Canadian blogosphere FAILS again
Why am I just seeing this now ?!
awe-some. I’ve never thought of the House of Commons translator lady as an actual breathing human being, but now I kind of what to take her out for a drink, she seems pretty cool.
Mea cupla
I think I’ve made a mistake here (see the comments). We need an inquiry, the problems are too widespread and too egregious to rely on the courts alone. Fingers need to be pointed regardless of the consequences or benefits to opposition politicians.
Pictures of the day
View of the skyline from 8th ave on the way down to the beach.
Kits beach at dusk, just before the fireworks.
The False Creek skyline on the way to work. BC Place’s new roof can be seen going up at the centre of the pic. I didn’t realize quite how big the new roof would be. From a lot of the city, it obscures Yaletown.
Looking at the new roof up close. That new roof is 150 feet high. That white thing is one of 80 supporting towers for the new stadium roof. The white horizontal beam is where they’re raising the stadium to. I had no idea the new stadium would be so big. It was a monstrosity before, but christ.
Something missing from the Census debate
Jobless Canadians, women, Aboriginals, visible minorities, the disabled, and francophone minority communities will be among those harmed by the government’s snap decision.
“The Conservatives want to undermine the government’s ability to enforce legislation and deliver social programs aimed at our most vulnerable,” said Mr. Garneau, citing pay equity, labour market development, and immigration settlement programs as examples.
That’s an excerpt from a Liberal party press release on the census . Read it and you’ll be left with the impression that the only people hurt by the scrapping of the long form are minorities – or what Stephen Taylor in yesterday’s post called special interests. That may be sound politics for the Liberals, after all those minorities likely make up 2/3 of their voter base, but Taylor does have a point – the majority of people likely don’t care.
On the one hand polls show that most Canadians want the long form census, but on the other hand what the polls don’t show is a) how much they really care about the issue and b)if they actually understand what’s included in the long form. I’m sure no sane pollster would ask voters if ‘they feel the government, under threat of jail time, should have the right to command Canadians to record their religion on some permanent state archive’ – maybe it’s a bit too leading. But during an election that’s how it would be phrased and that’s what Canadians would be reacting to. And so while the pro long-form people have a majority of Canadians on their side now, I suspect that’s a soft number and would be easy to move.
It all comes down to the balance of fear – and what is modern politics if not the selling of fear? What brand of fear is most credible, understandable, and personal to the voter? (see Stephen Taylor’s post today for an example – censusleaks.ca?!)
The Liberal message is absolutely credible and understandable in its code words and vaguery – but only to their minority constituency. If I were a wheelchair bound lesbian Filipina in rural Nunavut, I’d be scared sh*tless by what the Conservatives are up to. But I’m not, and because I’m not I need something real to grab on to and be afraid of, something tangible – because those particular code words don’t speak to me one bit. What precisely is ‘labour market development’? How is it connected to the census? Why are the Tories going after that? And why should I be worried about that? None of these are clear or easy to communicate during an election.
The Liberals do have one tangible talking point though: “The Conservatives will have to spend an additional $30 million to send out voluntary forms than if they had kept the long form, spending more money for less useful information.”
Unfortunately for them, there’s nowhere to go with it. The government wastes money – everyone knows that. It’s the accepted background radiation in the political environment. Unless that $30 million is going in a minister’s pocket it doesn’t have legs.
But there is one approach that if I were – Gods forbid – a Liberal I would take to attack the Tories and scare the sh*t out of regular Canadians. Here it is: build a list of health care studies published in Canada that cite StatsCan data. If you want to be honest – and this is politics, so that’s a real “if” – you can confine your search only to those studies which use data collected on the long form. Multiply the number of studies by the cost of conducting private polling to collect the same data. Then produce a campaign with large numbers showing how much money the “Harper Tories” are taking out of health care research. Produce ads showing healthy people at hospitals saying that ‘if the doctors who treated me didn’t have census data to rely on I wouldn’t be here today’ – then cite a specific study which used census data and connect it to a treatment or disease. If you think it out, it could be a really devastating and emotional way to get at Canadians. Give me 12 hours, some time with the database out at UBC, and a cheapo website from GoDaddy and I could have a site up by this time tomorrow. I could, except that I’m not keen on the Liberals. But gosh, are there no Liberals out there with the ability to think this up and execute it? It’s so damned easy and would be so damned effective.
Oh by the way, I want to be clear – I think the above argument is bullshit. The long form data is still going to be collected, it’ll just be voluntary, and anyhow, a Canadian medical researcher can just as easily free ride off American census data as use StatsCan materials.
You know there’s a flip side to the approach above too. That would be if an enterprising Tory were to find a dozen frivolous studies that relied on census data, and published them one by one to show taxpayers why they’re threatening jail time to people like Sandra Finley. It doesn’t have quite the emotional punch, but it doesn’t need to – it just has to muddy the waters long enough for the issue to go away.
What’s on Michael Ignatieff’s Facebook feed
Not an original idea mind you, but imitation is the sincerest form of something something.
Jedi Census Project
Here’s a project I did for the Western Standard:
Easy to throw together, took about 3 hours. The Jedi pictured is my girlfriend’s Build-a-Bear Darth Vader. Standing in front of Libby Davies’ office was soooo embarrassing. Otherwise, I’m kind of happy with the production values, if not the response. The site’s been live for about 3 hours and has only got 1,000 hits. We’ll see what it does tomorrow when easterners get their mitts on it.
Wasn’t able to use it, but I also created this logo for it because I’m way that much of a nerd:
Liberal MP claims that Liberals “hate” Conservatives
A Liberal Party of Canada website, Liberalist.com, features a Social Media Guide (PDF) for candidates. I read through it, and honestly, it’s pretty useful. In fact it comes with a lot of helpful examples and it shows off a few MPs as model social media users.
One of those models is Glen Pearson – MP for London, Ontario. Here’s a line from his blog which jumped out at me:
Politically speaking, Conservatives hate Liberals and vice versa. I see it everywhere I journey in Canada.
Now what to say about that? Honestly I don’t know – I can’t think of the last time I heard a politician talk about hating people – maybe Carolyn Parrish?
Obviously you can decide for yourselves – personally, I think it’s not true, it’s out of touch, and if it’s not widely seen as offensive, it really should be. What I am certain of though is that it’s the perfect example of the type of language not to use on an MP’s blog.
