Vicious circles and committees

Is the federal Conservative government defying Parliament again or does it have a valid point about ministerial responsibility in regards to the political staffers appearing before partisan committees?

The Opposition parties should stop whining and put the question to Speaker Peter Milliken and ask him rule whether the government can shield its political staff (or anyone) at its own discretion.

However, it seems relatively clear to me, after reading the House Rules and Procedures, that standing committees can call and/or summons whom they like with two exceptions. If I've read the R&P right, the only group that can say no to a summons absolutely are Senators (MPs can't compel a member of the opposing chamber to appear before a committee). MPs also have the right to refuse a request and/or summons but then, if the committee so decides, the MP must answer to the House why they refused (a little used tactic).

Even the most hardcore Conservative supporter must admit that this mess is the government's own making. A political staffer recalled a response to a FOIA request on how the government is managing Crown real estate. There would've been much less furor had the government simply released the information than they created by recalling it.

But there's a deeper issue here.

Had the Conservatives actually believed in ministerial responsibility and appeared at committees to defend the decisions of their ministries with regularity then the committees would not have been forced to call on political staffers, an ironic and vicious circle that goes around and around in today's Parliament.

But the Conservatives don't deserve all of the blame here.

Currently, the Opposition-controlled committees are more interested in scoring political points then revealing significant truths about government policy. This poisoned and partisan atmosphere help explain why many Conservative MPs and ministers are unwilling to appear before committees. Well that and the current governments shocking disdain for parliamentary rules and procedures.

But politics abhors a vacuum. When ministers refused to be held accountable for their subordinate's decisions, the committees went hunting for fresh game.

And the vicious circle of political life continues.

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 Coming Culture War?

 Ekos pollster Frank Graves told a Liberal gathering that it ought to impose a culture war on the Conservatives. According to Lawrence Martin of the Globe&Mail, Graves

..... has told the Grits that the wedge politics of the Conservatives provide them with an opportunity to stake out a stark alternative. Stop worrying about the West, he’s told them. No need to fear polarizing the debate. It’s what worked for Mr. Chrétien against Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.

In his advice, Mr. Graves could hardly have been more blunt. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

Graves, who is the CBC's go to guy for opinion polling, later apologized and tried to explain what he meant. Well sort of. According to another G&M article, Graves said, 'polling data shows the Conservative Party “does seem to provide a haven” for people with xenophobic or homophobic views.'

This, of course, dove tails nicely with people's ideological views of the Conservatives and previous scare tactics used by the Liberals. But Graves'assertions raise some important questions that Grave ought to answer.

First, xenophobia and homophobia are traits that defy political ideology. The Bloc and the Parti Quebec, for examples, are hardly sources for immigration friendly policies. And liberalized and secularized Quebec's tolerance and accommodation commission was little more than a podium for French-Canadian racist attitudes. The current Quebec Liberal governments pandering to anti-Islamic attitudes over the niqab is just a new incarnation of the same old attitudes.

Second, what does Graves mean precisely by homophobes and xenophobes? How is he measuring these attitudes and what is the statistical significance of his measure? Is Graves declaring people "homophobic" if they oppose teaching about homosexuality in grade 3 or does he mean something else. If you have legitimate concerns about immigration and refugee policy, are counted as xenophobic?

Second, what does Graves mean by "more" and by "empirically accurate"? Give us the numbers.

Third, where exactly do the Liberals, Bloc and NDP sit on Grave's scale of xenophobia and homophobia. What's the comparison?

Without numbers and data it's impossible to understand what Graves actually means. It would be possible to say, accurately and fairly, that the Conservatives attract more wackos than the Liberals or NDP even if it were only 1% more in comparative terms (although we all seriously doubt it's 1%).

Unless we have the hard numbers to review, it's impossible to know what Graves means and to evaluate its importance.

The accusation of xenophobia and homophobia originates in the Reform family values platforms of the 1990s. Preston Manning and the Reform Party used the social conservative trend as a wedge issue, working to divide support for the Progressive Conservatives, and expand beyond Alberta into rural Ontario. A political party will always vacuum up wing-nuts and extremists when it mines discontent and disenfranchisement for electoral gain.

Although Stephen Harper has successfully killed off or quarantined much of the wing of the party, so-cons still exert some influence and are therefore the soft underbelly of the Conservative Party. Conservative opponents love to poke the aging so-con lions through bars of their cage because the resulting roar makes excellent headlines.

ps: Chris Shelly of the National Post reports that G&M reporter Lawrence Martin stands by his claim that Frank Graves said that he told the Liberal Party about his strategy directly, which contradicts Graves' line that it was really "unsolicited advice" given to a newspaper reporter.

Guns and Politics

Liberal leader Michael "Iggy" Ignatieff has vowed to crack the whip and force his MPs to toe the party line on an upcoming vote on the firearms registry. The G&M reports that Iggy told a gathering of Canadian police,

".. the Liberal Party opposes the Conservatives’ effort to scrap the gun registry altogether and we will vote against the Hoeppner bill at third reading in the House of Commons...”

So, essentially, Iggy wants the Liberal Party to focus on vote-rich, genteel urban ridings in Quebec and Ontario and to hell with the needs, wants and traditions of those living outside those areas? This approach will only serve to further Balkanize Canadian politics and, in all likelihood, the Liberal Party.

Convention dictates that political parties allow MPs to vote freely on private members bills. The minority Parliament has turned this, and other conventions, on its head. It's unlikely, but not impossible, that Harper will attach confidence to this bill, therefore there's no downside to the Ignatieff allowing MPs to a free vote.The vote will not make or break the Liberal caucus but Ignatieff's heavy handedness just might.

The gun registry was a Liberal invention but this fact does not dictate that Liberal MPs should always vote for the status quo. The NEP was a Liberal idea and there's not one Liberal in the land that would vote to get it back.

By whipping his caucus brethren, Ignatieff opens himself to the same criticisms many level at Harper, that he's  intolerant of dissent and a growing control issues. As Jane Taber of the G&M points out, Iggy is still suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous voting by his own MPs over the party's abortion motion two weeks ago.

Let's assume the Conservatives get their way and the bill passes third reading. The Liberals will have an opportunity to reinstate the full registry in the near future, about six weeks after Harper falls on his sword and puts is government out of our collective misery. Whipping his MPs on a relatively minor piece of legislation is overkill.

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).