacco?

When governments first started taxing cigarettes, I doubt that they made it revenue neutral. I figure it probably was a tax grab. However, my understanding is that the Liberals will propose no such thing. Instead, we are going to argue that people should pay taxes for bad things like producing carbon pollution, instead of good things like earning income and investing. It might not be an easy sell at first, but I believe that we can find 40-45% of Canadians who see the benefit.

If you are one of them, then it will soon be your chance to help Stéphane Dion bring about a fundamental shift in our society. Don't worry about whether he can win an election on it and second guess the strategy. Instead, be proud of the fact that you agree with him and try to convince your friends and family. That is the only way to change society.

The NDP Paradox

Not too long ago, Idealistic Pragmatist wrote a very logical argument about how the NDP actually needs the Liberal Party if they are to ever form government at a national level. I recommend you read it for yourself, but the basic idea is that even if the NDP somehow squeaks out the "fantasy scenario" of a plurality of the vote, they will need a partner to get any legislation passed. Idealistic Pragmatist shows that this would almost certainly have to be the Liberals. Thus, destroying the Liberals does little or nothing to actually further the NDP agenda.

Idealistic Pragmatist stops there, but I want to take the fiction further. Let's say that this "fantasy scenario" takes place. The NDP are the government and they survive for a year or two with Liberal support. In the next election, they are rewarded for good government with a majority. What happens next?

I think there are two possibilities. The first is that you end up with a 1990s Ontario NDP government full of representatives who are unable to run a government. Everything blows up in their faces and the NDP is back down to 15 seats for the foreseeable future. That's what most Liberals and Conservatives believe would happen.

The second possibility, though, is more in tune with what Jack Layton hopes for. That would be a scenario where the NDP provides good majority government and, just like in the UK, the Liberal Party ceases to be a real force in politics. If that happens, the NDP supposedly wins.

The problem with this plan is that it does not account for the likely reaction of Liberals. Whether in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Quebec, when Canadians end up with a two-party system the moderate voters and volunteers tend to split between the two remaining parties. When the Liberal Party is ruined, the NDP becomes a new Liberal Party. When the right-wing party is ruined, the province's Liberal Party moves to the right and many former Liberals slowly swell the ranks of the right of the left-wing party. In the end, in both cases, you have one party that is run by left-wing and centre Liberals and another party that is run by what we used to call Progressive Conservatives. The only real change is to ensure that blue Liberals end up supporting the right-wing party instead of a centre party.

So where would this lead on a federal level? On one hand, it would move the NDP much further to the right. It would become sort of a Pierre Trudeau type Liberal Party. On the other hand, the Conservative Party would have much stronger moderate support. This would bring the party a bit closer to the centre, but those moderates would always have to appeal to more Reform members with scraps of policy here and there.

Many NDP members might like this idea. They probably think it would right politics because it would allow them to join their centre-left friends without having to deal with blue Liberals. On a purely ideological level, I can understand that. However, I think it ignores the electoral realities of Canada. This is not a left-wing country. There is a reason that the Conservatives and Liberals have always split the vast majority of votes in this country. There is also a reason that the Liberal Party occasionally gets taken over by blue Liberals, even if they are less successful in elections because people opt for the real conservatives.

I believe that in this fantasy scenario for the NDP, the end result is to make the new, more moderate Conservative Party the natural governing party of Canada. Surely blue Liberals account for the 5-10% of voters they need to reach that 40-45% majority government threshold. Remember that this fantasy NDP scenario still leaves the Green Party with 10% or more of the left-wing vote. The NDP might win government every once in a while, but in the longer-run Canada will slowly and surely move right. It's happened in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec. It's happened in the United States. It's happened in Britain. It is what happens in a two-party system.

NDPers seem to think that the Liberals are always co-opting their vote. This is an odd belief to have, since the NDP never gets beyond 21% of the vote at the best of times. The reality is that when the Liberals win, they are taking from the potential conservative vote. It is only when the Liberals mess up that those right-wing Liberals vote Conservative because they're sick of the "tax and spend" or whatever else you want to call it. If the NDP is also able to capitalize on general discontent, then they can really hurt the Liberals and get the Liberal Party close to 30%. Maybe if the Liberals get bad enough, they can even things out at 25% each.

That is the NDP fantasy scenario. The problem for the current NDP is that this fantasy still ends without an NDP Canada. It's a paradox that can only be solved by dropping the idea of destroying the Liberal Party. Instead, the NDP should focus on putting forward ideologically driven policies that the Liberals eventually adopt as their left-wing members convince the centre and blue-Liberals. That's how Tommy Douglas did it.