My Census Email to Peter Braid (CPC - KW)

Mr. Braid,

I am writing you today as a concerned constituent who believes that making the long-form census voluntary will have a number of ill affects on Canadian society.

Making the long-form census voluntary defeats the purpose of having a census at all. If only those concerned about filling out the census fills it out then the data being collected will be skewed. Secondly, the sample size of the statistical information will be reduced considerably by making the reliability of any data collected questionable.

Consider this, if you received a mandatory short-form census and a voluntary long-form census, which one would you be more likely to fill out and send away? I believe the government is being naive in thinking that the same, if not more, households receiving the long-form census after 2011 will complete it and send it back to Stats Canada.

As an academic I value Statistics Canada greatly. Throughout my master's program and work experience I have used statistical data from Stats Canada on a regular basis. Eliminating the mandatory long-form census will hurt the future of young Canadians studying public policy and the integrity of think-tanks in Canada.

As a parliamentarian whose constituency comprises of two universities, I implore you side with the integrity of education. It would be shameful to remain silent on the issue when so many of your constituents use Stats Can. information everyday to educate the future generations of Canadians. People come from all over the country to attend the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, let's not deprive them of the best education and the accurate statistical tools they need to learn.

I find no cost benefit for making the long-form voluntary, nor can I see any practical reason beyond mysterious complaints from disgruntled individuals. There are bigger fish to fry than the long-form census (I believe income trust taxation is one of them) that have far greater implications on Canadian households than filing out a form that is beneficial to so many sectors of the Canadian economy.

I urge you to break with Tony Clement's ranks and side with reason. Please show your support for keeping the long-form census mandatory.

Dylan

Words never spoken by PM Harper:

"I was wrong."

If it was not so sad it would be funny. Helena Guergis wants to reach out to her former party and have a sit-down, face-to-face meeting with the PM. Whoda thought that the RCMP would clear Helena? Surely not Harper and his crack squad of "shoot first, ask questions later" staffers.

Good luck Mz. Guergis, cause you'll need it. By taking you back into the fold the PM signals to the public, and his party, that he was wrong and that he took bad advice. Most importantly, it shows weakness and bad judgment. How can the Pope of Canadian Republicanism be fallible? Has the RCMP unwittingly found a chink in the chain of this master tactician? Maybe...

I always thought that Harper's minions would be the ones to embarrass him and screw up his plans to become Canada's natural governing man. But I never thought he'd pave the way for them.

The return of the Rough Riders? Dream on!

The CFL sportsworld is buzzing over what to call the 2013 Ottawa CFL team. When the league awarded a new team to the national capital region they did so on the condition that the Saskatchewan Roughriders had a veto on the Roughrider name (and variations of). Is that fair?

Of course it is! The Ottawa Rough Riders folded! The franchise, brand, and name died 15 years ago and since then the Saskatchewan Roughriders brand has been reborn and is flourishing. Moreover, the Green Riders have had 100 years of the name behind them. The Ottawa Rough Rider name appeared on the football radar sometime after 1926 (when they were known as the Ottawa Senators).

Reading the opinions of Ottawa football fans in comment sections makes me think that at the heart of all the name angst is not the name "Rough Riders" being dead and gone, but rather team ownership and management that couldn't hang onto a team for the 1997 season and beyond.

Suggestions for a new name? I like the Ottawa Raiders. This way, the signature white "R" could be reused. It's close enough to "Riders" to ruffle a few feathers in Saskatchewan (mine excluded) and most importantly, it's a classic sports franchise name. Names like "Renegades," "Mad Dogs," "Enforcers," or "Galaxy" will be come dated within the next 10 years. I also like the idea of the new franchise being called the Ottawa Falcons.

I'll admit, I was a little disappointed that there won't be another team of "Riders" in two years. It was pretty unique for a league of 9 to have to two teams with the same name (or moniker at the very least). But then again, I bleed Green. And in the final analysis I wouldn't want anyone mistaking a Rider to be some bureaucrat eating lunch on the the Rideau canal.

Who knows, maybe when Moncton gets a team they'll name their team the Argonauts and we'll finally have our league niche back.

RIDER PRIDE.

Burgundy is the colour; football is the game!

They looked smashing in their burgundy and black uniforms two days ago when they clawed their way back from a 14-10 halftime deficit to beat the Edmonton Eskimos 24-20.

This week the Saskatchewan Roughriders look to gain some space between them and the #2 Calgary Stampeders. I'll predict a close win for the Green and White given 3 factors: our running game has been fantastic, we've been putting pressure on opposing QBs, and the secondary has had been great at forcing turnovers.

Four-and-Oh!

GO! RIDERS! GO!

GPC: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

It might be a little late to comment on the recent fervor surrounding Elizabeth May's leadership of the Green Party; but I've got some time on my hands tonight.

Look, I'll be straight with the readers of RCI: I had a pretty unflattering post about E-May when she won the GPC leadership in 2006 over party stalwart David Chernushenko (the candidate I supported to succeed Jim Harris). Since those days, I have become very fond of Mz. May, and I think she is exactly what parliament needs.

I cannot comment on the conclusion drawn in the Toronto SUN that there is "constant infighting" in the GPC, but I can say that without Elizabeth May at the helm of the party in the next election - they'll lose all visibility. Canadians are used to seeing a leader stick around for a while, run in a couple of elections, and gain trust with the public. Changing the guard every 2 or 3 years might be good grassroots politics, but c'mon! The Greens have to run with the big dogs now, make a game plan to last half a decade, and stick with it! This is especially true given that we will probably be staring at the ballot box within the 12 months.

Was the departure of Jaques Rivard, May's deputy leader in Quebec, a "last straw" for grassroots members? It shouldn't be. Rivard justified his move by stating that the Greens could simply not serve the environmental interest of Quebec like the Bloc. I'm going to call bullshit on this one.

First, the "environmental problems" confronting Quebec are much bigger than Quebec - they are much bigger than the federal government; they are global. And to align with a separatist party to achieve these environmental goals over that of another federalist party (such as the Liberals) doesn't amount to beans. Now, it is true that separatism is far down the list of things that Gilles is concerned with. But that is not the story with the PQ which adds a twist in the already interesting situation brewing at the provincial level. Rivard's move smells of opportunism in Quebec, but does that translate to the situation of the GPC at the national level? I'm not entirely convinced at this time (although, they did take some regional hits in the last EKOS poll which is linked in the post below).

Looking in the rear-view mirror is only so good if the party can learn something from it in going forward. First of all, May should have been focused on BC since she won the GPC leadership four years ago. Yet, she had to run in London North in 2006. Was her decision to run against MacKay a game-killer for the Greens? Maybe, but she came closer to defeating the CPC incumbent than any other progressive candidate in the last decade. But was it ultimately a waste of resources? Perhaps, but what was her chances of knocking off ANY Conservative incumbent last election?

I believe May has built up some pretty good momentum heading into the next election. The party needs to run candidates in 300+ ridings again. It would be nice to see them in the debates for a second campaign in a row, but that is unlikely to happen. So she needs to have a tight, focused, campaign that puts her at the centre of the action in the Saanich Gulf Islands. If she wins, she stays on as leader. If she does not, it would be time to go back to the drawing board.

The bus to nowhere? Putting policy in the driver's seat.

I'll come right out and say it. I want Igantieff's cross-Canada bus tour to be a smash. Now, I'm not a Liberal. But if I was, I would be rallying all my friends and family to come out and support the team when it rolls through my town. Because that's exactly what this tour needs to do: energize the Liberal Party. The battlegrounds have been set since the last election: BC, Ontario and Quebec.

If we are to take the latest EKOS poll for the terrible news that it delivered, the LPC should be concerned. They do not lead in any region of the country. Apparently, there is a 12 point lead for the CPC in Ontario; a neck-and-neck situation between the LPC and CPC in the Maritimes, with the NDP running away with things; Quebec support for the Liberals is only 5 points above the CPC (and nearly 25 points back of the Bloc); and the picture in BC shows growing separation between the CPC and the LPC/NDP. The prairies and Alberta show the Liberals in second place, but just by a hair to the Greens in Alberta.

So what is this bus tour worth? To get all his ridings onside? To test the waters for an election? Those goals are very well and good, except this bus has to be going somewhere other than a six week gripe-fest against the Harper government. By which I mean the Liberal Express needs to be showing Canadians new things about Ignatieff and the Liberal Party. New, policy oriented, things.

I've argued in the past that Ignatieff does not want to show his hand about everything right away, and I maintain that there will be plenty of things that he doesn't say on this tour that will have progressives calling him a hack, lazy, undirected, and sliding into political irrelevance. Which is why he has to give us something. ANYTHING. Just a taste of what's to come. After all, you don't tell the audience that Bruce Willis is a ghost before the previews end.

And when I talk about "something" I do not mean speeches about how terrible Harper is. Nor do we need more words like "change" and "hope" and "future." We need some numbers too. Numbers that will make the CPC and NDP crunch some of their own in order to make a rebuttal. Moreover, he needs to unveil some new and exciting Liberal positions for his own candidates! These men and women have nothing right now! How can they go door-to-door looking for new members and new volunteers when they have nothing to offer their constituents besides the same old "Harper stinks" mantra?

Igantieff needs to find his niche - the thing that makes him a real alternative to Harper. The detainee issue isn't going to be it. Economic recovery isn't going to be it. Foreign policy could be it, but Canadians don't care about that kind of stuff (moreover, it would probably just act as another stanza to the "just visiting" chorus from the galactically stoopid).

I hope that this bus tour can reinvigorate the debate about what direction the country wants to go in and then kick it up a notch with hard facts, innovative ideas;,and the building blocks for an election platform. To do that, Ignatieff needs to put policy in the driver's seat. By only going so far as to say that "ideas" need to propel the LPC into 24 Sussex is going to make this tour a waste of time. Let's hope (no pun intended) that this bus is really going somewhere this summer.

Misinformation: "G20 Repression"

Today I received an email from the KW Anti-Torture Coalition, a decent group that I believe does mostly good work. The email was a call for participation in a rally on Wednesday for "Justice for Our Community Against G20 Repression." Similar headlines were made in the past few weeks by student newspapers with taglines such as "G20 police brutality." These headlines and titles for rallies are, in my opinion, misleading and misinforming the public as to what the G20 is and the circumstances that led to the curbing of Canadian civil rights in Toronto a few weekends ago.

The headline "G20 Repression" makes the G20 seem as if they are the group doing the repressing. The G20 is not an institution. The G20 is the grouping (or gathering) of 20 heads of states from the world's most powerful economic countries. You can liken the name G20 to that of a moniker - the meeting of heads of states happen all the time in Davos, in Washington, in New York, etc.; without rioting and mass protest. The G20 is not the World Bank nor is it the World Trade Organization. Their "market power" is incredibly weak - states may or may not do what they pledge at these meetings. The importance of the G20 is bringing together emerging developing states from the global south (China, India, Brazil) and the developed world to meet each other in an informal setting so that in institutional settings we can understand one another better.

People talk about the G20 as if it is the Legion of Doom. As if they meet all the time and are plotting against the world, or in collusion with "the banks", of have some grand scheme to enslave people. The G20 does not exist outside of the G20 meetings. That's why the "G" in G20 stands for "Group of."

The G20 has a number of uses for global governance and for the global citizenry - yet, as long as the focus is on a Seattle circa 1999 blackened police vehicle and everyone is talking about how terrible the "G20" was on our civil liberties, the bigger picture is being missed.

The group responsible for police brutality AT the G20 meetings in Toronto were the police groups and private companies that were hired to quell the sit-ins and marches. The repression that took place AT the G20 meetings in Toronto must be answered by the people in charge of these police forces and, ultimately, the federal government for organizing the security forces.

What hand can anyone say German chancellor Angela Merkel had in the "G20 repression" KW Anti-Torture wants to protest against? She a part of the group that, apparently, was repressing protester's rights, so, let's haul her to the Hague!

People have to start remembering that the police brutality and rights abuses that happened at the G20 by police and private law enforcement companies may have been done so because the G20 was in town - but not because of G20. The secret laws passed in the Ontario legislature to give police enforcement sweeping powers to investigate and detain anyone they want to in Toronto and Muskoka over the four-day stint was not, and is not, G20 meeting procedure. Dalton McGuinty and Stephen Harper have to answer to that.

Let's protest the fact that our provincial and federal governments think they can strip away our civil liberties, our rights and freedoms, just because they want to put on a good show for 19 heads of state. Going so far as to claim that the abuses that occurred in Toronto in June 2010 is a symbol of the G20 is plain old ignorance. It's a symbol of the Harper government. It's a symbol of the Ontario government. Creating a police state to have a four days of meetings in downtown Toronto in June is not acceptable. The meetings themselves are, in fact, acceptable to the public if they do not cost 1.2 billion dollars and people are allowed to go about their daily business without being detained by the police.

Is that not the message concerned citizens want to send? Or are so many people truly too confused about who and what the G20 is, that they'll equate an elaborate cocktail party with a black tower and a boardroom full of blood swilling vampires? Gimmie a break.