So, who here knows how hydro power works?

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by Dave Chomiak, the provincial cabinet minister (and my MLA, sadly) responsible for appointing people to the board of Manitoba Hydro. For those who are unaware, despite the name, Hydro is the public utility that oversees all the energy in Manitoba, including natural gas and our one wind farm. You’d think a diverse array of clean sources like that would merit an expert in the field of renewable energy. Alas, that would be the intelligent thing to do. Observe.

If for any reason you can’t or won’t click on the above link, let me sum up the board:

• The chief of a First Nations reserve!
• A former provincial cabinet minister!
• A provincial non-cabinet minister!
• A former federal non-cabinet minister!
• A principal architect!
• A guy who runs auto dealerships!
• The guy who ran the telecom utility!
• A chartered accountant!
• A professor of development economics!
• A mayor!
• A fucking market researcher!

Not to mention the new president of the company, the CFO of another energy utility!

It’s worth noting that two of the politicians were all elected members of the governing New Democratic Party and another one was an appointee of it. So that takes care of the patronage accusations pretty nicely. In addition, as my fellow blogger Graham Hnatiuk pointed out, the guy who ran the telecom utility also spearheaded the effort to privatize it. In this year’s provincial election, the NDP won again by accusing the Opposition Progressive Conservatives of wanting to privatize Hydro. The heads of 25 logicians around the world just exploded.

I can see some logic in most of these appointments, although the market researcher can’t do anything the internal communications staff couldn’t do faster, and the auto dealership guy is just baffling. Adam suggested that he might play a valuable role in creating a research climate for hydrogen-powered cars; I would have bought that if I knew the guy had ever designed a car in his life. Not one person on this list seems to know a thing about civil engineering or energy/environmental science. Priorities.

Why don’t they appoint Adam to the board? He’s studied clean energy more than all of these randoms put together.

I vote because there’s nothing good on TV

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by the New Democratic Party (NDP) of Manitoba. We’ll be going to the polls to vote for premier on Tuesday; I haven’t given enough of a shit about this election to mention it’s existence here. That’s because, like every other election that ever takes place in Canada, the candidates are running on the basis of who can best preserve the status quo. And I mean that as literally as possible in this case.

Around town, I’ve seen signs encouraging voters not to let the Progressive Conservative Party and its leader, Hugh “Evil Incarnate” McFadyen, make serious cuts to public health care or privatize Manitoba Hydro – which, it should be noted, has a de facto monopoly on energy generation in this province and does the bare minimum with it. The only trouble is that Hugh “Devil’s Reject” McFadyen never promised to do either. Here’s what’s really going to happen:

• The PCs promise to hire 1,700 nurses, 250 doctors and 40 physician assistants.
• The NDP promises to hire 2,000 nurses, 200 doctors and 50 physician assistants.
• The PCs have never promised to privatize Hydro. This claim is based on the fact that they privatized MTS, our landline phone provider, when they were last in government in 1999.

In short: On health care, they might as well be the same party; on Hydro, the NDP is running on the basis of . . . nothing at all. It’s a complete fabrication, based on the judgment of a government that existed 12 years ago. It’s true that Hugh “Son of Satan” McFadyen’s aunt was a minister in that government, but they didn’t have any designs on Hydro then, either. Perhaps they saw the difference in practicality between a public entity that provides phones and a public entity that provides power?

Of course, the PCs aren’t much better, as they have few ideas that differentiate them from the Dippers. That’s why I intend to vote for the Liberal Party (which, despite its name, is actually fairly centrist). They don’t have a hope in hell of forming a government, but at least I can vote for them without wanting to kill myself afterward. It’s entirely possible that Hugh “Giant Douche” McFadyen will become premier, but I’d choose Hugh “Turd Sandwich” McFadyen over Premier Greg “Wait, I Was Supposed to Do Stuff?” Selinger.

Something’s fishy at the Privy Council Office

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by the Privy Council Office (PCO) of Canada, which handles the bureaucratic duties of the federal cabinet. You might wonder how such a seemingly innocuous entity could fail, unless you’re like me and you hate bureaucracies on principle. But the fail goes far beyond their existence. It’s their penchant for total control over the government’s messaging, which any PR practitioner would tell you is bad for the message itself.

The issue is Kristi Miller, a scientist with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (yes, we have a minister for that), who published an article in the scholarly journal Scienceabout the possibility that a virus is responsible for the depletion of stocks of Fraser River sockeye salmon. How big a shit does the PCO give about this story? So big that they’ve prohibited Miller from conducting interviews about her article, as well as refusing a related media release to go out on the grounds that it “focused on salmon dying and not on the new science aspect.” Well, excuse her.

That’s how centralized communications are in the federal government. Everything goes through the PCO, and if it’s doesn’t make the government look sufficiently happy and shiny, it dies. Want more proof? Consider the Message Event Proposal; Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s rule on the campaign trail that journalists, as a group, can only ask five questions a day; and the government’s F grade for access to information. Take your pick. I’ve got more.

By going to these lengths to ensure that all government communications, including those of arm’s-length agencies, toe a certain line, the PCO gives the impression that the government has something to hide. I can think of no American government that would have permission to do this, let alone try. Do they believe Canadians wouldn’t notice this sort of behavior? Well, at least one of us just did. Do they believe we’d give them a pass for it? Ha! Not a chance.

“But, Jess,” you ask, “aren’t you worried they’ll notice this column and make something of it?” Um, yeah. That’s the point. In fact, if they don’t make something of it, I’ll have wasted half an hour of writing.

An election about nothing

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by the 41st Canadian general election. It’s incredibly rare for me to assign it to an event or inanimate object (carbon rods need not fear this fate); usually individuals or groups are at risk. But this election was so overstuffed with horribleness across the board that it’s shaping up to be a strong contender for Fail of the Year. In fact, I think it’s already won (lost?). But maybe I’m just biased.

Let us begin with Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who won a majority government. In Canada, a candidate needs 40 per cent of the popular vote and 50 per cent plus one of the seats in Parliament to get a majority; this prevents Opposition parties from blocking any contentious legislation. Harper got one despite all of this, not to mention incredible contempt for the press and people who voted for other people. The Conservative Party: Low taxes. Lower standards.

This might have happened because of the steady stream of attacks on then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who led the Liberals to third place – unprecedented for them – and lost his own seat in the process. I’m the first to call the Liberals’ platform hollow and Ignatieff’s personality sorely lacking. Nonetheless, it’s far better to win on your own merits instead of someone else’s flaws.

Then there’s the second-place NDP, who are the Conservatives’ true ideological opposites, thus destined to polarize Parliament even more than it already is; the Bloc Quebecois, a separatist party reduced to four seats when they really should have ended up with none; and Green Party leader Elizabeth May, the only “Other” in Parliament. Her victory was the only thing I smiled about, save a few local races not worth mentioning here.

This was not an election about big ideas. This was not an election about change. This was not an election about Canada’s place in the world. This was an election about a pack of spoiled, childish party leaders who may be mentally incapable of thinking critically about themselves and the people around them. Only one party in this country is worth voting for, and nobody’s ever heard of them. Now we’ll just have to sit back and watch nothing get done. I’m ready to defect already, and I hadn’t planned to do that for two or three years. Anyone willing to take me in?

Why do we suck so much?

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by the parliamentary system in Canada. You already know how I feel about the people involved; actually, everyone who was watching CPAC (the Canadian C-SPAN) yesterday afternoon knows, because I called in to announce my five-year defection plan. Now that those people have triggered – dear God – the fourth election in seven years, I figured it was time to discuss some real systemic changes, since they’re obviously not going to change their behavior.

Here’s the situation: Amid multiple ethics charges, the Conservative government produced a crappy budget. As distinct from the U.S., where politicians from both parties work together to fix the budget as best they can before voting, Parliament voted it down almost right away. With no free voting (members of all parties vote in lockstep on these matters), the Conservatives lost, triggering an automatic no-confidence vote, which they also lost.

When my first radio show was on air, I and my co-host made a running joke of debating the relative merits of the Canadian and American political systems. Three years later, here are the factors that put the American system over the top, in my opinion:

• non-whipped voting
• fixed election dates
• presidential term limits
• new leaders every four years
• an elected Senate

I still think the Electoral College ought to disappear, but it’s better than a vote for an MP (our version of a representative) counting as a vote for their party’s leader to be prime minister. Also, there is the small matter of Parliament lacking a single MP I trust as far as I can throw, and the other small matter of both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the leaders of the Opposition parties being unqualified to run a 50-yard dash, much less a country.

I can’t say with any certainty that the above noted changes to the Canadian system would make our politicians behave better. But the American system is more democratic by nature, which is why I would prefer to live within it. The only reason I’m going to enjoy this election is because people are entertained by my riffs on how bad every option is. And best believe this: I’m ready to party.

It’s your party and I’ll bash it if I want to

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by the entire Parliament of Canada. Actually, the past seven days have been fairly tame, but there were no other major blunders I could think of, and I was plenty pissed off about it all through January. A series of events has led me to conclude that the collective Canadian smirk at American politics is entirely misplaced. You think you have gridlock? You think you have bare-knuckled partisanship? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The first: The Conservatives, represented in Parliament by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, released a series of web ads attacking Liberal Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff, then yanked them 24 hours later when everyone picked up on their creative editing. The second: The NDP, a more left-leaning third party, are hammering the Conservatives for their proposed corporate tax cuts ahead of upcoming budget talks. The third: Ignatieff doesn’t know how to be clear on whether or not he will force an election.

All of these events, in their own way, illustrate major ailments in Canadian political discourse. It’s an unholy trinity of ad hominem politics (Ignatieff’s having lived in the U.S. and the UK for 35 years is the Conservatives’ major talking point), attacks without alternatives, and the constant threat of another election in the air. Combine that with tweets from the party faithful, and we’ve had one hell of a January.

I bring up the tweets because if you follow them closely, you will notice that it’s extremely rare for someone working for, volunteering for, or holding membership in a Canadian federal political party to disagree with it. At least in the U.S., rank-and-file politicos are more loyal to ideology than party; it shows they’ve thought things through halfway. But if you’re outside of the party machine, it’s easy to feel disconnected.

To date, none of the Conservatives, Liberals or NDP have proven any of the following: that they have a vision to improve Canada’s presence on the world stage; that they are willing to at least make an effort to work beyond party lines; that they will refuse to engage in personal attacks when making the case for oneself will do; and that, in sum, they know what Canadians want and need. It’s enough to make me not want to vote.

Only dicks need your protection

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by a small band of students at the University of Waterloo, who somehow managed to shut down a paid speaking event by yelling. If it were always that easy, two-year-olds would be the most powerful voting bloc in the nation. But I digress. The speaker in question was author Christine Blatchford, who had recently published a book on some complex happenings in the Caledonia region of Ontario. The protesters believed Blatchford to be motivated by racism and colonialism.

Now, if you could confront someone you perceived as racist at your own school, you would probably debate them, right? That’s the best chance you have of exposing any misguidance they may have. There was a teach-in prior to the speech, although it doesn’t appear to have featured an opinion different from that of the protesters. In any event, all they did was yell the word “Nazi” in her direction. With no college security coming to her aid, Blatchford left.

This is reminiscent of occurrences on American campuses during the Vietnam War. Lately, on Canadian campuses, it’s becoming a pattern of simply refusing the opportunity for speech to those who don’t toe the student-activist party line:

• Earlier this week, a pro-life group at Carleton University was cut off from student union funding and the privilege of promoting their views. They’ll get it back if they become pro-choice.
• In October, that same group was arrested for trespassing on their own campus because of some graphic imagery in their signage.
• In September, a student union VP at the University of Ottawa started forming a “human barrier” around a table giving away free bottled water, after screaming at them. (The sale of bottled water has been banned at some schools.)
• And the Ann Coulter thing.

What pisses me off the most about these occurrences is that in almost every one, the protesters claim to be “protecting students” from racism, misinformation, offensive humor, whatever. And the target is never on the left. Assuming university is where people go to be enlightened, can it be resolved that its attendees can think for themselves when confronted with new information?

Three mayors I wish we had

As I write this (it’s 6:24 p.m. on Wednesday), people are still straggling into their polling places to vote for Winnipeg’s next mayor, and I’m watching live coverage of the polls online. I haven’t had occasion to discuss that election here, but I will now because it’s illustrative of what a civic election should not be like – that is, utterly uninspiring.

Bartley Kives summed up our civic election in this excellent piece. His thesis: Our two leading candidates, incumbent Sam Katz (who owns the baseball team) and challenger Judy Wasylycia-Leis (who was a federal and provincial politician throughout her career), have spent so much time attacking each other that they haven’t had time to come up with innovative policy proposals. What was the first thing they did after a shooting rampage occurred in the North End? They blamed each other. That’s pretty much how it’s been the whole time.

There are examples of mayors around the world who Katz and Wasylycia-Leis would have done well to copy. Due to space constraints, I will only name three.

• Naheed Nenshi of Calgary. He was elected only about a week ago, and he ran on a combination of this platform and his own youth, optimism and tech-savviness. These are the four key ingredients for a successful campaign. Wasylycia-Leis’s platform was the most detailed, although some of her proposals were pretty off-the-wall. (Anonymous crime tip line? WE HAVE ONE.) Katz’s platform was barely existent; all anyone can remember is that he won’t raise property taxes (yet).
• R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis. Like Katz, his last election was for his third term. Under his watch, Minneapolis has become “what Winnipeg could be” in many respects, as anyone I’ve discussed it with will agree. He uses Twitter during and after elections, mainly to report on where he’s going and who he’s talking to in the city. What does Katz do to connect with citizens? When I asked him about it at a debate, he said he “danced on the street” at an event. That one time. Thanks, Sam!
• Rudy Giuliani of New York City. Yes, him. His anti-crime policies were so successful that we brought him over here to teach us how to use them. (Our crime rate, in case you didn’t know, is higher than that of Detroit.) Did we use them? Nope.

Forward-thinking, engaging and smart on crime: Three things no candidate of ours is.

Update, 9:28 p.m.: Aaaaaand Katz wins. Four more years of nothing. Cue music.

You’re not playing with the big boys now

The governing Conservatives have an unfortunate habit of giving Opposition leader Michael Ignatieff way too much credit (or blame, as in this case). Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon points to Iggy’s recent comments on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s handling of foreign affairs as the reason why Canada failed to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Yes, I’m sure the UN is extremely interested in what our two main political parties are screaming at each other about today.

If this does have anything to do with the loss at all, my guess is that the narrative is not “The Opposition leader is too negative,” but more like “The government and the Opposition are too busy fighting with each other to fight anyone else adequately.” That would put the blame at both their feet. It’s not a fight without a second blow.

Ignatieff and others pointed out a number of reasons why the Council may have been wary of having Canada on board:

• The government is pro-Israel to a point of alienating other Mideast nations.
• Our climate change policy sucks.
• We didn’t participate in enough peacekeeping missions. I know. Us.
• We didn’t ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Conservatives have their own reasons why they should have gotten the seat:

• They’ve been asserting sovereignty over the Arctic. (I’d think the UN would consider that a no-no without talks.)
• They’ve sent more aid to Africa. (So do people who respond positively to World Vision infomercials. Give them a seat.)
• They’ve campaigned against Iran’s and North Korea’s nukes. (Who hasn’t?)

What both parties seem to forget is this: Except for the Arctic thing and harboring war resisters, when it comes to foreign affairs, Canada hasn’t proven to have a mind of its own in years. And we can’t even get that part right. Combining independent thinking with respect for other nations means taking initiative without saying “We got it first, nyah-nyah-nyah!” The rest of the time, no government I have lived through has so much as opened its mouth without asking someone’s permission. Although that’s not entirely a bad thing, because nobody wants to attack us.

For Canada to earn a seat on the Council will require reclaiming our role as leader of the peacekeeper. Nobody has bothered to work on this, or even mention it, since we entered Afghanistan. But a trip to Mexico or Darfur might go a long way toward improving our global reputation – or getting one.

Conservatism in Canada: It’s just too easy

When I preach the virtues of centrism in this column and elsewhere, I do so in the context of American politics. Here in Canada, believing in certain things that centrists typically take for granted as good – fiscal responsibility, opposition to extreme political correctness, crime and defense policies that are neither too harsh nor too yielding – is enough to have you branded a conservative, often disparagingly and usually by Canadian liberals, who make American liberals look like a herd of Alan Colmeses.

Don’t believe me? Read this. The prospect of Sun TV News entering the Canadian television market has made pundits from sea to sea eager to pass early judgment, and this writer, Andrew Tod, is no exception. He is convinced of two things: a) that Sun TV News (owned by Sun Media, which has tabloid-style papers in most major Canadian cities) will be conservative in nature and b) that this will make it boring, which they believe existing Canadian media outlets are.

Doubtless, they would be boring in the U.S.; you’ve seen me complain about the “standing up for taxpayers” brand of political advertising more than once. And it is true that elected representatives of the Conservative Party of Canada have the collective charisma of a bag of trail mix with no M&Ms. Not that our other elected representatives are any better, mind you.

But conservative Canadian writers, though they are few in number and mostly work for Sun Media already, do endlessly fascinating work, and I dare say that most Canadian civilians above the age of 28 tend to agree with them. Sun papers are reasonably popular for easy reading over coffee, sports coverage, and the SUNShine Girl (ugh). But their letters sections are full of responses to articles that also have a rightward cant.

And that doesn’t even include our campus conservatives. If American centrism is Canadian conservatism, American conservatism is just short of Canadian campus fascism, as we learned during the Ann Coulter/University of Ottawa debacle. If Sun TV wants to avoid dullness as much as they say, they will hire at least one campus conservative as a regular commentator. (I would personally love to see that someone on a panel show with a young liberal and a young centrist – me, of course.)

So Tod is correct when he says that Sun TV will be conservative, by our standards. But that really isn’t saying much, especially when you consider – as I pointed out to him – that the closest thing we have to a Glenn Beck is probably in his mother’s basement where no one can hear him sob.