Anonymous Liberal

On Minimum Wage

2007-08-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

In a recent Globe and Mail article, Reginald Stackhouse discusses the idea of indexing the minimum wage rate. In discussing this, I have to first state that I very much dislike this particular article. I think Stackhouse deliberately confuses the very separate questions of a) ought there to be a minimum wage, and b) conditional on there being a minimum wage, ought to be indexed. While I do dislike the specifics of the article, I do agree with the overall suggestion. Before getting to that, however, I've got a bunch of other comments on minimum wage in general.

As for the first issue--which isn't even his point--I think he shows complete disregard for the economic analysis underlying not having a minimum wage. Contrary to what he thinks, higher minimum wages (special situations involving monopsonies and labour shortages aside) will reduce employment. It's not just the case that companies may not be able to pay their workers, it's often the case that they won't find it be cost effective to pay their workers. Minimum wages have the same problems as unions, in that they provide greater benefits to those on the inside, while simultaneously increasing the number of people on the outside. Of course, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily bad. But the economic problems, including the ways that minimum wages can make the working poor worse off in some circumstances, shouldn't be ignored.

Personally, I believe that there are rights issues involved in these questions, as I believe that a society shouldn't let its most disadvantaged suffer terribly as everyone else gets rich. I believe passionately in equality of opportunity, and I also believe that everyone ought to have a very basic standard. But I believe it's society's responsibility as a whole, rather than the responsibility of certain employers, to make sure that people reach this standard. As a result, I think that a better way than simply forcing minimum wage laws on firms to address such "rights" issues (I think the underlying right is much more complex and may not simply be an unqualified right to a minimum standard of living, but I'll assume now that rights language is appropriate for the sake of argument) is for a better welfare system which guarantees everyone a minimum standard of living and comes out of general tax revenues. A stronger welfare system reaches everyone and distributes the burden on society, not on particular businesses. Under certain conditions, welfare coming from general taxation may also be less distortionary than minimum wage laws, as the increase in taxation required to increase welfare would be much more diffuse and minor than is the burden imposed by minimum wage laws, which are specifically concentrated on specific actors. Thus, I think welfare is probably a more economically efficient, comprehensive, and socially justifiable means of providing help to the working poor than is a minimum wage law.

Now, moving on to the actual argument which Stackhouse was trying to make, I wholeheartedly agree that given that minimum wage exists, it ought to be indexed to inflation. If minimum wage is meant to provide workers with a minimum standard, then it must account for inflation. Indexing minimum wage to inflation reduces workers' risk exposure to the possibility of significant inflation, allows for stability in both real costs for firms and wage rates for workers, and provides predictability for firms, who can accurately predict costs instead of being forced to guess when legislatures will act to change the minimum wage.

Indeed, other legislation recognizes the benefits of indexing. The Residential Tenancies Act 2006, for example, indexes rent increases to inflation. There's no reason why the same couldn't be done with respect to the minimum wage.

An Inefficient Form of Pollution Reduction

2007-08-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Chinese government has recently announced an experimental plan to lower the amount of smog and pollution in its largest cities. In advance of the Olympics, it has instituted an odd-even license plate system in Beijing, whereby on certain days only cars with license plates ending in odd numbers will be allowed to drive, while on others, only cars with license plates ending in even numbers will be allowed to drive.

On the plus side, I applaud the Chinese government's efforts to tackle its massive air quality problem. Chinese growth has come at the significant cost of environmental degradation, and efforts to address this are good. If global warming and air quality problems are to be addressed, they will almost necessarily involve at least some reduction in the number of cars on the roads, at least given current emissions levels which cars generate.

However, this system is extremely economically inefficient. By arbitrarily prohibiting individuals from driving, this system randomly prevents people from driving, rather than targeting those who place the lowest value on driving. For some people, the inability to drive might prevent them from reaching their places of work or doing other necessary things. For others, driving might be more of a luxury.

Given this, it's significantly more efficient for the government to try to lower driving by imposing additional charges on driving, either in the form of gas taxes, or, if downtown air pollution is the primary concern, a congestion charge imposed specifically in certain areas. The same reductions can be made, but it can be done in a more efficient way.

(If driving distance could be taxed directly, an even more sophisticated and morally palatable solution might be to provide everyone with a certain number of kilometers of free driving, and then tax additional kilometers at an increasing marginal tax rate with respect to distance driven. Of course, this requires significantly more monitoring and enforcement capacity and entails substantial enforcement costs; thus, given current technology, it seems to be a rather implausible solution.)

In any event, this system of driving rationing is suboptimal. It's something which would have been expected to come out of pre-1978 China; it's not a 21st century environmental solution.

An Interesting Alternative to the Standard Approach to Contracts

2007-08-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

Richard Brooks provides an exceptionally interesting approach to contract law in an article at the Yale Law Journal.

As a backgrounder, the standard approach to contracts is that when one party breaches, the other party gets expectation damages. As a result, some (e.g. Holmes) have characterized contract law not as putting obligations on parties to do X, but rather to do X or pay damages. Specific performance (i.e. forcing the party to do X) is a remedy which is only available in certain cases. Thus, for the most part, one is able to breach contracts, but one will be liable for it. This standard model of contract enforcement has a lot going for from an economic perspective, and its efficiency properties have been examined by numerous academics.

What Brooks does is propose to reverse the holder of the right to breach or pay. Instead of giving that power to the person breaking the contract, he suggests a model whereby that right falls to the non-breaching party, i.e. they can either receive damages or compel the party to perform the contract. It's meant to be a model of contract enforcement with identical efficiency properties to the standard model, but which accords slightly more with our moral intuitions about forcing people to actually fulfill their promises.

At first glance, I rather like it. I'm still working my way through other commentaries on it, but for the most part, I think it's an interesting proposal.

Of course, in many ways, this proposal is a second-best response to failures in the law of contract damages. (Interestingly, the tort of inducement to breach a contract is justified by many law and economics scholars as a similarly second-best solution given the failings of the law of damages) If contract damages actually fully compensated individuals, they'd be fully indifferent to the damages or the performance, in which case the status quo model wouldn't be morally problematic, especially given the availability of specific performance in certain exceptional cases. But as it is, expectation damages aren't always perfect and can leave people under-compensated. Thus, while Brooks' proposal provides a solution to this, a more direct one would be to remedy problems in the law of damages. Of course, because this may not be possible or damages may be difficult to quantify in some cases (e.g. intangible harms), Brooks' solution might be superior.

In any event, there's interesting things going on with this, and while I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it, I think it's worth further examination.

A Mostly Uninteresting Cabinet Shuffle

2007-08-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

Some commentators think that the change in the Defence Ministry isn't the real change here. I am rather inclined to disagree. Obviously there were a number of goals that Harper was trying to achieve with this cabinet shuffle. But I think the main one was getting someone likeable and credible into the Defence portfolio. A lot of Canadians are grumpy about Afghanistan, and someone needs to remind Canadians why we're there. Maybe MacKay can pull it off. There are a lot of good reasons to be there, and I for one have no desire to abandon Afghanistan to the Taleban.

In any event, I'm quite curious to see how this goes.

After a long hiatus...

2007-08-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've come back to the world of blogging. It was a busy many months, and this completely fell by the wayside. A lot more random ramblings will be posted here. There will still be a heavy dose of political content, but it will definitely be significantly less politically-oriented than previously.

On Income Trusts

2006-11-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

Why are we fighting this? We're putting politics ahead of good policy, and that's the last thing we should be doing right now.

There are strong economic reasons to convert to income trusts, but we shouldn't be incentivizing the income trust-ization of our economy with the massive tax shelter which they've thus far enjoyed.

The theoretical economists who whine at the notion of double taxaton may be right, but they need to move past their abstract models and examine how they map onto the real world. There are exceptionally good reasons for taxing the hell out of income trusts.

Anonymous Liberal

It's been a while...

2006-10-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in quite a while, as I've been catching up on the rest of life after the DSMs. The blogs in general are a little slower, and libnews has been completely inactive for several weeks. So, I haven't had time to comment on a lot of issues. This post is an attempt to throw out a few random thoughts; forgive me for my lack of in-depth analysis for the time being.

1) Re: the leadership race, it's completely Ignatieff and Rae. They have strength across the country, they're comfortable in both languages, they have the media attention, and they have the most support in general. Both Dion and Kennedy have an outside chance, a chance which becomes much greater if any anybody-but-Ignatieff-or-Rae movement emerges. That being said, I don't think it will, and I think most delegates will end up choosing between a relative newcomer to politics and someone with so much baggage he'd have to buy the whole airplane for storage. It'll be an interesting choice, and, I think that if Liberals act strategically in looking at their prospects in the next election, they'll ultimately support Ignatieff. If this isn't their primary concern, all bets are off.

2) Re: North Korea,...yeah, there isn't much to say, except, as I said a few weeks ago, that it's going to be an interesting little while...

3) Re: Garth Turner, I respect him much more than I respect most tories (/former tories). Although I disagree with some of his views, I like many of them, and I like his blog, and I like that he feels comfortable criticizing his party. I feel bad for him politically that he was kicked out ("suspended indefinitely), but I hope he joins the Greens, serves as their first MP, builds credibility for himself, and is re-elected in Halton in the next election. He's for the most part an intelligent man.

4) More later...

Reverse Onus for Dangerous Offenders

2006-10-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

The Conservative government is apparently planning on introducing legislation that will reverse the onus on dangerous offender status for those convicted of three sexual or violent crimes. Up until now, the onus has been on the Crown to prove that someone should be declared a dangerous offender. Now, people convicted of three crimes in these categories will automatically be assumed to be dangerous offenders (with all that implies, including lengthier prison terms and seven years of parole ineligibility).

Now, we have that pesky notion in our legal system about being assumed innocnt until proven guilty, and I happen to think it's a good one. I think that ought to apply here too. Unfortunately, I don't think that a Charter challenge here will be successful (although similar reverse onus provisions have been struct down on Charter grounds). So my guess is that it will be up to opposition parties to stop this legislation in the political arena.

It seems to me that there are two classes of people who have committed three violent or sexual crimes: those who truly are dangerous offenders, and those who have had major extenuating circumstances and really are unlikely to reoffend. For the first class, even without this reverse onus provision, they're likely to be declared dangerous offenders as is right now. For the second class, however, they should not be considered dangerous offenders, and thus the onus should not be on them to prove that they are not dangerous offenders.

Anyways, that's my quick ramble. I think this proposal is relatively unjust and entirely pointless. Mandatory minimums I'm down with. Gun controls I'm down with. This I'm not. This will do absolutely nothing to stem violent or sexual crimes.

North Korea tests a nuclear weapon

2006-10-09T00:33:00.000-07:00

North Korea just announced that it tested a nuclear weapon. There appear to be enough independent sources of confirmation that one can conclude that there has indeed been a nuclear test.

I for one expected North Korea to keep on bluffing in order to gain concessions but not actually test the weapon. It appears I was quite wrong.

In certain circumstances, nuclear weapons can provide a stabilizing role. If two belligerent parties both possess sufficient quantities of nuclear weapons to create a situation of mutually assured destruction, the existence of nuclear weapons can actually lessen conflict in general, because the costs of conflict are so high that all parties will attempt to avoid a potentially escalating conflict at any cost (see U.S.-Soviet relations in the 60s, 70s, and 80s for an example of this).

Unfortunately, those conditions don't apply here. Kim Jong-il isn't exactly known for being the most rational of world leaders; rather, he's known for being a reckless party animal who likes American movies.

So maybe North Korea will try to use this as another bargaining chip for further concessions. Unfortunately, it could be much worse; this will go a long ways towards giving North Korea the ability to act with complete impunity.

Prior to this announcment of NK's nuclear capability, if worst came to worst, and North Korea did something so aggregious that a U.S./SK military response was required, North Korea could begin shelling Seoul and other nearby border cities, but the damage could be limited by an all-out American air attack.

With one or more nuclear weapons, however, Kim Jong-Il can be much more dangerous. Any attempted attack on North Korea would make Kim feel like a rat in a cage, and, as people often get when cornered, he might grasp at whatever straws he has. Unfortunately, those straws now include the possibility of completely wiping out Seoul, Pusan, and, if he really feels threatened, even Tokyo.

Of course, this is the worst case scenario, which is (thankfully) unlikely to happen. But what it does mean is that it's going to awfully hard to control North Korea if it does decide to undertake a certain course of actions that the global community doesn't like. Economic sanctions haven't worked, as North Korea is perhaps the most isolated nation on the globe, and there are very few additional measures that could be taken (short of China cutting off aid) that would really give the world community leverage over it.

Now, knowing that military options are even further off the table than they were before, North Korea may be emboldened to act as it sees fit.

It's going to be an interesting few weeks...

Some Thoughts on Support for Afghanistan

2006-10-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

There's something that I really haven't understood: why is there this general perecetion that the dominant position of the Liberal Party is that it does not support the Afghan position? Most MPs didn't vote in favour of continuing the mission (though admitedly there were other factors), and Ignatieff and Brison are seen as virtual outsiders in their support of continuing the mission. Especially in the blogs, so many people seem to be not only calling for a withdrawl from Afghanistan, but also asserting that that's the way forward for the Liberal Party. My question is, why?

Liberals began this mission. Chrétien began it; Martin continued it. Why, now that Harper is in power, would we be opposed to Afghanistan? I know that we're in opposition, but that doesn't mean opposing every single piece of legislation that comes before us. Hell, the Bloc supported over 85% of the legislation that came through the Liberal-dominated legislature when we were in government. A good idea doesn't became a bad idea just because bad guys are in support of that idea.

So, is it politics? Are we opposed to it because we think it'll bring us more votes? I really don't think so.

Support for the Afghan mission is up significantly from its low in the summer; it now sits, according to that poll, around 57% in late September. That means that only 43% of the population is against the war. But most committed NDPers (17.5% of the vote in the last election) are against the war, and they won't vote Liberal even if we advocate an immediate withdrawl. Same for the Bloc, who scored another 10.5% of the vote. Same for the Greens, who scored another 5% of the vote. Even assuming that some of the people who voted the latter two parties DO support the mission in Afghanistan, it's probably the case that of the 43% of Canadians against the war, 25-30% of them are solidly tied up in supporting other parties. What that means is that over half of Liberals support the mission in Afghanistan.

And, if you buy the arguments I (and others) have made earlier about moving to the centre-right instead of the left, there are a lot more gains to be made by supporting the war in Afghanistan than by opposing it.

In any event, this wasn't meant to be a question of whether it's objectively good that we're in Afghanistan (which I also happen to think it is). This is a question of what's good politics, and what makes sense given our (Liberals') past positions. Contrary to popular wisdom, I think both of those questions should be answered with continued support for the war.

The Continuing Cafuffles of Bob Rae

2006-10-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

So, now we have a situation where a bunch of Rae's delegates didn't sign their form 6's personally. Instead, they were signed by (or by the direct representatives of) his B.C. campaign co-ordinator. Sketchy. And quite unkosher according to the parties rules. Yet another thing that makes us Liberals look bad...oy...

Personally, I'm going to take the same line I did with the last Volpe scandal: it's not that big a deal. What does this scandal show us?

a) There are some sketchy political organizers. Shocking.
b) There are some sketchy political organizers in the Rae campaign. Again, shocking. *eye-roll* There are a few bad apples in every bunch. I'm sure that if a political party formed by an angel that was trying to get its wings would still attract some thoroughly rotten pieces of fruit.

Does it show us that Rae himself is sketchy? No. If it is revealed that he knew anything about this prior to its actual occurence, then my tone will immediately do a complete 180. But for the time being, I'm willing to give him, like I have given much scuzzier politicians (who will remain nameless...), the benefit of the doubt.

At the same time, I can't help but be kind of happy about the hits he's taking on this. Why? I thought he should have taken a lot more flack than he actually did over his NDP donations. So, in the cosmic balancing act that is our world, I guess I net even for my desired level of Rae-bashing, because he's taking more flack for one thing than I wanted and less for another.

As a final Rae note, if it becomes even more clear that it's a two-horse race between him and Ignatieff--which it probably will be if he secures one of Brison, Dryden, or Volpe--I'll be relishing the fact that he'll finally be subjected to some of the media scrutiny that Ignatieff has faced for months. I don't deny that Ignatieff has received a lot of favourable media, but, because of his perceived front-runner status, a lot of media were quick to jump on him over virtually any little thing. Rae, on the other hand, has been largely free from this.

There was that little blip (you know, when those polls came out showing him on top...) when the media was really starting to explore him and hammer him, but so far, he hasn't received the worst of it.

In all fairness, I will note that he also has been neglected when it comes to the good stuff. I don't think most non-political-junkies really know all of Rae's accomplishments and experiences, which are certainly numerous and profound. At the same time, I don't think most Liberals know of all his links to the NDP in recent years, as well as the many time's he's slammed the Liberal Party over the years.

In short, I'm just looking forward to this being a two-horse race so that each candidate can be subjected to a lot (and I mean a lot) of media scrutiny. With 11 candidates, this was hardly possible, and even with (effectively) 4 candidates it's tough. I'm hoping it's two, so that we can realy see what everyone stands for.

On Polls' Methods, Bloggers' Methods, and other nefarious means of prediction

2006-10-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

There's a beautiful article in today's National Post entitled "Rae, the Liberal Front-Runner?", which echoes sentiments heard in the blogosphere for a few days. The article kicks the metaphorical stuffing out of professional pollsters' predictions, such as Dryden being the leader, Rae being the leader, and Ignatieff being down in 3rd place.

By contrast, most bloggers' predictions were much more on the mark. Some were flippant guesses. Others were exceedingly well reasoned (e.g. Greg's at democraticspace.com). But virtually all of them got the basics right: Ignatieff in the lead in the high 20's; Rae, Kennedy, and Dion in the 10-20% range, not too far apart; everyone else a distant fourth. They might have got things wrong in terms of the degree (e.g. underestimating Ignatieff and Dion, overestimating Brison), but they were certainly much more correct that the professional pollsters' predictions.

Now, there's nothing wrong necessarily with the pollsters' predictions. The problem is one of interpretation. Ken Dryden may be the most popular and electable of the Liberal leadership candidates; that poll was probably completely correct. But that electability and popularity completely failed to translate into votes on the ground because it ignores reality and how the DSMs actually work.

Had the DSMs simply been a strawpoll of all Liberal members, maybe Dryden would be in the lead (and I'm not even sure of this, as I point out below). But it's not. DSMs involve having a large organizational team to identify and get the vote out, ex officios to build support, the money to send literature to your potential delegates and other voters, and more. Those are among the true measures of success at the DSMs. While candidate popularity is up there too (obviously), it's a necessary, but by no means a sufficient, condition for success.

But even if all those factors were irrelevant and it were more of a straw poll DSM, I'm still not convinced that Dryden could have come out on top. Individuals' responses in polls such as these often indicate their preference in an abstract ideal world. When push comes to shove, they might vote for a very different candidate, possibly for strategic reasons (i.e. their primary preference isn't for a candidate, it's against a candidate), possibly for perceptions of general electability, or possibly as a result of some kind of herd mentality phenomenon.

In any event, the point of the above is that while polls are useful indicators, those interpreting polls need to be careful not to attach too much significance to them or to read too much into them. Polls may show popularity, but this is only relevant for success in an election to the extent that sheer popularity is relevant.

Now, here's where I have a bone to pick with pollsters. The media and partisan bloggers will always pick up on a certain poll, for either the media value or to support their candidate, respectively. You'd expect some kind of spin or deliberate error to achieve those ends. And even if you didn't expect that, you might chalk up errors to a lack of understanding of what the polls are actually saying. But you should never expect that from professional pollsters. Insofar as some of them have used pre-DSM polling data to predict convention outcomes, they should feel ashamed of themselves, as that's just poor reasoning and use of statistics.

So, that's it for bashing pollsters and pointing out their limitations. Why did bloggers get it right?

Quite, frankly, bloggers got it right because they focused on process.

Most bloggers, in trying to determine DSM support, considered the factors which might lead to success, and came up with some formula based on these factors. These factors included membership sign-ups, ex-officio support, financial contributions, polls, and more. The weightings were somewhat arbitrary, but in the absence of PhD level research and econometric analysis, they were the best that could be expected.

Thus, the bloggers were successful because they asked, "what does it take to do well at the DSMs?", rather than just assuming it was a straight-up popularity contest.

This importance ascribed to process is something that professional pollsters and the media should pay attention to. Until they do, all the complex survey methodology, boostrapping, and asymptotic theory in the world can't save them.

Wasn't Rae supposed to win Saskatchewan? and other related questions

2006-10-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

Now, I ask these questions with only 3/4 of the meetings reported, so of course,the results might still change such that these questions become irrelevant. So, maybe this blog is for nothing. But for now, let's assume it is.

1) Wasn't Rae supposed to be a steam-roller over Saskatchewan? As of right now (9:10PM ET), he's running 4th place, and he has only half the delegates of the front-runner Ignatieff.

2) Wasn't Dryden supposed to be a big winner in Manitoba? Granted, only 1/3 of the meetings have reported here, but he's trailing substantially behind both Rae and Ignatieff, neither of whom was reported to have the extensive network built there that Dryden has.

3) How did Kennedy do THAT poorly in Quebec?
I know his French isn't the greatest, but if Dryden can get 1.5% of the vote and Brison can get 1.2% of the vote, you'd think that Kennedy would be able to get more than 1.2%.

And as a final observation, the fact that Ignatieff is leading in Quebec by a substantial margin (38.2%, with Dion being in second with 28%) means that his foreign policy views do not make him unelectable, contrary to what many people have suggested. Having one view that many in the Liberal Party (though by not by any means all) disagree with does not make you a polarizing factor, provided you are able to build consensus in other ways, which he is.

Overestimating the little guys (and girl)

2006-10-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

Most bloggers who made predictions about the number of delegates each candidate would receive got it, if the numbers continue in their present course, pretty much right. Kennedy was a little higher, Rae a little lower, Brison a little higher, but the overall pattern was correct.

There is, however, one major difference between the actual results and the forecast results. The divide between the top 4 and the bottom four is much larger than expected. Dryden was expected to be around 7-8% instead of 5.2%, Volpe was expected to hit 6% instead of 4.4%, Brison had high hopes of 8-9% instead of 3.8%, and even Martha Hall Findlay could realistically hope for 2-3% instead of 1%.

Meanwhile, Ignatieff was expected to be around 27% instead of 230.6%, while Rae, Dion, and Kennedy were expected to occupy the 12-16% range, not the 16.5-19% range.

What this means is that the smaller players are all but irrelevant. Sure, there are situations where the combined power of Dryden, Volpe, Brison, and MHF could exert some change, and if one even Rae, Dion, or Kennedy turn to Ignatieff, one of Dryden, Volpe, or Brison will be required to be a final kingmaker (assuming, of course, that delegates follow their leaders).

Because of these results, I wouldn't be surprised to see a few dropouts soon. Dryden and Brison, for example, might be embarassed by their poor showings and hit the road. Volpe will probably be stubborn as ever. And MHF has nothing to lose by sticking it out, so I imagine she'll hang in there. But in any event, I figure we'll lose at least one of the four over the next few weeks.

So why did the lower four get fewer delegates than expected? I don't think it's because they had less support than we expected. I'm pretty sure those blogger predictions were correct, not in terms of the number of delegates each candidate would receive, but in the number of votes. The problem is that, because of the fact that numbers of votes need to bedivided by 14 and rounded to integers, candidates will only start making their mark once they pass a certain threshold. In my riding, there were a number of candidates who received a significant number of votes that did not get a delegate spot. It's not even that uncommon for one candidate to get one fewer votes than another candidate, but the latter to get a delegate spot and the former not.

In any event, this system of rounding cuts out the marginal support that candidates have within ridings, thus shifting the totals by a few points.

In the end, it doesn't make too much diffference, but it does mean that smaller candidates' hopes of playing kingmaker may come to nothing.

Some More Confidence Intervals

2006-09-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

The following is a table of the proportions of delegates received as of 2:10AM ET on Sunday morning.(235/467 meetings reported)

Ignatieff	30.80%	Dion	17.30%

95% lower=	0.277884	95% lower=	0.148326
95% upper=	0.338116	95% upper=	0.197674

Kennedy	16.30%	Rae	19.30%

95% lower=	0.138905	95% lower=	0.167256
95% upper=	0.187095	95% upper=	0.218744

These numbers have changed quite a bit from yesterday, but so far, no one is outside their 95% range from yesterday. Rae is pretty near the edge, as he made a dramatic climb today.

In any event, as always, these statistics should be interpreted with caution. They only make sense if it's truly a random set of DSMs that have happened, and this clearly isn't the case, as certain regions tend to vote more on certain days.

But anyways, those are the results, as if it were random.

I am now quite ready to say that Lobster Thermidor's prediction that Ignatieff would end up at 24% is complete lunacy.

If Rae stays roughly where he is, i.e. about 2 points above Dion, I think that makes it an Ignatieff-Rae race, where Dion and Kennedy serve as joint kingmakers. Kennedy may gain some momentum tomorrow, however, as several additional GTA ridings return results.

We're getting further, but it still isn't the end yet.

As for me, I've made my appearance at my local DSM. I won't comment on how my race went, but I was planning on being at the convention as either a delegate or an observer, and that hasn't changed.

Some More Confidence Intervals

2006-09-30T23:34:00.000-07:00

The following is a table of the proportions of delegates received as of 2:10AM ET on Sunday morning.(235/467 meetings reported)

Ignatieff	30.80%	Dion	17.30%

95% lower=	0.277884	95% lower=	0.148326
95% upper=	0.338116	95% upper=	0.197674

Kennedy	16.30%	Rae	19.30%

95% lower=	0.138905	95% lower=	0.167256
95% upper=	0.187095	95% upper=	0.218744

Some More Confidence Intervals

2006-09-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

The following is a table of the proportions of delegates received as of 2:10AM ET on Sunday morning.(235/467 meetings reported)

Ignatieff	30.80%	Dion	17.30%

95% lower=	0.277884	95% lower=	0.148326
95% upper=	0.338116	95% upper=	0.197674

Kennedy	16.30%	Rae	19.30%

95% lower=	0.138905	95% lower=	0.167256
95% upper=	0.187095	95% upper=	0.218744

Some obvious but interesting observations about the DSMs thus far...

2006-09-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

The following is a table of the proportions of delegates received as of 1:00AM ET on Saturday morning.

Ignatieff	31.90%	Dion	15.20%	15%

95% lower=	0.261189	95% lower=	0.107469	0.105711
95% upper=	0.376811	95% upper=	0.196531	0.194289

Kennedy	15%	Rae	15%

95% lower=	0.105711	95% lower=	0.105711
95% upper=	0.194289	95% upper=	0.194289

Assuming there is no systematic bias in the DSMs that have reported thus far, these numbers show a few things.

First, it is extremely unlikely that Ignatieff will fall below 25%. Second, it is extremely unlikely that any of the main contenders to Ignatieff will rise above 20%. Finally, there is no statistically significant difference yet between Dion, Rae, and Kennedy.

It's going to be a long night...

But thanks to the Liberal Party for their Election Results Ticker. It gives diehards like us a chance to analyze the hell out of irrelevant results.

Stats anyone?

2006-09-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

With 47 of 465 meetings having reported, we now see that just over 10% of the results have come in. At the present time, two there are two interesting things of note.

First, Ignatieff is still comfortably over 30% (32.1%). Second, Rae is in a comfortable 4th with 12.9%, almost 2.5% back from the third place Dion.

Once again, the results are preliminary, and they may be skewed towards certain parts of the country which favour Ignatieff. But so far, these results are extremely encouraging.

Anonymous Liberal

Eleven-thiry, and all is well

2006-09-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

As of writing at this time, 34 of 465 meetings (7%) have reported, and the numbers are starting to look basically like what people have predicted. Ignatieff has a substantial lead (32.7%), with Kennedy in second (15%) and Rae, Dion, and Brison all near behind (11-12%). Dryden is weaker than expected, but no results are in from Manitoba yet, but he should win there by a landslide.

While we're by no means at the end, and this has the potential to be a hugely skewed sample, this bodes well for Ignatieff. If he performs better than expected and manages to sustain numbers above 30%, he's going to have a lot of momentum going into the convention. Of course, I'm not necessarily expecting this to happen, especially as results come in from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where Dryden and Rae respectively are especially strong, as well as the other Western provinces more generally, but I'm optimistic at this point that Ignatieff will emerge a clear leader in the minds of the delegates.

Michael Ignatieff by a landslide!

2006-09-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

According to the Liberal "Super Weekend Unofficial Delegate Election Results Ticker", if the trend continues as at present, Michael Ignatieff will win the convention with a landslide!

That's right, as of 9:30PM ET on Friday, Michael Ignatieff has 75% of the delegates! Forget thoughts of 30%, the Ignatieff campaign must be delighted with this overwhelming show of support by Canadians!

...of course, I should probably mention that that means the Ignatieff camp has gotten 3 of the 4 delegates reported...and there may be just a smidgen of variation from the actual results...but hey, it's a start. :)

Heading into the DSMs Anything Can Happen

2006-09-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

...almost anything, at least.

This weekend will be an interesting one. It will give some camps additional rhetoric, and it will virtually sink others. In any event, a couple of things will be clear very soon.

First, it will be clear whether it's a two-horse race or a many-horse race. If Rae manages to defy expectations and come in second after the DSMs, people will continue to mobilize around him as a front-runner, and it will come down to him and Ignatieff. If, on the other hand, Kennedy comes in second by a solid margin and Rae is stuck in 3rd or 4th, that will hurt Rae substantially, and Kennedy (if his media team can handle it this time) might be able to capitalize on his success and make it a race between and Ignatieff.

As is more likely, however, Kennedy will come in second by only a narrow margin, with Dion and Rae nipping at his heels. That will still make it anyone's race.

Second, there's the question of Dryden and Brison. If they have a respectable showing, they might stay in the race in order to exercise major influence at the Convention. As is likely, however, given their limited organization on the ground, they will command limited supported, and they may decide to drop out now. They may stay in the race, but if they are far enough behind, they may throw in the towel.

Third, there's the question of whether this will make Volpe finally get it. Everyone knows he should drop out, except for maybe him. Hopefully there isn't some last minute surge of support for him...that would be a solid way to wreck the Liberal Party.

Finally, there's the Ignatieff question. There are certain margins of victory that will make it all but certain that Ignatieff will be the next leader. If he breaks 30%, for example, with the next closest contender at 16-17%, it seems almost impossible that he will not win. Of the 70% who did not vote for Ignatieff on the first ballot, less than a third (20% of the total) would have to come to him.

If, on the other hand, Ignatieff falls below about 20% or within 2-3% of the next closest contender, that may spell disaster for him. His campaign will lose momenum, and he will be hurt substantially. Given, however, Ignatieff's commanding lead in ex officio support and the massive support network that the Ignatieff campaign has across the country, I find it very hard to imagine any scenario where Ignatieff is lower than about 23-24% and his next closest rival is less than 6-7% lower.

Remember, while Rae might have gotten Bevilacqua and Bennett, Ignatieff got virtually all their ex officio supporters. Bevilacqua and Bennett might add legitimacy to Rae's campaign, but it's the MPs, riding association presidents, youth co-ordinators, and other influential Liberals who can actually bring out the vote.

So, then, what will happen? It will be probably a race between Ignatieff and one of Dion, Rae, or Kennedy; exactly which of those three it will be will should become clear by late October or early November. At that point, the muddy waters will start to clarify, and at the very least, we will probably know who the final two will be on the last ballot.

For now, however, anything can happen. And you'd better believe that when the numbers come out, the blogosphere is going to be full of different interpretations of those numbers, showing how any given candidate can emerge victorious.

Take a Step Back and Breathe

2006-09-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Once again, people have gotten too hyped up about things. I think people got too hyped up at Dion for what (originally) seemed like an honest failure to cite. I think people got too hyped up at Brison, Dryden, and Dion over the poll issues. And now, I think people are getting to hyped up at Volpe (and more recently and minorly, Ignatieff) over a few individuals improperly signed up.

In the first instance, I think that all of these mistakes are very minor, and I don't think that any of them derived or intended to derive major advantages from having done what happened.

Moreover, I think that all of these mistakes were caused by people on their various campaign teams, not the candidates themselves. In situations where leadership candidates themselves commit minor but morally questionable errors, I am quite willing to judge. In situations where leadership candidates' campaigns commit minor errors, probably unintentionally, I think it is absolutely ludicrous to fault the candidate himself. It does no good to anyone, turns this leadership race into a mud-slinging fest, and weakens the institutional credibility of the Liberal Party itself.

Let's save our mud-slinging for active and intentional attempts by the leadership candidates to undertake actions which substantially have the effect of weakinging the Liberal Party. Like Bob Rae and his continued support for the NDP.

Fry Goes to Rae: Whoop-di-do

2006-09-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

This morning, Hedy Fry announced that she was dropping out of the race for the Liberal leadership, and that she was supporting Bob Rae.

That she dropped out of the Liberal leadership race should not be surprising. She has no funding, no caucus support, and virtually no ex officio support. She has been widely expected to gain fewer delegates than MHF, despite the fact that the latter has held no elected position and no opportunity to build the political relationships necessary to have a strong campaign. This is, of course, as much a testament to MHF's strong character, intelligence, and political savvy as it is to Fry's disastrous candidacy, but it remains that Fry has been in the House for a number of years, and her gaffe-prone past has not been ameliorated through impressive political contributions.

So if it's not surprising that she dropped out, how much of a gain is it for Rae? When Bevilacqua dropped out, Rae got a boost of right-wing legitimacy, which helped, despite the fact that most of Bevilacqua's supporters and ex officios went to Ignatieff. When Bennett dropped out, he got a prominent Ontairo liberal from the opposite end of the spectrum, and that will probably help him pick up a few extra delegates.

But what does Rae get with Fry? Fry not only has no funding, delegates, or significant ex officio support to contribute, she is also seen by the general population as being a little odd. She isn't exactly an MP, as was Carolyn Bennett, who commands a lot of respect. She might be an intelligent woman, but the public perception of her is that she's a radical wild card without positive and substantive political thoughts.

One need look no further than today's media to see how little support Fry commands. Take the EKOS poll, which Linda Diebel discusses in the Toronto Star today. Of over 1,000 people surveyed, each of whom had the opportunity to pick Fry as their first, second, or third choice, not a single person ranked her in their top three. Not a single one out of over 3,000 opportunities. That is a major signal that she commands little support.

To that end, while there are certainly other reasons for viewing Rae as the primary challenger to Ignatieff, I wouldn't consider Fry's support to be any help in this one. Virtually all of Ignatieff's caucus members--as well as Rae's caucus supporters--command more support and will yield more delegates than will Fry.

A Tale of Two Parties

2006-09-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the year, there was a story about how of the (then) eleven candidates, only three did not donate to the Federal Liberal Party last year. They were Michael Ignatieff, Gerard Kennedy, and Bob Rae.

While it's unfortunate that they hadn't given, there are reasons to believe the commitments of the first two. Michael Ignatieff has been a Liberal (and helped on Liberal political campaigns) since the 60s and is a Liberal MP. Gerard Kennedy has been a provincial Liberal MP for almost 10 years. Say whatever what you will about those two (and indeed, I have said quite a lot about the two), they are both committed Liberals who have been intensely committed to the Liberal project.

Now Bob Rae, as we all know, has been elected to office eight times, each as a member of the NDP. He was the NDP premier of Ontario. So now, he decides to make a switch to the Liberals, because they're, from what I gather from hearing him speak, he believes that they're a slightly more centrist and more pragmatic NDP with a capability to actually govern (instead of being a party of protest).

To that, I respond, fair enough. I think that it's quite legitimate for people to change political parties. I don't think they should run for leader a few weeks after getting their membership card, and I think they should show slightly more commitment to a party before running, but fair enough. If Rae has really, in recent years, decided he supports the Liberal project, then good for him. If he has ditched his NDP roots, then good for him.

But then, why did he give to two NDP candidates last year? Giving another party funding the year before you decide to run for the leadership of a party, now that doesn't seem right. If you want to prove your credentials, that is precisely not the way to do it. That's a way to alienate hard core Liberals, alienate moderate/right of centre Liberals, and alienate everyone who believes that you're actually committed to the Liberal project, instead of just being an incredibly opportunistic politician. I've called Rae opportunistic before, and this has just confirmed by suspicions.

Now, Rae might respond that he was just giving to two very certain candidates who he was helping to win, not giving to the party as a whole. Fine. But a) there were plenty of Liberal candidates in very close money who could have used that money, b) he gave to a party who helped to defeat the Liberals.

Why the hell should we believe that Rae is seriously committed to the Liberal party when less than 12 months ago Rae actively tried to help two NDP candidates defeat Liberal candidates? We shouldn't.

If you're a moderate/right of centre Liberal supporting Rae, go to Ignatieff.

If you're a moderate/left of centre Liberal supporting Rae, go to Kennedy.

If you're a moderate/left of centre Liberal in Quebec supporting Rae, go to Dion.

If you're part of the Red Tory wing of the Liberal Party supporting Rae, go to Brison.

Whoever you are and whatever your political preferences, if you're currently supporting Rae, get away. Go to someone else.

Libnews' Editorializing is Very Much Appreciated Right Now

2006-09-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

"Finally, we apologize for the lengthy and editorializing post, but the misuse and abuse of statistics is near the top of our list of pet peeves, right up there with cyclists who don’t stop at red lights, people who toss their dog droppings in our garbage and the new Transport Canada regulations that consider bottled water to be dangerous."

That quote came from Libnews.ca, and while they might have apologize a little for it, I couldn't be happier with their gigantic and brilliant post. I concur wholeheartedly with Libnews: I hate the misinterpretation of statistics. To be more technical and more specific, I hate it when individuals analyze point estimates without any understanding of the properties of the estimators. I hate it when individuals analyze only the first moment of a set of data, not the higher moments.

But at the same time, I have to admit, it's kind of fun to make conclusions from data. I do it all the time, and it's wrong, but darn it, it's just so much fun.

Anyways, I think libnews for their comprehensive list of arguments for and against every candidate. It saves the Liberal blogosphere from having realistically 20-odd--and potentially several dozen--comparisons, as the debate over the polls' findings is replayed between supporters of every potential pair of candidates candidates (much as Lobster Thermidor and I have already done in one instance.)

In any event, while it's usually the case that libnews reports on our blogs, I wanted to reverse that for a moment and throw my kudos out to libnews for their brilliant post.

I do, however, apologize in advance for the inevitable future when I continue to apply Coase's maxim. As is evident from my blog, I have an unhealthy obsession with torturing data, as I try to draw out whatever analysis I can, using whatever assumptions are necessary along the way.

I can only hope that, while I might get the information I want from the torturing, I make it painfully clear that that information is of limited use and quality and that not terribly much ought to be inferred from it.

And that's the problem with torture. You might get the information you need out of it, and you might be dead on, but you'll never know; you've had to torture so much that you don't know whether it's actually giving up the information or whether it's giving it up because it's had enough of the torture.

My solution is not to avoid torture. My solution is to act cautiously on the information that torture provides.

For those of us who love to over-analyze numbers...

2006-09-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

...we've reached an important milestone recently.

Nationally, we've reached the point that, in terms of caucus support, Michael Ignatieff is gauranteed to retain a plurality of support, no matter what happens with the rest of the MPs.

By my count, nationally, Ignatieff has 38 MPs. His closest opponent, Gerard Kennedy, currently has 14 MPs. Even if Gerard were able to attract every remaining MP--including all of the ones who have declared themselves neutral--he would still be below Michael.

The exact same scenario is occuring in the West, where Ignatieff holds a commanding lead, and in the East, where Ignatieff has nearly three times the MPs that his next closest opponent, Scott Brison, has.

In Ontario and Quebec, Ignatieff is not quite in this position. If Kennedy received the support of every remaining undeclared caucus member in Ontario save one, he would swoop in front of Ignatieff. In Quebec, Dion needs every remaining caucus member. But, Ignatieff only needs a few more MPs (2 and 1 respectively) to reach this same position of a gauranteed plurality. And, once all the neutral MPs are included, Ignatieff easily has gauranteed pluralities in all regions of the country.

While this may not attract any media attention, this is a symbolic victory, as it makes absolutely certain that Ignatieff is the candidate who has the largest support among the caucus right through to the convention. Other candidates may be able to rally additional MPs to their side, but Ignatieff will, at least in terms of caucus support, always retain the front runner position.

Moreoever, Ignatieff is the only candidate with a truly nationally representative caucus. While Kennedy may be putting up a good fight in Ontario, he only has 1 MP from each of the West, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. Similarly, Dion's Quebec support is strong, and he has a noticeable portion of the Ontario caucus, but in the West and the East he has no caucus support.

Now, I admit that, once again, this is simply an analytical game. It involes creating an excel sheet and manipulating certain numbers, and there is no certainty that these numbers will link up with anything. MPs are often able to deliver a substantial number of delegates in their riding, campaign nationally for a candidate, and show a broad base of support, but there are a great many more factors which are relevant.

After all, Bob Rae has picked up two former leadership contenders, and that bodes well for him. He also has the strongest fundraising machine, and his ex officio support is second only to Ignatieff's. For those Liberals who don't mind that he got his party membership half a year ago, he could indeed be the focal point of a movement for those opposed to Ignatieff.

But, despite all that, we shouldn't downplay caucus support. Come convention time, MPs are going to be extremely influential on the floor, and the significant caucus support that Ignatieff enjoys might mitigate the effects of a few additional candidates supporting Rae after they drop off.

But, like I've said before, it's still anybody's race--except for maybe Volpe or Fry's...

Bennett Supporting Rae

2006-09-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

Wonderful. The nice people finally decided that my blog was not a spam one and have unlocked it. A lot has gone on this week that I've been out of the loop on, and rather than attempt to catch up, I'm simply going to start from here.

So, once again, Rae has picked up a drop-out. While this doesn't impact the front-runner (Ignatieff) significantly--as Bennett's delegates and support are only minor--it does seem to indicate that the race has, for the time being, effectively dropped down to a two-party race.

For the last two months, I've viewed the race as a three and a half-horse race: Dion, Ignatieff, Rae, and maybe Kennedy. Ignatieff is unquestionably in the lead with his ex officio support and delegate numbers, and he has been receiving more press than any other candidate. Everyone else has been attacking him, trying to dislodge him.

But the general idea was that there were three other candidates close behind. But Kennedy has been receiving little attention in the press and has recently attract no new major supporters. Dion has received praise for his role in the debate, but he's also recently taken a lot flak from the auditor general for his environmental policies. He's gotten a lot of media attention, but he also hasn't picked up any major endorsements recently.

Bob Rae, however, seems to have pulled ahead of these two. He has attracted the support from both the hard-right (Bevilacqua) and the moderate left (Bennett), and he's been polling reasonably well lately. His fundraising numbers have been strong, and he has one of the highest profiles nationally (and certainly the highest in Ontario).

So good for Rae. We'll see what happens soon. Rae may pull further ahead of the other two and it will become a two-horse race, or it may be that the momentum of this will fade, with Rae failing to gain any additional endorsements or some of the other ones will gain some, e.g. if MHF or Brison were to drop out.

It's still an open race, but the murky waters may clear soon.

More on the Left/Right Debate

2006-09-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Let's assume that people like LT are most concerned with a progressive Canadian government, i.e. they want the Conservatives out of power. Let's also assume that, at least to some degree, a leftward lurch in the Liberal party will cause some right-wing voters to move to the Conservatives. It doesn't have to happen on a 1 to 1 basis, but let's suppose it happens at all.

What that means is, for every bit the Liberal Party moves to the left, it drives a voter away from a party with a progressive agenda over to one with a right-wing agenda. Why do we want that? I would put it that we don't. At all.

Let's look back at those charts from below. Just to debate the grounds on terms generous to LT instead of neutral grounds, we'll use the second scenario proposed below, where, for every 1% the party moves to the left, the party loses 0.5% of the vote to the right.

Scenario 2: Leftward Gain Twice as Fast as Rightward Loss

Liberal Deviation	Liberal Seats	Conservative Seats	NDP Seats
-10	102	117	14
-9	101	116	16
-8	101	116	16
-7	100	116	17
-6	100	116	17
-5	98	116	19
-4	97	116	20
-3	93	115	24
-2	93	115	25
-1	91	115	27
0	90	114	29
1	90	114	29
2	89	114	30
3	87	114	32
4	83	112	38
5	82	111	40
6	82	106	45
7	79	102	52
8	79	100	53
9	78	100	55
10	77	96	56

If what you want to do is prevent a government from pushing through a right-wing agenda, ought the goal not be to maximize the number of progressive legislators? Moving the Liberal party to the left will not help this.

Currently, the progressive parties (the Liberals and the NDP) have 119 seats between them (as always, in ROC). Suppose the Liberals move the equivalent of 5% to the left. This will increase the number of seats the Liberals have, but it will hurt the NDP so much that they will only have 117 seats between them. Moreover, the number of Conservative seats will have jumped from 114 to 116 in that case.

Suppose, on the other hand, the Liberals move to the right, primarily by continuing to advocate a progressive social agenda which at the same time being the party of fiscal restraint and thus attracting more support from business groups. Suppose the Liberals move 5% to the right. Then, in this restrictive scenario, even though the Liberals lose a few seats, progressive parties on the whole jump up to 122 seats, while the Conservatives fall to 111. Parties with a progressive social agenda will then have more seats than those without.

And that's just in this situation favourable to LT. I'm convinced that the situation is much closer to 1 to 1, and one needs only look at scenario 1 below to see how much better that situation is for progressive parties.

Some might respond, well sure, there will be more progressive parties in parliament, but the Conservatives might still be the single largest party. First of all, I don't think that that will always be the case, and it simply isn't in the 1 to 1 scenario. Moreover, having more progressive MPs, be they Liberal or NDP, means that those social initiatives which truly offend progressive sensibilities will be blocked. It might mean the Conservatives hold the government, but they will hold a government which is powerless to undertake the very actions which Lobster Thermidor and others fear it will.

An Anonymous Response to a Lobster's Thoughts on a Leftward Lurch

2006-09-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

My new-found blogging opponent, Lobster Thermidor, has posted a lengthy analysis about how the Liberal Party ought to move to the left, not the right. While I disagree with these thoughts in general, his attack is targetted particularly at me, and he has called for a cordial flame war. Well, I always enjoy a cordial flame war, so here goes.

LT's first objection is to my assumption that a one percentage point move to the right in the Liberal party necessitates a one percentage loss of support on the left. He writes that, if this were the case, the Liberal Party would be forever condemned to 30% support.

I very much object to that objection. The methodology used above was one that implicitly said ceteris paribus. This methodology never assumed that Liberal Party support would remain constant. It assumed, however, that in the short term, it would remain constant, and that movements along the political spectrum would maintain constant support for the Liberals.

There is, within this framework, a modification that can be made to allow for not only shifts in the Liberal party along this spectrum, but also a widening of the Liberal support base. In fact, I have updated the model so that it can include variations of this type.

Thus, I do not presume that the Liberal Party is condemned to 30% forever, as I believe that it can expand its support base by attracting both Conservative and NDP voters without major shifts in policy doctrine along the political spectrum.

Now, as LT has rightly pointed out, it may be the case that the a shift in policy of a certain direction may not net neutral for the Liberals. Maybe right-wing voters are unlikely to jump ship if the Liberal party moves to the left. Maybe. I don't think this is the case now, especially as a lot of Red Tories--those fiscal conservatives but social liberals who have continued to vote Liberal because of continued fears of the Tory social agenda--have partially had their fears quelled by limited Tory movement on the social front. Thus, I don't agree with that analysis, but I'm willing to engage it. So, let's use that same model to do so.

Below is presented the the table from my first blog, for reference. For a full explanation of the methodology, read the original post.

Scenario 1: Uniform Distribution

Liberal Deviation	Liberal Seats	Conservative Seats	NDP Seats
-10	66	156	11
-9	67	152	14
-8	72	147	14
-7	75	140	18
-6	77	137	19
-5	80	131	22
-4	81	128	24
-3	85	124	24
-2	86	121	26
-1	89	117	27
0	90	114	29
1	95	109	29
2	94	106	31
3	98	101	34
4	97	97	38
5	97	90	45
6	99	85	48
7	98	82	52
8	99	81	53
9	99	78	54
10	98	75	59
15	96	58	78
20	82	36	115

Now, we'll specifically analyze what LT calls for. Let's assume that when the Liberals move to the left, its right-wing voters are still relatively reluctant to jump ship. Specifically, let's assume that for every 1% shift to the left, the Liberals gain 1% of the vote from the NDP, but they only lose 0.5% to the Conservatives. Thus, they gain a total of 0.5% of voters for every shift to the left.

Scenario 2: Leftward Gain Twice as Fast as Rightward Loss

Liberal Deviation	Liberal Seats	Conservative Seats	NDP Seats
-10	102	117	14
-9	101	116	16
-8	101	116	16
-7	100	116	17
-6	100	116	17
-5	98	116	19
-4	97	116	20
-3	93	115	24
-2	93	115	25
-1	91	115	27
0	90	114	29
1	90	114	29
2	89	114	30
3	87	114	32
4	83	112	38
5	82	111	40
6	82	106	45
7	79	102	52
8	79	100	53
9	78	100	55
10	77	96	56

Under these circumstances, I've made assumptions extremely generous to LT's proposition, assumptions which I believe to be false. Even in these circumstances, the Liberals don't begin to come close to forming a government. Even compared with a rightward shift under this hypothetical situation--it should be noted that using these assumptions, the Liberals have 10% fewer of total voters under the +10 scenario compared to the -10% scenario--the Liberals are almost no closer to being the dominant party. Under a 10% to the right scenario, the Liberals are 19 seats shy of being the largest party, while under the 10% to the left scenario, the Liberals are still 15 seats shy of being the largest party. I grant that these are all restrictive assumptions and such analysis should of course be taken with a grain of salt, but even using LT assumptions, his theory is not confirmed.

Let's be even more generous to the Lobster and assume that for every 1% that the Liberals move to the left, they only lose 0.33% of rightist Liberals--i.e. they gain 2/3 of voters with every 1% move leftward. I find these assumptions to be crazy, but I'll present the results anyways.

Liberal Deviation	Liberal Seats	Conservative Seats	NDP Seats
-10	115	105	13
-9	113	105	15
-8	109	108	16
-7	109	108	16
-6	106	108	17
-5	104	111	18
-4	102	110	21
-3	100	110	23
-2	97	111	25
-1	93	113	27
0	90	114	29

So, with these assumptions, and a large enough movement to the left, the Liberals will form the minority government. But this has taken some pretty dramatic assumptions, which I think are completely untenable.

LT has suggested that there a lot of fronts where the Liberals could gain votes from the left without losing votes to the right. I think this is probably true, and wherever this can be done, it ought to be. I also think there are certain fronts where the Liberals could gain votes from the right without losing votes to the left. That should be done too. But what we're talking about isn't that. It's what direction we ought to move in general.

And as for LT's note that the elections in which the NDP have done best are those elections where Conservatives triumph, sure. That's not because of Liberal shifts, but rather because of the size of the Liberal base (i.e. the other type of change I was talking about earlier which LT completely ignored).

Finally, LT writes:

"A vast majority of NDP votes are spent in ridings they lose, but if all 17.5% of NDP support were to shift to the Liberal Party (absurd, I know, but hypothetically), then making use of my shmancy election predictor, the Liberals would win 184 seats, the Conservatives 81 and the Bloc 43. In fact, the NDP penalises us least in the ridings they win; the real sting of the NDP is in those 17 ridings in Ontario which the Liberals lost to the Conservatives by less than 1000 votes, while the NDP received more than the difference."

Sure, I grant that that's where the NDP penalized the Liberals most, and if the Liberals had those NDP votes, they might have won a bunch of ridings. I also think they could have done that by just trying to get back those Conservative voters. The Liberals were the party of fiscal responsibility in the mid 90s, but as long as there was a Red Tory party (i.e. the PCs), Red Tories were split between the Liberals and the PCs; even then, that moderate right-wing fiscal policy worked out well. Now, there exists no Red Tory party, but there are a lot of Red Tories out there. Those are all there for the Liberals' taking without much work.

Anyways, this all comes down to the question of where party support is the most flexible. I probably won't believe LT's assertion that right-wing Liberals won't ditch the Liberals if they move to the left, and he probably won't believe my counter assertion. But I have showed that, even if we make assumptiosn which are supportive to LT's position, the Liberals still won't be able to win back power.

If we made a similar assumptions favourable to my position, the Liberals would win a landslide with a shift to the right. If we stay neutral as before, the Liberals only chance of winning is with a shift to the right. If we make assumptions amenable to LT's position, a shift to the right won't help, but neither will a shift to the left.

The Liberal Leadership Debate in Quebec City

2006-09-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

All in all, not a bad debate. They've certainly gotten a hang of a format that doesn't make it completely painful to watch.

I have a variety of thoughts from this debate, and I'll sprinkle a few here.

On the Constitution:

First, I wasn't a fan of either Dion or Rae's comments on the Constitution. Dion noted that Germany and Switzerland are fine with their constitutional troubles. Rae indicated that "we musn't overestimate the importance of the Constitution."

Maybe I'm a silly Ontarian who cares about the overwhelming importance of the rule of law. Maybe I'm a silly Ontarian who thinks that a proper democratic society necessitates formal and substantive consent to the governance regime of the governed. Maybe I'm a silly Ontarian who thinks that there's still a little injustice and a lot of imperfections in the Constitution as it stands now. I might be silly, but I'm still disappointed with their responses.

I'm especially disappointed in Rae, who I've watched say, when directly questioned on it, that he would certainly consider further constitutional changes. His performance today seems to indicate that he doesn't.

And I certainly agree with the idea that other things are important. Practical, day to day concerns are something we should be dealing with. And constitutional discussions would be very hard.

But I don't think that we can't address both, and I don't think we should shy away from something because it's difficult.

On Michael Ignatieff and International Trade:

"Il y a une question éthique ici. Il faut créer un monde où les petits agriculteurs africains ont le même accès au marché que nos agriculteurs."

In contrast to some of the more protectionist rhetoric from some of the other candidate, I very much appreciated this. Ignatieff's principled stand on this is something long overdue from anyone claiming to be a Liberal internationalist.

Many Liberals may deplore the war in Afghanistan for the deaths it has caused, but the number of people killed indirectly and the economic damage done as a result of farming subsidies is many orders of magnitude greater.

More later.

An Anonymous Response to a Lobster's Thoughts on the Decima Poll

2006-09-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

In a well reasoned post, Lobster Thermidor critiqued my analysis of the the results of the Decima poll.

In certain aspects, I must admit that I was incorrect. For example, having gone back and crunched the numbers, it is clear that, from a statistical perspective, Rae does have a lead over Ignatieff in Ontario. The exact size of that lead could vary significantly, but, from a strictly mathematical perspective, I was incorrect. This is not the case, as both of us have noted, nationally, but in Ontario, there is a statistically significant difference. Thanks to him for noting this.

I also agree that Rae is somewhat higher than the 26% I originally noted. Fine. From that points onwards, however, we diverge. I still maintain that Rae is entirely unelectable in Ontario.

Why? It's informative now to note what the original article said.

Nationally, the potential voter pool sits at between 56% and 53% for all candidates. This potential voter pool includes three classes of people:
-people who will definitely vote Liberal
-people who will consider voting Liberal
-people who aren't sure

These numbers drop into the the 21-26% range that we're all quoting because the last category is dropped, i.e. the people who aren't sure. It's these people, the unsures, that the Liberal Party must be actively seeking. It is significantly larger than the other two categories combined, and it will necessary to win a large portion of these unsures in order to win the next election. It is these unsures in Ontario that I think Bob Rae would scare away. I grant that Rae has a stronger core lead in Ontario, but you can't win with just that core.

Moreover, I think that insofar as that lead does exist, it still exists because of, as I put in my last post, the name recognition that Mr. Rae enjoys compared to all the other candidates because of his stint as premier of Ontario. That is a huge advantage in this race, as there exists a massively crowded playing field, where few of the candidates had a massive profile among the Canadian population as a whole.

It speaks precisely to this phenomenon that the place where Rae seemingly enjoys the most support is Ontario! Ontario is where he was premier, and he has the highest polling in Ontario. Shocking? No. It's entirely name recognition. People are much more comfortable voting for a party run by somewhere they've heard of compared to someone they haven't heard of.

But here's the thing. Once we have a leader, that leader will begin to enjoy more name recognition across the board. Rae has more name recognition among ordinary Ontarians right now, but that difference would be minimized after the leadership race. Rae would gain more name recognition, but Ignatieff would gain even more than that. He would become much more of a household name then, because he would be THE leader, not one candidate out of ten.

In any event, that's the second half of my analysis. LT has successfully poked holes in bits of the first, for which I commend him. Unfortunately, he did not address the second, and more substantive, portion of the argumention.

Recent Poll Results: Do They Show Anything?

2006-09-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

By now, most hardcore bloggers will have heard about the Decima poll, which supposedly shows us lots and lots of interesting things. To that, I simply say, hogwash. Let's take a look at some of the potential conclusions that some people might have reached from reading those results. (Note: this blog is partially a reproduction and expansion of comments made on libnews.ca)

1) Bob Rae is, at least in terms of popular support, the front runner in the leadership race.

This is a poll using a sample; it's an estimate of support among the population, not the actual value. Using standard hypothesis test values, there is no statistically significant difference between the results of Rae, Dion, and Ignatieff. If you tested them, you’d find that they’re exactly the same.

You can just take numbers from polls and believe that they’re the population values. If you do, you have no knowledge of statistics, and you shouldn’t be claiming to interpret documents of a statistical nature.

2) At least in Ontario, Rae is way ahead of Ignatieff.

11 points WOULD be statistically significant if the sample size were 1,000, but it’s a subset of the earlier, it’s it’s probably more in the 350-400 range. Once again, huge confidence intervals. A 400 person sample has the capacity for wide divergence from the population value, so you shouldn't overinterpret the results.

3) But Rae did poll ahead of Ignatieff. It's not a sure-fire sign that he's the leader, but it might be an indication that he has a lot of popular support.

Ok. Let’s assume that the difference was indeed bigger. Let’s assume that Bob Rae is way ahead in the race, at least as far as your average voter is concerned. What’s this based on? Is this based on a reasoned analysis of the issues or the candidates? No. This is entirely based on name recognition. So much of what happens in politics is based on name recognition, and certainly Bob Rae has that.

For most Canadians, the only political figures who are household names are the Prime Minister, their premier, and occasionally the leader of the largest opposition party.

If you look through poll results asking people to identify the names of prominent politicians, time and time again (over the span of the past decade), nearly 20% of Canadians can’t even identify the PM correctly, almost half can’t name the Finance Minister, and roughly the same number can’t correctly identify any cabinet minister.

And now some have asserted that one of 10 candidates in the race to become the head of the opposition party has somehow become a household name because of a few months of articles in the Globe and the National Post? Come on.

In political circles, Ignatieff has become widely known and somewhat popular. Among the general population, he has certainly gained ground in terms of recognition. But there are literally millions of people in Canada who have never heard of Michael Ignatieff. That may be an unfortunate sign of political disconnect among ordinary Canadians, but for the time being, it's a fact.

4) Fine. But it does show, at the very least, that Bob Rae isn't unelectable in Ontario, as some have previously claimed.

Even this is false. Let's suppose that Bob Rae had, instead of collecting 26% of support, managed to poll in the 55-60% range. At that point, I'm willing to concede that Bob Rae is not unelectable in Ontario. With only 26% support, however, I don't think it shows his electability at all.

Receiving only 26% support may make you the front-runner, but it will never win you an election. To win an election, you have to receive as much of the remaining 74% of voters as possible. That means getting the undecideds and the moderates. I think that while Bob Rae might be attractive to a certain group (some old guard Liberals, as well as leftist Liberals and NDPers who haven't realized he's not the same old Bob Rae from days of yore), he won't have the capacity to build significant support for himself in Ontario, especially not in the 905 ridings around Toronto--and to a lesser extent the 519 and 705 ridings to the south-west and north--which are absolutely necessary to Liberal victory.

I think that someone like Stéphane Dion or Michael Ignatieff, both of whom polled marginally lower than Bob Rae among people definitely voting Liberal and considering voting Liberal, would still do better once the undecideds are included back in the mix.

So, at the end of the day, I think this poll shows very, very little. People from all camps should refrain from overanalyzing it.

Dion's Academic Honesty More in Question

2006-09-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

When the news first came out about the similarities between Dion's environmental platform and the materials produced by the Suzuki foundation, I gave Dion the benefit of the doubt. While there was some kind of an error made, it probably wasn't too big, at least in my opinion. But errors made more recently are.

Dion's people have stated that "The same people who worked on the two plans made the same proposals." Funnily enough, however, it turns out that only one person worked on the Suzuki Foundation's report, and he is not connected to the Dion campaign. Now that's a problem.

It's one thing to have made a simple mistake of some kind. It's entirely another one to have outright lied in such a transparent fashion. What on earth is going on with Dion's campaign team?

Admit a mistake. Or at least, if your a jaded cynic, try to spin something to seem like the mistake you made was pretty small. Don't try to cover your tracks by lying about it.

Ignatieff's Second "Gaffe": The "Civil War" Comment

2006-09-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

Ignatieff referred to a "Civil War" in Canada, in certain situations of Quebec seperatism. *alarm bells alarm bells alarm bells* I admit, when I first heard that he had used those terms, I found myself wondering whether Ignatieff's blunders might be more of a problem than I had originally thought.

Then I read the full quote:

«Il faut avoir des règles dans cette affaire. Il faut avoir de la clarté. Pourquoi? Parce qu'on veut éviter la guerre civile et j'ai toute la confiance du monde qu'on va éviter cela»

Considering the man has spent a major portion of his life studying ethnic conflicts and nationalism, I started to wonder whether simply his use of the words "civil war" were really a problem. After all, he did not in any way suggest that we would be headed for one; one the contrary, he noted that he has "all the confidence in the world that we will avoid it."

Then, I went on to read some a synopsis of the entire discussion in the Montreal Gazette:

"It would be well, he said, to "normalize" Quebec's political choices; that without normal politics the country suffers a continual over-stimulation that is bad for public choice; as premier, Andre Boisclair could certainly call a referendum. However, he went on, Quebec's real problems cannot be solved through a referendum; Quebec already has all the powers it needs to solve its problems. It's up to Quebecers to deal with their debt. Would a referendum help solve the problem of an aging population? Productivity can't be improved by escaping into magic. As for 50 per cent plus one, everybody knows we need rules in this business. Clarity is essential. We're talking about splitting up a great country. We must have clarity and proceed under rules agreed to by both sides. Why? Because we want to avoid civil war, and we can avoid it because we're a very sophisticated society and we have an admirable political system. Quebec voters can do what they want. They have the right. But we need serenity above all because without it, we have a situation of extortion, of menace. We have to be very calm."

We live in a country in which the War Meausres Act was invoked to deal with seperatist terrorism in Quebec. We live in a country that drew up contingency plans for seizing Federal territory in Quebec in the event of a sovereigntist victory. We live in a country where the question of what to do with Quebeckers in the armed forces was a very real concern prior to the last election. We live in a country that was torn apart by the thinnest of margins, a tearing apart that, had only 1% of voters voted differently, would have been fiercely contested by many and fiercely defended by others.

Mr. Ignatieff is absolutely correct in that there has to be clarity about any decision to seperate on the part of Quebec. If such clarity does not exist, the results will be disastrous, and, while it is hardly likely that there will be outright Civil War, there will certainly be major political conflicts.

I originally thought that his comment was a political blunder. Having contextualized it and read some of the commentary on it, I have now completely changed my mind. Ignatieff's comment was frank and it honest, and it once again shows his ability to be an intellectually honest individual who isn't afraid to shy away from difficult issues.

Is Dion's campaign simply careless?

2006-09-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

Steve Janke posted an excellent comparison between portions of Stephane Dion's Clean Air Plan and a Report by the David Suzuki foundation, releasted a week earlier.

Now, there are certainly major similarities in the content. On the one hand, this may not be too surprising. Both Dion and the Suzuki foundation may share similar positions, and both may be drawing their facts from the same sources. The similarities in content are quite remarkable, but this can easily be understood.

The similarities in language, however, are more remarkable. There appear a variety of situations where it looks like a 1st-year undergraduate simply copied the language from another text, then decided to change a few words so that it would seem "original". Could this be a coincidence? Maybe.

But to me, it appears as though there are two options. On the one hand, it could be that Dion's policy team has actually done the above and taken portions of the Suzuki Foundations's report, without citing that they have done so. It's quite alright to take someone's else's ideas and use them in your own document, but they must be cited, something which was not done in this case. And if this is the case--which I do not believe it to be, but let us suppose for the moment that it is--this is more than a simple academic error. This is an attempt by the Dion camp to claim as their own materials that were presented by the Suzuki foundation.

Now, like I said, I don't believe that to be the case. I think Dion's campaign is generally honest, and I do not believe that they would intentionally lift portions of the Suzuki Foundation report. Although the similarities would constitute a rather large coincidence, I am still willing to believe that it is simply a coincidence.

In that case, what would have happened is that the Dion camp wrote its policy document without knowledge or reference to the Suzuki Foundation's document, and there simply happened to be many similarities between the two.

Now, that is certainly less bad than plagiarism. But there's still a problem there.

One of Dion's three pillars is the environment, and, judging from his policy stances and speeches to date, it's his largest pillar. Dion has been touting his experience in this field, and he has positioned himself as the Liberal champion of environmentalism.

Now why, would the champion of environmentalism, not be aware of the publishing of the Suzuki Foundation's report? Presumably being a champion of a certain cause means that you keep abreast of the developments, and that your own policies are formulated through original ideas as well as reasoned analysis of previously proposed ideas. Why would one of his policy minions not have read and flagged that report?

Either way, I'm not all that impressed. Either there was intellectual dishonesty, or intellectual carelessness.

It's not a big gaffe, and I'm not really holding it against Dion. I just think it's kind of funny and kind of silly. On the other hand, if it somehow becomes clear that the Dion campaign was aware of the existence of the Suzuki paper and simply failed to recognize it in its own work, that would be a major problem. If that did prove to be the case, it would be ironic that it came out of the campaign of one of the two former university professors in the race.

Rising Tuition Rates: Such a Bad Thing?

2006-09-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

There was much talk today of the rising tuition rates. Not future tuition hikes, but the fact that tuition has been rising. Now, I'll leave out the point that, when adjusted to real terms, the rise in tuition is insignificant. I'll leave out the point that, at current levels, even a 5% increase in tuition really only amounts to $200 per year--only half a week at minimum wage job.

Instead of squabbling over nuances, I'll address the core issue: are tuition increases a good thing or a bad thing?

The facile analysis is that tuition increases, ceteris paribus, both increase the quality of education and make it available to fewer people. The pursuit of excellence would seem to dictate that we increase tuition. A sense of social justice and fairness would seem to dictate that we freeze it or lower it. What are we to do?

I tend to think of myself as a progressive Liberal with a sense of social justice who also sees the value of the market. So my answer is this: raise tuition.

Now, that doesn't sound like something coming from the mouth of someone with a sense of social justice. It is. Because I also believe that, hand in hand with rising tuition, there must be greater resources available in the form of financial aid--primarily interest free loans, but also bursaries. Why?

Fact 1: The private rate of return to an undergraduate education is about 11-12%. It depends on what you're studying, and, having crunched the numbers myself, it ranges between 6 and 15%. The 11-12% is a more mainstream figure, computed in a report a few years ago by Stats Canada. That rate of return represents the ultimate additional income value of a) paying for your education and b) the lost working time due to educational studies.

So clearly, there's a massive benefit to receiving an undergraduate education. Given that the majority of that return is private, I think it's quite fair to expect the individuals who benefit from it, not society at large, to pay for it. The caveat here is that in cases where the social return is large and enough people are not entering the field in question, it may make sense to lower tuition--thereby increasing their private rate of return, drawing more people into the field--and thus capture the social return. This would be the case, for example, if not enough qualified people were choosing to enter certain professions (e.g. medecine, nursing, teaching, etc.).

In any event, insofar as individuals are the ones who capture most of the return of their education, they should be the ones primarily paying for it. Society may find it in its interest to subsidize their education somewhat, but unless this represents an increase in the actual number of students receiving that education--which it effectively can't, given the limited number of university spaces at the moment--it is money poorly spent. That money would certainly be better spent funding additional research, something which has a much higher social return.

But what about my sense of justice and equity? Won't this stratify education along class lines? It probably would, if the system of financial aid were kept as it is. Which is why, any increase in tuition must be accompanied by a corresponding increase in financial aid. I cannot in good conscience support the former without latter. With the latter, however, I am completely in favour of the former.

An increase in financial aid--primarily interest-free loans, but also bursaries--will make education accessible. Although bursaries are a better form of aid for students, interest-free loans will stretch much further. At current interest rates and tuition, $100,000 could either pay the full tuition of 20 people, or it could service the interest on the student loans of 400 people. In practice, a combination of both will be best.

Moreover, the increase of tuition combined with increases in financial aid is actually socially progressive. How? Assume for the moment that all the money raised from a tuition increase goes into financial aid, which is then dispersed according to individual's needs. This sytem will actually give more money to the poorest, while making the richest and most capable pay more.

Under the status quo, everyone attending university receives a subsidy, as an undergraduate education costs much more than $5,000 annually. If, however, a rich student were not given this subsidy, it could give a poorer student a much larger one.

Then, even if not all of the increase were devoted to financial aid--suppose only half was--it might still be possible that education is more accessible. The total amount paid by students would increase, but those students least able to pay would see their tuitions be frozen or even fall. This would be the best way of both increasing the quality of education and research in our universities while ensuring that it becomes increasingly meritocratic, i.e. that the best and the brightest are able to attend.

Only lack of marks, not lack of money, should be an impediment to attending unversity--and those universities should be providing better educations than they are today.

Ignatieff's "Gaffe"

2006-08-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

Something in this world is upside down. I usually rather like Scott Brison. I also usually find a lot of Jason Cherniak's comments to be nothing but partisan rhetoric--interesting partisan rhetoric which I will continue to read religiously, but partisan rhetoric nonetheless. Today, those were backwards.

As everyone knows by now, in an interview today with the Toronto Star, Ignatieff did not commit to running in the next election if he is not elected leader. Many comments have already been made on this topic, but two are the most interesting.

First is Scott Brison, who attacks Ignatieff, suggesting that these kinds of gaffes show a degree of inexperience that is unsuitable for the leader of the Liberal Party. Then there's Jason Cherniak, who doesn't blame Ignatieff, but rather, he understands why he said it. Of course, he ends with his usual line about Ignatieff being a minister in Dion's government, but hey, that's what we expect from him.

Like I said, I usually like Brison. But I find it funny that he would criticize Ignatieff for not affirming his commitment to run. After all, Brison jumped shipped from the Conservatives after the merger, clearly because the party was moving in a policy direction he didn't want. How can he then criticize Ignatieff if he decides to not run because of a certain candidate winning--who could, similarly move the party in a very different direction. The Liberal Party would be very different if a Bevilacqua/Brison/Hall Findlay type won as opposed to if a Kennedy type won, not to mention the whole different spectrum it would enter under the leadership of Hedy Fry. Deciding not to run is a much less dramatic step than changing parties, and both are, in my mind, valid options when the policy direction of a party changes. Brison is being hypocritical by suggesting otherwise.

Now, on to Cherniak. He writes:

"He [Ignatieff] is not running because he wants power - he is running because he wants to help people. When all is said and done, there is very little that he can do to help people as a member of the opposition. In particular, why would he want to spend his time if the Liberal Party elects a leader who is bound to lead us to the doldrums of British Liberal-Democrat territory? Michael Ignatieff has better things to do with his life."

Cherniak rose significantly in my book for those words, as they show a recognition of what it is that makes up Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff may make the occasional political "slip-up", but it stems from his intellectual honesty and a genuine desire to make the world a better place. He may prefer Dion for a variety of reasons, but I appreciate the comments written there.

Oh, and the rest of the analysis in the thread is pretty good too.

Here We Go Again

2006-08-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

For those who have been reading my blog recently, they will have noticed rather few posts. For the past week and a bit, I've been on vacation and largely outside the blogosphere. But now I've returned, and my nitpicking and esoteric comments will be back. And I've added a few photo from the trip, just for kicks.

Moreover, those who have read my blog have probably also noticed that I have officially declared my support for Ignatieff. My name now appears on Cerberus' list under the Ignatieff supporters, and you'll find one of the pretty buttons linking to the Iggy website on the sidebar.

I did this with some hesitation, as, truth to tell, I like several of the leadership candidates. In a slightly different world, I might be opting to support another candidate. And there are several candidates who I would not be unhappy to see win.

But I also like Ignatieff. I like his policy positions. I like his style and charisma. I like his experiences. And to be frank, I like his honesty. He may at times appear to be an inexperienced politician, but I think this reflects more an intellectual honesty that many seasoned politicians lack rather than any inability on his part.

I also like Ignatieff because, of all the candidates, I think he has the greatest potential of any of the candidates to mount an assault against the Conservatives when the next election comes. The Conservatives will have mud to sling at him, but Ignatieff is also a man who can inspire Canadians. He's the kind of leader that people can get excited about.

Anyways, that's my very general justification. I could mention more on policy specifics and electability, but readers of this blog can probably pick up on that from my other posts. Enough on that for now.

Moving the Party to the Left is not the Right Answer

2006-08-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

As the leadership race continues to gather steam and the Liberal Party tries to redefine itself in its current opposition role, there are a lot of questions about what policies the Party should support. Internal divisions are very clear; one needs look no further than the Israel/Hezbollah question to see battle lines drawn in the Liberal Party.

An overarching theme that has attracted a lot of attention is whether the Liberals ought to move further to the left or to the right. Ought they become the party of social justice and big government in an attempt to capture some of the NDP's vote, or ought they become the party of fiscal restraint and small government in order to capture of the Conservatives' vote?

An increasing number of voices within the party have been advocating a move to the left. One of the front runners, Gerard Kennedy, is significantly to the left of most recent Liberal party leaders. Bob Rae, despite his recent right-ward lurch, is a former NDPer. The era of severe fiscal restraint seems to be ending, as candidates speak more and more about the roles government should fill. Indeed, the most right-wing of the candidates, Maurizio Bevilacqua, even spoke early in his campaign about the idea that Liberals should resists temptations to move to the left.

Of course, the overly simplistic analysis of political issues solely on the left/right spectrum is only of limited use, and this I admit freely. At the same time, it is a useful way to discuss issues, and there do seem to exist in most of Canada (at least outside Quebec) certain groups who identify as leftist or rightist. Much of the discourse does indeed happen along this one continuum.

As a (usually) right-of-centre Liberal, I personally hope that the leftward lurch will not come to pass. While this stems largely from my considerations of policy, I also believe that a leftward lean would be disastrous for the party at the ballot box. Why?

When people speak of moving to the left, they imagine that the Liberals will be able to capture most of the NDP's seats and turn them into a virtual non-party. I don't dispute that this could probably happen. But anyone who advocates this has complete lost sight of the fact that a leftward lurch will also cause some of the rightist Liberals to jump ship to the Conservatives. A lot of rightist Liberals voted Conservative in the last election due to dissatisfaction with the the Liberal Party, and as the Conservatives have pursued a relatively moderate course with respect to social policy thus far, the Conservative Party is increasingly coming a close second in many rightist Liberals' minds. A jump to the left, and those Liberals will abandon ship.

So, how much will the addition of the leftists to the Liberal Party help it electorally? Even if the Liberals completely wiped out the NDP and stole all their seats (without losing any others), they would only have 131 seats--24 short of a majority.

But in addition to this, we have to remember that a leftward lurch would cause the Liberals to lose seats. How many? That's not entirely clear. It can be estimated, however, using basic models of voting behaviour, if one makes certain assumptions.

Let's assume that there are three parties, the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP, all of whom are placed on a continuum from right to left. Let's also assume that voters occupy a similar space on this continuum. Parties announce their policies, thereby placing themselves on this continuum, and voters then choose the party which is closest to them in their preferences.

What happens when a party changes policies? It typically gains supporters and loses supporters. Although it's difficult to tell exactly how this would change, let's assume that voters are distributed uniformly, such that a policy change in the centre would cause the party to lose as many voters as it gains. That is, if the Liberals move to the right and gain 1% of the Conservative's voters, then they would correspondingly also lose 1% of their voters to the NDP. While this is by no means a completely realistic scenario, it is also of some value, especially in the case of a centrist party sitting between a leftist and rightist party.

The following table indicates the results of a model created to examine the changes in seats in the House of Commons given changes in Liberal's placement on the left/right continuum.

The methodology is as follows. The results of the 2006 election were put into a tabular format, with three columns representing the share of the vote captured by the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP is each of the 233 ridings in Canada outside Quebec. The 0 Liberal Deviation row corresponds to the 2006 election result.

The other rows correspond to the composition of the House of Commons if the Liberals had grabbed different shares of the vote. In the situation of a -1% Liberal deviation, it is assumed the Liberals have moved to the left on the political continuum (making it more attractive to those with left wing preferences), such that 1% of voters move from the NDP to the Liberals, and 1% of voters from the Liberals to the Conservatives. The victors of each riding are then recalculated, in accordance with the proposition that the candidate/party with the highest number of votes in a given riding wins.

Two notes:
a) Quebec is excluded from this analysis, because the federalist/sovereigntist axis is as important--if not more important--than the left/right axis, so analysis along the left/right axis will be completely useless.
b) The "Government" column calculates situations only based on the rest of Canada, as if Quebec did not exist. In fact, because of the presence of the Bloc Quebecois, it would be much more difficult for any government to win a majority of seats. Under more realistic scenarios including Quebec, a Conservative majority would only occur under a -8% deviation, not a -1% deviation as in the table below.

Liberal Deviation	Liberal Seats	Conservative Seats	NDP Seats	Government:
-10	66	156	11	Conservative Majority
-9	67	152	14	Conservative Majority
-8	72	147	14	Conservative Majority
-7	75	140	18	Conservative Majority
-6	77	137	19	Conservative Majority
-5	80	131	22	Conservative Majority
-4	81	128	24	Conservative Majority
-3	85	124	24	Conservative Majority
-2	86	121	26	Conservative Majority
-1	89	117	27	Conservative Majority
0	90	114	29	Conservative Minority
1	94	109	29	Conservative Minority
2	94	106	31	Conservative Minority
3	98	101	34	Conservative Minority
4	97	97	38	NDP Supported Liberal Minority
5	97	90	45	Liberal Minority
6	99	85	48	Liberal Minority
7	98	82	52	Liberal Minority
8	99	81	53	Liberal Minority
9	99	78	54	Liberal Minority
10	98	75	59	Liberal Minority

This analysis shows that while there are some seats to be gained by moving to the right, a move to the left is disastrous, as the Liberals would lose seats by making such a move. The NDP seats won would not make up for the seats lost to the Conservatives. Why is this case?

In most ridings where the Liberals have a chance of winning, their main competitor is the Conservatives, not the NDP (who often trail by quite a lot). Thus, a move to the left makes them stronger relative to the NDP, but in most cases they were never in any danger of losing the riding to the NDP. Rather, they were in danger of losing it to the Conservatives.

Under the -5% scenario (i.e. the Liberals move 5% to the left), the Liberals would have lost the following ridings:

Newton--North Delta

Brant

West Vancouver--Sunshine
Coast--Sea to Sky Country

London West

Madawaska--Restigouche

Saint Boniface

West Nova

Huron--Bruce

Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River

Richmond

Saint John

Oakville

Mississauga South

Random--Burin--St. George's

And they would have only gained:

Burnaby--Douglas

Hamilton East--Stoney Creek

Sault Ste. Marie

Parkdale--High Park

In any event, there's a pragmatic justification for not moving to the left. A leftward lurch will not win the Liberals any elections. It will only strengthen a resurgent Conservatives, who will increasingly attract the moderates.

Wrzesnewskyj's Resignation

2006-08-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

Wrzesnewskyj resigned!

About that, I have no complaints.

To be fair, I don't find all of his views completely abhorrent. On the one hand, I certainly believe that Hezbollah should be on the list of terrorist organizations, and I do support Israel's right to defend itself. And while I might find the force used somewhat disproportionate (and only somewhat), the notion that Israel, a truly democratic state with major judicial overview, has been acting as a state terrorist? Ludicrous.

Hezbollah is, however, a force to be reckoned with in Lebanon. Does that mean necessarily that the Canadian government ought to negotiate with it? Probably not. But in any event, he had his views, and he wasn't ridiculous to express them.

He was, however, incorrect to express them, given the views of most Liberals, and the already fractuous state of the party on this issue. With such a deeply divided caucus, it is not the position of the associate critic for foreign affairs to be on the most extreme wing of the party. As a backbencher, I have no problems with him expressing extreme views. As a critic with a responsibility to the party and acting as a representative of the party, his comments have been unacceptable.

Ignatieff's Environmental Policy Part II: Industrial Emissions

2006-08-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

Setting caps for emissions for given industries is an excellent idea. It attaches a cost to polluting above a certain level (thereby internalizing the externality), allows more innovative companies to lower costs and sell their pollution credits, and, with a decreasing cap, will ultimately lower pollution.

This is Kyoto without the problems. It's an enforceable, market-based system that will decrease pollution in the most effective way possible. The Kyoto protocol has the right idea, but, as with most international law, the lack of enforcability weakens it (not to mention Russian deindustrialization monkeying with the numbers).

Market-based approaches are indeed the answer. Greenhouse gas emissions must be lowered, but tey must be done so at the lowest cost.

Time to give Kennedy a little credit

2006-08-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

I make no secret about my support for certain candidates. I also make no attempts to hide my dislike for others. But I also like to give credit where credit is due. Right now, Gerard Kennedy deserves some credit.

Over the years, there have been numerous discussions regarding the engagement of women in politics. Some countries using PR electoral systems mandate that there must be a certain number of women in certain places on parties' lists. Others find other ways to encourage more female candidates to run. In Canada, we've done rather little in terms of legislation to actively enfranchise women politically, and thus, only about one-fifth of our legislators are women.

Perhaps it's time for pro-active steps, or perhaps not. While such measures are clearly positive for gender parity, they are mixed when evaluated from a formal democratic standpoint.

While promoting active steps towards substantive equality may be mixed, the case for creating formal equality is clear. It is always a good thing to eliminate socio-economic and political barriers which prevent the full attainment of women's equality.

Thus, I give credit to Gerard Kennedy for certain components in his plan for improving the participation of women in the Canadian economy. The readjustment of tax rates so as to not penalize second income-earners is absolutely necessary. As is exceptionally progressive legislation regarding pregnancy leave (alla Sweden). And the creation of funded child-care spaces surely has a greater social return than does the handing out of $1,200 annually to parents.

All of these measures are absolutely vital to completely enfranchise Canadian women. Economic parity is vital. Social parity largely derives from economic parity, and true political parity cannot be attained except through complete socio-economic equality of opportunity.

Good job, Gerard. Parts of the plan were admittedly vague, but it was a useful contribution to the debate of an issue which requires much more analysis. Dion and Dryden's plans for political parity are good, but in the long term, plans which promote economic parity will be more effective.

Ignatieff's Environmental Policy Part I: Internalizing the Externality

2006-08-22T21:26:00.000-07:00

In Tuesday's National Post coverage of Ignatieff's climate change plan, I found a lovely quote which, despite its inaccuracy, gives me great hope about the direction that Canadian politics will hopefully soon take. In analyzing Ignatieff's proposal, Darrell Bricker of Ipsos Reid notes that the plan may be good public policy, but political suicide.

Now, I don't think the plan is political suicide. I think Ignatieff is correct when he asserts that Canadians are increasingly environmentally conscious, as indicated both by the rapid growth of the Green Party as well as growing perceptions of the importance of environmental problems among the public as large. The success of Dion's candidacy thus far is also partially a testament to the importance of environmental issues; environmental concerns were one of Dion's three pillars, and they were probably (at least in the early part of the campaign) his strongest pillar. Thus, I don't think it's political suicide at all, and I think having a credible environmental plan is absolutely necessary.

But let's accept for a moment the idea that Bricker is correct; let's suppose that this plan is better policy than politics. In that case, kudos to Ignatieff. Society has been borrowing against itself for generations in a number of ways: environmental degradation, massive deficit spending, unsustainable development, to name a few. And while the curbing of such vices is seldom popular, it is absolutely necessary.

There will be no environmental plan which draws no criticism from a large portion of Canadians, because any plan will impose costs on Canadians in one form or another. They may restrict consumption, put higher costs on producers (either in taxes or in regulation), or tax consumers, but in one form or another, they will hurt one group of society, at least in the short term. But in the long term, strong environmental policies are absolutely necessary, and to not support policies which may sting in the short term is like taking a slow-acting suicide pill: it will kill you eventually, and by the time you want to do something about it, there's nothing you can do.

So, having made the case for why we need a strong environmental policy, what do I think about Ignatieff's plan in particular.

Quite frankly, I like it. Those who have read my blog since its beginning may have noticed the occasional tidbits of economic jargon; indeed, I like to frame things in those terms. And here's a situation where a very important economic term will pop up: externalities.

Externalities are the costs and benefits which impact third parties. Taxes need to be the mechanism used to internalize these externalities.

When I drive my gigantic SUV down the 401, I'm polluting the atmosphere. Unfortunately, while I've paid for the cost of the car and the gas, I'm not paying for the damage I'm doing to the environment. Why? There's no enforcement mechanism which can make me pay. If there's no enforcement mechanism not to pollute, then I have no reason not to, because my own contribution to global pollution is minimal. But clearly, it's in everyone's interest to counter pollution.

What environmental policy needs to do is internalize the externality: make people accountable for the pollution they produce. A significant portion of Ignatieff's proposal is to rework taxes on gasoline, such that cleaner fuels are relatively cheaper, thus creating an incentive to use them. By making people pay more for fuels that create more pollution, we cause them to take economic ownership of the pollution: we internalize the externality. This is exactly what we should be doing, as it creates incentives for consumers to consume cleaner gases, which in turn creates incentives for producers to research and create cleaner gases.

Considering the portion of Canada's greenhouse emissions which come from transportation, the development of incentive structures to cope with emissions in this field is a major development.

And something as simple as a tax on SUVs in not enough. This may discourage the usage of SUVs and internalize the costs of operating an SUV, but it provides no incentive for greater R&D into more environmental efficient fuels for all. It's a step in the right direction, but much more limited.

More on this later...

Why is Rae so weak in the world of blogging?

2006-08-19T18:01:00.000-07:00

Up until at least the end of June, Bob Rae was the strongest candidate financially. By some counts, he has the greatest number of ex officio supporters. In terms of the party establishment, Rae is certainly one of the frontrunners. He also has the greatest political profile, having been elected to office eight times. So why, with all those things in his favour, is Rae so weak in the blogosphere?

By Cerberus' count, Dion, Ignatieff, and Kennedy all have about fives times the number of blogger endorsement than does Rae. Even Brison--who, despite my own preferences otherwise, lags behind Rae by a long shot--has more bloggers supporting him than Rae.

Is it because Rae's campaign is completely divorced from the grassroots? Is it because Rae's campaign has a relatively weak youth wing? Is it because the Rae campaign doesn't care about blogs and hasn't tactically tried to stimulate interest? It's probably a combination of the all of the above, but in any event, it seems to send a dangerous signal about the Rae campaign.

If you were to ignore Rae completely, the endorsements of bloggers would very closely mirror actual support. Ignatieff, Dion, and Kennedy are the front runners. Brison and Dryden are on the radar, but just barely. Martha Hall Findlay, despite all the odds against her, is still making a good effort. And Joe Volpe, despite his networks, is probably a dud. But then you introduce Rae, and the whole thing goes out of whack.

To me, that signals that Rae's campaign is overrated for all of the above reasons. He doesn't have youth appeal. He doesn't have grassroots appeal. Among typical Liberal Ontario especially, he has "anti-appeal."

But more fundamentally than all of those, I just can't see people getting excited about Rae. I find Ignatieff's understanding, charisma, and character very exciting, and I respect him deeply for his intellectual honesty. I find Dion's experiences inspiring, and I respect much of his platform. Although I personally disagree with them, many people find Kennedy's leftist views to be a rallying point within the party. Dryden, one gets the sense, truly cares about education and childcare, issues around which he has rallied, and that is quite refreshing. And what's not to get excited about when it comes to Brison.

But Rae? Meh. He's a dull and, in the eyes of many Canadians, opportuntistic politician who, athough he might have done a fantastic job as a statesman, isn't terribly inspiring. If Rae wants to have a hope of gaining any grassroots support at all, he has to start being a politician that Canadians can rally around.

When he won his first nomination to run for the NDP in the late 70s, he did it much less through grassroots support than through his rather extensive network of friends and associates. He can't run his leadership campaign that way. If I'm wrong and he ultimately wins, then let's hope he doesn't try to run an election that way.

Former Bevilacqua Supporters Go To Ignatieff

2006-08-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

Maurizio Bevilacqua only ever had two other MPs supporting him, and he has been quite unable to bring them with him following his switch to Rae.

Earlier this week I predicted that MPs who originally supported a fiscally right-of-centre candidate would be unlikely to migrate to the former NDP premier, and today that was proven correct. MPs Roy Cullen and Gerry Byrne, along with other key members of Maurizio's campaign staff, announced their support today for Michael Ignatieff.

For those out there who hopes that the final decision will exclude Rae, this is excellent news, as it puts the brakes on the momentum that he has built up.

It remains to be seen to what extent the media will pick up on this. Will this only be a major development for die-hard and blog-crazy Liberals, or will this dampen Rae's growing public momentum as well?

More on Campaign Contributions

2006-08-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

After crunching a few more numbers, here's some things which may be of interest.

Here are the totals received by candidates solely in grassroots donations--as opposed to number of grassroots donors in the previous post.

Grassroots Donations ($250 or less)
Carolyn Bennett	$1,800.00
Scott Brison	$8,275.98
Stéphane Dion	$5,650.00
Ken Dryden	$3,035.00
Martha Hall Findlay	$5,445.00
Michael Ignatieff	$34,150.00
Hedy Fry	$250.00
Gerard Kennedy	$5,398.00
Bob Rae	$8,785.50
Joe Volpe	$470.00
Total:	$73,259.48

Now, here are the amounts that each of the candidates would have received had Harper's proposed legislation been in place since the beginning of the campaign. The methodology used for calculating these numbers is that all donations are capped at $1,000, so donations of $1,000 and less are kept as they are and donations of over $1,000 are reduced to $1,000.

$1,000 Cap Scenario--Amount of Donations
Carolyn Bennett	$19,500.00
Scott Brison	$51,974.63
Stéphane Dion	$13,850.00
Ken Dryden	$24,117.00
Martha Hall Findlay	$19,445.00
Hedy Fry	$8,600.00
Gerard Kennedy	$45,898.00
Bob Rae	$128,895.50
Joe Volpe	$46,570.00
Michael Ignatieff	$184,596.25
Total:	$543,446.38

Interestingly, Ignatieff leads in both scenarios. His lead among grassroots donors is commanding, while his lead in an Accountability Act scenario is less so. Rae also manages to break the $100,00 mark in the latter scenario, though the donations quickly drop down.

Campaign Contributions: A Time for Proper Analysis

2006-08-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

There's been a back and forth dialogue about the nature of campaign donations to various candidates. While it's supposed to be insightful (and often is), it's degenerated into a lot of partisan claims. Let's try and clear some of that up.

The story is by now familiar to bloggers. Cerberus claims that Ignatieff's campaign is grassroots. Greg Morrow at democraticspace responds that that claim is quite incorrect. Various others, led by Curiously Liberal, have questioned Morrow's methodology and results. So what's the deal? Let's find out by actually analyzing the data.

The first three tables below list the number of donations received by each candidate (as well as the percentage of donations), the value of the donations received by each candidate with the corresponding percentage, as well as the average donation received by each candidate. This isn't particularly new or shocking, but it's worth including in any reasonable analysis.

Number of Donations	Raw	% of Total
Bennett	38	3.09%
Brison	113	9.19%
Dion	58	4.72%
Dryden	67	5.45%
Hall Findlay	56	4.55%
Ignatieff	511	41.54%
Fry	11	0.89%
Kennedy	105	8.54%
Rae	209	16.99%
Volpe	62	5.04%
Total:	1230	100.00%

Amount of Donations	Raw	% of Total
Bennett	$59,800.00	5.53%
Brison	$100,674.63	9.31%
Dion	$14,850.00	1.37%
Dryden	$38,617.00	3.57%
Hall Findlay	$34,645.00	3.21%
Ignatieff	$276,696.26	25.60%
Fry	$9,600.00	0.89%
Kennedy	$103,778.00	9.60%
Rae	$384,795.50	35.60%
Volpe	$57,470.00	5.32%
Total:	$1,080,926.39	100.00%

Average Donation
Bennett	$1,573.68
Brison	$890.93
Dion	$256.03
Dryden	$576.37
Hall Findlay	$618.66
Ignatieff	$541.48
Fry	$872.73
Kennedy	$988.36
Rae	$1,841.13
Volpe	$926.94
Total:	$878.80

So far, nothing out of the ordinary from what's already been posted.

Morrow's claim that Ignatieff's campaign is not grassroots is based on an analysis of the percentage of each of the candidates' donors who are considered grassroots. Using this analysis, he shows that Ignatieff actually trails far behind other camps, because a relatively small fraction of his funding comes from the grass roots. But is that really the case?

The following table is a much more thorough analysis than the one presented by Morrow. The first portion of the table shows the number of contributions of various sizes received by each candidate.

The second portion of the table basically accepts Morrow's grassroots/elite distinction, but changes the divider to $250. Two subtables are included here, one for grassroots and one for elites. The first line of each shows the number of "grassroots"/"elite" donations (i.e. donations between $0 and $250/betweenn $251 and $5400) received by each candidate. The second shows the percentage of number of "grassroots"/"elite" donations received as a percentage of total numbef of the candidates' donations. The third shows the percentage of "grassroots"/"elite" donations received as a percentage of the total number of "grassroots"/"elite" donations made to all candidates.

Number of Donations	Range	Bennett	Brison	Dion	Dryden	Hall Findlay	Fry	Ignatieff	Kennedy	Rae	Volpe	Total:
	$0-$50	1	4	9	13	3	0	42	16	20	1	109
	$51-$100	7	11	21	14	18	0	85	24	21	2	203
	$101-$250	5	38	16	5	15	1	109	11	26	1	227
	$251-$500	13	30	6	24	11	2	173	24	39	23	345
	$501-$1,000	2	9	5	7	5	4	59	11	23	27	153
	$1,001-$2,500	1	10	1	0	0	4	24	2	24	6	72
	$2,501-$5,400	9	11	0	4	4	0	19	17	55	2	121

Total Number of Grassroots Donations:		13	53	46	32	36	1	236	51	67	4	539

Grassroots Donations as a % of Candidates' Donations:		34.21%	46.90%	79.31%	47.76%	64.29%	9.09%	46.18%	48.57%	32.21%	6.45%	43.82%

Percentage of All Grassroots Donations:		2.41%	9.83%	8.53%	5.94%	6.68%	0.19%	43.78%	9.46%	12.43%	0.74%	100.00%

Total Number of Elite Donations:		25	60	12	35	20	10	275	54	141	58	691

Elite Donations as a % of Candidates' Donations:		65.79%	53.10%	20.69%	52.24%	35.71%	90.91%	53.82%	51.43%	67.79%	93.55%	56.18%


Percentage of All Elite Donations:		3.62%	8.68%	1.74%	5.07%	2.89%	1.45%	39.80%	7.81%	20.41%	8.39%	100.00%

So what does this table show? First off, it broadly confirms what Morrow indicated. In terms of the percentage of donations to the candidates, Ignatieff is not the most grassroots. Dion, Hall Findlay, Kennedy, Dryden, and Brison all goth a higher percentage of their donations from grassroots donors than did Ignatieff (as counted by number of donors, not size of donations).

But that type of analysis is just plain silly. Why? Because it punishes candidates who are able to reach to large donors and small donors alike. If a candidate attracts 50 donations from the grassroots and none from larger donors, while another candidate attracts 100 from the grassroots and 50 from large donors, the former will be deemed under this system to have run a more grassroots campaign. But the question shouldn't be about whose campaign attracted the highest relative percentage of grassroots donors. It should be about whose campaign was most able to attract the most grassroots donors. Campaigns shouldn't be punished for ALSO attracting the support of large donors.

So, in terms of who was able to attract the MOST support from grassroots donors, it was clearly Ignatieff. Ignatieff received contributions from 236 grassroots donors. Since there were only 539 grassroots donors in total, this constitutes 43.8% of all grassroots donors to the Liberal Party over that time. What about the other "grassroots candidates"? Dion only attracted 46 grassroots donors (8.5% of the total), Kennedy attracted 51 of grassroots donors (9.5% of the total), and Brison attracted 53 grassroots donors (9.8% of the total). Even the next most successful in attracting sheer numbers of grassroots donors, Bob Rae, only attracted 67 donors (12.4% of the total).

Thus, in terms of the total number of grassroots donations, Ignatieff attracted more than the next 4 combined. If that isn't getting out the grassroots, I don't know what is.

So why does Dion get such kudos for this grassroots support? In terms of his support, it's true that grassroots supporters make up almost 80% of the individuals who gave to his campaign. But this could be for two reasons: 1) he did an extremely successful job or attracting grassroots support, or 2) he did an extremely poor job of attracting support from non-grassroots donors.

Looking over the data, it's clear that the second is actually the case. Dion was only able to attract 12 "elite" donations, which constitute only 1.74% of all elite donations given. So while Dion only attracted 46 grassroots donors compared to Ignatieff's 236, Dion appears superficially to be a more grassroots campaign because he attracted only 12 elite donors as opposed to Ignatieff's 275.

The point of this entire blog is that Morrow is entirely incorrect, even if you accept his methodology. Ignatieff is by far the most successful at attracting grassroots support within the Liberal Party, as he attracted almost four times as many grassroots donations than the next closest candidate. Dion appears superficially to be a grassroots candidate, but only because he completely failed at attracting large donations.

To me, the grassroots candidate is the one that can attract the most support from smaller donors. That candidate might also attract large donations, but they must certainly be the one with an unquestionable lead in attracting the money of the rank and file. And that candidate is unquestionably Michael Ignatieff.

Safe Injection Sites Must be Continued

2006-08-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

The safe injection site in Vancouver's Eastside will be closing in September, unless the Conservatives extend its life, something they have thus far failed to do.

Many members of the Conservative Caucus--probably the grumpy old men who have never set foot in Vancouver's Eastside--are surely grumbling to let the project die. But this would be a tremendous mistake.

Safe injection sites provide a strong mechanism for reducing infectious diseases, such as HIV and Hepatitis C, among drug users. They provide a safe and clean place for drug users to use those drugs. They provide a location where staff are trained to deal with the adverse effects of impure drugs and overdoses. In doing these, they save lives, stop the spread of disease, and create safer communities.

Most importantly, however, safe infection sites provide a necessary first step for reducing the use of injection drugs. Counselling services are available, and while counselling is not a sufficient step for rehabilitation, it is a necessary first step.

The presence of safe injection sites will not encourage drug use; it will merely bring it out into the open, where it can be done safely and managed. By bringing it into a safe injection site, drug users can receive help which they otherwise would not have gotten.

By contrast, the Harper government would police its way to solving drug problems. While law enforcement must certainly be a necessary component of a strategy combatting drug use, it cannot be the primary component, as shown by its failure throughout parts of the United States.

The Mayor of Vancouver supports the project. The Police Chief of Vancouver supports the project. Liberals across the country support the project. So who opposes the project? The Conservatives meanwhile spurn it.

Maybe the Conservatives would have some credibility if their only urban MP weren't a Liberal defector who is out of touch with his constituents and who will certainly lose his seat in the next election. If the Conservatives cared about urban issues or city dwellers felt that the Conservatives understood their problems, then maybe the Conservatives might have some credibility. As it stands, they do not.

Is Rae the new front-runner?

2006-08-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

No.

He has momentum for the time being, and there are some temptations to suggest that he is indeed the front-runner. Those temptations are more the realm of the media than public opinion; the former is certainly more fickle than the latter.

Does Rae have significant support in Ontario? No. Is he leading in terms of the ex officio support? No. Does Bevilacqua help him much? No (see earlier blog).

I'll grant that the current momentum might give Rae a bit of a boost. But that momentum has to hang around for a while in order for it to be translated into concrete gains at the end of September. As of right now, I'm skeptical that it will.

I will certainly bet on Dion or Ignatieff before Rae. And ask me in a month, and I might even bet on Kennedy. Probably not, but it might happen.

If Rae were to win, it will show a complete lack of practicality on the part of most Liberals. Rae is still deeply distrusted in Ontario, and those 905 ridings which are crucial to the Liberal victory are not something he can deliver.

Dion's rumoured frolic in the Orchard

2006-08-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

I respect Stéphane Dion quite a lot. Of the candidates running for the leadership, I am most supportive of Dion, Ignatieff, Brison, and Hall Findlay (not necessarily in that order)--and occasionally, when I'm in a certain mood, Rae. I root for Dion, I respect Dion, and I would happily vote for a Liberal Party led by Dion.

But what about this David Orchard fellow? I'm not a fan. Endorsements are not always good. Buzz Hargrove would not be a good endorsement. Paul Martin would not be a good endorsement. David Orchard, in my mind, would not be a good endorsement.

He hurts Dion's credibility as a true Liberal. He hurts Dion's credibility as a neutral internationalist. And he gives Dion very little help.

Would Orchard held Dion somewhat on the ground? Maybe. But would he also alienate others that are turned off by Orchard? Probably.

If I were Dion, I would avoid that press conference and disavow it.

Bevilacqua drops out of the race, but how much did Rae gain?

2006-08-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, Maurizio Bevilacqua became the first of the eleven contenders to drop out of the race for the leadership of the Liberals. Instead of running, he has now thrown his support to Bob Rae's leadership campaign.

Seems to be peachy keen for Rae. The most right-wing and fiscally conservative of the candidates has opted to support him, thus helping to counter his image as a former NDPer. It's also helped to deflect some recent press which criticized him for his somewhat weak stance on the conflict in Lebanon. He seems to be a solid front-runner, and the press has certainly been referring to him as such. But really, what will Bevilacqua really do for Rae?

Bevilacqua signed up only a few thousand new members, has been unsuccessful fundraising, and has truckloads of debt. And there's no guarantee that the members that Bevilacqua signed up will go to Rae. While some of them probably will, most of them are right of center Liberals from the GTA that lived through Rae's premiership. It's true that Rae was only partially responsible for the economic and labour difficulties suffered by Ontario when he was premier, but he is certainly blamed by many Ontarians for them. The type of Liberals that Bevilacqua signed up are much more likely to flock to Brison, Ignatieff, or Dion, than Rae.

And as for Bevilacqua's ex officios (all half dozen of them), there's similarly no guarantee they'll migrate their allegiance. Many of them will surely flock to other candidates.

So what does Bevilacqua give Rae? A little more legitimacy maybe, but not much else.

If I were a betting many, I'd still put my money on Ignatieff or Dion. Given a choice between Kennedy and Rae, where I would have probably chosen Kennedy before, I might choose Rae now. But unlike some other bloggers, my odds are certainly not on Rae.

Political Fundraising Regulations Too Extreme?

2006-08-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Others have raised the issue elsewhere, in the blogosphere, in newspapers, even by committees struck specifically to discuss this: are the regulations on political fundraising at the federal level too restrictive?

I am quite supportive of the notion that political parties ought to be beholden to no one individual or small group of individuals. I am similarly supportive of the idea that no firms ought to be able to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to political parties, thus buying their support. I am similarly supportive of political parties being forced to attract the support of a wide range of individuals. I do not, however, believe that any of these require that individuals only be able to donate $1,000 per year to political parties.

I do not believe that a $5,000 limit on fundraising gives an individuals undue influence over government. Look at the fundraising the current leadership campaign. Campaigns have turned to new fundraising techniques, including Dion's $100 dollar challenge, Ignatieff's Liberal helpings, Brison's web-a-thon, and more. All have taken to attracting a broader base of support, and all have started looking to larger numbers of smaller donors. This is evidence that the Canadian political process is already moving in the right direction; we don't have to tighten the noose even further.

Nor am I categorically opposed to corporate donations. Insofar as we believe that corporations have interests that merit expression, and insofar as we believe that corporate interests should have a role in the political process, then we ought to allow corporate donations.

Traditionally, there has been much opposition to the idea that corporations ought to be involved in the political process, and I believe that this stems much more from corporations controlling the political process than simply being involved therein.

The average corporation has much greater means than does the average individual to influence the political process, and for that reason, an absence of restrictions on donations for all parties would almost certainly mean that corporate interests would prevail over individuals' interests.

I do not believe, however, that it can be justified that corporations cannot donate the same amount as individuals. $5,000 per year from one firm will not be able to buy the support of a political party, nor will $5,000 per year from each of 20 firms in a given industry.

Corporate donations must be heavily regulated to ensure that holding companies as well as subsidiary firms do not both provide $5,000; similarly, there must be criteria which firms must meet, so that it is ensured that corporations are not created simply for the purpose of funneling money into political parties.

The current lack of corporate donations of any kind, however, is just another factor contributing to the difficulties of fundraising. Volpe's transgressions, heinous though I may find them, would not have occured in a slightly more relaxed fundraising environment. Indeed, if rules remain as strict as they are, we can only expect more individuals trying to find ways to skirt around the rules. That is certainly worse for Canadian democracy than is a minor liberalization of fundraising regulations.

The Conservative Government's Priorities

2006-08-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Of all the Liberal leadership delegates, I am probably most opposed to Gerard Kennedy. While there are numerous reasons for this--largely having to do with my own political views vs. Kennedy's and not Kennedy's record or character--I applaud Kennedy for being one of the first candidates to publish a statement about how Stephen Harper will not be attending a major AIDS conference being held in Toronto.

I find it quite amazing that, given the list of other prominent individuals attending the conference, Mr. Harper has declined to attend, citing a scheduling conflict.

This is another example of the short-sightedness of Conservative priorities. An analysis of these priorities shows that unlike the Liberals, Conservatives are amazingly short-sighted. The environment and climate change are low on Conservative priorities. As is AIDS, which is perhaps the single largest impediment to the development of Sub-Saharan Africa. Paying off the national debt, an increasingly good idea as interest rates rise, is largely being ignored in favour of current consumption (i.e. in the form of both tax breaks and higher spending).

Admittedly, increased current spending can be good provided the rate of return on that spending exceeds the cost of capital. In this case, however, interest rates are rising, and the fiscal stimulus is largely coming in the form of tax cuts instead of spending on infrastructure and other public goods which yield long-term benefits.

Harper's Conservatives need a longer term vision. Their policies may have been popular enough among some quarters in the short term, but they further exacerbate the short-sightedness which has been increasingly permeating most Western societies in recent decades.

Personal savings have fallen lower and lower over the past several decades, even to the extent that net savings in the United States recently hit 0%. Part of this, at least in Canada, has been mitigated by the Liberal government's policy of paying back the debt. That is now occuring less and less, to the detriment of the Canadian public in the long-term.

If the Conservatives are to pave the way for a prosperous Canada in the long-term, they must increasingly focus on these long-term issues which do not provide them with immediate political capital. So far, it seems quite unlikely that that will be happening, and I for one am pinning my hopes on the Liberals to ultimately fill this void.

The Third Way & Prosperity

2006-08-04T06:12:00.000-07:00

Canada's latest employment figures, released today, further confirm already well-known facts about the state of the Canadian economy.

First, the composition of Canada's economy is changing drastically. Overall, 5,500 jobs were lost; at the same time, manufacturing lost 33,000 jobs, mostly from Central Canada. That means a net gain of 27,500 from other sectors. An even more drastic example of this trend has played out over the past half decade. Since 2004, 224,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost, but unemployment has been creeping down, not up.

Manufacturing in central Canada is declining. As the Canadian dollar appreciates vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, the costs of exporting manufactured goods to our largest trading partner increases. At the same time, industrialization elsewhere in the world means that manufactured goods can typically be produced more cheaply, as in East Asia.

What will replace these manufacturing jobs? Natural resources will continue to play a major role. Alberta's job market is in obvious disequilibrium, as the labour market there absorbs tens of thousands of new migrants for its ever-growing petrochemical industry. Elsewhere in Canada, mining continues to play a major role in the economy. And no one can forget the importance of the lumber to the Canadian economy. In many of these cases, rising prices globally makes them increasingly lucrative, and the stronger dollar has not significantly hurt exports yet. But are these sources of revenue sustainable?

Without the development of alternative industries that will be sustainable in the long-term, Canada risks, over time, following the path of certain Middle Eastern countries, whose dependence on fossil fuels makes them vulnerable to fluctuations in the global market and may ultimately expose them to economic hardships as petroleum supplies dwindle. Most of Canada's resources, plentiful though they may be, are not renewable. Even many of those that are renewable may not be sustainable at their current levels of production.

Canada must instead focus on further developing emerging industries, including its high-tech sector, biotech, and the service sector. For the foreseeable future, these types of jobs will provide stability and super-normal profits and wages. These jobs, however, require skilled labour.

As Canada's economy changes, it must invest heavily to ensure that these changes result in prosperity rather than decline. Education is exceedingly important, both for new entrants to the labour force as well as re-training programs for the unemployed. Canadians who lose their manufacturing jobs must not be condemned to employment insurance or welfare, but rather they must be confident that the acquisition of further skills will make them sought-after skilled workers in another industry.

Public investment in R&D is also absolutely necessary. As the manufacturing sector shrinks and natural resources appear vulnerable (in the long-run if not the short-run), the social value of government expenditures on research and development will far outweight the costs. The private sector will certainly fund much R&D, but the short-term private return may be well below the optimal long-run social return, meaning that public investment will be necessary to ensure the optimal social level of research spending.

The Conservative model of cutting taxes in order to stimulate investment will increase R&D spending, up to a point. As long as the social return remains above the private return, however, there will always be a place for public spending.

The Liberals must engage this further, for it represents one of the most important challenges Canada is facing. The Liberals' record on this in the 90s wasn't exactly stellar, with Canada R&D spending (as a percentage of GDP) much lower in Canada than in most of the developed world. Similarly, funding to universities increased, but only somewhat.

In contrast to their record of the 90s, the Liberals must recast themselves as the party of prosperity. Middle-class Canadians are looking to Harper's conservatives for financial success, and they have seen it in the form of tax cuts and various credits. This must change. The party that balanced the budget in the 90s must once again be seen to be working in the interests of all Canadians.

To this end, the Liberals must also promote tax cuts and credits, but not quite as far reaching as those proposed by Conservatives. They must stand on the side of credits for R&D work and for education expenses. At the same time, they must also increase public funding to both, since there will be cases where credits will not provide the necessary incentives to spend the required money.

To cut taxes and increase spending, the Liberals must also recognize that cutting taxes is not a mantra, as the Conservatives believe; tax policy must be designed to yield socially optimal results. Thus, Liberals must not shy away from such taxes. Examples of such taxes are those which are simply meant to internalize externalities, such as a carbon tax.

When Michael Ignatieff spoke of a carbon tax, he initially received much criticism, but many ultimately voiced their agreement with the plan. Bob Rae and Carolyn Bennett both expressed qualified support for it, and the government of Quebec has been supporting such a tax for some time. Indeed, a carbon tax (on, as Rae qualified, pollution, not production) is both just and fiscally repsonsible.

Thus, the Liberals must be the party of sound, long-term economic development. They must support the private sector while recognizing the role of fiscal policy and tax policy to accomplish desired ends.

The European welfare state may not be a viable social model in the long-term, but neither is libertarian society in which government fails to even provide public goods, regulate externalities, and manage industrial and competition policy. A third way is necessary, and the Liberals must walk it.

Ignatieff "following" Dion?

2006-08-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to Ignatieff's Op/Ed in the Globe and Mail yesterday, Linda Diebel contributed an article to today's Toronto Star regarding other candidates' reactions to yesterday's Op/Ed. While mostly innocuous, certain aspects of the article show a somewhat worrisome trend in terms of the style of discourse in the leadership campaign.

For example, take the following section:
"Well, it's what our (interim) leader (Bill Graham) requested and most candidates are in agreement," Dion said last night. "Now that we have another candidate weighing in with the same view − after the others but, anyway, coming in − is positive ... He's following me."

It's true that Stéphane Dion made a statement several weeks ago regarding the conflict. It's also true that Michael Ignatieff's first statement came yesterday. It's also true that both candidates called for a ceasefire. To state that Ignatieff is following Dion, however, is a disingenuous on Dion's part.

Ignatieff's contribution is one of the more original pieces of thought that the campaign has seen thus far and it should be constructively engaged by other leadership candidates.

Candidates frequently reference each other's original contributions to the political discourse; to not do so would be to pretend that none of the other candidates' ideas have any merit. Doing so allows one to further debate in a constructive and non-confrontational way; doing so means healthier debate where ideas are evaluated on their merits.

To state that Ignatieff is solely "following" Dion minimizes the contribution that Mr. Ignatieff has made. Ignatieff did much more than simply call for a ceasefire. He demonstrated a profound understanding of the issue and posited a coherent and detailed plan for resolving the crisis.

Whether one agrees with Mr. Ignatieff's plan or not is irrelevant; indeed, one can certainly poke holes in his model for conflict resolution. The only relevant issue here, however, is whether it constitutes a positive and original contribution to the discourse surrounding the conflict. On that count, one must conclude that he has.

Stéphane Dion's Frank Talk on National Unity

2006-08-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

Stéphane Dion's recent release entitled "Frank Talk Needed on National Unity" is commendable, and I hope to see more from his camp on precisely this issue.

As one of the intellectual giants of the leadership campaign, Dion has much to contribute to an otherwise lackluster debate; on the issues important to Canadians, there's been a lot of fluff, but little in the way of substantive contributions. Dryden muses about child care. Rae criticizes the softwood lumber deal. Bevilacqua congratulates the World Cup Champions. And Volpe's mostly concerned with getting children involved in the party. Not exactly an inspiring bunch.

Dion's contribution, however, is a step in the right direction. Within the rhetoric one finds an insightful analysis of the flaws in separatists' arguments. More importantly, one finds genuine consideration of the issue of the "fiscal imbalance" rather than political pandering. Dion's views may not make him the most popular politician in Quebec, but his intellectual honesty ought to give him a boost elsewhere.

The next step in his campaign must be a clear policy statement on the very same issue. Dion has provided, in that statement, a philosophical justification for his position while cutting the separatists legs out from beneath them. He now has to build on that philosophy to create a policy statement that Canadians can consider and debate.

His intellectual depth and honesty are two of the major reasons why Barbara Yaffe may be correct when she recently mused that Dion may ultimately emerge victorious in the latter ballots of the convention. Indeed, Dion may be better than just a compromise candidate; he may be legitimate Prime Minsterial material.

Ignatieff's Op/Ed on Lebanon

2006-08-02T09:02:00.000-07:00

Finally, one of the leadership candidates has said something worthwhile on the conflict in Lebanon. While Ignatieff's entry may have been late--for which he has certainly taken enough criticism--his article in the Globe and Mail showed not only an understanding of the issues, but also reasoned and thoughtful insights.

One genuinely gets the sense that, unlike the statements of many candidates, his position is not made exclusively for political gain. Rather, it's meant to be a meaningful contribution to the debate on what to do in Lebanon. My kudos to him for a late but positive entry on the subject.

Kennedy's statement, on the other hand, shows that sometimes making a statement for its own sake is less than a waste of time. He manages to say little of substance while instead trying to score political points with standard Liberal platitudes that demonstrate little understanding of the nature of the conflict.

If he continues to harbour aspirations of being leader of this country, he ought to demonstrate a capacity for reasoned thought on issues important to Canadians.