Pample the Moose

Pot-smoking hippie monarchists

2012-01-15T10:12:00.002-05:00

Or as they like to call themselves, "The Liberal Party of Canada".

I see from my twitter feed that the monarchy resolution has been defeated by a wide margin. Surprise surprise.

But on a lighter (higher?) note, a resolution to support the legalization of marijuana has passed. A pity they didn't act on that while Chretien was in power and a Senate committee had endorsed it.

Fun and frolics at the Liberal Party biennial convention.

And now, back to my Sunday morning coffee.

Canada Day and the War of 1812

2012-01-08T14:10:00.004-05:00

In a story in today's Toronto Star and CBC from Canadian Press, the federal government has hired a consultant to inject a War of 1812 theme into the noonday and evening Canada Day shows on Parliament Hill. The article implies that this might represent a major shift in crafting politicized Canada Day celebrations, and that this is part of a larger heritage direction on the part of the federal government. The author is right about the latter, but I'd contest his implied interpretation that this is something dramatically new.

As someone who has dedicated far too many years of my life to researching the history of July 1st celebrations (my most recent article from the Canadian Historical Review can be found here, I could not be less surprised by this development, and I don't see this as anything new. Indeed, there is a long and illustrious history of both Conservative and Liberal governments of the past turning the national Canada Day (or pre-1983, Dominion Day) celebrations to political purposes. If we go back to 1958, Dominion Day ceremonies on Parliament Hill were established by Secretary of State Ellen Fairclough with an eye to promoting aspects of Canada's British and military heritage. In the late-1970s, government mandarin Bernard Ostry was seconded to put together a multi-hour coast-to-coast celebration, organized in part to combat separatism after the 1976 election of the Parti Quebecois. In the early-to-mid-1980s, Secretary of State officials began developing explicit annual themes, some of them linked to historical anniversaries (like the 1984 celebrations, which were tied to the 450th anniversary of Jacques Cartier's arrival in Canada). This year's decision by Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore to incorporate a War of 1812 theme is really nothing new, but simply the exploitation of an existing tradition to reinforce particular government messaging about Canadian identity.

And to answer the question posed by Dean Beeby, the Canadian Press author of the story, the degree of control over the noonday and evening shows has gone back and forth over the past several decades. Some years, the NCC has had a free hand with the evening show. In other years, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, the Secretary of State Department (now Canadian Heritage) played a much more active role in determining the themes and content of the evening broadcast. This was often connected to whether or not the show was to be televised (which also meant that CBC and Radio-Canada were involved in the process).

What I'm still waiting to see is whether an MP introduces a bill to return to the old moniker of Dominion Day.

Monarchy - Such a great idea, none of the kids are doing it

2012-01-03T16:03:00.005-05:00

So, it would seem that the Liberal equivalent of the NDP's name-change resolution and Conservative party's abortion/gay rights/pick-your-social-conservative-issue resolution at this year's party convention will be a youth wing resolution to consider severing ties with the monarchy. I'll be shocked if this resolution ends up being seriously debated, and even more shocked if, in the unlikely event it gets passed, the issue is not sent to an oubliette of long-term committee study.

I'm not a supporter of the monarchy, for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I have very strong objections to a system of government where one can only aspire to be head of state if one is born into the right family. But I don't want to dwell on that here. In discussing this issue with a friend, the following question popped to mind, and I was wondering if any defenders of the monarchy could answer it. Here it is:

If a monarchy (constitutional or otherwise) is such a great system of government, then why don't we see newly formed states adopting it?

I'll admit that my knowledge of global history is not all-encompassing, but what was the last instance of a newly formed state, particularly one which was not once a part of the British Commonwealth, that decided to choose a form of monarchy as their new system of government?

ETA: A friend of mine suggests North Korea as a de facto new monarchy, with the third generation of the Kim family having ascended to the leadership in recent weeks. Hmm...

Anniversary Post and a Call for Political Advice

2011-12-28T09:47:00.004-05:00

Pample the Moose is seven calendar years old today. I'm not sure how old that is in blog years. My posting has become more erratic in recent years, but I'm still committed to keeping it going for the foreseeable future.

So as to have some content here beyond a simple age statement, I'm hoping for a wee bit of advice in the comments section - and this is one of those rare occasions where I'll tolerate some partisanship. I'm making my end-of-year donations right now, trying to beat the deadline for tax receipts. I've figured out my charitable donations, but I had been considering making a political contribution or two as well this year. The trouble is, I'm not certain where best to donate. Over the last decade, I've voted for Liberals, NDPers and Greens, although to be honest my main consideration this year is Liberal vs. NDP. My dilemma is that both of the major parties are leaderless at the moment, and their future policies uncertain. I am an anyone-is-better-than-a-Conservative voter, and so like the idea of contributing to the efforts of the opposition parties during this post-election re-building phase. However, I'm not currently feeling energized by either campaign enough to want to take out a membership.

So, do I donate to the Liberals, the NDP, both or neither? Suggestions and rationales are welcome!

Long-form Census - Festive Edition

2011-12-22T09:35:00.004-05:00

A random thought occurred to me today, as I take my first day off for Christmas vacation. The biblical-era Roman census, which required that Mary and Joseph return to his hometown of Bethlehem to be counted - finding no room at the inn, spending the night in a stable, etc. - certainly puts the inconvenience and intrusiveness into one's daily life of taking a couple of hours in the comfort of one's own home to answer questions about one's language skills, ethnic origin, income level, and other Canadian long-form census topics into perspective, doesn't it?

A pity I didn't think of that argument several months ago. Ah well.

Merry Christmas all!

Partisan dreck: Seat Redistribution Edition

2011-12-15T13:52:00.003-05:00

The new seat redistribution bill recently passed the House of Commons, awarding new seats to Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta. Rarely have I seen commentary about legislation so thoroughly skewed by short-term partisan and regional interests, and it makes me ill.

I'll get my principles on the table. I favour representation-by-population in the House of Commons. If there are to be regional counterweights in our parliamentary and federalist system, they are supposed to be found in a Senate (which could be revamped) and in the provincial governments (which hold most of the key powers these days anyways). As such, I have no sympathy with the claim that Quebec's share of the House of Commons should remain fixed at a given percentage (a provision of the 1992 Charlottetown Accord that was widely denounced outside that province), and would have no difficulty with reducing the seat tallies of the Maritime and Atlantic Canadian provinces, overturning earlier legislation, if the appropriate legislative and/or constitutional changes were made. As such, there has been a lot for me to take issue with in the craven pandering that both the Liberals and NDP (the two parties I normally vote for) have been engaged in by objecting to this legislation.

And today, Twitter is abuzz with more partisan dreck in response to John Ibbitson's column hypothetically allocating these new seats according to the 2011 election results. This is not a "Conservative windfall". It's a long-overdue correction in an electoral system that has cheated urban Canada, and particularly Ontario, BC and Alberta of their equitable share of seats in the House of Commons. A decade ago the same allegation could have been made that such a change would have favoured the Liberals. Voting allegiances change over time, and seats are allocated based on population, not the party affiliation of the seats being divided and redistributed. It's not like the Conservative party is able to take the riding of Crowfoot (historically the site of some of their biggest single-riding majorities) and split it into 31 new ridings. And frankly, if you look at the Ontario provincial election, there is extremely good reason to think that new seats created in Mississauga-Brampton would be fair game for all three parties.

If our political discourse is devolving to the point where we refuse to engage in what should be routine corrections to the electoral map, then our system is completely broken. Perhaps the most ardent critics of these changes should openly admit that they are inspired by the political strategies of Maurice Duplessis, the Quebec Premier so well known for turning the rurally-skewed electoral map of his province to the advantage of the Union Nationale machine. It turns my stomach to watch one of the key principles of how Canadian democracy is supposed to operate being undermined for short-term political advantage and media soundbites.

Also, a word to the NDP and the Liberals. Do you honestly think that the Conservative Party of Canada is not keeping a detailed dossier for the next election of your quotes of why your party thinks Ontario, BC and Alberta don't deserve equitable representation in the House? How about making winning those new seats your priority, rather than trying to prevent their creation?

Publications!

2011-12-03T07:46:00.004-05:00

Just a quick post today to announce two new publications that I'm excited about.

The first is my new edited collection, Contemporary Quebec: Selected Readings and Commentaries, which I co-edited with Michael Behiels at the University of Ottawa. We've been working on this book for the last six years (yikes!) but it's finally in print. It's mainly intended for upper-year Quebec history courses, and contains thirty-one articles and 14 historiographical essays on various facets of Quebec history since the Duplessis era. Several of the articles are new or previously unpublished English translations, and all are situated within the broader literature in the introductory essays to each of the 14 sections of the book. We've also included bibliographies of further readings for each section (with an emphasis on English-language or translated scholarship) to try to assist anglophone undergraduate students doing research on Quebec history. I also have a previously unpublished article in the collection on the interactions between Canadian and Quebec language policies from the 1960s to the early 1980s.

The second publication is
Life After Forty: Official Languages Policy in Canada / Après quarante ans: Les politiques de langue officielle au Canada. This new edited collection, put together by Jack Jedwab and Rodrigue Landry, came out of a conference held for the 40th anniversary of the Official Languages Act, and includes contributions from a variety of academic and policy perspectives on the impact of this legislation. I have an article in this collection dealing with some of the key features of how this legislation was framed and implemented, particularly its ramifications for the education sector. The book was also the subject of a recent article in the Montreal Gazette.

Christmas presents for the Canadian/Quebec history geeks in your life, perhaps?

History and the Santa Claus Parade Weekend

2011-11-20T08:14:00.004-05:00

There's a history connection here, just wait for it!

This weekend is Santa Claus Parade weekend in Toronto, where I grew up, and coincidentally in Guelph, where I live. It's an important weekend in my family's history, because this was traditionally the weekend when the no-talking-about-Christmas embargo was temporarily lifted (although then subsequently reimposed until the first Sunday of Advent). My Dad, who sensibly did not like undertaking this task around a mountain of snow, usually put up the outdoor Christmas lights this weekend. We weren't allowed to actually turn them on until Advent started, but up they went. There was also often a ceremonial baking of the first shortbread rounds. The Christmas music was kept locked tightly away (indeed, for many years, we weren't allowed to listen to the secular Christmas albums until St. Nicholas Day on December 6th - it's all about the excitement management). And of course, because of the event which gave rise to these activities, we would watch the Santa Claus parade, either by trekking downtown on the TTC (and possibly trekking back in soaking wet snowpants), or watching it on TV in the comfort of our living room. These traditions really mattered to me, and so I still hold off on the start of any real Christmas decorating or baking until this weekend.

So here's the history connection. If you're a Canadian historian with access to journal databases, and you're in the mood for some fun Christmas-related Canadiana, check out Steve Penfold's most recently-published article. Entitled, "The Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade and the Making of a Metropolitan Spectacle, 1905–1982", it was published in the May 2011 issue of Histoire Sociale/Social History. Penfold does a really good job of analyzing the history of the Toronto Santa Claus parade (which pre-dates Macy's famous Thanksgiving Day parade) when it was sole-sponsored by Eaton's (and thus, before the period I can really remember). He connects the parade to issues of corporate and commercial culture, of urban development, of parades and festivities, of media history, and to Toronto's place within the broader Canadian fabric. It's also a very enjoyable read, which is high praise for academic work. Unfortunately, it is behind a pay wall, but it's well worth reading if you can get access through a library system!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Christmas lights to put up (but not turn on for another week or so).

Official Bilingualism, Officers of Parliament and Supreme Court Justices

2011-11-07T17:14:00.006-05:00

Much ink has been spilled of late about the decision of Stephen Harper to appoint a unilingual Supreme Court Justice (Michael Moldaver) and a unilingual Auditor-General (Michael Ferguson) in recent weeks. We've seen the usual range of commentary, which has ranged from demands that all top-level appointments in Canada, including the Supreme Court justices, be bilingual, to calls to have the Official Languages Act substantially watered down and abolished. Over the weekend, I had occasion to participate on a phone-in talk radio show where a caller suggested that Canada's bilingualism policy was responsible for the poor performance of the Montreal Canadiens.

Before turning to my own observations, I'd like to single out two pieces of journalism which have most impressed me. In his piece for Postmedia News, Stephen Maher pointed out that in the case of the Auditor-General, bilingualism was an explicitly listed job qualification, and that it seems particularly egregious to have selected Ferguson when the other three candidates on the short list for the position were all bilingual. In her column this morning, Lysiane Gagnon introduces some important nuance into this discussion, stressing the different job requirements - and talent pools - for the positions of Auditor-General and Supreme Court justice. I largely agree with her column, although her final snipe at the NDP for running candidates who do not speak French rings hollow for me - their constituents should have perhaps been "better employers" before voting for candidates with whom they could not communicate, and thus sending a really mixed message about the importance of bilingualism. But I digress...

My main observations about this issue are as follows. First, there are relatively few positions as an overall proportion of the civil service and judiciary which require full bilingual proficiency. These positions tend to be concentrated in areas where there are high amounts of contact with the public, or in middle-to-senior levels of management where these individuals are expected to manage departments filled with speakers of both official languages. As such, while there have been bitter and vitriolic denunciations of the official languages policy over the past four decades, this is not a complaint for which I have much sympathy in 2011. While I am fully aware that, depending on where in the country one was raised, access to French-language instruction was historically unequal, that situation was largely transformed by the 1980s through funding programs to education. The situation was not perfect, but opportunities did exist. This is particularly true within the federal civil service because, despite decades of calls for the federal government to end its costly language training programs and shift the burden of responsibility for learning a second (or third) language to individuals who sought job promotion, opportunities do still exist within the civil service for keen job climbers to go on language training. Moreover, public service unions have long protected incumbents in positions from suddenly finding their current job in jeopardy from a language re-classification. While I'm sure that someone will point me to some outlier to disprove this general rule, the overwhelming tendency within the public service has been to make bilingualism a condition for career advancement in certain areas - not for maintaining current jobs.

This brings me to the question of which positions actually require bilingualism. Under current job descriptions, the Auditor-General, whose job entails much direct contact with parliamentarians and the media, was listed as requiring bilingualism. The Supreme Court justices, whose work is supported by a small army of interpreters and legal translators, and who have relatively little direct contact with the public or the media, are not currently required to be proficiently bilingual. As such, the cases of Moldaver and Ferguson's appointments must be evaluated differently because of the differences in the currently-stated requirements for those positions. While it might be desirable to appoint fluently bilingual senior jurists to the Supreme Court, there was no requirement that Harper do so (as for the pros and cons of proposals that this be made obligatory, that's ample fodder for a post all of its own). On the other hand, applicants who responded to the search firm contracted to find an auditor general were responding to a position designated as bilingual.

It is this last fact that makes Ferguson's appointment most troubling. I can't help but think that Harper decided to appoint Ferguson even though he didn't meet this job requirement as a trial balloon, testing the public mood about the Official Languages Act. It strikes me that the fact that, on its face, the Auditor-General's job is largely perceived to be about number-crunching, played into the decision to try appointing an individual who did not have French-language capacities. Harper and his advisors may well have been counting on the public to assume that this position was all about financial skills, and ignore the substantial investigation and communication components of this position. How quickly the memory of Sheila Fraser, media star during the AdScam investigations, slipped from the public consciousness! This could well be a test to determine in how many other ways the Official Languages Act and its requirements of the federal public service might be chipped away.

The decision to appoint Ferguson despite the opposition of all three opposition parties is also very discouraging. The Auditor-General is one of a select group of senior public servants who are Officers of Parliament, and as such, stand apart from the regular civil service and rely on the confidence of all of Parliament to conduct their investigations and duties in impartial and non-partisan ways. Selecting an individual who lacked this confidence even at the outset of his appointment will cast a shadow over Ferguson's ten-year term. I should also note that I considered the Liberal tactic of walking out of Parliament in the two votes on this issue to be cowardly and sending precisely the wrong signal to Canadians. In an era where voter participation is on a steep decline, do we really want our politicians, in effect, refusing to cast a ballot because the process was flawed? If our politicians believe that it is important that the Auditor-General be competent in both of Canada's official languages, they should have the courage of their convictions to vote against the appointment of an individual who lacks that qualificiation. If not, they send a signal to Stephen Harper that they too will be wishy-washy when it comes to watering down the Official Languages Act.

Rick Mercer, the Globe, Bullying and Gay Visibility

2011-10-28T16:43:00.005-04:00

This post is my response to the recent public debate about Rick Mercer’s Rant and the subsequent Globe and Mail editorial attacking his position on the need for gay adults to come out as part of the answer to fighting homophobia and bullying. If you already know the history of this issue, jump ahead to paragraph six.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that it has now been over a year since Dan Savage launched the It Gets Better campaign, a YouTube-hosted group outreach project where people share their personal experiences and try to offer GLBT youth the message that although it can be very difficult for them right now, their lives can and will get better. In the months that followed, the campaign has attracted a tremendous amount of media and public attention, and there have been productive debates (some of which I discussed in this post last year) over how the campaign could and should go further to not only express a message of hope, but also lead to more direct action about issues such as bullying and depression that can contribute to the plight of queer youth. Savage himself has come out on numerous occasions to strongly support these calls for additional action, beyond the initial awareness-raising outreach efforts of the IGB campaign.

Of course, despite this, there have still been countless numbers of gay youth who continue to be isolated, and some have taken their own lives. Indeed, in recent months, there have been gay youth who have explicitly referenced the IGB campaign, and even made their own videos, but still committed suicide. In a number of these cases, other issues such as depression have been a contributing factor. The result of these incidents, though, has been a revival of the issue in the eyes of the media (with some interesting consequences, like actor Zachary Quinto’s recent coming out).

Over the past weeks, the suicide of a gay youth in Ottawa prompted a group of Conservative MPs to record their own IGB video, with an emphasis on anti-bullying efforts. Some critics derided this effort, citing the vicious anti-gay stance that had been taken by many of these MPs, such as Vic Toews, over the past decade. Others viewed this video in a more positive light, pointing out that this was still a small step in the right direction from individuals who have amends to make. On Tuesday night, comedian Rick Mercer stepped into the fray once again, dedicating his Rant to a call for authorities to take action against these bullies, but also for gay and lesbian adults to step up, come out, and provide much needed role models for gay youth. Although Mercer did not explicitly include himself among that cohort of gay adults in the rant (and I was critical of him at the time for failing to include that important nuance), he subsequently did so on the Thursday morning edition of CBC’s The Current, and discussed how the process of coming out and being out is an ongoing, recurrent one, and that he himself often overestimates the degree to which he is out in public life, given that he has been out to friends and coworkers for a long time now, although many of his viewers remain unaware of his sexual orientation.

This morning, the Globe and Mail attacked Mercer’s position in its lead editorial, which cited a number of reasons why individuals might choose to remain in the closet and not disclose their sexual orientations for personal reasons. The editorialist equated Mercer’s position to a burden being placed on all gay and lesbian public figures, rhetorically asking “Would every gay person now need to hold a news conference?” Calling his position “wrong, terribly wrong,” the editorialist claimed that Mercer was arguing that “it falls to successful gay adults to protect vulnerable gay teens from the problems associated with being different” and argued that instead “the job of protecting gay teens or anyone else from bullying falls to everyone.”

I found myself getting very upset at the dismissive, holier-than-thou stance taken by the Globe’s editorial this morning, and its protestations of outrage of “how dare he” impose a moral obligation on gay men and lesbians, forcing them out of the closet when they have so recently won the right to live their lives without discrimination. As I gave this issue more thought over the course of the day, I realized that the source of my concerns is how this issue has been dealt with by politicians and some media outlets. At issue is the question of linkages. The reason why the IGB campaign got as much coverage as it did is because of the tragedies that have resulted from the plight of gay youth – particularly the suicides of the summer of 2010, and those recently in Canada and the United States. And so, while there was an initial flurry of YouTube videos from gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered adults, this was soon followed by liberal-minded politicians and media personalities.

But along the way, the emphasis of the media message shifted, and it has continued to shift. Because the focal issue became less about a systemic culture that is not gay positive (or to get jargon-y, is homophobic and/or heteronormative), into a focus on the supposed proximate causes of the suicides – bullying and depression, although this latter issue shows up much less in the speeches and videos. And so it has become possible for those who want to appear sensitive to recent events to put most of their efforts on the more universally accepted issue of fighting bullying, while avoiding the particular challenges of gay youth that are rooted in the broader culture of North America (and elsewhere) which is often one that teaches that their sexual orientation is abnormal, deviant, a sin, and the list goes on. So, in the minds and messages of many politicians and public figures, the challenge became how to fight the symptom of bullying, and create safer schools. This has had the positive effect of creating a dialogue about how to foster safer schools for all who are bullied, and serving as a call for all adults, both gay and straight, to take direct action rather than just espousing a message that change will come. And this is the zone in which the Globe’s editorialist has positioned their contribution – a message that “bullying is bad, and all people have a responsibility to fight it”.

But where Mercer’s Rant is aimed is at a different core issue, which is the particular combination of challenges facing GLBT youth. They do not just have to face a climate of bullying in high schools (which many other youth so as well), but a society that still has some pretty deeply entrenched anti-gay attitudes, and shockingly few high profile gay public figures. It is a society in which it is well-known that Hollywood is chock-a-block with gay actors who are told to remain the closet to protect their careers, and that the halls of Parliament and Congress are littered with closeted gay politicians, who only seem to come out when forced to do so by an affair (a slight exaggeration admittedly, and less true in Canada). It is a society where, as the Globe dodges, but implicitly admits, it might be harder to live your life if you are open about your sexual orientation and your career prospects might be hindered because of the prejudice of others. Mercer’s rant argues that more gay and lesbian adults need to come out – and keep coming out, rather than just doing it once to friends and family – in order to normalize homosexuality, to make it part of the common fabric, and to make it part and parcel of what it means to be a public figure. He knows, as so many gay men and lesbians do, that our governments, media and businesses are filled with high-powered gay men and lesbians who are not “publicly” out, although many may be to their close acquaintances. But this does little to demonstrate to those struggling with their sexuality and feeling isolated in high school that our society is thoroughly permeated by the presence of gay men and lesbians at all levels.

Mercer is not calling for a press conference for all of these individuals. Although it might not hurt if a few more highly placed individuals in Canada did make a point of doing so. But coming out publicly can take different forms. It can be a matter of a politician, when speaking on the campaign trail, of casually referring to their partner (or wife, or husband) by name – just as any heterosexual politician does all the time – rather than letting it be thought that they are single and straight. It could be openly attending public events with one’s same-sex partner. There are numerous ways in which straight politicians and public figures “come out” as straight all the time by virtue of who they are seen with, how they speak about their relationships and the mere fact that they do speak about their relationships. What Mercer is calling for, if I understand his message correctly, is for gay adults to do more of this. Because while the issue of bullying can be fought by all adults, only gay men and lesbians can take steps to provide visibility of gay individuals in public life to combat the assumption that everyone in the adult world is straight.

And in case you’re wondering, I do try to walk the walk on this issue, in my semi-public life as a professor. I don’t just blog about issues related to my sexuality where those “in the know” will find out. I try to be visible within the university, but without being aggressive about it. So if I’m chatting with students on a break partway through class, I will make reference to “my husband”. Because many of my courses do deal with recent political history, I can incorporate references to gay and lesbian rights in Canada in a fairly natural way, and I’ve often picked those classes as an opportunity to make a casual reference to how those social movements made it possible for me to marry my husband (prompting a flurry of Google searches of “matthew hayday gay” that land on this blog). I don’t jump up and down in my students’ faces making all my courses about my personal life and my politics, but nor do I shy away from making references to my personal life if it is appropriate – just as many, many other straight colleagues of mine do all the time when they illustrate contemporary issues, or make a casual, conversational aside in the middle of their lectures. It is surprising how often one’s personal life does come up in casual conversation, if you let it. But as many gay men and lesbians will tell you, if they are honest about it, they also clam up or evade the specific details on a regular basis, depending on their audience. A good first step to changing that, and being more out, is to stop self-censoring as often. That alone will start a broader process of raising the visibility of gay adults, and hopefully have trickle-down impacts to allow others to take the bolder step of the public declaration, should they wish.

New Directions in Political History - Post-Conference Observations

2011-10-18T10:03:00.004-04:00

Last week, I attended a great conference on Canadian political history, held at York University (full disclosure, I was one of the organizers). About a hundred participants discussed a truly dazzling array of topics, ranging from the new citizenship guide to the welfare state, from gender to food policy, from the civil service to nationalism, from gun control to taxation. The participants approached the concept of Canadian political history from a very wide array of perspectives, ranging what might be considered "top down" studies of politicians and government mandarins to gendered and cultural analyses of political movements and state policy.

I'm sure that not all of what was covered at that conference would be considered "political history" by some people's definition, but I'm pleased to see a broadening of the field, and the interactions between different types of scholars. It was really refreshing to see people who consider themselves to be social historians, cultural historians or women's historians engaging with the foreign policy and constitutional scholars thanks to a shared interest in the functioning of the state. I also think it is important to see how there is an increasing dovetailing between the approaches taken by scholars in different fields, so that a person like myself might incorporate some analysis of gender in my studies of language policy, or a scholar of gender might spend more time considering how social policy and government action played a role in the cultural phenomena they are analyzing.

One observation struck me in particular though, which is the issue of the extent to which academic historians, as a profession, feel qualified to comment on contemporary public policy, or are even invited to do so. The two roundtables that bookended the conference really drove this home for me. The opening session, which centered around the perceived politicization of the Discover Canada citizenship guide, featured five scholars who were all eager to comment on the content of this very contemporary government document, which led to a stimulating discussion (with very ideological perspectives). Conversely, the five panellists on the concluding roundtable on the study of the welfare state expressed a certain reluctance to comment on contemporary issues, when the question was posed to them explicitly by Craig Heron. I'm not sure whether this was simply a reflection of the particular panellists, or an issue connected to the subfield (which generally hasn't tackled much post-1960s history so far, with some key exceptions). I'd really like to see more engagement by academic scholars on the whole in public life, particularly on important political topics like welfare state development. I understand the fears of being misrepresented by media outlets or quoted out of context by journalists or having one's complex analysis oversimplified. But I think that Canadian historians do have a public duty to think about the contemporary ramifications of their research, especially if they study relatively recent history. This is not to say that historical topics cannot be studied for their own sake. But if there are aspects of one's research that can and should inform contemporary discussions, it would seem to me that as good citizens we should be engaging in these debates and at least trying to put our knowledge to good use.

I think that this conference might serve as a great kick-starting to an ongoing series of thematic conferences about the history of the state and Canadian political history more broadly. Here's hoping we can build on this momentum.

Ontario Election 2011 - Tight Races, Bedtime for Me

2011-10-06T23:03:00.003-04:00

As I head to bed at 11 PM, the Liberals are one seat shy of a majority government in Ontario, with a handful of seats still teetering in the balance. I'm extremely pleased that the Conservatives failed to capture the government. As I see it, one way or the other the McGuinty Liberals will need to come to terms with Horvath's NDP (or at least a handful of Conservatives). Even if they take that cherished 54th seat tonight, there will doubtless be recounts, and then the Speaker's election could well pull things back to an even split. And in the long-term, you know that at least one or two or more MPPs will leave politics, and the ensuing by-elections will throw the whole situation into flux again. So better to govern as if it is actually a minority and come to workable arrangements with the opposition parties, so as to provide this province with some stability. I'm content with this election result - it is far better than what I had been fearing over the past year, and as recently as the summer.

It's a bittersweet night for me though. This is the first election where I haven't been able to share thoughts and opinions with my Dad, which we had done for every provincial and federal election either in person or over the phone since I was a kid. I'm sure he would have been satisfied though, both that the Conservatives lost, and that my riding (Guelph) and his (Oakville) stayed Liberal red.

Canadian Political History Prizes / Prix en histoire politique canadienne

2011-10-06T10:53:00.004-04:00

A few years ago, I helped organize and launch a Political History Group within the Canadian Historical Association. One of the group's initial objectives was to promote the recognition of excellent scholarship in Canadian political history, and so last year we launched a series of three prizes - best book, best English-language article, and best French-language article. We were short of nominations for the French-language article prize, but had numerous submissions for the other two prizes, which were won by Ivana Caccia for her book Managing the Canadian Mosaic in Wartime: Shaping Citizenship Policy, 1939-1945, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, and Bradley Miller, for his article “‘A carnival of crime on our border’: International Law, Imperial Power, and Extradition in Canada, 1865-1883,” which appeared in the Canadian Historical Review.

I'm pleased to announce the competitions for the 2012 prizes. Details may be found at the Political History Group's website in English and French.

Chess, the Cold War and Musical Theatre

2011-10-02T15:21:00.003-04:00

So... I know this blog is supposed to be about things political and historical in nature, but allow me a brief diversion into the world of theatre. If you insist, I can make the connection to the themes of the blog relevant. I want to encourage theatre-goers in the greater Toronto area to go and see the production of the musical Chess, currently playing at the Princess of Wales theatre.

How can I make this relevant? Well, despite its title, and despite the fact that the chorus features cast members decked out in costumes inspired by bishops, rooks and knights, Chess is at its core both a romance and a historical period piece inspired by the Cold War. With lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson (of ABBA fame), it was inspired by the Cold War era world chess championship which pitted American Bobby Fischer against Russian Boris Spassky, with the resultant political posturing that accompanied any such East-West clash (and indeed several decades of Olympic competitions). In addition to some truly great love songs (I Know Him So Well), pop classics (One Night in Bangkok) and power anthems (Nobody's Side), there are wonderfully subtle politically-tinged lyrics and songs designed to evoke the tensions of the Cold War. The concept album for the musical was first released in 1984, and I've been listening to it since I was a little boy (and chess player), longing for the chance to see it in person. Yesterday I finally did.

The current incarnation of the musical is not without its minor flaws, but the producers have done a great job of staging a wonderful production, maintaining the core human and political stories that drive it. What I did find interesting is that to a certain extent, the musical has been sexed up (not that I'm complaining), and some of the chill of the Cold War atmosphere has been reduced, favoring instead a more boisterous (and comical, to some extent) interpretation of the Soviet diplomats who are constantly on the fringes of the action. In the original concept album, there was something substantially more sinister about the Soviet agents, and more austere about the Arbiter overseeing the conflicts. Part of me is wondering if this has been done to appeal to an audience that no longer viscerally relates to the tensions of Cold War, or views the Soviet Union as a chilling menace.

Indeed, this is a question that is starting to preoccupy me as a young(-ish) historian. Until I was a teenager, the Cold War was an omnipresent fact of life, running through all aspects of political and popular culture. I was weaned on spy novels, Bond movies and even songs by Sting that reflected the omnipresent threat of nuclear war and the communist menace. And then the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the world shifted. Suddenly, what had seemed like an ageless conflict, certain to last indefinitely, had time parameters that (conservatively at least) were limited to less than half a century. I already know that I can no longer assume that my students will know that the Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union and that this fact strongly coloured Ukrainian-Canadian politics. It makes me wonder how significant the Cold War will be by the time I am delivering history lectures at the end of my teaching career. Will the period from 1945-89 (or 91) seem as significant as an era thirty years from now? Will I be able to convey how that era felt to my students in a way that will do it justice? I'm not entirely certain.

In any case, if you like musicals, go and see Chess. The score and songs are spectacular, and the orchestration is lush. But make a point of reading the plot description in your playbill before the curtain rises. The plot is filled with twists and turns and complications - much like the diplomacy of the era!

Ontario Election: Guelph Update

2011-09-29T11:17:00.003-04:00

I unfortunately missed the all-candidates debate on social policy last week in Guelph, as a nasty cold took hold of me. I had been looking forward to checking out the candidates in person. From what a good friend and colleague told me though, the NDP candidate, James Gordon, acquitted himself very well and was solid on the issues. I'll admit that my initial impression of him was not a great one (receiving emails about summers of listening and sending messages through song irritated my pragmatic and sober self). She wasn't terribly impressed by any of the other candidates, including Liberal incumbent Liz Sandals, who struck her as bored. I can't say that I was terribly surprised by this, as Sandals spent most of the 2007 debate that I attended seemingly working on other paperwork. She has always struck me as somewhat bureaucratic in nature - competent, but not all that inspiring in person.

In any case, with the election a mere week away, I have no real idea how the riding is likely to go. Last time out, it was mainly a Liberal-Conservative fight, with the Green candidate sneaking into third place above the NDP. I get the sense that the NDP are fighting harder this time, at least in my left-of-centre downtown neighbourhood. Indeed, to look at signs on lawns near my home, you'd be hard-pressed to consider the Conservative candidate a threat. This is reflected in the literature as well - so far we've had 2 NDP drops and 5 Liberal ones, with nothing in print from the other two major parties (although Green signs abound, since we live so close to their campaign office). I rather suspect that there is some rather specific neighbourhood targetting going on, with the Conservatives focussing their energies on suburban Guelph, especially the south end, with the Greens and NDP hitting hard downtown, and the Liberals spread more widely across the city. I suspect that this will once again be a close race, and I'm not feeling all that confident, a week out, to predict the outcome, especially with things seeming so fluid overall in the province.

Camera-test your ties - Ontario Leader's Debate Edition

2011-09-27T20:34:00.003-04:00

So, despite a deep-seated desire not to inflict pain on myself, I tuned in this evening to the Ontario election leader's debate. To make this a productive hour and a half, I also set up the ironing board and a stack of 12 shirts. If you don't feel like reading the rest of this post, feel happy for me that I at least got my ironing done.

Alas, that's really the only great thing that I can say about how I spent my early evening. The debate was formulaic, with no surprises, endlessly-repeated talking points, and folksy populism. And I'm sick of it.

Could we please end the new tradition of having the questions be asked by videotaped, carefully-selected "average voters" whose questions are picked because they aim right at one candidate or the other's talking points? And if not, could the leaders at least give up the oh-so-fake approach of pretending to be talking to these people directly and endlessly repeating their name in the ensuing 12 minutes? I get it, you wrote down that her name was Catherine!

And while we're on the name game issue, would it be too much to ask for an end to the folksy anecdotes about the hard-working family folks whom the leaders have met on the campaign trail, be it Julie from just outside of Wawa, or Kevin the electrician from Tilbury, or Sammi the nine-year old lemonade stand operator from Moosonee who is concerned about the HST on the paint she uses for her sign?

I don't feel that I got a great sense of any of these leaders' platforms beyond their endlessly-repeated talking points. Hudak claims to have a "5-point plan" (as if the number of points matters) with health and education as his priorities and cuts that will miraculously appear. McGuinty is all about clean energy, university tuition cuts, a $355 tax cut last year and home care for seniors. And Horvath (insofar as I got to see her tonight) will end the HST on hydro to help out seniors, and defend public health care. And all of them are parents, and have parents, and have kids that have had to use the health care system recently. And they all care about families and seniors. (And if you're single or in a couple but without kids, and in your 30s or 40s, none of the leaders could care less about how you vote!)

I would love to see the debate format turned into a rigorous on-camera grilling by journalists, or perhaps experts. To balance things off, perhaps each party could nominate their choice of a journalist or an academic with policy expertise. And then we might see an actual debate where there is interactivity, and a chance to get beyond talking points and have the assertions of the leaders challenged by those posing the questions. But that's probably a pipe dream, and we're doomed to several more debates that are a race-to-the-most-folksy-and-down-to-earth competition.

For what it's worth, I didn't think there was a clear winner or that any of the candidates really distinguished themselves. I think that hurts Horvath the most, as she seemed to be marginalized a lot of the time, and unable to get a word in over the other two, which is a problem when she is the least well-known of the three. I saw a lot of Twitter commentary about McGuinty waving his hands around, and his terrible hypnotic tie, but he stayed on point (perhaps too tightly and scriptedly so) and didn't seem to get too flustered - I still take issue with a number of his policies, especially on post-secondary education, but I don't think he hurt himself. I don't know whether voters waffling between a Liberal and Conservative vote would find that Hudak came across as a premier-in-waiting. I'm quite firmly opposed to even the notion of this, but I still don't think he was all that impressive (and who picked that purple-and-green monstrosity of a tie!) So in a debate without a winner, might we be headed for minority territory?

Steve Paikin, incidentally, was a good moderator, in terms of trying to pull the leaders back to the questions and allow for fair amounts of time. But the format really didn't allow him to press the leaders directly, as we sometimes see in the American Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates, or Canadian leaders' debates of the past.

As I said at the beginning - at least I got my ironing done!

John A.: Birth of a Country

2011-09-20T14:25:00.003-04:00

Last night, the CBC aired John A.: The Birth of a Country, a dramatization of the eight years of Canadian political history leading up to the formation of the Great Coalition government of 1864 - the government which ultimately drove the Confederation process. Based on Richard Gwyn's recent biography of Sir John A. Macdonald (and with historical insights provided by my friend, historian Andrew Smith), the film is clearly an effort to reinvigorate the interest that Canadians have for their past. Twitter today has been filled with glowing reviews from the Historica-Dominion institute and Canada's History magazine.

Would that I could share this enthusiasm. I'll admit that even though I love and teach Canadian political history, I've never been a huge fan of historical films, and I don't read nearly as many biographies as perhaps I should. But I'm always on the lookout for a new film to show in the Practicing Historian course that I teach to my second year students (much as The Valour and the Horror illustrates a lot of very useful points about film and public history, I don't particularly enjoy watching it year after year), and so I decided to settle in and watch John A. last night. Having done so, I don't understand the accolades being heaped on it by people such as Andrew Coyne and Peter Mansbridge.

The acting by the two leads, Shawn Doyle and Peter Outerbridge, as John A. Macdonald and George Brown, was solid, given the script and the material that they had to work with. Brown, in particular, came across as a complex character who had strong ideas about democracy and the failures of the United Province. Macdonald, on the other hand, was largely depicted as a charismatic showman and a crafty political operator. Having watched the film, though, I got the sense that the filmmakers got to a certain point and decided that they really wanted to make this a film about George Brown. This doesn't surprise me, as most of the accounts that I've read of Confederation give Brown most of the credit for compromising and coming up with the idea for a constitutional committee and the Great Coalition. Of the three major leaders (along with George-Etienne Cartier, who only plays a bit part in the film), Conservative leader Macdonald controlled the smallest number of followers in the legislative assembly. Nevertheless, the result is that "John A." felt like a misnomer of a film that could just as easily have been called "George". Had the film continued into the Confederation negotiations of 1864-67, Macdonald's central place in the narrative might have seemed more justified.

I'm not a historian of 19th century Canada. My own research interests lie in more recent decades, so I'm not particularly well placed to pick apart where the filmmakers might have taken some liberties with the historical past. My bigger concern is with the film itself as a piece of entertainment. It is primarily on this score that I found it to be a failure. I was not gripped by the drama, nor drawn in by the characterizations of these politicians. Quite the contrary. I found the script to be leaden in its earnest desire to educate its audience. In an effort to communicate historical facts, the characters frequently engaged in dialogue that sounded like they were reading aloud from historical monographs. It reminded me of a great scene from "The Great Muppet Caper", where Lady Holiday (played by Diana Rigg) delivers a long monologue explaining all about her relationship with her brother, the family business, etc, and then Miss Piggy turns to her and asks "Why are you telling me all of this?" Holiday airily replies, "It's plot exposition, it has to go somewhere. Anyways..." Almost all of the dialogue of John A. felt like this to me. The characters kept telling each other things in a completely artificial way, providing historical exposition for the audience, but snapping the viewer out of the moment, and making him/her very much aware that they were being educated about Canada's history.

Overall, the film felt like a two hour version of on of Historica's Canadian History minutes. And while that method of communicating tidbits of Canadian history can work in a one-minute commercial, it becomes tiresome in the format of a feature-length film. Caught between a desire to educate Canadians about their past and a desire to provide good entertainment, the filmmakers appear to have been unable to make up their minds, and thus fell flat with their final product. Mind you, I don't know that I could have done a much better job myself with the source material. I don't really understand what led to a decision to end this film with the start of the more interesting story about how the Confederation deal was brokered. When I lecture on this material to my undergraduates, I take less time to address the issue of the deadlocked legislative assembly of the 1850s and 1860s than this film did. It might well have been better to simply admit that some aspects of Canada's political past are not the best source material for a movie. But that's another debate...

Canadian Political History Conference at York University

2011-09-13T07:50:00.003-04:00

I've noticed that a number of people have landed at my site because many months ago I posted a call for papers for a Political History Conference at York University. The program for the conference "Transformation: State, Nation and Citizenship in a New Environment" is now online at the conference's website. The conference will run from October 13-15, and has a really exciting program with many of Canada's leading political historians presenting on a wide array of topics.

Now if I could just get my own talk finished, I'll be set!

On Royal Rebranding

2011-09-10T07:28:00.002-04:00

In light of this week's ministerial command to "hang the Queen" in Canada's embassies abroad here are some comments from me in a story by Sarah Boesveld in the National Post. For the record, I'm shocked, shocked(!) by what Rudyard Griffiths had to say.

Well, actually, I'm not shocked at all. He said precisely what you'd expect the founder of the Dominion Institute to say.

Enjoy your weekend, folks!

Ontario Election: GSAs, Greens and Catholic Schools

2011-09-02T10:16:00.004-04:00

The issue of gay-straight alliances in Catholic schools in Ontario has heated up again, this time in the Toronto Catholic District School Board, which voted this week to place denominational rights above other rights in implementing the provincial equity policies - which were supposed to guarantee GSAs in Ontario high schools. Clearly, the individual schools in the board are interpreting this as carte blanche to ban anything which explictly has "gay" in the name, going so far as to threaten disciplinary action against students who are fighting for these support groups.

I am pleased to see that this issue is not only getting attention from the gay and alternative media. The Globe and Mail has been devoting significant coverage to this issue, including today's commentary piece from Aidan Johnson.

I'm going to be very curious to see how this issue plays out in the provincial election campaign. So far, the approach of the McGuinty government has been to support the creation of GSAs, using gay Toronto Centre MPP Glen Murray as the main spokesperson on this issue. (Although I find it curious and significant that Education minister Leona Dombrowsky is largely MIA on this issue). But there is clearly reluctance to putting the full weight of the government behind a strategy of compelling the Catholic boards to accept these support groups, especially with the Liberal government in danger of losing the election.

The option of seeking a constitutional amendment to eliminate public funding for the Catholic boards - as was done in Quebec and Newfoundland - does not appear to register on the radar for the current government. I'm not overly surprised by this, given the stew John Tory found himself in in the 2007 election with his promise of funding for other denominational schools. I'm not sure if the gay community and their supporters will be able to mobilize this as a major campaign issue, particularly given the fact that the only major party to endorse an end to public funding of Catholic schools in the 2007 election - the Greens - have retreated from this platform promise, and so there will be no standard bearer for this approach.

I imagine that the Liberals (and the NDP, for that matter), will make vague promises about resolving the issue in the courts, which should tie things up for at least a few more years.

More's the shame, as it will be gay and lesbian teens who suffer in the meantime. I'm not at all surprised by the hateful position of the Catholic schools (having been educated in the system myself), or by the hesitancy of the major parties when faced with a sizeable Catholic voting block. But it does betray their cynical political calculations and lack of willingness to passionately advocate for one of our most vulnerable populations.

Ontario Election: NDP gives up on Guelph, saves me a decision

2011-08-30T20:04:00.004-04:00

I try so darned hard to support the NDP. I am sympathetic to their message of social justice, of social welfare programs, of equitable treatment for Canadians. I have had great respect for many of the party's leaders past and present. If only I could ignore their local candidates, literature and e-mails.

The following quote is from a message that arrived in my inbox today from the local candidate's - James Gordon - campaign, announcing the opening of the campaign office, which will feature an appearance by MP Charlie Angus:

"Guitars in hand, James and Charlie are going to send a message through song: we can win this riding, and work together to build an even better Guelph and Ontario.

Sending a message through song?!? Seriously?! In an election where the Mike Harris acolyte Mike Hudak (be prepared for multiple references to "the evil forces of Hudak" for the remainder of the campaign, kids) is poised to potentially topple the McGuinty government, the local NDP is going with a message of song? What sort of hippie bull is this? And this follows on the "summer of listening" email from July. I thought it was bad in 2007 when the NDP candidate ran on the message of "vote for me because I am an immigrant woman of colour" platform, but apparently the depths of the no-hoper barrel had yet to be plumbed.

In one sense, this makes my decision easier, narrowing my potential vote candidates to two. But I'm really disappointed that in a riding with a sizable left-wing population, the NDP continues to put up candidates that could not possibly appeal beyond the hardest of the hardcore 60s radicals.

Symbols Matter - Canadian Forces Edition

2011-08-15T17:23:00.007-04:00

Symbols matter. Traditions can be invented. Nationalism is the product of collective will to create an imagined community.

All of these concepts (which are debatable, of course) are vitally important to understanding the trajectories of Canadian identity politics since the Second World War. This has been my academic stomping ground, so to speak, for the last decade or so. I was thus not particularly surprised, although I was disappointed, by the leaked announcement that the Harper Government is planning to bring back the "Royal" in the official names of the Canadian air force and navy. It fits very nicely with what Queen's history professor Ian McKay has referred to as the Right-wing reconceptualization of Canada, a rebranding of Canada's national symbols and identity markers, including the Citizenship Guide to give much higher prominence to the military and the monarchy.

The 1968 amalgamation, re-naming and re-uniforming of the Canadian Forces was an incredibly contentious issue. Coordinated by Miniser of National Defence Paul Hellyer, this break with British traditions and symbols has never sat easily with many members of the Canadian forces. Indeed, it is one of the few topics that my students, usually reservists, have requested permission to write about in my post-war history courses, despite the fact that it isn't on the list of suggested topics. To a one, these papers have taken the stance that the amalgamation of the forces was the worst thing that could have been done, a sop to French Canadians, and an attack on military morale. Clearly the culture of grievance has been passed down through the generations, given that these students were born two decades after the incident in question, and the papers tend to be based more on opinion than academic literature. I'm therefore not surprised that the Harper government has opted to make this change. It reinforces their conservative narrative of Canadian identity, and plays to their electoral base, particularly their older supporters. Personally, I see it as a retrograde move, one which further reinforces a connection to the monarchy, a hereditary institution whose time I believe has passed.

If you're particularly interested in learning more about the amalgamation and re-naming of the Canadian forces, the backlash it engendered, and how it is lamented by more conservatively-oriented academics, you might want to take a look at The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964-68 by C.P. (Chris) Champion. Champion has been an advisor to the Conservative government on its citizenship and heritage policies, and his book has been endorsed by a who's who on the Canadian academic (and populist) right. If you want to know what sort of intellectual thinking is fuelling this re-branding and conservatizing of Canadian symbols, it's not a bad place to start.

Of course, given my own recent research projects, I wonder how long it will be until we see a return of Dominion Day!

Graham Fraser's So-called Secret Shoppers

2011-08-10T15:12:00.006-04:00

Graham Fraser, Canada's commissioner of official languages, has kicked off a bit of a kerfuffle in the nation's capital over a recently announced plan to investigate the state of bilingualism in the national capital region, a research study which would entail both examining signage and service delivery at federal government offices and buildings, but also examining commercial services in the region.

In today's Ottawa Citizen, Fraser defends this study as part and parcel of his mandate, which is not only to be the ombudsman for the federal government's institutional bilingualism, but also to promote and encourage bilingualism in Canada's business and voluntary organizations. He outlines a well-worn path of both his own actions, and those of his immediate predecessor, Dyane Adam. By couching this study as necessary research for identifying best practices in the private sector, he makes a good case for why his office should fund such research. Indeed, had Fraser been alloted more space, he might have pointed out that historically some of the best work of the Commissioner's office has been in areas that are not squarely within the realm of adjudicating complaints about federal bilingualism, but promoting linguistic duality more broadly. Efforts to promote French second language learning and French immersion, which have been ongoing since the first commissioner, Keith Spicer, leap to mind as an example.

It's unfortunate that the media were so quick to attach the phrase "secret shoppers" to this initiative, which invokes images of language police that are, alas, not alien to recent Canadian history. But it would be nice if these secret shoppers were in fact able to discover some great language practices in Ottawa. Then perhaps we could call Fraser "Canada's Secret Santa" if and when he produces a report filled with great new ideas for making bilingual service delivery more widely available. A December report release seems in order, no?

Federalism - It's not just for Centralizers any more!

2011-08-03T08:22:00.005-04:00

As an addendum to yesterday's post, I see that Nycole Turmel has re-stated her commitment to federalism, and plans to end her membership in the sovereignist Quebec Solidaire. But here's the central issue for me, as someone who teaches courses on Canadian politics and federalism. Saying that you are a "federalist" is a pretty meaningless statement in some important respects. The central feature of "federalism" as a system of government is that power is divided between a central government and regional governments, with each sovereign in their own sphere - although often with some overlapping jurisdictions. Where the balance of power lies between the two levels of government, and how responsibilities are divided up, varies wildly between different federations around the world. Switzerland, for example, gives almost all of the powers to the cantons, while the USA has swung back and forth between a state-centric and national government-centered approach. So when Nycole Turmel says that she is a commited (or strong) federalist, all this really means is that she is not a supporter of Quebec separatism.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate even this level of clarity. As someone who has studied Quebec history for years, I'm well aware that the sovereignist parties have basically monopolized left-wing politics for decades, and many NDP supporters hold their noses and vote Bloc, or PQ, or QS because of their social policies. But for many NDP supporters outside the province of Quebec, it actually does matter a lot whether the party is still committed to a strong national government role in the provision of social welfare. And this, at least for me, is one of the big unknowns about what the May election means for the future of NDP policy. I'm happy that Turmel does not support the sovereignist planks of the two sovereignist parties that she has been a member of, but I'd still like to know more about how she conceives of the future of Canadian federalism. For me, this isn't about using national unity as a political wedge issue, it's about getting more information about how the NDP is conceiving of future directions for the funding and delivery of Canadian social programs.

Nycole Turmel, meet Jean Lapierre

2011-08-02T10:59:00.003-04:00

Gosh, the Twitterverse is atweet today with spin and counter-spin on Daniel Leblanc's article in the Globe and Mail about interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel's very recent membership in the Bloc Quebecois. Some partisans are crying foul and alleging that this is a smear campaign. Other commentators are observing that it's commonplace to switch political allegiances.

Here are my two cents: Welcome to the big leagues Dippers! Changing political allegiances is pretty common in Canadian politics. Jean Lapierre did it. Rene Levesque did it. Bob Rae did it. Belinda Stronach did it. Scott Brison did it. Lucien Bouchard did it (a bunch of times, in fact). Heck, I've been a card carrying member of different parties in my lifetime (none at the moment though). Over one's lifespan, your political ideals may shift, and so too might your party affiliations. But if you're going to run for political office, you'll need to be prepared to be clear about your political past, and why you've changed your beliefs.

What appears to be igniting the firestorm in this case is the apparent absence of changed political beliefs on the part of Turmel, at least insofar as the letter obtained by Leblanc would indicate (which is not necessarilly the full extent of her reasoning). And let's get real, kids, separatism/sovereigntism is a big deal in Canadian politics. It's legitimate for Canadians to want to know where their politicians stand on this issue. And if that makes the current NDP, with its Quebec-heavy caucus, uncomfortable, that's too bad. Ever since May, the party appears to have been trying to dance around the éléphant in the room, and at some point, that's going to become impossible. The party known for heralding strong national social programs in English-speaking Canada is going to have to publicly reconcile this stance with its asymmetric-federalism stance in Quebec.

This might well be a good opportunity to start that public conversation and provide some clarity. Because without Jack Layton's personal popularity to hold the party together, things might become very tense, very quickly. A clear public statement from Turmel would be an excellent start.

Canada Day 144

2011-06-30T09:00:00.004-04:00

As long-time readers of this blog may know, I spent many years researching the history of Canada Day celebrations, especially the ones funded by the federal government and those hosted in Ottawa. The project is pretty much wrapped up now, having yielded three published articles and book chapters, a number of public lectures, a podcast, a series of interviews and another article that is still working its way through the publication chain.

For a capsule version of some of the findings of this research, feel free to take a look at this article from the University of Guelph alumni magazine slightly reworked to incorporate this weekend's events, which hits on a few of the major highlights.

And no, I didn't get to pick the backdrop!

ETA: I couldn't resist posting this image from the mid-80s - Because nothing says Canada like Bert the Raccoon and a Kazoo band! :

Rating the Prime Ministers

2011-06-11T17:52:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post to link to this Maclean's article by Stephen Azzi and Norman Hillmer in which they discuss the results of a poll rating Canada's Prime Ministers, past and present. Interesting to see Wilfrid Laurier topping the results this time around. There are a number of interesting quotes from Canadian political historians, both old and young (including me), explaining their choices and rankings.

Bryan Hayday (1952-2011)

2011-05-30T08:14:00.003-04:00

I'm going to be away from blogging, probably for a while. My Dad, Bryan Hayday, passed away suddenly on Thursday night, at the age of 59.

His obituaries are in the Globe and the Toronto Star.

At some point in the future, I'm hoping to be able to write up more of a tribute for him. But for now, I just want to mention that my Dad was the reason why I became engaged in politics, from a very early age. A life-long Trudeau Liberal, he was passionate about social justice causes, and worked for his whole life in the health, social services and education sectors. We used to listen to Air Farce together, and every election we'd watch the returns together, all the way back to when I was seven years old, and came down to the basement to be with him while he watched the 1984 election of Brian Mulroney - a horrifying event, in his opinion. He was even more disappointed when we spoke a few weeks ago on the night of Stephen Harper's election.

I'm going to miss him terribly.

Cabinet and Senate: Ongoing bad behaviour is stability, of a sort

2011-05-18T14:49:00.003-04:00

I don't have much to observe about today's developments in federal politics, except to say that I am profoundly unsurprised, unlike the madly twittering press corps. Harper's favorite cabinet ministers, such as Baird and Clement, got prime posts. Harper's incompetent and contemptuous ministers who were nonetheless defended by his administration, like Oda, got to stay put. Young up-and-comers from regions where the Conservatives won lots of seats, like Alexander and Adams, were left out of cabinet, but will probably become parliamentary secretaries. And defeated Senators who ran for Parliament but were rejected by voters were tucked nicely back into their Senate sinecures, despite assurances that they had no intention of returning to the upper chamber. Oh, and the invisible minister of her day, Josee Verner, will be joining them.

I can't work up outrage over this. It's entirely consistent with Harper's approach to politics over the past 5 years. And 40% of voters (the ones who gave him a majority) don't give a care. This is stability, of a sort. It's just stability of unpleasant and blatantly partisan behaviour.

What does upset me is the thought of how many editorials might run tomorrow denouncing the Senate appointments, all from newspaper editorial boards who endorsed Harper's re-election, knowing full well that this is how he operates.

Quebec NDP: The Kids [Could Be] All Right

2011-05-04T20:28:00.004-04:00

Monday was an exciting night for Quebec university NDP clubs, as a number of members of their executives were elected to the House of Commons, amidst a wave that elected NDP members in almost 80% of Quebec's ridings (on the strength of about 43% of the province's popular vote, although that's a subject for a different post). Since that day, news sites, Twitter and Facebook have been aflame with commentary and angry retorts regarding the issues of the youth, experience, and suitability for office of these newly-elected MPs.

To the vitriolic partisans on both sides of this issue, I say a pox on both your houses. Everybody has to start somewhere in politics, and many, many members of parliament (and indeed leaders of some major political parties) have been thrust into political office with no prior political experience. In many cases, this is what people find "fresh" about them. Many are elected at a young age, in their mid-20s, and seem to settle into the position without much difficulty. In both cases, they often stumble a bit as they get their footing, and many settle into the job quite nicely. Others don't, and our current House of Commons has many examples of "veterans" who were initially elected at a variety of ages who I'd argue are not fit to hold elected office. So this lack of experience is not necessarily a problem at all, and it's a cheap attack ploy when these individuals have not yet had a chance to prove themselves. It's particularly hollow and bitter coming from Liberal partisans, because they barely held on to less than half of their seats, electing very few rookies at all.

But to the NDP partisans who have been on their high horse about this issue, a little less self-righteous posturing would be appreciated. Many of these candidates were placeholder candidates. They knew it, Jack Layton knew it, and you know it. And they got lucky. So now the best line of argument is to make the case that they should be given a fair shot. But pretending that it is invalid to question and closely examine the credentials and political positions of people who were probably not closely scrutinized by the party when they agreed to run as the sacrificial lamb in the riding - to collect the $1.75 subsidy and reinforce claims to national party status - rings false to those on the outside. How about a bit more honesty? Admit that some of these people were not necesarily ideal picks with perfect qualifications, but make the case for their capacity to prove themselves despite their surface-level lack of experience and perceived lack of aptitude for public office.

I imagine that out of the current crop of rookie MPs, some will distinguish themselves. But at least a few others will likely be disastrous and make some serious media gaffes. It might be better to admit this earlier on in the process and perhaps earn a slight reprieve from the circling journalistic vultures when the inevitable first set of mistakes occur.

Don't blame Guelph. We voted for Kodos!

2011-05-03T08:34:00.004-04:00

Bah! Our electoral system has given a party that won 40% of the vote from the 61% of eligible voters who cast ballots a majority of seats in the House of Commons, and they've got control of the Senate as well. And as far as I can tell, electoral reform will not be on the agenda for the lower house for quite some time now. (The Senate, on the other hand...)

As you might imagine, I'm really disheartened by all of this (and I lost badly in my election pool). So here are my silver linings:

1) Guelph. My local riding stayed Liberal - unique for Southwestern Ontario - and Frank Valeriote substantially increased his margin over the Conservative. In large part, it looks like the Green vote collapsed here and went solidly Liberal. Many thanks to the U of G vote mobs and a great local get-out-the-vote team.

2) The Quebec NDP. Holy moly! Need I say more? I'm thrilled that the Bloc vote has collapsed (for now). Hopefully many of these MPs will grow quickly on the job. I'm somewhat optimistic that many of the university-aged or recently graduated newly-minted MPs, in particular, adapt quickly into their new positions and inject a youth perspective into our national politics. I'm a little worried about what the longer-term dynamics of this shift might look like on the national question, but that's fodder for another post.

3) Elizabeth May. Good on her for winning that seat. It's an important beachhead, and she should get a voice in the next leaders' debates, unless the consortium declares that the Greens don't have official-party status in the House.

4) Marc Garneau, Stephane Dion and Justin Trudeau. I'm pleased to see that these three Quebec Liberals, in particular, held on to their seats. I don't think that Trudeau would make a good leader, for what it's worth, but I think he deserves credit for a great ground game. Garneau has also been a really effective critic, and an intelligent voice in caucus. And I am just chuffed that Dion has stuck it out in politics, even through the hard times.

5) Dan McTeague (& probably others). I can't say I'm unhappy when socially-conservative Liberals lose their seats.

6) NDP in Scarborough?? I figured that the NDP would pick up seats in downtown Toronto, but it's nice that at least some of the weird shifts and vote-splitting around the city didn't necessarily lead to Conservative wins in all instances.

None of this overcomes my overall disappointment in the outcome of this election. There will need to be a very active civil engagement and critical media to keep this new government in line. But I'm trying to look on the bright side of life this morning - it's going to be a long 4.5 years in any case, and despair is not productive.

Election-day shenanigans in Guelph

2011-05-02T11:27:00.004-04:00

Like a good citizen, I headed out bright and early this morning to my local polling station to vote this morning. There was no line-up, but a steady flow of people in and out to the various booths. My partner reported the array of Conservative signs that were lying on the grass in front of the station (although not standing up) to the local officer, who had them removed before we had left the station. And then the interesting part of this story begins.

I returned home to find a message from an automated dialer on my voice mail telling me that my polling station had been switched from the one printed on the card I had received from Elections Canada, directing me to the Old Quebec Street mall. Clearly, this was a hoax. According to my caller ID, the call came from a 450 area code, and told me to call a 1-800 number if I had questions (the final four digits of which matched the number on my caller ID - not the 1-800 number on Elections Canada's website). I've reported the hoax call to Elections Canada, and initiated a call trace on the call. Hopefully that phone number will be shut down, and the perpetrator will not succeed in suppressing the vote.

This has been another ugly, ugly election here in Guelph. No reports of cut brake lines like last time, thank god, but enough nasty efforts at vote suppression and unpleasant campaign strategies that I'll be really happy when all of this is safely over.

Get out and vote everyone - and if you're not sure where to vote, check the address on your polling card or the Elections Canada website.

3:44 ETA: For more information about how this story is unfolding in Guelph, see this article in the Guelph Mercury. It appears that the local returning officer is arranging transportation for anyone who shows up at the hoax locations trying to vote.

Election Prediction? Beats Me!

2011-05-01T15:56:00.004-04:00

Well, this election has turned into quite the roller-coaster ride, hasn't it? Depending on your pollster of choice, we're either headed for an historic NDP breakthrough or a Conservative majority. Confused? Me too. As in past years, I'm participating in a little election pool with a few friends where we each try to call the winner of each of the 308 ridings in the country. It's surprisingly difficult to do, but it does focus your mind on getting past the broad national and provincial polling numbers to try to get a sense of how this election might play out on the ground at the local level. And it looks weird, my friends!

Rather than try to make bold predictions about the overall outcome of the election, I thought it might be fun to share a few of my guiding assumptions about what might happen tomorrow:

1) Quebec: Much as the polling numbers coming out of Quebec are wildly exciting for the NDP, it's really hard to predict how all of that will shake out on a riding-by-riding basis. I honestly don't believe that the Bloc will be decimated, especially since they have the benefit of a more established local infrastructure. I do think there will be some really bizarre vote splitting and that the NDP will make gains. My gut says that those gains will be in the Outaouais, Montreal, and parts of the south shore/Eastern townships, but that's just a wild prediction. I won't be surprised if the Bloc still wins the most seats in the province (although falling short of a majority of the province's total seats). And despite the tanking Liberal and Conservative numbers, I suspect that both parties will hold on to some of their seats, especially when it comes to Liberals on the island of Montreal.

2) Incumbency: More than anything else, this is the factor that I think will make a difference for the Liberals in terms of avoiding a complete decimation scenario. I think that, particularly in Ontario, where their numbers have not fallen as dramatically, many Liberal incumbent MPs might hold on to their seats as anti-Harper voters decide to stick with the proven option rather than jumping ship to another party. (This also works in favour of NDP incumbents in the province, where Liberal voters might switch to the NDP to keep the anti-Conservative option in power.) We might even see a few surprises, like in the Kitchener ridings, where long-term Liberal MPs Karen Redman and Andrew Telegdi barely lost their seats last time around, but are running again. In ridings where the incumbent isn't running again (like Kingston), it will be harder for the Liberals to hold their vote share.

3) BC: At some point in my life, I'm going to have to spend a few years in British Columbia. The political culture out there is fascinating, and the turmoil is wild. I really have no idea how that province is going to shape up. But I think it might be safe to say that for once, the old adage of British Columbia voters turning on their televisions on election night to find out that the overall result had already been predetermined will not be the case this year!

4) Atlantic Canada: I'm going to be keeping my eye on early results from Atlantic Canada, because a part of me suspects that we might be seeing some hints of 1997 in the works. Back then, the region turned against the Liberals, electing a substantial number of Conservative and NDP MPs. That was the early sign that presaged an overall reduced Liberal majority. If the Conservative numbers slip in that region, it might be a sign that Harper's total is in trouble. Right now, my instincts tell me that the region will be split three ways, and heavilly determined by incumbency.

5) Prairies. Conservative numbers, particularly according to pollsters like Nanos, indicate that the overall levels of support for the Conservatives have remained pretty stable at the national level. But when you drill down a bit, there have been wild shifts in many provinces - and a steady uptick in Prairie support, especially in Alberta. Given this fact, I'm not expecting tons of movement here. I think that Linda Duncan will hold her Edmonton seat (hello IP!), and that Winnipeg will still elect a mix of all three parties. I'm still not certain if the orange wave will land in the CCF cradle of Saskatchewan.

What do we see at the end of all this? My instincts tell me that it won't be quite the revolution that excited pundits have predicted. I think that Harper's Conservatives will still end up in good shape - let's say their current total +/- 10 seats. I also don't think that the Bloc will completely collapse, and will probably win enough seats that the could, if they chose, prop up a Conservative minority.

I think that the NDP is probably in for a record total seat count, but that it will be less than the optimistic 100-seat predictions of some. I also don't think that the Liberals will be decimated, and they might even avoid the disastrous low of the 1984 election. Together, these two parties might even surpass the total seat count of the Conservatives.

So what happens then? Very hard to say, in my estimation. It all depends on how much Harper wants to cling to power. I wouldn't rule out the scenario where Harper makes a major Quebec-oriented promise in an effort to win over the Bloc, who might not be eager to give the NDP a chance to prove that they can deliver in government on their major promises to the province's nationalist voters. But Harper has proven unable to compromise in the past, so...

Of course, all of this is wild speculation on the future. And I'm a historian, whose expertise is in explaining the past. Twenty years from now, I might think about writing an article about this election, when I have the benefit of more data, evidence and sources. So take this for what it is - the musings of an engaged citizen, with a bit of expertise on what has occurred in Canada's political past, but a very cloudy crystal ball!

In Memoriam: John T. (Jack) Saywell, 1929-2011

2011-04-29T08:16:00.004-04:00

I was saddened this morning to learn that Jack Saywell, the widely-acknowledged founder of York University's history department and an emininent legal and constitutional historian, passed away last week. Saywell has been a hugely influential presence in Canadian political and legal history circles over the past six decades. His most recent major monograph, The Lawmakers, is essential reading for understanding the role of the courts, particularly the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in the evolution of Canadian federalism. A recent tribute to his influence, Framing Canadian Federalism, was recently co-edited by Penny Bryden and Dimitry Anastakis.

Our understanding of Canadian history is richer for the contributions of Jack Saywell. He will be sorely missed.

NDP in Quebec: Who are these prospective MPs?

2011-04-26T22:25:00.003-04:00

With all the excitement/panic/drama surrounding the apparent NDP wave in Quebec, it's fair to wonder who might suddenly become the new crop of MPs from Quebec if polling data translates into seats in the House of Commons. I, for one, am very curious. Here in Guelph, the NDP ran fourth in the 2008 election, and even today, a week before the election, there is still no candidate bio on the website for the local candidate, Bobbi Stewart. I have no idea from the website who she is, other than the election preparedness chair for the local riding association.

If that's the case in Ontario, it's no surprise that speculation is rampant about the Quebec crop of candidates for the party. The Globe and Mail has started digging, and has turned up at least a handful of university students. I'm not surprised at all. When I volunteered for the local NDP candidate in Outremont in the 2004 election, I was rather surprised to discover that the entire provincial campaign was being run out of a single office on St. Laurent Blvd, and that most of the candidates for the province were in fact the campaign management team, based almost entirely out of Montreal, many of them university students, and most of them under thirty years of age. A quick glance through the list of candidates seems to indicate that this is again the case in at least a sizeable number of ridings.

As a person who genuinely would love to see the NDP replace the Bloc as the choice of Quebec voters, I'm hoping that some of the blue seats in that province will turn orange, and that the newly elected MPs will do a good job. It's just that nagging memory of the ADQ surge to become the official opposition in Quebec in 2007 that has me a little concerned of what could happen when a series of placeholder candidates suddenly become MPs.

Let's just say that I'm hopeful, yet concerned...

An Orange Revolution in Quebec: The NDP in la belle province

2011-04-21T07:25:00.004-04:00

I'm somewhat surprised by the latest CROP and Ekos polls coming out of Quebec, showing the NDP cruising into first place, and the Bloc vote steadily falling. But as I'll get to later in this post, there are good historical reasons to explain this trend. In the immediate context, to understand better why this is occurring, I'd strongly recommend reading Vincent Marissal in La Presse this morning, although the unilingual among you (ETA: or to be more accurate, those who can only read one of our two official languages) could get a slightly more negative appraisal of the cause of Layton's rise by reading Jeffrey Simpson's column in the Globe yesterday. Taken together, what emerges is that Layton personally is quite popular in Quebec, he fared very well in the leaders' debate, and, more importantly, the NDP in Quebec is running on the soft nationalist platform, endorsing an application of Bill 101 to federal institutions and an asymmetric vision of federalism.

Whoa! What's that you say, in English-speaking Canada? The grand old party of federal government control and centralization is advocating more powers for Quebec? What's up with that? Well, gentle reader, how about a brief history lesson...

It has been a rough and complicated ride for the left in Quebec over the last 80 years. The CCF, founded in the Depression years, encountered a Quebec ready for change, as decades of provincial Liberal dynasties were about to be cast off. However, in a province still heavily dominated by the Catholic Church, a socialist party was viewed with suspicion. And then things got worse, when Maurice Duplessis seized control of the would-be-progressive Union Nationale from his co-leader Paul Gouin and set about implementing his conservative vision for the province. For the left, this was disastrous, especially once the "loi de cadenas" or Padlock Law was passed in 1937, allowing the provincial government to lock down premises being used to promote bolshevism, a law widely used against unions and left-wing organizations. The arrest of Fred Rose, a Montreal-area Labour MP on charges of supporting communism in the wake of the Gouzenko spy affair in the mid-1940s didn't help matters.

Fast forward three decades, and Quebec's political Quiet Revolution led the provincial Liberals of Jean Lesage into office as the modernizers and pro-government intervention party. At the national level, Lester Pearson and then Pierre Trudeau's Liberals offered a safe option for left-wing Quebecers. Quebec's political culture opened up to government intervention and social programs. Indeed, the time should have been ripe for an NDP breakthrough in the province. However, in the 1960s, the party was seen as the standard-bearer for nationally-run social programs, which sold well to its constituencies in other parts of the country, but left them high and dry in Quebec, where the provincial government was fighting for more autonomy over social and cultural programs (including the Quebec Pension Program of 1964-65).

As Canada slipped into the 1970s, support for left-wing initiatives - support for unions, social programs and government intervention - were all growing in Quebec. But then things get derailed for the NDP. The Union Nationale collapsed, and the standard-bearer for all things progressive became the sovereignist Parti Quebecois, which promised a dynamic, interventionist, progressive - and largely independent - Quebec. Ever since the mid-1970s, a sizable chunk of the left-wing vote in Quebec has also identified with the sovereignist option, with many seeing the greatest potential for these policies outside of a more (small-c) conservative Canada. Quebeckers have come to love their social programs - witness the provincial daycare and drug plans. And so, in election after election, many soft nationalist, left-of-centre voters, particularly francophone ones, have supported the PQ at the provincial level, and later the Bloc federally (although the Bloc also attracts a lot of more conservative voters from rural Quebec who used to support the Creditistes and the ADQ). If you track the Bloc's positions on a lot of social issues at the federal level, they consistently end up left-of-centre. Heck, the CBC's who-should-you-vote-for tool pegged me, a Trudeau federalist, as a potential Bloc voter.

And so, under Jack Layton, the NDP has adopted a new strategy. While outside Quebec the party continues to champion a strong federal role in social programs, within the province they speak of accommodation and asymmetrical federalism. They embrace Quebec's protective language laws and sing the song of the soft nationalist. It helped with the Outremont breakthrough, and appears to be selling well in this election, when Duceppe has not been in his best fighting form. And talk of coalition government does sell very well in Quebec. So in these respects, an NDP surge in the province should not be seen as all that surprising (although it's understandable why are surprised given this long history), but long overdue, especially given that active support for separatism is quite low at the moment.

The big questions are as follows: a) Will this support hold until election day and be concentrated enough to yield more seats in the province? and b) Will the NDP's core voters in other parts of the country continue to support Layton and his party despite these promises made in Quebec, if and when they become more aware of them?

Election 2011: Thoughts on "Truthiness" and Evidence-Based Policy

2011-04-19T10:42:00.004-04:00

Just a quick post today to link to a blogpost I was invited to contribute to canada.com's Decision Canada election website. In it, I reflect on recent Conservative changes to programs such as the long-form census and the court challenges program which have undermined evidence-based policy-making and a rigorous democratic culture.

I'm marking exams at the moment, which explains the lack of new posts since the weekend, but I shall return!

James Moore: How far back is going too far back?

2011-04-16T07:36:00.003-04:00

In the interests of a bit of non-partisanship, I'm going to call out the Liberals today for a tactic I find distasteful that was used in BC. Liberals in the riding of heritage minister James Moore have released a column that he wrote in a student nespaper over a decade ago, which questions the issue of regulating late-term abortions. Effectively, the local Liberals are all but accusing him of secretly harbouring an anti-abortion agenda, despite a long record of pro-choice statements, and generally being one of the most socially liberal members of the Conservative caucus (with a stellar record on gay rights, for example).

The article in question was written twelve years ago! I shudder to think that someone would dig out pieces that I wrote as a high school journalist or even an undergraduate (when I was deeply in the closet) and take them for my current opinions. People's views change over time, and when a clear record of speaking and voting on issues a certain way has been established, I do think it's reasonable to let people make a break from their past. This is not to say that individuals who have gone quiet on an issue, or release ambivalent statements should be given a free pass. But when a clear pattern of voting and speaking a certain way is established, it seems petty to attempt a "gotcha" attack, especially when there are so many other ways to confront a candidate's actual established positions.

More to the point, Moore's position on this issue hardly paints him as a wide-eyed radical on the abortion question. Although Canada's laws on abortion were struck down by the courts in 1988, the Supreme Court did rule that regulation of abortion was permissible, but not using the procedural mechanisms that were in place under the 1969 legislation, which violated the principle of equal access. Moreover, the main reason that Canada doesn't have an abortion law now is because efforts to pass such a law failed in the Senate, partly because social conservatives considered Kim Campbell's legislation to be too permissive. The procedure /is/ internally regulated by a number of medical authorities at the provincial level, covering the particular types of cases that Moore addresses in the quotes cited in the Globe article. Indeed, one could make the case that clear legislation on when abortions are fully legal might make it easier for women to procure them in provinces such as New Brunswick, where access is notoriously difficult because of these internal regulations.

I think this particular case of going after Moore for this article is petty politics and something that both the local party organizers in BC should have been above, and that the Globe shouldn't have descended to reporting on. Frankly, there's plenty to attack in the current actions of Moore's Conservative benchmates and leader without having to stoop to digging up mud on his pre-office actions of over a decade ago.

U of Guelph votes will count!

2011-04-15T12:29:00.006-04:00

Elections Canada has released a Solomonesque public statement on the University of Guelph voting controversy. Of greatest interest is the fact that the student votes will be counted, and are considered to have been cast in a manner that respects the Canada Elections Act. The short version of the statement is that it appears that this special ballot station, although it was not centrally approved by the Chief Electoral Officer in advance of the election, is something that has often been done in a number of circumstances and was organized by the local Elections Canada Returning Officer. Such special ballot stations are usually pre-approved before an election. Similar on-site special ballot collection initiatives will not, however, be permitted for future cases during this election. Voters may, however, obtain individual special ballots from their riding's returning officers.

The statement treads a careful path between the competing party interests, staying away from explicit commentary on the other allegations (the alleged attempted box snatching, partisan material near the polls, the scrutineer question), and focusing on the central issue of whether the votes will count. For now, this is what needed to be addressed.

I remain, however, very concerned that amidst concerns about perceived irregularities, it was not until after the casting of ballots had taken place that active Conservative efforts were made to have the students' votes set aside. The details of this special ballot were well-publicized in advance in Guelph and around the university. Heck, the President of the university publicly offered to have his face painted Avatar-blue if enough students took part! In the absence of serious issues that might actually have led to actual fraud, all parties should be thinking in terms of encouraging youth votes, rather than actively cancelling them.

To any students/youth reading this post: Keep up your efforts to have your voices heard and votes counted!

Guelph Conservatives continue to try to exclude youth voters

2011-04-14T19:04:00.004-04:00

It's really quite mind-boggling to think what must be going through the thinking processes of Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke's campaign team. First, they make a point of keeping members of the U of Guelph vote mob away from Harper's rally. Then, he failed to turn up at this week all-candidates debate at the university. And now, in a move that I find jaw-droppingly stupid, his agent is trying to exclude the 700 votes cast at a special advance ballot held at the university yesterday. According to the article in the Guelph Mercury, such special advance polls are routine to try to encourage voter turnout among segments of the population that often have lower participation rates. Certainly youth qualify, with a less than 40% turnout in the last election.

I hope this incident gets nation-wide coverage. The Conservative Party of Canada doesn't want students to vote, and will take special measures to exclude their ballots. This is absolutely reprehensible, and yet completely unsurprising in light of how this campaign has gone to date. For shame.

Post-debate musings

2011-04-14T07:13:00.003-04:00

One of the nice perks of being bilingual is that you can watch Canada's political leaders debate in both languages without having to listen to their interpreters. I watched both Tuesday's English-language debate and Wednesday's French-language debate. Here are a few impressions:

1) Format: I liked how the format allowed for more one-on-one interactions. I was less pleased that camera positioning allowed, if not encouraged, leaders to not speak to each other but to talk straight at the camera (or to Canadians). Harper, in particular, often seemed like he was delivering an infomercial script. Alas, I think it probably worked for him, with the two hours serving as free advertizing time, rather than time for thoughtful exchange. As so many have said, the location and set were a disaster, from the acoustics to the decor. As I have also said before, Elizabeth May should have been in the room, especially in the English-language debates.

2) Questions: I'm just not a populist, and I thought the questions from "average Canadians" was an irritating contrivance. Many were still the questions that the media would have posed, but framed in a more awkward and partisan tone. Also, it's notable that not one of the questions in the French-language debate came from a francophone outside of Quebec (where over 1 million of them live), only 1 of the 12 Canadians came from a younger voter, and none came from a person who was a visible minority or an aboriginal Canadian.

3) Leaders:
Harper played it cool, almost reptilian (although I wouldn't go so far as to call him a kitten-eater). He stayed out of the mix in both debates, keeping his calm, and being thoroughly dismissive of the other leaders. He also dodged direct questions, which might have irked undecided voters. I think he fared fine in the English debate for what he needed to do, but he was thoroughly unimpressive and disengaged from the French-language debate. His outspoken contempt for the debate format itself, which he referred to as "bickering" or "chicanes" was all part of his strategy to prompt people to view politics as irrelevant and distasteful. I thought Ignatieff scored a good point in the English debate (and again in French) by reinforcing the necessity of democracy.

Ignatieff had some good moments in the English language debate, particularly around the issue of engagement with voters and healthy debate. But he did seem a bit hostile and unable to articulate the Liberal vision. Clearly his handlers spoke to him, because I thought he was really on his game in the French debate, repeatedly articulating Liberal promises (such as the learning passport) and generally seeming more relaxed. He also learned to address the camera more often. He also made a constant point of returning back to the original question, which might be a useful strategy to sway the undecided vote.

Layton probably read well in both debates. In the English debate, he was the voice of moral authority and concern for the working class, as is so often the role of the NDP. In French, he almost seemed impish, with a gleam in his eye as he called out the other leaders on a variety of issues. He seems more clever in French, somehow, and less dogmatic. He also avoided repeating his line about crime "and all that bling" being appealing for the young, which was embarrassing.

Duceppe was Duceppe. I think his English this year was not as strong as in 2008, for whatever reason. All he had to do was attack the other parties, knowing he will never, ever win government at the federal level. I appreciated having him there to attack Harper on issues like the would-be coalition of '04, but I find his presence in federal politics to be an irritant at best. I will be curious to see how his performance read for the soft-nationalist core in Quebec. Ignatieff tried to argue that constitutional issues were not the big priority for voters, and I'm not sure whether Duceppe has managed to convince Quebecers that this is the priority issue he needs it to be.

And now we proceed to another two and a half weeks of campaigning. Will there be an Easter surprise? Stay tuned!

Voter engagement. (or Week 2 wrap-up)

2011-04-10T19:12:00.009-04:00

Last week, just before the beginning of my second- and third-year Canadian history courses, I played the following Rick Mercer clip:

Youth voting has plummetted over the past couple of decades, and falls well below the national average. Indeed, Canadian voting rates on the whole have been declining in recent elections, leading many to ponder the causes of the decline and to propose solutions. Some of those proposed solutions relate to making voters feel more informed about the issues (perhaps via leaders' debates), and others about re-working the entire process so that individuals feel their votes matter more (such as electoral reform in the direction of a form of proportional representation). I was therefore pleased to see that a group of students from my own university attracted extensive media attention for their "Vote Mob" rally when Stephen Harper swung through Guelph.

However, the past week has not been encouraging in terms of the signals that some of our politicians and media outlet owners have sent about voter engagement - or at least about engaging certain types of voters. The Vote Mob rally got so much media attention at least in part because of last week's string of incidents involving students being ejected or barred from Conservative rallies. Although Harper's team has since backed down, the early signals from his team was that non-Conservatives were not welcome to hear the Prime Minister speak. The use of Facebook as a method of screening out voters, rather than engaging them, was not quite how most people probably envisioned the potential of social media to draw in voters during an election.

Indeed, I'm still rather disappointed in the failure of some parties to make full use of a now relatively-old medium for engaging voters - particularly the iPhone and Blackberry-toting youth demographic. In my own riding, Liberal candidate Frank Valeriote is on Twitter (and responded promptly to a question I had about a lawn sign - I'll admit my own leanings in this election), while the local NDP candidate (whose party I voted for in the last federal election) Bobbi Stewart still doesn't even have a candidate bio on the Guelph NDP's website! It hardly draws people in to vote for a candidate when a basic internet search doesn't turn up information about you!

And then today, we learned an important lesson about voter engagement. Because the first game of the first round of hockey playoffs, involving the Montreal Canadiens, has been scheduled for this coming Wednesday, Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe asked to have the date of the French-language debate changed, a request now granted by the broadcast consortium. I can understand the logic of both the request and the decision. Lots of Canadians (not including me) are Habs fans, and will want to watch the game. Rescheduling the game opens the possibility that they might tune in to both the French-language debate and the hockey game. I might not like the fact that hockey will trump politics for many potential voters, but I recognize the realpolitik underlying the decision.

But if you're one of the over 937,000 voters who supported the Green party in the last election - the only party, incidentally, to increase its total number of votes from 2006 to 2008 - or one of the many young voters who might want to hear what this party's leader has to say in an exchange with the other party leaders, you're still out of luck.

The lesson from these decision-makers for Canadians: It's more important to engage hockey fans in the electoral process than environmentalists, youth or Green supporters.

Tune in next week for commentary on polling trends, debates and the fate of the nation (after I get a big stack of exams graded).

P.S. - Although my blogging has been irregular and will likely continue to be so, you can follow my efforts at pithy commentary on Twitter. Follow me at @mhayday.

Debates, Debates, Let's Have More Debates!

2011-03-31T19:32:00.003-04:00

Most of my current students are too young to remember the now infamous election debate clashes between Brian Mulroney and John Turner. So I like to show them the Free Trade Clash from 1988 or the patronage kerfuffle of 1984. Both debates were widely acknowledged as game-changers for their respective campaigns, with Mulroney the winner of '84 and Turner in '88. Ever since those debates, pundits have longed for a return to this clear-cut era where there were fewer candidates on the podium, and thus a greater chance of a knock-out blow, or certainly longer periods of direct confrontation. (Lest I be accused of the sin of omission, both debates also featured NDP leader Ed Broadbent, a solid debater in his own right).

And so here we are in the same position as we were in 2008, debating whether Green Party leader Elizabeth May should be allowed in the Consortium-managed leadership debates. (Is it just me, or does Consortium sound vaguely ominous and evil.) And even if she isn't allowed in, should we perhaps also have an Ignatieff vs. Harper one-on-one debate, since most experts think these are the two most likely candidates to form the next government? Herewith, my two cents.

As a supporter of some variant of proportional representation, I support May's inclusion in an all-leader debate. Given that the Greens won over 900,000 votes in the last election, about 6% of the total vote, under pretty much any system of proportional representation or mixed-member proportional system they would currently have seats in the House of Commons. The fact that they do not hold an elected seat is the excuse being advanced by the Consortium for their exclusion. To my mind, the fact that our first-past-the-post system is an antiquated electoral model that ill-reflects actual voting patterns is not a valid excuse to exclude the Greens. This position, incidentally, is supported by Jean-Pierre Kingsley, former chief electoral officer for the country. It is a decision which only benefits those who are the current victors under the status quo. Moreover, if the Bloc, which doesn't even run candidates in three-quarters of the country's riding, is permitted in the national leaders' debates, then the Greens, which run in all ridings, definitely should be included.

That's my ethical, principled position. Now for the other side, which is how I feel as a television viewer. I found the five-leader debates of 2008 to be tedious and long-winded. Too much time was taken up with the initial series of statements about each issue, and then a number of, to my mind, tedious and dreary question exchanges between pairs of candidates who agreed with each other. The Dion-May and Layton-Duceppe interchanges, in particular, tended to drag on. With five candidates, and a limited time frame, there is not much opportunity for the front-runners to confront each other, but the time allocated to each exchange is not reflective of the relative standing of the parties in the polls (and, presumably, viewer interest). With this in mind, I'd love to see a series of one-on-one exchanges, such as the one that Michael Ignatieff was proposing to Stephen Harper. I think many voters might find these more compelling to watch, as they would allow for more sustained and direct interaction between the leaders. So by all means, I'd support having these types of exchanges in addition to the all-leaders forum.

Finally, with respect to the events of the past couple of days, I think Michael Ignatieff was smart both to propose the one-on-one debate with Stephen Harper, and to avoid the snare of accepting this encounter in lieu of the all-party debate. Ignatieff is going to be counting on soft NDP and Green support in this election, and will need to avoid looking like he is disdainful of those parties. But nor will I be surprised if Harper does not cave on this issue. It's to his benefit to limit the number of chances that the opposition leaders have to take him on directly. Frankly, I'm surprised he didn't back the inclusion of the Greens in the debate. Every minute that Elizabeth May gets on stage is one less that Layton and Ignatieff have, which only hurts them. The front-runner could have afforded to appear to be magnanimous, and it probably would have helped him in the long run (although perhaps not Gary Lunn).

Roger Abbott. A Canadian comic genius passes away.

2011-03-27T12:04:00.005-04:00

I just found out that Roger Abbott, star of the Royal Canadian Air Farce, has passed away at the age of 64. I feel a bit like I've lost a funny uncle. Air Farce was a huge part of my political education as a teenager, and my life is richer for Abbott's humour.

I often get asked where I developed my interest in Canadian politics. Roger Abbott and Air Farce were a huge part of it. My dad introduced me to the radio show when I was eleven, and we used to go to the annual Toronto tapings at Massey Hall. I also used to record the show off the radio every weekend, building up a rather sizeable library of past episodes (which I just digitized) that I used to listen when I went to bed. I could recite many sketches from memory. I always got the impression that Roger Abbott, along with Don Ferguson, were at the core of the show. They always did the voice overs for the repeat episodes and the new CDs and the announcements for the Frequent Flyer club (my magnet is still proudly displayed on my fridge). The fact that I have a rather quirky and cynical approach to Canadian politics was probably largely due to their antics.

Canadian politics and Canadian humour was made much richer by Roger Abbott's contributions. He will be sorely missed. Thanks for all the laughter!

Too early for a post on strategic voting?

2011-03-25T17:45:00.004-04:00

In a historic vote today, the Canadian government was found in contempt of Parliament. It's a shame they couldn't have also been found in contempt of the Canadian people, of logic, of sound policy-making and in contempt of a host of other principles that I hold dear. But I digress.

Unfortunately, the polls show that a sizeable proportion of the Canadian electorate doesn't care what Prime Minister Lego-Hair does, they still plan to vote for him. This means that we're likely to see a variant of the 2008 election, with nailbiter races across the country. It'll be particularly bad in my neck of the woods, southwestern Ontario, where Canada's Action Plan signs have proliferated in an effort to win votes for the Conservative contemptuous government.

So what is a left-of-centre voter to do? Is it even possible to vote strategically? Should you vote for the best party, or the least objectionable of your non-Conservative options? Do you vote for the well-intentioned local candidate or the party? Do you try to read the proverbial tea leaves and cast your ballot for the candidate who might be best positioned to beat the local Conservative?

There will be better-informed posts on the issue of strategic voting as the campaign unfolds. But here's my two cents. In many ridings across the country, your preferred non-Conservative candidate might well be a complete no-hoper to win. In many cases, an opposition party might have won a squeaker race in your riding the last time around, beating the local Conservative, but it might not have been your preferred party. In those cases, I would urge you to vote for the opposition party that is best positioned to beat the Conservatives, whether they be a NDP or Liberal incumbent MP, or the Green, NDP or Liberal challenger who stands the best chance of unseating the local Conservative. Inform yourself before you vote - look at the results of past elections in your riding to see how the parties have historically fared. Strategic voting, to my mind, means voting a certain way only if there is a high probability that one party's candidate is the only one likely to defeat a certain candidate.

So if your riding is usually a toss-up between the Liberals and the NDP, with a Conservative no-hoper, then vote your conscience! If all the opposition parties fared equally well last time around in your riding, then pick the one you like best and hope they come out on top. But if the last race was a nail-biter between the Conservative and a candidate from another party, and your top priority is to defeat Harper, then I'd urge you to hold your nose and vote for that party, even if it's not your absolute favorite. For me, this means I'll probably be voting Liberal here in Guelph, even though I haven't voted for the federal Liberals since 2000. (I probably would have in 2004 if I had been living anywhere other than Outremont - but Jean Lapierre was simply too horrible to contemplate supporting.) If I lived in another part of the country, say Edmonton-Strathcona, I'd be urging my Liberal friends to vote NDP. It's only in the really close races that I'm urging this type of voting strategy. But to my mind, any of the parties outside of Quebec are better than Harper.

Fingers crossed, we won't be in this same mess six weeks from now, or at least, the mess won't be any worse.

Brooke Jeffrey, Divided Loyalties: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1984-2008

2011-03-24T21:27:00.005-04:00

As I write this review, Canada appears to be on the eve of an election call. It thus seems fitting to reflect on elections and campaigns past. For the past two weeks, I’ve been making my way through Divided Loyalties, Concordia political scientist Brooke Jeffrey’s account of the internal dynamics of the Liberal Party of Canada from the end of the Trudeau era to the selection of Stéphane Dion as leader in 2008. Unfortunately, there is little being written these days by academic historians about party politics, particularly with regards to the most recent decades, and so Jeffrey’s account is a welcome addition to the literature.

In some respects, Jeffrey’s account echoes Stephen Clarkson’s The Big Red Machine which effectively chronicled past Liberal success at campaigning from the left, and governing from the centre or centre-right. In detailing the internecine warfare of the Liberal party during the years of the Turner-Chrétien and Chrétien-Martin feuds, Jeffrey, a former research director for the party, is clearly sympathetic to the Trudeauvian left-wing camp of social liberals in the party, and generally critical of the business liberal camp that followed Turner and Martin. Yet despite this bias, she generally provides an engaging and perceptive account of why the party has encountered its various difficulties in the past three decades – and why it succeeded when it did. Although this is a weighty tome (at 621 pages), it is written in a largely accessibly manner, and is filled with proverbial palace intrigue to sustain reader interest.

Perhaps the most interesting analytical angle put forth by Jeffrey is that the split within the Liberal party was not only the highly publicized business vs. social one, but that the more important, and perhaps less easily reconcilable, division was over conceptions of federalism. In her view, the party has succeeded most when it endorsed a Trudeauvian centralist approach to federalism and put forth a vigorous defence of national social programs as a central aspect of its nation-building program. It is during these periods, she argues, that the party is closest to the beliefs of its core supporters, and that it fares best at the polls. However, she is dismayed at a growing trend, often endorsed by the business liberal camp, and particularly under Martin and his followers towards decentralized and asymmetrical federalism. Jean Lapierre, the Liberal-turned-Bloquiste-turned-Martinite is subjected to particularly vigorous criticism – and not undeservedly, in my opinion. It’s noteworthy that she believes both current party leader Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae to fall within the asymmetrical federalism camp – one which she believes does not tend to lead to a sufficient degree of Liberal voter engagement and support.

There is much in Divided Loyalties for the policy wonk. A former researcher for the party, it is not surprising that Jeffrey devotes such attention to the development of various party platforms and policies. At points, the level of detail regarding key personalities may become moderately overwhelming for those not intimately familiar with the party, but these sections are nicely interwoven with the overarching narrative of major constitutional and political events. Implicit in her argument is the idea that the party desperately needs a strong set of well-articulated and presented policies to maintain voter support, which she contends has been lacking since the end of the “Red Book” era.

There are some frustrating elements to the book. Jeffrey had access to many party insiders, MPs and Senators, and these interviews inform much of her analysis. However, many interviewees insisted on confidentiality, with the result that the book has as many anonymous “senior party officials” and “caucus members” as a series of Jane Taber columns. These insights are valuable, but the lack of attribution is frustrating for the historian. Although most of the book is incredibly detailed, this level of detail and analysis tapers off sharply almost immediately after Martin’s departure. After reading detailed analyses of the conventions won by Turner, Chrétien and Martin, it was surprising that the 2006 leadership race was scarcely touched upon, and the roles played by Ken Dryden, Scott Brison and Martha Hall Findlay barely mentioned. Given that the book was published late in 2010, it is also somewhat disappointing that the 2008 federal election was relegated to a footnote. Although academic publishing timelines may partly explain this omission, it was particularly upsetting given that the footnote referred to Jeffrey’s own published work with another press.

After 621 pages of detail and analysis, I had also hoped for a more satisfying general conclusion and broad-based reflection, rather than the two paragraphs that Jeffrey provides. That said, her contention that the party requires a more concentrated effort at regrouping and rethinking its priorities and policy directions, and that it needs to stop fighting and tearing itself apart in public, is highly instructive. Alas, if the polls don’t turn around quickly, I fear we will soon see a repeat of the electoral campaigns described in Divided Loyalties, with Liberal insiders, caucus members and “senior party sources” calling publicly for the leader’s head, rather than trying to pull together for the duration of the election.

I hope to be proven wrong.

Wild election predictions

2011-03-18T08:56:00.004-04:00

I haven't blogged nearly as much about contemporary politics of late as I did when this blog got started. In no small part, it's because I've found both federal and provincial politics to be rather depressing, and largely without policy initiatives to inspire me. I've also thus far refrained from most of the election speculation that has been running rampant. But since a former student asked me last night for my thoughts about what is increasingly looking like an election train pulling out of the station, here's my wild speculation on the outcome of such an election.

Best case scenario (from my perspective): Another Conservative minority. Some shuffling of the deck in terms of Conservative-NDP-Liberal seats, but overall more-or-less the same ratios in the house, and no major Bloc losses.

Worst case scenario (from my perspective): A Conservative majority. Bloc stays constant. NDP and Liberal losses, particularly in Ontario.

Why do I think this? I don't think that voters are nearly as outraged about the various contempt scandals facing the Conservatives as they were about Adscam in the Martin years, and Harper has wisely (from a strategic standpoint) decided to try to put out the fires rather than throwing more fuel on them (launching an inquiry, declaring his outrage, and stamping about like a ninny). Most Canadians, frankly, don't even understand the finer points of what his government has done wrong, and probably don't care, because they're so disenchanted with all politicians right now. And so, the major election issue that the Liberals and NDP are banking on, I think, will fizzle. Neither of their leaders is particularly beloved, and I don't think that will change either. I hope to be proven wrong on this. (And sorry, Elizabeth May, but the Greens are going to be totally marginalized this time.) But with the Conservatives able to spend way more money on advertisements than the other two parties, I think they'll get to set the narrative this time.

What are the outcomes of these scenarios. Well, the big one is that Iggy gets shown the door in both cases. (Jack will be allowed to stay if he wants to, because nobody is going to launch a coup against a leader recovering from medical treatment.) After that... well, my suspicion is that the Liberals then crown "Premier Bob", and let him go down in flames in Ontario in the following election. And then we might actually see some renewal in that party.

Thus endeth a really, really pessimistic and bitchy post. Do you see now why it's better to have me posting about historical issues?

In Memoriam: Olive Dickason (1920-2011)

2011-03-18T08:40:00.003-04:00

This blog isn't going to become a chronicle of the passing of people who have played roles in my career as a historian, (political blogging will likely resume when the writ is dropped, if not sooner) but it nevertheless came as a bit of a shock for me to learn that path-breaking Métis historian Olive Dickason had passed away last weekend. History blogger Christopher Moore has a nice tribute to her at his site, and there are many other aboriginal and governmental groups who have posted similarly glowing assessments of her life and career.

My own contact with Professor Dickason was rather fleeting, but still important to me. She was an emeritus professor at the University of Ottawa when I was a graduate student in the late-90s, and although she wasn't offering any courses at the time, a friend of mine was starting her PhD work with her. I met her and we had a few brief conversations at various departmental socials. My research does not usually head too far into aboriginal history, but Professor Dickason nevertheless played an important role in my career. Twice in my early teaching career - once at Concordia, and once at Mount Allison - I was asked to teach courses on Canadian First Nations History. Olive Dickason's textbook Canada's First Nations, which is still widely used and now in its fourth printing, was a lifesaver to a young post-doc who was wildly out of his depth. She had a huge impact in the field of Canadian history, especially on aboriginal and Métis history, and will be greatly missed.

Working on recent history - some reflections

2011-03-15T18:55:00.008-04:00

In my professional life, I usually find myself researching and writing on topics that deal with the last fifty or so years of Canadian history. This sometimes leads to people thinking that I'm not a historian, but a political scientist. It also means that I often have access to living subjects for my research, and can interview or contact people who lived through the events I'm writing about to gain their insight on issues. I can tap into rich oral histories for information, perspectives and details about the past that aren't always found in the documentary or archival record.

One of the consequences of this, however, is that I'm often made all too aware of the passage of time in the course of my research. I will often be speaking with someone connected to my research, and have them mention that a given person would have been perfect for me to talk to, except that they passed away a couple of years ago. Pierre Trudeau, whose career was so central to my research interests, passed away mere weeks before my comprehensive exams as a PhD student. Senator Ron Duhamel, who I interviewed about his involvement in Franco-Manitoban education for my PhD, passed away a few months after we spoke.

Today this was driven home to me yet again. Just two months ago, I posted a query in a couple of places, including this blog, seeking contact information about people who had been gay writer-activists for a textbook reader that I'm collaborating on. Many people replied to my queries (queeries?) on Facebook, Twitter and here, allowing me to tap into the diverse networks of current and former activists, many of whom are still in close touch with each other. I also got a lot of help from the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. Unfortunately, in the course of these inquiries, I found out that one of the authors, Chris Bearchell, had passed away from breast cancer only a few years ago. Today, I found out that Herb Spiers, co-author of the "We Demand" manifesto from 1971 and a prominent gay activist, passed away on March 2nd. Only a few weeks ago the permissions researcher for my textbook had been in touch with him, shortly after he had been in hospital.

My apologies for what might seem like a rather melancholy post. I consider myself lucky, as a historian, that I often do get to speak with people who were involved in the events of history, and share in their memories. The conversations that I have had with these people are almost always incredibly rewarding and thought-provoking, and often much fun. Many people have been incredibly generous in sharing their stories with me. But the flip side is that the relative short duration of human lives all too often crops up in unexpected ways as I conduct my research.

Thanks, Herb, for your life's work!

Addendum: Although I never had the opportunity to speak to Herb Spiers directly as part of my own research, he did share many of his experiences with the ACT UP Oral History Project.

Ontario Catholic schools and Gay-Straight Alliances

2011-02-25T02:19:00.006-05:00

I've jokingly remarked to my husband in the past that if I'd been born 60 years earlier, I probably would have been a Jesuit priest, rather than the openly-gay university professor that I've become. But if I'd been born a mere 6 years earlier, my parents would have had to decide whether they wanted to pay tuition for a private Catholic school education for my three final years of high school. Until 1986, Catholic education in Ontario was only funded through to Grade 10. (Ironically, if I'd been born only one year earlier, I could have avoided what did happen to my high school education, when the school I attended, De La Salle College, a private school that had joined the Toronto Catholic Board after public funding became available, opted to re-privatize as a protest against the Rae government's destreaming of Grade 9, leaving me and many of my friends in the lurch for our last year of high school because the school would not initially be offering OAC (Grade 13). But I digress...)

The issue of public funding of Catholic schools has been a hot-button issue recently for Xtra!, Toronto's main gay newspaper, and their coverage has been picked up by a number of other media outlets, including the Star and the Globe. Specifically, they are concerned over the situation in the Halton Catholic District School Board, and its policy regarding gay-straight alliances (GSAs), a policy which effectively was to ban their existence. In conducting further investigations, the paper discovered that none of Ontario's Catholic School Boards actually have a gay-straight alliance in their schools.

This situation has outraged many of Xtra!'s writers, who have called on other gay organizations to join in applying pressure to the boards to change their policies, or to perhaps contemplate yanking public funding for these schools on the basis of their discriminatory policies.

In some respects, I sympathize with the position of the GSA advocates. I certainly believe that my own high school years might have been very different if there had been a school culture that was more open to gay students (as it was, gay and questioning students just flocked to the newspaper and the yearbook!) I also disagree with the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality. But that being said, I also think that these Catholic school boards are implementing a policy that is consistent with current Catholic teachings, and that as such they are as much within their constitutional rights to ban GSAs as they are to prohibit pro-choice student groups. So while I support Xtra!'s sentiments, I can't say that I'm convinced by their proposed solutions.

The crux of the situation is that public funding for Catholic education in Ontario is protected under section 93 of the Constitution Act of 1867. Specifically, the rights and privileges of any denominational schools or system of separate schools that existed by law at the time that province joined Confederation are protected. It's why until recently Quebec's protestant schools were protected, and so too were half a dozen different denominational school boards in Newfoundland. The issue in Ontario is a bit trickier because public funding to the senior years of high school was only extended as of 1986. (Indeed, this is why when the Robarts government extended public funding to francophone high schools in the 1960s, he started with public schools, to allow for full funding, despite the fact that most Franco-Ontarians were Catholic.) In theory, I suppose, there might be a case for revoking funding to Grades 11 and 12. But this gets me to my larger point...

I believe that at present Ontario's Catholic schools have the constitutional right to govern themselves in accordance with Catholic teaching, however much I might disapprove of this. As I see it, there are two main ways that this could change. The first would be to convince Ontario's Catholics, and specifically those running the school boards, to break with the papal authority over key social issues such as homosexuality, and permit clubs like GSAs in their schools. The tricky issue here is that although many Canadian Catholics (including some Catholic school teachers) don't support current Church teachings on issues such as contraception, homosexuality and abortion, those that do not are also less likely to still be politically engaged. This would also be a major political battle.

The second option, and one promoted in the last provincial election by the Green party, would be to seek a constitutional amendment to end Ontario's Catholic school protections. This would require the consent of the federal and Ontario governments. Such an amendment was reached with Quebec, when it moved from a confessional to a linguistic series of school boards in the 1990s, and with Newfoundland, when it abandoned its costly funding of six separate denominations. Unfortunately, while I personally support this option, I don't see it as likely in the short term. Catholics (whether practicing or not) still make up slightly over a third of the province's population and as such constitute a major voting block. Unlike the situation in Quebec, Ontario has not moved in a hardcore secular direction, and, current economic woes aside, it is not in nearly the financial straits that were faced by Newfoundland when it eliminated its costly denominational system. Moreover, Premier Dalton McGuinty has given no sign that he (a Catholic himself) has any inclination to move in this direction. Even terminating public funding to grades 11 and 12, which might be constitutionally defensible, would likely prove to be a political nightmare for whichever government implemented it. Acquired rights are awfully hard to undo.

Of course, there is one final option. Catholics who firmly disagree with the current teachings of the Church and its schools can vote with their feet and have their children educated in the public school boards of the province. While public funding is guaranteed, it is ultimately tied to student enrollments, and a hit to the bottom line might finally bring home the message that the Catholic school boards discriminatory policies are no longer considered acceptable in this province.

ETA: I should probably add that, as a historian, I'm not certain about whether the right of the Catholic school boards to ban GSAs would hold up in court, particularly if the provincial ministry of education attempted to force the issue. I rather suspect that this would fall into a bit of a grey area in terms of legal and constitutional rights, which might well be very tricky to sort out.

Mon pays, ce n'est pas Vancouver!

2011-02-05T08:24:00.005-05:00

I had to shake my head in amused bewilderment in reading Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong's whining in his memoirs about how the issue of French in the Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies was criticized by people like Graham Fraser and James Moore, excerpted in this morning's Globe and Mail. He seems to be very put upon, stung by criticisms of people he thought were his political allies. I posted my own thoughts on this issue last year.

But the thing that I found really amusing, in a shake-your-head kind of way, is Furlong's defence of the relative absence of French in the ceremony, which was that the original plan for the opening ceremonies, designed by David Atkins, was to have a major component oriented around Gilles Vigneault's song "Mon Pays", only to have Vigneault refuse them the rights.

The fact that Atkins and Furlong were surprised by this just goes to show how completely out of touch they are with the province of Quebec and Canadian history. I freely acknowledge that the lyrics for the song, on their face, are great for a Canadian Olympics, since they roughly translate as "My country, it is not a country, it is winter." But the song is a long-standing nationalist hymn for the sovereignty movement, and Vigneault himself is a high-profile separatist. After the 1980 referendum went down to defeat, it was "Mon Pays" that the disappointed crowd of "Oui" supporters sang. And so it shouldn't have been any surprise that he wouldn't allow it to be sung in a ceremony celebrating a united Canada including Quebec. Indeed, it's amazing that the organizers designed as much of a program around it as they did without asking his permission first. Whatever else one might think about how Furlong felt about how he was treated for his under-use of French, the fact that this is his line of defence indicates, at least to me, just how out of touch he was with the highly political issue of language.

ETA: Correction: As one of the commenters pointed out, it was "Gens du Pays", not "Mon Pays", that was sung on the night of the referendum - a quick check of Daniel Poliquin's biography of Levesque confirmed this. But it was still Vigneault, and "Mon Pays" also holds an anthemic status in the province.

The melody for "Mon Pays," for those who like Canadian trivia, was reworked into the 1970s disco hit "From New York to L.A." by Acadian chanteuse Patsy Gallant, who appeared many times as part of Ottawa's Canada Day events.

Political History Conference CFP

2011-01-27T17:02:00.001-05:00

I've been busy with the start of term lately, but figured it couldn't hurt to give a bit of publicity to a conference I'm helping to organize. - MH

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Transformation: State, Nation, and Citizenship in a New Environment"

A conference sponsored by the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History, Department of History, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, will be held from October 13-15, 2011 at York University in Toronto.

DESCRIPTION

Canadian Political History has changed over the last fifteen years. With a growing research interest in social history and for those who came to be categorized as "ordinary" people, some have lamented that the study of "great men" seems to have ended and, as a result, that political history had disappeared as a field of research. Although these concerns have received much attention, especially outside of academia, new venues were being investigated by scholars preoccupied with the study of the state, the development and implementation of public policies, strategies used by state components to foster a sense of belonging less centered around ethnicity and more around civic values, and strategies used by large segments of societal groups in order to shape policies and state symbols in a way that they would permit them identify themselves with these new symbols. Concluding that political history has disappeared is quite premature.

This conference entitled "Transformation: State, Nation, and Citizenship in a New Environment" will give researchers an opportunity to reveal the breadth and the level of sophistication that has developed within political history over the last decade. At the same time, it will reveal the discipline's transformation.

The state has been fundamentally transformed and shaped by Keynesianism, then neoliberalism and now neo-Keynesianism. These transformations also reflect the fact that the state - a sovereign entity that controls a well-defined territory recognized by the international community- has seen its actions, powers and abilities circumscribed by supranational entities, and regional, continental, and international treaties.

PAPER TOPICS

The main geographical area is Canada but comparison with other state entities will be considered. There is no specific time period. Since the conference intends to demonstrate new innovative venues pursued by scholars in political history, proposals might deal with one of the following topics:

-The welfare state, its development and transformation over time especially in the context of neoliberal policies

-The creation and implementation of public policies

-The liberal order and the usefulness of national narratives in order to understand Canadian historical experience

-State repression and strategies developed in targeting groups defined as subversive, or social agents and individuals who agreed to assist state components in their repression of dissent

-Nationalism and citizenship and how these concepts have been conceptualized over time

-Political culture and how Canadian culture has been conceptualized

-Political history as a discipline and changes that the discipline has undergone over time

-Expertise, its development and its capacity for shaping public policies

-The environment, science and public policies

-Science and its use in the development and implementation of public policies

-Federal-provincial relations in the context of mega constitutional negotiations and free trade agreements

-Aboriginals, self-government, land claims, and the political process

SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL

Panel and roundtable submissions should include a session title, a brief description of the panel or roundtable, abstracts for each paper of no more than 300 words, and a brief biography or one-page c.v./resume for each presenter before March 1, 2011.

Individuals should submit a title, a 300-word abstract plus a brief biography or one-page c.v./resume before March 1, 2011.

Please send your proposal to hist2011@yorku.ca

Applicants will be notified of the acceptance of their proposal in April 2011.
Papers accepted for this conference may be requested for subsequent publication.

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS

Dimitry Anastakis, Department of History, Trent University
Matthew Hayday, Department of History, University of Guelph
Marcel Martel, Department of History, York University
Jennifer Stephen, Department of History, York University
Will Stos, Department of History, York University

Adventures in Copyright - A Plea for Assistance

2011-01-11T12:44:00.005-05:00

Over the past few years, a number of publishing projects have made me keenly aware of how complicated Canadian (and international) copyright law can be. Right now, I'm working on a textbook module on gay and lesbian activism in 1970s Canada for Nelson publishing. I'm proposing to include three book chapters and scholarly articles, plus a selection of material that was originally published in Toronto's The Body Politic periodical. Sounds simple, right? Alas, when it comes to securing copyright, it is anything but, and this seems to be the case for much material published in periodicals prior to the 1990s. While Pink Triangle Press, who published TBP, is keen to allow us permission to use this material, they aren't certain who legally holds the copyright, and so we have to track down the original authors/photographers/cartoonists. But what does one do if they don't know who the photographer was, or if the author is deceased. That, my gentle readers, calls for careful detective work.

So, on the off chance that this post is seen by some friendly readers familiar with gay and lesbian activists of the 1970s, I'd greatly appreciate any leads that can help me track down someone who might know about the estates of Chris Bearchell or Michael Lynch, or who knows who was leading Toronto Gay Action in 1971 and could authorize the reprinting of the "We Demand" manifesto. My email contact information is listed in my profile.

Many thanks!

ETA: Thanks to the various people who have provided me with helpfor this query! I think I now have all the information I could hope to have found.

Asking and Telling

2010-12-22T10:34:00.004-05:00

After last week's flurry of excitement, including the support of eight Republican senators on the final vote, President Obama signed into law the bill that will lead to the end of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the United States' military, allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly.

As a good, smug Canadian, I'm tempted to quip, "Welcome to the 1990s!" Of the various human rights concerns facing the gay and lesbian population in the United States, this issue would have been one of the lower-priority causes for me. But on the other hand, I'm well aware of the symbolic importance of being able to serve in the military in a country where this is considered an important part of national service and citizenship. It is also an important federal recognition of equal rights and equal treatment regardless of one's sexual orientation.

However, as someone who got legally married to another man six years ago, I can't help but think that it would have been nice if the lame duck session's efforts had been used to repeal DOMA, or address any of the other relationship recognition issues that are still facing the United States. The ability to serve and die for one's country is important, but the ability to have one's love for others be acknowledged by the state, and granted equal privileges and rights (such as inheritance, hospital visitation rights, etc) would be even better. And that's without even getting into the host of issues related to challenging the sexual conservatism of the US.

Nonetheless, this is a victory, and should be acknowledged as such!

I'm sorry, but too many people live in your province, so we'll have to reduce the value of your votes

2010-12-02T20:52:00.005-05:00

I'd like to have something more pithy to say about the fact that apparently the major parties in Parliament have agreed to scrap a Bill C-18, which would have addressed voting inequalities that mean that Ontario, BC and Alberta are all underrepresented in the House of Commons. But at the moment all I can say is that I'm disgusted at just how broken our parliamentary system is.

It's bad enough that we don't have a proportional representation system. But the fact that now it appears federal leaders are too gutless to defend the principle of representation-by-population in the House of Commons is beyond the pale. The House was always intended to be the rep-by-pop house - regional or provincial balance is supposed to be the province of the Senate, and the Senate was deliberately created as a weaker body for that reason. It almost makes one want to consider moving to the Maritimes or Manitoba or Saskatchewan where your vote can be worth at least twice as much. Frankly, I'm amazed that Harper thinks his base in Alberta and BC is going to let him get away with continuing to stand in the way of democratic reform that would reflect the changing demographic trends in the country. Of course, their votes aren't worth as much, so maybe he's counting on it not hurting all that much! But I'm particularly disappointed by the quote from Carolyn Bennett, who indicated that the Liberal party wanted "robust provincial consultation" on the bill. About what, pray tell? To find out which ones wanted their citizens' votes to be worth more in the House of Commons? Rep-by-pop isn't that difficult. And if we're in a country that has decided to abandon this principle then, to paraphrase the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, this country is passing through a constitutional crisis without even being aware of it.

Bah humbug - this isn't getting me into the Christmas spirit.

UPDATE 3 Dec 11:15 AM: Interesting. A series of press releases, including one from the Conservative Party, are emerging to deny the details of Ibbitson's story. Was it originally true, but then leaks to the press changed people's and party's attitudes? I'd certainly be pleased to learn that this latest example of parliamentary reform dysfunction was not true, or at least being rectified.

It Gets Better Project - Visibility and Affirmation

2010-11-23T08:04:00.004-05:00

By now, you have probably heard of the It Gets Better Project, a YouTube campaign of videos launched by Dan Savage in September 2010 to raise awareness of gay bullying and to provide support and hope for young people facing harassment. If you haven't already heard about it, Savage and his partner Terry launched the campaign in response to a wake of gay teen suicides, in the hopes that he, and those who would make similar videos, could provide the message that if teenagers held on, their lives would eventually get better. It's a very simple, direct message, and one that has inspired thousands of people to record and post their own messages.

The campaign is not without its detractors. A columnist in Toronto's Xtra! accused the campaign of vastly oversimplifying the issues facing the queer community, and perhaps facilitating complacency or sidestepping the real social challenges facing gay and lesbian youth that require new policies and programs. Musician Owen Pallett observed that for him there were other issues, most notably clinical depression, that would not simply get better on their own. Many have been openly critical of senior US administration figures, such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who participated in the campaign, but have done little to take advantage of their political power to make meaningful changes.

For what it's worth, I tend to come down on the side of those who praise the campaign as just one piece in a larger campaign of social activism, and one that can work alongside and in conjunction with campaigns for political, legal and social change.

Which brings me (finally) to the main point of this post. Many of my gay and lesbian friends, and I am not an exception to this rule, have observed that when they watch these videos, they tend to get really emotional and teary-eyed. And that's not a sentiment which is limited to those who felt suicidal or attempted suicide as teenagers - it's a much broader phenomenon. For me, it's not unlike the feelings that I had at my first few Pride parades as a young man just coming out of the closet. It invokes a sense of community, of shared experience, of support, and also of joy at having been able to make it through the difficult coming out process and accept one's sexuality. And to my view, that speaks to a much broader and more subtle impact of the It Gets Better project. Because while the immediate message is targeted at those facing harassment, in many ways this is an echo of 1970s (and later) gay liberation messaging about the need for visibility, for having large numbers of open gay men and lesbians to create a sense of community, and to raise awareness of their existence among the greater population.

I've been really enjoying some of the new "second wave" videos that are being created by workers in organizations like Pixar because of how it puts a human face on co-workers at an organization. I also liked this Canadian group video of celebrities, politicians and artists for the impact it had of a whole group of reasonably high-profile gay and lesbians all telling their stories at once. That latter video probably had its greatest impact because of Rick Mercer's openness about his experiences. Mercer is a household name in Canada, but few outside the gay community really were aware that he's gay, despite how candid he has been. And that's one of the impacts that the homemade videos are having as well by putting a very diverse human face on gay and lesbian life - young, old, married, single, from a host of different religious and ethnic backgrounds. It's almost like the story-telling complement to a Pride March, where all the diversity that you see briefly in the parade gets a chance to tell their human stories, so that you can hear from the gay father, the dyke on a bike, the leatherboy, the drag queen, and the politician in their own words about what growing up gay or lesbian was like, and how their lives are now. They are everyday role models from all walks of life, which is really important not only for youth, but for adults who continue to struggle with homophobia (both internalized and in the world around them) in their daily lives.

The fact that, like Pride Parades, the It Gets Better Project is attracting such high-profile support from politicians, celebrities and straight allies is indicative of the impact that it is having in raising visibility of these issues. I think it's a good thing that high profile British, American and Canadian politicians think they need to participate in this movement. But moreoever, to me it suggests that, although the legal and political campaigns are far from over, there is a real need to spend more time on the social side of raising the visibility of the human face of gay and lesbian life in order foster more grassroots support in our broader communities for the political, social and legal changes that are also needed.

Kudos to Dan Savage for launching this initiative. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get a box of Kleenex and watch a few more videos.

Partisan mailouts redux

2010-11-12T07:37:00.003-05:00

I don't post here nearly as often as I once did, largely because there is very little that is subtle about the current state of Canadian politics that inspires me to thoughtful commentary. It's far more common these days, to me at least, to see blatant abuses of power, flat-out lies and shifts in policy that are informed by little other than the whims of the Prime Minister. But, since the topic of today's post was a hobby-horse for me a while ago, I'll give it a whirl!

Remember the really offensive 10-per-cent mailers that we used to get, sent by Conservative MPs using taxpayer dollars to engage in vicious attacks on the Liberals and the NDP under the guise of "informational material"? The House of Commons voted a while ago to ban this delightful practice. And now it's back, courtesy of the body of sober second thought, the Senate, as this Star article points out. Conservative Senators have been engaging in precisely the same tactics to attack Liberal and Conservative MPs. I suppose the main difference here is that in the Senate, the Conservatives almost have the numbers to block an effort to vote out this practice.

Charming.

Donald Savoie, Power: Where Is It?

2010-10-08T09:28:00.001-04:00

It is a rare day when my news websites, Twitter feeds and newspapers do not contain at least some reference to how the current Conservative administration is bypassing established bureaucratic process, subverting access to information legislation or centralizing power in the office of the Prime Minister. It is thus extremely timely to see the publication of political scientist Donald Savoie's Power: Where Is It? I picked up Savoie's book at the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the urging of my Dalhousie colleague Shirley Tillotson, who had purchased it and had been voraciously devouring it. Surprisingly for a book published by an academic press, Savoie's book is extremely current, assessing the lay of the political land in Canadian politics as it stood by late-2009, and assessing trends that continue to dominate the headlines.

While I imagine that most politicos are currently devouring Lawrence Martin's Harperland (a book I hope to get to soon), I rather suspect that Savoie's book deserves a place of greater priority for students of Ottawa's power relations. Drawing on a host of personal interviews, political science literature and years spent analyzing Canadian politics, he paints a chilling portrait of how the exercise of power in Canada has shifted over the past 40-odd years. Among the more important elements of his book, he examines how globalization, private-public partnerships, a thickening of the state and the adoption of private sector management techniques have made it more difficult to determine where decision-making power and, more importantly, responsibility lies in the modern Canadian state.

Few elements of modern governance escape Savoie's attention. He calls our attention to the extensive array of "watchdog" institutions which are supposed to make government more accountable - the courts, the media, officers of parliament, access to information laws. Unsurprisingly, he also observes the overall failure of these provisions to actually produce greater transparency and accountability. Indeed, perversely, he observes that the host of new reporting requirements on government have led to an ever-more-bloated bureaucracy, which is so weighted down with answering information requests (or finding ways to avoid them) that it has become easier for Prime Ministers to justify a policy process which bypasses the bureaucracy, placing soft power and influence in the hands of think tanks, the private sector and key individuals who are not always subject to these accountability provisions. Indeed, and this is one of Savoie's more interesting observations, it may be that these accountability provisions are completely unworkable, and perhaps detrimental to the policy process. In an era of "gotcha" journalism and ATIP fishing expeditions, senior bureaucrats have become more wary of "speaking truth to power" or questioning government decisions. This has the impact of weakening the policy function of the bureaucracy. As a historian, it is extremely troubling to read of how many bureaucrats are now explicitly instructed not to commit any key decision-making material to print or email, relying instead exclusively on personal conversations. There will be no paper trail for us to follow in the future.

As a student of the history of public policy, I was particularly interested in Savoie's observation that, beginning in the 1980s, a succession of Anglo-American democracies began to strip away that policy-making function from the state, relegating the bureaucracy to a management function, and away from being a source of creative ideas. From this perspective, the "path dependency" or "new institutional" approaches to studying policy thus have a diminished relevance after the 1980s, as key institutions (like major government ministries such as Foreign Affairs and Industry), have lost their clout and autonomy. He does observe that a bright individual working in the civil service may still be able to influence policy, but more likely as a result of their personal networks and contacts. Governance, he claims, has been reduced to the mantra of "what matters is what works", which has subverted key institutional players in favour of high-profile, well-connected individuals.

This trend towards personalism is the key conclusion of Savoie's work. Although he argues that many government institutions have lost power due to international treaties, privatization and globalization, what power remains has become increasingly personalized and concentrated in key individuals and their "courts". Nowhere is this more true than in the office of the Prime Minister - although this trend long predates Stephen Harper. Part of the responsibility for this trend lies with the occupants of that office themselves, who have been keen to exert increasing control over Cabinet and the bureaucracy. But this trend is also reinforced by an era of 24-hour media and electronic media engaging in "gotcha" reporting with an almost total emphasis on the party leadership. This in turn has led to the hollowing out of any real power for political parties, government ministries and the Cabinet. The situation is worsened in the current climate of minority government where we see perpetual campaigning by our political parties, unhampered by any financial controls on their advertizing outside of election itself.

Indeed, Savoie is quite scathing when it comes to policy role played by the media in the modern era. He argues that the media reports on what is "interesting", not what is important, and that as a result, their impact on the substance of policy substance is limited because most journalists are not interested in detailed policy analysis.

Although repetitive at times, Savoie has produced a quite readable synthesis of the key trends that are shaping the exercise of federal power in Canada. While he does occasionally delve into international examples and the private sector, there isn't as much material here on the provincial or municipal levels of government - not a flaw in his work, but a key issue for other scholars to examine. Ultimately, Savoie is posing us with a challenge. He concludes with the sentence "But what matters above all else is the individual, not institutions, not organizations, and not formal policy-making and decision-making processes." The question is whether we, as Canadians are willing to accept this new model of how power is exercised, and if not, what are we going to do about it?

Peter Russell and the Governor General

2010-10-02T11:36:00.004-04:00

According to a recent report on the CBC, the now-retired Governor General Michaëlle Jean extracted promises of a rapid return to Parliament and a budget that would pass before allowing the prorogation of Parliament in 2008. The story is particularly interesting because it gives the perspective of leading constitutional scholar Peter Russell, who was one of the experts consulted by the GG during the crisis. I'm supportive of Russell's interpretation of the action as not setting a binding precedent that all future Governors General must follow, particularly as I felt at the time that Jean had made the wrong decision.

The most interesting part of the story is the fact that Russell (whose book Constitutional Odyssey has long been a staple of my political history courses) is organizing a meeting of international experts for next February on the future of the GG's powers, and that the new Governor General, David Johnson, is supporting the meeting. It will be extremely interesting to find out what these experts conclude.

Of course, my own sentiments on the matter tend to line up more with U of T professor emeritus Michael Bliss, who opined in a letter to the editor of the Globe this week (not that I can find it in the Globe's revamped website) that Canada really needs to do away with its ties to the monarchy. But that's an entirely different debate, for another day.

The Queen in 3D: A Participatory Exercise in Public History

2010-09-20T19:30:00.004-04:00

Earlier this evening (or later this evening, if you're in Central Time or points west), I made a short appearance on the CBC documentary The Queen in 3D. My brief clip provided a short bit of context to the Princess's 1951 visit to Canada, two years before her coronation.

It was an interesting process to be a part of. I was asked to participate in mid-August. Initially, I was asked to contextualize five different royal visits, providing some details and stories about the Canada being visited by the Queen in 1951, 1959, 1967, 1982 and 2002. Ultimately, the latter 4 visits were compressed into a dialogue-free montage of about 1-2 minutes, and my stories ended up on the cutting room floor as the documentary shifted emphasis towards the 1953 coronation and the most recent royal visit.

It's interesting to look at the documentary through the lens of a public historian. It's pretty clear, given the amount of time spent on the garden party footage and the time allocated to the spokeswoman for Hello! Canada that this documentary is mainly aimed at royal-watchers and fans of the monarchy. I probably would have wanted to incorporate a lot more footage from the many royal visits. But that being said, I don't think the filmmakers erred in pitching this documentary at its likely audience.

Beyond my 45 seconds of fame, I was actually quite impressed with the first 20 minutes of the film. It provides a very interesting window into the culture of the 1950s, when a network would have spent a small fortune running coronation footage across the Atlantic Ocean in a fighter plane to try to air it the same day. The fact that this race-across-the-ocean was itself documented is also quite neat. And for all that I think the script over-hyped the significance of finding the Royal Review footage, from a history of technology perspective, it is quite remarkable to find 3D colour footage of such a significant cultural event from the early 1950s.

Mind you, all of that being said, I'm not a monarchist at all. I don't agree at all with a system of government based on birthright. To me, it's not far off from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene where Arthur's claim to be King is the result of "strange women lying in ponds distributing swords" model of governance. If Canadians could find a way to agree on how replace the Queen as head of state, I'd be thrilled. But that doesn't mean that as a Canadian historian I'd deny the significant role that the British connection has played, and continues to play in Canada's political, social and cultural evolution. And it got me on TV.

Update: The full documentary is now available online here, and if you scroll down there is one of my outtakes that didn't make the final version.

Perpetually under construction? Not if Smitherman has his way

2010-09-15T09:15:00.004-04:00

I don't live in Toronto anymore, I just play there on weekends. And I'm not sure whether Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman's plan to make contractors pay for overly delayed road construction is practical or implementable, but I'm willing to bet it will be a popular promise.

Heck, as I run the gauntlet of Guelph's construction maze, I'm wishing that there were councillors and mayoral candidates willing to propose the same thing here. I live about a 10 minute drive from the university, and have had to detour from the most direct route about 80% of the time since I moved into my current house over two years ago. The main north-south street (Brock-Gordon-Woolwich) has been under perpetual construction since I moved to Guelph over three years ago, usually with a complete blockage of at least one direction at any given point. I pity the poor businesses on the south end of Wyndham, which has been completely ripped up for the past two years. On some mornings, not only is my main route blocked, but so is at least one major alternate. And don't get me started on what happens in winter, when many of the residential alternate roads are essentially down to one lane, shared by both directions of traffic.

Of course, this probably wouldn't bother me so much if I routinely saw construction crews working on the torn up segments. But I would estimate that on about 50% of sunny days, many of the ripped up segments are vacant. It's as if at the start of the spring, a bunch of crews go around, rip up all the city streets that are supposed to be repaired in a given year, and then a single repair crew slowly makes its way around the city to fix everything. At least to the uninformed layperson's eye, it doesn't seem to be the most efficient or traffic-friendly approach.

I don't put on my "grumpy ratepayer/letter-writer to the local free paper" hat very often, but this issue does get me riled up. End of rant - please return to your regular business!

DADT: Courts do what Obama is afraid to

2010-09-09T21:56:00.003-04:00

A judge, ruling on a case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, has ruled the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy unconstitutional, stating that the policy violates both the First and Fifth amendments.

I'm glad to see that this decision has come down from the courts. But it would have been a lot more impressive had President Obama himself had the strength of character and the balls to make this an executive decision, followed by an act of Congress, over a year ago.

The "War on Experts"

2010-08-17T12:47:00.003-04:00

Much of my research deals with the development of public policy in Canada in the post-World War II era. A key theme that crops up regularly, particularly in the 1950s through to the 1970s, is the "rise of the expert" as governments and citizens increasingly turned to professionals who were considered "expert" in their fields to guide the development of policy.

In recent years, it seems that just the opposite is taking place. Conservative governments and movements have been taking aim at the "pointy-headed eggheads" and dismissing evidence and analysis, relying instead on "gut", "common sense" and just plain old "because-I-said-so"ism. It's extremely troubling for anyone who advocated a rational approach to the development of our society.

With that in mind, take a gander at Andrew Coyne's latest column. He seems to see a silver lining in the relative failure of these anti-expertise politics to take hold. I'm less convinced that we aren't just seeing the tip of the iceberg, and that worse is yet to come. If you're not feeling depressed yet, check out this piece by Paul Wells.

They used to say that when the revolution comes, first they'll round up all the historians. Perhaps what we weren't informed is that the statisticians will be pre-emptively undermined.

Censuses, Bedrooms and Bathrooms

2010-07-21T22:30:00.004-04:00

Could a journalist or two please start pointing out the absurdity of the Conservatives' "bedrooms and bathrooms" talking point in their articles about the census fiasco?

To wit: at least one level of government ALREADY KNOWS how many bedrooms and bathrooms are in your home. They know, because the plans for having your dwelling built and/or renovated were submitted to a government authority for approval and/or inspection at some point in the past.

The nice thing about providing this information again in the census is that this information can then be cross-referenced en masse with other anonymized data collected by StatsCan and stored in the same place to allow for public policy planning. The manuscript census data of individual records is not released outside of the government for at least 91 years, so in many respects the census data is more secure than the data that is already on record.

Munir Sheikh resigns. Plus a bit of perspective about the historical evolution of the long-form census.

2010-07-21T18:57:00.006-04:00

If anyone had any doubts about what Statistics Canada thinks of the decision to get rid of the mandatory long-form census, then today's resignation of the head of that institution should leave no more doubt.

The announcement is here, but I'm reposting it verbatim in case it gets removed:
ETA 22 July 1:30 PM: It's been removed.

--------

Media advisory: 2011 Census

July 21, 2010

OTTAWA — There has been considerable discussion in the media regarding the 2011 Census of Population.

There has also been commentary on the advice that Statistics Canada and I gave the government on this subject.

I cannot reveal and comment on this advice because this information is protected under the law. However, the government can make this information public if it so wishes.

I have always honoured my oath and responsibilities as a public servant as well as those specific to the Statistics Act.

I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census.

It can not.

Under the circumstances, I have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister.

I want to thank him for giving me the opportunity of serving him as the Chief Statistician of Canada, heading an agency that is a symbol of pride for our country.

To you, the men and women of Statistics Canada – thank you for giving me your full support and your dedication in serving Canadians. Without your contribution, day in and day out, in producing data of the highest quality, Canada would not have this institution that is our pride.

I also want to thank Canadians. We do remember, every single day, that it is because of you providing us with your information, we can function as a statistical agency. I am attaching an earlier message that I sent to Canadians in this regard.

In closing, I wish the best to my successor. I promise not to comment on how he/she should do the job. I do sincerely hope that my successor’s professionalism will help run this great organization while defending its reputation.

Munir A. Sheikh

----

Now would be a very good time for the Conservatives to back off of this ill-advised policy, and refuse to accept this resignation.

ETA: So much for that faint hope. It looks like Tony Clement is digging in.

Among the many things that really bug me about this entire process is the fact that the "how many bathrooms" talking point is being beaten to death. The actual questions on the long form census are frequently changed or modified from census to census, with new ones added, and old ones removed or altered. For example, it's only recently that the census started asking about gay partnerships. The option of "Canadian" was added as a possible response for the ethnicity question a couple of decades ago. Questions about language usage have been tweaked over the years. Many of my colleagues in the Canadian historical profession could provide other examples. It would have been a simple matter for the government to remove a number of the questions that they find more egregious. Instead, they are using a couple of questions that they think an uneducated cohort of voters will find particularly intrusive as an excuse to kill the entire mandatory census form. It's extremely duplicitous.

ETA @ 8:42: From Kady O'Malley of CBC (in the comments), here's Tony Clement's pitiful reply - you'll note that he admits that the voluntary form was never the option that Statistics Canada wanted:

I acknowledge with regret the resignation of Munir A. Sheikh the Chief
Statistician of Canada.

There has been considerable commentary about the federal government's
decision to replace the 2011 mandatory census long form with the
voluntary National Household Survey.

The Government took this decision because we do not believe Canadians
should be forced, under threat of fines, jail, or both, to divulge
extensive private and personal information. We believe it is not
appropriate to compel citizens to divulge how many bedrooms they have in
their houses, or what time they leave for work in the morning. The
Government's approach is about finding a better balance between
collecting necessary data and protecting the privacy rights of
Canadians.

As I have noted previously, Statistics Canada's preferred approach would
have been to maintain the mandatory long form census.

However, after the Government's decision to replace the mandatory long
form census Statistics Canada was asked to provide options for
conducting a voluntary survey of households. One of the options provided
- the voluntary National Household Survey - was chosen.

A voluntary long form survey offers challenges that do not exist in the
case of a census that uses coercion to compel completion. Nonetheless,
by working together with the professionals at Statistics Canada I
believe we can compensate for these challenges and offer data-users
high quality and accurate information.

I have relied throughout this process on the frank and open advice of
Statistics Canada and the Chief Statistician. I would like to take this
opportunity to thank all employees of Statistics Canada for the hard
work and dedication that has made Statistics Canada one of the best
national statistical organizations in the world.

Until a permanent successor can be found Wayne Smith, Assistant Chief
Statistician, Business and Trade Statistics, will act on an interim
basis.

The "voluntary census". Lies, damn lies. Now over to the statisticians...

2010-07-19T17:47:00.006-04:00

Amidst the howls of outrage at the Harper government's arbitrary decision to axe the mandatory long form census, condemnded by virtually every major association in Canada except the Fraser Institute (but including the National Post and the C.D. Howe Institute) there has been virtual silence from Statistics Canada. The most recently retired head statistician, Ivan Fellegi, decried the decision, but the current one has been silent. This is not a surprise. Good bureaucrats aren't permitted to speak to the public without government authorization, and they're certainly not allowed to voice opinions contrary to government policy in an official capacity.

So this announcement is interesting. There will be an internal departmental town hall held on Wednesday by chief statistician Munir Sheikh to respond to questions from Statistics Canada employees. The town hall will also be broadcast internally over the departmental intranet to accomodate the large number of employees that are anticipated to have concerns.

I am hoping against hope that this portends well. The chief statistician is completely within his rights and his job description to communicate with his employees. I can't imagine that many of them are happy at the Harper government's attempt to sabotage the quality of the data that they work with, and that most policy-makers rely upon to make decisions and plan for the future. So... he's going to communicate with them.

And who wants to place bets on how many reporters will find themselves with access to a StatsCan employee's intranet feed on Wednesday? I certainly hope that the answer is "a heck of a lot", and I hope that Sheikh is up front with his staff about having major concerns about the wisdom of this decision. If he spouts platitudes or blindly defends the decision, he will lose all credibility within the department.

And if Harper forces Sheikh to axe the meeting, then the press should rightly jump all over him for being an authoritarian dictator who won't even allow a department head to meet with his staff.

UPDATE 21 July 1:15 PM: The town hall has been cancelled by Statistics Canada. No explanation has been given as to why. Presumably this Globe story or this Canadian Press story will have updates today.

Plus ça change...

2010-07-08T09:48:00.003-04:00

As some followers of our top court are doubtless aware, there is a bill currently making its way into the Senate, initiated by NDP member Yvon Godin, that would require bilingualism of our Supreme Court justices.

So, with that prelude, any guesses as to who said this:

“Competency in the law is, of course, a most important criterion for the appointment of persons to the Supreme Court, but surely in this day and age it should be possible for us in Canada to pick nine men who are not only good lawyers but who are also bilingual. If we cannot do this, or at least aim toward it, there must be something wrong with this country. I do not expect we could have nine bilingual judges overnight but certainly we could work toward this goal.”

Any idea?

Ok, it was a trick question. This particular quote is from Warren Allmand, the Liberal member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace, in 1969 in a debate in the House of Commons about bilingualism on the Supreme Court. The fact that he said "men" and not "individuals" should perhaps have tipped you off.

Overnight, over forty years, over another century perhaps...

Unfortunately, the vehemence of the debate about Godin's bill shows just how poorly certain aspects of Canada's official languages policy have been implemented. The emphasis of the policy has been on providing government and legal services in both official languages. However, in order to really do this effectively and efficiently, you need to have a good-sized cadre of bilingual people to staff these positions, at all levels of government and the legal system, and they need to come from all across the country. Until the resistance of Canadians to learning (or making sure that your children are effectively taught) both official languages starts to break down, these conflicts are going to continue to repeat history, and we'll keep hearing the refrain of "we're not ready yet, but perhaps sometime in the future..."

And now, back to my research notes, as I pore through decades of Hansard reading the parliamentary debates about official languages.

143 years of Canada

2010-07-01T07:58:00.003-04:00

Happy Canada Day everyone!

After years of researching and publishing about the history of Canada Day, I'm really pleased that my article Fireworks, Folk-dancing, and Fostering a National Identity: The Politics of Canada Day has appeared in the latest volume of the Canadian Historical Review. This is also a special day for me, because my promotion to associate professor becomes official today! (My legal wedding anniversary is on St-Jean-Baptiste Day. Perhaps I should lay off having major events in my life tied to politically-charged holidays.)

The article itself is by subscription only, but as I've done in past years, I'll share some fun facts from the history of the day. Fifty years ago, in 1960, the CBC put together a special documentary to air on July 1st. Entitled "Dominion Day: A Day to Remember", it traced the stories of six new Canadians, who would be receiving their citizenship at a special ceremony on Parliament Hill. This ceremony kicked off the events taking place on the Hill that day. Somewhat ironically, this also re-launched official Dominion Day observances in Ottawa. The Diefenbaker government had tried to start this annual tradition of celebrating Dominion Day in 1958, but the visit of the Queen, which would take her out of Ottawa on the 1st, led to changes of plans for 1959. For those who are interested, she was helping out at the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Attaching citizenship ceremonies to the events of July 1st rapidly became a popular aspect of both national and local events. Indeed, this was the only official event organized by the federal government in Ottawa in 1976, after the rest of the budget for the "Show on the Hill" was cancelled as part of wide-ranging budget cuts.

Enjoy your Canada Day, however you may be celebrating it!

A course in Chiac

2010-06-29T08:57:00.005-04:00

The language policy geek in me is very excited this morning. Apparently the immigrant welcoming centre in Moncton, New Brunswick is going to be offering courses in Chiac, the Acadian dialect of French.

If you scroll through the comments page on the CBC story that I've linked to, you'll find all the anticipated denunciations of Chiac as bastardized, lazy French. I'm not a linguist though, I'm a historian. And my initial take on this is that this course could be really beneficial to new immigrants to francophone New Brunswick. I wouldn't recommend it as the only French course that they take - a course in "standard" French will be needed, and likely one in English too, if they want to maximize their opportunities. But to get a grasp on Acadian culture, theatre and literature, a knowledge of Chiac would be very useful - just as getting the basics of Joual helps in Quebec.

A common complaint that I heard at a forum on official languages policy in Toronto was that new immigrants were not welcomed and/or viewed with suspicion or hostility by the multi-generational French Canadians. This type of course will help with the integration process, if it's well done.

----

On a very loosely-connected note, I'm really looking forward to seeing French Immersion, the new comedy from the producers of "Bon Cop, Bad Cop", when it comes out. Our language issues in this country have caused severe tensions, but they're also great comic fodder, and it's always nice to see Canadians able to laugh at ourselves.

More arrests than the October Crisis

2010-06-28T12:40:00.003-04:00

I'm reeling somewhat from what happened in Toronto over the weekend. So much of it was so unnecessary - a contentious (and frankly, not all that useful) summit in the core of a major city, over a billion dollars spent on security, rent-a-cops from across the country patrolling in full riot gear, and a few dolts ruining an otherwise peaceful set of protests. Add on to that the effective detention of protestors and onlookers in a police cordon at Queen & Spadina, the assaults on journalists, and the destruction of property, and it's hard not to believe that our system of justice and policing is fundamentally broken at a number of levels.

I don't have a lot of concrete suggestions on how to improve things. But there is one thing that really needs to be highlighted. During the FLQ crisis in October 1970, which followed a seven-year campaign of bombing, which led to a number of deaths, and the two kidnappings of Pierre Laporte and James Cross, Quebec police were given extraordinary powers to arrest and detain suspected FLQ terrorists under the War Measures Act. After all of that very real and violent buildup, the police arrested a total of 465 people.

What does it say about our society when a small number of thugs engage in some vandalism and this is used by the police and state as justification for the arbitrary detention of almost twice as many people as were arrested during an actual terrorist crisis? It's not hard to argue that we are on a slippery slope with regards to our civil liberties.

In which Dalton McGuinty tries to buy my vote

2010-06-15T08:14:00.003-04:00

I don't have any particularly strong opinions about Ontario's adoption of the HST, although my husband, who runs his own translation business, will now have to collect more tax for his services. But my general take on thie issue is that if you're going to be implementing a new tax, then just do it - we've known for quite some time that this tax was coming, and delaying its full brunt for a year just puts off the political pain that will accompany the inevitable hostility that always welcomes a new tax.

Cue the reason for this post. I received a notice in the mail that I'm going to be receiving Dalton McGuinty's HST tax rebate. Or, more to the point, as a couple, my husband and I are eligible.

I've never seen such naked pandering to middle class voters. As a university professor, I earn a very good salary, and my partner's business does quite well. There is no way that we should be qualifying for this rebate - at least under any calculation method that is related to progressive tax policy or promotion of social justice. Moreover, as a DINK couple (double income/no kids), we certainly shouldn't be receiving more than 1.5 times what two single people are getting back.

I suppose that this is the first time that being a married gay couple has actually saved us money (as opposed to bumping us into higher tax brackets), but the naked political opportunism of this ploy bothers me. It certainly isn't going to make me more eager to vote for the man who plans to try to freeze my salary for at least the next two years.

Peter C. Newman and Political Biography

2010-06-01T20:54:00.004-04:00

The annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association at the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities wrapped up today. On the whole I had a good time, meeting up with a mix of eminent scholars, new grad students and old friends and also hearing some good papers. This was the first year that the Political History Group, a group that I helped found, was able to sponsor some sessions. Although I was quite happy with the roundtable that I organized on the current state of the field of political history, my real excitement was for a roundtable on political biography. We'd brought together a mix of new scholars (Cara Spittal & Adam Chapnick) and very well-known biographers (John English, Peter C. Newman) to speak about the challenges and developments in their field.

This was not the only session on biography that was held at the CHA, and indeed just before heading into our session, I'd attended another session dealing with issues of gender, historiographical theory and biography. During that session, panelists and the session attendees wrestled with questions of performativity, of private lives, and of reinjecting emotional and affective ties into history, particularly when it touched on political issues.

What I found particularly striking about attending these two panels back-to-back was the extent to which the "old school" political biographers were explicit about the fact that the issues which were so important to the social and gender historians in the prior panel were also issues that they had long incorporated into their own work. Indeed, Peter C. Newman spoke at length about how as a political journalist, he always paid more attention to body language and to the emotional content of what was being said, than to the words themselves. He spoke passionately of the need to tap into human feelings to make biographies appeal to readers. It was quite refreshing, and perhaps a bit ironic, to discover that the political biographers were already well in-tune with the issues of such great importance to the academic social historians, albeit perhaps in a less theoreticized mode. And of course, it was delightful to hear Newman's anecdotes from his encounters with our past Prime Ministers!

Clearly the field has a great deal of vitality. As John English, currently co-editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, pointed out, the DCB gets 280,000 hits a month, a far cry from the 20,000 that were predicted when its internet site was launched in 2003. The most hits, he noted, were for political leaders of the past. It would seem that interest in political history is indeed alive and well, which is very gratifying for those of us working in the field.

I would have liked to hear the panelists speak more about the new developments in their field, such as Cara Spittal reflections about the impact of microhistory on her work on the Diefenbaker era. It's clear from reading English's biographies of Trudeau that his work has been influenced by women's history, gender history and even new understandings of political history. However, I believe that political historians would benefit from being more explicit about the new influences on their work, which is often casually derided by some social historians, despite the increased sophistication and theoretical models which increasingly underpin their work. That qualifier aside, I think this panel went well, and perhaps might help spark some increased activity in this under-populated field of Canadian history.

When lacking vision, count the beans

2010-05-27T21:55:00.002-04:00

I'm back from Japan, and had a wonderful time. The one negative hotel experience I reported in my previous post proved to be the rare exception to a great vacation. I even managed to work up some interesting material on public history while sight-seeing.

However, as has been the case for several months now, I'm feeling uninspired to post anything here. Iggy has been, well, performing about how I expected him to - which is to say, in an uninspiring manner. And rather than clash on ideas, or risk forcing an election, Parliament seems to be obsessed with the petty details of Helena Guergis' life and/or auditing expenses. I suppose this is predictable. Sheila Fraser helped bring down the Liberals, and the Liberals are hoping that the Conservatives can also be brought down on some financial scandal, seeing as they have failed to sink Harper in any other way.

That being said, it makes for uninspiring material for a nice, meaty blog post. I'm hoping that the Senate will try to dismantle the budget that Liberal MPs allowed to pass the House, despite its glaring flaws. But here again, I'm not holding my breath, especially since the Liberals have now lost their majority in the upper house. It's rather hard to get myself excited about the prospect of a Liberal revival when the party still doesn't seem to know what it wants to stand for, nor how to articulate whatever vision it does have.

Adventures in homophobia - Japanese Edition

2010-04-23T09:05:00.004-04:00

Yes, my blogging has been light recently - chalk it up to marking season. And this post isn't even about Canadian politics. It's about my upcoming trip to Japan, and how I sometimes forget how good we gays have it in Canada. I recently had a rather shocking experience involving a hotel booking in Tokyo, which demonstrates that homophobia is alive and well, and running hotel management in some Japanese companies.

Based on the recommendations of Lonely Planet, back on March 8, we booked a 5 night stay at the Sutton Place Hotel Ueno, a business hotel in downtown Tokyo. We booked a room with a double bed, described on the hotel website as suitable for 1-2 people. On the online form, we indicated that 2 males would be sharing the room. So far, so good. We thought we were set for accommodations during one of the busiest travel seasons in Japan (Golden Week, which features 4 national holidays in the span of 7 days).

Two days ago, I received a reconfirmation email from the hotel. In this email, they indicated that the room I had booked was:"not for 2 male guests. Suitable for couples or 2 females only. We recommend you to change it to a twin bed room or 2 single bed rooms. Your cooperation and understanding is sincerely appreciated." By this point, all of the hotel's twin rooms were booked, so we were being asked to book a second room - and to sleep apart while on vacation!

Thinking perhaps that this was the hotel's way of trying to avoid our discomfort, I replied that we were, in fact, a married couple, and used to sharing a bed. The hotel replied with the exact same reply. Apparently married couples, or two "lady travelers" (or two lesbians, as my sister chortled with glee) can share a bed in this hotel, but not two gay men (or two straight men trying to save on accommodations in a rather expensive city).

We booked another hotel room, at a place which explicitly replied to my query that they had no trouble with us sharing a bed. I sent an angry cancellation message to the Sutton Place, indicating my anger both at their no-room-sharing policy and at their appalling customer service, which left us high and dry less than a week before we were scheduled to arrive. The epilogue to this story is that 24 hours after sending the cancellation message, the hotel sent me an email indicating that they would make an exception to their rule because of the poor customer service (although standing by their basic policy). We have decided to stick with the other hotel, which treated us well, rather than spend an awkward 5 nights at a hotel that didn't want us.

The irony of all of this is that Lonely Planet touted the fact that, apart from Thailand, Japan is one of the best places to visit for gay travelers, since there are no laws against homosexuality. Meanwhile, on a trip to Malaysia four years ago, where homosexuality is actually illegal, we had no trouble staying in rooms with only one bed in two separate hotels. Cultural norms, it would seem, are just as powerful as formal laws, at least at some hotel chains.

I would encourage all of my lesbian readers to visit the Sutton Place Ueno, since they seem to have no trouble with two females sharing a bed. I recognize that this is because the hotel managers likely have no conception of independent female sexuality - but I like the idea of this homophobic hotel being made into a covert lesbian love den. Not that I'm feeling vindictive or anything...

Of premiums, surtaxes and income taxes in Ontario

2010-03-18T16:18:00.004-04:00

Since joining the ranks of the gainfully employed, my days of tax-free living as a postdoctoral fellow have come to seem like hazy distant memories. Not that I mind paying my taxes. Indeed, I'm very fond of the tax-and-spend approach to government services. Tax me heavily, but provide me with top notch health care, education, transportation infrastructure and other services in return.

With those socialistic bona fides established, I feel compelled to observe that even my tax-loving self recoils a little bit every year as I complete my Ontario income taxes. It's not that the tax rates are particularly high - they aren't. It's the fact that after I calculate my basic tax rates, I then have to perform two additional calculations to establish my health premium surtax and my Ontario surtax, and then add these amounts onto the basic tax. I have no illusions that the collective health premiums paid by Ontario taxpayers cover the full cost of our health care services (even when the government isn't running a deficit) and I can't imagine that other taxpayers think this is the case, and so I wonder about the optics of this approach.

Have there been studies done of how taxpayers react to these additional tax calculations? Because my gut feeling is that there is a negative psychological impact attached to performing additional surtax and premium calculations, and that perhaps a significant proportion of the taxpaying electorate might be happier just calculating the lump sum at tax time. With the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if the short term benefits of Dalton McGuinty's technical keeping of a promise not to raise income taxes are annually offset by taxpayers grumbling as they figure out the amount of their additional premiums and surtaxes.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about this, but it might be something that future tax policy-makers might want to consider.

Ontario Budget: "A whole new University of Guelph!" What about the existing one?

2010-03-08T22:12:00.004-05:00

You'll forgive me if I'm not branding Dalton McGuinty the "Post-secondary Education Premier" after today's throne speech. Lt-Governor David Onley's throne speech made reference to a commitment to increase university and college spaces by 20,000 this year, likening this to "a whole new University of Guelph".

Meanwhile, the actual University of Guelph, where I work, is suffering from the last few years of Ontario budget cuts, which failed to deliver on promised inflation-matching funding increases, and turned off the taps on graduate funding, after encouraging the university (and others province-wide) to hire new faculty. What we're faced with now is a non-existent budget for sessional instructors, curtailed funding for graduate students, growing undergraduate class sizes, and faculty retirements that there is no budget to replace.

Here's an idea, Dalton: how about restoring core operating funding to Ontario's colleges and universities so that they can deliver quality education to the existing student base, rather than pumping more undergraduates into overcrowded classrooms?

An international broadcasting of Canada's insecurities: The closing ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics

2010-03-03T20:49:00.005-05:00

I'd better get this post up about the closing ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics before my prescribed course of medications and therapy allow me to blot it forever from my mind. Because, let's be frank here, that was perhaps the most appalling display of Canadian kitsch and insecurity that I've ever seen. And I've watched 50 years worth of Canada Day ceremonies. I've seen Patsy Gallant croon "Sugar Daddy" to Joe Clark. I've seen the Calgary Safety Patrol Jamboree sing "I've Got a Dog Named Leroy" on Parliament Hill. I've seen the Spirit of a Nation tour. They all pale next to the travesty that occurred on Sunday night. That, my friends, was a national disgrace.

And it's a real shame, because the evening started off reasonably well. I thought it was a nice bit of self-mocking Canadian humour to acknowledge the torch malfunction. But really, it could have stopped right there. Because it wasn't long before things headed downhill. I will give credit where credit is due. There was a token effort to "bilingualize" the closing ceremonies. The opening number did feature singers from Canada's anglophone, francophone and aboriginal communities. The Canadian anthem was performed in its bilingual version. The cultural performance for the Sochi Olympics was dramatic.

But...

In the two weeks between the opening and closing ceremony, could someone not have phonetically written out the French portion of John Furlong's agonizingly turgid speech? Not that the English portions were riveting, but the French portions were so badly mangled that it almost would have been better not to include them at all.

And then, the so-called comedy. Three anglophone "comedians," all of whom have made their careers in the United States, were trotted out to deliver unfunny monologues that were vaguely in the tradition of the Molson "I am Canadian" advertisements. If only any of them had "Joe"'s talent for delivery. And perhaps a humourous script. And the good sense to deliver the monologue when only Canadians are watching. The rest of the world neither cares, nor needs to know about Canada's collective psychological insecurities about how we are perceived. It made us appear whiny and pathetic, which is hardly appropriate for one of the longest-established federations in the world.

Following the "comedy", the travesty... I believe it was Kelly Nestruck who tweeted that the "Maple Leaf Forever" number looked like it had been produced by Max Bialystock (of the Producers). "Springtime for Hitler" had nothing on this monstrosity of bad taste, which featured a Mountie-clad Michael Bublé crooning away while gigantic beavers, floating moose and a procession of antiquated Canadian clichés were paraded around the stadium. It was as if all of Canada's capacity for camp, bad taste and self-mockery was being sucked into a quantum singularity located in Bublé's vocal chords, with each element tripping over the next in its haste to flood onto the stage. You know that a performance is horrendous when the appearance of Nickelback on the stage comes as a relief!

The final segment, the "rock concert" was problematic, but for its own set of reasons. Although there are reasons to question the specific choices of the acts (see: Nickelback), I'm more concerned by how they represented Canadian culture. All but the final two were white, anglophone, mainstream rock-pop acts, widely known in the United States. I got the strong impression that the concert was being performed for the NBC audience, and that the rule was to "play it safe". The single francophone act and the only visible minority were held back until the very end of the concert, which to my mind smacked of tokenism. That being said, I loved Alanis Morissette's performance. But this was an opportunity not only to showcase the diversity of Canada's musical talent, but perhaps to broaden the international audience's awareness of great Canadian music beyond the best-known acts. I'm not suggesting (as Paul Wells quipped), that the entire short list for the Polaris Prize had to be featured. But perhaps something from our alternative music scene?

All in all, it was a schizophrenic and ill-conceived ceremony, which to my mind did little to correct for the flaws of the opening ceremonies. French-language and multicultural content was minimal, and clearly an afterthought. Moreover, the "fun" aspects were largely embarrassing, and perhaps better kept for Canada Day ceremonies, when only Canadians are watching. Indeed, given the bland, mainstream content of the rock concert which was so clearly targeted at the United States, it's surprising that the "comic" sections which preceded it were included. Or perhaps the producers of the ceremony want the United States to continue to think of Canada as an insecure, pathetic nation worthy of scorn. We are capable of so much better.

Thank god for Gay Olympians /or/ Kenney the homophobe

2010-03-02T14:54:00.003-05:00

Today's post was originally going to be a reflection on the Olympics, their place in Canada's national consciousness, and the problematic elements of how Canadian identity was portrayed in the closing ceremonies.

Instead, let me take a moment to say how glad I am that Olympic gold medal swimmer Mark Tewksbury came out of the closet after the Sydney Olympics. You see, the Conservative government which oversaw Canada's latest citizenship guide thinks that touting Canada's sporting accomplishments is really important. So much so that you'll find images of at least 5 Olympic and Paralympic athletes in the new Discover Canada guide. What you won't find, however, is any reference to Canada's acceptance of same-sex marriage, or mention of the fact that homosexuality was decriminalized forty years ago. That's because Immigration Minister Jason Kenney overrode the advice of his officials, and explicitly removed those sections from the guide.

Indeed, the only time you'll find the word "gay" in the citizenship guide is in the caption under Tewksbury's smiling face. Because in the eyes of our Conservative overlords, the fact that Canada wins medals at the Olympics matters. The fact that Canada treats our gay and lesbian citizens with respect and dignity should be hidden from prospective immigrants.

Perhaps later this week I'll feel up to comment on the mass parading of our national insecurities that passed for the closing ceremonies. Right now, I'm just too pissed off.

Posting the Cat: Olympic-style

2010-02-28T20:16:00.003-05:00

More detailed reflections on the Olympics will follow in the next couple of days. But for now, I'm going to engage in the cardinal blogger sin of posting the cat, lol-style:

Congratulations to Canada's Olympic team!

Owning the Podium - the Empires Snipe Back

2010-02-16T20:49:00.003-05:00

I personally have a number of qualms about Canada's "Own the Podium" program, which has spent over $100 million on top-flight Canadian Olympic athletes. For starters, I'm not certain that this is the best use of taxpayers money.

That being said, I find it extremely rich to have American and British commentators sniping at Canada for having the temerity to be competitive. The formerly dominant empire in the world, and the current superpower, which each have sunk fortunes into global dominance, are upset with Canada for trying to win a lot of Olympic medals. The impudence! The gall! The shock!

I'll be curious to see how much money Britain invests in its athletes for the 2012 games in London...

Alexandre Bilodeau, Canadian Nationalism, and a Bilingual Olympics

2010-02-14T21:23:00.006-05:00

First off - kudos to Alexandre Bilodeau for breaking Canada's home-turf Olympic curse and winning the gold medal in moguls!

Tomorrow morning, he will be on the cover of every Canadian newspaper. Canadians coast to coast are celebrating his victory.

Now for the serious stuff. Amidst all of the other potentially problematic issues associated with the Olympics and Canadian nationalism, think about this: Bilodeau is a francophone from Quebec. As Heritage Minister James Moore, and Paul Wells have pointed out, the Olympics opening ceremony didn't do a great job of incorporating the French language. Both have been pilloried in comments boards for this statement. There have been quarrels over bilingual signage at the Olympics. And yet I am absolutely confident that virtually all of the Canadian sports fans who hate bilingualism are cheering for Bilodeau. And yet, they don't think a Canadian Olympics on home soil should give reasonable billing to the French language, the mother tongue of so many members of the Canadian team - including our first gold-medalist. They should think again...

Anyways, back to the festivities. And good on all the members of the Canadian moguls team for putting in such a great effort!

ETA: I see that someone on the Globe and Mail's editorial board agrees with me.

The power of language

2010-02-11T19:33:00.004-05:00

I'm currently teaching a graduate seminar on the history of social movements in North America. This week, one of the issues we discussed was the power of language, and the ways that members of social movements and those who oppose their objectives have learned how to use key phrases to mobilize public support.

With that in mind, this report from CBS news is highly illustrative of this point. Fully 14% more of Americans surveyed are willing to allow "gays and lesbians" to serve openly in the military than would support "homosexuals" being allowed to do so. It's a difference between a solid majority opinion in support (58% support) and a bare plurality (44% support vs 42% opposed).

Mind you, it's also disappointing that fully such a large percentage of the American population is opposed to gay men and lesbians serving in the military, no matter what they are called. But it does speak strongly to the powerful issue of messaging and the careful use of language. As John Aravosis points out, "homosexual" evokes cold, clinical connotations of disease, while "gays and lesbians" brings to mind living, feeling human beings - which is what we are!

[ETA: Hmmm... that got a bit earnest and treacly at the end. Don't worry - the hard-edged cynicism will return shortly!]

Olympic Fever

2010-02-07T17:17:00.005-05:00

The national news cycle is about to be completely dominated by the Olympics, which should provide Stephen Harper with his much-desired respite from his prorogation woes, and perhaps cover for any initiatives he's been waiting for the opportunity to slide into action without much media attention.

Since I'm not above using popular events to garner a wee bit of attention for academic pursuits, I'll be giving a talk at 7 pm on Tuesday night at the Bookshelf eBar in Guelph. My talk is part of the Café Philosophique series organized by the University of Guelph's College of Arts. My discussion will focus on the changing nature of Canadian identity, and more specifically, governmental efforts to shape the discourse surrounding this identity, since World War II. The Olympics, I argue, feature rather significantly in the most recent phase of efforts to come up with popular discourses of Canadian identity, a phase which stresses the individual achievements of Canadians. If you're interested, drop on by the Bookshelf's eBar on Tuesday for a drink and some interesting conversation.

Filibuster

2010-01-20T07:37:00.002-05:00

At some point, and I'm not sure if that point will come, the Democrats are going to have to decide if they really believe in their agenda. If they do, they're going to have to sell it hard to the voting population. Because if they do that, the threat of a filibuster will not scare them into craven submission. They will meet the challenge head on, confident that the Republican party will pay in the ballot box in the midterm elections for making Congress non-functional.

In the last 30 years (it goes back further than that, but it illustrates my point), the Republican party has never held 60 Senate seats. And yet their legislation got passed. The same applies to the Democrats. The filibuster is a scare tactic, and one that should not be treated as if it can be undertaken lightly. Unless the Democrats think their legislation is so weak that it could be brought down in a "Mister Smith goes to Washington" scenario, they need to strap on a set of spines, and get down to the business of governing, and pillory the Republicans in the press for daring to flout the will of the American people.

If not, they might as well hand the keys to the White House back to Dick Cheney.

Anniversary Post

2009-12-28T15:51:00.002-05:00

When I'm not studying language policy and political history, I do spend some time dabbling in issues of commemoration. So even though nothing in the news has really twigged my desire to blog on anything particularly profound, I wanted to put up a post today.

Today is Pample the Moose's 5th birthday! It's been a heck of a 5 years. I've lived in three provinces, teaching at three different universities. This most recent one has kindly decided to grant me tenure. I'm not sure if that means that my posting will become more outrageous in the years to come, but I rather doubt it. I'm a rather moderate fellow - most of the time.

And now, back to my holidays. There are leftover Christmas cookies that aren't going to eat themselves!

Conservative Ten-percenters - A Truly Macchiavellian Interpretation

2009-12-04T11:49:00.003-05:00

I've just received my weekly ten-percenter attack flyer from the Conservative Party. The Conservatives clearly have their eyes on Guelph - we literally get one of these damned things every week. This week's charmer is themed "Ignatieff: Just in it for himself", which doesn't even pretend to discuss Conservative policy.

I'm starting to wonder about the overall Conservative strategy. These flyers have become increasingly personal and partisan over the last couple of years, and the other parties don't seem to have fully caught on to their potential use. We're now seeing the Liberals fighting back against their content, and we've seen suggestions that perhaps these flyers, which are sent using public money at no charge to the political parties in question, should be banned.

Here's a thought. Maybe that's been the Conservative plan all along! The Conservatives have a much larger war chest than the other parties. Maybe the strategy has always been to use this tool, for free, as long as possible, steadilly ratcheting up the partisanship in the content, until the other parties demand that the program that allows them be discontinued. Then the Conservatives can turn to sending out the same content, paid for by their more substantial party donations, while the other parties are left without this free option, and have to spend scarce dollars to counter the Conservative ads.

It seems far-fetched, I'll admit. But given that Stephen Harper almost brought down his own government last December over his party's plan to abolish federal subsidies to political parties, wouldn't this be a crafty way of eliminating another federal perk that his opponents could theoretically enjoy?

This post has been brought to you by the tinfoil-hat society of Guelph.

Vancouver Olympics Podcast for the "Intellectual Muscle" Series

2009-11-24T09:55:00.001-05:00

And now for a bit of shameless self-promotion!

Back in August, I was invited to participate in a series of podcasts as part of the educational programming for the Vancouver Olympics. Entitled "Intellectual Muscle", the podcast series was developed in conjunction with VANOC, the University of British Columbia and the Globe and Mail. Over twenty universities are part of the series, which addresses themes related to sustainability, sport and culture.

My podcast - "They like us, they really like us!": Defining Canada through International Accomplishments - discusses on the the changing state of Canadian culture and national identity since World War II, with a particular focus on how Canada's governments have attempted to mobilize popular support around new conceptions of national identity, in an effort to develop national unity and pride. Of course, there are limitations to how much nuance I could incorporate into a 20 minute talk, but hopefully it will provide some interesting food for thought.

My podcast goes live today on the Globe and Mail's website, and will be up until the Olympics.

Canada Border Services - Arbitrary Censors Gone Wild

2009-11-21T09:25:00.004-05:00

Canada Border Services is up to its old nasty tricks again, seizing gay films destined for Ottawa's gay & lesbian Inside Out film festival. All three films have been shown in Canada before, and two of them are rated PG. But CBSA is insisting that it pre-screen all three films, a process they indicate may take up to 4 days - the films were slated to be viewed this weekend.

This sort of arbitrary censorship has been going on at CBSA for decades. Years ago, when I was on the board of the Making Scenes film festival (Ottawa's previous queer film festival), we held a screening of the documentary "Little Sisters, Big Brother", which tracked the decade-long efforts of the Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver to fight against Canada Customs (now CBSA) seizure of its books. The courts sided with the bookstore. Back in the 1970s and early 80s, Canada Customs used to black out information pertaining to safe sex information because it was deemed pornographic - a thoroughly appalling practice in the early days of the AIDS crisis. Gay and lesbian bookstores and festivals face this issue all the time, and have ongoing troubles covering legal costs associated with gaining the release of their materials.

It's ridiculous that bookstores and film festivals are still having to go to court to have these materials released - and doubly so when the materials have already been shown in this country! Small, volunteer-run festivals don't have the resources for legal challenges; they can barely afford to pay for a part-time staff member. When their financial lifeblood - the films they screen - is seized, they risk financial ruin.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that sanity will prevail and that the festival pulls through. But given past experience with CBSA, I'm not counting on it.

New Brunswick Sign Laws

2009-11-10T09:16:00.003-05:00

In my various publications, I've often taken a fairly strong stance against some provisions of Quebec's language laws, particularly early versions of the Charter of the French Language which prohibited signs in languages other than French. So the announcement of a proposed new bylaw in Dieppe, the francophone suburb/co-city of Moncton, New Brunswick which would mandate that all new signs must be either bilingual or in French, is intriguing to me.

I haven't viewed the proposed wording of the new sign bylaw, and I'll be curious to see if there is any language about how prominent French must be on bilingual signs. However, my initial reaction to the bylaw is a positive one. I've never had any major difficulty with language laws that are additive - requiring that another language co-exist or be promoted. Where I object is when these laws cross over into prohibition - denying any right to use another language. The bilingual compromise being proposed by Dieppe seems to meet the bill. Essentially, the bylaw appears to require some inclusion of French on commercial signs, leaving it up to individuals to decide if they also want to include another language. For a community which has essentially become the urban centre of the Acadian community, this seems to fall in the category of positive measures to encourage the use of French, without denying the rights of other language communities to express themselves in their own language.

Of course, I'm sure that there will soon be outbursts of complaints about what the translation costs involved are going to be. I think these will be overstated. And in light of Moncton's shameful historic treatment of its Acadian community (see: Leonard Jones), some encouraging measures are needed.

Canada's Economic Action Plan: Now Creating Advertizing Jobs!

2009-11-09T20:09:00.004-05:00

I guess this story can safely be placed in the "a braindead gopher could have foreseen that this would provoke problems" file. Not that I personally care all that much that an American company was contracted to paint signs to advertize the B.C. and Canadian governments' stimulus spending. But it's hardly the first time that this sort of issue has landed a government in trouble.

For me, the bigger issue is how much taxpayer money is being spent pimping "Canada's Economic Action Plan". I suppose it's creating jobs in advertizing. Why, between those ads and the "Save Local Television"/"Keep Cable Fees Low" spending spree, something like 50 short-term jobs must have been created, right? I mean, where else are those terrible actors going to get work? [/end dripping sarcasm]

Senate Reform Proposal - Just for Fun...

2009-11-06T08:00:00.004-05:00

Here's a Senate reform proposal - doubtless an unworkable one for many reasons. But I'm feeling perky today. I'll make a proposal, and you, my small cohort of readers, can pick it apart and improve it, because what else are you going to do on a Friday.

The EEEP! Senate (a variant on the Reform Party's Triple-E Senate)

110 Senators total
"E"qual representation - 10 from each province, 1 per territory, 7 "floaters"
"E"lected to serve 8 year terms
"E"ffective, and can alter/send back to the House all non-financial legislation
"P"roportional representation by province. 10% of the vote in a province gets you a Senator. The 7 floating seats are allocated to make the national total of Senators more closely reflect to the national PR vote.

Tear it apart, kids!

Senate salaries - and other trivialities that Peter Stoffer is studying

2009-11-05T21:28:00.006-05:00

There's a lot of idiocy to comment on these days in Canadian political life, and I'm too busy with work to deal with it all. But Nova Scotia NDP MP Peter Stoffer's "revelation" of what 27 new Conservative Senate appointees will cost in salaries and expenses if they serve their full term falls firmly in the category of pot-calling-the-kettle-black on the "wasting taxpayer dollars" front. All Senators - Liberal, Conservative, NDP - are paid out of taxpayer dollars. As are MPs. As are their staffs. As is the entire freaking bureaucracy. This is not news. And until we have Senate reform that is accepted by both the federal government and the provinces, I'd rather that the upper house not sit completely vacant, unable to carry out its responsibilities or represent the provinces it is supposed to serve. Moreover, assuming that days spent sitting in the upper chamber is the only thing that Senators do as part of their jobs is a classic example of setting up a straw-man argument.

Canadian Press, which wrote the non-story, at least isn't wasting taxpayer dollars by writing it. CBC, which decided to cover this non-announcement and waste time on it, did. So did Peter Stoffer, who clearly thinks this is how his time as a Member of Parliament (and the time of his taxpayer-paid staff) should be spent, also wasted taxpayer dollars preparing this media release.

If you want Senate reform, that's fine. But let's not pretend that whatever configuration a revamped upper house assumes will not also entail the spending of taxpayer dollars on salaries and expenses.

And let's also not pretend - even among NDP voters - that until the House of Commons moves to some sort of proportional representation system, that there aren't large swaths of the population that are extremely relieved that the Senate can slow down legislation rammed through a "majority" government elected with 39-43% of the popular vote.

ETA: In other conversations, I've been having, it's been pointed out to me that the NDP isn't in favour of Senate reform, but of complete abolition of the upper house. In that case, I will retract /some/ of what I've said about hypocrisy - but only in so far as it pertains to the cost savings of complete abolition. But let me make two other points here. First, I think the Senate serves useful functions. It does initiate legislation, and it does provide an important corrective to the wording/phrasing of bills. This is particularly important because often legislation is rushed through the House to serve highly partisan aims. Without having a reformed electoral system for the House of Commons, it's also the only check that we have on the false majority governments of the day. And I, for one, would be quite concerned about eliminating the upper house without reforming the lower one.

But my bigger concern is the way that Stoffer has chosen to go after the Senate. If the NDP has principled objections to the role of the Senate or the manner of its appointment, it should tackle them directly. Using the "government is too expensive" line feeds into a very nasty discourse, usually used by the right wing, about trying to eliminate all sorts of government programs and salaries/benefits for public officials. While the NDP may take issue with how certain spending is conducted, I don't think they'd be happy to see public health care eliminated on the basis of what doctors (or even better, nurses) will earn in their lifetime. Nor would they argue in favour of its abolition on the basis of what 27 Conservative citizens of Alberta could potentially cost the health care system over their lifetimes.

Or perhaps they would. But it's a dangerous tactic to start down the path of "government officials/programs are too expensive" argument. Therein lies building massive public support for deep cuts to most of the social programs that the NDP holds dear (as they should!)

Canadian Language Portal

2009-10-22T10:21:00.003-04:00

I've been incredibly busy this term, hence the dearth of posts. But my husband, a translator by trade, pointed out this cool new resource to me: Nos Langues/Our Languages is a new language resource tool from the government of Canada. Of particular interest is Termium, which is a major translation database used by the government of Canada, and might be of use to anyone struggling to find that mot juste in their second official language.

Also of interest, speaking of official languages, is the release of volume two of John English's biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Just Watch Me covers the period from 1968-2000. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my copy - the first volume was compelling, and I expect the second one will be as well.

No Confidence in Parliament... at all!

2009-10-01T18:35:00.003-04:00

I, for one, am shocked, absolutely shocked that the Liberals' non-confidence motion failed to pass in the House of Commons. I'm even more shocked that the NDP would chose to abstain on the motion rather than either support the government or the Liberals' motion. I mean, what sort of party would ever follow that particular tactic?

/end dripping sarcasm

At least Rick Mercer is back on TV to help me laugh at the absurdity of it all.

ETA: Hat tip to Canadian Soapbox who is more eloquent on who is winning in this gong show.

Outremont - The Musical

2009-09-21T20:41:00.007-04:00

Watching the hubbub over the Liberal party nomination in Outremont - a battle which Ignatieff has now declared in favour of star candidate Nathalie Le Prohon over former justice minister (and Outremont MP) Martin Cauchon, I am taken back to the two years I spent living in that riding.

The Liberals had trouble back then. Unfortunately, while I moved to Outremont when Cauchon was still my MP, I didn't get the chance to vote for him, although I enthusiastically would have done so. Paul Martin, the curse whose legacy still haunts the Liberals, decided to push aside Chrétien loyalists like Cauchon and Sheila Copps, making way for such luminaries as ex-Bloquiste Jean Lapierre. Not only did I not vote for Lapierre, I campaigned for the then no-hoper NDP candidate. Clearly many Outremont Liberals felt the same way about the changing winds in Liberal HQ. Lapierre's share of the vote plummetted, barely holding on to the seat. And as we see now, the Liberal lock on this safe seat was detached, making way for Thomas Mulcair.

I think this should have gone to an open nomination. But of the various opinions that I've seen on this fracas, my favorite, unsurprisingly, is Chantal Hébert's observation on her blogue at La Presse. She observes that "en laissant traîner les choses pendant une semaine, le chef libéral a transformé une bataille entre chats de ruelle en affrontement entre gangs de rue."

I think this is a rather poetic and dramatic image - the alley cat fight transformed into a street gang confrontation. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim and Luc Plamondon could make a new bilingual musical out of it, which could play at both Stratford and the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.

I rather suspect it would have to be a tragedy.

Ignatieff: Alienating supporters of electoral and parliamentary reform one stupid declaration at a time

2009-09-11T11:00:00.003-04:00

So, responding to Harper's latest skillful bit of bait, Michael Ignatieff has declared he will never enter into a coalition government.

Delightful. In an era of perpetual minority governments, and deeply fragmented voter intentions, Ignatieff has decided that making a working parliament that actually reflects the spectrum of voter opinion is a bad idea.

If he wanted to alienate supporters of electoral reform and voters who actually think a Liberal-NDP coalition might be a good thing, he's done a bang-up job.

I wonder who the NDP and Green candidates are going to be in Guelph...

ETA: I miss Jean Chrétien.

Of Home Renovations and Elections

2009-09-03T10:09:00.003-04:00

Never let it be said that Stephen Harper is not cunning. I've known for a while that the much-touted home renovation tax credit had not yet received official sanction from the House of Commons. Not that you'd know this from all the television ads and every home renovation store touting purchases as being eligible under the program. But you'd figure that someone in the Liberal party had to know that they hadn't voted on this yet.

It figures therefore, that this is the poison pill that the Conservatives are hoping to make the Liberals swallow. At best, Ignatieff will be forced to back down on his threat to vote against the Harper government at the first possible confidence opportunity, and wait until a subsequent vote when the party's bravado has a little less force. At worst, his party votes against a wildly-popular tax credit, and then has to explain to middle-class Canadians how his government will re-introduce the program whenever the House gets around to sitting again after the election - which I'd bet would not be any sooner than December.

My advice: swallow your pride, vote for the reno tax credit, and don't risk losing Ontario seats in the 519-905 belt. It's better than letting the election be branded on the theme of how the Liberals don't care about the middle class.

CCF-NDP-DP-SDP-WXYZ

2009-08-13T20:44:00.004-04:00

A lot of ink has, and will, be spilled over the issue of whether or not the New Democratic Party should change its name. We'll see more this weekend at their convention in Halifax.

My friend Ian Capstick has an interesting commentary on this in the Globe and Mail today.

My own take on this issue is that a name change, while not a bad idea in and of itself, isn't really a crucial issue for the party. If the party is smart, some new key policies and a campaign strategy will come out of the Halifax convention this weekend, and these will get press coverage along with the who-hah over the name change, whatever the party's decision is.

While branding is important, it is unlikely to make a difference at the polls for at least a few more elections (witness the number of people who still refer to the federal Conservatives as "Tories" or "PCs"), as everyone will keep using the old name in conversation (much as most people I know who are around my age still talk about the "Skydome" and the "O'Keefe Centre" despite their changes in name). As a long term rebranding exercise, a name change is not a terrible idea, but the short term gains will be pretty much non-existent. A major policy announcement, on the other hand, could attract some real attention.

A Hillside Moment - Final Fantasy

2009-08-03T19:59:00.006-04:00

I normally keep my blog's content strictly on political/historical matters. But every so often, there is the occasional personal anecdote or cool happening that requires a post. This is one such occasion.

Every July, Guelph is host to the Hillside Festival, a weekend-long community music festival that has become so popular that weekend passes sell out within a matter of a couple of hours when they go on sale in May - before the complete performance line-up has been announced. I've gone for all or part of the festival every year since arriving in Guelph, and have always had some fun memories of it. But nothing compares to the thunderstorm-filled weekend a week ago when we saw Final Fantasy (aka Owen Pallett) perform as the thunderheads rolled in. A few very skillful fans recorded his performance as the heavens opened. Enjoy!

Congratulations to the stage crew for safely getting him through that number!

Michael Ignatieff, the United Kingdom and the Conservative Party of Canada

2009-08-03T16:27:00.003-04:00

I recently received my latest partisan get-my-blood-boiling free-mailer from the Conservative Party, courtesy of Gary Goodyear. It's part of the Conservative party's "Ignatieff: Just visiting" campaign, smearing the Liberal leader for having the temerity to become an internationally-recognized scholar with long-term academic postings in the UK and at at Harvard (quelle horreur!) and alleging that he is insufficiently patriotic to Canada.

Now, I suppose that reasonable people can disagree on Ignatieff's long-term commitment to staying in politics (and in Canada) for long if this gig doesn't pan out for him. But, the historian in me can't help but find it fascinating/amusing that the Conservative Party of Canada is attacking a Liberal leader for being too closely tied to the United Kingdom! John Diefenbaker, champion of all things British and Commonwealth, must be rolling over in his grave to witness the party he gave so much of his life to engaging in petty partisan attacks using "Britishness" as a club to beat its opponents with.