Monday 14 October 2019

Considering Not Voting? Read.

This is not necessarily a column for people who have already made up their minds about who they'll vote for, although if that's you, you're perfectly willing to keep reading. It might be a column for people considering voting Conservative to spite the Liberals, because that's akin to cutting off your own foot to spite your big toe. But it's more for people who don't like the Liberal/Conservative bickering, and perhaps won't participate because of it.

Because there are more than two parties. And Andrew Scheer as the Prime Minister of a majority government? Would be a disaster, not only for Canada, but on a global scale. To be clear, not sold on Trudeau either (honestly, what Canada probably needs is a minority government of some form), what I'm saying is we need is people to actually come out and vote. Not strategically vote, just VOTE, damn it!

As Rick Mercer has said: "If your choice is a kick in the head, a punch in the head, or a slap in the head - you've still got to think about it and go, 'I'm going with a slap in the head'." Otherwise, everyone else will decide you get kicked in the head instead, and that's on you. Expect the rest of the world to shrug at you when you complain.

In summary, if you are not voting in the Canadian Election next week, you are not only minimizing your role in all of this, you are likely not thinking about Scheer or about some key pieces of GLOBAL information. Which is perhaps a kick somewhere worse than the head. Let's look at three key world issues.


1) Conservatives Want a Carbon Tax


You read that right - it's corporations who don't want a carbon tax. Oh, and for some reason, certain conservative premiers also don't want a carbon tax (Saskatchewan and Ontario launching court challenges with taxpayer money to that effect), and Andrew Scheer has said a carbon tax is bad too. This doesn't make sense.

In 2018, William Nordhaus and Paul Romer won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences for their work, which included that "the most efficient remedy for problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions is a global scheme of carbon taxes uniformly imposed on all countries".



Preston Manning, the former leader of the Reform Party (which later merged federally with conservatives) has told conservatives to stop attacking the market-based concept of carbon pricing. Michael Chong (formerly in the running for leadership of federal conservatives*) also supported the idea, and no one mounted an argument against him (beyond the equivalent of "but it sucks").
*: an earlier version stated it was Ontario conservatives, thanks Sonal

There's also this opinion piece, commenting on how Brian Mulroney (a conservative) won awards for being the greenest Canadian prime minister, and how carbon pricing grants flexibility, allowing individuals to decide how to respond to pricing. The complete opposite of being some intrusive regulation. The whole POINT of being conservative is not wanting to government to meddle, and carbon pricing is the best way to achieve that.

Carbon pricing is a better term to use, by the way, versus "tax". At best, it's an indirect tax (on transactions), not a direct tax, as income is irrelevant as to whether you have to pay. But the government also makes very little money off of this - 90 percent of the revenues are returned to the individual households. Meaning most Canadians (the lowest 80% of income earners, in fact - income is relevant for the rebate) get paid back more than they ever paid in the tax.

If you need help with claiming that on your taxes, here's an article.

The carbon tax isn't even mandatory in provinces where an alternative plan is in place. For instance, Ontario had a cap-and-trade plan, capping the amount of pollution companies in certain industries could emit. Doug Ford (supposedly conservative) scrapped that plan when he came into power, which incidentally broke the law, because he didn't consult the public about it.

Since then, Ontario has done "almost nothing" on their plan from a year ago, apparently more interested in forcing gas stations to put up little stickers about how carbon taxes suck and junk. They have to push this rhetoric, you see, because no one who's done any reading on the subject believes it.

Hell, British Columbia brought in their own carbon tax in 2008, and it's been working well for a decade. (Not necessarily boosting employment, but not hurting it either. More to the point, it's successfully lowered pollution.) If you didn't even know that, seems like carbon tax plans work as they should.

Why the HELL is Andrew Scheer against this?

Either he doesn't understand it (or understands he'd be in the top 20% to not get the best rebate), or he doesn't believe climate change is a problem (when it is), or he's pandering to a minority of Canadians to get votes. Which will work, unless YOU vote too.

If you want to be even more informed, here's what the parties have promised in terms of climate change.


2) White Guys In Control


None of Canada's premiers are currently women. The last time this particular event happened was between November 2002 and November 2008. There's some question as to whether Canada is going backwards with respect to equality.



Time magazine ran a piece in April about how the gender pay gap for doctors is getting worse. (It also mentions that there's racial differences.) More locally, female surgeons in Ontario earn 24% less per hour than their male peers. And it's not that they get paid less for similar procedures, it's that the highest-paid procedures have more male specialists... the Ontario study couldn't even include neurosurgery in some analyses because less than five women have that specialty.

Men are still making the rules, and for the most part are not being welcoming of women coming into male-dominated fields.

Recall Christine Elliot WON THE POPULAR VOTE in Ontario's conservative leadership race. By all rights, she should be the premier of Ontario now, not Doug Ford. Except she lost by one percentage point, because of how the ridings were broken up. Won the popular vote, lost the election... disaster ensues... doesn't seem like an isolated incident.

Now, for the past three federal elections combined, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) has had the lowest proportion of women running, at 20 percent. Bloc Quebecois (BQ) was 29%, Liberals (LPC) were 33%, Green Party were 35%, and New Democrats (NDP) were 39%.

At the federal level, there's also something rather insidious going on in terms of "stronghold ridings". These are constituencies where a party has won the previous two elections with a margin of at least 10% of votes. These candidates tend to get more funding, to win again. There's an article here which goes into great detail about the situation; I'll try to provide quick summary.

Candidates in stronghold ridings are more likely to win regardless of gender (and likewise candidates in other ridings are more likely to lose). There are four times more men than women running in these stronghold ridings (again, this is across all parties), meaning although men represented only 68% of candidates, they made up 76% of elected officials. The voting itself wasn't a factor, men who won amassed an average of 24,105 votes versus an average tally of 23,538 votes for the women who won.

What mattered was the riding (and related, if it got more funding). In this federal election? Women represent 40% of candidates, but only 23% are in stronghold ridings.

Looking again at the past three federal elections, for Conservatives, only 14% of stronghold ridings involved women, for Liberals it was 22%, for NDP it was 30% and the Bloc comes out on top with 38%. (The Greens hadn't had enough MPs to be included in the analysis.) In the end, the Conservatives have elected the lowest proportion of women over the last three federal elections, at 16%.

And that's before we even get into cabinet positions. The National Post ran a cabinet comparison back in 2015, Harper's first cabinet as compared to Trudeau's first: Harper appointed 6 women to his team of 26. Trudeau picked 15 women for his group of 30.

I'm not going to get into other minority issues because I haven't read up on it enough. (Heck, I can't even figure out what's happening in New Brunswick between the NDP and Green parties.) But they're a problem too, and this is a growing issue in today's society. Both in Canada and the world.



And the Conservatives not only don't have a great track record on equality, I don't see Scheer reversing the trend. So maybe someone can explain to me why anyone other than white guys are keen on voting for other Conservative white guys? Your riding results may vary.


3) Money For Who


The Conservatives have the worst spending record, bar none. To again pull in a comment by Rick Mercer, the last Conservative finance minister who left the country's books in better shape than when he found them was Sir Samuel Tilly, who died in 1896. (This was during his "irony" rant about Stephen Harper spending 20 million dollars to learn about how to cut spending.)

It might be worth mentioning that none of the parties plan to balance the budget within their four years. The Conservative party and the Green party have a five year plan, and both are under scrutiny.

The Conservatives (who released their full platform less than a week ago, after the debates) are looking for $6.5 billion dollars through cuts and new revenue in the first year alone. Overall, more billions of dollars in cuts to government spending over the five year plans. About $14 billion were simply categorized as "Other Operating Expenses Reductions".



Is this all feasible? I'm not the right person to ask. Back to the global issues.

Scheer pledged during the campaign to slash foreign aid by 25 percent. But Trudeau is already spending less (as a proportion of the gross national income) than Harper did. Nicolas Moyer, CEO of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation has been quoted as saying we rank 15th in the OECD, and this would drop us to 19th. Also, past Conservative governments have been leaders on foreign aid.

What gives?

Even ignoring how that article I just linked to above also points out that Scheer's claim, "Canada is sending $2.2 billion to upper and middle income countries", is false... he claims he's doing it to give Canadians a tax cut.

Hold on. As this National Post article points out, if this is going to be happening, why not invest the money into our own human development crisis instead? Such as the mortality rate of indigenous children?

Other experts have wondered, why are the Conservatives seemingly using their own criteria, rather than recognized measures set out by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)? Is this Canada becoming more isolationist, and going the way of the United States?

The last thing we need on the global stage right now is a Canada First mentality.

Canada is also campaigning for one of two seats on the United Nations Security Council in 2021, but Scheer says that's not a top priority. Meanwhile, to be clear, Trudeau has been silent about committing to increasing spending to reach 0.7% of GDP, a target the United Nations set in 1970. Jagmeet Singh says he would increase foreign aid.

Me, all I really think about the foreign aid issue is that if it must be cut (and I don't see why), it shouldn't be merely to give us tax breaks. Hell, I want to pay taxes, I want to fund public services like education. (Incidentally, the federal Conservatives have been very silent about education.) I also want the rich to pay more taxes, but now I'm getting off topic.


SUMMARY


So there's three key reasons why a Conservative majority would be a major problem: Losing the carbon tax during an environmental crisis, moving backwards on equality issues, and cutting foreign aid for a tax break.

Trouble is, at this point, I am almost CERTAIN that this government will happen, much as it did in Ontario last year. More to the point, I am also certain it will happen with LESS than a majority of Canadians being okay with it. Including a number of conservatives.



So you - yes YOU - go and vote. Hold your nose if you have to.

If there's a particular issue you hold dear, here's a link to the Maclean's federal election platform guide, which has been regularly updating. If you don't like any of the party leaders, read up on your local candidates and cast your vote that way. But vote, damn you. Hell, if you agree Scheer in all that, vote conservative.

Because if we're going to become an isolationist country with a bunch of old white guys on cabinet who are fine with watching the world burn, I at LEAST want a majority of Canadians to have acknowledged it in advance, and said that they're okay with this.

Thanks for reading, be civil if you comment, and know that most of the things I post are not political in nature. But yes, I do want a better future for my one-year-old daughter.

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