More on Graves and Xenophobic Tories

I reviewed data from the 2008 Canada Election Survey to substantiate Frank Graves' assertion that the Conservative Party of Canada attracts xenophobes and homophobes. Or to be more accurate, that xenophobes and homophobes are attracted to the CPC.

Using two variables - the first measuring respondent attitudes on various political parties and the second their attitudes toward racial minorities - I constructed the following tables for the CPC, LPC, NDP and Bloc as well as a final table showing general attitudes toward political parties. I also variables involving self-identification with political parties and attitudes toward gays and lesbians.*

According to data, 3% of the respondents that indicated they liked the Conservative Party of Canada also stated a dislike of racial minorities. This is a clear sign, a proverbial smoking gun, that the CPC harbours devout racists and xenophobes within their ranks!

But wait, there's more. Using the same variables and scale, 5% of those respondents who said they liked the Liberal Party also said they disliked racial minorities. Ditto for the NDP (see tables 1A to 1E below). The differences between the three main political parties is negligible and certainly within the statistical error rate for the survey. (The statistical correlation between these variables is 0.08).

Where there is a significant difference is among respondents who gave a preference for the Bloc Quebecois: 10% of respondents who like the party also disliked racial minorities.

The results are similar when the question is changed from asking respondents to rate political parties to which party they identify with.. In table 2.0 below, 12% of respondents who self-identified as Conservatives dislike minorities while 9% of who said they were Liberals dislike minorities. Respondents who self-identified as NDP had the lowest score at 6% while 15% of those identifying as Bloc stated they disliked minorities.

The results are more varied when the question is changed from how do you feel about racial minorities to gays and lesbians. As Table 3 shows, approximately 25% of those respondents identifying as Conservatives also stated a dislike of gays and lesbians while 14% of respondents self-identifying as Liberals said the same thing. The scores for the NDP and Bloc were 14% and 10.9% respectively. Clearly all parties have significant numbers of supporters that dislike gays and lesbians; the Tories simply have more of them. (The statistical correlation between party self-identification and attitudes towards gays and lesbians is 0.001).

Are the results surprising?

No, because, generally speaking, the institutions and conventions of federal politics force all political parties to excise or silence their wing nuts and wackos as they compete for votes at the national level. The vast majority of Canadian voters cluster around the center of the political spectrum and have moderate attitude toward most issues. This forces political parties to jettison extreme views in order to brighten their appeal. This is why a former Reform Party die hard like Stephen Harper can woo Quebec with money and distinct society motions and run huge deficit after he earlier vehemently claimed he would never do such things.

It's also not surprising that a higher percentage of respondents that like the Bloc Quebecois disliked racial minorities. The Bloc is not a national political party and only has to tailor it's message and platform to suit the separatist vote in Quebec and separatist voters in Quebec have historically had a low opinion of immigrants and refugees. Jacques Parizeau's condemnation of immigrants and minorities as being the proximate cause of the failure of the 1995 referendum is a testament to separatist thinking on racial minorities.

So what can be said about Graves' Xenophobic & Homophobic Tories? Pretty much the exact same thing as Xenophobic & Homophobic  Liberals and Dippers. All parties have their wingnuts and wackos.What matters is how parties neutralize the influence of such extreme views.

Source 2008 Canada Election Survey.
The tables are based on attitude assessments using a range of 0-100. I have excluded responses that fell along the median of 50 as neutral positions. Therefore, 0-49 are considered a response of "dislike" and 51-100 are considered "like".

Tables 1A-5A

		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
CPC	Dislike	3%	27%	30%
	Like	4%	37%	41%
		7%	64%	71%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
LPC	Dislike	18%	5%	22%
	Like	5%	73%	78%
		22%	78%	100%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
NDP	Dislike	11%	43%	54%
	Like	3%	43%	46%
		14%	86%	100%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
Bloc	Dislike	13%	42%	55%
	Like	10%	35%	45%
		23%	77%	100%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
All	Dislike	7%	21%	27%
	Like	5%	68%	73%
		11%	89%	100%

Table 2.0
In federal politics, do you think of yourself as Liberal, Conservative, ect vs. How do you feel about racial minorities?

	Strongly Dislike	Dislike	Neutral	Like	Strongly Like
Other	0%	8%	8%	15%	69%
LPC	5%	4%	9%	27%	55%
CPC	7%	5%	13%	33%	42%
NDP	4%	2%	11%	24%	60%
Bloc	7%	8%	15%	36%	35%
Green	3%	2%	3%	26%	65%

Source: 2008 Canada Election Survey (http://www.queensu.ca/cora/ces.html)


Table 3.0 Party self-identification and attitudes towards gays and lesbians.

	Strongly Dislike			Dislike			Neutral			Like			Strongly Like
Other		3.2%			3.2%			9.7%			22.6%			51.6%
LPC		10.1%			4.3%			10%			21.5%			47.7%
CPC		18.5%			6.8%			12.6%			23.9%			31.3%
NDP		9.8%			3.1%			9.3%			16.7%			56.1%
Bloc		7.2%			3.7%			14.7%			26%			43.1%
Green		2%			3%			12%			15%			61%

Source: 2008 Canada Election Survey (http://www.queensu.ca/cora/ces.html)

The Hypocrisy of Secret Meetings and Opposition Politics

In a comment to a Don Martin column in the National Post,  frege99 wrote,  “MPs on a committee can be sworn to secrecy if necessary to protect information the committee determines should not be released. There is no reason to believe that MPs sitting in opposition are less willing to act in the national interest than are those in government.”

Similarly, the G&M reported that the  “…opposition is not asking for a full public release of the documents, but rather for the government to let a parliamentary committee study them in private.”

They're kidding, right?

In a perfect world, swearing members of parliament (MPs) to secrecy and then revealing documents would be a no brainer.

However, the plan derails at the point where you actually need to swear highly partisan MPs to secrecy. Why would the Opposition want their members muzzled when there are political games to be played and voters to be wooed by making damaging documents public?

It's foolish to think, and for the Opposition to suggest, that MPs would agree to secrecy when they desperately want the information contained in the documents to be made public. The more damaging the revelations are to the government, the more valuable they are to the Opposition and more likely they will be released.

More importantly, at least from the Opposition's perspective, the detainee abuse issue has become intolerable because of excess secrecy and it is ludicrous to think it might be solved by more of the same. In fact, it's disingenuous for Opposition to even suggest it.

The undeclared and unexamined assumption is that the Opposition is acting out of some altruistic national interest. They aren't. Full Stop.

The government would never agree to this for similar reasons. There is an adage in the security business that if you have one lock and one key, you have security, but if you have one lock and two keys, you have chaos.

Having MPs pinky-swear to never reveal what goes on in a meeting regarding politically sensitive documents is a sure-fire way to ensure that the content of those documents and/or the documents themselves become public. The government is having a hard enough time managing its own bureaucracy on this issue, it doesn't need the added headache of politically motivated MPs running around with state secrets.

According to the  Toronto Star,

    ...(p)olitical scientist Ned Franks, a parliamentary procedure expert, said the government is right to be concerned about releasing sensitive information to MPs, even if they promise to keep it secret.

    “The House of Commons at present is so virulently partisan that I think the pressures on the members of a committee like that would be immense to reveal the naughty bits,” Franks said in an interview.

    "Parliament’s a leaky sieve and I don’t trust its ability to hold confidences.”

There is zero incentive here for either the government or the Opposition to create an ad hoc intelligence committee to review files on the detainee issue. That said, it's obvious that the Tories thought long and hard (an oxymoron I know) about this issue during prorogation, and came up with a alternative involving former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobbuci.. This is a reasonable alternative. Although it falls far short of a public inquiry, it's better than nothing at all. (A reasonable alternative provided the Conservatives follow through, which they haven't).