I’m not one of those people who feared Stephen Harper’s “hidden agenda”. I am one of those people who found his expressed agenda to be frightening enough. With the new budget that no-one seems to have noticed (what with Hockey Games and Gene Simmons and Hugh Hefner both having marital woes…), the Harper Government™ clearly outlines what their priorities are. The following graphic shows how he will distribute the 4000 federal job cuts over the next few years. The plan seems to be to put scientists in jail. But before I get all Godwin here, let’s look at the numbers.

Now this is from the Parlimentary Budget Office, and although they work directly for Harper, they have disagreed in the past, but these are the best numbers so far. Let’s start with the cuts.

The biggest cut (33.4%) will be in Heritage (sorry Minister Moore, but your portfolio is shrinking as fast as your credibility on the Evergreen Line). No surprise here, Heritage represents a lot of things Stephen Harper hates: media, culture, art, women’s equality, multiculturalism, the French language, etc. No hidden agenda here, he puts that depressing shit right out there on his sleeve and lets us sniff it.

Next in line is Environment Canada (21%). I guess we should not be surprised. It is the uppity Environment Canada types who irritatingly point out that tar sands development is annihilating large areas of the north, and is threatening two of the nations largest Rivers. As someone who works with EC enforcement officers trying to keep people from dumping oil into fish-bearing streams, I know those officers are overworked and their departments understaffed. Their ability to enforce the simplest environmental rules (like don’t dump oil into fish-bearing streams) is hampered.

These cuts also fly in the face of the Government’s own Independent Report released just before Christmas (when everyone was paying attention) stating that Canada had a responsibility to step up monitoring and enforcement to protect people and the environment from Tar Sands impacts. But that is just a bunch of science-talk…

Next comes Human Resources and Skills Development (16.4%). Good timing Steve. Bolstering our “fragile recovery” by taking away help for people whao are actually trying to get re-trained and find new jobs. What a Dick.

INAC will see a 13.5% cut. Again, ugly, but not surprising. Why continue to support people living in third-world level poverty, with inadequate housing, no clean water, and no access to jobs or education? I guess the thinking is that it is easier to provide for them in the new jails we are building…

The next three are Stats Can (13.5%), Natural Resources Canada (10%) and the National Research Council (8.9%). These are the agencies that actually guide government policy on the basis of facts and information. How in the hell do you govern an information-age country without access to the highest quality information? Admittedly, reality often gets in the way of Conservative ideology. The research is clear that Insite saves lives and saves the taxpayers money, but Harper hates druggies and wants it closed. This is why they keep bringing back mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes, although no-one in criminology, including the former head of the US DEA who introduced the same laws down south, think it is a good idea. Every police force in the country says the Long-gun Registry is useful and saves lives, but the redneck base hates it, so it has to go. Crime is steadily going down across the country, but “Tuff on Crime” bills bring in the votes. A nuclear scientist tells him a nuclear reactor is unsafe, he fires her and opens it anyway.

When facts get in the way, get rid of the facts. This is the problem with ideology-driven decision making: it is what crippled the USSR and keeps Cuba impoverished, it is what is killing the US economy, and it is how the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan. This is terrible leadership.

The cutting of 4.9% of the defence staff is an interesting move. This likely will be met through retirements of soldiers who have been busy fighting oversees wars for a decade, and are about ready to get out. The budget doesn’t actually include the costs of the war in Libya, nor does it include the cost to buy his new jet planes, but that is prudent since no-one can agree with Mr. Harper on the price of those planes. So let’s call the defence budget even.

Cutting 3.5% of the RCMP also seems strange for a “Tuff on Crime” PM. However, a good friend of mine in the RCMP reminds me that their main role is not to put people in jail, it is to prevent crime. By preventing crime, they keep people safe, and save the taxpayers money. With crime prevented, who are we going to put in jail to keep the natives company? Scientists?

But it isn’t all cuts, Harper also plans to grow parts of the civil service:

Including a 24.8% increase in corrections officers. I don’t mean to be crass, but holy fucking shit. At the same time he is cutting Police officers, he is replacing them with almost 5x as many prison staff. The Harper agenda appears to be making us into a nation of Jailers.

I had a chat on the weekend with a family member who works in corrections, and suggested Harper guaranteed him job security. He agrees, with a laugh, but wishes that instead of building more prisons and hiring more staff, they put al ittle more money in to the prison programs that made his job easier: drug prevention, counselling, rehabilitation, fitness and education. When the prisoners are busy and are making progress towards a goal, they tend not to act violently towards guards, each other, or themselves. But the direction seems to be more towards warehousing now.

I just can’t figure out the increase in the Chief Electoral Officer’s office. It is not like we had a hard time running our elections or that election fraud was rampant. It also seems a strange place to save money at the same time you are cutting contributions to political parties… but I will have to chew on that one.
The next few seem to pretty obviously follow the trend, 13.4% increase in Citizenship and immigration, 10.2% in Immigration and Refugees, and 7.5% in the Department of Justice. Clearly, Harper does not think all prison population growth can be organic, but we will need to assure a good proportion of immigrants also find their way into our human warehouses.

Industry (6.3% increase) and Agriculture (1.9% increase) will assure subsidises keep flowing to his multinational partners, as will a large portion of the Public Health (5.1% increase) budget (Tamiflu anyone?)

There is no reason to fear a secret agenda here. It is right out front. When the Conservative majority was announced, I put a post out on Facebook that said “Bed Manufacturers of Canada, time to stop the production of your Hospital models, and start ramping up the Prison ones!”

Did anyone mention to these guys that by any reliable numbers, Crime is continuing to drop in Canada? Oh, yeah, I forgot, unreported crime is up. I guess getting rid of some RCMP officers and StatsCan will assure the unreported crime rate continues to grow. Who needs information when you have ideology?

Meanwhile, people in Vancouver tie themselves in knots of worry about the deeper meaning of a few broken windows, yet remain blithely unconcerned about our own government dropping bombs on civilians in Libya.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

When I posted this story last week, I started by saying it needed more press. Well it made it to the front page of the Sun, but it seems to read like a good news story. The province saving money be “recovering health care costs”. What’s wrong with that?

I mentioned my concern that the Province could sue if you have an accident, to cover your medical costs. Not sue you (you are insured), but sue anyone who might be “at fault”. Of course they don’t have to prove the person is at fault, just make a compelling enough case that your insurance company pays them off to go away (“settles out of court”). If the person being sued has insurance. Anyone who has heard the frightening stories of tort-law craziness in the States should be looking at this.

I know what you are saying: if it is someone’s fault, they should pay! I explained in my earlier post how that person may be someone who you wouldn’t hold at fault, but the government might. My “exaggerated” examples were the company that runs a Mountain Bike Park that you like to use but where you crashed, or your grandmother if you slip and fall on her porch while shovelling it. I thought they were slightly silly examples that effectively made the “skinny end of the wedge” argument.

In fact, look at the story from the Sun:

“…a slip and-fall incident resulted in a $63,000 recovery and a mountain bike accident resulted in a $53,000 recovery. “

Yikes! They were way ahead of me. My exaggeration has failed to anticipate reality!

Do you have a business where the public may enter your store? Do you coach a softball team? Do you volunteer in a cycling organization? Sell bicycles? Manufacture or sell any product that might hurt someone if used incorrectly? Ever leave your house?

You should be very concerned about this.

This little news story needs to get more press.

Apparently the Provincial Government has decided to cover Health Costs by giving money to Lawyers. At first glance, the politics of “suing those responsible” sounds like the kind of thing fiscally-prudent Governments should do. But read the story: a drunk driver hits a pedestrian, and the Provincial Government is suing a municipality for not having a crosswalk!?! So provincial taxpayers are paying lawyers to battle in court against lawyers working for a local government’s taxpayers … to save taxes?

But this is only a single silly example, that distracts from the real evil of the Health Care Cost Recovery Act. Am I the only one scared by this:

“The Third Party Liability Department is responsible for the recovery of health care costs when a British Columbia resident is injured due to a third party’s wrongful act or omission for both motor vehicle accidents and non motor vehicle accidents. For example: Injuries occurring from negligence involving incidents/accidents such as but not limited to slip and falls, boating, air and rail accidents, swimming, diving, skiing, explosion, fire, falling objects, and Class Actions.

The Provincial Government is now going to hire lawyers to go to court and sue someone (anyone?) to recover costs related to your slipping and falling, swimming, or skiing. If you are not scared yet, read on:

Let me tell you the story of a friend of mine.  One day we were riding our mountain bikes at Town Run Trail Park in Indianapolis. How we got there is not all that important (I was once an incredibly mediocre mountain bike racer in Indiana), but my riding partner had a pretty serious crash. Serious enough that there was an ambulance ride involved.

Now my friend and I both lived in an adjacent State, so the hospital she was sent to wanted to know how she was paying the moment she arrived. Luckily, she was gainfully employed and through her employer, was in a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), a for-profit healthcare insurance plan. Once that was sorted out, she got very good care, as you would expect when they are charging you $1.50 a gauze and $1500 an X-ray (why scrimp?). She was not all that concerned as a) she had health care coverage; and b) she was pretty seriously concussed.

When she got home, she sent the 4-figure bill for the Hospital and the 3-figure bill for the Ambulance to her HMO, and after sending them her “co-pay” of a few hundred dollars, they paid for her care. That’s what you get for the thousand or so dollars that she and her employer paid every month to the HMO to keep her insured. What we call “health care”.

A few months later, she started to get letters and phone calls from a lawyer asking questions about her accident. She was reluctant to answer anything until they said they were working with her HMO. In that case, she asked for more details, and they explained they were seeing if there was anyone willing to share the liability. That is the euphemism they used “willing to share the liability”. At this point, she told them to get bent.

You see, her HMO had “sold” her accident to a lawyer. To recover the costs that the for-profit HMO had paid the for-profit hospital, they had sold the liability to a for-profit leech. The leech was looking for someone to sue. Anyone. Presumably, they could go after Giant Bicycles for making the bike, or Bell Helmets for not offering adequate protection, but those sound like big entities with their own raft of lawyers. It became apparent from their line of questioning (Where were you on the trail? Was the trail bumpy? Were there any warning signs? ) that they were interested in going after the people who ran the bike park.

Now, I ride a mountain bike a lot. I have fallen off of my mountain bike a lot (that is how you get to be good enough to be an incredibly mediocre racer in the mountain-bereft state of Indiana). Every time I went over the bars, I knew it was my fault. Either I overestimated my skill, or I underestimated the trail, or I got cocky, or I failed to check if my front wheel was attached. It would never occur to me to sue the person who set up and maintained a mountainbike trail system. Just like I didn’t sue the Ski Hill when I was concussed in a ski crash, and didn’t sue the beach resort when I broke my shoulder body surfing. Why? Because I like to mountain bike, I like to ski, I like to play on the beach (though I am now deathly afraid of body surfing). If I sue, I am transferring my personal responsibility to someone else, and they are less likely to set up opportunities for me to do these things, or if they do, they will need to be insured up the ying-yang and will price most people out of taking part in the activity.

However, there was no way that my friend could stop the leech who bought her liability from her HMO from suing the mountain bike park whose only crime was to set up a place where people could recreate outdoors in the middle of a mid-western urban centre. In fact, the HMO made it very clear that she could be compelled to testify in a civil suit against her will.

I suspect the majority of people have the same sense of personal decency to not sue people who provide you recreation. Break a leg doing a 720 at the local ski hill, would you sue? Slip and fall at the local swimming pool, would you sue? What if it was your neighbour’s pool? Slip on your grandmother’s step while shovelling it for her: Would you sue? You may not have a choice, as your Government will sue for you. Everyone who belongs to a curling club, who coaches a softball team, who has a grandmother who needs her walk shoveled, should be worried about this law. Yet I am betting you have never heard of it.

I expect that kind of shitty behaviour in the Tort-friendly Excited States of America, and I expect it from crappy HMO companies that must always acquiesce to the shareholders’ interests (what is suing a bike park compared to cutting cancer patients off of their meds?). I also expect from the con men who spill water on the floor at Safeway then “slip” and sue for whiplash.  I expect better from my elected government. I expect more for my tax dollars. This is not the kind of US-style health care I want to see.

The real election results:

The Majority Mandate enjoyed by our new Government

??

Locally, I am happy Fin won, as he is a great representative, for reasons I pointed out earlier. I also would like to thank Diana Dilworth, Ken Beck Lee, and Rebecca Helps for running positive campaigns. I think Diana especially proved herself capable and worthy as a Candidate, and deserves the reward of more votes vs. the previous by-election when she was famous mostly for not being accessible. This campaign, she was aware of the issues, meeting the public personally and at events, and was very personable when I met her. It was only the Shadow of Darth Harper holding her back in my estimation.

Her campaign also contrasted with Paul Forseth, who relied heavily on the politics of fear: this ad in the local paper is an example of the shitty politics that no-one should be rewarded for:

Classless, baseless, and insulting to the reader. I met Paul this election, and had a chance to chat with him, we agreed to disagree on some issues, but he kept bringing up the “Free Enterprise vs. Socialists” false dichotomy, as if there is no grey area between completely free unfettered markets and regulated social systems… so 19th Century as to be quaint. So although I was not able to vote for Peter Julian, I was happy to see him win.

Federally, it is obvious we are entering a new phase in Canada’s history. Part of me is hoping that Harper will follow the lead of Joe Clarke and Brian Mulroney: campaign right and govern middle. Maybe that is his “hidden agenda”. Otherwise, there will be interesting days ahead, with Jack driven apoplectic in the house, and a new era of very divisive politics in Canada.

One thing seems clear: the shift of Canada from one of the most highly respected nations on earth to a global pariah will continue. This is not “hidden agenda” stuff: this is what the Harper Conservatives wear on their sleeve. We will become more militaristic in lieu of seeking diplomacy. Our days as honest broker in the middle are gone. We will continue to be one of the planet’s worst polluters. We will continue to value security at the cost of liberty, and through this, we will become less secure by making ourselves more of a target for terrorism. Sewing a maple leaf on your backpack may no longer be a “get out of trouble free card” for people like me who enjoy travelling to countries without all-inclusive resorts.

Where the shift of support from the Liberals to the NDP will take us is uncertain. Some are saying the NDP surge in Quebec may create the legend of Jack Layton as the saviour of Canada, but let’s not start counting chickens. If Harper comes out of the gate too aggressivly with social conservatism, we will see a surge in PQ support in the upcoming Provincial Election, with little federal interest to prevent it (make no mistake, these are Manning Conservatives in this majority – a majority with no mandate in Quebec is a Reform Party of Canada dream).. and we may see a referendum in this parliament.

I think that the loss of Gerard Kennedy is a much bigger blow to the Liberals than the loss of Ignatieff. Without Kennedy, the Grits will need to re-grow around someone else. Most are looking at a youth wing surrounding Justin Trudeau. The number of old big-C conservatives who hated P.E.Trudeau for being so urbane is dwindling with demographics, and as the legend replaces actual memory, Justin will be there to scoop it up. I think any centre + left coalition talk will depend on how the NDP are polling in 2014. They have no reason to entertain the Liberals until they need votes. Or unless they need the Trudeau name to replace and ailing Jack. I hope Jack realizes that Bob Rae is the reason he didn’t win seats in Ontario, and the reason we have a Harper Majority.

Nina Grewal is an excellent example of why representative democracy sometimes just doesn’t work.

I was skeptical of Elizabeth May’s all-for-one strategy, but knowing several people on the islands, it seems obvious now. The end of per-vote subsidies may be a problem for her, but with it seemingly inevitable now, the strategy of getting a seat instead of crossing the country to grub out every possible $5 vote probably makes sense. From what I experienced this year as a former member, The Green fundraising machine is has been substantially developed since the deficit situation they got into last election. If Harper brings back big-money corporate political donations (and why wouldn’t he?), then all the other parties are in trouble money-wise. (that said, election rules really don’t matter to the Tories, as they are happy to break them with complete immunity, so I guess that doesn’t matter).

The Greens best strategy going forward is to keep her in the news, and expand the all-for-one campaign next election to an all-for-5, by identifying 3 or 4 more ridings and putting superstar candidates in them. I think of some of those Quebec ridings where the BQ support so collapsed that absentee NDP kids were elected: the Greens should be able to hone in and pick up those protest votes when the college bartenders prove to be incapable of administering a constituency office.

So election night I was at the NWEP / Tenth to the Fraser poll party, and ran an informal poll pool. The results were interesting, proving the lottery nature of this election.

In the end, the NWEP’s answer to Nostradamus, Andrew Murray, came closest to predicting the unpredictable, and won the pool. Although he predicted a minority government, his guess of 138 Conservative seats, 110 NDP, 38 Liberal, 21 Bloc, and 1 Green/Independent was closer to the final results that anyone else, with an aggregate total seat difference of 58, well ahead of the 2nd place finisher, who had a 78 seat difference. Clearly, the difference was Andrew’s prescient evaluation of the Liberal collapse and the NDP rise.

At first look, it appears the Vote Party participants (there were only 15 who filled out ballots before the 7:00 deadline) were woefully unable to predict the results, and even in what seemed to be a typical New West NDP-friendly crowd (the announcement of the Conservative majority really took the buzz off the party), the group underestimated the the NDP rise (average guess 88 seats) and Liberal collapse (average guess: 67 seats). Although one person correctly predicted only 4 seats for the Bloc, the average guess was 26 seats. The most common miss was a significant underestimate of the Conservative wins (average guess 123 seats), as no-one predicted a majority.

To be fair to the participants, most were given about 5 minutes to fill out a “ballot” with very little guidance. The professionals and pundits also significantly missed the mark here. Just for fun, I showed the EKOS and Nanos polling firm predictions from the day before the election, and the predictions of two “interactive” polling ideas: the 308 Project and the Canadian Prediction Project. With aggregate differences between 92 and 116, none of them would have won our contest, and they had 4 weeks to perfect their picks. As I said going in, this election was like a lottery. Next time, the pollsters should save us all time and money, and just call Andrew.

I try to stay non-partisan. I have voted for many different parties in the past, and now that I have zeroed in on “the environment” as the main issue I vote around, I am pretty confident that any party can take a leadership role on that topic (although none of them choose to talk about it this election). Generally, I vote for the best local candidate, and that is how I am going to vote this year. I feel pretty good about my vote this year, having had the chance to chat with all 4 of my local “main party” candidates last week. So this vote is a character vote, not a party vote.

That said, I have nothing against my local Conservative candidate. She works hard in her community and has some “envrionmental cred”, but I am going to be voting against her party for one simple reason: Stephen Harper is a dick.

I try to run a family program here, but the word “dick” just describes Harper so perfectly, I can’t think of a less profane way to encapsulate his personality. His history is defined by a long serious of serious dick moves, and he pretty much owns 100% of the dick moves this election campaign.

His latest dick move was standing up yesterday and talking up his unqualified support for profiteering from third world deaths.

Background: The sale of asbestos is illegal in Canada, as it is in most of Europe, Japan, and the rest of the industrialized world. In the US it is not strictly illegal due to strong industry throttling of the EPA, but it is effectively impossible to use, as the costs related to safety and clean-up have priced asbestos out of the market compared to safer alternatives. This is because asbestos causes cancer and other deadly diseases. Of course, in developing countries, they don’t have the governance levels required to institute strict controls on asbestos use. Therefore, in much of the world, Canadian asbestos is used in the same way now as it was in North America 50 years ago, with the same resultant cancer deaths.

Selling a known cancer-causing agent to countries that cannot effectively regulate their use is not illegal, it is just deeply, deeply unethical. Especially as Canada itself will not allow its use because of the unacceptable human health impact. Yet Canada is in the exclusive company of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe and Columbia as the last countries that mine and sell asbestos.

Why? Well, he is interested in protecting jobs! However, the few remaining asbestos mines in Canada are all in Quebec, and employ less than 1000 people. To put that in perspective, that is about 5% of the total mining employment in Quebec, and way less than 1% of the mining employment in Canada. Ten times as many people work for the City of Vancouver than work in all the asbestos mines in Canada combined. These few mines operate only due to government subsidies, and create markets in the poorer parts of the world through a government-funded marketing and PR firm. Standing up for this losing industry that kills more people annually than it employs is a big-time dick move.

Another campaign example of a dick move is to continue to assert that his pet jet planes are going to cost $75 million each. This despite the guys selling the planes saying that is not true; industry experts from Washington saying it is not true; his own Department of Defence saying it is not true; his own Parlimentary Budget Office saying it is not true. What do any of these guys know? Steve is sticking to his story. What a dick.

There was even a loca ldick move last week. Apparently, The right honrourable dick was going to meet the press and give a few words here in New Westminster. The press and supporters were told to expect him some time around noon on Easter Sunday, at Royal Square. A few people I know well showed up, hoping to spy the PM. However, only invited guests and press were loaded on to a bus, with a driver who apparently didn’t know (or couldn’t say) where he was going. At noon, they drove over to the Burnaby Alliance Church, and arrived just in time to see (and film, for the afternoon broadcast) the dick walk out of a church and into his motorcade. No press conference, no interaction with the public. Compare this to Ignatieff’s visit to West Vancouver last week, a public stop at a small business, an open-to-the-public town hall, addressing questions from people off the street. Or compare it to the time last year that Jack came into the Brooklyn on Columbia and shook every hand in the room, with Fin Donnelly the only “security” around. These are not dick moves.

Firing his “Integrity Commissioner” and paying her to shut her up? Firing the Nuclear Safety Regulator for not agreeing to approve the unsafe operation of a nuclear reactor? Giving a speech to his American pals describing Canada as a “Northern European Welfare State in the worst sense of the term”? All dick moves.

How about throwing Helena Guergis under the bus? Keeping mum for more than a year about shadowy “allegations” that made her too hot to keep around caucus, and eventually lead to her being turfed. Then when she is running in a tight election race as a Independent, Harper releases a bunch of salacious allegations, painting her as a drug addicted whore, then saying in effect “well, we have no proof, but boy, look at them allegations!”. This is eerily similar to the “ancient and honourable story” Hunter S. Thompson told about how Lyndon Johnson first got elected to Congress in 1948:

“…Lyndon was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go… He was sunk in despair. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference at two or two-thirty (just after lunch on a slow news day) and accuse his high-riding opponent (the [wealthy and politically favoured] pig farmer) of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children… His campaign manager was shocked. ‘We can’t say that, Lyndon,’ he said. ‘It’s not true.’ ‘Of course it’s not,’ Johnson barked at him, ‘but let’s make the bastard deny it.’

That is the type and scale of dick Stephen Harper is.