Losing the Thread

Driving past the gas station today Regular is $1.67 a litre. At the grocery store some perfectly ordinary eggs were $8.00 a dozen. Butter is $6.50 when not on sale.

On Canada Day some addled youth decided it would be a good idea to toss the statue of Captain Cook into the Inner Harbour. I rather doubt they had any idea who the great explorer and cartographer was, but he looked very 18th century and that was enough.

Over seven hundred people died during last weeks’ heat wave with around five hundred of those deaths attributed to the heat. Ambulance wait times went to over three hours.

Various polls suggest that Justin Trudeau is within sight of a majority were a federal election to be held now.

The remarkable thing about all of these little snippets of news is that they seem to be regarded as business as usual. Being taxed by an inflation rate which is well into the double digits does not cut through the COVID hype. Vandalism and arson purportedly in rage over residential school deaths which we have known about for decades attracts very little comment – though many First Nations people are not very happy that reservation churches which have served their communities for years are being burnt. People seem to shrug off the heat wave deaths and ambulance delays.

I expect very little from government at any level. A reasonably sound currency, a degree of public order and emergency services which can deal with the inevitable surges in demand.

The emergency services issue is probably the most easily fixed. Yes, having more para-medics is part of the solution but planning a reponse to these sorts of surge emergencies which tries to avoid the need for an ambulance in the first place is important too. Most of the dead were old, in many cases, very old. It should not be impossible to identify those older people and have a plan for these sorts of emergencies. Something as simple as a “Helpful Neighbour” program on a voluntary basis would be a good first step.

Restoring public order is more complicated. First, you have to have the political will to actually take on the problem. As we saw a couple of years ago, when it comes to people purporting to act on behalf of First Nations/environmental causes that will is absent. But even if the politicians decided that enough was enough there needs to be an investigation and an understanding of how the “spontaneous” vandalism and arson and blockades are driven. That is going to require rooting around in the activist community which will be, to say the least, difficult. The people who are actually creating the public disorder pay close attention to operational and communications security. Suffice to say this stuff is not being organized on a Facebook page.

Restoring order is also going to require a look at who benefits from disorder. To take an example: was it co-incidence that the sad fact of the Kamloops residential school graveyard came up just as the inquiry into Canada’s Winnipeg Lab’s connection to the Wuhan virology lab was heating up? The fact of there being a graveyard had been know for decades. The ground radar was being used to determine the boundaries so a new fence could be built. Yet, somehow, the number of bodies became headline news. I suspect, but cannot prove, that this was no accident. Public order will be restored when disorder is no longer in anyone’s interest.

Inflation is more complicated still. First off, the Liberal government and the Bank of Canada seem skeptical that there is any inflation worth mentioning and, if there is, seem convinced that it will be transitory. Second, the Liberals seem to think that with interest rates at record lows, borrowing lots of money makes a ton of sense. Third, the tools available to reduce inflation are all politically painful: reducing deficit spending means saying “no” to program and benefit expansion. Raising interest rates, even a little, would increase the cost of the government’s debt and the debt which Canadians have taken on in buckets during COVID. Plus, there is a federal election coming and no government wants to even tap on the brakes at the risk of losing votes.

In the past, inflation was largely self correcting. At a certain point the government would no longer find buyers for its bonds and would have to raise interest rates until it could. That brake has, to a degree, disappeared now that the Bank of Canada has decided to purchase government debt in apparently unlimited amounts.

The Modern Monetary Theory people will think this printing is a very good thing. I suspect it isn’t. What it creates is asset and price inflation. The $6.50 butter becomes $9.00 and the $1.67 gas becomes $3.00. But wages and salaries and even government benefits, are unlikely to keep pace. This clobbers the benefits, working and middle classes.

At the moment virtually all the Western economies are printing money fast and that means that the Canadian dollar is holding its value relative to other currencies. How long that will be the case remains to be seen. Similarly, interest rates are crawling along at less than 1%. Will that continue? I doubt it.

Bubbles burst. Eventually the dislocations caused by too much money in the marketplace will disturb and then dis-combobulate the system and the inflation will have to be squeezed from that system.

Politically, printing money is much more satisfactory than raising revenue and decreasing expenditures. There will be no action at all taken on inflation before the next federal election and it is not obvious that there will be any taken after. It is not obvious that Trudeau or his Cabinet have the foggiest idea that any of this is a problem. Nor, frankly, is it clear that O’Toole and the CPC would be much better.

The ideas of a stable currency, public order and good emergency services are beginning to sound a bit antique, quaint as it were. However, I suspect we’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Victoria Day

The Young Queen

Victoria Day began as a celebration of Queen Victoria’s birthday and an even louder celebration of the British Empire and Canada’s place within it. Bands, patriotic addresses, dances and teas were held in gratitude for Canada’s essential Britishness. The long Victorian era of Peace, Order and Good Government, the old flag and the old Queen underpinned the astonishing rigor with which Canada was first settled and then made into an economic powerhouse.

Underlying all that was a sense that the government, at a federal and provincial level had the peace and prosperity of Canadians as its singular priority. While there were better and worse politicians, the apparatus of state, of the Courts, of the military, of the schools and universities was dominated by men who aspired to public service for mainly honourable reasons. If a man sufficiently distinguished himself in the public’s service and kept his personal life free of scandal, he might, in time, expect a knighthood or at least a CBE.

The thing that was striking about this WASP ascendency was just how capable it was. Railways were built, banks founded, canals dug, mines and mills tore wealth from the hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness. Ranches and wheat farms, vast fisheries, and, eventually, steel mills and implement manufacturers and a host of other factories were concieved of and executed by these men.

For the modern sensibility the fact they were all men, all white, almost all – to one degree or another – Protestant is more than a little problematic. They were undoubtably racist, certainly sexist and not at all interested in being “inclusive”. But that took nothing away from their general competence and overall trustworthiness. They would debate particular policies from tarriffs to banking regulation to immigration to relations with “the Mother Country” and the rather doubtful Americans; but they framed their debates in terms of what was best for Canada. They certainly did not always “get it right” but it was not for want of trying or good will.

A great deal has changed in Canada since our Victorian gentlemen first celebrated their Queen’s birthday. Massive, non-British immigration, the political awakening of French Canada, two world wars, the end of the British Empire, votes for women, communications, transportation and medical revolutions: really, the invention of the modern world.

The idea that Canada is for every Canadian and should not be run by an male Anglo elite began its march through the institutions during Pierre Trudeau’s tenure. The visible symbols of the monarchy, the flag, the coat of arms on the mailboxes, God Save the Queen as a second national anthemn, Dominion Day all were replaced or simply forgotten.

A brighter, less traditional, Canada with a logo for a flag, community mailboxes, a national anthemn with constantly changing words and “Canada Day” replaced the dated echos of an Empire which no longer ruled the waves. More fundamentally, Trudeau with his brilliant Chief Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Pitfield, set about to replace the old ways of governing Canada.

The clubish conception of government by a vetted, trusted, mandrainate of gentlemen who had been similarly educated, had often served in the military and who were, by the standards of their peers, “sound” was replaced with a meritocratic, competitive, civil service designed to explicitly include French Canadians and women from the outset. The old system of regionally based political leadership was replaced with a Prime Minister’s Office which bypassed those regional potentates and dealt directly with the Premiers and, more importantly, with now increasingly professionalized provincial public services.

This transformation of Canadian governance was cemented with the Elections Act which formallized the power of a recognized party leader to authorize (or not) candidates running for that party and, of course, by the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Elections Act changes eliminated competing centers of political power within political parties at the federal level. The Charter gave a structure to arguments about personal versus governmental rights and powers.

From the Trudeau/Pitfield perspective the great stumbling blocks to modernizing Canada were the old fashioned, decentralized, mechanisms of the 19th century. The whole idea of a federal cabinet minister being power in his own right or a provincial premier defying Ottawa was contrary to the centralizing tendancies of the modern managerial/bureaucratic state. The Elections Act centralized political power in the hands of the party leader, the Charter was more subtle. Here power was, apparently, given to individual Canadian citizens but that power could be used to assert rights against both the federal and provincial levels of government.

This past 18 months we have had the opportunity to see how well the new system works under stress. Frankly, I am deeply unimpressed.

One thing you could count on with the pre-Trudeau establishment was a level of individual competence. Influential Cabinet Ministers and senior civil servants were not the products of political accident or random encounters at college. You did not get close to power without a resume of accomplishment. This is, rather obviously, no longer the case.

More importantly, the old guard regarded character as important as educational accomplishment or experience. People who lied, pretended to know more than they did, or were otherwise less than honest – the word “sharp” was not one you wanted said about you – made very little progress politically or within the public service. It was informal but it was effective. (It was also, by intention, exclusionary.)

The performance of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Ministers directly responsible for Canada’s COVID reponse at the federal level has been pathetic. At no point has the PM effectively taken charge. At no point has the public health advice been anything but lame and confused. We may have achieved diversity and inclusion in our federal Cabinet but it has come at the cost of competence.

The provinces have been little better. The patchwork quilt of lockdowns, school closings, travel restrictions, mask mandates, strangely prioritized vaccination regimes and the abandonment of the elderly in long term care facilities all suggest that the provincial public health officials and the politicians they advise have no clue what to do.

The use of Emergency Orders to impose restrictions which are constitutionally impugnable is the exercise of power without any real responsibility. (The fact that when these restrictions are constitutionally challenged the cases are, for the most part, quietly dropped by the Crown says a great deal. The fact that at no point has any level of government presented evidence going to the question of “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” is even more telling.)

The crusty old Victorians and their successors, swept away by Trudeau pere‘s re-invention of Canada, would, I suspect, have done at least as well as our woke technocrats. Likely better as they would have looked past “the models” and noticed that the elderly were dying in droves. Addressing that problem early and effectively could have kept the COVID death numbers down. So would closing the borders.

I can’t imagine that a Mackenzie King or a C.D. Howe would have pinned all hope on an undiscovered vaccine without also assigning “top men” to investigating treatment protocols. Nor would there have been any shilly shallying about lockdowns: either there would have been a strict lockdown or none at all.

May 24th has become the weekend to open up the cottage, perhaps display a Canadian flag and have several Canadian beers. It is no longer a celebration of Queen Victoria or Canada’s British heritage. It would be lovely to think we are abandoning the old traditions because the modern world is a great deal better. But it isn’t.

Nickel a KWH

Poor, stunned, Scheer really had no clue what to do during the election. Leave aside the abortion and the gay marriage hit jobs, the poor bugger had no counter for the climate hysteria whipped up by Trudeau, McKenna, Greta and Lizzie May. He lacked the courage to actually take on the bogus, not ready for policy, “science” which underlies the “climate emergency” and he really had no coherent, simply stated, policy of his own. Now a decade of non-stop climate hysteria with very little push back has left us in the invidious position that to win votes a party has to hew to climate orthodoxy.

Sigh.

However, there is nothing which demands that a political party accept orthodoxy when it comes to addressing the much hyped emergency. So here is a suggestion for the Conservatives, rather than debating the finer points of a pointless carbon tax or a cap and trade disaster or how many windmills will fit on the head of a pin, why not come out with a positive program which treats reducing carbon emissions as a happy by-product.

Canada has an abundance of hydro electric power. In BC, if you ignore the emissions costs of the components of most electric vehicles, you can actually drive essentially emissions-free all the way back to the generation of the electricity. We have that much hydro and are building more.

Quebec is a hydropower powerhouse as well. The problem is the grid and the distances involved in getting power to the people.

The solution to that problem is nuclear. A few, relatively small scale, nuclear plants of modern design and safety, could mean cheap, abundant, baseload power was available throughout Canada and in Canada’s North. Add a nuclear station at Fort McMurray and you radically reduce the emissions of that key energy asset.

But for the Conservatives to sell the program they need a slogan, I would try “Nickel a kilowatt hour” but, “Nickel a kilowatt” is snappier if less accurate, (though more accurate than labelling carbon dioxide “carbon”).

Electricity so cheap you would be foolish not to run your car on it and heat your house with it. Instead of raising energy prices with punitive taxes to reduce demand for “dirty” energy, why not drop the price of clean energy to essentially zero and see the demand soar as people voluntarily switch to so called cleaner alternatives.

Canada has lots of uranium. Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin is lousy with the stuff. We have significant expertise in building small, safe, nuclear reactors. Along with the reactors we’d also look at developing more hydro power and building, if not a national grid, then very strong regional grids to meet increased demand.

“Electric Canada” is a positive way to respond to the “climate emergency” and it even has the merit of being useful during the coming, sun driven, cold period which is far more likely than global warming.

The trivialization of Canadian Politics

Dock Currie (not related) apparently posted something to the internet several years ago which was offensive. So he felt he had to resign as an NDP candidate. [Anyone who sees Dock on Twitter has to wonder if he has ever posted something which is not offensive, but there is is.) Several conservatives have, at various times been in the same crowd of several hundred or thousand people as Canada’s answer to Toyko Rose, Faith Goldy. The shock, the horror.

I realize that a race between Trudeau, Scheer, Singh and May is not very inspiring. (It would have been so much more interesting had the Conservatives actually run a conservative like Max Bernier rather than whatever the hell Scheer is, but them’s the breaks.) But piling on to candidates for ancient statements or mau-mauing them for distant association with a cartoon fascist simply sets the bar even lower.

Having accomplished nothing of substance in their years in government – they even screwed up the pot file which took real ingenuity – the Libs are reduced to going negative from the outset. Their war room knows that Canadians are unimpressed with “climate change needs higher taxes” as a campaign theme. They also know that Trudeau’s legal and ethics problems offset what charisma he has as a campaigner.

So now it is time for “Project Fear”. Scheer = Harper = Trump. Scheer is going to take away abortion rights, Scheer is not an ally of the gay community because he does not jet all over the country to march in pride parades. The Conservatives hate immigrants and so on.

Going negative this early strongly suggests that the Lib’s internal polling is suggesting a fair bit of weakness. Conventionally, a party will save the negative stuff for the last couple of weeks of the campaign when it is the most damaging and the hardest to refute. I suspect the Libs have realized that with their own leader either under RCMP investigation or credibly accused of impeding that investigation, they need to distract and terrify the under 30’s, newer immigrants and the ladies if they are going to win.

After years of public school and woke university, the under 30’s are ignorant enough to fall for the climate scare. Newer immigrants might be frightened by conservatives who attended a rally at which Faith Goldy was present because, well, that would make them Nazis too. And the Libs think the ladies will swoon over the suggestion that Scheer (a major breeder and Catholic) will be jumping right in to create a Handmaiden’s Tale anti-abortion dystopia where the State will mandate that pregnancy will only end with birth.

With a bought and paid for mainstream media pumping out those themes, keeping Max off stage and lobbing Nerf ball questions at Trudeau, the Liberal war room may well be right.

After all, when not plotting with the Pope to make pregnancy mandatory, Scheer is a dull, decent, dog of a candidate. Dirty him up a bit and the poor man may never recover.

The Liberal war room and the mainstream media seem to think this is what politics is about. It isn’t. Right now there are actually serious issues facing Canada beginning with the fact that because of the disaster which is Canadian energy policy, the shut down of 50% of Saudi Arabia’s oil production may mean the Eastern Bastards really do freeze in the dark this winter. Will that come up on the campaign trail? Will real, if painful solutions to Canada’s deficit and debt problem come up? Will the fact that our current External Affairs minister is persona non gratia in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US come up?

These are real issues. Dock Currie’s usually odious comments and being in the same city as Faith Goldy are not.

The Liberals and the paid for Canadian media are pretty sure we’re too dumb to see the difference.

Timing

A fair number of the louder conservatives are already calling down the Furies on Justin Trudeau and his Cabinet. It turns out the Stephan Dion is just as Green as he ever was and that the Libs are going to throw their shoulders into bringing the 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada ASAP. And lots more besides. As Lance over at SDA points out:

“I hope the incrementalist Conservatives are paying attention. The liberals are slashing and burning their way back to Trudeaupia and they’ve only been in power for what – a week?”

With 39% of the vote the Libs are doing exactly what they said they were going to do and, of course, the media party is cheering them on.

Whining about the Libs doing what they said they were going to do is dopey. At the moment, and right through the winter and into the spring, the Liberals are going to push their agenda. They are also going to blame the Conservatives for anything which goes wrong. Conservatives who don’t get that are just firing blanks at an indifferent enemy.

Now is an excellent time for Conservatives to think clearly about why, in four years, Canadians should vote for the Conservative Party. Make the assumption that all will go reasonably well for Trudeau. (Over estimate his strength.) Assume further that there is presently no potential Conservative leader who will come close to Trudeau in terms of straight leadership appeal. Now, why would someone vote for the Conservative Party?

It is not enough to shoot at the inevidable “carbon tax”. Conservatives have to go out and actually say why a carbon tax is an expensive, ineffective way of making very little change to a non-existent problem. They need to push back against the dwindling, but loud, anti-scientific, economically illiterate warmists. On migrants they need to actually articulate why it is a bad idea to allow more than 25,000 into Canada while be conspicuous in helping to settle the poor people already in the pipeline.

Conservatives also have to think seriously about their own economic platform. Trudeau is promising 10 billion a year for infrastructure to be financed with deficits. Throughout the campaign there was no coherent response to this bit of economic candy. Was it wrong? If so why? Did the Conservatives have an alternative? What are the pillars of a Conservative economic vision for Canada? That needs to be hashed out before there really can be a coherent response to Trudeau.

Just as every new government has a honeymoon lasting at least six months and often up to a year, a defeated party has a period of reflection. While Ezra and the gang at the Rebel are pouncing on every Liberal announcement and appointment as evidence of Liberal prefidity, they are wasting their breath and annoying the fair minded Canadians who tend to think the new kids should have a bit of a break as they take over.

Winning the next election is going to be touch for the Conservatives, there is no reason to make it tougher by substituting rants for constructive policy. Give Trudeau room to make his mistakes. Give him time to hit the various potholes the world is putting in his way. Most of all, get to work to give Canadians a real alternative to the Liberals.