"It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued"

As my very first post on this blog a couple of years ago attested, Peter Russell has been inspirational.

I repeat:

“Spare your breath to cool your porridge.”

Way back in 1992 I participated in negotiations with the Broadcasting Arbitrator (who?) as the Liberal Party’s representative to statutory “negotiations” on the divvying up of broadcast minutes for a future election.  These meetings in the past had been completely perfunctory, but this time, there was a twist.  Well several actually.  We had a new arbitrator, number one. Number two, we had a(nother) new political party flexing its (national) muscles: Refooooorm!  And, number three, these were the first negotiations conducted since the multi-million-multi-year Lortie Commission on Electoral Reform (sic) and Party Financing had delivered a four volume report upon which the government had yet to act (and frankly never did).

Here’s what was interesting about these negotiations (aside from being scrummed for the very first time).  No one really knew this, or rather I should say few were cognizant of this, but at the time the Canada Elections Act, which barely recognized and contained no effective definition of a political party, nonetheless contained references to a formula upon which advertising minutes would be divided amongst the various parties. 
 Basically (I’m doing my best to simplify, so no one jump down my throat for the generalities) the Act recognized that broadcasting (television and radio) were the primary media upon which political parties could get out a message fairly universally to all citizens, but also that these were expensive mechanisms and so an element of fairness should be inserted into the electoral process to ensure that those who had the money couldn’t simply over-buy the airwaves (sound familiar?). 
In other words, to provide a bit of a level playing field.  Keep in mind that while we had quite a number of political parties back then (around 12 if memory serves me), there were only three (ok! I’m leaving out Creditistes) that had ever participated in crafting and amending the Act and its provisions and also which had ever formally participated in these negotiations. So they were really only interested in the playing field amongst themselves.

Soooo, the Act said that the arbitrator needed to meet with the parties to divvy up at total of 390 minutes (6.5 hours) of paid advertising time. “Free time” advertising would be allocated based on the “agreement” on paid time.  In place was a statutory formula for the divvying up of these minutes and if the parties couldn’t agree, the Arbitrator would decide. In keeping with the above-mentioned, the Arbitrator had never had to well, arbitrate; everyone (the big three) always agreed on the formula’s outcome. No Question Asked.

The formula, bless its little soul, used for the allocation of paid time was based largely on the application of factors that gave equal weight to the percentage of seats in the House of Commons and the percentage of the popular vote obtained by each of the registered parties in the previous general election, and half-weight to the number of candidates endorsed by each of the registered parties as a proportion of all candidates so endorsed. So, if that lost you – read it again – you will note it is based on previous performance – including, but not exclusive to the number of or even having a seat in the House of Commons. In short, it was was based on some principles.

Sooo, I, the little Opposition party person arrive at the usually sleepy meeting of party reps and who’s there, but The Media, yeah, THE MEDIA, and the REFORM Party – those upstarts – they joined our private little meeting, AND THEY CALLED THE MEDIA!!! After we all calmed down and the Arbitrator explained everything we got down to business.  But a lot of the business wasn’t what everyone expected.  We chatted a lot about public opinion and not a lot about democracy or equality of opportunity in the democratic process, but, I digress – or do I?

The Reform Party rep – actually a good man and a good political friend to this day, began by challenging, as had his party in court, the application of the provisions, which, without doing the math, one could see would diminish their relative weight, simply because of the paucity of seats they held in the House, and the number of seats they had run candidates in, even though they had performed relatively well on popular vote in the ’88 election.  At one point he mused that because his party was at 18% in public opinion polls; his party should be allocated 18% of the advertising minutes.  Being in opposition at the time and really, really badly in opposition to boot, I jokingly shot back that we, the Liberal Party, should then get 35% of the time because that’s where we stood at that very minute in the polls (even though we were little munchkins in terms of our relative weight in the house). 

The Tories (real Wheatbix Tories they were in those days too) really didn’t know what to make of all of this.  Their performance in the last election meant that they were entitled to well over 50% of the available prime time minutes, but everyone and I mean everyone (cause remember, my party had been in a majority situation before) knew that even though it was impossible without busting the expenditure limit several times over to purchase prime time advertising to a limit on each station in the country, you agreed to the allocation in order to hoard minutes so no one else could use them.

Soo, the little opposition person with nothing to lose and a democratic bent fomented from the Lortie hearings just ended, offered that piddling as they were, the Liberal Party would be prepared to “donate” some of its minutes to the emerging parties, because it would be good for the public debate, on the basis of the principles of the statutory formula (combination weight of % seat in the House, % of popular vote and proportion of candidates run).

The Arbitrator (with some edification by the courts admittedly) agreed that the allocation formula had a discriminatory effect which tended to favour the existing parties at the expense of new or emerging parties. He concluded that the statutory factors as applied to allocation “unduly fettered the ability of emerging parties to purchase enough time to make a meaningful case to the Canadian public”. So, two thirds of the time was allocated using the statutory factors and the remaining one third was allocated equally among all the registered parties. The result of this, as was put at the time a “hybrid” approach, was to significantly increase the time allotted to smaller parties, while continuing the predominant weight given to previous performance of “successful” parties. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a great Canadian compromise.

So fast forward to today’s debates about “the Debate”. It’s a debate that encompasses several similar parameters.  It discusses legitimacy for inclusion as witnessed or contemplated through previous performance and public expectations or increasingly importantly sentiment.  Some, but not all of these principles are being discussed. If you really think about they are challenging our tenets and precepts.  

We used to do that behind closed doors and without formal change. But when the public is involved it is often hidden too.  That’s called convention. But it is really about vested interest. In Canada, even though we’ve been given a lot of opportunity, it’s rarely called public intervention or public legislation.  For some reason, we prefer to let convention – for have no mistake, that is what Elizabeth May, when she speaks of opportunity, or Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, when they yearn for one-on-ones are talking about.

For sure. Let’s have a discussion in this election about who should be included in a debate. But could we please have the bigger discussion about why? And what’s fair? And what’s in the public’s interest? And a better definition of a national party? And how we should codify it? And most important of all, on what bases?

Every election, we seem to discuss what is in the perceived interest of the various parties, because we think that is what ultimately is in our own interests.  And then we hear that so rarely are our elections about something. Or something real.  When might we have a debate – in an election - about how we want to be and how we should be represented? In an election that people are already calling a Senfeld Election – an election about nothing, why don’t we turn it into an election about something that counts?

"They can expect nothing but their labour for their pains."

Herewith, my op-ed on women's progress in the Canadian political area, published on International Women's Day in the Ottawa Citizen:

Women's (lack of) progress through the decades

By Sheila Gervais, Ottawa Citizen March 8, 2011 5:24 AM

I am feeling my, um, demographics in this week that we mark the 100th International Women's Day. I'm a first-generation, middleaged, mixed-race, Canadian woman who has yet to see gender balance (note the politesse in this term; it's as if gender equity is just too unattainable, or perhaps too scary) in any legislative body in her country, in her lifetime, so far.

I'm feeling it, frankly, in a year when women elsewhere are making a difference in decision-making -where as we are told by Naomi Wolf in the Globe and Mail there is a feminist revolution happening in the Middle East, and that women have been courageously leading the way in Egypt, and also that while the circumstances in Afghanistan are increasingly challenging for women, there is nonetheless a greater percentage of women in the Afghan parliament than in Canada's.

And that's in this year, 2011.

All of a sudden it strikes me that years ending in "1" have some sort of significance for women. Well Canadian women at least.

Not always positive significance, but significance, nonetheless. It was 90 years ago, in 1921, that the first woman, Agnes McPhail was elected to the House of Commons, stating about her reasons for running and representing, "I want for myself what other women want."

Geesh. Who the heck wouldn't want that, regardless of just exactly what it was they wanted represented?

Especially when, no doubt and everywhere, gender is the only natural 50/50 split that exists. Interestingly and surprisingly timely, among other things, McPhail was an early advocate for prison reform.

Go figure.

It was 40 years ago, in 1971 (following the report of the Royal Commission a year earlier) that the first Minister of the Status of Women was appointed and 10 years after that in 1981 that the first female (and there have only been women since) Minister Judy Erola, was appointed, and not coincidentally that equality entered our Constitution.

And, thank goodness.

In the election after Judy became Minister, our ranks rose to a whopping 9.6 per cent of the elected House. By the time the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (Lortie Commission) reported in 1991 (a mere 20 years ago) we had pretty much doubled -a major and unmarked milestone -achieving 13.4 per cent in the election of 1988.

Taking a timeout to remark on the Lortie Commission's recommendations and legacy in this regard is warranted, particularly given the "1" year of the report. It just seems to take decades for change to occur in Canada, while elsewhere, it occurs at breakneck speed -(sigh, I digress).

The Commission had examined circumstances related to elections and representativeness around the globe and included proposals for increasing equity in the Can-adian Parliament based on those experiences and accomplishments. It noted, for example, how some countries that had already achieved gender balance had 40/40 rules: both women and men had to be represented to the level of 40 per cent.

In addition to other important incentive-mechanisms, the report recommended a regime that would kick in, in the next election, should "equitable" gender representation not reach 20 per cent in the House of Commons by the election following its tabling.

In simple terms, what Lortie recommended was that parties receive an increased reimbursement (or public subsidy) based on the numbers, proportionately, of women that they elected.

It recommended that this regime stay in place for at least two elections following the 20-per-cent achievement.

Readers should note that the generally accepted "rule" is that gender-based decision-making is impacted when a (national) legislature reaches what is called a critical mass; the UN sets this at one-third or between 30 and 33 per cent. At the election following the Report (1993) Canadians did indeed elect more women to Parliament, but missed the Commission's target by two percentage points and elected 18 per cent women.

The results since then, without the adoption of most of the Lortie Commission recommendations related to gender balance, or otherwise, are as follows: 1997: 20.6; 2004: 21.1; 2006: 20.8; and, 2008: 22.1.

It is accepted internationally that achieving gender balance makes changes in decision-making in national legislatures. Examples abound, but in South Africa, for example, where the 30-percent threshold has been exceeded, women legislators introduced gender-based analysis into the national budget process; studies in Costa Rica indicate that female representatives have an 80-per-cent success rate in getting legislation introduced and passed compared to a 48-per-cent success rate for men; and in Rwanda -usually at or near the top in gender balanced national legislatures -laws prohibiting women from inheriting land have been repealed.

Canada clocks in at around 50th place in terms of female representation in the world's national legislatures, depending on the year. So on the 10th anniversary of the founding of Equal Voice, a non-partisan organization dedicated to achieving gender balance in Canadian institutions, in this year 2011, where the power of women is making itself the power of the world and when Canadians are likely to elect a new government, how likely am I, given my demographic, to finally be represented?

Sheila Gervais, a former national director of the Liberal Party of Canada, sits on the Equal Voice advisory committee. She has written extensively on political party development and gender and politics.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

"Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?" Byelection syncronicity: Power to the people

Most of the posting and punditry analysis of the three federal by-elections held this past Monday has focused on the deep meaning or not of possible immediate and longer-term electoral trends that might be indicated by the different results. Discussions, not unexpectedly, centre on traditional by-election turnout levels, profile of the candidates, the rural/urban "divide" and some bits on the resonance of messages or perceived political party ideologies.

I see another set of patterns in these by-elections with implications for all of the political parties and while this may sound counter-intuitive given the poor turnout, these are related to a desire by the public - in the sense of the grassroots, the plebs, the masses - to be closer to the action. 

What are these common threads?

Local is where it's at. All three by-elections were called when their federal representatives chose to take a run at municipal politics. While I don't have the stats, this appears to be part of a trend in recent years of elected officials seeking positions at a "lower" level; a level closer to the people, viz. Joe Fontana, Dawn Black, Jim Watson.  Municipalities in Canada, be they large cities like Winnipeg, mid-sized and fast-growing ones like Vaughan or rural regional service centres like Dauphin, have the most direct impact on our quality of life, on our environment, on our welfare and on our economy.

It is interesting in light of Samara's latest study of the motivations of MPs, that some of our most seasoned chose to offer to serve where they believed they could have a greater impact.

Now, while the low turnout in the by-elections could be simply be a result of voter fatigue stemming from back-to-back elections in those municipalities, I'd posit that it could just as easily be as a result of voters giving more import to and therefore interest in who represents them at the local rather than the federal level.

Grassroots are not involved in candidate choices. Here by "grassroots" I mean both the political party partisan member and the civically-minded engaged citizen. 

In Vaughan, both of the leading candidates, Julian Fantino for the CPC and Tony Genco for the LPC were appointed and regardless the stated reasons there was deemed to be no need for a meeting of the membership.  In the case of the LPC, there hasn't been a meeting of the membership related to the choice of a candidate in over 20 years, the incumbent having been uncontested or "protected" in six general elections. Some have suggested that Mr. Genco (and this is no reflection on his calibre as a candidate whatsoever) was appointed because the Party was unable to convince several others, including former National Director Rocco Rossi to take the plunge.  Shame if that is so, but it also makes one wonder about the state of the riding association if their lack of ability to identify and convince - with much notice - good candidates with local roots to run.  I don't know the circumstances, I admit, but one has to wonder just how engaged the association is with its own citizens relative to its engagement with its MP or national party. Open nominations are great ways to engage the public.  LPC often seems to want to shut them out.

In Winnipeg North, the NDP chalks up their stunning loss of a flagship riding to the fact that their candidate Kevin Chief, while also of high calibre, was less known than the Liberal candidate and ultimate winner, Kevin Lamoureaux.  But they fail to mention, as widely rumoured that their own grassroots refused to participate or participated lamely having been shunned from selecting their own candidate themselves.  Kevin Chief was the choice of the outgoing MP and the party "elite".  Glad to know the NDP have one too.

And guess what? Not that it would or did make much of a difference in Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette (CPC could probably run a stick of wood and still win), Stephen Harper too chose to effectively appoint the candidate, Robert Sopuck, so angering the former MP, Inky Mark, a former Reform MP to boot, that he endorsed the Green Party candidate Kate Storey.

Used to be that local associations of political parties acted to some extent as brokerages for the institutional party with the population both in terms of political expression and representation. Having a say on policy matters and in the choice of candidates was a way to balance power between Party and Public.  What these by-elections illustrate to me is that the public already know where the real power lies.  It lies with the people.

In the immortal words of John Lennon:  right on!

"Many go out for wool, and come home shorn themselves".

I really don't get it.  I am usually the first in line to criticize my Party - and especially the Caucus purporting to decide/speak for the entire party all the time - for not consulting or at least finding some way to do a real values-oriented validation on the big policy directions of the day. (Not talking issues management here.)  I for one am getting pretty darned tired with the "You Propose, therefore I Oppose" modus of political debate in this country (well not just this country, but I digress).  Sounds silly, I know, but some issues are just too important for politics.  So one question for the LPC Caucus members and other Party members and pundits now vocally opposed to Leader Michael Ignatieff's position on assistance to Afghanistan but who (presumably) approved of the foreign policy program announced in June and fleshed out earlier this month:  If this were all happening for the first time today, what role is it exactly that you would propose Canada take on?  What role, given our historical outlook and historical strengths?
I'm not usually a betting gal, but I'd venture a wager on this one that the answer, from a military perspective would likely be along the lines of peacekeeping and training.  Particularly as we right now probably have the best, and freshest experience and expertise in the world to impart.
Where I will (must) agree, though is that the Canadian public is surely owed a public and open debate and discussion in the interests of public order and good government and in that vein, the Party is too. I guess what goes around, comes around.

I am warningly mindful though, as I often am, of Sir Edmund Burke's poignant commentary on representation: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

"A little in one's own pocket is better than much in another man's purse."

It seems that when it comes to reports about political fundraising in Canada we see the same headlines and stories recycled quarter after quarter year after year - at least when it comes to the Liberal Party and at least since 2004. "Cash-strapped Liberals". "Liberals lag behind."   Virtually every such headlined story contains a line or two suggesting that it is simply mind boggling how the party has been unable to "adapt" in over 7 years to the "new regime" of limits on donations and sources of funds.  The usual excuses are trotted out.  We had a Leader who was "dumb as a bag of hammers" (not); we never got over losing access to the corporate teat and continue to look for ways around it; we're doing okay, the Tories are just better at it; we've had problems (in this day and age, sheesh!) developing or buying the proper database; those mean old Tories used those nasty 10 percenters.   The one that hits closest to home is that the Tories inherited a more grassroots-oriented system or rather culture from their Reform wing.  

I would tie to this Liberal Party cultural shibboleth the unfortunate structure of the organization itself.  The Liberal Party of Canada remains a federation of "Provincial and Territorial Associations".  Until 2006 the constitutionally defined members of the the LPC were these "PTA's".  Actual individual membership in the party was not held at the national level, there was no standardization with respect to dues, privileges, and the like, other than the most basic (not a member of another party, etc.) and the PTA's, having wrested "control" of the lists away from the riding associations, guarded their membership lists fiercely from the national party.  While successful in creating (on paper at any rate) a "National Register of Members" in 1992, the national organization was not to fundraise from these lists, if given, and the biggest budgetary consultations each year occurred around "revenue sharing agreements" between the various levels.

Even with the obvious impact of the 2004 and subsequent changes to the Canada Elections Act, and with the move in 2006 to a real national register of members, the party continues to constitutionally vest power and authority for operations to the PTA's (real power and authority however is vested with appointed officials and bodies in the party but that's for another post) and separate revenue sharing arrangements are negotiated each year with each PTA.

This federated structure made sense in the days when there were closer and in fact unifed relationships between Liberal "Parties" at the national level contesting for seats in the House of Commons and Liberal "Parties" at the provincial level vying to form provincial governments.  In today's world, the BC Liberal Party for example has no ties related to members, policy, funding or frankly ideology to the Liberal Party of Canada. Provincial Leaders and MLA's have no standing at National Conventions or within the LPC constitution for any purpose including consultative.  Some of the smaller provinces retain some ties, mostly related to cost-sharing for secretariat operations, but the CEA and similar provincial acts have made financial and other ties virtually obsolete.

So who can, and who does raise money from whom remains an annual and individual matter of negotiation. Individual members, while being members of the national organization through their local organization are organized by their PTA's and subjected to the commensurate loyalty/affinity tuggles and jealousies.  

The main outcome of this is an ingrained culture of members giving at the local level and influencers giving nationally, although members will give when they are charged up and stimulated either by policy or passionate advocacy or both.  I think that this impression also influences the perceived voting preferences amongst the populace at large.  In other words, rather than Canadians giving less to the LPC when polls decline, the polls decline when Canadians see that the party's own membership either declines, or reduces its own vocal and financial support.

Like most things in the Liberal Party, organizational change occurs at a snails pace. In some sense this is understandable for a party that "knows" that if it can just wait it out until it's back in power, things will all be right once again.  But the required cultural change will not in my view occur without it. 

Cultural change and organizational change.  It's like love and marriage.  You can't have one without the other.       

Remember the old saying, "Faint heart never won fair lady."

I'm seeing  a bit of red over this front page story in today's Globe, particularly the beginning of this sentence:

"But more specifically, insiders said the Liberals will abandon nanny state proposals like universal child care and put forward boutique proposals that would cost relatively little and target areas where many Canadians are hurting – such as their family-care plan, which would give family caregivers a six-month employment-insurance benefit similar to parental leave and a family-care tax benefit for low- and moderate-income earners modelled on the child tax benefit."

Insiders say the Liberals will abandon universal child care do they?  On a day when I'll be attending an event for Liberal women with members of the Liberal women's caucus and former female Liberal luminaries, billed as an opportunity for women to participate in the Party's policy development we read this?  

It is also rather galling coming so swiftly after Person's Day when at a panel discussion following the ceremony we heard the Governor General's Person's Award laureates speak about the importance of universal child care to the cause of women's equality.

Although I am sometimes referred to as an "insider", and it can certainly be a useful moniker from time-to-time I'll admit, in reality I am not.  As a member of the LPC, I shouldn't have to be, or become, an "insider" to effectively influence policy. 

It will be an interesting discussion tonight, no doubt.